Episode #100 – Equipping the Police to Better Serve the Community

The term “Defunding the Police” has become a political hotbed in recent weeks and months.  Some say it means just that, taking money from police and reducing the force. Others say it means reallocating funds to change the way police work.

In this episode Chris and Crag continue the conversation after the episode with Carole Shrader to the go a little deeper on what it means to “Defund”.  Maybe the answer is to actually INCREASE funding.

Tune in to this episode to see “Equipping the Police” Through a Therapist’s Eyes!

Episode #100 Transcription

Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone out there. I am Chris Gazdik. He is Craig Graves. I am a mental health and substance abuse therapist and he is a coach. I have a book coming out soon to rediscovering emotions and becoming your best self. And Craig is officially unofficially or officially active on being a coach. Check them out.

Where are you at? Where do they find you anyway? J Craig graves. You still doing that

Craig Graves: [00:00:37] Yeah, I’m still J Craig graves on social media, but I’ve also got a website called wininyourmind.com  win or win. W I N like winning the. Battle of life winning.

Chris Gazdik: [00:00:50] We welcome you too. Through a Therapist’s Eyes, the podcast, seeing the world through the lens and a coach being aware it’s not to delivery of therapy serves in any way, checking out the website through a therapist’s eyes where you can get full show transcriptions.

We now do have categories of all of our shows. So you check them out a topic that you’re more interested in and, and you can see all of the shows that we’ve done on there because, Mr. Graves. We didn’t make a big deal out of it, but dude, did you realize we crossed over the a 100 show threshold?

Craig Graves: [00:01:20] Is this 100 technically now?

Chris Gazdik: [00:01:23] Technically, but we have a different shows that you did shorts on and everything, but yeah. Yeah. I can’t wait to tell you what 101 one is going to be.

Craig Graves: [00:01:32] You’re not surprise me.

Chris Gazdik: [00:01:33] Yes, sir. So this is the human emotional experience. Let’s figure this thing out together. Shall we?

Craig Graves: [00:01:39] Yes.

Chris Gazdik: [00:01:40] What did you think Craig, in review last time on this is part two and a listening audience.

If you didn’t hear part one, definitely check that out because we really put a face on the show. We put a face on the topic. Yeah. And, I’m just kinda curious, Craig, if you remember, when we recorded it with Carol, you know, talk to about her family and we, we really got a, an inside window. She was courageous and.

Super sweetly, kind enough to share a lot of things that she has been through watching her family members, she, yourself in different legal events and such. I was really it. I think it put a good face on what we’re, what we’re talking about with equipping the police and dealing with these things that I believe mental health is right in the middle of it.

What do you, what did you think about that? What do you remember from it? And that’ll take us into what we’re doing here today.

Craig Graves: [00:02:33] No, we’re recording on a new day. And I did, I haven’t listened to the show since we published it or recorded it even, you know, I guess the one thing that sticks out in my mind is it’s almost like we came to the conclusion that we need more money for police and services that it’s not defunding.

It’s it’s. At least, including some level of mental health training for somebody in there. Yeah. And maybe even some more services that, that could be offered to help individuals and, you know, and those kinds of situations.

Chris Gazdik: [00:03:06] Absolutely. You know, I was going through it and in the middle of the show audience, you can listen to part one and get the story of the faces behind what we see here.

And I’ve had a many in my therapy office, man. the faces of police officers and first responders and the faces of people dealing with mental health issues that have been in the prison system, I’ve see both sides. That’s why I hope I do a good job in these two shows are really important to me too, because man, I mean, you know, I, you know, of all the different things, man, you know, when we talk about, you know, through a therapist’s eyes, I was right, Craig.

I mean, dude, to me, this stuff is, I just wish, I, I hope I do a good enough job of kind of given. The flavor and the picture of the real stories of what is behind these topics, because people just talk about them as topics, but there’s real emotions behind them in real feelings. About them. And, and last time we didn’t really get to talk about my thoughts at all about the topic, which is what we’re going to do today.

Audience, you know, my, I had a lot of notions and I wanted to kind of weave them in the conversation. And I just kind of on the, you know, in the gut feeling and talking to Carol, I really felt like we just needed to stay with that story because she was doing a good job of giving you a vivid imagery about what somebody with mental health is really dealing with when they’re dealing with the police.

And in crisis situations and such, you know, let me start out though, as we did last time is important to me and Craig, you can chime in as you want to, but I wanted to be clear from the get go. You see the title, reequipping the police. That’s a reframe on defunding the police in my mind. That’s an important reframe and, don’t help me forget, but I want to say that metaphor again about hospitals.

I want that to be a part of the show. Craig. I’m speaking just for myself, this is just Chris Gazdik again. And Craig, you chime in, as you feel appropriate and willing and interested. I’m want to make sure that all listening on these understands that I support the police, the men and women in the, in the difficult position of managing the terrible challenges of, of dealing with mental health and substance abuse issues.

Right. Smack in the middle of their job, pretty much constantly. we. We do not have any idea, the challenges that, that, that, that involves. And I think that that’s why one of the things I hope our country is going through, even after the Brianna. what’s what is it? Briana Taylor,

Craig Graves: [00:05:25] Taylor,

Chris Gazdik: [00:05:26] you know, and all the things that right here we are, we’re recording on September the 24th and we’re right smack in the middle of another loaded deal.

And I want our country and believe our country is going to be able to get beyond these difficult times to have a better connection on the issues. We got to connect and discuss as a, as a, as a responsible society, how to manage these terribly difficult things. So people don’t get shot. People get held responsible.

People are doing a good job. And people in, in, in, in first response and in the public are taken care of in their mental health needs. And I do not believe that that is the case today. I do not believe people are being taken care of adequately enough with our healthcare system. With our selves, allowing it to happen with even a dialogue about mental health, being a big part of this issue.

And, and I, and I want, I want us to get through to that, and I believe that that we will, It’s tough to think for yourself. I mentioned about group think last time, do you remember that? You know, we get polarized on these things and we go with the T side that we’re polarized with. And I think that creates a psychological dilemma where we’re not getting good connection on the issues cannot do that politically, as well as with this issue of, of police.

Finally, the fact of highlighting PTSD. Is a major issue when we’re dealing with issues as racism. I think we made a good case of that. Mr. Graves, would you agree? PTSD and racism and we were talking about that.

Craig Graves: [00:07:01] Yeah.

Chris Gazdik: [00:07:01] Yeah. Right. And, and that’s, and that’s the same thing in first response with police PTSD.

And, and trauma reactions. If you remember, we’re talking about trauma, even something sort of PTSD light is something called acute stress disorder and that’s same symptoms, but it’s on a lesser degree. And even a lesser degree with that is our normal reactions to trauma. Even if you don’t have a diagnosable condition, which many people do.

So I really want us to know that we’re supporting, we’re not, I’ll take an asides on anything, but we need to support and respect and value what these people are doing in our society. Sound fair. Is that another long soapbox?

Craig Graves: [00:07:39] No, I think it’s, I think it’s a point that you needed to make.

Chris Gazdik: [00:07:44] Alright. So where do we go?

How do we start us off with this national discussion that we now have a face for? Right. We’ve got a face in a story. What the heck do we do with that? what do we do with the idea, first of all, you know, right in the middle of the, of the show, Craig, you were giving me some notes. You’re like, dude, you know, you’re writing notes that they can put an underline on it.

Like we’re not describing defunding. What does that mean? We haven’t gotten to that yet. You know, you remember that?

Craig Graves: [00:08:14] I do. Yeah. I think that we did a poor job in the beginning at least of, of, of saying what we meant by that or what, or what. Or what you meant by that.

Chris Gazdik: [00:08:24] Right.

