Locked In with Ian Bick - I Spent 45 Years as a Cop — Here's How Policing Changed & What Nobody Is Saying Out Loud | John Krupinsky

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

John Krupinsky grew up in Danbury Connecticut in a law enforcement family — his father and brother were both cops. He followed that path starting in Ridgefield before joining the Danbury Police Department where he spent 45 years working undercover becoming a sergeant and a detective running drug busts and working alongside federal agencies. In this episode of Locked In with Ian Bick, John shares the complete truth about what 45 years in law enforcement really looked like — from policing in the 80s and 90s to undercover work to drug busts to the city's relationship with federal agencies to his take on local cops working with ICE to why it is harder to be a cop today to dealing with social media and first amendment auditors to massage parlor busts to encountering Ian personally when he owned a club in Danbury to going viral to the Black Lives Matter movement. _____________________________________________ #cops #police #truecrimestories _____________________________________________ Thank you to GLD & FACTOR for sponsoring this episode: GLD: New customers get 40% Off with code LOCKEDIN at https://www.gld.com/ _____________________________________________ Factor: Head to http://factormeals.com/lockedin50off and use code lockedin50off to get 50 percent off and free daily greens per box, with new subscription only, while supplies last until 09/27/2026. (See website for more details). _____________________________________________ Connect with John Krupinsky: https://www.instagram.com/johnkrupinsky/ _____________________________________________ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ _____________________________________________ Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to John Karpinsky 00:54 Growing Up in a Policing Family 02:27 Starting a Career in Richfield and Danbury 05:48 Life and Work in Small Town Policing 07:41 Homelessness and Community Solutions 10:54 The Evolution of Policing Culture 14:04 Changing Crime Trends and the Drug Epidemic 18:48 Danbury's Unique Crime Profile and Law Enforcement Tactics 21:52 Gangs, Task Forces, and Major Cases 27:03 Undercover Work and Policing Methods Then vs. Now 34:44 Tech Advancements & Challenges in Modern Policing 39:35 Working with Federal Agencies & Major Takedowns 47:00 Cooperating with ICE and Local vs. Federal Law Enforcement 01:00:44 Navigating Police Department Administration and Patrol 01:04:38 Stories from the Danbury Nightclub Scene 01:11:28 Dive Team Dangers and Notable Local Cases 01:15:01 Drug Busts, Asset Forfeiture, and Ongoing Enforcement 01:20:27 Massage Parlors, Prostitution, and Community Issues 01:23:50 Most Impactful Cases and Coping with Trauma 01:32:00 Community Policing, Respect, and Building Relationships 01:37:07 Going Viral and Entering the Media Spotlight 01:44:42 Career Reflections and Lessons Learned 01:53:00 First Amendment Auditors and Modern Challenges 01:58:14 Closing Thoughts and Reflections _____________________________________________ To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/LockedInWithIanBicka Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus, starring Emmy Rossum. Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. today is John Karpinski, a man who grew up in Danbury, Connecticut in a law enforcement family. His father was a cop, his brother was a cop, and following in their footsteps was never a question.

He started his career in Richfield, Connecticut before joining the Danbury Police Department where he spent 45 years working undercover, becoming a sergeant and detective running drug bus, working with federal agencies, and witnessing the complete transformation of American policing from the inside. He actually encountered me personally when I owned a club in Danbury, and he ended up going viral and worked through the Black Lives Matter movement, the rise of social media First Amendment auditors, and the ongoing debate about local cops working with ICE. His name is John Kropinski, and after 45 years on the job, he is finally sharing everything. I grew up in Danbury, born and raised on North Street right next to Seatown. That vacant lot there is

Used to be my house. What was your upbringing like? My dad was a cop. My brother was a cop. So for me, you know, growing up, it was growing up in the police world. Sunday dinners in my house was like watching Blue Blood. Same thing, you know, family, family law enforcement, having dinner talking about the job. But the one thing that it did do, my dad and my brother instilled values of how the job should be done, how the job used to be done.

compared to what we're seeing today out there. What were those values back then? You know, back then it was one for all and all for one. If one cop painted his house, the entire shift came over and painted his house. Everybody came in together. We played together. We drank together. We picnic together.

Our families were all together. You don't see that at all. That was lost late 80s, early 90s. It had just disappeared. Why do you think it disappeared? The changing in policing and in 2020 just the Democrats absolutely destroyed policing. Policing is we knew it ceased to exist. But it's very unfortunate.

You know, I talk about these new kids now. They are never going to know what this job really was or how it used to be and how much fun it used to be. They'll just never know that. Now they were Damberry cops, your brother and dad? Yeah, my brother and dad. both in Danbury. I actually started right here in Ridgefield. I worked here for four years, and then I transferred to Danbury. Was that right out of high school? Yes. I graduated high school in June. I was a sheriff in August. In September, I was headed to the police academy. I was one of

the youngest guys they hired up here. I was 19 years old. I went from a Thursday night and Friday night drinking beers in McDonald's parking lot with the rest of the kids to go into the police academy the next day. So you knew you wanted to be a cop? Yeah, for me, it was a family thing. You know, a lot of kids when they're, you know, sixth grade, seventh grade, 10, 12 years old, when they get, you know, get home and finish their homework throughout playing baseball and football, my dad had to go back to the station every night at six. So as long as my homework was done, my mother would let me go. I spent pretty much the early years of my life at least two, three hours a day at the police station. So for me, it was just a way of life.

How many cops were there in Richfield back then? Because even now, it's so small. It's a small town. I can tell you. When I was the last guy hired, we had 33 because my badge number was 33. What did you guys do? Not much. You know, I mean, Richfield, luckily, and still today, not that much crime up here. It mostly, a lot of it was traffic work and, you know, running radar on Main Street and 35 and Route 7, but some burglaries here and there, but for the most part, look, this is why it costs so much to live here. It's a good, safe, quiet town. Was the job what you expected it to be when you first went on? Not when I came here. I was like, you know, when do we chase cars?

Who shot somebody? What did you? It didn't really. That was kind of the reason. I got to say, it was great working here. The money was, I took a $6,000 pay cut to leave. But, you know, no SWAT team, no dive team, no narcotchy unit. You know, all of the things that I wanted to do was a 19 and 20-year-old cop. They just didn't exist here. If it weren't for that, I probably would have stayed here. Danbury had all those things, plus bars and fights and everything else.

Now, how does a town like Richfield that's just a stone's throw? away from Danbury, which does have a lot more crime, have no crime in Richfield? Like, why doesn't it carry over at all? Did you ever see the cheapest house in Richfield? That's a difference. Wouldn't that attract, like, people, like crime robbers or anything like that? To an extent, if you're going to rob a house, maybe you come here. You know, we'd had problems with burglaries and car break-ins or every town USA doesn't matter

your demographics or your geography on that. that's just something like please folks lock your doors because bad guys are going to come and try that door if your door is locked they move on to the next but that's pretty much the reason why you don't see homeless people in richfield you know why Why? Here's what we did in Ridgefield. And this came back to bite me in the ass. In Ridgefield, if you had a homeless guy, I put him in my car, I drove him down to Danbury to the soup kitchen. I said, hey, bro, free food and drink in there. They never came back.

One guy I deal with, I get hired in Danbury. I'm a new guy. And this guy's, I'm like, come on, bro. Hit the bricks. He's like, hey, you brought me here. I'm like, shit, he's right. I did. Ah, you get in the past.

today. So you caused all the problems in Danbury years later? You think we were the only town doing that? New Fairfield, Brookfield, Bethel, everybody did that. Take them to Danbury. Why Danbury? Why do you think they picked Danbury? Back in the day, that was the only soup kitchen where homeless people could get free. Like, we did them a service because if they stayed in Ridgefield, you're going to starve, bro. Nobody here is going to feed you. So in Danbury, they had facilities where no one else had it. Facilities are kind of like field of dream. build it and they will come. Is there a way to fix a homeless problem in some of these major cities?

Yes, 1,000 percent. What is it? Well, I'll tell you this. If you can go and look and chat, GVT to solve the homeless problem in Connecticut, it's about a $70 million problem. How much a Ned Lamont just spend on foolishness? He took 500 million that he gave away to all of these foolish different, groups, if we'd have taken 70 million of that, you could, my personal feeling is, how do you

solve homelessness? I think that we need to build a place. Now, it was similar to what they did when they bought the hotel. No one wants that in your neighborhood. You need to build that somewhere where there's no one else around. But if you build a small community based, and Danbury, what do we got maybe, I'm going to say less than 100 people. If you build housing for 100 people, which not hard to do and you had everything self-contained over there, they would stay there. And that would pretty much take. Some people are always going to be homeless because they don't want help. They're junkies. You can't help them. But for the average person, you could probably fix that. It's just a question to spend into money. Do you find that the homeless people in Connecticut

are locals or are they from out of state? Well, Danbury, I will say there's a lot out of state. When they used to advertise on the internet that come here and they finally, once that shelter closed down, that was finally gone. But that was on the internet, you know, come here. So people would come. People from other states would come. I just remember the issues on Main Street, too, as when I used to own a business downtown,

how bad it is. It was bad then. It was way worse than than it is now. You know, at that time, you probably had the 35 to 40 hardcore homeless, all-alcoholics, junkies. These weren't people down under luck, couldn't pay their mortgage and got kicked out of their house. These were people who had been out there for a long time. What year did you go to Danbury from Ritchfield? 1985.

What was it like back then in the 80s and Danbury? 80s. I would love, if they invent a time machine, bro, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to grab one of these First Amendment auditors and sent him back to 1980. I would love to see these guys operating like with impunity. In 1980, you didn't talk to a cop like that. If you did, you were definitely getting tuned up. There was no question about that. And I'll say this. The cops were very respectful to people because it was a two-way avenue. The cops were respectful because they didn't have people talking to them like these people are now. Like, again, first hot day in New York City

shows people throwing water on cops again. And they're going to do whatever they want with Kami Mamdami out there. Forget it. New York City is going to be a complete disaster in zoo by midsummer here. It's getting there now. They lost a third of their police department

and very difficult to get anybody to go there. Were there versions of like auditors back then? No. Before it's time? No. So where do you think that comes from? No. Just social media?

It came from the wokeness. Wokeness across the board. It came from the Democrats, bro. It's wokeness of you can't do anything. And if you do something, you grab a First Amendment auditor and throw them out through the doors after you told them 15 times to leave. They're going to run and cry. Now the chiefs are like, oh, geez, they're complaining.

We're going to have to do something rather than just saying. Hey, this guy got what he deserved. How many times are you going to tell somebody to walk out through the doors? You had that incident where a First Amendment order showed up at a cop's house. In Connecticut, the state trooper. Like, you came to somebody's house in 1980? You would have disappeared. I mean, you know, we just wouldn't put up with that shit then.

But we didn't have to. It was expected by the public. Typical kind of, I mean, it was in 90s, but, you know, when you had your businesses, is if you called, you know, we would come down and we would tell people to move on. In them days, they would generally move on. If somebody said, I'm not doing it, you know, that would be a different story. Then we would probably physically move you. If you wanted to fight with us, you're going to get locked up.

And they would get prosecuted then. Now, it's a joke. You know, these George Soros, prosecutors that don't put anybody in jail, no bail. You know, how do you get arrested 39 times and you still have no bail? So it was eroding away and eroding away, but the Democrats in 2020 just absolutely destroyed policing. Well, it's interesting. A state like Connecticut, if you ever dig in the court system, you can see how many people have violations of probation, re-arrest, and they just get bailed out. And they just come back on it. That's a system we operate under now. We operate under a system that handcuffs to police. Now, you can go to Florida and you don't have that problem down there.

