The Untold Truth About Policing, Mental Health, and Accountability

MEET Jeff Wenninger

Retired LAPD Lieutenant, Nationally Recognized Law Enforcement Expert, and Founder & CEO of Law Enforcement Consultants, LLC

With over 33 years in law enforcement—primarily with the LAPD—Jeff Wenninger has seen the best and worst of policing. Rising through the ranks to lieutenant, he led officers through some of the most complex and high-stakes moments in modern law enforcement. Now, as the Founder & CEO of Law Enforcement Consultants, LLC, Jeff specializes in police use of force investigations, crowd management, school safety, and developing leadership practices that align policing with public trust.

His work isn’t about surface-level “reforms” or political catchphrases like “defunding the police”—it’s about driving the honest conversations that ignite change.

He focuses on leadership accountability, science-based training, and open communication that earns public trust while meeting the challenges of 21st-century policing.

In this episode, Anthony sits down with Jeff Wenninger—retired LAPD sergeant, consultant, and author of On Thin Ice—to discuss the raw realities of law enforcement, mental health, and addiction. Jeff shares how his upbringing shaped his empathy on the job, why culture always outweighs training, and the urgent need to reimagine policing. From personal stories on the front lines during the Rodney King riots to insights on breaking the stigma around mental health in law enforcement, Jeff pulls no punches. Whether you’re interested in mental health, policing, or just want to hear real talk about change, this episode delivers.

Jeffs upcoming book

On Thin Ice

https://jeffwenninger.com/prologue-download/

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hi there, welcome back or welcome to Recovering Out Loud
Podcast, the show where we get real about mental health and
addiction. I'm so glad you're here.
If you or someone you love is struggling with drugs or
alcohol, please reach out for help.
Send me a message on all social media platforms at Recovering
Out Loud Pod or by e-mail at [e-mail].

(00:26):
You are no longer alone. Thanks so much, Jeff for coming
on. I really appreciate it.

(00:46):
I'm really interested in, I think, you know, talk shows,
podcast radio, it's all about perspective in my experience.
And when I started this podcast,I was the aim was to get a lot
of different as I went on to geta lot of different perspectives
on mental health and addiction. And I think you have a very
interesting one from the law side of things.

(01:08):
And you know, I think that we'vecome a long way.
I think you would agree with that.
Like, you know, we've come a long way in terms of how we
approach addiction and mental health from from an officer's
standpoint. I guess I've even seen it just
in Toronto. You know, it's funny, the other

(01:29):
day I saw a situation going on in front of my condo building
and there was police involved and they were dealing with a
mental health somebody that was struggling with mental health.
And I noticed, I hadn't noticed this before, but there was a
social worker there and she had like a, a separate vest on.
And it said that her title on itsomething about, you know, the,

(01:52):
the unit that she was involved in.
And she was there just to kind of mitigate and, and communicate
with the individual. And, you know, you wouldn't have
seen that, you know, 20 years ago or maybe even 10 years ago.
I could be wrong about that, butI just think that's cool that
we're taking some feedback and implementing it right.
So you have a book coming out onThin ice.

(02:15):
I want to talk about that. And specifically, I guess I'll,
I'll dive right into you. You know, you experienced trauma
and adversity and that kind of shaped your empathy as an
officer would. Would you agree with that and
how you approached it? Yeah, I mean, I, I definitely
would. I, I, I do believe that it was
my experiences growing up and how I was brought up that

(02:39):
impacted my ability to maintain objective, my objectivity, and
not go down that dark hole of the them versus S mentality that
often times see law enforcement officers go down.
You know, my father, he was a university professor, sociology
professor, and he actually did his PhD dissertation on the

(03:00):
professionalism of law enforcement.
So when I, when I actually was intending on starting my PhD
program, because I wanted to be professor of criminal justice,
follow my father into academia, he strongly encouraged me to go
get five years of practical law enforcement experience in a
large law enforcement agency. He said your, your studies will
be much more rewarding and I'll make you a much more credible

(03:22):
professor. And that's, that's what my
intention was when I went out toLos Angeles, was to do 5 law
enforcement and then go back into my studies and have a
career in academia and be a professor just as my father was.
But as life has it, you know, there's a different plans for
me. And I did 33 years in law
enforcement, but it's being raised by my father, who was an

(03:42):
unbelievably wise man. He didn't speak often, but when
he did, it was worth listening to.
And he and he never asserted hisopinions on you.
He would, he would listen to what you had to say and then he
would, he would challenge, not in a critical way.
He would often times say, you know, seems to me some that you

(04:04):
might want to consider this, youmight want to consider that.
So he, he really developed my, my critical thinking skills
without me actually really knowing it.
So when I had an opinion about an issue we were talking about,
we would often times talk about sociological issues and I would
share my opinion. He'd asked me to articulate the
rationale for, for my opinion and, and support my, my, my

(04:28):
conclusions. And that really was something
that I took into my law enforcement career.
So I had a a different upbringing and kind of a
different approach to handling the challenges that are so very
unique to law enforcement. Yeah, I I love that.
It's so important too, to like, I think one, one thing that

(04:49):
really bothers me is when, and it bothers a lot of people, but
when people like the, the answerthat they give to why we do
things is we've always done it this way, right?
It's just, we've always done it this way.
And I've been guilty of it too. Like I, I do that with things
that I, well, I just, you know, that's the way I was raised.
And this is the way. Well, it's like, why?
You know what, like let's, let'sreally think about what's the
rationale behind this and what if we were to do it this way or

(05:14):
differently or, you know, maybe I don't have all the answers to
everything. You know what I mean?
Maybe my way is not always the right way.
Maybe that way is not always theright way.
I think, I think it's important.Right.
You know, I've always, I've always said that it's not about
being right, it's about getting it right.
That requires that you bring as many diversified voices to the
table, people that have different backgrounds and

(05:36):
different opinions and completely different
perspectives than than you may have.
I found as a leader in law enforcement that I, I gained the
greatest insight from those who thought very differently than I,
and that's who I learned the most from.
And because I, I was open mindedto the point where I, I wasn't
closed to the potential that I may change my mind about

(05:58):
something. If if you know, given the
rationale and the information too, and it that often times
occurred and it and it quite frankly, that's, that's a real
liberating type of thing. Rather than remaining in this
box that is, that is so, so customary of law enforcement.
It's such an insular type of institution.

