Dominick Izzo – TikTok Cops, Ladies in Police Work, Hot Calls

this things police see firsthand accounts with your host Steve Gold welcome to the podcast that interviews actor and retired police officer about their most bizarre intense and sometimes humorous moments on the job as I botched that intro i do it live every time just to defend myself but um I got a new uh mixer board and it does some stuff that uh I don’t have control over yet but thank you for being here guys always a pleasure to have you thank you for all the rating and reviewing that’s going on uh believe it or not that is important just for just for social status of the show people see that it’s got over a thousand fivestar on on Apple Podcast which is great and a bunch on um Spotify so I really appreciate that if you do that um before we get started thank you to our sponsor ProForce Law Enforcement best damn cop shop in the nation IMO um you’re going to hear more about from them later but just you know the TPS um landing page they built for us has incredible deals um and I’m not I’m not just saying that you can check it out yourself it’s tps.proforsonline.com um there’s a there’s a hollow sun 507 on there for $1.99 and there’s an Arco aim point for like just at 400 so you you literally can check out if you click it in the show notes and you’re a gadget and gun guy like I know a lot of you are um you literally can’t beat these prices they they they brought them way down for TPS listeners so go and check them out guys um today’s episode I’m very very excited to have him he one of those things I’m always looking to feed the beast and for guests i always have my eyes open for it and um he was popping up in my reels like a lot and I said “Geez we we must have algorithm must know we have something in common.” and he’s got a he’s got really got a giant following of social media all over a bunch of different platforms and um he’s uh he’s great super honest um about cop culture and the way it’s going he doesn’t just tear people down he gives like legit criticism that um you know you probably should listen to if you’re one of these cops that’s get if you’re making it to anti- cop um anti- Tik Tok cop maybe listen to the guest here he did 16 years as a police officer he was in the northwest suburbs of Chicago he even ran for Chicago sheriff at one point doing his best job to change cop culture the great Dominic sir wow that that intro dear Lord you’re my new new best friend holy cow i appreciate that thank you i I appreciate you man you know you’re one of those guys you have a giant following and I saw you on Instagram i was like let me just shoot him a message like who knows and you you wrote back you were like yeah sure here’s my email i’m like damn yeah I I do my best to answer to everybody who uh who sends me a DM all so more than welcome dude i appreciate it man and like we were chatting a little bit before you came on what I like about your commentary is uh it’s very thoughtful and it’s not just it’s not really just for entertainment it’s not just um busting someone’s balls to bust their balls like I see you’re you’re people and that’s what people want you to do like one of the reels you recently did it was like people like “Hey look at this look at this chick let’s bash her.” And you were like “Whoa hold on a second let’s let’s take note at how inc how incredibly perfect the uniform is the physique bunch of blue bellies telling me to tear her down you’re not in shape and then you go on to the you know well here’s some things that kind of bother me about and bother me about what her agency is doing so I think I think that’s why you’ve caught on a lot because it’s it’s easy to go either way to be a super corny Tik Tok cop or just to make fun of those people but you’re giving legit criticism yeah polarizing i am polarizing by nature you know I discovered a long time ago the two things that sell no matter what the platform is anything based off of sexuality and then controversy and controversy is just it’s how you you sell your product so to speak and my product is changing cop culture that’s what I want to do and it really depends on the platform like on Instagram if that’s where the platform is it’s very very very pro cop and if I’m critic critical of law enforcement in any type of way you know I’ll lose a thousand followers that day if I criticize something on YouTube it’s extremely anti- cop my content like like the same the same content will go up on each the same and different audiences will gravit oh oh I can’t believe you’re defending this one and blah blah blah so we the thing about law enforcement and I really appreciate you seeing that I’m trying to be fair i’m I’m Italian i’m 50 and I’m loud in my delivery and when people hear it I I was criticized with this when I ran for mayor out here in uh Chicago Cook County i I was Oh you ran for mayor apologies shut up i can’t believe I said mayor holy crap because I got the mayor on my mind i ran for sheriff out here in Chicago’s Cook County and um I did deal with I wanted to avoid like seemingly I was pandering to the black community and then when it came time to actually hey I have to address the black violence in Chicago the black community some of the the the older leaders if you will pulled me aside and said what you are saying is 100% correct how you were saying it is abhorrent so it’s like I I don’t care about the delivery there goes the shock value and the controversy and you yes there are sometimes people like you who can hear man you’re saying some things but I hear that you’re being fair about it so I really appreciate that thank you yeah of course man yeah I guess being a straight shooter uh when you get to the pinnacle of uh of sheriff or mayor or anything like that it’s um it might not go your way if you’re not willing to bend uh politically you know what I mean with your presentation yeah that’s a shame man that would have been nice um Chicago is I’ve never been there i have buddies that go there for like um for games and stuff like that and of course they only go to like the downtown they love it they love Chicago um but you hear just horror stories on the news about the violence and sell Chicago and all that stuff man and and all the all the suburbs around it yeah the sub the south suburbs are disgusting again my opinion uh I’m in the northwest suburbs and I was in the city all the time for years every day all the time every day and uh then like when the lockdowns came I didn’t go to the city and then like two years ago my cousin and I went to dinner in the city and the second I got into the city limits you just feel this filth energy and I’m like h I can’t I just can’t stand it it’s gorgeous to look at you know a lot of people come in they’ll come in air airport and then they’ll drive or they’ll take an Uber or taxi right into Ohio you know get it off the Ohio ramp and then you’re like “Oh this is beautiful.” And that’s it but the city itself yeah it’s like the city itself just this is my biggest suggestion uh anybody who has any type of of view want to go to the city go to the old rock and roll McDonald’s you know when you get off uh where is it like Ontario and uh wait till like after midnight 2 a.m when there’s no traffic and then walk north south or west and just you’ll start to see it’s just [ _ ] and it’s gross and especially in summertime it’s it’s a it’s I don’t care how beautiful architecture the city is how the culture is and the I I cannot stand the city of Chicago with how just unbelievably violent and and just full of [ _ ] that it is lately pardon my language yeah man that’s That’s such a shame and what in Chicago there I noticed that their police I think I was looking at their police versus sheriff the police wear stars as well there right the police wear badges stars stars yeah don’t they they do yeah and but that’s different the sheriff’s the sheriff’s also patrol the city so we have when I ran for sheriff in in Cook County cook County is the second largest county in the nation it’s 5.8 million people um and Chicago is within that you know you have 2.7 2.8 million people we got a big exodus of people leaving the state of Illinois lately it’s the it’s one of the only counties where for most people who know this it’s you have your municipality your cities Chicago then the county sheriff then the state police the Cook County Sheriff is never taken seriously they actually what do they call the uh the street deputies they’re called the brown clowns because they they wear a brown light brown uniform uh you go anywhere else like if you go to LA you’ve got LAPD but you’ve got LA County Sheriff yeah they’re like the ass kickers dude right in in Cook County you would think that’s the case and it’s not they’re not respected uh they’re not taken seriously even amongst their own and that was that was a big platform I ran on was I wanted to make them the preeminent law enforcement agency of the United States and that would have been a huge undertaking but they’re not taken seriously yeah they patrol they do back up but um CPD I I I say this on every time somebody asks me i have a very big love and hate relationship with Chicago police because for some strange reason now they’re underappreciated they’re not allowed to do their job um a a a percentage of them are slobs a percentage of them don’t give a [ _ ] a percentage of them you you’ll find them sleeping in their squad cars smoking they’ve got disheveled appearance and they’re just there to take up space and they think for some strange reason again this is going to upset a lot of people this is a generalization they think they are the police and I get it i get criticized all the time people think that New York LA and Chicago you have to be a city cop in order to be a real cop and I hate that i it’s it’s like do you realize that there’s you know 8,000 13,000 of them and when a shooting happens you know you’ve get 50 or 60 that show up on a scene right and stand around and get paid and drink coffee for the next several hours with suburban cops shooting happens from start to finish maybe you get four 10 and the investigation all falls on their shoulders due to the lack of the the resources that they have so I I Chicago they’ve always been the ones I pulled over two CPD officers in the same you pull them over their badges out the window before you get up there and it’s who you are so I have a lovehate relationship because