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Bare It All with Linnsey is where nothing is off limits. From thriving in recovery to building businesses, raising kids while chasing dreams, diving deep into mental health, and making a real difference in the world — we talk about it all. This podcast is raw, real, and completely unfiltered. Whether you’re healing, hustling, or just trying to make it through the day, you’re in the right place. We’re here to inspire, empower, and remind you that you can rise from anything.
My trauma came from getting a lot of power as a police officer and not having the skill set to control that power effectively. When law enforcement officers encounter trauma coupled with moral injury, coupled with a missing resilient skill set, and then they get into risky times where things don't feel good. They look for another risky thing to stop it. To find that endorphin rush that you found in your last code three run with your lights and sirens on.
Linnsey Dolson:No one sees the trauma and the stuff that you guys experienced. Do you think that is what's responsible for the high level of suicide in this industry?
Jason Lehman:A recent research study said that in a twenty year career, one in six officers has has thought about dying by suicide.
Linnsey Dolson:What is law enforcement agencies doing to help with that?
Jason Lehman:They're doing a lot. Are they doing enough? No. Can they do enough? I don't know.
Jason Lehman:To date, we've trained 250,000 community members on how to cooperate with authority figures to build their own authority set. We, have trained 28,000 police officers to date on a skill set that we call procedural fairness. That helps to kind of combine with dealing with people in times of conflict and crisis. I study this idea of how can we get along and how can we see the good in each other when really the perception right off the bat is that there's not very much good.
Linnsey Dolson:Jason, welcome to Bare It All With Lindsay. Thank you so much. We've been going back and forth trying to get you on the podcast.
Jason Lehman:The biggest reason I wanted to be on the podcast was to say that I was on a podcast and I got to sit in a pink chair.
Linnsey Dolson:Hell yes. I knew it. I knew it. That's it. I love it.
Linnsey Dolson:So am I the first podcast that has the pink chairs?
Jason Lehman:Yeah. For sure.
Linnsey Dolson:Awesome. So I get to hear about your story. You sent me a bio. I read your bio, but I wanna hear I wanna hear your story.
Jason Lehman:So I'm from New York City, New York. I grew up there until the age of 13.
Linnsey Dolson:Okay.
Jason Lehman:And then, I had a really weird mix up where I was actually arrested for attempted murder. I knocked the UPS man out cold with a brick, but I wasn't trying to knock them out with a brick. I was trying to break windows with At 13? At 13. Shit.
Jason Lehman:And so, I got arrested, the charges weren't filed. My mom decided she had to get me out of there. She had divorced my dad. So she married probably the first person she could. She married a jazz musician that she met on a cruise ship, a guy named Magic John.
Jason Lehman:And next thing you know, this guy Magic John is raising me in Glendale, California. So made the move out there, found the game of football, played football at high school at Cerritos Junior College. And then I played football on a a division one scholarship to play at the University of South Florida and had some fun playing football. I thought about the NFL, but I definitely wasn't good enough. And so there was no shot there.
Jason Lehman:Packed up, went back across the country to California. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I quickly became an EMT. I started working on the one of the transport ambulances for the LA County Fire Department. Started bouncing at nightclubs and then started coaching football at Woodrow Wilson High School.
Jason Lehman:And that brought me into a bar. And I know it sounds weird, but football coaches, after they're done coaching, sometimes they go into a bar, have a beer or whatever. So I did that. And me and my really good friend, I actually call my cousin. One night we walked into a bar late at night and we ended up getting into a bar fight.
Jason Lehman:Well, he didn't, I did. And the bar fight that I got into happened to be with one of the most well respected off duty gang sergeants for the city of Long Beach. He was a Long Beach police sergeant for the gang unit.
Linnsey Dolson:Did you pick the fight?
Jason Lehman:No, I think he picked the fight. It's a longer story, but he picked the fight.
Linnsey Dolson:Oh, wow.
Jason Lehman:And I don't wanna tell you who won the fight, but like when he picked me up off the ground after the fight, because he whipped my butt, he he mentored me through the process of becoming a cop.
Linnsey Dolson:There you I
Jason Lehman:was gonna
Linnsey Dolson:say, don't tell me who won, but tell me who did That's right. That's right.
Jason Lehman:Yeah. And he he he ended up helping me out and an amazing human named Don DC Campbell, just a great guy.
Linnsey Dolson:What a beginning of a friendship.
Jason Lehman:Yeah. And, and the end of our partnership was really, really sad because in 2019, he died by suicide. To think about Yeah. The think about the different aspects of a life is just crazy because such a well respected amazing human being. And he did great things.
Jason Lehman:But I became a cop and I worked in law enforcement for about seventeen years. And I worked primarily gang and violent crime suppression, like in on a street crimes unit. You said LA? Beach.
Linnsey Dolson:Oh, Long Beach. Okay.
Jason Lehman:Yeah. Got into some crazy, you know, use of force situations and then, you know, dealt with those in a very weird way and didn't really know how to recover from my trauma. Because there was some traumatic instances in the first few years. And that led me down some weird paths, which we can talk about later. But I got out of law enforcement in January 2022 and I left kicking and screaming.
Jason Lehman:Like I really wanted to stay.
Linnsey Dolson:And how many years was that total that you did?
Jason Lehman:About seventeen.
Linnsey Dolson:About seventeen?
Jason Lehman:Yeah.
Linnsey Dolson:Okay.
