Locked In with Ian Bick - Violent Crimes, Narcotics & Getting Shot in the Breonna Taylor Raid | John Mattingly

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Retired police Sgt. John Mattingly sits down to share the unfiltered truth about his decades in law enforcement. From working narcotics and violent crimes to running postage interdiction, Mattingly has seen it all — and some of those cases still haunt him to this day. In this powerful interview, he opens up about his early years as a police officer, the dangers of working narcotics cases, and the emotional weight of investigating violent crimes. He also talks about the unique world of postage interdiction and the major arrests it led to. But the case that changed everything was the Breonna Taylor raid, where Mattingly was shot and nearly killed. He discusses how that night ended his career, how the media shaped the public narrative, and what he says really happened during the raid. This is a raw, honest conversation about the realities of police work, the trauma that comes with it, the impact of media coverage, and what life is like after walking away from the badge. #JohnMattingly #BreonnaTaylorCase #LawEnforcementStories #PoliceInterview #TrueCrimePodcast #MediaTruth #NarcoticsUnit #LockedInPodcast Thank you to BLUECHEW for sponsoring this episode: Visit https://bluechew.com/ and use promo code LOCKEDIN at checkout to get your first month of BlueChew FREE & pay five bucks for shipping. Connect with John Mattingly: https://johnmattingly.com/ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Use code LOCKEDIN for 20% OFF Wooooo Energy Buy Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00 Intro & Most Memorable Cases 02:00 Meet John Mattingly: Kentucky Law Enforcement Career 05:00 Early Life, Family, and Upbringing 11:00 Becoming a Cop: Motivations and Education 18:00 Changing Law Enforcement Environment & Training 27:00 Media Portrayal of Police & Pop Culture 31:00 Policing Realities: First Calls and Trauma 36:00 Mental Health in Law Enforcement 40:00 Violent Crimes: Domestic Abuse and Case Handling 43:00 Rising Through the Ranks: Narcotics and Special Units 48:00 Youth, Gangs, and Street Crime 55:00 Frustrations with the Justice System 01:00:00 Most Haunting Cases: Loss and Pain 01:05:00 Coping with Trauma and Systemic Justice Issues 01:11:00 Major Case Narcotics & Parcel Interdiction 01:17:00 Parcel Operations: Drugs and Scams in the Mail 01:23:00 The Breonna Taylor Raid: Lead-Up and Details 01:30:00 Aftermath: Riots, Threats, and Media Narrative 01:37:00 Court Cases and Clearing the Record 01:43:00 Reflection, Lessons Learned & Life After Policing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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20% off all IQ bar products, plus free shipping. That's IQBAR.com promo code Brain IQ. IQ bar.com code Brain IQ. What's one case you'll never forget about when you were working in violent crimes? Call comes out that says there's been a small kid, three-year-old shot in the head. When you encounter these types of situations, how do you go on to the next one? And he's shaking me. He made of my kids alive and I'd say, I'm sorry.

Tell us about the incident that happens towards the end of your career. He fired the gun and it hit in my upper thigh. I went through my femoral artery. I was able to get some shots back, and then I went behind the doorframe. Is there anything you wish you did differently over the course of your career? Retired Kentucky police sergeant John Mattingley spent decades in law enforcement from narcotics to violent crimes and postage interdiction. But one night changed everything. During the Brianna Taylor raid, Mattingley was shot.

His career was cut short and a national firestorm began. In this interview, he shares the cases that still haunt him, what really happened during the raid, and how the media shaped the story that went worldwide. Also, guys, real quick, I need to apologize in advance. I accidentally lost John's angle after filming this episode. I thought I saved it to my computer, and apparently I didn't, so that's why I used a picture from his thumbnail that we took in studio in place of where he would actually be speaking in the video. Again, so sorry about that, but it is such a powerful interview. I didn't want to scrap it and re-record it. So, hope you guys enjoy it.

John, welcome to Locked in. Thanks so much for coming out here today. Appreciate you having me, Ian. You're from Louisiana? Louisville. Louisville. Oh, Kentucky. Oh, I got my two L's mixed up.

I think definitely our first law enforcement officer from Kentucky. Okay. We have a ton of guests, former addicts and inmates from Kentucky, and I've been in Kentucky a few times, too. Oh, that's cool. Doing, what's, I forgot the name of the town. Oh, Somersville? Yeah, was Somerset?

Somerset, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a couple rehab facilities there that we go in and speak in and do interviews. Oh, that's cool. Lake Cumberland Recovery. Yeah. Yeah, so we work with those guys. But yeah, thank you so much for coming today. I appreciate you having me.

I want you to plug in your book at the top of this episode and we'll have the link in the description of the bio. So it's 12 seconds in the dark. I wrote this after the Brianna-Taylor incident, obviously, because there was so much misinformation out there and so many things that my city and department just wouldn't stand up for and say, hey, that's not right. It's not correct. And I was telling your dad before this. I was like, man, I was not, I was apolitical before this, right? I didn't watch the news. I didn't care about it.

I didn't care about politics. But then once you're writing the mixed up mix of it and you see how many lies come out from politicians from the news, you're just blown away. Because our whole life we were taught, you know, the news is going to tell you the truth. You know, I remember the old Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw and all those guys. And I would see my dad watch it and be like, okay, well, that happened today. Cool. And I'm going about my life. was a kid. So I just assumed everything was right that they would tell you. I didn't realize

it was so politicized on both sides. And when this happened, both sides got it wrong. And I'm sitting there going, are you kidding me? You know, there's no way this is reality. There's no way this is life. But so it kind of encouraged me to start speaking up a little bit and trying to get the truth out. Because through this process, I've had dozens and dozens of guys and gals reach out to me who have been in my position and have zero voice. And that was the problem. Because I, I'm nobody, right? I'm just a little cop from Kentucky that nobody knew about or cared about until this happened. And I'll sound this villain somehow. And so I was like, man, people have to have a voice. So because a lot of these big incidents like Michael Brown in 2014 or other incidents, once that cop gets, you know, assaulted online, basically, they disappear. And rightfully so. You know, they're like, man, I didn't sign up for this. I'm just trying to serve my community and go home to my family at the end of the night. So when this happened, I was like, you know what, I'm not going to be the guy that just crawls under a rock and goes away because the truth's got to get out somehow.

Did you grow up in Kentucky? I did. Louisville my whole life. Wow. Never left. No. I left after this incident. Had to, you know, because we had a hit taken out on us and a bunch of death threats.

So we had to move. Okay. What was it like growing up in Louisville? I loved it. You know, it's all ever new. We're a big college state. We have no professional sports in Kentucky. So you're either a Louisville fan or a Kentucky fan.

I was a Louisville fan, obviously, because I grew up in Louisville, but I had friends that were Kentucky fans. But it was, man, just, it's about a million people in the metro area. So not a big city, but not small either. You know, anything you want is available to you, but you could also just kind of relax. And, but, you know, things have changed the last few years, and it's gotten a little more violent. I think in from 2020 to 2023, where I was like, 175 homicides a year, 800 shootings. So it's gotten a little more unpleasant place to live, but it's still a beautiful state, beautiful city. You know, we have the Kentucky Derby every year,

and I had to work it for 20 years. So I didn't appreciate as much as people coming in from out of town, but it's a pretty awesome city. That must have been interesting to work it. Oh, it was, man. You got to meet a lot of people, too, you know. I remember one time I was on an elevator, and who's the guy that owns Virgin Mobile, the billionaire? Oh, Richard Branson. Yeah. So I'm on an elevator, and he gets on. And he looks like, like a bum, and he had like this raggedy t-shirt and jean. Everybody at the derby dresses to the teas, right? The women have their big hats. The guys have a lot of colorful suits on and stuff. And he gets on and I look over and like, holy crap, it's Richard Branson. And he was like,

hey, how you doing, young man? I was like, well, good. I mean, he was so polite and so nice. But, yeah, you could just get to interact with people that you would never, ever see, you know, outside of that from Kentucky. I wonder if that's comparable to like a copson, say, like New York City working, you know, New Year's Eve or big events. It's your version of that. just in a different state. Yeah, and there's plenty of guys I knew that did escorts for celebrities when they would come in town and they would tell stories about it. And it was pretty cool. I mean, Jordan would come.

I mean, whoever you can think of would come to the Derby. What was your upbringing like? Very, very strict. My dad was a pastor. Even though we grew up in the inner city, super poor. Our family was poor. I remember, man, I remember one of our vehicles was an old Ford gold Pinto station wagon that had a rusted out floor and you could see the ground when you're driving. and you could smell the exhaust.

Probably contributed my brain damage. But yeah, we were poor. We grew up in the inner city. But my dad started, well, he came into a church there the month before I was born in 1972. In December of 72, I was born in January of 73. And it was an inner city church in the black area, had like 60 people in it. And over the course of time, he grew that to over 1,500 a week that would come to church.

And we would do outreach to the inner city. We do bus routes, mainly in the black community and bring them in. And that was just his passion because he was, we had people from, I think it was like 40 zip codes that would come in from all over, not just that area. And I remember when I was growing up, people would encourage him. They're like, man, you've got to get out of the inner city if you want to grow this church even bigger. And he was like, that's not my calling. My calling is to help the people like me. And so it was definitely a something that put him.

my brain and my heart to help people. And so I just, I did it, but in a different, different manner. You know, I became a police officer. What about your mom? She would stay at home most of the time. She would help at the church. They had a nursery or a daycare and different things that she would, she was constantly working, but not for a paycheck. You know, she would just volunteer and stay busy. But, man, my parents, they've been married 60 years. So just great examples. And the thing that that made me so impressed about my parents is who you saw in public is who you saw at home. You know, because growing up in a church environment, you'd see people act one way at church, and then they would go somewhere else and they were totally different, you know, until Sunday again or Wednesday night or whatever the church deal was.

But that's one thing that I saw in him that was like, man, that guy's got character and integrity that I'm not seeing in other people. And, you know, that's what turns a lot of people off to church. You know, people go church Sunday and they act one way and then they see them all during the week acting a different way. And they're like, I don't want anything to do with that. You know, they're hypocrites. But that's one thing I can say to this day, he has not changed. He's 82 years old. And I'm like, my goodness, that's a life of dedication right there.

How integral do you think a two-parent household was to the values that you would carry through the police department in your career? I think it was huge. I think just knowing that that family structure is so important. having that because what I dealt with most of the time in the inner city, a lot of the problem people were people who didn't have a dad in the household. It's just the way it was. And I think it's integral. I think it's something that if we could get back to that, I think it would be, it would change society.

Because right now you look at society and you go, man, is there any hope? You know, have we opened Pandora's box to the point that we're not getting back to normalcy? So I think it's huge. Yeah, especially. with the events that I've unfolded in the last couple weeks. Oh, my goodness, man, it's crazy, isn't it? I mean, you saw the bus thing and was it, North Carolina, and then the Charlie Kirk incident,

and you're like, what is wrong with people? You know, just senseless. And then just the publicizing of it, too. Yeah. I mean, these things, I'm sure, happened in the past as well, but it would not be as publicized and being able to see it as much as you can now. Yeah, well, like, you know,

I grew up without cell phones and Internet and all that, and then when it came into play, it just totally changed society. There's good to it, but there's also evil to it or horribleness to it as far as it's great to be able to have instant access to all the information, but at the same time you look at it and go, man, is that a good thing? Because sometimes being ignorant to things that are going on around you or somewhere else that has no effect on your life that now we take such interest in

and we push so hard for something that will never affect us that I think it's really changed. as far as, you know, the hate, because there's so much hate out there now. But I was also talking to your dad, there's a flip side of that, too. If you go online, you think there's a huge black, white divide, right? And, but if you go in the store, I was here last night, went to B-dubs and ate and went to a store, and I'm like, there's black, there's white, there's Hispanic. We're talking to each other. We're, you know, kind and gentle.

And then you go online and you look and you're like, everybody hates each other, I thought. But when you're living real life, that's not necessarily the case. So I think a lot of that is stirred up by social media, these influencers that, you know, want to get some more clicks and more dollars in their pocket. And they're doing that at the cost of you and I. Did you have siblings? I did. I got three older sisters. Oh, all sisters?

Yeah, I was a baby boy. Wow. Yeah, so I could do no wrong. What did they end up doing for their careers? One's a nurse. One is a school principal, or she actually started a school out in California. And the other is she works for Citibank, I believe. So in a way, they all went into careers that essentially help people. Yeah. Do you think that was all from your dad?

