PODCAST: “Cops MUST learn: ‘It’s not selfish, It’s self-care!’” with John Kelly | THE INTERVIEW ROOM | Episode 048
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“Cops MUST learn: ‘It’s not selfish, It’s self-care!’” with John Kelly | THE INTERVIEW ROOM | Episode 048
John Kelly
Law Enforcement Life Coach
Meet this Weeks Guest: John Kelly
John Kelly is a thirty-year veteran of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, one of the largest sheriff’s offices in the country. John has been fortunate enough to have worked in and supervised the following units: Patrol, Investigations, K-9, Training, and for the past six years, the Motorcycle Unit. John has been involved in numerous critical incidents during his career. Early on, he was involved in a life changing fight for his life. Fresh out of the academy, John found himself in hand-to-hand combat with an armed, drug dealing, career criminal. This baptism of violence has contributed greatly in shaping John's passion and dedication to winning and realizing that we are responsible for our own survival and success.
During his career, John has been tasked with the development and implementation of numerous tactical programs and initiatives. He has had tremendous success in creating a positive and lasting shift in the mindset of those he has stood before. John has received countless awards and honors during his career. The vast majority of those incidents had a recurring theme: John placing himself in harm's way so that others may live, running towards danger, fully aware of the potential consequences.
Like you, John wouldn’t have had it any other way. John’s most recent assignment required him to work closely with the United States Secret Service, providing instruction and assistance for presidential motorcades and related dignitary movements. John is well known for his ability to educate and motivate without losing the importance of the mission at hand, as well as the priority and importance of being accountable to each other.
John’s educational background is a never-ending work in progress. John received his BA from Norwich University, the oldest military college in the nation. He received his MBA from Phoenix University, and is currently pursuing his life coaching accreditation from the International Coach Federation. John is an avid reader and is always looking to expand his base of knowledge. John is also a member of the 100 Club of Volusia County, an organization that provides financial assistance to first responders who have died in the line of duty.
John is looking forward to retirement at the end of December 2020, and launching his Law Enforcement Life Coaching program. John lives on an island just south of Saint Augustine with his wife Nicol of 25 years, Briana his daughter, and Mr. Wallace his bullmastiff.
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.
Go Deeper:
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Step 3: Join the On The Blue Line Community on Facebook.
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Topics we discuss:
Alcoholism
Addiction
Adultery
PTSD
Mental Health
Wellness
Leadership
Law Enforcement Coaching
Self-Care
CONNECT with John:
LINKEDin: @John Kelly
INSTAGRAM: @LawEnforcementLifeCoach
FACEBOOK: @John Kelly
PODCAST: Law Enforcement Life Coach: Sometimes Heroes need Help
BOOK: Surviving Self-Inflicted Wounds: A Deputy’s Life of Redemption by John Kelly.
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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.
00:00:08:01 - 00:00:31:20
Wayne Mulder
And welcome everybody to another On The Blue Line podcast. I am your host, Wayne Mulder, and I'm excited to be back with you again this week. I'm going to try to keep this introduction short. I know that's something new for me. No comment, but I'm going to try. But I do want to bring you up to speed on just a few things.
00:00:31:20 - 00:00:55:05
Wayne Mulder
So first of all, every podcast has been and is now on video. So there is some time and effort that's going into these videos. I'm trying to improve them, add some things to them, some features. So I do promise you they will get better hopefully and hopefully you agree. So give me some feedback on that. But they are available on our YouTube channel, which is on the Blue Line and Rumble Channel, which is on the Blue Line.
00:00:55:05 - 00:01:14:18
Wayne Mulder
So definitely if you're someone who likes to see them on video, I would encourage you to check those out. It does take a lot of time dealing with the video, and so I just want to make sure that you're enjoying it to that end, if you would feedback, if whatever way is easiest for you. But I would love to get your feedback.
00:01:14:19 - 00:01:35:05
Wayne Mulder
What do you like? What do you dislike? What do you want to see different? And depending on what you go over, I will be sure to mention it in a future show, or you'll just see those changes come in the future. So and then if you would, a big help is to like share, subscribe whichever platform you're on, especially if you're on one of those video platforms.
00:01:35:05 - 00:01:57:03
Wayne Mulder
If you would, please be sure to subscribe to the channel to like this video, those all have huge help with the algorithms as well as we're trying to get the word out there on what we are doing. So lastly OnTheBlueLine.com, if you haven't checked it out in the last couple of months OnTheBlueLine.com was completely redone in July and I'm trying to keep it up to date with a lot of different things.
00:01:57:03 - 00:02:27:22
Wayne Mulder
There's everything from merch on there. We have you'll have all the blogs and then all the episodes actually have full show notes. So there's a lot of information. In fact, it's easier for you. You can just go to the show notes page at OnTheBlueLine.com forwards last show notes and on there you have not only a direct link to the audio for every podcast, but you also have the embedded video for the recording as well as transcriptions that you can look at the timestamps.
00:02:27:22 - 00:02:47:20
Wayne Mulder
So all the recent episodes will also have transcriptions in there and you can scroll down and see the timestamp that something was said. So if you do hear something and you want to reference it later, you want to look up what were they talking about or what was that article they discussed or that book? And it's you can't find it or you're not 100% sure what the context was.
00:02:47:23 - 00:03:10:00
Wayne Mulder
You can easily just control off and search in the transcription notes for whatever it is that you're looking for. So I hope all those features are helpful to you and I hope you're enjoying it. And if you are just joining, welcome. So without taking any more time, let's get to this week's guest here, John Kelly. He is a 30 year veteran of the Broward County Sheriff's Office here in Florida.
00:03:10:08 - 00:03:30:16
Wayne Mulder
And he will talk about his story and coming into law enforcement and what kind of led him to this career. Throughout his career, he struggled with alcoholism, addiction, adultery, PTSD and thoughts of suicide. John has taken his life experiences both the good and bad, to develop a wellness leadership program for those still fighting the good fight. And we get into a lot of that.
00:03:30:16 - 00:03:50:10
Wayne Mulder
We actually just scratched the surface. So I do. If you want to hear a lot more of his story, definitely check out the book that we mentioned many times and it's in the show notes. But without taking any more time, here's this week's guest, John Kelly. All right, John. Well, welcome to the show.
00:03:51:00 - 00:03:54:21
John Kelly
Wayne. Thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate the opportunity.
00:03:54:21 - 00:04:10:00
Wayne Mulder
T Absolutely. I'm glad you reached out and I'm glad we have this opportunity to sit down and discuss such a needed conversation of what is going on in the law enforcement space. And of course, your experience and I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
00:04:10:09 - 00:04:11:19
John Kelly
Yeah, man, let's jump into it.
00:04:12:04 - 00:04:19:11
Wayne Mulder
Absolutely. Well, let's start, as I always do with my get to know your question. So I start very easy, very simple. Coffee or tea?
00:04:20:03 - 00:04:21:12
John Kelly
Coffee. I have one right now.
00:04:21:15 - 00:04:27:09
Wayne Mulder
There you go. That is the right answer. So let me ask you, John, do you have a favorite place to have that cup of coffee?
00:04:28:00 - 00:04:48:03
John Kelly
I you know, I've I so I listen to podcasts and I listen to one podcast. It was about health. And they said the first thing you should do in the morning is not drink a cup of coffee. You need you need an hour and a half, 90 minutes to let your body kind of wake up on its own natural rhythm and calibrate.
00:04:48:03 - 00:04:57:23
John Kelly
So I literally the first 90 minutes of my life every morning are staring at a cup of coffee, waiting for the time that I can start drinking it. But I have.
00:04:57:23 - 00:04:59:02
Wayne Mulder
Not heard this stat.
00:04:59:09 - 00:05:02:10
John Kelly
Yeah, so I am sorry that I.
00:05:02:10 - 00:05:04:14
Wayne Mulder
Told you this because apparently it's based on.
00:05:04:14 - 00:05:05:01
John Kelly
Some sort.
00:05:05:01 - 00:05:05:18
Wayne Mulder
Of fact.
00:05:06:01 - 00:05:15:12
John Kelly
Okay, so I drank water for 90 minutes in the morning, and then it's usually here in my office. This is where this is where I finally get.
00:05:16:00 - 00:05:16:19
Wayne Mulder
The sip.
00:05:16:19 - 00:05:18:12
John Kelly
Of the the morning nectar.
00:05:18:12 - 00:05:33:02
Wayne Mulder
So I love it. Well, it seems like everybody, especially coffee drinkers, always kind of have that place they go to. You know, for some it's sitting out on the back deck. Others it's a beach, others it's a local coffee shop. So I always like kind of hearing everybody's where they go because especially coffee drinkers have that spot.
