Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates

Courageous Optimism with David Berez

• Travis Yates • Episode 135

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We sit down with David Berez to unpack culture, leadership, and mental health in policing, and why science-backed tools beat checkbox trainings. He shares practical ways to build anti-fragility, define purpose beyond the badge, and lead with courageous optimism.

• differences in culture across EMS, fire and police
• internal competition, promotion pitfalls and leadership gaps
• science-based wellness versus story-only events
• proactive gratitude as mental training
• storytelling focused on you at your best
• journaling and creative self-disclosure
• anti-fragility as the goal beyond resilience
• leading by example and financial habits for recruits
• identity and purpose outside the uniform
• the theory of courageous optimism
• service and advocacy through NLEOMF and Citizens Behind the Badge

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Announcement:

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

Travis Yates:

Welcome to the show. I'm so honored you decided to spend a few minutes with us here today. And we are honored today to have David Berez with us on the show. He spent 33 years as a first responder with over 20 of those in law enforcement. He's the founder and president of 6-4 consultants, which is focused on increasing the well-being of our nation's law enforcement officers, our veterans, and first responders. He's an expert serving for various organizations, including the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund and Citizens Behind the Badge. And he's the author of the excellent book, A Resilient Life, A Cop's Journey in Pursuit of Purpose. David, how are you doing, sir? I'm doing great, and thanks for having me on your program, Travis.

David Berez:

I really appreciate your time.

Travis Yates:

No, man, listen, uh, you you're someone that is always in the middle of some of the cutting edge stuff, and you're you're part of these organizations that are helping so much in law enforcement, and you had an incredible journey. I guess uh before starting out, I think we just want to get a foundation of I mean, 33 years as a first responder. I know a little over 20s in law enforcement, and you served in some other roles. Just kind of tell us about that journey and what got you interested in it.

David Berez:

Uh, so I started out when I was 14 years old as a volunteer with the local rescue squad. And I did 10 years as a volunteer as an EMT from the ages of 14 to 24. And I'll tell you, as awesome as that experience was, you are not prepared at the age of 14, 15, 16 years old to see the worst of that life has to offer from the car crashes to the fires. And you can't really participate in much until you are 16. But yeah, I was able to do the training, be on the ambulances, see the things. Um, and man, that was a really young age to start absorbing all the things we see in the first responder field. Um, when I got to the age of 18, I was off to college. I did four years uh at Hofstreet University, and I was on the uh volunteer fire department out there where I went to school. And when I came back uh back home after graduation is when I got involved in police work. And that transition for me from EMS to law enforcement really happened at the New York City Medical Examiner's office, where I was not there as a patient. Um, I was there well and alive uh as uh an intern for one year doing um medical legal investigations, which was a really cool experience. And I saw like the intersection between what I lived through on the EMS side versus what the investigations on law enforcement could look like. And uh that was my transition into police work. And then at the age of 24, I went to the police academy and uh had an awesome career in law enforcement.

Travis Yates:

Yeah, so you had this unique career where you sort of jump from one area to the other, and and I would assume that there's a significant difference in the culture. I mean, I guess speaking of that briefly as far as culture and leadership, jumping from I mean, uh EMS, fire, police, kind of talk about that.

David Berez:

So there's uh obviously they all have their individual responsibilities, uh, which I think create some of the culture in law enforcement. You you really are the first responder of the first responders. And uh on the fire and EMS side, you're kind of the second responders of the first responders because law enforcement has to secure the scene before you get into it. Yeah, we we have a nice term for it, we call it staging, right? We're staging. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's uh, you know, so yes, does that breed a little animosity between the uh services? It does, but it's all in good fun. Um but what I'll I'll I'll say is that on the law enforcement side, there is a lot more thinking and a lot more uh academic perspective on our job because the reality is we have to be able to justify everything we do in a court of law. So it's not just the hands-on pieces, there's a tactical and um academic response to everything that we do in law enforcement, where on the fire and EMS side, you're more just tackling a problem with a set of skills that you've you've learned. And I think to me that was kind of the biggest difference. There was also some cultural dynamic differences. I I think on the law enforcement side, there was definitely more of a brotherhood feeling um and a big brother, little brother relationships within the agency versus on the EMS and fire side, where it I never really felt that it felt family-like uh to some extent, but it never felt um just that you're depending on each other for each other's lives type feeling.

