July 10, 2024
The Second Mountain with Lt. Randy Sutton
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Retired Lieutenant Randy Sutton has a story that is nothing short of extraordinary. After enduring the heartbreaking loss of his mother, a debilitating stroke that ended his career, and a profound sense of betrayal from his police department, Randy has managed to rise above his challenges to become a prominent figure in law enforcement. From his early days in Princeton to being featured on the TV show Cops and landing movie roles, Randy’s journey is a testament to resilience and transformation. This episode takes you through the ups and downs of his life, illustrating how one can find purpose and strength even after facing severe adversities.
We take a deep dive into the importance of having a multifaceted identity, especially for those in law enforcement. Randy shares his insights on how early career experiences can mold an officer’s perception and how becoming a one-dimensional person can be detrimental. The episode sheds light on the critical role mentors play in shaping well-rounded officers and the neglect faced by retirees and injured officers. Through Randy’s personal stories and reflections, we uncover the alarming rates of suicide among law enforcement personnel and emphasize the urgent need for better treatment and recognition for those who have dedicated their lives to this demanding profession.
The remarkable work of The Wounded Blue organization, founded by Randy, is another focal point of our conversation. Providing crucial support to injured officers who often feel abandoned by their departments, The Wounded Blue is a beacon of hope. We delve into the powerful impact of the Law Enforcement Summit, organized by the foundation, which offers emotional and psychological support to both active and retired officers. Randy’s unwavering commitment to law enforcement and his efforts to leave a lasting legacy highlight the importance of courage, resilience, and leadership in this challenging field. Join us as we explore these themes and more in an episode that promises to be as enlightening as it is inspiring.
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Transcript
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Three weeks before that my mother died in my arms and two months before that I was in a fatal gunfight and it was a lot of stress going on and suddenly I had this stroke.
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It ends my police career.
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And my department so turned its back on me.
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They wouldn't even pay my medical bills.
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They just said we're not paying your medical bills and, by the way, we're not giving you those benefits that you're supposed to get.
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And I was mortified.
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I was humiliated, the betrayal of that that I felt.
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The darkness where that took me Travis was the darkest place you can imagine.
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Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
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Welcome back to the show.
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I'm so honored you decided to spend a few minutes with us here today and you will not be disappointed with today's guest.
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Today's guest is retired Lieutenant Randy Sutton, the CEO and founder of the Wounded Blue.
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We're going to get to all that today, but it's going to be one of those shows that you've got to be at, randy.
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How are you doing, sir?
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I am fantastic, travis, good to be with you.
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Now, randy, you're known as the I believe I have this right you're the voice of American law enforcement.
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I think I nailed that.
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But for anybody that's maybe in their 20s listening to this, I want to take you back to where you started and sort of your journey to today, because in my mind we've been friends for many years but you're one of the most recognized law enforcement officers in the world, really, I believe.
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But I want you to sort of discuss with our audience how that happened, because this wasn't something you planned, it just kind of occurred.
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And here we are today and you're doing something that I keep preaching to leaders about, which is conquering the second mountain, which is IE.
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As leader, it's not just your career, it's not just the job, it's just it's not the patrol unit you're in or the squad you work in.
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Your life continues after law enforcement and you have a lot to offer and you are a champion for that.
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You pretty much have set the bar on what everybody should be trying to achieve and we're going to get to that second mountain later today.
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But let's talk about your first mountain right now.
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How did that start and how did that go?
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Well, I was really blessed, Travis.
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First of all, thanks for having me on.
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It's always a pleasure to be on your show.
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None of this was planned right.
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My entire life wasn't planned.
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The only thing that I had actually planned that came true was to become a police officer.
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That was my dream as a child and I achieved it very young in life.
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I was actually one of the youngest cops in the country.
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I became a policeman at 19 back in well in the 70s let's say okay, I don't want to bad enough 70s.
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So I was hired in a small community, princeton, new Jersey, which is my hometown, and did 10 years on the department there.
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I was a patrol officer and then a detective.
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And, quite honestly, travis, even though a small department, 32 cops I was at the top of my pay scale.
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I was a detective but I was just bored to death man and I wanted more challenges.
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I wanted to be challenged and so I joined the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department by a large Florida police agency.
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But let's see how delicately I can put this.