(06:19):
It, it was, it was kind of kind of liberating to have have
people that would challenge my thought process and actually
change my mind. Yeah, it takes the pressure off
for sure, because I don't have to have all the answers all the
time, right, Right. So can you walk me, walk us
through a little bit what it waslike being on the front lines in

(06:40):
Los Angeles? I know you served, you know,
you, you did, you worked over the 90s, right?
And there was a lot of like pivotal moments that you talk
about. Can you describe what that was
like? Sure.
You know, I initially, you know,I'd grown up in Kent, Ohio, and
that's a population about 24,000people.

(07:00):
And I left home when I was 16 and I played junior hockey in
Canada and the United played Hockey League in Dubuque, IA,
which is about 62,000 people. So the the largest population
that I had lived in prior to going to Los Angeles was about
62,000 people. And then there I was at the
time, it was about 3 1/2 to 4 million people in the city of
Los Angeles. And that in and of itself was an

(07:22):
adjustment. It was unusual in Ohio to go to
a grocery store and hear somebody speak a language other
than English, where you'd be hard pressed to go to a grocery
store in Los Angeles and not hear three different languages.
So, you know, there there was the diversity that I had to get
used to and the scope and, and, and size of of the city and the

(07:45):
diverse communities that I was going to be policing.
So that was the initially the greatest challenge.
And, you know, I grew up rather naive, I suppose, just like
everybody does. And, and, and, and often times
people will ask me, you know, doyou have any regrets?
Would you do things differently?Would you go into law
enforcement again if you could do it all over?

(08:07):
And, and the answer is yes. But I would say that I do
acknowledge the fact that I wishI had some of my innocence that
I lost in law enforcement because of all the things you
see. And it's, and over time, I, I
kind of equate it to having a, a, a cup of coffee and it just

(08:31):
gets full and it, you can't fit anymore in the cup.
And it's, and that's when you start having problems and you,
you get overwhelmed with some sense of like sadness.
So it's not always the trauma. Yes, I had incidents where,
where my life was threatened andI was involved in all certain
ball shootings and things like that.
But those weren't the incidents that really caused me to stay up

(08:52):
at night, caused me to have moodswings and, you know, through
some orders with my stomach and things like that.
It was the things that were, it was just the sadness of not
being able to, to really impact something early on in my career.
The biggest incident that I can think of that was so impactful

(09:14):
in what I saw was the Rodney Kingleman's at the time I was in
LA County deputy sheriff. And the the day of the the
announcement of the verdicts, I was out to dinner at a Tony
Roma's in Glendale, which is a suburb of Los Angeles, just
north of Los Angeles like by Burbank.

(09:34):
And we saw that the riots were breaking out you at the corner
of Florence and Normandy. You had a Reginald Denny that
was being hit over the head witha brick.
And I was watching all this happen in real time on
television. And back then we didn't have
pagers and cell phones. So it was through the news that
they said all law enforcement officers report to your, your

(09:55):
area of assignment. So I went into work and when I
got there, we were being loaded into LA County sheriff's buses
and we're heading down to South Los Angeles to the Firestone
station, which is just to the east.
It actually borders 77th Division, which was the
flashpoint of the riots. And I was down there for the six
days of those riots and things that I saw.

(10:19):
It really was eye opening because in my assessment, it
wasn't the the verdict of not guilty for these officers was
not what this riot was all about.
It was really about decades of mistreatment of marginalized
communities. And this was just the catalyst

(10:41):
that boiled over. And, you know, often times
people got it wrong where they were saying that, you know,
these riots are just nothing butcriminals, you know, taking
advantage of the circumstances of the situation.
But, you know, really, it was itwas your everyday person that
was living in these communities that felt marginalized.
And because because really all anybody wants is is to feel, you

(11:05):
know, heard, valued and respected.
And the breakdown between the communities in Los Angeles,
especially down in the South LosAngeles and the Police
Department had deteriorated so badly that the police were the
enemy. And often times, from my
experience, what I saw, many of the officers saw the community

(11:27):
as as an enemy. And that was a very difficult
type of environment to work in because because of how I look,
people would make assumptions. You know, I would hear often
times, oh, here's the, you know,KKK hood wearing, you know,
racist cop. And that's furthest thing from

(11:48):
the truth. I mean, to give you some
background, I was, I was adopted, I was born to a teenage
mother who put me up for adoption.
And I was adopted by my parents.And they had a daughter of their
own who's my oldest sister. They adopted me.
And then they adopted my brother, who's Japanese.
And then I had a foster sister who was black.
And I grew up in the 60s and 70sin, in Kent, Ohio, in the

(12:09):
Midwest. So I, I was very, very keen and
insightful when it came to, you know, racism, just kind of quiet
discrimination things, things ofthat nature.
I saw things that occurred, how people would respond to my
mother when we'd be at the grocery store and things like

(12:31):
that. So I was kind of sensitive to
all that, but I had a completelydifferent upbringing and
experience that I brought to thejob that my peers really didn't
have. So, you know, at the time when I
was policing down in South Los Angeles, I had a girlfriend who
was a deputy sheriff and she, she grew up in South LA and she

(12:51):
happened to be black. And you know, I'll share with
you, I was working with this officer.
We worked together just one day.My, my partner as well as his
partner were both on days off. So we were partnered up for that
one day and we were driving downFigueroa, which runs North and
South right through the division, And he sees a couple,

