Locked In with Ian Bick - Inside the Undercover World: Ex-Narcotics Detective Exposes the Truth About Informants | Paul Bernd

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Former narcotics detective Paul Bernd pulls back the curtain on the shadowy world of informants. With years of experience on the front lines of the war on drugs, Paul shares the gritty realities of working with informants, revealing the delicate balance of trust, deception, and danger that defines this critical aspect of law enforcement. From high-stakes operations to moral dilemmas, Paul provides a rare glimpse into the strategies and challenges of managing those who live double lives, navigating the thin line between the criminal world and the justice system #NarcoticsDetective #LawEnforcement #Informants #UndercoverOps #WarOnDrugs #PoliceStories #CrimeUncovered #TrueCrime Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Paul Bernd: https://www.instagram.com/paulberndrealtor?igsh=aHoweGhjanA3em1u Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 - From Cop to Realtor 00:05:01 - Childhood Ambitions and Influences 00:10:01 - Overcoming Bullying and Becoming a Police Officer 00:14:53 - First Day on the Job 00:19:41 - Lunch Break Scheduling and Department Size 00:24:47 - The Importance of Managing Informants 00:29:44 - Cultivating Informants and Communication Methods 00:34:40 - The Importance of Protecting Informants 00:39:35 - The Dilemma of Utilizing Informants 00:44:32 - Unfair Treatment of Convicted Individuals 00:49:37 - The Challenges of Re-entry 00:54:18 - The Role of Magistrates in the Legal Process 00:59:02 - The Hardest Experience in Law Enforcement 01:04:02 - The Ugly Side of Police Work 01:08:51 - Leaving Police Work behind 01:13:38 - Embracing Changes and Shifts in Career 01:18:13 - Building Our Own Brand Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Get a free move quote at mayflower.com. Mayflower. With you every step of the way. Paul, welcome to Lockton, man. Pleasure having you. I think we connected on Instagram. Yeah, I believe you DM me and you said, hey, I'm in real estate, but I'm a former cop when we get on the show. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And you came from Virginia, right? Yeah, so I drove up last night, spent the night at the Jersey Shore, and now we're here.

That's awesome. I think you've got to be the first person that I know that had left the police force to become a realtor. Really? Yeah. It's a lot more common than you might think. I think that a lot of police officers have a certain skill set that translates really well to the interpersonal relationships that you have to have in real estate. So it's been a good transition. Are you licensed in every state? I'm not. Just Virginia for now.

And I live close enough to West Virginia that that would probably be the next one. But I'd love to get licensed in Connecticut and spend more time up here. Well, for the Virginia people listening. if we have any, definitely plug in your website so people could find you. Yes, you can find me on Facebook, Paul Byrne Realtor. On Instagram, it's the same thing. Paul Byrne, Realtor, all in one word together. And my brokerage is Realty One Group Old Town.

We're in Winchester, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. And I mainly serve the Shenandoah Valley in northern Virginia. So anyone in the area, feel free to reach out. Awesome. And we'll have those links in the bio of the episode, too. Did you grow up where you currently live now and work? No, so I grew up in central Virginia in a place called Orange County. So probably an hour and a half or so straight south of Washington, D.C. right down I 95.

Okay. I want to go to D.C. soon. The last time I was there, I was in high school. Or eighth grade, I think, me and my family did a trip there for the weekend. Went through the museums and stuff, but I was too young to appreciate it. Really? It's, D.C. is an interesting place, and it's beautiful. They've really invested a lot, I think, in the city and some tourist attractions, but it's also a little bit rough. So it's, it would be a good place to go and check out, I think. So the area you grew up in, what was that like a nice area, bad area, wealthy, middle class, poor? I would say middle class, maybe upper middle class, where I lived specifically. specifically was like a suburban kind of community.

I lived in a residential community with like 5,000 houses in it with a lake and stuff like that. But the county was more rural overall. So, you know, I lived in the very east end of the county and the whole rest of the county almost was rural farming. But then, you know, a half an hour away was Fredericksburg, which is a, pretty big city. And then, you know, again, not far from Northern Virginia and the rest of D.C. What about your family? Do you have both parents and siblings? Any siblings? I did. Yeah. So mom and dad were both in the house growing up. My dad's in sales. My mom worked for the state. And I have a brother who's 10 years older than me and then a sister who's four years younger.

And none of them went into law enforcement at all? Nobody. On my dad's side, I, have like a great aunt or something like that that was in law enforcement probably in the 60s or 70s. But outside of that, I'm the only one in the family that went into police work. When you eventually became a police officer, did you find that rare in the sense where like most people that are officers have more members in their family that are law enforcement? That's a good question. I don't know. I'd say it's a mix. There are definitely a lot of police officers that come from police officer families.

But there were a lot of like first generation police officers like me who didn't get it from the family. So I think it's maybe a 50-50 split. And did you feel like with those individuals, did you feel or even with your family, did you feel kind of an outcast a little bit or unique because of the profession you would end up choosing? A lot. My uncle was a health care executive. So he was the president, CEO of a multi-billion dollar hospital corporation called Centera. And they're really large in Virginia Beach and Newport News, that area of Virginia, like the southeastern part.

And, you know, my dad's in sales. My grandpa was a businessman. It was really hard for them to believe that I really wanted to be a police officer. and go into police work. And there were times where they would just outright tell me, we don't know why you love this or why you want to do this. Was that like your aspiration growing up while you're in high school, middle school, going through those years where, you know, a lot of kids are like,

I want to be a police officer, firefighter, this and that. But was that on your mind in those early years? It was. As far back as I can remember, I always had good memories of police officers. So the community that I lived in, we had security guards that patrolled the community and would respond to 911 calls inside the community. And so they weren't technically, they didn't go through the same training that a police officer would, but they were allowed to do that inside of the community. And so I can always remember interacting with them, you know, being young, four or five years old. and I would see one of them and just want to check out the car and see their uniform.

And I always remembered how polite they were, how kind. You know, they always took the time to hang out and to tell me to always be good. You know, it was never too much of an ask for them. And so that was like the first impression that I got of police work and of community policing. And then as time went on, I can remember my parents would put. me to bed and then cops, the TV show would come on. But our living room was set up so that I could lay in the entrance to the living room and watch cops on the back wall on the TV. And as long as no one got up from the couch, I could run back to my room when it was over. And so for, I don't know,

months, I watched cops in secret, you know, because they thought I was in bed. So I just always, I grew up really thinking that was like the most fascinating thing to be a police officer. What do you think about it specifically caught your eye or caught your interest that was like that moment where it's like, oh, this is exactly what I want to do? There was another time I was really young. I don't remember even how old I was and I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't breathe. And I think I had been sick, but I just woke up and just was wheezing. I couldn't breathe. And one of those security guards that worked in the community was also a volunteer.

for the rescue squad. And I didn't know that, that he was also a volunteer. But so he jumped in the ambulance in his security uniform and drove me to the hospital. And I thought that was the coolest thing. But, you know, there's a lot of research that says that children with sort of chaotic upbringings or, you know, people who have experienced trauma as a child are a lot more likely to go into police. because then they have the opportunity to kind of be that calm and chaos that they maybe wish they had.

