Small Agency Recruiting with Sgt. Dion Olson

If losing two officers would rock your agency, this conversation is a blueprint for stability. We sit down with Crestwood, Missouri’s Dion Olsen to explore how a 29-officer department recruits year-round, accelerates hiring without cutting corners, and turns culture into a real competitive edge. No fluff, just practical tactics you can adapt tomorrow.

Dion walks us through the long game: staying in touch with academy students and laterals, keeping a live database of prospects, and opening the door early with informal, low-pressure conversations that focus on mutual fit. Instead of hiding behind forms, he brings candidates inside the building to meet the chief, greet the shift, and feel the team dynamic. That authenticity draws people who want to matter fast and helps small agencies stand out against bigger paychecks.

We also dig into systems and speed. Dion explains how flexible scheduling, same-day interviews, and immediate background checks compress timelines responsibly. He shares how clear communication—texts, calls, quick updates—reduces drop-off, while smart spending on tools and workflows replaces wasteful tactics like billboards and empty career fairs. The result is a pipeline that can move from a job posting to a uniformed officer in training in 30 days, powered by trust, clarity, and process discipline.

Underneath it all is a mindset shift: recruiting isn’t scarce because candidates disappeared; it’s scarce when we cling to outdated steps. Treat candidates like customers. Make it mobile, fast, and respectful. Even those who go elsewhere will remember your agency as responsive and human, which pays future dividends. If you lead a small or mid-sized department, this is your playbook for building a resilient, relationship-driven hiring engine. Subscribe, share with your command staff, and leave a review with the one change you’re making after listening.

Safeguard Recruiting is owned and operated by first responders, and it is a public safety recruiting firm with a proven recruiting system that staffs agencies across the country. 

Reach out today for a free consultation and learn about our guarantee that will increase the number of candidates for your agency. 

Transcript

Meet Dion Olsen And Crestwood

Travis Yates 0:00

Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for spending your time with us. And man, we have a barn burner today. We have a guest that is going to blow your mind. We have Dion Osun from Crestwood Police Department in Missouri. And Dion is from a very small agency. He's the only recruiter, but he's not just a recruiter. He does a whole bunch of other things. And Doug, he reached out to you uh, I don't know, about a year ago, and you were impressed with this guy, were you not?

Doug Larsen 0:30

Oh, yeah, right from the first phone call, I was impressed with this guy. He does a lot of research, he understands a lot about um recruiting and what it takes and the technology side of it too. So I am very impressed with Dion. He's well spoken, he does a great job.

Travis Yates 0:45

We were actually uh we had a team member up by his uh department over the holidays, and we went by there and chatted with him. And man, I'll tell you, this guy he's running Google Sheets and he's got a bunch of different things going on. He now has Safeguard Connect, it all funnels into the software for him. And as he said, hey, he's got to do more with less. He's one, he's a half of a person, right? Doing a bunch of other jobs and doing recruiting, but he is bringing people in. I think you're gonna love what he has to say, you're gonna love his answers for what we talked to him about. So if you're a small department, you don't think you have a lot of resources. This is one you want to watch for. You want to listen to Dion, you want to get encouraged by him. So without further ado, here's Dion Olson. Well, we're honored to have Dion Olsen on the show today. Dion has been in law enforcement for 26 years in the state of Missouri, 17 years with the Crestwood Police Department. He serves as the community resource officer there, but he's a man of many jobs, including recruiting, special Olympics there, and many, many other things. And Dion has a great perspective that I think you or audience need to understand. He's in a smaller agency, a suburb of St. Louis, and he's doing a lot of things right. Probably did a few things wrong, but it got him to where he is today. We're really proud and honored that he's here. Dion, how are you doing, sir?

Dion Olson 2:07

I'm great. Thank you, Travis. Thanks for great introduction. I appreciate you.

Travis Yates 2:10

Well, we try, man. We try. But you know, I know the salary wasn't real big to bring you on, so we try to make you look as good as we can. Now, listen, Dion, I I love the fact that you're on because uh law enforcement, I know knows this, but maybe the general public that finds this doesn't. The majority of law enforcement, the vast majority, 95% plus law enforcement's under 50 officers. That's American law enforcement. We all know about the you know New York, New York Cities and the LAs of the world, but those are few and far between. Uh the most law enforcement in America is smaller

The Reality Of Small-Agency Staffing

Travis Yates 2:40

agencies. And so I guess give us the quick rundown about your agency, your agency size, sort of the numbers, and then we'll go from there.