Travis Yates:

Yeah, that certainly is unique. And and we hear a lot about this uh thin blue line and brotherhood and and and this and all these different things. But uh, you know, what we keep hearing from our audience and the experience that so many folks that follow us have is sometimes the people inside those walls, the people you work with, are some of the worst ones that the way they treat you.

David Berez:

Yeah, and I I think that's gonna be within the agency itself. I think culturally as a whole, we still have that feeling. Uh, but within the agency, there's always so much competition for promotion, for the greater assignments, for for who's gonna lead, who's gonna you know come behind. And we are real as cops, we are really good leaders. We're not really good followers. And I think when you put all of these type A alpha dudes into uh one pot, essentially, it becomes uh a mixture for disaster. Now, that can, depending on the leadership of the agency, that can be a good thing. If that energy is uh channeled into a great way through great leadership and great um just building of your people and having an officer-centric agency, I think we can really do a good job with that. But when the leadership is not trained, uh it really breeds malcontent within the organization. I always said, at least in my agency, and I hate talking bad about the police, but um, I always was worried more about getting stabbed in the back inside of it than shot in the face outside of it. Um, and that's kind of you know what I think people talk about. But the reality is I think there is just there is a a sense of family. You know, if you're a cop on a side of the road on a major highway, on a toll road, and you're battling somebody in the shoulder, somebody's gonna stop and help you out, and it's gonna be another cop. And it it's it we truly do look out for each other. But again, sometimes and not always the best ways with inside their own agencies.

Travis Yates:

Yeah, and I don't think you're picking on your agency by saying that we're more scared of inside the walls outside. I think that's probably almost every agency in doing. We've been doing agency surveys for many, many years, and I have found a couple that are fairly incredible that that are sort of sort of far off and beyond from the most. But I think in general, that's a good general term. And and do you have any ideas on how we can because obviously that goes to stress and and and mental wellness and all the problems. I mean, most cops I know leaving the profession today, they may be leaving because they got fully funded on their pension or whatever, but at the end of the day, they're kind of leaving because of what's going on between the walls. I agree. So, what's your thoughts on that?

David Berez:

Yeah, I agree. I I we have a dearth of good leadership within law enforcement, and that's not to say that our individuals can't be good leaders, because I think we all are leaders every shift that we work. Um, I I think where we struggle is we separate from the military, the military promotes people based on what they've done and the work that they've done and their and their uh credentials, their credibility, uh, the effort they put in. On the law enforcement side, we promote people who took the test the best. And I think that's our real challenge. And we put then put the people that got the promotion into a leadership class to hopefully make them a good leader. It doesn't work that way. You either have that skill set or you don't. Can it be learned? Yes. But there has to be a good foundation, and we're not promoting the right people for sure. And we see it, especially at some big agencies, big city agencies, where these chiefs or or or directors or commissioners at the top, they're kaltowing to the politics of the moment and they're not leading by example and they're not looking out for their people. We're not people-centric within our law enforcement agencies. I think there's just a dearth of good leadership. Isn't that crazy?

Travis Yates:

Well, the way you just put it, I don't think I've ever thought of it this way. We promote somebody, then we send them to leadership curriculum type training after we promote them.

David Berez:

Yeah, absolutely. Because we promote by test taking in an interview.

