Spreading Positivity and Fostering Support in Law Enforcement: A Conversation with Sergeant Eric Tung

Jerry: 0:04

Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the During the Voucher 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, while your phone is out, please do me a favor and give us a review on iTunes or our Apple Podcast. 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 that training course, you can attend different days of that training course, whichever ones fit 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. Complete first responder for more details. My very special guest today is Eric Tong. Eric is a law enforcement officer and he brings a lot of great things to law enforcement community. I found Eric on social media from his positive content that he was putting out and I really enjoyed watching that. I loved watching an officer put out this positive content that makes an impact on their people's lives. In this conversation with Eric, we talk about why he got into creating the positive content on social media, a little bit about his career and what it meant to him and being in these different phases of his career and the different challenges that brought up. Eric was also involved in an officer involved shooting and we're going to talk about that and how a little bit how that went down and how it looks to be in a shooting and the after effects of that and the role of peer support with him and his department. Eric is an incredible mentor, i think, to other officers and a great face to law enforcement, and let's jump right into this episode with Eric so we can learn all about him and what he's doing in the world. How are you doing, eric? I'm good man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming on, eric. Can you introduce yourself to the audience?

Eric: 2:32

Yeah, so I am a sergeant currently in the state of Washington. I've been in police work for going on 16 years it feels. I mean, sometimes it feels like five and sometimes it feels like 20. But currently I am supervising our hiring recruiting units and then I'm kind of double tapped as the training sergeant. Our agency is roughly 166 if fully staffed, which we're actually strangely and rarely because of the efforts of my team like we're almost there. Wow, just hovering in a couple vacancies, yeah. So that's fantastic. But still, you know, most of the people are in the training pipeline and all that. So operations not totally up, and anyone in first responder work knows that. I mean, we're all pulling double duty in some way or another. So that's just life for the hopefully the temporary. But yeah, i've had a bunch of different assignments, all with my same department, kind of what I'd call a mid-sized department. I got into peer support early on as kind of an extra hat and that's the huge passion of mine. Got into short term field training officer and I became a K9 officer because that was, you know, kind of the dream, especially being a younger patrol officer. I ran a dog until I promoted and then I was a road sergeant for about four years until I went to a small unit which was called neighborhood response team. But you know, a lot of cities have something like that more directed emphasis. You have more time and bandwidth or flexibility to deal with the problems you know connect with. You know apartment managers and business owners and things like that do a little bit of interfacing. But yeah, so that's been the majority of my until, let's say, until I got into hiring, which is, you know, obviously the need these days in the last couple of years. That's my professional side in a nutshell.

Jerry: 4:28

Yeah, that's kind of a lot in those 16 years. You got to do a lot of different things.

Eric: 4:34

Yeah, yeah, i mean, like I think we all know the old, i was gonna say old school.

Jerry: 4:39

I almost want to.

Eric: 4:40

I held back from saying old timer because I didn't want it to be, you know, taken offensively. But I think some of them would recognize that is a loving term, old timer. But yeah yeah, it used to be such that you know you get into a role, you you get. You know you get really acclimated in, proficient in patrol, and that takes five plus years and then you start to think about other things. You really specialize after that and then most people would say you know, you really shouldn't promote until 10 years or so. Right, but the times are more crazy than ever and I think it's pretty common place to have people in specialty units after just a couple of years and it's just. We just got to be more dynamic and that's part of the, the trends that we're seeing in police. Yeah, so I think a lot about that and think about where we're going as a, as an industry, as a nation, and that's that's where I do a lot of my like kind of commentary and trying to put positive content out on social media, which is kind of a become a hobby of mine the last couple years, especially facing what we've been experiencing in the last couple years.

Jerry: 5:50

Yeah, yeah, that's. I want to just kind of go back and touch on something you talked about a lot. Go back to a couple things. But one is that you know we're facing in the industry that we're having to promote people or put people in specialty positions very fast and that's got to be really hard on the training department to do that.

Eric: 6:12

Yeah, and so being the temporary training sergeant, like there's a lot of things that intersect there and every agency might be a little different. But you know, we have one full-time training officer and we have a range master who's a retired cop and they are a wealth of experience, but they're two guys, right. And so for the department our size, their full-time gig was basically handling our mandatory trainings, a couple elective trainings, right, so our in session, quarterly or whatnot, qualifications firearms serve K-pations and then another how to mind being intersecting with our defensive tactics team and then trying to inject that amongst everything else and staffing issues. And then, yeah, kind of like you're you're alluding to is you have a ton of new people that need a lot more direct training and supervision and coordination, but then you just need, i mean, that's ongoing, right, so that's past the training unit, that's, that's your, your supervisors, that's your senior officers. Everyone has to take a piece of the pie and that's what I'm trying to remind folks is that you know it's, it's tough. There's always going to be an iteration or a new theme of what is challenging in police work. I mean, it has been as long as we both been cops. It's just it's seemingly develops into another stratosphere of challenging, but it's always been there. You know like none of us really signed up because we wanted an easy gig. But yeah, that will be. That'll be on an entire agency and the whole organization to make sure that everyone is dialed in to ensure success on every new officer right, and then let's throw with that amount of stress happening in the department and throw in peer support.

Jerry: 7:59

Where is it? where is that fitting for you?

