Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 383 - Garrett Maxey

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Garrett Maxey is a Special Victims Unit Detective with a local law enforcement agency in Idaho. In his 12 years in Law Enforcement he has worked in jails, patrol, Major Crimes Unit, Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and Special Victims Unit. Today's Sponsors: Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com Express VPN: Get up to 4 extra months for free - https://www.expressvpn.com/clearedhot  

Welcome back, everybody, and good morning. Today's episode, probably a, you know, a darker topic than most people. Maybe want to start their Monday with, but I think it's incredibly important. I never shy away from these topics. I think they're critical. I think we have to have these conversations. And I'm going to add to that. I think we have to talk about the burden that this type of occupation places on the individuals.

I'm not so sure. Actually, I'm positive. It's not for everybody. and I think there's a maximum exposure. My guest today is Garrett Maxie. He is a special victims unit detective, been in law enforcement for 12 years in the Idaho area, jails patrol, major crimes, and what we talked a lot about was his time in ICAC, internet crimes against children.

To me, this is the worst of the worst, what these people are exposed to. And I mean those who are trying to stop these individuals, what they're exposed to is unbelievable. I don't even have the vocabulary for the behaviors and activities of those that they are after. So we talk a lot about that. But we also talk a lot about, like I mentioned in the intro, the burden and cost that it places on people who have to knowingly go into this world. Somebody has to. We have to have an ability to find these people where they are. And the people that do that, man, they get nothing but respect for me. And I'll never stop talking about this topic. because, I mean, people who listen to the podcast understand the potato peeler theory that I have, still waiting for a federal state, local agency to reach out for me.

I'll donate my services, but I don't know if that call will ever come. Let's get into the episode, but before that, stick with me. Give me 90 seconds. Let's pay the bills. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Let's head over right now to their website. Well, it just switched on me. first thing I'm seeing, and actually this is probably what I'll focus on for today.

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It's a single bag per month, but it's a really curated experience. The art on the bags is really cool. The beans, man, they, it's wild. I am not somebody who would ever be paid to give you a flavor profile of what coffee tastes like, but it really is all over the place in a good way. It's just a different type of experience. Don't sleep on that stuff. Those two subscriptions are pretty cool.

I am a member of both of those, and I appreciate both for what they are. I get the normal beans and then the exclusive ones as well. Looks like they also have rounds. For those you, I'm going to call those K cups, if I'm wrong, on that. I don't know. I don't drink coffee this way because I don't hate myself. Scrolling down the page, again, if you're going to join that coffee club subscription, just take this rotating or this slider bar. You can go all the way to light to extra dark. You can see everything that they have to offer. Here's an example right here of this cover

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Can't be clear hot. How often do you hear that those are your favorite episodes, though, with your dad? Oh, fuck every day. And the problem is he hears it too. I was just going to say, does he hear it? Oh, my God. He wants to do merchandise. He has started, were you there when he was telling, I think he was telling Leah,

Oh yeah, Flintlock. That's what everybody calls me. And I said to him, what? Yeah, because I called that episode Flint on Friday, because that was the technology that was current when he was fucking young. He goes, yeah, everybody calls me Flintlock. And I said, Dad, not a single person anywhere is calling you Flintlock. And he says, that's not what I heard.

And where did you hear that from? And he goes, you know, just the people. Oh, yeah. that dude tried to tell me so did he follow you Michael no okay so he did a recent episode we were talking about Instagram okay

two days later my sister hits me up over text and says I think somebody is pretending to be dad on Instagram because I just got this essentially non filled out account but the name was Vaughn Stumpf and it just followed me So we need to check to see if somebody is, you know, pretending to be dad online.

This is the same time period he got his new phone. Okay. So of which he needs fucking help. So I'm over there. And I was going to try to sneak Life 360 on there so I could track him and his wife. He is now agreeing that it's probably a good idea that it's on there. Okay. So when we find them in a park somewhere lost, we can go get them.

I'm scrolling through the app. And I see the Instagram app on there. I'm like, hmm, click on it. Von Stomph, all lowercase, no profile picture. Zero posts following seven different versions of my name, none of which is the correct account and my sister. So I started asking him about it. Dad, why'd you download Instagram?

He's like, I didn't. And his wife starts chiming in. You know he doesn't know how to do that. There's no way he did it. Like, do you think a fucking mouse came in here and started typing, you know, downloading Instagram? Finally, he admits, he's like, well, I was curious what it was. And I just started, I just started pushing buttons. I didn't know what I was doing.

Like you randomly, this is the, you know, the theory that if you gave a fleet of monkeys, a typewriter, they would have shake. They would at some point produce Shakespeare's greatest works. Right. So randomly he claims he created an account with his name, which is V-A-U-G-H-N. A lot of just people just put Vaughn, V-O-N. And I'm just, I can't, for whatever reason, he is emotionally unwilling to admit that he just created an Instagram account.

I think I did have him follow you. I did that for him. So you might have a Vaughn stomp following you. Okay, maybe. I haven't seen it, but I'll check. The next day, he just, he's like, I don't know how to use this thing. I could just push buttons.

So my sister texts me a picture of his feet that he had sent to her accidentally while trying to text her, the camera icon popped up, captured a picture of his feet and he was like, I didn't know how to get it off the screen, so I just kept heading the arrow button

until it went away. So, and then here's the thing. Yeah, he's fantastic on the show, but this is the shit I have to deal with off of the show. Or, you know, we're at dinner. Recently, Leah had me tell him the story

about when I flushed an orange down the toilet when I was young. We're at dinner the other night. and he is trying to convince people that I did that when I was 13. Meanwhile, where we lived at that time, I couldn't have been more than eight or nine years old. So he's with fingernails holding on to fucking reality. Yeah. Yeah.

And, uh, yeah, shady acres. Shady Acres is the name of the home. I'm going to put him in. Or that's the name of the home. I tell him I'm going to put him in. And my sister and I have agreed that, uh, yeah, we're just going to keep doing that until he believes it. Okay. That's fair.

That's fair. He's the worst. Yeah. That'll be us one day to our kids. Exactly. And then we're going to miss that from our dads and then our kids. Exactly. We'll be driving them nuts. Yeah. Michael, get on now and follow Vaughn Stump, see if you can find it on IG. V-A-U-G-H-N-S-T-U. Everybody who hears this, hop on there and give my dad. Here it is. Yeah. Do you notice how the profile is completely not set up?

Yeah. No posts. No profile picture. Because he says, well, what do you do with it? What do you put on there? How does this work? And I said, these are questions you could have asked before you open this account. I said, most of the time people, I said, if you follow people, you kind of get to see what they post. It's a curated collection of what people. What I said was it's mostly pictures. And he's like, yeah, yeah, I can take pictures. I'm like, fuck.

Love your beat. I'm telling you, there's a good chance that he would have posted that picture by accident and not known it. And so, yeah, for all the people out there who. keep encouraging my dad at some point you're going to get what you asked for and you may not like it I want to see that account get to like a million followers though I don't think it'll ever get to a million did you follow Michael I did say he's probably eight if all the fake Andy Stumpf profiles follow him back though what do you think maybe it was stump dot Andy Andy Stumpf I mean I don't and again Just pushing buttons, right?

Just accidentally followed five different incorrect versions of my username. And how many other people is he following, though? Just those? Yeah. Yeah. And my sister. And I'll get him to follow Michael. And then Michael, I'm going to, you know what?

I'm going to let you mentor him. No. Yeah. I do not get paid enough for that. Nobody does. It wouldn't matter if I paid you in gold bars. It's not enough. Send them a DM and see what you.

No. I don't think you would even know that that happened. The icon itself is not even on any of the home screens. So as you swipe to the right, they're clustered. First of, I don't know if he even knows how to do that. But I'm pretty sure he'll never be able to find it again. But I don't know. He might have four years left before he heads into shady acres.

So I don't know. What do you think, Michael? Should we just lean into his social presence? Yes. Yes. What would you recommend as his profile picture of Santa Claus? The Playgirl photo. Well, you used to work internet crimes against children.

How does a group rugby photo from the 1920s where they're not wearing anything but their cleats? I don't know if that is necessarily safe for internet consumption. The picture would be very small on the Instagram profile picture. But that's what it is. Yeah. Now, are we talking like from head to toe, the only thing they're wearing is cleats? Yeah. See, that's rough.

I think it might go against community guidelines. Illegal? Probably not. The amount of pubic hair. Did you notice that, Michael? Because I know you surveyed that picture closely. Yeah. You were pinching in.

Yeah. Did you notice that, though? I did, unfortunately. Yeah. Heavy, heavy, heavy. Yeah. I mean, people live your life however you want to. I'm not saying you should be.

be a hairless cat, but, you know. But also, if it's the 1920s and you're trying to shave down there. It wasn't actually the 20s, but I just, that's when I tell him he was bored. Oh, gotcha, gotcha. He's old as shit. Even still, you're talking like, you know, safety razor where you got to put the blade in and crank it. Trying to shave down there with that has got to be a nightmare.

Yeah. Yeah, I think they have developed electricity, like, in his early 20s, but, oh, well. Yeah. So, point being, welcome to the show and try to keep the mic about a fist away. I mean, I know what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the type of casework that you do. How did you fight your way into law enforcement? So growing up in Southern California, my dad was a deputy with L.A. County sheriffs.

And I mean, that's just what I wanted to do. Yeah. You know, my dad was so, like, why do you go sheriff over PD? I bet you there's a nice potentially friendly slash unfriendly rivalry between the two. Yeah. Oh, 100%. And I know you've had at least one LAPD copper in here or retired LAPD copper, but there's definitely that friendly, unfriendly rivalry.

Why he went sheriffs, you know, I'm not sure off top of my head. I think. What about his family before him were they law enforcement? No. So he was the first into the first. Okay. Yeah, my grandfather did like duct work for HVAC systems. And then, yeah, my dad's likely to get shot.

Yeah, a lot less likely. Yeah. A lot less likely. Now my pop got into. it and I he wouldn't have done well in the trades I don't think it's not his personality not his personality he definitely had a personality for law enforcement how long do you do gosh he did 24 25 years he just retired a couple years ago what's how do they abbreviate at l a s o LASD LASD LASD used to be L a LA County Sheriff's office that changed gosh in the 90s I think early 2000s do they

have a separate academy from the PD guys Yes. Of course they do. Yeah. That could have nothing to do with the rivalry. You know, and listen, I'll say this. I love the LAPD guys, you know, but we chase our bad guys down to them. They chase theirs up to us. And, you know, and we were talking about the helicopter side of things, right?

Yeah. They've came. LAPD's copters are coming back to us a ton of times when our arrow units weren't able to make it to us. So, yeah, there's a friendly rivalry. It's healthy. It's still ongoing. Who has the longer academy? So I think the academy is dictated by California Post. Who has the better academy?

Oh, L.A. County. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. I have it on good authority. It's identical curriculum at length. Here's the thing, no. And I've talked to folks from LAPD, and they've got little stress cards.

If they're feeling a little too stress, they can just hold up there. No, they don't. I don't know, man. There was a time in the military, where those existed. I don't know what they've done with them, but it was a TTO card, a training timeout.

A training timeout card. Yeah. Which is really reflective of a combat environment. You can really use those. Yeah. Enemy will certainly respect when you are emotionally at your brink. Yes. Yes.

That's when they back up right. Legitimately, though. I remember hearing about that. Training time out cards. Was that before or after your time? It was kind of in the middle, actually. Okay. Yeah. And again, I've heard that 15th hand from people who,

you know, had new people who were going through it. So there was probably some validity to it. And I will admit some of that was probably a blonde well out of proportion. Right. Yeah. Right. And there's that whole, you know, I'm sure it's the same in the military, definitely in law enforcement and fire and all that where the generation before us had it so much worse. And the generation before them, they were tougher and had it worse.

Yeah. And so on and so forth. So LAPD, L-A-S-O, L-A-F-D. Yes. Do they ever, does LAPD and the fire department ever gang up and harass the sheriff? Do you guys ever gang up with the fire department and harass the PD? Because that gets tough when there's three entities on scene. Oh, yeah.

Do you know what all, you know what LAPD, LASO, and the fire department all have in common? They all wanted to be firefighters. See, I knew it was going to go. My father-in-law has retired L.A. City fire. and the amount of times I've heard that over the past 15 years or so. Yeah. And it's untrue every single time. I don't think that's the case.

I've heard that the L.A. fire department secures the scene for you guys and then you guys go in. Yeah. Yeah. So not quite, generally speaking. They might have used the term second responders for your outfit. Yeah. So, again, all lies. If there was a firefighter sitting here, I'd be using exactly the same thing, but just the other side of the coin.

No, so 100%. And again, you want to say, all lies. want to talk about a friendly rivalry as cops and firefighters and can't do, yeah, you know, we can't do what we do without the fire department and they can't do what they do without us. Their mustaches are unbelievable. They are. They are. That comes from an old tradition, I'm told, for trying to save themselves from smoke.

They could just shove their whiskers up their nose. No, that's not how that works. It's not. It's not. But if it's, you know, 1905 and that's the best you got. You might actually believe it worked if that was 1905. Right. All right.

Nowadays. Yeah. I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think so. No, it's an interesting crew. My brother-in-law is a San Diego City Fire Captain, and actually this episode won't come out probably for almost a month, actually, because we have a few backlog. But next week we'll be in Canada snowboarding with them, and a good amount of them are firefighters.

Yeah. If one of the stereotypes that almost always holds true is their fucking mustaches. 100%. It's true. It's like department wide, east coast, west coast, it doesn't matter. there's going to be a guy who is a firefighter just Dick Broom model, like just chiseled. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know what the standards are for every single fire department, right? But they're usually, you know, well past the crease of the lip. 100% they're past the creek. Like, you can't see their front teeth. Sometimes I've seen it wrap under the chin, which I don't know how that works with a seal and a mask. And I don't care. It's not my problem. Shooter's choice.

