This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Welcome back for part two of my conversation with John Franklin, Chicago law enforcement specialist and executive.

[0:12] John Franklin: I see your face. Nobody else can see your face. The enigmatic smile is giving it all away. What you know, what you know. That was a mess. And it hasn't served Kim Fox well that she decided to drop the charges against Jesse Smollett. You know, Dave Chappelle summed it up very well. If you ever saw his comedy special, he talked about it. He talked about how there's a scene in his comedy special where he talks about how when the story came out about what happened to Jesse Smollett, that he was attacked by two white guys wearing MAGA hats, and they put a noose on his neck and poured bleach on him and ran away. He said black people became eerily silent.

[0:58] Exactly.

[0:59] John Franklin: He said the gay community started to attack the black community for not initially supporting them. It wasn't no black gay people attacking him because we knew better. Well, that's what Dave Chappelle said. He said, what the gay community didn't realize was that the black community was supporting Smollett by their silence. Yes. Because they knew he was lying about the whole thing. Nobody walks around in Chicago wearing MAGA hats.

[1:27] Exactly.

[1:28] John Franklin: And he even goes through a little skit where the officer's taking this report and he says, okay, you were walking where? He said, you do know it's minus 16 degrees outside. And you were going to wear subway? Okay. He says, and you were attacked by what, two male whites wearing MAGA hats in Chicago? Just a minute. He tells his partner, hey, Frank, co-pone at where Kanye West was tonight.

[1:57] Yeah.

[1:58] John Franklin: I mean, when I heard the story, I was like, oh hell no. This is ridiculous. I knew it, you know. But again, here you had to pull detectives off of heater cases, off of other more important cases, homicides, rapes, whatever, sexual assaults. You had to pull them off these cases. And because this is a national case now. This is a, what they call a heater case. So people have to, you know, and then the public's alerted to this, and people want to see results. They want to see them quickly. So you've got to drain these resources, pull them off of other cases, and spend a considerable amount of overtime to track down all these leads. And remember, Smollett wouldn't even give the officers his phone initially to look at his phone to see if there was anything on there that could shed some light on this. And eventually the detectives found out, but we all pretty much knew from the start that this was a completely made-up story.

[2:50] So why didn't they just let it go? Why did they go after Kim Fox?

[2:54] John Franklin: Well, Kim Fox took, for whatever reason, took it upon herself to drop the charges against Smollett. But the black community is supporting Kim Fox. Well, I will say, I will say probably most of the black community is supporting Kim Fox, but I don't think that was a decision she would make again, and I think she regrets that decision. Because basically, what you're saying is, I'm just gonna let this ride. You know, we'll just take his bond money. You know, there were considerable resources departments spent to check this case out. At the very least, it should have been a publicly announced agreement that he would reimburse the city for the expenses spent to investigate this hoax. And then at that point, I think everybody would have been glad to walk away from him.

Because basically he's charged with a state disorderly conduct charge. He wasn't gonna do any time for that. And he probably will not do any time now with the special prosecutor now. And he's been indicted on what, six or ten counts, whatever. I doubt if he's going to do any jail time this time around.

[3:56] It just felt like, you know, somebody had co-opted the whole case. And, you know, people were offended at that. I mean, the police department spent considerable resources. It was a black eye for the city of Chicago, a black eye for the department that they quote unquote could protect this celebrity who's here filming this hit show in Chicago. You know, and the mayor took it, you know, rather upsettingly understandable because, you know, those things paint a bad picture, you know, of your tourist, you know, we get a lot of tourists to come here too. And this happened in an area where a lot of tourists go. And so you're also looking at the image for the city. If a celebrity could walk around and that could happen to them, then a tourist could be in the world.

And we do have a lot of celebrities here. I've met William H. Macy on the street walking down Michigan Avenue one day. You know, they filmed their series. I used to think acting with him at the St. Nicholas Theater when I was 15 with Bill. I mean, we’ve seen a lot of celebrities here. Somebody told me one day, they said, you know, John, I saw Samuel L. Jackson walking down Michigan Avenue. I asked him, hey, can I take a picture? And he said, hell no. And said, can you believe he said that? I said, Yeah, I can believe he said that. If he has someplace to go, I don't blame him. I said, plus, you know, his characters on TV and in the movies. You're lucky he didn't let out a couple of MF words on you. Because you know, Sam could let some strings go, you know, in the movie. I said, that's a guy I would nod to him and keep it moving, okay? Nod and keep him moving.

