First Response with Bob Plaschke, Episode 29: Captain Abrem Ayana - Trust Through Technology

A 911 call gets answered and, in under a minute, a drone is already overhead. That single detail forces a bigger question: can public safety technology make policing both more effective and more ethical at the same time? PepperBall CEO Bob Plaschke sits down with Captain Abram Ayana from the Brookhaven Police Department, the leader behind some of the most forward-thinking programs in American policing, to find out what’s real, what’s hard, and what other agencies can actually learn from it. 

We start with the human side. Ayana walks  through why he joined law enforcement, what the academy does and doesn’t prepare you for, and why field training officers are the backbone of good policing. He also speaks candidly about stress, burnout, and the reality of drawing a weapon, including how training and repetition are meant to create calm decision-making, not aggression. 

Then Ayana gets into innovation with guardrails: Brookhaven’s mental health co-responder program with licensed clinicians, peer support for officers, and drones and first responders paired with tools like Live 911, cameras, and license plate readers. 

The conversation then turns to  community trust, transparency, and the tension around surveillance, including why Brookhaven limits drone use to 911 calls and why sitting down with the ACLU matters. If you care about ethical policing, de-escalation, real-time crime centers, and practical public safety reform, this conversation is for you. 

If this sparked a new perspective, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more people can get behind the badge with us.

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Transcript

Bob Plaschke: The front line of policing is loud, but the voices behind it are a lot louder and, frankly, a lot more interesting. Hi, I'm Bob Plaschke, and this is First Response, the podcast that takes you behind the badge and uncovers real stories and experiences of first responders from all walks of life, and the topics that shape public safety today. If you're curious about the person behind the hero, and they are indeed heroes, and the topics they care about, take a listen. This is your front-row seat to hearing some of the most interesting voices out there. This podcast is sponsored by PepperBall, where I have the honor to serve as CEO. PepperBall creates non-lethal alternatives to firearms used to help officers keep themselves and the public safe. Today, my guest is Captain Abrem Ayana from the Brookhaven Police Department, just outside Atlanta, right on the border of Buckhead. Captain Ayana leads innovation, technology, and special projects for the Brookhaven Police Department.

He is the architect behind some of the most forward-thinking programs in American policing today, including drones as first responders, Live911, which allows police officers to listen to 911 calls in real time and get a jump on what is happening, and the mental health co-responder program, which brings mental health specialists in to support people who need that help and to support police officers. In 2024, he was honored with the National Eric Talley Memorial Award for his work. Captain Ayana, welcome to First Response. You've been known as a technology innovator in policing, but I want to start before that. What got you into law enforcement in the first place? How did you decide to become a police officer?

Captain Abrem Ayana: Good morning, Bob, and thank you for having me. Interestingly enough, I was watching an episode of Cops back when I was in college with one of my very close friends. It was an episode here in Atlanta featuring the Atlanta Police Department in an area of Atlanta I knew. My friend said, 'That looks pretty cool. I'm going to apply to do that.' I said, 'I bet you won't.' This was back in 2008. You may remember the Great Recession was going on. I had just graduated college and was trying to figure out the next step. There were not a lot of jobs in the market because of the economic times, but the police department was hiring. It looked like a fun job and a cool job. About a year or two before that, my car had been stolen twice, actually twice in three months. The perpetrators had not been apprehended, and I remembered how that impacted me. It was an alignment of several things: I happened to watch that Cops episode in an area of town I connected with, I had been a victim of a crime, and I wanted to hold people accountable. It was either that or join the military.

I actually signed up to join the military at one point because I needed somebody to pay my student loans. Luckily, the Atlanta Police Department called me back before it was time for me to go to basic training, so I put the military on hold and joined the police force.

Bob Plaschke: Oh my goodness. How did you find that first year? You went through an academy, correct? You probably did an 18-week or 24-week course. When you got in, did it feel as good as you expected? How was it going through the academy?

Captain Abrem Ayana: The academy was fun and not fun at the same time. There were a lot of things I understood would help me do the job. At the end of the day, it was an experience that we all go through. It equipped me to think critically about some of the things I encountered when I first hit the street. But that is not where the real preparation came from. The real preparation was in field training. That first time I hit the street and started learning those lessons, that field training experience is where I really learned how to do the job.

