HI 108 - Challenges that Police Officers Face in the Court of Public Opinion with Attorney and Retired Officer Lance Lorusso

Welcome to the Heroic Investing Show. As first responders, we risk our lives every day. Our financial security is under attack. Our pensions are in a state of emergency. A single on duty incident can alter or erase our earning potential instantly and forever. We are the heroes of society. We are self reliant and we need to take care of our own financial future. The Heroic Investing show is our toolkit of business and investing tactics on our mission to financial freedom.

Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 108 of the Heroic Investing show where we focus on challenges unique to members of the first responders organizations of firefighters, police officers, EMTs, members of the active duty armed services and veterans. But we also focus on those that are common to all investors. We aim to provide tools that our audience can use to enable them to secure their family, their future and their retirement. And we help them put in place a solid plan to replace their W2 income or trading time for dollars with passive income so that they can focus on their unique genius, sharing it with the world and making this a better place. Hey, I want to make a quick plug for my friend and mentor, Patrick Donahoe and the Wealth Standard podcast. If you haven't listened to the Wealth Standard radio in a while, for 2018, Patrick started a series called Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property following John Locke's comments and his writings from, well.

A couple of centuries ago.

But John Locke talked about these really powerful concepts. And so Patrick took his podcast and broke it up into four month long segments or three four month long segments, excuse me. And that'll get us all the way through 2018. And so we're still in segment one. But he's got some great interviews in there, some great discussions about these concepts that were really foundational for our, you know, our founding fathers when they were writing the Constitution, Life, Liberty and their pursuit of property. Of course it was changed to the pursuit of happiness out of concern that perhaps people would misunderstand what John Locke meant by pursuit of property.

But pursuit of property really is about.

Things like intellectual property and the feeling, the belief that if you do work to create something, that it won't be taken from you, that your intellectual property will actually provide benefit for you, giving people confidence and the motivation to create, to use their unique genius and keep it unique. Right. And so that's really what he was talking about, what John was talking about. And I can't really wait to dig into that aspect of it when Patrick gets to that portion of his show. But it reminded me of that as I was going through our opening of this episode and how I open all of the heroic investing that that's really my goal. My goal is to help you put in place things that bring passive income protection and passive income. And that's really what we do at Paradigm Life. But it's also what Jason does at Platinum Properties when it comes to the passive income side of it. So you get the protections in place, you get the passive income in place, and that releases you from the chains of the daily grind to be able to focus on unique genius and make this world that we all live in a better place. So somewhat selfish, I do a podcast to get you to our world to make my life a better place, I guess. So this episode with Lance LaRusso is just an amazing episode. Lance is a successful attorney, business owner and retired law enforcement officer in the state of Georgia. So I think especially those listeners who serve in the blue will get great.

Value out of this.

I mean, Lance was a former officer, did a full career in the state of Georgia, and remains a very strong advocate for law enforcement, specifically Georgia law enforcement. He serves as a general counsel to the Georgia Fraternal Order of Police as well as lodge attorney for Cub Counties Lodge 13, the fraternal order of Police, and he responds to critical incidents on behalf of law enforcement officers. Lance continues to serve the community as an instructor for Georgia Police Academies and for a certified as a certified post instructor in Taser, firearms patrol officer, emergency vehicle operation and legal issues. So, you know, he has done a great job of melding together his current vocation and his obviously where his expertise lies in being a very successful advocacy attorney for law enforcement officers and for the citizens of the state of Georgia. He's also a prolific writer and the.

Topics of his books that we'll get.

Into a little bit during this conversation. And I really think, you know, he's just such an engaging speaker. I think you're really, really going to enjoy this interview. But a couple of Lance's books he wrote one for law enforcement officers on officer involved shootings called When Cops Kill. And he also wrote two books on business development with rainmaker coach Robin Hensley that I think you'll really enjoy. He writes professional journal and newsletter articles frequently. He's a speaker to law enforcement professionals, business owners, healthcare professionals. You can find more about that on his website@larusso law firm.net larussolawfirm.net and that's L O R U S s o law firm.net so in his primary business, you know, Lance LaRusso is a partner in a firm that he started, he's a problem solver and trusted advisor for his clients. You know, as a litigator with healthcare and law enforcement background, Lance focuses his practice on general liability defense for individuals and also for corporations, medical malpractice defense, healthcare law, and catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death cases. He's an advocate. Right.

