Arresting the Problem, Not Just the Person | Sheriff Daron Hall

Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall joins Spencer and Carli to pull back the curtain on a part of the criminal justice system most people rarely see. From the difference between jails and prisons to rehabilitation, second chances, and the humanity of the people behind bars, Hall shares lessons from more than two decades as sheriff. He also tells the unbelievable story of how a convicted felon infiltrated Nashville’s new detention center and secretly hid weapons inside its walls before it ever opened.

About Sheriff Daron Hall

Daron Hall has served as Sheriff of Davidson County since 2002 and is preparing to be sworn in for a historic seventh term, the longest tenure of any sheriff in Nashville's history. Over more than two decades in office, Hall has become a nationally recognized voice on criminal justice reform, pushing for rehabilitation, mental health treatment, and substance-use recovery to work alongside, not instead of, public safety. Many of the ideas he championed decades ago, when they were far outside the mainstream, have since become widely accepted approaches to corrections. Known for a candid, unscripted style, Hall describes his approach simply: keep your head down, do the work, and find practical solutions to Nashville's hardest public-safety challenges.

Arresting the Problem, Not Just the Person

For Hall, the job was never really about the arrest. It traces back to a book he read at 16, which left him fixated not on who committed a crime, but why. "I like to say that people focus on arresting the person," Hall says. "I try to focus on arresting the problem."

That philosophy took physical form in the Behavioral Care Center, an alternative to jail for people whose involvement in the justice system is tied to mental illness. Hall developed the concept after finding that mental illness was connected to three of the five leading reasons people kept returning to jail. Asked how he got it built, he's joked: "Well, I lied."

About The Davidson County Sheriff's Office

The Davidson County Sheriff's Office oversees Nashville's correctional system and is responsible for the custody, care, and rehabilitation of individuals housed in its facilities. Under Sheriff Hall, the department has increasingly focused on addressing the underlying issues that contribute to incarceration, particularly mental illness and substance-use disorders.

Resources

Davidson County Sheriff's Office

• Episode Transcript (Sheriff Daron Hall on Signature Required)

  Spencer Patton: Welcome to Signature Required. It is intended for Tennesseans by Tennesseans

  Sheriff Daron Hall, welcome to Signature Required. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Thank you for having me. 

  Spencer Patton: Sheriff Daron Hall is the longtime sheriff of Davidson County, overseeing the county's correctional system and offender services. You were first elected in 2002, and you've become a nationally recognized voice on criminal justice reform, rehabilitation, and improving outcomes for people returning to their communities.

  If I had to ask the regular Tennessean what a sheriff does, I feel like you would get a really wide bell curve of answers. I, I feel like traffic violations would come- ... like really chief up there. But when people ask you, "What does a sheriff do?" what do you say? 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: It's a great question. Um, my mother doesn't even know, and she's 86-

  and lives right down the road and, [00:01:00] and been with, you know, w- watched me the whole time. So the first thing to know is it varies all over the country, and so most people get a little distorted because of the m- media or news or something that might show it in cer- certain places. But in essence, every county has to elect a sheriff.

  That's a state constitutional requirement, so you have to elect the person. Then the duties can vary based on certain situations. Nashville was the first city in the country to become metropolitan government back in 1963, and so when they did that, a charter for how the city should operate, uh, dictated some different duties for this sheriff compared to, say, a Williamson County or a Knox County or, or a different one.

  So you have to elect it. Um, the duties can vary based on a few items, and usually that's driven by the voters in certain jurisdictions. But, um, so I, I like to think of it this, you're, you're a law enforcement agency, and what part of law enforcement you play, um, is really dictated somewhat by city or county arrangement.

  Most places, it's a city [00:02:00] limits. Hmm. So let's say in, in a county, let's just name one. My sister's from Perry County, Warren County. If you had that county, the sheriff usually patrols and supervises the cr- uh, the criminal justice world in the county, and then the cities have police departments. 

  Spencer Patton: Hmm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Okay. So it started years ago before cities were around that the sheriff did everything all over the county, but as cities started to pop up all over and population all over the country, those cities needed their own law enforcement agencies, and so they would hire a police chief.

  You didn't elect them. You would hire them. 

  Spencer Patton: Got it. Okay. So, so I, I, let me see if I can repeat this back and you correct me where I'm wrong. So there's 95 counties in Tennessee, so that means that there's gonna be 95 sheriffs. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yes. 

  Spencer Patton: Uh, probably each with their own very distinct personality. Yeah. We'll have to talk about that in a second.

  So all right, so 95 sheriffs. So then you have different cities. So we're sitting here in Brentwood, so Brentwood has a police department, but [00:03:00] Brentwood being in Williamson County, to the extent that there's gonna be kind of correctional needs- Mm, mm ... then they would look to the sheriff of Williamson County to really handle that part of the responsibility.

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Great. You, you hit everything. One thing I would say that might help, too, is that when the counties used to do it all, you only had a sheriff doing both the policing and law enforcement and the, and the custodial part. Um, as those duties started to become, you know, more vast, a police department never houses anyone.

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. Okay. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: It's important to remember. So when you hear the word department, always try to distinguish that. Police department, that's usually an appointed position. It's never an elected one. So you elect a sheriff all over this country, and sheriffs house every arrestee. 

  Spencer Patton: Okay. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: And but the police in some cases bring you the arrestee.

  In other cases, the sheriff does the arrest and housing. 

  Spencer Patton: Mm. Mm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: So, so in Williamson, for example, what you have is you have Brentwood Police, Franklin Police, uh, these other, Fairview Police. They can make arrests, but they're [00:04:00] all gonna take them to the sheriff- 

  Spencer Patton: Mm ... 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: of the whole county. 

  Spencer Patton: And so just last kind of table-setting piece, so you definitely see sheriffs on the road that will pull you over and give you a ticket versus the city.

  So do, do- Mm ... sheriffs equally see their responsibilities, like, to go into a city and they have just as much jurisdiction and right to be there as the police officers, or do the, is there, is there conflict there? Or is that a hot 

  Carli Patton: button issue? Yeah. Look, look ... Yeah. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: It's a great question. Or is that a hot button issue?

  Uh, it's a great question. Okay. And let, let's talk about Williamson 'cause we're, we're sitting here, and I'm not using the, the people. I'm just saying. So there's a city limits. I live real close to the Brentwood city limits where I live. So if you're inside the city limits, the city police are responsible for that.

  The sheriffs have the authority to make an arrest in those city limits, but that's not always politically popular for other reasons, so it doesn't always happen. But the police are responsible to, to do it inside the city limits, and that line is drawn, I don't really know who does it, but the city limits line is done inside the county.

  Outside of the city limits, all of [00:05:00] that is the sheriff's responsibility. 

  Spencer Patton: Ah. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: That all makes sense except when you go to Nashville. 

  Spencer Patton: Okay. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: In Nashville, in 1963, the voters decided we don't want duplication. We don't want two law enforcement agencies. We don't want two school systems. We wanna have a metro government.

  It was a creative thing. It's still really cool if you think about it. A lot of things that, around the country, people have modeled different parts of that. So in Nashville, there's no city limits. So the city police do not have a line stopping them, and I don't have a line that I don't, you know, engage.

  What's different there is it's the duties that we actually have. I do all of the housing of all of the inmates. I do all the security for all the government buildings. I do all the civil law enforcement, divorce, garnishments, orders of protections, evictions. We do all of that kind of stuff. The police do all of the pull-you-over and the criminal arrest part of it.

  So I like it because there's not a magical line that tells us where our duties are. It's really the duty that separates there. In most counties, it's a magical line that you're the city, [00:06:00] I'm the county, but we're doing the same thing. The voters in '63 said, "We wanna save money and efficiencies. Let's blend that."

  And I actually like it. I mean, there's some things that needs to be improved, of course, but I like it better than I do the city limit county thing, personally. Yeah. Um, but we, we've always had... We got some blurry lines, too, where it's very blurry. 

  Carli Patton: Well, does it save you from, like, what we experience when our kids share a bed on vacation, where it's like, "Do not cross this line"?

  Yes. "If your toe is across the line, it's over." So I imagine it saves you from a little bit of the brother, sister- Yes ... like- 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yes ... 

  Carli Patton: you're on my side of the bed. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: But I wanna be, I wanna be fair. That, that awkwardness still exists in a city, and here's a, here's a good example. Um, so we do, as I said, the civil law enforcement.

  Mm. The city police do the criminal, if you wanna call it, the criminal aspect of law enforcement, and we house everybody. Mm-hmm. But what most people don't think about is a lot of crimes are created by a violation of a civil act. If you and I are in a relationship and you want a order of protection to be kept away, me [00:07:00] to be kept away from you, we do all of that work.

