In this conversation, Jennifer interviews Benjamin Vernon, a captain with the San Diego Fire Department, about his experience with administrative betrayal. Benjamin shares the story of a traumatic incident in 2015 where he and his partner were attacked by a bystander while responding to a medical call. They discuss the concept of arriving in the middle of a call and the importance of being aware of the dynamics and tensions already present. Benjamin reflects on the impact of compassion fatigue and the need for first responders to reconnect with their purpose and maintain a compassionate mindset. They also touch on the importance of having a clear and universal code for calling for help in emergency situations. In this part of the conversation, Benjamin Vernon discusses the importance of mental health and seeking professional help. He shares his personal journey of seeking therapy and the positive impact it had on his recovery. He also highlights the need for departments to prioritize mental health and create robust mental health programs. Benjamin emphasizes the importance of sleep in maintaining overall health and wellness, and the challenges faced by shift workers in getting adequate sleep. He also discusses the impact of the incident on his department and the steps they took to improve mental health support. The conversation touches on the limitations of informal peer support and the need for professional help in certain situations. In this conversation, Benjamin Vernon discusses the aftermath of the stabbing incident and the impact it had on him and his crew. He talks about the silence and lack of communication within the crew, as they were all focused on the stabbing incident. Benjamin also shares his concern for his captain and his crew members who did not seek mental health help. He highlights the importance of mental health support and the stigma that still exists within the fire department. Benjamin discusses the concept of administrative betrayal and how it can contribute to the decline of mental health. He emphasizes the need for more education and training on mental health at every rank in the department.
Takeaways
Sound Bites
Jennifer (00:00.212)
calendar like who's relieving me and it was me so i'm doing pretty good we did have thank you so much we did have a bit of a a night a day and night but i'm doing pretty well this morning if there's any word finding behavior i'll pause i'll hit the clicker and i'll try and figure out what word it is i was trying to use so yeah a couple things on my end that i'm doing my glass is handy i have
Benjamin Vernon (00:21.848)
Copy.
Jennifer (00:29.918)
printouts your article that was in the the journal. I'm sorry, I can't remember if it think it was fire rescue one or was it EMS one about the ghosts of the terrible 10.
Benjamin Vernon (00:41.452)
gems.
Jennifer (00:43.042)
Gems, that's right, gems. And a couple of associated kind of things. So I've got some papers. I'm just gonna prep here.
Benjamin Vernon (00:57.499)
So ma 'am, what department do you work for? What's your rank? What do you
Jennifer (00:58.013)
Okay, so I am a paramedic. I've been one for 34 years. work at Mount Vernon Fire Department in Mount Vernon, Washington, which is about an hour north of Seattle, hour, hour and 10 minutes north of Seattle. And
It's interesting. started off at, you know, at 17, I joined the volunteer fire department and decided I wanted to become a paramedic. I ended up being a paramedic in a way that it was always a conflict of interest to be on the fire department. And so my whole career, I kind of thought I want to be fire -based EMS. And I kept a really amazing job, for example, as a hospital -based into third service. And then five years ago, the county that runs our county -based EMS system decided to split it up into four fire departments. So I became
line firefighter when I was 47, after not having done it for a really long time. And it's so it's interesting. So I have all of the medic stuff. And I have this novice curiosity at an adult level about firefighting because it's new for me, the whole world of firefighting is like a renewal for me. So I was like the world's youngest pro be or oldest pro be kind
Not really, but a little bit like that. but I was very fortunate. The job I ended up in was in, it was a County based system. split up into four different departments. We had, we made our picks, they made their picks. So we matched and I matched with my first pick in the County and the place that I had been working the whole time. So the community, the people that I work with are all the same. but now I've got the firefighting responsibilities. So anyway, but thank you very much.
Benjamin Vernon (02:42.704)
Welcome.
Jennifer (02:46.638)
I would like to ask you a similar question, but I want to do it on the air so that it's part of your interview. So I usually start off by saying, please introduce yourself in the context that you're here. And I think, you know, the reason why Josh and I reached out to you is because I read your article in GEMS on administrative betrayal. And I thought that was such an interesting take on it.
So I'll ask you a little bit about your background, however you like to share your background about what got you into San Diego. I'm very interested in that because such a big department. naturally I'm gonna wonder if you started off a smaller department and ended up getting there or not. I'm also gonna ask you, I'd like you to tell me how comfortable you are talking about the attack in 2015.
I say because of course it's the foundation of what we're talking about, but I don't want you to have to contend with more than you want to. I've listened to your podcast with EMS one fire rescue. That's the one that was fire rescue one. I've listened to your podcast and I know. Yes. Yeah. It's the two parter. Yeah. And I know that you speak.
Benjamin Vernon (03:54.778)
Yeah.
Benjamin Vernon (04:04.89)
one with them.
Yeah, and it's a two
Jennifer (04:14.534)
on the subject you travel and speak on the subject of what happened and all of those things. I'm gonna let you go where you want to with that, but if you could just characterize for me, how much are you interested in talking about your story compared to going into your captain's story and where you've gotten to with the betrayal? Just so I know.
Benjamin Vernon (04:38.811)
Yeah, I mean, I'm free and clear to talk about anything you want. So whatever topic you want. I've done, I don't know if I'm at two dozen yet, but I've done a lot of podcasts and it's mostly my story about mental health and PTSD. You you heard that story with Fire Rescue One. Administrative betrayal is not something I get to talk about a whole lot. And I wrote an article only at the request of a friend of mine who's on the board of
Jennifer (04:52.696)
Mm -hmm.
Benjamin Vernon (05:08.593)
and so it's interesting. What's, what's funny is my very first article I ever wrote was for gems. Gems used to be located in San Diego. They're headquarters in San Diego. And so I wrote an article about my experience just cause I,
Jennifer (05:18.274)
Yes.
Benjamin Vernon (05:26.321)
I don't know if we're getting ahead of ourselves, but I wrote an article for Jim's about my incident and I got a request to come speak publicly about it based on that article. And I did, and it slowly over time turned into a thing that I do now, right? Like I'm a public speaker, I travel all over the world and I share my story based on the Jim's article. I laughed a little bit. The second article I've ever written, it was eight years later, and I immediately got a request for a podcast and I was
here we go again, you know, okay. Start note, start from scratch. And now I may be speaking all over the world about administrative betrayal, but I'm happy to talk about that. is a different topic I normally speak about. So I would love to have that conversation. So we'll talk about whatever you want. We can do my normal talk, the one that I get paid to do, or we can do administrative betrayal, because that's the article and that's what got you guys interested.
Jennifer (06:16.29)
Okay.
Benjamin Vernon (06:24.997)
Whatever you want to talk about, we can talk about it
Jennifer (06:25.132)
Okay. All right. Well, let's just start off and we'll kind of get into all of those things that we just talked about. And if at any time I ask you a question that you're not, I understand that you're comfortable talking about this because you go out, this is your process is working through it. But I want to be respectful of your time, because I have a feeling we could be on the phone for like hours and hours otherwise. So I want to be
Benjamin Vernon (06:47.395)
Well, I'm afraid to make your podcast too long,
Jennifer (06:52.718)
That's okay. I could recognize, I recognize the podcasters moment where EMS one said, we're going to make this a two parter. I saw that happen. I'm like, that was a good spot to stop. see that happening. So absolutely. Okay. I have one other question, comment, thought, note, and that is in looking you up. I'm in graduate school in communications right now. So just to let you know, so that means that I went completely off of social media four years ago when I started graduate school.
But a master's degree, I'm getting two master's degrees from Gonzaga University from their School of Leadership. So organizational leadership and communications and leadership. And yeah, I might talk a little bit about a class I'm currently taking on hardiness, H -A -R -D -I -N -E -S -S and resilience. It's a very interesting, such a wonderful class. yeah, okay, great. That's hardiness.
Benjamin Vernon (07:23.451)
Master's or PhD?
Benjamin Vernon (07:44.688)
man, we have a lot to talk about then.
Jennifer (07:50.446)
Next week, I'm climbing Mount Adams as part of my class. We do an immersion where we work on projects and plans and learn about it. And then we all go and climb a mountain together as a class. so, yeah, we're going to it's I think the peak is 12 ,000 feet. So we are going into high altitude, which is, yeah, it's interesting anyway. OK. But the comment I had for you is this having not been on social media and then looking you up knowing that I was going to interview
Benjamin Vernon (08:03.121)
Okay, that's cool.
Jennifer (08:20.098)
I saw a posting where you said that you had been given a gift by your friend, Dr. Ben Abo.
Benjamin Vernon (08:25.541)
Yeah, been able, yeah.
Jennifer (08:27.202)
He, Abo, and I'm sorry, Ben was in paramedic training when I was at the University of Pittsburgh. We were both in this. So my bachelor's degree is in emergency medicine from the University of Pittsburgh. And I was like, is it possible that it's the same Ben? But it's, you know, it's a very distinctive name. Do you mind me? And by the way, I doubt he would remember me. My last name is different, first of all. And second of all, it was, I had been an instructor in the program for the center
Benjamin Vernon (08:36.486)
No.
Benjamin Vernon (08:41.219)
It is. It is.
Jennifer (08:56.118)
or Center for Emergency Medicine becoming my paramedic. And then I transitioned to getting my bachelor's degree. So he and I, and I stopped teaching. So I think he was through his paramedic training, but was getting the bachelor's degree foundation. And I don't know if we had any shared classes, but it was just so that that whole small world thing. And he's in Florida now and you're in San Diego. So how did you two
Benjamin Vernon (09:16.593)
He is. Yeah, so I am on our USAR team. And you know, there's 28 federal teams in the United States. Washington has one of them, yes. Well, California has eight of them. so, yeah, well, yeah, and we started it in LA. LA was the first team after the Loma Prieto earthquake. Anyway, so the FEMA, National FEMA team will
Jennifer (09:31.426)
Yeah, you've also got a big fault line,
Benjamin Vernon (09:45.713)
I was asked to go to medical specialist school, which is a very, I mean, it's the most advanced level training you get as a medic and it just was more fun than should be legally allowed. But I was sent to Pennsylvania, Hershey, Pennsylvania for the medical specialist training and it was 12 medics and 12 doctors. And Abo was there from Florida. Florida sent him through this training. And I mean, he and I hit it off immediately. We have become fast friends.
And then, and so we've kept in touch and he's had me travel out to Florida to speak and I've had him travel out to San Diego to speak. And so we pay for each other's flights and speaking fees. But we also just hang out together. So anytime I'm in Florida, I will call him and we hang out. And anytime he's in California, we hang out. And so we become good friends. When I got promoted to captain, he hired Colin mockery. And I don't know if you know that name. He hired him.
Jennifer (10:43.064)
I do know that name, yes.
Benjamin Vernon (10:45.893)
to make a video to congratulate me on being a captain. And my very first day of being a captain, he reached out, contacted a mutual friend who then drove to the station, came in at the morning meeting. I'm having my very first morning meeting as a captain. And my friend comes in and plays this video of Colin Mockery on behalf of Ben Able. he's just the coolest guy I know. So that's funny that you know him.
Jennifer (11:12.748)
That's That's awesome. It is, like I said, his name is distinctive. I was the president of the student group when he was going through, for the students. so I knew a lot of names. I knew him on site. I don't know if we ever interacted very much, but I knew he became a doctor. You know, there's a handful where we knew they were on a physician track from the University of Pittsburgh. So yeah.
Benjamin Vernon (11:38.309)
Yep, very bright and yeah, using paramedicine as a stepping stone to something better. That's cool. That's so cool.
Jennifer (11:43.084)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. Yeah, it's perfect. I, by the way, just just let you know, I pulled out my notebook. I'm a note taker. So if you say something that I want to reflect back to you, you might see me writing. I also pulled out my iPad because if you say something that I want to look up a date, I wanted that handy because I can't modify anything on the screen. So perfect.
Benjamin Vernon (12:03.464)
And is this podcast gonna be on YouTube? it video?
