Paul Ingles interviews Albuquerque Police Information Specialist and Officer Simon Drobik about a 13-hour effort that resulted in police talking down a man who was threatening to jump off an overpass to Interstate 40 in Albuquerque.

SD: When I arrived on scene, they already had officers from the Southeast area command there and they were talking to an individual. I could visually see that he was on the outside of the fencing, [inaudible] of Louisiana. It’s quite a drop. It’s a deadly drop.

PI: About how old of a fellow?

SD: An African-American male about 40 years old, identified as transgender, but didn’t bring it up at that point. We had some background on this individual. A lot of Southeast officers had been out with him before on different types of calls. Either he had been a victim of crime or committed a crime, so he was known in the Southeast area command. We had little bit of intelligence I guess you could say or some experience with the guy about what works and what doesn’t.

When we’re working with someone like that, we’re trying to discover who that person is. This guy, he was explaining to us, and it seemed kind of weird, that somebody was trying to get into his head. We’re trying to figure out who that was. He seemed to have victimized at some point in his life and that trauma might have triggered why he was up on that bridge that day. We never really got to the root of all of that because he never really expressed it, but he did say he was a victim of crime and people wanted to hurt him. It’s our job to reassure him that we’re not there to perpetuate that, but to help him.

He had some serious issues, obviously some mental health issues too, either schizophrenia or bipolar. He was standing right above eastbound traffic, right above the middle land. There’s a pole there, which he was hanging onto. The ledge itself was only about the width of your shoe, so four or five inches his feet were on and then he was physically hanging on with his fingers to the chain-link fence.

PI: What happens in that situation and what was happening with this fellow?

SD: Well, the main thing is to start some type of dialogue with that individual and get him talking and have him focus on us. We don’t want him focused on below or what he’s seeing around him. We want him to stay focused on us. It’s extremely small baby steps. Just having him turn around and look at us is a win for us. He’s focused on talking to us.

You start going into negotiation. You ask him, “Could you please come off the bridge?” We ask point blank questions; “Obviously, you’re thinking about killing yourself. What’s going on?” There is no candy coating it in those types of situations. You come out with real hard facts; what you’re looking at, what you see, and you try to start a dialogue to find out what got this person there to begin with.

Immediately we see what resources we have on scene. We had one of our lieutenants who was the sergeant of our Crisis Intervention Team. CIT was formed about 15 years ago.

We saw a need to address mental health issues within the community and to open up a dialogue. It was another tool for us to work with. We obviously carry mace and batons and impact weapons, but we needed a communication weapon or some type of dialogue that we could use to talk to people in all types of situations.

Recently, after the DOJ, we have expanded our CIT teams into ECIT, Enhanced CIT. There are about 80 officers in the department now that have that extra level of training to deal with people in crisis, almost like a crisis negotiator. These guys are the guys in the field taking these types of calls who are interacting with the public.

Rapidly you’re assessing, in that moment and the first five minutes, what resources you have and what you need to do. Do we need to shutdown the freeway? It’s very fluid. We can change situations and dynamics at any moment.

PI: I guess I’m asking for a little insight into the training. What our show is largely about is that we hope the listeners, after they’ve heard one of our programs, walk away with tools that they can use. Whether you’re dealing with someone in your own family that’s in crisis or has a mental health issue or is just angry or any of these things, I’m interested in hearing some of the techniques that those who get the CIT training are really good at and, even in this particular case, were used to calm things down or to get it to the next phase.

SD: Active listening skills are critical in this job; the facts, what’s going on. You really have to take a breath. We have to train rookies to be great active listeners and just give people time because sometimes people with mental health issues or drug abuse psychosis, their brain isn’t firing off as rapidly as our, so it might take a minute to answer a question if we ask one and you just have to give them that time.

PI: We’ve found in our program here that that’s a key to communication; people want to be heard. They want to be understood and until they are convinced of that, that the channel is open and they’re being heard, the negative energy can really build up. It sounds like that’s one of the tools I’m looking for to have our listeners learn from this process as well. So, active listening. What else is going on, either by the book or in practice, that seems to be really helpful in reaching out to a person in crisis?

SD: Well, we’re not going to be able to solve that person’s problems that call, so we will never have a resolution, but we definitely have avenues for that person to get help and we’ll talk about those avenues.

