Welcome to Man Talk, brought to you by TAWCMN, talking and walking Christian men's ministry, where they're devoted to breaking down the walls of race and denomination and challenging men to take their God-assigned role. Here's our hosts Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr., a black guy and a white guy. Well, we'd like to thank you and welcome you once again to Man Talk Radio and Roy, we have someone here who is Winston-Salem's finest.
Officer A.P. Jacobs with us today and I know he's a good friend of yours. Yes, we're honored to have Aaron with us this evening and thank you for joining us tonight, Aaron.
My pleasure, fellas, my pleasure. Roy, you know, there is a lot that's happening, you know, in the city and in the nation as you know as a whole and tonight's show is in reference to talking about men, young men and men in general, you know, keeping them on the right side of the law. So that's what we want to focus in on today and we hope that Officer Jacobs can give us some insight on that. Yeah, exactly, Will. As we're going through this journey of trying to be men of God, I think it's important to understand the other side of the fence when you're not walking with the Lord and you're out there in the world, how easily something that could be considered just a joke or something minor could turn into something major really quickly and I think maybe that's something Aaron will be able to share with us as we speak today about how a simple act turns into something really major and it changes you for a lifetime.
Yeah, so we want to just start off with a question for Aaron. What do you see as some of the major causes as to why we see so many young men getting incarcerated, just from your standpoint? You know, home life, you know, if there's not a good stable home life, if you're raised in an environment where all you see is the way to get what you need to get is, you got to break the law, or you want to have what the other guy has, but your mom or your dad are trying as hard as they can to provide for you the best way they can. But you don't want to wait on that.
You want to be selfish about it and go out and figure out a way to get it yourself. And then you don't realize that the actions that you take have parents as a whole, you know, kids nowadays don't realize that if you don't go to school for an extended period of time, your parents are the ones that are held accountable. Your parents can be prosecuted for those types of truancy violations. So, you know, kids just not want to wait or understand the value of the work that your parents do to try and provide for you and to try and keep a roof over your head, food in your belly, clothes on your back, you know, might not be the clothes you want or the shoes you want.
But you got clothes on you, you got shoes on your feet. Kids out here, people don't even realize that, you know, they scrounge and scrape and they're hard working kids, you know, you got young people out here working hard. But yet, you know, you got other kids out here doing things that they don't need to be doing. And it's making it difficult on those young people because unfortunately, in this society we live in, we group individuals together, we put them in one group and say, well, if this group over here is doing and we know you live in that area as those same kids, you're probably doing it too, stereotyping them. Exactly.
So we can't have anything to do with you. So Aaron, what in your experience with all the different areas you worked here in the Winston area, when you run into a situation with a young man, we'll say, and it's problematic with that child, how often is the father present in that environment or absent? Because one of the things we really have been encouraging as men to take their role as to be dads, not to be just a father, a child, but to be a dad to that child.
Right. That's a good point. We all need to realize that, you know, anybody can father a child, but it's different between being a father and being a dad. And sometimes we get the idea, well, if there's not two parents in the household, then you know, this household's not going to work.
This kid can't be successful. And what we, you can't look at it from a father not being in the household means it's not going to be successful because I've gone to many a household where mom and dad don't live together, but they can parent together. You can still parent together.
You don't have to live together. Now, is that ideal? No. That how the Lord intended for it to be?
No. But you know what? Sometimes I get better results and better experiences out of a household where the two parents realize, you know what, we can't do this as a couple and it's going to be detrimental to the household as a whole and to the children as a whole. Let's do this apart, but let's do it together for the better men of our children. Right. So in the situation where we had some of the most violent occurrences with I'll say young men was if you were able to ascertain maybe you weren't, was it the absence of the father and any kind of role that's kind of, because the more we read reading we do, we understand that the absence of a father impacts in so many ways that with women and men and just that father role is such an important piece of growing up.
Right. I mean, having a father in there, you know that you have that strong male influence in your life to help you go down the right path. And that's extremely important for a young man who's grown up.
And I mean, it's probably different. You growing up without your dad living in Cherokee, Wyoming, or Cheyenne, Wyoming versus the inner city of let's say, you know, Chicago or Los Angeles or Winston Salem or Greensboro for Pete sakes. The father role there is probably more paramount if you're growing up in a more hostile, violent environment. You know, sometimes the father grew up in that type of environment too. And that's all dad knows. And it's a product of the system. Unfortunately, that's all dad knew dad knew a violent lifestyle because that's what his father knew or mom, you know, came from underage mother because grandma came from an underage mother. And unfortunately, it's a it's a societal thing that branches across all races, bricks and spectrums, all generations, right.
