National Police Association Podcast with Guest, Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D., Police Chief (ret), Author, Trainer
Hi, this is Sergeant Betsy Brantner Smith with the National Police Association, and this is the National Police Association Podcast. I have a guest today that this guy's got more titles than a third world dictator. He's a chief, he's a doctor, he's a veteran, he's a cop, and he's an author and a subject matter expert and a trainer. And he has had his hands in American law enforcement for decades and he can speak to so many different issues. So I thought that you had to meet him.
Betsy Smith:Dr Chief Schults, welcome to the show.
Chief Joel F. Shults:Thanks, Bessie. Really proud to be here and I'm proud of all your work and that of the NPA.
Betsy Smith:Thank you so much. Now, I wanna start at the beginning. I gotta ask you what I ask everybody. Why'd you become a cop?
Chief Joel F. Shults:Well, certainly wasn't my intention. There's no family history of that. I have family history of interaction with law enforcement but, we don't need
Betsy Smith:to talk about
Chief Joel F. Shults:that in public. Actually I grew up in a relatively small town, Rowlett, Missouri, some people may have heard it's next to Fort Letterwood and my best friend's dad was the mayor. We used to hang around at City Hall a little bit after school sometimes and talk to some of the cops and they said hey come along and come and do a ride along. I thought well that that's interesting so I did ride along on midnight shift with a crusty old retired St. Louis cop who was who was I think a sergeant at the time there with RPD.
Chief Joel F. Shults:Sergeant Osment, if he's still around or has any relatives out there, thank you. You launched this career for me and I just I was so fascinated. It wasn't like, oh, I'll do a ride along and see if that's of interest to me. He just knew stuff that nobody else knew. He lived in a shadow world and it was just fascinating.
Chief Joel F. Shults:Just fascinating. Never outgrew it.
Betsy Smith:Well, and you know, we were talking before the show that our generation, we grew up on these television shows where the cops were always the good guys and they were just incredibly fascinating and they kind of had their hands in everything and we grew up with this absolute admiration for the profession didn't we?
Chief Joel F. Shults:Well we did and you know we're not terribly removed from the turbulent 60s and early 70s where the police were not I don't think quite as bad as you know twenty fourteen-twenty twenty but even in the midst of that it was the media portrayal was generally positive.
Betsy Smith:And we see now that the public perception of law enforcement is generally positive. It continues to go up. And the decades, you've seen a lot of changes in this profession, haven't you?
Chief Joel F. Shults:Yes, really have and when I talk to people and I haven't taught for a while, but I would say if you want to go to a law enforcement museum, here I am, you know, I've been some places and I think one of the fascinating things about my career, I started in, well, with military in '76, but civilian policing in '78, so that means I worked with guys who had been around in the 50s and 60s and watched that huge shift in civil rights and federalization and, you know, we've come such a long way in so many good ways. If anybody gets a chance to go to the National Law Enforcement Officers Museum across from the Memorial in Washington DC, it's great, but you'll see all the stuff I used to work with.
Betsy Smith:I know that, I see that now. I look at pictures of, know, I'll Google like antique police car and it's like, there's the car I drove when I had four years on the Yeah, really is unbelievable. But I think, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you because you do have this historical knowledge and not only do you have the knowledge but you've shared it as a trainer, as an author, as an expert. How did you get into the writing side? Because you are a prolific writer.
Betsy Smith:How did you get into the writing side of law enforcement?
Chief Joel F. Shults:I've been so blessed in that regard. Probably one of my motivations is to let the public know, get a little bit of insider information on what really is going on despite the narrated edited YouTube clips that they are exposed to, but also young cops and particularly young cops in smaller agencies because that's my background and, you know, you want to talk about antiques, my field training period was three weeks and then six months later I went to a police academy at the Missouri State Highway Patrol Academy facility for three weeks and I was 21, barely 21, and so from really from the beginning of my career and I had some great mentors and some great cops I worked with and, you know, was able to finish some formal education, but I just for the most part I'm self taught and every time I'd learn something I think why didn't I know this? How come every cop doesn't know this? And so that was one of the motivations to write and to explore some things and get some information out there. And I wrote for Police One, which you're familiar probably, I don't know, years ago actually, first article was with the street survival news line in that publication, and then I continued to write for Police One and then after 2014 I went to Ferguson to report from the riot scene and my writing got a lot of traction nationally and even internationally if you count the one BBC reporter that talked to me.
Chief Joel F. Shults:I think he was BBC or somebody with an English accent that was pretending to be the item. It might have might have been a big prank and did some, you know, were able to do some media interviews and try to get some perspective on this Michael Brown shooting situation.
