The call was a young woman with a knife. Her name was Carmen. She was rocking in a chair, angry at her mother for pushing her to take her medication, and yelling at everyone to leave her alone.
Deputy Jason Slabbaert stayed about 25 feet back, raised his palms and asked if he could talk to her. They talked for about twenty minutes. Then she dropped the knife.
On the ride to the Neuropsychiatric Center, he asked what he had done differently from the other deputy. As he writes in Lawdog, published by Writers of the West, she looked up at him in the rearview mirror and smiled. “You’re yellow.”
She saw colors in people. “Yellow is a great color. It means you’re kind and comforting.” Word of the call spread, and “Yellow” was his nickname for weeks.
Another call started as a 911 hang-up. Slabbaert found Tammy, a legally blind mother of two, picking cereal off the kitchen floor after her husband had stormed out. She was upset about the fight, and also about something small: she needed to write a check for her kids’ picture day and couldn’t sign it without scribbling.
He wrote out the check for her. Then he lined the top edge of an envelope up with the signature line and put the pen in her hand. “Just write your name and keep it riding the edge until you finish.” He had learned the trick at home, because his wife is visually impaired too.
Neither call made the news. Most of the job doesn’t. In the closing chapter, Slabbaert writes that the most effective tools on a deputy’s belt don’t come from the quartermaster: “Hard-earned experience. Empathy. The calm voice that can de-escalate hell before fists or firearms ever have to speak.”
If you want to know what de-escalation looks like on a real call, Lawdog shows you.
Book Details
Title: Lawdog
Author: Jason Slabbaert
Publisher: Writers of the West
Release Date: September 30, 2026
ASIN: B0HLLRH1GX
Print Length: 231 pages
Language: English
Genre: Biography & Memoir: Law Enforcement, First Responder Memoir
Formats: Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover
Available on: Amazon
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