Realizing Your Impact

00:04
Brent Hinson
Between the lines with Virtual Academy. We all have a story to tell. Hello and welcome to another edition of between the Lines with Virtual Academy. We are a podcast going beyond the badge to allow members of law enforcement, public safety and first response a place to tell their stories and also talk about the cases that have impacted their lives. I am your co host, Brent Hinson. And today, way much like previous guests, dan Green and Tony Taylor, the guests we have lined up, it’s going to be a featured trainer at a couple of different live events for Virtual Academy. We’re going to talk more about that as the episode goes along, but you guys can always stay up to date with all the future events hosted by Virtual Academy just by going to Virtualacademy.com and clicking on the bar at the very top that says events.

00:47
Brent Hinson
Someone else who will also be presenting at those training events is none other than our very own host, Mr. Michael Warren. How are you?

00:54
Michael Warren
Know, were talking before we logged on here how our guest is in Florida right now and you’re in Tennessee and I’m in Michigan. Yet I am the one with the highest recorded temperature for the day, and that simply is unacceptable.

01:08
Brent Hinson
Brent, it’s a backwards day. Apparently all things are going to go crazy from here on out.

01:12
Michael Warren
Well, speaking of crazy, today was my kid’s first day of school. Both a happy day and a sad day. Because you recognize this. You and I are a lot alike in this area. These go by so quickly. And I was going through some of the old first day of school pictures and Connor my third in line chronologically. You’ve got the little sign there that says, hey, these are my favorite things. This is what grade years ago. I think it was his third or fourth grade one. It says what I want to be when I grow up. It was out of good.

01:48
Brent Hinson
That’s a focused and career minded boy, right?

01:50
Michael Warren
Well, I’m just going to say he’s been very consistent because that message has not changed. It may not show up on the board, but my boy definitely wants to be out of school.

01:58
Brent Hinson
I only have one more first day for my son, so it’s going to be a rough couple of years for me, I think.

02:04
Michael Warren
I think you’re right, man. But life, it does go on. And our guest today, we’re going to talk about that, how you go through your career and how your life changes. Then it morphs into something else. It’s just like our relationship with our kids. They’re dependent on you for everything and then they become more and more independent and then you become less of a parent, more of a friend. And all those are good phases, but you miss them when they’re gone.

02:31
Brent Hinson
Yeah. That’s why it’s very important to be present in the moment, to appreciate all those moments as they come along.

02:36
Michael Warren
Absolutely, man. Absolutely. So why don’t you go and introduce our guest here? I do think that maybe he’s had done a little bit more morphing than you and I have, because perhaps he’s been around a little bit longer.

02:46
Brent Hinson
All right, well, our guest today is a retired captain of the St. Charles Parish sheriff’s office in Southeast Louisiana, where he served for over 35 years. He’s certified as an expert witness on police training, tactics, and use of force in US. District court, and has provided expert opinions regarding use of force, emergency vehicle operations, and policy, procedure, and protocol issues. Since retiring over a year ago, he’s created his own consulting company that provides use of force analysis, course development and instruction, expert witness and consultation services to law enforcement agencies and legal professionals. It is our pleasure to welcome on his vacation of all days, captain Mark Candies. Welcome to the podcast, Captain.

03:28
Mark Candies
Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it. Glad to be here.

03:30
Michael Warren
I just had to point out what you pointed out right then. It takes a lot of dedication to go and do one of these on your vacation, because there are times, and I’m not going to names, but part of our little group of four that do this podcast, it’s hard sometimes to get people to do it on their day to work.

03:47
Brent Hinson
Yeah.

03:47
Michael Warren
So the fact that Mark’s willing to do it on his vacation right.

03:50
Mark Candies
Yeah.

03:51
Michael Warren
I just wanted to give our listeners kind of idea how we met. When I say met, we met over the phone because our mutual friend Jimmy McLeod connected us for the possibility of teaching. I remember our first phone conversation. You know, it’s a good phone conversation when you take notes, and I had a page of notes from our time together.

04:13
Mark Candies
Yes, as did I. It was a very good conversation. And Jimmy is good people. He’s really good guy. And I got a call, and he was the representative for virtual academy in our area when I was still before I retired, still full time at the sheriff’s office. And he came in, and it didn’t have to be a sales pitch. I mean, it was cop to cop. And I saw the need. Our agency saw the need, and it happened to be right before COVID So the timing was absolutely perfect. And we became good friends. That first day, sitting in the office, sharing a cup of coffee, and he called me a couple of weeks before we talked. He says, hey, I want you to put you in touch with Mike Warren, and I think you guys will hit it off, and we’re looking at doing a couple of things together.

04:56
Mark Candies
And I’m like, okay, tell him give me a call. And as the Adage says, the rest is history.

05:01
Michael Warren
And so let’s talk about history for a second, if we could. And I like to ask my guests this question, because as Brent talked about 35 years. That’s a long time in any profession, but it’s certainly a long time in this profession. But what was it that got you started in the profession to begin with?

05:20
Mark Candies
Believe it or not, I had absolutely, positively no inclination to do police work. I graduated high school in 1981, went to Nicholas State University, which was a local college, within an hour drive from my house. And as all young men in southern Louisiana at that time, the oil industry is your career path. That’s just where you go. I was a petroleum safety engineering major, working offshore and going to school at the same time because I wasn’t good enough to have scholarships. And dad was a blue collar worker, so he was like, hey, if you want to go to college, you got to pay for it yourself, but you can live home at home for free, but that’s the best we can do for you, which was greatly appreciated. And in 1985, I came home from work. I was offshore for two weeks, came home, got to the heliport, got in my car, drove to the office to turn in my paperwork, and there was a sign on the door out of business.

