No, not an undercover cop.

Because if I was undercover, I'd let you know.

No, I probably wouldn't.

I knew.

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a cop.

It was my dream.

It's all I wanted to do.

I was so convinced they could help people make a difference in the world.

But I was pretty naive as a cop or as a kid.

I was pretty naive.

I thought being a cop was a simple as arrested bad guy.

You take him to jail and all the good people be.

Okay.

Then again, I was pretty childish as a call as a kid, too, because I thought that I was Batman.

That was only when I was a kid.

I don't believe that.

Okay, just so you know, not only do I believe on Batman, I know.

Uh, Batman, I am a practicing that voice for years.

Do you know how bad I wanted to say that in the public?

Best day ever.

I fulfilled my dream of becoming a full time police officer on March 1st, 1993 when I walked through the front door, the Newtown Police Department.

And as I stepped into the foyer, I was overwhelmed by this feeling.

It actually stopped me.

I couldn't move, and I heard his voice say, This is where you will change the world.

Of course, the voice doesn't tell you how or when that will happen.

I didn't find out until 21 years later.

I've foreseen in its higher family, and it's higher generation die from drugs.

A mother, she abused prescription pills and alcohol.

She had three sons.

The youngest, Josh was shot and killed by and crack cocaine.

The oldest, Johnny overdosed on heroin and fentanyl, then the last of the brothers.

His name was trials, but everybody called him Chucky.

He and I had quite a unique relationship.

He actually set my personal car on fire in the police department parking lot.

He was upset.

Another officer arrest to know me, Mr my car for his pour gasoline on it and torched it.

I can smile about it now, and I know the other officer.

He would thought that that was the best mistake Chuckie ever made.

I didn't think that.

And I remember one time I was sitting in traffic on Main Street, and I saw Chuck you walking down the street and walked right past me.

Was drinking a beer and smoking a joint.

I couldn't believe it.

I got in the car and said, Chucky, what are you doing?

Because time is always messing with me.

Why you always picking on me?

I said, Chuck, it's your fucking down the street and drinking a beer, smoking a joint.

You got this little smirk on his face.

He said, Okay, Tom, you got me.

I got a call from one of my officers a couple weeks before Thanksgiving in 2014 he said, Hey, Chief Chuckie overdose.

We found him in the street.

He's brought back with, nor can he's down here at the station.

He's crying, said he doesn't want to die.

How can we get him help?

At the time, we didn't have the Heroin coalition and we didn't have a lot of resource.

Is our connection being a small community?

But I knew that Chucky wasn't just the last of a family.

He was last of a generation, I said.

You got to find some kind of treatment taken to the hospital.

Whatever it takes.

Even if we had to pay for it, we'll figure it out.

About an hour later, the officer called back and said, Hey, Chief Chuck, he's refusing any help.

Would you want us to do having a better understanding of addiction now than I did then?

It's almost as if the fear of succeeding could be just as powerful as the familiarity of despair and being a cop, especially back then.

Often the only tools that you have the deal with addiction is a gun, Taser, handcuffs or jail, I said.

We got to keep Chuckie alive for at least one more night to take him to jail.

We accomplished our mission, keeping Chuckie alive for at least one more night.

The next morning, he got out, overdosed and died.

In my career, I've seen an entire family and its higher generation lost to addiction.

But it wasn't just them that were impacted.

Each one of those brothers had kids.

The oldest had five.

They were being raised by a grand parent and three of them struggle with substance use disorder.

Three generations impacted by addiction.

In my small community, I have to be honest, and this may sound strange, but I struggled when Chucky died.

The enormity off such a generational loss hit me really hard.

My naive dream, a believing I could save the world was shattered.

I couldn't save a family.

I had to accept the fact that it was more human than superhero.

And that night my worlds collide it being a cop in a human being.

And when that happens, there's nothing left but helplessness.

And as a first responder as a police officer, I, like many others, have felt helpless before.

But I'd never felt it at that level.

Trying to process it all, I began to write.

That's how a coat I wrote about the calls I had been on.

What I have seen, how I felt.

I wrote about the family, the loss of the family loss of a generation of loss of Chucky.

I wrote that despite all he had done in the 21 years I dealt with, Um, I never forgot that kid.

I never forgot that at one point he was a kid just like any other.

The empathy I gave him as a kid in the empathy I give him now is not for the loss of a drug addict for the loss of a kid.

I wanted to send it to the paper because I realized I'd written an op ed, but I was so afraid to do it because I had written it as a chief.

But I was still vulnerable as a human being.

