National Police Association Podcast with Guest, Dr. Travis Yates, LEO (ret), Author, Consultant, Speaker & Trainer
Hi, this is Sergeant Betsy Brantner Smith with the National Police Association, and this is the National Police Association podcast. I have today, of course, one of my rare repeat guests, but I'm starting to think I need to have Travis Yates on regularly because he really has his hand in everything when it comes to law enforcement, not just officer safety, but also politically from a leadership perspective. As we know, there's so much happening in The United States when it comes to law enforcement concerns, which of course concern everybody. So we have something really interesting to talk about today. So Travis Yates, welcome back to the show.
Dr. Travis Yates:Thanks for having me, Betsy. It's great to be on my favorite person show.
Betsy Smith:So, I live in Arizona and I'm about two hours from the city of Phoenix and the Phoenix Police Department is an agency really near and dear to my heart. It's one of the largest agencies in the country. And they've been under a federal consent decree that we're going to talk about in a minute. But to start with Travis, I'm gonna ask you the question I ask every cop, why did you get involved in police work?
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, my father, the easy answer would be my father was a twenty seven year veteran in law enforcement, retired as a captain in enforcement of Arkansas. And so I grew up around him and his friends. As a kid, I didn't need Superman. I had my dad's friends and I just thought these guys were gods, right? But ironically, I wasn't interested in going into the profession.
Dr. Travis Yates:I was in athletics and one of my dad's good friends was a prosecutor and I thought he was just, you know, everything there was to being a person, a great person. And so I was beating around the idea of going into coaching or maybe law school and things like that. But then at the age of 19, I guess you could say I made a fatal mistake, Betsy. I went on a police ride along and it's not the typical ride along I know you and I have done for hundreds of people where a lot of paperwork, you're lucky if you get a couple of interesting things. This was like a ride along of episode of Cops, like everything you can think of happened.
Dr. Travis Yates:And I can remember looking at the guy about halfway through the ride along and I said, Man, did they pay you for this? And he was like, Twice a month, man. And I said, This is it. This is it. So that's what directed my attention.
Dr. Travis Yates:I changed my degree. Was at the college at the time. I changed my degree. And as soon as I hit 21, man, I couldn't get to it fast enough. And then you blink, thirty years later, I retire from the career, that's how it happened.
Betsy Smith:And that is so true. It goes so fast, you know, you and I both, you know, never had the same day twice. And I don't think a lot of people, in a lot of professions can say that. Now, you were in law enforcement, you rose up through the ranks, ultimately held a high leadership position. But kind of parallel to your law enforcement career, you got involved in training and you got involved in writing and video and ultimately media.
Betsy Smith:Talk about what you're doing now.
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, yeah, I kind of fell into all that. I was, running our EVOC program at the department and we were having some successes and people started reaching out and asking me questions and asking me to come train them. And I didn't even know that was a thing. At some point I did it. And at some point I started writing articles about it.
Dr. Travis Yates:At some point it started getting picked up by people. Next thing you know, I've been on the road for twenty five plus years training and I still do consulting and writing some expert casework. And that's really what I do now. I do a lot of training on the road. I consult with agencies and just culminated a huge project with consulting with the Phoenix Police Union, Phoenix Police Law Enforcement Association, where they were under a DOJ investigation.
Dr. Travis Yates:They reached out to me about eighteen months ago. And of course, I was aware of the DOJ investigations and the local law enforcement and the consent decrees because if you just look at it from a critical eye, go, this doesn't seem like it's working. The federal government runs these agencies for ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years and these cities get worse. No one listens going on vacation in a consent decree city ran by the DOJ, New Orleans, Seattle, Portland. I could go Chicago.
Dr. Travis Yates:I could go on and on. And I'm like, but the DOJ is claiming success and these agencies are getting worse and the communities are getting worse. And so I think we all suspected something wasn't right. But the problem was, Betsy, is the DOJ would never take this evidence to court. They always sort of pressured these agencies to settle and to agree to all this bureaucracy.
