NPA Podcast with Wendy Patrick, Career Prosecutor, Media Personality, Author, Public Speaker
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 I I've actually been following, for, well over a decade. And, and then I I've had the opportunity to appear with her on cable news, and she is just she's so experienced. She's an amazing communicator.
Betsy Smith:I know you're probably all already familiar with her, but I'm guessing you don't know everything there is to know about Wendy Patrick. Wendy, welcome to the show.
Wendy Patrick:Thank you, Betsy. It's a pleasure.
Betsy Smith:So wow. Lawyer, prosecutor, author, analyst, teacher, trainer. The list goes on and on and on and on. How did you get to be that person that we all see, on cable news, we see in the bookstore, we see online? Talk about your amazing career.
Wendy Patrick:I think I owe it all to, the most important qualification, follower of Jesus Christ. That's really the only way I'm able to accomplish any of those separately. But yeah. So I am a career trial attorney. I was a defense attorney.
Wendy Patrick:I've been a prosecutor. I was a prosecutor for, like, I would say twenty eight of my thirty years. But along the way, Betsy, like many people, I became, sort of interested in the aspects of criminal law and law enforcement that we specialize in. So I went back to school kind of as a midlife crisis because I couldn't afford the fancy new sports car. I got a couple more degrees.
Wendy Patrick:I earned a master in divinity. I went on to get a PhD in theology, became formally ordained, and really created a love of wanting to learn more about personal relationships. I mean, how was it that well educated, worldly, smart people end up being victimized, end up being manipulated? Why do all of us make foolish relationship choices when we know so much in our professional life? So learning more about that really led to the, as you say, the writing books, different types of speaking.
Wendy Patrick:I have my own column in Psychology Today. You know, it just all sort of fits together in what you and I have dedicated our lives to, improving the lives of others and protecting a community.
Betsy Smith:You know, when you look at the bible, the the the chronology of it, the different stories in it, and you take that and you apply it to today, right, to modern life, You apply it to the law. You apply it to justice. It, it is pretty amazing, isn't it, how those stories and that book from so long ago apply right now today this second. Right?
Wendy Patrick:And that was my most recent book, Why Bad Looks Good. It was biblical wisdom for living today because all throughout the bible, and I often pitch this to my unbelieving friends, all throughout the bible, you get better wisdom and advice than you would anywhere else, yet it was written so long ago. There must be something timeless about this wisdom. And as a lawyer, I can say the law changes every six months by referendum or or new statute. The Bible never changes.
Wendy Patrick:What a delight. It's always relevant.
Betsy Smith:Exactly. So let's talk about being a prosecutor. You you think and I thought this when I was a young cop. I'm like, oh, man. You know, they because I thought, oh, maybe someday, you know, I'll I'll jump jump off the police ship and go to law school and things like that.
Betsy Smith:Prosecutors, what a glamorous job. You get to wear a suit every day. You're making the big money and all that. Tell me how wrong all that is.
Wendy Patrick:Well, you do have to wear a suit every day.
Betsy Smith:That's about it.
Wendy Patrick:And it it's it's I would say it's a very rewarding job. It sometimes it can be glamorous if you got the right case, but more than anything, it's an opportunity to protect and serve a community sort of like law enforcement is. That unless you're in it, you don't understand how rewarding that is. To have victims that are so grateful even when you lose a case that you fought so hard. And it's one of those jobs that is just rewarding in a sense that money can never satisfy.
Wendy Patrick:When I first became a prosecutor, my family members used to say, why couldn't you have gone into the private practice or civil realm and really brought home some money to improve our lives? And then we all laugh in retrospect that those civil lawyers don't ever have to take a break to enjoy it because they never get a break with the clients and the billable hours. And I, you know, just think to myself, government work really has a lot of benefits, especially when there's a tangible impact in making a community safer. So quality of life is priceless. That's one of the values that you and I both learned, law enforcement and government work.
Betsy Smith:So when you look at the law, the justice system, it seems pretty cut and dried. Know, the I mean, the constitution is basically a gentleman's agreement. You don't touch my stuff. I don't touch your stuff. You don't break my things.