they’re their own worst enemies and it’s it’s a stigma they’re not allowed to do their job and a lot of them just don’t yeah that’s a shame man because it is incredibly dangerous place to work i wouldn’t if I’m going to sleep in a cruiser there i’m going to be in the in the parking lot behind the fence well you know oh no you go right you you go right on any main street you’ll see a guy every now and then just sawing logs in the passenger seat of his car while his partner’s in the driver’s seat now it’s again I I there’s always been a difference between a cop and a professional police officer and I think that if you if you start your career as a cop you know you’re going to be a cop regardless i think if you strive to be a professional police officer that cop side of you will have a much more successful career and people know the difference you know I I I hated when people you know what do you do i’m a cop i hated saying that it just it felt like it was slang i felt like it was dirty i didn’t fit in with the concept of it and a lot of what I’ve seen with the urban cops that’s that’s what they are they’re just they just fill a uniform take space answer calls and they you know the [ _ ] rolls downhill and it rolls down from them to you right just a job just there punch punching the clock i get it totally yeah when I was in academy um one of my classmates was her boyfriend was a Chicago cop and we were in Massachusetts academy and um all I remember is she said “Yeah he went he went to Subway uh on the weekend and he he ended up getting uh shooting a guy.” Like oh my gosh just off duty you know they’re they It’s just super violent every everywhere you go it’s super violent but there again too you you look at like sub suburbs versus uh CBD i believe still to this day CPD has to buy their own equipment so there’s like nothing uniform i don’t know this this is how it was you know when I was young when I first tested in 01 you know I I didn’t live in the city so I had no desire like it was never my my goal oh I got to be a Chicago cop that was never my goal but those guys were you know I think I got hired at like 36 $37,000 a year those guys were like at $31,000 a year plus you had to buy your own pistol buy your own duty belt all this stuff so they’re they’re not set up for for success to begin with in a lot of ways it’s just that’s the stigma we’re Chicago police okay and what so again I’m not hating i’m critical i’m just not hating but I’m I’m very critical of the culture there right and like you said you’re you’re not talking about everybody it’s but there’s you see what you see and it’s the same way in like New York City too and Boston like you can you can go through Boston and see um Boston cops on footbeater or standing on corners like shirt half untucked big unruly beard just look just looks terrible like terrible representation you know it’s like why is that guy doing this beat you know it’s like why don’t they have you know somebody somebody squared away looking he’s everybody’s looking at this guy 100% and then you you even question them and they got an attitude so Oh yeah when I was my buddy lives in Brooklyn so we go visit time and the cops there like pride themselves on giving people bad directions they they love when a tourist comes up they’re like “Oh yeah just go around it you know and they send them to like a a gay club or whatever they do and then they just have a good laugh about it and then but every you know a lot of people in the neighborhoods think they’re [ _ ] because they do that to people you know it was you know that’s a lot of the message of call it like the old bull young bull and everybody’s heard that joke and what we heard it from the movie Colors you know anybody who wanted to be a cop back in my generation would be like “You watched Colors oh my god.” And and the older I got that stuff wasn’t funny anymore you know it’s like I remember joking around like crazy at at shift change roll call and screwing around i just told a story the other day about you know I’m very very critical of this generation of police officers who spends a lot of their time on TikTok making mockery of the profession and people think I’m hating you know you’re not a cop anymore you went through this and you’re just salty and bitter it’s like no you don’t understand you can call or find anybody who I used to work with and they will tell you the clown I was on duty and I told the story about how I went to a domestic and I you know while my buddy was interviewing you know uh the victim I was clearing the house and I found her very large purple sex toy on the bed so I decided to try to get him to break his professionalism by wagging it in front of my crotch to get him to laugh and my sergeant walks in so it’s like no we did that stuff all the time looking back you know that was one of the biggest blessings I ever got my my sergeant at the time he he came from us he was a patrol officer he was somebody who got promoted and and the badge the the the gold badge never uh tainted his head and he looked at me and he said “It’s indefensible.” And I said “What?” I’m like “Cuz he’s known me my whole career.” I’m like “What are you talking about it’s me.” He goes “If you got pulled into DC you know deputy chief’s office how do you defend that?” And I went “Wow.” So that’s that is where I’m at now lately it’s we have a beautiful profession a a very tainted profession a profession that the public is just completely uh uh uh defecating all over and we don’t need people to make it any worse but there’s no governor on on what people are doing now to to curb their own behavior and you know call it like an older brother it’s just I’m trying to shake some sense into them so they’ll change their ways yeah I think that comes through totally in your videos and um yeah it is it is kind of like we’ve been the last five years especially we’ve been beaten down so hard that it’s kind of like well let’s just show them how bad we can be then you know we can we can be we can be real bad it’s like that’s not the that’s not the way no and but sadly it’s going that way and and the fact that command staffs are allowing it just absolutely blows me away you know I I I’m very critical on I don’t know how we got to this space because if you rewind the the social media rise of like personalities and personas like 2015 like I talk all the time about the cop and stuff well it it was back then back then you had a couple different people who saw that they had niches in their um their their their whatever they their their voice and I I’m friends with them uh John Burke was like the influencer at the time that I I truly believe you look back at that John Burke started this stuff the influence remover in my opinion he went you know he got that he was a military started criticizing people who are overweight and blah blah then he blew up and the next thing you know he got political analysts he got people in this field then we went law enforcement and back then 2015 it was Officer Daniels Mike the Cop i wasn’t on their level but I had you know I had 100,000 people follow me on Facebook it was the only Facebook was the only thing we were doing at the time uh you had Tommy Norman from Arkansas I believe he’s great i like him he is and and a couple others and the the polarizing difference was between uh Daniels who was levity right he wanted to joke around and have fun and then you had Tommy Norman who I think is the the the I don’t agree with a lot of um what he did uh because I think it puts a lot of other police officers at a at a different type of danger but Tommy Norman was the quintessential standard for community policing and I was this brilliant and then the next thing you know uh he got it and I got it with my department we had policies that were created you cannot uh uh do anything on and with on social media in uniform you can’t my policy was it was affectionately known as the ISO policy and my commanders come out of their uh their Monday meeting one day and they look and I go you got to stop your social media garbage i’m like what he goes chief is just my chief was a camera [ _ ] himself and he’s like he hates what you’re doing blah blah blah this and that and he’s going to do something about it and then a month later there’s the ISO policy and it was you can’t even wear a generic black t-shirt with the white lettering police on there identifying yourself or associating with law enforcement and I was like what is this and I it was salty back then you know that was like it was like the badge if you took away my title officer back then I would have had a panic attack i would not know how to deal deal with it if you took away my social media uh the narcissism that I had behind it I wouldn’t know how to deal with it and I was in my 40s then and as it as it continued we saw that some agencies who were going through the same thing were suing their departments over these policies and winning they were winning and now all of a sudden you’ve got the hijacked movement you’ve got the you’ve got the Daniels who he tried to introduce levity you’ve got Mike the cop who tried to introduce humanizing the badge now all of a sudden we have a a a limitless uh uh content creation supply from children who they get the badge and the uniform to create social media platform for their agenda they’re not humaniz they’re not taking the profession to humanizing it they are now taking the profession so that their message can get out it’s a big difference it’s a big difference and it’s extremely dangerous and it does nothing to bolster the profession yeah you know who hates it the worst is the female cops I know that see the female influencers cuz you know with the super long nails and the and the boba drink and it’s like they they already have it hard enough because they’re only 10% of the profession so they try really hard to hang in there and do the things they need to do to be a cop they step up they may maybe have to they use maybe they have to use their tools a little sooner because they’re smaller but they try really hard and they do a good job and then they have these women who everybody the whole world is seeing and they’re going “Oh that’s a female cop i knew it i knew that’s what that was.” I’m very critical on law enforcement when it comes to females and I I take a blanket position because everyone thinks I’m anti-female cop and I have to start with no I’m