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Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
2024: Ranked #1 Law Podcast
Host: Tyler Owen and Clint McNear discussing topics, issues, and stories within the law enforcement community. TMPA is the voice of Texas Law Enforcement, focused on protecting those who serve. Since 1950, we have been defending the rights and interests of Texas Peace Officers by providing the best legal assistance in the country, effective lobbying at state and local levels, affordable training, and exemplary member support. As the largest law enforcement association in Texas, TMPA is proud to represent 33,000 local, county and state law enforcement officers.
Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
#069-"CloudGavel"
Get ready to delve into the intersection of law enforcement and technology with special guest Casey Roussel of CloudGavel. This episode takes you on a compelling journey from Casey’s beginnings as a stockbroker to his innovative impact on securing warrants for officers in the field.
Explore how technology is reshaping law enforcement. Video conferencing is revolutionizing judicial efficiency, reducing the need for physical prisoner transport, and optimizing jail staff resources. We tackle judges' initial resistance to tech adoption and their gradual shift towards embracing new tools.
This episode isn't just about the mechanics; it's about the human element. We discuss the influence of the Michael Morton Act on evidence submission, the evolving public trust amid body cameras and media scrutiny, and the creative adaptations officers make to uphold justice. Whether you're a seasoned professional or a curious listener, this episode offers a deep dive into the evolving landscape of law enforcement, technology, and the legal system.
Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies - The Beltway BriefingListen for of-the-moment insider insights, framed by the rapidly changing social and...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
So, without us, whoever's going to write the warrant gets back in their car, drives back to the office, gets there, types it all out, wait for the judge, get it signed, drive back to the office to make copies of it, make copies and then head out back to the scene with it. With CloudGabble, the officer can just walk to their unit.
Speaker 2:Welcome back. Viewers, watchers, listeners. I'm your host, tyler owen, and I've got a co-host today.
Speaker 3:Uh, this will be your third time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so about third time. Yeah, clint had to run down to, uh, galveston. Uh, if you don't know, clint mcnear, the other co-host for the blue grip podcast, is also no, clint McNair, the other co-host for the Blue Grip podcast, is also Texas FOP state secretary. So he had to run down to Galveston and perform what they call the oath of office. Galveston Municipal Police Association is now becoming a state FOP lodge, and so he had to go in there and perform his duties with Texas FOP.
Speaker 3:So I figured, now I've got to fill his shoes.
Speaker 2:I figured what better way to bring in the man, the myth, the legend that walks the hallways of our state capitol John Wilkerson.
Speaker 3:J-W. J-w. Welcome back, man. Hey man I appreciate you having me man.
Speaker 2:I've been doing great. You know, I was joking around with somebody the other day. They were asking what the hell lobbyists do during the offseason, and so I did not throw you under the bus. They kind of alluded to the fact that it was nothing but golf and cards and play, and so you guys actually stay pretty busy.
Speaker 3:I'm not a golfer. I'll tell you that.
Speaker 2:I'm not either.
Speaker 3:I develop Tourette's every time I try to play golf, yeah. So, you know, if I can get some free time, I love fishing and I've actually been able to do a lot of that lately. Thanks, tony Reich, by lately. Uh, thanks, tony reich, by the way. Yep, uh, but uh, yeah, I mean, even during the off time, we got a lot of work that we're doing. Uh, you know, looking at potential bills.
Speaker 3:You know some members are talking to us all throughout the year. You know some message that we put out all the time is if you have an idea for legislative, uh, fix, you know, bounce it over to us, and so now's the time to start doing that. Yeah, now's the time to start doing that. Um, you know, we, we got to really it, really research it, because you get a lot of ideas that they sound good, because they'll fix that issue right there for that officer in their area, but it may cause a cascading effect in a different area of the state, because we all know that and it kind of goes into what we're going to be talking about here today. Yeah, we know that you may have a judge over here and I'll give you a great example Back when I used to do DWIs all the time.
Speaker 3:You had the DIC 23,. And then there was subsection A that says contained in my offense reports, and you put your offense report number in there total number of pages. Have another officer sign it as a firming oath. We had a judge one time that even though you put that, if you didn't check the box that says that I am certified to administer the SFSTs and HGN, that judge would automatically rule in favor of the defendant on the ALR hearing. So you know, when you have things that are bouncing back and forth like that, you know different mentalities in different parts of the state. You really got to do a lot of due diligence to make sure that any legislative idea that works here, make sure that's not going to create some other issue over here.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think it's a good point that why you came on today, because who we have on today is Casey, and I was going to screw your last name up anyway.
Speaker 1:So Rousseau R.
Speaker 2:Russo. He is with the company that is called cloud gavel and we're going to talk about, uh, you know, different, different accesses to different search warrants, arrest warrants. So, man, thank you for coming on. Uh, you are from. We have a field rep, named late in an area that is from your neck of the woods. That is a diehard LSU fan and so welcome aboard man.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, man. It's a pleasure to be here. I love what you guys do.
