Our Instructors
Michael Freeman works for the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology, and was hired by the ODEQ in 1994 as a compliance inspector in the Hazardous Waste program. Mr. Freeman helped build the agency’s criminal investigation program a few years thereafter and became its first commissioned law enforcement officer. He spent almost 24 years in that position before transferring to another division in 2022, having successfully investigated a wide variety of state and federal cases. Mr. Freeman met Dr. Thompson in 2006 at the environmental training conference in Boise, Idaho, and immediately saw the value of Verbal Judo not only for law enforcement but also for anyone who deals with the public on a day-to-day basis. He subsequently became certified as a Verbal Judo instructor, adapted the program for environmental regulatory agencies, and since then has taught the course all over the United States and Canada to a variety of audiences.
Mr. Freeman holds an Advanced Law Enforcement certification from the Oklahoma Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training, and has specialized training in computer forensics and civil rights investigations. He has taught environmental crime investigation techniques and principles to thousands of officers in Oklahoma and elsewhere and was the founding President of the Oklahoma Environmental Crime Investigators Association. Mr. Freeman is also President and owner of Trilogy Financial Solutions, LLC-an Investment Adviser registered with the Oklahoma Department of Securities-and is financial counselor trained and certified by nationally-known author and radio talk show host Dave Ramsey. He is Deputy Director of Victims of Impaired Drivers (VOID) of Oklahoma, a non-profit organization he helped co-found. Mr. Freeman maintains his law enforcement skills and training as a reserve deputy for the Cleveland County (Oklahoma) Sheriff’s Office and working occasionally for the Oklahoma University Police Department. In what little free time he has, he enjoys traveling, learning other languages, learning and playing piano, and he’s currently working on obtaining a private pilot’s license.