I get to give back to a city who gave me everything. This place is special to me. One person's poor interaction affects the perception of this career. We sometimes think we know what they go through every day and what they deal with and we don't. What's the biggest misconception around police officers from South Bin to Evansville and everywhere in between. This is Get In, the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today.
I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation. All right, folks. Mother's Day is around the corner and I'm going to help you get prepared. Ditch the Amazon or Target candle and get mom something from Warm Glow Candle Company. They're based out in Centerville, Indiana, and they make some of the best candles I have ever smelled. They have made my house smell unreal.
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Today, I'm joined by Chief Chris Bailey, a 27-year champion of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, who has dedicated his life to protecting and improving the community he calls home. An Indianapolis native with deep roots on the west side, his passion for law enforcement is evident in his innovative leadership and commitment to building strong police community partnerships. Today, we're going to get to know the chief, talk through some of the hot topics in the community, and learn how IMPD is thinking about recruiting the next generation of law enforcement officers. Chief, welcome to Get In. Hey, it's great to be here. Man, I am uh I'm pumped about this one.
It's funny. Uh they were outside waiting to get into the studio and you know uh my neighbors kind of popped out like, "Is everything all right here?" And uh no, yeah, we're just recording podcast. So, not every day do you get um two awesome uh law enforcement officers that stop by the studio. So, thanks for coming. It is is so great to be here.
I watch you on online. So, actually to be here and be a part of this is amazing. Let's go. That is that's big praise. And I think that uh a big piece that I wanted to start off is getting to know you, right? So, you are now the chief of police for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
You have been in that role for a year now, but for 27 years, you've been serving the community of of Indianapolis. And I think that is a testament to uh I would say generosity to the community, right? Like that's not an easy role to fill for 27 months, let alone 27 years. So take us back. When did you know that you wanted to be a police officer? Well, first of all, I get to be the chief of Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
I get to serve a community that's done so much for me. So I feel like I'm one of the luckiest people to ever walk the planet. So but it started for me. Uh I I can't not remember a time when I did not want to be a police officer and I can't I really can't explain that like I can't say my dad was or my grandpa was or uncles. No, it just something was in me and there's you know Chief Taylor always used to say previous chief this is a calling and I believed that I believe that some people are called to certain things and I was called to to do this. I had some great people to look up to, cops that I interacted with as a lifeguard for Indie Parks from about the age 15 to 18.
They came in and out of the park. So, I saw them. I established relationship with them. I went on ride along starting at 18 with specifically officer Greg Weber, Officer Don Spiegel. They worked my neighborhood. They worked on this police department.
Both of them worked the street their entire career. Not only did did they find me, but I found two of the greatest mentors uh that a person could ask for looking to get into this world. And so they really drove me in uh drove me to get to this to get to get hired, but I've always wanted to be the police. And I I I can't explain where Well, and I do want to touch on one thing that's uh kind of a funny point that I was kind of like fretting with before. And I was like, do you say cops? Do you say police officers?
Like is one of them more is like I didn't want to be like disrespectful and say okay so here's like a cop like is there like a terminology that you guys prefer? No no there's a couple that I don't prefer but but you know cop or police officer officer that no all that's fine. Amazing. And so you talk about that career progression right? Um, so working the street versus being a detective versus as you work up, I'm sure there's less time in a car, you know, patrolling and more time, more paperwork, right? Like as you go up.
So, what's like the traditional progression through a police officer's career? Yeah. So, you start as a recruit officer. You're in training. We pay you the entire time. You're in training for six months.
And so once you graduate from the academy, you go sit with an officer in a car for another four months, another month by yourself. Then you're a patrol officer. That's your rank. That's your job. And usually anywhere you're you're going to be in that patrol car work uh working a beat on one of our six districts for at least three years. The six districts, can you outline that for us?
I'll go around the clock. So north district is where we're at now. Encompasses where your studio is. And then if you go clockwise, you have east district and then southeast district, southwest district, northwest district, and then the heart of our cities downtown. Gotcha. Okay.
So, one central core and then five districts all around there. Yes. Uh and you said that the the north district spans pretty far, right? You said from county line to county line across the top. So about downtown. So, old north side, 16th Street approximately or interstate 65 on the south, north all the way to Hamilton County, west to approximately Ditch Road, and it kind of zigzags down to Michigan and Crown Hill Cemetery, uh, east to throughout Gist and Lawrence into Lawrence.
Well, it stops at Lawrence is his own jurisdiction, but it'll go around Lawrence to the entire Gist community. So, up in H up near Hancock County. So, Wow, that is that's a ton of approximately 85 square miles just for North District alone. Yeah, we're a big city. People you forget about that. And and big as in like expansive geography, right?
Yeah. Uh and that's like one of the things that is a uh beneficial to the city of Indianapolis is that you can keep growing and suburbs become more uh urban and you know, you keep expanding, but it's also I mean a ton of the infrastructure and and you know, when you think of districts and things like that, that's a ton to cover. Um, so so you take us to you start as a patrol officer and are you out with a partner, you know, patrolling? Yeah, you're you don't have a we're we're single person cars, so you don't double up. And there's occasions where you you may do that, but 99% of the time, like for podcast appearances. Yeah, that's right.
I got to have a handler. You can't go anywhere without Absolutely. Especially me. So you you're you're working a beat in one of one of the districts and you know a lot of people stay more than three years but we don't really let you apply for any other jobs until you at least have three years on. So if you want to be a detective then we want you to have three years experience as a patrol officer working a beat those type of things. And what does a day in the life of a patrol officer look like?
You come in at roll call. 5:30 a. m. is day shift is when it starts. 1:30 is when middle shift starts. 9:30 is when late shift starts.
So, usually about 10 to 15 minutes, if there's something more, if I come to visit, maybe 30 minutes of time where you're getting instruction, your supervisors are seeing you, you you get the whatever needs to happen of that day, the announcements, and then you go out and you start taking uh dispatch runs, you do proactive work, traffic stops, investigative work, do community policing, stop into businesses, stop into schools. Occasionally weave your weave a lunch or a dinner in there or a breakfast, a snack or two and uh you spend your your time serving the community in that way. I think I probably already know the answer to this, but mostly you're out and about and then someone you have to go report. Like if you had to say what percentage of time do you spend answering calls versus traffic stops versus just, you know, general observation? Yeah. Most of the work we do is going to be reactive 911 calls.
That's our, you know, when someone calls 911 and they need police assistance, we need to be a available to do that. That's our primary function. So, we are more of a reactive police force. But we we do want our discretionary time used appropriately in places uh in areas uh that are that will reduce crime that will build trust in community relations, you help us serve the community better. But majority of our time, especially patrol offer officer, is spent responding to things like disturbances or traffic crashes, alarms, uh the whole gamut of issues. Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
And and you know, just I can only imagine I don't know what's the volume. How many 911 calls come in per day? About a million calls per year. Holy for our just our police department. Yeah, that would that would keep uh Yeah, it keep you busy a little bit there. So you do three years and if you're on the path to you know start uh pursuing different career paths within the police force, what is that next gig after a patrol officer for three years?
