Feb. 14, 2025
Legacy of Principled Leadership with Sheriff Scott Walton
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Authentic leadership in law enforcement is about integrity and the commitment to one's word, as Sheriff Scott Walton illustrates through his experiences. By fostering a supportive environment, Walton emphasizes the significance of standing up for officers in difficult times while exposing the damaging effects of weak leadership.
• Importance of keeping one’s word in leadership
• The unique atmosphere at Rogers County Sheriff's Office
• Supportive leadership creates a positive work environment
• The perils of cowardly decision-making in law enforcement
• Insightful discussion surrounding Betty Shelby's case
• The need for courageous leadership amidst crisis
• How to cultivate a department that attracts dedicated personnel
• Emphasizing fair treatment over equal treatment
• Introduction to the Stand First Foundation and its mission
If you are interested in supporting the Stand First Foundation, please visit stand1st.org to learn more.
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Transcript
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their word.
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I grew up hearing your words, all you got.
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You're only as good as your word.
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You know, if your word's good you can borrow money on your word.
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You know and you know as a kid growing up you hear, you know word, word, word and it doesn't mean to you a lot, to you maybe when you're, when you're young.
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But looking back, I mean today, I mean I see somebody, I meet somebody new and all I wonder is his word good?
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I mean, is he good for his word?
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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 there's no way to start the new year than with this guest.
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You've heard me talk about him.
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I've mentioned him a lot.
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He's in my book.
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He's a true inspiration to all of law enforcement.
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I'm at his agency as we speak, recording this live for you to listen at a later time.
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Thank you for doing that.
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I'm here with Sheriff Scott Walton, rogers County Sheriff's Office 44 years of law enforcement experience, a number of years of municipal agency before this.
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He's been the sheriff here for a long time and, if I have my way, he's going to be here for a lot longer because he's truly an inspiration.
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Sheriff Scott Walton, how are you?
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doing Travis, I'm good and I'm blessed and I'm glad to talk about whatever we're going to talk about, because we've had some good conversations over the years and they just get better and the need for the subject matter you're preaching here is growing every day.
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Well, I mean, scott, I've always been thankful to you because early on, during Courageous Leadership and our seminars, you brought us into your agency.
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I think we trained just about everybody and this had been a long time ago and you committed to that when you started here as sheriff and you fulfilled that promise.
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But I've watched you from afar, sometimes up close, of what you're doing here, and let me tell you why I wanted to do this interview so much.
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You don't know this by close of what you're doing here.
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And let me tell you why I wanted to do this interview so much.
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You don't know that.
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By the way, people don't know this.
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We don't prep for these.
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Scott's got no idea what we're going to talk about.
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We're going to free flow this, but it's going to be very interesting.
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And, scott, I've had multiple of your employees reach out to me because people will follow me or follow the content, and they reach out.
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I get a lot of emails talking about how bad things are in some departments, but what I get from your agency is so unique, it's like a unicorn, right?
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It doesn't happen very often.
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I've got employees that tell me that the time you spend with them, the time you invest with them.
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I had one employee a few weeks ago say that he threw an idea by you and you just said I like it, get it done and it's just so unique compared to what most law enforcement unfortunately is.
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And I unique compared to what most law enforcement unfortunately is.
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And I guess I would want to start this, this interview, with why are you different?
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Why, why do we?
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see so many cowards out there in the profession, but you seem to be so different, you know?
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Uh, a quick answer on that and, and I think the longer I thought about it, I'd still come back, uh, to a full circle.
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And you know, you and I both talked about our dads and, uh, your father was, you know, an administrator and, I believe, retired as a captain in Fort Smith, arkansas Police Department right.
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Yes, sir, my dad ran a steel shop, you know, and his blue collar all the way.
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He was a, you know, world War II and Korean War veteran and Korean War veteran.
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And you know, whether you know it or not, growing up, you know you might go through a phase of trying to prove your dad wrong or whatever, but you always want to be like him.
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And you know, in this small town of Claremore that I grew up in now it's a little big town or whatever, but you know, I still see men that used to work for my dad and they said you know, clint was the best boss they ever had.
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And you know, I guess I wanted somebody to say that about me someday, you know.
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But you don't.
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I mean you don't want it.
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You know, you don't want that as stolen valor or anything.
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You want it earned.
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You know.
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And I think of the fact that I mean I look back now, but you know, looking back, I mean it was just the thing that that fades away.
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Now.
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I don't care what industry you were in.
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Uh, it's, you know, it's people being their word.
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I grew up hearing your words.
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All you got.
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You're only as good as your word, you know.
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Uh, if your word's good, you can borrow money on your word.
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You know and, uh, you know.
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As a kid growing up you hear, you know word, word, word and and um.
