PODCAST: On The Blue Line Podcast | MORNING ROLL CALL | Why Cops shouldn’t say, “Be Safe.” | Episode 088
On The Blue Line Podcast | MORNING ROLL CALL | Why Cops shouldn’t say, “Be Safe.” | Episode 088
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 Community has the mission of Empowering Cops in their personal lives and educating the public on the realities of law enforcement. This law enforcement podcast is focused on providing concepts, ideas, and actionable steps that can make a difference in your life. 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
Go Deeper:
Step 1: Subscribe to the Podcast wherever you are streaming it.
YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeart Radio
___________________
Step 2: Follow us on social media, so you never miss an update.
Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok
___________________
Step 3: Join the On The Blue Line Community on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/onthebluelinecommunity
In this episode:
One take away for the week:
I talk about the outcome of the 2022 mid-term elections. Bottom line: Know what you believe, Why you believe it, and tell EVERYONE in your circle of influence.
I then discuss the often used phrase “Be Safe” or “Stay Safe.” Why is this concerning? What should we say instead? Is safety the goal? I answer these and more.
RESOURCES:
- Why you shouldn’t say ‘Be Careful.’ Eton House, Jackie Becher. July 28, 2018. https://parenting.etonhouse.edu.sg/why-it-isnt-good-to-tell-children-to-be-careful
- Officer Safety Must Never Become Cliché: Reclaiming what we mean when we say, “Be Safe.” LEXIPOL. Don Weaver. June 02, 2017. https://www.lexipol.com/resources/blog/officer-safety-must-never-become-cliche-reclaiming-what-we-mean-when-we-say-be-safe/
I read your Rating and Reviews:
- Be sure to leave us a Rating and Review on Apple Podcasts and I will read it in an upcoming episode. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-blue-line-podcast/id1456545904
- EMAIL me your feedback: Feedback@OnTheBlueLine.com
LINKS:
- Get the eBook, “How the law enforcement makes you cynical and what you can do about it” by Wayne Mulder.
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.
00:00:01:22 - 00:00:22:00
Wayne Mulder
So welcome, my friend, to the On the Blue Line Podcast with Wayne Mulder. I am your host. You guessed it, Wayne Mulder. And this is the podcast that empowers law enforcement officers by equipping you with the tools to find success in all areas of your life. This week on Morning Roll Call, Why You Shouldn't Be Safe. Yes, you heard that correctly.
00:00:22:08 - 00:00:44:21
Wayne Mulder
Now let's talk about it. Morning Roll Call starts now. So welcome to the 135th episode of the podcast. I am so thankful you're joining us again. If this is the first time you're finding us. This is Morning Roll Call. It's a monologue show where just you and I sit down for 15, 20 minutes and I just pick a topic, lots of different topics.
00:00:44:21 - 00:00:59:25
Wayne Mulder
Things bounce in and out of my head throughout the week. And you and I just discussed that for a little bit. Our other show, The Interview Room, completely different format. So I encourage you to check that one out. If you haven't comes out on Thursdays at 0500. And in there I sit down with guests from all walks of life.
00:00:59:25 - 00:01:32:29
Wayne Mulder
This last Thursday, I sat down with Dom Teich. He was a fighter pilot, has a great book that's actually a collection of wisdom from other fighter pilots and others that you can enjoy. And we'll also make a difference in your life this coming week. I have John Kelly, the Law Enforcement Life Coach, on the show. So again, another hopefully impactful interview that will help you make a difference in your life and hopefully something that you enjoy this week on Morning Roll Call.
00:01:33:03 - 00:02:08:16
Wayne Mulder
I normally if you've been watching the last couple of weeks, I'm not back to the news stories yet. It will probably be December when we fully bring them back. However, this week, I'd be remiss if I didn't start with what would be the biggest news story of the week, which would be, of course, the election outcome. We still don't actually know the full outcome of the election, even though by the time that we are recording this, we do know that the Senate will remain as it was, and we don't know yet what the House is going to look like, though, depending on what side you fall on, I would say about the same or status
00:02:08:16 - 00:02:27:13
Wayne Mulder
quo would probably be the operative term. I'm not going to get deep into it, but here is what I'm going to encourage you. And I know some people are always like, well, why do you bring up politics on a law enforcement show? So if this is first time you're listening to me, let me make it clear. I do it for one reason and one reason only.
00:02:27:19 - 00:03:08:24
Wayne Mulder
It's because these issues will absolutely impact you as law enforcement. It doesn't matter where you work, you won't be immune to it. Now, in some areas, it may actually improve things for you, such as recruiting, such as people wanting to migrate there from other parts of the country. But it is true that as society struggles, suffers, changes, becomes something different, that those that are stuck in the middle trying to hold together some part of society, which really is the role of law enforcement, is going to be the front line for no matter which direction this goes.
