Chad: [00:00:00] Ineffective force has the appearance of excessive force, and so people will watch something ineffective and they'll lose confidence in what they're looking at, and they'll say, oh, this is such a mess. It must've been bad. It must've been unlawful. Then it'll get evaluated on a legal standard and it'll be found that it's not unlawful.
The cop could respond to whatever it is they're seeing. It becomes more of an internal issue, like the cop needs better training. He didn't violate the law, and people who don't know the law or the training just see the ineffectiveness of what's happening and they jump on it and go, oh, that must be excessive.
[00:01:00]
Riley: Today we've got Chad Lyman on here. And Chad. Chad and I met through Ari, uh, naan, who is a, was on a previous episode of, of the Go Earn Your Salt Podcast.
And we've struck up a conversation here. We've got a, we've got a, a similar background in Jiujitsu. and then I learned through Ari that, uh, the chat is, is the man to talk to about. Hands-on law enforcement training and what that means, uh, as far as, uh, juujitsu grappling and when stuff goes bad in a law enforcement situation on how to train officers to better handle themselves out there in the field.
So Chado, welcome to the show, man.
Chad: Thank you. I.
Riley: Uh, well, tell us about yourself, man. Uh, let us get to know you a little bit and where'd you grow up?
Chad: So, um, yeah, my name's Chad Lyman. I was, I grew up in Southern [00:02:00] California, in Phoenix, Arizona. Uh, I kind of split between the two, uh, through high school. I served a mission for my church for a couple years post high school. Came back, uh, married a gal that I'd, I'd known since I was young, um, and then been married now for 30.
Shoot, I got married in 1990 in the summer, so, uh, 35, 36 years. Uh, best thing I ever did there. Uh, phenomenal, phenomenal, uh, young woman and, uh, really grateful to her. She married me when I had nothing and. Um, had not achieved anything and then she's helped me and, and helped push me to, to, uh, achieve a few things even though there's nothing special other than, uh, trying to do a good job on a routine basis and doing that continually year after year.
Um, I've been very blessed so. [00:03:00] Married her. We had eight children together, so we have, uh, three daughters and five sons, and we still have one at home. Yep. And, uh, and just like I said, that's probably the single best thing I ever did, um, was marrying a, a, a good partner. Um, then, uh, as I, I went through college.
With my family, um, and with kids and working. And, um, once I got done with college, I, I settled on law enforcement as a career and that. I started that in 1998. Uh, started with a, a department up in, uh, Portland, Oregon. The Portland Police Bureau worked from 98 to 2004 with the Portland Police Bureau, and then I switched to Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in Las Vegas, Nevada.
And I still work for them today. And, uh, so I'm an L-V-M-P-D officer. [00:04:00] Um, in addition to. Starting as a police officer in 1998. By the end of 98, I realized I needed to, I, I didn't have a bad experience. I didn't get beat up at work. I, I didn't get beat up as a child. I didn't get bullied. Uh. In fact, uh, Nate and Nick Diaz, there's that famous conversation where, uh, they asked Nate if he ever got bullied.
Did you ever see this in an interview? And he says, he says, no, man. And they said, why not? And he goes, because I had an older brother and his older brother was Nick. And uh, uh, kind of a similar thing for me. My older brother was awesome. Great example for me. Very tough. Individual and, uh, uh, never, never really got bullied.
So that wasn't really an, uh, a question. I didn't start training because of bad experiences. I actually started training because early on in my [00:05:00] policing career, I saw that my day-to-day activities were gonna require me to put my hands on people. Um, that that was daily. Daily, I'm grabbing people's hands, I'm searching them.
I'm in close contact with 'em. Um, I knew that that could turn into physical altercations. Um, I grew up in Phoenix, in la I was used to physical altercations. That wasn't a problem for me, but I was untrained and, uh, uh, I always had lifted and ran. I was in good shape. I was very strong for my size, but I just didn't have.
Um, what I would call professional response, a trained response that's reliable to me, grabbing folks or having folks resist my attempts to control them. The only thing I really had was a, a. You know, just like any other untrained person, I'm just gonna be really aggressive and have the [00:06:00] mindset to win and I'm gonna just, you know, overpower this person and, and I wanted to actually be good at my craft.
And so I figured out within a few months that while I've always worked in busy areas for big police departments where we do actually have oass, I've never worked for a small. Inactive police department, there's nothing with that. If guys listening to this do, I'm not like, I'm not better than you. If you would've gone to my pd, I'm sure, and you would've worked at it, you could have the same success I've had.
But I've had a ton of success at very good police departments, and part of that was I realized early on I need to make myself better. And so that was my impetus to start training. Um, I, I looked for martial arts. That would translate to what cops do. And this remind you this in 98, 99, this is before juujitsu was even really a mainstream thing.
The [00:07:00] UFC's on tv. But this is your early UFCs, right? This is not even, this is still style versus style somewhat. In the UFC, you have wrestlers beating boxers. You know, if you remember the early UFCs, art Jimenez goes in, or I, I don't remember Art's last name, but he, he was a pro boxer. He comes in with one boxing glove on, one off, on one off, and gets taken, admitted.
Uh, these are those early days of true juujitsu guys, of hoist Gracie's versus other guys. And, and, and then you had the rise of the wrestlers and then, then you had guys who learned to wrestle and strike in that, those middle years. And now it's grown to this overall. So there's the early days and I'm looking for something.
And, uh, in that pursuit, I found a mixed martial arts gym in Portland, Oregon called Straight Blast Gym. And while some of the listeners may know who Street Blast is, some may not, but to [00:08:00] give reference, they're a worldwide organization that Connor McGregor fights out of a street blast gym in Ireland, for example.
Uh, they have gyms around the globe there. Headquarters it so happens is in Portland, Oregon. And I walked into that gym. There's a guy named Matt Thornton who runs that gym. There was a guy named Rob fois who became a dear friend of mine, Matt Thornton's, a friend of mine. I respect the guy. I loved the guy.
I didn't, I ended up going a little bit different direction in my training as just moving and things like that, not because I ever had a falling out. And um, that was the gym I started at. And from day one at that gym I was getting handled on a regular basis. And this is in 1998, late 98. Um, I didn't necessarily like it at first, uh, because I wasn't having any success.
I was a grown man, very strong, very physically fit, not afraid to fight, who was just getting [00:09:00] tuned up every day in the room. And, uh, but my wife and we had, we didn't have a lot of money. We already had kids at that time and I was a young rookie cop and she bought me six months of training at one time, which was a hardship for us.
And, uh, and I couldn't quit because I, I had to go. and this is just given that background on, on how I ended up in law enforcement and then in the training business and train and, and why I train the way I do.
Um, I know my microphone pauses for a second, but just to kind of finish up that thought. Uh, I was looking for some kind of training that them would relate to what I was seeing at work. And I actually looked at Kempo karate. Um, there was an old karate school in Portland that I went to for, uh, that I tried out because I didn't know where to look right.
And, uh, those guys were tough, but they [00:10:00] were kicking each other in the groin and throat punching each other. And I would say. What if a guy doesn't wanna put their hands behind their back, kick 'em in the balls, I'd be like, well, you can't just kick people in the balls, rip his face off. You know, it's better to be judged by by 12 than carried by six or carried by 12.
I don't know. They had this crazy saying and I was like, no, that's not true. You're gonna get arrested. Like, not only can I not do that as a cop, but you can't do any of the things you're teaching in class, like you can't.
Riley: Right
Chad: A guy approaches. What if he's asking directions he should have asked from across the street?
You know, it's like, no, that's not the way the world works. You can't pluck dude's eyeballs out just 'cause you don't like what he asked you. Like, so the Keo guys were actually tough, but they just weren't giving me anything I could do if a guy didn't wanna put his hands behind his back. I went to TaeKwonDo and, and I'm not ripping on folks.
If you're listening to this and you do TaeKwonDo and you love it, keep doing it. Not, not [00:11:00] applicable to a physical fight. It just wasn't, anytime we grabbed each other, they would stop. The Keo guys would grab your balls or try to bite you or whatever, you know, if you tried to wrestle 'em, which it still isn't giving me an answer to a guy trying to wrestle me because I can't do that out in the nor do I wanna bite these people?
Like, I don't know if they've seen the people I'm dealing with, but some of them are dirty and open source. I don't wanna bite that dude. So.
Riley: Hepatitis is
Chad: so then I walked into this MMA gym
Riley: gosh.
Chad: and uh, and saw that combination of striking wrestling. At that time, we weren't using the GI in the state of Oregon In 98 when I started training, blue Belt was the highest rank in the state.
There were a handful of blue belt guys in the Portland metro area and one blue belt guy in the Eugene area. All those guys kept training and they're now all black belts, multiple degrees. Some of 'em are probably approaching [00:12:00] like the belt change color from black to uh, I think red and blacks next. I think some of them were probably approaching that now after all these years.
But that my coaches were blue boats when I first stepped on the mats, but they could all wrestle and they could all box. And, um, we started wearing the gi um, and that from 98 to oh four, I trained in Oregon and I earned a blue belt. During that time, I was competing a lot along with working as a cop. I moved to Vegas in oh four.
Go to the academy again. I'm a blue belt, but I'm a seasoned blue belt. Like I've been on the streets in Portland for several years. I worked in a great area. I had a great partner. We were very busy. I had several critical events. Um, moved to Port, moved to Vegas, go through the academy, find a good school there in Vegas.