I think so. I think a lot of us are products of our parents. You know, however we're raised, that kind of gives your influence in life, you know, the way you treat people, the way you think. A lot of that comes from our parents. How would you have described yourself in high school? It sounds cocky, but I'm popular. You know, I play basketball, even though it was a small school. I don't want to act like I was some big, you know, athlete star, but captain the ball team, got along with everybody, just, but I didn't get in trouble. I really, I didn't drink until I was 30, never even tasted alcohol. Really? Yeah. Was that because of your dad, too?

Yeah, absolutely. He instilled that in all day. And I still don't really drink. Once in a while, I'll have a drink, but it's like, eh, just doesn't do anything for me. I'm bizarre. Interesting. A lot of guests are, I mean, a lot of our listeners are always interested in the correlation between law enforcement that was bullied in high school and then become police officer.

Do you think that's a true statement? I think there's a little bit of truth to it. Not a lot. Because you've got a lot of type A guys in law enforcement. You got a lot of guys from the military. There's some truth to it. You can tell the guys that have that complex, that have that, you know, we talk about little man syndrome on some people. The Napoleon syndrome.

That's also a syndrome from guys who maybe didn't fit in. And now they've got this little bit of authority and they want to push it on people. But it's not the majority. Yeah, I mean, we look at a guy like Kenny. He was bullied and picked down in high school, and he didn't become that officer. No, he's super nice. He's so just chill and, you know, he's what you want. Yeah, and then there'll be people in the comments that just stir up painting.

Oh, typical. He became a cop because he was bullied. It's so frustrating. No. The problem of cops is, in my opinion, you've got guys who went to college, maybe some of them. A lot of them went, it's weird. There's a lot of Catholics in policing. I don't know why.

But it seemed, that's what I've noticed. And, you know, so they go to their private school, then they go to college, and maybe they're in a fraternity. And then at 22, 23 years old, they join a police department. And all of a sudden, they're thrown into this environment that they've never been in in their life. You know, they grew up in, not wealth, but, you know, mid-suburb. And then you've got to go to the ghetto and work. And it's like culture shop. It really is.

I was fortunate because I grew up in it. So I knew how to talk to people. I understood the complexities of it. And even with the church, again, we went in the black community every single week, you know, to reach out, we knock on doors. And looking back, I'm like, man, we went to dangerous communities as 14, 15-year-old white kids knocking on doors, trying to get people to come to church. And but it did a couple things for me. It taught me how to talk to people. And it taught me a lot of sympathy, you know, because you saw people who were in dire need and you're like, okay, they need help.

But yeah, you got these guys that go in and now all of a sudden they're talking to people that they've never talked to in their entire. life. They don't know how to talk to them. So that interpersonal communication is not taught in police academies. And I think it's a problem because everything police do is communication. Every single contact, every stop, every call for service is nothing but me talking to you as an individual. And if that stuff isn't instilled in you, if you don't already have it, some people have it naturally, but if you don't have it and it's not taught you how to do it, man, people just, they struggle with it. Did you go to college? I did.

I went to four different colleges. But I finally got my degree. I just wasn't satisfied with, I didn't know what I was going to do. I always wanted to be a cop, but I was married early. I got married when I was 19. Still together to this day? No, no. No, she didn't want me being a cop.

She was like, oh, no, there's always a divorce rate, all that stuff. So finally when I was 27, I was like, man, this is what I've always wanted to do. I'm not going to waste my life. So I did it. And at 29 or 30, we ended up getting divorced. Did you end up going to school for criminal justice at all? No, not at all. So none of your...

No, my degree is actual in pastoral studies. What's pastoral? Preacher. Yeah. Pastor. Okay, got you. I've never heard of that before. Yeah, so I went to University of Louisville and Jefferson Community College, another place,

and then I ended up at Shawnee Baptist College where I got my degree from. How did your dad feel about you becoming a cop? He was good with it, you know, because I asked him beforehand. You know, I had enough respect for him to go, hey, because as a kid, you know, you've got your desire But then if you've got a good parent, you're like, man, I want to be like my dad. I want to be like my dad because I saw what he did. And I was like, I think I, you know, if I'm not going to be a cop, I want to do that because I just admired him so much. But it just wasn't for me.

It wasn't my calling. It wasn't what I was supposed to do. And even in my high school yearbook, you know, you write what you want to be when you grow up. Mine was to be a police officer. So that was, it was either police officer or military is the thing I always wanted to do. again, I think it's that type A manly, if you want to call it, thing that I just wanted to be out there hands-on doing stuff. And so that's what I ended up doing. Why do you think you didn't go the military route?

Because I was dating my future wife. That derailed. Yeah, because when I was a senior in high school is when the Gulf War kicked off. It only lasted about three months or something. It was pretty short. And that's when Lee Greenwood was out and proud to be in America and all that stuff. And I was like, I'm going to military. I'm going military.

And, you know, she begged me, oh, please. don't, you know, and I was in love. So, and that changes a lot of what we do. It blinds you a lot. Now, if your dad didn't approve of you becoming a police officer, would you still have done it, or do you think you would have won that different path? I don't think, number one, he would have ever said, especially at 27, you know, this, you don't need to do that. Number one, he supports police officers because he's all about, you know, a peaceful society. That's what he wants. But I think had he said, you know, man, I don't think it's good. I don't know. I don't know, because I was so determined at that point that I had felt like I'd wasted six previous years because you can get on when you're 21, which I'm glad I didn't.

I think that's too young personally. I think at 21 guys are still, you know, your brain doesn't finish developing to 25. And I think you're putting a lot of power and a lot of decision making on somebody whose brain hadn't developed. And there's some guys that are great with it. But I've also seen guys that that's where that power hunger comes from. When you're 21, you can tell a 50-year-old man what to do, and he's got to listen to you or else you're going to lock him up. You know, that's a lot of authority. It's a lot of power that you've got to be careful with.

Are you seeing more younger cops now or kind of more ones starting at 27 or 28? It's still a mix. You know, your guys that come out of the military are obviously a little bit older, but it's still a mix. I mean, good luck getting good cops now, right? I mean, everybody's down. Our department included. So I think they said L.A. or was it New York or L.A.? It's 8,000 short, you know, from what they're supposed to be. That's a lot of people in a community that aren't there that could be helping. But again, when you go through the process and you started seeing in 2014 this attack on law enforcement from the political side and from DAs and judges and stuff. And you've got to make split second decisions that somebody else can review and look at for six months. months and go, oh, you should have done this different. Oh, you should have done that different.

Well, good luck in that moment being able to make a perfect decision. And I'm not talking about the criminal side of it. You know, any guy that commits a criminal act during under the guys of a badge, screw them. They get what they deserve. But the guys who have to make these really quick, you know, a guy's pulling a gun out, you don't know if he's pointing it, you are not, and you take action. And then you're scrutinized or you're prosecuted and you have to do prison time. You see your buddy go to prison for something that everybody else would have done. or the same way you were trained to do, people are looking at it and going, man, is that worth, you know, 60 grand a year, 70 grand a year to potentially be in prison for something I was trained to do, equipped to do, told to do, and I did it. And then, you know, now because it didn't go exactly like the public wants or community thought it should have gone.

Now I'm criticized and my family's put on front street. So a lot of guys have stepped out. You've lost so much good, um, seasoned guys who should be in. on the job today because of that. And it's being reviewed by people I've never once been in the field at all. Yeah, half of them don't even on guns. They're against them. And so you're already the enemy as they're going in thinking you're the bad guy. You know, you talked about people in the comments saying things and you're like, these are the people that are going on these police review boards that can't stand cops and they think they're going to go in and make a difference, which is fine. If we aren't growing,

if we aren't evolving in the police department, then we're screwed. You know, times change, people change, ways we do things change. And if we don't do that with it, then we should get scrutinized. Guys, enter the room downstairs CEO first. Blue Chew isn't just a tablet. It's like giving your CEO a corner office, a bonus, and an all-hands meeting. Stronger, harder, longer-lasting. Like, it just closed the biggest deal of its life.

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get your first month of Blue Chew free. Just use promo code locked in at checkout and pay only five bucks for shipping. That's it. Join Blue Chew's mission to upgrade humanity one thrust at a time. Head to Blu.com for details and safety info. And big thanks to Bluchu for sponsoring the podcast. I've noticed I think in Connecticut too, there's some states where there will be like a police commissioner who has never actually been a police officer.

That blows my mind. It's actually like appointed or they ran for a like. and I don't get that at all. It shouldn't be that way. You know, it'd be no different than, you know, let me go run IBM, even though I know nothing about computers. You know, why would you have that guy in a position? Because if you're coming to him with decision making that he knows nothing about,

but he's like a good people person, well, okay, great, you're a people person. Be the PR director, not, not, you know, the guy running the ship. Yeah, and I've learned that also from some of the, like, the federal agents I've been talking to saying that there would be head fielding. agents, the agents in charge that were just, it was all politics, they moved up the chain of command, but never served in a different country, never been to Mexico or anything. And they're running the DEA in, say, California. Yeah, well, that's no different than local policing, too. The majority of your guys at the top, not all of them. There's some good guys that were boots on the

ground that, you know, understood policing that were good cops that climb ranks. the unfortunate part is the guys that are the good cops that want to be police, they don't want to take promotional exams because this is what they enjoy doing. This is, this was their calling, you know, whether they're a homicide detective or narcotics or whatever. They might get promoted to sergeant and stay in those fields. But a lot of times guys like me looked at it and went, man, I don't want to get promoted past sergeant because then it becomes a political game and I have no desire to be political in policing. I think it's, I think it's a bad idea. And unfortunately, most of your chiefs aren't elected. They serve at the behest of the mayor.

And depending on what culture that mayor is, whether it be far right, far left, in the middle, that's getting pushed down through the police department and through decision making. And you look at that and you're like, this shouldn't be this. You know, let's just look at the law, the black and white of the law and enforce that and leave politics out of it. But unfortunately, it's not that way. When you became a police officer, how hard was it to actually get into the force? It wasn't hard for me. You know, if you got a little intelligence to you and you can physically do it, I got on the first time. I've known guys that, great guys, that it took six, seven times to get on.

But again, that was back then when you would have 2,000 applicants for 40 spots. Now you might have 60 applicants for 40 spots. So it's a lot easier now. And unfortunately, because of that, the talent pool, you know, it would be like going to an NFL roster and going, all right, does anybody want to play? Well, we got these guys that played juco ball. Okay, well, you know, we got to fill the spot. Let's put them in there.

And so that has hurt policing. It's going to hurt policing for a long time. It's going to take a while to get back. You're starting to see a new generation of guys who are wanting to step up. Same with the military. Look how down they were for a while. You know, they couldn't, the recruiting was way down. And I think it was the same thing.

There's so much politics put in it that people were like, Yeah, that's not military. That's not policing. That's not whatever the case may be. So guys that have that drive and that desire to do a certain thing don't want to mess with the political side of it. They just don't. Yeah, I see even in Danbury, there's like billboards and there's ads being ran for looking for police officers and they put the pay packages. The bonuses now? Yeah. Even correctional officers too in the federal system. Yeah. It's definitely, I think it's increased like 30 or 40 grand since 20. increased a ton since I left.

I'm kicking myself for leaving because these guys are making twice what I was making when I was on. Yeah, I had West Tabor on. He was a DEA agent, and he said that they want people to come back, and it's like double the salary. Wow. If you unretire to come back. Yeah. That's so crazy. That would be tempting.

I know, right? Yeah. Do you think that because there's less of a pool of people wanting to become cops now that they're firing officers less or more hesitant to fire? No. I haven't seen any way. I think that hasn't changed a bit. I think that's still kept. And again, the guys that deserve to get fired, send them on their way.

You know, there's plenty of guys that don't need to be cops that I've seen. But the ones that, again, getting these little trick bags over political issues that have nothing to do with policing or have very little. That shouldn't be the impact, but then the pressure becomes the impact and then they get let go for those type things. I've seen that. Now, I know you said they lack kind of like communication skills in the academy. training officers. Was there anything else that you felt that they should have focused more on? Probably more defensive tactic stuff. And I don't mean, you know, they've eliminated so many things. Like they called a choke code. It wasn't a chokehold. It was a vascular restraint, which was very effective.