Jason Lehman:But I left because I got up opportunities to work with really cool national organizations like the New York Post and Fox News. And I got to work with some major law enforcement entities like Lexapol and the International Association of Chiefs of Police and doing consulting work for them and kind of helping them to structure what it takes for a police officer and a community member to get along during times of conflict and crisis. So if we get into an argument and we both see each other as the opposition, what's gonna happen? Yeah. We're gonna pull each other's hair out.
Jason Lehman:Right? But you're not gonna pull my hair out, but right. But you know what I'm saying. You're right. We're gonna we're gonna we're gonna have some some beef.
Jason Lehman:And so I studied that for years. My master's degree is in interpersonal communication. Bachelor's So degree is in that I studied this idea of how can we get along and how can we see the good in each other when really the perception right off the bat is that there's not very much good. So ultimately when I got into this consulting thing, I became this like, I guess a leadership coach, right? And it's kind of hard to define what a leadership coach does.
Jason Lehman:It kind of almost sounds like a scam, right? It's kinda hard to think about like, what is this leadership coach idea? But ultimately I help people refine their greatness and work to get 2% better every day the right way. And I give them systems on how they can do that.
Linnsey Dolson:And that's what you do today
Jason Lehman:or It's
Linnsey Dolson:what do for a living now. Okay.
Jason Lehman:Yeah. So now I own chapter two consulting and run a nonprofit organization called Why'd You Stop Me.
Linnsey Dolson:And tell me about this name. Where did that come from?
Jason Lehman:So in 2011, I had just gotten what I consider well. And I walked into a high school classroom and I'd never thought I would speak to kids. This wasn't my thing. I was always this hard charging cop like guns, drugs, bad
Linnsey Dolson:Right, right.
Jason Lehman:Like look cool in your uniform and bang open people's doors at four in the morning and catch a bag. That was my thing like the TV show.
Linnsey Dolson:Makes sense, right, right, for sure.
Jason Lehman:Not every cop is that cool but I've tried to be
Linnsey Dolson:But you were that cool, but you were.
Jason Lehman:Thought I was that cool, right? Like, I thought I could be that cool. Right? Sure. Usually, the coolest people are the least cool people.
Linnsey Dolson:So Oh my god. I was telling my daughter that. I'm like, no. The ones that you think are cool are not the fucking cool ones. They're gonna be the broke, lame ones when they're older.
Linnsey Dolson:Go for the ones that don't look cool because they'll be successful. Yeah. That's right. Yeah.
Jason Lehman:So I was sitting here and I was, I was, I was inside of my office trying to figure out what to do. And I was inside my office trying to figure out what to do because the largest black gang in the city of Long Beach, a gang called the Insane Crips. I had had a run-in with them a few years prior and because of my over aggressive policing style, they were like, hey, you know what? We're we're done with you. And there was a rumor allegations that I was going to be ambushed and killed with my team that Friday night.
Jason Lehman:And so my
Linnsey Dolson:Who said they were done with you?
Jason Lehman:The gang members.
Linnsey Dolson:So they gave How did me they get to say we're done with you?
Jason Lehman:Okay. So if we back up into 2009, I got into a undercover drug deal that went terribly bad.
Linnsey Dolson:Okay. Got
Jason Lehman:it. That So they had it for you. Kind of sort. Got it.
Linnsey Dolson:Yeah. Okay.
Jason Lehman:And so ultimately, my boss had taken me off the streets. I'm sitting in my office. I'm trying to figure out what to do. Right? Usually, when a cop is getting paid to do nothing, that's probably a sign that something should change, whatever it is.
Jason Lehman:And that's what I was doing. Was getting paid. I couldn't go on the streets because of safety issues and because I was kind of aggressive. And so I was coming out of that phase, but ultimately my phone rang. And when my phone rang a kid, I'm sorry, the assistant principal of a school in Long Beach, he's on the other side of the phone and he says, Hey Jay, what are you doing?
Jason Lehman:I said, I'm not doing much. And he said, Okay, I want you to come to a school, come to the school and talk to these kids. They have some problems with the police and they could use your help. And at that moment, the saddest part back then in 2011 was I told him, I don't talk to kids. I don't like humans.
Jason Lehman:I'm a police officer who's supposed to serve people. And I just told a guy who works at a school that I don't like humans. Now, at that time, that guy was my, was a friend of mine. He had played football with me at Cerritos College. So I knew him good enough to kind of just be frank with him, but I was going through it.
Jason Lehman:And so he said, well, what are you doing right this second? And I looked around the office and I couldn't do anything. And I was like, I guess I'm doing nothing. And he said, cool, then come speak to, come speak to the kids. And I was like, all right, let me check with my boss.
Jason Lehman:So I have to, this grown man wears a police uniform, big, strong, thinks he's smart, the whole thing. I have to call my boss and say, hi boss, can I leave my office to go speak to some kids? Because my boss was scared if I left the office that I would cuss somebody out or get in trouble or whatever, right? And my boss said, yeah, that's a good idea. Put a suit on and bring a partner.
Jason Lehman:You don't drive, he drives. No police action and go talk to those kids. Now you tell this powerful type A person all of those rules and it's like, what? Like that was the craziest feeling. So what did I do?
Jason Lehman:The next day I put a suit on, I took my partner, I went to the school, I spoke to the group of kids and I spoke to him for about an hour. And in about a couple minutes into it, a kid asked me a question and you tell me what you think about this question. The question was, how come you don't just shoot the gun out of their hand? Like, hey cop, when you guys get in a shooting, how come you guys can't just shoot the guns out of their hand? And that's a thought that a lot of people kinda have.
Jason Lehman:So, I mean, that thought right there is is an incredible thought. What do you think about that? Should cops just shoot the guns out of people's hands?
