Christopher Curtis is a retired police sergeant who spent 20+ years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. In his career he was also a designated crisis and hostage negotiator. Sgt. Christopher Curtis joins Theo to talk about what really goes on when someone is detained, how race relations affect both sides of law enforcement, and the intense situations he found himself in as a crisis negotiator. ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Morgan and Morgan: Morgan & Morgan: Visit https://forthepeople.com/THEO to see if you might have a case. Morgan and Morgan. America's Largest Injury Law Firm. Valor Recovery: To learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at https://valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at [email protected] ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Colin https://www.instagram.com/colin_reiner/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the background of Christopher Curtis?
We want to let you know that today's conversation may be a bit graphic for some or gruesome. It's containing law enforcement and some of their involvement just with society. So if you don't like that sort of thing, you may not want to listen. Today's guest is a retired sergeant from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and a former crisis negotiator.
He was born and raised in Queens, New York, before spending 20 years on the force in Las Vegas, where he pretty much saw it all. Today's guest is LVPD's finest, Christopher Curtis.
Shine on me and I will find a song.
Okay, sitting here today, retired police officer. Sergeant. Sorry.
That's a thing with police, yeah.
That's a faux pas. A little bit, yeah. First, yes, sir. Sir, yes, sir. Retired police sergeant from the Las Vegas. Metropolitan Police Department. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
You did 25 years of service. Well, I did 21 plus, and then I bought some of the time. A guy actually bought my time out to go work for him. In Nevada, you can do that.
So you can... So if you're a police officer and you still have so many years left on your...
lease or what is it to collect your retirement okay right okay so you want to get your pension right so you can buy it yourself but what happened was i was one of the first people because there was a guy in the private sector you ever heard the company zappos zappos the shoes yeah the shoes so the guy tony shea who passed away some time ago he was a billionaire and he had one foot in the grave that's an old zappos yeah yeah i won't talk anymore
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Chapter 2: What are the realities of policing in Las Vegas?
I got to see like, I would go to a single wide trailer at 3am ladies completely tweaked out of her mind and her kids are awake, all nasty, you know, crying. The neighbors have called spaghetti sauce on the walls and I'd be pissed at the mother because,
And what happened throughout my career is I ended up seeing that little girl that I was trying to protect becoming the parent of a kid in the same type of situation. It's just cyclical. And then for the police to be judgmental, I found that to be incredibly disheartening for me.
And in fact, if there's anything I think back in my life, it is if ever I treated another human being improperly or if I didn't spend time with my children when I could have spent time with my children. You know, it makes me get emotional sometimes when I can think of specific situations. I'll tell you a story, man. There was one time where I took a little girl from her mom. And this is in Vegas?
This is in Vegas. Oh, yeah, all my police stuff is in Vegas. There was one time that the mom was completely took off. She was slamming speed. And she was just up and just doing all kinds of stuff. And the neighbors was at some point called. Yeah, slamming speed is injecting it? Yeah, it's injecting it. Okay. And so I go there. And I remember I had to take the little girl from her mom.
And this girl was crying in such a way, I recorded this, that it was almost as if someone was literally, though I wasn't, pulling her heart out of her body. Now, mind you, that's a kid who... loves their mom no matter what. You love your parent in spite of, right?
And I'll always remember in my mind that I have to learn to look at other people, not only the way that I'd want to be treated, but through the experiences that I've had. That's how I look at people now. You know, once you get older, you can start to get emotional about just the simplest of things.
Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. Jesus. Most of this podcast is like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. The little things that will trigger things that you didn't have or things you admire so much or even a word sometimes that a phrase somebody will use and it'll just like well you up with emotion.
Well, I do think it's interesting for for people in police, fire departments, those types of jobs where, yes, I'm sure you develop a lot of empathy, but then also you are put under pressure. an unrealistic amount of stress.
A lot of officers are, I would assume it seems like to me from the discussions I've had that a lot of people get put under stress that they're not really even as a human equipped to deal with. So then at that point, it's probably tough for you to engage your best feelings and your best empathy at moments when you're under stress. And then you also have to look out for your own survival.
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Chapter 3: How did Christopher Curtis become a crisis negotiator?
You should also incentivize officers with more than 10 years to go back to patrol. One of the challenges that happens is you get cops, they want to go through the ranks, they get to work in specialized units and then never go back to patrol.
Oh, so they get disconnected.
They get disconnected from patrol. Then you have young guys teaching young guys. And it's usually the older wisdom that is what helps policing. Because I remember I was in the knucklehead when I was young. I know I made a lot of mistakes.
Oh, yeah. Oh, God. Yeah, dude. So how do you get it to become a hostage negotiator? Because that's what you became.
Right. So that's a specialized unit, specialized training. You can keep your primary responsibility because what happens is you end up being on call. And that sucked because you would be in the middle of something and you'd get a call out. And you have to go. And you have to go. Because there's not many of you. No. And you need a team to assemble. On rare occasions, you can call out.
Um, so they'll put out an opening and interview department is different, but they'll put out an, you know, there's an opening and then, uh, you interview for it. And then, uh, you, how well you doing the interview, you get selected. And I was the young, at the time I was the youngest ever to be selected on the team. And, um, that was a phenomenal experience.
And so once you're on the team, you know, you get your, you know, your phones, but then you had pagers too. And, uh, you get your gear, your jacket and everything. And, um, you just start responding to calls, you know, obviously, obviously after training, you start responding to call outs. And, um,
If anything on the department weighs on you, it's talking to a person for a significant amount of time or listening to a person talk to for a significant amount of time, being part of the team, and then the person does themselves. Because hostage negotiation isn't really a good term for it.
It's more of a crisis negotiator because most of the time that we do it, it would be from a person in crisis, a person that wants to 405, as we said earlier.
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Chapter 6: How do race relations affect law enforcement?
So that's kind of where I feel like I'm at. Cool. And then it's like you get into an age range where you're like, okay, well, you know. It's kind of tough. Sometimes some people have children. But once you realize that, you're like, okay, well, I never thought about it if I would date somebody with children. So then you start to think about that and learn different little things and stuff.
With sleeping in the same bed with a person, does that bother you?
Yeah, that bothers me. A lot of times I don't like it that much.
So maybe that's something that you could find in common with a person and maybe – your intimacy comes together at a certain space and you still have enough space to be apart from each other. And if they're have, if on the, at the jump, if they're cool with that, maybe that's something that you can start off from that point. Cause some people don't like to sleep together. You had a sleep divorce.
You never heard of sleep divorce?
No, but I would love if my wife had her own room.
Yeah, sleep divorce is where people don't sleep in the same bed, but they maintain an intimate relationship. And then their relationships actually flourish. And I don't like to call it sleep divorce. I like to call it like solitary intimacy, like where you're cool being by yourself and you're cool being by yourself when we come together whenever. Just some stuff to throw out there.
No, I think it's neat. I think there's stuff like that. Relationships are kind of evolving and stuff too, I think. People are figuring out kind of what works for them. I think sometimes I've been afraid to maybe even say what I feel like. Yeah, if I would be like, hey, I'd love it if I could have a separate bedroom than my wife, you know.
And if we wanted, you know, like then we could have our own rooms. I think that that's the most awesome thing possible. And that would be fine. Yeah. So but I think for years you get caught in this idea like, oh, that's going to be crazy to say to somebody, you know. But then I think as time goes on, you're like, oh, nothing's really that crazy.
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