PODCAST: On The Blue Line Podcast | MORNING ROLL CALL | Finding success from lessons learned in law enforcement | Episode 075
On The Blue Line Podcast | MORNING ROLL CALL | Finding success from lessons learned in law enforcement | Episode 075
LISTEN
WATCH
If you would like to say “Thank You” for the content Wayne is creating click here to buy him a coffee.
Show Notes from This Episode
The On The Blue Line Podcast and Blog has the mission of Empowering Cops in their personal lives and educating the public on the realities of law enforcement. The morning roll call is a weekly monologue show with Wayne Mulder. The Interview Room podcast is an interview style format hosted by Wayne Mulder.
WATCH VIDEO OF THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE: OnTheBlueLine
In this episode:
- I first discuss the incident from the Unified Police Department where the 4-year-old fired a gun at police. (Subject of upcoming Blog on 08/28/2022)
- I read the second action step from the eBook: How the law enforcement career makes you cynical and what you can do about it by Wayne Mulder.
LINKS:
- Get the eBook, “How the law enforcement makes you cynical and what you can do about it” by Wayne Mulder.
Articles Discussed:
- Police Video Shows 4-year-old shooting at police while they were arresting his father at McDonald’s from Blaze Media.
After the episode:
SUBSCRIBE TO our YouTube Channel.
LEAVE US AN iTUNES rating and review!
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT OUR Website.
On The Blue Line was founded and is operated by active-duty law enforcement to fulfill the mission of providing guidance, resources and community for law enforcement officers, first responders, and military personal in their off-duty lives.
HONOR | EMPOWER | EDUCATE | DEFEND
Listen and subscribe wherever you prefer to Stream your Podcasts!
Get every Podcast and Blog delivered to your inbox.
TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE. Please note this is a new service we are offering and there will be spelling, grammar and accuracy issues. This transcription is offered as a convenience to our listeners, but at this time it is not guaranteed to be accurate.
00:00:05:34 - 00:00:24:37
Wayne Mulder
All right, welcome, America, to another round of the On The Blue Line podcast Wayne Mulder and I am your host. You guessed it, Wayne Mulder. Happy to be back with you again this week. By the time you are listening to this podcast, it is the middle of August. We should be in about the third week when this one releases. Bear with me a little while.
00:00:24:37 - 00:00:51:58
Wayne Mulder
Like I said in the previous episode, unfortunately, these are coming out a few weeks in advance, allowing me to keep the new content coming to you. But because of that, they are not necessarily timely. We're running about 3 to 4 weeks behind from when I'm recording them to when you are seeing them. Hence the fact that if you're watching this on video, I still have the beard, which hopefully by the time you are watching or listening to this episode, I will have had to have shaved because I will be back to work.
00:00:51:58 - 00:01:09:41
Wayne Mulder
So I hope everyone is doing well. This is Morning Roll Call and thank you so much for joining me. What I like about morning Roll Call, if you've been well, if you are new to the podcast and this is the first one you're listening to, let me tell you a little bit about On the Blue Line. We started in 2019.
00:01:10:19 - 00:01:30:33
Wayne Mulder
There is a podcast, there is a blog, and there is a community that is beginning to grow. And I welcome you. As far as for the podcast, there's two the morning roll call. That is what you're listening to. And on here, it's just something short. I'm just going to go over something that's kind of actionable. Sometimes it's political related, it's something out of the news.
00:01:30:33 - 00:01:55:07
Wayne Mulder
Sometimes I'm going to grab something that is just an interesting news story or scary news story, as I did today. And then sometimes it's just some sort of helpful anecdote that I can provide to you. The bottom line with all of them is, in some way, I always tried to rub it back or bring it back to law enforcement, because all of these things that are going on in the world do affect law enforcement in one way or another.
00:01:55:34 - 00:02:26:13
Wayne Mulder
And then secondly is the interview room and those podcast will be coming back. My goal is to get them back to you by September in the works right now on getting some of those interviews completed and getting a backlog of them so that once we start again, we do not stop again. So and for more on all that, if you go back to episodes, you'll get a little bit of the story be hind why there was a break and also the story on why we started on the blue line in the first place.
00:02:26:13 - 00:02:43:31
Wayne Mulder
So that's all I got for you. Let's get into it. So first and foremost, what I wanted to bring to your attention and again, this will be a few weeks old by the time that you listen to this episode because it happened in mid-July. But it is if you didn't hear this in the news, you need to hear the story.
00:02:43:31 - 00:03:02:55
Wayne Mulder
And that's why I'm telling you. So a body cam video which there's a link in the show notes and I encourage you to watch it because just listening to what's going on, on seeing it, it is probably one of the scariest things as a law enforcement officer to even consider happening, because what could have happened next is just something you don't even want to think about.