Linnsey Dolson:I mean, I have no fucking clue if that could happen, but I highly doubt it.
Jason Lehman:Right. Because in the movies, that's what happens. And so in the movies, cops are able to shoot guns out of people's hands. But in real life, a bullet is a deadly object. You're using it to go into the person that it needs to go into because there's no other level of force that works.
Jason Lehman:So this level of force is the lowest level of force effective at that time to use. But if I shot at your hand and I missed, where would the bullet go? Who knows?
Linnsey Dolson:Right. Right.
Jason Lehman:Right. And so this kid asked me this question and I didn't know how to answer it, but I realized that for the first time ever, when somebody said some dumb shit, I didn't respond negatively. There was no microaggression whatsoever. There was no anything. I was just cool.
Jason Lehman:I was like, hey, you probably don't know the answer to that, do you? And he's like, no. And I said, let's do this. And I gave him a dry erase marker, dry eraser off the dry erase board. And I told him this is gonna be the bullet that's gonna come out of the gun that's your hand, no real weapons.
Jason Lehman:And all I want you to do is I want you to take this bullet and I want you to throw it at my hand and knock the fake gun out of my hand. So you're gonna aim your bullet at my hand. And he stood, I mean, probably a little bit further than we are, right? Not too far away. And I said, all right, ready go.
Jason Lehman:And I went like this and I moved my arms. And when I moved my arms, he threw it and he missed. And I said, where does the bullet go now? And he goes, I don't know. I said, it could go into a barbershop and kill a four year old.
Jason Lehman:And that's what happened about two weeks ago in Long Beach during that time of the story. Two weeks prior a stray bullet, not from a cop's gun, but from somebody else's gun had gone into a barbershop and killed a kid, a four year old kid that was getting a haircut Bad. Because bullets are dangerous. Right? And I said, okay, so let's do this.
Jason Lehman:That was my hand. Now what I want you to do is I want you to throw it at my chest. So that's gonna be the bullet. It's gonna go into my chest. And I gave him the dry erase eraser.
Jason Lehman:And I said, let's go. And he took it and I went like this and I said, go. And he hit me and boom, hit my chest and fell down. And I said, where'd the bullet go? He goes into your chest.
Jason Lehman:I said, which is bigger, my arm or the chip, my chest? And he's like your chest. I said, yeah. So if the bullet goes left or right and we're aiming at the center of my chest, it still goes where? They're like, into your chest.
Jason Lehman:I said, we call that center mass. We aim cops aim for center mass because they can't afford to have the bullet miss. God forbid they have to use a bullet, right?
Linnsey Dolson:Right, right.
Jason Lehman:But if they have to, that's what they aim for, center mass because it allows for, you know, people to make mistakes or, you know, small mistakes in the positioning. So then after all that was done, at about the end of an hour, a kid stood up in the back of the room and in Long Beach, they call me Tiny. That's one of the That's a nickname I got now. I'm like six foot four, I don't know.
Linnsey Dolson:Was gonna say Tiny.
Jason Lehman:Like depending on the meal, I'm either three hundred pounds or I'm not, right? There
Linnsey Dolson:Sure.
Jason Lehman:A kid stood at the back of the class, he looked at me and he said, Hey Tiny, you remember me? And I looked at him and I'm like, Nah, I don't. And he said, Two years ago, you wrestled me with a gun in my waistband. And I said, just like this, I think this was really important for me to cover right off the bat. I was like, hey bro, you don't have a gun on you right now.
Jason Lehman:Do you like, I thought that was critical. He's like, nah, I don't. Said, all right, what's going on? He goes, well, from that day when you arrested me until today, I gotta tell you something I've been thinking. And I'm like, go ahead.
Jason Lehman:He's like that day when you arrested me, it was raining out. It was across the street from this school and I was holding the hand of my first girlfriend. I was wearing clothes. My mom bought me with her last money and I was proud to go on a date with her. And you and your homeboys got out the car and you pointed guns at me and you made me get down on my hands and knees and made me crawl to you.
Jason Lehman:And then you dropped your knee in my back. Your head, one of your homeboys handcuffed me and swept me away. And I haven't seen you since. And he says from that day until today, every morning when I woke up, the first thing I thought about doing was hurting you. And he said, but today's the first day that I could tell you I'll never hurt you.
Linnsey Dolson:That's wild.
Jason Lehman:He said, today's the first day I could tell you that I actually understand why you do what you do. Because before today, for the last two years, I thought that all white cops did in my neighborhood was stop and arrest black people for no reason. He said, but the scenarios you went over with us today in this room and the explanations you gave, they actually made sense to me. The one of the weirdest things I heard you say was if everybody in the neighborhood is black, who are you supposed to arrest? And it's crazy to think about all those different dynamics and all those different things And to sit here and process that that's not always the case.
Jason Lehman:Black people don't always get arrested because it's, there's just a lot of black people to make a selection from. That's not the way that works. But when a police officer makes an arrest, most of the time they're not saying, hold, let me go arrest the black person versus the white person. Most of the time that's not the case. If that was the case, they wouldn't be very successful.
Jason Lehman:It just wouldn't work out too well. Well, ultimately I was blown away by this kid saying that. And he, when he said, I'll never hurt you. It made me feel a sense of safety I had never felt before because I felt like I had backup that wasn't in a police uniform. And I never felt that way.
Jason Lehman:I never felt like my community was my backup. But ultimately what I teach now with my organization is there's a lot more community members than there are cops. And if you have to get on the radio to ask for help, that's because the person that's helping you is so far away that they have to use a radio to hear you. The person that's your backup is the person that's either gonna fight you or not. The person that's backup is the person across the street.