And I took jiu-jitsu. So it's not like that's not going to kill you unless you hold it forever. And guys didn't do that. If you got a guy twice my size that, because you look at the Rodney King thing, throwing batonies. lines looks horrible. You know, you're smacking somebody with a stick 10 times that, and those sticks just didn't do much. They really didn't, unless you're hitting in the head, which is lethal force and you can't do, um, hitting somebody in the thigh with a stick, it just doesn't hurt that much, especially when you're amped up or you're on drugs or, you know, your adrenaline's flowing. You don't feel a lot. Like if you've ever been in a fight, you know during the middle of that fight, you're not feeling a whole lot. Now, afterwards, you feel the results the next day or two,

but during the middle of that fight, you're so amped up, you're not feeling a lot of the blows and stuff. And you don't even realize you're cut. Some guys don't, realize they get shot I mean because that adrenaline is just dumping so hard so I think I think certain techniques that a lot of them have gone to the the Gracie stuff the Gracie jujitsu stuff that helps guys control people without hurting them more I think that's a I think that's an important thing how long to take you to actually put on the uniform the badge from the first day of training we had six months in the six months of training and then six

months in the field with the training officer, and then we could go solo. So six months is when you actually get pinned the badge and you're on the street, but you still have a trainer with you for another six months. So it's a year process to be on your own on the street making calls. From what you've seen from other officers in different states, is that pretty universal? No, it's really weird, man. So in Kentucky anyway, you've got a year before you have to go through the academy. So they can take a guy who has zero experience, pin a badge on them, give them a gun, send them on the street. And as long as they finish that training within that first year, they're good.

And I don't like that. I think the academy first, so it gives you all your little basics. Now, a lot of that stuff you learn in the academy is BS, and you throw it out the window because it's just stuff they have to teach. But it's not real applicable to the street. But I think you still have to have that base first. You have to have that discipline, that cognitive awareness of all the things that are involved in policing.

Then you go and get your physical training with someone. But yeah, there's departments that suit them up, send them out. And these guys are learning in real time, which isn't the best, in my opinion. I really enjoy the show The Rookie because it always has, like, the FTO officers, the field training officers doing the ride-alongs. And there's a new show, too, called, I think, 9-1-1 or The Rookie or something, that was good to showing just the process of after they go through the academy and doing those first. six months on the job. I don't watch me, please shows.

Because I'm watching it up. That's so stupid. That never happens. And I think that's been a, if you look at meat, not media, movies and TV shows over the last 20 years,

like it used to be cops for heroes in TV shows, right? Now, any movie that's involved in a cop, there's a dirty cop, every single one. So it's all this little psychological seed planning in people that cops are dirty.

Or you see like bad boys or whatever. Man, these guys are shooting people in the next day. They're in the field and they're shooting somebody else. And you're like, man, that is so unrealistic. I mean, you get involved in a little incident and you're on paid suspension

until they figure out the investigation and what's going on. You might be off six months for a clean shoot that didn't even involve a death. But it takes a long time for them to review those processes and go through it and justify it or, you know, or charge you with it. And so it's not TV's entertaining, right? And I like TV, you know, movies. But at the same time, I look at it and I'm just like, oh, man, all that. this propaganda that goes into it, it's just not realistic.

Yeah, I didn't even think about that until you just brought it up, that every cop show out there right now, there's always one dirty. Dirty cop. So it's planting that seed. Cops are dirty, cops are dirty. And what do you see in the younger generation, all these protests and stuff? Oh, they're all dirty cops. They're all on the take.

They're all corrupt. They're all this and racist and all that. And you're going, oh, my gosh, if I'm so racist, why in the heck would I leave my home and go to a area of town that I don't live in? and try to save lives, risk my life to save somebody that hates me. If that's the term of racism, then we're pretty backwards in this country. Yeah, I mean, and you look at what an audience, just the media eats up in general, you stick a good cop and a dirty cop.

The dirty cop will get more views because people are just fascinated in that in some regard, but the good cop is the actual good person. Yeah. It's boring, right? Yeah. And being good is boring. Yeah. It's not fun. But yeah, we all like that sensationalism and that, I mean, again, why social media is so popular?

You put something about God or faith and you get, you know, 50 clicks. You put something that's got some drama in it. The girl getting killed on the train or something. And boom, it blows up because everybody wants to see that sensationalism. So when you finally become a cop, was it what you expected? Yes and no. I had a blast, man, especially my first couple years on Late Watch. It was like a cop's episode every night, chasing cars, fighting people.

people, you know, it was legit. But the letdown was I thought all guys were going to be like me. And I don't mean me is like, again, like I'm not this tough guy, right? But what you envision yourself as military guys and as police officers are these in shape, one of, you know, hard nose, going after stuff. And you get on, you're like, man, that dude's over picking his nose. That guy's a coward. You know, all these things that you just didn't envision. So there were. were some disappointments when I went in, but overall, you know, it's, again, it's, we're all tribal, right? So you kind of find your group of guys more like you. And, and once I got in that group, it was, it was fun. What was your first, like, in the action moment on the job?

Well, my first two days were super busy. My very first run out of roll call, very first thing as a cop was an 80-year-old woman dead on her floor, naked. She'd fallen out of bed, and she had like this little nighty on, but it had fallen all the way up. And so a dead body was my very first run. Later that day, we get a call on the projects of a guy shot, and we pull up, you know, we go up to clear the apartment, and there's a guy in a chair similar to this. It was a recliner, though, and he's laying back, and he's got that death gurgle going. He'd been shot in the head. You could smell the iron from the blood and the gunpowder, so it filled the air. It's the first time I'd smelled those two things together. And he's back there doing this death gurgle. He's gone, but his body's still

reacting. It's like this you can hear him choking on the blood, but he's gone. You know, his brains are all over the wall. So my first few days were just crazy like that. There were several incidents that were... I'm Hannah. I've lost 75 pounds in 20 months with GLP-1s, plus diet and exercise.

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Visit MyFICO.com or download the MyFICO app to get started today. Like, okay, we're here. It's time to go. How hard is it to adjust to seeing that and just feeling those, you know, senses when you witness something like that? I don't want to sound psycho, but it was like, okay, this is what I wanted to do. I mean, this is why I'm here. This is. is what I thought it would be. So that part of me was like, you know, some guys can compartmentalize better than others because mental health is a big thing. And especially when I first came on back then, nobody talked about mental health.

That was a no-no. If you talked about it, you were a pussy. I mean, oh, that affected you? What's wrong with you? You know, that dead body bothered you? What's wrong with you? But we're humans, you know, and when you stick so much stuff in that box to compartmentalize eventually it gets so full that it's got to come out some way.

And that's why there's a huge drinking problem with cops. That's why there's spousal abuse. That's why there's so many things because you see all this stuff at work and you deal with all this stuff and you go home. And you walk in and your wife's had a crappy day with the kids all day. And the arguments start and then boom, somebody explodes. Or I'm going to forget about this. I'm just going to drink or some guys do drugs or, you know, whatever the case may be, they gamble. There's all these outlets that are not healthy.

that guys don't know how to deal with these issues, and that's the route they go. Do you think those thoughts on mental health have changed? Oh, huge. Yeah, especially in the last three or four years. It has become a major part of policing. Why do you think that's changed? I think 2020 did it. I think so many guys, again, they saw the mass exodus of people that just couldn't take it or said,

screw this, I'm done with it. But the suicide rate in police officers has gone up tremendously. I think last year there was double the amount of suicides as there was. attacks and deaths in law enforcement. And so, you know, the COVID stats skewed that up in 2020, 2020, 2021, where they attributed those to, okay, well, they got COVID on the job. So that counted in line of duty death. But if you take away the car accidents and that, I'm talking about the assaults, the stabbings, the shootings, suicides doubled that. Were all new officers put on the night shift, the midnight shift? No, back in the day,

it was more so that way because I remember when I came on, man, there were guys with 30 and 40 years. on day work still, patrolmen. And you'd walk in, they'd still have their red noses from their drinking the night before. And I remember my first couple, first couple road calls I went in, these old guys are sitting around the table and they're all old and crusty and mean. And they're what you thought of policing in the 70s and 80s, right? These are those guys, the big mustache, all that stuff. And you walk in, they're like, boy, you don't know what you're getting into.

Policing ain't what it used to be. And I was like, what are you talking about, man? I would do this for free, you know, because it was so fun. all the stuff that you're allowed to do now that you couldn't do before and all the adrenaline. And then by the time I retired, I remember thinking, oh, these poor guys don't know what they're getting into. It used to be so great. But they don't know any different. So to them, it's still great, right?

But again, technology changes, time changes, the looking at police and analyzing it and scrutinizing it has changed. So, but yeah, it was, I enjoyed it. How hard is it to adjust to working nights and being able to function throughout the night? like that. Very hard. I remember, no, my first few years I was younger, again, 27, but I already had three small kids. They were three and under, three, two, and one, or not even one. And it was hard as far as getting any sleep. But when you're at work, at least until 4 a.m., it was great because, again, it was go, go, go, go, go. After four, that witching hour, man, things slowed down and you're doing your best to stay awake. Sometimes you pull up next to a partner, and you're like, dude, I got to close my eyes for a few minutes.

and, you know, somebody's listened to the radio and you've got to take a catnap. But after about my third year on Late Watch, my body was done. And they say if you do your 20 years on Late Watch, it takes 10 years off your life. And that's anybody. I don't care if you're working at a factory or what it is. Late Watch, those hours and that change of sleep with your, you know, circadian rhythm and all that stuff, they say it shortened your life. So after five years, I got off of Late Watch because I was like my body can't do this anymore.

What do you think was the most common call that happened on Late, late watch? Man, probably domestics as far as radio calls. There was a lot of other stuff going on because at night is when people creep around and do things they shouldn't do. But probably, I'd say domestics. Has the policy towards domestics changed since you started on the job? You definitely have to document more because originally if there was no physical injury

and you couldn't determine, you know, who's the aggressor or whatever, you separate them went on their way. But now there's forms you've got to fill out because a lot of times, you know, there's injuries you can't see or things happen and somebody can hoot you in line. They're real good at it. And then later on they come back and attack them again or the person dies or whatever the case may be.

And they're like, well, man, we call the cops three times and nothing happened. But again, if I show up and you're like, man, this person hit me. And I'm like, okay, well, I mean, you can take a warrant out on them, but because it's considered a misdemeanor, if I didn't see it happen, legally, I cannot arrest anybody unless it's a domestic and there's obvious physical abuse that's taking place. So a lot of that's changed as far as trying to protect the victim because there's a lot of abusers out there. I mean, and I didn't realize how much that took place until I got on the police department, even growing up in the area I did. my mind wasn't on on sexual abuse or physical abuse but that's prevalent man did you follow the gabby potato case uh she's the one that was with her boyfriend out in the van yeah and they respond the cops responded to the call yeah how do you think that was handled uh man it's so hard to scrutinize if

you're not there um i wish it had been handled a little better i think you know i feel bad for that girl and her family i think that guy regardless was going to do something um but I wish there had been a little more follow-through. But again, when you're making these runs several times a day, and I can't remember, was she super cooperative? Did she say he hit him or anything? No, it was more. She kind of covered for him, right?

Yeah. And that's the problem you see with a lot of abusers. Because I remember my sister, well, I was 16 years old, and I stopped by my sister's apartment. It was her and her husband, she had a little baby. And I went up and knocked on the door, and I liked the guy. You know, we play ball together. We did certain things.

And I knocked on the door. And when he came to the door, he just had this look that was different that I'd never seen before. And he was holding a baseball bat. And I said, where's my sister? He was like, what do you want? And in my mind and my body, I knew something was wrong. So I kind of pushed him out of the way. And again, we were friends, right?

And I pushed him out of the way because I could see my sister in the kitchen holding the baby. And she was breaking up some ice in an ice tray. and I could tell something was off. And so I kind of pushed him out of the way, and I went in there, and she started crying. I'm like, we're out of here. I didn't know what was going on, but those instincts kicked in that something was wrong.

And we left the apartment and come to find out he was abusing her. He'd been doing it for years. And because she was a victim of the abuse, he had convinced her that, you know, nobody's going to believe you. I do love you. You know, you're not going to get any better than me, all this stuff. So a lot of that happens, and these people cover for him when you're on scene. And that's why domestics are so dangerous.

