In episode 47 of Everything is Up, Tammera Hollerich welcomes Jimmy Johnson, an Assistant Chief at The Amarillo Police Department, as he shares his inspiring career path from starting as a jailer to becoming an assistant chief in the police department. They highlight the importance of human interaction, the impact of societal changes on policing, and the significance of finding common ground in a divided world.
Tune in to learn about the powerful impact of following your calling and the determination it takes to pursue a career in public service.
TIMESTAMPS
[00:01:19] Career Path Discovery.
[00:06:36] Impact of a Handwritten Letter.
[00:11:15] The Challenges of Policing.
[00:16:03] Life-Saving Award for Gunfight.
[00:20:57] Lifelong Learning and Education.
[00:23:19] Education and Career Paths.
[00:29:02] The Importance of Human Interaction.
[00:32:38] Communication and Societal Issues.
[00:38:12] Politicalization of COVID.
[00:40:04] The Impact of Information Overload.
[00:45:39] Human Nature and Atrocities.
[00:50:26] Raising Daughters vs. Sons.
[00:52:24] Family and Work-Life Balance.
[00:58:14] Value Your People.
[01:01:25] Serving Others for Success.
[01:03:45] Serving Everybody as Police Officers.
In this episode, Tammera Hollerich and Jimmy Johnson emphasize the pivotal role of human interaction and communication in tackling societal challenges and nurturing mutual understanding. By prioritizing respectful dialogue, empathy, and finding common ground, individuals can work together to create a more harmonious and inclusive society.
Additionally, Tammera and Jimmy highlight the significance of focusing on commonalities to foster unity and empathy in society. Personal experiences shared by the guest highlighted the need for understanding and connection among individuals, despite diverse perspectives and backgrounds.
QUOTES
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Tammera Hollerich
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TammeraHollerich
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammerahollerich/
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Jimmy Johnson
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmy-johnson-97976835/
WEBSITES
Everything Is Up: https://everything-is-up.simplecast.com/
Tammera Hollerich: https://tammerahollerich.com/
Welcome to Everything Is Up, a podcast about the real life stories of people who have created extraordinary levels of success. These are conversations with people who are constantly striving to take things to the next level. And now here's your host.
Everything is up with Tamara. Joining me today is Assistant Chief Jimmy Johnson from the Amarillo Police Department. Welcome, Chief Johnson. How are you today?
I'm great, and thank you for having me here.
Oh, my goodness. Well, I am honored to have such a distinguished member of the Amarillo community joining me. I was doing research, obviously, and we had asked you some questions before. And one of the things that we dug up, obviously, is basically your career with the Amarillo Police Department or in that realm. So I see that you started as a jailer way back in 1980. What got you into being a jailer and I can only imagine the things that you have seen in being a jailer, but how did you end up going down this particular career path? Did you always know this is what you wanted to do?
I did, and we could ask that question a lot, you know, when we decide we want to be police officer or whatever. And for me, I have one memory when I was in the eighth grade, there was a career fair at our school in eighth grade. And I remember that day and I remember talking to a commercial airline pilot. He worked for one of the big airlines, American Airlines or somebody. And I remember thinking that day that that might be kind of a cool job to be as a commercial airline pilot. And I tell you that memory, because that is the only memory before that day and after that day that I had a memory of being anything other than a police officer. Everything before that day and everything after that day, I wanted to be a police officer. And I didn't realize until years later that that's a calling. When people talk about that being your calling, And you have to be 21 to be a police officer. So I was not 21 when I graduated high school. I was 17 years old. And so I kind of started going to Amarillo College, our junior college here in town. Just really, I was just killing time until I was old enough to be a police officer. During those classes at Amarillo College, they offered the criminal justice students a jailer certification over their spring break. Back then, it was only one week long to get certified to be a jailer. And they let us attend for free, but we had to do it over our spring break. So I gave up my spring break that year, got a jailer certification, and I applied at the city jail, which was, at that time, the police department had their own jail. And you only had to be 18 to be a jailer. So I applied at the jail just to get on at the police department in anticipation of being able to go to the academy someday. And the first time I applied, I was 19. And I didn't get hired that time. And for me, that was devastating because I was a kid and I'd never really been through an interview process where you actually had to do a formal application and sit down in front of an interview board. And so when I didn't get hired, I was devastated at the time because I had never been denied anything as far as a job or anything. And I didn't really know how that worked and what that meant. To be honest with you, I probably would not have reapplied the next year when I was 20, except for one of the interview panelists on the board was an old lieutenant that was over the jail at the time. His name was Merrill Gilbert. And he actually wrote me a handwritten letter. This was back when everybody wrote letters. He wrote me a handwritten letter. And I'm sorry, I get emotional on this. In that letter, he went on and on about how good an interview I'd had and how impressed the board was with me and how they were encouraging me to follow my dream of being a police officer someday. And he explained that the reason I didn't get the position at that point was because they hired a guy that had been there before. And he was coming back and he had all the experience. And if it hadn't been for that letter, that he took the time to write me to encourage me. And he didn't know me. We just met at that interview deal. I probably would not have applied the next year when I was 20. It was almost a year to the day another opening came up when I was 20 and I applied that year and I got on at the city jail. And you're right, it was a pretty rough place for a naive kid that had never really had any life experience. Back then, the city jail that was in the police department, they booked all the prisoners that they arrested in that jail. So it might be somebody that had gotten a ticket that they hadn't paid, or it might be a capital murder suspect. And everything in between went to that jail first and were there for a little while before they were shipped off to a bigger facility. So I really got an eye opening in working in that city jail, working around very different types of people that I grew up with and things like that. And I think that did me a service later on in my police career. I actually worked up in the jail for one year and one month, and I turned 21 on that year and applied at the academy and was accepted in the academy. So that's how my whole career got started, and here I am 36 years later.
sitting here listening to kind of that whole story. I sometimes don't think that we realize the impact that we make on other people when we take the time to express, to tell people that was fabulous. This is what happened. I mean, for, Mr. Gilbert, to literally take the time, like you said, I mean, and even nowadays, I mean, it could be an email. I mean, not the same as a handwritten letter, obviously, but it could be an email that changes someone's life because honestly, he changed your life.
