Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Inside the Mind of a Female Officer | Secrets to Catch Criminals

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

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It's the golden moment. Triumph on the podium, golden hand. But with Corona Serro, golden moments go beyond the Winter Olympics. They're enjoying sunsets, time outside, reconnecting with nature, and laughs shared with friends. For every golden moment at the Winter Olympic Games, enjoy your own with Corona Serro, 0% alcohol and a source of vitamin D. Corona Serro, the official non-alcoholic beer of Milano Cortina, 2026. Being a girl, you kind of were able to like sometimes flirt a little bit to like diffuse situations or, but then on the flip side, they, if it was a fight, they looked at you like you were the weak link. So they would kind of go after you first. So it kind of, you kind of played it either way. But most of the time, like there was one time, I was in the 105 precincts called the conditions unit. So you're basically dealing with like the guys who piss on the street, the drinkers, open containers, like the things that kind of bring down the quality.

of the neighborhood, you're kind of addressing those conditions and, you know, writing summons is forward or making arrests or whatever. So we go out, my partner and I see this group of guys hanging out on the corner and one of the guys makes like a motion on his waistband. So it's tricky because sometimes they do it without realizing they do it. It's like a, they see the cops and they're like, oh, I got a gun. Let me make sure it's still there. Kind of a thing. Sometimes they do that because they know they don't have a gun, but they know we're going to see. it because one of their buddies has the gun so it like helps you know we get the we we miss the jump on the guy with the gun and we're focusing on this other guy or could it just been a random

like movement but the way that he moved it kind of looked like we had a gun so we jump out on them and it's i think it was like five or six of those guys and it's me and my partner so i go right up to the guy i grab them and i you give him a toss which is like you kind of just feel where or out in the outside you're not going into pockets or anything like that you're just feeling to see if he as a weapon so i grab him where i saw he he's a went and grabbed and he just had like a cell phone or something like under his under his things what kind of looked like a bulge it was you know nighttime so it's hard to see but it wasn't anything so I'm like all right so now all these guys are getting aggravated and they're like yo what's up

why you coming after us so it was like you know I kind of just kind of did a little like sly like giggle and I'm like I don't know how you doing baby you know like kind of just like flirting a little bit with them not because I'm and it wasn't anything like being unprofessional or anything but it was like I'm about to get my butt kicked by like six dudes where's surrounded use a situation yeah like i got to get out of here so you know i kind of made like some jokes like flirting with him and stuff just to kind of get myself out of that situation so in you know and in that respect like my partner was like thank god you're a girl because you know it wouldn't have worked if he had tried something like that that probably would have ended up in a play you know

it would have been really bad but so you know like the situations like that kind of helped and then helping like with domestic violence with you know the women who are victims of domestic violence. Sometimes they would open up more to a female, kids a lot of the time. So there's, there's benefits to having police. And at that time, there was police that are females. There was, I don't know, maybe a handful of women in the precinct that I was in at that time. So it was, it was interesting. But the, the bad guys on the street did not hold back. If they were going to fight you because they wanted to get away and they didn't feel like going to jail, they were going to hit you just as bad as they were going to hit a dude.

They didn't discriminate because you were a girl. So, you know, you had to be. And I always always tell the girls who came on, like, if you've never been in a fight before, go take some self-defense classes, like take Krav Maga or do something so that you know how to defend yourself. Yeah, you get punched in the face. It's something you can't, you need to get punched in the face to be prepared to be punched in the face because when it happens, it's, you know, you see stars.

Like if you've been affected, then the situation is, it's not something you want to learn in a fight. No. And that actually, that happened to me once. I mean, I spoke to the new people who came on after me when I had time on from experience because I had gotten into a, I guess it was like a, you call it a fist fight with a guy. He was, he was, he was, he had a BMW in a driveway. And him and this other guy are like working underneath the BMW where the, where the steering. wheel column goes into the thing. Like, they looked like they were trying to hotwire the car. And it was like, I think it was actually, I was working for some reason during the day or like

early, early evening or something. So it wasn't, there wasn't like a lot of people out. And it was a time when we were really high in stolen cars. Like, there was a period where our precinct was like number one for stolen cars. So I'm looking at these guys and I'm like, are they trying to hotwire that car? So my partner, I go out just to see what's up because I'm like, it's still like kind of daylight. I don't know if they'd be doing this, but you, you don't know. And it just doesn't look right. So we go out to talk to them and this guy immediately started going at me. You can't do, you can't stop me. And usually when they're throwing static like that, it's because something's up and they're just trying to make you be like, oh, okay, we'll leave you alone. So the opposite happens.

Now it's like, okay, why are you throwing off static? What's the problem? Do you just hate cops or you you have to no good and you're just trying to like, you know, give your buddy a head start on running? So we end up trying to like talk to the guy. And I'm like, listen, trying to calm him down. I'm just is this your car like what's going on here like what is it broken do you need is you need a jump start like do you need a tow truck or I'm thinking in my head are you trying to steal this car and now I'm kind of raised up because of the way that he's reacting to me so he just goes and like text me like just text me right in the chest and like and I'm like what so in the police department it's not like levels equal

levels of force like you hit me I'm hitting you back like that's you just you know, there's, there's levels of force that you're allowed to use. And it depends on what's given to you that you're allowed to use a certain level back. So I open palm to them in the nose. I just whacked him right in the nose. And he had like blood trickling down. I'll never forget the look on his face. And my partner goes to grab one arm and go over the radio and tell where we are because we're about to have a fight. We got another guy here. I don't know if he's going to jump on his backs. Right now he's kind of laying low and he's kind of talking to his buddy like, yo, calm down, calm down. I don't know what's going on. So my partner's going to. to the radio. I go to grab his other arm and he just cockbacks and boom gets me, which I mean, it happens. So he got me right in the head. It was a beautiful haymaker that he landed and it spun me around and like, you see stars. I see the stars. But I'm like, you know, like, all right, get back in because now my partner is by himself with this guy. So, you know, we get back in and we're rolling around with him and I'm on the radio, given our location, just over the radio, just, you know, we need some help here because by now like I'm still seeing SARS my vision is completely blurred

because my eye is tearing and I'll never forget when the guys got there they all looked at me and they were like they gave me like a weird look and I'm like my makeup my makeup must be running because my eye is tearing so I'm thinking I look like some kind of freak show so I go running over so now you know the other guys have them and they're handcuffing and whatever he's still fighting it was it got a little hairy too because like the people in the neighborhood kind of came out and everybody's surrounded us with the cameras out and well back then it wasn't cameras with like the flip phone things or whatever taking pictures and like you don't know who's enemy who's foe who's going to jump on my back who's going to help me out who's you have to assume that everybody is is an enemy at this point so you know I'm just trying to

yell at everybody to get back the brother I hear him yelling like stop fighting the police stop it so the the other cars finally get there they put him into handcuffs or whatever so I go running over to a side view mirror of a van to take a look at my makeup and I'm like trying to I look and I'm like, well, my makeup doesn't really look too big because I wore like liquid eyeliner and I look and I got a huge unicorn knot on the top of my head. And I'm like, oh gosh, this is horrible. So my partner had gotten hurt. So I helped him over to an ambulance.

And then my sergeant was like, you need to go to the hospital and get that thing checked out. You have a unicorn, you know, horn on the top of your head. So I get into the ambulance and it was, you know, maybe five or ten minutes later. And I said to the guy that was in the ambulance with me, I'm like, bro, can you just take a picture? of my head so I can see like how bad it actually looks because I was only looking at the side of your mirror so he takes a picture and like my whole face looked like it was just swollen up disgusting so you know went to the hospital got checked out I had a concussion I was out sick a week later I come back and I'm walking past the arrest processing area which is a couple of computers

and like a little area with paperwork and stuff and I see something out of corner my eye and I look and there's my picture with the knot on my head bouncing around as a screensaver on of the computers in the arrest processing room. And I'm like, these guys got me so good. Like, you know, the bullbusting was a part of like being a cop. You know, we have like a very disturbed sense of humor. So I was like, okay, fair enough. You know, it was, they blasted in that picture everywhere.

It was pretty good. Every day I went into work, it was like, you know, what's going to happen tonight? I have no idea. Next thing you know, you're like chasing some guy into a dark alley or like one time I fell out of a police car, just like chasing somebody, like just crazy insane stuff happens. It's just fun. How do you fall out of a car?

Yeah. So we, my partner and I were driving around and there was a radio run central, who's the radio dispatcher, raises us up. And she's like, I have a man with a gun. He's like wearing a white t-shirt. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm a block away. So we turned the corner and it was like in the middle of the street. So on the left side was a school and there was like a driveway sort of opening in the fence halfway down the block.

So there's like a couple of trees and there's like a street light. And in like the circle of light that the street light will illuminates on the street was this guy. And here he is. And I turn the corner and my partner kind of like slows the car down and maybe 10, 15, 20 feet away because, you know, you, we don't know if he's got a gun. It's dark. I can't really see his hands. Central's trying to call the complaint and to see like, you know, does he have a gun? How did you see this gun? What's going on? Is this the guy? Is he still there? Do we have the wrong guy? And he's looking at us? And I'm like, it's him. I just know it's him. Right.

So I'm trying to see his hands to see if he's got a gun. It's hard to see. So I pull the door open a little bit, like I unhook it because I'm ready to jump out and use the car as cover to like, you know, give him orders to to end this scenario safely so we don't have like shots going off on this on this block. And as soon as I like unlatched the door, he takes off through the driveway of the school. So my partner guns the car and makes the quick left to drive into the school yard. And as he goes left, I go right out the car. And I just remember like, tumbling out of control and because I mean I wasn't wearing my seatbelt because I was ready to jump out on him. So I'm just flying.

We used to have these summons tins, which are actual tins where you put your paperwork for summonses and complaint reports and accident reports. So you have all these metal tins, my radio. Everything just comes flying out with me. I'm tumbling. I remember thinking like just tuck your head in so you don't like, you know, get knocked unconscious. And I rolled uncontrollably and I slammed into a tree that was on the curb. You guys aren't slowing. You're slowing down, but you're still going fast.

Yeah. Like it was like zero to 60. Like my partner gunned it. We were going. Okay. So, because we didn't want to lose the guy in the dark park. It was like, we got to go follow this guy in there. So I hit the tree and I just remember being like, oh, you know, like I hit it with like force.

And I get up and I'm like, I got to get my radio. And I see my radio on the ground. I grab it and I go running into the park after this guy. And I hear my part. partner behind me, yelling, where the hell are you going? You just got thrown out of the car. Like, forget the guy. Like, are you, are you okay? So I was like, I just ignored him. I just went running into the park and I'm like, you know, I don't want to turn my flashlight on because that gives away my position. So I kind of lower the radio so he can't kind of make me out. So I'm like,

you know, creeping around trying to see if I see movement in the shadows. And I'm like jogging lightly through the park as I'm like looking around corners and stuff and I don't see him. And I get to the other side of the playground and he's gone he's in the winds we we never it's an open-ended we never found the guy but my partner ended up stopping some other guy like it's like a dark night there's not a lot of people out all of a sudden we got two guys in white t-shirts just walking around where we are so my partner had stopped another guy hear him yelling so i go running over to him and uh you know to help him out but it was it was a different guy but i'm assuming it's the guy who ran who i would i would think that it would be But it, I mean, he wasn't like sweating or out of breath or anything.

So I don't think that it was, but he had come from like the other side of the playground. So I think my partner thought that he had just walking, but I don't mean the guy that your partner stopped. I meant like the guy that ran is the guy were after he your partner sounds like jumped out and said, hey, there's a guy in a white shirt. Let's stop him. No, this guy went. I think the guy that ran that way as our guy was this guy's got a white shirt. Yeah. I mean, it was fair.

He saw him coming in the direct. So I was like, it wasn't, it wasn't him. It wasn't. It could have been, but it wasn't him. So, you know, that was, that was a fun time. So my, my boss shows up to the scene afterwards because it's a man with a gun. So, you know, you have a couple of guys coming. So he, he shows up and my partner tells him like, you know, Mary just fell out of the car.