not but if we’re going to look at what I’m saying yes I am across the board I do not believe that a female should be a patrol officer no if ends or buts for the standard but since I don’t have any control over that I’m extremely critical of it especially with something you just said that is something the public doesn’t talk about you we we give females a pass well yeah they’re they’re smaller they’re weaker they’re going to go to their tools faster than a male would right we just there we just lowered the standard of use of force and said it’s okay if a cop shoots a guy quicker than he would deserve to be shot because it’s a female versus a male and when the public doesn’t even take account oh my god we’re actually giving women the permission to you to to hurt to to maim to kill citizens quicker because of their gender i can’t believe that we haven’t addressed that by now and we’ve actually making an excuse to the fact where people want the 3030 and they want 30% of women to become cops uh by third by 2030 uh oh I see that it this is this is my opinion all right and and I it’s not a popular one because women get hurt with emotional on it and a lot of women do support but but it’s just simply because of what you said the ones that are out there that are putting on their lipstick and doing a some kind of like there’s there’s a fitness female cop and I can’t remember her name and if I did I would definitely give her a plug but she’s an attractive blonde who puts on lipstick and big blue eyes and blonde hair and you can’t take her seriously and it’s like okay you could do all the tactical videos you want and the fitness videos you want and all of this how how can this be the representation of you’re going to get out of the car and deal with somebody at their absolute worst in life or take me into custody i’m 5’7 i’m 230 lbs there’s no way in hell you could take me into custody by yourself so now because she’s bubbly because she’s America’s sweetheart when it comes down to law enforcement if I resisted and and it’s you taking me into custody and you go right to your pistol you’re going to be crucified but because she it’s her and you know all of a sudden she’s used Tik Tok and leveraged Tik Tok to gain everyone’s heart and support and I love you and oh officer I would love to be arrested by you she goes right to her pistol and puts five in my temple it’s justified it’s justified that’s a dangerous standard to have in America i saw that in um I had that on the podcast i think it was last year there was a female deputy LD that did just that she just just poked a couple holes in a homeless guy that was just was being weird and shouting and I kind of had to search for the story it was a female Hispanic deputy and it really wasn’t that much outrage about it it really wasn’t and if you watch the video it’s all on video you watch it and you go damn that was she should not have been a cop because you Well you have the public uh that was um Well I don’t know that’s not Megan McCarthy i I don’t she I don’t remember the name is one and and her and I have rubbed heads or butted horns or whatever it is together um the the there was just an Arkansas state trooper I believe it was pulled a man over for speeding the guy is doing he’s 60 seconds continuing on his stop after she activates her lights and sirens he doesn’t the the music is so loud in his car he doesn’t hear the sirens and we know on dayshift or daytime a lot of times if you’re zoning you’re not going to see the red and blues behind you so he pulls over the first thing she goes do this female cop is goes running up to the uh uh door opens the door so you can hear the music blasting he clearly couldn’t hear and she goes to rip him out of the car it is a over six minute struggle and for anybody who’s ever tried to take somebody into handcuffs now a couple different things it’s eternity it’s not like a fight right and and people don’t get this law enforcement defensive tactics you’re you’re not out there to punish anyone and you’re not out there to to beat the [ _ ] out of them you’re out there to take them into custody it’s a part of due process so you’re limited in what you can do if you cut me off or you shoot at my car and we’re civilians and I pull you over or I get behind you I’m ripping your door out i’m grabbing your throat and choking the [ _ ] out of you right but this is you can’t do that 6 minutes goes by she’s losing the fight miserably taser’s out taser doesn’t work he tries to get the taser civilian bystander comes up who’s a female can’t do it she resorts to pulling out her pistol and and firing around and grazes his temple she holds them at gunpoint until another male shows up and the amount of support for PE for her from people in the comments because you do get the thin blue line supporters who are they’re the the FAFO f around find out crowd or play stupid games win stupid prizes that’s that’s always their comment but what they failed to realize is because she could not handle her business because she couldn’t take him into custody because she clearly overreacted charging up to a door after a 60-second pursuit that was It didn’t even happen we’re supporting her because she went to because she was losing the fight got to go to her gun she has to do whatever it takes to to go at home at the end of the day we we just proved and and we we give these women permission to use more force than a male would which puts more public people bystanders and other cops in danger and we we allow this we we absolutely allow this and I don’t want to get too long-winded but last year we had Andy Fcella from First Form and he criticized on a podcast that every female cop he’s ever come in contact with has had an attitude and has treated him like piece of garbage and I I I did I I’m blessed enough to be friends with him and I spoke to him on the phone because he you know he he did a an apology for it and I was like I I was outraged i said “I cannot stand the fact that you p walk this back why?” and he explained his answers and I completely understood and I supported his walking back but he had people women friends other cops and other big agencies in totality cops both male and cop supporters across the nation crucifying him and I went you guys all just proved his point if you can’t take the criticism from a man that you support his podcast his business everything he’s done for police and he criticizes female cops and then you try to cancel him get him just uh bankrupt all this stuff you’re proving that females do not have the fortitude to do this job because if they can’t handle a a professional podcast or entrepreneur leader of culture and his opinions how are you going to handle things on the street so in totality and it’s not removing responsibility for males I do not think we’re at a point right now i think females on patrol are a greater danger to the profession and to uh American citizens until we get a handle on it yeah I can I I can totally see your side of it you know who’s on your side also is my wife every time she hears about a female cop she’s like and she’s a very traditional Christian woman but she’s like I just she says I you know I know people want to do whatever they want to do but she’s I just don’t think it’s it’s not the right vocation for a female that’s what she It isn’t and there’s another factor and and you you get the the you how how hard is it to be married to a cop and then you’re at home and you do you get the relationships that inappropriately they they spawn from working with a partner you’re on midnights nothing to do you know you’re you’re you’re you’re car you’re talking you’re developing intimacy and I’m not talking sexual intimacy i’m talking personal intimacy emotional intimacy that transcends into calls you go on there it’s not just inappropriate there but it’s also dangerous we we had a a New York female cop who uh some homeless guy or something just cracked her face right open knocked her out then you see on the video she’s in the arms of a of a bystander who’s trying to hold her up and her face is battered and bloody and her partner is trying to put this guy in cuffs and he’s not putting him in cuffs cuz he’s too busy whailing on him too busy just throwing body shots and punching the crap out of him and and what people don’t realize is when you have a female that you’re partnered with in high stress circumstances like that for us men are our biological DNA imprinted need to be even older brother protector uh uh uh you know the the the guys that we want to shield and we have a soft spot for the women who are in our care we’re not going to treat you like a blue line warrior who’s going to go up on a call we’re going to are we’re going to have a split type of view and we’re going to be looking at the bad guy but we’re worried about you too and I think it’s a bad it’s a bad distraction so I just they shouldn’t be on the road the military ran into those problems too i mean that’s it it just happens um yeah super interesting um who I’m talking about is Proforce Law Enforcement the best damn cop shop in the nation whether you’re purchasing for an entire agency or just an individual officer they have the firearms and duty gear all the stuff you need and they are the best in the biz to deal with and believe me I’ve played procurement officer before i’ve I’ve boughten matching things for bunch of different officers it can be a nightmare but nightmare it could be a night bear also um but not with Proforce Law Enforcement they make it easy they have all the top industry brands and these guys really are the best in the biz so they’ve set up a landing page just for podcast uh or things please see podcast fans tps.pro My goodness tps.proforceonline.com the link will be in the show notes anyways guys um the products on there are just check it out the the discount is great and also proforceline.com to shop the whole site um these guys support our show uh their shop is amazing so um you know support ProForce Law Enforcement because they support TPS thank you Proforce dominic can I ask you about the first hot call you went to as a young police officer the day I passed out oh my god that was um I wrote about that in my book and we’re just out of the academy and um I was a June June i was with uh Greg my FTO very first night on patrol i have no idea what to expect from this town whatsoever um the area I worked was caught in between Milwaukee and