(13:14):
It's a white guy with a black woman, and they're holding
hands. And he says, my parents taught
me better than that. And I'm like, well, what do you
mean exactly? And he said, my parents taught
me not to have sex with animals.This was about a year after the
riots. I'm sitting there going, have we
not learned anything? Because the reality is, is that

(13:38):
people's attitudes and beliefs impact their judgments and their
decisions, which therefore is your actions and your behaviors.
So you know, this was, this is, this is what the problem was.
So I was in early on in my career, I saw that we not only
had the challenge of working in a very violent society and

(13:59):
communities in Los Angeles, but you had this, this rot within
the organization that actually brought true a lot of what the
the community members were saying.
And you often heard it in, in the lyrics of, you know, rapper
songs. And, you know, initially I
would, I would defend law enforcement against those, those

(14:21):
lyrics that were that were hateful towards law enforcement.
But as I was on the job longer and longer, I saw that there was
some credibility but to what they were saying.
And that's not to say that law enforcement officers are racist.
That's not to say that the vast majority of law enforcement
officers aren't wonderful peoplewith the most appropriate
motivations. That's what I truly believe the

(14:42):
problem is, is that in law enforcement we allow this
subculture to exist and it's it's it's, it's unfortunately
part of the policing environment.
Yeah. And I, I don't think it's
specific to the United States either.
I, I think it happens here as well.

(15:04):
I mean, I've even, you know, I've worked in construction a
long part of my life when I was younger and the culture was, was
very similar in the segregation and you know, racism and just
inappropriate language and feeling.
And, you know, it's, it comes off as, you know, we're joking,
but I was, I was always taught that there's truth in every
joke, right? And you know, you, you, there's

(15:24):
some sort of hate that, that if you're fueling deep down when it
comes to that. So I mean, there there has to be
a shift to some degree, but you know, people like you that are
are working toward that. I can definitely appreciate it
and I love what you're doing. So can you walk me through, you

(15:44):
know, retiring from from law enforcement?
What made you want to go into the line of work that you do
now? And you talk about, you know,
not just reforming, but you talkabout like reimagining, right,
reimagining policing. What does that mean to you And
and why did you get into it? Well, I served for 33 years
initially. I did three years with the LA

(16:06):
County Sheriff's Department before I lateraled over to LAPD
and I did just over 30 years with the LAPD.
And during that time I had a very unique career.
You know, I worked down in SouthLA as a young police officer.
I was a training officer in justW downtown Los Angeles and I

(16:26):
worked the elite Metropolitan Division, which is like the
Special Forces department, the canine and the spot and all
that. So, you know, I got expertise in
the crowd management and controland dignitary protection.
Any time the president, vice president, first lady or any
head of state came to the city of Los Angeles, we'd work with
the Secret Service of the State Department and work those types

(16:46):
of details. Then from there I, I made
Sergeant, I went to Rampart Division and this was right
after the Rampart scandal. Rafael Perez, he was assigned to
Rampart and worked crash which was the gang unit.
And there these officers were committing bank robberies off
duty. They were stealing pounds of

(17:08):
cocaine out of evidence lock up and selling it on the streets
for personal financial gain. They were involved in officer
involved shootings while on dutyand planning guns to justify the
shootings. And we're we're talking about
the most corrupt activities law enforcement could ever be
involved in. And I was selected when I made
Sergeant to go to Rampart and they were putting into brand new

(17:32):
leadership teams. And I was a member of that.
And while I was there, they thenselected me to be the new
officer in charge of the gang enforcement detail Crash had
been disbanded because of the problems citywide.
And they created this new structure and model for for gang
enforcement through the gang enforcement detail, where he had

(17:53):
a Direct Line of chain of command to the captain of the
areas. And I was the officer in charge
of that unit. So for three years I worked in
that unit completely re restructuring and redesigning
the entire culture and the mindset of the personnel.
And we had different level, different measures of

(18:13):
effectiveness that were very unique.
We weren't worried about how many felony arrests we were
making and those sorts of things.
It was about arrests that were strong arrests.
So I looked at filing rates, conviction rates, amount of time
of convictions, that type of thing, because that was what was

(18:34):
going to actually impact lower and violent gang crime.
There's a dime a dozen of felonyarrests you can make that are
related to gangsters, but they're not necessarily going to
make an impact in the reduction of the crime because for every
guy you arrest, there's two or three guys to.

(18:55):
So I changed that entire model on how we did things and that
became the model to be exemplified.
And we were recognized as the meritorious unit citation.
We're recognized for that. So at this time I, Chief William
Bratton, who had been the policecommissioner for NYPD prior to
coming to LAPD, he was the Chiefof Police and I went to go work

(19:19):
for him after I did my three years running the gang unit.
And there what I did was I briefed him and wrote all of his
rationale for the adjudication of officer involved shootings
and lethal force cases that wereultimately submitted to the
honorable Board of Police Commissioners who are the
ultimate adjudicators of those cases.

(19:39):
And then after that I did that for about 3 years and then I
went and became the officer in charge of the detective entity
that investigates all officer involved shootings and lethal
worst cases. So I had my hands in over 700
cases and I got a great deal of,of background and expertise in
in all of these areas. You'd be hard pressed to find

(20:00):
somebody that had such a diversified type of career and
experiences that I had. So with that experience, I
thought. What a waste, you know, you, you
don't just work your career and it's over.
It is actually just beginning because with that experience
that I can can parlay that into effective change.

(20:22):
And that's, that's what motivated me first to start my
company. I'm the founder and CEO of Law
Enforcement Consultants, where we, you know, we, we, we work
with law enforcement agencies totry to implement best practices
to hopefully have these criticalincidents have the stronger
likelihood of an optimal outcome.

(20:44):
It helps reduce liability and ithelps with the efficiency of the
operations in law enforcement organizations.
So that's the type of consultingthat I do, as well as with my
background and, and use of force, I have myself and a whole
team of experts that handle police use of force cases
throughout the country. So that's what I do with that,

(21:05):
with that company. But, but my book on thin ice,
it's, it's all about my personalbackground, which I spoke a bit
about, which is quite unique. And then my, my professional
experiences and my practical insights into what I believe are
the types of things that we needto have implemented for law
enforcement to be successful moving forward.

