Zeek Arkham

Jared Bradley- Warning. All things crime is a true crime production that may contain violent or disturbing material. Viewer or listener discretion is advised.

Zeek Arkham- Well, there was one time I was in Virginia, and there was this speed trap set up, and the trooper gets out of his vehicle and of course, I pulled over right away, windows down, hands on the wheel and then he got to the car, he just looked at me. He goes, Oh, sir, can I get your license and registration?’’ So I handed him everything. He says, sir, step out of the car. Now I’m thinking, Oh, boy, what’s going to happen? I didn’t know that in certain spots in Virginia. This is actually standard practice. I just want you to get the car so that they can take a good look at you and I got out of the car. And the look he gave me he just goes oh no. He actually said, Oh, no. So I go, can I ask you one more piece of ID in my back pocket? He says, Sure. I give him my job ID and he goes, Oh, thank God. Turns out, we had rented a vehicle and the vehicle’s license plate came back to a whole bunch of suspended summonses, which wasn’t my fault, which wasn’t, I don’t know whose fault it was. But he goes, Yeah, I thought I was gonna have to put you in cuffs and I was just thinking about what was going to happen. I said, No, we actually wound up becoming friends. I’m friends with him to this day, we call each other and joke around, but he was so visibly relieved that I wasn’t going to fight him, and that I was actually on his side.

Jared Bradley- Zeek, welcome to All Things Crime.

Zeek Arkham- Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I definitely appreciate the opportunity.

Jared Bradley- Ah the pleasure is all mine and for my listening and viewing audience, I want to introduce Zeek. He is a police officer and he’s also a podcaster and I see that he’s really active on different social media platforms. So if you ever get the chance to look him up, definitely do and give him a follow and his podcast is awesome, so especially if you guys want to know really what policing is like in today’s environment, then you got to listen to Zeek and he puts a What is it CWA on there? A Cop With Attitude?

Zeek Arkham- Cop with attitude? Absolutely.

Jared Bradley- Yeah, love it, man and that’s one of the things that actually attracted my attention to you and first, I think Twitter is where I first saw you and some of your comments and things and I was like, Man, this is a guy after my own heart. So I got to figure out who this is and see if I can get him on my show.

Zeek Arkham- No, thank you. Thank you. I mean, it makes me glad that a lot of cops are listening in and reading my tweets and listen to the podcast, and they’re agreeing with, a lot of what I have to say, it’s a great feeling when I’m walking down the street and a cop will see me who will be like Zeek, I follow you, because a lot of times it scares me, because he just jumps out of nowhere, but it’s a good feeling. It ‘s going in the right direction.

Jared Bradley- Well, I think there’s a lot of people that are kind of closet types that, they really agree with a lot of the things that you say, but in many and I think is by design, many of them are actually afraid to voice an opinion, like the way you do and especially when you grab a microphone, or a megaphone basically, is what you’re doing and just blasting it out there, because it’s weird what is going on. And like I mentioned earlier, this isn’t a political show. But it’s a show about policing. And it’s a show about the whole crime process. Now I travel, and I’ve traveled all over the world. And so I especially enjoyed listening to some of your other guests on your podcast to talk about world travels, and how lots of people really have no idea what they’re talking about. Because they’ve never been there. They’ve never actually experienced what they’re voicing their opinion on, which drives me crazy in the process of doing that. It was really enlightening to me, because I was like, you know, of all the people that need to be talking about how to do better policing, and how to do better law enforcement. It should be law enforcement. And I think you actually mentioned in one in one of your podcasts that you were saying, of all the panels and things that you’re talking about reforming police and everything, there’s no cops on there, there’s nobody that actually has any street experience, who’s talking about the reforms that need to happen. And so I wanted to get you on today to get your opinion on that. So as opposed to the political side, if we were to make some good changes, and well, first of all, before we even talked about changes, let’s talk about what you think the problem is. So as you’re out there in the streets, You are actually, you know, doing your job, what is it you’re running into? So what’s it like out there?

Zeek Arkham- Honestly, if we’re going to talk about fixing anything in policing, I mean, the problem has to be addressed. The hard questions need to be asked to a lot of people in the community. Why aren’t you taking more of a responsibility for what happens in your neighborhoods and in your communities? Yesterday, there was a seven year old girl shot in Chicago, that I mentioned on Twitter, why aren’t there protests? looking for answers for this seven year old girl getting shot? You know, she didn’t do anything wrong to anyone? She was waiting in line for McDonald’s in a McDonald’s drive thru why aren’t there protests? Why isn’t the mayor who cried for a 13 year old gang member? Why isn’t the mayor crying for this girl? Why aren’t there community leaders working with the police to try to bring whoever shot this little girl into custody? Why? I just had all these questions. Why? Why? Why? You know, they always talk about police reform. Let’s change policing, let’s get policing out there with less weapons, let’s work on de-escalation? Well, when is the community going to get their training? When are their parents gonna get their training to be more active in their children’s lives? When are teachers going to get training in order to stop their indoctrination? It’s not a teacher’s job to train a kid on how they feel how a teacher feels, I don’t think there’s anything really wrong or broken about policing. I think a few things need to be cleaned up here and there, but little tiny, miniscule things. I think the main change needs to happen in the community, with the parents, with the teachers, with these neighborhood activists, if you want to see real change, that’s where it starts.

