Retired Cop interview-Kevin

long time ago i grew up in the atlantic city area i grew up around all the gangsters of the era in the late 70s early 80s you know i've res i revolved around these the the sun 47 almost 48 times now and i've learned a thing or two but even growing up in that era i knew these guys were some serious guys and they did some bad stuff and you kind of got an idea that they were they were up to no good but you were just a kid you know i was friends with all their sons i hung out on george avenue in atlantic city and you you find out real quick that you better respect these guys they command it but what i realized is although they were bad guys the worst guy was the guy that i went home to every night and he wasn't a gangster that was he was my father and he there's there's something to be said about physical abuse versus emotional abuse i can take a punch you know i'm a pretty tough guy but emotional abuse especially when you're a kid takes a toll on you and you really don't know how to deal with it you know you get hit in sports or or something like that and you're fine you know you walk it off we're taught as young boys to walk it off or up some dirt on it but how do you do that with an emotional scar so although my father hit me quite frequently the emotional abuse that he put me through was probably the worst my father was a little racist he used to call me the laziest white man alive which i still to this day don't understand because i have friends of all different races and there's lazy ones in every every corner of the globe make you feel really bad in sports if you did something wrong really beat your character down and you always feel like you have this this monster on your back this thing that you're trying to run away from and you try to develop a new identity you figure if if i become this then everything at home will be okay it's not necessarily so so you know you're growing up and you think okay maybe if i'm the tough kid that'll do it maybe that's gonna do it well you become the tough kid you get into a lot of fights and does it do it nope nope so you know what maybe i'll be the smart kid that'll do it that's what everybody wants that's what everybody wants to me you're constantly searching for this identity nope doesn't do it then you go on to drugs and you go on to petty theft you know i might most of my friends growing up were thieves breaking into houses breaking into cars stealing everything that wasn't nailed down but maybe if i stole enough i'd be able to fill this this hole that was created by such a toxic home environment and you know when you when you try to fill stuff something in that hole inside of you and you realize that doesn't do it you move on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing when things got tough and that's not your true identity what do you do you run away from things time moves on i grow up and i had the opportunity to go to college i was pretty bright kid and i go away and i pick a college that was two and a half hours away it was the furthest college at the time that would that accepted me and i jumped on it i just wanted to leave this this life behind i didn't i didn't want to be a thief i saw some of my friends already starting to go to jail and getting arrested for petty stuff my home life was very toxic my father very just not a nice guy not a nice guy so i run away i run away to college because when you when you run away to a different area you get the opportunity that very few of us are given that's to reinvent yourself to to really make something out of nothing you can create a whole new persona they're going to believe exactly what you tell them so i go away to college and i said you know what i'm not going to be this guy anymore i'm going to be somebody new so i immerse myself in athletics i immerse myself in the gym and i become this big bulky guy thinking okay now this is my identity this is my identity this is where i'm going to fit in and after a while you realize no no so you run away from that identity then you get into girls you know you're always into girls but college is really when you get into girls and this girl that i'm with she's going to be my identity well that's not true either so you're constantly searching and searching you get out of college i found that i could never go back home there was nothing for me at home anymore i'm going to create this new life in north jersey uh south jersey is just not for me anymore and i really loved it i really did love it but i was constantly running from something and i never understood this until i got a little bit older i was trying to find myself i was trying to find my place in this world i had a feeling that i was i was destined for something like we all are you know we're all we all feel like we're destined for for greatness but you just got to find it you got to find your little niche one day i'm in the i'm in the gym and a guy comes up to me and he we're just talking and he says well you know did you ever think about becoming a cop i had never thought about it my brother you know my brother took police tests every week trying to become a cop that was his dream it was never my dream my dream was to go out and make a difference in the world but the way it was sold to me is hey you're gonna have a pension you're gonna have benefits you're gonna you're never gonna be rich but you'll you'll survive you'll make a good living and this is probably uh early 2001. so i go i i take the test and turns out i did very well in the test i get the job it's very rare in the police world in new jersey to get the job on the first first shot out so i was very fortunate while i was in the police academy 911 happens and the police world changed you know this this job that you thought you took it was just a job you everything the way you did everything changed the way your mindset changed one of the things about police work that i found very early on is i took it as a job and then when i became immersed in it because this was my new identity i finally thought that i found my place in this world i found out very quickly that it's more than just arresting bad guys doing car chases you know locking people up it's about keeping people safe it's about giving people hope it's about giving people a symbol to to look towards when they