.jpeg)
S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work
This channel confronts power, exposes institutional failure, and gives a platform to people willing to tell the truth when silence is easier and safer. We cover the stories the military, media, and influencers would rather bury, because reform does not happen without friction.
S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work
The Badge Has a Breaking Point: Chad Bruckner on Leadership, Trauma and Officer Wellness S.O.S. #276
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Let us know what you think of the show and what we can do better!
A single leadership decision can change the course of a career and sometimes a life. Chad Bruckner joins me to talk about what he’s learned across infantry combat missions in Iraq and 15 years in law enforcement, and why the “price of service” is often paid quietly after the call ends. We get honest about moral injury, shame, and the painful gap between how we train warriors and officers to perform under stress and how little we prepare them to come back, reconnect, and stay healthy.
We dig into toxic leadership, the trust gap inside agencies, and why officer wellness can’t be solved with a seminar, an app, or an annual training requirement. Chad breaks down what actually works: accountability at every level, leaders who model the standard, and a culture where hard conversations happen early. We also talk about fear-driven decision-making, endless meetings that replace real communication, and how “looking the part” can become a substitute for doing the work.
Then we move toward practical hope: building a tight circle of trusted people, using community and shared challenges as a healthier alternative to numbing, and returning to the basics of community policing where presence, respect, and relationships reduce crime and rebuild legitimacy. If you care about police leadership, law enforcement culture, first responder mental health, and what it takes to help people serve effectively and return home whole, this one is for you. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest takeaway you’re bringing into your own life.
Stories of Service presents guests’ stories and opinions in their own words, reflecting their personal experiences and perspectives. While shared respectfully and authentically, the podcast does not independently verify all statements. Views expressed are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the host, producers, government agencies, or podcast affiliates.
Visit my website: https://thehello.llc/THERESACARPENTER
Read my writings on my blog: https://www.theresatapestries.com/
Listen to other episodes on my podcast: https://storiesofservice.buzzsprout.com
Watch episodes of my podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheresaCarpenter76
Why Service Leaves A Mark
SPEAKER_03There are many parallels between the military and the police department. And I find that a lot of the people who have served in the military want to go on and serve their community in another capacity. Whether they want to become a fireman, whether they want to work in the hospital, whether they want to be a 911 dispatcher, you name it. We see a lot of our military members going into the first responder community. And my guest today is no different. And some of the things that he saw while serving in the military and saw at the police department were things that I talk about so much on the Stories of Service podcast. Not only accountability and leadership, but sort of the price of service and not only the price of service, but the price when the environments that people work in and try to do their job in day in, day in, day out aren't always the most healthy work environments. And to talk more about this, I've got Chad here on the line. I'll bring him in. Chad, how are you doing today?
SPEAKER_01Hey, Teresa, how are you doing? Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03Well, thank you so much for coming on the Stories of Service podcast, ordinary people who do extraordinary work, and to get us started, as we always do, an intro from my father, Charlie Pickard.
SPEAKER_00From the moment we're born and lock eyes with our parents, we are inspiring others. By showing up as a vessel of service, we not only help others, we help ourselves. Welcome to SOS Stories of Service. Hosted by Teresa Carpenter. Here from ordinary people from all walks of life who have transformed their communities by performing extraordinary work.
SPEAKER_03And police officers are trained to survive the worst day of someone else's life, but who prepares them for what happens when the call is over? Chad Bruckner has spent his adult life operating in high-stakes environments. He led infantry combat missions in Iraq and has served for 15 years in law enforcement. Today he serves as a police detective with the Lehigh University Police Department. And he's witnessed firsthand what happens when highly trained professionals are expected to absorb trauma, endure broken relationships, and continue performing as though nothing has impacted them. Today he's also a motivational speaker, the founder of Motivate Change, and the author of the Holy Trinity of Successful and Healthy Police Organizations. His mission challenges the idea that officer wellness can be solved with a seminar, an app, or an annual training requirement. True wellness begins with leadership, trust, and accountability. And it requires an organizational culture that begins, that values the human being behind the badge. And today we're going to be talking about all kinds of things, such as toxic leadership, the difference between checking a wellness box and building genuine support, why officers remain silent when they are struggling, how trust is built, how strong standards and officer wellness should never be treated as competing priorities, and what leaders must do to help our personnel serve effectively and return home whole. Welcome again, Chad.
SPEAKER_01Hi Teresa, thanks for having me. That's incredible intro. And your dad's intro is that was getting choked up watching it. What an awesome, awesome thing.
SPEAKER_03Well, my father was a broadcaster from 1960 to 1970 at WNCI Radio. And then he spent the rest of my childhood being a voiceover artist. So I would go with him to many advertising agencies and sit and hang out in the lobby, and the receptionists would have to entertain me. But during that time, I sometimes got into the recording studio and I got to see behind the scenes how he used his voice to influence and to tell stories. And it was a really instrumental part of my upbringing. And I believe that that has made a huge impact in the work I do today as a podcaster. So I appreciate that, Chad.
SPEAKER_01You're welcome. Sounds that way.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
From Philadelphia To The Infantry
SPEAKER_03So first off, as I always ask all my guests, especially those who have served, where were you born and raised and what inspired you to join the military to begin with?
SPEAKER_01Well, I was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was born in 1980. So I'm an 80s kid. And I grew up in a service-oriented family. So both my grandfather served, my father served, and graduating high school at 17. Didn't do really well in school, Teresa. Didn't get the greatest grade. So I know the feeling. So it was like coming from a service-oriented family, maybe not the most uh robust options available, like go ahead, full full speed in the infantry. And uh, so yeah, listed in the Army Infantry at 17. And wow, what a journey it's been.
SPEAKER_03So, what were some of the highlights of your army career? Like when you look back on your army career, what would you say are actually, and I'd love to know too, what are some of the lowlights?
SPEAKER_01Well, I'll start with the lowlight. One one story I've been telling lately as I go around, and it's it's not a negative, it's just to understand and put context to people like us and why we serve is I remember being in the Army infantry at uh Fort Benning, Georgia. I went in it in August 20th, 1998. And I remember marching around at 17 and drill sergeants having that cadus, what makes the grass grow? And we would all respond in Eudis and blood, blood, blood. And it was little stories like that that you have to build a fighting man or woman. You have to build them. There's there's a process to do it. So I have so much respect and uh appreciation for how we build fighting men and women. But we don't ever talk about how we deconstruct that mindset when they come back. I'm 17, we're all very young. That brain is still developing, and we're developing these procedures, these methods to shoot, move, communicate, and kill, capture the enemy, which we need to do to be successful. But we have to decon we have to deconstruct that. So I would say that's a low like that I wouldn't realize until 20 years later, coming back into civilian life and trying to figure out how do I fit into this world, how do I show up, how do I see the world the same as other people that I'm working with, because they don't see the world the same way I do. Um so those are things to work through. Uh, but the benefits so far outweighed. You never know truly what brothershi or sisterhood is until you until you put your hands in the life of somebody else. So I know you know that, and a lot of your followers have learned that from you, and you're you're putting this out there, but there really is something to be said about nothing else really matters. Doesn't matter the money, it doesn't matter what's going on back home when you're overseas, when you're overdoing missions. I had a 10-man infantry squad, it was just the 10 of us. You know, we're out there clearing buildings. It was it was us. And so that gave me a lot of appreciation for uh stop really running the mouth as much as showing up and how to use action and how to be intentional in the way we show up. So, you know, that's the military. You don't really get that in the other wall.
