First Response with Bob Plaschke, Episode 30: Lieutenant Frank Borelli - Behind the Badge

We talk with retired Lieutenant Frank Borelli about why police officers get flattened into stereotypes and how everyday courtesy can prevent conflict before it starts. We also dig into the family cost of the job and why honest communication matters as much as any tactical skill. Lieutenant Frank Borelli, a longtime law enforcement trainer and a leading voice at Officer Media Group and Officer.com, talks about what people miss when they only see policing through the loudest headlines. We get honest about how mainstream incentives can sensationalize police incidents, how context gets stripped away, and why that fuels stereotypes that harm community trust and public safety. 

Then we go where most conversations don’t: the impact on officer families. Policing is a lifestyle with odd hours, constant situational awareness, and the quiet fear that lands on spouses, partners, and kids who have the least control. Frank talks openly about what gets shared at home, what gets held back, and why 100% open communication is the best chance at making it work. We also point to Police Week and the importance of supporting survivors through Concerns of Police Survivors (COPS). 

If this helped you see the badge differently, subscribe, share this with someone who only knows policing from clips, and leave a review so more people can find these conversations. What’s one thing you wish the public understood about police officers and their families?

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Transcript

First Response Podcast Transcript

Guest: Lt. Frank Borelli

Host: Bob Plaschke

 Plaschke 0:04

Today I'm excited. I have Lt. Frank Borelli with me. Lt. Frank Borelli is retired and is one of the most credentialed voices in law enforcement media today. Think of him as the Walter Cronkite - maybe that dates me. Frank, who should we use as your comparison?

Borelli 1:24

Walter Cronkite is just fine. I remember him. Was he the guy whose tagline was, "and that's the way it is," or was that somebody else? I think that might be him.

Plaschke 1:36

I was going to say Bob Costas, but that would be inappropriate. Savannah Guthrie would be the more contemporary comparison.

Borelli 1:50

How about Bob Uecker? Can I be Bob Uecker?

Plaschke 1:53

Frank spent 40 years in uniform: first as a military police officer in the U.S. Army, then in a number of policing roles in Maryland, where he currently lives. He started more than 20 years ago as executive director of Officer Media Group and OFFICER Magazine, one of the most widely read law enforcement trade publications in the country. We advertise in it, as an example. He hosts and co-hosts several podcasts. The Lineup, which I listen to and which you should listen to, is fantastic. We will hopefully talk about that today. I'm excited to have the LT on the show. Frank, can I call you Frank?

Borelli 2:52

You can call me Frank, or you can call me LT. I have been called everything on the street in languages I didn't even understand, so feel free.

Plaschke 2:58

The first question for me out of the box is: what got you started doing this work at Officer Media Group? Why tell stories about police officers? What motivated you? I know what motivates me, but what motivated you to do this kind of education?

Borelli 3:22

It's interesting. On a personal note, as a young child, it was a matter of record. I'm adopted, and I wasn't adopted until I was four and a half. Apparently, when the judge asked if I was going to be a lawyer like my dad when I grew up, I said, "No, I'm going to be a police officer and actually help people." The implication being that lawyers don't. But I wanted to be a police officer all my life. I wanted to be a police trainer, and I was always driven to write. So it became a unique merging. I became a police officer in the Army. Then I got out and became a police officer in the civilian world. I became a police instructor at the grand old age of 24. Then I started writing - a lot of fiction that never went anywhere, and then for the industry in the late 90s. That led me into balancing police work, training, SWAT work and writing. Then I got this job with OFFICER. I've been here about 18 years as the editorial director. I'm the academy director for our online virtual academy, Officer Virtual Academy, and I'm the face, if you will, of The Lineup and Officer.com. It's an honor to do it. My biggest motivation is for people to understand that cops are human. Cops get vilified too often, and we get ignored as humans. That matters to me.

Plaschke 4:51

Why do you think the public does that? Is it because what police officers do can be contentious or scary? They give out tickets and make arrests. Has that changed over your career?