You won't see, like, the last time we had protesters sitting in the middle of the road, and we had to stand there with our cars and lights on. You try that in Florida. You're going to see dogs. You're going to see everybody getting locked up, dragged into the back of the cars, because they know they can't do that there. Do you think there were more or less arrests back in the 80s and 90s than there is now? Depends on what crimes you're talking.

They were probably less arrests. for the breach of peace type things or the public disturbances, because when you told somebody it's time to go home, they knew it was time to go home. Now you end up arresting them because they're going to stay and argue for an hour because they think they can't. I also think, and we're here on social media today, but I think social media has influenced a lot of stuff.

What issues did you see back then that weren't a big deal that are issues now? Well, I think it's back with the, ability to police, the respect during policing. That was never, there was never an issue. Look, cops were cops, firemen. Everyone was respected by, you know, your citizens of your city. Am I saying that every cop was great? No. Look, it's just like any job. You got a half a percent of people that probably don't belong there. And we had them in them days too and they would get watched out or dispatched and sent somewhere. But now you just, every cop that shows up, the matter how nice you are, it doesn't matter because people feel entitled. And they're going

to run their mouth, break your balls, because they believe there's nothing you're going to be able to do about it. Because if you do something, you're going to have an administrator take action against you, which we're seeing everywhere. What crime do you think progressed the most? since those days. What crime's been the biggest issue? I think crime stats stay relatively the same. Now, there's changing trends.

Back in my day, 80s, 90s, 2000s, I spent the majority of my entire 45 years doing narcotics work. Back in those days, heroin, 80s, 90s, early 2000s, right up until really the last five years. was with the show up of fentanyl, you know, heroin was it.

Now the trend has changed to fentanyl, and you're not hardly seeing any heroin at all, but you're seeing fentanyl, probably seeing it at about the same relative numbers that you were seeing the heroin at. But opiates, you know, back in the 80s, we never heard of any kind of pills. And, you know, then they come out with all these pain pills. They're opiate-based, and, you know, people are crushing them up and snorting them. Would Danbury have been considered a big city back then? Well, in this state, we used to be back in those days, we were the eighth largest city.

We've since elevated to the seventh, but we've been relatively the same size. Was there a lot of drug issues back then in Danbury? The 80s were huge, huge. We had a huge Colombian population in 80s, and in the 80s you could buy a kilo in Danbury for, you might be able to get one for 22 to 24,000 when everybody else was paying 30, but we had a pretty good network here. You know, the stuff was coming right from Columbia right on over, Puerto Rico right on over, so it was cheaper. Again, did they have it in Waterbury, New Haven, and Bridgeport, Hartford? Yeah, they had the same thing then. The difference with Danbury, and I've been asked on a lot of

shows on this. And I don't have an explanation. I've talked to both sides. I've talked to drug dealers, other law enforcement agencies. Danbury has never had a crack problem. You go to the 87, 88, 89. Crack was decimating every community. When we had crack in Danbury, we knew it was from out-of-towners. What the entrepreneurs would do, and I'm talking 16 to 18-year-old kids, they would take jump on a train they'd buy a thousand miles of crack in new york city come up on a train we arrested a couple kids one day getting off the train with their duffel bags and and i don't ask me why but in them days they all wore red sneakers every drug dealer from new york city came would they get off the train and we're all drive we're in another cover car we're like red sneakers holy shit getting off the train

what did they do? They asked us, do you know where the Law Gardens Housing Project is? And that was the main place. That's the project now, which is directly next to the PD. But that was the main place where these kids were coming in. So we grabbed them, threw them against the car, and that bag had nothing in it but crack. So that place has always been a crime kind of area since even back then. Back then it was really bad. Now, I would equate that now to a low-rent condo. I would not consider that a housing project any longer. Again, that was an investment in the community that the city made and the housing authority made and the federal government made. It was the way they were set up where initially back in those days, you had all these hallways and staircases to come down that you could go right under and do business.

If you drive by there now, they enclosed all of those stairways. And they made the apartments bigger. They added on like eight feet to an apartment. But now you walk in there and when you open a door, you're in your apartment. So there's no more common areas for the drug dealers to hang out. If you've been watching the show lately, then you've already noticed my new chain. This is from GLD. And trust me when I say, you're never going to see me again without it on.

And don't worry, this isn't the cheap stuff. The first thing I noticed when I got it was the quality. You can actually feel it when you pick it up. It's got a nice weight to it. The clasp is solid. The stone setting looks incredible and it just feels like a premium piece. It instantly makes any outfit look more put together,

whether I'm recording in the studio, going out to dinner, or just running errands. They've got everything too, chains, pendants, bracelets, and even watches. So whether you want to keep it simple or have a little shine on it, they've got you covered. One thing I really like is that it's made to be worn every day. It's waterproof, sweatproof, durable, and every piece comes with a lifetime guarantee.

That's huge because I don't want jewelry. I have to constantly worry about taking on and off. So if you're looking to step up your style or you're just looking for that perfect gift for someone that appreciates quality jewelry, I would definitely recommend checking out GLD. I love mine and I think you will too. card and change the game for a limited time only new customers are getting an insane deal use code locked in to get 40% off at gldd.com that's 40% off with code locked in at gldd.com after you purchase they will ask where you heard about them please support our show and tell them our show sent you were there

gangs in the 80s and 90s in damberry uh two types we have never really had a huge gang problem in town. We had local gangs, the hilltoppers, that was high ridge, the housing. We had three basic housing projects in town. You had law fourth, if you wanted to count Eden Drive, Eton Drive, Lowell Gardens, Beaver Street, and High Ridge. A little bit of activity out in Eden Drive. Lowell Gardens had some activity. Beaver Street had the most activity. You know, if you wanted to buy guns and stuff, you had to go to Beaver Street. High Ridge, mostly drugs, some shootings and stuff.

But they were always beef in between High Ridge and Beaver Street. It was the BSP in Beaver Street, the Beaver Street Posse versus the Hilltoppers. But again, these were local. You know, they called themselves gangs, but no national affiliation. We had a little bit of influence. when the Asian population arose with the EFCC Crips back in the day, then they kind of faded out quick. And then came the one legit, the most legit I've ever seen in this city was the Latin

Kings. One of our detectives, Mark Trahalis, did a huge case on them, which ended up later solving. Remember the Mark Rebong murder? You were probably like eight or nine years old when that happened. Asian kid was driving down 84 and he was shot right over here. And that went unsolved for years. They did a huge case on this and it was a wiretap. It was a drug case, but they ended up talking about the gun and nose drug.

They actually put the gun in a place and we were able to hear that and we went and took the gun. And that ended up, he ended up solving a case that was literally on the shelf for years. and he did a great job where again Danbury has solved some great cases and done some great things and a lot of it you guys never hear about or read about and we could never talk about in those days but our sID team that we have they're second to none and and I can name many federal agencies that call us when they need help and we would we'd go anywhere when I was a boss there I know have gone will travel you call me we'd go to Miami if you needed a hand And we did on occasion.

We had a Connecticut State Trooper on the show who was explaining how some cities that need the support will call in the trooper investigated division. But in this case, Danbury never usually called the troopers because their team was so solid. We didn't have to for the most part. And then some of it has to do with interdepartmental politics on who's running units. We didn't work with statewide narcotics for a number of years. and what happened is things come in trends. One of the guys who was a sergeant in statewide narcotics became the Connecticut State Trooper Colonel.

He's the boss now. He's a narcotics guy. So, of course, it'd be no different that if I was chief, I would be looking over to narcotics guys and making sure. And he was aware of this. And he came to us and said, oh, Johnny, who would you guys work with down here? and there are two guys that were there forever. John Mucciarino, he was the Johnny Kripinski to State Police Narcotics.

Johnny did, I think, right around the same time as me, 45 years, everybody knew him. And another guy, Tommy Bennett, great guys. We're like, we'd work with them. And the next day, we got a call. Mucci is like, hey, I'm coming back, bro. I don't know. I got called yesterday. 20 minutes later.

Time was like, I had a great gig working at the airport. I'm coming back. And then we went back. We did a lot of work with those guys. It's great when you have good relationships. And we're very fortunate that we worked with lots of agencies. Some things I can't talk about, but I will say this. A lot of departments would pick up the phone in this area.

Not a lot of the smaller departments have drug units. So if they have an issue, they would pick up the phone and say, could you give us a hand? And I'm proud to say, not once did we ever say, hey, Bethel's not our problem. Brooke feels not our pro. Whatever anybody called, we would certainly help them out to include the state police and a lot of federal agencies. To also include back in the day, we had one of the first two SWAT teams in this state that was a high caliber SWAT unit that could function.

We used to do a lot of the secret service in them days had no Connecticut SWAT team. So I did Bill Clinton a bunch of times when he would come to Connecticut. kid once we went to Norwalk, Secret Service, like, could you come down and help us out? Dropped what we're doing and down we would go. People don't realize in Danbury, they don't read a lot in the papers. Unfortunately, we don't have a local paper anymore. What we do need to do, we got to get together and have a local news, Danbury forecast every night of just not politics on the right or left, just the news of what's going on in

Danbury because you really don't know from a paper that's being produced in Bridgeport. And accurate reporting, though, too. Inaccurate reporting. I mean, the only thing you get now on Danbury, for the most part, is, you know, what you read in the news times that happened two weeks ago that they just heard about. That you have to pay for. Then you got to pay for. And they don't have any commentary.

I mean, back in my day, I enjoyed when I was a shift commander. The shift commander is a guy in charge of a patrol division on that shift. The newspaper came every night. The reporter came in. They would sit down with us. They would ask us what happened. I'd have the sheet out. Here's what happened today.

And we'd go over everything. When I first took over my unit, every single day, we were banging out of press release. My name is Peter Parker, but I'm also Spider-Man. This July, we're faced with a threat. That can be anyone. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker. I'm just a neighbor, friendly neighbor. But he hasn't forgotten them.

Sometimes Spider-Man has to do the hard thing. That's my responsibility. Talk to Banner? I didn't know you could get that big. Spider-Man, brand-new day. In theaters, July 31st. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another.

Your spreadsheet says, good luck. O-Doo brings your business together on a single platform. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, visit O-D-com to book a demo. It's O-D-O-O-O-D-com. It's with a big case that we're doing. Now, did you know you wanted to go into undercover work when you first joined? When I first joined, when I was a child and growing up and shooting, shooting, shooting,

I shot, I owned, you know, guns were it for me, and I wanted to be a SWAT guy, and I achieved that goal. But when I actually got there and started looking around to see two things it hit on me. One was, what makes the most impact out here? And it's funny, and people don't believe this, but it is true. It's not always arresting somebody. It's not always the swat guy. It's not always to 100 kilo arrest. Sometimes it's just being nice to people, doing things you don't have to do.

You're starting to see some of this on the Internet where somebody will call a cop and he'll show up and tie a kid. It doesn't have a dad and tie his tie to go to a graduation. I like doing those little things. In the rain, I did some things that were frowned upon in those days. You see somebody walking down the street and it's pouring out. I'm not doing anything. I'm driving around. This guy may or may not pay taxes.

What's the harm in picking them up and driving them? You know, I've heard guys say, hey, we're not taxis and we're not. And if I'm busy and got something to do, but I would do some of that. But that stuff didn't, it wasn't enough. Swat calls, you know, even four or five SWAT calls a year, not enough. But then I started seeing the fun and the anybody can go out in my entire career. When I was officer to year twice, the first time I had only written four traffic tickets, the second time I didn't write any.

And that's because I spent my time with Rio Police work. Anybody, I can train a monkey to sit on here and turn a radar gun on. And that's why I was never big. I didn't give a fuck if my guys ever wrote a traffic ticket, ever. And like now it's hard with these. new kids on the internet. They just don't fucking get it. They think that, you know, you got to pull everybody over and write tickets.

