Locked In with Ian Bick - I Was The NYPD Cop Who Sent Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff To Prison & Saved 50 Cent | Bill Courtney

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Bill Courtney grew up the son of an NYPD cop, followed his father's footsteps onto the force in the mid-1980s, and spent his career working DEA task forces taking down cartel traffickers in New York City before the rise of rap and the specific world where organized crime and the music industry collided became the defining chapter of everything he did behind the badge. In this episode of Locked In with Ian Bick, he shares what working DEA cartel cases in New York City really looked like, what the rise of rap in the 1980s and 1990s produced in terms of street violence and organized crime, what investigating the 50 Cent shooting actually involved, and what the investigation that eventually took down Kenneth Supreme McGriff — one of the most feared and most connected figures in New York street and hip hop history — actually required of the detectives who built it. He also opens up about flipping informants, making deals, the Murder Inc investigation, and the complete truth about corruption inside the music industry that most people who followed those stories from the outside never heard described honestly from the detective who worked them. _____________________________________________  #50cent #nypd #truecrimestories #cops _____________________________________________  Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick:  https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en  https://ianbick.com/ _____________________________________________ Timestamps: 00:00 Meet Bill Courtney, NYPD Detective 00:20 Growing Up in New York and Joining NYPD 01:45 The Violent Era of New York in the 80s and 90s 03:13 Comparing Crime in Different Generations 05:09 Robbery Culture, Fashion, and Juvenile Crime 06:09 The Crack Era Changes Everything 06:25 Rap Music's Influence on Crime and Culture 09:25 The Anti-Police Sentiment in Rap 10:39 Rap Violence: From Streets to Studios 11:39 Becoming the 'Rap Violence Guy' for NYPD 12:39 From Robbery Squads to DEA Task Force 15:15 Inside Major Drug Interdiction Operations 16:50 The Stash House Busts: Mistakes and Breaks 18:35 Money, Seizures, and Law Enforcement Tactics 23:18 Cooperation and the Federal System's Double-Edged Sword 29:08 Informants, Witness Protection, and Prison Realities 33:33 Managing Informants and Their Pitfalls 36:56 The Supreme Team: Origins and Street Power 42:41 50 Cent, Murder Inc., and the Violent Feud 49:20 Investigation Breakthroughs and Major Arrests 55:00 Building the Supreme Team Case and Trial Pressure 01:02:26 Hip-Hop, Fame, and Street Gang Connections 01:06:26 Music Industry Corruption & Tupac's Shooting 01:11:11 Celebrity Crime and Near Misses—James Woods' Story  01:17:12 Why Do Wealthy Stars Risk It All? 01:20:44 Changing Tides: New Rap, Old Crime, and Industry Shift 01:31:31 Life After NYPD and Podcasting 01:37:08 Family Fallout from Long Sentences 01:42:42 Reflection on Sentencing and Changing Perspectives 01:44:08 Legacy, Training, and Changing Police Culture 01:47:46 Closing Thoughts and Farewell _____________________________________________ To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/LockedInWithIanBicka

My guest today is Bill Courtney. He's a retired NYPD detective who investigated the 50-cent shooting, helped build the case against Kenneth Supreme McGriff and worked the murder-ink investigation. This is what it was really like behind the scenes. I grew up in the Bronx, New York, and in high school, we ended up moving downtown to lower Manhattan. And I went to high school in midtown, kind of one of them kids in school looking out the window all the time, didn't know what I wanted to do. And my father used to just kind of harass me and say, go take this test, go take that test.

And he was in New York City police officers. So I followed his lead, never in a million years thinking that it would be a career for me. And, you know, once I got called at the age of 20, I find out that I was like perfectly suited for this, you know, dysfunctional life and kind of loved every minute of it, you know. What did your mother do for work? My mother did, you know, she worked as like an administrative secretary. I had one other sibling, my sister, you know, just typical Irish family in lower Manhattan, middle class, you know, big music fan as a kid. All I used to do was go to clubs, buy records, and kind of realized at one point, like I had no real talent. So I better start, you know, making some decisions in life.

and, you know, the police department was perfect. I came on in 1983, and it was a pretty bad era. Starting in, like, the 70s, New York had gotten really bad. But by the time I, you know, came on, we were starting to hit like 1,000 homicides a year. And by 1993, we had something like 2,300 homicides. So if you add up those numbers, 2,300 people killed. how many people were shot and lived, how many people got robbed, you know, the most dangerous city in the world. I mean, it really was a crazy place.

And, you know, it was just one of those things where we, you know, you didn't know if you were going to be able to, like, save the city or not. It felt at times like, I mean, this could keep getting progressively worse because no matter what we do, it's not getting better. So it was a real, there was a lot of violence back then. a lot of people resisted arrest. A lot of people got hurt. People didn't tell on you, though. Like if you got noogied up pretty good, like people didn't go running and suing you like they do today.

It kind of took their lumps. But as much violence as, you know, comes at you, you give it back. And so there was constantly, like every night there was something going on. There was your heart was pumping. There was some kind of physical altercation or, you know, foot chain. or whatever. So it was always exciting, always fun. But at times, dismal and like, are we going to win this war or not, you know? How did it compare to your dad's era, stories that he told maybe when you were a kid? Yeah, you know, so my father came on in the 50s. And so, you know,

I guess he went through an era where he worked in like domestic terrorist groups like the weather underground, Black Liberation Army, F-A-L-L-N. So he saw that. side of like the world being a dangerous place because of, you know, like blowing up Francis Tavern or, you know, all sorts of separatist groups from different countries will blow up banks in New York or, you know, BLA was actively out looking to kill NYPD cops. So they had that area, but they didn't have as much as many homicides or as many, whatever. And then we didn't have as much as much domestic terrorism, but we had like, you know, these kids were just robbing everybody. Even nerdy kids from school were robbing kids after school. Like it was that bad.

You know, you had these wolf pack robberies where after school kids would like get together and just rob somebody, you know, and, you know, you'd go to the school the next day. You get out the yearbook and they would just go through it and pick out who robbed them. And, you know, you'd ask about these kids and they were like, you know, they weren't like bad kids, per se. So there was this like real, and I don't know if there's anything to do with the music industry or whatever, but it was also the beginning of the rap era. And things changed around that era for good and for bad. And you could see it a lot with kids where it was all about being tough and having the, you know, everyone had to have a sheepskin jacket or an eight ball jacket or a certain watch or certain chain. And people were just robbing each other.

the blog for it. I mean, it was crazy. So the robbery levels were like off the hook, a lot of juvenile crime, you know, after, it's fun in the beginning, but after a while it becomes monotonous. And dealing with the indigent is like, I can't explain how horrible it is. I mean, you've probably seen it, you know, in jail. When you run into people who are just stupid and will argue with you forever and ever, you can't give them a way out, you beg and plead for them. And they just won't, They'll take it to the end where you just have to clobber them or, you know, handcuff them, do whatever you got to do. There was a lot of that going on. And also back in the day, you could tell people were poor by the clothes they wore.

Nowadays, you can't tell if somebody lives in the projects or lives in a upper-middle-class neighborhood. Everyone has the same outfits on the same clothes. Back then, there was a distinct class, you know, structure. And you could tell by the clothes people wore, they, you know, And it was a tougher city in many respects because of, you know, the economic disparity. And I guess by the mid-80s, 86 or so, the drugs just, you know, crack came around. And that was the end. So from like 86 to 96, it was, you know, it was on all the time.

What rapper do you think have the biggest influence on the robberies and maybe even drugs early on when it first came? I think, I, you know, I've always hated Tupac. Oh, I can't, you know, he was a guy who just caused problems everywhere he went. Talked a lot of, you know, shit. He essentially started the whole East Coast, West Coast kind of war. His mom was a member of the Black Liberation Army as well as his dad, who I think was absent from his life for the most part. but um so he's raised by a radical mom who's got you know drug problems alcohol problems um and uh but he's got a little bit of talent you know he he wants to act he wants to be a performer

and instead of using his talent making money and having a good life he just insinuated himself with all the the worst people you can imagine guys um from these nightclubs in new york he ran into a a guy named Haitian Jack, Jimmy Henschman. He was running around with guys who were known to rob drug dealers. Guys like Haitian Jack would walk up to rappers and just take their money. Before rappers realized that they needed a neighborhood crew, a tough, tight crew, these guys were just running up to them at concerts and taking their jewelry, taking their coats, you know, you name it.

And so Tupac hooked up with those guys. And then when things went bad, you know, he was upset about it. And instead of handle it like a man, he went and found a tougher group of guys from L.A. to hang out with and incited, you know, a lot of the craziness between the East Coast and the West Coast. And, you know, all the nonsense about, you know, I don't know if you're a big rap fan. But back in those days, it was all about, you know, bitches and hoes. And it's like, looking back now, it's like infantile. You know, it's just like who, you know, if you grow up listening to this stuff, it has to have some kind of effect on you.

It really does. I mean, and I think it's changing us a little bit now. But back then, you know, the rappers were also vehemently anti-police. So you had NWA. out and you know, F the police. And so we were no big fans of rappers. But growing up as a kid, being a big music fan, I always found that there was a, there was groups like I could kind of like a little bit, public enemy or they kind of crossed over a

little bit. But that error was, you know, music was big anti-police. It's just ridiculous kind of, you know, being bred. Magadocious about weapons and money and things like that, that kind of, I don't know, had a really bad effect on the culture, I think. How'd that anti-police concept from the rapper start? Was there a specific incident? No, I think, you know, look, you grow up when you're poor and the cops rolled out

in your block and, you know, like, cops are never around when you need them. And then when they do come around, you know, maybe they're, you see them roughing somebody up or you heard stories about people who got arrested who were innocent. maybe they got railroaded, or the perception was there that they got railroaded. And I think that people had a great distrust for the police. And instead of, you know, turning that into some positive way of addressing those issues, it was like, let's be hardheaded about this. Let's be head on and go and make accusations, make threats.