We’re very blunt; “Are you thinking about committing suicide?” We need to open a real dialogue with somebody. It’s very uncomfortable if you’re not a police officer or medical person to say, “Are you thinking about committing suicide?” It’s a hard conversation to have if you’re not trained to listen to somebody and have an active dialogue.

We give them information. Usually there is a backstory as to why that person is in crisis and actually listening to what that person is saying, not trying to come up with a solution, just trying to give them avenues of how we can help that person.

PI: A different way of thinking about it.

SD: That and an extreme amount of empathy. You really do get self-absorbed in some of these calls. There were numerous times on that 13-hour call that I was sick to my stomach because I thought this guy was going to kill himself in front of me.
In the back of your mind, you’re living with the fact that you’re responsible in that moment to help somebody. A couple of times, his fingertips were barely on the fence and I really thought he was going to jump. You go back to those baby steps; having him turn around, saying “thank you,” just being a human being and being very empathetic towards someone in crisis.
I think in Hollywood and on the TV shows, you see so much bologna out there like grabbing a guy and just moving on to get something to eat. It absolutely isn’t that way.

I’ve been doing this for 19 years. I’ve seen so much empathy out there from officers and they really do personally buy into these people’s stories because they really do care. They really do.

PI: Is that changing? Are you seeing more of that in practice and in training?

SD: I think that in practice and training, very much so. Departments around the country are realizing that the Joe Friday approach just doesn’t work anymore; “just the facts,” it just doesn’t work that way and we have to have a more dynamic police department, more dynamic officers and better communication skills.

Now the flip side of that is that the younger generation is so much into a different type of communication than when I grew up. My communication was talking to people on the street, hanging out and playing, interacting with people. Communication today for young people is very much technology-driven. When we get newer officers, some are great and have great communication skills, but some we have to pull out of their shells. This whole job is talking to people. That’s all we do all day.

PI: You’ve got to be able to shoot the breeze a bit.

SD: Yes, you really do. You’ve got to be able to talk to all walks of life.

PI: Officer Simon Drobik is our guest with the Albuquerque Police Department.

I want to go back to the story of the 13-hour event where someone was threatening to jump off an overpass. How I discovered it was all of a sudden, I saw all these trucks going through these little tiny residential streets. That’s a lot of traffic having to go into neighborhoods and go way up past the particular overpass.

I want to ask you to talk about a couple of things. One is why the shut down was necessary. You mentioned in the article and on several TV interviews what you were hearing and the individual was hearing from motorists.

SD: In that moment, when you’re trying to talk to someone who is in crisis, it’s very intimate. You’re really trying to keep them focused from not jumping. We closed the freeway down, and also because it’s very loud, the environmental dynamics of it. Trying to talk to somebody with traffic –

PI: It’s impossible.

SD: The eastbound was closed down. Eventually, we closed down Louisiana Boulevard. What we were finding was something has happened before on these types of calls and it’s very unfortunate. I don’t know if it’s a sign of our times or what, but people would drive by, and it happened quite a bit, and scream “jump.” “Do it.” “Kill yourself.” There would be times that somebody said something like that and anything that we had gained with this individual was just lost.

He was repeating himself over and over. There were a couple of times when I really thought this guy was going to jump. I had that sick feeling in my stomach because we couldn’t control that at that moment.

Factors came about, and we did close the west side of the freeway. So, then we had the eastbound, westbound and Louisiana closed down because people were being pretty atrocious telling him to take his life as they were driving by. I saw people with kids in their car doing it. It’s extremely disappointing.

It’s hard to wrap your brain around when you’re trying to be a peacemaker, a peace officer and help people and then seeing the general public act that way. It’s a weird dynamic. It’s very strange and frustrating. It gets you emotional.

What if that was your loved one? I’ve said this before, “If it was your loved one, how long would you want us up on that bridge? What would you want us to do?” You would want us to do everything in our power and more.

For some stranger to drive by and say something like that … and this guy was feeding into it. It was really demolishing anything that we had gained. It was extremely disappointing, the humanity of people.

PI: Explain what get the net out is.

SD: People say, “Just get a net out and throw a net over him.” I don’t know what movies they’re watching, but we just don’t have those types of tools. We just don’t. Our tools are verbal. We talk to people.

PI: I’ve seen on TV fire departments that have these jumper looking things to help people jump from high windows in a fire. Those are not available?

SD: We don’t have those. Bigger cities do have those.

