Feb. 24, 2026
Citizens Behind The Badge with Craig Floyd
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Send a text We sit down with Craig Floyd to trace his journey from building the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and Museum to rallying public support through Citizens Behind the Badge. He lays out the data behind crime trends, officer assaults, and why leadership must speak with courage. • origins of the memorial and museum • why 2020 sparked a new advocacy effort • media narratives versus verified data • use of force rates across millions of contacts • rise in assaults and ambush...
We sit down with Craig Floyd to trace his journey from building the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and Museum to rallying public support through Citizens Behind the Badge. He lays out the data behind crime trends, officer assaults, and why leadership must speak with courage.
• origins of the memorial and museum
• why 2020 sparked a new advocacy effort
• media narratives versus verified data
• use of force rates across millions of contacts
• rise in assaults and ambushes on officers
• the cost of leadership silence
• brain drain from retirements and resignations
• rebuilding with training, mentorship, and recruiting
• technology and AI as force multipliers
• op-eds and policy pushes including the Back the Blue Act
• how to engage at BehindTheBadge.org
• human stories that reveal compassion in policing
Please follow Craig and his incredible efforts at Citizens Behind The Badge.
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Chapters
00:00 - Host Sets The Stakes
02:06 - Craig Floyd’s Origin Story
06:30 - Building The Memorial And Museum
11:25 - From Retirement To Citizens Behind The Badge
15:35 - Media Narratives Versus Data
21:10 - Leadership Silence And Consequences
25:20 - Op-Eds, Policy, And Back The Blue Act
29:45 - Officer Safety Trends And Restraint
Transcript
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You're about to listen to an interview with Craig Floyd.
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He's one of the most recognized individuals in the law enforcement profession.
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Of course, he's the founding chief executive officer of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, and he oversaw the building of that fine monument and the museum in 2018.
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But Craig is doing something different now since he's retired from the memorial, and it's called Citizens Behind the Badge.
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The website is BehindTheBadge.org.
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You're going to hear us have a discussion about this, but I think it's very important that you plug in to what he's doing.
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And you're going to know why when you hear the interview.
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What I kept coming back to is where is his truth within the law enforcement profession?
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Where is his truth within the law enforcement organizations?
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Where is his truth with law enforcement leaders?
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Now I didn't dig Craig on that because I don't want to put him in that position, but this is my job to tell you about that.
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You chiefs out there, you sheriffs out there, you commanders out there, why are we not speaking boldly like Craig Floyd, who's a civilian?
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Okay, who has frankly, he runs a nonprofit, but he doesn't shy from truth.
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So he's so well educated in this profession, and I found it very odd that if he can be this educated and he can speak this well to the men and women in this profession, where are our leaders in this profession?
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Yes, many of you listening are the people that I'm talking about that do an excellent job.
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You're excellent leaders, but you and I both know we need to improve greatly when it comes to that.
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So I hope you enjoy the interview, and I hope that it encouraged you, at the minimum, to speak up when words need to be said.
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Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice, and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
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Welcome back to the show.
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Thanks for being here.
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Thanks for spending your time with us here today.
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And I'm really honored to have Craig Floyd on the show today.
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Over the past four decades, Craig has been one of law enforcement's leading advocates.
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He's the founder and president of Citizens Behind the Badge.
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It's a nonprofit advocacy organization formed in 2020 to end the disastrous defund and defame the police movement.
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And it also ensures that our nation's top law enforcement officials receive the support and resources needed to keep America safe.
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Craig, you probably recognize the name and the face.
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He's also the founding Chief Executive Officer Emeritus of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
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It's a nonprofit organization established in 1984 to honor the service and sacrifices of America's law enforcement officers.
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He retired from that role in 2018, but he continues to do some incredible work.
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Craig Ford, how are you doing, sir?
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Hey Travis, this is such a pleasure.
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You and I uh go back quite a ways, and uh we haven't had a chance to connect uh much recently.
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So uh thanks for having me on your show.
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Yeah, people would be kind of shocked if they knew how far back we went, but it was in the 2000s, early 2000s, I think we started talking and talking about some police driving stuff.
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And obviously the memorial is uh it's legendary, Craig.
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And I think before we get going, because I want to get into the work you're doing now because I think it's so unique.