Borelli 5:10

What has changed over my career, honestly, is the way people teach their children about law enforcement and what the mainstream media does with law enforcement. Mainstream media has always made a dollar by hypersensationalizing things. If we tell you something horrendous and it makes you want to watch TV more, the ads get shown more, they become more valuable, we can charge higher ad revenue, and we make more money by hypersensationalizing things. But I remember being taught as a kid that if I was lost, hurt, had a problem or was scared, I should find the guy in the blue uniform and he would help me out. One of my biggest pet peeves is how many times I would hear a parent look at a child - two, three, four, five years old - and say, "If you don't behave, I'm going to have that police officer arrest you." All they are doing is teaching their kid to be afraid of the police. I got down on my knees a lot of times and said, "I understand where your parents are coming from and you need to behave for your folks, but you do not need to be afraid of me." I was thinking, "I wish I could take them to jail and get you ice cream," but I didn't actually say that to the kids. How we view police in general has definitely changed. It has become quite the political topic. It changes with every presidential administration. Are the cops good? Are the cops evil? Is crime going to go up? Is crime going to go down? How much money is available in grant funding? It changes president to president. It's a shame to me. If you have people sacrificing to serve, it shouldn't be politicized. It should just be appreciated.

Plaschke 6:42

That's part of the reason I started First Response. When I became CEO of PepperBall and told people what I did, I heard a lot of misconceptions from people I deal with in my personal and business life - people who are not part of the policing industry. Those misconceptions were, to your point, media driven. Not to cast the media as the bad guy, but it is this notion of taking one bad apple, or one example, and associating that with the entire profession, while losing sight of what 99.99% of police officers do, which is a heroic, quiet, daily mission to keep us safe.

Borelli 7:36

That's what really gets me. You see one guy who does something incorrect, whether it is evil - and there are evil people in the world, and some of them do end up in uniform - but we are all human. Whether a police officer makes a legitimate mistake, whether something goes sideways and he can't control it, whether it is horrendous and understandable, sometimes it is just the lesser of two evils. Then the media gets a hold of it. Without going one way or another, I will give you George Floyd. There is an hour and a half of video available around that incident. But how much did we see on mainstream TV? Thirty seconds, maybe. On the scene, there was a Caucasian officer, an Asian officer, a Hispanic officer and an African-American officer, and all we ever heard about was the Caucasian officer and other officers. You can't get more diversity in a response team. But if the information is manipulated, that vilifies law enforcement unnecessarily. It causes trust issues, which creates bigger problems. So here is what I'm saying: whoever wants to listen, take the police officer in front of you at face value for the way they are treating you. If I walk up to your car on a traffic stop and I say, "Good afternoon, I'm Lieutenant Borelli. I need to see your license and registration, please," I have been courteous while doing my job. You might hate the fact that you got pulled over. You might be running late for work. Your wife might be in a hospital delivering a baby. You might want to tell me to go pound sand. If you give me grief back, then we are going to go this way. If you give me courtesy back, you are probably going to be on your way pretty quickly. Do not assume police officers are bad.

Plaschke 9:26

By implication, assume they are just like you. If you are treated well and treated with respect, you are going to respond in kind. If you are yelled at or vilified, or accused of being something without that being the case, you are going to have a different response.

Borelli 9:54

Yes. When we talk about what has changed across the years, there is something else too. You and I are from a generation where we were taught to give everybody common courtesy. Respect was earned, but everybody got common courtesy. At least that is how I was raised. I look at the generation two behind me, my grandchildren's generation, and they are generally being taught - and I'm not going to blame schools because it happens at home as much as it happens in schools - that they are due respect and they better demand it. Nobody teaches them there is a difference between courtesy and respect. I can say, "Good morning, sir," and that is courtesy. If I hold the door for you, that is courtesy. How I view you as an individual and how much weight I give your outlook and your words - that is respect. Some kids expect that they have some kind of magic about them that demands everybody give them unlimited respect no matter what. If we don't, then we are wrong and they can vilify us for that.

Plaschke 11:00

That's a great way of articulating the pendulum swing that has gone, at least in my mind, a bit too far. Then you effectively create the precondition for conflict, particularly because police officers typically are not pulling people over just to say hello.

