June 13, 2024
From Badge to Author with Jim McNeff
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What happens when a decorated law enforcement officer decides to trade his badge for a pen? Join us for an intimate conversation with Jim McNeff, who shares how his early dreams of becoming a cop, inspired by a mentor at Anaheim PD, paved the way for a dynamic 30-year career. But the journey didn't stop at retirement. Jim's venture into breeding and training German shepherds quickly turned into a surprising second career in writing, where he found solace and purpose by connecting his professional experiences with biblical principles.
Balancing a successful career and personal life can be challenging, and Jim's story is a testament to that. We delve into a period of his life marked by marital strife only to witness the transformative power of faith and repentance. Jim opens up about overcoming work addiction and rebuilding trust within his family, sharing a powerful narrative that underscores the complexities of grace and forgiveness in the church. This chapter is an emotional rollercoaster, highlighting how faith can restore even the most broken relationships.
The demands of news reporting in the law enforcement arena are relentless, and Jim offers a behind-the-scenes look as managing editor at Law Officer. We discuss the struggle against media bias, the importance of fair and accurate reporting, and the dedication it takes to provide an unbiased voice in the industry. Lastly, Jim shares his retirement plans and love for travel, emphasizing the joys of family and new adventures. This episode celebrates courageous leadership, unwavering faith, and the enduring strength of love. Don't miss out on this heartfelt journey with Jim McNeff.
You can purchase Jim's books here.
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Transcript
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a lot of cops.
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All of a sudden, you know the drinking, the carousing, they became a real part of my life.
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I became and unlike people, a lot of people.
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When you go through the personal problems, that has a real negative impact on your life.
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Mine was just the opposite.
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I became a workaholic.
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There was no better employee at my police department than me, although my personal life was complete shambles and welcome to courageous leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
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Welcome back to the show.
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I'm so honored that you're spending a few minutes with us here today and I have been waiting for this interview for quite a while.
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On the show is Jim McNeff.
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He has over three decades in law enforcement, long retired from that career, but he just recently stepped down from almost a decade in publishing, working for several publications from law enforcement, ending his career at Law Officer Magazine lawofficercom.
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And there's just not a better guy to talk about career life, law enforcement, publishing, all things news than Jim.
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If you've read anything online about law enforcement, you've no doubt ran across something Jim has written.
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So we're very excited, jim, that you're here.
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How are you doing?
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I'm?
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doing well that you're here.
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How are you doing?
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I'm doing well, travis.
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Good morning.
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How are you?
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Doing great man.
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So I just kind of wanted to get you on here because I mean, the knowledge you have over the last decade for sure of what's going on in the profession is unprecedented and of course what a decade it has been.
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But before we get there, just kind of walk us through your career and how you ended up going into obviously one day writing, and of course now you're trying to enjoy more of your retirement years, but before that, before you were a police officer.
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Kind of walk us through that life.
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Yeah, well, I tell you what.
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From the time I was in junior high Travis, I knew I wanted to be a cop.
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I was that junior high kid.
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I rode my bicycle around the neighborhood pretending to be a motor cop and, of course, unlike most motor cops, where they're stopping you're writing a citation.
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Of course, every every time I made a stop as a junior high kid it was a foot chase right, foot chase right, and so I just knew I wanted to be a cop from the get-go.
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I grew up in Anaheim, california.
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I had a mentor in life who worked for Anaheim PD.
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Matter of fact, he was a helicopter pilot of what they call Angel One, and I just remember one day at a church outing, he shined the light down on us at the church out there playing at what we called Boys Brigade it was like a Christian version of the Boy Scouts.
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He shined his light down on us and said over the loudspeaker he called each one of us out by name and I just said man, that is exactly what I want to do.
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I want to be a cop.
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And so I just set my focus on it, and he recommended that I get some military under my belt.
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So I was in the best civilian organization in the military that's the Air Force, and of course that's a joke for all my Marine friends, since I worked with a majority of Marines, it seemed like I had to say I was in the military Air Force.
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But anyway, so that started it.
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I enjoyed thoroughly my career in law enforcement.
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As far as assignments went, I was very fortunate.