You know, that is the kind of.

Attorney that I think inspires us, especially with a background in law enforcement. I think you're gonna find that he's.

Really, really engaging in this interview.

But it is a little bit of a longer episode, so I will keep my other announcements to a minimum. Please leave us a review of this episode and other episodes that you liked either on itunes@ heroicinvesting.com or you can also do it on my new website@garypinkerton.com and you can always reach out to me with an email to garyarypinkerton.com and don't forget, go to Amazon to get a copy of my new book, the One Thing that Changed Everything, a book that I co authored with 25 other entrepreneurs where we share our stories about how an experience, a lesson we learned from a painful life experience, has changed everything for us. And we believe when you combine these tales will change everything for you. So thank you so much and here's my interview with the amazing Lance LaRusso.

Well, everyone, again, thanks for joining me. We have a distinct pleasure of having Lance LaRusso. And thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So Lance has a very recent book out and he's got a couple very well known that I mentioned during the introduction. You have four total, I think, right, Lance?

Yes.

Right.

And so there's actually now one novella, novel, fiction, story. I really love personally when someone has the ability, the depth to be able to write both fiction and historical recounts. And so what I'd like to do is just talk about your. I think it was your first book, but certainly I think one of the most best known When Cops the Aftermath of a Critical Incident. Can you talk a little bit about that one? Was it the first?

Yeah, yeah. Actually I had written, I'd co written a book with a business coach, but this was the first book that I wrote by myself. And I'd been in law enforcement since, you know, really 1987, 88, and had been a firearms instructor since 1991 and really started thinking about what happens when there's an officer involved shooting, especially when there's a death, and then listening to what happens in the media, what people think happens after an officer involve shooting. And then I like to read detective novels and I like to watch them on tv and it's nothing anywhere close to what happens in those venues. So I wanted to write the book to first of all let law enforcement officers know what they could expect in reality and then hope that I would educate the public and journalists as to what really happens after an officer involves shooting. So I interviewed officers who'd been involved in shootings, officers who had been shot in the line of duty, family members who receive the phone calls they dread. And it's everything from the administrative and criminal investigations, the prosecutorial inquiry, and then just having lived with taking a life.

And when did you write that?

That was released in 2012. And about six months later there was a trial that came up that really made people focus on the book, and that was the George Zimmerman trial in Florida. So the whole stand your ground thing really became a basis for inquiries and that's what really led the book to some prominence. And all the profits from all my books go to law enforcement charity. So I was just very happy that people were buying it and I could donate money. We're close to about $20,000 in money donated to charities.

That's amazing. Congratulations. So one of the things you just mentioned, there was, you know, a recent public event, newsworthy event, unfortunately happened very too frequently for law enforcement nowadays. But that's really the subject of one of your other books, Blue News. Right. And your most recent one, how does that affect or maybe a little bit about your book, but then also please weave in there how that affects officers on the day to day business of responding to calls and just doing their job.

Sure. You know, it's really changed the way they have to do things. Blue News was written about the intersection of media and law enforcement. And I started out with a premise that both sides need each other, they have to get along. As a matter of fact, I make the comparison of two kids in the backseat on the way to Yellowstone driving 1,000 miles and he's on my side. No, he's on my side. Sooner or later they have to talk to each other. And right now there's way too much going on that's leading to dangers for law enforcement. We're seeing more law enforcement officers ambushed, officers attacked. Really not in a fight with a bad guy, just attacked for sitting at a red light in a marked patrol car. And really that has to do with messaging. After the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, we saw this anti law enforcement bias going around and I explored that in Blue News. One of the people that I interviewed was the person who was in charge of all law enforcement operations in Missouri for that period of time. And just how the onslaught occurs with misinformation that comes out from sources that are just wrong because of the news cycle to misinformation coming out from sources that are intentionally skewing the news and then what it's like to try to correct a misconception. So Ferguson was really a watershed moment for law enforcement to realize that if they don't tell their story, someone else will.

