Law Enforcement & Military Leadership: Decisions That Cost Lives And Retention

Today, I sit down with Brent Colbert, a law enforcement officer, leadership doctoral student, and host of The First Responder Playbook, to have an honest and unfiltered conversation about leadership failures in high-risk professions. 

Mr. Colbert and I share how poor leadership—not the job itself—is often the driving force behind burnout, mental health decline, and retention problems in law enforcement, military, and first responder communities.

In this episode, we explore how complacency, emotional decision-making, and ego-driven authority can turn routine calls into life-or-death situations. Mr. Colbert walks through real-world critical incidents, including pursuits, suicides, and command failures, to illustrate how leadership behavior directly affects officer safety, morale, and long-term psychological health. We also discuss why “time served” does not equal leadership competence and why managing people is not the same as leading them.

We also examine post-critical-incident care, peer support, EMDR therapy, and the alarming lack of transition planning for first responders leaving service. Mr. Colbert explains why agencies must take responsibility for mental health follow-ups, retirement care, and human-centered leadership models.

Coaching With Brent Colbert: 

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Ka nus. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and today's guest is Mr. Brent Colbert. I was actually on his show quite a few months ago, the first Responder Playbook, insights on leadership and training. So we are here today to talk about specifically leadership.

In law enforcement and military, there's a lot of overlaps between the leadership styles and most importantly, the leadership flaws, which are a huge thing I imagine in the first responder world. It's a lot like the military world where. Sometimes it's not the job or the lifestyle, but the leadership that gets you, that makes people quit, that causes that retention to go down, that causes the mental health issues.

There's a lot of different types of leadership flaws, which we'll get into, which is neglect purpose. You know, there is, there's bribery, there's blackmail. It is just like any other organization, you know? So we're gonna get into that. Mr. Colbert, I'd love for you to start by sharing a little bit about yourself, especially you know, why you got into serving in the first place.

So thanks for having me. I I've been in law enforcement for 11 years now in the great state of Oklahoma. We just got hit with the massive snowstorm. Everybody, you know, has been hyping up and we got about two inches so far. So a little un underperforming. But we've got round two tonight. I'm a doctoral student in leadership life and career coach, and, you know, I had a very bad experience in law enforcement with a leader.

Once I really started getting in this career field, and ever since then I've kind of had a mission to make this place a little bit better than it was before. Because at the end of the day, whether you're first responder, military, whatever the case may be, we're all human. And we're not a robot. And, you know, the whole old mindset of you know, we're just gonna do it this way, is outdated and we really need to start leading instead of managing.

For sure. I think one of the big issues I've had blue collar side when I was working in the blue collar industry was that a lot of the people had been there for 20 or 30 years, and it led to this mentality of, because I've been here so long, there can be nothing new. Like I know everything and it's like something different can happen on the job at any time.

You have a lot of things that become mundane and routine, but that ultimately is something we talked about in the nuclear pipeline, which is. Complacency kills, right? You have to imagine you could have a safe reactor every single day and it gets boring, but you have to understand that any day you could have a reactor meltdown or situation that could be an international incident, and so it's difficult.

To maintain that vigilance and awareness though, when you get used to the mundane and then you think, well, nothing can go wrong because nothing ever goes wrong. So I think that's a huge issue that happens where time served or time at the job becomes, you know, this just complacency. And then another thing too is just leadership.

You know, having leaders who their job is just to fulfill their role and go home. And not actually create a better work environment, which I, I think is a huge distinguish between leaders who are just fulfilling a role than leaders who lead. Yeah, for sure. And I, if you got a minute, I'd like to tell you a story about complacency for sure.

I'll try to keep it as pg as best I can, but it's not too crazy. But I was a mid-level supervisor. I had a sergeant above me out that day. I was a corporal and then I think we had two other officers out that day. We have a we had a large tribal casino that is a very big name brand in the world, in our city limits.

We bumped up next to Tulsa which is, you know, a metro of several hundred thousand. And so we got a lot of criminal element up there. You know, a lot of people that were dealing with mental health issues, we'll go to the casino, right? And so we got a suicidal subject call, which is, I, I hate to say it, but very mundane, very regular.

And that's why I wanna tell the story is 'cause complacency comes into effect. We get there as we're in route. They say, Hey, this gentleman's threatening to harm himself, no weapons. Okay, well, we get those calls all the time as we're pulling into the parking garage because they had updated and said they were in the parking garage.

They tell us he was threatening to shoot people. Right then that we would've changed how we'd approached it, but we were literally five seconds away. Mm-hmm. As we get there, the security trucks got this guy blocked in from what I later learned in his car, and he's sitting at the back of their truck. Well, as he sees us get up and get out, he darts like as fast as he can to his driver's door and starts the car.

