Transitioning To Civilian Life

00:07
Brent Hinson
We all have a story to tell. Hello, and welcome to another edition of between the Lines with Virtual Academy. We’re a podcast going beyond the bads to allow members of law enforcement public safety, and first response a place to tell their stories and talk about the cases that have impacted their lives. How you doing? I’m your co host, Brent Hinson, and this episode has the potential to impact a multitude of those listening because today’s guest is going to talk about what happens when it’s time to take the badge off. In our email exchange leading up to this recording, he wrote about transitioning out of law enforcement and how he felt lost. But despite feeling that way, I really love how he followed up that statement. He said, being lost was where purpose found me, and I found purpose. So the focus today is what happens when the identity you’ve built your life around suddenly changes?

01:05
Brent Hinson
Our guest today is going to share his story and offer some insight and solutions about making that career transition. Our host has made a similar transition after serving with the Novi Police Department for over 20 years. Michael Warren. I think this will be an important episode for many and one obviously you can relate to.

01:23
Michael Warren
I think that this is one of the most under addressed topics that we’re going to talk about today, and I don’t think people understand that failure to do this actually is an officer safety issue, and so I’m looking forward to do that. But also talking about safety as we’re recording this, we’re in the middle of the week in which the episode with my mom and my daughter was released. I’ve been so nervous this week about that.

01:51
David Berez
I really am.

01:53
Michael Warren
Okay, mom, don’t embarrass me. I felt like I was in junior high school again. Mom, drop me off at school down the street. No hugging, no kissing. It’s like, oh, my goodness. But I hope some people get some stuff out of it. I hope it’s helpful. And I’m hoping that they’re going to get some good stuff out of our talk that we’re going to have today.

02:14
Brent Hinson
And that’s what we try to do. And we try to put links in the show notes for folks if they want to go further after they listen to these episodes, just to get some help or to get some more information. Because we want not just raise these issues and these topics, but we want to offer some sort of solution or a method to go forward.

02:33
Michael Warren
There’s nothing worse than working with a bunch of problem identifiers. Nobody has a solution. They’re really good at pointing out where the issues are. When we don’t have a possible solution, it really begins to make us lose hope, and hope is a terrible thing to lose.

02:50
Brent Hinson
Well, our guest today actually started life in public service at age 14 as a volunteer EMT. He interned with the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office following graduation from college and then became a police officer with the East Windsor Police Department in New Jersey for 20 years before retiring three and a half years ago. He is a certified resiliency program officer and master resiliency trainer who works with others to live a life of purpose and supports law enforcement officers and veterans who are suffering with their own mental health and career transitions. And his new book, A Resilient Life a Cop’s Journey in Pursuit of Purpose, is slated for release later this year. We’ll talk more about that. I’m sure it’s our pleasure to welcome David Barez to the podcast. Thanks for joining us today, sir.

03:40
David Berez
Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be with you guys.

03:42
Michael Warren
Now, David, I’m going to start things off the way I normally do, but yours is going to be just a little bit different because I want to know what caused a 14 year old boy to decide that he wanted to be an EMT.

03:56
David Berez
It’s a great question, and it comes back to where my life was in the moment and actually going back even further than that. When I was a small child up through the age of seven, I was very sick all the time. Sinus infections and all kinds of stuff. Then I had what used to be referred to as a TNA. I don’t think you can call it that anymore. Tonsil and adenoid removal. I think today it has different implications. So that was 1982. A TNA was actually the removal of your tonsils and adenoids. And that actually solved all my health issues at the time, I was enthralled by medicine and what it could do and how it could fix me. So as I got older, I wanted to be a doctor and specifically pediatrician to help other kids in the way that I was helped. I saw medicine as a future for me, as we know.

04:51
David Berez
Fast forward, that didn’t happen. But that’s a whole nother issue. You know what? I failed botany first semester of freshmen in college, and that was the end of my medical career.

04:59
Michael Warren
Yeah, that’s something that’s pretty important medical field.

05:02
David Berez
So at the age of 14, I still had that goal and that vision of wanting to be a doctor. And things in my house at the time were not good. My parents were separated for the final time. They were in the process of divorce. I was in those formative early teenage years and making bad choices, rebelling and resenting stuff going on. I felt like I needed to find purpose in helping others and I thought that maybe that would help me too. I was introduced to the rescue squad by my sister’s friend who was already doing she was four years older than me, so he was about 18 at the time, and he got me into it. And another individual that was a family friend was also involved with the squad. I would say the age of 16 in Jersey is when you’re legally allowed to get your EMT.

05:51
David Berez
So I did that right away, and then by 18, I was a rescue technician, which, again, was age restricted at that point. When I joined the rescue squad, I did it to help others, because I felt like that was purposeful and I needed that outlet. But in the end, it was really what helped me, and I was blind to it at the time, but when I look back, I see it through that lens. So it was a way for me to get out of my house. It was a way for me to get out of the chaos and escape the crap that was going on in my life at the time. But at the same point, helping others is what ended up helping me. And that’s kind of been a theme throughout my life. Every time something goes south in my life, I seem to then react by trying to give back to others, which in turn gives me that sense of purpose that we’ll continue to talk about throughout this episode.

06:35
Michael Warren
I’m not a psychologist. Let me throw that out there. But one of the things I just heard you say, what was that you did this. It gave you an opportunity to get out of the chaos that was happening at your house. But if you think about it, you’re leaving one chaotic world and going into another chaotic world, but at least in that world, you possess the ability, the skills, and the desire to bring order to that chaos. Would that be accurate?

06:59
David Berez
100% accurate. I’m almost 50 years old. I’m 48, and throughout my entire life, I’ve been really good at controlling and helping other people’s messes. I really suck at figuring out my own, but we’re getting there. Hopefully over the next 48 years, I’ll.

07:15
Brent Hinson
Figure out, join the club.

07:17
Michael Warren
Yeah. It’s funny, when I first became a police officer, kind of jumping ahead here, I remember going to scenes of domestics and family troubles and stuff like that, and I kept thinking to myself, why are the big people calling me to solve their problems? I still felt like I needed sitting at the little kids table at Thanksgiving dinner.

07:38
David Berez
Yeah, it’s a really weird dichotomy to walk in, especially as a young officer. I started when I was 23, 24. You’re taking these domestic calls of 50, 60 year old people and trying to help them figure out their problems, and I just finishing up having my first girlfriend. So you just have no frame of reference to be doing this stuff for people, but it’s that control that you have that they don’t that helps them solve their issues. But when you walk back in at home, it’s just chaos for yourself.

08:07
Michael Warren
Well, I want to go back, if I could, to the volunteer EMT rescue squad thing. I don’t think a lot of people because we’re a show about first responders and we haven’t had a lot of the fire service on here. But I don’t think a lot of people in America realize how many communities depend on volunteers to respond for their EMT and fire needs.

08:30
David Berez
Actually, I think volunteerism is probably 60% to 70% of emergency services around the country, obviously excluding law enforcement. That even though there are some volunteer programs there, auxiliary programs, I think they call them, but yeah. So volunteer fire and EMS is still 60% to 70% of responders on that end around the country. And without them, you’re driving yourself to the hospital with a missing leg or using the hose to protect your own house fire. Those are the unsung heroes for sure, and we couldn’t exist without them.

09:03
Michael Warren
And they train on their own time, own dime, and they do this thing. David, I have to tell you this because I so admire those folks and I always have, but it was really brought home to me several years ago when I got to go and listen to a debrief on the shooting that occurred at Virginia Tech. And what a lot of people don’t realize is that the EMS service that serves Virginia Tech is all volunteer, all student run. And so the briefing that I listened to was from a young lady who was shot, who was in one of the classrooms, and then from one of the young people that was serving on the EMS rig. Can you imagine? I was just kept thinking to myself, man, it’s bad enough being the victim, but can you imagine being 1819 years old and responding and seeing your peers like that, man, when you think about it, that’s what they do all the time.

