Resilience in the Ranks with Duane Wolfe

When the weight of the badge grows heavy, where do our law enforcement leaders turn? Duane Wolfe, a beacon of resilience and wisdom with 34 years in the profession, joins Dr. Travis Yates to unravel this very question. In this earnest discussion, Duane and Travis dissect the complexities of police leadership – the dance between protecting the mental welfare of officers and the tumult of public scrutiny. Duane's personal narrative, from his 1988 beginnings to his present role as a trainer and part-time officer, offers an intimate look at the sacrifices made in the name of duty and the impact it has on one’s mental health.

Article Discussed In Episode: The Day I Put A Gun To My Head 

WIN X Video Featuring Duane Wolfe

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Transcript

Duane Wolfe: 0:00

As we all know right now with the attack on police, that you have chiefs and other administrators who are basically relying upon their job, based upon politics and optics, and, as such, they make decisions based upon their jobs and optics versus what's best for their officers.

Intro/Outro: 0:22

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

Travis Yates: 0:32

Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored you decided to join us today and I am excited about today's guest. We've been trying to get him on for a few months now. Our schedules finally align and I'm super excited about Duane Wolfe being on the show. Dwayne's been a contributor to the law enforcement profession as an officer, trainer, writer and expert in several areas, including use of force and firearms. He recently retired from a full-time career in law enforcement as an instructor at the college level, but altogether everything he's done. He's had over 34 years of service. He's currently the owner of Wolfen Associates, specializing in expert witness work, training and speaking. Dwayne, how are you doing, sir?

Duane Wolfe: 1:19

I'm doing great. It's good to have a conversation with you finally, Travis have a conversation with you.

Travis Yates: 1:26

Finally, Travis. Yeah, man, I know we've tried to do it a few times and it just didn't work out one thing or another. But this is going to be great because, Duane, you've been around a long time, you've seen a lot of things, but I think, before we get there, just kind of tell us your journey. How in the world did you find yourself talking to me today? You started in the profession in the 80s, right, I mean. So you've been and you've done a lot of different things. Just kind of tell us how that happened.

Duane Wolfe: 1:49

Well, I started out, became a police officer back in 1988.

Duane Wolfe: 1:53

And at that time I was a full-time officer and I got to do training from time to time and I'd gone through the academy at the college, where I taught at for 28 years.

Duane Wolfe: 2:04

And when I went through the academy I thought to myself someday I'd like to go back and teach there and I thought I'd put in 10 or 15 years as a police officer and then, if the opening came up, I'd apply. Well, I got that call at about six and a half years and I had to make a decision as to whether I want to be a full-time cop and a part-time trainer or a part-time cop and a part-time trainer or part-time cop and a full-time trainer. I decided to go with part-time cop and full-time trainer. So I spent those many years teaching there at the college. Along the way, due to my mentors and my associations with a lot of great people, including yourself and Aelita, that led into being a columnist for Police One for many years, which I continue to contribute to. And during that time as an instructor, I became a firearms instructor, use of force instructor, train on how to respond to crimes in progress Pretty much the hands on training that police officers have, and that's been my journey.

Travis Yates: 3:01

In a nutshell, so let's take let's take the audience back to that decision, because that had to be a tough decision. You're six, seven years in man. You're just getting your feet wet in the profession. You know, as God would have it, things don't always go exactly the way we planned and so you get this call early. How hard did it take you to make that decision? Do you really wrestle with that? I mean kind of walk us through that, because we have a lot of listeners that face forks in the road, so to speak, of different decisions that don't necessarily come at the time they'd like it to come, Kind of what'd you lean on as you made that decision?

Duane Wolfe: 3:33

Well, at the time I had just been made sergeant. For a year or two I was on the SWAT team and I was happier than heck and the opportunity came up to put an application. I thought, well, I probably won't get it, and if I do, I do, and if I don't, I don't because I'm happy where I'm at. Well, lo and behold, I get that choice and it was really hard to step away from being a full-time police officer. In fact, for two years after I left I wasn't working for any agencies. Years after I left, I wasn't working for any agencies, and that was a difficult adjustment for me, having wanted to be a police officer and worked so hard to get there after all those years. But for me it was a good choice.