Sometimes fate works out how it's supposed to, but the security in their infinite wisdom moves their truck. The guy's driving a Dodge Hellcat charger. Hmm. We get in a vehicle pursuit 'cause he just guns it out of there. I'm the lead car and looking back on it I probably would've canceled the pursuit because it was like five o'clock rush hour traffic and I mean, we're doing 150 by the time we hit the highway already.

And, you know, we're weaving in and outta traffic on a two-lane road like we're moving. Mm-hmm. And we get to a point he doesn't know where he is at the tags from outta state. I think Kansas, if I remember right. And he turns and he loses control in like this little, like dirt turnaround. Mm-hmm. Well, I go from being the first car to the second car.

My sergeant takes over, well, he goes off road, hits a culvert, does a legit Dukes of hazard, like goes 50 feet in the air, like flies and he flattens all his tires in a ditch. Well, I had a faster car, so I go back around him and I kind of angled to call him out at gunpoint 'cause we just got in a huge pursuit.

We're gonna call him out and be safe. My supervisor parks behind him and. I'm getting out and giving this guy commands. He puts a gun to his head. Well, with his other hand, I can see him pull another gun up and he is got two guns to his head. And so like I'm giving him commands and my supervisor runs in front of me and tries to tase the guy.

Mm-hmm. Which, that's just bad tactics. Doesn't work. And the guy shoots and kills himself. Right in front of us. And you know, as he tasers him and it doesn't work, I run up there because my thought was to get him out of the way. 'cause I don't want him to get shot. So I yank him back. Guy shoots and kills himself.

But what I didn't realize is, is he got complacent. He let his emotions take the, you know, advantage of him to try to save that guy's life. I later found that his dad was in law enforcement and killed himself, and he didn't wanna see that happen again. But in reality, he put mine and his own life in danger by just not following standard protocol.

And so I understand why he did it, and me and him are still great friends to this day. But that emotion, if he would've just slowed down, like he put us both in danger that day And, there's a wild backstory to the guy that shot and killed himself. His daughter ran away with a trucker from Kansas, if I remember right, and a trucker overdosed him with drugs and she died and then he went and did a run to Colorado with her in the truck, came back and then reported it, and the dad went off the deep end.

Can't say I necessarily blame him, shoots the, the guy who killed his daughter and then was on the run. And we didn't know any of that, right? That's just a, a day in the life of being a police officer in America. Like you don't know the full story, you don't know everything behind it, but we show up and do our jobs every day and we want to do it the right way.

And so, we actually, me and me and him talked about this several times and he realized like, Hey, I probably shouldn't have done that. But we as first responders have to realize that like we can't let our personality, you know, our personal issues just take over in those moments of stress because that could get somebody hurt.

Whether the, the suspect ourselves, the victim, we have to slow down and follow our training correctly. I really appreciate you sharing that because I think so many people have a, especially nowadays, due to the way media coverage of law enforcement is a huge misconception of what cops go through. Like they have a huge, underestimation, so to speak, for lack of better words, of what they witness, what they have to deal with as someone, you know, my father was a police officer for 25 years, so I am a little more in the know about, you know, he shared plenty of stories from his time in service. So I know that it's a lot more than just what we see on the news.

You know, what we see is. Police brutality and car chases. We don't see all the stop trying to stop suicides perform. You know, my father has had to perform CPR on drown toddlers. You know, there's a lot of stuff and I've had some other police officers on the show who have shared it very gruesome details, some suicide fines, some homicides.

Spines, like there's a lot more. And like you mentioned, this is, this is just a, a Tuesday for y'all. Like this stuff happens every day and you know, in some cities it's worse than others. But even in, you know, the most remote places, there's some crazy stuff that happens. And I know. I've had first responders on the EMT side who say, you know, like we are the first responders.

What that means is we're the first people to get there. That means it's the messiest. The situation can be, it is the most chaotic, most hectic, right? If you're responding to a car crash as an EMT, it is the most gruesome scene. You know, he said that was probably the most scarring thing was car crashes.

You know, just the way they would. For a lack of, of cr, you know, mango human bodies in ways you couldn't imagine. You know, and you're, you're pulling these people out trying to save their lives. And so people forget, you know, they think nowadays there's just such a skewed vision of what, you know, law enforcement does, and people need to realize, like, there is so much that y'all have to carry as an emotional burden.

You know, just that story alone. Most people listening. Would have to take a step back and be like, wow, that's, that's really hard to digest. And this is like one of several calls in that day. You probably working, most, most law enforcement were doing 12 hour shifts, you know, night and days off and on. I know every, you know, chain of command and, and location has their different system.

Even my father, when he was in, they changed his schedule time and time again. You know, at one point it was one month of days, one month of nights, then it was two weeks days, two weeks nights, and they kept trying to find like this ideal. Rotation and I mean, just during that 25 years, he served so many different schedules that really just mess you up physically and emotionally from the sleep change alone.

