The Politics of Force with Kevin Davis

Discover the intricate balance between integrity and protocol in law enforcement as we welcome Kevin Davis to the show, a distinguished figure with 39 years experience in law enforcement and security along with an induction into the National Law Enforcement Hall of Fame. Kevin sheds light on the complexities officers grapple with in an era where actions are swiftly judged, with an emphasis on the necessity of meticulous investigations over hasty criminal charges. His seasoned perspective unveils the gritty realities of policing and the paramount role of steadfast leadership in navigating the mounting scrutiny faced by those in uniform.

As we converse with Kevin, his personal sagas of moral fortitude resonate deeply, offering listeners a glimpse into the profound impact of ethical leadership. His tales hold lessons for those in any field—courage in the face of adversity can define a career and influence an entire industry. Kevin's candid reflections on confrontations and legal battles underscore the challenges that come with upholding one's principles, yet also how such challenges can ultimately reinforce the integrity of the law enforcement community.

Finally, we delve into the advancements and hurdles introduced by technology in policing, particularly body-worn cameras and their implications on public perception. The conversation expands to cover proactive measures for handling critical incidents and the evolving landscape of police training amidst new policy changes. Through the lens of Kevin's expertise, we confront the pressing need for enhanced training and support for officers, while also scrutinizing the profound personal consequences they face when thrust into the legal limelight. Join us for an episode that promises not just a discussion but a comprehensive exploration of the principles and pressures shaping the future of law enforcement.

Article Discussed In This Episode: Let Them Shine

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Transcript

Kevin Davis: 0:00

I wrote a number of years ago in my book that we were coming at a time when, unfortunately, agencies, district attorneys or prosecutors whatever would rather charge an officer and make them prove their innocence than vindicate them in a professional investigation, and unfortunately, I didn't know how accurate that statement was going to be.

Intro/Outro: 0:27

I'm honored to have on the show Kevin Davis. Kevin's a veteran of over 39 years in the security and law enforcement field.

Travis Yates: 0:33

That included corrections patrol, narcotics investigations, swat team leader and over 25 years as a use of force instructor, police and private citizen firearms instructor and expert on police and tactics training and use of force. He's the author of what I consider to be the Bible on the topic of use of force. He didn't call it that, but it's called the use of force investigations a manual for law enforcement, and he's also written a book titled Citizens Guide to Arm Defense. Kevin's trained thousands of law enforcement officers and private citizens in firearms tactics and use of force, and he's consulted and trained police, labor unions, investigators and agencies on the legal aspects of use of force and use of force investigations. He's truly an expert in the field of use of force and he's consulted as an expert witness on multiple cases across the country and he was inducted in the 2019 National Law Enforcement Hall of Fame. It's my honor to have Kevin Davis here with us. Kevin, how are you doing, brother?

Kevin Davis: 1:47

I'm doing well. What's Hall of Fame? That Hall of Infamy, by the way.

Travis Yates: 1:53

Well, you know it says something about Kevin. I want the audience to know this. Kevin did not even put on his website that he's in the Hall of Fame. Now can you imagine any other Hall of Fame member in any other profession just omitting that from the website? And so that's something we often talk here at Courageous Leadership. Courageous leaders, you know, at the end of the day they're very, very humble, and I've known Kevin for many years. He's a very humble, quiet guy, Unless you're going against him on a stand, of course, but he's very quiet and humble and kind of unassuming. But, man, brother, what a lifetime of achievements. I'm so honored that you're here. Things are going well for you.

Kevin Davis: 2:28

They are. As you know, I retired from full-time law enforcement in April of last year and my wife says you retired from full-time law enforcement but not working full-time because you know my pursuit in the use of forest realm has increased tremendously and you know I've been very, very busy this year, which is a double-edged sword Travis because it number one, business is good but sadly, number two, almost all my cases are based on a law enforcement officer being charged with criminal violations and that's the part that cuts the most. And you know, here we are.

Travis Yates: 3:10

Yeah, and I want to thank you for your going, for your bold and courageous stance on, really, this entire issue of use of forest. I mean, I know it feels weird to say that. Thank you for being courageous, for just telling the truth, but that is the time we're in, is it not?

Kevin Davis: 3:23

Oh, it's definitely, but unfortunately the times that we're in, and you know, just you know, I wrote a number of years ago in my book that we were coming to the time when, unfortunately, agencies, district attorneys or prosecutors whatever would rather charge an officer and make them prove their innocence than vindicate them in a professional investigation. And unfortunately, I didn't know how accurate that statement was going to be.