Speaker 2:I see you sporting the LSU colors today. I'm sure that was by accident, no design, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm a greenie. I went to Tulane, but we always support. Yeah, we've got to support our state schools.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so talk about. We like to kind of start the podcast off of where did you grow up, how did you get involved with what you do now, and kind of just tell us more about you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate it. We grew up in South Louisiana, stayed there, had the privilege of going to Tulane, played some football there. What part of South Louisiana? A little bit of town in St James Parish, oh yeah, yeah. So it's right in the middle of Baton Rouge and New Orleans along the interstate. So grew up there, went to high school not far from there, then owned a two-lane and got out, loved technology, started as a stockbroker and did all of that stuff and just my love was for technology. So I kind of bridged from that into starting tech stuff, software stuff, and one thing led to another, and all these years later, this is where we are.
Speaker 2:Did you have anybody in law enforcement or related to law enforcement that you kind of leaned on a little bit or just have an interest in it?
Speaker 1:No, I think what kind of stirred the interest was a very good. Dear friend of ours was a sheriff locally where we grew up and we started with video conferencing between the judges and the jails to try to eliminate the need of transporting prisoners and all the chaos that goes with that. So that's kind of how we started trying to solve that need. And not long after that uh kind of when video conferencing took off and all the big boys the microsoft and adobe's got into it, we were like all right, we need to pivot and do something different.
Speaker 2:And so for those, those are not our non-law enforcement listeners. We do actually have some non-law enforcement listeners, the. You think about the logistics. You know I'll just throw it out there Dallas County, harris County, the very large Metro areas here in Texas you know they have typically the magistrates that are right there inside the jails, and so what that looks like is it's a very large room. You bring in, you know, all of your defendants that have been arrested within the last couple of hours. They get magistrated and then their bonds are set.
Speaker 2:In some situations, such as several counties where I was in East Texas and even some here in Central Texas, is that those magistrates are not 24 hours a day and so these defendants have to sit in jail and wait for these you know magistrates to come in, and in some defendants have to sit in jail and wait for these you know magistrates to come in, and in some cases they have to transport, said you know inmates to where those magistrates are located inside a courtroom. And so if you can imagine, you know, with law enforcement being as the, I guess the manpower crunch is what we have having that ability to go digital and have that ability to have it on, you know, on a TV man it cut down and it was a huge resource for us, our jail staff, and our jail staff is always kind of somewhat forgotten about in law enforcement. So what a huge asset for them, yep.
Speaker 1:And that's kind of how we bridged into. The electronic warrants side was where, okay, if we can eliminate the need for prisoners to have to travel to court, can we eliminate the need for officers to have to travel and find judges to do their job? And that's what led to warrants and kind of started what we created.
Speaker 2:Now I will ask you there has been some challenging judges that I dealt with in East Texas. Probably the most arrogant one that I ever dealt with was a county judge there in the local county that I worked at Not real personable and very, very, very hard to get along with. Was it hard to get judges on board with this program? I would think not, because it's a convenience to them.
Speaker 1:When we started it was back in 2007. Several times we met with judges and they would flip their computer screen around and Solitaire was the only icon on the screen. That judges and they would flip their computer screen around and solitaire was the only icon on the screen. That's all they would do. Everything else was paper and uh, you know if I can't tell you how many times we heard the excuse hey, come back with. The next judge comes in. Thankfully, today, all the new judges that are coming in, or younger, they do everything from a cell phone. So now it's kind of reverse, where we'll deal with new judges and the thought of having to sign something with an ink pen is absurd to them. Like they want to know why can I not do everything on my phone? So it's, it's really changed as to that. Technology has grown. So judges are very much now in favor of modernizing at least the simple things have you run into any any issue with?
Speaker 3:you know, maybe a judge in this area, like something specific to them, because they and tyler mentioned to you. Uh, you know, before I came over to the to membership services side, or field services side rather, um, I was managing our leaders program and one of the things that we found is is like our blood search warrant on that program. Uh, you know you'd West Texas county, that, okay, the county attorney looks at it and they're like, oh yeah, that looks good. But then you go to a different county and they say, oh no, we want this wording in there or that wording. Did you run into any of that with maybe some of the wording?
Speaker 1:We did. There's some variation. So we kind of took the philosophy as a company is that we're not here to tell you how to do your job. We're going to give you the platform to do your job. So if you have one county that wants things worded a different way, look in a different way, that's fine. You tell us how you want the output to look, we'll make it. Look, just to keep you happy and do your job. So we've really tried extremely hard not to force things on people and say like it's, it's not out of the box, this is, you got to do everything the way everyone else is doing. You know, through the 18 states we're in, we've got some major variances, just like we've got some huge similarities.
Speaker 3:So um judge wants to do something different, they're more than happy to do it you know, in texas we have 254 counties and sometimes there's 254 different ways of doing things and interpretations, and interpretations. And then and then, on top of that, every law book that you get in texas or most all law books that you get they have some blank pages in the back. You know what those are for, right they write their own rules, write their own laws oh my god, yeah, so it's.