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It doesn't mean to you a lot, to you maybe, when you're young.
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But looking back, I mean today, I mean I see somebody, I meet somebody new, and all I wonder is his word good.
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I mean, is he good for his word?
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You definitely want your commitments to stay strong, commitments to stay strong and and um man, in this industry now that we're talking about it, I mean our law enforcement profession.
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Uh, you know, we've seen the best and the worst examples of it and sometimes, you know, I'm I'm fortunate to, to be able to work and and be responsible for an agency that's a real manageable size.
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You know, we've we've got a little over a hundred employees, you know, and I'm blessed, I say, to work with the best men and women that I've ever worked with.
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Well, it's interesting because I have asked that question to a lot of great leaders around the country and they all come back to what you just said the way you were raised and your family and there's always a part of I know in my experience and of course, what you described is growing up with a father that was a leader you want to emulate that.
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You want to make your father proud, which is certainly strange at our age that we're still trying to make our father proud, and there's something to that.
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But the other thing that I think is so interesting is you broke the mode.
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Like in law enforcement, we have this idea that we can send these folks to FBI and A and leadership schools.
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You've got to go up the ranks, you've got to do this, you've got to do that, and then one day, when you're 65, well, you could be a chief or you could be a sheriff and you earned your right.
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People know this about you, scott, but you left your other agency as a police officer no rank and I don't know this about you, scott, but you left your other agency as a police officer no rank, and I don't think you ever desired to have any rank and you stepped into a sheriff's job a very important position and literally hit the gas pedal.
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And that reminds me a lot of Mark Lamb.
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You know Mark Lamb.
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People that listen to this know that I talk about Mark Lamb a lot.
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I've been in his agency a lot.
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He did the same thing.
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He had no supervisor experience in law enforcement, although he had been a leader.
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He'd been a manager in private industry before that and he stepped in and hit the gas.
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That, I think that is.
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There's something to be said about that.
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Are we?
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Are we almost creating and ruining future leaders in law enforcement by thinking there's this pedestal or this system in place that you have to do before you get there, because you're almost brainwashed, in a sense, by the time you get there.
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Now that doesn't mean that someone can't do that and succeed.
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But, scott, you and I both know there's a roadmap to being a coward where you can succeed at a high level in law enforcement.
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You could step over everybody in your way and get to that promised land.
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We all know a few of them personally.
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Where do you think we have to get to to duplicate what you've done here, which is a department that people want to be at, may not be the highest paid department may not have the greatest benefits, because you don't control that, but they want to work for leadership.
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Why can't every department emulate that?
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You know you've stomped all over it right there and let's just, I mean we could talk for a month about you know what you just opened up.
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But you know to expound on that I do, I think we got so used to.
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You know an educational and I mean I'm all about education and training and you know standardized ways of discipline and different things like this.
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But you know you can't take the human part out of it and you know that's the part of this.
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You know I spoke about my father.
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The first police sergeant I ever worked for was the greatest one that ever existed and that was Bob Meyer.
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If anybody ever got the blessing to work for Bob Meyer, he was a fair guy.
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Blessing to work for bob meyer, he was a fair guy.
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Uh, I mean just uh, you know to me, uh, he just in every way was the best example of a good leader as a street sergeant.
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You know, hardcore, uh, old school, he could call it whatever you want but I mean got the job done.
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You know, was compassionate when he needed to be.
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Uh, you know, was tougher in hell when he needed to be.
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You know, was tougher in hell when he needed to be.
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But you know we can't send people to an academy or training that you know that prepares them.
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And again you said it.
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If all we wanted to talk about today was you know how to rise through the ranks in an agency you and I both come from Tulsa Police Department how to get where you want to go, it would be an ugly lesson.
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It would be a sickening lesson, equally as sickening.
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We've seen people in that position that got there by the way of.
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I mean, let's just swallow it, let's just solve it out.
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We've seen serial liars, serial liars, yeah.
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And you've got to say this, you've got to do this.
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If somebody, if you can walk across somebody's head and stick their head under the train, you just need to do that because it shows that you're not scared to discipline people.
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We don't slow down enough.
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You know to think that.
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You know let's put the right or wrong element in this thing.
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You know what the person do.
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Let's just get rid of them, whatever.
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And the best, worst example I could give anybody in the whole wide world is Betty Shelby's disaster of a career.
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Yeah, and I've got that on my notes.
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Let's back that up and let's tell them exactly sort of what happened.
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And I'll open up with because Betty worked for me the year before this incident happened.
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Betty Shelby was involved in a shooting completely justified.
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The investigator that worked with her said it was completely justified.
