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Chats with law enforcement experts and leaders
Hi. This is Sergeant Betsy Brantner Smith with the National Police Association, and this is the National Police Association podcast. I have with me a guest today that has been, informing me about a concept that I am wildly excited about. And, so I thought that I needed to share it with all of you because whether you're a police officer, maybe a firefighter, and certainly if you're a taxpayer, you're going to wanna know, more about this, company. Todd Herb with Ready Rebound.
Betsy Smith:Welcome to the show.
Todd Herb:Thank you. Appreciate you, inviting me on today.
Betsy Smith:So, Todd, first and foremost, you're a retired cop. And you you served in a in a large agency. You did a lot of really terrific things. And but I gotta ask you. Like, I ask everybody who comes on this show who was in law enforcement, why'd you become a cop?
Todd Herb:Yeah. So I was living in Buffalo, New York. That's where I was raised and born. And so had the my family was moving down to Florida back in way back in the day, 1993, and I was 21 at the time. I started college early, graduated early, and had a political science degree and, didn't really want didn't have the skill set probably to be a politician or the, smarts to be a lawyer.
Todd Herb:So, you know, Florida was growing at that time and had opportunity to go to the police academy. And I was athletic and figured I could chase people. I could write well. And so, and they were hiring a lot down here back in the day. So I figured, well, this is about as good as, opportunity as anything.
Todd Herb:And so that was really it and kinda just came together, got accepted to the academy, and got a job right out of there, you know, right right out of the academy. So it was good.
Betsy Smith:What what kind of things were you involved in?
Todd Herb:Yeah. So I started at a smaller agency. I think at that time, they had about a 100 on the in the in Brevard County. And then, a couple years later, really wanted to, you know, run and gun and chase. Right?
Todd Herb:My my goal was to get be as active as possible, so I applied to all large agencies at that time and then was lucky very lucky to, be offered a a position at the Orlando Police Department. Figured big city, lots of crime, lots of fun. And so throughout my career, I pretty much did everything I I ever wanted to do. I started, you know, in the very busy area, lots of drug activity back in the day, and then wound up going to the drug unit, our uniform drug unit. Again, just, you know, a group of 10 guys and girls chasing people and running all the time.
Todd Herb:And then had the opportunity to go to the canine unit where that was about a third of my career. I did about eight total years there and did everything I wanted to, including training, worked a couple different dogs, and did and loved it. It was the best job I absolutely ever had in my life if any canine handler knows that and appreciates it, the magic of of dogs. And then, I was in about year 16 at at OPD, and, my son started playing baseball. I got two kids and really wanted to try something different, maybe get off of work and weekends, and then moved in to be a detective and spent my last four years in economic crime.
Todd Herb:So that's you know, I kinda had a full circle of of different things to put the bad guys in jail.
Betsy Smith:So like a lot of police officers, you retired, you know, pretty young. Right? And and, you know, that's one of the things. You you you've been a police officer for several decades, and you don't just retire and sit on the couch, right, or go get an RV or whatever. You know, we still work.
Betsy Smith:And, you tried a bunch of different things in the in the private sector, and then you came to the organization you're working for now. Talk about that.
Todd Herb:Yeah. Great. So I work at a company now called Ready Rebound. And as, you know, we had talked about when I first got, talked about this job and recruited, I said, what in the heck is that? You know, I had worked twenty three years of being the cop and then worked a couple different jobs selling the cops and firemen and, had never heard of this, let alone the company, but certainly the concept.
Todd Herb:Right? And so I was looking it up saying, is this a Ukrainian scam or something? Right? Like, who is it? You know?
Todd Herb:And and said, wow. They got a lot of customers, and they really got a cool mission. So dug into it a little bit more, had a few very difficult interviews, and then was lucky enough to be offered the position in the Southeast. So, yeah, what ReadyRebound basically does on the twenty second elevator pitch is we treat first responders, cops and firemen, like f athletes, professional or collegiate athletes instead of just a workman's comp claim. Right?