Jared Bradley- There is so much absolute truth in what you just said and it’s so bizarre to me. I mean, it’s hard to even put it into words, honestly, the shift that is happening away from personal responsibility. It’s like nobody’s responsible for anything. It’s always somebody else’s fault now, and the weird thing about communities as a whole, and you can go back all the way to the Wild West days, as a whole it takes the movie Tombstone, I’m assuming you’ve seen tombstone before?

Zeek Arkham- Who hasn’t?

Jared Bradley- Yeah, right. What a classic that movie is. So there’s different like Wyatt urban, but it’s all the same thing. So if you look at these wild west type shows, and it shows the community as a whole is struggling, but they’re all helping each other. They’re all kind of, everybody goes to the general store and buys some there. And then the general store guy helps the ranchers, but there’s always like one or two central figures that their job is to enforce the laws, the rules that the community establishes, but there’s only for a town of 100 people or 200 people, there’s like one guy, and if that one guy, the sheriff doesn’t have the support of the community, there’s no way he would be able to actually enforce what the rules are that they established. And to me today, when you look at today’s environment, and you look at guys like you that are out there, trying to enforce the rules and the laws that the community established, they told you what they wanted, enforced. And then they said, Okay, now go out and enforce it. But then when you do go out and enforce it, they come down on you, they come down like a hammer, and they’re like, you gotta stop doing that. And it’s like, well make up your mind. Do you want laws enforced or not? And if you don’t, then Okay, we’ll go find something else to do and you’re on your own, but they don’t want that. They just want you to become whatever it is they have in their mind that they should have. And I’m like, it just doesn’t make sense to me. But what is it in that kind of a context? Do you agree with that? Or what do you think?

Zeek Arkham- Well, I mean, they have this picture, like you said, of what they want us to be, and it’s the complete opposite of what actually happens in the real world. Cops will love voluntary compliance 100% of the time, and if that could actually happen. That’s a great day, a great situation for cops. The truth is people fight back. A lot of times they don’t want to go back to jail. A lot of times they don’t, they want to resist just because I think it’s the thing to do, whether it’s for street cred or whatever. So policing then gets ugly. As I say, there’s no pretty way to take someone into custody who’s trying to fight you. It gets ugly gets real. It gets physical. The problem is now it’s on TV. Everybody wants to cry. Oh, police brutality, police brutality. First of all, the problem could be stopped from them not resisting. And then second of all, we need a little bit more understanding, we’re doing our jobs. We’re actually not trying to hurt this person. We’re trying to get them under control. Now, are there cops that take it a little bit too far? Sure. We’ve all seen videos of cops where we can look at that and go, hey, he probably shouldn’t have done that. But for the overwhelming majority, the cops are out there doing the right thing. They’re doing the job to the best of their ability. At the end of the day, they just want to go home. There’s no hidden agenda. There’s no prejudice, there’s no animosity, you do your job, you go home. But the elected officials, the easiest solution for them is just to blame the cops. It’s an invincible position, they get to blame the cops, they get to say, oh, we’re going to do better. We’re going to introduce this kind of training, we’re going to do de-escalation, which people seem to think that you can abuse the cops as much as you want, without them getting mad or yelling back, and the community gets off scot free. Like you said, it’s always someone else’s fault. But like I said, if you want to address the real problems in the community, if you want real change, if you want real progress, you have to start there. It’s not an easy answer. But for any politician that truly wants to affect change, that’s where they have to start.

Jared Bradley- My thought is all of these politicians that are out there, bashing on the cops. To me, I’m like, wait a minute, you guys are the ones that set these rules. So the people elected you to go out and make laws. And once you make the laws, we hire people to go out and enforce the laws. And then when they get enforced, you don’t like them? Like, you are the politician. So if you don’t like what these guys are doing out there, then change the laws.

Zeek Arkham- Yeah.

Jared Bradley- And then face the consequences of the community saying, what do you mean, it’s not against the rules to rob people anymore. You’re an idiot, I’m gonna vote you out of there. But none of the politicians want to do that. They just want to make you guys the bad guys. Again, to me, It’s this weird cycle that we’re in. And I’m trying to wrap my head around it. And it just doesn’t make any sense to me. And I have, do you know, Deon Joseph, he’s out in LA.