There's obviously some great schools. Even back then there were less. Now there's [00:13:00] even more. Find a great school and, uh, continue to train and eventually learn my black belt. In 2012 or my black belt, I actually get awarded my black belt at Extreme Couture on the mat. Um, by my original coach, one of my original coaches in Oregon, Mike Chapman.
Who I stayed in contact with and, uh, even though I had coaches in, in, in Nevada, I stayed in contact with my Oregon guys and still do to this day, still train with them. And, uh, was awarded my black belt in 2012 by Mike Chapman. From Impact Jujitsu, which is in Portland metro area. And then from 2012 on, I've continued to train.
As recently as this morning I went to the gym and trained, um, and I'll be 58 this year, still train and still doing live rounds. Um, started teaching for money in Vegas in oh six. Started getting paid as a coach, uh, professionally coached for a number of years, up till about 2017, [00:14:00] 2018, where I transitioned over to judging.
And I no longer coach any of the fighters. I don't do pro classic couture. If you were to walk into Couture today, even with the current crop of athletes there, they will call me Coach as I walk around just out of um, respect for me, I guess, for lack of better word. They, I certainly have spent zero time coaching any of the current pro pro guys.
Um, I don't go to team practice. I'm not around the gym when those guys are in the gym typically. Um, they may be working in some of the octagons while I'm doing a civilian class on the main mats, but they still refer to me that way, and so I'm, I'm grateful for that. It's kind of cool, but I was little. I dreamed of playing pro at pro sports.
I was just never good enough. But I coached professionally for a number of years for one of the better teams in the world. And, uh, yeah, from the early days at Couture at at, at straight [00:15:00] blasts to impact to COU tours, I've been around such great coaches and learned from them how to run a room. How do we run drills, how do we develop drills?
How do we, how do we train smarter so that we can train and be physical in practice, but we have low likelihood of. Creating injury. And for me, injury means I need surgery, I need to rehab it. Um, we're gonna get, uh, little bumps, bruises, little aches, little pulls, um, stuff like that's gonna be routine, maybe break a, a finger or toe.
But I wanna stay away from injury. And, uh, being in the environments I've been in where you have a guy who's in camp, he's gonna fight on, on a UFC show. Clearly you have to get him ready for a very real fight. But if you break him in the process and he doesn't get to fight, nobody makes [00:16:00] money. So the goal is now everyone's hurt.
Hurt has some sort of injury. They're fighting when they fight because that's, your body is constantly getting broken down and then you're rebuilding, broken down and rebuilding. But the goal is to not really hurt folks, and that translates over. Two.
Riley: Chad, discuss what you, uh, differentiate between injuries and I like to call tweaks, right? If you've been in jiujitsu, you're
Chad: All the time.
Riley: but it's, no, it's different than injury, right?
Chad: Yeah. So, so, and, and real quick, because I think a lot of, well, let's go into that first. Yeah. Your question, what's the difference? Injury means that something is broken and, and. I can still even work with broken fingers or toes. I can tape those to the other fingers or toes and I can lessen
Riley: Right.
Chad: on them.
But let's say it. [00:17:00] Well, I was gonna say a torn ACL, but I have a torn ACL. I've had a torn ACL for two years, and I'm still training every day. So, um, if I were younger though, I would get it repaired. That is an injury. I, I currently have an injury that I'm training with and I'm training around, so now I wear a proper brace to try to keep my MCL, my PCL safe.
I'm not an advocate if you have a torn ACL or a torn MCL continuing to train. It just so happens that I'm 58 and I don't want to give eight months to the knife. Because I can't get it back. I see this window closing for me. I tore this same ACL when I was in my forties and I had ACL surgery and had it repaired and came back from that, continued to train.
So an injury is something like a torn ACL, a ruptured bicep, a broken arm, a broken ankle. It's something that you cannot continue to train because you're either going to make it worse. And, and it just won't function. You can't, you [00:18:00] can't use it anymore. That's an injury. I need to go have surgery. And by the way, when you go to the doc for sports injuries, and that would be.
That could be CrossFit, that could be your, you play directly basketball and you have an inju, an injury, like a pull or a tear or you roll your ankle. I would recommend don't go to regular doctors if your insurance requires you to go to 'em, request a, um, request them to send you to a sports specialist.
And I, uh, my insurance allows me to go right to the sports specialist. So when my knees started giving me indications, it was Toni again. I didn't go see a family doc. I could care less that guy. I'll go see him if I have a temperature, I put right in to go to my guy who fixed it. Last time I, I went to a surgeon and he gave me an MRI and he diagnosed it and said, yeah, we gotta do surgery again.
Um, so, so an injury is something I need medical [00:19:00] intervention. It will not heal on its own. I cannot make it better. A tweak is common and all the time you should be tweak. You should be working out at a level that you're tweaked consistently or you're, you're not, you're not staying in shape, like just staying in shape will tweak you.
Riley: Yeah.
Chad: And tweaks are to be trained around.
Riley: That's right. I did a private lesson with a gentleman today this morning where his whole question was, he's got some kind of a ligament tear in the back of his shoulder back here, and he's had a hard time training, right? And so he wanted to know, is there a way he can continue? So we spent an hour just going over.
Different little ways that you can train with this thing, you know? And I had him, we were, we were grappling without our GI on, but I had him tie his belt
Chad: Correct.
Riley: his hand in his belt and grab his belt. then we just played around and he had to defend himself while I beat the crap out of him, you [00:20:00] know?
And I was, I was nice, but. That was the idea. It's like you're gonna learn how to defend now. You're not gonna win. you're down in a digit and he's a white belt and I'm a black belt and it's, he's not gonna win. But what he can do is learn a new skill
Chad: So a couple carry-ons to that. It, it, it's super important 'cause it, it'll force you. And I've done that. I've tied my own arm down. Until it felt better. If I, if I don't have to have surgery or I don't wanna have surgery, I'm, I'm like my ACL I'm not going to have surgery at this point in my life. Well, I'm just gonna brace up and keep training then.
That's my choice. Um, I'm smart with it. Um, today, and I even covered this in the debrief at Couture. I'm rolling. I get stuck in a weird position. I feel my shoulder tweak, sprain, whatever you want to call it. And I don't even know why my, [00:21:00] my, my partner didn't even have anything locked up. Uh, they were putting pressure on me top side and I was trying to build base and come up and rust up and my shoulder starts to tweak, uh, significant enough that I can feel it.
Almost like I'm gonna tap to the position to, to move it. 'cause I'm afraid I am going to get injured. I've done this so long. And then I take a breath and I, and I settle into the position we're in, and I realize, okay, it's not in any danger of breaking or going out of joint, but it hurts. How can I move to relieve the pressure in, in my mind, I switch and I go, if I was in a fight right now outside, I don't get a call.
Time out.
Riley: Yep.
Chad: So how can I slow this down? My other arm, I, I hugged their weight. I got a tight waist and hugged them into me, and then I moved enough till I could get my shoulder out and start to move again. My shoulder is sore right now doing this. Just sore. It's gonna be sore tomorrow, but I finished a round and then I did two [00:22:00] more rounds and I didn't tell anybody until the debrief and the person I was rolling with when it tweaked.
Oh, coach. Sorry. I didn't know. I go, I know you didn't know you didn't do anything. I didn't tell you. My point is if I'm in a fight outside, do I have to work around it now? I, I told 'em like, I'm gonna tell the audience now. If I had felt it tear popped out, that's a whole nother thing. I would stop. Don't be a crazy person, don't be an idiot.
But at the same time, if you'll train and work through tweaks, you can feel when it's a tweak and then you just go, okay, I can roll around this as long as you'll train through it. The people who take time off 'cause they are uncomfortable, but they're not hurt or injured. Or the only, if you go, if you were to go to a family guy and he goes, oh, okay.
My medical diagnosis is you have a sprain. My, my treatment for you is just to sit around. That's the worst thing you can do in the world. [00:23:00] That's horrible for you.
Riley: Worst. Yeah.
Chad: And I'm not mad at the family doctor. He doesn't have a background in this and he doesn't want to tell you something that'll make it worse.
So he'll just tell you, just stay off of it. Worst idea ever. Just work through it. You go to a sports guy, he is gonna have you stretching that every day. He is gonna have you roll it out. I'm gonna roll this out tonight. I'll stretch it,
Riley: Yep.
Chad: with intention tonight. Um, depending on how I feel, I might take something, uh, I'll wake up tomorrow.
I'm gonna need to do a stretching routine tomorrow for this arm. 'cause I gotta train Monday.
Riley: Try.
Chad: So I until Monday to make it feel better. And that's the goal and I'll work through it. Kind of the last thing on this discomfort thing because there's a big reason cops don't train or civilians quit training.
Um, I'm active in my faith 'cause I enjoy it, it serves me and so I'm active in it. I certainly don't need to talk [00:24:00] about what it is or try to convert anybody else. But I do have a church group that is my age that I meet with.
[00:25:00]
Chad: I have a faith I enjoy, I go to it. The only reason I bring it up is because I have guys my age there. So sometimes the guys my age will say, we don't understand how you're doing all this training and how do you do it? And you're our age. Aren't you sore?