SPEAKER_03No, you really don't. And I mean, I always tell people, especially since I have some friends who are now in special forces, that I I didn't bear the brunt of of the violent conflict that a lot of them did, but I did serve in places where harms harm could have happened. And I saw the difference between peacetime operations and when we were in a combat zone and how things changed, how the team came together, how all the stupid BS paperwork and drama and petty politics, all that went out the window. And that was one of the one of the things that I loved about service was we realized that when we were, you know, shit hit the fan proverbially, we were a team. I mean, I've got Robert Sweetman, he's watching or was, and and I just did his Ryan Larkin invitational adventure race. And it was the same thing. I mean, we were all volunteers, we were all working really, really hard. And there were problems, there was, you know, conflict, but we found ways to just push through it because the mission needed to be accomplished. And I think that we're all searching for that and we all want that, and that's the best part of service.
SPEAKER_01It is, and and that's why so many of us bring those experiences to the private sector. You know, we're we're starving for those, that camaraderie. I'm starving to have a brother. You know, it's funny. Every unit I PCS from and went to another unit on active duty, guess what? I had a new best friend in that unit. It's amazing. Six months goes by, you're my best friend. You want to be my best friend? Sure, I'll be your best friend. But that's what it happens. And then you leave and you don't ever talk to him for a while because you just left to another unit. He PCS, went to another unit. And now six months later, my new unit, I have another best friend. So we want that. We're looking for that, you know, those relationships, those trusting people in our lives. So, in policing, especially, that's how I'm showing up. How do we how do we show up like that? You know, not we're not getting hit with IEDs or small arms attacks every day. So, how do you navigate a 24-7 operation while largely you're sitting around the water cooler telling stories, partaking in the gossip mill? Maybe the radio will go off, maybe the radio will go off for a traumatic hall we have to go to, but then we'll come back and kind of get back to how it was. So, you know, my lens is how do we show up and be really positive, push through the minutia, the the BS that comes for all of us in every walk of life to be to be purposeful, to be, to be there for others. In the military, you don't get to sit back and say, I'm not feeling it today, guys and girls. I'm just not gonna know there's a duty, there's a mission. There is and and policing, we sometimes we forget that we're serving human beings, we're serving a community, we're serving other
Training For War Then Coming Home
SPEAKER_01people. And and it's a noble profession. But these reminders, these kind of conversations are what have I experienced are uncomfortable for cops, but we got to just keep reminding ourselves it's not about us, it's about them.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. It is about the community. And I feel like in the military, when we're not at war and when we're at peacetime and we're in the rear, that's when all the problems happen. I mean, I can tell you, when I was on deployment and I was on USS Nimitz, I was a department head and public affairs officer. We just got the job done. We had all these exercises, we were dropping bombs on ISIS. I mean, it was just every day, just something, something. Weapon system videos at all the meetings I went to, ops meetings, and my PAR PA team was doing exercise malabar. We did just a bunch of different things with the strike group. And then we get home and we're back in the yard, the shipyard. And I can remember our XO, Dave Kurtz, he was like, we got to get these people, Teresa, involved in these nonprofits. We gotta find, we gotta find missions for them. And you know, and he was like determined to like get them out into the community and do community service because he saw that if they're just stuck in the shipyard with no job while their home now is transformed into a construction site, that they might not be feeling like they want to do a mission or they might not feel a sense of purpose. And I have to wonder, even with the George Washington string of suicides, that if that might have had something to do with it, because these were people that were probably obviously already in distress and had mental health problems, but then you exasperate those mental health problems when you have a climate where people don't feel seen, heard, and understood. And I know that that same kind of experience happened to you, right, Chad?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Going back a little bit to what you're saying is when we come out of the military, and there's all this stuff now about transition, it's phenomenal. There's all these nonprofits, all these out advocacy groups, outreach organizations. I mean, Sarah Carell, we both know, and just other people. Like what she does for people. It's like a mama, I call her my mama bear, but like I can talk to her twice a year because I'm busy and she's busy, but those two interactions are just so moving and engaging, yeah, powerful. And so I think I think coming back from the military, we got to take that idle hand thing that like that makes us so good at our job, it makes us can lock in. It's a lot of us have ADHD or some neurospectrum disorder.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and that's another thing that we never talk about, Chad. I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but I'm getting excited.
SPEAKER_01No, we get excited, we can we can go that way too if you want.
SPEAKER_03But oh my god, let's just go down that road. Many of us have cognitive defects, many of us have problems with our thinking and with our brain, and it might stem from childhood, it might stem from something we saw in combat, it might stem from dealing with a toxic work environment where we're always on guard and we're hyper-focused and we've got all this anxiety and angst. And the problem is we have nowhere to put it. And so what we do then is we numb. We either numb with people, with sex, let's say, relationships, we numb with alcohol, we numb with, you know, working out incessantly. I mean, whatever you want to do, we we numb with that instead of understanding that there are ways to get help. I mean, I recently got some amazing help with healing the hero. I want to give them a shout out, Dan Jarvis. He's the founder, and it changed my life. It took away my anxiety, and I'm sleeping again. I I brainwashed myself back into understanding my neurological issues that I've had all my life, and they're not great, and I still forget shit all the time, but I'm not ashamed of it.
SPEAKER_01That that shame part, I actually, so at chapter one of my book, I open up with it's called shame. I give all my book titles. I want to talk, keep talking about this. I give all my book title, uh, chapter titles in that book like one word answer specifically, because I feel like the power of words, like I can communicate to you in one word, I can look at you and say, fear. And you got to know what that means because I know what it means. I know you know what it means. We just have to be able to talk about it. That's the difference. Can we talk about it? So the shame for me, you know, leaving leaving the military, 17 to 25. I was in just uh to me, I had this great experience. I didn't know anything that happened in Iraq was negative. I was 25 years old. So even even the little things you see of maybe neglectful children, abused children, uh, food insecurity situations, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I didn't even think of that. I saw all that kind of stuff overseas too.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, yeah. And me being sensitive, I think, kind of growing up. You know, we all come into the world
Camaraderie Versus The Daily Grind
SPEAKER_01with some childhood experiences that give us the lens of which we see the world. It doesn't mean it's bad, it doesn't mean it's good. I've I've gotten away from saying that. It's just it's how we see the world, and if we're aware enough to understand that how I see it and Teresa, how you see it, might be different specifically because of what we saw as kids. Man, we can work through this because we could talk together and have those conversations. So I think a lot of it for the cop the soldiers coming back, the military personnel coming back, and finding that thing they can do that has that connection that lets their brain be who they want to be. But the world back home, the world back home doesn't have a lot of those opportunities. No pathway that said, Hey, Mr. Navy SEAL or Mrs. Uh, Miss Airman or Mr. Sailor or you know, Mr. Marine, come over here. We have a job just for you. Guess what? Come with me. We're gonna take you from this station to that station. And by the time you leave here today, you're gonna be making six figures. You can have health benefits and go home and tell your wife you had a good job today. That's not how it works. None of that. So this is the power of these stories and these these conversations, Theresa we can light a pathway up for other vets, for others first responders, people that are watching, sitting there going, Man, I felt that way, or I'm feeling that way right now. And we can sit here and say, I felt that two years ago. Here's how I got out of it. I'm not smart. Like, just this is what you got to do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that is a great segue into what I'm about to do in a week or so. And I'm only going as a volunteer because I didn't get through the qualifier, but I'm doing the New York City SEAL swim, which is a nonprofit organization. It's well, it benefits Beyond the Brotherhood, which is an organization that helps Navy SEALs who are getting out and transitioning to civilian world. But it's so much more than that. It's a patriotic event that honors Gold Star families, honors children from the Ronald McDonald House. It helps bring together men and women, first responders, everyone who wants to remember what we were founded upon, why we are free, and the values that make us who we are and what we stand for. And not only that, you know, through it, I have discovered a great love, which I already knew I did. I love the beach, but I didn't really understand like maybe I can actually become an open ocean swimmer. And if I can become an open ocean swimmer, then I've got an exercise regimen for the rest of my life, even if my joints fail because swimming is so therapeutic. And then how do we bring other people together to do these kinds of things because the ocean's really dangerous? So, how do we bring other people together to do these events? Whether, and it doesn't have to be swimming, it can be any kind of a physical activity, as what my friend Bill Brown calls adventure therapy. There can be just these things that we do together. And I feel like if everybody in every city was doing these things, instead of going to the bar, even though I love the VFW, I don't love the bar part of it. And, you know, if we could stop drinking alcohol and instead do physical activities together or go to retreats and do meditation, as Rob Sweetman always talks about, and breathing exercises and things like that, then I feel like we would be in such a better place. But unfortunately, we just get bogged down with so much of the minutia of the BS of the day-to-day, and we don't deeply connect with one another. That's another thing. I could go on and on about that. All right, seriously.
