Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - 27 Years Undercover, Zero Dent in the Drug Trade | Britt Elmore | Ep. 478

Episode Date: October 26, 2026

Britt Elmore spent 27 years with the San Francisco Police Department, 25 of them in narcotics, almost all of it undercover. He dropped out of school at 15, worked as a garbage man and a glazier, got a GED at 24, and started at the San Mateo County jail before SFPD hired him in 1998. Six months in, he was loaned to narcotics for six weeks of buying dope in the Tenderloin. He never left. His last 15 years were on a DEA task force running gun buys and federal wiretaps. He consulted on Training Day, and his dog's alert on a FedEx package helped kick off an MLB HGH scandal. We get into buying crack straight out of dealers' mouths, booking 30 bodies in an afternoon, and buying rifles from a man who had told an informant he planned to rob him. He also walks through six hours in a prison van, wired and shackled, next to a man who killed his pregnant girlfriend. We cover Flock cameras and the Fourth Amendment, fentanyl killing two people a day in eight blocks, reactive policing after 2020, and his one-word answer on how much of a dent 27 years made.  Take the Operator Code Assessment: https://www.theoperatorcode.com Today's sponsors:  Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecofee.com Firecracker Farm https://www.firecracker.farm

Okay, got the red smoke. So the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. You ready? I'm ready. All right. So I was saying, I usually only think of the first question to ask. 27 years as a police officer. 30 with sheriff's time, yes.

How does it feel to not be a police officer anymore? It was really weird. I mean, I woke up like my second day, retired. And I was like, the fuck am I going to do? Like, I got to do something. I can't. I can't only work out for so long. And I went back to, there's a thing called 960 when you're retired.

You can work 960 hours within the same retirement. So I went back as a sworn officer part-time for a investigator bureau. Hold on. So if you're retired, you can come back and work as an LEO or is contracted to LEO. No, as an LEO. Even though you're retired. That's correct. You can only do 960 hours per year.

year per year okay so it's so interesting i average about 20 hours a week 18 to 20 hours a week if being involved in law enforcement wasn't a possibility anymore for whatever reason how would you spend your time i don't know i try to get my hands into everything i try to i try well i do executive protection uh for a family i work for them um driving and uh do protection for them. I do that a few times a week. I have to stay busy. I got to do something.

I can't. I can't retire. Some people retire. Some people are like, hey, I'm golfing. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. It's not in my DNA. Do you always want to have a foot in the tactical world?

Or is there anything outside of that? I mean, I don't particularly like the term entrepreneur. I mean, we'll just say somebody who is interest in business or businesses. is, is that you at all, or is it tied to the tactical world? No, not necessarily. I'm kind of dipping my feet and I'm doing some stuff with an AI company right now. That's law enforcement. See, you're still in the tactical world.

It's in the tactical world, but it's in something I was never used to. Okay. Any type of computer techno stuff. How is AI going to impact your old profession? It's going to impact it. investigative wise, I think it's in a real positive drive. But I don't think it will ever change having that foot on the floor doing, doing, meeting with people, you know, person to person.

I don't think it will. Will it just help aggregate data, essentially, which will spit out information that officers can then follow up on? Report writing will be quicker or is quicker right now. we have an AI database series right now. I mean, a search warrant that would take me two, three hours to do. I can knock out now in 15, 20 minutes. You're talking about the preparation before submitting? It'll lay the template out for me, yes.

Okay. And I just got to go in, read it, tweak it, and it's ready to go. What are your thoughts on AI, specifically this flock camera system network? I was just, San Francisco's, known for its real-time crime center. Okay. It was like the biggest probably in the nation started it off. I feel like I've seen a TV show about this.

They've been showing it a lot. Okay. And a lot of people come from out of state to view it and to learn from it. Can you break down what that network is? Because I think this, did this exist before flock? I know people, a lot of people are talking about flock now, but... Flock was there. Okay.

And what happened is they combined it with a lot. The real-time crime center runs drones, flock cameras uh safe cameras throughout the city through businesses merchants um and they also have cameras put up by the feds so they've got a whole network of things that they're using at the same time flock is part of it um i was just there a couple days ago

and we were talking about the whole flock you know controversy they don't use their flock cameras unless it's reactive not proactive. Some agencies are using them for proactive. Some, some agencies are using their drones proactively, like patrolling. San Francisco uses theirs only in a reactive base. That's, that's what they're doing. They don't, they only kick the, they only kick it on and fire it up when something is occurring and they're not using it to police. Would that make sense? It does. I mean, it leads to more questions just because of my own night.

Viteo on the topic, but the other cameras and sensors and type of things that you're talking about, are those running 24-7, though? They do run 24-7. They don't monitor them unless they have to go back and try to pull information. A vehicle, a suspect that was in that area, once they get a location, they're able to go back and backtrack it as quick as they can to try to find vehicles are suspects. What are your thoughts on people, I mean, the argument against the system that you're talking about, people say, oh, we live in a minority report world, which we're not that far yet. I don't think we have three people in a pool of whatever they were in with precognition. Fantastic movie, though, by the way. But they will say that the system that you just described,

whether active or reactive, is starting to bump up against Fourth Amendment rights. We were having a real problem in the city with car boosting serial robbers. You have crews come in and they will drive through the city and just rob people all night. Numerous people. And then you'll hear the cars in this district. Then it's in this district. Then it's in district. And then it leaves.

Same thing with the car break-ins. And they would do it. The mayor prior to the new mayor, when she signed it off to say, hey, let's, crime was really bad. And she said, let's open this up for some technology to see if we can help fight it. It's probably, I'm hearing. and 30 to 40% dropping crime when it comes to a lot of those type of crimes. So I can understand that argument, but there's also an argument, and again, being a guy from

California, understanding that there are some interesting social experiments that happen along the West Coast of the United States. Portland being a good example of, let's legalize from at least a narcotics perspective, hey, bud, let's go to the Wild Wild West and see how that works out. Yes. So there's that, but then there is also we're not going to enforce the laws that are on the books anyway. So I can understand pointing to that saying we lowered crime by 34%. Another thing that I think some Californian jurisdictions would do better with is maybe just enforce the goddamn laws that you have on the books to begin with and take a little bit more of a forward-leaning philosophy and approach. And I'm not, when I say that I am not talking about the on-the-ground officers

who would love to do that more than anything. I'm talking about the people restraining them from being able to do the job. That would probably have the same amount of impact with less impact on privacy. Yes, things changed. I mean, after George Floyd, obviously things changed.

Things changed to where law enforcement pulled back and became reactive instead of proactive. So you're reacting to crimes as they occur instead of going out and, I would call it, hunting to see, to look for, to look for bad guys and crimes occurring. In your opinion, and again,

you can only speak for yourself, I can only speak for myself, that pullback and shift from proactive to reactive. Was that a net positive or negative for the society that you serve? And was that a net positive or negative for your ability to do your job? It was negative in both.

In both senses, it was a negative. The citizens suffered from it. because you weren't getting the officers out there making stops, taking people on. It became an issue with everything. Every time you went and took somebody on it, it became an issue. So you wait for something to happen and occur, and then you would act on it. So, yeah, definitely the citizens. How quickly did the changes, maybe that's not the right way to phrase it.

The incident with George Floyd obviously didn't occur. San Francisco, which for people, we actually haven't said where you worked yet, but we'll be talking about the San Francisco area largely. Yes. The incident with George Floyd did not occur there, but how quickly did you feel the impact of that in San Francisco? Oh, immediately. San Francisco's known for demonstrations, which sometimes turned into riots, and those occurred,

those happened immediately in San Francisco. They were having demonstrations, they were setting them up on the weekends and everything regarding that. How about policies for you guys? as officers like that shift from proactive to reactive. Immediately. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Every year about this time I feel the same way.

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Black Riflecoffee.com. You won't regret it. Back to the show. I would have to imagine that you are not the only person from that world who would consider it to be a net negative for the citizens that you served. And I would have to imagine that at least some people are vocally saying that up the chain of command. Is that just ignored? Or is the volume of voices saying that up the chain of command or from the citizens just not loud enough for them to take another look at it? The only people you hear is, they always used to say like it, or still say it. The only people you hear is at 10%. That 10% that wants to make noise. The 10% that the officers are picking on a certain race or a certain type of person or this or that, the department or the city itself listens to that 10% when 90% of the citizens just want things to be safe. What do you think it would take to go back to the proactive model in San Francisco? Is that a ballot box issue for people? Is this just a generate the current law enforcement,

another generation needs to come in? What do you think it would take to go back to that? I don't think it's just in San Francisco. I think it's everywhere, but I think everybody's turned into more of a kinder and gentler approach. And they really got, they really get bothered. by that militaristic approach of law enforcement when I first got in. They call it, it's not necessarily militaristic, but they call it, they call it like that. Do you think law enforcement should look more like a militaristic approach? Absolutely. Why do you say that?

Because law enforcement right now has no respect. And for numbers of reasons, I think that when I first got, in the department, we were respected a lot more and we went out and did our job and we didn't worry about who was going to complain to us. We have a watchdog group now that works right alongside our department and takes complaints and files complaints on all the officers. You get hit with a bunch of those complaints, whether sustained or non-sustained, it takes the way. It takes the out of you. I mean, it takes it to where you're like, okay, well, I'm just going to be reactive and not proactive. Um, like your units, like your gang units, your narcotics units. I was a narcotics

unit for 25 out of 27 years there. Very proactive. Before, it was like you hit the lotto if you got to go to one of those units because, uh, you were, you were brought up there based off your merit of how hard you worked. Now, it was, you were, you were brought up there based off your merit off how hard you worked. now it's really hard to even get people to want to go to those specialized units because why do I want to go to the specialized unit, be proactive, and have complaints written on me. If nothing changes, and again, specifically just your experience in San Francisco in that department, if things continue as they are right now,

what do you estimate that looks like there for not only the police but the citizens in the next 10 to 20 years? I think it will get worse. I mean, when they pass like Proposition 40, in California, Proposition 47, they turned a person using narcotics into a misdemeanor. So you'll go out and find somebody ingesting narcotics like patrol officers, and they give them a ticket. Then they give them a ticket again. They give them a ticket again. And those guys are, they have 30, 40 tickets in their pocket because nothing's being done with it.

As far as the survivability of the city and the police department, without change, Do you think it'll be okay? Or do you think California is an interesting study. And it's tough. I'm saying this based off of headlines I see and I'm not diving completely into each of these subjects because I just don't have the time to do it. But you talk about, first off, there's always immigration and exit, right? And California is a good example of that, as are many states.

For many years, Montana had positive people coming. Some from California. I think it was last year it had a net decrease in population. Not by a lot because there's only barely over a million people in Montana anyway. but it ebbs and flows. And there's a lot of people talking about that California is a failed state, and there's a lot of people saying that it isn't. So again, I'll leave that aspect of it to the side.

What seems to be hard to ignore is that major business districts in San Francisco are now becoming much more vacant than populated. Oh, absolutely. So the infrastructure seems to be drifting away. Where do you think that goes unchecked if the policies just stay the policies? I think it gets worse and worse. I mean, we had a new mayor come in and not necessarily a politician, but more of a businessman. And he worked really hard to get those businesses back into Union Square when they all closed.

Yeah. They closed for two reasons. They closed because of pandemic. And they closed from demonstrations, breaking all the windows on them and stuff. Yeah. So, and stealing out of them. There's been so much retail theft out of those, those nice, uh, fancy stores that they just closed doors and left.

Some of those videos are insane. People are just running out with fistfuls of whatever or bags full or shoulders, you know, burdened with whatever it is. Nothing seems to be being done about it. No. And back in the day when they had the prior last two district attorneys,

they didn't charge them those things. So it was just, it was free reign to go do what you want. I don't see how that's survivable long term. And so does it get to a point where it becomes a waste? and then people try to vote their way out of that? I don't know if that's even possible. I don't know either.

It's, I mean, a big thing, a big thing was the laws. I mean, you get caught with a gun. You go to jail. You get out the next day and you fight your court case. Before when you got caught with a gun and you were a prior felon, you didn't leave. You stayed in. Now it's more of a, well, he had the gun on him, but he didn't use it, which, Doesn't make sense.

I mean, that's, I guess, a good way to look at that situation. Yes, he didn't use it, but, you know, let's look at the contributing factor. Yeah. Or the potential for him to use it if he was already a felon is greater. Same thing with narcotics. I mean, a lot of it's the judges, too. I think it's education with the judges. You'll get caught six, seven, eight times selling narcotics with huge amounts of narcotics seized.

and you get out, you just fight your court case from outside. Do you think San Francisco is salvageable? Well, it was when that real-time crime center came out, it was like a shot in the arm. I mean, it really boosted everything and made everyone feel like, wow, we're starting to get our head above water. And with the way things are now, with the flock, you know, with the flock incidents and all this,

it questions you like, man, are we going to go back? Or we're going to lose that and go back into the way we were, which far worse? Personally, I would much rather see law enforcement agencies be able to enforce the laws that are on the book, books with supportive district attorneys and judges, an actual penal system that has teeth versus an AI-based privacy creeping system. that at some point has to butt up against the Fourth Amendment and people's privacy. No, you're absolutely right. When I first got in, I got in, I think I hit the street at 98. I went through the academy.

I got in at 98 on the street. Crime wasn't bad. I mean, we were handling business. My parents used to let me cruise. I graduated high school in 96, Santa Cruz. My parents used to tell them, hey, we want to go up to San Francisco as like, a 17-year-old with my buddies. They're like, yeah, go ahead. Maybe, I mean, there's still plenty of places you could get yourself in trouble at that time.

Sure. But I can't imagine them in the modern era saying two thumbs up. Go ahead and do that. Oh, yes. No, no, no, absolutely not. I got eight grandkids. I wouldn't, I wouldn't let any of them outside. It was a different time, point being. Totally different time. Yeah.

I remember getting on the bus going into the city because I lived in the peninsula and going down and watching the martial art movie. he's on Market Street, all the Bruce Leaf films and stuff. Oh, hell yeah. And then take the bus back and it was no big deal. My parents didn't care. Get back before it gets dark, you know? And I don't see a lot of parents doing that in this modern era. No, absolutely not.

I don't see, I don't see a lot of adults doing it now. And that's why I ask. I mean, is it salvageable? I don't know what metric you look at at a city to determine that. But when the businesses are leaving, when people no longer feel safe, when it's one of the few cities that I'm aware of that has a human shit tracking app. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Which my, how many times will we pull that up, Michael? It's fantastic. God. Yeah. That's what it's

known for right now. It's fantastic. And you just keep up and it's like what? It's like what? There's more. There's more. I mean, oh, you go between, you go on the tenderloin and you have to watch where you're walking. I got two son-in-laws in San Francisco PD working still. The youngest one worked at tenderloin station. And he stepped in a pile of shit outside the station. Human. I mean, he had throws boots away. I mean, it's insane. That is how you clean that, by the way. Oh, yeah.

