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 the community.
Hey, Alex Stone here. Welcome back to the ride along. We have a fantastic guest today. We have the korean cowboy in the house.
Long term SWAT guy, knows what he's doing. Been in law enforcement 20 plus years, almost 25, 26 years. He looks like he's 40, but he's not korean cowboy. Introduce yourself to the audience, kind of give us your background, and let us know what you're doing right now.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Great. Thanks for having me here.
So my background, I always start off with, I'm just a normal guy that had the opportunity to do some cool stuff. That's awesome. So with that being said, the normal guy is, I let me back up even more. So I grew up under the shadow of my dad, who was a rock marine, and he did a couple tours at Korea. Yeah, so he was a republic of Korea rock marine. And people say, I see that's where the path was. But actually not. He had no idea this is what I was going. He passed away, unfortunately, prior to me making the decision going to law enforcement. So that's where I kind of have to set the stage way back when. So I grew up under his tutelage.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: In Kelly or actually in Hawaii.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: So after the Vietnam war.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: That's what you surf.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Exactly. Okay.
And so he has two older sisters who been living in Hawaii for forever, and they talk him into coming out to immigrate to Hawaii. I was one year old. I was one year at the time. I had older sisters.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: That was.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: That was three, two years, two and a half years older than me. So I grew up in Hawaii. That's all I know is my childhood. I get there.
How's it?
And so in 80, my dad gets. He had to relearn a trade, so he learned carpentry while he was in Hawaii. And there was a big California boom. All the Kaiser hospitals were being, oh, yeah. So he gets a job coming out here. So he was like, hey, we're all going to move to California. And this is just before I started junior high. I'm like, I don't want to go. I don't want to go.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Yeah, bro, you're in paradise.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: This is crazy. So. But we made the move, and I'm out now, transplanted out in the mainland. Now. I speak pigeon. Yeah, terrible.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Pretty in. In the household, probably.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. Creating a household pigeon. So I get. I get, you know, landing in California, I'm out there trying to communicate with, you know, I'm the new kid on the block. Everyone's making fun of me. What are you talking. What is that? So, interesting story. So my dad being that regimented discipline, he goes, you're not gonna succeed on the mainline with that whacked up pidgin English. So he had me every night sit in front of the tv and repeat after the nightly news. Good evening, my name is Tom Brokaw. Good evening, my name is Tom Brokaw, and.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: No way.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: So he had the insight. That's brilliant to say, hey, you need to add to read a book. Record myself. Notice how I put two fingers when I did this. The young kids, they don't know what two fingers recording is. You know, that playback. So I had to record myself, listen to myself every night reading the book. So, you know, after months of that, I finally kicked the. My pigeon accent. Hawaii. So that's kind of. That gives you insight on the understanding of my life. My upbringing wasn't under my dad. So I go real quick, I go follow. He wanted me to go to college, traditional, be an engineer. He goes, I didn't go through war and bust my body. Immigrant. All this for you to just go.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: You can make money.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So did that. Went in college as engineer. Hated it. Wow. What?
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Engineering?
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Electric, electrical engineering. Hated it. So without telling him, I go transfer to another school and go business marketing. And he's like, no. Disowned me for three months. He's like, didn't talk to me, but, you know, that's just his style. Very, very strict. But he realized I was actually doing something productive and focused. But I couldn't get any classes in marketing and business because it was impacted. Ended up going, sociology. So when I graduated sociology major, I'm like, what do I do now? That's interesting. So I went to the job board, and they're looking for guidance counselors at certain high schools. And so I. I applied. I got it.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: And so you're your first job out of college, your guidance counselor.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: At inner city high school.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Because you're in LA at this point.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it was more of the suburbs of LA. It was a more the predominantly low income hispanic area of the county.
I'm working there, you know, good. Five, six years teaching you know, drug and alcohol abuse, health, fitness, doing, doing all that. And at the same time, because I had that business background and very entrepreneur under my dad, I started my martial arts career early back in Hawaii. So taekwondo, I got my third degree black belt. I said, how I, what do I do with this?
[00:05:53] Speaker A: And funny thing back, taekwondo.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I said, I got, I gotta do something with that. And the funny thing how that parlay developed was running around kid in Hawaii getting chased by the bigger hawaiian kid, getting scraps every day, getting beat up. So my dad, you're actually a pretty.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Big guy, but you're not samoan big?
[00:06:12] Speaker B: No, no. But I was the smallest kid until sophomore in high school. I went into high school five three, and I had this massive growth spurt, right? So I pushed almost 6ft. But if I'm in Hawaii getting my butt scraped and scrapped, and every day, you know, and my dad's like, no, enough of this. We'll take you and get you formally trained in a taekwondo. So I'm thinking, okay, so we're gonna pay money to get me beat up.
So that's what happened. I continued all the way on til I got my black belt and I come out here, it's like, I'm gonna open up my own studio. So I did that in the inner city. That's when we were in south central, opened up a studio for underprivileged kids, and I had this idea where we're gonna have the family, the mothers help open the studio, give them discounts. And it was thriving. What a great business. So I was doing that with the social work community, and then I guess it was a niche, you know, good friend.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: So you're still counseling, you're still a school counselor doing full time work?
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Full time, full time, full time. And then you open up your. Every day after work, I would rush out to LA, open up the studio from five to ten, and then on the weekends would be all day. So, you know, I had my calendar pretty full, so doing that, and it was busy, very successful. I had a couple kids go to state.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: This is the eighties.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: No, this is early nineties.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: Early nineties, yeah, yeah, that's like really when martial arts was becoming very popular.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah, tournaments everywhere. And, you know, I jumped on that train. And then a good friend of mine, he's in the finance department. We used to play competitive volleyball, basketball together at the, while we were in college. And he calls me up one day, goes, I don't think I can do this anymore. Finance goes, let's join the police department.
What? Really? Are you serious? And I guess he hit a nerve trigger that I said, let's do it. So I sold the studios, gave my two weeks notice to the schools, and said, well, actually didn't give the two weeks notice because it took four months to apply the process, getting on the job.
Right. So when I got my notice or letter saying, your academy date is, you know, in three weeks.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: So you were sent to the academy by the agency that hired you or some states. You know. You know how that works.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Right, right. So with. With California, with. With La county, there's only two big academies that are sanctioned, La county sheriff's and LAPD.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: So obviously I went with LAPD and I got the notice, which back probably.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: Then was one of the best academies in the country.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah. It had a great reputation. Yeah. So we did that. I got my. I got my academy date, gave my two weeks to the schools and sold my studio, and I'm all in. So, yeah, that's kind of started my journey.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: What was your class size?
[00:09:02] Speaker B: We started with, I think, 112, who graduated with 886.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good rate. That's.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Unfortunately now, because of all the issues and politics and hiring. Well, they need the numbers. Yeah. Well, now we're. Last class, it graduated 25.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Wow. So how do you went in? 25?