There's also like a bit of, there was some pride in how. having your own distinct form of music that was different from everybody else's. And that was really just like an urban setting style of music, you know, that would be hard to replicate by anybody else. Like, you know, the Rolling Stones could do a reggae song, but they can never do a rap song, you know? So they had their own thing, but it turned kind of ugly over the years. It just really, I don't know, it was just too much, you know, the back.

and forth between the rappers and disc tracks that turned violent. I can't tell you how many times it went to Hot 97 radio pulling tapes from the building for shootings that happened after somebody left the studio. I mean, I can think of probably like 10 times. So it was like, you know, crazy. And at some point, I became the go-to guy for rap violence in New York for a number of informants I had. who were amongst other things, stash house robbers. They were robbed drug dealers. And they knew, you know, who was extorting from the rappers, who had the beefs. And so I would get a lot of the information who was where and what.

But, you know, to get people to cooperate was a whole other story, you know. How did you get to that point in your career? Most of my career I spent in robbery squads working citywide. And then in the 90s, I got into the DEA task force. And so for, I guess, about six, seven years, all I did was Colombian organized crime. So give me an example, like an average day there is a task force setting. So it's NYPD, New York State Police, DEA, obviously. And we would get tips from U.S. Embassy in Bogota about activity happening.

in New York or high-level informants that were looking to be paid by splitting seizures of currency or some people used to get paid by the kilo, the amount of kilos we could seize. So I was really lucky to get into a really high-level Colombian group. And to me, it was great because working with the feds is you get cars, you get credit cards, you get the, you know, they're giving you your phone, they're giving you this, Whereas in the NYPD, it was the opposite. You were scrounging around for everything. So, and the DEA, out of all the federal agencies out there,

with the exception to maybe ATF are the most like cops. They're, you know, hands-on kind of guys. They work rough areas. They're not like the bureau where they're, you know, suit and tie. So I really enjoyed my time there. But to give an example, like one case that we got SOD, at DEA put us a part of a nationwide group that was intercepting cocaine coming from Mexico. It was Colombian Coke coming from Mexico.

And for the most part, it was coming across by tractor trailers. So we were told about four cell phones in New York City that were roaming. They were Chicago cell phones, but they were roaming in New York. And we had to build up probable cause to get up on those phones. So we get information that, you know, you look at the billing for these phones. and you see that they're calling other people that are on active drug cases in other cities. They're, you know, just basically making calls to areas of Mexico known for the importation of drugs. All these different things, you put everything together, you follow these people around,

you find out where the phones are, you follow them around, and you see that it's really hard to follow them. They're surveillance conscious. So with that, we were able to get up on these four different Chicago ones. cell phones. And the first day we're up on one phone, you can picture is here. We have all these interpreters. We have like a warehouse full of phones. People just sit there monitoring phones. And the first phone rings in this pod over here and it's calling the phone in that pod. And the guy says, where are you? He goes, oh, I'm at the place. He goes, oh, I'm at the place. He goes, what place? You know the place. No, what place? Oh, I'm at 189 dash. No, no, no.

I know where you are. Don't say that. I know where you are. So the guy's at the stash house. So we're all pissed at. We almost had the address. So when they hang up, that same phone about two hours later orders a pizza to the house. So now we have the address of the stash house.

I mean, so this is like incredibly stupid, but also lucky. So there's some chatter with some Colombians who said, hey, we're supposed to pick up some friends of ours tomorrow. I think, and you have 185 shirts for us. you know. So we know we got 185 kilos. So we follow this van comes out of the stash house, goes to a location, and they tell them to park it in a certain area. They park it. And the Colombians tell the Mexicans, all right, leave the keys in the, in the ashtray and get out of there. I'm not leaving, you know, we have to, don't we have to meet? They're like, no, just leave the keys in the ashtray. So the Colombians saying, like, these morons don't know how to do a drug

deal. So there's this kind of like they're going back and forth. They're calling their bosses. So my partner comes up with the idea, he goes, I'm just going to steal this van. So he jumps in the van and takes off with it. And I got off on foot and I followed these Mexican guys into a McDonald's and they don't know what to do. They're ordering happy meals. They're waiting for a call back from their boss and they look out the window and they see my partner driving this like cheap little minivan, we're at 185 kilos, like bottoming out as it flies across like 35th Avenue in Queens, wherever we were. So we can't believe, like, you know, we just did this.

This is like no one's ever stolen drugs like this before that I know of. So now the phone's start going, hey, the Colombians said that they don't know where the van is. They stole the van. They stole all the drugs. They're saying they don't have it, but it's gone. They must have stolen it. So they start talking about, well, let's get guns and we'll kill these Colombian guys.

So now we have a dilemma like, we can't let a war go on that we kind of started. So they get the boys. This is, listen, calm down. I have somebody needs 285 sweaters tomorrow and we, Bugs Bunny is coming over this weekend. So next day, they get another car. They loaded up with 285 kilos, something to something around that. And we follow it to the Queen Center Mall. they swap it, a Dominican guy picks up the van, we follow him all the way up to Washington Heights.

Our hearts are pounding that we're going to lose all this cocaine, you know. And so we grabbed the guy, we arrest him, and we put out a fake press release that made this guy the target of investigation, a years-long investigation of this guy, you know, Joe Smith netted the seizure. So the Mexicans wouldn't think that, you know, we were on to them. So they caught wind of it, but they still went. and drop the phones. So they said, don't worry, bugs bunnies coming this weekend. So they make arrangements to meet a guy on the phone who says he'll meet them somewhere around LaGuardia Airport, run the side streets over there.

And we go over and a truck pulls up, a guy gets out. And my partner runs up and pulls up the vent for their trailer, and it's filled with carrots. So it's like from Mexico, and it's like the kind of carrots, they're in vats that you would give to like animals to eat like horse feed and stuff like that. So we go, well, this is bugs Bonnie. We ended up getting 1,141 kilos out of that track, the trailer. When we went and started rounding these guys up, we got about, I think it was $1.2 million in cash and 10, you know, Mexican nationals, all who were like, most who were like former military guys and things like that. So that was like the first kind of case where Mexicans were really like building this distribution network in the United

States. And we lucked out in this particular case because they were just not drug savvy. Like the second something goes wrong, you throw your phone away and you start over. These guys just, you know, kept going. But what's funny is they only got the old pled out in state court and they got about, I think, 10 years. So 10 years for, 2,000 plus kilos, you know, it's a very good deal. I would, you know, because they will have, you know, clean wreckers, like I said. Why didn't they get fed time? Well, we did a lot of work with the special narcotics court, so we wanted, we owed them a case, so we took ours there. All the other agencies throughout the country, San Diego, Miami, they were all on a fed wire.

We use their wires to help us get up on ours and vice versa. We were all communicating with the same people in Mexico. What happens is about two or three months after, there was several calls that we had where we thought they were calling a boss in Mexico and they were garbled. They were using some kind of cloaking device, so we couldn't tell what they were saying. So we end up sending it to the NSA.

And the NSA says, well, there is something really interesting on it, but we can't tell you what it is. it's a matter of national security. So we're like, well, we're the, you know, the DEA, you got to tell us. I'm sorry we can't. The FBI now contacts us. They had cloned the governor of Quintano, Mexico's fax machine, and the affidavits from our case were coming across the governor's desk.

So we found out that the governor of Quintana Roe orchestrated the load. So about six months later, he ends up fleeing Quintanaro and jumps over the Belize border and disappears. So years later, he's apprehended and spends many years in a Mexican jail, a comfortable Mexican jail, awaiting extradition to the Southern District. And I want to say it's five years ago. It's probably a little bit longer. They finally, I had been retired and they brought him over and he took a plea and pled out. But it's funny as the NSA wasn't going to tell us that, you know, the Mexican government was a part of the, you know, the drug trafficking.

Now, who were they supplying? Was it gangs locally or were they selling themselves? You know, whoever, the Colombians were used in the Mexicans to move the loads, but it was mostly the Colombians longstanding customers and people who were part of that cartel. Most of the cases we did with cartels, they had their own distribution network in place in the United States. And from time to time, you know, things would happen. There'd be seizures.

People go to jail. Things might get heated up and people went back to Columbia and never to return again. It was like a cat and mouse game. They were violent in the 80s, but they had become very much business-like by the 90s in the era that I started working them. So, you know, we'd rip a bag of money at our car like half a million dollars like it was nothing, you know, take pictures, piles of money. We take our obligatory team picture in front of money and kilos and things like that. And it just seemed to be never ending. I mean, the time I

spent the task force had to be there for over a thousand kilos and millions of dollars. And, you know, I always say one thing is whenever we'd hit Stash House with money, I could tell you voucher, there would never be a dollar missing, but we'd steal all the porn. Because everybody who sat on money always had an extensive porn collection. And they were always bizarre, like Spanish porn that you never even knew existed. So guys I knew had these extensive collections and stuff like that. But every dime was there. But, you know, we took the porn. Now, these stash houses that have the money, is it well hidden like we see in the movies back then? Not really. Usually the Colombians would try to use like upper middle class neighborhoods.

They tried to get a garage attached, you know, to the building. One day I knew I was sitting, my boss kept bugging us to sit on this location. And we all thought it was dead. It was a house in like Woodhaven Queens. And I was the first one to get there. And he read us the riot at because he knew we were dogged it. So I was the first one to get there the next morning. I'm there by myself.

And I'm covering for everybody else who were at a diner, about five months. miles away just in case he comes and this dude comes out, he's jacked, and he's got these two bags. And I could tell by the way his arms aflux that each one of these bags weighs like 100 pounds. So I go, guys, get off here. You know, he's here. The money's here, you know. And so anyway, the guy gets in the car. He takes off.

So now I have no choice but to basically bump a lock him and just hurry up, guys, get here. So finally, the guy gets nervous. So I just pull him over. I was like, hey, got a little bit of a problem. It's no big deal. You know, I pull out my NYPD shield. Just come back with me, come back to the car, talk to me, let me see a license. Hey, what's in the car?