00:03:09:15 - 00:03:36:15
Wayne Mulder
So all I want to do is encourage you, the listener, to just think about this. Does everyone within your circle of influence know what you believe and why you believe it? Do that. You know, this is something I struggle with, and I see the failures that I myself have made over the years, but the days of the country song you know, that said, we don't discuss politics, religion and her.
00:03:36:16 - 00:03:56:16
Wayne Mulder
If you're familiar with the old country song, those days are long past. We are in a time where people need to know what you believe in, why you believe it. And where I want to encourage you is if you don't know why you believe it. We got a problem, right? And that is the problem that we're faced with right now.
00:03:56:29 - 00:04:20:12
Wayne Mulder
A lot of people are opening their minds and hearts and even voting for things that either there's only really two explanations, especially when you get into things such as socialism. You either don't understand it or you are intentionally destroying America. There is no option, see when it comes to it, because it is the opposite of what America was founded on.
00:04:20:12 - 00:04:44:06
Wayne Mulder
And that's just one illustration. There's many, many, many illustrations, but socialism is probably the easiest one to be able to say that if you are for socialism, you are against Americanism. It is that simple. So one thing, and I've noticed this even with the next generation, in fact, when you look at the results of certain states and across the country, there was quite an impact of voters between the ages of 18 and 22.
00:04:44:12 - 00:05:03:08
Wayne Mulder
We don't know those full percentages on what exactly the outcome of that was. But what we do know for sure is that as younger people are going to the ballot box if they're not grounded in truth, if they're not grounded in what made America exceptional and what made America great, then they're going to vote for things they want.
00:05:03:28 - 00:05:30:08
Wayne Mulder
We have an entire generation of people, including my generation, who believe that they're entitled to things right and this entitlement mentality and a whole bunch of other things. Again, I don't want to go deep into this episode, but what happens is if people don't know why right is right or what it's even founded on, or what makes this correct or incorrect, then you end up with what we have right now.
00:05:30:19 - 00:06:01:22
Wayne Mulder
You have states where people may win the gubernatorial race without ever once debating. That is amazing to me. I don't even know how that's possible. You never even debate. Which means the people voting for either person are doing it solely on an ideological framework. They're not doing it based on any kind of belief in what this person is going to do for the community, for the state.
00:06:02:07 - 00:06:45:24
Wayne Mulder
It's not based on anything more than almost a cultish, like behavior that, well, this is my guy, this is who I always have to vote for. The same is true when you see people that questionably and medically can't even do the job winning like, say, Senate races in states like Pennsylvania. It's scary. It really is. So what I encourage you to do as the listeners of this show, especially since you are going to be the most impacted as this country continues to change, and especially since those with the most amount of power right now seem hellbent on creating an idea such as globalism and ideas that are going to continue to tear at the fabric
00:06:45:24 - 00:07:10:18
Wayne Mulder
of this country, plus the economical destruction that's coming. Sadly, if we continue on the path that we are with spending, I mean, you don't have to be a brain surgeon here to be able to add and go one plus one equals and see what the road that we're on. So for me, the one big takeaway from this is that you have two sides that in no way can come to any a semblance of agreement.
00:07:11:19 - 00:07:50:24
Wayne Mulder
I really don't think that there is the silent majority you always hear about or, you know, this large pool of people in the middle. I just don't really believe they exist. So what I encourage you to do, as we are faced with the challenges that lie ahead, is to really take time to think about what you believe in, why you believe it, be grounded in it, and then secondly, tell those in your circle of influence the real way to turn the tide, to start headed back towards some semblance of what we should be doing as a country is to get as local as possible and to know why we believe what we believe and to
00:07:50:24 - 00:08:16:17
Wayne Mulder
educate those around us. That doesn't mean everyone to agree with you. And quite frankly, I don't want everyone to agree with me on everything. But there are certain principles on which we all must agree if we are going to live in this country. The Constitution is one of those key documents. There is no way around that if you don't believe in the Constitution, if you don't believe in the Bill of Rights as written, if you don't believe, then we're going to struggle.
00:08:17:02 - 00:08:41:04
Wayne Mulder
We are going to struggle. And that's what we're seeing right now. So that's all I want to say on that. But that was probably not probably that was the biggest news story of the week. Yeah. I just wanted to come in here and talk to you real quick. Have you joined our Facebook group? The on the Blue Line community?
00:08:41:15 - 00:09:09:01
Wayne Mulder
If not, I encourage you to do so. If you look down to the show notes below on whatever platform you're watching or listening to this on down there, you will see the link to the Facebook group on the Blue Line community, and we'd love to have you join us. It's just that it's a small, growing community of people who either support law enforcement or are in law enforcement with the goal of having conversations that will be beneficial both in people's personal lives and in their professional lives.
