From Hostage Negotiator To Author- Glenn Topping

 Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the Enduring the Badge Podcast.  I'm host Jerry Dean Lund and I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode so please hit that subscribe button and my phone's out, please do me a favor and give us a review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts.  It says, hey this podcast has a great message and we should send it out to more people.  So please take that 30 seconds to a minute to do that review and just maybe by doing that it will push this up into someone's podcast feed that really needs this message.  

Everyone I'm super excited to announce that I've teamed up with an incredible 
person and that person is Dr. Tia White.  She is a public safety, wellness, and empowerment specialist.  Together we have combined our knowledge and expertise to create a five-day training course.  Now about training course you can attend different days without training course whichever one's fits you but day one would be peer support and how to structure that and get your team up and running and maybe some of the legalities about that.  Days two, three, and four are going to be about advanced wellness and sleep and finances and family dynamics and diet and nutrition and retirement and mindfulness and meditation and how to be that complete first responder but we did not want to leave out the significant other in your life and that is going to be on day five.  Feel free to bring that significant other with you and we are going to do a training that's going to empower the both of you to have a better relationship, a successful relationship, and one that is going to stand the test of time as a first responder.  For additional information please go to the Instagram page called Complete First Responder for more details.  

My very special guest today is Glenn Topping.  Glenn served in the military.  He served in law enforcement and he's an author.  We're going to focus on Glenn's law enforcement career about how he was a hostage and negotiator on a SWAT team.  What that really looks like to be one and how he saved many lives just through his skills of negotiation and nonforce.  We're also going to talk about how Glenn has lost a partner in the line of duty and how that affected him and his department.  Now let's jump right into this episode with my very special guest.  

How you doing Glenn?  

Good.  How are you today?  

I'm doing great.  Thank you.  Glenn, can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? 

sure I'm retired Sergeant from the sheriff's office down here in South Florida after  25 years.  I'm an ex Army Military Police Sergeant with Station in Germany for a few years.  I'm trying to tell that.  I was a bodyguard in the musical entertainment field and a variety of other things.  Now I'm working as a driving school instructor and a private investigator.  

Yeah, that's a little bit of a change of pace for you.  

It's very different.  

What made you decide to do those two things after having such a different career?  

Well, most of that was really done before policing.  And lately, I've actually left 13 or so years of working as a driving school instructor  and the driving test administrator.  And I'm going to retire it all.  So I got my P.I. license and just started doing that.  

That's very good.  Great.  Glenn, tell us a little bit about that.  You're early on in your career.  Were you your bodyguard first or in the military first?  

I was actually in the military first.  I was in the early 70s.  I was kind of dating myself here.  

Yeah.  

I decided to join the army in the early 70s when it's in the military police corps.  Make sergeant, station in Germany for about four years.  And I got out of that.  Then I went into a, I got a work in a sub-floor in a rock and roll club down here.  I went turned out to be a very famous rock and roll club at the time of the early 80s.  And through that job, we started doing a lot of bodyguard work for the rock stores.  It was when it came into, into town for their concerts.  And then did that for several years.  And then went into police in order to that.  

Yeah.  So out of the military, you'd gain some skills there and then use those skills as a bodyguard?  

Yes.  Came in very handy.  

Yeah.  Yeah.  I bet anything cool happened while you're being a bodyguard for some of those rock stars.  

That nothing really major, the typical, got to be around a lot of cool came use back then.  It was like, you know, I really want to see it or know about it, but unfortunately, you  will see it and you do know about it.  Nothing ever crazy happened.  Nobody ever tried to attack anybody while we were with them right from like that.  They were certainly well protected.  

That's that's good.  I mean, glad you didn't have to use your skills there.  But yeah, I could imagine there's probably a lot of drug use going on in that  time period of rock and roll.  

Oh, yeah, quite a bit.  

And then you decided to become a police officer.  What made you do that?  

Well, growing up in New York, I always wanted to be a cop.  I would see these guys in the neighborhood always fought with them and growing up watching  all the cop shows on TV from the 60s and the 70s.  And I go and look like a pretty cool job.  It was a little exciting.  Of course, it's not like that.  I'm real like, not to be.  But eventually later on in the in the years, I started with the a small department  that called the city of Danya.  I started up with them as a reserve officer.  I was there for about six months until I got hooked up full time.  Be careful time to talk to them at that city.  And then about four years later, they merged with the sheriff's office and became a contract  city.  And 25 years later, it's over.  It's over.  