Yep. Absolutely. And I I, I've seen some, several agencies that have done stuff like that where, you know, where they switch like monthly, back and forth and it's just not good for your body naturally. But, you know, how do you expect people to serve the citizens when you're flipping them back so quickly?

Like, are they getting enough sleep? Are they, you know, eating correctly? Are they going to the gym? Like it's, it's tough to do those things when your body's just flipping back and forth from, you know, going to bed at a decent hour and then, you know, a month later you're staying up all night during those hours.

I I am not a fan of those, you know, quick turnaround schedules, but there, there are some agencies out there that do that. But I really wanna talk about something is, you know, after those critical incidents, and I, and I don't have the statistics in front of me, but you know, first responders whether police, fire, EMS even your dispatchers, I don't wanna leave them out, you know, they're involved in these critical incidents at such a higher rate.

Than the general public. And then your military is the same thing. You know, with so many different war scenes over the past 25 years, you know, they're seeing these critical incidents as well. It is very important to establish a program of peer support and dealing with those incidents. And if they do need a higher care than peer support, you know, the therapy counseling, stuff like that to get them that help.

Because it doesn't matter if you're you know, a six four professional wrestler build cop out there that, you know, hits the gym every day and looks the best. Or if you're the guy that, you know, hides in the, the dark at night and doesn't ever do anything, your cup's gonna fill up at some point in life of dealing with these critical incidents.

And if you don't address them, it's gonna overflow at some point. You know, there's, there's studies out there. I've had some great people on my show that talk about the, you know, there's a time period of these incidents needing to be addressed before they're permanent and we have to start doing these debriefs and getting you know, these people seen after these critical incidents.

Because after mine, we were told to go to therapy. My partner who you know, I told you. Ran in front of me to try to taste the guy. He actually went to EMDR therapy and it changed his life. Like he, he loved it. I didn't actually go I can say that now 'cause I don't work there anymore, but I never went, but no one held my feet to the fire.

And you know, I, later on I, nothing major, but like I've had some issues of dealing with me not addressing my issues. And so like I've had to do that on my own, but no one ever checked and said, Hey, did you actually go? And you know, we did a, a group debrief and that was great. I loved it. And we actually included our dispatchers as we should.

Because if you think about it, those are the ones that truly talk to people in their worst moments because that's when they call 9 1 1, right? And a lot of times they, they're lost in the shuffle and they shouldn't be. And you know, I, I highly encourage your leadership out there in the world at these different agencies and military.

That if you're gonna make somebody go, make sure they actually go follow up with them, check in with them, see how they're doing, and just don't think that, hey, it's just gonna solve itself because it won't. I know you're talking about that for post-critical incident. What about getting out of law enforcement, whether it's 20 years or two years?

What is the career transition counseling and mental health side like? Are there required mental health checks and physical, because I know the Navy and military does, you have to get your physical, you have to get dental, you have to get medical. You have to get mental and, and career counseling, financial counseling, like they make sure Now that's not to say it's performed well.

It's do you meet the check boxes? Can we sign these? It's not, Hey, I'm actually gonna make sure you do it. How is it law enforcement side from your personal experience there? There is none and that, and that's the sad thing. Unfortunately it's not like, your armed services once you're out, most places don't cover your insurance anymore.

So if you have a good insurance plan at your agency, and that's why you see a lot of guys stay longer than they probably should. Just 'cause they wanna keep the good insurance if they haven't. And there's a lot, I have terrible insurance. Trust me, I've been there. But there's no mental health check.

There's no like medical screening before you get out. It's like, Hey, two weeks. All right man, you work another month. 'cause the pension requires it and you're outta here. Mm-hmm. At least in the state of Oklahoma. I've never actually heard of that anywhere though. Yeah. And it's probably something that needs to be addressed a hundred percent.

We know the statistics say that it's about, and it changes of course, but from last I saw was like the average lifespan of a, you know, first responder, if they get out and they don't have the proper mental health care or career transition is, you know, two to three years. Otherwise they go into addiction or suicidal ideation or, or what is it?

You know, it, the fact that there's nothing to help them establish that life, you know, is the same. I mean the military law enforcement, and we also talk about this with their prison reformation, like a lot of prisons just throw people back out there without giving them the mental and, you know, civilian reformation that they need to prevent them from going back or from going into addiction or suicide issue.

Just like with military. Or law enforcement or a lot, like you've mentioned, and I, I've talked about before, a lot of military and law enforcement guys and guys actually just go back in instead of, you know, getting help and going something new, they just go back into what they know. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that a lot of chiefs need to start fighting for their officers.

You know, not every agency, but a lot of agencies now have police unions. And I think the chiefs really need to get down with the city and the police unions and start you know, wherever you may be back. 'cause I don't see it happening at the state level yet, unfortunately. But we really need to start getting insurance covered for retirees after they're retired so that way they're not having to, you know, worry about that burden.