And you know, without that male figure there to try and straighten and right in the ship, the ship's gonna run in that iceberg, the ship's gonna hit something hit another ship. I mean, Well, there are there are a lot of ladies out there and moms that are working hard to try to raise your children, right? We don't want to discount that. In fact, we like we want to applaud them and give them a hand tonight because it really is the fact that the men have stepped out of the situation or never took responsibility to begin with.
Right. So but what's important that we all realize that we can break the legacy. So no matter what's happened in the past, men, young men and older like it's never too late. So you own your direction, you own you own the legacy.
So if you choose to continue to play it out the way you were raised in it, then that's your responsibility to own that. But you can indeed break that legacy. And I think that's the word of encouragement we need to leave the men with. And the ladies are out there doing it by themselves.
You can indeed break this legacy. Indeed. And I'd like to add also that things God had designed man and the role of a man that a woman cannot feel the role in which God has set aside for that man.
She's doing the best she can. Right, right. But But in the in eyesight of the Lord, God is saying, as a male in a family, I've designed you to take on these responsibilities and the wife to take on these responsibilities. Right. You know, in accordance of what the scripture says. And I think when a man is in a situation where he's the single father, because we have to remember that, too.
Yeah, you know, so if he's the single father now, he's trying to do things that God did not design him to do as a man. Right, right. So, you know, it's a it's cross cultural and across the spectrum. When you're talking about gender, it is it is I, I think too often we we don't put enough value on either side of it. They both play a very vital role. But obviously, this being man talk, we're speaking to the men tonight.
But we really want them working towards breaking the legacy. If you grew up with and we call it daddy wounds will, you know, we've referred to that quite often daddy wounds and because they're real and they exist. So if you've grown up with daddy wounds, then seek help, get some counseling to figure out how to put that to bed so you can move ahead of that. So you don't have to carry that forward.
And you can actually break the legacy because if you if you never get over the wounds, you don't heal from the wounds, then you really have a much less likely chance of getting through that process. And I'd like to just ask Aaron as a Christian. Is it difficult to separate your Christian walk with your civil servant walk? Some days I would say yes. Some days I'd say yes. Some days it's a struggle. Because things that we see on a given daily basis, you know, there's part of you sometimes when you see a certain situation occur in a household or in a family or whatever the case may be, where you want to react outside of what the scripture tells you and how it tells you how to act as a Christian, tells you how to act as a man.
You see where a man has countly put his hands on his wife or significant other. And as a man, you want to react because you go to the same household over and over and over again. And you do your part. You know, as the officer, that young lady wants to press charges, she wants him to go to jail, she wants him to be punished. And you go through that whole process. And it breaks your heart because then you go to court, and she wants to drop the charges.
And then the next thing you know, they're walking out of the courtroom together, holding each other and hugging. And in the back of your mind, because after you've done this a while, you start to become callous to the whole situation. You think to yourself, you're like, all right, here we go again. I mean, why do I go through this?
Because I'm going to be going to your house in two days when he does it again. And you know, it's just those types of situations in general where you want to lash out, I guess is the best word I can think of. But you want to lash out because you know what the guy's going to do. Or, I mean, domestic violence, let me make this clear, domestic violence is a two way street. It's a two way street, you know, women committed, just like men do. But unfortunately, men are embarrassed to report that kind of thing. They don't want to report that their, their girlfriend, their wife, their significant other beat them up, even though it happens. It's a he-man thing.
It is, it is. And that's a problem in and of itself as well. Because that's going to, domestic violence is a cycle and eventually it escalates to a point to where somebody is seriously injured or killed.
And if that's going on, that's something you want to report and deal with and the appropriate authorities. So it's just, it's hard in general on a day in, day out basis to do what the Lord commands me to do as a believer in him and to do my job, to serve the citizens of Winston-Salem, knowing sometimes you just want to, you just want to lash out and just speak your mind. But you know, the spirit doesn't want you to just, and clearly in that moment, you've got to be quiet and you got to let it work its way out and do what it needs to do. Well Aaron, we really are honored to have you with us today and just excited to come back to the second half. We're getting ready to transition out, but as we do for a break here, think about what's the funniest thing you've had happen to you as an officer. Let's put a little bit of humor on this before we come back to the, come back to the more serious side.