Speaker 1:We face that, um, and the problem becomes firsthand, especially when you're dealing with the state agencies, the state troopers and stuff that have to go to every one of these counties. So we've designed and built a system to where, all right, which county are you going to? And based on what county they choose, everything will format and fit for that county. So troopers are not trying to figure out oh, I wonder what just this judge wants or what this attorney wants. The system will do all the work for them. All they have to do is just put in the facts and the reason of what they're trying to do. So we really eliminated one, the human error and the mistakes and things that can be. Get these warrants thrown out just because of you know what different judges and state attorneys want to see in these documents.
Speaker 2:The latest, the last agency that I came from, the computer system database that we had was Odyssey and I'm trying to think CIS, I think was the one I had at the police department. My point is this is that every single police department or agency across Texas has different platforms of what they keep their databases in. Does your product or your system, does it also sync with a lot of the law enforcement databases and how does that work and how does it look like?
Speaker 1:So the short answer is yes. So we're fully web-based, fully in the cloud AWS, govcloud we handle all the security and stuff for it. But we have what's called an open API. So all of the data inside of it belongs to the agency. It's not our data. We're the custodians of it. So we give them hey to go to your RMS vendor, your CAD vendor, whoever it is if it's the court side, the CMS, and say all right, here's the API to pull all of the data. You can do whatever you want with it, pull it into your system. It's totally up to you. It's your day to pull it. Or they can keep our system as the quote unquote repository of it and then continue things in our system.
Speaker 1:So getting the warrant signed is just the first piece, you know. The next piece is servicing the warrant. How are you going to go and actually execute it and track it? And if what? If the individual is in a different county than you, you have to get the warrant there for them to possibly execute it for you. So all of that is involved.
Speaker 1:And then the third layer is yeah, I may know that we have outstanding warrant for somebody, or even a bench warrant, and it may be an NCIC, depending on if it meets that threshold. But if I'm looking for a guy and he stopped four counties over, chances are that that patrol officer has no clue that there's a warrant out for me if it's not an NCIC on it. So the next layer is okay. How do we share all of that data? How do we get everything that's in the system available in the hands of the officers when they need it most, and normally that's on a routine traffic stop? How can we get as much information in that officer's hands before he even steps out of the car? That's the ultimate goal there, but again, you need participation to accomplish a lot of that.
Speaker 2:So what you're saying? We are located right now in Travis, you're in Bells, that's a neighboring county, so theoretically, that if we're just to the north of us, what is Waco?
Speaker 3:Bell is not neighboring, by the way. There's Wilco between us, is there really? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Okay, I thought a little sliver of I'm new to the area, so don't give me too much shit. Okay, I don't know you, east Texas guys Okay. All right. So let's just say hypothetically Might as well be from.
Speaker 2:Louisiana. Bill, you're right, I probably should. So if, hypothetically, if Travis and Bell County since they don't neighbor, if they both on the program and both their systems are synced, then I could share. I could be on the side of the road and I, being in bell county and the suspect was from travis, if the document it's originated from travis county and travis county granted permission for the for the documents to be shared, I theoretically could look at all the documents submitted to include possibly probable cause, affidavits for search warrants. I could basically look up all the information I wanted to if they chose to share that information with other agencies.
Speaker 1:Yes. So a perfect example would be if I'm filling out an arrest warrant on somebody, okay, I may know an address, multiple addresses, I may know multiple vehicles that's associated with this individual. That may not be pertinent to the actual arrest warrant, but they're linked to this individual that's in it. So again, I can have that warrant in this individual. Say, it was issued in Travis County, he's rolled into New Orleans, he stopped in Beaumont or he stopped in Baton Rouge. When that officer runs that license plate in our system we'll detect hey, there's an arrest warrant out for this guy that's associated with this vehicle. It might not be the guy driving, but at least that officer is going to know. I'm going to take extra caution before I walk up to this car because there's a warrant that's associated with this car. It doesn't mean that this is the individual driving. So we're just trying to give the officer more pieces to the puzzle. So when the officer's on the side of the road, he just again has access to data that normally he wouldn't have.
Speaker 2:But let's even take it a step further. Let's say that hypothetically, let's set egos aside, because that's typically what happens with administrations and especially with counties and stuff. Let's say that everybody's on this shareable platform. The cool thing about y'all's system is let's say that they do stop John Wilkerson driving a black Ford F-150, and all that's contained. And let's say it has to do with an aggravated robbery. Let's say it has to do with an aggravated sexual assault. It's a very complex investigation and some of that detail is inside the arrest warrant. Whatever the arresting agency that they find on the arrest warrant could assist them because they can see it, john Wilkerson was wearing a blue blazer at the time of the offense, had a firearm, has a cell phone, the cell phone bubble and how this is contained in there. That patrol officer, if he has the mindset of investigative mindset, he technically could build the case even further and build that case bigger, knowing what he knows on the screen, based off the arrest warrant and potential previous search warrants executed.
