Since you've really picked up your speaking, since you've got such a great message, I'd love to hear some of the really positive stuff that you get from your battalion.

Man, I tell you what, I learn more from them than I could ever possibly teach them.

I, I really can.

But one of the positives that I go out and I teach and I listen to the issues, that I'm able to go back and make sure that I don't go down those roads.

So that's a positive that happens there.

But my guys are, oh my gosh, they...

I, I am such a bl- I am the luckiest battalion chief there is in the world because I got seven stations and 60 people that are just aggressive, they're just good, just, just great firefighters, and they give you the shirt off their back.

[laughs]

You work for Seattle Fire, that's true.

[laughs] Right, yeah.

But no, it, it really come to me because I was checked out for the first half of my career, and I just was gonna do 20 and out, 25 and out.

I let the toxicity, I let the negativity of the fire service get to me.

And then luckily, we merged into Indianapolis Fire in 2009, and I was able to, what I say, get born again in the fire service and fall in love with it.

And now, you know, today I'm in my 36th year, and people are like, "When are you gonna retire?" I'm like, "Are you shitting me? 36's just warm-up.

I want another 36 in the fire service 'cause I'm just getting started." And I can't think of doing anything else with my life.

Yes, it is.

Well,

there weren't until the reports made, and then there was 15 of them around the apparatus.

And it's because we're a culture of punishment, and we have gotten very good as firefighters at covering that shit up so that we don't get punished.

instead of it being.

So we have people out there that say, well, I don't want to micromanage my people.

I'm not a micromanager, so I'm going to let them do what they want to do.

Well, that might not be a micromanaging moment.

Why does somebody become that when nobody intends to be? Why does somebody count down the days to retirement when nobody intends to?

... "Doctor Chief, how do we convince our best officers to become leaders when the leadership above them is exactly what they don't want to become?" And you've already hit on this a little bit, but I wanted to get this question a- right up to you.

Gosh, it's almost like I live it every single day of my life.

You know? And I can't name names.

There's people that's in positions that shouldn't be in positions that don't have the backs of other people, and I can sit there and I sit and I watch it, but you know what? That doesn't impact how I deal with my officers.

That doesn't deal...

It don't impact how I have my officers' back.

It doesn't matter whether anybody doesn't have my back that's above me.

Why don't you promote up and help change the leadership above?