He absolutely did. And I've told him that many times and he's still alive. He's retired from the police department, but I've told him that story many times over the year. he does not even remember writing that letter. As busy as he was back then to take the time out to write this letter to some kid he didn't even know. And you're absolutely right. And I tell people that all the time. And I use that story as an example. You never know what what you say or do for somebody that how it's going to affect them. And that can also be negative. You never know how that's going to affect them. So it's, it's, it's an important lesson for us to be mindful of how we interact with people on a daily basis. And, and, uh, one of the things, and this is kind of getting off topic and I'm sorry, but, uh, I worked as suicide many years ago, young lady, she was in her, early 20s, late teens, early 20s, I don't remember the exact age, she had hung herself and she had left a letter on the bed as oftentimes suicide people do. And the only thing it said on it was, no one has ever said a nice thing to me in my life. And that was the only sentence she left on that piece of paper. And that got me to thinking, how many people are walking around out there that, and I don't know that that was literally what she meant, or if it was just she was having a bad day, I don't know. But I've kind of taken that sentence she wrote, and now I kind of make it a point of trying to compliment somebody, a genuine compliment about something, whether it's a tie they're wearing, a shirt they're wearing, or their shoes look nice, or whatever it is, because you never know If that person is meeting somebody, to kind of tell them, you're going to be OK.
I care about you. COVID, obviously, you guys, to be a police officer in this particular day and age, I would say in the last 10 years, with you know, riots and, you know, the defunding police departments and you turn around the next day and call them and need them type of a thing. The things that make me irritated, as you can tell. But to be a police officer right now, I really don't think that the general public understands all that you guys do every single day. What you are exposed to as humans that you, I mean, to walk into a teenage girl hanging herself, I mean, that affects you. I mean, just as much as, you know, putting your lives on the line, walking in, not knowing if somebody's going to be shooting at you just because you wear a uniform. I mean, so to be a police officer in this, just, really the life is different. In the last 10 years, the negativity, I think sometimes that is pushed your direction is unwarranted because the next breath is somebody's, you know, somebody's chasing me or somebody's kidnapping me and all the sex trafficking that's going on that. I mean, all of the things that we rely on you guys for, and then turn around and talk crap about you, really, as well. I mean, you want to talk about a messed up society. Like, here we are. You know what I mean? Here we are. And yet, you guys get up every single day. And you've done this since 88, right? Starting out as a young adult, in a jailing system with your own community that you grew up in. I was sitting here thinking as you were talking, you grew up in this community and here's these crazy, probably older men with DWIs that you're having to deal with and thinking, you're my dad's friend. I mean, that is how small Amarillo is, right? I mean, you have been doing this day in and day out for 36 years. And I can tell by looking at you, you love it.
I do. I couldn't have done it if I if I didn't love it. I don't know anybody. I don't know how people that aren't called into this profession actually do it. It's just so like you're you're talking about everybody. Everybody thinks of the the things they think are the most dangerous for us. The the gunfights or something like that. The car chase. Those are relatively rare. It's the It's the everyday stuff, the suicide calls. We go out on the wrecks where somebody's hurt or killed. It's just a steady drip of critical incidents and man's inhumanity towards man. And it does take a toll on you. So if you're not grounded in this being your calling and having something that you believe in, I don't know how you do this job. And I see a lot of people that are in and out of the profession. I've seen people come and go and they just decided it wasn't for them. And I never blame a person or I always want to encourage our people, if they truly understand this is not for them, that's a good thing. That's great that you recognize that. And I'll give you a great letter of reference wherever you want to go. But the last thing I want to do is see a young man or woman try to stay in this profession when it's not for them. Because not only does it do them a disservice, it does the public a disservice.
Right. I was going to say, In a calling profession, I think teachers have callings. I think, you know, doctors, nurses, I think sometimes that's a calling. I mean, you don't get up and cut people open every day and have some of them die on the table and not have it be a calling. Police, fire, right? First responders. I think those are all callings because to do it day in and day out, like you said, my dad had a car wreck yesterday. And I got that phone call. He's fine. He's bumped and bruised and he's got a cut on his arm, but you know, the airbag deployed and he's 78 years old. So we just, you know, you panic and you're, you have no idea what you're getting ready to roll up on, even though, you know, and of course I got there and the police were there and And they were fabulous, right? But like you said, it's that everyday thing. What if he had been seriously injured? You guys have to deal with all of that all day long. Speaking of that, I did read that you have received so many accolades. I mean, I was so impressed. But you have two life-saving awards. Do you want to tell us how you got those?
