Leading From The Heart with Chief Jim Franklin

Imagine strolling through the bustling streets of Rochester, Minnesota, where every uniformed officer is a beacon of innovation and compassion in policing. That's the vision Chief Jim Franklin has turned into a daily reality, and we had the privilege of uncovering his approach to law enforcement in our latest conversation. As the torchbearer of a family steeped in police work, Chief Franklin draws on a wealth of experience to empower his team and uphold principles that resonate with every call they answer. Striding alongside officers who take pride in their service and leaders who embrace change offers a glimpse into the heart of progressive policing.

Our dialogue with Chief Franklin ventures into the impactful programs reshaping the relationship between the police and the community they protect. Hear the story of how a simple fix—a lightbulb change for a car—can illuminate the path toward trust and safety. 

Lastly, brace yourself for a narrative that grapples with the physical and the philosophical, as we examine the role of Brazilian jiu-jitsu in police training. Chief Franklin articulates how this martial art transcends physical conditioning to refine officers' control, technique, and mental acuity. It's a testament to a culture that values confidence, respect, and the ability to resolve confrontations with a calm, measured response. Through these stories, we learn that the true strength of a police force lies not in its grip but in its unwavering commitment to serve with honor and heart. Join us for this journey through the lanes of leadership and the alleys of innovation in modern policing.

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Transcript

Intro/Outro: 0:02

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

Travis Yates: 0:12

Welcome back to the Courageous Leadership podcast. I think you're going to be very motivated by our guest today. Our guest really embodies a huge principle here at Courageous Police Leadership when we discuss emboldening others to lead courageously. He empowers his employees, he doesn't expect them to do anything that he wouldn't do, and that's going to come across today. Before we get with that interview, let me encourage all of you to visit our newly formed Courageous Police Leadership Alliance. That's something that we've been thinking about a lot here and we finally put it into motion and what it essentially is it's an alliance, it's an organization, it's a gathering place for everything Courageous Police leadership stands for. So if you are someone that subscribes to what we discuss, subscribes to our principles, go check that out, sit your email in there and, as we start rolling out resources, you're going to be notified of that. You can find that at cplallianceorg. In fact, right now, we have our principal posters up for download. You can download these all the way up to a 24 by 36, all the way down to an 8.5 by 11. You can hang them in the squad rooms, you can stick them in your car these principles that we will be getting into in the future in detail and, of course, if you go to our seminars, we really get into them. These principles, essentially, are proven that if you just follow this, everything's going to go your way when it comes to leadership. I love them. We've worked very, very hard on them. I got to thank my business partner, dr Shea, on this. We really put a lot of thought into this and we believe that this is the answer, and so be sure to check that out.

Travis Yates: 2:04

Cplalliance. org Of course you can go to travisyates. org and you can hit our sub stack. We send out a weekly article. This podcast goes out every week. You can subscribe to all that to get those important resources. Today's guest is Chief Jim Franklin from Rochester, minnesota. He served before that role. He served five years as a lieutenant with the Metropolitan Transit and he has several years, many years, of street experience working as a patrol officer and detective with the Plymouth Police Department. He has a master's degree in public administration and a law enforcement degree from Metropolitan State University and he's an adjunct instructor for Rutgers University. You're going to love what he has to say. I love talking to him and so enjoy and thanks for listening. Well, it is a pleasure to have Chief Jim Franklin on the show today from Rochester, minnesota, chief, how are you doing this morning?

Jim Franklin: 3:05

Wonderful Thanks for having me, Travis.

Travis Yates: 3:12

So kind of give us a quick update, quick bio. You know you're there in Rochester I'm sure it's in the very comfortable wintertime. Just kind of tell us how you ended up in Rochester and how long you've been there and some of the things you've been doing up there.

Jim Franklin: 3:20

Yeah, so I've been in law enforcement about 25 years. It's really the profession that I've always wanted to do. I grew up in a cop family. My father was a police officer. In fact my father was a police chief, so I'm a second-generation police chief. I'm very proud of that. A lot of different cousins and relatives in law enforcement, so we do kind of call it a family business, if you will, but it's really been my calling ever since high school, Got into law enforcement, just kind of worked my way up in a couple different agencies and I've had the distinct honor of serving as the police chief for the city of Rochester, Minnesota third largest city in the state of Minnesota, for about the last four and a half years.

