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Feb. 6, 2025

Failed Leadership in Pacific Palisades with Rusty Redican

Failed Leadership in Pacific Palisades with Rusty Redican
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Failed Leadership in Pacific Palisades with Rusty Redican
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The episode delves into the profound irony faced by the Pacific Palisades community, where those who once helped the homeless now experience similar struggles. Through analysis of leadership failures and community initiatives, we uncover critical lessons that call for accountability and empathy in leadership roles.

• Discussion on Rusty Redican's career and experiences 
• Examination of leadership shifts within LAPD over the years 
• Insight into the community's efforts in addressing homelessness 
• Reflection on the consequences of leadership missteps 
• Emphasis on the importance of engaged and empathetic leadership

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Chapters

00:00 - Tragic Irony

03:59 - Leadership Challenges in Law Enforcement

17:13 - Mitigating Factors in Fire Prevention

22:09 - Community Policing in Pacific Palisades

34:31 - Community Policing Challenges and Professional Jealousy

48:32 - Leadership Challenges and Professional Jealousy

56:05 - Succession Planning and Transition Conversations

59:58 - Fire Hydrant Neglect and Accountability

01:03:37 - Management Failures in Fire Prevention

01:16:52 - Leading With Courage and Integrity

Transcript
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00:00:00.600 --> 00:00:17.512
And it's tragically ironic in this particular case, that the Pacific Palisades people who put their money and not all of these people we touched on, some of the millionaires and billionaires and very wealthy individuals the overwhelming majority of people in the Pacific Palisades are not those people.

00:00:17.512 --> 00:00:19.660
They're not very, very wealthy.

00:00:19.660 --> 00:00:23.443
You know, they've lived there for 60 plus years, 50 years.

00:00:23.443 --> 00:00:24.504
They've lived there for 60-plus years, 50 years.

00:00:24.504 --> 00:00:34.991
But those people all chipped in, whether it was their time or their money or their clothes, to basically help homeless folks get off the streets.

00:00:34.991 --> 00:00:48.773
And the tragic irony is it's now them who are finding themselves homeless at this point, and that's where all of these leaders that you and I are talking about they need to jock up do the right thing.

00:00:50.600 --> 00:00:59.011
Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

00:01:00.200 --> 00:01:01.302
Welcome back to the show.

00:01:01.302 --> 00:01:08.373
I'm so honored you're spending a few minutes with us here today and we've been trying to get this guest on the show for a couple of weeks now.

00:01:08.373 --> 00:01:12.284
With all the events in Southern California, we're excited to have him.

00:01:12.284 --> 00:01:14.248
We welcome Rusty Redican.

00:01:14.248 --> 00:01:32.201
He's a retired LAPD officer, 25 years of law enforcement experience, former Marine, really active in the Pacific Palisades area when he was on the job, just recently retired and he's been speaking on some issues about leadership, risk management, all the things that we're hearing.

00:01:32.201 --> 00:01:36.361
You may be surprised that you haven't heard this in the mainstream media, rusty.

00:01:36.361 --> 00:01:37.123
How are you doing, sir?

00:01:37.864 --> 00:01:39.751
Hey, good, travis, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

00:01:40.480 --> 00:01:41.801
Well, man, I'm so honored you're here.

00:01:41.801 --> 00:01:43.481
We've known each other for a few years.

00:01:43.481 --> 00:01:48.146
I know off and on on LinkedIn and we've communicated there and you did some good stuff.

00:01:48.146 --> 00:01:55.932
I was familiar with you and you were, I think you retired at the Range LAPD at the Elysian Park, there at the great facility.

00:01:55.932 --> 00:01:59.974
Just kind of walk us through your career and kind of how it progressed.

00:01:59.974 --> 00:02:02.578
And you sat here today and we'll talk a little bit about current events.

00:02:03.787 --> 00:02:05.739
And you sat here today and we'll talk a little bit about current events.

00:02:05.739 --> 00:02:07.843
Sure, I'll try and give you the Reader's Digest version.

00:02:07.843 --> 00:02:21.138
So, son of a police officer, dad was a police officer for 33 years and I realized early on that I wanted to follow in his footsteps.

00:02:21.138 --> 00:02:30.931
So after I went in the Marine Corps did what many people you know in our line of work do is look for a couple of departments that I thought kind of fit on top of my hometown, which is Chumpsford.

00:02:30.931 --> 00:02:34.128
Massachusetts Sort of grew up in the Chumpsford Lowell area.

00:02:34.128 --> 00:02:36.165
Great people out there as well.

00:02:36.979 --> 00:02:44.843
But while I was in the Marine Corps, obviously down at Camp Pendleton sort of had an account to be close to Los Angeles During the riots.

00:02:44.843 --> 00:02:49.348
I'm just going to kind of give a quick what sort of fed me into the LA area.

00:02:49.348 --> 00:03:02.600
I was down at Camp Porno on Pendleton when the riots kicked off after the Rodney King verdict and from there my buddies and I, when we had leave, would go up to LA often.

00:03:02.600 --> 00:03:04.923
So we kind of had an idea a little bit of what it was about.

00:03:04.923 --> 00:03:22.175
But we got called in to basically by our battalion commander and said hey, get your stuff and get it out on the parade deck and we're going to be going up to Los Angeles to assist them in swelching the violence that was going on.

00:03:22.175 --> 00:03:37.334
So of course, as a young, you know, 22-year-old yeah, that wasn't lost on me that infantry Marines are now being going to be going up to Los Angeles to sort of swelch the violence that was going on up there, the rioting.

00:03:37.334 --> 00:03:47.360
So I'll get back to the other stuff later, but you know that left a mark in terms of that city being someplace that I wanted to work.

00:03:47.360 --> 00:03:48.844
It looked like it was very busy.

00:03:48.844 --> 00:03:59.241
Yeah, um, um, I think, like probably most police officers, you want to go someplace that's that's fairly busy that you know you can make a positive impact on the largest amount of people.

00:03:59.483 --> 00:04:14.795
So got out of the Marine Corps and went and tested with LAPD and was told this was in 93, was told, hey, thanks for coming, but you're the wrong race and then the wrong gender.

00:04:14.795 --> 00:04:20.488
So you know it was what it was.

00:04:20.488 --> 00:04:23.166
I had a pretty good sergeant that was in my oral interview.

00:04:23.166 --> 00:04:27.949
That was very, very honest, took a little prying, but I was able to get across to him.

00:04:27.949 --> 00:04:36.805
Hey, look, I'm not looking to complain, but you pulled me out into this hallway and told me that I did an amazing job and in the same sentence, you're telling me that I can test every six months.

00:04:38.129 --> 00:04:53.990
I live in Massachusetts now I can't fly back and forth and eventually he came around and said look I hate having to tell you guys this, especially you military guys that come here and he was a black gentleman, so it wasn't like you know there was.

00:04:53.990 --> 00:05:08.288
He was trying to keep it close to his vest, but again he seemed like a really nice guy and eventually just said look, right now we just had the riots that you're trying to come in on the end of and unfortunately you'll get on.

00:05:08.288 --> 00:05:11.410
Please keep trying, but try another time.

00:05:11.410 --> 00:05:14.767
And you just happen to be a quota at this point.

00:05:14.767 --> 00:05:16.091
That is all stocked up.

00:05:16.091 --> 00:05:38.560
So went back, ended up becoming or getting on the job with the hometown that I grew up in, which is Chumpsford Massachusetts, with my, the hometown that I grew up in, which is Chumpsford Massachusetts, got on that PD and, you know, ended up making my way back out to Los Angeles and got out here in 2002, just after 9-11.

00:05:38.581 --> 00:05:39.942
So and that was sort of the beginning of my LAPD career.

00:05:39.942 --> 00:05:40.663
Yeah, you know, I test.

00:05:40.663 --> 00:05:44.225
I was tested in 93 as well and I heard similar stories where.

00:05:44.225 --> 00:05:46.649
There's lots of stories out there and I think they were generally right.

00:05:46.649 --> 00:05:48.310
You just have to keep trying.

00:05:48.310 --> 00:05:54.055
Completely different story today, of course, when it comes to recruiting, but they had a ton of people back then.

00:05:54.055 --> 00:06:02.459
Rusty, obviously you've got a ton of experience there.

00:06:02.459 --> 00:06:11.165
You constantly make comments about leadership and I think it's sound.

00:06:11.165 --> 00:06:13.574
What was the biggest shift you saw in leadership in general from when you came on LAPD to near the end of your career?

00:06:13.574 --> 00:06:14.158
What was the shifts you saw?

00:06:14.158 --> 00:06:16.769
I mean, I spent the same years in law enforcement, so I think I know what you're going to say.

00:06:16.769 --> 00:06:23.610
But law enforcement's dealing with a lot of hurdles today, recruiting being one, retention being another.

00:06:23.610 --> 00:06:25.834
But let's just talk about leadership and lean into that.

00:06:25.834 --> 00:06:32.026
What would you say would be the positive attributes in leadership when you came on and what kind of happened to that as your career progressed?

00:06:33.110 --> 00:06:35.521
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a great topic, obviously.

00:06:35.521 --> 00:06:38.531
I think it's probably the topic with respect to law enforcement.

00:06:38.531 --> 00:06:47.014
I think the leadership aspect is and when I say leadership you know in this case I think we're talking about management.

00:06:47.014 --> 00:06:52.807
I know you've talked about this before as well Leadership is a little bit different.

00:06:52.807 --> 00:07:00.413
The actual leadership could be the police officer, one which is a probationary officer all the way up to the chief of police.

00:07:00.413 --> 00:07:07.401
I mean, just because somebody has shiny lapels doesn't make them a leader, and this is kind of the.

00:07:07.783 --> 00:07:17.771
I have some self-inflicted wounds at LAPD, but also most people that I've worked for know that when they have folks like me working for them, things get done.

00:07:17.771 --> 00:07:39.365
So I think the biggest thing I see one of the major problems with management I see one of the major problems with management is I don't believe there's ever been a larger disparity in actual applicable experience on the street in dealing with interhuman aggression and or true community policing.

00:07:39.365 --> 00:07:40.809
They like to throw that out a lot.

00:07:40.809 --> 00:07:44.004
I think a lot of departments do, and it's for good reason.

00:07:44.004 --> 00:07:47.404
We worked for them and that never was lost on me.

00:07:47.404 --> 00:08:11.093
So I think right now and I think it's been just slowly digressing in terms of the leadership component is there's such a huge disparity between the experience of the officer on the street and, unfortunately, folks that decided to, just, you know, keep on checking boxes until they got to the point where they had their name on the door.

00:08:11.860 --> 00:08:13.644
Now I don't think that's all.

00:08:13.644 --> 00:08:18.512
Clearly, we have some amazing true leaders on lapd um.

00:08:18.512 --> 00:09:02.567
Sometimes they squeak through, but overall they would have to agree that and this is the part that might hurt some feelings, but it really should only hurt the feelings of those that this covers which is for LAPD, and I can say that I've seen it in other departments I think there's an institutional inbreeding of ineptitude that is accepted depending on who you know, what sort of box you check, and that has to change Because ultimately, if you have people that don't know what they're doing at the patrol level and or the operational detective level, then ultimately you have somebody in a position that has to make decisions that they just don't have the aptitude to make.

