 There are over 1,400 officers on the Denver Police Department. And just like you, we have lives, families, and a lot of us do some pretty extraordinary things out of uniform. Our accomplishments usually go completely unnoticed. But now, finally, we get a chance to tell you our stories. We're getting ready to go contact a one-in-felling. Hey, I'm getting clothes. Numerous felony warrants. This is the year of breaking into houses, stealing cars. All right, give me a location one more time. North-west corner, a tenth indicator. I used to live in those projects. Silver Honda. All right. Ready? Denver Police, let me see your hands. No weapons on you, right? I'm Officer Gerald Sloan. Keep your feet wide, buddy. I am currently assigned to the Denver Police District One Neurocotics Unit. Got some dope. Average day for us, there was cocaine in her purse. We hit our hotspots, the area where we know drug dealers hang out. A little bit of crystal, a little eight ball. That's our main function, to go after guys with drugs. So you got any dope on you? With this position, you have to be a highly proactive cop. I conduct traffic stops, pedestrian stops, run informants, file cases. When no record comes back, somebody's lying. My job is not typical of a regular patrol officer, you would say. We know the game, right? I don't have the opportunity to just rely on the radio call. I'll have to go out and try to find something. Greatest job in the world, huh? The pressure's on, which I like, because I like going after and finding bad guys. Just another day at the office. I start my day at 9 o'clock at District One. 71 to dispatch. I'm Coach Six at District One. Then right after my eight-hour shift, I do another three to four-hour shift afterwards, coaching football. Go! Good drive! Coach! Let's go, let's go! I'm the head coach of the Denver Police. There you go. Palhawks. The team is filled with... Keep your head up. 12, 13, and 14-year-olds. We got a big game Saturday. We got the Falcons. Palhawks is the Denver Police Athletic League. Squeeze your shoulder blades back. Palhawks essentially is a program that helps at-risk youth. Everybody back up. Try to get them in sports instead of jail cells. Good. All right, go. Three laps. It's different dynamics for this team. You know, we have a lot of single mothers, single parents. Grandmothers taking care of the kids. All for self. Ready? Get there, get there, get there. Good. So it's more than just football to me. Your car detailer? Yeah. You can detail my car? That's what I tell my boys. It's me being here for you guys, and I'm not going to run out on you guys. And that's the message I stretch to the boys. It's like, I'm here for the long haul. You know, we're not compensated through the police department, but I love doing it. You're going to play right guard. I'm sorry. Aaron, you're going to play left guard. All right, there's no problem with that. One thing that I love about my team, we are a big family, and that's something that I want to stress to the boys is more than just wins and losses. It's a family. All right, fellas, let's go. Bring it in. Bring it. Let's go. We break down as one, two, three family four, five, 16. One, two, three. Family. Four, five, six. All right, go to your individual coaches. We stress that from day one. We are family first and routine. These are lifelong friends you're going to have. I actually grew up just a little west of this area right off of a tenth of Decatur at the Sun Valley Projects. I actually played for the same exact team, the Palhawks, at the same exact field. I came from a single parent household. The biggest thing my mom used to say is, how do you raise a man as a woman? And since she said, use sports. Hook up with a great coach and the coach will guide you through. I knew this was my opportunity to come back and make a better experience for the next kid coming up for these set of hooks that I have on my team. Unfortunately, we weren't provided with all the tools that we necessarily needed. Line up on me. Line up on him. Let's go. Get on your pads. You know, we didn't have the best jerseys. We didn't have the best of anything. All right, David, grab a ball. Keep coming up. Probably about a week and a half ago. Mo, you're behind Jayce. I was talking to my team and they're like, coach, can we get new jerseys? I spoke to the parents and the parents were like, yeah, it sounds nice, but realistically, we just can't afford that. I started to poke around a little bit, see what I could do financially, and I was like, I think I could do it. Wow. That is sharp. We've been using the same old jerseys for a long time. The boys are going to love it. 52 youth large. Yep. 21. He is right there. Youth large. Let's get the balance taken care of and then we'll go from there. Man, I'm excited just to get the boys of jerseys. I can't wait to see their faces when they see them because I haven't told them anything about it. I didn't even tell them the color. Thank you, my man. You guys did an awesome job. You are good. I'm good to go? You are good to go. Thank you for everything. Absolutely. Jerseys came out. They're amazing. I'm surprised how well they came out. Nobody knows anything. It's going to be a good shocker for them. Players, listen up. The good news is the jerseys came out to $2,900. That's the bad news. The good news is it's going to cost you guys nothing. Okay? The entire setup. I'm donating the