Travis Yates: 3:54

Yeah, unfortunately, we've had leaders like yourself through the years to sort of sound a warning call. I know I myself I started talking about the recruiting issue years ago and everyone just ignored me and they thought it was crazy. You know, and here we are and you were doing the same thing with use of force and how that was leading. We went from seeing an isolated case here or there that looked weird to darn near every day we see one that looks weird. And I will say I know you talked about your busy or never, and I don't want to say I'm glad you're retired, but I'm glad you're a service to the profession, but you didn't wait till retirement to kind of take a bold stance on issues. I mean you, you spent a career spanning three decades of being very courageous and doing the right thing and I want to ask you a couple of questions.

Travis Yates: 4:37

I'm very curious to dive into it. This may shock you, kevin. There's not many folks like you around. That's why we're pushing this courageous leadership as much as we can, because we need more of it. But my first question is why do you think that was what's in you to make you kind of go? You know what? I know the whole crowd's going this way, but I'm going to go the other way. Is there? Can you, can you dial it into me and let our audience know? What do you think it was?

Kevin Davis: 5:00

Wow, I would say completely out of the law enforcement realm, just family and church and religion. In terms of being raised with ethics, integrity and morality and character, I mean it meant more to me. And you know, somebody said I don't know who this is can be attributed to in terms of a quote but they said, you know, in terms of teaching, that the students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And you know, and it's so true, and that informed my entire training career and then, as it's gone on, I just one of those people that has always spoken truth to power and you know I took my lumps along the way, but it made for an interesting career. So probably just the way I was raised.

Travis Yates: 6:07

Well, it's interesting you say that I I sound like I was raised very similar to you a group and a family with a mother and father that would just bust my tail if I did turn the wrong way and and I was very much raising a Christian home with ethics and integrity. That was everything. And I couldn't even remember back in high school like my friends coming up to me saying, do, why are you, why are you taking this route? Like just go with us, or why, how come you're going against this or that? I mean it for so I can't really take credit for it.

Travis Yates: 6:32

To be honest, kevin, kind like you, it was just kind of in me from beginning, but you said it made for interesting career. That is not always a comfortable thing to be, to be this courageous individual, courageous leader. Just, do you have any stories that tell us about your career and kind of how that affected? Because I am, I'm convinced there's more of us out there than we know but people, unfortunately, are unwilling to go there because of it can be uncomfortable out there in the world and in your job. Kind of tell us about that.

Kevin Davis: 7:02

Well, you know, in law enforcement in general, I mean, I butted heads with, unfortunately with administrators, and not all of them. I don't want to say that. There are some that I would follow through the gates of hell and literally did in my career, you know, and others who felt, for whatever reason, felt threatened by me, and I think you've run into this as well. The more you educate yourself, the more training you get, the more expertise you develop. You tend to ruffle feathers on the tech test takers. You know, those people that you know want to go. I never wanted to get promoted, so my object was not to educate myself in terms of seeking promotion. I educated myself because that's the way I was raised in. My family were educators, actually, and they constantly were going to courses and constantly seeking out. You know my dad was to short of his, you know go for his PhD when he retired from teaching. My brother has a master's degree in teaching and you know, so they were always seeking out training and educating themselves and then, as I did that, first of all to improve my performance on the street and it did I mean seeking out advanced training and learning about use of force saved my bacon innumerable times. I really believe that training saved lives. So I did that as my goal as a street officer and that attracted attention I sought out because I was going to be an elementary school teacher, if you can imagine that. But I found that I didn't have the patience for it. So I went into law enforcement.

Kevin Davis: 9:02

After I had begun working at a rock concert facility I had an uncle that was a retired Sergeant from the Marine Corps who was like a second father to me, very much promoted my law enforcement ambitions and everything. So as I went that way and as I began training and attending advanced training that people say hey, look at Katie, he's going all these courses and everything. How about if we bring him as an instructor in the basic academy? I had great supporters in that regard, including Jesus Police, but others in the ranks in the upper management felt threatened by me. They didn't want to be told by a patrolman that, hey, this use of force that they thought was bad was good. Hey, you really botched this use of force, investigation etc. They felt threatened. So that manifested.

