Ep 25 | THE POLICE CHIEF WHO CARES ABOUT COMMUNITY, HEALING, & HOPE: NEIL GANG
Episode Summary
Today’s guest is a policeman that cares about his community, their healing, and promoting hope.
Neil Gang is first and foremost a man of faith. He’s here to talk about his journey through life, from his work as a law enforcement officer to his keynote speaking gigs. After a colleague committed suicide, Neil was suffering and they never spoke about it at the agency. This lit his gut on fire to do something, to change things, and he wrote the Asher Model. Awareness, access, peer support, education, healthy habits, spirituality, and family are the seven pillars of the Asher Model. Since then, Neil has implemented the Asher Model wherever he works because he is committed to reducing police suicides. He not only uses it as an organizational program, but he also includes the families of his employees.
Join this episode of the HINESIGHTS Podcast and listen to Neil’s experience in the field!
About the Guest - Neil Gang
Police Chief Neil H. Gang began his career with West Windsor, New Jersey Police Department in 1988. After several stops along the way to include Pembroke Pines, Florida, and Surprise, Arizona, Neil was selected to become the police chief for the Pinole (California) Police Department in 2014. With more than 30 years of experience at all levels of a full-service agency, Gang’s policing strategy is progressive and innovative. His work focuses on innovation and community engagement, and in 2019 his agency was the first in the nation to create a Video Reporting Program that allows citizens to use different platforms to report crimes remotely and still receive officer engagement. Neil also was the first in the nation to partner with ThinBlueOnline for their online de-escalation technology and training software.
Neil is a graduate of Northwestern School of Police Staff and Command, where he was both the president of the class and the recipient of the Franklin M. Kremel Award for excellence in the field of leadership. Neil has a Bachelor of Applied Science Degree in Administrative Justice from Wayland Baptist University and is a graduate of the California POST Management School. He is a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Police Executive Research Forum, International Hostage Negotiators Association, California Police Chiefs Association, and the National Association of Police. Neil was also a past Northern California representative on the California Peace Officer Memorial Foundation Board and the Chairman of the West County Police Chief’s Association.
Key Take-Aways
There’s a difference between what you do for a living and who you are.
To create change, establishing relationships is the first step.
Even poor leadership will teach you something.
Your family and your personal life will always affect your professional life.
Being aware of things is the first step to a healthy journey in mental health.
Suicide is a topic that is many times denied in the police field, it must be addressed.
The Asher Model is a rounded structure that approaches wellbeing.
Resources
Connect with Neil on LinkedIn.
Follow the 6th Pillar Podcast on Instagram.
Grab your copy of the Emotional Survival kit for Law Enforcement book here
Hinesights Podcast_NEIL GANG_THE POLICE CHIEF WHO CARES ABOUT COMMUNITY, HEALING AND HOPE: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
Hinesights Podcast_NEIL GANG_THE POLICE CHIEF WHO CARES ABOUT COMMUNITY, HEALING AND HOPE: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Kevin Hines:
My name is Kevin Hines. I jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. I believe that I had to die, but I lived. Today, I travel the world with my lovely wife, Margaret, sharing stories of people who have triumphed over incredible adversity. Now, we help people be here tomorrow. Welcome to the HINESIGHTS Podcast.
Kevin Hines:
What is cracking, Hope Nation? It is your friendly neighbor, Kevin Hines, and today I'm joined by an amazing human being, a service member, bit of a genius himself, Chief of Police of Pinole Police Department, he's a keynote speaker and officer of Wellness, creator of the Asher Model, CPCA Officer, Wellness Committee Chair and Board of Directors Region, six representative, and he is the host of the 6th Pillar podcast. Please, please give a warm welcome to Chief Neil Gang.
Neil Gang:
Wow, Kevin, now, thank you very much. I have to go back, though, genius, I don't want to disappoint your listeners, but thank you so much. Very blessed to be here. You know, Kevin, you and I have been friendly for about a year now and finally get an opportunity to really, really interact with you. So I'm really blessed with the opportunity and excited to be here.