Todd Herb:We believe that first responders should be treated differently than a person in city hall that sits at a desk. Right? Because if that person gets injured and rolls their ankle the same way as a cop or a fireman, that assistant accountant could go to work the next day or work from home and get on their computer and work where the copper fireman is now either sitting at home or they're sitting on a light duty job getting paid something that certainly doesn't equate to what they should be doing.
Betsy Smith:So I wanna talk about that because and the this is the thing. The general public, you looks at police officers and firefighters, and they know it's a dangerous job. But when you think about that, when they think about firefighters, usually, they're they, you know, get injured in a in a fire. You know? Like, it's really horrific.
Betsy Smith:They get burned, things like that. With law enforcement officers, the general public knows that that we get shot. We might get stabbed, things like that, but, which are all really horrific. But as we were talking about off camera, first responders, we all get injured. Every you you really don't get out of our career in public safety without getting injured.
Betsy Smith:And and very often, it's it's a shoulder or a knee or an ankle or there's a lot of orthopedic stuff, especially that very often gets either mistreated, misdiagnosed. I just on a personal level, and, of course, this goes back to the eighties, I got hit by a car when I was a rookie, and at that this is before anybody had heard of a specialty called sports medicine. And, you know, they took me to the emergency room, and I meet with a doctor, and I had already had knee surgeries in high school. And the the doctor says, well, you need to retire, kid. You know?
Betsy Smith:And I'm like, I'm 22 years old. I'm not gonna retire. And I actually had to find a sports medicine doctor on my own because my city didn't know that existed. The ER doc didn't know it existed. And so what Ready one of the things that ReadyRebound does that I'm so excited about is that you help first responders not just recover, but you help them manage
Narrator:That's right.
Betsy Smith:All of this. There's so much crazy red tape. You don't know what's available, and you actually help them recover. Right?
Todd Herb:That's right. So, you know, one of the, gosh, I would say horror stories that you hear when you talk to these, command staff or union people or things like that, you know, they'll say, yeah, we get guys injured on duty, and they'll just say it happened off duty, cause they don't even wanna deal with workman's comp. And in defense of workman's comp, right, this isn't a bash workman's comp at all because a workman's comp process is set up for the entire city or for the entire county. There's no real specialty to state. We're just gonna have a special workman's comp for cops or firemen.
Todd Herb:Right? They're a business there to make money. So, you know, from their business standpoint, they're they have to treat everybody the same. Right? And oftentimes, when it comes to risk and HR, you know, they don't always feel that more benefits should be given to cops or firemen.
Todd Herb:Right? That's the not always, but the unfortunate part is, you know, the the administrators feel, oh, cops get paid the most. Firefighters have the most benefits. We can't give them more. Right?
Todd Herb:So there's often time because they don't understand what cops and firemen do. Like you said, Betsy, when a cop gets, shot or a firefighter has a horrific injury, they're taken care of for the most part. Right? Because they recognize that as a whole. But when that cop rolls an ankle or pulls his back or the firefighter hurts his shoulder in training, that that doesn't make the news.
Todd Herb:Right? That that's just the common thing. But for that copper firefighter, now they're sitting on the couch or now they're you know, they were in the drug unit or they're on the SWAT team, and now they're sitting in records running people's names for nine, ten, twelve weeks, and they're going crazy. Right? Because this isn't what I signed.
Todd Herb:I didn't sign up to sit at a real time crime center and look at a video or sit in records or not to diminish those jobs, but that's that wears on it. Right? And behind it, you know, now you're backfilling that overtime. Certainly, on a fire truck, it's one on the truck, one off the truck. So how much is that costing for a twenty four hour shift to pay someone time and a half?
Todd Herb:And then the indemnity where you have you're paying someone that they're not now doing the job that you hired them to do, sit in a patrol car or sit on a truck, put out fires, or detect things. Right? So, there's so many and that cost the taxpayers a ton. Right? Because the overtime budget, if you get one indemnity case, two indemnity cases, and even a smaller department of 50 or a 100, that city might have just paid out 50 or a 100,000.
