National Police Association Podcast

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Chats with law enforcement experts and leaders

Betsy Smith:

Hi. This is sergeant Betsy Brantner Smith with the National Police Association, and this is the National Police Association podcast. I have a guest today who I follow voraciously on social media because he is on top of law enforcement issues, not just locally where he lives in the Midwest, but nationally as well. And so I thought who better to come on and explain some of the local issues, local changes, but also national trends in law enforcement when it comes to the prosecution and the persecution of the American law enforcement officer. Lieutenant Brian Steele, welcome to the show.

Brian Steel:

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Betsy.

Betsy Smith:

So before we get into the nitty gritty stuff, I gotta ask you. Why'd you become a cop?

Brian Steel:

Yeah. Listen. Great question. I had no intentions of being a police officer. I was raised with my parents.

Brian Steel:

They were, off the boat Scottish immigrants. They taught me a lot about the value of hard work, a lot of what values is, what it is to be an American. There there is very people less patriotic than than than immigrant to this country, and and they came over with my, my grandfather's brother sponsored him, and they made a life for themselves. They, started off as a slaughterhouse. My grandpa worked his way up, a deli, butcher by trade, butchering union, then owned a restaurant.

Brian Steel:

I was going into the restaurant business. I went and did a tour in the marine corps because I believed in giving back to my country, I was gonna run the restaurant business, and then 911 happened. Being from Northeast New Jersey deeply impacted me. And if you remember, there was a call, a call to the police service, the fire service, and the military. I went and took my local fire test, my local police test.

Brian Steel:

The old joke, the fire department wasn't hiring me. The police department did, and that's how I started my career in law enforcement about 23 years ago.

Betsy Smith:

You know, I I gotta ask you both as a marine and as a police officer, coming from the background that you did, what did it mean to you to to take take that oath to the constitution that we all take?

Brian Steel:

You know, everything. I I said I I was raised loving this country, appreciating this country, and anybody who spends time overseas, you only love America more. This is the greatest country there is on this planet. Now is there always room for improvement? Can we approve things?

Brian Steel:

Absolutely. And that's what reform is. And maybe we'll talk a little bit about police reform because I use the word reform. Reform is not taking everything you did and throwing it out. It's taking what you have and making it better.

Brian Steel:

I use the example of an iPhone. Steve Jobs came out with the greatest invention in the world. He didn't stop with the iPhone 1. He just found ways to make it better.

Betsy Smith:

Absolutely. So so let's get into what you're doing now. You are a lieutenant. You're, you know, you you've been a working cop for 23 years. And now you're the union president.

Betsy Smith:

Brian, is it true that police unions exist solely to keep bad cops on the job?

Brian Steel:

Absolutely false. Completely false. My job is I take one of these contracts, this a 156 page contract. I protect the sanctity of the contract. When I took over as president, I made it clear.

Brian Steel:

I said, I will hold elected officials accountable. I'll hold a man of uncountable, accountable when they do wrong. I will praise them, support them, and when they do right. I said the same for myself and my members. If our members do something wrong, we will hold them accountable.

Brian Steel:

I am not anti discipline as long as it's fair, it's firm, and it's impartial, and it follows the just cause, cause standard, which majority times it do, you'll never hear a single word from me as a union president as long as you follow the due process that we bargained. Ohio is a very strong union state.

Betsy Smith:

I was an Illinois cop and, and a fraternal order of police, cop as well. And, sometimes I made mistakes. Sometimes I open my mouth when I shouldn't have. And, so I got discipline. We all make mistakes, don't we?

Brian Steel:

Sure. Sure. Listen. There's a mistake of the heart, mistake of the mind. If you make a mistake of the mind and you sit in front of me and ask me to defend you or to arbitrate your job, if it's a split second decision, mistake of the mind, we'll we'll help you out.

Brian Steel:

If it's a mistake of the heart, if if we had officers recently in Columbus that were working for the cartel, drug dealers. I took their FOP card, and I put that in a shredder ceremoniously. You don't represent this union. You don't represent this batch.

Betsy Smith:

But there's a real difference between a bad cop, a dirty cop, and a police officer who makes a mistake. We are making split second decisions, about life and death very often. And and, in in Ohio, you guys just had a case, that really is going to affect American law enforcement nationwide. Talk about that.

Brian Steel:

So you're referring to is officer Coy shot and killed, mister Andre Hill. It was December of 2020, just before Christmas. Andre Hill shocked. Andre Hill received a $10,000,000 settlement from the city of Columbus. They named a law after mister Hill, and they also named the rec center.