And you can always tell a cops mustash, right? Because it's kind of like that 70. gay porno type mustache where it's a little creepy it is yeah because those are the grooming standards you can't go past the crease of the lip and it's got to stay you know it's a little creepy and you guys walk up to cars and ask people questions i you can ask my wife about this i did try the whole mustache thing after my kid was born did she not like it she hated it yeah she hated it and i said this is you know i'm a dad now and i have to do this but working sex crimes with that mustache is risky business yeah you might end up in a mugshot yourself uh by accident

That's the thing. Great for undercover work. But, God. Man. Okay, so, pops, what a crazy area. Yeah, I was telling you on the walkover. I don't think people realize how active and stretched in law enforcement is there. And to include myself.

So I was super fortunate. I happened to be in the area for a speech and a guy from the Air Division reached out. Yeah. Offer me a ride along. So I'm just sitting in the back. I mean, it's like, I love rhetorical. questions when people ask them to me. Hey, do you want to ride in the back of our LAPD helicopter? Yes. Yes, I do. Yeah. So, and it was amazing. Like, their facility was cool. The number of helicopters

they have were cool. And I don't know the exact number of radios. I'm going to guess it was something along. Actually, probably wasn't radio. It's just frequencies. Five freaks, but they certainly were on LAPD. And over fact, they were on the sheriff's office frequency as well, probably fire. There was one frequency or channel that you could use to reach out directly to them and it would beep at them. And I think there was another one. In the three hours that we were flying, I am not joking. There may have been a total combined time of 10 minutes where one of those radios was not active. And that helicopter was just all over the place. And, you know, people talk a lot about the gun laws in California. Almost every one of those calls was not necessarily

gun violence, but kind of gun violence adjacent. Yeah. person with a gun call. Yeah. Or, you know, they would find it or, hey, they found a magazine or hey, and they're looking. And so it was, it was interesting. It was really cool to see how a little bit similar to us overseas. You can task shed stuff up because they have a better view. So they would work on coordination.

Right. You know, they were actually doing an aerial. They had surrounded a house, but they had them get on the, it must have been a very loud speaker and basically tell them to come out. I don't know how you don't have an entire block. of people coming out of their home when that thing's circling overhead. Like I get that the light, the eye of God, was on the house, but that thing was so loud, you could have heard it for blocks.

There's just people just walking out with it. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. I mean, you're talking the speaker on the helicopter. Yes. Yeah. I mean, the helicopters are loud.

That speaker was louder. Yeah. And like I said, they're orbiting at a couple hundred feet. I don't know how you don't have everybody in an entire city block walking out with their arms up. Well, everybody, I imagine maybe in your house, you hear something. Maybe you can't make it out. So we've had containments where, you know, canine's coming out. They're going to walk the dog.

And the warnings come over the speaker. Yeah. Hey, the dog's coming out. If you come out of your house, you're going to get bit. Yeah. And people probably curious. And they come out of their house. I'm going to come out of my house.

Go check out and you're like, go back in. Those guys were working it, though. It was cool to see. It was cool to see. And you can tell that the officers on the ground appreciated when they showed up overhead. Absolutely. Because they actually, I think on almost every, every, they would kind of loiter. And then when they would hear it.

here's something or get called, they would haul ass. And obviously without having to hit stop signs and they can just go straight as opposed to zigzagging. Right. But I think almost every time, if not every time, the units on the ground specifically said, thank you. Which is cool. You can tell that they appreciated it being overhead. Yeah. It's like a super small gesture.

Yeah. But it would be really easy to not say. And so the fact that they went another way to say that, I'm like, all right, these guys, they have a good relationship. And you heard firsthand like how precious radio time. is there because the radio's going constantly. So that like a genuine thank you to the helicopter pilots. If there's any of them listening, you got, I mean, they know it. They're lifesavers. Yeah. And yeah, man, it's, it's wild. And with, with that area being as big as it is, because L.A. itself, I could be wrong here, but it's like 90 square miles. Yeah. And Michael, will you look up the,

yeah, will you look up the population of L.A. County? It's like 12 million the last I heard. Yeah. 9.6. 9.6. That is 8.7 times more population than the state of Montana. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild. It's unbelievable. And then if you add San Diego to that, that's going to be another probably 6 to 7 million.

You're talking 15 million people, easy in the first 120 miles north of the southern border of the U.S. It's wild. And just the area that that county covers, it's not the biggest county in California by any means, but just how fast was helicopter. I worked on the north end of the county. Yep. That's kind of where we were loitering. Okay, perfect.

Yeah. And it's a lot of desert. You get pockets of dense population, but a lot of open desert. And just those guys being able to get there to you, that fast is, it's lifesavers. Yeah. Did your dad encourage you going law enforcement or is that something you decided on your own? Something I decided on my own. My dad wanted me to be a firefighter.

I don't, do you need us to cut that out of the episode? No. Michael, let's make note of this. I think that was an error. Yeah. No, he wanted me be a firefighter, and he was a fire explorer himself. Okay. Does that mean pyromaniac?

A little bit. Okay. Yeah, that man's campfires were out of hand. Okay. But I'm going to admit this, and this might be what every other cop thinks, might not be. But I am terrified of small spaces. I don't like having a mask over my face. I don't like, like, I, I shit my pants.

nearly every time I hang like Christmas lights. I don't like heights. I don't like getting on ladders. I mean, that's an unreasonable fear. It is. Reasonable fears and unreasonable fears. Fires are scary. Yeah, if you don't like tight spaces and you don't like masks and you don't like heat,

you probably shouldn't be either like a chef or a firefighter. Yeah, zero desire to do. I mean, either of those things, either of those things. So, and then, you know, you watch cops. Cops is like the best show ever. They don't show you the stacks of paperwork on the back end. But it's like, oh, yeah, I want to drive fast and I want to go take people to jail and find the dope and the guns and all that cool stuff. Yeah.

And there's a reason they don't make, you know, firefighter live. You just kind of hang around the station, you get called out. They do some really cool stuff, but it's, it is a lot of hanging around, not a whole lot of proactive stuff. So, and being kind of a spaz myself, I'm like, I got to get out there. I realize now, like, I definitely took the wrong test. Well, how old were you when you started pursuing that path? Oh, man. I got on with the Sheriff's Explorers in high school.

Yeah. I was a sophomore. Do they require a college degree for LASO? You know, I think they do now. Okay. I read something about that. I don't know if that's still the case. Here's the thing with L.A. County and probably a lot of different agencies in that area is you've got some of the hardest working line personnel.

And line supervisors and down. you really couldn't ask for better people. They did the whole college degree thing for a while. They got rid of it. And during that time is when I got in. I mean, I got in, gosh, I got hired when I was 18. By the sheriff's office? Yeah.

Looking back, do you think that's a touch young for that job? Oh, my gosh. 100%, man, 100%. And I don't regret it. It was either the Marine Corps or the sheriffs. And I had started the process when I was 17. and a half to get on with the sheriff's office, the sheriff's department there. And it was for a civilian position working in the jails. I was like, hey, this is the custody assistant position.

Jesus. You're still 18, though. Yeah. Working in jails. Yeah, man. It was, it was the wildest experience. I was, my 19th birthday was my first day in the jails and winding up at Midcentral Jail in downtown L.A. And it was, it was wild, dude. But it was cool, because the that this job is marketed is, hey, you're going to go and, you know, you're not supposed to have any inmate contact. You're just pushing buttons. Bullshit. Hell no. Yeah. So in LA County is completely all the time short-staffed. So it's like, hey, you're filling in wherever we need you. So you're doing inmate contact and all the stuff that it says you're not supposed to do, you're doing it. So that was a jail, more of an interim facility

as opposed to a prison? Correct. Okay. Yeah. So in LA County has this very robust. That's still not enough space. But gosh, I'd have to count on my hand or probably your hands, the amount of facilities they have. Jails? Yeah. Where are, so there's, I know the San Quentin. Where are the other prisons in Cal? There's one up in, by Monterey.

Right. It's basically the time you see the don't pick up hitchhiker signs. Yeah. Oh, yeah, 100%. You're driving through. Well, at least you got a pretty view there. Yeah. The desert.

I'm trying to think. East of San Diego, I think there's one out in the desert. Yeah. Actually, there's, you know what? There's a prison. There's a prison under where I used to skydive, not directly under. If you tried, you could make the yard. And I don't think you should try that at all.

Nah. But I remember, okay, so Southern San Diego, up in San Fran. Mm-hmm. How does that work? How do you, what's, if you're going to be held for a short period of time, do you go to jail? If it's more serious, you go to prison? Yeah, you know, and so California laws are, are, funky, right? There was, among many things in California. Among other things. Yeah. So I think it was

AB 109 was passed and it basically said, hey, you know, you're convicted of this crime, but you're going to spend time in the LA County Jail, which would be way worse than going to prison because at least the prisons, you get a little bit more freedom. You get radios, you get some other, you really cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So you have a little bit more, because it's long term. Like if you're going to spend 40 years in a prison, they're going to give you a little bit more. on the amenities side of things. Whereas a jail is meant to be more short term. I don't either.

I would need to know why somebody who was in prison for 40 years. And if it was super fucked up, maybe you don't get a radio. Right. Right. But, you know, that's how we catch lawsuits and we hurt feelings and feelings are what matter most. Yeah. I'm not saying I want to participate in any of the application of my concept. I'm just saying I don't think a guy in prison for 40 years for something super fucked up should get a radio.

Yeah. No, I'd agree with you. Yeah. I'd agree with you on that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the jails are meant to be temporary. And they became less temporary with the passing of AB 109. California also passed 47 and 57, so they decriminalized, like made it legal to possess methamphetamine or heroin or whatever.

But dropped it down to a misdemeanor. And then they made other crimes. Does that just become a waste of time for cops? It is. It is. and I would say it becomes more of a waste of time. You still got to take him to jail. You're going to hardbook him.

But they get a citation and they walk out, usually before you're even done with a report. Really? Yeah. So you took the dude's dope that he probably went and burglarized a car, stripped some copper or burglar the house or whatever for. You took his dope away, set him off of the citation.

So he's going to go steal more shit to go buy more dope. Well, he'll definitely show up for his court case. Probably not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'd love to see the stats on that. I'd love to see how many of them actually show up to their designated court hearing.

Yeah, I've seen California's number keeping. I probably wouldn't trust it too much. Yeah. But, I mean, Prop 57 came through after 47 by a handful of years. But that dropped a bunch of felonies down to misdemeanors, one of those being rape of an unconscious person. What? Yeah, yeah. How does that happen?

how does somebody sit down and say, you know, here's a good idea. The rape of an unconscious person, you know, it just doesn't sound as bad. Maybe it shouldn't be a felony. Who in their right mind says that? I, dude, I have no idea. And if I sit here and I go, let me look at this from the other side of the table and see what they're thinking. That's what I'm trying to do. And I don't understand how you could arrive at a place where you would make the punishment for that less severe.

Right. But it's a nonviolent crime. You might want to ask the person who has that happen to him. Right. Yeah, exactly. You know? But I have a sneaky suspicion that the people who are, you know, writing these things up haven't been victimized or don't have family.

But then how do more than 50% of people vote for that? Or maybe it's not 50% of people, just the majority. So I don't under, I mean, there's probably my recollection of California, there were so many different propositions and bills. Yeah. Let's be honest. Most people, to include myself, had a passing level of understanding what it is you were voting for to begin with. 100%. And if you name it something nice and rosy, like this is the safe streets law or whatever.

Yeah. And what we're going to do is take all these felonies. We're going to drop them down to misdemeanors and we're going to let these people out in your neighborhood again. Well, it's a good way to decrease crime. It's by lowering the threshold as what's reported a crime. Yeah. Well, exactly. Exactly, exactly. And that's why stats could be great if you're, you know.

They're also susceptible for manipulation. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, that whole, that whole area, unfortunately, there's, I'm going to go off on a quick tangent. But I got a buddy of mine. He's a deputy with L.A. County. And back in 2023, he gets called to a robbery in progress up in the city of Lancaster. So he gets there. Suspects are, Female black, male black. He detains the female portion of this party. She's resisting. She's struggling. She's fighting. He does take down. Hits her pepper spray.

A total of two times, I believe. Holes are off to the car. They seem to take the fight out of her like pepper spray should. So that got looked at by the sheriff. And the sheriff said, nah, you know what? I don't like that. I don't like the optics on that. So he sent that off to the LA County DA.

And even the LA County DA's office was like, there's not much we can do with this. The civil side of that didn't go anywhere. He got pushed up to the feds. And the feds said, yeah, we'll take this. And he just lost that case. He was convicted of... The officer.

Yeah, the deputy. He was convicted on... It was like battery under color of authority or... It's basically excessive use of force. Did he deviate from any of the use of force criteria? No. No. He did his job is what he did.

And here's the thing is he was giving verbal commands. He, you know, he tried to take down first. Hey, stop fighting, stop fighting. She keeps going. And if I remember correctly, he told her, if you don't stop, I'm going to hit you in the face. And he never did. He actually used a lower level of force, which is pepper spray. It hurts, but it's not going to, it's not going to break a jaw.

It's not going to bust a nose. It's just uncomfortable and use that instead of actually physically striking this woman. And he just got convicted and that carries, I want to say the maximum is 10 years in federal prison. Really? This dude's got a wife, two kids. So that's kind of the struggle that L.A. County is dealing with. And LAPD's got the same issues. The problem is, you know, it's the climate that they're forcing these cops to work down there.