09:54
Michael Warren
They responded on accidents. They’re responding on medical emergencies. And that’s got to be an incredibly mentally taxing jobs for young folks.

10:03
David Berez
It’s a lot of weight to bear, for sure. And I know for me, at the age of 14, going up through 18, when I was before I went off to college, and those are my primary years there as a volunteer, I saw so much at such a formative age, and we never did debriefing. So when you said that word, that actually perked me up because I’m happy that they do that and did that was obviously a very unique circumstance. But how many car crashes did I see at that young age? Or how many deaths of any kind and kids that you can’t revive, all those things, they weigh on you and they sit back in that storage container in the back of your head, and we never processed any of that. And that came out years later, which I’m sure we’ll get to in the actual transition conversation.

10:49
David Berez
But that stuff sat back there for years without being addressed. And at that age when that happens and you don’t process it manifests for that much longer. And a psychology piece out there called Aces is Adverse Childhood Experiences, and there’s an Aces scale, and it’s a ten question test, and you get essentially a result of a score of one through ten. Most of the country somewhere sits around between one and two, and I’m at a five for my adverse childhood experiences, but about half of those come from my experiences at the rescue squad. So when you look at those Aces scores, when you’re five or above, which is about 13% of the population in this country, you’re at, like, an 80% chance of suicide, which is insane. So anybody that’s interested in understanding where their trauma score is at Aces is a good way to kind of get a feel for what you’ve gone through as a child and understand what work you may need to do as an adult.

11:49
David Berez
So I’m no expert, I’m no psychologist, but it’s a pretty good baseline for you.

11:53
Brent Hinson
They have a website where you can take the test.

11:56
David Berez
There is if you Google Aces, Adverse Childhood Experiences, it takes you to I think the CDC actually puts out I’m not 100% sure. I don’t remember.

12:05
Brent Hinson
Okay, we’ll get that in the show notes. That’s interesting.

12:07
Michael Warren
Thank you for that, David. I think it’s interesting because too often in the first responder field, when we talk about based upon my training experience, we think that it’s limited to just my training and experience as a law enforcement officer, but it’s based off of everything we are as a human being. There were decisions that you made as a police officer that were influenced by your adverse childhood, that were influenced by the things that you saw as an EMT. And that role right there, people have this misconception that exposure to that is bad, and certainly it has some damage, but it also gave you options that you might not have had if you didn’t have that experience.

12:51
David Berez
So my experience as an EMT actually is what gave me the exposure to law enforcement. So whether it was just through the calls initially and then forming the relationships with the police officers that were in my town, they saw me in a way that they’re like, this kid’s interesting. Because I was always a networker, even at a young age, I was always looking to grow from the people that I respected and admired. Most of them were good role models, some of them were not. But we try to weed those out as we go forward in life. And not every decision you make and people that you let into your sphere is good, but sometimes we need to learn from those too. So I made these connections early on, specifically with one officer in my town. His name was Todd. He was a huge influence in the reason that I ended up going into law enforcement instead of the EMS or Fireside, not to mention in New Jersey, law enforcement makes about four times what EMS makes.

13:43
David Berez
So was not an option to make 25 grand a year as an EMT.

13:47
Michael Warren
If you look back on your EMT years, as we start to move on from them, was there any moment that you can remember where you were going? And you’re like, this is why I do this? All right, what were they?

14:00
David Berez
The first one being when I first was elected to the squad as the squad’s captain, when I turned 19 years old. So I was one year in to be an adult member. I was a freshman in college, and the squad elected me to be the squad’s captain. So that was the third officer in charge. We had a chief, a deputy chief, and then a captain. I hadn’t been a leader in any other way throughout that previous year. I was the cadet captain. I was the kid in charge of the other kids. That’s more of a ceremonial thing and training and whatever kind of keeping the core group together. Elected as the captain of the squad, it gave me this opportunity to thrive as a leader, and I had all of the training to do that, but none of the experience. About a week into being the new captain of the rescue squad, there was a call for services.

14:45
David Berez
A crash comes over the pager. Two or three car motor vehicle crash with six patients, one ejected, one trap. It was a hot mess. Go through all the resources. I assess what’s there. I start calling in fire department for extrication. I call in the helicopter for the transport of the Entrap victim because it’s going to be an extended extrication. So it was like the mother load of resources as my first call as a leader. In the end, I don’t know if I did it right or wrong. All the patients got transported, everybody survived, and all the rescuers, including the helicopter crew, got home and back to their stations without a scratch on them. So to me, that was the success. Whether I did it right, whether the process was right, I don’t know at this point, quite frankly, I don’t even care, because we accomplished the mission and everybody did it safely.

15:32
David Berez
So it was that moment I realized, man, this is what I want to take forward for the rest of my life. How we can positively affect people in this first responder business is unbelievable. And then we can do it as a team. I knew that’s how I wanted to move forward.

15:44
Michael Warren
You know what I’m talking about when I say this? That when that thing right there, when everything’s going wrong and you come in and start making it right. That adrenaline rush that you get. I’ve never done drugs. Okay. But this got to be what it feels like when you get that first hit. You know what I mean?

16:03
David Berez
Absolutely. It’s that euphoric moment that you can never reproduce, and without getting too dark. Heroin is the same thing right. They always say after the first time you’ve shot heroin, you’re chasing that dragon for the rest of your life because nothing will ever come to that moment of the first time. And it’s the same thing in our experiences as first responders. That first time you have that huge win. Knowing that you had that impact to save somebody else’s life is ridiculous.

16:27
Michael Warren
It just cannot be described. So what was your second story then?

16:31
David Berez
So the second story as an EMT, that affected me in actually quite the opposite way. I’d responded to another motor vehicle crash. It was on the highway. It was a car that got T boned by a tractor trailer. And when I got there, I thought I had recognized the vehicle. And as I got closer to it, I realized it was a high school friend of mine who was not going to survive. I will never forget that moment because I couldn’t help her. There was nothing I could do. And it broke my heart. Actually made me question whether this job was the right thing for me.

17:04
Brent Hinson
Let me can I ask a question here? In that moment? And Mike, you can probably chime in on this too. Does something happen if you know a person or even just adjacent where your body, your mind just kind of goes on autopilot and takes the emotion out of it and you just get super focused on taking care of the incident at hand?

17:26
David Berez
I think maybe initially, but I think as the relationship sets into the moment, I think that begins to change. And once you start taking it personal, you got to remove yourself.

17:38
Michael Warren
The one that early in my career that hit me wasn’t even somebody that I knew. And it wasn’t even this tragic accident or anything. We responded with fire and went up to this home and it was a lady. I think she was in her early forty s at the time. She’d already lost her husband to cancer and she had cancer herself. And she’s a skeleton of what she used to be. And you look over and you see this picture of her with her husband and here’s this beautiful lady and you see what cancer has done to her. But she was all alone. And I can remember just sitting there. All I could do was hold her hand. This lady’s about to get transported and she knows and I know that this is the last time that she’s ever going to leave her house, that she’s not coming back.

18:24
Michael Warren
I just remember I can’t do anything. I can’t make this better, but I can make right now just a little bit better by being there for her. Man, that one bothered me for a long time. It’s not that I did anything wrong. I couldn’t heal her.