Yeah, someone with an agenda that's counter to their ability to do their job.

Really.

So you mentioned a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of mis agendas, you know, that can tell completely truthful or completely unrelated information, doesn't even have to be wrong. But there's an ability to heat up a debate or heat up people's impression negatively towards law enforcement or military in a foreign country. Similar type thing makes it really, really hard and dangerous to do your job. Absolutely.

And I'll give you an example from Ferguson and from Blue News. There was the statement that came out that law enforcement was looking like stormtroopers because they were wearing Kevlar helmets. Well, the protesters are peaceful. Then we have anarchists and rioters. They are not peaceful. So the anarchists and rioters were freezing pint sized water bottles during the day and throwing them at law enforcement officers at night. Well, if you're wearing a regular campaign hat and you get a frozen pint water bottle to the side of your head, you may not survive. But during the day, it was a hot August September, CNN would go out there and film and all they would see was these water bottles. So that was very much of a planned strategy. But as you said, the misinformation actually leads. And it happens with our troops too. That misinformation that someone thinks is a neat news story actually can lead to law enforcement officers being placed in danger.

Meaning that they were told to take those skeldar helmets off. Or that was at least considered.

Well, part of it. That was one thing that was considered. But no, they generated information and misinformation that has led to attacks on officers. And we saw that in Ferguson. For example, Michael Brown was never shot in the back. He was not shot with his hands up. And if you stop people on the street and ask them how many times Michael Brown was shot in the back, you'll get a number and it never happened.

Yeah, that is absolutely crazy. And so, you know, a lot of our listeners as you know, are military or individuals that are first responders outside of the United States. And it's not just here, you know, it's probably worse in foreign countries, actually. There's a lot of places that would remind members of the military who are trying to do humanitarian aid and other services in foreign countries. They'll feel like they're in Henderson because it's just challenging. There's a lot of hate America stuff obviously out there. So they do with the same challenge that you talk about in Blue News. I said in the introduction, we haven't talked much about it here, that you learned a lot of this firsthand while you're wearing the blue uniform for many years for a full career. I want to transition a little bit to those. I have a lot of members of my audience that the listeners that or kind of making that step. And it's what I did. And really, one of the reasons I wanted to run this podcast is try to help people make a transition from being a service provider, whether that's, you know, a first responder, an emt, firefighter, active duty member deploying in the military. What thoughts do you have or what personal challenges did you have as you made that transition?

Well, and I'll start with an example. I was honored to be in the honorary commanders in 2011 out of Dobbins Air Force Base. And it was just. It was quite an honor. And they kept saying it was an honor for us to be there. So you don't understand what that means. There was an army colonel, 33 years in the military, started out, I think maybe with a ged, and was about ready to retire with two master's degrees, and he wanted to go to breakfast with me. So he said, you know, this is scary. He said, all I've known is the military since I was 17. What's this private sector world? What am I going to do? Do you think there's a place for me? And I said, well, Mark, I don't think there's a place for you. He said, really? I said, yeah. You don't know how to show up on time. You know, you can't manage anybody. You don't know how to manage yourself. You can't see a project through to its end. And he said, is it that simple? I said, yeah, it's that simple.

Yeah.

It's not just the military. My brother's retired military. My dad just passed away a year ago this month. He was a World War II vet. Those lessons that people learn, whether it's in public safety or the Military about pulling your own weight, about taking care of yourself, about realizing that you're part of something bigger and it's not all about you. There's no safety pins for those folks. They don't need them. They know how to pull their own weight. And when you get out of that environment of the public sector to the private sector, the first thing you need to realize is you have the core skills. And I'm not going to say it's not going to be hard, but you have those core skills that you need to succeed. And if you rely on those, the ability to talk to somebody, the ability to have a conversation with somebody with a completely different background than you, you're going to survive and you're going to excel in that environment.