(21:28):
Now there on thin ice, there's there's kind of two reasons I
chose them. One is because I I was a lead
hockey player and the experienceof being a hockey player
impacted how I viewed my law enforcement career.
But also in my estimation, law enforcement is on thin eyes and

(21:49):
it's I love law enforcement. I believe blue and I want law
enforcement to take the reins and control the narrative and to
move forward through their own changes rather than having
things imposed on. And, and that's what this is
really all about. So it's, it's about, I don't, I

(22:11):
don't for a minute think that I have all the answers.
It's about creating the dialogue, the important dialogue
where we're honest about where we've been, where we are and
where we need to get. And it's, it's about, like I
said earlier, bringing in those diverse opinions and inviting
all kinds of, of, of different perspectives to the table when

(22:36):
you're dealing with making decisions on how to address many
of these issues that modern policing is, is being faced
with. Yeah, yeah.
And so I want to talk about yourSpeaking of perspectives and
getting other, you know, sort ofviews and models of how people

(22:56):
are doing things. You, I want to jump into you,
you going overseas to, to look at different sort of law
enforcement agencies and how they handled policing and, and
mental health interdiction. But before that, I want to know
like, just thought just for me personally, like, what does, you
know, you come in as a rookie cop in, you know, in LA just

(23:20):
because you know more about that, I would imagine.
What does the mental health and addiction training look like?
Like how do they teach or how did they teach officers to
handle those situations when mental health is involved, when
addiction is involved? Well, when I first got on the
job, that wasn't even spoken. Yeah.

(23:41):
It just wasn't. And you know now, yes, they have
made some progress. However, I will tell you this,
that culture eats training for lunch.
What I mean by that, it doesn't matter what they train you, it
doesn't matter what policies or procedures, if the culture of

(24:04):
the organization is not aligned with that, people are going to
be driven by altruist. And unfortunately there is no
alignment. Like for the city of Los
Angeles, they do have a behavioral science services
where you can go and and see somebody and deal with some
issues you may have. Now the reality is this, I have

(24:27):
friends that are now retired that, you know, they've been
diagnosed during their career with PTSD and you know, they
were told by the, the mental health practitioners do not
disclose this to your, your command staff because the
problem is, is there's such a stigma in a one year career.

(24:48):
And, and that's, that's the truth of overall.
And, and the reality is in my career, I had four people that I
worked closely with that made that choice to kill themselves.
And that's not unusual. I mean, the cops kill themselves

(25:09):
at a rate two to three times more than the general
population. And if and if you look at it,
there's about 200 police officers a year will kill
themselves on the average. And you're looking at about
sixty officers that killed that are killed by a suspect.
So what you mean? So we'll spend all this time

(25:32):
training and to address violenceout on the street to protect
ourselves from from violent criminals, which is something we
need to do. But at the rate that we're
losing officers to suicide, let me tell you, we're certainly not
doing enough. And it's because the, the
reality is, is they're, they're exposed to the the trauma every

(25:53):
day. And it's the chronic stress
always being up in that orange or red zone.
Yeah, and it's the stigma that Ijust spoke about that's
associated with the access to guns, where they have a, you
know, immediate access to those,to guns, where in a moment they
may make that decision. And, you know, the reality is,

(26:16):
is there's limited resources. The 70% of American law
enforcement agencies, police communities of 10,000 or less,
they really don't have the resources for those officers.
You know, I, I had a great benefit of being in Los Angeles
where we did have behavioral science services.
So you could go see and talk to somebody if you wanted to.
But at the end of the day, the vast majority of the law

(26:40):
enforcement agencies where there's 18,000 plus here in the
United States don't have those resources for their officers, at
least to the point where in regards to the stigma, they feel
comfortable going in hell. And then it's, you know, and
then, so then what do we do in law enforcement?
I got to tell you, I can't tell you how many people I know are
lost, but they're Alcoholics because that's their answer.

(27:03):
Because we see things on a regular basis that human beings,
no matter how tough you are or how resilient you may be, we're
not designed to process all of them.
So the cultural thing in law enforcement is to to drink it

(27:25):
and let's go to the bar, let's you know, whatever.
And so then what, what happens when I was in the police camp,
They tell us the three things that'll get you in trouble.
It's booze, Broads and bills. Those are the three things that
are getting you in trouble. And they're really all circular
at the end of the day, because if you start drinking, then

(27:46):
you're going to have problems with your relationships.
And if you have problems with your relationships, you're going
to have issues with your finances, especially if you end
up going through a divorce. You have children, you're paying
child support, you start having to work off duty to make ends
meet and you have just just unmanageable life.
And it's, and unfortunately, this happens to all too many

(28:06):
officers. I got to tell you, I can't even
tell you. There's always, there's always
a, a, a trailer parked up at thepolice Academy where an officer
was living because they couldn'tafford an apartment there.
And you'd see officers living in, in the bunk rooms in the
stations where they'd, they'd, they'd work their watch and

(28:29):
they'd go and they'd sleep in the bunk room and they'd live
there. That's where they lived because
of their circumstances at home, going through divorce or what
have you, or they couldn't afford a rent.
So you know that that's, that's tough.
And you know, I saw one guy thatworked their Rampart gang unit
with me. He, I actually saw him in the
locker room at police headquarters.

(28:49):
And then a few weeks later he killed himself.
He was going through the walls and it, it dealt with the kids
and, and all that. And it's, it's just a sense law
enforcement, we, we see ourselves as fixers.
We're supposed to help people and your problem solvers, but
then our lives fall apart and wedon't know how to help
ourselves. And then we're too macho to, to

(29:15):
acknowledge it or to reach out and ask for help.
And you know, I, I had another, I had another officer that
worked for me at Rampart. I worked morning watch and he
and his partner worked for me. And we worked from 11:00 at
night to, to 8:00 in the morning.