And I’m not about by far an expert. I’d be curious what you hear about that. When you hear that, what you think about that in my view, from a mental health perspective and what I’ve heard people talking about it is, it is a, is a lot, is in a name a lot is in a phrase. That’s why I use metaphors a lot. And I’ll use phrases when I’m working with people in my office, you know, expressions in my book, you’ll see me using a lot of expressions.

You know? now I’m drawing a blank. I mean, you know, keep your nose to the grindstone. It’s an expression. It means something to people. what’s a couple other expressions I’m drawing blanks. Cause I’m just afraid right now. What, what are some expressions? You hear hard workers. Do different things,

Craig Graves: [00:09:09] like nice guys finish last I am not sure where you are going .

Chris Gazdik: [00:09:11] That’s an expression. Yes. Yeah. any, you know, these, the expressions and the words that use a really important as where I’m going with that and defunding the police is not a good way of expressing. I think what people are meaning when they go about it, it means to some, you want to take money away fire all the police wreck it.

Start over. I know some support too. Starting over like Camden, New Jersey or wherever that was, but I’m not so sure that’s what it means, what it sounds like is what it, what it means to some. Does that make sense? I don’t think I said that very well.

Craig Graves: [00:09:47] I think, I think, I think so. You continue and I’ll give you my 2 cents.

Yeah.

Chris Gazdik: [00:09:54] I mean, it, it’s not a phrase that I think is a good phrase because it misrepresents what I think the intent is. And honestly, man, you know, what is meant by the defunding statement is basically, it sounds like shut them down, you know, crying out, you know, This needs to end, you know, it’s, we, we cannot have a society without police.

And I think everyone recognizes that. It’s why the force of, of, of, of enforcement has been a part of most, all cultures in the world. I would bet we can’t do away with it. That’s not what we’re, we’re trying to do when people talk about it. I think what they’re doing really is taking money away, reallocating funds to community services, you know, going through.

A process to, to rethink how we do something. That’s, that’s what I, I think that’s the basic idea when people were talking about it, but it, but it doesn’t sound like that. It sounds like we’re going to fire everybody. We’re going to tear it down and we’re going to let the community police itself. And I know there are some that talk that way, but I don’t, I don’t think that’s the greater, you know, the greater notion of what usually meant you Googling it.

What you thinking.

Craig Graves: [00:11:07] Yeah, I was just, I was just looking and I wish, I wish you could trust the media these days. You really can’t. You know, I don’t know if what I’m reading is true or not. This, this article on Forbes says at least 13 cities are defunding their police departments. At least 13, us cities have cut funding from place department budgets or decreased officer numbers with several more in the process, amid a national wrecking over systematic racism and police brutality.

According to a Forbes tally. So in that case, Chris, money’s coming out of the police department, the bleakly there’s less police officers, you know, is, is that a good thing? Austin, Texas is the latest city to announce a police defunding effort with city council on Thursday voting unanimously to cut 150 million, roughly one third from the police budget.

Re-investing much of that. Some in social programs. Including food, access, violence prevention and abortion access. So, you know, I don’t have a problem with putting money into those programs. I think that’s a great idea, you know, but what’s going to happen when you reduce the size of your police force. I mean, what do you think is going to happen?

Chris Gazdik: [00:12:20] You know? Yeah. Reducing the size of a police force or reducing this and that. Remember, I started out earlier and I said, I think we need dialogue and conversation. We need focus because in some regards, the way that we’re policing doesn’t seem to work well for some. And I think that’s a true reality, you know, the crisis situations we talked about, you know, in my mental health field doesn’t work very well for people sometimes that are suicidal.

I think I was kind of stunned with Carol’s story where somebody is in a suicidal state, authorities are called and they don’t end up landing as much in a hospital and facilitated on treatment when they were calling for the suicidal state. Instead they get a, they get a, a prison sentence that, that to me, just stunned me.

I don’t think that’s working so well. So I want to, in instances, and, and so I want to have dialogue about whether or not. We can, we can figure out good changes in and into the system itself, funding moved around, call it, you know, D allocation, call it whatever you want, but how can we put the, the, the lot of dollars that we put into that particular part of our government, you know, because they do work for us.

It’s part of, of government state employees and federal employees. The police system is how can we do that in a different way and revolutionize it. And this is a good place to put my metaphor. Do you remember my metaphor about the hospitals?

Craig Graves: [00:13:50] No. Refresh my memory.

Chris Gazdik: [00:13:51] I think this is an excellent metaphor when we talked about maternity wards.

Craig Graves: [00:13:56] Oh yeah. Yeah. So the upgraded, the birthplaces and looked like luxury hotels.

Chris Gazdik: [00:14:01] They changed it.

Craig Graves: [00:14:02] Yeah.

Chris Gazdik: [00:14:02] they changed, the way money was allocated, you could say they, they refocused in effort to make hospital settings. And I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of crazy surgical procedures that go on in a birthing unit.

You know that, right? Yeah,

Craig Graves: [00:14:19] no, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Chris Gazdik: [00:14:21] And they reallocated, if you will, they refocused on, how can we make this experience in bringing a child into the world better? And maternity units are very, very different than hospital settings very much. So I think we could do thoughtfulness like that.

And I’m not saying make prisons all cushy, come on. Right. But how can we make police precincts more, more approachable? I think they’re intimidating when you go in there. Scary places. Yeah.

Craig Graves: [00:14:51] Well, I guess the idea is not to go in. Well,

Chris Gazdik: [00:14:53] if I want to go into file

Craig Graves: [00:14:55] and break the law, you don’t get in there.

Chris Gazdik: [00:14:57] No, that’s not true.

No, that’s not true. Wait a minute. If I’m going in there to file a protective order and I’ve had clients in my office that are scared to death. To, to, to bring a judge or to bring a process in where they’re going to protect their literal lives and they have to go to a magistrate office or they have to go to a police precinct to file petition order to get that done, to make sure that they’re safe.

And they’re scared to walk in. It’s imposing, it’s intimidating. It’s scary. And usually those offices are connected right next to the jails. I mean, Craig, I don’t know if you realize it, you go to see the magistrate. You’re about five steps away from our local jail.

Craig Graves: [00:15:32] Yeah, I get that. It’s scary.

Chris Gazdik: [00:15:34] And you’re, and this is an, and this is a person who’s already scared and I’m talking about tickle kite right now, but you know, I mean, this is a person who’s already intimidated or overwhelmed, or a victim of domestic violence and their kinda going into this whole system.

Like. You know, like a, like a sterile, scary hospital instead of walking into a maternity ward, that’s all, that’s what I’m trying

Craig Graves: [00:15:53] to say. Okay. So if you do that though, I mean, that’s going to cost money. So I keep going back to, we need more money in police departments, probably so, or in other services. I don’t, I don’t think that you take money away from having police officers to solve, to solve the problem.

I have no problem with training officers in mental health or having mental health people on staff that go out with the officers. If there’s a mental health issue. And I think that statistic we read last week, 50% of police altercations are because the person has got suffered from some mental health issue.

I think that’s a good thing to train those guys, but I think, you know, like you take away, you take away police and I think crime rates are gonna go up. I mean, you look at New York right now, new York’s the crime rate in New York is rising and. I think they didn’t hire 1200 officers. There was some kind of a, they skipped a class or something like that.

So there’s 1200 officers. They did not add to the force while they’ve got all these guys who were falling for early retirement, trying to get out of there because of the way the things are going on in the country. Right now.

Chris Gazdik: [00:16:58] Here’s, here’s an example of what I think. Cause I see that right. You decrease police size might increase crime and all this stuff.

Craig Graves: [00:17:05] Yeah, it happens.

Chris Gazdik: [00:17:06] Yeah, absolutely. You can, you can point factually to that.  Defunding a 70,000 $170,000 vehicle. For instance, you need computers, you need stuff. I’m not an expert in policing. Please hear me when I say that, but how about we get different cars that are like cars, you and I drive that aren’t designed a hundred percent of the time.