00:05:33:02 - 00:05:35:13
John Kelly
Yeah. There's never a bad time to have coffee.
00:05:35:16 - 00:05:41:06
Wayne Mulder
No, there's not. Do you, John, have a best or worst travel story I get.
00:05:41:16 - 00:06:07:17
John Kelly
I've got a few. We I was just married and we were going on our honeymoon and something happened with the flight. And my wife Nicole wasn't sitting with me and we got on the plane and I looked over and so I'm going to like where I was sitting. And she was just like, how does this happening? You know?
00:06:07:23 - 00:06:28:16
John Kelly
And as I'm making my way to the seat, I see there's a woman there. She's a looker. And I'm like, please, please don't let please don't let me be sitting next to this woman. This is not the way to start out my marriage. You know, this is not good. Please, please, please. Oh, and as I get closer, I realize that, of course, my seat is right next to Miss USA.
00:06:29:19 - 00:06:50:02
John Kelly
Yeah. You know, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, and I'm just like, okay, this isn't happening. I went to the stewardess, I said, listen, this is going to be the shortest, shortest marriage in the history of marriages. If I have to sit next to that woman, I said, because Mrs. Kelley's understanding. But I'm already I'm already in the doghouse because the ticket thing got messed up.
00:06:50:19 - 00:06:51:05
John Kelly
So.
00:06:51:05 - 00:06:51:14
Wayne Mulder
Right.
00:06:51:23 - 00:07:06:14
John Kelly
Can you can you help me out here? And she looked at me and she took pity on me. She's like, Well, I go, It's our honeymoon where she goes, I'll be right back. She grabbed me and Mrs. Kelley and brought us to first class on the cuff.
00:07:07:05 - 00:07:08:01
Wayne Mulder
Knives.
00:07:08:07 - 00:07:42:06
John Kelly
The upgraded us and she said this should be a good start to your to your marriage. And I was like, you miss if I didn't think I'd get smacked by Mrs. Kelley, I did kiss you right now because you really, you know, you saved me. And yeah, but that was it was one of those like it turned 180 for me in the blink of an eye because it really wasn't going in a good way for all my planning and trying to be that guy, the the stewardess, I guess we call them stewardess, right?
00:07:42:06 - 00:07:45:04
John Kelly
Air hostess or what's the politically correct term. Yeah.
00:07:45:04 - 00:07:45:19
Wayne Mulder
Any more out of.
00:07:45:19 - 00:07:50:11
John Kelly
Yeah, yeah. The Shia, she hooked me up. So that was good stuff, man.
00:07:50:11 - 00:07:51:15
Wayne Mulder
That's awesome. I it.
00:07:51:15 - 00:07:54:05
John Kelly
Was. Yeah.
00:07:54:05 - 00:07:54:23
Wayne Mulder
Avoiding this.
00:07:54:23 - 00:07:55:16
John Kelly
Tragedy.
00:07:55:23 - 00:07:59:05
Wayne Mulder
Yeah, well, it started out that way, but it ended up being a beautiful story.
00:07:59:10 - 00:08:00:07
John Kelly
Absolutely.
00:08:00:18 - 00:08:08:03
Wayne Mulder
So do you have a favorite or most meaningful nonfiction book other than your own? Of course, which we will get to. But do you have a favorite a.
00:08:08:20 - 00:08:29:17
John Kelly
Do you know what I've been doing? So I've got a stack. You know, we were talking about this network of ours and how we're building it out and meeting people. I've got a stack of books from guys I've connected with or Jason Schecter. Lee Story. Yes.
00:08:30:06 - 00:08:30:19
Wayne Mulder
I heard of that.
00:08:30:23 - 00:09:09:01
John Kelly
Yep. And I've got all sorts of books from guys doing all sorts of amazing things. I've got Chris Hoyas When that day comes, another great book or anything that Colonel Grossman puts out. I'm a I'm obviously a big fan. I'm reading on spiritual combat right now. Yeah. And I anything that Jocko Willing puts out all his leadership books, I think, you know, those are some really great core tenets to have as a leader, you know, owning it, taking responsibility.
00:09:09:01 - 00:09:17:13
John Kelly
You know, his first book there, Extreme Ownership. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what my my reading list looks like right now.
00:09:17:22 - 00:09:18:14
Wayne Mulder
That's great. And I'm.
00:09:18:14 - 00:09:28:02
John Kelly
Starting. Jason spoke right now. I've got a couple, a couple chapters into it. But yeah, it's just some, some amazing stories out there.
00:09:29:06 - 00:09:44:02
Wayne Mulder
Yeah, it is. And I think that I think that is also the way it goes for podcasters, because I've got the same thing. I've got a stack of books around here that are all people that have either been on the show or that I've talked about having come on the show. So I think that's part of how we develop our reading list.
00:09:44:08 - 00:10:05:04
John Kelly
Absolutely. It's what a space to be in to actually. I mean, when when in time would you have ever of met or spoke with the author of any book right in the technology allows us in this platform allows us to do that and I think that's pretty cool it.
00:10:05:14 - 00:10:11:13
Wayne Mulder
It's amazing and I say that all the time in fact I probably say it so much. I think the listeners think it's hyperbolic, but I really.
00:10:11:13 - 00:10:12:05
John Kelly
Do.
00:10:12:19 - 00:10:33:06
Wayne Mulder
Love that opportunity that like you said, I mean, like you mentioned that book on Spiritual Cabin about I think Adam Davis was involved in that one as well. And I've had Adam on the. Yeah, yeah. And I've had Adam on the podcast and got to sit down and talk with him. And I mean, it's just such a neat opportunity we get that we wouldn't have existed 20 years ago.
00:10:33:15 - 00:10:50:16
John Kelly
It's, it's, it's really it's an unintended consequence. I didn't realize how awesome it would be connecting and interviewing and talking to people from all around this country. You know, it's it's definitely in an added bonus, right?
00:10:50:22 - 00:11:02:22
Wayne Mulder
Yeah, it is. It absolutely is. Well, I tell you, John, let's get to a little bit of your story. So you spent 30 years in law enforcement, but can you kind of take us back to the origin story? What brought you into law enforcement in the first place?
00:11:02:22 - 00:11:28:13
John Kelly
And, you know, I went so I grew up in the northeast, North Shore, Boston, and I went to a military college, Nord University. It's up there in Vermont and always wanted to serve. I really wasn't sure in what capacity. And I had some uncles that were very influential in my life. One was in the Air Force, One was in the Army Special Forces.
00:11:28:13 - 00:11:56:02
John Kelly
One flew rescue choppers. They both, you know, had very distinguished career. So I kind of growing up around these guys always had that framework of what I'm going to serve. I just did it nowhere. In 87, I went through OCS in the Marine Corps, kind of pushing in that direction. And then finding out, you know, there was there was no conflict going on at the time.
00:11:57:03 - 00:12:20:00
John Kelly
And I wanted to I wanted to have a mission. I wanted to sort of get my hands dirty kind of right away. And that law enforcement role was like, you know, we're talking late eighties, early nineties. You know, things were jumping around and across the country. It didn't matter really where you were working. That was that was a calling.
00:12:20:17 - 00:12:43:05
John Kelly
And so I went the law enforcement route. I was up in Boston trying to get on with the mast ladies in late eighties, early nineties. That wasn't happening for me. And there was an advertisement in the Boston Globe from the Broward County Sheriff's Office and they said, you know, come to Florida and there's a little bit of that going on right now.
00:12:43:05 - 00:12:44:08
Wayne Mulder
I was going to say, yeah, that's.
00:12:44:22 - 00:13:14:07
John Kelly
Every every agency in the state of Florida is advertising to the masses across the country, and they're filling billets. Man People are leaving, you know, the northeast, northeast of the country, Washington, Washington state, California, New York. They're coming to Florida in droves. And so that was going on back in 90. And, you know, I had my nana God, God rest her soul.
00:13:14:07 - 00:13:35:07
John Kelly
She was one of those snowbirds before I knew what a snowbird was. And she had a condo in Pompano Beach, Pompano Beach, on a 20 on North Ocean Boulevard. And she said, well, you know, if you want to try Florida, John, you can stay in the condo. You know, it's it's vacant, you know, seven, eight months out of the year.
00:13:35:16 - 00:13:50:09
John Kelly
And you're free to use that. And I'm thinking condo on a Wednesday in Florida rent free we try Florida let me see what's going on with because.
00:13:50:09 - 00:13:53:20
Wayne Mulder
They know it takes a month of winter for that decision to be easy. Yeah.
