The Bossticks - Undercover Cop Tells All - The Crazy True Life Of Dale Sutherland

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

#721: Today, we're sitting down with Dale Sutherland, pastor and former undercover cop for the Washington DC Police Department. Dale worked for the DC Metropolitan Police Department for 29 years, retiring as Detective Sergeant in August 2013. During his career, he served as an undercover cop, buying drugs and weapons from criminal organizations, and helping to lock up hundreds of criminals. Simultaneously, Dale also assisted people in rebuilding their lives through his ministry work as a pastor, providing spiritual freedom. He talks with us today about his time undercover, describing his daily life and sharing some of his craziest stories as an undercover cop.   To connect with Dale Sutherland click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn's favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   This episode is brought to you by Squarespace From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. Go to squarespace.com/skinny for a free trial & use code SKINNY for 10% off your first purchase of a website domain. This episode is brought to you by Active Skin Repair Visit ActiveSkinRepair.com to learn more about Active Skin Repair and use code SKINNY to get 20% off your order. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep Head to eightsleep.com/skinny and use code SKINNY to get $350 off Pod 4 Ultra. They currently ship to the US, Canada, UK, Europe and Australia This episode is brought to you by Lipton Green tea is a great ally for wellness and a simple way to up your everyday healthy habits. Try new Lipton Green Tea! This episode is brought to you by HVMN Go to HVMN.com/SKINNY & save 30% off your first subscription order of Ketone-IQ This episode is brought to you by Just Thrive These days, stress seems to hit us from every possible angle in any environment at any time, day after day. Enter Just Calm - the breakthrough new stress and mood support formula from Just Thrive. Get 20% off a 90-day bottle of Just Thrive probiotic + Just Calm supplement at justthrivehealth.com with code SKINNY at checkout.   Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

Aha. You originally think drug dealers, oh, terrible, awful people. Then you meet them. And just like us, they're just huss on a buck. In many cases. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions. You're meeting these shooting, you know, these guys that are murderers and drug dealers and you find out they're not so different than me.

And then you see them and you feel, honestly, depending on the bad guy, at the end of the case, I would often feel bad and have a hard time interviewing them as a, you know, being honest, I'm the police, really the police. And you really build a friendship with these guys. And remember, again, it's anti to what I believe to lie and to cheat people and deceive people. And yet that's what I would do. I mean, that's what I did for a living. and I live for living. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the skinny confidential him and her show. Today,

we have another wild episode with a guest like never before, and that is Dale Sutherland. Dale Sutherland is a pastor and former undercover cop for the Washington, D.C. Police Department. Dale worked for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department for 29 years, retiring as a detective sergeant in August 2013. During his career, he served as an undercover cop, buying drugs and weapons from criminal organizations and helping to lock up hundreds of criminals. Simultaneously, Dale also assisted people in rebuilding their lives through his ministry work as a pastor, providing spiritual freedom. He talked with us today about his time undercover,

describing his daily life and sharing some of his craziest stories as an undercover cop. We also discuss how he became interested in law enforcement, his experience as an undercover cop, the craziest experiences that he's experienced while he was undercover, how he eventually decided to become a pastor and grappling with his moral beliefs on the job. This is just a really interesting story from a really interesting life. It's different from what we typically do.

We could have talked to Dale and asked him a million questions. Lauren believes that she would be good undercover. I think it's a little bit too late for her. I think too many people would recognize her right off the bat. But that's just me. Lauren, I don't think it's going to work out for you. Dale Sutherland, welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her.

How did you originally get interested in a career in law enforcement? got a family vocation, dad, grandfather, or how did you initially just get interested in this line of work? Well, I was in Bible College, studying to be a minister, and I worked a bunch of part-time jobs. One of them was with a policeman. I was working security at a hotel, and there were policemen that would work off duty, and I'd hear their stories, and I'd get interested. Went out a few ride-alongs and thought, boy, I could learn about life for a couple of years. Instead of just being a regular minister who doesn't really know what's going on, I wanted to work in the inner city. So I thought, let me get out of here and see this.

And so I plan to just do it for a year or two. And then I stayed 29 years instead. Wow, a little longer than a year. Yeah. What is the first wild experience that you have in law enforcement? Because to someone who's not in it, it seems like a lot. I look at the same way like a doctor or a nurse. I'm like, oh, my gosh.

It's just so out of my realm that I'm so interested what your first experience that was like wild. Well, I got assigned to a district called the third district in Washington, D.C. And it was 2.4 square miles. And for 2.4 square miles, there was 450 policemen assigned, 37 in the vice unit, just for 2.4 square miles. And in that area, we had 30 open air drug markets. So we had everything from prostitution to every kind of crime you can think of. And I'm driving around. I just, I'm in fresh out of Bible college. And I'm driving around. And we're seeing guys do things. They told me one day when I got to, to roll call said they just call old clothes. That meant get out of uniform and go out there. Just make some arrests. Okay? So me and this guy look like Chuck Norris,

exactly like Chuck Norris. He and I went out, so we're driving around. It gets to be about 2 o'clock we don't have an arrest. He says, hey, see that guy over there, go up and ask him for some cocaine. I never bought drugs or anything. Never used drugs. He said, go.