[5:22] Tonya Pinkins: So John to uh John. My dad was a police officer. And he was in the being in my community. And what I remember about my dad is when he would have parties, we would have he would have all the biggest gangsters, like the drug dealers, the pimps, and all the politicians, the aldermen, all at the same party. That's my memory of my life of my dad. I've never partied with gangbangers. I've never partied with pimps. Okay. I've never partied with gangsters. I've always kept my distance.

[5:59] John Franklin: I believe you, but I'm telling you what I grew up in, which is what affects my perspective on them. To me, it's like they're all working together. Like, you know, that's the perspective I had growing up as a child being in rooms where these people who are supposedly on opposite sides were socializing. I mean, it's like we see, you know, the Bushes and the Obamas socializing. Like they're all, you get to a certain level where, hey, you run the world and we run it from this end and you run it from that end, and we just make sure we all, you know. I mean, I sort of, that's kind of my take on the world.

[6:37] Sure.

[6:39] John Franklin: Well, again, there's a part of the oath an officer takes where it says, I will keep my personal life unsullied, meaning you won't dirty up your personal life by hanging with unsavory characters. And I think I've done pretty good at that part. I will nod respectfully at anyone who nods back at me, but it doesn't mean I love you. It doesn't mean I'm gonna sit down and have a meal with you or invite you into my home.

[7:03] But what about don't you have to have informants and things like that? Because you've been, have you been a detective?

[7:08] John Franklin: I worked in narcotics and the organized crime division for eight and a half years. Well, not eight, about seven and a half years. Uh-huh. Don't you have to have relationships with people who are going to give you information?

[7:18] You do. Doesn't mean you have to sleep with them, have them over and this and that. I mean, they're informants. They're part of that criminal world. You need to break down the bigger part of the criminal world.

[7:28] But that's not how we see it on TV.

[7:30] John Franklin: Well, again, I got no control over how you see it on TV.

[7:33] I know, but I sent you that Color of Change Rashad Robinson story about how the way people of color are viewed in our entertainment is really affecting how people view them in the real world. And so we now hear a federal agent, a supervisor contacted me when I was chief of Jacksonville, Arkansas, and he was in Little Rock, and he told me one of his officers, one of his agents got into a scandal where he was sleeping with an informant, basically supporting her, living with her while he had a wife and kids at home. I mean, those things sometimes happen, but they're few and far between.

[8:12] Okay.

[8:13] John Franklin: Most officers know where the lines are drawn and stay on the right, on the proper side of those lines.

[8:18] You believe?

[8:20] John Franklin: I know.

[8:21] Okay.

[8:23] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, so Chicago has this reputation as the most dangerous place in the country. And you know, I'm from there. I never experienced it that way. Is there a hype about crime in Chicago that is being escalated in a way that's not real as a person who, you know, you worked there all those years?

[8:42] John Franklin: Well, Chicago is, you know, Chicago's got a lot of great stuff here. You know, we got Navy Pier, we got the big Ferris wheel, we got a lot of great tourist stuff. We have excellent museums, terrific restaurants. We have a lot of, and in the summertime, this city really comes alive. But you cannot let down your guard to think Chicago's not dangerous. We have a lot of problems on our subway system right now that we're trying to cover. Well, robberies, shootings.

[9:08] Shootings?

[9:09] John Franklin: Yeah. We've had some people shot. Uh-huh. It does happen. A matter of fact, at the University of Illinois here at Chicago, the DYC stop on the blue line. A man got shot and his backpack was stolen maybe a month, two months ago. And a citizen actually helped the victim out. Stayed on his call 911, stayed on the scene, gave police a description of the man, and they eventually caught him.

[9:33] Okay. You have daughters. Do you think you'd feel differently if you had sons?

[9:38] About what?