Eric: 8:02

yeah, peer support. So I talk about this a lot with some of my peers and one of my supervisors mentors. But, man, peer support is, i think it's like most things, it's as much or as little as you want to make it on paper. You know, for us it's literally just checking in on your buddies and your team. We do facilitate critical stress debriefs. There's a couple of us are trained to do that, but those are in pure sport. I think would mostly agree that it's so much more of this, the day to day, innocuous kind of. It's the culture, peer support, rather than the official hat or the official engagement. I think pure support so much more than having your name or having it next to a few people's names in the department, but more just this culture of support, the culture of socializing, talking about their issues and that hey, i'm here for you. The culture that we normalize the stress of the job and sharing that burden, not just taking it alone and then just destigmatizing a lot of the things that come with that right, whether it's recognizing that professional mental health is extremely beneficial for most people that try it and then not just painting one you know, painting everyone with a broad brush if you had one bad incident with therapy and that's something that I've recently talked about in my fledgling podcast and something that I've written about several times, and so it's just trying to encourage that kind of notion that we got to keep an open mind and allow pure support as a concept, even if you don't have an official policy or an official team and you're your PD or organization, but just allow that notion to hopefully foster just more positive engagement and allow it to curb morale in a more beneficial, positive way.

Jerry: 9:56

Yeah, yeah, what's your? what's your favorite part about peer support?

Eric: 10:02

I think my favorite part truly is just at this point in my career has been sharing some anecdotes and seeing the you can. You can actually see it on someone's face when they have a sense of relief or a sense of safety or sense of I guess that pressure valve releasing of. Hey Sarge has been there, like he, what he just said, like that's where I'm at right now and just for me to say, hey man, like I definitely lost some sleep over my non shootings right, because I've been in a police shooting. But I'll say I've lost a lot more sleep over the shooting that almost happened as opposed to, you know, the critical incident that we all, we all label, or, you know, spotlight. So, just some, some personal recognition from shared personal experience, and then seeing that there is a, you know, a palpable and a visual cue that you, you see and feel when that weight is lifted off someone, and then they open up and I mean that's a, that's a really powerful validation.

Jerry: 11:10

Yeah, the power of vulnerability, right Yeah.

Eric: 11:14

So I'm an open book, so I tried to yeah, i figured like I luckily, i think, through a number of things, maybe part training, part awareness and and support. for sure, like my, my support systems are really powerful and very effective for me, but it's not perfect, right. so a lot of people are like, oh, sarge is the, he's the health nutter, you know the pure support touch, a feely guy and what can face him. he's crushing life. it's like no, no, no, like I have my moments and I have my, you know my edge of the burnout or all the things that we all experience. Just to say, even like I've been off the road largely for about a year and I'm still having dreams, i'm still having your fight for life dreams and, as crazy or unrealistic as they may be, my mind still wanders to getting an engagement off duty and what that looks like, especially being off the street, and whether I'm losing my streetness, as some say. So it's like it'll keep buzzing in your ear and kind of keep creeping back in and just to say, hey, let's give each other grace, let's give ourselves grace. It's life. We'll take it one day at a time and we'll manage all together.

Jerry: 12:26

Yeah, I like that. I mean, giving yourself grace is huge and doing that to others is just as important. No matter how put together you are, I think you will still have those things where you'll hear, for whatever those thoughts or chatter or whatever they're going to be there, They're going to just come and go, and how you deal with them. I think it becomes a lot better over time. But when you get your mental health in the area that you the place you want it to be, you get that more fine tune that that chatter does not constantly ring there And if it does, then you generally know how to deal with it.

Eric: 13:05

Yeah, And giving grace just to speak a little bit more on that. I feel like that has been a, it's been a theme that's helped me through a lot of you know, a lot of dips in this career and it goes in a lot of different directions. Right, I think that early on I was pretty judgmental. I was young and pretty naive, as a lot of us are, to the ways of the world. But I became pretty callous as a New York officer, very judgmental with suspects and people that were, you know, not living their lives in a certain way and they're creating these problems for us, the police, or for themselves or for their community, and just a lot of lack of connection and empathy. Because I didn't really know, right, But I recognized through, you know, maybe through more experience and maybe through exposure to other people and concepts, is just, hey, man, like they didn't have the life that they had that you had. And it's not to defer blame, I'm not trying to enable like a victim mentality, I'm just saying hey, like circumstances are what they are, Attics and all that right. There's definitely a shift where, you know, young cop Eric was telling people that they shouldn't be doing drugs, which is just, I mean, how is anyone going to receive that? Like it doesn't even work in high school, right? So, and then to the point where I remember, you know, having conversations with you know, someone in the backseat that you know ran from a stolen car, fought us, you know, fought the canine, and all that, just just connecting like a person just saying, hey, man, like you know they, they wave their rights and you're just, you're just having a conversation And half of it's not even really investigatory, right, You're just trying to connect to me. Hey, man, like I've never been a drug, I've never been addicted to drugs, I never tried them. I wouldn't be surprised with the kind of addictive personality some cops have. Like, if they tried them like man, it'd be a different story, right? And just saying, man, like I can't imagine what that's like to have that kind of a need for a fix. But I know what it's like to not eat for, you know, 36 to 40 hours And I couldn't do anything but think about food. Yeah, And just like that little recognition, you know, I remember seeing like someone's eyes kind of light up. It's like, yeah, man, that's what's like. Like it's like not eating, you know. Like you know, intermittent fasting is a really popular thing, right now, But like I got a buddy in my unit. he's like going like 15, 16 hours and he's like, bro, my blood sugar, i'm gonna, i'm gonna lose it, and it's just like, oh, like that's just to make some sort of comparison where, hey, like once, once we're not fighting, once we're not at odds with each other, like how can we, how can we connect and, you know, hopefully make something a little better for the future?