Kevin Hines:
Well, glad to have you. So let's just start off with a little bit about you. Who is Neil Gang and what has been your, if you can tell us a little bit about your life's journey?
Neil Gang:
Yeah. Who is Neil Gang? So this podcast is what, about four hours long or?
Kevin Hines:
The abbreviated version?
Neil Gang:
Yeah. So the only way for me to start off anything when I talk about myself is to say what my foundation is, and I'm a man of faith, right? And that just brings a lot of perspectives into what we're doing. So people say, well, you know, we ask you and you say, you're a chief. The chief is what I do for a living, it's not who I am, but I have been in law enforcement for over thirty-two years now. Several different agencies from the East Coast, all the way down to Florida, now I've been the police chief out in Pinole, California, for some of the listeners that don't know, that's that, that's right outside the San Francisco and the East Bay. And I've been a police chief here for about six and a half years now.
Kevin Hines:
Fantastic. And so, it's those 30 plus years in law enforcement, can you tell us about your three decades of service and your current role as police chief in the Pinole Police Department? So break down the changes you've seen in the last three decades in policing?
Neil Gang:
No, if I was to put it in a nutshell, things are so different now. Now we've moved from paramilitary structure type of organizations where you had autocratic leaders, now to business model, where now police chiefs are not immune police chiefs anymore, were more of like a CEO of a business, people that we interact with at a daily basis or our customers. We talk about customer service and community policing. All great things. But those aren't the way it was back in the eighties when we first out in law enforcement, law enforcements were really just silos in communities and they were there to police the community. There was no interactions, it really didn't, you know, pull up a chair and talk to a community member to see what they needed, they acted independently. So now we're partners, we talk about collaboration. And really, I think the biggest change in the paradigm switch was we exist only because the communities need us and we are their police departments. It doesn't work the other way around anymore. And for agencies that are succeeding, they understand that, they understand the need to continue to progress, look for innovation, technology, new philosophies. So that's kind of where you see the difference in law enforcement. So from paramilitary structure in the eighties with autocratic type of leadership, to CEOs of a business where leadership is all about love, right, and leading people and building relationships
Kevin Hines:
And bringing communities together.
Neil Gang:
Absolutely.
Kevin Hines:
Fantastic. So let's look back at your prolific career. You were a patrol officer in 1988 in New Jersey, a field training officer in 1991 in Florida, a lieutenant and canine training officer, amongst other things, in the early 2000s in Surprise, Arizona of all places, and now chief of police in Pinole, California. Can you tell us about a little more detail, the journey through all of that kind of, through your resume, if you will?
Neil Gang:
Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest with you, law enforcement wasn't a career I even dreamt about, it wasn't something I wanted to do as a kid, it was really something that came as a result of being injured playing college football. That's the only thing I had on my mind at the time. But when I got injured, I had to look for something else to do and my parents made a deal with me, if you're not going to go to school, then you need to find a full-time job. And honestly, I'm not a guy who looks to sit behind a desk, although, you know, funny now because that's all I do now. But you know, I need something where I could interact with people and I can go out and have difference in everything that I do every day and the thing, for me, it was really about having a serving heart, going out and helping people that can't help themselves. And that's kind of been my foundation regardless of where I've moved. So in New Jersey, yeah, it was all about just being a police officer, understanding what that meant, you know, going in the South Florida, a lot bigger organization. I had some really great experience with being a school resource officer that really kind of shaped my career because when you're in the schools, the fact that you have a badge and the fact that you wear a gun doesn't influence behavior, you had to build relationships with those students. They're not intimidated by that, so you really have to build relationships if you want to create change. And that's where I learned the foundation of what I'm doing today. You know, I was in the schools during Columbine. One of the most prolific time for school resource officers, the first time we really saw active shooter in a school. So trying to do investigations during that time, was all about relationships and helping people out, and building that cohesive partnerships with the students. And even now I use that and I say no, for us to go out on the street, I want you to handle it or at least think in your head, how would