And he's like, are you all right? And I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. And he's like, you're bleeding. So I had like road rash on my arms and my hands from like getting like scraped alone in the concrete. I was thrown out of the car. I'm like, I'm fine. Let's just go to the next job.

I'm good. Being a girl was a little interesting in the NYPD when I came on because there were not a lot of females. When I came on, the girls that were on were like hardcore. Like these were tough chicks. Like you did not mess with them. They were harder than the guys sometimes. Like they were just someone that even carried the revolvers still at that time. So they had like the low slinging belt like the Clint Eastwood thing and they would like walk around.

And, you know, they were just rough and tumble chicks. and they could hang with the guys. So it was really important to me to be able to hold up the, I'm not a feminist in any way, but I just wanted to be able to show the guys like, yeah, you can trust me. If you get into a fight,

I'm going to jump in there and help you out, you know, and cuff the guy up. I'm not going to be one of these, you know, girls that runs the other direction that's scared to get involved. So it was important to me to be able to hold up the reputation that these hardened women had achieved with, you know,

just being good cops. They were great street cops. I had a female partner for a long time. And she and I went to like, they call it a lift job where you have like an elderly person who falls and they can't get back up again. So the man had fallen. The wife comes to the door and she opens the door and she's like, oh, they sent females. And I'm like, all right, see you later. I'm out of here.

You don't want help. Then don't, you know, like, are you serious right now? So I guess she was really in a jam because she's like, oh, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Come back. And I'm like, all right, where is he? And I mean, the guy soaking wet was probably 100 pounds. You know, it wasn't like he was like a big.

So, you know, we lifted him up and we helped him out and, you know, whatever. And, you know, she was like, oh, I'm really sorry. And I'm like, yeah, well, don't underestimate us, man. I had to pass the same or similar physical test that the dudes did. Like, you know, so it was the people that and especially like the perps. How long was it until you like you went to, you were in homicide, right? No, I. I, no, I never went to the detective squad.

So when I was in the 105, I did patrol for like five years. Then I went to the conditions unit. Then I went to SNU, which was street narcotics enforcement. And then I went to anti-crime. And then I went to the field intelligence office, which was basically me and my boss. And we debriefed prisoners that came in there and gathered information on, you know, who's got guns, who's selling drugs, what kind of gang beef you saw there, whatever. And we would sign up informants and, you know, do search warrants.

And then I went, I did that for, I guess, like 10 years. And I went into, they had started an animal cruelty unit. And that was my real passion. It was like animal cruelty. And, you know, I'm a big like animal rights activist. So don't hurt any more gators because that's horrible. But as long as they eat the meat, it's like, okay. There's plenty of gators.

Yeah. They've been here for like thousands of years. I think they'll be okay. One of my, one of my old bosses was a he was an avid. My boss in the Intel unit was an avid hunter. He would go like hunting upstate or whatever, every, whatever the season is. And he knew that I was like this huge animal rights activist. So every day I would come into the office and he'd have on the TV like the hunting program and like watching little little baby Bambi getting shot and killed and like, you know, gutted and stuff.

And I'm like, seriously. So, you know, I'm not really good to. Are you in Florida? Yeah, yeah. We moved to Florida after we retired. Yeah. So my wife and I go walking in the morning. We're supposed to be jogging.

Sometimes we jog. But mostly it's walking. It's like an 80-20 mix. So, but we probably go around one, two, three. There's four ponds that we go around. There's huge ponds. There's at least two gators in every single pond that we go around. I mean, there's, you know, they're everywhere.

And I grew up in Temple Terrace right across from the Hillsborough River. man it's probably once a month animal controls out there dragging some alligator out of somebody's pool right out of the front yard like it's just super common you know and that's why i'm like listen we're not running out of alligators like they're over it's the wildlife down in florida is a different i was very big into hiking i would hike like the adorondack trail like i would always go upstate and go hiking and I was an outdoor person. I love the beach. You know, I lived, I live 10 minutes from the South Shore beaches my whole life. So I lived on the beach and we moved down to Florida and I'm like, I, you know, there's like the econ area and I'm like, no, not going there. You know, you see like

the lake or whatever in upstate New York. It's like, oh, you go stick your feet in the lake and cool off or whatever, swimmer out, not down here. I'm like, the good Lord did not really intend for man to live in Florida because it's like Jurassic Park down here. You have these giant sandhill cranes with these long beaks that want to peck your eyeballs out that walk around the gators the the the mosquitoes i'm like this is this place is legit like i need civilization in florida yeah listen the heat that yeah that's the mosquitoes the it's you know listen i was doing a shoot one time and i was going to tell you this because this is so obnoxious but my my wife the guys just uh walked into it um And I was doing a shoot one time and I was like reviewing a movie.

I know, reviewing a, um, you know, I was reviewing a movie like a con man movie or something. And there was a mosquito or something like no, it was a mosquito was flying around. And somebody goes, wait, wait, wait, you know, the camera guys are like, wait a second, there's a mosquito. And they're like, where is it? Where is it? And I'm, you know, kind of looking. And I said, well, I said, bro, we just keep shooting. I said, I'm not worried about us. They don't bite me. And, um, and somebody goes, I think it was, I want to say it was my wife goes. She goes, why?

And I go, out of respect. Listen, she's just what these guys were, everybody just bawled out laughing and they were just, so anyway, I was just walked right into it. That's awesome. So, so what was, and I was going to say when you were saying that, you know, people coming off the street that you're interviewing and for information or criminals, you arrest and you interview. But what about the code? There is no code with that. There is no code when your ass is on the line.

People are going to, they will tell. And it's you, they can't, everybody at the end of the day is out to save him, his own skin. That's just, you know, and you got to capitalize on that. And I mean, I guess, yeah, from your perspective, it's like these guys are rats, right? From my perspective, what are you talking about? I got 26 years. four months. I didn't even do 13 years. So I, I hear you. You know how many times I get these guys that come here and they talk and they tell me their story. And I'm thinking like, you know, mandatory

minimum guidelines. They're like, yeah, so you know, they called me with like two keys of hair. I had a really good lawyer. I'm like, yeah. And I only got five years. You got caught with two kilos in the federal system and you got five years come on listen i hear you yeah yeah and i'm looking bro you did the right thing i'm not judging you but i feel like that's 15 minimum but yeah yeah i mean what do you have to do what you have to do right and it benefits us because it's like you i mean the more every gun i got off the street was somebody that didn't get shot whether it be a cop or a civilian or like another drug dealer. You know, like it was, it wasn't really, I didn't look at it like, you know, and sometimes

you have to tell these people like, don't think of it like you're ratting people out. Think of it like you're going to try and make the neighborhood you live in safer because I don't live here. You do. You know, you need to make the people who are scared to come out of their houses. You need to make them feel safer. And every gun we take off the street is a way to. do that. That's just what it is. And you don't have to go to jail. Bonus. Yeah. Big bonus. But for a while, it was like in New York State, if you got caught

with a gun, an illegal gun, you were doing two years. There was no plea bargain. Now it's like the plea bargaining is so insane. I don't, I don't even know if people are really doing considerable time for having like an illegal firearm. But back then it was like, you know you're going away. So it wasn't It didn't really solicitate like cooperation because they're like, if I don't do two years for this gun, they're going to know that I'm cooperating. So I can't help you. So it was like, yeah. Good point. I knew a guy who got like 25 years and he cooperated.

And when he went to be sentenced, they were going to give him 178 months. So he has a mandatory minimum of 25. Or sorry, minimum mandatory of 25. So he gets there and because he cooperated, they were going to give him 78 months. And he went and he literally asked the judge, can you give me 180 months? Because that would be the mandatory minimum. You know, if you don't count the priors, if you count one less prior, it wouldn't have been 25, would have been 15. So he's like, can I get 180?

Because if you give me 178 and I go in with that paperwork, they know I cooperate because of my charge. And so the judge is like, I'll give you a 180. And he's like, okay, went in with 180. And listen, you want to talk about somebody who walked around? First of all, everybody in there, he called a snitch. He thought everything to the snitch. And he walked around with that paper like in his pocket. If somebody said, I got 180.

If I cooperate, you know, and they'd be like, oh, man, I'm sorry, bro. I'm sorry. That projection is really good. Call all other people what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah, it's a horrible situation. But yeah, it was killed me because, because like, you know, that whole, the whole street code thing is like you're, you're, you're protecting people that don't care about you that aren't going to help you when you go to prison that aren't sell you out, right? Absolutely.

But I literally know a guy that I wrote a story about because when I went to federal prison, I started writing guys stories, right? I started writing true crime stories because I'm an opportunist. So, you know, there was nobody in there that could write. And I realized after writing one story that you could sell these things for options. So I said, I get out of here with a bunch of stories. Maybe I can sell some options. So I did a story on one guy, never been in trouble, ends up, he raised in the projects, ends up getting his concealed weapons license and ends up being a guard for like cash logistics as a company that moves money.

you know they move money for banks and stuff right okay so he and he and his buddy decide that they're going to rob the place where he works they're going to set him up to get robbed so he sets it up so he gets robbed they get three and a half million FBI knows immediately he's involved in it I mean he's a he's a numbskull so and the guys were idiots too but they'd been to federal prison for robbing banks so when he gets so then he turns around at the they screw him out of the money he gets maybe a couple I think he got like two, three hundred thousand. They're supposed to give him a million in change. They're supposed to split it in thirds. He, they never give him like 10% 300 grand. They keep whatever. So he spends the money. He blows the money right away. You know, he has no

idea how to what to do with this money. So he buys just stupid shit, gives it away to people, you know. Um, it sounds like the good fellows with the fur coat. Oh yeah, just get it out of here. Yeah. A year later, he decides, you know what? I'm going to rob one of these places, one of these things myself. So he robs a truck himself. He does get the money, but he doesn't even get home before the cops have him. So when the FBI comes in, they say, look, you're going to do like 10 years just for this robbery. But we know you were involved in the other robbery with these two guys. Now, nobody's talking right now. But if you talk, one, we can give you a pass on that robbery and we can knock your 10 years or 15, whatever it was. We can knock it down. You do five, six years, you'll be

home. He said, I'm not going to do that. I'm not doing that. Anyway, a few, like six, he gets sentenced. He gets whatever it was, 10, 15 years. Six months later, the FBI arrest the other two guys. They immediately cooperate. They cooperate against him. He gets re-indicted. He gets additional 10 or 15 years. He ends up with 25 years. They end up with less than 10 years. They're out on the street right now. He's still serving the original 25. And they'd been in and out of prison. But see, they'd been out in and out of prison. They knew how it worked.

Right. And those are the same guys that go to prison and call everybody a snitch. There's no honor amongst thieves. Yeah. And now, now he's in prison. Like, he was then in prison trying to cooperate now. It's like, you got nobody to cooperate for you're not a career criminal. You don't know anybody.

Right. And the FBI is like, you had a chance. Yeah. Like, you had a chance. Like what? But I mean, that's what happens is these guys. they you go to prison they say don't say anything they don't send you money they don't come to see you they steal everything in your house i mean it's just you know they get caught then they turn

around they cooperate against you i mean and you see it so much like i'd seen it by the time i got arrested the second time my second federal uh-uh that's not happening this time yeah i know better your mama is the only one putting money in your commissary when you go away like Wow. Why do you say that? My mom came to see me every two weeks for almost 13 years. Good woman. You know, all those guys that I didn't ever say anything about the first time I got arrested, they didn't answer the phone.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. I mean, that's part of the bargaining tool is like, you know, we got you on this one, right? It is what it is. And I would be very straightforward with these people. I didn't, I wasn't into lying, right? That's just not good karma.

that's not the way you're if you tell a lie now it has to be the truth and it's too complicated to make lies truth so i would just be straight up with them like listen we got you dead to rights you're gonna go do time like i would have to go to rikers island sometimes which was like the the jail for holding prisoners for new york city and i hated it it was dirty it was noisy it was loud forget about like all the fights and the shivs and all the other stuff that goes on just you know like i'm i was just the place is just a nightmare i'd be like do you really want to want to go to the island and be stuck there, these guys that are going to get caught, they're going to, you know, they're going to rat you out as soon as you get caught. Like you, it's a survival. Do you want to survive and like be able to be okay? And maybe we can help you like straighten your life out. I mean, we had a couple of people that were like, you know, drug addicts and you don't, you know, it's tricky to sign them up.