Brian Steel:

Let me start by being mister, clear. Andre Hill should be here today. I am so incredibly empathetic to his family for the loss. The onus is a little bit on mister Hill. Officer Coy, just to paint the picture, it's 1:30 in the morning.

Brian Steel:

It's it's just before Christmas. It's an area known for high burglaries. The officer arrived, approached mister Coy in a car approached mister Hill in a car. A neighbor called and said there is a suspicious person sitting outside my house. An officer has a duty to go check on an individual.

Brian Steel:

The individual wasn't listening to him, ignored him, got out of the car, started walking up to 2 different houses, knocking doors. Officer Coy still stood back, trying to figure out what's going on. The individual walked into a a garage, an open garage. Officer Coy waited for his backup, told his backup what's going on. At this time, the individual is not committing a crime.

Brian Steel:

But as you know, as a longtime cop, something is not right here. We have a duty to investigate this. The individual was told to come out of the garage. The backup officer pulled out her firearm. Officer Coy did not have his firearm until mister Hill quickly concealed one hand and raised another one up with a set of keys.

Brian Steel:

Officer Coy yelled gun, gun, gun, stepped offline, fired 4 shots. At the time, we did not render aid, and that's something where reform actually helped the division of police. We didn't start rendering aid after 2020, and it's kind of embarrassing now to say we stood there over a body and waited for the medics. Right? We we weren't medics.

Brian Steel:

We've now changed that. We now provide aid. The real the reality is nothing was gonna save mister Hill. He was shot in the heart. A thoracic surgeon right there when a team could not save him.

Brian Steel:

This is the important part. Officer Coy made a split second decision. Officer Coy made a mistake. He admitted he made a mistake. State versus or, Graham versus Connor and State versus White in Ohio case talk about we can make mistakes.

Brian Steel:

He is not a murderer. He was charged with murder. He was convicted of murder. The jury got it wrong, and we're appealing.

Betsy Smith:

You know, in situations like that well, first and foremost, let me say, you know, you know, you've been on the job for decades, so was I. No cop wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves, I gee, I hope I get to shoot somebody today. It it is the one of the worst things that you can go through. Nobody wants to have to do it. And yet, like you said, we have this duty to investigate.

Betsy Smith:

We have a duty to confront. We have a duty to figure out what's happening in a situation like this. And in a dark garage, in a high crime neighborhood, somebody raising up their hand in a shooting stance, which is something that we see in multiple police shootings a year, is a very difficult situation for a police officer. And one of the things we have seen in the last 10 years, but especially in the last 4 years, is hesitation by street cops when it comes to deadly force, haven't we?

Brian Steel:

Oh, we have. And you know what it's gonna do? It's gonna get more people, more officers killed, or it's gonna cause officers to sit back, to sit on their hands. Officers need to go out there and be proactive. They need to patrol those alleys at 2 in the morning, not sit behind a building and play clash of clans.

Brian Steel:

But as a police leader, it's hard to tell these young officers they're wrong. Are we firemen? And no knock to my fire brothers, but dads and sisters, that's what we've becoming. We've become reactive. And what happened across the the country?

Brian Steel:

Crime went up. Arrest went down. The Ferguson effect is a real thing, and it's been going on for at least almost the last decade now.

Betsy Smith:

And, you know, in a case like the COI case, what do you believe leadership should have done? How should they have they responded? And what's going to change now if this case stands?

Brian Steel:

The first thing they should have done is not have been so vocal and and commend the officer right off the bat. Almost every elected official in this town, in this county, they vilify the officer right off the bat. Didn't even give him a chance. I don't know how you get a fair trial or trial in this city. I actually called for this to be moved to another county.

Brian Steel:

In this day and age, the jury is not supposed to know about the case. They're not supposed to talk to anybody. They're not supposed to look at your phone, social media. Betsy, it's almost impossible. These laws were written before technology.

Brian Steel:

Right? You and I are talking about things. We're gonna get on a website and our phone in about 20 minutes, and something we talked about is gonna pop up. Right? And ad's gonna pop up.

Brian Steel:

That's just how it works. What we have to understand is we have to think about reasonable. What was reasonable? And remember, reasonable action might seem different to somebody facing an assailant than somebody analyzing, you know, the question at leisure. These attorneys sit there, and they take their time.

Brian Steel:

4 years, it took this case to go through trial, to to to judge somebody who made a split second decision thinking their life was in danger and their partners.

Betsy Smith:

Do you think that because it was December of 2020 when we were still in the heat of the George Floyd riots and we had so much political discourse going on. Did that add to this?

Brian Steel:

It did. We had a brand new prosecutor was elected that year. That prosecute ran on on on the campaign of he was gonna indict cops. He had said, and I quote, he said, I'm going to warn officers in the city. If you fall to the temptation of shooting someone, I will hold you accountable.