[00:09:23] Speaker B: How many went in?
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Is there.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Is there an actual attrition rate anymore?
[00:09:29] Speaker B: No. Yeah.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: So academies, they pretty much just.
They get you to pass.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Traditionally, the. The biggest washout topics or categories are firearms.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: And you've got the, like, law and there's like 25, 30 blocks of instruction called lds, learning, learning domains. And usually firearms is pretty much the biggest because most people coming in these days, you don't have a big influx to try to.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Isn't that amazing?
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Tamper the ratio with military and, you know, community representation. So. Yeah. You. A lot of people don't have.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: In my class, there were probably. I mean, I had. Luckily, I had grown up using firearms because I'm from Texas. That's how they do it. But I had grown up using firearms and.
And I had also been a reserve. Oh, I've been in the army as an officer. And I also was a reserve police officer for two years.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: And had already had my pistol qual and firearms calls and all that down. Right. But we had at least by the. By the end of our. I think it was like a four month, four and a half month academy. By the end of that, we had about five people in my class that still had not qualified.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: And one of them was actually. Had been a jailer in corrections, like five or six years and could not qualify with their pistol.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: Yeah. You know what I found out ratio wise, wherever you go, it's a percentage is the same. You know, like, you know, we have big class, but there. There's a few that. That are struggling, especially shotgun.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Which is weird, right?
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's a. The perception, anticipation that. That. That kill more than actual. Just go through it.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: You know, but just lean.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Lean into it and have good time.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean. Yeah. And those are simple instructions, but yeah, most people are kind of. They. They're afraid more of the possibility than just. Just get it done. But the interesting thing about that with me, my background being I'm just a average guy that never. I. Maybe I shot a pistol once before the academy. I didn't have that background.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: So you're dead, actually. Bring you up.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: No, I mean, you know, Hawaii is a target. No gun state. Really.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Got to go to the big island out the middle of nowhere.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Right, right. And then la, kid. I really didn't have that exposure. My dad was not really. He wanted to get me far away from all that as possible. Right.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: That makes sense. Being in the war, he wanted something different for you.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Right, right. So, that being said, I had pretty much a clean slate going into the police academy.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: Crazy.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: No idea.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: And now you're a tier one operator status. So something happened in between.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: I tell people, if you listen, just pay attention and just have this. Just. Yeah, I can do it. Attitude.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Have a good time.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Have a good time.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: You're gonna fail. Enjoy your failures.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: Learn all the things that I was able to. I guess experience and accomplish was just having the open mind saying, let's do it. You know? So through the department, I was able to learn how to ride a horse. That's what they call korean cowboy. I worked the mountain unit for about a year and a half.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: That's dope.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: And the amount of skill that you're expected and you do accomplish on a horse.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Do you learn how to fire from the horse?
[00:12:48] Speaker B: No.
Biggest misconception, of course.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Because you have to counter that. So all the years of training as a police officer, when you see threat, you immediately draw. Yeah, but that's.
Yeah, you can draw. But now what are you gonna do? You got one hand on your range. Are you gonna fire? If you fire, you're gonna go ass over tea kettle. And the horse is gonna go, yeah, yeah. So what you gotta do is dismount the first thing you do is you threat. You dismount.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Do you take cover? Do you use a horse's cover?
[00:13:16] Speaker B: You can. In an extreme situation where you dismount and then you engage. So that was the hardest thing to.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Yeah. That's crazy.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Get training on. You're sitting there and all the years before leading up to working the mounted unit, your instinct is you see a threat draw.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: So I think I've just drawn a conclusion here.
I have a feeling that your nickname, korean cowboy, has something to do with the fact that you were mounted LAPD. Is that a fair conclusion?
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Okay. That was the first korean officer work that worked them on it.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: So there you go. I was dubbed that.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Congratulations.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Oh, thank you.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: I get a hat with that do.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're one of the only units, brother, that actually wore. We wore wranglers, our uniform top. So this top 90s, bro.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: This is so nice.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: And a black Stetson hat.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: With our hat piece. No. Into it.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: So, you know, your regular police cover. Yeah, the hat piece that we had, we would take it out and put it into our Stetson.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: So you're riding a. Riding a horse, 800 pound horse with a stetson, with wranglers, with your. With your spurs and your. Your boots.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: And so this is for more, like, crowd events, like parades?
[00:14:30] Speaker B: No, this is an everyday suppression. Yeah, we actually crunch. We did. We had for a long time. If not still, they had the highest stats in the city of arrests, of contacts. You're just. You're out there on horseback. You see lots.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: So you're in the community. It's true. Community policing making.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: So you're working on your mission is quality of life because your radius of outreach is pretty short because you're not, like, driving the calls. So wherever you're there to impact, you're there. You're. You're. You're there for a quality of life.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: So are the command place posts for those, I guess I was called horse units.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, the mountain.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Yeah, the mountain. Either. Are they decentralized so that you can get good coverage, or do you deploy them in?
[00:15:17] Speaker B: So we get trailers. So the.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: I mean, the.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: We were.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: I didn't really plan on talking about this, but.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: I know, but, yeah. So they're up and located up in Griffith park area. And they've got arena, they've got offices and all the stalls.
And you start your day there. You work out, you tack up your horse and get ready, and then you load them up in trailers, and you.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: So it's very strategic. The deployment of those is basically.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: So the request comes on crime stats or the request of the summer, though.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: So you got a commander somewhere who's, like, looking at stuff and they're like, put mountains.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: It's a request. So every division has their own command and they all put a request in. We want the money. But in the summer, the best part of being in the mount unit, you get to patrol Venice beach. Oh, my. Up and down Venice beach, hanging out.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: So I have a feeling that you had a really good time.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: It was great. It was. Yeah, it was amazing.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: But the fact that the horsemanship that you're expected to do if you're in Venice beach, you got tourists coming up with baby stroller.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Oh, I'm sure.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Walking around, you got to be able to control every quarter of your horse.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: The front, the left rear. You got to be able to move you back rear, like two inches. You can have your horse. Just move two inches out of the way. The front two. So it was pretty as far as cool. The fact that you have that command. You have to have that command over the horse. The liability fact. The liability. So you learn a lot. Fact that I've never really been around a horse prior to that. Then now you have this. This confidence. Command, control were. I actually went full. They call it lope, but full gallop. And after a suspect about 200 yards away. Drug dealer. Drug dealer? Like a partner. I saw him and we went across the park. Full gallop. I didn't lose my stetson. You jump off and you arrest me. Like, that was kind of cool. Who would have thought?
Metropolitan police officer, city of LA. Gonna go full gal. That's crazy. That's one for the books. Yeah, but. So I had a great time.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: I think I need a photo of this. I don't want to see the photo of the korean cowboy.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: I've got one, I believe. Yeah.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: So you're, you're. You're working the mounted patrol and eventually you get the idea that you're gonna put in for SWAT.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
I don't know. I can't really answer that as far as one of the same attitude. Why not? Well, there's not.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Like, for me, I always wanted to.