But it was it was more like some people I felt like mentoring, not even like signing up as an informant. Just be like, bro, we got to get you on the straight and hour. You got to clean your life up, you know, like, let's. Let's find God. Let's get the Bible. Get a job. Let's try and get you into away from this and get out of that life.

Because granted, there are like criminals that are like bad dudes. They just have no empathy. They will kill you. They don't care. You know, they don't care who they hurt or, you know, what they steal or it. There is no like conscience there. But then there are a few that get into the life because they didn't have a father figure. And they, you know, they hung out with.

their boys and their boys got into drugs and gang stuff and whatever and inner city stuff. And that was that, that's the only thing that they knew, right? That's all that they know. So they don't know like going to a job nine to five. I mean, that's like an unrealistic expectation for them is like, you want me to go and deal with rush hour traffic every day and work from nine to five and make $50,000 a year? I can sling crack and sleep all day and make $100 grand a week. You know, like, why would I ever be a normal person? So it was it was tough to see because you just see this repetitive thing of like these 15, 16 year old kids of, you know, they're getting into trouble. And it's like, you know the life they're going to lead. And so you try and if they're not going to cooperate with

you or, you know, whatever, you just try and push them onto the right direction. You know, like I was you once, man. I used to run from the cops and, you know, like I did all that stuff. But, you know, Now I am a cop because you get too old and you can't run anymore. You know, like there's only so many fences you can hop in your life. So it's funny. My wife, she was, she got indicted on like a huge, um, uh, meth conspiracy out of Okechobee before I met her. Okay.

And she, um, was going to trial. And she was going to trial because in her mind, she thought they didn't catch me with anybody. and the only people that they've got are friends of mine. They're not going to cooperate. So, you know, in the feds, I don't know how it is in the state, but you get your witness list about 10 days before trial. You can imagine what that witness list looked like. She was like, everybody.

Yeah. Like, like, no, nobody was willing to spare me, you know? Like, it's like no, like every single person had signed up that she was. And of course, they've already taken pleas or they're, getting, and it's funny too, she's like, you knew something was wrong because the lawyer would come see them or they'd take them out and they'd come back in and they'd be glancing at you. They go, hey, what's up? And they'd put them in it because when they rest them all, they put them in the same pod. Right. And then. Really? Okay. Yeah. Well, because at the same time. Yeah, well, I'm not saying all,

all like 40 people, but let's say you've got 15 or 20 people that are in the same U.S. Marshals, the holdover together. And there's 150 people. And so you've got like 30 of your co-defendants. Well, what happens is as they, their lawyers come and see them, come and see them, come and see them. And then one day they come in and they have this look. And then one day, and the next thing you know, they, you know, then they lock everybody down. And the next thing you know, the cops come to them and they take them and all their legal work and they move them out of the pot. And you know, right then they just added their name to my witness list. And then the next person, you know, a week later, this person gets moved.

It's like they're all being moved the same pod, you know. And that's what had been happening for her. She was like, so I felt like something was wrong, you know. But then when she got that stick feeling. Yeah. Yeah. And then of course, she turned around and went, you know, said, hey, call her lawyer and said, look, I want to plead guilty. And the, the original three year offer was off the table.

Yeah. You know, now. Yeah, you got to jump on it. And then the feds, you know, you can go to trial and get 20 years or you can take five years. You know, she was like, I'll take five years. There's a little over five years. But she's like, I'll, I'll take that because that beats the 20 that if I lose. And I know I'll lose because you've got eight people that, that are all going to get on the

stand and say, absolutely. She was supplying me. She was this. She was that. You know, and it's a, it's a hard lesson to learn when you're hanging out with these guys and your friends. And I even know, police officers who have, you know, they're undercover for a year. I've interviewed guys have been undercover for six months or a year or two years.

They're like, you know, and you're, you're eating with. these guys and you're hanging out and you have to keep reminding yourself like like god you know you're laughing with them and joking with them and and you know you're like this is not a bad guy you know it's like like and then you know that it's I'm going to be arresting this guy at some point but he's like so you know you feel bad because you know the undercover guys are like you know of course some undercover guys are like the more they get to know them they're like oh this guy's a scumbag like I can't wait for this to end yeah but but um yeah it's tough and then you know what's so funny is you've got the street guys that sell drugs that are always talking about

snitches and not trusting this guy and these guys and the truth that and the truth is is like like the el chapos of the world cooperated you heard what happened with uh el maya right mey yeah they everybody always turns yeah can you imagine that old guy the guy's like in his 70s he's like he's never been arrested there's like two folks Photographs of him. He's with El Chafo's son checking out some airfields. Clock, throw a bag over his head, tie him up, throw him in the plane, and fly him. You couldn't, you couldn't, if you saw that in a movie, you know what you'd say? You'd say that's not, that's not reasonable.

That would never happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's, we, we tried to kind of outsmart the perps when we would have a few guys in or something, especially if they were all arrested for like the same crime, you separate them. immediately so they can't like but we i would always and even if we had because we had like one cell area we had like two separate cells so no matter who was in there if i had one guy in there i would kind of feel him out in the cells see if you wanted to talk to me or whatever and then what you know

leave them but if i had more than one guy in there because they're all going to go down to central booking which is the holding place for arraignment right they're all going to and then they're going to know people who are there and they're going to start talking to be like yo that guy was upstairs and that chick's office for a long time you know he ratted you know like when they come down and they're not hungry anymore and they have like the chicken grease and you know a soda it's not a good luck because now you know you're putting this guy he's going to get his ass kicked in the cells so i would always take everybody and let everybody see and i would i would keep track of the time so that i knew like everybody kind of came up into my office and was debriefed for a certain period of

time whether they were coopering or not some people who didn't want to talk so it'd be like you want a cigarette hang out ask about because you never know once you get to know somebody people like to talk yeah so i would just be like you know i don't sometimes pretend like I wasn't even paying attention to them. Like you got me on a cigarette? You want a soda? Okay, cool. You know anything about this? And the other thing? No, I don't know anything. Oh, all right, cool. And go like this. And then you just start talking to them about, you know, the baseball game or, you know, the football game or who were your draft picks or something.

And then you kind of start leading into other stuff. And sometimes that would warm them up. But I always kept track of the time. If anybody was in the cells, I always brought like everybody up. And that way I wouldn't have like a guilty conscience that if they got their ass kicked in jail. It was because they knew that some, you know, they had cooperated with me. But I would tell them flat out, like, listen, man, I would release you right now. Because, you know, sometimes in New York City, you can release on a desk appearance ticket. You don't have to send them to arraignments. And I would tell them, I could do that for your crime, but it's not a good idea. You're going to go to the bookings and you're going to go see the judge just like everybody else because we don't want to raise, raise people up. You come back

later and come and talk to me. So you had to be very careful because you need people to cooperate, but you don't need it out there that they're cooperating with you. So, you know, it was a, you know, but it's just, it's smart for people who get locked up to cooperate. It's just, it's the smart move because if it's not going to be you, it's going to be them. And, you know, that whole thing, snitches get stitches. Snitches don't get stitches. Snitches get no jail time. Like that's, that's it.

So it was a, you know. When I first got locked out right, and I had like 26 years. So it was going around. The guys were like, that's a white collar guy. He got 26 years. So guys are coming up to me. And this is really more like when I, well, I know I said this into the medium to.

I went to a medium security prison. Guys would be like, bro, how much times do you get? I go 26 years. You know, it was actually 26 years and four months. But I don't like to say the four months. It makes it sound like I'm whining. What does four months matter after 26 years? Exactly.

Yeah. That's like a long nap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was going to say, have more time standing in line. Yeah. So I would go, you know, I'd be like, oh, I got, you know, 26 years.

I go, but they go, man, that's fucked up. I go, yeah. I said, well, I can be out of here tomorrow. Somebody might fuck up and tell me where there's a body. And they'd be like, damn, bro, it's like that. I go, oh, it's exactly. Yeah. Like, we're not friends, you know?

They'd be like, oh, okay, okay, you know. And they kind of, but I joke around a lot, you know, I don't think they realize how serious I was. Yeah. It was like seven years in before I got my sentence reduced. Yeah. So I got to reduce twice. That's, that's lucky. That's, that's just lucky that you, like, knew the right stuff and everything.

And, yeah. It was a lot of hard work. And it's funny because I'll be interviewed by other guys who are, who've been locked up. I was interviewed by this guy named Ian Bick. And he was like, you know, and he got like all of like three years or something. And he's, you know, big on like not cooperating. It's like, where you got three years? Yeah.

Anybody can be a standup guy for three years. But he was like, he's like, damn, bro. Like you don't, you like, you weren't concerned about being a snitch. And I was like, well, no. I was like, you know, Ian, you're not going to believe this. But at some point I had to, I had to make the choice, you know, 26 years in prison. or the respect of my fellow inmates. You're not going to believe this.

It wasn't, though, you know. It was, you know. It was, you know. Yeah. It always, it always, people will always tell you when they're faced with the reality of their situation, they, they're going to cooperate and you can't blame them for it. And, you know, it would get irritated because I'm like, cut the rat crap out. Just just stop it with that, with that stupid, you know, name on yourself. It's self-preservation.

You're doing this because you can't, you're going to help other people. You're going to make your neighborhood safer and you're going to get other bad people in jail. And, you know, you're going to work off your time. That's just what it is. I got no problem. You can call me a rat. 12 years off my sentence. I'm supposed to be in prison right now.

Yeah. I got people in 2030. You can. I got people in comments that call me a rat. Like you rat pieces of, absolutely. I'm leaning into it. It was the right call. Yeah.

I wish I knew more. I wish I had more names I could have given. My God. Yeah, what's so funny too is like, the people that cooperated against me, like, I talked to all of them. You know what I mean? Like, I don't have a problem. Yeah. Like, I'm like, hey, what's up?

Like I, you know, I never, I don't bring it up or anything, you know, but, you know, hey, I've no problem. I got one guy that cooperated against me. He doesn't talk to me, but he, and he never went to prison. And I have, but I, I'd talk to. I'd love to have dinner with them. I'd love to go hang out with it. You did the right thing. So this, I mean, there's, there's that with like the perps and with, you know, a lot of the cops because we would, we would know each other. So you'd run into the same people all the time. So I had like this, this one gang that was, for a while like a really driver of crime it was you know they were doing all kinds of credit card fraud and all those other stuff and shootings and you know territory beeps and stuff so they would see me and I you know I knew them and it'd be like yo what up you know how you know how you doing what's up

you know because it was it was like a mutual respect I guess a little bit and it was you know like it was it was an understanding that like sometimes I'm going to catch you and sometimes you're going to get away with it and we're going to play it like that but like you know you see them get a rest and it's like bro what happened this time man you want a soda you want something to eat like we would know each other and like one time this one guy it's like the coyote and the cheap dog right yeah like yeah like yeah it's like a nod of respect like yeah okay cool and it was it was also nice because when these guys knew they got caught they didn't play this game of like resisting and fighting and fighting and throwing punches and stuff that was that was almost looked at by them as like a rookie move

of a perp or you're like fighting the cops like you know you got cool what go go deal you know the judge is going to cut you a break you're going to get a plea you know you don't need to fight so it was like it was an appreciation of us that it was like okay we got you you know it's turn around put your hands behind you back it's over um but you know i would see them on the street one time that this guy got his uh his good buddy got killed and you know they had the whole gang is out on their corner and you know representing or whatever and we were driving around because we wanted to make sure we didn't have retaliation shootings and make sure these guys weren't going off with guns to go shoot whoever it was that you know did the shooting or whatever it was that you know did the shooting or whatever. And so I see I see the guy on the corner and he was historical crime. And I just, you know, I mean, I know he's done a lot of illegal stuff. And I know that he's not the nicest person to other, to his fellow humans. But he was hurting and I felt bad for him. And I actually like, I got out of the car and I was like, bro, I'm so sorry for you a loss. And I gave him a hug.