Bob Plaschke: That first time out on the street, your adrenaline must be racing. You're now on the other side of the badge, so to speak, and you don't know what to expect. Do you remember the first couple of callouts? You must have been nervous as heck.

Captain Abrem Ayana: I would tell you today that I probably did not have a lot of adrenaline, but I would be lying. I vividly remember some of those first calls, and I was all about it. I actually keep some of the field training notes from my field training officer when I first started because they really captured who I was. He talked about the energy I had to do the job, the work ethic, and the drive. That is all because I really enjoyed what we were doing and all of the new experiences. No day in policing is exactly the same, and no calls are exactly the same. That excitement of doing something different was exactly what it was like the first time I got in a patrol car. I remember those first calls vividly. I remember the first time I drove with lights and sirens. My field training officer asked, 'What are you doing using your turn signals?' I was going whatever speed we were going and still using my turn signals to change lanes and turn because I did not want a bad rating on my daily observation report. He said, 'What are you doing?' I told him I did not want him to give me a one.

He said, 'Man, drive it like you stole it.' He only had to tell me that one time. I started driving like I stole it from then on. That has kind of been my motto, and I have never crashed my patrol car. Like Ricky Bobby says, if you're not first, you're last. I vividly remember those first moments. There is nothing anybody could ever say to describe it. I remember the first time I got to draw my pistol on a felony traffic stop. I remember thinking, this is actually happening. The danger was real. It was an armed robbery suspect from a jewelry store, and I actually had two felony traffic stops in one day. I remember those feelings. It was exciting, but it was also unnerving that these things actually happen out in the streets every day.

Bob Plaschke: I think that is one of the challenges in policing today. We are losing a lot of older police officers who are retiring appropriately. They can retire after 20 years, but agencies lose a lot of that street experience. Those are the most valuable officers. I hear police chiefs say there is a lack of really good FTOs, and that is one of the limitations in policing: having enough strong field training officers to train new recruits.

Captain Abrem Ayana: Very much so. There is a period of time when you first start, those first two to four years, when you are really trying to figure out what you are doing. Right around year six, you become much more aware of what you are doing as a police officer. I would say years six to eight are your sweet spot because you have not reached burnout yet. You are still relatively new and still getting a lot of enjoyment from the work, but you have taken the time to learn the lessons that the career and the streets can teach you. As you progress, a lot of times around year ten or year twelve-plus is when burnout can start to kick in for some people. That is different depending on the agency and the assignment. There are departments where two to four years is like dog years. There are departments where you can work fifteen years and never get the experience you would get in other police departments. I had the fortune of working in busier police departments before coming to Brookhaven. What I like to tell younger police officers is to always look for something new to learn.

At some point, when you start to feel burnout set in, you have to find a way to revitalize yourself, whether that is a new assignment, a new task, or a new horizon. That is how I have evolved in my own right, having the ability to research and do some cool things with technology. Before I got into my role, it did not exist. We did not have a drone program. We did not have a lot of the tools we have now. Being a student of policing and paying attention to what was happening not just inside my organization, but around the country and even around the world, is how we evolved the Brookhaven Police Department into a model for leveraging technology and created a second act for me and for those who work with me. In my career, I have had the opportunity to work in a number of assignments. I was a field training officer, I worked patrol, I taught at a police academy, I was part of a drug and gang violence task force, I have been a street sergeant, a patrol commander, I have done internal affairs, and I led criminal investigations for several years.

Seeing the evolution of policing and talking to people who have done it as long as I have, and longer, is pretty cool.

Bob Plaschke: That is interesting. I had not thought about that before, but it makes perfect sense. Most of the police officers I talk to on First Response have done multiple roles. It makes perfect sense because you can get burned out in the same environment and the same context, particularly given the mental challenges that policing creates. Seeing the same scenarios over and over, and seeing people at their worst over and over, makes it important for a police officer to move around and get a fresh take. Can I go back to the first time you had to draw your pistol? I think lay people, people who are not police officers, may think that is exciting. I would imagine it is not exciting at all. It must be very stressful.

