[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi welcome to a new show called chit chat i'm mike chitwood the host of this podcast and the volusia county sheriff you know for most of my career as either the police chief in daytona beach or as a sheriff in volusia county i have always had reporters thrust their microphone in my face she asked me questions and asked me my opinions well now with this podcast i get to reverse the roles i get to be the one that asks the questions part of the impetus behind starting this podcast was the passing of legendary radio host big john and mark bernier both good friends of mine both come from different ends of the political spectrum both completely different people both ran their shows differently but their quest to get information and get that app into our community was admirable and with their passing i think it creates a big void in our community so when we do these podcasts that's the ultimate goal here the ultimate goal here is to get information and get it out into the hands of our community if i do it right it's kudos to those guys for the way they train me if i should royally screw up and do it wrong they're probably looking down saying see it's not as easy as you think it is some of the topics that will cover you know obviously law enforcement is going to be a big topic we'll talk about current events in the news we'll talk about sports we'll touch on politics we'll talk about life in general you know the idea is just to have this podcast get some information out there email your questions into us we can ask uh as we begin our first podcast we're going to learn and we'll do things better and you know always try to keep it interesting and get the public uh their opinions and their questions out there [Music] is your emergency between every crisis and every first responder is a 9-1-1 operator no two emergencies are alike and our highly trained 9-1-1 public safety telecommunications professionals use their critical thinking and decision-making skills to get the right personnel on scene as a valuable member of our team you will earn a competitive salary and outstanding benefits plus the satisfaction helping others and making a difference in your community are you ready to answer the call 911 and i couldn't be louder than to bring on our first guest and it's somebody that america is very familiar with this person is a media giant someone who's been a reporter a chief legal correspondent analyst a news anchor and a host he's one of the faces of news nation for those of us in volusia county that have spectrum that's channel 20. that's a cable network that is trying to give america a novel approach to the news fair and fact-based not something that's divided you might notice personally best as the host of one of the most popular shows on television first live pd and now on patrol live where they are right here in volusia county and this weekend they will be riding with our deputies royce james and jj smith so without any further ado please welcome mr dan abrams stan how are you doing hey there we're so glad to have you i'm glad to be with you can you tell us you know that what's going on with uh on patrol live i know that i get stopped constantly you receive emails about nothing but praise about the show and how how thankful they are you brought it back on the air so you know on patrol live um shows what you guys do on a regular basis um this is about you guys the the cops in the field and we're just sort of the the ring leaders there in the studio just making sure that we go from one place to the next and uh and shawn and curtis providing uh that background the analysis the explanation of what we're seeing and why we're seeing it but look i think that there is um a thirst in this country to see law enforcement um what they do how they do it and i think that's part of what's made the show so popular yeah i i know that like i said everywhere i go in the county people are so glad that volusia county is is part of own patrol life which brings me to one of the questions about the polarization in politics and the news media's attempt to slant and divide i don't know what your opinion is i know i watch you at night i know what you try to do presenting both sides of the coin uh and let the viewer decide yeah i mean look i i think that there's been a um a real problem which has been the financial incentive to create outrage and i think that the cable news networks have really bought into that meaning you pick a side you get angry you get people upset and people watch and it digs into their emotions and i think that that there is a little bit of fatigue now with that and i think that there are people who are saying you know what i don't need to be angry when i'm watching the news i'd like to get some analysis i'd like to walk away and feel like i learned something maybe i'm a little bit smarter as a result of of what i heard and and look you know on my show on on news nation i definitely do analysis and opinion but people won't necessarily know where i'm going to come out depends on the issue it depends on on the facts etc and it's never the extremes meaning if you're extreme on one side of the other you're not going to like the show no doubt about it because you're always going to be mad at me about something i'm hoping what i call the marginalized moderate majority are going to join me in that effort well you know it leads me to the next question because you know i know you're you're great to law enforcement you're you're very pro law enforcement especially when it's done correctly is this uh the political football that i think we have become uh in washington dc and even in local governments everything from defund the police to you know we become the the problem all the problems in the country it's law enforcement's full it's very frustrating um to see the way police have become political footballs in this country um you know from my perspective it's it's not just police it's law enforcement in general um people are now getting the point where they are constantly scapegoating law enforcement a mistake is made or a mistake wasn't made but something happened and people immediately jumped to the conclusion that law enforcement did something wrong as opposed to saying wait let's figure out what happened here first let's look at the entire context of maybe a video for example as opposed to just a snippet let's understand the mindset of the officer let's put ourselves in the shoes of the officer in that situation and now let's evaluate the situation because as you know sheriff i'm not going to say cops are always right there are cops who need to be held accountable who do bad things there are people in law enforcement who need to be held accountable but the presumption shouldn't be that they did something wrong the proof should be show me that there