I mean, if you work a predominantly black neighborhood, well, why aren't your stats for, you know, force or arrests or whatever? Why don't you arrest more white people? Because you got me working in a predominantly black neighborhood. That's kind of what's going to happen, right? So, yeah, Sheriff didn't like the optics on that one. Sheriff didn't like the optics on another one where deputies pulled over a car, middle of the night, no front headlights. And there's two or three female blacks in the car. And they've got their kids in there with no C.

belt and the driver's drunk. So, and might have been all three were drunk. But deputies go to take the kids like, hey, your kids are going to be going with DCFS now. And as they're trying to get one of the kiddos out of this lady's hands, she's got this kid in almost like a headlock kind of thing. So it becomes a rescue four-step situation. Deputy reaches over, clocks her in the face, and she lets go with the kid. And the kid's fine. And the woman's fine. She just got tagged real quick. didn't like that one. So he ended up losing his job over that. And then you get this issue where it's like,

I guess we're not going to do our jobs. Like we're going to do our jobs, but how do you expect cops to do their jobs down there if you're going to be, you know, hanging them out to dry for every use of force? It's a tough balance. It is. It is. And the problem is like, obviously there's bad cops.

Everybody knows that. Nobody hates a bad cop more than a good cop. But when your brass is, you know, is promoting the people who go out and they're hugging babies and shaking hands and all that stuff, but not the go-getters. Yeah. It's rough, man.

So when did you transition from jail into working on the streets? So I did a couple years as a CA. And let's see, I was 20 or 21. I think I was 21 when I graduated the Deputy Academy. it had to go back to the jails. I was there for about a year. The way L.A. County works is you put in your, I think it was three stations where you want to work. And Palmdale was my number one, Santa Clarita number two, and then I had a throwaway station.

I couldn't remember what was. But I was getting ready to go to Palmdale station. I got a phone call, said, hey, you're going to Santa Clarita, which is the city where I worked. And my recollection was, you know, like it's a slower city. And in a lot of respects, it is slower. than that Antelope Valley, Palmdale, Lancaster area. But once I started actually working there, realized, oh, it's a lot faster than I thought it was going to be.

Yeah. So I was at that station for about four years. And then that puts us in about 2020. Yeah, three, four years. And then. Well, and I don't know a whole lot about the career of sheriffs other than through my local touchpoints. And I've seen a good buddy of mine. He navigates through.

He did a drug task force. He is, went back to working on patrol. He augments his, I wonder, I don't think he has a paramedic qual. EMT, maybe. He rides around in the like technical rescue helicopter as well. They have a deputy in that for as well. He's a detective now, which is shocking. And I feel like crime is not being solved because he doesn't, he doesn't pay attention to a lot.

I feel like he could be surprised by his own shadow sometimes. So, yeah, if crime is actually up, the value, I would actually probably look in that direction. But so he's navigated around a little bit. So of all the type of stuff that you could get into. Yeah. How did you find your way into the ICAC stuff? Which for people listening means internet crimes against children.

Which to me, when I hear shit like that, I'm like thinking the darkest, deepest, most fucked up shit that human beings do. For sure. For sure. And you'd be correct. I mean, it's. Yeah. It's one of the, and I will get to that portion.

But to answer your question, um, you know, starting out, I was like, I just want to do the dope and the guns and the sexy stuff. And I got off training and training was a lot of, you know, you're learning how to write reports. You're learning how to do a bunch of stuff, right? But as a trainee, it's like, you're taking all the paper. So I got off training and kind of was at this point where I'm like, I really don't know how to find dope. So started hanging out with people who did. But your paperwork skills were, I bet, good.

Because of a handful of really good sergeants that bled all over my role. reports. They made me good report writer. Yes. So yeah, I started learning kind of how to do the actual proactive cop stuff and I loved it and I like a lot of cops do unfortunately. I was trying to avoid a lot of the nasty calls, the rape calls, the anything involving sex crimes against children. And it's not so much that I didn't care. It's just that it's really uncomfortable and I leaves me feeling pretty gross. Is that kind of a shared sentiment law enforcement while? Like, not that you don't want to be there to help, but that it takes a special type of person to be able to tolerate that? Yeah, I'd say so.

I'd say so. And I think a lot of it was you're, you don't want to be that guy who's stuck on a, on a shift killer of a call, right? So you get a rape call and, and this is going to vary depending on what agency you're at. But L.A. County, you do, you're not calling a detective out. You're doing the whole, the whole investigation, you know, up front, right? So you're interviewing, collecting evidence. You're doing the whole nine yards. and then writing your report, submitting your evidence,

and shipping it off to special victims. So it's a long, long day. And you're not going to be out backing your partners. You're not going to be out doing proactive, you know, sexy stuff. It basically takes you off the street. It does. It does. And it's got to be done and it's vitally important.

And dispatchers know that. Everybody really knows that, but you avoid those calls if you can. If you're, if that's just not your gig, you know? That's fair. And at the time it wasn't mine, and it wasn't that I didn't care. It made me really uncomfortable. And it's going to kill my shift. And I was honestly, it's just selfish.

Like, I was being selfish. I wanted to do what I wanted to do and not what I was hired to do, which is go and help people. But fast forward, a couple years in, I'm talking with the special victim's detective. And he's telling me about a case that he's working. And I was like, man, I don't know how you work that stuff. And he was like, I don't know how you don't. like it's really the most important stuff you can do because, you know, violent crime, homicide, robbery. You know, there's usually a reason behind a homicide.

There's usually a reason for a robbery or, you know, just savages going out doing savage things. But sex crimes against kids, like there's no kid that's asking to be victimized. There's usually it's just, it's the, in my opinion, right, it's the worst of the worst. Most people, I think, would agree with you. Yeah, it's just almost everybody I've talked to, there's a, they can, they believe people can change. Yeah. There's some pathway to forgiveness. And then you bring up things with little kids.

And they're like, no, no, kill that motherfucker. Right, right. It's the wildest thing. Obviously, I don't go on that. I do. I 100%. And I wish that they would federally allow me to do that because I feel like it's a service not being fucking utilized. But almost everybody has that line.

Well, and here's the thing is I think that it doesn't take some mathematician to sit there and calculate stats for everyone to know, like, yeah, if you're attracted to children, the recidivism rate is through the roof. It's through the roof. It's through the roof because there's, again, world according to me, right? I'm not a doctor. I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever, but there's nothing you can do. There's no money you can give me. There's no electroshock therapy that you can give me that's going to convince me that I'm not attracted to women. I'm not attracted to my wife.

I'm, you know, and I imagine for gay dudes, it's probably the same thing. People who are attracted to the same sex, it's probably the same thing. People who are attracted to children, why wouldn't that be the same thing? It's, well, I was going to say, have you tried making out with a dude for science? I haven't. Still open to that, yes. I don't. I don't.

So you live in the gray area. You don't even fucking know. You don't even believe in science. It's hard to believe sometimes. I guess. Hard to believe sometimes. Yeah, I don't know. There is something in that step.

And the fact, you know, one of the things that is, again, it falls in line with that. How does this person or a person sit down and go, you okay? Rape of an unconscious person. We should probably round the edges on that and make the punishment less severe. The attempt to change pedophiles. And to a minor attracted individual is like a fucking razor blade on my skin. I can't believe that anybody would try to round the edges on that. Right.

Right. And I got to walk back a little bit of what I said and follow my sword a little bit here because there are stats on people who were victimized as children. Yeah. And if I remember right, it's, you know, for every person that's victimized as a child and it might be sexual and like a physical abuse situation. They go on to abuse three more people. So that's like an exponential growth type of thing, right?

So I guess the question becomes is it, is it nature? Is it nurture? Is it a little bit of both? I mean, because we see. It's probably a combination of. Right. And you move on to the people who are, you know, maybe they haven't hands on abused a child in a sexual way,

but they're into used to be called child pornography but pornography what do they call it now? C-SAM child sexual abuse material or child sexual exploitation material Why did they change it from child pornography? So my understanding is...

Is it too rough of a term? Well, it is a gross it's one of those like words that just like takes minutes off your life when you hear it. It's just so gross. It's just so horrible. Right.

So let's again, let's not round the edges on this shit. I think they got rid of child child pornography because pornography, there's like this, uh, like consent to it. And it leads people to believe that there's consent. And even an adult pornography, there's an argument to me, there's a trafficking aspect of that. Yeah.

There's a monetary aspect of a consent. Yeah. Okay. Right. So in. How about this though? A child can't consent. Well, that's, that's a thing.

You know. Yeah. You're, you're a child. Even if you're 16 and you're consenting, like. Yeah. The law doesn't recognize that. Sorry. doesn't work that way.

Yeah. Especially when the dude's a lot older. Like, definitely not. Older creepy dudes. Yeah. God. And everybody's known about the older creepy dudes forever and ever, right? You know the worst advice we give our kids?

What's that? Stranger danger. How so? It's almost always somebody you fucking know. It's not a stranger. Yeah. I mean, I'll talk about this broadly because it just happened, but at the coffee shop where I met you. most of our staff is younger women

there is an interesting occurrence of older fucking men making comments they are lucky that I haven't been there to hear one because I would come over the fucking counter yeah man but there it's and for the younger women I worry because they're not recognizing

the slight pushing of boundaries to see what's somebody can get away with. They're testing the water. Right. Make a little bit of a comment, you know. We had an incident where an older man was soliciting for hugs from the barista. And it breaks my heart because I want the people to understand that that, there's no reason for that. I don't get a fuck if that person reminds you of your grandfather because it's not.

It's a random stranger. Notice they're not asking for hugs from everybody. Right. Notice that once you said yes, the first time it became more progressive. Notice that there was a phone number that was given to you after that. It's predation. Exactly. And I wish they would do it when I was there. Yeah, man.

It's, I mean. But it worries me because it wasn't recognized by the person it was happening to. And I had a conversation with the person about it. And then I ejected for life the person associated because it happened to be in the store. Oh, man. And they approached me. and Michael was in there for that. I forgot about that.

He noticed my knife hand when I was discussing. Oh, yeah. You should have cruised over, Michael. I was going to, it would, uh, it looked really funny. It would have been a nice learning. It was like a nice E5 fucking counseling, just up one side and down the other with instructions to get your coffee and get the fuck out of here. Yeah. But stranger danger.

I mean, you probably know the stats. Again, we'll get into the stuff that you were working on, but I bet more often than not, it probably wasn't a total stranger. No, and you're 110% right. There is the internet shit where they try to off platform. Right. But it's like this fucking creepy uncle, you know? And see, here's my problem with like stats and all that, because it makes you look in one direction more than another.

Sometimes that's good, but if you're looking in this direction, you miss all the stuff over here too. Like there is the creepy uncle and there is the dude that comes in and solicits hugs And he's trying to break that physical barrier so that he can take the next step, right? But a lot of what we're seeing in the National Center with Missing Exploited Children, their stats for 2024 aren't out yet. But 2023, there's stats on like child enticement type stuff on the internet. See, and that's a tool where maybe Stranger Danger actually is becoming more real.

Because those tools didn't exist when you and I were growing up. Right, right. And like a dude who was kinked out on shit that is just horrendous, but they lived in Florida. Weird shit happens in Florida. I think we can all agree upon that. Florida man's a real thing. He is a feature, not a bug.

So let's just say Florida, and you lived in California, right. Zero percent chance of having to worry about that. Correct. Now it's totally different. Oh yeah. It is. And I mean, so neck-back stats on the child enticement that actually resulted. in a kidnapping.

There's over a couple years span. There's a few hundred. It was over 400. So most of these kids are found over state lines. There's still like one or two percent that are missing, which is awful. Does that trip it to federal if they take them across state lines? Yeah, it can. Good.

It can. And as it should. Yeah. The thing is that it's not like the creepy dude in the van. And it's, you know, these average suspects, they're male white and they're mid to late 20s. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

On the, like, online enticement? Yes. That makes more sense because they grew up with that tool. That's my thinking, too. Yeah. That's my thinking too. I mean, if I try to apply this to my father, he wouldn't be able to entice anything. Yeah.

Because he'd be DMing Michael, you know, sending him accidental pictures of his feet from his sofa. Yeah. Which let me tell you, nobody wants to see those Ravenclaws. Oh, sure. I'm sure. 50 years of feet in rugby boots. You know what I mean, Michael?

No, I didn't see the picture, thankfully. I heard you to totally tangent. I heard you scored another try playing rugby. I did. In practice, let's clarify, in practice. What I hear when he says that is he was out on a field by himself with a ball running around, and he scored what he thought, was basically a touchdown, but in rugby.

Essentially, that's what happened. That's what I told Lee today. Because she was all excited. Oh, I heard Michael scored another try. We were at breakfast today. Like my middle son's home from college and these two fuck sticks are over at the house with my dad. He could watch rugby for 10 centuries straight and they're talking about all these drills. And yeah, Leah's all excited that Michael scored to try.

I'm like, listen, there was nobody else there. Nobody was chasing him. Let's back it off the edge here a little bit. Yeah, that's basically what happened. I know. Yeah, I know. I tell her you are out in the field by our townhouse and that's where you score all the tries. Yeah.

Nobody else is out there with you. I just do my own practices. That's what I'm talking about. Put it on the board. A win's a win. Yeah. So, stranger danger. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, so how did you, so the guy was asking you, how can you not work these things? Was that kind of your intro? Kind of sort of. Yeah. That was, uh, that was, uh, got you thinking about it. It got me thinking about it.