Captain Abrem Ayana: First off, you dated yourself, not me. I've never carried a revolver in police work. I've always had a Glock or Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol. I've never carried a revolver, and I only have three or four gray hairs. I was not in the revolver era of policing, sir. I'm in the semi-automatic pistol era of policing. It is not as thrilling as people think because you are drawing that pistol because you perceive danger, mortal danger to yourself or someone else. It is a sobering experience. I have done it hundreds of times, and I have come exceptionally close to actually having to use deadly force. If it were not for my partner disarming a burglary suspect I was fighting with in a confined space, I would have had to use deadly force. He had a pistol in his hand, and as I was about to use deadly force, my partner was able to take the pistol from his hand. I vividly remember that action. It was recorded on body camera. My reaction afterward, when it was all said and done, was that I was very upset with the individual because I almost had to kill him.

I do not think the general population tends to understand the decision that comes along with that. I can think of one or two of my academy classmates who did not make it out of the first one or two weeks of the academy because they wrestled with the difficulty of that decision and concluded they were not going to be able to take a life. People sign up for the job, go through the hiring process, which is not easy, complete an application that is probably harder than getting a home mortgage, and then make it into that first week or so and realize, 'I cannot take a life.'

Bob Plaschke: Right.

Captain Abrem Ayana: Every time I draw my pistol, that is something I have been willing to confront and make that decision. It is not something you do lightly. I will be completely honest with you. At this point in my career, these things are rather automatic. You can speed up the thought process. You orient yourself toward a decision and act a lot quicker at this point in your career versus where I was in the beginning. It is not easy. I was talking to someone this weekend about community, and I did not realize until that conversation that the law enforcement community truly is a community. After high-profile incidents happen, we talk about how people do not understand what we do, and the only people who understand what we do are people who are similarly in this community. Fair, unfair, just, unjust, that is the truth. You have to have been in that situation and faced that mortal danger to truly understand the result, the internal conflict, and all of the tension present in those moments.

Bob Plaschke: That makes perfect sense. That is why we have this show: to shed light on that community for people like me who use the word revolver. My team is going to give me a hard time for using the wrong term, or an old term. What I hear, and what I am comforted by, is that the training police officers go through, both at the academy and then in the first years when they are under supervision, helps responses become automatic so officers can manage stress. I asked my friends, we have a number of retired officers who work at PepperBall, how they manage fear when they have to breach a door, go in, and search a building without knowing who is inside. Their answer is that it becomes somewhat automatic. They do it over and over until they can do it professionally and manage their emotions, which is important given the stress, because they can manage the situation and not use force if they do not have to. Let's transition. There is so much about your career that is interesting. You started a number of new programs in Brookhaven.

Chronologically, what was the first new program that you started when you got to the department?

Captain Abrem Ayana: One of the first programs was our mental health co-responder program. Right at the onset of COVID, we saw a major increase in mental health calls for service. Brookhaven is a city of about 60,000 residents within roughly a 12-square-mile area. A lot of our residents are career-oriented, working people. You can imagine the uncertainty that came with COVID: getting up every morning and going to work, then being told you were not going to work, that you had to stay home, with lockdowns and everything that came with them. It put a lot of people in a place of despair, and we naturally carried the brunt of that. Family members would call because a loved one was depressed after being laid off, having hours cut, or being locked in the house. Sometimes people were expressing suicidal thoughts, and we had to respond. Before we stood up the co-responder program, I was the department's crisis intervention trainer. I trained hundreds of law enforcement officers across the region in crisis intervention, so that was something near and dear to me.

My father has bipolar disorder, and we found out about it from a 911 call. Police responded to his house, he ended up being evaluated, and that is when they determined my father had bipolar disorder. It became important to me. Like most cops, I was resistant to that training at first and did not understand why I was being made to go to it. But I very quickly understood the why and the utility of that training, so I became a trainer. Then we stood up the mental health co-responder team, bringing licensed professional counselors and clinicians onto our staff to work side by side with us as we responded into the community. Several years later, we now have a full-time counselor working in the police department, not only to serve the needs of the public, but to serve the needs of our police officers. I also started our peer support team many years ago so officers would have support from their peers. We do a lot of work to destigmatize mental health and all the things that come with mental health and law enforcement, but there is still a barrier. I even struggle with it myself.

How will the organization respond to a police officer who says they are not okay? All the training and reading material says we are going to support you, and I have not seen evidence otherwise, but that question always persists. Then I started moving into the technology space. At the time, I was a night commander on patrol. One of our officers saw some people trying to steal a car at an Enterprise rental location in our city. He got out with them, both ran, he caught one, and the other ran into a city park. The park had no lights, and the lights were turned off at night, so it was a large, dark area. We set a perimeter around the park and called for a helicopter. The county police helicopter was not available. The Atlanta police helicopter was not available, so we called the state patrol. It took them about an hour to arrive because they were somewhere else, had to get fuel, and had to come in. We did not catch that guy, and I like catching bad guys. I was frustrated that all that time and effort went into that search and we did not get him. So I started talking about drones.