To chase down at 130 miles an hour, some criminal in a car so that we have transportation for people that are going out to different types of situations or outreaching and doing community police to check on, you know, a well known domestic violence house with the lady or whatnot. I mean, taking defunding a police officer with the belt and the different things that they’ve got going on, moving those funds and reallocating, those funds do a DSS worker.

That’s going to go with a person. You can call that defunding if you want. Cause you’re taking money away from a police cruiser. You’re taking money away from a particular unit. Is that decreasing the police? Well, maybe you take one less staff position and you put it into a specialized trained staff position.

Is that defunding? Is that taking away from that precinct? Well, one position got whacked, but you put in a different position, right? Has, I mean, this is what I think people really confused about. And I’m not wanting to show to be like, you know, okay, I know what should happen because I’m not, I know that dialogue needs to be happening so that we do this in a smart way and have things working better for the more majority of people, particularly my folks in mental health.

That makes sense.

Craig Graves: [00:18:39] Yeah, I think so. I think, I think I hear what you’re saying. I’m just not sure it’s a, it’s a, it’s a good model, you know? And I’ve already said, I believe that we need mental health counselors or officers who are trained to handle mental health patients or suspects or perpetrators, whatever the right term is.

I’m just not sure. Demonizing the police to the point to where they’re retiring in record numbers.

Chris Gazdik: [00:19:05] That’s horrible

Craig Graves: [00:19:06] and not hiring new police officers to come onto. The force is gonna result in crime rates going up. I mean in many naps, Minneapolis, Minneapolis, all this semester. Yeah. Here’s an article in a, in, on, on the web.

The city, council now they’ve defunded their police department, right? They all voted to do this thing. Now crime rates are rising and city councils pissed off with the police department. Cause crime rates are going up. Although they’re taking, you know, taking funds and, and dismantling the department. You know, so, I mean, crime is going up in Minneapolis cause.

They’ve, they’re defunding their police department. Now. They wanted somebody to answer for that, you

know?

Chris Gazdik: [00:19:49] Yeah. What I’m fearful of is that people are going to kind of do, you know, surface level examination of an issue and make broad stroke statements that. Contribute to the psychological effect in society on something like group think, because people are going to take an article like that or a court decision that seems terrible to some like the Brianna Taylor, other people doesn’t seem very inappropriate to not, you know, reprimand two of those police officers or severely enough the other.

This is not a surface level issue that you can take any one city anyone’s story, any one circumstance and, and, and make a broad stroke from that. And I, and I feel like people are doing that wildly now and we’re falling into a trap, whereas diminishing discussion, diminishing communication amongst people that can connect on a knowledgeable way on what these issues are.

That’s that’s one of my biggest concerns about all of this.

Craig Graves: [00:21:04] Alright, so that one more time

Chris Gazdik: [00:21:06] in shorter terms that people are taking an article, people are taking a criminals case, a victim’s case or a circumstance and painting a broad brush. To make statements sort of formulate their opinions without doing a deeper dive or facilitating communication between people that are professionals in the field of criminal behavior, criminal policing, and mental health and mental, treatment and other domains of government and financing and everything else to make a smarter well informed decision on what we do with our precincts.

Craig Graves: [00:21:41] So you’re saying that’s not happening. People are not making smart decisions. They’re just going with a broad stroke approach. One size fits all kind of, kind of approach to this, to this thing.

Chris Gazdik: [00:21:51] I’m mad about this court case. And so I’m going to formulate my opinion. I’m angry at what that police officer did.

So let’s change the entire system. This police officer got shot, and that’s an example of why this is not a problem, or this is a problem rather, right? I do not think we can do that. It’s it’s a, it’s a, it’s a surface level, individual instance. We need a much broader communication about this with people of all sorts in, in, in, in the rooms of those discussions.

Craig Graves: [00:22:21] How do you think that happens?

Chris Gazdik: [00:22:22] I know it’s a good question,

Craig Graves: [00:22:23] that’s one of the things about all the stuff that’s going on right now is there’s no effort in place to, to make any progress on any of these issues. Yeah. You know, And people act like electing a new president. It’s going to fix things. It’s not, no, it’s not, you know, politicians are not going to fix.

The issues that the country faces and a lot of cases, they’re the reason we’re in the mess we’re in right now.

Chris Gazdik: [00:22:50] Well, you know what, for, for what it’s worth, I, you know, you’ve listened this far into these, these two programs. I do have, I feel like a good sense of mental health and I’ve got some, some thoughts that we’re going to get into at the end here after a little while on.

The last section or segment of our show, what might the answer be? From my mental health perspective, I got a through G in my brain list, but I want to stay here for a second, Craig. Cause I think this is probably more crucial that you pose that question. How do we get that to happen now? We’re just, I don’t have prepared thoughts.

We’re just off the cuff here. I think it’s a really important question. How do we get the appropriate discussions going on? With the appropriate people coming together to figure out how we’re really going to get improvements with this. First of all, who do we need? I mean, we need, we need people that understand, you know, personal defense and physical awareness.

I mean, Sean McGuinness is we had excellent conversations with him about that. We need people like that into discussions when he police officers in his discussions, you know, we need people that understand finances and administration. And involving government probably to be in that discussion, I’m going to submit, we need mental health professionals that are well knowledgeable mental health professionals in those daggone discussions.

You think we got any shot of being in there that Room… maybe,

Craig Graves: [00:24:10] hopefully, because I agree with you

Chris Gazdik: [00:24:12] right. I agree with you maybe, but I don’t think there’s been a whole lot now. Psychology has made a lot of inroads into a lot of different places that way psychology particularly has. Definitely. But. I don’t think enough mental health has been a part of these discussions.

Is there anything that I’m missing? I mean, what else we need in that room? Do we even know?

Craig Graves: [00:24:30] You know, I would say that you probably need some clergy in there. You know, religion is a big part of our country. Most people believe in some kind of higher power. I believe that you probably should have some of those folks in there.

Chris Gazdik: [00:24:44] you need a cultural expert. What cultural experts.

Craig Graves: [00:24:48] Yeah, no, I’m disagree with that either.

Chris Gazdik: [00:24:50] You know? Yeah. Maybe the mental health component can root out things like confirmation bias that are very real psychological group. Think that is very real mental health professionals that can point out that resistance that people in law enforcement have to getting help.

You hear me highlighting that? Yeah. Have the, the, the mental health issues of, of, of criminals. And how to handle that both with force cause we’re confronting it. But also with compassion, like Carol talked about, you know, cultural experts are a big part of that. Well, I don’t even know who’s the cultural expert.

Craig Graves: [00:25:28] I have no idea who they are.

Chris Gazdik: [00:25:29] Right.

Craig Graves: [00:25:31] You know, it’s probably not a bad idea to have media in that conversation. So the media, the media, I’m absolutely disgusted with the media in this country right now. You know, I really am. You can’t get us. You can’t get. The real story from just about anybody.

Chris Gazdik: [00:25:45] No,

Craig Graves: [00:25:45] you’re not.

Yeah. And it’s unfortunate,

Chris Gazdik: [00:25:47] it is. It’s a terrible reality. I think that’s a decent list that we just created back to that. Cause I’ll be thinking about that. How do we get that to happen? How do we get those conversations to happen? Because I don’t think people want to have those conversations.

Craig Graves: [00:26:00] I don’t think they do either.

You know, I don’t think they do either. I think the politicians don’t want to have it, you know, because it’s a. I think they can use the discord in their favor

Chris Gazdik: [00:26:12] yeah.

Craig Graves: [00:26:13] To, to get votes. And so you don’t want to solve the issue, you know, whatever side you fall on.