Most of those people are good people. When I started this job, a traffic ticket was 25 plus $3 court cost, $28 ticket. Now tickets are $300. That might be the difference of some poor lady feeding her kids that week or buying something she needed and not

doing it. So I never cared about that. But when I started seeing everything else revolved around drugs, our sure, shootings were drug-related. Our burglaries were drug-related. The guy that cut his grandmother's ring off her finger and sold it to go buy drugs. So if you attack the drugs, you really fit into the bigger picture of. So that's why I started leaning towards it. And once I got into it, there was no turn of back for me. It was very early in my career, my 18 months in. And back in the

day? Like, no, you had a joke with these people with your academy bullshit. We didn't go to the academy until I had a spot, but you went to work. You had two weeks of training. They said, here's your badge and gun. There's the keys to the car. You're sector four. And you went to work. You winged it, you know? There was no FTO. Like, you talk to the old guys and hope they'd give you some pointers. But now it's like, well, you got to go to the academy first. You got to have another 16 weeks of FTO. Then we might extend it. It was like, bro, we just got to throw. We just got out there. But you'll learn quick. What about the policy book? How did that differ back then to what it is now? We only had a few policies. There weren't a lot of them. Now you got

fucking volumes. But back in those days, you had some pursuit policies. They were made, like, policies. I loved, we had a dear chief, Chief Nelson Macedo, favorite guy ever to work for. He was just an awesome guy. And I've been at hearings with guys. We'd say, say the chief to policy, he says, policies are like guidelines. Doesn't always fit. And he used common sense. And that is true. You know, policy is a guideline, but, you know, our policy says handcuffs somebody

behind her back. Well, maybe that 80-year-old lady doesn't need to have her handcuffs. Maybe the guy with the shoulder operation doesn't he. I use it as a guideline, but the one thing that I've always said in policing, throw all those things away, policy should be about, common sense. And that's really what it comes down to. Policing should be about common sense. I know when I'm doing something, whether it's right or wrong. I don't need a policy to tell me that. What was undercover work like back then? A lot different, a lot different. I'll talk a bunch about some

UC work now. I will just tell you this. There's some things obviously because I'm not going to talk about it. but I see guys come on these podcasts. I'm just going to give you one show that, one, one experience I had back in the 80s. We had a piece of equipment that we used as a monitor or bug. I was working undercover in a bar. I making a purchase. I had that piece of equipment on. That's when cops first came out.

I'm watching fucking a sheriff hold up the same item on TV and say, oh, my undercover here is going to be all set. He, you know, we'll be able to monitor everything. And I got this motherfucker on. And I'm like, I got to pull my shirt up, slide it over the top. Luckily, nobody saw it. And from that day on, I said, nobody should ever. And I, when I teach the UC school, I have a great,

I've been very fortunate in my career to work with some of the greatest UCs and teach with. I teach the UC school. It's called a Joe Pistone. Undercover School, Donnie Brasco. Everybody's seen the Donnie Brasco movie. It's funny now. Cops in 2025, young cops, they say, who's Donnie Brasco? Narcotics guys don't know who it is because they watch them all.

But they don't even have a clue. And Joe Pistone, you know, again, infiltrated the mob. I got to personally work with Jack Garcia, who was one of the greatest FBI undercarvers also. He also infiltrated the mob. Jack was a guy who did scores That was the big thing when They grabbed junior You know talk about a dream job

If you're a cop They make you the manager of a strip club What do I sign for that? You know So there's a lot of a lot of different I've been again Very very fortunate in my UC career To work with some of the best guys out there

But back in the day The monitoring units that we had the wires are pretty much what you see on TV. Now they've been released and everybody knows. You know, it was like four battery packs with a big wire and you would put it on. And maybe if you were lucky, you would get a block radius, you know. And that was it. Like the wire went out more than it was on.

So if you were calling for help a lot of the times, it was really up to you. That Calvary wasn't coming because they didn't know. I did some work back in a day way before. your time, but Bridgeport had a housing project, Father Panic Village. It was so large, you couldn't get anywhere close enough because you couldn't send any white dudes in there, and any black dude, they would stick out that wasn't there. So you were on your own when you went in to make buys there. And there's basically no coverage. Today, there's just so much technology out there. And again, that's one thing I won't speak about what we use today,

because that would endanger the guys out there. But we're much, much more able to safely monitor people. I actually got to where, now, you know, you see body cams all over the fucking place, covert cams, you can buy them online. I got to use one of the first button cams that ever came out. And this was a fucking VCR that was the size of pretty close to your monitor over there that I had to strap to my back and run a wire around with a button that you put through. That was like the first, oh, we got body-worn video for when you make a buy.

And it worked, but you had to walk around like the hunchback of Notre Dame. You had to wear a heavy jacket no matter how cold it was. You know, those are the things that we used back in those days. It was crazy. But you did it and you went out and did your job and guys did great work. Do you think in the 80s and 90s, anyone in the police departments could ever envision that it would be like today with the body cameras and just technology in general in the departments? No. I'd be the first to say that, you know, and I was back when I was a young detective, I was the tech guy.

I just couldn't envision that that's what we would have today. And the safety things are great for individuals today. you know that we can we can get to guys if they need you know assistance because now we're going to know why didn't you go to say the feds or even the state or anything like that to progress the undercover work biggest fuck up of my life uh when i took all the tests i took the test for danberry ridgefield bethel and d ea i i get hired in ridgefield new york city calls me i take an air test first. I'm like, ah, fucking hot. I'm good, bro. I got a job. So I stay in Ridgefield. Then I go to Danbury. While I'm in Danbury. I'm only in Danbury, maybe eight months, nine months. I'm just

getting my feet wet there. I'm having fun. It's a great job. There's enough criminality and action. But I get there and DEA calls. So I'm like, hi. They don't come down. We'd like to talk to you. So I said, ah, you know, I got, I got down there. Because I'd done a, if I really had more experienced working with them, I would have taken that job. And I would have been a whole lot, financially been a whole lot better off today. You know, my pension is 72,000. Their pensions are 120, 130, 140. I went down and met with them and like, you know, we'd like to have you. It's great having a young guy. I said, well, I'm interested. I said, I'd be working here. We're in Bridgeport or Hartford. In those days, no, when you're a new agent, you go where you're sent.

And to some extent, now they try to keep you in your area, but it's not always possible. I had my choice of going to Miami or L.A. I'm 21 years old. You know, I'm living at home. I'm making more money than I know what to do with buying cars. I'm like, now I've got to go and get a hicking house. It's like, I can't work here. They're like, no, and I didn't take the job.

Subsequently, I work for them guys so many times on task forces and doing buys. They have different rules than we do, especially. back then. DEA is very strict, and it's a federal agency, and I understand, you know, that's all they do is you see work a lot of it in DEA, and they lost a lot of guys, so they came up with some rules. The rule said if, you know, if you're on a corner and there's corner A, B, C, and D, if you're going to do the deal, it had to be done in writing. If you're going to be doing the deal on Corner A, and the guy walked across the street to Corner B, deal was off. You left. That's their rules. I was, I didn't have to partake in those rules.

rules coming from an outside agency. So a lot of times, I worked on the DEA task force. I worked on the FBI had a drug task force. They still have today. It's called SOS, Save Our Streets, where you got drug FBI agents, no wingtips, no shirts, those guys just doing drugs. Again, they brought us in for the same rules because you didn't have to abide by the Fed standards. So I go to B, C, D.C., Hey, you want to sit in the car. You know, you got to be careful with some things you do. We don't like to drive around with people. You know, if I'm going to take a ride, I want to be driving the car and stuff.

But, you know, those are some of the differences of what feds did compared to what we did in those days. Have you seen the feds over the course of your career pick up less or more cases from the state? I'm seeing. I can go on my own experience in our last five years when I went back there as a boss. we were working hand in hand with the feds, several federal agencies. You know, the feds, if they find good people, they're happy to work with you. And here's the difference. And, you know, you hear people whine about this, the new woke cops.

But we didn't work with the FBI for quite a while. And I worked with the FBI a lot. Anytime Jack Garcia would call me, hey, Jack, what do you want to do? We're going to do it. Back in the day, I worked a lot with them. And then we didn't work with them for a lot of years. And then 2015, 16, 18, you know, we didn't work on them at all. It was like, who can we trust here, the things that were going on?

When Cash Battal and Dan Bonjino and Dan, who I've done his show, I know personally, gets the job, you know, I spoke with him. And their big thing was to work with locals. Dan understood, because Dan was a cop in New York City before going to the Secret Service and then being an FBI agent, Dan understood that local guys can get the job done. I'll give you an example coming up with the biggest case we ever did with that. But they started reaching out. You all saw the case that we did with the two Venezuelan children that were being human trafficked in Danbury.

in a whorehouse. Yeah. Okay. The FBI came to our office. They come in, they said, and I'd like to talk to sergeant. Hey, what can I do for you? I didn't know these guys, and I know pretty much everybody that exists that's been around more than 10 years.

I did not know either one of these guys. So it's kind of a cold meeting. There's a lot of different types of meetings, and I don't fill you in on them later. But with these two guys, they walked in, they added two pictures of the girl, and they're like, hey, we have reason to believe these girls are in your city. They're being trafficked. And would you be able to help us? I'm like, sure. And I'd never heard this from an FBI agent before. They said, look, we want to be clear. We have new bosses. And I didn't say a word. They made it very clear to us. We are to work with you. It's going to be give and take on both sides.

We're not going to be in charge. We're going to work with you. And I'm like, that's great. news. I guess they're doing it right now. And we take the pictures. I call my guys in. I say, hey, we're done doing dope. This is the priority. Find these girls. Unlimited overtime, do whatever we got to do to find these girls. And, you know, there's horror houses all over town. It's not that they're not known, not a big priority to do most of those unless there's an issue. and my guys went out and they this is at five o'clock the FBI was there about 7.30, 8 o'clock. We didn't have too much. And I said, all right, let's head home back in at 8 tomorrow morning. The FBI is going to come back down. One of my guys, and this is why I'm proud of these guys. The absolute, when I say they're the best, it's available in that city, they are, state.

And he's calling more of his people. At 11 o'clock that night, he called. me. I got them. Like we had, we didn't even know names. We had two pictures. He was able to locate them in which horror house they were in. Call the FBI back and said, hey, you guys come in early tomorrow? They're like, why? Well, we found him. We're going to bang the door and do a search warrant. And when they came in, obviously we typed a search warrant. It was Danbury. But I love it that their boss said to me, what do you need from us? not we're the FBI we're all right here's what we're going to do they come in and said what do you need from us you got any swat guys with you one guy's like that i'll take him you're going to make entry with

us and you got any females up okay you jump in the stack and he said whatever you need from you tell us we didn't see that many years past but that's that's the FBI that's operating today and once we get in we recovered both girls arrested five people things that they can do that I just not ashamed of it. We don't have the technology. When it comes to the phones and downloading and getting the info, the FBI is better than anybody out there. They have 10-fold equipment that we have.

It's also the worst thing to do because you have to do a search warrant for each one. We collected 11 phones that night. I said, I don't want to be that guy because I'll be honest, I would have been pissed if I was at. I said, you said anything. we need we need the info off all these phones no problem sergeant three days later they had the info back for me so this is the fbi we're dealing with today much different and i did call dan right after that and said hey you told me if guys are you know interested uh that you find some good guys to let you know

and i said dan i didn't know these guys and i'm not vouching for personal friends just met him this case awesome case but they were the epitome of what you wanted to see with the FBI and a local agency working together, not against each other. And they were pleased to hear that. Recording these interviews every day can get exhausting. And because I've been in the gym every morning, I get hangary. I think we all can relate when I say that I usually keep my fridge stocked with healthy items, but I usually get way too tired and lazy to actually put together a fresh meal.