And, you know, my childhood, my upbringing was regular in a lot of ways, but it was also there were some tumultuous things about it. And so I think that was another part of it was that I wanted to be able to protect people who couldn't advocate for themselves and to be able to show up for people who needed help that has always been a noble cause in my opinion as far back as I can remember. When you were put in those situations and positions when you were on the job, did you reflect back on your childhood and kind of did that help you get through those situations that you would encounter thinking, oh, this individual, maybe a child,

was in my shoes that I was in, you know, not so long ago. And that helped you navigate the situation. There were times where for sure I feel like I leaned into my own experience on the job to get through. But I would say more than that, really what it did was it influenced me to be a better community policing officer. And so I was able to go out and, you know, throw football in the street with the kids and stop and talk and give a badge sticker to a kid who I maybe know is having a hard time or just those. positive interactions that I had as a young member of the community, I was able to turn around and have with other members of the community, I think that is the most influential that my childhood was on how I was a police officer, if that makes sense.

Yeah. How was high school for you? Were you picked on at all? What did kids think of you as? Yeah. So high school was interesting. I was like a governor's school student in Virginia. We have the governor's school, which is like each county or each area has their own sort of school within a school where it's, you know, everything is advanced.

You have to test into it. You have to apply. And so it's kind of a big deal. So I was always sort of gifted academically. But I also played football and played sports. And so I got along with a lot of people, but there were also a lot of people who, you know, made fun of me, you know, like to talk down on me and stuff like that. And so I would say definitely in school I had the whole gambit. Do you think there was any influence of that bullying, people picking on you to become a police officer?

Maybe. I don't, you know, I think the stereotype is like, oh, you became a cop because you got picked on in high school. And so now you want to have an opportunity to be powerful and to pick on other people. And I would say if it was influential to me at all, not for that reason, but more because I knew how it felt to feel powerless in a situation. and I knew that, you know, there were times where I wished that I had someone there to advocate for me and didn't. And so I think a lot of people maybe that become police officers did have a challenging childhood, but I don't think that the stereotype is necessarily always true that they became police officers so that they could even the score or something like that.

Yeah, I mean, it could very much be they wanted. to make sure other individuals aren't put in that position. Right. And having to, you know, endure what they went through. Exactly. People are just like inmates and people that went to prison, people are very quick to stereotype all of them and individualize all of them in one category.

So it's important for people to hear that perspective. And maybe that'll help them think the next time they have maybe a negative police encounter or any type of encounter with law enforcement. That was something I always tried to do. I always tried to be that example. You know, every time that I dealt with someone, I wanted for our interaction to be what they thought of the next time a police officer encountered them, that they could think back on the interaction that we had. And it was respectful. You know, even when people went to jail, I was polite, respectful, curious to treat them like a human being.

And I wanted them to be able to remember that, you know, if there was a next time that they have a run in with the police. Absolutely. So was patrolmen, police department, wherever you ended up going to, was that your original goal? Or did you want to go into like the FBI or did you want to go into a state trooper or maybe even corrections? Was that what you had your eyes set on? So I never really, I was had a hard time answering the question, where do you see yourself in five years? Even now, I couldn't tell you where I see myself in five years. I've always. just taking such pleasure in seeing where life takes me. Where, you know, where do I wind up? So to answer your question, I never really went into it with a goal. I wanted to do the cool things I had seen on TV and protect people and do things like that. And, you know, I eventually wound up working in narcotics.

I was a narcotics detective, and that was something that I always enjoyed on cops. Every now and again, they would have an episode where they'd be doing some vice stuff or something like that. that and I always thought like that's pretty neat but even then I never I didn't get into police work with that as my end goal I just I just wanted to be a cop so you do kind of look like a detective you have that look to you like that you see on TV yeah bald head the goatee I can picture you in a nice suit that's the the outfit right that detectives wear yeah typically typically detectives you know they'll wear a suit or like at least a polo tucked into some slacks or some nice pants.

But when I was in narcotics, it was, you know, I didn't really do a lot of undercover work, but I dressed and looked undercover. So I had a long goatee and I wore earrings and I would twist the goatee and put rubber bands on it. Oh, like in every movie where they have like the DEA agents and detectives that have, oh my God, that was you. That's too funny. So we'll definitely focus on the detective, narcotics detective in this episode, because we haven't heard that perspective.

We always hear when we have a law enforcement on kind of like what they went through with training and getting into the force. But everyone always has a different story of their first day on the job. So what was that like for you? Once you beat it through the academy, it's your first day as a police officer. I'll never forget my first day on the job. So my first department, I field trained with a guy who's one of my. close friends now. We were just fishing the other day. I don't know if you can see. I have a sunglasses tan line that I picked up on the boat fishing with this same guy. So my first day I show up.

I'm ready to go. You know, I don't know who to report to. I just am kind of there ready to see what happens. And a police car pulls up and this this gentleman was also on the interview panel when I interviewed at the department. So I knew him and was familiar with him, but I didn't know that he was going to be training me. I didn't really know anything about him. So he gets out and he's got a flat top haircut and he's, you know, his uniform is all tight and he doesn't say a word to me at first. And then eventually he walks over and he has like a, almost like a drill instructor voice. And he says, you're a new guy? And I said, yeah, that's me. I am. So he says, come on over here. So he goes over to the car and he starts clearing out his front seat for me.

And he's not saying a word. And I'm so excited I could explode. And he's just moving everything to the back seat. And finally, you know, he almost doesn't even look at me and just says over his shoulder, I don't like nobody messing up my shit. And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. I don't mean to mess up your stuff. So we get in.

And for hours, we ride around in silence. He doesn't say a word to me. And I don't know if it's some new guy thing, if he's trying to feel me out or what, but we're going to calls. We're stopping cars, and he's not saying a word to me. So eventually, like halfway through the day, he says, are you married? And at the time I was engaged, so I said, I'm not married yet. And he was like, please don't ever get married. And I said, why?

And, you know, he told me that he had been married for a long, I don't remember how long it was, but it was a long time. So we're driving along and he tells me that and I make the joke. I said, gosh, you could have killed her and been out by now. And he turns and stares at me and he's still driving the car looking over at me and we're just locked eyes. And he's not saying a word. And I'm like, that was the worst thing that I could have said. They're going to fire me now. Why did I do that?

And finally, after what felt like a year, he goes, I like you. You're going to be all right. you'd be just fine. And after that, no issues. But, man, for the first few hours, I was sweating. How are rookies treated in the departments? Are there, like, pranks? Are there special, like, unofficial requirements, kind of like in college when you join, you know, a fraternity or sorority or anything like that?

