Sevan Matossian (00:04):
Bam. We’re live.
Greg Anderson (00:05):
Awesome.
Sevan Matossian (00:08):
Where are you?
Greg Anderson (00:10):
I’m in my guest bedroom.
Sevan Matossian (00:13):
Good audio. I like the audio
Greg Anderson (00:16):
Smooth. Yeah. Set up a little podcast here.
Sevan Matossian (00:19):
Not tinny. Uh, this isn’t for you, Greg. You could pick your nose or do whatever you want. This take 15 seconds guys. Paper street, coffee.com. 20% off of use, uh, seven as the code and every single person who makes a purchase between now March 27th gets, uh, entered into a contest to win a free barbell from rogue. This is the I drink. I mean that word affectionately. Thank you. And if my sponsor do well, I do well. And if I do well, my kids go to mortgage JSU classes and they’ll be nice to your daughters. All right. I can’t believe you’re on the show,
Greg Anderson (00:57):
Dude. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it,
Sevan Matossian (01:00):
Dude. You did it. I know I’m late to the game. I know I’m late to the game, but uh, you did it. You, you did what thousands of other people have told me that they couldn’t do because they had a mortgage or they were scared or they had a family to feed or, but you did, you, holy, you did it. You it’s like, it’s like, um, I wish I had the guy working the backend right now, so we could pull up the word integrity and we could read the definition, but you are. I you’re like the living embodiment of integrity,
Greg Anderson (01:31):
Man. It was, it’s kind of weird though, because like when I did that video and when I said those things, you know, everybody was like, Greg, what are you doing, man? Be careful.
Sevan Matossian (01:40):
Yeah. What are you doing? You’re gonna lose your job, dude.
Greg Anderson (01:43):
Shut up. And, and this is what everybody kept saying. We agree with you. Like,
Sevan Matossian (01:48):
Yes,
Greg Anderson (01:49):
Like Greg saying, but you can’t say that. And I was like, that’s the problem right there. That’s the problem. Everybody’s pretending to be a certain way. Even though pine closed doors, every cop that I knew, every person in my chain of command was in a hundred percent agreement with me. And so for me, it was really like, it, wasn’t a hard decision for a cop to stand up and say, he supports people’s liberties and he’s gonna stand behind his oath. Like shouldn’t every cop be saying that. And so they
Sevan Matossian (02:19):
Should,
Greg Anderson (02:20):
Yeah, it, it wasn’t an abstract,
Sevan Matossian (02:23):
Not just every cop, not just every cop for every cop that stands up and says that there should be fi and this is a huge problem I have with society. There should be five citizens who stand in front of his house and say, we support this guy as a vigil.
Greg Anderson (02:36):
Exactly.
Sevan Matossian (02:37):
It’s a partnership between the citizenry citizenry and the police. I pull my trash cans out on Friday or on Wednesday because the garbage man’s coming. That’s a partnership I have with those guys. I don’t park in front of my mailbox as a partnership with the PO with, with the mail company so that their job is easy and no one wants to do the, not no one, a lot of people don’t want to do the partnership with police. Like what the is wrong with you?
Greg Anderson (03:00):
I don’t know, man, but I feel like there’s always this ebb and flow of the relationship that the public holds with with law enforcement. And it gets skewed mainly in my opinion, by by media and by politicians, of
Sevan Matossian (03:17):
Course,
Greg Anderson (03:18):
I knew that we were on the verge of having our reputations as a profession tarnished. And uh, that’s one of the reasons I was like, dude, if we don’t stand behind the people on this one, it’s gonna go bad and it could go bad quickly. And then, you know, two weeks later it was the George Floyd thing and everybody hated cops for the, the next 18 months. But they like him again now. So I guess that’s a good thing.
Sevan Matossian (03:44):
Oh man, we have so much to talk about. I are, are, are, do you, are you affiliated with the political party at all? Like, are you a Democrat or Republican or a libertarian? No.