Travis Yates: 4:02

So that's interesting, your father was a chief. Did you grow up wanting to go into law enforcement from that calling? And that's what I've always said, especially when it comes to recruiting, because now we're having to actually recruit when I said really before, we really didn't. We recruited from agency to agency, because most people that come into this profession I ask this in my seminars all the time they knew they were going into this profession. It's a calling, like you said, which I think is the men and women that we really need in the profession. But did you ever think to yourself you'd be a chief one day, or did it just kind of happen as a career went on?

Jim Franklin: 4:34

Yeah, I would say that just happened. You know I got into law enforcement. You know, really, watching my dad growing up and just watching him interact with people, seeing him in a leadership position, and so you know, just, it was a natural progression of my career. Was it ever a career goal to be a police chief? Not at first, but perhaps later on. You know, about the middle of my career I said, all right, I think I can do that. I really enjoy the leadership of running an agency. It's really what brings me joy is leading the men and women that continue to put on this uniform, put on this badge and serve this community at the highest possible level. I couldn't be more proud of the troops, could not be more proud of the officers in this department and what they do on a daily basis. It really is an incredible profession. It's an incredible opportunity to be a chief.

Travis Yates: 5:27

Yeah, I've often said, if I teach a lot of cadet training, academy training, if someone says my goal is to be a chief in the academy, I always think, man, something's wrong with this person. Right, it probably should never be the initial goal, but you recognized early on that you had the competency and the skills. You think you could offer something to it. You're doing it for the right reason. I think that's why you are often talking about things sort of outside the box. I mean, law enforcement has this real bad habit of why do we do it this way? Because we've always done it this way and we don't always seem to think outside the box, because change can be difficult and hard.

Travis Yates: 6:00

But you've had a lot of success there in Rochester, chief, and you often talk about something I really love. Of course, you're doing the traditional crime fighting. That's our main mission is to reduce crime and create safety in your community. But, man, you talk about some things that I think a lot of our leaders should be talking about, which is we need to not only do the traditional means but we need to look at the root causes of crime. Kind of talk to us about what you've done, about that and some of the successes you've seen.

Jim Franklin: 6:26

Absolutely. When I first became chief here, you know, we wrote our core values and I said, you know, put together an internal task force and said let's come up with. You know, what do we, what do we really believe in, what defines us as our core values? I said but there's going to be one core value that I insist and that's the innovation. And so we're very much a department that takes a lot of pride in innovative ideas, outside-the-box thing.

Jim Franklin: 6:51

It's okay to fail fast, you know, if you're going to fail, fail fast, fail forward right and move on to a different program. So when I talk about getting to the root cause of crime and poverty, I mean there are so many different socioeconomic factors that go into that, quite frankly, that law enforcement's not equipped to solve or handle by itself. And that's why another one of our key tenets here is relational policing. Collaborative policing come alongside of, you know, non-governmental organizations, faith-based organizations, in identifying problems, getting to the root cause of problems and then really attacking it in a collective, relational matter, making this community better and safer. And I'll give you a quick example of that is we're one of the few agencies actually there's only one other agency in the entire state of Minnesota that has what's called a PAR program or a police assisted recovery program and one of the things that we saw when we were dealing with people specifically substance abuse, people suffering from that particular aspect out on the street is they'd go in and they'd fill out county paperwork.

Jim Franklin: 7:53

It is about a 30-day referral process. You know, when somebody's at the end of their rope I want to get into substance abuse services, I need some help they go in and fill out the paperwork. There's about a 30-day delay and we found that about 70% of the people never came back and actually got services. So what we did is we contacted with Doc's Recovery House and Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge here locally and we have a bed-on retainer for females and a bed-on retainer for males. So if we come in contact with somebody that truly does want help at the end of the rope, we'll get them the paperwork filled out and we'll get them a bed in treatment immediately, right away, bridging that gap. That's root cause problem solving kind of collaborative, relational policing efforts, and that's one of several different programs that we're initiating here at Rochester PD.

Travis Yates: 8:44

Yeah, that's excellent stuff. And what I think a lot of leaders don't understand is because we get stuck in this mindset of just throwing people in jail. Throwing people in jail, throwing people in jail. Now listen, that's obviously a part of our job, but by doing what you're doing, Chief, you're actually mitigating the need to throw so many people in jail. It actually helps resource-wise. So I know you're having to take resources on the front end, but it actually helps with resources on the back end, and I'm sure you've seen that there not the case and it's that perspective change, that change in viewing things through the lens of hey, there's a lot of nuance to problems.