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I went for a number of ride-alongs with them and observed conduct that was not consistent with my own morality and let's say that they didn't coincide with my thought processes on how to be a cop.
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Well, Miami's changed a lot since then, but go ahead.
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Rand, you just said 1970s and big city in Florida, and it just popped in my head.
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So who knows?
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I'm neither confirming nor denying, so who knows?
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I'm neither confirming nor denying, but I just call it.
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The ethical environment was not consistent with what I was looking for.
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So I had heard about the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, actually from a couple of FBI guys that I worked with in Princeton, and they said hey, listen, if you're really looking to go to a good department, las Vegas Metro is hiring and it's a fast growing city, and I had never even considered it.
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But you know, when you get a glowing report like that.
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So I came out to Vegas, I tested, got hired and and the rest was history and I never looked back on that decision.
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Travis, even though you know, like any cop, there's been a lot of pain along the way, the journey to being a police officer is never an easy one, and 24 years, you know there's a lot of there's a lot of pain along that way.
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But had it not been for that move, then I would not be talking to you right now.
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I mean what this department afforded me to do.
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First of all, my timing was perfect because the TV show Cops was just coming online and somehow I was chosen to be one of the first police officers featured on the show and that developed into a longstanding relationship that actually continues to this day, and I was one of the most featured officers on the show.
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My first year was 1989, if you want to do the math on that bad boy and again in 94, 96.
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And then even just a couple of years ago I did another special with them.
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So that made me very, very recognizable in the law enforcement community and then that led to some movie roles, and so that's how I became recognizable, um, you know, through through that medium well, what I'm so appreciative of you, randy, is is is obviously your life's journey would give you every reason in the world to be an asshole.
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I mean, just to be frank with you, and and and you're the opposite man.
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You are just down to earth, you, you meet.
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Your heart is so much in the right place, and every time I'm around you, man, it makes me better, and I just think it's so fascinating because, you're right, nobody set out to do.
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I mean, if you had told me I'd be talking to you 1989, I was a senior in high school and my father and I our ritual was we would watch Cops every Saturday night.
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I even remember the lineup.
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It was like Married with Children, america's Most Wanted, and Cops kind of in that format, because Fox has just kind of come online.
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And if you'd have told me then that we'd be sitting here today, I would just think you were completely a lunatic, right.
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And so what I've always appreciated about you is both you and I have met many people that are recognizable celebrities and things like that, and you're often disappointed, right, you're often disappointed, but there's no way you are disappointed.
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I mean, everyone that meets you is the same way, so it's just been really an honor to get to know you and I want to get to what you're doing now because, unlike a lot of people, you took that recognition and you have done so much with it.
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So many people will waste that right.
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That was a gift given to you and it can be seen as a burden or it can be seen as a blessing.
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You take that as a blessing and the things you're doing now, I think, is why all that happened.
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I really really do.
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We're going to get to that a little bit later, but you've got a story to tell there in Vegas Metro, randy, because and you talked about the pain of law enforcement, and this is how I've described it to people you don't necessarily know it at the time, but it's almost like a part of you is taken out throughout your career, right, and sometimes you get to the end of that career, man, and you're not even.
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You're a shell of yourself.
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I don't think I recognized that until I was able to start some healing after the career was over with and I did three decades in the career and then you kind of thought, man, this is, I'm not the same person as I was and you don't really recognize that.
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But obviously your career never goes as you wish it does either.
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So kind of talk to us about how throughout your career and you got to the end of the career and how that sort of launched you into what you're doing now.
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Well, you know, I think I learned early on, when I was a young cop and I was 19,.
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I lived and breathed being a cop.
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That was my sole identity.
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And I had a hero on my police department, this guy I looked up to as the epitome of what a cop should be.
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He was a sergeant when I met him and he wound up becoming a lieutenant and then a captain.
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But he was a 24-7 cop, to the point where he actually bought an old police car as his private vehicle and outfitted it with lights and siren and a police radio.
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So even when he was out taking his wife to dinner, he was still 24-7 a cop.
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At that time, Travis, in my 19-year-old and 20-year-old brain, I thought, yeah, man, that's what I want.
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That's what I want.
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That's the guy.
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That's the guy.
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That's the guy.
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He is the cop.
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And I thought that was the way to be.