I think that's great advice. And I have, living here in northern New Jersey, I have a lot of very close friends that are firefighters and a lot of retired firefighters and police officers. And I see the exact same qualities. We're just birds of a different cloth, totally mixed up metaphors there. But the same qualities that make you successful coming out of the military are exactly what I see with other, you know, as you said, public sector members providing service. And I agree. And what I've experienced was a little bit of trepidation early, but honestly, a lot of it was because I was in these circles of going to these job conferences and we were all feeding off of each other's, I guess, fear or something. I kind of made a, you know, a hard right turn and stepped out. Commission only, which for a military member, for me at least, that was very scary. But I have been extremely happy with the experience. I think we're kind of wired to be our own bosses. And so, yeah, all those qualities you just said are absolutely going to help. And listen, I think that in the 70s, if somebody was trying to come out of the military, that'd be a lot different. It's a lot of animosity and stuff, but people, I almost trip over people still telling me, thanks for my service. And I say, you know, I'm this guy who's out there with you now. I appreciate you saying that. This is very humbling. You feel like not deserving. I felt not deserving in the military. Surrounded by a steel submarine that no one could find. I wasn't walking around downtown Baghdad or worse, many places in Afghanistan. I felt embarrassed to take those compliments back then. Now it's much worse. I'm not even in the military. But I bring that up because it's evidence of the support that we have out there, you know, with the actual traits that everyone has that you just mentioned and the support that they have and the gratitude from America. You know, my advice is just go get them. I mean, you're going to have no problems. It's going to be amazing.

Well, the advice I'll give you too, and first of all, I slept a lot better knowing that you couldn't be found under the water. But the other thing I'll say too is don't settle. There are enough employers, there are enough entrepreneurs, and there are entrepreneurs just like your listeners who have decided, you know, I can do this on my own. There's enough out there, enough opportunity for you to not settle for the respect that you deserve. Yeah, there are employers who are seeking out people in the military. It's kind of funny. I talked to a retired cop who loves delivering flowers and I said, what do you want to do? Why do you want to do that? And it's really funny. He said, it started out on Valentine's Day just wanting to do that. We take a part time job day, just basically take off and do it as a part time job. He said, I want everybody to be happy to see me. I show up and people are upset. He said, I just want to, you know, have to be happy to see me. I've got a friend who's a retired special forces operator who's thinking about going to nursing school just so he can do mission operations in different parts of the world. So, you know, it's the forever servant, the servant's heart. Don't abandon it, but realize you can be your own servant and it's okay to recognize that you're going to invest some time in yourself. I think the biggest anticipation people have when they come out of the military or when they come out of public service is am I going to get the same support from my coworkers that I got in the military and in law enforcement and in firefighting? You know that those people that those four or five core group of people you're with, you know, you can count on them for anything. And those people that'll support you are out there. You know, there's some others that won't and you don't need to walk away from them. You need to run.

Yeah, absolutely. A lot of lessons I've learned in a couple of years worth of journey of personal development and you know, I've studied Zig Ziglar and Jim Rohn and Og Mandino and a lot of others much intensively than I ever really read them before. But one of Jim Rohn's comments is you're the sum total of five people that you're around the most. And so, yeah, if you just stay away from those people that are not good in your world. I've had the same exact realization in the circles I travel in now and in the field, the financial services field that I'm in and my local friends here that are absolutely people that would still die for me, they just are not in uniform with me, given that situation, that opportunity, very often. Back to your thought about entrepreneur and not settling. I loved to see that you were a speaker. I'm trying to get into that world myself. I've done a couple really motivating opportunities here in the last year. One of the things I talk about, I speak about is exactly that. It's this concept of unique genius and taking this opportunity. I mean, I started at 45, 46, but you can start at any age. Colonel Sanders started his incredible chain of restaurants in his late 60s. But it's about what you just said, not settling, finding that thing that you're uniquely good at, that everybody else thinks that you're just a genius for doing it. And you are good at it because you care enough and you lose track of time while you're doing it. To speak of the book the Outliers, the reason Michael Jordan was such a great basketball player and it was natural to him is because he'd done it 10,000 times. The same thing with our geniuses. I absolutely agree with you. Don't settle. Go for that thing that is that you're really good at and that people will pay gratitude to you for having done it. So, you know, they will pay you. They will, you know, provide things for you. You'll never have to worry if you focus on sharing your talents with other people. I think that's, you know, it's an amazing thing to always remember. And I also like this concept of this new term out there called entrepreneur. And it's the thing that you spoke about there at the end is it doesn't have to be entrepreneur.

