.png)
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
#078- "Here and Now" with Kevin Lawrence
In this episode of the Blue Grit Podcast, we discuss the challenges law enforcement officers face during emergencies. Kevin Lawrence, Executive Director of TMPA, joins us to talk about the role of local police associations in maintaining open communication, providing legal protections, and promoting transparency within law enforcement agencies.
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
This episode of Blue Grip Podcast is sponsored by McLean Advisors. Proud Ruby sponsors of the 2024 TMPA in Texas FOP Conference.
Speaker 2:Especially when we're asking them we're not asking them to go out and pick the right choice, make the right choice. In any given situation, there are no good choices. Very often, by the time law enforcement gets summoned, especially at 3 in the morning, these officers are being asked to go out there in an emergency in a split second and make the least bad choice.
Speaker 1:Welcome back. Viewers, watchers, listeners, I'm your host, tyler Owen. We have a guest host today the big boss, the man, the myth, the legend. Tmpa's executive director, kevin Lawrence.
Speaker 2:What's going on, man? You need to just go around the state and introduce me everywhere I go. It just builds my ego up.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what we actually probably need to travel the state and do like we did or you did several years ago. You did like a round-the-state tour and it was during the height of the George Floyd deal and it seemed successful.
Speaker 2:Actually that was pre George Floyd, was it? It was uh post Ferguson. Ah, okay, and uh trying to go around and meet with all the media outlets, the local editorial boards up here is what you're talking about. Yeah, trying trying to counter the misinformation, disinformation that was being put out. Uh, yeah, because after george floyd coveted and there were no opportunities, no, you're right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ferguson, talk about that real quick. I think it's important. Uh, your experience. I had this conversation there with a deputy I forgot what county, but he was so afraid to talk to the media. There was an issue going on with their local association where we really needed and it was important for the local association to really have that voice because, you know, the reality is that if, like, let's just say it's San Marcos, texas, they may kind of know what TMPA is, but they're going to know who Hayes County Sheriff's Association is, or Hidalgo County, and talk about the importance of why it's important for local associations to have those relationships with their media outlets.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, the first thing I'm going to talk about is why it's so much more difficult for officers who work for sheriff's offices or for counties and this is not. I don't even know which county you're talking about and I don't want to know Right, but just from a 30, foot view, the, I guess you can say 33 000. Okay, 33 400 feet, yeah, um, when you work for a sheriff's office, you work for a constitutionally elected official who does not answer to the commissioner's court, does not answer to the county judge, and so whether or not the county has any authority whatsoever to overrule a seated sheriff on a disciplinary action is one in a hundred. Maybe Because there's only a handful of counties in Texas that have any type of civil service whatsoever, any type of meaningful due process when it comes to your job. So the only recourse we have for the vast majority of sheriff's departments in Texas is, if you are fired because you came out and made some public comment is to go to district court and file some sort of a first amendment claim, you know, freedom of speech, claim something along those lines. So that's why it's it's exponentially more difficult for County employees to get in the middle of stuff like that than it is for officers who work for cities or school districts or you know, because they work for somebody who was hired and fired by the elected body of that governmental subdivision.
Speaker 2:So A let's make sure we're cognizant of that fact. B it is critical is thinking properly and getting good legal advice. They want their employees to have a police association, a union, a lodge, whatever we want to call it in that particular jurisdiction. They want them to be constantly in communication with the voters and keeping them informed about what is truly going on. Okay, assuming those administrators and officials are doing their jobs properly. They want that additional information flow, you know, and they want to.
Speaker 2:They want to work as partners and as teammates and there are protections out there that exist for the association that don't exist for the individual employee. Even at sheriff's offices, even at constable's offices, there are protections. The freedom of assembly in the First Amendment extends to labor organizations. A lot of people don't realize that the right to redress grievances extends to labor organizations. We might have to enforce it in district court, but there still are protections out there that don't apply to you as an individual but they do apply to the and I hope I'm not just guessing the right county accidentally. But they do apply to the employees of the San Saba County Sheriff's Office. It wasn't San Saba, okay, good.