you handle this if you weren't carrying a gun and you weren't wearing a badge? How would you do this conflict resolution without those tools? And that's really, really helps our perspective, when it comes to de-escalation and finding new ways to kind of deal with things so that's in Florida, I went out to Arizona and it was really a small organization when I went out there. One of the fastest-growing cities in the entire nation from the year 2001 to 2010, we went from about thirty-four or thirty-five officers to about one hundred and fifty officers in that span of time. And that's really where I got into canine and got into canine training. Some of the things for me, Kevin, is I always look to find out the best, right? So we were getting our dogs from some vendor, wasn't really really happy with the quality of dogs we were getting, so what does Neil do? I research and I decide I'm going to open my own business, I fly to Europe not knowing anybody, and I just network, and I go around and start buying dogs, and I end up creating a really good, successful business where I import and so police dogs for many years. So that was part of it. And then, you know, for me, moving up in rank really wasn't about a desire. Like, I wanted to be a police chief or I wanted to be a lieutenant, it was really I learned a lot from poor leadership, of say I could do this better and I can present more leadership, more effective leadership, and I can build relationships. And that's really what created me to become what I am today and become a leader in this profession. And if I was to sit down and say, hey, I'm going to write a book about leadership, I really would scroll down, I put one page in my book in the middle of that book would be relationships, and that's to me. That's everything when it means the leader, to be a leader and about leadership.
Kevin Hines:
Well, just to be clear, I would read that book in a heartbeat. Hope you someday do write that book because I'll be glad to check it out.
Neil Gang:
Yeah, thank you.
Kevin Hines:
So onto a more impactful part of your life and career, something that changed you immensely and push you on a particular path to create something, your friend and colleague, Police Officer Asher Wolinski, died from suicide and you created the Asher model. Can you tell us what is the Asha model? Well, tell us who Asher Wolinsky was, what is the Asher model and how does it work and why is it so important?
Neil Gang:
Sure. Thank you for that segway. So back in the late nineties, 97 I was working in Pembroke Pines, Florida, which is in South Florida, right outside of Hollywood, Florida and Broward County. And you know, I was working with a buddy of mine. I went to the academy with this individual in Florida, and I was actually in his wedding. Just a really, really astute officer, really, really squared away, ex-marine, good father and I get a call in the middle of the night. It's like 3:00 in the morning, and you're probably a little bit too young for this. But we used to have actually had phones in our houses back then. They weren't cell phones. So when you had a phone ring, it run your entire house because typically every room had had a phone. It woke me up in the middle of sleep and I got someone screaming on the line saying, Asher is dead, Asher is dead, and he repeats it one more time, this Asher is dead. And Kevin, it was like inaudible. Like, I didn't know who it was. And I'm thinking to myself, what are you talking about? We're all off. We work the same team. What's he talking about? And then I started getting my senses together. I'm starting to wake up and I'm going, oh, maybe he was working an off-duty job and he end up dying in the line of duty. You know, a risk we all know that we take when we get sworn in, we know that that's a possibility. And he goes, no, no, you don't understand, he died, he shot himself. And I go, what? And I just I remember sitting in my bed and I go, and what? You know, back in the nineties, no one heard about police suicide. No one talked about police suicide. And I go, OK, you know what? I'm trying to process this all but such a short turnaround because I don't know if you know, but in the Jewish religion, if you die, you need to be buried by the Sabbath. Well, this happened on a Thursday night, late night, Friday morning. He needed to be buried by the next day, so everything happened so quick. I remember going into work the next day and just for my regular job and the most profound thing happened to me in my career, Kevin, when it comes to Officer Wellness and I typically ask people when I talk about, what do you think that was? But I'll abbreviate this and tell you what happened. What happened was the most profound thing was nothing. Nothing. Not a conversation. No one spoke about it. We went into the briefing room, we sat down, I remember sergeant coming out of the sergeant's office to give us our assignments and our meal periods, and not a mention of Asher, not to mention of what happened, not a mention of anything. And I'm sitting there, I remember sitting in the briefing room and I'm sitting, I'm, OK, the chief's going to come in and talk to us. No, I remember so maybe a chaplain is going to come in, somebody from crisis, like awareness type of individual come in, no.