need help and they don't know where to go it's a it's it's a wonderful job one of the stories that jumps out at me is there was a there was a young woman with a very young child about four years old child's name was mason and she's ready to end her life she has a knife with her we go in there and she won't let anybody near the kids she certainly won't let anybody take the kid away and i'm able to sit there and talk to her i broke a very important role because there's something called the 25 foot rule that if you get close that close to somebody with a knife they're going to be able to stab you before you can draw your gun out and take care of things i felt comfortable enough to do this this woman was she needed help she really needed help and i really felt for this little kid i don't know what it was about what was about this little kid that drew me to him so i sat on the bed next to her and i talked her and i'm watching this kid mason go from hugging his mother to really start just nudging closer nudging closer and all of a sudden he's right up against me that situation ends we get her get her the help that she needs we send her off to the hospital we the grandmother was there we take the kids so everybody's safe ten years go by and i'm in plain clothes i'm in the sh i'm in the supermarket and i hear hey officer kevin i'm in plain clothes turn around and there's a 15 16 year old kid there and i said yeah that's my name's kevin who who are you and he goes well i'm mason you help my mom out and she's getting she's better now she's better now because of you and he gave me a big hug and that's what police work was to me and i love that job and for a long time after that i really felt like i had found my place and i didn't have to run away anymore like i did when i was a kid then july 10 2013 happens we respond to a dispute at a townhouse complex and it wasn't uncommon where i worked i worked in small suburban town and we go there and we can hear the arguing one about one of the officers is in the back and i'm in the front and as we try to breach the door pop pop it's that holy [ __ ] moment you fall back you make sure your other officer is okay i go back around the to the rear of the building it was a middle section of a townhouse so there's an exit in the back and an entrance in the front other officers are covering the front and we get on this little deck now this guy's already shot at police once there's no reason why he wouldn't do it again but we see the victim in there and again police work is about protecting people it's about helping people we have to get to this victim before something really bad happens we throw a chair through the sliding glass door and out of nowhere i see the brightest flash i've ever seen i hear a bang i feel gunpowder hit my face this guy was right behind the wall we couldn't see him pulls his gun around shoots at me the bullet missed my ear by what they suspect is about an eighth of an inch but i know it wiggled my left ear i hit the ground i have no idea whether i'm shot or not i looked down the other officers on the deck at that time were able to get off i looked down i see a lot of blood other officers are asking me if i'm shot and i said you know what i i don't know i don't know i see a lot of blood my shoulder hurts but i'm trapped where i am on this deck i can't get out if i get out he's going to be able to shoot so i'm stuck i come to the realization very quickly that i'm going gonna die and if i'm gonna die you're coming with me i get into a prone position very calm very clear i think of my kids i had a three-year-old i had a seven month old my seven month old will never know me my three-year-old only had vague recollections of me i say goodbye to him i uh i wish i would be there just to kiss him good night one more time and i get ready to die i get ready to shoot it out with this guy by the grace of god the other officers were able to reach over top grab my belt cover the front door and get me out at this time the the assailant goes upstairs the victim were able to get the victim out that's a great job we did our job we protected life nobody got hurt seriously i go to the hospital get glass removed from my arm and the the police department tells me hey you know you want to i was working wednesday thursday says hey why don't you take thursday off i come back monday i figured great i got a four-day vacation it was a great job you know i'm amped up i can't go to sleep i sleep a little bit but i don't really get good sleep i wake up to 50 phone calls about what happened that's you know police police works about it's like a big sewing circle and everything's cool everything's fine my wife is just beside herself that you know she can't believe what happened but she's thankful that i'm home so we go to the movies thursday night this event happen on a wednesday we go to movies thursday night and everything's fine we're watching a comedy it's a seth rogen comedy called this is the end and in there is a there's a scene with a big bang i still feel what it was like in that movie theater my heart started racing i started pouring sweat couldn't breathe i didn't want to alert my wife because she'd been through enough i didn't want to alert her about what what was going on so i just tell her like i'm going to go up and go to the bathroom i my stomach hurts a little bit i go outside and i can't catch my breath i can't stop sweating i can't stop shaking i've never felt anything like this before in my entire life i can't go back into the movie theater it's like i'm paralyzed after about 15 minutes she comes out and says you know are you okay i said yeah you know my stomach's hurt and she wants to go back and sit down i'll be in a little bit she goes now let's let's go home well that night i had about the worst nightmare i could ever have i woke up so wet drenched in sweat that i actually had to check to see if i pissed myself and then subsequently after that every night was just nightmare after nightmare after nightmare what i realize right now is that's the onset of of pts and i want to make this very clear is it's post-traumatic stress it's not a disorder it's not a disorder you weren't born with this a disorder is something you're born with this is a brain disease it's a brain injury the synapses in your brain actually become damaged