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So few people, so few leaders are willing and open to talk about the truths that you're you and your organization are talking about.
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So I think it's very impressive, it's very credible.
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But before that, I think most people are gonna want to know the answer to I mean, you were there when the memorial was built, essentially, right?
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I mean, you were there from the pretty much the very beginning, maybe the beginning, don't want to insult you.
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Kind of tell us that story, how you sort of fell into that.
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And of course, everybody's gonna know about all the milestones there at the memorial that has gone on in the past 30, 40 years.
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Oh, it was such a privilege, really, to have the opportunity to lead the effort to build a national law enforcement officers memorial and then ultimately build a national law enforcement museum to go with it.
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Uh, my uh days go with Congressman Mario Biaggi.
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Um, he was a New York City congressman.
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I got paired up with him right out of college.
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I wanted to work on Capitol Hill.
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He was hiring.
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We got paired up, and uh the rest, as they say, is history.
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I uh didn't even realize his reputation at the time.
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He served for 23 years as a New York City cop.
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And he was the most decorated cop in New York City history when he retired in 1965.
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He'd been wounded 10 times in the line of duty, received the department's highest award, the Medal of Honor for Valor.
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And um, you know, he went on to serve 20 years of distinguished service in the United States Congress.
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I worked for him as his legislative aide for 10 of those years.
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And every piece of law enforcement-related legislation seemed to come through our office.
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Uh, obviously, he was the champion for law enforcement during his 20 years in Congress.
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And there was an initiative that was brought to his attention back in the 70s, actually, to build a national law enforcement officers memorial.
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And it kind of languished for a while, um, didn't go anywhere.
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And then uh when I started working for him, a group of officers came into his office and said, you know, we'd love to see that uh national law enforcement officers memorial legislation revived.
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Um, and we introduced a new bill at that time in 1981, I believe it was.
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And in 1984, it became law.
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And it said basically, uh, we're gonna establish a national law enforcement officers memorial somewhere in the nation's capital.
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And it was up to us to find the land, uh, to raise the money, to create a design.
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Um, and uh all of that work was done uh under uh my leadership.
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Uh he designated me as the executive director of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
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So I had the privilege of uh leading that effort from day one and uh 1991.
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We dedicated the national memorial, and then uh we decided, hey, you know, let's uh augment the memorial with a national law enforcement museum to tell the story of American law enforcement and the story behind the names of the 24,000 plus officers whose names are on that memorial wall.
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And that uh museum was dedicated in 2018.
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It took us 20 years to raise all the money and uh get the site and create a design and do construction work.
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But uh 20 years after we started, we dedicated that museum in 2018.
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I retired, was happy to uh get back to my family and and other pursuits uh on a more pleasurable basis.
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And um, and then all hell broke loose in 2020 when George Floyd died, and I decided to get back in the game and start this new group called Citizens Behind the Badge.
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So that's basically my story.
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I love advocating for law enforcement, never wore the badge myself, but have met thousands of officers around this country, and I know their story, I know what's in their heart more than uh most Americans do, and uh I'm proud to uh be an advocate for them uh and mobilize the American public and their support.
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Well, it's uh what that's a just incredible story.
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I mean, uh obviously God had had you placed there at that location in time, and and the outcome is obvious.
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I mean, to anyone in law enforcement, even if they haven't been to that memorial, there's a reference there that's pretty incredible.
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One thing that always impressed me, Craig, and I was there for unfortunately multiple police weeks, uh, which is the week that we honor fallen officers year to year.
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And I would see you hustling around, you know, from one place to another, you'd always stop and talk to me, you'd always stop and talk to my wife, you always had time for everybody.
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And so uh you were a little more than just a fundraiser, I will tell you that.
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You are one of I think it's no question about it, when it comes to advocacy.
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I can't think of anybody else uh that has done it more than you.
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And so did was it a tough decision?
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Because I I I'm only assuming that you you're you kind of retire and you've had all this glorious and great things that happen, and what a blessing to get to sort of uh retire uh with those milestones, and then you see 2020 happen.
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Is this what spurred you uh to get involved in the Sizes Behind the Batch?
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Well, absolutely.
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Uh, you know, as I said, I I was very happy in retirement, um, doing a lot of the things I never had a chance to do during my 34 years at the helm of the memorial fund.