Speaker 1:No, it wasn't San Saba, but yeah, anyway, we had that discussion and it proved rewarding for me back when I was a president of my local association in East Texas. And you know, now being in this role, I'm constantly speaking with media and speaking to news reporters and man. It's so beneficial for you guys out there, the membership body, for us to have those relationships because if we have a situation going on you know maybe they're bad results of a management survey or you know politics are involved we can reach out to those partners and say, hey, I had the situation, can you help me out? So I just want to touch on that. Yeah, but anyway, anything else going?
Speaker 2:on. We got one of those bad management surveys going on right at the moment.
Speaker 1:We probably don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 2:I'm game, let's go. Yeah Well, you know a lot more about it than I do. Again, I'm getting this just from a very distant information flow.
Speaker 1:Well, what I will tell you is this is that, for those that are listening, that are in leadership at your local association, TMPA will come in and complete management surveys at the local association's request. But I don't want to give the perception to the member out there that that's what we're going to do every single time and then we're just going to drop a bomb when we get the results.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it should be done only as an absolute last resort.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Once you have exhausted all other possible remedies, all other possible avenues, only then should we do a management study. And the reason is management studies. Somebody's going to get bloody. It doesn't make any difference which direction it goes, somebody's going to get bloody.
Speaker 2:Very often, the administration will come out right away and try to diffuse everything by claiming that whatever the issues are that are being raised, it's just a and I love the expression they always say it's just a handful of malcontents. It's's just a handful of malcontents. It's always just a handful of malcontents that are stirring up all this trouble, and sometimes that's true. And if that is true, that is what we will find out once we do the management study. Generally, though, where there's smoke there's fire. So you know, in the old days, labor organizations would do votes of no confidence, which are commonly misphrased a vote of confidence. But that's never what they are. They do a vote of no confidence, but all that does is say we don't like this person or we do like this person. It doesn't really quantify or qualify what the issues are. So a management study is the modern scientific method of really. We got morale issues, we got personnel issues, we got recruiting retention issues. Let's drill down deeper and I can't explain how the difference between these two things.
Speaker 2:But when you do surveys, when you do data collection, you can do it two different ways. You can do and Dr Olbrich can explain this a lot better than I can. There is a simple frequency distribution that you can use to analyze that data, and then there's something called a regression analysis, that data and then there's something called a regression analysis and that's when you can draw nexuses between the answer to this question and the answer to that question. So, yes, my morale is low and here's why. Yeah, that's that's what you can prove through a management study, survey and the. Then you know there's a process you need to. Once you've done that, we need to understand we're going to sit down with management, show them the results and try to work with them to address the issues. We're not. The purpose here is not to get rid of anybody, cause I, I promise you, if you want to get rid of your chief, it's really not that hard to get rid of a chief. Finding a better chief, that's the problem, that's the hard one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yep, it can always get worse. And I'm going to tell you something you said that you weren't really sure or unclear the differences between a voter no confidence and a management survey. When I was local of my association it was before I came to work with TMPA I had a situation where I was in front of the body of our association, with our city manager, and we were having very, very, very, very difficult times with our police chief. Uh, clint McNair was involved. You were involved at some point and it came down to me ignorantly, uh, asking the body who in here is dissatisfied with his leadership, and the entire body raced around in front of the city manager. So essentially, we gave him a no confidence vote. And I did it ignorantly.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to tell you something, kevin, that was probably the biggest regret of my association leadership days because, moving forward, the association members themselves because I was the president right. So the association members themselves thought, you know, I don't like these days off and so they would expect that the association can flex at any point in time and we kind of wasted a lot of our political capital within the department. We spent our political capital outside with the citizens, but it almost hurt us and it hurt the morale of the department in a sense of entitled. Does that make sense? It?
Speaker 2:does. It makes perfect sense. What may not make perfect sense to some of the folks that are watching is exactly what is political capital? Yep, and I think we could spend an entire episode on that, oh, 100%.
Speaker 2:About how critical it is, and you know in 30 seconds or less political capital is. What kind of relationship do you have with your voters, with your citizens, with the people that you serve day in and day out? Have you banked enough goodwill with them that, when you need their help with something, you can turn to them and ask them for that? Yep, some agencies, some locals have really really, really good relationships and therefore they have banked a lot of political capital.