00:13:53:23 - 00:14:18:21
John Kelly
So I was like, you know what I think Florida. So I packed up the car, I drove down here, I put my applications in like we all do with, you know, ten different agencies. And fortunately, I got picked up by the sheriff's office and so that was, you know, I had some some odd jobs prior to that, but I got picked up by the sheriff's office right about the time.
00:14:19:06 - 00:14:37:02
John Kelly
And it was good, right about the time I was getting ready to go to the academy and my nanna came down. I think it might have been over the, you know, November, December, January time. And that was good because she actually hung around a little bit. You know, listen, living with your nana isn't really cool.
00:14:37:22 - 00:14:42:15
Wayne Mulder
I've been there, done that. That's actually when I came to Florida, I lived with Nana as well. So that's absolutely hilarious.
00:14:42:20 - 00:15:06:00
John Kelly
It is excellent to keep you on track with your studies while you're in the academy and keeping you focused because, yeah, Nana's tolerance for you coming in the door a little messed up, you know, with three in the morning and that's that's unacceptable. So I was in every night pretty early studying and being, you know, doing my due diligence when it came to being a good academy kid.
00:15:06:14 - 00:15:10:23
John Kelly
So yeah, man, that was the start. That was the start back in 91.
00:15:11:08 - 00:15:18:24
Wayne Mulder
Wow, that's awesome. For those who are listening, can you just what are some of the major cities in Broward County or where exactly is Broward County?
00:15:18:24 - 00:15:33:16
John Kelly
Broward County? Think of Fort Lauderdale. Okay. They are Fort Lauderdale. And it just so you've got Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County basically Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, 1 to 3. Right up. Right up the coast.
00:15:33:24 - 00:15:40:21
Wayne Mulder
Yup. Very good. Yeah. Because I know some of the listeners aren't from Florida. So just so they have some idea what part of the state we're talking on.
00:15:41:04 - 00:15:45:21
John Kelly
Where we're cops originated from. Unfortunately, that that's.
00:15:45:21 - 00:15:46:06
Wayne Mulder
Right.
00:15:46:17 - 00:16:00:24
John Kelly
Broward County Sheriff's Office was the agency that that didn't use good judgment back in the day and allowed camera crews to ride with us, you know, so we're responsible for the mess that we see now.
00:16:01:13 - 00:16:08:04
Wayne Mulder
Right. And everything that kind of fed and grew from that. So what kind of roles did you hold in your time at Broward?
00:16:08:16 - 00:16:33:12
John Kelly
Well, when when I tell you a blessed career, you know, a lot of times when you think back over your career, you might have some regrets or, you know, I wish I did this from a career standpoint. I rocked it, man. I loved it. I was a deputy, a field training officer, K-9 handler. I worked a patrol dog for seven years.
00:16:33:12 - 00:16:57:10
John Kelly
I mean, the best job in the world was hunting, you know? I mean, I got paid to hunt humans. I mean, it was there was no better job in the nineties. And so I had that job. I retired, my dog went to the detective bureau, got promoted out of the detective bureau. And then I oddly enough, they wanted me to go to Internal Affairs as a sergeant.
00:16:57:14 - 00:17:17:18
John Kelly
And I was just like, Hmm. And so the guy's trying to sell me on it. He's like, Oh, no, no, John, this would be great. And I said, I said the guy's name was Joe who called me. I said, Joe, I go, Listen, bro, I go, you know, I appreciate the offer, but I just he goes, Listen, we need somebody in there that knows what it's like to be under investigation.
00:17:18:09 - 00:17:20:14
John Kelly
I said, Well, then that makes sense.
00:17:20:15 - 00:17:22:02
Wayne Mulder
The subject matter expert.
00:17:22:11 - 00:17:47:11
John Kelly
Yeah, really. I go, I got that from that standpoint, I'm your guy. I've already been suspended a couple of times. You know, I've got, you know, healthy jacket. I said, But yeah, but no, bro, because I can't just can't, can't be a part of that. And so things worked out. I ended up going to training and I went to training at a time when we were at the sheriff's office.
00:17:48:10 - 00:17:55:14
John Kelly
Every four years they clean house. It's an elected position. And so I worked for seven sheriffs.
00:17:56:01 - 00:17:56:10
Wayne Mulder
Okay.
00:17:57:07 - 00:18:31:08
John Kelly
And it's really hard to get into a routine if the vision in command is is really changing every four years. Yeah. You know, most of these projects, they take time, so you really never got a footing. And the administration, back in the day that I was under, they were very liability conscious. They weren't weren't pushing the fight. They were overly concerned about the optics of the incident and not the facts of the incident.
00:18:31:17 - 00:18:33:09
John Kelly
Kind of sound a little familiar.
00:18:33:15 - 00:18:35:03
Wayne Mulder
We may have that going on again.
00:18:35:04 - 00:18:46:19
John Kelly
Right. And it's it's just history repeating itself. If anybody would pay attention and we were burying cops back in the day at an alarming rate, at least in my own agency.
00:18:47:03 - 00:18:54:12
Wayne Mulder
I was going to ask about that stat because that when I read your book, that absolutely shocked me. So at one point it was one a year. Did I read that correctly?
00:18:54:14 - 00:19:20:02
John Kelly
Yeah. One a year for felonious assault. It I'm not. And that's not including car wrecks that's not including you know. So that's that's at the hands of a bad guy one a year and saying it was insane. And you know the new sheriff came in and he was like, we need to stop going to funerals. But yeah, that's the mandate.
00:19:21:09 - 00:19:43:16
John Kelly
And I got brought in with a few other guys and they said, we're going to develop a team of subject matter experts, not because they're well learned or versed in anything, but because they have experience that they're respected by the guys. And that's the one thing I had going for me because I had been on patrol my whole career.
00:19:43:16 - 00:20:03:00
John Kelly
I had been in K-9 my whole career. I've been county wide. I've been in hundreds of critical incidents. So there was some if I told you, this is what we're going to do and this is why we're going to do it. There was almost an immediate buy in from the troops because, well, fuck it, that's what you are.
00:20:03:06 - 00:20:24:09
John Kelly
This is what we're doing then, you know. And because it was tested, it was it was true. And the team we built out were all guys that were involved in critical incidents, all been in shootings, all in all sorts of incidents and areas of expertize. I had a SWAT guy who was a bunch of shootings, but I mean, he was our small unit tactic guy.
00:20:24:20 - 00:21:08:19
John Kelly
You know, I had a hand-to-hand guy that was, you know, the most humble, unassuming guy you'd ever meet, but deadly, deadly with his hands. I had another guy that was just so well rounded that there wasn't anything that he couldn't do. I mean, so we assembled this team. Yeah. From all these guys that have been terminated, fired, suspended, gotten their job back this was like the bad news bears of, you know, the Broward Sheriff's Office Training Division, you know, myself, Zach, Danny and Steve and we later added a guy named Mike and Ian and like, we were this, like, misfit band of guys.
00:21:08:19 - 00:21:36:13
John Kelly
But when we came together and we delivered some realistic no B.S., do whatever it takes to go home kind of training. And it wasn't about surviving. We were like surviving. We are winning. We are. Survival is no longer a word in your vocabulary. Survival are the words of a victim. We are winning. We are taking the fight to the bad guy and that sense of empowerment.
00:21:37:10 - 00:22:07:17
John Kelly
We were in training for seven years and not one did we lose one deputy in those seven years at the hands of a suspect, that's all. And it was a lesson. I don't want to take the credit for that. It was definitely had something to do with creating the environment and the mindset that allowed guys to to to take some control of their destiny, you know, and empowering people is an amazing thing.
00:22:08:08 - 00:22:17:07
John Kelly
You once you do that, you know, everything else seems to take care of itself. You know, our motto was swift, violent, decisive action.
00:22:17:22 - 00:22:18:15
Wayne Mulder
I love that.
00:22:18:15 - 00:22:41:24
John Kelly
Yeah, I've got it in my challenge. Coins behind me. I've got four challenge coins, racks in each one swift, violent, decisive action with a unit logo that I worked for at the time. And, you know, the command was ecstatic. Yeah. They were like, you know, our budget, whatever we wanted the.
00:22:43:00 - 00:22:43:20
Wayne Mulder
Priority and.
00:22:44:00 - 00:23:02:01
John Kelly
Whatever you need three one, you know, whatever you need. And we were, we made training fun and, you know, how do you make in-service training fun? Well, you go, what? Do what what do I like to do when I go to training? Right. We had some humor. You know, we didn't take ourselves too seriously. We were goal oriented.
00:23:02:01 - 00:23:15:00
John Kelly
So if we finished what we needed to do in 6 hours, then we didn't give you busy work like we were in kindergarten, right? If it took us 9 hours, then you stayed 9 hours. You know, we work to the the objectives.
