The 'Fatal 10' with Dr. Olivia Johnson

When former police officer and Air Force veteran Dr. Olivia Johnson speaks, her words carry the weight of experience and a heartfelt dedication to an issue that's as complex as it is urgent: police officer suicide. In a riveting conversation on the topic, we explore the landscape of law enforcement health through the lens of those who've walked the thin blue line. Dr. Johnson, at the helm of the Blue Wall Institute, takes us on her journey of transforming pain into proactive solutions for first responders' mental health, scrutinizing the status quo of suicide prevention and proposing a shift toward a holistic well-being approach.

Navigating the intricate web of law enforcement's internal challenges, this discussion sheds light on the uncomfortable truths of officer misconduct and the critical necessity for transparency and accountability. Dr. Johnson doesn't shy away from discussing the resistance to change within the system or the sobering implications of misclassified suicides and unacknowledged heroism. The dialogue takes a hard look at the implications these realities have on community trust and the mental fortitude of our protectors, while also offering a staunch critique of the grant dependency that often stifles innovative progress in mental health initiatives.

Dr. Johnson's message is one of hope, grounded in the resilience of faith and the unwavering pursuit of one's purpose. Reflecting on her experiences, she encourages an alignment of professional work with spiritual guidance, underscoring its role in driving meaningful change. Listeners are left with not just a deeper understanding of the 'Fatal 10' and its mission to address systemic issues across professions but also with actionable steps towards preventing police suicide. Dr. Johnson's dedication to authenticity and providing tangible resources serves as a beacon for those seeking to support the men and women who serve our communities with courage.


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Transcript

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 0:00

Travis. There are organizations out there that are frauds hands down. I see them every single time I turn around. I just keep doing what I'm doing. But there are also organizations out there that are telling these men and women, hey, we've got you covered, we're taking care of you, and they'll literally give them excuses for every bad choice and all this bad behavior, literally tell they're dead.

Intro/Outro: 0:21

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

Travis Yates: 0:31

Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored that you're spending a few minutes with us here today and this is going to be a barn burner. Folks. I have Dr Olivia Johnson. She's a former police officer, air Force veteran and the founder and president of the Blue Wall Institute. Dr Johnson is a subject expert in police officer health and wellness, police officer suicide and suicide prevention and awareness in first responders. She served as an advisory board member for the Valor Officer Safety and Wellness Program and so many others I can't mention, and she recently received the law enforcement psychological autopsy certification from the American Association of Suicidology. Dr Johnson holds a master's degree in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Missouri, st Louis, and a doctorate in organizational leadership management from the University of Phoenix. Dr Johnson, I am pumped about this conversation. How are you doing?

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 1:32

I am excellent, Travis, and thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Travis Yates: 1:35

So I kind of want to start off. You've had a heck of a journey of a life and you're just one of my favorite persons to be around, and I think part of it is because of your life experiences. And, of course, you're sitting here today talking to me. Kind of lead our audience down a journey of kind of how you got here.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 1:53

Sure. Well, you know you mentioned my Air Force time. I did eight years in the military and when I got out I tried a little bit of everything. I mean I've done everything from bail bonds to, you know, pi work and a little bit in between. But I settled in law enforcement for a while. I kind of found that I really enjoyed it.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 2:10

But while working in law enforcement I actually lost the only other female in my academy class. She actually passed away in a vehicle accident. So I started down that road wondering why we were dying in one vehicle accident, things that could be prevented. You know, she was just two weeks on the road, newly engaged, just had so much going for. And I think the more I started looking down that road, I started actually discovering this suicide stuff and I'm like, wait, what's going on here? And the more I dug and more I dug, I felt like this is where my calling was at least to start looking into this, and I did.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 2:45

Sadly, this was back in 2008, 2010,. When I started looking into it I had so many calls come in and say, hey, we really appreciate you looking into this and doing research, but we don't have a problem in our agency, and that became the common mantra we wish you luck, but we don't need anything from you right now. And about six months went by and I started getting phone call after phone call. Hey, we had a suicide. What do we do? And I said, well, we don't do this right. So I said this isn't working for us.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 3:13

And this is exactly what we're talking about even today. And what we're doing is everybody wants to wait till you have a problem, and then everybody thinks that they can jump on it and immediately fix it and not have a problem again. That's the disease model. We're steering clear of that and we're actually changing the paradigm on this. So we're doing what we call the health model now. We keep you well, so you don't have major issues and you don't call me when you have a suicide. You call me when you start to see issues going on. You call me before you have issues, so we don't end up in this, in this state again, and we don't end up with phone call after phone call of things that I can't fix now. And that's that's kind of our new paradigm now and that's kind of how I got here.