Because you go in and you see an obvious abuse, and so you go to make an arrest. But this person does love them in a weird way. You know, they've been so manipulated for years that then the attack starts. And so a lot of cops get killed in domestics because they just can go sideways so quick. How common is it for you to see a female abusing a male? The guy wouldn't talk about it a lot, but you could see it. There's plenty of women out there. they're just that shit crazy, man, and that do it.

But it's majority men. Are you ever surprised in those situations? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because, again, you know, I never date anybody that would, that I think would be abusive. Or as a man, I'm thinking, good luck trying to abuse me. I'm not going to let it happen. But these guys get, they get mentally whipped, too, and women do it.

When you started, did you see your career going in a certain direction? Like, did you want to work up to detective or go to a certain unit? I always wanted to do narcotic stuff. That was just kind of my, I don't know why it intrigued me. It just did. Maybe because the area I grew up in, I saw a lot of it. I remember this guy named Merle who lived a few blocks from us. And this is the only guy around us that had a pool.

And he had these nice cars. And even though he lived in the ghetto, he had a nice house and a two-story house that he built out this walkway in the back to the garage where they had games and stuff. And all he did was he recruited kids to run as dope is what he did. And so I remember seeing these little 13, 14 year old kids in the Kroger Down by us with Jordan's on. You know, their house, the electric's cut off. And you got no running water. Their brokest can be. They're probably not eating at home.

But now they've got new clothes on. They got Jordans on. They got hundreds in their pocket because this dude was recruiting all these kids. And it used to make me so mad. Not that they had stuff. Good for them. I don't care about that. but the fact that he was using them to run as dope,

that always just made me so mad for some reason, even as a teenager. So it was just something that kind of, maybe that lit a fire in me that I saw deeper than just a user. Because, you know, if you're a user, I feel bad for you, but I don't think you're criminal, in criminal sense, right?

You've just got a problem. No different than an alcoholic, no different than addicted gambler, whatever. You've got an addiction problem, and I feel bad for you. I want to help you. But if you're the one peddling the stuff, knowing people, it's going to ruin people's lives, ruin marriages, kill people. I just don't have much sympathy for that.

What about users that start, say, shoplifting or stealing from stores or going into pawn shops? What do you think about them? I think they're fueling an addiction. You know, you get to the point. Number one, that stuff's expensive. Especially, we saw that really big when the, what were the pills called? Man, they came out. It was right after there was.

So when I first came on. it was a crack epidemic. And then it shifted to a pill epidemic, you know, with all the, what are the pills called that people got really addicted to. Oxy. Oxy's, yeah. So when the oxies got real big, they were a dollar of grams. So these guys were doing, you know, 40s and 80s.

So 80 bucks for one pill. And you can't keep that up. There's no way, especially if you're taking two or three a day. These guys were, they had to, I mean, they were physically sick if they didn't. And so while they're a nuisance to. society, right? Because they're stealing, they're doing whatever. They're still just fueling this addiction that somebody got them started on. Half the time it was doctors. You know, somebody's getting a knee surgery and boom, they're giving them oxies back in the day. They're fueling this. And so

big pharma played a big part in getting that part of the addiction in society going. Because when I first came on, there was no heroin. Every once in a while, you'd find black tar heroin. But the white heroin, the white china, the different stuff, it just wasn't existent. It was crack, crack, or cocaine. There was always been weed, but whatever. And so then when it came to the pills, then it switched over to heroin, and then meth became real big in like 2003, 2004. And that was a total game changer in an animal, too. After those three years on Nightwatch, what shift did you go on? Well, it was five years.

Five years ago. So I went to a, it's called a flex unit. It's a, and we had eight divisions in Louisville, and each division had a flex unit, which was basically a many narcotics unit. and probably 85% of the stuff we did was narcotics base. We'd receive complaints from the call center that would call in complaints, people selling drugs. So we would go deal with that. We also had to do stuff like prostitution details, robbery details,

whatever in your area, in your division, that was the major thing that our major, who was the one over our, used to be captains, they changed it to majors, over our departments or over our units, whatever they were getting pressure from downtown is what we did. but it was probably 85% narcotics because most of your crime diverts from that. A lot of your stuff comes from it. And are you in uniform or plain clothes?

No, plain clothes. Okay. So is that like a detective type division? Yeah, it was. Okay. And what did you think of it overall? Oh, I loved it, man. It's, you know, it's five or six guys in a unit.

You're together all the time. You've got a common purpose. If this guy's got an op going that day, that's what you're focused on. When that's over, you go to the next guys. You know, so it was kind of a chess game as far as, as, okay, what are we doing today? You'd meet in the morning. Who's got something going today?

Or you would know the day before usually. Hey, man, I'm going to have a warrant tomorrow. This is what time we've got to be here to do it. So it was very enjoyable. And in 2009, my sergeant came to me and said, are you ever going to take the promotional exam? I was like, heck no, I have zero desire to be in command? None.

And she said, well, have you looked around and seen who they're promoting? And I was like, yeah, a bunch of idiots. And she was like, all right, do you want to work for them or do you want to work with them? And I was like, that's a good point. So I took the test in September 11th, 2009, I got promoted. And I went back to Late Watch for a year. And that sucked, man. You know, I'm 30.

What am I at this age? Been nine years. So I'm 36 years old. My kids are a little bit older, involved in activities. Now I'm back on Late Watch. So I only did that for a year. And as soon as I could get off of it, I did. I had great guys working for me.

You know, it was a totally different environment going from one, from a high-speed, jump-out crew and warrant crew to back to uniform. So I probably needed that reality check for a little bit. But then I went to a division or district detective sergeant spot. And we did everything except business robberies and homicides. So we did shooting scenes. We did other robberies. We did thefts. We did hate crimes.

We did all that stuff. So I got that good experience for a couple of years. But, man, there's a lot of paperwork, a lot of soup and tie stuff. And I still want to be a cop. You know, I still wanted to be on the street, putting handcuffs on people, putting hands on people. So then in 2012, I went to what's called, they started what's called a Viper unit. And it was a violent crimes unit. Because again, 2012 across the nation, man, crime just started going out, violent crime.

And it was no different in Louisville. And they had done away with our street crimes unit, which was that unit. Same exact thing. They just renamed it because it got heat years before because they were such an aggressive unit. And they still wanted the. aggression because they were acting within the law, but they were doing things patrol guys couldn't do because patrol, man, you're answering the radio. I mean, you're tied to that radio. You know, you might see something happening over here and you want to take effect, but you're on your way to a domestic. You're on your way to a car wreck. You're on your way to, whatever the case may be, a stupid barking dog call, whatever it is. And so you can't be super proactive all the time. You're very limited in what you can do. And this unit was nothing but proactive, go look for the worst and go after them to try to help the community. And so when we went to that. They started back in 2012. I went to that as a sergeant, and I had five guys under me. And so we worked platoons with 10 detectives, two sergeants, day and night. And it alternated each week. What shift you did. And the sergeant in this one unit that worked with me left after a few months, because it was hard. I mean, it was the best time on the police department I had. I thought, if I'm going to get killed, this is it. Because we're, I mean, we're stopping murders every day. We're robbers, dudes with guns. In one year, we confiscated over 800 guns just in

that unit alone. Illegal guns, not citizen. I'm a pro-gun guy. You know, I've been shot and I'm still like, okay, everybody should still have a gun, you know, unless you're a violent criminal. Like, in your case, you should have a gun. That's just my opinion. I know they're working on that. I hope they get it solved because it's stupid. I think it's starting in California. I mean, it doesn't make sense. Like, how come you get some rights back and not others when my case has nothing to do with a gun or any type of violence? Yeah, it's, it's not that I'm really a gun person. I'm pro people having the rights to guns, but like me personally, I don't. But you want that option if you want it.

Yeah. You should have the same freedom as everybody else. It definitely interests me like for protection stuff, especially with everything going on in the world. Oh, yeah. And as you keep climbing and getting more popular, I mean, you become a target. It's just the way it is. Yeah, I know, especially like, I think what really scared me was I had a guest on the show. You're probably familiar with the case, but this guy came on the show and he was a very big BLM activist.

and he went on a big tangent, like at the end of it, really heated. And then my dad had to, like, calm him down after. And he, like, apologized to me. I was like, it's your interview, man. Like, you could, like, it's your space to share it that, like, I open up to all my guests. Whatever, put the interview out. Then three months later, he's the guy that stabbed, like, five court officers in New York City a few months ago.

Oh, man. That's crazy. Yeah. You know, like, it's okay to have your opinion, but not to go. out and do that because his his view was all cops were bad. And I tried to tell him that all cops aren't bad. There was a couple because he was wronged in a couple of his situations, but not every single cop, you know, but he didn't see it that way. So that's what the heated, like, argument was about. And he went into that courthouse and... Hey, honey, are you awake?

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You know, regardless of where you stand on that issue on what he talked, the fact that somebody can't get out and peacefully and for the most part respectfully talk about their differences and you get killed for it, you know, what country do we want to live in? That's not one I want to live in. Yeah, I think it's more. And back to the guns, I think it's more about the person behind the gun. Oh, 100%. Than the actual gun itself, unless like the gun was obtained illegally, but in most cases they weren't obtained illegally, at least from what I see. That's on your high profile cases. On the street, most of your murders on the street are illegal guns.

Yeah. But they don't talk about those. No, no, they won't talk about that. It doesn't fit the narrative, right? Yeah. So, I mean, and unfortunately, that's where we're at. So in those violent crime cases, what's the most common? Oh, a lot of them is stupid beefs.

So in like 2014, things just kind of shifted on the street. I can't explain it. There was some kind of morph that happened where all of a sudden you had these like 13, 14, 15-year-old dudes with Dracos and shooting people for no reason over these stupid. stupid Twitter beefs and stuff. And it wasn't, it even left from, from territorial, like you know, bloods and crips and your different local gang units that would get into stuff. You expected that, right? But now you got dudes on the same side or not affiliated that are just, they're so reactionary,

so emotional. And if you dissed me, you know, if you made a little song or if you did whatever, they're killing each other. And I remember talking to a couple of the OGs on the street that were like, legit killers. You know, they've done their time, they got out. And a lot of times, if you're a smart cop, right, you know these people. And not because you're hunting them or whatever the case may be, but I want to talk to you

because I want to understand you. I want to, I want you to understand me where we're coming from. And a lot of time, there was a respect there with the older guys, right? I'm talking 40, 50-year-old guys. And I remember in 14, I went to some of these guys. I'm like, man, what is going on in the streets? and these seasoned tough dudes, I mean, that you don't want to mess with. We're like, I don't know, man, but we're even a little scared to be floating around

because there used to at least be a rules on the street, right? There was some kind of code where if I'm going to take Ian out, I got to go check with Boo Boo over here to make sure I can do that or I'm going to be in trouble. That's gone. And so it's all reactionary and all emotional. And I don't know where these 14 and 15-year-olds are getting guns, but they're getting high-powered, crazy. stuff. And it's, it is scary. It really was. Now those individuals that are joining, like the young

individuals that are joining these groups and participating in this violence, do you think they're recruited by older adults into this? Man, on your traditional gangs, yes, right? Your traditional, especially California, blood and Crip or New York, Midwest stuff is different. It's total different gang sex. Even though they might affiliate with blood or Crip, it's a lot of neighborhood gangs. like we had the market street crips and the 38th street whatever you know all these different areas that that and a lot of those guys were more again the family structures broke down they don't have anybody to look up to so they see this guy that's cool that's got money that's

got some juice that's got you know people are scared of him on the street and so they're naturally going to to gravitate to that so they can be so they can fit in somewhere so they can have protection, kind of like prison, you know, especially when you go to these big prisons, as a white dude going in, you better join Aryan Nation or as a black dude. You better join Bloods or Crits or whatever. So you have that level of community, that level of protection, and it's no different on the street. Were you seeing mostly gang on gang violence or were innocent people getting No, it's a lot of gang on gang. Yeah, it's a lot of criminal on criminal. The last probably five years, it's kind of flared out into more a lot of carjackings, a lot of stuff like that, robberies.

We had one in Louisville, it's probably been a month now, maybe six weeks, I don't know. A guy was doing a 16-year prison sentence for a violent crime, and for whatever reason the judge, and he had a history, right? This wasn't this guy's first time, oops he messed up. This guy had a history. And for whatever reason, after six months, the judge shocked probating him. the next day after he gets out, he goes, breaks into a home, kidnaps a mom and her two kids, takes their car, goes to a bank, makes them rob it,

ends up getting in a pursuit with the police. So now this family is traumatized for life, right? These kids are screwed up because the justice system is just a revolving door with these violent criminals. You know, there's a place for shock probation. Your case, 100% should have been. But cases where these guys have repeatedly robbed people, shot people, it's time to change it up because that's who we're dealing with over and over.