00:23:15:12 - 00:23:32:16
Wayne Mulder
And I would think that there would be a lot of moving parts, just the basic FDLE standards, because that's where a lot of people screw up, too, is they just hit the FDLE standard, especially when shooting and those kind of things. And then you're in a real life incident and things go horribly wrong because you've never trained on it.
00:23:33:07 - 00:24:04:10
John Kelly
So our focus, Wayne, in everything that we did, was basically stress testing, everything, listen, training with the amount of see, this is the misnomer that somehow by you going to training, you become an expert at whatever it is that you're being trained on the number of repetitions that it takes for you to develop muscle memory and to be an expert at anything goes far beyond the realm of what we can provide for you.
00:24:04:10 - 00:24:36:15
John Kelly
At an in-service training class. Yep. What we did was we empowered guys to take ownership of their own, of their winning, of their own success. So if that meant, if we were doing if we were rolling and we were doing ground fighting, really what we were doing was showing you, one, the importance of in to your limitations, in the hopes that that would motivate you to do more outside of the the eight hour, ten hour block that we were giving you.
00:24:38:04 - 00:25:04:05
John Kelly
We developed we stole a lot from the special ops community. We would have hood drills. And so picture a room in our shoot house with pads lining the walls and floors set up like a living room. Okay. In the middle of the room, a hood comes down on a string and goes over your head. This music playing. So right now you can't you can't see, right?
00:25:04:06 - 00:25:37:16
John Kelly
You can't hear. We got music playing. It allowed volume. You've got your sim gun, your big taser, your fake pepper spray, your button hood comes off deal with the threat. Now the threat will be somebody coming across the room at you with a bat. The threat could be somebody pointing a gun at their own head. The threat could be somebody bumping you in the chest and and bringing their hands up, like to fight.
00:25:38:04 - 00:26:03:07
John Kelly
So we would throw these scenarios in quick succession right at the individual deputy. And so it was complete sensory overload. Hood comes off, we give you about a second to start assessing. Now, when you when that hook comes off, what do you need to be doing? You need to be scanning 360. You need to be moving. You need all these things.
00:26:03:07 - 00:26:28:11
John Kelly
We started to ingrain in that that OODA loop, right? Like how do I start figuring out what I need to do? And if you chose the right response to the threat that you were facing at on the back, good job. Hood goes back on your head and we set up another scenario and with very little downtime because it's the same guy.
00:26:28:19 - 00:26:45:00
John Kelly
I just pick up a different prop instead of a bat. Maybe now I got a gun to my own head and you know, we would have guys with a gun to my own head. Put the gun down, put the gun down. And then I go like this.
00:26:46:03 - 00:26:46:11
Wayne Mulder
Right.
00:26:46:20 - 00:27:11:06
John Kelly
In the eye. What did we learn here, man? That that that as much of a threat as you think I am to myself. I'm more of a threat to you. Yup. And holy shit. All everything was built on, like, learning real time. And then when you were done, you got to go up to the catwalk and you would watch everybody else in the class go through those scenarios.
00:27:12:00 - 00:27:18:01
Wayne Mulder
Wow. Yeah, which is powerful. I have that advantage as well. We have a shoe house now at our agency. Yeah.
00:27:18:01 - 00:27:40:08
John Kelly
So now you. You just learn, all right, man, I'm not going to do that again. All right? And we put you through three or four. I mean, and if it was fighting, if it was I can't tell you, my wife, I'd come home. I'd roll with, like 25 people that day and I'd listen. I'm not, you know, I wasn't young then and I'm certainly not young now.
00:27:40:09 - 00:28:03:04
John Kelly
At least I don't have the back of of a young person. And she was just like, Please tell me you've got an exit strategy here, because like, literally, she would have to lift me out of the chair once I got up. I was good right now. I could walk around like the Tin Man, like a you can, you know, I'm like but she's like, listen, I don't know how much longer you're going to be able to do this, so.
00:28:03:19 - 00:28:04:15
Wayne Mulder
It takes a toll.
00:28:04:23 - 00:28:09:05
John Kelly
Yeah. Fortunately, you know, there was an exit strategy and that brought me to motors.
00:28:09:21 - 00:28:10:06
Wayne Mulder
Okay.
00:28:10:17 - 00:28:43:08
John Kelly
Yeah, motors was I got I got a peek behind the curtain and see how some things were done, worked with the Secret Service extensively and met Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Mike Pence and got, you know, just a lot of interaction with our federal partners. And, you know, it's just one in motorcades, running escorts, dealing with our Metro Dade partners, our Palm Beach County partners.
00:28:43:08 - 00:28:52:13
John Kelly
And that was like the highlight at the, you know, to end your career doing that, you know, that was kind of cool. So and that's how I wrapped up 30 years.
00:28:52:13 - 00:28:57:00
Wayne Mulder
That's awesome. How many years were you in motors? Was that like a 4 to 5 year thing or that.
00:28:57:00 - 00:28:59:02
John Kelly
Was like, I think another like seven probably.
00:28:59:09 - 00:28:59:17
Wayne Mulder
Okay.
00:29:00:03 - 00:29:03:06
John Kelly
Yeah. Like another seven years. Yeah. No, it's.
00:29:03:13 - 00:29:21:04
Wayne Mulder
It's pretty neat the different things you can do in this career. I think for a lot of us it's amazing. Even when I look back like we talked about it, for me it's been 11 years, but just looking back where the different opportunities I've had and I love the opportunities that have taken me to working with some of our federal partners in some of the area jurisdictions.
00:29:21:04 - 00:29:23:12
Wayne Mulder
It's really eye opening. What you get to see.
00:29:24:05 - 00:29:49:20
John Kelly
There's really a lesson for all the good and the bad of the profession. I've always found that like right around the five year mark, man, I get the itch, you know, it's not the seven year itch again, it's a five year itch. And so you want to look to a profession that allows you to grow. And there are I don't I mean, I've done this solely for 30 years, so I honestly can't speak to what else is out there.
00:29:50:05 - 00:30:10:24
John Kelly
But every whenever you get the itch, you can figure out and do something else that's really cool. That's even that's even more bad ass than the thing that you were doing before. I mean, it's really unlimited. You know, if you like you like boats, you want to be a marine, you want to go in the Marine unit, want to be on SWAT team, you want to be on the Dove team, you want to fly helicopters.
00:30:10:24 - 00:30:31:20
John Kelly
You want to be a officer. You know, you want to you like working with kids. We got, you know, dirty schools. You you want to do this whatever it is you want to do. You're like drug enforcement. You like this, you like that. Whatever it is, you like working with robots and papier maché. I'm sure we we've got one of those units.
00:30:31:20 - 00:30:35:07
John Kelly
You can make stick figures or cartoons or something. I don't know.
00:30:35:14 - 00:30:36:07
Wayne Mulder
Probably.
00:30:36:15 - 00:30:45:09
John Kelly
Yeah, I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it. So, I mean, it's really it's quite a giving profession if you look at it through that through that lens.
00:30:46:06 - 00:31:06:14
Wayne Mulder
I couldn't agree with you more and I definitely not only are there are all these different opportunities, they're all like completely, completely different opportunities. So like in each position that I've been in, it's like, well, this is completely different than anything. In fact, sometimes going back and having to remember how to do something you did eight years ago, it's like now, how did I do this again?
00:31:06:14 - 00:31:08:02
Wayne Mulder
But exactly, that's part of it.
00:31:08:02 - 00:31:37:05
John Kelly
Yeah. And you know what? Honestly, I think that that's what allows you to stay in the game long term, is that listen, I mean, there are people that are perfectly okay with and happy with being a patrolman for their entire career. And that's that's great. I mean, that's but if if they want to challenge or do something outside of that realm, I mean, there's no other profession out there that will allow you to have that diversification of of experience.
00:31:37:08 - 00:31:48:21
John Kelly
Now, it does come at a price. You know, it's not free, but not free. And if you're not smart about it, it can take a toll on you. But I guess that's why you and I are here, right? So that's exactly.
00:31:49:02 - 00:32:05:21
Wayne Mulder
Why we're here in exactly the direction we're headed. Let me make one other quick pitstop on the way, though. I want to bring up something. When you talked about your time in training, there's something you touch on and will obviously be linked up and we're going to talk more about it. But you have a book, Surviving Self-inflicted Wounds A Deputy's Life of Redemption.
00:32:05:21 - 00:32:16:02
Wayne Mulder
But in that book, you talk about having a warrior mindset. Can we talk about that for a moment? Because I think we're in a time that this is getting completely lost and tragically so.