00:03:03:47 - 00:03:25:37
Wayne Mulder
But essentially the police were called. This happened at the unified police Department and the police are called to this McDonald's. Right. So there's an incident that takes place at this McDonald's. And it sounds like the dad who's 27 years old, the Sardar Johnson, he gets into some sort of disagreement argument. There's some sort of incident that occurs in the early afternoon hours.
00:03:25:37 - 00:03:50:48
Wayne Mulder
So around 1:30 p.m. on February 21st at this McDonald's, allegedly, according to the McDonald's employees, that he gets upset about his fast food order wasn't correct. And whatever is occurring in that argument, he allegedly brandishes a handgun. They use the word allegedly. Obviously, he has not been convicted yet. He was just been arrested. However, it also says that there's video to support it.
00:03:50:48 - 00:04:13:07
Wayne Mulder
So you take that however you want to take it. But essentially that's what's being alleged as he gets in an argument with them and then he ends up bringing a handgun. We get these kind of calls. These are some sort of aggravated assault disagreement calls all time. Any of you in law enforcement are well aware of that. So police get there and a little bit of an officer safety situation is kind of erupting.
00:04:13:07 - 00:04:31:10
Wayne Mulder
You see them coming up on this white car extremely dark tinted windows. The guy doesn't put the windows down. He's barely listening to commands anyway. You already know that there's a chance that this guy has a firearm in the car. So the whole thing is just it watching it from knowing what could happen at any point here, the whole thing's disturbing.
00:04:31:10 - 00:04:55:20
Wayne Mulder
Anyway, so you're watching this whole thing unfold and he eventually does open the door. They tell him, Hey, open it with your right hand. He reaches over and he has a phone in his hand. They told me, set the phone down actually before he reaches over and then he gets out of the car. Let me rephrase that. He's helped out of the car because the getting out of the car, things seem to be what he wanted to do very slowly, probably because he knew there actually was a firearm in the vehicle.
00:04:55:53 - 00:05:13:59
Wayne Mulder
So this is all unfolding. Well, while they get dad down on the ground, there's only two kids left in the car and you don't really know that. But the officers knew that because they're coming up on the vehicle as as you do, you know, on both sides. And they're seeing what's going on in there. Well, all of a sudden there is a shot that takes off.
00:05:14:14 - 00:05:37:57
Wayne Mulder
There is a round that is fire. And you hear the shots fired. You hear it go out over the radio and then you hear one of the officers yelling, Kids, kids, kids. So essentially one of the four year or one of the children who are three years old and four years old picks up Dad's gun and decides that what they want to shoot at the cops.
00:05:38:22 - 00:05:58:26
Wayne Mulder
Now, that seems like a really bad idea. And probably the last thing that a three or four year old should have going through their mind, let alone the fact that how do they even have access to the gun anyway? Quoting police said the child told them, quote, I grabbed my dad's gun and tried to shoot the police so he could be free and do what he wanted.
00:05:58:26 - 00:06:23:09
Wayne Mulder
And quote, the four year old reportedly told police that he shot the gun because he wanted his daddy back. The child also informed police that during the altercation, Johnson told the children the police officer cannot open the door. So clearly he had already been educating his children on, you know, we're not going to cooperate with these law enforcement officers, even though I've been completely in the wrong and decided to point a gun at a lady at McDonald's for not getting me my order.
00:06:23:09 - 00:06:49:44
Wayne Mulder
Correct. Oh, and by the way, Johnnie, here, let me just leave this gun right here. Do with it whatever you need to do. What in the heck is going on with society? It. It just flabbergasted me. I wrote an article. There's a blog post. It actually will come out right around the time that this releases. So in about 3 to 4 weeks from when I'm recording.
00:06:49:44 - 00:07:13:20
Wayne Mulder
So it's going to be right around the time that this podcast comes out. Look for it in this is exactly what I go into as these disturbing trend. And I quote some other experts and I put some other information in there and go a little bit deeper into it. But this this absolutely disturbing trend that's going on with these children, like these are little kids, three and four years old.
00:07:13:20 - 00:07:39:13
Wayne Mulder
The other one I talked about in that article, it is the young children up in Minnesota. I mean, toddlers in diapers, cursing and yelling profanities at cops, kicking at them, that we have a problem. Not only do we have a problem in current society, society is going to have a future problem if we don't come together on these type of issues and say this is unacceptable, this stops now and we are not going to perpetuate this going forward.
00:07:39:31 - 00:07:57:56
Wayne Mulder
And it's only going to make it more dangerous for law enforcement in not only the dangerous part of the Lord forbid one of them have been shot by this kid, but then the other side, not fully knowing who's shooting at you, I mean, this situation that this would put these officers in, it is beyond unbelievable and it's tragic.