I wanted the long term investigations. I wanted fraud investigations. I wanted sex crimes. I wanted death investigations. I like to spend six weeks on something and interview people and bring them back. Right. Go visit them in the jail and get the interview in the jail. Right. So if we can turn them, create a CI, get the control buys. But you're thinking you're like a high speed, tier one, operating status level guy, right. And so you were just naturally drawn to that. Is that your dad's? I don't think so.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Maybe sub kind of consciously or subliminally, you know, he really didn't talk a lot about the war. So as always, that curiosity was there, I think maybe, you know, and then when he passed away, before I even had any thoughts or inclination of joining law enforcement, I think that kind of always plan to see it in the back of my mind. What is that? Something that's always been, you know, kind of itching, maybe. I don't know. I never really deep dove that to figure out, but I've always wanted to do something kind of off the beaten path, I guess.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: So when the announcement came out, in a few years we're gonna. Or not a few months down the road, we're gonna have SWAT selection. And they don't do it every year is whenever they have enough opening. They can put this huge. Wow.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: So this could be like. It's kind of like the mafia. They have to open the books up, right?
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Like, okay, yeah, I guess something along those lines. So they have. So to put it to perspective, when they do have selection, usually about a 150 applicants throw their hats in the ring and there's a. There's a system that you got to go through if you have to do your 1st. First and foremost is the PFQ, you know, physical test. Always you line up on the line, you run. Back then it was a three mile run. You gotta do it under 21 minutes. And it's a hill course up in park. Yeah. Breeze, you're a gazelle. The korean cowboy can smoke that time.
Letting your horse do the run now. And you got to get your feet working a little different, but you work and then you do your push up, pull up setups. And then you race over down to the other academy, do an obstacle course, and then you do a pistol manipulation test, you know, because you're always handed. They want to see the proficiency level. You do that and then you do a couple other things. And then you take your oral interview and there's a board. Yeah. You get a supervisor from our, our SWAT team. And then they pick an outside supervisor from another agency.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: They're SWAT smart.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's no conflict or any perceived nepotism. Yeah. So they have that, your oral board and then all the packets of all 150 plus people they put together and they pick like at that time, do.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: They re background you at that point? I mean, even though you're already.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yes. Yo, they do. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz they want to see your past performance on the job is.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: I hand it off to a detective. Do you have a special assignment?
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Um, senior operators in SWAT. So the team leaders, assistant team leaders get their packages and they'll go out.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Scour the, like, hey, that guy's a dirt bag.
How is he even a cop?
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. No, you. You get, you get.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: I've been there.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah. They turn every stone, oversee that. That person.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Hey, this guy's actually dating a stripper, so. Yeah, that happens.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: That might be a plus because you can manage all that and still be a cop, so.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So multitasking at its best.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Right, right. So that once. Once that gets done. And my class had 14 spots to.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Out of 150 applicants.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Yeah, 14 spots to go. Start your selection process. So you invited to the school. The school was twelve weeks. Twelve to 14.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: That's like a real cute course. That's like a real selection course.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I think for me, not knowing.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: What academies in America, like, two weeks, cleats. What? Yeah, two to four weeks, maybe.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And then. But then you're out there, not make an entry, not doing any critical assignments. It's kind of on the job training. As you expose yourself to that, you probably won't see entry for about two.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Three years in a regular SWAT.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But for us, the tempo, the amount of volume, we can't have new select. These are new SWAT members. Sit on a perimeter. It's just. It won't work.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: So you're getting called out almost every.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Other day, pretty much three to four times a week. Yeah. The volume was pretty significant.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Sometimes even twice a day.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Yeah, three times.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: So back to back to back, those are the days that you're like, okay, I'm earning my money today.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Yeah, you are.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: So we had. So that's the whole selection. I think for me, being naive to all that, not having that paramilitary or even that tactical exposure kind of went in there. Very open minded, naive, you know? So I think that was. It helped me. Didn't really, I guess, intimidate me in that sense, because. I don't know. And then helped me through. And I was one of the fortunate ones. I got called to the selection process at the school and then we had about a 60% washout rate. So out of the 14, six of us made it out of six. Yeah.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: So that's a real selection, man.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Got out. And you're on six month probation when you're out in the field, how you perform.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: And you're actually making entry.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Entries breaching.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: At this point during your probation period.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: Which is important because if you're on a regular. Well, let's say regular swatch. If you're on a SWAT team that doesn't allow you to make entry or you're basically holding the scene outside of the action.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: How are you on permission? How can they.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Exactly. They evaluate you during training now, and their training relegate to once or twice a month. So that's their exposure to you.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: That's scenario training.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Which is good but not optimal.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Right, right. The stress level, you can only. You can only create so much control stress to evaluate someone.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: There's a famous story about my brother. They're, you know, they're doing close, close quarter combat, right? Clearing homes. I think it's a live fire shoot house. And a guy like, I can't remember, but he, I think he throws in a flashbang and then he, like, doesn't run in and hesitate. So the whole stack hesitates.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Right. So my brother pulls them aside and says, come here. And actually took him to a very small closet and just started dropping flashbangs in a closed closet.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: And he's like, what the. What are you gonna do now, huh? Is this gonna scare you? Are you not gonna make entry? You know what I mean?
[00:24:03] Speaker B: That's an interesting thing. Our budget for training for our SWAT team is astronomical because flashbangs typically run about $25 a pop. Right. And each train day we're deploying about 75 to 100. And during the school. During the school, the last, the 7th and 8th week is all HRT. Every day, 8 hours a day, you're out there, just flashback. And we don't use training bangs, you know, half, half load. It's a full bang. And I remember days where you're driving home and you're loopy.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Oh, you weren't ear pro.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: You weren't ear pro. But you're in a confined room for that overpressure, that concussion, as well as your teammate 1 meter from you shooting targets, the overpressure from the muzzle and everything. You're driving home loopy, like, okay, this is. And, you know, I'm calling my wife on the way home, hey, what's for dinner? She's like, why are you screaming?
I can't hear. I can't hear. So there's a lot of this. We're always training. So, you know, going back to your story with your brother, desensitizing that, that's that's basically what it is. Our philosophy is you get. But it's kind of a double edged sword because you're desensitized to the bangs going off and when you have real ops, but whenever you hear that steel a bang, body drop on concrete, you kind of cringe.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: You're ready for it.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Well, you have that, you know, that, that Pavlov frag experience. Exactly.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: So it's good. It's good.
So I still do to this day I feel very fortunate having navigate through, made the selection. I'm still, they did select me. I don't know why, but hey, I'm in keep quiet. Just see how long you can, you know, maintain. And through the, my experience I did twelve years the full time.
Yeah, twelve years, averaging about 100, 3250 missions a year. So we a lot of work and there's several cadres. I had the fortune of being in several of the cadres.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: So cadres, when you, when you, you go to the teaching level, right?