  We serve notice. We go out. We make sure that that separation occurs. If I come back within the range that I'm not allowed to be around you, that's a crime. Okay. So the civil part that I initiate against eventually can turn into what is a criminal violation. So the lines get real blurry, back to what you're saying.

  Mm-hmm. Who, who's supposed to be here? The victim, in that case, calls us thinking, "Hey, you need to come back. He's back in my neighborhood." Oh, no. We're not the agency that do, does that, and I don't love the blurry line effect for the person who doesn't understand the system. There are others. I mean, uh, in Nashville, for example, there's 110 car wrecks a day.

  We were riding out here and someone was teasing me about the Waymo thing. I said, "I'm a fa- In a Waymo, I mean, we have 110 people who can't drive themselves to get in wrecks." Mm. "A computer may be just as good. I don't know." But in that 110 accidents a day, most of those are civil. I bump into your car. Now, if I have a gun or drugs in my car, that's a crime.

  But if I just bump into you, but the city police do all [00:08:00] of traffic. Mm. And that's a civil action. You probably shouldn't have the city police doing that civil work if you restrict about, as you were calling it- Mm-hmm ... the line. So some blurry lines over the, the, you know, not... The charter in '63 didn't clear all that up, and so you're just learning over the years about ways to clean that up.

  But, um, I, I, I like it better than having a dotted line in the street- Sure ... that our duties and your duties are, are more clear, but we still have our problems, so I surely don't argue it's, it's perfect. 

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. So let's talk some about the election component of this. So how long are you elected for? Mm.

  What's the term? 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: It's a four-year term, uh, elected, gosh, we swear in tomorrow. So, um, so every four years. You're, you're on the same four-year cycle as the governor. 

  Spencer Patton: Okay. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: So whenever you elect a governor, you're electing sheriffs around the state. 

  Spencer Patton: And so you have been elected a lot of times historically, which just shows the level of trust that Davidson County, the residents have [00:09:00] placed in you.

  Like, Nashville is super different from 2002- ... to where it is today. Mm-hmm. And so I just wonder if you can speak to that for a second, because when I think about running a campaign as an elected official, like a more traditional politician, I can think about, okay, here's some kind of platform issues that I run on.

  Here's how you get evaluated. But I don't know that it comes to mind quite as easily for me as sheriff. So- Mm ... what are the types of things that you are articulating? 'Cause clearly it has been something that the public has seen and has given you a thumbs up again and again and again. So what are, what are those things?

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Well, I've often joked that I wonder if no one wants the job. That's maybe what's going on. So I, I'm not sure. But, um, no, you know, it's a really good question. I, I, I grew up, I read the book Helter Skelter when I was 16 years old. And, and, and I wasn't a big fan of school, if I'm honest, back then. I just [00:10:00] did what I had to do.

  I didn't like to read. Me and you both. Yeah, I was 

  Carli Patton: gonna say, you, relatable. 

  Spencer Patton: Yes. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: I didn't read unless you made me. I didn't even do well on comprehension back then of that. But, but this book, for some reason, I just kept flipping the pages. Mm. And I, I believe, I didn't know this, I believe I was looking for the answer on the next page to how did this man who stands five foot two motivate young women who had never done anything wrong- Mm

  to murder people. 

  Spencer Patton: Mm. Mm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: And I was just, I was afraid, I think. I, I didn't know that word, but I, I was like... And I thought if I kept flipping the page, when I get to this page, it's gonna say, "And anyone with horns, stay away from." Meaning that there was some obvious sign that this person was... Well, there is no such thing, and you kept flipping the pages.

  And so what I have learned and what I have always been interested in is the why. I'm not interested in who done it, to be honest with you. Yeah. Um, to be honest, who done it's easier than why they did it. 

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: To solve, I mean, to arrest someone is not hard, it's dangerous. But to figure out who did certain things, I mean, murder, 80- 82% of the time [00:11:00] a, a murder is a crime of passion.

  There's not that many people passionate about me. So at the end of the day, the circle to go look, and it's not always solved for various reasons, but that's not super hard. What's hard to do is to identify why they're doing these things and to address that. I like to say that people focus on arresting the person, I try to focus on arresting the problem.

  Hmm. The problems are way down in the weeds of why Charles Manson was motivating people. It was drugs, it was cult-related issues. But, but that book, at 16, when I didn't like to read, it just captivated me. And so I wanted to figure out if we know why he did it, if I'm honest, I was scared of him, then maybe we'd stop the next one of him.

  Yeah. And so I took off on this crusade for 50 years to try to stop the next... And that's not arresting him Uh, you know, CSI figures out in 45 minutes. I mean, that, that's not important to me. It's, it's what are we gonna do to stop he or she from, from continuing that? And I think that the, your question about running, I th- I, [00:12:00] I said that many, many, many times.

  The night I got sw- uh, elected, the first night, someone had handed me, um, Helter Skelter with all these people who'd signed it. It was so cool. 

  Spencer Patton: Wow. Wow. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: And I think the point of me, my passion was about that. The fact that you had to be elected was a unintended consequence of really liking this line of work.

  I went to college when I didn't really like school, went to grad school when I didn't like school, but it was all studying this kind of weird stuff. And, and if you're weird like me, and that's what you wanted to figure out, man, jails and people were the place to go grow the garden, you know? Yeah. It was just to, it was go to, to learn.

  And I don't think I knew that. I m- I knew that it was elected, but I didn't know that I'd ever wanna be in this level of the job. I just wanted to get my hands dirty. And, um, you know, at 38 years old, you know, my, the person who was in the job was leaving. It was vacant. It was gonna be a, a vacancy. But to get promoted one more step up, which is what it would be, I had to go run, raise money, do stuff that you're talking about.

  [00:13:00] I never thought much about... It was interesting that people laughed at me, but my, my motto, my whole campaign the first time as you're handing all this stuff was, it, it was, "It's what I do." Yeah. I wasn't running for it because it's elected. Some people are attracted to stepping stone offices or whatever.

  I've been asked to run for a bunch of offices. I- it's never been of interest to me. Um, but, but the, the part that I'm more proud of is if you go back to who we were, I think 24 years ago, and kind of what we were interested in, and if you drive down there today, I believe we're still trying to. You know, we're not...

  You know, I don't, I don't move with the winds very well. Mm-hmm. You know, it's just not really... I'm not trying to get elected, um, in that way. I mean that. Um, the other part that makes I think that has made my job, um, difficult, but, but when I look back on it, is the political swings that have happened. Mm-hmm.

  While you're sitting here and all that's going on from 24 years ago- Yeah ... just the politics of crime. You know, lock 'em up and leave 'em, bail [00:14:00] reform, jail, I mean, uh, criminal justice reform. All the swings that go on and you're sitting here, it's very easy to find yourself drifting, and then that wouldn't be who you are.

  And- That makes a lot of 

  Spencer Patton: sense ... 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: I would rather the voters take me out- Mm ... I really have, than to try to catch up with what everybody wants you to do. And, um, and politics is so divisive 

  Carli Patton: right now. Well, I like that you called it an unintended consequence. Politics is the unintended consequence. I think there's a lot of people that are afraid of running for public office that have a heart like you to serve in some capacity wherever the Lord has gifted them, but that feels monumental.

  Yeah. Like, this idea of how do I even start that? Fir- so for that person, and then I think- Yeah ... there's some pivots where we need to go, but I think it's really important. You hated school. You felt this calling to serve the deeper population- Yes ... not just to check a box. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yes. 

  Carli Patton: How did you kinda give o- get over that initial...

  You're in your 30s, right? People are probably like, "You're much too young. You need a few more gray hairs to do this." [00:15:00] How did you even begin, and what has kept you willing to do that every four years of your life? This is number seven, right? 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: That's 

  Carli Patton: right. Like, what, how did you start? And what made it worth it on the other side?

  'Cause I think people need to know that 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yeah, so to, and to be fair, my dad was a, he's in sales, but, but he ran for city council when I was a teenager. And, um, and that was so outside of our norm. We played sports all our life. He coached a lot and ran different things, you know, different teams and stuff. But, but he's...

  I didn't know what this was. I was a teenager. I didn't care really, and he, he signed up to run for council. So he eventually is in the city council for two terms, three terms, back during my college years. That never meant anything to me. I, I didn't... I mean, I knew what it was. It was, you know, back then it was a part-time role, which is still supposed to be.

  It was usually some retired people to give back to their communities, turned into this political s- Nashville has. And, and I think that role that he played, I was, I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. But when I c- when it came time for [00:16:00] this vacancy and I may have to run, he had r- he'd run an off- a run for office in a little bitty district right over here by the airport.