Jim Franklin: 9:31

There are a lot of, like I said, those socioeconomic factors that drive people into poverty and crime. Lack of education, lack of stability in the home, lack of food security, lack of transportation, all of those factors go into kind of those root cause analysis of crime. And until we can start collectively attacking those with a multitude of agencies, we're not really going to solve the problem and solve crime issues. But we can collectively start attacking those issues together and chipping away at it. And that's, I think, that's really the future of law enforcement is dealing with those root cause factors.

Travis Yates: 10:06

Yeah, and I think that's something that I call the reform movement because it's got such a bad name. But people throw these ideas on the wall just to think it's going to work. But it's the wrong they're focusing this is my opinion, Chief but they're focusing on the wrong entity. By the time someone gets to law enforcement and they're committing a criminal act, it's gone way too long, Like we're the last resort. So you're getting involved on the front end and I have to imagine this is a pretty big paradigm shift for law enforcement and for police officers, other leaders, to get involved in this, because I see that socioeconomics and all the issues including poverty, lack of education, lack of opportunities that sends people into criminal activity. So we need to get involved on that front end. So how were you able to sort of pull your followers into that mindset and how has that gone?

Jim Franklin: 11:02

Yeah. So that's always a challenge in any agency and with any bit of leadership, is getting that buy-in and I will say that I have been incredibly fortunate here. I cannot speak enough again to just the character and integrity of the cops that work here and to get them incredibly proud of them. I think how you get that buy-in is you build success cases. Let me just give you a quick example too. Another program that we started is called the Lights On Campaign, and that's where we worked with a nonprofit organization and a local Rochester motor cars entity that fixes cars and so when we pull people over for, let's say, a headlight out or taillight out or blinker out or something like that, we can give them a coupon and we've got this partnership where they can go get their taillight headlight fixed, their blinker light fixed, and Rochester Motor Cars will fix that for them through this nonprofit entity. That's all paid for. And I'll tell you, I rolled this program out and I still remember this today.

Jim Franklin: 12:05

I had one officer. He sent me an email after I rolled this program out and the email read something to the effect of Dear Chief, when you first rolled this program out, I thought this was the dumbest idea on the planet. I thought this was ridiculous. I thought this is silly, foolish, whatnot he said. But tonight I pulled over a young lady and I gave her a Lights On coupon to get her headlight fixed and she broke down in tears and she shared with me. Officer, I truly had to make a choice tonight Am I going to go buy groceries or am I going to get my headlight fixed?

Jim Franklin: 12:43

And this officer has been a champion ever since. He's like thanks for doing that, appreciate you having the courage for stepping out and doing that. We're making a difference in this community and people's lives. So it's little success stories like that that I think you just build on and build momentum and then again willing to try other incredibly innovative ideas of, and it's about relational policing. It's about coming alongside the community that, quite frankly, wants everything that we want. They want a safe community, they want a crime-free community, they want a police department that is responsive to their needs, and so we have the same shared goals. It's about coming alongside of each other.

Travis Yates: 13:25

Yeah, I think we get too caught up in the extremes in our society because the media keeps pushing it right. You have the extremes on one side, the extremes on the other side and most of the people, the vast majority of people, are ever going in the middle. They just want to raise their families. They want their kids to go out and play and be safe. They want the same thing everybody else wants. That doesn't matter how you vote. It doesn't matter how you vote. You want a safe community and I think we get too focused on the extremes out there. And I think that's a prime example. And, Chief, I think I know the answer to this. But I have to assume that some of your own officers have probably come up with some ideas that and kind of tell us about and maybe example that and kind of how you have have kind of helped that along with those resources.

Jim Franklin: 14:03

Absolutely so. This, this particular departmental initiative we started up again to make that handshake between non-governmental organizations and the officers at the front end of their career. So we run a 10-week academy when you get hired here at the City of Rochester. We're fortunate that we can do that. But as part of that we started a program called Beyond the Badge where we require our rookie officers to do one day of volunteer service either at the Boys and Girls Club or Minnesota Adult Team Challenge, doc's House or Salvation Army, battered Women's Shelter, and the officers then go to these non-profit organizations, volunteer for a day and then they come back and they present to the command staff. You know what they learned, what they learned about the entity, how that could help them in their career, and then they present to the command staff and then how it relates to our core values.