PI: Do they employ them in situations like this sometimes?

SD: I know in New York they do because there are so many high rises. Our unique system of the freeway is that if we had deployed one of those on the east side of the freeway, typically what would happen is that person would shimmy over to the west side of the freeway. We’d be moving the bag back and forth. Also, we have a drainage ditch in the middle. You’re talking about an incredible amount of resources. Those things are not light. If you have somebody in a stationary window, then you have a platform for them to fall on, but somebody that can be mobile, it’s very, very difficult.

This was very dynamic. This went into 13 hours. It was very unprecedented. We had a fire department cherry picker out there and we were going to try to move towards him and have him jump onto the bucket. We thought he might have been fatigued by then. This individual, his energy was amazing.

PI: That’s a long time.

SD: I’ve never seen somebody hang on and be on a four-inch ledge for 13 hours. It was incredible. At some point, I was really afraid that he was going to fall from fatigue, but he didn’t. But that was just how amped up he was. I think at one point, the fire department actually brought pizzas out because everybody was starting to get hungry.

PI: Was he offered food and drink?

SD: Absolutely, to come over.

PI: Did he partake?

SD: We said, “We’ll give you all the food you want.” We did give him water because we were worried that he was going to get dehydrated and pass out. That’s part of the negotiations; “You come over that fence and we’ll get you something to eat. We’ll get you all the resources that you need. We’ll personally drive you to the hospital.” That’s not anything that is out of the box. That’s just something that we do.

PI: Forgive me for using a cliché, but there is no bad cop, good cop. It’s non-stop good cop if there is such a thing.

SD: It’s non-stop empathy, really. You’re looking at another human being. Forget the uniform that you’re wearing. You’re just talking about humanity at that point; a one on one experience with an individual in crisis. Maybe some officers are just good at it, but at the end of the day, empathy is the key to policing and talking to people. There is no good cop, bad cop scenario at all.

PI: Over the arc of this event, were there any other moments, as you debrief and have thought about it in the time since that seemed like important moments where breakthroughs were made? How were they made? What happened?

SD: About hour eight or into hours nine and ten, we disengaged. We stood across from this individual. We had given every resource that we could. He seemed to be slowing down and was contemplating. He wasn’t at the point where he was leaning over the fence like he was before. He seemed to be a little bit safer. He was more attached to the fence and it seemed like he was thinking about things. That part of it is giving people time to process what’s in front of them. For a couple of hours there, we just stood around and looked at each other.

PI: No input?

SD: There were small things like, “Are you ready to talk?” “Do you want to talk about this?” “Let me know when you’re ready to talk.”

I think this case came down to fatigue; who was going to outlast who. Luckily for us, we have resources and we had the crisis intervention team detectives come in and take over after we briefed them on what was going on. They took a couple hours too to finally get him down. It was getting cold. It was Super Bowl Sunday, so it was February. The whole key to that was that we had to wait some time until he was fatigued and decided to come down by himself. That’s exactly what happened.

PI: To the extent that you can say, what has become of that person since?

SD: This is the frustrating part because the public looks at it like what did the police do. We are just a conduit to transport them to the next step who are even more trained; doctors, psychiatrists, psychiatric help. We’ll have follow up with that individual to see if he is getting the resources that he needs. He has to meet us halfway though. The guy can’t just disappear back into the population and not get the resources that we’re trying to provide.

PI: With this fellow, do you have any idea of whether or not he has taken advantage of those opportunities?

SD: Well, the backstory to that is that he was at UNM Psychiatric Help for two days. He jumped the fence over there at 26th and Marble. He got on top of the parking structure and started the same pattern over again. One of the UNM officers talked to him for about four hours and was able to talk him down again. It seemed to be a repeated pattern for this guy. We just happened to see him on Super Bowl Sunday and UNM was dealing with him two days later.

PI: I would be inclined to say that it’s not too much of a stretch to believe that one engagement with someone doesn’t mean that they will be fixed.

SD: Right. A lot of times too, and probably everybody knows this by now, guys will get back on their medication and get to a certain level, feel comfortable and drop off the medication. It’s kind of a cycle. We do deal with people over and over and over again.

Paul Ingles interviews former officer, turned author, Darron Spencer, who wrote the
book Humane Policing and is manager of HumanePolicing.com

PI: As I was reading your book, it seemed to me you had two audiences in mind. One is the regular citizen. Despite all the cop dramas that I’ve seen over the years on TV and in the movies, I was getting a really detailed look at the day to day challenges of local policing by reading your book that really upped my empathy for police on the job.