Oh, yeah, they're not very exciting. The first one was a it was many, many years ago. Well, they're all many years ago, but it was a elderly woman who was down, not breathing. And I just I just happened to be literally right around the corner from where her house was. So I pulled around the corner. I jumped in her husband. had her on the floor and was on the phone with the dispatcher. And so I was able to move him out of the way and I checked. She didn't have a pulse and wasn't breathing. So I did CPR on her for about, oh, I want to say maybe five minutes before the ambulance got there. And then I helped them with her when she got, they were able to get a pulse back on and breathing and they transported her. As it turns out, a couple days later, I called the hospital to see how she was doing. And they said she was not there. And I was like, OK, that's cool. So I actually waited a couple of weeks. And then I was contacted by the family who told me that she had actually passed away a couple of weeks after she had been in the hospital. But for me, I felt like, well, that was I didn't actually save her, but the family wrote a very nice letter talking about how they were able to have some time with her before she passed, instead of her just passing. So I was pretty proud of that one. I never really thought about the fact that even though she only lived another couple of weeks, it gave the family members time to kind of say what they wanted to say and interact with her and kind of prepare themselves. So that was the first one. And then the second one, I was, I was involved in a shooting back in 2002 and, uh, it was a, uh, high risk arrest. We were making a high risk arrest, pretty dangerous guy. And, uh, He took off running out of the car and the first officer that got to him grabbed ahold of him and they got to fighting on the ground. And during that fight, the officer's gun got lost in the fight and the suspect got the gun and started shooting at us and we shot back at him and ended up killing him on the scene. But the life-saving award, I guess, was for saving our own lives in this gunfight. Yeah. Those were the two that I was awarded. So they're very different situations.
But yeah, I mean, well, congratulations. I mean, that that is that's really what I wanted our audience and listeners to hear is that the everyday stuff that you guys walk right into without thinking about it and, you know, moving it all. Yeah. protecting the community, protecting the citizens from these, you know, dangerous guys. And we have some really interesting things going on in our society these days. I mean, the sex trafficking and, you know, having to worry about your teenage daughters disappearing, you know, and all of those crazy things that you guys are always having your pulse on day in and day out is, Is humbling if you're sitting in the right seat, looking at what you guys do for us. I mean, I take it that way. And so I just couldn't be more grateful to have you guys all here. So, um. You actually, during all of this, you were also going to school. You went back and got your bachelor's.
Yeah, I went back. I like to tell everybody it took me 40 years to get a four-year degree. I told you about the start at Emerald College, but I really wasn't real serious about academics. The police department does not require a college degree to apply. So I knew I didn't need it and I knew this is what I wanted to do. So it never was a big emphasis for me. And then when I, I think it was, I think it was late 40s, early 50s, I decided I was actually teaching out at Emerald College in their academy and some of their criminal justice courses. And while I was out there, one of the ladies who worked out there ran my old transcript. And she said, hey, she said, you never did finish your associate degree. And she said, you're like two classes away from it. Do you want to finish it? And I thought, yeah, I'll go ahead and finish that. It's just two classes. And I really kind of enjoyed those classes. That 30, 40 year gap in between did wonders for my discipline and stuff. So I kind of enjoyed that. And then once I got my associate degree, contacted a university here in town, Wayland Baptist University. They're actually out of Plainview, but they have a campus here in town and they have a real good justice administration program. And I just went out and talked to them and kind of thought, well, what do I have to do to get this? And they walked me through it. And luckily, the city of Amarillo will actually help pay your tuition and stuff for your degree. And I thought, you know, I might as well. I'm already halfway to it. I might as well finish it. Luckily, I finished my bachelor's degree, I think it was a February and in March, the opening for assistant chief came open and you actually had to have a degree to be appointed as assistant chief. And so luckily, I'd finished my degree just a few months ahead of that. In fact, the chief at the time didn't even realize that I had a degree. I had to tell him that I'd finished my degree, so I was eligible. And so that's how I got it. You know, it's funny how You have a plan for your life, and God's got a plan for your life, and they don't always mirror up. I can look back on my life and see the timing and why it was the way it was, but when you're living your life, you kind of don't recognize it sometimes that this is why things are happening the way they are. So yeah, I did go back and get my degree. And I had intended on stopping there, but when I went to the National Academy a couple years ago, the academic work at the National Academy is proctored through the University of Virginia. So I took graduate level courses while I was up there. So I ended up after the National Academy, I've got, I'm just about halfway to a graduate degree through the University of Virginia. So now I'm kind of contemplating whether to go ahead and finish that too. I don't really necessarily need it, I hate to get halfway and not go the rest of the way.
So it's funny that you say that because I decided a couple of years ago that I was going to go back and get my master's and everybody's just like, why are you doing this? And I was like, I don't know, because I started one and then just, you just kind of keep going. It's kind of funny. You know, you end up being a lifelong learner anyway. I mean, whether it's academics or like you said, life experience. I mean, you're right. A 30-40 year gap between high school and early, I call it early college, early college, right? You don't even know who you are yet, much less what your discipline level is like. And then, you know, you get into the what I call the real world and you get smacked around a little bit. or a lot depending on who you are, right? You get smacked around a little bit and then you start figuring out who you are and you start figuring out, you know, where you want to go or things you actually enjoy, things that, um, you, you like. And I think that's why there are so many older students now because people are thinking, if I don't know what I want to be when I grow up, you are unique in that because my original degree was in psychology. You can see, right? And I own a business. So it's like, maybe I need a business degree, like, you know, just one of those. But it's interesting because so many people have a degree and they're not doing anything along those lines. I mean, I woke up one day and went, I can't even take care of my own self. How am I going to help someone else? Right. So, but I mean, it's just, it's, I think there's just, I mean, I, so many people, people either going back for their graduate or going back for a doctorate. I mean, just going, it's, Maybe I can learn something. I think that's it. I felt like I could learn something and you're probably the same way. I was really shocked. I was taking an employment law class right now. And I was like, oh, I wish I had known this like 30 years ago when I first started having employees. I mean, you know what I mean? You're just kind of like, oh, that would have been handy. But here we are, nonetheless.