Jerry: 15:42

Yeah, I mean because that's going to really set the tone for the rest of your interaction with that person And odds are you're probably going to interact with them again at some point.

Eric: 15:52

Yeah, if not me, then someone for sure. Right, some officer this department or the other one, or they move out of the state and if they're still on the fringes of the life, maybe they have acquaintances, right, Like you're going to keep interacting. And I mean, we've seen, we've all seen people that even if they're not criminal, they've had a terrible interaction or anecdote from their family about police. And by having a chip on our shoulder we only further that. Right, i've been in those chipping mat. You know those kind of bark off matches of you know a battle of the wits and witty comments, and you know things that are just on the edge of you know unprofessional, or I'll just, i'll just say you know, i'll admit a ton of things that are extremely unprofessional. I've said in my career I'm not proud of them. Right, they came from a lack of control, emotionally, lack of maturity and just not seeing the bigger picture. Right, i felt like I need to maintain some sort of like respect level with these. Let's say, i mean, i want to say punks, but let's just say, like these, these people on the street that just want to chat, you know, chip at officers just because you know what is it, where does it get you right? And if anything, it just furthers their narrative for themselves And then, potentially, just like the random person on the corner that might have been pretty net neutral about cops, and it's just like man, that guy's kind of being a, that guy's kind of being a dick too.

Jerry: 17:15

Yeah Yeah, well, I like that. You can see that, right, i mean, have that perspective. Being able to see that and work through that is incredibly important in your career, especially in law enforcement. When you're engaging with people quite often and quite often you know it's it's not the greatest engagements, right? They're having a bad day in their life or they're lying to you or who knows what. Right, it's a lot of the narrative, the conversation and stuff that happens in that engagement is dependent upon you, right.

Eric: 17:50

Yeah, it takes two to tango, right, and yeah, it's not like I had like a mentor or senior officer pull me aside or anything but. But when I take a step back and I realize maybe it's just getting older, maybe it's getting softer, but there's definitely officers that kind of were never that way and they're navigating their careers Maybe they've been 20, 25 years all on the street in a busy city and they come in with a smile on their face and you start to wonder, hopefully, you start to observe and wonder like Hey, like what is that? what is that guy doing that he's thriving in this really stressful lifestyle and career and it's support systems, it's investment in health relationships. But then also how they conduct the job. Right, they don't take it personally because we all know what the other side looks like. Right, you have these. I mean now it could be a two year cop that's super salty. Like I'm describing myself at the time where everything was personal. Like you're running from me, you're lying from me. It's because you think you can get the edge on me and you think that. You think that you're better than me, you think that you're better than these victims. Like, hey, man, just like, separate from that Separate yourself from the outcome, just know that you can do the best you can with what you have, and that's I think that's been a theme that I tried to put out with with my younger guys and gals is that, hey, there's, there's a lot that's going to happen in this career that's completely out of your control. Suspects get a vote right And then policies get to turn my pupil. That aren't you and you can just do as you can do and navigate as you can do, right, yeah.

Jerry: 19:18

Yeah, like let's touch you a touch on FTO, because FTO can set the tone for your career, right. Like, yeah, and how your, your mentor is is kind of might really influence how you're going to be as an officer, for sure, and you you don't get a pick your FTO guy right, so it might not just line up perfectly to to to be the right person for that. I mean, in your FTO, did you find that maybe like the tone was being set for you, like how to engage with other people?

Eric: 19:52

You know, just going off what I was just talking about, i guess becoming like a really cynical newer cop. It wasn't my FTOs, luckily, but it was like one of the first crews I was with. Right, i was on night shift and the culture of that crew was just very like a bit of a word. It was pretty toxic, right, everyone was a shithead quote And I just adopted that right. I was really young and impressionable and these guys are essentially my heroes, right, they're out there crushing crime, chasing cars, catching people, excuse me, all that right. But a recognition that like that was not, that mentality was not serving my life. Well, luckily, i was able to bid to a different shift and truly one of the most toxic people I was with, or by far, was actually a dude that got hired close to me. So he was a younger guy and you're spending all your time with that person. That person didn't make probation and that probably was really beneficial for me and the people that were working around, right. So I'm glad to say that you know that was yours and the culture has definitely shifted. You know that crew isn't even as it exists today. You know they're all doing different things, or I've moved out of police work or promoted or working in investigations and just did and I can think about separate people that you know the hard charges were kind of mixed in with the negative people that supported the hard charges, right, so it was just kind of a bleeding of things, but it's good to say, like you know, that doesn't exist, as it did then. But you're right about FTO, right, you're instructed to be a sponge and you should be if you're going to learn. You're drinking from the fire hose, as we say. But I think an adage that we had and I think it's pretty common with different agencies is that you know you're going to pick a mix of your different field trainers you're exposed to. That's kind of a benefit of the model of having multiple trainers. But I think you know an adage of like leadership and this is an example of that. But you tend to remember what not to do oftentimes from the leaders you're exposed to or the lack of leadership you're exposed to, right, so those are good reps for you and I think that, as a new officer recruit, if you're cognizant to that, like hey, if it's legal and moral, like you know, follow along. But if it's not your way, like you don't have to keep it. You can find your own you know method that's legal and moral, and then keep that in the rear view or on the back burner of to inform how not to do things or how you prefer not to do things, and that's okay too.

Jerry: 22:28

Yeah, Yeah. you have to find your own identity and personality. to be out there and dealing with people, I mean what works for you because you don't share that same personality as other people.