Well, there's a lot happened in that 25 years.  I'm going to go back to something.  You're you're living in New York and you're a small kid and you're talking with a police  officers, right?  And I'm like a more routine basis just hanging out with them.  They're just making contact with you.  

Yeah, but wasn't really hanging out with them.  First say, we go down to the local park and they'd be like sitting in a patrol car  near the park and they woke up to the, hey, guys, how you doing?  What's going on today in the city?  And yeah, nothing kid.  Nothing going on my kid.  It's quite a bit of a kid.  I just thought that's good to know.  So I see the same guys, but there was no, there were areas.  There would be so often.  And it was just kind of nice.  It was nice.  But they were like, almost felt like they'd get away from the kid to bothering me.  

Yeah.  We got some great discussions going on in this car.  Move along.  So just dive down into your law enforcement career.  You did some kind of unique things I think in the law enforcement community.  

Yes.  

Yeah.  So you worked on, did you did some SWAT stuff at one point?  

Yeah, I was in a, I was a hostage negotiator on SWAT for 13 years.  Went through there.  And if you process them in the training and then got to be on the team.  And eventually, I built myself up to being almost like the lead negotiator on the team.  And I went on mostly all the calls at the time.  And I was exciting.  It was fun.  Got to use your skills.  It was mostly all verbal.  Had most of the time we had very good saves sometimes they didn't have any saves.  But it was 13 years of that went like pretty quick.  

Yeah, what kind of special training did you have to go to to be a negotiator?  

Well, for us having interview with the SWAT community.  And the head of the negotiating team.  Then he had to go see a psychiatrist and take a bunch of psych tests.  The, you know, there was like three or four tests of maybe like see like 3000 questions.  Yeah.  

Yeah.  Yeah.  

Then you had to do like a little puzzle of this, this wouldn't block puzzle.  You were trying to put it together.  Yeah.  It was, it did, it did.  It did.  It did.  It was just going to put it together.  It didn't do.  It's no big deal.  It's fun to see you can do it.  And then you had to go to school.  You had to go through some psychology classes.  And then it to that.  You went out with the, the lead negotiator and just kind of was a.  Oh, standby and one kind of attitude.  And then it finally goes.  Okay, now it's your turn to go and you're.  You're the lead negotiator now.  You deal with it.  And then you're the lead negotiator now.  

Those verbal skills that you talk about like what.  What did you do to make a connection?  Because you have to make a connection really fast with someone in those type of situations.   What were can some of your kind of go to conversations.  

Well, the first thing we try to do some background on the person or the people in the house,  but where we were dealing with that to time.  Just so you know who they are.  Maybe you get a name.  Get a little background on them.  Why is your each twice.  You should do what he's doing.  And then just basically talk to him like a human being.  And that is a cop just like when I was a, you know,  a Bob, you know, why you why you out here today.  What's going on in your life.  I had the same thing happen to me.  And I got out of it.  You know, every situation was totally different.  

Yeah.  Yeah.  

You know, the don't upper rapport.  And sometimes you couldn't build up a rapport.  Didn't want to hear about it.  They just wanted to do what they wanted to do and move on.  

Yeah.  Yeah.  And so we just got the same thing.  And we did a lot of that stuff.  I know the, the, the rapport really fast is huge in those,  in those situations and to get them resolved.  I mean, did you have some really long negotiations that had happened?  

Yeah, there was several where a time we,  I would want to talk into an empty house for three hours trying to get somebody.  In some contact with somebody inside.  After a while, we didn't hear from anybody.  is detention. 

Yeah. 

If that did work, I would throw rocks on the roof for the house and  run the world down. But think that these people walking on his roof. And if that didn't  work after a couple hours, then the sweat diced decided to go and make an entry just to find out  there was nobody there. 

Got some bad intel there then. 

Yeah. Other times when I was dealing with  people, it took two, three, four, five hours sometimes, even longer, to get them to the point where  they would walk out, or like throw some body. 

Yeah. I mean, that's a lot's a long time to try to  like talk someone out of something that you are someone that you don't know. 

It's very long.  And hours seems like eight hours. But yeah, you have to for guys working the case. So if you  if you're a while, if you're getting maybe getting a little stale, you're part of it could take  over with the help of the psychologists on scene. And they would point just a different direction to try  and maybe that'll work. 