You clean that with a garbage can. But no, you'll see those people in the, you'll see them pantsless in the street shitting, and there's nowhere to take them. You can't book them because they said they've got mental health issues. So it's, you know, they're saying it's not a crime. If you have no pants on it and you are shitting on a sidewalk, there are an argument could be made that you do have mental health issues. No. And they can't take. Because you don't understand what you're doing.

Then you take them to, you take them to the hospital for a 5150. And they say, now they're able to care for themselves. Well, who draws that line? So I think the actual map. Oh, my God. The actual interactive map, I believe, has been taken down. What?

Not, but this is just a screenshot of how it was. No, if you're in the tenderloin, you look down while you're talking to somebody. you walk down, you stare at the ground. That is a literal ton of shit right there. And it's a in between cars is the big thing to do because they can hold onto a bumper. I'm looking right now, you know, missed opportunity,

probably the best place if you're going to go take a dump in town, I'm going to say is on the walking path of the Golden Gate Bridge. What a view. You know, maybe like, plus you have a choice. Do you like try to hang your butt out the side and you can watch the sunset or you can go to the other side hang your butt off the side and watch the sun rise. And maybe, though, that's why there's no pins there because they hung their butt off the side.

But what a missed opportunity. Yeah. I also didn't realize, not this is anything to do with the Human Shit Tracker app, the number of people that jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Oh, there's a lot. My goodness. You'll hear, what you'll hear is, I'll hear on the radio still, a couple of vehicles that were left out for a few days in the parking area of the Golden Gate Bridge. and they've reached out to registered owners and can't get a hold of them.

It's, I don't know what the, I don't know if it's like a romantic thought or what that people get drawn to that bridge. I watched, I was at the hospital, as SFGH booking, getting someone cleared so I can go book them. And CHP brought in a guy that jumped off the bridge. And he lived.

And he put his, he put his bones to his heels, and he put his bone through his kneecaps. It has the surface tension of concrete. Water does it, that velocity. He was screaming. They were dragging in his clothes in a water in a plastic bag. And the doctor, he was screaming. The doctor was like, dude, you're the other one that jumped off the bridge.

Yeah. I mean. On average, about 30 people died by suicide each year at the Golden Gate Bridge. Yeah. Oh, that sucks. It sucks that people get to a point where they feel like that's the solution to whatever may be. A guy I knew he did the cross-office. the street from my youngest daughter's house.

He stopped in the middle of the bridge and last year or the year before. Did you ever find out what was going on in his life or maybe put the pieces together? What led him to? Totally fine. It just goes to show you. I mean, everybody in the world where you live in

where you have the opportunity on these social media platforms to present your best filtered BS life, you never know what's going on behind some of these eyes. No, you really don't. You really don't. Yeah. And also to do it that way. Wow.

I feel like you would have enough time to have some second thoughts. And I say this as somebody who used to base jump who might have spent some time assessing the bridge. Allegedly, you know, I don't know what the statute of limitations is. I did not ever jump the Golden Gate Bridge, but I tell you what, I took a hard look at it. Could you? Oh, God, yes. It's happened. Jeb Corlis has done it.

Oh, you'd be able to jump and then be able to pop right before. before. Yeah, he did it from the, the northern side, I believe. He ran up one of those, probably a suspension. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then send it from the top and landed, he went more north and landed, whatever that is on the northern side. Like, is they driving across it? If you look down to the right, he landed down there, I believe. I did a tandem jump out of a plane. Is that called tandem when you're hooked with somebody? Tandum's got up. Yep. I'm glad that I did it, but I would never do it again. Okay. It's not for everybody. A bunch of us from narcotics were at a convention.

I think it was Palm Springs. And they were all talking at the dinner, all the SFPD guys were talking about jumping out of a plane. And I wasn't listening to them. And they were like, hey, you went ship out of a plane? I was like, no, they're like, are you scared? I was like, I ain't scared. But I don't want to jump out of a plane.

So they're like, you're fucking scared. And I was like, let's do it. Dude, I went up in that plane and was like, what am I doing, man? Did you enjoy it, though? I did. Yeah. But I wouldn't do it again. That's fine.

I remember going up. It was corkscrewing up. And the door was open and all these guys are just jumping off and they're just throwing themselves out, having a blast. And I was just sitting there going, oh, my God, oh, my God. But the guy told me, do me one favor. When we go out, keep your eyes open and look. He goes, it's like a suspension of time.

The plane's going to be just like there. I did. And it was crazy. It's cool. Yeah, I've taken, oh, man, probably thousands of people for their first tandem. And it's not very. everybody. Some people, it's the beginning of a journey into that activity for years and for other people. I've never really, I've maybe one or two people who got sick or nauseous that didn't enjoy it,

but most of the time it's smile from ear to year. I seen on your, I didn't read your book. I did the audio version. I'm not going to read. Fair enough. But, well. On the tandem, the interpreter? Yes. That was an atypical experience. Still the single worst jumping experience of my life. I bet. Yeah, that was horrible. That is not the experience I try to give people to the civilian world who are paying you to take them for a tandem. That's because it was funny the way you say that he was, and also I really appreciate you,

you reading it. Yeah. Makes a big difference. So after that experience, I don't know how people go into this, voice actors, I guess they would be. I at least was familiar with the material that I had written and I knew where I wanted to add perhaps a pause or a little bit of inflection. I don't know how voice actors. actors do that stuff. Yeah. No, it was really good that I can hear your voice while you're talking

about it. Yeah. They offered me the opportunity to do it. I'm glad that I took it. A lot of people have said that. I don't consume a lot of audiobooks. I do more the written medium. So I had not thought about it or thought thought about it until I was given the chance to do it. But I did it sitting right here. Actually, it took me three days. Oh, really? Yeah. I had a laptop sitting right here an iPad that I was scrolling through on the books. That way, that way they don't have to remove the sound of the page flipping. Uh-huh. And a guy on a Zoom call who was managing the audio system that was just sitting right here,

three days, six hours a day, and boom, we were done. Yeah, it was, it was very entertaining. It was a really good book. Thank you. What do you guys talk about it in our Carics conference? There's really nothing. Like, there's classes you can go to. I feel like you guys are getting together.

And just, I mean, if there are anything like military conferences, you see your buddies. You go to the required classes. to get the whatever credit hours you need. Correct. And then you're getting faced that night. Well, that's the problem. I don't drink. Okay.

I haven't drank in 40 years. Well, that means you woke up feeling better than me many days. No, so I go with these guys and they get all crazy and stupid and silly. And I just kind of hang out. Yeah. You know. What's the theory behind it? Do you guys share emerging in our world that would have been called TTPs, tactics,

techniques and procedures. Is it drugs, things people are seeing? Is that kind of what it's about? Current trends. Maybe a big case that took place. The case agents on it will talk about it, like something that really stood out, like maybe a big cartel case, you know, that involved chopo or something. You'll sit and you'll listen to those things. So not to jump ahead, but I know most of the time you did was undercover, correct? Yes, almost my whole career, yeah. How can you go to an official narcotics convention as an undercover officer and not be worried about getting aired out at some point. And here's a lens for this. There's an organization and I'm not saying anything I'm about to say is not with any shade whatsoever. This is just something that I was invited to. And I remember

being there wondering, huh, this would be a really good chance for people to collect counterintelligence. Oh, yeah. It was the Montana State's tactical officer, or narcotics officer association, which they had a website. And they announced that this was going to be as they do with the other one. Yes. And it had the hotel. And it had the times. And I get to the hotel and all the trucks are combat parked and all, you know what I mean?

And the dudes with beards are however they look, right? There's the plane clothes. And then I didn't ask anybody if they were a UC, but whatever. even a not very technologically savvy organization that will say is your counterpoint in the field, who has an internet connection, could look at that and say, why don't we just drive through the parking lot with some GoPro's discreetly and just let's look at some license plate numbers. Well, look at now with the meta glasses. That's what I'm saying. What if somebody was working there?

Like, how do you not worry about that? Like serving food or working at the bar or something and wearing those? Yeah, you could. So I didn't come from your world, but maybe isn't that a bad idea? Yeah. To advertise that stuff, especially if UCs are going to be there as well, too. Yeah. Why do you still do it then?

And not you. No, no, no. No, no. That's a great point. That's a great point. I mean, from across the street, you could have said, why does the parking lot look so different? All of these cars are backed into their plate. Like, that doesn't even make sense visually.

Oh, yeah. And then all of the people kind of looked a little bit of the same. Well, you got the bear cats parked out front. got all the other stuff because they do these vendors. They do vendors. So they'll bring bear cats in. They'll bring all these different things. And they're so damn big. They can't bring them inside. So they've got them outside. I mean, I don't work in counterintelligence. But my goodness, that would be the place where I would probably start. And I haven't even thought about the meta glasses. Those are crazy now. You want to again talk about where does that align

in somebody's Fourth Amendment rights? Because we're not even talking about law enforcement necessarily using those. You're just talking about being anywhere, potentially you're being recorded at any time. Maybe we will be in the minority report pretty soon. No, but I know exactly what you're saying about we're using AI to advance what we were doing before in a kinder and gentler way. I understand the efficacy of it. I get the argument for it because all you have to imagine is my mom has passed, but my dad is now 160, not by driver's license age, but by how he acts. I can see a world, Michael, can confirm this for me.

Can you see a world where one day my dad is lost? I'm surprised that it hasn't happened already. Thank you. Okay. Thankfully, Life 360 exists. So I keep track of that son of a bitch, except every time I get an alert almost every day where my dad's phone is at 5%. I'm like, great, please plug it in.

He does not. So every time it dies, we get kicked out of the app. And my wife has to sweet talk him into handing over his phone to reengage with the life. I can see a world where he just goes for a walk one day. And we can't find him. And I know what that would feel like as a family. Or the same thing, I know exactly what this feels like when you have these terrifying moments when your kids are growing up. Maybe they're at the neighbor's house and they forgot to tell you, but you have this, oh my, you know what I mean?

That pit in your stomach. The ability to leverage a technical. tool that might be able to track them from their front door and just lead you right to where they are. I get that for sure. But that's only one use case scenario because the people throwing the levers behind the scenes could not only use it for that, but now we're hearing reports of flock cameras being pointed at the entrance and exit of gun ranges. Abortion clinics, fill in the blank, which whenever might be on the other side of the political current spectrum, all of that can be weaponized as well. So just because it might serve you well in that,

use case. I don't know if it justifies the ability to have all of that data collected to create these patterns of life and information that, quite frankly, I don't think the government should have on us. No, that's true. That's true. And like, I guess I think of it more in a simple matter, like when somebody tells me about how they're, how they're against flock or this, that, I think, well, if your child got kidnapped or something happened to your parents, you'd want us to have some things to work off of. 100%. Like I said, I understand that use case scenario.

But if anybody out there thinks it couldn't be weaponized, just because it's not being weaponized against us right now, we're using to aggregate data on a group that isn't currently considered the enemy of fill in the blank, doesn't mean that it can't be. And I don't know about your experience, empowering governments at even the local level and especially our federal level,

I've never seen them willing to hand that back once they are given those authorities and powers. No, that's true. That's very true. So that's an interesting. I'm not a constitutional scholar by any stretch, but I understand the argument on both sides of it. It seems to be that there is a little bit of a societal backlash against flock more than anything,

not from an administration at that local or national level. And I'm not here to give anybody ideas, but I mean some spray foam insulation has started to show up on these lenses and a little bit of rogue sniping from what I've seen. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I heard from one of them, I heard from one of the officers there. They make their 3D printing a cover.

So they're able to put it on a stick and clip the cover over the top of it. I mean, these are real world solutions to modern day problems. Yeah. Yeah. Be curious to see where that one goes. I'm not a huge fan of weaponizing the government even more than the first off at the flock. You got a cell phone, right? Yeah.

Yeah, they're already pretty much know everything you're doing. anyway. I am still not a fan, though, of giving them even more information. No, that's true. That's very true. So narcotics undercover almost the whole time. Are we as a country fighting the war against narcotics effectively, in your opinion? No. No. Yeah, it's been, how long have we been at this war on drugs? Three decades? Oh, it's been forever. Billions of, I mean, countless, what's the most effective thing you have seen in your time when it comes to actual, maybe even enforcement or just making an impact? The feds.

Because I worked up at a federal task force for my last 15 years. Okay. And it was very fulfilling to be up there. Because when I'm working to the state level, interesting people under San Francisco, they're getting out. But when I'm doing it at a federal level, they're getting 5, 10, 15, 20 years. And it was a lot more fulfilling because you would get the person for the same thing they did in the San Francisco, but you take them federally. And they're doing a minimum of five years.

Do they have cascading downstream effects, meaning when you were able to put people away federally, did you see it having any impact at a local level like San Francisco? or was it just your plug in the dam where the water is spouting out to the best of your ability? The further. Really? Yeah.

It's, it's, um, we did a couple of federal things where we went out. The first time Trump was in office, he had, the head attorney was, a federal attorney was Dave Anderson. And he told him, I said,

he said, I want to clean up the tenderline. I want everybody that gets arrested out there. I want them to do a minimum of six months before they get deported if they get to, if they're illegal. So we went in there and we knocked out, I think it was 145 bodies just selling street drugs. I'd go out there and buy. We'd get their picture. We'd get them ID, stop them maybe half hour later and get them ID. And then went in and did a big hit where we took everybody into custody.

That slowed things down for a little bit because nobody wants to come outside for, a couple few weeks. Yeah, the word spreads. Yes, it does. But then six months later, they forgot all about it and they all came, people all just pour right back in. That has to be exceptionally frustrating as somebody who is focusing their career on that particular aspect of it.

It is, it is. But I took it more as a game instead of taking it personal. It was a big. big game to me to see if I can buy from this guy, if I can buy from that guy, how many buys I can go out and do that night in the tenderloin. Or if I was working a big federal case, it was, uh, if I can, how many guns I can buy from this person or how many, how many pounds of dope I can buy from this person. So it ended up being more of a game to me. How did you get into that world? It was, um, I went to the sheriff's office. I was there for almost four years and then I as a deputy, as a correctional officer. Okay. So I, so I, um, I went to the sheriff's office. I was there for almost four years. And then I, as a deputy. Okay. So I, so I, So I just worked inside the jail. How was that? It was really good. It was very eye-opening.

It's nothing I would want to do my whole career. But it was very eye-opening because you're around those people every day. And inmates, not those people, but inmates. You talk with them, you get around them. I grew up in an environment where a lot of my friends had gone to jail and guns and dope and stuff. so it wasn't that eye-opening to me. Did you grow up in Northern California? I grew up in the peninsula, just outside just south of San Francisco.

I don't think a lot of people would associate that, especially through the modern lens of California, that has some relatively restrictive gun laws as a dope and gun area. No, it wasn't necessarily so. I did a lot of time in San Francisco as a kid. Yeah. And I grew up with, a bunch of guys that were older than me. I dropped out of school at 15 and went to work full-time.

