This is the first of two talks with James Mitchell, a retired police captain who worked in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and who happens to be politically liberal. We talk about excessive force by police in the United States, with the goal of understanding some of the factors that can lead to unjustified and too-aggressive police responses. (Here’s part 2.)
Topics discussed include: what he would do if he were put in charge of a federal department given the task of solving this issue; the wisdom of “abolish the police” and “defund the police”-type slogans and beliefs; George Floyd’s death and how Chauvin and his fellow cops handled that situation; how our mental health issues relate to police violence issues; how cops can escalate a situation whether they mean to or not, and more (below).
A transcript is below.
Podcast links:
Other topics discussed include:
- The problems that cops solve and why there is a demand for them to solve those problems.
- The reasons behind “qualified immunity.”
- The adversarial relationship that some police departments have with communities.
- How some cops are uncomfortable and inflexible, and how this can lead to them escalating things.
- The reasons James retired, which include anti-cop sentiment and decreases in protections for cops.
- The mental health issues cops themselves face.
Related resources:
- The Guardian’s The Counted project, an interactive database of killings by police in the U.S. for 2015 and 2016
- Book review of Tangled Up In Blue, a book by a law professor who became a cop to learn firsthand about policing issues
- The second part of the talk with James Mitchell
TRANSCRIPT
[Note: transcripts will contain errors.]
Zach: Welcome to the People Who Read People podcast, hosted by me, Zachary Elwood. This podcast is focused on examining psychology and behavior. It’s about reading people’s behavior, about understanding the factors that give rise to people’s behavior. You can learn more about this podcast and learn about old episodes at www.readingpokertells.video/blog.
In this episode, recorded April 2nd, 2021, I interview James Mitchell, a retired captain for the Prince George’s County police department in Maryland. We talk about the topic of excessive police violence; my motiviations in doing this interview, which is hopefully the first of two we do together, is to better understand the factors that are influencing police behavior. For example, when we see a video of a cop killing a civilian in a way that seems egregiously over-reactive and unjustified, what are all the factors influencing that cop’s behavior?
Because as open and shut as many of these things seem to many people, it would seem there are many factors present that make these encounters go the way they do; they aren’t random, … and it clearly doesn’t seem to be a matter of cops wanting to kill people or not caring about killing people; at the very least, even the most pessimistic anti-cop people out there surely recognizes that if you’re a cop and you kill someone in what seems to be questionable, that can ruin your life. And so I wanted to examine this area more closely. And that’s what this podcast is about; examining the hidden factors behind behavior, talking to people who work in specific niches who might have insight about the factors that we, from the outside, don’t often see.
I’ll give a quick summary of how I ended up talking with James.
James and I went to high school. We both attended a private Catholic high school in southern Maryland called St. Mary’s Ryken. We were in the same class; we graduated in 1995. I’ve always had a lot of respect for James. He was charismatic, smart, a nice guy. He also happened to be the first person who I personally knew to come out as gay, and he did that when we were in high school, in a pretty rural and conservative area. At that time I was impressed by his bravery; and also shocked at how effortless it seemed for him; he seemed so relaxed. And then later, when I learned he’d become a cop, I was like ‘yep that’s a brave guy.’ So I’ve always had a lot of respect for James.
After George Floyd’s death and the protests last year, I was occasionally trying to find a cop who’d be willing to talk about these topics, about the factors governing police behavior, the hidden factors that aren’t so obvious. One of my motivations for wanting to do that is because I have seen so many simplistic and un-nuanced takes on this area across the board, from newspaper pieces to TV shows to influential social media users, to people I personally know. This is a whole area in itself, but to make a long story short, I’ve seen so many people speak as if cop violence issues stem primarily from malicious or racist intent, the whole ‘all cops are bastards ACAB’ thing. I’ve seen so many people speak as if cops don’t provide valuable services, as if there’s not a real demand for cops to do what they do, including a real demand from poor communities who deal with a lot of crime. And then there’s the militant anti-cop protests; I live in Portland, Oregon and I’ve watched people I personally know transform in a few months to militant anti-cop revolutionaries, who believe that fighting with cops in the street is part of a war against white supremacy and fascism.
In short, I’ve been very disappointed with the extremism and lack of nuance because I see so much complexity in this topic, so many factors at work.
So I’d been looking for someone to interview for a while on these issues, but it was difficult trying to find someone who I thought would make an interesting interview. I didn’t want to talk to any current police official, as I don’t think they’re in a place to have an honest conversation. I quickly realized I needed to find a cop who was retired; someone who was more likely to speak their mind freely and didn’t fear any blowback. But at the same time, I didn’t want to talk to a retired cop who was now trying to do other police or defense-related work or trying to be a public personality of any sort; there, too, I thnk there was a lot of potential for bias and not being free to talk. And I also wanted someone who had progressed high enough in the ranks to know about a wide range of issues. Basically, I was pretty picky. I put the word out with people I know, and had a few leads, but didn’t have any luck. Some just weren’t comfortable doing it, and that’s understandable, as these are tough things to talk about even in the best of times, let alone our current polarized environment.
I did have one preliminary chat with a retired high level state cop. Strangely to me, he wouldn’t admit that our country’s huge amount of guns might be a factor in our police violence issues. And I was taken aback by that, as it seems such an obvious factor that I didn’t imagine anyone would deny it being a factor; personally I think it’s the main factor. And I’d also think that many police, even if they were very pro 2nd amendment, would be willing to acknowledge the role of our guns here, at the very least because acknowledging that as a factor might get cops off the hook a bit. But it seems many conservatives are loathe to admit guns might be a factor for political and group solidarity reasons. So I had to pass on that talk as I didn’t feel it would be that honest a discussion.
So long story short: I had spent a good amount of time trying to find a good candidate but with no luck. Then, a couple months ago I noticed on Facebook that James had retired from his police captain job at the end of 2020. It seemed like great timing, so I reached out to him and he said yes.
This is hopefully the first of two talks I do with James. As you’ll see, we go off on a lot of tangents and we don’t get to talk about many of the things I had initially wanted to dig into, like the role of our gun culture, or the fears that cops have and why they have them, or the role of race, and many other things. Honestly, it was tough to stay focused because this is such a complex topic; as James pointed out before we talked: we could talk for days about this. So if James and I do a second talk, which I think is likely, I’ll set up a tighter structure for that one where we’ll go through a bunch of topics and I think that talk will be very good.
Some of the topics we talk about in this interview are:
What James would do to tackle police violence problems if he were put in charge of some sort of federal department tasked with solving this problem.
Our country’s mental health issues and how he sees that contributing to policing issues
His thoughts on the George Floyd incident and Chauvin trial
The ways that cops can escalate situations, whether they mean to or not
Some of the factors that influenced him to take an early retirement, which includes the increase in anti-cop sentiment, and some policy changes that have made policing less attractive to James and some other cops
And it might go without saying, but maybe it’s worth emphasizing: James is just one person, speaking for no one but himself. While he’s been in policing for a good stretch of time ,about 20 years, he doesn’t pretend to be an expert on all of the things we talk about. No one can be an expert in all these areas. He’s just giving his own takes; he’s not going to give us solutions. But the reason I think this interview is worthwhile is that it helps show how complex some of these issues are. There’s a lot to talk about, and it’s hard to boil down any of this stuff to “cops are bad and we should get rid of them or defund them.” And if I accomplish anything with this interview, it’s to give a sense of how much there is to talk about.
My desire to do this podcast is partly about the police issues, but it’s also me trying to model the kinds of reasonable discussions I think we need to be having more of when trying to solve our problems. Because I believe on the actual issues, we have more common ground than we realize, even in today’s very polarized environment. Because a lot of our polarization is emotional, what researchers call psychological polarization or affective polarization; it has a lot to do with us vs them dynamics and not as much to do as we think it does with the actual issues.
I edited this talk a bit, moving some parts to the end because they were slightly less on topic. Topics I moved to the end include James talking about the various jobs he had as he rose to becoming a captain, and what motivated him to get into policing in the first place, and a talk about the mental health struggles cops deal with.
Before I play the interview, I wanted to plug a great resource that’s helped me better understand police violence issues. It’s an interactive tool made by The UK newspaper The Guardian. The project is called The Counted. You can use that tool to examine the killings of civiliians by police in the United States from the years 2015 and 2016. You can filter by race, by sex, by unarmed vs armed, and more, and you can read summaries about what led to the incidents. It’s a great tool for wrapping your head around what exactly is happening in this area, how these incidents are happening and who they’re happening to. If you’re someone who wants some concrete, real world knowledge of this area to make your discussions sharper, I highly recommend it. Again, that’s called The Counted: People Killed by police in the US, by The Guardian.
Okay here’s the interview with James Mitchell, retired Maryland police captain.
Zach: Hi James. Welcome to the show.
James: Hey, thanks for having me.
Zach: I thought a good way to, maybe, to start this [00:09:00] would be when we’re talking about the, the problems of the perceived excessive violence problems of the US police.
We’re gonna talk about some factories behind that in a little bit. But first I wanted to ask if there were somehow a national agency that controlled how policing was implemented in America and you were put in charge of it, what would be the main things that you would think to implement to try to solve the excessive violence problems?