Yeah. Did you find having that resource of a psychologist on scene  helpful? 

Most of the time, yes, sometimes no. But most of the time, yes. 

Yeah. Some of them probably  didn't really know police work back then and probably a lot about mental, was it your people  that you're dealing with have mental illnesses or were they just upset people? 

They were a  combination of everybody. Guys that were set up with life, combination of mental illness,  mental problems. They were the family of the white for boyfriend of girlfriend with  chief mom. They had an ambulance. They were got fired from the job for no reason.  Had a guy then was going to jump off an overpass onto the highway because his family did  just wish I had to be birthday. Oh, yeah. No, every second was that simple. So when I got to  the scene, I go listen, if I wish I had to be birthday, we'd become off that ledge. Okay.  All right. And then happy birthday. I'm sorry your family. We should have be birthday. And then  you came down. And we'll sometimes do it that easy. 

Wow. That's kind of powerful though that to  know to like to figure out what that person's issue is and then be able to resolve it like that  just saying wishing them a happy birthday like you said, talking to them like a human, right? 

Right.  Other times than with any opposite, then I want to hear about it. They're wanting to hear you,  then I want to hear about anybody. And then see, have to go to the next step.  

Yeah. Did you often like find that maybe like you couldn't connect with somebody, but your partner  could. 

Yeah. The times it's a system. I'm not getting anywhere with this guy. Maybe you want to take  over. And then he would go on a different track with the guy and there we go. Why like talking to  you, not that other guy. 

Right. That just happens in normal life. Right. That's just the normal thing that  happens. 

Yeah. So sometimes it's mostly time to work that okay. 

Yeah. That's good. What was it? Did you find that very rewarding that you know to be able to in those situations without having to use force?  

I thought the most rewarding thing to me in all my years of law for it was to save a life.  And we did that many, many times. Only two times that I can recall that we was somebody during negotiations. Otherwise, it was they would come out or they would have to be gone. People back through it and get them out before they did the harm to themselves or somebody else.  

Yeah. I would find that very rewarding. Be able to talk some amount out of,  either taking their own lives or having to escalate the situation where this was to domestic intern and resolve the situation. 

Yep. 

I want to talk to you about you. I want to know  do you feel like you're not getting the best out of yourself that you're struggling in your  close and personal relationships? Do you have that anxious and overwhelming feeling because your  home life and your work life balance is out of sorts? Do you feel like maybe you're working on  your mental health and it's just not going anywhere? Not getting the results you really want.  I thought that myself before and I want to help you with that because I don't want you to be  stuck in that feeling. I know how that feels to. So I have an offer for you. You can reach out to me  for a free 15-minute discovery call. No obligations. We just jump on this phone, chat for about  15 minutes and we try to figure out how to get you back on track and get the life you deserve.  You can do that by reaching out to me on my Instagram or on my Facebook page and for the Instagram  handle, it's Jerry Fire and Fuel or in during the badge podcast or you just go straight to the website  and during the badge podcast and there's a little coaching tab there and you can book a call there.  

They had some you did some other stuff in your career and had some other other challenges.  You lost someone on your same shift. Is that correct in line of duty?  

Yes, we had a line of duty death. One of my guys on my shift was on a traffic stop.  We just talked with him in the squad room about something and him and his partner we do  and have some tactical stuff in a no more car. I said, I'll talk to you later. I'll have  go get talk to you something. About two hours later, he's on a traffic stop on the highway  and he's talking to the driver and a car coming from behind, not paying attention,  and veers over and strikes him as he's talking to the driver on that side of the car.  Throws him about a hundred feet down the highway, killed him.  All because the guy wasn't paying attention to the new move over law. That was an act.  

Right, right. That's a very important law. I feel like people don't have time for that to move over.  I want to take the time for that. I don't really understand what the reason is. I know the law right quite well, right? And I always do my very best to move over and I understand that sometimes there is a situation where you can't quite move over, but you certainly can slow down.  And I don't really understand why people think that maybe some flashing lights or my yellow vests or reflective stuff that I have on is going to save my life or maybe a cone sitting out in the road when you're driving by at 60, 70 miles an hour. That's just not practical. 

Well, I think that human nature is to stare at something that looks exciting, it looks interesting. But when you drive your hands follow your eyes. So you start staring at something, you start veering over into it.  