Speaker 1:Exactly Right now. It's a huge mind shift and thought process that's changing right now because, as you remember, it used to be all about the little black notebook. That's where the majority of the data that officers knew and that's where it was contained in the head of the individual officer, in some notebook, somewhere in some desk drawer that no one knew about. Then it got to okay, we're all going to RMS systems. Everything is going to be inside of our local RMS system. Well, that's great. Number one you have to know what you're looking for. Number two even the county next door to you who may have the same vendor, y'all two systems aren't talking to each other, so it doesn't help anybody out. So that's where we've really tried to embrace to all right. We're going to create a system that allows the officers to decide what they think is important or may not be important, put it in the system and now that can be shared through everybody within the system on it.
Speaker 1:Now, does it mean sometimes an officer may have to do some double work? I got to put some stuff in my mobile CAD, I got to put some stuff in my RMS and now I got to put some stuff in Cloud Gavel. Yes, and we can try to fix some of that with integrations. But we always argue at least the point I always make is that is that double entry worth an officer's life?
Speaker 1:How many times we see an officer shot or killed and someone says well, I knew that guy was bad. Well, great, you knew, but that officer didn't know. So it's like okay, can we change our mindset and start putting some of this data somewhere where we can now share it and get it in the hands of officers, not only so they're more protected, but officers can make the right decision in real time, instead of just showing up and saying I've got no idea what's going on. I've got to treat everybody as a suspect until I figure out what's going on. So that's kind of a double way we're approaching this. How receptive are some of these RMS companies being with the integrations?
Speaker 3:Depends. Some of them are really good with it.
Speaker 1:I mean they have to see, they have to see you as as a competitor almost Some. We're not an RMS and and we have no desire to be one, so most of what we kind of position ourselves as we're an integrator, we have what we do, the problems we solve, but we want to be a centralized place where data can exchange, because even in populous states you may have one RMS vendor who's the leader, may only have 10% of the state because there's so many RMS vendors. Well, in our case, we almost have every agency in the state sometimes or statewide contracts, so everyone's using us. So it's really easy for someone like us to come and say, look, let us just integrate and share the data and move it around. You do what you do, we'll do what we do, but we can get the information in the hands of the officers and we really don't care what RMS you're using, we'll talk to all of them.
Speaker 2:Are you all seeing with leaders? Do you remember what program leaders used, or was it just simply like a?
Speaker 3:So leaders was a standalone, it was a. Now it's gone through a lot of changes since I left, cause I've been gone from there for seven years now or so, uh, and, and Brian Grubbs is running it now. He's done some, some amazing work with that system.
Speaker 3:Uh, but the, you know, at the time it was a system that was built. We paid the programmers to build that system, uh, and then we would have, you know, we had a small handful of of uh, rms systems work with us to build the patches, but the problem is most of them wanted to charge, you know, 20, 30, 40 and and more, thousand upwards, you know to, to do this integration system. In fact, bell county, we still use leaders and it got to the point where you're talking about double work, right, so I stopped somebody. Uh, the great thing about that leaders program is it's you know, it's it's web-based. So most of the time I I haven't I've got 90% of my report done before the record gets on scene.
Speaker 2:They got internet at Bill Kenney.
Speaker 3:They do. We have cell towers too.
Speaker 2:Holy shit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I have most of it done. And then when I get back to the office, all I do is go into our RMS system and I'm not going to name it because I don't want to get TMPA sued after this podcast because I hate that damn RMS system. After this podcast, because I hate that damn RMS system, I want to find who created it and take them to a ball game. But anyways, so you know, we get back and basically I go into our system because we have a great administration that says you know what, just go into our RMS, put suspect information, vehicle information, and then on the narrative, put sea leaders report, and it works out great that way. And that's because that particular RMS was another one of those that viewed the leaders program as a competition almost.
Speaker 3:And you know one particular program that we had communicated with. We brought them in talk to him about what we had. I said, hey, a lot of agencies are using you guys, uh, and and the system, I've used it years before and it was a good system, uh. But they kind of ghosted us and we told him hey, here's what we would like to do. They ghosted us and then about five months later they have their own DWI reporting. You know, enter it once and it goes in all the forms kind of thing.
Speaker 1:So I bet that's got to be a challenge for you as well of having these meetings and them seeing your product it is, and so every one of our clients that whenever they go out for a new RMS RFP, integrating with us is a mandatory requirement of doing it. So and again, most of the time with us it's just pulling data or sending status updates, so it's really straightforward. And again, they know that we're not going to show up and try to compete against them with it. So you have that challenge, but also a lot of these smaller agencies. They don't have the ability to buy million-dollar RMS systems. They're stuck with smaller ones that are call it not as good resources to deal with on it. So there's always a challenge, but it's a challenge that we're up for and we're not going to give up and quit just because something's difficult.