We have lots of specialty opt options within our police department. So you can be uh we have proactive teams. though they're still patrol officers, but they their day is spent instead of reacting to to to 911 calls. They're proactively responding to community complaints or finding violent criminals, removing illegally possessed crime guns from our streets. We have a mounted patrol, so people ride horses for a living. We have motorcycles, people ride motorcycles.
Even in the winter, does the mounted patrol go out in? Yes. Yes. Yeah. And there there are limits, right, to you know, the humans on top of these massive animals uh are probably the ones we have to worry about. The horses are probably fine, but yeah, they'll ride them in ride in the winter.
Holy. Motorcycles, if there's ice on the ground, they're not going to ride the motorcycles, but there are occasions where you'll see some of our motorcycle cops right as well. Holy. Okay. So, that into one of those more, I would say, like specialized roles, specialized detective roles, and then, you know, at five years, you can take the S sergeants test. you can test to to become a supervisor on our agency.
Okay. And so then you let's say you pass the the sergeants test, you become a supervisor. So on that morning roll call, you're uh kind of like briefing everyone and now you're leading that. Now you're responsible for all those women and men that are under your charge. You're you're responsible for making sure they do their job correctly. You're responsible to make sure they get home at the end of the shift.
Yeah. And so then you go from sergeant and then what's the lieutenant? Okay. Oh wow. Isn't that like are you overseeing sergeants? So you're now you're now the whole patrol shift is yours.
So you may have 55 people under your command. So middle shift uh shift commander on north district may have between 50 and 60 people that are that are under the command. I can only imagine the stress for eight hours or what the shift is 5:30 to they're eight and a half hour. Patrol shifts are eight and a half hours. You work six days on and you're three days off. I can only imagine.
Yeah. The stress. It's like you're the lieutenant and you have 60 human beings that are like under your supervision and all across the city, you know, stepping into not the safest line of work, right? So, wow. Holy. What is what is like a day if you're if you're the lieutenant, what does your day look like?
Are you monitoring all this as it's going on and oh, John's over here and Rachel's over here, etc. , etc. There's a lot of uh tasks that supervisors are responsible for uh throughout the day. And so that that lieutenant is making sure planning for the shifts ahead. How many people do I have tomorrow? How many people are off?
Do I have anybody that's sick? Do I have to worry about scheduling training? Uh and those kind of things. And then there's administrative paperwork. Every time we use force, for example, we have to do a special report and has to be investigated by a supervisor. And so that lieutenant is part of that investigation.
Sergeants usually do it if a patrol officer is involved and then that that goes up to chain of command for all those layers of review to make sure that what what happened was within policy it was legally allowed. Uh so there's a lot of administrative paperwork and and tasks that go along with Are there times that sergeants or lieutenants get called out into the field? Yes. I mean if if every patrol officer is out of service and the next available person is a sergeant, the sergeant will be dispatched. the sergeants get called out to certain uh runs that involved uh child welfare checks. Sometimes it's a requirement that to send a supervisor out to those or someone's not very happy with the service that they were provided by their police officer.
So they want the supervisor. They want you see that all over Instagram, right? Where it's like, let me talk to your I am the supervisor or whatever. I want your supervisor yet. Right. Yeah.
You just like keep calling up the line and line. Okay. So, where did you feel like you got your first big break when it came to your career? That I mean, did you set out when you were 18, I want to be the chief, police? No. Not at 18.
No. No. No way. I just wanted to be like those two guys that I that came in and visited with me at the park and who I rode around with. I wanted to do that work. I I even was able to patrol my own neighborhood uh you know, once I got on occasionally on the on the on the near near side.
I lived I I grew up in a neighborhood's called West Indies. So, it's just on the other side of the river near downtown. Uh not too far away from downtown. In fact, we rode our bikes downtown to Union Station when that was a thing uh when I was a kid. So, well, what's the cross street that we're taking? Harding and Morris Street.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Belmont and Morris. Is that kind of like in or would it be north of like the GM staving plant in that area over there? It's south of that.
Oh, south of that. South and west a little bit. And where'd you go to high school? Went to George Washington High School at IPS. I'm an IP. I'm a proud IPS grad.
School 46, Daniel Webster, school 47, Tom Thomas Edison, and George Washington High School. I feel like the the IPS has gone through several iterations and you know, whether there's turmoil or whe they're figuring that piece out. Um, it's cool to come from like you're you're patrolling, you go to George Washington High School, then you're in that neighborhood and you're working there. Uh, and as you raised through the ranks, when did you decide that, you know, a leadership career was going to be the right one for you? I really think that my big opportunity I mean I took the promotion test whenever I was eligible to do that. So at at five years I took the sergeants test.
You have to be in grade. You have to be a sergeant for two years before you can take this lieutenant test. And so I wasn't quite two years in when the first time I that test came around. So I was a sergeant for five years. And I'm glad I was a sergeant for five years. I had so many experiences as a sergeant both as a on the street.
I was a a detective sergeant. I was a narcotic sergeant. I got to over over in a car. I got to be in the FBI safe streets task force as a as a task force officer running a squad where we we worked on drug trafficking organizations and and gangs in our city. So I don't regret having you know five years or some people that that the way they time their test and do so well they're smarter than me obviously they can you know can jump right into the next test. So I really think when I saw I wanted to be a major part of the leadership team when I was a lieutenant and I was asked to to so run the public information office PIO's the public spokespersons for the for the agency and so I got to see how the chiefs worked all the decision-m that went in how important it is to message our community and to tell our story and and talk about the good work that we do and uh that that really was my journey on the trajectory to where I am.
Yeah. When you think about the communication piece, like coming on a podcast like this, like I I don't know. When I set out on this journey, I had no idea that I would end up with the chief of police in the in the chair here. You had much bigger guests than me. Let's be honest. No, I don't know.
This is one uh it's super unique and I don't think that a lot of people get the chance to sit down and have an hour conversation with the chief of police. But when you think about the communication aspect, I think there is a large gap between public perception and the reality and and so you were working you have the PIO. Yeah. Public information officer. Yeah. And and so what are the challenges that uh in communication that the IMPD is facing getting the messaging out to the community?
Well, especially now it's even more difficult with the uh emergence of podcasts and so much emphasis on social media. It's hard for us to keep up with the speed of that. Sometimes narratives take over when there aren't necessarily true. And it's important that that we're right in the information that we that we set out because if we put out wrong information, then then it could cause some reactions we don't want. If we're wrong and we have to retract it, then it makes us look like we've been covering something up or that we're not telling the truth and being honest about what we're doing. And so we really try to be thoughtful and think through how we release information especially in critical incidents when officers are involved in those incidents.
Officer involved shootings for example. So making sure that we have the right information is important but you know we had an officer involved shooting just a couple days ago. There was a lot of information we didn't know but we had we have to tell the community what was happening to this point. We did that and then I got qu then then when we didn't fill in the blanks people in the community fill them in for us. then we're fighting to try to retract them those things. So that's the challenge now is is that social media is great in a lot of a lot of areas.
