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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
#116- " Media Madness & the Legal Response" with Lance Lorusso
In this episode of the Blue Grit Podcast, we sit down with national use-of-force expert and law enforcement attorney Lance LoRusso—a former officer turned legal warrior who’s represented over 180 officers in critical incidents.
From patrol to prosecution, Lance knows the stakes. He breaks down what really happens when officers are thrust into the legal spotlight—where the headlines are loud, but the facts often get buried.
🔹 Why the real question in officer-involved shootings isn’t who did it—but why it happened
🔹 The fatal flaw of knee-jerk firings after viral incidents
🔹 What most attorneys don’t understand about defending cops
🔹 How the emotional toll on officers goes far beyond the courtroom
🔹 Why the “defund” narrative is falling apart—and what comes next
Whether you're wearing the badge or standing behind those who do, this episode delivers unfiltered truth about the legal minefield officers now face—and why specialized representation from people who understand the job is more important than ever.
🛡 From the streets to the stand—Blue Line Institute is in the fight. And so is Lance.
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
You talk about the reaction and the emotion. Let's start back with the reaction and emotion to the use of force itself. And if there's politicians listening to this, if there's police sheriffs listening to, administrators listening to this, I want you to recognize that firing an officer immediately is categorically, unequivocally, the dumbest thing you can do.
Speaker 2:Welcome back. Viewers, watchers, listeners. I'm your host, tyler Owen. We are recording our first ever podcast from our TNPA conference the 75th conference, I might add, from the beautiful Hyatt Regency downtown. On our third take.
Speaker 2:We have a few technical issues. We have a few technical difficulties but, believe it or not, we're recording this on an iPhone. Who would have thought technology has come this far? So we're going to try to get through this. Tony, tony Rock, my favorite co-host, what's going on? Well, thank you, tyler. So I am your favorite. I am your favorite you are my favorite co-host.
Speaker 3:That's good to know. Yeah, because you know I've always Bobby, trying to figure out how to do something with my hands. But since there's no video on this, I don't have to worry about it. You were on episode whatever.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I don't know. Yeah, it was kind of an ongoing joke. Tony was a guest host on a pretty emotional podcast episode with Michaela Burns. Oh yeah, anyway, that was a good episode. That was a good episode. We got conference In. That was a good episode. We got conference. In that conference we have guests that come in and, like I've said for the whole week, me and Kevin Lawrence last week on last week's episode mentioned that we've been trying to get this guy in for several months and he's at our conference and so what better time to jump on a podcast than now? Lance LaRusso, georgia's FOP attorney with Blue Line, blue Line Lawyer Institute and Blue Line Lawyer yeah, he's on our podcast. Hey, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 1:Third take I'm excited to be here. No, it's fantastic. We got all the flubs out, so we'll make sure that we do it right this time. It was a great opportunity to speak four hours yesterday to close to 600 of your members. It was quite an honor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, again, we can't thank you enough for coming down.
Speaker 3:Well, I was going to say I was going to do this at the end, but since this is our third take, I'll go and throw it out here right now too, because I'm sure Lance is going to plug his stuff. But if you haven't been to his website, look him up. Bluelinelawyercom I just got back myself and John Siriga, from a force forum, I believe is the name of it Out in Georgia super informative, super class, high-speed training. I recommend anybody listening to it. Look up his stuff and go. I think the next one is going to be in April, as always said, but I'm sure you'll get to that to the end. But that's where I've met Lance for the second time. But outstanding attorney and really good knowledge, lots of knowledge.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. Yeah, our first forum came out of just an opportunity to create a think tank for law enforcement officers and the attorneys who represent them. Any of the attorneys there are screened. They have to either be a member of like TMPA or FOP. They have to be an attorney who only does helping law enforcement. Now they may have other practice areas, but they had to be committed to representing law enforcement law enforcement.
Speaker 3:Now they may have other practice areas but they had to be committed to representing law enforcement, of course, and you know, before we I mean I'm going to jump on that also you know we get members who will call us and say, you know, my cousin's an attorney. You know, I just got in this incident, can you? You know, can my cousin help me? And truth of the matter is I'm sure Lance will speak to this and he's going to go over his background in a minute but you want an attorney who knows what you're talking about, who knows what you've been through, who understands what it's like to be in a use of force situation or even an administrative investigation. You want that expertise on your side. You don't want your cousin who's been doing real estate law yeah, great example.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to jump on that and give you a really good example. It was a horrible situation a few years ago and the officer involved and I laugh about it all the time so he gets into a situation physical combat guy had a gun and you wound up shooting and killing this guy. So it's the first time he's ever been involved and it survived the encounter. He's in the ER because he's got injuries. And it was not the FOP, it was not the TMPA and I'll let everybody else figure out who it was, but he was a member of some other organization.