Dion Olson 2:47

You're right, Travis. You know, the the big departments get the big press, but it's the smaller departments that make the majority of our great country. And we are tasked with some pretty unique situations and that we have to deal with. So Crestwood is a small municipality in St. Louis County, as you said, about four square miles, 13,000 people. And we we fit a um as as an older uh established suburb, uh, we're sometimes forgot about, you know, like we're we're like we're not even there, um, which is good. But when it comes to recruitment, that can be really bad. Yeah. Because one of the first things you have to do is you got to get your name out there um and find out, you know, what the people want. And this and that's one of the big things that I am tasked with doing.

Travis Yates 3:32

So how many officers are with fully staffed, how many officers um do you have?

Dion Olson 3:39

So fully staffed, we are 29. That includes all of our administration, our detectives, the road, and then uh a couple traffic officers and and the smattering of one guy that you're talking to.

Travis Yates 3:49

Okay. So and people need to understand. So you're 29 officers, if you go down five officers, that's like a LEPD's down 800. I mean, so it's really equal to that. And so people are used to on the news saying, oh, recruiting at this big agency, recruiting that big agency, and the numbers are real big. But in smaller agencies, you lose two or three in a month through retirements or resignations or whatever, all of a sudden, man, you're in trouble. Have you guys sort of discovered that? That you that is that why you sort of man, you can't recruit seasonally with a with a department like that. You need to recruit all the time.

Dion Olson 4:21

Right. It's absolutely devastating. And and you brought up a great point is that where the larger departments are recruiting 24-7, 365. They have people that that's what they do, and that's all they do, and because they're constantly hiring. That's a good and a bad, you know, because you have the ability to get out there and have your message. But for us, we may not hire for six months, nine months, maybe even a year, and you have to continue to have that message out there. And for a lot of people, they don't want to wait. They're not they're not waiting for the next um, you know, the next person to quit or retire or whatever it may be. So it does definitely have some distinct challenges.

Playing The Long Game In Recruiting

Travis Yates 5:02

What are some of the things that you do with those challenges to try to help with that?

Dion Olson 5:07

Well, I found that the biggest benefit is to play the long game uh in recruitment, is you we do have times when we need officers and we need them now. And it just like any other department, we have spots to fill, we need to fill them. But I want to start months ahead of time. I want to find out who's in the academy, who's looking to go to the academy. Um, you know, who could we who could we possibly sponsor? You know, I still talk to people, I keep a database, uh, much like you guys have in your software, and much better than my put-together uh database, but I keep a database of all the people I talk to, you know, where they're at in their lives, what they want, what they're doing. And I just reach out at times. And I've made a lot of friendships just outside of the department and law enforcement by keeping up with people. Uh I have people that are contacting me off that database maybe two years down the road, that they just want to ask for advice. They they maybe they know that this isn't a department that they're going to go to, but they've come to trust me for the honesty uh that I provide them when we're going through this recruitment process.

Travis Yates 6:15

Yeah, we always, as our audience knows, we're always talking about the power of communication relationships. Sounds like to me, you just honed in on that. You just know that you've got to do that to keep them sort of hanging on, waiting for those openings to come up. Absolutely.

Dion Olson 6:30

You know, I I when I got into this, and I and I'll I'll tell you my secret, and this is what I tell every recruit that comes through my door. Every I we sit down at a table and I have an informal conversation. I try to take away the formality of the hiring process. And what I tell them is I want to have this informal, informal sit-down just to find out what we're about, what you're about, what I'm about, what the Crustwood Police Department is about. And let's get to know each other. And at the end of the conversation, let's find out if we're even a fit for each other. Because the last thing we want is six months after hiring somebody to find out that they really hate what we're what we're doing. Uh it makes a department miserable and it makes for miserable employees. And so far that has gone really well. And I liken it to being a college sports recruiter, uh, the person who goes out to actually goes to people's homes, you know, finds out what they're about, finds out what their family's about, and bringing them in that way. It is a lot more work, but I have found that it pays off huge dividends.