Chicago and I’ll never forget the day I filled out i never wanted to be like specifically with any agency if any of it was it would have been the town that I grew up at Hoffman Estates Illinois and I wanted to be a Hoffman Estates cop but I was an anomaly and the day I filled out my first application to the day I got hired was four weeks and I kept hearing these horror stories from people who were saying you you got to you’re going to test eight 10 times five years before you become a cop and so the same that first offer came in I’m like I’m taking this job told my mother people wanted to be cops right back when you had 300 400 a thousand applicants showing up and um you know my mother’s like why are you going to work there and I didn’t know anything about this town well I I went up to the town during the day once and I I had seen it because the only times I’d ever seen it were nighttime i was a 4 a.m bartender so I dropped off my application at 5:30 in the morning when it’s still dark out you know I went to go get my paycheck once from the after being home on the weekend the academy i’m driving up there and I’m like broken down cars on driveways grass that hasn’t been mowed in forever rotted out buildings people it was it was a poorer town it just was not affluent at all and so when you go on midnights I’m like there’s no sidewalks in this town there’s no street lights what is this stuff so when we get our first call we got a call of a fight in progress and um it was so awesome it was an adrenaline dump from being in the passenger side seat to where Greg hits lights and sire well it’s lights no sirens and he floors it i’m like whoa this is like you know you’re you’re in the Millennium Falcon and this is great other lights i clearly remember I’m going westbound on Rollins Road getting ready to turn north on Cedar Lake and I see another squad zip two squads and I know exactly who they were sw uh zipped up north on Cedar Lake flew over Rollins Road another squad car we get there and you know there’s six or seven guys fighting and they scan they run away um and there was like seven or eight of us all the lights are flashing all over so I’d never seen the effect of lights uh you know in the middle of the night and it was this is this was distracting it was beautiful all this stuff so now we’re all looking for these guys fighting and I’m like I’m just trying to be alert and I got to listen to what Greg wants and it’s sensory overload absolutely next thing you know next thing you know we’re we’re looking for this guy and it’s it’s 2 a.m and um one of the cops goes up and she and she’s got to go check on this home see if the guy ran into there so I’m like “Okay we’re going to knock on the door.” She walks right up and she starts kicking the door now I’m I’m like polite you know I’m not you what we kick doors here at 2:00 in the morning to wake people up and as as there’s three or four of us standing at the door um one of the other cops comes around the corner and he goes “Oh he’s right there.” And I look and it was a foot a foot from me laying in bushes that were not even a foot high this guy is in a bright yellow shirt and I’m like he’s right freaking there jump on top of him handcuff him and I I stand up and I go “Greg.” And the next thing I know I I meet the the captain of the fire department because he’s taken off my vest and I had been passed out for about five minutes because I I fainted i went down they said because there’s no way it was from a fight i mean I’ve been in the 4 a.m bar industry i was a competitive wrestler martial arts martial arts all that stuff it wasn’t from the fight so it was from dehydration they said I had my vest and gun belt cut up way too tight adrenaline dump all this stuff but that was my first call and I went “Oh how am I going to survive this now?” I fainted on duty and that was that was my introduction to law enforcement but it was it was great wow that’s Man you must have been in the pits for a while after that no no i I I went to a shift change the next day so I worked 11 to 7 midnights and the 3 to 11 crowd was the bigger those are the season guys who all worked it so there’s five of us on midnights you had like seven so you had a 12 of us all in roll call with two sergeants passing by and I knew I didn’t know any of these guys and I knew damn well I was going to take a beating and I walked right in i went “Did you guys hear about that [ _ ] who fainted last night?” And there was laughter and I never heard a word about it again smart tactic be the first to strike even if it’s even if it’s on yourself self-deprecation helped my career a ton yeah you already You could already taste what cops are like you’re like I gotta do it oh yeah oh man that is that must have been such a bummer but I can I can see that happening though if you’re especially if you have adrenaline dump and the I actually for a while um with the vest thing uh it it I had mine too tight when I was new and it was it would f with your breathing you’d breathe shallow you’d breathe shallow but then when you have an adrenaline dump you’re kind of like you’re all wonky you know yeah that was that was the problem because I mean none of it wasn’t the nighttime and lights i worked in a 4 a.m club in the 90s that’s all we had was the lights and everything the strobes and all this stuff it wasn’t the fights we had fights all the time in a 4 a.m club it wasn’t any of it was I was so excited the other part of it was ego right because uh my my chief came down to our academy and he said uh you the graduation and my buddy uh uh Craig and I we graduated and the first the words out of his chief chief was congratulations you guys will do more in your first six months than most cops do in 10 years and we’re like oh this is great and I think that’s what it was it was the expectation of I’m a cop because for all my life I was either a retail clerk or a bartender and now it was a profession and I was like this is this it just lifech changing for me at that time and I was so excited and man yeah I mean I it wasn’t like passing out from from anything else you pass out you’re up I mean I I’ I’ve had a rear naked choke done on me I was out for 18 seconds this was I I remember Greg I said hey Greg and that was it and the next thing you know I meet a guy named Pat Walker well from the time that they call out over the air you know uh hey we got officer fainted to the you got to wake up the paramedics for them to respond that’s four or five minutes so I and that’s the next thing I remember being propped up and my shirts being opened up so I was not conscious for all that time that’s wild man that is crazy um Dominic can you tell us about your strangest or most bizarre call you went on strangest or most bizarre call you know a lot of them were funny um which at the time shouldn’t have been um a lot of them were traiest was I I give this as an example this is this is when anybody asks me what it was like to be a cop uh this is this is always the call I give them because it wasn’t exactly strange it was uh just kind of like career changing um I tell people imagine you’re you’re standing at the urinal and you got to piss bad and you know here you are in the middle of emptying your bladder and then you hear your your your in your earpiece you hear a tone go off and that tone is a and then you know okay here comes a high priority call and for those who don’t know the town I work for we shared the error with five other agency or there’s five of us total so if you had a traffic stop you know and there’s five other guys calling a traffic stop at the same time you’re going to take it in order and you got to shut up and listen when the tone came out it meant that the dispatch was was holding the air for a specific agency you’re at the you’re you’re in midstream and you hear your number called out 9272 or 9273 uh and and you’re so obvious you got to pay attention 9293 uh car versus child it’s like “Oh shit.” You have to finish up your your stream of urine as best you can cut it off you’re listening in your ear as you’re sprinting back to your squad car it’s about 6:00 on on a Saturday uh afternoon it’s Halloween you get in your car your sergeant pulls out before you you pull out now you got to follow him but you also got to look at the map and you got your your MDT your earpiece you know because still on your your your squad car radio you don’t even have time to be back buckle yourself in and you’re flying down the road because now and it’s weird how cops think right my mindset on that call wasn’t I was looking for a kid that got hit by a car i was looking for a car that was fleeing the scene cuz they didn’t tell us that but that’s how my mind thought right so I’m speeding down this road we’re going up north in the Countrywalk subdivision and you pull up and you’re doing 45 miles an hour in a 25 mph zone people are flying back it’s Halloween you got kids and parents everywhere so you still got the perception of you got to be careful and then you see 30 people all waving you over here all over here and you look and you pull up and your sergeant slams on the brakes you slam on the brakes right behind him and then you did have the seat belt on so it digs into your throat and all this you get out of the car and there’s a mom moaning and wailing and she’s just covered in her child’s blood and she’s rocking this kid back and forth and you’re looking you’re trying to get something from somebody where’ the car go where’ the car go because you want to put the you you want to put the information out over the air but selfishly you don’t want to be the one that doesn’t catch them right because it’s a car versus kid and and you know you’re you’re get now you’re for people who don’t know either you’re you’re experiencing a million different things that goes on your head simultaneously i want to get that car but now I’m on scene i’m committed to hear i got to get the information get it over the air but then it turns out it wasn’t a car i’m like what was it it was a piece of industrial uh uh trailer equipment that housed uh uh landscaping equipment and then you find out the kid pulled the lever and this big door had no springs on it so it crushed the kid and and now you’re you’re dealing with that and you’re you’re calling up your dispatch tell us tell paramedics to step it up and you find out years later they go “Well we can’t do anything because they’re going