Yeah. 

And I thought my guy's been on what I'm teaching driving to these kids. I go listen,  you can look at it, but don't stare at it. And I bring up the effect about my friend on my shift.  I was killed by a car because somebody was staring, he said, it's just going to click look.  

Right. Right. How did that affect you overall in your career?  

Well, it was totally shocking because I was just with the guy minutes before this happened and looking forward to taking a break with the guy early because it was a young kid.  It's on the job of short, few years. And then going on the crime on the scene, looking at  them down the street, you know, battered and built, bruised. It was like, is this a movie? It's just real.  And how did it do? It was a very long night. It was, let's take it to early morning and it's  at a really morning hours the next day. Everybody was walking around the office in shock.  You know, like the unbelievable, they couldn't believe what happened. And then, you know,  then you gotta go home after that. And then you had to deal with it. Maybe not sleep.  I didn't sleep for a couple of days because it got as like a good friend of mine. Well,  he was working with me. But eventually, you know, it kind of got to begin if you get it, but you kind of got over it. 

Yeah, yeah. How was your wife through this whole situation and all these?  Did you marry her earlier on in your career or when did you guys get married?  

Well, I was married. I was in 2006. So I was married for a few years at that point.  And I mean, it always called or say, listen, I'm on a, I'm on a murder scene right now. I can't  talk to you until later on tonight or this is what happened to me. I can't talk to you. So don't call me.  And then we talked about it later when I got home. 

Yeah. 

I think we talked about what you know  because why I don't want to bring my job home. 

Yeah. And how was and how did she feel about that?  

I think it was horrible. It felt terrible about it. I mean, it's, it's young kids like that getting killed in  land of duty. It sounds bad, but you're almost thinking like, well, the guy had 25, 30 years on  it was killed. That's terrible enough. But to be on job a few years and getting killed in  land of duty, sometimes there's tougher. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I'm sure as a,  do as they did, did the guy have a family to the officer? 

No, he was single. I think he, I think he  lived at home. I can't, 100, 100. I mean, that was a retired platform. The city of Floridadale.  

Okay. Okay. 

Yes. So I'm going to, we haven't talked about this at all and everything like that.  And you know, just in the current climate as, you know, recording this the last week of January.  And we know the things that have happened in Memphis and the climate in the world in the United  States for sure towards police officers. How does that make you feel? 

Well, you know, policing in the  80s is very different than policing into 2000s. Right. Okay. Back then, no cameras, no body  cans, no pole cameras, which is you with them and everything. Today, every block is a camera,  everybody has to camera phone, everybody has to body cams on now. And that's what happened in  Memphis, Tennessee that put another stain on the policing of this country. Of course,  everybody thinks so all the cops like this, there's only do it beat up four innocent people.  I'm glad that these guys were charged and they're going to face prison and they probably  will go to prison. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

You know, you know, you believe me or you're lying eyes, you know.  Right. And it was unfortunate because that whole situation three is that our East  police tactics and one of the tactics that used to teach was traffic stops. So I think this was a  bogus stop. I don't think this guy was, I think he was just targeted for something other than  direct stuff. Because that's not a routine response on a basic traffic stop. Yeah. You pull up the  drag that guy at a corner throw him on the ground. That's, I don't think that's what anywhere in this  country. 

No, I don't think so either. 

You kind of walk up to the guy and go, hey, you know, I'm so  and so I'm stopping you because of this issue. You have your life situation insurance.  And maybe at that point if you get crazy and violent, then you might break a matter of car.  But to go from zero to 100 and to matter of two seconds, it makes sense. So something's not right.  I get to see any footage from the traffic stop. 

Oh, yeah. It's out. Yeah. It's out.  

If it's even out, not really know it's out. 

Yeah. There's a six minute long video that's out now.  

That shows the actual traffic stop. We're done pulling a matter of car.  

It's the, it's kind of like the pretty much the whole interaction I would say with him.  Yeah. 

And the end of those guys were at a control. They were a bunch of bullies. They had a mom mentality.  You know, as a, as a pest sergeant, I've been on many calls where the guys were in a fight with  somebody and go, listen, what's the handcuffs for one of the guy to fight over? 

Right.  

It's not every other plentery and kick-kept it with handcuffs. Go on. There's another billion dollars to the family.  

Right. Right. Right. Right.  