Aren't you getting hurt? And so then I used to try to explain to them. The difference between injury and pain and all that. Finally, what I said, it just came to me one day. I said, well, what about you? How do you feel? Oh, I got all these aches and I got all these pains. I'm on high blood pressure medicine. I get winded going upstairs.
The stuff you're feeling is normal if you're, I'm either gonna kill myself on the couch 'cause we're all dying, or I'm gonna kill myself in the gym. But it's up to you and your time on the couch will be significantly better. If you'll go to the gym, you should be sore from the gym. You should not be sore [00:26:00] because you no longer do physical things 'cause you tore your Achilles in eighth grade or whatever stupid story you're telling yourself, oh, I used to work out until this, I used to do this, I used to do that.
Now do we do it differently than. Uh, if you rolled with me 10 years ago, 11 years ago, it'd be a different experience than it is today, and I can't get that back. That is what it is. But I'm gonna keep rolling. I'm gonna keep working out. I'm gonna keep, I've actually gone through this stage. It used to be that I could train really hard in the MMA gym hard rounds.
Whether it be jiujitsu, nogi, MMA, rounds, striking whatever, uh, wrestling, I could do really hard rounds and just stay in shape. What's interesting is I've gotten older is I have to be intelligent with my rounds. I still can do hard rounds, but it's all relative, and now I have to [00:27:00] do anywhere from two to really, three or four is a sweet spot.
Of body weight exercises, lifting and cardio work. Uh, on a treadmill where I'm walking at 58, I don't run around my neighborhood. I don't run on the treadmill 'cause that will beat the crap out of me. I walk on an incline and I walk for anywhere from 30 to 50, 55 minutes. And then I also do, uh, weighted exercises all for reps.
There's not even a three to five rep heavy reps anymore in the weight room. It's all 10 or more, 10 up to sometimes 30 reps of whatever I'm doing with good form. I'm doing body weight, stuff like crazy. I can't do enough body weight, squats, pushups, sit up, crunches in a day. I can't do enough of those. So tho I'm working those in when I'm at work.
[00:28:00] Um, for the pd, I'm in a unit. Where some of it is office work. I have my own office on the hour, every hour. If I'm not out in the field, I have to get up and do 10 air squats, 10 pushups, 10 crunches, and then get off a couch in my office and do, um, um. Tricep extensions, um, I have light dumbbells in my office.
I'll get out and do 10 dumbbells, uh, 10 curls, 10 tricep extensions on the hour. On the hour. I'm doing three to four exercises of 10 to 15 reps every hour that I'm in the office,
I
and so I can do that. I can do that just in my slacks and my shirt for the day. I'm not getting sweaty.
Right.
But I'm doing 10, 10, 10, and I have to do three to four exercises.
10. Well, if I do that on the hour and I just do the 10 and then [00:29:00] move on, it takes me three and a half minutes, four minutes, and then I'm mixing in in the evening or early morning Juujitsu or MMA, and then I'm mixing in walking on the treadmill. So does it take intention? Yeah. Do I have to be disciplined?
Absolutely. Do you have to be on it? Yes. Am I sore? Yeah, I am. Yeah. Every day my biggest injuries are in my sleep. Like I wake up tweaked, you know, not on the mat. So it's not like I can avoid these injuries of old age. I, I, I'm sore, but I'm capable. Like my wife and I went to a cruise to Mexico. Um. I could go everywhere we want to go.
I could go on long hike outings throughout a city if we wanted to get off the boat. Um, I'm able to do all the stuff that, you know, I used [00:30:00] to do. It just might take me a little bit longer
the difference, right? You can be sore just like the other guys, but you are not getting winded going up the stairs, right.
and I don't have, now I'm on TRT. Uh, I'm on that with blood work, under a, under a physician. Um, I do some, um, peptides once again under the help of a, I have a sports guy that I do my TRT through that checks my blood work. That tells me of, Hey, I use this peptide when I do get a tweak that won't go away.
It's persistent. I might use a, a combo peptide or something. So. I am spending money on wellness, but I don't have blood pressure medicine. I don't have, uh, I'm not depressed. I don't have psychological medicine. I'm not, you know, every guy in my church group is on a med. They're all paying outta their [00:31:00] pocket, but they're also outta shape, you know?
And I love these guys. I'm not mad at 'em. I'm not talking trash about 'em. But every one of them,
reality though.
every one of 'em wakes up sore every day. You might as well be working out. Every one of 'em is paying for me
It's
medicine.
right?
Yeah, I'm paying too. But the nice thing is the Jim, I haven't paid for an MMA or jujitsu membership since 2006, and I basically get paid every time I show up.
So the gym's kind of nice. It's source of income for me, but.
Chad, let's, let's back up the timeline here a little bit and back to when you, you graduated college and you went into law enforcement. What originally got you into law enforcement?
So I knew when I was young, I wanted to either teach and coach well when I was very little, I thought I'd be a pro athlete. And then, um. Once again, like when I look back at my lifetime, I've just been very blessed to [00:32:00] be really good places with really good people. Everything I've tried to do. So my high school sports teams were actually really competitive in a, in a big classification, in a decent sized city with good sports.
And in my mind, I want to be a pro athlete until,
I think
and I played high school ba I played. Every major sport that I played in high school, there were guys that went to the league in those sports that I played with. So one of my buddies I played baseball with. Two of 'em went to the majors and played in the majors, not minor league, they played major league baseball.
Um, one of my buddies I played high school basketball with, played for the Boston Celtics and started, uh, three or four of the people I played high school football with, played in the NFL. So once I start getting around guys at that level, I start figuring out, yeah, you're not gonna play, you're not gonna play D one, let alone any of those places.
So, um, I was like a junior college [00:33:00] T two athlete. And so then I transitioned in my mind and I thought, okay, I'm gonna teach and coach. I'm gonna be a firefighter, I'm gonna be a cop. So I coached high school football and high school basketball as an assistant for a few years with very good programs. Uh, loved coaching.
Didn't want to teach, definitely didn't wanna teach middle school or elementary. No desire. If I went into coaching, I wanted to coach probably collegiately or higher. Um, and I just, I don't know. I, I love coaching and that's ultimately what I did professionally, but I didn't know, I, I didn't even know MMA wasn't even a thing, so that wasn't an avenue.
So I looked at teaching coaching also. Um, the reality of. We wanted to be a one income family. Uh, we wanted my wife to be able to stay home with our kids and, uh, I didn't know if I could do that as a high school teacher. [00:34:00] And so that would be another push that I would have to go beyond high school if I'm gonna coach.
But I just didn't want to teach to be honest. Um, then, uh, I, I tried firefighting and I was a firefighter for a year. I graduated firefighting academy and was a firefighter for a year and hated holding shore. Whenever something was happening down the street, I wanted to go down the street and fight people.
And uh, and, um, that was firefighting was primarily a medical profession. You were primarily caring for people who got in car accidents or they fell down or they couldn't breathe. And firefighting is really, you're, you're, you're, you're doing stuff in the field, but it's medicine and then you're transporting 'em to facilities.
To be medically treated. That is the majority of your job as a firefighter. There were some structure fires not that many, and even the way they handled those over the years has changed. I did some wildland [00:35:00] firefighting 'cause I did some reserve work and then I graduated academy and I actually worked for a p for a fire department.
Um, just didn't like it, man. And, uh, switched over to the dark side. Um, went on Ridealongs with my brother-in-law, who was a cop at the time, and, uh, crazy stuff with us that like this is years and years and years ago. Um, now that I am a cop, like he didn't even, we didn't even fill out paperwork to ride along.
He would say, meet me on the corner of such and such, such such. At this time and we would go down there and park our car and get out of our car and get into his police car and we would never even meet his boss. So I know he wasn't even signing us in. This is back in the day. He's no longer a cop. He can't get in trouble, but he was literally just driving us around and we were chasing people and we'd get outta the car and do a foot seat.
We run with him. And that was when I was like, oh crap, I gotta do this, this, this is amazing. Um, [00:36:00] so.
Oh, that's
Uh, my, my brother-in-law exposed me to law enforcement. I looked at the military. Um, all the stuff I would've wanted to do in the military was not conducive to being with my family.
So, so then after doing ride alongs with my brother-in-law, uh, Fred Cutson, great dude. He was a Glendale, Arizona cop. What's interesting about those times. Out of those of us who jumped into that car and rode around with him, like there were, there were four or five of us between, between my brother and his brothers who would ride along with Freddy. And three of us became comps. So,
Oh wow.
um, and then over time we've had eight members of our family become active law enforcement. With, um, those guys serving in various departments. One of us had been [00:37:00] shot in the line of duty. One of my brother-in-laws got shot.
Phoenix Gang detective, uh, got shot in a critical instant, was able to continue on, and, uh, the bad guy, uh, didn't survive that event. Uh, ended up taking his own life, but they, he didn't stop fighting 'cause the guy shot him. He went after him and he and his partner got the guy trapped in a, in a park. then the guy chose to take his own life.
So from that, those first ride alongs we've had, Freddy started it in our family, Fred Cuthbertson Jr. great older brother, uh, to his brother's. Great, great older brother to me, in essence. Um, and then since that time we've had multiple serve as police officers in different cities. And do everything from leadership to homicide, to swat to gangs, all from those early ride alongs with him. And, uh, [00:38:00] other guys have become great police officers. And now we have some of the kids of those guys are now cops too, including Fred's own son, is a, is a SWAT cop
It's amazing.