06:13
Mark Candies
And the all crunch of 1985 had hit, and everybody was unemployed. And the old man that owned the business gave us severance checks and apologized that, hey, I lost five major contracts one day, and I just can’t stay open. So for the first time since I was 15 years old, I was unemployed for seven months. Had a hard time getting my old job back, bagging groceries at the local grocery store. Times were that bad. Saw a gentleman that had come there regularly, and he worked for the sheriff’s office, said, hey, why don’t you come apply at the sheriff’s office? And I’m like, Are you kidding? He goes, oh, man, come on. They hire him for all kind of things. So sure enough, I applied, got hired. The sheriff interviewed me, sheriff Johnny Moreno, that was in August 1 of 1986. And he said, yeah, I have you working in a jail, and we’ll just see how it works out.

07:00
Mark Candies
And I told him up front, look, Sheriff, I greatly appreciate it. I’ll give you 100% effort. I’m not looking to make this a career. I’m only going to be here long enough until the oil field picks back up and I go back to school. And he kind of grinned at me and smiled, old Italian gentleman. And he just kind of grinned at me and winked, and 36 years later, I was still there.

07:22
Brent Hinson
Life is what happens when you’re busy making other points, right?

07:25
Mark Candies
Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. And that was it. That’s how I got started. It was just a matter of they were literally the only employers in the parish hiring at that.

07:36
Michael Warren
Yeah. We had a previous guest on here, Phil Kearney. It sounds like his story was kind of similar to yours because he had his career path planned out. And literally, right when he graduated, he found out that, hey, you’re not getting hired at this place. Took him down this other pathway. I’m one of those guys that likes to think probably not deeply, but out there, how different would my life had been had this one single event not occurred? And you just think how much impact one event has had on your life, thinking into the future, how much impact you had on somebody’s life with one incident.

08:16
Mark Candies
And actually, as we’ve talked previous, that’s kind of what I’m going to talk about later today.

08:21
Michael Warren
It’s amazing to me how things that seem to be small at the time often have this much larger and much longer lasting impact on our lives. And I’m guilty of this, and I’m trying to pass it along to my kids. We have to be patient with life. We want things to happen, and we want things to happen now. But a lot of times good things happen or perhaps better things happen because we are willing to wait.

08:49
Mark Candies
I tell my all four of our kids now are all adults, thank the good Lord. They all have really good careers and great spouses, and they’re all doing well. But with my daughter, she’s now a high school teacher. I can remember when she was five years old, she was playing T ball, did not want to bat because she did not want to get the red dirt on her white tennis shoes. That she was like, five. And then by the time she was 1819, she was an allstate pitcher in softball, and she had signed a college scholarship to play softball at Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Mississippi. And after every game, she was covered in dirt from head to foot. That seems like yesterday she didn’t want to bat. Now she’s getting ready to graduate college. It goes in an instant. And I had a mentor of mine tell me he goes, well, you know, when you have those epiphanies, that means you did it the right way.

09:45
Mark Candies
So I hope he’s correct in that. Give it the best you can, but it goes by fast. It does.

09:51
Michael Warren
For our listeners who aren’t familiar with the red dirt that we’re talking about. I grew up in Georgia, and I remember playing football at one game, and it had been raining, and at the 50 yard line there was this big it was a mud pit. And it wasn’t really a mud pit, it was a really wet clay pit. White football pants. That red stuff not only stained my football pants, it stained the girdle underneath it, and it stained the underwear I was wearing underneath it. It’s like, how in the world does that happen? But that stuff has got penetrating power.

10:25
Mark Candies
Yeah, it’s like the best paint you’ve ever seen. It dyes everything, including your skin. I have a very good friend of mine, who, a matter of fact was my successor when I retired became the director of training in St. Charles Darren Grove. His kids played trout soccer and his wife had put a picture up over the weekend about soccer uniforms hanging over the air conditioned in the hotel room, drying from one day to the next because they played travel soccer. And I can remember when my daughter played travel softball taking all these twelve and 13 year old girls the cutest things you ever want to meet and tell them, okay, games over, tournaments over. Go to the restroom, bring your swimsuits. And the moms would take the water hose from the field and hose them down and then put them in their swimsuits to ride home because they were covered from head to foot in mud and dirt.

11:14
Mark Candies
And they enjoyed it. They would have it no other way. It was great times.

11:20
Michael Warren
I often wonder if the folks that live in the red dirt clay states if they actually have farmers tans or if that’s just the staining left over from the red clay from where they’re out working in it.

11:33
Mark Candies
That’s probably a good research project, Mike. I’m not sure.

11:37
Michael Warren
I told you, buddy, it’s a big old hat rack. But it’s more than just a hat rack. This big old noggin know, we’ve been talking about our kids and we’ve talked with several previous guests about the impact that this profession can have on your family life and how it can really overtake your family life if you allow it to.

11:59
Mark Candies
Yes, it can. I can remember, especially in South Louisiana, we have a lot of industry. So there’s that 3223 swing shift that works where every time you break shift you’re working days, nights, two days on, three days off, two days off, three days on. It comes out to where you’re working every other weekend and you work nights one week in a month. And there were many times where I saw ball games, graduation honor ceremonies, birthday parties in uniform, standing in the back with my earpiece in my ear, listening to see if it was a hot call coming out or what have you. Many holiday dinners. I spent many Christmas mornings sitting in the living room in full uniform, hoping nothing came out so I could at least watch the kids open their presents before I had to go. It’s funny when you consider normal because my kids thought nothing of it.

12:53
Mark Candies
It was like, hey, Dad’s, got to work. That’s just the way life is. They didn’t know anything else, and we kind of adapted to it. My son, who when he graduated high school went into the United States Marine Corps and after eight years came out. He’s now a police officer. He’s a deputy sheriff in St. Tammy Ferry sheriff’s office north of Lake Pontia. Train. And he’s experiencing the same thing with his two kids still working that same type of shift. It becomes kind of a lifestyle and you just kind of roll with the punches.

13:20
Michael Warren
It’s funny in retrospect, when I look back, it probably bothered me a lot more than it bothered my kids. The kids, they adjust pretty well. It just ate at my stomach, missing those things or not being able to stay for the whole thing. And I’m guilty of this. I think the one that bothered me the most was Christmas. Not that I wasn’t there, but because I would work seven P to seven A on Christmas Eve. So I’d get home 730, quarter to eight in the morning. Well, they’re wanting to get up, do presents, and they want to do it slow and enjoy it. I wanted to get it done and get into bed because oftentimes you had to go back and work that night. But talking to my kids now, I think you said it right, that was the life for them. They understood that was the only life they understood.