I said, okay, okay. It's just me and him. I had no money or anything. I just walk up to the guy. Guy says, come on, walk with me. We'll go get it out of my car. Okay. Never supposed to do that, by the way.

Can't protect you if you start moving around. You as a cop are not supposed to do that. Right. When you're doing the undercover, you want to stay where you're at and the team can watch you. And there's all supposed to be a team. There's just one guy. So in those days, we don't worry about that much.

So I'm walking with this fellow. And everywhere I look, you know, behind me, my buddy's like hiding behind light poles. It's very sophisticated. And we get to the guy's car. We get in the car. He hands me what I think is the cocaine. And I take my gun out. I mean, remember, I'm a month into this thing.

What use this? 1988, 1988. So take my gun out, my shaking, my hand shaking up, all this guy. And the other guy grabs him out of the car, so we get out of the car, and he's laughing because he just sold me baking soda. That's my very first buy as I get a ounce of baking soda.

The good news was, well, kind of good news was, the car he had taken us to was stolen. He had stolen it earlier that morning from an old man, and so we did have a case on him. But that was my first shot. I'm suddenly in the world where I'm buying drugs, pointing guns of people, and, you know, it was a bizarre. Did he know you were a cop?

No, no. Well, he did it at the end there. He did at the end. He figured that out. Yeah. I'm always curious how you compartmentalize when you see something that's awful as a cop. Like, I'm sure you've had to go into houses or homes where there's child abuse or neglect or molestation. How were you able to compartmentalize that?

That's, it's a lot. Yeah, I would say that that is, you know, I work narcotics and homicide and shootings and bought a lot of guns and did that kind of stuff. And I did everything I could to avoid all child abuse cases in that child in that whole division. But when we would go, remember a guy who killed, he got high in PCP, beat his seven and eight year old to death, wrapped him in a carpet, put him in a closet, and then raped his 17-year-old daughter. I remember that night really well.

It was a horrible man. And the big story really was that the policeman, the first policeman who grabbed him, it was weird because the TV cameras were there because there was a man not going on. He happened to grab him. And he punched him. He hit him. That was the first thing he did. The guy was the policeman was a father too and arrested him. And the big story really was that he punched this, you know, this guy who just raped his 17-year-old daughter.

So anyway, I remember that one. That was a troubling one. It was a really troubling story. And I had only been a policeman maybe three months when that happened. How do people hold restraint in that situation? because we're, I'm a father. Yeah. And I can't imagine running into somebody like that.

Mm-hmm. And being able to restrain myself. I imagine that takes a certain amount of discipline and maybe even disconnect at times. Yeah, disconnection, I think is the key, right? It's, for the uniform officer who grabbed him, he had just seen the bodies. He was in the moment. He couldn't disconnect or he didn't disconnect.

And we can do it, I think, better with other things other children. But I mean, he beat him to death of the hammer. I mean, it was horrible. Oh, my God. But the detective, when he gets that guy, the detective takes the absolute opposite approach. It's not like I watch cop shows on TV. It's just the opposite. They're his best friend.

They're talking to him. They're asking, what did this girl do to make you do this to her? Anything to get them to just say, well, that's right. She was the one who started in this way. And then he tells a story. If you go under your tough guy and you want to fight everybody, you don't get anything. I mean, in narcotics, everything is with your mouth, not with, you know, I didn't even carry a lot of the time.

What do cops say, like, behind the scenes when there's something that horrible that happens and the cop punches him and then the only headline is the cop punches him? Like, that's got to be frustrating behind the scenes to say the least. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very frustrating. Yeah, very frustrating. You know, there's a proverb in the Bible says bad culture calls evil good and good evil. And sometimes we see that. We flip it and we got the wrong emphasis.

And so, yeah, it's very frustrating. But the truth is in that case, he even testified in that case and everything it stayed. And the officer, they asked him on the stay and why. And he told him exactly why. And everybody in the jury understood. I mean, what are you going to do? And that circumstance, you know. What did he get?

Did he get? Yeah, the guy. Oh, yeah, yeah, you got life in prison. Yeah. I'm just talking to a detective. Do you follow up? Like, I'm so interested if as a cop and someone does something that horrific, do you follow up with the criminal, like seeing where he lands?

or are you just detached from it after he's in jail? So remember at that time, we were averaging, we're in a city of 600,000, which is a fairly small, not a huge city. And we got up to as many as 400 and almost 500 murders a year. That means about 1,500 AWICs. We'd call them or guys that got shot but didn't die. So with all that going on, truthfully, homicide detectives at that time were carrying 18 or 20 murders a year, which would be now they might carry two or three or one to three.