Jennifer (12:08.128)
It is not. should, I'm glad that you asked that. You're the first one that's asked that. I'm pretty sure you're the first person that's asked that. And I, never conceptualized of doing it on video because I'm such an audio nut. I love listening in the car. And then your EMS one, sorry, your fire rescue one podcast. I was listening to it and it was like, yeah, I watched the video and I'm like, you can do that. And my husband who is the tech guy is super savvy about this. He's
rolls his eyes. I'm like, okay, but yes, it is just you and me and the teddy bear back there. We're good. Okay. All right. So I'm going to hit record. It may be possibly that Josh hit record before he left and we've actually got it is recording very nice. That was what he was like, hit record. Okay. All right. So let me just get my, I want to get my notes upfront.
Benjamin Vernon (12:42.459)
Copy that, all
Benjamin Vernon (12:52.433)
He did his recording.
Jennifer (13:06.978)
Okay, so I'm going to click to start so Josh knows where we're going to get started. He can start to look for the visual cue on the feed there.
Jennifer (13:18.722)
Hello and welcome back to a duty to act podcast. This is Jennifer Darling, your host and I am here today with Benjamin Vernon, a captain with the San Diego Fire Department. Benjamin, thank you so much for being
Benjamin Vernon (13:31.921)
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be
Jennifer (13:34.186)
Absolutely. I wonder if you could take a moment and introduce yourself and in the context in which I've asked you to be here today.
Benjamin Vernon (13:42.097)
My name is Ben Vernon. I'm a Captain Paramedic with the City of San Diego and I've been on the job 18 years. I've written only two articles for Jim's Magazine, but both times they've attracted some attention. So you reached out after my latest article on administrative betrayal. So I think that's what we'd like to talk about today, yes?
Jennifer (14:06.126)
Absolutely, absolutely. And I'll just share with our listeners that that article was dated May 22nd of 2024. It's called Administrative Betrayal, the Ghost of the Terrible Ten. And you can find it by searching on the GEMS website. We'll try and make sure that gets printed properly in the show notes as well so people know how to look it up. 18 years at
City of San Diego, is that where your career started was 18 years ago, all of it at San Diego or did you start off as a volunteer or in a different location?
Benjamin Vernon (14:37.873)
Great question. Yeah, I was, I started as an EMT on an ambulance in 2003, so it's been 21 years. And I was a volunteer for a small county department, know, San Diego County. And so was a volunteer out in the county in the Booneys. I remember there was a cow pasture next to our fire station. And to me being a San Diego native, it was strange. You know, I felt very out of place, but I started as a volunteer for a few years. I got picked up.
by the city. it's my first real paid department and I've been with them almost, you know, for 18 out of my 20 years.
Jennifer (15:16.91)
And you've been there 18 years. I think that the cat is probably out of the bag, but just to say it, is this the job that you envisioned for yourself when you started? Is that sort of the dream job?
Benjamin Vernon (15:27.811)
It was, I actually graduated college from UC San Diego and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. And so I was in sales for a few years. I was miserable. I hated every minute of it. I played volleyball, division one volleyball for UC San Diego. And that team aspect was just so fun. And I remember going into sales and you know, I missed that probably the most was the team aspect. So it took me a little while to kind of figure out that firefighting was for me.
But once I figured it out, then I was all in and it came very easy to me. just, that whole team aspect just was exactly what I was looking for. And I really did feel like I met my people, you know? So after school, you know, graduated and then I'm in the sales job. I started rock climbing and scuba diving and just doing anything I could for a rush, you know, for enjoyment, just, and, you know, joined the fire department and it seemed like everybody was the exact same way. And I was
these are my people. And then the sense of humor, you know, that dark humor, I love it. And I just immediately like fell in love with the fire service. So it was a easy, once I realized that this job was for me, then it just, I was all in. It a blast.
Jennifer (16:42.136)
That's great. That's great to hear.
Jennifer (16:52.12)
just making a mark because I want to get my next question out, right? So perfect.
Benjamin Vernon (16:52.921)
Yeah, we have to talk about the clicker. There's a whole nother topic just on clickers, but I love it.
Jennifer (17:00.086)
on clickers, are you like dog training? Cause that's what this is.
Benjamin Vernon (17:03.141)
Well, so I actually watched a video on using a clicker on humans and that it's very efficient. And so I laughed when you have the clicker, I started cracking up. like, you're going to get me train like a dog here pretty soon.
Jennifer (17:14.382)
Oh, yeah. Very nice. Okay, very cool. I'm gonna do a little click. We'll just just look away. Okay. Your article that you wrote is about administrative betrayal. And you talk about the ghosts of the terrible 10. And I'm going to give a little bit of information about the terrible 10. Then we're going to go back and talk about your terrible incident. the terrible 10 are the
top 10 causes for a critical incident stress or a post -traumatic stress or a workplace traumatic stress for first responders, for public safety, public service providers. And they include a line of duty death, the death of a colleague or suicide of a colleague, serious line of duty injury, disaster or multiple casualty incidents, injuring or killing an innocent person, any significant incidents involving children.
prolonged incidents, especially with the loss of life, personally threatening situations, events with excessive media interest, and then anything that's considered a significant, powerful, overwhelming, distressing event. Those are the events that you talk about, that were talked about in the article. And specifically, you came to this topic because of a stressful, terrible, horrible event that happened to you.
In June of 2015, you were responding to a medical call as a four person fire company with an ambulance crew coming behind you for an intoxicated or apparently intoxicated person in need of help at a trolley stop in San Diego. And things transpired and you ended up being attacked by another person seemingly unrelated to the call.
Benjamin Vernon (19:05.201)
Correct, the bystander.
Jennifer (19:07.02)
Bystander. And I'm going to preface this. would I want you to tell the story your way, but I just want to let you know something that made a really big impact on me is that you don't call this an assault and I've called it an attack. But you in your interviews, you refer to this as an attempted
Benjamin Vernon (19:28.837)
Yes, well getting stabbed in the chest, that'll do it. That's, yes, attempted murder. Yes.
Jennifer (19:35.006)
I was blown away by that, that paradigm shift of calling it that. talk from time to time about assault and incidents involving getting injured at work because of combative patients. But I think that's a really apt expression. And I'd love if you could tell us your story. That would be
Benjamin Vernon (19:56.625)
Sure, I'll preface it with I'd been on the job I believe, well let's see here, 2006 and it was 2015, so nine years. I was a fire medic, riding backwards. Absolutely loved my job, loved my crew. I was on the heavy rescue team and the hazmat team and I'm on the urban search and rescue California task force eight. My career was going great. I was running a routine medical aid
And I was on the busiest engine in the city, the fourth busiest in the United States. So we averaged 25 to 30 calls a shift. A lot of them are around homeless people. A lot of them are with drug overdoses and, you know, mental health issues. And so you're, you're kind of always in this dangerous area dealing with people who are volatile. And the problem with that is you get used to it and you get complacent and you get very comfortable in that environment.
And so we ran a routine medical aid on a drunk patient, like you said, at the trolley stop. Trolley security guards were there. I was surrounded by them. had five of their guards with guns. There's four of my people, so there's nine of us. It's 4 p .m. on a Wednesday. We're outside. Everything is just so matter of fact. That day, was our 10th call of the day and our third time at the trolley stop. So to say this was routine, I mean,
and ma 'am I love that you're a medic, you know these calls, you've been on this call a thousand times. Somebody is drunk on a park bench at a bus stop or a trolley stop or what, right? you, I mean, you've done this call every day, every day a thousand times, nothing has ever happened. So just to understand the complacency, how relaxed I was, what we didn't know that day was there was a bystander and this bystander was also, he wanted to help, he wanted to be a helper.
He wanted to help this drunk guy. And this helper, I affectionately call him Stabby. His full name is Stabby Stabberton. He has the mayor of Stabberville. He wants to help. And the security guards who are, they do this all the time as well, right? It's pretty bread and butter for them. They have a routine. They interview the guy, they get his personal information, they call for dispatch, they request an ambulance.
Jennifer (22:03.446)
of the Stabberton's.
Benjamin Vernon (22:23.355)
They're trying to do their thing and Stabby's kind of interfering and everyone's trying to interview this drunk guy. The drunk guy is belligerent. He's drunk, he's rude, he's obnoxious. He's not cooperating with anybody. And essentially before we arrive on scene, it's becoming hostile. Everyone's frustrated with everyone, right? Nobody's working together. Everyone's getting pissed off. And a thing I think, and maybe you'll appreciate this as much as anybody,
I think sometimes the mistake we make is that when we arrive, the call now starts. When really, when we arrive, we're arriving in the middle of whatever is happening, right? Whatever's happened, a lot has transpired before we show up. And I think we kind of, okay, we're here now the call begins. And it's, we're here right in the middle of something that's happening. And that mindset, I think I had gotten complacent.
So anyway, we walk in the middle of a very volatile scene, but we don't know that. And so we interact with the drunk patient, the bystander kind of stepped off to the side, but he didn't leave and he was still very volatile. was still very angry. He was frustrated. And he is chirping at us and he's kind of chirping at the security guards. The security guards, they interact with him, but then they start to just try to ignore him. And so he kind of, he switches gears and he starts chirping at my crew.
And he's chirping at my captain and my captain engages him. He turns around and goes, Hey man, you know, what's going on? What are you doing? Like, you know, why are you chirping at us? And the guy's like, you know, you guys aren't doing right. And you know, you're not listening to me. I'm trying to help. And my captain just says, Hey man, look, I've heard the trolley guys ask you to leave. I've heard my guys ask you to leave. He goes, now I'm asking you to leave. Like, please, we do this every day. We don't need any more help. Like, thank you, but please go away. And the guy gets in his face and he
just gets right in his chest. He's poking him in the chest. And he's like, I'm not going anywhere. What are you going to do about it? And he's challenging my captain. Well, my captain is a big dude and he does not back down easily. He's a, he's a tough man and he puts his hand on this guy's chest and he goes, man, back up. And pushes the guy back and the guy trips over a park bench. And the thing is, we've only been on scene 90 seconds. We don't realize how volatile the scene is. We don't realize that it had almost come to blows a few times before we even arrived. And so my captain was
Benjamin Vernon (24:51.473)
realizing it has like just opened up Pandora's box, right? He's Exactly there it is and now this guy who's been wanting to fight who is angry has now been given every reason to fight and so he hops up on his feet and he starts beating up to security guards which from my captain's perspective is very confusing because We've been only you know, we've only been on scene 90 seconds my captain, you know pushes this guy down the guy gets up and punches somebody else
Jennifer (24:56.898)
Yeah, he set the launch sequence in motion.
Benjamin Vernon (25:21.635)
In the face and you know my cat was like what the hell like I'm not one that knocked you down Why are you attacking this guy? So we're we're just behind we're behind the eight ball the whole time, right? We just cannot Figure out fast enough. Like what is transpiring? I Hear the fight. I see this this bystander stabby is punching a security guard in the face And so I'm in I'm in rescue mode. We're rescuers. And so I actually jumped in to the middle of this fight
to save the security guard. actually break these two men apart. I separate them, I push them very hard. I push them away from each other. And then I actually was talking to the security guard first. And I said, hey man, are you okay? Like, you just got your butt kicked. I mean, that guy punched you in the face like five times. Like, that looked like that hurt. And he's, you know, his eyeballs were swimming. He's like, no, I'm okay. And I go, all right, well, let me talk to this bystander, like standby. And I turn and engage the bystander. I go,
the hell, know, like what's going on? Like why are we fighting? And a mistake, right? Like if fists are already making contact with face, you're not going to talk, right? Talking is over. That time has passed. And so what I should have done is, is tackle the bystander. And I know you've done this because any medic who's been on longer than a year has tackled somebody at some point and we're not fighters. We
We're not tackling people to hurt them. We're tackling people to keep them from hurting themselves, right? And that's a very different mindset. And so I'm like, well, I'm gonna talk to this guy. And of course I missed the whole, hey man, we're already at the fighting stage. And so I was behind and I'm like trying to talk to him. And by separating these two guys, I gave this guy a chance to regroup, right? And he kinda.
locks target on me and then he arms himself right he's got time now to pull out a knife and and so he went to work on me he he came at me he stabbed me in the back right above my kidney just above my belt and then he stabbed me in the chest you know right behind my left arm broke a rib punctured my lung and then he pulled the knife out of my chest and tried to stab me in the head luckily when he pulled the knife out of my chest it knocked the wind out of me and i kind of doubled over as
Benjamin Vernon (27:44.496)
went, you know, and I doubled, he swung at my head and he missed the knife. The knife glanced off the top of my head. So he only missed me by about a centimeter. And then my partner realized, okay, we're fighting, you know, my partner's getting punched. He didn't see the knife either. I never saw the knife. came out so quick and he hit me so fast. But my partner tackled the guy, you know, that's what medics do, right? We talk or we tackle.
