Law&Crime Sidebar - BONUS EPISODE: Phoenix Cop Accused of Creating X-Rated Content for Twitter Fans While on Duty

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

A phoenix police officer was accused of creating X-rated content on Twitter while on duty. The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber and former sheriff's deputy and assistant SWAT team leader Chad Ayers share their take on the allegations.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. A police officer accused of starring in porn while on duty, former sheriff's deputy and SWAT team member Chad Ayers talks about what we can expect from this internal investigation. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Let's go over to Phoenix, Arizona, where a police officer is under investigation for creating

and distributing pornography while on duty. Now, if you thought that I was about to splice in a shot of any of these videos or anything like that, this is Sidebar. Okay, we're a classy operation here. I wouldn't do that. But truth be told, all jokes aside, this is a very wild accusation. I mean, we're talking about 30s. 30-year-old Christian Gaggins.

And it is alleged that while on home assignment for unrelated and non-disciplinary reasons, Gagins would produce and star an X-rated pornographic films. Apparently, he was distributing them on his Twitter account, an account called Rico Blaze. The New York Post reported that he was making these kinds of movies or this pornography in 2019. This was even before he joined the Phoenix Police Department. And as I mentioned, he is now under internal review. So let me bring in Chad Ayers, former shares.

former sheriff's deputy for Greenville County in South Carolina, former member of the SWAT team, where he served as an assistant team leader and our resident, or one of our resident law enforcement experts here on sidebar. Chad, good to see you. Jesse, thanks for having me. You know what? When you sent the article, I knew this guy looked familiar for some reason. Yeah. Yeah, because you worked with them, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Well, Chad, let's start here. If this is true, if this is true, right? You know, this is law. It's innocent, so proven guilty, not even commit a crime. But if this is true, how do you feel about it? Yeah. So, Jesse, first and foremost, when you sign up for this job, we are held to,

as a law enforcement officer, we're held to a higher standard, more than just the average citizens. Our duty and the way we present ourselves on duty and off duty is held to a higher standard. And so there's, when you get on, you get your rules and regulations, you get your general order books. And I'm sure we'll go into this a little bit more. there is probably more than likely a policy violation here. Okay, let's start there. In other words, it wouldn't matter whether or not he was on duty making these pornographic films or off duty, meaning in the after hours.

The fact that he was doing it, if he's a porn star, that in and of itself could be reasons for him to be disciplined or fired. Yep. So the way R's read, and I might have a word here or they're off, but basically it was conduct unbecoming of an officer, says an officer shall conduct himself, herself at all times, both on and off duty in such a manner as to reflect the most favorably on the department. And when you have a police officer that is producing pornographic films and having sex and posing naked and everything else, let's be honest, I haven't looked at these

videos. But from what we can tell, that does not look favorably on the department. Yeah, I don't mean to laugh, but on this Twitter account, it said, I create art and my eggplant emoji is the pen. I don't have to explain what that means. I guess the question is, where's the line? Because I think we're in an interesting discussion here where there are people, you see articles all the time about law enforcement officers on the side making money through only fans. And now we have this gentleman who I can't tell if he was making money or if it was just for art. Is there a line? Is it maybe, Listen, if he was, let's say he was a regular model, let's say he was doing print advertising and he was shirtless for Abercrombie and Fitch or something like that. Is that not right? I mean, is it the degree of what he's doing on there? What is the line? And should there be a line? No, look, I absolutely think there should be a line. One, even in our own department back at home when I was there, when social media started to come into the equation, we had a clause put in that basically you cannot post yourself in uniform on social.

