Defending the Badge
The Dr. Phil Podcast
Dr. Phil McGraw
4.3 • 13.5K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michael Schwartz is a veteran defense attorney with over 30 years of trial experience, widely known for representing law enforcement officers in high-profile use-of-force and on-duty shooting cases throughout Southern California. Over his career he has secured full acquittals in some of the most closely watched excessive-force prosecutions, including the manslaughter trial of a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy, federal excessive-force charges for a Pomona corporal, and other defenses in nationally publicized on-duty shootings that drew intense media attention. Schwartz gives his reaction to the fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Renée Good by an ICE agent and the death of Alex Pretti.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well everybody, thanks for joining us today. |
| 0:04.0 | I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation. |
| 0:07.0 | My guest today is Michael Swartz, and he is a really highly regarded and experienced trial attorney. |
| 0:14.0 | He started his career actually as a deputy public defender in California, |
| 0:20.0 | and he litigated more than 200 jury trials to a |
| 0:25.0 | verdict, which is, let me tell you, that's a lot. He has really focused the past 20 years on |
| 0:30.7 | representing law enforcement officers, peace officers, in some really tough and noteworthy criminal cases. And I'm really interested in talking |
| 0:41.3 | to me about some of his cases, but also kind of the state of law enforcement in this day and time. |
| 0:49.6 | And full transparency, you guys all know that I'm very pro law enforcement, so I won't pretend |
| 0:56.2 | otherwise. It doesn't mean everything cops do or write all the time, because they're not. |
| 1:00.9 | But all in all, I think we have very dedicated law enforcement in this country, and I generally |
| 1:06.7 | back the blue. So Michael, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank for having me. It's a pleasure. |
| 1:13.5 | How did you get into a situation of defending law enforcement as one of the primary things that you do? |
| 1:22.5 | How did it turn in that direction? It's a long story. The Reith's Digest Version as I was a public defender in Riverside County, and |
| 1:30.3 | they asked me to be on the board for their union. |
| 1:32.3 | And the attorney that I called up to help do some work for us, Steve Silver, at the time |
| 1:38.3 | was one of the premier attorneys and law firms in Southern California to defend law enforcement. And he already knew my work with the public defender's office and along shrew it is, |
| 1:50.0 | rather than just do the work for the union, he offered me a job. |
| 1:53.0 | And I said, I took it, so it fell on my lap. |
| 1:56.0 | Are you glad you did? |
| 1:58.0 | Yeah, I mean, it's been a very interesting ride, but it's been a very meaningful ride. |
| 2:04.8 | And I'm also very pro-law enforcement. |
... |
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