as fast as they can.” You know and you go through that whole thing you take the parents as the kids get flyed off for life and you speed 110 mph down 294 to get the kids to the parents to the hospital and then you find out later the kid’s dead and you drive home in silence after all that happens and you walk through the door and your girlfriend’s getting ready to go out to the bar with her friends that night and she’s putting on her mascara and you’re trying to tell her “Yeah I saw this horrible you know it wasn’t the dead kid it was the moaning and wailing mom in pain that you could do nothing about and you have your your girlfriend just looks at you and goes “Well you’re the one that chose this profession.” And I tell people you have to take all that and compartmentalize it that’s that’s what law enforcement is that’s what being a cop is all that stuff and you have no control over any of it and then you get like the guilt but the guilt makes no sense it was an accident you don’t control over anything but then you also have how do you how do you Oh is it so horrible to say i enjoyed the fact that I got to take two parents in the back of my squad car and I was doing between 110 and 120 mph in a Ford Crown Victoria to get to the hospital and you can’t do that i could though i could though and then you also have to compartmentalize why am I not bothered i just saw a dead kid today i’m not bothered by this what is this so there’s a there is so many components to law enforcement that people don’t understand and when it comes down to you asking like what was your weirdest call or whatever that’s the one because it’s like that was kind of like the standard of all the stuff I’ve been through and I’m like okay why was I never bothered seeing dead kids why was I never bothered by this and that stuff why did I cry on the way home at certain calls and then why do the other ones get me angry so for me personally those calls always sparked an interest with my own ability to process things and that was the weird nature of it because in the other side of it no call was ever weird because you you just you compartmentalize everything as simply it’s a part of the job it’s what I do so in a long-winded answer uh that was one of them but they were all like that yeah that I mean man that is a that is an intense story i mean you’re right though i mean I’m my my mother-in-law is visiting right now and she’s “Oh what’s been going on in town or at the job or in what’s been going on around on in the towns around us and you know I just start rattling things off and um when you tell people that aren’t in the business they’re like “Oh my gosh it seems so nice around here or whatever.” You know what I mean it’s like “Yeah these little things happen.” And some of it is truly strange and bizarre but not to us you know and to us it’s just kind of like and I think the longer I’ve done the job the less I I don’t know because I hear a lot of people talk about it like being deep inside me somewhere but the longer I’ve done the job it bothers me less yes um Yes it’s Yes and you can And if you do analyze yourselves you can be like “Well what is wrong with me have I just I grown calluses on my heart?” Or you’re just protecting yourself you know i think it’s I think it’s both and I think that we you and I say we I’m not a cop anymore i haven’t been for years um but I think you become a person who handles stress so much better and for me I and this was a a pivotal point in my career too where like I I was blessed right i made a great paycheck i got to leave i didn’t work or I didn’t live in the town I worked at right i worked I lived in a much nicer area and when I started to see that the things these people were going through on a daily basis how much money I made and the fact I could leave whenever I want I I started taking things a little bit more seriously and respectful i stopped treating people in my mind as “Oh this is a [ _ ] who’s calling 911 for something stupid it’s petty.” It’s petty to you it’s worldchanging to them and that was like the beginning of my my difference from going from a cop to a professional police officer and starting to look at I I can never complain about anything again you know okay XYZ is going to happen to you every time that that I get a little bit of stress you know I’m like well yeah but you remember when you saw this that was their world what’s with your world oh you you lost a contract on something that that whatever okay you’re right so for me personally it didn’t matter if it was a personal relationship didn’t matter if it was something traumatic you know death of a loved one it’s like I have seen people who have had it a hundred times worse i have no right to complain about anything ever again oh it definitely sets you up to be grateful or it should i mean it’s like the the horrible domestic you go on Christmas day and then you go home to your your great family and it’s like wow the the polarizing views here i am so grateful for the life I have and it was like that too and um I’ve said this before in the show but I worked at backgrounds uh for LAPD hiring for a couple years and it it’s all just um coppers you know just from all different cities around and from LA where you work with them and um but managed by civilians so everything to them they’re their screw up is you know not my emergency type of deal but they are stressed out about so much stuff and these I’m working with guys have been five six seven shootings and they never like the the the um it pretty much was a cubicle job except for the field work we did they were like never stressed and they would just laugh at management be like yeah this is real stressful oh the deadline you know like nothing nothing bothered these guys no when you see what you see it’s it’s how how can it’s it’s wrong it’s an insult to to humanity when you when you stress out about stuff and you’re like dude uh you know and I I I have and I have seen too many dead kids that I didn’t want to see and you know I there the one that sticks out more it’s always it’s never the dead kids that bother me it’s always the parents and that’s that’s my measure of of standard of complaining i Yeah it was I I I tell a story about where I uh we get a call and it was the agency next to me that child not breathing and it was again it was a winter night was snowing like crazy and um nobody was driving anywhere everyone was parked reading a book back then or back then since we didn’t have cell phones we it was Maxim magazine is what we really read in that spot i used to love Maxim yeah so I remember I I remember reading Rax magazine and I was close to the town boarded us and I was close to where this call was so I just decided to float over you know and I was doing 5 miles an hour to get there and um I show up and you and I remember getting out of the car and the two things I heard was I actually heard the strobes of my overheads going off cuz that snow had just like muffled everything it was so quiet and this woman was half in and half out of her doorway laying moaning and wailing and screaming and reaching and her husband had just pulled up at the time he was out plowing that night hispanic couple younger couple had to be in their 20s and he pulls up and I pull up and I’m it’s knee deep in the snow and I’m trying to trek to get in the house i get in before him but I go “Where am I going?” And he points me in the direction she’s still moaning and wailing in the uh in the half in half out and we go in and what they did was is they put their their five-month-old in the crib but they had pillows and stuffed animals in there and he was on his stomach so he suffocated he just didn’t lift his head suffocated and I remember picking the kid up to do CPR and it was he was purple and he was cold and rigid and I’m like put my I put the two fingers on the chest and I’m looking I’m like I look at the dad and I just shake my head and I I put the kid back down and I watch this man who was you know my age at the time i watch him destroy a bedroom flipping dressers punches through the closet door i thought he was I I was pro that was the only time my career was ever scared legitimately because if that man wanted to kill me with his rage there was no question he could have and that was you know then then the call proceeds the other agency gets there there’s like 10 of us in the house and then the family starts coming over and it’s it was the just the most horrible just like melancholy atmosphere and that is my benchmark for that night was probably going to be the worst night in that family’s history of being alive and anytime I wind like my mother passed a couple years ago and a lot of my family is like you’re not broken up about it and I’m faith-based so in one view I’m like “Oh my mother’s in heaven why should she be broken up about it?” But in the other side of it it’s like I’ve seen so much worse she died at 74 70 73 74 this was an infant that died at at 5 months and these children who were in their 20s or early 30s who had a a beautiful child of their own how are they going to survive as a couple now is is he going to blame her is she going to blame him for going out that night not checking on the baby that’s stress that you you it will it humbles me all the time by thinking there is not a damn thing on this planet I should ever gripe about after what I’ve seen nothing at all yeah yeah oh my gosh that is I have three kids of my own and um I am so glad my youngest is five now and that was always the when they’re little little babies that’s what you that that is your that is the nightmare that that you could live through that that could happen like I mean yeah my sister lived with me um when she was raising my first niece and because of that call I don’t think I slept the first uh probably two years of my niece’s life because I would always be waiting for my sister to wake up in the middle of the night and scream the same way I heard that woman screaming so you you you the job affects a lot of people a lot of ways and kind of to come full circle that’s where I don’t I I have no respect for this Tik Tok generation of cop who focus so much online without understanding the reality of the job and acting as if what they’re doing is is is levity it’s it’s it’s it’s meant to distract it’s not what they’re doing is putting a different priority on a very serious profession doesn’t matter if you’re in a town of