Speaker 2:Most departments don't spend nearly enough time working on it no no, but they do like to complain when things are not going. The old joke is there's only two things cops don't like there's change, and then there's a status quo.
Speaker 1:Other than that, we like it yeah yeah Well, speaking of the situation of the management survey TNPA, recently we've been in the news a little bit. In Houston Texas City area we completed a management survey and I've got to give it the hats off. I know we give Leighton Gunnery so much crap and hell but he did this one exactly right.
Speaker 2:We give him crap and hell only because he's a loser.
Speaker 1:Rightfully so. That's right, he's an LSU fan and plus he's just. If you know Leighton, you know what I'm talking about. So he got the results of the management survey tends to reach out to the chief. That was canceled 15 minutes before the meeting was supposed to happen and then that resulted in Leighton reaching out to the mayor and requesting a meeting and that that was ignored. So then you're kind of left in a situation where you know what do you do now, right? So the local association came out with a statement and that was responded by the mayor and I've got a lot of questions this week. The information that he put out there one would deem it was personal and probably too much information out there. And then I got a lot of questions about man. That was G-file information. You know that's something we're looking into. Without concrete evidence we don't know.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's a debacle at Texas City. Well, that's about. What I've heard is that the mayor probably appointed the wrong person to be chief for the wrong reason and is now refusing to even talk about the resulting problems that have been created by that.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's a anyway. But while we're doing this podcast, you still got men and women in Texas City that are serving and protecting their community, and just of yesterday we got to notify that the assistant chief, who's also we have have data to prove it based off the votes that his leadership style is also somewhat controversial and retaliatory is the best way to say it. And I just got notified yesterday that the once-approved outer carriers that a lot of you guys love for the heat they're really good in the summertime and the old school polyester uniforms that you probably wore day in and day out at Baytown they're reverting back to those. So just to kind of poke them in the eye a little bit. So a lot of retaliatory stuff going on, like you just poked me in the eye with the joke about my age.
Speaker 1:No, I wasn't saying your age.
Speaker 2:I was just saying that you served our state well and, and just during a time that that seemed like almost wool uniforms were like a thing when, um I I noticed that we got an email either late last night or this morning from an officer who had just resigned from Texas City, yep, and that email was basically saying I just can't put up with this environment anymore. I'm out of here. Please look out for all the other officers that are still there, the ones that are still trying to go out there and take care of the citizens and serve the community. I've gotten phone calls from old retirees from that department basically saying man, isn't there something we can do to help these officers, because the environment over there is just so untenable.
Speaker 1:Well, the mayor has met TNPA and I don't think we're we're not going anywhere. We're going to stand behind our members and do what's right, and I don't know how long this fight is going to be with the city, but we're going to continue to serve every day and I guess we'll be updated later on, and ultimately, it's up to the voters.
Speaker 2:Voters are the ones that have to fix problems like this. They need to recognize that. They need to be sending a clear message to their elected officials Either do what's best for for the city, do what's best for public safety, or we will find somebody else who will.
Speaker 1:yep, yep, I agree well, speaking of elected officials, uh, you know, it's very interesting to me. I I tend to kind of go the route of like not liking a an individual that we may be, you know, dealing with on a professional basis, just based off the way they've treated other cops, and I kind of get this preconceived notion and mentality about them. But it's weird because if you sit down with the majority of people, you actually have so much in common more than what you think. I think you had that mindset several years ago. You and Steve Foster, y'all have maintained and started a what was called then Facebook Live group.
Speaker 1:That's included multiple law enforcement individuals, some elected officials, some state reps, and y'all have created this deal. It's been really successful and we are going to turn it, I think, into a semi-show. We don't know, we haven't really come up with the concrete, because there's one thing about my boss I know when I mentioned something like hey, we're going to do this show, it's going to be called this, and he's not like his eyes don't look at me a certain way. I know for a fact that he's kind of hesitant about it. So we haven't come up with a show name yet, but I kind of want turn it into like a podcast.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I may be looking at you like that, because I've got this idea in my mind of something that's completely inappropriate to say back, and that that that one little gene that people don't think I have is actually working. And now you better not say that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you mentioned Steve Foster. Steve is an attorney who I first met Steve when he was relatively young, relatively new out of law school, but he was working as general counsel for the criminal justice committee in the Texas Senate when Ken Arbester was chairman of that committee. Ken is an old Victoria police officer. He rose to the rank of lieutenant and then got elected to the Texas Senate Wow. So he retired from law enforcement and then spent the rest of his career in state politics, but Steve was his legal person, his general counsel on the committee, and so we got to know Steve very well, developed friendship with him, and we've just stayed in touch over the years.