Betsy Smith:And that's one of the things and that's one of the things that you're known for in the law enforcement world is your report because you're Missouri born and raised and you actually ended up in Colorado, but you went back to Ferguson in 2014 and you were right there to watch literally the situation that I think changed our world in law enforcement forever. Talk about that experience.
Chief Joel F. Shults:Well, one of the things that the different caps that I've worn whether it's a college professor or chief or chaplain or journalist whatever will get me in the door and I was actually, this is probably more background than you need, I was actually headed to Missouri to do some de escalation training and I did some, I did a local report and a news station in Colorado Springs and they introduced me as this is the Joel Schultz, he's headed to Ferguson. I'm like I'm not headed to Ferguson and so I called the P1 editor who I worked with Doug Wiley at the time and I said I'm headed to Ferguson, could I get some credentials and he kind of laughed it off like that wasn't really gonna happen, so I stopped in Kansas City and stopped at a Kinko's and got a press pass made and was able to get right in the thick of it. I did a ride along with St. Louis County PD and they were very gracious and they like, you know, I've done ride alongs with over 50 different agencies and sometimes they treat me like a civilian and we're not gonna handle any hot calls and stay in the car and that kind stuff and some of them were like, hey get out and help and one of the first calls was a med call and at Ferguson they were blocking anything that had any kind of taint of first responder to it.
Chief Joel F. Shults:So ambulances weren't able to get in, fire trucks weren't able to get in, so we were going to this sick child call with a fire and EMS response and we had to get out and I didn't have my vest, have my weapon, but they managed to get me suited up and you know I was out working perimeter with these guys, but what was fascinating was just all of the bad information and one of the first articles I wrote was, you know, the chief there who I met briefly did this 05:00 news timed regular media press conference, but that was hours after Twitter had gone nuts and the hands up don't shoot thing was already out there and there are still people repeating that lie just drives me up a wall.
Betsy Smith:Yeah, in fact annually on the day that Michael Brown forced a police officer to kill him, there are so many politicians from around the country who post about the murder of Michael and this and that. And you're right, mean that shooting of Michael Brown, a strong-arm robber and gang banger, There was almost no factual information coming out for at least a week. And we found out, the profession did, the power of social media. And yet a lot of police leaders have ignored that even up until today. The use of social media in our profession needs to really, I think, be ramped up.
Betsy Smith:That is the best way to get to your public and to get correct information out there. And yet a lot of times we sort of wait for the, we gotta put out a press release, nobody does that anymore. And we've had to really adapt. Do you see law enforcement always lagging a little?
Chief Joel F. Shults:Oh yeah, I've made a statement. I had somebody from the highway patrol call me up when I was teaching faculty at a junior college and he said, hey do you have anything on zero based budgeting? Because they were thinking about maybe going to zero based budgeting and I okay, so this was probably in 1991 and I'm thinking, okay Jimmy Carter tried that and gave up twenty years ago, so yeah I see management philosophy peaking in business falling off, being replaced and somehow police leadership grabs that old concept and tries to apply it to a non marketplace organization and, you know the technology has absolutely left me behind. Know every place I worked they would test you and make sure you knew every street and alley in the city and now know cops have the GPS. I did ride along in in Tampa with a young lady just a fine cop but it was like she she didn't really know her city.
Chief Joel F. Shults:She just plugged in the GPS. You know, she would she would everything was was on camera and she just backed in and remotely downloaded the camera. I didn't, that was new to me. And she was asking where I was from and I said, well, you know, I live in a small town kind of like Mayberry and she said where's that? And I said just pull over at the next cemetery and bury me because I'm I gosh.
Chief Joel F. Shults:So, yeah, so many changes, you know, we've got the weaponry even. Of course, I'm a shotgun guy, patrol rifle was rare in my day. I had I didn't have OC at first. We had tear gas that has lots of different limitations. No taser, six shooter, you know, with 18 rounds if you manage to survive to reload And so you know, there are just so many advantages now, so much more to know and so much more to forget and so much more to be held accountable for.
Chief Joel F. Shults:It's, you know, I've always felt like at every academy at graduation, I've had probably a thousand academy graduates that I've had some role in their in their academy training and man, when they go across that stage, I'm like, what are these guys, you know, what are these gals gonna, what are they gonna see, you know, are they gonna live? I know of at least eight. They were killed in line of duty and I probably lost track of of more. And it's like watching your own child go across the stage. I'm sure you've had that feeling.