So that's why I switched a factor. These meals are fully prepared, delivered straight to your food, door designed by dieticians and handcrafted by chefs. And the best part is they are ready to eat in just two minutes. All I have to do is throw one of these bad boys into the microwave and it's ready to go in just two minutes. What surprised me the most is how good everything tastes. The meals are fresh, never frozen, and there are over a hundred different meals that rotate every week. So you're not eating the same thing over and over. They've got everything from Mediterranean-inspired dishes to Asian flavors, plus ready to eat salads and extras like immunity shots and superfood bars if you want to

round out your day. My all-time favorite Factor meal has been the Parmesan cream chicken, so you already know we've been keeping the studio stocked with these. And it's not just convenient, it's quality food. Every meal is made with lean proteins, colorful vegetables, healthy fats, and whole food ingredients. Factor also leaves out more than 175 ingredients you probably don't want in your food, like artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, and refined seed oils. I use Factor, and if you want to eat healthier without the hassle of shopping, cooking, cleaning, and all that jazz, then you should use Factor too. Head to FactorMeals.com slash Lockton 50 off and use code Lockton 50 off to get 50%

sent off, plus free daily greens per box with a new subscription while supplies last through September 27, 2006. See the website for more details. Now, what about the process of getting the search warrant from a judge after you found the missing people? Is it like the movies? You know, you go knock on the judge's door and they sign it in their bathrobe? Or? In that case, yes. In most cases, no. What we do for search warrants is we type them. We generally, we make an appointment with the judge and they'll tell, you know, come on over at three o'clock and we go there at three o'clock and go in his office, he reads it and signs it and gives it back to us. That's what you're generally. Now, this case was obviously the exception. We had to wake a lot of people up in cases like

that. And I'll say the judges are great. There's always one on call. I've never had a problem with, You know, I've gone to soccer games where guys like, my kids playing soccer, can you come here? Yes, Your Honor. And, you know, the kid's playing, and he'll step out of the game. And one was, you know, he read the whole thing and signed and gave it back to me. They've all been good. You don't abuse that. You start showing up every day at somebody's house when you could have done it at noon.

Then it would be an issue. But in those cases like that, no problem at all. Now, who's making the call to cooperate with the feds? Is it the chief? Is it the mayor or is it just say like a sergeant or a captain? I'll be honest with you. We never deal with like when the feds generally come. They're dealing with when I was there is the unit sergeant.

They were dealing with me and my lieutenant. It might go to the level of the captain who's in charge of the DB and whatnot. But generally these things, unless it were a political case, you know, in politics and that stays out of these cases, it's pretty much cop to cop most generally now once you form these relationships it's like i was tight with that guy afterwards he could call me for anything and i could call him for anything um my guys and the guys that they worked with now will the feds tell you when you're they're making an arrest in your town um most of the time most of the time my unit would they would reach out to us if it was something If it was like child porn and computers, there's a different unit that handles that.

They would, most of the time, come and take a local cop with them. As of lately, it just makes sense. Not all the time. But I'll give you another one of those stories. And this goes back to, around 2001, the case, you see it on A&E called Air Paracol. What happened on 9-11, remember all the planes got grounded. You old enough then? Yeah, I was sex.

Every plane was grounded in the country. When people got their suitcases in like 10 different airports, there were three suitcases going around to carousel and no one picked up all over the country. When the security grabbed them and opened them, they're full of each. It was roughly 33. It was 100 kilos of coke in each airport. They're like, now the FBI opens up the case, they're worrying about, you know, the terrorism aspect. the DEA opens a case, but ultimately FBI did that case, and we worked with them.

Now, this is a case of they were in our town. They had photos of three people in our town that were baggage handlers in Kennedy Airport that were picking up the three bags and bringing them back to Danbury. Shocking. New York City is the hub distribution, but it was being transported from New York City to Danbury split up and then go back to New York City for distribution. And in that case, the FBI was in town for over two years working on that. And there was no call made does.

Now, if you're any unit worth of shit, you should know when the feds are in your town. You know, we cross paths here and there. You know, they were doing surveillance in areas we're doing surveillance. You know, we're calling everybody saying, hey, anybody know who's driving that black tinted windowed car over there and not us, not us. So we had heard through the, and you always have your friends that'll pick up the phone and say, hey, just see you know. So we knew they were in town, but we didn't know why.

You know, they could have been investigating us for all we knew. We don't know why they were in town. About two and a half years after that, they show up, knock on our door and come in, similar to what had been done in later years. And they show us the pictures and like, do you know who these guys are? and we're like, why? So now it was like a little bit of a cat and mouse game. Well, we're looking into these guys,

and I had the absolute best lieutenant. He was a Marine. He didn't put up with any bullshit. Finally, my boss says, come on, you guys have been in this town, and we know who they were. It was funny because I had just done a search warrant on one of them. I didn't get 100 kilos. I got a few ounces, but all three people we had done cases on.

So three feet behind that FBI agent, we had files in the cases. We could have just gone. But we want to know what's going on here. And the FBI, there's a lot of different units there. Some units that show up with their, you know, $2,000 shoes and $5,000 suits. We might not necessarily do a lot of work with. These guys showed up in sneakers and jeans. And their boss that showed up.

Absolute aces. these are guys that we still stay in touch with to this day, 25 years after the case is over. Finally, he says, all right, guys, he made some calls, and everybody says from every federal agency out there, you guys are legit, you're good people. How about we go out and talk about this over a beer? Back in A's, like, if you went to do a search warrant in New York City,

like the first time we went down, like, I mean, we don't drink on a job. our unit. And it's like, get on, the guys, like, they put beers down to like, hey, you guys are going to have a beer with us. So I'm like, I'm not going to fucking drink. We're going to do a search warning. And my boss whispers to me, they don't trust us if we don't have a beer with them. I'm like, okay, I guess we got to have a beer with them. Back in the 80s, 90s, the mutual respect, it just, again, so different to, you know, going out and getting a flapolino with extra whipped cream and talking about it today. We went out and 15 minutes later, we knew that these guys were just like us and they knew that

we were, once we got through the bullshit initial 20-minute conversation, we finished up our beers, went back and we threw the files down. They immediately brought us into the case. It was a huge case. We got trips to Puerto Rico, Miami. And when that case was done, again, when you're dealing with great guys, the guy running that case was a SWAT guy. Ray was awesome. when takedown day come he's like you know we're bringing FBI swat Johnny but I know you're a swat guy jump in a stack with them and uh the most nerve-wracking part about the entire case the three people in Danbury they've taken 16 people down around I believe it was like six or seven different countries this is all going to be done at once so 24 hours before we were each assigned a target in our

unit and you had to stay with them because the FBI were coming at 6 a.m. and we had to be be 1,000% sure where our guy was at 6 a.m. Of all of the jobs I've ever done, it's probably the most nerve-wracking. My guy, he's, everybody else is following our guys, I'm lucky. My guy, he's home. He's home. He ain't going anywhere. I'm like, I'm kicked back.

I'm watching his front door. This is great. About 9 o'clock that night, my guy goes out. I'm like, fuck. And we're all split up, so we only got two cars compared to having dozens. And we're following my guy, and I lost him. but I'm not going to get on the radio and say I lost them. So I'm like panicking.

I went to every place that we knew we went, sweats coming down. I don't know what to do. I can't tell the FBI. I'm going to be the only jerk out of 16 countries that I don't know where my guy is. So we get lucky. I went back and set up on his house. In about 2 a.m., he showed up, thank God, and walked back through the front door. And when they showed up at 6, the team that came to me, they're like,

You know, where he is? I said right inside that door. And that was great takedown. You see that case on A&E. They featured. Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. That one, it's one of the largest that we'd ever been involved in. So now, why do they prefer the 6 a.m. bus? don't prefer it. That's their rules. That's an actual rule. Yeah. I'll hit your door at 3 a.m.,

4 a.m. I like catching people sleeping, but that's, they don't do search warrants before then. So that was their way. But they don't necessarily do them after, too. It's always like that morning. And not on the weekend. No, I'll do them in the afternoon. I've done it, you know, any, it's just depending on a case or depending on what they got. But again, absolute great guys. A little bit of a game there in the beginning. What I'm glad is we don't see that too much. anymore right now. They hit my house at 6 a.m. and Danbury? Six a.m. with Danbury cops. You know, at 6 a.m. Where were you that day? Were you on call? Not our unit. Your case was done by general investigation. So, you know, we, and I wouldn't have gotten involved in your

case. It wouldn't have been good for me personally. So I wouldn't have gotten involved in that case. But that was not something that we did. Now, speaking of working with federal law enforcement, What's your take on local cops refusing to work, let's say, ICE because of, say, like, the mayor's directive? If I was the chief, I'd fire him. Let me give you this story. And you know my wife and my family's from Brazil. So for, you know, the liberals that whine and cry, oh, you're a white male and you don't get it. I have more of my family from out of the country than I do in the country.

So here's what happens with not working with ICE. And I can tell you because back in my day as a young detective, we did work with ICE. Ice never came and did a raid here without us. But you know what the difference is? ICE would listen to the local guys because they know we know our community. So I'll give you one case. We raided a bar with ICE. they're going through everybody we had a guy that was in there that was awesome to help out the community

he's now a u.s. citizen and everything else um but they would have grabbed that guy that day he had he had helped our department out our cops out um if if there was something going on in the community he was not a paid informant or anything like that he was just a great guy who wanted nothing better than his for his community to do well. And I said to them guys, hey, look, we like this guy, and he's a benefit to this community. You know what they did?

Okay, Johnny, I grabbed them. Step outside. I want to talk to you, sir. Have a nice day. And because ICE would listen to us because they don't know. A guy who comes from Hartford to Danbury has no clue about anything,

Danbury. when we were involved with them, they would listen to us. If ICE was involved now, if local cops, not just Dan, but every community, that same thing would transpire

and you wouldn't see a lot of this stuff. If you had local cops out there with them, like if it was in Danbury, all these people around the street, I know all these people by first name. They would feel much more comfortable. However, with this is a Connecticut state law, we couldn't assist ICE at all. Now, I am proud to say our department

when ICE was being physically assaulted and having their cars rammed, did step up, did make arrest, and did what they had to do in that case, where some cases you're seeing that they won't. But I don't care whether it's ICE, whether it's DEA, I'll even throw internal affairs out there. If a cop somewhere is getting his ass kicked and calling for help and you get a guy sitting in a patrol car, a half a block watching it, I just assume fire the guy and never work with it. Now, I think one of the issues, too, with ICE is that, you know, you have some individuals that are, you know, the mom and pop restaurant that might not be here illegally, but they've been paying their taxes or, you know. 100%. And they're doing well. But then you have, like, I read in Danbury, ICE got two individuals that were sex offenders.

So where's kind of like that line, you know? The line should be common sense. Where are these people all protesting? Where? In Danbury. The courthouse. Okay. So that tells you, in my experience here, they've only seen ICE at the courthouse arresting offenders.

But they don't care. They were complaining. They were out there the day that ICE picked up four of the guys. One was a legal resident, but four of the guys that we arrested with those 15 and 16-year-old Venezuelan traffic girls. When ICE picked them up, those same idiots were out there complaining about that. Where's the line? These guys were involved with human trafficking of children. and you don't want them picked up, that to me is ridiculous.