I think we've kind of done a disservice to the younger generations over the last couple of generations where, and I know this is not a popular opinion, certainly not among the academic world, but how we've almost kind of shoved everybody from high school straight into college and just not that that's necessarily a bad thing, it's just we didn't We didn't do a good enough job explaining to them, this is why you need to go there. And what you're talking about, when you graduate high school, you don't really even know what you want to do. But we're forcing them into these colleges. And I think the last statistic I saw was that over 50% of people that start college will not finish college, which tells me there's a lot of people going to college who shouldn't be going to college. But then the other thing that's done, and we're starting to see this in our industry, is more and more people are showing up with degrees and they're expecting a certain level of pay or certain benefits and stuff and nobody ever really explained to them that yeah your degree will help you with that but you got to kind of go out and find those places that'll do that and then and then make a good employee you don't just get handed the stuff because you got the degree I mean that's uh and I and I don't I don't know that we did any favors to our younger generations kind of misleading them a little bit, I think, on the value of it.
Well, that and it doesn't help when we have, you know, a government that is forcing entitlement down everybody's throat. It's like everyone's entitled to $15 an hour. Okay, but you have to start at the bottom somewhere. And at the bottom, what happens to an economy and inflation when you at you know, 18 flipping burgers at McDonald's starting out, right, are making 15 bucks an hour. What happens to then everything else? And I think we're feeling the effects of that mentality right now. But how do you go backwards? I mean, how do you take it backwards?
I don't know that you can. And the problem with it is it's not self-sustaining. At some point, it's going to collapse. But I don't know how you go back when you've built everything around, what can you give me? What can you give me? And we're so far away from John F. Kennedy's famous speech about, that's not what your country can do for you. That's what you can do for your country. I don't even think people understand what he meant by that anymore.
I promise you half, if not three quarters of our entire world or our country probably missed that class in history class because they chose to just not show up.
One of my answers to one of your questions, I don't remember which one, but it was something along the lines of Service is its own reward. And I don't think people realize that. We live in a very transactional society now. It's, I'll give you something, but I have to get this. And that is kind of getting further and further away from service. And I try to tell our, and I didn't always realize this myself. It took many, many years for me to realize this specific to my profession is that, We talk about the way the job has changed. Everybody wants to know how has it changed in the last 30 years, 35 years. And I always tell them the same thing. The way we do it has changed. The equipment we use has changed. The vehicles we drive, computers in the car, that's changed. But the job has not changed. The job is about human interaction. And you can, this job, law enforcement, public service, It goes back for thousands of years. You could go back to the Roman days and somewhere in Rome was one of the Praetorian guard who that morning put on his armor, picked up his shield, strapped on his weapon, and he went out to an area he had been assigned, his beat, And he, on that beat, he may have had to deal with a man who'd had too much to drink that day and was causing a disturbance. He may have had to deal with a shop owner who somebody had stolen from him. He may have had to deal with a couple that the pressures of life at that time had gotten so much to where they were fighting each other and causing a disturbance. And you could bring that guy forward 2,000 years, and if he was a good cop back then, he would be a good cop today because it's still about human interaction. And I think we kind of tend to think that our little piece of time right here is the way it's always been, the way it'll always be. And that's not correct. But as long as human beings are living on the planet, there will always be human interaction. And I know AI and things like that's taking the place of a lot of stuff, but you will always have to have some type of human interaction element.
It's still, you know, we just had this conversation in my office this week with the conversation of, It doesn't matter if there's AI doing calculations. Somebody has to present the calculations. A human has to present to another human. I was like, people still do business with people. Then it was like, well, no, they're buying from the company. I said, there's a person in that company they're talking to. there's a person in that company that's going to make that delivery because it's you know okay there might be a drone but somebody's flying the drone like we still have humans humans still And we saw during COVID what happened when we couldn't interact. It's ugly. We're still feeling the consequences. We are. It's just ugly, and we are not designed that way. I'm thinking COVID might have been God's test to see if we were still human and around or whatever, but you know what I mean? It's just Wake up. I kind of want to just smack people and just say, come on, guys, wake up. We are still human. You take that touch away from us. You take the conversations and the communication. But that's what you guys do all day. You guys are settling disputes. You might be doing this to keep people away from each other from killing each other in a domestic fight. But you're still saying, OK, everybody calm down. Now, what's the problem? Because it takes that, it takes, I think we are, the human has the only intelligence level to be able to, what was it that the word I'm looking for here? to negotiate and problem-solve. Animals, they know survival, but they don't know how to problem-solve. That's what we do. When you take and pull us apart, and we can't communicate, we can't interact. it's just going to be a problem long term.
You're going against the entire way the human species was designed. Even the most introverted person in the world still needs some amount of human interaction or it's going to be a miserable life if we
So what was the movie Cast Away, where he was on an island and Wilson became his friend, the soccer ball or whatever it was? Yeah. I mean, because it's like something, something like and when Wilson went away, that became a really big problem.
Oh, yeah. It was it was a loss like it was an actual person because we have to have that human interaction.
And you saw what happened in the movie when that didn't happen. I mean, regardless, you make it up. I mean, kids make up pretend friends. I mean, we're just human. And, you know, it's there's a lot going on in our society right now, whether it's, you know, political, whether it's, you know, the disease thing that's going on, you know, that we're constantly worrying about. I mean, there's just so much going on. How do we keep our sanity? How do we make sure that we aren't putting undue stress on you guys every single day?