entire cost for the jerseys. Okay? Thank you. All right. That's my gift to you guys and that's a gift to you parents. Okay? All right. Let's do this right. Number 30, Roy. 16, Berciaga. Vasquez. I think there's going to be something they're going to remember for their entire life. Thank you, coach. I mean, it'll be a jersey they can hang onto when they get older and they can look back on the attic, when they pull the jersey out and they can show their kids like, wow, you know, this is a jersey I wore when I played football. Thank you. I think it means more than just a jersey. It's like a completion of the task I hand. In 2007, I graduated at Denver Police Academy. I was right at 22, just barely 22. During that summer, a Denver POW representative reached out to me and he said, hey, we would love to have a cop as a coach. I just finished the academy. This was a very stressful moment in my life, but I jumped on board thinking it was going to be just a one-year agreement, just hanging out coach for a year. But then I ended up falling in love with it and staying for the next seven. First year, all the players were the age of six. My mother, you know, she struggled and I got to witness it firsthand. You know, I have lived a life and I know what it's like to be without something. So I will never want these kids to be without any opportunity. I knew after I left my first year would be the same type of new coaches every year, nothing consistent, nothing stable. And I didn't want to leave that type of impression on them, so I committed to riding it out until they finished middle school. Keep sending them over. This is my seventh year playing for them. Six years. Seven years. Five years. I've only been on the team for a year and he's already taught me way more than I can even imagine he could. Rotate it so I see the Hawk. For him to have that kind of commitment. There you go. To come coach the Hawks is just amazing. He's done so much for me personally along with the rest of my teammates. Move over a little bit. Take an E right there. Grab the ball. Let me see the laces. He's taught me just to stay out of trouble, to do the best you can in everything. All right, here you go. He's like pushing me every year to do better. Make a smile, looking right at me. He's supported me when I was getting into trouble at school sometimes. He'll pull me off to the side and just talk. Just stay there. Teeth, smile. Come on. This is for your girlfriend. There you go. A lot of us are single moms. A lot of the kids, they look up to him. So I mean it is a father figure type of role that he's in too for a lot of these boys. Is that good? Yeah. Yeah. Oh that looks good. You look mean enough? Even in the beginning he told us all he didn't grow up with his dad. So it means a lot I think as well to him that he can be there for these boys in that manner too. We're going to do a team picture. Okay, follow him. Follow, follow. You know the boys understand and know that he doesn't have any kids of his own and he's just doing this on his own free will because he wants to. You know most coaches, they'll have a son or somebody on the team that they know of and they know that Sloan is just doing it strictly for the boys. Coaches, get in your spots. I always tell the kids it's a sacrifice. Oh he's made way too many sacrifices. Many nights of sleeping because I've been doing the playbook. Personal life is kind of upside down because I'm constantly with the boys. Job, I mean I could have probably went to different units and done different things in the police department but I stuck with the boys. Smile! He puts in thousands of hours in just a few months. I know he don't want nobody to know that or anything like that but he's an amazing person. I have sacrificed pretty much from head to toe my entire life for the boys just to show them that people who do care you just got to find the right person. Now how about a goofy one now? He's a kid. They had one coach the whole time and for Sloan to stick with them and teach them and bring them as far as they have. They're going to remember him forever. We're at our final game. Dang gee this is it. Gee, hi to love guys. We got to win this game to get to the playoffs. Let's go. If we lose we're done. Charly right slot motion right rub on 1 or 1 earlyrd. For 4 and 2 going against another 4 and 2 team. Let's go, run it, run it, run it, run it. Go. It's a really big game. Good job, hey, that looks sharp. Great job, fellas. I've coached these boys. Pretty much do their entire life. Good. This is our last year together. There's no next year. You know, I've been thinking about this moment, right? You think about all the time we put in, right? Coach. From the time we won zero games. From the time we won two games. From the time we have gotten better and better, right? You guys have touched me in a different way. I have never been touched before. I want to tell you guys, thank you for allowing me to coach you guys. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your family, all right? All right, let's go get a win. Let's go. This is your moment! This is your moment! Today's your day to be great. This is what we love, right? Our three rules, right? Play hard. Play fast. Have fun, right? Yes, coach. All right, family on three, team on six. One, two, three. Family! Four, five, six. Let's go get the FW! Let's go! I know we're gonna win. We can do anything that we put our minds to. We're gonna smash him. Ha ha ha! Good job. Drive on die, by 24. Get someone out! Zero, zero, right? This is your moment, right? This is your opportunity. Eye to left, open. FB lead, right. Slot, reverse, run, pass. What do I do? You get the move, coach. You're getting the ball. You're going right in between them. I get your laugh. This is a big game. We go into the playoffs if we win. Man, there you go! It's okay, fellas. Now we're faced with our back against the wall. This is a big moment for us right now. This is it for us right here. There's no tomorrow. Let's go, Hawks. There's no Monday without taking care of business today. We ain't giving them nothing, Hawks! Right there. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go! Get him out! I knew it! I told you. I told you he's gonna do it, right? Did I tell you? I told you he's gonna do it. Let's go! Get him out! Go get it, go get it, go get it. Go get it, hit him. This is your time now. This is your moment. Let's go! Get you one. Right there. Get you one. Go, Lawson. Go, Lawson! Play on defense. Somebody stripped that ball. That's gonna win the game right now. Let's go. Make a play. Get you a fumble. Help! Let's go! Offence! Let's go! Offence! Hey fellas, this is it. Touchdown drive to win. He's gonna make a play. Go. He's right open. Come on. Just give him some time. Give him some time. God! Keep your head up, all right? That's what happens when you play quarterback, right? You gotta be able to face the crowd. Let's go, defense! We've got no more timeouts. We've got to do something. Watch your down, watch your down! Eight to seven. Eight to seven. Good job. All right, coach. Well, hard you guys worked, but don't let this one loss define who you are as a person. All right, my eighth grader, stand up. You guys made it, right? All right, you guys. I'm proud of you guys. You guys did a great job this year. You guys ever need anything? You call me, all right? It's Kogel. Anything. It's Kogel. All right? You're lucky in high school. All right, good job. Proud of you guys. All right, be careful, fellas. That world is a crazy world out there. All right, rally around me. Just go, keep tight. All right, proud of you guys. Thank you, guys. All right, family on three, team on six. One, two, three! Family! Four, five, six. All right, see you guys. Woo! It's a tough world out there, and these kids or my team are exposed to different scenarios than other kids. Be careful, Adria. Be careful, be careful, be careful. I mean, they're gonna be faced with gang violence, gang initiation. Call me if you ever need anything, got it? I got you. Be careful. Stuff that other kids probably wanna be exposed to as often. You call me if you ever need anything, boy. I will come pick you up personally if you ever get in a dumb situation. I just told my boys, like, you're gonna be faced with that moment. Please, please, please, rely on everything that I told you. Thank you for taking such good care of my boy and instilling such great values. This is it, you know? There's nothing more. I'm proud of you, bro. I'm glad you came to the Hawks. No other time with these boys, no other time coaching them and watching them grow. Thanks, Kirk. Come here, boy. Started in the beginning, right? Yeah. Look where we at now. Good job. I want these boys to realize it's more than just football. I'm here for the remainder. Jase, I'm proud of you, man. Be careful in high school, Jase. All right. We are a family. This is more than just football. I always believed in you, PJ. You just gotta believe in yourself, right? You know, we have been through problems like a family. Had success as a family, just like any other family. Ricardo, I'm glad you came back, man. I miss you when you were gone. Gonna miss my boys for sure. Be careful, be careful, be careful. But they are still gonna be my boys. Thanks for being my coach. All right, man. Good job. I'm glad you came back to play this year. We'd like to thank Officer Sloan for his years of dedication and service to Denver's youth. And now we want to introduce you to another Denver police officer who has an extraordinary talent, both on and off duty. You'll find his story just beyond this door. So the most important thing though, just like all of our classes is safety, we don't want to get anybody hurt out here for sure. My name is Brad McKernan. I work for the Denver Police Department at the firearms section. We guys like this class, I think. I am a firearms instructor at the range. We're gonna shoot lots of rounds. And it's gonna be a lot of competition stuff. So you guys are gonna be shooting against each other a lot. I've been working at the range about 11 years now. The harder you grip the gun, the less it moves. So if the gun's doing one of these numbers on you, you know what, grip it harder. The training, a lot of it's classroom because you certainly have to be able to know the laws that pertains to use of force. The dude's trying to kill you and he's right there. I mean, as soon as you see him, you can start triggering. But, you know, the actual hands-on skill of handling the weapons is really important and can take a long time to really master. How about we go shoot a little bit? Line, ready? Watch him. My father had me shooting at an early age and I just liked the shooting sports for a long time. So I think I never grew out of being a kid and wanting to be a cop and chasing the bad