The Last Line of Defense: Why School Resource Officers Are Needed Now More Than Ever with Clyde Boatwright

Baltimore is on track for one of the city's deadliest years Baltimore is a cautionary tale of when anti-police rhetoric activist judges and Rogue prosecutors Collide the charge City currently has some of the highest murder rates in violent crime rates in any city in the country however this hasn't stopped the brave men and women at the Baltimore Police Department and a Baltimore city school police force from suiting up and showing up every day to serve their communities today we're joined by Clyde Boatwright a police Sergeant with the Baltimore city school police force its Union president and the president of the Maryland fraternal water police I am Patrick Yoes National president of Fraternal Order police this is the blue youth well Clyde thanks for joining us today and coming back we had you a year ago we talked about a lot of issues going on in Baltimore and uh but I want to take I want to talk a little bit different take a little different approach Your Role is working within the schools but before we do that how about telling our uh our listeners and our viewers a little bit about yourself I've been in law enforcement for 20 well this will be my 23rd year when I hit my anniversary I've spent the last 20 years with my current Department which is the Baltimore city school police force it's a department at our highest a few years ago we were at 143 police officers so we're a little lower than that now uh in my role I'm a sergeant that's assigned to external operations which is the uh my role as the uh Maryland state laws president but also the local Lodge president so um I handle exclusively all of the labor issues as it deals with um Baltimore city school police well cool and really what I want to do is I want to you know probably the best job I ever had my 36 years of law enforcement was the time was I served as a resource officer I truly loved it felt like I was doing some good but there's a lot of a lot of talk these days about whether we should have police in schools um and I think there's a lot of misconceptions of what our actual role is in schools and why it's necessary for to have it but but if we could just unpack it a little bit first it's hard to talk about the climate in a school without talking about the climate of a city yes and you're in the middle of Baltimore and uh really a school system a school is really nothing more than a microcosm of the community it's serving and you've got some record crime going on in in in Baltimore you know itself so you get uh you know we're coming off a year where we've got more law enforcement also shot across this country and violence towards Law Enforcement Officers but not only that crime is really uh on an increase in in Baltimore let's talk a little bit about just the atmosphere that's in Baltimore and into just the dangers the way we are as a city yeah you know so across the country we do see high levels of violence but it's a little bit different in Baltimore and and different in the fact that um you know we see over 700 non-fatal shootings uh and over 300 uh homicides each year uh and so when you combine the two you got over a thousand people that are permanently impacted uh and in some ways or their families their families impacted as well yeah and that was going to be the lead-in I was going with that you know you you've got if there's a parent if there's a student themselves or if it's a sibling of someone that was a victim of one of these crimes that we have um in some cases sometimes these issues that happen in the community do bleed over into schools and so you know as police officers we are charged with the responsibility of one as we know to be the barrier between all that's good in schools and and and all of the madness stuff that could be outside and so we deal directly as a school-based guy you would deal directly with some of the external forces that are happening outside in the community you know I've always uh you know when I was a resource officer I tell you I can't tell you how many times we had this great working relationship with the guys that uh that work Patrol and if there was an incident that happened in a community they would call me and I would have kids before in some cases before he even got off the bus some some cases we'd actually get them before they actually got on a bus knowing that the things that happen within the community potentially were powder kegs yes and you know again schools you know if it's going to happen in the community it's going to spill in spill over and it's going to disrupt the learning environment so you know there's a whole lot of uh you know ways that we can go and talk about why it's important to have law enforcement officers in schools but I can tell you just from what you you know what you identified I can't tell you how many times that I'm confident that we caused and we're able to call uh to have an impact on those incidents that happen within the community to make sure that the kids when they showed up at school didn't continue it uh it was that intervention bringing in school counselors and pulling everyone in and in some cases even the parents and trying to neutralize these things so that we could have a safe learning environment as opposed to the things that happen within the community and I can give you an example after example after example let's let's talk about the role of uh that that you know your uh that you have in your agency has in Baltimore in within the schools why it's so important for us to have law enforcement officers in the schools working where our kids are so we unique in in the city of Baltimore and the fact that we have a city police department that's comprised of you know officers that respond to 9-1-1 calls we have a sheriff's office that's responsible for handling our little Courthouse issues and then we have a school police department which is a total separate Department from each of the Sheriff's Office and the city police department and our primary focus is the 84 000 students in the city school system and 190 buildings that the school system owns so it's a it's a big city and so our role is to be the primary law enforcement officer as as it relates to issues that happen in schools but it actually goes a little bit further because we're able to partner with the sheriff's office we're able to partner with the city police and