of a hundred people or a town of a million people you you you are in a responsibility to be there you’re the person that someone calls at their absolute worst day on the planet and here you are screwing around on social media instead of being prepared mentally and emotionally for being the best version of yourself to serve others so it’s it’s just there’s so many components to it it’s bad brother i mean it is um those are all great and true points but it just on the base corniness level like someone like me is just slipping through it’s and it’s um it’s just like textbook a lot of them it’s just textbook narcissism like it’s it’s it is it is just all about them you know what I mean there’s no which which is the opposite of police work the idea of it you know yeah and and we do you have to be have a certain type of narcissistic characteristic to be a cop i I 100% embrace my narcissistic side i get it i don’t have respect for uh the the influencer Hulkilla who has you know I just did I just did a video on him the other day because here he is he he mocked he made a skit out of an overdose subject and he’s like I’m like this is what you do you know I I never and and I got a little bit of a taste of a humbling uh the story I told about the Halloween I told on Facebook years ago and um when I ran for sheriff I learned firsthand how cops hate hate other cops nobody a cop will never be hated more by other than by other cops and I had people try to dig into that story to find out whether or not it was legitimate and people made up stuff saying “Oh yeah I spoke to the ER trauma nurse and that didn’t happen.” I’m like you know you guys are absolutely ridiculous but that got me in a position of you know these stories you keep to yourself and you only you tell them when it’s poignant and relevant and you don’t they’re not made to be light of so when this whole gorilla is telling these skits to kind of humanize the badge number one it’s you that’s not how it’s done that’s not how it’s done number two the fact that you’re doing it that way is such a disrespect and disservice to those that you serve who may have been through that type of call because now you’re making it all about them or you not them and that’s the biggest problem I have so it does spin back to the narcissism but these kids who are who they have the badges now they have the stripes they’re command staff some of them this is all they know and this is this is where the the the profession is headed on a very dangerous path yeah the Hulkilla stuff brother i I mean I don’t know the man at all he’s probably a nice guy but like it the guy if people out there who don’t know it uh don’t know what he does he he like will he will play he does a full dramatization of things he’s supposedly been to where he plays different characters in different outfits it’s It is at best incredibly lame and at worst just an outofcrol narcissist like who who I I mean I can’t believe the amount of time he spends while working this i don’t know about you but we didn’t have take-home cars i do not think that a majority of law enforcement county and state have take-home cars i don’t think that most municipalities do and when you see these these children these faux professionals and you get the public well you know they’re they’re videoing in their squad car well maybe they’re on a break you’re never on a break when you’re in your squad car and it says something it’s like and I did a I did a follow-up video on him and I pointed out you’re doing these skits you’re in full uniform you’re in your car so that would mean if you’re off duty you took the time to dress up in your uniform to get in your squad car and makes it even lamer right and but there was a story that in the very same town he worked at uh a teacher was arrested for abusing children so I said and I kind of I tried to point this out for the the the awareness you may not have had any nexus whatsoever to this crime or this investigation but do you think the public knows that so how do how do you defend hey while these ch you may not have even been SRO it may have just been reported 2 days ago but here we have this police department while children are being raped in school you have one of their officers who focusing on two million people on his social media instead of the maybe a handful of thousand people in his town and maybe he could have prevented those children from being raped if uh he had more command presence and say maybe walked through the school or drove through the parking lot more instead of filming on TikTok so there it’s a very big perception as reality problem and they don’t get this yet yeah yeah you’re absolutely right it’s just bad bad optics um Dominic can you tell us about your most intense or terrifying call that you went on no they they were all No the the the the pucker you know the the butthole pucker ones i mean we had suicidal subjects who were reportedly armed with a gun and you I can’t explain this where you get the tactics and I was I was blessed you know we had a lot of high priority calls and they were great i’ve only had my finger on the trigger of my pistol once never pulled it thank God we had our pistols drawn all the time felony stops um domestics with weapons and I no there was never a specific one i mean I could tell you maybe because it was tactical we had a guy who his girlfriend calls from uh South Bington Illinois and she says “You know my boyfriend’s suicidal he says he’s going to kill himself he’s got a gun.” And it was winter time again too you know three of us go walking up to the door and there’s It’s always winter time in Chicago oh my gosh it’s winter time and it’s cold out and it’s afternoons and it’s my buddy Craig and I and there’s the door he’s got the storm door open but the screen door is shut and we hear Frank Sinatra blaring in the background and I’m like “Oh my god here we go.” open up the door and like police department anybody home and there’s a gun case open on the floor open on the floor and the gun case is empty and we see the basement door empty and that’s where we hear the music blur it was a spiral staircase so we’re trying to tactically you know maneuver down a spiral a very narrow spiral staircase and you could see him sitting on the bench with a bottle of sambuka and the pistol or actually a long gun was at his feet and I’m like uh how do and I’ve got you know my non-tactical sergeant in front of me it’s I mean stuff like that you know but for the most part there was never there was never um there was never any one where I was like “Oh my god this is this is horrible i I’ve had the pursuits I hated i hated i’ve been in five vehicle pursuits and every single one of them I hated um the last one was a guy from WKE Keaggan shoots his uh his girlfriend in the head on New Year’s Eve night and um the car shows up in our town and next thing I know here goes you know a guy named Mike Bar from the town north of us he’s pursuing it and you know his lights and sirens goes flies past me then Michelle from the town over and then I’m the third car in and we get all of a sudden we hear what every cop wants to hear because not everywhere is Georgia State Police we hear pursue pursue pursue and by the end of this we went back to the town he went right back to the bar it was just like the Dark Knight Rises where all those cops kind of fun they corner Batman in to the alley in in the in Gotham there was a hundred squad cars on scene the night sky was flashing red and blue and it was you know it was Yeah we we formed a stick and you know I got the command from uh Tran was his name from Walkagan he says “You see any fur of movement you put a bullet in his head.” And you know thank God he didn’t resist and that was it those kind of calls they came and they were cool and then afterwards you’re like “Okay that was that was surreal that was kind of surreal i can’t believe I get to do this.” But no call ever no call ever scared me uh the guy with the uh with with the the dead infant that scared me uh I that was the only time I thought legitimately you know I’m Billy badass i can fight i could do it this that I did not know if this man decided to turn his anger on me would I survive that no clue just based on how his state of of being but there were calls that that pissed me off and outraged me i had a dead kid who didn’t wake up one morning for for high school senior year great student had a a promising future Hispanic kid mom finds him he’s in he he just died of natural causes overnight 17 years old and this was summertime springtime coming up on because coming up on graduation and um you know we show up and you know and if anybody ever knows about Hispanics it it was 5:30 6:00 in the morning and the house was full 50 people i mean because they heard this horrible news they show up and my [ _ ] uh newly put back on the street sergeant who hadn’t worked it in like 15 years you know sits there and and he leaves the scene but before leaving the scene he looks at me goes “Don’t let anybody touch the body corner’s on his way.” And here’s mom wailing in the door and I’m and and it it was I was so close from saying “How the [ _ ] am I supposed to prevent this mother from hugging her son if she wants to?” And you want me to do that because you think it’s a crime scene that w That was the moment where I hated law enforcement because I saw how compassionless we were because the the the the problem then becomes you’re compartmentalizing everything but you also have to at the same time so that was that was the moment that I started to hate uh uh law enforcement and the profession I was in yeah yeah i get it uh Dominic do you have a heartwarming story from your career i I don’t know i’d always thought um I had always hoped I I could have made a difference uh you know and that’s what everybody wants to do um you know you you you you do your best to serve the community and and that’s what I do love and that’s the one thing I missed i missed uh the the people ask me all the time when I first uh became a cop it’s like how did you answer what did you want to do oh I want to I want to give back the community i want to serve and you know I want to I want to I want to do X Y and Z and you know later on if you ask me that the the the question if somebody some people ask me hey I want to be a cop you know what’s my mindset and I tell people all the time when you’re asked by the board you know the the