18:42
David Berez
Yeah. So we’re built on control for the most part as first responders and controlling the chaos that surrounds us. Just not in our personal lives whole, nother discussion. But sometimes actually that chaos in our personal lives is a release and a result of us trying to control everything at work. Living in those moments, I actually think is so important because it gives perspective in so many ways to what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. It also builds that level of empathy that you need to rely on and fall back on in the most acute moments when empathy may not be warranted the emotional response, but when you have a cognitive response and that you can pull that empathy forward and no feeling or no emotion is going to happen on its own. Most of that’s learned if you’re not practicing emotions, you’re going to have the wrong ones in the wrong moment, and that’s when things tend to go sideways.

19:32
Michael Warren
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. One of my favorite quotes ever by Dr. Henry Thompson in the book Why Good Leaders Make Stupid Decisions, says, the ideal is to have emotions without being had by your emotions 100%. I love that right there. You learn very quickly. Lucky for you learned very quickly that being a doctor wasn’t going to be an option. So you can change your major, right? So was that when you made the decision to go into law enforcement, or was that later down the road?

20:02
David Berez
No, that was the moment. As I expressed earlier, I failed botany first semester, freshman year, and for those that are not familiar with botany, it’s the study of plant cells. Yeah. So when I realized I couldn’t figure out an Amoeba from a whatever, I was out, and I recognized that school was probably not the best place for me at that point in time. I stayed, just not in the premed world. So I came home first semester, freshman year for winter break. I was on call with the rescue squad for Christmas Eve. I met up in the middle of the night with my friend Todd And, who was a police officer working that shift. He was telling me just all kinds of stuff, cop stuff. I couldn’t tell you what the stories are or were. I don’t remember them. However, I just remember being enamored by him and the stories and the moment, and that’s when I made my transition.

20:58
David Berez
That’s when I knew something had to change. So when I went back to school, I went back a couple of days early for a spring semester of freshman year. I changed up all my classes. Didn’t have to pick a major yet at that point, but I went back into psychology classes. It took some pre law type classes, just criminal justice type stuff. And I remember when my mom got the tuition bill, she goes, what is going on here? I was like, I changed my major. She’s like, what do you mean you change your major? I was like, Well, I’m not doing premed anymore. I’m doing pre cop. And she’s like, what?

21:28
Brent Hinson
You’re not going to be bringing in that doctor money.

21:30
David Berez
So it took a little convincing. She still paid the bill, which was awesome, but I don’t think she was very happy, and it took many years before she realized that was the best decision for me.

21:42
Michael Warren
And so did you get hired right out of college? How did you come about to be employed? Because being employed is a lot better than being a volunteer.

21:51
David Berez
So as I went through college and I was taking all these criminal justice classes, I also did an internship with the Freeport New York Police Department as part of one of my classes that I took. And I went to Hofstra University out of Long Island, and Freeport was a couple towns over from the school. I was also depressed, socioeconomic town that had a lot of crap going on in it. So the experience I got in that internship was incredible. And then I did an internship at home between junior and senior year of college at the police department where I ended up working. That was eye opening for me. If you’ve ever worked in the town that you grew up in, you can relate and understand that when you think you know someplace because you’ve lived there for so long, and then you start working there as a cop, the truth is you don’t know crap about your town.

22:39
David Berez
You don’t know crap about the people in it. You don’t know crap about the hiding spaces. You don’t know anything about that place until you start working there as a cop and you get to see all the dark nooks and crannies and the inside world of people’s crazy lives. A family that you thought was on top of the world and had the world all figured out. Man, that was usually the biggest shit show in the town. It was just unbelievable. The learning experience I had because I was pretty sheltered from that kind of so I graduated upon graduation. My budy Chris, who was my fraternity brother, said, hey, man, I know you want to become a cop. You got to talk to my aunt’s husband. What’s her husband do? Well, my aunt works at the medical examiner’s office in New York City, but her husband is an NYPD sergeant in the narcotics unit.

23:22
David Berez
But I didn’t hear anything past my aunt was an investigator for the New York City Examiner’s Office. I’m like, Damn, I could do both at the same time. I could be a cop that deals with medical stuff. Like, how cool is that? So I ended up getting an internship with the New York City medical Designer’s Office for a year. I learned more in that year than I learned the entire rest of my career. Life experience that I can’t put a dollar sign an emotional I mean, it was unbelievable. If you can die from it, I’ve seen it and New York City’s got, you know, a hundred of those a day.

23:54
Brent Hinson
That’s like college right there. All in mean that’s a college experience. It was, know, learning on the job.

24:01
David Berez
It was absolutely wild. Everything know, floaters in the Hudson to jumpers off rooftops, know, burn victims at the bottom of an elevator shaft.

24:11
Michael Warren
It’s funny that you should say that because the guy who wrote, in my opinion, one of the best textbooks on homicide investigation was the practical homicide investigation. A lot of it was due to the fact that in that position you’re exposed to such a breadth of types that you get exposure that others just don’t get volume wise.

24:37
David Berez
Yeah. And going back to the trauma side of it, I was 22 years old, going to 23 years old. I had no life experience. I’d never thought about any of these things before. I didn’t have exposure to what this stuff looks like, feels like, smells like, tastes like unfathomable. That this exists in life, that this level of death exists in life.

24:59
Brent Hinson
I think it’s kind of foreshadowing as we move along of what is building up inside of you starting at a young age.

25:07
David Berez
I agree.

25:07
Michael Warren
Right?

25:08
David Berez
I agree. And I didn’t know it at the time, and nobody talked about that stuff only recently. We’ve talking about wellness and well being and mental health for law enforcement, even any first responders. So that stuff really wasn’t addressed back then. But yeah, it was an incredible experience. I did that for a year, and then in the summer of 98, I got hired as a special police officer in Seaside Park, New Jersey and started my law enforcement career from there.

25:32
Michael Warren
And we spent this time right here on the stuff leading up to the career because you’re exactly right. The trauma in law enforcement in the first responder world that ends up causing us problem usually isn’t one incident. It’s the cumulative effect of all these things. And yours just started earlier than most did in this profession.

25:55
David Berez
So a lot of people compare the whole trauma response thing to the military for law enforcement. And there are definitely parallels and similarities. But I think that and I’m not a veteran. I was not in the military, so I’m only speaking from what the conversations I’ve had most of the veterans that struggle with a specific incident or a specific group of days or a deployment of some sort that they are struggling to get past and move forward from. And in law enforcement, I say we struggle with the death by a thousand cuts. That cumulative response that you were just talking about is truly what gets us and we don’t address it along the way, which is where we get into.

26:30
Michael Warren
Trouble, just like I did with the EMT side of things. I want to ask you, looking back on your law enforcement career, was there any moment where you said you’re in the middle of something. And you think to yourself, this is why I did it. This is why I did all the push ups. This is why I worked midnights, this is why I worked holidays, was for this moment right here.

26:51
David Berez
Gosh over a career of 20 plus years. There’s definitely a lot of them. Some of the ones that stand out in no particular order, I think the one that had the most specific impact on me and it had to do with empathy. I responded to a call in the middle of the night for a middle aged male that had fallen down the steps in his house and was unresponsive the address. When I got there, I knew where the address was because it was around the corner from the house I grew up in, but I didn’t know the address specifically. So when I got there, I recognized the name and the woman who answered the door. And her daughter was a classmate of mine. Same grade, same age, and I’ve known them my whole life. I just didn’t know where they lived. And so when I got there, I saw it was her.

27:38
David Berez
Her name happens to be Carol. We’ll leave it at that. She recognized me and my name, and she actually made some kind of come. I don’t know. You were a police officer, had that initial introduction. Recognizing each other brings me to her husband, which was just literally right on the other side of the entry door, who was unconscious, unresponsive at the bottom of the steps. Didn’t appear to be injured to me, like physical injuries. There was noticeable deformities, anything like that, no head injury, that kind of stuff. So I trying to reposition him, maintaining the best cervical spine protection that I can, but get him into a position where I can actually give a good assessment. No response. Very thready pulse, limited breath, and there really wasn’t much I could do for him, which is tough because you want to show the family that you’re trying to do right, like they called you for help.