we have a lot of working relationships with information sharing and so that goes into your point of some of the things that happen in the community we get the information real time and one it's because of the way we communicate with our radio system the way we communicate with technology with you know group text messages the way we communicate with emails and things like that so information sharing amongst the department is really really key but that also helps both us to deal with issues that may come to the school building but it also helps with our local jurisdiction City police because if we have something that happens in school that could spill over into the neighborhood you know they have real-time information and they're able to deal with it um when it's off peak hours of the school day yeah so what's uh what's your largest School uh we have a school about 4 000 students which is smallest uh about 100. and these are high schools well I wanna I wanna make a I want to make a comparison of of maybe the argument that we shouldn't have law enforcement officers in schools there's a whole lot of reasons and we'll unpack them all we'll talk about all of the Dynamics of why it's beneficial to have them in schools but but I want to point something out I'm sure just you where I live and where you live is probably the same thing if you're going to have an event where you're going to gather a group of people together even as small as 100 people an event then you probably have ordinances that are in place from the city of Baltimore that requires you to have a security plan have your security in place have to have permits and all of these things yes because they recognize at these events even as small as a hundred has the potential that they need to they need to have safety added into it yes so so we take four thousand kids and put them into a school or even 100 kids in a school and somehow we don't consider the fact that we should have that same safety plan and that saying you know we're requiring we're requiring it on one end and we ignore it when it was some of our greatest assets that we have the value most valuable thing to us our our kids yes we're ignoring our our duty and responsibility to make sure that we have a safe learning environment yes I want to want to run with that a little bit yes yes so I find that you know when I first started my first assignment was uh it's a school that no longer exists but it was Southwestern High School um when you you did a query of uh the the different demographics of of that school and it it was a cross-section of everyone from Every uh different uh you know background one of the things that we found is that we were servicing students in one school from 18 different zip codes around the city and so our kids have to Traverse through uh you know different name neighborhoods that maybe you know are unfamiliar to them or maybe less friendly in some cases and so whether they are Walkers whether they're catching whether they catch public transportation you know school you know these young people have to you know come to school in the morning and get home in the evening safely but to you know to travel uh you know maybe five or six zip codes away just to get home that's a long time and so with that understanding that Dynamic we always stood in the gap between realizing that you know there are certain neighborhoods that Gather in certain places the main meeting place for every day is is uh is the cafeteria and so you were able to develop those relationships as a school-based officer with those young people and they will be able to give you information that may be useful to you later at a later date so I'll make an argument you're right there's a strong movement out there saying we shouldn't have law enforcement officers in schools and and I I try to write my you know having served in that position for a while and actually supervised a group of officers in in schools for for a couple of decades I try to wrap my head around that whole thought process and and I can't I keep coming back to one thing um there's such a an anti in our bias against Law Enforcement Officers across this country has really grown uh in you know in the last couple of years with a number of events regardless I I guess my question is is it's easy to demonize someone when you don't know them correct and that's what we find you know across the across the country you know you've got a bunch of people because of their own self-serving interest have really put it at the feet of law enforcement everything is wrong with society and and it's very much unfair because they're some 800 000 men and women who suit up and show up every day and make a difference and yet yet we'll point to a handful a small handful of incidents and say the entire entire system's broken and because of that we're all painted with that broad brush yes in reality that's not the case serving in the schools working building those relationships with kids uh allow us to to not only you know provide a safer safer learning environment but also build those relationships to recognize that uh you know those are people who would argue that you know Law Enforcement Officers shouldn't be in school maybe they're afraid that they might realize that we're not the uh the bad guys that we've been portrayed to be it's you know it's all about the image and what's your thoughts on that yeah so it's funny that um you know those relationships that you build with young people they last a lifetime absolutely um you know and I'll take for example uh during my career when I I was assigned to the high school that I graduated um from and I lived um in that neighborhood until I was 21 years old so I moved away became a police officer and then later gets assigned back to that that community and and I'll tell you you are more of a Community Service Officer than uh than than you know an enforcer um you know I told the story uh and I'll use a different name so I don't um impact anybody but um there was a lady by the name of Mrs Jones so when I was a kid my childhood nickname in the neighborhood was was chip um from you know watching uh you know I'm gonna start calling you chip yeah yeah and that's because I watched Eric Estrada and and uh on on the show as a kid so uh there was a time where a young lady called my mother and says uh Kim can you have chip call me because I have kids hooking school behind my house and so that's a Community Service