Whose car is this? Oh, I don't know. It's a friend of mine. Oh, to me a favor. Let's just make sure everything's okay. Open up the trunk. Oh, what's in those bags? Oh, I don't know.

The bags were in there. I don't know. It's not mine. Open it up and there's, I think that was like a $300, 400,000, $400,000 hit, you know? Wow. So, you know, it's funny. is like in retrospect saying like we all could have just left with that money you know what I mean like and whatever but that's there was so many opportunities to grab money out there back in the in the day

so much cocaine coming through New York that any time anybody was carrying a big bag out you know you might want to randomly ask somebody hey could I look in your bag I mean it was that rampant so the cash was flowing like crazy and money laundering was basically just moving large amounts of cash to somebody who could you know, slowly either, you know, put it through bank accounts, a little bit of a time, but it wasn't so easy to get rid of like it is now where you can do more things electronically or whatever. So they were, you know, but the thing is, and something you could probably appreciate it, having years have suffered through state cases, which are annoying as all hell, It seems like, you know, it's a crapshoot whether or not you're going to get a guilty verdict.

Working with the feds was a pleasure because they put the time, the effort, and they had the money into doing a case. But there was like some, you know, I can see why a lot of people think the system is unfair, you know. And I'll tell you, like, my first, the first occasion where I actually cooperated somebody was a Dominican guy named Juan Soriano. and Juan was supposed to take over distribution for the Colombians, but he was having trouble. And he looked like, he looked exactly like Shaq, he's a dark-skinned dude, and he even had his driver's license made up as John O'Neal, and he used to tell him, buddy, he was Shaquille O'Neal's brother. Anyway, so he'd go to all these clubs, and he'd meet all these black dudes who were rappers

and stuff, and he started dealing to them. And so we get up on his phone. right away the girl on our team who's running goes, I don't like this. This is like a ghetto phone. Like they're talking shit. You know, this is not going to move us up. So let's just take this thing down. Let's just, let's walk away from it. So I did a little research and I found out that the Target had a brand new Lexus that he paid cash for. He had a house. He paid cash for. I go, wait, you know, there's some stuff we could seize here. Let's just try to get a few kilos out of them. So we follow him. And he goes from.

Yonkers, New York to a house out near Kennedy Airport. We pull over his driver, and he's ahead in a lead car, and his driver immediately cooperates. Matter of fact, when we had handcuffs on him, he's going like this. I want to talk. He's making the talk in motion. And we lose our target. He goes down the street. So he still doesn't know we're up on his phone.

And we find out that he was going down the street to a house that was used by two brothers known as the Walden brothers, who were famous for being like really like, you know, like violent, crazy drug dealers from Freeport, New York. And so we're staying up on the phone and he calls his mother and he calls his wife. Now this is when I found out how crazy the Fed system is. We then went to his mother and we went to his wife separately and said, have you have you talked to him? No, I haven't talked to him. Immediately arrested them for lying to law enforcement, lying to a federal agent is crime. Locked them up, put them in jail. So now here you are. Your mom's in jail. Your wife's in jail. You got to come in.

You know what I mean? So he did about another two weeks after. We ended up finding him. He was threatening to turn himself in a couple times. But we ended up finding him. And he goes, look, I'll tell you everything. And this is my source of supply. You know, gives everything up. And these two black guys, Armel and Rachelal Walden, when I got to the stash house, I ditched my car. I got to their stash house and they put on bulletproof vests and they got guns. And they said, like, if we have to, we'll shoot our way out of here. He goes, but I saw you guys driving around, but, you know, whatever. So we said, all right, well, tell us more about the Walden brothers.

So we build a case on them. We find calls that he had made between them. and we arrest the Walden brothers. He testifies at that trial and was Judge Corman from the Southern District with a very conservative guy. We figure he testified against these two guys. He helped us solve a homicide somewhere along the line, everything else. Anyway, Judge hits him with 10 years.

So we're like 10 years. He testified in, you know, I think it was two or three different trials. hit him hard. So we were kind of upset about it in a way, which is, you know, if you think about it, you know, selling multi-kilos doing 10 years, it's really not bad, but like, you know, he was expecting to walk out the door. So he kept calling me on the phone and I know where drugs are. All right, I'd hit a house, sure enough, there'd be like 20, 30 kilos in it. I know where there's a guy wanted for a homicide here, whatever. So I end up getting a Rule 35 for him. So we do a rule 35 motion, which is post-cooperation, you know, a continuation basically give you cooperation agreement,

but additional, you get credit for additional assistance to the government, and he ends up getting out of jail. Not a year goes by, he gets arrested for running a heroin mill next to the 44th precinct in the Bronx. So the lesson, you know, that I learned right there and then was like, I never should have pursued anything after the initial agreement, should have just let things lie and all that. But if you want to argue with the good and the bad points about cooperation in the federal system, this is a prime example of when somebody really wasn't deserving assistance from the government, obviously. And then years later, he got arrested again. And we wanted to talk to him about the Supreme Team, if he had ever dealt with them. And he was cooperating on another

the case in Seattle or something. So, you know, this is somebody that was just going to keep playing the system. But as long as there is a need for your testimony, we'll keep using you, obviously. But is it right? Does it come a time, you know, when you should step away from that? I mean, I don't know. Now, a guy like that back then, is he safe in prison giving that type of information? Yeah. So I cooperated a lot of people over the years. And, you know, the day you, you know, usually we used to reach out. There were our occasion that they would reach out to an attorney, and then we do the queen for a day.

And maybe after the third one, they'd say, all right, I want to come on Team America, and I'm going to sign away on. And then the trouble begins, because they're immediately sent up to the shoe. The shoe is always like, it doesn't matter what time of year, it's always like 30 below zero. and all you have on is, you know, your jail, your little jail outfit,

and you're freezing your ass off, and there's always some sociopath on the floor that knows you're in that cooperating, who's screaming your name out night and day. So they can't sleep. They're freezing their ass off. They can't eat the food they're getting because it's not even as good as the food that everyone else gets. And you almost lose them as cooperators.

Like, they're like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. But then with all the cooperatives in New York, we were usually able to get them up to a WITSEC facility in Otisville fairly quickly. So maybe like three months later, we'd get them up there. But, you know, the marshals would have to do their due diligence to see the background of it, too. You know, they don't want to put somebody in a safe environment who could be danger to somebody else. And, you know, you know, the rest. So then now you got them for probably a year to two years before you're going to go to trial,

if you're going to use them to testify and everything else and put the case together. And you become really familiar with these people, their families. Some are more needy than others. Some think they're being followed. Some actually have some legitimate threats to them. You try to move them and help them. But it's a big deal. And it's a lot of work for the U.S. attorneys, a lot of work for the U.S. attorneys, a lot of work

the marshals, Bureau of Prisons. And it's like adopting a family you don't want of needy people. But with, you know, multi-killococaine and drug traffickers, they're usually smarter guys. And I found more than often that their families were pretty cool people. And, you know, it's like, why did their kid go astray? You know, you know the reasons, right? Like maybe there was no dad around. There was this.

It was that. But they usually fairly well spoken. If they're not well educated, they're still, they've educated themselves to a certain degree. And those are the type of people that I ran across. Of course, if you're doing gang cases, you might run to different people. But I maintain relationships to this a day with people who went into WITSEC, went into witness protection. and all but I think one have left and, you know, get calls from time to time. I get calls from guys to tell me, you know, hey, I just saw this guy.

I found out his name. He did a murder 20 years ago. You know, now I'm like some annoying retired detective calling, you know, the squad in Queens to say, hey, did this make any sense to you? and you know but I still have a little intelligence network believe it or not I still get I still find out things have you ever had someone that was trying to outsmart you and be like a double agent when they were an informant uh no but I can think of a couple of times where we had guys lying and um I would say on two occasions luckily it was in a task force that I was in

And I wasn't the one pushing the cooperation agreement. One guy out and out lied about a homicide where a rapper named E Moneybags was killed. He was ordered killed by Kenneth McGriff from the Supreme Team. And he made up this whole scenario that he was there and he saw it and everything else. And it made a lot of sense. And he had the story down pretty good. but I forget how we tripped up. And it's funny.

It's like, I started to say, like, there's something wrong. I don't, he's, I don't think he was there. I think, you know, whatever. And you get the people that are sponsoring him, sort of speak, we're going, what are you talking about? You know, they get mad at you. And you're like, listen, I'm, I don't want you to be embarrassed. I think, like, I think he's full of shit.

And sure enough, the guy fessed up later that he made the whole thing up. And then we've had guys like, I think this guy's street name was Daloo. I'm trying to remember his name. Another guy he was sponsored. Every time we had a profit with him, he was just like low rent. You know, he'd always asked for the most expensive food

for you to go grab them, wanted to make all these phone calls. Like, he was kind of like running the show kind of thing. And he ends up having a love affair with a female correction officer in one of those geo prisons out in, Queens, one of those holding facilities, pre-trial holding the facilities, and she's bringing him in heroin.

And he legitimately had good information, but we had a walk away from him, you know. So, you know, I would say that I've been lucky that the cooperators I've had have all been truthful that I could tell, had no reason to believe otherwise, but there's definitely a lot of room for manipulation in the system. a lot of room. What was it like seeing the start of organizations like Supreme and other different types of groups in that era? You know, so I missed out on, you know, I became a cop around 1983 and those groups were selling crack. You figure around 86 or so before I, you know, been on that, that, into that type of investigative role. So they came and went a few times.

in and out of jail before I started the last Supreme team case, which was in, I think 2000, I started that case. And, you know, like Supreme kind of made himself out to be like this gentleman gangster. And when he got out of jail, he wanted to produce a film. All these guys would go to jail, black dudes, read these novels by a guy named Donald Gould. I don't know if you ever heard of them.