Travis Yates 7:31

Yeah, that's that's really huge because you're right. It it that's why I think we've seen, and I'll just tell you from probably the most of the people that contact us that need help, we find a huge hole in communication and relationships. So you've really honed in on something that we know works. And and typically you mentioned our software that was actually developed because people don't do what you do, Dion. I mean, we've got, don't get me wrong, we got great people out there and great recruiters, but they don't have time. You know, you've got 100, 200 people coming in a month at some of these agencies. They don't have time to have that relationship with everybody. They don't have time to pick up the phone, they don't have the personnel to do it. And so, what our software does obviously is it helps them hit everybody at once. It's mass texting, mass email. We just had a conversation out of Lermer County where their recruiter on July 4th, just on a whim, just went through the software and spent about 30 seconds and sent everybody 2,000 people

Relationship-First Hiring Conversations

Travis Yates 8:20

happy 4th of July. And he said that alone created an engagement with people that are now going through the process. And so obviously, not everybody has the ability to do what you do. That's where the software comes in play. You've been able to make it work without the software because of that. But you're right, it's a lot of hard work. But as you said, it really pays off. And I think sometimes in law enforcement, we think that oh, we'll just spend money and things just get easier. Well, obviously, you need to be efficient in recruiting, but recruiting at the end of the day is still about relationships, and relationships are work, is it not?

Dion Olson 8:53

Absolutely, it's a lot of work, and that's you know, I'd like to say that I make it look easy, but it's not easy. Um, you're talking about time management to a whole new level, and then oftentimes years of learning software and different systems and building your own systems out, which is where you guys really take the lead, um, especially when I look at it from a small department, going, you know, if you only have one person who might have only a couple hours out of their day to do some recruiting, you guys make it easy. That's what I love about it. Um and I I've I've come to the point where uh even though I'm not an administrator, I'm not in administration, I'm not command staff, I've I've really brought it forth to our command staff that we need to budget more for recruitment, just as if we were budgeting for training, um, ammunition, equipment, because this is the reality of law enforcement today.

Travis Yates 9:52

Yeah, and it's not only the budget for recruiting, it's where you're placing that budget. Because trust me, there's plenty of folks that will throw $10,000 at a billboard, you just threw away your money, right? So there's you got to make the right decisions on that. But I love any decision you would make when it comes to communication, when it comes to relationships. Uh, and and we have people that ask us all the time about their budget items, and we'll just be honest with them. I mean, I'll be honest with you, Dion. We know at smaller agencies there's a budget issue. Number one, they don't traditionally budget for recruiting, but when they do, they don't have a whole lot. And so we have costs that is I mean, we're talking three, four hundred dollars a month for a lot of these agencies that we work with. Because and now, yeah, you're not gonna get a thousand people a month come through your door, but you're gonna get what you need based on your size. So we've we've really worked hard to make this affordable for everybody. And I think as we talk with you back and forth, that's what really encouraged us to do it because I know budget's an issue, not just for you, but for everybody else. But you're right, getting the budget, but then spending it the right way. Because trust me, Dion, you could go to four colleges over the course of a week and setting a job forever where nobody shows up and you just spent five thousand dollars, right? It can go away real quick if you spend it wrong.

Dion Olson 11:00

Very quickly, you are not wrong. Uh, your budget, you can eat through your budget pretty quickly if you're not wise in your expenditures. Yeah, yeah.

Travis Yates 11:07

Let's ask about. I mean, you're you're at a kind of a doctorate level in recruiting, since I'm talking to you, we know that. But before that, was were there any mistakes you made where you kind of went, aha, this isn't the right way? Because we all make them. That's how we get to the knowledge we'd have. What well what give us your experience in that?

Dion Olson 11:23

I was a blundering buffoon. Uh, you know, you you walk in trying to figure out, you know, how do you get people hired? You look, we're looking at old paper um uh

Budget, Tools, And Smart Spend

Dion Olson 11:35

sorry, um applications and yeah, you got old paper applications, you're trying to um work with your in-house uh human resources department, who gets the applications, who talks to who. And I gotta be honest, it took me probably a solid two, two and a half years to build up any kind of system where I could follow up with people and really make it meaningful.

Travis Yates 12:01

Yeah, just to take our audience that maybe isn't familiar, because we talk about this all the time. Law enforcement, I mean, I came on in '93, but if you came on in 2003 or 2013, or even 2020, you're talking about what the majority of law enforcement did. Come pick up your paper application, turn into HR, turn it in here, or you're out. If you don't show up for this event, you're out. And I mean, I I make the joke all the time, but it's not a joke. I applied, and for six months, nobody said a word to me. And one day a piece of paper showed up in the mail and said, show up for this test. I mean, there was no, you know, that, but we could get away with that when there were thousands of people showing up to our agency wanting to work for us. But as a as the new generations change, the generation today, they expect a little more relationships, which is what you've honed in on. And so you're right. If you can cross that hurdle of breaking the tradition of law enforcement, which is not always easy, okay, we've used these old outdated systems. Let's modernize the systems to increase what we're doing. And it took you a couple of years to get there, didn't it?