14:06
Michael Warren
But I knew it should be different, and therefore it bothered me.

14:09
Mark Candies
Yeah, we’re the adults and we have the understanding of what it’ll mean further down the road as they mature and they’re kids, they take the moment as it is and they just roll with the punches. That adage that children are much more resilient than you give them credit for.

14:27
Michael Warren
Absolutely. And you just used a word there, but I’m going to challenge you on it. You said we’re the adults, but I want you to go back to the very beginning of your career and think about the responsibility that had been given to you, the authority that had been given to you in your role as a law enforcement officer. I would be willing to bet the decisions you made then might be different than if you got to make those same decisions now, when it came to going about doing your job the way.

14:56
Mark Candies
You did your job, without a doubt. I sit back and as a director of training, as an academy instructor, as I’m teaching these newer recruits and shedding some light on the career, if they want to make it a career path and not just be a job, play back many incidents that I had and think to myself, what were you thinking? That was the most lame, brain decision you’ve ever made in your life. But at the time, it seemed appropriate. At the time it worked. And I was a rookie. I came out of the police academy in 1986, October of 1986, and thankfully, the profession training has advanced considerably, and we’re much more of a profession today than were 35, 36, 40 years ago. And it’s like the old Marine Corps saying, we improvise, adapted, overcame, did the best we could and went about our business.

15:50
Mark Candies
But, yeah, there’s a lot of things, if I look back at it, go, I would never think of doing that.

15:54
Brent Hinson
Now, how often do you go to your son and give him advice or often does he come to you with advice where you say, hey, don’t do it the way I did this way instead? And does heed that advice?

16:05
Mark Candies
Well, it has happened a few times but as any member of our family will tell you, he is a chip off their old block because he is as stubborn or more than I am. So he doesn’t ask very often. More so it’s not ask, it’s more.

16:20
Michael Warren
So.

16:20
Mark Candies
I’ll get a call and go, hey, you never guess what happened. And as he’s telling it to me, I can think back 20 or 30 years and go you did this and you did that. How did you know? Well, okay, remember what I told you? Do as I say, not as I did. You forgot that part. It happens. But yeah, we have had some very lengthy, entertaining conversations on those things. Yeah, history seems to repeat itself.

16:46
Michael Warren
I think this kind of leads into an interesting discussion because I appreciate your friendship, but I really respect the work that you’ve done as a trainer. And I think one of the hardest things being a trainer is when you have somebody it doesn’t even have to be your son when you have somebody that made a decision that, you know, wasn’t the best decision, but it worked for them. I don’t want my people to fail, but oftentimes it would be much easier as a trainer to address certain activities and attitudes if they had tried something and it failed and they’re coming to you, hey, I need a way to get through this. But when things work out for us, we as human beings are wired to say, hey, you know what? Next time something remotely close to that comes up, guess what? I’m going to do exactly what I did this time.

17:37
Michael Warren
And it’s dangerous in many cases because they had a good outcome.

17:41
Mark Candies
Yeah. And there have been several coaches, athletic coaches, that have said when you win you enjoy it, but when you lose, you learn.

17:52
Michael Warren
Very good.

17:53
Mark Candies
I’ve had several officers in my own personal experience and I tell my cadets especially, you need to focus on a task at hand. It’s an external focus. You need to focus on the objective of getting the job done. Get it done safely, get it done within the law, get it done as best you can within policy and procedure and make sure everybody goes home safe. It may not be pretty, it may not be perfect. We’ll work on that later. But make sure you get the job done and then later, three, four, 5 hours later when you’re writing the report or you’re sitting in the coffee shop and then your hands start shaking and you realize how close you came to that being really bad, that’s when you want to feel that, not when the incident is happening. I’ve had several cadets and the training staff, not just myself, but the guys that worked with me and the ladies that worked with us, our adjunct instructors, have received calls and emails like that.

18:48
Mark Candies
Hey, when were in the academy and you said this was going to happen or I was going to feel this or this was going to go this way, you were right, and it happened. That makes you, as a trainer, that tells you what you’re doing is worthwhile. And it’s not just a job. It has a purpose that a lot of people just do not comprehend.

19:06
Michael Warren
It sounds like that your law enforcement career began almost as a fluke. It just happened to be the timing and running into somebody. What was it that drew you to the training world? I think you and I both agree that the training world I hate using the word elite because it sounds like it means better than but I say elite in the sense that you’re entrusted with other people, and there’s no greater trust than that right there. So what was it that brought you over to this world?

19:35
Mark Candies
Believe it or not, it was in the academy. Like I said, I got hired, got laid off in the oil field, got hired with the sheriff’s office, was with them about three or four months. Hey, you’re going to the academy? At that time, it was eight weeks up at LSU, and I’m still trying to figure out how to marry law enforcement and petroleum safety engineering. So I’m thinking, Well, Louisiana State, you know, and I’m thinking, Louisiana State Police has a Hazmat unit, so that might be what I need to know, that kind of a thing. And I’m sitting in the basic academy, like, week three, week four. The instructor was a guy who’s well known, aubrey Futrell. Aubrey Futrell was the Director of Training for Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries, and himself and Coach Robert Lindsay, who was the.

20:20
Michael Warren
Bob Lindsay I know.

20:21
Mark Candies
Bob lindsay coach. Yes. Coach and Aubrey Futrell were my DT instructors in my basic academy. And to tell you how good that class was, I still have bruises from that class 37 years ago. Okay? But as I sat watching these guys teach and saw the sincerity and the enthusiasm, it wasn’t just a job. They cared when they told you don’t want to do that because you’re going to end up hurt or you’re going to end up dead, they meant it. They truly took pride in what they were teaching, and they took a responsibility to do whatever they could to ensure that you were going to go home safe to your family. After every tour, it just kind of resonated with me, and I was like, that’s the kind officer I want to be. As luck would have it, went back to the sheriff’s office. I was working in corrections at the time.