Duane Wolfe: 4:16

I was working in a very small department and small town politics and things like shifts where we were working three on two off, two on three off and switching from nights to days every five days, which was basically killing every one of us. So about probably two months after we'd moved, my wife and I were driving down the road one day and we were joking around. She looked at me and goes welcome back. I said what do you mean? Welcome back, welcome back. She says you're finally back to yourself. She said you've been a son of a bitch to live with the last six years. There's six years because of the constant changing your shifts and how that affects uh, your performance and your uh personality and your judgment. So for us it was a good choice.

Travis Yates: 5:06

Yeah, you know, I think wives are bad about that, like my wife's similar. Like, like you could have told me a lot earlier, right, like you know she'll, she'll wake me up after a while and go hey, the last six months you've done this or that. I said, hey, how about telling me six hours afterward? Cause you know, I think you think I'm smart, smart. I'm really not that smart, but that's just the way it is. What duane when you're in the middle of it, right, you don't actually realize it, but your loved ones around you do. And I know you have written and talked a lot about mental health and mental wellness and and you have an incredible article out there that it's just been seen by millions is that sort of what drove some of your talking and teaching on that subject?

Duane Wolfe: 5:47

Well, what it came down to is my mentor, coach Bob Lindsey, asked me to write an article for Police, one about mental health for police officers, basically using the concepts that we learned in Below 100 as a catalyst for doing that. Well, when I sat down to write the article, it didn't take very long to write it, because I had come very close to committing suicide back when I was in college. So for me to write that article, I thought would have been very hypocritical for me to tell police officers to be willing to come forward, share what's going on, seek help, if I wasn't willing to share my own story with police officers. So and I think Dave Smith probably said it best, when I did an interview with him a number of years ago, he said that's the warrior ethos you tell the story so others perhaps don't have to walk down the same path that you walk. They avoid that path by hearing your story.

Travis Yates: 6:58

Yeah, it's very powerful. I'll link that story up in the show notes for the listening audience and I can't recommend it enough and I've gone back to it a few times, like everyone else has. Duane, it's extremely powerful and that is odd, right, I've been involved in a few things that have written it very easily, didn't think much of it and they got seen more than the things that put a lot of effort into it. So there's obviously a higher power at work there. So incredible job with that. And how has that shaped and formed your teaching and training? Because you've obviously impacted thousands and thousands of police officers, students in law enforcement, criminal justice system. How's that impacted that?

Duane Wolfe: 7:35

Well, when I first became an instructor, one of the things that I said to myself was I was going to make changes of what I taught and how I taught. From how I was taught when I went through the academy, nobody talked about mental health, nobody talked about stress. So I went through and I tried to do my best to expose the students to those concepts in order to better prepare them for what they're going to run into, based upon my level of knowledge. As time went by, I gained more knowledge and I also had a great training partner who took that catalyst from where it started and built on it even better for our students in the program that she taught for our students as well.

Travis Yates: 8:17

So you've done a lot of different things and now obviously, training, expert witness work, use of force, but your involvement in ILEETA and the association, really, of trainers across the country has impacted so many, kind of walk us through the importance of of community right, a community of trainers, a community of people that can can throw ideas off each other and support. How is that? You know what got you involved in that and how has that shaped you and molded you through through your career?

Duane Wolfe: 8:45

Well, first off, let me say and I told you this at ILEETA when I saw you how great it was to see you back there again, and I particularly have really missed you because you've been a great mentor to me. Aelita is unlike any other organization ever belonged. It was founded with the idea that it would be a peer organization where everyone is equal. Regardless of your level of experience, the number of articles you've written, books, you know, whatever it is that you do, everybody gets treated like equals. I was at a conference with another organization one year and three or four of us walked into the hospitality room where members of the board were standing in a corner. When we walked in, they all looked at us, turned back and continued having their conversation and treated us like we weren't even there, and that said something to me and shortly thereafter I left the organization.