Greg Anderson (03:56):
No. I mean, my, my views align more with libertarian than anybody else, but you know, obviously as more of a conservative person, I find myself voting Republican more often than not. But it’s funny because like when I bring up things about like Tosey Gabbard, Tosey Gabbard says some very good things. And if I say that as a conservative people are like, why the do you? You support her? And I’m like, guys, that’s all, that’s what the problem is. In my opinion, it’s like, I don’t care necessarily what your political views are. I want the words that are coming outta your mouth to be congruent with how you feel in your heart. Then we’re, then us, as citizens are gonna have a good idea of what you bring to the table as a person and, and make always if you’re the right person, if you’re the right fit to serve our community, but we never get that anymore. We get people.
Sevan Matossian (04:49):
When you say your heart, what do you mean by that? That’s always a word that trips me up cuz I don’t really, I don’t, what does that mean? Your heart?
Greg Anderson (04:55):
I mean like what you feel inside of yourself behind closed doors when you’re sitting in your own bed night, thinking about different issues or, or, you know, some of the political landscape, the, the, the, the things that people are dealing with as politicians, they don’t say on a public platform, what they believe to be the truth. They say what they think is gonna garnish the most votes or what’s gonna appease their lobby. They’re lobbyists. Like they’re gonna say the things that are going to help their political party or help them stay in power. They’re not gonna say the things that they think are true and correct. That’s why, what do we see every single time during an election cycle, they say one thing. And then as soon as elections are done, they flip lo and that’s been happening my whole life, but I feel like it’s getting worse and worse as time goes on.
Sevan Matossian (05:46):
It is getting worse and worse. Look at this, look at this. Holy, Caleb. Hi, should, is it okay to show your face for a second, Caleb?
Greg Anderson (05:56):
Well, I see it. You can’t,
Sevan Matossian (05:59):
You can’t hear me, Caleb. I know you. I don’t know if you can hear me or not, but I didn’t know you were gonna come on today. I’m gonna send you the show notes. Okay. I should have sent them to you as default. I’m a. Thanks for coming on, dude. You’re a beast. Oops. I think he was just about to say something and I sent them away. Caleb beaver, what a great name? His, his, his name is C beaver. Isn’t that awesome. I can’t get that. It it’s. Um, when I, when I first started messing with CrossFit, uh, I was 34 years old and, and I had never heard of a snatch and a jerk in those things. And I just remember it took me years for the child in me, not to chuckle every time I heard those words. And now I’ve been working with Kate for a year and I to get over his name, C beaver.
Greg Anderson (06:40):
Have you ever seen that name that says shouldn’t it be jerk and then clean?
Sevan Matossian (06:48):
I think I heard Annie Sakamoto do some rendition of that once.
Greg Anderson (06:52):
Uh,
Sevan Matossian (06:53):
Um, Greg. Oh. Now I sent away my, I sent away my notes. I, I can open him here to send Greg Anderson. Okay. Greg, can you, um, can you paint the, um, picture for me a little bit, um, of, of the buildup to that for those of you who don’t know, um, Greg Greg’s, uh, has reinvented himself many, many times. He is, uh, man, I’d like to talk to his mom. I think he was born, just shot out of a cannon. Um, and he has been just a go-getter from as far back as I could research him, uh, when he, when he entered the military. But then at some point, um, life brought him to Washington state where he worked for the police department at the port of Seattle. Is that correct?
Greg Anderson (07:35):
Correct. Yep.
Sevan Matossian (07:36):
And, uh, there is where, um, the, uh, his bosses were asking him to do things where, um, that he didn’t feel were appropriate. And not only did he take a stand for himself, but he made an address while sitting in his police car to all of the police in the United States, in the world, uh, on, on some level, can you tell us like the, the, the build up of that and what happened? So then as we go forward in the podcast, people understand down why I’m so enamored by you. I mean, I’ve been talking about you for, I’ve only been doing this podcast a year, but I bring up your name all the time, because I just can’t believe what you did. I mean, and people owe you, people owe you.
Greg Anderson (08:11):
No, nobody owes me.
Sevan Matossian (08:12):
Well, they don’t, they don’t owe you in the sense from your perspective, but they owe you from the sense of my perspective.
Greg Anderson (08:17):
I’ll take it back. So to, to when I went into the military, so I grew up in Washington state, and that’s why I’m here. This is, this is my home. I’ve lived here. I was born here. And so
Sevan Matossian (08:28):
Funny how you have to justify that, but I fully understand that I’m in California. I feel like I have to justify every time.