Speaker 2:So then, in just jumping forward a couple of decades, in 2020, shortly after the George Floyd incident, my wife and I were actually in San Antonio. We were down on the river walk doing something. My phone rings and it's Steve and I'm like hey, man, how are you? We go through our pleasantries and he said hey, listen. He said I really think that we need to team up and get out in front of the unrest that is stirring. And, by the way, san antonio was the. The city was busy putting out barricades because they were prepping for the demonstrations slash riots that were about to happen. And while I'm watching that go on, steve calls me and says I really think it's not. He said I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm now on the African-American lawyer section of the state bar and I think we could get together and work with law enforcement groups like TMPA and at least talk about where do we go from here, how do we address this, how do we not let this thing turn into a powder keg? And I said, man, we're in, count us in. How do we, how do we not let this thing turn into a powder keg? And I said, man, we're in tech, count us in. How do you want to make this happen?
Speaker 2:So that resulted in, uh, him getting other members of the African-American lawyer section and I reached out to HPOU, dallas police association, harris County deputies organization, dpsoa, and we started having conversations. Yeah, we called them Facebook Live. We would do them like every Wednesday, every other Wednesday, and we would just get on there for an hour and talk back and forth. And what we quickly found was we've got a lot more in common, a lot more things that we agree on than what we disagree on.
Speaker 2:We simply don't take the time to listen to the other person's side, the other point of view, there's a lot to be learned, a lot to be gained from hearing what their perspectives are and from them hearing, and this is where I developed this understanding relatively late in my career. The better our citizens understand why law enforcement does what it does, the way we do it, the better off we're going to be. It's when they just don't understand, when they just see a video of like this most recent one where the cop shot the woman with the pot of boiling water. Yeah, if you have no foundation about exactly what led up to that, that video is extremely difficult to watch.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Once you have the full background, it might make a whole difference to how you view that video. The citizens need a better understanding and we as law enforcement and I put this blame on city attorneys, county attorneys, district attorneys, law enforcement agencies, chiefs and sheriffs when something happens, they're told don't say anything, don't come out publicly, you know, don't make any answer needs to be no comment, no comment, no comment For the sake of the investigation, for whatever. So we lose the support of our own citizens because of the perception that we're covering things up. We need to be as transparent as we possibly can and let them understand. This is what we can share with you and, by the way, we're willing to talk to you about why we're willing to show you how our officers are trained. You know you did a great job of putting together um, where we brought in the Austin justice coalition and had them go through some simulations with us, some out on the range.
Speaker 1:Um, and what was his comment at the end of it? A guy that's anti law enforcement hates cops. Well, I shouldn't say hate cops, at least that was the perception to us, right? The law enforcement world who went through that training what was his comment? Completely changed his opinion.
Speaker 2:Completely changed his opinion. I love the fact that I don't remember it was him or one of the other gentlemen that was with him who said, yeah, I'd have shot every one of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy because you don never, you don't face those, at most those moments every day. But we do, and I mean, just like this morning I had a conversation with a local district attorney that was blown away in a certain county. They are required to fill out use of force documentation every time their gun leaves the holster. Now, how many times? And? And you worked at baytown, you, you've worked, you, you had, you had, you had some experience and I mean this lovingly Like there were some dangerous cities that you worked in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I worked for Baytown when Baytown, you know, wasn't cool.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a country song, yeah, but yeah, I mean probably two times a shift in Marshall at least, and I would have had to fill out use of force documentation for that. I mean, that's just.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't see how we would have been able to sustain that, because you know I developed a habit of, especially on night shifts, when you get out on just a traffic stop, if there's anything about that car that you just you get that little little gut feeling, a little you know, pit of your stomach kind of thing. You, you walk up, you go ahead and draw your pistol and you put it down beside your thigh and you walk up this direction with that pistol down here, and once you get up there they don't know you've drawn your pistol and if everything checks out, okay. But when?