James: The, the first thing I would do is come up with the use of force policy and the use of force continuum. Make it very specifically stated and make that consistent throughout every, you know, if a national law enforcement, whether it’s an agency or a policy group, that that was formulated in every, every police department that receives federal funds and they all do somehow must account to use of force training standards.
Deescalation are the main things. A lot of the things that I see on tv, I’ve been in stressful situations, so I know how they play out. So [00:10:00] I, I think I have a better, I, I stand better to, to critique, um, the actions afterwards. But a lot of the times I see where the, the police officers are just taking it, not not taking it too far, they’re taking it the wrong direction when there are other directions that you can go and they’re taking specific steps where escalation and, you know, I don’t wanna get too far off topic, but, you know, they, there are ways to, to quell a situation.
Then there’s the law and the policy that allows you to do the next steps. I believe a lot of them are just taking the next steps rather than thinking, how do I keep this to where it doesn’t turn into, does this have to be an arrest situation? Does this have to be a forced situation? You know, that we’ve all had the disorderly motorist that doesn’t wanna sign their ticket and just wants to scream at you, and you just, you become immune to it after a while after about the first 15 times that someone screams out their car window that you know you are, you’re harassing them, or, or, [00:11:00] you know, they didn’t do it.
I’m like, okay, well there’s a, there is a venue for you to completely argue with me and argue your case, and you can have, you know, and one, one of the things is, you know, don’t talk, you know, don’t scream back at them. Don’t, don’t be disrespectful because all you’re doing is throwing gasoline on a, on a fire.
Zach: Right. Right.
James: And a, a lot of officers just get stuck in the authority mode and just forget that they’re people and that they’re dealing with people and work under policy, which is allowed by law to do that. A lot of these situations escalate and the optics of them are terrible and the outcomes of ’em are terrible and they’re terrible for people of color.
And I’ll be the first one to say it. I, I’ve seen it on the inside. I’m not saying that, um, the place where I worked was, was a racist agency because I don’t believe it is. But I do see how people of color are dis disproportionately affected by, um, policing tactics and by laws that. Allow [00:12:00] policing tactics.
So that’s something that, that we could go into, you know, in 20 episodes of, of an interview.
Zach: Yeah. There’s so many directions and so much, yeah. Like you said, um, before we talked mm-hmm. You could talk about this for, for days and not reach, uh, yeah. There’s just so much to talk about. Oh. So maybe let’s, uh, you had talked about the implementing standards, you know, and, and the lack of standards across the country mm-hmm.
And, and everybody having their own rules. Is it fair to say that you see that as one of the big problems in this area?
James: Yes. And, and that a lot of them just don’t have, they haven’t updated policies and training standards in so many years. Take the, um, the case in Minnesota with, um, George Floyd and the officer Derek Chauvin, I was shocked that, um, carotid restraints were actually.
Allowed by a larger agencies. We all know from past experience of in custody deaths, these things are talked about through all professional policing organizations, how these [00:13:00] practices need to stop because you can accidentally kill somebody. Mm-hmm. People can die from positional asphyxiation, whether they’re just excited they’ve taken a drug, they have a medical condition.
Placing somebody face down with their hands behind their back. It’s hard to breathe. It’s hard for me to breathe. I mean, we did this in training. It’s not a comfortable position. So you, you throw in there every factor where you have a grown man kneeling on top of another grown man on his airway being in another country.
I honestly haven’t been keeping up with, uh, what’s going on in the trial. But I can give some, some takeaways from that.
Zach: Yeah, we’ll wait on the, uh, maybe get to that a little later.
James: Run me back to where I’m supposed to be.
Zach: It seems like these various departments and regions have their own various rules and it seems like, like you say, without a large set of rules that cross, you know, everybody and stays up to date, you’re just gonna have all these rules, like the carotid restraints that are out of date and that no one’s g gonna change until something really bad happens.
It seems like,
James: and I don’t understand why they haven’t changed because mm-hmm. You can just [00:14:00] look around the country and see which agencies have dealt with this problem before and why they changed their policy and there’s a good reason. There are other ways to. There are much safer ways to restrain people without the risk of death.
Plain and simple. And why? Antiquated, uh, choke holds and carotid restraints and neck restraints actually still exist and are still permitted by policy. Is, is probably one of the first things, is the first thing that if I was in charge, I’d get rid of. Mm-hmm. Because there are other ways to do it. There are devices.
I know that, that my agency used a, a system called the Wrap basically wraps somebody’s body up, but it, it, it wraps them and secures them in a way that they’re sitting face up without any interference with, uh, neck or airway. It’s cumbersome to use, but it’s possible. I was trained on it very early on in my career because they were dealing with an issue of in custody death, um, about the time I was hired.
And so training had had been changing and evolving as I was being hired as well, because these had been issues in the past.
Zach: If we were looking at other things besides having a, a larger set of [00:15:00] rules that applied across, you know, larger regions of the country. Mm-hmm. Would another main thing to do be mental health response, like overhauling how that’s done and having different systems for that.
James: Oh, absolutely. I know you had talked about, you know, when you mentioned wanting to do the interview, what defunding the police means, and if we could get into that, I can actually segue into this other part, but I’ll talk about here. Mental health, I believe it for officers and for every member of a community is of utmost importance and it’s just not available.
More if it was available to community, I think it would be a less of a stressful response, a stressful atmosphere in policing if people had their opportunities to, to get help without, um, obstruction and without having to go through red tape or, you know, worry about a hospital bill.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Oh, right. Yeah.
Yeah. I
James: mean, and I know this in my, in my own, um, experience, there’s not anywhere near as much mental health resource. Like, there’s not even a fraction [00:16:00] of what actually needs to occur, be available to people. It’s just not there. And I think that has a cascading effect on everything relating to policing and mental illness and the tragic instances that happen with encounters of people who are going through a mental health crisis.
It’s, it’s a scary thing to deal with because people are very unpredictable when they’re at that point, when they’re at the brink of wanting to live or wanting to die, and you don’t know what they’re going to do. I’m sure you’ve heard about this, um, the phenomenon called Suicide by Cop.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
James: I mean, I’ve had pe, I’ve had people point weapons at me, um, not a gun, but hand tools, knives, and say, you know, go ahead and shoot me.
Why don’t you just kill me? I, I wanna die. It doesn’t matter anyway.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
James: It’s a position nobody ever wants to be in. And fortunately, while they’re still controversial using a taser, an electrical device, you know, kept it from being a deadly force situation.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
James: But at the same time, the, the law and our [00:17:00] policy at the time would have justified a deadly force situation in, in that thing, but it wasn’t, nobody wants to do that.
I don’t think anyone sets out to try to kill anybody, but in too many places, I believe the philosophy and, and you know, not behind individual authors, but behind an agency or be behind a region or a state where, well, that’s the policy and that’s what we go by, but. You know, who, who is it affecting? It’s, of course, it’s disproportionately affecting poor people and people of color.
It always does.
Zach: There’s so much, uh, complexity in this area alone because, like you say, the, the fact that if cops show up for what you know, in hindsight is an obvious mental health call, the cops are an escalating presence. The presence of that cop with her gun and the associations behind it escalates the situation.
James: Oh, just showing up, just showing up in a uniform, in a, in a patrol car is enough to, to light off a powder keg sometimes.
Zach: Mm-hmm. And, and a
James: lot of times that will do it, and there’s nothing anyone can do really to stop that. If you’ve been called in to [00:18:00] help, you’re called in to help, but showing up in a blue uniform with a, a tactical belt on and your vest and all of that, it’s intimidating.
That to somebody who’s having a mental health crisis may be just be the tipping point, or it may be the point where everyone calms down. I’ve seen it both ways.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
James: Where you show up, they’re like, all right, you know what? We, let’s come out, come to find a different resolution to this. And it really, a lot of it has to do with the attitude of, of the, the person in the uniform getting out of the, of the patrol car and how they started.
Mm-hmm. And how they start the, uh, the interaction. I had been on scenes where it was very heated, very, uh, violent family dispute, um, involving many family members, uh, I don’t want to call it domestic violence. It, it wasn’t really, um, intimate partner related. It was just a huge family fight. And I, I honestly don’t remember what it was about, but I remember that another officer I worked with, he and I, and a third one had.
We had really calmed everything down. [00:19:00] People were not screaming, they were talking, we were working on a solution of all right, who needed to find somewhere else to go for the night, you know, whose residence it was and, and how to keep this, how, how to keep it from happening again. The, the, the one thing that we aimed to take care of when we were at a house for a problem is to make enough of a resolution that we’re not going back for, again, for the same problem or a worse problem.
You know, you, you don’t want to leave an unfinished situation where the next time you’re coming back because someone has a knife stuck in them. You know, that’s, that’s not what we want. And so, uh, while on the scene, I remember everyone being calm, and there’s another officer who walks up and is like, all right, who, and quote, who the fuck wants to go to jail?
And then the brawl starts because it’s just somebody being a smart ass who thinks it’s funny. And you get this in all walks of life and all, you’ve always got that one person at work who just says the wrong thing. Or the one person in your family who at the family function, who just is always that [00:20:00] guy?
Well, you know, every, every while it’s not criminal and it’s not the most professional, it’s not corrupt or anything, but that, that behavior really can, can turn a, a scene upside down when it was already solved.