00:09:02.567 --> 00:09:04.932
And we could probably get into this too.

00:09:04.932 --> 00:09:16.648
But you take a look at what happened in Los Angeles the last couple of nights and that is a very good sort of snapshot of what it is that I'm talking about and that you brought me on here for today.

00:09:18.942 --> 00:09:35.153
Yeah, I think that's this little unwritten rule nobody likes to talk about as I think you nailed it, rusty where you can be very successful in the upper ranks in law enforcement but not have a lot of tactical skills or tactile skills to actually do the job.

00:09:35.153 --> 00:09:43.331
There's really a separation there and that creates obviously a lot of issues, mainly being mission creep and not being mission focused.

00:09:43.331 --> 00:09:44.886
We've seen a lot of law enforcement today.

00:09:44.886 --> 00:09:52.467
I mean, if you get away from your mission I mean just look at the federal government right now what they're trying to clean up at this very moment you get away from your mission, everything else goes haywire.

00:09:52.467 --> 00:10:00.749
So I think it's safe to say that if the chief's number one priority is everything but crime control, we got ourselves a problem, because that should be the priority.

00:10:06.940 --> 00:10:15.548
Yeah, and I think one of the major causal factors of this problem right now is you get people in high management positions, whether it's the chief of police, assistant chief, deputy chief I know there's, you know there's colonel.

00:10:15.548 --> 00:10:20.967
There's different sort of titles that you know different departments and municipalities use.

00:10:20.967 --> 00:10:35.450
When you have a sheriff right just to use that as another sort of comparable example that's elected in by the people do you have an opportunity where you elect a sheriff who is also perhaps incompetent but maybe says the right things?

00:10:35.450 --> 00:10:36.211
Yes, you do.

00:10:36.211 --> 00:10:49.745
The benefit to having an elected position is you now have a mechanism in place that you can replace that person in four years if it's not an egregious or you know they committed a crime.

00:10:50.587 --> 00:11:05.731
With respect to the chief of police and I'll use actually well, both LAPD and my previous department and again, I love the people of both departments and the people that are leading the department that I came from before LAPD.

00:11:05.731 --> 00:11:07.345
You know they're good guys too.

00:11:07.345 --> 00:11:19.076
Problem is, and even Chief McDonald, who I have a fairly personal relationship in terms of knowing him off the job he's a really nice guy and very, very competent.

00:11:19.076 --> 00:11:26.341
When you have people that are very competent but they're hamstrung because they're at a political appointed position.

00:11:26.341 --> 00:11:28.527
That's no bueno.

00:11:28.527 --> 00:11:43.707
Now you're definitely going to be dealing with situations where decisions are not going to be made for the number one reason or question that should be answered, which is does this make my public safer?

00:11:43.707 --> 00:11:55.205
That's the first order of business in terms of how a manager or a leader should take a look at what they have, what assets they're assigning to certain problems is.

00:11:55.205 --> 00:11:58.272
Does this help or does this hurt?

00:11:58.272 --> 00:12:07.302
And when you hire or promote people based on skin color, gender, pick your demographic imperative, you're definitely hurting.

00:12:07.302 --> 00:12:17.048
Not only are you hurting the community, but you're also hurting the people that maybe fall under that same category, that are very adept at doing the job.

00:12:17.048 --> 00:12:19.113
And we saw that.

00:12:19.113 --> 00:12:28.190
I saw that repeatedly at LAPD and it was frustrating because they kind of get looked at with a with an odd eye if you don't know them.

00:12:28.190 --> 00:12:32.683
And then you get to know them and then you're like, okay, this person actually is very competent.

00:12:32.683 --> 00:12:34.990
So I think that's the beginning.

00:12:35.029 --> 00:12:43.904
The beginning is the pipeline of promotions needs to change, and I would say every single department should look at it.

00:12:43.904 --> 00:12:45.809
And I know you, you, I know a lot of this stuff.

00:12:45.809 --> 00:12:49.206
I know you already know and is going to make sense to you very clearly.

00:12:49.206 --> 00:13:02.152
But if you take somebody, like if I took you as whether you're retired or even when you were still on the job at your position, given the way your thought process works, and I said, hey, look, we'd like to pay your way.

00:13:02.152 --> 00:13:05.509
Have you come on out here to LA and I'd like to use you?

00:13:05.509 --> 00:13:21.474
And you could hire a swath of people, especially with how long people's arms nowadays with LinkedIn and other ways, and I want you to come and help us in the interview process of our officers that are looking to promote to the next level.

00:13:22.201 --> 00:13:30.287
Then you get somebody that is they're not biased, they're coming in, going oh, what are these officers bona fides?

00:13:30.287 --> 00:13:31.590
What have they been doing?

00:13:31.590 --> 00:13:38.620
And then you get to see, oh okay, yeah, this person's been playing hide and seek for two grand a week for the past four years.

00:13:38.620 --> 00:13:42.328
And this person you know we have in LAPD.

00:13:42.328 --> 00:13:48.600
We have a thing called Teams 2, right person In LAPD.

00:13:48.600 --> 00:13:51.408
We have a thing called Teams 2, right Captain Espinoza, I believe you promoted to captain already, so talk to Anthony about it.

00:13:51.408 --> 00:13:52.913
He'll go down a rabbit hole with you on it.

00:13:52.994 --> 00:13:56.466
But, in short, it's basically your resume on LAPD.

00:13:56.466 --> 00:14:08.062
It's also where your uses of force both critical incidents and or standard uses of force, complaints, those sorts of things, all of your training.

00:14:08.062 --> 00:14:25.993
A lot of times with LAPD we see it and most people from LAPD listening to this will probably go yeah, that's 100% spot on is, if a person needs a paperweight to hold their teams two down, they're definitely upper management material.

00:14:25.993 --> 00:14:32.332
If it's somebody, maybe like me, who's professionally assertive I try not to.

00:14:32.332 --> 00:14:53.488
There's been times where I've had to sort of check a few people that needed it, not just from man to man, but most of the time it's somebody that doesn't quite have the foundational skills that are required to be a law enforcement manager and that doesn't do anybody any favors.

00:14:53.488 --> 00:14:54.966
So I think that's got to change.

00:14:55.500 --> 00:15:05.951
And using that example of having people come from the outside, where a lot of departments do that with LAPD, I've got friends that are in the command staff and that are supervisors.

00:15:05.951 --> 00:15:16.174
They've told me hey, I'm going to Nebraska for a couple of weeks helping them with their intake or their promotional process.

00:15:16.174 --> 00:15:20.129
So I think that's something that should happen across the board.

00:15:20.129 --> 00:15:24.825
It's tough when you get with, as you know, because you come from a big department too.

00:15:24.825 --> 00:15:29.270
When you have a massive department, things just sort of get lost.

00:15:29.270 --> 00:15:40.083
And I used to hear from and I still do guys will say well, that's the way it's always been, man, you can't buck the system, and I disagree with that.

00:15:40.083 --> 00:15:47.654
You can buck the system if you do it respectfully and you offer solutions, not just, you know, critique and ridicule.

00:15:48.301 --> 00:16:05.038
So, yeah, that's all good stuff and and give us I know that the news has been you know, I mean we have such a short attention span, but obviously we started talking a week or two ago, rusty, and what's going on in Pacific Palisades is, you know, it's cataclysmic, right?

00:16:05.038 --> 00:16:07.505
I mean I think you've got more of a personal viewpoint on it.

00:16:07.505 --> 00:16:10.542
Kind of give our audience what you're hearing from there.

00:16:10.542 --> 00:16:19.143
Then let's backtrack that too, because everybody wants to talk about the mistakes made now, but I want to talk about, when it comes to real leadership, which is real risk management.

00:16:19.143 --> 00:16:21.807
What were the mistakes made in years past?

00:16:21.807 --> 00:16:33.011
Right Like so, because the stuff yes, this stuff is is, it's tragedy, you know, manmade, and it happens, whether it's arson or whatever, but it doesn't just happen Leadership.

00:16:33.011 --> 00:16:35.683
I always say this everything good is because of leadership, everything bad is because of leadership.

00:16:35.683 --> 00:16:37.087
You can wrap it all in leadership.

00:16:37.087 --> 00:16:41.048
Let's talk about the leadership problems, but first give us a quick overview of kind of what you're hearing.

00:16:41.730 --> 00:16:51.652
you know about, about the area?

00:16:51.652 --> 00:16:52.777
Sure, yeah, no, it's devastating.

00:16:52.777 --> 00:16:53.500
What's happened to those people?

00:16:53.500 --> 00:17:10.491
You know, I don't have any, obviously living in northwestern North Carolina or western North Carolina, now just outside of the floods and then having a personal connection with the Palestinians, having worked there for five and a half years plus, um, my heart breaks for them, for the people of lahaina, hawaii.

00:17:10.491 --> 00:17:13.625
I mean, you're talking about massive problems.

00:17:13.625 --> 00:17:18.724
That, to your point, which is where I'm going to kind of steer this into, they don't happen overnight.

00:17:18.724 --> 00:17:20.407
These, yeah, you have.

00:17:20.669 --> 00:17:38.294
Sometimes you have fires that can happen, uh, by way of lightning, right, some natural resource occurs and or, hey, look, we're a technologically advanced society, so as much as we count on the electrical department and those folks to sort of take care of things, stuff happens right.

00:17:38.294 --> 00:17:41.808
But there's a lot of things, to your point, along the way.

00:17:41.808 --> 00:17:45.891
You don't just all of a sudden get to a devastating event.

00:17:45.891 --> 00:17:49.446
There are different things that lend and lead to that.

00:17:49.446 --> 00:17:53.023
Can you mitigate every single thing, every single threat?

00:17:53.023 --> 00:18:00.345
No, you can't, and I think I'm not arrogant enough to think that anything I did in the Palisades could have stopped it completely.

00:18:00.345 --> 00:18:08.161
But to your, your question, and then just my experience I got called in to speak with my captain.

00:18:08.161 --> 00:18:11.228
Just to give a quick sort of snapshot of how I got there.

00:18:11.890 --> 00:18:12.791
Uh, tina nieto.

00:18:12.791 --> 00:18:14.884
She's now a sheriff up in northern california.

00:18:14.884 --> 00:18:19.259
She's the type of person that knows her people, so she knows.

00:18:19.259 --> 00:18:21.563
Okay, I have this issue going on over here.

00:18:21.563 --> 00:18:36.804
Who do I have in my, in my quiver of folks that can go in there and do what they need to do to affect positive change and to this current situation, what she was dealing with was massive fires back then.

00:18:36.804 --> 00:18:39.910
Now this was end of 2015, 2016.

00:18:39.910 --> 00:18:42.280
So she called me in the office.

00:18:42.280 --> 00:18:44.444
She said hey, I'd like to send you over here.