Travis Yates: 3:53

Well, Dr Johnson, you didn't mention it, but you are an instructor and a trainer and hopefully people listening that just heard that understands what that day would be like. It's groundbreaking stuff. Folks and Livy, you are in a world with training and research and I'm in a similar world in the leadership realm, where there's a lot of players and when you get any area of any profession where there's a lot of people involved in it, you have fraudster. It's a weird way to open up the show and asking about it, but the reason I say it is is you're the real deal. You have applied one of the first persons I've known I know there's other people doing it and I know a lot of your colleagues that do it that have applied real research and real data to this issue, and what you found is completely different than what pretty much everybody else is talking about.

Travis Yates: 4:43

But you're having some hard times breaking through because, as you said, it's a paradigm shift. What are you seeing out there? What's going on with this sort of environment where there's all these people running around talking about this but very few people are actually getting it right? What is that like? To be sort of the one person going, hey, I'm over here, Listen here.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 5:04

Oh yeah, it's no, it's rough. I tell you, it's something I literally have to pray about every day and really, really focus on, because I know that what I'm doing is what I'm supposed to be doing. It's God's purpose for me. And listen, travis, there are organizations out there that are frauds hands down. I see them every single time I turn around. I just keep doing what I'm doing. But there are also organizations out there that are telling these men and women, hey, we've got you covered, we're taking care of you, and they'll literally give them excuses for every bad choice and all this bad behavior, literally tell they're dead and then go hey, but we want your dues. So we have organizations just like that that are putting on this front, telling you that everything that happens in your life is not your responsibility, it's the job, it's the stress, it's PTSD, giving them every excuse in the book for this stuff, and they'll fight me. They fought me online and tell me that I'm wrong and I said listen, the reason that we do our research and the reason that I've been in this field for over 15 years, but we never collected numbers. I knew there was a problem. We didn't need to collect numbers, but after I saw a certain group just throwing numbers out every day with no validation, verification or any kind of idea what was going on. I said numbers don't do crap unless you use them in a certain way and you find out what's going on. So we said that's it. The end of 2016, starting in 2017,. I said we're going to collect this, but we're not collecting to put a number out. We're going to collect it to get some real data here and find out what's really going on.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 6:30

So ours is different. I mean, we're the only database in the world we call it the National Law Enforcement Suicide Mortality Database. That's a mouthful, but it's one of those things where we collect autopsy, toxicology, police reports. We go back on social media, on every social media account we can find for the seed and back to a minimum of a year. We look at interactions and pictures and posts that they have. We get family members and coworkers that'll do interviews with us and every case that we have, we do a full psychological autopsy on the case. So my clinical cohort, dr Jory Crossen, works with us at the Blue Wall Institute and he helps us put all this together as well and we build a file. We have a solid file, paper file for everybody, and it goes into the database. And we took that information and said listen, this doesn't do us any good if we don't do something with the information that's here.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 7:22

So in 2017, we started pulling this stuff together and we came up with what we call the fatal 10. And these were 10 factors noted in a majority of the cases we had at that time that literally stood out and they said, okay, these are the major issues we're seeing and it wasn't what everybody else wanted to say, which was the job in PTSD. In fact, we had about 700 cases at that time, from 2017 to 2019. And our PTSD and anxiety rates among that population that had died by suicide was 15%. We were missing the depression, which was at 32%. So we had all kinds of stuff going on. We had personal relationship issues. The majority of them were either going through a divorce or a pending divorce or they believed it was going to happen because of their actions. We were dealing with substance use and addiction. In fact, we had so many cases that we were getting in that were just overdose cases that died by overdose, that were not proven to be suicide. We put them in a whole separate database.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 8:20

So we started looking at this big picture and said, listen, it's not the job.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 8:24

The job's a component of this, for sure in some cases, but not all.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 8:28

It's how we're dealing with that stress and that trauma and that daily stuff at work.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 8:32

How we're dealing with it off duty is how we're getting caught up, and the majority of the issues we saw were personal in nature.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 8:40

And here's the thing we can't take those documents that we get and we can't share them, and never would we, because I protect these cases.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 8:47

If I knew every one of these people and when I see a name or I see a case, I can put a face with that. Like I know these people and I can see some of the things written here that would not fare well if other people read them. The closest coworker you have would not even believe some of the stuff that's in these documents or some of the things that were said by a loved one that was happening behind closed doors. So we're not here to try to make anyone look bad, but if we want to really stop this problem in its tracks and at least reduce numbers, because suicide is still going to happen then we've got to start getting honest about what's really happening here and the people that think that they're doing a service right now to these men and women in uniforms saying that it's just the job and PTSD, and that self accountability has no play and choices have no play. They're the ones that are really going to be sitting here at some point taking some personal responsibility for some of these cases.