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's specialties in there.
Sniper, explosive breacher, combat diver, lead climber, EMT, H and T. Yes. So all that and, and one of my favorites, and we talked about this before, is the negotiation portion. Yeah.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: And kind of. So I'm glad you brought that up because kind of what we do at echelon is we really want to use our authority. Right. Our perceived authority on the street to build relationships and rapport from victims, regular people that are just houseless, community members, any type of stakeholder, even the drug dealers. Right. And so kind of draw on your history and social work and how that helped you in the SWAT kind of area as a negotiator.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Definitely. I think for me, I kind of took to that cadre like fish to water, you know, you didn't have to like really, I guess school or learn me as, from, from the history or the onset how and why. All the how and why of the negotiating portion because I had six years of that as a social worker. Exactly. Right.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: So I think that listening to people being empathetic.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Yes. Empathy was the biggest thing.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Having the empathy to listen in such a way that you can mirror people's emotional states. Right. And you're doing the behavioral analytics the whole time.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Right. So what I was doing all that and then when I got into the cadre, crisis negotiation, CNT cadre, now they were telling me, labeling the clinical terms of what I was already doing. Right. Mirroring nonverbal cues, all that. I was like, oh, okay. So I was already doing that, but I didn't know how and why you just did it. Because that's part of building that rapport or just on the job training. So it's kind of cool learning all that. And the cool thing about it is we've always. We always project and share with people who have this perception about SWAT, especially with LAPD SWAT, you know, they think we get. We land, blood crisis location. You hear the community saying, ah, here we go. Someone's gonna die. They're gonna destroy everything.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: And that paramilitary.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Right, exactly. Whereas the fact is, out of all the contacts and calls that we get every year, less than 1% go to deadly, deadly force, and that blows people's minds.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: So almost out of 100 to 150 calls a year, maybe two of those, one to two of those end up using deadly or even going to deadly force.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: So the individual might not actually pass away or suffer from their injuries.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: Right, exactly.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: But it kind of goes. So what you're saying is that communication piece, the psychology.
Right. That social work background is really the key component of SWAT.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. Every. Every crisis situation other than canine, where it's a. It's a canine search, if you will, of, you know, other than that, it's always starts and ends with negotiations.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Right. We establish negotiations.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Give us an example of that.
Of, well, you know, you feel like that if the negotiation hadn't gone well, it would have. It wouldn't have gone well for anybody.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Wow, there's so many to pick from as far as examples of negotiations out there that we start so the typical, if you will, set up of a crisis scene. We get there, you know, you get the command post, you get the perimeters, containment patrol or whatever units out there containing the location. Then we get there, and the process is we slowly, we assess. We.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: So let's say it's a domestic.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Yeah, domestic.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: One of the partners takes the other one hostage. Maybe there's a child involved. Other, maybe an elderly woman. The person who can't move because they're elderly.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Right, right. So I'll give you an example that we had a gangster running from the cops with a gun. He committed a crime, and he enters residence. Right. And so, yeah, I feel like the.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: Baby mom was gonna be involved.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: The gangster always runs to the baby mom's house.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: It's just like vehicle pursuits. It always ends in the familiar area that.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: You can go 20, 30 miles out, but they always return to.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: They're always going to the baby mama's house.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Right. So we had one gangster. He goes in and goes into baby mama's house, like 10:00 at night. She self evacuates. But they have a ten month old swaddled up inside.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: That must have broken heart, man. Doctor.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So she's out there cuz she sees, you know, him running in with a gun and running from the cops.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: You get notified from, I'm assuming that female, the bait, the baby mama. You said she fled the scene. That's who probably notified law enforcement.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: Well, she's already out. Cops are there.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
Hopper suit.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Patrol gets there, that's around it, and they see her, you know, self evacuate. So they have her in pocket and. And good intel. Great intel. And she verifies the name, who he is. She's my baby's daddy out there. And now he's barricaded, got a gun, crimes committed. So it meets the criteria for Swatco.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: He's already been in prison and he's not going back.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Exactly. So we get there and I'm negotiator. So we have what's called a centralized model where we have out of 60 operators that we have on the team. Roughly about 20 are designated trained more than the basic entry level. So every SWAT candidate in the 10th week of their selection, they go to a week long hostage rescue school. Critical.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: So they go to that. They have the baseline understanding. So they have a little bit more than. Significantly more than the average patrol officer.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Oh, every kid. That's amazing. You're looking to get a day or two of that.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: And. Right, so we get a full week of immersed scenarios, clinical, you know, subject matter experts come in and we do all. So that's. They get that. But that's. Every individual, every selectee that goes part of the school is mandated that you shall attend and accomplish and finish the one week long. So now you have that. But now if you want to be a negotiator now, one day a month, sometimes two, you're working to even better hone and skill that craft, that craft with psychologists and all the different resources that we have. We'll sit there, we'll round talk, a roundtable talk, or we'll do scenarios. So you're now bonafide negotiator and on scene we can do the actual negotiating. So going back to that crisis, that barricade, we get there, I land on scene. And those days of throw phones and in our CNT cab, those days are gone. Because everyone has a cell phone. Yeah, everyone's got a cell phone. So you should. Now you're talking to subject suspect, whoever on the cell phone. And that's where the dialogue starts. We know the anxiety is up at nine or ten.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: Just been running from the cops. Cops are out there. They are, you know, elevated their anxiety. Everyone wants to cause now you've got hostage in there. So your job is to just bring it down, build that rapport so it starts from there. If I come in there hot, who knows? You can trigger. Oh, easily, especially with suspects and gangsters being on meth, on drugs and everything. You can't predict like where they're at, what happens.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Yeah, they could be in a drug induced psychoses. So their reality isn't even real. Real.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: Right. So, you know, your job is to kind of bring everybody, everybody I'd seen back down and now you, you're at the helm. Everybody is subject to kind of what, how you.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: So you're the incident commander essentially.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Pretty much.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: I mean, there is someone that's running incident command, but you're the one that's advising. You're the lead advisor for the command at that point. Yeah.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: So everybody has to basically access to what you're doing, you know, so you have your primary negotiator, secondary and your psychologist there and feeding intel, giving information. You're driving this whole crisis situation. So that's kind of the cool thing about it. You know, you're in this tactical mode and everything, but as a negotiator, you're running the show and you get to kind of slow it down and drive it to where you want a successful outcome.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Outcome.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: A peaceful outcome. Sometimes it'll take six, seven, 8 hours.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: It takes a long time.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, so the, and then the, your tactical side, they trust you that, you know, you are looking out for everyone's best interest, but they don't want to go out there and barge the location and get into a use of, for shooting where you don't know somebody couldn't get hurt.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: So be well, and if there's a child inside, nobody wants that child to suffer an injury.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: That's the real, I mean, no police officer wants that on their conscience.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So the perception that we're trying to always, I guess, change or convey to the public is that we're a life saving organization, not a life taking organization. Right. So that perception, because I think Hollywood and a lot of the media that want to portray this tactical situation as like kick down the door, take names, bang up, shoot up, and then hopefully we'll hope for the best. But sexuality, no, we, we pride ourselves that we're life saving organizations. All starts with communication and the empathy. Right. So one of the reasons why every SWAT operator goes to that week long negotiation school, you might be on the one two corner or, you know, the containment and the suspect comes out the window. Yeah. Comes the window. Instead of barking at him, you know, giving him commands, you just gonna go, hey, what's going on? You build a report. We've had several instances where that containment SWAT officer ends up being the negotiator because he instantly built the rapport.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: So then whoever holds the rapport holds command.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: It's relationship.