Speaker 1:And the lawyer shows up at the ER and he's like, oh cool, a lawyer's here. He goes hey, man, you know homicides here, should I talk to them? Should I talk to internal affairs? And he said look, it's a holiday weekend, I'm just covering, I'm a real estate lawyer weekend. I'm just covering, I'm a real estate lawyer, oh God. And I'm like man, if I need a title search done on the place where I shot and had, you know, had to shoot and kill this guy, then I'll call you. But why are you here? He sent him at, he sent him packing and, um, one of his relatives is a uh, as a FOP member called me and we got involved.
Speaker 3:So that's real, it is real and it's. It's happened here in Texas as well.
Speaker 2:That's real, Well we generally like to kind of let the guests kick off of who the hell they are, and then I guess we'll start there who the hell is. Lance, how'd you get law enforcement? How'd you get?
Speaker 1:to where you are today. So I've been involved in law enforcement since about 1987. My first full-time job in law enforcement was in 1988. And we were talking earlier about looking out over the crowd. There's a lot of times that I'm looking at officers who I'm very proud to be able to speaking to, but they probably weren't around when I first started policing. My staff likes to remind me of that that they and got a master's of public administration at night and then really wanted to take it a step further. Always loved the law, always liked teaching, search and seizure in the academy, so I decided to go to law school at night.
Speaker 1:I like to tell people opposing counsel it took me four years to get through law school. I just don't tell them I worked full time and went at night. It's always good to be underestimated. I started that, graduated in 1999, and have been representing law enforcement as the general counsel for the Fraternal Order of Police since 2002. Wow, but since I got out of law school I've been representing cops. It's a passion, you know. I get to represent heroes every day. I got the best job in the world.
Speaker 2:Well, we were just talking about this is that you know you fit the profile, the perfect profile to represent cops. You know somebody who has driven the patrol car and worn the boots on the ground and I think that's important and it fits our profile. We at TMPA certainly like that profile with different attorneys we've got with Snyder, you know Greg Cagle, marsha Todd, and so I think it's important from your perspective from Georgia, looking at TMPA as a whole and Texas FOP, since it's somewhat of a marriage there. What's your perception on how we're doing things here, how it's different there in Georgia, and just kind of give us from your perspective how we're doing and what we can do better.
Speaker 1:So a couple of I mean, first of all, y'all are doing a great job, TMPA and the FOP, the FOP on a national level. You're telling your story. If you don't tell your story, someone else will, and Georgia suffers from the same problem that Texas does. And if you're listening to this and you're wearing a badge, don't listen to the noise. The public overwhelmingly supports you. You're basically listening to a couple of news stories that get amplified and magnified, like I gave the example of an officer I represented international news coverage. He gets cleared by the state, he gets cleared by the feds, and there was one paragraph article in our local newspaper and everybody else ignored the fact that he got cleared.
Speaker 1:Don't listen to the noise, but what you see is these small pockets of individuals that don't like law enforcement, and right now they're grabbing the headlines. So TMPA is doing a great job of telling your story, standing up for your members, and it's just like any other business. If business is having struggles, whether it's financial, whether it's marketing or whether it's just messaging, just like law enforcement it basically is suffering from a messaging problem in the United States. You can't sit in a closet and hope things get better. You have to get out there. You have to tell your story, you have to exemplify the good work your folks are doing, and that's the way you dominate the marketplace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. Is there a specific case that you think it's important to kind of highlight? For the patrol officer sitting in a patrol car right now listening to this, Is there a certain case that you kind of want to reference or kind of go over, Not so much a highlight, but just kind of a oh wow, this is a shocking situation?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So right now, the ambushes that are going on in law enforcement and generally, you know we had some officers in Ohio recently who were ambushed. One was killed. I'm hoping the other two survive.
Speaker 1:That's a perfect example where we back away from it in law enforcement because it's painful. It hurts us to think about that and telling that story that a bunch of law enforcement officers decided to take some time offline, which they're entitled to do. They get a lunch break like everybody else. They went and my understanding is they got a pizza. They went to a dead end road or an area that was rural. They sat there, they had you know, they're not doing anything differently than anybody at a big corporation does and somebody ambushed them and shot them. Telling that story, so the public really understands how it happens, because all they see is a distorted view from a few issues that come up. And then they're exploited, and even most of those are exploited and the facts are not really known. And once the facts are known and it turns out the officer didn't do anything wrong, well, it's no longer newsworthy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's true, tony. You got any questions for Lance, or Enough, because we cut this shit out.