So they're all about like pimps and hustlers. But what's good about them is if you can't read, they're written very simply. So if you have a sixth grade, fifth grade reading level, they're perfect books for you. And that the, you know, the subject matters right up, you know, crooks alleys, you know, those type of crooks. So he wanted to produce a film and he finds this young aspiring DJ, Irv Gotti for Murdering Records. who now wants to pay homage to him. The famous Kenneth McGriff comes out of jail and he wants to pay homage to him.

And McGriff kind of insinuates himself into Irv Gotti's life to the point where they're friendly. He's a regular at the record company, you know, headquarters. And Irv Gotti had some early success with Jay-Z and some other people, whatever he produced. and was a hot name at the time.

And he has this young aspiring rapper Jarl Rule, who's becoming really big. But murdering directors guys now are falling victim to some really bad guys from Queens who are like the kind of guys who rob drug dealers and rob anybody. They just can't be trusted. One is a guy named Troy Singleton, who is also known as Big Nose Troy. Another guy is Thomas Baylor, whose street name was Homo for homicide. And e Moneybags, Eric Smith, who was a rapper and sociopath.

So at different times, they were robbing, smacking around members of murder rank records. Troy Singleton was with 50 cent in Atlanta and 50, 50, I guess, was jealous of Jarl. So he started to fight with him. And during the fight, Singleton takes Jad Rul's watch or his chain or whatever. So now Supreme gets involved and gets it back. And they think it's squashed. And then, you know, these young guys from Queens are like, well, this OG doesn't mean anything to us anymore. He's trying to make a movie.

He's hanging out with rappers. Like, we'll take this. Why should we listen to him? So like pretty much a, there's like a war going on between guys from like 134th Street in Jamaica and the Supreme Team. What's left of it. And so Supreme now is he's looking bad because he can't control these guys. He was lucky to get 50 cent, you know, to get the chain back or the watch or wherever it was. And so he goes to 50 and says, enough is enough.

You better cut the shit. And, you know, nobody's listening. So there's one incident happens. where McGriff has an argument with eMoney bags, and he pulls out a gun and starts shooting, misses McGriff and shoots his lieutenant and hits him in the infernal artery. And by the time Supreme drives him to Jamaica Hospital, he's dead. So now the war starts.

So McGriff isn't as powerful as he used to be, but he has Irv Gotti to bankroll whatever he needs. So they hire a hit team to go find Thomas Baylor, Troy Singleton, eMoney bags, and some other people that they're throughout Woolworth, and 50 Cent. So the first one, I guess, to get it is 50 Cent is going to his grandmother's house to pick up something because he's going to go to Cancun the following day for like, it's one of these big weekends where all the rappers and like kind of urban. people would go for a big party, Memorial Day weekend, I think it was.

And Supreme, a guy named Rob Lyons, and a guy named Chauncey Millen or are laying in wait for him. And when, you know, before 50 can even get out of the car, they pull right up. And a guy's son shoots at him like, must have hit him like, they say he got hit nine times. And it's 50, a friend of his from Brooklyn, I forget his name, and some female. and somehow survives it. So 50 now goes into hiding. He goes to the Poconos and he's hiding. We can't find him.

We're trying to, you know, get him to cooperate. We just can't find him. He's laying low. And now McGriff goes to murder rink, and they come up with like $50,000 for each member after that that they want to go hit. So they kind of put themselves in this stash house kind of thing where they have all these hit men,

guys who have promised, I think only like five grand each to kill these guys. And they're pretty bad guys, like the targets. Like five grand ain't enough for some of these guys, you know. And they would just rely on intelligence from the people in Jamaica, Queens. Hey, I just saw them over here. And they get all suited up and they jump in cars and they go out looking for these guys. So eventually eMoneybags is in front of this guy, Randy Walker's house.

His brother, or stretchwalker, who was with Tupac when he got shot at Quad Studios. So he pulls up at the house, and there was a woman that the Supreme Team had who knew that he showed up in that area. And she gets on the phone, and she directs them in. For whatever reason, she was filming it with a video camera. So she calls to hit team in. She's given them directions on the phone. because they're all from Harlem and Brooklyn. They're not Queens guys.

So they pull up and about five guys at once just light him up. They just jump out of different cars and shoot him repeatedly, get in, leave, and there's no leads at all. What happens is, well, I'll just leave it at that. So the next to go is Van Wicks Sports Bar. There's a guy, Troy Singleton, Big Nose Troy. He comes out of the sports bar. Somebody who was in there, I think a guy born master who was a 5%. I think he's the one who gave it up to the Supreme Team that he was in there.

They roll up on him and get him coming out. It's in the winter. Starts up his car remotely. Goes walking towards it. He gets interrupted by somebody. They come up and they shoot him. Now, he's gone. So McGriff has a drug operation going on from New York to Baltimore.

And two of his workers get into an argument. They think one is cooperating because they got stopped in the Carolinas in Lumberton, North Carolina, by the local sheriff's office. He used to sit on 95 and just pull over black guys all day long. So one thought he was cooperating against the other. So when they were outside McGriff's stash house, one laid and wait for the other, and this guy, Victor Wright, kills the guy, K. Ron Claret. What happens is, though, is somebody from the neighborhood recognized the guy from what apartment he went to, and that leads police to do a search run of the apartment, and inside of the apartment we find effects from Kenneth McGriff, or they find effects of Kenneth McGriff. His fake driver's licenses, pistol courses that he took, combat pistol courses in different places in Florida and I think Maryland, and a videotape. and it's the videotape of this woman filming e-money bags his murder so that's sitting in in this stash house

so those were like the beginning leads that we we got and um now i'm desperately trying to get 50 cent to cooperate because he is like key to one he's he's got the name he's you know um i felt what they did to him was obviously wrong but it was Yeah, I mean, it was just like that kind of needless violence that kind of infuriates you. It's not like 50 Cent was a threat to the Supreme Team. It's just that he was not obeying, you know, McGriff. And by trying to murder him in a car, you know, was just, you know, way over top. And the shooter, Rob Lyons, after he puts the work in,

He's made John Rule's bodyguard. So that's his reward. So now he's on the murdering payroll. So the McGriff at the time was trying to make this Donald Goyne's novel crime partner as a film. And he gets guys, it was the worst movie ever saw in your life. Like you couldn't watch it from one like 15 minutes, not even for the comedic, you know, like aspects of it, how poorly it was produced. But they put this movie together. They get iced tea.

Snoop. People make these cameos for Supreme because he's Supreme and because Murder Inc. Records, you know, and, you know, they put this, this really bad movie together, but one of the people who helped them put the movie together was a credit card fraud guy. And he, he was basically like, you know, defrauding every single, like, Home Depot in New York, every day for like $50,000 worth of murder. like washes, dryers and everything else. And he's also, was a car guy. So he would get you cars like, you know, if you're a drug dealer and you have no credit,

he'd get you like, you know, your escalate or whatever. And he is one of the guys who, after they shoot 50 cent, he hides the car and they tell him the story. And he is the first guy to cooperate. So, and I'll never. forget he was my biggest problem as a cooperator because of the conditions of the shoe and threats that he was getting up there threats on his family and but he was he was the beginning of the downfall of Supreme and murdering records the problem with murdering records

cases there's two cases murdering records was run by the IRS who were part of our task force and then there was the supreme team case and there were two separate cases although at times we felt there was enough crossover that irv goddy it was our belief had some involvement in supplying money for hits and different things like that um that he he could be culpable and part of the the gang but it was i guess it was there was not enough evidence to to to prove that um although i like you know, I was looking at old reports of investigation and people would tell me like, yeah, he said this. He said, I want you to kill this guy. I want to kill that guy. But we can never corroborate the information. So the feds end up taking murder, murder records on a, you know, some kind of money laundering case.

And the IRS agent who has the case, a guy named Fran Mace, he's a brand new agent just out of college, real nice guy. And he's like, I don't have faith in this case. I don't know why the feds are bringing this case. Like he goes, I ran this by my bosses and they don't think we have enough evidence, you know. So I had always, I had this other case and other things going out on in L.A. And the U.S. attorney, Carolyn Pukorne, says, well, you know, one thing I found is that the two brothers from Murder Inc. Records, Irv Gotti and Chris Gotti, they're talking to a guy via text message. in L.A.

And they're making major bets with him. They're betting like, you know, $100,000 on a, you know, a bulls game. They bet in the over. The bet in the point spread on games, which is like a moronic bet. You know, you know, like it's just not, and it's not a lucrative bet. I guess it's an exciting bet to make, which is what compels most people with gambling problems. But anyway, so I knew a guy out in L.A. former LAPD guy who was with the Orange County DA's office.

And I said, do you know this guy, Brett Stay? He's like a, you know, he's probably putting money out on the street and he's taking action. He goes, I know who he is. I've arrested him before. I think he'll cooperate. So I hook Fran Mace from the IRS up with Rick. And Rick goes and finds this guy, Brett Stay. And Brett falls on the sword and says, yeah, yeah, I took bets from these guys.

and at one point they owed me like 800 grand. And so they bragged to me that they knew different NBA players who would help them out and to hit the over. And one of them was Coutinho Mowgli. And he said that Coutinho Mowgli, when he was with the L.A. Clippers, he goes, as a matter of fact, you can tell that they were, they were definitely weren't lying to me that he was helping them. after he scores these points, which would put them on, right at the over, he jumps into the stands and hugs Irv and Chris Gotti in the stands, and then jumps back out and finishes off like the last minute of the game or wherever it was. Also, Kobe Bryant was accused of being like he would hit extra points for them. And there were some other players, too, I forget, lesser-known

players who supposedly were doing the same thing. Years later, And this is why I think is true. Years later, I'm in the Beverly Hilton, and I'm bodyguarding a part of a security detail for a Saudi princess. And I walk out into the lobby. I put the princess up in a room. We had a whole extended royal family there. And I come down to go put my car away in the garage, and there's Chris Gotti. Years later.