Dion Olson 13:02

It you know, there's the time that it takes for that. But Travis, I'm gonna tell you what the real the one of the real things that take a long time is changing mindset. Yeah. The mindset is a huge thing where um just like you, I you know, I've been doing this for I've been doing this for 26 years. And when I got into this, I was the honor graduate from my academy class. It still took me over six months to get a job, you know, um, and I had to move hundreds of miles away to get that job. And nobody cared who you were, that you didn't have a name, you were lucky to be assigned a number. Yeah, and I always tell the recruits these days that I know times have changed. I said, but there's some departments that haven't. And I said, I want you to know that you're a name here, that you are a person, and there and therein lies my big um my big movement for our department to be the kind of place you want to work because we actually do care about who you are, the individual. And that's huge.

Travis Yates 13:54

Yeah, yeah. You just honed in on a huge advantage for agencies your size, which is the majority of agencies. And I dealt with it. My son just uh graduated

Lessons From Early Mistakes

Travis Yates 14:05

the uh a fired academy, and I'll tell you, their fire department has about the same amount of officers as your department has 27, 28. And I asked him, I said, Hey, I know fire chiefs at this city, in this city, in these larger cities. I know these guys. He goes, Nope, I want to work in a small community where they know who I am, where it's a family. And man, that's just what his goal was. And he did it, and he loves it. And I and that is something that I think these smaller agencies, as you said earlier, you sometimes feel like the small step step kid in the in the room, but man, you actually aren't. I mean, people there's especially with I think this new generation of kids that want to feel like they make a difference immediately. It's not like it was when you and I came on, Dion. We're like, shut up for the next five years, and then we'll ask you if we want to know something.

unknown 14:50

Right, right.

Travis Yates 14:52

Generation today, if you're in your 20s, they want to step in somewhere and immediately make a difference. And these agencies like yours and others, Dion, you can offer that.

Dion Olson 14:59

Absolutely. And while it's not easy to sell culture, that is something that we have. We can't, and I always tell the the people that come into my office and we talk about uh where they want to go with their future. I always tell them, you know, we may not have the highest pay scale, we may not have the best benefits. They're all good. We have good pay, we have good benefits. We may not have the best. But what we have is something that I can't put in black and white on paper, and that's a culture. And that's when I actually will give them a full tour of our facility. They get to walk in, shake hands with the chief if he's here, shake hands with our lieutenants and meet the officers that are out there, and you know, then give them the opportunity that if they they're still interested at that point, they have the opportunity to actually sit down, do an application, and ride with one of our officers. We want to make sure that's and it's that culture, that the welcoming culture. And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lie to anybody, that's a hard thing to sell. You have to put in some effort, but that's where we can flourish by selling who we are.

Travis Yates 15:59

Yeah, that's that's so good. And people need to understand that there's actually many advantages in agencies like that. But again, you've got to you've got to work at it, you gotta sell it. And so once you got your system to where you really helps you efficiently, did you see an improvement just automatically from that? Or did it take a while?

Dion Olson 16:17

Oh absolutely, immediately when you it takes time to get the system in place, but once the system starts working, that's why you build it. Yeah, and you get to where you are waiting with twiddling thumbs for an application to come in to actually contact the people ahead of time. You you hear someone putting in their retirement papers, you start making phone calls. You let them know, hey, I've got this coming. And we've actually had, and this this still amazes me to this day. From the announcement of an open position to having someone in uniform on the street with an FTO, we've done it in 30 days.

Travis Yates 16:55

Yep. That takes a system, Dion. That takes a system, and that's valuable. I mean, there's so many agencies trying to get to six months, right? They're they're happy they get to six months, and so pretty, pretty valid stuff. And that's and that's actually