Jason Lehman:The person that's your backup is the person that raised the person that you're encountering.
Linnsey Dolson:Right. That's
Jason Lehman:your backup. You're raising young people to be amazing leaders. Like you're sitting here going, hey, this is this is what it is. This is how we do things. This is how we do that.
Jason Lehman:This is Right? Like those things are important. But the people that I encountered a lot in my police uniform, they didn't have the parenting that we're offering our children.
Linnsey Dolson:Of course not.
Jason Lehman:They didn't have that.
Linnsey Dolson:Of course not. They're a product of their environment.
Jason Lehman:That's right. Yeah. A lot of the times. And so what can I do differently? And when he said that, I just shut my mouth and I was almost physically and emotionally paralyzed.
Jason Lehman:And he said, there's three things I wanna tell you about that stop. And I've been waiting to tell you these three things. And I said, okay, go ahead. He said, the first thing I want you to know is I was raised never be disrespected in front of a woman. You see, was holding the hand of my first girlfriend at the age of 15 and as you were screaming orders at me, my mom walked across, walked out from across the street and watched her son and four big bald white cops point guns at her son.
Jason Lehman:And then you made me get down on my hands and knees in the clothes that she just bought me with the last money she had. And then you dropped your knee in my back and then you handcuffed me. And he said, I was raised in every disrespect in front of a woman. Weren't you raised that way? And then he went on to question two and he said, hey, here's the second question I got for you.
Jason Lehman:See, I was arrested and a police officer went over to my mom after the arrest and said, your son's going to jail for having a gun. He'll call you in a couple hours. See, heard that through the crack in the window as I sat in the back seat of the car handcuff. And I heard it. And then I watched the police officer walk in front of the police car to go to his car.
Jason Lehman:And I heard my mom very loudly ask the officer for help. She said, excuse me, Excuse me, officer. And I saw the officer just stare my mom down like the piece of crap he thought she was, get in the car and drive away. And he came down that aisle in the classroom again. And for the second time, he said, my mom wanted to know more.
Jason Lehman:Said if all that happened to you, wouldn't your mom have a couple more questions? And the third thing he said, which was a very, very big one was, hey, you know, my mom was watching this all go down. And my girl was across the street and I was carrying a gun. I had a gun. But did you ever think about why I had a gun?
Jason Lehman:Now, I thought I had thought about that back then. But he said, I had a gun because my big brother had just been shot and killed right across the street from the apartment complex where we were three months before you saw me. My baby sister's in the house with my mom. And I don't know if you've ever met him tiny, but I've never met my father. He walked down the aisle and he said, if all that happened to you, cop or not, wouldn't you be carrying a gun when you left the house?
Jason Lehman:And he backed away and he looked at me and he said, Tiny, I thank you for your time. I'm done speaking with you, but you can't stop doing what you're doing. But in order for you to keep talking like this and keep doing what you're doing, you can't stop thinking for us. Because when you think for us, you're gonna be safer. I appreciate your time.
Jason Lehman:You can go now. That kid kicked me out of the classroom. I walked out of the classroom with no clue what was going on. I have not seen that kid or said a word to that kid since. He is the leader of something, and I hope it's a great thing.
Jason Lehman:But as I walked out, the assistant principal said, what's the name of your program? And I said, let's call it Guns, Drugs, and Bad Guys. And he said, Jason, you're at a school. I took pictures for this this presentation. I'd like to put it on the school website, this new website thing we got.
Jason Lehman:Guns, Drugs, Bad Guys not gonna work. I said, Okay, well, and so my hamster up here, I tell people that I have this hamster up here that's supposed to have four legs, but it really has three legs and he kind of gets caught in the wheel every once in a while. And he just started sprinting and I said, they always wanna know why they get stopped. Like their big questions were, why do you stop? Why do you do this?
Jason Lehman:Why do so let's call it, why'd you stop me? And so why'd you stop me came Makes sense. Came around to be the nonprofit organization that we now run. To date. We've trained 250,000 community members on how to cooperate with authority figures to build their own authority set.
Jason Lehman:And so we have trained 28,000 police officers to date on a skill set that we call procedural fairness. And that helps to kind of combine with dealing with people in times of conflict and crisis. And I can explain that to you if you want. But ultimately, that's how why'd you stop McCain to be. And now it's morphed.
Jason Lehman:We used to think that why'd you stop me was a question that police officers are asked by people. But I think why'd you stop me is a question that we should start off by asking ourselves because we stop ourselves from our own success more than anybody else does.
Linnsey Dolson:We Oh, I always tell people to get out of your own way. Right. You're literally A 100%. You are stopping yourself. Okay.
Linnsey Dolson:I wanna back up to something you said. Okay. So you talked about that that guy that you fought in the bar killed his self. And we're talking about through all this how the people are being arrested, being stopped, how they feel. But I know so many people in law enforcement.
Linnsey Dolson:And back in the day, I was dating a cop. And I went with him to these trauma classes. And we would sit in these trauma classes, and all the first responders would tell their trauma stories. And I was like, okay. I fucking have trauma now.
Linnsey Dolson:Wow. After being in this class, like, is a little more than I don't know if I'm gonna go again with you because, like I've
Jason Lehman:never I've never seen a couples trauma class. That's good. Okay.
Linnsey Dolson:That's good. That's Yeah. Yeah. No. It wasn't a couples.
Linnsey Dolson:I just went with them. It was for officers.
Jason Lehman:And you just got you just got the invite.