So I tried talking, my partner tried tackling. So he tackled the guy, landed on top of him, but the guy still had a knife in his hand, so he just starts sticking my partner in the back and he stabbed him three times. both of us were rushed to the hospital, both with life -threatening injuries. Luckily, we both survived.
Jennifer (28:32.526)
So, well, thank goodness, absolutely. And you two were the only two that were stabbed at the time. was this, cause there were fists and other things. So what timeframe did this transpire over? You had been on scene 90 seconds before you had to go into the captain getting him away and then just moments after that. how much time did it take before all of
Benjamin Vernon (28:58.629)
The entire fight lasted less than five seconds. Two men, I was stabbed twice, my partner was stabbed three times. Two men were stabbed five times in less than five seconds. The fight was over so fast and I ended up with a hemo pneumothorax so my lung collapsed and was filling with air and blood. I didn't even have trouble breathing until after the fight was over, right? Like he stabbed me, my lung collapses.
My partner tackles the guy and then he gets stabbed three times. Everybody dog piles, holds the guy down, pulls the knife out of his hand and puts him in handcuffs. And then I start going, and I then realized after all that, like, I thought he was punching me. I'm like, he stabbed me. But it was over, it was over before I even knew what had
Jennifer (29:53.092)
And in San Diego, you have a code for sending help from the police department. What's your code for send help?
Benjamin Vernon (29:59.003)
Yeah, every every department has a different code. Our code is cover now. So if you ever do get to see the video, you'll hear us screaming, you cover now, cover now, cover now. And that is our code for all hell's broken loose like send help. So what's your code in
Jennifer (30:14.398)
We actually in Skagit County, have a status response. say status one, status two, status three, status four, or it can be things like that. And so we don't have a code word. I know I spoke to someone once who said their code was go get the big oxygen or bring the big oxygen. Yeah. Yeah. Not a fan of that.
Benjamin Vernon (30:33.531)
We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that. I guess, not a fan. I think we need to all just go to Mayday. Everybody knows Mayday and that should just be the code. Every agency, every city, every county, they all have different codes and I just, I think that's a mistake, but that's a topic for
Jennifer (30:43.906)
Yeah.
Jennifer (30:56.775)
Yeah, think May Day is my instinct now since I've gone through the fire academy, it made me think differently about how in those what if moments like what if this ambulance got hit by that truck that just brushed past us and excuse me. Clicker again, sorry.
I have a similar thought about May Day now when I do those what if moments, you when a truck breezes past the ambulance, like it was a narrow miss and I think, gosh, what would I say on the radio to get help here right now? And I now have this instinct from the Academy and being fire -based where I wanna say May Day, May Day, May Day, we're at first and first, send help because we just got hit or something like
Benjamin Vernon (31:44.241)
Yes, yes, and everyone knows what it means. yeah.
Jennifer (31:50.688)
I think that there's value in having a quiet response code, meaning send law now, but don't send them loud when you're perceiving something going down the road. yeah, it's on the on the radio, the emergency button on the radio.
Benjamin Vernon (32:02.949)
When we have the emir button,
but you hit that orange button on the top of your radio. And then what we've been training is you hit that button and then open mic, right? Like hold the mic and let them hear you go, hey man, what's with the bat? know, what's with the crowbar? You know, just, and then they know that Eamer is legit and they'll start moving your way.
Jennifer (32:23.616)
Mm -hmm. Yep, absolutely valid. Something hopefully departments will take seriously and maybe put a little effort and time into pre -planning for that moment. It's good that you had a code. It's good that you had something that you could say and that everybody recognized. So that's a really good thing.
Jennifer (32:43.242)
You started off by telling the story and you mentioned something about how you arrived on scene and you arrived in the middle of the call. And after listening to your podcast with Fire Rescue One and you mentioned this, I was struck by that. That was where actually I took all of my notes and that's where I started with my notes thinking about, how often we really do arrive in the middle of a call. We don't know what transpired before we got there.
And you also said that you were assessing from a block away and that's probably not a good idea. And in fact, the risk is that you're assessing from the dispatch because it's the same bat time, same bat channel, same bat location that you were earlier. So that's really interesting. During your recounting of what happened, you had a lot of hindsight language. You said, I should have, I missed and what you might've done differently or what you recognize now.
If you could go back and think it through, were there any clues that you discovered that you overlooked other than I walked into the middle of the call?
Benjamin Vernon (33:53.082)
Yeah, well.
Great question.
Benjamin Vernon (34:01.273)
laugh because I was I was Being one of the busiest engines in the city in the country you get pretty burned out and Pretty bitter and I got to tell you I was I don't think looking back in hindsight. I was not a very nice person I was not a good patient care person. I wasn't compassionate. I definitely had compassion fatigue I was bitter. I was burned
I laugh because there are lots of times the way I treated patients if I had been stabbed I would have been like well, okay I deserve that right and this just happened to be because it was in the afternoon I was coming off of Being off duty right I was coming in I was rested fresh. I was actually really nice and very compassionate because I had slept and I
And so I laugh. It was like the one time where I didn't deserve to get stabbed. I got stabbed. And so I really look back and I see this now because I work downtown still as I'll work overtime downtown and the medics, the fire medics who have just been getting their butts kicked are bitter and frustrated and quick tempered and not good patient care people. And I feel for them, you know, and I have to pull them aside and go, hey, you have got to find a way
reconnect mental health wise, reconnect with why you do this job, Find your purpose again and get back to being a compassionate, caring person. Honestly, strictly so you don't get your ass kicked because that's coming, right? Like you are on a train headed for a brick wall. Like you're gonna find somebody that is not in the mood for your bad mood and it's going to reach ahead.
And I don't ever blame my captain, ever. Honestly, I've watched the video enough times and I know the man well, he is family to me. He did not deserve that, he did not instigate that. But he was tired, frustrated, and I think he was not the compassionate man that I know he can be. And so him pushing that guy back, while I think was certainly warranted.
Benjamin Vernon (36:25.581)
it if he had been rested and compassionate and reconnected with his reason why we do this job, I don't know if he would have pushed the guy down. And so, you know, that compassion fatigue has a consequence. And that call is a great example of what happens when you get a bunch of people who are tired, worn out, frustrated. You know, we can bring the fight sometimes, right? We can instigate when we don't mean
So that is probably the one thing I look back at. Honestly, it wasn't on me that day, but certainly my crew was tired and frustrated. And so if I could go back and anything, would just help my guys be compassionate again, know, make sure they're rested and remind them of why we do this job so that when we're on scene, we are better patient caregivers. If anything, just for our own personal safety. Does that answer your question?
Jennifer (37:20.236)
That it does answer my question. I think a lot of times when we do after action on an incident, we discover we go backwards and discover that we missed cues. I read a book. I try to read it every couple of years. I try to reread the same book. called The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker. It's a fantastic book. And it speaks so much to what we do and what we see and this idea that
Benjamin Vernon (37:38.618)
God, that's a good book. So good.
Jennifer (37:47.482)
And honestly, just as a handbook for living life with awareness that what did you see when your instinct kicked in? What was it about your instinct that made that happen? And as an advanced level provider in the field, I'm sure you know this, there's a moment when you just look at your patient and you know something that maybe not everybody else is speaking on. Of course, experience has a lot to do with that. Having just once you've seen it, you it's now part of your makeup,
such a great book. And so the book is The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker. And the idea is, what is it that launches your instinct? And what you've just discussed is actually what covered up your instincts. And that perhaps if you had been viewing it without the blinders of a bad day, a bad week, a bad location that you've been to multiple times. And of course, there's no
hindsight that's emerged in your review of it that said, there were clear cues, you know, there was a big red flag waving and people were dancing and chanting.
Benjamin Vernon (38:48.325)
Well, so there were a couple things, and now that you mention it, I have another book for you, Malcolm Gladwell, Blink, and it matches the gift of fear perfectly. And he talks about the ability to look at something and instantly pass judgment. And basically what he's discovered is that you can only do it
Jennifer (38:53.454)
Okay. Blink.
Jennifer (39:02.573)
Okay.
Benjamin Vernon (39:18.073)
when you are an expert in that field. And so, like for us to, and so he gave several examples, but one was a fire captain who went in with his crew to fight a fire and he was in there and he goes, nope, nope, let's get out. don't know what it is, but let's get out. And he pulls everybody out and then the whole building like collapsed. And then they asked him like, what was it? And he goes, I don't know. And then they interviewed him later, know, days later, weeks later. Okay, what was it? What was it? And he was able
Jennifer (39:20.429)
Mm -hmm.
Benjamin Vernon (39:48.445)
you know, to verbalize what all of the clues that came to him immediately, but he couldn't do it for days, if not weeks later to figure it out. And that goes along with the gift of fear, right? These people are like, I don't know. And then he talks to them and interviews them. And then they're able to verbalize, it was all of these things that gave me a clue that, you know what mean? And so you got to read Blink, you'll like it. It goes right, perfectly meshes with the gift of fear.
Jennifer (40:15.99)
Okay, I haven't written down, it's on my list now.
Benjamin Vernon (40:18.873)
Yeah, okay, good. to go back to the man, I did have short interaction with the bystander was stabby and he was big, tall, six foot four, wiry, very strong, clearly homeless. He had a buzz cut on the side of his head and then he had his hair pulled back in a bun. Nothing wrong with that haircut,
hair pulled back in a bun, you're ready, right? mean, your hair's not down around your ears, around your shoulders in a relaxed state, pulled back, I mean, when we go to work, especially for females and guys with long hair, you put your hair in that high and tight, right? He had a lazy eye and he had a scar above his left eye. And so not a lazy eye, but a lazy eye lid.
Jennifer (41:13.87)
Mm -hmm.
Benjamin Vernon (41:15.947)
looked like from a fight, right? He had a scar and then he had this droopy eyelid and he had scars on his knuckles and it didn't register at the time but I remember when I talked to him I was like, whoa, like this dude is like, this dude's ready, you know? I was like, damn. And I remember thinking, and again, it didn't occur to me until later but when I first interacted with him I was like, whoa, like this
Now he was very nice and he and I interacted very briefly for the 90 seconds before the fight broke out. But I did go, wow man, this guy, is ready. And then when we were in the fight, when I separated them out and he moved, he reached behind him, he pulled the knife out and he locked it, but he kept it hidden behind his back. And I remember going, that was a weird move. Like, did he just pull his wallet out of his pocket?
But the way he kept the knife behind his back hidden, I mean, I saw it and my brain went, that is not good, right? Like that was not a good move. I still couldn't react quick enough, but I just remember that motion. I just remember going, was that a knife? Did he just pull a knife? Like that wasn't his wallet. And that was at that point, I put my hands up and go, easy, dude, easy. And I tried to back up, I tried to get out of
Just by the way he moved his arm, so I never saw the knife but it Hindsight me what it was. I knew I was about to get stabbed
Jennifer (42:49.74)
Yeah, very interesting. I've had an interesting change in my maturity level as a paramedic in the past five years that I've been with the fire department. And it's a very interesting one. And I'll just tell you from my perspective as a female. Now, you mentioned that this guy was six plus feet tall and had some look of a brawler, wiry physically.