00:32:16:05 - 00:32:54:14
John Kelly
Right. So this is what happened way under Eric Holder's DOJ, Department of Justice. The the mantra was, we know our cops, but every time law enforcement got a military surplus vehicle for $500 in spending, instead of spending $500,000, any time an agency got a bear cat or a vehicle to allow rescue, you know, there was a segment of the population that was up in arms that we were militia terrorizing our law enforcement, which, by the way, is a paramilitary organization.
00:32:54:18 - 00:33:27:12
John Kelly
But we won't talk about that right now. And so this overly this overly concerned, supercharged environment and then add to that a couple of high profile incidents. Now, mind you, millions of interactions a day with nothing but positive outcomes. You have one high profile incident nationally every six months and the whole professions, shit, we're all racist, we're all warmongers, and we disrespect everyone we meet.
00:33:27:12 - 00:33:55:08
John Kelly
And what are they doing? Yep. So under Eric Holder's DOJ, there was a push and a successful push at that to remove the warrior culture or mindset from law enforcement and replace it with a guardian mindset. And everybody says, well, we are really guardians. And so and I don't shut people down when they say that. But but this is here in lies the problem.
00:33:55:08 - 00:34:29:13
John Kelly
There's a a misnomer about what a what it means to be a warrior. A warrior is empathetic, intelligent, caring, caring to a fault. Yeah, a warrior is a tactician is holds himself to a level of excellence that you will never be able to hold him to. Right. These are the tenets of being a warrior. It's not some mindless knuckle dragger that that looks forward to kicking somebody's teeth in.
00:34:30:00 - 00:34:59:00
John Kelly
Quite, quite frankly, it's the opposite. And so words matter. And if you don't know what you're defining, then that's a problem. So there's this big push for us to be less military, you know, aligned for us to be less intimidating and more welcoming for us. I mean, we can be a warrior and do all of that. Right? I'll submit to you that all the warrior needed was a little tweaking courage.
00:34:59:15 - 00:35:27:12
John Kelly
But we're in a situation now that we've pushed so hard from our elected officials and our command structure to not be a warrior, to be this guardian that we've forgotten what the mission is of this profession of ours. Our mission is to hold the line, to uphold law and order and protect people that can't protect themselves. A warrior does that.
00:35:28:08 - 00:35:51:24
John Kelly
And we want we've got a situation in our schools. We've got a situation in our streets. We've got a situation our neighborhoods where the criminal element is laughing at The Guardian because the wolf the wolf is the sheepdog. But if you've just recruited a bunch of poodles, the wolf is laughing.
00:35:52:11 - 00:35:52:19
Wayne Mulder
Right?
00:35:53:05 - 00:36:18:03
John Kelly
The sheepdog has a role. The sheepdog is there to protect the herd, to protect the flock. And you just can't become a sheep dog overnight. It's a culture that gets ingrained in you. And so what we've done is we want the warrior, but we don't want the baggage that comes with it. Well, I would argue that there is no baggage that comes with it.
00:36:18:03 - 00:36:48:12
John Kelly
If you train the warrior the way it's supposed to be done, that we're hoping and praying that the warrior will show up when we've done nothing to promote that culture and mindset. And so you've got a situation. I've always said it's so much easier. You want to talk about de-escalate right now, our command and our our our political geniuses want you to de-escalate before you even know what's going on.
00:36:48:17 - 00:36:53:13
John Kelly
They want you showing up in a de-escalated manner.
00:36:54:01 - 00:36:54:12
Wayne Mulder
Right?
00:36:56:06 - 00:37:28:01
John Kelly
I've always been up that of of the mindset that I treat every person that I don't know as a person that could potentially take my life right? Yep. And until that, that's proven. Otherwise, I'm going to conduct myself in a professional manner, but one that's mindful to the threat. And so once I determine that, oh, it's way I know I oh, I can dial it, it's so much easier to dial it back than it is to ramp it up.
00:37:28:08 - 00:37:29:12
Wayne Mulder
Yup. And safer.
00:37:29:21 - 00:37:49:08
John Kelly
It's much safer. It's safer for everybody involved. You know, when I got out of the car and I came up to the corner, I was ready to rock and roll, man. But you assess, you go through the order loop and you change gears in a matter of seconds, like, Oh, what's going on, fellas? Hey, I got a call.
00:37:49:08 - 00:38:19:19
John Kelly
Is everybody good or, you know? No F-you, man. Oh, well, fuck. All right, then. Let's dance, you know, I'm itching. Let's dance. It's not this. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Please. You know, how many videos do we got to see of cops begging people to stop shooting at them or to stop hurting them? Yeah, this is a culture issue, and it doesn't get you don't get warrior by adding water to the guardian.
00:38:19:19 - 00:38:42:00
John Kelly
Instant, instant warrior. I throw some water on the guardian. It'll become a warrior. The issues that I had as a leader, I would only why would I would rather have to rein somebody in a little bit and give them some parameters to work and then having to ramp them up, having to build them up. Right. And that's what we want.
00:38:42:03 - 00:39:13:12
John Kelly
We want guys to go to scenes that require a warrior and then somehow magically find the heart and the fortitude to do a warriors job. But that doesn't happen that way. And so one of the biggest two services our politicians and some of our upper echelon leaders have done that have actually bought into this nonsense. They're responsible for getting more guys hurt.
00:39:13:12 - 00:39:49:23
John Kelly
They're responsible for more civilians getting hurt because at the end of the day, the job demands you to be a warrior. It demands you to have command presence. It demands you to have empathy. To be fair, to be honest, to have integrity. It demands you to be excellent at your craft. Yeah. And when we stop placing those demands on our warriors and allow a substandard set of criteria to be introduced, then you get what you get.
00:39:49:23 - 00:40:26:10
John Kelly
You get what you expect in that regard. And that's why. Now, listen, let me say this before I end up getting a bunch of hate mail and people end up wanting to beat me up at Publix. There are a bunch of guys out there who haven't bought into the knights heads, who train hard, who who are constantly polishing their skill sets, who spend time on the range, and they spend time at a rolling on the mat and work in their stand up game in their B.J. And they are seekers of knowledge and they're constantly striving to be better, right?
00:40:27:14 - 00:40:59:05
John Kelly
Those are our warriors that are keeping this thing together. They're out there. Yep, they're out there. And if they weren't out there, it would be a complete breakdown and collapse of what we have right now. And but look around. They can't do it by themselves. We're losing the battle on this. And so it's going to take somebody waking up and going, we tried this, we tried the guardian thing and and there've been some unintended consequences, right?
00:40:59:05 - 00:41:28:04
John Kelly
We listen and it it goes like in line with, I know this is going to piss people what it means to be a man. I know we're not supposed to say that, but god damn it, you know, when when you have to have command presence, you've got to the person initially initially the person has to be afraid of of of consequences of their continued action in your presence.
00:41:28:20 - 00:41:38:07
John Kelly
They have to know where to ask. Weapons come in. They have to because the absence of that is anarchy. Yeah.
00:41:38:18 - 00:41:40:09
Wayne Mulder
So what we're seeing in the media.
00:41:40:13 - 00:42:19:22
John Kelly
We're seeing it, which I'm not. This is I don't have a crystal ball. It breaks my heart when I watch it unfold. And then you've got cops that that are not only second guessing their their internal belief system and their reaction appropriate reaction. To instance, I watched a video of I think it was a Secret Service agent. He ended up joking somebody that was jumping in front of a motorcade and there were a bunch of cops that turned their back on him while he was rolling around with this broad woman.
00:42:19:22 - 00:42:36:13
John Kelly
They turned their back. They were like, Well, if I don't see him fighting with this lady, I don't really have to help. This was a dynamic. Wow, this was two months ago. And I was just like, why is he the only one? And that you know, and this guy, you know, he was he or he had his hands full to begin with.
00:42:36:13 - 00:42:59:10
John Kelly
Then it's like his gun fell out of his holster. It was just a it was a shit show. Yeah. But at what point did we get in our career? We were we were more afraid of politicians than suspects. Yeah, that's what we got going on our way. We are. We are. Of course. You know what they've said. Listen, if you step out of line this much, we're taking your job.
00:43:00:15 - 00:43:21:18
John Kelly
We'll get we're going to make an example out of you. And so that hesitation, you're thinking about all the things that you should not be thinking about during a critical incident. Yeah. Do I go? Do I stay? Do I jump in the fight? What if I, you know, swift, violent, decisive action? I've got it on a challenge coin, man.
00:43:22:14 - 00:43:39:05
John Kelly
I would love to be able to give it out nowadays because. But I'm not seeing it. Yeah, I'm not seeing it. You know, there's a small segment of the law enforcement community that's still fighting the good fight that's doing their damnedest man to keep this thing together. They just need the support of everybody else.