Betsy Smith:I don't break you things. You don't kill me, I don't kill you. That's kinda it. And yet in the last fifteen to twenty years, we've seen this seeping in of something called procedural justice where we looked at the the suspect, if you will, or the accused, and we started looking at not what they did, but more who they were and how was their childhood and what's their skin color and how do they identify. And it it it it has bastardized some of our justice system and the way things work.
Wendy Patrick:Yeah. There's a lot of voices, very vocal in the last ten years, especially as you mentioned on that concept of restorative justice, procedural justice. How do we accommodate and take into account all the different factors that go into why somebody became involved in the criminal justice system? And in many cases, that's appropriate. In some cases, it backfires, as you mentioned, because somebody may have been a recidivist for twenty years and at high risk to recidivate again, yet they're released out into the community.
Wendy Patrick:Those are the cases that make the news. But then we all sort of rally around and say, why? Given maybe we understand the recidivism, but the fact that it can't be halted should have also weighed into the threat assessment. And if there's one concept that I'm passionate about, it's threat assessment because that's about prevention. It's never about prediction per se because nobody has a crystal ball, but we can prevent crime if we not only look at the important factors that led up to the crime, but also the important factors to prevent the next crime.
Wendy Patrick:And so that's where that's why judges make the big bucks that make a joke about that too. They don't. But that's where they have to step in and also do threat assessment deciding whether or not somebody should be released into the community or should take advantage of procedural justice, restorative justice, or should they just having done the crime do the time?
Betsy Smith:You know, you make such a good point. I was I was a a crime prevention specialist for many, many years. And, when we look at it from a law enforcement point of view, again, you can't really measure prevention. Right? We you know, there's no statistic that you can pull to say, we prevented 20 burglaries, and we prevented 50 murders, and and things like that.
Betsy Smith:But there are some predictors that we can look at with people to say, okay. This person is likely to reoffend, may reoffend, because we're seeing, again, these cases in the news, and there's tons more that don't make the news of people that have forty, fifty, 60 arrests or sometimes forty, fifty, 60 convictions, and yet they're 40 years old and they're still running the streets. How do we how do we tackle that as a as a society and as a justice system?
Wendy Patrick:Yeah. That's risk assessment, isn't it? You're assessing risk based on known factors, based on a quantity of known factors. And if you're looking at a pattern, you know, like I always say in my sexual assault cases, patterns make the predator. When you have somebody that has a distinct pattern, some people call it an MO, modus operandi, but you have to history predicts the future in so many different types of cases.
Wendy Patrick:And, Betsy, let me tell you an interesting twist on that that I often teach on. How do you tell if somebody's dangerous? Sometimes you don't need a criminal record to be terribly dangerous because there are ways in which you could look at somebody's patterns of behavior, their history, and tell that this is somebody that's capable of committing a terrible crime. Now that's hard to sell to a judge or a jury if somebody's got no background. But remember, sometimes people people are able to creatively elude whether it's detection or conviction.
Wendy Patrick:Kinda like that famous line from strikes, convicted? No. Never convicted. Because sometimes people's patterns of behavior include things that still make them a risk. I'll give you a couple of examples.
Wendy Patrick:Disregard for the law, disregard for authority, terrible temper tantrums, impulsivity, drug abuse, addiction, difficulty making rational decisions. They're a nightmare to supervise, but nobody's ever quite caught them committing a crime. This could be a perfect storm for somebody that is capable of committing a terrible crime because they just don't care. So that that's sort of why I went back to school to study some of the ways in which you don't necessarily need all those convictions to be able to potentially prevent a crime if you know what to look for and what to look and really what red flags might be indicative.
Betsy Smith:Well, you know, you write for psychology today, and and we see these cases, in the news and beyond where, somebody commits a horrific crime, and yet they have no criminal history. And what do all the neighbors say? Oh, he seemed like a nice quiet guy.
Wendy Patrick:Axe murderer next door. That's it.
Betsy Smith:What what breaks in people psychologically where we see them commit these horrific crimes, and yet they've just been a you know, a guy in the neighborhood for maybe decades?