was an issue and i think a lot of times in the media what you're seeing is this kind of presumption that oh if there's an officer involved shooting what must be a problem and it must be the officer's fault um and that's i think part of the problem that we've seen in the media yeah i agree with you i've been doing this for 35 years and it's something i always say when we go into a community we are the government they don't know who their mayor is or their representative is but they sure as heck know who's got that badge on their chest and that's where they vent a lot of their frustrations and i i know i'd like to bring lieutenant sticks larkin in i mean lieutenant's longtime law enforcement officer retired great career sticks what's what's your feeling about the way we're being politicized uh as that political football no i mean just to kind of piggyback what dan said i mean it it's pretty much spot on um you know even obviously 20 20 year was kind of that's when it really exploded to the extent that we've seen um over the last 18 months or two years but you can kind of see things building up to that point uh you know where police were were no longer uh you know the good guy in the neighborhood so to speak they kind of became the bad guy for a lot of people whether it was involved in politics you know some of the people were talking about as far as you know athletes musicians and so forth it just became the thing to pick on without all the facts being out there thanks i like curtis i see you we got you back up on from our technical difficulties uh i don't know if you were if you were following our conversation about our our profession being a political football really use whatever side wants to hammer us or use us in another vein what's your take on that you know my thing is the majority of people out there they love what law enforcement's doing and as dan said you know there's a small percentage of officers who may be doing the wrong thing but the majority who wear the uniform they're wearing it to do the right thing and that's to protect and serve criminals are loving the protest because they feel now you know they can get away with stuff and do the things that they've been doing without having to be held accountable so yeah i i do think that this show is going to help show the the positive things that law enforcement officers are doing curtis i know we're getting a lot of questions and i'd like to i'd like our viewers to hear about you and your background you know where you work what type of agency you're with and let them get to know you uh well i'm in richland south carolina columbia south carolina which of course encompasses richland county and the sheriff's department there about 800 deputies there worked with the sheriff's department for 12 years now of course learned a lot growing up from being a public information officer to uh then running the community action team which of course then that encompasses traffic code enforcement as well as our code enforcement traffic and cat team now cat team are the folks who are out there touching the community i mean just knowing who's in the community the issues the problems in the community as well as the business and neighborhoods and that's what they you know they did and that was a great thing and now i work with you services and as you know we have issues with our youth nowadays it seems as though they're getting in trouble younger and younger and younger so my job basically now is to try to curtail that to try to set them in the right direction and that's the task right now but it's a task that i enjoy doing and i'm so glad to be a part of on patrol live with two distinguished individuals you know dan and sean i'm learning a lot from them and i'm hoping that i'm settling in nice and comfortable with their guidance they're leading me right now but sooner or later well they leave me too and they have me on there as a guest they they absolutely lead me sean real quick could you give us a thumbnail sketch about your time in tulsa man let's see uh moved there in 92 right out of high school grew up in california knew i wanted to be a cop since i was a teen i went to college in oklahoma did my internship there with tulsa police department and started in january of 97 and much like a lot of the officers we see on the show throughout my career i was fortunate to work for a larger agency we've got roughly about 800 officers as well did everything from patrol to major crimes homicide street crimes narcotics and then i was in gangs and our crime gun unit what we call the last 14 years so uh very very fortunate worked with a lot of really good officers that i do miss seeing them daily but uh i'm happy that uh that the retirement date came for me i'm enjoying this second phase of life so so dan how many uh department sheriff's offices and or police departments are on live p or online patrol now with you and what are you looking to get what goal are you looking for so we we ride with eight departments per night right um we are have other departments that we may put in um but we're gonna always stick with eight just because technologically we really can't go with more than that you think about the fact that we've got six cameras in each of the departments we're already getting in 48 live feeds just from the departments themselves throwing some other cameras and we're well over 50. so we're going to be sticking with eight departments as you know we'll either be following two or sometimes three officers in in each department um and then we go between them uh depending on on what's happening and and try to then go back uh if the uh if the story continues if we didn't find out exactly uh how it ended etc so you know that's the interesting part from a tv perspective is figuring out where to go uh when to get out when to go back making sure that the audience who's watching understands what happened in the stories etc but you know look we don't know a lot we're always winging it because this is a live show and uh we don't you know we don't have uh a sense at the beginning of the show what's gonna happen uh in the in the three hours that we're live and that's part of what makes it a lot of fun well i i have to tell you i got to compliment your staff the folks that you have assigned to us here in volusia county where they are top of the line they are true true true professionals and it is we're blessed to have them as part of the team and we're honored to be there with you uh we have a pretty big social media footprint and uh we get about 300 000 followers it sounds like we just had a wave go over top of us but uh we asked him to submit some questions what is the question for the threes and did you jump right in there this is that dick driver asked if you could pick any storm to play at full volume by running code to a call what would your go-to song