So everybody I hung around with were in their 20s. And there was back then it was cocaine was a big thing like at the bars and stuff. So there was a lot of my friends would deal cocaine, little bindles of it and stuff inside the bars and guns were normal. But the peninsula I lived in, it was, it's a nice area. It was a nice area. It was a nice. area, blue collar area. But I was in the jail and then I knew I didn't want to work in the peninsula as patrol. So I took the test for San Francisco and went over there. They didn't require high school diploma? GED. Sweet. I got my GED when I was, I think around 24. I dropped out when I was 15, went to work full time. I was a garbage man. I was a, um,

window glazer, install glass. And then I ended up working for my family's pole construction business, swimming poles. And then my buddy was working for as a fireman. He's like, you got to take a test, get the GED, start taking test. I went down, take my GED. I hadn't gone to any schooling since I was 15. I passed the practice test. They said, okay, we're going to put you in school for like six months.

And I said, no, I'm not going to do that. Let me take the real test. And if I pass it, I pass it. They knew I wasn't going to stick around to go to school. So I took it and I passed it. So they had to give me a JD. Then I started reading into how to take government tests, city worker tests. So I was taking tests for fire, police, utilities, anything so I can try to get into the city.

And the sheriff's office was the first one that popped for me. Okay. So I worked for San Mateo sheriffs, just in the peninsula. And then over to SFPD. What do they do their academy? Their academy was at San Francisco. Okay. They have their own academy.

So I did seven months in an academy over there. And then how did you work your way so quickly into the undercover narcotics world? It's really weird. I went and trained in uniform for six weeks downtown, had a blast, car chases, shootings, all kinds of crazy stuff. And I never even had any thought of ever being a cop growing up. I didn't even know how you become a cop. I just thought that's what they do. and I'm going to be doing construction the rest of my life.

That's just the way it is. So I get into the sheriff's office and I'm just totally blown away. I get picked up by San Francisco. Now I'm like, Jesus Christ, I can't believe I'm here. Nobody in my family had ever been into any type of law enforcement or anything. So I go to, I go downtown. I work for six weeks. Then they send me up to the upper mission.

It's called Ingleside. I work there in a uniform for about four to six months, I think about four months. And I was working in the projects. That was my beat. They call it housing developments now, but it's the projects. Michael, will you pull up a map just of San Francisco? I'd love to be able to, because I obviously am familiar with San Francisco, but some of these areas, like even the tender line I've heard of,

I can't even necessarily place it. So it'll be cool just to have ability to look at what you're talking about. So when you're talking about training in uniform, is that essentially the field training officer? Who's field training? Yeah, I just rode with a guy. You don't know anything when you get out of academy. I was going to ask you, how well did the academy prepare you for your job?

Not at all. Not at all. I mean, it was... How could it though, right? It really can't. What would you say it does prepare you for you? The baseline understanding of your left and right boundaries and how to like look up what the laws actually are? Well, there's like these, God, what is it?

Like 13 different tests you need to take. Oh, awesome. Perfect, Michael. Thank you. So you take like these 13 different tests and all they're making sure is that you pass those are for post. Yeah. It's police officer standards training. And you're looking to hit minimum threshold and then you're good to go.

You just got to pass. You can go to the next one. And it's, you don't even, you're, you're trying to digest it, but you're not trying to learn it. Yeah. I just got to get these tests up. I got to get to the next one. I got to get to the next one. So you get through the tests and you get out and you're like, I don't know a goddamn thing.

I know nothing. So you jump in a car with a guy and you ride around with him in uniform. What does he say to you for his day? Just shut up and pay attention. Some do, some don't. I had a couple of good ones where they're like, hey, man, you're my partner. And I never forget those guys. How could you?

They probably kept you alive. The best. They're the best. And then I had some were like, shut your fucking mouth. Don't talk. You know, so I never forget the guys that were good to the new guys. I, even later on life, I resented the ones that were shitty to us. Because they're like, we can't trust you yet.

Trust me for what? What are you going to do that? You're going to have to worry about me trusting you. So I worked downtown. It would be on the left side financial district area for training. Okay. And then I went up to the Ingleside. Engelside is closer to Daly City where daily city's at.

Okay. It's down on the bottom. Yeah, at the bottom. So I worked at, that was, that's the upper mission. What's the population of this area we're looking at? What would you guess? We're talking $8 million? I don't even know.

It's densely, I mean, Michael, it's worth a quick goog. For all San Francisco. Yeah, just San Francisco population. It's really populated during the day for working hours. Oh, I bet. I mean, it just really loads up. 820,000. That is a lot more than, I guess, a lot higher than that.

Really? 820,000? San Francisco. That's probably city limits, yeah. I get it. Yeah, probably in the city, I guess. Sure enough. I don't have a degree in math, you know, take it easy.

I work the upper mission area. Yeah. But I only worked it for a. about four months. I worked mainly Sunnydale. It was a Sunnydale projects. Okay. And I worked that area. And then one of the plainclothes officers left. And I get along with everybody. I don't have any qualms with anyone. So these guys are like, hey, you know, you want to fill in now and then as a plane close officer. I was like, oh, absolutely. What's the difference between the two? As if you were fresh out of the academy, you're going through your FTO, a plane closed officer.

What's the difference in roles there? If I'm a uniform officer, I'm assigned to a, I'm assigned to a beat. So I have like the sixth car was Sunnydale. The five car was up on the daily city border. So you're assigned to that and you're responsible for that whole area. Okay. So you do everything that's all your reports, all the arrests and all the stuff you'll do in that area. You'll have a day shift, you'll have a morning start, a midday start, a swing shift, and a night shift.

So you're overlapping each other. So it's just not you and one other person. You'll have another couple cars out there. So the plane clothes, each station has a plane clothes unit and they just wear regular clothes. And they look for people for warrants. They go out proactively looking for things. They're able to just get in there because they're in unmarked cars and stuff to make arrests. Working inside of those same boundaries, though?

In the same boundaries. I was still assigned to that district. Okay. The narcotics unit used to go to the Sundaydale a lot because there was a problem area. And I would see the guys there. So I would kind of like, I was attracted to what they did. I mean, I was like, wow, these guys are narcs. This is pretty cool.

Never thinking I was going to go there. So one of the guys that worked there, Paul Lazada, he was pretty cool with me. I just had met him. And then he kind of took to me and he'd be like, hey, we're going to do a search warrant today. You want to come out and help us. While I was playing clothes, I'd be like, absolutely. So our unit would go down and help. And then narcotics asked, do you want to come up here for six weeks and try to buy dope?

So I was only six months into my probation. And I said, sure, I'll go. I'll try it. So I went up there. They told me you're not going to like it here. You're just going to be buying dope. That's all you're going to do. And I was like, that's fine.

And they go, you're going to want to go back before the six weeks is up. Well, I didn't. I really enjoyed it. So I stayed my whole career there. Did they give you any, training on how to do this with the street vendors, as we shall call them, I suppose? No, they didn't. Were you probably still high and tight at this point as well, too?

I feel like you were a little bit fresh out of the academy. Yeah, but I was kind of a... I mean, I kind of grew up as a street guy. I kind of grew up. I knew the tenderloin real well for being a kid and stuff. Thank you for me. Where's the tender line on this map? I feel like it's north, right?

The tenderline... Scroll out a little bit, Michael, because we're missing the north edge of Sam Fran. go right in the middle Michael and zoom in. There's the Castro Mission District. Pull it down a little bit. And what is the tenderloin known for? See where it says Turk and Gary. It's narrowed down just a little bit right there.

That's the tender one. Traditionally, what was this area known for? Well, I've always known it since I was a kid as drugs and prostitution. Okay. It's the only place in San Francisco where people can come from other areas to sell dope to pimp girls for girls to work out there. Why that area? I don't know. And it's at like an eight block by eight block radius.

Keep zooming in, Michael. Where are you going? You were going to go to the bathroom? You were going to go to the bathroom? Yeah. I don't remember receiving a request for that. Don't you have a cup right there on your desk? You can turn your mic off if it's going to be uncomfortable.

We won't look at you. Thank you. Yeah. Cool. I just wanted to get a better look at it. I mean, this looks residential. It's downtown. It's a lot of, they call them SROs, single room occupancies.

Where they have a bunch of rooms with common bathrooms in the hallway. Just really like real shitty, real shitty hotels. And was it just tolerated? Like, why that area? Well, it was kind of like, kind of like if you watch the wire, if you were familiar with the show the while. I'm not unfortunately. It was called a, like... Is that a cop show? Yeah, of course you know that. Hamsterdam. It was like they pushed everybody into it. Okay. And they were like pretty, they don't push everyone into it, but it's like,

everyone seemed to be able to do what they wanted to do as long as they were in that eight block radius. What's the benefit of allowing an area like that where you know it's occurring? Is it just easier to keep tabs on? Well, that's what I would say. The only benefit I would think is that you would know that all your dirt's taking place there. But you also know that dirt is taking place there. Correct, correct. But okay, like the tenderloin, like if you look at the tenderloin, that's where all the users are.

That's where all the traffickers are. You're getting two deaths a day, seven days a week from fetnal, from fentanyl overdose. And that's not the people that are overdosing. That's just the ones that die. Yeah. They were at three. now they think they've done leaps and bounds by getting down to two.

Well, two people a day in a eight block radius. Do they allow Narcan to be purchased in SFO? They give it out. I was going to ask. The cop cars up here, you're going to see a box in Narcan. I mean, even up here, you're going to see a box in Narcan. No, they go through tons of it. And even a civilian, even the users carry it with them.

Even the drug traffickers will carry it with them. To be honest, that's not a bad strategy. Well, they're the first it's seen. Yeah, I'm not advocating for anybody to use fentanyl, but also if you know you're using something lethal and I don't know if anybody out there has ever watched somebody get Narcan, but they come back to life pretty animated. Oh, yeah.

And oftentimes piss that you just robbed. You took that high away. It's like, cool, do you want to go back there because you were dying just so you know, but, you know, noted. That's your best high on a fentanyl is you're just on the brink of dying. And that's what fentanyl has brought them to because fentanyl attacks the respiratory system. Yeah. And it locks it down to where you're barely breathing.

Yeah, it binds, right? Yeah. And it pulls on its receptors. And what happens is if you get right on that edge, they say that's the ultimate high. Talking, I've done enough shows now specifically with the other show I host Change Agents talking about basically any street drug, any pill you have to assume has some level of fentanyl exposure in it at least. And I mean, no parent wants their child growing up experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Absolutely not. But every child is going to pass through at least a phase where they are going to be exposed for that.

Maybe they're curious. It's happened up here where I'm not going to, you know, the horrible way to describe it would be pill roulette where somebody just takes a pill and they think it's something and they end up dying. The reason I bring all this up is it goes back to the Narcan. As a parent in the modern era, are you better on? off equipping your kids even with an understanding and potentially even Narcan when they're, you know what I mean? Yes, because that's, that's the whole thing like with, I don't, I can't speak for Montana, but like a lot of the people in the peninsula, even the richer areas, it's the pills.

Yeah. And if they get those M30s, they'll, they'll, uh, DEA, we used to, I used to buy thousands of them like hundreds of thousands at a time from from dealers they would have i would buy directly from them when we would go up on wires federally or even if we didn't go on a wire if i just did a big operation to locate who they were and where they're from um we'd send it to dea to have a tested at western labs and 40% of it was showing that had the potential to be an overdose pill a lethal dose pill lethal dose of fentanyl 40%. So what happens is a real pill user a lot of the in the tenderloin is powder form.

But the people that get the pills, and a lot of them are the people in the higher up areas, a real pill user will now split it into fours. And they'll take a quarter of it. Or are they doing that as an embedded safety mechanism? Safety mechanism to reduce that LD. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

And that's why DEA had that one pill kills is because they were saying like 40% of them. or you can overdose. There was enough of fentanyl amount to overdose. It's two micrograms can overdose you. And some of the pills had over two micrograms. Do you remember in your career the first time you encountered fentanyl or heard about it? Yeah, it was probably 2016, 2017.

Up until then, what were you mainly dealing with? Crack error stopped. Crack is still being sold up to now. But the crack error stopped and meth came in real heavy. heroin's always been there but the crystal meth that's when they started making the crystal meth crystal meth runs like

in the high 90s for purity okay so that it ended up being crystal meth and then fentanyl came in and we knew us on the street knew this is this is a monster this isn't like any other tsunami

they started coming in and you're wondering man why are these people so out of it you know like you thought they were on a heroin high but they're not and it's really weird like if you if you brought up video of like San Francisco

like Instagram if you brought something up on Instagram you'll see them completely leaning over standing up yeah oh the trink stance yeah it's the zombie lean first off how are they able to do that I don't know because Michael there's no just we're doing it you know what I'm talking about Michael

I look at some of these purely from an interest I think I understand how gravity works at a baseline level. I can't write out the formula for it. But some of these people are in postures that I don't understand how they're. There's a guy who runs through the tenderloin and he's a, what do you call it? Like he's on social media. So he's a, I don't even know if you call it an influencer.

I don't know. But his name's J.J. Smith. And he goes through the tenderloin on his scooter and he films these guys. So these people are alive and they will not move. They will stand there for a half hour without moving from that spot. So this is, we're going to get into the realm of a hypothesis and assumption here. How would you guess that they had ingested the drug? There's only one way they ingest it right now is the only way to do it correctly.

They don't shoot it. To do fentanyl, you put it on a foil. Yep. You put a straw in your mouth. You heat up the bottom of that foil. Vaporizing. you vaporize it and you suck those fumes in. How long after that does that happen?

Minutes. Okay. And then about 30 minutes, they're in whatever world they're in. And then they're longer than that. They're down. They could be in that position for at least a half hour. But they're still out of it for another hour or two. They're still, they're not maybe bent over in that position, but they're laying on the ground now.

And then they just slowly reanimate. I mean, then they look for their next high. And you can't tell me that. those people, the 10% that I talk about in San Francisco are the ones saying these people have every right to do what they want to do. I don't see how that's able to care for yourself. You know, what you're talking about, I have never, I have no exposure to any of these types of drugs. I've actually hosted quite a few people talking about their psychedelic experiences and the healing they've had from it. Sure. And it's always fast. I have no psychedelic experience either.

But from what I understand, so you were talking about crack, crystal meth, and what was the other one? Heroin. Well, what I was getting to is heroin to me, and these are obviously broad terms, crack and crystal meth seems like it would be an incredible up, right?

And just for what I can see people, the way that they act, meth is an issue where we are here as well. Cracks the immediate one. The crack they say is, I talked to informants that I had that were crack addicts. Yeah. They say smoking crack is like having an orgasm.

like the best one in the world. And then you come off it real quick. Now you want to do it again. Now you want to do it again. But they're seeking long periods of time. But they're both up, right? They're both uppers. So meth gives you one that goes for hours.

Days. Yeah. Yes. So then on the other side of that would be the heroin in trank or which, you know, or fentanyl. Do you see in your experience working in this world, are people doing both or do they find a flavor of what they like and they stick with that.

Because if before you were dealing largely with the ones that take you up for the ride, did those same people that just, they find fentanyl and they enjoy that, they stop doing one or then they just do both? Sometimes they'll do both. What they do is sometimes they'll self-medicate where they get, they do the fentanyl and they're out of it. And if they have to bring themselves up, they'll do some crystal. So what they'll do is they'll self-medicate themselves.