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It seemed like I had a different assignment every four years and you know, most of the time when you get done, when you've done 30 years or 30 plus, whatever the case may be it feels like you've done everything in the department right, like you've done everything in the department right.
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And so that's kind of the way my career ended.
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It felt like I had done everything.
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I didn't feel cheated.
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Very, very satisfying career.
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When I retired, my aspiration actually was to breed and train German shepherds.
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So as my kids were going to college and getting married and going different places, my wife and I trailed our oldest child, a daughter, and her husband to Texas, because at the time we had two grandkids and so we wanted to be near the grandkids.
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So we moved to Texas, built our retirement home up in a town called Salina in North Dallas, and I was going to breed and train German shepherds, and so I had two pups from different litters.
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They were going to be, they were going to start my new adventure and I was probably two or three months into training them.
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Every day I would go out and train with the dogs, exercise the dogs and train with the dogs, exercise the dogs and doggone.
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If God just didn't continue to put vignettes from my career into my head as I was out training the dogs, and each one of these vignettes, it wasn't just a time to reflect on my career, but every time God put a story in my mind, he took me to Scripture somewhere and I felt like what God was telling me was okay, you can use this illustration to teach this biblical principle.
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And I ignored him for a couple months.
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I'm thinking well, this is a nice stroll down the memory lane, god.
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But you know, writing a book to me looked like David going up against Goliath.
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God, but you know, writing a book to me looked like David going up against Goliath.
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And it's like, if you want me to be victorious here, man, you got to give me those five.
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Have you written before that, Jen?
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Had you enjoyed writing.
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Had you done any of that before that?
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I was probably the rare cop that actually enjoyed report writing.
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You know how it goes Writing reports.
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For most cops it's cops, it's not their number one thing that they enjoy.
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But that's really the extent of it.
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You just enjoyed report writing.
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You didn't write anything official or anything.
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Now, before you go, let me back you up to your career, because you did do a lot of different assignments.
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By the way, that helicopter story never gets owed.
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I'm impressed to this day when I see that helicopter and I had the honor of commanding that unit at one time in my career and I still couldn't get over the awe of that.
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Of course, canine and all that is the same.
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You have this love of dogs.
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Did you do canine at some point in your career?
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I was not a handler, but for five years I managed the program.
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Once I made lieutenant at my department.
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You wear a bajillion hats it seemed like.
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So one of the hats I had to wear was I was the manager of the canine program and yeah, that's when I fell in love.
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I mean, I'd always had a love for dogs, going back to my childhood, but I never realized how much I loved the German Shepherds and the Malinois and I think I kind of freaked most of the handlers out because I was the lt out there with the bite sleeve on.
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I'd take bites at training and of course you need to know that when all the lawsuits land on your desk you better know something about the way I was in a similar position.
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I had those units as a commander as well, and to your right.
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You don't actually have to know a lot about it, but a good leader wants to know a lot about it, right?
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Yeah, you better if you have to, because sooner or later you're going to have to defend what you do, and you can't defend what you do if you don't know how to do it.
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So anyway, yeah, so no, that's when I really fell in love with the dogs, was the period of time that I managed the canine program, and so, yeah, I just decided, going into retirement, that, wow, yeah, I want dogs by my side and so I'm going to train and breed them in retirement.
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But, like I mentioned previously, god kind of had other plans for me.
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So he puts on your heart to write a book, kind of talk about that process.
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We have a lot of listeners who may have that thought themselves, and it is funny how we have our own plans.
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God sometimes derails those plans, but you listened, even though you were probably stubborn like most of us at first, and you moved that way.
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So kind of talk about that process of that first book Because I know you're involved in three, I believe but talk about that process.
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Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
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I think every cop has a book in them.
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I mean, you can't do this job, you know, and have more than one cup of coffee for any period of time where, and so my journey that that eventually the writing was.
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I had a.
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A mentor of mine said you know, just start to journal all of the, all of the high-risk stuff, all of the storytelling stuff that you get involved in, Just start to write about it when it happens.
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And this guy told me this about eight years into my career.
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Well, I didn't more than write about it.