I was told at the time that we had looked at drones when we started the city, and that we could not do it because of our proximity to the airport. I am the wrong person to tell that something cannot be done, because then I dedicate my effort to understanding the problem and the reason behind the 'can't.' During that research, somebody showed me a YouTube video of a groundbreaking use of drones in Chula Vista, California, where they were sending drones ahead of officers to 911 calls within seconds. I thought it was pretty cool, but I did not think they would give me the money to do that. Fast forward several months, and the police chief found the money to start a pilot program. We started with one drone in a pilot program, and it has exploded since then. We went from one drone to eight drones across our almost 13-square-mile city, with an average response time of 53 seconds.

That is 53 seconds from the time somebody picks up the phone and says, 'ChattComm 911, what is the address of your emergency?' In less than a minute from the 911 pickup, we have a drone overhead looking at the emergency. That is taking us to another era of policing. Then I leaned into it and started bringing in other technologies to complement that. We have seen what policing was and what it is transforming into. It is pretty cool to hear patrol officers say we would not catch half the people we catch today if it were not for drones. That is a positive development because there is natural tension between technology and cops. The one thing cops hate more than the way things are is change, and vice versa. We do not like change, but we also hate the way we have always done it. Right now, I am the project manager for construction of our real-time crime center. We are reimagining our real-time strategy. For years, we have had hundreds of tools at our disposal, including license plate readers, video cameras, and drones, but they were all in different segments of the police department.

As the chief called it, we had a real-time crime closet. Now we are building it out into a custom space. One second I am looking at plans, the next second I am talking about paint colors, vents, and conduit. It is all going to come together and help us take what we have already been doing efficiently, and what I would argue we are doing better than most, if not everyone in the country, to another level.

Bob Plaschke: Let's unpack that. I want to go to mental health and then come back to the drones. We talk a lot about mental health here and the stigma of a police officer expressing distress because of what they have experienced on the job. Thank you for bringing mental health specialists into Brookhaven. That is important. Where do you think we are on the scale from one to ten? One means officers never want to admit they are struggling because they fear they will not be allowed to do their job. Ten means officers are readily open to admitting mental distress on the job. Where are we in that transition? Are we close to where we need to be, or do we still have work to do?

Captain Abrem Ayana: We still have a lot of work to do. If I am being honest, and that is all I have ever been, we are at a three or four.

Bob Plaschke: Yeah.

Captain Abrem Ayana: The reason I give us a three or four is because we are trying.

Bob Plaschke: Yep.

Captain Abrem Ayana: God knows we are trying, but we are at a three or four because organizations have a ways to go, and the people doing the job have a ways to go. I have dealt with these stresses myself. There have been times when I have not been okay. To be completely honest with you, Bob, it was not because I saw a dead body, it was not because a baby died in my arms, and all of those things have happened. It was not because somebody tried to kill me. It was the regular stress of the job. There is tension in any role, but when you put your marriage and your family on top of an already stressful job, that creates pressure. For me, it is questions like, am I going to be home on time so I can help my wife take care of the kids? If that does not happen, what does that do to the marriage? Am I earning enough money to make sure my children have the best opportunities ahead of them? I have two little girls, and it has always been my mission to make sure they have the best upbringing the world can provide them, not just what I can afford, but what the world can provide.

I work as hard as I can to afford it, and if that means I go without something, I will go without. There are parents who want their children to go to the best schools or be involved in the best sports programs, but they cannot afford it, so they have to work extra. They are tired, but they want to do that for their family, and that creates stress. While organizations and the profession have done a lot to debrief critical incidents, the dead bodies and the shootings, I would argue personally that it is the other things putting pressure on people. The cost of living is outpacing compensation. People say officers can work extra jobs and side security jobs to make extra money, but who wants to work 60, 70, or 80 hours a week to make ends meet? I am lucky where I am, but there are police officers just down the street in another jurisdiction who do not have it as well. How do we make it more equitable for everybody? I think all of those things play a role. a solid three.