SPEAKER_01So let's talk about this. I know, I gave you a lot. Let's talk about not feeling seen. Okay. Let's talk about being ignored, rejected, denied, ridiculed, embarrassed, shamed. Let's talk about that for a second. I think we don't say it enough. Like, and Rob, Rob and I exchanged messages a couple years ago, and I can't wait for him to shake his hand, just seems like a great guy. And what he does, we don't talk enough that we are here to empower each other, lift each other up. How many of us as kids have been told you can't do that? You don't have enough money for that. Well, you're not smart enough to do that. That's for somebody else's family. Well, that that's not for us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's great, but that's that's cute. You want to try, right? Those phrasings and concepts destroy us. We don't even realize it. Then you go into the military and you're swimming. I haven't done this, obviously, but I can only imagine you're swimming with your buddies and your sisters across this in the open ocean for a mission, for a purpose higher than yourselves. And you get there and you put your arms around each other, you say, We just did that. That that what that does is that tells that little girl and boy inside of all of us is everything that everybody told us was wrong. And they can kiss my, they can kiss my butt respectfully and lovingly.
SPEAKER_03And Chad, I had a couple times during this process these past this past year, where I just like broke down in front of my husband and I and I and I did that. I just cried for like the person that I always said wasn't going to be able to do a sport and wasn't ever going to be able to compete in anything because I realized that those were just lies I told myself and and ways I held myself back. My mom and dad were not athletic, they never did team activities. They didn't really, I mean, they're not, they are who they are. And I'll I'll just put it that way. And they just weren't really a part of my my world and and they weren't involved very much. And so I I kind of just fended for myself. And I I just didn't get involved. I was in flag corps in high school for a couple of years, but that was about it. And I I don't have any regrets now. I I've processed it and I've moved forward, and I'm just so happy and grateful for the life that I'm gonna get to have now, especially as a retiree. But I that day was really significant because I just broke down and I cried. I think I was kind of crying for that little girl and grieving and saying, you know, I didn't have to be that way. Like I I could have done those things. And it was it was a really poignant moment between my husband and I.
SPEAKER_01That's really neat. You know, that those are childhood wounds you're trying to heal and solve. And uh, you know, those are the hardest ones to go after, too, Teresa.
SPEAKER_03The hardest ones. Oh, yeah. A lot of people don't do it. And uh, you know, and and I am grateful that, like I said, I have the friends that I do. I mean, I made two very, very close friends after my retirement, Bill Brown and Rob Sweetman. And they have been really instrumental in opening up a friend circle that I would have never had otherwise. And then lately in my local community, I've been getting to know Melinda Likey and her husband Eric, and then my VFW friends. Now I go to steak night at the VFW, and which is so bizarre, you know. Like I know.
SPEAKER_01Why is it bizarre though?
SPEAKER_03It's gonna be because the VFW has this like reputation of just being about the bars and the drinking, and and the people that I'm being, they're not about that at all. They're at the local level, they're not, they don't care about the national politics that are going on. They're just good, hardworking people that want to do good for the community. So it's just it when I first started going to the VFW, I remember my husband going, Teresa, this is not your demographic. Like these are older, older, you know, veterans and mostly men and and stuff. And but I don't know, service is service. And so service is service.
SPEAKER_01So let's talk
Top Down Culture And Bottom Up Influence
SPEAKER_01about that real quick. Bottom-up leadership. Because I had a conversation today at a guy with work about this. And I and I'm so I'm so like nuanced between both, because I think to make real organizational change, and I'm speaking more from the police side because that's what I've known for the last decade and a half. But to real make to make real organizational change, it has to come from the top. The chief executive of whoever that is, whether it's a chief CEO, the chief of police, if it's an acting chief, if the lieutenant acting, you know, chief's out on injury and the lieutenant's acting is whatever that is, that person has to set the culture from the top. It has to be that person, it cannot be anybody else. Now, what I've experienced and learned and researched is you have to also, we have to also have bottom-up leadership. If we have nobody from the bottom, regardless whether they agree with the chief or like the chief, that does not matter. This is where being a professional matters. If the person on the bottom who has influence, influence can make guys and girls around him do the things that need to get done to get a mission done, they have a duty and a responsibility to do that, regardless of how they feel about middle management at the top. And this is the rub of policing. I have seen too many good cops throw in the towel because they don't like their boss. Right. Well, excuse me, you know, I wish I could work in a world where just because I don't like somebody, I don't have to do my duty. But that doesn't work that way. And this is where the military lessons of thousands of years of tradition, I am beating my head against the wall, Teresa, trying to communicate the cops is there is a way to do it, and we're not doing it good. And we got to adapt some military techniques, not all of them, but some of them. And some of them are we have to be more accountable. We got to be honest. We got to lead by example. If we're going to give a delegation to clean a latrine as supervisor, we don't have to clean the toilet. Well, why can't we grab a brush and do the sinks? Absolutely. Why? What does the ego tell us that I can't clean the sink because I've done this and I've done that? I will clean that sink until the cows come home if it gets my guys and girls to do it also.
SPEAKER_03You lose me. Yeah, you lose me when you don't set the example. You lose me when you're off to the side doing your own thing that has absolutely nothing to do with the mission, and I don't see you involved in in some of it. I get that you're not why would I trust you?