Yeah, it's a little bit you know, outta the city's pocket every year, but, you know, they've done 25 years, 20 years to your city. Right. Putting their life on the line every day, and like the least way they can do is cover the insurance for the rest of their life. Like, I don't feel like that's too big of an ask.

Because I've been around a lot of agencies that waste a lot in cities, tribal agencies, wherever I've been, that waste a lot of money on a lot of stuff when they need to be taking care of their retirees. Hundred percent. You know, and you, you kind of touched on it and I wanna touch on it a little bit too.

You know, prison's supposed to reform people when they go to jail jail, prison. But you know, a lot of times when they get out, they're treated like lepers in society. And don't me wrong, there are people out there that they're gonna continue as criminal acts their whole life. Like, and those people we're gonna handle business and we're gonna take them to jail as they commit their crimes.

But there are people that get out of prison that actually want to turn their lives around and want to better themselves. We, in the first responder community, especially police, have to do a better job of, you know, we're gonna see these people in public. We're gonna see 'em on social media if they're turning their lives around.

Take the 30 seconds to check in on 'em and say, Hey man. We're proud of you for turning your life around. Like when people are trying to bounce back from such a hard thing in life, that little bit of motivation can be the thing that helps them keep going and not go back to their old lifestyle. And you know, I, I, I probably will get a lot of pushback from law enforcement for that, but here's the deal.

Our goal is not to be the judge, jury, and executioner. Our goal is to handle law enforcement. Mm. If we can help turn these people's lives around a little bit too, so they're not committing crimes as well, why wouldn't we? Right. It's just another way of addressing problems in our society. And you know, I'm totally about that.

Like, if they're turning their lives around, Hey man I've got a good friend that I play Xbox with regularly. I arrested him for domestic 11 years ago. We went to jury trial and we lost, but he's completely turned his life around and we've laughed about it so much now and we've stayed friends because he knew I was just doing my job and we've talked about it and he's turned his life completely around.

He works for the federal government now, like he's doing great.

Why? Just 'cause I wear a badge doesn't mean that like I should just cut 'em out and say, man, never gonna talk to you again. I don't care if you're doing good. Like, that's, that's silly. And so that, that's another thing that like I want to change in this community is like, Hey, if they're turning their eyes around, let's give 'em a little bit of encouragement.

That's a really refreshing perspective and like you mentioned, unfortunately unpopular because it's definitely not something I've heard a lot, but I, I think that's really good. It actually reminds me of, we were talking on an addiction recovery episode of my show that, you know. Even if you don't let someone back into your life who was an active addict in your life and they, they hurt you, they burn bridges that can't be rebuilt.

You should still, at minimum acknowledge their sobriety and recovery and encourage them. You don't have to let them back into your life. But even just saying, Hey. I appreciate what you're doing. I know you want to get back into my life for my own emotional security or whatever it is. I, I can't let you do that, but I am very proud of you for sobering up and I, you know, I see great potential.

Encouragement doesn't have to be letting them back into your life, you know? So same, same thing with that, you know, encouragement doesn't have to always be an invitation for a further relationship, but it can make a huge impact. I had a, you know, Noah Asher was on my, I had a person off ice show before who, you know, they got out of prison and the first day they went to a grocery store after a month of fearing leaving the house, they got spat on right in the face by someone, you know, because people just.

Didn't want to believe in change. And you know, he now runs ministry and he is doing the best he can and he has people actually chasing after him online trying to, you know, bring up what he went to prison for and this and that, and not let him do the work he's doing now, which is trying to reform prison ministry and mental health and saying, Hey, I went through, I got out, this is how I felt like it was lacking, and why so many people went back in.

I saw this and I want to help change that. And people are like, what? Not wanting to give him that chance. And so I think it's so terrible we see people trying to turn their life around, like you said. And one of the things we talked about is the, the job incentives. You know, there's, sure there's higher convict or a villain programs, but for the most part, you know, I feel like a lot of them get over overlooked because of that.

And like you said, all kinds of opportunities and positions. So it's, I'd like what you said is, you know, we're not the judge. And the thing is you said if they choose to go back to that life, we'll handle it then. You know, people are trying to handle it before it happens because they're making an assumption.

So I really like that. Like, we'll take care of it if it happens again. Like why are you worrying about it now? I think that's a really good mindset to have, you know, and that, you know, that doesn't mean don't be cautious. That doesn't mean, you know, don't be planning. But you know, a level of trust and respect for that change.

I think, and, and honestly, that's biblical, you know? And I think we need a lot more of that right now. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about it, not one person in this world is perfect. I guarantee every single person has something they've done that they regret. And you know, if we were judged on that, then you know, people, we would be like, ah, man, we can't associate with that guy.