police fire commission you know why do you want to be a police officer your answer needs to be this and it’s got to be in some kind of way where you say I want to be the the absolute best version of human that I can be i want to raise my standards to a level that are almost unreachable but I want to reach them every day and the only profession I can ever think to do that is in law enforcement because every single day it doesn’t matter if it’s a barking dog call and somebody’s trying to get some sleep or it’s a dead kid it’s it’s a you know stolen UPS package or or fatal car accident people at their worst are asking for their best of you and you have to give that doesn’t matter if you’re tired if you hate what Brass did if you got the target on your back you didn’t polish your boots that day what you have to bring your agame every single day by choice to the profession so when I discovered that later in my career it was nice i did have some people uh who have like DM’d me and said “Hey I don’t know if you remember me but you showed up at my house on this domestic and you know my my mother’s boyfriend at the time was the biggest jag off on the planet but I’ve never seen him coward anybody until you walked through the door and I went I like that.” Oh I screenshotted that one and saved that one but those are the nice ones right you you hear you hear that you made a difference and with with with social media over the last several years I do have a lot of people who have sent me oh my god I didn’t realize that was you and I’m like uh and I go man I hope I treated you okay yeah you were great you know you stopped me you were great that’s the things that were heartwarming to me is that I didn’t let the power go to my head I didn’t let the badge uh uh corrupt who I was and I treated everyone fairly if you needed to go into handcuffs I put you in it quickly swiftly uh but I was fair with you And and at the same time too I didn’t disrespect you because you were in cuffs that day and I wasn’t no right yeah absolutely um and to people who listen out there who are going to take the oral boards that is the question that’s very difficult because you don’t want to say I just want to help people because that’s what every single person when I’ve been on a retiring when I’ve been on a hiring board that’s what they say but what Dominic just said is actually a very eloquent and uh uh good answer so if you are get there are a lot of people listening to the show that are thinking about becoming cops or or on the fence or they’re in backgrounds that I think that’s very valuable what they should steal that word for word and they have to realize what they’re doing as well too because when you pull someone over you’re ruining their day how are you helping them giving them a ticket 90% of what most cops are going to do is going to be traffic it just is responding to calls or or traffic and you know what you’re ruining people’s day it’s so yeah get that answer down and for the love of God understand what free speech is in the Constitution please yeah yeah because everybody’s recording you now i actually had an academy instructor say that and I thought it was just as I’ve gotten longer in my career here it was very good he said “Okay everybody let’s um I want to talk about positive interactions you have with the police.” And everybody was like “Uh I got pulled over and I got I got a warning.” He’s like “That’s negative.” And then we all of us had these interactions none of them were positive he’s like “Guys these are not positive and you’re not going to be having a lot of positive interactions with the public just even even proactively how many times like to now and granted my mouth is one thing i will never walk up to a group of cops who are having coffee at 7-Eleven and say “Hey how are you guys?” Cuz they all look at you like you’re an [ _ ] so they and cops are being conditioned to where you know what do you want this and that and they’re always on edge it just is how it is there’s it’s not an initiated people don’t actively do not go out of their way to get involved with police unless it’s like national night out or something that’s an event and then still it’s oh it’s the police oh they’re so much better than I am oh they’re it’s just you’re you’re you’re always going to have a negative interaction with law enforcement you truly are yeah that is the worst i remember being down uh on vacation with my wife and we needed to know about going somewhere I forget where somewhere in Tennessee and there’s a there’s a cop sitting there we can just ask him i’m like no he’s he’s going to hate it and he’s like well and I was like all right I’m going to ask him but as soon as I got to him I said I’m really sorry to bother you i’m on the job in Massachusetts and as soon as he believed that he was like “Hey man what’s up?” Like he was totally normal but right away when you go down there and they put the window down they’re like “What the hell does this guy want?” Yeah i I may I promised myself years ago I will never go up to another cop and go “Yeah I used to be a cop can’t do that.” They look at you go “Yeah you’re not anymore though.” Oh you’re right yeah that’s what My dad was a cop 32 years and he said “When you’re out you’re out.” Yep you have to understand that that that officer is not your name yeah but I said “Uh I asked him i said,” and you retired a lieutenant on a department on Cape Cod and I said “Uh are you going back to the station say hi to the guys at least.” He’s like “I will probably never step foot in that building again.” Oh I never I understand it i was like I wasn’t a cop yet i was like “What why?” Oh go people yeah for any of your your audience who who wonders what the job is like there is no thin blue line i speak to one I speak to my academy mate he’s in the DEA now and he left two years on he went to the DEA and I are extremely close friends we speak outside of them i hear from one other guy maybe once or twice a year and I’ve heard from two others since I’ve been gone it’s like there is no Blue Brotherhood they don’t they don’t stick around and you know you you hear it doesn’t matter how good you were with your department you’re always going to get badmouththed people will always tell they’ll never tell the good stories of what you did they’ll always you know hey do you ever work with Dominic ah guys I’m [ _ ] They’ll always It’s so true unfortunately it’s so true um cops love I mean you hear a guy wrecked and you’re like “Oh what a what a moron.” Like not is he okay he wrecked his car and now we’re going to make fun of him for eternity and then maybe later they’ll be well was your all right you know but that’s not that’s not the first thought the first thought is let me dig this guy hard unfortunately that’s true um so Dominic after saying all that still an honorable profession we still need cops uh I’m saying all that because the next question is advice to new police officers there’s a lot of people I get a lot of emails from people who actually hear you guys talk about the job and tell your stories and they actually become police officers i get like pictures from people at academy graduation oh that’s great like baby cops being made it’s really cool um what and what you guys say for advice really really they take it to heart so what would you say to them people looking to get into it number one don’t you dare under any circumstances ever any time at all lie never doesn’t matter if you’re if you if you didn’t write the report I didn’t write the report doesn’t matter if you didn’t do X Y and Z i didn’t do this don’t ever fabricate anything don’t ever lie that is it you’re done the second you lie excuse me your agency will not only find a reason to terminate you but your credibility will be destroyed and your dignity your your character is done absolutely own up to everything you didn’t see probable cause on a traffic stop but you want to pull the guy over sometimes they win sometimes don’t do the whole I can’t tell if he’s wearing a seat belt or not be solid on everything um understand that the Constitution rules supreme i I put a survey up years ago and I could not believe this and people will still argue with me on on social media about this your job is not to punish the American citizen no matter how badly you want to you want to just crush somebody’s throat because they were abusing a child due process is still something that every citizen in our country is afforded and this is what makes police officers superior human beings is that they willingly know that the force they use on someone is not punishment it’s preventative and they have a limit on it so you you show up on a scene and uh excuse me you got a guy who’s flamethrowing a daycare center and the second you pull up and he stops and drops everything you can’t ventilate him you can’t the other part of it is discretion for the love of God is the first amendment is important and it’s something that everybody has i put the survey up online and I said “How many of you base your traffic stops off of the language or the attitude of the driver the amount of c excuse me that the citation issue not the traffic stops how many of you base your traffic citations off of the attitude or language of the driver the the amount of people Oh I do all the time it’s my job to correct their behavior i’m there i have to teach them blah blah blah.” What you’re out of your mind it the the And I had a police chief in my area who I did a video on him and he and I are no longer friends who actually wrote in a comment on this thread that I did where he said I said do not say anything be respectful when you get pulled over excuse me say um officer here’s my license here’s my insurance and that’s it if they ask you questions officer I just you be very polite about I politely declined to answer any questions and he wrote in this uh this thread he said “Actually as far as I’m concerned the silent treatment greatly increases your chance of getting a citation from me.” And I went “Your chief of police and you just put that.” I said “I’m and I don’t I don’t I don’t play fair with this [ _ ] the public needs to know this.” I screenshotted it i exposed it i did a story on it and he got pissed you cannot say that so your your your citation needs to the the the pop pissing off the police tickets get out of your system your job is not to punish people well somebody gave me an attitude told me to