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But it was sort of this pre-George Floydyd, the very beginning, right after the ferguson type thing, and you saw everybody in sync bow down to the loudest voices right, you know we you probably got file footage of the Press release and I sat in my office that afternoon and watched, you know, the press conference, not press release.
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I watched the press conference where they talked about this and, my gosh, you had the police chief, chuck Jordan.
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You had Steve Coonswaller, district attorney.
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You had the US attorney, danny Williams at that time the mayor everybody got up and apologized for Betty's actions.
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They didn't slow down enough to talk about.
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You know she was trained to do a job.
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You know there was a difficult decision to be made there.
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You know the component that she needed to go home to her family that night.
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No, I mean we immediately apologized and at the conclusion of that press conference, you know I thought two things.
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I mean Betty screwed, betty's head's under the train and all the truth didn't matter at that point.
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No, and you know you just saw the best example of spinalist leadership.
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I thought, okay, why?
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I mean you know tragedy?
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Yeah, you know a man lost his life because of his stupid actions and this is just.
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I mean you fast forward through that deal.
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Betty goes through eight months of hell thinking that she's I mean you talked to her idea of whatever.
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She knew she was going to go to the penitentiary.
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I mean that was her belief and she probably had plenty of you know reasons to believe that, by the grace of God, she survived it.
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Well, the irony of it is you had figures, authority figures that we put our trust in to do the right thing, that we, you know, we elect or we hire, and they all left it to a jury to do the right thing People we don't pay to do it, people we don't think, but the jury actually took all those facts and made the right decision.
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But you've ruined a family.
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Betty walked out a free woman with a ruined career.
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You know, I never will forget this conversation.
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First conversation I had with Betty after this whole deal was over with I asked her.
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I said hey, I'm curious how the conversations went with you and Police Chief Chuck Jordan.
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And she looked at me kind of weird and said what do you mean?
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I said just, you know what did he say?
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And she said nothing.
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And I said you never had a conversation with him.
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She says no.
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Second conversation I ever had with Betty I said has Jordan said anything to you?
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Yet he said yeah, he came in my office, pointed his finger at me.
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When she came back to work, they put her in a little closet and give her about 20 minutes worth of work so she could go crazy.
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And he come in and said, pointed his finger at me and said you know, you're here for your own protection, not punishment, and walked out, you know?
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And I thought, okay, what did Betty do wrong?
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I mean why are you treating her like a piece of crap and continue to punish that you know that girl for again doing her job?
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And it keeps going on.
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Yeah, I mean we could duplicate that story across the country.
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Right, and unfortunately it's still happening.
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And when we talk about courageous leadership, that's the brunt of it.
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It's easy to lead in times of peace, but in times of chaos and activists and media and pressure, well, the truth is still the truth and you still have to lead.
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And you look at that day, I thought you know I'd have respect for Jordan if he'd stood up there in that press conference and said we're going to investigate this.
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I mean I mean inside and out, always.
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But we're going to do it.
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I mean we're going to do it in a fair way.
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The fact that that poor girl accepted the job to be a Tulsa police officer doesn't shortcut or give her any less of an opportunity to justify her actions.
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But I mean that whole deal.
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They accelerated it.
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I mean you know the affidavit.
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Well for the audience, because this happened a while back.
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You may not know this, in fact, I'm sure you don't know this they charged her before the investigation was complete.
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Now we've seen that repeated across the country, because that's what cowards do.
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They think that that helps them, but it actually hurts them.
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Right?
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Because at the end of the day oftentimes we see this time and time again the jury makes their, they take all the information, all the facts, the full investigation, and they make.
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The jury makes their.
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They take all the information, all the facts, the full investigation.
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They make the appropriate decision based on case law, and then the people that were screaming to charge her are now screaming the whole system is rigged, which is exactly what happened here, right?
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Well, I mean and I think it's the first, first example, I remember that happening in Tulsa, oklahoma, and you know Al Sharpton comes to town, he screams and yells I think he gets paid to do that Makes his demands that Betty's arrested and gosh, what happens next Betty gets arrested, you know, and you know her concerns at that time, you know, is death threats.
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I mean, we all know that.
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You know they had to go literally hide and you know she.
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You know the roller coaster that she went through.
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I mean financially, they weren't prepared.
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You know she.
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You know the roller coaster that she went through, I mean financially, they weren the road, you know screaming and yelling in a car.
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Uh, knowing that, hey, that could lead you to some problems.
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Betty, betty did her job.
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Betty walked into a situation that even some police officers wouldn't, you know.
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And especially after those incidents, uh, and we all know the one I think it was at Chicago right after that where a female officer got beaten near death.
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Yeah.
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When the chief asked her why she didn't shoot him, she said I didn't want to shoot an unarmed man because it would happen just right after the Shelby incident.
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And she's lucky to be alive today.