Linnsey Dolson:Yeah. That's interesting. Went with
Jason Lehman:them. Okay. Okay.
Linnsey Dolson:Okay. So some of them had their wives with them. Okay. So there's probably half and half.
Jason Lehman:Okay.
Linnsey Dolson:And just shared stories of the trauma and all of that. It was a eight week program. And, but my point is, like, hearing those stories, I'm like, oh, fuck. Yeah. You know, just all this stuff, like, just, I mean, some of the stories I couldn't even handle hearing.
Linnsey Dolson:And so no one sees, the trauma and the stuff that you guys experienced. Do you think that is what's responsible for the high level of suicide in this industry? I even think my sister, she is a correctional officer now. So not law enforcement, but, you
Jason Lehman:know, similar. But she's law enforcement inside of the facility?
Linnsey Dolson:Yeah. So I guess it is law enforcement. And I my sister is so amazing. Nothing negative at all. But I've definitely seen her harden up.
Linnsey Dolson:Like, if that makes sense over the years. Like, you know, it's got an outlook like there's so many piece of shits in the world when it's just because I think you see piece of shits on a daily basis. Or everybody you come
Jason Lehman:around shits.
Linnsey Dolson:You know what think that now. Yeah. Gotcha. I gotcha. Gotcha.
Linnsey Dolson:They're like murderers and pedophiles and like all these people that she's talking about. Right? So I would let call that a piece of shit. Like a pedophile, you're a piece of fucking shit. And so, like, she's dealing with them on a daily basis.
Linnsey Dolson:And so it makes her like feel like everybody's that way. And I do feel like she struggles with depression now because of that. I can see it. And so I mean, how often or how common is that in that industry? Because we're hearing about how everybody else is affected and how they're feeling about you, but like the actual officers in that situation, they're struggling just as hard.
Jason Lehman:But before we started the podcast, we were talking about how hurt people hurt people. Right? Right. And I think that a police officer's decision making is based off of how well he's been over the last two days, not how his trauma is gonna impact them tomorrow. It's how well that officer is over the last two days.
Jason Lehman:Well, if you're dealing with coming from incidents where you have to pull a dead baby out of a dumpster, which is something that I've had to do, or you have to pick up body parts along the side of the road, or somebody tries to kill you, or you get into a deadly force incident or whatever, those bits of trauma, oftentimes I describe them as bricks that you put into a backpack. You just keep carrying those bricks even though you're putting bricks into a backpack, you keep Heavy carrying
Linnsey Dolson:and heavy.
Jason Lehman:It's heavier and heavier. And so now what ends up happening is you end up feeling, at least for me in my times of crisis, I've ended up feeling like I was a burden on others because of the decisions that I had made that were made because I was a hurt person hurting a hurt hurting a person.
Linnsey Dolson:Did you have children at this time? No. When you're in law enforcement?
Jason Lehman:Okay. During law enforcement, yes. But in my times of so ultimately in 2010, I unfortunately tried to die by suicide on about a dozen occasions. And in those
Linnsey Dolson:And how did it how was it not successful? Did someone save you? Like
Jason Lehman:Yeah. So I'm You
Linnsey Dolson:don't have to get in extreme detail, but
Jason Lehman:I mean, I'm here. If people get on podcasts, they don't wanna get in detail. They shouldn't be on a podcast.
Linnsey Dolson:I know. Okay. Right. See, that's all I have to I I tell people that about
Jason Lehman:Don't like don't come on a podcast.
Linnsey Dolson:Hey. But I'm like, don't have to be, you know, detailed, but you can if you want to. Yeah.
Jason Lehman:Yeah. That's very caring and kind of you, but that's
Linnsey Dolson:not why this works, right? I mean,
Jason Lehman:my business, we define, I'll tell you the answer to your question in a second, but we define leadership as someone who has a unique capacity to utilize humility and vulnerability to bring someone else to a place they wouldn't go without them.
Linnsey Dolson:Story of my life. That is exactly why my mugshots are all over social media.
Jason Lehman:A 100%. Just saw something something in your stories of you today, you were walking down a beach, right? And you were talking about the bad decision and the bad choice and this and that, how you've now All of those things lead to the position of success. Like I feel successful right now because I could sit in a pink seat and be on a podcast, Right? Like that's one small tiny version of success.
Jason Lehman:There's way more to it. But I mean, I really am stoked about sitting in the pink seats. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Jason Lehman:Kidding me. But when I when I was dealing with my trauma and I can only speak for my trauma because I think it relates to some other trauma. My trauma came from not from getting a lot of power as a police officer or working in the fire service or as a EMT or as a first responder, getting a lot of power and not having the skill set to control that power effectively. What That's
Linnsey Dolson:wild, I've never heard it put that way.
Jason Lehman:And what ends up happening is I start telling people to stop, sit down, shut up, stop the car. And that wouldn't work in my personal life. So now I have to undo all that super powerful stuff, go home and be an equal to somebody. And I can't tell them to stop, shut up, shut your mouth, sit down, stop the car. And now I have to go backwards.
Jason Lehman:Now I have to be somebody else at home. Then I have to go back to work and I have to be somebody else at work. Well, what ends up happening is I end up looking for bad decisions because what I wanna do is I wanna find the life I have at work at home or vice versa. Mostly is that the life is fast hitting life that I have at work. So what do I do?
Jason Lehman:I do risky things. I start gambling. I start you know, I I could start cheating. I could start doing all of these different, you know, all these different opportunities that you could have to find that endorphin rush that you found in your last code three run with your lights and sirens on because you get addicted to that feeling. And when you're doing that, sometimes this idea of moral injury creeps into your head.