Eric: 22:41

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, i think that, like the introspection and then the awareness is really helpful. as you, i think mentorship is huge and I think it's more important than ever. I look at my department, i look at you know, talking to people on social media, the challenges of their department, like they're all the same, right, whether it's a huge agency, a tiny agency, it's all. We have a lack of experience and so we're going to curb that with mentorship and hands on, just just caring, right, yeah, and then the craft and the people. So, really, what it comes down to, i think, is that you just need to even if it's more passive mentorship, right? Like, if I'm a young, young officer or like, let's just say, i'm mid-career, i actually look for mentors and I'll seek out feedback. But at the same time, a lot of it's more passive, where I just see what different officers and supervisors and leaders are doing toward the end of their career, and I look at the ones that are living life in this fruitful, positive way and they've navigated their career in such a way that I want to emulate. I just use this as an example, right, they don't have to be telling me hey, tom, you need to be doing this, that and the other, or come to Jesus, right. This way I'm just saying like I can look at the examples of things. I want to avoid anecdotes and I can look at things that I want to gravitate towards and just emulate that for my life and certainly at any point in their career. Can do that in whatever industry or whatever lifestyle.

Jerry: 24:09

Yeah, So you talked about being an officer involved in shooting. That had to be pretty tough to go through in your career. I mean, how did that look like? far as I'm getting through that, navigating through that in your career.

Eric: 24:24

Yeah, So I talked about it in decent detail on a couple of podcasts I'll, just in case anyone's listening and they want to tune into that, but on my own, but the Off-Duty podcast as well as Ken Roy Balls, please have Kent podcast, So I won't bore you all with all the details. I can get into it if you want. But as far as your question like what was like going through I think it was. I mean it wasn't as stressful as it would be today and for a number of reasons, When we got in the shooting the suspect drew a gun and fired first And so that makes it a lot easier. This is super weird. Probably verb is and concepts for people outside of law enforcement. Yeah, maybe, But like oh, it's easier when they shoot first and they have a gun, right, because there are a ton of legally justified shootings where the person doesn't have a gun or doesn't have a real gun. Like we understand this perception thing and making the decision with what you have at the time. That made it easier. Truly, just being in a shooting with a couple other officers also made it easier. Right, i wasn't on this island where I was in the situation where, like man, did I mess up or did I not? It kind of was instant validation that we all perceive the thing the same way, the same lethal threat, the same way. And so, even though we couldn't talk about it under legal advice and just protocol, like I knew when I was off on my admin leave or whatnot, that I did what I had to do and I felt I'm sure that that's an element that is trickier for some situations and some officers And then, going after that, i know from my training and just experience, like we all reacted, traumas and stressors in such a multitude of ways. For me, i had that I'm high on life right, like I was bouncing off the walls. I had this just everything was sunshine and rainbows. I get the second lease on life because in my shooting there's a propane tank that got ruptured and ignited and this fireball kind of passed over me and a couple guys And I thought I was done, like. I thought like game over Fox punched, like, oh, like I guess I did the best I could with you know 26 or whatever years it was you know at the time, and then so I felt like I had this huge lease on life, right, i feel like I had really good social circles At that point in my career. I wasn't, you know, battling anything specifically you know my life and my home life and my now wife but girlfriend at the time, like things were just rosy right, and so I was able to kind of, i guess, monopolize on that in some ways, just with where my mindset was. So navigating wasn't too hard and I was. I was looking actively for the quote unquote triggers. So that was, you know, going back to the scene on my time off and kicking some dirt around And I was like, well, i guess that wasn't it. No, no, no. Quote unquote PTSD flashbacks right, yeah. And then I remember kicking up the grill and kind of joking with my girlfriend at the time, right, and I was like, hey, i'm going to turn on the grill. I start screaming, just come, turn it off. and you know, pull me back inside. I just was looking for things that you hear about. Like I was looking, maybe the smell of propane or the heat of the flame would bother me, taking my canine and my canine was deployed on that, on that call. You know, i thought that he had been basically blown up or shot up as well, and he wasn't super, fortunately. And then you know, trying to, as you do with the canine that's exposed to that, like you do, stress introduction, right. So taking it back to the range, getting him introduced to gunfire, canine training, and that was all fine, right, so he didn't overreact, he didn't underreact And you're like, okay, cool, everything's checking off, right, yeah, but years down the line I recognize that there's just kind of the. it's not one critical thing, it's not one specific trigger. but I think every time, if I'm honest with myself, is that every time I got a dog call or every time I took him out and I put that clip, that lead, onto his harness. there was just a higher level of vigilance. right, and vigilance is healthy, right, it keeps us alive, it keeps us safe. But just to recognize that I was not a laxie days call officer and I had, i maintained a pretty high level of hyper vigilance and time on and time off. but recognizing that it shot up that much more, even non-K-9 stuff like I can think specifically of, like a traffic stop where they're doing the typical look around, finding a place to pull over. It's a couple blocks. you have to update your location a little bit more. Now you're going into the apartment complex in the middle of the night and your buddies hear it in your voice and they start drifting your way because they're like this guy's gonna bail or he's gonna find out And then he starts digging into the glove box and then my meter is off the charts, right, when I'm as I'm making the approach and he starts doing that and I'm getting ready. but really it's just someone suspended and wanted to park their car so they didn't get towed and they're just fumbling around for their insurance and all that I mean. I say insurance they're paperwork, they're not insurance, they're suspended. Not to be stereotypical, but let's just, let's be real. But it wasn't that right, it wasn't a lethal encounter, it wasn't confrontational, the dude was fine, right, but I was pretty elevated because that was my experience, right. My experience is that if something's not going a certain way, you get ready for the ambush. So I think it's worth sharing that in that, even though you may not have these typical stressors or I guess it triggers, immerge the way that you might expect there's something somewhere.

