Let’s Talk CJ

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Intro: Welcome to the Let’s Talk Government Podcast that is provided for you by the Department of Government at Minnesota State University, Mankato located in Minnesota in the United States. I am your host Dr. Pat Nelson the chairperson of the Government Department. I want to thank you for joining us as we explore different topics about government. Some may be surprising to you and some may not, so please enjoy.

Dr. Nelson: Welcome to episode 10 of the Let's Talk Government podcast. Today, we are going to talk about qualified immunity and the importance of supervision in law enforcement. I'm joined by three faculty members from the Minnesota state university Mankato law enforcement program. And most importantly, they've all had a variety of professional experience, including supervision as law enforcement officers in law enforcement agencies. You may recognize them from our very first podcast about defund. The police abolish the police in policing today. Associate professor Dr. Carl Lafata has been a proud member of the program for six years and has professional experience including supervision with both the Michigan state police and local agencies in California assistant professor Dr. Thor Dahle has been a member of the program for five years and has professional experience again, including supervision with the Fargo police department in North Dakota, and also served as a chief with a local agency in Washington state assistant professor, Dr. John Reed is in his second year with the program and has professional experience including supervision with the Louisville Metro police, and also served as a chief in another agency in Kentucky. So thank you for joining me today. Let's start with the first part of our talk, talking about a term that we've heard a lot in the media who wants to start with telling me what does qualified immunity and what does it mean in law enforcement?
Dr. Carl Lafata: Uh, well, qualified immunity quite simply means that an officer can conduct their, um, duties. They can do their job without fear of lawsuit. So long as they're civil liability so long as they are within the limits of the law. So they're not violating the law, uh, and they are, um, not plainly incompetent as the Supreme court stated. And this has its roots in the civil rights act of 1871, also known as the KU Klux Klan act. And that's actually the law that gave Americans the right to Sue public officials who violate their legal rights.
Dr. Nelson: So what role does an agency play in ensuring that an officer does get qualified immunity? Um, when they're taking action on a call? John or Thor, would you like to jump in there? What's what, what's the role of the agency?
Dr. John Reed: Well, I think the role of the agency is actually to provide all of the officers and all the employees who work for the organization, uh, the knowledge and the, to, to deal with those particular issues that could come up while it's almost impossible to determine every issue that will come up, uh, clearly established law, uh, or, uh, constitutional provisions, I guess, such as, just as an example, fourth amendment, uh, those need to be, uh, trained, uh, and people need to be aware of that from a supervisory position to be able to supervise officers on, on those types of things.
Dr. Nelson: So Thor, I'm gonna have to kind of turn to you. So if we don't have the ability to Sue an officer civilly, what is still available to make sure that an officer is not doing things wrong, is there any other punishment? Is there anything else that can happen?
Dr. Thor Dahle: Yeah, I mean, in addition to the agency itself being sued and having to pay for a lawsuit and African to be held criminally responsible for their actions, they can be, they can suffer personal personnel actions against them from the agency, which could be suspension, reprimand, termination. So there's still a number of methods of holding an officer accountable outside of qualified immunity.
Dr. Nelson: So that's gonna kind of bring us into our discussion about the importance of supervision in law enforcement. We know law enforcement is a profession where there's a lot of autonomy. We have that law enforcement officers have discretion to make their own decisions. So why is supervision important? Why do we worry about if law enforcement has good supervision? Who wants to start there? Yeah, exactly. Go ahead, Carl.
Dr. Carl Lafata: Okay. So I think the reason supervision is important is that peace officers have an enormous amount of discretion in our society. They have the power to deprive people of their freedoms. They have the power to circumvent due process and take, uh, life, uh, when they believe what the person is doing is so egregious, it must be immediately stopped. And so you're sending out, uh, in many cases, young 20 somethings with, you know, uh, weeks of training. And you're saying basically apply the law in a fair and balanced manner and without supervision, without guidance, without the ability to ensure that, uh, they're learning the lessons that we're going to make them an effective peace officer without holding them accountable when they step out of bounds even a little bit, um, you're really not upholding the social contract that we have with society that basically says, we're loaning you this power and authority, and we're doing it under the assumption that it will be used reasonably and to learn the art of the job in practice is not only, uh, the result of experience, but also proper supervision that shows the officer, uh, what those parameters are generally law and policy and how to operate within the law and policy in a manner that is again in accordance with the expectation of the public at a peace officer, perform their duties in a firm fair and consistent manner.