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If I was involved in a situation that made the newspaper, I collected the articles.
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So at the end of my career I had three 8x11 manila envelopes, absolutely stuffed with news articles oh how we all wish we would have done that, Jim.
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How we all wish we would have done that.
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So when it came time to so.
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Anyway, now fast forward.
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I'm a couple months into retirement, I'm training my puppy German Shepherds.
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I'm training my puppy German Shepherds and I come back, and at the time our house was being built and so we were staying with my daughter and son-in-law and grandkids.
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So I come back from training one day I open up my laptop and my granddaughter says what are you doing, papa?
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At the time she's five.
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I said well, dakota, I think God might want me to actually put my police stories into a book.
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Oh, that's nice, can I read it?
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And I'm thinking, yeah, part of it.
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And uh.
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So what happened was over the next four hours I did not touch a keystroke, I did not type a word.
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All I did was cut and paste stories, top stories that I've been involved in and I'll have to insert here.
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For four years.
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I actually was a lay pastor of a ministry called In the Dirt.
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We were a group of dirt bike riders.
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Once a month we went out to a retreat in the high desert, we rode dirt bikes and then I preached every Saturday night at the campfire.
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So I took my cop stories and I connected them with notes, my message notes, and after four hours Travis, I kid you not cut and pasting for four hours, I thought I had 19 chapters to a book and I had not written a thing.
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Thought I had 19 chapters to a book and I had not written a thing.
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And so once that happened, I thought, okay, this is not me having indigestion, this is not me having anything other than this is God's direction for me.
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So I thought, okay, god again, I felt like David in writing a book at the time, felt like Goliath.
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I said I'll be obedient, I don't think I have much to say, but I know you have a lot to say.
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So here's the deal I'll take good notes when you're kind of talking to me through Scripture and through my own prayer life and through the mentors in my life.
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So that's kind of how the first book was born.
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You speak about your faith and kind of talk about the importance of that through your law enforcement career, because obviously you have sort of two or three different camps in law enforcement.
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You've got true believers that are in this job and there's always kind of a tug and pull with that.
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You have people that think they're believers because they do a job.
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That's obviously not true and you have people that just don't believe because of the job they do and what they see.
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Kind of talk about the power of that faith you had in your career, Jim.
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Yeah, it's real.
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It was something I had growing up.
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I had it through my upbringing, through my military years, through my entry into law enforcement.
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But then it really got tested.
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I had probably not, unlike many cops.
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You know, we hire the type of people that will give you the shirt off their back when we hire them right.
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And then, after a couple of years worth of working graveyard shift weekends, it's so easy to get detached from your support network, and that absolutely happened to me.
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I mean, matter of fact, I've got three brothers who pastor churches and so in the early years of my law enforcement career I'm working graveyard I tried to go to church after graveyard shift.
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It got embarrassing when I'm falling asleep in church and my brother's up there, you know, delivering the message.
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And so I told my wife at the time.
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I said I'm not going to church after I work in graveyard.
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It's too embarrassing for me.
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I'm not going to church after I work in radio.
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It's too embarrassing for me.
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I'm not going to go there, fall asleep in church, it's just I'm not going to.
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So I actually I quit going to church for several years and I blamed it on the schedule.
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Well, what happens is when you detach yourself from the things in life.
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That will sharpen the sword, so to speak, that will keep you accountable.
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That will be your community to help you through those rough times.
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All of a sudden, I put all of those things to the side and guess what?
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I'm not unlike a lot of cops.
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All of a sudden, you know the drinking, the carousing, they became a real part of my life.
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I became, and, unlike a lot of people, when you go through the personal problems, it has a real negative impact on your life.
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Mine was just the opposite.
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I became a workaholic.
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There was no better employee at my police department than me, although my personal life was a complete shambles.
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This is part of my first book.
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I just appropriately titled the chapter Prodigal Son because I did.
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I had five years where, again, my professional life spot on.
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I mean, I couldn't do any wrong, but my personal life was just in the toilet.
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And so it was during that point in time where, during that five-year period, we had our first two children and man, I just remember just breaking down and bawling one evening and I just knew I'm about to lose a great woman in my life.