Kevin Hines:
Nothing.
Neil Gang:
Yeah. So just to make a long story short, because I know we only have a short time together, but the whole point is that nothing happened. You know, the landscaping of policing back then, there was no peer support, there wasn't CISM, there wasn't counseling, there wasn't really anything. But I remember walking out that day and I remember sitting in my patrol vehicle before I went 10-8, which is going on the street and I sat back and I said, you know what, I think I'm a pretty strong emotional guy, but I'm suffering here, and this is just no answers. Why did something happen? Why did this happen? And no one's talking about it. And I remember sitting there and saying, if I ever get an opportunity to lead, in a position to lead this profession, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to change how we approach these type of events instead of sweeping them under the rug because we're embarrassed or the agency is embarrassed, I'm going to actually bring this out into the open. So I've been carrying that on my heart for all these years, Kevin, and that was like I said, almost twenty-five years ago and then recently, with the rise in police suicides and a lot more conversation happening, I met Dr. David Black of Cortical, I don't know if you've met him yet, and we sat down and had lunch and I shared him the story and I told him what I want to do, and he said, you need to write something, you need to write an article, you need to do something. And I'm like, I don't do that, that's not who I am, and I'm not interested. And what happened was, is that sometimes when you want to do something, but the Lord has something else to put on your heart, it doesn't make a difference what you want to do. Well, I was awoken about three o'clock in the morning, one day and wide awake, and I put this Asher model together in about twenty or twenty-five minutes, believe it or not. Not a whole lot of thought and just everything was on my heart, and I do believe there was some divine intervention to help me create this. But really, it's just a seven point approach to creating a culture of wellness in your organization, you know, and the points are number one is awareness, you have to create awareness, right? Where it's OK not to be OK. That environment, I know that's getting cliché, but it's not only that, but it's OK to not be OK, but we need to bring people back to OK, and how are we going to do that, right? And then having a solution focused approach, whatever that may be. You know, for us, it was a mobile app, so we could put resources in our employees' hands. 24-7-365, it was the cortical wellness app and we just thought that was the most comprehensive way of bringing resources to our employees. And three was peer support, creating a proactive peer support team so you can have people out there to help people in crisis. And then four is teaching people, educating them on resiliency, what that even looks like. You know, deep breathing exercises, yoga for first responders, the difference between PTSD, PTSI, systems like sleep deprivation and how that affects you, teaching them on social intelligence and why you react to certain things the way you do, and teaching them social intelligence in regards to trauma and what that looks like. And then five was healthy habits, pretty simple, providing an opportunity. We created a workout place in our facility, used to be a Sallyport filled with junk and storage, and now it's a fifty thousand dollar fitness facility that we were able to create an opportunity for people to work out on duty, which is so important, right? To lower those cortisol levels and be able to de-stress. And then we designed a meal prep partnership with a local company, bringing healthy meals so the officers have healthy meals 24-7-365. So on a late-night, you don't have to go through a drive through to get a meal. You can go into our refrigerator and get yourself a nice, fresh, clean, healthy meal.
Kevin Hines:
You'd get to brain health.
Neil Gang:
Yeah, absolutely. And then the last two are spirituality and I know a lot of people want to talk about that, but I'm a very spiritual person, a man of faith, but developing, you know, police chaplain program where they're actually a part of your community, your law enforcement community, they're a fabric of your community, not just a side program where they come in and ride when someone's having a crisis, but then they're so used to being around the police department and people are comfortable with them. And then we started something with our community called pray with the police, and pre-COVID we would meet with everybody, anybody that wanted to come, all denominations, we didn't care what your religion was, but we met at the public safety building around the flagpole and we prayed for our community and our country and of course, the safety of all first responders. And then number seven was the biggest one, Kevin, and this is probably where it will tie into a lot of what you're talking about, family, right? Getting families involved from the orientation process forward. You know, typically in law enforcement, they would say you have a family life and you have your personal life and they don't ever interact, that couldn't be further from the truth, and that was the old school way of thinking. We had supervisors telling you to leave that side, that part of your life at home when you come to work. We all know that can't happen, right?