guys. Alrighty, line's safe for everybody's holstered. That was kind of my dream growing up until I finally got old enough to do it. Okay, so coming up on target, get that all lined up. Put that blade as far at the bottom of that notch as you can make it. Shooting under stress class, we're trying to put some pressure on the guys. I'm gonna face those targets for a short period of time. Either physical or mental stress. You're gonna draw and try to shoot him while he's there to make it a little more difficult to fire accurately. Okay, draw those guns out. You ready? Go. Handgun's the main weapon that we train with. Unload those guns, lock them back, holster them that way. We spend a lot of time out here shooting rounds and practicing. Go ahead and patch everything this time. And talk about the decision to shoot. That's been really important for us. Okay, you guys, grab those barbells. We'll make them run, we'll do push-ups, we'll do some curls. Up to your shooting spot behind your barrel. Feet within those batteries. Draw your guns out. Obviously a lot different, you know, shooting when you're static and everything's fine versus when you're breathing hard, when your hands are sweaty. Three around the right side, shooting while he's there. Make him spend a lot more time. Go. Trying to calm themselves down while you're pressing that trigger. Left side. I'm hoping it'll help them with their confidence. That, you know, even when things aren't at their optimal level, that I can still perform. Right side. Even when I'm cold or hot or tired or hungry or, you know, stressed out or breathing hard. Okay, we're clear, let's go look. That they can still perform well if something happens for real. We're gonna get your heart rate up a little bit. Back up and one shooter on that side, one shooter on that side. Being able to teach something that I enjoy has always really been a lot of fun for me to do. You two ready? Go. And then once you get on the job, you know how important it can be when you get on the street. So I think it's really important to be able to share those skills. Okay, you two ready? Go. Our program is better than ever has been. It's the longest time and the testing for it is the toughest that it's been certainly since I've been on the job. So if we can keep that kind of skill up. Nice, very close. Reload in holster. I think that'll really benefit them and certainly the community. You know, Colorado has a lot of really good shooters. So I try to get better all the time. I like to shoot the competitions. Last year we had three major Colorado matches. I won all three of those. Nice, nice. Using my go-fast shoes. Dig in a little better with all this sand out here. These are pretty heavy Velcro and very stiff belts that hold the weight of the gun and the magazines. We'll go here and here. Organizations called USPSA, United States Practical Shooting Association. And it's based on time and accuracy. So this is the safe area where you can check your gun out and make sure it's all set up the way you want it to be. Try a few draws, a few dry draws. Make sure you got your gun working the way you want it to be. You just can't have any ammo in this area. Fully custom and all the trigger control parts for really good trigger and fast hammer speed. Magazine will to make it easier to load magazines in. Pretty high-tech stuff. We'll get all loaded up before stage. I'm shooting 9mm major. And so it's a regular 9mm case but loaded to higher pressure. About 1,500 feet per second is the speed that we're shooting these. This is like a liquid shock that goes on and keeps your hands dry. If you're behind a second on something, that's the difference between first and tenths. So you've got to try everything you can to help out. Are you finishing up here, Paul? When you're on deck and you're getting ready to shoot, you know, you walk the stage and come up with your plan and really cement it in your mind like, I'm going to go here, I'm going to shoot these three and then I'm going to go here, I'm going to shoot these two. Then I'm going to hit my steel target and that's going to activate the swinger. And, you know, then I have to be in this position to take care of, you know, that shot, you know, where can I make another reload? So you're kind of going through all that in your mind. I got Brad McCurn in his first, followed by Steve Shiggy. You're really trying to focus when you get up to the starting point. I like to kind of close my eyes and think about what I'm going to do and visualize the whole thing. Are you ready? When the beat goes off, it's real easy to lose your mind. You just try to be smooth. You've got to be fast on the first target. You've got to be fast from target to target. You've got to hit your targets because no matter how fast you are, if you're not hitting anything, you don't get any points. This is a very legitimate sport, I think. The work that goes in before you start a match, the training that goes into it's very important. You've got to have the physical skills of how to run the weapon, but the mental part of it is huge. Are you ready? You know what? This is just fun. It's fun and every time I do something, I learn something, you start to work on, okay, how can I do it better? You know, should I shoot faster? Should I move quicker? Should I set up better? I mean, there's all kinds of things you can always work on. The more you do it, the better you get, just like