Chris Gazdik: [00:26:19] I would imagine there’s certain amount of defensiveness on the part of the police departments themselves to have those conversations.

Craig Graves: [00:26:25] I, you know, I don’t know, man.

Chris Gazdik: [00:26:27] cause we, we don’t need help. There’s a great resistance.

Craig Graves: [00:26:30] There could be there, there could be. I would have, I would assume that police departments want the public perception to change and shift because, you know, man, there’s a few bad apples in every single crowd, but as police officers, I got friends I trained with and one of my best friends is a police officer.

These people are the salt of the earth, man. You know, they’re not out there hunting people down, you know, based on the color of skin or anything like that. They’re good. People who want to serve the community in that capacity.

Chris Gazdik: [00:26:57] And I made this point last year out there and I made this point last time. Yeah, they’re here.

They’re protected, sir. But they also want, how did I put that? Don’t get me wrong. I think they want help to make things better. But I’m saying almost to the point of realizing we need help in our precincts too, for emotional growth and health. I think that’s what I that’s did I misspeak? That’s the resistance I’m talking about

Craig Graves: [00:27:20] potentially. Yeah, right.

Chris Gazdik: [00:27:21] Yeah. Cause I don’t need, I mean, like I said, therapists don’t need to go therapy. You know, we don’t think that we need emotional support. In our own life and in our own professional life. And we

do,

I think so, but we have great EAP services, but they’re not used.

Craig Graves: [00:27:41] Right.

Chris Gazdik: [00:27:42] They’re not used, we have clergy in the precincts.

They’re not really used. They’re run from

Craig Graves: [00:27:48] yeah. You know what, man, I wish we could get past that stigma because I listened to a couple of guys on, you know, podcasts that I listen to. And

Chris Gazdik: [00:27:57] Lemme guess is it Rogan.

Craig Graves: [00:27:59] No, it’s not. Well, I mean, he’s, I’m sure he’s talked about this, but I heard a guy the other day on a podcast who was a former Navy seal who served 13 years.

And I can’t remember how many combat deployments he had, but he was talking about how a therapist helped him turn things back around, you know? And that’s not a unique story to him. I’ve heard several of them say that

Chris Gazdik: [00:28:21] I’ve had, I’ve had that. I’ve watched it. I’ve been participant

Craig Graves: [00:28:25] the toughest warriors on the planet, you know, who were saying, Hey, they’re vulnerable enough to say, Hey, I’m a therapist helped me out.

So that should tell us something, right.

Chris Gazdik: [00:28:35] It should, man. And thank you. That’s what I’m talking about, man, because I mean, I’ve had the distinct honor privilege. I’ve said one of the biggest honors I’ve had, I can’t really qualify it from one client to the next, but to work with our, our men and women in the military special forces, as well as your, your, your, your, your, your, I wouldn’t say beat cop, foot soldier.

As well as our men and women in policing your beat cup all the way up to people that have been in the field for forever. One of my earliest jobs, many years ago, I had, I had the distinct honor and privilege of working with, and I can say this now because it’s a different district as long ago. I’m sure I’m not breaking confidence, but a high member of a particular precinct in a local County.

You know, and, and he was in, he was actually, no, he was actually retired. I, I stand corrected. He was actually retired and dealing with all the ramifications of an entire career in this. Like, they need that. We need that. And we need cultural awareness because you know, all the misunderstandings that are going on and in prejudice, I mean, this is, this is why we got to get into love your question.

And Craig, we’ve got to get. Multiple people in the room to begin discussing, how can we turn this sterile, scary place, such as a hospital, into a maternity ward that we can actually feel comfortable and good. Do good healthcare in C I switched it. Those conversations need to happen. I really believe that that’s part of the benefit of protests that are going on.

That’s part of the outcome that protests might be able to create. Notice I said the word protests and I didn’t say, hold on. And I didn’t say the word riots.

Craig Graves: [00:30:15] Yeah. Yeah. And that, and that’s the problem. That’s a polarizing thing too, because nobody has a problem with protests. I mean, that’s, that’s part of the American story, right?

Protests are, were what made change. I mean, peaceful protest. When it turns into riots, that’s where the polarization starts to come in, you know,

Chris Gazdik: [00:30:37] and you know, I don’t even, I wouldn’t even, Oh, a little step further, Craig. And, and say, to be honest with you, just to help the listening audience understand that when people are really upset and protesting and yelling and screaming about defunding, the police, you know what, I’m not, it isn’t always peaceful.

what was the black Senator that just died? rest his peace. I just blanking

Craig Graves: [00:30:57] John,

Chris Gazdik: [00:30:59] what was it? No. Oh my God. Louis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, what, what was he said, you know, he had a, he had a reason cool way of putting it, you know, good trouble. Is that what he said?

Craig Graves: [00:31:12] I don’t recall that.

Chris Gazdik: [00:31:12] Yeah. He talked about, you know, we’re, we’re going to create good trouble or something like that. Pissed off angry, you know? No justice, no, peace is one of the things I heard from one of the protestors that. At, Mount Holly when, I covered it. Right. You know, the, the, the older gentlemen, they’re kind of saying, you know, you, you want us to be quiet and go away.

We’re not going to do that peacefully until we get justice. The idea is that, you know, it’s not peaceful to listen to people yelling for something they’re upset about their protesting. I want nonviolent, how about that? Can we get the sirens going on? Yeah, that’s awesome. We’ll fit it in the background.

One nonviolent, but you know, if you’re angry, it’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to show people that you’re angry. Some people might be very uncomfortable

with that.

Craig Graves: [00:32:02] Yeah. I mean, well, anger is fine, but, but when you start burning down buildings and way killing people, police officers being coming,

can you know

you what I mean?

It wouldn’t have been no change. If Martin Luther King hadn’t burned down all those buildings, Chris, you know what I mean? Or Muhammad Gandhi, all that trouble, he started up and. You know, all the buildings, Mahatma, Gandhi burned down. I mean, Dan had done all that. He would’ve got nothing done.

Do you remember the quote that I chose from Martin Luther King?

Which one was that?

Chris Gazdik: [00:32:28] The quote. Neil,  find that quote, if you could,

Craig Graves: [00:32:30] but you get the irony of what I said

to say it, these were peaceful protesters who made a hell of a change in our world without doing any of that stuff. Right. You know?

Chris Gazdik: [00:32:39] Right. I’ll pull that quote out and we’ll come back to that and move on here. You know, when we talk about re allocating funds, the community, I’m just poking at this little segment here on a concern on, on being able to be productive with that conversation.

And I did this a little bit during part one. So let me just refresh really quickly. Listen to this list, Craig, what should we fund community mental health centers, therapists, DSS, the department of social services. Other States call it different things. Universities for training people planned Parenthood.

you know, private investigators, excuse me, such as in human sex trafficking and what we’re dealing with, that youth specialized detention centers. Those are, you know, we fund detention centers for youth, job training programs and, you know, in community colleges, do we, do we reallocate take away? Funds and put them to the boys and girls club, you know, do we, do we put them towards gyms and memberships towards gyms for poverty people, or, you know, the list can go on and on and on, you know, this child development and services administration, where my wife works, you know, helping with, with families and children that are disabled, you know, where do people really want to reallocate these funds to hear people saying that.

And when, just like we should decrease taxes. Well, okay. A lot of people agree with that, where he taking the money from him, or he’s going to run it more deficits. See that’s the superficial kind of intensity that people get when they start talking about things like that. And when you’re sitting there and you got a hundred million dollars and you got to take $20 million from this and put it towards this, how do you re that gets real.

I think that’s what people talk about. All the stuff they want to do before they get an office and get an office and nothing happens, you know, worst things happen because when you talk about refunding the police, where are you putting it to? There’s a lot of good services. I just put there. Thanks, Neil.