(29:36):
And he, his partner was taking the sergeant's exam the next
day. So I allowed his partner to go
home early so he can get some sleep before he had to take the
test. And I gave gave the partner an
option. You can go home as well.
If you'd like her, you can you can work the front desk because
at Rampart we didn't we didn't put officers out at night.

(29:56):
Individual one officer cars without violent divisions.
We have 140 some homicides a year in the seven square mile
block division or not block, butseven mile square division.
So he elected to go home and when he got home is two young
daughters were in bed. His wife was nowhere to be
found. And she turned out she was

(30:17):
having an affair. So he was struggling with that.
And I saw him on a Wednesday at a training and we spoke and he
he said he was doing really well.
He was, you know, working well with his church.
He had a lot of support there and a lot of support with his
father. He looked great.
He had obviously been working out and he was eating well.

(30:37):
And he's given me all the right answers.
And that weekend, Saturday, he blew his brains out and it's,
you know, and it's just like, wow, I just didn't see it
coming. And it's, and so you have to,
you have to understand that you're like, wow, I wish I could
have done something. I wish I could have done
something. But I had to, I had to be
careful not to go down that darkrabbit hole, blaming myself for

(30:59):
not picking up on this, that something was wrong and making
sure that he got that help. You can't blame yourself in
those circumstances where peoplemake that type of a critical
decision. How did you manage that like
yourself with your own mental health?
Was there somebody that, you know, was there advice that you

(31:19):
got that somebody, you know, a mentor maybe in the in the
department or like how did you navigate your own mental health
through all that? Well, I was very fortunate.
Like I said, I had a father thatwas very aware of what the
pitfalls of law enforcement were, and he gave me a lot of

(31:41):
insight. I, I was able to to speak to him
about anything without any judgement.
So that was really critical for me.
But from, from a personal standpoint, I really made an
effort to spend my time away from work with people that were
not in law enforcement. I thought it was really

(32:01):
important to be around people that had a completely different
perspective than the people I was around every day.
I also was very, you know, active in, in physical fitness
and, and, and, and off duty stuff.
You know, my parents were very civically minded.
My mother, she was a president of legal and voters back in the

(32:23):
70s. She was a city Councilwoman.
My, both my parents, they were the Co founders of the Kent
Environmental Council. They, they raised me to
recognize that life was larger than myself in that it's about
not what you can do for yourself, but what are you doing
to impact your community in a possible way.

(32:48):
So I, I focused on that. I was a Big Brother and the Big
Brothers of Los Angeles program.I was a captain of the LAPD
hockey team and we made an effort to play a lot of us
celebrity charity hockey games there.
There was actually a Hollywood celebrity hockey team and you

(33:09):
know, a lot of the celebrities Cuba Gooding junior played.
There's there's a lot of guys, but we would do raise money for
like make a wish foundation and we would these children that
were terminally ill, they would come in and, you know, we'd give
them a a jersey and sign sticks and things.

(33:29):
And, you know, granted, they had, they didn't have much time
left on this earth, but see the smiles and, and the opportunity
for them to, to interact with usin the way that they were
allowed to in that environment really, really felt rewarding.
So it, it was I, I made sure that I was doing things that was

(33:53):
positive for other people's lives, which in turn made me
feel good about myself. And it, and it was very
different than the hours that I spent in the patrol car
handling, you know, see the man,see the woman, radio calls.
Because the reality is this, people call the police because

(34:13):
they want to see you. You know, you're going, you're
going into a toxic scenario and you're expected to figure it
out. And I've always said, I used to
say this all the time, but the greatest actors aren't in
Hollywood. They're in, they're in, they're
in a badge and uniform have to go into every scenario and read

(34:35):
it very quickly and determine who you have to be to resolve it
in the most most appropriate manner.
So that in and of itself can be quite stressful because, you
know, it's everybody, you know, wants to use the benefit of, you
know, hindsight being 2020. But at the end of the day, you

(34:56):
often times have split seconds to to make decisions in rapidly
unfolding tactical scenarios, which can forever impact you.
You know, the reality is, is that like I spoke to my
background and with force, you know, 36% of officer involved
shootings involve somebody that's suffering a mental health

(35:18):
process. Yeah. 36%.
Wow. Yeah, 36%, that's, that's quite
a lot. So you're talking about on the
average per year law enforcementofficers in the United States
kill by firearms about 1050 people on the average.

(35:39):
So if you take 1/3 of that, it'sabout 380 people a year that
their lives are being taking taken primarily because they're
suffering a mental health causes.
And now that's, that's talking about the officer involved
shootings that actually someone was was struck and killed.
There's an estimated additional 2500 to 3000 officer involved

(36:03):
shootings where the injury is not fatal or the shooting does
not result in any hits. So if you look at that data,
about 1/3 of all officer involved shootings are lethal.
And you know, I have, I've had friends that were responded to

(36:26):
scenarios. One, one guy was responded to a
radio call and as an older gentleman, he had a shotgun and
he began to level the shotgun towards the officer and the
officer responded to the force and shot and killed him.
It turned out he was a retired fire captain.
And it was a suicide by cop. Shotgun wasn't even loaded.