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Matter of fact, the only reason she even stayed married to me through that five-year period was.
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It was not out of weakness on her part, it was out of her own testimony and strength.
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And God kept reminding her that well, you don't have to like him right now, but I am commanding you to love him.
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And that's a concept people are going to wait a second.
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You have to love him when you don't have to like him.
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Well, yeah, because we should never like anything.
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I don't want to get too preachy here, but of course the Bible calls it sin, the world calls it a lot of other things, but, matter of fact, we're actually commanded not to like that stuff and still love the person who's engaged in it.
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So that's kind of a hard concept for a lot of people to understand.
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But my wife understood it and she put it into practice and finally, one day I just broke down just bawling and I knew I was about to lose my wife.
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I was about to lose my wife.
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I was about to lose my children and the thought of someone else raising my children broke my heart.
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But it actually wasn't until my wife told me that we were unexpectedly pregnant with our third child.
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That that convinced me that I got to get my personal life together.
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I got to get my act together.
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I got to surrender my life to Christ.
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I've got to get back on track, and so that was a turning point for me.
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So it's kind of about year nine, year 10 in my professional life that my spiritual life turned around.
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And you know, the sad thing is is when you're living like hell and you're living for the next, what we call a debriefing at the bar right after work.
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At the time I was working narcotics and being a narc, it was not unusual.
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We could be at work two, three.
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There's one point in time I didn't come home for a week, and that wasn't from a deep undercover assignment, that was just we were all rabid dogs in my small unit and if the case meant we had to sit on a sit on a moat because he just crossed the border into mexico, we were going to sit at the border.
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You're on doper time.
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At that point there's no telling when the day is going to get over oh yeah, so, uh, so, yeah, that's so.
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Anyway, I finally said, god, my life is yours again.
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And so, once that process began, we started to attend a church that had a great recovery program for anybody who has any kind of an addictive vice, and people and that's one thing about cops is we don't view anything that we're doing as an addictive vice, when in fact, the reality is man, even if you are married to the job, yeah, that's an addictive vice.
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So I had that going on.
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I wasn't an alcoholic, I just like going to drink with the guys.
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Right, yeah, and during that period of time this is a man uh, yeah, I was unfaithful to my wife.
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I mean, I was involved in a series of affairs.
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It's like I was a bachelor, I lived like I was a bachelor, it was horrible, did horrible things and uh.
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But that's the beauty of God's redemptive, uh, or God's redemption in our life is he can take what we have messed up.
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And because my wife stood with me, stood by me, and then I chose to turn from all of that and to become a new man, god has used our marriage and I mean that was gosh, what was that?
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That was almost 30 years ago.
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Well, and non-believers?
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This is where they really get stuck, because you actually just described the Bible right Repentance, faith and that's the story of the Bible is what you described.
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Not everybody has that story, but everybody has a story to where they got away from it for a while and had to be brought back.
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Almost every Christian you talk to has that story, but everybody has a story to where they got away from it for a while and had to be brought back.
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Almost every Christian you talk to has that story, including myself.
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But that's where unbelievers really sort of use that against Christians.
00:18:00.810 --> 00:18:03.826
I love it when nonbelievers want to preach to Christians about the Bible.
00:18:03.826 --> 00:18:05.720
That's awesome to me when I hear that, right.
00:18:06.160 --> 00:18:10.603
But that's actually the story of the Bible and it's a beautiful although it sounds odd.
00:18:10.603 --> 00:18:22.769
It's a beautiful picture of what Christianity is to so many people and I'm sure today you're who you are today, in your faith, in your family, in the jobs you've done because of that.
00:18:22.769 --> 00:18:24.550
That's also the beauty of Scripture.
00:18:25.151 --> 00:18:37.597
Yeah, and if I can even just input this, because I know, because there's been people who knew me before my prodigal son years who still, to this day, they have a very hard time offering grace and forgiveness to some.
00:18:37.597 --> 00:18:47.333
What's interesting here I found this out about the church, if you will, and that is they're very good at extending grace to someone whose life has always been a mess.
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They're not very good at extending grace to someone who was scored away.