I'm five five right off the bat six feet is physically imposing to me long arms are physically imposing to me and I've also been Muay Thai kickboxer for several years but I know my reach I'm gonna get decked so it's it's just one of those things that I started off my career and I spent a lot of years working
inner city in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then moved out here for the largest portion of my career. And I have maybe some city awareness that I don't let go. And I shame myself into thinking like, calm down, you're just being over dramatic. And I've had those moments where I'm like, step to the side of the door, don't stand in front of the door. And my partner's like, what are you talking about?
And I'd say things like, hey, can you watch my back? Because I hear something going on back there. And my partner's like, yeah, OK. But they stay crouched down beside me. And they just kind of glance over their shoulder. And I'm like, no, I want you to stand up. I want you to turn and face. And then I allow myself this sort of sense of shame, like, I'm just embarrassing myself. And there is a female component to it that I feel a sense of machismo. So in some cases, I talk myself out of being protective.
which may be a feminine instinct. don't know. This is how I choose to identify it. And I also, I'm like, I got this. Cause I see these things. And when I started, before I started with the fire department, when I was the county agency, I'd be like, I'm fine. Shut the doors. We're good. We'll go to the hospital. And then I started with the fire department and I ended up getting decked by a 14 year old girl.
Jennifer (44:53.838)
Who was it was flailing by the way, it wasn't even that directed it was just flailing but I got right in the face and the fire the battalion chief a wonderful guy named Aaron Robbins afterwards he's like you just asked for somebody to ride with you, you know do that and I'm like Duh we're all there to help each other I don't gain anything by the machismo and I also don't gain anything by holding back my instinct at that moment Even if I'm painted as the worrywart
And I think that these past five years in that team environment that the fire department engenders, that has opened up in me and I have had a big maturity in my experience. And of course I had great coworkers, but we always worked in teams of two and then the fire department came separate. And so we were always, we're all working together, but we are two separate entities and now we're all the same entity. anyway, very interesting. And I have Malcolm
Jennifer (45:56.494)
Very interesting. And I did write down Malcolm Gladwell's book name, so that's on my list of things to read. And I guarantee that it will either be something I read immediately after I finished my coursework, or it will be the thing that causes me to totally procrastinate my coursework.
Benjamin Vernon (46:14.865)
And I hope I didn't lead to you not doing your work. Just a couple of thoughts. One, I you just said the gift of fear and it's listening to your instincts and going, I don't like this, right? And what did he say? The number one thing women do is then go, come on, being, you're just, on, you're not being tough. You're just being a worry ward. And they talk themselves out of being safe.
Jennifer (46:20.898)
Yeah.
Benjamin Vernon (46:42.043)
because of the social norms. And so I like that you identified that. You're like, why am I doing this? This is dumb. And then I can tell you statistically, women are attacked the same as men, the same percentage. And so I think one of the mistakes we make is that women bring a sense of calm and patients are less likely to strike a female. That is not true.
Dorrance of School of Public Health, the first center under Dr. Jennifer Taylor. She's studied violence against first responders for more than a decade now. She's done the math and the statistics. Women get attacked just as much as men. Not more, but not less. And so to think that, okay, I'm a female, like I'm safer, that's just, that's a mistake.
Jennifer (47:19.523)
Right.
Jennifer (47:27.662)
And she's out of Drexel University and she has done some really amazing work. In fact, in researching this, I looked up her study, Expecting the Unexpected, a Mixed Method Study of Violence to EMS Providers in an Urban Fire Department. And the date on this is 2016. Really fascinating. And she also, were you interviewed as part of something recently that they did where they're trying to come up with a checklist?
Benjamin Vernon (47:55.269)
Yes, I actually have been actively, I'm, is the word, a consultant for her staff. She is one of most incredible people you ever met and you definitely need to try to interview her. You'll love her. Her staff is amazing. She's since partnered with the IFF and the IFF brought me in and for the past couple of years, helping Drexel draft a model on how to handle violence against first responders.
Jennifer (48:07.064)
really want
Benjamin Vernon (48:24.687)
We've also created a bunch of training videos. So there's a three hour online training on deescalation and what we can do and how we can try to keep people calm. And then I just last month filmed a bunch of videos on how to approach a door, where to stand in a living room, where to sit on an ambulance. Like we came up with all these videos, hopefully to show, you know, new and even experienced people like yourself to maybe get
thinking just a little bit different. So I just filmed those videos a month ago and I think they're published now on the IFF website. I'm all about mental health because I struggled with my mental health after my injury and I'm all about workplace violence prevention because I don't want people to even have PTSD or need mental health help because they got their butts kicked. So I got two very big passions in this job now since my injury. So it's fun to talk to you about this stuff because
It's mental health, it's workplace violence prevention, and Jennifer, as you know, that we're a small group, and then the group of people who've been damn near murdered, right, is an even smaller group, and so it's always fun to get to talk to people like yourself who've been there, who've done it, and know this job, and it's fun, so.
Jennifer (49:46.498)
Yeah, my husband, Josh, the our sound guy here. He he had he was new to public service, public safety, this whole world. And he has we met because I was taking Muay Thai kickboxing lessons and he's a coach. so, you know, just throughout
the years of taking those lessons, he's learned about my needs and what happens to us and what's likely. I remember, and just to kind of go in the way back machine, I remember back when we were just friends, just coached that I knew, I remember calling him and saying like, hey, I just had this guy who was seizing and then he came out of the seizure and he was kind of aggressive and I sprawled, or I used an arm bar and
He's like, my God. And so he begins to understand that it's this idea of the defensive. It's this idea of the neutralizing that we do rather than the kicking and punching and things like that. And so that's been an interesting journey to be on with him where I'm at this point in my career where I've seen this stuff, I've heard of this stuff, these bad things have happened and he's learning about it. And he comes from this completely blank canvas.
with regard to this. So that's been a neat journey. And every now and then we'll be training together or something. And I'll be like, I know when I can use this. that's, yeah. So anyway, okay. So you, I'm gonna go back to your incident a little bit. And I wanna talk to you about something you just mentioned, which is mental health. And in your fire rescue one,
podcast interview, you talked very frankly about your pursuit of seeking a counselor, seeking a therapist or someone that could help you with this. And you went through several different people before you landed on one and then you discovered a technique. Could you tell us just a kind of nutshell that journey for us about how you ended up getting
Benjamin Vernon (51:58.373)
Yeah, so after my incident, you know, I went home to heal and I'm off work. and I'm just, you know, having to sponge bathe because my stitches were still fresh, that kind of thing. I was taking a lot of pain meds, which was great. And it was helping me sleep and, and, know, life was good. Honestly, I thought I would heal pretty quickly and then get back to work and, know, no harm, no foul. Like he missed I'm alive. Let's get back to work and go back to doing what we do.
pretty soon the effects of PTSD and it for me manifested, it started with really horrific nightmares where I would fight, redo that fight, relive that fight, but I would tear the guy apart. mean, just rip his face off and gouge his eyes out and I was biting him and you know, would wake up screaming like it was just horrible, horrible. Honestly, up until the point in 2015, my department, I think nationwide there was not a lot
knowledge about mental health. My department had nothing in place and I didn't know anything. I got zero training with regards to my own mental health. Something I'm actively working on trying to fix nationwide is bring more awareness to the topic. But anyway, I'm having these nightmares, I can't sleep and I'm realizing I'm not okay. Like mentally I'm not okay. Honestly, the only thing that really gave me permission to go get help is that my attempted murder was caught on film and
The film was shown on TV and my department, the men and women who I work with every day, who I love, saw the film. And I had gotten dozens of emails, phone calls, and texts, you hey, if you need anything, know, don't hesitate to ask or hey man, I'm glad you're okay. But then the video came out and people started driving to my house and they were going, dude, are you okay? And I realized after like the second or third visit, I'm like, these guys
asking if I'm mentally okay. And so I remember feeling this sense of relief that I could get mental health help and the stigma wouldn't stick, right? I wouldn't be labeled someone who's untrustworthy or someone who's weak because the video is intense. And if you've seen it, it's awesome to watch. I actually love showing it to people because you can just see everyone's like, whoa, that's intense. And so I remember going, this is great. I can get mental health help and no one will make fun of me.
Benjamin Vernon (54:26.025)
My reputation will stay, right? I've worked really hard on a good reputation. My reputation will stay intact. And so it was only because it was on video that I even felt comfortable asking for help. But with my department not having anything in place, I didn't know anything about mental health help. I went the workers comp route. And the first guy said, you know, hey, if you're feeling stressed or you're having trouble sleeping, lay off the caffeine.
And I was like, dude, that's not helpful, right? I'm pretty sure was the knife in my chest, not the coffee in my stomach. I had another guy tell me, hey, if you're feeling stressed at work, just don't go on any calls. And that was very frustrating, because I'm like, don't have a choice, right? Like, that's not, we don't get to sift and pick what calls, you know, we don't cherry pick the calls that come our way. You have to go
Jennifer (54:59.671)
The price.
Benjamin Vernon (55:24.325)
And so I spent a lot of my time, realized with therapists trying to explain our culture, our job, it was very frustrating. And I was getting worse, you the whole time I'm going to these professionals, I'm getting worse. It got to the point that suicide became an option. You know, I hadn't slept in so long and I was so frustrated and I was trying to get professional help and it wasn't working. I was kind of losing hope and I was, I remember just one night thinking,
If I don't figure this out, I own a gun and guaranteed I'll get some sleep then. And it was at that point, you know, this lowest, darkest point, I'm weeks after my incident, but I'm sitting alone in the dark at two in the morning contemplating suicide. It was a buddy of mine I thought of, peer support wise, you we didn't have a peer support team, we didn't have chaplains, we didn't have professional therapists, the fire department had nothing. But I remember a buddy of mine, a firefighter that I worked with,
He was a former cop and he got involved in a police shooting. He killed a guy. It was a good shoot. The guy had a gun and was trying to kill him and he fired back. But it ended his career. And so I reached out to him and I said, hey man, I'm doing pretty poorly. You've been where I've been. What did you do? And he was great. He said, look man, I saw a really good therapist.
who understood police officers and he worked with guys who'd been in shootings. And he pulled an old business card out of his pocket and he handed me the card and he said, call this guy. And so I did, I called the guy and I said, look, I, workers comp won't cover you, my insurance won't cover you, my department can't pay for you, and I'm not making a very big paycheck. I said, but if you can help me get past this and recover, just keep track of the billing hours.
Once I get back to work, will pay you back. I'll pay you back every dime. You know, I said, but can you just please help me right now? And he was awesome. He said, yeah, man, I got you. I like get in here. And so this guy's name was Dr. Mark Foreman. He was a former San Diego PD police officer. Went back to school, became his side. He got his doctorate in psychology and worked with first responders exclusively. And so this man absolutely saved my life. The treatment I'd like to talk about,
Benjamin Vernon (57:49.325)
He did something called EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. And we did EMDR and very quickly helped me recover. mean, the turnaround was insanely fast. It took only a couple weeks seeing him every couple days where I was better than ever. I was mentally stronger, mentally tough, recovered, sleeping regularly, full night sleep.