media, even if you're just out to dinner with your family. So now you see on social media, a lot of officers will post pictures of themselves in uniform, and they're getting around it a little bit by blurring out their patches or their badges so people don't see, you know, who they're representing there. I think when it comes down to it, when you go back to say, well, what if this guy was just a normal model on the side? One, I think that where I came from, any type of secondary employment or extra income, whether you moat, we had guys that mowed grass on the sides. I had a lot of landscaping businesses. That had to be approved through the department in order to have that secondary income, probably for that reason alone. I don't know a department in this country that's

going to have a, let's just say a female officer comes to him and says, hey, making a little money on the side, working at the strip club on Saturdays. It's not going to, you know, there's, there's too much, especially in that line of work. There's a lot of investigations for prostitution that goes on in strip clubs. There's drugs that go through those types of places. So again, any type of employment needs to go, secondary employment needs to go through the department. But Jesse, it all goes back to following rules and regulations. I think that a while ago, there was a great podcast done by our friend, Sean Larkin, where an officer's in Dejas was involved in only fans. It takes a lot to go into that. It goes back to following your rules and

regulations, period. And I think there's something good about that. I think it's good to hold members of law enforcement or the military to a different standard, I guess the counter argument would be, and this is still so early, if I'm doing my job great and I have, you know, been doing great work for the department, I've been, I'm just giving an example here. Let's say there's somebody who has a great, a record with the department in terms of arrests and busts and citations, you know, how much of what they do on the side should that affect it? Because in the end of day, if they decide to fire him, they might be losing a really good office. Well, I think we've got to look. In the news articles that I have read, and like you mentioned earlier, he was on duty but working from home. So maybe he had some type of injury or something like that. I know plenty of officers who have been caught and charged for double dipping. So basically you're on duty. So we had a prime example. We had an officer that was on duty. But at the same time, he was in a role that was minimally supervised. He was working on the interstate directing traffic.

and helping with construction sites. So now you're getting paid to do your job. Now you're double dipping. Now we've got some, you know, it's almost like an embezzlement type of ordeal at that point. And this guy was criminally charged. I would go back and looking at this article at face. At a minimum, you've got a guy that is making money on the side while working. That's the biggest problem for me.

That's the biggest problem that he was on duty. And when again, you're on duty. You have a job to do a very important job. And to be doing this, that's the biggest problem. So, an internal investigation, what is that going to look like? What do you think the penalty will be? And how do you think that this is overall going to conclude? And it's so hard to say in this day and age, 2022 going into 2023.

I've seen such a change in internal investigations and the outcomes, I would say. Let's be honest, if this was back in the 80s, this guy would have been gone already. So with internal investigations, you have an IA department that their job is to, investigate complaints or misconduct in office. So what I gather is they're going to look into this. They're probably going to pull times stamps on when these videos were produced or uploaded. They're going to interview this gentleman, ask questions. And at that point, leadership, command staff is going to come together and say, was there a policy violation? And does this policy violation meet a termination? Does it meet a suspension? Does it meet a write-up? I don't know what those

standards are for this department. I know where I'm from. Internal investigation wouldn't last very long, but there is. It comes back to being held to a higher standard. Hey, real quick, Chad, before I let you go, how did he make it through the vetting process? If he was making these kinds of films or art before he joined the police force, how did he was, how was he not vetted? So in a background check, when you go on into any law enforcement, whether it's local, state, federal, you're sent a packet and you fill out a questionnaire, an extensive questionnaire. It goes all the way back to, did you ever steal an ink pen and middle school or anything like that? Then your recruitment department starts going through that, highlighting questionable things,

whether it was a smoked weed in college, whatever that is. They're going to then start looking at, okay, what happened here. But with this, what I think happened is he's using a different name on his Twitter thread that probably wasn't picked up on. I don't think anyone was searching whatever that name was. Personally, I think that if that would have come up in the hiring process, we probably wouldn't be here today. Yeah, they weren't searching for Rico Blaze. Or the or the emoji. Or the emoji. Or the emoji. Chad Ayers, thanks so much for coming on and talk about this. I know we had a little fun with it, but you know, it is an interesting, it's a serious accusation for him. It is his life. I think.

I think, you know, it's a member of law enforcement. You don't like to see this. But I think it's worthy of talking about nonetheless, because as you said, and as we talked about, we're seeing these kinds of conversations more and more about officers taking certain kinds of jobs. Clearly, there's a difference doing it on the side and actually doing it when they're on the clock. But it's an interesting discussion nonetheless. And Chad Ayers, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Jesse, always great to join you. And that's all we have for everybody here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.