  So that was one out of 40 pla- 40 districts in Nashville. So that little experience helped us a little bit. I went to him and said, "What do we do?" And he said, "You don't have a chance in the world of winning." And, uh, and, and I said- ... "You're probably right, but I'm gonna get, lose my job anyway, because whoever wins is gonna bring in their people."

  And so part of it was, let's take off. And, and the person who was in the office before me supported me, and that helped. But I had a year and a half of what you'd call kind of the boots on the ground- Mm-hmm ... which I had never done. And, and I was born and raised in Nashville, but I'd never been to parts of this county- Yeah

  for that kind of thing. And so that was exhausting. Um, in the middle of that, um, uh, experience, my wife and I get pregnant. We have a baby two months before I'm sworn in the first time. 

  Carli Patton: Oh, wow. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: He's now graduated college. He's working downtown. That tells me I've been in a long time. But yeah, so our life was moving fast.

  And then, you know, I was like, "Oh gosh, now if we lose the election, we don't have a job for the, for the [00:17:00] baby." Mm-hmm. So, um, but we were blessed and, and, and got elected. We, we, we beat, um, some really, uh, Leo Waters was a, a citywide elected official multiple times, very popular guy, person I knew well, and the friends of our family and stuff.

  And everyone assumed he was gonna win. And, um, and so we worked really hard. It was, it was, um... And it kinda goes back to the why. I, I don't... My grand- my f- father-in-law asked me one time, said, "Why do you, do you have to be that honest?" And what he was talking about was there were unions that wanted you to say a certain thing.

  There were certain entities. And I'm not saying I'm better than anybody. I just I didn't think about what to say. 

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: I wasn't there trying to match up to what the answer needed to be. And so when it was all over, if you win, you just get up and go to work. If you lose, at least I didn't have to, you know.

  Yeah. So- 

  Carli Patton: Compromise. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yeah, I felt, I felt really strong about that part. But y- and, and just so you know, one other thing that most people don't understand, in Nashville, in Davidson [00:18:00] County, um, the office of sheriff, DA, judges, we all have to declare a party. I'm totally against all that. I don't like that at all.

  Just, just so you know, in Nashville, the mayor of Nashville doesn't have to tell you what party he or she's running in. They run in an unidentified, you know, winner take all eventually. In this office and every other, um, constitutional office, you have to declare what you are. I don't agree with that at all.

  Hmm. Um, for a bunch of reasons. I don't get to say at the front door of our facilities, "Democrat, Republican-" Mm-hmm. "-house him here, her here." I mean- Yeah ... the point is, it makes no sense. We're not legislating laws. We're not... And, and if I'm running the city, I think you might wanna know my leanings becau- but we don't in Nashville But the sheriff has to tell you, he or she, what she, what they're doing.

  And so I don't love that part of it because I don't think my party or not should matter. I'm not active in the party. I never have been. Um, I just don't feel like that's an important part of this job, and I don't like the inconsistency with an office [00:19:00] like mayor and council, by the way. The city council doesn't have to tell you.

  Spencer Patton: Hmm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: And those offices are dictating some, some important issues that, that may, affiliation-wise, may matter. And, uh, so I've just... I don't know. I haven't loved it. I mean, the, the politics has gotten me in trouble over the years and, and in certain things because you're expected to do something or you're- Mm-hmm

  um, you know, and so it's, it's, uh, it's part of it I didn't think about on the front end. I, I didn't run for it for that reason, and I, I think and I hope the people view it as less of a political office than some places- Yeah ... just because I, I haven't tried to make it that. And, and I hope the voters think that I'm doing it with some compassion that's...

  I'm not saying it doesn't happen all the time, but I'm not looking for the next job. And, you know, and, and maybe... And I've even said this a lot, you know, times are changing. People are changing. This needs fresh blood. It does. I mean, that, that's not... It wasn't the plan to stay here this long. I didn't expect to win.

  Uh, but, but we're at a point now where we've done a lot of different things. I'm really proud [00:20:00] of it, but it's time for someone else to figure it out. I 

  Carli Patton: think if any of us knew what was coming for us, we would never step out in faith. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Well, 

  Carli Patton: yeah. Like, it is God's gift that you don't know- 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: It's fair ... 

  Carli Patton: what the, how the politics are going to change or what the public sentiment's gonna be because I think none of us would ever try if we knew- 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Good point

  Carli Patton: the uphill battles that it would be. But thank goodness that we do. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: It's a good point. Yeah. 

  Carli Patton: Yeah, 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: that's a really good point. 

  Spencer Patton: So while we're talking some about elected officials, so Governor Bill Lee has an enormous passion for men of valor. Mm-hmm. Individuals that are incarcerated, he'll tell you, and often speaks publicly, that a big reason why he ran- Yes

  for governor was sitting and seeing what he wanted to kind of have the chance to change. And so if you could take us through for a second some of the Um, correctional facilities. Yes. So I've spent the better part of this year going to River Bend Maximum [00:21:00] Security Good for you ... and it's been my first time ever doing a prison ministry.

  I have no idea whether that's even a facility in your- Yeah, yeah ... jurisdiction, so you can tell us that. But that has totally changed my perspective of- Wow ... what a correctional institution is like, the people that are inside, the individual that I've been paired with. If I had 10% of the trauma that- Wow ... he has had to endure throughout his life, I would be in prison for twice as long and for five times- Yes

  more things than he is. I mean, it's, it's just never had a chance. And so if you can just take us down a little bit of just from a high level- Yeah ... here's the correctional- Yeah ... oversight that you have, and just anything you wanna share about that. Yeah. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Man, there's a bunch there. Yeah. That's... And, and, and you're right.

  I, I knew Governor Lee before, um, he ever thought about running and, and I don't [00:22:00] need heating and air and electrical. That wasn't it either. It was because he volunteered in, in, in Men of Valor, and I knew that a long time ago. The man who started Men of Valor, Carl Carlson, was a friend of mine, and we, um...

  Anyway, man, and that whole program was fantastic, and I, I can remember the night he was, I think it was election night or whatever, and Governor Lee steps up there and Roll is on the stage with him, and he says to him, you know, and, and, you know, and I said many, many times, most governors never been in a prison in their life- Yeah

  and he had volunteered and worked in it and, and did a lot of, you know, on the front end of it. And, um, so it was a, it's a blessing to, to have someone who can speak some language and, and it's a tough job that he's in no m- no matter what. But, but to, to understand where his heart is about it because, um, prisons aren't sexy, and they're not easy for politicians to care about.

  And, and it, and so it's a tricky thing when you elect people, I think, that don't have that understanding. And so, so a couple things. So I love to do this because most people don't understand it, and it helps me to ground myself. 

  Spencer Patton: Yeah. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Jails and prisons, the term gets [00:23:00] universally used. Yeah. And we ne- we need to clean it up a little bit for everybody.

  A jail and a prison would be like saying an emergency room and a nursing home- 

  Spencer Patton: Hmm. Okay ... 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: if we think about it. And so they're both important institutions for various reasons, but a nursing home and emergency room. A jail is the emergency room A nursing home is in essence what, what we would call the prisons.

  By definition, what a prison is, is someone convicted of a felony serving a sentence, which is what you were talking about River Bend. Everyone there has to be doing that. Sheriffs run jails that house everyone awaiting trial. There is no one in prison awaiting trial. And they, they house some other people awaiting transfers for a variety of reasons.

  So we house 3,000 people today. Um, 2,000 of those are awaiting trial. I'm just rounding here- Yeah, yeah ... but I'm, I'm close. Tw- 2,000 will be a- awaiting trial. There's probably a couple of hundred people convicted of DUIs and misdemeanors that would never go to the pr- then there's another group that would be moving to the prison eventually.

  And so you do all of that math. But in essence, a prison should be convicted, [00:24:00] awaiting tri- excuse me, convicted serving a sentence, and a jail should be awaiting trial and, and these other trivial types of things that go on, and I'm talking more about lower sentences, not necessarily. Because you can serve a sentence before we could ever move you to prison.

  It goes that fast sometimes because it wait, it takes that long to get you through trial. 

  Spencer Patton: Yes. So it's really a temporal, a timing element to really highlight the emergency room. It's like you're in the emergency room for what is hopefully or thought to be some briefer period of time, but in the event that the outcome is one where you're convicted of something, then- You-

  you're going out of- Yes ... the jail and you're going into prison- Yes ... where you're gonna serve some longer period of time. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. And I've worked in both. I've worked in prisons and jails. I worked in a prison in Australia one time, it's cool, for nearly a year, and worked for, for now CoreCivic, used to be CCA back in the day, and that's where Governor Lee used to volunteer to that facility.