00:43:39:23 - 00:43:57:24
Wayne Mulder
Yep. And it needs to be pushed. And I like how you make that dichotomy that we're not saying a warrior, because I think sometimes you get this like alpha male thinking when you have these conversations. And so people are like, Oh, like you said, the whole knuckle dragger thing. That's not what we're saying. It's more in line with the warrior poet.
00:43:57:24 - 00:44:20:13
Wayne Mulder
So if Scotland, who are just as vicious on the battlefield but have a heart and understand the empathetic side of what we do, and you absolutely have to have both. And we're seeing it. I like how you mentioned it because it's very true. We're seeing it is far as masculinity as well. So, in fact, I have a guy on the show it's going to be two weeks before this one releases.
00:44:20:13 - 00:44:40:17
Wayne Mulder
And we had exactly this conversation on how, you know, we pretty much are we we want the effects of having strong men or in this case, strong law enforcement officers, warriors without, like you said, the baggage or what it takes to develop that in somebody. And it's just crazy.
00:44:41:03 - 00:45:13:04
John Kelly
Yeah. And you know what? It'll come back. It's just going to take the right people. When I mean the right people, I mean the wrong people. It's just going to need a few more politicians becoming victimized. It's going to need a few more, you know, a few more black eyes, unfortunately for this profession and not that good. You know, we're going to have to fail a few more times before everybody realizes that this this trajectory that we've been on has had real consequences.
00:45:13:17 - 00:45:40:21
John Kelly
Yep. And that it's completely within our power to change the trajectory of this profession and know it's it's intelligent, based. It's not, you know, and it's just all the things, you know, who suffered. This is the thing that kills me the most. And then I'll shut up. You know who suffers the most with the with the absence of the warrior is the people in your under-privileged communities, you minorities who need.
00:45:40:23 - 00:45:57:06
John Kelly
Listen, when we talk about black on black crime, the biggest threat to a young black male growing up in Chicago, growing up in Boston, growing up in Fort Lauderdale, is not a white cop, right? It's another young black male.
00:45:57:21 - 00:45:58:22
Wayne Mulder
Sadly. That's true.
00:45:59:13 - 00:46:31:02
John Kelly
I'm not making this up. This is this is the. And guess who is keeping that that violent offender in check? The white cop was the guy that was patrolling your neighborhood. I remember back in the day, I had listen, it takes time to develop relationships, right? And when shitty things happen, everybody becomes suspect. I remember back during Rodney King, I was patrolling the northwest section of Fort Lauderdale and you got out of the car and said, Yeah, no, it didn't look great.
00:46:31:02 - 00:46:51:18
John Kelly
Yeah. You know, what do you want me to do? I'm here now. What can I do for you? Yeah. And so you can judge me on something that happened in L.A.. Or you can talk to me right now. We can try to work through this as man to man. And guess what? We did work to work through it man to man, right?
00:46:51:18 - 00:47:08:24
John Kelly
And they would thank the people in the communities that I served in the northwest section of Fort Lauderdale. And I spent the vast majority of my time there, hard working, loving people that just want to raise a family without fear of their kid getting killed by the kid down the street.
00:47:09:12 - 00:47:11:00
Wayne Mulder
Yep.
00:47:11:00 - 00:47:27:18
John Kelly
But see, that's the thing that gets that's the thing that gets completely dismissed in all of this. And, you know, they come up with some bullshit program. They to plant trees in the neighborhood. They're going to give them swales, you know, all this this nonsense. You know.
00:47:28:13 - 00:47:31:02
Wayne Mulder
I'll simultaneously defunding the police or something.
00:47:31:14 - 00:47:50:02
John Kelly
Like what we gave you, we gave you, we gave you. Swales We put yeah, we put grass in between the street and your house so you can park, you know, the cars over. It's just, it's just nonsense. Everybody knows what needs to be done, but very few people in the position of authority have the balls to do it right.
00:47:50:12 - 00:47:53:24
Wayne Mulder
Yeah, well, that's a whole nother conversation. We could go on forever on. Yeah.
00:47:53:24 - 00:47:55:21
John Kelly
So let me get me all jacked up.
00:47:56:20 - 00:48:15:09
Wayne Mulder
I'm with you, John. You were right on. And I love everything you're saying. In fact, that's why I wanted to bring that up. Because when I read that in your book and again, the name of your book, Surviving Self-inflicted Wounds A Deputy's Life of Redemption. And I'll have the links in the show notes. Let me switch gears, because something else you say that will kind of take us down the road I wanted to end up on.
00:48:16:11 - 00:48:22:01
Wayne Mulder
So you make an argument in your book that we should train less on cop stuff and more on the life stuff. What do you mean by that?
00:48:23:04 - 00:49:03:04
John Kelly
Oh, my God. So and I love speaking with somebody that's on the job because you can check me if I if I say something that's out of out of turn. I mean, who better to check me on it than you to? We do a ridiculous amount of training on things that we can do with our eyes closed because of there's some FDLE mandate that a box needs to be checked every so many years or you're stuck in this training we do this year in and year out, knowing that the number one killer of cops is suicide.
00:49:03:21 - 00:49:42:06
John Kelly
Yeah. So this is what got me in when I was in training. That kind of that epiphany where I had that aha moment, I said, and I didn't know that back then. It certainly there's been a shift in awareness over the last probably 5 to 10 years. Absolutely. You know that there are other things going on behind the scenes that we need to be more aware of and personal, professional, financial, physical, mental health, you know, all those things play into the role and so, you know, cop being a cop is really just about having some common sense, right?
00:49:42:06 - 00:49:58:16
John Kelly
I mean, we what's the what's the right thing to do? What's the fair thing to do? And nine times out of ten, it falls in line with some statute or law. Yep. Don't drive 100 miles an hour down the street, you know. Do I have to know that that's a statute? I can look that up in the book.
00:49:58:16 - 00:50:06:17
John Kelly
But when I see you doing 100 miles an hour, you know, down a side street, I know I probably shouldn't be doing that. And they go figure out what that problem is. Right.
00:50:06:19 - 00:50:08:11
Wayne Mulder
Doesn't take a rocket to write it.
00:50:08:19 - 00:50:40:13
John Kelly
We don't need statute books. You know, we don't need to know that stuff. We can look it up. It's a no brainer. But the things that historically that jam us up, the things that historically have catastrophic consequences for us is in not knowing a procedure or a policy. It's how we live our lives. It's our inability to establish a true, meaningful relationship with our significant other in our family.
00:50:40:20 - 00:51:09:03
John Kelly
It's our inability to be resilient at work and develop the skill sets that we need to keep getting up when we get knocked down. It's our to appreciate the complexities of our individual finances and to live within our means and to develop a budget so that we don't end up falling into that trap of depending on money that is fluctuating.
00:51:10:11 - 00:51:58:05
John Kelly
It's our inability to understand the importance of maintaining our physical health beyond the now that we need to be strong and we need to be healthy. But not just for now, but for tomorrow and for all the things that we want to do. And it's a complete disassociation in in our minds of our mental health and what we need to be doing proactively to address that, you know, the job builds in certain mechanisms to keep you going from call to call to call so you can do that to do a job, quite frankly, that is is is demanding and emotionally draining.
00:51:58:05 - 00:52:29:20
John Kelly
Is this one can be. But when we're done with that, there is no switch that we can flip over to start addressing and dealing with that things that are eroding our health, physical and mental health. And so we don't talk about see, my argument would be that we need to spend time training our people on the debrief. After the call, we've got the call down.
00:52:29:23 - 00:52:55:20
John Kelly
We know how to we know how to handle the call. What we don't know how to handle what happens after the call. Yeah. And what happens what often happens after the call starts a slide, a slow slide that, unless we can get ahead of, will likely turn into an avalanche, an avalanche of personal problems and things that will keep us really from realize in this life that we're we're entitled to.
00:52:55:20 - 00:53:31:14
John Kelly
We're entitled to be happy and healthy and mindful. And we, Wayne, not only do we not have any programs in place to teach these principles of self care, we don't talk about it. We pretend that it's not even an issue. And so, you know, there are some agencies that are progressive and that have realized from you know, from some conversations I've had that, you know, understand the importance of it.
00:53:31:14 - 00:53:59:22
John Kelly
But I would argue that it's still there. Programs are kind of in the infancy. And it's it's a trend. It's a trend in some ways. Yes. Like your fucking health and wellness. Somehow it's popular now, but it's not going to be popular a year from now. Like. So who makes that call? Who says that? Like, this is the thing, but it's only going to be really we only need to care about your mental health for the next funding cycle.