Jim Franklin: 14:56

But one particular officer that we sent to the Banner Women's Shelter and it was around Halloween time and one of the things he learned is he said you know there's a lot of women there that we talk to that are not going to go trick-or-treating with their kids because they're afraid to go out on the street, they're afraid that their assailant might be right around the corner and his idea was hey, chief, do you think it'd be okay if I grab a couple of cops and we take some women and their kids trick-or-treating this year? And I just beamed with joy and I said make it happen. I said that is a great idea and that's actually turned into a legacy program where we've done it for the last three years where we're like, hey, we're coming to take you guys out to trick-or-treat and come alongside you guys, and so taking a program that we had and then plugging a brand-new rookie cop and coming up with that idea, that's one of my favorite stories and success cases, I can tell.

Travis Yates: 15:53

Well, I don't want you to get too cocky about this, but if you have officers that are developing ideas and pushing forward, you've got your culture in a really, really good place. But you need to keep going right. I don't want you to lay on your laurels there, but that's really, I think, should be the goal of any chief. You know is to I want my department to almost be self-sufficient in the creativity and the new ideas, because that's only just going to make you such a better department. That's pretty cool, and the reason I actually came across you Chief was I saw a post on LinkedIn about Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and why this appealed to me was when I read this I was about a month into my own jiu-jitsu journey and I couldn't hardly walk and I was very sore and what you talked about was pretty incredible stuff and I just kind of wanted to just for you to lay out to our audience kind of how this came about and what you've seen from it and the decision you made going forward, because a lot of Chiefs wouldn't have made this decision A lot of.

Travis Yates: 16:54

For some reason, we have some nervousness about trying especially defensive tactics things. I mean, we can't get chiefs sometimes to do general defensive tactics, but this is kind of an outside-the-box training. I'm obviously a big fan of it. I do it myself and I see the value in law enforcement. In fact, I am a little bit upset that I waited 30 years to see the value in law enforcement, because it's really incredible.

Travis Yates: 17:18

And I came to it, chief, because I got into an altercation and I thought to myself this should not have taken that long, like this, should not have been this difficult and there must be a way out there. So I confided in a couple of friends of mine and they said you need to get to the jujitsu gym. I'm having trouble saying that today for some reason, but I said what? And they said, yeah, you got to get to the gym, come on out with us. And man, it was. It has been crazy, but I wanted to sort of get your mindset on it because this was one of the coolest stories I've seen in a long time. Just kind of tell us about it.

Jim Franklin: 17:49

Yeah, absolutely so.

Jim Franklin: 17:51

Um, prior to kind of us starting our program, we had we had about three officers Uh, we have 150 cops, uh, three officers, we have 150 cops, sworn officers.

Jim Franklin: 17:59

We had about three of them that did jiu-jitsu at a local gym, mario Roberto Jiu-Jitsu Academy, and a couple of them are use-of-force instructors. And I think one of the first things that stood out to me is, you know, watching them instruct as part of the use-of-force and them talking to the cops, specifically the new cops and the smaller-statured cops you know, talking about, hey, you know, don't worry about kind of getting. You know you got to have good officer safety, but you know, don't panic, relax, control yourself first and then the situation, and don't panic if you go to the ground, right, that's not the end, all be all here and there's ways to handle yourself on the ground. And so, kind of just looking at that, I did have a group of officers kind of approach me and say, hey, can we send a bunch more use of force instructors to the Gracie Survival Tactics School? And so I said, sure, go ahead and do that. And they came back and they said, chief, this is incredible.

Travis Yates: 18:54

And then and now, just for our audience, that's a week-long school, correct? They went to it, so you let them go to a week long school.

Jim Franklin: 19:00

Yep, it's a week long school. It's very law enforcement perspective specific. And you know how do you, how do you handle yourself, how do you do takedowns, do double takedowns, things like that, and it's really, you know, trying to use that, that minimal force necessary Right and also reducing any sort of harm to the officer initiating that force and the subject. You know, reducing all that. But yeah, just, it's all your Brazilian jiu-jitsu tactics really. And if you actually go back to like the BJJ historical roots, you know it's rooted in ground control tactics for self-defense. And so if you couple that with what is our desired outcome and any use of force in couple first encounter, rather, what's a desired outcome? It's compliance, right, but absent that absence, compliance, it's we're trying to reduce that risk, minimize that risk to harm to the subject or the officer. And so here's what I love about jiu-jitsu and here's what I think it teaches. And here's the takeaway is it enhances the officer's ability to remain calm, to operate effectively under stress and I'll come back to that in just a quick second because that's a key point. But it trains our officers how to use their body weight. You know, regardless if they weigh 150 pounds or 250 pounds, it gives them understanding of takedowns, control techniques, leverage and at the same time it gives them understanding on how to counter the same techniques that could possibly be used against them on the street.