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Um, and and I was glad uh to have every day at the memorial fund.
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Uh, don't no regrets there at all.
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But uh now I was doing other things.
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And um, you know, it just bugged the hell out of me when you know everybody started crucifying law enforcement.
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I I remember an Atlanta police officer, I quote him off, and he said, uh almost overnight, everybody started hating police.
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And I'm like, what is going on here?
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Wait a minute.
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2019, the year before George Floyd died, we had one of the safest years in American history.
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All right, crime was at its lowest levels, um, had been for some time, and it was due to the great work that our uh police officers were doing.
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We had never been better prepared for that job uh than ever before.
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We were doing the best job ever in law enforcement uh in American history up until that point.
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And yet uh George Floyd dies, and people are saying, let's abolish police, let's reimagine police, let's defund police, calling them brutal racists.
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Um and I just said, wait a minute, I know the facts.
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I know the the data does not support that that image.
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And uh I want to get back in the game here.
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We need a voice of support, a voice of reason.
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Uh and the media doesn't like that because they they love uh controversy, they love uh when people are attacking police and when it appears that maybe a police officer did something wrong, the media goes berserk.
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Uh they love a good story like that, and they create those stories.
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You know, they they basically select the facts, the figures, the anecdotes, the video that they decide to show on uh to the public.
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And I know what the facts really are, I know the stories.
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And uh and I said, you know, we got to do something to counter these media lies, these uh politicians that are out there bashing cops because it seems to be the right thing to do at that time, you know, the way the wind's blowing.
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That's the way politicians are.
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And um, so we created citizens behind the badge.
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And and really the name says it all.
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The vast majority of American people support police.
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They respect police, they they want them to go out and do their jobs effectively and safely.
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Uh, and they rally behind them.
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I mean, think about it.
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When a cop dies in any community in this country, thousands of people are out there on the side of the road, hand over their heart as the the hearse goes by with the officer.
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And uh, you know, it just shows you there is great respect and support for law enforcement in this country, but nobody was mobilizing it in 2020 after George Floyd died.
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And that's what Citizens Behind the Badge is all about.
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It's about mobilizing and amplifying the voice of the American people in support of law enforcement.
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And I think we've done a pretty good job over the last six years uh rallying that support.
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Now we're refunding police.
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All right.
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Now crime is going down again.
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We're having more officers uh joining uh the profession.
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And as a result, uh, you know, we're getting the public is safe once again.
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Um, it shouldn't have taken uh six years to figure that out.
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Yeah, uh people I think people forget how wild and crazy that time frame was.
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And you're right, it was like overnight.
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Uh and it's almost like a I've described this as almost as if people were just brainwashed.
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Like all of a sudden, all the things that they knew, they forgot.
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And there was just this one narrative from something that may have happened hundreds or thousands of miles away.
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I mean, and quite frankly, Craig, obviously, we talk about leadership on this podcast.
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I was not only disappointed in what some politicians were saying, but our own leaders were sometimes saying things that weren't making it better.
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I mean, uh, if a school teacher does a heinous crime a thousand miles away, you don't see every superintendent coming out talking about that crime because it has nothing to do with that superintendent.
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And, you know, and and because every profession has problems, but in our profession, it just seems so strange to me.
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There were so many leaders talking about that event and talking about every all these other police that didn't know anything about that event.
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Of course, now today we all look back and go, oh, there was a lot we didn't know about all that.
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And as you said, what you know, and then we saw the reforms that came after that.
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And that came from internal.
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Yeah, there were some political and legislation that brought some reforms, but there was a lot of police leaders that just made the decision to change policing, and you termed it as reimagining, which was a common term, but they didn't really sit back and think what's the repercussions of this.
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So it's not it's not shocking to me that our crime spiked in 2020, 2021, and sort of started peaking in 2022.
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It's not a shock to me that officer assaults and officer injuries are at an all-time high as we speak.
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Every year since 2020, Craig, they have increased to the tune of 86,000 in 2024, the last year we have the data.
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No one's talking about that.
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Yes, our library deaths have dropped.
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That's great.
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A lot of that's to medical technology.
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But when you look at the assault rate, they're going higher and higher and higher.