And that was the most frustrating thing in policing, man. You know, you spend two months going after a guy, you finally get him. And it's a scary or dangerous situation when you're going through a door knowing a guy has weapons, has shot somebody, has told his friends, I'm not going back to prison, screw that, I'll have a shootout with the cops. Now you're going through the door to getting, knowing that's a possibility. And to say if you didn't have a little bit of fear in you, you're lying. But you did it anyway, right?

And so you go in, you do what it takes to get him. And then two months later, he's back on the street. And you're going, man, why am I risking my life for this if the judge is just constantly let this type of people in society out? What's your view on criminal defense attorneys that represent people that are, that, you know, are guilty that have committed, say, a heinous crime? What's my view? Yeah.

I think everybody deserves a right to trial. I think everybody does. I don't know how they sleep at night. I don't. especially when you come to like kid sex offenders or heinous murders. I don't know how you could defend that, you know, because they have an option to go up and out. Because in our cases, you know, when we went through what we went through, we couldn't, none of us could get lawyers in Louisville. All the high-powered lawyers went, not touching it.

So we didn't have that advantage or that right. But your seasoned criminals, man, they have certain attorneys they go to that are really good that make a lot of money. And so it's all money driven. It's not this greater good of we need this balanced justice system and everybody deserves a right. It's all about money. But do I think everybody deserves a fair shot? 100%. I think I don't care what you've done.

You should see your day in court. But we've got one attorney in Louisville's name's Rob Egert. And he looks like a homeless dude, right? Baggy suits, messed up hair, comes in with his papers all disheveled. but he was number one in his class at Harvard, and you do not want to go against him as a defense attorney. I mean, this dude will just clean you up.

And he usually doesn't win on the black and white of the law. He comes off with, he's very good at catching little things and just blowing them out of proportion, like, oh, you had an IA case eight years ago where this happened. You're a dirty cop. And, you know, he'll make it look like he'll crowd of the jury. He'll do all these things.

And these guys are getting these murder suspects. I mean, if you should commit a murder, in Louisville, that's who you go to, right? This guy. Because he gets so many off that look like airtight cases, but they're, they, he convinces the jury that the police are corrupt or whatever. And, and, and you're going, man, that is not what the justice system was intended for. It was intended to come in and go, okay, here's the facts of the case. Here's what my client did or didn't do. And you balance it out off that and let your peers decide. And so I think there's some flaws. I think,

You know, people want to bash on the police because crimes up or this or that. But the system itself is pretty broken. You were talking earlier about how one of the worries of being an officer is you have to worry about the review boards and whatnot. But you also have to worry about the process and technicalities that a criminal defense attorney could be using to get this guy off. Yeah, and that's another thing that, you know, we talked about communication and training. And we're taught law. We're taught all these things. But, man, the dot in your eyes and crossing your T's and investigative.

or even in regular cases on patrol that guys take shortcuts or they don't think it's a big deal on the scene. That that's what gets these guys off in court because there's just not enough training on that type stuff. You know, they should take this attorney's playbook and teach it to the guys in the academy or guys like this attorney and teach it to guys in the academy to go, hey, man, if you're doing this job, just do it right. Don't get lazy. Don't take shortcuts because the effects of it are the community. he's going to suffer because these guys are going to get off. What's one case you'll never forget about when you were working in violent crimes? Man, there's so many.

My goodness. The case that sticks out to me the most was before violent crimes. I was an afflux unit. And I'll give you a little backstory. There was a church event, actually, a youth group event where these four teens, three of them brothers and one of them was their friend had just left this event. And they're coming out. And this kid that they knew from school, but they didn't know him real well.

excuse me, pulled up in a car and said, hey, y'all want to ride? And this church was taking kids on a bus back home. But they saw this dude they knew in a car and they're like, sure, we'll get in. Innocent, 100% innocent. They jump in this car and they leave. Well, a squad car, a patrol car pulls up behind him, runs the tag. It's a stolen car. Lights him up. Dude takes off. He's 15 years old, I think, 16. I think he's 16. He takes off. And we happen to be me and my partner coming this way, a lot of streets in Louisville, one way in downtown. And they're going south. We're coming north.

And he's like, man, just let a car up. It's taken off on me. It's a stolen car. As a cop, you go, oh, yeah, here we go. You know, this is fun. And so they're going. We make a left to come up to, we were parallel on them, but then they're coming close to us.

And as we make a left to come up to him, he said radio, they just had a 1050, which is an injury accident. And this little Honda accord had gone around this curve too fast and went through a tree that was only, I don't know, 10 inches in diameter. And it ripped this car in half. I mean, totally in half, two pieces. And we pull up on scene and it was horrific. I mean, the kid in the back was stuck in there and he slumped, barely breathing. There's a couple of kids on the sidewalk.

I mean, it was horrible. And so we're doing CPR. We're doing all this stuff. Those four kids all died on scene. The driver, the guy who stole the car, all he had was a broken nose. And he's sitting over there laughing about it. And so we went down to the hospital because it was going to be a big scene. So we go down there and I'm back in the ER and look at this kid and he's just like,

eh, no big deal. Like, dude, you just killed four kids? Eh, he didn't care. I mean, just blank. No, no conscience. And so I'm like, man, I got to remove stuff from this. because I want to just choke this kid out, right? I'm just, I'm mad that these other kids died.

I go out to the waiting room, and in all hospitals, you've got your main waiting room, but then you've got these little rooms that a lot of people don't know about that if it's a major event, if somebody probably died, they're asking you to sit in there to wait for the doctor's update.

And this group was in this small room, and I was tasked to go in there to check on them to let them know the chaplain's coming. Well, when the chaplain's coming, It's bad news, right? I knew all four kids were dead because I was on scene. And I had my outer carrier on my vest, and I'm in plain clothes, but I had the police vest on and stuff. And I go in this room, and this dad comes up to me just, I mean, lost it.

And he's grabbing my vest, shaking me going, how are my boys? It was his three boys. And this is a dad that's involved. And we're talking about the black community. This dad's involved. And he's just like, man, I just bought him all their Christmas gifts. This was like two weeks before Christmas. He said, planning Christmas.

Christmas, all this stuff, are my boys alive? What do you say? I mean, it was, it was traumatic. I know it was for them, but my sense, too, I was like, because I had three, I had four, three kids at the time, about his age, and I'm like, oh, my goodness. And he's shaking me, man, are my kids alive? And I'd say, I'm sorry. You know, the chaplain's on his way in. And just the scene in that room was horrible. That kid did six months, got out, and has been a career criminal ever since. he's been involved in shootings he's been involved he shot a cop

since then I mean just this is one of the people in society that just don't belong in society and and the weird coincidence is in we have a

the state fair for Kentucky is in Louisville every year and I would work it in an off-duty capacity and we had this little parking area that they had coned off

for all the police cars of state police the local police that were done security and every year I would see this guy that was the same parking lot attendant for for this this area and I would always talk to him be polite hey how you

doing man thanks appreciate what you're doing for watching our cars you know whatever one year I'm walking in he's like man this crime in the city's getting out of control in it yeah we're just sitting there talking and he said yeah I know crime he said my my son died I'm like oh man I'm sorry tell me the story that was the fourth kid and man we cried together and it was just you know just something that just sticks with youth I think think of that. I can see both those dad's faces every time I close my eyes and just stuff like that, but there's been many. And the violent crime one probably was a three-year-old that got shot in the head. We're at a division preparing for a warrant. And as we're leaving, this call comes out that says there's

been a small kid, three-year-old shot in the head. And those you never want to go to, right? You're like, oh, crap, man. But it was right there. I mean, like a half block away. So we're responsible. We got to stop and check it. And one of the guys I was with, his kid, was three at the time. She had leukemia, and she was in the hospital down in Tennessee. What's the real good children's hospital that does amazing stuff? I can't think of it off the top of my head. St. Jude.

She was down at St. Jude. And so he had been traveling back and forth because she had had a transplant, bone marrow transplant. So now we're at supposedly a three-year-old's house that had been shot in the head. three-year-old daughter. So we're thinking, man, I hope this is false. Hope this is a bad call. Knock on the door, nothing happens. Knock again. We're like, good. This is just somebody pranking. Well, then we see somebody peek out of the window. We're like, oh, crap. So I'll open the door, and it's a little boy, a little five-year-old boy. And we rush in, and sure enough, there's little girls on the ground, been shot through the head. And what happened was there was

a dresser in there. And the 16-year-old brother who the mom had kicked out previously because he'd been involved in gangs and stuff. And she was trying to protect her other kids. But then she let him back in the house the day before. He had left and left a 38 revolver cocked on the dresser sitting there. The three-year-old saw it, reaches up to grab it. And the five-year-old tries to stop her. When he did, he set the gun off somehow. And it's sitting right there and just goes right through her head. And so we're in there doing CPR on her trying to, we know she's gone, but you've got to, you know, you got to try. And I remember when that scene was over, we go outside on the porch and, and my buddy's standing there whose daughter's in the hospital right now. And I could just see

the angst on his face, man, just the blood had rushed out of him. And he wasn't there, right? So we sent him home for the day. But yeah, just stories like that, man, it was just nonstop, just gruesome stuff that most people in society never deal with. But then those people are the first ones that judge how we react, what we think, what we feel. When honestly, most cops are there to help. I mean, that's just, that's a calling. When you encounter these types of situations, how do you go on to the next one after encountering something like that? How do you regroup and then live to go on another day?

I attribute my faith. I mean, that's what I got to go back to. It's all I've known. But, man, it's tough. It's hard to just because, again, you might go from that run right to. a car wreck, right, to a missing kid or a domestic or whatever the case may be. And then you're supposed to be on your A game, right? You know, I just saw somebody die.

Now I've got to go out here. And then I've got this this dude running his mouth at me over his neighbor's dog barking or something stupid. You're like, dude, this is not an issue. And so that's where a lot of cops get into the fact where it is hard to just tuck that away and go to the next one without snapping on somebody or without taking it out on somebody else. So it's not an easy task or chore, but it's something you just got to do. Now, going back to the guy that only got six months for killing those kids, do you see a major flaw in the justice system with manslaughter

charges? Because I see like drunk driving cases someone dies. They got less time than I did in prison. Yeah, I do. Yeah, especially all the reckless knowing stuff. You know, there's a difference in an accident and somebody, not even maliciously, but just intentionally. You know, doing something that they know isn't right and then don't have to pay the consequences for it. When, you know, we talk justice. I don't believe in, quote, justice. I think that can't be done on earth. I think there's retribution or there's consequences.

But if you kill my kid in a drunk driving accident and even if you do five years in prison, that's not justice. My kid's not coming back from that. You're paying a penalty. Now, we can all spot injustice, right? I can see when something's off. I can see, like, in your case, when I read about it or when I heard you talking about it, I'm like, that's an injustice. I've got a guy that I grew up with. He was in our church when I was younger.

Then he moved up to Hammond, Indiana. And super successful guy, just one of those guys that, man, he had the gift of gab. And he was a salesman and all that. And he was involved in a big church up there. And somehow he got wrapped up in these, he got involved because he was always looking for angles to make money, right? He was a salesman. That's what he did. And he at the time was, I think, 60.

60 years old, 65, had heart condition, had a couple heart attacks where he flatlined and came out. And he's trying to run, these guys came to him with this car dealership deal. I don't know the exact concept of it, but basically they buy and resell cars. They move them around, middlemen, basically. And they had people invest. And these two guys ended up being con guys and didn't pay the people their money, did all that stuff. Well, when the feds investigated, they came to them. And before they went to Tom Kimmel's a guy's name, before they went to him, they went to the guys who were the masterminds of all this.

And, you know, the terminology, the first person to talk, gets the best deal, right? And so these guys got like nothing. I mean, they're the ones that stole all the money. Tom got ripped off too. Some of his money got taken by these guys. Yet they claimed that he was the mastermind behind it. The feds believed it. He went to trial.

I had a horrible attorney, horrible attorney. And he got like 25 years. And I'm thinking, that's not justice for what you consider a car scam, right? Because, again, I see guys that kill people that get five years, six years. I mean, intentionally kill people. I'm not talking about, oops, it was an accident, a car, you know, or we were playing around with a gun and somebody died. I'm talking about super injustices within our system that's just flawed, man.