anything else. That's what I try to do. Randy's clear. Denver's police chief has a secret. He's been spending a lot of his off time here in this building. To find out exactly what he's up to, we followed him here today. But first, we want to give you an exclusive look into the career of Robert White. I started off as a police cadet at the age of 18 in Washington, D.C. At that time, you could be 20 and be a sworn police officer. So at 19 and a half, I'm sitting in a police academy, really excited about becoming a police officer. And all of a sudden, I get drafted. For four years, I was in a naval reserve. I was an aviation metalsmith. I worked on C-130 planes. Then I found out about this other reserve unit that had a lot of police officers in it, but it was an army unit. So I decided to transfer to an MP unit in Fort Me, Maryland. It did that for another three years. After doing that, I continued my career as a police officer. So after five years in Washington, D.C., I took the exam for sergeant and got promoted to sergeant in relatively young age. From there, I took the exam in lieutenant. I would tell you that was a real experience for me because I was determined that I was gonna be a perfect lieutenant. I was gonna get everybody to like me. That was my goal. I would tell you that it was the longest and maybe the hardest year, one of the hardest years of my life. I found out that being popular was a hard thing to do if you were gonna hold people accountable at the same time. It became very clear to me that what was important was that you build relationships on respect. You hold people accountable that need to be held accountable and you acknowledge innovations with doing good work that was doing good work. Eventually, I retired actually. I retired at the age of 43 from the Washington D.C. Police Department and was offered a job in public housing as the Director of Public Safety. I missed the D.C. Police Department. I left because I was frustrated. I was mad. I didn't like the politics. And I regretted it every single day. But the chief, he got fired and then they appointed an interim chief. The interim chief called me and asked me if I wanted to come back to the city police department as the number two person. I went back, did that for a year but I had applied for jobs and had gotten accepted a job as the Chief of Police in Greensboro, North Carolina. I got hired in North Carolina to attempt to change the mindset of the executive branch. Everybody who knows me knows that I'm certainly about change and trying to do things what I think more effectively. So as a result of some of the things we were doing I was asked to come to Louisville, Southern Police Institute to speak about organizational change. And Louisville was in the process of merging the county police and the city police. And I said, boy, that would be really exciting. It would be something different. So I applied for that job and actually got the job. We merged the department in about two and a half years which was warp speed. Somebody called me about Denver. Went to a series of interviews. Here I am. Three years later. If I only knew then what I know now. How many times have you heard that? Obviously we're gonna continue to look at our policies. I'm not being critical because I don't have all of the answers. I can't imagine how hard it is for the family. The biggest challenge is getting everybody on board to understand that our primary focus is prevention of crime. The reason why I've worked with so many different law enforcement agencies is that I've always gone to an agency that I believe, number one, fit philosophically what my beliefs were. And that I believe needed to make some culture changes. To be in a better position to provide services to the community. I have a strong philosophical belief about how policing should be done in America. I sincerely, with every fiber in my body, believe in prevention. And I believe in order for that to happen, our greatest resource is our ability to connect with the residents. I've been doing this for 43 years. I still do it because I am passionate about what I think policing is to this country. You know, I don't hang out with the fellas, don't go drinking, I don't golf. The really only outlet I really have is bowling. Here we go. It's like taking candy from a baby. One of my faults is I'm a very competitive person. It's 300th a perfect game. I have about 13, 300s. You can get a string of strikes, three, four, five, six in a row. It's really a very satisfying feeling. I actually didn't start bowling until I was about 47. When we had moved from D.C. to North Carolina, we lived in an apartment and right across the street from the apartment was a bowling alley. And it gave me an activity to do with my two sons. Here it is. I fell in love with it. A couple things that I really enjoy about bowling is you against the pins and the conditions of the lane. When I'm having a really bad day, I imagine the pins have a lot of faces. The bigger the faces, the bigger the pins, the easier it is to get strikes. Ultimately, my goal is to get as many 300s as I can. I met a man, I think he's 82 and he boasts a 300. I'm hoping I can be where he's at. Oh! We hope you've enjoyed meeting some of the officers that make up your Denver Police Department. From all of us at DPD, thanks for watching. I'm Sergeant Steve Warnicke. We'll see you next time on An Officer's Life at 5280.