21:14
Mark Candies
Right after the academy, they transferred me to Uniform Patrol. About three or four years later, I was given an opportunity to become an adjunct instructor. I was the very first OC instructor in my agency, so no one liked me because I got to spray out 230 employees. Okay. And that was my first taste of instruction. And I can tell you, when I went through that instructor school, the instructor bug bit me, and it was a terminal life sentence. I was like, this is it. This is what I want to just it clicked and I never looked back.

21:49
Michael Warren
Brent and Aaron are musicians. They downplay their abilities. They’re very good musicians, but I love listening to their musical podcast called Crossing the Streams. And the reason is, when these guys kick in and they start talking about music, their voices change. The tempo of their speech, it changes. To me, there’s such a parallel between musicians that are dedicated to the craft and lovers of the craft and a good instructor. They behave in very similar ways. They reach people the same way. That’s the thing that gets me.

22:27
Brent Hinson
Well, I think it all boils down to being passionate about something that you love doing, and it just comes out organically.

22:35
Michael Warren
Yeah, I’m going to put this out there because I know it bothers him. Now, you become a slave to training. Musicians will often talk about becoming a slave to the music, and Brent doesn’t like that because it’s not being forced to do something. But it really is, though, and I’ve never done drugs. That euphoria has to be very similar when you have that connection with a student like they had with you, and you described it, Man, I got this. It’s lifelong. It’s not going to end when I retire.

23:05
Mark Candies
Yeah. It’s not temporary. It bites you, and it’s like, I’m done. That’s it. I was very fortunate to be able to train with and be trained by those two individuals multiple times in my career, and they led me to other great instructors and great mentors. And that’s the thing about good trainers. We’re the best thieves in the world because we will see something from another trainer and go, that’s really good. I’m taking it. I’ll give you credit for it, but I’m taking it because that’ll work for my students. And as you said earlier about phone conversation we first had, where you were taking notes, I was taking notes. I don’t think either one of us knew were taking notes on the other, but we did. I always take notes because I always find something in every class or every presentation, even if it’s something that I can identify as I never want to do that.

23:55
Mark Candies
At least it’s something that I’ve learned I don’t want to do. You can always take something from everything you’re in, and I have notes and sticky notes and stuff, highlighted pieces of paper all over my office, and I got to paperclip them together with a general title, so I kind of know how to organize it.

24:12
Michael Warren
Brent just to give you an idea, coach that he was talking about is a legend at Aelita. And this year at Aelita, because of health problems and stuff, he wasn’t able.

24:23
Mark Candies
To travel the one year I go.

24:25
Michael Warren
But guess what he did, though? He recorded the opening prayer and sent it so that he could be a part of it, because it is. It’s a lifelong bug. And that guy is just stinking legend in this community. And it’s because he cares.

24:43
Mark Candies
Yeah, he was actually and this is almost ancient history, he was present at the 1972 Howard Johnson’s incident in New Orleans with Mark Essex, and he has a bracelet that he wears that was made from the brass of the rounds fired on that shooting.

25:00
Michael Warren
There’s a pretty famous picture in the picture at that particular incident right there. And listen, when you meet people like that, it would be like meeting Eddie Van Halen, somebody who is at the top of their game, and you hold them in reverence. And here goes the Per podcast. Shout out to left of Greg. I was listening to left of Greg, one of their recent episodes, and they had been in Austin, Texas, where Charles Whitman had been in the tower back in I think it was 1966, and was shooting. As soon as I started talking about that, I got all excited, because like four or five years ago, I got to meet the dude that went up there and took care of business. And he was a young guy then, obviously he’s older. But when you meet people like that have lived life with purpose and on purpose, and that’s what training is all about, is doing things with purpose and on purpose, it just changes your outlook on things.

26:01
Mark Candies
Yes, it does. You realize as you’re talking to them that you are blessed to be able to be in this person’s presence and be able to glean the information that they’re willing to give you. And that’s when you know it’s a special person, because they’re not hesitant to share with you. They’re wanting to give you everything they have. They’re not holding back. They’re an open book. And they will sit with you till as I’ve done with Coach. Two, three in the morning, many cups of coffee and go through things. And it’s lessons well learned. And that’s my thing now, is trying to pass that on to as many of these younger officers as possible. Because though it was decades ago, the concept of the lesson is still true. You just have to kind of adapt it today’s world. The actual foundation of that lesson still holds true.

26:50
Mark Candies
It’s be as safe as you can and go home after every shift. I mean, that’s the bottom line.

26:54
Michael Warren
You talk about the impact, they talk about the butterfly effect that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado. In know, with all these different things that go think. About that from a training perspective, because when you and I talk and I want to start talking about it now, the incident that perhaps had the most impact on you weren’t necessarily right there. The sense that we’re talking about how did that start out? Kind of lead us down the path, if you would.

27:25
Mark Candies
Okay. I had gotten transferred to a training academy in December of 2009, so I’m working on our training academy for four or five years. And so now fast forward to 2015. It’s April 16, 2015, and it’s a Thursday morning, and I’m working an extra duty traffic control detail at a school before I start my shift at the academy. And we had a traffic officer, Bert Hazeltine, who was doing the same type of detail at another school across the river. The Mississippi River divides St. Charles Parish in two. So we have an east bank and a west bank. So I was on the east bank, he was on the west bank. And I’m working my detail, and it’s basically just stopping traffic to let the school buses come in and out, make sure the kids get to school safe. And I hear him on the radio kind of squawky, and I hear him say, Subject has a gun.

28:15
Mark Candies
Stand by. And I’m like, did he say a subject had a gun in a school zone? That doesn’t happen here. Next thing I hear shots fired. I’m hit officer down. And it caught me for a second. I’m like I’m processing. Did that just really happen?