Travis Yates: 9:41

You mentioned. It's the first database out there and that really should say a lot to the profession, because I've talked about this a lot A law enforcement doesn't have an official police shooting database or use of force database and you know all these things where we could have easily pointed to when people were burning cities and going. What are you doing? Look at the data. But we let other people collect the data, right, you let the Washington Post collect the data. You let the FBI that says they're going to collect the data. We know how that works out.

Travis Yates: 10:10

They haven't been able to collect much good lately at all with the data. They're all years behind on that data and we're sitting back with all these police organizations, all these trainers, all these instructors, and that's really what it reminds me of when you talk about this. And here you are, olivia. You jump out there and you say, hey, wait a minute, look over here, look at the data, which is something very similar We've done here at courageous leadership, where we're looking at actual data instead of just cliches and slogans and things that sell. But what I noticed and there's a bit of what you've noticed is boy, I don't sell right. Being original, being real with data and research. Not everybody wants to hear that, do they?

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 10:46

Oh no, and they don't want to hear it because you know what, travis, I truly believe that we're running agendas here. You know, I sat and talked for the Memorial Museum recently about line of duty deaths and they were mentioning suicide and I gave them my take on it and I said Listen, there are too many variables here to be just going in and looking at the last moments that someone worked or was on their way to work, to declare that these are line of duty. And I said and paying out on these deaths is going to only contribute to an increase in these deaths. And you would have thought that I had five heads and three eyes and some of them understood completely what I was saying. But they failed to take things into account. And you know I just sit here going, you know, guys, I said you're claiming that every suicide that happens is somehow, you know, someone that has just lost their way and they've had something tragic happen at work and they just couldn't handle it. And I said Let me explain something to you. I said this fatal 10, we have a component in here called under investigation and it's not, you know, it's not uncommon that someone would be under extreme stress and be singled out and isolated during an event because people don't want to establish contact, because they're afraid of getting pulled into, you know, into an investigation. So they keep their distance and this individual might start drinking more and feeling really isolated and having problems at home.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 12:00

But I said the majority of our guys that were under investigation were under investigation for child sex crimes and I said, but people don't want to hear that. In fact, I even spoke for an organization that actually was, you know, had investigators in the child sex crimes business and law enforcement, and when I mentioned that, thinking it would be helpful to at least understand that you may be working with people that are actually doing bad things, they didn't want any mention of it and I'm like this is the problem, guys. I said you know, not everyone that wears the badge is a hero. Not everyone that wears the badge is a good person. In any occupation we have people that are doing things that they should not be doing. In fact, another officer just recently got accused and the chief came out and made a statement about it. But we actually have a whole separate database Travis, if you can believe this of cops, more than what we already collect now for suicide of cops that have done bad things to children and other people in a sexual sex scene.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 12:55

And yet when you tell them this, we're not doing this to somehow put a bad light on law enforcement. What we're doing this is we're saying, listen, we need to go back and reevaluate who we're bringing in, because we can't sit here and tell people that what we're, you know, we're digging bottom of the barrel. Now look at, we have these low numbers. We're going to be digging bottom of the barrel. I said we're not going to be guys. We already are in some cases and some of these guys, I mean they're getting tipped off before their arrest, they're getting to take a full pension and these victims are struggling and some of these cases that I'd say a lot of them are being done while the individuals in uniform. You don't think that's going to affect how the community views us as a whole.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 13:33

And yet when I put something out about this and the number of child victims that are going to be, you know, dealing with these issues and possibly being suicidal later in life, no one wanted to like the post.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 13:45

It literally sat there and I thought, okay, let me.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 13:47

Let me understand this a little bit.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 13:49

So I have an individual here who just wears the uniform and has a badge and got hired, but he's done something and it's been proven he's actually facing jail time done something to a child and you can't quite understand how now we don't protect this young person right, because we're here to serve and protect. It's like there's just this, not that's not understanding of what's going on here, and we're trying to show this in a way that says listen, guys, we need to do a better job here. We're missing a lot of stuff. This is just one component. We have other, you know components of criminal behavior and drug use. We're no different than the people that we represent and that we serve in our communities and the sooner we can understand that and stop Putting ourselves on a pedestal in some way and expecting you know an out when we do something wrong, the sooner our communities are going to come in and gonna trust us that we're gonna do the right thing and be Transparent when stuff happens and it literally goes against what we said we would do for them.