Travis Yates: 9:36

I have never been treated like that at ILEETA and they have had the ability to keep that founding concept of a pure organization creating a great community of trainers working together to make the law enforcement profession better for over 20 years, which is why I belong to that organization for all these years yeah, and this is not about me, duane, but I I think I would I'd like to tell my story about alita too, because I think I want to emphasize to our audience how important that alita is if you're in law enforcement, if you're a trainer, but how important community is regardless of what you do. We have a lot of non-law enforcement. Listening to the show, I discovered Alita in 2006. I was at the FBI National Academy and my roommate, Andy Ryan from Butler University, he was the assistant chief at the time. He goes hey, I see you're involved in training and I was. I was involved in a lot of chief at the time. He goes hey, I see you're involved in training and I was.

Travis Yates: 10:34

I was involved in a lot of training at the time. He goes well, have you heard of alita? I'd maybe I'd heard of it, but I I didn't, you know, didn't ring a bell. I'm sure I'd heard of it, been around a few years at that point. He goes well, listen, I go every year. My department sends me. If you just show up, you can stay in my room and just stay with me because, as you know, know, and everybody listening knows Dwayne, the room expense and travel expenses are real expensive at conference, right, and so my department had quit, you know, helping me out long before that on training and stuff. I was doing it all on my own and so we used that annually just kind of a get together, because me and Andy became friends. But I put in to teach a class the first year, probably not because I really cared so much, but I didn't want to pay for registration, cause if you teach a class at ILEETA you get a free registration. So I taught a class and out of that class, man it it. Really I don't know if I'd be teaching the day around the country if it wasn't for teaching at ILEETA and because just of all the connections and the people that I got to know.

Travis Yates: 11:29

But but really what I wanted to tell after I got off on that tangent is this I remember showing up year one at ILEETA and thinking I was at a rock concert with all of these trainers and riders I'd been looking up to. It was a who's who of all these individuals, and today it still is. If anybody reads the magazines or reads websites or follows anything, you're going to see those people there. But you're right, there was no hierarchy, right, dwayne, everybody was equal. I mean, I had people that I had I thought were the best, the best, asking me questions, right, and I was, of course, asking them questions, so it really is phenomenal. But I wanted to end that conversation with this.

Travis Yates: 12:07

I want to tell our audience why I believe and, Duane, I'm interested to hear what you have to say of why ILEETA is so successful many years later because I think we all have been involved in law enforcement organizations, where it has ups and downs, ebbs and flows.

Travis Yates: 12:23

Sometimes they don't always last. Well, my belief is Ed Nowicki founded ILEETA after a bad experience with ASLET Board of directors, cops involved, money, this, money, that and he decided I want to form a training organization and I'm the dictator, I make the rules, I make sure this is done right. Yeah, we may have an advisory board, but we need a solid foundation of somebody steering the ship, and he, of course, passed that on to Harvey after he passed away. But I believe that's why Elite has been so successful because, unlike a lot of organizations where, if your board is part-time or volunteer and they get transferred or lose interest and those organizations rise and fall with the board, ed Nowicki very profitably said I'm going to make sure this works, and I believe it's still here today. Ed Nowicki's legacy will live on for decades and decades because of that decision. What's your thoughts on that?

Duane Wolfe: 13:19

I agree with you completely. The key thing with ILEETA is, you know, leave your ego at the door. People who walk in who can't do that, don't ask, don't get asked to come back again. Uh, and I know, uh, over the years there've been several people who've been told not to come back because of their attitude and their behavior. They're willing to sit down and have those courageous conversations with people who are not meeting the expectations of the organization. As a result, you have a um organization. As a result, you have a culture that facilitates that attitude and has continued to grow as time has gone by.