28:30
Michael Warren
The movies, as soon as that call comes out, everybody immediately responds, and they respond in unison. But really, it’s something that you have to slow down and go because you’re questioning yourself. Did I just hear what I just heard? Because it’s so out of place.

28:46
Mark Candies
Because you know what you need to do, and that’s get your butt in the car, hit the lights, the heck with your detail, and go to the scene. You’re trying to make sure, did I just hear what I thought I heard? I did. I get in my unit, cross the river. By the time I get to the scene, they’re loading bird into an ambulance. Now, let me back up a little bit. He was doing a traffic control detail where there’s two schools side by side. One is an elementary school, one is a junior high, a middle school. So they take in at different times. And there’s a 30 minutes window between the take in times of the two schools. He was sitting in his marked unit with the overhead lights on. First school had taken in. He’s waiting on the second school, the buses to come in for the second school.

29:30
Mark Candies
And this individual, who we later determined after he was arrested, had severe mental issues, was upset because Bert didn’t stop traffic to let him cross this busy highway. It’s a us. Highway that he was stopping traffic on to let the buses cross. Well, that’s not part of his detail. Once the buses are in, he sits in his patrol unit, waits for the second school to take in. So this person got upset, went down into the neighborhood behind where Bert’s detail was, which is adjacent to the school, and retrieved a couple of handguns. He came back and got his attention. There’s a convenience store there on the corner. Got his attention. Bert realized this guy had a handgun. He gets on the know. Hey, this guy’s got a gun in his hand. Stand by. Shots rang out. He starts shooting at Bert. He unloaded, like, two or three magazines at him.

30:19
Mark Candies
Burt gets hit. He goes down behind his unit. Traffic stops. Luckily, we had an off duty EMT was right there, pulls up on him. There’s never a good day to get shot, ever. But if there was one, Bert picked the right day because this EMT was right there on off duty EMT. And 3 miles up the highway was our training academy, and were holding in service training that day. And the class was downed officer rescue, which was TAC med. If you’re ambushed, if you’re shot, what to do to take care of yourself. The entire SWAT team was in training with our SWAT doc teaching the course, and they’re 3 miles down the street from the shooting. So the academy secretary runs in. She hears it on the radio because there’s no radios in the classroom. Hey, I don’t know what’s going on. There’s shots fired in Bert school zone.

31:11
Mark Candies
He’s down while the entire academy Empties out. The whole SWAT team responds in less than three to four minutes. He’s okay. He took a round to the upper arm, one to the upper chest, right under the shoulder, but shrapnel hit him in the face, and as a result, he lost an eye. But we found out it’s on a Thursday morning, so we find out by midday that Thursday. Hey, he’s going to recover. He’s probably going to lose his eye, but he’s going to make a full recovery. There’s nothing life threatening. He’s okay. Well, I make it to the scene just as they’re loading him in the ambulance, and I see the SWAT doc, and I was on SWAT. I had just gotten off SWAT at the time, as a matter of fact. And I see the SWAT doc give me a thumbs up, like, he’s going to be okay.

31:50
Mark Candies
And so I’m there with the other officers, and we’re doing what we need to do for the scene, for the investigation. So time goes on. Fast forward to that Sunday. That was a Thursday. It’s now Sunday, and I’m home on my patio with my wife, and I’m telling her, I says, tomorrow when I get to the office, I said, We’ve got to start scheduling the debriefs, because I do the critical incident debriefs for the agency with several other officers. I said, we got to start scheduling the debriefs for Birch shooting. And she goes, yeah, that’s going to be kind of tough. I said yeah. I said, but at least it’s something that he survived. It’s not like some of the other shootings. We’ve had to do debriefings on where weren’t as fortunate. And as I’m talking about this, it’s 1130 in the afternoon, my phone rings, and I see his wife’s name come up on my phone.

32:40
Mark Candies
Just a side story. Bert’s wife, her father is my ex brother in law, okay? I watch mandy, grow up. I watched her as a kid grow up. So I see her name pop up on my phone. So I answer the phone. I says, hey, girl, what’s going on? It’s Bert on the phone. Because his phone was up, I think. I would think it was in evidence, if I’m not mistaken. So he’s using Mandy’s phone, and he says, I’m doing great. I said, Where are you at? He goes, I’m still in the hospital, but I’m sitting in a chair, and I’m looking out the window. I said, man, that’s great. I said, what can I do for you? He says, You’ve already done it. I said, what are you talking about? He said, I just called to say thank you. I said thanks. For what? Because when I got to the scene, everything was over.

33:20
Mark Candies
The guy had been arrested, the whole nine yards. I said thanks. For what? He said, you know that down officer rescue course that was going on? I said yeah. He says, I know you were instrumental with Marlon. And Dr. Obisha, who was the instructor, insisting that be taught in service. I said yeah. He said, Well, I was in that class last Thursday, the week before he got shot. And he said, during this incident, all I could hear was what the instructors were saying. This is going to happen. This is what you’re going to do. This is what you need not to do. And that guided me through that incident. He says, And I’m just calling to tell you that had I not had that training last week, I don’t know that I would have done as well or survived this incident as well as I did.

34:06
Mark Candies
I just wanted to call and say thank you, and it just took my away. I just sat there on the phone, dead silence. It was a defining moment in my training career. And they tell you when you go to instructor school, you’re responsible for everything you say, for everything you don’t say, for everything you don’t do. And you take notes and you pass the test and, yeah, okay, whatever. But when something like this happens, you realize what the influence is when you have students before you and the responsibility that you have to those individuals and to their families and to the general public, it is domino effect. People talk about trainers, and people say, well, it’s an elite group. I say it’s unique. Elite it is. But I would say unique because it’s far reaching. The umbrella of responsibility spans everything. That was the defining moment in my training career.

35:07
Michael Warren
You’ve done a lot of trainings over the years. It can get very draining. And I don’t want to use the word monotonous, but that’s the only one that comes to mind when you’re delivering that material for the 10th time in a two week period.

35:23
Mark Candies
Right.