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And it's hard to not think that that has something to do with the support that was lacking for a while, leadership, combination of the reforms that nobody seems to want to go back and look at and see if these reforms actually made things better or made things worse.
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Without question.
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Yeah.
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And clearly the all the anti-police rhetoric that started occurring right after George Floyd died had so much to do with this uh disrespect for law and order in this country, uh, disrespect for the men and women who were enforcing the laws.
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And I think that was the real problem.
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All of a sudden, it almost seemed it was like it was okay uh not to comply when a police officer would pull you over for a traffic violation.
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Um it got ridiculous.
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And, you know, what we needed to do uh to have some common sense uh take take over after George Floyd's death, we needed to go to the facts and the figures, okay?
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Let's look at it a little bit uh piecemeal.
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Uh people said uh they're brutal, okay?
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They use excessive force unnecessarily, and they pointed to uh George Floyd's death as the uh you know the poster child for it.
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Uh the bottom line is, and you know this better than anybody, of the more than 60 million interactions each year in this country between law enforcement and the public, all right.
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That's traffic stops, pedestrian stops, calls for help, you name it.
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Force is used by officers, force of any kind is used by officers less than 2% of the time.
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It hardly ever happens, all right?
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And you mentioned uh, you know, last year, 86,000 assaults against law enforcement officers in this country by criminals.
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And officers have uh lethal force.
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They have a weapon at their side that they could easily use in those instances.
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But uh, we find that only a thousand people each year, roughly, are killed by officers, shot and killed during those confrontations.
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I think that's an amazing show of restraint myself.
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It's good training, uh, good professionalism exhibited by the officers.
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They don't want to shoot anybody, they don't want to hurt anybody, and most of the time they never do.
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But the media will zero in on that one time where it might have happened, where a thousand deaths uh occur in a year when there's 86,000 assaults against police officers.
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They don't talk about that part of the equation.
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And then they talk about officers being there being systemic racism in law enforcement.
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Forget it.
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The facts do not support that.
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Again, there may be good anecdotes that the media can pull up from time to time, isolated as they are.
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Um, but the facts tell us, and this is uh documented year after year in the Department of Justice, you'll find that about 10% of all whites, 10% of all blacks, and 10% of all Hispanics are stopped by police.
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That's uh pedestrian stops, traffic stops, all right?
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There is no indication that that cops are targeting blacks or targeting Hispanics.
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Uh it's 10% across the board, all right?
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And these are the facts.
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And you do study after study, they look at individual departments, they look at the entire profession.
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No incident uh is found of uh uh brutal uh use of force by officers, nor is there any systemic racism in law enforcement.
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And yet those facts and figures were totally ignored for two or three years while uh crime went rampant in this country.
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Officers were being shot and killed, ambush attacks were on the rise against officers, and uh and that got us into a real mess.
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And now finally we're we're getting some common sense back in the game, and people are looking more at those numbers.
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Well, I don't usually get challenged on my data, Craig, but you came smoking today.
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You know exactly what you're talking about.
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And I I keep thinking to myself, I need to clone you and put you over the IECP and PERF and the police chiefs at major city police chiefs.
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We need more people spitting out these facts because you're dead on with that data.
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And because that's what people need to hear.
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They're here, they're hearing so much from the media narrative uh that no one's hearing this, but we have leaders in every police department that can speak up and talk about it.
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I'm not gonna put you in a bad spot and ask you why that's not happening.
00:18:03.920 --> 00:18:05.440
They get that enough for me.
00:18:05.440 --> 00:18:14.960
But I do want to talk about the the positive things you're doing with citizens behind the badge because your content and your articles is fighting this narrative.
00:18:14.960 --> 00:18:17.920
And did you just sort of think that that needed to be done early on?
00:18:17.920 --> 00:18:21.119
Because it's morphed into something that everybody needs to pay attention to.
00:18:21.680 --> 00:18:25.680
Well, I really feel good about how we've evolved as an organization.
00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:31.440
You know, in the beginning, it was let's stop the defund and deep uh defame the police movement, all right?
00:18:31.440 --> 00:18:32.640
And that was our goal.
00:18:32.640 --> 00:18:39.759
We weren't sure exactly how we were going to get it done because, you know, I'm basically a one-man uh operation here to some extent.
00:18:39.759 --> 00:18:43.519
I have a great uh leadership group, all right, volunteer leaders.