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And it took me several years to realize the reason that he was that because he didn't have shit else in his life.
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Right, that's all he had.
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He was a one-dimensional person.
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And I caught myself being a one dimensional person and I didn't like what I saw.
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And that's when I made the conscious effort to to change the way I viewed things and luckily I had a couple other mentors along the way.
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That grounded me, if you will, and that's so important to have in law enforcement, is to have mentors, people that you can trust, that can help develop you not just as a police officer but as a human being.
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And I know that you know you and I in our later careers, you know both were deeply involved in training and still are, and so we're blessed to have the opportunity to pass some of that wisdom down now, Because it's not something that you can learn in a classroom, right, but it is something that you can absorb through listening to others who have been in those shoes.
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Yeah, one thing that's always bothered me, randy, is we stand on the shoulders of those before us.
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We stand on the shoulders of giants, so to speak, and we don't treat our retirees, we don't treat the former cops the way I think we should be treated.
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I can vividly remember being in a staff meeting and saying hey, listen, these folks are given 20, 30, 35 years of their adult life to our department and they just walk out the door.
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We don't even so much as give them a coffee mug.
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I said how about we do an annual ceremony?
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Right, because we do an annual ceremony for people that win medals and stuff.
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But how about every year we bring people that retired that year to that ceremony and we honor them with their families?
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And they literally laughed me out of the room.
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They thought it was the craziest thing ever.
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And it's always struck me as odd that we are only who we are, randy, because of those before us and we treat them like utter dog crap.
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And now that I've been on the other side of it, I see vividly how we're treated and and I sort of knew that was the deal, I knew that was part of it, but I never liked it.
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I definitely don't like it now that I'm part of the club but to me, do you have any reasoning behind that?
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Because everybody that's treating those guys like that are going to be those guys one day, or gals one day.
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Do you have any idea why that is going on?
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You know it has been the way of policing since I've been involved in it, for you know all the, all these decades, and I'll tell you.
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I just want to now intermingle what I'm doing now, and that is I'm the founder of an organization called the wounded blue and we're the national assistance and support Organization for Injured and Disabled Officers, and so the reason I want to bring it into the conversation now is because it's so critical to what you just mentioned.
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Now, all right, you did 30, some years.
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You walked out with your head held high, you walked out, you got the brass ring of your retirement right.
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And then you know, you walked out and it was Travis who right, and that's hard enough to deal with.
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But imagine when your career is cut short because of your injuries, because you were shot or you were paralyzed in a car accident or some other harm befell you through no fault of your own and suddenly you're into your career for six years or eight years or 10 years, and suddenly that's snatched away from you because of your injury and your department treats you exactly the same way.
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Who's that guy?
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That's devastating, devastating, you know, and my circumstance.
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What ended my police career, travis, was I had a stroke in my police car right on Las Vegas Boulevard at 2.30 in the morning and it ended my police career.
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And three weeks before that my mother died in my arms and two months before that I was in a fatal gunfight and it was a lot of stress going on and suddenly I had this stroke.
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It ends my police career.
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And my department so turned its back on me.
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They wouldn't even pay my medical bills.
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They just said we're not paying your medical bills and, by the way, we're not giving you those benefits that you're supposed to get.
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And I was mortified, I was humiliated, the betrayal of that that I felt, the darkness where that took me.
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Travis was the darkest place you can imagine, and I even went to go see the sheriff, a guy who I served with for 24 years, and I said how do you treat me like this?
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And I'll never forget those words, randy, this isn't personal, it's just business.
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It's business.
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And that, travis, I think may encompass the worst thing that you could possibly say to an injured police officer.
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And yet thousands across America have heard just that and been treated and belittled in such ways that it's led them suicide.
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Rate in law enforcement, as you know, we don't even track the number of officers who kill themselves after they become physically, psychologically, injured in the line of duty and are forced to retire.
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They don't keep those stats and God knows what they are.
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Well, I want to stay on this track line of the injured officers, but you said a word that triggered me a little bit.
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You said the word betrayal.
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And there's a lot of betrayal going on by our leaders, not just to the injured, right To the guy or gal that just did their job and now all of a sudden they're out of a job or they're being attacked for no reason.
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There is a lot of betrayal.
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I hear from those folks each and every week, like you do, randy.
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It's horrendous when you talk about the injured one, because I can't think of another profession that would treat people like this.