Zeek Arkham- No, doesn’t ring a bell.

Jared Bradley- Okay, you need to look him up. He was also a guest on this podcast, and videocast and fantastic guy, he’s a cop out there and works Skid Row. And so there’s a lot of homeless out there. And some of the things that he does, especially on LinkedIn, some of his videos are just spot on. Fantastic. And so I think you two would really be a force together, talking from both coasts, and being able to almost join your message. I think he’s kind of the same mindset that you are, in that regard, making the police and making law enforcement, the scapegoat, and the enemy is not going to end well for anybody, even the people that are actually doing it. I don’t think they understand the long game here. Because ultimately, if you get rid of law enforcement, are you weak in law enforcement? It’s the same with the military, I have a military background. So as they weaken the military, what is it like, your goal might be to fix law enforcement or the military. But ultimately, what is the repercussion of that? And the more you handcuff the cops, the worse society is going to get. To me, I just don’t understand how people cannot see that.

Zeek Arkham- Well, I mean, it’s easy like I said it’s an easy fix for them, their main goal is to get reelected. So they’re not going to do anything to mess with that. They’re not going to give hard answers towards the community, that might work in the long run, but for the short term, they don’t get reelected, or they jeopardize their chances of being reelected, or, for them to get reelected. They have to give the easy, soft answer, which is to demonize cops to weaken the military to go after the people that sort of pick and choose where they want to go. Yeah, I mean, just like I said, they create these laws like you said, they created these laws, the people don’t understand you, if you want the laws changed, you have to affect the law makers. The people making the most noise right now, are the ones affecting change. You’re talking about Black Lives Matter. You’re talking about Ann Tifa, they’re making the most noise. So according to these politicians, they think this is what the people want. This is why I tell people you have to be more vocal and more open about your support for cops. Once these elected politicians see that there’s a swell of support for cops They’re gonna change their tune, even the most liberal of them are going to change their tune. I mean, just look at what happened on January 6th. It was easy for them to support cops and condemn Trump at the same time, like you said not to make this political, but that just happened. They were supporting cops, we love our police, let’s support them, let’s back them up against these evil Trump supporters that attacked them at the Capitol. And then two days ago, you’ve got Maxine Waters, calling for an uprising against law enforcement, anything else like that? So I mean it’s, they go by whichever direction the wind pushes them, the wind has to be pushed in a direction where they’re supporting law enforcement. That’s how change comes about.

Jared Bradley- Yeah, I was in Minneapolis. Three weeks ago, I think I was up there training Hennepin County, on a new M-VAC and it was crazy downtown, a lot of the businesses were all boarded up. Every public building had plywood everywhere, double fencing, multiple layers of fencing. It’s like they knew what’s coming. And the sad thing is, it’s not really going to matter what the outcome of the trial is that they expect everything to burn, and then yeah, you have politicians that are going up there. And it’s insane to me, they should be up there saying, Hey, we need to allow the justice system to play out. This is our justice system, we have to support it, we need these citizens, these fellow citizens that are sitting on this jury, imagine the pressure these guys are under

Zeek Arkham- Oh, yeah.

Jared Bradley- These 15 individuals who are just everyday people like you and I, that are sitting there on this jury, they’ve been selected to be people that are going to literally mean imprisonment or freedom for this, you know, shovin, but they know what’s going on. And now they’re going to hear all this chanting and screaming and yelling and protesting outside, they’re gonna see buildings burn, I don’t care how much you tried to sequester these people. There’s no way they’re not going to know what’s going on out there. And especially the day that they have to get moved somewhere, pack your bag, because this hotel is about to get burned down. Something like that happens. They know what’s going on. And so the influence of them beginning, in the back of their minds, they’ve got to be going like, well, if we vote the wrong way, what’s going to happen to my family? Somebody is going to put it out there of who I am, you know, is my house gonna get burned down? And it’s like, you guys like I have good friends that live in my neighborhood, who are cops, and most of them on social media have a different name. When they were helping enforce the riot in Salt Lake City. The night after the initial George Floyd incident, and the Salt Lake PD, they shut that thing down the second night, but there were a lot of cops that got doxxed from that.

Zeek Arkham- Right.

Jared Bradley- How much more unAmerican can you get?