Speaker 1:you hol can put it back, but when you holstered and you have it out, how are you doing it to where it wasn't public perception and to where the person you're dealing with is not going to elevate the situation? But you're doing it in a way that's not going to alarm who you're contacting.
Speaker 2:I was able to do it Discreetly 99.9% of the time. In a way, they never knew I had my weapon drawn, but I was ahead of the game if something went afoul and I immediately had a gun pointed at them and could give them directions. But the current policies that most agencies and accreditation bureaus are now pushing is I would have had to to submitted a use of force report on every single one of those. It's crazy, it's just too burdensome. Yeah, one of the things I wanted to mention, by the way, that came out of these conversations with Steve and Rudy Mattia, by the way, is the executive director of the African-American Caucus.
Speaker 2:Charitable arm of the African-American Caucus in the state legislature and he he's also a city councilman in Pflugerville and he's also a city councilman in Pflugerville, and then Nikki is an attorney in Dallas-Fort Worth area, who's also part of that.
Speaker 2:We've had these conversations and one of the points we've been trying to make to them and one of the big fallacies of the police reform movement is the assumption that bad policing happens because of bad police officers. And one of the things I think we've been able to demonstrate to them is and, by the way, we acknowledge bad policing happens. Bad policing happens a lot more than we want to admit, but it does happen At a very small rate, though it is a very small rate and the vast majority of the time cops get it right. They do the best they possibly can, especially when we're asking them we're not asking them to go out and pick the right choice, make the right choice in any given situation. There are no good choices. Very often, by the time law enforcement gets summoned, especially at three in the morning, these officers are being asked to go out there in an emergency in a split second. Make the least bad choice, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Don't understand that about the jobs that we have, and so we've had a chance to dissect that with them. Bad policing generally happens because of lack of something lack of manpower, lack of equipment lack of communication lack of training or bad something, bad policies, bad leadership, bad management, bad whatever we want to talk about. And so if we're going to address bad policing and we're only going to focus on bad police officers, we're not going to fix the problems we're trying to fix, and that's part of what has come out of these conversations.
Speaker 1:Well, and a great point Back to like the, let's say, the Austin riots. Right For the life of me, I can't understand and we've had this discussion with people in that DA's office that explain to me where the mindset of indicting cops were, as it came down to it. My understanding and I wasn't living down here at the time but the main, one of the key pieces of evidence is that the ammunition was expired and there was a problem with the ammunition. Is that that's accurate, right?
Speaker 2:That was what we were told at one point.
Speaker 1:Right, and so I don't, for the life of me, can wrap my brain around the fact that, okay, so the department negligently provided the ammunition. It was justified at potentially shooting, but because the ammunition was bad, that's a violation. And it goes back to your point that being educated and teaching people about use of force and doing the things while we do it, maybe we'll get there one day, maybe we won't.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the problem to me is when you're looking for a reason to charge somebody or looking for a reason to indict somebody rather than just following the evidence where it takes you.
Speaker 2:That's where the problem comes in, and I believe a lot of this is simply political posturing by prosecutors who are themselves elected officials and, by the way, I also want to defend them a little bit.
Speaker 2:This failure of law enforcement's part to be completely transparent, or as transparent as we possibly can, leads to the impression that things are being hidden from the public. And the way our grand jury system works and I'm not saying I disagree with it, but because it's secret, not open to the public, and nobody who ever testifies in a grand jury can actually say tell anybody what happened inside the grand jury it feeds that perception that we are operating under cloak and dagger circumstances, and so some of these DAs are doing this just simply because they don't want to take on the responsibility of telling the voters the officers didn't do anything wrong. That's why I'm not charging them, that's why I'm not indicting them, and they want to put that off on a grand jury. Part of it is also the attitude of let's just take it to trial, and then it does become a completely open public.
Speaker 1:Well, but they're doing that for political reasons, because that way they won't be the phone guy. Okay Well.