Todd Herb:And then behind it, if that first responder decides, you know what? I don't feel I was treated fairly. I'm now gonna sue. And now it moves into litigation. And one litigation case might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Betsy Smith:You know what I'm and let me I'm glad you brought that up because most people think of large agencies, Chicago, Orlando, New York, things like that. But for especially from a taxpayer standpoint, most police departments are less than 20 officers. So like you said, if you have 20 patrol officers, let's say, and one goes down to a light duty situation, that that's very difficult that it starts to cost overtime. And then what if another cop gets hurt? And and, also and I do wanna explain what light duty is to people.
Betsy Smith:Light duty is you're taken out of your patrol car or off the fire truck. And, again, you're put in an office. And in most jurisdictions, that is limited. So you can only I know, like, where I was a cop, you had one year to get back on the job, and then otherwise, you were done.
Todd Herb:So,
Betsy Smith:and that's a problem too because let's say you've got a cop with a chronic shoulder injury that's never really treated properly, and then after a year of light duty, they can't go back to patrol. And but the then the agency has to let them go. Not not only are is that devastating, of course, that officer, losing their career. They're losing their income. But, also, you're as a taxpayer, you're losing all of that training and experience
Todd Herb:That's right.
Betsy Smith:From that police officer. Talk about that.
Todd Herb:Yeah. So, yeah, I'm working with the smaller agency here. They have 32 sworn. Right? Small agency.
Todd Herb:You know, you would think, well, they're not super they had two officers injured last year. That's what I'm not good at math, but, like, 8% of their entire workforce, right, is now gone. Think about if you have an agency of 50 patrol up and you have, say, two k nine officers as we talked about and one gets injured. You just whack 50% of a whole squad. Or if you have a smaller department that your sniper is gone, right, or your homicide detective hurts his shoulder in training, that doesn't that that person can't go out and investigate.
Todd Herb:They can't interview people. Right? Because you have to have a gun and a badge. And if you're on light duty, as you talked about, you're on light duty. You you are sitting in an office.
Todd Herb:So that talent drain is huge on the short term. And then as you said, a lot of agencies you got three hundred sixty five days to the time you got injured. You gotta come back or you are medically retired. So it just costs the city money. It costs them talent.
Todd Herb:And if you think about if it takes the officer gets injured for a shoulder injury. Right? And it normally takes them because the normal process a lot of times is they go to the ER at night or they'll go to some sort of, you know, you know, Occmed, right, the occupation medicine right away. And that doctor will say, oh, you know, you got a shoulder issue. Rested, I said PT.
Todd Herb:Right? Come back in six weeks and tell me how you feel. They come back again. It's like, you know, maybe we'll do another three weeks of rest, ice, PT. Now you got nine weeks, and then you come back and say, yeah.
Todd Herb:It's not getting better now. I'll get you to a shoulder specialist. Now that nine weeks just extended, when they use ReadyRebound, they call a +1 800 number. They get a board certified athletic trainer that have stood on the sidelines of either a collegiate or professional sports team who understand those injuries. We work side by side with your current process, and they'll understand that injury and say, you don't need rest, ice, and PT.
Todd Herb:You need to get in to see a shoulder specialist tomorrow or within forty eight, seventy two hours. You need an MRI behind it. We'll help schedule that. And if surgery is needed, within ten days. Think about that athlete on ESPN that gets injured.
Todd Herb:Right? They get injured. What do you hear? Oh, they got injured on a Sunday. They're going to see the doctor Monday, MRI behind it.
Todd Herb:Next Tuesday, the the athlete's gonna have surgery. Right? That's what why? Because the that costs a lot of money. There's a bottom dollar for those teams, right, for Georgia, Florida, the Buffalo Bay, whoever.
