Behind The Badge
Johnny Joey Jones
Harper Collins
June 17th, 2025
Behind The Badge by Johnny Joey Jones is a look at first responders. It is a collection of the different professions of first responders showing readers in their own words the triumph, tragedy, success, and failures of what they must endure each day.
Jones provides military analysis across all Fox News media platforms, including Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. A Marine Corps veteran who reached the rank of staff sergeant, Jones suffered a life-changing injury in Afghanistan, resulting in the loss of both of his legs above the knee. Since his recovery, he has dedicated himself to improving the lives of all veterans and their families but that has been extended to wanting to improve the lives of the first responders.
The book has memorable stories of dramatic rescues, heartbreaking losses and incredible acts of courage. These men and women are heroes on the home front. He delves deep into what drives these brave men and women, offering an intimate look at their personal and professional lives. Below is the interview with Jones.
Behind the Badge will leave readers transfixed and inspired. They will realize that these first responders are true heroes who will keep them safe.
Elise Cooper: Were you influenced by Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy?
Joey Jones: I read it in college. I cannot say I was influenced by thinking about it when I wrote this book. With that said, there are always experiences in our lives we don’t realize. The book before this, titled Unbroken Bonds of Battle, is in a similar style. I thought about the ten people I knew and wrote about them, nine service members and one Gold Star wife. After that I thought about writing a great book for first responders. The inspiration of this book are the people in my life. I wanted to choose these people that are in towns all over the country, not just in New York.
EC: How did you choose these people?
JJ: I knew them personally, they have amazing stories, and they are not from some big city.
EC: How would you define a first responder?
JJ: For this book, we did not constrict it to the definition. The point of the book is to give the reverence people have for the military to those who keep us safe, including police officers, fire fighters, game wardens, border patrol, plus search and rescue. We wanted to extend the first responder title to include all who keep people safe on the home front.
EC: What do you want to say about game wardens?
JJ: They do park service. They save those who get lost, attacked by bears, and attacked by bad people. In Texas a young lady was killed on a jet ski, and it will be a game warden who leads the investigation on the water.
EC: I want to ask about a few examples of the book. What about Tundra the dog?
JJ: Jeremy, the dog handler, makes it out that Tundra was the star of the show. She helped him get over his trauma, giving him positivity in a dark place. At the time he got her, Jeremy was a diver, who never found anyone alive. Tundra brought it out of him to find people alive, becoming a search and rescue team.
EC: There is a quote in the book that one of the largest killers of public safety jobs is suicide. Please explain.
JJ: They have depression, anxiety, and all the different stresses that happens when someone is in a traumatic experience. With suicide we need to understand that someone taking their life comes from emotional and psychological despair. The emotional trauma these first responders go through will push anyone to the brink of insanity. They do it every single day. The point in bringing it up in the book, for twenty plus years there has been national conversation about the mental health of our military veterans. There are national organizations. A Veteran’s Affairs agency, free meals offered at restaurants, and a conversation that we need to do more for our veterans.
But with first responders they are at war, of freak accidents and evil acts, every single day where their hometown is their battlefield. They are at war with keeping people alive. After they take their uniform off and go home, they will drive past the incident, their battlefield. The psychological effect of their job has no support. There is not a major non-profit nor is there a federal department in charge of their health care. The first responders have a grass roots mental health journey and try to keep each other going.
EC: One story that was gripping was the Baltimore County SWAT story of the kidnapping by the police officer. Please explain.
JJ: There are three stories in this book where the police officer is the bad guy. This could be an episode of a crime series. There was Katelyn Kotfila, whose story is about her best friend, a police officer murdered by her boyfriend, who was also a police officer. Jeremy Judd was the only game warden in Maine who had to use his gun in the line of duty against a police officer who pointed a weapon at him. This and the Baltimore County Swat story of Tommy Wehrle had suicide by cop. The reason I put the stories in the book is that there are bad apples, people who do bad things in these jobs, yet tens of thousands of men and women in these jobs are heroes. It is a great way to show that being a first responder and a good person puts them above the rest. I put in this quote, “sometimes you need to take a life to save another.” This is from my time in the military where we go out not to kill our enemy but to stay alive and keep our friends alive. If it means to kill our enemy, then it is what we must do. These book stories shows that there was opportunity after opportunity to use deadly force, but they only did use that force when they absolutely must. These first responders have a responsibility burden, not a power trip.
EC: What about the chapter of Border Patrol?
JJ: A large part of the border patrol force is Hispanic. It is laughable that they are called racist. They do not know who is coming across the border since there are so many ethnicities. Vincent Vargas, a border patrol agent in the book, does not even speak Spanish and was raised in Southern California, the son of two Hispanic people who migrated to America. He saw the people he was rescuing as human beings but not Americans. His job was to keep Americans safe. The point is that those in Border Patrol can have an allegiance to a country and its borders without having hate towards those they are defending against. People coming into our country illegally are hurting it one way or another. Vincent deals with the struggle of his responsibility to protect this country, not allowing people to come in illegally, but as a human being to help people in need. Humanity is not jeopardized or called into question.
EC: Can you explain bravery versus courage?
JJ: I use this terminology a lot. The best way to explain it is with this anecdote: a house is on fire, and you are a bystander when someone says there is a child inside. A brave person may run into the house to save the child. A courageous person knows what that fire can do, all the dangers, and says “I will still go do it.” Courage comes with enlightenment, knowing the danger and choosing to do it again and again. Heroes know what is going to happen to them. They run towards danger, not away from it every single time.
EC: What do all the first responders have in common?
JJ: An inherent skill set for the job is decision making in times of stress. What is common among them is the willingness to sacrifice their own peace to provide and protect those around us. Each one of those in the book made the decision that their responsibility was more important than their peace of mind. They decided all the negatives inflicted upon them, mostly emotionally, are worth it, because the mission of keeping people safe is worth it.
EC: Do you want to address that some Americans consider them the enemy?
JJ: I address this in the opening chapter of the book when talking about Colin Kaepernick. The rioters in the streets were yelling ‘all cops are bad,’ while the politicians in Congress and City Hall were yelling ‘defund the police.’ I think we are on the back end of this.
EC: What do you want readers to get out of the book?
JJ: People live with a sense of entitlement that they will be safe. They do not think twice that someone in a uniform behind a badge will be there to save them. People live with bad decisions because they have such strong faith that someone will be there to save them. It is incredibly stressful that first responders who live with the full responsibility not to keep their family safe but to keep everyone safe around them. We should all appreciate them. To think about what the first responders go through, think about watching a gory movie and having to turn your head. There are people out there where that is their job, not only to see it but to clean it up and do it with dignity and respect.
THANK YOU!!