Kevin Davis: 10:13

Just a short story is that I was transferred out of the training bureau because I had written in a paternal order police newsletter that are current at that time. Well, we call a fast tracker program. In other words, we bring people in that had basic academies from other agencies or a guns from a basic academy. We would hire them, give them a few weeks training, put them out on the street. It wasn't working. I mean the undeniable wasn't working. And I said that chief of the police at the time, who was a former Phoebe, transferred me out of the training bureau illegally and properly, and so the FOP came to me and said, hey, let's sue him. This is wrong and we did and we won, and I want to. In addition to a monetary settlement, I actually got a letter of apology from the chief of police. So who gets that Travis?

Travis Yates: 11:13

Well, there's not many chiefs that will want to write that and you know Dale Stockton wrote a great article on lawfishercom many years ago called never outshine the master, and he's referring to you and a few others. I may have been, may or may not have been, involved in that article.

Kevin Davis: 11:28

Hard to believe if you were.

Travis Yates: 11:29

Some of the things that would occur. And what I've always told people is I never wanted to outshine anybody, kevin. I just wanted to do what I love to do. I don't want anyone's rank, I don't want anybody's job, I just want to do what I enjoy doing, when I'm passionate about. But not everybody takes it that way, but I really appreciate what you've always done.

Travis Yates: 11:46

You know it's one thing to keep your mouth shut in your career and then get out of your career and I see people do this and they write all their articles and they attack people. But you have always been on the cutting edge of just telling the way it is, telling the truth and people don't like it. Well, they're just going to have to get over it, right? Because we're kind of in this world where we think feelings and emotion outrank the truth and that's kind of the world you're living in in use of force. I mean, you've been doing this a very long time when it comes to use of force, expert witness stuff and training, and you kind of got a really good beat on the climate out there. When did you see this starting to change? You said you kind of called it a long time ago, but at what point did you see this sort of changing pretty drastically to where this is going to become a very common occurrence where legal justified force would become criminal?

Kevin Davis: 12:31

Well, somewhere around 2012 is when I started to perceive this, and it was mostly based and this was, of course, years before Black Lives Matter surfaced.

Kevin Davis: 12:44

But I had noticed that the what I had come to refer to as the politics of force was impacting the outcome of force investigations.

Kevin Davis: 12:59

In other words, let's just forget about the facts, the realities as developed by a proper investigation, let's just go with what we feel. Buddy of mine and I don't know whether you know Bob Denton, a dear friend of mine and a PhD, said call it phenomenology. In other words, it's not based on the facts and the totality of the circumstances, it's based on what you feel or your opinion, and that has increased over the years and as now that we have, by war cameras and so much video available now, although we see officers who are being vindicated by BWC video, we also see the weaponization of that same system, or those systems against officers, and a lot of it is by people that don't know their derriere from a hole in the ground. And it's just sad that, whether there's some talking heads on TV or news or whatever, or a special interest group, that now we are to the point where let's not even wait until the investigation is completed, let's charge the officer and make them prove their innocence.

Travis Yates: 14:28

Well, and we know that the vast majority of citizens from the general social survey, they don't understand what legal force is and, by the way, why would they? They're not in law enforcement, they haven't had the training, they don't know the case law right, and so that's exactly right.

Travis Yates: 14:42

And then you show them body worn cameras and it just, and it can be spun by a number of people a certain way. And that's where leadership comes in. And I'm convinced that if leaders would stick to the facts and stick to the truth and tell the correct context, most of the public follows along in the same breath. When you get emotional and you say a bunch of lies, either straight up lies or bio mission, the public, as once again, follows along. And so we've seen cases after cases to where this has occurred.

Travis Yates: 15:10

And really, kevin, what we're talking about here, there's there's a supply and demand issue. There's this huge demand for bad cops, use of cops that use too much force, cops that are racist. There's this huge demand problem, but the supply is very, very low. You know, I don't think either one of us are going to sit here and say that this profession is perfect, because no profession is perfect, but the supply is certainly low and we are supplying millions of videos a day and all they can find typically are just videos where they have to take it out of context and, and you know, and make it seem like it is something that is not, which really is a huge applause to the profession that we. There's no other profession that would film their date all day long, you know. And, and I would say, what do you have? Well, what they have a lot of times is lies. I mean the NBA and the Major League Baseball. They're taking vacation days off of lies, right, and then they never apologize afterwards, based on some of these incidents.