Where is this at the, secondly, the quote we were talking about, the limitations of riots, moral questions aside is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence rioting is not revolutionary, but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

That’s why I chose that from Martin Luther King, we were talking about racism. So where do we put the money, man? Anybody have any idea?

Craig Graves: [00:35:11] You know what? I don’t like paying taxes at all. that’s a different story, maybe a different show taxes and mental health, but boy, But, you know, I have no problem funding, those programs that you just talked about, all my, except for one, but I don’t think that answer to the problem or the answer to funding those programs is taken away from police forces.

I just, I do not think that’s the way to do it. I think that if you start taking away from police departments, you’re going to see a rise in crime. And, and, and I think that’s a mistake.

Chris Gazdik: [00:35:44] Gotcha. Gotcha. Kind of got myself out of order. I want to go back and then come forward.

Craig Graves: [00:35:52] Lemme say. I do think those things are good things I just want to be clear on that.

I think it’s awesome to have more mental health counselors. I think it’d be awesome to have training in mental health for police officers, if they don’t already, already have that maybe that maybe they do in some departments. And some of those programs sounded really cool, you know, but I don’t think you take away from Peter to pay Paul in this instance, because I think it’s going to result in more crime, not less crime.

Chris Gazdik: [00:36:18] It’s it’s, it’s why we need to have those conversations. You know, it’s why we need to have those conversations with people probably be way smarter than you and me put together.

Craig Graves: [00:36:26] You know, I don’t think there’s any more than me and you in

politics.

IfThey are. I haven’t seen them yet,

Chris Gazdik: [00:36:32] maybe. So here’s a question that we, to, that I wanted to start out with, I’m kind of back in, I have to go back to that and then forward and back to the idea of police are involved in mental health.

treatment and I don’t want to go forward back to, you know, moving more on, on concerns that I have about the healthcare industry. And then we’ll, we’ll taxi in with what my thoughts are from a mental health perspective is the answers to a lot of this questioning. Mr. Graves, can police facilitate mental health treatment?

Craig Graves: [00:37:07] Can they facilitate mental health treatment. Right? What do you mean by that?

Chris Gazdik: [00:37:13] Right. Taking, taking guessing and a statement or two, if you could think of for that, because, and, and go with, go with what you think people  would say.

Craig Graves: [00:37:21] Can they facilitate mental health treatment for four suspects for people they’re dealing with on the street?

Yeah. I don’t see why not,

Chris Gazdik: [00:37:29] right?

Craig Graves: [00:37:29] Yeah, of course I can. Yeah,

Chris Gazdik: [00:37:33] they do. I said, hold on before you say no, because they’re like, they’re not therapists. They do terrible with cultural diversity. Some might say they’re not aware of, you know, the substance issues and addiction. Cause they don’t have it. And they had any training on any of those things.

Well, hold on a minute polices are the first on scene. That’s why I think it is a really good point of intervention for mental health, because when you are hurting the most, you grow with the most in crisis situations we talked about, I think when Carole was here are oftentimes the most important times that people make major life changes.

And what she talked about, that one in a million moment. That’s when it happens, you have many moments in your life, but when you’re in the most crisis, state, those percentages go down, meaning you’re more likely to. Change your life in those crisis moments and police are right there with you in that. And they are there when the domestic violence victim is dealing with their turmoil.

They are right there. When kids are dealing with somebody that’s just been murdered or hanged or suicide, you know, they’re right there. Whether they realize it or not simply by their humanity, they may not do a great job sometimes because they’re all stressed out there. Right. Are in those crucial moments right now, I’d like to help them be there in a full and emotionally compassionate way, which is tough when you’re dealing with all that they’re dealing with.

Also they transport Craig. Many times I’ve worked with police officers in different cities. Typically West Virginia, when I was doing crisis work, man, they’re right there transporting these people. How’s that drive to your treatment facility. Going with that police officer, I would love to be in that car.

You know, helping them facilitate that conversation. And I know police officers have had this conversations. They know that the street longterm, chronic alcoholic, like come on Bob man. You know, man, how you doing today, Bob? You’re on a first name basis with these people

Craig Graves: [00:39:32] and how those conversations go, Chris?

I mean, w

Chris Gazdik: [00:39:34] well, I’m

Craig Graves: [00:39:34] I mean what would you do if you were in there with the guy locked up in the backseat of a car.

Chris Gazdik: [00:39:39] Oh boy, that’s a whole show. I would, I would be talking a lot, dude. It’s a good question. I don’t even know how to answer that in short term. I mean, I’m going to use cognitive reframing. I’m going to be compassionate with their situation.

I might find a probe them about what got them here. I might probe them about what they’re aware of their own behavior. I might point out some of the conflicts in their mind, in their, in their dialogue with me during that time. I mean, I’m just going to be, Hey man, this sucks I’m with you. I know that, you know, you’re, you’re going through a tough time, you know, whatever I’m going to join them.

I got a lot of thoughts.

Craig Graves: [00:40:11] Let me ask you, let me ask you some questions in a different way then. So have you seen the, you obviously saw the video with George Floyd incident where the guy was on his neck for nine, nine minutes? No excuse for

that. We all did

no excuse for that, but have you seen the video of them getting him out of the car?

Chris Gazdik: [00:40:28] I think I saw a little earlier. All of that. Yeah.

Craig Graves: [00:40:30] Okay. So when I started asking him to get into the back of the car, he started resisting. Right, right. And I think at some point he even asked them to put him on the ground again, no excuse for the guy sitting on his neck for nine minutes. But how would a mental health counselor have been able to diffuse that situation?

The guy’s house hound, fentanyl, and basically resistant arrest. So let’s say you’re on the scene with those cops. What would you do?

Chris Gazdik: [00:40:59] So it is really hard to answer that and it’s, and I don’t mind you putting me on a spot and talking about it. It’s awesome. When you’re on the scene. With the, the moment to moment decisions that are going on, it is unfair of me to try to comment about that.

Not having been there and whatnot. So I’m not avoiding the question with, with George Floyd in that circumstance, but I want to get more broad and a different set of circumstances. So I’m not commenting on something I don’t know anything about. Does that sound fair?

Craig Graves: [00:41:34] That sounds fair. Right. Okay. Fair enough.

Chris Gazdik: [00:41:37] Because I don’t know what the verbal. Nonverbal. I don’t know the history of the relationships. I don’t know if they know that, you know, if they knew George Floyd, when report said, you know, particular officers that did that knew him from a long time. I don’t know any of that. Right. The broad statement that if I’m on scene there and I said, this one, we’re talking about it before Craig, because I’m on scene and I’m involved in the team.

I mean, I mean, I’m not a I’ll use, I don’t know that I want to do it, but I’m going to do anyway. I’m not one of the three cadets that were with them or the two cadets were with the officer on scene with George. But if, because I’m an independent entity and I’m a mental health clinician, I’m going to maintain that.

And on a, on a scene, the police officers are gonna act differently just by my presence, just by my being there, there, there’s going to be an impact. They’re going to act differently. Might make it some situation, even worse because they might want to protect me. I’m not saying good or bad, but I’m saying different.

Craig Graves: [00:42:39] Got it. Okay. Fair enough.

Chris Gazdik: [00:42:42] So I have a lot of thoughts though, about that in getting into situations where, you know, when I’m on scene on crisis circumstances, I’m talking quieter, I’m engaging the person and asking them what they’re doing. I’m kind of connecting with them to see what their intentions are.

I’m immediately the whole time when I walk up on the scene taking a substance abuse or a, a, a suicide risk assessment, I’m kind of trying to figure out and if a very experienced clinicians on site, they’re going to be able to kind of figure out, Oh, this person’s. Yeah, he’s got some circumstances, but he’s also got some bipolar manic right now.