Uh but in a lot of areas it allows for just misinformation, allows people to say things that just aren't true. Frankly have those individuals have no accountability. I'm accountable for everything that I say. Yeah. And and in a world where speed is kind of like the currency of social media, right? Where if I go out and say like, "Oh my gosh, the potholes are great."
like whatever and there's there's no like I don't need to be right wrong and different like it's like oh no one it's just a person saying something on social media but when a government agency that has to be very meticulous and you know fact like you deal in like I deal in a lot of opinion right and hype and this that and the other thing and uh for you guys it's like when you put a statement out it has to be 100% the gold cut facts that you guys know yeah and that puts us behind sometimes when that happens because people are going to fill in their blank people have their feelings about police people have their feelings about uh officer involved incidents. And so they're going to they're going to take that opportunity to fill in that gap. And so what what we've done is really built a strong community network behind the scenes that we can get in front of these issues and be in front of the community within 48 hours of these events and tell them what's happening.
Even though there was a narrative out there, the person that had that narrative called me. I'm open to those communications. So I was able to dispel those rumors and tell them that's not what happened. Fill them in with what actually did happen and tell them we would be updating the community. So why it puts us behind what we've done here in Indianapolis over the last two chiefs and now now I'm the beneficiary of that is building strong comm community communication systems and networks throughout the community. Chief height I always used to call it chips in the bank of trust and that when when when the time comes you can cash some of those those chips in for people to to believe what you're saying is true.
I think a decade ago, maybe 15 years ago, the way in which you guys probably communicated was maybe a column or a piece in a newspaper or an actual press conference or things like that. What are the innovations that you're seeing when it comes to social media or or just modern media in general that you're having to learn and do and and where are you seeing the most effective way to communicate with the citizens of Indianapolis? Well, let's be honest with it. I'm not having to learn much of anything. I've got a great team. my chief communications officer came from the news world.
She really changed our dynamic to help us understand the news cycle, help us understand what the what the traditional media is going to be asking for from when I say traditional media, the newspapers, uh the television stations and now you know the dynamic we have now is smaller internet bestbased news organizations that have a different way of operating. So uh we're consistently learning. We had to hire a social media person, a 23-year-old fresh out of college uh person who is helping us understand Tik Tok and how to leverage using short videos and and information to get the audience we need to get to where it's easier to get to people my age, right? The 50-year-old plus. They're watching Fox 59. They're actually reading the physical Indianapolis Star.
I don't know where I'd even find an Indianapolis Star. You can find plenty of them in Joe Hoget's office. Right. that man when it reads the newspaper every single day which is a a little bit of the underlying of why I think get Indiana and this is important right it's like every day I actually remember growing up it was like if you wanted to be in business so you need to read the Wall Street Journal every single day or if you want to be and whatever the thing is it's like go read the newspaper and you do learn a ton but nowadays it's like everyone let's go 40 and under is consuming this content on social media and there's a gap for sure because there's a million organizations, right? Whether it's the fire department, the police department, the government, the mayor, this that and the other thing that like you have to follow all these accounts and hope that it hits your algorithm, right? And so trying to be that's why I I try to be like one source where people are going to learn not everything and it's not necessarily all of the news, but it is a place that that's going to show up in their feed and they're going to get to learn and meet these people and learn about the stories that are happening across Indiana.
But you know that a lot of people I mean even me I I I scroll through in the morning time through Twitter to see is there any headline that grabs might then I can go back and learn more on it. But I I've don't know which which which online news organization is. So, I'm not going to say the name, but what I noticed is that they write their stories in these small like almost bullet point type thing that's draws you to their website to read the news and you get a lot of information out, but it's not written in a traditional way you would read a story in the Indianapolis Star or in the Indianapolis Business Journal, right? It's it's different. And so, there has to be a multitude of ways to get your news and get your information. This podcast is great.
You are reaching a lot of people and a frankly a lot of people that we want to reach as a law enforcement agency. Not only to tell our story and to make sure they're informed about what's happening in their city and with their police department, but also the demographics that are listening to you are the people we want to come serve their city. Absolutely. When you think your your career progression now you're you're in a leadership role, right? You are the chief. What lessons from your early patrol days still influence your approach to leadership within the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department?
First of all, it is uh listening, right? You have to do a lot of listening as a patrol officer whether you want to or not to figure out what happened. People call you in their worst moments and so they're telling you their story and it's important that you that you listen with some empathy, compassion, and understanding. Did I have that as a 23-year-old patrol officer? I did not. So, I learned that over the time.
And that's important now because especially in this seat, there's so many constituencies. So many people want my time. They want action. Uh they want their most important to them dealt with the police and they want it dealt with. Now, that part, if I could go back and prepare myself a little bit better, um would be to learn more patience and more ability to listen. Uh but over the course of sitting and watching some really good chiefs manage uh some pretty significant situations and how to deal with all these constituencies, I think I found my sweet spot and that is if everyone's mad at you must be doing something right.
Every Yeah. Everyone just a constant cycle, a year of just everyone's got something that's Yeah. You know, everybody's issue is the most important and and to them it is. It is the most important thing. when when you're a victim of a crime or you see something occurring in your piece of the world, it is the most important thing to you and I appreciate that. Now, multiply that by 350 square miles and almost a million people in six six districts and every single one of our districts is different.
I was a commander of North District. It's my favorite district, by the way. Don't tell any of the rest of them. We won't tell. Even though I didn't I grew up as a patrol officer on the south side, I was a commander of North District and I really miss it was my favorite job. What did you love about it?
The people. There's not another district that I know of that has such diversity in the way people look. Absolute poverty, absolute wealth. But what I found consistently in every single neighborhood with people that cared about their neighborhood, whether it was Broadripple or Butler, Tarington, Crown Hill, Devington, wherever they were, uh was full of people who wanted the best for their their situation, their kids, their families. We had the most commercial business anywhere in the between Castleton and the Fashion Mall. And at the time, we had all the all the things along Michigan Avenue, too.
So 96th in Michigan East was on was on North District. You got this variety of people and things. And yeah, no two days would be the same there, right? No, you you got people whose biggest issue was that my lawn furniture got stolen. And then you had some, you know, areas that were that were riddled with violent crime and and they they needed different types of attention. So, it really learned how to try to provide each individual neighborhoods using our cops um to help provide that level of service that they need.
Compartmentalizing, right, where it's like, okay, we're reporting, we're showing up in Meridian Kesler to talk through uh yeah, lawn lawn furniture was stolen. And then you have to be like, okay, give them your undivided attention. And your next call could be, you know, maybe it's down on 38th Street or something where uh a violent crime or something is going on, someone lost their life and and by by means of of gun violence. And so competing interests, but finding a way to manage all those uh it was tough. Um but when you have great cops that understand the mission, uh they do they do that work for you. And that is I I keep like lingering on the everyone's issue is the biggest issue whether it's your lawn furniture or you know a a violent crime.
That's I mean those are it's crazy to think of them on the they're not on the same plane but to the person that's on the other end of the phone or the person that you're standing and talking to like you don't want to treat their issue like oh this doesn't matter to them. You have to build trust within those relationships and I think you guys are are working to do a great job of building trust in your communities. Can you talk about some of the programs or initiatives that you guys have spun up to continue to build trust within the city of Indianapolis? Police community partnerships have been a hallmark for this police department since the '9s. Since Steven Goldmith was the mayor, it's on the side of our police cars. It was on the side of our police cars.