Jason Lehman:And moral injury is when you injure the morals that you had before you were a cop by doing something that you could do only because you have a badge and a gun. And it could be something as little as saying to somebody in the back seat and arrest you in the back seat, Hey dummy, you're here because your mom raised you this way, Like something as small as that, how big is that for the person in the backseat of the car?
Linnsey Dolson:I mean
Jason Lehman:It's giant for the person in the backseat of the car. I just told his mom he was an his mom was an idiot.
Linnsey Dolson:Right.
Jason Lehman:It's giant. It's like, if I look at somebody who's experiencing drug addiction and I tell them they're a tweaker and then they've changed their life and five years later, I look at them and go, you're still a fucking tweaker. Well, how hard did that person work for five years to change their life? Very easy for me.
Linnsey Dolson:I mean, words are powerful. Right.
Jason Lehman:It's very easy. They're gonna do that. And so what ends up happening is I think that when law enforcement officers encounter trauma coupled with moral injury, coupled with a missing resilient skillset. And then they get into risky times where things don't feel good. They look for another risky thing to stop it.
Jason Lehman:And that risky thing to stop it is an unfortunate permanent decision based off of a set of temporary emotions, which looks like suicide. And I believe that that has a lot to do with law enforcement suicide. And when we think about law enforcement suicide, you know, it's like most suicide, when people are having suicidal ideations, they're trying to escape something because one thing or a series of things happen and they can't get over those things. And that's how suicide occurs. And so when we gets into law enforcement suicide and I unfortunately have been very impacted by law enforcement suicide in my last six years, four of my partners died by suicide in the same agency.
Jason Lehman:And I've had, I've known at least 50 police officers that have died by suicide. And so when it comes and to like I've trained some of them before they've died. And when it comes to
Linnsey Dolson:That's crazy. That is a high number. I know one person that personally that killed their self. You know, that's that is such a high The way you explain that was so wild because I do I have a lot of law enforcement friends. And I have to admit that the men are very very like they cheat, most of them.
Linnsey Dolson:Most of the male law enforcement friends I have, no judgment, but they all cheat on their wives. They just do.
Jason Lehman:Not all, most.
Linnsey Dolson:No, a lot.
Jason Lehman:Let's go with most.
Linnsey Dolson:Right? Say most that I know. Alright. Do. Do.
Linnsey Dolson:They do. And not all, but that was the best explanation right there of why.
Jason Lehman:And it's not always I mean, it's not always that. It's it it could be something else. It could be porn. It could be, you know, a lot of different things. Right?
Jason Lehman:And I have But they're chasing something.
Linnsey Dolson:And I They're chasing something.
Jason Lehman:And I have been that person that's chased that stuff. So I I know firsthand what that's like, what that's about.
Linnsey Dolson:I actually I used to be the exact same way. I chased that shit. I would have like six fucking boyfriends. Mhmm. I was horrific.
Jason Lehman:Yeah. So it was all of those kinds of things that you sit there. And obviously, you know, like I tell people, I was on a podcast for alcohol recovery. When they asked me to be on the podcast, they were they really just it didn't fit what I normally do. Right?
Jason Lehman:But I was like, I don't know what I normally do. And so I told him that, I said, what is what do mean fit what you normally do? Like, I don't fit in a box anywhere. I sit here, I think about all that stuff. And one of the questions that, got asked of me is, well, what's your addiction?
Jason Lehman:And I realized that I'm an addicted a hole. Like I am an addict. I get, I feel powerful in being an a hole. And I have to literally use my own 12 step version for me to make sure that I do not relapse. Like I could smooth in a heartbeat, look at somebody that does something really dumb at that moment and literally say, you're not the dumb one.
Jason Lehman:You're dumb, your mom's dumb, your son's an idiot. Like I could just blow them up. Like just ruin them just with my words. I don't now. I've gotten all the skills I need to not have to be able to do that.
Jason Lehman:But I think it's an addiction like any addiction, drugs, alcohol, food, whatever it is that those addictions, they bring you to a place that you think you can't go without it. And so you're like, wanna go to that place. Like, that's the place I wanna go. That's what ends up happening with the
Linnsey Dolson:recognize it.
Jason Lehman:But that's what ends up happening with the endorphin rush with law enforcement. And that endorphin rush with law enforcement coupled with the inability to understand resiliency and wellness skills leads us to bad decisions. And then you couple that with the bad exposure to trauma, the stress from the incident. It's the incident's stress. Not a disorder.
Jason Lehman:You're not mentally completely broken. It's this one incidence called post traumatic stress incident. I have stress from one incident, 12 incidents, 50 incidents. I don't have a disorder. I have these incidents that I haven't either forgiven myself for or talked about or let go.
Jason Lehman:And so I'm compartmentalizing all of this emotional trauma because we're trained and it's a good skill. We're trained to detach from our emotions to make valid decisions. A really, it's good skill at home. Like when I'm in the middle of an argument, if I don't detach, I'm gonna say something dumb like, hey, Like I can make another person relax. What is this?
Jason Lehman:Massage envy? Like, just gonna Yeah. Right? Telling me relax. That's not gonna work.
Jason Lehman:Right?
Linnsey Dolson:Can the fight, right?
Jason Lehman:Like calm down. What do mean calm down? How about you
Linnsey Dolson:That's calm down, do.