Had I been in law enforcement, I’d be picking up some really useful tips to do my job better. Did you see this effort as a real bridge-builder, the effort of writing the book?

DS: That’s exactly what I meant it to be.

When people say they are an accountant or some other profession, people have a pretty good general concept of what you’re talking about, but when you say, “I’m in law enforcement,” people will be like, “Well, what does a cop do?” They’ll say things like, “They keep us safe. They enforce the laws.” But there is very little understanding of what cops do day in and day out and the stress they deal with.

That divides the general public from law enforcement and what I’m trying to do is educate the general public in what law enforcement does and how and why they do it, but also give law enforcement my perspective of what I employed that I was very successful in.

PI: Even the title suggests that we need a greater emphasis on humane policing in our law enforcement agencies. Your book’s back cover references a quote; “Crisis in our society involving the frequently inhuman and unproductive, even when lawful, interactions between law enforcement and the public.”

In your view, are we at a serious deficit in humanity and empathy and our policing across the U.S.?

DS: As a whole, we are, and the problem is getting worse because as the profession gets more difficult to do with the lack of public perception and appreciation of law enforcement, fewer and fewer people want to get into the profession. When you have the lack of people joining the profession, your quality of individuals naturally drops.

A good example would be back in 2004 when I became post-certified. There were well over 100 viable applicants to every open position. Now, some agencies are having trouble filling open positions with qualified people. That is a huge turn of events in just over a decade.

The problem we have now, and the reason it’s getting worse is because you have experienced veterans of 10, 15, 20 years that are asking themselves, “Why am I doing this? Why do I continue to do this? I don’t feel like I’m making a difference.” There is a huge liability risk and they’re like, “It’s not worth it anymore.” We have an exodus in the profession and less people getting in which is why the problem is getting worse. When you talk to recruiters, they’re saying it’s monetary issues or it’s not education issues. Well, I think the main problem is the public perception issue.

Back in 2004 when I was in the academy, they jokingly said, “If you want people to like you, you need to join the fire academy.” Well, I disagree with that because the way I did my job and the way I impacted people in a positive light, 90% of the people that I arrested thanked me. That encouraged me to continue to do my job better. If we appreciate law enforcement, they will continue to do a better job and more people will want to do the job.

One of the things I do with the business side at humanepolicing.com is I actually go into different agencies and I help train and give people a different perspective on why they do their job and how they should do it. If you get people to look at the same problem from a different direction, that’s when change can actually occur.

I was successful because I was able to get the people I was serving to relate to me as an individual doing a job. When a cop shows up on a scene, there is initial resentment towards just the uniform. You have to get them to see past the uniform and see you as a person. If you can find common ground with them to relate to, that’s when they will start to listen and that’s what I help teach.

PI: Darron Spence, in your book, you give what I would call play by play details of cases that you were on in your service in the Well County Colorado Sheriff’s Department. If I had to define the overarching emphasis theme of many of these stories, it would be an emphasis on quality of communication between officers and the public, officers and serious suspects or inmates and even officers with each other. Would you agree?

DS: Yes, and I attribute a lot of my success to my ability to help people and have people help me. I would utilize my dispatchers. I would utilize fellow officers. I would utilize anybody that I could to help me do my job better. In law enforcement, we lose sight of the fact that we are public servants. We’re there to serve the person that is yelling and cussing and being disrespectful to us. When safety is not an imminent threat, that’s when we can do a better job. That’s when we can improve people’s lives.

PI: You say in your book that a common approach that officers utilize in the field and are trained to utilize is, “ask them, tell them, make them.” Then you offer nine or ten points that you think might be more useful. They’re on page 11 of your book. Could you read through those for us?

DS: Certainly. On page 11 on the possibilities; Addressing the initial perceptions and reactions of the individuals involved before acting. Remaining calm when being tested. Receiving and redirecting resentment for law enforcement. Starting a conversation to get individuals talking. Listening for key factors to improve rapport. Having individuals give you leads and help you track down people. Maintaining patience and professionalism to change the perspective of individuals and bystanders alike. Rewarding positive behavior from both individuals and bystanders. And finally, gaining cooperation by giving individuals a moral victory and allowing them to salvage some pride.