Zach: Mm-hmm. On the flip side of this, you know, it’s easy for me to imagine, like, say we did implement something where there were not cops responding, not armed cops or not as armed cops, uh mm-hmm.
Mental health specialists responding to calls about people acting, uh, badly, strangely, uh, I can imagine the situation where things go badly and that that respondent, that mental health focus respondent is not equipped, and then some people get killed. Mm-hmm. And then we’re, we’re back to where we started because, you know, some people are gonna say, well, why didn’t you send out the people that were.
You know, uh, equipped to deal with the situation. Yeah. And, and so I run these kind of simulations in my head and I’m like, I can totally see it just swinging back the other way where they’re like, well, now you wound up with a bunch of people getting killed because people were not prepared to deal with violence when it happened.
[00:21:00] Yeah.
James: It’s, it’s, it’s true. And that I think that having, uh, mental health workers responding to scenes of crisis while. It actually already exists in many places, and it existed, uh, with my agency from the time that I started until the time that I left. We, we contracted with mobile mental mental health workers.
Basically, they were, um, mental health workers licensed in a car with a police radio, working on the police channels. Um, they would help with, um, family disputes, problems with kids, people who were feeling suicidal, but were not taking an, an imminent action that would warrant like a, an an officer coming out.
Usually officers went here first and then would try to refer the mental health counselors out.
Zach: Ah, so their officers would go first,
James: would go first, and so, so we would have to investigate unattended deaths. So, um, a family member dies and everyone’s distraught. We would call the, the counselors out to help because the thing a [00:22:00] wants to see is a bunch of.
Cops with guns and police cars outside of their house. I mean, it’s one, it’s traumatic enough that you just, that someone died. But then there’s this perception of there’s something going on at the house and it’s, it’s overwhelming. They, and they, these folks would also do follow up at later dates without officers.
If, if there was a teenager feeling suicidal but not taking any, any actions for it, they would still, they would go back out, let the police dispatcher know where they were. And the dispatcher would always check, do you need an officer with you? And they would say yes or no. And usually it was no, because they’re just doing a follow up check to make sure that, you know, whatever help they had referred them to was actually being followed through with.
Or did they need anything else. And I would say in the last 10 years that the need for it has. Just exponentially, I think, um, the boom of social media has just thrown so much more pressure on people in general. It’s harder to live a private life.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
James: Things get found out sooner. Things get blown out of proportion.
And I think this happens in inner interpersonal levels and [00:23:00] then just kind of bubbles over into an event that now requires an outside in, uh, intervention. And, and the first, the first thing that anyone call, uh, can think of is call the police. Well, they say cops aren’t social workers, but yes, cops are social workers, whether they want to be or not.
It’s just the way it is, especially in the United States because it’s what people have come to know as their first line of help. And I think that replacing. Or deciding when to dispatch a, a mental health counselor out rather than the police is actually a step too late. That the access to mental health needs to exist before the, the point where someone needs to have an intervention at their house.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
James: And I think this, this goes a little bit further and, you know, we’re, we talk about defunding the police, I don’t think people realize exactly what this means. They talk about one, uh, people and advocates are going for it. We want the police to do less well. Yeah, I think that’s a great idea too. But defunding an organization because of bad things that have happened, you know, would be fine [00:24:00] if there was, uh.
If it was here, and I could wrap this up, good plan. Maybe like
Zach: a good, if there was a good plan in place for her, for what, you know, what exactly If, if the
James: resources existed, say you have a, uh, densely populated community, but you’ve got, um, you know, health centers, clinics, mental health, and these things are available.
Oftentimes it’s not gonna come to the point where a family needs to call authorities on another family member if there are other ways to deal with it. And right now in the United States, there are just not other, a lot of other ways to deal with it unless you have a level of affluence or. Insurance or you live in a wealthier community.
Uh, poor communities and communities of color are lack in everything from educ. We know this. We could go down the road of, of what’s lacking mental health resources, you know, that focus on mental wellness to substance abuse, counseling and treatment to everything else. These are just some of the things that, that contribute to [00:25:00] what the media describes and what officers describe as as a mental health event.
These are all the precursors of things that can contribute to that. And if you’re not treating that early enough is when you start to get the bubble over. You know, the pots boiling over, then you have, you’re. Who is trained, one, not trained enough to counsel or, or in my opinion, not, not given enough of that, but trained more in warrior mode.
I, I can refer back to, to my training and tell you, I don’t think the philosophy is still valid 20 years ago, is what it needs to be today as far as training.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
James: Um, it’s not us against them. I mean, the police exist out of an, a need dictated by a community and it’s turned into an adversarial relationship where it really shouldn’t be because really the, the police are there for the will of the people.
There’s a disconnect, especially in the US based on, I mean, you can go back into the days of slavery and Jim Crow and all of [00:26:00] that to keep certain people down, especially people of color. And the, the laws are designed to protect those who had, I guess, standing in the community or, or wealth. They’re not for the greater good and, and I’m seeing this in now, I’m living in another country where people don’t go without healthcare.
If you’re to the point where. You, you can’t afford rent. There’s, you’re not gonna be homeless. But I don’t want to go down that road of, um,
Zach: you’ve brought up so many interesting things. It’s hard to know which direction to go in, but I think you, you know, you bringing up the mental health and the, the medical insurance aspect, you know of mm-hmm.
We often talk about the lack of the mental health stuff. Mm-hmm. But, you know, a big factor there is, like you said, people afraid of being broke. That that stuff costs money. You know, all the, all that stuff costs money. Whether it’s therapy or whether it’s like e even if there are some free things, a lot of people just don’t know about ’em or they’re far away from ’em or whatever.
James: People know where to go if they need to buy a lawnmower or they need to go to Home Depot. There’s no Health Depot. Mm-hmm. You know, where you can get everything [00:27:00] taken care of that it’s not obvious that you have to, you know, there, there can be barriers if, you know, if there’s a barrier in language or a barrier in education or the ability to, to think, you know, where would I get this sort of resource because it’s not obvious.
Mm-hmm. And I, I think that most communities need to start thinking about community health. If they want to talk about safety and reform in police, reforming police is not just, you know, basically cutting the powers out of the police and cutting the money out. It’s expensive to, to run a police department.
It, it’s just, I’ve seen it from the business end and some of the assignments I had, it’s a lot of money. You know, equipment costs more. Um, you have to buy things, certainly through government contracts. It’s not like, you know, when you’re buying a laptop for a police department, it’s not like you can go to Best Buy and get it.
You have to, you know, there’s all these sort of contracting things and a lot of ’em are so inflated. Um, I won’t even get into how that happens with government, but cost rises and police technology is expensive because they’re limited vendors. It, it’s, it’s a costly endeavor. And when you’re talking about defunding a police [00:28:00] organization, I think it’s shortsighted in the fact that, and especially in communities that actually need police.
If, if you were to delete the police department out of, I don’t know, pick a city. No, I’ll let you pick one. Um, Chicago. Chicago, okay. Chicago has a horrible problem with shootings and gun violence with the police department. Say you defund the police and, and cut the police force back and the resources back by, I don’t know, 40%.
That doesn’t solve the problem of the crime in that, in that community. And there’s different measures of safety and how a community feels of, of, of the safeness of a community. It’s not always based on statistics and, and counts of things that have happened. It’s based on. How people feel? Do they feel like they need to lock their door?
Do they feel like if they walk down the street, they’re going to, you know, encounter somebody who may try to harm them or rob them? Do they worry about bullets flying down the street and drive-by shootings or [00:29:00] stray bullets? You know, because of war gangs or, um, people involved in drug trade, uh, and how that affects the community.
So if people aren’t worried, going back to where you and I grew up, I know we didn’t lock the door. We didn’t have a deadbolt on the house.
Zach: Yeah. My parents never locked the door in the country. Yeah,
James: yeah. Uh, we left the keys to the ignition in the car because, well, we didn’t worry that someone’s gonna come and steal it.
So how much police did we need there? Not a lot, but in areas where it’s more populated, where crime of opportunity exists, where there are people who do not have basic needs met in life, they don’t have food, a job, uh, a steady income. It leads to problems. I understand where defund, where the, the idea of defunding the police comes from.
People are pissed off and rightfully so, and they want to see something, some changes made and taking the money away from what they see as an oppressive organization. Yeah. That is a, a, a hammer to the kneecaps of
Zach: understandable solution. Yeah. It’s an understand, it’s an understood, understandable that they want that.
Yeah.
James: [00:30:00] It, it is. And, but I don’t think that people realize exactly what they’re asking for, you know? Okay. Delete the police department from your community.
Zach: Right. I, I agree. I, I don’t think people are, are seeing like what the actual problems are that mm-hmm. Police are solving it and the complexity of like, if you’re gonna solve this problem.
Maybe it doesn’t involve defunding the police, maybe it involves more training. And I, I think it’s these, it’s these simplistic points of view mm-hmm. Where it’s like bad things are happening, cut the funding. That is a very simplistic way to look at it. And, and in order to, to show why that’s correct, you would have to show a, a large plan and show why that plan would work.