00:09:09:01 - 00:09:26:10
Wayne Mulder
So I hope that you'll consider joining us. It's on the blue line community inside Facebook groups. And of course, you can always go to it through the website, which is OnTheBlueLine.com. So thank you so much for considering it. Thank you so much for listening and I hope to see you inside the community. All right.
00:09:26:10 - 00:09:45:05
Wayne Mulder
So this week, let's get to this idea of don't be safe, right? I know that sounds counterintuitive, but let me explain. So anyone that's been in law enforcement for any length of time has either said or heard the, hey, be safe out there. Just be safe. Right. We've all heard that moniker. That statement over and over again. Nothing wrong with it.
00:09:45:13 - 00:10:07:08
Wayne Mulder
However, I just want you to think about it differently. Right. So I on my social media for a long time would end with a little praying hands and be safe out there and so forth. I've since changed that. If you look at what I put out on Twitter now, it's usually something like you're in our thoughts and prayers, that kind of thing, because I wanted to fall away from this idea of safety.
00:10:07:08 - 00:10:31:18
Wayne Mulder
Right. So first of all, let me be very clear. Obviously, I want the men and women out there on the front lines to be safe. That's not what I'm saying. So please don't hear what I'm not saying. Obviously, we want our men and women in uniform, in uniform, whether they are on the front lines overseas, whether they are here in the United States, on the city streets or counties or wherever they choose to serve.
00:10:31:18 - 00:10:51:17
Wayne Mulder
We want them to be as safe as possible. But the problem that I see in that I think I can support is that safety shouldn't necessarily be the goal. Right. We have this really weird thing going on in society right now where safety somehow became its own constitutional right. It almost became like, you have a constitutional right to safety.
00:10:51:17 - 00:11:12:17
Wayne Mulder
And tell me that isn't scary. In fact, one of the biggest lessons you should have learned out of the last couple of years is that not only is there not a constitutional right to safety, but the safety making safety, the goal leads to all sorts of atrocities and tyranny. Now, what's baffling to me is how tyrants still manage to get voted in again.
00:11:12:20 - 00:11:38:02
Wayne Mulder
But again, conversation for another day. But the goal shouldn't be safety. In fact, a society that prioritizes safety minimizes risk and self-reliance. And at first, you might be like, well, I want to minimize risk. And in some situations through proper training, which we'll get to in a moment that isn't a bad thing, but it shouldn't be the goal and exasperates complacency and inaction and fear.
00:11:38:19 - 00:12:00:01
Wayne Mulder
This is why if you have children between the ages of 17 and 24, this may sound familiar to you. I don't know how many people I talk to that have young men in their 19, 20, 21 that don't want to drive. And a lot of times it's based in a fear. It's this whole safety minded one. I'm scared of what could happen.
00:12:00:02 - 00:12:26:17
Wayne Mulder
Well, yes, people die on the road every day. I responded to many of them in law enforcement, as have you. But lots of good things have come from driving as well. And I would not give up those experiences because of the perceived risk. Right. And if you take this even to a societal level, this whole idea of safety mindedness typically ends up taking away rights.
00:12:27:03 - 00:12:48:25
Wayne Mulder
So obviously, that's not a road we want to go down. And it's not something I really want to discuss here. But what I do want to discuss, there's two articles that I want to bring attention to. First of all, is dealing with children right? So this comes to us from 2018. I would be curious of going and finding a newer article, which I have not been able to find that bases in the days post COVID.
00:12:48:25 - 00:13:14:02
Wayne Mulder
What they say now, because I would be curious if they have a different mindset. But in 2018, coming from Eton House star Edu, they said that young children run, they climb, and sometimes oftentimes they fall. Sometimes what they are doing even looks dangerous. And it's tempting to yell out, Be careful. Well, doing so this is quoting is actually counterproductive to the growth and development of children.
00:13:14:18 - 00:13:33:06
Wayne Mulder
So why? So this is back in 2018 and here's what they said. Because it instills fear, which prevents them from taking risks, making mistakes and being creative. We all know those so-called helicopter parents. We all know those people that are like, no, don't do that. Don't do that. It's scary. Don't you know, don't don't go over there and do that.
00:13:33:07 - 00:14:04:14
Wayne Mulder
Well, in turn, if you are constantly telling a child, be careful, be careful, be careful. You will often times instill a deeper fear into them. They're scared of their environment. They're scared of what could happen. And in turn, it leads to, like I said, inaction or this living from a state of fear, which we've talked about before. So the writer of this says instead you need to teach the child to be aware of his environment rather than, hey, don't do this, be careful making them scared of the environment.