Jerry: 30:26

Yeah, yeah, i mean, i don't know how, after something like that, you don't kind of elevate yourself, right What you're saying, these things are starting to check off, they're not quite right, and then so you get elevated. I think that's just that's just something normal that happens. But I'm sure after being in a shooting, that is even more so, more elevated. Yeah, definitely get your heart pounding and your thoughts going.

Eric: 30:56

For sure. Yeah, there's just a lot of little factors. And then for those wondering, when I mentioned back then or in these circumstances, i mean now it sucks that we let race and color and these things permeate our decision-making based on the circumstance, like in addition to the circumstance. That's a common question And this is not a political statement. This is just trying to have this conversation of transparency with whether people are in or out of police work listening to this, but there's an officer involved shooting in my city or any other. One of the first questions people ask is what was the race of the suspect? Because they want to show up in such a way to be supportive and cognizant of some of these issues. If you are, if you're assigned, like I was, to our civil disturbance team kind of crowd control you start thinking these things immediately, not even knowing the circumstance of the call. And I'm not saying that police shootings that happen are always justified. What I'm saying is that it sucks that we're in a world, in an industry, where you have to consider all these risks without even knowing anything about the circumstance truly, and so it was definitely a different time. I think there would have been a lot more stress, but at the same time, even back then, even that many years ago, people quickly were asking hey, what was the race of your suspect? And it was a white male. And so the cynical or realist or whatever you, however you want to put it, said, okay, cool, no one's going to hear about the news, your face isn't going to be in the papers, get a gun, all that, And it was kind of true Like no one really heard about it. You know, even though we're just outside of Seattle and involved, you know, a handful of officers. And this big explosion on a Sunday, you know, late morning, while people were out there at the landscaping store, like you know, buying bark and produce Never really hit the media.

Jerry: 33:02

Yeah, i'm sure you're very grateful for that.

Eric: 33:05

I am And I was also prepared for it. You know, there was a part of me and I don't know if this is, i don't know if this is a common thing with law enforcement, but it was almost like this, like bring it attitude right. Yeah, i was like this guy just tried to kill my buddy and us And you could not have a cleaner shoot, as we say in the industry, or a more justified shoot. So like, let's pick this apart, let's, monday morning, quarterback this right. And there was like an officer involved. Like the headline would probably back then. You know, even though we're still printing paper, it's probably about Yee-Bee.

Jerry: 33:38

Yeah.

Eric: 33:40

But yeah, it was just like hey, you know this many officers involved in the shooting you know suspect was killed in the gunfire No names mentioned. I think they updated it with, like our years of service but then they never released our names And well, not like it was not really a concern. But I guess what I was saying was like you just kind of get ready And I don't know if that's just a defense mechanism where you're ready to get scrutinized. So at a certain point you're like, okay, let's go, because you would prefer to be prepared mentally and emotionally than not.

Jerry: 34:17

Yeah, Yeah, yeah, i can totally understand that. I mean, definitely there's scrutiny over, seems like, everything, whether it deserves it or not.

Eric: 34:28

Unfortunately, in these days, These are tough times And I think that that's where work like you're doing on this you're social media and your podcasts And I mean really that's the crux of a large portion of why I even started one and wanting it to be public facing And the audience is a lot of cops and a lot of cops supporters. But I still connect with people that aren't police or people that just know me from my life prior to being a cop, and a lot of times it is like, hey, we need more cops like you And that kind of prompted it too. I'm like you don't even know. There's so many guys in Galzat are way better than me. They're just way better investigators. They're more and more committed to the mission. They're burning it on both ends. They're just better people. I'd say I can think of a handful. I can count them off. Right now His name is in his face is popping up in my mind. But yeah, i mean it's like I think just that narrative alone even someone that wants to be kind of supportive or just doesn't know many cops it's just hey, let's help bridge that, let's help just be communicative and just stop creating this sense of other. That's what's gonna drive us apart, or has been.

Jerry: 35:45

Yeah, eric, when you brought up these five people that you can think that are better than you and stuff like that did a little bit of you feel like an imposter syndrome, like are you familiar with that?

Eric: 35:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, my wife is a super, super sharp, sharp gal. We talk about imposter syndrome a lot. I think that's something that, to be honest, i think that's something that maybe navigated me to this career in a lot of ways And then has been a part of my career And that's like psychoanalyzed myself. But a lot of times people ask me why police work. Right, yeah, as a recruiter and hiring sergeant, like it's quickly like why police work and then giving people insight as to how to explore that for themselves. But, yeah, i didn't wanna, i don't wanna be a police officer, but I recognized that through my life I was looking for a stronger sense of male role models and connection and brotherhood and all of these things that you know. When you fast forward, you're like, okay, of course, a life of service, like police work, like firefighting, like military or whatnot. So it makes sense. I think if you were to look at, you know what my motivators were and what values I hold dear. For sure. But, yeah, the imposter syndrome, i think for sure there's this. Okay, can I make it? I mean that definitely contributes to a lot of things we're talking about in this episode. Was for this conversation, like being a new cop and trying to puff my chest and because respect is everything on the street. But truly, if I'm a 22 year old cop at the time and I look like I'm 17, you know, like it is what it is right, but if I would, just I wonder if I would have just let the chip in my shoulder go and just if people wanna clown on me for being a kid, i'd be like, yeah, you're right, i'm a new cop, all right, but I'm here for this, i need this. And if you wanna tangle, we could go there, but we could also just like we can get along too. You know, if I just presented it like as it is, and maybe that, just that transparency, maybe that would have built trust. I like to think it would.