Duane Wolfe: 14:04

Now we're looking at an average year, for I lead somewhere around 700 people attending the conference. That's probably one of the largest conferences in the country. At the same time, any day you've got 20-some classes going on a wide variety of subjects. Everybody's there to learn, everyone is there to help, everyone is there to build each other up, to answer questions, to guide, to mentor. I can tell you, as you said previously, that if it were not for my membership in Aelita, the relationships that I have formed there with people who are my mentors, my friends, I would not have accomplished any of the things that I've accomplished in the last 20-some years writing for Police One being asked to do a WinX talk. Back to the article. If you want to see me do a talk on that subject, they can look up WinX Duane Wolfe on YouTube and they'll find me doing a 20-minute talk on that topic of officer medical wellness.

Travis Yates: 15:08

Yeah, we'll link all of that up, Duane. This is a leadership podcast and we just outlined the success of an organization because of leadership, and I actually believe that small nonprofits or small businesses, they live and die by leadership. That's why I've personally been involved in small nonprofits. That didn't last because it was a failure of leadership, some my fault, some others fault, but you mentioned a lot of things there on the success of Alita. You know, mentorship, coaching leave your ego at the door. What if we brought that now? Stay with me here, audience. What if we brought that into our law enforcement organizations? Duane, you've been around a long time. Let's talk about that. What, what are?

Duane Wolfe: 15:58

what are the the, the good and the bad you've seen within law enforcement over the last three decades? No-transcript, basically relying upon their job, based upon politics and optics, and as such, they make decisions based upon their jobs and optics versus what's best for their officers and when it comes to your job and your income. I understand how. That's a very powerful, powerful force to get people to act a certain way. What we need is people to stand up.

Duane Wolfe: 16:36

Right now in the state of Minnesota we've got an officer involved in use of force. He's being charged by an anti-police county attorney. At this point the agency finally has stood up and three of the trainers have stood up and said hey, what they said regarding the charges about what we said is not true. All three of us said what the officer did was reasonable, what the officer did was within policy, what the officer did was within their training. Just right, with that company, excuse me, that prosecuting attorney told the media in the charging process told the media in the charging process. They literally had a use of force expert who looked at it and said I can't see anything that you can charge him here for based on the evidence I have.

Travis Yates: 17:29

And then said that they didn't need the expert witnesses testimony in making decisions whether or not to charge the officer.

Travis Yates: 17:52

Well, that's a big difference, dwayne, to what we've seen, and I'm glad we've come that far, because for years we sat there and took it. We've let these decisions be made, and I'll give you a quick rundown of the principles we push in Courageous Leadership, which is integrity, focus on the mission, public safety, don't let feelings redefine facts, communicate to eliminate misunderstanding, anticipate and challenge the status quo. These are all common sense things no one can argue with. But we haven't seen a lot of this being placed into practice, and we can all think of numerous cases where we would all, under our breath, say that's wrong, but nobody stood up for it. What do you think, because I've seen the shift too what do you think has shifted to make people to start standing up, because that is how you defeat this nonsense and this lack of leadership going on is leaders have to stand up. There are more good leaders than bad leaders, but the bad leaders have been overwhelming us because the good leaders have stayed silent. What do you think has shifted to see some of this start happening?

Duane Wolfe: 18:35

I think a lot of people have finally started to see the writing on the wall. When we see political prosecutions based on people's uh attorneys personal beliefs versus the law, it makes everybody in law enforcement look around and say am I next? Is this going to turn on me? So so that's one thing. The other thing is and I just lost my train of thought, sorry, because I'm over 60. But I think the key thing is that emphasis more and more around the country of political prosecutions, charging officers and letting it go to trial because they don't want to have to make the decision that says no what the officer did was objectively reasonable. Letting it go to trial, dragging it out for them to be found not guilty or to have the case dismissed in court, simply to avoid having to make the decision early on doing the right thing and saying no what they do is objectively reasonable.

Travis Yates: 19:32

Yeah, if there's anything encouraging through this nonsense is the many times our police leaders are cowards, the DAs are cowards, if not evil as well. Your activists and everybody that pushes for these charges are cowards when there aren't any charges to bring. But guess who gets it right? The jury Civilians. They get it right when they're given the actual facts and we see that time and time again of officers being acquitted. Of course we know that forever changes their career and their life and everything about it, which almost seems to.