SPEAKER_01Why would I trust you? And this is all about trust. I don't trust you. Right. You can talk all you want and gibber jab and play the politics game, but I don't trust you. And influence is trust. So my whole point of all this is we can have all the shiny badges, and I can we can have there's a new thing in policing, and and I'm probably gonna get jammed up for this, but it used to be colonel, it used to be eagles on the collars. I don't know if you've seen like uh lieutenant colonel in the army. That's what a chief of police used to have. Very rarely would you see a star. Now I see four stars on some cheeks, not three, not two, not one, four. Like they got promoted all the way to the highest level. Now they're waiting to be general of the police forces, I guess. And then some have one star, some have two. Is there a separation? And I'm I'm being I'm being tongue-in-cheek here for a purpose. When we care more about the way we look, we're never gonna be good about doing the job we're showing up to do. Totally at some point, we got to take the stars off the collar. I don't care if you wear gumballs up there. Get out and roll your sleeves up and show your men and women that you can do the exact same job that you're ordering them to do. And by the way, Teresa, we send these men and women out to hard calls, and then they come home and take those hard calls of their families. That's fine, that's the job. It needs to be done that way. But by God, we better give them all the time and energy to deal and heal with that. So their families aren't also taking hostages. A police chief with 30 officers isn't running 30 officers. If everyone's married with two kids, he's up over 150. That's who we supervise. That's who he's responsible for. Because every day a cop has a bad day, like any one of us, they come home and they dump that on their family. They do. And we have to get into officer wellness and individual accountability because that's important too. Because we can't just blame it on an organization. You have to be accountable to yourself.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And unfortunately, we've rewarded the wrong things. I mean, like you said, we've rewarded prestige and power aesthetics that everyone can see through. But unfortunately, they persist because the right people are being satisfied by something. Like they're getting, like the leadership is getting something out of that person,
Fear Driven Leadership And Empty Meetings
SPEAKER_03whether it be it alleviates them from having to deal with it because it's so stressful. And the other thing that we do, at least in the military, I don't know if it's like this in the police force, is that we have way too many damn meetings. We have replaced genuine human communication for these formalized PowerPoint destructive sessions that drown everyone out, they lock everyone out of the conversation, and they are a one-way banter between the briefer and this one person in a position of power. And we spend two or three hours a day, if you're a senior leader, locked into these pointless meetings that don't accomplish anything because they generally are just 60 PowerPoint slides that could have been a point-to-point conversation with just the group that needed to have that information. And I mean, that administrative minutia BS is what drives people away.
SPEAKER_01And I and I think too, on that is I've spoken to so many chiefs and leaders. There's such a especially in policing where you're in that fishbowl. You know, I look back in the in, especially in Iraq, I'll even say Fort Lewis when I was stationed at Fort Lewis. You know, we're we're in the field doing a 30-day field exercise. You come back and you're in garrison, you're shining your boots, hitting the range, you know, doing what garrison things do. It's a great, it's like that's like vacation when you're in the infantry, you're not in the field. I was going to over this and I just totally lost my train of things.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, I was talking about the fact that there's all these meetings and so I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01And we we spent all this time creating these operations. What happens to just getting and having conversations? And and I say this because I've heard from leaders, police leaders, say, Oh, there's so much liability involved with that. No, you can't do that. There's liability. The liability comes from you doing exactly the opposite of what you should be doing. There's no liability to rolling up your sleeves and asking somebody to go have a cup of coffee to ask them, hey, how are you feeling? There's no liability there. What are you gonna get sued for? You care? You might be the first person ever gets sued that you cared for somebody. Where the where the insecurity lies for a lot of leaders is they know they don't really care. So they're in these, they're in these roles for the title, for the salary. They're not they're not idiots. They got there for a reason, but they know they don't really care. So if I don't really care, and now the right thing to do is probably have a really tough conversation, but I don't really care. And if I do that, that's either going to be uncomfortable for me or it's gonna be liability for the organization. It's just easier not to do it. And I I get back to fear. I think most leaders are operating from a place of fear. Fear of messing up, fear of being judged, fear of being ridiculed, fear of getting fired, fear of losing money, fear of their spouse not respecting them the same way, fear of losing their respect inside the agency. So all that fear, all it really does is it it eliminates all the opportunities to be great and to be excellent. All it does is create mediocrity and averageness. And that's our policing profession in America. And this is gonna be so hard for some to hear. We are just a mediocre industry. And until we're saying, ready to say, I want to be excellent again, like it used to be, like it used to be, then we can be excellent again. But it's gonna take all the chiefs that go to all these big fancy conferences to stop pointing the fingers and start pointing back in. Say, you know what? I think I have a recruitment problem because of me. I I don't think we're doing this right. I think we have, I think, guys and girls, we have a retention crisis. We always have 10% coming and going. I think, God, I don't think that's a money thing. I think that's a culture thing. I think if we spent more time with the officers and rewarded them more, we probably could take that 10% down to 5%. Yeah, by the way, I think you're right on that. So there's there's a lot of things out there we know what to do. It just takes the will. And I I do get frustrated and share this because I've applied to be a chief of police multiple times, and I can't even get an interview with these kind of thoughts and philosophies. And it it really speaks to the fact that I think we don't know what we're looking for. We want something that's safe, that's not loud and different. We want something that can be pushed around and manipulated and controlled. We do, yeah, and when you don't have that, that's scary, right? That's a wild card. No, it's not a wild card, it's somebody being excellent at what they do, and to be excellent, it's going to look different. It's not going to be the same as you're used to because you're used to mundane, you're used to average. So, of course, this is going to be scary. It's going to be different because we're going all the way, baby. And when you go all the way, you're going to, it's going to look different. We're going to have some failure, we're going to have some conflict, but we're going to get to a place of greatness. That's what we need, that mindset.
Using Your Voice Without Losing Yourself
SPEAKER_03We do. And Chad, I just started an Instagram campaign that's very controversial where I'm calling out the social media stars who are on active duty and are parading around in their military uniform as an extension of their personal brand for personal gain or for financial gain. And this has been going on ever since the dawn of the internet. And the Department of War refuses to put out policy about it and clamp down on it and explain the cost of uniform and professionalism in uniform.
SPEAKER_01So it happens to same and same and police work, Teresa. Same and police work. The vendor, the vendors and the politicians, everybody's looking for the next career, everybody's looking for the next deal. If I go and make this amazing, you know, post about this particular vendor that's in the media right now, law enforcement media, about digital surveillance. If I go and make a post supporting this and do it often, I could get a job with them when I retire. It's an insane, it's an insane self-serving endeavor that we all do. We all do it. I'm not going to say I don't, but we just have to be aware and say, look, is this meeting the moment? Is this about me or is this about somebody else? And if we could just be honest, say it's about me, the next question is, should I be doing this? We're probably going to say, eh, probably not a good idea. We could talk ourselves into those things.
SPEAKER_03And then, and you know, I I've thought about it as I'm going down this road with this campaign that someone's going to like go digging and do some like archival post of me in a uniform doing a dance or something like that. And I'm like, if they do, you know what? I'm going to own it. I'm just going to look at that post and I'm going to point to it and I'm going to say, yep, that was me four years ago playing around on social media. Probably not the most professional look I could have done. I know better now. And that's what I'm calling it out now. And making posts and points about what we really ought to be doing. And I and I found a guy today that I really felt, and he's a prior podcast guest, I've had him on twice. And he's really telling the Navy story and he's using the uniform, but he's doing it in a way that the uniform is not a prop. You can tell. And it just warms my heart. And so I thought, you know what? There was a guy that I found on on the internet. He's anonymous right now. I hope he he one day comes out. And I hope I someday have some other people that are doing this with me. But you know what? Like you said, Chad, I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid for people to come after me. They come after me, they come after me. If I have to play lawfare, I play lawfare. But at the same time, I want to be a leader in my community. And sometimes to be a leader, you've got to be able to speak up.
SPEAKER_01Can we talk about that? Because I think there are so many people that will watch this or just sit on the internet, because I'm in this, I'm the same way, I'm sure you are, that you want to do more. I want to speak up more. I want to advocate more. And I do sometimes. I'll get out LinkedIn a little bit and I'll throw a little frustrated post, but like, you know, passive aggressive.
SPEAKER_02Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_01So I think there are so many people that want to do the right thing, but they know if they do, there's a risk to that. Oh, yeah. Maybe we could maybe we could talk just a couple minutes about, you know, I don't view myself as an expert. I just say I try to put light onto into the world. I I try to create conversation with what I believe to be truthful facts, and that's not always going to be met with people that like you and they will hate you or resent you just because you think differently than them. And like, what are you gonna do? You know, you just gotta accept that.