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And I listen, I want to, I want to challenge myself, I want to challenge the leaders out there.
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I just kind of gave you a breakdown of how we're treating not just the injured officers, but every officer that did this job that we stand on their shoulders afterwards.
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What are you doing for them?
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I know Scott Hughes is out there.
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He's at the FBI academy right now.
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He's a leader.
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So, scott, I want to hear from you what are you going to do for them, the leaders out there listening to this.
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Let's take action, because Randy's about to describe the action he took based on his experience and I'm going to hold myself accountable.
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We're going to do something as well.
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We need to start respecting and understanding all of the years and years of experience these officers get.
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I learned this the hard way, randy.
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I mean I watched men and women that literally were the experts of the experts in different topics and the department just said we don't want to hear from you.
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And once they left, I mean they almost kicked them out of the department because they were so smart at what they did.
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Listen, it's a leadership issue.
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I can't understand it.
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I can't even wrap my brain around it, but, unlike so many others, you took that pain, randy, and you did something about it.
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So tell us how the Wounded Blue came about and kind of failures of leadership in policing.
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You know there's I've met some tremendous police leaders, people that I would follow into the depths of hell.
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But, man, I've met a few of the others and and I would I would kick them down the stairs to hell.
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But, but, you know, the wounded blue was was never something I had ever anticipated.
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But then again, becoming disabled on duty is not something I ever thought would happen to me.
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Right, that was the, that was what I had to deal with.
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And, of course, you know, I'm in this darkness, this place of loss, this betrayal, this, you know, the brotherhood that I was promised will always be there for you.
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You're part of the thin blue line, You're part of that blue family.
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Right, we've all been told that, we've all bought into it, we want to believe it and then, when you find out that maybe there's a different, harsh reality out there, it's devastating.
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Well, because of all you know, we talked about being on cops and writing books and being involved in movies and things like that.
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You said that nothing was coincidental.
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Basically and you're 100% right Because I was so visible in the law enforcement community after I left, facebook started becoming a reality, right, and people started reaching out to me.
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Randy, I know you don't know me, but I saw you on Cops and I was shot in the line of duty and my chief never even visited me in the hospital and they're not paying my medical bills.
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I don't know what to do.
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I don't know who to turn to.
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Randy, I was hit by a car.
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I was paralyzed.
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My department has thrown me away one after another Travis, and not because I could do anything about it was simply because I was recognizable and out of desperation.
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I was recognizable and out of desperation.
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They reached out to me and I got to tell you, man, I was so frustrated because I thought, wait a minute, there's got to be a resource for these men and women.
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Now, if you die in the line of duty, there's a great organization called COPS Concerns of Police Survivors and they step in and they become part of your family literally as long as you want them Could be forever.
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They believe in that, that peer support of survivors.
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That's great if you die, but if you don't die, there's nothing for you.
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Well, there is now, and that's why the Wounded Blue exists.
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We've been in operation a little over four years.
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We've just entered our fifth year.
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We've helped more than 13,000 police officers.
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We have a team of unbelievable.
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We call them peer team.
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They are our peer team, peer advocate support team, and all of these are former officers or current officers.
00:20:39.521 --> 00:20:42.618
Many have been devastatingly injured.
00:20:42.618 --> 00:20:48.715
We have guys in wheelchairs, we have guys in crutches, we have guys who've been blinded.
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And yet here, what?
00:20:51.215 --> 00:20:53.060
What heroes they are.
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They continue to serve.
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They want to serve their brothers and sisters by because they have walked this terrible journey.
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They know that walking this journey alone can be devastating.
00:21:06.561 --> 00:21:16.679
So they are willing to wrap their arms around their brothers and sisters and say you don't have to walk this by yourself, and that's the power of the wounded blue.
00:21:17.911 --> 00:21:32.701
Well, randy, I want our audience to understand, first off, not the irony, not the coincidence, that God ordained that you had to suffer what you suffered on the job and then you have been literally tapped, I believe, by God to do what you're doing today.
00:21:32.701 --> 00:21:41.569
I don't want to try to guess, but if your career wouldn't have ended the way it would have ended, you may not have had the passion that you have today.