Mm-hmm. You know, uh, I agree. It, it, it’s very simplistic often. And, uh, I also wanted to say too, I, I think an interesting thing in that area is talking about the, the fact that police organizations tend to want to seem to hold onto power and increase budgets and such. Mm-hmm. That area is interesting to me because if that’s true, and I think it is true that any organization tends to want to hold onto power and increase their power.
[00:31:00] And it’s interesting because that’s actually a primary conservative criticism of government in general, that a, that a government organization will always seek to expand its reach to gain power for itself. And I’m curious if you see that natural human group tendency. If you believe it’s true and if you see it playing a role in, in these issues.
James: No, I know that, um, I was involved in budget hearings every year and would have to, um, put forth things for technology, you name it. Um, it came down to the, the things I had my hands on were like, you know, putting, um, internet routers in cars. I mean, down to that and what it would cost. If you put a router in a police car, it will actually handle the, the computer, the camera system, um, the uploads and a whole host of other technology things that are absolutely great that would, should and, and can work seamlessly.
They just cost a lot of money. So if you’re talking about, uh, cutting a budget and funding, nobody wants to lose money, but it’s, uh, and it’s only because budget managers know how much everything costs to, to run. And I know [00:32:00] this from experience that no agency wants to run short on people. They don’t wanna be underfunded and under, uh, and understaffed.
I know what it was like to have forced overtime on me at, at one point in the early two thousands, and it was, um, not long after nine 11, um, that it started, a lot of agencies began, began competing with each other for the talent pool that was out there. And so it left, uh, you know, with the federal agencies and federal law enforcement agencies beefing up after that event.
Um, it left a lot of local agencies, you know, looking for other ways to recruit people. And it was especially when, uh, in 2003, when we were in Iraq, because a lot of police officers are also military members or reservists and a lot of them, you know, got deployed and a lot of people, um, went into the military during that time.
So. A certain type of person who will actually take this job. It’s, it’s dangerous. It’s, uh, my family hated it. They were very supportive of me, but they were always worried that I was going to, you know, [00:33:00] die at work. Uh, I went to 10 funerals of coworkers. One of ’em was a very good friend of mine. You know, I talked to one guy, the, the, the day before he got shot and killed and was on his, the scene of, um, when he was shot in 2005.
That stuff takes a toll on people. And there are certain people who don’t ever, you know, while they, they believe that police work is noble, don’t wanna take on the danger for themselves. So, um, going back to the idea of being short-staffed, it’s, it’s hard to operate. It’s a long hours. There’s forced overtime that you’re unable to get away and take some of the, the generous vacation that you earn for being in that spot.
It just isn’t available to go. And it just day in and day out of, of handling negative scenes really takes a toll on an officer’s mental health. Cops being cops think they know everything. Um, and I was probably that pigheaded at one point. You know, they find their own ways to deal with, with stress. A lot of it’s drinking and a lot of drinking.
I’ve had friends on the agency who have lost their [00:34:00] jobs because of drinking problems. Um, some that have nearly lost their jobs and still don’t think they have a drinking problem. Or those who have, who know they have a drinking problem and have gone to the department counselor like, I absolutely need help and have gone off for like a 30 day inpatient rehab.
But those are the only, the people that are one doing things that get them noticed that they’ve got a problem or the kind of person that reaches out for help saying there’s a lot going on. And then there are those who kind of fly under the radar ’cause they know just how to handle themselves to the point where they’re not raising any red flags.
But being angry and depressed at work is, is not good if you are charged with protecting people.
Zach: A little note here that I cut out some dialogue about the emotional toll that policing takes and the mental health struggles of cops. I move that to the end of the podcast if you’re interested to tie this in, you know, the stresses of the job, uh, I mean that, that’s related to the fact that policing is a hard job.
Mm-hmm. And there are hard [00:35:00] things that cops have to do. And to tie that back to, you know, for example, there are many people who live in poorer and. High crime areas who appreciate the police and, and want the police there. And there was actually some, some research that showed that the increase in, in minority Trump supporters in, in 2020 was related to the defund, the police, the, the abolish the police.
Mm-hmm. That makes sense to me because there’s a lot of minorities and, and black people who live in rougher communities and they absolutely, they’re scared by the, the idea of like, we don’t need the police, you know?
James: Yeah. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times, uh, one of the things that, uh, we were tasked with in, in, as patrol officers and later on is overtime assignments were, um, visibility positions.
We would just go out and sit, you know, with, you see, um, officers with, uh, or cars with like, their, their, their lights on, but they’re not flashing, but they, it’s on like a dim setting, so you can see that there’s a police car in the neighborhood. I, I can’t remember which agency in the US was the first to do it.
I think it might have been [00:36:00] Philadelphia or maybe Chicago. Started using the overhead lights while just patrolling rather than just an emergency. And that came from Europe. Um, and I know that Portugal does it. And years ago I knew that Italy would do that if, if the lights were on, that meant they were on duty, not necessarily, you know, responding to a call for service.
But I would take some of the, um, the overtime assignments on top of, you know, whatever position I was doing. And actually, and later on I would, I would run some of the programs. I’m like, all right, tonight’s, um, you know, traffic enforcement in the, in the one neighborhood where people keep getting hit by cars.
So generally it was like, we’re not out here to hammer everybody with traffic tickets. It’s if you find somebody speeding through a neighborhood, stop and have a conversation with them. And that’s, that’s what we were told by our leadership was have a conversation and then de decide the best course of action after that.
And a lot of it was, you’d find the person lived in the neighborhood and you’re like, okay, you’re doing 70 in your 35 zone in the neighborhood you live in. And you say, and if you approach people say, let’s have a conversation about, about your driving. [00:37:00] A lot of ’em were like, I know. I’m like, yeah. I’m like, like, this is really not good.
I’m like, and then you’d see, you know, a child seat in the car, like, how many kids do you have? They’re like, two. I’m like, okay, can you draw the conclusion of where I’m coming to? They’re like, yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. And that, and that. Sometimes that’s all you have to have and that that’s the kind of police service that not a lot of people are privileged to get that kind of service from the police.
It’s always negative, and police stops can be very affirmative. I mean, they, and they can be good. And I, I remember I had one that, where I had a car pull out in front of me, almost hit me, and I pulled the family over and, uh, it was a, a presume a husband and wife and a kid, and I can smell marijuana coming from the car.
I’m like, okay, two things. One, your driving is absolutely atrocious. Who are we trying to kill here? You’re trying to kill me or your family. And the guy just looks at me like crap. I’m like, and two? Yes. While, while it’s decriminalized, stop rolling around in your car with it. Smoke it at home. I’m like, it’s just, I’m like, you’re, [00:38:00] and I would tell them like, you’re not always gonna get the, the one who says this to you.
You’re gonna get the one who’s gonna yank you out of the car, have you sitting on the guardrail while they bring a drug dog and tear your car apart for, um, a roach that’s left in the ashtray. And he just started laughing. I said, you know, this is true. I said, I just don’t want you to kill somebody because you were angry.
And, and of, and his wife or girlfriend’s like, see, I told you, I’m like, look, we’re not trying to make this any worse. I’m like, argue when you get home, but don’t argue to the point where you have to call us. And I, I tried to in induce comedy into situations. But I mean, I can see things very differently than somebody who’s just programmed to think one way.
I think that has to do with, I guess, my upbringing. And then I was fortunate to have, and you know, we talked about privilege and like, I understand the privilege I had growing up, and there are ways to understand it, acknowledge it, and then use it for greater good. And then there are others that don’t analyze situations and see how, and we, and cops aren’t taught to, hey, throw [00:39:00] humor into it.
We don’t have to be a robot every time. And new cops don’t know that. And so that’s what I would, would teach them is I’m like, there’s, I would, I remember very vividly, I had, uh, one guy I was training and they come out of the military is like, you know, I, I, I don’t know exactly how to do this. And I’m like, there are a hundred.
I said, remember this isn’t the military, while we’re still wearing a uniform and we’ve got guns and pepper spray and handcuffs and bat and all this stuff. Like there’s a thousand ways to navigate, uh, a call for service or an encounter with a person. And I said, and, and most of them. There’s not one right way.
I’m like, stick with the rule book and improvise along the way, you know, do things that, that you’re supposed to do. But if you think that your approach of, of hard nosed by the book is going to work in certain situations, then by all means use it. But if you think you can use your role as a parent, um, to try to quell a situation because he had kids do it.
If you think that laughing and joking is going to be the way to solve it, do it. You know, I’m, I’m not gonna tell you that, oh, you were unprofessional because you were laughing with the people. [00:40:00] No, your people. You can do that. Right? Be flexible. Be flexible. Stop being a robot, and stop sounding, you know, and every time someone says booty, you don’t jump.
You know,
Zach: I think it’s, uh, you know, for people that are newer to that too. I mean, I, I can imagine me going into the, into, uh, policing and I’d be kind of terrified for a while. I can imagine. And, and, and looking for rules to tell me what to do and not being comfortable, not being relaxed. Not being flexible.
Mm-hmm. I think that that probably plays a, a big role too. Just people being scared and, and looking for, you know, not, not knowing how to handle situations that they’ve never come across before. Mm-hmm. And I know in
James: training and I, it’s, it’s changed some over the years, but it was when I went through, and this was summer of 2000, so yeah, getting on, getting on about 21 years ago, it was everything you do, it was like you, you risk the instructor, you know, hypothetically killing you in every situation.