And so, it's an always front of mind and it's one that, you know, we consistently have to work at. We're impacted by what happens in other cities when it when relates to the police department. when George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis didn't happen in Indianapolis. We're impacted by what happens there. And with the way social media is and media is today and the news cycle, we have to be mindful of those things. So, we're constantly trying to build that trust and legitimacy and building bridge bridges to help fill that gap because without the community, we can't keep them safe.
We can't solve their crimes. So, we have to have those partnerships. We have a great police athletic athletic league program in our community engagement and outreach bureau. U in that bureau we have very few cops but we have lots of volunteers. They coach basketball, coach baseball, they coach football, cheerleading, dance. And so it's a way to keep kids busy, keep them exercising, but also engage with our officers.
That same bureau has donut with cops in schools. They go have lunch with at one of our most um you know challenged elementary schools and sit down with second, third, fourth, and fifth graders and have lunch with them and hear their stories and try to build those relationships. Some of the things some of these kids say to an officer when you're sitting down with them, a fourth grader about uh what they experience at home is is pretty heartbreaking or how they feel about the police a police officer and how they're scared and why they're scared. And so those are opportunities to build those things in the future. We're doing mentoring at the Shepherd Community Center and uh or tutoring there. And we have a program called IMPD Cares where we're going into schools and and and mentoring our young women and young men.
Uh those are just a few things that we do at a centralized space like a fourth grader, right? There are I mean fourth graders throughout the city of Indianapolis whose only ever experience with police officers and law enforcement are a call being answered and like you know they came in and maybe separated their family or or just like those or a loved one was killed. Yeah. You know you're a fourth grader. No wonder you may not not have the best perception of of police officers because that's all the only interaction you've ever had. Yeah.
And so having these programs where you go down and realize again like the big thing I think my big message is that the people behind the badge are still people, you know, and getting to know them and and you guys wouldn't do this if you didn't care about the community. I truly believe that. I think those community outreach programs and getting out there are are important. And you talked about uh George Floyd and then the unrest across the country that that brought. When you think back to 2020 in the city of Indianapolis, you weren't the chief at that point, but you were still in leadership. How was IMPD thinking and handling that situation?
Uh, it was it was a it was a rough time and I would tell you there's not been another four four and a half year span in policing in the history of the entire profession. The only thing close to it was probably the late 60s early 70s. And what it's the same thing we saw uh racial reformation, the civil rights movements and defunding of the police and deinceration. All those things occurred in that same period of time. The thing that added here that that made this worse in the in the eras of policing was one we had a global pandemic and you have social media which fuels misinformation. It fuels fires and a lot of a lot of people with a lot of free time, a lot of outlets like a social media outlet and and a way to go and get outside and and stand up for something that that they believe in, right?
and and to ignite change. But on the opposite side of that, I mean not even the opposite side, but just from the like this is happening in our city and and there's a lot of unrest, what were the conversations that you all were having about how to understand and empathize with those sides of the party, but also like continue to keep Indianapolis safe? There were there were days and I was see assistant chief that you know don't forget about co in there that we were changing how we did business four or five times a day based on what guidance was coming down from CDC or the state or whatever how to keep our officers healthy and safe, how to keep our professional staff safe and how to keep the community safe. And then you add in uh you know the the consistent constant protests and then we had three days of pretty bad civil unrest that were happening all across the country. While I think our cops did an admirable job, they did they did a really it was tough.
I I I listened to the radios. I I heard the what what was happening, right? And you know are the things that we wish we could have done differently? Absolutely. And everybody was trying to feel feel their way out through that. But it was it was it was tough.
And anybody that was in a leadership position anywhere in a major city in a police department uh really had trial by fire during those times because it was not only were you dealing with the things on the on the streets, but you were also with dealing with policy reforms and training reforms and legislation that was that was changing how we do business. Every now and then you have to have those resets. I just wish it wasn't as, you know, dramatic as it was. uh police departments including our own have bear some responsibility for uh people's frustration with with policing and the the lack of change or the at least the perception of lack of change but they don't bear all the all the burden. What are some of the changes or innovations or different policies that have been put in place uh over the last four and a half five years? Now, we've seen significant reductions in our our how we do vehicle pursuits and why we do vehicle pursuits.
It's a high risk, high liability thing. So, we've seen significant changes in that and how we do them and why we do them. We talk more about deescalation, how we talk to people. We talk about using less lethal tools, time, distance barriers when it when it comes to communication, when it comes to dealing with individuals, especially that are in mental health crisis. We talk a lot about mental health crisis more than ever before. We have more civilian oversight probably than we've ever had.
We have a civilian majority use of force review board that reviews all of our major uses of force involving officers in our community. We have a civilian majority general orders board. We're all we're we operate under policies and procedures. We call them general orders or uh standard operating procedures. That civilian board now writes a lot of our policies for us. So those are those are a few big things that came out of it, including rewriting our our our use of force policy.
That's a lot of good change. And when you talk about deescalation, I think that's the route that a lot of people and it's not that can't happen in every case, right? Like not every time it doesn't always work. Yeah. You can try, but the if you and I are arguing, we both have to agree to stop. Yeah.
Right. So it takes two parties. But I can't continue to I as an officer shouldn't instigate you to force me to do something I needed to do. we need to be calm and but at some point we expect our officers to take action because inaction could lead to something bad happen as well. Yeah, that's just like such a balancing act. Uh that I I I'm glad it's a a problem that I'm not in charge of solving.
Um that that would really encourage you or any anybody to to go out and do a ride along one shift just to see the the magnitude and multitude of things that our officers are asked to deal with every single day. I think people think that it's just cops and robbers, good guys versus uh bad guys. But, you know, we're sending 23y old, 22 year olds into houses trying to mitigate arguments between parents and their children. A 23-year-old who doesn't have any kids. Uh we're asking them to go in and solve the problem between a mother, a 30-some year old mother and a 10-year-old kid, right? All the way to being shot at uh and just doing their job.
So, we ask a lot of our officers and we sometimes think we know what they go through every day and what they deal with and we don't. And so, I would encourage you or anyone else to go out and just see it. Uh, and then you can come back and talk about what what you saw and even if you don't set the time to go do an actual ride along, but like looking through some of the body cam footage that's being put out u because I think that's definitely become more prevalent over the last four or five years. Is that like a your choice? Is that a mandated thing? Where did that become so prevalent?
Depends on where you're at. Like I think that Indianapolis, we from the beginning said when we have body warn cameras, we're going to do our part to be as transparent as possible and add context. Uh you know, sometimes releasing a raw video of an incident doesn't provide the context and tell you what led the officer up there. So we've we've decided to create these critical incident videos. If you've never seen them, they're on our website, right? To tell more of the story and still leave it up to the the person to, you know, to decide whether or not they believe the officer's actions were righteous or go watch a few of those and see all like because then you guys break them down.