Travis Yates: 20:06

I'm interested in yours. I think we have a supply and demand issue. There's a huge demand to call cops racist, accuse cops of being racist, to show the world how cops are racist and cops are brutal and cops are this and cops are that, but the data and the facts do not support that. And so when the data and the facts don't support that, what do you have to do? Well, to meet that demand, you got to create fake lies, you got to create a fake supply, you got to create the outrage, and we've seen that time and time again. And it shouldn't be a shock to anybody that you can watch the news at any time on any given day and see absolute chaos in the streets of America.

Duane Wolfe: 20:44

I agree with you completely and as far as supply and demand, and the other thing that I was going to talk about, this causing a shift in your change is, right now, a lack of people wanting to be police officers, the departments that are well behind their staffing requirements, the fact that they're not getting any applicants, or nowhere near the number of applicants that they used to get. That has to be a very startling wake-up call for the people who wanted to defund the police. That has to be a very startling wake-up call for leaders, because if you don't have good leadership, who would want to apply to your department?

Travis Yates: 21:17

No, I think we're within five years of seeing the first major police department literally going bankrupt, being dead. It's probably going to be Seattle, although Portland is quickly behind them, as is Minneapolis. In your backyard, dwayne, where they've got more leaving than coming in and it's only a matter of time before they're. You know, they're literally doing nothing but manning a desk, and they've they've had to contract without the, with the county or something like that, to actually patrol the streets, because people haven't realized that it's not bonuses, it's not benefits, it's not salary that that gets police officers do the job, it's support and leadership, and that's where it is throughout the business world as well. But they don't want to accept it, do they, dwayne? No, they don't.

Travis Yates: 22:01

So we're at sort of this crossroads in the profession, dwayne, and your experience is impeccable. You've been around for over three decades. You usually see what's coming, what has happened based on that, usually see what's coming, what has happened based on that, the next five or 10 years, what do you think leaders must do to retain some semblance of law and order in our cities and to obviously retain law enforcement officers and their organizations? What do you think has to be done in the next really not five or 10 years immediately, to make sure that we do not keep going down this dark, dark road.

Duane Wolfe: 22:35

Well, number one we need to be. The profession needs to stand up when we have these people making false statements about the police and hitting them with the facts, not the feelings. What they're all about is likes and clicks and shares, getting money and viewers for advertisement. If they put something outrageous that gets likes and clicks and shares, well, then they can raise their prices. That's how they make their money. Don't ever underestimate the power of money when it comes to the media.

Duane Wolfe: 23:00

When we get the point where we will stand up and say, no, here are the facts, here's what's actually happening. This is what's actually happened with the police. What this narrative is is false. Once we do that, that'll start to turn things. Number two creating environments, like I said, that want to have, that have good leaders, that people want to work there, for the departments out there who have good leadership probably aren't suffering as much as those with poor leadership, and the key thing here is getting the administrators to understand what it is their job is, and that is standing up for the people that they serve. Not that the officers they have serve them, but they serve the people below them. By creating that atmosphere, by creating a positive place to work, by creating a place that stands up for its officers and they can count on that department to back them when they make the right decisions and do the right thing, then they'll have officers that want to work there.

Travis Yates: 24:06

Yeah, I couldn't have said it best myself, dwayne, you know, and the only positive in this is leadership got us in this position, but leadership can bring us out of where we are, and I think it's the answer to everything. That's why I know you're passionate about that, Duane. I can't thank you enough for all you've done for law enforcement, all you've done for me. Thank you so much for being here.

Duane Wolfe: 24:28

Thank you, Travis, thanks for having me.

Travis Yates: 24:29

And, if you're listening, thank you for being here and spending your precious time with us. And just remember, lead on and stay courageous.

Intro/Outro: 24:38

Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. travisyates. org.