Dr. Travis Yates:So nobody got to look under the hood, so to speak, of what was actually going on. And 18 ago when Phoenix contacted me, I sort of saw an opportunity to get under the hood. Wasn't sure we could, but we informing the public through media and through other channels of what this has done to other cities. It's not my opinion. You can look at the data for the last thirty years.
Dr. Travis Yates:They've been investigating agencies since 1994. The 'ninety four Crime Bill gave the attorney general the authority to investigate and run if necessary local law enforcement. Now there's a constitutional issue with that, Betsy. The tenth amendment prohibits the federal government from getting involved in local matters, But that's not a constitutional issue if the local government agrees to it, which is what has occurred for thirty plus years. And so it always bothered me that they make these outlandish allegations, but they never have to prove it in a court of law.
Dr. Travis Yates:They never have to actually show the evidence. And it always bothered me that these agencies would just say, okay, without saying, can you show us what is actually going on here? And so Phoenix Eighteen Months ago decided we're maybe make them show us this. This is very destructive, very fortunate that a lot of the leaders in the city of Phoenix was on board with that. And by the way, it wasn't controversial.
Dr. Travis Yates:When the DOJ culminated their investigation, the city leaders knew what the past had been. In the past, the the DOJ would not show any of the leaders the investigation. They would just press them to sign in for a consent decree, which is what creates obviously the chaos. And when I say chaos, don't even mention the money. It's cost on average $10,000,000 a year for these cities to operate under the federal government's authority.
Dr. Travis Yates:I mean, Seattle is twenty years in, 200,000,000 later, and no one's going to Seattle anytime soon. Can guarantee you that with what they've caused in that city.
Betsy Smith:So talk about that. Why, first of all, why is this so expensive? It would seem that if the federal government comes in with permission to an agency to take a look at how things are working, are there problems? Usually it's because there are problems with how they're dealing with certain communities or use of force issues, things like that. Why would it cost millions of dollars, Travis?
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, there's a couple reasons. First off, what the DOJ demands, you know, it's everything from training to technology to a bunch of bureaucracy. So there's extra cost there. But secondarily, it's all the staff the DOJ brings along. They use outside consultants, many of them attorneys from Washington, D.
Dr. Travis Yates:C. They have federal consent decree monitors that essentially run the department. And their salaries start at $1,000,000 a year. They will rent office space in that city. The Phoenix Monitor, he hadn't been to his office in over two years, The guy that was running Maricopa County because they under consent decree.
Dr. Travis Yates:So they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, the department on his office space, he hadn't been there in two years. And then of course, consent decree monitors write four reports a year, a quarterly report to the federal judge about progress. Their salaries start at $1,000,000 a year. So there's a whole other aspect of this to where there's a lot of money being given to outside consultants that are connected to the Department of Justice. Many of them are former DOJ employees.
Dr. Travis Yates:The cities are on the hook for it. They have to pay for it. In the case of Phoenix, they actually have paid over $10,000,000 just to help the DOJ investigate their own department. They're not even under a consent decree. So yeah, it's a pretty ugly thing when you look into it.
Dr. Travis Yates:The downside is it's kind of a complicated issue. So most people don't talk about it. They just let it go and let it happen. Most police leaders aren't talking about it because guess who's giving them grant money every year, Betsy? The Department of Justice.
Dr. Travis Yates:And so it's pretty ugly when you look at it. I feel a little bit dirty. I know too much about it. So I take a couple of showers a day, but that's why.
Betsy Smith:So this type of investigation, if you will, comes from the federal government to a local law enforcement agency. And you brought this up. This really is a constitutional issue, isn't it? Because, and I don't think a lot of people know this or understand it, law enforcement in The United States is decentralized for a reason. Our constitution allows for local law enforcement because we, the voters get to elect our mayor who picks our police chief or our sheriff who chooses what kind of sheriff's department we're going to have.
Betsy Smith:Same with our, we elect our governor who decides what kind of state police we're going to have. And then, the federal law enforcement, the federal government has its own law enforcement. They have over 100 of their own agencies. How, again, how does the federal government come into a city, let's talk about Phoenix for a minute, and say, We're gonna investigate you, you're gonna pay for it, you're gonna agree to it. How does that happen?