Jerry: 37:59

Yeah, yeah, it is a unique scenario looking so young and being out on the road like you don't get a lot of credit.

Eric: 38:09

No, definitely not, and I think that's worthwhile to reflect on, not to dissuade really young candidates. There are some fantastic really young candidates, but they are. I would say they're very special. right, they're not numerous. You know, life experience goes a long way and just that sense of confidence that you get from doing things, living life, raising a family I mean that's raising a family is way harder than being a cop in my humble opinion.

Jerry: 38:38

but yeah, even the sense of I forgot where else I'm gonna go with that but Yeah, i just think like part of what you got one touch on was, like you know, being a young officer, like in not having a lot of life experiences. I would think that's probably makes it kind of difficult to deal with the public in certain areas, because, like if I've never been married and haven't had like a serious relationship, and then I'm going on a domestic violence call, What advice do I?

Eric: 39:11

have to go on. Yeah, because so much of being a police officer is just communicating, right. Yeah, and to effectively communicate you either need experience or insight, and as a young person you may have some, or you may have what you've been told or what you've read in a book, and that's not the same. So, yeah, that just quote unquote life experience. I know that there's a lot of. There's a lot of candidates that I've talked to recently. Right, they get frustrated because maybe they didn't score high enough in our process but they got disqualified from other ones. And usually comes down to life experience, right, and I thought I had quite a bit at the time. You know, i didn't have the. It was by no means like a terrible childhood, but I didn't have a very I guess, an ideal family circumstance growing up. Like I wasn't close to my dad, you know, hence like kind of what I was talking about before, and so there was that. But I was, you know, i was in the kid that got in trouble and I was pretty productive and pretty good in school. So you know, i went to college and had brush-ins with crime, you know, like my car got broken a number of times and house got set on fire when I was in it in college. So, and then it was, you know, outside of Seattle or it was in Seattle. So even back then, like the drug problems and the mental health issues around you know, student housing were crazy, you know, and just you know, you'd walk as many people home, as many girls home, as you could, just because it's sketchy neighborhoods. Back then, and even more so now, right, so I didn't feel like as a young adult and such that I was really that shelter. But even then and I had good work experience, like I was doing the whole college, college painting business thing and hiring people and project management and, you know, was able to make some money doing that. But but yeah, it didn't really translate into what you're talking about, right, it didn't have any any real real, real challenge. I guess, as far as interactions, right, and a lot of that. I think growing comes from relationships and having hard relationships and having to work through that. And that's where I say, like man, marriage or like building a family or being a parent, is way harder. Yeah, yeah, if you do it right for sure. So definitely that I thought about what I was going to say.

Jerry: 41:27

Oh, awesome Yeah.

Eric: 41:29

I was doing the young looking officer and I got FTO in about four and a half years, which makes me like a dinosaur now, but like I mean, we have FTOs are less time on now, but that was pretty rare at the time. But I remember going to calls and, you know, do you do the final, your department do the final phase, where they're more civilian clothes, they're like kind of like a shadow, yeah Yeah, and we don't do it quite that that way now, but we did at the time, you know, for final phase, block four, and I had a couple students that you know. I had one where the witness for the victim asked if I was the student son, just so we're kind of watching and observing. At the same time I was the field training officer and I got called the rookie. I don't want to talk to you, rookie, get out of my face. I want to talk to this guy And he's just the brand new cop. He just happens to be, you know 32. I was like, okay, cool, cool, cool.

Jerry: 42:31

Maybe that hopefully that was a comment that because he maybe been squared away and was doing doing his job And he I think it's just, you know the, just the confidence and just how you present right And I was.

Eric: 42:42

You know you look like a kid and I don't know.

Jerry: 42:45

Yeah, yeah, just part of it, yeah, just quick judgment, right, and I think for it just as a natural human instinct. People look at other people and they judge them like they're. I mean you can go to a whole another level of that, but a quick instinct you just look at people and you judge them like that.

Eric: 43:02

Yeah.

Jerry: 43:03

It's just part of life, that's part of being human. Yeah, absolutely. I would love to hear people and they probably will say you know well, that's just not true. People don't look at each other people and judge them. You do, and some way, some manner you are, you're judging them.

Eric: 43:17

Yeah, it's biased. I mean policing, modern policing. we talk about bias. We have to be aware of it.

Jerry: 43:23

It's not going to go away.

Eric: 43:24

We just need to make sure we're aware of it And so we don't make misinformed decisions and make decisions off of it, right Or ill-informed decisions, right. At the same time, like to notice behaviors. I think it's worthwhile to say this, just so people don't, you know, put words in their mouth later. but like behaviors are what we're keying in on and making decisions as police officers. Like not what you're wearing or what you look like, but what you're doing could be suspicious, and just recognizing that And so allowing officers new officers to say, hey, like you just need to articulate the behaviors and it's not profiling. if it's behaviors, yeah. If someone's angling away and putting their hands in their pockets when you ask them not to, that's suspicious, that's cause for concern. That's the first factor, whatever you want to call it right.