Um, definitely got me looking at things through a different lens. I think the interest was always there is just, uh, it's intimidating. It's gross and, you know, it's, it's, it. But those are the investigations that are just, they stick with you, man. Yeah. You know? So I never got a chance to do that in L.A. County. Um, by the time the riots kicked off, my son was just born and told my wife, I go,

we're, we're out. Yeah. We are out. So applied with a couple departments out in Idaho and got hired. Pretty easy transfer. You don't have to go back through an academy. Any of that stuff? It's like a lateral academy.

Okay. Yeah. So it was like, I feel like that's a little bit of a gentleman's course. It was. I'll tell you what. I mean, so all the other California... As it probably should be at a certain amount of experience level. Yeah. Yeah. I would say so. I mean, it was a 10-week academy. Yeah. There was other California laterals in there, all from Southern California.

And the academies in Southern California are all pretty similar. It's a full-stress academy. It's 22 weeks of just screaming and PT and, you know, get your day ruined every day. So wind up there and sit in that position of attention and just waiting for the hammer. were to fall and like, hey, there's coffee and bagels. And we're like, that's a trap, dude. Yeah, you're like, listen, dude, we've played this game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

That's, no, you don't go touch that stuff. It took about three weeks for anybody to actually make it over to the coffee pot and pour some. But not get screamed at. Yeah, not get screamed at. Exactly. I don't think anybody got screamed at. I was like, this is like a vacation, man. This is great.

There's time and place for everything. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So made it through the 10 weeks and went out and didn't put. troll training again, which was a blast. I really enjoyed the city I was working in. Kind of remind me a lot of the city that I was in before, just on a smaller scale.

And not having the same issues as Southern California did. So it was a lot of fun. I moved from Southern California up here, too. I totally understand what you're saying. Yes. Yeah. And, you know, I'm like, oh, my God. Dope's a felony here?

This is great. Taking people to jail for drugs. Is it still a felony, though? In Idaho? Okay. Oh, yeah. How about weed? It's still a misdemeanor.

Michael, well, it's federally illegal. What is it in, it's recreational and medicinal here, right? Yes. So that's not a misdemeanor at all? No, I don't think so. That's weird that it can be state legal, but federally legal. Yeah, I don't know how it works. I don't know how it works either.

Yeah. I'd say we're a couple election cycles, though. I feel like they probably at some way will decriminalize weed. Probably. I think more than half the states are already at least medicinal, if not recreational. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah.

Idaho is one of those funky ones where. I don't know if they'll ever legalize it. In fact, I heard, I don't know how true this is, but I heard that they're like, oh, no, we want to make the penalties stiffer for possession of marijuana. So 40 out of 50 states will be slightly more progressive than I know. Exactly. Whatever.

Yeah. But yeah, man, just went out there and knowing that I wanted to go work, you know, special victims type work. Did the patrol thing. Got a really great opportunity to help. out in the detective bureau there. And let me back up a little bit. Before I started the academy there, I got put in with a detective unit just to, like,

hey, you're waiting for a date. Just help out. Do you have to go to a different school or additional training to become a detective? Yes. What do they teach you? It's like basics of investigations. Okay. I think it could be...

Like a process or you... I mean... Not quite. Yeah. I mean, again, I think people think Sherlock Holmes would be a non-fictional detective where you're out there and, you know, you're just leaping to conclusions and a CSI laboratory can get your results in six minutes as opposed to six months. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So it's, and this is going to change, you know, state to state where, yeah, you've got to go through this extensive training to become a detective in some places.

And some places you make detective and you're doing work and then they throw you on a course whenever it comes. up. So with this first agency that I was with in Idaho, they tossed me in there. I talk with the sergeant. I go, this is my background. This is what I'm, you know, this is what I'm used to writing and running investigations. And they're like, okay, cool. Thanks for telling me that. Here's a full caseload. All right. So started doing that. And then hit an academy. And then went on a patrol training kept real close with the detectives there and you know still stopping in saying hi show in my face um it just it got to a point when I was working there uh you know being the sole breadwinner I just couldn't make that one work anymore so I loved loved loved loved that city in that

department just financially yeah yeah couldn't do it anymore so applied for another agency and got hired on and um same thing not so much the academy it's just straight in do the patrol training portion and I first thing I did was go and talk with detectives when I got there like this is what I want to do I'm you know real passionate about crimes against children and special victims type work like perfect sounds good man we'll get through the field training portion and yeah when a spot comes up you know put in for it so as luck would have it a couple spots opened up as I was coming towards the end of my training or just finishing and put in and we were off to the races man got What kind of additional training do they give you to prepare you for the shit you're going to see in the special victims or ICAC world?

So they don't really provide that for you. I went and sought additional training through, it's like free training that ICAC does. But it doesn't prepare you for what you're actually going to see. That's what I'm going to say. How do the fuck do they on ramp you for that? There's a. Do you like the full clockwork orange and they just put you like. They probably should.

I mean, I think if they did that, nope. that somebody who went through something like that would just be like, yeah, yeah, I'll go back on the street. There's like an emotional survival or a emotional readiness class. I shouldn't even say class. I think it's a couple hours. It's a block built within, you know, a one or two day course on how to investigate those kinds of crimes. But it's just like, hey, you're going to see some really bad stuff. And we have a psych on staff and talking about ICAC. Yeah. They've got a psych on staff and it's mandatory.

You've got to go talk to her like once a quarter or something like that. But, you know, working and with that first agency, I got to work a couple of cases where it was like ICAC type cases where you're dealing with child pornography and that kind of thing. So I knew kind of what that stuff was. And this is going to sound terrible. but I mean these cases I was working with that first agency, these girls were eight, maybe youngest at six years old, which is atrocious.

It's terrible. But it's not the, you know, infant torture and infant rape and that kind of thing. So there's some really just, like I thought I knew what evil was kind of thing. And then I went and worked ICAC. So, and for anyone who doesn't know,

I mean, ICAC, Internet Crimes Against children, they're, gosh, I can't remember how many task force entities they have around the country. But generally, it's going to be the state investigator's office and their investigators attached to that task force and then affiliate positions with local agencies around that state. And so, you know, when you get a cybertip or whatever the case may be, it gets, I guess, tasked over to that law enforcement agent, whoever's attached that task force. But the nice thing is you've got the whole state investigator's office there behind you. It makes sense. Yeah. So,

yeah, I left that first agency. Went to the second one, said, this is what I'm really wanting to do. Got in with the detectives. I was working major crimes and positioned open for ICAC. And I was like, man, I want to go do that. Like, those are the people I want to go after. So I was the only person who put in for it. Shocking. Right? And got that spot and went over and started working those investigations.

How long was it until you realized you were in some pretty deep waters? Man, I made it about six months. I made it about six months. So I've got a little kid. He's going to be five this coming July. So, you know, like I said, I kind of knew what I was getting myself into. Those were the crimes I really wanted to you know, investigate and those are the bad people I really wanted to go get.

The problem is when you're working those investigations, you get what's called a cyber tip from National Center of Missing Exploited Children. And at this time, Idaho's backlog for cyber tips was, it was terrible. They've since got it figured out. And I think they're one of like the highest producing units in the nation right now. They're doing great. But at that point, it was just, all right, we've got to get these cyber tips. out and start investigating them. And man, a lot of those, a lot of those after I kind of got my feet

wet were just atrocious, man. I mean, we're talking like, you know, infant, rape, torture, really young kids, under two years old, a lot of them. Did you ever roll up any of those guys, catch them? Mm-hmm. What do they like when you're sitting across the table from them? And I'm curious as to, I mean, obviously, The internet lives forever to a degree. You know, the people try to obfuscate and hide stuff. But, you know, there's white hackers or white hat hackers and all that stuff that help law enforcement. And, you know, it just leads a breadcrumb.

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look at what you want to look at, you know, away from the prying eyes of a government. Sounds good. Head over to expressvpn.com slash cleared hot. You can get up to four extra months for free just for listeners to the show. That is expressvpn.com slash cleared hot. Let's get back to the show. Do you try to get him, how do you do it? Because I imagine it like, you know, the Matrix where he puts the fucking massive file down?

He's like, Mr. Anderson. And then winds it and. flips it open and starts going through the pages. Do you lay it out for them or do they know they're fucked when they're sitting there anyway? You know, I don't know if they know, they must know why we're there. And they've got to know. I suspect they have a pretty good suspicion. Right.

Do they think they can get away with it? I don't know. I'm not sure what's going through their head at that exact moment. But if I put myself in their shoes, there's a reason why there's a lot of these suspects end up called taking a brass plea. usually take themselves out. Not usually, but it happens quite a bit with those types of investigations. I wish you would happen more. Yeah.

I would again volunteer my services to any agency that needs help with this. I just need a blanket pardon and an address and an eight and a half by 11 glossy headshot. And obviously, I don't condone any of violence or anyone taking their own lives, but, you know, it does. I condemn pedophiles taking their own lives. I would be, I would feel comfortable going on record with that. Yeah. I'm okay with the pedophile killing themselves. I don't say that, and I don't say that lightly, and there's very few things that I would be okay with that with, but somebody that harms children like that fuck off into the sunset.

Yeah, that's a, that's a rough one, man. Like most criminals, you take a murderer and, you know, just someone who's just a sociopath and be like, hey, pedophiles, yeah, no, they're like, absolutely not. I do appreciate how they get treated in prison. It's not, it is not a good experience. And I appreciate that. Oh, man. criminals. There's honor among thieves. And from what I've heard from some people who are deeply in the know, it is a rough ride.

It is not good. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, I did a relatively short time in that task force. And those investigations are so detailed and they take a long time. You're writing a lot of legal process to different entities to try and get information to put your case together. So while I was in there with ICAC, I had investigations going. I wasn't able to get one to a point where I was taking my guy. But I was also before that taking people for similar type crimes, right, producing child pornography. What's it like sitting in the room with those people?

Do they seem normal? Yeah. Yeah, for the most part. I mean, there's some dudes where you go, that's obviously. Very stereotypical. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

That's the dude living in his mom's basement. And he's got the Jeffrey Dahmer glasses. and it says like, I don't know, I heart anime or whatever on there. It's always anime or Star Wars. I don't know why. Michael? Yes. I believe I've seen you in both of those shirts.

Often at the same time. We're going to need to open a case. First off, don't ever wear your Star Wars shirt again because that's what it means now. We're going to double-leg anybody we see wearing a Star Wars shirt in the street. For the record, I don't have a Star Wars shirt. Yes, you do. I see you in. People to know that.

And listen, this isn't 100%. I like Star Wars. Stats. Yeah, I get it. It's a trend. It's a trend. It's a trend. It's always anime or Star Wars.

How do they act when you're laying it out and they realize they're fucked? It's either. Is there a breaking point for them? Generally, yeah. So there's going to be, there's the denial. And it's usually a very soft denial. Like, no, I didn't do that. And you can kind of see them melting.

Flip the page. Right. Mr. Anderson. Right. So, so for example, one of the cases that's adjudicated at this point, this guy, he was basically grooming his niece from a super young age. And this is a, this is one of those cases where she had her own cell phone, but she also had a burner phone that her uncle gave to her. Oh, of course. Right. So, and that's where they communicated through Facebook. And over the course of quite a few. years. I think she was 12 or 13 when her case landed on my desk. But he had been, you know, sexually abusing her online enticement type stuff. Hey, sneak out of your house and come over. I love you. I'm going to leave my wife and we're going to get married and all sorts of stuff like that, right? So we get to a point where we can make an arrest and we come to find out that he had been

producing photos of her and had those on his phone. So we get those. photos. We put our whole case together. We rewind on that. We knew about some of these photos. I didn't know how many though, but I had two or three at the time. We arrest him, bringing him in for the interview. And at that point, I mean, this guy's like, he doesn't know how much we know, right? But as we're laying it out for him, you can see him kind of sinking, sinking, sinking, sinking, and the denials become weaker and weaker and weaker and eventually are just like, hey man, like we know, you showed up to a park to have sex with your niece. Like you haven't been talking to your niece for the past three weeks.

You've been talking to me and my partner. So we know what's up and we have all your messages and we have the photos inside the truck. You showed up with a moving blanket down on the bench seat. You got condoms in the car, flowers and the chocolate that we ask you to bring. Jesus. Right? Like that kind of thing. So he gets to a point where he goes, yeah, okay, nope, I showed up.

This was the reason I was trying to get back up my wife because we've been having issues and yada, yada, yada. So, which that's a lie, but thanks for telling me that. Yeah. And finally. Also, there's a variety of probably other fucking legal means that you could get back at your wife if you wanted to. Right. Or don't be a dipshit. Maybe sit down and talk with your wife.

Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, the last thing that we showed them were the photographs. They were, they were, we call it sanitized, right? So we sanitize the photos. Digitize it out or whatever. Correct.

Yeah. And put them down and go, hey, what about this photo? Is that her? And he goes, yeah. I go, that finger right there. Is that your finger? And he goes, yeah. Take this one.

Yep. Take this one. Yep. Check this one. Yep. All right. Cool. So, last year, he got, he got 30 years, which still, I don't think is quite enough.

But it's a. Enough if every day somebody is wearing him like a condom while fucking somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. That's where my mind goes with that. I don't think he's having a good time. I hope it's the worst ever. Yeah. Not that it would be better if it was somebody who was unknown.

His fucking niece. Yeah. And again, this is where the stranger danger thing, we have to do a better job of presenting a realistic picture of where the danger comes from. And it might be becoming more real because of the, ability of the interconnectedness. But that story, that level of connection, somebody that you knew is so much more common in the conversations that I've had than the random unknown.

Yeah, it's like upwards of 80% of abuse cases. The abuser is somebody the child knows. Yeah. So it's, it's, there's a million stories like that, unfortunately. So parents had no idea that this girl had a burner phone that uncle gave to her. For sure. And that's like, that's the thing. Like, I mean, gosh, if this, if this podcast saves one kid, like, dude, awesome.