Culture As A Competitive Edge

Travis Yates 17:10

people aren't familiar with safeguard recruiting. We actually sell a system. Yeah, we have products, but those products together build a system for our clients. And the way to not maximize what we do is if we have a client, and this happens sometimes because of tradition, they said, Well, we want this piece, but we don't want that piece, and we just see it. We had a recent client that just said, We'll take it all all the way to uh applications on the phone, it keeps our keeps everybody on the phone, it's all mobile, it's all automated, all the communications automated. Overnight, with uh you'd be shocked if I told you they didn't really spend that much money. Overnight, the applications doubled because they found out that they were losing a lot of people that once they once they got notified about the job, they had to go sign up and get a password and a username, and they had to go to a desktop and they had to print something off and they had to scan it. 90% of the people today won't do it, they just won't do it. And uh, once they came off of that, it was like magic for them. And and it was almost like, well, you weren't lying to us. I'm like, no, dude, we're not lying. We've done 500 plus campaigns. We know exactly what system you've got to implement. Of course, you have done a lot of that yourself, and you've seen it's nothing special. We just have it sort of in a box, here you go, and it helps out and gets you there quickly. But you have to sell that to the administration. It took you a couple of years, and we still we're still talking to clients saying, Have you thought about maybe doing this or doing that? Now, what about access, Dion? You talked about they can come in, they can apply, they can go on a ride-along. When you do your testing, when you do all this stuff, do you sort of give them options? Do you work with their schedules? How do you do that?

Dion Olson 18:44

Oh, absolutely. And um we we rely very heavily on an interview basis. Uh and that has helped us a lot. Once again, because we are culturally based, we want to find out if people fit. Um, and we we always joke that if we can't tell if someone can do basic math and write a sentence while we talk to them in a formal interview, then we're the ones who have a problem.

Travis Yates 19:08

Yeah.

Dion Olson 19:09

So um we are heavily interview-based. We we will actually do within a couple hours, get our interview in, get a quick background assessment started, and we get moving all with in their schedule. We make sure that they have we can put to their time. We can grab four people that are in the office, it's the same team of people. Okay, when do you have time off from your job, or when can you get away from your family, or you know, how much time do you have? Because we can do all this at once if you'd like. And that is a benefit of having in a smaller agency of being able to be fluid with the things that need to happen. Uh, we can actually um get somebody started, uh, everything done on the computer um within one day, as long as they're willing to do their background stuff. And then we can have somebody into a psyche valve in a couple weeks, um, you know, sitting in front of a doctor with a physical. And we, of course, we pay for that, and

Building A Fast, Flexible Process

Dion Olson 20:05

it's it we work with them all the time. And then what I do, and it's I I have no part in the process. I have removed myself from the hiring process. I think that's worked out for us, but I remain the uh the friend on the inside that they can call, hey, I haven't heard anything, I'm getting nervous, you know, what's going on? I they can send me a text, they can give me a phone call, you know, shoot me an email, whatever it is, and I can go check into it for them. And I can give them information within minutes. Usually if there's if I could the right person's in their office, I can find out within minutes and get back to them. And I still have, like I said, I still have that great communication with people two, three years down the line because they want to ask questions. Maybe it's not just about crestwood, but that communication is really the key to all of it. And it keeps people in our system, my system, our hiring process. You have to you can't just give somebody an application and say, hey, you'll hear from us in a couple weeks. You you lose people too quick. And this generation isn't willing to put up with that. And and they really shouldn't. We shouldn't have had to do it back when it was us. Um, yeah, it's just it's just some common courtesy. And I think that by showing that common courtesy to people, they're willing to come back. And my goal when this is all said and done is if we don't hire this person and they go somewhere else or do something else, maybe they're not even a law enforcement, they can look back and say that we were a great department to work with, that we had a great process, that we were good people. You know, we're not gonna get bad talked because they didn't get a job here.

Travis Yates 21:41

So, yeah, I mean, what you just described there, maybe we don't think of it that way, Dion, but the customer service mindset. You know, if you've got a burger joint in Crestwood, most burgers, let's be honest, unless you're like an in and out, maybe you're gonna argue with me and say water burger, but that would you would be the devil if you said that. Most burgers are very similar. How does one burger? Burger joint do better than the other. They better separate themselves through customer service. You've got a Bucky's a few hours from you, people familiar with Bucky's. Boy, they better have clean bathrooms and great customer service because they're convenience stores on every corner. And so I think law enforcement's sort of forgotten that, right? We think you owe us an application. You owe calling us if you have any questions. Look at us. Man, you got away with that 20 years ago. You ain't getting away with that anymore. And so they your customer service has, I mean, you have separated yourself from those, you know, 90 plus agencies right there around you. It has to be, right? I mean, just by the way you're treating people. And I guess is there any examples of that where you saw where that really helped you? Because I'm sure a lot of your applicants are looking at other places as well.