00:18:44.444 --> 00:18:46.409
I want you to do a quick recon of the area.

00:18:46.409 --> 00:18:47.210
Let me know what.

00:18:47.210 --> 00:18:54.371
What you think I need to sort of, you know, mitigate these issues, because the Palisades people are very upset, rightfully so.

00:18:54.371 --> 00:18:56.521
She wasn't, you know, complaining about it.

00:18:56.521 --> 00:18:57.703
She said look, I don't.

00:18:57.703 --> 00:19:00.748
We have a lack of resources to be able to funnel in there.

00:19:00.748 --> 00:19:03.592
I want to know what you think I can do to kind of get this thing going.

00:19:04.393 --> 00:19:07.478
Anyway, went up there, kind of got the lay of the land.

00:19:07.478 --> 00:19:21.212
I ended up liaising with this homeless task force that the Pacific Palisades had put together, based on the fact that they were not getting any traction with the city also with their city council member at the time and the LAPD.

00:19:21.212 --> 00:19:26.011
They weren't getting the people to sort of mitigate the law enforcement issues.

00:19:26.011 --> 00:19:34.285
That hopefully didn't allow the situation to get to where the fire department had to go put out fires right Now.

00:19:34.285 --> 00:19:45.958
There's some other causal factors with respect to just that tinder, that vegetation that's been dry, that the state has failed miserably to hold up their end of the bargain on.

00:19:45.958 --> 00:19:49.349
Hence the reason why a lot of these insurance companies canceled a lot of people.

00:19:50.180 --> 00:20:18.700
But with respect to my sort of position, I kind of explained to the captain then that you're going to need 10 officers with the autonomy to be able to come in at any time of day or night, change their schedules, have a supervisor obviously assigned to them to be able to sort of keep everything on track, and then they will go ahead and liaise with this homeless task force and I think you'll be able to quickly get all of the homeless encampments out of the hillsides.

00:20:18.700 --> 00:20:21.123
Because that was one of the things she asked me was.

00:20:21.123 --> 00:20:30.395
She said you know and again I don't expect her or any command staff member to know every single square mile of their division.

00:20:30.395 --> 00:20:34.405
That's what they have us for, right, the people out in the street.

00:20:34.405 --> 00:20:36.667
So she said what's with these encampments?

00:20:36.667 --> 00:20:39.128
Apparently, there's encampments in the hillsides.

00:20:39.128 --> 00:20:41.106
And I kind of chuckled a little bit.

00:20:41.106 --> 00:20:45.751
I said, ma'am, it's like Swiss family Robinson in those hillsides.

00:20:45.751 --> 00:20:58.285
These people that are in those hillsides, yes, they're mentally ill, they're whacked out on central nervous stimulants, they're homeless, but they're pretty smart and they've created these little sort of small cities in there.

00:20:59.126 --> 00:21:05.990
Anyway, that was what we were needing to deal with, because they were the ones that were, for the most part, starting all these fires.

00:21:05.990 --> 00:21:13.787
Again, that's not to say that that's what this particular fire was started by, but this was a major problem.

00:21:13.787 --> 00:21:16.932
So she sent me in there.

00:21:16.932 --> 00:21:22.326
She basically told me I can't give you nine other people and a sergeant, but I'll give you a partner.

00:21:22.326 --> 00:21:24.351
And she said people and a sergeant, but I'll give you a partner.

00:21:24.351 --> 00:21:25.212
And she said can you do it?

00:21:25.212 --> 00:21:25.933
And I did.

00:21:25.933 --> 00:21:34.673
Well, obviously you know that I will have a pretty good chance of doing it, or you wouldn't be asking me if I would do it.

00:21:34.673 --> 00:21:36.417
So I told her look, that's great, Give me a partner.

00:21:36.417 --> 00:21:38.603
I ended up working with a couple of guys.

00:21:38.603 --> 00:21:53.163
But I ended up settling on my partner, jimmy Solomon, just a stand-up human being and a great police officer, and we went forth and prospered and just tried to really make the connection lay, the foundation of communication with the public.

00:21:53.163 --> 00:21:56.690
So we did that for five and a half years.

00:21:56.690 --> 00:22:00.423
I'm going to gloss over a lot of it, but we were very successful.

00:22:00.423 --> 00:22:04.853
And when I say we, I mean as a team we were successful.

00:22:04.853 --> 00:22:07.740
Successful.

00:22:07.740 --> 00:22:09.567
And when I say we, I mean as a team we were successful.

00:22:09.586 --> 00:22:11.855
The Pacific Palisades at that time put their money where their mouth was.

00:22:11.855 --> 00:22:12.457
I just went over why they.

00:22:12.457 --> 00:22:15.006
You know the fact that they weren't getting any assistance from the city.

00:22:15.006 --> 00:22:17.212
They were constantly getting stiff armed.

00:22:17.212 --> 00:22:25.676
And so they decided how can we mitigate these problems legally that are infecting our area?

00:22:25.676 --> 00:22:28.709
That you know we're going to have a massive tragedy if we don't get in front of it.

00:22:28.709 --> 00:22:55.733
And so they raised about and again, I don't want to speak for that task force, but I'll tell you what, from what I know, uh, working arm and arm with them for five and a half years, they raised to about two hundred thousand000 per year to fund a bunch of clinicians, homeless outreach folks, a nurse, and also to actually furnish housing for a lot of the homeless that they were reaching out to try to help.

00:22:57.481 --> 00:22:59.507
And about that time you've got the Boise case.

00:22:59.507 --> 00:23:02.282
That was sort of making things difficult for a lot of municipalities.

00:23:02.282 --> 00:23:05.520
My captain and others asked me what I thought of that.

00:23:05.520 --> 00:23:18.554
I also would speak to the people in these massive community meetings that were worried about it and I would tell them look, according to the Boise case, we're fine, we're offering resources.

00:23:18.554 --> 00:23:41.566
I very quickly and again I'm going to kind of go into a few other things, but very quickly my partner and I found out that, look, we can't arrest our way Two cops can't arrest our way out of this problem that society has sort of created by, you know, sort of acquiescing in not getting these people the help that they needed for the previous 50 years.

00:23:41.566 --> 00:23:47.201
So we decided, look, we're going to have to try to adjust our positioning.

00:23:47.201 --> 00:24:08.967
It should also be said and I'm sure you probably have somebody in your family too, but from my perspective and my partner, we both had people in our families, immediate families that were either addicts or alcoholics that we applied quite a bit of empathy into the people that we were dealing with out on the street, right.

00:24:09.769 --> 00:24:29.863
So hooking up with that, that Palisades task force, and then also going to these meetings every, you know, every time they had a community meeting and every person that I would meet out on the street, I I gave my card away and was like hey, here's my cell number, you get any intel.

00:24:29.863 --> 00:24:30.104
Or to them.

00:24:30.104 --> 00:24:37.510
I would kind of put it in a way that hey, look, if you happen to see a homeless encampment or somebody going into the hillside, hey, give me a shout and I'll go in there and talk to them and try to get them out of the hillsides.

00:24:37.510 --> 00:24:44.647
Both in areas where it was illegal for them to camp, I would obviously make sure that I mitigated that and enforced that.

00:24:44.647 --> 00:25:01.145
But also, if it was somebody that was in an area that they weren't not allowed to be in maybe hiking trails, stuff like that I would just make sure that they were not looking to set up a camp where they would have fires.

00:25:01.145 --> 00:25:14.693
So that built a very, very ironclad relationship between my partner and I, and then during the summertime we'd get two additional officers assigned to help us in the summer with the community.

00:25:15.500 --> 00:25:21.713
So, with that said, there's a few things that occurred between that point and the time that I left.

00:25:21.713 --> 00:25:24.788
But we get these new captains that come in.

00:25:24.788 --> 00:26:02.356
They're constantly rotating in a big department like Los Angeles, and so I think in a smaller department it's easier because you have and again, this is not a negative critique on a smaller department, it's actually a positive where you get to see exactly what the next person above you, what their position is, and so you can either ghost them for an extended period of time to really get the lay of the land, or you're there for so long and it's such an open concept that you kind of know what's expected of you when you get there and you know what resources you have to bring to bear.

00:26:02.356 --> 00:26:08.532
Well, with LAPD we have that hiring issue that we started this off talking about.

00:26:08.532 --> 00:26:11.692
But we also have folks that come in that are not.

00:26:11.692 --> 00:26:13.259
They don't know the area right.

00:26:13.259 --> 00:26:26.906
They might not know what the 26 square miles of austere environment in a hillside where you have very little egress and ingress in terms of getting in for emergency services they don't quite get it right.

00:26:26.906 --> 00:26:42.160
So some of them might have to explain it to them, bring them on small rides, show them what was going on, but having that sort of a turnaround makes it difficult to be able to keep the resources in place that you need Now.

00:26:42.781 --> 00:26:46.710
With LAPD, I think right now there's 8,300 officers.

00:26:46.710 --> 00:26:49.323
At one point we were up at 10,000.

00:26:49.323 --> 00:26:54.281
We got a lot of people playing hide and seek on the inside that can be sent out to the streets.

00:26:54.281 --> 00:26:55.766
But I get it.

00:26:55.766 --> 00:26:59.413
We should be 12,000, 15,000 cops and I agree with that.

00:26:59.413 --> 00:27:11.815
But there are places and West LA is one of them because it's a fairly it's a very large division, but it is the smallest in terms of personnel in the entire city.

00:27:13.280 --> 00:27:18.153
So having two people assigned to do one sort of 26 square mile area.

00:27:18.153 --> 00:27:32.959
So it's a bit of an ask of the command staff that are in charge, but once they hear what exactly you're doing, it shouldn't be a difficult thing for them to make that decision that you know what.

00:27:32.959 --> 00:27:39.405
I just simply have to have these guys there, because if I don't, this is what's going to happen, right?

00:27:39.405 --> 00:27:41.217
So, fast forward.

00:27:41.217 --> 00:27:52.951
Most of the captains from 2016 up until when I left in 2021, most of them got it and again able to go in there and explain it to them in a way that they understood.

00:27:52.951 --> 00:27:55.240
From a management perspective, let's talk about the audience.

00:27:55.299 --> 00:27:56.605
I mean Pacific Palisades.

00:27:56.605 --> 00:28:06.105
I'm sure you have everybody of every economic background, but you have the highest economics to probably all the way down to the homeless people in the hills, right and so correct that's got to be.

00:28:06.105 --> 00:28:09.130
It has to be an easy decision from a captain to go.

00:28:09.130 --> 00:28:16.180
Yeah, we need to take care of this issue because he's probably hearing it from the backside if he's not your lips, god's ears.

00:28:16.941 --> 00:28:20.607
So, um, you know chief moore, who's the chief of the time.

00:28:20.607 --> 00:28:25.207
He had come out to some of the meetings that I I was at and was very happy with what we were doing.

00:28:25.207 --> 00:28:32.020
A couple of the other folks were fairly happy Again, and you're probably not shocked by this.