Borelli 11:29

No. That's one of the big things. I'll tell you a quick personal story. I'm a cigar guy, and I sit in a local cigar shop. The owner is a Caucasian man married to an African-American woman. He grew up in the inner city of Baltimore. I was obviously retired and in simple clothes - probably a Hawaiian shirt and shorts for that time of year. I still had a gun on. As a retired officer, I usually don't leave home without it, but it was concealed. Another gentleman sitting there made the statement that he believed all white police officers left their house trying to figure out how they could get away with killing somebody that day. He had no idea I was a police officer. The owner asked him, "Do you really believe this?" Then he said, "Let me introduce you to Frank. He's a white police officer sitting here with a gun on, and you've been interacting with him. There has not been any conflict or aggression. Does this change your outlook?" The guy didn't even want to say, "I'm sorry. You're right." It is funny. I don't know if you've heard this a lot, but instead of saying, "Okay, you're right. Maybe I'm not 100% correct," what I hear a lot now is, "Well, you're not wrong." But that means we can still debate it, right? Anyway, it is amazing to see the different viewpoints people have on police officers. I trust some of it is based on experience. I once pulled over a little old lady whose tags were expired. I didn't know who was driving until I walked up to the car. She was in tears. I said, "Ma'am, what's wrong?" She said, "I've never been pulled over before." This lady was in her early 80s and still driving, and she had never been pulled over before. I said, "Well, I'm sorry." She asked why I pulled her over, and I told her her tags were expired. She stopped crying and said, "No, the sticker is in my glove compartment. I just forgot to put it on my car." I said, "I'll put it on your car." She was more amazed that I wasn't going to write her a ticket and that I was going to clean off her license plate and put the sticker on for her. She asked, "You would do that?" Of course. I'm a public servant. Let's get this squared away so you don't get pulled over again. She started out crying, and by the time she left she wanted my number so she could send me a Christmas card. That kind of interaction can really change a day.

Plaschke 14:07

Again, police officers are brothers, fathers, mothers, sisters, grandmothers and granddaughters. They are people who decided to swear an oath to a constitution and serve the public. It is nothing more and nothing less. I shouldn't say nothing less, because it is a hell of a commitment to put your life on the line to protect others. But they are also normal next-door neighbors who, to your point, serve and simply want to be treated reasonably in the process of protecting you.

Borelli 14:55

They just want common courtesy. Same thing I give. I walk up, I issue you a greeting, and I give you my name. All I want is courtesy back, and we go from there. If you are going to throw out a string of curse words and call me names - and I have had it done in languages I don't understand - why would you think I am going to continue to be courteous? If you want to flip that switch, we go for the rough ride. I have no problem with that.

Plaschke 15:21

That's what I try to explain to my friends and, hopefully, to people who listen to this podcast. How would you personally respond if someone aggressively attacked you with name calling and accusations? You would respond as a normal human would respond. It is difficult to find common ground, and that is why I give police officers tremendous credit for managing their temperament in view of very difficult situations. I appreciate that you are getting the person on their worst day when you pull them over or arrest them. That is true. But the police officer did not create the crime. The police officer did not do the deed. They are just there to manage it.

Borelli 16:19

It is kind of a shame. We do deal with people on their worst day. It is one thing to think about pulling someone over or arresting someone, but what about the days when I have to hold a wife whose husband has been murdered or died in a car wreck? Or I have to notify someone that their grandparents died? Those are the worst days too. I delivered two babies while I was on the street. A carpenter once asked me, "At the end of the day, I do my work, I look and I see what I accomplished. How do you know what you accomplished in a day?" I said, "I don't." I never have any idea how many crimes I prevented because I came around the corner at the right time. I have no idea how many people's days I improved just by giving them a smile, a wave or a good morning. But here is what I know in 40 years: the average carpenter never delivered a kid. I delivered two babies as part of my job. The average carpenter never actively saved a life. I kept four people from coding out. That is solid. That is defined. If all I can say about my 40-year career is that I saved six lives - brought two into the world and saved four - it was worth it. It was good.

Plaschke 17:33

There are six lives, yes. There are six people out there. There are countless more that you personally, and each officer personally, affect in the work you do who are eternally grateful for what you did.