Jim Franklin: 20:36

So let me go back to the stress part really quick, and here's one of the primary benefits as I look across the landscape of this country and examine bad police citizen encounters, you know there's a common thread that really begs several questions. One is why are cops so bad at dealing with that acute onset? You know that stress of the moment, dealing with that acute onset, you know that stress of the moment. And why are they so vulnerable to making mistakes in that moment? And I think it's because we're not training correctly. We're not training and that's one of the most important things that I like about jiu-jitsu, right is it directly reflects that high stress, that instant acute stress of the real world police encounters that occur, allowing the officers to train through that work, through that visceral stress response in a safe arena, which increases the likelihood of better police community interactions out on the street.

Travis Yates: 21:35

Yeah, I could not have said that any better. And going through this journey, I mean I walk into the gym with, you know, 30 years of experience, practically 20 of those in the street patrol doing these things, and 12 year olds are wearing me out Right and and, and it took a long time to figure out exactly what you said. Hey, you don't have to go all out, it's just about control, it's about breathing, and to me it has been a game changer and I immediately have thought to myself why is not every cop in America doing this right now? Use of force videos that either are legally bad or look bad, because we're sometimes equally concerned about that. This fixes it all, this changes it all. This is everything.

Travis Yates: 22:28

And the vast 99% of the public cannot win. If you have some experience in jiu-jitsu I mean there's going to be occasional if you want to run into somebody that may know something about it. But the study of this martial art and what it takes it takes to do it there's not a lot of bad guys studying this martial art. I mean most people. This is a very honorable type sport. Uh, I'm very, I've been very impressed in every gym I've walked into, and so the the chances of you being able to literally control your opponent with no injuries whatsoever are very, very good, and it's actually a lot better than what we've been taught in the academy, which is basically brute force, right and get them cuffed as quick as possible. When the jujitsu teaches you really the opposite, that quickness is not necessarily what's going to win the day.

Jim Franklin: 23:11

No, and I think it also teaches. You know it teaches what I call the quiet confidence. You know, the quiet confidence that cops need to effectively respond to subjects that are either actively resisting or passively resistance. And I want that confident officer on the street. I need them to be out there. I need them to be confident out there. Just the escape techniques alone are invaluable. You know, getting heaven forbid, you find yourself with somebody in mount position on top of you. You know that is bad. You know you've got to know how to escape from that.

Travis Yates: 23:42

As a white belt gym, I know very well that's very bad. It's very bad.

Jim Franklin: 23:46

Hey, you know I'll tell you this, travis. I took my blue belt test and I'm honored to have passed that, but I think all I learned was how bad I really am and how much further I got to go.

Travis Yates: 23:57

Well, listen, chief, you've left out the whole reason I brought you on here, which is and you haven't said this yet and you alluded to it when you gave your officers permission to do this, which I applaud you, because I've heard so many people around me go oh, you're going to get hurt, you can't do this, you can't do that. No, actually, it's really not the case.

Jim Franklin: 24:27

But anyway, you're more likely to get hurt on a on a treadmill more than as far as I'm concerned. But they said, chief, why don't you do it with us? And you said, sure, kind of talk to us about that. Yeah well, I've never been one necessarily to back down from a challenge, you know, challenge accepted. And so, uh, yeah, one of the officers did uh, come to me and say, hey, why don't you try this with us? In, uh, in, in, not the gracie school, but again, we've got a great partner with.

Jim Franklin: 24:43

I can't say enough about Mario Roberto Jesus Academy and the partnership there. I can tell you some stories, but it's a phenomenal partner. But they said, just do it with us. And kind of not really knowing what I was getting myself into, I showed up there and, and, uh, and we started training and, quite frankly, I just fell in love with it. I just fell in love with it. Uh, to ramping it up. To now I go two, three times a week if I can, and uh, you know coming home, like you said, with some bruises and some uh bumps, but that's fine. My wife thinks I'm a little crazy, but uh, my only regret is that I didn't start this 20 years ago.

