Episode 1000: Choosing Life - Suicide, Forgiveness, and the Fight for Change w/ Brian Sizemore and Jared Murphey

Street Cop Podcast

Street Cop Training

Education

4.9 • 933 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2025

⏱️ 99 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brian Sizemore and Jared Murphey reflect on the life and death of Brian’s son, Lucas Sizemore—an Atlanta police officer who died by suicide. They open up about Lucas’ childhood, his service in law enforcement, and the lack of apparent changes in his behavior. Through raw honesty and deep reflection, they explore grief, guilt, and the urgent need to talk about mental health in policing—and how we can prevent this kind of loss from happening again.

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00:00:00:00 - 00:01:47:10

Teaser

00:01:47:10 - 00:02:15:14

Intro

00:02:15:14 - 00:04:15:02

Jared and Brian’s background

00:04:15:02 - 00:12:27:04

The life of Lucas Sizemore

00:12:27:04 - 00:16:08:03

Enabling your children

00:16:08:03 - 00:24:19:07

Lucas’s experience as a police officer in Atlanta

00:24:19:07 - 00:27:46:12

The lack of apparent change in Lucas’ behavior

00:27:46:12 - 00:35:41:03

The stress of working in law enforcement

00:35:41:03 - 00:36:00:07

Midroll

00:36:00:07 - 00:43:49:14

Repairing your life after losing someone to suicide

00:43:49:14 - 00:52:25:03

The impacts of suicide

00:52:25:03 - 00:57:49:21

Valuing life

00:57:49:21 - 01:07:47:04

Forgiveness & dealing with guilt

01:07:47:04 - 01:09:17:03

The reality of law enforcement suicide

01:09:17:03 - 01:25:32:21

How to move forward & how to make change

01:25:32:21 - 01:30:54:14

The mental health conversation in law enforcement

01:30:54:14 - 01:34:43:04

What does it mean to care?

01:34:43:04 - 01:35:25:23

The Lucas Foundation

01:35:25:23 - 01:38:42:24

Outro

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you haven't checked out the street cop community, you are missing out. Go to streetcop.com or
0:04.3	street cop community.com to find out what it's all about. That's where you can find the three books. Hasell that every cop needs to know, haynine case law, and the RAS field guide. These things are game changers. They're profound. And what are you waiting for? Get your career on path. Save yourself five years of trouble and get great as a cop.
0:03.5	My older son,
0:22.2	Lucas, was a rookie police officer for Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia. And last year on January 9th,
0:29.8	2004, he took his own life. The best way I can describe it is God reaches into your chest and rips a piece of your heart away
0:40.8	and then patches you back up and says, go ahead and I'll figure out how to get through the rest of your life like that.
0:47.5	There are a lot of police officers that take their lives, and it's very, very common.
0:52.8	And as heartbreaking is the story of the Seismore family is there are thousands of families that are just like them.
0:58.7	You know, there's a lot of tough stuff that cops deal with.
1:01.6	I mean, a lot of just emotional baggage that you bring home from work that over time affects you.
1:07.4	What's being done isn't working that great.
1:10.6	What has to change? I don't know. What should we done isn't working that great.
1:11.0	What has to change?
1:12.3	I don't know.
1:13.3	What should we be doing?
1:14.3	I don't know.
1:15.3	But it's got to be something different because like I just said, what is being done isn't
1:19.1	working that great.
1:20.1	It keeps happening.
1:21.7	When you are authentic and when you are transparent and you can sit and have a conversation about something horrible and
1:30.3	something important and they can feel that coming from you, they know that you care.
2:01.5	Hey guys, welcome this episode of the Street Cop Training podcast. I'm your host founder and CEO of Street Cop Training. My name is Dennis Benino, and I have with us today, two guys that have a lot important shit to talk about. And that's how we start the thing off. Brian looks angry. I don't know what. Brian, can we get a smile?
	...

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