Speaker 3:There's still agencies out there to this day, that big chief tablet that's their report, still paper.
Speaker 2:I started on a Word document, green screen, and we've transitioned.
Speaker 3:It wasn't long ago I walked into a sheriff's office and the sheriff had an old typewriter typing out his offense report.
Speaker 2:Well, so let's just say, hypothetically, patrol officer shows up for domestic disturbance, knocks on the door. Of course the PC side of this you're not going to, that doesn't matter to you. But they show up, they kick the door because they feel like they need to go, you know, help a victim inside and they find they see five kilos of cocaine. Obviously they need to secure the scene and get a search warrant. Five kilos of cocaine Obviously they need to secure the scene and get a search warrant. Depending on how the agency works, they would essentially use y'all's product, type out the affidavit for the search warrant, hit a button and then kind of explain the process after that.
Speaker 1:So without us. They have to secure the scene, which means they have to bring in multiple units and officers to show up and secure the scene. While whoever's going to secure the scene which means they have to bring in multiple units and officers to show up and secure the scene while whoever's going to write the warrant gets back in their car, drives back to the office, gets there, types it all out, prints it, gets back in the car, drives to the judge, wherever the judge he or she may be, wait for the judge, get it signed, drive back to the office to make copies of it, make copies and then head out back to the scene with it. With CloudGabble, the officer can just walk to their unit, sit there on their MDT in their car, type it all out, fill it all out, route it to the judge.
Speaker 1:If it's anything like here in Texas, if it's an arrest warrant, accompanying with it, we've got all the built-in video conferencing for the judge to, hey, raise your right hand and swear them in. All through the technology. If it's a search warrant, they can swear them in via the phone here in Texas and then officer gets it back. It's signed electronically. They can go and do what they need to do. Everything is there. Once they're done, they go back to their car and they can fill out the entire return, submit the return back to the court of everything we just seized inside of the house. All done. Electronic Officer never had to leave the scene for the whole process.
Speaker 2:Who's responsible for returning it to the court?
Speaker 1:The system will automatically route it to the proper path it goes for that county. So in some cases it goes to the judge and the judge will actually sign it. In some counties the judge just says, look, I want to know it was submitted within the legal time frame. It has to be submitted. I don't care about signing it, just publish it back to the court. So it kind of depends on where you're at and what process the court has. We accommodate both and it gets published right back to the court.
Speaker 2:Does it receive a number to like the district clerk's office? And I mean, how does that all work?
Speaker 1:So that's another thing. In Texas, where it varies tremendously, some may have a JP sign in the warrant, right? Yeah, so here in Travis County, which is not a good, not a good thing to do, yeah, that's a whole other debate. So, like here in Travis, each court has their own numbering system and depending on what type of document it is, if it's felony misdemeanor, if it's going to municipal court or district court with it, so they'll call or get the right numbers in the system for whatever type warrant it is, they can either do that beforehand In some cases the warrant number is put on after the fact with it when it gets to the clerk office. So we really have the flexibility on our side to design it and set it up and configure it exactly how the county wants. So you know, in Florida it's completely different than what it is in Texas. So we have to have the flexibility of routing those documents accordingly. Wow.
Speaker 3:Pretty interesting. Wow, Pretty interesting. So it sounds like it's a lot more than just warrants With the municipal court system. I think we were talking a little bit about that. So the documents that municipal courts need for them to proceed with citations, stuff like that, does it have all those legal forms on it as well?
Speaker 1:So there's no limitation on what forms we can put. So any document, any, any form that you want, we're getting ready to start with all the protective orders. So if um deputy shows up on a scene and there's a battered woman and they need a protective order, the deputy can sit there with the individual and get it done and submit it to the court right away and have that signed um. Well, I've got good news on that.
Speaker 3:by the way, one good thing that came out of this last legislative session lawmakers told OCA Office of Court Administration that they have to develop a standardized protective order application and a standardized protective order, and once they do that and it's already out there every peace officer has to use that same application and every judge has to use that same application and every judge has to use that same protective order. So that should that should alleviate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we've heard about that and had some really good meetings with the state courts, um on that and we've been prepping for it. But uh, yeah, the standardization of the forms is is a big one and then the process is. More you can standardize especially for the state guys that run all over the place the better and more efficient the whole process works.
Speaker 3:Yep, yeah, I was shocked. Somebody was telling me I think it was the great study of the state of Missouri. Oh God, I think somebody was telling me that there, in that state, it doesn't matter where you are in the state. If you arrest somebody for DWI, all the paperwork is the same. The report is the same. Like they have everything standardized. It's not. You know, in Texas the only thing we have standardized is DIC forms, Right, and then Well, there's more, but, yes, theoretically statewide as far as DPS.