Travis Yates: 25:18

Yeah, yeah, same here, same here.

Jim Franklin: 25:21

But but I will tell you this, we've had a few spinoffs, so we got about 17 to 19 cops consistently training in in in jujitsu. Right now We've done a couple of sessions, kind of one day or half day sessions, to try to generate some additional interest within the organization. And I'll tell you, it wasn't my intent to get kind of quote-unquote street cred, if you will, but I've gotten a lot of credit from the cops and had several of them come to me and go. I think it's pretty cool you're in this room and I'm like, well, I'm just in this room with you, you know, just trying to get better.

Travis Yates: 25:58

Well, I was actually going to say that. Yeah, I was actually going to say that, as is. I knew that wasn't the intent and it wasn't my intent either. My intent was not to get twisted around by you know 120 pound girl the next time I ran across this person, uh, but three or four weeks in, I mean, you know, I kind of saw. I mean of course I'm at a in, know, I kind of saw. I mean, of course I'm at a in a large metropolitan area and so I don't know every single police officer in the area.

Travis Yates: 26:21

But I'm getting a few stares, you know, and of course I'm a higher rank because we have this silly notion, law enforcement, that it's us versus them, which is ridiculous, uh, but uh, and that's why, when people call me by my rank, I'll say you can really call me by my first name. Let's just drop this nonsense, because one day I'm going to be my first name. I'm not going to be here forever. And they still call me by the rank, but you know how that goes. And um, but finally this kid comes up to me and he's calling him a kid because he's a kid compared to my age, and he goes uh, major, can I ask you a question.

Travis Yates: 26:49

I said sure he goes, why are you here? Probably the same reason you're here. No, really really, why are you here? And I reason you're here. No, really really, why are you here? And so it's not that I've got a lot of street cred, but I would say for you, chief, that that's got to matter, man, that you've done what probably a lot of chiefs wouldn't do, and it's not blaming them, it's just, you know, at this point in someone's career, by the time you're a police chief, you're not exactly the age to be rolling around on the ground with young kids, right, and so it's not something maybe you would do. But you're right, I hear that all the time, and I've actually had people come to me on the backside saying because I'm terrible at it, don't get me wrong, I'm not, there's no way I'm bragging ever about this stuff, but just the point of being there and suffering with them, right, I think, says a lot to your troops a lot to your troops, and I guess you probably had a lot of those comments as well.

Jim Franklin: 27:42

Yeah, absolutely yeah. Again, it's a point of conversation as we walk throughout the police department. It's fun to talk about with the cops, it gives me that connection with them and, more importantly, though I think this just kind of like what you alluded to. It took me as silly as it sounds, because we've been doing it since we were little kids or babies really, but it took me a year to learn how to breathe, and I'm still working right right, I'm still, and it sounds silly, but unless you do jiu-jitsu, you don't really understand.

Jim Franklin: 28:09

That is when you're, um, when you're rolling with somebody we do, um, our class format, which I really like, is, you know, they teach a different moves and then at the end of the class it's six minutes.

Jim Franklin: 28:20

It's six minutes of rolling, uh and go time and uh, you're, you're rolling with another person and, uh, you got to learn how to breathe, you got to learn how to kind of pace yourself, how to use your body weight as leverage, and I've, I've rolled against some people and, like, I know I'm stronger than you, and uh, I tell you what they've, uh, they've folded up my gi with me in it and uh, and it's a, it's a humbling experience taught me to say, you know what, you can't underestimate anybody. Uh, it's, it's made me a better cop, um, you know, um, in a better person of having situational awareness and kind of understanding out there. I'll tell you what it's getting really, really popular out there, and so we're going to be coming into contact with people that have this mixed martial arts training. I think we've got to match. We have got to match that kind of trend line here.

Travis Yates: 29:11

Yeah, I think it's incredible stuff and you mentioned something that is really important, I think, for leaders, and that's why leaders should consider this. Maybe, if it's not jiu-jitsu, maybe it's CrossFit or something very, very difficult. It could be playing guitar, which I've also discovered is very, very difficult, which, as you mentioned, it humbles you. It humbles you. I have to sometimes force myself to go because I'm having a pretty good day, had a few wins at work, a few things went my way. Oh, now I'm going to walk into the gym and feel like a complete fool, but I personally need that. I think all leaders need that, because I think, if we're not careful, we're in this bubble, chief, where we think you know, because when you become a chief, it's hard to get people to be honest with you all of a sudden, right. And I think we need that honesty. And also, I think everything you said is important. In fact, you mentioned the gym. That's helped you out.