Travis Yates: 16:04

And so, when it comes to body worn cameras, you mentioned the weaponization of that. What should leaders be doing? Because let's just assume they all have them. That's what we're headed to. About 85 percent have them now. The rest of the profession is going to have them soon. We wear body worn cameras. We think that it's being done to help us, but, as you said, it's it's actually the politicians and the activists and the groups out there actually using it to hurt us. What can leaders do up front with body worn cameras to make sure they're not using that way?

Kevin Davis: 16:32

Well, one of the big problems we did in this my opinions or my beliefs were formed by working three years in a body worn camera unit at the end of my career. So I've reviewed thousands of hours of BWC video footage as well as multiple officer involved shootings. Oh and, by the way, a former chief of police in mind said to me when I went to the unit I keep in mind I had worked for over 25 years teaching use of force and defending that agency in civil cases. He said you know you're not going to be reviewing use of force video. And I looked at him and I said no, I didn't know that. And then the next thing, you know I'm working on every single officer involved shooting and multiple uses of force, and to the point where he had to give me a letter of commendation for work I had done on our wife's incident, which is kind of funny, but anyhow, the thing is is that when you do, the problem and you know this to be true, travis when law enforcement embraces technology, the problem is that they don't look down the road to the ripples that are going to happen, or looking in the lake for what ripples may occur, and BWC has tremendous ripples. First of all, you have to understand the technology, and we don't. Very few agencies have a unit capable of looking and doing a use of force analysis. They don't have the software, they don't have the education, and so what I did when I went to that unit is put in for training to educate myself on digital video evidence and had the great opportunity to learn from some of the top dogs in the business, including Andrew Fredrich and Grant Fredrich. And then we got some. I ordered digital video analysis software called InputAce and other software, and so I began breaking these things down and you learn so much about it. But here's with BWC you don't have the agencies and administrators, don't have the staffing or don't have the properly trained people when they get these systems to do proper analysis on use of force incidents.

Kevin Davis: 18:56

The courts are sophisticated in terms of their ability AV ability to play this stuff. I mean I've had actually homicide cases, murder cases when I worked as an expert for my local county prosecutor's office. Where I had to, I was sitting in the witness box. I would be asked a question. I would have to go out into the floor of the court, watch the video and then go back and answer the question Because they didn't have monitors set up where I could see the video in the grand jury.

Kevin Davis: 19:33

One time on an OIS incident you know that I presented the grand jurors. I remember like five of or six of them were gathered around a small monitor in the back of the grand jury room watching the video and then they didn't have a sound bar in the back of the room or any speakers in the back of the room. So when the suspect said clearly on video something about a gun, they said we can't hear that, you know, so we weren't sophisticated. And then we could go into storage, we could go into records and everything else, but people last on to BWC's who were pushed into these things not knowing the many, many ripples that would occur in the criminal justice system because of them, and primarily the thing when we're talking about officer involved shooting that were serious use of force incidents they don't have the knowledge base to really analyze the digital video evidence.

Travis Yates: 20:43

Yeah, one of the things I often talked about, I talk about in my seminars, is if an alien came down to earth and they went to YouTube, to police videos, they would think we're shooting people every second of every day because that's the only videos you typically see. Because we wait. We wait until an open records request comes in for these videos. Of course they're not doing open records question on the videos where we do good things and where we help citizens and we protect people, and so really I think it's up upon the leaders to give their community context on what they do. I mean the one, the one, the one avenue, kevin, where you can sort of see. That was live PD and of course, the activists got that taken off the air because they couldn't let that truth be out. But I think we've done a really poor job of letting our community see this great tool we have and letting them see exactly what we do on a day to day basis to give them context, because it's not like Hollywood, it's not like television, it's completely different, and so most people have a very warped reality of what policing is. And I'm curious to know you know, you're an expert witness and these officers, everybody on every level on a justified legal use of force. They don't do. They're not leaders, they're cowards. They pass on the buck, they pass in the buck, they go off emotion and it gets to the juries.

Travis Yates: 21:54

And what I have seen not every time, what I have seen typically is these juries are the first line of defense that actually do the right thing. When they hear the evidence, when they hear the facts, when they hear the context, when they hear what the law says and they hear from someone else Like you that can explain that to them, they kind of go oh, what are we doing here? Explain that to me, that feeling where you're sitting here watching everybody, from the prosecutor to the police chiefs and the shares and the people in the community and the activist groups just lying and just saying crazy stuff, and then it gets all the way to the end to a jury, and then they go yeah, we get this. It kind of tells us your thoughts on that and do you just put do you believe that if we would tell the community those things up front, it would mitigate much of the things that occur through the course of these cases?