35:23
Michael Warren
But I go back to the music because I think there are so many parallels in the music world. A band that does it well, it doesn’t matter if it’s at the beginning of their worldwide tour or at the end of the worldwide tour. It doesn’t matter. This is the 30th time that you’ve done this play set. For those people in the audience, it’s the first time they’ve heard you. And if they’re able to deliver it seems like it’s their first time as well. And instructors are the same way. And it’s very difficult, though, not to get that. Oh, my goodness, let’s cut corners. It’s Friday, this is day ten of ten to just cut corners. Even if you don’t cut corners, it’s hard to keep that enthusiasm and carry that enthusiasm to them. But the way in which we deliver the material has a tremendous impact on it as well.

36:13
Mark Candies
Yes. Being a musician, our music is a great example. I have one of the matter of fact, I think he’s the only officer still with our agency that went to the academy with me. He’s one of our senior school resource officers. He’s a musician, very talented saxophone player. He and I just talking because I know enough about playing music to get myself in a lot of trouble. Okay. And I asked him, I says, Harold, gig after gig song after. He says, yeah, it can be monotonous. But he says, you know, there’s nothing like the live performance. There’s nothing like feeding off the audience. They will guide you, what you need to do and when you need to do it. The same is true for trainers. Every class is different. You may get a bunch of corrections officers. So an honorable job worked corrections for 18 months.

37:06
Mark Candies
1st 18 months of my career was in corrections, and it’s a very honorable job, and it’s hard to find people that want to do that for a career. If you’ve got a predominant amount of corrections officers, your analogies need to be geared that way so they can identify with it. If your class is predominantly command staff, well, you need to kind of gear it and tweak it a little bit so they can understand it. Or detectives, read your group, read your audience and feed off of them. And as you become an experienced instructor, you know what’s working. You know when they’re turning you off and you need to adjust, you can’t just keep plugging along. If it’s not working, you need to change it up a bit.

37:46
Michael Warren
It’s easy on the student side, too. Wouldn’t you agree that if we’re doing stop the bleed training, this could be day one of this year, but this could be the twelveTH time I’ve gone through it in my career, right? It’s like, oh my goodness, let’s just get done with this stuff. Hearing that guy’s story said that you were guiding me through the incident, think about that. You were my guide. I was following you in that incident. And without that, I don’t know if I would have made it.

38:19
Mark Candies
Very powerful statement. One of the best examples that I use. We had an instructor with our sheriff’s office and she taught CPR and first aid. And you can’t get any more dry than CPR and first aid, especially when, and I won’t say the vendor, but the vendor that we use went to all video training. I mean, if you could put in a VHS, tell you how long ago it was, if you could put a VHS tape in and push play and pause, you could teach CPR first aid. But her approach was, hey, this is mandated by the state. We got to do this annual certification. We all know it. I don’t care if you learn this for the clowns we’re dealing with on the street and everybody kind of looked at her, she said, but all of you have children. What if you’re at a ball game and a kid comes down with heat stroke?

39:09
Mark Candies
What if you’re at the camp and somebody falls out of a deer stand and now they’re bleeding profusely? What if you’re here and this kid’s drowning? What if you’re here and your mother in law, your mom gets a burn? I want you to know this to take care of your family. And her classes were a success from then on because it related to something. Hey, yeah, you can use this in your job, but this is also to help you in your everyday life. This may be important to someone who you actually know.

39:38
Michael Warren
Yeah, you may need to stop your partner’s bleeding, but the truth of the matter is you may need to stop your life partner’s bleeding at the scene of an accident.

39:46
Mark Candies
Correct.

39:46
Michael Warren
You and I, we know that when an officer calls for help, we’re going and we’re going balls to the wall, right?

39:53
Mark Candies
Yes.

39:54
Michael Warren
But how are you going to react if it’s your life partner?

39:57
Mark Candies
That’s a good point.

39:58
Michael Warren
What’s that going to do to your heart rate? And the more you have to cognitively think about those tasks right there, the less effective you become. And so trying to take that and take it from the abstract and bring it to the world of concrete for our people is the role of a trainer. It’s not just about delivering the information. It’s about showing the applicability of what we’re supposed to be teaching.

40:22
Mark Candies
Correct. I’ve had a good friend of mine who was a paramedic for years and was also a deputy sheriff on my shift. Great guy, great guy. And he told me one of the defining moments for him was as a paramedic. He’s been to shootings, he’s been to fatal car crashes, seen every type of injury, medical condition you could think about, never blinked blood. Gore he dealt with it. He’s home one day and his granddaughter falls and cuts herself and he froze because it’s his granddaughter and she’s bleeding, and he knows what to do. And he says, it wasn’t that serious a thing. He said, but Mark, I’m going to tell you, for four or 5 seconds I stood there and was like, what do just your knees buckle when it’s your family? He says, and then of course, it kicked in. And he says, So now I can get it.

41:11
Mark Candies
When these officers are out there and firemen, police officers, EMTs, we work with the same people daytime, nighttime, weekday, weekends, they’re our family. When they get hurt, the same thing happens. We know what to do, but it may take a second or two for it to kick in, get going. And once you get going, then as Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman says, you’re not going to rise to the occasion. You’re going to fall to the level of your training.

41:36
Michael Warren
Absolutely.

41:38
Mark Candies
That is the other thing that we push, is that’s why we train so hard, because if you’re going to fall to the level of your training, I want your level of training to be as highest as possible.

41:46
Michael Warren
I want it to be a shortfall, absolutely long ways. People get hurt. But there was something else you said that I thought was really interesting. You talked about how once you got the thumbs up from the SWAT doc, hey, he’s going to be okay, then I could calm down and we could do what needed to be done at the scene. Right up until then it’s still in question. And listen, before people start sending in hate mail and stuff like, okay, I am not saying I disagree with this decision. I’m just trying to show how unique law enforcement is. I believe his name is Hamlin Was, the Buffalo Bills defensive back that last year during a game, took the direct blow to the chest and his heart stopped beating and they started doing CPR on the field. Well, they ended up canceling the rest of the game.