28:29
David Berez
But as a single police officer, that is not going to be sticking a guy with needles or whatever, there’s nothing I can do other than preserve the position that he’s in. So EMS arrives, they start doing their thing, and I back away. I was really upset by it because I couldn’t do anything and this woman’s watching me. But she was pretty cool, calm and collected. Sad, of course. We started talking as EMS is working on her husband, and I was reassuring her that we’re going to do the best we can. I don’t know what the end result is going to be, but however this ends up, you’ll be fine. I’ll help you. Your family will help you. If this doesn’t go the way that we hope it does, you will still be fine. And we just had a really nice conversation, and she was clearly looking at me like, recognizing that I was struggling in the moment, and she was kind of giving me the same feedback, which was weird.

29:20
David Berez
She’s like, yes, we’ll definitely be able to move forward with this. Thank you for all you’ve done. She was reassuring me that everything that I did was all I could do. And I don’t know what she saw, but in hindsight, I feel like she was comforting me as much as I was comforting her. Never thought about it again. Ambulance ships the guy off to the hospital. Later in that evening, I got a phone call from EMS that he had passed. But you compartmentalize this stuff, and you move forward to the next thing. Really wish I would have gone back to the house and put my arm around her, send my condolences. I never did. But that’s kind of how we move forward in this environment, is we push those things aside. About six weeks later, when I got to work, there was a card in my mailbox, an envelope dressed to me.

30:07
David Berez
I look at it, and it was from Carol. And I’m like, man, the guilt in that moment that I never went back was horrible. I didn’t want to open the card. I didn’t want to read it. I didn’t want to know about it. It was crazy. But I opened it in the privacy of my patrol car in the event that it caused me to get emotional. I didn’t want to not give it the credit it was due. But at the same time, I also wanted to be in a place where if it caused that reaction, that it wasn’t visible to anybody else. So I read the card. I still have it to this day. If I don’t read it daily, I read it three times a week, and it expressed her gratitude for everything that I did for her and her family. At the end of it says, I know how tough your job is.

30:49
David Berez
If you ever need a glass of milk or a cookie, don’t ever hesitate to stop by. I have a hard time even talking about that without getting choked up. And I have the card sitting here. I look at it all the time. That was the most impactful part of my career, was that card that were recognized for not the work that were doing, but the compassion that we had to do it.

31:10
Michael Warren
I remember early in my career getting dispatched, and I wasn’t even dispatched. I heard another officer go out. They were looking for a backup and ended up being a suicide of a mom found by her son and her daughter in law. I was first on scene, and not to go into details, but I just felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. It seemed like I was still a new officer. And I remember going back after it’s, going, man, I really screwed that up. But then, like you, I got a card, and the guy thanked me. I still remember I still got the card. The son, his wife, had just graduated from law school, so he’s trying to find a way to grieve his mom, but also to celebrate his wife. And he said, thank you so much for doing this.

31:54
Michael Warren
I just don’t think that people understand how people in this field oftentimes feel that guilt, because we feel like we didn’t make things better sometimes, that maybe we made things worse because we didn’t go back. We didn’t provide that, don’t understand the impact that we have on other people’s lives.

32:15
Brent Hinson
Now, when you get those cards like that, for both of you, was that a turning point where you shifted your mindset, or was that something where it didn’t affect you till years later?

32:25
David Berez
Gosh, for me, I think it was a little bit of both. I think for me, it was a moment where I recognized how important empathy is in our job, and I made it a point to be overly empathetic in every situation that I was called to or that I dealt with or that I addressed. So I think that it was a teaching moment for me in a good way, recognizing the positive impact that level of empathy has on others. But I don’t know that I dwelled on it until I retired and I came across that card, looking through all of my stuff as I was organizing it into my home office, this was absolutely where life changed for me. And I have not stopped reading it or stopped looking at it since. And that’s three and a half years ago. I think it has more impact on me today.

33:14
David Berez
The post George Floyd life, policing, however you want to, whatever words you want to put in there. I think that card has more impact on me now from that than any time before that, because when I look that specific incident, I don’t see the media narrative. I see a lack of empathy in an officer that should have been taken off the job 20 years before.

33:35
Michael Warren
I’ve said this before on the podcast. If you’re not impacted by some of the things that you see, some of the people that you come in contact with, that’s an issue that needs to be addressed, because that’s a symptom of a much deeper problem.

33:48
David Berez
I agree.

33:49
Michael Warren
What that one did for me was it really made me understand that I don’t have to be perfect. I just need to be there. And by there, I mean giving full attention to the people that we deal with, because I can’t imagine what it must have been like for that young man to find his mom. She was hanging from a rafter in a basement. She had a trash bag over her head because she really wanted to do it. It just was a reminder to give, and I hate to say give everything but give everything I possibly can in that moment because it will have impact beyond. And the funny thing with you, David, is that you had impact on her, but she is impacting you 20 years down the road, and that shows the type of impact that we can have on people.

34:38
Brent Hinson
Well, David, you said something, I think it’s important. I don’t want to glance over. You said you went by yourself and opened the car because you didn’t want anyone else to see you get emotional about it. And I think we’re addressing that currently is that it’s okay for you to get emotional and you needed that support and you needed something, somebody institutional or otherwise, to help you work through that incident.

35:05
David Berez
It’s the one thing that I think we struggle with in law enforcement in general is we have to maintain that badass tough guy persona. It’s just not normal to be like that. At some point that glass spills over and you have to let those emotions go or you have to process them in some way or they will come back to bite you in the ass later on. The field of law enforcement has such a machismo piece to it that it’s very difficult to get past that. And you don’t want to be known as the guy that’s crying on duty. You’ll never get past that in your career. So we have to have those moments in private, if you have them at all, if you allow yourself to have them at all, which is a whole nother conversation, you need to allow yourself to have those moments.

35:45
David Berez
And it’s part of the well being process. And if you’re not embracing and processing that, you’re in trouble.

35:52
Michael Warren
Do want to point out something for our listeners? I’m hoping that you’re going to back me up on this, David. Unless those types of calls that we’ve been talking about, unless they come in right before the end of your shift, most of the time you’re going out and taking other calls after you have those. And I’m not giving excuse to officers having bad behavior. Please don’t think that. But I think the public doesn’t understand a lot of times. You’re not my first call of the day. And I could have been handling a very traumatic call, not just for the victim, but for me before I came here. And I have a duty, a responsibility to handle you appropriately. It can be very difficult for those in the first responder field.

36:36
David Berez
Couldn’t agree more. You could be dealing with somebody’s worst moment in time, which then becomes your worst moment in time, and then the next call is a parking complaint. And you’re like, Are you freaking kidding me? This is what you’re worried about? That somebody’s parked in your spot? Yes. Is that person’s worst part of the day? That somebody was parked in their spot. And they may have to walk a little bit further to their front door. If that’s their biggest worry, they could probably use the extra steps. But it’s crazy that people don’t recognize and it’s our fault, too. I do remember later on in my career, being short with somebody, I don’t remember the specific circumstance, but I do recall being short with them and being like, listen, I’m sorry for acting like a jerk, but here’s the perspective I have right now. And that person is like, oh, you’re right.

37:20
Michael Warren
But that requires us to be vulnerable. I mean, for us as law enforcement to say, hey, listen, I apologize for being really short right there, and I’m not making excuses. I just want you to know that I just had to make a death notification to somebody, and it’s really bothering me, and I’m sorry. Can you give me a couple of minutes here? Let me take a couple of deep breaths because I want to be sure to give you the service that you need. But that requires us to be vulnerable because it means, hey, were impacted by something.