(36:47):
But the officer didn't know that.
And but now the officer has to carry that luggage for long.
And like I said, your coffee mugcan only hold so much coffee.
And you know, it can, it can do a number on you.
It really can. And what's interesting is, is
you have this armor during the time that you're on the job and

(37:10):
then you leave the job and you're not around that
environment every day. And you begin to realize how
susceptible and vulnerable you are to the experiences that you
had during your 2530 year career.
And it's amazing how many peoplein retirement, that's where they

(37:34):
begin having their problems thatthey're able to hold it together
while they're on the job. But then afterwards it's, it's,
it's tough. I mean, I, you know, I
personally, you know, I'm, I'm much more reactive to things
from emotional standpoint where I see a commercial of, of a kid

(37:56):
dying of cancer or something, you know, when they're trying to
raise money or it's you just cry.
And would have that been me backwhen I was on the job?
No, I wouldn't have it. It's just you find that you're
hypersensitive to emotional stuff, stuff that impacts
people's lives. And it's really important to try

(38:19):
to understand why you feel that way and not just write it off
because you know, you'll have those days where you just don't
want to get out of bed or you get up and you're just not
motivated to do the things that you traditionally did to keep
your mind clear. I used to, I used to get up

(38:39):
every Sunday morning and run like 15 months.
And you know, I, I can't do thatnow.
I have two artificial needs. But you know, it's a long walks
now that that I get my best thinking.
And it's it's about taking the time for yourself.
So it's you gotta learn that early on.

(39:00):
So you start doing that before things build up.
So you're you're dealing with itas you progress through your
career rather than being hit by a tidal wave when it's all all
at once. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's, that's a good metaphor.
It's like this armor, right? And I, I feel like, I feel like

(39:20):
you don't even have time to dealwith it when you're in it and
you're just so distracted by thenext event, right?
The next call, the next, you know, case, whatever it may be
that you don't have time to eventhink about what happened the
day before. And it's like you're just
constantly being, you know, berated by, by these high stress
situations, like you said, and you like, and it just becomes a

(39:44):
distraction after a while. And then, yeah, you, you
mentioned it perfectly. It's like it's a tidal wave at
the end of your career and then you're just crying for things
you don't even know why you're crying for and, and doing the
internal work being really important too you.
You talk about, I want to talk about going overseas and
modeling other, you know, you mentioned you went to England, I

(40:06):
believe in France. What did you see there that that
you think could help North America, United States and and
our system, how we approach things?
Well, the one thing that we do here in the United States, I
don't know if people really realize it, but when it comes to
hiring police officers, we we don't have a selection process.

(40:29):
We have a deselection. So as long as you don't have a
criminal record and your finances are in order, you got a
decent chance of getting hired. Where it's, it's much different
over the entire mindset is different.
And it's, it's not always about people always say, well, it's,

(40:50):
it's about who we hire. Yeah, I would suggest that part
of it has to do with who you hire.
But that can be resolved by how you hire.
And like I said here in the States, it's a deselection
process over there. They, they often times, if you
look like the Nordic countries, they go through a two and
three-year university level undergraduate program during

(41:15):
their training before they even hit the streets as a police
officer. And during that time they're
being continually evaluated. They haven't been selected for
the position yet. You're selected when you're
finally done with with your training.
So what they're evaluating is, is, is how open are you to the
training that you're receiving? Do you have the characteristics

(41:37):
that just about anybody would agree are characteristics that
you'd want to see in the law enforcement?
Do you have critical thinking skills?
Do you have moral reason? Do you have self-awareness?
Are you a problem solver? All of those sorts of things are
being evaluated the entire time.So when it's all said and done,

(41:57):
you're taking the people that have demonstrated that they
possess the characteristics thatwe know law enforcement officers
need to be successful. I mean, you equate it, equate it
to to professional athletics. You were, if you were to, to
have to blindly draft people or you took them based on a, a

(42:21):
deselection process rather than a selection process, you
probably wouldn't have a very good team.
And, and that's really what whatwe do here in the United States
is. And it, and it's unfortunate
because they talk about all these, you know, vacancies that
need to be filled and that people are, are leaving law
enforcement at unprecedented rates and they're just lowering

(42:45):
standards. And you know, you even see a
Dallas PD, they, they lifted their, their academic
requirement. They used to require 45 college
hours credit to be hired on the department.
And they're removing that. And it's, it's interesting
because that's completely in conflict to what all the
research demonstrates. The research demonstrates that

(43:08):
officers that have a four year degree or better have 40% less
incidence of use of force. I mean, that's significant.
Yeah. And so to not take that into
consideration and factor that into your hiring process, to me

(43:30):
it's kind of negligent. The research is there.
That's not my opinion. You know, not only do you have
less force incidents, but you have fewer complaints against
you and you tend to be a better problem solver and act more
appropriately under critical circumstances.

(43:50):
That's the research. It's not really, it's not my
opinion. So it's at the end of the day,
we in America need to to follow what the research actually tells
us, what is the empirical evidence times and then we have
to model our systems behind that.
And then and really if you look at these these organizations,
Sir, it's, it's not like a them versus US where it's a swarm

(44:14):
personnel. And then you have the civilian,
civilian is is incorporated intothe to the organization.
There should be civilian commandstaff officers that have the
same level of authority as you know, other deputy chiefs and
things of that nature. Because to think that we are
going to find within our ranks people that have the same level

(44:36):
of expertise in particular areasis, is naive.
At least most agencies of the LAPD, you can get hired with the
GED and you know, that's not, that's not a great foundation to
start with and in a career. And if you're going to

(44:58):
recruiting from people that havethat level at the very
beginning, to what extent does your organization value
education to begin with? And are they then going to
encourage you to continue with your education?
And unfortunately, the opportunities that you do have,
you go to these schools. And I, I actually took part in

(45:19):
it where you go, but you're justthere with cops, other police
officers. You don't have any diversity of
thoughts. You start having group think
when you have these discussions about issues and things.
So you're not getting the level of insight that you need to be,
you know, truly maximizing your,your academic experience.

(45:41):
So, and unfortunately, law enforcement's little too insular
here. The mindset's a bit different
over there. They view law enforcement
differently. They pay them well and they
train them well. And if you just look at the the
studies that they do as far as their favorability, cops are up
there at the top of civil servants in regards to their

(46:04):
favorability with the citizens that they serve.
It's not the case you're in the United States, but I would
suggest it could be. We just need to make some
changes. Yeah, yeah, 100%.
And it takes time. You know, it's, it's not going
to happen overnight, but I I think we're definitely making
progress. One of the themes in your book
is accountability and learning from failure.