00:28:32.020 --> 00:28:44.710
I've said it a couple of times, but I'm fairly outspoken, and when I say outspoken I'm not the guy in the back of roll call, that's mother effing everybody all the time and everybody's horrible except me in life.

00:28:44.710 --> 00:28:46.661
That's not my angle.

00:28:46.661 --> 00:29:12.384
My angle is I have a serious problem and I'm sure you do too with ineptitude in public service, and if you're proving to me that you're not really in a position to be able to affect the change and or engage in the things that your particular rank expects, yeah, we're probably going to have somewhat of an issue.

00:29:12.595 --> 00:29:17.765
Now I was just a police officer, so I also understand that.

00:29:17.765 --> 00:29:23.484
I may get my point across, but at the end of the day, I'm just a police officer.

00:29:23.484 --> 00:29:24.959
But back to your point about the people up there.

00:29:24.959 --> 00:29:25.192
You're, the end of the day, I'm just a police officer.

00:29:25.192 --> 00:29:28.111
But back to your point about the people out there you're talking about.

00:29:28.111 --> 00:29:28.571
And again.

00:29:28.571 --> 00:29:32.556
I did the same thing in South Central Los Angeles.

00:29:32.556 --> 00:29:38.827
I still have people in South Central that call me now and ask how I'm doing.

00:29:38.827 --> 00:29:44.815
So it's not like I changed my policing overall for the people of the Pacific Palisades.

00:29:44.815 --> 00:29:56.780
I treat everybody the same, whether you're the homeless guy that's treating me well, whether you're the janitor, whether you're my captain, my partner, joe Blow's citizen who just has a question.

00:29:56.780 --> 00:30:00.586
Look, I understand my place in this whole dynamic.

00:30:01.655 --> 00:30:08.106
But those people up there, to your point, you're dealing with millionaires and billionaires that are self-made.

00:30:08.106 --> 00:30:16.607
You're not talking about people that, for the most part, were given a lump sum of money and they don't quite know what it's like to want, right?

00:30:16.607 --> 00:30:21.563
They also are the types of people that have lived there for a long time.

00:30:21.563 --> 00:30:34.823
They're very, very good in their own respective positions, in whatever they do for work, whether it's a producer, a bank manager, a bank CEO or whatever their positions are.

00:30:34.823 --> 00:30:42.520
Most of the people there are very good at what they do and, again, they're used to sort of a certain element of service, right?

00:30:42.520 --> 00:30:48.150
Not, you know, an overabundance of and looking for anybody to kiss their tail.

00:30:48.150 --> 00:30:50.703
That wasn't the experience that I had with them.

00:30:50.703 --> 00:31:07.795
They were actually down to earth and understood when somebody was very good at their job what it looked like, whether that was police work or whether that was the entertainment industry or, you know, the financial industry or whatever, whether that was the entertainment industry or the financial industry or whatever.

00:31:07.795 --> 00:31:17.982
So these people knew and would constantly say to my partner and I hey, we're so glad to have you guys here.

00:31:18.363 --> 00:31:47.767
Well, towards the end there was some overlap from my job, as the team in the Eto'o called us the beach detail on paper, because from a logistical sort of deployment angle, she knew that if she just put you know Palisades detail that the people at Bureau, the deputy chief and the commanders would be like well, you already have an A car which is your typical patrol car with the LAPD model that's assigned to them, so you don't need this other unit.

00:31:47.767 --> 00:31:53.103
Well, there's also a lack of crime, typically in the Pacific Palisades.

00:31:53.103 --> 00:32:08.084
So just the way the and it's you know somewhat the deployment model of LAPD is somewhat antiquated at times, I think, probably like many places, but it's a pretty good rolling model for the most part.

00:32:08.084 --> 00:32:19.449
And so when there's crimes in other parts of the 65 square miles of West LA and or West Valley, on the Valley side or just past Santa Monica and Venice.

00:32:19.449 --> 00:32:26.961
Sometimes you get pulled to go handle those areas too, and Wolster Division, the Palisades car, is typically the first one to get pulled.

00:32:26.961 --> 00:32:29.469
So what then?

00:32:29.469 --> 00:32:40.059
Captain Nieto now Sheriff Nieto basically said was look, you're going to be my beach detail on paper, but you're going to take care of all of these other things.

00:32:40.079 --> 00:32:44.003
You're going to deal with the homeless folks, you're going to deal with the quality of life issues.

00:32:44.003 --> 00:32:46.934
And so we had what we call a senior lead officer.

00:32:46.934 --> 00:32:48.679
That's typically assigned there.

00:32:48.679 --> 00:32:56.307
Oh look, he was a nice guy, I got along well with him, but he was literally one foot out, one foot in and he's at the end of his career.

00:32:56.307 --> 00:33:08.482
Now, for guys like you and I, we pretty much sprint for the finish line and then, once we get done, we're like like you've got something great going on right now.

00:33:08.482 --> 00:33:10.627
I don't yet know exactly what.

00:33:11.958 --> 00:33:12.719
I'm going to do.

00:33:12.719 --> 00:33:13.540
It's hard to stop.

00:33:13.540 --> 00:33:15.384
It's hard, you just got to keep going.

00:33:16.027 --> 00:33:16.307
It is.

00:33:16.307 --> 00:33:25.107
But you to your, your sort of ethos, right, I was always the guy that wanted to keep working, working, working.

00:33:25.107 --> 00:33:35.542
I felt like it was, look, I'm going to gain sort of I don't want to say but the respect of my peers by them seeing that I'm the guy that's out there doing it.

00:33:35.542 --> 00:33:44.167
And so I didn't want to go into training full-time until this 2021 thing that I'm about to illuminate sort of occurred.

00:33:44.167 --> 00:34:03.240
But being an adjunct rifle and shotgun instructor because I had a lot of respect for those guys and gals that were up at the range and just wanted to sort of be a part of that bigger picture of them helping officers with their shooting that I did that right.

00:34:03.240 --> 00:34:31.237
So back to the Pacific Palisades Most of the folks that had kind of that live there knew and still, because my phone has not stopped, there's actually been two people that have tried to chime in while you and I are talking now, not because they know we're on a podcast, but because it's just been a constant flow of just trying to help them navigate these problems that unfortunately they have right now.

00:34:31.659 --> 00:34:35.967
But at the point that I was doing the work that my partner and I were doing with the homeless.

00:34:35.967 --> 00:34:42.936
There was sort of an overlap right With quality of life issues that typically our senior lead officer would deal with.

00:34:42.936 --> 00:34:49.048
And while I would give people, hey, here's his number, call him, here's his email, email him.

00:34:49.048 --> 00:34:59.780
If you don't do the job that, I am sending people your way, that is, in your wheelhouse, and now I'm face to face with these folks out in the street.

00:34:59.780 --> 00:35:10.085
I now have to do your job for you Because if I don't, I'm the bad guy that's sending them to you, filling them with hey, look, this guy's very.

00:35:10.085 --> 00:35:19.201
You know he's good, he's going to take care of you, and then, when you don't do it, I have to do it, which, because they overlapped, it wasn't that big of an ask, right?

00:35:19.201 --> 00:35:28.163
So I had a conversation with that particular gentleman at the time He'd retired and I said look, I'm not coming for your job, I don't want to be a senior lead officer.

00:35:28.163 --> 00:35:36.297
I believe, probably much like you, believe, we are all senior lead officers In LAPD.

00:35:36.297 --> 00:35:44.454
That might be the title, and there's a lot of great senior lead officers on that department, but I believe every police officer is a senior lead officer.

00:35:44.454 --> 00:35:49.704
They're a community liaison with the police department to the community right.

00:35:49.704 --> 00:35:52.599
And so he was like no, no, are you kidding me?

00:35:52.599 --> 00:35:54.146
He was like I'm just happy to have you.

00:35:54.146 --> 00:35:55.733
Things get taken.

00:35:55.733 --> 00:36:01.978
I'm going to try not to use foul language on your podcast, which everybody that ends up watching this and sees me, they're going to go.

00:36:01.978 --> 00:36:11.827
That was probably a very difficult time, but you know I would take care of the issues and the people would call me and it was what it was.

00:36:12.494 --> 00:36:20.456
Well, it ended up getting to a point to where it was very clear the new management at LAPD West, la at the time was not very, did not have as much aptitude.

00:36:20.456 --> 00:36:25.847
The time uh was not very, did not have as much aptitude, and it's disappointing.

00:36:25.847 --> 00:36:44.802
But you know when, when you have a guy that uh, or a person in a position that has, let's say, 25 years on the job but he's worked 19 different uh divisions and or um jobs, are you really good at any of those or are you just checking a box?

00:36:44.802 --> 00:36:47.623
And I got along with this person fairly well.

00:36:47.623 --> 00:36:55.021
I thought incorrectly at the time oh, this guy, he's a man of integrity, he's going to do what's right, he's going to just keep me doing what I'm doing.

00:36:55.835 --> 00:37:09.202
Well, then I found that they were starting to remove people from positions like mine because we were becoming shorter and shorter handed out in the field and this was a big problem a couple of times.

00:37:09.202 --> 00:37:10.706
Actually, it's a big problem now.

00:37:10.706 --> 00:37:13.443
I don't want to make it sound like it's gone, it's still a problem.

00:37:13.443 --> 00:37:14.405
There's still not enough people.

00:37:14.405 --> 00:37:25.985
So I kind of made the decision that, okay, in order for me to continue to be effective at what we're doing in the Palisades, I'll probably have to put in for this position when it opens up.

00:37:25.985 --> 00:37:42.538
So I did and I'm skipping over a couple of things, and the things that I'm skipping over are just, you know, I had been asked by other managers or leaders I call them leaders in the department that I had worked for in the past Throughout that five and a half years.

00:37:42.538 --> 00:37:46.385
Hey, come work over here, come do this particular job.

00:37:46.405 --> 00:37:57.068
A lot of them were jobs that are more suited to somebody typically with the work ethic and sort of style of policing of mine.

00:37:57.068 --> 00:38:03.563
Most of my friends are like you're the homeless czar in the Palestinians.

00:38:03.563 --> 00:38:06.690
I mean because, again, I tend to.

00:38:06.690 --> 00:38:12.956
Most of the time that I spent with my partners in South Central we were chasing the predatory individuals.

00:38:12.956 --> 00:38:20.902
I don't have time to go sweat the people that are typically just, which is the overwhelming majority in South Central, are great.

00:38:20.902 --> 00:38:48.682
People just want to live their life without getting, you know, victimized by some predatory gang member, and so you know, being up there doing the things that we were doing, it was I could see the fruit of our labor we took I'm kind of going down a rabbit hole, but we took probably three to six, I don't recall the exact number you know those 30 foot massive dumpsters full of trash out of the hillside.

00:38:48.682 --> 00:38:50.427
We put signs up all over the place.

00:38:50.427 --> 00:38:54.081
So we were doing very good work.

00:38:54.081 --> 00:39:14.246
We were getting people off the street into housing, including, as as a Marine, a lot of veterans that obviously was were a little bit more near and dear to my heart to be able to get them off the streets and into protective housing and if they needed recovery from any sort of addiction or anything along those lines, it was very good to be able to help them.