Are there, is there hazing? Is any of that going on? Yeah. So, you know, it's all varies from department to department. But I will say, I think that having. fun with trainees is a really important part of the process. I would go on to be a field training officer and train other rookies that were new to the department. And so we would always find ways to pull their leg and, you know, play pranks on them. There used to be, I think, a lot more hazing.

It was a lot more hardcore when you were a trainee. You couldn't eat while anyone else was eating. You couldn't sit at their table. You know, there were guys who made their trainees sit in the car while they all went in the restaurant and ate. But at the end of the day, like, this could be the young man or woman that's going to save your life, put a tourniquet on you if something happens, defend you from someone else. So I always saw value in having fun, but I didn't like to take it to that extreme or, you know, try to make them feel unwanted or anything like that. So, you know, we would do silly stuff like unplug the microphone for the radio. We had a, we had a, we had a radio at the station. And so we would unplug the microphone and then we would tell the training like,

hey, can you ask dispatch to send someone a message? And they would be, you know, for four or five minutes, couldn't figure out why the radio's working and we're all saying, hey, come on, what's wrong? What are you doing wrong? And they're freaking out. And so just little, little pranks like that. Yeah, one of my favorite shows right now is the rookie. I love that show. Have you seen it? I have not. No, I'm admittedly not a big TV watcher. Okay. It's with the, um, the guy that he's like in his 40s or 50s and this is his second act and becomes a cop, a rookie, and then he ultimately becomes a field training officer. But great series.

You should check it out if you're into that. So a question, cops and lunch breaks. Are they scheduled or do they, can they get them at any time throughout the day? How does that work? Like sometimes, you know, you go into a restaurant or the deli and there's an officer waiting to get their lunch. Is that like a scheduled time? How does that work? So that also varies from department to department.

And bigger departments, I know that they will schedule, try to schedule your meal breaks because they have so many officers. They can afford to do that. You know, smaller departments, you can, you know, some departments you can place yourself out of service and go eat. So placing yourself out of service means just telling dispatch, I'm not available for calls right now. I'm going to go eat. But unfortunately, I worked in small enough departments that it was really just everyone's going to eat when they get a chance and it might be together. You might have to fend for yourself. But there were definitely days.

I can remember days where I would wake up going to work. I was never really a breakfast guy and it would be 3 o'clock and I still have not eaten anything. And I'm supposed to go home in three hours. Tires matter. They're the only part of your vehicle that touches. the road. Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack. Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy. Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection, convenient installation options, and the best selection of Yokohama

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My first department was really small. I think we had 18 officers. The second department was a little bit bigger. It was a sheriff's office. So we had more responsibilities as a department. And that called for more manpower. We were probably closer to 100. So I never really worked for like a mega agency.

There's a sheriff's office down the road that's got literally thousands of deputies. But again, I think going back to my roots as a police officer, I felt more attracted to smaller departments that I felt would afford me the opportunity to really build relationships in the community. Why did you switch department? And is that common for officers to do? So at the time, the first department that I had gone to work for, again, I started as a patrol officer, I became a narcotics detective. After that, I went back to the street and worked patrol. And I had found myself in a temporary position of being a supervisor. So I was a patrol sergeant because the current sergeant was in the National Guard and he went away for a

a long, like a 13-month deployment. So they said, you know, in the interim, we've got to fill this position with someone. So I stepped up, became a supervisor. I really enjoyed that. I loved being a supervisor. And, you know, I was having such a good time. And then it was getting toward the end of his deployment. I think a lot of people thought that he might leave the department at the end of his deployment. And then that opportunity would become mine permanently. but I heard through the grapevine that he was considering coming back. And that left me kind of feeling like, you know, I was going to have to go back into my old job, less opportunities.

I just really felt like being a supervisor showed me that there was more to police work than everything I had seen before. And so I left and went to a somewhat larger department just in search of those opportunities. I just wanted more opportunities than I felt like my first department could offer me. Why did you go from detective back to patrol officers? Is that normal to do? Do people do that? So the position was for a limited period of time.

And the department did that on purpose because a couple of guys before me in the position had been in the task force working narcotics for, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years. I think my first chief was on the task force for like more than 10 years. And that can really change you as a person. You know, your kids are born and grow up while you're working undercover their whole lives. You're never at home when you're working narcotics. It's hard to have relationships with people. So there's a lot of strain.

So when they advertise the position, they said it's only for a limited amount of time because of that. We want to keep people rotating through so that, you know, they, number one, you can have some semblance of a normal life when you go back into patrol. And number two, so that everyone else would have an opportunity to get in there and learn and do the same things I was able to do. So that's why what brought on the transition for me, I would say it's somewhat common. Even the best gigs in police work, you know, every once in a while you need you need some change. You've got to change it up. And sometimes with a promotion, you'll have to go, you know, maybe you're a detective, but you want to be a sergeant and the only sergeant position available is in patrol. And so you've got to make that decision and go back to patrol.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a great idea to, I've never even looked at it that way, to make sure people aren't getting worn out in their current rule. That's definitely a model that most jobs should take on so you're not feeling burnt out and worn out. Yeah, and it's a lot. You know, when I was working narcotics, I went to every single fatal overdose that occurred in my county. And then sometimes I would be in other places and go and help work a fatal overdose. And so you see a lot of, there's a lot of death. There's a lot of, you know, in between the running and gunning, it can get pretty dark and be kind of, it's not all rainbows and butterflies.

And so years and years and years of that can really just wear you down. And so I do think it's a good approach. And I think it made me a lot more well-rounded when I came back out to the street as a patrol officer. I knew way more about the job. I knew way more about what I was able to do on the job. So it made me a more effective police officer when I got back to the street. So, Dan, the life of a narcotics detective, what time do you wake up? What's that look like?

What do you do throughout the day? How many calls are you responding to? Are you at your desk most of the time? What's it look like overall? So the start time wasn't really scheduled. It was really workload dependent. And there were some days that we'd be up at, you know, 4 o'clock in the morning, brief at 5, and we're on the door to serve a search warrant at 6 o'clock in the morning.

There were other days where we weren't up until 11 because we had an operation the night before that ran really, really late. Or, you know, I've had informants call me in the middle of the night, and I've had to get up and go and work and then come home and try to sleep before more hours. So there wasn't a really set start time, and for us, it was a regional drug task force. So in Virginia, the Virginia State Police have regional drug and gang task forces. And I was in the Northwest Virginia Regional Drug Task Force. So there was us and then the county sheriff's office was another member agency.

And so we would go in and meet together at like a joint office. And it really would just, our day-to-day activity would depend on what everyone had going on. So if I came in and someone was lining up a deal that they needed, help with, you know, they needed surveillance or they needed whatever the case may be, that would kind of dictate the flow of my day. So, you know, you go in, check in at the office, see what everyone's up to, figure out what you've got going on for the day, catch up reports. There was, it was a lot of death time. It was a lot, a lot less running and gunning than I thought, because I only spent a year on patrol before I went into the task force. So I

was still very new to the job and didn't have all the running and gun and worn out of me yet. So, but from there, you know, it would just be when the phone rings you go. And if your informant calls you up and says, hey, I can get X, Y, or Z in an hour at this location. Well, then everybody gears up and you go and do the deal. So, yeah, walk us through the idea of managing an informant, how you even find one, how you communicate with them to make sure they're not in danger and then actually putting it together like you were just describing to do the deal. And if you guys are making a bus right then and there too. Yeah, so handling informants is a lot like hurting cats because you've got these people that were entrenched in the criminal element of some sort. and now they have some motivation to cooperate.