[00:36:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: And that suspect leading leadership comes through. Relationship.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Exactly. And that's the concept. People are like, that suspect refuses to talk to anybody else, even the negotiator, because he built a rapport with our tactical operator on the corner. And we've had several situations where he or she is now being talked out successfully.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: That's amazing.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: So I think that is where my passion is to kind of hopefully rewrite the perception of the public thing. It's not all doom and gloom and kick the door down knuckle draggers. It's that ability to convey and build that rapport. So key why we've been so successful in that percentage of contact.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: So I want to shift gears, but I'm going to stay on the same topic, and I bring this up a lot, but we have a huge lack of emergency services in America, especially in urban environments, cities. Right. And at the same time, we have a cyclical crime wave, which comes every 20 so years. You have peaks in crime on top of that, what we also have because of Supreme Court decisions. Right. O'Connor v. Donaldson in the seventies, we have mental health.
All these major institutions have kind of shut down.
There was no adequate healthcare for people that were less privileged people in the lower strata of the economic sphere of life. And so we have an entire generation of. Of kids that have grown up and that are now adults that have never received the proper psychiatric care that they need. So we have an increase of school shootings and mass casualty events. Right. Which is, again, goes back to your sphere of responsibility, your area of operations, which is Swat. Right.
At what point do you believe that law enforcement has ever woken up to the realization that. That we had to take on the mantle of mental health crisis? Social work operators in the field? I mean, the average cop in America, do you think that they realize that these decisions that happened really, even maybe before they were even born, kind of led to this dynamic, that law enforcement are now responsible for being mental health care professionals on the street?
[00:39:03] Speaker B: I think the average cop knows that they. Because they're dealing with it on a daily, day to day basis.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: But they're doing social work.
[00:39:12] Speaker B: Yeah, they are. They are. And I think the hard part of that is you got to balance that with the understaffed and overworked of radio calls, calls for service.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: You're four calls down all day long.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Right, exactly.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: So you carry a criminal mandate. We don't really have a civil mandate.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: Right.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: But yet we're doing social work, and it's. They're almost diametrically opposed, but in reality, neither works without both components present.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: So how. Where would we go? Where do we go from here?
[00:39:46] Speaker B: I think it's a simultaneous education, I guess, push for the public to understand that you can't have a response team that is not law enforcement minded or has a law enforcement background, because it's not so, like, black and white binary. You're not gonna have a social.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: It's all.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And a drop of a hat. It can turn into violent, or you can turn into a situation where it can go to a hostage or it can go whatever, but you have to have the ability to react to that, answer, that component, but have that initial outreach of the social aspect. Right. The empathy and all that. So I think the ultimate, I think, goal of strategy was to equip officers to have that training, the empathy, just like with our selection process, with that SWAT operator, having that mandated one week crisis negotiation school. I think that has to be integrated to the patrol officer, because you can't take away that component and just send in social workers.
[00:40:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: Right. Because that's. That's.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: I agree. Risky. That happened in a town I used to live in near. Near where I served in law enforcement. And she was going to an individual's home who had a criminal history of violence, had a clinical history of MPD, multiple personality disorder, and also other clinical issues.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: And the individual was just. All they were doing was going to drop off medication at their house, and the person jumped the female social worker, stabbed her in the neck. She died almost immediately.
And at some point, like.
[00:41:35] Speaker B: And I'm not.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: And this is not. I'm not trying to dog, like, other emergency services bureaus. So. But at some point, doesn't it make sense, either one, or in my mind, there has to be a change. Right. And the change either looks like law enforcement becomes a multidisciplinary team where we have medics, maybe even firefighters, maybe social workers, even if they're all armed. But we need a multi discipline. We need multiple disciplines on scene at almost every time right. Or is it that long? Is it that EMTs and firefighters are actually just going to be patrolling in units and not just at the firehouse? And maybe that. Maybe that level increases. We get the social workers, just like the fire department invited the medics in after fire suppression systems became very, very effective. They got those medic units out of the hospital, brought them into the firehouse. Maybe they need to bring social workers underneath their purview. Maybe we share a slight criminal civil mandate with them. Maybe because I've always thought, you know, as a police officer doing a police officer hold or a psych hold, I always thought the EMTs and the firefighters were better poised with their background to make that determination.
Right. Rather than. I mean, I was a Cit guy. I did all that. I mean, I had background in the chaplaincy, in the army, so I think I was better qualified to make those calls. Right. But I think a lot of police officers would prefer an EMT actually make the decision if someone's in a true mental state that was possibly not drug induced and they were also a danger to themselves or others.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: So if you could have your way. Do we create a third emergency bureau?
Do we have. Do we put firefighters and EMTs on patrol with us?
[00:43:23] Speaker B: Possibly. What worked very well for us. And speaking as far as, just, like, the swap missions, we had, what's called tems, tactical, ems, that were, because they're the firefighters.
Protocol is they will not go into a hot scene. You know that, right? They don't. Never going. So what do we do?
[00:43:43] Speaker A: We had to clear. We had a house that was on fire. He held. He had his wife hostage. He was a welder. He pulled all of his giant welding tanks, assetling tanks, into the house, set the house on fire. She escaped. She ran. He ran. We actually. He hit our vehicles. We took him into custody, but they didn't. The firefighters didn't want to go in because they thought someone might still be in the house. So they wanted us to go into a burning house.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And become firefighters.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: And become firefighters. To clear the house with giant, huge, giant tanks of gas. And I literally. I was like, we're not going in there, right? Just put the fire out, bro.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: No, I mean, if. If we'll clear around or he was still in there, then you have to go in.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: Right. But, yeah, that's. That's. That's the.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: We had no known hostage.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: Well, we. I have situations where we've got a suspect barricade in there, and we introduced gas and inadvertently set the mattress on fire, the house on fire. So I'm sitting with a hose from the neighbor's yard, putting it out while my partner's covering me on the window. Was the suspect running around with a gun in there? And so we're. Fire departments are going to come and do that, and we don't expect them to do that. That's not their job.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: That's not the job.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: So we had what's called the Thames unit, the tactical EMS. We trained them, familiarize them with our.