This is all worth it. And that's, that's my goal is to try and get info out to parents. But it's like, listen, if you've got a kid that's a teenager, don't be shocked if they have a burner phone. Go, like, be a parent, toss their stuff. Go look through their rooms. Yeah. And that brings up an industry. So answer as broadly as you need to.

I'm curious in that. Oh, you said it was adjudicated. So yes. But again, obviously answer however you're most comfortable. In that situation, how was that uncle able to convince her that, A, what was happening was normal in any way, shape, or form, and B, get her to a place where the burner conversation is not telling an adult. How does that happen? So we don't have the chats from when they first started talking. Well, they, I mean, there's a level of.

proximity. So we know how they got, they met, right? It wasn't a creepy dude with an ice cream van down by the river. Correct. Which Michael would fall for 100% of the time, if I'm being honest. But so it's not that, right? So they're probably fucking having Thanksgiving. You know, whatever it may be, whatever. And so I just

I'm fascinated how how do they convince the, maybe she was just too young to understand, but the burner phone, the sneaking out, how? So I think and I can't, I can't speak for her. But for what we did hear from her, this started when she was super young.

And it's, hey, this is a secret. If you tell anyone, like your mom and dad are, they're never going to talk to me again. They're probably going to get divorced. It's all your fault. Yada, yada, yada. And there's usually something to that effect. Yes. That keeps a kid quiet. And then it just kind of, it just kind of grows from there, especially like, he's got access to her all the time. And it was, it was always a, it was a small touch. And then it became, all right, well, I touched your knee. So now I'm going to try and touch your thigh. Yeah, the boundaries just get pushed and pushed and pushed microscopically.

Yes. And he was patient, didn't push it. And he just, he was able to get her to a point where she, she knew that it wasn't. normal. She said, I don't, I don't like this. It makes me feel gross, but it just kind of is what it is. And I think that there's a lot of kids that deal with that. And it's, it's tragic because you're a kid. You don't know any different. You don't know any different. Yeah. So she just, I think she just got to a point where it's normal. And if something bad happens, it's my fault. And she was, how did it end up on your guy's radar?

Parents found her phone. The burner? Yes. Did they know it was the uncle? Yes, because he was talking to her through his Facebook account. Oh, I would have definitely gone a non-legal route with that. I told her dad, I said, hey, like, man, I appreciate the amount of restraint that you have. It was, honestly, it was commendable the amount of restraint that he had.

I don't think I have it. I also feel like the legal system should allow before. they're sent to prison somewhere between five to 30 minutes alone in the room with the person. Yeah. And whatever happens, just kind of happens. It, you know. It is what it is. You have a 30 minute pardon.

Have that. Have that. It's a rage room. Yeah. What happens in here? We don't know. There's no cameras. There's no windows.

The door locks from the outside. We're just going to put you in there. And we'll be back in 30. Yeah. This girl said something that like, I mean, it's still, it just, it breaks my heart. She, she had mentioned. when she was being sexually abused, she goes, it made me feel gross, but it was confusing because it also, like, it physically, it felt good because, you know, that's, that portion

of your body is supposed to feel good. It's not supposed to feel pain, right? So, I mean, it's, you can imagine how in a young child, you know, 10 years old, give or take, how confusing that has to be. Well, how does that not scramble your eggs for the rest of your life, too? Right. And she's got a great family. I stopped by their house not too long ago just to check on them, see how they're doing. And she's doing great. Good. Grades are good. I mean, I don't think I've ever been so blown away as like watching some of these kids come out of these situations and just rebound as well as they do. Some of them don't. Yeah. Which is tragic. But I mean, man, it's wild. It's wild how well they can do. So in that instance, the parents found that. burner phone. Uh-huh. When people are into this type of shit, is there almost a community of people that communicate back and forth?

I'm curious how a lot of the, I mean, the reality is, the hard, hard reality to absorb is if there's a smart person out there that wants to do really fucked up shit and they're able to compartmentalize it well, it may never hit law enforcement radar. Yeah. So I'm curious if there's any tendencies and it's not like a. trying to give a shopping list to people that may mean, you never know where this may go. Right. So again, answer wherever you want to, but it seems as if there would be a slip-up or an error

along the way where it finally lands on radar for law enforcement. Yeah. And, you know, I was thinking about this exact exchange on the way up there. Yeah, because you don't want to educate the predator either. Correct. And the fact of the matter is like criminals do dumb things, but they're not stupid. they're usually pretty smart. Yeah.

And so if I was a criminal and I want to find out how I'm going to get better at what I do or how I can get away with it, I'm going to seek out the cop talking to a guy on a podcast about what I'm doing and try and get away with, you know, like take some notes down. Yeah. Right. So I. Like hide burner phone better. Yeah. You know, I mean, but I actually, I'm legitimately thinking about that as we're having this conversation because I have an immense amount of empathy for the victim and absolutely none for the fucking

predator. Yeah. And I don't want to educate them at all anyway. No, no. And that's, and I'm, trying to be really careful about my words here because I don't want to give anything away. We're not going to talk about investigatory tactics or anything like that. But to the person who is listening to this that maybe is looking for that tip, it's, you're not going to find it here. Yeah. But it doesn't matter how good you are on the internet. The internet's a big, big place. But it's not, it's, it's not that big. And there's always a tidbit that leads. leads back to you, that bad guy. And I guarantee you at one point that your name has come across the law enforcement officer's desk, whether it's local, state, federal. We hear all the time

about how underfunded law enforcement is in these units that work sex crimes against kids and all these things are underfunded, understaffed. And sometimes that's true. But if you're the person that's going after kids and you're listening to this right now. Like, I hope this keeps you awake at night knowing that the people who work these units are they're fucking bulldogs, man. Like, it's bite, it's hold, it's chew. It's, I'm going to, I'm going to find you eventually. And there's always a breadcrum somewhere in all the data that comes back to that person, you know,

or it comes back to their house. And now you got a SWAT team busting down your door and detaining your whole family going, all right, well, which one of you is into kids? And it's coming. So I guess my urge to you is stop what you're doing now before it's too late. And, man, go find Jesus because that's the only way you're going to get any sort of mercy, any sort of grace, because it ain't coming for me. That's not my job. It's not the job of the prosecutor.

I don't think some of them can stop. That's the problem. They can't. Well, the problem with that problem is they don't allow what I consider to be the reasonable solution, which is lights out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like a rabid dog, right? Everybody says, like, oh, if a dog bites a kid, we put it down. You're right. We do. And obviously, I'm not condoning any violence here, but you leave that to me, sir. Yeah, that's, I'm not a lot, I don't see. Yeah, yeah, right. It's, it drives me, it drives me, it drives me nuts that you just, you can't fix it. You can't fix it. And I talked to my wife about this not too long ago where, like, if I can keep myself, zoomed in on this is my casework. I'm going to I'll be okay. I can keep myself held together pretty good. But if I zoom out and I go, oh boy, 2023, 36 million cyber tips over 105 million

files shared. And you can't, you can't fix it, man. You can't fix it. Correct. So I don't want these people to learn anything from this podcast besides like that your day is coming your day is coming well let me ask you this along those lines in your experience when you're getting to that point where the objections or denial is a weakening and then you finally it's like hey man how often do they want to flip on somebody else and I ask this because the local cops here even like the petty theft they're like hey yeah if I were to have information for you could I enjoy you know not being in jail for 96 hours. Yeah.

They'll try to tell you where a stolen bicycle is. So it's not as if people in the criminal world are unwilling to flip on others. I'm curious, though, how it is with something of this level. And are they more lone wolves or do you find that there are groups of people that communicate? There's groups of people who communicate, whether they're in the same local area or not, I'm sure that that exists. You've got multiple people, same local area who are into the same. nasty stuff.

But there's also, you know, the internet being the internet, it's worldwide. You do get those communities where it's, you know, all these people, one chat room from around the world. So the chances of arresting one guy and going, hey, I need you to flip on a buddy and we'll take it easy on you. First of all, like, we can't really do that. It's hard to prosecute a case. They could maybe flip and like, hey, this is where I communicate with people who are

like minded. Right. So, and that works. That works. The issue is, is they're probably going to give us something we already know. Which seems to be the case with the bicycle guys up here, too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're trying to get out of the local jail 24 hours earlier.

Yeah, exactly. You're like, oh, the same tweaker that steals all the bikes. Yeah, thanks for the stale info. Yeah, man. So it's, this world is so big and complex that it's, I don't even know if that juice would be worth to squeeze. Maybe on the federal level, it might be. I mean, if they did have access to something or a portal or a new, because I feel like law enforcement, and I say I've never spent a second in it, is a chess match. Yes.

I mean, it's the same thing as what I used to do overseas too. We would have a tactic. They would watch. They would evolve. Sometimes they would fuck us up. We would watch. And it was just constantly back and forth. Yeah.

So I have to believe that the people that participate in this understand that they're broken in some way. Yeah. But they also probably understand that there are others out there like them. In isolation, if COVID-taudus, anything is that isolation fucks human beings up. Yes. And not that I want there to be a portal or way for these people to either share access in means or their own tactic, techniques and procedures. But they're out there trying to figure out ways to do what they do to avoid and evade law enforcement. And I feel like they're constantly out there looking for ways to communicate with others who are like-minded.

Sure, sure. Outside of the purview of law enforcement. So it does get more difficult. So courts make things more difficult, right? It's not like every time they make a decision that it makes it less restrictive on law enforcement. Yeah. Usually gets more restrictive. And on top of that, when you're talking about cyber crimes of any kind, everything's going over to encrypted. Everything's, you know, so it makes getting your legal process through a little bit harder.

It's not impossible. It just makes things harder. Yeah. It's evolving. It's evolving. Exactly. And these people know that. They know that. They're not, again, they do dumb things, but they're not stupid. So the tactics change. We have to adapt with the tactics. And there's constantly new trainings coming out and there's new tactics coming out and there's new forensic software that comes out. And it's constantly evolving to try and keep up with the way that technology's going. I think where things get so difficult is with just how massive the issue is, right?

And you got your people who are into the images themselves and statistically speaking, most of them are hands-on offenders at one point or another. But I could see where if you got the guy who's, if he's pimping out kids, maybe. But then again, most of those people, it's inter-familial. Yeah. Type stuff. It's a parent pimping out a kid. So they might not know who the other people are pimping out their kids.

Is the problem more prevalent than you think most people would want to admit? To 100%. 100% it is. The numbers are just staggered. Like we just talked about COVID and we just talked about, you know, cyber tips. So 2019, the cyber tips were, it was like 16 million. roughly. And you fast forward to 2023 during the whole COVID-type deal jumped up to like 36 million. Jesus.

It's a huge, huge jump. And the reason is because part of the reason is because we said, hey, kids, you're no longer going to school. Here's a device. Go home, do your homework and both parents are working. So you got just like all these kids on a computer all day. And you got dudes in chat rooms that were looking for kids. And they literally called it harvest time. They knew that all these kids were home alone and went after them. And so now you got these cyber tips that they include the child enticement. They include the solicitation of nude photos or just dudes sitting unwarranted photos to children or they're acting like their children and they're not. Those cyber tips include all of that. So it's just this massive spike and I haven't seen the

24 numbers. I would imagine they're probably about the same. Who knows what 2025 is going to look like. But it's not like there's less internet. It's just, no, it's evolving. And like you said, the encryption is evolving as well too. Yeah. Yeah, that is an uphill battle for sure. How long were you able to stay on the ICAC task force? I made it about six months. I made it about six months. I'll be honest, man. Oh, man. So it's kind of a few things. I really, I kind of, I stepped in there. on the wrong foot as it was. I had a partner down in LA County that was killed Ryan Klinkenbrumer on September 16th of 2023.

And then the following week, I started in that unit. So I'm just messed up over losing Ryan. I go to this new unit and it's, you know, it's off to the races. It's, it's pretty, you're learning as you go. Like, here's your caseload have at. And it started out pretty solid. I was loving it. And then getting to the point where it's like, you know, four or five months in where I know what I have to go do today.

I know I'm going to go see this stuff. And I'm like literally in tears on my way to work. Like just not in a good space, dude. And my wife knew it. And she's watching me like circle the drain. Like I can't give my kid a bath. I can't change, you know, put him in a new pull up or do underwear. I was a mess and wasn't really talking to anybody about it and didn't really talk to any of the guys at the unit about it.

And it was at the point where, you know, I'm working these cases that are, it was just constantly like little, little kids. I mean, there was a video, a little girl and she had the same baby blanket that my kid had. And it just like that one sucked. That's going to blow your brain up. Yeah, 100%. I mean, like what they tell you when you work that unit is, hey, you're going to, On the videos, you're going to watch the video with the audio off. And then you're going to minimize the video and play it again with the audio on.

Because when you write your affidavits, you have to describe what you're seeing and what you're hearing. I feel like there's a way to automate that particular. Fuck. Man, yeah. What normal person could do that and not be completely destroyed? I'm not quite sure. I will tell you, I've got my head back together at the, this point. Yeah. And I feel like I could go do it. I don't know if I actually can or not.

But I've worked with guys who've been working that stuff for like no shit, like over a decade. Here's a fucked up question. Have you ever heard of somebody who specialized in ICAC stuff that ended up actually being one of these predators? Yeah, I have. I have. And I was actually, I was kind of amazed when I put in for this spot that they didn't really screen for like, Are you into this stuff? I feel like that should be in the world we live in. I would like to imagine a world where you don't have to ask that question. I would too.

I would too. That's like saying, hey, do you eat your own shit? Right. Why would anybody ask that? Of course I don't eat my own shit. Yeah. Yeah. It's you hear about it.