(46:27):
What can you share a moment maybe in your career where you
look back and you were like, youknow, I I could have done this
differently. And here's now I'm I'm I where
you learn from the experience and maybe change the way you
approach certain situations. Well, you know, really, I talk
about one, it was a critical tactical scenario where my

(46:48):
partner and I, we made a severe tactical blunder.
And in our initial response to the incident, that was where we
had a radio call, shots fired there now.
And we responded code 3 lights and sirens.
And the direction we were travelling would place my
partner who was driving on the side of the road where the

(47:10):
location was. And what had happened was it was
a domestic incident and the female involved fled and the guy
took an AK47 and shot her in theleg and she had a pound
fracture. And he drug her back up to the
porch. And then he was sitting on the
steps that led up to the upstairs unit of the duplex.

(47:31):
They lived in the upstairs unit and we pulled right in front of
the location, which you just don't do.
And it was like, for him, it waslike shooting, shooting a fish
in a barrel. And he opened up on us and
things could end, ended tragically.
But luckily for us, the air unitshowed up.

(47:54):
It's the police helicopter whichhas sworn personality.
And the pilot actually was a Vietnam veteran Platinum, and
they saw the predicament we werein because he was approaching us
and he came down to about tree level.
And the observer who is the one not piloting, but the one that

(48:14):
communicates with the officers on the ground as well as
controls the PA system, gets on the PA and gets the suspect's
attention, who then started firing at them.
And as they flew northbound away, he followed them up the
driveway, which gave us an opportunity to redeploy and get
out of there. He ultimately was shot and
killed. But you know what?

(48:37):
What that incident showed me wasthat you have to put tactics at
at the highest level of of your priorities.
And it's not just your tactics, but your knowledge of the job,
knowledge of the law, your physical fitness level.

(48:58):
Everything has to be continuallyaddressed to where you're not
just competent. You have to be exceedingly
proficient in everything that you do or it could end up in a
very tragic scenario. So it was just a split second
mistake that could have, you know, I could have lost my life

(49:20):
in, in my mid 20s, but fortunately that that didn't
happen. But as a, as a training officer,
that was, that was an experiencethat I shared where hopefully my
probationary officers that I wastraining could learn through my
mistakes rather than having to make them themselves.

(49:41):
But you know, it, this, it really came from, it just really
underscored how I viewed things to begin with.
As a hockey player, you, you didn't achieve the, the level
of, of hockey that I, that I achieved by just giving 50% or
70%. You had to give 100% all the

(50:02):
time and you had to be committedand dedicated.
And I can't think of a career that that's more meaningful than
law enforcement, that you have that same mindset because you
you have to be able to perform. I've always said that we're not
paid for what we do on a daily basis.
Just about anybody can do that. You're paid for what God forbid
you might have to do. And that's when these types of

(50:23):
scenarios where it's a rapidly unfolding tactical scenario and
you're making split second decisions under immense stress.
And if you're not prepared for that, then you're not earning
your paycheck. Yeah.
Yeah, it's stressful situation, I mean, yeah, thanks for sharing
that. You I mean, it really paints a

(50:44):
picture. Yeah.
And if anything could have happened differently in that
situation, right, It's it's scary.
What Jeff, what's your, what's avision or maybe your vision for
how we can I, I, I don't want tosay the word break the stigma,
but maybe lessen the stigma around, you know, whether it's

(51:05):
how we approach mental health situations or calls and also
like how a cop, how a law enforcement officer deals with
his own mental health battle. What?
What does that look like for you?
Well, I think it's it's kind of interesting that they kind of go
hand in hand because I don't care how tough you are or how

(51:27):
tough you think you are, these incidents will weigh on you.
And these are the incidents thatI'm talking about where somebody
is shot and killed because they are behaving a certain way when
they're suffering a mental health crisis or what have you,
that then is going to down the road potentially become your
mental health crisis experience.So it's really important that

(51:53):
your, your policies and procedures and your training
align with not only what is mostlikely going to result in an
optimal outcome for the officersand the, and the person you're
addressing, but that long term, it's going to be optimal for the
officers because you're not going to be carrying that
heavyweight because things endedtragically when they perhaps

(52:16):
could have ended better. Now you, you mentioned, you know
earlier where you know, there's the, the practice of aligning
law enforcement with mental health practitioners to better
address mental health scenarios.And that's great.
The problem is it doesn't reallywork if the culture of the

(52:40):
organization is not in line withthe de escalation training that
you're receiving, in line with the the recommendations and the
suggestions that you're getting from the mental health
practitioners. Because the reality is that the
initial officers that are going to arrive on scene, generally
speaking, are not going to be these officers that have the

(53:02):
specialized training and are working these mental evaluation
units and, and those sorts of things that have this, this
mental health practitioner assigned to them.
And, and unfortunately, the tragedies already occur before
these highly specialized trainedpeople can arrive on scene.

(53:24):
So we really need to work with that.
If you look at the LAPD, it's been almost a couple decades
since we had a mental evaluationunit and that we worked with
mental health practitioners. But if you look at the data,
about 36% of our officer involved shootings are still of
people who are suffering mental health crisis.
So although we're implementing these practices to help address

(53:49):
and hopefully reduce these incidents and hopefully have a
more optimal outcome, that's notactually what's occurring.
And I would suggest it's becauseof the culture.
You know, I've, I've seen this day and age people wear body
worn video nearly all on post and officers wearing.
And in what I do is I, I evaluate a lot of lot of these

(54:13):
scenarios where force is used. And I part of that is watching
the video and it's, it's astounding to me how officers
that you can, you can learn whattheir mindset is based on what
you're hearing them say on video.
And you'll have family members that have called you to their

(54:36):
apartment because they have a family member that is suffering
a mental health crisis and they want you to assist in getting
them to a medical facility so they can be helped.
And law enforcement all too often ends up killing the
person. And it's So what is our rush?