I thought that if I did that, it might bring more awareness to the public about addiction.

But this isn't something that a cop achieve supposed to do.

We don't talk about the things that we see.

We feel we're not supposed to champion causes.

I knew that if I sent that to the paper, I'd be judged and criticized.

I would lose friends and peers.

It would have a negative impact on my career.

I knew that if I sent that, no matter what I wanted out of my life or career would be changed forever.

And as my finger hovered over the sun button, just as it did 21 years prior, that voice came back and it said This is where you will change the world and in that moment I had to make a decision.

Do I lead with my career, or so I lied with humanity.

I chose humanity and hit send all of those bad things I thought would happen.

They did, But there were things that could have never imagined.

I became this unlikely advocate.

Ah, voice for changing the way we view and deal with addiction.

I was even called the face of heroin, which I don't know.

This is about my face.

It's like, Oh, man, I joined other committee members, help inform the Hamlets Accounting Heroin Coalition traveled overseas and spoke about addiction.

Interview by media from all around the world, I testified in front of a U.

S.

Senate subcommittee about the impact of fentanyl car fentanyl in the United States.

My life, career and work with the opiate epidemic has been archived in the National Law Enforcement Museum, and I was invited by President Clinton to join him and other speakers at Johns Hopkins University.

That event was webcast throughout the world, and after it was finished, a friend came up and said, You gotta check out Twitter.

So I got on Twitter and I looked and I saw what I said is being shared all around the world.

And I stood there and I thought the voice was right.

It came true.

I was changing the world.

But the more reflected on it.

I realized that I wasn't changing the world.

What was changing the world was the everyday actions and interactions.

Ah, people courageous enough to share their experiences.

Parents who had lost a child to addiction that somehow gathered the strength to start a foundation hoping others were substance use disorder Get the treatment they need all in the hopes no other family would feel the pain that they did.

Ah, Father, who others only saw his daughter as a drug addict and a prostitute.

And although he didn't condone her behavior, he only soldiers he did the first time I ever laid eyes on her as his princess.

He and I became good friends and I washed every day as you work to save her life.

So determined he would walk the streets, try to find her.

And even as he was dying of cancer, he taught me the true meaning of unconditional love.

I'm telling you, this man came from the heavens because I had read what the war grace meant in the religions.

And he didn't just personify it.

He waas grace people in recovery.

I'm honored to call my friends.

They have been had overcome such immense challenges mental, physical, emotional challenges to achieve recovery.

They now lead by example, inspire others help them so they too can achieve recovery.

They are some of the bravest people I know because they had nothing other than be able.

They had no choice but to be so vulnerable.

There was nothing left but honesty.

It was all of them that taught me to stand up in front of the world to tell the world.

It is time.

We change the way we view and deal with addiction.

We must see the person before we noticed the addiction and understand we cannot punish addiction out of someone instead should treat it as a chronic mental medical health condition.

It is, and never can we discount the one because it is never just the one that suffers.

There's always a mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter who suffers along with them.

Never just the one but the many.

I have been asked, How many times should we save someone once, twice, three times?

How many chances should we give them?

My answer at least a 1,000,000.

There's this parable used in a world of addiction called a starfish Terrible.

It's a story of a young boys walking along the beach with thousands of starfish of washed up.

He knows that if he doesn't get them back in, the ocean will die.

She picks up a starfish, throws in any ocean, picks up another, throws it in the ocean, picks up another frozen in the ocean.

An old man watching this can't believe what he's seeing.

He goes up to Mrs Young Man, What are you doing?

There's too many.

You're wasting your time.

You can't save them all.

The young boy picks up a starfish, throws it in the ocean, looks at the old man and says, I saved that one.

It is in our humanity.

We find hope and hope doesn't determine when it intervenes.

It only gives us the wisdom to persevere.

In that op ed, I wrote about one of the daughters of the oldest brother.

She was introduced to drugs at a very young age.

She's still young but has nearly two decades of dealing with substance use disorder.

But ah, family, police department, a judge, advocates and community never gave up hope.

She even saved many times, given many chances.

And it was a good thing because a few weeks ago Shelly stood up in the front of a group appears and strangers telling her story is she graduated from a long term treatment program.

She now has an apartment, a job and is an active recovery.

She is breaking the family tradition of addiction.

There will be moments in your life when you'll have to make a decision.

Will you lead with your career profession?

Job title, the uniform costs to master to show others?

Or if you want to change the world, then I leave you with this challenge.

Lead with your humanity.

Thank you.