because of the trauma you you see it goes on and on we we go down to see my parents who still lived in the atlantic city area to bring the kids down and my son spills chocolate milk he's three years old he spills chocolate milk on his on his car seat and i lost my mind it was so bad on the ride home that my wife was begging me to pull over and let her and the kids out i was this just maniac that night i realized that there's a serious problem and i need to get some help i try to go get some help and they send you to the doctors and you know the doctors medicate you and i i was supposed to go back to work on that monday i was in the doctor's office because i had a bunch of glass in my arm and that's where the blood was coming from i wasn't shot but the the doctor's picking glass out of my arm and i remember her asking me she goes are you okay and i said yeah you know i'm all right it's just it's just a little bit of glass it's not a big deal she goes no that's not what i mean are you okay i'm not a crier you know i've i consider myself pretty tough you would have thought that i lost the most important person in the world to me i started crying and bawling in that doctor's office to where the doctor actually gave me a hug it's very rare for a doctor to break that that patient boundary and she did she gave me a hug and i didn't know i i didn't understand these feelings i didn't understand what the heck was going on all i know is i wasn't right time moves on the nightmares are still going and i realize that some things have changed in me thunder and lightning storms this was july so the thunder and lightning storms were common and when thunder happened i was ready to go [ __ ] my pants i couldn't deal with it i actually would go and hide in a closet when the thunder would happen um i couldn't watch movies with guns i couldn't hear any loud like fireworks forget it fireworks will send me under the covers in a closet just hiding away i was i was changing i was changing i couldn't sleep i was up majority of the night and one day my son he's a three-year-old he's got nerf guns hanging around he's playing around points a nerf gun at me well there's a maneuver that the police will do when somebody you're taught it when somebody's pointing a gun at you you grab it like this real quick and then you pull it away from them and it's it's a blink of an eye you practice it so much it's it's muscle memory i do that to him and i rip it right out of his hands i take it snap it in two and i remember that look and for people who have children they know that blank look that that child gets i scared the hell out of my three or a three-year-old what did i just do he's standing me with his mouth open and i snapped into a throat in the throat in the garbage i don't say anything to him i walk out of the house now prior to this i had never carried my off-duty gun off you know when i wasn't working it's a liability i'm not real big fan of guns anyway so i never carried it but i started carrying it because i wasn't sleeping i was getting paranoid um the guy who shot at me he was in custody but he uh my brain was wired wrong so i started carrying my off-duty gun it was a little uh chief special 38 nickel plated with lightning grips beautiful just gorgeous gun little five shot after i broke the gun on my son i just walked out of the house i went and lived in the woods for three days hung out against a tree took my cell phone threw it in my car parked my car in a different section and uh i didn't want anybody to find me and just thought and i don't think i slept for three days because i had to get out of the house who are you going to talk to about this stuff there's nobody there's no there's nobody is going to understand you nobody's going to going to understand these these these random thoughts going on in your head and you're not sleeping i started drinking which i'm not a big drinker i wasn't a big drinker but i started drinking because i just needed some something to just calm me down i i started drinking more than i can possibly imagine it'd be nothing for me to to drink a fifth wash down with a couple other things whatever i could find and don't forget i'm medicated also so i'm on a cocktail of an antidepressant and anti-anxiety and the anti-anxiety was kalonopin and it says very clearly on the bottle don't drink on kalonopin i found out real quick that if you take a couple kalonopen and drink you can get twice as drunk with less alcohol scary thought don't it's really bad it could have some it can really hurt you but at that point i didn't really care i was starting to think that i'm just becoming this monster and i'm starting to think that i don't belong here anymore i'm supposed to be stronger than this i was really mad at myself you're stronger than this kevin you can do this and i was out of control yelling at my wife spitting at my wife calling her every name in the book she couldn't relate to me i just stopped sleeping in a bed because i was either if i did sleep i was having night terrors or i was so wet that when i woke up i had to change the sheets so i started sleeping downstairs i can't live like this anymore i i need to go away i need to remove myself from the situation the common misperception with police is if i die while i'm working my wife will get three and a half times my salary she'll get benefits for the rest of her life i'm here to tell you that's not true it's it's one of the biggest farces and lies that we tell ourselves along with that same lie that the world is better off without us but i thought the world was better off without me you're in a dark place you just there's no rational thoughts trying to rationalize uh suicidal thoughts is is you're trying to rationalize an irrational behavior so one morning about 2 am i walk into my office which was just a converted bedroom i take my my gun which again i never let my wife know that i was i was holding this gun i was carrying this gun and this was the time that i was going to remove myself from the situation i was going to kill myself i write the note i say goodbye to everybody and in my note i'm just that type of guy where i don't want to leave a mess behind so i give passwords to the bank you know and things that need to be done like a you know like a rundown list of everything that i take care of in the