Jerry: 44:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great that you bring that up. I want to go back to peer support and how that kind of operates a little bit within your department, because it's becoming a really big part of departments these days, and I want to throw an idea out at you, since you're in training and stuff like that and had some experience with peer support. What are your thoughts of like when a new officer comes on and he's got his FTO, but then also like Hey, we're going to sign you someone from peer support too, yeah, and then in your FTO time you'll or whatever, like you'll have this peer support person that's going to check in on you, and then your FTO officers for something different, what?

Eric: 44:54

do you think about that?

Jerry: 44:54

idea.

Eric: 44:55

I love it. Where we went with that very recently because we have all these new hires, new recruits is that we made the decision to lean more in the experiential vein than the peer support. So we are assigning mentors and it's treated a little. I mean there's an assigned mentor on paper but there's not much structure to it. I don't want to over. No one needs anything. No one needs more things to be mandated to do right now, but it's volunteer basis. Yeah, and the purpose is just Hey, like you might have someone that's coming straight out of the military and with a family. If I can link them up, ideally, with someone coming straight out that came out of the military with a family or a young kid, like, if I can find those little similarities, then I'll go for it. But if not, if it's just kind of like someone that's eager, then cool, and it's just that recognition of mentorship again, right, yeah, where it's all hands like we need to ensure success. It's not nowhere should it be the Hey, prove yourself and we'll be waiting here and oh, we still can. 60% of the people we hire, okay, well, i mean, when the generations get tougher, then we'll staff it up. It's like, no, we need to meet them halfway, yeah. So I do love the aspect of looking at it as peer support, because then you do have some element of privilege. There's definitely some carryover where a lot of mentors you know of course they're volunteering. So a lot of them are the peer support types already that are already volunteering that capacity. So partially it just came down to having enough people and some people are still kind of double tap, but but it's cool because I see some people are leaning more into that role, more than I asked. Right They're. They're really checking in, they're getting coffee and others, or maybe it's a text, but that text alone just to have an outlet, right?

Jerry: 46:44

Cause you can't go to your.

Eric: 46:45

you may not want to um rightfully so go to your FTO to ask some dumb question or the supervisor, but but if you have another officer, you know that may work, the you know the other shift and you can just pitch him some stuff or be like Hey man, like what was it like adjusting your hours and, you know, communicating that with your family and trying to figure that out, like just to have that commonality could be huge.

Jerry: 47:07

Yeah. So setting them up for success, right, i mean it's great to have a mentor, no matter what you're doing in life, and someone that can just I see it as like speed up your success, right? Uh, yeah, absolutely. You don't have the opportunity to discuss things with another person kind of openly and casually, and I don't think you can speed up to your success.

Eric: 47:28

Yeah, and I think that it also goes back to giving grace and just recognizing right. Like it's because I've been interacting with prospective candidates and new hires that I am harking back to being a new cop and being like I don't even know which way is up right And my take is this job is more complicated than it ever has been. Right It used to be hey, do you have PC or not? Or I go grab that person if they fight and then fight them. But now it's like, at least in my state of Washington. It's like, okay, what do you have? probable cause for, her law? But then also, what will the prosecutors actually treat it as? What will they get right held for? And if they don't, then is the juice worth a squeeze? What's the liability, What's the level of crime? And if they're acting a certain way, will this be, you know, is it more likely than not? it's going to be a knockdown, drag out. And then what do you? what do you left with that at the end of the day? Are you getting hurt or just suspecting hurt, all these and I'm not saying right or wrong, i'm just saying it is way more complicated, even to the point where in recent time, like last year, we weren't able to use force to detain anyone on reasonable suspicion. So that's pretty huge change of culture. And even how to navigate your tactics, knowing that if someone doesn't want to stop, if you don't have probable cause, you got to let them walk or watch them until someone else can get probable cause talking to the victim or whatnot. So that's just a complete change in things. And so just to recognize like, hey, one, this is way more complicated than ever. And two, let's not forget what it was like for you to be a new person, new officer, because I actually do enjoy sometimes reminding some of my buddies, some of my peers Hey, remember that call that you and I were on, and we were like two or three years on and we should have known that. You know like, yeah, we all make mistakes, it becomes possible. But now you know a new person makes a mistake And, depending on your department culture, you may not, you may not be able to forgive them for it, and you're like okay are the stand like let's be, let's be real.

Jerry: 49:32

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Let's be real, like it's that's the tough thing and vulnerable. Because if we're real or vulnerable, like we know we've made past mistakes Like we and we learned like the big things, to learn from right and give the back again to grace, give the person the grace and the opportunity to learn from their mistake, because that'll help them kind of lock that in in their brain And so maybe another time when they have that same opportunity, they're not going to make that same mistake. It's different if they're making it over and over for sure things are working. But I mean, there's a lot of times you make a mistake and you learn from like fell forward right.

Eric: 50:13

Yeah, absolutely, and that's why I like sharing And I really appreciate the people that have set the example for me to share. And that's what's kind of fun about social media is like being able to reach cops from different areas of the country and new people in Canada. Right, like I can share a story and make fun of myself, whether it's in, you know, not taking care of my sleep and what what that caused for me in my career and my health, not prioritizing that or just dumb mistakes. Right, and hopefully that's that's the point of wisdom right, you will learn from the mistakes of others, not your own. So hopefully it's not a waste of you. Guys can expand it out to help more people, whether it's whether it's avoid mistakes or just perform better or more optimally in this career and this offered that just through my own experience then. Then I'm down and it's really cool opportunity.