Greg Anderson (08:33):
Uh, but no, I went into the military at 18 and it wasn’t because of some patriotic duty or some like deep calling, really, it came down to, I didn’t know what the I wanted to do with my life. And I knew I hated school and I knew I liked fighting and partying and being wild. And I was like, you know what? This seems like a, a good outlet for me to just go get some experience and get outta the house. And for whatever reason,
Sevan Matossian (08:57):
Why did you hate school? You seem like one of the qualities that I picked up about you is that you’re a good friend. Um, didn’t you like the friendship part of going to school and making friends and like your homies
Greg Anderson (09:06):
School for me was a hundred percent social hour. Okay. And, and it’s, it’s funny that you say that because I would work out with the jocks after school and then I’d go skating with the skaters. And then I could, you know, I could hang out with the stoners and it was, I was able to have, like, to mesh with all the different groups. So I loved high school for the social aspect of it, but I just hated the actual work itself, my brain never. And I mean, I ended up getting my bachelor’s years later and I can tell you, even though I did it and I did well, I didn’t enjoy it. That’s just not my,
Sevan Matossian (09:39):
Yeah. I didn’t, I didn’t enjoy, I didn’t enjoy that part of school either, but I loved going. I liked the girls and I liked the boys. Yeah. And I could be friends with anyone too. I could be friends with. I wanted to be friends with anyone, the goth, the jocks. I just wanted to hang with. I wanted to know everyone’s story.
Greg Anderson (09:54):
Yep. No, same with me, man. That’s my, but anyways, I ended up going in the military and for whatever reason, you know, I just like, I wanna do something really hard if I’m gonna go in, I might as well do something hard. And I said, I wanna be a ranger or a seal. And the weird thing is I didn’t even really know what either of those were other than what you see on movies and whatnot. But, uh, yeah, I ended up getting, getting a, getting into the army and went and did their, their ranger program and served with the 75th ranger regimen. And that was from 99 to oh three. So I was in a special operations unit during that transition from peace time to war time, military. And I mean, it got crazy cuz we never thought and everyone always said, oh, we’re gonna go to war one day. We’re gonna go to war. But no one ever really, truly believed that. I think because the regimen hadn’t been involved in any type of combat since Somalia, that was 1993. And so after the, was
Sevan Matossian (10:54):
That the Blackhawk, was that the Blackhawk down incident? Yes.
Greg Anderson (10:57):
That, okay. Um, you know, so as soon as nine 11 kicked off, we were on a deployment tempo. That was just go, go, go. And I did a few deployment to Afghanistan with the regiment and then that’s when military contracting kicked off and back in those days, you know, when I was a young 23 year old E five, we were told, Hey, you can reenlist as a ranger and continue to make three grand a month. Or you can go over on these private contracts with special operations guys and make 30 K a month. And so it was kind of a no-brainer and a lot of us did that. And the cool thing about it, it was, uh, it continued to be, it, it continued to fulfill that like military mission. We had our brotherhood, we were out, we were doing our thing. It was, the stakes were high. It was extremely dangerous. And I know people think that might sound strange, but as a 20 year old or 22 year old man, that’s what you trained to do. And then when you actually got to go be deployed and do the mission, it was actually exciting. I always tell people like the combat deployments were some of the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. And so,
Sevan Matossian (12:07):
Oh, by the way, if anyone really wants to hear this stuff, I, and it’s fascinating the, the details of this even more, I recommend going over to, uh, Greg Anderson’s first podcast with, um, my ex friend, Andy stump, uh, cleared hot, go over there and listen to that. I mean, Andy and you and Andy have a two hour and 57 minute conversation that, um, I’m not happy with Andy, but I even enjoyed him. And you thoroughly in that conversation, Andy’s such a good podcast, gas host, man. We used to work at the same, uh,
Greg Anderson (12:37):
Andy friends through that process.