And I don't know if it's, I know that it's not super common, right? But you do hear about it. It's one of those where you always hear the negative thing. But if you were a fucking predator and you wanted to have unfettered access, Holy shit. Well, that's the thing, right? It's the same thing, like the people who are into kids. Then they work at schools. They work at a daycare. They're a scoutmaster. Shockingly enough, they spend time where children are. Imagine that. It's like a drug addict hanging out at a flop house. You're going to go where the dope's at. So it's no different.

How did they catch the cop? Gosh, I don't know, but I hope there was like if. So you have heard of it, though? I have heard of it. Yeah. I don't know, like, I don't know these people personally. Yeah. I've heard the stories about it. But this is my personal opinion is if you're, if you're the general Joe public and you're doing this stuff, you need to be treated very harshly. If you're a cop doing this stuff, strip that uniform off because you don't deserve it whatsoever. You're a disgrace. And you should be treated twice as harshly as that person. I mean, think about the long game that that person would play.

Correct. to get into that unit? Well, not only that. I mean, I would assume that they probably didn't develop a desire for that because they volunteered for that unit. So you probably can imagine that it was even maybe before fucking, who knows, lifelong. Yeah. So they bury that and wear a mask that's good enough that they get into law enforcement.

Right. Work their way towards that unit. I mean, that's a long game. It is. It is. And I get it in a sense, it makes it even more. It's even more fucked up in devious. Yeah.

That you're, you have to play that game that long to get into a unit like that. Because you hear about cops, firemen, politicians, you know, you name it. These people who are put in positions of trust that get caught like a sting, right? Not politicians, though. Never. Cops and firemen for sure. Yeah, yeah. Never politicians.

Ever, ever. I like the cops or the firemen that end up pyromaniacs and they're bored so they're lighting fires. Yeah, man. Dude, how are you supposed to be? hero if you're not putting out fires. You gotta make them somehow. God damn building codes. Just keep getting better with these auto sprinklers.

Sons of bitches. You know, well, I mean, again, if you were a pyromaniac and you had some intelligent, and again, I'm not trying to give a instruction manual. Yeah. But these are the things that I think about when I can't sleep. Like, what would a pyromaniac do if he loved fire? Probably fucking work with fire. Right.

You know, he's either a Hollywood pyrotechnic specialist or probably an FDNY dude. And I don't know why I just said New York, but whatever. that's a lot of firemen there. Where was the movie Backdraft, Michael? Which is, I know a movie you haven't seen was in Chicago. This fucking kid, dude. I swear God.

I got seen Backdraft, though. He hasn't seen the Boudat. I've seen a fireman. I've seen that. He hasn't seen the Boudaq Saints. Oh, man. Was it Chicago? I can't find it.

Unbelievable. Yeah, but Bull, spoiler alert to a 30-year-old movie was Light and Fires. Yeah, exactly. Imagine that. Imagine that. Yeah, that doesn't, that doesn't surprise me. I'm surprised that. that there hasn't been a massive sex ring at either Disneyland or Disney World, to be honest.

We just don't know about it yet, is my guess. I mean, because there are a lot of kids. Right. You hear about dudes getting hooked at Disneyland or they're, you know. Yeah. They're Disneyland adjacent, right? Yeah. They're working around Disneyland.

And you hear about him getting arrested quite a bit, quite a bit. And it makes sense. And it makes sense. but yeah man the dudes that can do it forever i'm i'm thankful for them because it's a job that needs to be done i just was not in a space where i could do it anymore and be any use to anybody or like just not completely lose my shit i mean i have to imagine that those task force however they're structured i have to imagine that they understand that there is a limited amount of time where people can tolerate exposure to that yeah that most people aren't going to do it for

a decade or two. Right. And it's, to my knowledge, it's, it's like one of the few places where you put your name in, you get selected, you go do it, and you can tap out at any time. Well, I was going to ask, when you went to whoever you needed to go and say, hey, you were done, I'm assuming they didn't like, hey, man, get back in there. Just given the gravity of the subject matter. Oh, dude, for sure. Like, I, it was right before I just, I had to call it, maybe a week or two before we helped, again, this is an adjudicated case, but we helped Homeland Security with a warrant. This guy was producing terrible stuff with son or daughter. I can't remember.

But he was sending that material over to an undercover agent on the other side of the country. So they were able to track them back to this little town. HSI hit us up and said, hey, like, we need help with the search warrant. And we say, yeah, we're there. So does that flip it to federal too, even if it's the internet, cross state lines? Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. I don't know if you could play that both ways, local or federal. But generally speaking, if you take that to an AUSA. Across State lines. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, we get there and go into this dude's motor. I guess the situation is this guy's going through divorce. Mom and kid live in the house. Do you lives in his motor home. Like on the property? On the property. Like in the driveway. In the driveway. I don't know if mom ever went out, went out into that motor home or not. But I mean, it. It was disgusting.

And in the back was like, you really, you can't describe it as anything else except for like a child sex dungeon. It was horrific. Like little child sized torsos, you know, that are. I don't know, actually. It's a thing. And people advocate for it because they think it's, you know, oh, well, they'll just take it out on that instead of actually seeking children. And that's obviously not the case because this guy got caught doing it. I mean, here's an idea, right?

You heard about the explosive pagers for Hamas. That's where my mind goes. Oh, man. A little pressure sensor in that? Yeah, I got an idea. Let's put about pound and a half of C4 in that motherfucker. Oh, man. I'll tell you what.

You're never going to touch a kid again. Well, it's because you'd be dead. That would just detonate your entire pelvis. Yeah. Perfect. I mean, in this little motorhome, I would imagine, just the whole back end being removed all over the neighborhood. all over the neighborhood.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that was, that, I was already not doing great. Go and do that and seeing that stuff. And I'm like, oh, man, I'm not. Just, yeah, dude, it was all bad. It was all bad. And then go back into work.

And there was a video, I'll spare the details, but just infant, you know, being raped. And it was horrific. And it's one of those things. You watch it without the audio, right? Produced inside of that RV. No. No, this was a separate. Separate case.

Sorry. Separate case that I was working. And infant is having these terrible things happen to it. And it's like, dude, it's so messed up because you watch these videos without noise and you go, I hope that this kid's dead because I can't imagine what that's like, you know? And I minimize the video and turn the audio on and this baby is screaming, dude. Yeah. It was terrible.

It was terrible. And I did I ripped off my headset. I just walked out of the office and took a drive. And I called up my buddy who works child crimes. I was like, dude, I can't do this anymore, man. Like I'm not that I was going to do anything to myself. I just like, I can't, I just can't stand this stuff anymore. And so he was like, hey man, relax.

You're good. Just bro, pull yourself out. You just, you got to. get out of there. And I was like, you're right. So I went to my sergeant's office and just I was a mess in there. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. And it's the first time that I've ever taken myself off of something in this career. And it sucked because that's all I wanted to do was go work those kinds of crimes. But I just, I got to a point where I just could not. I was, I couldn't function, man. I couldn't function. Do they give you some time off?

Yeah. Yeah. He's like, hey, take the rest of the week off. Oh, really a whole three or four days? Yeah, thanks. And I appreciate it. I came in. No, look, that, my agency, I can't express how awesome they are, really. They, I come back in on, it's like a Monday or something for a meeting with the lieutenant. And he's like, look, dude, we fully expect for people just to not be okay when they leave this unit, whether they're there for six months or years.

Like, do people leave that unit? and I've heard, have spent time in a facility or they just quit law enforcement. Yeah, man. I mean, it's it just, it scrambled me to a point like I've never been scrambled before. And it was, that was truly a new feeling for me because I was stable. I was pretty good at tamping everything down. Or so I thought, right, I look back now and I'm like, no, definitely not. You were good at wearing a mask.

Yeah. It's like you weren't that great at it. Yeah, man. So meet with the lieutenant. Tells me, yeah, you're out. Don't worry about it. Like, we just need to make sure you're okay. And then went and worked.

It was like a juvenile crimes type spot that was, wasn't too, too bad. And then we switched over to special victims. Skittles theft crimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, it wasn't anything near as, as heavy as that. And then you went.

to an additional unit, the special victims unit. Right. I mean, man, that's a step, I will say, back towards that direction, separated by some layers for sure. For sure. Why did you want to do that? I still wanted to work crimes with kids, you know, crimes that included child victims, which is, you know,

special victims, you're going to work with adult victims. You're going to work with child victims. And don't get me wrong, I've got a huge heart for, you know, the adult victims that I work with, too. Huge heart for them. But I think anybody would agree, like, it's a whole other, it takes on a whole other meeting when it's a child. Yeah. So getting to work those crimes and still, you know, I'm not seeing and viewing this terrible stuff every day.

I'm working those types of crimes still, but they're further and fewer between. But how long have you been a cop now? Gosh. Or a deputy. Yeah. I know the terms are not interchangeable. I got hired in 2013. All right, so 12 years.

Yeah. How does it work in Idaho? Is it a certain number of years or 55? Yeah, it's a for retirement. Yeah. It's like a rule of 80. So it's like your years of service plus your age. If it makes 80, it's whatever percentage of your.

That's a fucked up way to do that. Yeah, I don't quite understand the math. I would just start that job at 72 then and do eight years. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you might as well. Right? Yeah.

Yeah, dude, I'll be the first to admit I should probably look more to the retirement side of things. I feel like it's so far off and it's not. It's 20 years, but it's close enough. I should probably know more about it. I just, you know, I've been putting it off. I should know more about it. I don't. You get time.

Yeah. Is there a way to use technology to reduce the burden on the humans that have to deal with that stuff? Like, I didn't realize you had to watch the video with two different forms or watch it once. then listen to it. There's got to be a way. No human could do that without scraming on their fucking eggs. Here, so I, is there something that could do that?

Maybe, probably. I think it gets, I think it gets dicey. Maybe if you have like a, almost like an AI system where you're not, to reach a legal standard, right? It would have to reach a legal standard. But it's also,

if you dump this into an, AI system and other people have access to that AI system, now you're like disseminating this type of stuff. See, I don't know. I would imagine we now have like a code for AI generated CSAM, which is great because that's becoming a more prevalent issue. Yeah. So is it possible?

Are the penalties less for that because it's not an actual human? I don't know if it's that it's less, but I think the threshold to reach it is more. God, I had not thought about the difference of it actually being a human victim versus AI generated. And there's still arguments going on about that, right? Because some people are like, you know, oh, well, it's not a real person. So it shouldn't be treated as such. It's a real desire, though. It's a real desire.

So the way the code's written for like enticement, right? If I'm working undercover as a kid and somebody reaches out to me, I'm not a real kid. but they showed up to have sex with me. Yeah. There's, there's, it's not going to change. I do like those YouTube videos where the people get busted in Walmart and they try to run.

Yes. They're screaming, help me, help me. It's like, we're about to help you. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, like, what's crazy though is that some civilians are doing that like full vigilante style. Yeah. Not advisable. Not advised. Like, like,

okay. Yeah, actually I'm glad you brought that up because we're, dude, it's happening all over the place. And I will say this. It's a rose and thorn moment. The rose is you're putting yourself between a real child and one of these predators.

And that's awesome. Thorn is you're not a cop. The thorn is, you're not a cop. And you're probably not going to meet the Fourth Amendment standard for this to actually hold up in court. So there's a whole lot of training that goes into doing those undercover chats. And all you're really doing, if you go, you catch this guy to Walmart parking lot, you smack them in the face and send them on. his way and you get a million likes on YouTube. That's cool. But you just made a smarter pedophile. He's going to go, oh, man, I fell for that. Is that enough? Let's say somebody does that.

They go to Walmart. They tackle the dukes. I've seen a video like this. Law enforcement eventually shows up. Yes. I don't. It's like citizens arrest. Fuck, I guess. I don't know. Is there enough probable cause for you guys to start looking into that behavior? Can you just, you know what I mean? Yes. Can you take the word like this guy was, I'm here. He was supposed to meet my 12 year old sister. They could show you that. Is that enough PC to get you guys looking in that direction of that person? I would say so. Would I take that person to jail?

I don't know. I was going to say, because if you don't take him to jail, he might change his behavior and get the fuck out of there. Sure. But I think on the other side is when you do take someone to jail, like your clock starts. Yeah. If I can take a report, take this weirdos name down, all of his information, hand it off to a detective. That's what I'm saying. Could they start looking at him?

Yeah. So I would say that that's probably how I would go. I can't take this dude's chats, some random dude from whatever platform and hand him to a prosecutor and be like, I'm sure hope this is good enough. That's not going to fly. But if I can, you know, if you're a patrol cop and you get one of these and you write it as like an information only type thing or whatever and you hand it off and maybe an investigation can start that way, I think that's a lot safer. I think that's you're going to have a better chance of this flying in court because now you're not using for. of the poisonous tree, right? Yeah.

As much as I appreciate the, and to understand the headspace of the vigilante video. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's tough, right? It's tough. And I'm so torn, right?

Because I'm, same boat. I'm like, this is, who doesn't like watching that, right? Yeah. The reality is, though, like you said, it might get a bunch of likes. Nothing may be happening to that person. It may be the cracking the door and finally the spotlight is put onto them.

Right. But, yeah. concern is like, you know, it's like fishing, right? You throw a lure in the water. You're throwing flies on the water. And the fish, they could start recognizing what's, what's food and what's not food. Yeah. You're going to start training these people, you know, they talk with enough people who are trying to get a gotcha moment. Yeah. They're going to start finding out like, okay, what's real and what's not. And that to me is what's scary because we don't really get a whole, we don't get a whole lot of chances for proactive work and sex crimes against kids.

