Back in America

They still had the mother on the phone because their son had just stabbed his father with a pair of scissors. We had to drive way out into an outlying settlement and it took me almost 40 minutes going with lights and siren. I got on the radio and I said, I know on this particular stretch of road, border patrol has a checkpoint. Tell them to clear the checkpoint. I'm not stopping.

I'm going to just go through there and hear over the radio, relay the information of what was going on at the scene. And we're trying to get out there and tell her to stay safe and not aggravate him. That was crazy because it was 40 minutes and I just felt I'm constantly going 15 and not 65 or so that I was barreling down this highway in the middle of the night in the desert. I don't even want to imagine if a coyote would have stood in the roadway. So it's situations like that.

It's hard, Stan. And what day or what thing made you feel extremely proud and good about what you were doing? I actually had the greatest sense of fulfillment during my time as a detective in Crimes Against Children, which is by far the hardest type of work I had to do. Not just because of the subject matter, because obviously what you once see you cannot unsee, but because of the victims and what it meant to them. And they're there with me to this day. I was the one who, at least for that moment, could make it stop and get them into a safe

place. And that gave me a tremendous sense of fulfillment, which wasn't always possible in a patrol setting because you handle that call and then you're on to the next. Yeah. Whereas a detective, you get deep into it. You get to know all the people and the situation surrounding the crime that was committed. It can be very difficult. If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the Internet, try talking with one of them in real life.

Welcome to Back in America, the podcast.

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Tom Payne. Born and raised in Germany, Tom moved to the United States in 2001, just before the event of 9-11. His path here were influenced by a deep connection to the country, a feeling of coming home during his first visit years earlier. What makes Tom's story particularly fascinating is what came next. He transitioned from a corporate career in Germany to a life in law enforcement in the U.S., becoming a deputy sheriff in Arizona at the age of 40. Through his experiences, Tom gained a rare perspective on American culture, from the country's gun culture to its complex relationship with law enforcement, immigration,

and race. Tom Jones offers a deep look into what it means to be an immigrant and a public servant in America. Thank you for joining me today, Tom. My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Stan. Tom, we both know what living in your home country and settling to a new country is like. We know it's tough. You're losing your bearings. You're losing your friends, your support structure. However, I understand that your wife is an American. I'm sure that has definitely played into it and maybe helped in the transition. I've read that your mother had a first good impression with an American during World War II. Do you want to take us through this journey,

maybe starting with your mother? Absolutely. It actually plays during a time when she's a child in the last days of World War II. She is hunkered down with her mother and other members of the household, people that live in the house in the basement, and they're awaiting the arrival of American troops. She told me before how they had been inundated, obviously, with propaganda before that. One of the more, how do I call that, strange things that they were told was that Black soldiers would eat little children. In the lingo of the day back then, they said, Negroes eat little children. Needless to say, the kids that were there were all terrified. Sure enough, at one point, as the soldiers near the house, they hear banging upstairs,

somebody opens the door to the basement and walks down the steps. As my mother gets a good look, she notices that it's a Black soldier. She said at that point, she was so terrified, she felt like almost peeing herself. To her surprise, the soldier was, after they had made sure there was no men or no soldiers down there, they actually pulled out some chocolate and gave the children chocolate, which very much not only eased her nerves, but also made her later talk with great fanfare of everything American. That was maybe one of the first introductions to the US. Then you met your wife and decided to move to the US. That did not happen overnight. Do you want to walk us through this process? My wife was a natural born American. She worked in Germany for the US Army as a civilian

for the Department of Defense. As her contract came to an end, we were faced with the question, what are we going to do? Are we staying in Germany? Do we want to go to the US? My wife doesn't speak German, or at least not fluent enough that you could make a living with it at the time. I worked for a US-based software company. I spoke English fluently. I then approached my boss. They said to us, it really doesn't make a big difference. If your desk sits here or there, that's fine with us. You want to go to the US? Go to the US. That's what we did. I have been to the US, I believe only once, maybe twice before. That was all of my exposure. And yet, as I said in the introduction, it felt to you like coming home. Describe that.