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, there's only one way it can happen because clearly there's a constitutional violation there if it's forced on it. The only way it can happen is if that department goes, Okay, we'll do it, we'll comply, and we will pay for it. This is why the DLJ's only one agency in thirty years has taken them to court and the DLJ ran back to Washington DC. This is why it can't go to court because it's a constitutional issue. This is why they have to get agreement.
Dr. Travis Yates:And this is why their summary investigations are so damning on the department because it's designed to put pressure on the department to do something because public opinion is swayed. It won't shock you that the media can't get enough of this. They love these reports because they get to run these sensational headlines. So it's really a racket. And what a department ought to do if the federal government does this is say, that's fine, investigate us all you want, but we're not helping.
Dr. Travis Yates:Go to a federal judge, prove your case, get a subpoena for our records, we'll comply with that. Because if they have the evidence, they should be able to do that. But up until now, that's not how it's worked. These departments and these weak cowardly leaders have just said okay. And it's also very political, Betsy.
Dr. Travis Yates:They don't go into Republican led cities. Historically, you've seen Republican administrations have shied away from this because they understand the constitution. It's really odd that in a time we know this term threat to democracy, this is actually the threat to democracy of every citizen with the federal government running local law enforcement, nobody wants to talk about that. And so over the last thirty years, this has ebbed and flowed. Republican administrations, kind of pulled back on this.
Dr. Travis Yates:Trump pulls back on it completely in his last term and he's pulled back completely on this term. But then Democrats come in and they pick it back up. But they only pick and choose traditionally Democratic led cities. Why? Sympatico, right?
Dr. Travis Yates:They all get along. They all agree to it. Everybody's hands in the cookie jar. Everybody wants to play nice because of politics. But anytime politics gets involved, investigations wane, accuracy is dismissed, and like we saw in Phoenix, complete lies and myths occur.
Betsy Smith:So let's talk about Phoenix. Why was the Phoenix Police Department being investigated in the first place?
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, the city asked the DOJ and the DOJ wouldn't tell them, so nobody to this date knows. I personally, it's just my opinion. I think that they, you know, the ultimate goal of this and people will say this conspiracy theory, but I don't know how you say it's not. The ultimate goal of the federal government is to take over local law enforcement, right? And so I think that the Biden administration saw an easy city.
Dr. Travis Yates:Hey, Phoenix has a democratic mayor. They have a democratic city council. The city is a kind of a swing city. Sometimes it votes Democrat. I think they saw us as easy pickings.
Dr. Travis Yates:Let's just pick them off, right? Because once they had them, they got them for twenty, thirty years. So it was just another chink in the armor, but they didn't expect a few courageous men and women to rise up in that organization and to question them. Once they got questioned, it was kind of on at that point. And let me tell you what the city council did, Betsy.
Dr. Travis Yates:When the investigation got done, the DOJ went to the city council and they said, what we found was bad. It was really bad. Bunch of racist, a of discriminatory behavior, patterns and practices, which they won't even tell you what that definition is, by the way. And so the city council, because they were prepped by the union and prepped by information they were given, they asked one simple question. Okay, will you show us what you found?
Dr. Travis Yates:Show us the investigation. Keep it in mind, the city council had authorized over $10,000,000 to do this. And the DOJ said no. They said no, if you will sign up for a consent decree, we will then show you. Well, signs a dotted line on a contract without reading the contract?
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, every city before Phoenix did it, but Phoenix kind of stood firm and they asked him twice over the course of the year. No, show us what you have, show us the evidence and then we will consider it because we want a good department as well. We believe in accountability as well. That's important, Betsy. We all believe in accountability.
Dr. Travis Yates:This is just a broken system, right? It's what we exposed. The DOJ said no again and they released a summary report that just was the most horrific thing. That's all you read about the Phoenix Police Department. It was the most horrific thing you've ever read.