Zeek Arkham- Well, I mean, these cops have families. They have, wives, children that didn’t ask for any of this, these cops are doing their jobs. And basically their families are being attacked now. It’s not just unAmerican, it’s terrorism. I mean, you’re threatening someone’s family. These people should all be jailed. God forbid, they find your house now they break in. Now you’ve got a family at home that didn’t ask for any of this, you know, they’ve got enough pressure, my wife, my daughter have enough pressure with me going out there every day. I can’t 100% guarantee them, I’m going to get back. And now the added pressure of a bunch of terrorists, anarchist groups, outside that now ones, want to threaten us. I mean, I will point again with these elected officials. At what point do you protect cops and go, you know, what, if you go to their house, arrest everyone on scene, you wouldn’t go to someone’s private house and threaten them. You wouldn’t go to these elected officials’ houses and threaten them. I think Lori Lightfoot had a please detail in front of her house, you know, other mayor’s have please details in front of their houses protecting them, you wouldn’t go to a cop’s house and protest him. I mean, excuse me, you can’t go to a cops house and protest him and nothing happens. You can’t go to an elected officials house and protest them without repercussions. So how about we protect cops and we protect their property and we protect them doing their job, the job that they signed up for the job that you’re asking them to do? Yes, I think they should be arrested. You know, you go to a cops house. You start protesting or threatening his family. How is this allowed? How is this okay? I don’t understand them at all.

Jared Bradley- Yeah, I 100% agree. Your family deserves the exact same protections and the exact same rights of privacy and everything else that anybody else’s family does. And when kids and families, there used to be kind of an unspoken ethic that like even a politician’s family was off limits. And I think I’m not sure exactly where it started. But to this day, anytime anybody starts bashing a politician’s family, it depends on what side they’re on, of course, but the media goes crazy.

Zeek Arkham- Yeah.

Jared Bradley- And frankly, they should do that exact same thing. If anybody is protesting a cop’s family, or something like that. It’s like, you’re outside of you, being a police officer, you are a private citizen. And you and your family deserve the same privacy that my family does, or that anybody else’s family does. And it’s when that doesn’t happen. When people started, like when my friend’s address and family, and all that information got put out there. And basically, they got doxxed. I was, I was pissed. I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, Hey, brother, I’ll tell you what, I’ll break open my safe. And I’ll go stand guard at your house. You just tell me, you give me the word. And I will stand there. And trust me, nobody will touch your family.

Zeek Arkham- Well, that’s also the thing to most cops, I know, are very second amendment friendly. So you bring it to that house? Things aren’t gonna wind up too well for you.

Jared Bradley- It’s gonna be a bad day.

Zeek Arkham- Oh, yeah. You better have all your affairs taken care of before you break into a cop’s house?

Jared Bradley- Yeah, the best. What is that doormat that I’ve ever seen? It says, before you break into this house, make sure you’re good with God, because you’re about to meet him.

Zeek Arkham- I just bought that.

Jared Bradley- Oh, did you really? Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, I love that. I need to get one. So yeah, I’m one of those where I’m like, Look, I don’t care what you do, as a job, you have the responsibility to your employer, to do the best job that you can possibly do. And all of you guys in law enforcement have signed up to do this job. And the job includes enforcing the laws that the politicians establish. And there’s a, it’s not like you guys are making it up as you go along. You have certain obligations as police officers to do what you were hired to do and what you’re trained to do. And that includes enforcing the law. And when people break the law, like this 13 year old in Chicago, it’s like, if you objectively look at that scenario, there is no way that you can actually say that, that cop did anything other than what he was supposed to do.

Zeek Arkham- Well, again, this is where you get to people that have never been cops and have no sort of law enforcement experience. Now offering their, quote unquote, expert opinion on what the cops should or shouldn’t have done. What these people understand is, as cops, we have a fraction of a second to make a decision. Was this kid firing a gun? Yes. Was he? Was he a gang member? Oh, yeah, you know, my gang, I can look at his pictures. And I saw all the gang symbols. There is all the gang terminology and codes. His nickname was little homicide, which isn’t, that’s not a name, you just pick for yourself something that’s given to you by other gang members. He had just finished firing eight shots at a moving vehicle. You know, this is why the cop was there. The cop didn’t just decide to pick a random person and run after them. The cop was responding to a call. And then this kid knew why the cop was coming after him. He threw the gun behind the fence. And then the cop made a decision. I’m not going to condemn, or Monday morning quarterback, a cop based on a video I’ve seen. Well, I can slow it down and analyze it and take a look and then rewind and look at it again to see what should or shouldn’t have happened in real time. In that situation. The cop has to make a quick decision. People don’t understand, we have families as well. We want to go home at the end of our tour. We don’t want to be the cop where we’re on a T shirt now or, we have cops flying in for our funeral. I don’t want that to ever happen. My wife doesn’t want that to ever happen. However, I don’t want it. I’ve been to too many cop funerals. I don’t want to see that happen to any other cop. But this kid made a decision as well. He made some grown man decisions that day. No, it’s a grown man’s decision to carry a gun, it’s a grown man’s decision to fire it. So he paid a grown man consequence. Everybody’s saying Oh, he was 13 he was 13. Guess what? in that space. He was just as grown as a 21 year old or 23 year old. He made decisions that day. And then you got Lori Lightfoot crying on TV. She’s not crying for the seven year old that was just shot. She’s crying for this guy. Like I said, again, the most expedient, quick answer is two quick points that she can score, not the real points that she wants to score, which she can ask, why was he out at three o’clock in the morning? Why was he carrying a gun? Why was his name little homicide? But again, that’s pandering for votes, not doing the right thing that’s going to actually build your community up in the future,