Dr. Nelson: John, what do you say?

Dr. John Reed: One of the things I'm going to take it a little bit earlier, uh, than Dr. Lafata and, uh, earlier on talking about before that process is one of the things that we talk about all the time is critical thinking. And a lot of the times people that are hard on the police department, uh, have not made, uh, critical decisions, uh, or have a way of making those and may not be knowledgeable about that. One of the things that we usually try to do is as we here in the university, talk about it is, uh, teach critical thinking. And I think in society, we're always concerned about making the right decision and we put less emphasis on making it the right way. And one of the things that we need to concentrate or we need supervision for is, and we train in policing is how do you go about making those decisions? And what are the components that you use in almost every decision you make and what is the order of those different components or stages. And I think that's one reason for supervision to help teach, to help mentor officers, uh, that they learn those types of things and then get into what Dr Lafata had talked about,

Dr. Nelson: Thor, what do you think?

Dr. Thor Dahle: Oh, I think that, you know, this is like, uh, Dr. With described, this is one of the most unique professions that exists in our country, which is that people given that power to use force against another person deprive them of their basic rights, at least for a period of time, lock them up, you know, put handcuffs on him, take him to jail and ultimately potentially use deadly force against them. And on top of that, it's done in an environment where you're frequently by yourself, or maybe one or two people are present. So supervision. I think the preparation like, uh, Dr. Reed was talking about teaching critical thinking skills, preparing them to make difficult decisions is really important, but also because of that, that supervision part being so important is those supervisors, especially first-line supervisors need to be out there on the road, leading by example, being present at as many calls as they possibly can eat, knowing that they can't be there all the time, but to help ensure accountability, to help officers make difficult decisions and enter to recognize they have that support, that supervision behind them. That's not there as a gotcha, but somebody that's going to support them in making those tough decisions.

Dr. Carl Lafata: You know, and one of the things that I had mentioned when I was a supervisor and I spent most of my time, um, as a supervisor on the road, uh, on nights, and I was offered opportunities to promote, to headquarters in element. And I chose not to just because I didn't want to be a cubicle cop. Um, but the point is, is that every shift change when we had a new, uh, roster, sometimes every year, every six months, I would tell my officers, I said, look, I'm here to facilitate your success. Um, the policies, the laws, they are, what they are. Those are the parameters within which I expect you to work. If I cannot trust you to make good decisions, then you shouldn't be here. Uh, and so basically when I would show up on a call, it would be to help. It would be to offer guidance. It would be to teach. Um, but if I couldn't expect them to make those good decisions after they've had some time on the road, then somebody didn't do their job in terms of preparing them. And so as a supervisor, it's my job to not only again, facilitate coach educate, but also take the, uh, remedial action necessary to either retrain the individual or take the steps necessary to, uh, have them leave the job. And that's something that's very difficult, uh, in terms of the, uh, administrative integrity, because so many supervisors, uh, at whatever level Sergeant, Lieutenant, and on up, don't have the administrative courage to write a negative performance evaluation, to take the action necessary to, uh, either retrain or remove a, a poorly functioning or poorly performing officer. And the problems perpetuate to the point where sadly, sometimes these officers make really poor decisions and end in someone's life being ended or, or severely injured. And then people look, why didn't you do something sooner?

Dr. Thor Dahle: I think that fear of account of holding people accountable is, is UN it's unfounded in a lot of ways, I think, and it's hard to learn, especially as a new supervisor, as a new Sergeant, that that's maybe the most important part of your job, because the reality is other officers like in any workplace, they want their coworkers held accountable for their actions. They want to know what the parameters are of their responsibilities. They want to know what they're supposed to do and clearly understand their job. But they also want to know that if I do my job, that's important. And also if other people don't, if they don't do their job adequately, if they don't have the adequate training or ability that something will happen to them because it's too critical, these positions are too important with too much power to have people that are working in them, that don't, uh, have that feeling of accountability and who have not been held accountable.

Dr. John Reed: And I think one of those things, you kind of give the other side of this too, especially today, we've been, as police asked the document more and more and more, we've tried to push decision-making levels, uh, to the, the lowest in the organization, which would be sergeants and lieutenants and officers. Uh, but what you hear from a lot of the first-line supervision today is that they have so much paperwork to do, uh, that it's hard for them to get on the street as described by Dr. Lovato and Dr. Dali. Um, and that's one thing as an administrator, you're constantly fighting, trying to get those folks out on the street where they can have hands-on supervision rather than, uh, be in the cubicle, just pushing a pen and filling out reports, uh, for the administrators.