And in just a couple weeks of doing this EMDR thing. And so when I travel all over the world and share my story, it's, you know, I show the stabbing, but I mostly am there because I want to introduce firefighters and EMTs and medics and police officers to EMDR. Because despite that it's been around since the 80s, overwhelmingly, overwhelming number of our people have never heard of it. And so that, I bring awareness to that because that treatment was
Game Changer, a
Jennifer (58:48.462)
I'm curious, knowing that you did shift work prior to this incident, how did you do with sleeping before the incident? Because obviously the incident is a life changer, of course, but in general, how would you have characterized your sleeping habits as a young firefighter
Benjamin Vernon (59:08.081)
So, horrible. I was that guy that was saying, I got plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead, right? And I would pull all -nighters and I would work at the busiest firehouses like yourself, right? Three, four days in a row doing trades and paying people back, going days without sleep, just drinking coffee at midnight so I can, right? And since 2015, I have been on a mental health journey and I
dedicated my time and energy into learning as much about mental health as I can and In my travels I was speaking in Canada and the speaker right after me was a guy named dr Glenn Landry and I will put you in touch with him but he is a sleep doctor his PhD is in sleep and he he was studying sleep in Alzheimer's patients and elderly and in the elderly as he was studying their sleep habits he realized
their sleep habits was remarkably similar to shift workers. And he kind of discovered that by accident. And so as he was working with elderly and improving their sleep habits, he goes, dude, I could take this like directly with no changes whatsoever and go right over to first responders and try to help them with their sleep. And so he gave this lecture in Canada and Vancouver. It was a game changer for me. I mean, it just opened my eyes to sleep, how sleep works, the effects of
And so he and I went out to dinner that night and I said, buddy, we need to be friends. Like, we're gonna be best friends. I need to know everything you know. And I wanted to like a sponge just wring out all of his knowledge. He has become a friend. He volunteered to be my sleep coach for two years. And I just gave a lecture to my department in January. And he was so generous. He gave me a lot of his PowerPoint slides to present to my department.
So I gave a two hour lecture every day in January to my department on sleep and how sleep works. But I can tell you what's funny is the two things that kill firefighters more than line of duty deaths is suicide and cancer. Both of those can be fixed with sleep. And so I find it funny that the one thing we could do to improve our overall health and wellness, mental health and physical health,
Benjamin Vernon (01:01:35.825)
is sleep and we literally have a job that prevents that, right? So you run calls that are horrific, dead kids and right, the terrible 10. You run calls that are designed to try to break you mentally. And then the one thing you could do to prevent PTSD from happening, depression, alcohol abuse, right, is sleep. And then our job doesn't let us sleep. And so it's, I find that kind of fascinating that we struggle with two things that can kill us.
because we don't sleep. so I am a huge, I mean, that can be a whole nother talk we have on sleep, I'll let Dr. Glenn Landry do that with you. He's
Jennifer (01:02:11.118)
Mm hmm. OK. Oh, that's amazing. Well, I look forward to making that connection. I struggle with sleep. I actually it's it's shift work for for 30 years of shift work, some form of shift work. And it is true that you bring things home with you and taking away the the the terrible 10, taking those out for a second, taking away your awful incident that happened, the
Benjamin Vernon (01:02:22.125)
Yes.
Jennifer (01:02:41.014)
the attempted murder, taking all of that aside. Sometimes you just bring home the frustration of that fourth call to the same trolley stop for yet another. You just bring that home. then of course, there's the frustrations that you can have with your working stress. There's ranks, there's chiefs, there's people that you're forced to work with that maybe weren't people that you would choose to work with.
There's the getting stuck, holding over and all of those issues. And so when you are laying there and you want to nap, for example, and you're just, your brain is wide awake and it's not even the bad, bad stuff. It's just that this is a stressful job. The mechanics of this job are stressful. They're stress inducing. So in the, it's been a little over 15 years now ago, I ended up
Benjamin Vernon (01:03:23.665)
Yes.
Jennifer (01:03:33.11)
deciding I'm trying to be a grownup. I'm in my 30s, I'm trying to be a grownup. And I went to make a relationship with a primary care physician, because in your 30s, you're just like, I'll see the doctor when I'm sick, and that's it. And I decided to establish a relationship with a primary care physician so that I could go in and make my case for help with sleeping. And so I'm on Ambien, and it works well for me -ish.
for me, I know that it's not the right thing for everybody to be on these meds and so on. But my whole life, I spoke to someone about it this morning, my whole life is set up on maximizing sleep. I don't drink anything caffeinated, I barely eat chocolate. And when I do, it's this furtive little taste of some chocolate and just know I'm gonna be wide awake all night. And I think it's the most important thing in the world that I buy the best mattress possible. Like I take out a mortgage.
to buy the best mattress possible because you should, as a shift worker, as somebody with a stressful job, as a human being on the planet, you should get into your bed and think, this is the most comfortable bed on the planet. There is no other bed as good as this, but that's what it should be like. And so to add to that now, the terrible 10, to add to that an attempted murder, to add to that the stress of the world that you get, yeah, it's, yeah.
Benjamin Vernon (01:04:37.136)
Yes.
Benjamin Vernon (01:04:41.275)
Yes.
Benjamin Vernon (01:04:53.201)
When it's funny, I realized as I was doing EMDR and I was healing and I was recovering, I realized I was on the fast track to PTSD anyways. Like my life choices, the way I was sleeping, the way I was handling caffeine and stimulants and burning the candle at both ends and running at the busiest firehouse as much as I could, I realized I was already...
starting to have symptoms of PTSD because I just wasn't taking care of my mental health. And honestly, what weird to say, I'm grateful from the stabbing because I was doing a slow decline and the stabbing was an immediate, like I realized something was wrong because it was so different, right? It was such an immediate change. The stabbing saved my life because I got treatment for that stabbing.
through EMDR and then I realized, ooh, I need to EMDR some other calls that have been bugging me. And then as I'm learning about mental health and I'm learning about sleep, I'm like, my God, I need to change my sleep habits. And so I'm doing so much better now, but before my stabbing, I wasn't doing anything right for my mental health, right? I was on the fast track to breaking and so I'm actually grateful for the misstabbing. I think that really helped.
helped. Weird as that sounds.
Jennifer (01:06:20.929)
I love that you can see the positive outcome of a very negative thing, that you're able to develop that resilience from something so awful happening. I'm going to click right now because I want to take a moment.
Jennifer (01:06:45.934)
Um, if you you game to keep going? I mean, either. Okay. So you can keep going through a bit because what I'm noticing is that we're at a point where we've been talking for an hour. And of course the first 15 minutes were just jabber and who's been oboe and you know, all of that stuff. Um, but I'd like to sort of transition over to talking about the, um, the, um, uh, the, your captain and the betrayal, the administrative betrayal. Uh, so I just wanted to make sure before
engaged in launching out a different topic that would do that. So thank you for sharing all of that. That's just really amazing. So I've got all of my talking points about the core of your thing, your podcast that you gave. So, all right. So I'm to click again and I'm just going to kind of segue and then Josh and I will figure out how to cut. And I'll just say, Hey, part one, part two, if we do it that way or, or
chunks and pieces. We try to keep these largely intact.
Jennifer (01:07:53.036)
Ben, thank you so much for your candor in talking about your mental health and the incident that happened, the stabbing and where you've gotten to from. I'm so impressed that in your ability, your resilience, your ability to say that I've learned lessons from this, I'm a better person as a result of it, and you've actually got gratitude for the challenge in your life. What would
what would you say to a department, someone from a department who's listening right now and realizes that they don't have these mechanisms in place. They don't have an avenue for mental health. They don't have a sleep doctor that they can get to or a code like cover now. I guess I'm kind of wondering if you can tell me your best suggestions for people, but maybe also if this has had any impact on your department as well.
Benjamin Vernon (01:08:48.603)
Well, yeah, okay, that's a big question. My department had nothing in place.
My entire apartment watched the video of my attempted murder. My chief was amazing. Chief Javier Maynar, who's long since retired, but the man at the time followed up with me regularly checking in with me. And I'm very grateful. I was very candid with him and I was telling him, know, hey, I'm not doing well. I'm having nightmares. Like this is horrible. And then, hey, I'm trying to get help and it's not working. And then, you know, we had lunch and I said, hey, I found this Dr. Foreman
and this guy is absolutely fantastic. The thing I had found, Dr. Foreman worked for a company called Focus Psychological Services, and it's a private entity, but they had a contract with the city just for the San Diego PD, and they had 12 therapists that were exclusively set aside. Their only job was to help San Diego PD. All of them could go for free as many times as they wanted. Their family members could go for free.
They could go even into retirement. So even after they retired, it was still available to them. I mean, just a ridiculously amazing program. And so I was telling my chief about this program and I said, hey, you know, by the way, Dr. Forman has never asked for a dime. I told him to keep a tally.
He's been helping me so much. I've spent so much time in his office on his couch crying my eyes out If he asked me to pay that bill Could you help me pay it because I just I think it's gonna sting Worth every penny, but man, it's gonna hurt and and he said hey, you know, I don't want you to pay a dime I'll take care of it. And so he I thought he was gonna pay out of some slush fund somewhere But he went to the city and said look, you know
Benjamin Vernon (01:10:42.673)
Focus is available to PD, I want the same company for fire. And the city, I think, agreed that, know, they, I'm guessing they saw my video and they're like, yep, like, okay. And so suddenly this company with 12 therapists who are culturally competent, who know how to work with police officers, who've helped me recover, they now had access to it. And when word got out that there were these culturally competent therapists,
that were free for the fire department, 10 % of my department signed up overnight. And so we have thousand members, a hundred people signed up in like the first month. That was a massive like red flag to my department, right? Like, holy crap, you know, we thought we were doing okay. Clearly we were wrong. So we kind of did a full stop. They created a health and safety office at the time was only worried about our physical health. You know, we were doing
yearly physicals, stress tests, blood work. And they kind of went to that chief and they went, hey, full stop, like focus on mental health. So we created a peer support team. We had one chaplain who was an amazing man, but we ended up with 18 more. I mean, just right, just throwing time, money and resources to our mental health program. So my department has created one of the most robust mental health programs, I think in the country.
We have a long way to go. Sadly, I only see the progress we haven't met, you know, because I'm so into this and I see where we still need to go. We have a lot of work to still do, but we have come a long way and we are leading the country in our mental health program, largely because we have 12 culturally competent therapists that are free to every firefighter and their families.
Right, and I can boast I don't think any other department in the country has that big a resource available, if that makes sense.
Jennifer (01:12:45.482)
That absolutely makes sense. And you've mentioned multiple times, and one of the notes that I took was that having your attack caught on video empowered you to say like, this really happened, this is a thing. I hadn't considered it from this point of view of the impact that now your department is able to look at the council or the mayor and say like, this is what happened to one of our people.
We often talk about video and the negatives of things being caught on video, but certainly a lot of positives here. Something to think about, yeah.
Benjamin Vernon (01:13:21.393)
Yeah, it really helped open the door. very grateful for that. But, and I'll just tell you, even though we have one of the most robust mental health programs in the country, we've still had two suicides in the last 18 months. So, and this is something we can definitely talk about with the terrible 10, but you got a long way to go, right? You got a long way to go,
Jennifer (01:13:44.265)
Yeah. Yeah. I'm so sorry to hear that. Yeah, I think let's go over to the terrible 10. Let's go back to the article that brought me to you and you to the podcast. And I just want to start off from a little bit of a side jaunt from what we've talked about up until now. You recognize that you needed mental health help. People helped you realize that by coming to you and saying like, wow,
This is a thing. You had the video to back it up. And one thing that I think many people that would be listening to the podcast might think is like, well, you know, I'm going to, don't need to get mental health help because I'm just going to go into the station. I'm to go sit around the coffee table. I'm going to, we're going to work this out. We're going to figure this out. But two things. One, there was a strange incident when you did seek out that coffee talk. And the other thing is you were prohibited from talking to
about the incident because there was a legal case. So I guess, could you sort of talk about why mental health on the outside was a better choice than the coffee table and also about what it felt like maybe to have your, you know, your BFFs, the people that you hang with every day at work and the people that you rely on and the people that experience the same thing as you and not being able to talk to
Benjamin Vernon (01:15:09.009)
Okay, man, you ask good questions and you are opening the door to a lot of things. right. I know one and I could talk for hours and so I'm afraid I'm gonna talk your ear off and I'm apologizing. So you're familiar with Dr. Jeff Mitchell? Yes, Dr. Jeff Mitchell is the man who created the critical incident stress management model. Okay. How he came up with it, he was a young kid.
Jennifer (01:15:14.328)
Hours, hours you're gonna be on the show.
Jennifer (01:15:27.202)
Yes, doctors, yes.
Yeah.