Wendy Patrick:I'll answer that by giving you two bookends of the analysis. The first is the typical ax murderer next door. The neighbor says he seemed like such a nice guy, but then when she's asked, why do you say that? What's her answer? Well, he kept to himself.
Wendy Patrick:He was quiet. In other words, she didn't know him at all. And that's also the fallacy with saying, I knew somebody, you know, I've known him for thirty years. Nope. You knew him thirty years ago maybe if you're talking about somebody you went to high school with.
Wendy Patrick:It's that absence of knowledge. It's like in my profession, the juror who becomes impaneled and all of a sudden the judge, the defense attorney, and myself all look at each other like, did anybody ask that person any questions? That's a scary fact. You know nothing about someone that just seemed mild mannered, so they seemed like they were safe. Now here's the other end of that, Ariel Castro.
Wendy Patrick:Remember, this was the man that kept those three girls locked in his basement. He knew all his neighbors, but superficially, he played, you know, with the neighborhood kids. They barbecued together. They listened to salsa music together, but not a single neighborhood ever been inside his home. So the common denominator is sometimes it's not that something breaks, it's that nobody gets close enough to notice the red flags that are no doubt already there.
Wendy Patrick:And I can give you a thousand other examples. You and I prosecuted people like that for for the last several decades.
Betsy Smith:Right. John Wayne Gacy was a birthday party clown. You know? We could go on and on and on. And and that is something that is so extraordinary and and and really and really does capture people's attention.
Betsy Smith:You know, where I live in Pima County, Arizona, of course, we're still all abuzz about the Nancy Guthrie case. And and I I think that at some point, we're gonna find out when when that case is finally cracked that we're all gonna go, oh, yeah. You know, now I know. Now that's what everybody said. All those kind of things that we all say post arrest or post solving of the crime.
Betsy Smith:But we see that all the time in law enforcement where we see these upstanding kind of pillars of the community people who do really commit horrific crimes. And and and it ends up being surprising to some, but then a lot of us go, oh, yeah. That makes it makes a lot of sense again in the aftermath. Right?
Wendy Patrick:Well, another great example is Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Remember, he was an associate professor at Harvard. I somebody that had a PhD in, wait for it, math. How many people are, like, lucky they passed high school math? And yet, when you go back in retrospect, you learn things like, you know, actually, he was a he was a professor at Berkeley.
Wendy Patrick:But when you look back, his Berkeley students maybe not all got along with him. You know, sometimes there are red flags as you go along. Maybe it's social awkwardness. But, you know, when you when you put it all together, I know easier in retrospect, sometimes the threat assessment analysis that you and I do includes some of the little subtleties, some of the nuances. Why does this person make somebody nervous?
Wendy Patrick:Some of our most notorious serial killers and mass murderers have had people on edge simply by virtue of the way they interacted. And that's telling you and I and our listeners and viewers all can think of someone in our lives that makes us feel unsettled. Well, guess what? That's our God given instinct, worth more than we recognize. We are more perceptive than we realize.
Wendy Patrick:It's sort of like that stranger getting into the elevator with you. You either feel calm or you don't. And if you don't, you better get out. But those are some of the reasons that we worry or that we're not able to predict as well as we might like, as you say, who exactly is going to snap or more likely slowly burn their way up the pathway to targeted violence, which is really the way it happens.
Betsy Smith:Well, and we're a society that, you know, we we kinda thrive on politeness, especially women, I think. That's why every woman out there needs to read Gavin DeVecker's Gift Gift
Wendy Patrick:of Beer.
Betsy Smith:Right? You know, we've been talking about that for for decades. And and, you know, of course, we recommended it to to law enforcement. I wanna switch gears a little bit because as we're talking about law enforcement and crime and prosecutors, one of the trends that we've seen in the last, again, about the last ten years is this propensity for prosecutors. And of course, now we all famously call them the the Soros prosecutors.
Betsy Smith:These prosecutors who come on the job, and it started in my own home area, Cook County, Illinois with Kim Fox. These prosecutors come in with not a pledge to lower crime, but a pledge to put cops in prison. And and are there bad cops? Absolutely. And and as we say in law enforcement, nobody hates a bad cop more than a good cop.
