Behind The Squad Room

Garrett Te Slaa once had what looked like a dream career. He worked in publicity in New York and Los Angeles, moving up the ranks at record labels and a major Hollywood film studio, and spent his days around multi-platinum rock stars and A-list actors. He had the expense account and the Beverly Hills office to prove it.

After 9/11, that stopped feeling like enough. On a whim, he signed up for a ride-along with the LA County Sheriff’s Department. The night was terrifying and exhilarating, and by the end of it he knew what he was meant to do with his life.

More than twenty years later, Garrett is a commander at a large sheriff’s office in Southern California, and he’s still serving. He oversees 15 bureaus and units on the support side of the agency, including wellness, human resources, training, dispatch, and judicial services. Over his career he has worked patrol, gang enforcement, media relations, and professional standards investigations. He has also served as Chief of Police Services for two cities, a Native American reservation, and a large unincorporated college community.

He has led when the stakes were highest. In 2018, he responded to the Montecito Debris Flow, which killed 23 people, and later turned that experience into a TEDx talk, “The Importance of Second Responders.” The following year, he was the on-scene leader of the search and recovery after the M/V Conception dive boat fire. He coordinated 13 local, state and federal agencies and more than 100 divers in one of the largest maritime recovery efforts in U.S. history.

By 2015, rotating shifts, injuries, and a near-fatal mountain bike crash had worn him down. He started sharing what he was learning about recovery and resilience with his squad. Every time he did, someone pulled him aside afterward to say they were struggling too. That became The Squad Room, a podcast on personal development and leadership for first responders that has since passed a million downloads. It grew into training, consulting, and speaking across the country. Garrett helped build the wellness curriculum for the 720 Health Initiative, a partnership between California POST and UC San Diego that reached 55 agencies, and he leads monthly wellness webinars for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. He has spoken for the California Department of Justice and at conferences across the country, and has written for PoliceOne and Law Enforcement Today.

Today he brings all of it to agencies and their leaders: building healthier cultures, developing the next generation of leaders, and coaching command staff how to stand in front of a city council, a news camera, or a packed community meeting and be understood through storytelling and audience engagement.

Garrett holds a Master of Public Administration from Cal State Northridge, earned with Distinction, and a business degree from Colorado State University. He is a graduate of the Sherman Block Supervisory Leadership Institute and POST Management School.

Off duty, you’ll find him on a mountain bike trail, at the pickleball court, or a concert, but he’s probably at the beach.

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