And I go, hey, Chris, how you doing? So he was like, oh shit, how are you? How are you doing? Whatever. You know, he's a gentleman. Have a good day, whatever. So I walk back inside and I tell this retired female L.A. sheriff, hey, I just ran into a guy arrested years ago.

This guy, Chris Gotti. She goes, Chris Gotti. I know Chris Gotti. So she runs out. So when she comes back, I go, how do you know him? She goes, oh, they used to throw these poker games in the Beverly Hill, these massive poker games, like huge, you know, stakes. And Kobe used to come.

all the time and play in the poker games. So I was his bodyguard. I used to bring him to all the games. So I have no reason to believe that Brett Stey told anything but the absolute truth. He also asked them to help recoup the losses to go collect from these bankers, like in places like these really rich neighborhoods in Jersey and places these bankers would step in for 50 grand, 75 grand. So Merrimic Records would send their thugs over, a guy B.J. Bryant, a couple other guys. So these black dudes in Escalates show up in these really affluent neighborhoods of like Bergen County going, where's your husband?

He owes his money. The next day the check is written. You know what I mean? So he recouped some of his money that way. And that was memorialized on emails and things between them. So we knew a good portion of it was true. If we had pulled the footage, whatever. Anyway, long story short, the Fed say, no, you know,

it looks like we're going to be targeting too many. Black people in the entertainment industry. We have enough. So we're just going to go with this. So the Gotti brothers get Jerry Left Court and Jerry Shargale, two of the most vicious defense attorneys. I mean, these guys, you could sit on the stand as a law enforcement officer and tell the truth, and they will interrogate you on that stand in such a way as to make it look like you're a buffoon, a liar.

Great attorneys, really good attorneys. Morally, probably bankrupt, but really good attorneys. famous for representing mobsters and stuff like that. So anyway, they lose the case. So, you know, now it's like the, the, everything is on me now because I'm sitting there hold on the Supreme Team case. They're joint at the hip. It's the same task force of guys all working together, but I'm the case detective.

I brought the case to the Eastern District. And so for the better part of five years, I put together guys who had reached out to cooperate or people that were arrested and flipped. And for five years, I sat on them and proffered them over and over again for make sure that the stories were, you know, what they said. You know, when you're separated for people in there in prison, it's hard to communicate. So every time you want to communicate, you've got to go visit them in a facility. or have the marshals bringing them in.

And it's a pain in the ass for everybody involved. So for five years, you can imagine just shuttling around, getting these guys, and then going to trial and winning in that there's a guilty verdict. They arrived at a guilty verdict. It's a huge effort and a huge, but the pressure that you feel on you is amazing. it's like, what if we lose this case? I wasted five years, all this overtime, all this money, travel, you know. But anyway, McGriff, when I arrested McGriff, I found him in a Lowe's Hotel in Miami Beach.

We get the pass key. It's like two days after Christmas. The fed's like, we want this case taken down now. I don't know what they were drinking. If they were out partying, they came to this resolution over. a holiday break, but they called me like the day after Christmas, said, we want to put this down now. And when I grabbed McGriff, he was, you know, he was a gentleman.

He, he just, hey, you know, his girl he was with, so I screamed, he's, hey, hey, they're just doing their jobs. And while we were driving him to the lockup in Miami, you know, he was talking, bragging about all the people he knows, J-Lo, you know, this, you know. But he was a nice enough, you know, gangster. I mean, I wouldn't want to be on his best. side, obviously. So, you know, I'm sorry I didn't, I knew he wasn't going to cooperate. And I'm sorry I just didn't sit down and maybe even put him in a room for a bit and talk to him

more. But he obviously, you know, had an attorney. He had a guy named Robert Simmel's who represented him. He'd be a great guy for you to interview because Robert Simmel's ended up get caught on a wiretap, arranging to have witnesses killed who were cooperating against some Guyanese nationals. And so he'd be over in like, you know, Guyana threatening, having people threaten people over there. If your cousin testifies,

you know, we're going to have him, we're going to kill somebody over here. So that was McGriff's attorney. And we were able to prevent him from representing McGriff because he is like a house counsel type guy where he's, you know, he's going to make sure he represents everybody.

No one's going to cooperate. And, you know, the big, the big guy can't cooperate. So, you know, those kind of house counsel guys, you pay for everyone's attorneys, then at least you can control them, you know. So, but yeah, there was an interesting case.

And I went half to 50 cent. I can't tell you how many times. I got to his managers, Chris Lighty. I got to, who's the owner of the record label? Famous guy. But we went after everybody, his bodyguards. We just couldn't get him to cooperate. And he had all these really bad dudes after him.

A guy named World, who was Little Kim's boyfriend slash sociopath. He was shooting at 50 outside of a hotel in Jersey City. He had all the guys from Murder Rank Records after them. Benzino. I don't know if you ever heard of Benzino. He was a rapper who owned Source Magazine. If you ever heard of the Source Awards, the Source Magazine?

I've heard of Source Awards, yeah. He had beef with 50 cents. He was part of, he was, he was gut-in-form. I mean, it was just ridiculous. Like, while we're trying to do a case, all these other things are happening. But what was funny is I went from, when this case started,

I had a, I went and bought a CD in the mall and Queens, the outdoor mall and queens. of 50 cents. He had like four songs. There's a mixtape era. And it was Had a Rob. And I know if you ever heard of that song. It's a great song.

And where 50 Cent talks about robbing all these different people and rappers. And he names them and makes fun of them. And to see him go from like this simplistic, you know, kind of form of street music to this like polished, you know, number one selling album, with, you know, all these great producers and everything else and surviving, it added to, you know, the happiness that we got from starting the case and kind of, you know, murder ink records afterwards took a big dive. They lost all their integrity. Everybody in the record industry kind of knew that Irv Gotti was no good. You know, I had,

I spoke with a guy named Craig Calman from Atlantic Records. I knew he was being threatened by them. He was going to sign 50 cent. And Irv Gotti said, if you sign him, I'm going to destroy you. So he took a pass. They threatened Tommy Motola from Sony with the same thing. And Tommy Motola was still going to sign him. And what was funny is, is Michael Jackson had some kind of beef with Tommy Mottola

or he wanted to buy like his songs back or something like that. And so Michael Jackson, Irv Gotti, and the Reverend Al Sharpton have a press conference and talk that, say, Tommy Motola is a racist and he does all these things, you know, whatever. So we go to Tommy Motola

and we had an inside guy who was part of a security detail who told us, yeah, he's worried he thinks they're going to hurt him. He lied to us and wouldn't cooperate. So we tried every which way you know, to get people to cooperate and get the goddies for the things that they were, you know, I mean, listen, they were talented guys, but they took advantage of a relationship with a really bad guy

to promote themselves as tough guys. And they destroyed their careers. You know, not only, you know, you're going to destroy and walk away from everything to make sure another rapper doesn't, you know, become popular. It's, it was just so, so crazy. I don't know, like bad mouth and nerves, he and he passed away about a year ago. He's not around to defend himself anymore, but he was not, to me, he was not a good guy. He made a lot of mistakes. And when you have that kind of talent, why would you blow it for, for these things? It's like, the thing that I don't like about, about him is that through the years and his time passed, he, he, he, he, he,

He should have had some remorse about what he had been involved in with 50 and all these other things. And he never was. What were the final charges against Supreme that he was convicted of? It was a death penalty RICO case. So he was found guilty. They didn't, obviously they didn't go for the RICO, but they didn't go for the death penalty. But he was found guilty. Some people from the Baltimore side of the drug dealing.

people who put money together for the making of the film and knew about the drugs and different things that were used to finance it, people who were involved. There was a guy named Emmanuel Mosley who we got to cooperate. We found out that he was, his street name was Manny Dogg. And he, he ended up cooperating and gave us the violence. He put the hit teams together. We followed him. and he came out of a house in a nice area of upstate New York, somewhere around suffering in New York. And he's driving towards the school. We pull him over and he had kids in the back of the car.

So we're like, oh, shit. So we ended up letting him go back to the house and drop the kids off. And it turns out that his wife had a successful salon up in Harlem and he would stay home and watch the kids in the daytime. and at nighttime, he would go out and do hits. So McGriff was introduced to him through a Harlem drug dealer named Wayne Davis. And Wayne told Manny, he goes,

listen, these guys from Queens are all insane. He goes, just make sure you do it like what you've got to do. They'll do stupid things like, you know, whatever. And sure enough, they did do stupid things like keep videotapes of murders and stash houses and stuff like, I mean, you know, like things. that would seal their fate later on. And they were also using two-way pages to talk to each other, and it was all memorialized.

So we had access to years of conversations between the Gotti brothers and everybody. They were somewhat careful, obviously, on how they communicated, but they would send each other messages like, hey, I just saw 50s on 178th and Sutton Boulevard or whatever. So we could see that they were actively pursuing them. We also saw, like, communications when they had killed somebody, so-and-so's done, you know, like obvious things like that that showed at the very least that they knew the subject was dead before it was in the newspaper or anything like that. During the five years of the investigation, were you ever in fear of your life? You know, it's funny is they intercepted a jail call.

somebody was listening to jail calls and McGriff told a guy Godby who's one of the shooters on 50 cent hey find out everything you can about this guy Bill Courtney um so that was you know that we took serious and another time I ended up getting a phone call um I'm getting it on a plane I see my phone ringing but I can't answer we're about to take off when I landed I played the message back it was someone racking a gun back and firing a shot So, you know, and what was fucked up is I think there were NextTells. And there was something about Nextel where you couldn't find out the incoming call. I don't know.

We couldn't trace the source of it. So it was basically, yeah. So, but did I really think someone was going to come kill me? Like, no. But was I a little, you know, worried for my family, yeah. But if it was just me on my own, I wouldn't have cared less. What did your dad think about you taking on a case of this caliber? Did you get to talk to him at all?