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And you just think about.
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You know, I would hate to think, and I know I'll be able to go to my grave saying that I didn't do anything in any leadership or administrative role that would add to a police officer.
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Think of that, bitch down and didn't say that.
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We'll just do our job, like it should be done, uh, everybody in that leadership role police chief, district attorney, anybody that got up there, the mayor they all said it, um and did it, uh, added they.
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They added to the police officer's decision making.
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If I didn't get too windy on that and make sense, I mean because you know, gosh dang, you know you can't tell me if you're a seasoned police officer near retirement.
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You know you've got your house paid off and you know things are starting to look pretty good for the future.
00:16:55.875 --> 00:17:00.868
You know, and finally, done this for this long and everything, I'm going to risk it by shooting a guy here that needs to be shot.
00:17:00.868 --> 00:17:03.581
You know, and finally, done this for this long and everything, I'm going to risk it, uh, by shooting a guy here that needs to be shot.
00:17:03.581 --> 00:17:09.883
You know, and and um, that's a hard way to say it maybe, uh, but I mean it's realistic as hell.
00:17:09.883 --> 00:17:22.614
Uh, you, you, you, you unwind uh, everything there about you know a tough decision to make anyway, um, and you went through it, I went through it.
00:17:22.614 --> 00:17:30.241
I mean situational exercises and and, and we got in service train on it after we graduated from the academy and everything.
00:17:30.281 --> 00:17:31.946
It was all about make the decision.
00:17:31.946 --> 00:17:37.349
You know I heard people screaming in my ear and slapped me on the back of the head saying you might not want to go home tonight.
00:17:37.349 --> 00:17:38.601
Maybe your partner does.
00:17:38.601 --> 00:17:44.711
You know you've got you've got partners and people here that you took an oath to protect.
00:17:44.711 --> 00:17:46.255
Betty did her job.
00:17:46.255 --> 00:17:47.663
You know it wasn't.
00:17:47.663 --> 00:17:53.006
And again, how many people want to walk into that situation and take care of business?
00:17:53.006 --> 00:17:58.259
Most of them would gladly drive past it or avoid it at all costs.
00:17:58.259 --> 00:18:11.066
And when you see again, I mean I watched that press conference and you know, for lack of better words, I mean that's the most chicken shit leader decisions across the board that I ever saw made in my life.
00:18:11.500 --> 00:18:13.327
Well, you saw that in your own backyard.
00:18:13.327 --> 00:18:14.987
We've seen that, of course, across the country.
00:18:14.987 --> 00:18:26.727
And, scott, you did something during that time period and you continue to do it today that I don't see anybody else doing here or across the country for the most part is you stood up for that officer.
00:18:26.727 --> 00:18:28.453
That officer did not work for you, she did not work in your agency.
00:18:28.453 --> 00:18:47.935
You, as a leader here in an adjoining county, stood up for her during that time, to this day as people just listen to, and then you offered her a job when she felt like she couldn't work at that agency anymore and you took a lot of heat for that, and I have an immense amount of respect, because this was not giving somebody a second chance.
00:18:47.935 --> 00:18:49.306
You've obviously done that as well.
00:18:49.306 --> 00:18:53.951
This was giving somebody the career back that was taken from her at no fault of her own.
00:18:54.701 --> 00:18:56.266
We can all repeat what you just said.
00:18:56.266 --> 00:18:57.067
Of course it's tragic.
00:18:57.067 --> 00:18:57.990
Of course it shouldn't have happened.
00:18:57.990 --> 00:19:06.409
It doesn't change the fact what happened and what nobody offered during that time period is what would you have done?
00:19:06.409 --> 00:19:06.852
I mean nobody, nobody.
00:19:06.852 --> 00:19:08.640
Everybody that wanted to criticize her never gave an alternative.
00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:09.922
Well, what would you have done?
00:19:09.922 --> 00:19:15.554
Because law enforcement isn't in a position to do what the citizens during that day, which was, running away and call 911.
00:19:15.554 --> 00:19:22.521
We're not in that position.
00:19:22.521 --> 00:19:24.989
We don't get to do that, and so we won't debate if it was wrong or not, because it was clearly wrong.
00:19:24.989 --> 00:19:25.530
But I think it's.
00:19:25.530 --> 00:19:28.041
Here you are and I've already sort of built a foundation.
00:19:28.041 --> 00:19:36.490
You end up a sheriff, no formal leadership training, and then you're the only person in this community that is standing up for this one officer.
00:19:36.490 --> 00:19:37.575
Once again.
00:19:37.575 --> 00:19:39.823
You knew you would take heat for that.
00:19:39.823 --> 00:19:44.164
You knew that you would get the media headlines for that, and you certainly did.
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