You slow-mo, you maybe zoom in on some stuff to make sure you have the facts that are there and put yourself in those shoes. And it's like reaction time, understanding, inaction, deescalation. You got 10,000 things running through your mind and split second that everybody wants you to be right every time. A split second when you have to decide between losing your life or taking someone else's in some instances. And it's it's tough if you've never been in there. And on the back side of that, when an incident like that happens, what does the next one week, one month, six months look like?
uh on the back side of that. So within 48 hours we get together with a community group and do a it's led by the community. They host it on a virtual based uh basis and we get on and we talk about the incident. We talk about what we know, what the facts are, let them ask questions, dispel any rumors, uh talk about next steps. We always tell we talk about the process repeatedly so that people understand the process because officers are citizens and they have rights under the constitution and there's a process through the prosecutor's office and internal reviews to to determine whether or not the actions were justified legal. And so we want to talk about that process over and over again so people understand it.
And then then you know the investigation is ongoing. We have two parallel tracks a criminal investigation and an administrative investigation. uh and those are going on simultaneously. One is looking about whether or not the officer's actions were legal and the other were they within policy and in their training. And that's you know at the end of the day I determine whether or not I believe their actions worth in policy or training and I deal discipline or I I agree with the findings that it's in pos in policy. Is that a hard spot to wor like the buck stops with you?
Yeah. It's the worst part of the job and it's every bit of every disciplinary whether it's an officer involved shooting or someone who comes in late to roll call. I deal with all of that. Eventually it steps comes across my desk. What are in terms of frequency? What are the most common things?
Sometimes they're getting in trouble for the way they talk to people. They become frustrated. They say things. They they you know they yell or scream. It's the talking usually that gets them in trouble. Well, and it's like you add another layer to it, right?
So decision- making, deescalation, customer service. Customer service, right? where you know it's like and you've been to I don't want to compare it to a restaurant, right? But it's like you've been to a restaurant where you've had poor customer service and you've been to a restaurant where they were polite and courteous and and like that's a piece of of perception and the impact though like if you go to and I'm going to continue on this uh comparison, right? But if you go to one McDonald's, you know, there's kind of like the stereotype, but like you still go back because maybe you'll get a a better person that's more polite, but one person's poor interaction then like affects the perception of an entire population of of this career. We have segments of our community that may have never had a negative encounter with a police officer, but members of their family did, and it goes back generations.
And that and that mistrust and issues is passed from generation to generation. So you're right, one bad experience with a law enforcement officer can have negative impacts for every law enforcement officer now and in the future. So uh we don't want that. We want our officers to treat everybody. Remember what I said earlier. Most of the time when you're when you call a police officer, you're having a really bad day and the last thing you want to see is some smart eloic, uncaring, unempathetic person talking to you when you called them for help.
Uh but cops are human beings, too. They have bad days, too. And um but that's no excuse. And every circumstance, the expectation is that people are treated with respect and dignity. uh no matter what the circumstances, whether it's someone we have to arrest or someone that we're that we had to use force on, that person deserves to be treated with dignity, regardless of what had to happen up to a certain point. JC Hart Company is your answer to navigating the apartment rental journey.
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A large portion of this first half of the podcast has been about people within our community. No shock to anyone, we also play host to a lot of visitors where people come in and this is their conference city or the Super Bowl city or the Taylor Swift era tour city, you know, and it's not home to them. And I do think there is a difference between people who call this place home and people who are are visiting here. And you think about all the events that we host from the police department perspective. How do you guys think about those events and make sure that they run smoothly and you have traffic and you have out oftowners and downtown's population increased by 60,000 on Sunday afternoons, right? How are you guys thinking about that?
First of all, no no city is a better host than Indianapolis for whatever it is you want want to bring here. We've proven it over and over again. Who hosts a Super Bowl in February in Indianapolis, Indiana, and gets 55 degree days? Nobody but Indianapolis. That's why we're the best. I mean, we even we even bring in good weather.
Amen. For those events. That's that who's your hospitality. That's who's your hospitality right there. But we have a great team of planners in our police department and public safety partners because it takes all of us working together to pull off getting 350,000 people in and out of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Like how much staff, how many police officers does it take to pull off the Indy500?
Hundreds. Hundreds. Hundreds. And that's a combination of IMPD and Indiana State Police and Speedway and our federal partners who bring in a tremendous amount of resources because it's a national security event. And so when it becomes a national security event, we get a lot of resources from the federal government. You know, specific to downtown, our great partnerships with Indiana Sports Corp and downtown Indie, Inc.
and the Capital Improvement Board, they're working together every single day on permitting and and putting on these events. Last year was a huge year for our city. It was the most canceled days off. We have to cancel our cops days off uh in a lot of these events and so they handled it well. A lot for for us. It continues to be a lot for us.
Uh because we have the other event. We have Colts games. We have Indians games. We have Pacer games soon. I'm hopeful that we'll have some soccer games to to matches. Some soccer matches.
Soccer matches. That's right. Yeah, we're a culture podcast here. Yeah, you know, I don't I didn't even I didn't think I even saw a soccer ball until I was in my 20s probably as a kid. It wasn't this football, basketball, baseball. That was it.
So, you know, I hope And not to mention the conventions. The conventions, the firefighters bring in 40,000 people every year. FFA 75,000 teenagers here every single year. What are the con? Have you been down there to see the Princess Leia and the I can only imagine the calls that are coming in with 75,000 high schoolers down on the circle in their corduroy jackets. Yeah, they they're it's a great conference, well behaved.
My biggest thing is getting them across streets. I've been driving from A to B and I there's a big herd uh coming across the street. I'll stop and make sure they get across cuz it's it's massive amounts of blue jackets and their uh lime lime scooter incidents up into the right there. Was that like a big point of maybe not contention, but like a new piece that again something that didn't exist seven years ago, eight years ago, and now everyone's scootering the wrong way down the sidewalk. It was a hot topic the first couple years, but I think we found our sweet spot. You know, the companies have evolved a little bit to carve out gezones.
You ever been riding one and out of out of out of out of the city and all of a sudden just stopped working? Yeah. It's like what is this? What's happening? Columbus, Ohio. That happened to me.
I tried to take it into a huge park in downtown and I got about five feet into the park and it just died up and I'm like ripping it like a normal scooter trying to get my speed back up. Oh man. Yeah. But but since it's settled down a little bit, I think uh and I feel like now for the majority what I see is like everyone found like the bike lane and those those spots to not be on the sidewalk and running into people and this that and the other thing there because that for a minute it was like every third person I talked like I crashed a line last night. And and just before you change topics I had a I had such a great time during the Taylor Swift concerts. It was good changing those bracelets out and everybody was positive.
It was there was an energy like you'd never seen before. tens of thousands of people on the street even weren't going to the concert. You know, I was down there for the final night um out just out and about, you know, like man on the street kind of stuff. Holy smokes, people were ex I've never seen more glitter. Yeah. And people were excited like and people were drove from Ohio.
They drove from all over and didn't have tickets. were trying to either find some or just listen from outside and you couldn't hear anything which definitely on the last two nights of the concert they figured they were they were blaring it from those pedicar somebody had figured out a way to somebody was streaming it live from inside so they were streaming the music live right there at Capitol and South Street. That's pretty fun. And so yeah, when you think through the event calendar, you have event planners that are that are on there. What are the biggest challenges or just headaches that you're seeing from hosting so many events? exhaustion for the officers.