Dr. Travis Yates:They listed 132 incidents. And by the way, keep in mind, the time period they investigated Phoenix was was six years. During that time period, Phoenix responded to 5,000,000 calls and arrested approximately 300,000 people. So to prove a pattern in practice, the DOJ listed 132 of those incidents. Here's the police activity they said that made it a pattern of practice.
Dr. Travis Yates:Point 000025% of the police activity they said makes you a reason why we need to come in and take over this department. And so, but what happened next has never happened before. The Phoenix Police Department at the at the push of the council that was turned down for the information said we don't know what that these these summary reports to DOJ is very vague. Mean, they'll say things. They'll say things like the Phoenix Police responded to a man that was having a mental episode and they used unconstitutional force period.
Dr. Travis Yates:They don't give any details, right? That's how they're able to get away with this this deception. And so what the city of Phoenix did and everybody can go see this is right off the Phoenix Police website. They put a public website up that listed exactly what the DOJ said on the left and on the right, the same incident, they listed the body camera footage and all the reports. That's what gave me an opportunity last summer to go through every single incident and to analyze what the DOJ said versus what actually happened.
Dr. Travis Yates:And I gotta tell you, I am not proud of what I found. It's sickening of what I found. It's disturbing of what I found. It's the epitome of a threat to democracy that one of the most powerful entities in the land did what they did to the city of Phoenix.
Betsy Smith:So I want to talk about that because again, locally, you know, I live in the Tucson, Arizona area, so locally this was kind of a big deal in the media. And yet I know Phoenix PD to be a very professional, well educated police department. They have been innovative for the forty years that they have been on my radar as a trainer and then as an Arizona resident. And when I read those vague of what the DOJ found, frankly, I just didn't believe it. Talk about what you found and what they were putting out there.
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, ultimately what I found is 97% of the time the DLJ deceived in their report. And sometimes it wasn't just deception, it was an outright lie. 97% of the time. Now, frankly, that's unbelievable. Like I I've told somebody the other day, I I wish it was only 50% because people see 97% and they go, this can't be true.
Dr. Travis Yates:But no, you can go yourself, watch the video, and then see what the DOJ said. It was completely I mean, there were sometimes when I went through these cases, Betsy, I didn't think I was looking at the right case. That's how off the narrative was in what the DOJ said. And if you want to deceive the public, here's how you do it with law enforcement. As you know, Betsy, law enforcement is judged based on totality of circumstances.
Dr. Travis Yates:You have to know all the information to be able to judge the incident or call. And so what the DOJ would do 97% of the time is they would say things like, the police, were speaking to a juvenile and the juvenile was being compliant and they just pushed his head in the ground and handcuffed him. Well, when you watch the video, you see, well, he wasn't compliant at all. Like he was fighting officers, he was running away from officers and they did this in virtually every single one. And there were some, as you said, the Phoenix is professional.
Dr. Travis Yates:There were some cases where you watch it, you go, that's textbook. I gotta put that in my class. This tactics and this I mean, it was just insane, Betsy. I'll talk about one real quickly because they're all insane. But the police got a call that a man was holding a baby hostage with a knife.
Dr. Travis Yates:So the police show up, the wife basically says, her girlfriend says, yeah, he's back there in the back where the baby is. He's got a knife. He's threatened to kill the baby, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so the police pop the door open. They shoot pepper ball rounds at him, kind of distract him, they rush him, tackle him, get him handcuffed and hold the baby and everybody's happy.
Dr. Travis Yates:And it was just an incredible act of courage and a tactical plan. The DOJ said that was unconstitutional. They put the baby at risk and thought. I mean, it was insane. They took these cases that any somebody with a brain would look at and go, man, that's some heroic stuff and they made it seem like they were doing something wrong.
Dr. Travis Yates:And the only reason I can think they would have done this is just like in the last thirty years. They didn't expect anybody to know it. They didn't expect it to go to court. They didn't expect me to look at it. They didn't expect the Phoenix police to put out a website showing the showing the details.