be the jets i'm with you curtis yeah i'm with you until somebody crashes and then they'll be written up for having the radio blaster but dan well no i wasn't i mean i wouldn't dare to answer going to a call question because uh that would suggest that somehow i'm a real cop so uh yeah i'm i'm listening sticks had an idea though well i was trying to think man that's a good question i'm a kind of an old school rap guy and i was trying to think something like like some old dos effects or something an old group that's not even around any longer something like that kind of pump me up i i like it i like dan's answer though but it's pretty good this one's directed to you i thought this was great this is probably a very popular question they want to know what your workout routine is man uh i take the stairs when i can and uh i kind of throw in a salad here and there so uh we'll just call it that how's that listen hey it is what i tell everybody is i really look like danny devito or something man it's all about good camera angles makeup and lighting dan this one's for you joe kieran asks uh and actually anybody gets up here too how can we restore the public space in law enforcement uh from cops walking the fbi doj and capital police there just seems to be a total lack of respect for law enforcement so look i think there's a number of of ways to to go about it um number one i talk about this a lot is the media right is the media just needs to stop feeding the outraged beast when it comes to law enforcement um second of course is law enforcement itself right i mean law enforcement itself needs to recognize and that that there's outreach uh that needs to be done um the efforts need to be made to bond with the communities particularly in areas where there is distrust um of law enforcement and and i mean that both with regard to you know fbi capitol police and local police um that you know people uh want to sense that that the authorities are being fair and applying the law evenly and again cops are human um law enforcement is human people make judgments things are subjective but the more that people get a sense and are reminded that law enforcement is out there to serve and protect um and to to help i think the better but look it's tough when you've got people yelling and screaming and making accusations sometimes that are just totally unfounded against law enforcement it's uh it's a tough tough environment to be it yeah i mean i couldn't agree with you more and which brings me to a question i want to throw at sticks and curtis we we've been blessed here uh i've been able to start my own police academy as opposed to going through the state we hire you from day one pay a good wage medical benefits uh pension and we train you with the best and the brightest in this organization and uh this woman danielle howe wants to know if you guys based on your policing career could offer one piece of advice to our class that's graduating on august 25th what would that one piece of advice be to these young recruiters you know for me like i said you mentioned the size of your agency uh the fact that it's a large agency it gives a lot of opportunities for the different deputies throughout their career and i think that's important because we do get burned out in various assignments but i think it's to when you know when you are getting burned out when you're getting tired of the day-to-day grind a job that you're doing move to something else because this is a fantastic career that has a lot of opportunities that you can impact a lot of different uh you know people throughout your time there and just take advantage of those opportunities rather being that guy that just is so negative day in and day out don't be afraid to make the change within your own department do something different that is fantastic you know also the piggy back up on on that is never become lacks you know uh because you have you always have to keep your head on the swivel uh because this job each and every day is never going to be the same and on top of that learning verbal judo is going to be one of the most important tools that you keep on your tool belt instead of you know situations going from zero to a you can keep that situation under control by learning to use this as opposed to everything that's on your belt it can get you into trouble or out of trouble so verbal judo is gonna be one of the most important things great great point great point dan i'm going to throw the last question to you uh if you could look into a crystal ball where do you forecast where is law enforcement headed in this country where do you where do you see us ending up look i i think that we've gone through a rough patch um i think we've um we're on the right side of the the mountains so to speak i think that people are recognizing that you know dumb things like defund the police etc they aren't just counterproductive um you know they lead to more crime and and and frustrate people etc so i think that there's been a little bit of unfortunately an experiment at the expense of law enforcement for the last couple of years i think we're on the other side of it now that the challenge for law enforcement is getting those recruits back right we're having real problems nationwide um getting people on the force we gotta we gotta sell again the idea that being a law enforcement officer is a noble profession and and something that uh people ought to want to do and i think we're going to get there and i think we're going to have i think law enforcement's going to be in a better place in a few years than it's been today because right now we're still dealing i think with the effects of a lot of a lot of negativity over the last couple of years so i think there's going to be a rough patch in the next year or so with a lot of retirements um problems with recruiting but i think that we're on the right side of that and i think it's going to go in the right direction and we're going to be back to a place where people appreciate and respect law enforcement hey amen dan i'm i'm praying that your words come true you know dan like i said to ferguson sticks i can't thank you guys enough for the work that you do you are so professional air uh i just wish other folks would emulate what you guys do and how you try to do your job i think we'd be in a better place uh in this country and our profession would be a little bit better off if more people took that fair approach that you guys take so again thank you so much for bringing us on our first podcast uh and that's the first show i'm sure you know folks will let me know how i did through email because god knows this past year i've gotten hammered with quite a few emails about the way we do our job but seriously thank you for listening thank you to our wonderful guests for our first episode of chit chat and stay safe out there [Music] you