Yeah, I mean, well, you know, I was so busy back then. I really didn't get to talk to him much, but I would always see he'd have newspaper clippings of all the stuff that was in the papers and stuff. So he was really proud. And I think, you know, like I surpassed my father in notoriety from getting these articles because he, worked in a you know an area of law enforcement which was all about like we don't discuss these things and they're never to be told you know so I had a I kind of won up them on that but I think we had similar careers of equal kind of success but I found his work more interesting you know than mine but you know it's just funny too you know you wouldn't believe how much corruption

there is in the music industry and the television industry and all and You know, it's funny, I, we were going to arrest Haitian Jack. It was a legendary, I guess, rap extortion guy, you know, a stash house robber. I looked him up and saw that he, he had a hold on him for, like, he could be deported because he was born in Haiti. And before his family could get him citizenship, he was already like a violent predicate felon. So he was not, you know, he, he just never got a green card or never got whatever. He speaks fluent English. He would never be a million years, no, he was from Haiti and whatever,

but he was good to go. So I was like, let me just lock him up. And if he cooperates, you know, fine. If not, we'll send him back to Haiti. Who cares? So I grabbed him, oh, yeah, no, I help you out. I'll tell you anything, you know, you need to know, whatever. So Haitian Jack was like a legend in the music industry. And he was rumored to have been the one who, Tupac, when Tupac got shot in Quad Studios years earlier, he, about a day before that happened, he mentioned, Tupac mentioned to a writer named A.J. Benza that he got arrested on this rape charge because of Haitian Jack. And Mike Tyson told me not to hang out with these guys. They were bad news. And now I'm in trouble. It was kind of like a pussy way out.

You know what I mean? I think to say to a news reporter. So A.J. Benza puts it on page six or whatever it is in the daily news. So they were all mad. But Jack was already in jail. He took a plea on this rape charge. And so, you know, Tupac is going to Quad Studios to do a song, but I think Little Sean or somebody.

And they're outside waiting for him to rob him. and smack him around and tell him, better watch what you say. And Tupac goes for a gun, shoots himself in the groin twice, which I think he's the only one who shoots himself. I don't think the guys, I think they fired rounds,

but I don't think they ever hit him. Basically, Tupac shoots himself. But the guys who went to, after him, were, according to legend, was a guy named Jimmy Henschman, who was one of Jack's cohorts, and they kind of had their own things going.

but their goal was to control rappers and to manage them and to do whatever. So I basically flipped Haitian Jack, but he, you know, he was a really crafty guy. Jack couldn't really help you because his life was a crime in progress. Like everything he did was not legit, you know. And so eventually Jack ends up with the rapper MC Light at a nightclub called Monroe's in West Hollywood. and he ends up, gets into some kind of argument and walks, he walks, MC light out to the car, comes back in and chases these guys around the club, shoots him in the legs a few times and leaves. And another informant that I shared with the LA sheriffs was outside the club, saw it,

and called the sheriffs and said, hey, this guy, Haitian Jack, just shot this guy. So they called me and they go, hey, you got a problem. You're the guy you signed out of jail. He just shot, you know, two people in Monroe's. So that was the end of Jack. We ended up, I tricked him into meet me at the riot house, which is the nickname for the Hyatt Hotel on the Sunset Strip. And he came in and comes to give me a hug, hey, how you doing?

Everyone jumped out. And that was the end of him. But what was funny is, you know, when we were going to arrest Jack, I had heard that He had dinner every Friday night at the La Mertage Hotel in Beverly Hills. So I do some research, and I find out that the L.A. sheriffs are also looking at him for, I think, some stash house robberies out in, like, Colombian stash house robberies in the Beverly Hills area. So we joined forces. We set up at the LaMertage Hotel on a Friday night, and sure enough, Jackson's side. So we made a deal with the hotel.

They would tip us off when he came if we would just arrest him away from the scene. So we had Beverly Hills PD on the outside, Mark Units, and me and Mark Gaiman, the detective from the sheriff, so we're inside drinking and smoking for cover, you know, of course. And so we go out to have a cigarette. We come back. We're walking back towards the bar watching Jack have dinner. And elevator door opens and who comes out of the elevator.

James Woods, the famous actor, and James knows Mark, I think from the Heidi Fleece case, if I'm not mistaken, and says, hey, Mark, how you doing? He goes, well, this is my buddy Bill from New York. He's out here helping me. We're doing a case. I actually sitting on somebody. So James Woods tells me, he goes, you know my story about New York, right? I'm like, no.

What's your story about New York? He goes, you never heard about my story? No. So James Woods tells me, he goes, I was working out in Boston. We're doing a show. He goes, I'm flying back to L.A. It's early in the morning. It's like 10 in the morning.

But I wanted like a scotch or something. So I get on a plane, I ask the flight attendant, whatever. So maybe they thought it was odd that he was drinking, whatever. But he goes, I'm sitting there and I'm looking at people in first class. I'm like, they did not look like first class customers. He goes, they looked all swarthy and unsophisticated, uneducated, foreigners, you know, whatever. He goes, there's something just off about it. So the plane takes off.

He has like another drink or whatever. And he grabs the flight attendant. He goes, I think the guy in 1A is talking to the guy in 3F and the other guy over here. I think they're going to try to hijack the plane. And so she goes, oh, okay, sure. Anyway, somewhere along the line, the pilots come in and out to use the restroom, somewhere along the flight, and she sees what he's talking about. They all start chattering with each other as the pilots are coming.

in and out. So she said, listen, I spoke to the pilots. They're not going to open the door for the rest of the flight, and the FBI will meet you on the plane lands. We'll get to the bottom of this. So the plane lands and, you know how planes go. You get first class goes first. They ask him, just stay seated. And now coach, so solid 20 minutes, right? FBI agent and a LAPD airport cop come on. And go, well, what seems to be the problem? He goes, well, did you get these guys? I think they were going to hijack the plane. Did you? I don't know.

I'm sorry. There was some kind of miscommunication, you know, whatever. So they take his information. What turns out, that was like Muhammad Atta and the bombers from 9-11. Wait, they were on that plane. And they were doing a test run. And so when the doors were coming up, they were telling each other, all right, so this would be when you run.

And you know what I mean? So I call that the, you know, James Woods could have saved us from 9-11. if they responded to that situation properly. So when I came back to New York, I was in an FBI group at the time. I said, I got to find out if this is true or not or if he was bullshit me. And sure enough, it rang some bells.

When we ran the information, it, like someone called, why are you looking at this? But he was telling the truth. So who do you blame for that, the flight attendants or the police that responded? I guess, you know, I mean, I don't know.

It's, you know, somewhere on the line, I guess they communicated with the airline itself who reached out, hey, there's some guys on the plane. I don't know what's going on. It got watered down. Wow. You know, and, but yeah, he was, he knew right away something was wrong. And look, if they grabbed those guys, one of them would have flipped, I'm sure, you know. So, but, yeah, I, there was a lot of, you know, all the guys I investigated.

out in L.A. It was a guy Joe Isgrove who was a payola guy, you know, there was all sorts of former New Yorkers and guys from Chicago who had their own little L.A. crime family out there who were, you know, extorting from stars or, you know, lending stars money and they couldn't afford to pay it back. Guys like Mickey Roark, different famous personalities out there. So, you know, it was fun time. We got to meet a lot of, you know, you know, get to get these, like, sexy Hollywood cases and stuff. Now, was that normal for an NYPD detective to go to different states, or is it just because you're on a task force?

It's because I was on a task force, and, you know, I was deputized as a marshal, so I had, you know, I could sign search warrants and affect arrests and other jurisdictions and stuff. But I would have done it anyway. You know, it was like you can, you know, the NYPD, at least at that time, we thought we we controlled the world. You know, it's the biggest city, United States, most cosmopolitan city, everything in the world that happens, happens in New York. And we felt that we didn't really have any jurisdiction, as crazy as that might sound.

You know, I mean, we checked in where we went places, obviously, but yeah, I mean, it was just, it was, I'm really lucky you had a great career with, with the music industry stuff, having the huge drug seizures and, you know, there's just so many talented guys out there. Like, I can't tell you how many smart people are cops. Like, people don't realize how smart some cops are. And I work with some geniuses, you know, like, how are we going to cover this up? Let's put out a fake press release. Like, who thinks like that?

You know what I mean? Like crooks think like that, you know? Now, why do you think that the rappers and even the sports stars like the NBA guys get involved with crime when they're getting paid so well? Even back then they were making good money. Yeah, like now, so like if you're talking about like Kobe back then, that would have been around 2000. So it's not it's not Kobe when he was making his big money and all that. But it was still Kobe, obviously.

I don't think that they, I think they obviously know you're not allowed to do stuff like that. But it's not like you're missing shots on purpose so somebody can win. You're scoring extra points. You're playing at your best. So it's not like point shaving and things like that. So I guess they figured somewhat, I'll do it for some friends. I mean, it was like five or six guys named in that. You know, Kobe just happened to be the most popular out of them.

Matter of fact, Qutino Mobley from the Clippers, when I was doing work out there, I found out his house got, he had a home invasion robbery at his house. You know, so he was hanging out with idiots in Hollywood and clubs and stuff. And then the next thing you know, he's getting. And I went and talked to him. And I didn't talk to him about that, but I had met him. And he was talking about how he had a deal in Hollywood to make a show about the NBA and using NBA and using NBA players voices but as cartoon cats. So he invested all this money in that.

And I don't think that obviously it never came to air. He lost his shirt on that. But you know, you see these stories with ballplayers all the time where they just, yeah. Yeah, I mean, look at it now. There's the gambling cases, but then you also have rap cases. You know, later on, you look at like Takashi 6-9 and all of these guys that get caught up when they're making millions of dollars. Right, right. Yeah, there's that thing.