  The more famous person there was Jelly Roll, who actually went to, to Men of Valor that, from that facility. We w- so that whole setup, but that was a prison. [00:25:00] They were serving one to six-year sentences in that facility at the time, and then everyone above six would move out to, to Riverbend or to that campus.

  Here's something really important, though, that people have trouble thinking about. So let's go back to emergency room, nursing home. Let's, let's assume that, that that's a prison jail built side by side. Mm-hmm. They're both 1,000 beds to make it easy. So there's a 1,000-bed prison, 1,000-bed jail. At the end of a year, in the prison, 700 of those people have moved on.

  Either been released, uh, could be transferred, but the movement of a 1,000-bed prison is about 700 people a year. 

  Spencer Patton: Wow. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: In a jail, it's 36 times. 36,000 people go through this door. 

  Spencer Patton: Wow. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: 1,700 people, 1,000 plus the 700 go through this. So what you're talking about, emergency room is dealing with so much coming off the streets.

  Mm-hmm. So many things. The volume and the pace of that make a lot of things very challenging. Addiction, very, very hard to get some of that under wraps in a... If you get a 10-day sentence for shoplifting. 

  Carli Patton: It's just not long enough. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: [00:26:00] It's not. And it, it, it sounds weird. I tell people all the time, I mean, I'm a very, I think I'm a, I don't know if this word is fair, but progressive as in, I think, I, I hope I'm a, a willing to try guy on all sorts of programs.

  I've never said no to anyone, ever- Yeah ... who came and said, "Here's what I wanna do." We just, we may have to figure out how to do it. But I believe there's not a pill that's gonna fix it for everybody. What, what trauma I experience, what I need, what would reach me, it may be songwriting, it may be... We do a lot of animal therapy.

  We, we've done, we've done, uh, Tim Robbins in, in, um, um, oh gosh, what's my movie? Star- Shawshank Redemption. You know? Mm-hmm. When he left that movie, it impacted him so much, the prison setting, that he started a program helping prisoners, um, in performing arts types of work. And what it was about was, he tells a great story, that he learned that men, especially men, had trouble telling you- Mm

  what they had done wrong, and telling you their crimes they had committed, or where their, their needs are to be fixed. So, [00:27:00] but what he learned is if we acted it out- And eventually even put makeup on. It allowed them to be more honest and free and get to the bottom of what they needed to be dealing with.

  Oh, yeah. I think that's fascinating. And so we tried performing arts at 12 o'clock in the morning, driving inmates across to, to Donaldson that no one knew about, because someone said, "What do we think? Let's think about it. Let's try it." So we've tried, we try all sorts of programming. Because I don't know that we know, us three, what's gonna reach that person- Sure

  that's coming in right now. And so my theory is let's throw it all at them and give them all the chances we can. Prisons are easier in, in that I have you for a longer time. I can assess you be- better. I can train you- 

  Spencer Patton: Mm ... 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: in, in, in industries or certain types of thing. We can build a mentorship program much better in prison than a jail where I'm going home in 60 days.

  Spencer Patton: Yeah, I can give you skills- Right ... while you're there. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Right. Yeah. So it's... When I say easier, that part of a nursing home environment is a little easier to get to know everything. Jails are so high volume. It's so... And what you're coming off the streets [00:28:00] with. I mean, we book 70 people a day, and that person being booked right now very likely has pills in their pocket and just different ones.

  And so you're trying to assess what they need versus what's, you know, inappropriate, and how do you get that all cleaned up. And keep 

  Carli Patton: everyone safe. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: In between each other- Yeah ... and their own health and... But by the time you go to prison, most of that's done. 

  Carli Patton: Mm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Detox is over with. We've kind of done some association with you, and so we're handing you a person that needs a lot of things, but they're not detoxing.

  And if you wanna say, coming off the streets and just a, a, a myriad of, of challenges. Sure. Um, so it's, it's a... And, and your point is a really good one. I think people who go into a jail or prison to volunteer their time or to help, uh, two things that people don't think about. The first is that the inmate knows you're not being paid.

  And what does that mean? I have 1,400 staff. I think they're fantastic. I think they all work really hard. The difference between me and you, if we walk into a cell, they know you're here giving of your time. Mm-hmm. And so it's important to have that because we have master's level social workers and [00:29:00] psychologists and all that.

  That's very important. There's a difference between someone... They know. Yeah. And what that means to that person, that's why Men of Valor has been very effective, I think, is because it's a mentorship. I'm giving of my time. You appreciate me. And, you know, even these folks over here getting paid, I mean, they kind of look at you like, you know, "Ugh, they're not all out here to help us."

  Spencer Patton: Yeah. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: And I understand that. Some of it's just by nature, the fact that I'm willing to help you without- Mm ... a paycheck. 

  Spencer Patton: Sheriff, undoubtedly with the role, there are impossible stories, stories that you just can't even believe to be true. Yeah. Right? What is it? The truth, uh- Yeah ... fiction. What is it, Leah? 

  Carli Patton: Truth is stranger than fiction.

  Spencer Patton: Thank you. 

  Carli Patton: Is that right? That sounds good. Okay. That's 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: it. 

  Spencer Patton: Truth is stranger than fiction. So there is an incident that I need to hear about involving an individual called Alex Friedman. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Got chills. 

  Spencer Patton: Our audience has no idea who they are, what they did, so take our audience through this incredible story. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: [00:30:00] Wow, wow, wow.

  Yeah. Um, so a couple things. I, I knew Alex Friedman for many, many years. Um, he had... Just to get this part out of the way, he, when he was 18 years old... He's about my age. He's m- maybe 60 today. Um, he had been arrested and convicted when he was 18, 19 years old of robbing a store in Green Hills, shot at the m- the owner, uh, missed him, and the guy shoots back, and they eventually catch this 18-year-old who was robbing him.

  He gets out, uh, pretty quickly on probation, violates probation, goes to prison for a 10-year sentence, just, just to kind of put that into perspective. And so he does a 10-year sentence at a private facility down in Clifton, Tennessee. Um, that's, that's where he became an activist while in prison. Uh, extremely, extremely smart.

  He's a member of Mensa today. He is- 

  Carli Patton: Wow ... 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: incredibly intelligent. But he used that intelligence while in prison to work as an editor for the Prison Legal News and [00:31:00] some other things outside, but he was able to be paid as an editor. And he also... We call them jailhouse lawyers. But he became, uh, you know, a lot of help to some of the guys in the prisons and all that.

  So when he was released, he had kind of some footing because he had established himself, and so he was hired, and he took off. And for 20 years or so, he was what you and I and, and this country would call probably the leading advocate in, in challenging conditions and safety issues in jails and prisons, and he would...

  I mean, he would threaten to sue us and oftentimes would. He sued CCA and won many times. He, he testified at Congress. He's in every legislative body in this country. Every media outlet would go to him. And, um, and, and I knew him, and we would have some issues where he would kind of pick apart something that had happened, want to know where's your policy about this, and so we had a relationship.

  It was never ugly. Um, he was anti-private prisons completely. That w- became his whole model, saying he was mistreated while in a private facility. So that's kind of where he [00:32:00] was, and all that was going on. And, and again, I had r- you know, involvement with him over those years. S- so roll back to 2015,

  2015. We had a jail downtown that'd been here since the '80s. We needed to tear it down and build a new one. The mayor was then Karl Dean. He and I had this press conference on the courthouse steps announcing we need to do this, to ask the f- city council for money and all that. So we take off on that journey, so that's in 2015.

  Three months after we were on the courthouse steps, Alex Friedman, unbeknownst to anyone else, hired a man to teach him how to manipulate concrete. What that... So eventually, he had a warehouse out on Harding Place, and the man taught and, and would build cinder block walls in the shape of a cell, and then he was...

  This is all in the court, by the way. It was testified, and, and the checks he was writing were in the courtroom, so this is not hearsay. 

  Spencer Patton: And I, I love this because, like, right now in the story, really the audience can't necessarily tell other than the [00:33:00] tone that, like, I feel like this is about to take a dark turn.

  And now we've just introduced the manipulation of concrete. 

  Carli Patton: I know. And so, like- It sounds like X-Men. Like, are we sure? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're dealing in reality here? 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Okay. Well, this, this is hard for me to smile through, I'll just tell you that. Yeah. Yeah. It, it was, it was a dark, dark time for us. But, so at that time, my focus was trying to get this building built.

  We did not know he was up to this. And, and, and, and when I say working on concrete, the pictures were... If you take two cinder block, you know, stacked, the mortar joints in between each one of those w- was really the aim, aim for him. He- They would, they would learn how to grind out the mortar, and then what you could slide into the mortar and how to cover that back up.