Benjamin Vernon (01:15:38.481)
18 or 19 on his way to college. He was a volunteer firefighter and because when I was 18, I was picking my nose like this guy was aware enough. They ran a terrible call and he saw the police officer there and when they were done with the call, the police officer got back in his car by himself and drove away and he got in a fire engine with a bunch of his crew and as they were talking.
about that terrible call. They were laughing, they were decompressing, and then they got back to the station, they sat around the table, they talked about it some more. They off gassed, right? They unloaded on each other. And he said, they ended up like a day or two later running another call with that same police officer. And he noticed his crew seemed to be doing very well in good spirits, and the cop looked like he was still on
He was still carrying the weight. And I mean, the guy's 18 or 19 and looks and goes, man, I bet if that cop had a bunch of friends to talk with, he'd be a lot better. He'd be like us. And that's what created the model. he goes through school, he gets his PhD, but the whole time he's thinking about that. And so that critical incident stress model came from the concept that as a group, if you can talk about a call, it helps
and prevents you from getting mental health issues, right? Which I think is so fascinating, it's so cool. So the first thing I tried when my first therapist told me to lay off the caffeine, I remember going, you've got a PhD and you are worthless to me. And I remember thinking, the one thing I've always enjoyed doing is going to the firehouse, laughing, joking, and I just need that decompression. Because I was wound tight. I was angry, I was aggressive.
You know, I had trouble going grocery shopping because this little old lady cut me off at the grocery store and my first, I wanted to throw her through a play glass window. And I remember my wife sent me shopping. came back an hour later with no groceries and she said, what the hell? And I said, I almost killed an old lady today. Like she cut me out with her car and I wanted to kill her. I can't go shopping. It's too stressful and it's too dangerous. You know, and my wife was like, what the hell? And so I just remember being very tight and
Benjamin Vernon (01:18:03.813)
thought, if I could just go to the firehouse, I'll be okay. And the very first, didn't even, you we're a huge department. I didn't look up on our roster. I know where all the fire stations are. I just drove to the closest one. And I thought, I'm gonna know somebody at this firehouse. And sure enough, I went into the kitchen around noon. After my appointment with the psychologist was a bust, I walked into the kitchen and it's a guy from my fire academy. And not only that, he's a close friend. His wife and my wife, we've double dated and gone to baseball games together.
Like this is, of all of the thousand people I could have run into, this is one of my closest friends and I'm excited to see him. He's excited to see me. He knows about my incident and with our dark humor and he's trying to decompress, right? He, as a joke, pulls a knife on me. And now if he did that, it would get the reaction you're looking for. It would make me laugh. But when he pulled that knife, man, I went into full.
fight or flight and I remember I was mentally ready to kill
And he could tell right away, like the joke did not land the way he wanted it to. And I just felt his rage, right? And I was just like, I was gonna kill him. I was gonna kill him. And he very quickly put the knife away and he goes, dude, I'm so sorry. And I went, no, that's my fault. I came in unannounced. I didn't tell you I was coming. I shouldn't be here, my fault. And so I got in my car, I drove home and I just started bawling. You know, I was very quickly moving toward that.
midnight session of contemplating suicide. as long as my people understand that our humor and our group therapy works to a point, right, it is efficient up to a point. You you sprain an ankle, therapy, rehab therapy, right, and doing basic exercises with bands and weightlifting is the answer.
Benjamin Vernon (01:20:08.347)
But if you break your leg, that's not gonna help, right? Like you can't physically, you can't rehab a broken bone. You have to go get surgery. And so I didn't realize that. I'm at the point, I need surgery. I need therapists, professionals. I need to work on my head. I need to do EMDR. I was trying to do rehab on a broken bone, if that analogy works. And so it's just critical incidence stress management is an amazing tool.
Jennifer (01:20:31.062)
Mm
Benjamin Vernon (01:20:37.689)
Understanding the terrible ten is amazing But as long as my people understand that gets you to a certain point. It's a good first or second tier response to a mental injury Beyond that You need help right you need to go to a pro you need to go to a psychologist You need to sit on that couch you need to grab a box of Kleenex and man you need to ball your eyes out and and just you know, you need a pro who can Figure out those root problems and get you fixed
that makes
Jennifer (01:21:08.212)
no, that that absolutely makes sense. And then in your your interview on the podcast, the previous podcast, you mentioned, sorry, this is a two parter. I don't want to say the previous podcast. So this is very interesting. And in your interview on Fire Rescue, one podcast, you mentioned that you were at work with the same people and there were these awkward silent moments where you just couldn't talk about it like
there was an elephant in the room and you didn't really talk about it because you couldn't because of the legal case.
Benjamin Vernon (01:21:42.011)
Yeah, so that was a, first of all, I got the mental health help that I needed. I got EMDR, I recovered. I felt mentally stronger than I ever had. I was sleeping great. And I was very excited to go back to work and reunite with my crew. I remember the lawyers had told us, you cannot sink your stories. You can't get your story straight, so to speak. Because, and he goes, and our,
Our guy was amazing. He was very talented. He said, I've done enough of these. When the story is identical, it looks fake. When you guys share your story and they don't line up, that's actually way more realistic and way more people can buy into that more because everyone that has a different opinion is going to see different things. And he said, and so I'm going to ask and I know how hard it is. Please don't discuss the case.
Well, all of us, all four of us were, I mean, we really wanted justice and we wanted the guy that attacked us to go to prison, right? I mean, that was a big goal of ours. And so we all discussed it at the morning meeting, like, hey, you we want this to be successful. We don't want to sink our stories. So let's all agree right now, we're going to do what the DA is telling us. We're not going to talk about the stabbing, okay? And right, and the captain's like, look, I
this guy to go to prison for trying to kill you. So let's just agree we're not going to talk about it." And all of us went, yes sir, like okay, you got it, like no
then we had nothing to talk about because that was all we were thinking about. And so, you you've been on a fire engine. mean, they're, first of all, those headsets, right? I mean, if those walls could talk, all of us would probably be fired. We are gross and we talk about horrific things and we make fun of each other ruthlessly, right? I mean, anyone from the outside would be like, you guys are borderline abusive with each other, but
Benjamin Vernon (01:23:50.287)
We laugh and we just pick on each other and we make jokes. It is a lively place to sit and talk. It's a fun. And so when I tell you that it was dead silent in that engine almost every shift, you know that is a weird, unpleasant experience, right? And it wasn't a crew that didn't get along. was a crew that...
Jennifer (01:24:07.724)
That's a very strange dynamic.
Benjamin Vernon (01:24:15.301)
that loved each other but then didn't know what to talk about because all we wanted to talk about was the stabbing and then, and you'll appreciate this and I'm sure we'll talk about it
I knew right away my captain was not doing well. He needed a decompress, he needed a critical and stress debriefing, he needed professional help, he needed surgery. He was hurting. And my engineer and my firefighter, my partner, they did not go to the lengths that I did for mental health help. And so I could tell as I was working with these guys, I felt like I'd fully recovered. I'm bouncing around, I've got a spring in my step, I'm smiling.
I'm healed, my crew is not. And that was also hard because I didn't know enough at the time. I've learned so much in the last eight years. I didn't know enough at the time of how to help them except to tell them to go to therapy. And our stigma was still pretty intense and they were reluctant. They didn't have a video to show people of their mental health injuries.
And so it was hard for me because I watched three men I very much care about struggle and I wasn't carrying the burden of that call anymore and they were. So that was tough.
Jennifer (01:25:37.89)
Yeah. I can only imagine the, I said the elephant in the room and I'm sure it's more like the skyscraper in the room or something just so big and with its own force of gravity. If you don't mind and if you're comfortable, I'd like to ask it this way. Will you please tell us your captain's story?
Benjamin Vernon (01:26:02.683)
Yes. Well, I like to say all four of us, what was the outcome of all four of us? So all four men at the time of the stabbing, the second the knife went into my back, all four of us were within three feet of each
So this happened to all of us. I had a collapsed lung, a hemo pneumothorax. I got rushed to the hospital. They had to give me a chest tube. My partner Alex rushed to the hospital. They had to clean out his wounds and sew him up. And then my captain and my engineer were waiting outside the hospital for us with our families in the hallway.
So all of us were there, we all experienced it together.
I was having nightmares. I went and got mental health help. did EMDR. I offloaded not only that call, but I managed to offload all of the calls that had been, I'd been carrying for 20 years. My partner started struggling with nightmares. And of course he was my confidant and he and I were texting back and forth at two in the morning while we were going through this. He was having nightmares as well. His nightmares were very different than mine. I was ripping the sky apart in my sleep. My partner confided in me
He was having a dream where he's with his wife and they're in their house and they have a gate. And he saw Stabby trying to come through the gate and he tried to close the door on him. And as he's closing the door, the guy's arm comes through and prevents him from locking the door. So he tells his wife, know, get in the house, get in the house. And then he pushes and then turns and runs and runs into the house and gets to the front door and tries to push the front door closed. And the guy's foot comes through the door and he can't close the door. And so he's like, get in the bedroom, get in the bedroom.
Benjamin Vernon (01:27:56.099)
and they run in the bedroom and then he leaves the front door and runs to the bedroom and as he tries to close the bedroom door, the guy's arm comes through, get in the bathroom, get in the, right? And so his world is just getting smaller and smaller and smaller and this guy is getting closer and closer. And then he said, you know, it was the bathroom door. He couldn't close it. The guy is preventing him from closing the bathroom door. There is no more doors, right? There's nothing. And so he would open the door and ready to attack and he
Benjamin Vernon (01:28:24.443)
he would wake up screaming. And he and I are texting back and forth, you know, at two in the morning. I went workers comp, he went EAP. And I try very hard not to smash EAP when I travel and speak, but a consistent theme of the first responders I've talked to that have tried to seek mental health help have tried EAP. And a lot like workers comp, they're not culturally competent and they don't help much.
And so Alex didn't get a lot of help. He tried to go to EAP. The woman said, if you're having trouble sleeping, lay off the caffeine, which was what my first guy told me. And so a running joke with my partner and I, if we didn't know the answer to the question, we would say, hey man, lay off the caffeine. And I'd be like, hey, we're out of paper towels, where are the paper towels? And he'd be like, drinking coffee, Ben. And I'm like, copy, you don't know. And that was kind of our inside joke. My partner and I very active.
in the department were engaged. We taught in the fire academy. We taught rescue classes together. We, we did a lot of, of teaching and, that, and my partner, he, he's doing okay, but he didn't get as much mental health help as I have. And he's kind of, what's that quiet quitting thing, you know, where he's at work, he does his shift, but he's at a very quiet station and he doesn't engage.
He doesn't teach any classes anymore. Like he does his work. He goes home, right? My engineer who, in my opinion, helped save my life too. When I was getting stabbed, my engineer grabbed me and tried to throw me out of the way to clear me. Also actively engaged. We were all on the heavy rescue team together and on USAR together. And he has, he has kind of quit a lot of that too. He's very quiet, reserved. does his shifts. He goes home. My captain took a brunt of
the abuse, the media attacked him showing the video clip of him pushing the guy over and only showing that clip, right? Not before, not after, just showing that clip and the media would show him actively pushing this guy over and we got labeled the aggressors, right? We were told that it was our fault that we got in that fight. The men and women in my department bought into that a
Benjamin Vernon (01:30:48.785)
You know, they saw that video and they would turn their backs on him when he walked into a fire station. He got a lot of grief from his own people for that move. And firefighters actively would say to his face, hey man, it's your fault. Your guys got stabbed.
As you can imagine, he did not take that well. He started drinking and he was already a drinker, right? I'm not gonna sugar coat it. But if he was a drinker, I mean, now he's a professional drinker. He drank a lot. And then he got in a domestic dispute with his girlfriend and he hit her. And when Petey arrived, he was led away in handcuffs. About a year...
and a half after my injury, I was back in court and I was testifying on behalf of my captain. And I did not want to condone domestic violence. mean, dear God, that's right. I'm not defending that. But I was on the stand pleading with the judge going, listen, and I'm trying like doing a terrible job, but I'm trying to explain PTSD and EMDR and all of these things and knowing full well
All of that had accumulated from my incident, right? And he could have been convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor. And I was pleading with the judge, please make this a misdemeanor. Let him get help for alcohol, let him get help for PTSD, let him do EMDR, let him do these things, because I promise you, don't make him a felon. And the judge was very kind, he listened, he smiled.