Now, I will say this, the flip side on the other side, look, these guys that are out here, hardworking individuals, never been arrested, credit to the community, such as a person I spoke for earlier, I don't have a problem with them at this point. You know, look, let's go focus on what we're doing, but that is what they're doing. They're not getting up at six in the morning going and sitting. outside some poor guy's house that's mowing lawns. Where these other people become a statistic and it's terrible, but you have a family member that, you know, he's been arrested for narcotics or assault or robbery and he's living at this house and they show up there and there's

four other family members. That's where these people are coming in as collateral damage. They got caught in the crossfire. Caught on the crossfire. And that's very unfortunate. But if somebody calls for help, you ought to be responded. Now, when ICE comes to, say, a city like Danbury, I imagine they're getting a list of, like, what the dockets are for that case and they're looking for specific people. Any time they've come to Danbury, it was for targeted individuals. They're coming here to arrest people that shouldn't be here. Yeah. Like the individuals I spoke about.

It just shocks me. I love all these liberals out there. We're the keepers in. We're the protectors of women. They're arresting people for sexual assault. in human trafficking, and they're out there protesting it. Now, with 45 years in the department, you've been through a lot of chiefs. Yeah, I think four and a half, five, depending on how you count.

We had maybe six, counting the acting chiefs that we had at times. Is that hard to navigate from different administrations? Depends on your administration. For the most part, luckily, it affects different units, different ways. Our unit, for the most part, never really been affected. we were pretty much separated. We're in our own world, doing our own thing. So it affects the patrol division more than anything.

You'll get one chief to say, you have to have a hat on 24 hours a day. Don't step out without a hat. You'll have another chief to say, I don't care if you ever wear a hat. You know, bullshit like that. That's the bullshit that ruins this job. How about we worry about, like, I was asked once,

you know, some of your guys have some different shirts on. I'm like, I could care less. It ain't a police fashion show for me. I care what the guy does when he gets. The guy comes in and throws two kilos on my desk. I don't care if he's wearing pink bra. I mean, let's worry about real stuff. But administrators sometime, that's the bullshit they worry about.

Now, did you stay with your unit for your whole career as you moved up in rank? And that's where a lot of my guys never leave the unit. We've had guys here for over 30 years. It's very difficult to do. I'm in the unit, I'm a detective, I make sergeant. I had been promised by the previous chief that, Johnny, if you go back to patrol, we knew the boss was going to leave, go back to patrol. It's going to be like six months and then. And that's what happened on a couple of the bosses.

I did that. Then we get a new chief comes in, and I spent 14 years in patrol. As a sergeant. Yeah, sergeant in patrol. Then I was eventually a shift commander when I became the senior sergeant running a shift. But, you know, for me, that was 14 years of a waste of my time. You know, people calling, someone's parked on my lawn. There's any cocaine or drugs or guns in it?

I mean, you know, it wasn't really my thing. You go there, you do your job. I just felt that if I went there and protected the guys, I'd be in good shape. You know, I tried to give my guys the leeway to go out and do a good job, motivate them to do a good job. Is a supervisor. I could sit in that desk and put my feet up all day. I went out many a time in a patrol car, arresting people, making drug arrests.

Because if the boss is out doing it when he don't have to, why aren't you doing it? So some guys, new kids would come to me and say, hey, I heard you like the drug guy. I'd like to go make, I take new kids up on 84. We'd do some traffic interdiction and stuff. That was the only way to at least keep me sane. And then finally, when we got a new mayor, I had the opportunity to go back as the boss. and Mayor Esposito sent me back there. And then, you know, that was like for me,

win the lottery for $500 million. I go back to that job as the boss. There was no question of which thing I would take. That was the Crem de la Crem. And we went in and there were things that I didn't like when I was a detective. I said, we ain't doing that shit anymore, guys. This is all about productivity. Now, I remember when I met you as a sergeant,

you were doing a lot of overnights in the nightclub space. Yeah, I used to work that old. Overnight, we call it the bar detail. If you work four to twelfths, which I work straight, four to twelfth, from 12 to 4, you would just go to the bar area and deal with de idiots and drunks and fights all night. You probably have some interesting stories from back then. Well, Ian, I got a few stories about you that I could actually share now that I'm retired. Let's hear. The audience would love that. Now, you know, when you do these shows, most of the time you come on, you have no clue who your host is, and your host is looking into your background.

I've done 120 podcasts. I'm looking at my producers and host backgrounds. I didn't have to do one freaking thing for this one. Because I've known Ian since he was, what, we was 18 then when you were down? I started promoting when I was 16. You know, he'd always been down there, so he knew who he was. Interestingly, the club that he took over, and my wife worked at prior to that. And when Ian bought the place, she had advised the new owners told her, the old owners told

hey, we're going to have a new owner here, but don't worry, you're safe. You know, your nights are the best nights here. My wife said, I have to go meet with the owners. And, okay, her business was her business. My business is mine, we never mixed it, too. She came home and said, baby, I quit my job today. That guy is not honest. I don't want to work for him.

I was like, okay. Thank Christ, she quit her job. I didn't want to be involved in the middle of a federal investigation. It would have come. But some of the great stories with Ian. My unit gets called down, assist the fire department. You know, we also had to do bar detail stuff, and it was a pain, and he asked for us. We were doing more important shit.

Didn't really want to do it, but it was part of our job. So we get down, I go out there, here's the fire marshal there. I go, what's going on? He goes, well, we got a complaint of overcrowding. Okay. I said, what do you got, bro? He goes, well, I got the clicker. I'm running the clicker here, so I know we're at 605.

So I know he's got like another 135. to put in there. I'm like, okay. Now, just remember, my wife ran that place for 10 years. I'd been to every show she had. I know how many tickets every show she had. She sold. I can open a door and look in and say, okay, 630 people. Hey, you didn't make any money tonight. There's like 110 people here. The farm is, yeah, there's 605 in there. They opened that door. First of all, when they opened a door, I think eight people fell out because the place was absolutely, I looked in and I'm like, yeah, I'm thinking it were about at least 2,500, maybe 3,000, which is about five times over. Closed the door to the fireman's like, see, I told you, we're at 605. I'm like, you're in charge

of the fire department. If you want me to do something, no, we're good. I said, okay, that's, that's his job. My job was to throw people out if he wanted me to, but okay, we get in a car, leave is I drive around the building. Ian is at the back door opening up the back door. He's got a line of like 50 people collecting tickets, letting them all come in through the back door. Now, that was one of my favorite Ian Vic stories. Now, in a case like that, who's sending you down there? Is it the police department? Is it the mayor's office? No, it was a complete. We don't, everybody thinks that the mayor calls us or the chief. That's very, very rare to be honest with you, no matter who, the mayor is, whether a Democrat, Republican, no matter who the chief is, most complaints like that,

and we still get them today, it's somebody picks up the phone and calls, in that case, called the fire department. They called the fire department who sent the party marshal down. It was just someone who called in. Could have been a rival competitor. Could, you know, we see that one bar calling on another bar. That's 90% of the time. So these are the things that have. happen in that case. And then the fire department marshal's never come without police because obviously they can't arrest people or move people. That would be our function if they want to do so on that. Do you think there's a lot of ball busting at that point in time from the cops? Just with like, there's a lot of raids on the clubs and whatnot for our laundry drinking.

You know, you had a lot of violations and stuff. And, you know, we would, you know, we would go there. I had a raid Tuxedo's one My wife was one at the place She's like What are you doing here? I said, I got to do my fucking job,

Rose. Look, your job is your job. I don't ask you what you do here. You know my job And I can never tell you When I'm coming here. You know, we go in check IDs

And luckily everybody was of age But, you know, that's just part of it. That's a job that we have to do But it's busy work that We have a lot more important things to do. Now, you guys would do

Liquor Control Division Rades too, right? Yeah, Whenever Liberty Division came out, we had to go with them. Do you have any good stories from that for any of the clubs? Most of them, they're all pretty basic. You know, you go in, you find somebody, you know, that's underage and, you know, they'd write them up and that was it. And, you know, they were never, you know, bigger type cases, you know, like we just, that was work you didn't want to do. It was overtime.

The one thing I do miss about Ian Bick being down there. I made so much money with overtime because Ian was having these huge shows where everybody's panicking. And my guys will all work, and we would go down there to work two to ten, go down there from 10 to four, six hours, sometimes a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Yeah, we don't get that overtime. I remember there's a big article where they added up all the overtime. It cost, what, like 60,000 a weekend or something? It was a lot. Yeah, it was huge money, huge money. Because you guys would be there, what, Thursday, Friday, Saturday? It used to be Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, then it went to Friday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, then it went to Friday Saturday. Now, as the club started to die out,

You guys would still stay there overnight until a certain point, right? Yeah. You know, I think they probably still have people down there now. You know, it's just you remember, we've had shootings down there, stabbings down there. You know, people got murdered down there. You guys get some real assholes, too. At the late at night, I would see them interacting with cops because they're drunk. You know, they're drunk.

You know, I would deal with a thousand drunks a night down there. You know, I mean, that was just typical. But they weren't, you know, those cases were bullshit cases. as you get down. Sometimes, you know, in 1980, you could actually get in a fight with somebody. And then when he got up off the ground, you could say, oh, your choice. You want to keep going. You want to go to jail or you want to go home.

I will say in 1980, a lot of the people say, oh, I got my ass whooped, I'll go home. You know, I've seen things that you'd never see today. Well, take that badge and gun off. I'll kick your ass. Somebody hold his shit. And you fought? If the guy whooped your ass, he didn't get arrested. If you whooped his, he didn't make a complaint.

So when did that change? Does it just change overnight? Yeah, yeah. That stuff right is when the 90s came that really got phased out. You know, that type of policing was that. That's just not done. You know, you can't, you get, you're going to jail for that now. But is that just one chief that comes in and says we're done with that?

No, I'm talking nationwide from here to California. Whether life serves you an ace or an unexpected backhand, the high-protein yogurt, Oikos Pro, is there to feed your strength and help you turn every challenge into a smash. Oikos Pro helps build strong muscles and support muscle recovery with high protein and contains no added sugar because true strength isn't about being able to take the hits.

It's about being able to bounce back. Oikos Pro. Feed your strength. Visit oikos.ca for more details. Care for your skin like you care for the game. Dove Men Plus Care is an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2026 and has just dropped their new limited edition Deodorant and Antiperspriceprint Collection

for 72 hours sweat and odor protection helping you stay fresh from kickoff to the final whistle. Visit dove.com slash CA slash EN slash men dash care to shop now. This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. Last year I went through many different life changes. I needed to take a pause and examine how I was feeling in the inside to better show up for the ones who need me to be my best version of myself.

When you're navigating life's changes, Talkspace can help. Talkspace is the number one rated online therapy, bringing you professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatry providers that you can access anytime, anywhere. Living a busy life, navigating a long-distance relationship, becoming a first stepfather, Talkspace made all of those journeys possible. I could speak with my therapist in the office.

I could speak of my therapist in the comfort of my home. I was never alone. Talkspace works with most major insurers, and most insured members have a $0.0.0. No insurance, no problem. Now, get $80 off your first month with promo code space 80 when you go to talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com.

Save $80 with code space 80 at talkspace.com. 1980s, you didn't run your mouth. If you did, you better be able to back it up. You remember that restaurant that was next to tuxitos where they said the body got chopped up or whatever. Oh, yeah, yeah. Guestos.

And they said they found the carpet in the, in the tuxedo junction. Dumpster. Dumpster. In the alleyway. That was probably one of the bigger cases in Danbury. Yeah, that was a big case. I actually was, I got involved in that with the dive team. The body was dumped in some garbage bags over in New York.

So because it was our evidence collection, I went down with our dive team. It was in east. It was only up to our chest and water, but we went down and recovered some of that. And you found the body in the bag? Yeah. The Boy Scouts were out doing one of them city cleanup things. They dragged the bag on it. It was like an arm in there.