That was, to this day, a sensation that I cannot fully... You asked me to describe it. It's difficult because I don't fully understand why I could have experienced anything like it. So we arrived in Boston at the time because my wife said, we should go to Massachusetts where the United States started. So you get a first-hand look, and there's lots of history, and I love the idea. So as I get off the airplane and we enter the airport, or at some point, I have this feeling where I look at my wife and I say, this is so odd. I feel like I'm coming home. And home isn't... When you come from a long trip abroad and you feel that bit of elation, you feel your back, it's a certain kind of warmth that you have.

It doesn't feel foreign anymore. And for me, and for this to happen in that particular situation, when I first set foot on US soil on that trip, I didn't know what to do with that. My wife was convinced that it was past lives. That is her theory, her working theory to this day. But it was strange. Let me stick with that part. Continuing on this theme of coming to the US, being European, we both also understand that being French or being German is very different than being an American. How would you explain that to a non-European? I think for me, maybe it was because I was just a very happy-go-lucky guy when I arrived here, it became noticeable really only when people approached me initially and were very curious.

Where are you from? What's your family like? What's your ancestry look like? And I said, I don't know. I never looked into that, where every American seems to have that pretty much figured out. And so to me, growing up as a German with a mother who went through World War II and my father was just post-war generation, I was brought up where rules were important, laws were important. You follow the law, you follow the rules and well, this kind of a German attitude you might say from the stereotypical German. And then coming to a place here where people say, you know, rules are made to be broken. And if you make an error, if you make some kind of mistake, that's a good thing because how are you ever going to learn? Whereas I was brought up,

don't ever make a mistake because then you show that you don't know what you're doing. So this switch in my head took a long time actually, probably the longest out of everything. The language was easy for me, fortunately. I think a lot of cultural aspects were easier because my wife, as you said, is a natural born American. So I had somebody there to quiz all the time, why is this, why is that? But that was something, what I just described, this difference in thinking and approaching certain situations that is also more subtle. So it took quite a bit of reflection and then experience in this realm to notice that and figure that out. All right. So we said that you arrived just before 9-11. Take us back to that time and

especially how it influenced the rest of your journey to the US. I went for this business trip to New York City, Manhattan to meet with a client in the World Trade Center. That's where our meeting was. And all this unfolds as I'm moving towards the World Trade Center. First of all, I was very lucky. Today, I really can't believe, number one, how limited my vision was on that day, what was going on. And I think it's fair to say, the closer you were, the less of an idea what was happening you had. Whereas people who were further away who were watching TV coverage and then hearing analyses and people talking about it, they had a completely different perception. Number two was when I drove back, when I got out

and I was on the train back to the Jersey side, I had this overwhelming feeling of being powerless. There's nothing I could do. This was some sort of inevitable stream of events where all I could do is react to it in the moment. And that was all of a sudden all these stories that my mother was talking about, bombing nights and bombing raids rather, and things of that nature where, especially as a young person, you go, oh yeah, that actually sounded kind of cool. And because you don't grasp the magnitude of what someone's talking about, yet that was so different at the same time how people reacted and helped one another and stood together. That to me was also a new experience that I had not had, at least not to this extent. Helping the person next to you

almost went unquestioned. That was something you just did. And that was actually a very positive experience out of this whole negativity. So we fast forward to the time when you decide to enter the law enforcement, become a deputy sheriff. So why? Why the big question? That is, yeah, I get that question quite regularly. Again, I would say it's probably chance. So there's a bit of a backstory to it, obviously. When I was a teenager and in Germany, it was time to pick your professional path, the question was, what do I want to do? And I had looked at all sorts of job profiles. And because typically at that time, at least in Germany, the smallest amount of students would actually move on to college. The vast majority of us

would move into some sort of trade education or business education, which were three-year programs. So very different than it was here. And I had grown up with police were people that you would respect and I found them very impressive. And then there were these interesting things that you would see on TV that the police does. And I loved this image of the protector, I guess, that you go out and you help those who are in a dire situation or who are not able to help themselves. And I liked this persona. So I decided I'm going to join the police force in Germany, which came with a positive, from my perspective at that time, effect that you didn't have to go into the military draft because there was a mandatory military service. So you were excluded from that. But then