  Mm-hmm. And this was, again, I wasn't there, but it was all brought out as a part of the, of the case. So he's working on that in 2015. We are not even designing a building yet. I mean, we're... You know, it takes forever in the government to do that. Ours takes con- uh, construction starts in 2017, and so we're tearing a building down and we're build- building a $200 million complex [00:34:00] that would have 800 beds in it.

  And so while all that's going on, and who knew what he was up to, um, he started way early in the construction coming out of the ground, um, visiting the site and starting to make a plan, a, a deviant plan. Just so you know, along the way, because of our relationship, there would be inter- you know, interaction between my office and him.

  We have a legal division, and he would ask questions. "Hey, are you gonna have a law library in this new facility?" And that's not an unusual question. And we'd s- we said, "Yes." "Well, I don't see it on the plans." And that's kinda him anyway. You know, it wouldn't be a shocker he'd ask that kinda question. But looking back, he was asking for other reasons now that we know.

  Mm. And so we were gonna have an electronic law library. You didn't have to go anymore. You could pull it up on tablets and things. So that, he was wanting to know where the building was gonna be. So all that was going on. So we had this stuff going on. Well, simultaneous to us building this building and, and Friedman up to his stuff, um, the con- the political conversations we mentioned earlier in Nashville was [00:35:00] that private prisons were all bad.

  Uh, whether they are or not, I could debate all day long. I'm not here to argue yes or no. That's not important to me. There's a contract that we oversaw with CCA, uh, to house people. It's in the facility that Governor Lee and quote Jelly Roll was in, that we oversaw the contract. CCA managed it. The State of Tennessee paid for it.

  That's just the arrangement. Well, the politics on private prisons got so loud that the city council, in the middle of one meeting, got all wound up and said, "Let's throw them out. No one should be here." They had no idea what they were doing. Um, and when I say they had no idea, they didn't understand the ramifications of doing that, and it's a major operation that had not, uh, been in, in effect for 25 years.

  Um, 700, 800 in- inmates, where are they gonna go? Who's gonna hire- Mm-hmm ... the people? Where are they gonna house them? I mean, they didn't care. The city was all in, in an uproar about all that, and the leader of that was Freddie O'Connell, who was, at the time, a city council member. Um, and there were other council members that were very loud and passionate about anti-private prisons.

  So [00:36:00] to his credit, Freddie O'Connell, who I did not know, came up to me at some weekend event and walked up to me and said, "Hey, I'd like to talk to you about doing away with private contract." And I said, "Will you sit down and give me a chance to, to explain the, the ramifications? If not, I don't wanna be a part of it," because I'm not playing the game of what was popular that night to get behind a rally in a big courthouse, you know.

  He was incredible, to be honest. For two years, he met with... And eventually, I said to him, "I want you to bring the loudest people you know to this table, and we'll meet with them along the way so they understand this is not just a political decision. It's, it's financial. It's, there's some liability the city's under.

  There's a lot to it." To his credit, and I gave, I let him be the leader of the committee. You know, you bring your group to the table. I'll meet with them as often. We did it every quarter, uh, for, for, I guess, two years. He picked Alex Friedman, and he picked Don Diener or some other advocates that were very anti-private, which I thought was great.

  I want them in the room. I want them to understand what all we're dealing with. We spent a year studying the, the cost through all that- Mm-hmm ... and [00:37:00] presented that to this group, and that group, including Freddie O'Connell, understood that just blowing it up is not the right way to do it. So the reason I bring that into this conversation is there were times during the same simultaneous build of a, of a building that we now know he, Friedman, was playing multiple roles.

  He was in my office in a conference room with the m- future mayor of the city and others, talking about doing away with the contract. Nothing to do with this building we were building. Mm. But we have him on record being in the meetings with us, going home, changing into his fake construction site, and going to work that night in the pr- in the facility.

  So, so just know, there's a relationship ongoing. There's simultaneous issues. One was trying to do away with the private, uh, prison. The other one was us building a $200 million jail. So while that was going on, Alex Friedman, we know he was in there for at least two and a half years. And what does that mean?

  He was in the b- building. We were set to open in December of 2019. Yes Wait, 

  Carli Patton: when you say in the building, you mean he had on a hard [00:38:00] hat. He was pretending as an imposter to be a construction worker. He got his own training. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yes. 

  Carli Patton: And then he came in and paraded as a construction worker to his own ends while working the political angle- 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Right

  Carli Patton: on the side. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Right. Goodness. So it's really good to point that out, though. I promise you I could show you footage, and you would never pick him out. He, he was dressed just like the other 1,000 people. Yellow vest, different... He would wear different- 

  Carli Patton: And so it's a busy site. I mean- Right. Huge ... this is a giant facility.

  It's not like there were five people working on it every day. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Exactly 

  Carli Patton: right. It was a huge operation. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: And he was extremely sophisticated. I, I, I hate having to give all the credit, but it is real. And so he, he was completely decked out. He complet- completely navigated the... Keep in mind, a construction company's in charge of the site, not us, right?

  This is a- Mm-hmm ... it's their job to build the thing. Yeah. We're not over there checking to see who's coming to work. But he monitored how you come in on all the c- the campus. He learned how to do that, and then he s- he came in and, and, and started operating. The question would probably be, [00:39:00] how do you know that?

  Well, so we're gonna open this thing in December of '19. It's about a two-and-a-half-year build. Mm-hmm. So, uh, we're gonna open this building in 2019, late in December. Um, just so you know, we had 600 cameras in the building. Th- that's really today's corrections. A lot of it's monitored by cameras and ob- obviously people, but you got them everywhere.

  Those 600 cameras went on in August of '19. So just kind of give me August to December, cameras are running. 

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: So that's, that's where we eventually see what you're talking about, what he was doing, how he was doing it. So December 19 w- we were supposed to open. It got delayed a few weeks. We have a grand opening type of event set up for January the 13th of 2020.

  Um, we had been practicing training. The building was basically done. They're punching out things, but we've got staff hired 24/7. They're practicing delivering fake food and running eleva- elevators. We flush toilets and showers. My management team, I snuck in, snuck a trick in on them, and we slept in the [00:40:00] building over the weekend.

  They thought we were going to our retreat. We slept in the building. There was a lot of things to build up to this thing. We'd spent a lot of energy to get it right. And so here we are into the December months. I do a New Year's trip every year with my college roommates, and so it was our 40s- 41st year we'd done it, and we're in Panama City or something for a weekend of, of New Year's, and I get this phone call and, uh, families, everybody was there, ph- phone call, and it says, um, you know, we're two weeks away from opening, and our chief of corrections says, "Hey, w- we got some keys missing."

  And on the phone, I get calls all the time. I get calls that are, you know, awkward and difficult and expecta- But I said, "What, what keys are you talking about?" And he said, "We're missing two keys from the new facility." There are thousands of keys in a building like this, and we run multiple other jails at the time, and if you told me some keys in that building, I'd say, "Oh my gosh."

  Yeah. But when you said keys in the new building, I said, "What do you mean? How would there be keys missing in a new building?" He said, "I don't know. We're looking into it." "Okay, fine." I said... I even kind of said, "Well, that's ridiculous, but okay," because it didn't even worry me. I thought [00:41:00] some construction guy may have- It's new construction.

  Right. Yeah. Right. But keys in a jail or prison are like money in the bank. We've got to have them. Yeah. That's how you run the place. Mm-hmm. And so, so it's important, but it didn't matter much to me because we were empty. Pack up, fly back home, you know, three, four days later. What they had done was they had taken the cameras and to look into where the key control room, where all the keys were to be and had already been placed, and to monitor the cameras to see did they see any weird construction activity in there.

  They see this guy spray painting and painting, and he works. I promise you, if I showed you the footage, you could never see him do it. I promise you. Uh, eventually, you slow it way down. You see him rub by and, and slide this thing in extremely slow, a ring of keys in his pocket. The person who even saw it said he saw it 10 times and never fo- found it.

  I mean, you would not see it until you, yeah, make you do it. Yeah. He leaves the facility. You follow him on cameras. Again, there's 1,000 other guys looking just like him. You wouldn't pick him out. The only thing he did that was interesting is he wore a mask. Before you and [00:42:00] I knew a mask was- Right ... in March of that year, he's wearing this mask, a hat, and a vest.

  Painters do that sometimes, so it didn't jump out. But he was different, looking back, because he wore the mask all the way to his car, which was three blocks away. 

  Spencer Patton: Mm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: He didn't want e- us to see him, him, and that makes sense. But no one would've said, "Wow." So he leaves that day with the keyring. He comes back two hours later.