37:48
David Berez
Absolutely. You said it right there. Being vulnerable, it’s such an important part of all of it, right? It’s an important part of the job. It’s an important part of the transition. It’s also an important part of what you do next in chapter two after you retire, because if you’re not reflecting on what got you to that point and the vulnerabilities that you had to get you there, you’re doing yourself a disservice, and you’re never going to be able to properly succeed in that next phase. And when we talk about resiliency, one of the big phrases is just be where your feet are in the moment. I think that’s important. When we’re taking calls as cops as well, or any type of first responder, like you said, we don’t know what that next call is going to be, and we’re anxious to get to it because we know that the CADS got them stacked up a mile high.

38:29
David Berez
But you know what? Be where your feet are. Those calls will get answered. If not you, by somebody else. Just do you in the moment, and when the next one comes.

38:38
Michael Warren
That’s where I kind of want to transition into the transition, like what I did right there.

38:43
David Berez
Good job. Good job.

38:44
Michael Warren
Yeah, that’s right. It’s more than just a hat rack, buddy. Law enforcement specifically, to me is a unique profession in that in a very short time period at the beginning of our careers, people start talking about looking forward to retirement. Man, I cannot wait. I just can’t imagine a professional football player in their third year in the league. You’re saying, Man, I cannot wait to retire. What they’re looking for is, hey, I can’t wait until we have this team put together and we win the Super Bowl or this game right here, and it’s this forward looking thing, but it’s done in a mythical fashion. A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is retirement. But everything past that pot of gold is completely dark, because nobody has any idea what they want to do post law enforcement. I’ll share this with you. There’s a class, and I’ve said it before.

39:38
Michael Warren
There’s a class that I wrote on leadership, and there’s a point in the class where I ask the students, hey, tell me where you want to be in five years, ten years and 20 years, okay? And they’ll write things down. I can always tell when they get to the 20 years, because they start giggling and laughing. And so we go through what they want to be in five and ten years, and I say, okay, how many of you wrote down retirement for 20 years? And just about everybody in the class raise their hand. I said, what are you doing day to make sure that happens in 20 years?

40:05
David Berez
It’s an excellent point.

40:06
Michael Warren
It’s that failure to prepare for that transition that causes so many problems for.

40:13
Brent Hinson
Our profession and just to make it relatable to those that aren’t in law enforcement. For me, it’s an identity thing, because I’m a dad. My identity right now is that I’m a dad, but my son graduates from high school. In two years, he’s going to go off to college. I’m still his dad, but he’s going to be his own man. You know what I’m saying? So it’s like in law enforcement, you’re going 50, 90 miles an hour with blinders on, and suddenly you come to a hard stop, and it’s like you’re.

40:42
Michael Warren
A crash test dummy.

40:44
David Berez
You hit that wall up to the day you retire. Doesn’t matter if it’s five minutes before you retire. You are still who you are in that job. Phone’s still ringing. People are still wanting answers, people still wanting accountability. But five minutes later, when the clock strikes midnight, literally, the phone doesn’t ring. Nobody asks you any more questions. The uniform is in your closet, if you still have one. Didn’t have to give it back, and it’s over. Like, literally, like a light switch, it’s over. Then it’s not until then you really recognize who was important in your life. And when you’re sitting at home and you have nothing to say to your wife or your spouse, your children don’t come to you with problems. They’re going to your spouse with problems. And the phone’s not ringing because nobody at work needs you because you’re not a valid answer to any question at that point.

41:36
David Berez
Nobody’s knocking on the door because they need to ask you a question on how to pay a ticket. Literally, just shit changes in a light switch moment, and we’re not prepared for that, nor are we programmed for that. That’s just not how humans operate, right?

41:50
Michael Warren
Your proximity card doesn’t get you in the building anymore. It’s been deactivated, right? Your passwords are all gone. And as much as it annoys a lot of people, when you go to, like, a family gathering or to a party and somebody found out you’re a cop, they want to ask you stories and stuff like that not the same when you’re cop, yeah, you did it. You’re guilty. Just pay the ticket. Right? But nobody wants it. It’s like they’ve lost interest in you. Yes, it’s personal. It’s personal. And so there’s a lot of people that struggle with that.

42:23
David Berez
I’m glad you mentioned the outside influences, because I think for us, the outside influences, the family party stuff or friends or neighbors, I think that parts in our heads because of the other tangibles with the phone calls, the emails, that kind of thing. I think the outside influence is in our heads because you weren’t any less interesting the day before you retired than the day after you retired. And people are still going to ask you those questions if they knew what you did rather than what you’re doing. The questions are going to transition into congratulations, what are you going to do now? And now that can either be freaking awesome because you’re excited to tell people what the next chapter is going to be, or it can be devastating going, Shit, I have no freaking idea, and it’s a reality check.

43:10
Michael Warren
But see, I found there’s usually two sets of people. Okay, well, I said take that back. Three sets of people. There’s the one set. Unfortunately, I think it can be a minority. Those that have a plan and a clear idea of what they’re going to do post retirement.

43:25
David Berez
Correct.

43:25
Michael Warren
Those tend to be healthy people. But then you’ve got another set that, like you just said, they retire, and it’s like, well, what am I going to do right now? Not only do I not know what I’m going to do, I feel like I’m less entertaining and less fun to be around because I’m not a cop anymore. I’m not bringing anything to the table or going back to the officer safety thing. We also have a segment in our profession that are eligible to retire but can’t because they haven’t prepared financially to do so.

43:52
David Berez
Correct.

43:53
Michael Warren
And now they have to stay in law enforcement, and they’re pissed off, and they become an officer safety issue because we’ve got them we called them retired on duties. Right. Based upon your experience, what do we need to do as a profession to better prepare people for that transition? And I just want to .2 things out right here. The military has transition training for people who are leaving service, right?

44:20
David Berez
Absolutely. The Tap program.

44:22
Michael Warren
Yeah. How about this? Prisons have transition training programs from those that are going to be transitioning from being incarcerated to free life. But in our first responder field, it is literally don’t let it hit you in the butt as you go out the door. Give me your keys. I need your keys. I need your equipment. And we’ve got this checklist. I need your equipment. Really? You lost your flashlight? Really? Okay. That’ll be coming out of your paycheck. Six uniforms? What do you mean? You only have five? You know what I mean? And that’s the only transition that takes place. So what do we as a profession have to do better? Wow.

44:58
David Berez
So there’s so much there to unpack. I think the simplest answer is you have to transition with purpose. I think if you break it all down, that’s the bottom line. You have to transition with purpose. Positively attack some of what you just said. As a side note, today happens to be hire a vet day. Again, not being a veteran, but I did relate well to that statement. I’m so happy we having this conversation today because I think that’s part of the transition process on the veteran side, that they do have the Tap program, the Transition Assistance program. They do have this pipeline into the civilian world where you can leverage your skills that you attained as a military person, whether it be enlisted officer, whatever. So much of it is logistics oriented, and you’re able to transition that into a private sector job, and there’s people to help you do that.

45:45
David Berez
We don’t have that in law enforcement. I know one thing that we’ve done here in New Jersey, specifically in Ocean County, New Jersey, and specifically Dr. Renee White, who’s in charge of the program. We did a transition pilot program a number of months back, and it was so successful. I think we had about 25 folks in the class, and it was a five day program. We talked about resiliency. So it was essentially the resiliency class for the first couple of days. We had a financial resiliency day. We had a career day, meaning teach you how to write a resume, how to change your vocabulary. Because the truth is, if you go to a private sector job, when you retire, nobody gives a crap that you were a radar instructor. What’s that going to do for them? Right. Take that crap off your resume. You got Officer of the Year.