Surprise, Arizona, of the other brothers who joined and is still active as a cop. His son is a cop in Utah. Um, so lots of public service on the law enforcement side from those early ride-alongs, and that's what got us hooked. So then after that, I focused more on that and then went to college, earned my degree, and got on with the Portland Police Bureau. And that's been a true blessing, man.
Yeah, sounds like a crazy good, uh, recruitment tools, those sounds, those ride alongs.
Oh, dude, it, it,
Um,
We
could you.
Yeah.
I, I've done a couple of them, man. And, and actually I, I went the other way. I realized I don't have the temperament for it
Yeah. Yeah. There's
'cause I,
That's So
good for you. That's good [00:39:00] for
I wanna,
Yeah. For
yeah, it's a tough thing to admit, but.
didn't think would, one of the things that I didn't think would be amazing 'cause I kind of got hooked on, on finding the bad guy, chasing him and getting in the mix. One of the most amazing parts of being a police officer all these years is actually meeting people in the community. And so I've worked predominantly poor areas or bad areas of Vegas, bad, and I did the same thing in in Portland. And what I've learned over the years is kind of what I learned growing up because we didn't have a lot of money. Um, but it, it never got emphasized. 'cause I had great parents and then I had great family dynamics and I was playing sports. But when you get into these communities and you get on a street that's got gangsters that live on the street, but other folks live on that street or a drug house, a dope house, the [00:40:00] other people on that street are good, normal people, they just don't make a lot of money. And oftentimes they're extremely hardworking. And extremely extremely faith-based. Uh, they are phenomenal people who don't have the ability to move for whatever reason, or they're not gonna move. And, uh, you start appreciating those people and the, the media and the political nonsense. Towards law enforcement, in my experience, has not been what the communities actually want of the people who live in those communities. Um, there are
Yeah.
when those people want more policing. I've had them tell me, just take those guys to jail. There's the bad guys right there. someone who owns a home. The ones on the corner, they're the bad [00:41:00] guys. And I'm like, well, I know. But constitutionally, they can be on a corner and they're like, well, screw that.
Just go get 'em. I'm like, I can't. They're like, you should go smash all those dudes. And so when you're working for those
Right,
and you start to develop, um, trust with those people and those people will actually talk to you you don't burn them because they have to live there. So they tell me, Hey, this guy's really
right.
Well, I don't run over to that guy and tell him, the neighbor over here in the house said, you're really active. And I don't even use, I have to then go and do my job and try to surveil this guy and try to get a look at what he's doing. Just 'cause someone says he's doing it doesn't make it true. It could be, maybe they don't like each other, but it doesn't take very long. And I've always had the drug dealers and the gangsters say to me, 'cause I've worked in, in gangs, I worked in swat, I worked in, um. Counter-terrorism. [00:42:00] I worked in these different units where we were targeting, I worked in the street crimes unit and we're targeting crime. And uh, sometimes the bad guys would go, why are you talking to me?
Why are you stopping me? And it might be they're slinging dope. And I would say, well, how does the dope or know to ask you for the dope? Like, how does he know how? Why doesn't he just go ask else? Do you think dudes are
That's right. Yeah.
you to buy dope? And then they would realize, ah, crap, I really can't talk about this.
Or I'm gonna have to admit I'm slinging dope. And, but I would see the change in their eye and I would go, what makes you think I can't watch you and see the same thing? The dude wants to buy heroin seizes. I can see the same crap. I just don't wanna buy heroin. I'm gonna arrest you, but I'm not randomly talking to you.
And it's certainly not because you're black or brown. I'm talking to you. The same reason a white dude from. From Summerland drives over here and talks to you [00:43:00] 'cause you're doing behaviors that make it known that you're gonna move something. And that's why I'm talking to you. So don't be mad
Right.
This is the business you're in. I'm in the business of,
Yep. You earned it.
grabbing, snatching dudes up who are doing what you're doing is not racial. It's certainly not personal. We don't know each other. But how does anyone know to stop their car on this block? How do they know to come knock on this door? Like, do you have a sign that
That's a good point.
I go, you do if you know what to look for, but I can look
Yeah.
just like a dope fiend can look for it. So don't be mad at me that you engage in behaviors that make it known that this is who you are. And that could be a gang. want to stand on a corner and look at people a certain way. I want to. to take certain postures.
I want to have certain words or challenges I throw out, well, if you're gonna live that [00:44:00] lifestyle, don't get mad when the gang unit wants to talk to you. Like you should actually be kind of proud of it. You're making it, it's obvious you're a gang member. That's why we're having a conversation. So don't make it something that's not, and guys would generally shut
Yeah.
point, you know?
Chad, when you see this stuff in politics that that, what, what does it do to the average officer as far as how they think about those day-to-day interactions with criminal behavior?
Does it create hesitancy? Does it, does it hinder the, just their,
S
mental place when they're going into a dangerous situation?
it, it, it can, but it, it, it shouldn't, and I tell guys this all the time. As a police officer, you need to know what you can do, when you
Hmm.
it. And then you need to do what you, what you are trained to do and what you're allowed to do. Because even if, even if it gets challenged on the back [00:45:00] end. I can defend it much easier if I'm doing what they ask me to do, what they train me to do, and I'm doing it the way they train me to do it. So we have a mix of things that I see. It does have an impact and, and we, we will tackle this in two ways. Number one is the general overriding. The thing you don't understand when you jump into law enforcement is you, you expect bad guys are gonna oppose you. That's kind of like. that's gonna happen, but it surprises you when you're, when politicians or the public or your own department opposes you, and really that's a ni that's you're naive.
You're not, you just don't understand the way this is gonna go. The policing agency or the policing industry, uh, they're gonna be true to themselves. When I joined Vegas Metro, they gave me a P number. [00:46:00] Uh, I'm identified by my P number and my personnel number. For me, it's a four digit number for our new guys.
It's growing to five, or might even be six now 'cause I'm a real senior guy, but mine's four digits. The reason I have a P number is because when they're not happy with me anymore, they could get rid of me. I'm a number, but that's true anywhere you go. Like if you go work at Sears or you go work at. Neiman Marcus, or you go work at, name the place.
If you're no longer Apple, you're if, if you do something that's counter to what is gonna benefit Apple, they're gonna try to get rid of you and they're gonna try to run you over. So sometimes cops act like this is the only place that happens. It could happen to you in the private sector as well. And in fact, I would argue it could almost happen to you with less protection depending on. How good your department is and how good your union is [00:47:00] now. So there's part of that that officers, when they first get exposed to it, get so freaked out about it. They say, well, I can't do anything. That's not really true. Uh, the reality is though, that anything you do might get challenged and so you should have that mentality.
That's one of the reasons I started training. I also studied the law extensively. I studied. I can and can't do extensively I go on a call, I know when I can enter the house and when I can't, uh, I know when I can see something from somebody I know when I can get into someone's pockets, when I can get into a vehicle when I can't. So having that knowledge allows me to operate, um, more confidently, for lack of a better word. I also know it could get challenged any point, and I just have to be ready for that. That's the one part. Riley, I can't [00:48:00] see you. Can you hear me?
I.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you.
can
We've got, we've got you. You've been a little choppy for a second, but you're, you're okay.
thing though, that is really impactful, Riley, to your question on how does it affect cops, the second thing is you can. I put a real damper on whether or not I'm going to, um, certain things. I'll give you an example. When I first started as a police officer, if someone was going to kill themselves and their family called in and said, Hey, Chad's over at this house, think he's gonna kill himself, and we can see Chad inside the house. Chad's alone in the house, he's pointing a gun at himself. We would start interacting with Chad and try to get him to put the gun down and we'd try to work through it. [00:49:00] And we would try to actually take Chad into custody for a civil evaluation 'cause Chad needs help. But in that process, Chad turns the gun towards us, gets himself shot. Well now the family says. Hey, we called you to help him. You killed him. We're gonna sue you. That was kind of part of the job for a number of years Now, das have started going, and courts have started saying, well, killing Yourself's not a crime. So even though Chad's in his own house, he has a knife, or he has a gun, or even Seth out loud, I'm, I'm gonna kill myself.
Ain't gonna shoot myself, leave me alone. I don't want help. Well, that's not against the law. So what the courts started doing, especially out where we live in the ninth circuit and on the west coast, is they started saying, if, if Chad doesn't commit a crime, why are you using force? And they started saying, that's an unapproved use of force.
It's an ill [00:50:00] unlawful use of force, and we're going to arrest and charge you for the death of Chad. you caused this shooting. He eventually did point the gun at you, but he wasn't even committing a crime and you guys are bugging him. So you're contributing. So we for, this is an example of how this can change law enforcement public changes or pressure. My department's current SOP standard operating procedure. I'm suicidal in my own house and I haven't threatened anybody and I don't have criminal history. I lawfully can have a gun. We're driving away. We're not doing anything. go there and ask Chad, Hey, you want help? Nope. I don't want anybody's help. And in fact, if you stay here, I'm gonna kill myself. Okay? We're gonna leave and we leave because the problem is if we push that the same people who called us now call for us to be fired, indicted, [00:51:00] sued. And so it's, it's not a law enforcement problem. It's a mental health problem. That's an example of how, another example is, um, George Floyd happens and they say suddenly, okay, well carotid restraint shouldn't be in law enforcement. So the state I live in passes legislation says you can no longer do carotid restraint. Not in deadly force, even as a police officer, it is unlawful in the state of Nevada. To apply a car restraint to another human. It's a crime. It's not a policy violation, it's not a, of force policy. It's a, it's a crime. What we, my agency used to do 20 to 30 applications of car restraint a year, typically with no injury to the bad guy, and we could get him into custody. I applied a carative restraint years ago on a guy trying to get a knife out. Who had a scabbard [00:52:00] butch, big buck knife in a scabbard had his hand on it.