Betsy Smith:It really is and when you, as I have as well, lose a student in the line of duty, it's a gut punch and it reminds us of what we're sending these kids out to do. When we look at the job today, which I'm happy to not be doing because it is incredibly, it's complicated and these kids that we're still teaching, not only are they concerned about getting hurt, getting sued, they're worried about going to prison simply for doing their job, there are cops sitting in prison simply for doing their job, and that's one of the things that we're hoping changes with the Trump administration, but there's a long road to go in affecting some of these radical district attorneys and states attorneys and attorneys general around the country who seem to be more interested in putting cops in jail than they are interested in putting the bad guys in jail, which I know you've seen that as well. When you talk about technology, you have watched as a trainer, as a chief, the changes that body worn cameras have brought to the profession which really kind of started with Ferguson Missouri really.
Chief Joel F. Shults:Talk
Betsy Smith:about what you've seen and what you think body worn cameras have done for the profession.
Chief Joel F. Shults:Well I think definitely on the plus side before I had my university police officers wear some not the high technology body cams but some recorders before it was kind of a big thing and it was just great to be able to, you know, somebody comes in and complains, I said, well, let's look at the tape and let's see what happens. So, you know, I know the anti police people were just chomping at the bit to wait and catch all this misconduct, and guess what? We do it right way, way, way, way, way most of the time, and so it's been a blessing in that regard. But on the other side, it is so invasive of victim privacy and the public's privacy, and I also think, you know, one of the reasons that I took pride in my job is I dealt with crap that other people so that other people wouldn't have to deal with it, you know. So, okay, I see this seemy side, I see this wickedness, I see this death, I see this gore, but you don't have to, because I'll do that.
Chief Joel F. Shults:I'll take that on myself. And now, you know, other than maybe a little warning that says some scenes may be disturbing and will blur out the face of somebody, public it's a balance and I'm not sure what side we've come down on. Public now knows way more, but maybe they see way more than they really need to see in terms of the reality of what we do.
Betsy Smith:Well, you know and I agree with that because you know and everybody's fascinated with true crime you know podcasts and watching just people watch hours of different body cam videos on YouTube and this and that. And I agree with that, that that was what we were supposed to be taking on. I think it makes it not real to people and that sort of gives them a license to say, when they watch an officer involved shooting to say, wow, the cops should have done this, cops should have done that. Everybody's an armchair Twitter expert, you know, a keyboard because they feel like they understand our job because they've watched all this body worn camera.
Chief Joel F. Shults:Yeah, do think there's a desensitization that comes out of that. I mean, you know, we know about the CSI effect and how that's affected, you know, the criminal justice system. So, we'll just have to write it out and see what the long term result is. I would hope to think that when you see these videos of these knuckleheads who just absolutely can't comply with the simplest demand like showing your driver's license, that that would just appear to be so idiotic that no citizen would want to be on that side ignorance and disrespect, but I'm not sure that's happened.
Betsy Smith:You know, another thing, and this is another part of your expertise, a lot of people look at law enforcement and they think most police departments and most cops come from the giant agencies, LAPD, Chicago PD, NYPD, all of that. In reality, most police departments are small and in small jurisdiction overwhelmingly statistically is that right?
Chief Joel F. Shults:Right, right.
Betsy Smith:And small town policing there's a perception I think amongst the public that oh small town cops going back to Mayberry, Small Town Cops just sit around with their gun in a drawer, know kind of waiting for you know the call to come in on the telephone this and that. Talk about the true nature of small town policing.
Chief Joel F. Shults:That's a great subject Betsy. One of the things that I'm concerned about, and this happens in large departments too, and it's a whole separate conversation, but what do you do when a police officer is injured or they're in a shooting? Bigger departments may have some mechanisms to take care of that. Smaller departments will just let the clock run out and get rid of you. And it's really been an honor for me to be able to write about police officer victimization to help some agencies with wounded officers, so that's one thing that is missing in police work in general, but as I told you before I've ridden with over 50 agencies from I did Tucson last year as a matter of fact and and I've done Phoenix, LA, New York, just a whole bunch of them and I haven't and again I never worked for a department that had more than 20 sworn officers, never in my career.
Betsy Smith:Which is most police departments, right?
Chief Joel F. Shults:That's most police departments, yeah, most are under 10,000 population, but in those ride alongs I never saw anything in any of those ride alongs that I hadn't already seen or at least generally experienced. So, you know, this idea and the other thing about small agencies is if there's a major case you're not three blocks away being a human traffic cone behind some yellow tape, that's your scene and so they're really think I'm not against big departments, God bless them, but I think there are a lot of officers that in smaller departments that have more real hands on variety of experience than some larger city cops do. Maybe that's just my prejudice, I don't know.