So they're either trying to avoid charges or gain consideration on charges that they've already received, or we had paid informants. So sometimes, you know, they would get low on money and decide that it was time to come back to work. So it's a lot like hurting cats. It's a lot of checking in with them every day, making sure that they're on the straight and narrow, that you're not going to be buying with them on a Tuesday and then buying from them on a Wednesday. So informants are cultivated usually at the patrol level.

So a patrol cop will stop a guy and maybe he's got a half ounce of methamphetamine in the car. And they get him out and they say, hey, man, you know, either you can go to jail or we can call this narcotics detective, He can meet with you somewhere. You know, we can send this stuff off to the lab, these drugs, and we'll let you deal with the narcotics detective in the meantime,

and then we'll make a decision, you know, from there. So a lot of informants are cultivated at the patrol level initially. And then from there, you know, you might use one informant to get into a larger network of people or more targets who then in turn may cooperate. And so it's just like, you know, one of them starts to cooperate and work, and then you get two new informants, a couple of new ones from there. So that's kind of how that whole process works. And then the communications aspect, we always had an audio monitoring device,

and they have video monitoring devices as well, but we always had at the very least a wire of some kind on the informant. And it's not, technology has advanced to the point that, you know, people don't have to wear a microphone taped to their chest like they did in the movies. And, you know, out of respect of the integrity of the job, I won't say what all we used as audio devices, but we always had at least ears on the situation. And so we had code words that we would tell the informant to use,

you know, and like if they were dealing with someone and they had a gun, but they weren't robbing them, but there was just a gun there, you know, that would be different than if they were getting robbed. And we would maybe tell them one thing to say if they just saw a gun or another thing, if they said this code phrase, it was on. And we were going to go in and rescue them. So that was always established beforehand. And a lot of times it was like my uncle, so-and-so is what we would tell. So if I had an informant get into a situation where they were getting robbed or they needed to be rescued, they would say, man, I wish my uncle Paul was here. And that would be my cue, the hey, my informant's in trouble. We got to go in.

The cover team needs to go get him and save him. So the only, I guess different, the next question you asked was like, how does utilizing, and informed how do we put it all together and then what would we do if we were taking off a target right there so um before the deal we would have to meet with the informant and search them to make sure they weren't bringing any drugs of their own to the deal so that they you know the defense couldn't be you know there's no way my client distributed those drugs the informant must have already had them on him he's lying to try to gain consideration and throw my client under the bus So we would search their person, you know, search if they were in a vehicle,

search the vehicle, wire them up. We would give them our controlled purchase money. So we would document the serial numbers of the bills and make sure that we kept track of all the money. And then we would give them the money, make sure that we could hear them on the audio device, and they were in there. And then, you know, we would always make sure that we had eyes on them, surveil them during the deal. and then the difference would come, like you said, whether it was just a buy-and-walk versus a buy-bust.

And so on a buy-and-walk, they would do the deal like normal, say their parting words, and then we would surveil them back to a predetermined location where we would do the same thing. We would search their car again, make sure the money is gone, make sure they're not pinching any additional drugs, and then we would just document it all and write it up in a report versus a buy bust, you know, those were always a lot of high energy.

It was a lot of fun, but it was always a predicament because it was like, how well can I act? Can I act well enough that this target truly won't think that this informant set him up? And so you know if you're going to buy bus somebody, the odds that your informant is burnt after that are very high. Oh, you guys try not to burn them right then there. You want them to go back and work after that. Yeah. So, you know, one of the first things, when you sign up an informant, you try to gauge the veracity of their potential. So can this person get into a lot of targets and will this person get into a lot of targets?

If we picked up an informant that really only just wanted to work off a charge and they wanted no parts of that life, that was a different decision-making process. And if we had a professional informant, you know, some of these informants will work and then go dormant for years and then come back and work again. And so someone like that, you want to try at all costs to avoid burning because they're invaluable. They could come back time and time again. But the suspect will see in their discovery that that person was an informant, though, wouldn't they? Or do you guys try to keep that classified? So there were measures that we would take. Truthfully, I've never in my entire career seen a discovery packet and don't know what happened.

And I would tell all my informants that. I would say, look, I can't guarantee you anything from this, most especially that no one will find out about this. but I'm going to do everything that I can to protect your identity. So when we signed up an informant, they would sign up on paper. We had to like get a thumbprint from them. But then we would take that paper. We would input all their information into a database, destroy the paper so that there's no more paper trail. And then they were assigned a number.

So the database, when you entered someone into the system, would populate a number. And that was how we referenced them in all the reports. That was how, you know, so on our end, we did everything that we could to avoid having to disclose the identity of the informant. But truthfully, and I never heard either way. I never had an informant say, hey, so-and-so said they got my information in their discovery packet. I think the goal was to continue to cultivate as many informants without ever having to get to the discovery point. Oh, to get them to plead out and plead guilty. Either they plead or they say, you know, you keep going up the ladder and this informant says or this target says, hey, all work.

And then their target says, all work too. And eventually, I guess the case gets large enough that it doesn't really matter. You're, you know, we would turn over cases that would get too big. We would turn over to the DEA. And so that's a good question. I don't know exactly what happens in discovery. Now, these professional informants, how much do they get paid? So for us, it was kind of a good deal.

It was $100 a transaction. So, and it was kind of backwards. They could buy $50 worth of drugs, and then we would pay them $100 for the deal. So it was $100 a deal. And there were some things that could get in the way of, you know, you couldn't, it was difficult to make unlimited money doing this. one of the things that I mean is like the the Commonwealth's attorney's office the prosecutor's office wouldn't prosecute more than one distribution that occurred on the same day so the informant couldn't come to you at 9 a.m. and then again at noon and then

again at three and you catch three individual charges they would charge one instance and so because of that we wouldn't work the same informant on the same target and the same day But, you know, people with the well-established network, they were earning, and that was $100 a deal was the standard. But if you had really good information or if you were capable of making really noteworthy cases, I'm sure there was a potential that you could. How many discounts does USA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount.

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Earn a lot more than $100 a transaction. How much leeway are these informants getting? Like, are the police letting them commit acts of violence? Are they letting them, you know, do anything they want? Is there a leash on them? Are they running free to hold up the cover? What's that look like? So technically, they sign an agreement that they're going to follow all the laws.