Speaker 3:Well, and it doesn't matter. Like what I was hearing about that other state and I want to say it was Missouri. I mean Missouri I keep saying that now and I don't mean to but from what I heard was is it doesn't matter if you're a two-man agency in that state or the state agency. All the DWI, the reports are the same, format's the same, everything. And I thought you know a lot of officers, a lot of officers have have reached out to me and said, hey, why don't we do something like that? And I have to explain to them well, because you have all these, you know rms companies out there and they want their slice of the pie. They want uh, you know they want to make their money off of their product, and so they will. They will pay their lobbyists to get that. Any, if any, bills fall on that. They will pay them to get that killed quick yeah and the duis.
Speaker 1:We normally see both extremes. Extremes where either they want it as vague as possible to let the officer, in their own words, describe what's taking place, or they go all the way to no, we want to go check boxes to every the hgn walk and turn all of that stuff where it leaves zero room for vagueness or interpretation, because then it's easier for the DAs to get in court and prosecute it on it. So it's, you see the varies. The majority of them are leading more towards.
Speaker 2:Let's again walk the officers through step-by-step with most detail as possible, so when it gets to court we have a solid case and not trying to get an attorney know, twisted, in their own words, you mentioned something earlier about the, the notepads and uh, just just to the north of us, if I'm not mistaken, the michael morton act uh came out of williamson county from some mistakes that were made from the district attorney's office, if I'm not mistaken, yep. Uh, for the patrol officer listening to this podcast, watching this podcast to the new boot, new trainee. If you're not familiar with that, read up on it. I know that anybody that's in CID absolutely should know and will know what I'm referring to. But if you're not practicing attaching your notes, scanning them as a PDF and attaching those documents that you're writing on scene, just for a simple class A assault, class B assault, I would start that now. And the reason why is because it is imperative that all of your notes get submitted because of that Michael Morton ad.
Speaker 2:Let me give you another example. Let's say that me and JW are brothers and I'm going to sack him, or that Casey here is going to sack us up for assault family violence and I was the aggressor and he's seen on body cam writing the note, writing notes down on a piece of paper and that note's not in evidence or it's not submitted with the offense report. That could be an issue later on at the criminal trial. And so when you said that earlier when you were scanning those documents in, it just needs to be. We need to start doing a better job on our end to not raise that doubt Everything these days.
Speaker 2:Back when I started, we didn't have body cameras, we had in-cars, but for the most part the general public believed us because we didn't have a lot of cop shows in the first 48. And so now people just believe what they see on camera and they think that if it's not inside evidence that we just restored it because we were trying to be deceitful, and that's not the case all the time. We just restored it because we were trying to be deceitful, and that's not the case all the time. So do yourself a favor.
Speaker 3:I want to take that a step further. So a lot of prosecutors started putting that word out to their officers, telling them you know, hey, if you, if you make notes, make sure you make a copy of that. And you know, cops, we can be some creative critters sometimes. And so we started seeing some of those that didn't want to take the time to make the copy. So what they did is they wrote it on their Palm Pilot, any note that they had, and that turned the prosecutor saying well, now you either need to hold your hand in front of your in-car video camera or photocopy your hand and put it there. So don't try to do anything stupid like that to our listeners, watchers, whatever, don't, just make a copy of the damn note and the searching capabilities with the technologies these days is unreal.
Speaker 1:You know everyone's talking about AI and all of that right now, but when you have all of that data that's stored digitally, the ability to search it and mine it and find links between it all and how these things are associated with each other is tremendous. So, yeah, we're big believers. Hey, take the time. Put at least the key identifiers in there, put the vehicles, put the individuals, put license plates, put tattoos, put all these things in there that can be identified and associated with each other in these systems, because, hey, you never know when one little fact is the thing that's going to break an entire case.
Speaker 2:Well, you're building a database. You're essentially building a database for other agencies that you may not even know what will happen Green eyes, brown eyes, whatever 13-inch If you're building a database and we're sharing all this information, I never understood why agencies are so hesitant about why they don't want to share their information with other ADCs.
Speaker 1:It used to be horrible. It's gotten better because we've been able to show the value that comes from it all. And I think most people are tired of seeing these mass shooters and these school shootings and all these things. And after the fact we all find out that, oh, all these people knew this. It all seems like certain people weren't really surprised that this happened.
Speaker 1:So a lot of the technology is trying to figure out okay, how do we provide answers to you that you didn't even think about the question to ask yet? How can we look at what's going on and start doing some predictive modeling to say, hey, all of these things are happening here. Maybe you want to pay attention, maybe you want to look into this with it, to try to give some again predictive modeling to officers. Give some again predictive modeling to officers. And look, I'm not saying that we're trying to give all of this to your standard officer that's running around on patrol, but most agencies now have they all have investigators. A lot of them have analyst units on it that's trying to interpret all of this data with it. And then you have the people at the state level where, if certain things rise to certain levels, you can route this to the right people that can look at it and say, okay, do we have something here to pay attention to?