42:36
Michael Warren
And it absolutely was the right call.

42:39
Mark Candies
It absolutely was.

42:40
Michael Warren
I’m not saying it’s not. What I’m saying, though, is when an incident like that happens in law enforcement, when one of our brothers or sisters is involved in a shooting and they’re wounded and they go down, we don’t get to cancel the rest of the game. The scene still has to be investigated. We still have to go through and we have to go not just that call. We’ve got to answer all the other calls for service that are coming in. Life continues to go on, and we’re expected to handle it with the same professionalism and effectiveness after that type of incident as we did before. That type of incident that only comes about if we have the proper training.

43:20
Mark Candies
Yeah, absolutely. Because let’s face it, when a citizen calls 911, whether it’s fire, police or EMS, it’s an emergency to them. I have responded to 911 calls with our agency where it was an elderly lady and her toilet was overflowing. Not a great emergency in the wide scope of the world, but to her, this was tragic. They don’t care. They don’t know whether you just left the scene of a fatal crash or an officer injury. They have an emergency and they need help, and they’ve been told, you called this number and the fire, police, EMS come there and they’re going to handle it. And you’re expected to do that and do it in a professional manner. It’s not an easy task. It’s not an easy task at all.

44:06
Michael Warren
My mom, who has been a guest on this podcast, if she called, that’s what I would expect of law enforcement in her area. And if I have that expectation of the people who are policing her, then there should be no less of an expectation I have for myself in the way that I handle those same types of calls that come in. In my know, with Bert’s incident, I’m.

44:28
Mark Candies
Going to give a little hint to my age. I can still remember watching Johnny Carson at night. Okay. And Buddy Hackett of all people, saying the key to being a great comic is timing. Timing here was exquisite. Not that it was a good time for Bert to get shot, but that was 2015. And in 2013, 2014, Louisiana Post Council made a decision to transfer or transition, I should say not transfer, transition to providing all of their academy level training in corrections, firearms, and basic law enforcement in the adult learning model because they realized that adults learn differently than children. Pedagogy versus androgogy with that looking at Burt’s incident with the downed officer rescue class, it wasn’t just sitting there and doing the stop the bleed. It wasn’t just showing a PowerPoint and videos. We had the officers doing tourniquet drills. We had them doing tourniquet drills one another.

45:27
Mark Candies
We had some role play in the middle of the part of the class. It was an eight hour class all day long. At the end, we actually had simulation where they were doing force on force drills and they were having to apply tourniquets to themselves. And were taping one arm down saying, hey, that arm’s not functionable. How are you going to do this? Those types of things. And after Bert’s incident and our conversation on that Sunday afternoon, I went back to our training commander and said, we got to do more of this and we got to do it better. It’s working, but there’s a lot of things that could have been a lot worse. We were lucky, and I don’t like being lucky. I’d rather be good.

46:04
Michael Warren
You’re so passionate about this, though, that you’re actually going to be delivering a class on this very topic about learning and the way that we need to be training our people. Coming up, what is it? September 19, you and I are going to be in Biloxi, Mississippi, and we’re going to be delivering a class. And your portion of the day deals directly with what you just said, that we have to train them as an adult, basically, if we want them to respond as an adult, you can’t use kindergarten methods and expect adult.

46:40
Mark Candies
I mean, it has proven itself time and time again, and it’s one of the times where I can know, finally, the state of Louisiana is not in the lower half of anything. Okay? They’ve stepped up, and it’s been remarkable. And I will tell you, when this first came about, I kind of sat there as an academy director or an assistant academy director at the time going, why are we changing everything? When he explained it, I was like, okay, I’ll give it a shot. I’ll go look at it and see, and it works. It’s scientifically proven to work. The state of Louisiana only mandated it in the classroom portion for standard basic academy and corrections academy curriculum and firearms curriculum. But it can be done. It has a pathway to be done, furthermore, into practical exercises, into reality based training, into scenario training, even into force investigations and other types of law enforcement operations.

47:42
Mark Candies
And the limit is simply how far or how much does that agency want to commit to or doesn’t want to commit to. It’s exciting because you have agencies out there that are like, we want to take this to the next level, and the expectations and the rewards are limitless. It’s up to how far that individual agency or instructor wants to take it.

48:05
Michael Warren
The truth of the matter is, if we’re unwilling to invest upfront, there’s going to be investment on the back end. And unfortunately, in many cases, if we fail to train on the front end, the cost is paid by the individual members on the back end. In terms of injuries, in some cases even death, or perhaps they lose their job or they lose their freedom. There’s a price to be paid, but no one’s arguing that. Really what it comes down to for an agency is to decide, do I want to pay it now or pay it later? But it’s going to be paid, correct?

48:39
Mark Candies
Yes. And the message is the transition to using that adult learning method. The investment is minimal as far as dollars and cents. But the reward in your most valuable resource, which is your human resource, is 100 fold over because it gets the officers involved and the trainers involved and the investigators involved in human factors vision, memory, attention, speed and performance critical decision making. They experience it, which is what’s going to happen in real life. We cannot make it exactly as real life because, yes, there are safety precautions and there are in training those simulations there’s accepted unrealistic parts of training that we have to accept because we are going to do it safely. We’re not going to get anybody hurt. However, putting these officers through that and getting them as close to and as realistic as possible to let them experience that stimulus of anticipation or anxiety or tunnel vision or whatever it may be, and then showing them how what they were taught in the classroom or taught in the gym, they can now apply it.

49:58
Mark Candies
It ain’t got to be perfect. As long as it accomplishes the objective and is objectively reasonable, that’s good enough. This is not like an Olympic gymnastic competition where you got to be a 10.0. No. As long as we can get the guy, stop the resistance and get the guy in custody and stop him from hurting innocent people, we win. That’s the objective. And that can be done, but it needs to be done. Reality based training, force on force. I’m a big proponent of that. You cannot and simulators and virtual reality are a step in the right direction, but they’re no substitute for another human being on the opposite side.