00:18:43.519 --> 00:18:48.079
These are former law enforcement leaders that I've worked with uh throughout my career.
00:18:48.079 --> 00:18:59.119
And I brought them on board to give me the expertise and experience that we we needed so that our voice would have some uh reliability, all right, credibility.
00:18:59.119 --> 00:19:06.799
Um, and I love these guys, 18 law enforcement leaders on our uh National Law Enforcement Advisory Council.
00:19:06.799 --> 00:19:21.759
So, what I've done a lot lately, especially, and I think it's getting good traction, and you've been a big help with Law Officer, is getting op-eds written by these experienced and expert uh law enforcement leaders on various issues.
00:19:21.759 --> 00:19:22.319
All right.
00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:31.519
Uh for instance, uh just this past uh week, we released an op-ed uh on Substack, uh, and it was published uh before that on Law Officer.
00:19:31.519 --> 00:19:37.039
And it basically it's a police chief, Tom Wheatzel from um out in Illinois.
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Uh, Tom's been on the show.
00:19:40.240 --> 00:19:43.839
Tom's a great guy and very I I love the guy.
00:19:43.839 --> 00:19:52.400
But he for 15 years, he told me, has been advocating for uh making the murder of a police officer a federal offense.
00:19:52.400 --> 00:19:52.960
All right.
00:19:52.960 --> 00:20:00.160
And there's been a bill in Congress, back uh back the blue act, uh, that would do that, more or less, all right.
00:20:00.160 --> 00:20:02.559
And uh it's languished, all right.
00:20:02.559 --> 00:20:10.559
There there hasn't been any traction, even though now we have a Republican-controlled Congress or Republican in the White House, you would think maybe a bill like that would go somewhere.
00:20:10.559 --> 00:20:23.119
Because if if we make murdering a police officer a federal offense, it makes the the um the suspect, the uh convicted killer subject to the death penalty uh if if that applies.
00:20:23.119 --> 00:20:40.960
So um, and and you would have much better uh prosecution, investigatory uh professionals coming to that city or state, uh helping the locals uh investigate uh the crime and ultimately convict that killer.
00:20:40.960 --> 00:20:52.400
Um so this is an example of what we're trying to uh do is take advantage of this great wealth of expertise and knowledge and experience that we have and get the word out.
00:20:52.400 --> 00:20:59.920
Talk about what the facts are when it comes to issues like uh killing a cop, why we need tougher penalties.
00:20:59.920 --> 00:21:05.119
I mean, you hit the nail on the head earlier when you said it's more dangerous now than ever for police officers.
00:21:05.119 --> 00:21:09.359
The the fatality figures this past year went down dramatically.
00:21:09.359 --> 00:21:14.079
I think the total number of officers killed in the line of duty last year was 111.
00:21:14.079 --> 00:21:19.279
That was the lowest fatality figure for officers in more than 80 years.
00:21:19.279 --> 00:21:25.359
Um, but as you point out, 350 or so officers were actually shot last year.
00:21:25.359 --> 00:21:27.839
And that's been true for the last few years.
00:21:27.839 --> 00:21:33.680
We've had more officers shot than ever before, um, and more officers assaulted than ever before.
00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:43.119
And and part of it's better emergency medical care, part of it is more officers wearing their vests and better driver training.
00:21:43.119 --> 00:21:45.119
Um, all of that has made a difference.
00:21:45.119 --> 00:21:50.799
But boy, uh, it's a dangerous place to be if you're a police officer walking the streets of this country.
00:21:51.119 --> 00:21:59.759
Yeah, and Craig, we don't want to we don't want our audience to know this that you're not just talking about officer safety now, but with when you were at the National Law Enforcement Memorial, you guys excel at all.
00:21:59.759 --> 00:22:05.680
Honoring officers, that you played a major role in all kinds of programs to make officers safer.
00:22:05.680 --> 00:22:08.640
Uh, and so uh those programs still exist.
00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:11.759
And so that's so vital and so important.
00:22:11.759 --> 00:22:14.640
Where do you sense the profession is going?
00:22:14.640 --> 00:22:21.200
You talked about the crime rate has been lowered, uh, recruiting has improved somewhat, although we could use it to be improved a little more.
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