Kevin Davis: 22:43

Oh, you're spot on, you know. And, by the way, recommendation to the audience if they don't have your book, I highly recommend it because part of being that courageous police leader is to get out in front of this stuff and to explain to the public you know, the legal standards of use of force, as well as how law enforcement is trained and everything we don't do that you know we're so reactive in law enforcement. So what you have is I mean, I don't know whether the audience realizes the sophisticated nature of an attorney like Benjamin Crump and the people that he brings in to bear against law enforcement when he takes a case. For instance, they have social media experts, they have media relations experts that go out there and they know how to get their version of the story out in front of the public and in the media long before law enforcement. You know one of the. I would highly recommend a book by Melissa Agnes.

Travis Yates: 23:46

Yeah, christ's Communication right.

Kevin Davis: 23:48

Oh yeah, excellent book, you know, because she, you know, instead of being reactive, to get ahead of the story and put your version out. But, travis, one time I had an OIS. It was a cross-racial shooting of an unarmed black male by white officers and I told the bosses where I worked. I said, listen, we need to get ahead of this thing, we need to do a preemptive video release. But I will create a video with context, I will break it down and I will show frame by frame what the subject did. And you know it was like arm twisting.

Kevin Davis: 24:26

I really at one point, you know, I looked at my office and my former partner laughed because I had the mayor, his chief of staff, his media expert, the chief of police, two deputy chiefs of police, a captain, a lieutenant and, oh, the city safety force director. All in my office is. I broke that shooting down for them frame by frame, and it was took so much arm twisting to get them to do it. And you know what I'm going to say this not one complaint, except the media who said that we didn't release the raw video, which was what they wanted, and we didn't get sued. They haven't been sued on the case and there were no uprising by the public.

Travis Yates: 25:08

Yes, it's funny you say that I have exactly the same stories. I have stories to where I was able to arm twist and get the video out and we took a very volatile situation and it went calm almost immediately. And then I have other situations where they wouldn't do it and things blew up right, and so it's amazing, in 2023, we still have leaders that refuse to do that and it's I don't even know what to say to it, because you're not. You're not lying, you're just putting the truth out there with context, because in law enforcement, everything is context. But these things occur, kevin. These, these tragic events are going to occur as long as human beings are operating in this world. They have always occurred. They will always occur. We have, I mean, we have homeowners that tragically shoot and kill their, their sons or daughters they thought they were burglars Right, we have these horrible things that occur and that doesn't make them criminal, because crimes, crimes need intent, and I think I think where we make a mistake from a leadership standpoint is we set back and we judge these events and we and we throw shade at it, and then we and we think it's not going to happen to us, and you and I both know that many of these events we're talking about or we could talk about are happening in cities you didn't know about before.

Travis Yates: 26:15

That happened, right? And so I think it makes sense for leaders to prepare for these events before they occur. You hope, you pray to God they don't occur, but if they do occur, you have to be prepared for that, versus what we've seen now, where it's where they come out and make wildly emotional statements that have no truth or facts behind it. That just gets everybody in a tizzy, right. And so do you have any suggestions now in a, in a police chief or sheriff or upper management listening right now, where they're in a city and everything's peaceful and calm and this is not happening to them?

Travis Yates: 26:48

Are there some things they can do now to sort of help when that occurs? And we, of course, we hope it doesn't occur, but we work in a, we work in a business that these things unfortunately do occur. They don't occur very often, and it's really amazing the millions and millions of contacts we make a year. We can name them all on one hand. What's happened in recent years? Right, so it doesn't occur very often, but what could our leaders do now in anticipation if that was to occur?

Kevin Davis: 27:14

Well, just some pre planning Travis. You know that to fill your plan is planning to fail, and here you have the circumstances. First of all, let's let's start at the basics. Train your people. That most of your ability, including confrontation, simulation training, you know. Revisit your policy and procedure. Make sure it's up to date, make sure it's realistic and make sure that it's not a 30 page thing on what officers can't do, but a short declarative policy on what they can do and the standards that they're going to be able to countable to.