SPEAKER_03You you do. And I try to do it in a way that's not attacking them, it's attacking their behavior, it's attacking what they're doing. Like if they're disparaging the uniform, or if it's obvious that the uniform is only there as a prop, I think we need to talk about the fact that it's abusing something that is so sacred. I mean, when we all put on, whether it's a police uniform or we put on a military uniform, we are not representing, I'm not representing Teresa Carpenter anymore. I don't care if it's my personal social media. It the fact that I'm wearing that uniform, it means something. It means something. I don't care if I worked at Walmart and I had a Walmart vest on, but the Walmart vest doesn't compare to what the military and law enforcement stands for. And so, yeah, I get really passionate about it. And, you know, I'd been wanting to say something for a long time. And then I had former Navy SEAL Bill Brown on my podcast, and we had a conversation about this very subject, advocacy and speaking up and using your voice. And I thought to myself, well, Teresa, you have been wanting to say something about this for a long time. You have written papers about it, about the fact that the military has no social media policy that is does anything or holds standards or holds anyone accountable. I mean, it's but it's basically a checklist or a handbook of do's and don'ts, and then they call that social media policy. That's not social media policy. And I thought to myself, well, I'm just gonna have to show the world what this really looks like. And lo and behold, and I and I know I'm gonna probably say the name of his Instagram page wrong. So I want to get it right. He called it disinformation earlier, disownership and extreme disownership. So then I found this person who's right now anonymous, IG handle, extreme disownership. I believe it goes extreme and then underscore disownership. And I was like, oh my God, he's he's nailing it. He's he's crushing it. And he only had like a hundred followers. So I was like, collab on everything. So that's what we've been doing for like the last five days. Now I might, you know, this is taking up a lot of my time. So I probably will have to stop doing it at some point.
SPEAKER_01But um we go to that rabbit hole every now and then.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but it but it also makes me feel like at least I'm doing my part to like show what professionalism should look like. And I think that's what we all should be doing in our respective communities, not just online, but in person and in our families. And to kind of go back to your story and what happened with you. Was your experience with your leadership really what propelled you to create your your coaching program and to go down what the road that you did?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. I mean, everything in my life
A Demotion That Broke His Identity
SPEAKER_01changed. You know, I write about in the book, obviously, it's like the subject of the book. It I should say it's like it's it starts the story in act one, so I can talk about what I want to talk about about leadership and culture and wellness throughout the book. But you know, when I experienced some conflict with leadership, I should preface this and say eight years in the military. At this point, I had 11 years as a police officer, so 21 years. Is that 21 years? Yeah, and never had a any sort of disciplinary issues. So yeah, I don't know what that's like to get, and I'm not I'm not a perfect person. I made sure I I am Mr. Bonehead, like I make so many just dumb boneheaded mistakes, and hopefully, in the time when it matters, I show up and I can execute. But I've never been any counseling statements, I've never been any sort of cart court-martial proceedings. Like, I don't know it. I just put my head down, I work, I do that. So, and as a cop, I did the same thing. I make tons of mistakes, don't get me wrong. So man, this is this is something I don't talk about anymore. I kind of moved beyond it, but I'll talk about it. I I make an arrest for a double drive-by shooting that we're I've been working on for months, and this is June of 2019, and I walk in the next day catching up on work, and I'm doing my reports at my desk. And the lieutenant, who is my field training officer, had a great relationship with, I still do, knocked on my door and said, Hey Brook, Chief wants to see you. I said, Chief wants to see me. Okay. Now, this this chief was my former boss, he just got chief as my former first line supervisor, so we had an in-depth relationship. And yeah, I walked out of his office thinking that I'm gonna get an attaboy, you know, just rested these people the night before, and it was a very unemotional conversation. I've been a detective for seven years that hey, we're gonna send you back to patrol. And I remember saying, I remember being so caught off guard, because again, I'm thinking we get an attaboy that I remember, I remember this feeling because I was embarrassed. I had a single tear rolling down my cheek. Just I mean, the emotional wave in like seconds, I thought I'm getting an attaboy to double knock on the door, walk in blindsided, yeah. Within 15 seconds, I'm told I'm going back to patrol, which I love being the detective. It was like, that's it's like saying you can't be a sailor anymore. Well, you're just telling me now, and right now I have to figure out what I'm gonna do next. They was like, whoa. So I walk out there totally confused. What's going on? Now I find out later, and I believed in that moment it was retribution for calling out a promotional process that wasn't what I believed, and what was shown to be, I think, a fair process. Sure. By administrated by somebody who has no ethical backbone, or was that person? I say that with complete confidence uh because this person is still on the job at another agency doing the same things he's doing there. So that shame I felt walking down the hallway. I remember walking down the hallway, and I remember thinking to myself that my buddies and detectives are gonna say, Hey, what chief one? Which is a standard question. And my response should have been he wanted to say good job for the shooting. But really, what I had to say was, I don't know, I'm going back to patrol. And it's a demotion. We could say any which way you want, it is a demotion. I was demoted when you get detective, and and this has been argued about kind of in my circles behind the scenes. When you get detective, because it's a lateral promotion, you don't get any extra money, but they give you a new badge, they bring you into a ceremony, a ceremony where chief of police stands there, he gives you this badge, people clap, right? Yeah, you are been promoted to detective. Congratulations for your hard work and your diligence and your attention to detail. We think this is you have heard this. So we can't take that. We can't say, Hey, can I see your detective badge and then throw me a patrolman badge again 13 years later and just say, Oh, what? What? I need your back on patrol. It doesn't work that way. It was personal, everybody knew it, he knows it. And I know he probably lays in his bed looking up and thinking about the kind of man he wants to be, because when you make decisions like that that affect a human being, other human beings, that has the worst effect on people that you can imagine. That incident, and it shouldn't have happened this way, but that contemplated me wanting to end my life, which is a crazy thing that I let a job-related incident do that, but it did.
SPEAKER_03Well, it was your identity, it's your identity, Chad.
SPEAKER_01It was my identity, 100%. I remember thinking, I had so many good relationships around the county, and I remember thinking, how am I gonna what am I gonna say to all these detectives? Because we work a lot with other, you know, the county I worked in, we had 40 or 50 some agencies, so you get to know each other really well. How am I what am I gonna tell them? Right, they're gonna say, Chad, what happened? Like, dude, we come to you, we ask you to lead our cases to help us put stuff together. Why are you back on patrol? I don't have an answer for that, and that is the moral injury, that is the shame for soldiers, sailors, first responders, anybody, Marines, anybody watching that says that is the shame is not knowing how to explain something, is not under being able to put your finger to understand. What I didn't know in the moment, and what I wish somebody would have told me is hey, buddy, it's okay. You're caught up in a political situation right now, right? You're caught up in this in a situation that person does not care about you, they care about themselves, they're out for their best interest. Right to take a breath, it's gonna be okay, but this is gonna be for the next whatever amount, this is gonna be a challenge for you. I didn't have that, so the only hope I could feel was to end my life. That was the only thing I could feel was to drive my car off the road, have this thing barrel down, blow up. He, you know, he would have to read about this in the news. My wife, I remember thinking this is how dysfunctional suicide is. And I have never told a soulless story, and I can't believe I'm gonna say, but here you go. When I was driving down the highway thinking about driving my car off a road, the one thing that I remember clearly is Kristen, my wife that Kristen, my wife, would have to tell my chief personally what happened. Now that wouldn't happen that way because that's not how it works. He would find out through somebody else. My wife would be grieving, but in my broken brain, that's what I wanted. That's what I wanted. I wanted that feel that feeling gave me good. It made me feel good in the moment, and it made me give me hope that at least that can be the last moment of my life. That'll be the last part of my wife's life. Is my wife went up to him and said something to him that Chad killed himself. Like the description.