But you get the, you know, you get your fetno, like what will happen? I mean, as I said before on other interviews, they, you'll get a, you'll get a person who blew their knee out or blew their back out. Starts with a prescribed meds for two years. Yeah. And then the doctor says that's it. No more. Yeah. You can't do that.

And then what happens is they'll start stealing pills from their friends and this and that. And then they'll come down here and they'll find out that heroin's better than the pills. And then they'll find out, well, you don't even need to inject yourself. You just got to take a straw and suck this in. Then that's it. Game over. Man. How do you come back from that?

That's a rough one. And that's the weird thing. It's like, I'm not a political guy at all. But you'll hear the president's talking to the president of China. And he's talking about the fentanyl that he doesn't want to see the precursors coming into Mexico. Yeah. it doesn't stop. At all.

It doesn't stop at all. Maybe they move a little bit more of it to Vancouver. Yeah. It's not. There's, there's, there's, there's, that's, it's a steady flow. Bringing up China reminded me of something that I wanted to bring up. We were talking about San Francisco in the, uh, human shit app. It was fascinating to see how clean San Francisco got for a very short period of time.

Oh, yeah. When the Chinese delegate came through to meet with Mr. Newsompson. some. Oh, they cleaned all the streets up. They cleaned all the streets up. How did they do that? Did they just basically not with actual bulldozers, but they did just push everything to the side of where that delegation wasn't going to go and then just. They did it for the Super Bowl too. When they had the Super Bowl, there was nobody there. And they did it for A PAC, A PAC, when they had that conference there for a week. Everybody's got a warrant, goes to jail like a couple days before. Whether it's a small horn or big warrant, you're going to go to jail. And also, they do.

just tell them they have to clear that area out. Give them a little heads up. Yeah, but then a week later, it's, it's all, it's a charade, man. It is, it totally is. Yeah. It's, it's unbelievable. It's just like with the tents. Yeah.

There were so many tents in the tenderloid. Tents everywhere. Well, then they're like, okay, we, we don't have the tents here no longer. We're putting them into housing. Yeah, we put them in the housing, they're dying up in their rooms. That's not helping. No. You're not addressing mental health, but it's not as stressing.

addiction. You're not addressing those two. You're calling it homelessness. That's not homelessness. It's mental health and addiction. Two different things. Yeah, you take them off the street and people think the problem is solved. It's just, it's perpetuating, but it's out of sight. Yes. And then when you're up in your room and you stop breathing, at least when you're down on the street, all the other users like, this guy ain't breathing, call 911. And they all start trying to revive him when he's up in that room or she's up in that room. There's nobody there. What was it like buying drugs? your first time as a cop it was fun you dress up really disheveled kind of homeless looking you get real bummy you get your hands real dirty you get your nails real dirty because

they'll look at your hands will look at your your shoes and you walk through but there was so many of them out there you just give them a head nod they're like come here what do you need do you remember that when you first went up to narcotics that very first time you bought do you remember the guy you bought it from oh yeah yeah about crack from hondurne what did you say to him and let me get a 50, 50 shot. Yeah. And that's back in the day, because it was cracked, they'd wrap it up and put it in their mouth.

What? They hold it in their mouth. They hold mouths full of crack. So they can swallow it? So they can swallow it when the cops come. They can take water and swallow it. Then they puke it out or they shit it out. And then they clean it up and resell it.

So we're talking about potentially shit recycled crack that people are buying out of somebody's mouth. Yes. But what happens, if you're a real crack addict, you don't care. So you're really, real crack at it, you don't care. So it got to where they started saying, open up your mouth, I'm going to put it in your mouth. And what? I was letting him do it. You, sir, are fucking disgusting. I was letting him do it because I was, I was, well, I was going off the five second rule. If I get it out within five seconds, it's like something that touched the ground. So just so you know,

that works with kids, but that's made up. You know that that rule isn't real, right? Yeah. It's like one of my kids drop something. I was like, you can go ahead and eat it. Yeah, That's pseudo-scientific. I believe that whatever bacteria, what was in that person's mouth, is now and yours. My God. They would say, open your mouth. And if you said no, they'd be like, your cop get away. So I was like, no, fuck that.

Open your mouth. Go ahead. And I'd let them throw it in. I'd pull it out and I'd pay for it. And then I'd get the arrest. So I did that for a while. You know, the things you learn, Michael, that you start your day with that you think you're never going to?

But that was like a big thing for the cops to drive through the tenderloin and you'd see them all stand on corners, they stick right out. Yeah. And you pop the door of the car and they take the water and they swallow it. And then the cop drives away. And they're like, I just put 20 rocks down my stomach. I got to get it out so I can go sell it. Yeah. And then they're going to puke that up, put it back in their mouth after they clean it. Then they're going to put it in your mouth. Yeah. I know. All right. Life's about the choices. I wanted the arrest. I wanted to be the best. So six weeks. So is that what you did for six weeks? You would just buy and then.

Just buy the tender line. And we would wrap up. like 20, 30 bodies at a time. How do you do that? One day. One day, 20, 30 people. How do you do that without them associating you with the end result? Greed. They would just come in and another wave of them would come in. And another wave of them would come in. Wow. Okay. I had one guy sell to me three times. And when he put the dope in my hand, he was like, I haven't seen you in a while, you know? And I said, oh, I haven't seen you. And then he put it in my hand. And he was like, oh, shit. Like. He put two.

Now I know who he is and he got arrested. But it's greed that blinds them. They're blinded by greed because there's so many people out there. If they wave me off, I'm like, yeah, no problem. And I'll walk down the street and they'll be like, no, no, no, no, like I'm going to lose the sale. Yeah, it's not like there's a lack of competition. But what happened was we get 20, 30 at a time and a day, probably in a four to six hour

period. We'd be booking 30 people, 20, 30 people. And then it got to where I can sit in the stand at court and I can say, I walked up, I asked him for a 20. I gave him money that was marked. He gave me the 20. My cover officer was watching. He's seen that I engaged in a hand-to-hand, and he had the arrest team move in.

And then it got to where, okay, well, the cover officer has to write a statement, too. And then it got to where, okay, the arresting officers all have to write statements, too. If I said something in court on the stand, the judges would say, and they'd say, well, who's there to say that didn't happen? And the judges back then, back in the day, would be like, if also Elmore said it happened, it happened. Then it got to work. I don't know. I need somebody else to verify that that happened. Why do you think that occurred?

What was the change there? The judges, the judges didn't want to stand up for the officers. Why? I think they got really liberal. I mean, there was new groups of judges coming in. A lot of your judges are public defenders. So then when from me doing 20 to 30 arrests went down to we're only doing six because we all have to write statements and reports. So that just choked the whole process down to nothing.

So we'd go on a search warrant. I'd be the case agent on the search warrant. We'd crack a door. We did tons of search warrants. We cracked tons of doors. And I had to write a report. And I'd write who was there and who did what and blah, blah, blah. Then it got to where this officer found this.

So he's got a write statement. this officer was with the people that were detained, so he's got to write a statement. They just choked it way down. And that's part of the whole proactive, reactive thing. It became like we can go through the, we'd be able to go through the projects back in the day and crack three, four doors in a morning.

By the time we hit one now, everybody's got paperwork. So we'd have to shut it down. Yeah, the wheels of bureaucracy do not move quickly. No, you used to be able to put a tracker on a car in public. And then you had to get a search warrant to put a tracker on a car. Or if a guy has an ankle bracelet on, he's considered under arrest if he's got the ankle bracelet on to be monitored by the sheriff's office because he's out on a court case. So it's, he's pretty much still serving time.

Shouldn't you need a warrant to put a tracker on a car? We didn't back in the day if it was in public. If the car was in public, we do now. Okay. I don't know where I land on that. one. I feel like it's, I mean, it should be justified. And if it is, you know, use the AI tool to write the word and get that done. No, that's true. But, and then, okay, so someone's got an ankle bracelet. I'm not talking to ankle bracelet. No, but he's got a key to earn your way into that one. Yeah. Well, I got to pull paperwork to be able to monitor it. Oh, I just figured they were consistently monitored. They were. And then I'll send that stop, too. I guess that's a little bit of a different one because you have, like you said, you're considered under arrest while wearing the. bracelet, which is correct. Yeah. Huh. All right. So after that six weeks, you make it through, they're like, you'll never want to stay here. 26.0. 9 years later, you're still there. Yeah.

So what happened after that six weeks other than obviously that you were still there? I just clicked with everybody. We were a unit of like 80 of us. Great team. Great group of guys. we are on an offsite. We had an office on the offsite from all the other officers. I'm assuming that is for discretion and the ability to come to work and not be directly associated with law enforcement.

Yeah. And then we worked with the feds. We worked with DEA a bunch, ATF. We did a bunch with them. We, even during a war demo, it was like when we had demos, demonstrations, tons of demonstrations in San Francisco, we worked alongside TAC

because we were such a tight knit unit that we worked really work. really well together. So we trained together. And when TAC would work the demonstrations back in the day, narcotics would work alongside them on it. Who would, like demonstration as in people would come in and want to see what you guys do? No, demos like demonstrating against things. Got you. I thought you meant a dog on a show. No, no, like demonstrating against things. San Francisco's famous for that. If anything happens within the United States, that weekend, they're marching in the streets. Oh, got you. okay, I got my, I got my wires crossed on that one.

Now I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Okay. How does it progress? So you go, you're a guy who for six weeks went, you've demonstrated clearly that you can buy on the street. So you're street savvy. Where does it go after that? How do they decide where you sit?

I mean, what's the progression? Well, they assigned me to a HUD group, housing urban development group. And all we did was, we did projects. That's all we did was drug cases within the different projects within San Francisco. Francisco and they're throughout the city all over the place. So I worked on that unit and the 9-11 hit and they defunct HUD and they took the money and put it into terrorism. So HUD was no longer around. What did you get from there? I worked in one of the units and then they downsized narcotics. It wasn't the flavor. It became violent crime task force stuff instead of

narcotics. So when they were downsizing it, they told me, hey, we're going to send you to DEA, you and a couple guys, because we don't want to lose you because you're doing non-cover work. So I went up to DEA. And I worked on a Metro Task Force. It was under DEA, but it was a Metro task force. So it was ATF, DEA, HSI, U.S. Marshals, a couple of us, locals. And we worked in a unit at the Fed building. We did everything from street level enforcement to wiretaps. So how does that work? Because there is a difference, obviously, in credentials between state and federal law enforcement. When you're attached to a federal agency like that, are you working under their authorities? Or do you still, does that question make sense?

I'm cross-designated. Okay. I work under both. So I swear in as a Fed. Oh, interesting. So I have federal powers for arrest as well as state powers. Okay. Which is kind of weird because federal agents can only enforce.

federal laws. I was going to say oftentimes they have to partner up with the local unit and it's a little bit more by with and through. Yeah, because of a federal agency, someone breaking into a car. Yeah. There's not a federal charge for that. So it becomes a citizen's arrest. If that federal agent detains that person, they sign a citizen's arrest because they're considered a citizen. Interesting. Because they're not, it's not under a federal charge. So I had both, which they need us there. So you had both, but they didn't. That's interesting. That's correct. So that's their mechanism to really get down to that street level enforcement. Yes, we would arrest people on state charges and then we would work it up to federal. So we would start the case off at a state level.

And then once it was ready for Fed, we would just adopt it up and take it on the federal level. How did you, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but you would, as you described, you would go to court and testify against the people that you had been involved in at least in the investigation. What was what got them to court, correct? Yes. How do you do that and protect your ability to work undercover?

Well, in the beginning, when we first started doing, that was another thing to change. They would try to keep the by officer out of the state case, the San Francisco case. They would try to have the cover officer or one of the arrest team officers.

It's called Prop 115, where they talked up, like, my arrest team officer talked to me prior to the case, going to court, and he would say, Officer Elmore said he did this, he said he did this,

he said, did this. To protect the anonymity of the UC, right? Yes. And then what happened? That kind of goes out the window. So they start fronting out the by officers and telling them, no, we need you on the stand. The defense is like, no, I want that officer to tell us what happened. So that kind of, that's another, you know, there's a lot of things that there's a lot of

speed bumps that were put in through my career. Yeah. So I'm at the feds by then. So I don't even worry about going to court in San Francisco because I'm just doing federal cases. But when you did go to court. in San Francisco. I mean, at some point in time, not that these are, the people that you were dealing with were necessarily like high-level criminal cartel networks that were, you know, doing that

when they weren't going to Mensa competitions. Sure. You know what I mean? No, absolutely. You're still, people see you. They, you know, even dumb people have pattern recognition. You know, how did you manage that? We would do a lot of different disguises. I mean, we would wear wigs. Oh, hell yeah. We would put makeup on. We had these, there was a, there was a, there was a, There was a place on 7th or 9th Street that sold theatrical makeup. So we would go into there and they had things that I can run it down my face. It would turn it into a scar. It looked like a real scar.

So we would do stuff that would throw them off. Like I would put one from my forehead all the way down to my chin and they would be like, man, what happened to you? And I was like, oh, someone slash me. Hey, let me get a 20 shot. And they'd be like, oh, yeah, okay. So we would do a lot of things that would, that would, throw him off. Were you married during this time? Was I? Were you married? Oh no, I was married prior to

going to the sheriff's office. I was married with, I had my, I had my last daughter, I have three daughters, I had the last one going through the academy at the sheriff's office. And that was a thing. I was paying for my kids to be born when I was a contractor. You know what I mean with the health insurance and stuff? Yeah. I had just enough to cover us, but I would have to pay for pregnancy and birth. So this was like a godsend. You know, this, my last one was covered by the department. I mean, a godsend for medical clearance and coverage. I don't know if your wife.

Are you guys still married? Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I've been married 40 years. I don't know if your wife at the time would have called it a godsend, but yes. How did you pitch to her this concept of, or did you pitch to her this concept of what you wanted to do and what you were doing? She doesn't get nervous about things. She was really good about it. in like I kind of related to your book in a sense that once I got into police work,

I like dedicated everything to it. Yeah, it suffers last. Yes. How'd that work out for your family? It was, it was okay. I'm a way better grandfather than I was a father. I'll tell you that. Yeah.

By far. I was not there for a lot of things. I was working all the time. My phone I had, because I was, I was UC, so I had burner phones. They'd be going off at two in the morning, three in the morning. I'm answering and I'm talking to people that think I'm some crook. Hey, what are you doing? Are you out?

Hey, come by here, you know, or something. And it was 24-7. How would you explain that to them when the burner phone goes off and you're in bed with your wife at 2 a.m. And they're like, shoot, she would be like, Jesus Christ, dude. Come on, man. I'd be like, I'm just trying to, you know, I don't even know how I go over. But I got, I did get a little obsessed with work for a long period of time. where I missed a lot of stuff.

How did you make amends for that with your wife? I am now. How's that going? Good, good, good. What do you think the impact of your job was on her? Oh, it was heavy. Not nervous-wise. She was always like, if you get shot or you get stabbed,

that's on you, you know. It's kind of rude, but also accurate. Very much so. I was never worried about I wasn't worried about getting hurt. I was more, I got a big rush. How could you not be worried about getting hurt? I don't know why the stupidest thing in the world, dude.