Speaker 2:Well, and I guess I should ask this, you're going to find in Texas that of the 254 counties that are in Texas, I would say 230, 30 and 25 are going to be all rule for the most part. That's a pretty good, that's an accurate number. Bell County is not rule per se because they got Killeen, but let's just say Bell County, they've got Bell County, they got Killeen.
Speaker 3:We got like 17, 18 law enforcement agencies in that county.
Speaker 2:Let's say that we're going to implement your product. Okay, would it not behoove all of the once again? I think we're seeing a better part of this for law enforcement. But I think that if all the police chiefs and the sheriff got together, got in a room and said, hey, there's this great product called cloud gavel or whatever, and got together and said, hey, let's get on the same sheet of music, and went to the DA's office, because people don't know that if a proactive, pro-law enforcement office, because people don't know that, if a proactive pro law enforcement, pro public safety district attorney, they have funds available for programs such as this. Yeah, so would it not make more sense for all the agencies to be on one program such as cloud gavel?
Speaker 1:then have it agency specific absolutely, and I'm I'm sure we have some, but it I don't know if I could name them for you of a county where there's any agencies within that county, that's excluded, that doesn't use the system. Normally. It's a countywide deployment and the key thing is that we're not coming in and challenging the law of what's required. All we're doing is changing the process, and so everyone who looks at it says, hey, we still have to get the warrant, you still have to have the same requirements in the warrant, you have to do everything. The only thing you're doing is you're not driving anymore, so, okay, well, we're already spending the money. We're spending on a fuel, so we got the money. So it's not about going to find new money and all of the overtime.
Speaker 1:The other big challenge right now is officers. People can't find officers. We know the problem right now with trying to find officers. Well, we're saving all of the time that they're spending sitting in a car, sitting in a courtroom, waiting for a judge to sign something, so we're getting all the time back and then, from the DA's perspective, wait, we've got a system that will help these officers write a cleaner warrant. That's better. When it gets to me, my case is not screwed up because I can't make sense of the warrant. Okay, I'm in, and then the judges wait. Officers aren't banging on my door in the middle of the night waking me up to sign a piece of paper that may be wrong, that I have to send them back three times to fix.
Speaker 3:With a prisoner in a passenger seat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's happened before. Oh, I know.
Speaker 3:It's. I didn't do it, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So across the spectrum, everyone has looked at our product and says we've got some things to fight about, but this ain't one of them. This makes perfect sense. Let's just do it. It benefits everyone.
Speaker 2:Would you agree that in your experience I mean, obviously you are going to push the product, but would you not agree that it is cheaper for an agency to look at this product by the time that they add up the amount of fuel and they add up the amount of overtime that it's cheaper to go with this product versus having the expenditures of paying the officers overtime for dealing with search warrant type issues?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. We've got an NFL city as a client and when they factor in overtime travel time and fuel, they save over a million dollars a year using our product.
Speaker 3:A million dollars and I'm going to say this and it's not. I looked at your website so, for those that are watching and listening to us, I'm not promoting your product at all. It does sound intriguing to me and it does sound like it's something that you know. Hey, I'm going to look into. But to the administrators that are watching this, uh, keep in mind and that's why I asked if it does municipal court, uh, because every city out there, uh, and county for that matter, they, when they collect money on traffic citation revenue, there is a specified amount that has to go into an account called court security and technology fee. It can only be used on one of those. So every city out there already has a technology account through that, and so that might be an option to the administrators that are looking, if they're looking at going to your system or a similar system. Keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:And the last piece I'll throw into. That is so you always think about. Okay, we talked about everyone that's on the criminal justice side, but how about the public that's on the receiving end of these warrants? So in the old process we had no idea if officers actually stood before a judge and raised their right hand. I see a judge's signature, but did the judge sign that? Did a secretary sign that? When did they sign it? Did they sign it after I kicked down the door, after I made the arrest? It was all on.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're trusting the government that they did what they were supposed to do With Cloud Gavel. Everything is audited, every single click is audited. So all of the defense attorneys, all of the public defenders, they're like look, I've got a detailed audit trailer on every document of when it was created, when it was submitted, when the judge looked at it, how long the judge read it. What if I'm looking at a document and it shows the judge took less than a minute to read an entire warrant? I was just thinking about that. What's the chances that the judge actually read it versus rubber stamping it?
Speaker 1:So all of that is now law. So we've given an enormous level of transparency to the public where they can say all right, we at least know that everyone's doing their job when they're supposed to do it the right way. Now, or do we have judges that sign in warrants that may be on the line of probable cause? Maybe that's why we have an appellate system. You can go and challenge that in court, but at least the process is true. The process is being done the right way and holding everyone accountable.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I've seen judges out there that you know they have faith in an officer, they've worked with them before and they're like you know what, yeah, just send that over and I'll sign it real quick, whatever the case may be. But to your point, it's kind of a funny story when those things happen and you kind of get that sense of complacency and you don't do your due diligence. I know an officer that his sergeant entrusted him because he always did great reports and he got in the office one day. And he's kind of a jokester, but he got in the office one day and the end of his report or end of his shift it was about the time that they're doing reports.