SPEAKER_03You wanted you wanted some retribution, you wanted some kind of some kind of someone to say that's exactly what Brandon Caserta did. I don't know if you know about that story with the Brandon Act, but I don't he he tragically took his life by walking into a propeller in front of his shipmates, apologizing for what he was about to do because he'd been mercilessly bullied in his work center. And he did it to send a message. If you go on the brand, I'm sorry to bring this up, but if you go on the Brandon Act, go to the Brandon Act, look it up, and you'll read, which I did a few days ago, all the letters that he wrote. He he did it to send a message, and he knew that his parents would get a huge amount of life insurance money. And he wanted his parents to carry his legacy on. I get chills thinking about it. It's just awful. And to try to do something to eliminate workplace bullying in the Navy. And to this day, I mean, his Brandon Act still isn't strengthened, and civil service members still don't, I don't think, feel they can confidentially seek help without retribution. And his father is still left grieving. I had his father on my show for a live broadcast, and it was it was painful. I mean, I'm not, I like I said, I do these shows live. I'm not the best editor. You know, I was just watching a friend of mine do another podcast, and it was so much more cleaner than than these live shows that I do here. But I I want to give you guys what exactly what you tell me, Chad. And it's not gonna be pretty and it's sometimes gonna be raw, but it's the truth. And we need to be talking about this. We need to talk about the damage that these people do, and we need to talk about the fact that they need to be exposed because what they're going to do, Chad, is they're not going to just do it to you. They're gonna go on and they're gonna continue to abuse people because nobody sees through them. And I see through them. That that's that's also the problem with being an empath. I see through people's nefariousness, especially if they're women. Sometimes men, I'm a little bit more, I'm not as I don't see it as quickly. Sometimes I do with men, but with women. Oh man, I can smell it a mile away. And why do you think you can't?
SPEAKER_01Why do you think with women you can smell it that far away?
SPEAKER_03Because of
Childhood Trauma And The Abuse Cycle
SPEAKER_03my mother. My mother was abusive towards me. And so she played mind games. She played power games with me. I was always made to feel like I was not as important to my father as her. She put herself in front of my father and she made it so that my dad, who was the only nice parent, would not do things for me or would not show up for me. And she treated her children, both of me and my brother, like an inconvenience. My entire childhood. I stayed in a fight with her. And it was an unresolved fight to this day. She still doesn't care. She pretends to care. Her subconscious doesn't let her acknowledge what happened because she thinks that she cares. And so it comes out in a very fake and glossy way that isn't real because subconsciously she has never dealt with the fact that she herself was damaged and traumatized. And so she went on to traumatize other people. I know that's a lot, and that's really deep.
SPEAKER_01It's a cycle of violence. So how how how do we help those people? And I know we can only do so much. It's an individual. How do we help those people see? One, you the hurt you've caused, and two, you're not a bad person. It's okay.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01You can be forgiven. You can heal. How do we help them see that? I don't know, you can.
SPEAKER_03Because it's in their subconscious. That's the problem. They don't even realize they're doing it. They don't realize they're abusing people. They think they're being kind and benevolent. They don't realize that they're being fake. They don't realize that they're abusing people. That's why exposure is the only thing you can do. It reminds me of Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. If you ever watched that trial, that trial was very, very transformative for me. I was stuck in the jock during the war in Ukraine at UConn, and they put me on a 12-hour shift doing absolutely nothing. And so I turned the TV on by my computer and the Johnny Depp trial was on. So I watched every single blow-by-blow moment of that civil, you know, lawsuit taking place in Virginia. And I saw a female abuser. I mean, that's what she was. She was the abuser, she was the aggressor, and she managed to get so far with it because she played the victim advocate card. She was a domestic violence survivor, in her own words, and she caused a lot of damage because nobody could see through her. But that trial exposed her because she had a female litigator, which I think was very smart, and who just blow by blow deconstructed her arguments and sent her off into oblivion. I think she lives in like Spain now. She doesn't act anymore. And I mean, I'm not saying that's gonna happen to every person you expose, but I just don't think there's any other way to do it other than to expose them in a public way.
SPEAKER_01Let me ask you something. Do you think that there has to be a reckoning for that for for there to be healing and forgiveness?
SPEAKER_03Yes. Oh no, no, no, no, no. I'll never have a reckoning. I'll never have closure chad with my mother. She will never reckon.
SPEAKER_01But do you believe, but do you believe that person need that person needs to have a reckoning for you to have the closure that you need to have?
SPEAKER_03No, no. Okay. I I've healed and moved forward, and I have a very hands-off relationship with my mother these days. As you can tell, I'm not even getting emotional talking about it anymore. I used to not be able to talk like this. I'd get triggered every time I would bring up a conversation about her. Now I just I have pity for her. And she's a sad, lonely woman who has no friends. But I I there's nothing I can do for her. And I know she doesn't genuinely care. And so I I've made my peace with that. But I don't need, I don't need that closure. I have I have new friends now that fill that gap. I have an amazing, loving husband. I have, you know, a great life. And I think that's what you have to do in that situation. And I don't think that a person who's carrying trauma in their subconscious and is damaging people is going to change by you even exposing them. I mean, I think that you just expose them to protect your fellow brother and sisters from the damage and the harm that person's causing. I'm I just I've never seen a psychopath or a person who's a narcissist. I mean, I hate to use those words because they really don't mean anything, but I've I don't know. I mean, Chad, that's a great question. What do you think? I'll turn it back to you.
SPEAKER_01I I I think I I would have said yes. I would have said yes. I don't know that we live in a world where that's just realistic, you know, that that people hurt people. And it's up to the people that if you're on the hurting side of things, you get hurt, you just have to learn why it happened, accept it, learn the lessons, and move on. I get back to a place where I think about these people are in an excruciating amount of pain.
SPEAKER_02Oh, they are.
SPEAKER_01I I think and I'm gonna share this, and it's probably not the most appropriate, but I'll share it because that's who I am. So my my former chief, who is the subject of my book, the yeah, the subject of the book, the at least the first act, and it teaches me lessons that I can share with others through those lessons. We would go out to lunch, and he would tell me his dad is a multimillionaire, business owner, and his dad never told him he loved him, never told him he's proud of him, or he had never had those feelings. So now imagine you have those as a man where you're deeply insecure about who you are, because you don't know who you are, because you don't have older male figures in your life reminding you and encouraging you you are. Now you're leading other men, alpha men, men doing highly dynamic jobs. Do you think that person would be good for those highly dynamic men or would be obstacles for those highly dynamic men? No, an obstacle, right? An obstacle, right?
SPEAKER_03They're gonna be very damaging and harmful to them.
SPEAKER_01100% because they never healed their own baggage, they're still in the middle. They they are the main character of their own trauma. They don't know how to make you the main character because it's all their world and we're just we're just living in it. So that is what I didn't know then that I know now. So now when I show up in systems, organizations, I collaborate on a project like you, I look for the broken boys, not to run from them. I don't run from anybody, but I just need to know who the broken boys are, and I will not give you anything more than you give me. That's what I've learned because before I would be so trusted, I would give it to you. I'd give it to you, and it's up to you to maintain that level of trust or slowly decline over time. What a crazy actually way to approach the world. How about I show up and you have zero trust with me, not in a cynical way, but you have to earn it. And by the way, you could earn 100% in like a week or two just by constant, consistent actions, and then you can lose it again. But that I think is a healthier way to showing up building relationships is not walking in on day one, like, hey, you want to be best friends? Right, right. It's not a good recipe for building relationships.