It was like the fear of death and, um, getting shot and killed was every day in training. While I believe this is [00:41:00] important, that you need to be vigilant and know that anything can, that anything can turn on you because you can go through history of, of every, um, murdered officer in the country and use that as a, as a training tool.
But that doesn’t happen to the majority, although it happens to a lot and it’s happened to people that, that I knew and cared about. But I think it, it has harmful effects on how people react when they’re constantly worried about being killed at work.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
James: And I think it, it only gets worse as people get older, as they, you know, have families or, you know, get closer to retirement where they’re like, I don’t want to, you know, lose my life.
I want be able to do this. I want to see my kids grow up. It just, it just plays. There’s so many things that play into everything and nothing and nothing can be scripted or legislated that will tackle every issue that, that policing in America, uh, has.
Zach: And I think, uh, maybe a good thing to put here is, you know, [00:42:00] talking about theoretically creating a perfect, uh, policing organization with, with perfect, you know, if we could.
Imagine a theoretical situation where we’ve created this perfect system. Even in a perfect system, there’s gonna be bad things that happen because mm-hmm. At the end of the day, these are, these are humans. We have, you know, for example, we have a lot of guns, we have a good amount of crime. Mm-hmm. And, and cops are humans.
And at the end of the day, we’re gonna have some bad incidents. Things you’re gonna escalate in unforeseen ways, even with the most ideal rules in place. Mm-hmm. And that, that’s what I see when people talk in these kind of ways that are like, this will never happen again. This can never happen again. It’s like, uh, no matter what we do something like this is gonna happen again.
And there’s just no getting around that. That’s not to say that, you know, we can’t try to lessen that, but I think that the point to me is these things will happen. It’s just a matter of, you know, how much we can reduce them happening.
James: Yeah. It, and it’s true. It’s it, while I, I’m seen by many of my peers as a bleeding heart liberal for the way I think.
And I have no problem doing that. I’m, I [00:43:00] was always known by my work ethic and people respected me at work, and I can honestly say that, you know, did I have a, a warrior mentality yet when I needed to. But it was not all the time where, where some guys are just like balls to the wall warriors, the en the entire time of their career.
That was not me. It’s, that’s, that’s a lot of unnecessary effort and in, in, into, you know, doing the same job without having to everything being like a, a police chase, you know, foot chase use of force incident. That just wasn’t how I, I operated. But, you know, at the same time where they talk about, oh, this is such a tragedy, this can’t happen again.
Nobody can be shot by the police. I’m sorry, but when you encounter police officer and point a, a gun at a cop and the cop shoots you, I, there, I don’t see a lot of, uh, room for negotiation of how that could have been better handled. I, I, that’s where I kind of draw a hard line.
Zach: These things are gonna happen, whether it can be, see, perceived as justified, or even mm-hmm.
Just occasionally someone’s gonna mess up because how can, how can you expect in a nation of 330 million people mm-hmm. How can [00:44:00] you expect every cop to handle every situation the same? Mm-hmm. So whether it’s a completely justified situation or it’s these places where it’s like somebody panicked and behaved badly.
It’s like these, these things are gonna happen one way or another in various iterations. Mm-hmm. And, and to, to pretend that in a, in a huge country where. Violent things do occur and people behave badly that these things are, are never gonna happen. It’s, and and I think most people realize that I, I, I think it’s just the, the unhelpful rhetoric of acting like this is complete.
This, this, this can never happen. You know, I, I think that’s the really unhelpful thing. ’cause it sets people up for unrealistic expectations. Mm-hmm. And then more heartbreak when, you know, things do occur because, you know, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s like car accidents. When our nation is built on transportation, we’re gonna have some v vehicular accidents.
Yeah. It’s just a matter of how much can we reduce that? Like how much is acceptable. Yeah. And, and obviously we can reduce unnecessary police violence, but the, I I think it remains that these things will be present in some way. Oh,
James: [00:45:00] absolutely. So, uh, I guess we can circle back to my opinions and seeing the, the incident involving the murder of George Floyd.
That scene could have been handled so many different, better ways. You have, what was it, um, four officers on that scene, correct? If I’m correct.
Zach: Yeah.
James: Um, two of them were, um, were trainees, which is why I brought up they, you know, finished the academy. They were, two of them were in field training, which is what I, you know, I brought up earlier that I had actually been a, a part of.
They’re at the, working at the direction of their senior officers. And when you have two senior officers, they just handle that poorly in every way. Whether, and you could, you can sit here and, and think about, you know, the past records of, of both officers and I’m, I’m gonna put that off to the side for now, but I, I know that I was taught years ago, and this is 16 years ago, I, there was an officer I worked with that used to always cause a commotion on every scene.
And there was always a crowd gathering because the way he handled things. And I remember our, um, our shift [00:46:00] commander at the end of that night said, you know. Everybody get a roll call 15 minutes early tomorrow we’re having a chat about these, um, certain types of incidents. So when you have a, a situation, you know, that’s starting to ga, gather attention and starting to get stressful, the easiest way is if you’re making an arrest, put somebody in handcuffs, put them in the car, and drive around the block.
Don’t sit here and let it escalate. Hang out there, hang out more until you’ve got a crowd of people that wanna fight you. Whether their arrest of George Floyd was warranted or not, based on whatever they were acting on, there are ways to not have that situation kneeling in somebody’s neck and waiting for, I believe he said he was what?
Waiting for transport or an ambulance to come by and pick him up.
Zach: Right.
James: That’s, that’s not necessary. He could be sat up and put in a car. You can drive around the block and meet the ambulance.
Zach: To that point, I’m not sure if you saw what led up to the final moments, but he basically was crying about going into the cop [00:47:00] car and saying he, he couldn’t breathe, and he was panicking while they were trying to get him to the cop car.
So he was kind of resisting in that sense, and that’s why they mm-hmm. Put him down the ground. So it, and then it escalated from there. A quick note here, when I said George Floyd was crying about going into the cop car, I realized afterward that that sounded callous. But I was referring to the fact that Floyd was literally crying when the police were initially trying to put him in the car along with him saying he couldn’t breathe and that he was claustrophobic, which I think is an important point, and one that I literally have never seen mentioned in mainstream liberal leaning coverage of this.
Not that it hasn’t been mentioned, but I’ve never seen it. I think Floyd’s behavior before he was on the ground is an important point because it shows why the cops might not have been initially taking his crying that seriously. In short, I think they thought there was a decent chance that Floyd was deceiving them, considering how quickly his behavior escalated and knowing that little bit of background, which I don’t think most people do know, makes some aspects of this encounter, at least at the start of it, a little more comprehensible.
James: Yeah. And, and escalated from there. There’s still [00:48:00] better ways to do that.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
James: I’ve, I’ve had plenty of, okay, there’s, it’s four against one at that point, so there are other ways to handle that and kneeling in someone’s neck until they go quiet. I want them screaming and yelling at me and kicking the windows out of the police car because that means they’re not dying.
I’ve, I’ve seen the windshield get kicked out of a cop car more than twice.
Zach: I’m not defending Chauvin here. ’cause I think the last couple minutes of that are, are, are very bad. But to play devil’s advocate here, it was an approved technique, you know? Mm-hmm. Even though he may have done that too long or whatever.
So from his perspective, he was doing what he was taught. Right. I mean, up, up until a point, not to, not to say that maybe they, they weren’t taught to always do it in every situation like that, but Yeah. He thought it was an approved or it was an approved technique. Yeah.
James: And, and you know, I, I agree with, with points of that and, you know, yeah.
I, I’m glad you played Devil’s a advocate for it because Yeah, it was approved, but. But was it the always the right thing to do? There are other ways to handle that.
Zach: Right? And I
James: think common sense needs to play in it. If you’re, if you’re able [00:49:00] to carry a gun and a badge in this country, you need to have common sense and think outside the box because not everything is, is that, and just because you’re allowed to buy the authority and, and wearing the, the badge I, I can use my gun to in a deadly force situation.
Do I have to it every time? No. No, because you, when you, when you pull that gun out of the holster, I mean, it’s, it’s, you’re opening up a different avenue of, of how a scene will conclude. It just, it’s boggling my mind why a, a, a neck restraint was still approved and why even after he went quiet, why they still thought it was a good idea.
I’m just, I would’ve been, I would’ve been in the office. It was like, no, pick him up. And now you’re seeing legislation and duty to intervene. Um, that was also one that was passed in Maryland this year, which, which now by law it’s required that if, if you see something happening, you have to act as an officer.
If you see another officer doing something wrong or illegal, you have to [00:50:00] intervene or attempt to. So, and I, I, I believe that’s good legislation that comes out of a bad situation.
Zach: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the Chauvin, you know, the, the last couple minutes of the Chauvin thing, the most egregious thing seemed to be the, the fact that his fellow cop had said that he couldn’t find a pulse, and then mm-hmm.
Chauvin didn’t get up after that, that, that seemed to be the most egregious moment because I, up until then, you can kind of understand like maybe the, the crowd was, was being pretty aggressive and they didn’t know what to do and they were kind of mm-hmm. Aggrieved and felt under pressure. But yeah, that, that seemed to be the most egregious.