it's a lifelong commitment. You get into this career and that's what you do for the rest of your life. So that didn't quite work out because of a medical issue that I had. And it was just high blood pressure. And because you get free healthcare, they said they did not want to take that risk. And because they had lots of people who wanted to become cops in Germany, it was thanks, but no thanks. So I was understandably pretty upset over that because it had all the green lights. Everything was set on go. And then in the very last minute, they pulled the plug, so to speak. I moved on. I did something completely different, went into a banking education, made my career in sales. And then years and years and years and years later, I sit in the dining room in our house

in Arizona outside of Tucson. And I'm looking for a job locally because we had just relocated. And there it was. I opened the newspaper and that was actually still a physical newspaper, which is kind of strange to think about that. And there was a full or half page advertisement by the sheriff's department. They were looking for deputies. And I don't know what drove me in that moment, but it was as if that little man on my shoulder started giving me a tip and said, maybe you want to put in for that. So my first concern was age requirements. But then I looked it up and as long as I would pass all the tests, I could join. So that's when I had to break the news to my wife, which was not easy. How did she take it? She said I was crazy. She said,

well, what are you doing? You're 40. Crying out loud. Do something else, but don't particularly do the get yourself a Harley or. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes, buy your sports car. Yes.

So we had a we had long discussions on top of that. I had just received an offer from Wells Fargo as a banker and she said, you go back to your roots. It pays more. Please. Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I said, but I want to be a cop. It took a number of days really to, I could say convince her maybe it was a little more of wearing her down. But I mean, there was a lot of discussion going on because obviously she had concerns. She said, look, you're you're 40. And, you know, why would you want to do this? And I said, what does encourage by this requirement? As long as I cut it in the test, then why wouldn't I? Because obviously then I'm capable of doing it. Yeah. Because why would they don't want to hire anybody

who can't do the job? And ultimately she caved in and said, OK, well, then go for it. So here you were, you know, about to apply to be what you wanted to be as a kid, but you had to go through the academy. And that was an experience. Right. I read of that guy, I think, who was screaming, abusive, almost harassing you. Who was it? Tell us more. Yeah, I think as a 40 year old, that was maybe a little harder to take. I think that my experience in the military helped with that. While it wasn't in Germany, it wasn't to the extent that I would go through in this in this law enforcement academy. But at least I had worked in a command and control structure before in a military structure. And I mean, law enforcement is

paramilitary the way they're organized. So I think that made it a little easier for me to adjust to that. But it was still, you know, I had managed sales teams and build up offices. And then all of a sudden, I'm, you know, I have to run through the whole compound there in right angles, because that was the rule for whatever reason, somebody came up with that. So it was these things. I had a few incidents where my own independent thinking got in the way and then violated rules. So it wasn't always easy, but I mean, I made it through and it actually did make sense to me. In the end, there's only a few ways that they have to create this constant stress environment and to get you into this thinking as a group, as a unified body that does something together and

can rely on each other. And then yeah, that stress, I mean, once you get out on the streets, you learn very quickly that that was very helpful because there's a whole lot more yelling and screaming going on. And at that point, just, you know, it's not done with you doing some pushups. Were people aware that you were German? Did that ever got in the way? Did you get comments? Yes, they were. I don't remember how, but people were aware that I had a German background. But really, besides a few questions, maybe, and a little bit of that curiosity that I initially described that was present there as well, I never felt really different. I would in moments when certain cultural references were dropped,

right? People making a joke about a TV show or about a certain accent or something like that, that I wasn't familiar with and everybody breaks into laughter and I'm standing there like the dummy. Okay, what just happened? Why is this funny? Do you know how he goes with explaining a joke that didn't always work out so well? So that was something I sometimes ran into. So you are from a German background, you're 40, you got into the academy and then you become a deputy sheriff. As a European, I've got two questions that immediately popped to mind. One is the gun culture and then race. But let's start with guns. Guns, what a topic. It's a huge topic. So again, I think I had a bit of an advantage because