(54:56):
When you have a mother and a father with a son who's having a
mental health crisis, the motherand father are outside with the
officers and the son is inside all by himself.
What's the rush? It's all about creating a
dialogue. It's trying to align yourself

(55:17):
and try to find a way to connectwith this individual.
Officers need to be asking questions like what is the
mental health issue that does this individual take medication?
Has this type of thing happened before?
If so, what has worked to calm the individual down?

(55:38):
All of those types of conversations, you have a wealth
of knowledge from people that are there at scene and you don't
have anything that's exigent in regards to having to go protect
somebody from this individual. We see this all too often and
then what do we do? We force ourselves into the

(55:59):
location and the individual may be armed with a knife,
approaches the officers and thena shooting occurs and it ends
tragically. There's a better way.
And there we also need to be more aware, self aware of how
our actions are influencing the people that we're interacting

(56:20):
with. When you have somebody that's
having a mental health crisis, you have got to understand how
you're being perceived. Where you have 5 or six officers
in uniform, certain number have their firearms drawn.
The other one will have a Taser with the red dot bouncing around
their chest. Another one, I have a bean bag

(56:41):
shotgun. And often times multiple people
are yelling commands at that. Yeah.
Is that really going to end optimally?
I would suggest no. I watch these things and when it
goes sideways, it's like, really, who would have thought
it was going to end up any any differently than it did because

(57:01):
these officers are so unaware ofof how they're being perceived
by the person who is suffering the mental health crisis.
I mean, let's be real. If you or I were that
individual, that in and of itself would stress out us out
to a point where we may do something that may cause the

(57:22):
officers to respond in a way that could be fatal, let alone
somebody that's having a mental health crisis.
So officers really need to change their entire mindset, and
it begins with the culture. What is your role in that
scenario? You first need to have the the
knowledge to identify what you have and identify that, yes, OK,

(57:48):
this person is exhibiting, demonstrating examples of mental
health, of a mental health crisis.
And therefore I need to then shift and address it more in
this banner versus our traditional tactics that
unfortunately often times resultin unfavorable outcomes.

(58:10):
Yeah. Well said.
You know, there's so many parallels that could be drawn
across life in any job where it's like if I ask the right
questions and then just listen, I can get a lot of information
of how to approach the situation, right?
I think that's so important. It's so simple, but it's not
easy, right? And like a lot of things in

(58:31):
life, and I also like how you mentioned culture too.
You know, my dad taught me 'cause I, I was a manager for a
long time in my career and I hada team of people and he always
taught me like culture is the worst behavior you allow, right?
The simple, it's the worst behavior you allow.
So if you're allowing this, thiscertain type of behavior to
continue, that becomes your baseline, becomes your culture.

(58:53):
And it's, it's about changing that and not accepting certain
things right. I want.
What's really important when in in regards to what you just said
is that you shouldn't have to have a negative outcome before
you hold people accountable. Yeah.
So if if you see behaviors or actions in law enforcement

(59:14):
officers that are not consistentwith your expectation under a
particular circumstance, you, you should be addressing that
regardless of what the outcome is.
Even if the outcome was favorable, but the behavior and
the actions were inappropriate, you have to address it.
And because if you don't, you'resending the wrong message 'cause
you often times, I tell you, I saw this often times in my

(59:34):
career where officers like we'vedone this ten other times.
And we, we were, you know, commended for it because the
outcome was was a positive outcome.
But now we're being criticized for it.
We're you're sending a mis message as management.
And that's where we were wrong as well.

(59:55):
And that's where you create thisculture where they're not doing
what they're trained to do. But since it didn't go sideways,
we're going to commend them because it went well.
So you're just reinforcing the bad behavior when it's contrary
to what you're actually training.
And that's where you get this, this, this conflict and and
understanding of what what is expected.

(01:00:19):
Yeah, amazing. I learned a lot today.
Jeff, I want to end with this. If you could go back to your
yourself as a rookie, what wouldyou say to that, to that guy,
what would you say to that, Jeff?
I would say that early on in my career a lot of the stress that
I had was self-imposed because Ihad not learned the relevance

(01:00:46):
and importance of patients. I held myself to a particular
standard and I found that it wasnot going to serve me well to
actually hold other people to that same standard I held myself
to because often times the standard I held myself to

(01:01:06):
exceeded what anybody else was willing to hold themselves to.
And it began even in the Academy, you know, I, I, I was
taught from my parents to do thebest in everything you attempt
to achieve. And I carried that into my, my
hockey career and then subsequently into my law

(01:01:27):
enforcement career. So when I was in the Academy,
when I studied for an examination, I wanted to get
100%. And I would get ridicule too.
But what are you studying so much for?
All you need is a 70% to pass. And that's, that's not how I
view things. And I ended up graduating.
We had 157 in the Academy class and graduated 107.

(01:01:50):
So about 1/3 washed out, but I graduated with the highest
academic score with a 98.7%. And then I was #1 scores in
physical fitness and #2 and marksmanship.
So I was actually was called thehonor recruit.
My my peers and the training staff voted for me to represent

(01:02:12):
the Academy class as the honor recruit, the number one recruit
of the class. But in that it was I saw how my
commitment to excellence was notsomething that was shared by my
peers and that became a a sourceof stress for me.

(01:02:35):
And I then, you know, I carried that same level of commitment
and continued to see that that wasn't shared by my peers.
And I had to let that go. And I didn't really learn that
until I became a Sergeant. And I left the the elite
Metropolitan Division where that's the best of the best of
the LAPD. And now I'm back out in patrol

(01:02:57):
supervising people that had lessstandards for themselves and
what I was accustomed to. And it was really stressful for
me. And I had to learn about
patients. And that's not only the case in
my law enforcement career, but now as a father with a 14 year
old son, it's all about patience, what you do if you

(01:03:18):
don't have patience. Love it.
Thanks so much Jeff. I appreciate you man Thank you.
Thanks for listening. Please help us grow the channel
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(01:03:40):
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