But, you know, to, to play devil’s advocate even more, uh, the fact that, you know, you said cops need to have common sense, but it also seems to me like we have so many cops in this country, and some of those people will, you know, necessarily be not that. Not that smart, not that sophisticated. Mm-hmm. Or they’re, especially if they’re on the newer side.
Mm-hmm. And it’s hard for me to, I have empathy for those people in some cases where it’s obvious that they just, you know, some of these situations where cases where cops panicked and, and obviously behaved badly [00:51:00] mm-hmm. And did things bad, but can they be blamed for that? Because at the end of the day, they’re, they’re being put in that so situation by society that they were placed in that situation.
So, and I, I think that also is why a lot of cops are, are found not guilty because, well, yeah. Even if we judge them for behaving very, very badly, it’s like, well, we, we put them in that situation. They didn’t ask to be in that situation. And if they behave badly, I mean, how can, how can we expect every cop to be at the top of their game in every situation?
To be very smart and, and commonsensical in every situation. Yeah.
James: Well there’s, there’s behaving badly and then there’s making mistakes. And yeah, that qualified immunity is basically there in case there’s a mistake made in, in judgment. Not, not an egregious act, but, but, but different ones. It’s, it’s used very broadly and I think that’s what angers a lot of people.
Zach: Understandable, understandable mistakes.
James: Um,
Zach: it’s what it’s supposed to be. But,
James: and I think the measure is, was the officer working, acting in a manner that another, uh, reasonable and prudent officer would be doing? [00:52:00] And if it’s deemed that, yeah, he or she is actually doing X, um, and it turned out badly, that’s where the qualified immunity, that’s where it angers people.
Now here’s the thing. Um, I know that I retired at the end of, um, 2020 just because I had, and I’ll give personally, I just had enough of the stress. I had enough of the 12 hour work days and having rose to the rank where I was, I was able to leave with a pension at age 43. That, um. That most people would love to have.
And I decided that, you know, I was going to do other things before I was too old to enjoy them and decided to bow out. Now during, uh, a time where the agency I worked for was getting ready to do another administration change and you know, I, I had had enough with a bad boss that I was, I was just ready to be done with it.
And I, I went hiking in the summer during, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and when I came out of the woods I was like, yeah, I’m retiring December 1st. So I, I think there are ways for I could have stayed in and, [00:53:00] and, you know, worked more and more years, but there’s a certain time, you know, in your life when, when other things matter.
And I think that’s where the point where I had gotten to just so, so much politics and with the not that I am against, you know, what the changes that are happening in policing and a lot of officers are leaving because of that. You’re gonna see a, a lot of departments running short soon, but they may learn to.
Adapt their policing style with less people, which I, I think is probably better. You know, a police department that can operate with minimal people and achieve a happy community is a good thing. You know, if you only need to have, you know, four officers working in a, in a larger area because things aren’t happening, that’s great.
That’s the kind of utopia I think a lot of, uh, a lot of communities would love to have. But right now and taking away qualified immunity is going to make recruitment and retention a big issue.
Zach: Yeah.
James: Um, because no one wants to go to [00:54:00] jail and I don’t wanna go to jail. That’s an another reason why I left for qualified Immunity’s Gone, or the, that like, basically in Maryland, the law enforcement’s officer’s Bill of Rights has been dismantled to, to where it was.
Some parts of it justified some parts of it, in my own opinion. I don’t think were were necessary, but you’re gonna have a hard time recruiting talent and keeping talented people and keeping people on. Um. My eligibility date was November 27th. And like, you know, while I, I know that the changes need to be made, it’s, I’m one example of somebody who’s like, all right, this is enough.
I don’t want to accidentally make a decision this far down in my career, um, that has a very negative consequence and lose it all. So, and that’s a very, very real thing that the US is going to have to face in policing. It’s like, oh, you make all these changes. Who’s gonna do this job now? Especially when it doesn’t pay well,
Zach: right?
Who’s that gonna attract it? You know, there’s a chance that it attracts the more of the worst people [00:55:00] that you don’t wanna attract.
James: Yeah. So, um, a good example of attracting and recruitment is, um, Suffolk County, New York, the further end of Long Island for years, has been one of the highest paid agencies on in the United States, and I believe they started around a hundred thousand dollars a year.
Yes, it’s expensive. Yes, people think that’s, uh, outrageous, that cops should make that much. But guess what? Off, guess what? Agency? You don’t hear problems out of.
Zach: Hmm. Yeah. You know,
James: you, you don’t. And I, I know people that worked on the inside and they, the applicant pool for that agency is huge. They have waiting lists of people trying to get in, and therefore they take the most qualified, most educated people with solid backgrounds.
They make it so, you know, I’m not saying that every agency can afford to pay officers like that, but if you, if you’re many parts of the country, they’re still making 30,000 a year. That’s barely above a poverty line in many places. Now, if, if you continue to pay poorly, who works bad paying jobs? [00:56:00] Not, not all bad people, but
Zach: yeah.
Then the whole, um, the way things have gone this last year, I mean, and has kind of have been so demoralizing, just more allies for, for cops, the perceptions and the, and the polarization, you know, and, and choosing sides kind of things that have happened in that area. I mean, I’m curious if that, if that’s played a role in, in how you felt about continuing, ’cause I know you probably had a lot of rightful pride in, in your work over your career.
Have you, has that the last year affected, uh, you in that, in, in emotions around that?
James: Well, absolutely and probably the last, um, five or six years really in social situations that I can be in a group of people that, you know, I, I consider peers and I tell them a police officer, like, oh, so how many, uh, parking tickets do you write?
I’m like, no, this is not how it goes. I would also notice it with one of my best friends who. It happens to be very wealthy. We would be at events together and there would be other wealthy people around. They’re like, oh, you’re a police officer. And my friend would [00:57:00] jump. And you’re like, no, he’s running shit.
You know, he’s doing this, he’s an administrator. And you know, like I come to my defense, it’s just a negative perception now all around. And there have been plenty of times where I was, uh, felt quite unwelcome in social situations because of my profession. And, and we were, we were told that from day one in the academy that some people will just not accept you because of what you do.
And I, and I saw it generally, I had no problems with, uh, with family. They were all very supportive. They were just more concerned because they would see things that on the news. And I get text message or phone calls. Are you okay? Yes. That kind of, and I know that, uh, you know, when I told everybody I was retiring, they were, they were just very, very pleased.
But yeah, it’s,
Zach: well, yeah, this, this, uh, you know, in Portland, as you’d imagine, I, I, I see a lot of the extreme anti-cop sentiment mm-hmm. Including from people that the lack of nuance around this stuff is, you know, that’s one of the reasons I’m mm-hmm. I’m doing this is just the, the amount of simplistic things from people that are, are pretty educated and, and I would’ve expected [00:58:00] more from, you know, saying things like, all cops are Nazis.
They, we need to literally abolish the police. And, uh, so yeah, I’ve, I’ve seen that and I, I can’t imagine how that, you know, if I imagine myself being a cop and, and just imagining how that would affect me, seeing this being a, a frequently said thing is, and knowing that it’s a, a widely held sentiment and increasing has just gotta be so demoralized.
And it’s,
James: it’s also people who jump on that bandwagon. I’ve known acquaintances through the years that would always ask me about my employment and be like, oh, you know, I, I wanna come on a ride along and do that. And then, you know, something happens and they’ve got the, all cops are bastards acronyms on their Facebook pages.
Like, okay, this is how you wanna present yourself now. I, there’s a lot of people jumping on a bandwagon that they don’t know a whole lot about, and you see a lot of that growing. And then there are the people who are on a bandwagon that they need to be on because it needs to happen to enforce positive change.
And it’s, you know, policing isn’t, isn’t a job where you can have, they’re like, oh, well, there’s a, there’s bad apples in every profession. Well, this is one that you [00:59:00] really can’t afford to and you don’t want. It’s, it’s not like you are working for Delta Airlines saying, well, most of our pilots are good, but some of them kind of suck.
Mm-hmm. And that’s okay. No, that’s not, they’re flying airplanes with lots of people in them.
Zach: Mm-hmm.
James: Over overland people. They don’t want a shitty pilot. You know, having a a poorly performing pilot in an airline is not acceptable. And having poorly performing officers in a police department is not acceptable either.
And the changes that need to be made are gen are really specific to how do you deal with the ones that are performing badly. You know, there’s been all sorts of studies about precursors of, you know, you can, you know, if they’re acting badly this way, they’re gonna do it again. And, you know, there’s problems with unions and firing people and yeah, that, that’s a.
Internal thing that is a whole, Ooh, you can make changes now and it’s gonna take 20 years to wiggle that way down the river. You know? Right.
Zach: These, all these organ systems are so massively complex and, and hard to change. I mean, I, [01:00:00] I think, uh mm-hmm. That’s the, it’s the impatience I think that, that people have for change and, and like you said, the kind of the bumper sticker mentality, like the acab thing, it’s like, I feel like mm-hmm.
For so many things in, in society, like on, on both sides of any issue, there’s these kind of people just doing things because it seems cool or they, they don’t, they don’t, they’re not taking it as seriously as it’s perceived from the outside. Like somebody who says has an acab thing might not actually.