[00:44:59] Speaker A: They don't have a criminal mandate. They're not sworn officers.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: No. You know, they're just attacking to the hip. So by having that exposure and training on SWAT tactics that allowed them to come go downrange with us and stay, you know, near us, we were to have forced protection. But now, in case one of us or suspect gets injured, we have immediate, you know, paramedics. So I think along those lines. LAPD has a program, it's called a smart team MEU mental evaluation unit, where officers are designated to ride along with a clinician with someone. So you're not sending one or either one alone, right. You're not going to send a clinician out to make the assessment without forced protection.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: Don't we need hundreds of these? It's usually here in Portland. We need. We need, like every patrol, I would say 50% of patrol units need to have someone of another field, another discipline.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: With them, I think so that definitely this the way the population society has evolved to where you can say in the LA, greater LA area, you're looking at about 35, 40% are suffering from some kind of mental illness. So you look at that ratio, then at least maybe one or two cars per shift is dedicated for that shift where you got an officer with a clinician or someone to be accessible, as opposed to, you know, I don't think those calls are necessarily urgent enough where it's a hostage rescue type temple, you can say, okay, this is what I'm going into. This is the call. You read your comments when you get in there, and then you can say, hey, can I get the smart car? Can I get the Mu car roll out. You've got time. And then when you get there, you brief and you go in. Just like our model of our negotiation team, we've got primary, secondary and psychologists, and we gather, we huddle, we chalk talk how we're gonna drive that critical situation. It's the same thing that we can implement. We pour so much money into the social work part of the community from LA.
I think last year, the previous mayor committed a billion dollars to address homelessness. How much of that can be carved out to have that type of clinical clinician patrol team?
[00:47:18] Speaker A: I think you need it, because if. If the only people who are on the streets that can actually identify and then save someone from harming themselves because of a mental illness or a drug induced psychoses, if the only people on the street that can do that are essentially police officers, right, then we need to be patrolling. Just if that's. If that's gonna be one of our functions and we're gonna be stuck in that. That field of fire or that area of operations, then we should be patrolling with the mindset that that's an actual real task that we need to be conducting during patrol all the time and not just something that we're going. That's going to be one of our calls today, right. There should be units out there patrolling and taking those calls, it seems like, and at least at a higher volume.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: So I think a good common sense approach would be because it's so hard to, you know, increase and hire right now, for every police department across the country, they're having that same problem.
[00:48:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:48:19] Speaker B: We can't hire. So I think what you do is you pour money into training the existing officers to have that empathy, to have that awareness, to have that ability to now wear that one of the extra ten hats that they are already wearing. Cops are the best at doing multitasking.
[00:48:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:48:37] Speaker A: That's the job.
[00:48:37] Speaker B: You're either doing renting first aid. Right. You're either, you know, rushing into a building, you either traffic control, you're doing a lot of things anyway. But blanket that. All that with the understanding of empathy and social work, which they already have. And a lot of that, I think, personally speaking, is. It's a misperception that people have already. So by, I think, equipping. So how does. How do we normally handle, like, Christ, for example, Rodney King. Right. We know the infamous Rodney King incident that happened on Foothill Boulevard. LAPD. That happened. What happened after that? That incident? LAPD got more training.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:17] Speaker B: We didn't take away money. We didn't take away equipment from those officers. We said they need more training where they. Money poured into at that time. That's. That was the common sentiment. We just needed more training. How did that deviate or evolve to, for instance, the George Floyd.
[00:49:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:35] Speaker B: Turn into the takeaway money.
[00:49:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:37] Speaker B: So what did the takeaway taking away funding do? It just took away a leg off, off that three legged stool.
[00:49:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:44] Speaker B: You know, so when you're down five.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: Calls because your department's only stepped at 50%, and you have two. Two domestics where someone could literally be getting killed. And those are two of your five calls. You don't have time to do psychology. You don't have time to sit and wait with someone.
[00:50:03] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:50:04] Speaker A: You have to figure out if that person needs to be arrested, and then you got to go to your next call.
[00:50:09] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah.
Your time and your shift is limited. Right. So it's kind of like you have a doctor that messes up on an operation or surgery. Do you take away his tools and say, no, you send him to go get more training. So the next operation he'll be. He'll be successful. Right. Not, you know, chastisement. Say, okay, well, because you did that, we're gonna give you a dull.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: Actually, because somebody. Another. A doctor in Florida did that.
[00:50:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: Now we're gonna take your money away.
[00:50:37] Speaker B: And all the other. Right. It doesn't make sense.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: This is another problem I have, and I know that we're probably running a little bit late. We're gonna hit the road soon. We're gonna go on a ride along.
This has always bothered me. So I'm a co. I'm a cop in a small town near the coast in Oregon. Right. And for some reason, people think that law enforcement is, like, this national thing.
[00:51:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: Like, if something happens in Tennessee.
Right. That somehow reflects upon LAPD or Ohio or Idaho, and in reality, it's. Law enforcement is the most decentralized.
Right.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: Kind of like when it comes to the ability of the. To use the constitution to affect changes in individual lives, it's more diverse and more decentralized than any other program. Like, hospitals are pretty regulated. If you go to a hospital in La versus a hospital in New York, you're pretty much gonna have the same experience. Right, right. Because of protocols, insurance, what you're allowed to do, it's all very regulated, but you could get contacted by a cop in Mississippi and then get contacted by a cop in Georgia, a contact by a cop in New Jersey, and then get contacted by a cop in Washington state, and you'll literally get four completely different. Right. Four completely different experiences out of that. And so I think that's part of the problem is people assume that because this. Let's say you have a whole department that hasn't done training in years, and there are some civil rights violations going on. Right. And they do have issues. Maybe they even have issues with discrimination, but that has nothing to do with LAPD. And that has nothing to do with La county sheriff's office. And so how do we, how do we bring awareness to that, that kind of dynamic?
Right?
[00:52:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it starts with education. You know, like what we're doing now, reveal and educate the public that just exactly what you're saying. We're not all one big giant amoeba. Yeah. Right. So.
[00:52:46] Speaker A: But people did this with my company. They're like, you're just Blackwater. You're just, you just left Iraq and turned into echelon, and now you're just trying to take over the west coast of America. And I'm like, actually, no, we're doing social work.
[00:52:59] Speaker B: Right.
[00:52:59] Speaker A: Like, I, we, I want to spend 3 hours with that bat person today.
I want to spend 3 hours with Sonny and try to get him a ticket back to Alaska. Right. And we're not, that's not who we are.
[00:53:12] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:53:12] Speaker A: Are there other security companies out there that act stupid? Yeah, but that has nothing to do with me. Like, exactly. How do we fight that? How do we fight that?
[00:53:21] Speaker B: I think one day, one community at a time, one person at a time, you gotta, you gotta. It's fighting that.