46:29
David Berez
Awesome. What does that do for me? So you got to change your vocabulary, and even little things like you walk into an interview and you, yes, sir. No, ma’am. These people, they’re going to look at you like a robot and not a human, because that’s not what happens in the outside world. So you got to start by changing your vocabulary. And that’s very difficult to do because we’ve been programmed that way for 2030 years, however long your career was from day one in the academy. And for us, we see it as a respect thing. But for the people in the outside world, they actually see it as disrespect.

46:58
Michael Warren
We get used to things being done a certain way in a certain manner.

47:01
David Berez
Absolutely.

47:02
Michael Warren
We speak our own language, and we think because we’re so inward looking, we think that everybody does. And what you’re saying is that’s not the case?

47:11
David Berez
No, it’s not the case at all. And if you start using ten codes at a business conversation, you’re getting kicked out of the room and going right to the psychologist because people just aren’t going to understand you and they’re going to think that you got issues. The transition piece is huge, but I think that starts long before retirement. Absolutely. You mentioned, what’s your 20 year plan? And start today with it. So we don’t talk about that necessarily in any capacity. To young officers. There’s always that one guy that’s been the ID sergeant or something like that’s been sitting in a closed office for 20 years dealing with evidence, who has a side hustle with some kind of pyramid scheme and is talking to young officers that are bringing evidence to his office about financial planning and stuff like that. And, well, I’m an insurance guy, so why don’t you come talk to me about this and I’ll help you sell Amway product.

47:58
David Berez
There’s always that guy in the agency. But the funny part is, as kooky as that dude is, sit down and talk to that guy. You don’t have to buy his products. You don’t have to be his underling. So he’s higher in the pyramid scheme, but you should listen and understand the 30,000 foot view of what he’s saying.

48:15
Michael Warren
And he’s probably the one dude that has his mortgage paid off correct. And has a lake property because he has been preparing for all that time.

48:22
David Berez
Correct. And that’s the biggest part, is making sure you’re financially stable. So when you do get to that transition phase into retirement, you can now do what makes you happy because you’re not worried about paying the electric bill at the end of the month. If you retire and you’re chasing dollar bills in your second chapter, you’re never going to find that well being. You’re never going to find that happiness. You’re never going to find that joy that life should be offering you at that point. If you’re chasing dollar bills, you’re doing it wrong.

48:50
Michael Warren
But would you agree with me that because of the way that our culture in law enforcement is, a lot of times we don’t know what makes us happy.

48:59
David Berez
We don’t know what makes us happy.

49:01
Michael Warren
All our friends are cops, all our clothes are cop related. Everything about us is cop related. And all of a sudden that’s poof, it’s gone.

49:10
David Berez
I’m glad you said that. I think it’s important that we differentiate the difference between happiness and joy, and I think it’s very important to understand the difference between the two. Happiness is an emotional response to something in the moment, and joy is a state of well being. That is a holistic view of how you’re doing. Things that make you happy are the things that are going to cause you to ring the bell during physical training and get kicked out joy is the grit that’s going to keep you there to make sure you get to the end and be successful and thrive. So I think it’s important to differentiate the two. When we’re in the throes of our job, we do what we can to make us happy, because it’s momentary, and it’s a learned response to get us out of the crap that we’re dealing with in the moment.

49:55
Michael Warren
It’s the hit.

49:55
David Berez
That’s exactly right.

49:57
Michael Warren
I’m going to take your words. Joy, I think, also comes with purpose. Correct that purpose, meaningful purpose helps to provide that joy. And I loved how you wrote that on there that found your purpose. So how did that come about?

50:15
David Berez
That was all part of my transition, and I retired January 1 of 2020. Actually, that was the first day of retirement, was January 1, 2020. So if you do the math good time. Yes and no. I’ll say yes and no.

50:29
Brent Hinson
I mean, you really got hit. You retired, and then we all got down.

50:33
David Berez
So that was the good part. So COVID was the best thing that ever happened to me. Not the disease itself. I’ve had it three times. Not so bad, but I could have done without it. But COVID as a societal problem was the best thing that ever happened to me, because the world stopped, and I had a chance to catch up. So when I retired January 1 of 2020, the first six weeks were freaking awesome. It was the longest vacation I had ever had in my entire life. I was just truly enjoying the moment. I was doing woodworking stuff that I hadn’t touched in a while. I was outside pulling weeds. Like, I was happy to pull weeds just to have that.

51:15
Brent Hinson
Nobody believes me that pulling weeds.

51:18
David Berez
It’s the second best time for me to think, is pulling weeds.

51:21
Michael Warren
Oh, my God.

51:23
David Berez
First most important for me is bike riding. But that’s a whole different story. I was in that Euphoric moment those first six weeks, and then shit started to unravel, and I started to think about things. The box starts opening up the memories. The thoughts start flying out. My relationship with my wife and kids starts to fall apart because I turn into an instant asshole. I’m just completely unraveling. I’m up all night. I don’t sleep, so I’m a jerk during the day. I can’t quiet my brain. And then March 13 or whatever it was, COVID hits. So one of the reasons I did retire when I did, not the reason, but one of the reasons was my wife wanted her career to excel. And me being at home with dealing with the kids stuff gave that opportunity for her to move further ahead of work. About two months into my retirement, she was like, man, this whole corporate thing just isn’t I’m falling apart with it.

52:17
David Berez
I want to go out on my own. So I’m like, all right, in a couple of. Years. That’d be great. She’s like, Nah, I’m putting my papers. I’m leaving. I’m like, holy crap. She leaves work to start her own consulting business, and then COVID hits a week later as far as the lockdowns go, and we’re like, holy crap, I retired. Pension is pension. It’s not a livable sum of money, but it helps just not livable. And she’s going doing this thing out on her own, so her salary stops. I’m like, man, this is crazy. What are we going to do here? Fortunately, she’s just a rocket science genius, and her business thrives and she just moves forward, which was actually great for the family. But it was hard on me emotionally because I’m like, how did she just take that Pivot moment and just rock it forward?

53:02
David Berez
And I couldn’t do it. The world does slow down and stops. I start to recalibrate, but I’m struggling. She helps me form my own LLC, and it’s like, so take your experiences from work, and I’ll give those services to somebody else in the private side. I’m like, all right, I never wanted to go to the dark side and work for a defense attorney, but it ended up looking like an option. It’s like, all right, so maybe I’ll just do, like, active shooter training. But this whole COVID thing screwed up everybody’s budgets. Nobody wanted to pay a consultant to come in and tell them what they should and shouldn’t be doing. So I had all of these. What I saw at the time was failures, but looking back, it just led me forward to the next thing. So in the moment when you feel like you’re failing, just keep pushing forward and don’t quit.

53:45
David Berez
Because you only truly fail when you quit. If you take that failure and translate that word into learned experience and pull it forward to your next idea, thought, or ambition, I think when you change that mindset is huge. I wish I knew that then what I know now, because I think I would have struggled less in the process. But struggling in that process is actually what led me forward to now. But June I forget what the date was. June 19, 20th, whatever it was a George Floyd incident. We’re just having so much tumult within our society and COVID and that all combined was very stressful. I live one town over from Trenton, New Jersey, which is pretty much an urban nightmare. There was a lot of civil unrest and stuff there. So I’m listening on the scanner to all my friends getting their asses handed to them, trying to work these riots and stuff, and I’m sitting home on the couch losing my marbles.

54:37
David Berez
I end up doing perimeter checks around my house at night. I don’t sleep at all. Completely losing my shit in the process. The only thing that I could do to kind of keep myself sane was try to help the guys that were still on the job that were still going through that live locally to me. I’d be dropping off cases of beer to people’s houses. I’d be making phone calls, sending texts, just trying to keep my toe dipped in the water to where I was having the connected relationships because I no longer had the connection to the job. So then July 29 comes around, and my really good friend Danny ends up taking his own life. After working with him and recognizing he was in trouble, he ends up taking his own life on July 29. And that changed everything for me. I recognized that if it wasn’t him, it could have very well been me.