household how the bills are paid and and i i just i'm ready to go you know i say you know tell my kids when i was older that i tried the best i could i'm sorry that i'm such a disappointment i'm sorry i turned into this person [Music] but you don't deserve this i still have that note i don't think i'll ever let anybody read it i take the end of the gun and i can taste the metal on my tongue i can feel the the sight on my teeth and it's a double action gun so when you cocked a hammer back it's it's it's only the the gun itself is only 1.9 ounce or 1.9 pounds something somewhere around there so it's real light but it feels like it's it's a lead weight in your hand like it takes gunpowder on my tongue too and i cocked that hammer back and when you [ __ ] a hammer back it's the slightest touch and boom it's go time and i replay the incident in my head and i'm just i'm i'm looking for a reason to not do this but i can't find one nothing is coming to me i'm just going through all the the [ __ ] that i just put my family through and this is i'm probably four or five weeks removed from the shooting i'm not that same person you can see it in my eyes my whole body has changed squeeze i start squeezing the trigger tighter and tighter and tighter just waiting for the bang you know because i figure in my mind once that bang happens it's just going to be lights out i'm not going to see anything i'm not going to have to feel this pain anymore that i feel this this internal struggle this emotional pain at the end i have this brief moment of clarity uh some people think it's their higher power calling some people think it's just a pause i don't know i don't know i'd like to think that it's somebody telling me that i'm not done yet i hold the gun in my hand and i just stare at it for probably 15 minutes going oh my god and i start thinking now now that moment of clarity let me think i'm like if i just did this my kids are going to come down and find me find their father with their head half their head missing because i always had hollow point bullets what a horrible thing to do yeah that was that was the first time that i tried to kill myself other times as i told you before that if you take colonopin and drink it's a very dangerous cocktail you can kill yourself i knew this so i'm drinking all day because i can't work i can't go obviously i'm never going back to the police department i take a handful of clown pit i must have taken out anywhere from 10 to 15 whatever whatever i could pour out and i start drinking and just drink and drink and drink and then everything if you've ever passed out you see the darkness just close in on you like this you know and you just pass out well the downside of that was i woke up and i woke up in a pretty bad mood because once again i was unsuccessful there were other times too i i tried to hang myself with a uh with a dog leash at that time i went out in the woods tried to drive uh you know you're driving down the road and you're just thinking well you know what if i just fly off this bridge that'll do it um let me try that gun again but the problem with the gun is is i knew i was in trouble and i didn't want to do it but i did not want to kill myself but i found no other way so i took my gun and i i shipped it off to a friend of mine and said hey look you got to hold on to this i can't be trusted with this stuff and it just goes on and on like that just drinking and drinking and drinking just wondering how long i'm going to be able to do this i started going to some group therapy and specifically with other officers and there's something that i found out i'm not the only one going through all these things i'm not the only one that's having all these thoughts there's other people involved that are that other people who have been in similar incidents who are going through almost identical things that that i'm going through i can't you know i'm like wow this is this is incredible um and through that group therapy i just each day you know i would go to group therapy come home and i'd be able to sleep i i you know in in six months time i probably slept a total of 24 hours i started getting some help i started getting some genuine help and then i realized the biggest lie i ever told myself as i said before was the world's better off without me the world is not better off without me because as i got through this and got help from these other people i realized that i'm not alone other people understand these feelings where i thought nobody nobody could understand these feelings so i was on my way back i was able to retire and get my pension and thankfully i was able to to get my pension and i realized once i was through you haven't you have a an option once you retire you can stop going to group therapy and say hey look i'm cured i'm fine but if you were able to do that uh you're you're a fraud you're a phony because now you owe it to yourself to take what you've learned and pay it forward to other people and give what you've what people gave to you and pay it forward because those people don't want anything back they want it they want you to to go forward so i continue going to group therapy and i see this this cadre of people coming in and you can just see that look in their eye there that that stare you're like yeah you're you're about to you're really about to go on this ride and there's nothing i can say but what i can do is i can walk alongside of you from a place of understanding because i have been there and i made it out to the other side see when you're in the darkest times of your life you're in this dark tunnel and you think there's nobody around you nobody understands you're all alone it's not until you get towards the end when a little bit of light shines in and you look to your right and your left and there are people walking through with you and they're helping you out it's just it's so dark in there and what i realized very quickly was what happened after this incident is no different than what happened in my childhood i just ran away from my problems the same way i ran away from home and went to college the same way i tried to change identities and run away from who i was before that's all i was doing but i was numbing it alcohol prescription medication uh trying to trying to kill myself that was just a temporary fix i had to face