Because I just, I felt for this guy. He was like, it was like his non-blood brother. And I felt full. them, you know, and I just, I mean, like, before I retired, I would see other guys from the same thing. And they would be like, yo, Mons, what are you doing out on the street, son? You're about to retire. You shouldn't be out here. You should be like in the precinct, hiding out, you know. And like, they were like, yo, you want to, we'll roll you a blunt for when you retire if you want to come smoke with us. And I'm like, yeah, and thanks for the offer. I don't, I don't want to be smoking on your porch and, you know,

get locked up by my fellow officers that I just, you know, retired from. But, you know, it was, It was like a, it was like a mutual understanding and respect. And they did bad things. And when they did bad things, they had to go to jail for and they had to answer for it. And that's, that's what it was. But it's, you know, you just, you work in the same place for a long time. You see the same people. And it's, there's a code. There's a code. And we, you know, I wish they hadn't chosen that life. It was like wasted talent. But that's what they chose. And, you know, sometimes we got lucky and caught them. And sometimes they got lucky and got away with it. I interviewed a retired FBI agent named Jim DiOrio. And he was funny. He had locked guys up for like, he's like, I have locked these guys up for like 15 years. Like these are mobsters, wise guys. You know, he's like, he said, you know, 15 years goes by or 10 or 12 years and they get out of federal prison. And he said, you know, and I'm in New York.

Like I'm at a restaurant. I hear some guy say, Jim DeOio. It's over. And the guy's like, hey, it's. me, Polly. He's like, what are you doing? He's like, what's going on? He's like, you go over, you sit down and you talk to him for a little bit.

Like, I'm eating with someone, but I'm glad. Yeah, I got out like a year ago, bro. I was, how are you doing? And he's like, he's like this guy, like this guy was, you know, Robin Banks or this guy was, you know, whatever he was doing. You know, and at the time, you know, he's like, was, you know, he's like, he was a big tough guy. And he was serious and he was, you know, go fuck yourself. I got nothing to say. or whatever the case may be and got 15 years.

And then he gets out, you know, 12 years later. And he's like, it's like, it's just like they do what they do and you do. And that's the way the world works. And there's no reason to be angry. And he's playing his part when he gets arrested. And, you know, but the thing, I'm going to say one one more thing I was going to say about the cooperation thing is that it's like, let's face it. Most police work gets, most cases get solved through some type of cooperation. And so, you know, unless it's somebody grabs a purse and the cops chase them down or they run a red light and they chase them down like they're there for the event.

Like typically you need the neighbors or you need other criminals. Mostly it's other criminals to get caught and say, look, I know there was a murder six months ago. I know where the guy is and I know where the gun is. You know, like at I was there, I can help you with that. So, you know, is it in his own interest? Of course. But that's everything. And life is in your own, your own interest. So, you know, to me, I have talked to these guys who will be like, yeah, you should never cooperate.

Okay. If you didn't cooperate, society wouldn't function. And you think in your sick mind, these guys think that they would be okay in that society. But the truth is, that's chaos. That's anarchy. And it's chaos. And you couldn't function there. And even if you could function your wife and your children and your mother.

and your older mother and older father. And most people can't like, it doesn't function like that. Like you're delusional to think not cooperating is the way to help society in general. So I just thought, you know, I've thought about that, you know, many times when these guys say that. And, you know, typically I just laugh it off. But when you really think about it, it's like somebody has to help because the cops just can't do it on their own. You know, they would have to be surveillance cameras everywhere. And then I'm not even sure you'd have maybe AI.

Maybe if you had cameras everywhere and AI was running those cameras and watching them, maybe eventually we'll get to that. But it's not happening right now. Yeah. Cooperation is like the criminal currency. You have to do it for self-survival and you have to do it to, you know. It has to be done because otherwise the bad guys are like going to really, I mean, the real bad guys that like really, I mean, I was doing a lot of like animal cruelty stuff of like just brutal, brutal. brutal acts on animals that were just absolutely horrific.

And a lot of the time it was because we had tips. We got tips from people that, you know, this guy did this or I see this dog. I see this is going on and they would videotape it and send it to us or whatever. And then, you know, that was the only way that we would know that, you know, this dog gets beat with a baseball bat on a near daily basis and, you know, has every ribbon is body broken and is just sitting there suffering, starving to slowly and getting beaten. And if it wasn't for somebody speaking up and saying something about it, you would never know. So police work, I think, really relies on people like that for the good of society.

People, in my opinion, who hurt animals just they have no empathy towards anything. There's just, there's no excuse for hurting something innocent. Hurting children, babies, you know, the shaken baby syndrome. There's no excuse for it. And these people are dangerous and they need to be taken off the street. And, you know, the only way sometimes you do that is by an enforcement. form it, whether it be like a registered or like a tipster. Right.

Yeah, I was going to say animals don't call 911. Yeah, they just sit there and take the abuse. Yeah. Or they're uses like leverage too. Like, you know, I'm going to the husband or, you know, sometimes the wife. Really? Very rarely. Very rarely.

But usually the husband's like, you know, you love your little, you know, your little puppy. I'm going to beat the crap out of it. And this is what I'm going to do to you or, you know, like they like they would threaten the woman or like a lot of times the women were afraid to leave because they didn't want to leave their animal because they knew it would happen and domestic violence shelters sometimes don't take the animals or they have nowhere to go that will take the animal. So it's it was it was a, you know, that is a hard situation. I feel I feel for I feel for the animals a lot because it's, it's just it's not fair. It's really not fair. I would never think that like to me I would like that

scenario you just said you just thought well I'm going to kick the dog or you know like I wouldn't even I didn't even realize that's a thing. Yeah, it's the, the stuff that you see in animal abuse, like, I mean, you get your run-in-the-mill dog fighting, which is horrible. And most people don't even know that it goes on because it's so underground. But you get the people who, I mean, I had like a German Shepherd that was raped and we recovered, well, the vet recovered a metal broomstick handle, you know, in the dog's vagina. And you could see like the hair on her muzzle was, was missing on.

you know, because she was, she was muzzled. So she had, like, the hair missing because she was muzzled so often. And, you know, it's the chain of custody is broken a lot. So it's hard to prove these things because of personal come in and rescue the animal or something. And the animal cruelty investigations are like probably one of the hardest to do because you have a victim that can only speak through their injuries. Most of the time you don't have witnesses. And the people who do it, I mean, you just, you kill a dog. You just throw in a garbage bag and put it out for the trash and nobody thinks otherwise.

you know, like a body, usually the bodies, you know, are discovered, but, you know, the dogs are found in the bottom of the trash compactor that are thrown down, you know, 20 stories in the projects and stuff. And you get these jobs and it's like, does anybody know who's this dog this is? Has anybody seen anybody with this dog? And, you know, then sometimes you catch them and then you got to talk to them and see if they'll give you any statements. And showing empathy towards those people for me was hard because I didn't feel like I was talking to somebody who had a heart and a soul. I was talking to somebody who just, you know, did not care at all and would just willingly hurt something that couldn't defend itself. And that to me was just you're missing something up here

when you're capable of doing that and not feeling regret for it. Granted, some felt regret and stuff, but some people just, they don't care. And that's, that's scary to see that side of society too. You know, you have your, your legitimate, you know, upstanding criminals who are like, you know, they just do their thing and that is what it is. And then you have the people that are just brutal people that are just out there hurt. They just have this need and drive inside of them to hurt other things that can't defend themselves. And we need the people who see this stuff to report it because, you know, you don't report it. We're never going to find it sometimes. How long did you do that?

The animal unit was in for like nine months. it was a brand new unit. It was it was me, this other guy and the sergeant. And it was basically like the ASPCA had turned law enforcement for animal cruelty over to the NYPD. So we were like creating how the NYPD was going to handle this. So I was creating PowerPoints to train cops on how to do investigations and how to like what to ask and, you know, what to document at scenes and stuff. And then I was also going out there and looking for cases of animal cruelty that, you know, we could build cases on.

And I was at the detective level. So it wasn't like responding to it. It was like, okay, here's a complaint for a dog that got hit by a car. Was it an accident or did somebody intentionally hit it? You know, was it? So I did that for like nine months. And, you know, my husband said to me, he's like, you're like depressed. You know, like it's not, it's not fun.

Like police work was fun for me. This was this, this, this. it was hard to see a lot of the stuff that I saw. And it was also hard for me to maintain a distance. Like when you see people shot and you see, you know, I had a baby that would shaken baby syndrome and I've held the hands of people as they died. And you do, you do these things and you develop a sort of a separation from it. Not that you don't have empathy and, you know, feeling, but to survive in that world of being a cop, you kind of have to put those feelings aside and kind of forget about it, right? Just turn your heart away. do the job that you're doing, handle it, help the person, but then you have to be able to go home and like have a happy home life. And for me, the whole animal thing was just, it was like seeing the worst of society and the inability of justice to be brought. You know, when you have like a baby

that's hurt or, you know, a woman who's shot and she's bleeding on the street and, you know, the husband did it, those criminals will be brought to justice. There will be a trial and there will be witnesses presented and you know they will get their jail time a lot of the time with this stuff that I was getting I couldn't make an arrest justice couldn't be brought and it was it was rough for me to have to try and deal with that so I left that unit went back to the to the 105 back to the intel spot after like nine months okay um other than the animal unit do you have any interesting stories oh gosh um I so so many I'm trying to like think it's like as you talk you you remember um stories that would come up like um i had a i had a

case where we had a a robbery at a at a at a bodega there's a robbery at gunpoint at a bodega which is like the corner candy store for people who aren't from new york it's you know yeah i was i say it's not called a bodega it's a bodega um but that's you know you buy your beer and some groceries and you know they kind of have you know your cigarettes and stuff there so these places got frequently robbed. So my partner and I were an anti-crime and the job comes over. So we kind of are circling the area to see if we see the guy. And they put a description over of like khaki shorts and a black hoodie. Right. So I'm driving down and I see this guy walking and he's got khaki shorts and he's got a black hoodie, but it's over his shoulder and he's wearing like a white t-shirt. So like whenever they'll never put together. Yeah. Like yeah, like we're not like he should have just chucked it and maybe. But the. But the. packing shorts, but like whenever somebody who put a description over, you always take the outer layer of clothing off, right? Because it's like, you know, they're, they're going to lose it. So assume whatever the pants, like they never kicked their sneakers off, right? So what, what sneakers was he wearing? So this guy happened to choose like these very bright, red, white and blue sneakers. So we jump out on them. And I'm assuming that he's got a gun still because usually they don't chuck the gun because guns are expensive to buy on the street. So I just, I yoke him up real quick. You know, I put, I, which I, you take his arms, I, you approach him from behind. I put his arm. I put his arm. behind his back as I'm saying, like, police don't move or whatever. So he doesn't think that, you know, he's getting robbed on the street. And so I see he's got like a bulge in his pants

pocket. So I grab it and it's the cash from the robbery. So I'm like, all right, this is our guy, you know, with this. So I take, yeah, like, you know, like, do you not believe in banks? You know, that's the famous, I don't believe in the bank. I just carry my cash on me all the time. I'm like, yeah, that's what every normal person does, you know, singles and fives and tens that just got taken out of a register. So, you know, I take his sweatshirt and I throw it over my shoulder so he can't like chuck it and I forget about it because it was black and it was dark out. So the victim comes and we do a show up and it's positive. So we go into the, I, he gets transported back to the precinct and the detectives are going to do their interview, right? So I go back to the bodega and he's got

great video this dude. I mean, high definition, color, legit video. And I watch what the kid does. He comes in, with the black hoodie on covering his face. And I think he thinks because his face is covered, we'll never solve it. But there were those red, white and blue sneakers and the khaki shorts. So he was kind of brutal. Like he, he robbed the guy.