So when we return, we'll ask Aaron what the craziest things happen to him. Thank you. TAWCMM would love to have you join their community of men for breakfast every first and third Friday of every month. They have Bible discussions and fellowship after the best breakfast in town. The meeting location is at their gracious Host Church, First Christian Church in Kernersville, 1130 North Main Street in Kernersville.
They have a hard start at seven o'clock and a hard stop at eight o'clock. First time visitors eat for free. Join your hosts, Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr., a black guy and a white guy. Affordable chiropractic in High Point, as you might tell from their name, affordable chiropractic, even for the cash patient. Dr. Jeff Fricke has been caring for patients in High Point for 34 years. Physical therapy such as ultrasound and spinal decompression for disc conditions such as herniation, comprehensive care for auto accident injury patients with no out of pocket expense. Remember affordable chiropractic on Lexington Road in High Point.
Call 336-885-1987. Welcome back. Thanks for joining us today on ManTalk Radio. I'm Roy Jones here with Will Hardy and we've got Officer AP Jacobs here with us. And we left before break with a challenge to him to kind of tell us about the funniest thing that's happened to him or the craziest thing that's happened to him.
And I'm sure he's got many stories that would probably fit that bill, but we'll just see what he's come up with for us here. Well, the one that comes to my mind, it didn't actually happen to me, but a buddy of mine who worked at the police department. We were standing around like most officers do when they have a little downtime between calls and just shoot and shop. And he's like, man, I pulled this car over tonight and I knew that guy was going to be drunk.
He was all over the road. He goes, and this guy, white guy doesn't speak Spanish or anything like that. And he walks up to the car and asked the guy for his driver's license and registration and Hispanic guy. And Hispanic guy goes, no habla español, sir, no habla español. And the officer looks at him and goes, well, sir, that's great.
Cause I don't speak Spanish either, but we both seem to speak English. You're just fine. That's a good story. You know, to all those listeners out there, you know, we want to come back to the scripture cause we always got to have a little scripture when we talk on man talk and in Romans 13, I'm sure some where along the line, most of you, if not all of you have been exposed to this verse of scripture and it says, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and the authorities that exists are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God.
Maybe I need to read that one more time guys. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority?
That's a question. Do what is good and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid. Bad boys, bad boys. What you gonna do?
I just had to put that in there guys, I'm sorry. For he who does not bear the word in vain, for he is God's minister and avenger to execute wrath upon the practices of evil. So what the word of God here is saying is that the, our men and women in blue, they're here to enforce the law and to bring justice against those who do evil. That's the word of God.
That's not my word. And so when we see the men and women in blue coming and we again thank officer Jacobs for what he does, being a man of God and also a civil servant, that we need to come to this realization of putting aside things that we see visually on TV that cause us to take a side, understand man, what the word of God says and what your stance should be in relation to the scripture. Because we know that when we are subject to the law in which God have placed before us, that obedience to that brings about, well it's sacrifice for us, but it also brings about those things that God would want to pour out on us, which is the blessings from heaven.
He said, I will open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's all money. Blessings could be coming any form. Well, of course, that's a very good point. Too often we're expecting their blessings to be something of a financial piece because that's the way we've geared ourselves. Exactly. Blessing only comes with dollar signs associated, at least in our society it does.
Will, I appreciate what you just read in the scripture. Let's just give some statistics that you provided for us here related to North Carolina. These are North Carolina statistics for assaults on law enforcement officers. In 2017, there were 76 firearm assaults, which I would assume means either shooting at or actual shooting of an officer, 29 cutting or other instruments, 197 dangerous weapon charges, 2,070 physical impacts with hands, fists or feet, total assaults in the year of 2017, 2,372. I don't know what that breaks out to in terms of number of officers there is, but it sounds like you've got a pretty good opportunity that somewhere through the year you're going to be attacked or something's going to happen to you. Erin and I have a friend from our church that was shot a couple of years ago on serving a warrant, if I remember correctly.
Yeah, I think that's what it was. I think the guy had a warrant on him and they went out to serve it. People like their freedom. People like their freedom is what it comes down to. I mean, I work at the jail nowadays and I'll be honest, I hate being at the jail. I hate the confinement that it provides to you.
But yeah, so he didn't want to go to jail and thought it'd be a good idea to shoot at the police. So now he's going to be there for a real long time. I would assume so.
I would assume so. So Erin, one of the things that I want to ask just personally is how do you keep sanity? You've been on the job now for 15 years and to your point, being a Christian man and a follower of Christ and trying to remain sensitive to leading the Holy Spirit in your daily life and with your family life, and you have to kind of separate these two things because obviously you see a lot of things that you never talk about to anyone and there's a lot of stuff that goes on that's quite violent and really harmful to the mind and to the soul.