You don't.

If it's not a good fit. Some of us don't have the unique genius that would lend itself well to running our own business. And that's quite all right because we have the talents from what we've learned as service providers to absolutely kill it in somebody else's business and be able to lead that team and do amazing things. It's okay to be W2 employee. You know, if you are sharing Your talents. I think it's amazing. So that was a great comment.

Well, thank you. And, yeah, one of the people that I like is Brian Tracy. And I think for anybody who's looking at a big transition like that, the biggest thing about Brian Tracy is he talks about writing out your goals, having goals, writing them out, and, you know, it's okay to adjust them. You know, when you're running a compass heading, at some point you may need to adjust a little bit. But the writing, there's something magical about writing the goals down. And once you do that, you know, you're going to realize that there's things that are important to you, there's things that you thought were important that were not. But the bottom line is when you find the right place to land, you know, if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life. If you look at that W2 and say, I can't believe they pay me this much to do this, I'm having a ball. When you've chosen wisely, right?

Exactly.

Absolutely. So let's make a little shift here. So you wrote a fiction story, a novella called Peacemaking, and it was a funny story. You mentioned to me that after it was produced, Amazon informed you that you had just written a Christian thriller.

Yes, it's a Christian thriller. I have no idea what a Christian thriller is, but I wrote one. But by God, if Amazon says it's a Christian thriller, then it is. The book's done very well. I've represented some officers, and some of them former military, who have been forced to take a life. And they had a lot of questions. People ask me what I talk to officers about after they've been involved in a shooting. And sometimes we do a lot of silent meditation, sometimes we do some praying, and a lot of times, quite frankly, I watch them just sack out because their adrenaline has hit such a point. And that's one thing everybody on this podcast probably has in common, to the point where your adrenaline has hit maximum and now you're coming down and all you want to do is sleep. When they finally were able to wrap their head around the fact that, number one, they had to take a life, and number two, somebody was trying to take their life, a stranger. They had questions. And I've represented officers whose parents were involved in the church, more than one, whose father was a Baptist preacher, and then they took a life. So Peacemaking really was a lot of their questions and a lot of the questions that I've had personally. And it's about a cop's Walk with Christ kind of what questions would come up and what kind of answers would we get?

Nice. I also wanted to mention that you did a full career in the military and as I said in the intro, you now have a very successful legal firm. I wanted to make sure that I got the title out there for everybody to go and investigate more. It's larussowlawfirm.net that's last name is L O R U s s o lynlawfirm.net and on there you can find all of his books.

Full career in law enforcement, not in the military. I was never able to serve military, but. No, but I've. I appreciate the owner.

No, that's what I meant. I consider them really the same, especially when you go down, go downtown New York City. They're, they're more inside Baghdad than I ever was.

But, well, as I said, the, the only difference between your service and mine was your guns were bigger.

That's right. So, yeah, thanks for that clarification. But on the website also, though, you talk about some another member, a retired Marine, he was in the JAG for a while there. A master sergeant, I think she was.

Yeah, she's a retired master sergeant. She's about five foot even and she is just incredible.

A fireball.

Husband is a retired master gunnery sergeant. And I'm just honored that, that she works with us every day.

Awesome.