I used to, you know what I worried about getting a claustomy bag? Because I got stabbed or shot in the stomach. Okay. I would be searching people at the jail when I was young and I'd be like, what the hell's that? And they'd be like, oh, a claustomy bag. I got stabbed. So, and I'd be like, how the fucking you wear that? They don't have a choice.

They don't, but I was like, I always worried about that. I didn't even worried about dying. I worried about having a claustle me back. Even in those environments when you're operating undercover, you weren't, I mean, and maybe that's the key. I've never done anything undercover. Maybe that's the key to being able to operate there. But you also, if you didn't have some semblance of concern,

that probably put you in the realm of being a sociopath. I kind of, sometimes I thought I had like tombstone courage where I didn't care. But I just got a thrill out of, okay, it's happening right now. He's walking to my car. you know, like I'm buying a gun from him. And he had a gun on him. And he knows I got five grand in my pocket.

He can easily rip me off. And it would run through my head. But it was a big thrill. It was a big thrill. And then when it was over, I was like, it was just like, it's kind of like, they say like, you know, like when you get a tattoo, how it hurts like hell when you're getting it.

And then when it's over, it's like you're very relieved. You're like, whew. I think it depends on where you get the tattoo. Yeah. Like we both have tattoos on our arms. Not that, not that bad. My back, my upper neck and my kidneys were rough. How'd you like the back of the elbow? That was a little bit of a ride. Have you put your hand like this and they start getting to work? Oh yeah, because there's no meat there, man. You're going straight into the phone. Like, uh, whatever shading you're doing is good enough. But yeah, yeah, I'll come back. Yeah. Um, yeah, I just, I just, I got a rush out of it. And,

And I probably got pretty sloppy in a sense that they would call me, like ATF would call and go, hey, we got this guy wants to sell some rifles. This guy got arrested. He's going to introduce you to him. I was pretty much, let's go. Let's go do it. I didn't take a lot of steps to see what that person, who that person was about and everything. Why?

I just want to do it. No, I get one to do it. But if you want to continue to do it. I know. I know. It was, it was time for me to go. It was time for me. I tried to burn myself.

Like I tried to, I went on an interview right when I retired on a podcast. And I said, okay, I'll put my face out there. I'm going to burn myself. Which for clarity was only two years ago. So this is relatively recent. Yes. I said, I'm put my face out there. People were like, what did you do that for?

I was like, because I'm done. And then I did a couple things after that people asked me to do. And I was all, I was on it right away. And I was like, know the reason I did that was to kind of memorialize stuff for my kids and to stop doing what I'm doing. And then I had the opportunity to do some stuff and I did it. There is a word in the English vocabulary that could help you here. And it's no.

That's true. Yeah. Nobody can force you to say that one. I always, I know. I would always get to like, I want to see if I can do it. I want to see if I can do this. I understand that. And that works out until it doesn't.

I did a case for. 2005 where a guy killed his girlfriend and she was nine months pregnant. And he fled. He was down in L.A. He got arrested in L.A. And they were going down to pick him up to bring him back up here. They needed more evidence. And I was doing my part-time gig as an investigator.

The 960 or whatever. 960. And they called an ass and I was all over it. Oh, I could do that. Yeah, no problem. I'll do that. And then I asked my bosses and they're like, okay. I mean, the tipping thing was she was pregnant. Yeah.

So they were like, go ahead and do it. So I went down south. They booked me into Kern County and I was in jail down there. The people booking you in, at what point do you pass between people knowing what you're doing and then not? There's only a couple people now when I go into the jails. A lot of the deputies don't know. Okay. Because if they start talking out loud, everybody inside those jails, I did some stuff up in San Mateo County, too, with some gang stuff.

If they start talking, you have the guy sweeping the floors, the guy's serving the food, all them. They start talking to each other. It's going to get through like wildfire. And that's going to be a death. There's a cop inside there. So they book me into Kern County. They pick him up in L.A. They bring him there.

They tell him he can use a restroom in Kern County, drop him in a cell with me. They pull us both out, shackle us, ankle iron us, and then bring us into the van. And he was like, where you go? I go San Mateo. And he's like, oh, I'm going San Mateo too. So I said, okay. So then we're riding up. I have a wire on me recording.

And we're both in the back of the van in these little cages. And he's like, what did you do? I said, I killed somebody. And he was like, I killed two. And I was like, wow, beat me. So I just kind of let him talk. And he talked about it. And then when we got up, six hour ride,

When we got up, they booked us both in the same cell, and he was like, hey, you've been hell of cool to me. You might want to stay away from me inside the jail. And I said, why's that? He goes, it was my girlfriend that I killed. And I said, well, you got charged with two. And he was like, yeah, she was pregnant with my baby. And I was like, oh, okay. So I got him to dump the whole thing.

Why would he say stay away from me in jail? Because he killed a baby. And is this going into that hierarchy, like the prison system seems to actually have a better or more self-correcting system oftentimes in society. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they handle their shit.

Yeah, they do. They do. Okay, so you end there, you get booked. How do they extricate you from that environment without, again, you know, because you're booked into this system. It's like, hey, Bob, come over here. Well, they put us in separate. They pull us out and say, hey, we're going to bring you guys up to your rooms. Yeah.

There's six floors. Yeah. So he's going his way. I'm going my way. But how do, I mean, again, other people, all you need is the wrong person to see the wrong thing. How do they get you out of there and back into, we'll call it the civilian world? They bring me back in. They dress me out like I'm an inmate with those inmates.

Yep. And then they release us all at the same time. So from start to finish, they make it look like I was in there. I mean, wouldn't a person with a room temperature IQ potentially think that the vehicle that they were being driven in for those circumstances? hours would have at least been wired. I mean, I kind of learned a thing about people in a sense that I keep my frequency open where they can talk to me. Yeah.

Everybody. And they want to talk. People want to confess to things. I think they feel like they need to let it out. I'm going to say, why do you think that is? I've been in homicide cases where I arrested people and we brought them up to homicide and they're like, okay, I'll talk about it. I don't know why.

It's like a cleansing maybe. I don't know. Can you see it when you're interviewing people who are not yet at that point when they're right at the precipice and ready to just come clean with it? Yes. What usually gets them over that? Comfort, I think. I think they feel comfortable to be able to say stuff to me. You mean comfortable with the person in the room they're talking to?

Interesting. Even knowing that what they say will determine the trajectory of their life going forward potentially. I don't think they think about it. it at the time. Huh. And I kind of set it up. Like when I'm in the van with him, I told him I'd been in prison before.

I did this and that. He'd only been to jail. He's never been to prison. He starts asking about how's it going. And I'm kind of mentoring him on it. So he's getting his guard down, guard down, guard down, guard down. And I never asked him a question,

a direct question. He was the one who came forward and told me. What ended up happened to have happened to that? He got 30 years to life, 30 to life. What does that actually mean in California, though? Like six months? No, no, no. He'll be in there for a while.

He'll be in there for a... He'll probably never get out. Because he'll come up... He's got to serve a certain amount of his prison term before he can even come up to review for parole. But with a crime like that, I don't think he'll... I think he'll... He'll... He's going to be one of the few that stay. How do they determine what is an appropriate sentence for the loss of two...

lives like that. Was it premeditated? Was it in the moment? I mean, not that it necessarily matters, but two lives were lost. What do they come up with 30 is the number? I don't know. I really don't. And then they oftentimes don't even serve the 30. We talk about it was the mandatory sentence portion of it, but you've got a lot in California right now getting out on things because they hit that, they have some law that they was at 65, I think it was. Now it's at 50. You're talking about the age of the person? Yes, that they can review now your case. Why does their age matter? I have no idea why they'd done it.

That was a new something. How about pack of lunch full of go, fuck yourself if you're going to go kill two people. I don't care what age you are. Because the people you killed, they don't get any more birthdays. I know. And that's, that was the reason I wanted to do that one. I wanted to, it was, I wanted to do it to see if I can do it, get him to talk. But I was kind of like a pregnant woman.

Jesus Christ, dude. I want to be in on this. Have you, do you ever watch documentaries, like crime documentaries? Yeah. Have you seen the more current one, maternal instinct? No. Burrell. Have you heard about this?

No. Michael? No, I'm not asking you to look it up. I was asking you if you've heard. No, I have no clue we've talked about it. The number of times I've gotten that answer from him on a... You can't expect to know this. Also followed up with exactly that, by the way.

versions of, okay, the documentary opens with a woman being pulled over on the side of the road. And she has a newborn baby in her hands claiming she's trying to make it to the hospital. Spoiler alert, everybody out there, I'm about to talk about where the documentary goes. So if you don't want to hear it, now is a good time to skip it. Come to find out she had faked a pregnancy with her husband. Now, maybe they weren't married. boyfriend or husband. They were living together.

She went and killed a pregnant woman, cut the baby out of the body. Oh, my God. And tried to sell it. She went into the hospital saying, I just gave birth to this. And the cops are like, we're going to bring the doctors in here and they're going to check. And a doctor goes in there and checks. And you can probably imagine what the doctor didn't find, which was a history of having a child. And then she still sits there and is telling both the law enforcement and the doctor.

No, I just gave birth to this. this baby. Wow. There's no sentence in the world. No. That is enough for that. I would agree with the death sentence. However, comma, can I get creative how we apply this? I mean, I'm willing to consult for free on this issue of creative death sentences, which I'm pretty sure violates most people's constitutional rights. So I understand why nobody is calling. I'm just saying it's a, it's a free service that I would offer. But I don't, there's no punishment in the world. True. That documentary will knock you on your ass and just shit.

Well, you've seen it. There's just the, the depravity of humans is unbelievable. Yeah. I had a case where one of my partners got killed at work. He got shot with, I think it was AK-47. Undercover officer doing the same thing? No, no, no, no, patrol officer.

And, no, he was working plain close. Okay. Isaac Espinosa was working plain close. Not to get into the case. but he was a good friend of mine. We ended up getting a co-conspirator after the fact. He was a gang member. He hooked up with one of his gang members,

and he told him what he did, and this guy panicked because he was like, I'm not going down for murder of a cop. So they ended up hooking me and my partner with him as a witness. We relocate him. We sit on him. And the... A suspect who killed Isaac, he was in jail and he was still conversing with that because he didn't know that guy, his partner, rolled on him.

So he started saying, as soon as they bring up the death penalty, I'm going to plea because I'm not going to sit in a cell worried about having them kill me. He said, I can sit in a, I remember listening to it. I can sit in a cell and read a book for the rest of my life. but I ain't going to worry about someone killed me. So we bring this to the DA, Kamala Harris, was the DA at the time. Vice President Harris? Yeah.

Okay. And we're all in a room. And I said, hey, he said, I don't even want to say the suspect's name. He's a piece of shit. He said that if they bring up the death penalty, he's going to plea. So our homicide inspectors were like, we should go out. after the death penalty. And if he please, that's better for the whole family,

not have to get it drug out for years and have to go over it. She agrees to it. The next day, she has a press conference. And the head of our union was there. He was pretty powerful at the time. San Francisco's unions have always been, police union has always been a pretty powerful thing.

And goes up to the podium and says, I will not seek the death penalty. She said that? Yeah. Why? And the president, Gary at that time, was like, what was that about? And she was like, it's politics. You wouldn't understand.

You're right. I don't understand. Fucking explain it to me. Yeah. Like, make that make sense. It was terrible. Terrible. Just everybody.

All the officers were just distraught about it. That she did that. So he drug it out and everybody had to go to court two years later, three years later, whatever it was for him to get life. When you get life in California, does that mean life? I don't know. The things have changed so much. I don't. Yeah.

I don't know. Man. What was that like going from working with just that state level authorities to that joint task force essentially where you had federal? It was a lot like going from an adult. I don't mean this negatively, but like JV, because SFPD is definitely not JV, but to varsity because you had all the other toys and money and agencies to work with. Yes. I was always a really good networker when I was just at narcotics. I worked with all the peninsular agencies, East Bay guys, Oakland PD, San Mateo. I worked with all of them.

So when I got up there, I still had a big click with all of them. So that's my thing. I constantly worked with a bunch of agencies. So it worked out real well because a lot of people stay away from the Fed. in a sense. And I was able to go in there and be like, hey, we'll do this case with you. We'll furnish the money. I can do the buys.

You guys are the ones that start at this case, but we can come in and really make it work. Why do people stay away from the feds? Don't understand them. And some of the federal agencies will big time you and take the case over. But the group I was with wasn't like that at all. Does it matter at the end of the day, whether or not they big time you? I mean, at the end of the day, isn't the net result what you're looking for? It's not so much the big time.

It's the more of not having any control over it. I always made sure whoever started it, even if you're a patrol officer, that you rode this out with us. Yeah. Not we're taking it from you. I'll tell you the outcome. Yeah, I'll tell you the outcome. No, we take them with me the whole way. What's up everybody?

Welcome to my kitchen at our rented house. It's not a big deal. We don't have to celebrate it. Today's episode is brought to you by Firecracker Farm, and I wanted to take the opportunity to actually show you the stuff I have at the house because this stuff is absolutely amazing. So we got the big boy, right? This is the Three Kings. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm kind of a spice baby.

So I don't use this one that much, but I do love this one. Pineapple. It's delightful. And look at this thing. It's a little plunger. I'm not going to push it because the dogs are on the floor. They don't need to experience that. Then we have vanilla heat.

Absolutely love it. You can probably hear the dogs running around in the background. Absolutely. And then I don't even know what this one is, but I have now put this on everything. Every protein source that I have, I put it on, I've put it on fruit. I know people who put it into cocktails. If you like spicy stuff, if you want to enhance the flavor of everything that you're going to be eating or drinking, I would highly recommend it. I've actually started traveling with it as well.

Now, people will say, that's pretty tiny. What happens when you run out? Check this out. Refill packet. This one happens to be the pineapple express. Call this one medium spice. I like this stuff because it improves everything about the food, but what I really like about it is Alex and his family. This is a family-run business. Living the American dream, his whole family is involved, and I care far more about that than anything else.

So if you want to enhance your entire experience when it comes to food and beverage, check out everything that they have to offer. You won't regret it. And again, remember, Christmas is right around the corner. Stocking stuffers, they're going to appreciate it. Firecracker.com, back to the show. Yeah, yeah, we'll take it from here. The professionals are here, we'll take it. That's going to rub people the wrong way for sure. Absolutely. Absolutely.

How close do you think you've got to something getting out of hand? You were saying that it was about the rush for you and you're selling or buying a gun from a guy who you know has a gun and you got five grand in cash. Hard to say because people will ask me, oh man, how close do you think you got to get and kill? I'm like, well, I don't know the answer to that because, you know, it's not the Matrix where you're watching bullets fly back. past you. I had the one case where I was buying guns out of San Jose and I was buying probably there's a video of it. I was buying like six, eight guns at a time. They'd just bring me down these like groups of guns. Like I'd have a revolver. I'd have a Smith & West and MP I'd have and it

was just all these and I'd put them like in a pillowcase and buy them from them. Would you do these in like when they're selling them to you? Are you talking about out of vehicles or out of this was out of a car? I've done. I'm out of houses and stuff, but this is at a car. What are they just pop the trunk and say, hey, this is the John Wick's Somali A room? I hook up with, I hook up with an informant who tells me, I'm going to take you to meet these guys, but I don't want the informant to go with me. So I show up to it. I tell them, hey, the informant flaked out on me.