Borelli 17:48

The reality is they have probably forgotten me, and the babies probably don't even know who I was, but that doesn't matter. I try to think of it in terms of whether I have to answer to St. Peter at the pearly gates.

Plaschke 17:59

Amen. One of the things we talked about before we started the podcast was what we were going to talk about today. You suggested, which I loved, that not only is the police officer affected by all of this, but their wives, spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends and children are all affected by it too. On the positive side, going home and telling your girlfriend or spouse that you delivered a baby was a good day. Then there are all the stories you couldn't go home and share - the bad days and the horrible stories. So let's talk about that. I've never talked much with a police officer about their personal life and how that works. Do police officers share a lot of the details with their spouses, or is it situational and each person is different?

Borelli 19:00

Yes, 100%. It depends on the relationship. Unfortunately, the side effect of me being me is that I have been married and divorced twice. The significant other I have now - if I were coming home from working the street, I would not keep anything back. I would share 100% of everything. That is the basis of the relationship we have. With both of my ex-wives, there was a lot that got held back, and it stemmed from my belief about whether they could emotionally handle what was going on. I remember coming home late from a shift and taking the phone. Remember, we used to have phones that connected to the wall. If you were really flush and fancy, you could get the cordless one that could go on the other side of the bed. I would grab the phone and put it on the other side of the bed. My ex-wife woke up enough to ask, "What are you doing?" I said, "I want to be able to answer the phone if it rings." She asked, "Are we waiting on a phone call?" I said, "Yes. I had an incident tonight. A guy is in the hospital being monitored. We don't know if he is going to live or die. I'm waiting on a phone call." How do you explain that to somebody? Here is the thing: we do not train officers enough on this, no matter the gender. We are talking about spouses and significant others. It doesn't matter if it is same gender or opposite gender. We are talking about the significant other you have. When you are only dating, absence doesn't matter. If I ask you out to dinner on Friday night and it is Tuesday, you don't care what happens between now and Friday night as long as I show up at the time I said I would. But if the relationship gets serious and we are living together, and I'm supposed to be home for dinner Friday night and I'm a half-hour late, if you haven't heard from me, that half-hour can become a source of stress. Worry can creep in. When that half-hour becomes six hours, it becomes a heavier impact. I had an incident when I was working a 3-to-11 shift and a Kentucky Fried Chicken got robbed at about 10 or 10:15 that night. I ended up on a perimeter position until 3:30 in the morning and could not call home. There was no way to do it. By the time I got home, the wife I had at the time was losing her mind because it had been four and a half hours, nobody knew where I was, and she didn't know who to call. Honestly, policing is a lifestyle. We just talked about this. I've sat in a cigar shop with a gun on, retired, but if I'm an active-duty officer and I have a gun on off duty, there is a good chance I have handcuffs too. Am I really off duty? Not if I'm in my jurisdiction. Not if there is an emergency that covers it. When I go to a restaurant now with my significant other, she knows I'm going to a corner and sitting with my back to a wall. This is military as well. Where are my primary exits? Where are my tertiary exits? Can I see the threats coming? One of the biggest arguments I get is when I go out with a buddy of mine who is a cop and one of us has to sit with his back to the door.

Plaschke 22:25

How do you decide that, by the way?