We can put together a team and go, all right, cool. Hey, this night we're going to have, you know, four or five dudes chatting online with these weirdos and we'll have a house that they're supposed to show up to and a take down team. Boom. Those videos are also amazing. And they're great, right? But that's also law enforcement on the other side of the door. Correct.

Yeah. There's a penal code section that says, hey, if we end up whooping someone's ass, like, we're good as long as it's justified. Well, and they're also leaving in, you know, silver bracelets. Yes. So something is immediately going to happen to them. Correct. Correct.

But that's, dude, you take 10 to jail in a night. That's awesome. That's a great night. You're not even putting a dent in the population, though. That's the problem. So it's not like you send a team of street cops out there and go, hey, this area's been having a lot of burglaries or a lot of dope. And we're just going to go rape and village, take everything to jail.

It doesn't work like that. So the opportunity for pro-waxia, work on the sex crime side is really difficult. So we can't make smarter pedophiles. We really got to be careful about that. Yeah. I mean, I want to ask you, I'm curious. I don't know how you could answer this question, though, without educating people.

And that is, I'm just fascinated by the level of sophistication. There has to be probably a case or a person that sticks out of like, holy shit, had never thought of that. Yeah. And I don't know how to, you could even talk. about that without educating people or giving somebody an idea. Yeah. But have you found in that predator pool highly intelligent, highly sophisticated people that have gotten away at this for a long time? Absolutely. Absolutely. Was it a broadly, was it a stupid small mistake that they made that got

them on your radar or was it somebody else? Was it a tip? I mean, the couple that come to mind, and these weren't my cases. These are cases from due. who are, I mean, if I could be half the cop that they are, I'd be doing pretty good. But chatting with them, it's a mixture of both. It's a little bit of luck on the law enforcement side. And it's also, yeah, they made a mistake. Yeah. They made a mistake.

But here's the thing is like, we all use the same Internet, right? We all use the same dark web. Like, it's not like... I mean, I've heard of the dark web and the onion round here or tore. I'm like, I don't the fuck that means. Dude, and there's so much to it. Like, if I tried to tell you what it is, everyone in this room will leave more confused

because I can't articulate it quite right. It's like an internet that's not an internet through a browser. That's not a browser. I'm already like, I gotta go. Oh, dude. Yeah, exactly. That was one of my first questions when I went to ICAC was, hey, do I need to be a computer nerd to work this unit?

And they go, no, you need to be an investigator. The nerds are over there. Perfect. Yeah. All right. Cool. I have immediately disqualified myself if I have to understand that shit. Yeah, I went and put myself through a bunch of training through ICACS training portal.

I'm like, this is an IP address. And it looks like this. And it's just, I mean, Barney style breaking it down. I know what IP address stands for. I don't know what the fuck it means. It's all of it is so confusing. I know it's some numbers. I know it stands for Internet protocol.

Yeah. I still hit up dudes from that unit. I'm like, I have this. What does it mean? And they're like, let me take your hand. Yeah. And bleed you. Me with my father.

in his foot pictures. Yeah, man. Yeah. So I'm the dude, I'm my dad in this scenario when it comes to that type of stuff. Most people are, but there's people who are really, really good at it, right? Bad guys and good guys. So I guess the moral of the story is like, yeah, you can, you can try and hide your identity through using the dark web, but that's only going to work for so long.

You're eventually going to get caught, I think is the moral of the story on this one. Like I don't want people to think that I can just get away with doing whatever on the dark web. There's a, you can hide a little bit. But you're eventually going to get found, man. You're eventually going to get found. We all use the same internet. We're all using the same, you know, not all of us, but the people using the dark web. It's all the same.

Yeah. All right. So there are some savants in super high level, sophisticated people. Yes. What's the dumbest criminal you've ever come across? because there's got to be the other side of the bell curve. Gosh. There is definitely the other side of the bell curve.

Yeah. And generally, they think they're the smart ones. That's one of my favorite features of these people. I would say, like, low level, right, especially now working in Idaho. It cracks me up. You get people from Oregon where they're like, it sounds like they're almost handing out heroin and meth. They're like, if we have too much heroin and meth, please take this. I've heard Oregon has taken.

making another look at their decriminalization policy. I sure hope so. Almost as if decriminalizing everything solves nothing. Right. Yeah. Imagine that. Yeah. But you got these people with heroin meth and heroin's thing of the past now, fentanyl, meth, that type of thing.

And they roll into Idaho and they get stopped and their car gets tossed and you find all this stuff. And they're like, I thought we were good. That stopped over there. Man, that was about 80 miles, 90 miles that way, dog. That's not going to fly here. And then they go to jail for possession. Yeah. I mean, those people to be, man.

I think I can one up that. Apparently this is not uncommon, and I bet you've encountered this. And this is, again, through my local buddies. They roll somebody up. Okay. In their pockets is a shit ton of whatever. And they say, well, these aren't my pants. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Dude. Have you ever heard that one, Michael? Oh, man. Apparently, it's incredibly common. Yeah. But like, well, sir, or ma'am, whose fucking pants are these? Well, that's the thing. That's crazy that somebody else's pants fit you so well, first off.

Yeah, they've been worn so well. And your zen, I was going to say dip, but your little zen thing is just went through. And it's weird that your wallet has the exact same imprint on these. Yeah, these aren't my pants. Yeah. And my whole life, I've never worn somebody else's pants. So I think at this point, I mean, Cops has been around since the late 80s. Yeah.

I think that's people still try it. It doesn't work. I think we're on to you at this point. Yeah. We're pretty sure that those are indeed your pants at this point. Probably. I think they are too. You might have fooled us back then in the 80s, but oh, man, I don't know about now.

My buddies tell me that shit happens all the time. All the time. And I think it's a pain. It's not my car. Yeah. It's registered to you. Oh, yeah. Or they do like the tweaker car shuffle.

They're like, oh, no, so I picked this car up last week from my girl and blah, blah, blah. And you try and call them and this is a disconnected number. And you can't figure out whose car it is. And like, all right, well, you're going to jail for something. We just haven't found it yet. All right. So let's reverse engineer this. And think about this from the perspective of probably I would say from the lens of the parents more than the minor.

Because I feel like I have more listeners that are of age than are of underage. given what you've seen, where would you start parents on keeping their kids safer? I'm not going to use the word safe. I'm going to say safer. Yeah. I mean, that's a great way to put it because unfortunately, like, nothing is 100%. There's risk to everything. If they leave your house, there's risk, but let's be honest, if you have a large family

and they come over for Thanksgiving, they may not be safe even inside of your own house. Right. Depending. So safeer. Yeah. I think, dude, honestly, like, let's start out with what's free? What's going to cost you nothing? It's just conversations. Conversations with your kids as in like, hey, from when they're super young, these are your private parts. Nobody touches them but you. Or mommy and daddy when we're giving you a bath or helping you go potty or anything like that. But other than that, like nobody and just being, you know, keep drilling that into their head. Have you found that with victims that is something, a conversation that is often not had? Yeah.

It definitely happens. I was going to say, or is that a barrier that a family member might be able to break their way through? Because from a stranger, like a stranger, that seems like it could be a harder barrier. And not that it should be a softer barrier, but we're talking about not fully formed brains. Sure. Family. Oh, he hugs mom and dad. You know what I mean?

This is uncle so-and-so. Yeah, I would, I see exactly what you're asking. I think you're right on the money because there is a big difference. Not the parent shouldn't do it. I'm just curious if that's a more malleable barrier for a known quantity. Yeah, there's, there's definitely a difference between the neighbor touching you inappropriately and maybe a family member that it's still weird. It's still not right. And these kids are, they're not, they're not dumb.

They go, whoa, right. Yeah. This is really weird, but it's, it's Uncle Bob, you know, so maybe they don't say anything. for a while. But at the same point, I mean, you do have, you do have the kids who, you know, when they're super young, kids are going to act out what's done on them, right? So you get the kid at school that's touching the other kids inappropriately and the teacher pulls them aside and goes, hey, you know, those are our private parts. Nobody touches them but us, yada, yada, yada, and the kid goes, oh, well, daddy does that to me and makes me do it to him, right? So.

Oh, my God. I can't even fathom being a teacher on the receiving. Yeah, man. I'm assuming That's a mandatory report in every state. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in that case, it's like, it's almost normal for that kid, right? He's just saying, well, I think it's okay to do it because it happens to me. Are they generally open about saying that, or is that something you have to claw out of them a little bit? I think it depends on the kid. I think it depends on the kid because some of them, you talk to them or have, you know,

they go in for a forensic interview and they just blah. everything. Well, they probably think it's or it's been conditioned into them that it's normal. So they talk about it. Right. Exactly. And then others, you really got to pry it out of them. I think that depends on the kid. But as kids start getting older, because, you know, I have seen like five-year-olds with cell phones, which blows my mind. But as kids start getting older, that conversation starts shifting to like, hey, you're going to be trusted with a little bit more freedom. Maybe we're going to give you a phone. Maybe we're not. But your friends are going to have phones. and, you know, they might show you some really bad stuff, you know.

They might show you pornography on their phone and this is what, this is what pornography is and it's not okay. This is, you know, got, even drugs. Like you just buy drugs off of Snapchat these days, right? So. I've heard this. Never tried it, but I've heard it because I don't have Snapchat, nor do I want it. Yeah, man.

Or tiki-talkie. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you name it. We could probably, I'm not familiar with this area, but we could probably find someone to sell is dope and no time. I have had people on the show who specialize in that and they did a little research before coming on the episode and trust me, anything you could possibly want is for sale. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. But I do, those conversations are are make or break and it's

creating that trust or, you know, your kid's always going to be better at technology than you are. So be curious about what they have. Hey, can you show me how that works? Can you show me this, that and the other? Um, they're probably going to, they're probably going to show you. Kids are also sneaky though. So, like we talked about burner phones. We talked about all these different things. I mean, kids are curious. Kids are sneaky. I worry sometimes you hear parents say, well, I'm going to have an electronics-free household to a certain degree.

Right. Or to a certain age. But if they go to school with people that have smartphones, they have access to a smartphone. Correct. And it's so easy to, oh, in this little bubble of the world that we can control, this doesn't exist. With my own kids, the older they got, the more influence their social circle had. And it was competing at best. Probably the kids had more influence over them at a certain age than I did.

They've heard me say the same thing over and over again, but they're like, shut the fuck up, Dad. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, go ahead and take a smartphone away from your kid or don't give them one. If they're ever unsupervised with their friends who have a smartphone, I hate to tell you, they're looking up shit or exposed to stuff. You don't want them to see. Yeah. Oh, dude. For sure.

And I mean, here's the thing is, you know, I tell people this quite often is you give your kids. kid this phone with access to the internet and now they've got access to the whole world which is the world has access to them exactly exactly and maybe you take their phone away but their friend has it and same thing happens where you know they're being exposed as terrible stuff or these people who have access to your kid's friend now have access to your kid because they're hanging out in the same circle they're all going to be doing the same the same things so I think that's where it's really you just got to have those conversations and drill it into them. like this is not okay and these you're you are going to see these things that's not an if it's you

are going to see these things and I I can only do so much so you need to be aware of this be aware that it's not okay and be aware that you can come and talk to me about anything I mean something we we haven't covered yet is like the the extortion side of things I was just going to say I have tried to hammer into my kids yeah that the internet is forever Anything that you ever type into your phone, regardless of how pissed you are, how upset you are. You should at some point in time think at a job interview. Somebody's going to slide something across the table and say, is this yours? Yeah.

It lives forever. Pictures. Random thoughts you want to type away on whatever. Yeah. It doesn't disappear. And you have to remember that. Yeah. Absolutely.

I mean, like Snapchat's one of those where everybody says, 10 seconds. and it's gone. Until you get a fucking warrant. Yeah, exactly. So you get a warrant. Exactly. And then we go, actually,

it's kind of forever. Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, the sextortion type thing, it's, we're seeing a lot of, I don't know what I put this.

We're seeing the rate of teenage suicide skyrocket. And we're also seeing sextortion skyrocket. And I can't say that those, those two things are, you know,

might not be causal, but they're probably correlated. Correct. And, And NECMEC put out a report about that. And I want to say it was 2023, but don't quote me on it. They said, hey, we can only confirm that 20 teen suicides were because of not only, right? Yeah.

Only 20 teen suicides are because of sex distortion. And then they go, but we believe it's a lot higher. Yeah, it could be a flawed reporting system. It could be a flawed reporting system. Or it's, hey, this kid didn't leave a note behind saying why this happened. Yeah. But you look into, you know, their phone while you're doing. doing the investigation and go, well, yeah, there's extortion behind it. I can't say this is the exact

reason this kid did this. Yeah, but it exists. But it exists. Yeah. Right. So I have a hard time believing that those two numbers aren't related, you know, in some form or fashion. So having those conversations with your kid about like, this is, you might be exposed to this. Somebody might hit you up and you make a poor decision because we're all human beings and we all make poor decisions and you send that photo and it's actually not some cute blonde girl you're talking to. It's a dude and he's going to start heating you up for money and hounding you and hounding you and hounding you and that's when you need to stop what you're doing and come tell mom and dad and mom and dad take the phone don't erase anything, just keep it as is and give us a call. Call the cops. If it's somebody that's

overseas, we might be able to do something that we would hope, right? Somebody here on the state side, Absolutely. Because your kid's not the only person that's happening to. They're talking to kids all over the country. And it's rising at this insane rate. And the pressure that it's putting on kids, it's like, yeah, how do you deal with that, like, shame? I can't go tell my mom about this. But you can.