00:39:15.235 --> 00:39:22.840
But once it was very clear that they were taking people out of certain assignments, I knew that mine was fairly close to being on the chopping block.

00:39:22.840 --> 00:39:34.346
So I put in for the position and a bunch of the different Palisades folks, would you know, reach out to me and when I say a bunch, I'm talking dozens and dozens of people.

00:39:34.346 --> 00:39:45.905
When they heard the other SLO was retiring and that it was going to be open, of course the next person that they would want there would be me.

00:39:45.905 --> 00:39:58.943
So I would explain to them look, I appreciate the vote of confidence and, yeah, I'm going to put in for the position because if I don't, I don't see my work here as being set in stone.

00:39:58.943 --> 00:40:01.563
I think I could possibly be taken out of here.

00:40:01.563 --> 00:40:05.715
But I told them look, it's not a guarantee that I'll be it.

00:40:05.715 --> 00:40:12.358
Well, we're going to make calls and I told them look, that's not how this works, but I appreciate it.

00:40:12.358 --> 00:40:19.295
Some of them I said look, the more of you that call, the less likely I will probably get the position.

00:40:19.315 --> 00:40:19.735
That's right.

00:40:19.735 --> 00:40:22.617
You're never a prophet in your own backyard, for sure.

00:40:23.297 --> 00:40:23.757
That's right.

00:40:23.757 --> 00:40:25.500
You're never a prophet in your own backyard, for sure.

00:40:25.500 --> 00:40:26.719
That's it, man, and look, you touched on it.

00:40:26.719 --> 00:40:29.722
You don't tell a millionaire, no, don't do this.

00:40:29.722 --> 00:40:30.842
You know what I mean.

00:40:30.842 --> 00:40:37.586
I try to explain to them the inside baseball, but you know, you can only you know direct somebody.

00:40:37.586 --> 00:40:41.208
That is like I said, and this isn't a negative.

00:40:41.208 --> 00:40:46.373
These people are very, very good at what they do and so they're like well, no, you're our guy.

00:40:46.373 --> 00:40:53.820
So, anyway, long and short, and there's some nuance to it.

00:40:53.840 --> 00:40:58.855
But I was also dealing with a lot of professional jealousy in the particular office that I was in, and I know that this is a lot of things.

00:40:58.855 --> 00:41:04.775
These are a lot of sort of things that a lot of cops don't talk about, you know, as as often out in the public eye.

00:41:04.775 --> 00:41:10.775
Um, I told you earlier that I've got a bit of a reputation, and I don't mean to, that's not so.

00:41:10.775 --> 00:41:13.119
I can like pound my chest, it's just.

00:41:13.119 --> 00:41:20.329
Look, I loathe being around low energy, incompetent people.

00:41:20.329 --> 00:41:21.918
Loathe it, it's.

00:41:21.918 --> 00:41:22.679
I get a.

00:41:22.679 --> 00:41:26.938
Being around people like that is for to me is like being around a bully.

00:41:26.938 --> 00:41:39.436
I get this chemical reaction that if they do something and it's woefully incompetent, or they're lazy or they're just they don't have the motivation to do the job that they're supposed to be doing.

00:41:39.436 --> 00:41:47.757
Um, it bothers me and and usually I say something right I try to use if it's somebody I don't dislike.

00:41:47.757 --> 00:41:50.304
For the most part I'll try to use a little jab.

00:41:50.304 --> 00:41:56.681
Hey, maybe you should stop playing hide and seek and excuse my French.

00:41:56.681 --> 00:42:00.235
Why don't you un-ass that chair, head on out here and try and do some police work?

00:42:00.235 --> 00:42:01.778
We need the help.

00:42:01.778 --> 00:42:03.782
You might've heard, right, this, this is.

00:42:03.782 --> 00:42:07.670
These are some of the things that I would try to use to sort of joust at them a bit.

00:42:08.295 --> 00:42:17.447
Well, a lot of the people and I have an audio that I'll send you later that you can listen to, which will give you a very clear because I got a couple of officers on an open mic.

00:42:17.447 --> 00:42:30.186
You know and you've experienced that, where somebody, somebody keys their mic by accident and they're pontificating about how they would change the world and you're trying to call them like hey, man, you got an open mic.

00:42:30.186 --> 00:42:42.847
Two of these knuckleheads did that and they were getting frustrated because they were being held to the standard that I was setting in the Palisades and I'm like, look, man, I'm not.

00:42:42.847 --> 00:42:44.452
This is not rocket science.

00:42:44.452 --> 00:42:46.576
I'm simply doing my job.

00:42:46.576 --> 00:42:49.601
This is what the public expects of you.

00:42:50.422 --> 00:43:04.126
So a lot of these guys not all of them, uh, but most of the ones in that particular office this is not patrol cops, these are, you know, specialized unit area um officers they they just want to do the bare minimum and go home.

00:43:04.126 --> 00:43:08.998
They don't want to deal with people, they don't want people calling them, they just want they got this.

00:43:08.998 --> 00:43:14.822
It's almost like the perfect government job, right, like I can't get fired and I can just do whatever the heck I want.

00:43:14.822 --> 00:43:17.817
I can disappear, and just nobody will say a word.

00:43:17.817 --> 00:43:28.179
Where guys like you and I have a conscience, and if I don't put a full day's work in as a policeman, I don't feel right.

00:43:28.661 --> 00:43:45.030
So at that point, this particular captain came in and pulled me aside at one point and asked me what I thought of the office, because it was not a secret that that office was filled with lazy people.

00:43:45.030 --> 00:43:47.943
The new sergeant same thing.

00:43:47.943 --> 00:43:50.161
The old sergeant who promoted the lieutenant.

00:43:50.161 --> 00:43:54.764
He was amazing, he was great and a true leader.

00:43:54.764 --> 00:44:08.800
But once he promoted out, this other person promoted in and unfortunately, as I know, you know, once you get people that are not competent enough to be in the position they're in now.

00:44:08.800 --> 00:44:09.822
They're making decisions.

00:44:10.324 --> 00:44:37.561
That's just not a not a good time, right, so that I was dealing with kind of that stuff there and then put in for this excuse me this position and based on my work with the homeless, I had also written a and I know I'm kind of sporadic here, but all of this is sort of connected um, I had torn my ac for my, uh, my labor, my shoulder, so I was out beginning of.

00:44:37.561 --> 00:44:39.344
I got surgery I, I.

00:44:39.344 --> 00:45:06.338
The injury occurred in the bluffs, which is now burnt to a crisp Went shoulder first into a tree coming down a mountain and, just like any knuckle dragger in my sort of position, just kind of sucked it up for a couple of weeks and babied it a little and felt like, well, I'm good, documented it with my supervisor, but if I'm not there, my partner and I aren't there, the work just doesn't get done, right?

00:45:06.338 --> 00:45:09.304
Anyway, fast forward.

00:45:09.304 --> 00:45:15.742
Just after the riots I was like, okay, I got to go get this thing sorted.

00:45:15.742 --> 00:45:19.900
There's no way I was going to go out injured during the riots.

00:45:19.900 --> 00:45:21.664
That wasn't going to happen.

00:45:21.664 --> 00:45:26.958
I would have duct taped my arm to my chest to be there to do my part.

00:45:27.780 --> 00:45:37.327
But after everything was sort of done, I ended up going and getting surgery and while I was off, they have a really good city council member in CD11 in Los Angeles right now.

00:45:37.327 --> 00:45:50.322
Her name's Tracy Park, very pro-law enforcement and just a very pragmatic individual who wants to legitimately do the right thing because she's from that area, right?

00:45:50.322 --> 00:45:53.356
The guy before her was a guy named Mike Bonin.

00:45:53.356 --> 00:46:19.362
If you haven't heard of who he was at that time, he's just that guy that you don't want in a position of power, and so he wanted to all the work that we had done to get all the homeless out of those hillsides, he wanted to create this homeless sort of makeshift small condominium, um campus on the beach for all the homeless.

00:46:20.664 --> 00:46:27.317
And I, like people are calling me, including some of my, my, I have some family in that area.

00:46:27.317 --> 00:46:30.364
They were calling me like what, what is this guy trying to do?

00:46:30.364 --> 00:46:35.503
You have to, you have to say something, and I just had surgery, so I'm off recovering.

00:46:35.503 --> 00:46:43.467
So I so I was like, okay, give me, give me about a week to figure out how to address it without getting in trouble.

00:46:43.467 --> 00:46:47.215
Right, give me about a week to figure out how to address it without getting in trouble.

00:46:47.215 --> 00:46:54.967
Right, because, as you know, when you're a police officer or a law enforcement officer, regardless of rank, you don't really have a First Amendment right, completely right.

00:46:54.967 --> 00:47:12.621
And so, even though I was still very outspoken and have some self-inflicted wounds, I still knew that, hey look, I do have to tread somewhat lightly, partly because the good supervisors I have I don't want them to get in trouble because of my mouth, and I got to figure out a way.

00:47:12.661 --> 00:47:40.637
So I did and I penned this response that was hey, these are the pragmatic solutions to the homelessness crisis that is infecting major cities, and this is probably a whole other podcast that we could do, and I can send you the writing as well, but it was basically just pragmatic solutions with some historical context.

00:47:40.637 --> 00:48:07.099
This is how we got here and I pressed, send boom, sent it out, and I had people reading this from the far, you know, right side of the political spectrum and the far left side, people that I saw say things that were, you know, blm supporters, and they were like we can't, I can't believe a police officer wrote this, you know which?

00:48:07.099 --> 00:48:08.625
You know I have a self-deprecating sense of humor.

00:48:08.625 --> 00:48:17.376
So I told them yeah, me either, but they were very, very pleased that it showed empathy yet didn't just complain but gave hey.

00:48:17.376 --> 00:48:24.409
These are the solutions that you can call on your elected officials to enact.

00:48:24.409 --> 00:48:32.731
You could also have your police department and your other social services do these things, and you'll see a lot of these changes, right?

00:48:32.835 --> 00:48:40.916
So everybody loved it, except one person, one person from the Pacific Palisades, and this doesn't bring me joy.

00:48:40.916 --> 00:48:43.137
He no longer has a house.

00:48:43.137 --> 00:48:46.539
His house I know who he is His house burnt to the ground.

00:48:46.539 --> 00:48:49.561
But he wrote a letter to.

00:48:49.561 --> 00:48:52.103
There's a judge, judge Carter, who I had had.

00:48:52.103 --> 00:49:05.056
I gave him a ride along in my area because he wanted to know, while he was presiding over these homeless issues for the county, because he was a federal judge, he wanted to know what we were doing for the county.

00:49:05.056 --> 00:49:06.461
Because he was a federal judge, he wanted to know what we were doing.

00:49:06.461 --> 00:49:08.349
So I drove him around and he was like oh, what you're doing is amazing.

00:49:08.349 --> 00:49:11.097
I can't believe that the police are doing this kind of stuff.