But at the end of the day, he slammed the gavel down and he convicted my captain of a felony. And so my captain lost his job. And he luckily didn't have to go to prison, but he wore an ankle bracelet for, I don't know, three or four years. And so, you know, when I share this story, a lot of people ask, like, how did my crew do? All four of us were standing within three feet of each other. I'm the only one that got mental health
Benjamin Vernon (01:33:04.101)
and I'm doing fantastic. I can do podcasts with you, right? This is cool. But my captain drank, fought, and ended up losing his job all from this incident. So, I try to tell people, if you don't think mental health is important, I mean, there's an example, right? My engineer and my partner are both, all of us are captains now, but they all do just kind of, they do their thing and they go,
and my captain lost his job. that is the answer to your question.
Jennifer (01:33:43.448)
There's so much positive in your story and there's so much negative in your captain's story. They're two sides of the exact same coin. And it's interesting. And I appreciate you telling me about the rest of your crew because I was curious, but what I knew of was your story and I knew of your captain's story. And I didn't know that about the other two.
And so it sounds like there's sort of a light that's gone out of them or a light that didn't turn on in them for the rest of their career that maybe did come on for
Benjamin Vernon (01:34:15.441)
Yeah, that's a good way look at it. I rediscovered my passion for the job. How's that? Lots and lots and and I get a lot of credit it I mean that therapy I can't tell you how much time I spent in the therapist office Rebuilding my life, you know, and it looks like it's easy and I hope I don't make it sound like it's easy Like all you got to do is go talk to a therapist. You'll be fine like it was a ton of work and you know, dr. Forman would give me homework and
Jennifer (01:34:17.605)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Benjamin Vernon (01:34:43.407)
You know, I'd have to journal and I'd have to read articles that he gave. Like I was working really hard to rebuild my mental health. So it's not easy and it's not that the thing I like about surgery is they knock you out and you just wake up fixed. And honestly, when I went to therapy, I was kind of hoping for that. Like, can I just sit here and you fix me? And it didn't work that way. Right. It was a ton of work. Talk about physical therapy, right?
The weightlifting coach doesn't lift the weights for you. He just yells at you until you lift it, right? Like that's kind of what therapy is. It's brutal. Like it was a ton of work. I didn't enjoy it. I was very unhappy. I wanted to quit a lot because I just didn't want to do my homework assignment. I didn't want to journal all my feelings and I, know, ew, gross. But man, I'm so glad I did and I feel great. But yeah, it had such a gnarly impact on my crew that one.
event, know, ruined, in my opinion, ruined three lives. Four, if you count Stavvy, poor Stavvy's in prison for 24 years. his life is negatively impacted
Jennifer (01:35:52.77)
Yeah, lots of lots of it. So all right. In your article that you wrote, your second of two articles, which is short of two thousand ships, you talk about administrative betrayal. You talk about your captain and that if the administration had been there for him in certain ways, that it may have prevented the decline that he went down.
You specifically the quote that I highlighted to ask you about. You said, I couldn't help but hold our administration partly responsible for his downfall. The intense public pressure to assign blame seemed to drive their decisions, even when the investigation was flawed. It felt like they cave to external pressure, betraying my captain and intensifying his troubles. Can you tell me about
pressure that they faced and what you do.
Benjamin Vernon (01:36:52.731)
Yeah, so first of all, it's interesting. My friend, Yanni Klein, he is an EMS chief for FDNY. And because I've gotten to travel all over and share my story and work with Drexel and the IFF, I've gotten to meet the coolest people. But know, I get to meet you. Like, this has been such a cool journey. But Yanni Klein called me he said, hey man, I want you to write an article for Gems. And you know, this would be the second article I'd written for them. And the first one had an amazing.
impact on my life. So I was like, okay, what do want me to write about? He goes, well, will you please talk about administrative betrayal and the terrible 10? Now here's what I want to share with you. And this is interesting. The terrible 10, when I first learned about it, administrative betrayal was one of the 10. And as the years go by and I saw lecture after lecture after lecture, I noticed that administrative betrayal
was often left out. And I thought, well, that's really interesting that that one is no longer considered a terrible 10. And I'm like, that's interesting. And so I did a deep dive. And here's what I can tell you. If you look at the terrible 10, right? Dead child, mass casualty, prolonged extrication without a favorable result, meaning somebody's like pinned under a train.
And as you're waiting to get the train lift off, you talk to them and you get to know them and you talk about their grandkids, right? Like you get to know them as people instead of patients. And then they lift the train off the person and then the person passes away, right? Like that kind of thing really messes with your head. Well, administrative betrayal though, the first article I wrote for Yanni, he rejected it. He's like, no man, that's not what I wanted. the I wrote is why administrative betrayal is no longer in the terrible
And it's for this reason. Because if you make a mistake on the job, it is your department's duty to correct that behavior, yes? If you make a mistake, and as a captain, as I was learning to be a captain, and I was going through the captain's academy and they were training to be a captain, the thing they kept saying over and over and over
Jennifer (01:39:04.353)
It up,
Benjamin Vernon (01:39:16.849)
is the minimal amount of discipline to correct behavior. That was the thing I kept being told. What is the minimal amount of discipline? And in the fire department, you know this, 99 % of the problems can be solved with just a cap to go on, hey, knock it off, right? And that ends it. Everyone's like, oh, shit, cap told to stop, right? And that ends the, you've corrected the behavior. Hey, knock it off, done, right? Verbal, just stop.
and then it stops.
Benjamin Vernon (01:39:52.625)
If if and discipline is progressive, we learn that too, right? Hey, it starts with verbal knock it off and then it comes to a written. Hey, I am writing down that what you did was unacceptable and you need to stop and I need you to sign this document right and that man if that doesn't solve the other 1 % right after written then you go to suspension right? We gotta suspend you but then again for us in my department it can be a suspension for 12
then it can go to 24, then it can go to 48, then it can go to 72, right? Like even that is progressive. And then after that, now you're talking like you're in a world of hurt, right? Now you're talking about getting terminated.
The thing that's interesting though is administrative betrayal.
You could be disciplined and take that as betrayal. And so I'll give you an example. And what I wrote, my original article is two different stories of guys in my department. And one I really feel was administrative betrayal. And that was we ran a call. This homeless naked guy was up in a tree and they brought in the heavy rescue team. And my buddy looked at this guy in the tree and was like, how in the world are we going to get him out of the tree?
where he doesn't get hurt, we don't get hurt. And they came up with a plan, they put up an aerial ladder, they tied a rope to the aerial ladder, and then they stayed connected to the rope so they could grab this guy. Long story short, at the end, they broke the ladder.
Benjamin Vernon (01:41:33.541)
aerial ladder on top of the truck, the rope snagged and it broke the ladder and it put the truck out of service. And the chief was pissed, know, the chief in charge of trucks was pissed and disciplined my buddy. And I remember being very angry about that because I thought he didn't deserve that. He didn't do it on purpose. He wasn't running around. They weren't pulling pranks. They were trying to save a life. They broke a truck. And my buddy took that very personal. He was very angry about
Jennifer (01:41:51.664)
you
Benjamin Vernon (01:42:02.043)
To me, that is administrative betrayal. You are trying to come up with discipline to correct behavior. You don't need to correct that behavior. He didn't do it on purpose, right? It was in the, and it was especially in the line of duty to save someone's life. That makes me very angry. He was angry and he had every right to be angry. And so I wanna caution departments, you like you gotta really look at your discipline. Do you, does this need to happen, right? Do
Is it the minimal amount of discipline to affect change? And the number one thing I hear chiefs say, and I've even caught myself saying it is, I'm gonna make an example out of them. And as soon as that sentence comes out of your mouth, you're like, Nope, right? Like you are going to over discipline. And that can lead to, that administrative betrayal, right? Leads to people don't wanna work anymore, right? They don't wanna work for you. They've lost motivation. They feel betrayed.
feel like the department's got their back, right? That is rough. But there's a flip side to that coin, and I had another guy in my department, he took a class, it was a lecture PowerPoint type class, he brought booze to the class, proceeded to get drunk, and was disrupted in the class.
The department was pissed and they suspended him. He felt betrayed. He felt like that was over and above. He felt like they were trying to make an example out of him and he felt betrayed. he honestly, you know, he spiraled. He spiraled quite a bit.
You can view that as the trail, or you could view that as, well, what lesson can I learn from this? What can I do to improve? And you could not take it personal.
Jennifer (01:44:05.304)
I'm gonna interrupt you there for a second. You broke up when you said you can think of this as betrayal or not. So you had just, so I'm gonna click. Okay, it got really metallic and Star Wars and C -3PO right there. So, okay, go.
Benjamin Vernon (01:44:13.829)
Yeah, so you, yeah, go ahead.
Benjamin Vernon (01:44:20.879)
Okay. Sorry. Yeah, so the problem with administrative betrayal is it couldn't be just. can be a, know, department can hand down a just sentence. But if the person feels betrayed and thinks that it's overly abusive, right? And so administrative betrayal is tricky because like my buddy who brought
Almost you know every one of my department goes no man you screwed up. That was your fault You should take your punishment and learn from it and so you know the department is trying to Discipline and keep and change behavior and letting everyone know that you cannot come to class Pretty much a booze and get drunk. I mean every one of us like no dude. That was a good punishment right that punishment fit that
Jennifer (01:44:54.038)
you
Benjamin Vernon (01:45:17.754)
but he took it very personal and he spiraled. And so I think the reason administrative betrayal often is not in the terrible tent anymore is because it's all about perspective, right? Is the punishment worth the crime? And then does the person take it that way? And positivity, gratitude, all of these things I learned in mental health, if someone passes down punishment and you can look at it as instead of why are they doing this to
learn, what can I learn from this? That change in mental health, that change in perspective can be very positive. so administrative betrayal is often not shown in the terrible 10 because it's a perspective issue. Whereas a dead kid, prolonged extrication, mass casualty, that's very black and white. And so the first article I wrote for Jim's, I tried to take that route and my buddy
on the board of Jim's, rolling back, he goes, no, no, man, I wanna know specifically about your captain. And I go, boy, okay, you got it. And so yeah, the jury finally got guilty, but the defense attorney did a very good job in trial trying to paint us with a very negative brush. And this, I mean, we could have a class on just courtroom antics.
Jennifer (01:46:44.899)
Mm -hmm.
Benjamin Vernon (01:46:46.491)
But the prosecutor would show a section of video, and I was sitting in the audience, he would show a section of video, we look like saints. And then the defense attorney would take a different section of video and we look like jerks. And then we'd watch another video and we look like saints. And then the defense attorney would show another section of video, we look like jerks. And man, you could take these slices of the call and paint very different pictures.
And one of the things the defense attorney did, which I appreciated just style wise, right? The guy's very talented. He put my captain, he showed a clip of the video of him pushing the guy over and then he put it on repeat and he had it playing in the background when he was talking to the jury. And he's like, look, you know, my guy was just trying to help and you know, he was provoked. But the whole time the video is playing in the background of my captain knocking the guy over, knocking the guy over, knocking the guy
And I smile because I'm like, that's very clever, right? He is just showing that clip and just showing that little section. Well, the media really ran with it. the story when I first got hurt was heroic firefighters are almost murdered. Six, eight months later, we're in trial. And now the story's coming out, jerk firefighters, provoke fight with
And it's like, whoa, like what happened? know, the narrative changed in the media and we're jerks. And so my department, you know, the whole trial's over. The guy's found guilty. He's sentenced to 24 years. Like it's done. My crew, we're still working together, right? We're still a unit. And then I got a call from a chief and he goes, okay, we're doing a fact finding, basically our internal affairs. You know, we need to investigate captain, you your captain.
and we're coming in to interview you for discipline. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like the jury found this guy guilty, right? If they had, if they said, no, yeah, after listening to all of the evidence and seeing all of the video and hearing all of the stories, they said, no, that guy tried to kill these guys. He is responsible for that fight. To me, that's we're done, right? Like we're done.