But you can. But you can. And you. I mean, at the young age, your early teen years, your optic on time is the end of the day. It's the longest amount of time anybody's ever lived. Absolutely. And I'll never make my way. through this. I'm going to be embarrassed forever. This is all the people are. No, that's none of that

shit's true. None of that's true. And I talk to parents who, you know, I get a report on my desk and it's, hey, you know, Johnny was talking with this girl who we thought was a girl, sends a picture of himself to her and the extortion portion starts, right? The parents freak out, which is completely understandable. I'd be in the same boat. And they call us and we go, hey, like, relax. We got this. The only person that's in trouble here is the guy talking to your kid. Your kid's not in any sort of trouble. We don't want them to feel pressured in any sort of way. Like this is the time where we back it up a little bit. Let's have, you know, let's have a cool calm conversation about how we, you know, fix this, how we don't run into this issue again, right? A little bit of a tangent,

but one of the ways that you fix this is through NECMEC, and they've got a program called Take It Down. And it's this awesome program where, hey, I sent this photo of myself and I really screwed up, right? You can take that photo, you drop it off to NECMEC, and then they do their best to scrub it from the internet. Yeah, that's probably using some AI and looking for that. Correct. Digital signature of the picture. Yes. Yes, exactly. That's a beautiful use for that type of AI. It is. It is. So, and like any, if you're a kid listening to this or you're a parent listening to this and this happens to you, like, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to suck. That's not a fun position to be in, but you've got a whole law enforcement agency

behind you. You've got neck meck there. You've got these options. So have those conversations with your kids because it's like legit could save their life. It could save their life. Like we've all been teenagers before. Thank God I didn't have a phone. Dude. Well, and that's I mean, I noticed Michael taking notes off the corner of my eye. It's like, take it down.com. It's like, son of a bitch. I finally have a route to freedom. There is an adult version for Take It Down also. He's got his pencil out. I don't remember that.

I'm on the website right. I'm not even joking. He's just air dropping shit from the tone. He's like, get this one, then this one, then this one? Yeah. What is the, there has to be some lore in the ICAC world of people working in that. What is the most prolific case of predator targeting? Oh, man.

There's got to be some ones that are just like, like, unbelievable. scope size or scale. Yeah, you know, this probably is, I couldn't tell you, like, across the country. Like, this is the be all and all case. Yeah. But from the unit that I worked at, I mean, you got guys, the dudes who have been there for a long time. They have that one case where it's like, hey, this started out with a single image, dropped into like Bing or whatever.

Yeah. And we had almost no information and we start working it. And then we come across thousands and thousands. and thousands and thousands of files or, gosh, there's one case, the detectives did an amazing job on it, where it started out, it started out as a cybertip, I believe. I could be wrong on that. But it was just one victim.

They tracked this guy down. Long story short, this guy was talking to kids on some gaming platform and then would move him over to another platform. And then he would basically get them to start taking their clothes off. and he was recording everything. And he had like five, like, like hard copies of everything that he was recording. And he would, like this is a guy's full-time J-O-B. Like he's spending his entire day doing this.

Like we're talking, gosh, I want to say 60 victims. It's probably more of that of all these kids, right? That he was able to get to a point where they're taking off their clothes and exposing themselves or getting them to bring in a friend or a young family member and abuse them. So, and we, there was. victims from all over the country, all over the country. My cousin, who was working special victims at the time, actually worked on this case that originated out of Idaho. And my cousin was working down in Southern California. So there's just victims everywhere, everywhere.

That guy got some insane, insane sentencing. Like, he'll never see the light of day again. Good. He should not get a radio. No, probably not. No tuna, extra tuna rations for him. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. No. Somebody needs to be just butt fucking that dude until Elon Musk calls him for advice on his tunneling company. And even then, in my mind, that's not enough.

Probably not. Yeah. Probably not. But you reap what you sow, right? You reap what you sow. You know that people who commit those crimes don't do well in prison. You went and did it anyways. Yeah.

I'm very happy that they don't do that in prison. Yeah. What do you think if you could lay out you the rest of your career? What kind of stuff do you want to do? Do you think you'll stay in the SVU stuff? Do you look ahead, two and a half year, five year, 10 year? Yeah. I mean, looking ahead, I really like the leadership aspect.

I remember being, you know, just a boot cop and looking up at like some of my sergeants going, I want to do that one day, like lead a team and go out there and be proactive and that kind of thing. So I think in the next two to five years promoting and then, yeah, hopefully kind of finding out from there that you promote and it opens up all these different doors. And, you know, I can't say for certain what I want to do. I didn't realize all the different task force jobs that were available, interagency stuff. I didn't get that until I became friends with some guys locally. I was like, you're doing what? You guys are doing what?

You're attached to who? Like, fuck, okay. Yeah. It's a lot more than people would. think just sitting in a patrol car. Oh, yeah. What do the sheriffs call their vehicles? Is it a patrol car?

Like a radio car, is what I've always called it? They're in trucks. What would you, do you just call it a patrol truck? Gosh, I guess. Or suburbs. Or some people call it the shop, sitting in my shop. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. That's kind of where. Buddy of mine watches a lot of Netflix in his shop. Yeah. Exactly. Hey, man, if it's two in the morning. That's usually what he's doing. It's freezing cold.

Yeah. Ain't nobody moving around. Fuck. Yeah. Yeah, you're just trying to make it to the end of your shift. What would you change? If you're king for a day in law enforcement, what would you change about the occupation? That's a great question.

I guess the first thing I would change and knowing that it is actively changing is the culture around mental health. That's what I would change right up front. The place I'm at right now does an amazing job, in my opinion. I think they do a great job. And the place that I was at before, the other agency in Idaho, did a phenomenal job. Los Angeles County,

I love that agency. The culture does not, like I said, that's changing. That's like a battleship changing, though. It takes a lot of spins of the wheel for the compass to move a degree or two. Absolutely.

And the agency themselves, I mean, there's a ton of, like, county shrinks, and all they do is handle cops, right? hired by the county for the county and that's it and in their families i believe but uh the problem is is the the culture just hey you're a pussy if you go talk to them you're a pussy and so it makes it makes it difficult man like i'm not afraid to admit that i went to a really really

really bad place i was two years give or take and a patrol and you don't really fit in with like the brand new guys but you don't really fit in with like the OG cops and you're just seeing nasty, terrible stuff all the time and blowing off smoke is, you know, or blowing off steam is drinking too much. And I can't do anything else. All I know is being a cop. Like, I don't feel like I can sustain this anymore. So. That's a super dangerous lie when people tell themselves they can't do anything else. Yeah, it is. Or the sunken cost fallacy where I've been doing this for a decade. I can't start over. You have no idea where your life could be. I've had to reinvent myself multiple times because I'm an idiot and don't think about my future very much.

Yeah. And I put myself in these places where I'm like, well, I guess I better figure this shit out real fast. And then you look back a few years later and you realize I didn't, none of these opportunities that I have now would have even been possible had I stayed the path I was on. Right. Right. And it's not always the case. I'm not trying to paint a rainbow picture for people of, ah, fuck it. Let's just reinvent. I'm not saying that. Yeah. But if you need to, just don't lie to yourself and say you can't do anything else. Yeah, man. And super tragic. I mean, we've seen it happen. I just had a partner that I worked with down there, took his own life. And it sounds like it was that same.

Like, I've got 15 years on. I can't leave and go somewhere else. But you can't. We're so short-staffed. And I'm working, you know, I'm maxed out on overtime, mandatory, can't sustain it. And I mean, from 2023, there was, it was a 24-hour period and four L.A. County, there are two deputies and two civilian employees killed themselves in a 24-hour period. I mean, if that doesn't set off alarm bells institutionally, I don't know what would. It was all over the news, but, you know, as it should be, but you go, okay, there's four and 24 hours and that's terrifying, but then you look at and that's in one county. And that's in one county. Yeah. I think L.A. County that year, I want to say had like 13 or more suicides.

And at what point do you go, man, we've got like a serious issue. The county did their job. They've got all these shrinks on site. It's, it's a cultural thing. Yeah. So like, dude, if you're, if you're struggling, like, bro, go get help. It takes a strong man to actually go get the help that they need. Because if you're just asking for help is a sign of strength.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I wish, I wish I went and did that. Way sooner. I would have saved myself a lot of heartache, man. A lot of heartache. I would have saved my family a lot of heartache. Like it's,

I'm just going to sit there and I'm going to suck it up. And, you know, well, that only works for so long before it starts spilling over. And yeah, and it's never, ever, ever good.

I agree. Yeah, man. Well, shit, man. We've been out at a few hours. Your wife is probably waiting for you at the coffee shop. What do you want to close it out with? Nothing's ever going to be 100% safe. if you're a parent, like, don't think that the boogeyman's around every single corner, right?

And you've got to allow your kids some freedom, but... Don't think he doesn't exist either. But don't think he doesn't exist, right? Like, if your kid's got a cell phone and none of this is aimed at trying to tell you how to parent your kids, none of it. But if your kid has a cell phone, maybe it's a good idea to just, hey, we're going to charge that and it's going to be up in my room. Or, you know, you leave a kid in the middle of the night with their cell phone, they're probably going to be a cell phone. to do something that they're going to regret later. There's different options out there for cell phones.

I'm not sponsored by any of them, but like bark, pinwheel, anything like that. They design phones for that. Are there any good state or federal resources or websites you would point parents out for educational? Yeah, absolutely. So missing kids.org is neck meck. Okay. Dude, they've got stuff for kids. They've got stuff for parents.

They'll come out. They'll do training. If you own a restaurant, you own a coffee shop, you own a clothing store, whatever it is. They do a program called Code Adam. And it's basically just a protocol for like if a kid goes missing in your store or around your store. Like, hey, everybody's trained up on what to do. We're going to call the cops immediately. Give me a description of the kid.

Get me a photo. We're going to have all that lined out so that we can get this kid, A, found faster. Yeah. Let's put them in the system as fast as we can. I mean, most, most basic kid situations, the parents go and just completely understandable. They go and they look for a couple hours and go, oh, God, he's like really gone, gone. Yeah. And then call.

That's enough to be over state lines. Correct. Correct. You know, God forbid something like actually happened or even like, you know, you find kids in lakes and canals and that kind of thing. And it's terrible. Yeah. If I guess what I, last point is if you're a parent, God forbid some. something happens to your kid. What do you do? Um, you kill everybody. Yeah. Well, it comes with some

legal issues, but we can try to work around it, I guess. Just shooting from the hip here. Yeah. It's your, your natural instinct as a parent is to go, oh my God, tell me everything. Right. That's, and it's going to be really hard to do this, but call the cops, get a very basic story. And then let the investigators investigate. Because if, if we asked, too many questions up front and we don't get a great interview in or this kid comes across looking like they were coached, even though they weren't. That's going to be really hard on the court side. And we don't want people who abuse kids to get away with any of this stuff because small, tiki tack nonsense. Yeah, that makes sense. Cool, man. I am not going to bother. I mean,

I know you're still active. So you probably don't want to put out your social handle or way for people to get a hold of you. Yeah. You know, I, you know, I, I'm not affiliated. Yeah, I'll throw it out there. The, uh, on Instagram, code word dot North Star. It's not affiliated with any agency. Um, anybody who goes to checks it out. I'm terrible.

Terrible with social media. So it's going to look like it with my dad. He could be your manager. Oh, dude. That's, dude. That's my dad's retirement job. Yeah. Social media account manager.

Yes. I really good idea. I will legitimately pitch that to him today. And I bet I can get him to say yes. And I bet I could. find him a client or two. Perfect. Yeah.

He'll start with Debbie. Which is his wife. Perfect. Cool, man. Well, thank you for coming out. Dude, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah.

I think we did a good job of not educating predators and hopefully giving parents some good ideas. That's the name of the game, man. I'm trying to put some sort of training together. The gym that I roll at in Idaho. Oh, Jitsu player. Yeah. Well, okay. Let me put it this.

way. I suck. Yeah, welcome to the fucking club. Michael and I suck too. Michael sucks more than me, but more than most people, actually. Oh, bro. I guess what? You're never going to master it, and there's always somebody out there that has your number. Oh, 100%. I found that out real quick. Yeah, it's a fucking rough intro. It is. It's a rough intro. It is, man. I started at 30. I'm like, I really wish I started this earlier. I started at 41. Oh, man. Yeah. Well, dude, good for you. Good for you, though. It was from my buddy who was a cop who wouldn't shut the fuck up about Jiu-Jitsu. Nice.

He got his blue belt shortly after I started. He is still a blue belt. That's how often he comes to class. It'd be like that sometimes. Hey, listen, shift work sucks, all right? What was the last time? I'm not going to use any names. So like a hypothetical.

Like, when was the last time you saw Nelson in class? Was it last year? Definitely last year. Well, he blew his knee out. Yeah. Yeah, that doesn't help. But before that, I didn't see. He's like in there for eight months.

Yeah. It's been a while. I was at his blue belt iron man as a one stripe white belt. The motherfucker is still a blue belt. It'd be like that sometimes, man. You know what he says? It's like, I know enough. I can handle most people.

Yeah. I just, I want to entice him. I need to, I need to steal a car and figure out and get him to pull me over. There's a lot of ways this could go south and I could get shot and killed. Oh, man. But I need to, I want to fucking tackle him and just beat the shit out of him. If you yell,

fight and then he shoots you, you got a great case on your hand. I mean, I don't know. It's not a good shot either. Probably miss. I don't know. I'll help you. I don't know to help you. But yeah, man, trying to put out trainings and just get in front of as many parents as possible. I think that's the way. Yeah. That's the only way we get in front of this. Yeah. Because on the long, we're, we're reacting to a lot of stuff. It's all, something bad's already happened. So the prevention is going to be up to parents. Yeah. It's an uphill battle for sure. Yeah, man. Cool. Let's get back to get you back.

That's your wife's cool. Thanks, brother. Of course.