Dr. Nelson: Well, and then you also have issues of span of control as well. Cause you could have a large geographic area to cover or a large number of officers or P or squads on the street. And you may have one supervisor for anywhere from 12 to 25 individuals, depending on what's going on. So let's talk about some challenges you guys have mentioned, you know, mentoring and teaching. And we really think about that for your newer officers. What are some challenges of supervising older officers, ones that have 10, 15, 20 years on, um, what kind of challenges do you see there and why is it still important that they have good supervision?

Dr. Carl Lafata: A lot of times with the youth, uh, the older officers, they may have come from an environment where they've never been properly supervised. They just had somebody who was essentially, you know, letting them get away with whatever they want. And they were the defacto shift supervisor because they were the senior officer. Um, I remember a time where I had a, a senior trooper when I transferred posts and he was on my shift and reviewing his investigative reports and his writing was atrocious and I pulled a few of them out and I sat him down and I said, well, look, we need to talk about your report writing. And the first thing out of his mouth was I had been doing this for 30 years. And I said, well, you must have been doing it right, because then I showed him different parts of his report. I said, look, you can't end a sentence with ant and you didn't proofread this. You didn't type check out the typos here. And he got all offended and shift. He switched shifts is what he did to a retired on duty supervisor that would just let them keep getting away with whatever. Um, and so when we talk about lack of accountability, a lot of times, again, it comes down to the lack of administrative courage to confront underperforming officers or lazy officers. And the problem is, is if you have inconsistent supervision across shifts, then you don't have one department vision was, should come from the chief, get transferred down through to the line officers through the supervisors. You don't have consistency. And if you don't have that consistency, then that is right for officers taking extreme actions, uh, because they know they can get away with it. And whether that's stealing something or use of force or whatever it is, there's a lack of control there because of a lack of supervision. Oftentimes it's spearheaded by the officers that have been around a while that have never been held accountable for their actions.

Dr. Thor Dahle: I think sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that, uh, more senior officers don't want that supervision. And there, while there may be some that don't, I was just recently talking with a couple other people that are currently in police leadership positions and, and they were talking about how, when they got that first promotion, it was a little bit, uh, took them by surprise that they had some senior officers coming to them and ask questions about how to do certain things. I had the same, exact same experience. I remember getting promoted to Sergeant and having officers who had as much experience as I did, or were more senior to me coming to me and asking me questions about how they should do something. And all they really wanted was somebody that just to confirm to them that they were doing the right thing. And that, to me, that was, uh, was eyeopening. I had just assumed those senior officers knew how to handle all these situations and they don't, they can be as uncomfortable and, and lack that competence in certain situations, just like everybody else, even young officers.

Dr. Carl Lafata: Well, and the laws change technology changes. I mean, think about computer crimes versus today versus 20 years ago, the internet today versus even 20 years ago, um, you know, a truly professional officer any age or at any time in their career knows that the job requires constant learning. And if they're truly professional, like I said, they would want to bounce, uh, ideas, concerns, questions, uh, against their supervisor because the supervisor should have at least, uh, you know, some of the more technical information that maybe they don't have the time to look up. One of the things that I found, uh, as a supervisor was that the most common question I was asked was, Hey Sarge, can I do this? You know, can I, should I, could I, and you know, you have to have the answer.

Dr. John Reed: Well, I think that, um, I think that a lot of times with younger supervisors, uh, they have a misconception that seniority means knowledge. And it doesn't always mean that they're, there's, uh, lucked out turtle. Pata said there's a lot of times where you have, uh, senior officers who have been around for a long time, that, that haven't been supervised properly before and may not be doing the exactly what they should be doing. And I think working with those senior officers while working with a senior officer and working with a younger officer are going to be different, how you handle each one of those people, uh, you still work with those folks and actively supervise them. Um, I did hear a story the other day that, uh, I think is really appropriate for our conversation today is there was a couple of officers. One was an officer. One was a, a Sergeant that, that went on a run. This was out of state. I was talking to chief and the Sergeant told them, um, something went wrong at the, at the scene. And there were some complaints and it was being investigated. And the Sergeant so told the chief that they were there in a support role, uh, to try to, I guess, uh, mitigate their accountability for what had occurred. And, uh, I told this chief, I said, well, as far as I'm concerned, a Sergeant may be in a support role for a duty of a police officer, but a Sergeant is never in a support role in a supervisory position. They need to actively be supervising all the time and

Dr. Carl Lafata: Be able to jump in when necessary.