I head over here. And yeah, that was a big case in Danbury. Is it scary being a part of the dive team when you're looking for, say, a body? I could care less about bodies, but I will say this. I've been in every special operations unit we have. The only thing in 45 years I didn't do kind of pissed me off. And it just never clicked was I never had a cane. dog. But, you know, SWAT team, dive team, defensive tactics instructor, all the undercover work,

every dangerous thing you could, when people, a lot of people ask me, what's the most dangerous job you did? And the most dangerous job I ever did was a dive team. Not the SWAT team, not undercover work, but the dive team. It's extremely dangerous. People don't have, they think, oh, these guys are going out swimming. It is the most dangerous job in a department. You go down there, It's not like recreational diving where you dive together. You know, you're down there alone. You got a safety diver up top, but you got a rope on. You get tangled on, like you're down there.

We brought cars up, boats up, safes up. That safe falls off and pin. You're dead. Helped out New Milford one day and almost watch a diver get killed. Route 7, that river is so fast. Stretch a rope across because you put a diver in, he's gone. You stretch a rope across, put a be in or a rope onto the diver, and you pull ropes on him and you pull them out. Here's a problem.

You have to stay either directly into it, which I don't recommend or directly away from the water rushing, and he'll pull you back and forth while you're looking for your body or car. Diver turned his head. The force is so much. Ripped it out, and he was so far out there by the time we pulled him in, I was concerned. It's just the dangers of diving. You probably see more guys get killed doing that than a lot of the other jobs. And you have Candlewood Lake next to us. Yeah. We have a lot of bodies of water here.

Candlewood Lake, we've done two bodies up, or one body up in Lake Wicca. I was there during that drowning. During that, yeah. Bodies of water over in Terry Wild Park. We've had a couple. You know, so it's, it's, it's, our dive team is busy, real busy. You know, it's just, again, part of the job. Were there any bank rob,

And Danbury? Yeah, we had the Pardue brothers, when you're bored sometime, go online and look. I was a youngster then. I was in, I'm going to say sixth grade down the street. My dad was a cop. They came in. They blew up the police station first. So that everybody went there.

They robbed the bank on Main Street. And then they blew the bank up. And then they drove the car over. That's where the apartments are now, but it used to be the Danbury Fair Mall downtown. They blew the car up in that parking lot. So you had three explosions. They were huge, it was a huge man on. Them guys had done a bunch of killings and shootings.

Some of them ended up dying in a shootout in court. But yeah, and we've had numerous other bank robberies here. They weren't high profile, so you didn't hear much. But I've probably been involved in six to eight in my career here. Oh, didn't Webster Bank get robbed in Danbury, too, at one point? I personally was not involved in a Webster one, so I'm not sure. Maybe it was something else. There's just been so many that, you know, these are the things you don't read about in the paper.

But one of my favorite cases that I did, we did a drug case. This guy had been arrested twice by the state police. He was a great target. We knew that he was selling. We made buys phone women. And it's rare, but in his case, I'm like, let's do a wiretap on this guy. So we do a wiretaps, so now we can hear everything. He is going to retire the following week.

He is breaking in two new guys that he's selling, like, phones, drug phones that's a commodity. You can sell them for big bucks if you decide to get out because they have all your customer base in there. That's why we always take them. He's going to sell his phones to two guys. He's already having them meet people. So we're like, we got like a week to do this. So I get search warrants for everything. His bank account, everything.

He's going to, he is, his truck and trailer in his house was packed. He was leaving on Saturday. He bought, and this is where the interesting part of the story comes in. He bought, and this is around the time too, so, you know, it was the Scarface Mansion in Florida. That was when you could buy a mansion in Florida in the 80s and 90s. for, you know, 170,000. This was like a 250,000. It had the waterfall, the gates,

the big circular driveway. I wanted to seize that in the worst way. It would have made a great office. But he had only put down a $50,000 deposit. When he went down there, he was going to close out the deal and pay the rest off. So on Thursday before he leaves,

we raid his house. We arrest him. We got $80,000 at the house. We dug up over, two acres because he had the stuff, we found the stuff dug up. But we knew it was there, but it was a needle in a haystack. We dug up, we got an excavator in there and dug up over an acre of property house and everything. And now we're doing all the seizures. Look at his bank account. We see the 50 grand was removed. We know the address of the house. We go down there and look. We call up the guy who's

doing the deal and it's in escrow. He's like the 50,000 is an escrow. I said, okay, but we're going to come down and we're seizing that money. And I was working with DEA with us at the time. We had this little five foot agent. She was awesome. She was like a pit bull. The guy's like, no, that's my money now. I said, what do you mean, sir? He's like, in our contract, if he doesn't close on the deal, which certainly wasn't going to happen, he goes, I get to keep the deposit. I said, no, that is confirmed drug money. That is our money. We are going to seize that money. I'll be happy to come down with a search warrant. He's like, do whatever you want. I don't care. So I go, the agent goes, fuck it, Johnny, let's go. We're typing. And I go with Sarah, and we go down. When she does the

trace, what this company did, they didn't have an escrow account for each transaction. They had one giant escrow account. They put all the money into. So we got, call the guy up again. I said, look, I don't want to do in a search and seizure warrant. He goes, I told you, I'm not giving you the money. Hang up. Okay, Sarah. Let's go do what we got to do. She has DEA, Miami, go to the bank in issue a search and seizure.

It was $8 million, which at that time was huge money. Every transaction he had was tied up. He couldn't sell a house. He called us up the next day, crying. He's like, please, please, you got on. I said, I asked you for my, I have a check. In 20 minutes, DEA went over there. He wrote a check for $50,000, so we would release the funds.

But that was one of the cases that were fun to do. Why would it even matter anyways for him? Because he still had the property. But for him, it's going to be a payday. You know, you sign a contract that says if you don't go through, I keep your deposit. He's saying, I got to do nothing. And he would probably put in $50,000 in his pocket because it had nowhere else to go. Because you could still go sell it to.

And he could go sell it and do it again. That's great. But that was a fun case. What about the massage parlors? You always see those get busted, especially in Connecticut, and then they still are able to operate. What's a deal with that? All right. You're speaking to the guy that did one three times.

And to the guy that said, I'm never going to fucking do this again. The massage parlor that was still up on Lake Avenue. I did it once just because, you know, it was where our unit was responsible for prostitution. I did it once, just like we would normally do a case, the next day they're open. Okay. About five years after that, I get a call from back then, it was before there was ICE, it was real customs and border. They're like, this ties in, we think it's human trafficking.

I do it a second time. They were open the next day. do no, every girl had a visa. They're like, it was either this or working a restaurant. We don't want to work in a restaurant. Okay. Five years after that, the FBI comes. I'm like, guys, I'll ever go in there again.

They're like, no, we got it. This ties into a, okay, did it a third time, and the next day they were open. So what's the deal? Why is that? They just, they pay their fine. Prostitution in the state. Like, nobody goes to jail. And nothing, you know.

The bigger problem we had with them back in our day is two of them in, we had three in the city, two weeks in a row, two of them got robbed at gunpoint with people coming in wearing badges, saying they were cops getting on the ground. So everybody thinks they're getting arrested. They all get on the ground and they took their money. And in one case, they sexually assaulted a girl. I don't care what you do for a living. That's a sexual assault.

And we ended up arresting them. But we were at the third one. We figured third Friday they got to be here, but nobody showed up. How do you feel about prostitution, especially with like only fans and whatnot? You know, I see both ends of it. Prostitution, look, when they say it's a victimless crime, to a point, two consenting adults want to do something. I personally don't care what they want to do. What's a difference between that and spending $300 on your date?

You know, it's the same gig at the end of it night. However, here's the problem with prostitution is we see it, non-regulated, non-controlled. Every girl you see out on Beaver Street that's up there selling her body as a prostitute is doing that because she has a drug problem. So that type of prostitution is a problem. The prostitution that you saw that we had down on Chappelle Street, that's, you know, girls that are being traffic force prostitution. The straight up legit bunny ranch, I don't see a problem with that.

It's controlled and those people want to be there and they're getting big dollars to be there. But it's the prostitution that we have to deal with here that most are not willing participants. It's the result of some other outside influence, whether it's drugs or a pimp or trafficking or something. So that's kind of the issues with that on there. What's a case you think you'll think about for the rest of your life? A lot of P. I have two. One, we actually discussed with the Venezuelan girls. And everybody asked me, your biggest case, you could give me a truckload.

You'd give me a 737 full of kilos and guns. And nothing will ever compare to the one case. Most important case of my life. it's probably, I can step over a dead body and eat my lunch and that stuff. Nothing really bothers me. It's probably the only case that I ever get emotional about.

I was a young cop. I just got to Danbury. I was probably 19 or 20 years old. 3 o'clock in the morning. I'm driving around, doing all the things they told you, keep your windows down so you can hear gunshots.

I was up at Beaver Street. I'm driving in circles looking for white dudes. You know, everybody when the bars would close would go up to cop. And in those days, there was no cell phones or anything. So you had to physically walk into the project. You just had to be there at the right time. As I'm driving down, the railroad tracks are adjacent to project.

I heard a girl screaming. I stopped my car, I got out. I'm like, what is that? And I hear this girl screaming. So I run up the embankment. I'm on a railroad tracks. I look down, I can see some bodies down there. It was a 14-year-old girl being raped by an adult male.

I'll be honest with you. That showed that I did have some sort of self-control because I would have had no problem killing that guy. He was in the act of sexually assaulting this tiny little child. I took him into custody, and he'll always remember that. Well, he's gone now. But he, it was 1980. And I picked up this poor 14-year-old girl.

brought her down to the ambulance, to the hospital. And we still stay in contact today. When I retired, she called me. She knew him. We all knew him. He was a fixture. So she said, there's no way he was going to let me go after that because he said, you know, I know Johnny would have killed me

because I would have been able to identify him. I'd known him for 20 years. So unfortunately, fortunately for her, that is my most memorable case. She has children now. She'll call me up and say, we're praying for you. To me, if I had to do one case, and they'd only give me one, it would be that one. So a case like that, do you follow along with what happens to the perpetrator? Yes, yes.

That case I took personal interest in to see what was going to become in. And he did get convicted and he did a lot of time and he got out and then he passed away, which didn't lose any sleep over that one. Did those types of situations get to you, especially when you're following the case, whether the person gets off or when they're in prison or when they get out? Everybody is different. Everybody. Dead bodies to me, none of that stuff ever really bothered me.

The only thing that personally bothered me was children. I went to that, you had that mother who choked her three children in Danbury a couple summers ago. You know, these are tiny babies, you know, six, seven, eight, ten, twelve-year-olds. You know, I don't like that was, I went to a suicide of a 12-year-old. You know, those things, you lose a couple nights of sleep. The shootings I was at and stuff and who's ordering pizza? You know, like when you talk about this, we had a dive team when we recovered a body. And the chief sent the Reverend to come out with us.

Hey, make sure the guys are all, you know, we had to bag it, tag it, it, bring it up, you know. And the Reverend's like, I was told to, you know, stay with you guys for a little bit. I'm like, okay, but we're going to down the hatch, bro. you want to come, you're buying. He's like, I'll go with you. So we go to the hatchet. I go, hey, he's got the first round. So we're drinking, like, after like three beers and a couple sandwiches, he goes, I got to ask you guys, it doesn't bother you at all, doesn't? I said, no, but we got the beers. He's like, all right, Johnny, I'm out of here. But it does affect other guys. You know, we have a lot of police suicides. I sit on a board called the Wounded Blue, where we

provide assistance to cops going through troubled times. Nobody calls EAP because they tell the cities, but they can call us, and we provide them with doctor assistance. And obviously, you know, I'm never going to release a name. So it does bother people in different ways. Some people end up retiring from the job from incidents. It's just, that'll affect each and everyone in a different manner, but most of the blood and guts never really bothered me. Now in a town like Danbury where you're on the force for so long, and it's kind of a small community where everyone knows everyone, is it hard to police in a community like that because you know a lot of people?

