The voice / The purpose
Meet your host
Retired California Highway Patrol Chief
For Mark Garrett, the conversation begins with experience. He joined the California Highway Patrol in 1990 as a road patrol officer and retired as a Chief in 2020. His 30-year career included patrol, investigative and administrative assignments across the CHP’s Southern Division.
Today, Your LEO Nation gives that experience a different setting: the podcast desk. Mark brings a public servant’s perspective to conversations about law enforcement, leadership and the communities officers serve. The aim is to make room for informed discussion, personal experience and the people behind the profession.
Watch the conversationsOur mission
To reaffirm the honor of the law enforcement profession, to champion its indispensable role in the preservation of a civil society and to strengthen the resolve of law enforcement leadership to act based on principle, integrity and courage.
Your LEO Nation is an organization dedicated to preserving the honor of the law enforcement profession and the memory of its fallen officers.
Beyond the microphone
As Southern Division Public Information and Recruitment Coordinator, Mark served as a CHP spokesman and worked with news organizations covering Southern California. The assignment brought public communication and recruitment together: explaining the agency’s work while introducing prospective officers to a career in service.
In 2008, Mark helped bring the CHP to NASCAR by brokering a sponsorship with Yates Racing. Travis Kvapil’s number 28 Ford Fusion appeared in CHP patrol-car colors at Sonoma that June, marking the agency’s first NASCAR Cup sponsorship. It was a way to meet a new audience through a familiar California institution.
Mark’s cycling career includes membership on the United States National Cycling Team and four U.S. Elite National Championship titles. In 2002, he raced as sighted tandem pilot with Pam Fernandes at the IPC World Cycling Championships in Germany. Together they won two world titles—the one-kilometer time trial and mixed tandem sprint—and set a world record. Their results are another part of a life shaped by preparation, partnership and commitment.
Career sources: Mark’s biography · 2008 NASCAR coverage · 2002 championship report
The principles behind the conversations
The rule of law. Personal responsibility. A civil society. These convictions shape the questions Mark asks and the conversations he brings to Your LEO Nation.
Mark believes the law should apply equally to everyone, including elected officials and police officers. Accountability should not depend on political affiliation or public status, and an accusation should never replace the presumption of innocence.
For Mark, a civil society begins with individual choices: self-control, respect for the law and responsibility for our own actions. He believes those habits are learned at home, demonstrated in everyday life and strengthened by the example we set for others.
Mark stands behind the men and women who serve honorably. He also believes misconduct must be addressed openly, discipline should fit the violation, and officers who break the law should face the same penalties as anyone else. Public trust cannot be built on cover-ups.
Mark believes law enforcement leaders have a duty to act with principle, integrity and courage. That means defending sound policing, answering difficult questions and taking responsibility when things go wrong—even when political pressure makes those choices uncomfortable.
Mark supports constitutional freedoms, including free speech and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. He sees the right to defend yourself and your family as inseparable from personal responsibility, and believes government should respect those freedoms.
Mark believes protecting communities requires clear standards and consistent enforcement. He argues that criminal conduct must carry meaningful consequences and challenges policies that, in his view, excuse wrongdoing or weaken accountability.
