Podcast: 'Modern Warriors: Law Enforcement Edition' on FOX Nation Highlights the Struggles Officers Face on the Street
FOX Nation, the subscription video streaming service from FOX News, is now offering a free one-year subscription to active law enforcement officers, firefighters, paramedics and other first responders. The show Modern Warriors, hosted by former Army National Guard officer and Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, recently debuted an episode focused on law enforcement, which is now streaming on FOX Nation.
Modern Warriors: Law Enforcement Edition features police veterans Betsy Smith, Randy Sutton, Garry McCarthy and Bryan Camden. Smith is a well-respected trainer who retired in 2009 as a 29-year veteran of a large metropolitan police department in the Chicago suburbs. Sutton spent close to 24 years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and is a nationally known expert and commentator. McCarthy most recently served as Chicago Police Superintendent and previously led the Newark Police Department in New Jersey after spending a majority of his career with the NYPD. This summer, Camden resigned as an officer with a police department in Ohio, citing politics and anti-police culture.
Hegseth, who recently spoke with Officer.com, says that while Modern Warriors was initially created to showcase the stories of military veterans, the events of the last year-and-a-half have shown how dangerous it is an be an officer in America and have highlighted the struggles faced by the profession. “What was so stark about what they shared was how much policing has changed, not just in the last 10 or 5 years, but just in the last 2 and 1. With limits and scrutiny, to the point where it’s almost impossible for them to do their job, and most starkly, their inability as a result to recruit the types and caliber of Americans that we need to fill the ranks of our police departments.”
Smith, Sutton and McCarthy all provided examples and statistics to underscore how difficult the job has become, while Camden echoed a lot of the sentiments of rank-and-file officers who feel like they’re now viewed as the “bad guys” by the public.
“(Camden) said—without mincing words—politics has taken over policing and that his job is nearly impossible to do,” says Hegseth. “With a family, a wife and young kids, he felt like leaving the door every morning, he signed up to do good in the community and felt like he’s as much a target as criminals are as far as how justice is considered in the job that he does.”
The original idea of Modern Warriors was to create the feel of what Hegseth describes as “Vets in a bar.” This setting has allowed military Veterans to share stories that they wouldn’t otherwise tell because they are comfortable with other Veterans. This is the same environment Modern Warriors: Law Enforcement Edition sought to emulate. “I almost fade out of the conversation and you feel like you’re just listening to four dedicated police officers talking about how difficult their profession has become,” says Hegseth. “Initially, when you are more of an outsider, you tread a little bit more lightly. I don’t want to pretend to understand the experiences that they’ve faced in their decades in law enforcement. The split-second decisions that they have to make, the second-guessing that has come into play and the new scrutiny that they deal with.”
He notes, however, that during the filming of the episode, he couldn’t help but draw parallels to his military service. “When I was a platoon leader in Iraq in 2005 and 2006, my job was basically dependent on whether my military leadership at the battalion and brigade level was going to support the operations we were doing and if there was a disconnect between the guidance of political leadership or JAG officers, a disconnect between them and what warfighters were doing, that ambiguity—all it leads to is hesitation. That can lead to deadly outcomes in much more dangerous situations.”
Hegseth says he owes a debt of gratitude to officers for the dangers they face on a daily basis. “I deployed a couple of times for a year in a couple of different places. These officers effectively deploy every day from the confines of their homes into a community, and they want to do good and they throw themselves in between harm’s way on everyone else’s worst day of their lives and now they are somehow—to a large swath of our country—the problem.”
The guests talked about the role that district attorneys play in how officers are able to investigate crimes and how certain policies can decrease the willingness of residents to offer up information.
“The demoralization of these DAs and environments in cities where so-called bail reform really just means you’re letting violent criminals out of jail time and time again. That one really connected with me,” he says. “When I was in Iraq, we called it the ‘Iraqi Catch-and-Release Program.’ Because we were effectively having to be CSI agents on the ground, putting together evidence, oftentimes based on multiple sources and intelligence, we would go in and detain someone and bring them in. Three days later they are back on the street and the people who were our informants, or were working with us, would look at us and say ‘What are you doing to me? I’m dead now. I’m dead because you couldn’t hold on to someone who was a known member of the insurgency.’ The same happens with members of neighborhoods in places where it takes a lot to step up and provide information to police about someone who is doing deadly or dangerous things. I can’t imagine having to go back into those communities and having to look those people in the eye and say: ‘I did what I could when there was danger, but I can’t change the fact that politicians and others keep releasing these people.’ They certainly mentioned how dangerous that makes their job.”
The panel also spoke about the difficulty for law enforcement agencies to recruit and retain officers, especially in big cities. “This is on mayors and city councils and chiefs to reverse the really dangerous portrayal and rhetoric that has been thrown at police departments,” says Hegseth. “You’ve had mass retirements and you’ve had people saying ‘I don’t even want to get into the profession to begin with,’ not to mention all of the COVID stuff and mandates. There’s a lot of reasons not to be a law enforcement officer right now. It’s on leadership that understands how central they are to create an environment, a culture where you want to serve.”
According to Hegseth, Modern Warriors: Law Enforcement is just part of the content geared towards first responders that FOX Nation is now focused on providing. This includes a new season of COPS, as well as other series and shows geared toward law enforcement officers.
“We know who the police are in this county. They are patriots. They love God. They love their country. They love their communities. FOX Nation is the place in media where those things live,” he says. “If you love the way that FOX News does the news, you’re going to love the way FOX Nation does documentaries and series and specials on a wide variety of topics. You’re not going to get it anywhere else.”
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Paul Peluso | Editor
Paul Peluso is the Managing Editor of OFFICER Magazine and has been with the Officer Media Group since 2006. He began as an Associate Editor, writing and editing content for Officer.com. Previously, Paul worked as a reporter for several newspapers in the suburbs of Baltimore, MD.