Travis Yates:

Versus the military and and the private industry that looks for leaders, promotes leaders, and then mentors those and then we wonder why platforms like this exist and why you why you're having to teach so much on mental wellness and resiliency. Man, it's pretty wild when you think about it. So, what got you interested in uh obviously you've got a great organization. There's six, four consultants. Uh, give the website with the answer, but I mean you're doing a lot of great stuff around the country, it revolves around resiliency and some other things I want to talk about. What got you interested in that?

David Berez:

So when I retired January 1st of 2020, I retired into a really odd time. It was the beginning of COVID and you know, come June, we we had all the civil unrest following the uh Minneapolis incident. And I was sitting at home on the couch, losing my marbles. And I wanted to be part of the fight. I'm a fighter. I'm I'm a guy that just wants to be engaged with being a problem solver. And I was literally sitting on the couch, drinking my brains out because it was not a damn thing I could do to help anybody else that was struggling. And on July 29th of 2020, a very close friend of mine, Danny, had taken his own life as a result of everything that law enforcement was going through at the time and things that he also had going on in his personal life. He was still uh an active detective sergeant with a local department at that time, a city department. And he was like the eighth or ninth person in the course of, I don't know, maybe 10 or 12 months here in New Jersey that had died by suicide. And I was like, dang, what what's going on here? What's the problem? And I knew in my heart that I was struggling too, but I didn't realize where I was or how I was doing in the in the space of everybody else. So I was lucky enough to um be at the forefront of what we were doing here in New Jersey with the New Jersey Office of Resiliency for Law Enforcement. And I was put into a class called Master Resiliency Trainer Course, which was uh assisted by the FBI National Academy's folks. And it was a great opportunity to understand what resiliency looked like. And it was a three-day course. I got my certification in that, all well and good. But I then I started teaching some of this as an adjunct for the state and then uh for a private company, and I didn't understand what the science was behind what we were doing. And I was reading off slides, I was talking about emotion, using my own background and story. I'm like, but something doesn't feel right. This is inauthentic. I don't like it. So I had to figure out what that was about. So uh through that process, I had read uh Marty Seligman, Dr. Seligman's book, uh Flourish, which is a very popular one. I'm sure a lot of people have read it in this space. And in that book, he talks about the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania. So I was like, dang, I gotta do that. And my wife's a Penn grad from undergrad school, so I married up. Um and it was great to see, like, hey, maybe I can have this connection to her and go to this program. We can both be penned grad. Oh, this cool. I'm like, an Ivy Geek school, it's never gonna work. So I applied. I did not get in the first time, I did get in the second time, which was a blessing of its own. Um, and I graduated, and I'm the only police officer to who have ever gone through this positive psychology degree. And um it's uh it's a true blessing to have been part of that experience for many reasons. And now Marty's a personal friend and a mentor of mine. And taking all of what I've learned in the science of well-being, which is what positive psychology is, and being able to bring that to the law enforcement space, we've been talking a lot about these concepts, and there's a lot of people that talk about this stuff, and like I'll even say, have you know, um vomit from a podium about these things sometimes. And uh but when you put the science behind it and understand why it works and what we're telling you to do, it really makes a big difference. And for me to have that level of authenticity of the scientific background of discussing these skill sets, these interventions, these tools really made a big difference for me. And that's why I ended up getting involved. I had to give back to the problem we were having. You know, we have over a hundred almost 200 people a year, 200 cops a year that kill themselves. And um it's four times the amount of people dying by a felonious attack in the line of duty. That's insane. That's insane. We can't be doing this, and we got to figure out what the problem is and how to solve it, and not just having diarrhea of our of our hearts at the podium, which are great. We should be telling those stories, but let's have people walk away with skill sets that they can use so they can do better for themselves and they can serve their communities with the best version of themselves.