You know, our motorcycle cops do a lot of the heavy lifting on those particular instance and our special operations people like uh bomb sniffing dogs and our SWAT operators who provide overwatch. I mean places you don't see them, they're probably watching the crowd. They're looking for it's basically counter sniper type thing or to try to stop something happening. What we saw in New Orleans is impacting everybody that host major city and we have to rethink, you know, vehicle incursions. It's always been a thing for us. And so I maybe people don't notice it when they see snow plows or metro buses or dump trucks parked at certain intersections.
You're maybe you don't think about that, but that's to stop those type of things from occurring. Happen a lot more in Europe than they do in the United States, but those are that's that that keeps me up at night is is worrying about safety getting we have such a condensed downtown. It's funny that we have a sprawling a sprawling city, but a very condensed mile square downtown. You go to Boston, you don't even know where. I mean, what is considered downtown? I was in Boston in October last year and I just kept walking and walking.
It all looked the same like it was it's just all downtown, but you you know when you're downtown Indianapolis, right? And so that makes it a little more difficult. We want it to be a walkable town. We sell it as a walkable town. Uh and so that those pose challenges for us is is to making sure especially when we're 300 officers down. Um being able to provide enough staffing for these events and and without wearing your cops out is a is a challenge.
When you say 300 officers down, what do you mean by that? So, we have a budgeted strength of 1743 police officers and right now we have about 1,450. And that I mean that's a perfect segue into how is IMPD thinking about recruiting this next generation? And is that is that deficit coming from shorter careers? Maybe people come in and they're like, "Yeah, I don't want to do this for 25 years. I don't want to serve for 27 years."
Uh or is it from a a deficit of new recruits coming in? Uh it's both. Uh so we talked earlier about what happened in 2020 and all the police reformation and all the the rhetoric that was around that. I think that similar to lots of things, we tend to swing swing this pendulum way too far one direction. We swung it too far in 2020 and it's had an impact on people that want to do this job. we can do and want good constitutional fair policing and accountable policing and care about our cops and and see their value and why they're they're important.
Part of the pendulum swung too far in one direction and I think it's impacted major city police departments across the country. We're not immune to that, but we're seeing fewer people apply. When you have fewer people apply, what comes out of the bottom of the of of the funnel is very is fewer people. And so we're we had a class just graduated class of six recruits. We used to have classes of 70 75 people. Uh we're averaging probably about 20 per class.
We added a class a year to try to get people in and out more often. And we saw a lot of people say, you know, I've had enough of this. I've been I've been through a lot in my career, but what's happened in 2020 and the pandemic and everything that we've seen occur, I'm out. I'm gonna go collect my pension. We do a better job of preparing people for retirement than they did in maybe previous generations where people were only focused on their pension. We have 401k type benefits and people are saving their money and being more financially secure so they don't have to work.
We have somebody on our police department that's been that's working over 50 years and we have another person that's approaching 50 years on this on this agency. What's their what's their dayto-day like? So I assume they started at 18 if they're 50 20 21. I mean, they've just been on, you know, longer than I've been alive. What's What's the Who's this? I don't know if you're allowed to say who the person is.
I don't think Skip Copelan is on. He's a detective sergeant. So, he he I've never seen a more energetic and happy person to be at work every single day with that much time on. Every single time I go to visit Skip, he's a great great man, great public service. He is always positive. He's always smiling.
He's asking me how I'm doing and he know what he comes and he does his job every single day. 50 years. 50 years. Yeah. 50 years. That is 50 plus years.
And you talk about the one of the original you said is it's a calling. Yeah. Like 50 years and still bringing the energy like that is Skip's calling. Yeah. That's it. He He loves this job.
You know, we love him. He's a He's a great cop. That's amazing. On the south side. On the south side. Heck yeah.
So, so when you're thinking of how to attract the next generation, how to continue to to fill that deficit of 300 police officers, what are you guys doing to to fix that issue? That's a it's a tough one. Uh, in this job, especially when we're 247 operation, we work shifts. There's a lot of people that don't want to work after 4 or 5:00 every day. They certainly don't work on want to work on Saturdays and Sundays. And so, that poses a challenge.
This remote idea of remote work has also uh you know caused us some significant challenge. There's a lot of jobs where you can work remote and make as much money if not more than sometimes in a lot less risk than a police officer. So I think this gener generation expects different things, right? They expect to be well taken care of. Mental mental health and physical wellness is important to us now. It's important to our younger generations.
We have more resources available than ever before to to deal with mental health issues and challenges and family issues that exist. But we have to do better. Uh this recent labor contract um focuses more on retention than recruiting. We've done a lot of to raise pay over the last several years, starting pay for new officers to try to bring them in the door. Didn't exactly work. We tried hiring bonuses.
It didn't didn't exactly work. We tried hiring officers from other agencies. It didn't work. Um so there's a lot of challenges. So this this last labor contract uh addresses some family issues that people are interested in. So we have I don't know that there's another agency in the state of Indiana that offers 12 week 12 weeks of parental leave male female partner spouse adoption those type of issu type of issues.
I think that's important to this younger generation and retaining them that I I don't want to have to choose between my career and a family where you know that may have been the case in the past. Uh we're trying to build a wellness center, public safety wellness center that focuses on physical health, mental health, social health, spiritual health, and financial health. All those five pillars that all under one roof. So we'll have our chaplain, we'll have a workout facility, we'll have a mental health uh clinicians and and workers will encourage people to come play basketball with each other, have threeon-ree competitions, have a pickle ball court in there, run a movie night in there. our our physical fitness uh contractor that works on our muscular skeletal injuries will be in the building. And so we're we're working through financial and philanthropic ways to to raise money for that that to show our cops that we care about them.
We're caring about not just their physical health, but all those things that make people ha happy and healthy because a happy and healthy cop serves better, will stay here longer, and will be able to reach what we want them to reach is to be able to enjoy the pension that they've earned. If there were, let's say, 18, 19 year old kids that are trying to figure out their career path, um, whether they're young men, young women, and what they're seeing in the media, right, they kind of like I think right off taking a a career down law enforcement just because what you what gets amplified is so much negative. What would you say if you could go out and have a million conversations with this younger generation? What would you say to them? And what would the sales pitch be to become an IMPD officer? Let me tell you about my journey, the opportunities that I've had throughout my career to do things that I never thought I'd be able to do.
I came from two hardworking family, both mom and dad at work. We didn't have a lot, but I never felt like I didn't have a lot. My first year as a police officer in 1999, I made more than my parents. Yeah. $28,000 is what I made in 19. Did you kind of feel like you made it then?
Well, first of all, being a lifeguard, making $8 an hour as a pool manager and getting that check every two week was like, "Wow, we're going to White Castle sack of 10 for everybody, right?" And and $28,000 in my first year. And then, you know, I had this conversation with my mom before I p before she passed last year. It was like, "Mom, do you know how much money I make a year in at the time?" And it's like I never crossed my mind. So, I say that because you don't do this job to get rich, and you're not going to be rich doing this job, but I've had opportunities to travel around this country.