There's that, you know, like that, I don't know, why would you, yeah. I mean, it's like not only my own ball player and I have this great talent, but I also want to be. with these guys who were singing about like this really rough street stuff and street life like what's the attraction? What's the do you think people think you're streetwise and you're you're

a bad dude because you hang out with them too like what is it? I think it's just immaturity you know and not seeing the bigger picture and just a lack of integrity. I mean I understand why people would manipulate that art form

and sing about things to make money but, you know, most of them are broke, you know, most of these guys have nothing. It's like the few top guys like, you know, Jay-Z 50 cent, they reinvented themselves, they bought things, they started companies. But most of the other guys are all brokers. They're all online, you know, queues in each other stuff. I mean, you know, guys like Dame Dash and stuff, they're just all bitter and they wasted all their money and they got nothing now.

But that's, you know, that's like. when you're young and dumb, the problem is, is the art form is not what it used to be. And it's a young man's game, and it's hard to get back into it now. And the music industry, as far as having people attaching themselves to rappers and extorting from them, or having their record labels, put all this money into an artist, those days are over. Everything is kind of self-produced now. So it's kind of like crimes that really don't happen like they used to. And I think like Takashi was probably the last of that, you know, guy who had some decent money.

But yeah, really like low rent people he was with, though, like street gang guys, not even like, you know, stash house robbers or, you know, like gentlemen and gangsters. He's hanging out with like these really bad, like drill guys and stuff. And now mostly all these guys are rappers. I mean, I can't tell you how many guys I've interviewed that are blood or Crip and they say their career is a rapper and it's just not realistic. Right. But they're, you know, yeah, I mean, you know, it's funny to that you, if you ask any pro basketball player, like who's the like the best basketball players out there, they'll tell you a lot of them are out on the street. They just, they weren't sophisticated enough to go to college and whatever or for whatever. They drifted off.

They got involved in, you know, nonsense and stuff. But it's the same thing with the music industry. You know, like, I'm sure there's plenty of talented guys out there who aren't going to make it. But there's certainly, it's so easy to produce your stuff now that there's so much crap out there. It's like the guy E Moneybags, a rapper. He was a terrible rapper. But, you know, who's going to tell him no? Who's going to tell him he's bad, you know?

It's funny. You brought up the urban novels. That's what they're called earlier because when I was in the shoe, you know who's urban novel I read? Fat Cats. The one he wrote. And I was doing some research on him recently. He's out of prison. He's not in prison.

You know, I met Fat Cat in FCI, Marana, which is down in Florida, not too far from Tallahassee. And I went to talk to him about Supreme and say, hey, do me favor. Give me some inside stuff. So he was standoffish to a certain degree. He still had the obligation to cooperate because he was in, you know, Witzek facility. But the one thing he did tell me is about with the assassination of police officer Edward Byrne, he said that Fat Cat did that all because he had been dissed by this cop, another cop earlier,

and thought it was the one who was sitting on this guy Arjun, this neighborhood activist against drugs, house. But little did I know at that time, he was somehow running a criminal enterprise inside jail. And it had something to do with like car theft in Detroit. So he's like, here he is in Witsack and he's running like some kind of operation through the jail. And he was using his legal calls where they don't listen to the calls. They had a legal phone to, you know, do his, his bidding. And so shortly after I spoke to him, he was thrown out and put into state prison in New York to do the remainder of his turn.

But I didn't know he was out. But yeah, and those guys were like Supreme, all of them. So you had like Fat Cat Nichols. What was it, Pappy Mason? Pappy Mason. Gerald Prince Miller, all these guys were involved in, like, senseless violence or, you know, like, arranging to have parole officers killed because they were going to violate your parole. Like, what did you think that that was going to do?

Why would they kill the parole officer? Oh, well, who is he? You know, I mean, like, they brought such heat on themselves. They thought they were so powerful that they could get away with these things. and it's because of Fat Cat Nichols and Pappy Mason and those guys that the NYPD started the TNT drug units. And it's also the reason that the feds changed the laws on sentencing guidelines from the difference between powder and crack cocaine. Significantly different sentencing guidelines. And it was all because of those guys.

And the violence they brought to the street, you know, like you could go in Harlem. And people were like selling drugs everywhere. There was no violence at all to a certain degree. But in Queens from the get-go, they had issues and problems with each other. They were killing their sources of supply. And it's something you would think that would happen like in like the worst neighborhoods of the Bronx. And it was happening in areas that were like middle-class neighborhoods in Queens. And the drug dealers there were just as vicious, if not more vicious than ones from like the worst neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

You know, it was just a very strange era. But I never in a million years ever thought that they would see the light of day. It's shocking to me. Like, you know, those are the kind of guys you thought were away forever. And the fact that they're getting out, like, I mean, anybody who was involved in having, like, parole officers kill, things like that, I don't think she'd ever walk out again. But did it get similar to, like, the mob guys that have talked about, you know, killing five, 10, 15 people? and they get the plea deals and they get out and now they're on podcast talking about it.

Yeah, like Sammy the Bull, you know. You know, and there's a guy too, like Sammy the Bull. He testifies to being involved in, I think, 19 murders and he gets five years, you know. And then a few years later, he's doing, I think, 18 years for selling ecstasy. I guess you have to look at the character or someone and if they're going to reoffend on that level. Yeah, well,

Like the guy, this guy John Reagan, who was the, he was the money guy for the making of McGriff's film. He cooperated. And, you know, it's funny as I heard from when he got out of jail at one point, you said, yeah, I started a business where I sent things to prisons that people are allowed to have. Like the prison, I'll find out what you're allowed, inmates are allowed to have and how it has to be packaged and how whatever. And you can order it directly from me. and, you know, whatever. And of course, like, you know, we tell him, oh, I'm doing really good. And then the next thing, you know, he starts a home health agency.

And, you know, he's stealing old lady's Social Security numbers. And, you know, he's back in jail and out of jail since then. Very intelligent guy eloquent speaks well, whatever, could do anything he wants. But he just, that's his thing. I don't know what it is. Some people just have to commit crime. It's like they don't see. they don't see anything by the long way.

It's always the shortcut, you know. Were you guys using lyrics to convict individuals back then? No, I mean, you know, people blame 50 cent for, I think the song was called the ghetto Quran. And he talks about he names people like Supreme, Prince, mostly Queens guys, Tony Furtado, all the big players of the day. What can you do with that information? It's not like he's saying, he's paying homage to them.

Like, these are the tough guys from my neighborhood. These are the legends. And there's, you know, there's nothing you can do with it. There was, like, I think a guy in Atlanta that said something so specific in a song as to, you know, insinuate himself in a crime. But it's a rarity. I think they're using it with, like, the little dirt case. I think you're right, yeah.

I mean, but people used to accuse 50 cent of, you know, oh, you snitch. I can tell you right now, 50 cent never snitch. We tried, and he wouldn't tell us, you know, anything. But because he wrote a song where he paid homage to some OGs, you know, they try to turn it against them, whatever. How come you guys couldn't get to him at the hospital that night, or did he not go to a local hospital? I didn't even know who he was at the time, you know. So I was in the early days of looking into this. And, yeah, you know, I mean, he had just put out some mixtapes and stuff.

He was just starting to make a name for himself. And yeah, someone told me that when Prince got out of jail, that 50 threw him 50 grand or 100 grand or something. And I was offended. And I said, you know, he should give me a million dollars for. saving his ass. But, you know, I find that to be funny. I guess it wouldn't be Prince. I'm sorry, I think he was Tut.

I think he sent Tut money. Walter Johnson was another famous stash house robber. Tut was known to, like, rob drug dealers, extort from people, extort from rappers. you know, real, like, crazy, shoot-em-up guy, robbed an entire city bus when he was a kid, robbed an entire subway train, robbed the congregation of his mother's church, and became a famous street guy.

But it was just always too close to violence. And he was from the crew of guys like Haitian Jack and Jimmy Henschman. They all used to do stuff together. They all used to go to the same nightclub. and, you know, they just walk up and down the lines of these clubs and see, like, you know, what drug dealer had their Rolex on. They just take the Rolexes right off, like an entire line of people, you know, and they was so feared, so notorious, they could walk past the, you know, the magnetometers and

nightclubs and just walk in. It's an era that'll never, you know, I'll never see again. Did you encounter Maxby at all? Who? Max B, the rapper. He ended up doing close to 20 years in New Jersey. Oh, wow. But he did have issues in New York before that.

He did New York bid. He did time at Rikers. That was around in the 90s. You know, talk about the pitfalls of, like, cooperating people. One guy that I cooperated, his last name was Baum. His brother was Darrell Baum, a famous guy who 50 cent thought was the one who actually shot him first. He was Mike Tyson's best friend. They grew up together and everything else.

And Darrell was like a, his street name was homicide. He was really like tough, tough guy. After he died, his brother tried to avenge his death and got involved in all sorts of craziness. Amongst them was a payroll heist, which I arrested him for. Anyway, we put him, he wants to cooperate and give us all sorts of information. We put him in a facility in the Bergen County. We take federal prisoners, Bergen County Jail in New Jersey. And he gets into a fight with like Bob Marley's nephew and kills him.

He like punches him one shot and kills the guy. So like these are the things you never think are going to have. Nothing's going to go bad. Here you are. Your main cooperator is killing the famous person's nephew, you know. So what happened to him? Did he get charged for that? You know what?

I never, we never ended up using him to testify. I had so much other shit to do. And I stopped answering his calls after a while because he was so annoying. And I guess he took a plea on his, he got sentenced on his robbery and whatever. But he was, it wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. So, but yeah, like another example of somebody that maybe shouldn't have cooperated. Did you finish your career with that department? or did you move on to a different unit?

I left. I was assigned to the intelligence division and we had an FBI task force for a bit and that fizzled out. And after the case was over, I was like, you know what, I've done 25 years. Let me just leave now while the going's good, you know?