My partner was shoving the hands down in saying he's got a knife. He's trying to get a knife out. I shot a carotid restraint in while we train it a certain way. I got it. The way we train it. I finished it. The guy went to sleep. We cuffed him. We didn't have to kill him. We didn't even hurt him. He woke up.
Right.
He was in handcuffs. That option's gone for me. Because of society. Okay, well now we'll shoot that guy, but you created this. Mr. Legislature, you created this. Or I'll batter that guy so badly that he loses consciousness, maybe has a traumatic head injury because I can no longer apply a car or restraint. And so in those ways, it affects law enforcement significantly. think some of it is self-imposed by the officers. They just get so, um, [00:53:00] think it's so shocking when it happens to guys for the first time that the
Yeah.
turns on 'em and the, the, the community turns on 'em when they have someone. You know, he is coming after him with a knife and they shoot him and everyone says, oh well the shootings, you should have done all these other things other than shoot 'em. And I, I think for guys it's overwhelming and it contend make them stop working. I've never had that reaction. And I encourage guys not to have that reaction, but I also encourage 'em to be smart. Anything that's legislated. anything they're trying to indict our guys on, we're not gonna do that anymore. And so have to decide. 'cause in Nevada it was a, you know, we have lawmakers and those lawmakers are not being held to account. Well, they took away an option from us, which actually is safer for the bad guy, [00:54:00] but they took it away for political purpose and to make a statement and all that a thing that happened in another state. And it's like, okay, so kind of depends.
Chad, I, I would love it if, for the audience sake, you could paint a picture of. What happens psychologically, physiologically, because you, you've got this unique perspective where you, you were in law enforcement before you trained juujitsu and now, right? And so what's, what is the difference between what goes on in your, your mind, in hands-on situation as a trained demand versus an untrained.
Yeah, and I can even compare that to guys who don't train, who do the job, right? And they get into these fights. The difference is, I, I, I talk about the cs, and the only reason I talk about the CS is it can be easier for people to recall. [00:55:00] I'm more confident and my confidence is born out of training. It's not false. I'm more competent, meaning I perform at a higher level. Okay, so, so those two things play closely together. I'm more calm because. I'm competent and I'm confident when I'm confident and then I start doing stuff and it actually works. It, it allows me to be calm. in general, I'm rarely elevated. And by being effective with low level force, I can deescalate the person's level.
And then finally, I'm actually more compassionate because I
Yeah.
like to have. weight on you, and you need to be dog tired. I know what it's like to get cross faced hard. I know what it's like to get punched in the face. I know what it's like to feel like I'm going through a grater with a [00:56:00] guy putting pressure on me, hammering me. know what that feels like. And so,
Yeah.
um, it's, I understand what I'm doing to the other person. And what it does is it allows me by being more, more competent, more confident, more calm, more compassionate. It really improves my communication with the bad guy where I can start having effective verbal calms with him.
'cause I'm not overwhelmed by the fight. not overly emotional to me. The fight's not overly, I might still feel a little adrenaline or whatever. I, I almost don't feel it much anymore. Um, but I might. You know, um, still feel a little bit of tiredness, but I'm familiar with that feeling. I might get hit hard.
I've been hit hard a lot, I'm familiar with what that feels like. That familiarity allows me to [00:57:00] be able to not be overwhelmed or try to think of how to solve the problem. I'm doing stuff I've already trained to solve the problem, now that frees up my bandwidth. Emotionally and mentally to begin to communicate with this person and tell them, Hey, this is how this ends. This is how we get through the, this is how you know, uh, you know, Hey, take that pressure off me. Uh, Hey, no problem. I'm going to buddy. Let's get your right hand this on and I'm grabbing, put it behind your back. Let me cuff you up and then we will, we'll work through it. Well, I didn't even do it.
This bullshit. Hey, no problem. Let me cuff you up and then we can have a conversation. I promise you I'll have a conversation. The cuffs can come off if, if, if, if we're wrong cuffs are gonna come off. You keep fighting me. I'm, I'm telling you right now you're resisting. Now you've got a thing, you're not gonna get out from under, just let me [00:58:00] finish whatever it is, right? I can have that clear communication. So it, it dramatically changes. It also, by being trained, I can be, I don't wanna be a thermometer. I wanna be a thermostat in chaotic events for both my team and for the bad guy. A thermometer just matches the other person's temperature. Well, that's not gonna do anything to control what's going on. I, I
Right.
to be a thermostat. gotta have the ability to run the temperature in the room. So I gotta have the ability to slow it down, and I gotta have the ability to go fast when it's time to go fast, and I can set that thermostat for my buddies, even if they don't train by communicating with them.
Hey, slow down, put your weight on his legs. Pin his legs down. Hey. I need you to that shoulder towards you. [00:59:00] start giving them the answer to the
Yes.
train I can actually verbally talk them through it. Now if you already train, if you and I had to take guy into custody, I would just say, Hey brother.
Uh, neon top. Neon top. You know exactly what that means. You could go there. Hey, gift drop this guy, let's turn him. You could do it right now, and you're not a cop. That,
percent
really extremely useful,
[01:00:00]
Chad: So yeah, the key, once you're calm, you're, you're confident, you're competent. You, you have better communication with your team and with the bad guy. And so you can talk to your coppers and you can tell maybe a less trained officer good things that they should be doing, and you can tell a, um, tell the bad guy things to calm him down.
So it just. Really allows, if you have trained behavior, uh, you won't think of what to do in the middle of a fight. You either know how to fight or you don't. It's, it's like saying, okay, I've learned a few words of Spanish and I'm gonna go talk to a Spanish speaker and they're gonna talk, start talking [01:01:00] fast and moving from one topic to another, and I'm gonna be able to communicate with them.
It's silly nonsense. And these guys who don't train. Who know they're gonna put their hands on people then go down range and put hands on people and you're never training it. Why would you think you're gonna be good at it? You're not gonna be good at it. Um, it's, it's, you're gonna, you're going to struggle.
Now, that doesn't mean it's unlawful. That doesn't mean it's just ineffective. And ineffective force has the appearance of excessive force. So you'll have forces.
Riley: Oh, that's a good quote. Say that, say that one more time. I don't, I don't want that to go.
Chad: Ineffective force.
Riley: To get
Chad: Ineffective force has the appearance of excessive force, and so people will watch something ineffective and they'll lose confidence in what they're looking at, and they'll say, oh, this is such a mess. It must've been bad. It must've been unlawful. Then it'll get evaluated on a legal standard and it'll be found that it's not unlawful.
The cop could [01:02:00] respond to whatever it is they're seeing. It becomes more of an internal issue, like the cop needs better training. He didn't violate the law, and people who don't know the law or the training just see the ineffectiveness of what's happening and they jump on it and go, oh, that must be excessive.
Well, it's not. I, I would argue if I punch a guy 32 times in handcuffs and he's not injured, like out, like needing cert, he's not near death. It's ineffective now. It doesn't mean it's correct. It doesn't mean it's correct and I'm not advocating you should be able to do that. But just 'cause something doesn't look good, that's when people lose their confidence in what the officers are doing and that can happen with your own chain.
Think of the chain of command at at, at a law enforcement agency. In the past it was certain they didn't change. They didn't train 'cause Jiujitsu was new. I am [01:03:00] older than Brazilian Juujitsu has been in the us so think about what I just said. I
Riley: Real.
Chad: ju Juujitsu in the US is not 58 years old. It's it's newer. So every guy who was born here that achieved their black belt has, has done that in anywhere from 10 to 12, 13 years, 14 years, whatever your path was.
It's been in the last three decades, four decades, that Americans started earning black belts in Juujitsu, maybe five decades. You got the dirty dozen, the early guys before Keith, the Chris Howers and stuff, those guys were in the seventies and and eighties. They were earning black belts. And you know, now fast forward to today, so I, I am older, the UFC really brought Jiujitsu.
Into America. Not that it wasn't [01:04:00] happening in garages or on small levels, but, and then even, even the early UFC did not, it's only been in the last 20 years, two decades. It's really taken off and in policing, I was doing juujitsu in 98. Nobody was doing juujitsu. That was a cop in 98, except for other guys like me.
There were a handful of us. Right. But departments weren't adopting it. So then fast forward to now, now you finally have some administrators who are training. But imagine the administrator isn't training. Um, they're watching this cop try to do dts. The cop's dts are horrible. The administrator loses confidence when he is looking at, but it's still not unlawful.