No, quite honestly, I think it makes a job easier. I mean, in the 80s and 90s, they spent tons of money on community policing. You know, for me, I was the ultimate community cop, pretty much anywhere I went, whether it was Dominicans, Brazilians, Mexicans, Americans, black community, white community. I would go in there and, you know, these guys were all my friends or I had arrested most of them. This is one thing that I always separated with the job. And I think you can attest to this. It's great having you in a podcast.

You got to do mine next so that, you know, this is nice and easy where we, you know, you can attest to what I'm saying is true. You know, you got arrested by our department. You get out. And then, you know, I'd see you at hockey games. I never was rude to you. I just believe that the job shouldn't be personal. That, you know, you do, I treat people how they treat me. You were always respectful for me when I had to go to your club.

You know, you never, while you're breaking, you always, yes, sir, no, sir. And when you get out, you, you know, you get out and you did what you had to do and now you're doing this. And that's one of the reasons I'm here. If you were a douchebag, I wouldn't have been here. I mean, but, you know, I've never, ever taken policing personal. And now, I'll tell you this, one of the things that I, we talk about outreach and community policing for 10 years, Beaver Street, which is the housing project up there, they have an outdoor picnic. One year they asked me, because the FOP has a huge grill, and I'm the FOP president, if they could borrow the grill. I said, bro, I can't give it the grill.

and they're like, oh, come on, Johnny. I said, I'm going to give you one better. I'm going to show up here, and I brought 500 dogs and 500 burgers. Now, I came out of my pocket. I tried to get money from the city every year. I could never get one cent. You know, they waste money in the community bullshit. This is real community policing.

And so every year I had to pay out of my pocket. I will say when the new chief came, I went to Chief Rittenhow and asked him and go, Johnny, I can't get any money either, but I'll make a deal and I'll split half with you. And then the deputy chief heard, Shaw McCoghine, and he threw in another half. So we all paid one third. But this is just something I did because it was the right thing to do. And I grew up and cooked burgers and dogs for everybody. You know, now, and I'll tell you where you get to payback.

And now I've arrested at that 500-person party, at least 100 of them I put in handcuffs. But you know what? The next day, I beat a bar. I felt very comfortable going down to the Elks on West Street. which is predominantly a black bar from predominantly Beaver Street area, they would invite me down and like, I'd go and I had a great time. You know, the first time I walked in, like, eight people ran out of the bathroom and flushed. I'm like, guys, I'm not working, man.

I just came here to have a beer with everybody. And they became accustomed to that. And to me, I think that that's how policing should be. You know, treat people good, treat them with respect. Now, every one of them guy, no, you put your hands up and we fight. I ain't holding back. that's business but I

that's how I've always operated and I found that I take great pride when we'd be out with my wife and somebody come up and talk to me for attention to say who was that I arrested him for dope I raided his house

just like why is he something like we'd be out I can't tell you how many times we'd be out at the diner oh your check is paid for who all the guys down there you know guys I arrested and if I saw them on I'd buy them a beer

now a lot of guys won't do that in this job A lot of guys, ah, you're a scumbag, you got locked up. As long as you treated me decent, I treated you the same. And that's, you know, that's how our relationship always was. Do you think that's a problem then with the police versus, say, former incarcerated people or people have been arrested, that there are some cops that hold that grudge? It's both sides. There's some cops that hold that grudge. And there's some criminals that hold that grudge.

Some people can't get over that arrest factor. I always told new people an arrest shouldn't be personal. It's just a job. If it's personal, it's probably wrong. Yeah, and I think doing the show has taught me that too. It's just a job.

People make a complaint. You got to investigate it. Hey, I took a lot of complaints that didn't go anywhere, nobody got arrested. You know, the chips fall where they fall. And everybody I've arrested, every guy has told me,

maybe not that night. Because that night they didn't do anything. They were innocent. But every guy that I've arrested, you know, we laughed, you know, a month later and have a beer like, hey, you were fair. You know, you did what you had to do. Like some guys, did I catch every foot pursuit? No, 99% maybe. And, you know, if a guy got away for me, I'd see him next week and I'd high five and laugh and say, hey, today you win.

It is what it is, you know. But I'm going to give you an example. I go to, we got called to the Elks Club on New Year's Eve. They're having a big New Year's Eve bash. It's all criminals there. It's all the guys that run a Beaver Street party. I get there. I have five cops.

That's all I have. We only had 10 cops working. Five were tied up on other calls. We got five cops there. Huge fight. A girl broke a bottle and ripped another girl's face. So I get there and we're trying to get, they tell us the suspect is in the ladies' room. I'm trying to get there.

and I'm getting hit by like people from all around. You know who came out and saved our ass? The drug dealers who run the block party. They came out pushing people back and I'll never forget. He said, what the fuck's wrong with you? That's Johnny. He just cooked the motherfucking cheeseburger for you. Why are you putting your hands on him?

He said, Johnny, what do you want to do? I said, look, that's your girl. She got cut up. We have to make an arrest. There's no ways about it. I said, I'd rather not get, a hundred state troopers in Bethel and Brookfield there, you guys help us get that one arrest and we're going to get in our cars and leave

and you go back to your New Year's Eve. He had like eight or nine guys. They separated the people right up to the door. I opened the door. She's hiding in the bathroom. We arrested her, came out. They all shook our hands and walked away. Another classic example, especially 2020, George Floyd.

We had our big parade down Main Street. I go up to Beaver Street. all of the these are hardened hardcore shooters dope dealers they're all sitting on a wall up there i go wow man you guys ain't marching they start laughing they're like shit johnny you see all them white boys down there ain't none of them ever had an interaction with the police they're like bro you always treat us fair up here we got no problem with you you guys we're just going to hang out and drink some more guys have a good day about a week after that we had a fight up there two girls

We get up there, and this is one, people in New York City, bought everywhere, cops are getting rocked, beaten up. We get up there. I get out of the car. They said, we'll handle this. My guys are all looking. I said, let's see if they handle it. They went over.

And again, these are criminals. But it doesn't make them bad people. Makes them a criminal. It doesn't mean they're bad people. They went over. They separated two girls. One guy picked one girl up. She's kicking and screaming, put her in his car, drove off.

The other girl went over and said, sat down. They walked over, and this is like when people absolutely hated cops. They all walked over and shook all my guys' hands. Thanks for being understanding. That's how community should. Danbury is the epitome of this. This happens more often than not in Danbury. More often than not. Now, you also went viral during this time period, too. Yeah, that was my big claim to fame. I've been very fortunate from that. In 2019, for those that don't know, besides, you know, and this is why I probably haven't killed myself, cops need to need to do other things other than arrest bad people and see dead bodies.

You need to have your own environment outside of law enforcement. I can never tell cops enough that and it keeps them alive. My big gig was two things. I love going skydiving for three minutes, nothing else matters. matters to let shoot opens and I love hockey and I've had the opportunity to coach all of the most of the hockey teams pro teams we've had in Danbury and I'm currently the assistant coach with the Danbury hat tricks well 2012 2019 if you remember Megan Rapino wearing a USA jersey for the US national team is taking a knee during the freaking uh national anthem and like

that just don't set right with me. And that's the same time, Kaepernick was the same week, yelling about Betsy Ross shoes. Like, like, what's wrong with Betsy Ross? Why you can't wear her shoes? But that was all in the same week.

We had tryouts for the team. Like, when we have open trials coming in August. Anybody that wants to come, you want to pay me $2.50. You're going to be on the ice with a hat-trick jersey, whether you can stand up or not. It's open tryouts. So we get a lot of different people in there.

And first of all, I don't like getting up early. That's why I told you at 1 o'clock today. I get, I'm at the arena. I walk in at 6 a.m. because we're going to be on the ice at 7. Coach is downstairs. He goes, Johnny, go warm and love, I got to go give them the pregame bullshit and everything.

Rise and shine, boys, here's what's expected of you. And I have to tell them what we expect out of our arena and our organization. and I go down there, up there, and everybody's sitting there as I'm walking up, here's Megan Rapino on her knee during the National Anthem, and it just set me off. So I'm going to the locker room, and I'm pissed. So everything else, the list of shit went out the door, and I looked at these guys, and I said, everybody, listen up, if there's anybody here that's going to be disrespectful to the American or Canadian National Anthem, grab your gear and get the fuck out right now.

You'll never see the ice in this arena. Look, we're hockey. We're better than that. But if that shit was going to happen, I just wanted to be clear. And you could have heard a pin drop. And I looked. I said, okay, nobody's leaving. And now here's some other things we expect of you.

It was video during, during, like you paid $250. You're going to leave with a video or you doing something so you can say to your grandkids, hey, Daddy was a pro hockey player for 48 hours. And it was videoed. And I was asking, can we post this? I'm like, post it up. I don't care. I thought America needed to see that bullshit with her.

And it wasn't because it was me. It was because of the time frame, that moment with her and him. America was just gut-wrenching, reaching for something to respond. And when it got posted, I didn't even notice it. Like a week later, Herm Sautcher. I love this guy to death. The Herminator calls me up to his office. And if you remember, we just had, we bought the arena, new ownership.

Herm calls him, he goes, Johnny, you know, Herm, ah, Johnny, we got to talk about this video. I'm not sure what's going. I'm like, what video? I have no clue what Herm's talking about. He goes, you know, the video, you in the locker room? I said, doing what? He goes, talking about the now. I'll go, oh, that video.

He goes, you know, it's only four days and that has over a million views. I said, no, I didn't know that. He's like, oh, you know, we got new owners and stuff. And, you know, I said, Herm, let me be clear. If it's going to be a black eye to the organization, I'll all of a sudden have a sickness and I'll have to retire from coaching. If there's any issue, you guys have been great to me.

You've allowed me here. He's like, you know, I just, he goes, Johnny, you're my guy. You know, I'm always in your, you know, how Herm is. He goes, I'm in your corner, but, you know, we got new. We've never met the diamonds. So they're on a cruise. So he's like, yeah, we got like another week until they get back. Well, they saw it on the cruise ship.

They turn out to be the greatest, most patriotic guys ever and absolutely loved it and called the arena and asked to speak with me and her and said how proud of us they were. So I knew at that point I wasn't getting fired, which was awesome. Like week two, it's like four or five million. Now I'm starting to get phone calls from my friends and got coach that are now Russians in Russia. Coach, coach, can you come on FaceTime? Tell them I know you. you was my like i'm getting calls everywhere across the freaking the PD my mailbox was full because people that didn't know how to get a hold of me were just calling it because they said i was a cop we're

calling a pd fuck i i i you know 45 years is a cop you know you heard some of the stories i but not i hate those guys to talk about themselves but let's just say i done a lot i'd send my resume to fox like eight because i see these people they have on i'm like that guy wasn't even born when i was a cop he has no clue what he's talking about we don't do it that way but you get guys that get on there that in the beginning days they would just grab people you know all of the stations CNN get who you could get locally pretty much but I sent a resume they never call me back now my phone is every fox and friends um when the shows will have people to reach out so I kept getting these calls hey can you do fox and friends so I'm going to do fox and friends

go down that's my first you know it was great I I guess I got to meet Pete Hagseth, all of these people that day. And it was an awesome show. We get down there. I'm under the impression that when I go there, I got some hat-trick jerseys and stuff to give out. I thought we're going to have like a little sit down here and they're going to tell me, what are you going to ask me and stuff? I get there.