Dion Olson 22:44

Oh, absolutely. I've had uh I've had applicants that literally two, three years down the road will call me back and say, you know, this is I've been here, here, and here, you know, these different places,

Customer Service Mindset For Candidates

Dion Olson 23:00

and you know, I'm not really sure what to do next. And it has absolutely nothing to do with you know trying to get a job with us anymore, but you know that they would jump at that opportunity because they've seen what we offer to well, it is it is the first impression of any employee you have is the recruiting process.

Travis Yates 23:20

Absolutely. It's the first impression, just like if you walked into a business, you expect someone to say, How are you doing? Can we help you? If you if I don't say that, you actually notice it. Like I hate going to Best Buy because everywhere you turn, how can I help you? How can I help you? Obviously, it's been trained in them, but they're doing that because the electronic store down the road doesn't ever do that, you know. And uh, that's why Radio Shack doesn't exist. No, I'm just making all these companies mad today, but you know what I mean. Um, it's so important, man. It's such a lost art. And I'm gonna I'm gonna sort of get a little uh, you know, maybe it's gonna seem a little bit self-branding here, but I just want to talk to you. You ran across our content, I think months or years ago, and you started watching a lot of our content. I I so we put this content out, Dion. We talked before the before the show, like we don't know anything. We're just we want to help law enforcement. We're from law enforcement, we got about 100 years of combined experience our team does inside law enforcement, and so yeah, it's a business. We want to help you staff up full, but at the end of the day, we just want to help you, and so a lot of that is you start content, and we do this obviously each and every week, both articles and videos, but we don't always get feedback from people that watch it, right? Uh so I guess my question to you is when you ran across the content, what what was your first thoughts?

Dion Olson 24:30

I love it, and I and I and I don't just say that to butter your muffin. Let me tell you, I uh I have stolen so many great ideas from your videos uh because my system is not complete.

Travis Yates 24:42

I don't think well, you know what? It never should be. That's a great comment. It never should be. We should obviously constantly improve on it. That's what we do here, right? We should always improve on it. So that's a great statement.

Dion Olson 24:54

Yeah, I want I want to take what I can from wherever I can. Yeah, and I'm also not the kind of person to hoard knowledge and and wisdom about what I'm doing. Obviously, I'm here today, but I've also had recruiters from other agencies in our region come visit me to see how I do it. And I don't mind because I don't have um I don't have a scarcity mindset. A lot of people in recruiting think that we are scarce for recruits right now. Brother, I'm here to tell you. We're not scarce for people. Yeah, we're scarce in the way that we've been doing it.

Travis Yates 25:27

Yeah, first off, hold on, Dion. People think I'm crazy or we're crazy because we've been saying that the whole time. It does we've because we know it. We know it. I mean, this department will come to us and they're like, we're about to be down. This it's a crisis. I'm like, no, it's not, it's not. And then we we we put that system in place, and all of a sudden they go, Oh, so I'm glad you said that. We don't have a crisis of recruiting, we have sort of a crisis of making the right decisions around recruiting.

Dion Olson 25:54

Oh, it's definitely it's uh it's it's learned behavior, and something it's just something we're gonna have to

Share The Playbook, Fix The Mindset

Dion Olson 26:00

unlearn and learn something else. And I've always said that you know, when you stop learning, that's when it's time to lay down and die. And here we are, it's time to learn, change the way we do things and and get it done right because the best people, the people now that if they're interested in law enforcement and you can show them what this profession offers, you have a good chance of keeping those people in the profession. Yep. It's it's not people who just, hey, you know what, I decided one day I'm gonna be a cop, they go to the academy, and three months into what into their their job, they decide, you know what, this is crazy. I can't do this. And we had a lot of people that did that in previous times. Now you have people that, you know what? I really want to do this, and they'll really stay and they'll really make a big difference in their communities.

Travis Yates 26:48

It's good stuff, Dion. Dion Olsen, Crestwood, Missouri Police Department. You know, whether you know it or not, pat yourself on the back. It's very inspiring what you've been able to do there. We hear the woe is me stories constantly. Uh, but you are proof and evidence that if you just sort of figure out that system that works and make it efficient for you, you don't have full-time recruiters, you don't have a big budget, but you're you're you're doing phenomenal stuff. We want to just clone you and send you everywhere. It's awesome stuff, Dion. So we can't thank you enough for being here and helping out those watching.

Dion Olson 27:19

Thank you, Travis. Greatly appreciate the time.

Travis Yates 27:21

And those of you that've been watching or listening, thank you for being here. We look forward to seeing you next week.