Jason Lehman:That's right. And that's what we Our system is based off of the fact that words and moments matter, words are powerful. So ultimately I think that you put all that stuff together and you end up recognizing that law enforcement trauma is actually what is responsible for law enforcement poor decision making. And so when we see a police officer that makes a poor decision, I'm gonna show you somebody that isn't emotionally well. It's hard because it's subjective.
Jason Lehman:It's really hard to find out what their wellness was before. But when officers are making those crazy decisions, like for instance, you wanna shoot a lady who has a pot of boiling water from 17 feet away because she tries to throw the water on you, which by the way, the which happened in real life like a year ago.
Linnsey Dolson:I remember. Didn't he go get charged
Jason Lehman:with murder? Yeah. Got charged. He just got charged charged with murder. Ridiculous.
Jason Lehman:Ridiculous. Ridiculous. That person not well. He'd been in two shootings before in the mill he'd been in the military. He'd been and people didn't recognize he wasn't well.
Jason Lehman:I bet you if I went to that agency and spoke to people, they'd say, yeah, that guy was a little bit off at times. He was over aggressive. He was undercaring. He was this, he was that. You know, when somebody tells, when somebody, when I can look at somebody and say, hey, that person has compassion fatigue, That's a big problem because compassionate people don't get fatigued doing what they like to do.
Jason Lehman:Can't get fatigued at being compassionate if you're a compassionate human. But if I'm not compassionate, I have to be compassionate. That'd be like asking me to go bench press 500 pounds. Yeah, bench press 500 pounds because I don't bench press 500 pounds. But if you ask me to go be compassionate, guess what I'm gonna do?
Jason Lehman:I'm a be compassionate AF. I'm a be as compassionate as can be. Because that's what I like doing. I'm a compassionate person.
Linnsey Dolson:So what is law enforcement agencies, is this kind of changing the subject little bit, doing to help with that?
Jason Lehman:They're doing a lot.
Linnsey Dolson:What support? Okay. So that's what I was hoping to hear. Yeah. So there is a lot of support there.
Jason Lehman:They're doing a lot, but they're not doing enough. And when I say that, I say that to say this, I don't know if you can run a corporation that's focused first on wellness, you won't succeed. So you to recognize that there's a lot of focus and that wellness focus needs to be the focus early on in the corporation's beginnings. Because that that will build a culture of wellness. And that's what you want.
Jason Lehman:Culture will eat strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Culture is the move, right? It's like, what are we gonna do? Like if I come into this podcast studio and the culture is that everything's set up and ready to go, then everything's set up and ready to go. But if the culture is, I could be five minutes late, next thing you know, I'll ten minutes late, next thing you know, I'll be fifteen minutes late, right?
Jason Lehman:That's a cultural thing because somebody's allowing that to happen. And so the culture is what's important for law enforcement entities to change. And that's very, very hard right now because right now they're very overwhelmed. Their cops are working in LA County Sheriff's right now. I got a bunch of friends there.
Jason Lehman:I've had the opportunity to train hundreds of LA County sheriff's deputies in Palmdale and Lancaster and other areas. And people entrust me to help out with with this wellness and strategic communication. But if you're being forced to work eighteen hours a day for six days straight, like, now what? Now I get now I get six hours and I get to sleep for a little bit. And I and I'm not sure if eight if six days straight is correct, there's some wild number of how many shifts they can work at eighteen hours and eighteen hours.
Jason Lehman:And it's called Right? The county
Linnsey Dolson:At the prison works so many hours. I'm like, stop giving them that much of your life.
Jason Lehman:That's right.
Linnsey Dolson:And you'll never get back.
Jason Lehman:But if they don't work, the corporation fails. So now the corporation is trying to put wellness first, but they can't because now they have to put, they have to have bodies in seats in positions, right? A jail can't operate without somebody that operates this and is over there, right? So the streets, keep, if somebody doesn't respond to 911 calls, would happen, right? You call 91 and they say, hey, this number is disconnected.
Jason Lehman:You'd be like, what
Linnsey Dolson:the Right.
Jason Lehman:So now how do you balance all of that? So what are what are law enforcement agencies doing? They're doing a lot. Are they doing enough? No.
Jason Lehman:Can they do enough? I don't know. Now you have to hire somebody that's in a well position and then you have to have a culture of wellness for that person going forward. But what happens? If I'm a field training officer and I've been in this job as a police officer for fifteen years and you get in the car and you're happy go lucky and you're like, yeah, let's go get the next one.
Jason Lehman:And I'm like, hey, kid. I haven't slept for more than six hours in the last two weeks and I'm in a broken relationship and my boss is in the middle of writing me up and I like to use the term tweakers. So not not Jason, but this guy. So we're gonna go to go to this call where there's gonna be another tweaker deal again. Well, how don't I how do I maintain my own wellness and not wanna just get absorbed by that culture?
Jason Lehman:So now what do I turn into? Now I turn into this guy that's chasing the high, that's morally injuring themselves, that doesn't have the balance, that goes and makes bad decisions.
Linnsey Dolson:Who's unwell.
Jason Lehman:Who's unwell. And what does a hurt person do? A hurt person hurts another person. Yep. And now what do you do?
Jason Lehman:Now you go chase those highs. And if you don't catch the right highs and the bad things happen and the wrong things happen, unfortunately, you're now met with the ideations that I was met with of suicide. So a lot of that stuff is happening in law enforcement. And I don't think that that's happening to everyone in law enforcement. But what if what if one in twelve people were encountering what I just described?
Linnsey Dolson:That's a lot. That's still a lot.
Jason Lehman:And I would argue one in twelve people aren't dealing with suicidal ideations, but a recent research study said that in a twenty year career, one in twelve No, I'm sorry. More than that, it's somewhere something like one in six officers has thought about dying by suicide.