It's just me. Well, I got 10 grand in my pocket. I jump in the back seat. They start passing me guns. And every time it was a, it was a black male and it was a little Latin male in this little skinny latin male. You could tell he was the devil. He had scorpions tattooed on his ears. He had his face all tattooed. And he would always pull the last gun out and unload it and then hand it to me. So I was always like kind of like, why is he doing that? And then on the third one, he told the informant,

I'm going to rob him. And they didn't want me to go out on it. And I wanted to go out on it. I wanted to see what he would do. So slightly unhealthy headspace, but okay. Yes, probably not the probably not the smartest thing. I was very lucky that people, that my bosses let me go out and do things. My boss at that time was now the chief of police in San Francisco, Derek Liu. So he was my boss there. He was my sergeant.

So I said, I want to go out there and see what he does. And he was like, oh, Jesus. So I go out there. I'm buying guns for like the third time. He's selling me Dracos. and a couple of assault rifles. Some AK4, no, not AK4-7s.

I don't even know shit about rifles and stuff. There's 47s, there's 74. It's, it's, ARs. AR 15, yep. AR-15. Yeah.

So he sells me some AR-15s. And he's got one gun left and he's holding in his lap. And I made sure I sat behind him. So I carried a little 38 featherweight on my ankle. That's the only thing I went in with. And I pulled it out and I put it into the seat.

And I asked him, I said, hey, dude, why do you always have a load of gun? And he was like, oh, no, it's no big deal, Carlos. It's for the ride. It's for the ride down. And I said, really? And I thought, like, dude, he was looking at me and I'm looking at him and I'm thinking he's going to do it now. I was just going to cap him right through the back of the seat. That would have been a robust amount of paperwork.

Yes. How are you legally within your rights as a police, it's not even rights, authorities as a police officer at that point to take that action? If he was going to harm me, I would have the right to harm him. Man, we're deep in the trenches at this point.

So you're in that vehicle with him. How close is the next level of help to you in a situation like that? Are you being followed by a car? No, there's a group of, there's an arrest came around, they're not very close. Yeah, because I mean...

You're talking about is going to sort itself in seconds. No, anytime I would do a buy inside a car, they're probably 30 seconds, a minute away. That's a long time. That's a long time. Yeah. So I always knew I was on my own.

Would it be uncommon if you, as the UC, you know, having that featherweight, would they, if you were armed, assuming it wasn't with a police issue in 1911 or something like that? Right. Would they have been that surprise that you were armed? Or would that, would that fall into kind of the,

legend of the person that you were portraying. No, I didn't want them to, like, a lot of times, like, you go to do a buy and I'd go into someone's house or something. They, like, give me a hug. Hey, and I could feel them. Poor man pat down. Yes. I could feel them checking.

If you had had a gun on you, what do you think their reaction would have bit? Because it doesn't necessarily mean you're a cop. No, it doesn't necessarily mean a cop. They're carrying a gun, but then I didn't want to get to the explanation of it. Or I didn't want them to get nervous. Okay. And now he feels a gun, so he pulls his gun out on me. And now we're at a standstill or something or I end up shooting him.

Okay. All right. So it was a mechanism of the... But I always thought like, if I did a buying a car, I would always position myself. I'd tilt the seat back. I would pull the seat back, lean it back, bring the steering wheel up. Because I would think, okay, if he pulls a gun out, I'm going to have to go for that gun. There's no way I'm going to be able to pull a gun on a guy who already has a gun on me.

Oh, you're losing that 10 out of 10. Yes. So I'm going to grab those arms and I'm going to pin him to the ceiling or I'm going to pin him to the floorboard and I'm going to drive myself in him into the window of the passenger side. And I'm going to hold him. I'm not going to try to do anything, but hold him and hope that 30 seconds is quick. Did you, I mean, is there a school to teach this stuff, a variety of schools? It sounds like a lot of this was just OJT. It was.

It was. I went to a federal school. The Fed sent me to a school down at Quantico. It was, I think, a one-week school. It was an FBI DEA school. I think FBI put it on it. It was Donnie Brascoe school. Okay.

And he was the undercover FBI guy for the mob, correct? And I got certified down there. What does a week provide you? Not much. For them to say, I was certified. So if something happens to me, they could be like, well, he's certified for here. A week is not a whole lot. No, it's not.

And the situations that you're describing are, like you said, 30 seconds to a minute may be the remainder of your life, depending on how that goes. And like when I would go into people's houses, dude, they would be probably minutes and minutes away if something happened. If something had happened, are they coming through the door, just smash the door? They would have a tact team. Okay. They would have a tactical team to come in. Yeah, so they're coming in hot for sure. They're coming in very hot.

And I always had like, if I went and did buys and stuff, I always had a team that stayed geared up. in a van waiting to come in to pull a rescue for me if something happened. What do you think looking back on your career, what's the farthest you ever hung it out? Like probably the most dangerous situation you were in. Nothing really happened, but I think pissing off the cartel. I had a... Traditionally not a good idea.

No, no, no. I had this, me, I was working, one of my partners from San Mateo worked on the task force with me, Cody Farkava. And he, me and him worked together and we were working a lot of big cases

and we were ripping a lot of dope out of East Palo Alto. And he's just a big, a Pacific Islander guy. And they put a head out on him to,

uh, to take him out. Did they know he was a police officer? They knew that we were ripping big dope. Okay. It came out from an informant

that they want to do a hit on him to, to show. Oh, like, this is for ripping off all that dope. If they had known he was a cop, do you think they still would have put the hit out? No, that's why they put it out. Oh, so they did know he was a cop. They knew he was a color.

Because I feel like even that is crossing. They called him the gorilla because he was an East Pawwalt. He was a big Pacific Islander. He was super racist, but I know. They called him the gorilla and they put the green light out on the gorilla. And, man, even that is a wild step for the, you're going to get some heat for targeting a police officer. Oh, yeah. So what happens is they gave a moniker to who was going to do.

the hit and the name was like Nighthawk or something and we were able to find out from informants who it was so we go to the house and uh the narcot same-antan narcotics unit i go with them to the house and i believe he was on probation or parole and we searched the house and can't find anything but his wife had a stroke when she was given birth so she was kind of like in a hospital bed setting and all kind of, I wouldn't say twist it up, but she was in a bad position. Yeah, I get it, yeah. But every time we got next to that room or her,

he would lose his shit. So we were like, it's in here. So we had medics come lift her up off the bed. They didn't want to. We were like, yeah, and he was still on a fit. I'm going to sue the shit out of you guys. Lift it up. He had an assault rifle underneath her.

How does their attitude change when you discover that? Is it a different tune? Yes, we went and do the interview after. Oh, yeah, but I wasn't going to do it. I wasn't going to do it. Finally, he kind of broke that. Oh, yeah, it was out there. And, you know, I think he said he got offered,

but he wasn't going to do it. But, I mean, we found the assault rifle at the house. How did the cartel figure out it was, what did they call him, the monkey? The gorilla. The gorilla. How did they figure out it was him? Well, that probably visually, they figured that out.

But how did they figure out he was a cop? Everybody knew in that area. He was in East Palo Alto. to a cop before he became a sheriff. So everybody knew him. He's very distinguished looking a big Pacific Islander. Probably tough to do UC work. Yes. Oh, absolutely. But we were both on the Fed Task Force and we were we were getting information to rip off big loads coming in that were being transported in. So you start taking a bunch of their dope and pissed them off. If that happens, if you're identified like that by the cartel, you hear about that from an informant.

internally how do those agencies view that because clearly somebody on your task course has been positively identified what do they do with that is at the end of your run with them you go no it wasn't he ended up passing away he had a illness since he was a kid and he ended up passing away at a young age but um no it wasn't it was we dealt with it and moved on i mean i figure i have again no exposure or true understanding really other than the conversation with you on how this stuff works, but not everybody has to be in the field, right? Like if you were blown for whatever, say you make national news for something in your faces out there. I'm sure you could still support these, but just not as the guy in the street doing the

thing. Yes, yes. I mean, Cody was more of a jump out guy where he was on the street and taking people on and stuff. I've heard the term jump out boy. Yeah. Buddy of mine from the, let me see, is it Chicago? Yeah, Chicago area. He recommends it. He said it was one of his favorite jobs. Yeah, that's, it's, it's, yeah. Yeah, I had to have him disguised it. I'm sorry, what, jump out boy? I don't know if that's an actual evaluation bullet point, but... Yeah, that was a big thing in narcotics.

Like, when we first started, you'd go in these... They had this project that's no longer there called Double Rock, and you'd pull in, and they'd all be standing there. All the guys that were in there, and you'd pop the door of the car, and you'd see one of them start running, so you'd take off after him. And then the car would go around the corner and try to block him off, because you knew he had a gun. So he would take off, because, you know, he was... You'd start walking towards him and he'd say, you'd see him around and he'd be like, that guy's got a gun. So 27 years you did this line of work, essentially.

How much of a dent do you think you made in the drug trade or the war on drugs? Zero. No, seriously. I can only imagine that that's tough to say, so what can we do to make? If you were given the levers of power, staying inside of our, you know, constitutional values and rights, what would you do differently? What are we either doing that isn't effective? Maybe the answer to that currently is everything from the way we're approaching it.

But what are we not doing that is not, how are we at this three decades later? And it doesn't seem to be, if you were to put it in the W or the L column, I think most rational people would say if it's greater than 50% towards the L column. I mean, if you really had to blow it up and do something crazy, invade Mexico. It's where it's all coming. And everybody knows it is. Everybody knows it. We won't even call that an openly held secret. We'll just call that information.

Absolutely. That's where it's all coming from. Absent invading Mexico. Is there a policy or something that could shift? I mean, we're talking about the security at the border, the way. interdiction tactics. I mean, other than that, what else do you think would have a large impact? Well, there's not enough people. I mean, there's not enough customs people at the border to be able to handle all the searches.

When they throw enough at it, too, that they expect a percentage of it to be seized anyway. Well, you're doing random searches. Random searches isn't going to stop it. Do you think it is solvable? Or does this human nature play into this? No, no, no. I think it's solvable because you've seen it get a lot worse. So I think that if you can see it get a lot worse, you can see get a lot better. How, though? I mean, you're the stricter laws. I don't know if strict, well, I mean, just using alone not being a felony anymore is crazy.

I mean, you go on the corners, you're walking down through the tunnel and you're watching people injecto. You're watching people smoke fentanyl. If they went to jail, and like it said before, that you put them in for a minute. Some of them get clarity. Some of them decide they don't want to sit on the street, shoeless and in a corner and do dope. Is that through the forced sobriety?

Yes, it is. And if you take away the, if you take away the user, then it makes it harder for the trafficker to sell. I don't know how we solve the demand issue. You know, the addiction, the people who, I mean, if people weren't buying it, I have a hard time believing that the cartels would be as rich as they are now.

I don't know how we solve that particular aspect of it. I don't know if laws, well, I think it's been proven that law is actually for the, for the motivated person or maybe the person that just doesn't care, they're not actually effective at all. No, but it's education. And, okay, so you say it, you know, people say that they're educating against drugs, but then they're legalizing it. and they're making it easier for them to do it.

So there's no consequences. Yeah. It was, obviously, this isn't in the U.S., but I was up in Vancouver City in Canada years ago, and I walked down. I don't think they call it Skid Row. They might. I know that's generally associated with the area in Los Angeles,

but a buddy of mine was like, hey, we should go check this out. I watched a guy, there was cops on the corner, and I watched a guy inject a needle into his arm. I have no idea what was in it. change his mind. He was on one side of the street. Change his mind for whatever reason,

left the needle dangling, picked up his stuff, and just walked to the other side and finished in direct view of the police watching him. I mean, I don't know where that leads. Well, I mean, that's kind of a problem in San Francisco, too.

I mean, before, if I seen you injecting drugs, I placed you under arrest, I take you in and book you. Possession of narcotics. Now that's a misdemeanor charge. So when I'm driving by and watch you inject, what am I going to get out of that but writing a ticket in a report and I'm writing it

and he's got a hundred other tickets in his pocket does the infrastructure even exist given that that has a problem that has grown in size scope and scale to arrest those people I mean does it exist to put them in a place for a period of time to force that sobriety where maybe they can make a better choice or would it overwhelm the system I think it was far more effective when we did that than way it is now. and how it is now. And like you had said before, that's, that's boots on the ground. That's doing it.

And that's one of the reasons we went reactive instead of being proactive. Being proactive, there were days they would call us and say, hey, you're putting all the users in jail. And we hated it because it was like, God, dude, got to deal with all these guys. Why would they pick days to say that in other days not to? Because we'd be doing traffickers and then they'd be like, okay, now you're going to do the users today. So we would grab the users And then we had to deal with sickness And abscess with maggots crawling out of their

Abscesses and all this other shit And couldn't clear the doctor And jail wouldn't take them But we were getting them off the street They also had the opportunity They also had the opportunity For programs right away They don't have the opportunity for programs right away

They have a new thing they just started Called the Reset Center Which I don't really believe in it It's if they see you use in or your 11-5 if you're under the influence they bring you to the reset center when you're high you're not going to want to even think about a program

probably not the best time to ask about you you're going to need a few days for some clarity get some food in your stomach take a shower and then think about it what's your sense of morale at SFPD right now I think it's good

I think I think it rolls off these people's backs the officers man They just do their job, man. They just do it. And like the officers are, people don't really look at officers. Officers are problem solvers.

They're not arrest people that just go out and arrest people. They're constantly solving problems. They're necessary, like, what resource can I use for this? Or where can we take them from this? We can take them from this. For an example, there's an officer in the Tenderwine Officer Katz. He goes into a doorway at night. It's on camera, body one camera.

And he sees people sleep and he checks on them. And it's a mother and two kids, little kids. She said she got kicked out. She had nowhere to live. Stay overnight. So he calls for resources. They can't find a room for her. How can you not find a room for her with all this money that's being put into the system?

For all these nonprofit organizations, they don't have a room for her. did they not have room for her because they didn't want to bring kids into the shelter or I don't know for what reason but they couldn't he uses his own credit card to put her in a hotel that that shouldn't happen I'm glad it did no it's good that what he did yeah I mean that was great that he did no officer I'm just glad to hear that that morality still exists but they hear that there's no beds yeah that's a lot of hotels in San Francisco yeah or you'll go to court and they'll be like your your honor I'm I'm going to try to to get him in a program, we're on the list. There shouldn't be a list. If you're trying to effectively combat this drug use or this mental health, they should be able to be put somewhere right away. It shouldn't be, I'm on a 30-day list. That's why I asked if the infrastructure actually exists to be able to do that.