Vulnerability That Builds Real Trust
SPEAKER_03No, you got to build trust slowly, and people have to see you in different circumstances, especially under stress, and you know, to see how you really behave. I mean, my buddy Rob Sweetman again, bringing him up, he was on the call earlier, and he got to see another little side of Teresa that wasn't like the greatest side during the Ryan Larkin race. I mean, when I he didn't actually see me cry, but his buddy Crystal did, who I love and adore. And it was a really vulnerable moment for me. And it was about putting up a fucking tent, you know. I mean, it was all about something so stupid, but because I just felt like it was something that I should know how to do and that I should be able to do well. And, you know, I I I tend to have some cognitive uh challenges in learning new things. And sometimes people have to repeat themselves over and over and over again sometimes. And, you know, I had kind of an insecurity about that. And I knew, I mean, I do it in front of my husband all the time, but I knew that these other new strangers were gonna see that side to me. And but to Rob's credit, he's just such a gracious, wonderful leader that he doesn't judge people about that kind of stuff and doesn't care. And I was just so grateful to be around somebody like that and to be in an environment where I felt like I could be, you know, be vulnerable and be safe. And that's why I'm his director of volunteers for next year, too.
SPEAKER_01So you're when you're when you're honest with somebody and you're able to be vulnerable and that stays the way it's supposed to stay, or you're met with the same, they give you the same reverence that you disclose this hard piece of information. And that's met with that. To me, there's that's like that's a real one. That's the person you put in your life. You know, maybe they don't have the time to be in your inner circle. You don't have the time, but like that's somebody you keep on your speed dial of like, hey, I appreciate that. So, you know, kudos to Rob.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, that's when you like know you have your people, and I feel the same way about Bill Brown. I mean, he's the same thing, like, no judgment, no nothing. I could hang out with him and and be myself around him. There's a few other people that I can think of. Um, my friend, my new friend Linda, who's who's here in Ocean Springs, but then there's my best girlfriends growing up, you know, Mary McNeil, my friend Sandy. Um, she's my best friend from high school. And then there's my friend Sandy. I guess there's more than I think. There's a Sandy Duchat.
SPEAKER_02See, that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_03See, yeah, yeah. I just talked to her last night and she's my Navy friend. She I met her when she was in E5, I was in O3, and we've been friends ever since. So yeah, there are some, you know, one of the things that you really have to do is you have to find those trusted agents that you can, you know, really bear yourself your soul to. And once you have that, that's why I think like the stuff with my mom isn't like as as powerful anymore. And I have a sister, oh, by the way, I'm adopted. And I have a birth, two birth sisters and one birth brother from the same mother. And I'm in touch with the birth sister, as Katie, uh, one of them, a lot. In fact, I just talked to her three days ago, and we're so different politically. Oh my God, like night and day. Like she's so far to the left, and you know, she's a social worker and she's an artist, and she's amazing and crazy. But we just had like the best conversation the other day. And yeah, Kathy Remington's on the call and she's like, and now you're new SEAL friends, and she's right. We even have a group chat with all the female SEAL swimmers, and there's like six, I think, six people on it, and we're constantly going back and forth. So, yeah, I mean, I I think that I'm in a community of people around me right now where I feel welcome and supported, and I think that makes all the difference.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're welcomed in, and that's all we want. We just want to be invited. We we we we all LinkedIn's a great example of that where you know we're waiting, we see a job get posted, and like, why not just hit a comment on the hey, I would like that job. But no, we don't not all of us, some of us don't do that. We wait, we kind of hit the DM, and we're all just trying to be secretive sometimes because we all like to go on. Well, I said we don't want to be accepted, we all want to be invited. Hey, Teresa, hey Chad, would you like to come on join this with me? I think you'd be great at this, and we would love to have you. Well, thanks for asking. Let me think about that. Like, we all want that. We can act like we don't, but we all want it, and that's where the LinkedIn game is sometimes you have to kind of discipline yourself to realize it's not real life, it's social media.
SPEAKER_03Well, I have to remind my friends and myself all the time that it's not emojis and likes and links on text messages. Like, I love all that stuff, don't get me wrong. And I realize we're all like really busy, but like every now and again, it's really nice when someone takes the time to either call you or say something insightful or give you advice on something that you're struggling with when you when you call them and you ask for advice. I mean, those are the kinds of things, or when someone asks you for advice and comes to you, because then you're like, oh wow, this person like trusts me with their story and will and we'll and and really really is showing me a vulnerable side. Well, I'm gonna reciprocate in return. That's another thing, too. Oh my god, I could go on for hours about this one. This and I I'm sorry, Chad, I'm just I'm just vibing with you, but I would I had a feeling we would, but I hate it when somebody expects me to be vulnerable with them and wants me to give my vulnerability away and then gives me nothing back in return. And and I'm like, you're not safe. And so, you know, I just that's another thing that you learn.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna push back one second on that.
SPEAKER_03Okay, please do.
SPEAKER_01What if they need they don't know how to say it, but they need you to model it for them or show them, like they need they want to do what you're doing, but they don't know, and they're embarrassed or they're ashamed, and they're like, But I see Teresa, she's on the podcast, she speaks so good, she's you know, like she's doing more stuff every day. Like, I want that. Like, I feel like I have things I want to say, and like you and that. So I feel like people are looking for us to also help them create pathways, not to be they might not be the best teammate in return, but it's like they're looking for us to give them that breadcrumb that then they can do their what they want to do. And and it's like you don't you're not guaranteed anything in return, you just and that's where the LinkedIn thing sometimes I think gets a little funny. Where you know, it's it doesn't have to be a competition, you know. Like I we're all trying to share resources, share connections, share events or or share opportunities that could benefit. And it it just gets to be sometimes like this competition, but it doesn't have to be that way. You know, we're all we all have such a unique contribution. I can't imagine trying to be Teresa Carpenter. I can't imagine it. That's not who I am, you know. So, like, why would I want to compete with you? I can't compete with you. You're you I'm me.
SPEAKER_03So um No, I I I agree. I I think that it's just a matter of, yeah, figuring out who your tribe is and investing in those people appropriately. And then when you know that you're might be surrounded by somebody who doesn't seem as trustworthy, you just you have to be very cautious and you have to also just be careful to guard your heart and to push, you know, push away or or push back a little and back away. And and you can still have a wonderful relationship with them and you can still be cordial, but you just have to know what who to trust and who not to.
Policing As Relationship Building
SPEAKER_03But I think that what you've done and some of the suggestions, and we'll kind of, because I know we're kind of going towards the end of the call and we've kind of gone in a lot of directions, but I definitely feel like your idea at the end of the book about community policing, like volunteer organizations and those ability of us working in the community to lessen some of the calls that are the low-level calls, I found that to be just one of the most brilliant ideas. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and then some of the other ideas that you had towards the back of the book on ways to improve the policing organizations.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we are considering our title of our profession is law enforcement, which always makes me laugh because how many if you asked any cop in a 12-hour day to give me a percentage of how you know, 10%, 20%, 50%, 100% did you enforce the law on this 12-hour shift? You will probably generally have anywhere from one to 30%. I enforce the law. Well, hold on, that's your job. You're a law enforcement officer. No, you're not. And I push back on this tremendously. You're a policeman or a policewoman. That's who you are. That's what you do. That's all you need to be. You don't need to be a sworn, college-educated, certified, you know, White House vetted, congressional medal of honor, eligible. You don't need any of that. You just have to show up with a heart that says, Hey, you're gonna pay me for 12 hours to be on this street or this neighborhood, and I have to report back to you things that are bad. Okay, I will do that. Law enforcement. What do I do with the other part of my time? I don't know, go build relationships, help the community. Oh, cool, I can do that. That's the component we're missing right now. Too many cops sit in their cars when there's not law enforcement functions to be done. Well, I see that small part of our job. So they sit in the media and they sit on the road. We've done it, I do it.