Travis Yates:

Well, you alluded to it. I think you said diarrhea of their heart. Uh, this uh whatever you want to call it, mental health, mental wellness, resiliency. Uh these trainings popped up overnight, right? It's just everywhere you look, somebody is a so-called expert in it. And that's why I think what you're doing is so different. I said it, you didn't have to say it. That's why I think what you're doing is so different, is you've actually studied this, and you obviously have your personal experience, but you've studied it, you have the science behind it. That's the difference, is it not?

David Berez:

I I would agree with that statement. Um what I focus on is actually the science of storytelling, and I think storytelling is so important, and I'm so grateful for people being vulnerable enough to tell their stories in a public forum, at a podium, on podcasts, however, whatever platform they choose to do it from. What I really struggle with with, and I've actually seen it happen, unfortunately, is people walk away from a conference only having heard how bad everybody else is doing. They go out into the parking lot and blow their brains out. Um, I watched it happen. And it broke my heart. So for me, what I needed to do was be able to use my story as a foundation, but then be able to give people tools to walk away with so they can do better for themselves, their agency. But honestly, the most important part is do better for their families. Because if we're not giving people the skill sets to get healthy, telling the stories is just well, only benefiting the person at the podium.

Travis Yates:

There, there's entire three-day conferences that will make you more depressed before you before you got there. I was just at one. It's nothing but that, yeah.

David Berez:

I was just at one. And you know, the feedback I got from that conference was dang, you're the only one that gave us tools to walk out of the room with, and I appreciate you. To me, that was everything. Like I can die tomorrow happy because that comment was passed to me.

Travis Yates:

Well, we don't want you to die tomorrow, but we want you to be happy. So, so when you talk about tools, give us give us three things right now that our listeners should be looking at. First off, from a proactive standpoint, and then even maybe unfortunately, sometimes a reactive standpoint.

David Berez:

So I I appreciate that you actually broke that apart because I think proactive is the most important part. Um, we don't run a marathon on the first day of training, right? We we need to train our brains in the same way we would train our bodies. So we got to do it when we're in good shape and we have to work ourselves up. So when the moment happens where we have to put ourselves or our minds into action, we're already in a great place to be able to do that. So proactive training of our brains is really important. And one of the simplest, easiest things we can do, and I know this word is thrown around a lot, it's free, it's cheap, but gratitude. Be freaking grateful, not just for the things that people are doing for you, but feel gratitude for what you offer back to other people. Gratitude is based in the idea in the science of meaning and mattering. And there's two parts of that. There's feeling valued, which is great, but adding value actually has been shown to be more effective in our overall well-being, in what uh Aristotle would have called our eudaimonia, our living the good life. Uh, so we giving back to others is what makes us feel good more than when people do good things for us. So just be kind to others, but also feel gratitude when people are doing kind things to you. And just it's free, it's simple, it's easy.

Travis Yates:

Well, yeah, we just our Thanksgiving episode was about that. Uh now I just we didn't have a guest, I just sort of ripped on for about 15 minutes and talked about it because it's something that I've had to sort of find. Because if you want to feel sorry for yourself, you'll find a reason all day, every 100%. You have you have to look around even globally and go, hey, the fact that we get to sit here with technology and meet each other in the United States of America, I'm pretty grateful for that because I didn't choose that. I didn't choose where I was born, didn't choose my parents, didn't choose anything. And so it's really about having that holistic approach to things, if it's not it is.

David Berez:

I I completely agree. Um, and and as we also alluded to before, uh, storytelling I find to be a really good piece, which is going to be more on the reactive side because you have to have had a story to tell. So it's uh a little bit harder than than gratitude as a proactive tool. Uh, but storytelling is is a great way. And when I do that lecture, when we have those workshops, what I really concentrate on is finding a 10-word, building a 10-word meaning statement, number one. So you have a north star for what your life is about. And then building a story up with that north star, with that meaning statement as your focus and talking about you at your best. The story should be about you at your best. It shouldn't be, oh, when um I saw this, it made me feel X. No, no, no, no. Yes, that sucks. It happened. I'm sorry about that, but it doesn't do anything for you other than to, as we said before, vomit that at the podium. When you're telling a story about you at your best, you can reframe what you saw and it sucked, but how did it benefit you? So instead of looking at things, why did this happen to me? Let's talk about things, why they happened for me, and use that to build your meaning story with your meaning statement as you're a North Star. And then if words aren't your thing, and it's not for everybody, I'm a I'm a writer. I love writing. I know you're you're a writer as well. And that's how I get my emotions, my feelings, and my thoughts to live somewhere other than the scrambledness in my head, and it helps me organize. Some not everybody's a literary person. Some people are more visual. And if you draw a picture of your story, take photographs of things and create a pictorial of a story. There's different ways. You can sculpt, you can do woodwork. Anything creative allows you to tell a story through that art. And those are the things that we talk about often in my storytelling workshops and lectures. That's a really good reactive way to things that have happened to you, reframing it as to what happened for you.

Travis Yates:

Is that why the power of journaling, that's why is that why journaling is so important, David?

David Berez:

It is. So journaling is actually grounded in the uh science of self-disclosure, which goes back over a hundred years. Uh, you know, and if you're able to take the things that are living in your head and making you crazy, I'll I'll use that word, which is not a great word, but certainly not scientific. But uh, taking those thoughts and putting it on paper and organizing it in a way that makes sense to you. What's so amazing about that journaling process is you can refer back to those thoughts at any given time and revisit them and understand them in a way that you can't when they're just stuck inside your head. You can reframe them because they're there for you to look at and reflect upon rather than uh being an emotional response inside your brain.

Travis Yates:

So when it comes to resiliency, um, I think if I asked a hundred people what that was, I'd probably get a hundred different answers. So, based on all your knowledge, what's uh What's a good working definition for that and what people should be looking at?

David Berez:

So I actually don't like the word resiliency. I think uh it doesn't really serve us in the way that it's clinically defined. Um and I know positive psychology certainly has a uh resiliency as a scientific component to it. I actually look looking at uh Nassim Taleb's anti-fragility because resiliency is coming back to zero, where anti-fragility is is that um response from zero, like building from coming back better than you were before the adversity took place. And so to me, I actually uh try to refer less to resiliency anymore because it has become a buzzword. It's a it's a it's a brand at this point. And uh I think it's a bad brand right now, actually. And we have to look at what do we do to build ourselves beyond resiliency and how do we come back better from adversity than before the adversity took place? And that's truly the concept of anti-fragility and building ourselves up in a way where the the adversity can't break us, it changes us, but we can then come back better than before it took place in the first.

Travis Yates:

When it comes to leaders, uh one of the problems I have with what leaders are doing with this, all these topics right now is they're I call it checkbox training, right? They just want to find some training or find some program endorsed by some four-letter word that's a cuss word, and they just say, We did this and we're good and we're we move on. Uh, I'm sure you've seen the same thing. If there was a if there's leaders listening to this that truly want to make a difference, not just say say they did something to satisfy some mandate, what's the first step they should do?

David Berez:

Number one, lead by example. Random acts of kindness, being good to people, showing people how to live in a a pious way where you're not. If you have a new kid coming into your squad, make sure he doesn't buy that $100,000 F-150 right out the gate with his first paycheck. Make sure that they're having financial resiliency in their lives, that they're setting money aside from their first paycheck. Yes, they should enjoy themselves. They're young, they should they should be out there, but they also need to be responsible. So lead by example. That would be my first um suggestion for a leader. And don't just because you're the sergeant or you're you're the lieutenant of your squad, uh, don't come to work in your $100,000 car that your wife helped you buy because what these young kids are looking up to you and they're trying to um follow in your footsteps because you've been successful, lead by example and be do it in a way that's kind of humbling. And yeah, it's um show I would show these young kids how to be grateful for what they have and not yearn for the things they don't. And I think that'll also help them when they answer that first domestic violence call, that they've never even had a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend, so they don't even know what relationship building is all about. So, how do you go beyond just separating the two parties, finding out which one is responsible? And then, you know, in Jersey we have a must-arrest. So you got to take that. Let's talk to people like humans and find out what's bothering them, what brought them to that place? How can we be of service to them beyond what we're required to do as police officers? And I think that's a great way to start is leading by example.