55:21
David Berez
And I recognized that I needed help, and I recognized that I needed to do something to make sure nobody in my sphere, any cop anywhere, was left to that choice as a choice. So that was the pivot point for me. I ended up writing an article. Danny, and his situation instantly hit a lot of people. And then it was picked up by some media, and it got out there, and it drew attention. Within the first couple of days, I’d written that to where somebody reached out to Chief Resiliency officer, which is a new position in our county, and said, hey, I think Dave’s in trouble. So his name is Michael. Michael reached out to me and was like, listen, man, I want you to come talk to me about what’s going on. I think I have some ideas for you. And I’m like, great. Now I’m good.

56:10
David Berez
And I love Michael. He’s been a good friend of mine for a long time, but I didn’t want to recognize that I needed the backup. So he’s like, Listen, you got a choice. You can come talk to me and Pastor Barry about what’s going on here, or I can have somebody take you to a 30 day vacation. Your choice. I’m like, all right, cool. Let’s go talk. So went out to lunch. Pastor Barry shows up. I should note that we’re Jewish in our religion, and Pastor Barry not so much, but he was an awesome guy, and I had a hard time relating to the whole Jesus conversations, but it all worked out for the good. So Michael’s telling me about the Resiliency program in New Jersey just started, and he’s like, one thing that we’ve realized is there’s no connection to retirees. So we’ve recognized through Danny’s death and the processing of Danny’s death that nobody reached out to the retirees.

57:03
David Berez
And just because you haven’t worked in six months doesn’t mean you’re not as just affected by everything that’s going on as the guys that are still on a job. So we need to bridge that gap. So he put me through the Resiliency program that was being taught for in house for active duty officers that we can talk about more of that program in a minute. But I was, like, one of the first two I guess there was two of us retirees that took that class. That was where I realized how I can still be in the world in the culture of law enforcement. And instead of helping other people, I can help my own. And in the process of helping my own, I help myself. And that goes back to when I was 14 and I was struggling in my own house, and I left the house to be a volunteer to help others.

57:47
David Berez
But it was really helping me. So that’s been a theme throughout my entire life. So it was interesting to me when I recognized that how my brain is wired and recognizing what my purpose is. So my purpose is to help others. And I’m not saying that as a pat on the back. I’m not saying that at a nobility. That’s not my point. Because when I help others, I’m helping myself. So there’s both sides of that. But I have found that is what my purpose is in life. So out of tragedy has built this opportunity for me to continue to help others within law enforcement, maintain a purposeful, living and staying alive, primarily. But in the process, I’m helping myself too.

58:29
Michael Warren
It’s important to point out that you may be off the job, but the baggage from the job is still there. The sooner that it’s addressed, the healthier you’ll be and the better your retirement will be. I mean, how many people we talked about it, how many people look forward to retirement?

58:44
David Berez
They don’t prepare countdown clock on their phone.

58:46
Michael Warren
Exactly. And then when they get there, it’s not what it’s supposed to be. And then emotionally, psychologically, it’s a dark period instead of this fun period.

58:54
David Berez
So those that have the countdown clock on their phone, those that are counting the days to retirement, those are the ones that you should be looking out for the most. Those are the ones that are retiring without purpose other than for the purpose of retiring itself.

59:07
Michael Warren
The purpose is the clock.

59:11
David Berez
Yeah, 100%. And those are the ones you got to watch out for. It’s not an exact science, but self inflicted harm or death by suicide is most prominent in our field. 18 months before and 18 months after the retirement date. When you’re looking at folks that are struggling, that’s your window. So that three year window, the 18 months before and 18 months after is the most vulnerable space that we can be in. And once you can get past that, you’re in pretty good shape. Even though there are folks later on in life, but generally, there’s some additive factors there. That transition window is crazy, and I.

59:44
Michael Warren
Think it’s one of the most shameful things in our profession that when you hand your badge in, when you turn your creds in, you’re no longer reached out to, hey, you’re on your own. It’s like a parent kicks their kids out the door at 18. It’s all you now I got you here. It’s sad because as you just alluded to that, we’re still in the middle of the most dangerous period.

01:00:08
David Berez
Yeah, it’s funny when you were talking about handing the stuff in. My most laughable and most gut wrenching moment at the same time was when the lieutenant that was taking back my equipment asked me where my bike shoes were. So I was a bike officer for a while, and it wasn’t a full time gig. It was just part of the responsibilities. And I was like, I don’t know. They’re probably at home. They’re like disgusting old sneakers. And he goes, yeah, but they were issued to you. We need them back. I’m like, I wore those things for ten years as a bike cop. What are you going to do with them? He goes, we’ll probably reissue them to someone else that gets bike trained. I almost threw up. First of all, nobody wants to put their feet in my shoes, especially after being a bike guy.

01:00:53
David Berez
He’s like, yeah, sorry, we have to get this. I actually had to go home and bring him back the next day. I found him, fortunately. Isn’t that crazy? And that’s a guy that doesn’t see the moment. That’s a guy that’s literally checking boxes. He’s got a lot. And that person will struggle too when they retire, because they’re so fixated on their position as a lieutenant, cap, whatever their rank is, that’s their only identity.

01:01:21
Michael Warren
They’ve lost it all in the military. It was the armor when you had to go turn in your weapon. Well, this isn’t clean. Enough said. Listen, dude, I just spent 2 hours and 45 minutes cleaning this son of a gun on a day I didn’t shoot it. Okay? Yes, it’s clean enough. Believe me. No. So I couldn’t agree more. As we’re wrapping things up, what do you do now? What’s your purpose?

01:01:44
David Berez
So I’ve taken that experience of the Resiliency training, and I also had this great opportunity to be part of an organization called The Power of Our Story. I was introduced to that in the journey of the retirement. I had put my profile on LinkedIn, and I was looking at all these LinkedIn things and seeing what people were doing. First of all, don’t let that bother you. If you’re looking at LinkedIn and you’re seeing the success of all of these people, know that when you write your own profile, people are going to see like, wow, that dude’s awesome. And you’re sitting at home struggling. So the guy who you think is awesome is also sitting at home struggling, but his profile looks like a complete badass. So don’t let LinkedIn cloud your judgment of what everybody else is going through. So I reached out to this one guy who seemed to have his shit together on LinkedIn, and he was a recently retired Navy Seal.

01:02:35
David Berez
And I’m like, Man, I love what you’re doing? I’d love the chance to talk to you. He ends up calling me and we have a great conversation and he’s like, I got to tell you something. I don’t get cops. And I went sheet white. I’m like, oh, my God. This Navy Seal guy is another cop hater.

01:02:52
Michael Warren
Did I write you a ticket?

01:02:54
David Berez
Yeah. I was shocked. But what he said next was, you guys are the badasses of our society. This is Navy Seal saying this. You guys are the badasses of our society. We train not only till we get it right, but we train till we can’t get it wrong. And every mission we go on has a year’s worth of prep in some way or another. We go into that mission knowing that we are going home from it because we’ve planned for every possible contingency along the way. Every time a cop walks up to a car, there’s a 50 chance you’re not going home. Every time a cop walks into a domestic, there’s a 40 60 chance you’re not going home. Because you don’t know what’s inside that house. You don’t know how the victim is now going to become the victor and turn on you to protect the actual piece of crap that you’re there to protect them from.