Benjamin Vernon (01:49:11.323)
The trial is where you're going to find out all of the facts. But the media is still playing, you know, jerk firefighters start fight. And so my department has this big fact finding. We have a big internal affairs review. I'm interviewed, you know, they interview everyone and they decided that my captain was responsible for starting that fight and they suspended him for four days.
just you know discipline is the minimal amount of discipline to change behavior. Do you honestly think my captain would ever push somebody over ever again and then if he did you don't think he would have made sure all of us were on the same page so we could all tackle somebody and put them in restraints or chemically restrain them like like you don't need discipline to affect change there's no way I'm make the same mistake.
And so that, think largely not having the support of the department and feeling betrayed, getting suspended after the trial found us not guilty, you know, in a way, that broke him. You know, that really added and contributed to his mental health decline. And so that's what I wrote to our, it was, here's an example of poor leadership, right? You feel the need to discipline based
a media interview, right? Like, that was frustrating.
Jennifer (01:50:46.168)
Thank you for your sharing all of that. I looked, it was a new term to me. Administrative betrayal was a new term for me when I read the article that you wrote. And since that time in talking to you and planning for this, and I looked back and I find that it really is prevalent in articles about law enforcement. And I think this is pretty apparent.
Certainly there are bad actors in all walks of life and all shapes, colors, and flavors of human beings. There are bad actors and I don't want to talk about bad actors. Things warrant scrutiny. They warrant investigation. They warrant looking out for the weaker man. That's all of that is absolutely true. But it was really overwhelming actually as I started to look it up and I realized
that law enforcement officers deal with this on a regular basis. one of the particular articles that I read, I highly recommend you just because if
Click,
Jennifer (01:52:00.026)
One of the articles said, when an officer is getting hammered by the press, he or she is totally undefended in the court of public opinion. When his or her leadership courts the press or remains silent, it becomes an administrative betrayal that causes both trauma and moral injury. And so they actually liken silence on the department's side to be equally and in some of the articles I read even more concerning.
And conversely, we had a circumstance in the past couple of years where some officers were involved in something. I'm not going to second guess what happened on the scene, but the footage in its totality was really damning of their callousness toward a human being. And their chief got on the news and basically said, I have no defense and we are going to figure this out. And I thought that was one of the best responses.
So I'll bring this back to you now, these thoughts back to you. At the time of this incident, were a, you were facing backwards in the jump seat. You were, you were a line firefighter paramedic. Now you're a captain. Now you've got that responsibility for the crew and you feel that weight on your shoulders. But I'm curious with your perspective then or your perspective now, what would you have liked?
your department to do at that time? What would have been the ideal thing? I'm sure in your imagination, because it's clear that you put a lot of imagination to your problems, what would have been the ideal thing to say or do, Ben? What might you do in that same circumstance?
Benjamin Vernon (01:53:44.337)
So what's funny is my department took care of me better than any department in the history of departments could have taken care of me. They checked on me regularly. They, you I asked for help paying a bill and they ended up getting a contract for the entire department for mental health. They realized I was struggling.
They created a peer support team. They brought in chaplains. They brought in dogs. You could not have asked for a better response from me. And that's why I think it's so funny that I, I mean, my department went above and beyond and took care of me. Amazing leadership, amazing, right? Chief Maynar following up with me every week through the whole process, taking me out to lunch, listening to me, and
trying everything he could to help me through the process.
That's why I cannot badmouth my department because they went above and beyond for me. I just think it was so funny that then my captain didn't get that same level of love. The video showed me getting stabbed. The video showed him pushing the guy over. So they took care of me with everything they had. They went above and beyond and became the greatest department in the history of the country in mental health. And
hammered and smashed my captain. So was like, dang it guys, you did such a good job with me, why couldn't we extend that to him? Honestly, what I've learned, and this is still to this day, I received 12 PowerPoint slides on mental health. When I was a brand new EMT, the manual, right, which was a 1 ,700 page encyclopedia,
Benjamin Vernon (01:55:39.217)
The first chapter is health and wellness of the EMT, and there is a paragraph in there about our own mental health. 12 slides. Well, I am actively teaching EMT, the lecture's coming up on mental health, and I'm very excited. Well, I counted 17 slides. So we've improved in 20 years five more slides toward mental health. There is no training.
When I went to engineer school, right? When they train me how to be an engineer, they train me about the pump and the ladder, how the hydraulics worked and how to change the oil. When I went to captain school, they taught us about discipline and they taught us about, you know, the proper way to run a crew and how to be a good team leader. Nothing about mental health, nothing about the signs and symptoms, what to look out for, right? Nothing. So the fact that my department
stepped up huge and took care of me, but then didn't know how to handle my captain. No one gets a lot of training on mental health. And so I have thought a lot about it. To me, if you want to affect a culture, you want to change a culture, the first thing you do is you got to train your probies. You got to teach them about mental health and put a lot of time and effort into educating them on their own mental health. But then every time someone goes for a promotion, that's an opportunity to train
And so to be a captain, need to mental health training. Italian chief, you need to get mental health training. You want to go higher than Italian chief? Man, you better know a lot about mental health. Because that's what leadership's about, understanding where your people are coming from. So that to me, if I could change anything, it would be more education at every rank on this topic so that there is more understanding.
and we can do a better job of taking care of our
Jennifer (01:57:40.91)
think that's just an excellent thought. And you're right, in the EMT class, 17 slides is about right. I suspect that your students are going to come out with a lot more perspective than the 17 slides. Yeah.
Benjamin Vernon (01:57:58.577)
feel really bad for them actually. They get hammered on mental health. I'm sure they're probably over it, but they just want to get out of the AMT class and go work in the field. But yeah, my AMT students, they get a lot more than 17 slides. I feel
Jennifer (01:58:03.456)
Yeah.
Jennifer (01:58:10.09)
All right. I kind of want to wrap up and talk to you little bit about what I've been working on at school because we started talking in the pre stuff about it and it does tie into this. And it's the idea of hardiness, -A -R -D -I -N -E -S -S. Somebody said you're working on tardiness and I'm like, no, no, tardiness. So I try to spell it out every time I get, but there's this idea about hardiness
Benjamin Vernon (01:58:32.401)
Yes.
Jennifer (01:58:37.07)
Hardiness is the ability, this is my words, but I'm gonna read it from one of my writings for school here because this is a paper that's due and I don't wanna get it wrong. So hardiness is a series of attitudes and characteristics that help an individual cope with adversity. It's the ability to anticipate, react, adapt and overcome hardship. And so hardiness is this word. And then I contrast that, think that resilience, it's easy to get those two.
sort of merged together, but resilience then is the ability to come out the other side of hardship and return to a normative baseline. And so bounce back, get back to where you were before, be able to see the beauty in the work that you do, the ability to turn that light on and have
Benjamin Vernon (01:59:19.259)
Yes.
Jennifer (01:59:33.974)
And yeah, so reading, I've got, there's a great book called Hardiness, literally Hardiness by Spine and Bartone that's been the core of my learning for this class. And then there's some great books about leadership and high altitude leadership and gosh, a couple of others that all tie into it. But I think really what you're talking about though is instilling
the youth of today, right? Our probationary EMT classes, firefighters, police officers, anybody who chooses these helping careers to just instill in them this idea that bad things are gonna happen and it's your perspective that you have on it. And that determines whether you're gonna be able to come out the other side. And part of it is looking after yourself physically. So I regret that you and I scheduled
the week before my class ends because we could have covered all of this. I'd have an A, there'd be, you know, the instructor would be joining us on the podcast. It would have just, you know, this is one of those moments, but your perseverance in getting yourself help is incredibly impressive to me and your willingness to talk about it so candidly. The time that you spend traveling around and sharing your story and these hard lessons with other people,
It's just wonderful. And I make a special note that when you were interviewed on the Fire Rescue One podcast, which was several years ago, your emotional level is still the same. You're still tied to the story. You haven't told it so many times that you can tell it without showing the emotion on your face and in your voice. It's very real to you. And now it's very real to us. So I really appreciate that. Thank
Benjamin Vernon (02:01:23.281)
Yeah, thank you. I'm good about talking about stabbing. I can watch the video. I'm totally fine with all of that. I don't break down. But as soon as I start thinking about all the people that sacrificed for me, you know, my partner tackled on that guy and taken a knife to the back to save me. My peer support buddy who, you know, reached out and handed me a tattered business card.
a doctor who's willing to see me for free. I mean, just the people who sacrificed, my wife who was along for the ride, right? As soon as I think about all the people that went above and beyond for me, right away. So yeah, it's still raw for me on that one, because I can't pay that back, I can't. And so I only can try to pay it forward and...
coming on a podcast like yours is how I do that. I try to pay it forward. try to show my appreciation for them by trying to share my story. hopefully someone will get something out of this and, you know, reach out and get help. That's the goal.
Jennifer (02:02:32.51)
Check the box for hardiness, check the box for resilience.
Benjamin Vernon (02:02:36.335)
Yes, but again, I worked hard on that, right? Like that was a lot of work. You must know this man, Dr. Seligman.
Jennifer (02:02:45.698)
Yes, one of our books.
Benjamin Vernon (02:02:48.483)
Okay, so he kind of is, I mean, he's the president of the APA, the America Psychiatric Association, and is known as the father of positive psychology. So I looked him up, he created the first ever masters in positive psychology. And so I was going to take it. I was like, I need to learn this skill, it's going be great. So I was on UPenn, he did it through UPenn. It is the only masters of its kind that he created.
So I was online, I was looking like how to apply, and they said, hey, know, here are all the thesis from a lot of our students. And so I started going through all the thesis. And sure enough, there's a thesis, Positive Psychology and How It Should Be Applied to the Fire Service by a woman named Karen Depa, D -E -P -P -A. I'll put you in touch with
Jennifer (02:03:41.697)
Okay, all right. List is getting long here.
Benjamin Vernon (02:03:44.753)
Yeah, so I read her thesis. It was 82 pages. It was an easy read. It was a ton of fun. And her email was on the bottom. And so I took a chance. Her email was an AOL account. And I'm like, well, this is not going to go anywhere. I'm sure this account is dead. But I sent her an email. And I said, hey, I'd like to talk to you. I hit Send, and my phone rang. And she said, hi, I'm Karen Depa. You wanted to talk about my thesis? And I'm like, holy shit.
So she created a program for first responders on the power of positive psychology. And so I took her class. And it's a game changer. It's a game changer. It is very good. And she took everything she learned from Dr. Seligman and created a curriculum for first responders to take on how to build hardiness and resilience. you got it. I'll send you her info. You got to interview her. She's amazing.
Jennifer (02:04:40.482)
Amazing.
I love
Benjamin Vernon (02:04:43.345)
Yeah, but that so I took her class and learned a ton about positive psychology and and gratitude meaning compassion forgiveness and acceptance. That's what dr. Foreman He beat that into me But every everything in life looking at it from a lens of gratitude meaning compassion forgiveness and acceptance and and so that's That's how I live now. I try to live my life that way you build our knees you build resilience
by trying to find the positive. Find the lesson, right? What's the lesson? What is life trying to teach me? Not why is life doing this to me? What is life trying to teach me? And that is a game changer in perspective and it will build hardiness and build resilience. So you know this, Jennifer, because you're writing a paper on
Jennifer (02:05:29.966)
Okay. Yeah. Right. I'm about to climb a really tall mountain. okay. Well, Ben, thank you. Thank you again. You have devoted two plus hours to me, to the podcast, to the greater world of public service. And I really appreciate you. Thank you. I'm going to hit stop now. And so I hit, okay, I
Benjamin Vernon (02:05:54.319)
Thank you. Okay.
Jennifer (02:06:00.356)
make sure so hit stop