Kevin Hines:
Right.
Neil Gang:
That's impossible. So they interact with each other and they affect how you are at work. But now so we bring our family members in from the orientation process forward, they come through, they get a tour of the building, they get to see their loved ones and they even get a chance to go through our real-life shoot-don't shoot scenarios system, and then I meet with each family individually and I meet with them individually because I want to talk to them about the importance of mental health, that they're employees, their loved ones, are going to change over the next several years because of this profession. And when they come to work, they're going to mask their emotions, right? And they're going to say, I'm fine, I'm great, everything is good. But when they're at home is when their guards are going to be down, and that's where the red flags will show. Unless I champion these family members to feel comfortable, to contact us, or contact somebody to let them know that their loved ones are struggling, we're going to continue to see police suicides, so now we create that opportunity, then they come in, make phone calls, get in touch with our peer support people, build that relationship with them so they can feel comfortable when they see a red flag to make a phone call and pick up the phone and then before each family member leaves, I gave them a copy of Emotional Survivor by Kevin Gilmartin. It's a book.
Kevin Hines:
Yeah.
Neil Gang:
And then the other thing I do is every single family member gets the same exact mobile wellness app that the employee gets, so they have the same resources that those employees have. And then again, of course, teaching and educating our employees from rookie to retirement, right? And one of the biggest things I'm seeing now is financial elements, where financial fitness is, just has not been approached or addressed in our profession, yet we hire 20-21-year-old kids who are making minimum wage, and now they're making 60, 70, and out in the Bay Area, 80 hundred thousand, they don't know how to manage their money, but yet financial fitness is so important, right? It creates anxiety, depression if you're not dealing with it properly, so that we bring people throughout the organization, we have them teach them on financial fitness and what that looks like, it helps strategize so they can have enough money so they can retire. One of the things you see in the profession right now is a lot of retirees are dying by suicide. That should never happen, and they're dedicating their lives to this profession for 20-25 years and they're dying by suicide, that's ridiculous. We need to do something. We need to be passionate about it, intentional about it. We need to change outcomes when it comes to police suicide. So that's kind of this approach. I know it's a kind of a shortened version, but it's a multifaceted, multilevel approach because not everything is going to resonate with everybody. You know, Kevin, you may think that yoga for first responders is great for you, when someone else is going to go, I'm not going to do yoga, it doesn't work for me. You may believe that sleep deprivation is something that's important to you, someone else may not. But if you have these multilevel, multifaceted approaches, you're hoping you'll have something in this program that will resonate and create a culture of wellness. Because if your wellness program is just a program and you're just checking off a box, you're going to fail and someone's going to end up losing their life. That's why you have to create this cultural awareness and create an organizational health program.
Kevin Hines:
Fantastic. Well, the work you're doing is amazing. You know, you wrote in one of your articles and this is a quote from you, fast forward to 2019 so much technology, so much awareness, yet more officers still die by suicide than all other in-line of duty deaths combined, citing that a recent study discovered that every forty-four hours an officer dies by suicide, by their hand. How does this all number affect you personally and how does it affect the officers you command?
Neil Gang:
Well, I think it's important. In 2019, we lost two hundred and twenty-eight officers that died by suicide, so die by their own hands. So that number alone is really concerning, right? But the experts, Kevin, are saying that it's underreported by a factor of 2.5.
Kevin Hines:
Oh wow.