He pointed the gun at him, robbed him. And then as he was walking out, another store worker was like sitting by the entrance. And for no reason, the worker was just sitting there, not moving, like just kind of frozen, you know, doing nothing. And he just cold-clocked him for no reason. And I'm like, that's such a,

jerk thing to do. So I have all the information. I get the video and everything. So I go back to the precinct and he's in the box with the detective denying everything. I was just walking. I wasn't doing anything, you know, just total innocent. So if you didn't know any better, this kid was very convincing. He did nothing wrong. You got the wrong guy. He would never do this. You know, he, you know, he was going to the store to get his mommy something and, you know, whatever. So I just looked at him and I'm like, bro, we have you on video. And I just told him what he did in the store. And I'm like, you see the sneakers that you're wearing? I'm going to take a picture of those sneakers and I'm going to show it to a jury. And the shorts that you're wearing, I'm going to take a picture

of those shorts and show it to the jury. And we're going to put the clothes that you're wearing now up next to the video of you robbing the store. Who do you think is going to believe the truth? Right. So I'm like, just, you know, just cut the crap and be honest. So, you know, he, you He told what happened and he ended up doing time or whatever. But you get you get nonsense like that of like, just like be honest. Like we had another guy one time when I was in the street narcotics. Did you ask him why he punched the guy? Yeah.

I was like, why? That's such a dick move. Dude. Why would you do that? And he's like, I don't know. I don't know. I just did it. I'm like, okay.

Well, you know, that's that's another charge. So good move. That's, that's an assault three. So congratulations. You just add another charge onto your robbery. But. And here's like the open end. thing is that he didn't have the gun on him. So that was the other problem of like, I'm like,

where did you ditch the gun? Because in my mind, I don't really know what his path of flight was. And, you know, like, I knew where I found him? So we would check the vicinity. But like from there to the store, like, where else did you go that, you know, because sometimes when they run, they have fences and stuff. And he just was like, I just threw over a fence. I don't know where it was. So we had a huge search for this gun because the last thing you want is some kid to find it and play with and have like an innocent life taken because you know you didn't do a good enough job looking for the gun so we never we never found that he swore was a BB gun but i didn't believe him you know you can't you said there was another guy yeah so oh so the the the other guy in the street narcotics

unit uh he we was illegal in new york city then and weed i wrote a little bit about this in my book that is like everybody thinks it's like a peaceful drug and like hippie movement and like love and peace but my experience is that precipitates every other crime. Only the real hardened criminals who are like up to legitimately no good and do like organized stuff. They don't smoke

because they know it's an easy way for us to once you smell it, that's it. We get the car, we can search everywhere. So regular everyday criminals smoke like everybody else does and they would do other things like

robberies and other stuff like that. So it would it would always graduate to other stuff. So we would go and look for guys smoking and stuff and try and stop that trouble from escalating into something more. So we stop this car. It's a hot summer night. All four winters are down. There's four people in the car.

And it's three girls and a guy. And each of them has like a blunt. And they're just smoking. All right. Well, then everybody goes. So we go to open the car, you know, start step out of the car, whatever, police. And he's like, I'm not going. I'm not going.

So now it's a fight trying to open the door. and he's screaming and like my partner looks down and sees he's got the little blades the razor blades in the little pocket of the door so he's going to reach for the blades and we're trying to stop it because I'm like what's this guy going to like he's going to slice me like I don't what is this guy doing it's weed like it's not that big of a deal like you're going to get a desk of here and take it I'm going to take your and you're going to be out in like maybe three or four hours like it's not crazy deal now he's fighting so as he's fighting us he starts screaming mama mama mama And sure enough, across the street, out comes mama wearing her curlers with the shower cap, the pink fluffy bathrobe, the slippers running out there, don't hit my son.

Don't beat you police is beating on him, screaming at us making this whole big chaotic scene over weed. And I'm like, this guy is sitting here with these three girls. I don't know if they were girlfriends or whatever, but they weren't going to be after this because instead of being a man and being like, okay, you guys got me, he's screaming for his mommy. I'm like, what, what do you scream for your mommy for? But, you know, you kind of, I mean, I don't know how other cops felt about this, but I always kind of gave respect to the guys who maybe tried to get away. But then once they were caught, they kind of were like, okay, you got me. And, you know, like I had this, I had this kid one time.

It was, it was Thanksgiving Eve. And I had off the next day, which was rare, right? So I'm like, okay, I don't really want to get involved in anything tonight. We're just kind of drive around. If we see trouble, it's not going to be. do, but I just, you know, so we're driving around and it was like 11 or 12. It was late. 11 or 12 o'clock at night. And I'm like, I got to pay. My bladder's going to explode. Let's go back to the precinct. I got to go to the bathroom. So we're driving this big unmarked van.

So my partner spins around and we're taking a ride back to the precinct. And as we're going, I see two guys running up the sidewalk in the shadows. And then I look and there's like a Chinese delivery guy standing in the middle of the street with like bloody nose, blood pouring down his jacket. And I'm like, oh, God, we just walked into, like, I have to pee. And we just walked into like a robbery. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me right now. Couldn't get worse luck than that because I, you know, like you're wearing your, your belt and it kind of puts pressure on your bladder as you're sitting there with like your gun and all this stuff.

So we said, you know, we stopped the guy and we're like, are you all right, stay here, don't move. We're going to go grab these guys because we knew it was them. He's pointing at them. But I, you know, they're running. So we catch up to them and we get like a couple of. a couple of blocks away, we, we jump out of the van and we grab them. So I grabbed the one guy and he's wearing one of those like billowy winter coats. Like they're like, you know, they add like six inches to your to your body. You know, it's just like you're walking around like human snowman.

And he's got this jacket on and he's got blood. It's a white jacket. He's got blood all over it from the victim. I'm like, well, you just incriminate yourself, you know, like whatever. And then his buddy was with him. So my partner grabs his buddy and his buddy was very tall. And this guy was about my height. So I'm putting over that, you know, we have a pickup robbery. This is my location. The victim's over here. Get an ambulance over there. You know, I need another car over here. So I just, I have this guy up against the fence as I'm putting over the radio and my partner is trying to cuff the other guy. So I put the radio in my back pocket. I go to cuff, cuff this guy up, but I can't find his wrist because of this stupid puff jacket. And I'm like, I can't find his arm.

And he literally just does like the quick body twist. And I, I'm left like with the jacket like you you know like I there's nothing for me to hold I'm not holding on to his body part I'm holding his jacket so his jacket just rips out of my arm and he's gone so I go and take after him meanwhile my partner started the other perps started fighting with my partner he got off of him because he's in another puffy jacket so they go running in the opposite directions now we have like two foot pursuits in two different directions so my guy makes a left and goes like northbound on the street and I'm right behind him and as soon as I turn the corner, he's gone. I don't see him. It's like vacant street. And I'm like, he couldn't have gotten

far. He went up this block. So, you know, I put over the location for pursuit, whatever, in the last known location that I had in his description. And I turned my radio like almost off to like the lowest volume possible because I'm like he's here. I know he's here. So I'm creeping around and I get like to the next house up. And I look up the driveway and in the back of the yard, there's this huge beautiful maple tree. I mean, it was just like, it must have been a hundred years old. This thing was ginormous behind a garage and I'm looking and in like the street light from the other side of the street, I can see branches moving. And I'm like, you know, we have a lot of raccoons in Queens, but there's nothing that's going to make this type of disturbance. So I'm like, this bastard's in the

tree. I'm like, nice try. I got him. So I'm like creeping, trying to like get up the driveway so I can kind of get the jump on him because he's at such a disadvantage. And at this point, I don't know if this was like a strong arm robbery where he didn't have a weapon or if he had a weapon. So I'm just trying to like be able to at least creep up to him so I can get the jump on him even though tactically I'm at a way disadvantage because he's on top of the roof in the tree so he sees me coming and he jumps off of the tree into the yard behind the house that I'm at so I take off and I have the fence and as I have the fence my foot doesn't hit the top bar and I go down and I fall like I think it was like a five foot fence or something and I fall right on my ass on the concrete and I just was

like another one like every like I just the breath got taken out of me and I'm like oh and I see the stars and I'm like that that's something something broke because it doesn't it doesn't feel good so I get up and I'm like oh like I can't my tailbone is killing me and I'm like I can't let this guy get away plus I don't know where my partner is meanwhile there's like police lights everywhere the whole street is lit up like daytime everybody because it was very close to the precinct so every cop from the precinct came out everybody's there so this guy ends up getting underneath the car in the driveway because when he went to go run up the driveway, he saw the other cop. So he just like dove underneath the car. And one of the detectives is like,

he's under the car, you know, like, just like not a lot. He'd been involved in so many police pursuits that like didn't even phase him. He's like, he's like, come out from underneath the car. Just just come out. We got you. Like it is what it is. So he came out and, you know, the other guy was eventually caught. And so I, these guys, I ended up going to the hospital, I like broke my coxics. So like the next day of Thanksgiving, it's like you can't sit, you can't stand. But like, you know, it was brutal. So I would see this guy over and over throughout the course of my career because I stayed in the same precinct for almost my whole career.

So, you know, it's he would always get in trouble for something. He just couldn't help himself. And every time I would see him, I'd be like, bro, what are you in here for now? And then he would tell like the guys that were in the cells with him, you're like, yeah, she was chased me and I broke her hair. she busted her ex because of me. You know, like he was like, yeah, he did. I broke my coxick because of this guy because he was running from the cops.

And I, you know, I fell off the fence. And then like the other guy I would see once in a while out there. And he, they kind of stopped being friends after that incident happened with the robbery. But like, I would see him on the street and I'd see him hanging out with guys that I knew were like criminals. And I would say his name as I walked up to him. And I would be like his mom. Like, what are you doing hanging out with these guys? And they would be like, yo, son, she knows you a name.

It was like, it was. I felt bad for him because I'm like his mother chasing him around. But you know, you see the, you see the same guys over and over and you have the mutual respect. But I'm like, you know, he's tried to run. Okay. You know, you did. You got it. You didn't get away though.

We got you. But it's that part of the job I really enjoy because it was always like it, you never knew. I mean, I feel like I'm telling all kinds of crazy war stories now. But like talking about this story reminds me of like another time of chasing this guy who had stolen a car. And like that whole pursuit. or whatever. And it was like, that was the beauty of that job is that you never knew what was going to happen during the day. You never know. That was just thinking about the jacket. I think it was a Seinfeld episode where like George

bought one of those jackets. It's like they kept calling, he kept saying it was made of Goretex or something. I forget what it was. Massey, it almost looked like a snowman wearing the jacket. It's so fluffy and you can't get your arm, you know, like, it's just it's. It's like the Christmas story. He's, you know, you're. Yeah, yeah, layered. Yeah. I hated those jackets because, and you could hide stuff like perps would hide

or bags like in the sleeves. So when you would, because it was, I mean, it was hard to feel anything. So when you would toss people in the wintertime, you'd have to like squeeze the sleeve so you could feel if they had like a mouth. I mean, and, you know, women were also hard. I had one chick one time, narcotics had brought her in. She wasn't even my arrest, but she had narcotics. And I mean, it is what it is.

You're going to hide stuff in every orifice of your body. So if there's an opening in your body, you're going to stick stuff in there. So they would need females to do like the strip searches once in a while when they suspected that she had shoved something somewhere where the sun don't shine. So of course that was me. So I'm like, I never enjoyed it. It was always an uncomfortable experience. So this one chick one time, I'm like, you know, searching her and I pull because like women's bras have the underwire, right? So I pull it away and out falls a crack pipe with the rock out from underneath her bra.

And I'm like, seriously, dude, like, why do you just tell me this was here? Now it was like broken glass. So, you know, I kind of kick it away to the side so that I can get her like, you know, handcuffed in a way. And she's like, no, you don't understand. This isn't my bra. And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? She's like, I just, I just found it and I just put it on.

I didn't even know that was in there. That's not mine. Look, the broad doesn't even fit me. Look, it doesn't even fit me. And I'm like, good try. Good try. Not going to fly in court. I don't think, I don't think you're going to get away with that one.