Well, somehow we've got to get back to the point where You know, there's a lot about cancel culture and people being offended by other people saying and doing certain things. And I think we've. At some point in our history forever, we had the ability, if I said something to you that offended you or hurt your feelings or upset you, then you could tell me that, hey, what you said to me, that offended me and here's why. And I would have the opportunity to listen to you and say, I didn't realize that. I didn't mean it in that tone or what I said, I didn't realize you would take it that way and I'm sorry that that happened. And then you could say, okay, This is good. We've apologized. We can move on. We've lost that ability. And the sad thing is, we've got some very serious issues in our society. We've been talking about them. And very serious ones specific to law enforcement and the public we serve. to work our way through those problems, we have to be able to communicate with each other. And you cannot effectively communicate with somebody unless you run the risk of offending somebody. And so when that happens, each side should take the opportunity to point out that it was offensive and give the other Opportunity to apologize or explain and that's how we work our way through these problems. But if we can't even talk about the problem, we're never going to get to the to the root issue. And what I'm really afraid of. And we talked about the defund the police movement and and all that is is What I'm afraid of is you have one side that's very far this direction, and I'll say it's the defund the police side. You have another side that's way on the other end of the spectrum, and I call it the we back the blue side. And it seems like those are the far ends of the extremes. Somewhere in the middle of all that is where the true issues lie. But my fear is is that we're now evolving to the point where you almost feel like you have to choose one of the extremes or the other, that there is no middle ground. And what the really sad thing is, is that I think that, I think historically and even now, most of us would fall somewhere in the middle ground somewhere, maybe a little further one way, maybe a little further, but certainly in the middle somewhere. And that's where the issues are, but we're being forced to the extremes is the way I'm kind of seeing it.
You know, it's funny. My mom, growing up, would say, there's two sides to every story, and the truth is somewhere in the middle. You know, politics, you know, you have your far left, your far right, but I would say probably 85 to 90 percent of Americans sit in the middle third. Now, that might be one, you know, slightly one way or the other, but There is no one that I have talked to in the last two years that is so far left or so far right that they believe only the left or only the right. There's like these issues, you know, you take the abortion issue that's happened in the last couple of years, right? You have got women who are like, yeah, but I mean, there's that whole, yeah, but that's going along with so many things, like you said, in our society, and they're all right in the middle.
They are, and I think even most of the people who would claim to be on one end of the spectrum or the other, if you actually start talking about them, you'll find that they're actually not completely over there on certain things. And unfortunately, I think there's an entire industry that's being built and has been for many years that's forcing people to those extremes. I think that's where there's There's money being made in those deals, there's terms being extended by being on one extreme or the other. I don't know what it would take for the people in the middle, the rest of us, to wake up one morning and go, wait a minute. We're all kind of in the middle here. Can we not just talk about this and see where then that's that's another part about the human interaction. We're never going to agree 100% of the time on everything. So the next best option is to agree to disagree.
I was going to say, so Chief Johnson, are you married? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So anyone who's married knows that that is a gospel truth, right?
That's exactly right. That's a great example is the marriage unit. That's a great example of how you're not always going to get your way. You're going to have to give and take a little bit and find that happy medium in the middle where you can still love each other and accept who that person is even though you don't agree with everything that they say or do.
Yeah, I mean, you have to meet people where they are, like you have to love them for who they are, whether you agree with it or not. Like you said, at some point we are all going to have to figure out how to agree to disagree and still love each other so we don't kill each other. I mean, I fear going into the next What 8, 9 months with this political arena that we're all going to be shoved into. It's going to be I mean, I, I almost feel like the. 4 years ago is about to happen all over again. We may get a different result. out of it, but the ugly, the mudslinging. I think everyone I've talked to when it comes to a political, like a presidential election year, everybody just kind of goes, oh, like, oh, because it's the mudslinging and you don't know what to believe. Then there's no civility to it anymore. It's just, you're like, can we have the facts and give us the credit of having at least half a brain to make a decision?
You know what I mean?
You guys are going to be affected by that, too.
Yeah, for sure. Going back to the COVID thing you mentioned, I mean, that the whole response to COVID, I think, was affected by the fact that it got politicized almost immediately, almost immediately. And never before in our history did we take a medical issue and politicize, at least not that I'm aware of, to that extent. And never in my And of course, that was when all the rioting was going on too. And I remember watching the news one night, the national news, and they had a story about the block in Seattle that the rioters took over and the police just pulled out and let them kind of take it over and they were burning down the police station. And the very next story was the police arresting a mother from a soccer game or something out of the stands for not wearing a mask. And I thought to myself, How did we get to this point where we're allowing people to commit crime out in the open, burn down police departments and not doing anything, but we're arresting mothers for not wearing a mask at an outdoor soccer game? And I know that they put that on the news for a reason to elicit emotion, but I just thought to myself, what kind of Crazy world are we living in now where it's almost like everything's topsy-turvy or something.
You're exactly right. The common sense is missing. I literally, I'm like, where is the common sense here? And I feel like, you know, I jokingly say when I hire employees, you know, we used to have a 90 day probationary period. And then on day 91, people got hit with a stupid stick. And then like, so now I've moved it to 120 because I'm like, you can do it for 90 days, but 91 was a problem. But I mean, here we are. I mean, how it is almost as if people are walking around with a stupid stick, hitting themselves with it. I'm like, what is going on? It's so bizarre.