I might go for collateral information pretty quickly. You know, and, and get somebody on the phone. I’m like, I might, you know, get an idea that they have some Christian background. And sometimes when they’re drunk, they want to talk about God a lot. I’d rather have conversations about God onsite when that’s going on, but I’m not going to be up there approaching and taking somebody down as a, as a therapist and get myself killed in a danger.

I ain’t going on to those scenes alone. I’m rambling now a little bit, but what, what do you, what are you here?

Craig Graves: [00:43:44] Well, I mean, I’m, I think I’m hearing some interesting stuff in there. So let’s say you continue to talk to him and you say, look, man, you know, and you talk him down maybe a little bit and you say, Hey, look, you got to go downtown with these guys.

And he still refuses to get into the back of the car. I mean, do you think that you could have calmed him enough to get him to cooperate

Chris Gazdik: [00:44:04] again I am not speaking specifically about the George Floyd’s event? Cause I have no idea. Right, but in some instances, yes.

Craig Graves: [00:44:11] Okay, cool.

Chris Gazdik: [00:44:13] And to be honest with you. Police officers do that probably all the time by natural compassion with the person that they’re working with.

We see the instances that don’t work out so well. Right. Would I do better? I don’t know. So what possible

Craig Graves: [00:44:31] let’s let’s talk about another example then. So what about the Jacob Blake? I think we all saw that one. So the guy shows up not supposed to be there. Cop shows up. I think they tased him. And it either it didn’t work or something or that he followed it all for whatever.

Right.

So both, both officers got their gun drawn telling him to stop, but he continues to go around the car, opens up the door and that’s when the incident happens. So how would a mental health counselor have defused that situation?

Chris Gazdik: [00:45:03] Yeah, I’m not there, dude. I, I, I don’t know the circumstances of a particular event.

I really don’t know. I don’t want to comment about something that, that. You know, I’m not gonna know what those circumstances were with this. Cause I think that’s what police officers struggle with is trying to have that conversation where somebody has an opinion on a split second circuit set of circumstances that you’re dealing with.

Cause you know, as well as I do that, do might’ve turned on a dime. I know police officers and some of these, some of these circumstances they’ve been in conversation or interaction with the person for 20 minutes or an hour and 20 minutes. I mean, that’s. You’ve seen that too. Right. You know, so these things can change on a dime.

And I don’t think that we can pass judgment or say I’m going to do this or that better as a mental health clinician.

Craig Graves: [00:45:52] Right. I think, I think people are passing judgment. Yeah. That’s it, that’s the whole, that’s the whole thing. People, I mean, I’d like to ask somebody maybe if somebody listening and they can get in touch with us or something like that.

Chris Gazdik: [00:46:04] Well, they certainly can’t do through therapists. Right.

Craig Graves: [00:46:07] But what should these officers have done differently in this. In, in this situation, you know, I mean, that’s, that’s the thing, man, that guy, if there would’ve been a pistol in that floorboard, I sent you that video on Facebook and that guy turns around and shoots in a flash.

Chris Gazdik: [00:46:21] Oh, it did not listening audience a totally different, not a police situation. Just different video. Yeah,

Craig Graves: [00:46:27] it was. I mean, I mean, what would, what would somebody else have done in that particular situation? And I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer to that is.

Chris Gazdik: [00:46:36] Deescalation is a big, important part of all of this.

And one of the things that’s so tough about a lot of these circumstances that you even mentioned. If I’m developing a little bit of trust and rapport as just this, you know, who knows what they put on me on scene in a crisis center circumstance. If I’m like in some criminals, eyes I am some Liberal want to be good Doer for somebody and they can get one over on me or they, maybe they develop some actual trust and rapport in me with.

With a, with a 35 minute conversation. And I say, Hey, I got some ideas. You know, we, we, we do have, you know, some, some help down at the hospital. These guys wanted to take jail. I’ve talked with them about doing a mediator, you know, I guess some trust and rapport because I’m not immediately threatening. When I walk up with a badge, it’s totally different.

You know, I don’t know if it’s on my list and I want to move off of this then and get to get to some of this and get to where we run out of time with. You know what my mental health answers or thoughts are, you know, as an example, even of defunding or changing the way we do with this, I’ve heard people call for, and I can’t agree more get badges and guns out of the police, out of the schools, you know, we need, you know, we need police officers in the schools cause they’re, they’re big kids hurting people, but let’s have them, you know, on uniforms.

Let’s have him, you know, appearing to be. A nonthreatening person, two teenagers are terrible with police officers, man. I mean, they’re terrible. They’re a menace because they think it’s funny and they’re terrorizing.

Craig Graves: [00:48:08] Well, it goes back to the home, right?

Chris Gazdik: [00:48:11] It goes

Craig Graves: [00:48:11] back to my kid. Won’t do that. If he does, he’s going to be dealing with his father

Chris Gazdik: [00:48:15] so much, as you know about him, I’m doing it

Craig Graves: [00:48:17] well.

If his dad catches wind of that, there’s going to be trouble for my boy.

Chris Gazdik: [00:48:21] Same.

Craig Graves: [00:48:22] Same. I think a lot of our problems are, are, are, are that we we’ve got a generation of people who think they’re entitled.

Chris Gazdik: [00:48:30] Yeah.

Craig Graves: [00:48:31] And, you know, you need to respect your elders and people who are in positions of authority. Yeah.

Bottom line.

Chris Gazdik: [00:48:37] That’s why you don’t know, or you don’t remember, but you’re mr. Craig, you know that don’t you? What, in my house. You’re mr. Craig.

Craig Graves: [00:48:45] My daughter, I was taking my daughter and her friend somewhere yesterday and she was calling me mr. Graves. And I said, you can call me, Craig and she’s like, okay, mr.

Graves.

Chris Gazdik: [00:48:55] Right,

Craig Graves: [00:48:56] right. I bet that kid’s not harassing the police officer at school.

Chris Gazdik: [00:49:03] Let’s kind of go with a segment on here, finishing up on what might the answer be from my mental health perspective. This is what I was kind of thinking about the show, putting a story on it with people like. Carol’s family members with substance abuse and dealing with, with the violence that we have in policing and the racism and you know, these different issues.

this is by no means a complete thing, but this is what my brainstorm was. Let’s go through them a little bit and see what you think. Craig mandatory and involved therapy for policing, you know,

Craig Graves: [00:49:36] mandatory and involved therapy for police

Chris Gazdik: [00:49:40] in house, regular checkups from the neck up, they say.

Craig Graves: [00:49:44] That’s an interesting, that’s an interesting thing there, because the stigma is, if I go see the therapist, then I’ll get labeled or something.

Right. Is that fair to say? Absolutely. But if everybody has to go. Then, if you’re in there, you can take advantage of it if you needed it

Chris Gazdik: [00:50:01] mandatory.

Craig Graves: [00:50:02] That’s a good point.

Chris Gazdik: [00:50:03] Mandatory. Every single man and woman in plolicing has contact regularly and routinely with some type of mental health, professional period.

Craig Graves: [00:50:17] That’s not a bad idea. You could even do that with combat vets or people. Absolutely.

Chris Gazdik: [00:50:22] Absolutely. I don’t know why. I don’t know why that isn’t. That one to me is almost a little bit of a freaking no brainer. Now, mind you, we have systems in place. We have clergy that, but dude, I told you there ran from back in the eighties.

Craig, do you remember? I loved this show. Who was the, Gilbert. That’s not the name of the guy. black police officer, white police officer. Come on Neil. Who is this a show? Yeah, the movie in the eighties. Huh? Lethal weapon. Thank you, Neil. Right? You remember Lethal weapon? I remember before I even started therapy and stuff, and they were making fun of the mental health clinician in the precinct that copped, it was a Mel Gibson it was gets.