Brian Steel:

Betsy, there's never a temptation of shoot someone. Right? We respond to someone's aggression. And then, of course, 2020, the city of Columbus, we had our own riots here, and they lasted 5 days. We had over 200 officers injured.

Brian Steel:

After that, we brought in a DOJ investigation. We brought in a special prosecuting investigation. Ohio State University and a former US attorney known as the Carter report did an investigation. And what we found was 99% of the times, our officers got it right.

Betsy Smith:

What do you think the future of policing is, first, for your agency and then even around the country, if we continue this trend of prosecuting cops for crimes when in reality, what happened is a mistake was made?

Brian Steel:

Easy. No one's gonna take this job. No one's gonna stay on this job. The city of Columbus, we hired 90 people this year. Elected officials boasted that's 90 boots on the ground.

Brian Steel:

We lost 93. We're not keeping it up. When I came on post 911, there was lines out the door to take this job. I remember standing in a line to to just for the opportunity to take a test. We're not hiring.

Brian Steel:

Nobody's taking this job. Our guys are leaving. We have a deferred retirement program out here. It's a great program. If you wanna stay a little longer and make some extra money, when I first came on, everybody did it.

Brian Steel:

Now most people hit 25. They're out the door. They said, you know what? I'm gonna do something else where I might not be charged with murder. As you know, Betsy, we'll die for our communities.

Brian Steel:

Not a problem. We won't think twice. We'll run into that building. No. We're never coming home.

Brian Steel:

We're not volunteering to go to prison for them, though.

Betsy Smith:

You know, about 250,000 people die each year from medical mistakes, and yet the American public is not we're not protesting at hospitals. We're not putting doctors and nurses in prison. Why are cops expected to be perfect?

Brian Steel:

No profession is perfect, and I'm glad you brought that up. A a a surgeon. I used a I used split second decision. A surgeon who has your chest cracked open, that surgeon is trying to save you. If that surgeon makes a mistake, I like to say cuts the wrong wire, but we know there's no wires in there.

Brian Steel:

It is not murder. If that surgeon shows up drunk, smoking crack, and does it, well then, hey. Maybe that could be considered murder. Right? But these cops are the same thing.

Brian Steel:

You make a split second decision. You you absolutely should be held accountable if you make a mistake. Maybe held accountable is training. Maybe it's discipline. Maybe, you know, you just weren't ready to be the police that day and go find another line of work, but not murder.

Brian Steel:

It is making it harder to do this job. It's impacting retention, and it's impacting recruiting.

Betsy Smith:

Can you explain to people the difference between getting sued as a police officer for making a mistake and getting charged with a crime?

Brian Steel:

Yeah. So let's say let's say you're sued. You're acting within the scope of the 4th Amendment quality, qualified immunity, is applied. The city might pay out. Let's say qualified immunity is stripped and you have to pay out punitive damages.

Brian Steel:

That that is a way of being held accountable if you make a mistake. But, again, being charged with murder for something you did in good faith, acting within the 4th Amendment, it's completely out of line.

Betsy Smith:

Your police department, like many, is under, or what has been under in the past, a federal consent decree. This is something this is there's a lot of discussion about federal consent decrees, especially as we move forward into a into a new, more pro police administration in Washington DC. Talk about the Department of Justice and and what they do, sometimes to local law enforcement, in a way that over controls them.

Brian Steel:

So, a little bit different. The city of Columbus was under federal consent degree. The city of Columbus brought in the DOJ cops office to review policies. It wasn't the litigation of problem. They weren't controlling the division of police Columbus.

Brian Steel:

They looked at our policies. They looked at our policies, and they found that 99% of our policies were correct, that we were doing the right thing. We're an accredited agency, a CLIA accredited agency. And I use that in 2020 when when the allegations was there was, systemic racism within division of police. Our elected mayor said there was racism in the division of police.

Brian Steel:

CALIA is made up of perf. It's made up of the chief association, and it's made up of noble. Right? Our black law enforcement executives literally put a stamp saying you have the best policies and practices, the division of police. So when that report came back from the DOJ that our policies were correct, we did not have a pattern of systemic racism.

Brian Steel:

We did not have a pattern a use of force. Instead of our mayor saying, hey. It was worth the money we spent to ensure. The mayor said, I'm disappointed with the findings, and he sent it back to reinvestigate. The DOJ came back again, and they had the same outcome.

Brian Steel:

There was a couple policies that we could fix. Again, that's the reform part. Let's take what we're doing, do a little bit better. No racism, no pattern of corruption or use of force.