00:07:58:19 - 00:08:17:24
Wayne Mulder
And that's really all I can say on that. So I want to bring that story to your attention. Please go to the show notes at I'm the blue line dot com and be sure to check out the different links there because those links, will you? You can actually watch that video if you haven't seen it. All right. So for this week, I want to do something a little bit unorthodox.
00:08:17:24 - 00:08:36:08
Wayne Mulder
If you've been listening the last couple of weeks, I've talked about the new e-book that came out in July, and it's a small book that I wrote. And in fact, calling it a book is probably a little unfair. It's more like a large pamphlet, but it is 30, 40 pages takes you roughly a half hour to read. So it is technically a book, but it isn't a very big book.
00:08:36:37 - 00:09:03:49
Wayne Mulder
So it's a little e-book and that's called How the Law Enforcement Career Makes You Cynical. The main reason I'm pushing it, if you would, right now, is because it is absolutely free, no strings attached, nothing more than I wanted to get the content out to the people who've been listening and supporting on the blue line. So for at least the next couple of weeks, it's going to no longer be free as of September 1st, but up until September 1st, it is free on the website, on the blue line dot com.
00:09:04:02 - 00:09:25:55
Wayne Mulder
You do have to enter an email like all email list. You can unsubscribe if that happens to be the the block or the reason why you just can't get the book is because you have to give your email. But that's the only quote unquote catch, if you would, is you have to enter an email and then once you do that, you will get a link to the book and it is absolutely free until September 1st.
00:09:25:55 - 00:09:52:40
Wayne Mulder
After that, it's only going to be available as a Kindle e-book. Still only a few dollars, but it will only be available as a Kindle e-book. And if you would rather go that route, it is available on Kindle right now. So whichever you'd prefer. What I want to do though is read a section from it. So where this pamphlet came from, I was actually just sat down and originally it was only six pages, so I just took a snapshot of three main issues that I saw that kind of led to cynicism, right?
00:09:52:58 - 00:10:10:12
Wayne Mulder
Because anyone, anyone who's been in law enforcement for more than a year, and for some of us who've been in law enforcement now more than ten years, there are things that definitely can lead to cynicism and patterns that you've seen over and over again throughout your career, you know, and that's what I kind of wanted to talk about.
00:10:10:12 - 00:10:29:17
Wayne Mulder
I wanted to point out, hey, you know, some of the things that you see. So one of the first points I make is, you know, some of the things that we see in this career, they're not normal. Right. And then the second thing I kind of point out is, hey, the schedule that you work is abnormal. Yes. There are other careers that have tough schedules.
00:10:29:40 - 00:10:49:29
Wayne Mulder
But I think when you add our tough schedule to some of the demands and some of the other craziness that's specific to this career, that can lead to a level of cynicism. And then thirdly, I don't know how many times and anyone listening to this can attest that we've heard people complain or there's this constant bitching about administration.
00:10:50:00 - 00:11:11:27
Wayne Mulder
And fortunately, I've been able to work at a location where I've not had that issue to the same degree, but I hear these stories from all across the country, and some of them are truly nightmare stories, and that can lead to cynicism. So then I just and again, there's a million other things, right? So this is going to actually grow and evolve into something bigger that I'm working on right now.
00:11:11:43 - 00:11:27:42
Wayne Mulder
But I wanted to get this content out to you first, and then I kind of give you three things from my life that I did that helped me combat that cynicism are just overall helped when it came to the area of mental health and law enforcement. So what I'm going to do today is I'm just going to quickly read it's a small section.
00:11:27:42 - 00:11:48:23
Wayne Mulder
I'm going to read you number two, this is number two of the three things that I kind of learned or was able to help me when it came to law enforcement. And in this case, and the reason I want to read this one is it actually kind of taught me what I've learned from law enforcement and how that helps me in other areas of my life.
00:11:48:38 - 00:12:09:41
Wayne Mulder
So I'm just going to take a minute and read this section to you. It's not very long. You just take me a few minutes and I hope you get something out of it. So number two, in this book, how the law enforcement career makes you cynical, what you can do about it. Law enforcement has the potential to be the most significant, significant catalyst to success in life because of who I had to become to be successful in law enforcement.
00:12:10:42 - 00:12:31:49
Wayne Mulder
Imagine that not only do you not have to be a victim of what happens to you and around you, the training and who you will become as a law enforcement officer will be the same tools that will set you up for success in other areas of your life. This thinking often contradicts the ominous warnings of this career that you have heard before a law enforcement that ran a small business that I had started in my early twenties.
00:12:32:07 - 00:12:54:07
Wayne Mulder
I won't tell the whole story here right now. The basic situation was that I had big dreams and goals, no life experience and no knowledge of what to do when things go awry. I had a sales experience that came naturally and allowed me to build something quickly to quickly. I had no financial experience running a business and no infrastructure around me of resources and people to learn from when the inevitable collapse came.