as a teenager, I was a sports shooter. So I had exposure. On top of that, I went to the German military. Again, there was some exposure. So it was not the first time that I would handle a firearm, obviously. And what you're referring to is not necessarily handling a weapon yourself, but being confronted with it. And I mean, they made sure that we were mighty afraid of what might happen because you had to be prepared because this can emerge as a threat at any second during any encounter, not always seen sometimes behind you. So how do you even operate as a law enforcement officer in that environment? But I really have to say that they did a very good job at that. At the same time, it's difficult because if people on the other side are not necessarily aware or

don't sense the same threat environment than what you do and you fail to communicate that, you potentially set yourself up for a scenario where you have to draw your weapon. And then people are either surprised or they react negatively towards that. It's not always that everybody jumps into compliance. So I think that's a problem. I understood, in the sheriff's department, you also patrol the remote areas of a county down in Arizona. So you don't have to be only have the built up areas with the neighborhoods and what we call the metro districts, but you also have the areas where there's nothing. And then for miles and miles and miles, it's just an empty desert. And then comes a farmhouse or a ranch rather. And dealing with

those folks, yeah, I would have never dreamt of asking them, why do you have a firearm? That's not a good thing. For them, it made perfect sense that they had that out there. And there's a hunting culture and all that that goes with it. At the same time, it always struck me as odd that a nation that is founded on walking away and revolting against a monarchy, setting itself free and making the decision, we are free people and we elect our leaders, feels an almost incessant need to arm themselves so that they could take down a government. Whereas I was brought up in the thinking of, well, then you just elect somebody who you like better. There are peaceful means. Why do you have to revert back to it? And then quite frankly,

because of that, there is also a fear culture. So a lot of people feel they need to arm themselves because that's the what if I do if I run into somebody who's armed? So the supposed solution on one side creates the problem on the other. But that is really, really, really hard to discuss with people here even because it's such a trigger topic. Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me say this. I was maybe to give you an idea. I did this for maybe two months or so. I was curious and asked myself, how often do I actually come across a weapon when I do, say, traffic stops, for example? I looked only at that and I did it only while I was working. So it's an extremely narrow scope. But in my own little statistic that I had over that period of time,

I had in about one out of seven cars there was a weapon, a firearm. The people were mostly very compliant about it and talked about it right away. Let me know it was legal that they could have it. But sometimes they were not. And that's obviously the way more concerning environment or situation. And as a police officer, you must be freaking out, right? I mean, you stop someone and you know that they've got a gun. And if something goes bad, you know that it could turn out to be very dangerous for both of you, right? The person you stop and for yourself. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you need to maintain a level of alertness that is probably very different to, say, a police officer who approaches a car in Germany. First of all,

they stop in front of the stop vehicle, which to me is, oh, no, no, no, no, no, that can't be. I have to have it in front of me so that I know what's going on. I can see everything. But at the same time, while you go through the academy and through trainings afterwards, there is a bit of a desensitization, I guess, because you are in these scenarios always confronted. So the scenarios are built on situations that actually happened. So having somebody in a car that suddenly produces a weapon, you begin to learn, you know, where do I quickly take cover or what situations, when do I get that gut feeling that something doesn't feel right here, that maybe I draw my weapon and just drop it out by my side so they can't see it. But I'm a little faster if it comes

to that than drawing from the holster. You know, it's situations like that. And then many times, it turns out to be perfectly fine because people are licensed or you come up to that car in the middle of the night and the light is on, the windows are down and the driver sits in there with hands on the steering wheel. So you may say that that was a bit of a dangerous scenario because at that point, did my guard sometimes drop a little bit? Yeah, because you think, wow, they're all compliant. Yet at the same time, that could be a setup as well, right? So it's you constantly have this game in your head going on. What do I do when this and this and this happened? Did that ever happen to you? Did you ever get into a shooting?

