Blue Canary: For Cops By a Cop

Send us Fan Mail I attended the police academy at Indiana University. At the time, it was one of the only academies outside the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in Plainfield that the state officially recognized as a full police certification academy. The program itself was unique. While a full-time student with Indiana University you had to apply for the IU police department. The application proce...

Send us Fan Mail When I decided to talk about police reform I immediately thought of Brad Seifers. I had the pleasure of working extensively with Brad over the years and new that if anyone had solid thoughts on police reform it would be Brad. Brad recently retired from law enforcement after a 32-year career. He started at the Indiana University Police academy in 1994, then spent over 22 years in m...

Send us Fan Mail Real reform requires honesty. It requires evidence. It requires experience. And most importantly—it requires conversation. Not lectures. Not slogans. And not screaming people into silence. That’s what this podcast is about. Not defending bad policing. Not pretending problems don’t exist. But talking honestly about what real police reform should actually look like—from the perspect...

Send us Fan Mail https://www.thethinlinerockstation.com/ In October of 2025, I got an email that made me pause for a second. It was from James Hathaway who said that he was one of the owners of The Thin Line Rock Station, an online radio station that was specifically designed for public safety. He had heard my podcast and thought I would have a great voice for their station and would I be interest...

Send us Fan Mail We find ourselves once again at the end of a season. This caps off Season 6 of Blue Canary and it’s been very interesting. I had been thinking about retirement for a couple of years. Once the greatness of it started to settle and the things you missed started to creep back in past the walls you built telling yourself it was the greatest decision you ever made, reality raised it’s...

Send us Fan Mail “The Hollow Call” a Halloween Special. Let’s just add a little more spook to an already spooky tail.  I received this email from a user who went by Mallory98. The email didn’t have anything in it but this attached story. I tried several times to reach out and get more information, but every time I sent an email it bounced back as an invalid address. Every time. Through every email...

Send us Fan Mail Jessica Flores served as a police officer and detective in the Kansas City Missouri area, but was forced to retire early due to medical issues. That left her struggling to find purpose and meaning in the post law enforcement world. That all stopped one day when she realized she could help other officers find their purpose after law enforcement. That’s how Next Shift was founded. T...

Send us Fan Mail When an officer retires, whether it’s after 20, 25, or 30 years, there’s often a handshake, a plaque, maybe a party. Then the uniform goes in the closet, and that’s it. After decades of service—after countless nights on patrol, after seeing humanity at its worst and sometimes at its best—suddenly, you’re just… done. There’s no transition program. No debrief. No structured counseli...

Send us Fan Mail Every day’s a Saturday. That’s one of those great retirement sayings. What it means is you get to do what you want, when you want. After thirty years of being told where to be, when to be, and how to be, it’s very liberating. My wife was at work and I had finished all of the little chores I wanted to get done around the house. I sat down and fired up the streaming services. I was...

Send us Fan Mail When I retired from the Bloomington Police Department, I was done. I knew that, walking out the door. There was no way I was going to go back to the department and work for them again. I was moving on with my life. But, to be fair, it was easy for me. I had prepared for retirement. I had followed the Dave Ramsey financial plan and was debt free save for my home mortgage. I had a s...

Send us Fan Mail Police Helicopters are quickly becoming a thing of the past. When the helicopters themselves cost anywhere from 500,000 to 3 Million dollars to purchase and have operating costs around 400 bucks per hour to fly nobody can afford them anymore. Not that anyone outside of a handful of major metropolitan police departments ever could.  But that doesn’t take away the fact that having e...

Send us Fan Mail Author Willet Ryder said “Hobbies are both a mystery and a delight. They’re a mystery because many people with hobbies don’t always share them with others. They’re a delight because of the pure joy they provide to the hobbyist, making hours pass like minutes!” But don’t take my word for it, listen to the experts. First, hobbies help improve your mental health. Hobbies are a powerf...

Send us Fan Mail William Osler was a Canadian physician and one of the “Big 4” founders of John Hopkins Hospital. He created the first “residency” program for training physicians and he has been called the father of modern medicine. I think it’s safe to say he knows a thing or two. Osler once said “No man is really happy or safe without a hobby.” That is especially true for law enforcement. The st...

Send us Fan Mail Road School. That’s what my wife calls it. In 2017 we tuned into Netflix’s new series Mindhunters, based on the book by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. In the premier episode, directed by David Fincher, the FBI agents in the series are traveling across the country and teaching police departments how to identify serious violent offenders. They called it Road School and it stuck wit...

Send us Fan Mail It’s amazing what getting a job will do to you. I was still taking classes at IU, but the Bloomington Police Department had already given me a call and confirmed that I was going to be hired in a few months. My first full time job. At the time I was working as a part time officer for IUPD while going to school and I was making about 7 bucks an hour. That was great, because at the...

Send us Fan Mail The Gold Watch The Brass Ring Retirement You know … Winning It’s a simple topic, one that everyone should be interested in and one that everyone should applaud. Ask a retiree if they regret getting out, odds are 100 to 1 that they will just laugh in your face. Easy days of putzing around the house, playing golf, and waking up whenever you feel like it. No calls, no emergencies, no...

Send us Fan Mail I am blessed with friends. I am blessed to have neighbors that rushed to my home to make sure that we were safe. I am blessed that I have people who will be there for me and my family in the darkest moments. I am blessed that I have friends who will reach out and provide moral and actual support when needed. I am blessed that I have met some amazing people over my career and they...

Send us Fan Mail Jared Altic is a police chaplain in Kansas City, focusing his work in the patrol divisions of the Kansas City Kansas Police Department (KCKPD). He attends roll calls, goes on ride alongs, teaches at the police academy, and responds to homicides, suicides, and accidents in the city. Jared's passion is encouraging officer wellness among cops, which he also does through his podc...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to our annual Halloween Episode. These stories have been told to me by officers around the country and they swear they are true stories. Thanks to Parker for this one. Happy Halloween.

Send us Fan Mail In the United States there are 3,116 local jails, 1,566 State Prisons, and 98 Federal Prisons. But let’s not forget the 1,323 Juvenile Corrections Facilities, 142 Immigration detention facilities, and 80 Tribal jails. These facilities house a little over 1.2 million prisoners. These facilities are staffed with approximately 393,000 corrections officers. At first glance that might...

Send us Fan Mail Chief of Police is a title typically given to the head of a police department, but that simple definition gets very confusing very quickly. Sheriffs are the name we give to elected officials who preside over county law enforcement in the US, while Chief’s of Police typically preside over municipal police agencies. Sometimes Chief’s are elected. Sometimes they are appointed by a ma...

Send us Fan Mail Note: This was an extremely difficult episode for me to record. I want to apologize for the audio. It was the best I could do. 72 officers had to die. I refuse to let that sacrifice go unremembered. This one is for you,

Send us Fan Mail Ethics in Leadership It’s an interesting topic and at times can be very controversial. Peter Drucker was an Austrian American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of modern management theory. He famously said “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers” This statement has led to som...

Send us Fan Mail Commander Bob Meader retired from the Columbus Ohio Police Department in February of 2022. During his tenure at Columbus PD, he served in patrol, street attack unit, property crimes, legal and training. He retired as the commander of the Columbus PD Police Academy. While working Commander Meader managed to get his law degree and today spends his retirement training Ohio police off...

Send us Fan Mail Leading Up General William T. Sherman once said "We have good corporals and good sergeants and some good lieutenants and captains, and those are far more important than good generals." Sherman recognized the importance of leading up. What is leading up? It’s providing leadership in an organization from a position of lower authority. It’s understanding the role played by...