And I just try, I try to follow the golden rule man of, you know, treat others how I would want to be treated. And as simple and silly as that sounds like, that's just my life motto. Right? A hundred percent. And you think about what if you went there for something and you turned your life around and no one was giving you a second chance?

And like you said, we've all done things that weren't worthy of a second chance in life, you know, so imagine if we actually carried the weight of that and people kept that over us. And I wanna tie that into, you know, leadership. Because this is something that leadership has to implement and you know, show by example.

I think that's one of the places it starts. And we mentioned in the very beginning of the episode, the first responder playbook, which is actually the, the podcast you run. So at what point did you make that podcast and why? Yeah, so, I'm going on my one year anniversary in April and. I think it's, it started just because I, I mean, I listen to a wide variety of podcasts, man.

It may be your podcast, it may be Bigfoot or Sasquatch. But being in a car for 12 hours, I had a lot of free time driving around and so I was always playing a podcast and I'm like, man, you know, I hear a lot of crime podcasts and those are great. I love them. Yeah. But there's not a lot of leadership and training podcasts and you know, I jumped into it.

I'm probably over 50 episodes now and I love it because I've had a wide variety of guests from I've done a couple you know, paranormal ones. There's A-U-A-P-P-D out there as a little bit of fun just to kind of switched up a little bit. I've done a guy, that guy that he believes there's a.

Ets not, and not like little green men, but like some sort of you know, space debris that's fell on the earth and brought you know, outer terrestrial biological entities to earth. And but then I've got a lot of people that do mental health stuff. I've got a lot of people that do life and career coaching.

I've got women empowerment coaches on the show because there's a lot of ladies in law enforcement that are badass and do a lot of stuff. And then they have to deal with a, a very male dominated field. And so like, yeah, you know, I can get 'em in contact with the empowerment coach that helps them be the best they can be.

Why wouldn't I? Because at the end of the day, I want people to listen to my podcast and take something away. It doesn't have to be the whole 45 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever the episode may be, but take something from each episode and make yourself better. I've had EMDR specialists on there. You know, sometimes we've just talked about like.

You know, just topics. I think we did one over, like, Hey, what's a good patrol knife to carry? Because, you know, hey, every cop carries a knife, but so do most first responders, but the general public does too. And so each one's a little bit different. You know, I like to say it's totally leadership and training focus, but we, we branch out every now and then.

But you know, I want people of the first responder in military world to have an outlet to learn new things every day. And the general public, I would love for you to listen to as well, because a lot of times you can pick up these little tidbits the same way and apply 'em to your life. Yeah, it's technically focused towards first responders, but the general public can learn a lot from my podcast and you know, I would love to keep for it growing.

It is slowly. But at the end of the day, I do it because I want to get these people's information that are experts in their area out to the public. I think it humanizes, you know, law enforcement officers as well who have been really, especially nowadays, dehumanized, you know, we just see this person doing their, as you mentioned, their job.

But, you know, if we don't agree with it or, you know, we're in the wrong, we dehumanize them. But, you know, sitting here having these conversations, people can be like, Hey, Mr. Colbert is, he's, he's a human. He understands. You know, just a regular guy like us, you know, he's just doing his job and it happens to be a very different job.

But, you know, he's into, you know, paranormal stuff, you know? Yeah. He has hobbies outside of, you know, law enforcement you know, which is actually something that most military members and law enforcement. I struggle with, which is having outside hobbies and, and interests. But you know, y'all do, you have your own life that you live and you know, I think it's really important for people to listen in because most people don't interact with a police officer unless they, you know, live with one or related to one or, you know, it's on the receiving end of law enforcement.

So I think people. Again, I get most of their assumptions and interpretation of law enforcement from the media, which you know, is always. Pretty polarized. Either the officers are superheroes or they're, you know, terrible people. And so getting to hear something independent, you know, not backed by anything financially or any bias, you know, to just have conversations with first responders is super important.

And so throughout your podcasting journey, which congratulations on a one year, most people who aren't familiar with podcasting, I just wanna share that is huge because most podcasters quit, in fact, hundreds. And this is. Statistically proven hundreds of podcasters quit every single day. You know, like the likelihood of actually keeping a podcast for a year or you know, four 50 or more episodes is very, very slim.

So congratulations on that, first and foremost. But through all of those episodes as well as your time serving, what would you say was the most important leadership lesson that you've learned up to date? Oh gosh, man. Before I answer that question, I want to touch on something you talked about. Of having hobbies outside of this job and career, whether it's military, first responders, when I am not working, I can care less what's going on at work.

You know, I got buddies that wanna call me and say, Hey bro, you know, we got in a big pursuit tonight and. Okay. Like, that's great. I'm glad you caught the bad guy, but there's nothing I can do about it. I don't wanna talk about it. Right. You can't really see rocking the New York Mets baseball hoodie.