PI: Let’s talk about some of these more specifically. The first for example; address the initial perceptions and reactions of the people involved before acting. What do you mean by that? What’s a brief example from your experience of that idea and practice?

DS: Well, it’s easy to say that if a cop is in your home, you’re having a bad day. They are upset, they are emotional, they may be high, intoxicated and when you get there, they’re not happy that you’re there, even though they called you.

You’ve got to let them vent. You’ve got to let them address how they’re going to respond when I show up on scene. And then, am I going to get more assertive or am I going to let them voice their concerns? That’s when the tone of the conversation can go really bad or it can start to improve.

PI: Even your answers are touching on some of the other items that you mentioned in your list like receiving and redirecting resentment for law enforcement. You alluded to that a moment ago. Talk about the dynamic of receiving that energy yourself and what you have to do with it. You have to redirect it for yourself first, right?

DS: Yes, and one of the points that I like to talk about is an article written by Seth Stoughton about the law enforcement’s “warrior” problem. It talks about how that approach makes us believe that everybody is out to kill us and harm us. I like to say that we are actually the calm in the storm. You have all this chaos going on and we are the ones there to bring peace and to bring rationale and bring thoughts back under control. That’s our job as peace officers.

PI: Well, once you’ve grounded yourself, then you can attempt to redirect it with the person that you’re dealing with, that negative energy, right?

DS: Yes, I was very good at making fun of myself, making light of the profession. A lot of times they would be yelling and being disrespectful to me and I’d be like, “You know what? I get it. You don’t like cops. There’s a lot of cops I don’t like. I don’t drive a big red, shiny truck, so I understand that you’re not happy.” That would usually make them chuckle a little bit and actually say, okay, this guy is a little different. Humor doesn’t always work, but it’s helpful.

Compassion is very helpful. I try to start a conversation with them, something other than why I’m there, other than enforcing the law because as soon as they see me as a person, that’s whey they’re like, okay, this guy is just doing his job. He’s here, he actually cares and he wants to help me.

PI: What are other examples of looking and listening for ways to connect with people out in the field?

DS: Well, if you’re in somebody’s house, you can see pictures, you can see sports memorabilia, you can see anything related to hobbies. If you’re on a traffic stop, you could be talking about their vehicle, their clothing, anything that you can find, a common interest or something that you can generally talk about that’s not why you’re enforcing the law. As soon as you get just a couple of sentences of dialogue, that’s when they become more receptive to you.

PI: I would guess that connecting over kids is good too. Now you have a son. Do you ever purposefully try to connect with their kids if you know they’ve got kids?

DS: I use kids a lot in questioning them as witnesses because they make some of the best witnesses.

I would go against my agency’s policy. They used to teach that whenever you knew you were going to arrest somebody, that you would get them in handcuffs as soon as possible. I adamantly disagreed with this teaching philosophy. I said, “I’ll get people in handcuffs when I think it’s appropriate and when it will best suit my situation.”

The people that I’m there to serve, they don’t care what I think of them, but they care what their children think of them. I would give them a choice. I would say, “I don’t want your kid to see me put you in handcuffs. You can cooperate with me, I’ll let you hug your kids, you can say goodbye to your spouse and we can go out to my car and I’ll handcuff you out there or if you don’t want to cooperate, then there will probably be additional charges, you’ll further traumatize your kids and your spouse and you will end up in the car anyway.”

That’s another way that I would use kids to further the goal of what I was trying to do.

PI: This sounds a little bit like the point you were making in another one of your items; giving individuals a moral victory, a way to salvage some pride. Say more about that.

DS: Yes, it’s the “Ask them, tell them, make them philosophy” and it goes against that because when you’re in somebody’s house and they’re upset and you asked them something, but they didn’t hear you because they’re upset, then you’re telling them something, but as soon as you start to back them into a corner and start demanding they do something in their own house, that’s when they’re like, well, I’m going to go to jail anyway, I’m going to salvage some pride just by taking a swing at a cop. That’s when we’ve got to take a step back and say, “How can we help this individual?”

Whenever safety is not an imminent threat, and we walk into a situation with our first through being how am I going to help this person, it completely changes the whole dialogue.

PI: One of your ideas is to reward positive behavior from individuals on the scene, including bystanders. What does that look like?