Dr. Travis Yates:They flat out did it intentionally knowing no one else will know this because how this works, Betsy, is when you sign up for a consent decree, all that goes away. They look to the future. So whatever that report said, all the falsehoods that if Phoenix would have signed that consent decree, would have been gone and they would have been moving forward to destroy that city and so. Every city that's gone under this in the last thirty years should be taking a critical look because I don't think the DOJ just started with Phoenix and lied 97% of the time. This has started way back and I I gotta tell you, it's really disturbing Betsy.
Dr. Travis Yates:If you and I would have lied 10% of the time in a police report and took somebody to jail, we'd be in prison right now. It's the epitome of what we hold each other accountable for is you have to be truthful in police investigations. And this was an investigation, if you could call it that. By the way, you don't know who did it. They don't list their investigators.
Dr. Travis Yates:They don't list the experts they use. It's just this vague report. And, the Phoenix local media, you know, they're just as guilty. They've been complicit. This website was up for them to see as well.
Dr. Travis Yates:They didn't look at it. In fact, I put a preliminary report last summer when I saw the use of force. The first thirty six incidents were used to force and every one of them I found was a fraud. Every one of them. So I thought that was important enough for the politicians to know that.
Dr. Travis Yates:So I put that preliminary report out. Once again, the media could go look at the same videos I looked at. Well, didn't do that, Betsy. They just talked bad on me. I'm some controversial figure.
Dr. Travis Yates:I'm this. I'm that. I'm like, well, that tells you they have nothing to talk about, right? You can talk about me all you want. And here's why they can talk about me, Betsy, because my name's on the report.
Dr. Travis Yates:We can't talk about who did the DOJ report because they're anonymous. But the media there in Phoenix, for the most part, they've propped this report up like it was something sent from God. And this is why the Phoenix Police Department needs to be you know, they have to do this. They have to do that. They should be ashamed of themselves because the media should hold power accountable.
Dr. Travis Yates:And one of the most powerful entities in the land has been going through these cities for thirty years and absolutely destroying them and the media hadn't set a peak.
Betsy Smith:So what is the fix for this? And I know that Phoenix is going to be the model for how we're going to take this on in the future. I know you've got Congress involved, local legislation as well. Our Congressman up there, Aba Hamaday, who ran on being pro law enforcement, He is getting involved. How do you unwind decades of this kind of potential fraud and abuse?
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, President Trump started it today, actually, as we're recording This is on the May 21 and he stopped everything in Minneapolis. He stopped everything in Phoenix. And what they said was because they don't trust the report that even they looked at it and I'm not gonna. I mean, my report's out there, I'm not sure they've seen that. But even they looked at it and said, yeah, something's not right in these investigations.
Dr. Travis Yates:They pulled back. But see, that's not good enough, Betsy. They've pulled back in the past. Trump pulled back in his first administration. George Bush pulled back significantly in his administration because it just comes right back.
Dr. Travis Yates:This was codified in law in the 1994 crime bill. So the only fix is, is you have to get rid of it. It's so broken. If a police department lied 97% of the time, nobody would go, We can fix that department. No, they would say, You have to disband that department and start new.
Dr. Travis Yates:So you have to start new. Now we need police accountability. Civil rights violations are important. And by the way, you mentioned the federal government. Well, what would the DOJ do if they don't get to do this anymore?
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, here's a little tip. Guess who's immune from civil rights violations? Federal law enforcement. So I would say not make them immune. They should be held the same accountability as local law enforcement and the DOJ can investigate their own.
Dr. Travis Yates:Investigate their own backyard. What needs to occur in Phoenix has a great model that they have presented to some congressmen. They're in the Arizona area, and I believe it wholeheartedly because it complies with the constitution. We should all want to do that and we should want to hold officers accountable is to take that funding. The DOJ has been just abusing for thirty years and send that to every state attorney general and and have them rise up at their own team to look at local law enforcement.
Dr. Travis Yates:They should be doing that anyway, but the federal government can support that by using what they've been doing here. And what that does, it does two things, Betsy. Since 1994, the DOJ has implemented 41 consent decrees. So you know, I don't know. It's four or five a year.