00:53:59:22 - 00:54:35:10
John Kelly
And then when the grants out and you know, well, then you know what? We'll figure something out, right? You know, which is a scary prospect. Well, that's where we're at with this, because it's not something that we've we've made a priority. Listen, we there is no obstacle. This is where I have hope. There is no obstacle that we you, me, our bosses, this agency, this country, that if identified and we truly were committed to solving it, it's done.
00:54:36:00 - 00:54:42:00
John Kelly
Yeah. There is no shortage of resources. What there is a shortage of is. Well.
00:54:43:06 - 00:54:43:15
Wayne Mulder
Yes.
00:54:44:10 - 00:55:08:23
John Kelly
And so you what you're doing is part of that will is part of that education is part of listen, I don't care how it gets done, man. I don't care if I have to shame people into getting help. I don't care if I have to shame bosses into providing services. At the end of the day, I made it to the end.
00:55:10:11 - 00:55:36:11
John Kelly
I could go out back in and jump in the pool. I don't care if I'm perfectly in a position to do that, but there's too much unfinished business, man. Too many people that we, you and me, care about are in the middle of this, and the prospects of them getting out aren't any better than they were when we first got in right.
00:55:36:11 - 00:55:57:18
John Kelly
We're not getting better at this now. We're not there to continue and we're not we're not getting better. Certainly not fast enough. Our things are I don't even want to know that we're better off. I think if you start looking at I think it's suicides this year were at 88 I think was the last number I saw.
00:55:57:21 - 00:56:01:13
Wayne Mulder
Yeah it's it's high again. I remember the exact number.
00:56:01:13 - 00:56:28:18
John Kelly
Where it happened. Yeah. I'm not a mathematician here, but we're about halfway mark of the year. Yeah. And so, but these are, these are, these are topics that there's no black and white. What's different for you? It's different for me. But I will tell you, you got me all jacked up about suicides. How the so we know that the number one cause of death for the for the first responder is suicide.
00:56:28:18 - 00:56:33:01
John Kelly
Yeah. For every bad guy that kills one of us, three of us take our own lives.
00:56:33:09 - 00:56:36:20
Wayne Mulder
As you say, there's a 3 to 1 ratio is what I see one ratio to sticks in your book.
00:56:37:02 - 00:56:57:20
John Kelly
And that's just I'm not talking, you know, somebody is going to point to COVID deaths and listen, stop, stop talking. Don't get me on that tangent, okay? It's not in the. I'm sorry for your loss. He was a good guy, and that's really sad. But he caught a fucking cold, all right? And he died from it. And it's sad and it's shitty.
00:56:57:20 - 00:57:19:17
John Kelly
But he didn't go down in a blaze of glory taking out the robbery suspect. Or, you know, this is we got different categories. Yeah, there's there's services in any less, but the means of which they passed is different. It is somebody that gets felonious assault that I hope our, our listeners can agree upon that.
00:57:19:22 - 00:57:32:13
Wayne Mulder
I think so. I mean, we did lose several we lost I lost several guys that I knew well. Friends to go. Yeah, but you are right that in traffic, I mean, they all are a little different than being involved in a shooting or felonious assault.
00:57:32:23 - 00:57:52:15
John Kelly
And that's and that's where I draw that. That's where I like to draw the distinction, because if that's the case, then anybody who dies that was ever employed should get fly over in the 21 gun salute. Yeah. Regardless of the way they died. And I don't think. I don't. That's almost like everybody gets a trophy thing, you know?
00:57:53:10 - 00:58:10:10
John Kelly
Yeah. I don't think we want to go that route. I think that I think that the guy that that whose life is taken from a bad guy in his attempt to thwart a crime, I think that ceremonially, at least that deserves something different than you catching something.
00:58:11:03 - 00:58:12:20
Wayne Mulder
Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with that.
00:58:13:03 - 00:58:14:06
John Kelly
That's my perspective.
00:58:14:06 - 00:58:37:11
Wayne Mulder
Yeah. And I think in some ways what we're doing, what you are doing and what I'm doing and many like us, is kind of taking that in an opposite thinking. So instead of focusing on the death, we're actually doing the opposite where we're trying to promote the type of lifestyle changes and so forth that help people live the type of life that they can live.
00:58:37:21 - 00:59:29:10
John Kelly
Absolutely. And Wayne, to that point, so we say you're more likely to kill yourself than to die at the hands of a suspect. Yeah, statistically, which is absolute insanity. So there was a woman doctor, Olivia Johnson. She's got she was a police officer, a research analyst. She's an extremely intelligent woman. Olivia Johnson, Blue Wall Institute. She's working in partnered with another company right now, I think law enforcement research, she's really super sharp and she came up with the ten fatal and they're ten different circumstances that have all surrounded the deaths the suicides of our first responders.
00:59:29:24 - 01:00:17:22
John Kelly
And it's financial issues, health issues, the break up of a relationship or divorce under investigation of all these this kind of money. And and so I really I started getting informed. I always for a long time, I didn't realize the impact our personal lives had in this role. Think about this. If the number one component of resiliency in this job is our families, that's our support network and we destroy that support network by the way we conduct ourselves.
01:00:17:22 - 01:00:54:22
John Kelly
Half of the suicides a year are the result of a breakup or a divorce. Right? This is all self-induced weight where the reasons why that situation gets created, right? Because we're not taking care of ourselves. We're not having discussions with our loved ones. We're not living within our means. We're so it's the cycle of self-destruction. And so when I come home from work and I don't discuss it when I mean discuss my day, I don't give details, right.
01:00:54:22 - 01:01:18:11
John Kelly
But when I just go, yeah, fine. And I lock myself away and I disassociate and I distance and I completely unplug. How long is the spouse supposed to accept that? Right? How long is somebody supposed to live like that? Right. And you go, she doesn't understand what she can understand because you don't talk to her. Right, right by about fucking bed.
01:01:18:11 - 01:01:43:10
John Kelly
She doesn't understand. Oh, well, okay, great. So you've had some heart to heart conversations about. No, we don't do that. So we we think we're protecting when we shield our, our, our family from what we do. And we don't need to delve into the specifics of that crazy call. But, you know, what we do need to communicate is, hey, you know what?
01:01:43:10 - 01:01:49:11
John Kelly
I had a really lousy day today, and I saw some things that I wish I didn't. I'm going to need an hour when I get home.
01:01:49:21 - 01:01:50:02
Wayne Mulder
Yeah.
01:01:50:15 - 01:02:10:18
John Kelly
I'm going to need to shower. I'm going to need to just be with my thoughts for a minute and then, you know, then then I can be dead. Is that is that cool? Right. And so but that's communicating. Exactly right. So I didn't I didn't give my wife or my daughter the nuts and bolts of what my trauma was.
01:02:10:18 - 01:02:13:12
John Kelly
I don't want to share. I don't want to spread trauma.
01:02:13:13 - 01:02:15:17
Wayne Mulder
Right. Create secondary or tertiary trauma.
01:02:15:17 - 01:03:11:01
John Kelly
Oh, but I can certainly let them know what's going on with me. Right. And so that starts the communication and that that strengthens. Now your spouse is your partner in this. Like eventually we get to a place where, you know, we're building a stronger connection just by having that that conversation without going into details. And that's stuff. You know, I spent a lot of time when I do my seminars in my talks talking about relationships and I say, you know, I don't have any formalized training in it, but I have, despite my best efforts to destroy my marriage, you know, my wife wouldn't let that happen.
01:03:11:07 - 01:03:35:21
John Kelly
So there are some real time lessons learned through some of the things that I did, my failures as a man, my failures as a husband and a father and a friend that I've learned from. And I'm blessed enough to be able to right wrongs that I've committed and teaching those life lessons. You know, that's the importance of this thing.
01:03:35:21 - 01:03:43:20
John Kelly
I think, you know, our survival is really more about everything outside of this profession than it is within it, right?
01:03:44:21 - 01:03:46:00
Wayne Mulder
Absolutely true.
01:03:46:15 - 01:04:10:20
John Kelly
And so but we don't do any training on the things outside this profession to keep us in it. And so it's like, listen, I want to talk about your relationship and, you know, are you still chasing it, man? Are you still leaving notes for your partner? Are you still leaving notes? Are you when was the last time you just some did something just completely random that brightened their day?
01:04:11:02 - 01:04:38:17
John Kelly
You know, when was the last time you just sent them a text or called them just to hear their voice? Yeah. All these things add value to our lives, but, you know, we get so busy and wrapped up in non sets that we forget to do the things that really matter. And then so once we start driving little wedges, unintentional link and once needs stop being met by our spouses, somebody steps in to fill those voids.
01:04:39:04 - 01:05:01:05
John Kelly
Yep. And that's the beginning of that's the beginning of the end of the relationship. And that's what I'm trying to prevent. I really at the end of the day, man, I'm blessed. I know I am. I've been given a second chance. And much like the the person who has died and come back, they appreciate that opportunity more than most.