Bob Plaschke: I appreciate that, and I appreciate the honesty. It is a combination of all of those things. You are trying to raise a family, city budgets are constrained, and you are under a lot of stress. On top of that, there are traumatic incidents that 99.9% of the population chooses not to deal with. I do not know that we are paying officers enough to deal with it. I want to go to the drones. This seems to be a no-brainer. If someone calls 911, you need eyes on the situation and situational awareness. You need to give officers some perspective on what they are driving into so they feel more in control of the situation. How has the community responded to this? I would hope positively.

Captain Abrem Ayana: Here in Brookhaven, it is overwhelmingly positive, but you have to understand that our community is not like every other community. We are a relatively new police department. In the broader picture of police departments, we are not celebrating our 100th or 50th anniversary anytime soon. We do not have a lot of the old things that come with that kind of legacy. We were not around during the civil rights movement, so we do not have those vivid images of police officers putting dogs on people who were protesting to be treated equally. We do not have that history, and history means a lot in this profession. We are a new city, and people expect us to do things that bring our city to another level. Luckily for us, we have amazing support from our mayor, council, and city manager's office. They have put the full weight of their offices behind us as we progress and lean forward. We also have a citizenry that sees the benefit in it. That is not just because they organically woke up one morning and saw the benefit.

It is because we have been very deliberate in telling that story, and very deliberate in telling the success of what we are doing and why we are doing it. Every day, we aim to continue building that trust, not because we give kids popsicles or have coffee with a cop every day, but because we actually do the job and, when it counts most for them, we are there. The drone, Live911, the license plate reader, and the camera are all tools that help us get there. Our organization's mission is to enhance quality of life for those in our community by providing high-quality, professional, and effective police service in partnership with the community. High quality, professional, effective: that is what the technology does. When we look at onboarding technology, we ask how it makes the quality of service higher, more effective, and more professional. I say drones are the single greatest tool in making sure policing is ethical.

It is funny because I have this conversation with people and they cannot always wrap their minds around it, probably because they have never been stopped because they fit the description. Imagine somebody calls 911 and says there is a suspicious person, or an individual pulling on car door handles. They give a description: race, sex, and clothing color. Depending on the area you are in, an image pops into your head. I did not specify a race or sex here, but something popped into everyone's head. We can call that conscious or unconscious bias, but something pops into the mind of the person hearing it. A police officer is going to go out and stop somebody who looks like that. But within 50 seconds of somebody calling 911 and giving the exact location, we can have a drone with a camera looking directly at that person and providing information to the responding officers. That means no other individual, other than the individual in question, gets stopped by the police. Policing becomes much more precise.

Because we get there so much quicker, the likelihood that the individual is still engaged in the criminal conduct is elevated, which means we are likely to get evidence on drone camera of the crime occurring. The officer then arrives with a much higher level of awareness and knowledge. At the very least, we walk into the situation with articulable reasonable suspicion, meaning we can state the facts or circumstances that lead us to believe criminal activity is occurring, has occurred, or is about to occur. Officers can make more definitive decisions and take more definitive action. We also see a greater cascading benefit. Here in Brookhaven, if somebody commits a shoplifting, they have nearly an 80% chance of being caught by the police. That means when the average citizen goes into a local pharmacy or grocery store, they do not have to ask someone to unlock Plexiglas to get toothpaste or deodorant, as you see in some communities. It means businesses do not close in our city and reopen somewhere else because of theft.

Our community is more vibrant and healthier, and people who live here can spend their money here instead of driving 30 minutes or waiting to shop in another community. Technology is equipping first responders to make that difference. That 80% happens, first, because we are well staffed and nearly fully staffed. It also happens because we have people who want to do the job, so we are bringing the right people into the organization. Then we have the tools that help them be much more effective. Even when they run from us, they cannot hide.

Bob Plaschke: That's fantastic. Practically, you have eight drones. Do you need an operator for each drone, or can you enter the address and have the drone go to the call?

Captain Abrem Ayana: We do not type in latitude and longitude. We type in the address. In many cases, we do not type in anything because we believe in integrating things. A lot of our services, whether RapidSOS or Live911, are integrated. When that call comes in, the drone has the approximate location of that call. We send the drone to the location of the caller unless it is a mobile incident and we can see that, and then we send it to where the caller is pinging. Through the FAA, one pilot can operate four drones simultaneously.

Bob Plaschke: Oh, so you have two pilots for your eight drones?