Linnsey Dolson:One in six.
Jason Lehman:One in six. Yeah, that's In their twenty year career at some point in their career. So you're dealing with all that stuff. You know, I think that that conversation can get really dark and make it look like cops are all the bad guys. They're not.
Jason Lehman:Cops are great people. They're hired, great,
Linnsey Dolson:they're amazing humans. Yeah.
Jason Lehman:100%. But they make flawed decisions sometimes because of a set of circumstances that they should be pushed to control harder than they're being pushed to control. Like right now they're having wellness checks for cops. So every year you have to sit and speak to a peer or therapist every year once a year. I mean, I'm in therapy almost every week still since 2010.
Jason Lehman:And it helps me for different reasons, right? Because therapy, can go and I can be like, Hey, you know what? I didn't like this situation. I don't like that person. And nobody gets impacted by it.
Jason Lehman:But if I go to work and I talk about that situation and that person who gets impacted, that situation and that person.
Linnsey Dolson:Of course.
Jason Lehman:Right? So therapy is this outlet for me to be able to get away from the need for that next endorphin rush.
Linnsey Dolson:Right? I that you Now
Jason Lehman:I can suppress that. And if I suppress that, it now gives me more time before the next threat. Because these are all threats, right? These are all threats to our wellness, our safety and to other people, to our families. And so it's really thinking about all of those ideas, but I wanna make sure that the statement is clear.
Jason Lehman:I think that in any business that is a legal functioning business, the majority of people in those businesses are great people. It doesn't matter what the business, they're great people. And sometimes great people make
Linnsey Dolson:bad are great people. I I'm definitely one of those people that think the majority of the world are great people. Yeah. Yeah. I I'm definitely not the half the glass is half empty.
Linnsey Dolson:It's always half full. So we have just a couple minutes left. I want you to tell everybody how they can find you on social media, the websites of your business, that sort of thing.
Jason Lehman:Cool. So on social media, it's Jason Lehman sixty four
Linnsey Dolson:K.
Jason Lehman:And Team Wisdom. So those are the two social media sites. Jason Lehman sixty four and Team Wisdom. The website is wism.org.
Linnsey Dolson:Okay.
Jason Lehman:Like, why'd you stop me?
Linnsey Dolson:Got it.
Jason Lehman:Wisdom.org. And I think that's probably about it. The thing that people need to know is that when they if they're if they make it this far in the podcast, right, which means they're committed to you, they're not committed to me, they're committed to this podcast, which is a great thing. Right? And if they're not like subscribing and stuff, they should do that.
Jason Lehman:So but
Linnsey Dolson:That's right. Like and subscribe. Yeah. There you have it.
Jason Lehman:But but no. But I think what they need to recognize is that in order for them to be effective in any aspect of their life, they have to become the best versions of themselves. I'm still working on that. I don't know if I'll ever find it. I think it's a quest that I hope I never reach, but we have to continue to work at that.
Jason Lehman:And if there's anything that I can do to help out anybody, whether it be their organization or their school, you know, speaking at a high school or a middle school or anything, I would love to do that because I have a lot of thoughts in my head that I can't get out unless somebody offers me the platform that God's put me on an assignment to have. And so once I can do that, that opportunity is something that I can help other people to get to wherever they wanna go. And that's that's why I believe that I had the opportunity and the blessing to come on this podcast. And is to be able to help people recognize like, you know what? Most people are good people and hurt people hurt people.
Jason Lehman:And as if they can take away one thing that says, hey, this is what I did today to get 2% better versus, Oh, what I just did made me 2% worse. Then they're gonna stay on track and they're gonna make it happen. I tell people, even adults, Hey man, if whatever you're doing, you wouldn't do in front of your mom, you probably shouldn't do it. Right? So it's those kinds of things that we think of, like, okay, that's gonna remind me, that's gonna make it happen.
Jason Lehman:So I'm gonna really quickly give a three step process on how we can not get into the next argument. We'll give it to all that. Know you deal with entrepreneurs and great people and people that are, you know, in recovery, all different kinds of stuff. But, here's a three step system. Number one, in order for us to calm down, we gotta tell ourselves we're gonna calm down.
Jason Lehman:So we call it deescalating ourselves first. So I asked my first responsibility. If I'm gonna try and keep you calm, then I have to calm myself down. It could be as simple as telling you, hey, Lindsey, can you help me relax? Now I'm not telling you what to do.
Jason Lehman:Now you're the helper. Now you have the opportunity to influence me by helping me relax. You can be like, what?
Linnsey Dolson:What do
Jason Lehman:you, right? The second thing is I have to have a reminder word. And my reminder word is heartbeat. And so if I wanna keep people's heart beating in the right way, then I remind myself with a reminder word. Some people might be pineapple or frog or I don't know, but for me it's heartbeat.
Jason Lehman:And then the third one is to let my breath be my first word. So anytime I get upset, as long as safety is not jeopardized right away, I literally go, and whatever I was gonna say that was stupid, it stays inside my body because now I don't have to say it and I can say something that's more effective and more realistic and smarter for us to be able to get along with, right? So that's the three step system I wanted to leave everybody with. I love it. Feel like there should be a takeaway.
Jason Lehman:It's not just a story, right? But these stories are cool, but there should be a takeaway too.
Linnsey Dolson:Always takeaways.
Jason Lehman:Alright. Cool. Cool. You so much. Thank you.
Jason Lehman:I appreciate it.
Linnsey Dolson:Love you guys. Bye.