Dr. John Reed: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Carl Lafata: You know, I remember having, uh, uh, a couple of officers complained to me about one of the other supervisors in what he would do is he would show up on scene and as opposed to kind of hanging back and seeing what, or if he's needed, he would, you do this and you do that. And you put this in your report and you do that in your report. And they basically told him, look, if you want to direct the investigation, then you take primary and we'll assist you. And so the art of being a supervisor is not just pinning on the stripes and barking orders, but the art of being a supervisor, a professional supervisor is really knowing what kind of a touch each individual officer needs, developing junior and senior officers in a way that it sh it basically makes them a more well-rounded officer. You're basically building upon their weaknesses. You're, you're allowing them to work towards their strengths. It really truly is an educator's job. Just like in the military, your job as a NCO, a non-commissioned officer is to be a trainer, a mentor to develop your people. Um, and you know, how many officers in law enforcement that get to supervisory roles truly believe that? Sure. Many, but there are also some that just don't.

Dr. Thor Dahle: I think that role model element is, is really important. And, and Dr. [inaudible] mentioned it earlier about needing to have the answers when you, when people ask you questions. But I think the most important part that I learned early on as a supervisor was what I've learned from previous supervisors, who never said, I don't know. And there is a, uh, power of being able to say, I don't know, but I'll find the answer for you to pass on your officers, that you somehow got some promotion and now, you know, everything is unrealistic. So you have to reflect that. It's okay to say, I don't know. And then secondarily to acknowledge making mistakes, because you're going to have to, you know, officer's going to make mistakes. So you, as a chief, have to be able to understand that certain times it's just a, maybe it needs to be addressed by, you know, a change of policy or training, but the reality is everyone's going to make mistakes. And if you, as a supervisor will never acknowledge yours. If you'll never say, I don't know, you, you pass on to your, the people that are working for and with you that they shouldn't do that either. But somehow it's showing weakness to say, I don't know, or to acknowledge that you made a mistake and maybe even in some circumstances, apologize for what you said or did that might've been inappropriate because of a mistake you made.

Dr. Carl Lafata: Well, one of the things that, sorry, I was going to say one of the things that I always, always, always told, uh, told my officers was that if you think I'm screwing something up, if you think I'm not doing the right thing, you need to tell me, and you're never going to get in trouble for it. You're never going to, I'm never going to be offended. I would much rather you tell me, uh, that I'm not doing the right thing. You don't think that I'm doing something appropriate before I do it. Right. So it's just like, you know, if you see my fly down on a traffic, stop telling me that I'd much rather know it ahead of time beforehand. Um, by the way that was, that is a true story.

Dr. Nelson: Well, since we've got the true story there, okay. Before we kind of move on to something more serious, again, I know that in law enforcement, especially we learn from everybody else around us. And before you became a supervisor, what is one thing you saw a supervisor do that you swore you would never do yourself as a supervisor while I have you think about that? Um, one of them that I saw before I got promoted to Sergeant is, uh, one of my sergeants lost his temper and he pointed to the stripes on his arm and said, do you see these straights? I can do what I want because I have those stripes. And I swore to God, I would never point to that authority. It's just being a Sergeant to do something just because I was a Sergeant. So, so let's hear it. What did you learn from a supervisor you start you at never do as a supervisor yourself. I know you got stories or FTL. You can do that to me.

Dr. Carl Lafata: Well, I worked midnights for the majority of my career and, um, I never, ever, ever wanted to be the Sergeant who was asleep, uh, when the code three, uh, assist came in or at all. But I mean, there was one that I remember quite, we were in the middle of some things and, uh, you know, we called for assistance and that supervisor was asleep. And we found out after the fact, and of course, nothing really happened to that individual, but yeah, asleep,

Dr. Thor Dahle: Uh, I, the one that comes to mind to me and I had a Sergeant who was a very nice guy. We also had a very difficult time holding people accountable, but he routinely said, well, he would do things on calls that we knew you shouldn't do that frequently were too risky and violated tenants of officer safety and his the message he would say afterwards would be do, as I say, not as I do. And I, I thought that is a really terrible message to send to a bunch of young officers. And w and that group that I was with at that time was a bunch of officers looking for role models. And while he was a very nice guy, he wasn't a very good role model. As a supervisor.