Kevin Davis: 27:49

Next is train people. Train your officers on use of force, like I said, and actually put them in scenario based training so they get that you know that an oculation effect from good, solid training. Train your supervisors to conduct proper investigations. Train internal affairs and command staff. Oh, by the way, unfortunately it's too hard to get out of in service training, instead of just going and learning, they spend more time trying to get out of it.

Kevin Davis: 28:20

But actually go and learn what the troops are doing and then create the structures, including people that can deal with digital video evidence. There are police information officers that are properly trained, that can actually communicate to the public and can actually say a sentence without stumbling, that are savvy people that understand this stuff, including use of force. Because let's be honest, travis, the number one thing in law enforcement under the microscope right now is the use of force, specifically the use of deadly force. And yet we sit around, twiddle our thumbs until an incident happens. And then we have this strategy where we circle the wagons and say what should we do now? Do that advanced training, get the structures in place so that when one of these incidents happens, you're not reactive, you're actually putting into effect the plans that you made prior.

Travis Yates: 29:21

Yeah, what you just mentioned is a very strong principle in trade leadership. We often talk about called leave. No doubt, like you should build your police department around that if anybody was to attack any aspect of it, that, if they tried to attack it, that they would look foolish because you've left, no doubt that you have one of the best police departments around. And that is in all the areas you just talked about training, policy, procedures, all that stuff. But we just don't see that right. Like you said, we wait until bad things happen and then you're in a bad position then, because then a lot of other people are going to tell you what to change and they don't exactly tell you what to change based on the mission law enforcement. And that's kind of where we are right now. As I talk about that, let's talk about the attack on Granby Connor and we'll have to come back later and really dive deep into that.

Travis Yates: 30:05

But that's a 1989 Supreme Court case that dictates use of force in law enforcement and it's not going anywhere, right.

Travis Yates: 30:13

I mean, the last couple of times this case has gone away, the Supreme Court it's been like either a shutout or a 6-3.

Travis Yates: 30:19

I think 6-3 was the closest it's ever come, the judges, despite political differences on each side of the aisle, are all kind of on the same page that law enforcement needs these protections in Granby Connor, meaning you have to judge police officers based on what they know at the time, without 2020 hindsight, and what is reasonable based on all that and, of course, it goes into further detail than that, because this case is not going anywhere we're actually seeing police agencies, law enforcement groups that are supposed to be supporting law enforcement states, coming out and mandating policies that go completely against this. One of the most popular ones that I'm seeing today is this last resort policy, and that's pretty dangerous, because they're judging last resort based on what they know after the fact and kind of tell me. That to me seems to be the trend moving forward and there's only one goal in mind by doing that throw policemen in jail, and so I'm curious to know your thoughts on that.

Kevin Davis: 31:25

Well, you know, it's sad that, as you mentioned, some states have come out, with California being one, washington State being another and Virginia I'm working on right now in Virginia and they changed and restricted use of deadly force more than Graham allows. The problem is is let me pose this what about the leadership, or lack of leadership, with the law and your state changes? It's more restrictive than Graham, yet you don't modify your policy and procedure and you don't give your troops any training on the new legal standards. What about the vacuum of leadership there? You know, and yet that's exactly what's happened in a couple cases.

Kevin Davis: 32:12

I've worked in these states where you know the AG's office. Even they said that before the end of last year in Washington State that everybody needed to embrace these new legal standards on use of force, and yet they didn't put out from the state AG that I know of a lesson plan or mandated training. Virginia did the same thing. I even sent an email in case I worked in Virginia or after I worked in case in Virginia and I said hey, did you ever put out a lesson plan to the state law enforcement agencies requiring training? And no answer. And the truth is they didn't, so left to their own devices. These patrol officers in Virginia the ones that I go with had to go out on their own and find out what the new legal standards were, you know. So here we have. If you're going to change something, then you better have training that deals with it.

Travis Yates: 33:15

Absolutely, kevin. You would not find this in any other profession on the planet. There is no way that doctors or accountants or or exterminators would have some major change to their job and they're not provided the tools and resources to effectively make that change. And the only thing in my mind while they're doing this, the only thing in my mind while they're doing this, is they want cops in jail. There's no other question for me. They're setting their setting the profession up for failure.

Kevin Davis: 33:43

Well, I can't under these circumstances. Here's here's my take on it. Under these circumstances, you're absolutely right. There is no other possible reason.