Speaker 3:No, I mean you know. And talking about the ambushes, you know we recently had two here in Texas on our federal detention centers and Alvarado actually one of our members, one of my association members, up there was shot. Thankfully, yeah. So you know, thankfully he's going to be okay. But you know, it's that vocal minority that makes that noise. But I agree with you, I think the public does support us but because of the rhetoric and because of what you hear in the media and because of all the stuff that you see, it's that small group of people that seems to have the loudest voice, for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, part of the problem too is that law enforcement officers do not have a First Amendment right to speak their mind when they're in uniform, and that's a case going back, you know, a couple of generations Garcetti out of the United States Supreme Court. But that doesn't mean you can't speak when you are not in uniform. It doesn't mean you can't have your spouse and your family members speak up for you. And I want to kind of get back to this mindset issue. You talked about representing law enforcement officers and this is where I tell officers you have got to be a member of an organization that knows how to represent you. So let's say, you're charged with aggravated assault and you're just you know, joe Dude on the street and you go to a criminal defense lawyer. The criminal defense lawyer they can be the best criminal defense lawyer in the world and they understand the state has to prove all the elements of the crime.
Speaker 1:Were you there? Did you have a firearm? Did you use the firearm? Did you place the person in fear of receiving an injury? Did the person receive an injury? Who were you with? How did you get there? And now contrast that to a law enforcement officer involved shooting. They're standing there. When homicide gets there. You can take pictures of them. They surrender the gun. They tell you you can test the gun. They tell you who they were with and then they can look at the CAD system and find out how long you were there when you got there and why you came. So it is different. As I say, there is no whodunit in an officer-involved shooting. It is all about the why. 100% of the analysis is about the why.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually never really thought of it that way, that's true, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for 100%. Yesterday you made some also good points, and it was the reaction time. You know, oftentimes I was involved in a situation where another officer of mine did discharge his firearm, and it was the person ended up getting shot in the back and his first instance was no-transcript overtaken or reversed back to where they don't know that their body cam is even on. You know what I'm saying, and so my fear and you can weigh in on this is that how can we as an organization, a labor organization representing law enforcement, how can we push the message to our members that, if you are involved in a officer-involved shooting or a use of force situation, how do we want you to control that raw emotion? Because it can be scary, right, and we're supposed to be cops and we're supposed to be heroes and these tactical warriors, but you can't hide that raw emotion. And so what would you say to the patrol officer right now listening, how do you control that and how do you navigate around it?
Speaker 1:Well, it's okay to be human. That's the first thing I tell people. And I don't know if y'all have seen it I don't remember the name of the jurisdiction but an officer shot and killed someone and he calls for backup, he calls for EMS and then once that adrenaline starts to drop a little bit in his system, he just falls apart. And I've seen that with SWAT officers. I've seen that with military combat vets who have been involved in shootings. I've represented over 180 officers in shootings. I mean we've seen a lot of these different things.
Speaker 1:But for the people that are, you talk about the reaction and the emotion. Let's start back with the reaction and emotion to the use of force itself. And if there's politicians listening to this, if there's police sheriffs listening to administrators listening to this, I want you to recognize that firing an officer immediately is categorically, unequivocally, the dumbest thing you can do. Now, I know that may sound like I'm equivocating a little bit and I'm hedging my bets. It's stupid and here's the reason why it's stupid.
Speaker 1:You will never be able to interview that officer under Garrity to find out exactly what happened. And all of the noise, all the politicians, all the activists who want you to fire the person immediately tell them to shut down up. An internal investigation is not just about that officer's use of force. It's about your training, your selection, your recruiting, your culture. All of those things get examined. So if you yield to the political pressure and you fire somebody, you will never know what led to that situation. And if there is a problem in the agency, which all the activists are screaming about, you're never going to find out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we actually had that happen. Had an incident where two days after the incident there was a bunch of protests and stuff going on Sheriff comes out and fires several people, which I'm telling you they did nothing wrong. But as soon as you fire them, then what does that do to the public? It gives a perception that the officers did something wrong and they didn't, and so you know, luckily through they had civil service. So luckily through that process several got their jobs back.
Speaker 1:But you know, this administrator fired people forum that we had four years ago was entitled Political Prosecutions, and we know a little bit about that Now. At every one of our force forums we've always brought someone in, a law enforcement officer who's been through that ringer. You know we brought Garrett Rolfe in one time, we brought Betty Shelby in Just high profile cases. People were under indictment, wearing ankle monitors for two years, waiting for charges to be cleared, because I want the people there to see the human toll of that. And what's really amazing, when you look at those political-based prosecutions, at the end of that they wind up bringing that person back. They have to pay them back pay and they still don't know what happened. And what's really amazing.