It's just ineffective, and that ineffectiveness erodes everybody's trust in what you're doing. If you're effective and decisive in what you're doing, people tend to go, okay, well that's probably what should happened.[01:05:00]
Riley: That's an interesting way you put that. 'cause I, I think of my dad would watch me grapple with people, right. And gosh, I think I was a purple belt at the time. Right? But he, he would come down once in a while and sit in the gym and just watch me and he would kind of get laughing 'cause he's going, man, what, what you're doing. It seems like you could be so much tougher. I. I'm, and I'm saying, dad, but I'm still winning, man. Are you, are you You aren't feeling what that other guy is feeling. Right. And there's a lot of, I'm, I'll be super calm and just tuning some new guy up. Right. And I can do basically what I want. My dad couldn't see it though.
And he's going, well that guy, you know, it just seems like he's, he's, he's coming at you really hard and you're just kind of. so calm and it seems like more aggression is necessary. And I'm going, man, it's just not, I don't think you understand, you know, you, you're not feeling the pressure that I'm able to put [01:06:00] on him from different positions and take his balance out and do these things.
So for me, I'm, I can move very competently 'cause I'm way more experienced than the other guy. Right. And that quote you said really is hitting home with me about, um, you know, and again, I'm, I'm trying to remember how you said it, but ineffective force looks like excessive force, right.
Chad: Ineffective force, the appearance of.
Riley: it's beautiful
Chad: so then you look at, think of the new guys. You got a white belt in the gym today. You can just make him quit with position and pressure. People quit all the time. This idea that I would never quit. Stop it. I can make you quit right now. I, I mean, for one thing, I could just go, okay, well, we're gonna do burpees.
You have to do a burpee every second. Ready to go. You're gonna quit. You can try your hardest, you'll quit. You'll reach your limit and you'll quit. Everyone quits. What I try [01:07:00] to do through position of pressure and competent use of force is, is get the guy to agree to quit, and most guys will. There are those special guys out there that they're committed and they're not gonna quit.
They have some dog in them. That's one. One level of guy that might not quit. And then second guy is he's so mentally ill that he believes quitting is not an option. And then the third guy could be a combination of the mentally ill and now he's high or he is just high and he believes. He cannot quit. Um, those guys, it becomes important that you are using effective force.
You're probably gonna lose that fight. Um, they've done study after study. Those guys don't really, like, even cops say, oh, he had superhuman strength. The studies indicate even people high on hallucinogenics don't have super human strength. They're doing what we could probably do if our mind didn't tell us we couldn't do it.[01:08:00]
They're doing what we're capable of. But the problem is they keep doing it until their body's just done. Our body will naturally tell us, A, you can't do that, or, B, you're too tired. Stop doing what you're doing. Like slow down. They're, when they're under the influence of those drugs, what's happening is they just don't have a governor and the studies have shown they're not strong.
I could lift a car too if I actually believed I could do it and put everything into it. And, and you're physically able to do far more. And, and I was not in the military. I'm not a Navy Seal, but, but I have someone who worked for me on the private side at, in the business I'm a partner in, and a thing for them was when you think you're done, you have, you have 40% probably left and you have 30 minimum, you are not done.
You think you're done. And that's what they try to. Spring out in their people through the [01:09:00] things they put 'em through is you're not really done. And I think you people also get there depending on narcotics or mental illness. And so if I can learn to at least get to really good positions where I'm, I can be dominant and I can put a lot of pressure.
Now, it doesn't matter how crazy you want to be, um, you're gonna be crazy from an inferior position. I ain't gonna wear you out and then I'm gonna handcuff you or, or if you're a big enough threat, I'm gonna have to do some damage and I'm gonna be in a better position to do the damage than if I allowed you to get on top of me 'cause I can't fight.
So the training really makes a difference.
Riley: Talk to officers who are listening to this man. Talk about. Talk to them about the need for training, man. What? What they need to do.
Chad: So you mentioned earlier, what's the [01:10:00] effect of the political and the um, just the climate the scrutiny officers are under. So if, I think everyone would agree with me in 98 stuff. You could do in 98 that people would go like, ah, it's part of being a good guy and a bad guy. They no longer look at it.
There's far more scrutiny. And I think some of that's good. I think there's nothing wrong with that, especially if we as an industry look at ourselves and find areas we could get better at, such as training, you know, and training effectively so that we can effectively take someone into custody, uh, in a professional manner.
That's not bad. That's good. My, my emphasis to officers is, do you not think there's gonna be a lot of scrutiny when you use force or violence on another human being? Don't complain about it. That's, that's the reality of where we're at. Some of that is to our advantage because it forces us to be better than if they didn't [01:11:00] scrutinize us.
We should be scrutinizing ourselves, we should be looking at ourselves. 'cause ultimately. Ultimately what allows me to be more calm and what allows me to slow the pace in a physical confrontation with a resistive individual is my competency and my ability to be successful in those spots. And my ability to be safe, safe in in, in spite of the fact there is a threat.
There's a threat. It's a viable threat. There's no guarantee I'll win. I might lose, even though I train, I might lose. So why train it all? It's so that I can at least be competent and it's so I can also address in the after action process, I can address what I felt from the bad guy, what my training experience tells me that is, and then why did I select this option to apply during the fight.
The reality is the courts [01:12:00] even say, I don't even have to be right. I just have to be reasonable. What does that mean? What that means is if I got a guy who turns away from me and he begins to do this, and now he comes out like this with a cell phone and I believed that was a gun and, and it was a gun call and he was known to be an armed robber, and we, uh, and I'm pointing my gun at him, telling him, don't reach.
Don't reach. I think you're getting a gun. Don't do it. Show me your hands, and then he flips out with the cell phone and points it at me as though it's a firearm and I shoot him. That could be a reasonable use of force. There's gonna be a lot of people who get upset about it. But then on the back end of that event, when I start talking about his behaviors, his body language, how his hands moved, uh, me recognizing, uh, a drawing platform, me recognizing him, uh, cell phones are used like this.
Like this. Maybe he wants to video the encounter, he would've done this instead, he punched it [01:13:00] out in a two-handed. I can go right back to training and reps and go, this is why I interpreted what he was doing as this. And, and as long as that's reasonable, um, well then that's a requirement. And so being trained allows you to not only be in control during the event.
There's going to be an extensive after action review process, and that is part of this job. And by the way, that's a good part of this job. Like go do something else. If you don't wanna be critically reviewed at the end of you're taking people's freedoms away, you're taking, you're using force and violence on another human being.
You better get critically reviewed at the end of those processes. You better stay within the legal guidelines that, that, that guide those processes. When you're out there, this protect and serve thing gets a little trite for me. And especially when we have these guys who go up to cops and they're trying to get the cops to use force and [01:14:00] they're talking trash to 'em on camera.
'cause they know, they know a little bit of the law and they think they can say whatever they want and really they can. And I'm gonna drive away from that. But you know, those guys are, are just goofy. These, these YouTube auditors, uh,
Riley: These
Chad: grow up, go get a real job, whatever. I don't really care about that. I'm gonna get no play with them 'cause I'm gonna ignore them.
But let's say it's not an auditor and it is an actual event. Public review of your events is a good thing that should happen. Accountability for the force or violence you use on civilians is a positive part of the process and necessary and correct when you train.
Riley: Yeah.
Chad: allows you to go into rooms and have a real conversation about what you saw, what you didn't see, what it meant to you, what you knew at the time of use force, what you didn't know, [01:15:00] what the law requires, what your training is, what your department SOPs are.
All those things come together and you're able to, um, give a clear accounting for what happened. If you're untrained and you get into an emotional, crazy fight and you just say, oh, well he was resisting and I was fighting and I don't even know what happened. Well that, that doesn't allow for us to get a true review of the event.
So my cops who train are not using, uh, force outside of training or law. They're not, they're effective when they use force and even when they have to use high levels of force. We're able to easily talk about why and why it was reasonable. And we're not, we're not making it up. It's because the cop sees it, they identify key things and then they're responding to those, to those things, and they understand what's happening, um, and then they're [01:16:00] responding to it.
So training assists you in all of that. My first use of force I got sued on and I got beat up on the stand on was prior to me really diving into what can I legally do and what can I not do? And um, I knew I'd done fine on the event, but I didn't know off the top of my head our use of force model. I didn't understand off the top of my head use of force case law.
And then when you get on the stand, you're not allowed to read it. They ask you, officer, what does this case law say? I didn't know, and I had to admit, I didn't know. And then the, the attorney for the plaintiff who's suing me is like, well, what else does this guy not know? How do we even have any confidence in anything he did to my client?
And he made me look foolish. And, uh, he raked me over the coals. Now ultimately, I've not done anything wrong in the case, and there was no criminal liability. But, um, I went through that process [01:17:00] in my, I was, uh, I'd been on the department under two years. I'd already started training jujitsu and uh, MMA and that told me, well, that's not enough.
I have to be well-rounded. I owe it to the people I'm putting hands on to be able to sit on that chair.
Riley: this is a good thing you're saying, man, because that, you know, whether people are formally these YouTube auditors or whether they're just a civilian recording a situation going on. Where the, the police encounters with these auditors that make YouTube are the ones that go wrong,
Chad: Yeah,
Riley: overstep their bounds.
And so we've been talking a lot about the hands-on training, but you're talking about the legal knowledge training. It is just as important.
Chad: it's vital and so. I'm at a stage in my career now where I'm, I'm a re, I'm a recognized SME in court uses of force. And so when I go to court and the other side is suing and they see me as an expert, they don't challenge that I'm an expert. [01:18:00] Uh, they stipulate typically. Well, the first few times I did it, I had to talk about my training and what I've done and what I've been involved in, and why am I an expert?