[9:40] Tonya Pinkins: About safety for your sons with police.

[9:43] John Franklin: Of course I would feel different because, oh, Tonya, I hate that you really bring this out on me. You know, we see all the time it's very difficult at times for a young black man to stay out of the system. And I'll give you another story about that. I have a godson who basically I looked out for. I knew his mother. My wife and I are good friends with his mother. She was a single parent to this boy, young man who's now an adult, has his own family now. His mother called me one day while I was working as a sergeant in a district station. She said, he's been arrested. I said, for what? She said, gang loitering. What's that? I said, gang loitering. I don't know what that is. Well, we had a policy in place where if the officers pulled up on known gang members, known from their arrests, known from their gang affiliations.

Some people blatantly make their gang affiliation known to officers or their gang colors. The officers tell them to disperse, so they come back in a certain amount of time, they're still there at that location. They can arrest them for gang loitering. That law was later found non-constitutional, thrown out. But he was taken in for gang loitering. And I told her he's not in a gang. She says, John, I know that. I said, Where is he at? And she told me, you know. So I went over there. And I'm first I called over there and I inquired with the watch commander. Do you have this young man over there? He said, John, I know they got some kids in the back. I don't know who. I'm waiting on see the paperwork.

I said, Well, Lieutenant, I'm on the way over there to check into this. I'll see you when I get there. So I left my station on the northwest side and went to the south side, to the South Chicago district where you grew up, where I work, spent a lot of time there.

[11:19] John Franklin: I get there and I talk to an officer I know who's working in the back, working tack, playing clothes like I did. And I said, What happened? He says, uh, well, we saw a group of gangbangers in front of this store on commercial. We told them to disperse. And when we came back, they were all out there and we took them into custody. I said, Well, was my godson in the group? He said, Well, when we arrested them, your godson was coming out of a store, the store there. I said, You took him into custody? Well, yeah. Did he tell you he was in a gang? He denied being in a gang. What did the other kids say? They told us he was not with them. He was not affiliated with them. I said, So why did you take him in?

He said, Well, John, you know. I said, you know what? You need to go speak to the watchman or get these charges dropped. I'm gonna take him home. And you need to do that now. Yeah, but that's somebody having a relationship. That that kid's mom could call you. If you're just got a kid, you're just some poor parent, and you're at work and your kid goes to the store and they come out and they get arrested. You don't even know where they are. Your kid just doesn't come home, and you're just, you know, you don't have that's that's a relationship. That's what Smallette had with Kim Fox. He could make a call and get something taking. But at the same time, I kept him out of the system because first of all, he didn't break the law.

And when I confronted the officer about that, I made him correct his mistake. And you're right, everybody doesn't have access to somebody who knows the ins and outs of the longest. Most people don't have access. Again, and Tanya, I'm not denying that. I told you it's very difficult to keep a young black man out of the system. Who knows what having that kind of arrest on his record could have done to him in the future. So and unfortunately, and unfortunately, a lot of us don't police our kids very well. We don't know where our kids are at when they get out of school. We're uninvolved. I've taken many reports of missing kids, and I asked a parent for them, Well, who is friends? Officer, I don't know what friends are.

Where's he hang out? I don't know where he hangs out. But that's this generation's generation with the the cell phones and you make friends on apps and ten grinder and I know, Tanya. When my kids were in high school, I could tell you where their friends are, who their friends were. I could give you their phone numbers, I could tell you where their friends live. I knew where my kids were. They couldn't just hang out in the street, and they knew that. It's a different thing. We raise our, we don't all raise our kids that well. And a lot of us are totally oblivious to what our kids are doing. We don't even know if our kids go to school. A lot of parents and kids are like ships in the night. Kid wakes up in the morning, the parents go on to work, they've got cereal on the table.

Here's some money for the bus, and I'll see you when I see it. Parent gets home, 10-11 o'clock. That's the reality of most people. I don't look down on people who I feel like it's a privilege when you can have that kind of information about your children, that you have the privilege of ease of mind that you can give extra energy to that. Most people are struggling to survive every day. And law enforcement is a good idea. Well, you know what else we got to struggle to do, Tanya? We got to struggle to be a part of our kids' lives. We got to struggle to know what's going on with them. If we don't know, we need to make it our business to find out. For it blows up in our face. We look up one day and our kids are locked up for some serious stuff, and we wonder how the hell did this happen?