Outside of that, when I'm not at work, I'm talking about baseball. I'm talking about Oklahoma State football, Tampa Bay Bucks football. Like I'm about sports. I chase tornadoes for fun during the spring. Oklahoma's great for that, but I don't want to hear about the job. You know, I, I, I keep that wall up.

To separate my personal life and the job as much as I can to keep me sane because I want to the, as much as, and I've had this mind shift mindset shift over the past year of going away from being a cop to, I can help people in whatever field I'm doing or whatever I'm doing right? And so I'm a person that can help people, not just as a cop.

So I encourage people that are in that mindset of, Hey, and you've probably seen it in the military when they get out and they think, well, I can only do you know what I was training the military to do? Right? Bullshit. You gotta have the mindset of, I can help people. It's not, I'm just stuck in this one small box.

And so I encourage people to not limit themselves and to also keep Abbie outside of work, but to talk about my most impactful guests. Man, I had a lady. I met her on Pod Match, and it's escaping me right this second. But her father was a LA police officer and was killed in the line of duty picking her Susan Snow.

Yes, Susan. Yeah. Had her on my show as well. Yeah. And you know, I think, I can't remember if it was her brother or sister, but picking their arrest. It was, it was like hollow night in la. Yes. And he was picking up her younger brother from school, and there wa he was testifying against a gang that, you know, most of them had been locked up.

There was one person who escaped and he didn't want, you know, her father to testify against him and he killed him. Which again, that, that was just so tragic, you know, like, this is a, a man trying to pick his kid up from school. Getting murdered on site. And I, you know, it also emphasizes a lesson I always say, which is, and I experienced this being raised in the same time where my dad served, is never raise your family where you're a police officer.

You know? Yeah. I just, I was hated and judged for my father being a cop, you know, not based off of me, but people hated him because he was a cop. And during, during that time when I was growing up, it was just. Because he had arrested their parents or something like this. Yeah. Nowadays it's just like, you know, they have all these anti-cop movements now.

It's just Yes. Just being a, being a cop. It's not even personal anymore. It's just he's a cop. You know? So that, that's, that's a lesson right there too. Not leadership base, but never raise your family where you're serving as a, a law enforcement. You know, maybe back in the day it would've been like, your kids are praised.

Like no, nowadays it's just dangerous. S Yeah. And, you know, and. Her story was so impactful to me because I grew up in a law enforcement family. And like you said, he was picking her brother up from school, you know, he wasn't doing anything. That's all because criminals didn't want them to testify over stuff they committed, you know, and I try to remind myself, and that's why I loved hearing her story as tragic as it is and share with my, it's because.

At the end of the day when that uniform comes off, we are human and we've got families, we've got real life problems. And that's the one that stood out to me the most, and I love all my guests, but that one hit home to me deeply. And you know, I, I, I love Susan's story as tragic as it is. Yeah, no, I, I think, like you said, and, and, and you're humans, even with the badge on, even with this, you know, uniform badge on, you know, people, it, it is kind of like, you know, the military and, and my dad used to say, oh, like, I'm not a robot.

People think, you know, you put it on and there's a level of. Mental toughness and professionalism that you keep, but again, you're, you're still human. And so obviously you've talked about the show growing. I mean, what are, what are your future plans as you continue to expand? Expand the playbook, man. You know, I wanna keep this one going for sure.

And grow, but over the next six months, I want to get a sports podcast off the ground too. And just because I'll be honest, I, I enjoy talking about sports stuff more than I do. Law enforcement and leadership stuff. Right? And, and that goes back and that's fair. That's very fair. And that goes back to keeping that, those boundaries.

But I do think this podcast is invaluable in getting that message out. So I don't ever want to like, go away from that. So I plan on doing 'em both and I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna have fun with it. 'cause I enjoy doing podcasts every time. That's that's, you know, I don't care. That I'm growing slowly.

I'm okay with that because you know, kinda like you said, I never thought I'd get to a year and I'm there. And so as long as it keeps growing a little bit and I'm having fun with it and searing good information to the people I'm okay with it. You know, I don't, I don't have to be Joe Rogan as much as, you know, as cool as that would be.

I just want to keep growing and keep getting that message out there. For this sports podcast, do you think you're gonna have a co-host or is it gonna be single or what were you thinking? Guess what, what kind of style? Yeah, so that one I'll probably have a couple co-hosts and we'll probably talk about you know, sports betting or, you know, big games that week.

I've kind of got that one a little bit different from this one. I don't, I mean, occasionally we might have a guest on there, but mostly it's just gonna be us bantering back and forth and yeah, having a good time. And so, it's gonna be a totally different format than, you know, my current one. And I'm excited for it.