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Their life became messy and then they turned back to God, and I've experienced a lot of both of that.
00:19:04.461 --> 00:19:22.682
But as my wife and I have now been involved in various ministries over the last 25, 30 years about 30 years now and my wife has been very involved in counseling women whose husbands have been unfaithful and what's interesting is that people want to blame the church as the institution of the church.
00:19:22.682 --> 00:19:26.833
They want to blame the church for the problems of sinful people.
00:19:26.833 --> 00:19:38.825
Well, and so whenever someone is hurt, they're not mad or angry at the person in the church that hurt them, they're angry at the church.
00:19:38.825 --> 00:19:54.471
Well, it's not the church that hurt them, it's the sin of the individual person that hurt them, and that's a concept that more people would do better if they came to understand that the institution of the church didn't hurt you.
00:19:54.471 --> 00:19:57.209
It was the individuals in that institution.
00:19:58.741 --> 00:20:04.032
So you end your law enforcement career and God sends you to write this book.
00:20:04.032 --> 00:20:05.686
You write two more books.
00:20:05.686 --> 00:20:08.849
At what point did you get involved in writing for law enforcement?
00:20:10.221 --> 00:20:10.442
Yeah.
00:20:10.442 --> 00:20:22.671
So after the first book came out, then I was just reaching out to different publications to say because you know, that's how you market yourself, is you just continue to write articles?
00:20:22.671 --> 00:20:33.285
So I had reached out and so I started to write a lot of articles for a publication and after writing for them for about a year, the owner asked me hey, I'm looking for an editor.
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And I just kind of laugh.
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I'm going well, do you want an editor who knows anything about editing, or do you want an editor who knows about?
00:20:39.826 --> 00:20:41.691
You know, cops and robbers?
00:20:41.691 --> 00:20:45.825
I know a lot about cops and robbers, I don't know jack about editing.
00:20:45.825 --> 00:20:52.035
And he goes yeah, no, I want an editor who knows about police work and we can deal with the other.
00:20:52.035 --> 00:20:55.851
I said well, if that's your criteria, then yeah, I'd be open to that.
00:20:55.851 --> 00:21:06.010
So I started to work there and I was there for nearly three years as their managing editor and some things came up that I was just in disagreement with.
00:21:06.339 --> 00:21:07.721
Well, let's talk about not exactly the disagreements but the work time.
00:21:07.721 --> 00:21:17.691
Let's talk about not exactly the disagreements but the work time, because I think people don't understand that as a managing editor it's not exactly a nine to five easy job.
00:21:17.691 --> 00:21:22.375
You probably had all sorts of hours, probably were working more than you wanted to write in retirement.
00:21:25.119 --> 00:21:25.401
Oh my gosh.
00:21:25.401 --> 00:21:26.304
Yeah, I can't underestimate.
00:21:26.304 --> 00:21:29.012
I mean, unless you've got a team somewhere.
00:21:29.012 --> 00:21:31.125
Yeah, it's a seven.
00:21:31.125 --> 00:21:38.243
The news business it's a seven day a week, 24 hour cycle.
00:21:38.243 --> 00:21:49.601
It never goes to bed, never sleeps, and so, as you know, most law enforcement news organizations that have propped up or cropped up in the last decade, that's kind of the way they're run.
00:21:49.601 --> 00:21:57.166
They're run with a skeletal staff with a minimal amount of overhead and income, and so people work like a dog.
00:21:58.561 --> 00:22:25.472
And so and I'm really not saying this, not over-exaggerating it, but essentially for the last eight plus years that I've been involved in editing for the most part, yeah, I've worked seven days a week, not 24 hours a day, but I would routinely put in 12 hour days and on the other hours when I'm not working, like if I'm watching a ballgame or something on TV, where I've got split attention.
00:22:25.472 --> 00:22:27.506
I've got one eye on news stories.
00:22:27.506 --> 00:22:29.030
I've got another eye on the ballgame game.
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Something pops up and it's a, it's a breaking news story.
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All of a sudden, you're no longer watching the ball game, you're, you're writing an article.
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I can remember super bowls with family.
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Boom, the laptop has to come out because something popped up.
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