And so there's quite a bit on here about, you know, some of the charities that you and she and others choose to give back. Any special charities you wanted to mention or causes.

You know, the WellStar health system is one that's meant a lot to me in the past. We've also found a lot of law enforcement charities to support through the book donations. You know, people can learn more about the books@lancelorusobooks.com and also bluelinelawyer.com is my blog. I think a lot of your listeners would find it pretty interesting. Sometimes they're Supreme Court cases, sometimes they're just things that are of interest to me. But it's having the ability to donate either your time or money. For me, it's the money from the books. And my time is just so empowering. And you know, I've heard people in the military that I worked with in law enforcement said, you know, the thing that I. There were two things that I missed when I was in a war zone. One was my time being my own. And they felt bad about being selfish with their time. Well, they gave enough to everyone else. And two, and I'll never Forget this. I met a young captain in the army who was deployed several times, and he was a big hunter. So he and I had a lot in common. Hunting. And he said, you know, the hardest thing about being deployed was it's never quiet. And he described being in Iraq and between the daytime hustle and bustle or the, you know, the sounds of war, he said, even when it was quiet, I couldn't get away from the generators. And he described this goal that he had was to find someplace on the base where he didn't have to hear the whir of machinery. So, you know, anything that you do that kind of gives you a little bit of an escape is worthwhile and serving others, you know, that's what everybody, all of your listeners are about anyway.

That's right. And so to kind of tie it back there, I've done a little bit of hunting, and for some people, it's maddening, you know, like, this is so boring. But for someone who enjoys hunting, I can imagine that those hours of listening to the sounds of the woods would. I grew up on a dairy farm in the Midwest and didn't have any neighbors, really, that I could see at least. And it was, you know, it was beautiful to, you know, to see the real night sky. Right. And so for me, that was a lot of peace and quiet as well. So I can imagine. I can certainly relate to what he was trying to. Trying to do the same thing on my submarine.

I really did. I mean, I went hunting in Montana for a couple years in a row, and I'll definitely go back, but, you know, when you're in the middle of big timber, Montana, on the side of a mountain, maybe you hear an elk bugle. Yeah, it's your own time.

Yeah, that's. That's gorgeous.

That's amazing.

That never occurred to me that that would be presence of noise would be a lack to someone like that and something that he was seeking for some quiet. That's a really good feedback as we start to wrap up here. What have we not talked about that you think we're missing that an audience would benefit from?

Sure. I think I can probably lend this. Recently I had a conversation with a law enforcement officer getting ready to retire, probably 32, 33 years, getting to that point. Try to do this before you get out. Don't wait until you're ready to get out to figure out what to do. He started taking a few classes, one at a time. He had a college degree, but he thought, well, I think I want to do X. Well, he went to the community college or went to the local college, especially the veterans. You know, you're going to have GI Bill benefits and just took one course. Take an intro course in accounting if you thought that was interesting or investing or something, and try it on a little bit before you jump out of whatever comfortable role you're in, whether it's in military, law enforcement, public safety, and jump in with both feet, because that's the biggest problem of both of those groups. We're deep into the pool kind of people. And if you jump into something without having a backup plan or without knowing whether you like it or not, six months later, you may say, you know, this sounded like a really good idea on paper, but this is horrible. Give yourself the benefit to try it on.

Absolutely. That's amazing, amazing advice. I think back a couple years ago when I was looking at, you know, at that process and that stress that you're feeling when it's getting close, you're just going to jump at something, right? And you'll end up settling just like you start. You know, this is kind of bringing full circle to the conversation that you. With that stress without knowledge ahead of time, in a low stress environment where the paycheck's still coming in, you will just jump at something that meets one or two of the criteria and you'll end up working somewhere for the wrong reasons.

And you have worked hard enough and you deserve to do something that you love.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, we got to end on that. That was a great comment. Thank you so much, Lance. I really appreciate it. The audience got some great, great help out of that.

Thank you so much. Thank you for your service and let me know if I can ever help you again.

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