Jerry: 51:04

Yeah, yeah, definitely Eric. like let's talk a little bit about your social media. Like, yeah, i mean why I just wanted to, why'd you get us started and what made you take the direction you took with it?

Eric: 51:16

Yeah. So what made me get started was going back to that comment. You know, after. You know, 2020, when George Floyd was killed, you know we were all reeling, our heads are spinning. I had a lot of buddies leave. You know, with political climate prior to that, close buddies leaving my department and, you know, neighboring departments. Just make the change right And no judgment. And I'll say that all day long. I say that recruitment things, hey, no judgment. If you put in five, 10 years, two years, whatever you put in, thank you for your service. I think that it's reasonable to look at law enforcement a lot like how we may look at military service, right, not a lot of people are going to be lifers in looking at generational trends. That might be less reasonable to expect that. But before I go too far down that road, it's the, it's the writing on, you know, just on my own personal Facebook, when I reflected on when George Floyd was killed and what we need to do as law enforcement and how we need to step up and hold each other accountable and how. You know it pains me to see this and see the nation hurting this way and talking about the riots and being on call and being, you know, in downtown Seattle helping out, you know, one of my guys got hit by a rock and they weren't like it's, it's the real stuff. You know, i got a lot of that feedback saying hey, like thank, thank goodness we got guys. You know, we got a guy like you or we got people like you And that was the thing I was like man, if you only knew, right, like sure, we got dead be cops all over the place sprinkled in. But of course it's the, the minority, that make the mistakes, that make us all look bad. We all have stereotypes of every job in the mess ups, right, you know you're drunk pilot or you're whatever right, teachers, clergy, like. We know that and we know it's not true when we challenge it. Is that the majority? No, no, no, no, it's like a fine, like a tiny, tiny percent. Yeah right, but just to recognize that. And so it was largely just to have an outlet to, to connect, you know, help, empathize with the badge. At the same time, to be honest, i was saying, okay, if I didn't do police work, like what would I do? And then that's my passion for fitness. As a you know, department trainer, i've always been into nutrition Well, not always since, since figuring out what wasn't working in my career, you know, trying to be a K9 and trying to be healthy and fit, sleep, and I've done a lot of self experimentation and such with that. So, okay, work and I put this all together and maybe be a coach and maybe all this. But if you track back my my Instagram blue grit wellness it starts a lot more fitness based and then it kind of moves with me as my career, right, So it became a lot more interfacing engagement, because I was in the community engagement unit And that bled right into my mantra of how to approach recruiting, which is it's a lot less the traditional recruiting hey, i'll be out here No, just be everywhere and be approachable. There's always going to be someone somewhere that might be interested or learning more. It just be transparent, be available, be at different events. Whether you're even trying to actively recruit or not, someone's going to have a buddy or a family member or a kid, right? So that's what's caused me to kind of shift my content, because it's just whatever I'm thinking about, you know, for 40 to 60 years a week, yeah. So it went community engagement, humanizing, and then went to recruiting, and so that's still very much part of my life is commenting and sharing, you know, news articles, but also insight and commentary that help people get hired or just give them interview tips, things that I had to learn, you know, trial by fire, right. Again, whether it's nutrition or hiring, interview stuff, it's just trying to be a resource for whatever the need is And that need is continuing to evolve, as I see and even commenting on training, right. So now that I'm wearing the training role is that's a lot more of my purview, and so at the end of the day, it's just hoping that it provides a resource to help people, especially in the job, because it is specialized, but outside the job as well, right. If there's lessons from my life, from my experiences and my friends, and that I've seen that can help you live more optimally, then I just want to put that out and try to create that positive environment.

Jerry: 55:36

Yeah, Yeah, Eric's social media is really great. That's how I connected with Eric And I thought it was inspirational and educational and fun and funny at times And you know it's a good. You have a good mix of things going on to keep people engaged and a good resource. Where else can people reach you, Eric?

Eric: 55:58

Yeah, thank you, man. So yeah, instagram is my most active. It's blue grit wellness, blue grit wellnesscom, for the blog, which I'm trying to kind of went on sleeper mode but I'm trying to pick that up, so there's been some recent posts. You can subscribe there. And then blue grit radio is my newest little project, so that's my podcast And so it's been cool to connect with podcasts such as yourself that have been out a bit longer. But yeah, just to give people a different format, a different voice. And yeah, i mean, obviously, talking about the things we talked about today and in roughly an hour is a lot more dynamic, engaging, than us writing about it for the most part.

Jerry: 56:40

Totally, totally agree with you. Eric's been a great pleasure having you on today, as usual. I learned so much from every guest and there's some great takeaways. I've loved seeing the more approach, the better approach of looking at ourselves with some grace, because we're not perfect and nobody around us is perfect And generally the people who are judging us to be less perfect than they are the probably one struggling harder than we are, for sure.

Eric: 57:09

Yeah for sure. Just do your best. And what I say, like my recruits and candidates, is just stay hungry, stay humble, and that's going to get you most of the way. Yeah, yeah.

Jerry: 57:18

Thanks again, eric. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me, jerry. It's a good time. Thanks again for listening. Don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you access your podcast. If you know someone that would be great on the show, please get ahold of our host, jerry Dean Lund, through the Instagram handles at Jerry Fire and Fuel or at Enduring the Badge Podcast, also by visiting the show's website in during the Badge podcastcom for additional methods of contact and up to date information regarding the show. Remember, the views and opinions expressed during the show solely represent those of our hosts and the current episodes guests.