Officer she didn't think of me as officer boat right she thought of me as chip because I was a member of that community and so those relationships again are long lasting and uh you know people that make the argument that young people shouldn't have police protection I always ask them what college did you go to and you know I went to University of Michigan well you know University of Michigan has a police department a University Police Department so why should they have less protection than what you had when you were going through school when you were matriculating you had those same protections so all young people deserve that they deserve a Fighting Chance exactly I you know I used to you know show up at events and and people come up to me and tell me they were resource officer and walk away and people with me saying who was that and my answer was always the same as well it was either so and so you know art was must been a good kid because I don't remember you know because you have a tendency of dealing with the kids that have the most need yes uh you know because it's so so I've developed relationships over the time that that still served me today and we're talking about quite some time ago when I served in that position so it's it's it's having a meaningful impact on on kids at an age when they really need it yes and and look I you know one thing that really and I think a lot of people can appreciate this and a lot of them really don't give a lot of time to think about it you take a kid who's living in an environment where it's just uh it's just not a good environment you know a broken family struggling not getting regular meals you know School the safety that's provided a school that that safe environment is really the only the only Safe Haven they have in their lives oh yeah yeah so it's yeah you know again it goes back to the argument why should we be at schools because schools are for learning yes and if we don't take all of these external things that you see in our communities every single day and stop them at the door or at the Gate of the school they're going to be in our schools yes and where is that safe haven and and it's funny um you know again the relationships you build I mean I can't tell you how many uh hairdos and haircuts and and proms uh and shoes and fingernails and things like that that we had to you know put together to buy uh young people who just didn't have it and that's because they developed these relationships with uh with staff and and they come to us with their problems I can't tell you how many times I've come back from lunch and and a note was under my door that uh Hey officer boat right there is going to be a fight at this location so it was it's those type of interactions where young people want to have that friendship they want to have that that building block in that relationship but it's the external forces that that decide that this is not a good idea and why and it's all for click bait uh and you know we just got to get away from that and let our young people thrive into learning in a safe environment um of foot learning so one of the other things that I I've always found interesting you know when I was a resource officer we had a and I'd like to talk about programs that you have within Baltimore and and how and we talk about the evolution so mine goes back a little ways it still exists today it's a very beneficial program and it was brought in to our school system at a time when we were seeing people get hurt uh yeah really the the the the violence in schools was escalating and we saw a pattern and recognized we need to do something for it and uh so so the discussion is this is a little bit of violence acceptable no and if you're in an environment of a school and you give you know you take the position a little violence is okay well where do you draw the line you know when things are black and white when you know if you cross this line there's consequences with it then it's very clear what you have but when you blur those lines well people inevitably are always going to find where the blur ends yes so so I you know I know what went into my time there we focus on the fact that uh that there was a zero tolerance towards violence within schools but it wasn't designed to throw kids within in a criminal justice system it was really designed to create a diversions for them to take conflict resolution and required to take conflict resolution of the classes and for us it turned out to be a very good program what type of programs do you have in uh in Baltimore you know a school district that that is really helping curb crime when we look at cities where you know there is no consequences for Crime so and it's funny we've taken a different approach we've used our traditional uh approach to handling things uh and and you know I'll break it down as such some organizations want you to have a community conferencing they want you to have a diversity I mean a diversion program and things like that in lieu of arrest and so we didn't always have to focus on making an arrest and it's not about the qual the quantity of arrest it's always about the quality of arrests and so when you have an intervention one of the ways that we we're intervening and this is a question so I'll I'll give you the question I would always ask if you have an officer that has 25 arrests in one month and you have an officer with zero arrests in one month who's more effective and so that that would be the question that I would ask the decision makers and they couldn't tell me who I was like because this guy's school is quiet or because this guy's taking a proactive approach and how do you quantify that if I if I was able to mediate a situation and that's what we did because we're all from the same Community we would sit the young people down and once we get to the bottom of why they were arguing or why why there was a disagreement uh more often than not we found that these young people had way more in common uh than they thought and they were actually they actually walk out becoming friends and why it's because we actually took the time and sat them in a room during the school day with an administrator and we talked it out um and that's just the way that school police officers do their job yeah I think in in age comes with uh with experience and experience comes with knowledge and and a little bit more better understanding and kids you know you know someone more advanced than others