Travis Yates: 14:42

If you're just joining us. We're talking to Dr Olivia Johnson. She's the founder and president of the Blue Wall Institute and we are drinking from a fire hose today. Folks and Olivia, you talk about being collecting the first database and you get access to autopsy. This is information. Do you have difficulty getting that access? I mean, how does that work?

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 15:01

So yeah, so I had to do a lot of research of my own about open and closed states and what's available and to whom right. So a Lot of states are open and I can get documentation Fairly easily and we get whatever we can. And there are times that we don't get documentation. But what we do is we don't ever put anything in our database that is not 100% verified in some way. So that means it either comes from a medical examiner or a coroner's office, it comes from a department that has made a statement, it comes from the news or it comes from a family member. And even then, with a family member, we will oftentimes try to keep digging to make sure that we can verify in some other way. Because, I'll be honest, we've gotten cases that people said, oh, it's an overdose, you know, but we know it was a suicide. We don't go with what you think, we go with what the medical examiner shows and we'll put that other case in a different database. But we, we don't put anything out there that's not verified. And other organizations actually do this. They'll put out a number or they'll put out a statement and say, well, this is flexible, and it's like no, no, no, there's nothing flexible. It either is or it isn't, and and and. Part of the problem, part of the reason that they say it's flexible, is because they're not doing the work. They're taking everything that they see, every case that someone submits through the online. You know, they're their online portal, whatever it is, and they're just, you know, putting it out there.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 16:19

I got six cases from one organization by someone that works with this organization and said hey, can you verify these six cases for us? They gave me the cases and I said, okay, you've got two that are completed suicide. I said there are two other ones. It says like black male from Texas or white female for whatever. I said this there's nothing that I can prove here, nothing, there's nothing I can get from this. And then the other two they had the wrong people. In fact, one of them was they had the father listed and it was actually the son. So the information that's coming in is not accurate and yet it's getting put out. So people wonder why when they'll call me for a number, or also here's where we're at today.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 16:55

But you have to understand. We could be waiting months for these cases to come back to be verified and until they're verified, they're not in our database. Well, yours isn't as high as this group. No, it's not going to be, because we verify our cases and you're right, people don't want to hear that. They want everything to be sensationalized and they want everything, you know. They want all this attention in the wrong way, you know.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 17:16

And I keep saying, guys, what we need to understand is this is Is the mindset of us right now is somehow we're all struggling and we have a lot of things going on and we have all these suicides, even though suicide is not an epidemic by any means, it's a leading cause of death, which is why we look at it. But what people need to understand is we could have this civilian component that comes around and says listen, what's going on in the law enforcement? These guys are killing themselves left and right. They've got all these problems. Maybe we need to look at this a little bit harder, and I say you know that could be the case here. We need to get on board with some of these programs and Understand that we're not fixing anything by putting on a bandaid. It's something that needs to turn again and that's all we've done up to this point.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 17:58

Everybody comes out, they give their condolences, they send out their letters and then we wait for the next suicide. And I said this is absolutely absurd. Like, do we really want to fix this problem? Is my mantra. Do we really want to fix this? Are you part of the solution? Are you really part of this problem? And I have to tell you, travis, I'm really feeling like a lot of these people want to keep this mantra going because somehow I think they think we're gonna get funding back from this deep funding movement. We're gonna get funding back in certain areas and we will just not in the right areas. And I just feel like they're really making us victims here, when what they need to do is empower us, and they need to empower us through what we call an inoculation model type of training, which is we get in there before.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 18:39

You have issues in your agency. You know you can look around at every, you know almost every case I have and you can see the red flags. Sometimes there are so many that just by not seeing them anymore, you're purposely avoiding looking at them. And yet when the suicide happens, everybody pretends they didn't know it was gonna happen. They were completely blindsided. And I go this is at some point, this is BS right, because I can look at enough cases and tell you you can see it even going back in social media Most times or something that was online or that this individual had prior issues or was under investigation. It's there but we oftentimes don't want to address it.