The general perception of law enforcement, the general perception, I don't know where or how that's kind of pushed or perpetuated, but, you know, a lot of it's media smoke and mirror movies, Hollywood, all right, they give you that hope, perception. But from my experience, going out to call ups in the middle of, you know, underprivileged communities and the ghetto and stuff, they're great people and they appreciate us, but it's a media that says they don't. Yeah, but I'm like, no, I get there. I just had a call up. They love us. We had this conversation. They thank us for protecting their community, but then you go home, you watch, the media's like, no, the community wants you out. I said, that's not what Misses Johnson said, you know, so I think it's that constant education and train people. Just like how I share with you the stats of our team. Of all the hundreds of contacts we had, less than 1%.
[00:54:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: Go to use of deadly force.
[00:54:31] Speaker A: Well, and I think I did the stats one time just for, I think, like, there's like three or 4 million people get pulled over a year for speeding or something like this, for traffic violations, and only like less than one 10th of 1% does that ever end up in like, a use of force.
[00:54:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:54:46] Speaker A: It's very rare, actually.
[00:54:48] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: So it's finding that dynamic. We can shift we can shift focus because we've been talking a while. I want people to know kind of what you're doing today and kind of what you're offering classes wise. I know that you're constantly traveling around the world. You're training everybody. You're training Americans, airsoft team. You're doing everything. So give us a little, a taste of what's going on.
[00:55:10] Speaker B: So I had the opportunity, and the, the hardest thing was pivoting from the public sector to the private sector. Yeah, pivoting. So your mindset, you know, we're always.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: Taught you made it to retirement.
[00:55:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So you're always taught silent, silent warrior, silent professional. We don't toot our own horn, all that. But now running a company, you kind of have to let people know what you do and so forth. And that was kind of the biggest pivot, the biggest growth, learning, and opportunity.
[00:55:40] Speaker A: But without talking about yourself, keep your ego in check. Stay humble.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:55:43] Speaker A: But explain people actually, like, I know what I'm doing here.
[00:55:48] Speaker B: So I let projects and I let my, the actions speak for, you know, ourselves. And when I, prior to retiring, just under 25 years, I. What spurred me to retire when I did, I probably could have put five, six more years on the books, but I was, I got the bug, so I started the business. Training company. Yes. Entrepreneur bug that I had prior to coming on the job, and I had the opportunity to just dive into that world. So I started my training company, Tricell USA.
[00:56:18] Speaker A: Tricel USA. And that's the hat I'm always wearing.
[00:56:21] Speaker B: It's somewhere floating around here.
[00:56:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm wearing it all the time. Oh, the producers got to throw it to me.
[00:56:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So with the three cells, you know, we had that basically the three disciplines that we have, firearms training, tactical training, and corporate security related consulting. So that's. I keep that vague because there's a lot of nuances to that. We do executive protection. We do active shooter training. We do a lot of different things that we have our hands in, but that has been amazing. Allows me to reach out in a different way in the community where they want to know about law enforcement, which they never had access to. Now they do through training. But we also train, I bring active police officers, active members on our swat team and law enforcement to train not just the civilian side, but also other tactical teams. But with that, recently, I just, we're gonna launch a foundation, a non profit. So part of the range, I'm also co founder of a shooting range called Route 66 Shooting Sports park.
[00:57:24] Speaker A: And this is in near San Bernardino.
[00:57:25] Speaker B: Bernardino, it's a great thriving.
[00:57:27] Speaker A: It's a public private partnership.
[00:57:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:29] Speaker A: With the county sheriff's office.
[00:57:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it's a private, complete private property. It's about just shy of 100 acres thrive. Now we got two.
[00:57:38] Speaker A: I haven't been there yet. I know. You invited me.
[00:57:40] Speaker B: You're gonna come down. You're gonna love it. I've got two co founders.
[00:57:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm gonna be the guy running around getting airsoft.
[00:57:45] Speaker B: You are, you are. We're gonna do, we're gonna do all that stuff. So half of the range is dedicated to the public.
[00:57:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:50] Speaker B: So we've got the traditional private bays, sporting clays, 40, 50, all that. Yeah. Is dedicated to the public. We've been thriving. We see about four or 5000 people a month. They come.
[00:58:01] Speaker A: I know you had Mike Glover there.
[00:58:02] Speaker B: Yeah, he comes occasionally. Do his classes every month. Yeah, he's. We actually scheduled in September to do defensive pistol, so forth. So the back 50 acres, that's private.
I started a foundation to oversee the build and the build on that. The project is to build the international training institute and to house training, the ability to train international teams shoulder, shoulder on us soil. To train so that they can be prepared for any world events in anywhere in the world. They're comfortable. They've trained shoulder, shoulder. So that's the initial.
[00:58:38] Speaker A: Is it fair to say that America, because of our involvement overseas, we tend to always be leading kind of that urban warfare, combat or that anti terrorism stuff? You know, Israel's always doing a great job in this type of tactical field. And so a lot of these, a lot of our allies, we'll just talk about Korea. Like Korea, you know, they're always going to want to get trained with. They want to train with us. Thailand, the thai marines. Right. They want to train with us. And so you're talking about having an international facility where these groups can actually come here.
[00:59:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:59:13] Speaker A: Because a lot of times we have to meet these entities.
Other countries like Thailand.
[00:59:18] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:59:18] Speaker A: Right. So rather than have to always have these us operators travel oconus, you're gonna try to bring a lot of that action here.
[00:59:25] Speaker B: Correct, correct. And mainly because of the facility, the way that the topography and the layout of the land, I can do a lot more.
A lot of freedom and flexibility to run that type of training where a lot of the other place, even in us or anywhere else, you have to take a backseat to the public ranges. All the ranges are subjugated to. Let's the public first. Yeah, right. And they're all just kind of square range, bays.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: Boom, boom, boom.
[00:59:51] Speaker B: Right. With the back range. You've got this crazy, you know, terrain that I can do a lot of things that we.
[00:59:56] Speaker A: I've seen you do long term missions and tracks. I think I've seen some work that you've done with drones. You actually had a drone tracking you.
[01:00:04] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:00:04] Speaker A: And you're on mission. Right.
[01:00:06] Speaker B: You're like, we can do rural tactics.
[01:00:09] Speaker A: I don't give your secret sauce away.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: But still, we're still building. So part of that foundation is overlook the build. We're going to build the live fire shoot house, five story repelling tower, sniper tower, multipurpose room. Gonna have all that in that terrain. But a big portion of that foundation, we want to apply to the build of trust so we can provide scholarship where? In areas of either university or trade school to fallen officers children.
[01:00:37] Speaker A: Oh, that's amazing.
[01:00:38] Speaker B: Right? So that's kind of our big, big, big.
[01:00:41] Speaker A: Let me know. I want to be involved.
[01:00:42] Speaker B: That's amazing.
[01:00:43] Speaker A: I'm involved. I give money to a lot of foundations. Our company does. And we would be honored to be a part of that.