Travis Yates:

You know, you you you talk about purpose a lot, you teach on purpose, and I think that's uh something really huge that happens to people that retire or leave this profession because we sort of do them a disservice by making by wrapping up this job as who they are. We start in the academy, we we separate them from Saudi with a uniform, we identify them, and we we tell we talk about us versus them, or even if we don't talk about it, it comes across in our actions. So you can see where if somebody spends 10, 20, 30, 35 years in that environment, they think their entire life, their entire purpose is that environment. When they leave that environment, there's significant problems. I want you to talk about kind of what officers on the job need to be doing right now to make sure that they don't lose their purpose when they leave a job. And then people that have already left the job that I mean, I'll just speak for myself. It took me a couple years of fog to sort of figure out, oh, even though I teach this and this and that, this happened to me, I didn't even know it because I didn't even know I was being indoctrinated like that. So kind of talk to that crowd as well.

David Berez:

So I think uh understanding and finding out who you are is really important, and that goes back to that that 10-word meaning statement, uh, is identifying what your meaning and what your purpose is. It you're and it's not being a police officer, it's not um, oh, I'm uh a SWAT guy. Like that's not your purpose, that's an avenue towards your purpose, but identifying what your purpose is, like mine is being an just authentic servant leader for other people. And I didn't need to wear what what I learned, because I took me some time just like you on the way out the door to figure it out. But what I've learned is I didn't need to wear a badge and a gun or a uniform or hang my blue line flag on the back of my car to understand that and or to be that servant leader. I can serve people in other ways through authenticity, through intention. And that's what works for me. Some people, their identity may be a beach bum. You know, here in New Jersey, we have a lot of guys that live along the ocean, and uh when they're off duty, they're off duty and they're with their boat and their family and they're fishing. Like, that's awesome. So, what I would suggest to folks that are on the job or potentially transitioning out, uh make sure you have friends that are not cops. Because when you walk out the door on your last day, you are not coming back. You are not part of the team anymore, you are not part of the inner circle, you are gonna be on the outside looking out. And no matter who you were, I don't care if you were the social leader, if you were the chief, I don't care what your position was within the agency, either professionally or socially, you are on the outside looking in now. And you are not part of the team. You're not even gonna be part of a retirement team. Most agencies don't even have a retirement team. Now, if you go like NYPD, New Jersey State Police, Chicago PD, there are retirement organizations with those larger departments. But you know, the vast majority of the country has their departments are 25 cops or less. So you are on the outside. Make sure your friends are not all cops because you you there's nothing to talk about on the outside when when work doesn't isn't there anymore. If your friends are all cops, have experiences that are outside the agency, outside policing. It's so important. And for your family as well. You're not going to be talking about cop shit with your family once you've left the job. It's just it's a non-factor anymore, it's not work anymore. So find ways to experience life with your family, with friends, that is not police related.

Travis Yates:

And before we go, David, I need to ask you about this term because I saw it on your website. You teach about it, but it obviously piqued my interest because we talk about courageous leadership here. But you talk about a term called courageous optimism. Talk to us about that.