I don't understand how career criminals, people that abide by the law, make one mistake, and they get hammered. But you see these career criminals, you see on these, oh, he had 31 arrest, and he's 30 years old. And I'm going, how? You know, you were out, like you did, you served how many years? Almost three. Yeah. And it's like, this makes no sense. So the justice system definitely needs to be reformed.

But I think it needs to start at the court level and work its way down to DAs. And, I mean, you can do it all simultaneously. But, man, I think the main problems at the top. Did you stay with the violent crimes unit for the rest of your career? No. In 2017, I went up to major case narcotics. And I did that. And then in 2019, I went over to what's called a parcel interdiction unit because we have UPS, which is the main hub for the nation in Louisville.

Three million packages come through their day. And so much drugs comes through that. I mean, we're talking tables full off of 20 packages. night out of three million. You're only allowed to pick so many because it's everything that comes in. It comes in from all over the nation, comes here, it gets put on other planes and transport out, and you've got about a three-hour window to pull packages, determine if it's legit or not, do a warrant on it, execute the warrant, and then seize it or package it back up and send it. And so we can only do about 20, 25 packages a night. And we're talking, you'd

fill a table from the table to the ceiling with drugs. So when you find it... time you do it. When you find a package that has drugs in it, what happens after that? A couple things. A lot of it's coming from unknown sources to fake sources. And that's how you could determine a lot of it. Because if I'm sending drugs to Ian, I'm not putting Ian's name on it. I'm making up some name and I'm not sending it to your address. I'm sent it to a vacant lot, a girlfriend's house, you know, something that's not going to come back on me. And to the person that it goes to, they have plausible denialability to go. I don't know who Joe Smith is. I don't know where this package came from. If the police show. up. So a lot of these packages, and that's how you can verify it, if you're looking at something that's just off, you look from source cities, you know, the Mexico border out west, going to Midwest, you're going to East Coast, or if you're looking for money, it's going to New York. There's different ways you could look at it. And if something was off, you'd run it through different programs to

see if that house existed, to see who it came back to, if this person existed, all these different things, investigative tools that you could use. And then you'd pull it, and then you'd put it with legit packages that you knew didn't have anything illicit in it. And you'd have a dog run. And if they hit on it, then you pulled it. If not, you had to put it back on and go. And then do you actually follow up and go to that person, the address to do like a sting in there? If it's going locally, we did.

If it's going to another, like North Carolina, we would call connections in North Carolina and go, hey, we got this package with 20 pounds of meth in it. Do you want it? If not, it would go in the property room. We would just seize it. But a lot of times we would try to find out if other people had cases. on this type thing in that area. But again, it's got to be a really quick turnaround to do that. Because if you seize a package for a couple of days,

their radar's going off. They're like, don't take that package. Just ignore it, let it go, because they knew what was up. And when do you involve the feds? Because it's across state lines. Depending on the case. You know, the feds would come to us sometimes saying, hey, can you look for packages coming from this location

or from this area? We're looking for fentanyl pills. We did that a lot. But mostly it was our finding. that people didn't know anything about. And then you'd reach out and go, hey, this is what we got. Or if it's a certain amount, you'd call the feds and go, hey, what do you want us to do with this? You know, is it something you're interested in?

If not, we're just going to, you know, they dispose of it. Now, are these drugs packaged discreetly, or are they just so obvious in these boxes? No, most of them are hidden. I mean, we've had them in poured vases or poured sculptures that you have to break the sculpture over and get them out. They've been in freezers. And that's another cue. Okay, I'm sending a $20 toaster overnight for $150. Come on, dude.

Plus the toaster on the boxes it weighs, you know, 1.8 pounds, and this thing weighs 10 pounds. That was some of the cues that you could look into. Some of it was in food. I mean, any way you can think they were shipping it. Now those drugs that got busted, what happens to them? Most of them get destroyed. Yeah. If they're not going to somebody else to use this reverse sting where they actually deliver it and then do something with it.

that they just get destroyed in a Cinerator. Is money still as common these days in the mail or not as much? No, it is. Yeah. I remember out at UPS, they'd probably be mad if they heard me talking about this because they didn't want their name on anything. You know, they don't want people to know that they're the biggest drug mule in the country, them in FedEx and the Postal Service.

They are the biggest drug mules in the country. They had this one room that was locked up. We couldn't get to it. Didn't want to get to it. But it had over a million dollars in cash in it just from scams, like old people that would send money. A lot of it went again to New York for whatever reason. That's where a lot of the money scams go to, not the drug money, but the scams. And it was amazing. You call these people, like you get this Southern Living magazine. And as you flip through it, there's $100

bills and different sheets because that's how they told them to send it. Right. And you'd call this old person the next day and be like, Miss Smith, you know, did you send a package up to Queens, New York? And they're like, no, no, no, you know, because they, they legit think they're helping someone. I mean, they've been scam bad. It's horrible. And we're like, Ms. Smith, I got a package here with your name on it. Oh, well, maybe, you know, and they wanted to deny it first. And then you're like, well, it's a scam.

And they wouldn't believe it. A lot of them didn't want their money, but they just didn't. They're like, nope, nope, it's legit, no. And you're like, oh, my goodness. You know, you feel bad for them. Some were thankful. A lot were thankful, but, man, there was a group of them that. that were just so sold into what they were doing.

Had to be quiet. Had to be on the down low, but I'm really helping somebody. So good heart of people, good intentioned, or, you know, the mental acuity is starting to slip, and now they're just getting taken advantage of. It was sad. But the drug money, yeah, that was still coming through big.

That money, the million bucks, say, in that room, does that go back to the victims? Well, they try to. They don't want it, so they don't know what to do with it. And the police department's like, we're not touching it. We're not saying we're policing for,

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Join us June 11th through 14th opening weekend as the tournament kicks off in Los Angeles. Tickets are just $10 and kids under 12 were free. Get yours now at Los Angeles FWC26.com. I'm not sure what they. eventually did with it, but I know at the time I was out there, it was still there. Wow. Yeah. Tell us about the incident that happens towards the end of your career.

Yeah, so I'm in that unit. And in January of 2020, they had started a new unit called Place-based Investigations. And basically, it was a unit that was a pilot project out of Cincinnati, Ohio, that came in and said, okay, if Ian's getting, we're getting all these complaints on Ian, right? we're going to surgically go in and remove him in a politically correct way as far as, you know, abiding by the law, finding a charge on him. We're going to investigate Ian until we can find what he's doing as far as, man, if he's a known drug trafficker, gun trafficker, shooter, whatever it is, you focus on that, and that's all you focus on in this group, that one target at one time until you can get charges on him and put him away. And this was their very first case, right?

There's some new guys that came in from the outside that I didn't really know. And one of them came to me one day and said, hey, can you see if they have any packages going to 3003 Springfield Field Department number four under a guy's named Jamarcus Glover? And I was like, well, who's it through? And they were like, it was the Postal Service. And I was like, man, we don't deal with the Postal Service. The Postal Service and Louisville Metro Police had gotten into a fight a few years back

and they kind of severed ties. Had nothing to do with us, just something that was. went on before our time. And I said, but I know who does. It's another smaller agency that it's an incorporated city on the outskirts of Louisville. We've helped them out on cases. They've helped us. Let me give them a call. So he's standing there. I text their sergeant and go, hey, do you have anything at this address under this name? He said, well, Mike, who's one of his detectives, actually just intercepted a package on a Glover. We'll see if it's the same. I exchanged their numbers and I went about my business. Like, cool, good luck. Right. So I see Mike, that detective,

at UPS. He's actually working off duty because, again, it's such a large facility and it's such a young crowd. There's a lot of car break-ins in the parking lots and stuff. So they post guys up on extra work out in the parking lot for that. He was coming in taking a break and I signed him. I said, man, did you all ever do anything with that text? I sent you all a couple weeks ago. And he said, yeah, we were talking about, I talked to Kelly, who was the co-lead on the case, with Josh James and Kelly Goodlett. He said, and we were describing vehicles and realized it's not the same Glover. They're both. Jay Glovers, which is coincidence, but different vehicles.

So not that. No, nothing going there. I'm like, cool. Good luck. I see Josh the next day in the hall, and I'm like, did you talk to them? I was just clarifying that he understood this was not the same one at this address. He's like, yeah, man, now I got to write all these warrants. And I was just hoping to do a rip or reversal, which is basically you show up with the package.

You know, you're dressed like a delivery guy, and you show up with a package and you do it. Or you put a tracker in the package and you send it, and then you do a warrant on it. He said, now I've got to write all these warrants. I was like, you know, sorry, man. I wish it worked out for you. Go about my business. Don't think anything of it. And we're doing, you know, 40, 50 warrants a week on packages.

So I'm constantly reviewing addresses and names and double checking. And my memory's not good enough to remember 300 Springfield from two months ago. So we get this email that says we got this manpower intensive five warrants simultaneous and one night going. We need any available bodies that can come into work. the road call was going to be on Thursday, March 12th at 10 p.m. So I looked at my calendar. I'm working UPS during the day. I'm working FedEx up until 10 that night.

And I was like, shoot, I'll come in. It's easy overtime, right? I don't want easy overtime. So I volunteered for it. One of my guys was going to do it with me, and then we had some other guys that were from different units that were kind of attached to us. So it wasn't the normal crew we did warrants with,

but it was guys that had done warrants. And show up at roll call that night. So this is leading into Friday the 13th. It's a full moon out. It's raining. I go to roll call at 10, come out. I got two flats on my car. The car behind me has a couple flats where somebody had come through our lot and pop them.

So now I'm kind of in a rush to get to our secondary brief location. I get the tools. I transfer all the junk from my car. It's pouring down rain. And I forgot my tourniquet. I always took my tourniquet out of my vest and put it either in my glove box or in this little holder here and through my vest in my trunk or whatever. and that I thought, I had no big deal. Once I got on scene, I didn't realize until I got on scene.

We're doing the secondary brief and I'm gearing up. And I'm thinking, I had no big deal. I hadn't used it in 20 years. I don't need to turn it. Somebody's got one. That was my thought process. I was being probably too lax because the one that we took was the apartment. It wasn't, the other ones were trap houses down in our ghetto, right, in the troubled area.

And I had done that for so many years. I was like, I don't want to be down that in the middle of the night because you, get these large crowds and I'm doing this for overtime. His guys can do that. I'll take the easy apartment that's supposed to have money or drugs or paperwork, you know, that the female's holding because they had jail phone calls that said she was holding the money. Jamarcus Glover, because everybody goes, everybody always asked, why were y'all even at Breonna Taylor's apartment? And I said, well, Jamarcus Glover, who was the main target of the investigation, his ID came

back to her house, his car was registered to her house, his bank account had her address. his phone service was at her house. She had just bailed him out in January of 2020 for, they did a warrant on him. He had seven guns and a bunch of fentanyl and cocaine and all that stuff. And she bailed him out and gave her address is his and her phone number is his. So everything pointed to her as being maybe not the person slinging the dope. And again, I'm not here to smear her name. She's a victim in all this.

And the reason I say that is because doing narcotics for so long and violent crime, you saw these guys who looked for these guys. girls who were desperate for love for attention. And they would, they would latch on to them. Like, your big dope dealers would have four or five girlfriends. And they just take,

have them rent their cars, have them get guns for them, have them do different things because these girls were kind of desperate, right? They wanted to love. Brianna's dad's been in prison her whole life. Her mom wasn't part of her life growing up. Her grandma raised her.

So she was looking for something. And this guy was showing her this attention. And so he was using her is all it was. And so we go to our brief and then we finally go to the door. And when I went into the brief that night, I remember on the board, it was no knock, no knock, no knock. And then on this address it said knock and announce because one of the big lies is that this was a no knock warrant. We didn't knock and announce. And I asked us, why are they all no knocks and this one, knock and announce?

And they were like, well, because the main target of the investigation, Jamarcus Clever was the basis of the no knock. And we know he's not going to be at that residence now. We had it signed as a no-knock, but now it's got to go as a knock and announce because it doesn't fit the parameters. We've got a tracker on his car, peeing on his phone. We got some of my physical surveillance. We know he's going to Elliott Avenue, which is where most of the houses were. I said, cool. I don't care.