I don't think there's a lack of funding. No, it's all being wasted. Yeah, Los Angeles had some really information or interesting information come out about the amount of money that they've either spent or not on affordable housing and, you know, the things that have occurred, how many billions of dollars they've thrown at the homelessness issue or, forgive them. Or look at the Nick Shirley thing with the hospice care. They weren't, they spent billions of dollars on hospice care and those are empty offices. Yeah. And then what do they do up in Sacramento? They pass a law that private journalists can't

investigate anymore. Government. What the fuck is that all about? about. That was insane. I mean, he was up there going, why are you doing this? And they were like, they were disrespecting him. Like, dude, he, he just peeled a scab off of something. Yeah. I wish it could have gone a step deeper because the treatment of hospice, my sister was a hospice nurse. So she might have had a home office that she reported back to, but she was off in people's homes. You know what I mean? So I don't know what they expected to find at the actual office itself. I'm not saying that what they found wasn't bullshit. Did you see that when they showed that? Did you, did you watch that? I saw not the entire thing. Yeah, they're empty offices with no desk or

anything there. And in, and one office would have like three, four businesses in it. Yeah. Oh, I'm not saying what he found was anything other than what appeared to be absolutely criminal. I'm just saying you're not going to find probably an office full of hospice nurses because they're out providing. No, but I would have rather than proved it wrong to me. 100%. Instead of saying, oh, Oh, he's running around starting shit. Let's pass a law that they can't do that anymore. How did that law pass?

I know. Like, what? Isn't the role of the press to hold the government accountable? Hmm? Yeah. No, I know. How much longer do you live in California? Oh, I got, I'm not, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.

I got eight grandkids. Two of my son-in-laws are cops in San Francisco. My other son-in-law works for, he's a contractor group supervisor over at Stanford College. So they all got good jobs and stuff. Yeah. My daughters all came out of school and became dispatchers. Really? Yeah.

That is an unsung, not talked about portion of the first responder world. Oh, yeah. The amount of trauma that is dumped on those operators, holy cow. I know all the time. Can you imagine being on the receiving? The conduit on some of these calls, listening to people take their last breath, listening to people. You know, there's the... Suicide, they call and they say, hey, nobody's done this.

This is me doing it. Click. And you hear it, pow. And they're like, okay. What? Are there, uh, I hope there are equal resources available to the dispatchers as to the, we'll call them the front line officers. I don't know the correct terminology for it.

But does, does that exist as well, too, the resources for them? I don't think enough exists for any of them, even the office. Would the officers take it even if it did? No, because they're afraid they would lose their position. Well, then we're going to catch 22. No, it is. It really is. It really is.

But it's, if you, they have a really good unit in San Francisco. They have a good behavior science unit, but you'd be afraid to go to them because that might change your whole, they might pull you off street. You might need to be pulled off the street. True. But then I think a lot of them don't. It's like you could tell me this. I heard someone say, and it really piqued my interest.

I was listening to an interview with like a Navy SEAL guy or Special Forces. And he said what you guys did, he did real heavy shit for short periods of time. And then an officer will do nothing compared to what you guys did. for long periods of time, for years and years and years and years. Yeah. And they were saying that it still had the same effect. There's, well, there's some huge differences. And I'll layer on to what you were saying.

I can only speak for my own experiences. I got the opportunity to essentially clock in, right? We knew when we were going to go on deployment, we go on deployment. You know you're going to be operating inside of the boundaries that are overseas. And then you know you're going to come home. The existential risk. ballistic tactical risk to self is largely contained during that time period. Yes, there are training desks because we do hyper-realistic training in it.

I don't want people to be hurt or injured in training. However, comma, as horrible as it is for the families that are directly associated with that loss, I actually think it's essential that it happens from time to time. Not intentionally. I'm not saying training should be set up to kill people. But if nobody gets hurt and nobody ever is pushed to that point, an argument can definitely be made and I would agree based on my firsthand anecdotal experience that lives will be saved by doing that as opposed to not doing that moral will be lost overseas

which is a totally different conversation in and of itself but I didn't work where I lived so one of the biggest difference between military and law enforcement and I talk about the with my I'm very good friends with law enforcement here the police station is literally through those windows. And then the true heroes, which are the fire station that's attached to it. I love both of them. Did your buddy early on telling you to get a job?

Did he have a mustache? Yes, he did. Big handlebar mustache. Why? Doesn't fit well under the mask. Whatever. That's a total aside. We'll just leave that one. That is one of the most true to form stereotypes ever.

I can pick a firefighter. I was just at a jiu-jitsu camp and looked at a guy. I'm like, you're a firefighter, aren't you? He goes, how did you know? I'm like, shut up. Fucking ballerous. I talked to my buddies, and they can tell you, yeah, at this intersection, I had to respond to this. At this place here, I had to go into health and help with this.

So even on their off days, they're still passing through and around the areas with which that they were working. Yeah. And there is, I think the stats show somewhere between 400 to 600 traumatic instances that an officer will likely respond to. in a 20-year career. The average for a civilian, I believe, is 4-26, 4-6. I hope for most people, it's closer to 4 or 0 than any of that. But, and again, I can only speak for my own career. It was, it was short bursts, but there's also another important aspect to it. For the vast majority of my experiences, I got to choose when I encountered violence. I wasn't responding to violence. It was initiated and predicated on my own decision-making.

which in talking to psychologists is that locus of control. Are you in control of what's happening or are you responding to what's happening around you? Very different geometry in what that does to the exposure and experience to the person. And again, I'm not, this is not me talking through my own experience. I'm repeating things that people much smarter than me have talked to me about. For the officers, it seems like it's inescapable. I personally think that in totality, the job that an officer does, the exposure to the number of incidents,

the exposure to the places where those incidents occurred after that, I think it's a much more challenging job. It is in a sense, but you guys lost a lot of your friends. Our job is different than yours. Our job is violent by nature. We're fighting war. You guys are not, hopefully. Yeah, when we lost people, it was devastating.

Yep. And it was devastating for us as well, too. But by doctrine and definition, the roles are absolutely different. My job was not a life-saving organization. It was a life-taking organization. That's true. The police, by definition, is the opposite of that, or should be. It's just different.

I think there's a reason why average life expectancy for a police officer is around five years after retiring. That's gnarly. That's why I keep working. Fair enough. You're just trying to game the system. I get it. Well, a lot of that is, and this is true of people from my old career, you retire in, you let it go. They stop working as hard. They lose a little bit of that purpose. And you start having some health issues. You are older, the residual of things that come from exposure to those type of things. But for, you know, and again, to go back to my other job, every police officer, every first responder that I know,

if something happens around them, they're getting in the mix, whether they're on duty or off. The military, I mean, I had to leave my shit at work. All my cool toys. That's true. So I'm not yet worried about being ambushed by ISIS where I live. You know what I mean? It's a difference in headspace. One is, I think, a little bit more manageable.

The other one, my words, not necessarily anybody else's, is. it's inescapable. My retirement was a little easier because I wore plain clothes my whole life. So I just wore regular clothes. You're still working full time, by the way. Yeah. Yeah.

But if you're in uniform, it's probably really hard to pull it off. I don't think it's any easier, man. No, because I think, man, you're wearing that uniform every day for 30 years. People see you. It's kind of, I think it becomes your identity in a sense. That happens.

That when that uniform isn't there anymore. My was like work clothes, work boots. Yeah, that's a literal shift that you have to get used to hanging up in the closet. I tell you what, though, to tie this back, in our job, in my old job, at least when I was getting out, the environment was shifting way more towards front loading and get in front of the residual impact from the exposure to those type of environments. You were not going to get sidelined. You might be put on the bench for a little bit.

for the purpose of retooling you and helping you get through what it is you need to get through so you can be put back on the field if you want to. For some people, the glass is overflowing and it can't hold anymore. So sometimes you have to make that decision for people. Right, right. Sometimes people's cups feel quicker. And that's where you need leaders and mentors who can say, hey, man, we're trying to save your life here. We're not trying to ruin your career.

But the stigma was at least in my experience at that time. And I'm not connected to it anymore, so I might be talking out of my ass here. But I hope that the trend had continued. It's not a career-ending thing. So I don't know how to shift that inside of law enforcement because I do hear that. People don't want to go talk to the person or department that they're supposed to because what they're worried about is, hey, badge and gun, slide it over. I don't know how to fix that. That's going to have to be an internal fix for that occupation.

but absent working towards finding that fix, I mean, the stats are what the stats are when it comes to life expectancy afterwards, suicide while on the job, not necessarily in your uniform, but we've had a ton of suicide in the Bay Area during and after, after retirement. Well, the after one, I would say that's where you're struggling with the identity

like you talked about. Yes. towards the tail end, you know, as you're getting ready to that, that retirement time period. I don't know, maybe you're looking at the path ahead and not being able to figure out who you are, or you realize or feel that sense of being lost or not being anything of importance anymore. I don't know. I do my best to try to understand how somebody lands at an irrational choice is their rational decision, but I've yet to be able to do it.

But that system has, there's no way that your occupation, or any occupation should be expected to be exposed to that level of trauma and have no impact. It's, yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me. And it's weird like when you retire, that's it. You're done. I mean, very rarely talk to anybody that you were around. You're so used to networking and being around all these people all the time and stuff. And then all of a sudden you're at home by yourself and you're like, okay, what the fuck I do now?

You're so used to being socialized out there. A person who works patrol, they encounter probably 20, 30 calls that they go on per day, every day. And whether they're socially meeting with people in negative form or positive form, but now you're you're at zero. You're at zero. The best advice I've been able to come up with for people in the first responder world is to try to have a social circle completely detached from what you do for living. Yes. Because otherwise, you talk to your work buddies when you're not working about work stuff, and then you go back to work. So the work-life balance is just work.

And self-medicating becomes a problem with alcohol, you know. Yeah. How did you, how'd you navigate all that not drinking at all? Well, I was doing martial arts and I was boxing in my 20s. and I had a professional trainer say, hey, I'll train you if you stay off the booze for six months. I wasn't even drinking hard. So I did.

And for some reason, it just, I had no interest at all to drink. Yeah. And it made it easier when I see everyone acting stupid when they're drinking. Oh, yeah. It's a net positive 100%. It was good for my marriage too.

And that's probably one of the things. That was probably one of the positive things too was I wasn't going out the bar after work drinking and stuff. What did you tell your wife you were up to at work? How read in was she onto the program? She was into knowing that I was doing buys and encounters because I'd be on the phone in the morning telling, calling the people up, the dope dealers or the gun dealers being like,

hey, we're good for today, huh? And I would want to get away from them as quick as possible. So I said, I'm going to work right now. So we're going to be ready to meet at 12 because I'm going to have to break for lunch and meet you so I can get back to work. I always made an out so that I wasn't stuck with somebody for a long period of time where they'd be like, oh, let's go eat or let's go drink or let's go do something. Yeah. So my whole thing was always, I got to get in and out.

I got to get in and out. So she would hear me networking on the phone in the morning. How much did you really share with her, though? Not as not as, not as much as what I was really doing. I mean, she'd seen it after on videos and stuff. and there's a lot of video and stuff of me doing stuff. What are her thoughts on that now? You're stupid.

Well, first of all, you married a man so we can just start with the capital. She should just push the car. Yeah. Push the patrol car. Show me the man that doesn't start with technical definition of being stupid. I mean. No, true, true. I just had this glitch that I fell into where a lot of people didn't want to do it.

And I thought, okay, this will be my avenue. And I mean, a lot of people don't want to buy and go undercover. They just don't want to. And I thought, okay, I'm going to be really good at this, and this is going to solidify my job. I never promote it because if I got promoted, I got moved. How do they allow you not to promote? I'm surprised they didn't force it on you.

They try to push it on you, but I never, I would, I don't know. Wouldn't you have made more money? Yeah, I retired as an acting sergeant. They gave me a year pay of acting sergeant, so I retired as a sergeant. Where is that in the rank structure of the police? Officer, sergeant, lieutenant, captain, commander, deputy chief, assistant chief, chief. You better hope that your wife never does some back of the envelope math of where you could have been. San Francisco pays a lot.

These pay a ton. Especially as you get higher and higher in those ranks. I mean, I could have been a captain making double retirement what I was making. She has no thoughts on that? Yeah, but I also didn't fall in that group. I think I was more of a, I kind of called bullshit. So I didn't fall in that. They don't want that.

They don't want that. They want somebody that configures with what they're doing. Like, I see a lot of stuff with Sanford. Cisco that they don't want to make any waves to keep things status quo. And it's like, I'm the one who's always would be coming up with ideas on shit. Why don't we try this? Why don't we do this? We should do this. And a lot of times when you get higher in the ranks, you don't want to make any waves because you just want to settle on to your retirement. So what do you do these days? You're working for the DA's office, right? Yeah. What do

you do there? I'm like a utility player. I do investigations, work with some DAs. I do some of the security for the DA herself when they need an extra body. What does that mean

do an investigation for her? As in you're looking at the things coming across her desk and you can dive into it a little bit deeper? No, stuff comes across. It's already been done by the police department. Okay. It's getting ready for court. So there's things, there's loose ends that need to be tied up. So we're sworn investigators. So what we do is we help tie up the loose ends before it goes to court or before

it goes to trial. Can you make the determination or at least a suggestion as to whether or not she should proceed with something or not? Or once it gets to your level, it's already driving. No, once it gets to our level, it's already rolling. It's already rolling. So you're buttoning up essentially the case. Yeah. And they're saying, hey, take a look at this. Is there anything else we could do? Should we do this, this and that? Or, you know, that's what we do. Do you enjoy it? Yeah, it gets me out of the house. I don't enjoy it like like I did my other job, but it gets me out of the house. You're still connected, I guess, tangentially. You know, you're still involved in that process.

Yeah, I could have went to work as a 960 for the police department. The chief asked me, like, hey, where do you want to go? And I was like, I kind of need to take a break. I just didn't want to, I didn't want to be the old dinosaur there. So I went over to the DA's office and I work with a great bunch of guys. A lot of them are retired from mainly Oakland Police Department. and this is their second job. So I work with them.

How many cases do you think are pending in the system to be adjudicated? So many because the system's so, the system's so screwed up. If I get arrested six times selling dope and I get caught with tons of dope, the public defender is going, let's go to trial. Let's go to trial. Nobody's settling out. because they know that they have

they have liberal judges and liberal juries and they're like let's go to trial so they just they plug up the system with with dates for trials if that goes to trial somebody caught with like you said tons of dope I'm assuming you mean metaphorical not like thousands of pounds are they likely to get off for that

you could how is that possible there's so many different loopholes they use especially like with the Hondurans right now Oh, he's being forced to do it. He's not being forced to do it. I've worked on hundreds of wire cases. I don't hear of anybody forcing them to sell for them. The Hondurans work on a horizontal platform.

They all just sell for themselves. It's not like you would, it's not like you're looking at a cartel where it's vertical. Yeah. So, oh, he's, he's being forced. He's being human trafficked. Some bleeding heart juries like, oh, I feel bad for him. you know. And so they overlook the criminal activity because of the argument of being human trafficked?