Captain Abrem Ayana: It is very rare that we have multiple incidents to that extent operating. Typically, we are operating anywhere between four-to-one.

Bob Plaschke: This is fantastic. To your point, it is the right thing to do because it de-stresses and de-escalates the situation by providing situational awareness to the officer coming in. Officers are not walking into a blind spot, and they are not having to check their own prejudices in terms of what they are looking for. It creates transparency for the officer and for the public because there is a clear record. I assume this is only a couple of years into practice because I do not see a lot of drone activity across the United States. I see it a lot with SWAT teams, but not much in day-to-day patrol.

Captain Abrem Ayana: We have been doing it in Brookhaven now for six years, and the application is growing. There is a lot of concern and a lot of questions about whether it is ethical for police to have drones and fly them. I think we have answered that question resoundingly. One of the things we do in Brookhaven is that we are not out patrolling with drones. That was one of the earlier questions we had in our planning. I sat down with the ACLU, at the urging of our city attorney, to iron out what the drone program would look like. The ACLU's concern was that police would go around using drones to police certain communities, specifically communities of color, differently. It is not lost on me that we have a large minority population here in Brookhaven, predominantly from Spanish-speaking countries. One way we have combated that concern is that we only respond to 911 calls. If you do not call 911 today, then the drone is likely not coming into your neighborhood, unless there is a police officer on the ground conducting enforcement activity and we send the drone as a backup for that officer.

Outside of those applications, the drones stay on the ground. A lot of communities are struggling with that tension and the concerns about surveillance, mass surveillance, and Big Brother. Luckily for us here in Brookhaven, we have answered those questions and continue to prove to our community that what we are doing is what we say we are doing. When we got into it, the regulatory process was much more complex and convoluted, with a lot more red tape than there is now. The process has become much easier and clearer for agencies that want to do this. Cost is also a big factor, because agencies have to find a way to afford the technology in the long run. There have also been questions for several years about Chinese drones and drones from foreign countries of concern. Some agencies could not necessarily afford certain products, but the products they could afford were from other countries. They were concerned that if they made the investment today, legislation could make that platform a paperweight tomorrow. The roadmap is getting clearer, although it is not crystal clear.

What has become clear is that there are U.S. manufacturers building quality products domestically. I tell people I built the drone program twice. I built it the first time using predominantly Chinese aircraft from DJI, and then we rebuilt it using all American drones from Skydio. We are showing that American products can work today. More agencies are starting to enter the space because they do not have to worry as much about the government banning the platform they are using. With integrations into body cameras and other systems, the barrier to entry is no longer imagination. It is what technology can you afford, and how do you deploy it?

Bob Plaschke: Well, Captain, I am sad to say that I only have one last question. This has been fascinating. I could go on for another hour, but we need to wrap up. Thank you for taking the time to be on First Response, and thank you for what you have done in your career, for the leadership you have shown, and for charting a path for other agencies. It is inspirational. We make a small donation in your name. What charity can we donate to on your behalf?

Captain Abrem Ayana: I would say the Georgia Police Foundation. It is a nonprofit here that serves Georgia first responders in their time of need, whether in times of bereavement or for medical needs. They support first responders, so I would say the Georgia Police Foundation.

Bob Plaschke: I hope you have been as fascinated as I have with Captain Ayana's career. There are so many important takeaways. One is how people decide to become police officers. I am really glad he took his friend's bet and stayed with it. Another is the importance of moving into different roles inside a police agency to avoid burnout. Another is the importance of training and repetition, and how many years it takes to become a good police officer. That is why we have to support agencies from a staffing and compensation perspective: officers need that time to become effective. Finally, there is the use of technology. We did not even get to talk about all the things Brookhaven has invested in, but this notion of providing the best possible tools to create the ultimate transparency helps police officers do what they are supposed to do. In this case, nearly 80% of shoplifting in Brookhaven results in the offender being caught, which allows businesses to operate and the community to function the way it should. It has been a fascinating discussion.

It is great to see agencies like Brookhaven and leaders like Captain Ayana taking policing to the next level. This has been First Response, the podcast that takes you behind the badge. I am Bob Plaschke, and I am proud to be the chief executive officer of PepperBall, the sponsor of First Response. PepperBall makes non-lethal alternatives to firearms that help officers protect themselves and the public. Until next time, be safe out there and thanks for listening.