Speaker 1:And then I've just been shocked by this I don't know how we got to a point where we have law enforcement administrators whether an elected sheriff or a chief that are not law enforcement advocates and they suddenly turn into these anti-law enforcement. We need to not do things better. Everybody wants to do things better. We need to completely change the reason we're doing it. They really don't have a reason why, and a lot of them are just building their resumes. They want to go somewhere else. So, more importantly, how did we get to.
Speaker 2:This is how do we get rid of these folks and turn them into Walmart greeters, because they're much more better suited to them out the political party affiliation with every single law, law enforcement or law justice type profession, judges, das, and maybe that can curb some of that. I don't know what the answer is, but speaking of politics, are you guys seeing the pendulums in Texas? Certainly swinging back. We're realizing that defunding the police and having these radical district attorneys it just doesn't work. Who would have thought defunding a police department or having these radical DAs that are not? They're soft on crime. Their crime rates are up in those communities, right. Who would have thought that? Yeah, shocking. Are y'all seeing a swing back in Georgia?
Speaker 1:We are and I think we're seeing a swing back nationally. So, as I've said, defund the police is the fastest conceived, implemented and failed social policy in United States history and at least they got a chance to try it and realize that it's failed Now that that philosophy of defunding and eliminating the police started around 1900. So there were people that were saying, well, you know, you really don't need the police. The police are the reason people go to jail, not because they commit crimes. It's ridiculous, it's it's it's silly, it's stupid. It's created by people who are either socialists or they failed eighth grade civics. And the bottom line it's interesting about the hypocrisy the people that are touting that typically live behind gated communities and magnetometers and have security, private security, guarding them while they're working.
Speaker 1:So I think in some jurisdictions you're seeing people who are continuing to push that, even though it's failed. And, as I say, you know, when your only tool is a shovel, you just keep digging. So I think that they're starting to have people vote with their feet and leave those communities and go to others that are safer. Now what's amazing is law enforcement was screaming and hollering about defund the police, not because they were worried about the funding. They were worried about the effect of defund the police on poor people and it was really amazing that you had folks saying we need to defund the police to protect people who are marginalized in society, when law enforcement sitting on the school bus stop and making sure that somebody's not recruiting your kids into gangs is what the function of law enforcement is, and the politicians that were screaming about defunding us. We're not going to do that, right? Yeah, I agree, I agree.
Speaker 2:Well, again, we are recording this at the TMPA conference. Lance, I cannot thank you enough for not only coming to the conference but jumping on this podcast, especially with all the debacle we've had with the technical errors. We've certainly worked past that and we look forward to pushing this out, hopefully next week if all the equipment kind of holds up. But do you want to leave our listeners with anything from Lance LaRusso with Georgia.
Speaker 1:Sure, a couple of things. First of all, if you are not a member of an organization, if you're in Texas, you need to be a member of TMPA and the FOP and support and get that background because you may need it. Hopefully you go a full career without needing it, but you cannot do this alone. Second is the training that you can get at these conferences is going to help you sharpen the tools in your toolbox. But the other thing sign up to bluelinelawyercom.
Speaker 1:Look at some of the webinars we've had. We're trying to tailor our efforts to exactly what law enforcement needs. We have our force forum next year. We have a blue line lawyer league. We're starting as a discussion group for attorneys who represent cops to be able to quarterly pick up the phones and say, hey, I've got this case I'm struggling with. But the most important thing I want to leave them with is stay in the profession. The profession is honorable. The public supports you. They need you and get your family members, get the community supporters, get the ambassadors that you've put through your civilian police academy to go to the town square, go to the city council meetings and talk about how great you are. Because we need you, and there is an absolute reason why you're here because you have a desire to serve.
Speaker 2:Lance. Thanks again, man, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, lance, thank you again. I hope I see you again in April in Georgia. Again, if you're listening to this, check out bluelinelawyercom, the Force Forum is definitely worth making the trip out to Georgia for, and it's just great training.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Well, this wraps up this episode. Before we end, I want to give a shout-out to our two chief sponsors here at this conference, the 75th TNPA Conference. That's going to be McLean Advisors and NEP Services, great partnerships, always loyal to TNPA. We could not make this conference without our sponsors. Look in the links and we will also provide our captain, sergeant and vendor sponsors as well, and we're looking forward to tonight. Tonight's going to be our banquet Never attended conference. I strongly urge you to. It's a great time, family-oriented, and it's just a good opportunity for you to network.
Speaker 3:All right, yeah, I appreciate that, tyler. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Come back, man. You need to come on anytime you can. Well to you, since we have the cell phone thing now. All right, deal, hey, you guys, take care, stay safe. God bless you and, as always, may God bless Texas. No-transcript.