01:03:42
David Berez
The unknowns are what me as a Navy Seal, cannot understand how you and what you do and how you do it. I was floored by this guy’s perception, and he’s a I have somebody I want you to talk to. And he introduced me to this woman, Sarah Carell, who is putting together a platform called The Power of Our Story. And essentially her platform allows a safe space for people to tell their stories. And it gives you the audience of other storytellers who are part of the family. The act of storytelling, the art of storytelling, is so cathartic for the individual telling it. It gives you the ability to find your voice again. And so Resiliency gave me the tools on how to manage my emotions. The Power of Our Story and the storytelling process itself gave me the ability to find my voice and share it with others.

01:04:33
David Berez
I have also learned from the stories of other people. And you have these MeToo moments, not in the news narrative of a couple of years ago, but a me too moment as something that’s relatable and damn, I’m not the only one that’s going through this. Let me reach out to that person and see how they managed it. So now you’re making these networking connections, you’re working together, you’re bouncing stuff off of each other and you’re learning from each other. And it is so unbelievable on the power of that and how you can then move forward with your own life. Those are the two big things. I’ve been working with the Resiliency program and facilitating that for both the state of New Jersey and for the nonprofit, and then being a facilitator for the power of our story as a storyteller and helping Sarah with all that as well.

01:05:18
David Berez
So that’s kind of the main parts of what I’m doing. The state of New Jersey, we have a first of its kind resiliency program. It’s called New Jersey’s Resiliency Program for Law Enforcement. We’ve trained all 36,000 cops in this state with the resiliency framework, and we have about 1200 RPOs, which are resiliency program officers. Some of them are MRTS. Depending on who you got trained by, it has been very successful. We’ve really reduced our death by suicide rate in law enforcement. We’ve created an opportunity and a framework for people to talk on a peer to peer level where administration does not hear about it. It is a truly confidential environment and it’s worked out really well. We’ve helped, then trained Georgia. Georgia now has a very good program as well. I actually think it’s better than New Jersey at this point. We’ve done some training in Pennsylvania and through many states throughout the country on the nonprofit side as well.

01:06:10
David Berez
So those that started the resiliency program through the state are now doing it on the nonprofit side. And we have a new group coming up through the pipeline on the state side. There’s also a great program in Kentucky, of all places, that’s been around for a while. They actually do a week long resiliency retreat for law enforcement. So anybody that’s out in the Kentucky area, state of Kentucky, look into that. It seems like a great opportunity. I don’t know much about it, but I’m learning more each day. And so I realized this whole path of teaching resiliency for law enforcement specifically was where I wanted to end up and where I wanted to go. So I’m very fortunate. After second round of applying in September, I am starting University of Pennsylvania’s Master’s of Applied Positive Psychology program. And so this knuckle dragging door kicker is going to be an Ivy League graduate, which is absolutely an insane thought, especially when I graduated college with a.

01:06:57
Michael Warren
2.8 GPA and failed Botany.

01:07:01
David Berez
And failed botany. So good news is there’s no botany in you got to check those.

01:07:07
Brent Hinson
I think that’s required.

01:07:08
David Berez
Exactly.

01:07:09
Brent Hinson
You got to pass botany.

01:07:10
David Berez
So that’s kind of where I’m at now. And honestly, just like you were saying, I’m the coolest dad out there. I love being with my kids as much as I can. They’re awesome. And watching them thrive was what brings me true joy.

01:07:22
Michael Warren
So Brent also alluded to the fact that you’ve written a book when’s your book supposed to come out.

01:07:26
David Berez
So I did write a book. It’s called A Resilient Life, and it is the resiliency lessons taught through the own lens of my experiences. And I’m hoping that it’ll be out in about a month or so. So that’s the goal. We’re the final stages of editing right.

01:07:41
Michael Warren
Now to do us a favor when you do that, because we’ve had several authors on our podcast. We like promoting the books that have been written. If you can let us know when it comes out, we’ll help promote that for you. We’ll include the links and everything. We appreciate that you took the time to do that. It’s just another way of finding your voice and sharing your story. And so I appreciate that.

01:08:04
David Berez
Yeah, the storytelling piece, honestly, is so important. It’s funny because my book started out as not a book. It was in the darkest phases of my transition period where I was capturing stories and emotions that my kids would be able to read when I was gone and could learn a little bit more about me.

01:08:24
Brent Hinson
I’m doing the exact same thing for.

01:08:27
David Berez
My it’s such a special gift, and I’m so happy and proud of you that you’re doing that. I think that you cannot leave somebody behind any greater gift than an understanding of your life. That goes back to some of the Aces stuff that we touched on earlier. There’s things that happen pre you before you were born, and whether they’re positive or negative experiences, we’ll call them transgenerational trauma. And so there’s baggage that gets passed down to you when you’re bored, whether you recognize it or not. And it’s part of your upbringing. So my whole goal that I want to leave for my kids is I can’t take the bags away from them. They’re going to have to carry those bags just like I carried the bags for my ancestors. But I want to lighten the load. I want to make sure that I take the baggage out of the bags as much as I can and leave them with a lighter set of bags to carry.

01:09:16
David Berez
That’s where this book process started. And quite frankly, when I was writing it, I didn’t think that my time on Earth was long and I was really in a bad spot. I felt like I needed to get all of this out for them before the devil knocked too hard on the back of my shoulder. Fortunately, the process of writing the book is what brought me today, not, I shouldn’t say the process of writing. That is what generated my positivity and to move forward from that dark space. So all of these sticky notes and previous articles that I’d written that I kind of incorporated into it, turned into the book. So it didn’t start out as a book. It started out as more journaling and leaving something for them to understand me better when I wasn’t around anymore. And it turned into this, I think. Awesome set of stories and purposeful lessons for everybody else.

01:10:04
Brent Hinson
We want the folks that are listening to this, they hear your story. They want to implement similar programs. We’re going to put links in the show notes where they can reach out to you. They can find you on LinkedIn, your website, what have you, because I think you guys have started something here in New Jersey and it’s expanding and we want to expand it further. I think that’s the purpose of having you on today is like you said, I like your wording. This topic doesn’t get enough oxygen, so hopefully we’re able to get this word out a little bit further.

01:10:34
David Berez
Transition discussions are important and if you’re not having them within your agency, it’s never too late to start. And instead of the 03:00 A.m. Coffees with Fu this guy and fu that guy, start talking about the positive visions you have for the future. And it’s our general nature as humans to always turn to the negative. It’s kind of a survival thing. The positive conversations are just as contagious as the negative ones. And it’s that ripple effect that will bring everybody up. That whole rising tide raises all boats. So if you can stay positive at those 03:00 a.m. Coffee sessions or the choir practice you’re having after work, take that positive energy and share it with others because it will change other people’s perspectives and that purpose that you feel you have will be translated to them as well.

01:11:18
Michael Warren
David, we really appreciate you being here today and sharing your story with us. I’m going to give another shout out to Crossing the Streams here. You guys did an episode on songs that address mental health and well being. And one of the songs that I downloaded from there was Bad Life and one of the best lines I’ve ever heard. I said, it’s just a bad day, not a bad life. So for my brothers and sisters out there who are still on the job, please keep that in mind. It’s just a bad day, but that doesn’t make it a bad life. Thank you for being here today, david, fantastic job today. I think the message was really good, very much so.

01:11:59
Brent Hinson
And I do want to point out David reached out to us on our website and were able to connect that way. If you’re listening and you have a similar story that you’d like to share with us, you can do that as well. You can find us on our website at between the Lineswithvirtualacademy.com. David, thank you so much for making time for us today. We appreciate having you on and incredible story you had to tell.

01:12:20
David Berez
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Everybody needs to talk more so everybody hears you talk and share your voice, share your story, and somebody’s going to have that me too moment with you and they’re going to relate to their life and they’re going to better off because you spoke up.