Jared Bradley- which is sad. And yes, it is tragic that a 13 year old lost his life. But like you said, every choice has a consequence, or at least it should. And that’s again, it goes way back to what we first started with, is that individual responsibility, at what junction do we take the blame off of the cop, Who was just like you said, reacting? And I love all these people, that Monday morning quarterbacks are the best, because I listen to some of these people on TV, and Twitter warriors, and all of these types. And I’m like, Yeah, you know what, let’s put you in one of those training scenarios, and see how you do. Because every single one of those that I’ve ever seen where they’ll take, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a pastor or a politician, or a Hollywood actor, it doesn’t matter. You put them in an actual scenario, one of those training scenarios that you guys go through all the time, whether it be virtual, or, you know, a mock scenario, any of them, they fail miserably.

Zeek Arkham- Oh yeah.

Jared Bradley- And the cops out there, when you guys are out there, and you’re in the heat of the situation, you don’t have the luxury of freeze frame, you don’t have the luxury of saying, does this kid have a gun? literally one second ago, I saw a gun in that kid’s hand. And now his hands are moving. And they’re moving in a direction that Yeah, maybe he’s just moving to put his hands in the air. But that’s the exact same movement that is required to actually point a weapon at me and fire. And then that officer unfortunately had to make a decision. And in that split second, for us to come back and Monday morning quarterback this guy, because we have the luxury of a freeze frame. To me that is just so unacceptable.

Zeek Arkham- Well, yeah, I mean, these people that do the simulations, not only do they fail it, they all come away saying, You know what, I have a newfound respect for what law enforcement goes through. That’s why some of these activists, these, want to be activists, they will not do the simulation. Listen, they understand what’s going to happen, and they understand the truth of what’s going to happen, but it’s gonna screw up their entire narrative.

Jared Bradley- Isn’t that funny?

Zeek Arkham- They’re not gonna be able to say what they have to say with the same conviction. Yeah, you got these people on Twitter. Some kid living in his mom’s basement, he’s 35 years old and has never ventured outside of his basement, but he’s played Call of Duty for hours. So he thinks he’s got just as much say, as an actual cop out in the street on what should and shouldn’t have happened. Why didn’t he just shoot the gun out of his hand? Why didn’t he just shoot him in the leg? You know, I saw someone say, Why didn’t he just tackle him? Excuse me, I’m not going to tackle someone that’s got a gun. I don’t like being shot at close range. Just because you can have, you in your basement can have a good moment of Oh, well, look at the cop who escalated. That happened. No, that’s not escalating. That’s being dumb and dying. That’s why my response is always if you don’t have any actual police work doing this, if you’ve never strapped on a gun belt, if you’ve never strap on a vest, if you’ll notice a standard foot post. And, people walk past you and they feel good, because you’re standing there, they know they feel safe, they’re safe, at least for that, those couple of yards while you’re there, then I really don’t want to hear your opinion on what should and shouldn’t have happened. It’s like me going to my doctor before surgery and saying, hey, make sure when you do, before you grab that scalpel, make sure you do this and make this kind of incision. I watched a bunch of medical shows on TV and this is exactly how they did it. No, I would sound dumb. Most people will agree You sound dumb, telling the doctor how to do his job. Same thing, law enforcement, just because you’ve played a video game, or just because you’ve watched a TV show. That’s real life. It doesn’t mean you know exactly what’s going on or how cops think or how cops operate, or what’s going on in that heat of the moment. That’s why I really don’t pay me mine.

Jared Bradley- Well, it’s good because and I’m glad you don’t and I hope most cops don’t because, honestly, the vast majority out here, and it makes me a little perturbed that it’s the silent majority because it needs to be the vocal majority. And until we become the vocal majority, these politicians are going to continue to make things worse and activists and everybody else but If you, I’ll bet if you look at it, it’s less than 1% of the society that is actually making 99% of the noise. And until all of us that are just out here trying to live our daily lives actually get involved and say, Woah, this isn’t right. We’ve got to fix this, which is, again, another reason why I’m doing this podcast, because I’m trying to give you guys a voice. And I know you’re doing it with it. The same thing with your podcast, and the more podcasts that are out there that are saying the same thing. Maybe we all say it in different ways. And that’s fine. To me. There can’t be enough voices out there saying, we have got to stop this madness. Protesting is fine. But the moment you pick up a brick, the moment you threaten somebody, it is no longer a protest. You are now a rioter. And you are now a law breaker. And you need to be held accountable.