00:21:41.569 --> 00:21:54.580
Right, and these men and women that have been abandoned and betrayed, as you said, it would be so easy to turn your back from a profession that betrayed you, but they're turning towards the profession, to make the profession better.
00:21:54.580 --> 00:21:56.557
Folks, there is no better second mountain than that.
00:21:56.557 --> 00:21:59.700
There's no other description of leadership than that.
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We need to bottle that up and we need to encourage everybody.
00:22:03.390 --> 00:22:09.311
Randy, I talk to either the injured, or the non-injured, or retired, or they think they've been forgotten.
00:22:09.311 --> 00:22:10.457
Almost every week.
00:22:10.457 --> 00:22:13.938
I will tell you that many aren't taking that approach.
00:22:13.938 --> 00:22:14.740
Many are bitter.
00:22:14.740 --> 00:22:19.461
You know I kind of make a joke that you're sitting around watching Fox News all day, just pissed off all day long.
00:22:20.192 --> 00:22:26.292
Right, they're taking that approach, but if they could turn that energy into the good, the power of this country?
00:22:26.292 --> 00:22:31.663
I mean, there's millions of retired first responders in this country right now, as we speak.
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Many have been hurt and betrayed.
00:22:33.055 --> 00:22:34.529
As you said, man.
00:22:34.529 --> 00:22:43.230
To me that is also a story within a story of men and women that have no reason to give back to a profession that betrayed them but they're choosing to do that?
00:22:43.250 --> 00:22:43.632
Oh, there are.
00:22:43.632 --> 00:22:45.157
So you know there are so many.
00:22:45.157 --> 00:22:49.338
There are so many heroes among us that we'll never know.
00:22:49.338 --> 00:22:53.369
There's so many heroes among us that we'll never know.
00:22:53.369 --> 00:23:06.453
You know people that have done decades in service and still have now begun different career paths, but service oriented.
00:23:06.453 --> 00:23:06.693
You know so.
00:23:06.693 --> 00:23:26.480
But at the opposite spectrum, the opposite side of the spectrum, are those who have become embittered, those who have given up and just said I'm going to go fishing and you'll never hear from me again, and I feel sorry for them.
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I feel sorry that they've taken that loss and allowed that loss to define them.
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I feel sorry that they've taken that loss and allowed that loss to define them.
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You know, I got to tell you, travis, I thought the worst thing that could ever happen to me happened to me.
00:23:45.292 --> 00:23:48.959
You know that stroke.
00:23:48.959 --> 00:23:52.684
I'll never forget the night that it happened in my patrol car.
00:23:52.684 --> 00:24:04.036
Luckily I had a young officer with me, but I started speaking slower and I could feel my brain slowing down and then I lost the ability.
00:24:04.036 --> 00:24:07.972
I started speaking gibberish, lost the ability to speak.
00:24:07.972 --> 00:24:12.623
Move all together, laying on the pavement while tourists are walking by me taking my picture.
00:24:13.651 --> 00:24:17.221
You know, quite honestly, I wasn't afraid to die.
00:24:17.221 --> 00:24:20.900
I was afraid to live like that.
00:24:20.900 --> 00:24:39.344
I prayed for death, travis, but once again that angel that's been on my shoulder my entire career was with me again and that clot went through my brain, did the damage that it did, but we all know it could have been a whole lot worse.
00:24:39.344 --> 00:24:56.632
And now, in retrospect I realize, had I not been given this gift and that's what I refer to it now as a gift the gift of clarity.
00:24:56.632 --> 00:25:14.365
I was given this because of that loss and I know that my mission is exactly what I'm doing now to help those people who I respect the most, and that's the men and women of American law enforcement.
00:25:15.369 --> 00:25:23.454
Well, without pulling out a Bible, randy, you just gave some scripture there, because that's what scripture tells us, right when in hard times it is a gift In hard times, there's a reason.
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This is happening and it's great.
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You can look back and see that.
00:25:27.269 --> 00:25:30.536
So I want to encourage the people that are out there that may be experiencing hard times.
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I know why they sometimes don't turn back to give because it's painful.
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There's probably days that you are helping people at such a level where you almost go back to the times you were struggling.
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It's painful to sometimes do that.
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I sometimes stand in front of groups and I see people that maybe are working in a different environment than I had the ability to work in.
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I kind of think, man, what a gift that is.
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How come that couldn't be me?
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