So, you know, they try and be like, like, slick. Yeah, not going to work. Well, the, you know, the guys they do the, they're the strip searches. They, you know, bend over, squat and cough. Yeah. I always asked the cop. I'm like, why? Like, have you ever, is there ever been a situation where some guy coughed and like a 22 dropped out of his ass? I mean, is that ever happened? And they're like, no, you know what has happened? They're like, listen, you'll see it like a cell phone

or something or they're like, it does work. And I'm like, really? And he's like, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, there's stories. That was the other part was like the searching people on the street is that guys love to hide drugs underneath there. So, you know, like you got to like and, you know, sometimes you don't have the manpower. Like I know I have to search you too. Like, you know, we only have a certain amount of people and there's, we're number outnumbered here by perp. So I have to search you. And, you know, you'd have to do like the tap to make sure there's nothing in there.

And I can't tell you how many times you do the tab. It's like, yeah, there's, I feel rocks. That's, you know, you either have some type of a severe disease where you have rocks forming down there or you have crack and I'm going to need to go and retrieve that. So, you know, but you tried to make a joke of it. Like, you know, just a little pickle, no big deal, you know, whatever, just joking around. But it's like I'm not, I'm not getting pleasure out of grabbing, you know, away. It's just these are the orifices that are known locations for hiding stuff. So I have to go. So I, why did you, I mean, why you didn't ever want to be like,

go to like homicide or go was there ever a specific division you wanted to go to or you just you know no no i you know i i i didn't want to go too far from the street like i the investigative work was interesting to me which is why the intel spot was great because we did case investigations there was times where you know you would if you had a lot of perps and you had this brief them you'd be in the precinct for you know a few hours or whatever so there was that aspect of it but then there was the street you had to go out there on the street and you had to go out there on the street and and do surveillance and do recon and send your informants out to do stuff. So that appealed to me because I got the best of both worlds,

whereas like going to work every day in like a suit and kind of like showing up afterwards. It just wasn't anything that I was really interested in doing because I just felt like it was kind of an after-the-fact thing. And I still had the drive for like adrenaline and being on the street. And I felt like if I left the street, I might kind of eventually lose some of that savvy because you're kind of just, you know, responding after the fact. And, you know, I didn't want to lose that ability to see stuff that's going on because it's really amazing when you when you see, I mean, even now, like when I was

driving down from Florida, from New York, when I was driving to Florida, I was by myself moving because my family had already moved down here. And I went into a gas station. It was like two or three o'clock in the morning and I pull in and I see. you know, the mopes on the side over there. And it's like, perps move the same no matter what state you're in. And I saw them and they saw me and I saw that they were trying to like come over to me. And I'm like, you know, they're going to try and see if they can, they can rob me here. And I, you know, I was happy because at least I was able to recognize that.

Like I feel almost bad for regular people because they're just like waiting victims because you don't, you don't see that. So for me, that's why I love the street because that stuff kind of pops out at you when you see it long enough. And I loved being able to be on the street and see that stuff and then be able to kind of take action and stop crimes or, you know, at least arrest the guy of a crime I've been committed. So when people did, was there, were there, so people would give you information and then you would, would you pass it on? Like you're, you're talking to some guy and he says, listen, you know, I know about this or I know about that. Do you then just call the detective that investigated that or do you guys go out and kind of see if you can put something together and then go. and hand it off to somebody? I mean, I'm not understanding.

It depends. So it depends on the information. Like if you were talking to me and you're like, you know, I have this scam and it's stealing money and it's involving this and the other thing. Like that might be like a grand larceny thing. So I would take all the information down and then I would call the grand larceny guys and be like, you know, are you interested in this? Or if I had somebody who had information on a shooting or a homicide or, you know, they started

talking about that. Okay, I got to call the case detective. or if it's another precinct that least call one of my detectives and have them interview you because it's like you know they have the information on that particular case they know what to ask and it's it also goes into like the court stuff of like now he's making admission statements or if he was involved in it now does moranza come into play and stuff so depending on the information that you've got it depended on if you would refer it elsewhere or if you would keep it in-house and then build a case on it So like we would do narcotic sales cases or people who were selling guns.

We would, you know, do that. But then sometimes you also work with other units. You work sometimes with the feds. You work with other precincts. You know, you work with other counties if it goes that way. So it all depends on what information the person's giving you. And also if it's credible. You know, you got to vet the information that they're giving you because you don't want

to be like getting information and then you call the case detective and they come down and stuff. And then he's like, he's full of shit because they're going to, you know, you don't want to because the story that he's telling isn't actually what happened. So you have to kind of make sure that he's not lying to you. And we get lied to all the time or partial truths. You know, it's like, all right, all right, I'll be honest with you. And then next thing, you know, it's like, well, that's not really the whole truth.

Like, I need you, you're, I'm going to be honest with you. You need to be honest with me. So it would, it would depend on what we had. Do you ever have like professional informants that were like on the, that were actually getting paid? Like I've read articles where there are people written an article one time. I was in prison, but there was also, I've read a few articles on this where there was actually, it's funny, this was actually a woman who, um, her boyfriend was a drug dealer.

Then she was black and she had like a gold. They said they know they don't show her, but she had a gold tooth, they said. They said, but she was in college. They like, she's, she's like had was two years into school. They said she could have, you know, what they call their interview voice. She could speak perfectly, you know, or she could do the whole kind of street, you know, lingo, right? The street vernacular and talk like she had, you know, like she was straight from the streets. So her boyfriend who was a drug dealer got arrested, went to trial like an idiot, got 20 something years. She goes into the DEA and says, look, he's explaining to me that there's something called the third party rule 35, which just means I can, I can help you bust drug dealers.

and you know, you'll give him credit for it. Right. Which is a real thing. In the feds anyway. So they talked to her and they went to the U.S. attorney. The U.S. attorney was like, I went, this guy went to trial. I don't care what. I don't care.

You know, it's one of those. I don't care if he tells us where Osama bin Laden is. He's not getting any time off. Like we gave him, we were going to give him five or 10 years. He could have cooperated and gotten four or five years. So they were like, no. But the DEA agents were like, listen, look at you. Like, you're perfect because you're, you don't have, she'd never been arrested.

She's not in trouble. She speaks perfectly. They're like, and yet you can blend in and with these guys. And they spot us right away. So they started flying her around. And she did this for years. They would put her on a plane, fly her somewhere, have her do seven or eight buys from drug deals. They said they, because all the drug deals they see her, they want to sleep with her.

You know, for their first part, that overcomes any type of resistance, any type of a caution that they have. They're like, oh, look at this chick. So she's buying whatever it is, crack or whatever they're selling. These were like street buys most of the time. But I mean, she talks about one time where they had asked her to get close to like a guy, like go to like she had made some buys. They got invited to a party. There was a whole thing. They were like it was super, super like undercover.

And then they said the great thing is that she makes the buy. we can't make, we put together a case, we bust the guys. And if the guys go to trial, she shows up, sits on the stand. And they said, unlike our other informants who have been arrested seven times, who they're, they're almost incoherent when speaking to them. Right. She gets up and she speaks, you know, perfectly. And she's 100% credible. And they were paying her and they were talking about like, I forget what they were saying, but she was making, you know, she was making whatever three, four, five thousand. a month doing this for years while she was going to school.

That was the other thing they said. She's extremely flexible. Like she can go somewhere for three days or two days or because of her schedule. And they had her schedule. They knew when she was between semesters. Super interesting. There are guys that, I mean, I know there are people that do that. I was wondering if you ever had anyone like that or are you paying people for information?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was, yeah, I guess for most people, people, it's probably a motivating factor is like, you know, they get paid for it. So there's there's the double edge sort of like you have to, you know, these people usually, they're not like good people that come in from the street and it's like, my neighbor's selling and it's a usually these people are involved in thuggery. Right.

That's why they know what's stuff going on. So you have to make sure that, you know, we would pay the informants and you'd also have to make sure that they were giving you correct information. So you also test them sometimes. So we would do the same thing as like, you know, go in and buy or whatever. And it would be like, we knew that it was a dud and nothing would happen. And if they come back with like a bag of or something, it would be like, all right, now we don't know.

We were constantly testing to make sure that the informants were not lying to us to get paid. Right. Or exaggerating. Yeah, like making stuff up. Like a lot of times, like with information, you'd have to vet the information. Okay, this is the information that they gave us. Does it make sense, first of all, with the stuff that we know? Does it follow with what actually happened?

You know, like because, you know, we worked very closely with the detective squad on a lot of cases. But yeah, we paid our informants, you know, that information wasn't like a private thing. That's just that was part of, you know, you're working for us. We're going to pay you. It's like a job. But we would also demand that they didn't use drugs. You can't, you know, you're not going to lie to me. I'm not going to lie to you.

You've got to stop using. If you're an addict, then you're going to go get help and I need to know you're clean before you come back to work. And, you know, just, sorry. Go ahead. Well, I was going to say, and what are they getting paid in? Or when I say professional, like, is this all they're doing? Like, is it enough to make a, to pay your bills? Or is it like, they make $600 a month?

Like, well, that's not enough. You know, that's not. Yeah. I mean, it would depend on what they were doing for us. Like if it was gun stuff, it would be a certain amount. If it was, you know, and then when you're doing buys, obviously the end game is to get a warrant. So we had to make sure that they were credible so that when they spoke to a job, judge. The judge believe them because if the judge doesn't believe the informant, they're going to be like, yeah, this guy's, he comes in here stoned and drunk and, you know, I can't believe what he says. So we would have to make sure that the informants were, they were paid. We disclose that information. And it depends on what they bought. Especially we work with the feds. The feds paid a lot of, you know, they pay a lot of money or whatever.

It's a lot of money. Like, humor me with specifics. Oh, God. I don't, you know, I don't even really. For them, it's like, it's, it's, you know, I don't remember exactly how much they were paying, but I know for us it was like, okay, go do a buy and we'll give you like, I don't know, 50 box or 40 boxes. It wasn't like a substantial amount of money. But if they knew enough stuff, they could make a good amount of money because it's like, okay, you know a guy here who sells drugs, you know a guy here who sells drugs, and you know this guy who has a gun, you know this guy who sells guns. And so it depends, how much information they knew, benefited them because they would be, you know, compensated for whatever the work was that we had for

them. But, you know, you're dealing with people who are in the world of criminal activity. So they can't be like, you know, getting into too much trouble or whatever. And, you know, if they did get into trouble, sometimes they would have to go to jail and you'd be like, you know, you got caught. I can't help you out because it's going to give you up. So it was, it was, you had to kind of be savvy. You had to think like a criminal so that you wouldn't raise up the other people and put this guy's life at risk. Because really, you know, informants are like the most important people because they're giving information and you want to make sure that they're safe. So that was like our number one thing. It's like you have to be safe and you have to, you know, we got to be in contact and stuff. I had read an article in the New Yorker. God, this was 10 years ago. 10 or 10 no wait I would say maybe maybe almost 50 probably closer to 15 years ago this was of course you know in the really like the thick of the whole you know war on terrorism kind of thing like they were pushing it every day hard and there was a guy who he was a professional and this is like all he

did it was it was buying and selling weapons but this was like internationally and he was the terrorist task force was was paying him because he was in the middle of helping set up what appeared to be, you know, like charity organizations that were then taking money that was deposited there and buying weapons and smuggling weapons. And he would, they would let him just blatantly kind of break the law for six months to a year to 18 months. And the amount of money that he was getting paid was, I mean, and I, I know this is completely incomparable.

I mean, we're talking about it was, it was hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right. You know, it was outrageous. Like, and I was, and that girl, like I said, I think she was making like three to four thousand dollars a month working for the DEA. But they were like, she's a, and I'm sure she was the exception because that's why they were at the article about her. Right. But, um, uh, yeah, that, that's, that's always interesting to me that these guys, it's like, you know, this is, because I've talked to tons of guys that like, this is all they. knew how to do was be involved in crime and drugs and I always thought you know but they like they

some of these guys like they want to get out of it they don't know how to get out of it yeah yeah um you know they don't know what else to do and it's like well you don't really and i always think to myself like you don't really have to get out of it you know like you can still if that's your life and that and you like those guys and you like that life but let's face it those guys are coming in and out of your life all the time yeah you know and i've actually it's funny i've actually broached the subject i don't want to mention the guy's the name he's like He's like a high profile guy. But, you know, he's actually thought about, you know, he and I have kind of picked this around.