You know, I'm not going to announce. It's an apartment. It's a female. They told her she was there alone. No kids. No guns. No boyfriends. Nothing.

Just her by herself. And I thought, this is easy. Go knock on the door. And they said, matter of fact, give it extra time. She's a heavyset black female. We want her to come to the door. We want to keep the neighbors out of it. We want to see if she'll get on board, right?

They wanted to try to get her to rat these guys out. We get to the door and I knock, knock, knock, nothing. I knock again, nothing. And when I pulled up, I saw the light in her bedroom flickering from the TV. Her car was out front. So I thought, well, she's got to be home. Why is she not answering the door? So maybe she don't hear it.

So we started the police knock. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Started yelling, police search warrant. Come to the door, please search warrant. This went on for a minute. Probably five cadences of police search warrant. weren't banging on the door yelling. One of the neighbors even came out and got into an altercation with one of my guys back

here because when you're an apartment complex, you don't know who's involved with who. You don't know who knows who, what the dynamics are. And anytime somebody comes out when you're at a door banging, you're always like, get back in the apartment, get back in the apartment. And this guy argued with him for about five or ten seconds. So finally in between Knox, I'll look at the guy who's arguing with him like, man, if he's not a threat, just relax, let it go. And so that guy went back in his apartment.

Kept banging. Boom, boom, boom, boom, police search warrant. And still no answer after a minute. And when you're in the door for a minute, I mean, kind of, let me help you kind of understand this. Have you ever pulled up to a red light in the middle of the night and nobody's around and you're sitting there going, man, when is this red light going to change? And it might only be 45 seconds or a minute, but it feels like forever. Well, when you're at a door, not knowing the threat on the other side, a minute feels like an eternity. And the longer I knocked and announced, I remember more thinking, man, something's not right. Something just don't feel right. Something's different.

She should have been to the door by now. Even if she was sound asleep, the amount of noise we're making, she's got to come to the door. So I finally look back, my lieutenant's there, or a lieutenant, it went to my lieutenant, but a lieutenant's there, and he's like, go ahead. So the breacher hits the door, and on the third smack of the door, it comes open. And I remember I'm on the left side of the door. He's on the right. The door opened from right to left. I'm able to see everything from my right in the living room all the way around to where the hallway wall is here.

and my door frame's here and I can't see anymore. So everybody's yelling, please search warrant, please search warrant. And as soon as I take a step, I never even crossed the threshold. I step forward, my left foot.

As I'm turning, my gun lights coming around. And in my peripheral, I can see two people at the end of this hall, which was odd to me. My brain automatically, in these milliseconds, your brain's going,

oh, this ain't right, something's off. Because normally people are giving up, they're running, they're hiding, they're doing something. But I've never had two people at the end of a hall

just standing there waiting. And I couldn't tell who was who, but I knew one was taller, one was shorter. It was like a blob at the end of the hall with a tall and short head. And by the time my gunlight gets around, I see the tip of Kenneth Walker's gun.

I never got over to Brianna. Even though the hall's only about this big, they're both pretty big people. He's kind of halfway into this other door that leads into a spare bedroom. And as my gun light gets here, I see the tip of a silver gun and it's too late. I mean, this is quick too.

This is boom, but your brain's still, actively recording all this stuff in your thought processes are going through. And he fired the gun and it hit my upper thigh. I went through my femoral artery. I was able to get some shots back. And then I went behind the doorframe. And the guy behind me kind of stepped up and started shooting.

As soon as I put my hand down on my thigh, I knew it was bad because it was a lot of blood. Just filled my hand. And so I kind of went down on one knee because in my brain, again, you think weird stuff when these actions are happening. I thought, man, this hit my femoral. And I even said that to the guy across the way who had breached us. Dude, I've been shot my femoral. And I'm pushing as hard as I can.

And I thought I'm pumping blood out. I got to get off my feet. So I kind of went down on my knee. And then I realized, I got to get out of here because I could hear gunshots above me. I couldn't hear them real good because my sentries, sorry, my sentries were kind of coming together. But I thought, I'm going to get hit with a crossfire. So I get up and I run behind him and I go down in the parking lot and they start working on me. And the whole time I'm running out, the whole time I'm running out,

The whole time I'm hobbling out, I'm not really running. I'm going, I need a tourniquet because I knew it didn't have mine. I'm thinking, of all the time I ain't got a tourniquet. I need a tourniquet. I need a tourniquet. So I get on my back. They get a tourniquet on me probably within, I don't know, 15 seconds, 20 seconds of getting shot, which is good. And that tourniquet hurt worse than getting shot.

Man, that thing was something. And so they get me to the hospital. It's a five-and-a-half-hour surgery. They replace four inches of my artery with vein. and that process started. But I remember when I woke up in the hospital bed, my wife is there and I said, man, was anybody else hurt? I knew none of my guys were hurt except me because I kind of took account while I was on my back.

I could see this person. I could hear this person. So I knew my guys were good. And it felt like, in my mind, it felt like as soon as that guy shot Kenneth Walker, it felt like instantly I returned fire. I mean, I thought there's no way I missed him. There's no way. It was spot on.

And what he did was. As soon as he shot, he dove into this bedroom. And Brianna tried to follow him in. And one of my bullets hit her left arm, I believe. That was it. So I was thankful I didn't kill her, but I didn't know that at the time. And I'm laying in bed, and my wife said, yes, somebody got hurt or died. And I'm thinking it's the guy that shot me.

I hit him, right? I was like, who was it? And she said, a female. She didn't know her name. And I was like, oh, man, I remember that pit in my stomach. And it felt like the blood rushed out of me again, right? and because my whole fear my entire time on the police department wasn't me getting shot or hurt. I mean, I didn't want to leave my kids and family, but at the same time, my fear was always hurting somebody who didn't deserve it.

You know, somebody pulling a cell phone out and you think it's a gun or shooting and missing over somebody's shoulder and killing an innocent civilian in the background. And now this nightmare had come true. This girl who did not shoot me is now dead because of our actions. And so I remember sitting there thinking, I can't believe this just happened. And then my mind went from that to, oh, this ain't good. I'm a white cop who just killed an unarmed black female. You know, we saw the Michael Brown stuff in 14. We know what happened there.

We've seen incidents since. And I'm like, this ain't going to be good. And March 13th was the day that Trump shut everything down the two weeks, slowed the spread for coronavirus. So we had a little bit of a break for about a month and a half as far as everything was focused on corona. All the press conferences, you know, people worry about hands. sanitizer and toilet paper and there you know nobody cared about crime in that moment so i thought well maybe we'll get past this and some other incident will happen something else big and it'll kind of get

forgotten um and again come to find out my bullets didn't kill her which i'm thankful for um but then um ad abry happened in april this was march amott abry happened in april ben crump got on that and the attorney for her family on did a press conference said i reached out to ben crump and said hey we're not getting any national attention, can you help us? Well, Ben Crumple's like, sure, you know, money involved. I can help. So he got on to where if you run for Mod, run for Bree, right? So the intensity in the city started picking up.

This is before George Floyd. Everything started picking up. There started some small protest. It started growing. You could fill the energy building. And we had just moved into a house in April, a different house. and I remember the day George Floyd died. I didn't know he died.

It was, I think, May 27th. Somebody said, turn TV on. They text me and my wife were watching Netflix. It's late at night. And I turned TV on. They're full-blown riots in Louisville. So, Brianna March, Amad Aubrey in April, George Floyd in May, May 27th.

Instantly like a switch flipped, and it just exploded. And, I mean, seven people got shot in the first night in Louisville riots. It was just chaos. And previous to this, we'll back up a couple weeks. The first part of May, we started getting these death threats. Like, everybody got docs, my kids, me, all the guys involved.

It was like overnight, something just happened. Our phone numbers were exposed, our addresses, all of our social media was super attacked and we're going to kill you. We're going to do no knock on you and your family. They're naming my kids. And it was a little, it took me back a little bit. And then I started getting, then I got notified from the department that some informants and narcotics were coming forward saying, hey, man, there's been a hit taking out on these guys.

And they're specifically naming John. And I'm thinking, what? So Brianna's mom, who I said didn't raise her, she was high up in this motorcycle club in Louisville. It's a black motorcycle club known for drugs, violence, and guns. And somebody that's kind of a hanger on her at that club, not a member. had come to our narcotics unit, who was his handler, he was an informant, he'd come and said, man, this is what's happening. This guy named Slim, is a mechanic, said he could do X, Y, Z, the car.

These other guys said they could take him out of red light, but, you know, they named all these things. And so in my mind, I dealt with informant so long, I'm thinking, well, you know, somebody killed my kid, I could see me spouting off saying some stuff like, I'm going to get them back or whatever. So maybe there's a little truth to it, but I was concerned, but not super concerned. Well, then after May 26. seventh, when all these riots just broke out crazy in Louisville,

now you have all these events being conflated as one, right? Now you've got Brianna, Ah, Maude, and George being saying, all these white people were just out killing black people, and these cops are, even though the Amad Aubrey had nothing to do with police, it somehow got crunched in the middle of it. And May 31st, it's Sunday night. I'm out in my garage, putting stuff away, my kids asleep, my wife's in the house, and I get a call from somebody at the FBI,

a joint terrorism task force guy that used to work for me. He was over at the FBI, and he's like, man, what are you doing? I said, I'm putting stuff away in our garage. What's up? He said, you know those threats that came out a few weeks ago? I said, yeah. He said, well, we just cooperated them through an informant through the ATF, who's been embedded in this motorcycle club for months,

who's been buying illegal guns for us. That person was present when a Sin City motorcycle club from Chicago came down. Money was exchanged. They talked about how they were going to kill you all. There's a hit taken out on you all. You've got to get out of your house tonight. So this is May 31st. June 5th was going to be around his 26th birthday.

And they planned this huge balloon release that was going to be televised. And the word was her family said, we want something more to celebrate than her birthday. We want the death of one of these officers. If we can't get to them by then, we want one of their family members. And so now this thing just got real, right? It went from, eh, maybe, possibly, I can see, to now we're full-blown riots in Louisville, with our faces on signs. We're all over national media at this point. Social media is just destroying us.

I mean, it didn't matter if it was these athletes I followed, movie stars, singers, politicians, everything was just hammering on how racist we were and we're murderers and were all this stuff. And now this legitimate threat from three different sources comes together. And they're trying to kill us. And I'm thinking, this can't be good. So we got moved in the middle of the night by the Dignatory Protection Team to a location about two hours from our house. My wife, all my adult kids, their kids, my sisters, my parents, I mean, this caravan of cars at 2.30 in the morning.

And we show up and everybody goes in. I remember coming outside and there's dudes with ARs outside and I'm standing there going, this is so surreal. I mean, it feels like a movie number one, but it also feels like a nightmare. And I thought, where do we go from here? What happens? And the sad thing is the FBI took the case, right? And I thought, well, good.

At least the best law enforcement agency, the best investigative law enforcement agency in the country with all the resources, all the experience is going to have this, they'll do something about it. Didn't happen. It was so politicized. Ten days later, they dropped the case and said, the optics looked bad going after a national victim's mother.

And so now here's a woman who got 8.5 million from GoFundMe, 12 million from the city, all these resources at our disposal now coming at my family. And I'm thinking, how do we combat this? How do we get ahead of it? So that's when I started speaking about it because I thought, you know, I'm sitting here going, okay, if nobody's going to investigate it and they threatened the agents, the agents were upset, the FBI agents. Those were good guys. the command, the sack at that unit, told them if they investigated any further, they would get fired.

And that sack miraculously got a promotion to D.C. And it's a huge story. It's in the book. But it's a huge story of corruption in our city is what it was. The mayor is the one that got this whole thing started for gentrification. That's why he put that unit on these houses on Elliott because the city couldn't get these houses and they needed them so they could start this project that they've been planning since 2017. And they used the police, unknowingly, to get those houses. But then once these dominoes started falling, the mayor backed off and was like, oh, man, the police are bad.

We got to get justice for Breonna. If I could fire him today, I would. I'm like, dude, you started this whole thing. This was your idea. You put the cops there. So just a huge disaster. And then the instantly started coming out. Ben Crump said we had the wrong address.

And it was a no-knock warrant. And she was asleep in bed. and all these factors that were just blatant lies. And I'm thinking, well, there's no way my department's going to sit back and let this continue to snowball, right? Because I called him as like, when are you going to release this information? When are you going to tell the truth? And the response was, well, we don't want to set precedent for future cases. I said, so you'd rather the city burn and people get injured than tell the truth?