They're not going to break the law. Our prosecutor wouldn't even let them drive to the deal if they had a suspended license. So on paper, they were supposed to walk the straight and narrow. But I learned pretty early on. I had only been in the task force for like a month, and we kind of all got activated to go on this surveillance mission, but I didn't really know what was going on.

And we were waiting and waiting for a car to get off the interstate. And finally the car gets off, and we pull him over, and he's got like a quarter ounce of heroin, which is a decent amount of heroin. And they talk to him and send him down the road on his way to jail. And the next day, one of the guys from the team says, hey, jump in. We got to go meet with an informant. So we drive out to the middle of nowhere and this guy gets in with us.

And the other detective says, hey, man, have you been using drugs? Because we took off a quarter ounce of heroin coming to. to you yesterday. And the guy's real nervous, doesn't know what to say. And finally he says, yeah, man, I've been, you know, I fell off the wagon. And so I thought, man, this guy's fired. He's not going to be allowed to work anymore. But the detective said, well, you got to stop that.

And that was it and put him out of the car and continued to work him as an informant. And it was like, you know, you're really exposing your case to a lot of scrutiny. if you know that stuff about your informants, but continue to utilize them. So for me personally, I didn't offer any leeway to my informant. I didn't want my informants to be in any way entangled in anything that was going to come back to bite us. Now, if local law enforcement's doing what you just described, I can't imagine what the feds are doing on a bigger level. I mean, you see in TV shows they work with the cartel, they do this and that. They let the cartel sell drugs.

They'll let things get carried out. When you hear about things like this on just a local small town level, it kind of makes you wonder that those things that you hear about are actually true. Yeah, I mean, Operation Fast and Furious was an entire investigation based on knowingly allowing firearms to go illegally into Mexico under the premise that we were going to somehow backtrack them using their serial numbers to figure out who the real bad guys were in Mexico. like we didn't already know, but it's documented that there was a Border Patrol agent murdered with a firearm that was lost during Operation Fast and Furious. And so, yeah, I mean, there's definitely, you know, another thing that some people might not know, the FBI is involved in a lot of investigations involving child pornography. And in some of those cases, they have seized those websites and then kept them running so that they could collect the IP addresses of everyone coming to the website. And that's, you're towing a really, a very fine line, in my opinion, when you do that. And obviously someone much higher than my pay grade said that they were okay with that.

But for me personally, that is a moral and ethical dilemma. Yeah, I've met a lot of guys in prison that were trapped on those like sex offender site just from the IP and this and that. It's wild. That's what the feds are very good at, just like entrapping. That's why they're great with those like RICO cases and casting that wide net and just rounding up everyone. And then everyone pleads out. They're not going to trial. They're just pleading out because what are you going to do?

You got that evidence stacked against you. Yeah. federal prosecutors have a really high conviction rate because they've got the entire weight of the Department of Justice to bring down on individuals whenever they choose. And you're right. I mean, they'll put, you know, an unknown amount of resources behind these operations. And you can't, you know, you can't beat City Hall. And so you're right. It's interesting.

Now, on that topic, something I've learned about, you know, in the law enforcement, criminal justice world is that prosecutors have discretion over who they can charge and not charge. How often do you see, you know, you bring up to a prosecutor a bulletproof case, like this is a great case, this person's guilty as all hell, and they decline to prosecute? A lot. A lot. And what's the reasoning behind that? Honestly, and I don't say this is like any prosecutor, I think, that being a prosecutor is a very noble existence. You know, they're way underpaid compared to the rest of their counterparts in the attorney world.

And it's a thankless job. They've got to see all the evidence, all the same bad stuff that we have to see. So do they. And so I give them all of their credit. But I think at the end of the day, it's just a combination of, you know, a lack of confidence. and their ability to maybe prosecute the case and a lack of resources. And I think when those things come together and, you know, a lack of maybe understanding of the law. And when those things come together, you wind up with an indifference that's almost can be dangerous to society.

They just show up for work, plug away at their job and go home like an accountant. And I think as a prosecutor, that can be tough. Well, you're playing with people's lives and it makes an unjust system because if two people commit the same acts and those cases both get presented by two different police officers and the prosecutor only takes one of them, when the evidence is the same, I think that's a little, that's not right. Absolutely. And another example of that is, you know, what about the real human victims that are affected, impacted by these cases? I worked a case where a woman who only spoke Spanish came into the office and reported to me through translator. It was a very long and arduous interview process, very emotional. She reported to me that her boyfriend who lived with her had a few days earlier thrown her to the ground, use his forearm to try to choke her,

you know, was trying to strangle her, and then said, told her, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you, and then started to get up and look for a machete that he kept in the bedroom before she finally knocked him out of the way and ran for her safety. And when I took that to the prosecutor, I said, hey, not for nothing, but I think that's attempted murder. I mean, he's strangled her. He's trying to arm himself while he's telling her that it's an accident. his intent to kill her.

And the answer I got was, well, you know, things start to get serious when you mentioned that M word, that murder word. And so we're going to not charge that. And it's things like that that make you feel kind of almost defeated a little. Now, did you ever have, say, corrupt cops working in the department that would tip off someone in the street that they have, there's an informant onto them or anything like that? I don't know of any instances like that. I had always heard that they sometimes had a problem with cops inadvertently making the target aware. And the example that I got was, you know, an officer pulls over a known criminal, a guy that's got a reputation for being a bad guy.

and maybe the interaction is unpleasant. And so the officer trying to get his digs in and says, yeah, well, you watch your back because the task force is on to you. You know, they're aware of you. And so I never knew of any instances like that, but I know that we were pretty diligent to keep, you know, no one else outside of our division knew really what we were up to our day-to-day. You know, we had to have ops plans and briefings.

And all the important decision makers were always involved in what we were doing. But, you know, every rank and file police officer didn't know that we were buying drugs from Tom Smith because we just had no way to control that information. And we were in smaller departments. I'm sure that in larger departments, there has got to be that just based on the law of averages. There are so many people involved. There's got to be a situation like that, but not for us. Do you think, and have you ever witnessed those who have been convicted of a crime coming out of prison being unfairly treated by law enforcement? I think so.

And I think, you know, we were talking off camera that I had a little bit of a colorful youth. And I think that was one of the advantages that I had as a police officer was that I knew guys who had gone to prison. in my personal life. Friends, kids that I grew up with, played sports with, went to prison. And I knew them beforehand. And I knew that they weren't bad people. They just made a bad decision. And so for me, I was capable of separating those two things.

But that also made it equally as frustrating when I would see, you know, a cop who's never been in trouble, who's never, quote, unquote, done the wrong thing. They were a lot less willing to give leeway to people. who had a record or who had maybe had a run in with the police before, you know, they, they didn't seem to be always as fair with them. And it really stuck out to me because it was like, you know, you're not, you're not perfect either, despite the fact that you think you are. I'm sure that there are ways that you're imperfect as well. And so don't, you know, don't just come out here and bully people because they've been in trouble before. That's not why we exist. That's not what we're here for. Yeah, I mean, I feel like not only police officers can learn a lot from that,

also probation officers and those dealing directly with those that are coming out of prison. A lot of times you have a felony on your record and you're on the disadvantage. The world's stacked against you and you're not treated like a human being in that sense. Yeah, I think, and I know that reentry is really kind of a passion of yours and like really seems to be a niche for you. And I think that we as a society could do a lot better at how we treat people upon reentry. And, you know, at the same time, I am also in support of accountability for people who are on probation or parole. Technically, you received this probation or parole in lieu of being in prison. And so I think that there needs to be accountability.