Travis Yates: 19:16

Yeah, I mean folks. If you're listening, you know why Dr Johnson and I get along so well. I mean, she says it the way it is. And, dr Johnson, I can tell you from a leadership standpoint, we see the same thing right. There's more leadership training, there's more you know, plaques to put on your wall and achievements in leader. There's more knowledge than you've ever seen before. More people talk about you ever seen before, but the problem remains like like they're just like almost does. There's no emphasis for the problem.

Travis Yates: 19:47

We've talked about some subjects here that every leader should be talking about, and I've often noted why am I the only one talking about it? And that's what it reminds me of. Dr Johnson is no offense to you, but why are you the only one? And I want to get back to something she said, which is the organizations and the folks out there. Listen, I'm not going to pick on any particular organization. I'm just going to use the homeless problem in America as one of them. There are more homeless nonprofits and organizations out there than you've ever seen before, but the homelessness continues to grow and you have to ask yourself what's going on and I think it goes back to what Olivia just said If they actually have solutions that fix the problem, funding drives up. There's no need for them anymore. That's why most of these organizations are doing things that enable people to be homeless. You can live on the street in most places in America and get three showers a day, five meals and a tent and everything else, maybe even a tiny home. They're still going to send you home, but they don't really want the problem to go away, because the solution is are right there in front of you and Dr Johnson has it.

Travis Yates: 20:52

And Dr Johnson, I think you put out. You talk about the fatal 10, but the resource that really lines a lot of that out is a book called practical considerations for preventing police suicide. You were very gracious to send me a copy of this. It's an academic book, although it doesn't read like an academic book, but it's published and it's an academic piece of work. So it's a little bit more expensive than your typical book on Amazon, but you've been very gracious and you've sent those out. I see that you give out digital copies all the time to get the word out, but that's where a lot of this research is and I've got to tell you I know you're not the only author there. But, folks, if you're listening, that is the Bible of what this issue is. I've never seen anything like this book and I just kind of tell us about how you got involved with that and some of the success you've seen with that.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 21:39

Yeah, so no, travis, we have some amazing co-authors on there, and everybody that's on there we invited on purposefully because we knew that their background would add to those chapters, and every chapter in there talks about one of the fatal 10 components, so it's extremely important. Any of your viewers can contact me afterwards and I'll send them a free digital copy. I don't make any money off this. I think I made 200 bucks after I split it with the first four authors, and that's not the point here. We wanted to get the information out about what our research is showing and to speak a little bit to your first point, just for a second, is we keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, as we talked about that in being insanity here, and yet we keep doing it. And yet that's why a lot of these people aren't stepping aside and doing something different, travis, because they won't get the grant funding. In fact, I went to do a training recently and the individual says okay, give me the title of your training. And when I mentioned inoculation and I explained what we're doing, they're like, wow, that's really great. They sent it out and they came back and said listen, we can't have that title. It has to say suicide prevention. I said see, there's your problem. I said you guys are tied down to this grant. And they said well, you need the grant money. I said, no, I don't need your grant money, I do need the training. I don't need your grant money, I can get trained. I can do training anywhere I want. I said, but what bothers me is that they're so hung up on this title and how everything has to be done the same as it was done last year and yet nothing is changing. I said lives are being lost right now and they're more worried about a damn title than they are about the content of the training. I said this is what's wrong. I said prevention and intervention, they operate in the disease model. They do not work. We're not preventing suicide.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 23:17

We keep saying well, after that one, let me do a, let me honor this individual, let me start a new program, let me do this, let me do that, and we'll have another one. And then that name eventually will be covered up by a bunch of other names, because there's going to be suicides that follow. And intervening on a suicide is very dangerous, if not deadly, and it doesn't happen very often. We might see it on Facebook, where somebody is able to intervene if somebody getting ready to jump or do something. Tragic and that's great. But that's very dangerous and we don't want to wait till people get there. The lifelines, your suicide lifelines, your 988 number those are all literally reactive when someone is in crisis. You've got to stop waiting until people are in crisis, right.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 23:56

But what happens is these people aren't wandering out to do new things. Number one a lot of them don't know what they're doing. They're just wanting to do something, which is why all the slogans come out, because that's really as far as they can go, because doing real research is really elusive to some people. But the other part of that is this grant money keeps going to the same organizations every damn year and they're producing no different results. And yet with our training, our inoculation training with the fatal 10, we have actual, measurable outcomes here that we can show you.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 24:25

