Jun 29, 2026 · 49 min · 10 segments
Richard Burns, a retired police officer and United States Marine, shares his journey from law enforcement to retirement, highlighting the mental health challenges faced by first responders. He…
Richard BurnsGuestMickeyHostSo I found you on social media and your social media is called The Broken Responder, right? Okay, medical dial, we went through these issues and we dealt with them and now we're helping other first responders deal with them through this social media called The Broken Responder.
So talk to us a little bit about The Broken Responder.
Initially, when I started The Broken Responder, it was I wanted to podcast, but I wanted to talk about like the things we went through as cops or as first responders, all the stuff that we go through.
And then as I got further into like trying to do the podcasting and talking with folks, I was like,
man,
like nobody wants to talk about their misery, you know, or the worst things we we've done.
And initially when I got into it, I was like, we need to kind of talk about that, you know, but then I was like,
well,
You know, I think I did like 10 different podcasts and I was like, man, I just don't like how this is going because talking about our misery isn't fixing the problem.
And that's the mental health problems that first responders face on a daily basis.
go in, we apply, we pass a background, you know, we pass a psychological and then the like, you know, first year on the job, you couldn't pass that same psyche vow that you had to pass to get the job because of all the things that you've been through.
Yeah, I agree.
I had a SWAT eval for the SWAT medic thing.
And I was like, I don't know how I'm going to pass this, to be honest with you.
Right?
So I found you on social media and your social media is called The Broken Responder, right? Okay, medical dial, we went through these issues and we dealt with them and now we're helping other first responders deal with them through this social media called The Broken Responder.
So talk to us a little bit about The Broken Responder.
Initially, when I started The Broken Responder, it was I wanted to podcast, but I wanted to talk about like the things we went through as cops or as first responders, all the stuff that we go through.
And then as I got further into like trying to do the podcasting and talking with folks, I was like,
man,
like nobody wants to talk about their misery, you know, or the worst things we we've done.
And initially when I got into it, I was like, we need to kind of talk about that, you know, but then I was like,
well,
You know, I think I did like 10 different podcasts and I was like, man, I just don't like how this is going because talking about our misery isn't fixing the problem.
And that's the mental health problems that first responders face on a daily basis.
go in, we apply, we pass a background, you know, we pass a psychological and then the like, you know, first year on the job, you couldn't pass that same psyche vow that you had to pass to get the job because of all the things that you've been through.
Yeah, I agree.
I had a SWAT eval for the SWAT medic thing.
And I was like, I don't know how I'm going to pass this, to be honest with you.
Right?
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