Yeah. And then as we wrap this up, we're gonna have the description below for, you know, your podcast, the link to that available for people to check out. I wanna know on the flip side of, you know, most impactful leadership and powerful leadership. What is the, the worst thing that you have seen? What is a, a lesson on the worst?

Thing you've seen a leader do, whether it was a specific event or a certain kind of quality that leaders should avoid or try to train in a different way? Yeah, so I was at a municipal agency and there's a supervisor there then that's actually what started me down his journey. He was out injured my first year at the agency.

He was a sergeant old school Marine from the eighties. His brother actually sadly passed away in the Beirut bombings. They were both Marines and everybody raided about him. He's the best supervisor around blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. First night back, I'm talking to a, a county deputy. Like we're, you know, sitting and talking Tulsa gets into pursuit, into, you know, our area.

And so we're heading that way as we're heading that way. They say, Hey, we can't get in contact with our officers. Can you check on them? At the time, this is on the interstate and so like there's the concrete dividers I can't flip around. If I go down a mile to the next turnaround and come back, it's all under one lane construction.

So like, it was taken forever. It was like three in the morning. So I get off, I can see them at the top of the off ramp 'cause they were eastbound and we were coming westbound. And so I went up the shoulder with my lights on at three o'clock in the morning. There wasn't any cars coming. It was wide enough for my car to go up.

You know, it's just up the off ramp. And there was a Tulsa police officer blacked out and he said, he gets on the radio, he said, Hey, there's a kause officer going the wrong way on the off ramp. If I would've seen him blacked out there, I kind of would've realized that they were probably okay because he wasn't up there helping, but no one was answering the radio.

And, you know, when you make your dispatchers worried, they're the ones that right, you know, control where you go half the time. So, you know, I was just going through a check on 'em. I get back down to where my officer is, the Tulsa police officer is, or my supervisor, the Tulsa police officer and the county deputy.

And he asked me a question. He said, why did you do what you did? So I answered, that was the wrong thing in his mind. And I got dressed down to, with a lot of expletives in front of these two other officers from different agencies. And I'm of the type that if you don't want to answer, don't ask me a question.

If you want to make your point, make your point, but don't ask me a question. Right. If you ask me a question, I'm gonna give you my answer. He didn't like that. He took his back talking and he threatened to write me up. And from that moment forward, he lost any shred of credibility he ever had with me.

And we did not get along. I mean, he treated me like I was less than and you know, it was reciprocated right. Hundred percent all instead of just. Addressing his concerns properly with me. He cussed me out in front of other officers, which made me lose credibility in their eyes. He lost every shred of credibility he had.

And I, I will just say one, know your audience when you're correcting somebody if you have an issue with their behavior but corrected. Why don't just it's my way or the highway. And, i'll never forget that. Like I said, we did not get along after that from the day forward. Everybody else at the agency, oh, he is the best supervisor.

We get along great. Right. I always joked, I always joked around me and my best friend at the agency because he got along with him fantastically that we could both save a baby falling from a tree and he'd get accommodation, I'd get wrote up and it should've never been like that. Like I, I tried my best to get along with him, but he would never have it.

And he couldn't get over the fact that he didn't like me. You know? And, and that's cool. You don't have to be best friends with everybody you work with. There's a lot of people I would never have a beer with, but at work we're gonna, I'm gonna have your back and you're gonna have mine. Plain and simple, especially in that field.

Yeah. And I just encourage leaders to. Instead of letting emotions handle things, take a step back and give it a minute, take a deep breath and address it in an appropriate manner, because you can lose credibility forever from that first interaction. That was the first night we'd ever worked together.

Yeah. And from moving forward for three years or whatever it was I, he, it, it wouldn't matter like I did what he told me to do, but I definitely poked the bear as much as I could because he just had no respect in my eyes. A hundred percent. No, I totally understand that. It actually reminds me a lot of the military, so I, I can relate a lot and it is unfortunate that things like that happen and it's like, in your situation, it's like it's offer officer safety and, you know, missing more important than, Hey, you shouldn't go down this road this way.

Especially given the road conditions that you had. So, yeah. You know, it's, it's just. Red tape versus priorities kind of stuff. So it's, that's, that's where it is. And, and you know, the thing is, is I understand where he was coming from, but he'd handled it completely inappropriately. If he'd have handled a different way, I would've been fine with it.

Yeah. And you know, about, I'd say a year and a half later we got a call of an intoxicated male urinating in the casino parking lot. Hmm. They said they left westbound towards Tulsa. Right as they were going outta city limits. They were outta city limits at this point, but I saw him go, literally, this is like a six lane highway at this point.

He literally goes mayonnaise the mustard, both sides all the way across about hits the center median gonna kill somebody. There's established case law in Oklahoma. It says, Hey, you can stop them in an emergency situation until the proper authorities can get there. So I did. He was intoxicated. He didn't stop.