Kevin Davis: 33:53

However, what's good for me as an expert witness working in defensive law enforcement officers is that what I, when I go in and work these cases, I find universally that people are not trained in Grand Vecana or they're not trained in the legal standards from their state. They're not even trained in use of force investigations. They do sloppy, incomplete investigations. They have investigator bias. You know they operate when watching a BWC video that if it looks bad, it is bad, that that a use of force that, say, for instance, is bad, equals, as you said, criminal intent. They say that if you have a difference of opinion and officer statements in the incident, that that means they're lying, that if an officer makes a statement that's different than the video, that he's lying.

Kevin Davis: 34:45

I mean these are all the things that I use when I go in and work the case and I'm probably saying that I had only one officer convicted last year, you know, and that was an amazing thing. That's subject to appeal and that was on misdemeanor case and complete judge bias, by the way. So we'll be pointed out the threat to arrest the defense attorney, by the way, and he threatened to charge her with contempt. And then I had one where we had a hung jury. But other than that, you know I'm not bragging. I'm just saying that if you go in and you know your business first of all, if you know your business this is never going to happen. You know, what's going to happen is that these officers, by and large, will be vindicated in a professional and proper investigation. That's what should be happening, you know. The fact that they are being charged, then, with crimes you know, gives people like me the opportunity to come and say you know what? That's not the law.

Travis Yates: 35:51

Let's talk about the ramifications of that, kevin. I mean we don't, we don't ever talk about. It's great these officers are vindicated, but it shouldn't even come to that. Like you said, it should be based on an investigation beforehand. Like any other criminal looking into a criminal act, you investigate it first and, like I said, other than police officers, no one would ever be able to get away with treating people like this. But you know we're dealing with that. But what happens to the mindset of a police officer that goes through this? Maybe they're Suspended or terminated from their job. They go through an entire court process. They may think they may lose 20, 30 years of their life behind bars, and then they're. I mean then, yeah, they're acquitted, they're vindicated, but what? What happens after that? I mean their lives are never the chain. I have to assume. Their lives are never the same.

Kevin Davis: 36:39

Oh, it's horrible. And, by the way, my those listeners who are attending the elite of conference or are on the the fence about going, make sure you go, because there's some great classes that I'll be presenting on officers charged this year. In other words, what are the ramifications? The officers, what are the ramifications to agencies and what can officers do to help mitigate that? You know prior what, what, how, how they should plan and prepare for that eventuality. But yes, I think that when you're talking about these types of incidents, changing the law enforcement, because Officers are perceptive as to weight, the how people are being treated and if you treat an officer like this, you know what's gonna happen is morale is gonna be adversely impacted. You're the best recruitment tool and you know this to be true is to take care of the people that already work for you. They're your best recruiters right there.

Kevin Davis: 37:42

But if you don't take care of the people, if you throw them under the bus to serve political gods, then what's gonna happen is words gonna get out and pretty soon You're gonna have a hard time recruiting officers. Proactive policing is gonna go down. They're gonna sit and and this is happening in my agency, my former agency where officers Sit parking lots and wait for calls, rather than go out and do proactive policing, because it's doubtful that they're going to be supported by the agency. My former agency, the city, is now looking at the citizen review board. They already have a police auditor, who's a complete waste of taxpayer money and time, and now they're going to a citizen review board, which is even worse. Why? Because there's an actual problem, no, because of politics, and officers are sitting back and saying I'm not doing this, brother, you know.

Travis Yates: 38:36

Yeah, and what the amazing thing about all these so-called reforms is? They have no good reason to do the reforms. Then, once the reforms are implemented, there's no way that comes behind them and they go. We'll do this work. I mean, use of force policy is a prime example, kevin. We're shooting people to hire right now. They were in 2015 because violence has increased in this country. It's not, it hasn't ticked up too much, but it has ticked up a little bit. And Meanwhile we've we've changed all these use of force policies and all this training, check the box stuff that we thought would do this, and it has no difference at all, because they're reforming the wrong group of people, which is law enforcement. They ought to be reforming the violent criminals that keep attacking law enforcement. You know, I have no respect for the LeBron James of the world because he has a huge platform where he all he has to say to help this issue is hey, here's an idea Don't fight cops, don't attack cops.

Kevin Davis: 39:23

He could say that to people you know, and you know it's from my hometown, I'm not gonna stick up for him. And there's a Anti-law enforcement.