It's part of that, and I think there's a bunch of things at play here. Part of it is we live in a day and age where we can go out at any time and find all the information we want on anything we want. Yeah, exactly. And I don't care what topic it is or what your stance is on that particular topic. You can go out and find a thousand things that verify the way you believe and the way the the internet search engines and the algorithms and all that are set up it just starts feeding you exactly what you want to believe and so then you don't you don't get the other option and it and the other thing it convinces you especially with things like social media and things where where you can actually block people that that uh you don't want to talk with you and then eventually you just surrounded yourself with like-minded people and then then you're in this bubble to where you're you're convinced that the entire world thinks exactly like you do and if you run into somebody doesn't well they're a they're an outlier and and really all council culture is is just blocking somebody in real life yeah i don't like what you're saying so i'm just not gonna do you anymore and and i don't know how we get back to that but until we can actually look at one another, and I'm a Christian. I'm unapologetically a Christian. And what I mean by that is I'm a broken sinner, and I can't do it without God. That's what I mean by that. But until we can truly look at each other as brothers and sisters under God, instead of the differences we have, I've had the benefit of traveling a little bit in my life. I've been to places like South Korea and Vietnam. And the one thing that amazes me every time I go to a place like that is we have much, much more in common than we do different from each other. But it seems like all we focus on is the differences. And we have got to start looking at what we have in common. We all want to have good lives. We want to be taken care of. We want good things for our children, our parents. We want that human interaction. This is all things that all humans share with each other. You can go to whatever remote area of the world you want to, you can find a mother taking care of her baby and watching over her child because she cares about it. That's the way we were designed. So I don't know how we do it, but we've got to quit. We've got to quit focusing on our differences and focus more on what we do have in common.
You know, I'm afraid. with, especially like you said, with social media and canceling people that don't have the same beliefs as you, or you can't even have an intelligent conversation with somebody that thinks a little bit differently than you. To take that mentality and try and push it back, I think Jesus is going to have to come before that happens.
And you may be right. I don't see how we It just gets steadily worse. It seems like and I don't know how we we go back, but, uh, you know, that's and that's not a very optimistic outlook, but that's that's kind of reality. I look at and how much are we missing? How much are we missing? from the days where somebody could say something that you didn't necessarily agree, but it triggered something in your mind and you thought, I never thought of it that way. And that makes me wonder about this. And that's how you learn. That's how you gain the knowledge. You're talking about a lifelong learning instead of, you know, building this little bubble around yourself where you're convinced you have all the answers and everybody that disagrees with you is just wrong.
Well, I think we get stagnant as a society and we don't grow as people. Like you get stuck and then you because you can't see anything else. So you just become and we and then as a whole society, we get stagnant. And unfortunately, the American Americans in general. You know, my dad was in the military, so I grew up traveling military bases and around the world. So I've been exposed, you know, to several different cultures. And you're right. We are all human. I mean, we might speak a different language, but all of the fundamental human traits that we have, we're all the same. Sure. And when we stop looking at, you're right, the commonalities that we all have. And all we're looking at is that one or 2% difference, the one or 2% difference, right? We speak a different language, we live in a different on a different continent, I mean, whatever that is, but everything else, I think COVID, you know, when we were starting to watch countries around the world and people were dying in other countries from the exact same thing that we had, you would have thought that would have been a wake up call, that we're all really a lot alike. And yet here we are fighting with each other, Russia and Ukraine, right? Like all of this craziness, you're just like, didn't we get past all this yet?
It shocks people that were not past it. But unfortunately, that's kind of the way it's been historically too. That's part of human nature too. One thing you said, and I completely agree with you, is the human fact that we're all humans. And if you look back through history at some of the atrocities that have been committed, like the Holocaust for one, slavery in America for another. The first step in all that is finding a group that's different than you. First it's different, then you strip their humanity. And once you strip somebody's humanity away from them, it's easy to do whatever you want to, which is what happens. And this is way off topic, but the German people didn't wake up one morning and go, we're going to kill six million Jews. That's a process. And the first thing was stripping their humanity away from them. And that's exactly what you're talking about. And it's still going on in other parts of the world.
Yeah. No. And we just kind of say, there's so much that's going on. I mean, I'm here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. You're in Amarillo. We talked about how cool it is to be able to jump on a Zoom call, talk to each other, have this podcast, and talk through some of these issues, common issues, from wherever we are, how cool that has been. You know, I think just having an opportunity to speak to, you know, an assistant chief in Amarillo and just be able to go, hey, look, you know, it's the same hair as it is in Dallas. I mean, it's there's just this. overwhelming amount of support and unsupport for the police department that I wanted to be able to have, you know, your accolades. I mean, it's impressive what you have done since, you know, a 20-year-old kid and, you know, now the assistant chief and your home community. That is, I think, the thing that was so impressive is that this is the community you were born and raised in. This is the community that you love and that you have raised your family in. I mean, you've got two kids and did I read three grandkids, three grandbabies that I'm sure are the love of your life.
I've got two grandsons and a granddaughter any day now. Any day now? Yeah, she's due the 29th.
Oh, so I bet. Oh, and is grandpa excited?
I'm pretty excited. The first two came as a surprise. I had the typical response when my son and my daughter both had a child the same year. They're five months apart. So I started the year with no grandkids, ended it with two grandkids. And the first thing that hit me was, I'm too young to be a grandfather. Then I look back, and my dad was a lot younger when I made him a grandfather, so I wasn't too young. Then it let me kind of get adjusted to it, and then I had my son and grandson still live here in town. My daughter and that grandson have moved over to Georgia, but I got the opportunity to live with my grandson. My daughter when they were getting ready to move to Georgia had about a three-month gap that she needed to stay here while her husband went to his new job and they asked if they could move in with me while they sold the house and so my grandson was three at the time and it had been a very long time since I had a toddler in the house and I was a little nervous but it turned out to be a Oh man, what a great experience. So this grandchild, the first one that I really like have embraced and I'm like just so excited. And I told her I'd give her a couple, two or three weeks, whatever she needed after the baby's born. And then I'm going to go over there and see her.
That's exciting. I mean, what a blessing to to be able to have all of that time, three months with them, you know, staying with you. I mean, talk about just even and three is such a precious age. They love you. They want to sit in your lap. I'm sure totally excited that grandpa is the policeman. I mean, I can just. read it all over. But what a blessing and then to have a granddaughter and your first granddaughter. Oh boy, you are in trouble. I'm sure you are in trouble.