Todd Herb:Right? They're they need to get them on. We believe that same treatment should be applied to first responders in order to compress that time, get a definitive diagnosis, get them back to work healthy, and then keep them healthy for all those reasons we talked about, saving money, saving morale, saving the the mental aspect of getting back to work. Right? And there is a financial component.
Todd Herb:So we average anywhere between 3040% faster getting those first responders back to work compared to your, regular workman's comp process.
Betsy Smith:So there's a a kind of a concept in law enforcement training, and, frankly, it was it was started by my husband back in the early eighties. But to treat law enforcement officers like high level athletes physically, mentally, all of that, because you think about that, and especially now in the days of extraordinary scrutiny when a police officer, for example, is involved in some sort of controversial officer involved shooting, you know, if we can send those officers out where they feel confident about their skills. They're they feel confident, physically, and they have that winning mind, right, that winning mindset, we're we're sending out a much better cop who's gonna be able to deal with all this kind of stuff. You're adding it's almost like a three legged stool. I feel like we had the two legs, and now Ready Rebound is adding that third leg to that stool of let's treat these first responders like high level athletes when they do their job and they get hurt doing it.
Betsy Smith:I that is just so huge to me. It's mind blowing.
Todd Herb:And they know that they're taken care of. Right? The morale issue of it knowing that this is like you had said, this is a dangerous job. Being a firefighter or a cop is dangerous. Right?
Todd Herb:When you're when you're a cop, you're arresting guys on midnight shift. Right? You're arresting drug deals. You're arresting you're pulling guns off guys. Guys are fighting you.
Todd Herb:When you're a firefighter, you may be in bed for four or five hours. Right? Because it might be a little bit slow, and then all of a sudden, boom, that call comes out, and you're ten minutes after you wake up, you're now pulling someone out of a burning car. Right? You don't have a chance what's the difference beach one of the many difference between athletes and cops and firemen?
Todd Herb:Athletes, you see them. They're stretching for an hour, hour and a half. Right? They have all these different preventative things. Where a cop, it might be a little cold outside.
Todd Herb:He's sitting in his patrol car for five hours, and then boom. He's running, jumping fences. The the firefighter's sleeping for two, three hours and running, saving somebody, right, pulling somebody out of a car or climbing up a ladder, and then that's where those injuries, the back, the shoulder, things like the ankles, knees, all that are gonna get injured. And you have to get in to see that elite level doctor as quickly as that athlete, that wide receiver for, you know, Arizona is not gonna go rest ice PT for six weeks. Right?
Todd Herb:That athletic trainer position coach Ed, coach AD, they're gonna be like, we need to get him in because he needs to get back out of the field yesterday. Right? So, again, we just apply that model to cops and firemen for all the reasons we've talked about.
Betsy Smith:When somebody gets hurt in the line of duty, it is very difficult to navigate. I I you know, and everybody, you know, everybody watching and listening, you you know that. You know? If you if you get hurt or you get sick or whatever, you know, you our medical system right now is kind of arduous. Right?
Betsy Smith:You gotta call your primary care person, blah blah blah. Then when you involve your jurisdiction, you involve workers' comp. You know, some some jurisdictions have their own doctors, or you have to see a special doctor. And then if you wanna see, somebody who specializes in, for example, her knees, then how do you find that person?
Todd Herb:You could do
Betsy Smith:a needle search. Could ask your friends. It it it seems like ReadyRebound takes all that away. Right?
Todd Herb:That's right. So we don't we work within your system. It's a very silo system. Right? You have the member.
Todd Herb:You have the command staff, your reporter. You have the doctors. You have your third party administrator, workman's comp. You have HR. You have risk.
Todd Herb:You have all those silos and all those things get missed. Right? The HR calls the member and says, well, where's the paperwork? And he's like, I never got paperwork. Well, he left it at the doctor.
Todd Herb:The doctor didn't check a box. Right? So when and and we our athletic trainers are called navigators for a reason. They navigate the system. They run with HR.