go left f my mother so I’m writing them for everything on on the book why why because they got the best of you so that that needs to stop that needs And your job is not to punish when you see and I’m I’m going to have him on a podcast in a couple weeks there was a Florida officer who legswept a 20-year-old uh who was half his size and I criticized him for it i’m like you’re not any threat and you know he’s defending himself and we’re being very social about it we’re going to have a podcast on it but you get the public oh that mouthy teen deserved a need he deserved a lesson he effed around he found out that’s not the job of the police right you have to leave your emotion at the door so number one never ever lie number two know the constitution know that you swore an oath to it and leave your damn emotion at the door words of wisdom my men i will say to be honest with you I do take in account their attitude but only when I couple it to their driving history that’s different you know what I’m saying it’s like a multi- multi-tiered thing but I do try to do a good job the silent treatment if they have if if they’re not a habitual traffic j I’m a big and a lot of the guys I know are big written warning guy just because they get a little paper they feel good about it you can sleep at night i know it’s not the best for upper management doesn’t love that my chief’s actually pretty cool about it but there are agencies where like they want they want money they want you to hit people in the wall i have buddies get pulled over in California and they’re like uh the cops like “Hey man you seem like a good dude i know you’re but you’re out of state and I’ve pretty much been told everything’s money.” They write for everything they’re they’re creating revenue you know which is horrific i respect that if that’s the standard either write because Yeah well we we grew up on uh you know you write everybody or you you know and it’s either you lecture and don’t issue or issue and don’t lecture but if if driving history that’s that’s out of your hands at that point and you’re not teaching them a lesson driving history is this is a a pattern of behavior you are sending them to court it’s the court’s job to change their attitude and change their behavior so you’re just doing that’s that’s due process as far as I’m concerned right well words of wisdom man um I want to go over to you have like I said in the beginning you have a lot of stuff going on social media you have Cobb Talk Live got like 60,000 plus followers but you also have another martial arts channel with over 100,000 um and you also you’ve written a book so um the book I’m guessing is on Amazon correct amazon Barnes & Noble and it’s uh Words Matter Publishing is my publishing house okay and what’s the uh what’s the what’s the background on the book so the book was I wanted to start it in 2005 and I didn’t get around to writing it until um 2016 and it’s uh before the badge everything you need to know before you become a cop and includes my philosophies on law enforcement things like you know we are public servants you you have to be like uh u people love thinking samurai meant warrior a samurai meant servant you know bushidto samurai it’s a servant it’s a warrior servant and we need to be the same thing in law enforcement you need to be as tactically proficient as possible as knowledgeable in the law as possible you need to be willing and this is this is going to it’s some people aren’t going to get this you need to be willing and able to take a life if lawfully necessary not that’s your intent because I talk about a use of force especially deadly force being terminating life-threatening behavior not terminating life and um their death is just a byproduct of your your use of force but the the the concept of community and I talk about black culture and and the criminality aspects of it and how law enforcement is vilified and I I close the book out with what happened with me and my department and I put up all the um the documentation all the memos I wrote uh the lawsuit and everything because I I want that was insane weren’t they videotaping you guys 24 like whenever you were working your camera was on yeah and I I wanted cops to know it’s like they’re in my opinion a lot of and this is probably one of my biggest messages and it wasn’t in the book and it’s now I have all of these I’m so blessed by so many people cops hate me a lot of cops hate me for the last several years I’ve been talking about stuff I get [ _ ] on by more cops than anything else but the those who have been reaching out go you going dude I just found you oh my god thank you this and that who can hear me like you can you those the people who can look past my mouth and the sensationalism way I talk they keep saying “Thank you thank you thank you.” And I hate it because it’s like “No no no don’t thank me you’re in a position to become more of a cop than I ever could i ruined my own career i chose to take on brass i lost but I won you know ultimately I won in the end but it cost me my career.” You know people you ever think about getting back into law enforcement i tell people all the time I burned my boats a long time ago you know there’s no agency that would ever touch me because you know I’m also 50 but it’s like you look at my mouth no I never go that way but now it’s it’s your job to do do what I didn’t I didn’t think when I was on patrol hey you know I I want to become brass i want to make the changes i never thought that it never entered my mind so many people they just think patrol is it like no you have to you have to be the highest level of standard possible and make the changes we need and I don’t know how you were in the academy but we that was our saying all the time we hold ourselves to a higher standard no we don’t no cops don’t they’re fat they they they they take a power test and then once they’re done they complain about having to do a suggested man annual or bianual fitness policy that’s implemented they don’t shine their boots their uniforms are just they’re they’re are they’re disheveled wrinkled not ironed their appearance and their knowledge of the law is ridiculous and we see that we see that with all these First Amendment auditors who are proving cops don’t even know what the Constitution is so the book is all about the ideas of of of your character before you go into law enforcement and it needs to be a servant but at the same way you’re not a doormat you’re not a doormat if you run a house you’re a father you know as as the dad you take care of your kids but dad’s law is still the way so you have to be like I was never a parent i don’t have any children but it’s the same mentality you have to be that that backbone of the community but you’re still there to serve so you can’t give what you don’t have how can you give people your best if you are not at your best yeah absolutely words of wisdom right there man um sounds like a fascinating book the link for that book will obviously be in the show notes along with the link to your YouTube channel and um you have a website you want me to link as well or Yeah our website is coptalklive.org copalklive.org articles news um the use of force breakdowns uh and yeah just just cop culture i want law enforcement to to become the the the ultimate status of standard of profession in in the United States i think that there’s in my opinion and people they they just they hate me for it i don’t care i think the American police officer specifically specifically the patrol officer the first responder is the the the highest standard of human being on the planet simply because you have people who choose to go into a job where they are they are they’re they’re [ __ ] on every day by their command staff by the public by other cops by their family and they have to make a choice every single day to give their best to an old lady who calls 911 because her UPS package got stolen in Christmas time and there’s not a damn thing you could do about it but you still have to go the distance even though your town is a town of 10,000 people it’s Mayberry there’s no calls nothing ever happens you want the high-speed chase and the shootings to happen but what are you you’re the guy who’s going to come up in the middle of the day because the mayor said “Hey can you go go around and everybody who’s got a garbage uh at the curb after garbage day go walk it up to the door.” That’s not your job it Yes it is your job the dynamics of law enforcement town to town city to city county to county state to state is is so profound that this is why the men and women who actively choose to do this job I think 90% of them don’t know what they’re getting into it but those who are in it and then see it and stay it that makes them superior human beings to the rest of us and I want them armed with uh uh the the greatest uh uh weapons if you will possible to make their careers uh professional i love it man i love your channel i love your stuff like I said I found you recently i love how direct you are it’s uh it’s really great man everybody should go follow you support Dominic um sir it was an honor to have you on thank you for coming on the show i appreciate you letting me be long-winded thank you oh my pleasure man i’m gonna do the outro can you hang Do you have another engagement can you hang on for like two minutes sure can all right the great Dominic Isizo ladies and gentlemen uh really really really fun interview uh great stories and uh he’s got a lot going on he’s got he’s got that life after law enforcement going on which um which I think is nice i like that this is a time in the show when we talk about when we thank when when I praise the Patreon sponsors guys if you really love the show and you want to show that to me monetarily which I truly appreciate um you can go through the link in the show notes and become a Patreon member it’s patrolman sergeant uh lieutenant or captain a bunch of different levels but don’t worry the show will remain free the four interview episodes a month so that you can get the um uh so you can hear the stories of the men and women of law enforcement and get a better appreciation for what it is they actually do on the job but the Patreon supporters who I’m talking about these are the lieutenants everybody the great and powerful Andy Biggs Kyle Roberts the great Kyle Roberts everybody michael Roach from 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