That's a free and several clients and pull people off. They say, you know, get off. I'm not getting off.  

Yeah. 

It wasn't done in this case. I think I was done in this case. It would be a different outcome.  

Right. Right. There's, there's lots of them that could have had a stop to, to that.  And I mean, that's kind of like, there's so many amazing and great officers out there. And such  just very minute percentage of bad officers out there. Right. There's bad people in every line of  work and every place in the world, you'll find you find bad people. I guess it's just the  best way to put it. And you're about to do it. Yeah. And then to be judged to be judged by that,  you know, small percentage and is very harsh. Right. I mean, I'm sure you've had a great career.  It's been a lot of times serving your country and not in the and your community. That's got to hurt you.  

Yeah. It's very bothersome. I want to all the stuff on TV. I want to all these things on Facebook,  right YouTube. I'm how these cops react and what was criticizing? I'm out there, obviously.  You know, when you see, I very critical about what they do. And it was something that, you know,  I used to cover during role calls and during scenario training that we do with my days.  You know, this is what you can do. If you do the follow your training and follow the law,  you'll never be wrong. 

Right. Right. 

That's it. It really is really his dad easy.  

It will be very interesting to see what plays out over time. Maybe they knew this,  this gentleman before that. And, you know, there were some some other issues that played into this.  

Yep. 

Yeah. So, during, I mean, you talked about during your career, you had experienced some  situations like that where they did you easily kind of resolve them, were you able to like,  hey, like, for so many back and say, hey, what you're doing is not right.  

Yeah. Several times I had a grab somebody by the gun built and he came off the file.  And I go, this is a knock it off. You know, he's in custody. Knock it off.  You know, yeah. 

What do you think of what? 

Okay.  

Could they did? There'd be consequences. It didn't. It's off. 

Right. What do you think would  lead to some of those officers being like that? I, 

I really don't know. I mean,  it, they definitely weren't trained that way. Right. I heard, I heard of it. It was true and not that  they had lower distandards to hiring police officers than in that city because they couldn't  find anybody to work. Now, I don't know what the standards were before that they even lowered  them to whatever they were lower to. I don't know, would you have to have to be a phug and a  gang member or something to get on the job? I don't know. You know, it's not, it's not all that  anger to take out on one guy. Five people, five cops against one, they should have easily  had this guy in custody, but no problem. You made it to anger.  

Yeah. I think you touched on something there and that's, and that's anger. Like,  I think that plays a big role in, and just in the first, in people's worlds, right? And  all people's worlds, the management of their, their own anger and, you know, in certain situations.  I think sometimes that boils over on, you know, I think pretty much everybody at some point  has a little bit of an anger outburst. Some people lot better than others about identifying  and controlling it or learning about it to better control it.  

Yeah, but it's one thing to have anger, but to to build up to having that anger, not to immediately  have that anger. 

Yeah. 

It's like, there's something like, they're missing part of the story, but that case,  you know, while this fighting go full board in somebody, who knows, you guys wasn't armed.  Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to it. I don't get it. 

Yeah. And maybe you might come out and  try and see what happens. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Maybe time by time this thing, this podcast airs  with a, no, a lot more details than we do today. But yeah, I'm with you. I mean, and I think  everybody in any kind of police work would want to see them, you know, the book thrown out  and because I don't want to be judged by what they did. Like, I want to be judged by what I do,  not by what everybody else does. 

Of course, you don't want to, unless you're in the fight  for your life, this somebody in the really music to try and hurt you, that's a different case.  But this was in that case. 

Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever find it yourself in those type of situations  or you're fighting for your life? 

Oh, yeah. Sure. And you always come out of winner.  

Yeah. Why, why, why do you, would you say that? 

Because you can't afford to lose.  That's one right. 

Yeah. Right. 

You, you can't, you definitely can't afford to lose. Right. There's  you lose your life. Right. And then you're in the sometimes. 

Sometimes the rules go out  the window when you're going to fight to your life. 

Right. So, you know, you want to fight,  we'll have a fight. So, you want to go peacefully? We'll go peacefully. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  That's, I think people who have never been in any kind of altercation doesn't really  maybe understand like fighting for your life. Either way, right? You're fighting for your life.  If you're feel like you're fighting for your life, everything goes out the window and you're doing  whatever you can. 