Things are changing. We follow up, we stay connected to the organizations when we go to the training. We follow up with them, we do a baseline. Where are you at right now? What do you really need from the fatal 10? What are the three or four main things right now that you need to stabilize your organization, and then we come back in and we give you the rest of it when we get you stabilized, and yet everybody goes out.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 24:45

They say the same stuff. They tell you you're all heroes, which I love, my first responders do not get me wrong, I will go to the ends of the earth for my military, my first responders, but I'm tired of telling them what they want to hear. We need to start telling them what they need to hear. If we truly care about these men and women and we want them home with their families and we want them stable and happy and healthy in the organization, then we got to stop lying to them and telling them that none of this is their choice, none of this is their fault and they have no accountability. And people don't want to hear that. And until that happens, then we don't want to change this.

Travis Yates: 25:18

I think that's probably one of the most frustrating things is, you know the millions and millions of dollars that the federal government is giving in grants to organizations and it's the biggest big brother network out there and every time I hear a class response with a deal. J I know for the most part, although I walked into one living and you were standing there, but for the most part they're the most terrific classes you've ever been to. I remember taking a class where it was like a four to four hour class. They brought down six instructors, just you know, just milk and that money and they did not have really said much of anything. So it's really frustrating because there are some great trainers out there that can really make a difference.

Travis Yates: 25:54

Like yourself, but I think you're like me. Olivia, you've already given up on the grant money because they call us controversial. It's an interesting term when you're absolutely correct using research and data, I know, but that's the world we're in, because for them to succeed with mediocrity, they have to break you down and I have experienced this from time to time. I know you experienced this from time to time, but talk about that controversy and what that means to you and how that drives you.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 26:22

Oh yeah, you know I'm so tired of the status quo. I mean that seems to be where everybody wants to settle because it's easy and the grant money comes in. But you know, I don't, I don't like the status quo. I think we need to be shaking things up and I think they need to be shaken up all over the place. And sadly, you know, when you do that, you do cause issue.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 26:41

And for me, recently I was actually called controversial. It was by a speaker from a large organization. But this individual was, you know, actually got back to me third party by a friend that actually had mentioned our training and the individual said, well, you know, she's too controversial for us right now. And I thought, wow, and they couldn't even tell me to my face, right? So I thought that's okay, that's how these organizations work. You know it's all political and in that kind of thing. But I said, you know, at first I really took offense to it because I'm not one of these people. If I've got to go in the fight I have no problem going, but I'll be damned if I'm going to. You know, I just felt like I wasn't starting stuff just to be starting stuff, like I have legitimate backing of research. I don't throw stupid stuff out there just to cause issues. Sometimes I do it to make people think differently, but I'm never one of those people that goes out there and has issues with my integrity or or you've heard a story about me that was inappropriate. Like you know, in other areas you'll hear that. You don't hear that and I just do my thing. I stay in my lane. I try to do work every day. I mean I'm sitting here with research all over my table right now and data. I mean I do this every day.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 27:44

So when I first heard it, I was pissed. I got to be honest. I was just sitting there going like this is ridiculous. What do they mean? Controversial? I don't do anything. And the more I sat with it and the more phone calls I got after I posted something, they said you know there's nothing wrong with being controversial. You know we have to stir things up here.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 28:00

And I sat with it for a minute and the more okay I became with it and I thought you know, if I'm going to be controversial and I'm going to be saving lives, then I'm okay with that and maybe it'll get the attention that it needs, because what we're doing is not working. And I don't know. You know I don't know what else to do. You know you can, you can only do so much and you can only try to. You know, lend your resources and and talk to people about this stuff, but it's not changing anything.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 28:26

You know, in fact, travis, recently I had spoken, like I said, on the Mortale Museum it was like this con con congressional type of hearing thing and I had an individual on there, sadly from a large organization, that made the comments that he's been working for over 30 years to get names on the wall, meaning suicides. And I said well, I'm sorry, sir, that you've been working that long, because personally I've been working for the last 15 to keep them off altogether. And he sat there and he looked at me and I know that I ruffled his feathers for sure. But I said you know this is the problem. Here we are working to try to appease the this thing after it happens and trying to make things right, and yet we do nothing to make it not happen in the first place. How many of these families would give back that money and give back that name on the wall to have their loved ones sitting beside them right now. And yet that's their main goal is getting names on the wall and getting this money payout. And I said that's. If anything's controversial, that should have been. You know, I didn't even know about it till after it happened and I read it in an article by an individual who was pushing for one family to get payouts. The individual wasn't qualified to do any type of psychological autopsy. It was a really big.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 29:36