but in reality I don't think they you know for us uh you know they're my time there I've always you know kind of preached the fact that hey what we have here is a an incident or some trigger that has happened and then we have some action I'd have taken because of it and most most don't think that there's a whole process in between yes or you analyze you know cause and effect of each one of these they just go from here to here and that's how violence happens within schools uh and so I that's why I found a lot of our programs were very beneficial you're right look as a as a law enforcement officer I've always I've never really saw my job as going out there interesting people I saw it more of trying to correct behavior and arrest is just one Avenue uh in correcting that behavior what we're trying to do is we're trying to to set those parameters and and create safer environments yes and you're allowing uh you know the person you're arrestee or the suspect to get the resources that they need it may not always be a penalty you know for jail or prison it could be that they need other resources and the only way they get those resources if someone hears their problem uh so so one other thing that you know the reason there's a resource officer model the school resource officer model that uh in training specifically for that talks about the roles of law enforcement and there's really three strong sides to to being a resource officer you know one of them is that is you know is within those schools and providing the Safety and Security within the schools but there are two other aspects too one of them is Law related education if there's a better understanding of what police officers do and the roles that they play and why the rule of law exists uh then it's a greater respect when you truly understand it yes and the other one is is that a law enforcement officers like it or not you know although they may not have a degree to hang on a wall to show that they are counselors they certainly are reality based concerts based off of their experience of working and they bring another Dynamic to within the schools can you talk about some of the you know experiences that you've had of how those three elements play a key role in and maybe lowering the temperature within a community within a within a a school system or a school that's surrounded by kind of chaos outside of the way outside the gates yeah it's funny in in our city uh most of our schools are what we would call walk-up schools that they're located within neighborhoods and communities uh and so um it's very important uh in order to uh you know tone some of that some of the noise down is to clearly understand and clearly Define Your Role um and so when we get to the point of not engaging in non-police activities um and what do I mean by non-police activity you know if if Little Johnny's walking down the hallway and little Johnny doesn't want to take his hat off um we should our administrative staff should be able to deal with that and the teacher should be able to deal with that without getting the police involved exactly um and so um calling the police because of disruptive behavior is not a a police function and so I would condition the staff and that and uh and and everyone that worked in the building that I work with only call me if you would dial 9-1-1 yeah if you went down 9-1-1 don't get on the radio and call for me uh and so once they started to understand uh my role in the building as a school-based officer when I was there um then my calls for service became less and less and my interactions became my interactions switched the power down shifted from only negative interactions where I had more time to to do to positively impact our young people and that's where extracurricular activities you know I was able to coach multiple Sports and do some other activities and kids got to see me outside of the uniform and that's one of the roles that most of our police officers they serve as mentors they serve as coaches exactly sir they serve on these various boards I was a advisor for a class uh so you know we had to sponsor their prom and their class trips and things like that so they saw me more as a part of the school Community they're not occupying force and so some of these uh these advocacy groups that are totally against policemen in school they don't understand the interesting Dynamic that police officers have with young people because you know what we get information and we give information with helping our young people understanding the law and give them classes on what to do when you're stopped by police and what we're thinking as a police officer if I'm stopping you in the car I'm going to explain to you what I'm thinking when I see you move when I see you do this and and things like that so our young people are armed with the the best information that when they have a police encounter it does not have to always end or become negative you know there's and there's a movement across this country that you'll see a lot of prosecutors that are are trying to do social reform through uh not through the legislature but through their own decision or what crimes they're going to to prosecute and prosecute and it's creating a lot of problems it's creating problems that are that are far beyond have have little to do with law enforcement have everything to do with law enforcement you have creating you know food you know creating an atmosphere where businesses are leaving communities what is the quality of life of community what's the ability to have access to you know to services and to to stores and you know drug stores and all of these things but but in reality they're not happening that's correct what we're seeing across this country are businesses that are taking two approaches there one approach is is you know what it's just not profitable profitable anymore because there's no deterrence of the theft that is existing within my store and then there are now businesses are stepping up saying you know what I can't what the good conscience have employees in this environment it's not safe for them and what does that say about a community when when that's where we are when we have policies failed policies that are creating such you know that really deteriorating communities that very communities and to claim that these these uh these these adjustments that in the criminal justice system is is going to help is actually harming them even more