Dr. John Reed: Mine was, uh, uh, Lieutenant came in roll call and said, uh, y'all get out here and work if you, if you're right, I'm behind you a hundred percent. And if you're wrong, you're on your own. And I thought, you know, if I'm right, I really don't need anybody behind me, a hundred percent. Uh it's it's when you make a mistake, uh, you need to be mentored and taught and helped, and those types of things, and I'm not talking about agregious mistakes, but, um, I, I just thought everybody were in a one thing. I think that's really unusual about policing is we're in a humanistic business, but perfection is expected. And, uh, it's hard to achieve perfection. I used to tell my folks were w w you know, we're shooting for excellence every time, uh, but we're gonna make mistakes. And, and we're gonna learn from those mistakes. And I think, uh, that's important. And I wish that Lieutenant would have said it, but at least I learned something from him. Uh, even if it was the way not to do something.

Dr. Nelson: Okay. Well, we're going to kind of bring us back to one thought here. Oh, Carl, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Dr. Carl Lafata: Yeah, no, I was just going to mention just real quick. I sent Thor the other day, uh, a, uh, article from, uh, California state university, San Bernardino, where on surveillance camera, a Sergeant was briefing, uh, there off his officers about enforcing the mass mandate. They got into a bit of a heated discussion and the Sergeant pulled a gun on his officer. So that's now under investigation. It is caught on camera, right?

Dr. Thor Dahle: That'd be one of the worst I've seen.

Dr. Nelson: Definitely. Definitely. All right. So let's, let's think I'm going to ask each of them to you for some closing thoughts here, but obviously the importance of supervision. In fact, you can have an officer who's covered by qualified immunity, but if you have a supervisor that did not provide supervision, they could be sued as part of the lawsuit, but the importance of supervision, what, what does it needs to happen within law enforcement agencies to ensure officers are getting the supervision they need and what can be done at higher levels of supervision to ensure those first-line supervisors are getting the support that they need. So I know I've got two former chiefs here and I've got, um, we've all had supervisory experience. What can we do to work on that in law enforcement agencies?

Dr. Thor Dahle: Like Carl's kind of touched on this, but that it starts at the chief level, setting the expectations down through the organization. You have to create a culture of accountability and an expectation for it, for each supervisor to hold those people accountable. And if they don't do that, then there's a break in the link that there's a, the chain is broken. And, and so it's, it's not just SA you know, coming in one day and saying, these are the expectations it's going to the different work groups it's being out there. It's engaging in communication with all levels of your organization, depending on the size. It may be unrealistic for you to know everybody or talk to every single person, but they'll know if you were there. I mean, the fact that a chief comes out and works on a night shift, or is out on the road at, with the officers from time to time, it sets, uh, an ex you know, uh, a culture that says I'm the same. You as a leader are the same as everybody else. Yes. You've been given some additional responsibility, but at the heart, you're still that line level law enforcement officer that has, that could do all those same things. And, and so, to me, it's a cultural thing. If you don't set that culture within the organization, your supervisors don't feel supported. They aren't going to hold their officers accountable because you're taking a chance when you do that. If, if you hold someone accountable and your superiors don't support you on that, the lesson is, I'm not doing that again, because it's painful. It's not easy. Like Dr. [inaudible] mentioned at the beginning, you have to confront someone and tell them something. They probably don't want to hear it. Nobody enjoys doing that. John, I'm going to turn to you next, because you worked in a very large agency, Louisville. Metro is a large agency.