  He comes back. He's seen on footage, not real obvious, but sliding by locks to see if these key, the keys that he has work. Um, we discover, obviously, that he, he, he puts the keyring that he'd taken off back on the wall. Um, and that's the ring, just so you know, that they see and count, and see two missing. And so when they're calling me, that's what they're looking at.

  I'm telling you the footage that they went back to see- Mm. Yeah Yeah ... as, as we're describing what he was up to. The key ring was missing the two keys. That, that's what alerted us. We start watching the footage, and we see this unusual dude who's about 5'6", 5'7", White male, maybe [00:43:00] 50 years old, with this and this on.

  If you see him come back, we wanna talk to him. It looks like he, looks like he, he did something with the keys. That's all we knew. I never thought he would come back, because I thought it was just some weirdo. Surely, yeah. Yeah. I mean, who would do that? So four days later, um, here he comes with his lunch pail, mask on, walking down James Robinson Parkway, and here he comes.

  And we have the entry-level person working in security. We had put a BOLO out inside. If he comes back, we need to get him, you know, trapped, and we'll, we'll talk to him about what he's up to. Um, and sure enough, he came in. Inside of his lunch pail was bolt cutters and some other materials that he... There was no lunch in there.

  And so, I mean, I... When we catch him, I'm, I'm on the phone with the chief of police. This is probably not legally appropriate, but I said, "I don't care. Find something to arrest him for- ... because I don't know what he's up to, but he, we know he stole the keys." So they charge him with burglary and burglary tools.

  He bonds out in 30 minutes, so he's out. But when... Oh, I'm sorry. And at that night, when all this happens, I watched Scooby-Doo when I was growing up. I love [00:44:00] Scooby-Doo. And if you re- Did you 

  Carli Patton: unmask him? 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yes. Well, I didn't, but our guy does. And here's what happens. Remember in Scooby-Doo, because when... It was always someone you knew from earlier in the- 

  Carli Patton: Yes.

  You're so right. And then, like, their whole face- 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yes ... 

  Carli Patton: you know, and it's actually- I get chills ... like, the little girl from down the street. Yes. Yeah. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Mm-hmm. It'd be the librarian that you walk by early in the shot, you know? Yes. And here... So when that mask came off, I won't ever forget. This is exactly what happened.

  I was, I was at home. They told me, "We've got him." I didn't know who he was. Really? So, well, I can't wait. Well, give me a call. And I was trying to figure my way down there. So the call came to me, and it was just like Scooby-Doo. This is exactly what they said: "It's Alex freaking Friedman" Exactly what they said.

  Just like Sc- And I went Everything changed. '

  Carli Patton: Cause you knew- 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yes ... 

  Carli Patton: you knew he was brilliant. Yes. You knew what you were working with, and now you were like, "Okay, what was, what was the deeper plan?" 'Cause keys are one thing. Yeah, 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: right. 

  Carli Patton: Infiltrating a construction site, one thing. But at that point, did you have any [00:45:00] idea- 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: No, 

  Carli Patton: no

  what you were about to uncover? 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Mustaf would take us up

  Wow. So, man 

  Spencer Patton: Yeah. 

  Carli Patton: Oh, I'm sorry. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: No, no, no, no. So everything changed, and the difference was we have a $200 million building. A lot of people are screaming at you for opening it. You're running late. There's pressure to open the building. Sure. You've got this person who I knew right then I had no idea what we're gonna get into, that i- we're not opening this building- 

  Carli Patton: Mm-hmm

  Sheriff Daron Hall: until and maybe never. And, and I said, "I don't know what's going on here." And we had seen enough on the footage, and this was just getting the keys. He was so deliberate that he was up to something far more significant. I had no idea. And I have a press conference. We're not opening the building. I said, "We have no idea what's going on."

  He had bonded out, so he's out, and we're looking through all this stuff. So we, we now have 600 cameras. And I, I tell our staff, "I want every piece of footage w- [00:46:00] watched to see what he did, if he ever came in here." I didn't know what I was talking about. I just said we can open it. 600 cameras times six months is two million hours 

  Spencer Patton: Wow 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: I mean, that is a lot of footage.

  And so we put people who'd never done any of this and said, "If you see him, you trigger our IT division." Yeah IT within... You didn't have the facial recognition stuff 

  Carli Patton: today. Yeah. AI wasn't what AI is. Like today, that would be a totally different- 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: I called people ... 

  Carli Patton: discovery task 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Right. I had no idea what... And, and so there was- so we had a guy in our IT division, and his job was to splice every time he came in the building.

  He'd get through this camera, you know, and connected all that. So that took months. I was, believe it or not, I was also the president of the National Sheriff's Association at the same time, which is terrible. And part of your job in that j- in that role was to be in DC quite a bit. And on this year, in that particular year, in February, we just caught him in January.

  He's on bond, and we're looking into everything. I have to be in DC for this national meeting th- th- that's every year. Um, my job [00:47:00] that day was to introduce the attorney general, brand-new, Bill Barr was at the time. And president of the Sheriff's Association, I was supposed to introduce him. There's Secret Service.

  There's media everywhere. It's a locked room, 100... The board of the sheriffs and everything. It's a pretty big deal, and I'm trying to hit the marks, you know, and make sure I was getting ready to go introduce him. And I'm sitting there, and our chief of staff, who's out here with me today, has been with me for 30-something years.

  And, and I knew that we were trying to figure out what all else he was up to back at home. Mm-hmm. Um, I had watched a lot of footage. Once they'd spliced it all together, we had all watched, and we saw him in certain concentrated areas, always outside of the view of a camera, but you could see him over in the corner.

  Mm-hmm. And one of those was in visitation. And, um, and so I watched that enough to where... Keep in mind, we don't know if it's a crime. I can't get anybody to pay any attention to it because keys don't matter to people, and it was an empty building. What are you worried about? The DA and others, I couldn't get any interest in it.

  And I was... I, I said, "I don't want to screw this up, but let's figure out what we can to, to carry it forward." So I literally, going to lunch one day, said, "I want to go up [00:48:00] there to visitation." No one's in the building, of course. It's empty. I had some people with me, and I went and sat down just like if you were visiting me through the glass- Mm-hmm

  as you would see in the, in the movies. He had worked a long time down here around what I would call your knee level in a booth on the ground, but you couldn't see it. You could just see his feet outside and dust and drills and things like that. Keep in mind, that's going on in every piece of that building during this time.

  Mm-hmm. So you wouldn't know, except we knew to follow him once we c- got him spliced together. So in this visitation booth, I saw that, and I'm, I went up there and sat down myself and just started moving around. It was painted perfectly. It looked perfect. And eventually, I pushed, and it just c- it caved in about an inch, about, about that big.

  About a- Wow ... you know, a four-by-four section just fell in. And I just... Man, I got chills. I, I said, "I don't know if that's a bomb. I don't know what that is." Sure. I don't want to screw this situation up because it... Who knows? Yeah. I, I didn't want my, we call it chain of custody, I didn't want me to start something and screw that up.

  So I said, "I'm heading back." I [00:49:00] headed back to the office. We get our team set up, and then, you know, I'm not an expert in, in concrete removal anyway, but our team and our, our investigators- I in turn have to fly to DC. That's the February timeframe. So I'm in DC introducing Bill Barr while they're back at home and making arrangements to go and see what's in the wall.

  And so while that's going on, I'm literally in a room like this and, and, and our folks are back at home. I, I didn't pay attention to exactly what they were doing, but so happened to be they get down and start getting into the wall to see what it is with some police and other folks. And they sent the pictures of these loaded weapons coming out, loaded .38, extra ammunition, handcuffs, uh, handcuff keys, saw blades.

  Wow. And so she handed me... Carla West, she hands me her phone just stunned. And, and I was about to st- We've laughed about this, but I was about to step up and introduce him, and when I s- I couldn't even think. 

  Carli Patton: I bet. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: And I mean, and I s- I, I, I don't know what I said. I introduced him. I get on a plane and flew home, and, um, and that was the first.

  There, [00:50:00] there turned out to be three more loaded handguns with extra ammunition in the walls of visitation, in the walls of our medical unit. Um, there were 26 escape packets. Each one of those were placed in every housing unit. So remember the mortar joint practice? Yeah. That was to grind out the mortar, and then slid into each mortar joint in every housing unit in the facility was a packet.

  In that packet had a razor bla- or a knife, a razor blade, handcuff keys, which are no-nos, and a tool that unscrews security bits. In jails and prisons, they have a... It's not a Phillips-head type of head. Yeah. Yeah. So he, he had a bit in every one of those. And the reason that, the reason he did that was wherever he was going to be housed, s- this is my theory and I can prove it He was gonna be arrested.