Dr. Travis Yates:Maybe my math may be off, but it so are they really holding law enforcement accountable, right? I mean, they're picking and choosing certain departments. We don't know why, But if you empower all state attorney generals across 50 states to do the same thing, you're gonna get more accountability. You're gonna get more common sense accountability. Yeah, California may do it different than Texas, but that's the way the constitution is set up.
Dr. Travis Yates:Local by states, that's the way it should be. We have a bill ready to go. We need congress to do the right thing. I know president Trump will do the right thing. I think he has a proclivity to send things back to the state because the irony about president Trump is they keep saying he's a threat to democracy.
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, he's he keeps wanting to send things to the states, which is what democracy is. And so we I will not rest, and many people will not rest until this is eliminated in its current form. And by the way, that has not been done. President Trump can do whatever he wants through executive order. It's still codified in law.
Dr. Travis Yates:And I would I would say to any congressman, Democrat or Republican, this is not a partisan issue. You cannot continue to destroy cities and lie about local law enforcement. I would love for them to try to defend the 97% failure rate that I just discovered in Phoenix. And by the way, you don't want me going to these other cities and looking because I bet I'm gonna find something very similar and that might be my next step.
Betsy Smith:I think that's extraordinary. And I think that's what's gonna need to happen. You are peeling back. You're peeling back the layers, you're doing it rapidly. I know it's time consuming, but I think what you've done is really break open this issue for people to see that not only should the federal government not be involved in this, but it's really not helping the safety of the community.
Betsy Smith:It's not helping people's civil rights. It's really doing nothing except, it seems like, enriching some individuals who are involved in this.
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, Betsy, it's so crazy. Roland Fryer is a Harvard professor. I'm sure you're familiar with him. He's an African American gentleman and an esteemed economist. He did a peer reviewed study that said more African Americans are dying because of consent decrees.
Dr. Travis Yates:It's created that much more violence. And I'll give you just something so silly. The DOJ just wrapped up a ten plus year consent decree in Albuquerque. They did it right before Trump came in, right? Well, this is their success.
Dr. Travis Yates:They they claim success, but nobody wants to remember why the DOJ came to Albuquerque. They claim because they had shot and killed 20 people in three years. We have to come in here and fix your department. Well, they leave out the details of those shootings because every one of those shootings was justified. Well, guess what the last three years was in Albuquerque?
Dr. Travis Yates:Not twenty, thirty. So all the metrics they say is a success actually gets worse. Prime's up 60% in Albuquerque. The their department's at the lowest staffing ever. Their budget has exploded, so they make these cities worse.
Dr. Travis Yates:So it's not like we're we're talking about a system that can be fixed or can can do the right thing. It has to be eliminated there, sent to The States. And then I think you're gonna. I think everyone's gonna like that because you're gonna get honest accountability at that point for the most part.
Betsy Smith:Yeah, you're absolutely right. Travis, where can people find out more about your work, read about what you're doing and find out more about you?
Dr. Travis Yates:Well, I'm gonna give you the link to this full report, Betsy, so you can put it in your show notes. But if they go to travisyh.org and just hit my article button, at the very top of that article will be the articles about the consent decrees. You can go in and search. Written a bunch of articles on this, but I really encourage people to read the full report. It's going to take you a little bit of time.
Dr. Travis Yates:See what I saw and then go to the website yourself and start watching some of these videos. It will. It should make your blood boil if you're an American. Now, if you want to keep your head in the sand and and believe the federal government, the DOJ is your friend, go right ahead. But I don't think there's any defending this.
Dr. Travis Yates:And by the way, it's not just me. There's been a lot of great men and women in the city of Phoenix that have really decided we can't. We can't let this happen. They cared about their city. They knew what would happen to their city and they've done some tremendous work.
Dr. Travis Yates:I'm very, very grateful that I even got an opportunity to participate.
Betsy Smith:Travis, thanks so much for taking on this topic, and thanks so much for spending time with us today. And if you'd like more information about National Police Association, you can visit us at nationalpolice.org.
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