The thing is what it was. Right.

Craig Graves: [00:51:12] He needed it right.

Chris Gazdik: [00:51:13] Absolutely needed it. It was wicked crazy, but even back all the way then when mental health wasn’t even around quite as long, I mean, They run from this. They mock if they laugh at it, it’s laughable, it’s unnecessary and it’s not mandatory for every single officer.

Craig Graves: [00:51:33] That’s pretty good,

Chris Gazdik: [00:51:34] you know, improved policy by experts in both policing and mental health fields, combined all caps. I may, I was talking about that earlier. You know, the policies need to be improved. In ways, I guess, like I said, the metaphor where the policies that involve, you know, issues of prejudice and issues of stigma and issues of culture and issues of mental health and issues of substance abuse and issues of criminology.

Cause cause criminals need to be stopped, right? Like experts in all of these fields need to be combining our efforts. In a real way that I don’t think has been, I want to say allowed, but maybe even allowed with some of the politics that we get with, you know, labor unions and stuff. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s happened.

Craig Graves: [00:52:33] Say it again. Say what you just said. Again, policies

Chris Gazdik: [00:52:37] in policies being improved by the experts in both. Policing in mental health fields. And earlier I spoke better, that was my item number B here, but earlier I spoke better about we, I think we, you and I on the cuff developed a much better list.

Craig Graves: [00:52:52] What is the, you said something about race there too.

Chris Gazdik: [00:52:54] Yeah. Policies that involve prejudice and race and policies about,

Craig Graves: [00:53:00] are there policies?

Chris Gazdik: [00:53:02] I don’t know.

Craig Graves: [00:53:03] I have

Chris Gazdik: [00:53:03] no idea. I don’t either.

Craig Graves: [00:53:04] I don’t know. Yeah. I’d be shocked if there were any policies that were race specific. And that goes back to a question. I mean, do you think that some of these things, some of these incidents are race-related?

Chris Gazdik: [00:53:15] Oh yeah, I do. I do. I think there, I think that there absolutely is racism in these issues. I think that there’s prejudice in these issues. I think that there’s trauma in these issues. I think that there’s fear in these issues. I think that there’s various points of shame in the eyes of criminals. And I don’t know.

I mean, you know, it’s a tough thing when you’re policing people is you feel guilty when you’re doing some things. Sometimes you’re not going to go on scene and be emotionless to plan

Craig Graves: [00:53:44] and understand that. But how does this, how does the racism piece do you think fit in.

Chris Gazdik: [00:53:50] I think that we have prejudice and preconceived ideas about, you know, all sorts of ways. I, I do. I think that people, you know, likely have fear of differences in people. You know, if I’m a, if I’m a white person and I’m walking into an Indian reservation and I’m not really knowledgeable about that race, I’m going to be kind of freaked out.

Cause I’ve seen a lot of movies of people being chopped up. That’s a little bit of a silly example. But you, you have a whole level of life experiences that, that contribute to circumstances that you come across.

Craig Graves: [00:54:25] Yeah. Yes. I think some of those, some of the instances that I see it’s, it’s, you know, I do think there is racism there and others, I’m not so sure.

You know, I’m not so sure that that. White guy or Hispanic guy or an Asian guy would’ve gotten treated any differently than, than the African. Yeah.

Chris Gazdik: [00:54:43] And honestly created, you know, the only people that will know in any given instance

Craig Graves: [00:54:47] are those people.

Chris Gazdik: [00:54:48] God. Yeah. And that man or woman,

Craig Graves: [00:54:51] yeah, that’s it? Yeah. You know, there was an incident in Dallas, Texas in 2016 where the guy was, was held down.

Now this guy was a knee in the back, not on the neck. But the guy ended up dying and he was a white dude. Yeah. So, I mean, it does, it does happen both ways.

Chris Gazdik: [00:55:11] ah, it happens to white people all the time.

Craig Graves: [00:55:13] Yeah. There was a guy coming out of a, the place we’re knocking on a hotel room. I can’t remember if it was in Chicago guy comes out with a weapon and there there’s police officers on each side of the door and the one on the side facing the man’s back, shot him in the back and killed him.

He was, you know, he was a white guy. Right. So if he were a black guy, would that’d be a racist incident.

Chris Gazdik: [00:55:36] God. And that person would know

Craig Graves: [00:55:38] exactly, but I think we jumped to conclusions and say, Oh, it’s racism. And we’ve got how many people in the world or in the country, 323 million. So as we live together in this great melting pot, you know, different races are going to have altercations with each other, but not every one of those incidents is a race related issue,

Chris Gazdik: [00:55:57] but it is an issue.

And I think that’s, that’s part of what we need to realize.

Craig Graves: [00:56:02] Well, I think it probably always will be, but I mean, but just because if you or I get into an altercation when an African American guy doesn’t mean we’re racist, it just means there was an altercation

Chris Gazdik: [00:56:10] and nobody would that person in God will know.

Craig Graves: [00:56:13] But what I’m saying is people just, that’s always a conclusion that we jumped to.

Chris Gazdik: [00:56:17] Here’s a good point though, Craig, with that notion here, here, and here’s what scares me, honestly, about a lot of this. Only God. And the person inside themselves will know what scares me is when only God knows.

Right. Okay.

You follow up because I think that’s the case in a lot of ways about our mental health.

And I think we could probably put racism into the category of mental health. It’s a psychological, emotional set of feelings towards a particular race. Could we say that? Yeah, right.

Craig Graves: [00:56:49] Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gazdik: [00:56:50] If only God knows. And that situation, that scares me because that person doesn’t

Craig Graves: [00:56:56] right.

Chris Gazdik: [00:56:56] And I think that happens a lot.

Craig Graves: [00:56:57] That could be possible. You know, the guy down in Georgia with the two guys in the truck, approached him and ended up being an altercation and the young man was shot and killed.

Right.

A lot of racism. Right,

Chris Gazdik: [00:57:10] right.

Craig Graves: [00:57:10] Racism. Absolutely. But I don’t think you say every altercation that happens between different races is racism.

Chris Gazdik: [00:57:20] Yeah. Interested in number three.

Craig Graves: [00:57:23] Absolutely. I can’t wait to hear it.

Chris Gazdik: [00:57:26] Carol talked a lot about it, so I’m not going to talk a lot about it, but in our show, she was talking about her family members, having interactions with mobile crisis team units. We have these Craig across the country and I think they need to be tremendously beefed up mobile crisis team units are on the site, on the scene, doing what we were talking about.

What would you do differently, Chris, if you were in that scene or whatever, do we do that? Like we do that now. And it drives me nuts that people, I bet. I wonder if we took a poll, how many people even know that we have them?

Craig Graves: [00:57:55] I didn’t, I didn’t know the hell. What are they tell us, tell us more about them.

Seriously. I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it.

Chris Gazdik: [00:58:04] Well, I’m going to be very brief and short. I need a drink of water, or we’re getting done soon anyway. The, the mobile crisis units are, are, are, are groups of people from the mental health, group. We used to have them in mental health centers, they would get funding and whatnot, and they would, they would be contracted to operate.

you know what, I’ll tell you what, you know, what a, what a crisis hotline is, right? It’s essentially a crisis hotline that goes on scene.

How about that?

Okay. Right. They’re not embedded with police officers, but we often are on the same scenes with police officers. Yeah. I used to play a game to try to beat them there for sure.

You know, and I, and at times I would, but thank you Neil I appreciate that? But you know, at times I would. but, but, but I think they actually need to be embedded. I think that we can tremendously beef that up and, and go big on that. But we were talking about that with Carol. So we’ll leave that go very robust EAP usage, number four.