I tell you, my son was first. He was born when I was actually in the academy when he was born. And then my daughter was five years after. And I got to tell you, I was praying, praying for a son, another son. I did not want a daughter because I was scared to death. I don't know anything about raising daughters or girls or anything like that. And what I do know about girls scares me. So I didn't want anything to do with that. I waited and waited, and then she was finally born. And we didn't know until she was born that it was a little girl. And I remember when the doctor handed her to me and I saw it was a girl, I went into full-blown panic. My biggest fear was I was not going to be fair to her growing up and everything that comes with a daughter. It was the blessing that I needed, not the one I wanted. That's how God works. He gives you what you need. So I'm pretty excited about the granddaughter now. And having grandkids is a lot easier than the kids.
Yeah. Cause you get to just spoil them and send them home. Like here you go. And trust me, my, um, I have a sister and she's got her first granddaughter. And so it's my great niece and we love Lizzie. Lizzie is amazing. Um, but literally I have found every t-shirt that says, um, don't mess with me. My grandma's crazy. Like, you know, all those fun shirts. And my, my nephew is like, everyone's going to think that my mom is nuts. I'm like, she is over your, your child, her granddaughter. Like, you know, so it's just, there is just something about little girls. As you know, because you've raised one, you know, they say your son is there, but your daughter's your daughter your entire life. And I don't think there's anything more true. You know, my mom was sick and my mom was very sick before she passed. It was me and my sister. My brothers are around, but it's not the same. You know, my dad had a car accident yesterday. I was a phone call. My sister was a phone call.
right now like I need you here right now like I'm in the middle of the road help I mean but it's it's us that he calls so um I don't think it's ever going to be any different and I wouldn't want it any differently to be honest family is so important and that's another thing we we I really stressed our our academy is that this is an important job it's probably one of the most important jobs that we have police work but your family is more important than the job. And too many times we get that backwards. I know I did, and that's probably why my first marriage ended in a divorce. But it took me many, many years to get my priorities right. And so now I try to impress upon our newer people that there's a day one of your job and there's an end day of your job and you're you're hopefully going to have a successful career in between those those days but but your family's there before day one and you're hoping they're going to be there after your last day but you got to make them the priority to make that happen that's no matter how important your job is your family is the priority
Yeah, I'm guilty, guilty of it. We all are. I think most people are is, you know, what's more important? You know, I try to remember who's going to be at my funeral. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, you know, it's the truth. And we were having a discussion the other day. We talked about legacies, you know, your husband and his architecture. We talked about that a lot. The PD, the Emerald Police Department, we're fixing to celebrate our 110th year. So we've been here 110 years. And we've got all these, we started running our own Academy back in the 1950s, I believe. And we have Academy pictures all the way back into the 1950s. And I look at those pictures now and I think, I don't know who any of these guys are. And someday, somebody's going to be walking through this hallway, see my picture and go, I don't know who that guy is, you know, and so one of the old timers put it this way. If you want to know how long your impression at the PD is going to last, fill a five gallon bucket with water, make a fist and put your fist down in that water and pull it out real quick. And the length of time it takes to fill that water back up, that's how long your impression is going to last on this police department. And so That's important to remember, and that relates back to your family, is that you said it correctly. They're going to be there before, and you hope they're going to be there at the end of your life. Your job, you can be proud of it. You can be committed to it, have a good work ethic and all that, but don't ever confuse the two of them.
Yeah, we do. I think as a society, as a whole, we have got so much. We talked just briefly, we touched on the money. And, you know, you can literally almost say, and you've heard it your entire life, follow the money, right? Money is not more important than the people that are going to be crying in the front row of the pew at your funeral. I mean, they just aren't. And we all are guilty At some point or another right of getting that priority wrong.
We do and I always think about Rockefeller, you know. If you put Rockefeller's money he had back then in today's terms, I saw a study said it'd be $5 trillion, $5 trillion with a T. And it's kind of a famous story. When he passed away, somebody, a reporter, somebody asked his accountant, how much did he leave? And the accountant's response was, well, he left all of it. Yeah. That's the reality. There's no trailer hitch on a hearse. You're not taking any of it with you. And sometimes I think it's a kind of a rat wheel. We're working to get the money to work, to get the money to get, and if that's one thing I think about COVID, going back to that, is I think the shutdown and the layoffs and things like that, I think people started realizing they don't necessarily need as much as they thought they needed to be happy. Because if you're chasing that next big thing, you're always going to be chasing it.