Zeek Arkham- Well, yeah. That’s why there was a collective eye roll when a certain former first lady said that the protests were mostly peaceful. Every cop was like, excuse me. Every cop, Yeah, I was out there. It wasn’t mostly peaceful. They were throwing cocktails at our vans, when they were burning out of stores. They were looting the Nike store and the footlocker and the Apple store. That wasn’t mostly peaceful. There was a small block during the day when they were peacefully protesting. And those people were all fine. They peacefully protested and they went home. It was what happened that night that really defined what was going on, nobody boards their stores over mostly peaceful protests, you’ll impose a time limit on when people can go out over a mostly peaceful protest. I mean, like I said, it’s a matter of being honest with people more peacefully, not an honest phrase, when you’re describing these bonafide riots that went on. So just you have to introduce honesty into all this, or else nothing gets fixed. And you’re right. The people in these high crime neighborhoods would give us a small nod when they saw us or, a quick thumbs up, they didn’t really want to be seen giving the cops a thumbs up, but they would give us a small nod, or small thumbs up, those are the people that we need to be more vocal, I would say, 95%, over 95% of people that live in these high crime neighborhoods, they want us out there, enforcing the laws and keeping people safe and doing our jobs. You never hear over policing from them. You always hear about policing, from these activists that don’t live in these neighborhoods, from these elected officials that don’t live anywhere near these neighborhoods. But the people that actually live in these neighborhoods, I will say they need to get more vocal. They need to have more of a voice, more of a say because they want us out there. Because when you defund the police, when you put handcuffs so to speak, when the police when you restrict what police do, they’re affected. And they know it. They feel it.

Jared Bradley- Yeah, the Mayor de Blasio is never going to be without security.

Zeek Arkham- Yeah.

Jared Bradley- No matter what rules that he puts down on the rest of New York, none of those rules are going to ever affect him. And to me, that’s the number one problem with most of these activists and politicians, is when they put out what they put out a huge amount of the time, it doesn’t actually affect them. To me, it drives me crazy when, and I had this in college, too. If you ever had a college professor that is teaching on a certain subject, but has never actually done what it is that he or she is teaching. And, for example, in college, when I first started, I thought I wanted to go into international business. And ironically, I ended up in international business, even though I bailed on that initially. So how many of us are actually doing what we thought we would be doing when we were 25? Right?

Zeek Arkham- Listen, I knew I wanted to go into some sort of protection, but I didn’t know what I was going to do. But nah if you told me when I was 25 I was gonna become a cop. I probably wouldn’t have believed you.

Jared Bradley- Yeah, there you go. Well, you’re a perfect example. Yeah, but fortunately for you right now. I mean, you have the body type of a man. When you say on one of your podcasts, you’re 6’2” like, 260 something like that.

Zeek Arkham- Oh, Yeah, I played football for a season for my job. So yeah,

Jared Bradley- there you go. Well, geez, man. Well, I’ll tell you, most of the guys that are 6’2” 260. And if you’re in as good a shape as I think you are, then yeah, this is a good profession for you, man. You can handle it, because I’ll tell you what, I was also laughing at one of your podcasts and you’re like, Yeah, when you get pulled over by the cops, you can just see the look on their face, and if they ask you to step out of the vehicle. And you step out and they’re just like, Oh, you know what, I hope I hope this doesn’t go sideways man. Because if it does They’re gonna really hurt.

Zeek Arkham- Well, there was one time I was in Virginia. And there was a speed trap set up, and the trooper got out of his vehicle. And of course, I pulled over right away, windows down, hands on the wheel, and he got to the car, he just looked at me. He goes, Oh, sir, can I get your license registration?’’ So I handed him everything. He says sir step out of the car. Now I’m thinking, Oh, boy, what’s going to happen? I didn’t know in certain spots in Virginia this is actually standard practice, they just want you to get out of the car, I think so that they can take a good look at you. And I got out of the car. And the look he gave me. He just goes, Oh no, he actually visually said or vocally said, Oh, no. So I go, can I ask you one more piece of ID in my back pocket? He says, Sure. I give him my job ID and he goes, Oh, thank God. Turns out we had rented a vehicle and the vehicle’s license plate came back to a whole bunch of suspended summonses, which wasn’t my fault, which wasn’t, I don’t know whose fault it was. But he goes, Yeah, I thought I was gonna have to put you in cuffs. And I was just thinking about what was going to happen. I said, No, no, we actually wound up becoming friends. I’m friends with him to this day, we call each other and joke around, but he was so visibly relieved that I wasn’t going to fight him and that I was actually on his side. So