00:49:11.097 --> 00:49:12.018
This is great, right.

00:49:13.001 --> 00:49:15.788
And so this guy wrote a letter, an email to him.

00:49:15.788 --> 00:49:21.461
He attached Assistant Chief Beatrice Grimala from.

00:49:21.461 --> 00:49:23.525
She's retired now from LAPD.

00:49:23.525 --> 00:49:26.771
Assistant chief Beatrice Grimala from, from.

00:49:26.771 --> 00:49:44.847
She's retired now from LAPD, um, my captain, captain John Tom, chief Moore, um the the, the deputy chief of West Muro, mike Bonin, and also, at the time, the uh board of supervisors, um, elected official and, basically, you know, clearly did not read what I wrote, because what he wrote is an email.

00:49:44.847 --> 00:49:49.306
In his email I thought this guy had did not even read what I wrote.

00:49:49.306 --> 00:49:53.742
If he did, he would see that what he's writing is factually incorrect.

00:49:54.525 --> 00:50:01.786
Well, anyway, at that point you have all these people who are like, well, who's this guy right?

00:50:01.786 --> 00:50:05.275
I mean, the chief knew who I was because he saw what we had done.

00:50:05.275 --> 00:50:16.971
My captain knew who I was, judge Carter knew who I was, and so did Chief Kramala, right, although I was not her favorite person, but it is what it is.

00:50:16.971 --> 00:50:19.056
Some of these people don't like anybody.

00:50:19.056 --> 00:50:22.503
That's not completely kissing their tail 24-7.

00:50:22.503 --> 00:50:27.985
And I just had too much police work to do to worry about a shallow ego.

00:50:27.985 --> 00:50:39.282
So she, obviously, to be in a position she's in, from what I'm told, had her way with my captain in terms of, hey, you better suck this guy up.

00:50:39.974 --> 00:51:01.385
So at that point I had Captain Tom and a guy named Captain Ryan Whiteman, along with Sergeant what's his name Scott Alpert, decided okay, this guy is making issues for us, having to answer for him in a way that guys like you and I would have been no problem at all.

00:51:01.385 --> 00:51:04.835
They would have called me and said, hey, this guy won't shut his mouth.

00:51:04.835 --> 00:51:12.403
And we would have said hey, chief, can I come over and sit down with you and kind of explain a little backstory, because that's what you want, right?

00:51:12.403 --> 00:51:48.322
If I were chief of police or an assistant chief or a captain and somebody was upset with one of my officers who didn't do anything wrong, who was actually doing a good job, I would want to go shed light on what this person was doing in the name of our police department, so that they understood that this one malcontent does not speak for the entirety of the Pacific Palisades, nor do they speak for the homeless that oh, by the way, this police officer, his partner and this task force have done God's work helping these people off the streets.

00:51:48.322 --> 00:51:51.612
But that didn't happen At the time.

00:51:51.652 --> 00:52:21.827
That particular captain that I had was going through his own problem in the media with a perceived I don't want to put you in a position and it's just he was having some legal issues of his own that he ended up getting out from underneath, but at that time he was sort of in the crosshairs, so I understood a little bit of why he was hesitant, but he still should have had the intestinal fortitude to do his job.

00:52:21.827 --> 00:52:41.742
So at that point they decided that, with all these people calling and saying, hey look, we want this guy, we want this officer as a senior lead officer, they made the decision that that wasn't going to happen, and so they conspired to conveniently not select me with all these letters.

00:52:41.742 --> 00:52:46.336
Some of the letters are pretty funny, the ones after the fact.

00:52:46.336 --> 00:52:52.507
One lady wrote what on earth were you thinking?

00:52:52.507 --> 00:52:55.577
Not selecting this guy for this position?

00:52:55.577 --> 00:53:03.282
And so now these people are calling me and they're saying, hey, you didn't get the position, so what are you going to do?

00:53:09.875 --> 00:53:12.018
So I told them, I said look, well, I'm going to leave.

00:53:12.018 --> 00:53:12.259
You can't.

00:53:12.259 --> 00:53:12.800
You have to stay here.

00:53:12.800 --> 00:53:15.083
If you leave, this is going to go to crap.

00:53:15.083 --> 00:53:19.717
And I told them look, respectfully, I deeply love you guys and love what we've done.

00:53:19.717 --> 00:53:24.204
I initially only gave you a three-year commitment, but I stayed here for five and a half.

00:53:24.204 --> 00:53:26.507
I've got it up and running.

00:53:26.507 --> 00:53:34.623
You now know what to expect, or what is possible, from your law enforcement partners.

00:53:34.623 --> 00:53:55.762
So now you have a barometer, you have a bar to hold the people that are going to replace me too, and I would just tell you that you need to do that Because, if you don't, you are going to have a massive catastrophe in the way of a massive fire, which you know to the conversation you and I have been having prior to and now was the warning.

00:53:55.762 --> 00:53:57.447
That was the beginning of the warning.

00:53:57.695 --> 00:53:58.880
Yeah, I just want to.

00:53:58.880 --> 00:54:00.103
I just want to remind our audience.

00:54:00.103 --> 00:54:15.242
So we obviously you identified years ago the homeless issues and the and then, you know, create some of that issues, and so you were addressing the root of that issue and the fact that people still call you today shows you the power of that community outreach and what you were doing.

00:54:15.242 --> 00:54:20.804
I think everybody would love to have a legacy like that, rusty, but you've got to keep your foot on the gas right.

00:54:20.804 --> 00:54:39.463
So at some point, lapd decided for whatever reason this emphasis, we're not going to do anymore that, combined with the things of the state, the water reservoirs, everything else I mean nobody wants to talk about the real reason these things happen, but it's leadership decisions like you just lined out, is why this happens.

00:54:39.483 --> 00:54:46.182
Boom boom, boom, it's, it's, it's a progression yep yeah, and look when that happened.

00:54:46.282 --> 00:54:50.670
Just you saw that photo that I put up and I'll address that.

00:54:50.670 --> 00:54:58.554
When that happened, I had gone in front of a board, right, and you have the same ability.

00:54:58.554 --> 00:55:05.226
I think one of the things that I do okay is run this audio distribution device under my nose.

00:55:05.226 --> 00:55:27.844
When I have to right, I try not to just talk to talk, but if I have to explain things or if I have to go in front of a board to either defend myself or to put in for a position, I don't have a problem explaining and or giving evidence to support my bona fides or just what my thoughts are.

00:55:27.844 --> 00:56:05.958
So we had this board and I had already and I can just gloss over this part I had already been physically being removed at different points and the command used some nonsense to try to oh, you know, everybody's having to do this, but they weren't, they were, it was specifically targeting me and whenever I would put in to go speak with them face to face, conveniently, they were busy, right, the one captain um, at one point he's in his car coming into work and I'm coming in from from my duties and I see him and I walk over and I go.

00:56:05.958 --> 00:56:09.967
Hey, you know you, I'm kind of pantomiming do you have time to talk?

00:56:09.967 --> 00:56:11.358
Do you have time to talk?

00:56:11.358 --> 00:56:15.025
And he's oh, you don't know, I'm on the phone.

00:56:15.025 --> 00:56:16.668
So just did not.

00:56:16.668 --> 00:56:27.242
Because he knew that that conversation unless he just wanted to bark at me was going to be uncomfortable, because the odds of disappointment I never hide right on purpose.

00:56:27.242 --> 00:56:35.025
If, if a person is trying to lie to me, unless it's a criminal that I'm trying to use the Jedi mind trick on, that's different.

00:56:35.025 --> 00:56:47.936
But when it comes to a manager or another officer who's doing something they shouldn't be doing and they're trying to sell me on a bag of goods, I want them to see my eyes are telling them you're completely full of it.

00:56:47.936 --> 00:56:49.563
I don't believe a word of it.

00:56:49.563 --> 00:56:52.465
And I want them to see the disappointment, right, right.

00:56:52.465 --> 00:56:56.222
So he knew that and so he steered away from it for as long as he could.

00:56:56.876 --> 00:56:57.677
Now fast forward.

00:56:57.677 --> 00:57:01.146
That morning that I took that photo that has kind of made the rounds.

00:57:01.146 --> 00:57:06.463
I had gotten flagged down by three different people within 10 minutes.

00:57:06.463 --> 00:57:10.702
That told me hey, it was great, we're so happy to have you.

00:57:10.702 --> 00:57:11.960
You did great work up here.

00:57:11.960 --> 00:57:15.940
We met your replacement and I was perplexed.

00:57:15.940 --> 00:57:16.858
I said what do you mean?

00:57:16.858 --> 00:57:17.601
My replacement?

00:57:17.601 --> 00:57:19.501
Oh, we met your replacement.

00:57:19.501 --> 00:57:22.043
This guy, brian Espin, told us that he's replacing you.

00:57:22.043 --> 00:57:25.666
I said, yeah, they haven't made a decision yet.

00:57:25.666 --> 00:57:30.956
So, unless he knows something, I don't know, I haven't made a decision yet.

00:57:30.956 --> 00:57:31.818
So unless he knows something, I don't know.

00:57:31.818 --> 00:57:33.101
Um, I, you know, I, I haven't been told anything about a decision.

00:57:33.101 --> 00:57:34.101
That's, excuse me, that's been made.

00:57:34.101 --> 00:57:41.349
So I called my sergeant, I and I called this, this officer, and said and text them first.

00:57:41.349 --> 00:57:42.411
And then, today, what's?

00:57:42.411 --> 00:57:43.896
This is what I just had happen to me.

00:57:43.896 --> 00:57:45.719
What's going on?

00:57:45.719 --> 00:57:58.391
Right, um, and, and this is again, three different people within probably about 20 square yards and within about eight minutes of one another, right In the common area.

00:57:58.391 --> 00:58:02.583
That is where the Starbucks in the Pacific Palisades was.

00:58:02.583 --> 00:58:07.775
That building is incinerated and so, anyway, fast forward.

00:58:07.775 --> 00:58:10.217
I could see the writing on the wall.

00:58:10.878 --> 00:58:14.900
I already knew, or felt like I knew, they were going to try to edge me out.

00:58:14.900 --> 00:58:23.246
So I decided you know what, I am going to leave this place absolutely spotless.

00:58:23.246 --> 00:58:26.329
There's not going to be an encampment anywhere.

00:58:26.329 --> 00:58:28.891
And so I decided to go make the rounds.

00:58:28.891 --> 00:58:29.813
Right, I was going to start.

00:58:29.813 --> 00:58:41.101
Then I didn't have a landing spot, I had not yet acquired the position at the academy, but I thought, either way, I'm going someplace else, right?

00:58:41.101 --> 00:58:44.768
So I went up to make the rounds.

00:58:44.855 --> 00:58:47.719
I went up Palisades Drive to the Santa Ynezanez reservoir is.

00:58:47.719 --> 00:58:51.346
That was an area that we would make in our rounds, right and I would.

00:58:51.346 --> 00:58:53.469
I had the keys to get in there, so we would go.