Travis Yates: 39:31

Well, it's just silly you know, it's just silly that that, and I'm convinced that maybe they don't want the problem to Go away. So so they keep the rhetoric going, so they have something to talk about. Because I really think it would make a difference if somebody, a stature, a president, an athlete, somebody, instead of just throwing gasoline on the emotion, they would go. Here's an idea. You know, the courts is where you fight what's happening, you. You don't fight it on the streets and and and, because we could end use a force tomorrow if everybody complied right and but that's that's not happening.

Travis Yates: 40:04

No one's telling them to do that. They almost feeling bold, and so it's really, really crazy. I want to ask you one more thing, kevin, and you just let into it. You talked about no pro activity and, by the way, I kind of laugh when all these police departments running around and wondering why they can't recruit and are throwing all this money at it the signing bonuses and and all this stuff and I'm thinking to myself Are you serious? You, you really don't. You don't, really don't see why you can't recruit.

Travis Yates: 40:28

Look in the mirror, look what you've done to. You cannot make a job impossible and expect anyone to raise their hand or do that job, kevin. So this, that issue is not going away. I can tell you that right now, until we change from the inside. And One more question you talked about the proactivity, but what about from an officer safety standpoint? I know, just like me, you have seen multiple videos where officers have let people Point guns at them, do things to them, and they are not responding to that. How much of that you think has been a chilling effect Based on them being scared of a prosecutor or being scared of YouTube more than someone with a gun?

Kevin Davis: 41:08

Well, unfortunately, travis is you and I talked before we went on the air. It's not just the outsiders, it's not just the activist groups, blm or the politicians that are going out to law enforcement, it's our own profession. You know, I dealt with this today in a case in which you know I mentioned the Taser ring in Minnesota, where a law enforcement veteran said this is unbelievable and and yada, yada, yada that this tazering and how many people have been killed with tasers and this guy was just lumbering along, leaning in an auto accident. Well, that's not the truth. He hadn't even watched the entire tape. The entire tape showed this guy, after the audience Accident, tried to get in several different cars whether you call it car jacking along the highway and he was running away from officers, by the way, to female officers who responded and tasers him, neutralized the threat and controlled them.

Kevin Davis: 42:02

And this the so-called expert didn't even know that of this thing called disparity of force, which certainly we allow our female officers to use more force against male subjects. The male officers do it. So it's been a long thing. We want them to use those remote controls because we understand that they get in trouble when they go in and try to wrestle with, with male suspects, but yet here we are eating our owner, in this Individual, you know, condemning the use of force before he knew the full context of the video, before he, you know, had educated himself about the totality of the circumstance.

Kevin Davis: 42:43

So it's, we can't just blame, you know, outsiders, we're doing it to ourselves, yeah, you know, and oftentimes in the guise of, you know, ego. In other words, I Believe that I would have done better than this had I been in those same circumstances, and that's not how it's supposed to be judged. The question is, was there would have reasonably prudent and well-trained officer, in the exact same circumstances, have used that amount of force? That's the legal question. You know not whether they could have done this or should have done that, or maybe their tactics. If they were different, then some would never happen. But here we are throwing our own people under the bus, you know so. Yes, the, of course. They're, you know, trepidatious and Pesitant to use force. My god, can you blame them?

Travis Yates: 43:34

right and Kevin, I'll tell you this has been epic man before we get off here. What? How can people reach you?

Kevin Davis: 43:40

Well, the the the best way is through email at trainer. That's t? R a I n? E? R, kevin Davis. No hyphens or periods. Trainer Kevin Davis at gmailcom. Or you can send me an email through my link at katie Hyphen force training. Calm, I'm on the web. Just do a Google search and my website will come up. I do publish, I try to get out every couple weeks of a blog about these topics and and like you said, I'm not hesitant to go out on the thin ice and tap around a little bit, because that's what we need right now. We don't need to be conservative in our views about training and about use of force. We need to to really prepare and Train our troops so they survive the encounter and they survive the internal investigation, they survive the media scrutiny and they survive the potential civil liability as well.

Travis Yates: 44:39

Well, I can't agree with you more, kevin, I'm so thankful that you were here. I'm honored to have you and, on behalf of the entire law enforcement profession, thank you for your dedication and efforts on these issues. There are many officers that have their free in the day because of you and I can't thank you enough for that. Thank you for listening and remember. Lead on and stay courageous.

Intro/Outro: 45:02

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