the problem i had to turn around and hug this suffering of mine and i did i faced it head-on i had to go back and repair a lot of different relationships in my way my life i'd repair the relationship with my wife i'd repaired a relationship with my friend with my with my uh children with my friends who just thought i fell off the the map and i started to find some peace and hope when i went out there and and started helping other people through the same situations that i went through you know we're we're born with a with a glass and in that glass is the amount of suffering and pain and just crap that we can handle and with each piece of pain that comes in the glass gets a little fuller and a little fuller a little fuller and you hope that by the end of your life that glass doesn't overflow because you hoped that that glass was made big enough by your maker where you can handle all this stuff my glass spilled over my glass spilled over i've learned to empty the glass now so when the glass starts getting a little full i just give that suffering a big hug so i found a lot of peace and hope in helping others around me and helping people around me um deal with their pain because as police officers and as as just the the regular citizen you know every piece of pain and damage we see we we stack on another piece of armor and another piece of armor and another piece of armor and before you know it after 20 years you're so heavily laden with armor because these different pains you don't ever want to get hurt like that again so you guard yourself against it you can't even stand up because you're so weighted down with armor but when i started telling other people the journey that i went through the pain that i went through i found very quickly that a piece of armor will pop off and wow that feels pretty good it's like doing a 20-year squat in the gym you know once that barbell comes off your back you're pretty light and that's what i did i would go out and tell my story and tell my story and somehow my story gave people some hope and that identity that i was looking for that thing that i was running away from i seem to have found it in in my new purpose is helping people helping other people because that's ultimately where we're on this earth once we we all have an expiration date it's what we do when we're here that makes a difference you know everybody has peaks and valleys in their life and just because you're high right now doesn't mean tomorrow you're not going to be in that valley and then the next day you might be up again i want everybody to realize that just because you're in a valley right now doesn't mean that you got to stay in a valley and that there's purpose in your suffering it's a it's about helping people through and showing them that there is purpose in this in this life purpose in their in their pain and their suffering you know i i i learned to embrace my pain and i use the i use the terminology i read this book years ago it was about how to survive worst case scenarios and i think i was on a business trip or something and one of them was a prairie fire and now i'm in new jersey there's no prairie fires in new jersey but when you see a prairie fire coming to you it's it's human instinct to run away from danger that's just how we're built that's how we're designed it's it's survival with a prairie fire though if you run away from it it's just going to grow and grow and grow until it becomes so big that it's going to consume you and you're ultimately going to die but all you had to do is run straight towards that prairie fire and you'll get through to the other side you'll be a little scarred you'll be a little charred but ultimately you're going to be alive and we tell people we walk people through to have them run to their suffering not away from it don't numb it don't numb it you would never know anything good in life if you didn't know the bad and because you know the bad in a way that some people can't imagine you're going to have so much better perspective on the good things in life you're going to appreciate that meal a little bit more than the average person you're going to appreciate your relationship with your kid or your spouse a little bit more than most people in life and it's worked it's really worked because then people will listen to it and say you know what i i can relate to that person so we're doing a group therapy session on air every week with thousands of people and the the suffering podcast has has just been so great that i'm able to smile again i i went probably seven six seven years with rarely smiling and definitely very few genuine smiles and now i have a genuine smile on my face i'm a happy guy now i found that primary identity the one thing about primary identity that thing that i was always chase always chasing you know primary identities have to be my good friend pastor adam burke primary identity it has to be unshakable and he's taught me this i used to think my primary identity was being a tough guy or being the the best at sports or being the biggest drug addict or or being uh the best sport play or the the highest educated person in college or even being a cop i always thought that was my identity but all those things have an expiration date every single one of them has an expiration date so you need to find something that is your primary identity and only you can find it nobody can tell you what it is you need to find your primary identity in something that's never going to move whether it's a belief in your higher power or whether it's a belief in your children or your spouse something that is well even your spouse is shakeable but you need to find something that is totally unshakable in your life and then everything else you are falls underneath that primary identity so when those things expire you still have that one unshakable thing at the top helping others is where it's at isn't it you know it that's all it is that's what we're put on this earth to do we're not put on this earth for personal gain we're put on this earth to help our fellow human being what a great talk kevin thank you thank you you

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

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Id: kORNKnIFZQY

Length: 34min 9sec (2049 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 01 2022