Yes. Not that I'm obviously neither you nor I are advocating for human trafficking and saying that's anything but horrendous, but man, that's losing the force for the trees a little bit. Absolutely. Or you'll get a gang member with a gun on him. He's a prior felon. He can't possess a gun. And, oh, he needed to carry it because he was a gang member. He's no longer a gang member.

And there's people who want to do harm to him. Yeah, but that's not what the fucking law reads. That's not what the law's about. I thought a convicted felon found with the possession of a firearm was a one-way ticket. It used to be called a trigger lock up in the feds. If I had a felon in possession of a firearm, I can go to the feds and they would go after him.

Well, it's not the, it's not ATF or DEA or any of them. It's the AUSA's office. It's the lawyers up there, the federal lawyers. It's not that sexy. Well, no, he has. had a firearm and we used to trigger lock them all time they'd get 10 years they'd plead a five man how'd you reconnect with your kids um grandkids they how was it before the grandkids i was cool with them but my wife uh i mean i hate to say like that she raised them because i was always

gone so i mean i was around them a lot but missed a ton of stuff for them. I hear it. They still rid me. Yeah. They still rid me for it. If you could go back and change it, would you? I probably should. But would you? I don't know. I had such a good time. It's hard to say.

I mean, I was, dude, when I retired, if I died tomorrow, it's like I did it all. You know what I mean? Like, man, I had a good run. I had a lot of fun. Yeah. And I had a wonderful family. my daughters were never any problem. My wife raised them. Like she stayed at home and she went to work. She works part time now, but she,

she was on them. So, man, I never had problems with alcohol, drugs, nothing. It was, I was, it was textbook. It was, it was very fortunate. Plus, I don't think any drinking in the house was, I think that made a lot of, not that we were against drinking in the house. It's not at all.

But I think they just kind of, didn't really think about it. You know, and being a police officer, I think my kids looked up to it that their dad was a cop. You know, like, for an area we live in, I think that's a pretty good job to say, you know, my dad's a fireman

or my dad's a police officer. I agree. But do you think they would have been able to, or prefer to tell people that or spend more time with their dad? Probably spent more time. Yeah. I get what you're coming from. The, you know, you did everything you wanted to do, a legend inside of SFPD.

I always ask, or I ask myself now, you know, at what cost, you know, SFPD may be able to remember you and more memorialize you on a wall. But if your kids never knew you, what is your actual legacy? And I'm not saying this applied to you. No, no. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. That's, that's always been a thing since I was a kid. I get obsessed by stuff.

I got obsessed with martial arts and I was like, that's all I ever did. Every day. That's all I thought about. Even when I was married, I was, had to work out, had to work out, had to work out. And I would get obsessed. It's a good thing I didn't get obsessed for stupid things

like drinking at the bar or anything like that. That's a real fun to get obsessed. But you're still gone. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Eight grandkids.

My God, I can't even fathom that. It's great. Because we all live in the same area. Do you just wind them up and give them back to their parents? Well, it's great now because if they came over, I know they're going home when they start getting tired and acting up. I'm like, oh, we've got an hour left and they'll be leaving. I have heard that's the best part about being a grandparent.

You know that there is a left and right boundary and also right before they go home. Like, have several pieces of chocolate cake. Yes, yes. Exactly. That's exactly. Yeah. Mom and dad can go ahead and do that. Or one of my daughters like, they were up all night sick. I'm like, oh, I remember that.

You know, I remember when they were sick at the house, my daughters were up all night. Do you think you'll pursue anything outside of the, I'm going to still call the world you're attached to the tactical world, whether it's through the administrative side or the work you're doing? What else do you think you would be interested in doing? You have any desire for a brick and mortar type business? I mean, I know you're talking about the AI stuff, but again, that's tangentially tied to law enforcement. I think, well, I think I'm, I, I, I hooked up with this DEA agent that retired Matt Murphy, and we wrote an outline of a book. So we're trying to get a publisher to bite on it.

What is the title? What did he, he named it? Powder pills and pain, I think is what it's at right now. That's not bad. I think that's what it is right now. That's not, but you're going to need a subtext underneath that. Powder pills and pain. The true life story of DEA and SFPD.

It's stories, but it also explains the different narcotics and what error they came into and what they did, what they did to into the U.S. And it has a lot of undercover stories. Also, I was a consultant on Training Day, the movie. Really? Yeah, yeah. Did you go hang out with Denzel? And of course, I can't remember the other guy's name. That was a fantastic.

Ethan Hawk. Ethan Hawk, yes. Yeah. No, they Antoine Fuqua had a director. Yeah. flew our group down there, our narcotics unit. And then me and Paul hung around Denzel prior to him filming. Yeah.

And he kind of just like would watch us and talk to us and kind of absorbed into what he's going to do. We went down quite a few times for them filming of it. So I kind of like that. I think I have a lot of stories that would be good for maybe TV series or films. film or something. Because a lot of the stuff, like, you know that, like even with the military, a lot of the shit you can't write. You see this stuff happen in front of your eyes and you're like, people wouldn't even

believe this happened. Yeah. You know, so I think I have a little interest in that. We can talk about Training Day because this isn't like the maternal instinct one. If you haven't watched this movie, shame on you. So we want to talk about what the movie is about. Don't chirp away at us about. about spoiler alerts.

Would it be possible? I would describe his character as, I mean, he was a narcotics officer for sure. That's correct. And essentially, I would say, from an outside observer, kind of running, not that he wasn't doing narcotics work,

but he was certainly running a rogue entity inside of that, with his own intent behind it. Yes. In the beginning, it makes it look like, oh, with Ethan Hawk, we weren't allowed to be around him. Interesting. They didn't want anyone to be around Ethan Hawk

because they wanted him to be. He was the new guy. They wanted him to be the unpolished person. So they didn't want him to start trying to copy what it is. So he was told to stay away from us. So, no, it seems like he was, it seems kind of like in the beginning, Denzel was doing God's work in a weird way, in a different way, not a weird way. In a way, he could self-justify.

Yes, but then at the end, but then at the end, you're seeing it was selfishness. Do you think it's possible, again, movies are, and this happens all the time with military movies, they'll take something that may have been possible at a lower level and blow it up into something that's not even plausible anymore. Given the fact that the narcotics officers, there is an essence of undercover work and they do have some lateral ability to maneuver, if you will, outside of direct oversight at times. Would it be possible for somebody Denzel's character for that to exist in real life and to create a team of people working, underneath and reporting to him working like that? Absolutely. I felt like our unit was like that.

We ran a lot of informants, a ton of them. And when we would go into the projects or out on the street, you were a friend or a foe, and you didn't know who our friends were. So we just didn't do stuff for narcotics. We did stuff for homicide. We did stuff for robbery crews. We did stuff for all that because we had all these informants.

And a lot of our informants were gang members and stuff, but they would talk to us. So they, we sound stupid, but we received big respect in those projects and stuff because they knew that we had people paid off their own people, but they can never figure it out. So it was kind of like, you want to come on my side and talk to me or do you want to stay on your side and you're going to get arrested? So we did have kind of like, and they embellished the hell out of it. Of course. Yeah. But that's what we, we spent a lot of money on.

We paid them for a lot of information, but we were also the guys that can call homicide up and say, hey, this is just third party, but you want to look at this guy for that shooting last night and just pass on information. But it was because we had such a big group of people working for us. That was a gnarly movie. Yeah, it was. It was good. Was Denzel pretty cool? The nicest kind of world.

That's awesome. Just like, like generally, generally. I know nothing about acting other than I don't have the ability to do it. They seem, and what I've talked to, like the Ben Affleck and Matt Damon movie came out, The Rip. Yes. Seems like they do the same thing. They can take those actors and those people, the Thespians, if they will. Yes.

They have this ability to sponge up. And it's interesting to see they pick up on a lot of the small nuances and then are somehow, able, I'm sure a guy like yourself with your background, that I wouldn't even see it and you maybe see something in a movie like that. Like, son of a bitch, probably nobody even pointed it out, but it was something small that he saw or took away from that experience. I think it's really smart that they do that. Yes, he, he would mimic us when we would say stuff. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He was pulling it in and, yeah. Yeah. Not a skill of him. It was like a very, it was a very, like kind of a low budget film.

Was it really? And it did really well. Oh, I think Slade. So well. Yeah. Yeah. I know we've been out for almost three hours, but okay. My mom was a huge San Francisco Giants fan.

Oh, yeah. I've told you before we started, we have to talk about you guys may or may not have found something heading towards the team, a player, walk me through the HGH scandal. Okay. I had a dope dog. I had a dope dog with me all the time when I was up at DEA. Yeah. It was a field span.

It was a hunting dog. So I could take him anywhere with me. He didn't even look like a police dog. So we used to do packages at UPS, U.S. Postal, and FedEx. Hit a package at FedEx and dog alerted to it. Brought it to the recipient's house. This girl answers the door. It was in an apartment right next to the ballpark.

And she, uh, she doesn't speak English, so I'm talking to her in Spanish. And she's saying, oh, that package is for me. And I'm like, well, what's in it? She's like, it's for me. I thought it was a large amount of money. Yeah. So, because that's, the dog would hit a lot of weed stuff.

Okay. So it would be money coming in. And the box would be in the room with the weed and it absorbed the smell of weed. So she opens it up and it's growth hormone. And I'm like. Is it just vials and vials and vials and vial? It was like 20, 20, uh, bottles of it or something. So I go, this isn't for you.

She's like, no. And she's like, it's for him. And she points. And I can see this guy sleeping in the bed. It was a condo. And he was a baseball player for the Giants. I mean, it's on. If you look it up, it shows it.

It was Jose Gian. Yeah. He had pinched his nerve in his neck. So some guy from Florida set him up some stuff. So I take the box. And it was during, it was during the playoffs. for the Giants. So I take the box and book it into San Francisco.

DEA finds out and says, no, give us that fucking box right now. So I give them the box. They notify, they notify Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball notifies Giants. Giants puts him and his family on a plane and sends him to the Dominican immediately. Damn. Because they didn't want him to be questioned.

Correct. So they take the box, they're able to chase a down to the recipient in Florida. A lawyer calls me and says, did your dog alert to that box? And I'm like, yeah. And he was like, well, your dog's done because your dog ain't trained

to find growth hormone. And I was kind of like, oh, shit. So we take the box and eye on Scan it up at Western Labs. It shows it has high concentrations of cocaine and heroin on the box, absorbed into the box. Which your dog is trained. He's trained.

So those guys, the EA goes down to Florida. They find the guy that gave the box away. He works for the Major League Baseball, all the players, works for all the players, and sends them, he has cocaine, heroin, guns, growth hormones, steroids, and he does all this stuff, and he rolls. And he was hooked up, I think it's the movie Screwball. Yeah, there was the whole, like, Belko. Well, it was a screwball because I think it was one of his main supply. He was a supplier for A-Rod. So that whole major league scandal started

And a lot of it started off my dog finding that package But what was good about it was he goes out They bring Cody Bell in Cody Bell plays And he put them into the World Series with the home run Yeah So his old game was out of the picture Bell came in and did it

Do you remember the Bash Brother eras from the kids? Oh yeah just McGuire and Konseco completely natural and just chicken-briar conseco Sosa. All those guys were just monsters, man. McGuire turned into an even bigger specimen when he went down, was it in Texas? Yeah. How are you aging like this, sir?

Oh, yeah. Your vitamin D complex is so impressive. Yes. That was very entertaining watching those guys back then, hit those. Yeah. They're just crushing records. And then when they put them all in front of,

was at the Congress and crying that we, I did nothing. Yeah, the whole, there's a documentary right there about the Balco stuff. And I don't know, anybody who looks at professional athletes and thinks that they're not looking for every single competitive edge to stay where they're at. I don't know what to tell you. Yes, yes. There's so much out there now. Indeed. What do you want to leave people with?

Like I said, we've been out for almost three hours. I like the fact you're thinking about writing out some of this and potentially like a life story-ish or pushing those experiences on so other people can either learn from them or be inspired by them. but what do you want to leave the listener or viewer with? I think that I've done well for myself because like I'll go back to like, I think I keep an open frequency where I get along with everybody. And a lot of stuff comes in my way. Like the AI thing came my way. Driving for this family came my way.

I think I just sometimes people lock themselves down and become very, put blinders on and I think if you sounds kind of silly like but I think if you open up your frequency I think a lot more will come your way I don't think it's silly I mean you can use a hallway analogy

a lot of people and to include myself at times have complained about the opportunities that other people may be getting but they do everything they can to make sure the doors in the hallway are open and sometimes we're own worst enemies and we'll go and close them for whatever maybe it's a judgment or a bias or a thought whatever it is

like go open the doors up. You don't have to walk through it, but at least you can see what's in there, maybe allow something to come through. It's true and it's, I think it's given me this opportunity to speak about police officers and law enforcement,

not just about myself, but about like a lot of officers, you're told you can't talk to anybody, can't talk to the press, you can't talk to anyone, you can't say anything. You get that embedded in your head for 30 years. Yeah.

When you get done, nobody really knows what you ever did or nobody knows what the police department does. Like I said, they're problem solvers. They're not running around to arresting people. They're constantly trying to solve problems. I dig it, man.

Well, thanks for making the... And thank you for your service. Oh, you're welcome. Like 98% of it was my pleasure. 2% of it kind of sucked, but... Yeah. Yeah, it's... Yeah, what a wild time in my life.

I look back now and I was talking with my middle son yesterday. And then I was talking with my wife afterwards. and we were just talking about his journey through life. And I realized, I'm like, I had already been in SEAL for three years by the time I was his age. Yes. Yes. It's totally different now.

Yeah. And I look at no comparison or judgment, but I look back at that like, why did they ever give me an automatic weapon? I don't know. We can't think, yeah. Well, it's like my kids when they drive. I can't even imagine my, well, my daughter's turned 16. I was like, I can't imagine her behind a wheel.

I was driving when I was 15. My parents let me take the car out. Yeah. You know, and I see my daughters and I'm like, they're not old enough to drive. They're like, they're 16. I'm like, I can't imagine these kids behind a wheel. It's wild.

But it's, yeah, it is. It's, it's been a crazy ride. And I relate to a lot of stuff in your book. Cool. Yeah. I hope it does for a lot of people. It's definitely not a hero's journey story. It's mistake after mistake.

No, it's truth. It's very truthful. Yeah. Well, that's because my life has been kind of mistaken. after mistake, you know, a little bit ups and downs, more downs than ups sometimes. But it is what it is. Yeah. So Michael didn't learn anything from it. Did you read the book, Michael? Still haven't. Get the audio. Yeah, maybe I'll listen to it. Get the audio, Michael. It'll be easier.

I just figure. When did you want your last day of work to be? I just figure it's stuff that you tell me every day. So I pretty much, I have the book in real life right in front of me. sometimes I have hope for the next generation and then sometimes I talk to Michael and oftentimes the hope diminishes. You're welcome. Unbelievable. He's leaving soon, sooner than he thinks. He's like, January would be great.

Maybe October 1st is even better. Thank you for making the trouble. Thank you very much.