You never know what's going to go bad in police work. So when I left, I ended up going over and I worked in the United Arab Emirates for a couple of years. And then I did different things like bodygoers. these, you know, musicians and princesses and people. And then I went back and worked for the city for another seven, eight years,

doing investigating organized crime in like city construction projects and things like that. And now I occasionally do a YouTube channel podcast, which I kind of got bored with because I don't have the technical. know-how that you do, nor the connections to keep it going. But I was lucky enough to sit down with guys like Greg Scarpe, Larry Mazza, Anthony Wugiano, guys who were around from back in the day, the old days who were around underneath Gotti or underneath the around during the Colombo Wars. I ended up actually, it was a funny, not a funny story, but there was a guy named can do in Brooklyn who came up on one of my wiretaps. And apparently little Kim wrote about him in

the song or something. Anyway, he goes to trial and I had him on some phone counts in New York. I had him, my source of supply, my target was selling him drugs. And he was taking the drugs down in Virginia. And him and his wife ended up getting like six consecutive life sentences, you know, like something crazy because it was in the, uh, the, uh, the east. Eastern District of Virginia. And matter of fact, I got a call to testify on a case down there about, like, you know, the phone intercepts and stuff back up in New York. And I was told I was like the 15th witness and the trial started on Monday and they would need me on Tuesday. I go, how am I going to get on Tuesday? She said, honey, this is the rocket docket. This is, you know, whatever. So I can

imagine justice is not as, is a little too swift in some places than others. And they had us in and out of there in no time. But anyway, he ends up getting like consecutive life sentences. And he was a gentleman gangster. He was not a violent guy at all. Immediately surrenders. I'm not cooperating. I got an attorney.

Thanks, but no thanks. You know, whatever. So years later, I said, you know what? Let me see if I can find him and see if he'll interview with me. Because I destroyed his life by just, you know, I was dumping out in this case. I wanted nothing to do with it. And I had all these phone counts of guys that didn't even was in I'm going to bother with until I found out that the FBI in Virginia wanted him for a big

conspiracy case down there. So while I'm looking for him, I come across his daughter basically is raised by her grandparents. Both her parents go to jail. She doesn't know her parents are in jail. She visits them and finds out that they're like, you know, they made up some story like they were, you know, secret agents and they were infiltrated, like anything but the truth. And she doesn't find out until she's like 15 or 16 that her parents have both done life sentences for drug trafficking. Her caretakers, her mom's parents die one after the other.

And just as she's about to go to college. So she's got nothing. She starts to GoFundMe page, goes to college, and manages us to get the room and board. And school break happens and they find out like, well, you have to be. have to go home now. The dorms closed for, you know, the next month or two, whatever it is. She's like, oh, I got nowhere to go. I'm homeless and, you know, whatever. So some people find out how to get her proper scholarships and everything else. And she ends up becoming a school teacher. And when I saw it, I was like, you know, this is the things like you don't see

when people get in sentence to jail that this girl's basically is, you know, given to her grandparents, orphaned, and just manages to eat through and get through and graduate and make something out of herself. And her parents eventually get out of jail with these, they're revisiting a lot of the old drug cases and lowering the sentences for that crack error. And so there's somewhat of like a happy ending, you know, where it'll, you know, the system righted itself it realized like, yeah, we shouldn't have sent people away for 100 years. But back then, if you were selling crack, you were responsible for so many homicides on the street and all this violence.

And so it was the only way to stop it. And I think it really did stop it. But I'm glad they did revisit it because even guys, when I look at guys like Supreme, it got life in jail. Supreme killed people that deserved it with the exception of 50 cent. All the people that's... Supreme killed, had brought violence towards him, or didn't give him respect. And so the only thing I have to fault him with is the shooting of 50 cents. Everything else he did, I kind of

understand, anyone, anyone could understand. Doesn't make you a nice guy or a good guy, but he's been in jail since 2001 or 2002, I guess. So it was a guy like that, should he come out of jail, you know. When we, when we were doing the sentencing on his case, Troy Singleton's son came and spoke, and he was this very eloquent, 12-year-old boy, maybe, and spoke to how he's never going to be able to see his dad and, you know, whatever. Now, his father was a horrible human thing. He really was. I mean, he was a bad guy. He was a robber. He was reckless. But you saw this innocent kid. He was a kid, well-spoken, with his mom and different members of the family, all women,

but very nurturing, nice people, sane, sober people. And then I saw him on the internet, not too long ago when he's talking shit like he's, you know what I mean? So, and then the other guy who's, is Kenneth McGriff's son, is doing some kind of podcast by himself and also with his uncle, Gerald, Prince Miller from the Supreme team.

And we had several people tell us that McGriff tried to have his mother killed when she was pregnant because he didn't want her to be the mother of one of his kids. One of those guys ended up, who was cooperating, ended up getting caught sleeping with a CEO and selling drugs in a facility. And the other one would have kept cooperating. but he, we couldn't take it any further because of the, we didn't have the corroboration because his mother said that, no, it was just a random shooting. Whoever shot me was just random.

It was no, you know, had nothing to do with anything. So does this kid know that it's the government's belief that his father tried to have his mother killed while she was carrying him? I don't know. I mean, that's, and it was spoken to at a court case in the Eastern District. His mother was subpoenaed. I sat down with her once. She was very angry, wanted nothing to do with it, didn't want to believe it, or there was rumors that she got paid off. I don't know if that's true or not, but this is the crazy world we live in now that, you know. So I'd be interested to see what this kid thinks about that. Now, do you think your stance has changed on the sentence of, say, you know, McGriff, you look back when you were at a sentencing, you know, you were probably advocating for life in prison, but now you might be second guessing that.

Yeah, you know, maybe when I was a younger cop, I really cared about the numbers and they should go away for life and it took it really personally. as I got older, I kind of realized, like, I was lucky to be able to investigate people like this. They were, like, sophisticated criminal organizations. And I wanted a guilty verdict, no doubt. Did I want a death penalty verdict? No way. You know, I didn't, this is not, you know. And like I said, the only shooting that he did that I really felt was horrible was the 50-cent shooting.

But if you, if, if McGriff was going to write me a letter tomorrow and said, hey, would you speak on my half to come out of jail? That's the only reason I might, I would consider it. But the only reason I wouldn't is only because of that one shooting. But it means nothing to me now. When I look back and I see what happened to the, the children of the bad guys who were becoming like wannabe street hoods. And, you know, I mean, McGriff's kid doesn't seem like a bad kid. but I don't know that he knows any of those things that I just mentioned now, and I don't know that he'd even believe them.

And I don't know what his childhood was like and how he was raised or anything, but when I do see him occasionally on the internet, I'm saying he seems like somebody who's doing okay, you know, mentally. And, you know, he doesn't seem like he's, he seems more like a gentleman than a braggart So, yeah, I don't know if he knows that or not. Does the NYPD bring people like you back to, you know, to kind of train the new guys or give them insight? No.

As soon as you're gone, you're a nuisance. It's sad. You know, each generation, like every 20 years or so, there's a group of guys. It's just like there's guys, bad guys who were, like, notorized. It's the same thing in the NYPD. There's guys out there who are, like, get really big kids. or who are just really talented, really know what they're doing, and they're talked about.

People either hate them or love them, they're jealous of them or whatever. But once you're gone, like, that's it. They don't even know who you want anymore. I get calls constantly. Right now I'm dodging calls from the Manhattan DA's office. The Queens Cold Case office and the Queens DA's office has a unit that is innocent.

project. They're trying to get me to help them out on something that I really don't remember much about, had nothing to do with me. So I'm sought after still for stuff that I wish my memory was a little bit better. But I saved a lot of my paperwork. So it's funny, you know, I get a call. And like the next day, I sent them like 6-7 DD-5s, which are NYPD reports, kind of like a 302. And so, yeah, I know. it's good to be remembered sometimes and to relive it, but you definitely have different eyes and different perspective now, you know. Is there anything you wish you did differently in your career? Yeah, I probably wish I stayed, you know, like, but yes and no.

Wish I maybe stayed somewhere. I was a bit of a wise ass and a boss fighter when I was young. I made trouble for myself as a cop, but, you know, I matured as I got older a little bit. Yeah, you know, no, I'm one of the lucky ones because if you're a uniform officer working in like, you know, the 46th precinct in the Bronx or something, every day is a drag. Every day is like it's bad news. You know what I mean? It's nothing good happens in these really like indigent, tough neighborhoods. You're constantly putting out fires.

You're begging people to just be calm and do whatever. and you don't get any respect anymore. In our error, you know, like, I mean, people weren't getting beat up, per se. But if you got handsy or whatever, you know, you got knocked around pretty good. Whereas today, like, you can't do anything out there. Like, you lose your temper. It's over, you know. But people could throw water balloons at the caps.

Right. Well, you know, it's funny, too. It's just reading the Civilian Complaint Review Board in New York has active investigators. who promote, they have like that ACAP, all cops are bad or bastards or whatever it's supposed to stand for, in their profiles on Instagram and stuff like that. So can you imagine having your civilian complaint investigated, your excessive force complaint investigated

and the person vehemently hates the police? So that's just like, that's just crazy, like, you know, left-wing government stuff that only happens in these big cities. But it's a tough, tough error to be a cop because everyone loses their temper, sooner or later. You know, some, you had a fight with your wife, you didn't get enough sleep,

you go to work and somebody's poking you and poking you, and you just can't take it anymore when you slug them or something, you know? That is a perfect, you know, that, that's a response that someone, you know, got out of you because you were having a bad day.

Doesn't mean you to lose your job? I say, no, everyone else probably disagrees of me. But, yeah. And in my era, like, you know, your partner could do something wrong, like, loses temper and party, you're never going to tell on them. You were never going to give them up. You know, nowadays, I don't think these guys stick together at all. So, I mean, I hope they do, but I don't think, I think the code of honor amongst police has been changed so much because they'll go after you.

It's so bad, like if you step out of character. Well, Bill, I appreciate you coming on the show today. This was an awesome interview. Oh, thanks to have me. I had a lot of fun. I appreciate it. Yeah, and thanks for support in the show. Absolutely. Awesome.

Thanks, buddy.