Borelli 22:27

With the guy I'm talking about specifically, we don't worry about it. If I see him yanking his gun, I'll get out of the way. We've got it. It is a mutual thing. If I'm grabbing, he goes down. If he is grabbing, I'm going down. We are getting out of the way. It is kind of funny. My youngest son went to college in Louisiana, and he took me to lunch one day at a place he had been bragging about. We go in, and we are heading to the back corner. He knows it, and he sits with his back to the wall and looks at me. I said, "Dude, you know better." He said, "Get over it and have a seat. I'm already sitting down." I had to accept that. But it is truly a lifestyle that impacts families. Police Week just happened in May. This is the beginning of June as we record this, and it is sad to me that Police Week always starts on Mother's Day, because there are mothers who don't have their kids or spouses around because they died in the line of duty. You go to the memorial in D.C. and watch the spouses, widows, widowers and family members walking around with their kids. I took my son down there one time to the candlelight vigil. Afterwards I asked, "What do you think?" He said, "I don't ever want to do this again." That is a gut punch. He said, "I'm glad I did it, but I don't ever want to do it again." There is a reality there. It is a heavy impact on the family. The biggest disservice we do is that we don't talk about it enough in the academies, or at least we didn't when I was going through and when I was still teaching actively in the academy. We talk about stress management, support systems, priests and avoiding the bartender. We talk about your spouse, if they can help you. Your family ought to be a support system for you. If you can't take joy out of that, they are not being much support, and that is not their fault. Are you letting them? Are you sharing with them? Are you telling them? Do we want to protect them from some things? Yes. They don't really want to know we got shot at or that the vest stopped the bullet. But do they need to know that? Yes. That is what they signed up for. Why would we hide from them the ugly side of the profession? They chose us. They need to get 100% of it.

Plaschke 25:02

Although, to be fair, they chose you, not the profession. They understand the profession comes along with it, but I can't imagine that anyone, unless they came from that world - unless their father or mother was a police officer - would have any real sense of what you face.

Borelli 25:26

It's interesting. Like I said, I have been divorced twice. In my first marriage, I was not a police officer when I got married. Then I went through the academy, and everything was fine until we had a child on the way. All of a sudden, from her perspective, I couldn't be a cop anymore because there was too much risk to the family and I couldn't leave her to do it by herself. I was already a cop when I got married the second time, and she understood that it was just who I was and part of it. Honestly, I wore a badge for 40 years. For all the people who don't think I look 80, I'm only 62. That is two-thirds of my life. Whether it is who you are or not, the habits and the lifestyle change who you are. After even a 20-year career, there are permanent habits you never lose that impact your family.

Plaschke 26:24

To your point, one example is always being aware and never being truly comfortable. That is what I always notice with police officers, whether on the job or retired. In public, they are never fully relaxed. They are always aware. Situational awareness is built in. I always tell a story about walking down Mardi Gras with a fire chief and a police chief. I was in the middle. The fire chief and I had a great conversation. The retired police chief could barely hold the conversation because there were too many threats as we walked down Bourbon Street. It was too much stimulation and too much for him to take in and remain aware of.

Borelli 27:21

We call that head on a swivel, looking for work. It is always, "Where is the threat coming from?" Eighty percent of the data we get to make decisions comes through our eyes. So we are constantly aware. You're right, and it can drive our partners nuts.

Plaschke 27:41

I was at Police Week and at the memorial at the U.S. Capitol. It was horrific to see gut punch after gut punch for 154 fallen officers and to see those families come through, especially the small children. You have to be empathetic to a spouse who asks, "How do we raise a family when I could be a widow or alone raising the child?" That is a reasonable threat every day.

Borelli 28:21

You have to find a way to work with that. You have to recognize the reality, have the discussion and have the open communication. At the end of the day, I don't have one answer. Everybody does it a different way. Your spouse has to have faith that you are going to come home. Before we started recording, we talked about the show Blue Bloods, and now there is Boston Blue. I wish I had a family where I could lean on the cops who had been there before me and done all that. I had plenty of police officers in my life. My father was a lawyer who became a district court judge, and I knew cops who were friends. I was the kid who would wake up at three in the morning when the door knocked and there was a detective wanting my dad to sign a warrant because he was the on-call judge. I saw that lifestyle. But the first shooting I was in, I couldn't go to my dad for advice. I couldn't ask, "How do I deal with this feeling?" or "How do I cope with that?" My dad didn't know anything about guns, number one. Number two, he would look at me and say, "Well, it's your job. Get over it. Have a drink. You're fine.

Plaschke 29:31

To expect spouses to carry that takes it to the next level. It is hard enough for the police officer, who at least has some perception of control over himself or herself and the risks they face. But spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends and partners have no control. They are the recipient of a few good days, a lot of bad days, and potentially a horrible day. I think that is the general reality.