Where's the transparency I'll talk about? Because there's none. There's zero transparency. So when that happened, man, I kind of lost my faith in the system. I did. So I can understand why people look at government and go corrupt, horrible. You know, I get it. I get it.

I've been on both sides of it. And what I thought and what I did was right. I didn't, I wouldn't violate people's rights. I wouldn't do anything outside of the scope of what we were supposed to do. But I can see how people can look at government, look at police, look at all these systems in place and go, man, messed up. corrupt. Now, you never got charged in that incident. Everyone got cleared. No. So, Brett Hankinson was the third guy in the stack coming up. And he saw the gunshot. He saw me return fire. He heard me. So he couldn't get to the door because you can't have more than two guys going through a door. You kind of peel off each other and go through a door. The third guy is the one that goes straight. And so as he was coming up, he saw the shot, heard me say I got shot. And the other guy was started to shoot. So he buttoned, he. He'd buttoned, hooked around the front because there's nothing he could do there he button hooked around to the front and as he got there he could see the flashes through the window he didn't know it was from our guy shooting in

all he heard was rapid gunfire and we're underneath this this this pavilion and this you know apartment complex and the echo was just crazy i mean it sounded like automatic gunfire from all the echo on the pop-b-b-b-pah i mean it was just crazy and it's happening so quick as he's coming around the edge he knew i was shot and down um and he saw these flashes in he thought we were getting executed at the door door. So he put some rounds through a window trying to get the guy inside. His term was to stop the threat. That's all I want to do was stop the threat so you guys could get out and not get killed. And so they ended up charging him on a state level for one endangerment. He went to trial, got acquitted. The feds charged him for civil rights violation. We went to one trial. It was a hung jury tend to acquit, two for guilty. They did another trial and they ended up finding him not guilty. on civil rights violations of the neighbor because they charged him with that as well because the bullets went through their drywall

into their apartment. But they charged him, they found guilty on the civil rights violation of Brianna Taylor, who was probably already dead by the time he was shooting because it went through her aorta and she dropped instantly.

And so here's a guy who hurt no one, who's the first officer in American history who is charged with returning fire after being fired upon hurting no one. And now he's been convicted of 33 months in prison and three years probation. Do you feel like you've been able to clear your name? Or do you feel like you'll always be tied to that incident?

Oh, always be tied. There's people that no matter if you showed them video of it, no matter what truths you show them, they go, oh, no, you're a murder, you're a racist. That's frustrating because your whole character was just drugged through the mud. I mean, everything you worked for my entire career was just taken. And when your name is smeared like that, again, by all these people, like one of Cardi B's posts about us, called us murders and racist got over 17 million views.

I can't combat that. That's out there. You know, once that, whoever gets the truth out for, or a story out first, not the truth. Whoever gets a story out first, people believe. And again, there's not one probably big public figure you know that didn't say something about it to their audience in a negative way. in a way that they were deceived by. I don't think most of them were malicious. I think because the story never got pushed back on,

the city paid them $12 million because they included the gentrification in the, they updated and revised the lawsuit against the city and put the gentrification against the mayor in it. Two days later, they settled the lawsuit in darkness without city council's approval because he did not want to have to testify about the gentrification part. So when you have a city paying, a mayor coming out against you, the department not telling the truth, all these lies that just

capitulated out and just kept going and going and going and nobody of authority pushed back against it, if I didn't know the case, I would probably think I was dirty too. So I don't blame everybody for what they said or did because emotions got high, right? During 2020, emotions were insane and high. And when emotions go up, common sense goes out the window. People just, they jump on the bandwagon. and they retweet people's stuff, they say stuff that they don't know anything about, and they're too lazy to go do their own digging and their own investigating on it.

And so I'm not like condemning those people. I wish they would pump the brakes a little bit on these incidents and wait and see when the final story comes out or how things played out. Because it's unreal that Brett got acquitted in the city of Louisville. We're a liberal city that's not super police friendly. And so I thought for sure,

if he's going to be found guilty, it's going to be in Louisville. And when they heard the story, they were like, that's nothing I've heard. It's all different. And so he got to quit on that charge. But it was just a weird time to be in. Do you think if the department just put the body camera footage out, like right immediately? That's a problem.

We didn't have any. Oh, there was no body cam. No, the only body camera footage of the patrol guys showing up. At that time in narcotics, there wasn't body cams. And the reason for that is understandable because if I make an end. tree on you and the whole goal in narcotics is to climb the ladder, right? I don't want the guy sewn a couple ounces. I mean, if that's all we get, that's all we get. But I'm looking for the guy moving the kilos. I'm looking for the guy that is the source to all this. You want

to cut the head off the snake. And so as I'm going in, every time I'm dealing with somebody, I'm trying to work an angle to go, hey, you want to reduce your sentence or you want to get off on this? You know, do you got a family to go home to? Do you want to see them? You're trying to get informants. That's the goal because we can't. go in and we can't get these we can't get to these people it's impossible you got to have informants um so if i'm sitting here with a camera perched up on my shoulder looking at you going hey tell me about your source you're going to be like uh i don't know nothing you know nobody's going to talk so that was the logic behind it but i would give anything i would give everything i've got

to have body cam footage at night i wouldn't be here you wouldn't know me you wouldn't know this story because um the truth would have been right there caught in high death and so they have to have them now on entries, which I'm thankful for. I think it's smart. I was never a super pro body cam guy, but now I'm like, please, wear your body cams. If you're not doing anything wrong, wear your body cameras. Turn them on because it's just crazy. The amount of, I think it's 90, it's in the high 90s percentage of complaints that come in now that when they review body cams, they go, that's not how that happened. They can show the person and go, you know, in that moment, people feel it's hard to understand when we feel like we've been done wrong.

to feel like that we mistook the thing, kind of like my son. You know, he's in football right now. He plays baseball and football. And I help coach. And so when a parent comes to you and goes, hey, man, you did this wrong. You got to do this. No, I did that. No, I did that.

You know, I made this move. Or I did the swim move on the line. I did whatever. No, you didn't. You missed it that time. You missed that block. No, I didn't. Okay, well, look at the film.

Here it is. Oh, yeah, I did. Because in our minds, a lot of times, we can fool ourselves, right? We can think that something in a certain way in a heat of a moment that didn't. But these body cams clear a lot of these things up, or it catches guys who are doing wrong. And again, if you unjustly did something, then that's on you. Did you end up going back to policing or did you retire? Well, I went back with the intention of staying.

And the day I went back, my department demoted me down to the property room. And, you know, I was a hider coordinator. I've been in narcotics and all these things. And I'm like, man, because my chief came. out. We got a new chief in the process from Atlanta, Erica Shields, and she came out on her first press conference in the city of Louisville while I worked for her. She said, this is where, this is a case of white reckoning. They would have never done this to white people and all this stuff. And I'm going, what, are you kidding me? I got shot in this incident by a black dude. You know, this wasn't,

this wasn't a race thing. This just happened to be the way this thing played out. And so she wanted me gone. She demoted me. She did all this stuff. And it's like, I could see the writing on the wall. And I wouldn't have been allowed to talk if I'd stayed because you can't go out and do your own stuff. So I knew the word needed to get out. And even at the cost of my career and the cost of, you know, a lot of money left on the table with all the raises and all that stuff and my pension that it was the right thing to do. How's your life now after leaving? It took a while, but it's finally falling in place. It's getting there. Because when you go from 100 miles and to nothing, which that was forced on me in the beginning, right? I went from working 60, 70 hours a

week, adrenaline filled to being at home with my wife and kid 24-7. That wasn't even my home, stuck in a place a couple hours away. Then it was like emotional whiplash. I mean, it was like everything just stopped. Now what do I do? This is all known for 20 years. What do I do now? You know, when you're on suspension, you can't go work another job. You can't do stuff. So it's like, okay, I'm making base pay. I'm not, I'm still having to pay my mortgage, but they ship me out here and I've got all these other bills. It was just a weird, weird time of, you had to do a lot of self-reflection. You had to do a lot of decision-making of, okay, is this where, where do I want the rest of my life to go? You know, what's going to be my next purpose? Because this probably

isn't for me anymore. What do you do now? I travel and speak. Yeah. I go to conferences and individual group meetings and stuff. And I tell the story a lot, you know, do a debrief for policing, a debrief on things that could have gone better, things that were leadership and administration failed. Just trying to encourage other leaders. I do some stuff on leadership. So it's just been a different dynamic. It keeps me involved in the police world, but at the same time, hopefully helping people not be me. I don't want anybody else to be me or be put in this situation.

Does, do you feel like the law enforcement community support you? Oh, yeah. Everything that happened? Yeah, a lot of times they'll all go to places and they'll say a couple of things. Hey, they'll come up to me afterwards and go, man, I didn't even know a cop was shot here in this incident. They never heard about that. They just heard about, you know, the other people. Or they'll go, man, before you came, I thought you were this scumbag, dirty cop that now that I've heard the truth, I get, oh, man, media lied to us.

Yeah. Do you think that's common in a lot of these situations? I think it is. I think it is, especially if there was no pushback from anybody or anything, which made this a little more rare as far as you didn't get two sides to the coin and then be able to make your own decision. And that's all I ask of people. You know, put your truth out and then put, which I think should be the truth. I don't believe in your truth. I shouldn't even say that. But put the truth out or put the media side out, put the police version side out, and let people decide for themselves. You know, all this agenda pushing stuff, because in,

In the ultimate scheme of things, we're just a little cog in the wheel that gets replaced. You know, next man up, kind of like a football roster. If a guy gets injured on a pro roster, blows his knee out, okay, next guy up. And that's how it is in policing. And so the little man just gets totally railroaded because it doesn't affect the system. It doesn't affect this moving part up here. Just dump him out if you got to, you know, dump on him. If you got to let him be the fall guy or throwing him under the bus, that's fine.

We've just going to keep, we've got to keep the system moving. Is there anything you wish you did differently? over the course of your career? There's sometimes I wish I'd done something like homicide, maybe branched out my investigative skills more, just so I had more resources to fall back on when I left. It may have opened some different doors. But other than that, man, I had such a fun career.

I had such a good career. You know, I try not to look back on things with regrets and just go, okay, what do I learn from it? And now what can I do different? What do you think is the biggest lesson you learn for your career? career. Not, and this is what I tell guys, do not sell your soul, do not sell your life to the career, right? I missed down on things with my older kids that now, because of the position I'm in, I get to coach my kid. You know, time wasn't there for that before. Guys get so invested and so enthralled in their career, whether it be policing or whatever it is, any career, right? You can, you can equate this to anybody. If you sell your soul to it and you neglect. You, your family, one day that career will stop, and you're going to have to have something. And if you neglect your family, your entire career, they're probably not going to be there when you're done.

And I was fairly balanced. I tried really hard. I was cognizant of it, but I could have done better. There's times I didn't have to go into work that, oh, but they have to have me. I didn't have to have me. I'm not that special. But I wanted to be there. And so that was probably my biggest takeaway and the biggest thing, kind of like I tell guys now, too,

in policing a big flaw is when you get off your shift, you and your buddies go, man, let's go have a drink. Then they go have a drink. Now, I never did this because, again, when I came on, I already had three kids and responsibilities, and I just didn't have time for it, not because I didn't want to go hang out with the guys, but cops make cops their friends.

And I was fortunate to be able to already have an outside friend group and have kept them over the course of my life. And that kept me balanced. It kept me grounded a lot where I wasn't going out after work hanging out with just cops. And then we're talking, we see all this negative stuff, deal with all this negative stuff all day.

And then we go home or we go out and what do we talk about together? All the negative stuff. How the department's treating us. How the citizens are treating you. How blah, blah, blah. So it's negative, negative, negative. And we're like computers.

Anything you put into us, eventually that's what comes out. And if all you're getting is negative, negative, negative, negative, you're going to be a negative person. And I didn't want to be that way. And it wasn't because I was some wise guy. Circumstance played a lot into it again with already having a family, but at the same time, I did see some value to keeping that

outside friend base of balance and being able to just resort back to that when I needed my sanity back, because this job, it'll put a toll on you. John, I appreciate you coming on the show today. Yeah, thank you for having me in. Yeah, thanks for an incredible interview and taking your time to come be here today. Well, thank you. Awesome, and we'll have the link to your book and the bio this episode. Sounds great, man.

Great.