I was shot at once during a call, but we were fully prepared for that potential that that could happen. It came out of a direction that we hadn't fully covered that was our potentially fatal error. It worked out, nobody got hit, but it's a very, it's a not good feeling. Did you ever fire back? Did you ever shot your gun? No, not on duty. No, I did not. And I'm very glad I did not. Because when you see people who had to and potentially with a lethal effect, it is something that haunts them. There's not like in the movies where you just move on and maybe take that guy away or something like that. Or something like that. There's actually something, there's a class in the academy

where someone who wasn't a lethal encounter will come in and talk about it. And you could hear a pin drop during that class when that person talks about it and talks about how that after the initial event, it played over in their head over and over and over and over. And they constantly think about did I do everything right? Did he really have a gun? This obsession, I saw a gun, does he really have one? Asking the colleagues, where's the gun? I need to see it. Because they needed that reassurance. What I did was the right thing to do in the moment. But that doesn't make that trauma just disappear. So it's a tough situation. Yeah. So talking of gun and all the training you got, I know that the training depends on the states in which you are in the US. But would you say that

there is sufficient training? Mind you, this was a long time ago, right? So I went through the academy in 2006. And a lot of things have changed in US society since 2006. Especially when it comes to the use of firearms by law enforcement officers. And I think it is important that today, we take into account when we train young officers that realize what you ask people for. What do you do if you don't know if the other person is armed or not? Let me give you an example. After I think it was at the Trayvon Martin shooting, I'm not entirely sure. But it was after one of those where there was a questionable shooting of a civilian by a police officer. And at the time, I was the public information officer for the department, the spokesperson. And I invited, I talked to our

sheriff and he said, go for it. I invited the local journalists to a day of use of force training with the sheriff's department. So they got an hour or so of theoretical instruction on the laws that they would have to follow. And then they were thrown into scenarios. And one particular one stuck with me where you come into a warehouse and you get called for suspicious activity. And the guy is on the ground and fidgeting in a duffel bag. And so the journalist who plays the cop draws his weapon and says, you know, show me your hands. And the guy pulls something out of the duffel bag and he shoots him. So the video stops, the reporter says, okay, so was this okay? Was this not okay? And we're like, we don't know. Let's see what happened. And you continue the film and you see that he

pulls out a wallet. So I said, tell me the headline that you're writing tomorrow. What would that be? And he's a reporter shot innocent man. I said, see how fast that goes. And yet this is just a film. So it's easy to talk about these things. It's much more difficult in the situation. I have to say that we had a fantastic leadership at the time. And they would always tell us if you and others around you and other innocent bystanders are safe, make sure the situation doesn't become mobile so that it transfers somewhere else. And if that's the case, have your weapon ready, but don't necessarily fire. Maybe there is a way to talk these people down as long as you have it contained. Right? Because once again, if the threat becomes mobile, then you've just made a problem a whole lot worse.

How do you think that George Floyd and Black Lives Matter have changed the way people in the US see the police? Well, I don't think it's one particular incident that does that. What these incidents did, a lot of them, unfortunately, is it brought to the forefront complaints and a feeling of not being properly represented by citizens who were maybe more policed than cared for. Because there's a big difference in that. And seeing, you know, this is a very difficult topic, so I want to be very conscious of what I say and how I say it. When you have somebody who is armed and you train them in a certain way to make sure that number one, they survive, number two, they protect the innocent, it's not absorbed by everybody the same way. And if you then put a bit of a testosterone

laden culture to it, you can quickly get into this scenario where police officers draw very fast. And then you have the racial aspect with it. So it's muddy waters, right? And all you can do, I believe, as a leader in police, and those are the people who are today really, really at the forefront of this, because they're the ones who have to change the culture, is to make police officers, deputies, whoever they are, law enforcement officers, aware and more sensitive for these types of scenarios. And maybe for their own cultural stereotypes. We talked about it, we had classes on cultural sensitivity. For some reason, it always turned out that, you know, you have to talk to the male because the female is not the one who makes any decisions.

And that was if they were from an Asian culture or from the Latino culture or wherever they were, that was what you had to do. And I remember us talking about that afterwards, you know, going to our break and saying, this is very strange. You know, supposedly these cultures are all different, but they're all, there's no power on the female side. And I quite frankly, doubt that. So the reason I'm telling that story is because the training that I received at the time fell short. If you didn't have the drive yourself, then you probably wouldn't have the necessary sensitivity towards that. And a few miles north of us, there was an example on how not to do it, right? When you see what happened in the Phoenix metropolitan area