Borelli 30:16

Ultimately, I think it comes down to faith in the person you're with. I will give you a perfect example. I know a couple, husband and wife. The husband was a police officer - now retired - and she was a dispatcher. He worked for a municipality, and she was a dispatcher for the county.

Plaschke 30:34

Yes.

Borelli 30:34

Part time, she would work as a dispatcher for that same municipality. In Maryland, or at least in the county where I worked, we had something called Signal 13. That means, "I'm in trouble. I'm a police officer, and I'm in trouble." I hit the magic button on my radio that lights up the dispatcher's panel and says, "I'm getting my ass kicked. Send me the world." It has my ID number, and the dispatcher knows where I am. That happened to this police officer while his spouse was the dispatcher.

Plaschke 31:01

Oh my goodness.

Borelli 31:02

She handled it phenomenally. She was 100% professional. She kept all her emotions locked down until everything was fine, the call had been cleared, and she knew her husband was OK. Then she got relieved from the console so she could fall apart. The funny thing was, he was the one who had been in the fight. He was the one somebody was trying to kill. He was the one who literally fought for his life, got the guy into handcuffs, took him to the hospital and then to jail. But when he got home, she was the one who needed the most comfort. Actually, they both did. Every relationship dynamic is different. I know another couple: the husband is a county police officer and the wife is a park police officer. They have different settings for effectively the same job. They have 100% open communication: this is what is going on, this is how things are, and there is nothing they don't talk about.

Plaschke 32:07

I have noticed that with a lot of police officers I have gotten to know on a more personal basis, especially the ones in second marriages. The second marriage is typically with someone who is in the business in some shape or form. Maybe they were in the Army or in the military, or they have some context. It makes sense that it is hard for someone who does not have that context. A nurse, for example, deals with what I would call trauma. Now you're going to tell me your first wife was a nurse.

Borelli 32:50

No. Well, both of them actually. Anyway, I laugh because when I was going through the academy in the 80s, one of the largest divorce rates was cops married to nurses. They seemed to come together like magnets, but that was one of the greatest divorce rates. When you think about it, both were working shift work, both had demanding schedules, and they couldn't make plans. It was a zoo. It would be an interesting study to see how many second marriages for police officers are to people familiar with the demands of a uniform. One thing that has been studied is families that do the work. There have been genetic markers found that show higher rates of what they call cardiac elasticity - a higher stress threshold, effectively. These families that do the work do not have the post-traumatic stress injuries, trauma care issues or physical impacts of the job as badly. They understand the outlooks, lean on each other, and it runs in family lines.

Plaschke 34:06

That's the Blue Bloods construct in a very pragmatic and helpful way: being better able to deal with the demands and therefore recommend it to your son and then your grandson. Are there programs, or formalized programs, for agencies providing training to officers about how to deal with spouses and children? Or is it all just in the air?

Borelli 34:45

I imagine that now, as they have expanded stress management training and stress inoculation training, this is at least discussed. But in my world, I could almost see support groups, not necessarily for the officers - and even for the officers still active on the job - but for spouses who need somebody who can relate to exactly what they are going through, sympathize and offer guidance or advice. Kids play off their parents' emotions, the setting and the tone in the house. It is just something I don't think we have taught enough. We need to teach police officers to consider the spousal perspective, and we need to make sure spouses understand the police officer's perspective. If there is an imbalance, if something doesn't mesh, that has to be worked out. Otherwise, that is the nail in the coffin that starts a downhill spiral.

Plaschke 35:48

I think it is so important. Speaking for myself, I travel a lot, I'm away from home and I work odd hours. It creates stress for my wife and my kids. My job is not stressful in the context of a police officer. On a scale of one to ten, mine is a one and an officer's is an 11. If I'm thinking about it and trying to manage it, imagine the nature of the job for an officer. You cannot be distracted as a police officer. If you come to work with a difficult home life, that puts your own life in jeopardy. That is not a good thing.

Borelli 36:36

Hopefully you have the sense to take the day off if you are having that kind of day and cannot focus. I've been there. I've gone to my sergeant and said, "My head is not in the game today. I'm going to get myself hurt or somebody else hurt. I need to take a mental health day." If he had sense, and he did, he would say, "Cool. Go home. Get out of here." There were other times when he said, "I can't afford not to have you here. What do you need from me to get your head straight?" It can go either way.