And I think that certain members of society need to be held accountable to make sure that they don't go back off the beaten, you know, off the wagon again. But overall, I think that we, you know, people are ill prepared for reentry and then they get out to the street and they can't get a job anywhere because people aren't hiring felons. I think that has improved a little over the last few years. But, man, I can remember, you know, when a felony was almost like life ruining, you know. And in a lot of ways it still is. But I guess what I'm saying is I think that we need more of these opportunities, you know, just because you made an unwise decision doesn't mean that you should never be able to have a career again. I don't think that's fair.

Yeah, I mean, and a lot of people think that it's still life ruined. and people that haven't been affected by it, you know, they think, oh, you know, it's a worst thing that could ever happen to someone. And, you know, I'm thriving with a felony on my record. And I encourage other people to do the same because they can kind of create their own path and go up against these individuals who think that your life's over. But I just think it's too broad, the probation aspect. And it puts everyone in one category when literally every case is different. Every individual is different. What works for one individual might not work for the other.

When someone serves a lengthy prison sentence, that might be enough for that individual to be on the straight and arrow. And then having probation could just deter them and put them in a bad place. And it works reverse. Someone that did a lengthy prison sentence might not be ready and needs that probation. So I think it just needs to be taken on more of a case-by-case basis. And you really, at the same time, you don't know until that person has completed their sentence and you could dive in. And the system's just not, you know, built to give that individual the one-on-one time that they should need to help them. It's really not.

And, you know, we went to a regional jail with our inmates. So if I arrested someone, they would go to the same regional jail as, you know, other surrounding counties would take guys to the same regional jail. And so I would have the opportunity sometimes. you know, I had people that I arrested and charged with a felony. Six months later, I go in there to commit someone else, and they're a trustee, and they're all smiles, hey, you know, things are going good. I'm on the up and up. And so I agree with you. You know, we as a society have become so focused on being individuals and everyone is an individual, and you can express yourself the way that you choose, and I can express myself the way that I choose.

but there's still a very uniform approach to criminal justice. And it's a complex issue. And you pull on one thread and that unravels several more. And how do you keep the truly dangerous people away from society where they won't have the opportunity to reoffend while also balancing the fact that a lot of people don't need constant supervision, like you said? It's a tough uphill battle, I think, to really rework our criminal justice system. Definitely.

So search warrants and arrest warrants, walk us through that process from the time you're writing it up to going to the judge and then going to actually execute that because as a detective, you're part of that whole process. You're physically submitting it to the judge. Yes. So it's different on a case on a, I'm sorry, a state-by-state basis. Every state has a different way that their justice system works and that people interact with their justice system. So in Virginia, we have a magistrate system. And magistrates, in some states, magistrates are also judges, and they're called a magistrate judge. And it's in the federal court system.

That's a very prevalent thing. But in Virginia, magistrates are lay people. A lot of them have law degrees, but are not practicing attorneys. But they're not a judge, but they're the first stop in the judicial system. So I would write a search warrant affidavit, and the first person that I would take it to, normally would be a magistrate and not a judge. So they're the first check and balance in the legal process. So, you know, the search warrant affidavit was on a standardized form. You would just kind of feel in the blanks about the specific case. And then there was a section where you

would write out your probable calls. And almost always mine would extend beyond the little box. So I would write up an attachment that would attach to the face of the, affidavit. And basically what you're doing is asking someone else to give you permission to search a lot of the times the most intimate places of people's lives or intimate aspects. Sometimes you're searching their body. You want to get a sample of their blood. So what you're doing is you're asking another person to review the evidence that you have.

And if they are moved the same way that you are by it and they find probable cause, that a crime has occurred or will occur and that the described target of the search warrant is in some way responsible, then they'll issue the search warrant. Otherwise, they'll deny it. They'll say, I don't think that, you know, you've established enough evidence here for me to allow you to run in this person's house in the middle of the night. You know, do a little more homework and come back. And so that was the same way for both search warrants and arrest warrants. magistrates would issue arrest warrants.

And, you know, sometimes I would put together a case. Let's say you're a target of mine and I've bought from you several times and now I'm ready to bring you in. If I want to try and leverage you as an informant or see if you'll work as well, maybe I'll go and get a few warrants for your arrest from the crimes that I already have you on video committing. and I'll go to the magistrate, present that probable calls, and she'll issue the warrants for your arrest. And then I would just show up at your house and jeans and a t-shirt with a badge, sorry, with a badge dangling from my neck, and just say, hey, man, we got a little situation, you know.

Other times I would turn them over to patrol, and they would go and do that. But so that's how the process works in Virginia. Now, a judge can also be utilized to approve a search warrant or to issue an arrest warrant. if a magistrate has already been, you know, if you've already been in front of a magistrate. And there were instances where, you know, I would go in front of a magistrate. I would present the evidence. The magistrate would deny it. And then I would call the prosecutor and they would say, we need to take this to a judge because I see the case the same way that you do.

And we're not satisfied to stop at no from a magistrate. We're going to go to the judge. So that was also not uncommon. Now, the whole thing of like arrest warrants being executed at like five. in the morning, is that just like a policy that the departments have? Or can you arrest someone at any time in the day? And the weekend aspect of it, too. No. So arrest warrants, you know, we tried to be considerate of the totality of the circumstances. So if you have a warrant for your arrest because you shoplifted at Walmart, they finally figured out who you are, we're not going to come and

pound on your mom's door at 2 a.m. to drag you off to jail. Or, you know, if it's a Sunday, evening, Sunday night, and, you know, there were times that departments would send us parking tickets. Now, people wouldn't have to go to jail for those, but we would have to fill them out and serve them on them. And they'd send them in the middle of the night at 11 o'clock at night. I'm not going to wake somebody up because they parked on the sidewalk in your town, you know, in the middle of the night. So, you know, different departments may have policies. Don't go out and serve on at nighttime. You know, sometimes sheriff's offices want their deputies.

to not go out and disturb the public on Sundays because they feel that the voting base will become upset with them. And so for the most part, though, what we were doing, you know, if we were serving something early in the morning or late at night, it was for a purpose. It was because they were known to have weapons. And that's the most likely, you know, at 4 a.m., they're most likely to be sound asleep. If it's nighttime, you know, maybe we'll wait until midnight to serve. of the search warrant because we know that he's in the city right now reing up on drugs and he's

going to be back soon and we want to catch him as soon as he's got all those drugs before he can get them out to the street. So it really, a case-by-case basis and all the facts at hand would dictate that kind of thing. What do you think the hardest thing you had to do as a law enforcement officer was? Do you mean the hardest single thing? Like what was the hardest one instance or overall, what was the hardest. It could be either one. Whatever had the most impact on you, you know, mentally, something that you might still think about to this day.