Jared Bradley- yeah, I guess the most hand to hand that I ever did was I went to Ranger School, with the army, there’s a certain section of Ranger School where it’s more about just beating the crap out of each other than it is actually teaching, how to do actual hand to hand. And there’s a period in there that once you figured out what was going on, for the training, you’re just like, Okay, I gotta find somebody that is, like, smaller and weaker than me, because I’m going to get the crap kicked out of me. And if there’s some dude that looks like you. That’s going to be a bad day. And so I can kind of relate with that. But, there’s just enough scenarios that you just know, anybody that’s played sports, and you’re coming around the end, and you see some dude, that’s, like, twice as big as you and he’s got a full head of steam. And he just plows into you, you’re just like, yeah, that hurt. Okay, I’m not sure that I want to do this anymore, but every cop goes through that scenario. And that’s, that’s another one of the things that I like these politicians to say. Well, not every officer needs to have a service weapon on them when they pull somebody over, and I can’t imagine what your reaction was. But when I heard that, I was like, Are you out of your mind? These guys have absolutely no idea what they’re walking on and they don’t know if this guy is going to be peaceful like you were if the officer is 5’10” and 180 and some guy 6’2” 260 gets out of the car. What are they going to do?

Zeek Arkham- Well I mean, in my situation it is always helped a lot by size is actually always helped a lot because I get voluntary compliance more often than not I mean, yeah, sometimes it’s always a little guy who always wants to fight me. But I do get voluntary compliance more often than not, as long as I don’t take guns to a traffic stop mentality that’s going on, these people again, this is the same as shooting them in the leg crowd. This is the same tackle the gun wielding bad guy crowd, you have no idea what it is to pull a car over. I even said you can search YouTube and there’s hundreds of videos of cops being ambushed on car stops, aside from domestic it’s the most dangerous thing we do and these people don’t understand that, they think that everything can get solved with just a quick tap on the shoulder or quick hey, sir, do this for us and that’s not the case. They don’t live in the same reality that we do. When we have to pull these cars over, car stops are dangerous again, like I said in my Virginia story. This guy had no idea who he was pulling over, he’s pulling over a cop and didn’t know it could I have been some gangbanger, Sure. Could I’ve been some guy that just got out of jail, that’s not going back, Sure. He didn’t know that, for these people that are saying, they don’t need guns on car stops. I think Minnesota just said that they’re going to have a traffic safety officer that’s going to do these car stops from now on. This is going to go bad, and it’s gonna go very bad, very quickly.

Jared Bradley- I don’t know who, I don’t honestly, I don’t know, who would sign up for that.

Zeek Arkham- I certainly wouldn’t. Even at my size I’m not pulling over a car when I don’t know who’s in there. Without a weapon. I need to be protected as well. So I mean, these people are just clueless. That’s what it comes down to. They’re clueless.

Jared Bradley- Honestly, I think every elected official, every elected official before they open their mouths, should go on a ride along.

Zeek Arkham- Well, they’re not going to do that, they’re not going to do it, again it’s the same reason why they’re not going to do the simulations, they’re not going to do the virtual police tactics course, it’s going to destroy their narrative. They’re not gonna be able to say do an unarmed car stop with a straight face, they’re just not, after taking a police tactics course, I’m not going to do that, after doing a ride along where they see what happens, where they encounter a public that might be combative. God forbid, they go on a job that goes completely sideways, it’s going to change their entire narrative. I mean, it should happen. There should be at least a class where you have some of these elected officials that have these outlandish ideas of what policing should and shouldn’t be. Should they take some sort of class? Sure, but they’re not going to. And again I read Thomas Sol a lot.

Jared Bradley- That dude is amazing.

Zeek Arkham- Oh, he’s great. He’s great. I discovered him. I would say about five years ago. Now, I’ve been reading everything I can or anything I can get my hands on. Which is a shame, by the way that I only discovered him five years ago. He’s been doing his thing since long before then.

Jared Bradley- RIght

Zeek Arkham- But, he said that he doesn’t waste his time talking to these activists, these Reverend’s that make, they make a career out of your race hustling and race baiting, he doesn’t waste his time. He’s basically asking them to give up their main source of income. That’s the same thing with elected officials, that’s the same thing with these activists, they’re not going to give up what makes them easy money. And while we’re talking about easy money, I’d like to congratulate the co founder of BLM on her fourth mansion, she moved into a white neighborhood you know, cuz a white supremacy is so horrible and so bad that she had to move into a white neighborhood, it’s that kind of thing she’s not going to give up buying mansions? So

Jared Bradley- Yeah

Zeek Arkham- Why talk her out of it? Why convince her otherwise?