Why weren't we paying attention? Why didn't we see the signs? I never forget. I arrested these kids for burglary. I went to the mother's house and she told me, you know, well, I knew something wasn't right because I saw this antique cuckoo clock in his room. Did you ask him where he got it from? She says, No, I just told him he needed to get it out of the house. Now, here she knows he took it from someplace. She knows it wasn't in his room by legal means. But rather than inquire and find out and put this whole situation in check, just told him go get this out of the house. Well, let's think about she's a woman and she has a boy who probably is stronger than her. Maybe she's got a little fear of that child.

Have a little empathy for what it people tell me with my kids, you need to make them and you need to make them make what? They are grown people. How am I gonna make them do anything? I'm not hitting them, I'm not knocking them down, even though so many men just brag about, ooh, my mama knocked the shit out of me. My mama, I'm not that, I'm not that mama. So what was she gonna do? She said, get it out of my house. You're not bringing furniture in my house. I don't know where it came from. She told him to get it out. Okay, but I'm gonna make inquiries. Where did this come from? How did you get this? How did you how did it come into your ownership? I'm going to make inquiries. Okay, so say she finds all that out.

Still answers gonna be the same. Instead of just saying, just get that out of here, because I know this is wrong. Maybe she gave you the abbreviation. Maybe she had that whole conversation, and the bottom line was get it out. She said, I didn't want to know. I just told them to get it out the house. I didn't want to know. Make business to know. You are the parent. You run the household. Run your household. You don't let the child set the boundaries. You set the boundaries. You're the parent. I hear you. I guess I'm just not a good parent. I mean, granted, my children are not in any kind of law enforcement problems. But I'm, and I'm grateful for that. And I'm grateful for that. But I, you know, I worry.

I mean, when people talk about setting boundaries for kids, or like, you know, they're not doing this. Throw them out. I can't think of throwing my kids out on the street because I worry about any confrontation I might have with law enforcement and that it might cost them their lives. Tanya, at the same time, are you gonna let your kids run dope out of your house? No. Would you let your sons run a string of prostitutes out of your home? No. Of course not. I mean, if it got to that point, I would have to kick them out and they would have to. I mean, if they were behaving in a way that was like that. I don't think you would physically get in their face if you saw thought they were having damaging relationships with women or abusing women or doing anything like that.

I think you'd step up very quickly and straighten that out. Because you tell them, I didn't raise you that way, and you're not gonna behave that way to any woman while you live under my roof. And I know you'd step in. I know I'd step in. We done we're afraid to talk to our kids. We don't want to challenge them on anything. It's crazy. Yeah, it's scary. I'll send you another situation I'll tell you about. Two women involved in an intimate relationship. They move in together. One of them has a like a 14, 15 year old son. And the lady they move in with, she tells her partner, I'm letting you know your son can't sell no drugs out of my place. He can't have any dope in here. She says, he won't do this, he won't do this.

Well, the partner comes home one day, searches the boy's room, finds crack and a pistol in his bedroom. So when he gets home, she confronts him. He takes a gun and shoots his mother's partner in the chest. She survives, but he shoots her. Runs out the house, runs about a couple blocks. We get the call. He's in an alley, shoots himself, kills himself. Oh my God. Yeah. Meanwhile, uh, there's a memorial. You know, these kids do. They start leaving flowers and bottles of liquor and this and that, and memorial to this young man. We start seeing these t-shirts, these spray bottle, you know, cans of spray painted t shirts on kids. What's with the t-shirts? And the kids telling us, y'all know y'all killed him.

We said, What? Y'all shot him to death. So ho, ho, ho, hold it. Kids. Nobody shot him. No, I heard, I said, listen, young lady, he shot his mama's girlfriend, and then he ran on up, ran out of the alley, and he apparently felt remorse about what he did, scared about what was going to happen, and he shot himself. We did nothing to him. We found him in the alley, shot to death, self-inflicted. But there's a story going around in the neighborhood. Yeah, but d doesn't the police department care that their reputation is such that even in the case of a self-inflicted wound, the reputation of the agency is so poor that they're getting the blame for everything. Tanya, how do you control rumor? By having good relationships with the people.