00:58:53.469 --> 00:59:04.023
We would go in, drive around the perimeter as you saw in there it's a, you know, a paved perimeter and then I would go do my typical foot beats up in the hillsides and in the mountains.

00:59:04.023 --> 00:59:09.382
Excuse me, well, I took a little selfie, I think, that day.

00:59:09.442 --> 00:59:17.097
Actually, if I recall correctly, I was by myself, my partner, um, so I don't know if he was at court or he had something going on, but uh.

00:59:17.097 --> 00:59:27.266
So I was by myself and I took a picture of myself with the empty reservoir behind me and then took another establishing shot, then went down and continued on to go do my thing.

00:59:27.266 --> 00:59:40.547
But on my way out I saw a couple of guys that were, you know, doing some maintenance on on one of the electrical um I don't know if it was an, it's not a complete tower, but one of the areas that are that were was powering something.

00:59:40.547 --> 00:59:42.838
And I said, hey, what's, what's with the water?

00:59:42.838 --> 00:59:45.344
Is it, what's up with this thing being empty?

00:59:45.344 --> 00:59:47.456
And at the time I didn't think anything of it.

00:59:47.456 --> 00:59:50.346
They just said, oh, we, oh, we had to empty it for, for, uh, for maintenance.

00:59:50.346 --> 00:59:57.923
And I thought, oh, didn't think anything of it, and then I left and went and did my thing and, um, eventually got a position and went elsewhere.

00:59:58.855 --> 01:00:27.445
But when this fire hit and I was talking to firefighters to your point earlier, I still have all these connections and all these people that you know my heart breaks for but that you know I'm in communication with, and so when I found out that the firefighters were heard, they were hooking up their hoses and you know it wasn't every single um fire hydrant, but the majority of them at one point ended up being empty, right.

01:00:27.445 --> 01:00:31.072
So I'm like gosh, you know what I think.

01:00:31.072 --> 01:00:40.289
I have a picture of this empty, this, and that was 2021, july 5th, at 09 15 in the morning.

01:00:40.289 --> 01:00:49.295
Now, I don't know, I it's not my job to to be able to, you know, do my due diligence and figure out how long it's it's been empty, but I find it rather ironic that it's empty.

01:00:49.295 --> 01:00:50.210
You know, they were saying diligence and figure out how long it's it's been empty.

01:00:50.210 --> 01:00:51.567
But I find it rather ironic that it's empty.

01:00:52.208 --> 01:01:11.456
You know they were saying as of february of the year before, or I don't know if they said it was february or or november, but either way um yeah, they obviously knew it was empty, they knew the dangers, they knew the problems, um, and you know the whether, whether we don't, we don't do a great job of holding each other accountable.

01:01:11.456 --> 01:01:36.643
But you know, yeah, you know, you know everybody wants to blame the mayor this or the fire chief this, but there's a lot of people, all the way into the ranks of the police department, city council, you name it, that knew this was an issue and uh, yeah, I hope we take I hope we take some lessons from it rusty yeah, well, to the exact point of who I warned, right, I sent emails and physically, face-to-face warned.

01:01:37.545 --> 01:01:48.677
I'll name them Captain John Tom Brian Esmond the slow that is charged with being up there, his sergeant, which was my sergeant at the time, scott Alpert.

01:01:48.677 --> 01:02:09.996
I told these people to their face at the time look, if you stop doing what we've been doing, if you take those people out of there because they had another couple of officers that they were going to put in there, officers Yee and Margin officers are great police officers.

01:02:09.996 --> 01:02:11.860
They're very good, they're very young but they're very good police officers, very competent.

01:02:11.860 --> 01:02:19.884
And if they were to have been left there to continue the work that my partner and I did, then I think it would have been a different situation.

01:02:19.884 --> 01:02:25.284
We were the ones that trained them and so I explained very much to them the same thing.

01:02:25.284 --> 01:02:40.746
Like, look, if they take you out of here and I'm going to give you a little evidence to support that then this is going to revert back to Swiss Family, robinson and the Hill Sides, because PPTFH was the Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness.

01:02:40.746 --> 01:03:01.677
They had a little bit of success before law enforcement came on to help them out, but nowhere near the success they had when my partner and I were with them, pretty much completely right, and I don't want to make it, I don't want it to sound as if that's all we did, and I know I touched on some of the other quality of life things.

01:03:01.757 --> 01:03:09.485
But mitigating the man-made fire threats in the hillsides, it wasn't just homeless people that we were going in and talking to.

01:03:09.485 --> 01:03:16.418
We would get information, I would get people call me or text me.

01:03:16.418 --> 01:03:17.942
Hey look, these kids are going up partying, lighting up fireworks.

01:03:17.942 --> 01:03:22.960
If it was around New Year's and or around 4th of July, obviously those times that stuff kicks up.

01:03:22.960 --> 01:03:25.324
Can you come in and address this?

01:03:25.324 --> 01:03:25.606
Right?

01:03:25.606 --> 01:03:29.019
They're drinking in the hillsides, they're smoking marijuana.

01:03:29.019 --> 01:03:34.168
We don't want them to flick a cigarette butt and start it those types of very realistic concerns.

01:03:34.168 --> 01:03:37.141
So we would go deal with that stuff too.

01:03:37.141 --> 01:03:41.942
And then we also trained this other, these other two officers, to do the same.

01:03:42.664 --> 01:03:48.724
Well, I told you about when I was off injured and I wrote that that little little piece.

01:03:48.724 --> 01:04:02.561
Well, I explained very explicitly to Sergeant Alpert and to Captain Tom respectfully hey guys, please, I implore you, please leave these two guys, just these two.

01:04:02.561 --> 01:04:09.822
Just let them do the things they're going to keep you in the loop, we don't just go do anything and nobody knows what we're doing.

01:04:09.822 --> 01:04:13.307
I would let my sergeant know every day hey, this is what we're doing.

01:04:13.307 --> 01:04:16.940
Give him sort of a brief after action like, hey, this is what we did, how we did it.

01:04:17.943 --> 01:04:32.297
And so one day and this isn't funny, but these officers went in and they found somebody had started a new encampment, right, and they actually found this guy and they were.

01:04:32.297 --> 01:04:32.478
They had.

01:04:32.478 --> 01:04:33.340
He was in an area that he couldn't be.

01:04:33.340 --> 01:04:34.302
There are signs, no trespassing.

01:04:34.302 --> 01:04:39.583
And in the dealings they had with them they found out that he had a warrant for his arrest.

01:04:39.583 --> 01:04:42.152
So they took him to jail.

01:04:42.152 --> 01:04:57.465
Well, while they were walking him out of the bluffs, this guy says to them hey, just so you know, you guys haven't been here for a little while and there's five more encampments up here that are active.

01:04:57.465 --> 01:05:10.967
So these guys armed with that information I was in constant communication with them when I was off IRD because, again, I'm that guy and I would pass information to them that I would get from people.

01:05:10.967 --> 01:05:15.514
Right, they said, hey, just so you know, we just arrested this guy on our way back to the station.

01:05:15.514 --> 01:05:21.056
He says there's five more encampments, we're going to go and deal with those tomorrow when we come back in bright and early.

01:05:21.878 --> 01:05:24.760
Well, the next day they call me and they go hey, just so you know.

01:05:24.760 --> 01:05:27.385
Yeah, sergeant Alpert won't let us go out there.

01:05:27.385 --> 01:05:34.764
He's got direct orders from the captain to send us to these other parts of the division, right, and not to go back to the Palisades.

01:05:34.764 --> 01:05:43.847
We told him that we have these other encampments and he said sorry, these, this is neither direct orders from the captain.

01:05:43.847 --> 01:05:45.782
He wants you to go work in this area.

01:05:45.782 --> 01:05:47.668
So I warned them, you to go work in this area.

01:05:47.668 --> 01:05:56.661
So I warned them, I told them now you have another couple of officers and a homeless person who's telling them hey, look, there's these other encampments.

01:05:56.661 --> 01:05:59.543
And, just so you know, these guys are smoking a lot of narcotics.

01:05:59.543 --> 01:06:02.059
There's going to be a fire if you don't get them out of here.

01:06:02.059 --> 01:06:03.764
They ignored that.

01:06:04.094 --> 01:06:06.059
What do you think happened the following day?

01:06:06.059 --> 01:06:07.824
Massive fire.

01:06:07.824 --> 01:06:16.625
I'll send you the photos the helicopter Luckily they're on top of it, meaning Station 69, lafd and Station 23.

01:06:16.625 --> 01:06:20.500
Great bunch of guys that are very good at what they do.

01:06:20.500 --> 01:06:23.067
So they were able to use air assets and put it out.

01:06:23.067 --> 01:06:24.376
But what?

01:06:24.376 --> 01:06:32.983
The people at the top of the Palisades and the Bluffs were texting me and sending me photos of, and calling me hey, we're at the top watching this fireisades and the Bluffs were texting me and sending me photos of and calling me hey, we're at the top watching this fire.

01:06:32.983 --> 01:06:35.076
There's a homeless guy that just took off running.

01:06:35.076 --> 01:06:42.539
The police are, we have an officer here, but the fire department's not here yet and the guy's running to PCH.

01:06:42.539 --> 01:06:43.842
So what do I tell them?

01:06:43.842 --> 01:07:02.304
I go, look, get off the phone with me, go tell that police officer to call in additional resources to go take this guy into custody, even if, for the very least, he's being detained pending an investigation, right, so that didn't happen.

01:07:02.304 --> 01:07:04.702
And so you had that massive fire.

01:07:04.702 --> 01:07:10.407
And I ended up telling them look, I'm trying not to be the guy to say I told you.

01:07:10.407 --> 01:07:13.163
So I told you what was going to happen.

01:07:13.163 --> 01:07:37.530
These managers did not have the benefit of the Captain Nietos, right, that were there before and dealt with the fires and the influx, or the constant phone calls rightfully so from a community that was upset because you look at what happened and this was the possibility.

01:07:37.530 --> 01:07:40.416
Now, ultimately, that's where they are Now.

01:07:41.358 --> 01:07:48.567
When I left, yeah, I was pretty upset, right, and I'm not a silent kind of guy, I don't.

01:07:48.567 --> 01:07:56.028
I don't, I don't suffer in silence If somebody has done something to be in with malice, which is what I believe happened.

01:07:56.028 --> 01:08:03.036
And so, yeah, I wasn't shy, I was, I was telling people when they called me look you, you got to make sure you hold these people to account.

01:08:03.036 --> 01:08:15.085
They would call the citizens, would call me and say, look, we're not getting the level this is after I went to the academy we're not getting the level of service that you and your partner gave us.

01:08:15.085 --> 01:08:16.645
What do we do?

01:08:16.907 --> 01:08:21.750
And I told them look, first you go to the captain, right, or you go to the sergeant.

01:08:21.770 --> 01:08:26.515
You go to the officer first I mean, he's not helping you out the slow Then you go to his sergeant.

01:08:26.515 --> 01:08:28.060
If that doesn't work, you go to his sergeant.

01:08:28.060 --> 01:08:29.162
That doesn't work.