50:37
Michael Warren
And I like the word you use. They experience it. That experiential learning is the way to go.

50:44
Mark Candies
Yes. And the adult learning method will show you there are four primary learning traits for adults, but adults will learn from all four. Every person has a primary one or two primary ones that they learn best from, but they will learn from all four. That experiential learning is the key is putting everything it kind of wraps everything else together and it gives them as a very good friend of mine who retired from our neighboring agency, who does critical incident debriefing explains how the brain works, says, you know, the brain is like a file cabinet. And when it has an experience, it creates an index card and puts it in a file. And then later on, when you experience something, it’s going through the file cabinet very fast, looking for that card to find it, that snapshot of, what do I do? How do I respond to this?

51:36
Mark Candies
And that’s what we’re creating with reality based training, with following up with the adult learning method is, here’s what may happen. And it’s kind of that been there, done that, got the T shirt type of a thing so that when they get into a real life situation, they’re not buffering, where the brain gets jammed up and it’s like a computer with too many programs open and the cursor is just making the circle. We don’t want the human brain to do that because while that’s happening, the bad guy is making positive decisions.

52:06
Michael Warren
Exactly.

52:07
Mark Candies
They’re gaining on you. So we want you to be able to find that index card, find that file, and be able to take a positive action. May not be the best response, but as long as it’s objectively reasonable, we can live with that. That’s the standard.

52:23
Michael Warren
Absolutely. And as we’re wrapping things up and we really appreciate your time today, speaking of experiences, there’s another program that you’re involved in, and I believe it’s your agency. They bring in young people and they’re able to take a look behind the scenes kind of at law enforcement and to get an idea, because the truth of the matter is, it’s expensive to train people in this profession. And so I would rather have people having these experience getting a peek behind the curtain before they come into profession to say, yeah, you know what? That’s really not for me. It’s better for them and it’s better for us as a profession. But real quickly, what can you tell us about that program, what it’s designed to do and how it’s working for you guys?

53:07
Mark Candies
Yeah, it’s a new program that we just started this year, as a matter of fact, with the St. Charles Parish Public School System and the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office. We have, I believe there’s 18 or 19 high school students. They’re juniors and seniors. It’s an elective for them, which is a criminal justice course. So what they do is they come to the sheriff’s office 1 hour a day, every day of the week for the entire fall semester. And as they come through, different divisions in the Sheriff’s office are presenting curriculum to them on what that division does and how it integrates with the overall operation of the Sheriff’s office. So two weeks ago, the training division, we had a whole week. We had them for five days. And our new director of training, the gentleman, the young man who took my place, Darren Groh, headed up everything, did a great job.

53:59
Mark Candies
The host training staff did a great job and kind of presented to them the difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause and gave them some Fourth Amendment issues on objective reasonableness and the Fourth Amendment and the Graham factors and the totality of the circumstances and walked them through that. And then they got to do some virtual reality training with our Taser VR Goggles. They actually fired the new Taser Seven at some targets. We did a couple of case studies with some actual dash cam, body cam video and had them break it down as to was the officer’s actions reasonable, why was it, what was the probable cause? What were the gram factors? And they did exceptionally well. We’re getting a really great response from it. And they’re doing this with every division investigation, uniform patrol, fleet maintenance, it the records division, the tax collection division.

54:55
Mark Candies
They’re going to go through all the different divisions in the sheriff’s. Office so they get an idea of not only what does the sheriff’s office do, we’re not just a group that puts people in jail. There’s much more to it than that and there’s a ton of job opportunities there other than being a uniform policeman. The main goal is to see how it all integrates and how it serves the public and how it serves the community. These young people are engaged and we’re getting a phenomenal response to it. So it’s a pilot program. This is the first semester and based on what we’ve seen so far, I see it continuing.

55:32
Michael Warren
I think that’s fantastic because I don’t want to say you’re on the back end of your career, but we’ll say that the second half of your career and sooner or later those positions have to be filled. And being able to have influence on those that might fill it, I think, is, again, one of those things. Who knows what impact you’re going to have on somebody 30 years from now because they came through this thing. It’s just such a great program. But I’m looking forward to seeing here in a few weeks. I think we’re going to have a great time together. Hopefully we’re not going to have any 02:00 A.m. Talks because I am old and I need my sleep and start sounding like Charlie Brown’s teacher if I don’t get enough sleep before I teach. But man, we appreciate you taking time out of your vacation schedule to be with us today.

56:23
Mark Candies
I appreciate it, enjoyed it, and looking forward to our time in Biloxi as well as Shelby County and any other time we can get together.

56:31
Michael Warren
Roger that.

56:32
Mark Candies
The bottom line is just to put that information out there one of those keys to leadership know at some point in time you have to realize you’re going to have to train your successor because if you don’t, that role is going to be vacant and you’re responsible for that vacancy and that void. So we need to train our successors and that’s kind of the goal we have.

56:52
Michael Warren
Absolutely. Brent having impact on a life threatening situation even when you’re not there. I can’t think of a higher praise for a trainer than that.

57:04
Brent Hinson
Yeah. Some takeaways from this episode. Today we hear, we talk about training and how important it is. But to put it in context of a real life situation, how that impacted that situation, that really shines a lot on how important training is. And the fact that something we say at church a lot is this Sunday is someone’s first Sunday. And that applies to training. You may have done it 1015 times, but this is first time somebody else is hearing it. So it’s extremely important to get your point across and that you get that same passion out that you have in the first class.

57:36
Michael Warren
Absolutely.

57:37
Mark Candies
Just as a musician, it’s someone’s first concert.

57:41
Brent Hinson
Absolutely. If you want to find out more about the events with Virtual Academy. Again, as I mentioned at the front end of the episode, you can find them@virtualacademy.com. Just click on the tab that says events. And if you’d like to find out more, listen to some of the past episodes. You can find them all on our website at between the Lines with virtualacademy.com mark, thank you so much for taking an hour out of your vacation day. We certainly appreciate it. Some insightful comments.

58:02
Mark Candies
Glad to do it. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys.