Locked In with Ian Bick - I Was an NYPD Homicide Detective & Federal Agent — The Dark Side of the Job | Peter Forcelli

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Peter J. Forcelli, a recently retired Deputy Assistant Director of the ATF, joins the show to break down his career inside some of the most dangerous criminal investigations in the country. From working as an NYPD homicide detective and surviving the 9/11 attacks to leading federal investigations targeting armed gangs and violent criminal organizations, Forcelli shares what the job actually looks like behind the scenes. He talks about developing complex cases, executing hundreds of search warrants, making over a thousand arrests, and the personal toll of dedicating a life to law enforcement. The conversation also explores accountability within the justice system, investigative excellence, and the responsibility that comes with holding power — including his role in uncovering wrongful convictions and fighting for justice when the system gets it wrong. _____________________________________________ #TrueCrime #LawEnforcement #FederalAgent #ATF #CrimeStories #BehindTheBadge #RealStories #youtubepodcast _____________________________________________ Thank you to PRIZEPICKS for sponsoring this episode:Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/IANBICK and use code IANBICK and get $50 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup! _____________________________________________ Connect with Peter Forcelli:Website: https://www.peterjforcelli.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterforcelli/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092203516682Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/pete_force/ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Path-Operation-Furious-Lawyers/dp/B0CCMMQKCQ _____________________________________________ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Shop Locked In Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop _____________________________________________ Timestamps: 00:00 From NYPD to Federal Agent: Inside a Life of Law Enforcement 07:00 Growing Up and Choosing a Career in Policing 14:00 Early Years as an NYPD Officer on the Streets 21:00 Becoming a Detective and Joining Federal Task Forces 28:00 Freeing the Innocent and Working Major Federal Cases 37:00 When the Justice System Gets It Wrong 42:00 PTSD, Burnout, and the Toll of Major Investigations 51:00 9/11 as a First Responder: What He Saw That Day 01:00:00 Leaving the NYPD and Moving to the ATF 01:07:00 Life as a Federal Agent and National Investigations 01:13:00 Cartels, Phoenix, and the Fast and Furious Era 01:23:00 Fallout, Consequences, and Career Crossroads 01:29:00 Leading ATF Teams and Responding to Mass Shootings 01:36:00 Cancer, Survival, and Facing Mortality 01:41:00 Retirement, Legacy, and Lessons From a Life in Law Enforcement Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required.

Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. The stuff I saw happening in Phoenix would blow most people's minds. What do you think was your first real moment as a police officer with the NYPD? I would sit in these rooms with some really, really bad guys. I mean, guys that were responsible for multiple, multiple murders. And they would talk to us about all these things that they did.

Do you think it's easier or harder to go from a regular cop to a federal agent? While I was in charge of the Miami office, we had parkland, the shooting, the school shooting, and we had the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale Airport. When you're seeing things like that for the first time, is it hard to keep your emotions out of it? I was there that morning right after the first plane hit. What was one case that stood out to you as a detective during that career? And in the bathtub with her were two children.

And they were skeletonized. For more than two decades, Peter Forcelli worked some of the most dangerous cases in America. First, as an NYPD homicide detective, then as a senior federal agent for the ATF. What most people never see is the cost of that job. Peter, welcome to Lockton. Thanks so much for coming out here today. Honor to be here. Thanks for having me.

And thanks to Steve. Murphy for connecting us. Yeah, he's a good man. Yep, he's gotten us probably like 20 guests this past year. He actually this morning, I woke up to an email right from Steve, another guest. So he's great. He's popular. How did you meet him? We have mutual friends. Steve was with the DEA Special Operations Division for a while. And one of my best friends is a guy named Derek Maltz and Steve and Derek worked together. So Derek's a drinking buddy of mine. He was an agent in New York back when I was a cop in New York. So I've known him for a really long time. Very gregarious, charismatic guy.

Very different than Steve. Steve's kind of more quiet, reserve, like a southern gentleman. Derek's a little bit more boisterous, fun to be around. But that's how we know each other. Awesome. And tell everyone about your book. We'll have this in the link to the episode. Sure.

Well, I spent some time working for ATF in Phoenix. I got out there and were shocked by what I saw. We were seizing tons and tons of guns. No one was going to jail because federal prosecutors just didn't seem to give a crap. And then in 2009, a new group was stood up to handle the Mexico-bound firearms trafficking cases. And they took a different act. Rather than Seedons' guns, they just let them go. Figured we could pinpoint them on a map later, trace them back to a straw purchaser, and build this big case.

The problem with that is when the guns are being recovered in Mexico, they're being recovered next to dead bodies. You know, when we seized the guns in the old days, those guns would never hurt a soul. They'd be in our evidence vault, you know, ticking up space. Again, no one went to jail. So in this instance, 2,200 firearms were allowed to be trafficked to the Sinaloa cartel. And we only even found out about it because we weren't co-located with that group when a Border Patrol agent named Brian Terry was murdered with one of those guns. And an agent from that group named John Dodson stepped forward to blow the whistle. And the same U.S. Attorney's Office that wouldn't prosecute all those cases I mentioned earlier decided that they wanted to indict John Dodson.

At that point, I stepped forward and blew the whistle on the U.S. Attorney's Office and what they had done for the previous three years. And it turned into a big scandal of, you know, congressional hearings. It got Eric Holder, founded contempt of Congress. And I spent four years clear in my name because obviously the Department of Justice doesn't like to be told that their baby is ugly. So there were accusations that were made that were untrue, luckily or provably, you know, false. But four years. And then finally got back to work and later promoted and became the head of training for ATF at the end of my career. But, yeah, so that documents the time frame from 2007 to 2012.

Wow. Yeah, quite a speed bump in the career. Yeah, yeah, you could say that. And that's cool that Steve did the foreword of it, too. Yeah, yeah. Well, he had me on his podcast a while back, and he had heard of the story, and he was so shocked by what really happened. Because if you listen to the scandal back when it was going on, you heard either the Democrat version or the Republican version, just like anything else. And neither were true.

So when Steve heard the real truth, he was shocked by it and appalled by it. And the other thing is Steve worked with some of the folks who were mentioned in that book. when he was down in Columbia, because the head of the Phoenix office of ATF during Operation Fast and Furious was assigned to the Columbia office way, way back in the day, helping DEA and helping the Colombian government find out where the source of firearms and explosives were coming from. So that commonality also intrigued, Steve. So I asked him if he would consider writing the forward. He said he'd be honored to when he did a great job. I was actually moved by what he wrote. Awesome. Well, I can't wait to check it out. Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Yonkers, New York. Oh, not too far from here. Not far at all. Yeah. I used to go to Empire City Casino back in the day. Okay. When I was a kid, I actually lived across the street from that for a little while. It used to be Yonkers Raceway. And I could smell the horseshit.

And I could hear the trumpet. Like, I'd be laying in bed when I was a little kid. You could hear the trumpet kicking off every race from my bedroom window. Yeah. My dad said his uncle, I think, used to be a bookie that used to go there all the time back in the day, too. Yeah, probably. What was it like growing up in Yonkers? Well, Yonkers was okay.

I mean, it was close enough to New York City that you had all the excitement. If you wanted, you get in a car, you drive down there, you go to Manhattan, see things. Very close to Yankee Stadium. I grew up a Yankees fan. But it was quiet enough that you weren't constantly hearing police sirens and everything going by. When I was really young, I grew up in kind of a bad neighborhood in Yonkers, something called Getty Square. I don't if you're familiar with it. I was surrounded on each side by housing projects, and crime was pretty bad.

Once my family was able to afford to get out of there, we moved closer to Yankees' race way, like I mentioned. And I lived there until I was in my 40s. What did your parents do for work? My father was a crane operator and my mother worked for a real estate company. So no one in law enforcement? No, I was the first. In fact, they were disappointed. I was supposed to go into construction like my father and like his father and all of his

father's brothers. They were all in heavy equipment operating. So that was my destiny. Did you have siblings? A sister. Okay. Yeah. So she wasn't going to go into construction either?

No, no. She works for the schools. Okay. Gotcha. So when did you decide not to go into construction? You know, it was weird. I grew up always loving cop shows. Starsky and Hutch was my era, you know, the rookies at all these crazy police shows back in the 70s.

And the way it worked is in the NYPD back in those days, you could take the police test at age 16 and a half. Here I was in high school. I was in 10th grade. And I took the NYPD exam and passed it. So I told my father I wanted to go into law enforcement. He thought I wouldn't do it. Like, he still wanted me to go into construction. I was taking carpentry classes in high school because I went to Saunders, which was a trades in technical school.

But when the NYPD called me, I went. I mean, I always wanted to be a cop because I always found it interesting. And look, the TV shows made it look exciting. Police work is not exciting. You have like maybe 10% of the time there's exciting stuff going on. It's mostly paperwork and just, you know, dealing with mundane things. But it was fun. I started my police career walking a beach.

Because what happened was, you know, before Giuliani came in, there were three separate police departments in New York. There was New York City Housing Authority Police, the Transit Authority Police, and the NYPD. The NYPD was a behemoth. It was like 30,000. Housing police was 2,300. I got sent to housing. So at first I was disappointed because I was going to work in the projects. Most of those guys walk on foot.

They're not even in police cars. This is bullshit. But the reality was, I loved that job. Like, after I graduated the academy, because we went through the same academy, we were answering the same 911 calls, but yeah, I walked the footpost. And you realize quickly that the people that live there are no different than you. Yeah, there's some folks that live in the projects that have some issues, probably about 2%. The rest are folks that just live there, they're trying to raise their kids, trying to have a halfway decent life.

So, you know, just walking a beat, you're talking to people, you're getting to know them. You knew which kid belonged to which parent, which kid belonged to which apartment. It was rewarding. Whereas later on, when I got into a sector car, you're a rest of it. responding to a 911 job, you're taking paperwork or arresting somebody, and you're leaving. Like, you don't have that relationship with the community. And, you know, two things I'll say. One is looking back on my career, 35 years, the part I missed the most was that. The other thing is you hear people talk about problems with the community and police and mistrust

and all that stuff. Go back to what we did back in those days. The true community policing, you were there, not just when stuff was bad. You were there. You got to know people. You knew their names, you'd get invited to parties, you really couldn't always go to those parties. Or if you did, you made an appearance just to say, hi, thank you, and left because you didn't want to take free stuff from people in the community, because if something good happened to them, then, oh, it's because he's friends with the cop. Or if something bad happened to them, it's like, oh, he must have an argument with the cop at the party or some stuff like that. But you just, you know, you just built that trust. You got to know folks. And it was rewarding. When do you think that changed,

that type of policing you're describing? Partially during Giuliani's time, because they wanted to put more resources into crime fighting. And look, I fought crime on foot. I made a lot of arrests. I used force, but I also, like said, building that trust. And the nice thing, too, was there were times where I used force where I had people from the community helping me handcuff somebody because they knew me. That's Officer Pete, you know.

I get it why he did what he did because crime was getting out of control. They started to be gang activity. The Bloods had just come into New York. So there were things that needed to be done. But I think what happened is they pivoted. and you can still adopt new techniques and embrace the stuff that you already have. But what I've seen, and I've seen it in law enforcement other places too, is like I call it flavor of the day policing. Like something new will come up, new technology, new this, new that.

And they pivot towards that and walk away from other things where it's like, hey, man, why not just keep what you have and bring these new things into the fold? So some agencies do a good job at doing that. Others, like I said, they just chase the shiny ball. How would you have described yourself day one of when you became a cop? What was young Pete like? I was skinny. When I started the police academy, I had a 24 inch waist. I weighed 140 pounds.

I was definitely not a tough guy. I would say curious, you know, because you go through the academy and it's six-month academy. You learn a lot of things. But you don't know what you don't know. You know what I mean? You're dealing with people. The bad guy always gets. vote. There's a lot of unpredictability that's out there, like family disputes. When you're a

housing cop, you handle a lot of family disputes. The wife calls the police on the husband, right? They're at each other's throats. And then now when you start getting in the middle, wife loves the husband again. So it's just, it's, they're, um, they're volatile situations. So you just go in, I always try to be a sponge and learn. And I was blessed because I learned from a lot of guys that had a lot of time on the job. Like the cops, in fact, when I became a detective, there were detectives in my squad that were around in the Serpico days. Today, you look at police, it gets a lot different.

Like, you got guys that are coming out of the academy today that are learning from folks in the street that are on the job for like three years. When I came out, I was learning from guys who were on the job for 20 years. I mean, they literally wore a uniform and worked the streets for 20 years. Didn't even want to go into the detective beer or some did. So, I mean, it was just different. So I just wanted to be a sponge and to learn. as much as I could. But I always recognize, and it was partially banged into my head by these

old timers, too, the importance of learning how to talk to people, and that respect has to be a two-way street. Like, that badge does not give you power. It gives you responsibility, you know? And as long as you remember that, I think that you could be very well served in your career. And I always retain that. Like, you know, this doesn't give me the authority to be abusive to people or to be disrespectful. It gives me the authority to arrest someone when need be, sometimes to give someone a break. when I could have arrested them as well. Just, you know, and I always just try to just do the right thing. And I didn't always get it right, but I tried.

Were you picked on as a kid because of your size? Not so much. People made fun of that. I was real thin. It's funny because, you know, talking about that. When I became a cop, I realized that being thin, sometimes presence matter. They call it officer presence.

Like your uniform, I always made sure my uniform look sharp. Shoes were shined. Because if you look like you take yourself seriously, people will take you a little bit more seriously. So I was like when I knew I was going to be a cop, I started going to the gym. But I didn't have much money. You know what I mean? So, but once I became a cop, I was still living at home in the earlier years of being a police officer.

Now I had money to buy like the supplements, the protein powers, which most of it was a waste of money looking back like that weed or crap. I'd stop. And I would get, there was a police on Allerton Avenue in the Bronx that wasn't far from where we worked that I would buy every day a dozen canoles. and a quart of milk. And I would just go to town, just trying to gain weight. But my metabolism was so fucked up that I could not gain weight. So, I mean, I slowly inched up, inch up. Then when I got to age 30, by that time, I was putting on weight.

And now I'm at a point where it's hard for me to keep the weight off. So it's funny how your metabolism works. But yeah, you know, so by the time I was 25 with five years on a job, I was about 160 pounds and still trying to gain weight, just like I said, to look a little bit more intimidating. Just because you don't want to have to throw that punch. You know, if someone thinks that, well, this officer has some size to them, I don't want to roll out on the street with them, then you're ahead of the game.

You know what I mean? Crack a Cayman Jack Margarita and taste your escape. It's America's number one for a reason. Kaman Jack is a premium malt beverage with flavors. Please drink responsibly. Cayman Jack beverage company, Chicago, Illinois. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%.

Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about run club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear on D-pop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest.

They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Deepop where taste recognizes taste. What do you think was the biggest difference for you being on the job versus watching it on TV and getting excited for it? Well, realizing that it's not exciting. A lot of rules, a lot of paperwork.

The worst paperwork was arresting a child, like a person under the age of 16 or drunk to the point where I know cops that they turn. turn the car off, lock the keys in their trunk and not arrest them. Because it would take several hours just to do the paperwork for a DWI back in those days. So, I mean, that was the big thing. He's like, you said, on TV. Everything's done in an hour. There's foot chases, there's gunfight.

It's exciting, right? Because they want to keep you watching the show. That's not how it is, man. And there's days where your post, you can show up and the desk officer's like, hey, we need you to send on a DOA, which is a dead person because the morgue hasn't come yet. So you'll spend eight hours just sitting next to some dead body waiting for the medical examiner's office to come and take the body. So, I mean, there's times we're sitting by a hospitalized prisoner where your eight hours is sitting next to someone who's handcuffed to a hospital bed,

sometimes completely unconscious, but you still have to sit there and guard the prisoner. Did they have computers, like the computer system set up back then for the police reports and whatnot? Oh, no. No. In fact, I left the NYPD in 2001. So it seems like a lifetime ago. They were still using IBM Selectric typewriters. We were still writing reports set in the field by hand, there were no cell phones. We didn't have cell phones. I mean, the cell phones came out towards that time, but the police department didn't issue them. So, I mean, we will work in with a lot of old technology. So what would people, like now the cops have a, like a computer in the car where they can look something up back then? What would they do? Call headquarters?

You'd call, you'd call dispatch and ask them to run that stuff for you or you'd telephone it in. But yeah, now they have iPhones, I think even, where they can run stuff on iPhones. So the technology today, man, it's pretty a stuff. I wish. I would love to see what I could have done because I had a pretty good career. It was very successful and made a lot of arrests, made some really good cases without the technology. I would love to know how I could have used that technology. How would things have been different for me then if I had access to the stuff that they have now facial recognition technology, license plate reader technology? I mean, now it's amazing what's come out.

What do you think was your first real moment as a police officer with the NYPD where it just, you know, really hit you that you're a police officer? The first homicide I responded to. It was in the Soundview Projects, five people killed. It was drug robbery. I didn't know it at the time. And just to see what humans can do to other humans was shocking. And there were other times two child abuse cases. You know, I remember going into a search warrant.

It was in the Throgsneck Project, which is in a relatively good neighborhood. Throgsneck is near the Throggsneck Bridge, White Stone Bridge. And it was on Dewey Avenue. I remember it was on the sixth floor. We were searching the apartment after the people were in custody. The suspect were already handcuffed. And I remember getting to a crib. And in the crib is a child, a baby, maybe 18 months old, maybe younger.

And in the crib with the child is dog feces. Some of it somewhat new. Some of it, like old and dried up. And you wonder, like, who thinks like that? Like, how do you treat your child like that? Like, just trying to get your head around the differences, and some people are wired, was tough. You know, I didn't see that as a kid growing up.

We had some people in the neighborhood who were assholes. We had some, I had one neighbor with one of my best friends. This kid named Michael Miller went on to go to the Air Force Academy. His brother was a stark raving crackhead. So, I mean, even within families, you know, that not everybody's raised are the same. But to see that just disregard for humanity was hard to see. When you're seeing things like that for the first time,

is it hard to keep your emotions out of it? with the kids always. The five people being shot in the apartment is bloody. You could even smell like the metal in the air. It's shocking, but I wouldn't say I got emotional, but seeing the little kids, like a defenseless little kid in that situation, or later I'd go to homicide scenes where a kid was dead. Those are tough.

They stick with you. You don't get those images out of your head. How do you even process that? Was there help for officers back then? No, and that's something that I'm really glad is happening. Now, like when I came on the job, you were taught. like we're the police we're the people that come to for help we don't ask for help like it was it was it was shunned it was frowned upon to show any weakness the problem is with human beings and you see things

that can scar you you see things that stick in your head and um you buried them you know and we use gallows humor like you joke about things that you shouldn't really joke about like you'd be standing next to a dead body not when people could hear like joking about stuff um but that doesn't work either and then eventually catches up to you catch us up to you catch us up to you when you get a little older and you look back on some of the things that you saw. But yeah, there was no getting help back then. I've gotten help much later in my career because of some other stuff I went through. I was there for 9-11, wound up getting cancer as a result of 9-11, lost my entire right lung. And thank God I'm cancer free now. But just remembering like what I had seen in my career up to

that point and the fact that I had shut so much stuff down, I was at this point where I came to this conclusion like, hey, man, I came into this profession whole, 130-something pounds, but still whole. I want to leave whole. And that's when I finally, like, sought out some help and talked to somebody. But for years, you just bottled it up. And that's what cops do all over the place. And you know, I got to give credit. The military were the first people to really start recognizing that when their soldiers were coming back, they were coming back different. And they had that same mentality back in the day, just tough it up, buttercup, you know, I mean, you didn't complain.

So they've come a long way towards recognizing PTSD and other issues and treating it. Law enforcement has followed suit, but I would say the military has gone a little further than we have. And we think both professions still have a long way to go. When you first came on the job, what was your career plan? Did you see yourself moving your way up, maybe switching agencies, or was it just, you know, retire as an officer? I wanted to be a detective. And when I was in housing before the merger, I had just gotten into the detective bureau. My daughter was born January 1st, 1994, and I got into the Detective Bureau 20 days later.

So I thought at that point, I was in the pitiful of my career. Then Giuliani came and merged departments together, and fortunately I stayed a detective, originally in the 47th Precinct Detective Squad, which is in the North Bronx, close to home. It wasn't bad. Then I got sent to the 45th Precinct Detective Squad. And then they started a gang task force to work with the feds. So I was sent to Bronx Homicide to work on that. task force. That was in October of 1997. And my intention was to just be a detective. But I saw a lot of

stuff happening with the court system in the Bronx that was not very good. And I saw the federal system. You know, the way it worked in the Bronx is once you made an arrest, the case was closed, which is bullshit because there's a lot of stuff that happens after an arrest is made. And when I was working with the feds, it was different. They had a lot more resources, number one. But you couldn't close the case that you went to trial. And a lot of stuff happens between that arrest and that trial. So I really had the ability to learn a lot of things. But I also saw that the sentences were much stronger.

But there was another thing, too, and it was like really the thing I fell in love with, is in the feds, and you probably hear about it all the time, cooperators. You know, you hear about the rats in the feds. And they do. There's plenty of them. But what happened is if you get arrested, let's say you're looking at 15 years, right? You're a three-time felon. You get caught with a gun.

So there's a mandatory minimum 15-year sentence. You can get out from under that 15 years. But there's only one way you can do that. And that's to cooperate. And then at the end of that cooperation, the U.S. Attorney's Office writes a letter to the judge, and the judge can depart down from that mandatory minimum sentence. It's the only way out. So here, I would sit in these rooms with some really, really bad guys.

I mean, guys that were responsible for multiple, multiple murders. And they would talk to us about all these things that they did. And then we would then go and corroborated. Like we'd go out find witnesses. We'd go find the police report, see what really happened. So you're running down the leads. which is putting the puzzle together. It's almost like a smorgas board.

Like it's a feast because you have all this information now. And then if you have to sit back down with that person and get more information like you're going back and forth, there's people I interviewed probably like 60, 70, 80 times on some cases. But we were able to make some really good. We were solving murders like it was going out of style. The other thing that was really interesting, something I'm really proud of is there were a couple times

where people would talk to us about murders they committed and we would run down those leads and we'd be like, oh shit, there's a problem. Someone's in jail for that murder. And I got news for you. If you think the district attorney's offices are willing to just say, oh, okay, hey, we got the wrong guy. No, it turns into like an all-out fight to get the person that's either sitting in jail or waiting trial or has been convicted sitting in prison out. I mean, you're redoing that case, but when you're re-investigating that case, you're also fighting tremendous battles with the district attorney's office who care more about their batting average than justice sometimes. So it was

that's something probably arrested 1,200 people in my career. Very proud that I was able to get nine innocent people out of jail, eight of them post-conviction. So is it easier to get someone out when it's a different prosecutor, say like that prosecutor didn't get elected and it's a new DA is in the office? Do you think that that new DA is willing to flip an old person's mistakes to make them look good? No, in fact, it's weird. I will say this. There's one guy he's passed on.

His name was Dan McCarthy. When I talked about the exonerations, I had two of them that came very close together. One was a kid named Lacey Little, who was about to go to trial for a murder. He'd been indicted. And we had information from a guy who said he was involved in that murder, didn't know who Lacey Little was. So we started putting the puzzle pieces together. And we let this prosecutor from the Bronx District Attorney's Office, this guy, Paul Greenfield, come and sit and listen to this cooperator.

And this guy's information is spot on. It was the caliber of the gun that was used, all this stuff. And the ADA dismisses it. oh, this guy's full of shit. We have our guy. We're going to trial. We're not here to get guilty people out of jail. We're here because there's new evidence that's come up.

You need to hear it and we need to follow it. And he was just completely dismissive. So what happened was we went and found the actual shooter who confessed to me that he was the one who shot this person in the elevator in the, it was on trying to think of the, the Marseania Air Rights Project, which is right adjacent to the Bronx parole building, by the way. So Greenfield's not willing to let this guy out. So what we did is, I use the word, cock blocked him. We went and we arrested the guy. He confessed to us in jail that he did the murder. So we arrested him. And then we called the DA's office and U.S. Attorney's Office was 100% on board

because we had a full confession. Well, like, hey, you can't take Lacey Little to trial for that murder now because we just arrested the murder. And this guy was pissed, this Bronx District Attorney, as was his boss, the District Attorney, right? The person. He's just an assistant district attorney. Now, in the other situation, the guy named Lawrence Fowler was in jail for about 13 years for a murder that this guy said he was involved in, too. Because of what happened with the Lacey Little murder, it's probably confusing some folks. Another ADA, Dan McCarthy, was like, hey, can we send one of our investigators with you to interview the person who you think was the shooter? Right. So I was like, look, this isn't about Pete for sale.

This is about like following the evidence and just, yeah, you could say whoever you want. You could come. So we went up to Massachusetts and interviewed this guy who was the intended victim. See, the second murder I'm talking about was a 16-year-old kid was killed. He was at his mother's birthday party. The gunman was intending to kill someone else, a guy named Dell. Dell used this little 16-year-old kid, Lamar, as a human shield. Lamar gets killed.

So we go to interview this person and he tells us, yeah, I told the cops that the person that, that person that was in jail isn't the one that did the shooting. But what happened was two kids on bicycles picked the guy out of a photo array and the DA's office went with it. So once this guy told me this story that they had the wrong guy in custody, we had the confession from the guy

who was actually involved in the murder who said they had the wrong guy in custody and the DA's investigator was there, Dan McCarthy got that guy out in 24 hours. So again, that was unbelievable that he did that. But so some of the ADAs gave a shit, some cared more about their batting average. This episode is brought to you by prize picks, whether you're starting a new routine or making

player picks for the first time. Trying something new can be hard. But in life and on prize picks, it always feels good to be right. With high pressure playoff matchups every weekend and elite hoops actions, almost every night, the action never stops and prize picks lets you take control. What I like about prize picks is how straightforward it is. No draft, no waiting. You open the app, pick your players, choose more or less,

on their projections and you're in. Watching games with prize picks honestly feels different. Every drive matters, every possession matters. It's like being locked into the moment, not just sitting there watching time pass. I've had lineups that hit. I've had ones that miss, but either way, you're engaged the whole time. It reminds me as something prison teaches you real fast. You've got to pay attention because everything counts.

One feature that stands out is early payouts. if your player gets off to a hot start, prize picks now gives you the option to cash out before the game even finishes. That flexibility matters. And if your fantasy league is already over, prize picks lets you keep playing daily fantasy every week even during the playoffs.

No draft required. Just make your lineup and stay locked in. You've also got options. If you want more flexibility, choose flex play where you could still get paid, even if one pick misses, or if you want the biggest payouts, go with PowerPlay. Either way, PrizePix lets you play your way. Plus, prize picks is available in all 50 states. Withdrawals are fast and secure and deposits are

quick and easy. No stress, no run around. Download the PrizePix app today and use code Ian Bick to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That's code Ian Bick to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup prize picks, it's good to be right. Now in some of these situations, how far are you willing to go as a cop? Will you go to the defense team? Will you circumvent the prosecutors to do that make sure the right things done here? Well, yeah. In fact, the last case that we got somebody out was a guy named Edward Gary. Edward Gary was in jail for murdering a retired police detective during a grocery store robbery that went bed. So what happened was Edward Gary was arrested because he was picked out by two different people.

The woman that worked behind the counter at the grocery store and a 17-year-old child who was delivering soda off a soda truck with his father. So they didn't know each other and they both pick out Edward Gary out of photos independently of one another. Like one did it at one building another did it at the Bronx detects. So they weren't even in the same room. It's not like somebody could overheard something. So the DA's office went with that. A while later, Later, I interviewed somebody who said they were involved in a murder and they described a murder that fits the same description as the murder of Oswald Potter, the grocery store murder. So I gave that information to the DA's office.

And this was around the time I was leaving the NYPD to go to ATF. So what happens is I get a call many, many years later from a defense attorney saying, hey, you requested some fingerprint comparisons on that case. Why? And I explained why. It was because we had some information that someone else might have been involved. And at that time, I thought it could have been like a second perp, perpetrator or, you know, an unundited co-conspirator or something. But what I found out was some detectives arrested three other people for being, one of them was a felon in possession of a firearm.

That person came in, like I was talking about earlier, and proffered and spoke to the district, the U.S. Attorney's Office with the detective and talked about that murder. So they arrest three people involved in the murder, and they showed them the picture of this guy, Edward Garry. And they're like, we've never seen this guy before in our life. So what happened is I get called many, many years. It's like 20-something years after this. This guy, Edward Garry, is now trying to get out of prison. And they're like, well, why did you request this fingerprint comparison? And I explained both because I believe this guy, Stephen, was involved in the murder.

So I get called back and they show me a picture of this guy, Stephen. And you look at the picture of Edward Gary and they look very similar. So I get called to testify and I'm looking at Edward Gary at the stand. And I realize this was a straight-up man. identification case. Well, the district attorney's office went into like hyperdrive, and they were making all kinds of crazy accusations. So what happened was, and this was crazy, the first set of hearings that I testified at, the judge got sick and retired. This poor guy, Edward Garry is still in jail. I get called back to a second set of hearings. And by this time,

by the way, the NYPD case file went missing mysteriously. The defense attorney got some additional documents. And luckily, a lot of the stuff that I had testified to were now corroborated by these old documents. So the judge at first, because I overheard him, saying, I don't want to take the word of some detective who barely knows anything about this case. What the judge didn't know is myself and another detective were on that task force. We got awards for arresting Edward Gary. Turned out, Edward Gary was innocent. I wasn't the case detective. I didn't go to trial with it. But anyway, so now I realize that the district attorney is just digging their heels. So then there was a third hearing, and finally the judge realized that to let Edward Gary out pending the decision from the DA's office.

Now, by this time we identified that this guy, Stephen, was the shooter, because those three guys that came in and proffered to being involved in the murder, pick him out and say, yeah, that's peanut. That was his street name. And he had a wound in his hand that was consistent with a gunshot wound because some of the witnesses said that one of the guys might have been shot in the hand. Gary didn't have a bullet wound, but again, the witnesses weren't sure. This guy has an old bullet wound in his hand. So the DA's office decides to retry him for a murder. So I am now coming back by this time I'm pretty pissed off as a defense witness.

So to your point, yeah, I came back and testified for the defense, how I believe that Edward Gary was innocent. The jury sat down, picked the foreman, and acquitted him in less than 30 minutes. How do other cops feel about cops testifying on behalf of the defense? Oh, well, look, that's funny, you should ask that. when I mentioned the cases earlier, that Lawrence Fowler, the guy that was in jail,

who did Dan McCarthy let out very quickly. You know, obviously you got to go talk to the detectives that were involved in that first case because there's things that don't always make their way into the notes. People remember things. And I remember the detective was a guy

named John Tierney, a guy I really respected back in the day. And when I knock on the door and say, John, I got to talk to you. And he's oh, what's this about, Pete? Everything's good. And then I said, look, John, we think that you might have locked up the wrong guy.

He literally said, get the fuck out of my house and slammed the door behind me. So cops, yeah, look, it was a mis-ID. It's not like John framed the guy. It was a straight-up misidentification case that could happen. So John didn't do anything wrong. He trusted the witness.

You know, it just happened. Witness was wrong. Some cops don't like that. Cops don't like to have their baby called ugly, but that's not. I was raised to believe that policing is about fairness. It's about justice. It goes back to the days where I walked the beat.

Like, those people were good people. What if one on them were. wrongfully picked out in a photo array or in a lineup for something they didn't do. So I just thought my job was to do what you and the taxpayers would want me to do, not what, you know, the department gives a shit about, you know? Why do you think some of these new suspects end up confessing when there's already someone that may have been wrongfully convicted in prison, but they technically got someone, why do these new people come forward and confess? Well, I'm glad you asked that. Because under the federal system, right, remember I mentioned how you can get a letter written,

you have to tell the truth. That's the only thing that you have to. You have to tell the truth about everything that you've been involved in, anything you've witnessed. Now, it's called, you know, if you do enough of those proffers, you sign with, that's a cooperation agreement. That agreement might require you to have to testify in a court,

federal court or state court. Like, you can be a federal cooperator and be required to testify in Bronx court. If no one goes to jail based on your information and you told the truth, you get the same credit. You told the truth. So what happened is these guys are coming in and talking about murders they did because they don't want to have that cooperation agreement ripped up and them do their entire sentence.

In fact, we had one guy kind of related to the case that I was just talking about with Lawrence Fowler and Lacey Little. One of those guys came in because there were two of them. One was a guy named Steve Young and the other guy. Oh my goodness. I can't think of his name. Big heavyset guy. the heavyset guy came in and talked about a bunch of things, but left out one crime that he was involved in,

which was an attempt to kill a witness. And the other guy, Steve Young, talked about that. Dwayne Beatty was his name. So Dwayne Bedey's cooperation agreement gets ripped up and he gets sentenced to double life for two different murders where he could have got a deal and not done two life sentences. He might have got like 10 years or something like that. So that's why they come in and talk about stuff

is because they want that cooperation agreement. That thing is gold. They're working for themselves, you know. I mean, sentence reductions can be dramatic, but the crime is you tell the truth. So in a situation like that, who really wins? You have a guy that gets out for after serving, say, 20 years for being wrongfully convicted, and the guy that actually did the murder is getting a reduced sentence. Where's the justice in that?

Well, it sucks. And you're making a deal with the devil. But the reality is, I mean, if you were in jail for something you didn't do, first of all, if you can always sue, and these guys usually do, they sue the state for the wrongful conviction. and they often get a lot of money. Now, is the money worth the years they spent in prison? No, no. But, I mean, you would not have that justice without making that deal with the devil.

You know, and similarly, like I said, we had a lot of cases that we solved that were unsolved murders, like where the person was never arrested, nobody was arrested. It's bad enough when the wrong person is sitting in jail. And I'll take that as a win if we can get an innocent guy out of jail. But, I mean, we were bringing justice to the families of other people whose cases weren't solved when we're arresting the actual murderer and that family can now have that closure. So I get it. It kind of sucks when you think about it that somebody's people are getting a sweetheart deal.

But the alternative is the truth is not out there. You know what I mean? Like there's no one's really being held accountable or the wrong person is being held accountable. So I mean, is our justice system perfect? No. Not by any stretch. But I think it's better than any other justice system in the world. Is it hard for you to go back to the victims to dredge that back up to say a case is reopened in a scenario like?

that. Yeah, it is. You know, I know the Potter family didn't like what was going on. But at the same time, they're like, hey, you know, we want someone in jail for murdering, you know, Ozzie. But at the same time, we want it to be the right person. And that was weird because that's one of the things that the attorney said about Edward Gary. Like, hey, man, you were a former detective yourself. Don't you feel that somebody should be in jail for the murder of a retired detective? And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, the right person should be in jail. As a detective, Ozzie Potter would probably want that too. Just because if Edward Gary is innocent, which the overwhelming evidence said that he was, how was that justice that someone is in jail, be it the wrong person for murdering a

detective? I mean, it was mind-blowing that case. The New Yorker actually did an article on it, and they were as perplexed as anybody. What was one case that stood out to you as a detective during that career? Well, you know, I got to work on a couple of racketeering cases. Sex Money Murder was one of them. This guy, Peter Rollock, ran a. gang was running drugs from New York to Pittsburgh all the way down to Charlotte, Mecklenburg, Carolina area, and they were killing people like it was free. So, Roelock himself did six murders, his underlings did probably another dozen. So, I mean, just to see the carnage, they ever any amount of money they were making,

they incorporated, it was a gang that literally incorporated itself in the state of Delaware as SMM Inc. They would go out, they would lease cars. They would write checks, paychecks. they were making the money with drug money. They were trying to launder that money by writing paycheck. So they formulated this crazy incorporation. So that one was interesting, went on for years.

And then look, some of them were just, you know, like I remember there was one case that we never even really solved. There was a woman found in a bathtub in Harlem. This was when I was still a housing cop. And in the bathtub with her were two children. And they were skeletonized. So what you had was you had these skeletons in this waxy substance, right, which was the body fluids and everything. And my partner in that case was a guy named George Millian, good guy, former Special Forces guy from the Army, real knowledgeable. I learned a lot from him.

And we never able to really figure out what happened. The closest we could find was because the doors were locked from the inside was that she killed herself and her kids poisoned them. And they just, like I said, melted in his bathtub, which was disgusting thing. The smell was horrendous. I mean, there was a lot of things that I saw. Some cases really blew my mind. Stuff I saw as an ATF agent later on was even perhaps sometimes. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars.

Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavatheater.com. Only a Yamava resort and casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Must be 21 to enter. Feels like every product claims real protein these days. But real doesn't start on a label.

It starts at the source. Like real California milk from California farm families, it's real dairy delivering high-quality, complete protein. With all nine essential amino acids to help build muscle, give you energy, and keep you. you satisfied longer. So keep it real. Look for the seal.

Real California Milk. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking. Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. Even more perplexing.

Yeah. How many years were you into your career when 9-11 happened? 9-11 happened. I was 15 years with the NYPD. I just left. I left the NYPD the end of May of 2001. Oh, so before 9-11. Yeah. I was an ATF agent. Our offices were at the World Trade Center. So I was there that morning right after the first plane hit. And it's weird. Didn't leave till the morning of the 13th. But like, you know, it's a weird story. Like, so when I got there, my boss sent me down there.

I think, you know, I'm on the FDR drive when the first plane hits. But there's a lot of buildings between me and the trade center. So even though those were the two tallest buildings in New York City, I can't see what's going on. And my boss calls me to tell me get my ass to the World Trade Center, a plane hit the World Trade Center. So I'm thinking it's like some propeller plane. A pilot had a hard attack or something. And I remember pulling up to the scene, I pulled up on Greenwich Street facing south. So I'm like looking over seven world trade at the slash in the building.

And even at that point, I'm still not realizing that it's, you know, a commercial airliner to hit the building. And there's flames everywhere. I see a woman or man, I don't know what it was, waving a white cloth. Like I guess, hey, help me. You know, you're like trying to figure out like how's the police department and fire department going to save these people. And I'm figuring they'll land helicopter. to get people off the roof that are above the crash site and everybody below all evacuate. Sure, people are dead at this point.

And I get out of my car, throw on a windbreaker, the ATF windbreaker to the head. And I walk around the corner and I see a plane engine. And it's detached from the plane. It's banged up a little bit, but it's pretty intact. And they're pretty big. Like, they look big on a plane. They look really big when they're off the plane standing in the middle of the street. And that's when I realized, holy shit, this is like an airliner hit the building.

So I remember just trying to help people move, like move it along, moving along, doing what you do, because there's no training to deal with this. And it was like such a colossal mess. Fire trucks are still coming. Ambulances are still coming. So then we realized that there's people,

and your listeners might not notice, the towers didn't sit at ground level. They were up on a mezzanine. So I ran up the stairs with this detective named John Faust, and we start just getting people to clear the mezzanine. And we walked down towards the south tower, which hadn't been hit yet. The North Tower's burning.

There's still, you know, debris, like paper blowing out of the building. And I remember looking to my left, and I see this young female paramedic, attractive on her knees, like tending to a guy who's all messed up. Something must have fell and hit him when the plane struck, I would imagine. And I remember feeling heat from above. And I didn't really hear anything. And I just remember looking to my left back at the girl. and she's now like chest down, face towards me,

and I just watched the color leave her face. And I realize, holy shit, she's dead. Like, you know, that's the assumption. Her eyes aren't blinking. And so we're just freaking out at this point, right? And so I'm just still trying to keep people moving away from the site. And then I turn and look back towards the North Tower. And like I said, paper was just hanging in the air.

It's just how paper is, I guess, when it's fallen from 115 stories or whatever. And I remember seeing something tailed. Aaron through the paper and looking in it is like, holy shit, that's a person. As a cop, you respond to jumpers. Co-op City, which I think it's not far from here, right? So the North Bronx, we'd have jumpers there a lot. A lot of elderly people that kids would not stay in touch with them. They would jump from the building to commit suicide.

It happened every now and then. So you'd either show up and it would be a crime scene, right? Or you would show up and a person would be like kind of calling for help. They weren't going to jump. They just want that attention. They're in a window sale or on a rooftop or something. And I'd never seen a human being fall from that height. And I remember, like, just like bracing myself, like, fuck.

Like, felt like I was going to get punched in the face to hear what it sounded like when that person hit the ground. I can still hear what it sounds like when that person at the ground. Like, that's something, you talk about, like, things that stay in you that is in my soul, like hearing it. And I remember looking to seeing another person jump from the other side of the building and that person didn't hit the ground. They hit like an overhang.

And under that overhang, there were EMTs and paramedics tending to people. And I'm just like, all right, this isn't safe. So I went back down the stairs I came up, which meant going back around the North Tower, going down the vet. They called them the Vese Street stairs. They were concrete stairs. They were on the outside. And I remember my boss catches me.

And he says, hey, man, where are all the ATF people? Because you're not like, if you ever work for a company that there's a lot of employees, they always have like, if there's a fire drill, you're supposed to go meet somewhere so they could do a head count to make sure everybody got out. Well, no one showed up. All the ATF people disappeared. So my boss at the time, this guy, John, asked me to, go back down south into like the ground zero area to find some ATF people and tell them to get

their ass to 90 church street which is supposed to go. So I'm like, okay, like I wanted to be helpful, but you know, it was kind of a weird choice because I was with ATF for three months. I didn't even know who all the ATF people were. So I remember heading south on Church Street and there's a store down there called Century 21. It's like department store. And I remember being at the north corner of century 21, and I see this guy on his knees, like, sobbing and, like, whaling. And I recognize him. He was a detective with me in the 47 precinct. A guy named Steve Rodriguez. So I'm Steve. You all right, brother? He's like, Pete. My wife is trapped in the building. I don't know what to do. So, like, what do you say to that guy at that point? So I'm just saying words to try to be

comforting, but they're meaningless, really. And you feel like really weird and kind of helpless at this point. And then it clicks in, hey, man, I got to go find the ATF people. So now I got to leave my friend who's like beside himself to go do what I had to do. So it's not a good day already at this point. So I get to the south corner of that very same building and I run into two ATF agents that I know, Jason Samaloff and Salamilio. And I was like, hey, have you seen any ATF people? They're like, no, we've been looking to. So I finally run into two. I felt at least a little bit useful. I've found two ATF people. And I remember at this point, I'm looking across the street. And I see a bunch of NYPD emergency service unit guys walking south.

And ESU is kind of a weird team because they're like a hybrid of like a SWAT team and rescue team. And I notice amongst the ESU guys is about 10 of them. They have the heavy equipment. Some of them had Scott packs on. I see three of them that I knew really well. Two of them were housing cops with me back in the day. John Coglin and another one, Vinnie Danz.

I went through the academy with Vinnie. And then there's another cop with them, Walter Weaver, who I knew from when I was a detective in the 47 precinct. He used to come up to the squad room. He loved watches. We used to talk about watches, right? Brightlings, Omegas. Nice guy.

He was much younger than me. And I see them. And, you know, Vinny basically looks at me. He's like, what's up with the jacket? Right? This is all verbal. He's across the street. He didn't know that I had left to go.

Because when I left NYPD, I just left NYPD on a Friday, went to work with ATF on a Monday. There was no retirement party. I just quietly left. And I hadn't seen Vinny in a while. So I'm like, I don't know. I guess we'll talk about it later. And I'm watching them.

Just fixated on them as they walk into the. the underneath the mezzanine. And all of a sudden, Jason Zamboff bragged my left shoulder. He hits it hard. And he says, one word, run. I remember looking up. And if you ever see footage from Ground Zero, when the South Tower fell, like what happened was, that's, it can't it.

And then it collapses down. So, but from that split second, it looked like the building was falling like a domino towards us. So I start running north. And I get probably a block. And I get hit square between the shoulder blades with something. It didn't injure me, but it hurt. And it got my attention.

And I realized, all right, police training. You're getting shot at. What do you do? You get small. So I look around. There's a few police cars and there's a fire truck. So I get down on my hands and knees, and I roll under this fire truck. And it's pretty stupid because a fire truck is not strong enough to suspend the weight of

a collapsing 115-story building. But at that second, it seemed like the right move to make. So I remember being under this fire truck, and the truck is a lot of the truck. shaking and I can hear shit banging off the truck. And then the dust cloud comes. And that cloud came with like a ferocity, like a high wind. So I'm facing north because I got when I got down on my hands in ease, I just rolled on there. I didn't like change direction or anything. And I remember like now it's like, fuck, like blinking hurt. It felt like I was sandpapering my eyeballs. Then it got thicker and thicker. And then I said, I'm going to suffocate under this truck.

So I roll out from under the truck and just now I can't really see very well. well, and I'm running north and I'm running, I get to buy across the street from 90 Church Street. There was a building. It was an office building. I hear somebody yelling, hey, over here, over here. And it didn't sound like somebody who was like, hey, come over here. So I ran towards that voice. And as soon as I get to it, the guy grabs me by my collar and brings me to a water fountain and I wash out my eyes. And I remember at that point, coming out of one of the back rooms is the chief of NYPD detectives, a guy who I really didn't care for. He didn't like Bronx detectives because we didn't wear fancy suits. We wore like Catholic school reject kind of outfits, you know, a blue blazer and dockers

and construction boots and dress shoes. So anyway, he comes out of the back room. He's like, what the fuck is going on? And I'm covered in dust at this point. And I look at him and I'm like, Chief, the South Tower just fell. And he looked at me like in complete disbelief. And he's like, what? I said, sir, the South Tower just fell.

And at this point, a bunch of cops and agents or whoever run. And I'm like, don't go out there, man, because you will not. be able to breathe. Don't go out there. You'll go down. And 80% of those people didn't listen to me and ran out there. Once my eyes were all cleared out, I went back out there. And you went to try to see who you can help. And it was weird because people were either like moving on their own or were under the building. You couldn't help them. So again, talk about helplessness. There was, again, this feeling of like helplessness where you're trying to see what you can do because you want to be helpful. But no. So yeah.

While we're there, I get another call from my boss saying that one of our agents, a girl named Kara, was trapped in a car, so we got to find Kara. So myself and this agent named Bill Sheldon, we get together. Bill had come to the scene. We find Kara. She's trapped in her car. But luckily, she's not. Like, when I hear trapped in her car, I'm thinking there's a girder on her car.

There's a pile of debris. Her car had little minor debris on it, but it was covered mostly in dust. But Kara was pregnant. So Carrie didn't want to get out of car. Like, so she was more paralyzed with fear than she was, like, trapped in the car. But we got her out, got her to Beakman downtown hospital, which is only about a half mile from ground zero, like if you were to draw a straight line, went back. The North Tower collapsed.

Did the same thing. I wasn't as close to the North Tower when it collapsed as it was to the South Tower, trying to see who you can help. And the people were either able to move around and were leaving or they were under rubble again. And you couldn't do shit for them. So, you know, spent the night there digging. didn't get home until the morning of the 13th. So it was rough.

And were you married at that point? I know you said you had a kid. I was married and I had two kids by this time. And it's weird, man, because, you know, you asked before about like PTSD and all that stuff. When the night before 9-11, my wife and I had a pretty bad argument. Didn't get physical. It was about money, right? So, because when I went from NYPD, a homicide detective with overtime, I made about $83,000.

Feds don't get overtime. Eventually, your salary goes up, but I had to take a big pay cut. So I went down to about $49,000. That's a huge pay cut. Yeah. Yeah. So we argued over money. So our routine in the house is kiss good night.

If somebody goes out for a gallon of milk, there's a kiss. Because as a detective, I know plenty of people that I show up at a scene that they didn't get a kiss, ginaight or whatever to their family. They went to go buy something and they got killed. killed in a grocery store robbery or they got mugged or something. So it was just kind of weird thing, I guess. But that was just our thing. So September 10th, there was no kiss good night.

I was pissed. Right? September 11th, I get up. I went to work. No kiss. When all of this shit was happening, you know, you're a cop. And it's probably going to be hard for some folks to understand. It's like, you just, you want to be helpful.

You want to do something. I'm doing all of these crazy things. On the morning of September 13th, I go home. And my wife and kids are standing outside. They're like, my kids are in Catholic school uniforms because Yonker school sucked. So they went to Catholic school. And there's a UPS truck on the other side of the street. So to my left is this UPS truck.

I get out of the car. I'm still covered in dirt. I'm in a different car because my government car got crushed. So they gave us new cars. I drive home. I'm in this brand new Ford Explorer. Still had this sticker in the window. So my wife didn't know who I was until I got out of the car.

And UPS guy comes and hugs me. So it's like, hey, man, thanks. So he obviously knew where I was coming from. and then I get across the street to my wife, and my wife is a little bit like, hey, good to see you. We need to talk. And what I learned, and which still really bothers me to this day, was when the South Tower fell,

my wife sent her mother to school to pick up my kids and bring them home. And for two days, they waited for a chaplain to come knock on the door and never called home. For two days, I was there digging. doing what, you know, what we did. And never thought about my family because that's what cops do, right?

We get so caught up in the work that you sometimes forget about what's important. So here we're 25 plus years, or 25 years later, I still feel guilty that I went there, did what I thought I was supposed to do, but never stopped to think about the people at home who were worried about me. You know, and it bothers me because for two days,

my wife thought our last conversation was an argument over money. So, sorry about that. No. Did that change your perspective of prioritizing, you know, your career and law enforcement? For a couple of days, yeah. You know, I lost, well, Vinnie Dan's, I mentioned there, Vinnie, Walter Weaver, John Coughlin died. My wife told me that day, four other close friends didn't come home. So it put me in a really bad place. because like I always went to police funerals because that was you paid your respect to your colleagues. I couldn't go. I felt like a piece of shit for being alive.

Got tired of driving past ground zero all the time. That's why I put in to promote. I know one of your previous guests, Eric Imsburger, we worked together. I left New York because I just thought like, you know, driving past this brought back memories. I figured if I get out of New York, I could escape those memories.

The thing is you can't escape the memories. Going back to our earlier conversation about, hey, man, sometimes you need to ask for help or talk to somebody. No, no, I was going to get away from it. Went out to Phoenix. That's where all that other nonsense happens. I thought I'd get away from stress. I wound up in a place with even more stress.

But I didn't actually try to get help till after the lung cancer that I got in 2017, man. Like I said, when I came out of the anesthesia, I'm like, looking at my wife crying, my daughter's crying. My son was deployed with the Coast Guard, so he was, you know, not there. And I'm like, wow, I can think about all these cool cases I worked on, all the shit. I didn't. I don't have those same memories at home. If I was on vacation with my family and the phone rang, I answered it. You know, I'd be the idiot walking along the water's edge talking about something happening where other people could have handled it. You know what I mean? I didn't do a very good job

putting family first. And I didn't actually until around 20, yeah, 2017 is when I finally got my head out of my ass and decided, hey man, I'm leaving this profession as whole as I can, down along, mind you. but I'm also going to start focusing on important things like family, taking care of myself. Yeah, I did a lot of things wrong. Why do you leave the NYPD to begin with? My last year with the NYPD, I had a case that went to trial.

There was a kid named Joseph Dauphin. He was four years old. Joseph was mentally handicapped. He was being babysat by his father. Well, no, his stepfather. It wasn't his natural father. Joseph soiled himself. The stepfather changes his diaper.

Joseph immediately soils himself again. The guy flew into a rage and beat him to death. 2000, that case went to trial. Joseph Dauphin's killer, the stepfather, person who should have loved him and done right by him, was sentenced to four years in prison. It was around that time that I was doing all these federal cases. We had this thing called Operation Trigger Lock,

where we would go after violent felonies who used guns and charged them federally. And a one-time felon that we get caught would have gone was averaging 48 months in jail, four years. And I'm like, why am I wasting my time with this broken criminal justice system in the Bronx when I can make so much of a difference with the federal system where we would get these guys in the room, proffer them, go out and investigate bigger and better things? We were taking small cases and turning them into racketeering cases, continuing criminal enterprise cases, Hobbs Act robbery cases. I mean, I had one case that started in 1999. It was one defendant, one gun case. The guy was an illegal alien in possession of a firearm, but he was also a fugitive in possession of a firearm.

He came in and proffered. That case turned into a case with 23 different people involved in 145 home invasion robberies and six murders. So I'm like, why would I stay with the NYPD when I can do this? Right. Why see the justice that Joseph Dauphin got, which was none, when I can actually see people get justice with a federal system. That's the reason I left.

It was the system. Why do he only get four years? Because he was mentally diminished, enraged. He got four years. It wasn't premeditated, you know? The judge showed sympathy, understood. Like, really? How about sympathy for the little kid who had diarrhea

and really wasn't, you know, in his... Sotopia 2 has come home to do. Disney Plus. Let's go. Get ready for a new case. We're going to crack this case and prove for the greatest partners of all time. New friends. You are Gary Desnake.

And your last name? The Snake. Dream team. Hit new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly. We're going to hit.

Zootopia 2. Now available on Disney Plus rated PG. Exima is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis, a once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four and ten people taking ebbglis, achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. Hebglis, Librikizumab, LBKZ.

A 250 milligram per 2-millimeter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults in children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebbglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebbglis. Before starting ebbglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about ebbglis.com and visit ebglis.com or call 1800 lilyrx or 1-845-9759. As the Krispy Chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud.

And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me, and baby, I'm a whole meal. And with seven rewards, I'm just $4.

Quiet. No. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley through 62326, participating stores only well supplies lastly out for full terms. Right mind normally anyway. So yeah, that was it.

So do you blame the judge for that or the sentencing guidelines that allowed for that to begin with, like the laws? Both, I think, because the judge didn't have to go with that sentence. And look, that's a problem that I think has gotten worse now. Look, I mean, I don't, we can't arrest our way out of the problems that we have by arresting everybody. But when you look at criminals, there's only about two to three percent of real hardcore criminals that create most of the, violent crime. Most criminals aren't out there shooting people, but when you're giving those people a pass, you have problems. And there are some judges that would put, hey, you were involved in a shooting, put them right back out. You've seen it on the news all the time. Well, so and so.

There was one recently in the county I live in Fairfax County. Guy was arrested for a murder this month. A couple of months ago was in jail for a murder and they decided, well, until we go to trial, we'll just let him out on bail. Who are you protecting? Not the regular taxpayer, you know, you're protecting criminals. So at all the federal agencies, why did you choose ATF? They were the most like cops. FBI is kind of a little pretentious. You know, they take themselves very serious.

I would argue, and I look, I work with some really great FBI guys, but they kind of cult-like, like the Bureau. It's all about the Bureau. Like if you criticize them, even when the Bureau does something wrong, there are some guys who will never criticize the Bureau. ATF guys are a lot more like cops. They criticize their own agency. Like I know, I remember in one office,

there's people that have like, There's people that hate ATF, obviously, as you know, because they enforce the gun laws. Some people think there should be no gun laws. So this one agent had a shirt that said ATF is gay that he found, right, because there's people that would wear these things that just hate an ATF. And he hung into the office because we didn't take ourselves that seriously. DEA was also similar to that where they didn't take themselves too seriously either. And I think that's why as organizations, ATF, DEA and the marshals get along probably the best

because they're probably the closest to like what you would see from regular cops. Do you think it's easier or harder to go from a regular cop to a federal agent? It's probably easier for a lot of people. The challenge, truthfully, is I mentioned before about paperwork. There's a lot of paperwork as a cop. There's a lot more as a Fed. I mean, for us to do a kick in a door, there's an 18-page tactical plan that we'd have to write out as an ATF agent. When I was in Bronx homicide, it was like, all right, there's a guy in there.

We're sure he's in there? We got a warrant. All right, let's go. There was no like, all right, sit down. we need a plan. Where's the nearest hospital? We just won it. Now, is that the safest way to do things? It's probably a happy medium. But I think it's, we actually, towards the end of my career, I was the head of training and hiring ATF for agents. I'd say about 70 to 80 percent of the people that we hired came from other law enforcement organizations. How long did you stay in New York before you

requested that transfer? Six years. Oh, so it was a six year stretch. Yeah. Yeah. I got hired in 2001. I went out to Phoenix in 2007, February of 2007. I was in in Phoenix for five years, then bounced around other places after that. What was a case you remember from that time period in New York? The Bello case, I mentioned, with the home invasions. That started as a one defendant, one gun arrest. But when I left the NYPD, I took that case with me to ATF. There was that.

There was the other case. It was called, we called it Operation Stadium Shadow because it happened right outside of the shadows of Yankee Stadium, which was a group of drug dealers who basically took over a building. ironically, almost diagonally across the street from the Bronx criminal courthouse and turned it into like a drug distribution center. So you had senior citizens who were afraid of them and these guys would just go in and take over to building and sell drugs out of it out of this senior citizen building. So you felt horrible for these old people who just wanted to go about their life. And you had these young kids going there, bullying them, scaring them, threatening them,

just so they'd be able to sell drugs because it was a convenient location for selling drugs. How did you guys get tipped off to it? A home invasion robbery of a marijuana dealer. We arrested the shooter and then we arrested one of his co-defendants and the co-defendants came in and proffered to a bunch of things he was involved in. And one of them was he was part of that crew that was running that building. Okay. And then you guys stake it out and take them down after that.

Yeah, we've sent informants in to buy drugs from them, undercover agents in to buy drugs from them. Start looking at some of the other things. Some of them were involved in other murders, you know, because drug dealers got to protect their territory. And then it turned out the guys who were running that building, also were running a drug enterprise on a street in the Bronx called Cortland Avenue. So this guy's name was Sidney Bright.

He was the head of the organization. He ran a drug enterprise for like 20 years. We finally were able to take him down his organization. So it was rewarding. But here's the problem. Sidney Bright got sentenced to life. He was involved in murders, other things. He deserved it.

for a little while, Cortland Avenue was better, but like anything else, right? When you arrest someone who's running a very lucrative drug enterprise, right? It's very convenient, people are there. They have their own self-contained little market. Someone's going to fill that void.

And then you have that same cycle repeats itself because the police department isn't sending people in there to patrol it and, you know, keep crime down forever. They may do it for a couple of months. And then it's like, okay, we've got a problem somewhere else. Were you traveling a lot with

the ATF when you were in New York or was it mainly mainly just New York cases? No, I was traveling and the reason was, frankly, like, I specialized in home invasion robbery cases and if you get robbed in your house, a lot of people, what they do is they move. The Bello case, there were 145 home invasion robberies tied to that case. And we know this because we proffered people. 23 people came in. 21 came in and proffered. Two of them decided, I'm not cooperating.

They went to trial. They lost. what would happen is they were robbing drug dealers mostly. So those robberies don't very often get reported, right, unless somebody dies. But they would get information just like anybody else. Like the cops get information from informants. So do these drug robbers. So of the 145 robberies, 13 of them, they hit the wrong door.

Like there was one instance they went in and they basically raped the girl in front of her father. Like, where's the drugs? I don't have them. We think you're lying. Where's the drugs? I don't have them. They're going to find out they beat the hell out of the father. He didn't give it up.

So then they rape his daughter in front of him, right? Other instances where they had another woman like she had moved to Florida. Her daughter was mentally handicapped. And they basically threatened to kill her in front of the mother. So I went down to Florida to interview her. Another guy, Herman, who had transferred, he left because they hit the wrong door. Again, bad information. He had moved to Puerto Rico to a town, I think called Katanya.

or something. Not too far from that fort, El Morrow. So I had to fly to Puerto Rico to interview him, find out what happened, show him pictures. So that's what would happen is like out of those 145 robberies. 13 of them were legit robberies where they robbed a house thinking it was a drug spot, but it wasn't. So we were able to show those victims' photos, but they had left the Bronx area. Two of them went to Florida. One went to Puerto Rico. One went to California. One went to Tampa. Now, by the time you transferred, you were about 20 years or a little over into your career. Transferred to Phoenix? Yeah.

22. So were you thinking about retirement at all at that point? No, because when I left the NYPD, I could have retired from NYPD at 20 years. But when I went to the feds, I was in a whole different retirement system. So I would have to do 20 years with the feds before I could retire. So going into that Fed job, were you okay with that? Yeah. Yeah.

Like I said, I just felt I could do more as a federal agent than I could as a detective. I love being a detective, but the system wasn't amenable to. real progress, you know, it was like shoveling shit into the tide. How did your family take the idea of moving all the way across the country? By that time, my wife had knee surgery, like several of them, and we figured warmer weather would be good for her, for her knee. I figured getting away from New York would help me get away from things that they follow you.

I didn't know that. So I put in for transfers to Savannah, Jacksonville, Dallas, and Phoenix. Those were the officers that were open. I got picked for Phoenix. I'd never been to Dallas or Phoenix. I had been to Jacksonville and Savannah because they're close to where the ATF Academy was. So, yeah. Which one did you want the most?

Probably Savannah. Yeah, it's a nice town. But I got Phoenix. I went to the desert for the first time. What was Phoenix like for you when you first got there? Shocking. It was shocking. The stuff I saw happening in Phoenix would blow most people's minds.

I would watch agents. The normal way, the normal way, the normal way. way things would happen, right, was we would get phone calls from gun dealers, like gun stores, saying, hey, man, is something not right? Can you guys send someone out here? There's some people we think are straw purchases, which is basically a straw purchases, someone who's buying a gun for someone else, not as a gift. Like, they're going in there to disguise. They know that they're going to buy that gun and hand it to someone else who shouldn't have it, whether it's a felon, whether it's a trafficker. So what happened is they would call us routinely. I remember my first

weekend out there, we get a phone call and we roll out, right? The guy, He called me. He called one of my agents, called Mario Attencio. We were all out there, start setting up surveillance, and we call them, tell the deal, we're outside, hey, man, you can execute that transfer. And we watch guys take 13 AK-47-style rifles and put them into a vehicle and leave. So we follow them. We wait until we get far away enough so that we're not endangering anybody at the store or in the street. We get to a safe place. We stop the car. They got on I-10. They're heading south. We pull them over. Separate them. Where are you coming from? One guy is like, well, we were at my mother's, you know, just eat.

We just stopped to get something to eat. The other guy's like, oh, we were playing soccer. Interestingly, he's not sweating at all. But did you stop anywhere between soccer and here? No, no, no. We just came from there. Okay, so we just watched you leave a gun store and put a bunch of guns. So anyway, we catch them in enough lies that we decide, let's call the U.S.

Attorney's Office and see what we can do. And we're going to seize these firearms because they're definitely not purchased for legitimate purposes. So the U.S. Attorney's Office tells us, yeah, okay, good, good job, good job. let him go, we'll indict it later, just seize the firearms. So we do, we seize the firearms. Now, in New York, it would have been different. It would have been lock them up, take them to the Bronx County Courthouse,

we'll drop a federal complaint. You can pick them up tomorrow morning, take them down to the federal courthouse, take them to the magistrate. But I'm in a different part of the country now, and I know each U.S. Attorney's Office operates a little bit differently. I'm figuring, all right, this, okay, indict it in a couple days. I didn't like that we'd have to go back out and find these guys.

But, again, I'm brand new. I'm there a week. well, that indictment doesn't come. But I'm also watching this scenario happen again and again. Gun dealer calls us. Sometimes it would be 30 rifles. Sometimes it be two. We would stop the car.

We would seize the guns. We would wait for that indictment. We would send the paperwork over to the U.S. Attorney's Office and wait and wait and wait. So then a short time later, I come in one morning and Mario Attencio, Billy Medina, and Heidi, Peterson, three of my agents are like, they're waiting for me. And I can just tell that they're not. happy. I'm like, oh, fuck, what's going on with this? And they have a newspaper in their hands,

right? So what happened is there's a town in Mexico, in the state of Sonora, which is just south of Arizona, a town called Caninea. And in this town, there's a situation where 21 people are murdered. Four of them are police officers. Four other police officers are captured, taken into the desert, and beaten and tortured and left to die. They didn't die. So I don't know, like, it's not like a Chicago. Mexico. Like when Chicago, when they drive by, it's like maybe one or two cars, a guy lights up a building, and then they just drive away. In Mexico, with the cartels, they roll in in like caravans, and they'll light people up and they're kidnapped people. It's bad. I mean,

and they're heavily armed. They're sometimes using explosives. So, all right. So anyway, this particular shooting in Canaania, Mario tells me one of the guns that was used in the shooting was purchased in Arizona two days before the shooting. Now, an ATF, what happened is, like straw purchases, is what I mentioned before. When the dealers would see something suspicious, they would call us. But a straw purchase is an act of deception. Like you're saying that you're there to buy for yourself.

You can pass a background check. You have the driver's license and everything. So sometimes those guns would be, they would make it to the streets. And we would only find out about it when they would be recovered of crime scenes. This is one of those instances. Now, in ATF, you looked at anything where the time,

we call it time to crime. Like from the day it was purchased till the time it was used in a crime. If it's anything less than two years, that gun was probably trafficked. Because most people don't buy a gun and keep it for less than two years. It happens. We, if we, you know, if we conducted an investigation, the person like, yeah, I bought the gun

and I had a kid, I don't want a gun in the house anymore, I sold it. Okay, whatever. Not everything's a crime, right? But two days is mind-blowing. So anyway, they found the straw purchaser who admits, yeah, I bought it and I gave it to the trafficker. They find the trafficker. Yeah, I took it to Mexico.

U.S. Attorney's Office declines the case. They then have a meeting with us saying, listen, from this point forward, anytime a gun is recovered in Mexico, that means the body of the crime is in Mexico. The corporate is delecti, they called it. So we're not going to be taking these cases anymore. So, yeah, we wouldn't charge that case. Well, that's bullshit because the body of the crime is lying on the form, that form that you fill out that says you're buying the gun for yourself.

It's called the Form 44-73. We would have the original form with us. That's the evidence right there, but they decided the only U.S. Attorney's Office in the country that decided if the gun makes its way to Mexico, we can't prosecute. So we fought them tooth and nail on that. Around this same time, the chief of the gun unit for the U.S. Attorney's Office, a woman named Rachel Hernandez demands a meeting with me, my bosses, and everything. And she decided that one of our informants, this guy named CI-921, that was in his name,

that's his informant number, was not trustworthy. He was unreliable. So now I'm starting to get a little upset because I'm thinking, like, is this, are my agents bringing, like, substandard work? Like, why is nothing happening? So basically called my agents in for a big meeting and said, bring me everything with CI-921. I want to look and see what's going on because she said he was unlawable. So I start to look at all the information he gave us and the recoveries and the evidence.

And it's like, this dude is fucking spot on. I'm like, what's going on here? Like, this is insane. So I call Rachel back. And she was a very nice person. And explain everything. Hey, Rachel, I looked at everything that you're saying. And he's incredibly accurate.

Like, what do you mean? She was, well, no, no, you misunderstood. She said he was an informant that was moved with EWAP funds, which is the emergency witness assistance program. So once you move someone with EWAP funds, DOJ policy says we can never use them again. I did stuff in New York where EWAP was used and I never heard such things. So I call the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, their victim witness coordinator, and ask, hey, man, is it true that if we move someone with EWAP funds that we can never use

again, she laughed to me. She goes, no, Pete, you know what it's not true. I said, well, I just wanted a check. She was, well, call Maine Justice, gave me a number, see what they say. So I call Maine Justice, and they tell me the same thing. Oh, you can use them. But if you ever use them, you just might have to articulate to a jury why he was paid this money because some people think it might look like you're buying their testimony.

But really, you're moving them because they're in danger. So, okay, so I call Rachel back again. And then it's like, Pete, you're not getting it. This guy has no jury appeal. He wears too many gold chains, too much jewelry. No jewelry will relate to him. We're fucking done. We're not using him anymore.

End of story. Well, we had like 20-something cases that were pending that now just went into the garbage can. Well, they went back into the file cabinet, dead on the vine. So now we got, if the guns were covered in Mexico, we can't charge it. All these other cases just sitting there that they won't charge. Now, CI-921, we can't use. And he was a gold bind of information. So, finally, some other things happen.

There's a case where a 50-caliber rifle was trafficked from Phoenix by this kid, Victor Vero. into Juarez and it's used to murder a Mexican police commander in a daycare center. It's pretty bad. Makes big headline news in Mexico. We push back on the U.S. Attorney's Office and they say, well, you know what? Maybe in certain instances, if ATF can go examine the gun in Mexico, we'll prosecute it and we just have to figure out a way how we'll get that gun back.

So we figure that's the perfect test case. They decline it. So we take it to the State Attorney General's Office and the State Attorney General's Office decides the prosecutor for lying on a business record, right, which is obscure, but they were willing to take that chance for us. And then the funny thing is that makes international news, right, because we arrested this guy because of the nature of the case. The U.S. Attorney's Office gets called for Maine Justice, the Attorney General's Office, saying, why the fuck wasn't this a federal case? And they pretended like, well, you know, we don't know. It was never run by us.

This is the kind of stuff that's going on, no, no, no. 2009, something changes. Phoenix becomes the home invasion capital of the United States and was only second behind Mexico City in this hemisphere, which is not a distinction that Phoenix wanted, right? So my group gets changed because in New York, that's what I specialized in, home invasion. So Pete, your group is now the home invasion group. And they send out this new group of people. One agent from my group was reassigned to it. And then the rest came from all over the United States and they stand up this new group, Phoenix Group 7. And they are now going to be the Mexico-bound firearms trafficking group. Well, instead of doing what we did, which was stopping cars, dealing with the dealers, they decide, and they're still getting phone calls from those same dealers, by the way, and to call them.

But instead of stopping the car, they'll just document the license plate. We'll see who it comes back to. Let the gun go. Guns turning up in Mexico, they don't care. This goes on. They're still documenting these purchases, right? The U.S. attorney assigns this guy, Emory Hurley, to this case, and they know guns are now, making their way to Mexico, they're going to build this big giant case.

The numbers keep going up because I'm going to these weekly supervisors meetings. First one I went through there, like 600 guns. I'm like, 600 guns. Okay, I figured maybe they turned into a treasure trove of like documents and found some guns that been sold in the past. Guns go, the numbers are going up, 800 and 900. I start finally asking, hey, man, I'm like, you guys stopping these cars? Like, are you doing car?

Like, what are you doing? And I'm told, Pete, relax. We got this. We're doing something different. But I don't know what they're doing. I still, no idea. The numbers go up and up. Then I'm starting to get like really upset.

Like, hey, man, like, can you let us in? Because we're starting to get calls from the dealers now who are saying, hey, man, like, what's going on with this new group? Because, you know, we're getting trace requests now for Mexico. When you guys were seizing the guns, we never got trace requests. Yeah, because we didn't have to trace them because they weren't showing up at crime scenes. So now, while this is all going on, all of a sudden, a border patrol agent named Brian Terry gets killed.

Brian is patrolling Peck Canyon area, which is down near. Tucson, not too far from Tucson, but an hour away. And then he's looking for drug bandits. They find drug bandits. Brian gets shot through the back, goes through his spinal cord, through his aorta. He dies. One of the guns found that the scene turns out to have been one of those 2,200 firearms.

By this time, we're up to 2,200, that ATF allowed to just ride off into the sunset. So an agent named John Dodson, who was in that group, because, again, they knew what was going on. We didn't know. We heard rumblings here and there. We didn't think it would be possible that they could be that freaking stupid. John Dodson blows the whistle. They call Senator Grassley's office to say ATF intentionally is letting these guns go to Mexico.

So I'm at another supervisor's meeting, and the special agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division, this guy named Bill Newell, comes in and starts the meeting with, hey, man, listen, folks, we got some problems. The U.S. Attorney's Office is really pissed at John Dodson. My advice to you all is to stay away from him because he's probably going to find himself indicted. And I'm just sitting there boiling at this point, because I'm thinking, all. All of these cases, 95% of the cases that we sent them involving firearms traffickers, they turned away or ignored. They wouldn't take cases specifically because the guns were in Mexico. Now they're doing this shit and their strategy was to let guns go to Mexico?

Like it made no sense to me. So I went home that night and told my wife, I said, look, man, this is what's going on. I said, and my understanding is they're talking about in dining John Dodson. I didn't even like John Dodson. John Dodson was kind of a shitter. kind of a wise guy and whatever so I tell my wife

I think this is just wrong I said I think I need to call Grassley's office and my wife's like well you're not the man I married if you don't fucking call Grassley's office so I call and I remember I spoke to a guy named Brian Downey and I'm like hey Brian look my name's Pete Fresselli I'm a supervisor from ATF and Phoenix

I know the attorney general holder ATF everybody's saying that ATF never walks guns I know John Dodson contacted you're all office. They're calling him a liar. Well, I'm calling to tell you he ain't lying. And if you give me a subpoena, I'll tell you everything you want to know. And it's like, okay, thank you. Well, a couple, a couple weeks goes by. I'm sitting at my desk. I get a phone call from a gentleman named Carlton Davis, who worked for Darrell Issa at the time. He's like, Pete, this is Carlton Davis from the oversight committee. I have a subpoena for you. You can either come downstairs. There's a hotel across the

I forgot the name of the hotel. Or we can come up to the ninth floor and serve you there. Or we can come out to your house and read you me my home address. And my response is I'll be right down. So I got the subpoena. A couple months later, got deposed in an office with folks from Daryl Issa staff, Chuck Grassley staff, Elijah Cummings, and Senator Leahy. And told them everything for about six hours.

Talked about all those cases that are in my book that were declined. Talked about a grenade case. We had a guy who was making grenades for the Sinaloa cartel that the U.S. Attorney's Office wouldn't let us touch. He confessed to making over 800 grenades for the Sinaloa cartel. Got caught crossing the border with 114 disassembled grenades hidden in his tires, and they ordered us to let him go. Why?

I would love to know the answer to that question. He eventually got arrested by the Mexicans with our help. But yeah, so, but anyway, so I talk about all these things, and before I even made it back to my office, I parked at the office because I'm cheap, I didn't feel like paying the park. Six blocks. By the time I left that deposition and walked to my car, I got a phone call from someone from the U.S. Attorney's Office, because some of those people wanted to do their jobs, they weren't all bad,

the U.S. Attorney's Office. And he tells me, Pete, dude, you got to watch your back brother. I was like, what's up? He goes, everything you just said in that room over the past few hours was relayed to the U.S. attorney, who's a presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed. Dennis Burke was his name. So I'm like, oh, shit, I got a problem. So anyway, the very next day, I get a call from another person from the U.S. Attorney's Office. He says, hey, man, we need to chat. I was like, all right, he goes, no, in person. So he met at this place downstairs from my office called Paradise Bakery.

It's all right. It's kind of like an old bomb pond. So anyway, he slides an email across the desk to me. And I look at it, and it's from Dennis Burke. Again, presidentially appointed head federal law enforcement officer for the entire state of Arizona to his entire staff. And I could almost quote it verbatim. It said, anyone running into Pete Forselli, even if it's him having coffee with his family,

on a weekend, will report it to me through your chain of command immediately. And I'm like, holy shit, I'm a fucking marked man. Right. So then as time goes on, I'm getting surveilled. Right. So there was times where I, there was one time my wife and I went to a cheesecake factory and we're sitting there and these guys come in and they just literally sit like two tables down from one and just sit and stare, which is kind of messed up, man.

Because I was a cop for a long time. And as part of me, it's like, I should confront them. And then you're like, well, I'm with my kids and my wife. And what if it goes sideways? I mean, you don't know where it's going to. I was like, we wound up like just paying for food. We didn't even get the food. We just paid the bill and get the fuck out.

It was tailed in my car. It just went on for a little while. So then I had to go to testify at the actual hearing, which was interesting because the deposition was lawyers for the staff. They were asking great questions. The hearing, which was on June 15th, which is still on C-SPAN. Nobody watches C-SPAN again was a show, you know, because now it's the politician. and it's all the, we need more gun laws, we need less gun laws.

So that went on for a while. While I was testifying, the chief of the criminal division for the U.S. attorney's office was basically in ATF headquarters telling the director of ATF that I was perjuring myself. Everything I said was a lie. So I wound up having to call the Inspector General's office saying, hey, man, I was just accused of a felony. I need you guys to investigate me. And for four years, I wound up having to get investigated because the U.S. attorney's office was saying one thing.

I was saying another, thank God, most of it was documented, that which wasn't documented I had witnesses to, but the Inspector General's office moves at a crawl. So, but it took about four years from my name to be completely cleared. And I stayed working during that time. But, you know, it was rough. It was rough on me, rough on my family. And eventually just got back to work, went back to ETF headquarters, was the chief of leadership and professional development for a while, then went down to Miami.

I was a assistant special agent in charge of. first, but then I became the agent in charge of that field division for a while and then got dragged back up to headquarters and finished my career up there. Would they have you on desk duty when that investigation was going on or were you actively in the field? I was working in Canada. They sent me up to Canada. So it wasn't, I didn't have a gun up there because I'm in another country.

I wasn't making arrests or any of that stuff. So it was kind of a timeout, but I'll tell you what. And there were some people at ATF who were good guys. Tom Brandon, who is the deputy director and the director, Bita Jones, who was the new director that came in that Obama put in there after they removed the command staff. I think they respected that I was telling the truth and they knew. And they said, look, as long as you're telling the truth, we'll have your back. But as you know, man, they could say that and not mean it.

They never fought for me, but they didn't try to crack my head open when I would fight for myself. I was pretty public and how I was going back. back at the department and at ATF and the people that were involved in that. And they gave me the space to do that. So when they sent me up to Canada, it was, I think, to get me away from a lot of the media and a lot of stuff. But the reality was, it was a gift because I got to work with cops up there.

Canadian cops are fucking awesome people. The only thing is I was surprised that my liver survived that assignment because the, the stereotype of the Canadians and the drinking, man, it's not off, man, but wonderful people. So I spent two years up there while the investigation went on. down in headquarters for a short time. And then once my name was cleared, then they were like, all right, we're good to go. They put me in charge of leadership training and then all those other assignments came.

But yeah, I was mostly riding a desk, but it wasn't. You go to Hawaii in your head all the time. But when you're actually ready to go, there's Expedia. Flights, hotels, vacation homes, cars. Save more when you bundle so you can stop dreaming and start saving. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Members only savings vary. Amazon presents.

salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up

on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. For the moments that matter, choose Curad Naturales infused with aloeuvre and vitamin E,

Kyrad natural's bandages protect your unexpected scrapes, cuts and burns, while also moisturizing your skin. Find deeper relief with natural ingredients you can trust to start the healing. When life surprises call for the best,

choose Kiraad, a deeper level of care. Shop the full collection on Amazon or visit curad.com to learn more. I portrayed it. It was like I was going through hell. I was fighting my battles, but I had some allies. Now, when you make the transition to a leadership position, is that less on the field and more in the office?

You know, as a group supervisor, when I was in Phoenix, I was in the field all the time with my people. Once I got above that level, yeah, you could be working for a bank. I mean, you're just filling out paperwork doing budgets and stuff. The higher you go up, the further you get away from why you really took the job, frankly, which is the law enforcement part of it. But seeing what happened in Fast and Furious and how a lot of that was the result of bad leadership is like, how do you not take that, like you can't complain the boss sucks unless you're willing to go in there and try to be the boss and do a better job. So that's what it came down to.

Myself and another guy, Carlos Canino, who was the At the Shea in Mexico City, didn't want to rise through the ranks. But he did the same thing. He's like, hey, man, he goes, this was such a cluster fuck meeting Fast and Furious. Like, how do I not promote now? They almost like twisted our arm and said, you, you can't. guys got to promote. So we did. How did your colleagues treat you during this whole situation? It's weird, man. Like Tom Brandon, who I didn't know at that time, who I mentioned earlier,

he later became the deputy director. He was great. The Bita Jones, the director was great. Originally, it was weird because some of the people I was close with kind of distance themselves. Others were like, hey, man, good job. But they were quiet. Like, they didn't want to be guilt by association. When I first went to headquarters after this, you would think I had a radiation symbol like hanging around my neck. And it was weird because I think a lot of people recognized I was telling their truth. Like Fast and Furious was such an anomaly and such a disgrace that agents around the country were pissed. But they didn't know like if I was like one of those people that was like, just fucking hated ATF. I don't. I loved the organization. This was just something

that had to get fixed and you can't fix what you won't talk about. So it was weird. Like people would see me in the atrium, which is this big atrium in the building, and no one would come near me. But if I would see them in the bathroom, which is awkward, or in the stairwell, hey, good job. Thanks for telling the truth. But it was until later on when people would see, like, the director come up and talk to me or the deputy director or some other folks, like that were in high positions who respected that I told the truth and thanked me for having the boss to speak up. Once they saw that they could talk to me, they were like, oh, so talking to Pete isn't a career render anymore. Oh, So then I slowly welcomed back into the fold.

But for a while, it was awkward because you were treated like you had some sort of like communicable disease. Now, when you got to the position of assistant special agent in charge or the actual person in charge, what's your job like in those positions? Well, when I was the assistant special agent in charge, I had several groups in the Miami area. And my job was to make sure that the group supervisor were leading their people. we were sticking to policy, dealing with other agencies, because the police departments have certain things they want from us or need from us. You know, if we have like a large operation, we may have to coordinate with other agencies like Broward County Sheriff's Office or Miami-Dade

Sheriff, well, it used to be a police department. I think now it's a sheriff's office. So it's a lot of it. It's more political in nature, a lot more managerial, not as much rubber beats the road stuff like a GS-14 group supervisor does. And then later on, when I was this, the special agent in charge, same thing, but just a lot more meetings. And then the other thing is the Miami Field Division also controls Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. So I was traveling to those islands, dealing with the politics there, you know. And so you're dealing with different organizations that have different needs and trying to figure out how does ATF help you. And you're putting out fires too, because sometimes there's things that we do that they don't like or, you know,

they might want to have task force officers assigned with us and we just don't have the money to do that or vice versa. Sometimes, hey, man, we can't let you keep. Because the way it works is ATFs has detectives assigned to it as well, deputy sheriffs. They're there at the grace of the police chief or the sheriff, whatever. And sometimes when there's retirements and shit like that, they need bodies. So sometimes those bodies come out of task forces. So it's like, all right, well, you know, we love having your guy.

But if you're going to have to take him and that other guy back, you know, so be it. We understand. But just stuff like that, meetings, a lot of meetings. No, are you the one that gives the green lights on investigations and big task force, say, cases? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then while I was in charge of Miami office, we had Parkland, the shooting, the school shooting,

and we had the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale Airport. So, you know, dealing with those things as well, which is a lot of politics. Parkland was tough. You talk about things that leave an impression, seeing those teenagers snuffed out in the prime of their life was tough. And the coach, of course, who tried to guard their kids. So yeah. And as someone in charge, do you actually go on the scene or are you from the office in like a command center?

Originally, when that happened, we had a command post going once it was confirmed that there was that many kids hit. And it was weird because I remember a lot of times you come over to radio of a shooting at a school. And we turned on the TV. We watched the news and it would turn out to be false. I remember when that call came over, the helicopter was overhead and you could see the body of the coach. And the director of ATF at the time, Tom Brandon, had become the. director Bita Jones left was on his way to meet with me down in Florida and I was like I got to go you know at this point and the director fully understood um so he he was pulling in it actually as I

was leaving went up there to the scene um you handled the press I was so I spoke to the press and it was weird because I had gone back to work um my lung got removed shortly before parkland happened while you're in Florida yeah so um I was back to work after Christmas parkland happened on on on Valentine's Day. I'll tell you a funny story. When your lung is removed for a while, man, you don't, like if I had walked up a flight of stairs, I'd have to sit down for two minutes and let my pulse slow down. If I walked more than 50 yards, same thing.

You could feel the pulse in your neck, let me suck in wind. Couldn't answer the phone even. So when I got to the scene, the crime scene was so big, right? And I was just not oxygenated, right? And I remember getting out of the car and walking to where the command post was. And all of a sudden, they said, they're going to be doing their first press hit. And I got ATF headquarters calling me saying, you need to be there. And I'm like, why?

I'm in a suit. Nobody knows who the fuck I am. Like, nobody's, oh, there's the ATF guy. Other than the ATF agents that worked for me and some of the police chiefs, like, is that like John Q Public? He's like, oh, like, God, the ATF people are there. It didn't matter, but headquarters wanted me there. And I remember when the camera went on and I spoke, all I could think to myself was, don't faint

because my chest was pounding, pounding. So I don't even remember what I said. I was told that it was okay, but whatever. So I remember being there, doing a walkthrough of the scene. Man, I was barely able to stand up. The importance where I have to like just lean against the car and catch my breath. But anyway, I'm there for hours.

I walk back to my car and I'm like, the fuck's my car keys, right? Talk about how oxygen deprivation can mess you up. And I look at my car, right? And there's a puddle of water under the car from the condensation from the air conditioner. I left the car running the entire time, unlocked. Yeah, from just having oxygen deprivation.

Thank God no one got in the car and took it. So anyway, got in the car, went home, slept it off. But yeah, it was rough because, again, you know, I was just walking that crime scene, almost white. out. So aside from what I saw, just the lack of being able to breathe like a normal human being kicked my ass. How has jurisdiction decided in those moments when something happens like that? Well, if it's terrorism, FBI is going to come in to take it. The weird thing about Parkland was when I arrived on a scene, the first thing, the sheriff, which a guy named Scott Israel was

the sheriff at the time, asked me, is, hey, can you guys take over this scene? We couldn't. I mean, ATF doesn't have body bags. We don't have crime. We have people that can respond. and do a crime scene, but they're coming in from all over the country. And I'm thinking, this is an area. We have a lot of Jewish kids. You have a lot of Arabs, right? They have certain rules as to when you have to be buried. I want to respect that.

So I'm like, I'm just processing this while I'm answering them. It's like, there's no way I could do this without fucking up some tradition, right? Because it would take 24, 48 hours to get a team on the ground, where FBI has that stuff right there. So I say, no. I said, we're here to help you whatever you need. We'll knock on doors. We'll make notifications, but taken over to crime scene, I just can't do it. The reason that that happened was when the Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting happened,

the FBI was pulling fast ones with Scott, Israel, at the scene. And then Scott was also pissed because five people were killed in that shooting. What happened was the guy was in Alaska, was interviewed by the FBI because he was professing his allegiance to ISIS on YouTube or something. So they took his gun from him. Then they gave him his gun back. He takes that gun, goes to the airport, declares it, puts it in a lockbox. He follows all the rules with TSA, lands at Fort Lauderdale Airport, takes his bag off the carousel,

goes into the bathroom, loads it up, and comes out blazing and kills five people. So that, of course, wasn't disclosed right away. I knew that before I arrived on the scene because they traced the gun. So FBI was being a little bit squirrelly. The other thing that really pissed people off was there were, Five people that were killed and they were covered with little yellow, like, um, tarps. And there were also kids that were misplaced. So until they could figure out which kid belongs to which parent, they had them.

And where did the FBI have them sit? Sit over here. And what are the kids sitting there looking at? Five dead bodies. So Scott Israel was really unhappy about that. So he didn't want to give the FBI the scene at Parkland. But again, I couldn't take the scene because we wouldn't have been able to do it that quickly. and I wanted to be mindful of the respect for the dead

and for their families to bury those kids in a timely manner. So could we have taken it? Yeah, I just didn't think it was the right decision. And headquarters was pissed at me for that. Because in their mind, it would look great if we were in charge of that scene. Yeah, but there's other things that are more important.

How did you find out about cancer? Well, I was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I was mentoring a class of ASACs, so GS-15s. I was a sack at this time. And I was with this guy named Pete Mangon, wonderful human being. He's a retired Montgomery County cop that went to work for ATF. He was a training coordinator.

And we were drinking at this place called the gingerbread man. Ice cold beers, cheap food. I highly recommend the gingerbread man if you ever up in Carlisle. And I went into the bathroom and I coughed up blood. And it was like cherry red blood. And I remember seeing Breaking Bad, one of my favorite shows. That didn't work out good for Heisenberg, right? So I remember like kind of freaking out when I was like,

all right, maybe it could be something else. I had no symptoms. I didn't feel sick or anything. So the following morning, I went to an urgent care. And it was a shitty little urgent care, man. And this was in Mechanicsburg or Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania, right nearby Carlisle. And I remember walking in there and there's two little kids with their mothers. And I'm the only adult in this place.

So the doctor sees me. He goes, well, it could be nothing. Could be bronchitis. You know, we'll take an x-ray. No problem. So they take the x-ray there. They bring me back into the room. And, you know, you ever see the old school doors that are, like, crappy plywood,

doors, like, you could almost put your thumb through it. That's how poorly constructed this urgent care was. And I remember sitting there and I could hear the doctor talking to the nurses on the other side of the door. And he's like, oh, Jesus. I don't know how I'm going to tell this guy. This guy's going to freak out. Oh, fuck. And I'm just like, dude, I can hear you.

So anyway, he comes in the room now and he's like, sir. We found a little something on your lung. It's approximately eight centimeters. It's kind of large. It could be artifact. And I'm like, what the fuck does that even mean artifact? He goes, but I can't make a determination. We're going to have a radiologist look at it.

And we'll get back to you. So he goes, well, in the interim, I'm going to prescribe. He gave me cortisone. So I had to go get a prescription filled and some cough medicine. So I go get that done. I go back to the Army War College. I'm sitting there entering the class now. And I get a call from the radiologist now.

radiologist, like, sir, yes, I'm affiliated with the urgent care and I looked at your, your films, and I'm a bit concerned. We know, we have a relationship with a hospital here. We would like for you to come and perhaps have a CT scan and like, listen, thanks, but no thanks. I'm getting out of plane and I'm going back to Florida. So I went, told Pete, man, and I say, Pete, man, I can't stay. You know, I'm going back, flew back. They did a cat scan and then a biopsy.

And it was weird because I had the biopsy done right. right before Hurricane Irma hit, right, which was a Category 5 hurricane. So here I am sleeping on the floor in my office. My wife and daughter were there with me as well. It's so uncomfortable. And then I go home. We have no power, right? I finally get my cell phone had like one of those charger things.

Finally get my cell phone to have some life in it. And I get a message from the doctor saying, hey, man, biopsy came back as cancer. So we need to figure something out. So, yeah, that's how I found that. Had no symptoms. But my wife did give me bronchitis before that, which is why I was coughing. Had she not given me bronchitis, I'd probably be dead because no symptoms, no nothing. The thing was pretty big.

So what happened was they took out the lung. They took out 17 lymph nodes around it. I was fortunate that it only spread to one lymph node. So the people who specialize in that kind of cancer said, no chemo, no radiation. So, I mean, it took a while to get used to having only one lung and being, you know, deprived of oxygen. But it does come back. The lung doesn't come back, but your body gets used to having that situation.

Yeah, it was rough. And I learned that John Wayne, the Duke, had one lung and lived for 40 years afterwards. So, yeah. If you were still a regular field agent, would you have still been able to continue with the work or now? Probably not. Yeah, I don't think so. I'm not running very far. You know, I just actually got back into the gym now, talking about self-care, right?

I let cancer be an excuse, right? So I focused a lot on mental wellness, like I said before. I talked to somebody, finally got some help. But, you know, I was a big weightlifter back in a day. Like I said, I was a skinny kid, man. So for me, it was part of survival. So I became a gym rat. And then, you know, after the cancer, after, you know, walking, like I said,

at that crime scene, sucking wind, after walking up a flight of stairs, man, I couldn't do any exercises. So what happened was I just said, fuck it. If I can't bench press 315 pounds, then why do any of that stuff? So I basically shut down. Like I tried to walk here and there, but I wasn't doing any exercise. So I went to my doctor last year, and he's like, hey, dude, you got a problem. He's like, you're A1C.

You're pre-diabetic. So I was like, oh, shit. So anyway, just started moving around again just to try to stay ahead of having diabetes now. But yeah, I let having the one lung be an excuse when the reality is I probably could have gotten shape a little bit. Look, that one year I needed that one year at a minimum. But I let that one year of getting back shape turn into like that. like seven. So bad. And the doctors are able to trace the cancer back to 9-11? Yeah, they have

certain types of cancers. I guess are rare that they say if you have it and you were there. That's probably how you get it. So they make that determination. And then once that happens, your cancer care is paid for by the World Trade Center Health Program. So yeah, I never smoked a cigarette in my life. Wow. Yeah. They breathe in all that shit on 9-11. How does that make you feel, you know, when you're given that news and knowing that you were there that the I don't know. Sox, you know. Look, as sick as it sounds, I'm glad I was there that day.

Because as a New Yorker, I had to be there. You know, I mean, I had to contribute because it just, I love New York City. I wouldn't live there now. I still loved it, though. So it sucks that I got cancer. It sucks. I lost so many friends. You know, like I told you before, I lost seven friends on 9-11 that day.

I've lost over 25 since to 9-11 related cancers or sarcoid-old. or other diseases. So, I mean, that's just something that's going to haunt the 9-11 responder population to the end of time until we're all gone. But I don't regret being there. I wish I didn't get cancer, obviously. I wish my friends weren't dead. But I think we did what we had to do. You know, I think it was our duty. When did you decide to retire from the ATF? I left in October of 2021 because I didn't like the direction that the director at the time. time was taking. So, and I, federal agents have a 57 year mandatory retirement age. So I was like, you know something? I don't like where we're going, kind of, you know, a little too political.

And I want to go out on my terms, right? Because I know guys that stayed until the very end. And then what happened is they were forced to retire. And then, and it could just be a perception. It seems to me that if you're not working and you're looking for a job, people are like, well, something must be wrong with you. You're not working. So I don't want to be that guy that's thrown out the door, no job, trying to figure out how I'm going to get something. So I started looking at jobs while I was with ATF and the timing just worked out where Amazon offered me a job and I just went to work for them. And yeah, so that's why I left. If we didn't have a 57-year mandatory retirement age, would I still be there? Probably, because I really

do believe that law enforcement is noble when it's done right. And I loved the people I work with, even though I went through that shit in Phoenix or after Phoenix, it didn't change my perception on the value of going out there and serving for something bigger than you, you know? Do you think that's a flaw with law enforcement that the heads of these departments are politically appointed? I mean, even with local police and with federal? Yes. Yeah, I don't like to see politics intertwine with law enforcement at all. It should be independent, completely independent, because priorities change. The Biden administration went after the gun dealers. You just heard me talk to you earlier.

about how the gun dealers were allies. They were the first ones to call us. They weren't the enemy. The criminal is the enemy. But the Biden administration also similarly decided they weren't going to go after their mandatory minimums. They didn't want to stack charges. And look, just because you're stacking charges on somebody,

it doesn't mean you're not going to afford them the opportunity to dig themselves out of the hole by cooperating. You know, it goes back to that same. We're talking in a big circle here now. But look, there is value to being able to solve crimes that you couldn't solve any other way by dealing with people who were in that system. So looking back on it and knowing the career you had with the ATF, would you have left the NYPD again if you had the opportunity? Yes.

There is one regret that I will tell you. Federal pensions suck. My pension as a retired NYPD detective if I did my full time there would have been way, way better than my federal pension. But other than that, I have no regrets. And all you would have had to have done was stay five more years with the NYPD? Correct. That's interesting to think about. Yeah.

Well, I would have done something anyway. I went, you know, I'm too young. I'm 60 now. I still feel the need to work. So, I mean, what would I have done after being a cop? I don't know. The thing is, to be a Fed back then, you couldn't get hired after age 37. So I had, you know, I had to make that decision because I couldn't do the full 20 and then get a job as a federal agent. What do you think was the most important lesson your career in law enforcement taught you? You know what? I've seen a lot of things. I've seen a lot of people. I've seen people thrive in their careers.

I've seen people get ahead for the wrong reasons in careers. I think the most important thing to recognize is that the only thing you leave with is your reputation. So if you're known for being an honest person and doing the right thing, that's the best way to go out. I've seen people sell their souls for promotions and leave and people despise them.

I mean, titles don't mean shit. How you treat people matters, you know. And that includes the public. Like I said, I mean, if you would have asked me, I mentioned it earlier, of all the things I did, I had some really great assignments that I feel blessed to have had. But if you were to say, I'll let you go back to one job right now that you had, I would be wearing a uniform, walking a beat in the Bronx. It was rewarding. Are there ever any cases that pop up now that you're like, I wish I was still with the ATF or even with the NYPD? Yeah, of course.

That's the nature of. Like, do you analyze everything? Yeah, yeah. because you don't do this for 35 years and then just walk away from it. You know, like right now, I speak regularly at the federal law enforcement training center about a lot of what's in that book because there's ethical leadership lessons to be learned about doing the right thing, about like pushing back, not just going with the flow, about, you know, if you see something wrong, being willing to take a stand,

even if there's a price that comes with it. You know, so I mean, but I do that because I still feel tied to the profession. And me sitting here talking to you, I hope if some cop is listening, they may listen to some of the things I'm saying about, number one, about taking care of themselves and their families. And number two, about doing the right thing. You know, again, the badge is a symbol of responsibility, not power. When you think it's a symbol of power, then you're on the wrong track. You know, that's something I just feel very deeply about. Definitely.

Well, Pete, thanks so much for coming out on the show today. Honor to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, this is a pleasure. Excellent. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.