We had a, like a mile and a half pursuit. He finally stops. Highway patrol shows up. I tell him what happened. They said, yep, we'll take it. Have a great day. Write me a statement out. Once again, I get back to the city limits and he just starts cussing me out again. You don't know what you're doing, blah, blah, blah.

Why didn't you just let him go and me being me to poke the bear? I went and found the case law from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, and I highlighted it for him, stuck it in this box. But you know, he, he did, he didn't know that that was acceptable because that was never done before. But I was a very well-trained officer, and I knew it was, and I was protecting the citizen.

That guy, a hundred percent would've killed somebody that day. He was that intoxicated the way he was driving. He would've killed somebody. I'm not gonna have that on my conscience to let him drive off just because he's, you know, 50 feet outside of the city limits when I see him. I've got a d duty as a cop to protect the public of this general area a hundred percent.

And, you know, and I'm gonna do it. And he, you know, he dressed me down again completely inappropriately. And so, like I said, me being me, I went and highlighted that case and stuck it in his box and he just, you could see him seething after when he saw it, but Right. I don't care. You're not gonna treat me like I'm a 12-year-old when you're wrong.

A hundred percent. And you know, that's just one of 'em. Things like, trust me, wholeheartedly public, I was wrong in how I responded to him multiple times because I was tired of it. I was tired of the bad leadership. 'cause it didn't stop. I get that. No, I get that. And, and I can admit that, but as leaders moving forward, we have to learn from that and not repeat those mistakes.

Well, I've had leaders similar to what you're describing, to the point where if I had presented what you did, like the highlighted evidence, which I've actually done myself in the blue collar side, my, the, the response I got was equivalent to, well, if you have time to highlight and show me where I'm wrong, you should be, have time to do your job better.

You know, that's like, that's like the kind of BS answer they will give you, right? They'll completely deflect onto you just being worthless again, instead of saying, you know what? I was wrong. You were right. Thank you. You know, and they don't even have to admit it, but I, I've had it where they'll literally be like, oh, so you've got time to highlight and print this stuff.

Why don't you have time to do a b? You know? Yeah. It's that deflection stuff. Yeah. But like you said, as at the most important thing is not just. You know, looking back at it and complaining, but how can we not repeat this? Or what can we do different? I've heard people, you know, mix reviews on praise in public punish in private.

But I definitely think, like you said, more, I feel like that's too rigid. I like what you said, know your audience, you know, know the room. Yeah. Right. Who's there? I think that's, that's more important than anything. And I think, you know, hopefully we're seeing better shifts in leadership, but there's always gonna be, you know, that boss, you don't like that leader you don't like, yeah.

One of the issues is, especially in the military and law enforcement, is going back to what I said in the very beginning about leaders who want to fulfill their role and be a leader. Leaders who just wanna do the job, there's a lot of volunteering or qualifications based off of, you know, their resume rather than their personality.

And what I mean by that is not everyone is meant to be a leader or a mentor. A hundred percent. And in the military and law enforcement, you have a lot of people who get promoted to a leadership position who do not have a leadership personality because the military law enforcement will focus more on experience or skills rather than personalities.

But someone who is maybe less experienced or skilled but can get along with everyone and can lead powerfully is more important. You know, you look historically, you know. The best leaders weren't always the greatest, you know, combat people or whatever it was, who could give the best speech, right? And it's not fluff.

It's like who can actually connect with the people? That's what true leadership is. It's about communication. So I think it's important that we continue to learn about leadership. Your podcast is a place to do that, and we'll have that and. The description below, again, for everyone to check out, and I just wanna thank you for what you're doing.

I think especially now in a day and age where police are hated more than ever, it's so important to sit down and realize, like these are people, people who are, as you mentioned, putting their life on a line every day. People don't realize how dangerous it is. You know, people think of cops and they think of them sitting around eating donuts and just doing radar.

But like you mentioned, like I've heard from other police officers, the suicides, the homicides, the robberies, the criminals, especially nowadays, criminals are more armed than ever before. So I really appreciate what you do and my heart goes out to all the first responders out there. So thank you for what you do and for your time today.

Yeah, absolutely. And as we wrap up, I, I want to give you one thing to your listeners. You know, I do a lot of career life leadership coaching as well. I do it in group and one-on-one sessions. If your listeners though would like, I will share my link with you and I will give them discount code for their first session half off.

Because, you know, coaching, everybody kind of thinks, well, what is that? That's me questioning you in a positive direction and helping you reach where you want to be, whether it's in your career, your life, your leadership. Let's get you from point A to point B. And you know, with your listeners, I'll share you the link to sign up if they're interested and I'll give 'em a code for half off for their first session if they'd like.

Thank you all. Have all that is Chris and below. So ladies and gentlemen, be sure to check that out and as the podcast as well. And again, thank you for your time today. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.