Speaker 3:Well, he was mad because day shift had come in and he got sent to a call and he's like why didn't they send damn day shift to this?
Speaker 3:So he comes back and he writes his report call and he's like why didn't they send damn day shift to this? So he comes back and he writes his report and he restarts his office with his report is you know, on such and such date, such and such time, while in the in the report writing room trying to get my damn job done and day shift was out in the parking lot fucking off and he submitted it and his sergeant he did that as a joke to his sergeant and his sergeant was like, hey, you know what, this guy always writes good reports, approved, approved, so, and that kind of stuff happens. And so, yeah, I think that having a system out there that would have the kind of the checks and balances associated with it and you know, years back I wrote a search warrant and I put the wrong date on the thing, granted, you know, prosecutor had to do a little extra work on that, but it didn't kill the case but having systems in place that will help avoid situations like that, I think is a good thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and especially with all the various different charges, as you guys know, as cops, hey, depending on what you're charging someone with, you have to make clear articulation to the court that you did X things before you took certain action as an officer on it. Well, we're hoping the officers trained and maybe have encountered that situation before, to do it, but a lot of times they haven't. So you know, we've tried to go the extra step. That. All right, depending on what you're charging with, make sure your probable cause has these things in it. If you don't address all of these things in your probable cause, it's not going to meet the barrier of the law and the judge is going to be forced to reject it because you missed something. Now you may have a chance to go back and add it and fix it, but again, that takes time, it takes back and forth with it. So the technology is there to try to help these officers, you know, do their job with the tools in front of them.
Speaker 2:Speaking of Clint McNair, him, joe Gamaldi and some other guys just got back from Axon had a summit out in Glendale Arizona and there was some other pretty neat, less lethal obviously Axon, you know having the body cams, but they also specialize in the tasers. There's some pretty neat, less lethal weapons that Axon is introducing to make law enforcement officers safer, but one of the neat things was body cams. They are trying to dock body cams and have some type of it is AI, but it's a summary. So when the officer docks his body cam, it essentially gives a summary, because that body cam is officer specific. It says this officer, this date, and gives a whole printout or a summary of what that officer went to in that call, and so they're trying that out.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of technology, my point is this is that if we don't look at and at least embrace the fact that technology can be our friend when it's used responsibly, that's the main key. Yes, I think that when you don't use technology responsibly and you trust that you know chat GBT. I use it every day, but it's a good baseline for me to improve on some social media posts and so I can write, but it's a tool and a resource that I can use, and I think that if our law enforcement officers aren't embracing technology to use it as a resource, then, man, they're missing the mark.
Speaker 3:So anyway, I agree with you 100% on that, 100% yeah.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, we like to end every show with some rapid fire questions. I hope you didn't study for them. Stop it, okay, I hope you didn't study for them.
Speaker 1:Stop it, okay. So what's your favorite line from a cop movie or your favorite cop movie? My favorite cop I don't know about movie, but show is probably Chicago PD. That's a good one Only because it's probably one of the most close to real shows I've seen as far as how detectives and cops actually work. Shows I've seen as far as how detectives and cops actually work. You know I like some of the other ones, but you know I know this is rapid, but when they sit there and do things in five seconds that I know take five days to do, I'm like all right, I lost interest. What's your favorite drink or choice when you're trying to relax? Well, I'm not a drinker, so iced tea. But my partners are trying to get me into scotch but they're failing.
Speaker 3:I'm not a drinker, you know what you need to try. There's this awesome stuff called Angel's Envy. I'm familiar with that. I've seen it. You're not the only one in this room familiar with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good. It's an angel, all right, it can be an envy, but anyway, what's your favorite?
Speaker 1:cop car. I know you weren't a cop, but at least what's your favorite patrol car? I like what they're doing with the Tahoe's With it. It's one that discourages a lot of the high-speed chases because it's bigger, but it's more secure for the officers especially on the side of the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're a lot more roomy, for sure. Yeah, a lot more roomy. J-dub, you got anything?
Speaker 3:else, no man, no, I just really started thinking about that. Angels envy, I don't know why you got him distracted. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We're going to put all y'all's information there. On the link, you can find more information about Cloud Gavel right here. And, uh, man, hopefully we'll see y'all at our 2024 Texas FOP and TMPA conference the end July in Dallas. Uh man, that's it for us. We enjoyed. Uh, george, you guys coming on or are you coming on driving all the way from your station? Yeah, it's a pretty good, a pretty good clip. You flew today.
Speaker 1:You didn't drive is a phenomenal city. Anytime I can come here, they're all clients. It's great to come here and see them Again. Thank you all for what you always do. It's a fantastic show and I'm honored to be here. That's cool.
Speaker 2:We love having you. You guys take care, stay safe. God bless you and, as always, may God bless Texas.
Speaker 3:We're out, thank you. No-transcript.