Sevan Matossian (12:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sure he he’s, he’s a great dude. We just worked at the same place and uh, we both worked at CrossFit and when, at one point I was on the ship and he was throwing rocks at the ship, you know, so he never did anything to me personally, but I just, I, I, I, I’m still resenting the fact that he was throwing rocks at the while I was still on it. You know what I mean? But it, but it’s nothing, he’s a great podcaster. He’s he’s um, yeah, it’s I, I’m not like this, but I just, I just, you know what I mean? I’m just like, you, you know, like I’m just at him anyway. Difference, different story. But the podcast with you and him is great whole. Yeah. It’s, it’s like a little
Greg Anderson (13:19):
It’s
Sevan Matossian (13:19):
Like for, for a little, like me to hear two brave men talking and, and be able to live vicariously through that podcast and hear what you guys did. I was proud of you. I was proud of this country. I was, I was, I was stoked.
Greg Anderson (13:31):
Thank you. So
Sevan Matossian (13:32):
Yeah, yeah,
Greg Anderson (13:32):
Yeah. A funny story about how putting yourself out there and, and, and speaking what you believe to be true. It changes the trajectory of your life because Andy saw my video, he reached out to me and said, Hey, will you do cleared hot? I went to KBO and filmed that episode.
Sevan Matossian (13:51):
Where’s that? That’s Montana. That’s where he went, right? Yeah.
Greg Anderson (13:53):
KBO Montana. And, uh, My inbox blew up with people saying that podcast was so fun to listen to. You need to do your own, that podcast was awesome. Do your own, do your own, do your own. And
Sevan Matossian (14:06):
I thought, and endless and endless endeavor podcast. I listened to one of those yesterday also. Yes. Congratulations. Awesome. Awesome.
Greg Anderson (14:12):
And so we started that just out of like, I never thought that would be something that I would do and we started it and it’s been great. And it’s been doing very well and it’s, we’re on, I just finished episode 91 yesterday. So I mean, it’s, it’s crazy, but it’s a really fun journey. I’m enjoying it.
Sevan Matossian (14:28):
Yeah. It’s cool. The one I listened to, I think was 89. Do you ever have, and you didn’t have a guest. Do you have guests on the show also?
Greg Anderson (14:34):
Yeah. Yeah, no, I probably do.
Sevan Matossian (14:36):
Oh yeah. That’s how you, you and Greg Lapland have done shows together.
Greg Anderson (14:40):
Yes. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (14:40):
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Greg Anderson (14:42):
I probably do 10% solo and 90% with guests.
Sevan Matossian (14:45):
Okay. And, and then you have that other, your other homeboy? Um, Mitchell.
Greg Anderson (14:51):
Yeah. Mitch ag yard.
Sevan Matossian (14:53):
Ag yard. Yeah. Another cool dude, man. You hang out with some manly dudes.
Greg Anderson (14:58):
Well, dude, it’s just everybody. I got connected to all the right people when this stuff happened. Me and Lapin were already home before the video, but the video definitely helped like create a footprint in the, in the social media world. Connected me with a lot of people. So it’s, it’s been amazing.
Sevan Matossian (15:14):
Can you imagine if you and Greg Lapland would’ve been friends like in high school?
Greg Anderson (15:18):
Oh my God. We’d both be in jail probably.
Sevan Matossian (15:22):
Oh my goodness. Yeah. This guy, this guy speaks the out of his mind.
Greg Anderson (15:27):
Oh, Mitch is a wild.
Sevan Matossian (15:30):
Yeah. Shorts.
Greg Anderson (15:32):
Yep. Sunga life shout out.
Sevan Matossian (15:35):
Oh, he, this guy is single.
Greg Anderson (15:37):
No Suna life. That’s the brand of
Sevan Matossian (15:39):
Short. Oh, that’s I thought you were looking at. I thought you were okay.
Greg Anderson (15:47):
No, Mitch is the opposite of single. He has two girlfriends.
Sevan Matossian (15:50):
Oh, perfect. Perfect. Do you have two girlfriends?