Believe that when you talk to them, you know? Mm-hmm. There’s more nuance there, but I, I think the, the end result is, you know, is the perception and, and they don’t realize that people are taking those statements at, at face value and, and how polarizing that that is and how unhelpful that is. Yeah, definitely.
Like you said, we could talk about so many things, and actually, if you were willing to. Do another episode. I think we could, for another episode, we could just go through a list of factors in this area. Mm-hmm. ’cause we didn’t even touch on so many, like, including, you know, the ubiquity of guns, which I think is, to me, one of the, the [01:01:00] biggest factors in our, in our problem.
We did, didn’t even touch on that. And then, and that’s like so high in my mind, but, so I, if you’re up for another talk, we could go through like a list of factors and, and get your take if, if you’re, if you’re interested.
James: Definitely. I think that the, the, uh, the gun and gun policy discussion is definitely a good one to have.
Uh, there’s just so many, there’s so many different directions this can go and we can talk about all of that.
Zach: Yeah. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk about that. And, uh, this has been James Mitchell, retired police captain. Thanks so much for coming on, James.
James: Thank you very much for having me.
Zach: So that’s the end of the main interview, but just a reminder that coming up, I’m going to play more of my interview with James, but I’ll do a quick podcast wrap up here and you can stick around afterwards if you want.
This is my podcast. It’s called People Who Read People. And I’m Zach Ellwood, the host. You can follow me on Twitter at a poker player. You can learn more about the podcast at Reading Poker tells video slash blog. If you wanna learn more about this topic. There’s a book I just learned about in an order that looks very interesting.
[01:02:00] It’s called Tangled Up in Blue Pleasingly American City, and it’s written by Rosa Brooks, who’s a liberal law professor who became a cop to directly learn about what the issues were. You can find a very good interview that Ms. Brooks did on NPR in 2021. That was one of the more nuanced discussions I’ve heard in a while about police issues.
So her book looks very good. I wanted to plug something I worked on that I think is very relevant to this topic. At the end of last year, I spent almost four weeks full time researching and writing a piece about the psychological mechanisms through which social media may be amplifying our divides and amplifying our extreme thinking.
I think it’s relevant to this topic because I think social media dynamics have influenced so many people to have simplistic us versus them thinking around police violence issues and around a lot of other issues. If you wanna find that, you can Google how Social media divides us by Zachary Ellwood and you should find it, or go to my [email protected] and look for this episode’s blog post, and I’ll have that and other resources I’ve [01:03:00] mentioned in this episode.
Okay. Here’s more from the interview with James. I’ll start with James talking more about mental health struggles that cops face and the treatment that police departments provide.
James: I can say where I worked, we, it always had a psychological services division that was focused on, uh, employee wellness, mental health wellness, and, um, as supervisors had a specific role in, in, and we were trained in.
Watching what was going on with, um, with employees, you know, absenteeism, um, being disengaged at work, bad attitude, really quiet, um, and detect changes. And there, there was a point where I had to refer, um, uh, an employee to, um, psychological services because this person was just dealing with, with, um, with so many problems, the death of two parents, a divorce, um, you name it.
He was dealing with all of it and trying to deal with it as best as, as he [01:04:00] could. And it was just hard and I could see it. And, um, you know, we, we, I, we, we left the building, we, we went out. I’m like, what’s, and you know, I’m like, you don’t have to tell me what’s going on, but I can tell something’s going on.
And, and a lot of people, when you confront them, a lot of officers will actually say, yeah, things are really bad and I don’t know where to go. Um, and I would share my own personal experiences where, um, dealing with a very abrupt breakup and a very bad circumstance in my own personal life. I actually went to the counselors.
I’m like, I just don’t know what to do. And they’re like, right now it seems really bad, but really you’re okay? I’m like, okay, that’s good. And I had gone to, you know, a few sessions with the department therapist and, uh, you know, I got what I needed out of them, but I really didn’t feel like I could, not that I, and a lot of, uh, officers don’t trust.
They think that, um, that, um, the psychological services is just, you know, there to [01:05:00] get you suspended and get your gun and badge taken away. And it’s absolutely not the case. Um, but there’s always been that like old myth that, oh, you go to psychological services, you’re crazy. You’re gonna lose everything.
You know, you need to hold it together. That, um, has started to, um. At least where I work has started to change where it was encouraged so much that they’ve now had to hire other clinicians because they’re so backlogged of people asking for help. Um, asking for help in, you know, their life. Um, you know, if they’ve got, um, you know, kids with special needs or there are a lot of, a lot of circumstances where the, the, the department preached it’s always okay to ask for help that people started listening.
And then the, uh, the people that helped the cops were like, they’re like, okay. They’re like, whoa, you know, you need to fund another position for us and, and get us some contract ones so that we can actually not have to let people who are asking for help wait six weeks to see help. So, [01:06:00] um, I know that that was an issue, and I guess it was a good issue to have because it was, it was put out there enough that, hey, this exists.
And people started using it and it was suggested to me by a friend of mine who had gone, um. During a divorce and said it really helped put things in perspective when you felt at your worst. And what I took from that is later on, you know, just for my own health insurance, I found my own therapist that I started going to for, for certain issues.
And what, 10 years later, I’m, I’m still going because nothing’s wrong. Just because I think it’s a great, a, a great resource in my life. Now, I don’t go to solve problems with my therapist anymore. I go because it’s, it’s like a, a, a regular check-in with a professional on, you know, how am I problem solving skills?
How am I dealing with, with, with certain influences in my life, um, with death in the family, you know, parents getting older. It, it’s turned into, it was like, oh my God, woe is me. You know, you know, I’ve got the stressful job, I’ve got [01:07:00] stressful relationships. Um, I have an ex that that did me wrong, you know, and I’m making all these mistakes into, wow.
It’s, it’s now so. A part of my life. And I love, I, I love the sessions. Um, and I would, and I was very, very open at work with, um, with sharing this with people that I worked with, like you and I, and I would tell other officers, like, we all have the same health insurance. You know, we have a variant of, of plans.
Uh, I was like, you can do this too. Right? You can do it too. Yeah. It basically equates to, if you go in network, it’s, it’s covered. I think there’s a $10 copay and if you go out, um, they cover 80%, which to me was 45 bucks to go to somebody I really like to go to. Um, and that was absolutely worth every bit of it.
Um, and so I know that I personally influenced about five people to get their own therapist, and they did. And they’re like, this changes everything. I’m like, yeah, because there’s somebody listening to your problems and giving [01:08:00] you context of your problems. Um, I. And, and,
Zach: yeah. I think also the, the value is sometimes just, uh, a therapist is just that I’ve, I’ve learned is, is that they just get you to think about things that you wouldn’t otherwise have thought about and think, view things from different angles.
Yeah. Re regardless even of their skill levels on, you know, it’s just an excuse to think about things. I
James: think this would be something that would be very easy to, um, to put into, um, implement into, um, police departments. And you, and they don’t even have to, I mean, ’cause I don’t know of many police departments that don’t offer health benefits, um, but at least to offer them places to go that you contract with, to go see a.
I don’t see a psychiatrist. It’s a psych, a licensed, um, um, psychotherapist, um, just to talk about your life and require people as part of your work. You’re like, okay, this, it’s the third Monday of the month in your, in your first two hours of your shift. You go see the, uh, you go to your appointment [01:09:00] and all you need to do is verify that, um, with the, uh, with the person that yes, they’re showing up for their appointments and participating as prescribed.
And I think it’s, it’s a less costly solution than someone dying in lawsuits and, you know, a mistrust of a community of, of, of people that are charged to help them. The mental health thing and, and it’s being legislated and I know Marilyn actually just passed it. Um, there are a lot of agencies that didn’t have access to mental health, um, because it wasn’t legislated, and I know they changed it this year.
Uh, that was, that was in the, and, and I failed to mention that, uh, you know, the last year, the last two years of my career as a captain now was wor also worked on legislative affairs with two other, um, police commanders. So any bill that was going running through the Annapolis State House, um, was, was run through a committee of people that worked in county government, and the three of us worked for the police department side.
So anything that had to do with like law enforcement, um, public safety, [01:10:00] had to go through our desks so we could, you know, thumbs up, thumbs down, um, give, uh, support. I mean, everything went through with like the local delegates. And then that one had been coming and now that’s mandated. Now I think that’s a win, a, a legislative win.
And people want to complain about how, how expensive it is. I’m like, okay, what is the cost in the long run of not doing this?
Zach: Okay, next up is James talking about how he moved up through the force to become captain and how and why he became a cop in the first place. I know you’ve had a, a long career, but maybe you could, uh, sum up your policing career in a, in a few sentences.
James: Yeah, definitely. Um, so, you know, in the beginning stages when you, um, sign up for a, a police department and you’re hired, of course you go through a training academy, which is generally six to nine months, depending on which state you live in and, um, and how robust the training is. Um, that differs, uh, greatly amongst, um, states and different agencies.
But, um, after about a [01:11:00] six and a half month academy, I worked, uh, I was assigned to as a patrol officer where everyone starts. Um, I worked in the Oxen Hill Station in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and I worked there for four years as a patrolman. Um, ranging, uh, working neighborhood patrols, um, special assignments, um, special events.