DS: It’s just thanking people and apologizing to them [when you’re wrong]. Admitting when you’re wrong as a cop because we’re people. As soon as they see you as a person, that’s when they’re like okay, this guy doesn’t have an ego, he’s not trying to power trip with the badge, he’s not trying to force his authority upon me.

I would always reward the positive behavior. I would let them hug their kids, I would let them say goodbye to their spouse. I would give them options. They knew that they had done something wrong and that they were going to go to jail, but I would let them say goodbye to their family, hug their kids and that way the kids don’t see them in a bad light of being handcuffed and drug away. That’s one of the ways that I reward people while doing my job.

PI: We’re talking with Darron Spencer about his years in a busy sheriff’s office in Colorado. He garnered a good bit of experience that he has written up in a book called Humane Policing. He’s also online at humanepolicing.com.

Darron, it looks to me like you’ve been drawing from peacemaking philosophy for inspiration. Your book is loaded with quotes from folks like Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Confucius, Mark Twain. First let me ask you if you went looking for these quotes just for the book or were some of them part of your learning and experience otherwise?

DS: I like to be inspired like most people. I would draw motivation from these different individuals. I wanted to tie my personality into the book with the quotes of what inspires me and what drives me so that way the reader will understand my own perspective of what I was trying to get across with the different messages and different learning points.

PI: Then again, did you find most of these quotes in doing research for the book or were you familiar with them beforehand?

DS: I would say it’s about half and half. I was aware of probably about half the quotes and then during the research process of writing the book, I became more aware of some of the individual’s other quotes that I enjoyed as well.

PI: Here are a couple of quotes I found intriguing and I’ll tell you why and ask for a response. You quote Dwight D. Eisenhower as saying, “Though force can protect in an emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.”

Your training to be an officer was called “Peace Officers Standards and Training.” Some could interpret the use of the word “peace” in this context by saying that the job of an officer is to keep the peace with the force of law and weaponry if necessary.

Or, you could say that a big part of a peace officer’s job is to model peacemaking and conflict resolution strategies broadly on behalf of the community. Is part of our conundrum with improving our policework agreeing on which of these definitions of a peace officer dominates?

DS: That ties directly into the “us versus them” mentality which I’m trying to get rid of because the better we can understand why cop do what we do, then we will learn to appreciate what they do.

The important part about that quote is the first part of it which is, “Force can protect in an emergency.” We need to respond completely differently in an emergency when the preservation of life is dire and to every other circumstance.

That’s why when I train, I teach about when safety is not an imminent threat. We should be resolving things peacefully whenever we can, whenever it doesn’t put in jeopardy somebody else’s safety.

PI: Another quote that I like that seems to really apply to your whole book is Einstein; “Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding.” That seems to have guided a lot of your decision-making in the field.

DS: It did. I’ve got posters on my wall and different paintings of Einstein and different quotes that he’s had. He’s always been instrumental in my thought process even before I got into law enforcement.

The better we can understand the person we are talking to, the more we can relate to them. That’s when cooperation comes because they see you as a person and not only do they see you as a person, they see you as a person that cares. As soon as you’re a person that cares, that’s when they’ll actually listen. As soon as listening happens, that’s when a common goal can be achieved that benefits everybody.

PI: Here’s a quote you used from Dr. King; “The ultimate measure of a man (and I’ll add ‘or woman’) is not where he (or she) stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he (or she) stands at times of challenge or controversy.”
Then you go into a section in your book of telling some stories of when your law enforcement colleagues have strayed off course to make things worse in a situation.

What have you seen on jobs and in training regimens that would help officers do a better job as things get testy or even dangerous on a crime scene that we haven’t talked about?

DS: That’s what people need to understand about law enforcement and people in law enforcement is we are people. We have bad days just like everybody else. The more we are overworked and over-burdened, the more stressed we get.

We’re getting challenged more and more on a daily basis with cell phones. I had a lady hold a cell phone 12 inches from my face and had a steady stream of cuss words coming out of her mouth and all I was doing was just asking to contact somebody.
We have people in society trying to inflame and insight a reaction from law enforcement just for the purpose of gaining that reaction. That’s where, in law enforcement, we’ve got to be like, okay, we’re the trained professionals. We’re the ones who have to take that breath and say, “Okay, I’m not going to react and respond the way this individual wants me to. I’m going to move forward. I’m going to be that calm in that storm that they’re creating.” As soon as they know they’re not going to gain a reaction out of you, that’s when they start to calm down.