Neil Gang:
So kind of just take that and let that resonate with you for a minute and think about that. So over five hundred officers in our country are dying by their own hands. It's alarming. It's an epidemic, and it's something that we need to do to create changes in our outcomes. So we have to have some progressive approaches, innovative approaches to stop those things from happening. I mean, like what you read, it's double the amount of officers die by their own hands, typically, then all of the line of duty deaths. Yet, what do you see in the news? Officer maybe died in a car collision, he died in maybe a shooting, or maybe a heart attack, a medical thing. But yeah, nothing is addressed with police suicide because it's taboo. No one wants to address it. That's why we have to have leaders in our profession partner with people like you, Kevin, who is bringing so much awareness to this issue that we need to partner together to bring out the message, and we need to continue with the message and get it as far as wide as we can. So the most amount of ears can hear what we're talking about and hopefully, hopefully just one of these stories will change an outcome.
Kevin Hines:
Hmm. Absolutely. Can you tell us a story about a situation involving a crisis throughout your career where you would have like to see a different outcome? What could have been done differently in a situation that you can describe, ... you call?
Neil Gang:
So I'm going to share and I'll add some anonymity to the story, only to protect some people. But in a local agency where I'm working now, last year, they lost a sergeant who died by suicide and pretty emotional, I knew the guy personally, I had some friends that knew him very well, intimately aware of some of the people in the organization and they're great people. This individual actually showed a lot of red flags. Actually, he was asking for help and just never received the proper help. I don't think it was out of malice. I just think it was because people didn't know what to do and they didn't know how to deal with that, right? We're told in our profession, just, oh, you're OK, you'll get over it, throw some dirt on and get back in the game, and that's just not the way we handle things. So to me, that was a crisis. We had a potential outcome that we could have changed just by maybe taking that person in enveloping them in our arms, getting them some resources, and understanding that not everybody works the same way, not able to handle stress the same way. Yet, unfortunately, what happened was we ended up sitting through a funeral and watching the spouse and their children lay their loved one to rest, and that's something that I think could have and should have been avoided. And I think those stories are all over the place. I don't think it's exclusive to this one agency that it occurred in, and that's what I'm talking about, we need to address these things. Police leaders need to be the ones that are out in front of this. But I always ask myself, if not me, then who? All right, so if I'm not going to be the one to push this off, I'm not going to be the one to open this up and say it's OK to not be OK and share my own personal stories, then how would I expect anybody else to do that?
Kevin Hines:
Have you been able to help spread the Asher model to other police organizations?
Neil Gang:
I have, you know, again, I'm going to go, this is a blessing that, you know, when I wrote that article and again, it was really just writing an article to share with one person. It really caught on, it went viral, it went into most of the major police publications. And as a result of that, it got offers to come speak publicly. And now I go around the country. Well, I don't think anybody goes anywhere now around the country, but through a computer now we're doing a lot of presentations, where we share the Asher model. And what I continue to tell people is this is not my idea, I don't have a patent on this, use this as a structure to help your own organization. I don't care if you take our name off it and throw your own name on it, do what you need to do. But I do know that there are several organizations throughout the country that are using the Asher model now. Obviously, they made some of the text to meet their organizational needs, they put their own patch on it, their own badge on it. I think it's a real tribute to Asher and not just Asher, but for all of us that are doing such great work when it comes to raising awareness. And Kevin, I know people, we talk about law enforcement, but we can't do this without partners from outside our profession, and that's why the partnership and your friendship has meant so much to me.
Kevin Hines:
Thank you very much, chief, I appreciate that too, and the feeling is mutual. So now, we talked about something you would love to have seen changed, and you would like to have seen a different outcome in a point of crisis, but tell us about a story or situation during a crisis involving your police, one of your police departments that you've worked at, that you're proud of, or were happy with the outcome.