01:05:01:14 - 01:05:24:13
John Kelly
Yeah. And so that's where I'm at with this weight and that program, you know, your personal, professional, financial, physical and mental health. There's nothing more important than you keeping balance between all those areas so you can listen to job as a means to an end. Yup. You know, these life lessons I learned, they're not strictly applicable to law enforcement.
01:05:24:13 - 01:05:47:21
John Kelly
They're your neighbor goes through the same line, sets just varying degrees. And so really, if we can live a better life, if we can look at ourselves in the mirror and go, you know what? I'm okay with the guy staring back at me, you know, you know, and not hate that person, right? Like I did for a really long time.
01:05:47:21 - 01:05:52:20
John Kelly
Then that's, you know, that's the foundation of building a life worth living.
01:05:54:14 - 01:06:13:14
Wayne Mulder
You're you are absolutely right. And that's one that I love. I love the honesty in your book, The Surviving Self-inflicted Wounds. I like how you go into each of these areas and you talk about your own struggles, but it doesn't end that way. You then go into these positive feedback as well as provide actionable steps, like even the notes and so forth and relationships.
01:06:13:14 - 01:06:19:21
Wayne Mulder
And it's so powerful. Well, John, we could go on forever, but for today, let me narrow it down to a grab.
01:06:20:01 - 01:06:20:05
John Kelly
A.
01:06:20:10 - 01:06:32:10
Wayne Mulder
Couple last thing. So very important. We got to get to what you're doing. So I mentioned the book Surviving Self-inflicted Wounds A Deputy's Life of Redemption. But you've also got a podcast. You've also got some coaching. So tell us a little bit about that.
01:06:32:20 - 01:06:59:01
John Kelly
So yeah, I, I have the book and I do some speaking. I speak to agencies all around the country. I've, I've really been blessed to be able to share this, this philosophy. And I don't get listen, Wayne, I'm this is not unique. I'm not you know, I don't I'm not some guru I didn't come up with. This is all this is just life man, it's it's a life that you can look.
01:06:59:01 - 01:07:23:20
John Kelly
It's in a million different people. And I said, the only thing that is a little bit different about me is that I'm really okay with letting you know how horrible I was. I'm not ashamed of it anymore. And and if I can if the story helps change, provide some direction and power, then it's a win. It's a complete win.
01:07:24:03 - 01:08:03:24
John Kelly
And so I do my speaking engagements. I've got the podcast and like we talked about, you know, it's really some of the things that have come from it of truly been humbling and amazing. Just this opportunity. Wayne Just to sit down and talk with you. It's just awesome, you know? And so I've got that platform. I try to put out something every week, speak to somebody that is in that, you know, the wellness, self-improvement and, and then, you know, my one on wife life coaching, you know, when I sit down with people, I had a client reach out from all around the country.
01:08:03:24 - 01:08:25:10
John Kelly
That this is another amazing thing with the technology is that we don't ever actually have to be in the same room with each other, that this is, you know, just amazing. And, you know, helping people work through different issues that they have. A lot of it is, oddly enough, interact actions. You know, how do I interact with my boss?
01:08:25:10 - 01:08:54:03
John Kelly
How do I interact with my subordinates? You know, how do how do I do these things, you know, these leadership type things, and how do I become better? And so, you know, for me, it's I don't want to say it's easy, but somebody who's been awesome their whole life, it's kind of hard for them to tell you how they should become better because they've always been awesome and, you know, it's like, Yeah, all right, I'm not that guy.
01:08:54:03 - 01:09:15:08
John Kelly
I have fallen more times than I care to remember. So this is what I did when I fell. What do you think? You know? So it's really about asking the right questions of people to kind of get them to come to a place where they see the value in owning it and in making decisions that are in their own best interest.
01:09:15:16 - 01:09:42:11
John Kelly
And and sometimes that just needs an objective person to hold them accountable for what they say they're going to do. And so I do a lot of that as well, a lot of coaching. I enjoy that because I like when somebody comes to me and they say, you know, I really I don't really feel confident about this or that or and then in a matter of a few sessions, you know, we've reframed some things and how they look at themselves.
01:09:43:05 - 01:09:57:21
John Kelly
And, you know, it's nice to see somebody, you know, stand back a little bit and put their shoulders back and speak about themselves in a positive way and not the self defeating type way. So right now, a bit of everything, brother.
01:09:58:07 - 01:10:15:03
Wayne Mulder
Yeah, it's so powerful, as many have said, but it's that whole finding your message and your mess, you know, it's that's where it's at. If everything was perfect, if it wasn't for, you know. So I've failed businesses and some of the other things I've had, I wouldn't have a story, but that's what that's what gives it to us.
01:10:15:18 - 01:10:25:10
Wayne Mulder
All right. So they can get more information on all of that. The coaching, the podcast and the book at Law Enforcement Life Coach.com, Law Enforcement Life Coach.com. Is that correct?
01:10:25:22 - 01:10:27:15
John Kelly
That is 100% correct.
01:10:27:21 - 01:10:45:10
Wayne Mulder
Let me ask you my final question that I ask every guest that comes on here. We've talked about a lot of different things, but I like to ask this one to kind of boil it down to the most important, if you would. So what is the one take away the one thing that law enforcement officers can do today that will make a difference in their personal life?
01:10:45:18 - 01:11:08:21
John Kelly
They've got to care like they've got to care. They've got to care about themselves, man. See, this is the thing. When we spend an entire shift caring about everybody else, that's what we do. And at the end of the day, we forget whether it's intentionally or not. We forget to care for the most important person in this whole damn thing, which is you.
01:11:09:15 - 01:11:27:00
John Kelly
You got to care about you more than you care about everybody else. And it's not selfish, it's self care. It's if I want to be the husband and dad that I want to be. I've got to be right. I got to be good. I got to be firing on all cylinders. I can't be fucked up. Excuse my language.
01:11:27:00 - 01:11:51:09
John Kelly
I can't be I my life can't be a mess if I'm going to be the best dad that I want to be. I can't be the best husband or friend or, partner or coworker if my life's in turmoil. So I need to take care of me. And that doesn't have to happen. That doesn't mean I go to, you know, I go on a sabbatical, you know, and I disappear off the face of the earth.
01:11:52:02 - 01:12:01:17
John Kelly
That could happen right now. Today. Yeah. That you can care for yourself and not at the expense of caring for others. But you need to make yourself a priority.
01:12:02:08 - 01:12:13:14
Wayne Mulder
That's great. That is absolutely wonderful advice. And I'm glad you touched on that, because that was one of my questions I had for it was the whole is it selfish, take care of yourself that we didn't have time to get to. So thank you. That was wonderful.
01:12:13:15 - 01:12:14:12
John Kelly
Oh, my pleasure.
01:12:14:12 - 01:12:24:17
Wayne Mulder
John, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. For listeners, it's LawEnforcementLifeCoach.com. John, I wish you the best of what you're doing. And thank you again for coming on.
01:12:25:02 - 01:12:27:12
John Kelly
It's been my pleasure, Wayne. Thanks for having me.
01:12:27:23 - 01:12:45:14
Wayne Mulder
Perfect. Thank you. And that does it for this week's The Interview Room. I hope you really enjoyed it. Another great guest will be with us again next week. We have a great lineup for you here over the next few weeks and I'm through the rest of the year, so you're definitely not going to want to miss a single episode.
01:12:46:02 - 01:13:04:09
Wayne Mulder
We also have Morning Roll Call, which typically comes out on Monday mornings. However, I may change my mind and who knows? They could come out different day of the week, but morning roll call, check that out as well. That's just me talking to you and it gives us a few minutes to go over something, anything from news or something actionable that matters, hopefully to you.
01:13:04:19 - 01:13:24:13
Wayne Mulder
One last favor, please, please, please. Whatever service you are looking at or whatever service you are watching this on, you're listening to this on, please leave us a rating and review five stars. That would be the appropriate number of stars if for some reason it's not five stars, in your opinion, or if it is, tell us why we would love to hear it.
01:13:24:13 - 01:13:38:09
Wayne Mulder
I would love to get your feedback. In fact, I'm going to start reading some of these reviews on the air. I've been looking at some of the ones on Apple Podcasts and thank you, thank you, thank you for the phenomenal reviews and thank you all for taking the time to listen to this. I hope you're really enjoying it.
01:13:38:15 - 01:13:53:21
Wayne Mulder
You all have a safe week out there and I will see you next week in the interview room. I will see you next week in Morning Roll Call. But in the meantime, I'll see you On The Blue Line.