in Maricopa County, it was pretty disastrous. So I know the people there were, a lot of them were happy with it. But I'm not aware of what happened in Phoenix. Yeah, I don't know if we should go into that. I mean, it's a situation with the famous, infamous Sheriff Joe, Joe Arpaio, who was out there and he basically had his deputies profile and racial profiling. They would always deny, but he also put his prisoners, you know, in pink underwear and did things like this to humiliate them. And when you came to Phoenix to see them in their tent city in 110 degree heat,

that's not punishment, that's abuse. So again, perspectives are different. Maybe it's a little too much to get in depth into that. It's just hard to, I'm struggling to put this into words. The reason is not so much because I can't. The reason is it is so, so different seeing it from an elevated perspective from the 30,000 foot moral, ethically laden perspective and say, here's what you should do. And then being in that scenario yourself, being fearful for your life. I'm sort of aware of that. I remember when a joint student in the late 80s in Washington, DC, I did several ride along on the South East area, which at the time was more dangerous than the Gulf War. And I was, yeah, no, I mean, we, I was with a SWAT team. We broke up, you know,

we had domestic violence. I remember breaking through a door and walking into a flat that was devastated. I mean, scary stuff. And those guys, they were putting their life on the line every, every single night. So, and I know that there is no straight answer, but what I also hear that quite often the idea of lack of training. And when you compare the training and the years of training you've got in Europe, toward the month of training you've got in the U S sometimes, plus, as you say, you talk about race and the race problem in the U S is very real. And we don't have, I mean, obviously we've got racism in Europe, but it's not based on, because this country was based on slavery, right? So it's a different racial problem. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Being a black person in the U S

has so much weight that I think we European don't really understand until we've lived long enough in the U S. Do you have anything to say to that? Yes, absolutely. So person of any color, I would add. So I can tell you that in the beginning, I had a couple of, in the early years, I had a couple of situations where I just did a traffic stop because somebody broke some sort of traffic law and I would come up to the car and it was a person of color. It doesn't really matter if it was, you know, a black person or not, or some other ethnicity, but in this case it was. And he looked at me and he started immediately to become irate and asked me, you know, why are you doing this? It's only because I'm black. And I took offense to that. And I mean, while I didn't act that way,

I told him, I said, absolutely not. This is just a traffic stop because you did ABC. And can I just see your documents? And that person continuing to be very loud and to me aggressive where, you know, my threat level went up where I thought, okay, what do I do? I got to be ready for this guy to get out of the car and go hands-on with me. And then what do I do? So I again explained myself and then went back to the car and just sent them on his way. And that was a profound ignorance on my side. I learned over time because I think the very best example to explain why it's so different was a conversation with my partner as a PIO in the department at the time. There was two of us and we, yeah, those acronyms, that's another thing you

learn in the US. So my partner, public information officer, there was two of us so we could swap and we're in 24 seven on call. He was black and we had a conversation one day about this. And he looked at me and he said, Tom, you got to understand one thing. When you teach your son to drive and you talk to him about how to behave during a traffic stop by law enforcement is different from what I have to teach my daughters because they have to behave differently because of the color of their skin. And I have to do that knowing farewell that they might be stopped by my own co-workers, yet I still have to teach them this. That is the big difference. So from that moment on, I handled situations like that much different and did not

necessarily unless other things were involved, but take offense immediately and just have more of a buffer on my side because I can see that. Why are you attacking me again? Why are you stopping me? Why are you talking to me like that? Why am I the suspect? It's probably just because of the color of my skin and I can see how they can jump to that conclusion. And I think the onus is on the law enforcement officers at that point to explain and to make sure they can understand and give them a chance to adjust behavior if necessary. Yeah. So, you know, I'm conscious of time. We're coming at the end of this session. I really want to understand what made you want to write this story? Besides the usual, your friends, family, and everyone who says you got to write this down and

then you go, yeah, sure. Sure I do. Sure I got to write a book. But then as I started writing it, it was a visceral experience because I've relived a lot of those situations and a lot of stories didn't make it into the book. They were in the manuscript in the early drafts and I took them out because I decided those are things that don't necessarily belong in the public realm. It's something that people don't need to imagine because it's something that we would consider, you know, ugly, the ugly side of human beings and their interactions and what they do. The cop books that I had seen up to that point were typically the ones of here comes Superman and they take care of everybody and save the day. While I have done that many, many times,

that's not why I did this job. And I wanted to, on one hand, explain to you this is why I did it and take the time to explain and show people this is how I got into this and then show what that feels like. So to me it was important that people could step into my shoes and take a few steps in those shoes and relive what I experienced at that time and let them look into my head.