And that’s along the lines of mandatory and evolved therapy for every police officer. I think that the EAP usage needs to be in that’s employee assistance program. You know what they are right

Craig Graves: [00:59:10] now. Yeah. We did a show on that and guys, employee assistance programs, you might be able to get. Access to a mental health professional through your company.

If they have an EAP, a

Chris Gazdik: [00:59:21] lot of people want to love this one. Number five, build up DSS intervention with calls involving kids. You know, I think that that needs to be a part of the on-scene circumstances because contrary to a lot of people’s beliefs and fears. Department of social services or in other States child protective services, CPS there’s different names for them across our nation.

They’re not, they’re wanting to take kids away from the mamas and daddies Department of social services there. Yes. To protect children. But I think that we could have extra units and wings to embed with police as well. Anytime there’s a call going out, you know, that. Trained professionals that work with kids can be there too to change those scenes in a dramatic way.

Yeah. By the way, take custody when they need to. Cause sometimes they need to. The advocate for kids and interventions of all plethora of situations involving kids, murder events and trauma events and suicide situations, and sometimes police officers, what are they going to do with the kid that’s in the corner, crying and super, or even worse, a super silent, you know, when they’re taking their bodies out there.

I mean, you can’t facilitate all of this all at once. Quick 911 dispatch, DSS to x scene. So the kids can be dealt with just like we do an ambulance. Right. We can get ambulances to scene where there’s medical events pretty Degen quickly. How about we beef some things up or change some things around re equipping the police with extra services from DSS for kids

five or six, treat kids like kids again. Get policing out of the schools quite so much. I don’t know that we need even needed there and uniformed or not be honest with you at a minimum, having a specialized unmarked. Officer’s a resource officer, so to speak, you know, and, and then, and then when I talk about policies, you know, just as an example of some things that I think that we can really, re-examine a lot of police violence and victims of, of, of crime and whatnot are dealing with.

You know, teenagers and I’m sorry, Craig, when your kid turns 21, 22 years old, are they still a teenager?

Craig Graves: [01:01:41] No.

Chris Gazdik: [01:01:41] Are their brains stilly developed? No. Do they need to be treated like teenagers? Quite possibly

Craig Graves: [01:01:47] sometimes. Yeah.

Chris Gazdik: [01:01:50] Right. I wanna look at policy changes in these types of focus groups where clergy are coming together with mental health.

Government officials with finance years with police experts, with physical, you know, that group right there with that imaginary group that we talked about, they need to evaluate things like, you know what, finally, we got the country to agree across the nation federally that you’re 18 and years and older and treated like adult.

You know, people very recently as money as months ago are treated as adults. When they’re 16 years old. Don’t not agree with that. And furthermore, here’s an interesting idea, Craig, what do you think about maybe a young adult category that’s different altogether, teens and kids, middle young adults aged 17 to 24 are treated differently by the law.

Then we are 25 and up, right?

Craig Graves: [01:02:44] Yeah. That’s an interesting concept to

Chris Gazdik: [01:02:46] think it has some merit

Craig Graves: [01:02:48] potentially.

Chris Gazdik: [01:02:49] We’re absolutely criminalizing. In prison circumstances, sometimes little human beings that don’t even have a fully functioning brain.

Craig Graves: [01:02:57] Yeah. You know, you know, that’s, that’s true. And I do think that our, our justice system yeah.

Is more geared toward, Punishment than rehabilitation.

Chris Gazdik: [01:03:09] We don’t get rehabilitation in prisons and jails and systems and stuff. They’ve got stuff again. The public probably doesn’t know. I don’t know either, but they do have a lot of things. They have job programs in prisons. They’ve got federal tax breaks in place for people that are coming out of prisons.

They’ve got, you know, different, you know, AA meetings. Did you know there’s AA meetings in jails and prisons.

Craig Graves: [01:03:28] Yeah, right. Yeah.

Chris Gazdik: [01:03:29] Right. I mean, you know, there’s things that are there, but you know, I think that’s an interesting idea. Letter G and lastly, obviously a massive buildup on police trainings. I think that crisis clinicians need to have police trainings that you talked about Craig.

And I think that police trainings need to have the mental health training that I have in a combined body and combined specialized unit.

Craig Graves: [01:03:55] Yeah. I’m not disagreeing with that at all.

Chris Gazdik: [01:03:58] Right. Taxi in and get out of here. But I really want to maybe end on highlighting a little bit of the reality that we are in a difficult time in our nation.

People are stressed out people having a hard time. I don’t even think financial problems have started to hit Craig pandemic, freaking wildfires right there on top of it, the cherry. Right? Kidding me. There’s so many things that are going on right now. And, and I do believe in our country. I believe that we’ll be smart people as a society and get through this and be better off for all the pain that we’re going through.

Any ain’t going to change if it ain’t painful and I’m telling you it’s painful right now. That sounds fair.

Craig Graves: [01:04:42] Indeed, sir.

Chris Gazdik: [01:04:44] That sounds niave.

Craig Graves: [01:04:45] No, it’s, it’s definitely painful. We’ll we will get better. I mean, I know things have been bad in the past. We had a civil war. Right, right. But man, it sure seems like things are polarized right now.

You know, the government is not interested in working together. people are. what’s the right word, Hunter down in their belief systems and not willing to talk to anybody else and dogmatic. Yeah. They demonize people who disagree with them and you know, so it’s, it’s pretty bad, man. I, it’s going to be interesting to see how we come out of it if we do

Chris Gazdik: [01:05:17] well, you know, I know these shows are tough to do and tough to talk about.

I hope that I haven’t pitched anybody off. I hope I’ve pissed some people off. Listen, what I mean by that is, you know, I was at, I was at a church. A presentation one day, you know, and, and, and the pastor was, was talking there. He’s like list a and list B. And he list all these things about Christians in list a and list all these things about Christians in enlists B.

And they were like things all over the place and what he was doing. And by the end of the thing, he said, I hope I’ve pissed you off. If you’re a cat category B and I hope I’ve pissed you off a little bit. If you’re in category a right, because there’s some things that we don’t like dealing with. We don’t like talking about, we don’t like confronting and I want to fearlessly on this show.

You know, some of my views might be jacked up and some of them, I might make a good point every now and again. I want us to be dialoguing in a professional  and adequate way about how can we get to the other side of this? And I am hopefully not naive, hopefully a what’s the other word I used. I hope it’s hopeful.

Craig Graves: [01:06:29] Yeah. I hope it’s helpful too. And I think it’s good to talk about these things, man. It’s just, you know, it’s hard to talk about them because people label you for, for disagreeing with them. People label you for disagreeing with the mainstream, you know, Do you have different views on things? It’s a, it’s easy to get put into that cancel culture category.

So they’re definitely hard things to talk about, man. There, there definitely are. We should do a show on cancel culture and mental health.

Chris Gazdik: [01:06:55] Yeah. It’s a thing. That’s a thing. That’s a new, it’s a new, a new term that I’ve heard a lot nowadays. Alright, man. Let’s get out of here. You want to know where we’re going next?

I’m going to tell you where we’re going next. I don’t care if you want to know where we’re going next. I’m just kidding, man. We are going to go do episode one Oh one. It’s like get it college one Oh one. I really wanted to do episode a hundred. I really kind of screwed up. We’re going to do episode 11.

Reborn remain. Because, yeah, yeah, yeah. All about marriages and relationships. It’s easy for me to remember to refer my clients to episode one Oh one instead of episode 11, because we kind of know what we’re doing a little bit more now. So how about we dig into that next week? Cool. Looking forward to it.

Alright man, you guys have a safe time out there. I hope we’ve given you some things to think about. We support the men and women in blue. We also support many people throughout the world that are dealing with mental health and substance abuse. We really want to try it. To figure this thing out together, guys.

I hope you have a great week and we’ll see you on the next go round.

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