but but I want to I want to take it a little bit further because this is the role of a resource officer our job is not to go in and arrest kids is to create a safe safe working environment and work within that environment to maintain a safe safe environment an arrest is not always the answer however sometimes arrest is the answer because some people just need to be taken out us most of crime you know committed in any Community is committed by a small percentage of people and they do it because they're they don't they don't they don't recognize the consequences associated with it in some cases so I'm gonna pose a question for you um and you you know you deal with it every day of dealing with kids and know what that you know how do you draw those parameters what good we're doing to a kid who who crosses the line who acts out who does a little violence a little bit and we and we don't hold them accountable and then it escalates and it escalates until a point now the kid's sitting in prison because of of some incident that uh that that my question is is where do we go wrong in trying to correct that behavior early on and save that kid before he ever gets to the point where he's too far going yeah so what we're doing is we're actually setting these young people up for failure um we're not exposing them to what the real world has for them uh immediate consequences for your actions uh and you just said it our role is not to make an arrest but sometimes an arrest is warranted but the arrest is to get you resources and services so you understand not to make that same uh that same type of mistake or behavior that behavior you know that that behavior is not acceptable so what we must do is is is give our my young people with the best information available and and how do we do that we show them uh that you know you you should not be limited uh you shouldn't limit yourself to only understanding the narrow mind of political figures who have a different agenda you have to understand that if you cross certain lines in certain areas that you will be held accountable immediately I mean I'll take Baltimore for an example for the last eight years we had a prosecutor who decided that certain crimes that were non-violent were not going to be tolerated and so people they she did that but didn't educate the public that it's still illegal and so the mindset is that I it's I can do what I want I can I can smoke marijuana I can steal I can do anything as long as I don't hurt someone and so having that approach um you know gave people a false sense of understanding of the law because when you try to correct correct that behavior they still they believe because of these prosecutors that make these uh social justice movements that they believe that they're right because the prosecutor won't prosecute the crime however if you go one mile up from in some locations to another jurisdiction you cross that City Line on that boundary that other prosecutor is definitely enforcing the law and so they find themselves in a trick bag where they walk on the other side of the the boundary into to another jurisdiction and now they're being held accountable and they have they don't have an understanding why like you said they found themselves with escalating behaviors they're sitting in a jail cell and it's only because they were not properly informed by those that uh that took up the flag of this social justice movement and they did it in the wrong way you cannot do it as a as a prosecutor that's not the role of a prosecutor to change law to decide what laws are not going to be prosecuted you know that job that job is is for a lawmaker if you want to become a delegate or Senator that's your role if you want to change the law but to become a prosecutor inside that you're not going to prosecute crimes one one uh important part of that is you're not giving the victim the problem proper services and who are these victims these are our businesses these are all our community members and they want corrective action taken when you're a victim of a crime you want the person to be held accountable yeah and and look I'm gonna I'm gonna again I'm gonna add to that that it's almost criminal to not hold people accountable yes because we are as you said setting them up a failure you know so when we look further down the line and see that the repeat offenders over and over and we see them escalate over time you know I had a I had a guest here uh um uh on on a podcast a while back and he said something pretty profound what he talked about a particular case that he worked Marvin Richardson with ATF you talked about a case where he worked where an individual who uh you know just summarize it who had contact with law enforcement but nothing was done to him and it escalated and escalated he continued and continuing to continue until it uh it resulted in the homicide of several people and in his his I guess his his thought was as you know what if they had intervened with this kid early on what would these people have died yes so you know it's almost criminal to somehow think that uh that we're not going to to hold people accountable and somehow that's beneficial to them because really it's it's it's it could be disastrous for them themselves what we we saw in in Baltimore and thankfully that prosecutor is no longer in office uh the residents um you know decided that they wanted to go in a different direction I mean 70 percent of the voters um you know voted for other candidates and um but that prosecutor would in the in the in favor of a high conviction rate would exchange uh guilty convictions for serious crimes for No Time little time or no time at all and so that really really set a bad precedent because people saw some uh of these people committing they saw these suspects committing these crimes they saw them get arrested for the crimes they saw them on TV with their face and then they see them back on the street with little to no accountability because that prosecutor cut a deal in favor of touting a high conviction rate because of a plea deal I want to shift gears a little bit and there's a challenge that we have in law enforcement across the board and that is is that we we see Law Enforcement Officers because of the environment you know law enforcement office and not anyone anyone I don't care what your profession is and okay who you are uh when it comes down to what your job is you could you could you could be a printer you can be a