01:08:29.162 --> 01:08:29.744
You go to his captain.

01:08:29.744 --> 01:08:30.185
That doesn't work.

01:08:30.185 --> 01:08:31.890
You go to the chief over or the commander of bureau.

01:08:31.890 --> 01:08:35.043
You know you just have to incrementally go up.

01:08:35.043 --> 01:08:42.101
Well, you're telling millionaires how to incrementally go and complain and they're like why would I do that?

01:08:42.101 --> 01:08:44.221
I'm just going to go to the mayor, right.

01:08:44.221 --> 01:08:46.363
I'm going to go to my congressman, my senator.

01:08:46.363 --> 01:08:57.319
The chief of police is going to get email.

01:08:57.319 --> 01:08:58.121
And that's what happened, right.

01:08:58.140 --> 01:09:08.819
So these folks called and said hey, will you go on this Zoom meeting and listen to this meeting we're going to have with Captain Tom, sergeant Alpert and Brian Espin, which is the LAPD sort of contingent for that area, right, the captain, the sergeant in the slow office, and they're slow.

01:09:08.819 --> 01:09:16.875
And so I went on and I changed my name so that I could just use anonymity and listen and watch what they were saying.

01:09:16.875 --> 01:10:00.882
And you and I know and when I say you and I, I also mean every other police officer from the two-month academy recruit to the chief of police and or all of the retired police officers and detectives that are out there we know what a consensual encounter is and how to use those right number one use them to to build the rapport with the community, but you can also use them to sort of get additional information from either you know nefarious individuals or people that are that you know are up to no good, but you don't really have anything that you can stop them on legally.

01:10:00.882 --> 01:10:10.855
And again, you know this whole and I'm not going to get into the rabbit hole on this but the term constitutional policing is something that's been thrown out for quite a while.

01:10:10.855 --> 01:10:20.003
I don't know about you, but I don't know any other way to police other than to adhere strictly to the Constitution of the United States of America.

01:10:20.826 --> 01:10:29.547
And a lot of times my bosses probably were not happy because I, you know, look, I stick to exactly what my oath of office was.

01:10:29.547 --> 01:10:39.887
Well, I'm listening to these guys get asked questions why are you, officer Espin, why aren't you doing what Rusty was doing, right?

01:10:39.887 --> 01:10:42.444
Why aren't you doing what Jimmy and Rusty were doing?

01:10:42.444 --> 01:10:44.454
You're not approaching these people.

01:10:44.454 --> 01:10:48.926
And then the answer was well, I can't approach them if they're not breaking the law.

01:10:48.926 --> 01:10:52.082
And I'm like gosh.

01:10:52.082 --> 01:10:59.681
And then if, to make matters worse, his sergeant and his captain doubled down on that and said look, I expect my officers to only engage.

01:10:59.681 --> 01:11:01.086
I'm like no, you don't.

01:11:01.086 --> 01:11:07.426
You expect your officers to build a foundation of communication and trust with your community and trust with your community.

01:11:07.426 --> 01:11:14.886
So warning those folks and explaining to them the very real potential was ignored.

01:11:15.494 --> 01:11:29.224
And instead what they did was they went on sort of a campaign, if you will, to sort of sully my name and besmirch me, telling the people that watched exactly what I did.

01:11:29.224 --> 01:11:31.578
There's nothing I did that was secret.

01:11:31.578 --> 01:11:37.137
There's nothing that I did, that any good police officer could have done the exact same thing, right?

01:11:37.137 --> 01:11:41.653
I'm not necessarily special in that regard, but they saw what I did.

01:11:41.653 --> 01:11:44.198
There's nothing, that's that's secret, right?

01:11:44.198 --> 01:11:52.658
Instead, they went in and decided, well, we have to besmirch this guy as best we can without, you know, getting into legal trouble.

01:11:52.658 --> 01:11:55.720
Say, look, he didn't do the job that he said he did, he did this job.

01:11:55.720 --> 01:12:02.345
They know that that was a causal factor to get us to where we were on the 7th of last month.

01:12:14.154 --> 01:12:24.376
And so I do believe and I don't, I don't, I think 90, I'm probably 98% that this was not started by a homeless person.

01:12:24.376 --> 01:12:40.971
Everything that I'm seeing is that it was a human that did it, but whether it was arson that was committed on purpose and or, obviously, as you know, now we have also a homicide investigation, because you have 28 people that have lost their lives.

01:12:40.971 --> 01:12:52.417
So, look, this happened at the hand of a human, in my opinion, hand of a human, in my opinion.

01:12:52.417 --> 01:12:58.206
I personally don't believe I could be proven wrong, but I've talked to my stepdad, who's a retired firefighter, line firefighter.

01:12:59.387 --> 01:13:11.146
I've talked to a bunch of line firefighters that were actually out there, responded to the New Year's Eve or New Year's Eve morning, fire, right, and most of them are all saying the same thing.

01:13:11.146 --> 01:13:14.262
Actually, they're all saying the same thing with no look.

01:13:14.262 --> 01:13:28.898
There's different times where embers can come up and and provide, you know, provide this sort of devastation or at least this kind of fire, especially with 80 to 100 mile an hour winds, but they're like nah, if this was started by fireworks, it was fresh fireworks.

01:13:28.898 --> 01:13:34.048
And again, this is the opinion, opinion of folks that I'm not going to name because of the obvious.

01:13:34.048 --> 01:13:39.106
I'm okay to be pummeled, but they're still actively working.

01:13:39.814 --> 01:13:46.764
Yeah, and I think, more importantly than how it started was I think the story you lined out, Rusty, of where we got how we got here right.

01:13:46.764 --> 01:14:04.541
I think that's really the lesson that all leaders, managers, should be listening here is is we need to listen to the people on the ground, listen to people that know what they're doing, understand that risk management is everybody's job, because, as horrific as this is, shame on us if we don't take some lessons from it.

01:14:05.302 --> 01:14:07.381
Yeah, yeah, and that's the thing right there is.

01:14:07.381 --> 01:14:10.737
I've always appreciated a debrief right.

01:14:10.737 --> 01:14:22.109
Most cops and military and sheriffs understand an after-action report right, even an after-action brief on LAPD.

01:14:22.109 --> 01:14:23.371
We refer to them as debriefs.

01:14:23.371 --> 01:14:39.400
After an incident, um, or, you know, I was a peer member on critical incident, um issues that you know, obviously, when you get involved in a shooting or you have some sort of a leery call out or, uh, a critical incident where deadly force was used.

01:14:39.400 --> 01:14:42.355
I was a a peer member, much, I think you.

01:14:42.355 --> 01:14:46.984
You would state that you've done that as well and so I'm familiar with how that works.

01:14:46.984 --> 01:15:00.208
So you debrief what occurred not to you know, to sort of, you know, grill the officers that have done the job, that may have made some mistakes, and or just look, they did everything in policy.

01:15:00.208 --> 01:15:15.307
But, to your point, we can learn from this, right, because I think that's the job of law enforcement that I think a lot of times we've done very good at, which is continue to sort of as a profession, start to become better and better.

01:15:15.307 --> 01:15:26.046
Unfortunately, we've had a similar digression because of some of the demographic imperative stuff that has unfortunately been mainstayed.

01:15:26.046 --> 01:15:32.287
But, yeah, they need to look at this and go okay, I made some mistakes here.

01:15:32.287 --> 01:15:34.059
I shouldn't have done this.

01:15:34.059 --> 01:15:40.807
I should have kept these guys there because, look, we had that place for the most part when we were working.

01:15:41.711 --> 01:15:45.220
And when I say on lockdown, I don't mean that people couldn't go enjoy themselves.

01:15:45.220 --> 01:15:46.344
To the contrary.

01:15:46.344 --> 01:16:02.265
Even during COVID, when there was this edicts going all around the country of you can't go out, you can't go hiking yeah, I'm not doing that, I'm not stopping people from enjoying their constitutional rights, and that didn't happen.

01:16:02.265 --> 01:16:03.448
I purposefully.

01:16:03.448 --> 01:16:09.291
People wanted to go surf, go ahead, see, united States of America, Go, go.

01:16:09.291 --> 01:16:10.092
Do I think the other?

01:16:10.113 --> 01:16:19.306
importance that I want people to take from this is just the difference that a couple of cops can make, right, I mean, you obviously lined out that story, but everybody needs to understand the power of one.

01:16:19.306 --> 01:16:28.621
Like, if you're a police officer somewhere in america, you have the potential to literally uh, you know, stop, stop catastrophe at some point.

01:16:28.621 --> 01:16:30.445
Right, I mean so, mean, so it's pretty amazing.

01:16:30.445 --> 01:16:32.140
Rusty, I can't thank you enough for being here.

01:16:32.140 --> 01:16:33.820
Pretty incredible story.

01:16:34.978 --> 01:16:37.386
I think it's one that none of people are talking about.

01:16:37.386 --> 01:16:46.904
We all want to just put a blame on somebody, but at the end of the day, we need to really look at the cause of leadership and the decisions made on how we can improve in the future.

01:16:46.904 --> 01:16:48.078
So thank you so much for being here.

01:16:48.761 --> 01:16:50.827
You got it, I and the decisions made on how we can improve in the future.

01:16:50.827 --> 01:16:52.011
So thank you so much for being here.

01:16:52.011 --> 01:16:52.372
You got it.

01:16:52.372 --> 01:16:59.391
I'd like to leave with this and I ended this on with the Fox News as well just because it's applicable.

01:17:03.435 --> 01:17:13.688
It's tragically ironic in this particular case that the Pacific Palisades people who put their money, and not all of these people we touched on some of the millionaires and billionaires and very wealthy individuals the overwhelming majority of people in the Pacific Palisades are not those people.

01:17:13.688 --> 01:17:16.457
They're not very, very wealthy.

01:17:16.457 --> 01:17:43.856
You know they've lived there for 60 plus years, 50 years but those people all chipped in, whether it was their time or their money or their clothes, to basically help homeless folks get off the streets, and the tragic irony is it's now them who are finding themselves homeless at this point, and that's where all of these leaders that you and I are talking about they need to jock up.

01:17:43.856 --> 01:17:45.002
Do the right thing.

01:17:45.002 --> 01:17:53.806
Look, if you're going to have a little egg in your face, it's okay, as long as you wipe it off and learn from your mistakes where they're not egregious.

01:17:53.806 --> 01:17:55.097
Some of the others.

01:17:55.097 --> 01:17:57.225
They got some splinting to do.

01:17:57.975 --> 01:17:58.596
Russ, you're Etikin.

01:17:58.596 --> 01:17:59.300
Thank you so much.

01:17:59.300 --> 01:18:01.917
If you've been watching or you've been listening, thank you for doing that.

01:18:01.917 --> 01:18:03.301
Thank you for spending your time with us.

01:18:03.301 --> 01:18:05.858
Just remember, lead on and stay courageous.

01:18:08.181 --> 01:18:11.087
Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates.

01:18:11.087 --> 01:18:19.542
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01:18:19.542 --> 01:18:19.542
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