Even with good relationships. Stuff can get out on social media, and by the time you get wind of it, everyone believes it, because God knows it was on Facebook, it was on Instagram, it was on WorldStars, what's gotta be true. That may not be a spidge in the truth to it, but because it's on social media, people accept it as fact. But we see videos now. We see the videos of officers shooting people. There are videos. Yes, there are videos. And these officers don't ever get prosecuted, and then the jurisdiction has to spend money to give the parents, you know, some sort of compensation to make them whole again. So Tanya, look at the Van Dyke case here in Chicago, Laquan McDonald. The kid who got shot on the that was rare.

That was the first time in the history of a police shooting anyone. He shot that kid like 17 times on the streets. Look at the officer in St. Louis that was playing Russian roulette with his girlfriend who had just gotten off work, another officer. He was on duty, played Russian roulette, shot her in the head. He just got sentenced to see. But that's an officer to an officer. Yeah, but still they did time, Tanya. You're seeing more officers prosecuted today and getting convicted today than ever before. But the history of policing in America, just because in the last five years, we're suddenly seeing our first prosecutions in 200 years. Tanya, justice doesn't always move fast. You didn't have cameras before.

And I'll tell you, if an officer got in a shooting, all an officer had to say back in the day was, he placed me in fear of my life, boss, and that's why I had to shoot him. And you know what? That's when the investigation ended. And the officer said those magic words. I was placed in fear of my life. Automatically ruled, justifiable. Now you got cameras out here, you know, stationary in the streets, officer wearing body camp saying, hold it. That was not a life and death situation. You could have de-escalated. You could have retreated. You could have backed off. You could have done this, you could have done that. You didn't have that access to seeing what was really went on. And if everybody there is going to say the same thing, case closed.

Now officers are worried. Am I going to put down the truth on this show? You see worry, you experience worry. No, I'm going to never. I'm not never experienced worry. No, no, no. I'm saying I feel like police know that they're immune. They are a very elite. No, they don't feel that way today, trust me. They know that a camera hidden showing the truth could jam them up on their wildest dreams. That Walter Scott guy, there was a video of that. He got off. Tanya, sometimes juries don't find people guilty. That happens. I've seen people I've arrested I know were guilty. And not often, but sometimes wound up with a not guilty. How do you make peace with that as doing your job? I mean, I hear you that you have a sort of internal moral code, but you know, we see TV movies where it's like you get officers get fed up with the fact that people get off and then they fudge it a little bit or they plant something, or you know, we're seeing all these cases now where all these people were um even.

[22:49] John Franklin: We're seeing it in Baltimore, where a whole team was planning stuff on people. Uh, LAPD. I mean, so how are we gonna trust, how could you expect me to trust people when this is what I'm seeing?

[23:02] John Franklin: Tanya, I don't know how you're gonna trust people, but I was saying police specifically. Most of the problems in the police department occurred due to poor supervision or oversight. If you have sergeants who are missing in action or are not willing to correct people's behavior, if you saw improper behavior, didn't say anything, didn't correct it, then you've condoned it. And the officer will make a mental note of that. It's that's cool because the sergeant didn't say anything. So I can do this, I can get away with this.

[23:30] John Franklin: I agree with you. You have to step in and say, hold it. You can't do this. I'm not gonna allow it. I'm writing you up. You know, you're not gonna be friends with everybody. And it's a big transition when an officer moves from that role of patrolman to supervisor to frontline supervisor, sergeant. It's a huge transition. Everybody doesn't transition well in that because they still want to be everybody's friend. And you can't be everybody's friend when you're the boss. People look at you to tell the truth, to straighten out the mess, to keep things clean and above board. And some people do a good job of that, some people don't.