Oh, sure. And I was, I'm 65 to 50. I didn't have too many problems in any  body, but I just wanted to take you on. 

Yeah. Yeah. With the statue like that, I mean, it does  to determine our deteror people from, you know, come up, come and after you for sure.  Hopefully. I cut. I want to touch on a little bit of your other career that you've  been moved on and talking about driving and stuff like that, you know, teaching driving.  That's got to take a great amount of patience to teach people to drive. 

Oh, yes. I always told  I think being a copy 30 years was easier than doing this job. 

Yeah. How did you learn such  great patience? 

Well, being an negotiator for those years, yet to be extremely patient, dealing with  people and dealing with the situation, to say, say, arise. And that's why I learned to be very,  very patient and as a driving instructor and administrator of the testing of the driving tests itself,  you've got to be super patient with these teenagers because the road, you'll have much brains.  They don't pay attention. They can't comprehend anything. They get in the car and they think like,  you know, this is easy. But really, well, you know, we drove yet. 

How do you think it's easy?  

So we cut somebody learns at their own level, you know, somebody well, some that they take a  little longer to learn, start a more fin of parking lot and try to gradually progress from the road,  you know, quiet road to a busy road to the highway. And then hopefully they get them ready for  their driving tests. So most of them go to the end. It sounds like you've used some of those tricks  of your prior career in this and this fill to, you know, use on these young drivers to get them  to be better. Like, I kind of see that, you know, the crawl walk run type of effect with them.  

Right. That's what you have to do and then you look at me. The parents were, how do you  remain so calm with these people all the time? 

Yeah. I go the only know.  They're probably afraid of you, probably fill up that whole car that they're in.  Well, sometimes you're going to be very intimidating because most of them are for small guys,  well, kids. Yeah. And I'm, you know, being 65 in a little driving school car, you know, my  these come at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah. But what advice do you have? There's probably  mostly parents listening to this of younger kids. What advice do you have for them, you know,  trying to help their kids get to a level of driving professionally? 

Well, get out there, get them in your  car and start teaching them. I mean, you can always hire professionals from a driving school  because obviously that the instructor's not going to yell in the free man, I'm like a pair of  wood. Right. You know, the driving school cars have that third break on the passenger side,  just in case that the parents don't have, they have their virtual break. 

Right. But to get them out,  you know, get them out there, get them used to just in a parking lot, it just do two miles an hour.  But I'm moving around that I'm turning the wheel, get used to the gas and the break and  be around the aware what's going on around them. These are moving around the nut to sitting  at home, you know, waiting for the driving instructor to show up.  So get them out there. But I hear all the excuses all the time, you know, we're too tired. We  have we worked too much. We have a new car. We don't have the patience. It's, it's to me,  there excuses, even if you have a new car, okay, that's nice, but just go in a parking lot and  don't let them touch the gas pedal. Let the car just idle around, you know, so they're moving.  

Right. But yeah, they hired the driving school, which, you know, my owner of the school is  glad about because he's very, very busy. And then we get out there and do what we do.  Hope to make my safe, better driver. 

Yeah. 

I noticed a lot of younger kids don't really  have the desire to actually get their driver's license. I'm coming across that a lot,  a meaning with some time to the girls. They go, well, my boyfriend takes me everywhere I want to go.  I say, again, until they don't. And then what are you going to do? Can you for Uber every day? Probably  not. Yeah. I think it's with young boys, 16, 17 row boys, they go out. I really want to drive.  I don't like driving. I'm afraid to drive. But hey, going to get around, especially  done for yourself, Florida, with this no real mess transportation. 

Yeah. 

They put the other bus,  you have this train, but you're going to wait for them for an hour, where they run, it's crazy.  So you might get behind the little car and I have to drive. It's not a hard thing to learn.  

Yeah. I want to touch on something here. You said that there are a lot of them are afraid.  What did they afraid of? Because I find people are going to throw that word out, or at least  younger generations that want to throw that word out a lot. I'm afraid. And sometimes I'm like,  well, what does that really mean? What do you really saying? 

Well, they're afraid of when they're driving  or afraid of other cars, my hit them, or they're afraid that they'll do something wrong with them,  with themselves driving, causing a crash. They're afraid of traffic. 