And it could ultimately been one of the reasons why you left the department too. Yeah. So I worked a suicide in 2017, I think. And that one stuck with me for quite a while. And it was, you know, it was not my first time seeing a dead body. It was not my first time working to suicide. But there were a lot of things about that situation that really, for whatever reason, resonated with me and kind of soaked into my brain.

You know, and it's, I can talk about it now. I've been to therapy. I've taken care of my mental health. and I think I have a better understanding of what happened that day. And really all it is is that, you know, this guy's whole family was there. Everyone was there. They were all so decent. At some point in time, I let the partition down in my brain and I let this stuff kind of come into my personal brain.

And I didn't stop it in just my work brain. And I took it home, you know. And it was strange the way that it happened. And, you know, there are two types of PTSD. Let me take that back. PTSD is a very complex thing. And I'm not by no means a mental health professional. But my understanding is, you know, there's PTSD from one significant incident or there's

something called cumulative PTSD, which is really just, you know, the bucket in your brain has reached enough bad memories that this one-five. final one, it's kind of what does it for you and is bothersome to you. And so that's what happened with me. It was almost a year later before I started to have any negative effects, but almost a year later to the date, same time of year, same temperature, same smells in the air, I started to get really vivid flashbacks to this incident. And at first it was only at certain times and I felt kind of in control of it, but then it started to become more frequent. And it got to the point that I would be sitting and playing with my little girl just like on autopilot.

And inside my head, I'm reliving this scene that was kind of gnarly and just the whole, just reliving the whole thing over again. And so simultaneous to that, there was kind of some turmoil going on in the department. There was some jockeying for promotion and stuff. And so I felt really isolated like I couldn't go to anyone at the department. and talk about what I was feeling. So I just internalized it. I never told my now wife.

She was my girlfriend, didn't tell her for a long time about it. I never opened up to anyone. I just internalized it all. And that just gave it the opportunity to grow and grow. And it reached the point that I was completely satisfied with the idea of dying. I didn't want to commit suicide because that was what had bothered me so much in the first place. and I didn't want to put that on someone else. But I would drive into work at night and say to myself, you know, if I have to die tonight,

I am completely okay with that. And it's when you're in a hole that deep, sometimes it can be difficult to even recognize that you're in a hole. And so it wasn't until I actually sat down with the chief. He would sit down with us yearly and kind of just check in with us. How are you doing? What's it like at home? What are your goals?

and how can I help you accomplish those? He was big on that. And so he said, how have you been? What's new? And for the first time ever, I verbalized the way I had feeling. I said,

not great. And honestly, I drive into work more often than not, hoping that I'll get killed and not go home. And it was a really somber moment. Just a few months before, I had been to a funeral

for a guy that I went to the academy with. And all I could think in that moment, was, man, I wish that I could swap him places. I would go and climb in that casket if he could come back out and be with his family. So, you know, the chief just kind of looked at me and said, do you feel okay at work? And I said, at work is the only place that I feel okay. And so he had a decision to make. You know, does he suspend me because I told him what I told him and make me feel ostracized?

Or does he allow me to stay in the only thing that's really giving me a sense of purpose right now? And that's what he did. He let me stay on the job and he checked in with me and I'm proud to say that I finally A little waste, a lot of wow. This summer, turn your shape into your statement. Dr. Matthew Nichols' butts by design is about sculpting a little waste, enhancing your curves, and creating that wow hourglass from every angle. High-deaf lipo BBL's implants.

Check out the transformation on Instagram at SoCal Plastic Surgeon or visit SoCal Plastic Surgeon. elastic surgeons.com to schedule your consultation. Confidence looks great on you. I pulled myself up out of that, but it got very ugly for me for a long time. Why did you ultimately decide to leave? To leave police work. So there was another suicide that I worked that also went really unfavorably, which is, you know, we were talking before we started filming, and I, and I,

referenced like if I had a highlight reel of all of the moments that made me want to leave police work. One of them would be, you know, another suicide that I worked. It was then that I really realized like human beings have a specific noise they make when you tell them that their loved one is dead. And I was like, man, that is a very gruesome realization. And in this second instance, you know, the wife showed up and blamed us. She said, if you all had gotten here sooner, he wouldn't have done this.

And I know that she came up later and said, I apologize for what I said. And so I know that she didn't mean that. But at the same time, it was like, man, someone's got to do this job. But I don't want it to be me anymore. So there were a few really incidents that made me make up my mind. And another one was we had a 15-year-old boy in our custody in the hospital for like a mental health evaluation. And he was nonverbal. He didn't have autism.

He had a condition that was similar. He was nonverbal, didn't like to be touched. You know, he's very particular about the way he was treated. But most notably, he had the mental capacity of a three-year-old. And so we would quite frequently be at the hospital with him while they would try to find him a facility. He could go and stay in while he would get in these episodes that he would have. And so during one of those stays, they gave us an order that we were to handcuff him to the hospital bed around the clock. Because on his last stay, he had gotten into a tussle with another deputy.

And so they said, you know, if he's in your custody, he's to be handcuffed to the bed. So I get to the hospital. It's my first morning in. I'm relieving the night shift guy. This young man is in his bed asleep. I know from previous interactions that he only communicates in sign language. So I learned a little bit of sign language. And so he woke up and he looked over at me and signed that he needed to go to the bathroom.

So I unhandcuffed him. I noticed that he had slept in a handcuff at, you know, at an awkward. position all night long. I took him to the bathroom. We walked back into the room. And he pointed at the handcuff and this look of horror came over his face. And he said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Ow, and pointed to his shoulder. So now I've got a young man who can't speak, uses his hands to communicate, complaining

of pain and obviously afraid that I'm going to handcuff him back to this hospital bed. So I said, don't worry about it, buddy. I won't handcuff you. So we hung out. I learned more sign language. We made faces at everyone else in the ER. You know, we had a blast. And I went home that night, and I got a phone call from a supervisor, and he said, you know, did you have him handcuffed to the bed?

And I said, honestly, no, I didn't. And he said, well, you know, you're supposed to have him handcuffed to the bed. And so they interviewed several of us on my shift, and we had all individually decided that it was not humane to handcuff a human being. I mean, this kid was in the hospital for more than 100 hours. Several days he spent in there. We all decided it was not humane. We weren't going to do it. We didn't know that either any of us had made that decision individually.

We were all not handcuffing him. And they wrote all of us up, disciplined all of us for making the decision that we all felt served the human that we were dealing with above and beyond just following an order. So that was your final straw. You said that that was. So I had already been working. on my real estate career at that point. I had gotten my real estate license several months before, but it takes a long time to get established in the business.