I didn't. My vacation was at Kings Island when I was a kid. It allowed me to meet my wife, and we have three great great kids. So, everything I have in my life is because of this job. I get to give back to a city who gave me everything, who helped raise me in the in a neighborhood where we we looked at the visa raised our kids together. And uh I'm sorry.
No, I a little emotional because it's it's it's this this place is special to me and I've had so many opportunities to serve and things I've gotten to do and you have a pension at the end. Who talk pension? I didn't know what a pension was either. I knew we had it when I came on. I I mean there's only there's very few organizations that still offer that. Yeah.
And I I don't know if you want to get like you get a a paid a portion of your earnings for the rest of your life. Like if you work here 32 years, the state of Indiana is going to give you 77% of a patrol officer's pay for the rest of your life. Not 25 year officers pay for the rest of your life. Doesn't exist anywhere else. All you have to do and you can get that pension as early as 20 years. So I'd talk about that a little bit, but I'd talk about all the opportunities.
What we hear from, you know, this generation is that they don't like staying in one place for longer than, you know, three or four or five years. What what other place can you go to and ride a bike today, a motorcycle tomorrow, a horse the next day? You can be a digital forensics investigator and dig into my cell phone and see, you know, what I've been up to. You can be a polygraph examiner. You can be a background investigator. You can investigate homicide.
You can help protect our children by investigating child abuse cases or internet crimes against children. There's so many options within the agency that you think that if you think it's just, you know, 911 calls and patrol car, it's not. It's so much more than that. There's so many opportunities and there's so many opportunities in a large agency than you're going to find in some of the smaller ones. And you know, I'm biased. I think this is the best police department.
We have the best cops. I'm sold. I love it. I just think being able to share that story, a lot of people are looking for change of pace and and like changing the perception that you're just going to ride in one car doing the same job for 30 years versus I mean, you've had what seems like 10 careers in 27 years. I've come to do so many things that, you know, if I was just making widgets, that's what I do every single day. I' come in and make the same widget every single day for 20 years.
I've been a detective. I've ridden I've written I've been a motorcycle cop. Do you start on a bicycle? I rode I No, I I was I started on the street. I probably should have been on a bicycle as many crashes as I had. Uh but uh as a patrol officer, but two weeks of motorcycle school was the hardest school I've ever been to in my life.
Two straight weeks of learning how to ride a motorcycle. You ever lifted a 500? I think they're 500 plus pounds. When you tilt it on the side and try to lift that thing up by yourself, it's difficult work. Oh, you gota Yeah. So many narcotics investigations and, you know, working with the FBI and the Secret Service, dignitary protection details, presidential details, vice presidential details, all the candidates that came through here when Obama won his first term.
We had Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton and I've had opportunity to meet so many people and go to Taylor Swift and participate in the Super Bowl all because this city believed in me uh to be a police officer. Man, as we kind of get to the end of the show, I'd love to talk about one or two of the topics that are top of mind for you as we I mean, we're early on in 2025 here. What are the things that are taking up a lot of the mental capacity for you in 2025? Yeah. So we have really five broad priorities in 2025 and there's lots of little bitty things in between it. One is reducing violent crime along with some of the other things we saw in 2020 2122.
We saw a significant amount of increase in gun violence and and violent crime over the last three and a half years and the mayor's leadership. We've seen uh criminal homicides drop by 30%. We're seeing a significant significant decline this year. But anytime someone dies as violent crime, we've not been successful. And so we have to continue to push down violent crime. We mentioned it.
We talked about it here. Uh retention and recruiting. If we're going to do all the things we want to do, keep hosting events, keep allowing people to have these career advancements, we have to hire and we have to retain that talent. U officer wellness. Got to take care of the people that take care of us. Uh it's important to us to do those things because they'll take better care of the community when we take care of them.
Those are the really big ones in front of mine. Uh we have to continue to modernize our police department, use technology to our advantage with with decreasing staffing. Uh those are all really important to to the success of our agency. I think those are those are all great initiatives and it's the initiatives that you see on online, right, that people are upset about. I think change and solutions never come as quick as anyone wants them. Like if there was a magic wand that everyone could wave and solve everything, like of course we'd do that.
But it's good to know that those are priorities that are, you know, you're taking steps towards solving. People talk about being a battleship in a in a lake and trying to turn that around. It takes a long time. We're down to the end of the show here where I kind of run through I have a couple fun segments here. So, the first one would be the younger years segment. This is brought to you by our friends at Or Fellowship.
They're a great organization here in Indiana helping develop young business leaders across the state. So, Chief, what advice would you give to your 22year-old self? Learn some patience and humility. It'll serve you well in life. You don't know it all at 22 years old. Slow down.
at 22, how much you think you know. And then as you get older, you actually know more but think you know less. I have a 23-year-old son. He tells me how much he knows every day. Well, what's your what's your 23-year-old son doing? He does it work.
Oh, nice. So, he's making more money than I could ever imagine at 22 years old. Hey, isn't that like how it goes, right? You go out there and you make more money than your parents and then you expect your kids to go out there and make more money than mom and dad. You know what? I I'll give him that.
He's much more responsible with his money than than I than I was. Hey, there we go. Now, we have some lightning round questions. Uh, we're gonna I mean, some of them are just I mean interesting questions that I thought of when when I mean we have the chief of police here. First one would be what's the biggest misconception around police officers that we all eat donuts that you know that that we're machines that think that we all work under the same brain that some computer controls us, right? We're each individuals human beings with our own stories, our own experiences, our own background, those type of things that that we are human beings and um we care.
Uh I think that's that's the biggest misconception is everybody sees us as a uniform, as a thing, and not as a person. That's a really good answer. What's the most frequent 911 call? Uh disturbance. Someone's arguing with someone else. I'm arguing with my neighbor.
I'm arguing with my kid, my spouse, whatever. That's probably the most prevalent from my days is just disturbances. That makes sense. What has been the most memorable day uh of your police career? My experience where I get to spend 10 weeks training at the FBI National Academy. That was probably the most uh impactful experience.
What did that training look like? Uh we classroom training every single day, physical training. I I equated to this is college with a little more money. We stayed in a dorm. We shared a suite with four other or three other uh dudes. shared one bathroom.
Uh, and then we went to we went to class. We worked out every day and uh, you know, I made networks of of cops for throughout the world. France, Italy, uh, Kuwait. Um, so I have these connections all over the world. So that was the most impactful, you know, event in my life. Narrow it down to one specific thing.
Uh, that that was difficult. I've had so many. That's that would be a fun one. And you I feel like I don't know how long police academy is. Six months. Uh, yes.
Right. So, but then did you go do you know what you said 10 weeks of specialized training? Yeah. 20 weeks of field training. Wow. Yeah.
Well, at the FBI academy. Oh, the FBI 10 weeks. Yeah. Yeah. I was a I was a I was a lieutenant, I think, when I got to do that. So, then you kind of take a step back and you're like live living in a dorm for 10 weeks.