Greg Anderson (15:54):
Um, we’ll talk off the air, but
Sevan Matossian (15:56):
No. Right. All right. All right. Cause I’m looking at this picture and I went to your entire Instagram yesterday, but yeah. Okay. We’ll get, we’ll get it that later. Um, so, um, so, so, so you go into the military and then you go, you turn into a, okay. And, and are you changing as a human being through all of this? Are you are like in terms of like some of the things that bring you to being able to speak your mind, integrity, honesty, all the guys I know who are special forces guys. Um, there is something about them. That’s extremely refreshing about just their honesty and bluntness. It offends some people, but the truth is, is that the E in your relationship with these guys is so fast because they’re so honest. And so if you can hang and not be offended, not have your feelings hurt, man, you can grow with them quickly and get done.
Greg Anderson (16:44):
And that’s the biggest key. And I still remember as a, as a young ranger, like, you know, when, when you have someone just say something that’s just blunt and honest and it, it, it’s not necessarily rude, but in the special operations community, you can’t, you don’t, we don’t have time to have your feelings hurt because the mission comes first. And if you something up, you’re gonna get called out on it. And you’re gonna get called out on it in front of the whole team. After every single operation we do, what’s called a, a AR and after actions review and the, the team gets in a big circle and we talk about everything that went right. And everything that went wrong and who the key players were. And if something went wrong, who it up and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again, there’s, there’s a lot of transparency.
Greg Anderson (17:28):
And there has to be because our lives are on the line. Right. And so if somebody did something that was up there can’t be any other way to approach it than right now with brutal honesty. And I know that that offends some people, but once you live in that realm for a while, it’s actually refreshing because everybody knows what’s on everybody, else’s mind, and nobody’s playing these weird games behind closed doors. And it kind of set the tone for how I, how I decided to live my life and how I interact with people and how I speak my mind. And, and just like you said, yeah, it’s, it’s a little much for some people, but if you, if you live in a realm where people know who you are, then they can choose to accept that or off. Right. And it’s actually comfortable. And so moving forward from, from the contract,
Sevan Matossian (18:19):
Can I, can I jump in there one second? I wanna tell you a funny story. Um, what you’re talking about in the current vernacular, in, in the woke corporate vernacular is transparency and vulner, and you just made me realize something. Um, Dave there, uh, I don’t know if you you’re into CrossFit, right?
Greg Anderson (18:35):
Yep. I own a CrossFit gym. Well, I own a gym that has CrossFit and jujitsu. I run the jujitsu side. My homie runs CrossFit side.
Sevan Matossian (18:43):
Okay. So, so, um, my friend, Dave Castro, my friend, Nicole carro ran the level one training to team over at CrossFit, Inc. And they had, they ran it exactly the way you’re, you’re saying it was it’s so gnarly. It was scary. And I ran the media department and basically what they would do, they would take their coaches. And there would be reviews from all sides, from your peers, from the P your pupils, and then from the higher ups. And it just, I mean, the feedback was nuts. Whenever I would talk to the L one trainers and I would hear about it, be like, oh God, that sounds so uncomfortable. That is the ultimate vulnerability and transparency. But then you have these corporate goons come in and talk about it. We need to be open. We need to be transparent and vulnerable, but you need to make sure that you don’t offend anyone.
Sevan Matossian (19:28):
Well, first of all, I can’t make sure that I don’t offend you. That’s not, that’s not my responsibility. And second of all, you, you can’t have both of those. And it’s so funny. They, and, and I tell people this all the time, people would say there was this thing in the community. They would say, Dave’s so unprofessional. They’re so naive. They don’t realize the fact is they don’t recognize a professional. He’s actually the epitome of professionality. He’s the apex professional. Because like you, his job, every decision was life or death professional. Isn’t the suit in the tie professional is this ultimate transparency and vulnerability back and forth. And it it’s totally, it’s even, even a dirt twirling, hippie, like from Berkeley, like me could spot that like, holy, this is, this, the real
Greg Anderson (20:13):
If you offend, if you offend somebody, but you’re telling them what you perceive to be the truth. I mean, sorry, you know what I mean? Like
Sevan Matossian (20:23):
You’re fat and you’re gonna die if you don’t lose weight because all fat people die prematurely from chronic disease. There you go. Well, that hurt my feelings. Well, you can thank me when, when you live another 10 years.