David Berez:

So courageous optimism was born out of a pretty simple question that I didn't know how to answer. And when I was in graduate school at Penn, Dr. Marty Seligman has said to me, What? And this was right after a critical incident that was in the news. And he said to me in class, what allows a cop to go into the proverbial gunfire when everybody else is running away? And interestingly, it wasn't proverbial at the time, it would there was an actual critical incident that we were talking about in our class. And I was like, I don't know, they're just trained to do it. And I was coming up with all of these like random things. He goes, No, what's the academic theory? If anybody knows Marty Seligman, everything with him is academics and in a great way. He's one of the most brilliant researchers and brilliant psychologists who have ever walked this earth. Um, but he was looking for an academic theory, and I had nothing, literally had nothing for him. And uh he's like, Well, it's not an official assignment, but I need you to figure it out, and I don't care how long it takes, go figure it out. So, with plugging in all my ideas on paper and then putting them into um an AI platform, I'm like, what does this all mean? And after months of researching different pieces of this, um, I came out to courageous optimism was what allows cops to run into the gunfire when everybody else is running away. So then what did I have to do? I had to take those two words, courageous optimism, and rebuild that into a theory. And so where that and where I landed with that was the combination of self-determination, self-efficacy, and courage is what allows cops to do their job. And self-determination, meaning um the want and the will to do something, self-efficacy, having the skills and the right tools to be able to do it, and then courage, being able to act in spite of whatever fear may come across because of the circumstances you're in. And that's courageous optimism in a nutshell. Uh, and I think it can be used both for recruitment, retention, promotion. If we have people that lead with courage, courageous optimism, uh, I think we'll be in a much better place, kind of taking this full circle to the where we started the conversation. And I think that that is what allows cops to do and be the best version of themselves.

Travis Yates:

It's fascinating, man. Fascinating. How can people reach out to you, David? And I know after listeners are going to want to talk to you, and and obviously they get your book on all major platforms, but how they can how can they reach you?

David Berez:

So the best way to get to me is uh probably through email, which is David at sixforconsultants.com. Uh also I'm on LinkedIn, a pretty prolific on on LinkedIn. I do write a lot of articles uh through positive psych uh through psych psychology today, the publication there, so you can find my work there. Um but yeah, it's uh if you go to my website, um, which is www.sixforconsultants.com, you can get to get to me through either LinkedIn or through I even think my phone number is up there. And I what I ask is if you ever have a problem, you want to reach out, I'm always happy to help you. I'll always answer the phone. Just don't call me when you're drunk because I won't come and get you.

Travis Yates:

So you you're you're really involved reading into this, but before you go, I want you to talk about it. So you're involved in the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, you're involved with citizens behind the badge. How did that involvement happen?

David Berez:

Uh National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, uh, I started back in 2013 as my first year at the Police Unity Tour. So the Police Unity Tour is a nationwide bicycle ride that started uh in New Jersey back in 1996. It's 300 miles from New Jersey to Washington, D.C., the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial to kick off Police Week. Uh the money raised for through that organization all goes to the maintenance of the wall, the memorial in Washington, D.C., and into the museum. So that's what was my indoctrination into the memorial fund. Since then, uh I've become an ambassador for the memorial fund, which has allowed me to do a lot more work with them and even help create last year's uh officers as artists exhibit, which was part of my uh thesis work from uh University of Pennsylvania to help to build help build that exhibit. So that's been uh a really exciting adventure. And Citizens Behind the Badge was started by Craig Floyd, and Craig is the CEO Emeritus of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, and once he retired, he started a second organization called Citizens Behind the Badge. And it's an advocacy organization that was looking at the defund and defay movement uh starting back at the COVID days and all the civil unrest. And it's kind of transitioned into just being really good stewards of policing to help change the narrative in the public space and identify problems, uh, offer solutions, and just make sure that police are being seen for the good work that they're doing. And I'm an advisor, advisor for that organization as well.

Travis Yates:

Yeah, I've known Craig for many, many years. You're in good company there. So, David Berez, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much for being here. I can't thank you enough.

David Berez:

Appreciate it. And uh I love the work that you're doing as well, and I hope our paths continue to cross.

Travis Yates:

They certainly will. If you've been watching or you've been listening, thank you for doing that. And just remember, lead on and stay courageous.

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