Is that because I get contacted by people probably, and I never mentioned this, they just reach out to me because they're involved in some kind of crimes, some kind of criminal enterprise of some kind. they don't know what to do to get out of the situation because they have involved themselves. But suddenly somebody gets busted that's associated with them. And then two other people get busted. They know it's coming down. Right. And I had actually have talked to this guy and thought to myself, like, how cool would it be or interesting would it be, let's say, to actually start like some kind of a consulting firm.

And it's funny because I've actually talked to a couple of a DEA agent and an FBI agent. For informants? Like for instance, and I give you an example is you're in an organization like whatever. You're 30, 40 years old. You got eight or nine guys that are working with you, however large it is. You've been doing it for a while. Periodically people get busted. Maybe something's happening.

Maybe nothing's happening. But you're running this organization or you're a big part of it. And the problem is people, most of these guys are like, yeah, I make good money doing this and these are good guys. But at some point, you have to kind of realize like, look, at this point, you know, because these guys always kind of think they're either going to do it forever. So they're delusional or they think I'm going to get a bunch of money and get out. Never happens. No, never happens. But the other option is to go in now to law enforcement and say, I'm here's, I've been doing this. this. I'm, I want, I'm not getting charged. And I will help now, I will help go ahead and infiltrate the organization, which I'm already in, and help you get stuff on everybody else. And, but, you know,

either I'm keeping all my stuff or I'm going to get paid for this. Right. And, and that, but those people are too scared to reach out to law enforcement. And they don't know. Right. How much, like, to broker that deal, like, could you get paid by them or by law enforcement? And I, this is, this would all be federal. We were always thinking federal because some of these guys, look, well, that's where the money is. I mean, the feds have like the bottomless pocket. Yeah. Typically, when I get a phone call from somebody, not phone call, but I get an email, you know, some cryptic email or some cryptic, you know, Instagram message like, I'm, I'm in a bad spot. I need to watch you. I don't know who I watch your stuff all the time. And you.

You know, so you're like, okay, well, you know, and sometimes if it sounds reasonable enough, then I'm like, okay, and I'll say, look, let's arrange a time to talk. And usually it's after they got like a target letter, you know, like they're there. It's like, okay, listen, bro. Like the walls are closing in on you. Yeah. Closing in. So typically with those guys, I say what happened and they tell me what happened.

And then I, okay, here's what you need to do. You need to go ahead. They're like, I don't have any money or enough money to go get. I talked to a lawyer. They want $40,000 or these guys want $20,000 up front or these guys want. And I'm like, okay, go to the public defender. Like, you're destitute. You know, you need to go. You can't come up with that money unless you start selling off the assets that you've acquired, like a couple of cars or whatever.

And you know what I'm saying? And usually the guys have pissed away everything. So it's like, look, go to the federal defender program. They will give you somebody. He's like, yeah, but I haven't been charged yet. It doesn't matter. You got a, you got a target letter. They're like, no, but you got to be.

No, you don't. Stop thinking you know what's going on, first of all. You know, I have this one guy who literally, so I send them to, to the federal defender's office. And they immediately assign him somebody. So he calls me like, oh, they gave me somebody. She's going to call like in the next couple days. I'm like, okay. And then like a couple days ago by him getting the text messages, I haven't heard anything. Calm down. Give them a couple more days. They'll call. They'll get to you. Well, yeah, but what about the feds? I'm like, you got a target letter. Yeah. Bro, you're not even close to being having your they haven't indicted you yet they're still investigating they're just hoping you'll walk in the front door and confess right right right make their jobs easier right right um and so you know i talked to him and then eventually he did get a phone call it was weeks later and then

it was they're going to call the fbi get back with me they don't know how long that's going to take i mean literally so two months later he's like what is taking so long i'm like he's like i want to plead guilty. I'm like, right. And right now, if they said you could plead guilty, you're not getting a court date for six months and you're not getting sentenced for another three months. Right. And he's like, what? Like, bro, you're looking at a year and honestly, you're probably looking at a year to two years before you're even going to prison. It might be 18 months before you're going to a prison. So that I had to talk him off a ledge after telling him that. He thought this whole thing, he thought he could get six months to a year just based on the dollar amount. And I,

Oh, I'm calculating the guidelines for them everywhere. And I'm talking about prison is not what you think. You're going to a camp. You've never been in trouble. What are you doing? Like, so I've actually thought how interesting would that be to have people that are in the, in the middle of something that's been going on a while in dealing with a bunch of people that deep down you, you can delude yourself, but it's going to come down around you.

So your best bet is to go now, even if they've heard about you. Now, if they haven't heard about you, you're not even a. better situation. But they may know who you are. They're still trying to put together on something. Now you could go, you could also go to them then and say, look, I need to walk away, Scott free. Yeah.

You know. Yeah, self-preservation. Right. I would be cautious with that because one of the mantras that we had was like, you cannot tell anybody. You can't tell your girl. You can't tell your mom. You can't tell your boy who you think is your boy because nobody is really your friend.

and if they find out that you're cooperating with us or if it leaks out, you know, like, like we weren't worried about like computer hacking because everything was encoded and whatever, but like for something your level, like I would be worried like, you know, do you have a computer database with these people's information? How do we know that it's protected? Like we were very careful. Even like when we would go into looking into like, you know, buying stuff from drug dealers or whatever, like how many people, we would go sit on the spot and see what kind of traffic

they had coming in and out and, you know, How many people know this? Because at the end of the day, we have to protect the identity of the people who are giving us this information. Their lives are, that's our responsibility. Their safety is our responsibility. And I took that really seriously. So I would, my first thought would be like, okay, how many people know that you're going to cooperate with us? Because my objective would be zero.

You know, like we're not going to meet at the precincts. We're going to meet, you know, in a different county, in a different borough. you know, like as far away removed as possible from all of the people that you know. At the federal level, though, it's got to be a little different because you're, you're kind of dealing with like a bigger bank account, whereas what I was dealing with in like the city was people who were just hand in mouth. They were dealing and then, you know, it wasn't like they had a savings account or, you know, they had like the fund of like, you know, the town where Ben Affleck just takes his piles of money

from a brick building and like disappears to Florida for the rest of his life. These, it was, it was more like, I'm going to make what I'm going to make what I'm need and then you know that's that's we're going to spend it and that's it so they didn't have like the means of selling the cars and getting a hideaway and stuff you know and running from the situation they were stuck there and the sad thing was that these guys grew up with these people like these were the people that they grew up with so they looked at to them as family and you know it was like you can't think of it like these people are family because if you guys will do the same thing and they get caught they're going to say you're the trigger man even if you're not just so that

that they, you know, like you can't, you can't look at it like that. You have to learn to take care of yourself. And I would, I kind of took on like a maternal role sometimes with some of these informants because I felt like they were kind of like lost souls. Like they wanted to do the right thing, right? They wanted to come clean and just be like, you know, this is wrong. And I don't want to live this life anymore, but I don't know anything else. So I would kind of coach them. I'm like, okay, well, let's go look at getting you a job, you know, like McDonald's is hiring. start at the bottom, you know, work your way up. Like, you know, what do you like to do?

Do you have a GED? Like, let's get you a GED. Let's get you enrolled in these programs and try and get them on the right footing to get them out of that life because it just, it, like, it's a habitual thing because then they get a girl and then the girl gets pregnant and now they're raising a kid and they don't have a job and now the kids growing up in the same environment. And it's like a revolving door cycle in the inner city that I found that was like it was depressing because it's like they don't know how to get out of it.

So I kind of tried to help them alleviate their guilt, right? And then be like, you know, it's okay that you're doing this. It's a good thing that you're doing this. And now we're going to help you to get out of this life. So eventually, you know, you're going to be useless to me because you're not going to have any information for me to, you know, work off of. So I would, I would try and do that. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to say two things. So the one thing I had been thinking about was like using the YouTube channel to talk about this.

Yeah. And then those people could reach out to you, pay you a fee. You could explain the whole situation. And then there would be somebody you could hand them off to on the federal system. Right. So then the feds would, you know, take it over at that point. But they can always talk to you and say, this is what they're saying. Is that, is that okay?

Is that, you know, and explain to them up front, you know, like, look, you know, just be very honest with them. Because a lot of times, you know, federal agents will promise you things that they can't promise you. So you're just explained to him, look, if he says, don't worry, you're not going to do any time. say he can't prove that he can't promise that like be honest with them how it really works and what there what has to be reasonable um you know what that was big yeah that was big for me no i i i agree with that 100 percent i would never if if the guy was going to have to do jail time and we'd have to do like a proffer type of a situation i'd be like you're going to have to do the time like i never applied to them because i thought that was the basis for our relationship is is trust is really all that

you have and i'm dealing with somebody who lies habitually for a living right they did not they ever do any criminal acts and everything so the trust for me is like if i get proven to be a liar they're not going to work with me because they're going to not trust anything else that i say so i have no credibility so i'm i'm with you on that that you have to be able to have the trust and you can't you can't bs people and just give them like a smooth job because half of them know the system better better than you do you know the right sometimes know the system better than the cops though but they they also know like they're kind of going on your word they're right hanging on your word and you don't you know it's like a moral thing i think sometimes you don't you know

you got to you got to be truthful and honest because you you can't tell a lie and then be found out because now it's over right so yeah i mean i i i agree but i but not unfortunately not all agents are playing by that rule um yeah i mean every all the ones of course i've i talk to they are all they're all straight shooters but i've you know i know that's not the case but yeah um So I was going to say that would be great because if they could contact me and I can be honest on every single facet of it like cooperating how it goes what the time frame is what you're really looking for or looking at if anything you know can you do pretrial intervention you know can you or diversion you know can you what if you go to prison what prison you're probably going to go to what that's going to be like like you know I could help them on every every in every facet and the other thing is you mentioned something about the people right like their family. because they're because they're hang out with my boys every day I hang out with them and this and that. So, um, I met a guy when I was on the run. Um, I met a guy one time. They called him New Orleans.

He worked at Home Depot. And I'll never forget this guy because I was we were, I was buying, I'm on the run, buying houses, renovating them and selling them and refinancing them because fraud is not a full time job. Like I don't, I have plenty of money, but I have nothing to do. And I, I'm somebody who is always doing something. I sleep four or five hours a day. I have to get up. I have to go work out. I'm doing, I'm running multiple channels. I'm doing that.

Like I'm just always doing something. It's, it's, I feel bad for my wife. Like I'm a horrible person to be in a relationship with. Especially because you're like gator hunting. So it's, you know, kind of. Exactly. So this kid of New Orleans. I used to see them all the time at Home Depot because I'm always,

I'm always there picking up lumber, dropping it off for the guys doing the work and doing this and driving. I'm on Home Depot, sometimes two, three times a day. So I would walk in. And the thing about New Orleans was what I liked about him, one, he's young. He's probably 24, 25, you know, black kid. And almost ran wherever he went. New the store inside now. And so if you said, hey, man, where's such and such?

Oh, I got to come, go, come, come, come, go. And you almost had to have, like, run after him, you know, like, wanted to help everybody. where some of those guys are like, are like, yeah, it's aisle 12 and they just kind of walk off like they're only alone. Yeah. Like, you weren't the customer service job, but yeah, they don't know it. They're upset. They're working there. Yeah.

He loved this job. So I remember seeing him and, and I, listen, after maybe six months of seeing this guy, I go, bro, I said, why do they call? Because now I know him as New Orleans, or whatever. And I'd say, hey, bro, I'd say, why do they call you New Orleans? And he goes, oh, he said, I used to live in New Orleans. And I was like, oh, really? I said, he said, yeah. What did I ask him?