Betsy Smith:But we see time and time again police officers prosecuted simply for doing their jobs. And the last the most recent one was in New York, the NYPD sergeant who in 2022 threw a cooler at a fleeing felon who was on a moped zipping down a heavy pedestrian area. And the the bad guy who he had just, you know, thrown some cocaine and ran, the bad guy crashed and and died. That sergeant just got prosecuted and and is likely going to go to prison to talk about this over prosecution of law enforcement, again, to satisfy the Michael Brown, George Floyd, you know, cops are bad activism that we have seen really since 2014.
Wendy Patrick:You know, that is completely unrelatable. You and I and and most people can't imagine that such a thing exists. The offices would deny it as well. You know, I often wish we knew more than we did about what goes on behind the scenes in different places, as you mentioned, around the country where we see police getting prosecuted for things that seem to be accidents. That's the narrative that many people are just, you know, they they can't imagine that somebody grabs a taser instead of a gun, to use another example, that that's worth any time behind bars.
Wendy Patrick:And then there are other people that say, on the other hand, you know, training should be everything. But you and I are talking about criminal law, not negligence, not negligent supervision, not accidental discharge or all the other things that end up happening. But the case you're referencing in New York is an example of a judge making this cop at this is he made a record on this on this point. Making this cop an example of what you need to do for deterrence when it was a split second decision based probably at least partially on instinct. That's the way the argument would go.
Wendy Patrick:That's the way I'm sure the defense argued that it should go, that it was something that happened in the heat of the moment. And then, of course, the judge would say, well, is it poor judgment? Is it impulsivity? Should there have been more time for reflection? You know, as police officers know, you don't have the luxury of reflection on, you know, under the gun, so to speak, when you have these types of circumstances.
Wendy Patrick:So this is one of those cases. It's rare that you do see this result, but it's also true that you can imagine a result like this, a sentence like this, much less the, you know, the prosecution to begin with, is going to have departments around the nation really thinking through what kind of training are we able to give police officers officers that would somehow override instinct or instill better judgment if it was an issue of poor judgment. Because I don't know that we've always thought through these kinds of let's say somebody would call that a mistaken judgment as crime, as criminal. Most people would say, let's say, you know, twenty years ago, it might have been a disciplinary issue within the department or a training or a teaching issue. That was the way people thought back then.
Wendy Patrick:We didn't see police prosecuted for the same kinds of things. Obviously, you know, they commit a the kind of, you know, murder, rape, driving under the influence. I mean, they commit lots of crimes, and they're prosecuted for all those crimes. But when you're talking about things like this, police procedure, instinctive decisions, grabbing the wrong weapon from your duty belt, we have seen those prosecuted criminally now more than ever. And I'll tell you another trend along those lines.
Wendy Patrick:You're seeing parents of shooters now prosecuted for similar kinds of what might have once been seen as negligent supervision, civil issues. You're now seeing those cases brought criminally. There's a much broader array of criminal conduct that's being brought to a jury than ever before. And that is something that everybody's paying a lot of attention to because not only is nobody above the law, but we also wanna make sure nobody's below the law, That it's it's fair no matter who you are.
Betsy Smith:Well, yeah. And you make a good point because, you know, the the case you're talking about, Kim Potter, you know, who accidentally taser taser. Grabbed her taser and set her firearm. You could even look at the George Floyd case. The jury selection in these types of cases, you know, you know, the NYPD case was a judge case.
Betsy Smith:But jury selection, something you're very involved in, is is tandem. I mean, it's huge. Because if you get a juror on a jury case where a police officer is the defendant in a case where, like you said, it really should be more of a personnel issue or a training issue rather than a criminal issue. And we've had cases where juries have come off the jury and said, hey, it didn't matter what he did. I hate cops, so I wanted him convicted.
Betsy Smith:That's that's a huge deal as well.
Wendy Patrick:Total subversion of justice if that's the reason. What I wanna know is why wasn't that juror honest in voir dire? Because you know that's always one of the standard questions is views about police officers, which is a whole another issue. Maybe we do another segment on the fact that jurors are actually getting called out now for for failing to disclose relevant evidence in voir dire. I mean, it can be contempt of court.