Well, now I just present my CV and I haven't gotten challenged in years as to whether or not I'm an expert. And, uh, that's another thing that'll happen. These guys will watch these videos online and they'll want me to comment on them off a video and I'll say, well, my, my opinion is I don't know anything about.
And they'll say, oh, you're just on the cop side. I said, I'll say, oh, I, I'm not on the cop side at all. I, I don't know. I would actually have to under, well, there's a video. The video shows the video's from across the street doesn't even have the same vantage point those cops did. The video has no, has no sound from the people fighting.
You have no idea what they're saying. The video doesn't have the call details. The video doesn't have anything that happened before the video started. The video doesn't exonerate the officer and it doesn't, uh, end [01:19:00] item him either. It's a piece of evidence that's valuable that shows there's a fight, shows who's in the fight.
It does show questions we might wanna ask, but it doesn't say anything. And I say anybody. Anybody who gives an opinion about a video online and says, this is my analysis of this case doesn't defend these, they have no idea what they're talking about. They just expose themselves. I'm a former cop. I'm a former FBI agent.
Lemme give my opinion on this piece of video. You're a clown unless you were involved in that investigation. And you talk to the bad guy. Also, flip it around when political, um, conservatives try to say what the bad guy's motive was, absent the bad guy saying it, which does happen absent the bad guy announcing it or having a manifesto.
Oh, well this guy was a terrorist. No, he might just be a reto. [01:20:00] He might just be an idiot. He might just be stupid. Who firmly believes in the cause he's protesting. And you may not agree with his political views, but he may actually think he can resist a cop with physical force and just understand that he can't.
He may literally believe he can. Well, it's 'cause he's a terrorist. I don't know if he's a terrorist now, if he's saying I'm a terrorist and death to these people and these chanting things that are very terrorist centric, uh, that's a key piece of evidence as well. To try to cement that later, but like the ice shootings and, and, and, you know, people have huge opinions and they started texting me, what do you think of this shooting?
This shooting's good. This one's bad. The one with the car, there's this, oh, look at this new one with the car. Look at this new one with the guy who was a nurse. The guy with the nurse was, uh, this was his aim. And to all those, I've DMed people and said, here's my opinion. There's a lot of [01:21:00] questions to be asked for both sides.
We can see there was a, there was an encounter, but we're also talking about one city in the nation that keeps having these. Why is that? Why is that? And they're not even the top. Minneapolis is not even the top ice arrest in the nation. That's in New York, that's in la, that's in Chicago. The amount of arrests in those cities dwarf Minneapolis.
We keep having shootings, so it's all ice Now. I don't know that it's not, maybe it's that field office, but that's a lot of investigation. What are, what does that field office do for training? I don't know. What does that field office know about the protests they're going to? I don't know. I'm not in those briefings.
[01:22:00]
Chad: That's why these things take time. Can I look at an event that's public? Eric Garner. Freddie Gray in Baltimore, um, um, the guy in Minnesota, um, can I look at those events and go, Hey, I got a lot of questions. Yeah, no problem. I got no problem with that. But for you to look at a video and go, this is what happened.[01:23:00]
That just shows you, you don't do this for a living. It's like you watching heart surgery, a heart surgeon, and going, oh, I know how it went wrong. I know where the surgeon made, I know where the guy. Where it went south, you don't know. Now you might be able to hear machines beeping. You might be able to see a graph change, and you might be able to see people's intent change.
You might see blood suddenly appear where there was no blood. So you know something happened, but you don't know what happened. You're not a heart surgeon, nor do you have the ability to investigate it. But I got all kinds of,
Riley: That's
Chad: got all kinds of opinions of pop uses of force. Oh, I can just look at the video.
If you're a cop and you think you can look at the video, it just shows you don't do this professionally. And that's okay. I mean, and if you're not a cop, you, you have no idea what you're talking about. Now, that doesn't mean what you're looking at is okay, it doesn't mean that. But for me to identify what it is [01:24:00] now, I will watch those and think in my head, this is what I would look at.
You know, this is, this is. You need to know why that happened and I can do that, but I'm, I'm even careful with that.
Riley: before, it's, it gives you
Chad: Yeah. I'm even careful with that publicly though. 'cause people will take that one thing I'll say and then they'll go, oh, well he said this was good or bad or, so I got into back and forth with one guy to the point where he starts sending me hate dms and going, well, now I see you're the enemy and stuff.
And I'm like, dude. And I, I tell the guy. Hey, send me your cell and I'll literally have a phone conversation with you. I'm not gonna text all this stuff back and forth and I'm certainly not gonna do it publicly, but I'll actually explain to you how police use of force works. Call me, I'll call you. This is a random dude.
He's got a fake username. I said I will literally take time outta my day and have a conversation with you. And he had a very specific question about one shooting, and I [01:25:00] said, and I would tell you what I would look at and the answers I would need to know on both sides. No, I, I don't have any desire to do that.
You're just trying to stick up for the cops. So finally he starts telling me I'm the enemy and he hates me. And so I'm like, Hey, dude, you're following me. You're popping up on my feed. So I just banned the guy. But that's the, you have on these things, you have these crazy opinions and it's like, Hey, I'm not saying it's okay.
I'm not saying it's not okay. I'm saying it's. Anytime you shoot somebody, we need a very significant review of that case. We need to figure out what went right. And by the way, there's gonna be things that could have been done better. Doesn't make it criminal, doesn't mean it's not, but there's gonna be things to learn from each one of those events.
So let's do a full review. But that takes time. You don't know what,
Riley: Yeah, for
Chad: because you watched it. You know, it's just ness.[01:26:00]
Riley: Chad, in a, in a perfect world, what would the training time versus the working time look like in for a law enforcement
Chad: We, we need to get more like fire, uh, the firefighters. And what I mean by that is we need to start, um, um, training every single week at work. Two to four hours a week every week. Hands on, not diversity class, not, not a form of deescalation is effective. Low level force. That's one of the biggest forms of deescalation is when I grab you, I convince you by the way I grab you and how effectively I grab onto you that this doesn't need to go anywhere else and you allow me to handcuff you.
That's a form of deescalation. Okay, so two to four hours a week, every [01:27:00] week nationwide, it is part of your work week that you will train, and the training will consist of grappling, striking weapons, team tactics, all those things, and you have to do it every week, and it's part of your work week. That is what needs to happen in some.
In some departments that's happening. Some departments are allowing their cops to train every day at work. Uh, the standard currently is annual training. So think of that it's once a year. If you're a biannual is another standard quarterly, and you're a great police department four times a year. So how would my juujitsu look four times a year?
Yeah, it'd be ridiculous. Be silly. It's goofy. C over T equals R. Consistency over time gives you a result. C. [01:28:00] Consistency over time gives you a result. If you consistently over time do not train, the result is you become less competent, hard stop. There's no way
Riley: It. Yep.
Chad: cannot stay the same in any aspect of your life.
Spiritual, emotional, physical, fitness, financial stability. As a dad, as a as, as a husband, as a partner, whatever your preferences are, um, academically, um, you're combatives, you don't stay the same. You're always getting a little better or a little worse. The only thing that will determine long-term progression is consistent.
Consistent over time. Repeated training a little, a lot. Not a lot a little. Law enforcement training is a lot, a little. I go to an academy that's six months long. After that six month block, I enter the [01:29:00] workforce. Now I train annually, so I trained a lot, a little that does not produce proficiency. Training a little a lot produces proficiency.
CTLs are. So we need to not, it's one of the big arguments is should we do GST? Should we do EFC? Should we do PJJ? Should we do OSS, which is a program back east, which is phenomenal. Who's training with, uh, Rob Mcal, who's a Keith? He is a black belt. Rob me, great guy. Should I do this system? I don't care what system you do if you're not training consistently.
Because none of your people are getting good at it. The only way to get,
Riley: It's gonna work
Chad: the only way to get good at any of it is to train consistently over time. And uh, my [01:30:00] department trains pretty well, more than most. We're still not where we should be, and that's okay. I worked for a very good police department. I love the department I work for, and I love the people there.
And I've only been blessed by being here, but that doesn't mean we couldn't do better. One of the areas we could do better is the frequency of our training. So the industry is broken in that regard. Very few departments, less than 1% are training even every week. If you didn't know, how often do you think
Riley: well that's what
Chad: if you didn't know, how often do you,
Riley: was perfect
Chad: often do you think without, what would you assume?
I'm required to do with my handgun a year in life fire. What would you assume? My department trains a lot. So what would you assume now?
Riley: have a little bit of inside knowledge with, I don't know about your department, but, but around here, and I, I [01:31:00] kind of think that's changed recently, but it was an annual qualification test and that test
Chad: Yeah. But did that surprise you?
Riley: rounds and they had to score 80%.
Chad: you when you found out? That's what it is.
Riley: It blew my
Chad: Yeah. Did you assume we were getting to shoot on a pretty routine basis before you knew?
Riley: I, I, a hundred percent
Chad: I believe people think we train all the time, and that's why they'll be like, this cop didn't deescalate. Or he didn't shoot.