  He was gonna come into the facility. He was gonna be housed, and wherever he was housed, he has access to the packet. That packet allowed him to get to where the guns were, and when you get to the gun, you can unscrew... There was metal facings- [00:51:00] Wow ... that would allow him to unscrew that. He had handcuff keys.

  He can undo his handcuffs, and then he's... And you know this, or the public may not, but there are n- there's not a loaded weapon in a jail or prison anywhere in this country. You would never have a loaded... Our staff are, are not armed. 

  Carli Patton: Man, I don't think people... I don't think I knew that. They don't. Say that again.

  Oh, yeah. I don't think I actually knew that. Say that. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: There's not a load- There's not guns in any jail or prison in this country. You do not ever take that. That's fish in a barrel. That would be- Yeah ... incredibly dangerous. Now, what you see is transportation, court, you're moving people in the public. There are weapons.

  We use that. When you get to the door of a, a jail, nobody comes in. We fire people, police officers and our own, for not removing their own. So it is a no-no. Mm. Alex Friedman knew that from the very beginning. He was in prison. He was an advocate- Oh ... claiming he cared about safe jails. But the truth of this whole thing, there's so much to think, to think about.

  Three months after we announced we're gonna build it, he went and started practicing. The building wasn't even started. He was in that building from the time the footage had gone on for six months. He knew the building [00:52:00] inside and out. Yeah. The guns were planted after the cameras come on, or we never would've found them, because keep in mind, we could see him doing work in, in deliberate areas, and it was late in his project.

  Yeah. All of the packets in the housing units ca- were put in before the cameras ever went live. We only found those because as I was leaving DC, in a room full of people, the director of the FBI was in the back of the room. I said, "I have no idea what I'm doing." But I'm gonna need all the help I can get. I, I don't know what.

  I see guns come out of the wall. You know, some convers- "Just let me know what you need." I, I don't know the guy, but I was like, "Holy crap, we don't deal with this." We flew home, and the FBI here, um... Now I'm gonna give you one more thing to think about. We're now in March of 2020. 

  Carli Patton: Ugh. Yeah. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: So we found guns in February, and we're trying to figure out what else is going on.

  It's March. What happened? Everybody was sent home. 

  Spencer Patton: Yeah. Mm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: So I get the FBI to send some of their people that were in Quantico in training. It was DEA and Border Patrol that does a lot of the searching for the federal government, and they sent them all here. It was like the all-star team of searching. It was super cool-[00:53:00] 

  in, in March. Everybody else was, was at home. Uh, we had a tornado here, if y'all remember, early March. Oh, yeah. So we're all in dealing with that mess, and so they brought equipment. We took our staff and scanned 400,000-square-foot building, all the concrete. And every time you would see a, a, you know, a dysfunction in the temperature of the concrete, that would alert us to something's there, and that's how all the packets were able to be retrieved, because we never would've found them.

  Spencer Patton: Wow. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: So y- you know, in all of that, you know, the, the, the weirdness, of course, we eventually get him indicted on that. Um, he was convicted. Uh, he's doing a 40-year sentence. Um, but I want you to remember this, and this, this is important. Alex Friedman knew more than anybody that no one had a weapon in there.

  Alex Friedman knew that it was, it was... You don't load weapons if you want to escape. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Y- you fix locks and keys and jam everything, and y- there's a lot of ways you could've really damaged the, the security. Guns were going to be used, and I'm convinced of this. He, [00:54:00] he had relationships with several women who reached out to me once he was arrested.

  And I didn't know them, but I have come to know them, at least their story, and he told this nine-year relationship, uh, woman m- many times that his retirement plan was to go back to prison And she said, "I had no idea what to, what he meant by it. He never shared much of that." But he... And, and so all they knew that he was working on a project.

  I'm convinced he was going to be a martyr. Yeah. He was going to get arrested inside the system. Then once he's housed in whatever unit, that packet is all he needs. When he goes to medical or goes to visitation, which inmates are allowed to do on appointment, he has the tools to get the guns and then to shoot his way out of this thing.

  Once we get him indicted and arrested and brought in, there were 26 other weapons found at his house. He's a convicted felon. He can't have a weapon. He had tubs full of body armor, every kind of ammunition. I'm talking about these huge tubs. Wow. Stocked, locked at, at a house, and he was moving that [00:55:00] around.

  Don't have a good sense for what he was gonna do with that, unless people were gonna come out with him, or he was in a pretty underground kind of a advocacy group of- Mm ... you know, abolitionists about jails and prisons. So, uh, it could be other people. But, um, there were gonna be lives lost. There's just no way around it.

  Yeah. And it, it... You know, I'm a big redemption guy. I am. I'm all about second chances. I'm a sucker for that. I love that. He wasn't evil. There, there's just, there's just evil in there. And, and I say that because he wasn't on, on substances. He was portraying... He was in the office with me and going across the street and putting in construction- Mm, yeah

  and loading guns, and then claiming in the media that he was out trying to make jails safe. Mm. It was just horrific. 

  Carli Patton: I imagine... I can't put words in your mouth, but I imagine the thing that probably keeps you up at night is what if- 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Mm-hmm 

  Carli Patton: You hadn't found that footage. Yeah. Like, what if he was ever so little bit smarter and the keys never went [00:56:00] missing, they were just duplicate...

  Like, what if has to be the thing. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: 100%. Think, think, I, I told you when we started, we were supposed to open in December. If it had been on time, we don't catch it. 

  Carli Patton: Yeah. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Because we find it in January, first week of January. There are multiple... If the cameras didn't go live, by the way, that was just a fluke. You know, it's, it's an, a technology company flipping on when they're ready to go.

  This is a big project. Two days later, he's putting the guns in the, in the medical unit. We see that on camera, not till, you can't see as clearly as, as I'm making it, but we see him working. He actually covered a camera up. 

  Carli Patton: Mm-hmm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: If we don't see that footage, we don't go looking in there. There's no way for us to have seen.

  So the cameras, if they're a week later, we miss the guns. Whew. And, and, and your point, which, which I've struggled with, is how horrible it would be to have the building open with 700, and just to be candid with you, this is the most violent people we have. Mm-hmm. It's the highest risk facility. We have 3,000 inmates.

  It's the 700 most dangerous situations you'd have. So you, you've got them in there with those [00:57:00] weapons, you're in big trouble. If, you know, if... I'm, I'm convinced he was gonna come in. Um, there's a lot of things that happened that were fascinating to people. It's gonna be a movie, by the way. I'm not, I'm not a movie guy, but we've had all kinds of people.

  It, it is so... His, when he was caught, we caught him, um, he, he eats paper. Come to find out, that was kind of the manuscript of, of where to go find all the stuff. Um, some of that we were able to get out the night, the, the Scooby-Doo moment. Um, so that was all, because it was so complicated. You caught 

  Carli Patton: him eating the paper?

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Right. On film, too. You can see it. Wow. 

  Carli Patton: Wait, not to like rabbit trail, but who plays you in the movie? Who's the, uh, who's your casting pick? I, I- Do you wanna say- I, I 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: like Denzel Washington. That's what I was hoping. But it's, I like- That, 

  Carli Patton: that would be, that would be a great pick I vote for Denzel also. That'd be great.

  Sheriff Daron Hall: But we, it's, it's a... There are, there are other crazy, weird things. Wow. But he, he is a, his, his uncle's Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman- Mm ... under Bush and Obama. His parents are both instructors at [00:58:00] Duke. Um, well, they may be retired now. Um- Wow ... he, he was, his family lived in Saudi Arabia. When he was 14, they kicked him out of the country.

  His family has never owned him since. They don't recognize him as their son. We don't really know why. Um, there's a bunch of different wild spinoffs that matter in a movie. To me, what's is how close we were to being in big trouble. It was just horrific. If 

  Carli Patton: not by the grace of God. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Right. No doubt about it.

  Well- 

  Carli Patton: Thank you for sharing that. Well, it's- That's like, that's a lot of detail, and you can tell there's a lot of emotion still tied to that 'cause you care. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Mm. 

  Carli Patton: You care about the people that you are meant to steward, and regardless of how they end up under your care, you still have compassion and care for them, and that is really evident.

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Well, I appreciate it. I, um, and I felt like a sucker with him a little bit because I was honoring his time and work, and then here he is- Mm ... betraying that with me and my own s- you know, so but- 

  Carli Patton: Ugh ... 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: it worked out. And, and we, we, um, but it's a crazy chapter in my life. 

  Carli Patton: Um- I'm so glad to have that on film. 

  Spencer Patton: [00:59:00] Mm.

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Mm. So- 

  Carli Patton: Yeah. 