painter you can be whatever uh there's two things that that every person I think wants and they want to know is is what they doing is important and they're appreciated for what they do so the problem we have in law enforcement and just like the attack of whether we should have law enforcement offices in schools it has created an environment where people are leaving our profession rate we've never ever seen before because they just don't feel appreciated they don't feel what they're doing is important uh because because of these policies that exist in many cases by Rogue prosecutors who somehow want to who want to adjust the uh you know social injustice not looking at the damage they've done within their own community at the same time we have uh we don't have people coming in taking this job because they've demonized us so bad yeah so what's the impact you're having on your agency what's the impact you're having is you know in Maryland as a state president because I see that as as you know an existential threat to this profession that is probably going to last a decade if not even a generation yes yeah so you you're absolutely correct um and and the fact that we are seeing High turnover rates um what we have to focus on with recruitment is also the retention piece a lot of times we throw a lot of incentives for people to come to take the job I agree but those that are already here we limit uh the the resources and the benefits that we give them they shouldn't be recruiting retention it should be retention and then recruiting and recruiting right uh and so one of the things that we're doing like in Maryland we we had a bill drafted last year uh in the Senate uh it was Senate Bill 949 and we introduced in our legislature that just started is an educational incentive and it's the the police officer's equivalent of the GI bill so if you want to go back to school we incentivize you going back to school you can get an educational uh credit uh for going to school pay for going or you can go attend one of the state-run institutions for free and if you do not want to use that benefit you could pass it to a dependent child so that is a incentive that we're trying to do that for people that are already in the profession and so we all you know feel that education is the key a better educated cop makes better decisions and so we're trying to make sure that we do everything we can to give them the tools and resources so when we identifying what's in the recruitment piece we just need to make sure that we're focusing both on Recruitment and Retention because what happens is we see too many times people come and do this job for a few years and then they say you know what I can go and uh make money being a YouTuber you know doing something else Tick Tock you know and so we we got to keep uh good people uh who actually care about our communities we got to keep them in this profession and the only way to do that is find creative ways and creative incentives to attract them to stay absolutely well Clyde I appreciate uh I appreciate all you do as a state president and some challenging times in your state uh representing your members I appreciate what you do in your your own Union uh but I also appreciate the person you are and the job that uh that you and your fellow officers do in protecting the schools in in Baltimore thank you if uh as in final words uh you'd like to share yeah I I'll say this uh you know police officers that uh work in a school environment um are a unique breed and for everyone it's not for everyone it's an acquired taste it's almost like drinking a Guinness it's an acquired taste it's a good good comparison so so I'll just say hats off to all of the folks that serve as resource officers and uh because we see you we want you to know that you are not forgotten uh and you know that is a unique job and you know just continue to keep up the fight because ultimately a resource officer is the bridge between our young people and the law enforcement community and you be careful on what you do as a resource officer because somebody could be watching I'm excited to see one of my students that was a athlete for me never came to me and talked about being a police officer but you know he recently you know shared that it was because of him watching me from afar he decided to join his profession so so I have a long list I have a coaching tree now I see one Lieutenant a couple sergeants and guys that have been promoted in in various police departments that you know came through that coaching tree and and to a man each one of them have decided that you know it was that influence and that positive interaction that they maybe not shared with everyone that influence and impacted their decision to join this this profession you know I I would give an example of that I know you and I I'll tell you this story before but it kind of shocked me we had an event uh here in Washington and it was uh someone at the uh at Quantico base who who needed a letter he went needed some permission to attend an event we had and so you know what I don't I'm not it was a you know I I'm not in a position to be able to send a letter and tell this person it's okay to go to this this event that was you know hosted by a public official uh but what I can do is I if you give me the supervisor's name I'll send him email and explain what it was because it was an officer who was gone and he wanted to bring his son who was stationed in in uh in Quantico and uh I didn't pay attention you know I just I got the email and I responded back to it and uh you know the the the kids Sergeant over at Quantico said hey you know absolutely sounds like a great event I'll give him uh you know clearance to go to it you may not recognize me but you know I was uh I was one of your uh one of your um explorers uh in your agency and you know I'll look at the the things that that was done and experiences I got from the people work with them during that time it put me where I am today no so you just never know you never know the impact you have on people that's correct and uh you know just uh just keep up the great work and we appreciate all you do yes sir yes sir and to our viewers uh and and our our listeners thank you for joining the blue view podcast where where we talk about the issues are so vitally important to the men and women of law enforcement who suit up and show up every day in communities across this country and make a difference thank you