SPEAKER_03I saw a pickleball. I saw it like at the back of my pickleball parking lot. There's a cop that my husband and I would just joke around. We'd be like, Oh, there's the cop again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, we all do it, we all do it. So I only say it to say is it's okay. We don't have to be a law enforcement officer, we can be policemen or police women, and to be a policewoman or police man, it just requires you to get in that vehicle with the lights on top that they gave you and issued you and to drive through the neighborhoods. And all you got to do is wave, wave, mix in a couple foot patrols to your neighborhoods. Go when the kids are playing wiffle ball, go take 10 minutes and just go watch them play wiffle ball. You don't have to say anything, you don't have to say a word to anybody. Then get back in your car and drive. By the way, at some point in that 12-hour shift, you may get an arrest. You'll have to do that, you'll be expected to be highly professional and executing that. But then that will end, and you'll have to go back to being a policeman or policewoman. So I'm being a little funny, but that it is something to say is we have to do a better job of filling our time to do the things that really matter, to build those relationships in the community. And I speak from experience as somebody that in the height of it, when I was undercover, you know, wearing a big beard with ripped jeans, I'm making 150 felony rests a year in clubs or bars buying drugs or in the community. Those are important parts of that job. We need that, those are the special forces element of what we do, but that's a small part of it. Not everyone's a special forces soldier, right? So we just need policemen and police women to get out there and do their job, go to the kids' events.
SPEAKER_03That's my husband talking about the cop.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we need it. We need a bed, we need a bed because the truth of it is people commit less crimes when they know they're cops, when they have relations with their community. So if we want to get to a place of lower crime, you know how we do it? We get out and we know people, we meet people. If you have an area that's dangerous, why would you not be getting on a foot patrol? I would always do that and go walk through the dangerous pole. The good part of sounds great. What do they need me to walk around for? I'm gonna walk on the dangerous part. So I want them to see me, who I am. Here I am, I'm trying to trust you.
SPEAKER_03And trust you, Chad, because you know what? Oh my god, I have a great story about this, and my husband's on the call, so I he'll have to say it. So we were living in Norfolk, and where we live in Norfolk is is very gang related, like prostitutes on our street, people shooting up guns in the air, selling pit bull puppies across the street. I mean, it was just very, very bad, nefarious things. People would get drunk and scream at each other, all these things. And my husband was the handyman that everyone loved because he was always outside working on something. And they always had shit, stuff that they needed fixed or things that they needed. And my husband was never intimidated. Now we did carry, I mean, or he did, but that never really came up or was a problem. And we never walked our dog in our neighborhood. We would always go across the street to East Lake and walk our dog over there on East Bay, I think it is. But in Ocean View, where we live, it we would just kind of be there and be present. And my husband's presence, I think, calmed people. It soothed these guys, like these like gangbanger, like really like quote unquote tough guys, which really probably aren't tough at all. They they had a trust in him. It was really interesting. And I think it goes to what you're saying, Chad. He was just present. He would listen to it.
SPEAKER_01They respect, they respected him. That's what it was. There was a respect. I guarantee your husband, they they felt a respect. And when you respect people, we don't have to agree, we don't have to see it eye to eye, we don't have to hang out, but there's this respect. And too many police officers. I'm glad you shared that by your husband. You know, we got to get back to that respect. Like I am, and Sir Robert Peel actually it's kind of what I wanted to talk about. He is the father and father of American policing, but his whole shtick back he passed away in 1850, I think, was he was in England, he formed the first Metropolitan Police Department. Was the police are made of the people, and the people are the police. Like we're not separate, we're together, man. Yeah, like like I can call you by your first like this whole rank and title structure, like we have in the military. Like, why do we need to be like, you know, sergeant major and and police officer and detective? I'm in my community. Why can't you just call me Chad and I'll call you Mike or Dan? You know what I'm saying? Like it's gotten so militarized. You know, we expect citizens to use our rank, they don't even know what a rank structure is. It's just it's gotten nuts. So getting back to just the human, human stuff, the eye contact, the smiles. I got you. And if I don't know, I'm gonna get you the answer. I'll email you. Totally true. And if I say I'm gonna email you, I better email you because you'll not trust me if I don't email you. So simple, simple thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I agree. I agree.
Gratitude For First Responders
SPEAKER_03Well, well, Chad, I totally enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for seeking me out. It's an honor to talk to you. And whenever I get like people like yourself who take the time to write me and tell me about your work, I know it takes me several months sometimes to get back to people and kind of get to a place where I know that I have the time to invest in their book and actually read the whole book, but I do and I take notes and I and I get a kind of an idea in my head of how I want to frame the conversation and what what I think we should talk about. But before I go, is there anything else that you'd like to tell our audience or anything else you wanted to touch upon that we didn't cover down on?
SPEAKER_01No, not really. I mean, we I mean, I I say no, but yeah, I could do this for four hours, but I appreciate the opportunity. When I message you, it was, you know, I'm always trying to figure out like how can I find somebody to collaborate with and ask them, hey, would you mind having me on the podcast? We could talk about this great work. And that that always is met with a little bit of care. Like you responded and say, Hey, absolutely, thanks for reaching out to me. So that's the power. And as a podcaster myself, not the consistency that you're at, but people do that to me. And I try to also meet them and say, look, I'm really busy, or but I would love to hear what you're working on. So I just want to say thank you for that. And and to any police officer watching a first responder, I just want to leave with a positive note to remind you all that you're doing great work. Selfless work, caring work, thankless work. I know so many first responders that are going home with infidelity issues, alcohol and substance abuse issues, financial issues, wellness issues, family, just general family issues, kid, kid issues with their children, and yet they show up every day to do a work for others. So that duty part that we're so wired with that you and I get from the military, they have the same thing, but they're not in a foreign country, they're in our communities working and serving, getting deli meat at the same grocery store after working a long shift. So, like that is really important stuff. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you to all of them. And I think we should all just take time and throughout our lives and realize our people in our communities right now are brothers and sisters that are doing a lot of work, and nobody's really saying thank you. Nobody said, Hey man, hey girl, appreciate it. You know, nobody, nobody's really doing that.
SPEAKER_03Nobody is, and and they deserve all the thanks that they can get. We just did a breakfast with the first responders through the chamber, and it was it was really meaningful to meet some of the people there. So I I hear what you're saying, and thank you so much, Chad. For those of you who haven't seen it, this is the book, The Holy Trinity of Successful and Healthy Police Organizations. I did hold it up like three times, so please take a look at it. It's a great book. And yeah, thanks so much, everyone, for coming on for uh joining us on the live call. Please make sure to tell your friends about the Story as a Service podcast. I'm probably just gonna close on here. I don't know if I want to go. Well, I'll go full screen and I'll meet you backstage to say goodbye. But thank you so much, Chad. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Teresa. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_03All right, guys, that is a wrap. I'm actually using my iPad because I'm on a trip in Dallas uh seeing my friend Carly give up her Miss USA icon crown. So that is a very exciting event. So I'm in this little motel six here, because you guys know I love saving money. But anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of your Thursday. And I'll be back at it next week. And Kathy Remington, I see you're also on the call. So thank you so much for can't for showing up and being here on the live stream. And as I always say, to close out these calls, please take care of yourselves, please take care of each other, and enjoy the rest of your day. Bye bye now.