Wendy Patrick:They're under oath when they're answering these questions. But, yes, to in order to kind of tackle the broader issue, it has to be justice for all. And when you do have jurors that wanna convict for the wrong reasons, that is just a travesty. And, you know, when those jurors come forward and say that, oftentimes, the defense is able to, you know, take that information and do something with it if it's a, you know, if it's a conviction that they wanna have overturned or file a motion to maybe get some more of those, get have have another shot at it. But I think one of the other issues you bring up that's interesting is remember it was never only a personnel issue.
Wendy Patrick:It was a civil case. That is why counties and states and cities are sued for the misconduct of their officers and employees, and that used to be the venue that we were familiar with. That would be the you know, that's where the lawsuit would be filed. That would be the defendant. It wouldn't be the bad actor that grabbed the wrong duty weapon or, you know, shot somebody, on in the line of duty thinking they were reaching for a gun when they were reaching for an apple or whatever it was.
Wendy Patrick:Now we do see more of an indication, at least in some jurisdictions, that those cases are going criminal. But I have to say, even when they do, they don't always start a trend nationwide as widely as we think. Sometimes there's questions surrounding why a particular case went the route that it did when there were alternatives, because the answer cannot be political pressure. That's not a valid reason. And that's why I always hate to see anybody, any public official coming out and making a statement like, we're gonna get the president, we're gonna prosecute cops.
Wendy Patrick:You can't say that when you don't know who's gonna do what. You know? That kind of a an orientation is not only bad press, but it becomes suspect in retrospect when valid cases are brought. If you're bringing a valid case based on evidence proof beyond a reasonable doubt, hopefully you haven't said something in your past on television that's gonna make everybody second guess your decision and your judgment.
Betsy Smith:Absolutely. So well said. And and when we Wendy, when we talk about justice for all, we've seen some recent cases in the news. You know, Tiger Woods with his I think it was his third bad crash involving drugs or alcohol. We Britney Spears is checking herself into rehab after a DUI.
Betsy Smith:We see celebrities. Celebrities screw up too. Right? And and yet sometimes I think there's a perception that they get coddled or they get treated differently. Talk about that a little bit.
Wendy Patrick:So I I always like to sort of not take a provocative perspective, but share a provocative perspective. And that is that one thing that distinguishes celebrities from, let's say, the rest of us is the amount of public scrutiny that they live under, that they're constantly barraged, they, their family members, their children. You could make an argument. And I remember I used to be a a criminal defense attorney, so I used to make arguments like this if appropriate, that you need to have a a sentence, for example, or conditions of bail really fit not only the crime but the accused. I almost said the criminal.
Wendy Patrick:The accused. Okay? Yet they haven't been, Tiger Woods hasn't been hasn't gone to trial yet. So in his case, as in a case with Britney Spears or others, there's a privacy issue. They would argue it's not so much about privilege as privacy, where they can't just check into, the local rehab where everybody else goes and expect that they're gonna be able to really take advantage and internalize and learn from and incorporate the treatment that's available there.
Wendy Patrick:Because that'd just be a It would be a total distraction to everyone. It would completely defeat the purpose of a residential facility. The purpose is to provide them with a controlled environment within which they can learn how to change their ways. I'm paraphrasing, but you know, that's the idea of a live in rehab versus, you know, going to AA meetings. So Tiger Woods made a lot of press when he was on a plane to Switzerland to check into a private rehab.
Wendy Patrick:And he also made a lot of press by saying he didn't wanna have a driver because that's the first thing everybody always says is, you got all this money. Why, you know, why weren't you in an Uber? Celebrities have this unique desire for privacy that the rest of us probably can't even fathom. We think we can, but we can't because we see some of the behavior they engage in and we think, I feel so bad for them. They can't leave their house without being hounded by paparazzi.
Wendy Patrick:So I think celebrity justice on the one end, we have to make sure that they're not treated more harshly simply because they're a celebrity and they should have known better, they shouldn't have been driving. That, of course, is always true. You don't endanger the public just because you want your privacy. But we also, in fashioning sentences, have to account for what would work as a rehabilitative measure, especially when you're talking about drugs and alcohol for this celebrity, for this defendant. Most people would not be hounded by cameras and news crews if they checked into the local rehab.