It's like college again, except I didn't have to worry about, you know, where I was getting money for the weekend. Hey, there we go. So, every day 1,400 police officers in Indianapolis go out and risk their life. Yeah. And I know that there's uh the unfortunate circumstances that happen. There's like a scholarship foundation and and a lot of things like that when unfortunate circumstance.
Are there any of those other community groups that are supporting uh police officers that that people should know about? Yeah, we have we have an organization called the hundred club 100 influential influential business people around the country or around the city that if something bad happens to one of our police officers, they try to take care of that person's family financially. The COPS organization uh is a is a nationwide organization that that deals with surviving family members, you know, unfortunately have to live with losing their their loved one, which is the absolute worst uh thing to happen. I' I've lost a dear friend, Jake Lair, in 2004. And of course, as the assistant chief, we lost Brienne Le. It's our latest officer killed in line duty there.
That's the absolute worst days. If you ask me that question, that was an absolute worst day. The FOP does a great job of taking care of of families and and and survivors after critical incidents. And we have two great foundations, the Central Indiana Police Foundation and the Indie Public Safety Foundation. Both of those are great organizations that every day wake up and find ways that they can serve our public safety community. How often uh does an officer fall in the line of duty?
The last one for us was in uh 2020 under your you've been in as a chief for a year now. So, we haven't had that, which is No. No. That's great. But I I can't imagine just and as tightknit as this community is like having to experience and deal with that and and then remember it's like that and then someone's got to go out on the street the next hour the next day their friends and family their their classmates people they spent six months with grinding in the police academy which in you know in the case of Brienne Le had the most impact on this agency because she was so young it was so they were all so fresh out there on the street and that the impact and trauma that it on her classmates has been, you know, it's impacted us. It still impacts us today.
Yeah. She was a beautiful soul. I mean, that's one of those things when you talk about you see some people see her as a uniform. They don't know that she fed the homeless every day or that she bought pots and pans. Uh that she had a little boy that she was raising by herself. Those are things that you don't know about that individual because you only see him as a uniform and not the person that lays behind it.
But she was she was the absolute best of us. And if you open the dictionary and and looked at the police officer and there was a picture, that's who you'd want. Top to bottom, man. That's that's uh that's real. Yeah. Uh this is one of the I mean sometimes we get to sit on the show and it's laugh and it's jokes and it's that, but then I I greatly appreciate the real conversations that we get to have.
Um and shedding light on these these stories and these just different individuals and people. I think that the that's gonna something that's going to stick with me is that people see cops as things. Yeah. And not necessarily as people. I think that's super important and having a place to talk about that and amplify those stories and and I would encourage people to go like look up and learn more about Brienne and these organizations that support officers whether it's here in central Indiana, Indiana beyond or or just across the country. I think that there's a lot of people doing really impactful work there.
One thing that's really popular right now is the whole true crime aspect shows. So, do you have any guilty pleasure true crime shows? Honestly, stay away from those shows. Uh, just because I get so much of it during the day that I'm not I just I don't have a lot of interest in it. But man, oh man, a lot of people do. My daughter's a travel volleyball player and the parents, you know, they they're always intrigued about policing and so they want to talk to me about Deli and I'm like, I can't provide you an honest assessment of Deli one way or the other because I just didn't pay that close attention to it.
But it's so amazing how many people were all in on that all the time. And it's not just that case. It's, you know, last February we you we partnered with somebody does a podcast and we ended up solving a cold case. No way. Some of the work that they did. Yeah.
Wait, what podcast? Uh, I I don't remember. I I'll try to get it to you. It was It was uh She's local, I think. Is it Tri Crime Junkies? Yes, it's Crime Junkies.
They're like right across. Wait, you partnered with Ash? She partnered Yeah, they they partnered and worked with an old case and it wasn't a homicide, but it was a maybe it was I can't remember, but last February did an announcement about it, but it was a old case that used genealogy and all that to to finally figure it out. That's pretty huge. It's It's huge. Well, and right now the the Hulu documentary in Fox Hollow is like all the the rage now about the Westfield alleged serial killer or whatever.
And like people are asking like, "Well, you I'm like I don't know any like that's not I'm not a true crime junkie. That's I love crime junkies cuz they're here in Indiana, but I'm not like a crime true crime fan." I have I have a neighbor who's a really close friend. His mom is all in in these shows. Probably make a really good detective, but you know, she's in her 70s. it that I love that because you start putting pieces together.
I watched or I listened to like the serial podcast when it first came out and it was like this whole big it was like the first podcast I felt like that really crushed it and like after listening to like two episodes I was like n I'm like I don't like it just like not the kind of time you know I'm spending my time listening to Smartless and uh watching Vegas Mad on YouTube. Hey there you go. I love it. All right these are the same three questions that I ask everyone who sits in the chair all about the state of Indiana. First question, what's something the world needs to know about Indiana? It's not all flat.
The glaciers only went so far. I learned that from Mayor Hoget this this week. He he explained to me why there's hills in the south and everything else is flat. So the the glacier stopped around just south of Indianapolis, right? And that's so it's not all flat. That's why there's hills and kind of stuff in Brown County and that's a really good point.
All right, Mayor Hoget. Thank you. Next question. What is a hidden gem in Indiana? French lick. Yeah, French Lick.
That whole Orange County Frenchlick area is just we we we went down there. We we we actually spent Thanksgiving as a family in French click. It's awesome. And the history. I feel like there'd be a true crime detective show to do around Alapone and all the mobsters coming from Chicago. Crazy.
Uh next question. Who is a Hoosier that we need to keep on our radar? Someone who's doing big things. Well, I can tell you from uh the police department standpoint, which is, you know, where I'm at, and that's Major Corey Mims. He runs our community engagement outreach bureau. He's a young, enthusiastic uh man who cares about the community, and he's going to do big things in our city, for our police department, and our community.
Cory Mims. Cory Mims. Heck yeah. I love that. Finally, to round out the episode, I was told that I needed to get a few of your or at least one of your best dad jokes. The other day, my kids told me that I didn't have all the board games.
I had no clue. There. So, I torture I torture my staff with these every single day. I I stole that one from the Instagram last night. Oh, that's that's a good one. Uh what what is there like one that's always been just like uh a home run hitter?
But it's kind of hard to force a dad joke, right? Is that like coming? It I mean, especially me, I have to prepare and I I I watch and read so many of them that I that I sometimes forget some of the old ones, but I, you know, I bought a uh air freshener that I can control with my mind. My wife thought it was dumb, but um it makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Yes. There it is.
That's how we're gonna that's how we're going to round out the episode. Chief Bailey, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for all the work that you're doing in our community and and everyone, right? You said,400 and yeah, 1450 cops and 200 plus professional employees. They do all the work. I just I just get the opportunity to to lead the organization.
Man, it's uh you know, a lot of times a thankless job. We talked about it before we kind of got rolling that it used to be really impactful and and kids would want to grow up and be police officers and I think that there's less of that now than than ever probably. U but I appreciate the work that you all do every day going out there and putting your life on the line. um and all the patrol officers and everyone. So, from one Indianapolis resident, uh thank you. Appreciate it.
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