00:12:54:34 - 00:13:11:34
Wayne Mulder
Instead, I tried to save it by starting more businesses without fixing the core issues. And this only led to me being bankrupt and losing my home before my toes were over. When I look back at these years, I also see those things in my life that needed strengthening. I was good at sales but no longer wanted to communicate when things fell apart.
00:13:12:10 - 00:13:30:28
Wayne Mulder
In many ways, my trying to start more businesses to fix the failing business was the equivalent of hiding under a rock. It solved nothing in the problems only grew until the inevitable collapse. The irony is that when I came to law enforcement in my thirties, I began to see that some of the strength of this profession would sharpen these ragged edges within me.
00:13:31:13 - 00:13:48:45
Wayne Mulder
Responding to chaotic scenes teaches you something about courage and dealing with problems directly. When the world is falling apart around you and people are yelling and screaming, the radio is chirping, back up is a distance away and victims need help. It is you're seeing you make the decisions and you determine the plan to attack it the best that you can.
00:13:49:12 - 00:14:04:48
Wayne Mulder
All of this within moments of your arrival on the scene, you will not succeed in this career if you try to hide under a rock. This trait is almost always rooted out in the field training process because your safety and the safety of others are at stake. Another thing you learn in these moments is to find your voice.
00:14:04:48 - 00:14:26:20
Wayne Mulder
I tended in my previous life not to want to rock the boat. I would like to go into a particular direction. But being plagued by indecision and uncertainty, I would let it pass by never speaking up. Law enforcement does not allow this insecurity to remain. You must be confident, speak confidently, walk confidently and approach the worst of situations with confidence.
00:14:26:50 - 00:14:43:52
Wayne Mulder
It will catch up to you. But if you can't speak up and provide direction, the public may not even think about it. But then, on the worst of calls and scenes, a brand new deputy may be the same supervisor, even if only for minutes. Whoever is there is in charge until the next person of higher rank relieves them.
00:14:43:52 - 00:15:05:23
Wayne Mulder
Depending on the agency size or the area's remoteness, a deputy or a corporal could be the supervisor on an intense scene for long periods. These experiences have taught you courage, leadership, scene management and proper applications of resources, just as they are me. They also taught me one other thing that took me a lot longer. It was years into my career before it finally was shown to me and I began to apply it regularly.
00:15:05:51 - 00:15:30:27
Wayne Mulder
That was too brief. I spoke earlier about a shooting incident where a bad guy decided to turn a neighborhood into a war zone. Scenes like that go on for hours until there is a relief and you can go back to the command post. That evening was no different. I'll never forget when the after action review took place. Weeks later, a supervisor in charge of looking at all the body worn camera footage and offering feedback made a life changing comment to me.
00:15:31:01 - 00:15:52:20
Wayne Mulder
He stated, Next time, remember to breathe. He went on to talk about how he knew I wasn't breathing correctly for hours during the incident because there was one moment in the end when we were relieved that I finally just took one deep breath and began to relax. That was the best advice and reminder I've ever received. I've applied it in subsequent events and even in completing projects to a deadline.
00:15:52:20 - 00:16:15:13
Wayne Mulder
In this business, I take time to breathe regularly and deeply. I find this simple lesson born under the tragic circumstance was one that changed my life positively. Remember, as you consider all the negative aspects of law enforcement that you are now looking at as opportunities to develop yourself into your best self. You also view all the positive tools you can add to your toolbox.
00:16:15:40 - 00:16:31:46
Wayne Mulder
These are assets that will help you and your family, church, business, community, or whatever situation you may be. And then at the end of the chapter, there are a few questions for a little self-reflection, if that is something you would like to do. So that's what I have for you this week. I want you to think about it, though.
00:16:31:46 - 00:16:56:18
Wayne Mulder
Think about the things in the law enforcement career and the tools and the ways that it's changed you for the better in the tools that it's given you that you're going to be able to apply to other areas of your life. That's part of what this whole mission of On the Blue Line is all about. It is to help you recognize the tools that you already have for whatever those dreams are and those goals are that you want to achieve.
00:16:56:58 - 00:17:19:09
Wayne Mulder
And then to help you sharpen them and to prepare yourself so that either if you decide to leave the career early and you're looking, you know, maybe you're going to start some sort of side hustle or side business or when you retire, maybe you're someone who started at 20 years old and you're going to be retiring at 45 and you wanted to do a second career or whatever your situation will be.
00:17:19:11 - 00:17:43:35
Wayne Mulder
Law enforcement can be one of the greatest things that get you ready, but it's not going to work out that way. If you resolve to cynicism and you resolve to falling into some of these traps that are created by some of the negative parts of the career. So that's what I want to leave you with this week. I hope that you will join us again next week.
00:17:43:35 - 00:17:45:48
Wayne Mulder
And in the meantime, I want you to be safe out there.