Wendy Patrick:Nobody would recognize their name. But Tiger Woods or Britney Spears walking in the front door would I mean, can you even imagine what a circus that would be? That's not a good venue for them to get the help that they need. That's the argument I'll say is out there, in terms of balancing celebrity justice.
Betsy Smith:And when you when you look at that, you know, taking looking at both of these cases, there's substance abuse potentially involved, things like that. How do you punish you know, again, what kind of punishment do you go for as a prosecutor? Like, Tiger Woods seems like a really good guy except he's got three DUIs. Most people with three DUIs, are gonna go to prison. But is that really gonna serve is that gonna serve society?
Betsy Smith:Is that gonna serve Tiger Woods to go to prison? Mean, That that seems difficult in and of itself to manage. How what do you look at as a prosecutor when dealing with a celebrity case?
Wendy Patrick:Well, he doesn't have three DUIs, and that's a great example. He had one that was originally written up as a DUI. So somebody like you did the you know, did all of the relevant paperwork, got in a lesser plea, and the other was a rollover crash Right. That wasn't so but if he had three DUIs, he would've been in a different tier of offense. He would've been charged with a felony, and there there would've been you know, you you do I'm back to you.
Wendy Patrick:You do the crime. You do the time. There's nothing about being a celebrity that says you get out of a jail sentence. Paris Hilton went to jail. Remember that case?
Wendy Patrick:You know, when owner Ryder was convicted of shoplifting and even Marcus, I mean, there's lots of celebrities that commit crimes, but let me give you a big distinction when it comes to substance abuse. Substance use and abuse isn't automatically a crime of moral turpitude like theft is. That's just one of the many types of examples that we as a society have chosen to incorporate into the criminal law. The fact that addiction is something that is noticed as a disability. And treating an addiction is admirable.
Wendy Patrick:You talk to some of these celebrities who've gotten sober, they have said it's the most difficult thing they've ever done and they didn't make it the first time. So there's a lot that goes into the analysis of is sitting in a jail cell, assuming it's not the third DUI, but this would be the first one, if it's if it's even that. Remember, that's even complicated because he refused the chemical test. But whatever it ends up pleading out for, is jail going to be a commensurate fair sentence under all this including deterrence. Remember, one of the goals of punishment is deterrence.
Wendy Patrick:Is that going to deter similarly situated others more than a plan designed to get him sober back on his feet healthier? Because one of the reasons celebrities are different is especially with athletes, whether they want to be or not, they're role models. They're role models sometimes within their own family as Tiger is, as he as his own father was. Celebrity athletes and even other celebrities, they are looked up to. They're larger than life.
Wendy Patrick:If there is a way we can help them become healthy, then there's an argument that not only unless they've done something that warrants jail time, if it's an option, maybe a rehab sentence for substance abuse is more productive in the long run, especially given all of the success stories that are out there that all started out like Tiger Woods or Britney Spears, driving under the influence, poor judgment, endangering the lives of others, who wouldn't wanna see anybody that's predisposed or addicted regain control of their life?
Betsy Smith:Absolutely. And we do. We wish them, really wish them the best. Wendy Patrick, wow. Where can people find you, bring you in, have you speak?
Betsy Smith:Tell us all of it. How can people follow you?
Wendy Patrick:I think the best way to find me is my website, wendy patrick p h d dot com or blackswanverdicts.com. That's the name of my jury selection and threat assessment consulting company, that I have. And I'm on my website's a contact form for speaking or media or anything else. You know, I just have to say, with all the the issues that you discuss on your show as well, you know, thank God there are a lot of people that are interested in how do we protect each other. That's like the analysis that I'm so passionate about.
Wendy Patrick:How do we protect one another to clean up our streets, to make safe communities, to empower young people, to help help everybody build self esteem and healthy relationships? I mean, if there's anything we can do in that respect, I would love to partner with anybody that shares those common goals as you do.
Betsy Smith:I love it. Thank you so much, and thanks for spending time with us today. And if you'd like more information about the National Police Association, you can visit us at nationalpolice.org.
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