Greg Anderson (20:34):
No, that’s right, man. And so, oh,
Sevan Matossian (20:38):
So sorry. I, I get on my horse every once in a while. I I’ll park it in the, in the garage a
Greg Anderson (20:42):
Little, it wasn’t until I contracted. And I did, uh, I did 12 tours as a contractor to Iraq. And in 2009, I got an email and it was a picture of my wife’s positive pregnancy test. And she’d been with me through a lot of different deployments and she goes, Hey, I think if we’re gonna do the family thing, it’s time to put this lifestyle behind us and, and pursue something new. And I had to agree with her, even though I enjoyed that lifestyle. I saw a lot of guys over there that did have families and it never really sat well with me. Like, I don’t know how they would just, Hey, you know, deploy for six months. And they got three little babies back home. And I remember think, man, I, that can’t be me because I don’t think I would be able to be mission focused. And some guys are to each his own. Right. But that was in 2009. And I, I had redeployed home and I, that was, that was it for me. I let ’em know that I’m out. That was my last deployment. And then I started to,
Sevan Matossian (21:45):
How many years were you in? Say that again? Nine?
Greg Anderson (21:48):
Uh, yeah, just under 10 when you combine like the duty contracting.
Sevan Matossian (21:52):
Okay.
Greg Anderson (21:54):
And so came home and what do a lot of soldiers do? They kind of follow the path right into law enforcement. It’s a very natural transition. And people think like, okay, if I was part of a special operations team and you know, I like that camaraderie and I like weapons and I like tactics and all that stuff, let’s go into law enforcement. And so that’s what I did. And I did. I tried two different agencies. And to tell you the truth, I never really found what I was looking for. Law enforcement inside of the United States is very, very different than thing in the special operations community. It’s very political, um, a lot of poor leadership in my experience. And I just kept coming to that same conclusion. Like, man, this is not what I had hoped it would be. But at the same time, a lot of people work in jobs that they’re not excited about day to day, you know, but I wasn’t, I was never like super passionate. And as a, as a police officer and love the job like some cops do, because I just always saw a lot of, a lot of flaws and, and, and how they conducted themselves. And so to tell you the truth, you know, fast forward to 2020 when the pandemic started, like, I didn’t want to lose my job. I had, you know, mortgages and kids and, and I’m on the same grind as everybody else. But I knew
Sevan Matossian (23:18):
Three daughters, right?
Greg Anderson (23:19):
Three daughters. Yep. Yep. They’re 6, 6, 9, and 12. And so, but I knew that like I’m successful at what I put my mind to. I know how to win. I, if I need to get on the grind and do something to feed my family, I’m not intimidated by having to do that. And if I have to stock shelves at home Depot at night, then, then that’s what I’ll do. Right. But I’m not going to not share my mind or like speak mind when I see this massive issue that’s affecting our profession. And that’s why I was never intimidated about doing that. And, and that’s something that bothers me. I see a lot of cops that are intimidated to speak their mind and the public needs us to speak our mind. They need to see that we’re sticking up for them, that we stand for them.
Greg Anderson (24:06):
And that we see these flaws in, in this, and in the political landscape, that’s swept across our country. And another thing that I tell cops all the time is like, if you speak the truth and I, you can call it God, you can call it the universe. But if karma I’ve found is a real thing, cuz my life has become enriched over the last 24 months. Since I made that my business, my side business has blown up. Um, we started that podcast, all kinds of new relationships and new friendships. And man, I, I can’t imagine sitting in a patrol car, a cop right now, like my life has changed so much in the last two years for the better. And it all started by speaking my truth and, and following integrity.
Sevan Matossian (24:57):
Did you enjoy the, when you, so you’re sitting in your, in your car and you make that video and then you posted it to your Instagram, is that where you posted it?
Greg Anderson (25:06):
Correct? Yep.
Sevan Matossian (25:08):
Um, did, and then I’m assuming from there it was just a snowball that just rolled downhill, just gaining momentum people were. I mean, I, I was trying to figure out how many views it’s seen. And at one point I came to the point I was writing it down. It, it wouldn’t surprise. I think it’s closer to a hundred million than zero because somewhere over the millions, you have to start losing because it’s just, now it’s just gone everywhere. It’s it’s not just that people use this word viral, uh, too often, but this thing literally was like, everyone was ripping it and reposting it.