I walk in and are like, go through that door. So I thought I'm coming into, I go through the door, man. I'm on the couch. And now the questions are coming. I'm lucky. The one trait is an undercover. You got to be able to talk. that's why I can do these shows.

If you can't talk, you ain't never going to be an undercover. You're out the door. You've got to be able to answer shit quick. So I did a pretty good interview. It went pretty well. And after the show, the producer said, well, you're very well spoken.

I said, well, you know, I said, they said, we didn't know you were a cop too. That came out on Fox and Friends. I said, well, you know, I'm a UC and we talk well, and that's what we do. They're like, you know, geez, you ever think about doing some of the police stuff? I'm like, well, I've been sending you my resume like six times. And everybody's like, I said, but I happen to bring some today.

And that's what got me into the media. You know, not the 45 years of policing, but one hockey video from the Danbury Hattricks pushed my career to media. Otherwise, they'd never, I owe Herm Sarcher and the Diamonds everything, because without them, I wouldn't be on Fox and Newsmax. O-A-N news nation now. That's how I ended up there. How did the city respond to that in the department? I'm going to say this. And I really, really got to give a lot of credit. And I have talked to the chief about it. You know, Chief Rittenhauer, a lot of chiefs,

a lot of guys that go on, they can't even put their department they're from up there. And I went there and said, hey, this is where I work. I need a secret. You know, what are you going to do? The chief, I'm sure he watched that. every interview I've ever done. But not once did he ever come to me. And our political ideology may be a little different, but never did he come to me and say, Johnny, I don't want you to say that. Johnny, I don't want you to go there. And I talked on some of the most topics, heated topics. The backing I got from the department just by leaving me alone, you know, I went through, you know, two mayors while I'm doing this. And they never, ever, ever,

ever once bothered me on anything. So I really got to give them credit for that. Is there anything you wish you accomplished in your career that you didn't get to? I would have liked to done some more of the Fed stuff. You know, do I wish I took that DEA job now? You bet your ass I do. I did get to work with Dematon and work for them a ton. But overall, like I said, the only thing I really didn't get to do that I wanted to do was have a dog. I just, I never got to, that's the only thing that I really regret. And it was just for me, a timing thing. After I left a unit, they gave the unit a dog.

When I came back to the unit, they had no dogs. When I went to patrol, I was a sergeant, so I didn't have a dog. They didn't have dog. That's just, it was a timing thing for me, but I'm pretty fortunate that I got to do a lot of stuff. If you were 20 years old today, do you think you could do another 45 years in today's world of policing? Today's world of policing is tough. I could have done two more. And, you know, and I elected to leave.

We say it this way, Ian. In the beginning, we were worried about getting yelled at. Ah, you come in. In the 80s, you fucked up. Your captain came in and chewed your ass off. And you shut your mouth because you knew you were fucked for a while. Most of the time, no one got written up or anything. You got the shitty details, and you said, yes, sir, until that stuff worn off.

And then you never did that again. And you kept your captain happy. then came the 90s where all of a sudden now it was all these idiots with their pens. I was a cop 45 years. I never put pen to paper for one guy. Does it mean that my guys didn't fuck up? No. But I handled them in different manners.

Putting pen to paper, it creates some undue stress on people. We've had guys kill themselves. And their work product, then they say, and I see guys say, when I said to a guy, hey, you parked in that parking lot to a whole fucking night tonight. You didn't do anything. Why not? He said, Sarge, I'm getting paid the same as that guy, and I'm not in trouble. The high-end guys, and I was probably more of an exception, even I had complaints, but your high-end

guys generate complaints because you're doing so much more. And some people aren't going to be happy no matter how right or wrong you were. So the 90s, they started writing people up, and that became a big thing. supervisors. I witness guys in locker room sergeants. We got to keep an eye on this guy. And hey, I wrote them up tonight. So the rest of you guys, you know, don't make it look like I said, bro, I don't do that shit. And if any of my guys, stay the fuck away from them. You deal with your own people. I'll deal with mine. I never got involved with those clicks, but you saw that in the 90s. 2000s came. Guys started getting suspended. Holy shit. You know, get suspended in this job.

You had to be the ultimate cluster fuck. Now in a 2000. thousands, you know, you're getting guys getting legitimate 30 days off, 60 days off, 90 days off. Guys started worrying about that. And then now you hit 2019, 2020, and on, you got to worry about getting arrested and go to jail because guys are getting arrested for nothing. A Hartford cop just shot a guy coming out with a fucking butcher knife in his hand. And because it's politically correct for the Democrats, after Al Sharpton showed up in Ned Lamont's office, the next day. We used to have a great inspector general and a great investigator that were fair and impartial. If you should have been arrested, they arrested you.

If you didn't, they wouldn't play the political game. This is a joke that they arrested this guy. He's going to be found not guilty. But he's got to suffer for this in his family. Trooper North, another guy, less than 18 inches away from him with a knife, shoots him. They arrest him. Three years of his life upended. And then he gets found not guilty and he's back to work now.

But you have no idea what it does to these poor guys. No matter how righteous a shooting is when these things happen. Now you've got to worry about your family and your livelihood. So today, what I do 45, probably not. Still the greatest job in the world. If you can find another job that I could have this much fun at, and trust me, I'm looking for jobs. And the media stuff is great.

I love Fox and Newsmax and O-A-N. Dan Ball's great. But you just can't have the kind of fun you could have. I mean, that's, I don't care what people say in these interviews and their interviews. Well, I want to make a difference. Yeah, it's great making a difference. And you feel good about making a difference. But hell, it's fun doing it.

What do you think is the greatest lesson your career has taught you over 45 years? I think the greatest lesson for me is, is treat people with respect, be kind to people, treat people the way that you want them to treat you or your mother. And in my early years, my early years, I was a little rough around that because I was a 19-year-old kid. You know, what you knew about policing, because there wasn't all this training like now,

you knew about policing what you saw on TV shows. You know, grab a guy, throw him against the wall. That's what everybody does, right? You learned quickly. I learned after it took me about 18 months to learn that. And the reason I was able to become a detective and move in that direction was being nice to people. I had all these people calling me.

If I was working with ICE today, back in the day, all of the communities, whether it was Brazilian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, every community would be calling me saying, hey, this guy's wanted. He's over here. Hey, like, I got a call from the Brazians. This guy escaped from jail. Well, he paid to jail to let him out. Guards let him out in Brazil. Hiding and Danbury. They told me the apartment he was in. I call up Brazil. And in them days, you could do things a little different. I call up Brazil. They're like, yeah, we got a word for him. So we went over there, grab, did a search one in the apartment, grab him. It's friendly. Another friend of my that's in there from Brazil is sitting there. He goes, Johnny, what are you doing here? I got a

who and I'm in only eyes. He's like, Johnny, what are you doing here? And I go, sorry, bro. I got to take your boy here. And what we did was immigration in those days. They deported them. Extradition nationally is brutal. Back in 1980, they deported him. And I just called Brazil and said, hey, he's going to be getting on this flight and getting off this plane. They waited there. In those days, our nextel's would work to Brazil. That's the only technological advance that's going backwards. In those days, I had dozens of Brazilian cops on my phone, and dozens of them had my phone on theirs. If they had an American and wanted him run, NCIC, they would hit my nextel.

I would answer it and say, hang on, go to my laptop and say, hey, yeah, he's an idiot. Oh, he's got to rest here for guns. And communicate. We can't do that with today's technology. It doesn't work internationally now. Now, I had one more question for you because we briefly touched on this earlier and you've had personal experience with this in Danbury, the auditors. What's the deal with it? They're just idiots that think they're important now.

You ain't going to find a guy that's more Second Amendment or First Amendment based. I'll go out there and fight for your rights. But these guys, they're fighting for rights and the Constitution. means nothing to them. For these guys, they don't have the ability to host a show like you do. It actually get real people watching and click on it. So this is their attempt to get clickbait and to have people. That's the only reason they're doing it.

They're not helping the Constitution or anything else. They're a causing problems with normal people. People that they had a problem here in Ridgefield. Poor ladies sitting in their desk. They're going over there. Like 1980 should have been there. Because they'd have been going down the front stairs of City Hall here and say, get in your car and don't ever come back to Ridgefield again. But that's, you know, that's just what they do.

My problem is with administrators that break cops' balls when they've had enough and say, oh, I get the fuck out and they throw them out. You know, that's what should happen. We shouldn't be cow towing to them. But this is what you get in 2026, the wokenness in policing and administrations. So do you think the cops are in the wrong? for getting frustrated or should they keep their cool or are they handling it appropriately? You're going to go there and keep your cool. You're going to tell the guy, but how long, I don't care who it is, whether it's a cop or a normal person, how long are you going to have some idiot

who just keeps getting in your face and running his mouth? Again, it goes back to that respect thing. No one would have ever done that in the 80s. If they did, it would have lasted about 3.2 seconds. But it's strictly, they're only attempting to lure these guys in. They want to respond. because that's clickbait for them. That's the only way they can make money on the internet because they can't do what you do. Now, these guys that go into these locations to say film to get, you know, stoke the bear,

in your career, is anyone else just going in there wanting the film naturally and having an issue? Like, say the library, the guy went to the library in Danbury. How many people in Danbury want to go to the library and film? None. But people that have, like sometimes you'd have mothers in there with kids and stuff, he could have probably, probably going in there and filmed.

But again, they're doing it in a provocative manner. They want confrontation. In all honesty, the best way to deal with them is if you ignore them. That's true. It's hard to do for us sometimes because we got people calling us. And you have to respond to the call. But you're going to do one or two things if you worked for me. And we did one on the second trip.

You're going to do one of two things. if he's in violation, if he's in violation, you're going to tell him wants to leave. If he doesn't leave, there's no discussion. You're under arrest. Or if he's not in any violation, you're going to tell people he's legit, there's nothing I can do,

and you're going to walk away, and you're going to take them people and say, look, just going in, he's not going to be out there video if there's nobody to video and no reaction to get. That's the two best ways to handle a first amendment. Amendment auditor. Here's another way that we never got a third shot so I didn't get to do it here, but I have a good friend who is a country music artist. He plays it to Grand Old Opry. He has

hit songs, which are all copyrighted. So if you have a First Amendment auditor there, you turn on his copyrighted music while he wants to talk to you and you hold it up. He can never post any of those videos with audio. Because if he does, I will call my boy who's a part-time cop and say, hey, you got a copyright violation here, bro, and he would get a cease and desist order. That is the third way in which you can deal with an auditor. Why do they not give their licenses? Do they not have to?

They always say, I don't have to identify myself or something. Which is a joke, because if you're investigating a complaint, people have to identify themselves. There's other ways around that too. If the guy says, I'm not, I'm not going to identify myself. Okay. Johnny, can you bring the boys down for surveillance? No problem. Set up on him.

All the black and whites drive away and he's like, I got nobody. He's going to go get in his car. Hey, he's driving down Main Street. And I know in one particular instance, the car was unregistered. Oh, do you guys pull them over? So, you know, there's a hundred ways to skin a cat. What you don't want to do is you don't want to go out there and get in that first two minutes, that verbal altercation.

Because first of all, you don't know what you have yet. Find out what you have. Find out if somebody's like in the case at City Hall where a party was posted off the property, then, you know, you can go do what you got to do. But, you know, the library, it went a long time. And I felt bad because one of those guys here is the nicest guy in the world was working for me that day. Well, Kripinski, I appreciate the time today. I'm glad we finally got to do this.

Always a pleasure seeing you. You know, you're not in the backseat. You can ride in the front of my car now, bro. I appreciate you, man.