Todd Herb:They work hand in hand with the third party, those TPAs. Right? And one and one thing that I I hadn't mentioned, Betsy, that I think is real important is our company truly values the holistic approach of taking care of first responders. So what we cover when an agency purchases us, we not only cover the on duty injuries, we cover the off duty injuries. Number one.
Todd Herb:Because if you get injured training on a Saturday when you head off and you hurt your back, what happens? Light duty, restricted duty, overtime. All the same things happen. So you can now call on a Saturday and get us. We cover all of your professional staff.
Todd Herb:Right? So if a dispatcher gets injured or a crime scene technician, those people are covered. We cover all your family members too. So think about you're sitting there. Right?
Todd Herb:You're a cop. You know, you're you're 30 years old. You've been in this job a couple years. You're there with your wife, and your kid's playing baseball, and boom, he twists his ankle. Mom's gonna freak out.
Todd Herb:I've never used my personal insurance. I never did it. What in the heck do I do? You call a +1 800 number, and you're gonna get a board certified athletic trainer. Mom could call.
Todd Herb:You could call. Right? You talk about the the relief on that now instead of that cop or firefighter calling his sergeant Monday and saying, I can't come into work, man. My kid got injured last week this weekend. I don't even know where to start with this, sarge.
Todd Herb:I got now all of a sudden, we help you take care of all of that. So it helps the family members, and we cover all retirees of that agency too. Right? We really believe in that holistic approach to help. And those are courtesy cases.
Todd Herb:Right? And we have a lot of those. 60% sometimes are the courtesy cases, the off duty, the family members, the retirees. And, again, you talk about a morale boost and all that other really taking care of cops and firemen. Not only that, but giving the return on investment.
Todd Herb:It again, I I talk highly of this company. It's the reason I came here and left, you know, and and came to this company because I believe in the mission and see the results of it.
Betsy Smith:So Ready Rebound could've helped me with my pickleball injury. Darn I I
Todd Herb:that. Yep. You call me, and I'll make sure we get you to the right people.
Betsy Smith:So I wanna talk about because this concept just blows me away. I wanna know who came up with this and and how.
Todd Herb:Yeah. And it's a great story because, you know, it what we do really, we just kinda give you that Disney fast pass, so to speak. Right? We what we do on the front end is not a complicated thing. All the stuff on the back end, making calls, building relationships certainly is, but that's a great question because how we were founded really kinda sums it up.
Todd Herb:So our founder, Luis Rivera, was the athletic trainer. He had worked at, Arizona State University and then was the athletic trainer for the Milwaukee Brewers. And he had a friend in Milwaukee fire up there and said, hey, Lou. How come, you know, your guys get injured and in five months, they're pitching a 100 miles an hour and my guy gets injured and they're out a year with the exact same injury? And he said, well, what do you got?
Todd Herb:Well, I got a guy with a knee. Right? He can't get in to see a surgeon for a while and well, just have him call me. I'll get him in our doctors. And couple days later, he's in.
Todd Herb:Hey, Lou. We got another guy that's injured. Right? And he just he truly believes in the mission of helping first responders and really did that for a while. And then, you know, the other agencies were like, how come your guys are coming back to to work way quicker than our guys?
Todd Herb:And he's like, we just call Lou. And so, eventually, this kinda fell backwards into this business and said, we'll pay you to do this. And so, really, it's that relationships with the doctors, understanding workflows and stakeholders and all that, and just understanding that process. That's how our company was founded. You know?
Todd Herb:Now I think it was about fourteen years ago about that. And, you know, we've built 400 customers in The United States. We have agencies as small as five sworn, and then our largest customer is Cal Fire, California Fire, that has 12,000 members. So we really go we scale from the absolute smallest to really the absolute largest, when it comes to taking care of first responders.
Betsy Smith:And I what I really love is the, I can really see the respect for first responders for what they do. I also gotta look at it, and, you know, you and I talked about this. We're both taxpayers. I gotta look at this from a purely financial standpoint as a as a taxpayer. I live in a Midsize City.