I said, when do you come to, how did you end up in, you know, it was a Nashville, Tennessee. He goes, oh, Katrina. Or was it Katrina? Wait, what was the one that hit? Yeah. Oh, Katrina. Katrina. He said, yeah.

He said, I was there when the levees broke. He's like flooded my house. He said there was eight feet. My house was eight feet underwater. He said, boats, you know, came and picked us up. And he said, it was just destroyed my entire neighborhood. My neighborhood is not even there anymore.

He was like, yeah. I said, oh, man, I'm sorry about that. He said, now, bro, saved my life. Saved my life. And I went, what do you mean? Oh, I was selling crack, bro. He was, I was selling crack. He said, my two brothers, well, one of them was like in prison.

One of them was, and one's in prison. One was like dead or something. I got four cousins. He said, they were all selling crack. He said one of those guys, one of them got shot. He said he died a couple years ago. He said, my dad's in prison doing life my like he sat there and rambled off a fucking tragedy of a life yeah yeah

and he said new orleans came he said Katrina came in knocked everything out he said I stayed in I forget what that big stadium they stayed in he said stayed in the stadium for so many days oh he said he said was there he said maybe two weeks afterwards he said they my name came up they stuck me on a plane he said he said they flew me here home depo gave me a job a place to stay and a vehicle to use and a job and a full-time job he said i've been working here ever since he said well i pay my own rent now because i pay my own rent he said i got my own car he said that only lasted so long but he said they kind of did it in phases he said but i still got the same apartment he said and he was ecstatic and i go did you ever find out what happened like listen

this is his mother i did you ever have what what happened with your mom or you know your or anything and he said no bro he's i don't want to know he cut it yeah well and i was like i was like you don't want to know because i said because something bad happened he said i don't want to know because he said that was a life i couldn't escape until katrina and i was just like bro like even now think about it like i teared up when he was telling me it was so it was sad but he was so this guy walked away from everything he knew yeah and he was like static about it because he was in a situation he could not escape yeah you know and then he ran and it got me like 12 uh 2 by 4s and you know but yeah but he was it was great and the problem is with you know

and i i always thought that too so you know after thinking about that a lot i was like wow these guys are trapped some of these guys are trapped yeah you know like they don't they don't know it though they don't they don't yeah i don't think they do know it i think that he'd never done that by himself and that was his big thing like it saved me because he would have never he didn't even realize the situation he was in until they they they picked him up and stuck him in a better situation and he also knew but he was smart enough to know i can't i can't talk to that i can't go back to them i can't i'm done like they were they were a part of the system that was dragging him down and uh and i feel like that's something that you would have to tell these guys is you can't go back

Like if you do this, you have to leave, but don't look at it as being a bad thing. You know, you've got to look at it as being, you know, a gift. I would say that to a lot of these. Yeah, like I had a guy. We, we caught him with a gun on the street, you know, he tried to run or whatever. We grabbed them. It was a cannon. And I just, I remember, like, he was just too nice.

He was just, hey, ma'am, I apologize for that. I'm sorry that I ran. You know, I shouldn't have done that. And I'm like, you know, I just, I don't know. There was like a kindred spirit type thing. Like I just felt like this. So, you know, we're sitting in the, in the thing and I'm fingerprinting and whatever. And then I take them out.

And I'm like, I said to, I go, bro, listen, you're going to have to do your two years. Like, I can't. There's no negotiating that. Like, it's just a mandatory sentence. We got you with a gun dead to rights. It is what it is. I'm like, but use your time in prison for good. Like, this isn't sure Shank redemption.

I'm sure they have like a library. and you know, self-education classes. And I'm like, you can educate yourself and get yourself out of here because you're, you're a gang member, you're going to come back and you're going to get the pressure to go fall back into it again. And I'm like, I try to explain like there's so much more to life, you know, and I feel like for me, the police department was kind of like a redemption because I feel like I was like a lost cause.

I was going all over the place. I didn't know what I wanted. I was just like, you know, flopping in the wind. And then it gave me like the structure and like, okay, you know, you. you have to report it, you know, 1,500 hours. Like, so it was like, you know, it led me down the path that I'm on now. And I try and explain to him like, dude, I'm in a job where after 20 years, I get 50% pension. And I'm going to be, you know, 43 years old when I retire.

And I'm going to be able to start a second life or continue if I want to. You know, a lot of guys stay cops. You know, you have all these opportunities. I said, you are living in a, in a neighborhood where every day you have to worry about drive-by shootings. You have to worry about the rival gangs coming after you. You have to worry about going to jail. Like you're getting crushed from all sides. And this is not what life is about.

I'm like, what about traveling? Like, have you ever been to like, you know, Italy or Ireland or, you know, anywhere? Like get out of, get out of the city. Have you been out of state? You know, like, have you, have you left New York City? And it was, it was sad because I, he, I followed this guy. Like there was a program where you get notified when they get released. And I, and he got released and he moved.

that estate. I don't know what happened to him, but I was, I was hoping that he started fresh. And he saw like, I have to get out. This is no good for me. Because it's said, it's almost like, I always, I mean, not to get like a too religious thing, but I working in the city, I was like an atheist. I was an atheist already. And I'm like, there's no God here. People are evil. There's just evil everywhere. And I realize it's just because people don't, they're not enlightened. They don't understand the other side of life and that these people who they think are their friends aren't really their friends. It's a friendship of convenience temporarily.

And the minute that you've got jail time hanging over your head or, you know, somebody's coming for you. You know, there's no, there's no honor there. And the only option is you're going to get shot and killed or you're going to end up in prison and rat it out by the people who you consider your brothers. So the real only option is to get out of that life. And how do you do it? you have to you get an education you get away from those people you know like you just you have to physically remove yourself from that scenario because these same people are going to keep coming around

and maybe they don't mean evil for you but they don't intend for you to get caught up in this but that's the only life they know and you have to get yourself out of it and I you know it's it's tough to watch because you see it especially when they lowered the uh the age for crime in new york city they did that lower the age thing. So like if you were 16 and you got caught, you were charged an adult and they raised it to 18. So now you had like these 16 and 17 year olds that felt emboldened because they're like, I'm not going to do the time that I would have done. You know, like if I get caught with a gun, now I'm going to the juvenile facility as opposed

to like the real jail. So it actually encouraged kids to do more crime. And I'm like, this is, this is, you know, politicians are not usually helpful because they usually make the problem worse. And I saw the. change of like these kids who maybe were inhibited from doing things because they were like, I don't really want to go to real jail. Now they're starting even earlier because they know they're not going to go to real jail. And the early you start on that life, the harder it is to remove yourself.

And it's like an addict. You just can't get out of it. So I think that's an admirable thing to try and create a program where you're not only helping people to, you know, turn on the other bad people and to, you know, solve the crimes and to get the guns off the street. But you're also trying to find a path for them to get out of that life entirely. That's the challenge, you know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I was going to say, it's, yeah, there's tons of excuses for these guys not to get out of that life. You know, they, they give themselves tons of excuses. But truth is, if they really sat down with a pen and a piece of paper and started doing the math and thought about it, like you can go somewhere, you can live in someone's spare room. You can, you know what I'm saying? You can rent a room. You can get next to the bus line.

you get a job, you start slow. And in a year from now, you'll have all your shit together. And within a year and a half, you'll have enough money for a car. Like, you can, you can fix your credit. You can get a car loan. You can get a better job. You can, like, you can do these things. These, this is not impossible.

Like, it's tough. It's not as much fun and it's not as easy as it is to sell drugs or, you know, commit for or something. But, you know, you don't have to do five or 10 years. And those sentences only get worse and worse. And every time you get cool. And you really have no clue. you're going to get. These guys all think that they're going to get two years or three years and they

end up getting 15 and they never saw it coming. Yeah. And they're like, oh my God, like now what are you going to do? You know, right. Now you're convicted felon. Yeah. Yeah. Now you're convicted felon. You're getting out when you're, you know, in your like 40s or 50s or something. Now you're starting over again from scratch and you got somebody watching you. You got a probation officer watching the next three years. Like you like you had, you had many, many opportunities. Yeah. It's it's it's sad that I don't know. I don't know. I think they feel to an allegiance.

Like I would talk to some of these guys and they'd be like, this is my boy. You know, I grew up with these guys. I'm not ratting on them. And it's like, no, you got to.

I'm like, I don't know. I could never be a criminal because I can't do jail time and I need to sleep at night. Like I can't put my head on the pillow and know like the cops might be banging down my door at 5 a.m. On a warrant, you know,

like that. I can't deal with that kind of thing. So I would never be good at being a criminal because I'd be like a paranoid disaster. But I'm like, wouldn't it be nice to. just to go to bed and not worry, like, are the police coming? Is, am I going to get shot?

You know, is my girl going to wrap me out? Like, just to be able to like live a good life. Right. You didn't even like visiting. I hate to go into Rikers Island. Yeah. Yeah. I hated it because I'm just like, I don't know.

You know, you're a bird. You can't be caged, you know, and I would try and explain to these guys. Like, you just, you can't. It's not a healthy lifestyle, but it's, you know, It sucked because it was just watching young kids enter the life. Because the, and the music, too, like, it's the whole atmosphere of, like, you emulate the guy on the corner because you see him in the flashy car with all the money and he's, you know, dollar, dollar bills, all this stuff.

So that type of lifestyle is emulated. And I would see the kids that tried to do well in school, they would get beat up. They were bullied. You know, I had like one kid, one time he was, I guess maybe he was maybe mentally, I don't know, with the appropriate PC term is mentally retarded or not down syndrome, but like he was something was a little off and he was slow and he got beat up bad. They you know, the kids from school came and they bullied him and they beat the crap out of this poor kid and I just remember I went to the house and he was just hysterical crying and he wouldn't tell

us who beat him up but he was just so devastated because he's like the you know, I'm trying to do well in school and he was slower than everybody else and you get picked on for it and And it's not encouraged behavior to do well and excel. It's encouraged behavior to sling crack and make money the easy way and fight the system and, you know, whatever. And I would say to these guys, you're so smart. Like you're so, this scam that you have is so smart. And you're so smart the way you do it.

It was so hard to catch you. Why don't you go work on the stock market, you know, go take your test and pass your series seven and, and go work on the stock market and make money legally. So you can, you know, like the only thing that's going to rob it from you is like the government and taxes. Like that's that's your biggest thing you have to worry about. Like go and get a legitimate job. You're wasted talent. You're going to get shot out on the streets.

This is such a waste. And for them, you know, sad to say most of the time, I think it went over everybody's heads and they just, you know, they didn't care. There might have been a few cases where I might have helped a few people. But, you know, that's the, that's the life. That's what they do. But so that's why I tried to, I kind of gravitated towards saving the animals, you know, like, You see a cat on the street and it's like, oh, my gosh, this thing or like the dog that's beaten up or it's freezing cold in the backyard. It's abandoned.

I think you try and crave a happy ending sometimes being a cop because most of the time you just see the same people doing the same thing. And it's a repetitive spiral, you know, the drug addicts and the shootings and it like it doesn't end. So it's hard to watch that. So you try and bring some good into the world by helping what you can. All right. I was like as I go on and on. I'm trying to think of funny stories to like lighten the mood, but this is, I mean, there's a reality of it. And then there's like, you know, the bull busting pranks that cops plan each other because you are living in this world of like depression and sadness and horrible living situations that these people are in.

And then they're no sleep and, you know, problems at home because you're never home and you're, you know, you're at work for three days and whatever. So, you know, you would bust each other's bowls relentlessly and play for. practical jokes and that was how we relieved our stress. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. If you like the video, hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you get notified. Also share the video because that really does help. I have a Patreon. We put Patreon exclusive content on Patreon. It's like 10 bucks a month. So you get stuff that happened like before we started or things that were cut out. Oh, you also get an unedited version. So if you're one of those guys, it screams because we had to beep out or censor certain drugs and you get upset about it.

Well, for $10 a month, you can watch the uncensored version and you can hear all the drug and curse words you want to hear. So it's $10 a month. It's Patreon. The link is in the description. Also, we are going to put a link in the book to Amazon to you can buy that. I appreciate you guys watching. Thank you very much. See you.