What was the feedback you got from readers? So far the feedback has been that it worked and that they say it's interesting but that is exactly what it did, which made me very joyful because you don't know if it actually works in the end. Certain situations that I described, some people thought that I was on some sort of political mission because I had brought up the Second Amendment. I, you know, I was on a mission I, you know, I have no reason. I worked under the laws of the Constitution. I respected it. I still do to this day but I can still, I should be able to show these things and describe them from my perspective without people getting all that upset over it because I'm not, I didn't

criticize, I just pointed it out. How, for example, how easy it was to commit suicide because there's so many guns around and that we're focusing maybe not quite enough on preventing it but making it rather easy but it's, the feedback has been positive so far.

Do you hope that some people will find a carrier in law enforcement thanks to your book? Absolutely. I, because I think it is important. It's hard for law enforcement today. I still work in this realm and I know that law enforcement agencies are struggling to find recruits or cadets, whatever they may be called. And the reason is that not only is it not a fantastically paid job but you also have all these sensitivities and you need to often make sure you explain yourself on why you're doing something and it's not just that you show up and everybody just stands still and does what you tell them. I mean, sometimes it does and that's rather comfortable because then you feel in control of the situation which you're supposed

to be. But at the same time, that's just not the case anymore today. You need to assert your authority and explain that the authority is there to conduct an investigation and that you're there to protect those who need protection, whatever that may look like. And I think that is where it needs to switch. We had for a few years, there was a discussion going on, not only in our department but law enforcement-wide, are we the cops, warriors or are we guardians? And I think that's the completely wrong way to go about it because it doesn't need even that militarized of a picture and they shouldn't need that to feel good about what they're doing. They are protectors and it's a very dangerous job and that nature alone should suffice for someone to join this field

and I hope a lot of young people do and take that on. And maybe some people who switched careers like I did because it certainly did come in very helpful at times because I knew how to talk to folks and to not only get information but also put them at ease. It's a little easier when you're 40 compared to when you're 21 and just come out of college. Can you find sleep at night? Today I can. I had a period where actually when I was asked to become the public information officer of the department, I had just had a meeting with my dentist who said, at night you need a mouthguard because you're grinding your teeth. And he said, I have never seen anybody grinding their teeth like that. My wife had told me at the time that she said, man, you were just flailing about

in the middle of the night because I have had nightmares. And it's hard because it's close. It's very, very close when you're with these people in the same room and maybe you're even with a perpetrator in the same room and you interview them or interrogate them depending. And you have to get them to a point where they feel they can talk to you and they will tell you what went on. That's awfully close. That's emotionally awfully close. And you have to go to places that otherwise you wouldn't want to go to in your mind, in your heart. And that was rough. But therapy does wonders. So I'm very happy that I found some help here, which is a whole other ball game. This whole post-traumatic stress is huge in the law

enforcement community. There's a reason why there's a lot of suicides by cops, why there's a lot of alcohol abuse. There's a reason. It's a coping mechanism. One last question is what is America to you? America to me is home. America to me is the place where things, I mean, it sounds corny, but the place of the ultimate possibilities. Because what I have experienced here, how open people were to me taking unusual steps in my life, how curious they acted towards me coming from a different country, how open everybody was when it came to that. Really, are there negative reactions to that? Yeah, of course. But they're so minute and so rare. It's really the vast majority

of the people was very welcoming. And as I said earlier, this ability to make a mistake and learn from it is something that to that extent, I had not experienced before. And I find that extremely valuable. And that's a big aspect of this whole freedom story and the American dream. Thank you. Houston. Tom's book is called The Beauty While Immigrant, the story of a German who became a deputy sheriff in Arizona. You will find links to the book in the episodes note. If you enjoy Back in America, I have a favor to ask you, please leave us a review on your podcast app so that more people discover this podcast.

Our next story will be an interview with the next CIA agent. Goodbye.