From what I'm looking at, there's a lot of serious questions about this whole investigation that they did. And yet I'm sitting here going. Why? Why didn't I get a phone call about anything? And then when they brought up things like you know, the officers are having issues with sleep, they're working too much, they're this or that I go, but does anybody ever talk about the guy or the gal and myself included when I worked that you spent too much time out with friends, maybe you had a few too many drinks and you got home late and when you got to work the next day you were tired and literally again, you would have thought I had five heads and they said well, I guess we never thought about that. I go.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 30:08

The problem is is we're not making anyone accountable. Like I told them that the two dirtiest words in law enforcement right now are self accountability. You know we have made these officers out to be victims of their own circumstance, and we have. We have given away their power to everybody else and they don't feel powerful anymore. They don't have what they need. They they're not getting, you know, fed what they need from good people and telling them how to stop these problems from happening. They just keep getting told their victims and it feeds right into this agenda because the more issues we have, the more deaths we have. It's going to feed into these agendas and the more money certain places are going to keep getting to not fix the problem.

Travis Yates: 30:48

Well, it reminds me of that Roosevelt man of the arena speech, right when he says uh, the credit belongs to the man, and I'll talk about you, olivia. The man or woman will make this a 2024 version. The credit belongs to the man or woman who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who airs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error. It it goes on and on. But he's talking about what you're saying. Like, people that are people that are being critiqued are oftentimes the ones that are right over the target, doing the right thing, and I won't tell our listeners specific stories, but I would say this the large organization acronyms you can think of before you get too involved or behind, or whatever they're doing, take just take a close look at how much is the board getting paid? Or they even have law enforcement experience. What are they doing to actually solve problems? Because, olivia, the you you become, you can become popular and make a lot of money, especially with somebody as talented as you, if you remain with the narrative, remain with the status quo, spritz it up a little bit, but I really have to applaud you, you, you to the detriment of, probably, popularity and finances. You are committed to fixing the issue and there's so few people out there doing that.

Travis Yates: 32:07

I'll give a quick personal story. There's a specific trainer that is very, very popular, probably on the road a couple of hundred times a day, and I go man, what is this guy or gal have that I don't have because I'm not as popular because I'm. You know people are all concerned about that, but they were at a conference the day before I was supposed to teach. So I flew in a day early. I wanted to see the speaker and I sat there and I watched entertaining speaker that didn't tell them anything to solve anything. And then I thought to myself this is why he's so busy or she's so busy and we're not that if you're not that. But how do you mentally deal with it when you know you don't have a place to go teach or you don't have people calling you this week or that week, and you know there's people that are getting those calls that probably shouldn't be getting those calls? How do you personally deal with that?

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 32:56

Well, I'll tell you, you know, you know I'm a Christian. But when I left another organization a few years ago after my dad passed, you know there were some things going on there. Again, it's just to kind of cover on their basis go out and do the training and whatever. And God just told me he's like you need to jump, like it was just clear as day. You need to jump. And I had been in business for myself before but I had put it on hold and the moment I jumped I didn't.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 33:19

I haven't made listen, I don't make phone calls, I don't go out looking for work. Work finds me and I'll tell you what. God is so good to me. Travis, I don't deserve any of it, but he has opened so many doors and you know, I keep telling myself and he tells me daily you're not here to be popular. And and sometimes those who aren't popular I mean Jesus wasn't popular a lot of times either, right, but but again, we're not here to be popular, we're here to do what my purpose is to save lives, families and careers.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 33:47

And I work now with some wonderful people. I work at Responder Health, I work at the Blue Wall Institute. I've got, you know, other jobs, but I work for people because those are the people that we're working for. Like that's the reason I'm here and and I don't let it get me down I'm an excellent speaker when people bring me in and we try to relay the message in a way that people understand. We get great reviews but I don't go looking for work. What I have done is I've gotten actually this fatal 10 has taken on a life of its own, if you will. So we've actually started looking at construction trades, we've looked at physicians and nurses, we're going to be looking at veterinarians soon, clergy members we're putting together this fatal 10 because really it affects every occupational group. So this thing is really taken on a life of its own.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 34:28