How do you deal with all that? Well, you probably, officers in general, I'll say officers in general before I refer to myself, we probably compartmentalize, which isn't good for anybody whatsoever, especially some of the stuff we see. Now Roy said I've been on the police department 15 years.
He shorted me three. I've been on the police department 18 years. I've earned those three years. Um, but no, you don't look like you've been on there 18 years.
I've been on there 18 years. So, um, I don't know. You just, I try and when I'm off, I try and be off, you know, um, my new position at the police department, um, has afforded me, um, the ability to spend more time with my wife. Take your time. It's all good. It is. Yeah. Um, and my daughters and uh, just take a moment.
It's all good. Uh, folks, as you can tell, this is a, this is a very, very, um, sensitive man that loves the Lord and just a very sensitive about his family. But this is the kind of pressure these, these officers are under both men and women. And it's a, we need to remember that when we see these folks out there that are protecting us every day and service.
Absolutely. Just, uh, absolutely that we, um, that we honor them and let them know how much we appreciate them. Cause I'm sure they don't, they don't, they don't hear it enough that, um, that we appreciate what they do. And so, I mean, and, and I think, I think Roy, sometimes we, we have a tendency and me being an ex military person, you know, I'll have people come up to me all the time saying, thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. Why don't we do that for our men and women in blue?
Come up to them and say, Hey, thank you for your service. Don't be, and I, and I'm gonna take a national incident. Don't be kicking them out of a restaurant. And some of you know who I'm referring to in reference to the story that happened a few months back.
Because we're kicked out because a person felt threatened. Come on now. Yeah. I mean, let's be for real. This is man talk. We're talking man issues.
Let's be for real here. Let's put it out here on the table because as, as men of God, we need to take a stand for God. Right.
And that means that we have to look at everyone through the eyes of God, through scripture. Right. You know, we'll back to that incident, the restaurant, what would have been really interesting is the people as a way to support the officers, whoever's in the store. So if you're not going to serve them, you're not serving us.
And everybody stood up and walked away. Absolutely. Absolutely. Solidarity.
Yeah. But the problem is now I will say, um, people don't realize this, but more people than not, then people realize come up to us on a daily basis. They appreciate the job you do. Officers were praying for you.
We didn't know we care about you. I mean, it happens all the time and I'll be honest with you cross is all racial divides here. Of course. Um, you know, people might think I'm saying this, Oh, it's just a bunch of white people or whatever coming up to him. Uh, no, no, I get as much, Hey, thank yous from the African American community as I do from the Caucasian.
And I'll be honest in the last year, I probably got more from the African American community than I did from the Caucasian community. Um, sometimes I think that there's, you know, uh, some people might just, uh, have a, there's just that appreciate. They just assume we're going to be there. You pick up the phone, you're going to call the police are going to come.
So it's like, you know, it's like, turn your water on, turn your lights on. You just assume that's going to happen. But, and yeah, you call us, guess what, whether we want to go or not, we go, we go to calls all the time that a lot of officers are like, why am I going? I mean, I've told Roy about it. I've gone on calls where people call cause they're seven year old little boy doesn't want to get in a car at a grocery store.
Wow. I can't parent your child, but if you call, we are going to send an officer out to try and assist you the best way we can. Now that little boy, I will tell you, he did get in that car and he buckled his seatbelt just fine. I'm sure if he saw you step out of the car, uh, folks on radio, you can't see Aaron, but Aaron is a, he is not a small man.
He is a, he is the larger variety. Uh, I'm not fat, not at all. It doesn't mean fat, but, uh, it's been a pleasure having you here with us there and we'd like to get you come back another time.
We can have some more time with you, but, um, we'll, how would you like to close this tonight? Absolutely. We had a great time with Aaron and I just like to say man from Proverbs chapter three, uh, verse number seven, do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil.
It will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones. Be obedient to the word of God. Listen to the word of God. Go to your local house of worship and just don't listen, but listen and receive.
Take that word out. Talk about it with your family on the way home. As we wrap up today's show, be assured that TAWCMM talking and walking Christian men's ministry is building a community of men that are Christ followers with a desire to be servant leaders in their homes, communities, churches and work environments. Check out our website for upcoming events and regularly scheduled meetings. Drop us a note for topics that you would like to have us visit in the future. Thank you for joining us on man talk today. Visit us at www tawcmm.com men walking the talk. This is the truth network.
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