Plaschke 37:04

Frank, I have two last questions. Looking back over your 40 years, what advice or perspective would you share with the spouses or partners of police officers? What would you tell someone thinking about getting into a relationship with an officer? Is it even worthwhile given the challenges it brings?

Borelli 37:43

I would say 100% open communication has to be there. Have the hard conversations. Have the conversations about expectations. Make sure the person you are thinking about having as a spouse understands how odd the hours can be and how communication can be. Sometimes the answer is, "You are just going to have to take it on faith. I'm coming home." You have to be honest and say, "Here is what will be bad. When two guys show up at the front door to knock and one is wearing a cross and the other is not, then something went sideways. Until that happens, if the phone rings, the phone rings. Worst case scenario, I'm in the hospital, but I'm alive. Until somebody knocks on the door, it is OK. We'll get past it." You have to have those hard conversations. What is going to scare you? What can I do to help you avoid those fears? Both people have to say, "This is the line for me. This is where I need to be honest. This is what you may not want to hear, but this is what you need to hear." You have to have that open communication to make it work.

Plaschke 38:50

That makes total sense. To your point, it is no different from the changes in mental health for officers themselves. Today, agencies and chiefs are actively changing the culture to get officers to admit the stress, admit the impact, and be open and transparent about it. Providing that same visibility to the spouse and family matters. It is what it is. Hiding it, pretending it isn't there or trying to ignore it will not make it go away.

Borelli 39:30

No. It is an infection that will grow. You have to treat it. We are not talking about treating symptoms; we are talking about eradicating the infection. Full communication means: this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm scared of, this is what I'm happy about, this is what I can manage, and this is what I can't. Earlier, we were talking about your bad day and a cop's bad day. Every time I think I'm having a bad day now, I remind myself that nobody is going to try to shoot me or stab me today, so it can only be so bad. I have had those days, so it can only be so bad.

Plaschke 39:58

I am sad to bring this session to a close, but I will finish with one last question. We try to make an honorarium in your name as a thank-you for showing up on First Response. What cause or organization can we donate to in your name?

Borelli 40:18

Are you familiar with Concerns of Police Survivors, C.O.P.S.?

Plaschke 40:23

Yes. Definitely. I'm familiar with C.O.P.S.

Borelli 40:27

They are a national organization that supports surviving families of officers killed in the line of duty. Anything you want to donate to them is appreciated.

Plaschke 40:34

Fantastic. That makes perfect sense. Folks, today was a special day for me. Lt. Frank Borelli is an incredibly well-respected and well-listened-to voice in policing, and he is someone you should follow. He is on Officer.com. His ability to explain, in simple language, the challenges we face as a society - the misperception and stereotyping of police officers and how that leads to confrontation and unnecessary escalation - was helpful. How our children are raised and how we almost create the preconditions for conflict is something for me to take home and think about. That was one takeaway. The discussion around spouses and families is another huge takeaway. If it is hard enough for the police officer to deal with the mental challenges, imagine how difficult it is for the spouse and children, the fear of the unknown, and how their mental well-being affects the officer and what he or she has to take into work. If it is a big sacrifice to ask a police officer to put their life on the line to keep us safe, they are also putting their entire family's mental health on the line every day by taking that badge and getting out on the street. They are putting their entire family at risk in a way that I do not think we fully appreciate, respect or understand. So when a police officer pulls you over, understand that they are a brother, mother, father or son, and they have families they have put in harm's way to keep us safe. Think about that when you roll the window down and respond to their request. Today was a fantastic session of First Response. This is the number one podcast, and we try to take you behind the badge. Hopefully we did that today and talked about what officers deal with. I hope you enjoyed it. I learned a lot. I also need to thank PepperBall, the company where I am CEO and the sponsor of this podcast. PepperBall creates non-lethal alternatives police use to keep themselves and the public they serve safe. That's our tagline. I hope you enjoyed today, come back and listen again, and stay safe out there. The next time you see a police officer, you might want to thank them for their service. Have a great day.