Speaker 2:I mean, I get it, but yeah, you know, we, we, but you know we can talk all day long about how we are held to a higher standard if the citizens can't see us being held to a higher standard. And, by the way, this is also something that's different in Texas. Even on disciplinary actions in other states, disciplinary actions and the appeal of disciplinary actions are not open to the public. Really, people don't understand that in Texas, for those agencies where you do have some kind of due process not most sheriff's departments I'll bring us back to the beginning of this whole conversation Cities, for example, like Austin, that have civil service where if you are terminated or you're suspended for 15 days or you can appeal that either to the Civil Service Commission, which is a civilian review board. Appeal that either to the civil service commission, which is a civilian review board, or to an independent third party hearing examiner. Those are open to the public. Those hearings, you know the media can go in there and film the whole thing. We're used to that in Texas. We're good with that.
Speaker 2:In Texas, we believe if we didn't do anything wrong, we should go back to work. You know, if we did something wrong, why are we appealing it we. We should be put back to work If we did something wrong. Why are we appealing it? We should take our punishment and move on. It's just that simple. But in other states those are not open to the public and it further feeds that perception that we are operating under cloak and dagger situations under veil. That's why so many people have a problem with qualified immunity. They think it somehow is more of that cloak and dagger persona of law enforcement and that's just not the way it's. It's certainly not the way it has ever been in Texas.
Speaker 1:Well, I did not know that about outside of Texas. Of course I wouldn't. I mean, I thought East Texas was its own country until about two years ago.
Speaker 2:There are other States where, like there, like there are about 100 agencies in Texas that actually have collective bargaining for their labor issues, for pay benefits, working conditions, whatever 100 out of 2,900 have some sort of bargaining. In Texas, those bargaining sessions, the negotiation sessions, are also public meetings. They are open to the general public, they have to be posted 72 hours in advance, so on and so forth. In other states they not only aren't open to the public, a lot of times they're not open to the members that are being represented. It's crazy. Even the officers can't go in and watch the negotiations. That doesn't make any sense at all. I can't answer for New York and Michigan and Pennsylvania and how they do things.
Speaker 1:Well, but we were going to probably segue into a good time to segue. Speaking of New York and Massachusetts and all those other states, we have been kind of connected to Texas FOP from an association standpoint for a number of years now. We had a big election this week, uh, two weeks ago at the conference, uh, this is our second. Is this our second annual conference together because, covid, we had the 18 and in, uh, horseshoe bay?
Speaker 2:or third, it's the third it's the third combined conference.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's the first truly joint conference yeah, well, because before we I mean and this wasn't a pun on our planning and execution, it's just the way it was where we would have tmpa conference and then some people that were our dual members would have to run down the hallway for one one portion of the fop conference. This wasn't. It wasn't enjoyable. Right, this was the uh this year, man, it was. This was one of the best conferences I've ever been to.
Speaker 2:The history of this thing, the genesis of this whole thing. It's difficult to explain to people just how many hurdles had to be overcome, and the first attempts to get TMPA and FOP to somehow coalesce started way back in the 90s when I was on the tmpa board, and they fell apart fairly quickly and just created a little more animus than we had starting out. We started that process again in 2011, 2012, 2013, fell apart again. Fop is a different type of organization. It's a lodge system where each lodge is subordinate to the lodge above it. Tmpa is not like that. We don't have a mothership of any kind. We don't serve as a mothership to our local associations. Our local associations are autonomous. Our members are not beholden to us. They don't have to stay with us.
Speaker 2:The local associations can choose to affiliate, but they're not required to in any way, shape or form, and it's almost like there's just this fundamental philosophical difference about the structure of the organizations that has to be overcome. There's also the fact they only have their conference every other year. We have a conference every year. They elect their board of directors every other year. We elect our board every year. Again, the difficulty that created it. So, the first time we actually had a conference together at the same place was yes 2018 at Horseshoe Bay. God, it was beautiful. It was a great conference, great facility, great facility, great facility. But we had tmpa having meetings in one room while fop was having meetings in another room and, like you say, people that were trying to run back and forth and navigate both and um, that was actually when I got elected to the fop state executive board I thought so I couldn't remember what year that was so since then, tmpa didn't have a conference in 20 because of COVID.