[24:06] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I thank you for having this conversation with me, John. I always can look to you when I have something going on in the world of particularly police, policing in America, to tell me the other point of view because I really do care because I'm emotional and I'm upset, and then you will, you know, you'll I don't always agree, as could be told here. It's okay for friends to disagree. It's okay. But we still respect each other after that. That's fine. You know, we're never gonna see eye to eye on everything.

[24:37] John Franklin: Right. That's okay.

[24:39] Tonya Pinkins: Um, I'm gonna have three questions for you.

[24:42] John Franklin: Okay.

[24:43] Tonya Pinkins: Um, who are you?

[24:45] John Franklin: Who am I? Well, I'm a 60-year-old career law enforcement officer, executive. I'm an adjunct professional in criminal justice. As you know, back in my early days, I even did some acting. I've done some writing. As a matter of fact, there's a show going on here in Chicago called Sheepdog, performed by Shattered Globe Theater. This is gonna be their last weekend performing the show. They prolonged it for another whole month. And about a month ago, they did the show. It's about an interracial couple, male and female officers in Cleveland, and they have a relationship and they live together, and then one of them gets involved in a shooting, and it changes the whole aspect of their relationship, the shooting itself.

And I was asked to moderate a question and answer segment after the show, and I stayed behind. I sat and watched the show, which was very well done, and took questions and talked to the audience for about a half hour after the show. That's the second time I've done that for Shattered Globe Theater. Sandy Schinner is the artistic director of Shattered Globe Theater. I think the audience got a lot of keen insight from what I had to offer after the show, explaining some aspects of the program. As a matter of fact, you gave me the script to read, and I pointed out a couple of holes I felt the playwright needed to tighten up. And you always help me with that in my things.

[26:10] Tonya Pinkins: So, what do you think is needed in the world from the police officer's perspective? What is needed, particularly from law enforcement?

[26:21] John Franklin: What's needed? Well, over time you develop a bit of a callous as you have to, because you see, we run upon a lot of horrific stuff. You run upon people who have been shot or horribly wounded. I remember one time seeing a woman who was shot with a shotgun. She literally had no head at all. Just gone. And you see a lot of stuff, and it's horrific to see this. And you know, because you know, like you, I grew up middle class. I never dealt with druggies. I never did drugs in my life. I never dealt with that underbelly of Chicago. And now I was immersed in it. And it takes quite an adjustment. And, you know, you see some stuff that you'll find disturbing if you're normal. At the same time, we have to remind ourselves as we develop that callous we need to get through it and remain in control.

And then that's our assignment to deal with the homicide or the rape or whatever it is, the infanticide, the killing of a child, whatever. We had to remind ourselves that we're human. It's okay to feel pain about this. It's okay to go somewhere and express it, but you can't express it at the time at the scene because everyone's looking at you. You're in uniform. You're the person in control, you're the trained law enforcement professional, and everyone expects you to be in control, and you have to be. But it's no, it's okay to deal with it later, you know, to let that stuff out.

[27:39] Tonya Pinkins: Do you cry?

[27:42] John Franklin: Ugh, yeah, sometimes, not often, but I have shed some tears, yeah. Over a case. Particularly kids. Kids are always hard to deal with. You know, because children just don't deserve all the pain that sometimes people put upon them. Most of the time, they don't deserve the pain, the suffering, you know, that people put upon them. I can remember one case I didn't handle, but I was a supervisor on the scene where a lady befriended a woman who was pregnant, and then she got in a woman's home and basically killed her, cut her open and took her baby. And that was pretty horrific to see.

[28:19] Tonya Pinkins: Did y'all get the woman and the baby back?

[28:21] John Franklin: Yeah, yeah, we got her.

[28:22] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[28:23] John Franklin: She went home and told her husband she had given birth earlier that morning. She'd been telling her husband she was pregnant, and she took the baby home, and he called the police. And that's when we tracked her down to the woman she had befriended at the neonatal center and found a woman, you know, basically cut open and the baby extracted from her. That was a pretty horrible thing to see. You know, and I could go on and on. I've seen a lot of horrific stuff in my lifetime. But, you know, I think I'm reasonably well grounded with a good family. I'm still a practicing Catholic. I still go to church, and I just make a conscious effort not to bring that stuff home, you know, not to take it home and let it affect my life with my family, with my friends. You know, it's important to leave that stuff.