Travis Yates: 30:02

I'll mention my gym, triton Gym. Every law enforcement officer in the area gets to go for free through Bluebell, which for me will be 12 or 14 years for free, right. So, yeah, I walk in there and this thing is hundreds of dollars a month. And if you're a police officer, he lets you walk in there for free. Very, very good stuff. Great, great environment. And I'm, you know to walk in this room like you, chief, and I'm sitting here with black belts and purple belts and brown belts, dudes and gals that can just mix it up, and they treat you as equals. It's a great environment. I would say, if you're listening to this and you have a say, maybe you don't have a gym near you, well, go to the Gracie Academy. That's just one example, and I think I paid for it because I needed a little supplemental. I think it's maybe $100 a year and literally online with a few friends, you could walk through and learn a lot of this stuff. I don't think it's going to be as valuable as in a gym setting, but you need to expose your officers to this because if you don't, and they get involved in some use of force incident, be careful with bad-mouthing too much if you haven't given them the resources.

Travis Yates: 31:11

Now, chief, I know there in Minnesota, your state has banned LVNR and I personally believe it's very effective. A lot of states, a lot of departments have done this. They've changed it in the use of force continuum as well, based on events in the last couple of years when LVNR really didn't have anything to do with it, but it's still based on these events and some organizations and law enforcement that have recommended this. Now that is part. This is part of jujitsu. You know, I think they call it choking people out. They're not. It's not exactly chokeholds, but it is. It is limiting the oxygen through those side pressures on the neck, and this happens in jujitsu gyms all day, every day across the country. We're not seeing people being injured by this. But are you concerned, when your officers are doing this training, chief, that this would somehow come up on the job and violate some sort of policy or law?

Jim Franklin: 32:03

Yeah, that's a great question, Travis, and you would think that, but I would argue and I would put this out there. It's actually the direct opposite for me, just seeing the firsthand benefits of what Brazilian jiu-jitsu teaches, that remaining calm, you know, calming yourself, and then kind of entering into that arena of conflict, and I've got more confidence in well, first of all, I have a tremendous amount of confidence in all my officers, but I got more confidence in the officers that are training in BJJ that they know where the lines are, that they're not going to cross the lines, than I do the officers that don't, necessarily, and so I think, because of the training that they have and OK, so what are we talking about here? We're talking about human performance under stress. And we're talking about human performance under stress with another human being All right, invol, involved in a confrontation out on the street and there's an unlimited number of actions that can be taken by that other individual and the officer has to respond to that. This training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu really helps set that officer up for success in just the breathing, the calmness, the body leverage right.

Jim Franklin: 33:23

It's that quiet confidence for the officers, setting them up for success, which I really think is my job as the chief is to give them the best tools, tactics, training, supervision, all that stuff on the street to set them up for success.

Jim Franklin: 33:36

And here's I've said this, I've said this in a couple different community meetings and it's so true that, you know, no police chief, no sheriff can stand before their community members and promise that they'll never have a bad, you know, police community interaction. But what I stand before my community and say is I'm the police chief that's doing everything that I possibly can to, you know, reduce any sort of negative interaction with it and eliminate those. I'm doing everything that I can setting my cops up for success out on the street, giving them that tools of training, the tactics to really reduce the likelihood of something bad happening out there. And the reason I can't make that promise is because we deal with human beings in a very fluid, dynamic environment, oftentimes with people under the influence of drug and alcohol that don't want to do what you need them to do for their safety and the rest of the community's safety.

Travis Yates: 34:46

And I can't think of a more complex difficult profession in America right now than American policing. Completely agree, chief Jim Franklin, you're not only leading from the front. I think this is an example for all chiefs to follow. I can't thank you enough for being here, for what you're doing for your community and for your agency and for your officers. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Jim Franklin: 35:01

Travis, my absolute pleasure. Thank you, sir, and again, keep going. You're going to make Blue Bell before you know it.

Travis Yates: 35:06

Yeah, I'll talk to you when I'm 70. And for those of you listening, remember lead on and stay courageous.

Intro/Outro: 35:14

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