00:14:04:25 - 00:14:34:04
Wayne Mulder
You what you do is you present them with awareness to the environment. Hey, notice that the floor is wet. Maybe we shouldn't go running across here and cracking our head open on the concrete. I added the last part or the mud is slippery, the path is bumpy, and so forth. So on you get the idea. But essentially what you're saying is, Hey, listen, by making them aware, then they can use their own self-reliance, their own self decision making to make a manageable risk in the moment without living from a sense of fear.
00:14:34:25 - 00:14:57:09
Wayne Mulder
I don't know. It makes sense. So if that's true, when we are talking about children, how much more so is it true when we're talking about cops? Right. And so that is I found an article that was written in Alexa poll back in 2017 and it says Officer safety must never become cliche. Reclaiming what we mean when we say be safe.
00:14:58:10 - 00:15:20:20
Wayne Mulder
So another societal issue and something that much bigger conversation for a different day is this attack on masculinity. Right. So there's this whole push towards emasculation where we don't want men to be dangerous. And the same is true oftentimes with what you're seeing in law enforcement. We don't want them to be dangerous. We don't want them to be scary.
00:15:20:20 - 00:15:38:20
Wayne Mulder
Right. You see this when people are like, oh, well, they're too tactical or they're too this or too that. Obviously, law enforcement is made up of both men and women, but you see the same thing when it comes to masculinity itself. In fact, there was a writer that wrote We Castrate the Gelding, but we bid him to be fruitful.
00:15:39:09 - 00:16:13:09
Wayne Mulder
Right. The idea is as well, we don't want the stallion however we want the babies that come from the stallion. Huh? Isn't that interesting? And the same is true when we talk. You know, there's all these metaphors you hear for law enforcement, whether it's the wolf and the, you know, the sheepdog and all these different metaphors. But at the bottom of all of them, or boiling it all down, is this idea that we need cops who aren't necessarily using safety in a cliché manner or as the most important thing, though, as I said, safety is very important.
00:16:13:09 - 00:16:40:23
Wayne Mulder
So what does this mean for us? Right. So here's the fierce here's what happens if and this is what the writer is saying of this article that was in the exit poll, is that when you hear people say be safe or stay safe, it becomes almost as common as farewell or goodbye would be in the common language and telling them to stay safe or be safe often must be understood as encouraging or commanding them to take purposeful actions to enhance their safety.
00:16:41:06 - 00:17:02:25
Wayne Mulder
But sadly, what it really is, is it often is this whimsical wish of good fortune and fortune or good luck. I hope and wish everything turns out okay for you today. Well, that isn't very smart for either one of us, right? So the writer goes on to say, also know that most of the time there are things that we can do to minimize risk and enhance safety.
00:17:02:25 - 00:17:24:25
Wayne Mulder
So we need to move away from this cliche, just be safe and actually take control of our safety. And this is perfect for law enforcement, but it's also perfect for us in our personal lives. Right. There has to be a point where we take personal action. Right. We know that officers must take some risk. But being safe and staying safe and I'm quoting here is not the result of passivity.
00:17:25:04 - 00:17:46:25
Wayne Mulder
Be safe and stay safe. Must be understood as encouraging or commanding them to take conscious, purposeful actions that are designed to help ensure safety. Right. So he goes on and explains, what does this look like? Right. This whole idea of so be alert and aware of your surroundings. Yeah, we've talked about that a lot. Be constantly training and prepare.
00:17:46:26 - 00:18:11:26
Wayne Mulder
Maintain mental and physical fitness effectively utilize cover and concealment. Don't place yourself at unnecessary risk. Do not intentionally antagonize people. Yeah, I do that a little bit, but I've got a podcast, you know, and avoid complacency. Use force when appropriate, when possible. Summon additional resources. Use safe tactics and techniques, and on and on it goes. And then he makes a great argument for formalizing a department's commitment to the officer safety.
00:18:12:09 - 00:18:34:10
Wayne Mulder
But here's the bottom line on it, right? Instead of just saying be safe in some sort of cliche manner or some maybe less than meaningful manner. Instead, what we need to do is we need to encourage people to take action that will help to keep them safe in the long run. Right. We need to stay away from this risk adverse thinking because sometimes we need to take risk.
00:18:34:20 - 00:19:03:20
Wayne Mulder
If if there wasn't risk, people wouldn't we wouldn't have even come to this land. Right. People have to do things that take risk, but being safe is mostly not completely. We all know bad things can happen, but being safe is mostly in your control, at least the basis of being prepared for whatever may happen. So this week, I want to encourage you to be courageous, be strong, be wise, be vigilant, and take steps to be prepared.
00:19:03:27 - 00:19:24:10
Wayne Mulder
In doing that, you're going to help to increase your safety and the safety of those with whom you work. That does it for this week's Morning Roll Call. I'll see you next Thursday in the interview room. But in the meantime, I'll see you out there on the blue line.