Speaker 2:Fop managed to do one that was kind of a hybrid of virtual and in-person. They did it later in the year than they normally would have, so there was not one. That combined know a combined conference. That year, 2022, we did the combined conference in senate in san antonio good, but once again we were in separate rooms and now that I was executive director of one chairman of trustees for the other, you can imagine how I was getting pulled back and forth. Uh, same thing for a couple of other people. This was the first time that we actually got together and had our conferences in the same big ballroom at the same time and simply switched who was on the dais. Yeah, back and forth, so that FOP could conduct their business and have their elections, their elections. Tmpa could conduct their business and have their elections, but still share information, you know, to everybody in the room at the same time and you know folks don't understand.
Speaker 2:The biggest reason, the biggest incentive for TMPA members to become part of FOP, is that FOP is, in fact, the only game in town in Washington DC If you go to the White House or you go to Congress and you watch them, you listen to their committee hearings, their deliberations. Every time a law enforcement issue comes up, somebody whether it's the vice president of the United States or the president of the Senate, or the speaker of the House, or the chairman of that committee somebody says what does FOP say about this? Because they are the big guns. They've got 370-something thousand members. And I say they 78.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you and I are both, yeah, fop members. Like I say, I'm on their state executive board, I'm on their state executive board, I'm on their national legislative committee. We need to not just be part of that effort, we need to be a major player in that effort. We need to be having a huge impact on what FOP is telling the White House and the Congress and all those federal agencies, because they're making decisions every day that affect our members, not only in their jobs but in their day-to-day lives, and we need to be doing everything we can up there to represent the interest of our members, and FOP is the best way to do that. So, having said all that, fop sees Texas as important too, as evidenced by the fact that every member of the National Fraternal Order of Police Executive Board was at this conference. Every one of them showed up.
Speaker 1:It was great to see it. I'm going to say this, and it may be twisted up, but conferences prior to this are always a good time. It always feels like a huge family reunion. My wife she kind of handles the purse bingo, so they're great.
Speaker 2:Anybody who hasn't been to the purse bingo, by the way. Bring your spouse, bring your wife.
Speaker 1:It's great, it's a good time. Everybody who's done it loves it. Yeah, it's a good time. Everybody who's done it loves it. Yeah, but this conference there was a sense of pride and a sense of unity that I've never felt at any other conference before.
Speaker 2:And again, this is the third conference we've had together, but this was the true combined and since it was the first true joint conference, there were hiccups.
Speaker 1:There were hiccups, there's no doubt about it, not many.
Speaker 2:There were hiccups. There were hiccups there's no doubt about it, not many, you know. The ones that happened were behind the scenes. For the most part, I don't think the members or the vendors or the guests that were there had any idea that stuff was going on. There's still going to be some of that, though there's still some disagreements and some hurdles that still need to be overcome. But you know, I think we certainly are as close to making this thing a reality as we've ever been, and I think we have long since passed the point of no return.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. I hope so. Well, planning the conference isn't kind of easy. Our staff, Shelly, Alicia Mupo, and we've used it Well. Natalie, she's been showing up a couple years and, ironically, the day of conference we got notification that she had a baby. I'm going to say a baby boy, baby girl. It was a girl, but I mistakenly sent you an email and, not knowing the situation, I was in a rush, which I tend to do, admittedly sent an email from Kevin's email to all of our staff announcing the birth of the wrong sex. So, Kevin, on the podcast, I'm sorry I made you look foolish, but in reality it was me, but you took one for the team. You didn't tell anybody until now. You're quiet on that one, Okay, Anyway. So you got anything else?
Speaker 2:All I know is that later on, when I sent out a correction, that I didn't know about that either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If you've ever done that before or sent something by mistake, especially on your big boss's email, and you're like, and you don't know what to do but clam up and I couldn't go in the corner and cry. We had a conference going on, so I was embarrassed, it was bad Anyway.
Speaker 2:Well, we're based in Austin. Keep it weird. The baby needs more time to decide.
Speaker 1:Well, that is true, that is true.
Speaker 2:You got anything else. You know you mentioned Shelly. She's in the room with us, I know, I know.