[29:10] Tonya Pinkins: That sounds like you have to compartmentalize your life.

[29:13] John Franklin: You do. You most definitely have to. You most definitely have to. You know, police suicide is a huge topic today. When I first got to the city in Arkansas where I was a chief, I had an 18-year lieutenant kill himself in my parking lot three weeks after I arrived there.

[29:29] Tonya Pinkins: Do you know why?

[29:31] John Franklin: Well, his wife left him. He told me he couldn't live without her. But he was seeing a therapist and he was on prescription antidepressants, and he would come see me every day in my office. Sometimes he'd just come in there and cry. And if I was in there meeting with my captains, I told the guys, if he shows up, just leave the room. We'll pick it up later. I want him to feel this is a safe place for him to just come vent whatever he has to do, you know. And he called me every night between six and eight, and he called me again between midnight and one in the morning. And every day I worried about him. Even though he was seeing a therapist. And I had even told him one day, I said, you know, and his name was Jason.

I said, Jason, when you go see your therapist today, I want you to ask her three questions. He said, What's that? I said, I want you to ask her if she thinks you're getting better. I want her to look you in the eye and tell you that she believes you're getting better. Because if she doesn't think you're getting better, Jason, then you need another therapist. I wanted to recommend someone else. He said, You think I need someone else? I said, Jason, that's not for me to say. But if she doesn't think you're getting better, then you might need another therapist. I said, everybody needs a therapist, doesn't always bat a thousand on the first one. Sometimes you got to walk around and try out different therapists to find one that fits you.

I said, Secondly, I want you to ask her if she thinks you need to have your meds readjusted. He said, Okay. I said, and thirdly, I want you to ask her, does she think you need to see her more than once a week? He said, Do you think I need to see her more than once a week? I said, it's very possible, Jason. But those are three questions I want you to ask her when you go see her today. And I saw him the next day, and he said, Chief, she looked me in the eye, she told me she does think I'm getting better. And she did adjust my meds, and I'm now gonna see her twice a week. I said, Jason, I'm glad to hear that. And I wanted to believe he was getting better. Um, I can't say I necessarily saw that he was getting better, but again, I was only around him a limited amount of hours per day, you know.

Um, the day he killed himself, he came to my office about 9:30 in the morning. It was Friday. And he said, Chief, I woke up this morning and I actually had a good night's sleep. I talked to my wife. We had a civil conversation on the phone. We've agreed to keep shared custody of our daughter. He had a 14-year-old daughter. She stays one week with my wife. She stays one week with me, and it's working out well. We decided to keep that going. He says, and I got therapy this afternoon, and I feel like I really turned a corner on this thing. I said, Jason, I'm so proud of you. And maybe around 10:52, some officers came running my office. Chief, chief, you gotta get out of the parking lot. What's wrong?

You gotta get out here. And I come out there, and Jason had walked between two trucks and just shot himself in the head. I know that he had taken a call from his wife around 10:40 on a cell. He walked out in the parking lot to take the call, and that's the last time anybody saw him alive.

[32:30] Tonya Pinkins: Hello?

[32:31] John Franklin: Yeah, that's a toughie.

[32:34] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah. That would answer my last question. How do you serve? That whole story tells ways in which you serve as a man and a human and an officer.

[32:44] John Franklin: So I'm so sorry that that happened.

[32:49] John Franklin: I'll tell you, I probably could not have made it through that day without our department chaplain.

[32:56] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[33:00] John Franklin: Well, I thank you so much for talking to me today and sharing your life and experiences. And I'm grateful that you're my friend and I get to check in with you.

[33:12] John Franklin: Okay.

[33:13] Tonya Pinkins: Well, likewise.

[33:18] Tonya Pinkins: Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT, The Show Where You Can. I'm Tonya Pinkins. This is part of the Broadway Podcast Network, produced by Dori Berinstein and Alan Seales, edited by Derek Gunther, music by Anthony Norman. Available wherever you get your podcast. And visit me on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and let me know what you'd like to hear me talk about. For more information, visit bpn.fm forward slash YCST.