You know, and look at all of the superstars and all of these, you know, billionaires that have all this money and their lives are crap. There's no quality to their life. They may have things, but those things don't replace the relationships of that. And we're missing a core primary family anymore. So, you know, the core primary family has been destroyed by whatever it is we think we're doing here. And, you know, and so that leads back to you guys having to be people. peacemakers, you know, in, inside of families that are being torn apart because of, like, it's, you're right. I mean, as difficult as it was for employers, because employees finally woke up and just said, yeah, I'm not doing this anymore like this. Difficult for employers because, you know, keeping things running, everybody still wants, you know, their favorite pub to be open. But if there's nobody there, I mean, it's, it's kind of hard to do, but, You know, I get it. Yeah, I get it. You know, I tell, I know, the reason I'm an employer and because I am a unique employer, because I literally say to employees when they come in here, if you have children, you are a mom first or a dad first, right? You are a mom first. So if I find out that you have missed a soccer game or missed a baseball game or missed a dance recital, you're going to get written up. And they just kind of look at me like, what? And I'm like, seriously, You know, just all I ask is just let's make sure we take care of the client or take care of the customer. Tell them, hey, look, I'm going to be gone for a few hours, but I'll be back, whatever that is. I said, but you can't miss them. You can't get them back.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's a good point for your podcast about business and careers and things. And that's one thing we stress, starting in our leadership schools from sergeant on up, is value your people. You are here to serve your people. You can spend your whole life chasing the money, chasing the success, chasing the next rank, chasing the accolades, but that is all a mirage. The people that work here are the real thing, and you have to value your people. and you go to different leadership conferences and they have different ideas of how to show people you value them, popcorn parties, ice cream parties, things like that. And I think we're getting it backwards. You have to love the person, value the person, and then you'll want to do these things as you do that, that make it not so much of a cold environment, that I actually value you, and I want to spend time with you, I want to spend time with you, so hey, let's go get some ice cream or something and let's talk. Not necessarily about work, let's talk about whatever you want to talk about, but I have to truly be present in that conversation to show that person that you do actually, I do actually value you, but that's something that you really can't fake. You do have to value the person.
No, you can't, and you know, the other thing is, it's also got to be taught because I don't think that we're so self-centered as humans anyway. Just naturally, just it's part of our human makeup. We're just so centered. So you have to teach servant leadership. You have to teach, you know, that this is, you know, that, I had a mentor tell me, bless him, when I was in my 20s, I was in a male-dominated field, still a male-dominated field, but I was young and in a male over the age of 50, white Caucasian male over the age of 50 industry as a 27-year-old female. And I was trying to make it on my own, like, And I was not giving up. I'm very stubborn. I saw that that's one of your favorite things that you just love about yourself. You're stubborn too, right? But I was just literally like, I've got to make it. I've got to make it. And I was so centered on the money. I had this mentor say to me, you know, Tamara, if you just do the right thing for the right reason, the money will always be there. It took me two weeks. to sit there going like, what does like, do the right thing. Okay. Integrity, like do the right thing for the right reasons. Okay. And it can't. And so I was just like, okay. So I was like, I started to adopt the principle and it was interesting at how, how easy the money came years later when I got an opportunity to mentor someone, I use that same advice. I said, look, I'm going to tell you what someone told me. And that is when you do the right thing for the right reason, the money will come. I said, but I'm going to take this one step further. And it's just because I've learned it over time. When you do the right thing for the right reason, and it cannot be self-serving, then you never worry about money. You just don't because it comes as a by-product of authenticity. It comes because you care. It, all of those things that today, if I get one more sales call where they don't know how to pronounce my name, right. I'm a freak. I mean, I'm just literally like, if you're going to call me at least know my name. Yeah. You know, but they don't even take the time for that. I mean, and of course, my name is unique anyway. It's spelled differently than what they think. But still, if you took the time to get to know me, then you would know that that's not how we pronounce it. But you know,
That's the reward people are chasing. They think it's the money. They think it's the position. The reward they're chasing is that feeling you get from serving somebody else. And you're absolutely right. That is not our first nature to serve somebody else. That is a survival instinct. Anybody that doesn't believe that hasn't been around toddlers when they're playing. You don't have to teach a toddler how to keep a toy. You have to teach them how to share. That's our human nature. That's why it's so important and we stress this in our academy that your number one role out there is to be a good servant, and that does not come naturally. That is a taught skill and it's got to be practiced or it's perishable. it's difficult for people to wrap their minds around that. But really, if you just observe human nature, you can see examples of how we actually truly are hardwired to look out for ourself. And again, that's a basic survival instinct. If I'm looking out for myself, I'm safer that way. So to step out there and actually look out for somebody else goes against our human nature. That's why you have to make an intentional But boy, once you truly get that reward back for somebody you've served, and that applies to everybody, and this is a hard concept for our younger officers to understand and some of our public to understand. I don't care. what person you look at, the worst criminal you can look at, drug addict or murderer or whatever. At some point, that was a little boy or a little girl and nobody woke up and said, I want to be a crackhead when I grow up or I want to be a murderer when I grow up. Something happened and I'm not just absolving them of the accountability for their crimes. What I'm saying is that's a human being. And for the grace of God, go I. So I think if we all remember that, that at some point, no matter who we're talking about, This was this was a child and maybe they didn't have the same opportunities. Maybe they did and something else happened and they made conscious decisions. But regardless, it's still a human being. They are still a human being. And we serve as police officer. We serve everybody. We serve everybody, regardless of socioeconomic class, regardless of what crimes they committed. I give our guys examples all the time. You may be in a fight for your life one of these nights, somebody who's physically trying to kill you. and you will you will still serve that person in the middle of that fight. You will serve them by only using the amount of force that's objectively reasonable. You will serve them by once the fight is over getting them medical attention they need. You will serve them by making sure they're seat belted in the car properly in case you have a wreck on the way to the jail. You will serve them by making sure all their property is accounted for and a receipt is given to them. You're serving everybody, regardless of the situation. And that's a tough thing to wrap your mind around, especially a young person who has an idea of what law enforcement is, and then they realize it's quite a bit different when you actually get into it.
Well, I can't think of a better place for us to end because you have nailed it with exactly what it is that you guys do on a daily basis up there. Amarillo, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, wherever there is the blessing of a police department that does serve their community. Chief Johnson, thank you so much. much for your time. It has been a joy to spend some time with you today. Again, everybody, this is everything is up with Tamara and Chief Johnson from the Amarillo Police Department. Make sure you guys like and share the podcast and make sure we share some love for Chief Johnson and the Amarillo Police Department. Thank you so much. Have a great week.
Thank you.
You bet. Bye bye.
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