And we just said listen, law enforcement is a small part of this pie, if you will, and we care about them deeply. But at some point I can't sit here spinning my wheels trying to help somebody that doesn't want to help themselves. So we go with those people that want to make these changes and want to do these things and we press on and we go do other things, and those doors have have opened for us and it's been. It's been amazing. And you know, we just keep telling people listen, we love our military, we love our law enforcement, our first responders in general, and we are here and at their service. But we can't come in if we're not invited and we're not getting.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 35:02

You know, this isn't mind blowing stuff, but we can change the direction of your agency and I think sometimes people think that you know, you've got to be the most well liked or they. They run in circles and everybody's rubbing elbows and they get them in and that's what happens. But I've always my kind of mantra is I don't want to get on some. I don't want to get into your agency on somebody else's credentials, because when those people are gone I don't get in it anymore. I get in on my own credentials, my own speaking. You know how I do my things, my own research, my own background, and once I'm there, they they see that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing and I get invited back. So it's purely on faith how we, how we go around at the doors that open and that for me has worked very well.

Travis Yates: 35:44

Yeah, I think, since I've gone on full time in the last nine months doing this training and consulting and writing thing, I've probably gone through proverbs about 25 times, just over and over, and because there's not a motivational book out there that can beat that and I continue to see that. You know, popularity, as you said. Popularity, I mean, look at the Master Jesus. Popularity was not his, his mission, and he certainly wouldn't popper for many people still to this day. But he stayed on the mission and and I, god's God, does send me affirmations enough to calm me down, you know, and I'm sure he does, like you said, you don't look for people, they find you.

Travis Yates: 36:25

But it's certainly, at the end of the day, it's frustrating. I'll give you that I don't. I don't, I don't give up, I don't give in, I don't get mad. I just kind of get frustrated because I know that folks like you, olivia, have the secret sauce you have, you have what solves it and people tend to run away from it and I can't thank you enough for choosing to be controversial and for what you do and folks and she's right, I've been to her training. There's nobody like this and hopefully we can get you out there as much as possible.

Travis Yates: 36:56

But I think one of the most brilliant things you did, olivia, was the fatal 10, because it's just so easy to see playing his day of what's going on, and I know you were. There's some cool articles and graphics out there, but if people are sitting there listening and they want to know more about the fatal 10, they want to know how to get access to the book. By the way, let me talk about the book. She just she told you earlier in the show she was sent to anybody that contacts her. That's not true. You got to stay. Keep listening. I'll tell you how to get one. We'll do that here in a second, but tell us where they can get some more information on the fatal 10, olivia.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 37:26

Yeah, no, they can either reach me by email at Olivia at bw-institutecom, or just Google the blue wall Institute and it'll pop up and you can come to our website.

Travis Yates: 37:37

Yeah, it's great stuff. We've been. We've been modeling something similar on the leadership side. Everybody here is listening and is familiar with our courageous leadership principles, but we're taking that model and it may even look a lot like the fatal 10. I just love the what they've done with that. We're working on a book as well, I think. I think that's going to help and I think eventually, when we look around Olivia and the problem's not being solved, A lot of people are going to go wonder what's going on, and I can't thank you enough for kind of standing the gap and doing that. You're a constant fighter. You're an inspiration to me. I can't thank you enough for what you're doing and thank you for being here.

Dr. Olivia Johnson: 38:13

Thank you for having me, Travis.

Travis Yates: 38:14

Now, if you've been listening, you've drank through a fire hose. We didn't get to hardly anything. In fact, I don't even think I covered any of my questions. We will have Dr Johnson on later, but I cannot recommend her book enough. Practical considerations for preventing police suicide.

Travis Yates: 38:29

Go get your own hard copy. If you got the funds, go get it. It's not crazy, it's worth it. It's worth every penny. So you have it. But if you'd like to see an e-copy, just to kind of determine whether you want to put the money down, here's what you got to do. Whatever you're listening to the podcast on, whether it's Spotify or Apple or even our website, yatesleadershipcom you got to leave a review, take a screenshot of the review and email me. You can find my contact at travisyatesorg. Once you do that, I'll ship a copy to you, or Olivia will. However, we work it out, but that's how you can get that copy and it'll be well worth the 45 seconds of your time to do what I just described. So, if you're listening, thank you and just remember lead on and stay courageous.

Intro/Outro: 39:15

Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. travisyates. org.