  Spencer Patton: Now, Sheriff, thank you for sharing all of that because, uh, just what I love about our time is there is a ton of education. Like, you have taught us so much that I just don't know, didn't have occasion to learn, and you do it really well as is a hallmark of someone that understands their craft is being able to teach it to someone that is learning it- Okay

  for the first time. And also to not take yourself too seriously to where you're willing to tell that story. Right. Because I guarantee you that there are so many people that come out and say, "I'm not gonna come out and publicly talk about something- Right ... that I'd rather have never happened- Right ... or be lost in history."

  And your vulnerability to come and talk about that and to share it makes it really clear to me why people have elected you again and again and again. Well. So. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Well, thank you. 

  Spencer Patton: I just really appreciate- Yeah ... [01:00:00] you sharing it and, you know, we all can take ourselves too seriously, and just for you to be able to laugh through it- Yeah

  a little bit with us- Yeah ... while also crying through it a little bit with us is, like, just a, a, a great piece, so I, I appreciate that a ton. Well, thank you. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Well, thank you very much. 

  Spencer Patton: Um, Sheriff, how we end each podcast is I, I have a couple short sentences that have a fill-in-the-blank, uh, spot at the end. Uh, so you can fill it in with a word or a short phrase- Okay

  that you think, uh, completes the thought. Uh, the only request is if you'll just repeat the prompt back to me. Okay. And then fill it in- Okay ... uh, at, at the end. Okay. Okay? All right. Uh, number one: The criminal justice system fails people when blank. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Yeah, the criminal justice system fails people when they only arrest the person and don't arrest the problem.

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. Hmm. Number two: The biggest lesson 24 [01:01:00] years as sheriff has taught me is blank. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: The biggest lesson that 24 years as sheriff has taught me is we're all human beings, and we're vulnerable to, to make mistakes. Um, whether you're leading an organization or you're housing people who've made mistakes, you need to keep both of those in, in, in mind.

  Spencer Patton: Hmm. That's, there's a lot of wisdom- Super. Yeah ... in that answer. Um, all right, two more Public safety and rehabilitation work best together when blank. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Public safety and rehabilitation work best together when society sees the need to help people when they're in trouble- 

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ... 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: instead of just housing them.

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. And the last one, the biggest misconception people [01:02:00] have about people in jail is blank. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: The biggest misconception about people in jail is that they're not human. 

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. 

  Carli Patton: Hmm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: They're animals- 

  Carli Patton: Hmm ... 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: in a lot of people's minds. 

  Spencer Patton: That has really come clear to me. Even going into Riverbend Maximum Security, the humanity behind the eyes of the people that I see in there has totally changed my perspective 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: It, it's, uh, we do a citizens academy.

  Everybody does one. Mm-hmm. Right? But, but here's something that's fascinating. It, it, police, the FBI, TBI, they all do them. Everyone does them. And a lot of people focus, which is cool, they shoot, don't shoot, and, you know, they got boats and motorcycles, and there's toys, and all sorts of new crime t- you know, tricks and toys to, to show.

  What we do is we take them into facilities. And what we do is, which I think is, it's the most powerful... You do it. You've done it. Most people never do that. 

  Spencer Patton: [01:03:00] Mm-hmm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: And what you hear from the citizens academy at the end, my mom did this by the way, at 86 years old, is that when I walked in there, I did not realize these are just regular people.

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: And I'm paraphrasing, but I promise you that's what they say. And the most empower- powering thing for them is to see the people working there as humans, the people who are here, and them coexisting as humans. Yeah. And the citizens academy group comes in there, and it is, every time it is what everyone talks about, how y- you see the human aspect, you know- Yeah

  life and, and, and I just... What's also awkward, and this is, is, is an odd experience to hear from, I've been in this all my life, is that the inmate wants to see someone other than a staff member, so they're interested in you being there. You're awkwardly interested, not in them, but you, you're in their space.

  And so that whole relationship of, of visiting a facility the first time i- is so- Mm-hmm ... and believe it or not, it's [01:04:00] powerful for them to go home with. Yeah, 

  Spencer Patton: yeah. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: It's, because, you know, I, I, it's easy to get caught up and cynical about all this, you know? And, and people say, "Oh, they do it all the time. They get what they deserve."

  They don't, they don't understand the trauma. They don't understand that, that they didn't have the opportunities I had in life. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and I think humanizing it's hard, but we've kinda learned a little trick of treating it like... And we do a tour, and we do conversations. We have a panel where the inmates sit down and talk to the cit- citizens.

  Mm-hmm. And it's the most powerful part of the whole thing. And- Yeah ... just think it's my job a little bit to open the doors. Jails and prisons are dark places. 

  Spencer Patton: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: And if you can open that up and get people to see it, maybe appreciate what you're trying to do, but... 

  Spencer Patton: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think that's really well said, and I think a lot of people go into prison expecting that they're gonna wheel out Hannibal Lecter, right?

  That's right, that's right. And maybe there's one, right? Sure, sure. There's an Alex Freeman. Sure. There's one in the group, but the overwhelming vast majority of the people there, um, have life stories [01:05:00] that you don't feel like you'll be able to relate to it in the slightest, and then all of a sudden, you see yourself had just a couple things been different- No doubt about it

  in your life, where you were born, what a couple decisions that your parents made when you weren't even old enough to know any different, and it really is an incredible moment to spend just reflecting. Um, and so I just appreciate again your heart and what a great job that you do for, uh, our city and for our state and, uh, for people that do ask the question, what makes Tennessee Tennessee?

  Uh-huh. Um, I'd definitely say Sheriff Hall helps answer that question. Well, 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: thank you very much, both of you. Thank you. Thank you for your time.

  Spencer Patton: Sheriff Daron Hall, Davidson County [01:06:00] Sheriff, has the hallmark of what we look for in all of our best guests. He is an excellent educator- 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Mm-hmm ... 

  Spencer Patton: teaching about what the difference is between a jail and a prison. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Mm-hmm. 

  Spencer Patton: What the difference is between a police department and a sheriff. All kinds of things that he just made it really plain and simple, and that's so often the very best, rather than making something that is complicated.

  And he could confuse everyone listening. Quite easy to understand, and does so with a heart that you can see. 

  Carli Patton: Mm-hmm. 

  Spencer Patton: Doesn't make himself to say, "Oh, I'm a seven-time elected official, and I have this fancy title, and badge, and all these things." And instead, he's just a guy saying, "Hi, I'm Daron." 

  Carli Patton: Yeah. I love that the unexpected consequence [01:07:00] of him doing what he wants to do with his life and he's called to do was politics.

  Spencer Patton: Yes. 

  Carli Patton: I just thought that was really funny for someone that has been elected now seven times to this office. And he definitely doesn't live up to a stereotype or a caricature. I don't know, if you'd said coming in, "What does a sheriff look like?" I might have thought about Andy Griffith. I may have thought about, you know, cartoons and all of these things, and I really...

  It's my favorite thing about the job we get to do, is that we peel back these layers on things that people... I guarantee you no one in our audience was like, "You know what I wanna be taught about today, is this." 

  Spencer Patton: Yeah. 

  Carli Patton: But it's important. And these lives matter, and they are still made in the image of God, and there's a lot of work to be done, and important work, not only keeping people safe, but stewarding the people under their care.

  And I'm just grateful we got to the heart of so many things today. 

  Spencer Patton: I can only imagine that Sheriff Hall could tell us [01:08:00] 4,000 stories- Oh my gosh ... that just would make you laugh and cry and just probably have every emotion on the spectrum. He's probably seen a lot of stuff that can't go on air. 

  Sheriff Daron Hall: Mm-hmm. 

  Spencer Patton: But at least the one that he took the time to tell us about today for Alex Friedman was a stunner.

  I was hanging on every word of the story as he was building towards the ultimate payoff of what Alex Friedman was doing over years of time. It- straight out of the movies. 

  Carli Patton: Yeah. Well, and I appreciate, too, that he didn't overly sensationalize it. Like, he was very measured in his telling. He made sure that we understood the details.

  He made sure we understood the political environment at the time. I love his attention to detail and his heart to make sure that we understand the circumstances at play. Mm. Because you know that this is a tweet, this is a flashy [01:09:00] headline, but I feel like we got the better, more rich, well-rounded version of that story- Mm

  which I really appreciate. And I think that's the care he takes to everything he does. Number of times he's talked about the innovative programs he's trying to use in these prisons, and mental health issues, and addiction, and the heart for it. I just, he's very methodical and compassionate and detailed, and that wasn't the caricature I assumed when he walked in, but I'm so glad to know that's true.

  Spencer Patton: It's what you want your sheriff to be. 

  Carli Patton: Mm.