[01:00:49] Speaker B: The idea that came back was the whole adage, give them out of fish, feed them for a day, teach them how to fish, feed them for a lifetime. So the thought we had was, okay, the child of a fallen officer, we can say, okay, we'll provide roof and shelter and clothing, all that. But what about that child's rest of the career? That child has a big burden to bear.
[01:01:14] Speaker A: Right?
[01:01:14] Speaker B: And we have in our foundation aboard, we have tutorials, tutoring. We have all that. But we want to be able to provide the path for the rest of his or her life.
[01:01:24] Speaker A: I love that.
[01:01:24] Speaker B: Right. So, once again, going back to teach that child how to fish, and that child would feed itself for the rest of his life.
[01:01:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:01:32] Speaker B: So with that being said, we want to really focus on that aspect of it and making that.
That tragic incident, that child now a thriving, contributing part of society, of community.
[01:01:47] Speaker A: Can I add to that little adage or proverb? So, the way I look at it, and I probably got a lot of this from Jocko and my brother, but you give a man a fish, you give him a meal for a day, you teach a man to fish, and then he can feed himself for the rest of his life. If you teach a team to fish, you can feed a village.
[01:02:07] Speaker B: Outstanding. Yes.
[01:02:08] Speaker A: Confidant village. It's exponential, you know? And so the type of work that you're doing really, is teamwork. Right. And how to work in those components and how to do team leadership stuff.
[01:02:18] Speaker B: So, yeah, and we want to build a foundation where they can always have a home to come back and continue to get plugged in, continue to come back. And it's going to be, you know, just like when one of our fallen soldiers, their family members will say, now you have 30 uncles and 50 aunts, uncle. So it's kind of like that same concept. You don't, you're not out there alone. All right, we're going to teach you how to fish, but you're also going to have a home of however many uncles and ants that are in this foundation. Internationally. Internationally as well. So fantastic. We're excited that we're going to be launching that. Ti squared.
[01:02:53] Speaker A: Ti squared. And that's right here. Ti squared, yes.
[01:02:56] Speaker B: Tricell International Training Institute.
[01:02:59] Speaker A: Love it.
[01:02:59] Speaker B: The website's gonna be launched pretty soon. We're slowly, we built a great board. We've got some heavy hitters on the board. Yeah. We've got surgeons, attorneys, we got former chiefs. We've got everyone on the board to really, they're, they're all bought in. They're all in on this, on this vision to provide not only a training facility, but also future and direction for these children. So.
[01:03:21] Speaker A: So where can people find you? On social media, on the youtubes and all that? And then for anyone who's watching who has, who doesn't have prior law enforcement, maybe they're younger, they're thinking about law enforcement. What would you tell them? So tell them where we can find.
[01:03:36] Speaker B: You and what would you tell those? Our website is www.tricelusa.com, t r I dash cell USA.com.
[01:03:46] Speaker A: Check it out.
[01:03:46] Speaker B: And Instagram is same thing, tricellusa.com, where we have classes, a lot of cool things that we're posting up. And for that, for that young individual, that young child wants to either aspire again to law enforcement, I like to use myself an example. If a guy like me, no prior military, didn't really know what to do and where to go, didn't even know.
[01:04:11] Speaker A: How to shoot a handgun, no.
[01:04:12] Speaker B: Well, and throw myself into, like, a.
[01:04:15] Speaker A: Swat, into a guy who held like seven right positions on the premier SWAT team in the world, I mean, that's pretty.
[01:04:21] Speaker B: I say, if this korean cowboy can do it, you can do it. You know, there's no, there's no formula. All I say is, oh, and I want to closed by kind of this story that propelled me and compelled me to, I guess, do what or chase the dreams that I did. I read way back early in my career, I read it's called memoirs of a hospice nurse. So that changed my outlook. I mean, dramatically before that, it was very introverted, just a homebody. And those memoirs basically was about a hospice nurse throughout her career. And what she realized and gathered after her career was that the only thing you can take to your grave is regret. You can't take money. You can't take fame. You can't take looks, and everything. You can take regret. And she realized, having tended to all these people that are in hospice care on their dying bed, they always. They all shared with her their regret. Things they didn't do, things they didn't do, you know? And so I passed that on to my kids. I said, I love that you're gonna go. You don't want to be 30 years later down the road saying, you know what? I wish I should have done that. I wish. I wish I should. I should have, you know, published that song. Yeah, I should have talked to that girl, and I should have done this. And talk is cheap. I always tell my boys, talk is cheap. You just do it. So that's kind of changed my attitude. And with that, it was like, I'm not gonna regret. I can sit there and 30 years later tell my kids, you know, I had a chance to try out for SWAT. I had a chance to do this. But, you know, then things didn't work out.
[01:06:02] Speaker A: I picked up the donut.
[01:06:04] Speaker B: Exactly. Regret, regret. So we don't. We don't.
[01:06:07] Speaker A: I love that. One of my mentors, my current mentor, he was a former vp of a big tech company. I don't want to put his name out there yet. I think he's eventually gonna be a guest here at the right along. But he told me, Alex, because I'm trying to make big moves right now. Big moves. Trying to buy tech company, trying to raise millions of dollars and all this other stuff, keeping this. But I do a lot of other things other than that. And he said, alex, you need to do. You need to think about this. And I was like, okay. He said, what would you do if you knew that you could not fail?
Do that?
[01:06:45] Speaker B: Hmm.
[01:06:47] Speaker A: And I was like, well, let's go for it.
[01:06:51] Speaker B: Yeah. We put our own roadblocks.
[01:06:53] Speaker A: We do. You know, and that leads to regret because we're fear of. We're fear. We're afraid of success. We're afraid to fail. Whatever. And whatever that is. Just do what you would do if you knew and if you knew in your heart of hearts, deep in your core that you are not going to fail that you were actually going to succeed and do very well.
Imagine that, and then go out and do it right. And so that's what we do. That's what we do to become leaders here at the ride along. That's what we do every day. We're going to go out and do it in the field because, you know, there's a lot of podcasts where people, they do a lot of this, right? There's a lot of this going on in the world. And I love sitting down here talking to my people. I love this. This is great. But at the end of the day, I want to hit the road. I want to be on patrol, and I want to change lives, right? And so the only way to get to community transformation is personal transformation. It begins here. It goes out to other people and then it affects the community. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to get Charles Joe a horse. We're going to put him on the korean cowboy. We're going to not really know. We're going to jump in the van like we always do. We're going to hit the ride along. We're going to meet up with Bach EMT, former reserve deputy. You're going to love this guy.
He's a very large man and he barely fits in my sprinter van. That's how big he is. So we're going to hit the road, we're going to have a good time. We're going to save some lives. And if anything crazy goes down, we'll do an after action after that in the field.
[01:08:15] Speaker B: Feel good. Looking forward to it.
[01:08:16] Speaker A: All right, bro, let's roll.
[01:08:17] Speaker B: Right on.
[01:08:19] Speaker A: Wear my tricel hat. Yeah.