And so that was like the final moment where I said, you know what, I need to do whatever I can to ensure that I don't have to continue to show up at a job and take orders from someone else that are going to make me have to do things like this. I need to be in control of my own fate a little bit. really lean into this real estate stuff. And so it was like the final motivation that I needed to cut ties. I couldn't do it anymore.

Do you have any regrets leaving? Zero. Not for a second. I tell people a lot. You know, people ask me, because I've been out of police work now for a year, a little over a year. And people ask me still like, hey, do you miss it? Do you, you know, do you wish you could go back?

And I tell them all the same thing. The things that I miss about police work don't exist in police work anymore. I miss the camaraderie that seems to be not there. It seems like everyone's out for themselves anymore. You know, there's not as much camaraderie in the job. And I miss the time where we weren't constantly under a microscope held to a scrutiny that I think no other profession in this world is held to. And when I say that, I don't think that police should just be free of scrutiny and no one should ever question what the police do. I'm very much in favor of also being accountable to the public.

But I got into the job before everyone recorded every interaction and picked it apart from every angle. And then I watched the job turn into that. And so the things I miss about police work don't exist there anymore anyway. So no, no regrets. Yeah, I've interviewed a few former cops who all say, like, they wish there was more community policing the way there used to be. Getting out, working the streets, working the corners, interacting with the individuals, going into stores, talking to them. I know I guess they do that in, you know, New York City and whatnot, the bigger ones, but how much interaction are they actually doing? You know, obviously they're physically on the street, but are they there mentally interacting with individuals?

And that's kind of a common theme that I've been seeing. Yeah, I loved. I really had a passion for community policing. I loved the fact that, you know, people knew me. They knew that they could deal with me. You know, I started my profession. I was in the academy when I think it was Mike Brown. Is that hands up, don't shoot in Ferguson, Missouri.

Do you remember that one? Sounds familiar. It was like the first. probably since Rodney King it was like the first police interaction with the community that went viral

and Mike Brown was shot by a police officer and killed in Ferguson, Missouri and the police officer was clear the shooting was found to be justified but that was where it was the first time like I said really since Rodney King

I think since that they were burning things and destroying the protesters were coming out and really making a show And I went in the next day to class and I said, hey, guys, like, this is going to change the way that we work, our job. And they said, no, it's not. You know, it's not going to bring about any difference. And then several months later, I was field training during the Freddie Gray riots.

Do you remember Freddie Gray in Baltimore? Yeah. And so, you know, that was like the very beginning of my career. But, you know, I played football in high school. And so, and I grew up in a household where I was encouraged to have friends of all kinds, you know. And my parents both taught me like that God loves everyone equally and that I really need to treat everyone like a human being. And so when I got to the street, I almost loved more the opportunity to deal with people in minority communities, you know. And when black people would see me on the street and would look at me almost fearfully, almost.

like they didn't know if I was going to hurt them or not, I would take the extra time to talk to them and give them an interaction that they would remember forever. And that on more than one occasion paid dividends down the road for me in my career. You know, not in any groundbreaking ways, but people remembered me and would refuse to deal with anyone else but me just because I took the time to, you know, to be decent to them. So I agree with you that community policing is lacking. What advice would you give to someone that puts their time, energy, a lot of years into a career that they think is their life's purpose and their mission only to find out that that's really not for them? And, you know, as they're older, making a shift.

And it doesn't even have to be older. It could be someone getting out of high school or college or after college or whatever it is, you know, just have to. having that career and then realizing this isn't for me and I'm going to make a shift in a change, what advice would you give them? I would just say don't give up. I think the beauty of life is in these changes of direction and these surprise turns that your life takes that you never could have imagined. That's what makes life so special.

You know, I grew up never imagining that I would be a police officer because it was not what my parents wanted for me. And then I did it and it was everything that I could. have imagined and then it changed and now I'm in something new. But even now, I have found so many parallels to police work and selling real estate. You know, in both instances, I'm dealing with people most of the time at a great time of need in their lives. You know, my first real estate clients had owned a house during the financial crisis of 2008, lost their house to foreclosure. They were renting. And then their landlord said, hey, by the way,

I'm selling the house. You guys have two months to find someplace new. And so they come to me and they're panicked. And they've had this bad experience before and lost their house to a foreclosure. And I get to be the calm in that chaos. And I get to say, hey, that's fine. We're going to do this the right way. I'm going to take good care of you. And so my advice would be, don't give up. If you're in a profession that you thought was everything that you could ever imagine and now you're finding that it's not for you, there's something else out there. And just every day, you know, don't lay on the ground. Just get up and move a little bit and don't ever lay still. Just keep plugging away at finding what that next step's going to be.

You know, it's interesting. You just said that because the same reason why you went into policing and wanting to help people and that what interested you about police work, you ended up finding in a whole different career. So it goes back to the key element that, you know, that maybe that was your purpose. It was just misguided. It was it was misdirected. And you found it in something else in your channeling the same energy that you put into police work just into this, which is completely different, but it's the same outcome. Right. And, you know, I think as I listened to you say that, I would be honored if at my funeral, someone said, who was Paul Byrne?

You know, I wish that they wouldn't say, well, he used to be a cop or he was a realtor or whatever I might be moving forward. But if they could just say he was a helper, you know, and everything that he did, he was helping other people. I think that is my purpose, is to help people. And I didn't see it that way from the beginning. I honestly, I had a friend who had been a police officer. He started selling real estate and he was killing.

it and he got tired of the job kind of like I was. And so I saw it as a means to an end. But it wasn't until I really started being involved with these people and hearing their life stories and finding, you know, running down ways that I could help this person and leaving no stone unturned and gathering all the evidence that I need. And, you know, all of these things are just like police work. But now it's 100% helping people. It's no more showing up. at someone's house and telling them that their loved one has passed away or, you know, having to fight someone, roll around on the ground or, you know, all of those things that I used to have to do, now I can just help people all the time. So it's been cool. Yeah, I mean, I compare it to,

I spent so many years in the nightclub business promoting, building that brand, and I thought it all went to waste, you know, that I lived that whole life, this first act of my life for nothing only to find out years later that that had a purpose. And what I did then, I'm applying every day now just in a different way but getting the same outcome. Yeah. And now, you know, all the work that you put in is to build your own brand. And it's not, you're not working for someone else. And that's something that I've found I love about real estate is that, you know,

I showed up every day and gave 100% when I was in police work, no matter what. And the outcome wasn't always the way that I thought it should have been or the way that I wanted it to be. But it's really one of those things where your situation and mine, both, everything that we do is pouring back into our own business and building our own brand. And everything that we do is laying the foundation for what we're going to do next. And it's really special to be in charge of something like that. Definitely. Well, Paul, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was an absolute pleasure meeting you, connecting with you.

thank you very much for reaching out and taking the time to be here. Yeah, man. Thank you for having me. It's been a blast. Yep, and safe travels back to Virginia. Thank you.