Um, but generally just as a patrol officer, traffic enforcement, um, crime prevention and everything that goes along with that. I worked at that station for four years, um, transferred to the Hyattsville station, um, prob about 30 miles north of where I was, um, into a completely different type of neighborhood around the university, and worked for two more years in patrol there.
Um, in the two years of in patrol in that station, I worked as a field training officer, meaning I would, uh, I would mentor, uh, new graduates of the police academy, which, uh, is a common practice and actually a [01:12:00] policy, uh, for the agency that I worked for, which was 60 working days where, uh, a new officer was observed, graded, rated, um.
Trained, counseled and everything along the way. Um, because coming out of the academy and then working in real life is completely, completely different. So I did that. Um, and that was from the end of 2000 until December of 2006, I had applied for a spot to be a general assignment detective. Um, that type of detective, you know, follows up on any sort of crime that is not handled by, you know, a, a specialty detective force, like a homicide division or a specialized robbery division or sexual assault.
This is everything else that happens that needs to be investigated. Um, so shooting stabbings, burglaries, um, any event where someone does not die, where the victim does not die. Um, some financial crimes, um, some, [01:13:00] uh, lesser, um, sex offenses. And with that came a lot of, uh, neighborhood outreach too, as far as, uh, crime meetings and citizen groups and, and that I did that for until about 2008.
And I had applied to work and undercover vice and narcotics. Um, I did that for one year and really did not enjoy it. And then had transferred out and worked on, uh, a gang task force where I learned a lot about, um, criminal enterprises. And then a spot opened up and, and a lot of people don’t know this, my love of, uh, cars and junkyards and motorcycles and those types of things.
Uh, a spot came open in the high-end auto theft group and I took that where I could honestly say it was probably one of my favorite. Favorite, uh, assignments because it felt like I didn’t feel like I was going to work. I felt like I was gonna go have fun that
Zach: day. I mean, [01:14:00] that does sound fun.
James: So yeah, it’s, it’s totally a lot of fun, you know, um, figuring out, uh, and that had everything to do with the unit people that would just steal cars off the street to, um, uh, chop shops.
Um, resale of parts, um, reconstruction of cars, insurance fraud, um, insurance fraud being one of the hardest, um, cases to prove. But it’s rampant and it’s, um, and here’s a little fun fact that it’s, it’s about 60% of any insurance bill that you, um, that you pay in the United States is 60% is, is due to, that’s why insurance is expensive.
So, um, and it’s, it’s, it’s not a widely investigated, um, investigated crime because it’s not really glamorous and people don’t think it affects them, but it affects them financially. I’m talking about where, oh, my car was stolen and, and Oh wow. Someone set it on fire. Yes, that is, you know, people who have leases and they’ve [01:15:00] gone, you know, way over their mileage or they can no longer make the payments.
So, um, during that, um, that was 2012, I had taken an exam to become a sar, uh, a sergeant’s exam, which is a first line supervisor. Um, I did very well. Out of 400 people, I placed number five. Overall. Um, that process is a written test, uh, followed by a skills assessment center. Which is graded by officers from outside the department, and they, they grade you based on benchmarks.
And from from there, um, I was assigned very briefly to run a detective squad in the Landover station that, uh, focused on property crimes such as burglary, theft, and, um, anything, uh, that didn’t have to do with, uh, violence against a person. So, uh, that was a very short assignment as I was, uh, tapped by the assistant, uh, police chief to be sent to the FBI, uh, to work on a federal [01:16:00] task force involved, um, investigating, uh, public corruption matters, which would involve, um, corrupt, uh, police officers, corrupt politicians, or anybody who works in government who’s using their position in government, um, for personal gain.
Um, bribes, steering, contracts, you name it. Um, and that the federal, uh, statute that most of that falls under is called the Hobbs Act. And so basically everything that I worked on with the FBI there, uh, was, was under that, that guise of, uh, of public service where people are taking their position and using it for financial gain, personal financial gain.
Um, and so I did that for, um, three years. I was, um, I re received, I was deputized by federal officials. I had this all the same, uh, uh, credentials and arrest abilities of, or, uh, abilities of arrest and arrest powers of a [01:17:00] federal agent. Um, but I was, I was employed by and paid by, uh, by the local police department and.
These task forces, uh, are not just for public corruption. They work with, um, you know, gun groups, um, anti-terrorism, you know, you name it. The FBI likes to put together task forces with local, um, local police officers because they know how things work in their smaller area and it’s, it’s much easier for them to, um, develop solid investigations using, um, this kind of technique.
So I did that for three years and then in, in that course, and the only reason it was only three years long is because I had aimed to promote again to the rank of lieutenant, um. Went through that process, um, placed 15 out of I think 140. And when, when the 15th spot became available, I was, uh, promoted and then I was assigned to [01:18:00] take over our, um, um, intel and analysis center, which is where all of the, um, crime analyst work.
And they also house all of the historical crime data, um, you know, calls for anything that, uh, data that, that police departments can save. That was housed there. It was the, the data warehouse. And in that time I was also, they merged together that division with, um, the technology division. So I was, I would also oversee, um, anything.
Technology related and police work, which would be anything from a laptop being issued to somebody, cell phones, tablets to software programs, how they work, um, the legalities behind the information that goes in, uh, working through, um, a government IT system to make sure, you know, all of the things are taken care of.
I was the, the department liaison for that, uh, working right under the, uh, the chief information [01:19:00] Officer. So, uh, after that I was, during that process I had, uh, tested for police captain. Um, I think, uh, out of 55 I made it, it was number nine overall, nine or 10. And when I got promoted to that, I was assigned to work in the chief’s office.
Um, because of my vast knowledge of, you know, everything from patrol to investigations to specialty to, uh. Federal issues, um, in the IT world, uh, and running the crime analyst, I learned a lot about, um, processes in the county government as far as purchasing, procurement, um, and what’s the other, how do I, how should I put it?
Uh, um, working on memorandums of understanding, um, agreements with other agencies, federal, local, state, um, you know, typing up those types of, uh, of documents to make official [01:20:00] connections between, um, my agency and other places. And so, and that’s where I, I retired from out of that position.
Zach: I’m, I’m curious what, um, if, can I ask what drew you to wanting to be a cop?
James: So, in, uh, undergraduate, I went to University of Maryland in College Park and I initially had set out to become a doctor or something in the medical field. And once I got there, uh, into the classes and I. How great I wasn’t doing at any of them in my second freshman year of college. Um, I decided to start taking other classes and figure out what, what was really something that I would enjoy doing.
And I want to say that I took, um, an introductory criminology class and I really enjoyed it. And then I took another one. I was taking them because they fulfilled elective credit, uh, while I was trying to figure it out. And then I really got into them. I got into the law aspect and the ideas behind, um, criminal behavior and what [01:21:00] drives it, um, theories, all of that.
And so I decided to pursue the criminology and criminal justice degree from University of Maryland, which is a, one of the, um, better known programs in the United States for, um, that line of study. So I got into that and I believe, so my senior year I was interning. With, um, the Prince George’s County Police Department and the homicide division, um, and I was helping them, um, on their cold cases, all the unsolved ones.
And a lot of it was going through case files. Um, the investigators who were assigned to work on ’em or would, would give the interns, they’re like, look, we’re looking for, um, specific pieces of information, um, you know, look for through all the documents for anything associated to this person and make notes on, on what you’re finding because this is a new lead that we’re gonna go through.
And then a lot of it was, uh, they were just starting to computerize and work databases in 2000, which is a bit late for the [01:22:00] agency. But, um, that’s also something else that I worked on there. And I really, really enjoyed it. And while I was there, I think it was three of the detectives, um, told me I should apply for the police department.
And I said, yeah, you know, I’ll do it. And then they grabbed an application and made me fill it out. So that’s kind of how it went. They’re like, no, you’re doing it now. So, and the, and the funny thing was these, uh, two of the, uh, of the homicide detectives I worked with while I was an intern, um, are actually still in the homicide division 21 years later working their same jobs and have been police officers for 30, 30 something years.
And it was great to actually work with them my entire career because the two of them are always still working on old cases and solving them and, you know, yeah. They’re, and they’re life or homicide detectives and it’s, that’s, that’s what they do. It’s what they know and their geniuses at their top. Yeah.
The cold
Zach: case stuff sounds always sounds really interesting. Like I know, I know some people who have, [01:23:00] you know, taken that on. ’cause true crime is so popular these days. People are, are into those ideas and it Yeah, it does sound fun to work on those kinds of things. Yeah.
James: Yeah. It’s, and they’re extremely difficult because when you, you run out of leads, you are still, um.
You still have a family to account to. And I think that’s the bigger, the bigger part of it. These guys are so good at dealing with, um, the family of, of a victim. And even after years there, there’s, uh, an unsolved case from 1995, uh, of a girl that was abducted and murdered. Um, and I know that they talked to her mother at least twice a week still.
And it’s, it’s what, 26 years later. So, yeah. And these are the kind of relationships that they’ve built through the years working with families. And most of their, their work now is, is focused on, on a lot of DNA work and a lot of science.
Zach: You’ve been listening to the people who read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood, interviewing James [01:24:00] Mitchell, retired police captain.
Intro music by small skies.