Yeah. Well, welcome to the real  world. It's busy out there on the streets, especially with this no-mas transportation.  Everybody has a car. Yeah, it gets busy. But if you pay attention about what you're doing  and control the car, you'll have to save Germany. That was a guaranteed note. You can be the  perfect driver out here and somebody must still find you. Yeah. Yeah. Accidents do happen.  I mean, they do happen. Some officers don't believe that, but I mean, I'm pretty sure accident  do happen. Yes, they're always something that kind of, we'd be lead up to that accident, but they  just, I feel like there's several percentages this happened. 

Right. Yeah. It can be perfect. 

Yeah.  It can't be perfect. Of course not. Glenn, before I let you go, is there any way,  do you have social media and stuff like that? People can follow you and reach out to you on?  

Well, I'm on Facebook and Twitter, typical ones. I've got every ties with my books that I have  to see that I wrote. Yeah, let's say before, oh, yes, before we let you go to talk about those,  exactly what you're about to say about that. 

Oh, thank you. That's fine. Yeah. Well, I have four  of them. I have four about there. One is being one, one more of the fifth one is being edited right  now. One is called the hurt. It's a true crime drama. I was involved with that. Can the 80s  witnessing Twitter and working at a rock or world, click with one of our downsides of  Sutton killed and then dried by shooting. And then the sequel to that one is called the real story  behind the hurt and the rise and fall of extremists. That's when the club at the end club had been  closed 25 years later, the original owner reopened it. But knowing that he was really a domestic  terrorist himself where he led a lot of Antifa and Black Lives Matter people working all those rock  clubs and they were kind of hiding and playing site. Another one's called Look A Quarter, where it's  an autobiographical anecdotes about my crazy life growing up from New York to the military to  police it to today. And the other was called Operation 1600, which is a political thriller that  criminal US president, it gets it into a nuclear exchange with Russia. And the one that's  going to be coming out is called Making of a Monster. It's a little kid that was bullied  just whole life that became a notorious thrill killer. How did you get into writing books, Glenn?  Glenn? I don't have a long story. Well, the first one, the first one, the first, which  it's a true crime drama from the early 80s when I was working in the Rock and Roll Club.  After we had the incident, I decided that, well, this story sounds like it would be a really  good movie. So I wrote a screenplay for it and I got with the screenplay right on California  and he'll be put it together in a screenplay format. And then a short time after that,  I got a hold of just executive producer that I know that's the executive producer for the TV show  the amazing race. Back in the early 80s, I was on the cops TV show on the first season several episodes  and he was the cameraman back then and obviously he's a good producer for the TV show.  So I spoke to him about the script and he goes, it sounds like I would like to produce it,  but I'm really busy with my show on the 30th anniversary of my show. But you might want maybe  have this script transformed into a book and then book to movie. So I got with just lady in  California to help me do that and we transformed it into a book which is not called a novel called  the Earth. So I started to fit that together and this is very practical for the pandemic  a couple of years ago. And then I go, that was really easy to write because I kind of lived the story.  And then I just started going from there, I go, let me try this one, I had this idea,  let me put it to paper and play with it and then I just started going from there.  Wow. I'll order a spec for you to put those things into a book form.  That's a dream online someday, but man, that's impressive.  Little bit of a big pain the next.  

What did you like writing more? The one where you felt you like you lived it or the one that's coming  out where it's more of a thriller? 

I always loved my first one because I lived it,  I was part of it, I was witness to it. I had to go through our deals with the trials and the  convictions of these guys that we've never found. Go to the crime. But then the other ones,  I kind of liked the last one I'm working on now that making it a monster.  Could that have had a lot of mass murder, it's a lot of violence, but they would  have actually a lot of stores have taken two events. They kind of built into the storylines.  Very good, very cool. So people can learn more about where these books available.  They're on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle and Look.  So they're out there everywhere for everybody to purchase.  Glenn, if people want to reach out to you personally, sorry, they can reach out to you on your  Twitter and Facebook. Yes, they can. And what's the what's the name under those? Because you  by name, you can just look up Glenn Topping. Okay, you'll be in T.O.P. the I.N.G.  And so find me. I'm all over the place, even on Google. Even on, well, I got this written  a few books. I would expect to be there on Google. But Glenn, thank you so much for your time today.  And everyone, please look up Glenn and check out Check out his books and would imagine  they're quite interesting. I mean, especially from Glen's perspective.  

Yep. Thanks again, Glen.  

Yeah, Jerry. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you.  You bet. 

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