Betsy Smith:Well I think you're right and when I look at my career you know when I started my agency the town was about 43,000 and it was about 150,000 when I left And when we were that sort of small town, 43,000 people, the cops did everything. We did everything. We took our own fingerprints. And I think I learned a lot more as a young cop in a smaller town, do everything, you know, be on a homicide and be at an armed robbery and do all these things. Whereas if you're in a city of a half a million more, you're kind of siloed up and you're just doing very specific things, right?
Chief Joel F. Shults:And I had the opportunity, not that anybody would have hired me, but I thought even while I was working for my first agency I had a friend of mine, Reed Benny, I'll just say his name, he's retired homicide out of Kansas City, great cop. Funny guy, but anyway I rode with him when he was a patrol officer because he'd left our department in in Kansas City to see well maybe I want to be a big city cop and I'm like no I don't. Want to know the people over time whose my life affects and now I know if you're in a big city you're gonna be working in a population of 20 or 30,000 in your district and maybe you have the same opportunity, but you know I could pull somebody aside and say hey you know I know you're going through you know tough times if you need something you know I don't arrest you but on the other hand you don't go to Walmart without watching your back because they know who you are.
Betsy Smith:Yeah absolutely. You know there's a wrong perception out there too that cops are just uneducated rubes. And here you are, you're a PhD. What made you pursue that level of education?
Chief Joel F. Shults:Well, I didn't come from a family highly educated people. They were smart, but no degrees and I just had this expectation that yeah, I need to go to college and so when I began being attracted to police work I thought well, can't be a police officer because that's like being a bus driver, you know, and then there was an officer who came to one of our classes to speak on career day or something and said she she got her degree from Central Missouri State University which is now University of Central Missouri. It's been a million dollars to switch their titles around, but so I thought, okay, well, bing, bing, bing. And so, I got my associate degree there and then got hired and then the rest of my academic life was all working through and it was all on-site stuff, you know, there wasn't any remote learning to speak of at that time, and so and then I moved away from the college town where I worked, Warrensburg, Missouri, was a great place to start and a great university, and I moved to my hometown and that's a different experience which I didn't expect to be quite so difficult, but I realized at that time I'm now separated again, distance learning, I'm now separated from any further education, So I actually went back for a variety of reasons, but I went back partly under the guise of getting my master's and so I did that.
Chief Joel F. Shults:That opened up some opportunities for some part time teaching and eventually a full time faculty position in a couple of different institutions. And then when I was teaching at Hannibal Grange University and Hannibal Missouri Baptist College as full time faculty, I thought well I better work on my advanced degree because that's what college professors do. And actually when I finished my doctorate in 02/2007 it was after I had left full time teaching and became a police chief at Adams State University here in Colorado and that was kind of cool because they couldn't say I was just a dumb cop. They had to say, oh, let's ask Doctor Schults about this.
Chief Joel F. Shults:I was like, okay, when you're swimming with the professors it's nice, you know, to have that academic background, but you know the majority, I don't know why, I can't remember what the last study says, but you know when people say, well cops ought to be more college educated, I see pros and cons, but really most cops do have some college.
Betsy Smith:Right, usually at least a two year degree.
Chief Joel F. Shults:Yes, yeah and so, you know, we've made a ton of progress. Now I was an anomaly, not in my department, because we were sitting in the backyard of one of the top five criminal justice programs in the country, so everybody was working on a degree mostly when it where I was first working, but it was almost a disadvantage because people thought you were an egghead and there's still this idea that the more knowledge, the more book learning you put in this side, more common sense you lose out the other side. I've just been very enriched by all my academic studies and you know it's given me a not so much credibility in the law enforcement community but outside the law enforcement community. So I don't really go by the doctor thing very much. I'm not offended by somebody not knowing or assuming that I'm uneducated.
Chief Joel F. Shults:It really doesn't matter and it's just been more stuff that I can share with other cops and the people in the community. One thing I'm particularly proud of is NPA had me gather a number of my articles together in a series of lessons that can be downloaded free from the NPA website for homeschoolers And that was a brilliant idea. It wasn't my idea, but they're used to my writing. I just hope that has some influence to give a positive portrayal of law enforcement to America's young people.
Betsy Smith:Yeah, the National Police Association's curriculum for homeschoolers is really popular. I end up talking about it quite a bit on talk radio. Parents are always looking for something pro police to talk to their kids about, something in addition to visiting the local police station, things like that. So yeah, we love that part of your association with the NPA because that's a really popular thing that you've done for us. I got to tell you, Chief, I wish I had about another two hours to talk to you because I got 15 more questions.
Chief Joel F. Shults:I could do that.
Betsy Smith:We're gonna have to let it go, but we so appreciate you spending time with us today. And if you'd like more information, visit us at nationalpolice.org.
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