Well, they're trained to do that. No, they're not. They're absolutely not. But the average person assumes. If you didn't know before you knew, did you think I could just go shoot kind of whenever I want that the department must have a range and I can go up there and shoot my gun? Yeah, absolutely not The department,
Riley: Yeah, not the
Chad: that range is being used by other people.
You can't just go up there like absolutely.[01:32:00]
Riley: You know, it was an interesting thing. I went down. When it was still open, there was a place out outside of Vegas called Front Site you're probably familiar with, right. And I would go down there and train a couple times a year for, for a season there. Several years I did that and you know, we'd get lined up in the line and I'd get, oftentimes I'd get partnered with somebody from law enforcement and I'd see the gamut there.
I'd see guys who literally had to be shown way to put the magazine in the gun Guys who were really super competent shooters, all of them coming from the law enforcement background, you could tell the guys who took time on their own to train,
Chad: hard to see. Not hard to see.
Riley: man. Chad, can we move on to some lighter questions as we start kind of landing
Chad: Sure. Yep.
Riley: Okay, this is called, uh, called the Go Earn Your Salt podcast. Just like my
Chad: Cool.[01:33:00]
Riley: Go earn your salt. Okay. Um, when you hear the phrase go earn your salt, what does it mean to you?
Chad: Uh, probably. Doing those little things, whether you wanna do 'em or not, it probably means discipline. Like, uh, you know, I, I going your salt would, would indicate to me that a commitment or a discipline as opposed to a motivation. Motivation is motivation fades in all aspects of our life. Um, I married my wife years and years and years ago.
Uh, and the, the newness and the excitement of it being new and being super attracted to her and having that be new was crazy exciting. Uh, the deepness of earning over the years, a relationship with her, [01:34:00] uh, that happened long after the newness faded away. Long after I saw the newness of her and me fade away, she used to say to me, I think you're perfect.
And it used to scare me 'cause I knew I wasn't. And I thought, what is she gonna do when she figures out that's not true? And when I let her down or I disappoint her, or I don't do what's gonna happen, then oh, you always do the right thing. I don't always do the right thing. Now. I used to be worried about it, earning your salt.
A fact, she loves me and I fall short. And the, the motivation and the butterflies left a long time ago. But that's what that means to me is, is you have to earn this. This is earned by consistent, ongoing, daily, uh, doing what you need to do. Regardless, whether you wanna do it does not matter what you want.
Doesn't matter if you're motivated. [01:35:00] Motivation is fleeting. It's not even a thing. I could give a crap about being motivated. Guys will say to me, oh, I'm motivated after hearing me talk. And I'll say, well, be committed, be disciplined. Be motivation means jack. Squat with earning your soul. It's about a commitment.
It's about a discipline. It's about continuing to.
Riley: Beautifully said. what is your favorite pastime?
Chad: Well, I've got a few, um, spending time with my, my wife and my family. Training for sure. Training, spending time with my wife and my family, uh, reading and then, um, even like scripture study. I enjoy that too. So pretty much, those are kind of things I like to do.
Riley: Right. Chad, what's something quirky about you that people don't know?[01:36:00]
Chad: I'm not technologically, uh, I'm so bad that it is horrifically bad, and they used to call me stone. And even back in the day in gangs and swat, because I would hand write everything, warrants, everything, and you could jump on computers, get a template and all that. And I, I just, I am broken. Um, I'm broken as far as technology, I, I'm horrible.
Riley: It is like called just stone, like stone age. Is that what the,
Chad: Yeah, they would joke about it and say, Lyman will need that written out on a stone tablet and then. I got papers everywhere. I got stuff written down on papers. I still do a Daytimer that I carry around and I write in
instead of just keeping it on my phone, which you could totally do, which a lot of times then I [01:37:00] take it from there and put it into my phone, but I have to have something that I have physical that I can carry around. Yeah, it's. Everywhere my bag has that. My bag's got weapon systems. I got a bag everywhere.
So quirky.
Riley: What's, uh, what's your favorite food?
Chad: Probably Mexicans food. Yeah.
Riley: Yeah.
Chad: Or Thai food.
Riley: That's a, that's a good choice, man. You got, do you got a favorite thing within the Mexican food
Chad: No, I like it in general. Yeah.
Riley: Yeah, I, it's funny 'cause you say that and I can think about 10 things. I would just happily eat outta the, just instantly. Right. Um, Chad, what is the scariest moment of your life?
Chad: I dunno.[01:38:00]
I don't, I don't know. I've got, I've got a phobia of heights, but it's not, it's not, um, it's not based on a phobia of heights. It's not based on anything that's not real. Like, like I joined the rope rescue team in Portland to overcome it and did everything required and got certified in swat. I would repel and come outta helicopters and stuff and I did all that, but I hated it and I'm scared the whole time.
I hate it. I got a phobia of the dentist, but the thing I'm really scared of, um, probably as I get older, um, not being physically competent is probably pretty scary. I can see that ability to. Fight start to leave. And I don't like that at all.[01:39:00]
Riley: Yeah, that's something we all have to, especially in the martial arts world, have to reconcile. Right. It's like a constant battle for
Chad: Yeah. And for me it's, you know, I gotta protect my, my family and, and that kind of thing, so, so I get older. I don't like that aspect at all.
Riley: Yeah. What's the best advice you've ever received?
Chad: Uh,
well, a couple of 'em. One is, uh. Build a relationship with God and with my savior, Jesus Christ. It's been really rewarding for me. And then, uh, the most important person, [01:40:00] the most important decision you're gonna make in your lifetime is, is your partner. And, uh, that's definitely proven to be true. And then if you choose that person and you find that person, um, you need to remember who they are and you need to keep them.
There, um, be true to them. And, uh, I can say I've never pursued, like I have zero nervousness of someone ever coming to my wife and saying I'm texting them or I'm pursuing them. Like that just has not happened from the moment that she said yes to me. There's not a female, and I'm not weird with women. I talk to women at church or I talk to 'em at work and I have women that I would even consider friends or whatever.
But none that I talk to on a regular basis. I don't text him and I don't call 'em, I don't have any relationships that are significant with a female outside my wife,
Riley: I got some guardrails built
Chad: [01:41:00] and that's for me. It's not, it's not like, you know, that's how that stuff starts is, you know, you're upset with her. If I'm upset with her, uh, if she's irritated me or I've irritated her. Stay focused on her, that's not gonna go to somebody else. And, uh, not that, not that someone else wouldn't have good intentions to help or something, but that just don't do that.
I got told not to do that. I got told, don't ever talk about her disrespectfully even to your parents. Um, if people ask about it.
And I've said that over the years, and then it's proven to be true. Like I say it now and I mean it, um, I even meant it when we were first married, but you have those first few arguments or something happens that irritates you. Being true to that has been very, very important and, uh,
Riley: That's
Chad: been [01:42:00] good.
Riley: That's awesome. Chad, what's the, you, you mentioned you're a reader. What is the, your favorite book of all time?
Chad: Uh, scriptures.
Riley: Side scriptures we're, uh, just as far as like recreational type reading or, or self-improvement type reading that, that sort of a thing.
Chad: Um, yeah, there's one on fat. It's on the tip of my tip of my tongue. Um.
Golly, I, I've got it at my at work. It's on my desk. Um, I like, I like stuff that talks about, um, it talks about mindset and talks about, um, working through things. Uh, man Search for Avenue is a pretty good book. [01:43:00] That's an example.
Riley: Yeah, good one.
Chad: that one. Books in that kind of genre. I'm, I'm currently reading another one.
I, I, it just escapes it.
Riley: Are you talking about Man's search
Chad: Masters for Meaning. Yep. Really good one.
Riley: Yeah.
Chad: Um, that's a really good book. Um, that is one of my favorites. So be right up there just with how amazing Victor Franco was in being able to deal with the things that were happening and still find the meaning, right. That's really good book.
Riley: Yeah. Yeah, I read that one last year. I really, that it's incredible. Absolutely incredible. Um, what's, what's next for you, man? What's, what's, uh, where are you going from here?
Chad: So I'll finish up my career. I, I don't know when, for sure that'll be over and then I'll continue to coach and train. Um, I judge fights for the Nevada State Athletic Commission. I'll get more into that and, uh, I'll keep working once I leave [01:44:00] law enforcement. You know,
Riley: If, uh, if people wanna find you out in the interwebs, where can you be found?
Chad: so I'm on, I'm on Facebook, Chad Lyman and C four CPJA. I'm on, um, I'm on YouTube with Chad Lyman and also PFC training, Paul Frank, Charlie training. Um, and then on Instagram. C four CPJJ, and C four C operator. But if you Google me, I'm probably gonna pop up on a few spots.
Riley: Will, um,
Chad: I'm a few spots. Then our webpage is PFC training as a A webpage and also c4, C PJ J uh, c4, CCP jj.com, PFC training.com.
Both those that you can find. Firearms, tactical training, physical training.[01:45:00]
Riley: Wonderful. sure and list them below. Okay. That way people can find you there. Um. Listen, man, we're gonna wrap it up here. It was awesome having you on. I, I just love the wisdom you're dropping, dude. And it's, it's so informative to see what life is like from the other side of the badge. Right. See what goes through an officer's head and all the stuff going on behind the scenes and did, you're a wealth of knowledge there.
Chad: Well, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.
Riley: Yeah, man. All right, Chad, go earn your
Chad: Yes, sir. Thank you.
[01:46:00]