Jared Bradley- She’s got hers. That’s what matters.

Zeek Arkham- Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I don’t have a mansion

Jared Bradley- Yeah, no kidding. There’s this nice wood paneling behind me hiding. Yeah. It’s amazing what the virtual world can create, we can make whatever reality we want. But well, Zeek, I appreciate you coming on. I mean, there’s so many more things we need to talk about, we’re definitely going to have to have you on again, because there are so many issues right now with law enforcement, and again, I try really hard not to make anything, especially this show political. But it seems that law enforcement and politics and the media and everything are so intertwined right now that you really can’t talk about one without talking about the other one. But honestly, just like you, I just completely ignore all of these people that don’t actually have a basis to stand on I’m like look, if you haven’t actually been in a uniform, or at least walked alongside a guy who’s in uniform, who’s actually trying to enforce the laws that you’re talking about, then stop talking about them. Because you it’s like, ignorance, to me is like the worst offense. It’s like, Don’t talk to me if you absolutely have no basis for what you’re talking about. And that’s why I created the show again. I wanted to talk to guys like you so that my audience can actually learn what it’s really like out there.

Zeek Arkham- I think social media has given voice to the ignorant, people that have all these opinions on what should and shouldn’t happen without actually having experienced it. And policing and law enforcement are the main things now that people can voice their opinion on without having an actual education. So actually, it’s ignorance. I know what to do to fix this. And then when you present them with facts and logic why that wouldn’t work. Now they fall back to calling you names when they fall back to, other ignorant people agreeing with them, and they surround themselves with that, like an echo chamber. Yeah, I’m glad to do things like this where I can give law enforcement a voice, which was always my goal. Like I said, two days ago, I just happened to be in the city walking and a cop, screamed Zeek and just came up to me and say how much he appreciated my words and how much he appreciated what I’m saying and told me to just to keep doing what I’m doing, and that’s a great feeling. It’s just a great feeling. So thank you for the opportunity.

Jared Bradley- Well, I 100% agree with you, man. Keep doing what you’re doing because giving your side of the story and getting more of the actual truth, but also the positivity that you guys do. And in fact, I was talking to a crime scene investigator out of Atlanta. And we came up with a hashtag. So maybe on Twitter, you can do this. It’s called #PosiPol. Posi Pol and it’s kind of a play off of Interpol. It stands for positive police pictures. I was thinking that there’s around 700,000 law enforcement officers out there just in the US. Imagine how much different things would be if every single cop took one picture. And even if it’s not about them, because I know cops hate doing selfies and stuff like that, but just take a picture, and put that #Posipol on it, or something that you guys do, because I know you have tons of buddies that are out there that they’re buying shoes for the homeless, they are buying meals, they’re helping people change tires, they’re doing all this service, amazing things that happen all the time. And yet, they rarely get credit for it and one of the biggest problems is, you guys have to stand up and when I say you guys, I’m talking about law enforcement in general. It can’t just be the Zeek show, it has to be more than just you guys are just you, speaking for the law enforcement community, everybody has to contribute. But imagine if 700,000 pictures hit social media in some form or fashion with that hashtag on it every day, the difference that that would make?

Zeek Arkham- Well, I mean, I think the main problem, especially here in New York, that a lot of cops run into is like you said earlier, they’re afraid to voice their opinions. They’re afraid to put their true feelings out there, even me . It took a while for me to get comfortable expressing my views, just because you feel like you’re doing something wrong. Just by having pro police views. Sometimes you’re going away from the narrative. So I think more cops need to be let know, we need to let more cops know that it’s okay. To have pro police views. It’s okay to have pro America views. Yeah, I mean, just need to break out of that whole mentality where you feel the need to cover up how you feel. Because you don’t want to get in trouble, so to speak, or you don’t want anybody to think something of you. Go ahead, be loud with it, my entire family knows how I feel. Thankfully, they support me and I think if more cops came out and just said how they feel, it will lead to in effect, a domino effect and that’s also what I’m trying to encourage, it’s okay to voice how you feel

Jared Bradley- absolutely. I love it, man. Okay, well, hey, let’s pause everything like that. I know, especially as a military officer. I have an amazing opinion on that Lieutenant that got pulled over. But let’s save that for another episode.

Zeek Arkham- Sounds good.

Jared Bradley- All right. Well, hey, appreciate you coming on. And you have a good day and be safe out there. And I like how you always say, Hey, we got your six man.

Zeek Arkham- Thank you. I’ve got yours as well. Thank you so much.

Jared Bradley- Okay, have a good day.

Zeek Arkham- Thank you. You too.