Greg Anderson (25:36):
No, it, it was, I mean, it went all over Twitter, all over YouTube, all over all these platforms that I don’t even have
Sevan Matossian (25:44):
On networks. It was all over television. It was all over television
Greg Anderson (25:47):
Were, yeah, I was on Fox news. It was on CNN. Um, one guy, one radio show host out of Vegas. Um, he shared it and his share alone got 15 million views. And so they’re crazy. Yeah. I don’t even know where to begin on my personal Instagram got like 1,000,001 spot that it got posted. But uh, no, it, it was really crazy. I posted it and like I told you, my commander got a hold of me and he goes, Hey Greg, I watched your video. Awesome message. Everything you’ve said, we stand behind and we
Sevan Matossian (26:24):
Oh, wow.
Greg Anderson (26:25):
And I was like, Hey cool. You know? Yeah. And I
Sevan Matossian (26:29):
Ready for a promotion.
Greg Anderson (26:32):
My, my department had been begging me to put in for Sergeant so they could promote me. They’re like, you’re a natural leader, Greg. We want you to be in a leadership position. We wanna promote you. Like, I was always well respected in the department, both by my peers and my chain of command. And so when he called me and said that, I was like, okay, cool. You know, I didn’t foresee this video getting me fired, but I also knew
Sevan Matossian (26:57):
You didn’t, you didn’t. No,
Greg Anderson (26:59):
I knew there was the potential for it to rub something people the wrong way, but I wasn’t sure what the outcome was. But at the end of the day, I wasn’t concerned about the outcome. I was concerned about getting the right message out there.
Sevan Matossian (27:12):
And was that because going back to this word you used before heart something, wasn’t sitting well with your heart, you’re going this way. And something was telling you to do this. And you’re like, I can’t do that. I can’t do that. And so you out, Hey, I know you want me to make a right turn here. I can’t. And that’s what that video was. Right. They want you to do some stuff that you felt you didn’t wanna do to, to the people that you swore to serve.
Greg Anderson (27:32):
Well, and, and, and here’s the, the God honest truth about it. I, and I, I articulated in the video, my specific department, I was fortunate. I didn’t get tasked to go arrest women at parks. And when we started seeing all this stuff happening, I went right into my chief’s office and I was like, Hey, just so you know, you know, if we start getting these orders to go shut down, people’s businesses, I need to know where you stand on this because I already know where I stand. And he’s like, no, no, no, Greg, listen, I we’re gonna, we’re gonna stand behind our communities and we’re not gonna do all the stuff that we’re seeing on TV. And I was like, okay, like I felt, uh, a sense of relief because my specific department told me that they weren’t going to ask us to do all of these egregious acts that we’re seeing from police officers nationwide. So, but just because my specific department wasn’t asking me, it’s like over here, over there, what’s the difference? You know, I was still seeing cops nationwide. I mean, we saw those, we two police boats chasing that surfer around in Malibu. Do you remember that video?
Sevan Matossian (28:43):
No. I heard about some like that. That’s crazy.
Greg Anderson (28:47):
They said the ocean’s closed. And I’m like, What are we talking about? Like, and this is, this is the biggest problem with the perfection. And with politicians like you guys, aren’t in charge of all of this. You don’t get to close the ocean. That’s not how it works. You know? And we saw like mothers getting arrested for going on, walks, pushing their babies through parks. And
Sevan Matossian (29:12):
I saw some of that.
Greg Anderson (29:13):
The, uh, the one that the, the straw that broke the camels back for me was there was two Hispanic women. And they were, uh, yeah, there, it is
Sevan Matossian (29:26):
Crazy.
Greg Anderson (29:27):
Two Hispanic women were doing nails out of their basement. And they sent in undercover agents to go ahead and, and pretend to be customers. And then they arrested them. And I’m like, you like,
Sevan Matossian (29:42):
Hey, I don’t mean to make it political, but Democrats, the ones that care that’s Democrat.
Greg Anderson (29:47):
Yeah, it is. It is man. And, and, and like I said, like, I don’t necessarily align with, with the political party, but I certainly don’t align with the Democrats. Yeah, yeah.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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