Neil Gang:
Yeah, I'll share a story. And again, unfortunately, we had to use some change of stories to protect some anonymity for people. But I actually was a part of our peer support, our critical incident stress management team in another organization. We had an officer who was in crisis. You know, he got involved in a domestic situation, and that situation, it got bad, and he wasn't living in our jurisdiction where I was working, so a local police department responded and found this individual in this crisis situation wanting to hurt himself and had the capabilities of doing so. And this individual, what he asked was, before you take me to jail and different codes or different places out in California, it's 51-50 before they took them on this mental health, he said, I want to make one phone call before I allow you to take me in. And it was to me and he shared, he, you know, Neil, I screwed up, this is what's happening and I want to take my own life. I don't want to deal with this, and we were able to talk him through seeing what a future is going to look like, that just because you made a mistake, just because you're broke, just because you're cracked doesn't mean you're broken, right? And I learned that from a good friend of mine named Kevin Hines, but that it's so important. And you know what? The bottom line is, he went in, he got some help, and he's a flourishing great officer now, still in the profession. And I think without that phone call, without that relationship, I'm not sure where he be right now.
Kevin Hines:
Wow. Well, that's phenomenal that he's here with us, and gets to continue to tell his story and be safe and be well. What advice do you have for anyone in law enforcement about handling a crisis that they may not have had training to handle directly? Like, you know, something that comes up that kind of catches him off guard? What advice do you have to an officer going through something like that?
Neil Gang:
As somebody who's trying to give advice to that person or the person is going through it?
Kevin Hines:
Someone who's trying to quell a situation that may be a little bit heightened and potentially dangerous? What advice do you give to that new officer who's kind of green and hasn't seen too much of this kind of action?
Neil Gang:
Yeah, I think everything goes back to, goes back to your training and your experiences, right? So just because you're a brand new officer doesn't mean you have, didn't have other experiences. So my advice to that person going through that crisis is to understand that you're not alone, right? You have people out there to help you, whether it's on the job or off the job. You always have somebody out there, right? Look for mentors that you can bounce things off of, if you're in the middle of a crisis at work, obviously, there are supervisors there to reach out to and get some assistance for, but take a deep breath, understand that there are positive resolutions out there where you may not see any and just use networking, whether it's with your supervisors, with your friends to help you get to a resolution, that's a peaceful resolution.
Kevin Hines:
Very good. And what advice do you have for young police officers in the times we're seeing now of political unrest and COVID-19? You know, we're all going through a lot right now, whether you're a police officer or a civilian, whether you're in the military or you're checking out a person at the grocery store. It's been a much more difficult path for a lot of us, and there's more people talking about their mental health than ever before in this country and around the world because of this COVID crisis. What would you say to that young police officer that hasn't navigated waters like this ever before?
Neil Gang:
So I think you brought some good points there, and it's something that I coined for the leaders in our profession, trailblazer leadership, right? When was the last time that this profession has seen a global pandemic, along with the political unrest that we see along with the civil unrest when it comes to law enforcement and defunding the police department? We have officers every day that just don't see any worth in doing this job anymore and are leaving by the hundreds of this profession, let alone trying to get people into the profession. This is the thing I've been saying to them, and you know, it's important for us leaders to shepherd our people through this difficult season into this new quote-unquote era of policing. And we're going to get there, right? But this is the thing, I keep saying, if you're serving this profession with a servant heart, you will always be needed, you'll always be wanted and you will always be appreciated. If you're in this profession for any other reason than to serve people and be a public servant, then it's probably a good time for you to get out. But again, if your foundation is about serving people, helping people and you have a servant's heart, you'll make it through this and you will be successful and we will come out of this better than ever.
Kevin Hines:
Chief of Police of Pinole PD, Neil Gang, thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to be with me today and to share part of your story. I'm sure those who see this will be greatly appreciative of your words of wisdom and the work you've done for the last 30 plus years, I know I'm very grateful of the service you have given this country, so thank you for coming on, really appreciate it and wish you a good day.
Neil Gang:
Thank you for everything, Kevin. Thank you so much. So blessed to be with you.
Kevin Hines:
Margaret and I love sharing stories of people who have triumphed over incredible adversity. For more content and inspiration, go to KevinHinesStory.com or visit us on all social media at KevinHinesStory or on youtube.com/KevinHines.
Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.
Automatically convert your mp3 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.
Sonix has many features that you'd love including share transcripts, secure transcription and file storage, advanced search, automated translation, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.