Dr. John Reed: Yeah. I th I think there are a number of things. I think, first of all, probably looking, um, leadership was mentioned several times, and I think leadership is important, but I think, uh, for some reason, traditionally law enforcement people look for leadership toward the higher levels of the organization. I think it's important to train and mentor officers in leadership, uh, to bring them forth. And I th otherwise you have incidents where you have officers who will not come forward. Uh, if they see wrongdoing, uh, you want everybody to be a leader out there. I think as an administrator, you have to have clear policies and clear rules, uh, policies that are not ambiguous, that people understand the difference between a policy and a rule. And I have found that, uh, there are multitudes of people out here in policing who don't understand the difference in which you can work, uh, like policies. You can work within guidelines or, um, levels of discretion where so was in rules are strictly either prohibited or required. Uh, I think good training is important. I think there has to be on the chief's level, a commitment to training. Uh, and by that I'm saying usually if their budget cuts or something of that nature trainings, the first thing to go, and you get out what you put into those particular things. I can't speak for exactly today. And I know each department's a little bit different. Uh, but when I left a couple of years ago, on average, each officer went through three to four weeks of training a year and people was like, Oh, wow, that's a lot. But it really isn't, uh, when you come down to those things, uh, I think it's very, very important. Um, I, I think you have to set the culture is Dr. Dahle said about, uh, allowing mistakes and, uh, allow decisions to be made, do it by mentoring and guidance, but you got to allow mistakes and turn those into positive experiences. And here, again, I'm not talking about egregious acts, uh, not, not the mistakes of the heart, but a mistake of the head that you need to work with folks and make that positive train experience, uh, where they can learn and pass that on to other folks

Dr. Nelson: Carl Lafata, let's hear your ideas, take a more macro approach.

Dr. Carl Lafata: Um, there's some research that I'm doing in a kind of unrelated to this, but there's an article from July 20, 20 star Tribune, and, uh, Mr. Brian Peters, who's the executive director of the Minnesota police and peace officers association, uh, was quoted saying, uh, we're trying to fix the rank and file cop, but nobody's focusing on the leadership at some of these departments. And that really speaks volumes. You know, people look at, you know, when an officer makes a mistake or uses force inappropriate, Oh, the officer's bad. The officer's this the officer's that, but what about the culture at all levels of supervision that allowed this to happen? And so to have a standard or to improve a standard, rather you first have to have a standard, and I'm going to pick on Minnesota here, because there is no standard whatsoever for law enforcement supervisors. And so the national, the national stat on officers with military experiences about 19%. So these are people that you would assume, understand, chain of command, understand, and I'm not talking about, you know, marching, lockstep and things of that nature, but they understand leadership. They understand the importance of good leadership. You've either seen it. We've been in those positions here. You know, you go through your training and post certifies you, and you're off on your own. Whereas, and I'll use California as an example, first time, you're a first-line supervisor. That includes FTO because you're responsible for another officer. You have to go within 12 months to an 80 hour course supervisor course, when you become a watch commander or Lieutenant within 12 months, you have to go to a three week, 104 hour course. And then once you become a chief or command officer, again, you are mandated to go to another two week course that is required by post. Otherwise your license, your gets suspended because they understand the importance. We don't have that here. The closest we have is the Michigan, or I'm sorry, the Minnesota chiefs of police has a leadership Academy. That is a three-and-a-half day leadership Academy. When you're taking a 20 something year old officer with no supervision experience, you know, maybe no supervisory experience outside of law enforcement. And you throw them into that position with me, be kind of OJT. Let's see how it goes. Don't be surprised when maybe they're not the most astute supervisor, because if they don't have that, that good mentoring, they don't have maybe a natural affinity for the position they're going to learn by making mistakes. And the problem is, is when a peace officer and a supervisor makes mistakes, it's the public that usually suffers, and we are not upholding our commitment to that public by putting under-trained people out on the street. And so what we need to do in Minnesota and elsewhere across the country is have States mandate appropriate training for supervisors. If we expect to fix the problems at the line officer level.

Dr. Nelson: And I just want to clarify OJT means on the job training for anybody that might not have understood that acronym. So I'm going to wrap this up. And I actually might, one of my ideas kind of dovetails on what Carl was talking about is we also need to make sure law enforcement agencies encourage a culture that if somebody is not a supervisor, so they get promoted to Sergeant and maybe they try to be a Sergeant, but not everybody can be a leader and not everybody can be a supervisor that there has to be alternatives available for those people to still move throughout their department, without being punished for not being a very good leader or supervisor. We see that with FTOs, which has field training officers as well. You think somebody might be a good field training officer, but they, they aren't, they just don't have that, uh, the capability or ability to teach another person. But instead of punishing officers who are not able to fulfill those roles, we need to find alternatives for them as well. Because then we may have those that are retired on duty or not comfortable holding other people accountable, give them other opportunities to still contribute to their departments. So well, gentlemen, I'm sure I'm going to bring you back at least once, if not twice in the spring on different topics, but I thank you for your time. And I think the listeners for joining us again, to talk about qualified immunity and the importance of law enforcement, leadership and supervision.

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