Speaker 1:She is actually running the cameras for us today because Natalie is on maternity leave and you know again the staff here we actually just had this conversation the staff here at TMPA. Me growing up in a very culture environment with my dad working at Southwest Airlines. This is a family and you know we've got some great employees that work here and you walk in here and it's like working with cousins and sisters and brothers professionally and we do.
Speaker 2:I tell people all the time we hire good people. We don't hire or keep marginal employees. We hire good people and we try to provide them with the best possible benefits and pay. We do at least every other year we do a whole new market analysis see where we stack up against our competition, make sure we're paying our people enough to hang on to them and to reward them for how hard they work. Our benefits package I have been told by our brokers we're in the top 10% of employers when it comes to the benefits that our board offers to us as employees. So we offer the best possible pay, extremely good benefits. We hope it's a good working environment that we offer around here and then we work you to death. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Come work here, get paid, but then work your ass off, and Shelly is a great example of that because she has since she came to work for us and it's only been a couple of years now one year not all she's wearing so many different hats, which includes handling the FOP office day-to-day office operation, which can be a challenge.
Speaker 1:It's not a pun against Texas FOP. It's just a different animal.
Speaker 2:It's a whole different thing, and we have several employees that are involved in that. But Shelly is one of the ones that takes on a lot of those responsibilities. She also handles HR functions for us. She handles membership for us. I think she sweeps out the place to y'all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's definitely a special group, but you know, like you said, we don't hire. There's a special blend of character that you need to have to work here, and I mean the dedication aspect of it, right, and so we've got a good team. It's been a good foundation built by people like you that served on the board of directors and past employees. So, yeah, it was a good foundation built by people like you that served on the board of directors and past employees. So yeah it was a good conference.
Speaker 2:Anyway, you got anything else. By the way, I think this year's conference for a couple of different reasons and we're not going to talk about Austin, but y'all will hear the news at Austin soon enough but this year's conference, I believe we're going to look back on it and say, yeah, that was a huge turning point right there.
Speaker 1:I think you're right. I think you're right and it was. I'll leave it at that. Good times. Well, if you don't have anything else, man, thanks for the update. Thanks for stopping by. I'm telling you I'm 39, about to be 40 in November. Me and my wife were actually talking about this the other day. Our executive director is probably in his mid-50s. I'm going to go with that, leave it there, and you, my friend, need to slow down a little bit. This dude is nonstop, sun up, sun down, Sunday through Saturday, and you can't ever tell. He could end up in Corpus. You're like Carmen San Diego, honestly, and so for you to stop in here and have time for us today, I greatly appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you something. First of all, I'll show up anytime you invite me. You tell me when I'll be here. Second of all, you make jokes about my age how long I've been doing this. Tyler and I were talking the other day. When I first started in law enforcement, my brother had to buy my bullets for me. That's crazy, because I wasn't old enough under federal law to go out and buy my own bullets. And then I started out with the Baytown Police Department back in 1978. And a couple of months ago I saw a post on Facebook that Assistant Chief Whitaker was retiring from the Maytown Police Department after 38 years with that department. And I looked at my wife and I said now that makes me feel old Because I never worked with him. Oh wow, I was gone from there before he even started. Oh wow. So yeah, I'm not in my mid-50s anymore.
Speaker 1:Well, but look at where you're at now.
Speaker 2:I mean, you've had some years of experience and you are, and I've wound up now for 15 years having the absolute best job on earth. Ten years before that I was the deputy executive director, but I've now been the executive director for 15 years. There's no doubt in my mind I have the absolute best job on earth.
Speaker 1:Well, for me, speaking on me and Shelly's sake, you've made some damn good hires, especially within the last couple of years, within the last 18 months, so I appreciate it Anyway, well, hey, we're all. I think that's about it. We're going to wrap it up. You guys take care, stay safe, check our website. Our ledge team is going to be coming up in a couple weeks and talking about probably Kevin needs to join us on that to talk about our legislative, I guess, agenda coming up for next session, and that's really about it.
Speaker 2:And if you need anything, give us a holler. We're always here, yeah.
Speaker 1:You guys take care, stay safe. God bless you and, as always, may God bless Texas. We're out.