Betsy Smith:You know, we got a police department. We got a fire department, all that. I can really see the savings to the taxpayers because, you know, you you instead of having a guy or a gal on light duty for eleven months and going through all these things, you get them right back to work. And and that is just huge from a financial standpoint. It's also huge from a mental health standpoint.
Betsy Smith:A lot of people, you know, look at this and think, okay. Well, some cop twisted his ankle. Now he gets to hang out by his pool for for eleven months. They don't wanna do that. Right?
Betsy Smith:Talk about that.
Todd Herb:Yeah. You know, most cops and firemen are mission driven. Right? They're they're they're there to do a job. They got into it for a reason.
Todd Herb:Right? Especially in today's day and age. Right? You there's plenty of things you could do, and they got into it for a reason, and they wanna work. Right?
Todd Herb:They wanna get back. They wanna do their job. Cops that are on a midnight shift or on the drug unit or on it being a detective, firefighters, right, on the dive team or doing all this great stuff. Now all of a sudden, again, you're stuck there. So the mental aspect is just you know, I know that, you know, I got injured.
Todd Herb:I hurt my wrist one time, and I was in uniform drugs at that time, and I spent six weeks in with records. Those ladies were so nice to me. I was I still have PTSD to this day losing my mind. I must have ran a thousand different names, right, for this what I was doing. So it really does.
Todd Herb:I mean, it is an emotional just wear and tear on you. And you talk about the financial piece. Right? It's not only the overtime. It's the litigation.
Todd Herb:Right? Because we now arm the city with a quality process to get that officer or fighter fighter back to work. So we reduce that by as much as 50%, the litigation. So, yeah, I mean, it really does help on a number of different levels on what we do to show a true return on investment back to the taxpayer, back to the agency, back to that first responder.
Betsy Smith:Todd, if I'm a police chief or a city council member or I'm a taxpayer that wants my agency to look at this, how can people find out more about Ready Rebound?
Todd Herb:Yeah. I mean, very easy. Go to readyrebound.com. You could serve that's the absolute easiest path there. Right?
Todd Herb:You could certainly find me, reach out to me. Right? But, yeah, I'd say go to readyrebound.com, look at it. And it could be on a bunch of different if you're a a local politician, right, if you're a if you're a a state representative, if you're a local representative, right, and you're looking to drive something for your first responders and for to answer to your taxpayers, right, we we provide the numbers. We provide you with a dashboard to say how many days have been saved compared to what you used to do to what you're doing now?
Todd Herb:Here's the dollar savings. Here's what you see every day. And we truly are at expert level staff augmentation that if we're not producing, then fire us. You know, if you you don't like us after a year, then you could fire us. You're not giving us benefits.
Todd Herb:Right? You're not giving us a pension. You're not giving us all that other stuff. And if we don't produce, you could fire us. And that's why we have well over 95% renewal rates with our customers on basically a year over year subscription plan because we do produce, because we do show that savings, and because we take care of first responders like, you know, no other company in this realm, certainly.
Betsy Smith:Absolutely. I I've I gotta tell you. I'm so wildly crazy about this concept. I think we're gonna hear more about it. And and I'm so grateful that you spent time with us today to to explain how all this works.
Betsy Smith:So, Todd, thanks for thanks for spending a little time with us today. And if you'd like more information about the National Police Association, you can visit us at nationalpolice.org.
Narrator:Every day, the brave men and women of law enforcement put their lives on the line to keep us safe but they need our help to continue their mission. Activist politicians, progressive prosecutors, the ACLU and the rest of the anti police forces receive millions in donations from extremist pro criminal elements like George Soros and woke corporations. The National Police Association is fighting them in courts around the country including the United States Supreme Court defending officers who are being attacked for doing their jobs. Additionally, the National Police Association works year round to pass tough on crime legislation to put and keep criminals behind bars. Consider going to nationalpolice.org and donating to keep us in the fight.
Narrator:Together, we can win. That is nationalpolice.org.