Betsy Smith:

Cops are automatically, you know, said to be racist when we arrest or we have to use, force against an individual of a different color. How did this get so bizarre?

Brian Steel:

It was created. It was created by a narrative. It it was I'm not gonna get political, but there was a leftist wing in this country who created the false narrative. 2020, I was at Broad and High Street. That's our main intersection next to the state house.

Brian Steel:

Like many people, I watched a video of something that happened 500 miles away, and I was shocked like everybody. Now we've since found out even that story is not quite what we were led to believe. But I thought, okay. Here I am. I'm a white officer.

Brian Steel:

I took this job. I worked at majority of my career in inner city community of color. Absolutely, my community I'm dedicated to, but everybody's called me a racist and throwing rocks and bottles at me. So I thought, you know what? I'm gonna maybe see if I miss some things.

Brian Steel:

I went back to school. I'm a lifelong learner. I went back to school, and I did a program of black studies. And I learned a lot. I learned there are some things that I missed growing up that I wasn't taught.

Brian Steel:

I realized the black eye law enforcement has the people of color in our history, but it's bigger than that. So when someone wants to talk racism or brutality, that's micro. I wanna talk a macro scale. I wanna talk about racism in education, in health care, in banking. We can acknowledge that so we know where we have to go to move forward.

Brian Steel:

So I always push back when someone wants to talk simply race and police department. I have never seen it. That doesn't mean it's not there. It just means it's never happened in front of me. Me and you, Betsy, people like us, we would never tolerate that.

Brian Steel:

It was such a false narrative.

Betsy Smith:

You know, as we as we move forward into 2025, you know, after a really historic election, not just nationally, but locally, One of the things we saw is these, prosecutors, you know, there's there were about 75 of them around the country that were brought in, that were propped up by, you know, George Soros and others specifically to prosecute police officers. About half of them are gone. You know, they got they either quit. They got recalled. They, got defeated.

Betsy Smith:

What do you think that says about what the how the American public views the criminal justice system as well as their own local law enforcement?

Brian Steel:

We overcorrected in 2020. We went so far one way. Luckily, the pendulum is starting to swing, come back. That's why this coy decision was such a sock in the gut. These prosecutors ran on this notion of they're the chief social justice warrior.

Brian Steel:

There is a time and place for social justice. Your prosecutor is your chief law enforcement officer. Their job is to take the worst of the worst people that we arrest and send them to prison where they belong. I think individuals saw when we put these woke rogue prosecutors in place, what happened to crime and murders, it spiked. The city of Columbus post 2020, we had over 200 murders.

Brian Steel:

When I came on, we were at 70 murders. Now if we hit a 100, we're trying to celebrate like we're doing right. You and I know, and I'll just speak in the city of Columbus, 90% of our victims in city of Columbus are people of color. 75% of our known suspects are people of color. In the city of Columbus, overwhelmingly, suspects commit crimes at a higher rate.

Brian Steel:

Overwhelmingly, people of color do not commit crimes, and and most people don't wanna talk about this. So instead of blaming police and racism for the reason, there's drive by shootings in Columbus. We have to get to the root problem, and I can't find anybody from the black curr curr curr I can't find a single politician, police chief or sheriff to wanna talk about that.

Betsy Smith:

You know, and this is the thing. We have 32,000 identified street gangs in this country, and that's one of your biggest problems in Columbus is street gangs. And and we and this has been going on since I was a rookie cop in 1980. What do you think we need to do to finally stop the scourge of street gangs?

Brian Steel:

Go back to proactive policing. I had a commander, when I first came on, I worked with a gang unit. He was a commander of color, and I remember he said, listen. If there's someone selling drugs, a gang member selling drugs in front of the store, and someone doesn't wanna go in that store, he goes, I expect you to harass that person all day every day. Right?

Brian Steel:

That's your job. He said the drug dealer or the the gang member should see your cruiser and have a panic attack because he knows you're gonna get out on them. Right? But we were supported then. We had a mayor Coleman at the time who came out publicly and said, point a gun at one of our officers.

Brian Steel:

They will shoot you. Think of how great it is working with someone who's gonna support you like that as opposed to someone that says, follow the temptation of pulling your trigger, and we're gonna send you to prison.

Betsy Smith:

That is so well said. Brian Steele, where can folks follow you?

Brian Steel:

So, I I'm at Brian Steele underscore, or you can go to, f0p9.org. That's our page.

Betsy Smith:

Brian, we cannot thank you enough for spending time with us today. And if you'd like more information about the National Police Association, 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.

Narrator:

Consider going to nationalpolice.org and donating to keep us in the fight. Together, we can win. That is nationalpolice.org.