So that tells you they're just the bodies and the body. Only on really weird ones like the one I just described, do you remember, you know, and stay with it. Like that one, the detective I was talking to it the other day on the phone, had the case. You knew everything about that case, every single thing about that guy. Because it was so horrendous. Yeah. And thank God that stuff doesn't happen very often. Well, you know, we told you before we started that Lauren and I have always been like very pro-law enforcement.

And I think that, you know, and we have people that are in our lives that are in that community. And I think it's hard for the normal person, the normal citizen, to contextualize going to work and seeing something like that. Right. Like most people go to their job, you know, sit in the office, write a couple of emails, maybe go to a service industry job, serve a couple of people. And I'm not trying to diminish anybody, but I'm just saying that's the normal experience is you where a lot of people in law enforcement, they see things like that. And then we, listen, we want to hold everybody. to a standard and all of that. But I just, I think sometimes there's a lack of empathy

for some of the things people in law enforcement seek because you are the ones that see the worst of humanity first, right? And I just don't think people can understand or rationalize that. I can't imagine waking up, going to work, seeing two small children beaten to death with a hammer, encountering then a 17-year-old woman that had been raped, and it was all done by the father, and then I have to see that father to prison.

Or be the detective. and have to be friends with him. I just, I want people to, like, really, like, understand and grasp what that day of work would look like, right? Most people's hard to say, like, oh, my God, my boss was tough on me or I had a, I lost an account or, you know what I mean? Sure. It kind of pales in comparison when you think about that way.

Even firefighters are people that are, you know, nurses and doctors, people that just see, honestly, the worst of humanity. Yeah, listen, I think there's some truth to that. There's, there's, I was just thinking, as you said that, so I worked, most of my career, I spent working as undercover officer. So I acted as though I was somebody else and spent a lot of time with criminals. One type of criminal we did,

we did these like sting operations with guys that were committing robberies. If they were out doing violent robberies, what we would do is we would pose, I would pose as a guy who could help them find victims. So I would tell them I was a drug dealer, small drug dealer, but I knew big drug dealers and we could go rob them if they'd.

And during those conversations, the idea was to get them to confess to other things they've already done, to prove to me that they were bad guys or whatever. And I was thinking about a guy. There were these two really awful people who beat. The one crime that they had done the worst to me was they had beaten an old man so bad that when he was found by the cops who came on the scene, he was unconscious.

And they thought he had, car had run over him. And he didn't wake up until three days later in the hospital. And then they found out, in fact, he was beaten. It was a robbery. So that's how bad these guys are. And we're meeting with them over dinner, trying to get friends. with talking about all this stuff. And they start laughing about what they did to the old guy.

That was challenging. And then they got off. He got off. We went to trial and he got a few months in jail or whatever because he'd run up in a bad life and he'd had a hard time and that kind of thing. And so that was a little more challenging. And when you think about those circumstances, yeah, you're spending time with people that nobody should spend time with. When you are approaching becoming someone else, I have. have to ask this. Did you like change your voice? Did like what are you wearing? How did you prepare

to become someone else as an undercover cop? It's kind of funny. I watch TV. Yeah. That's I did. I watch TV and here's why it matters is because the dope dealers watch TV too. So if I'm doing what what they expect, what I would do or I would get in an observation post we call and I just watch buyers in that neighborhood all day long and I'd see what guys in my age group, Caucasian, what do they like what do they come in because cops come up with all kinds of stupid ideas about how what should work that doesn't matter you need to go and see what does work what happens every day so anyway i learned some of the things we we were for a year i was a mobster and it was probably the most fun i ever had i was uh oh my god you got to tell us all about yeah i got to play like i was richie giovanni

for a year from philadelphia big cigars and a white beater and it's really funny and i had a you know a desk like yours i had a merry statue on it and a picture my grandfather who looked italian behind me and it was in all African-American city. We didn't have, we don't have mobsters in Washington and that we know. And so I was an anomaly. And all they knew, same as I knew, was what was on Sopranos. So I literally, I watched Sopranos, saw what they dressed like. I'd go get a shirt like that. And I'd get the guys, we had jewelry, we'd get Rolexes, all this stuff. I'd never, you know, would own. I just did what TV made them do. And it went over great. Wait, I have a couple questions about us. Sure.

Okay, first thing, where does, you said Richie Giavani? Richie Giovanni. Where does Richie Giovanni come out of? Like, when, so you just come out of nowhere? So I picked the undercover name Rick from a college roommate that I had early on. And then I used Rick, Richard, Richie. I used Richie, I used Ritchie a lot of different cases. Most all my undercovers I used because I wanted to be able to turn if somebody ever called my name, that I'd catch it.

Because occasionally things happen where you're not planning to see the bad guy and then you do or whatever. But anyway, other than that, that's where I came up with that. And then Giovanni was just, you know, I'm like you. I'm just picking an Italian name that seems like it's good. I mean, though, how do you come out of thin air to criminals? Like, if you're Richie Giovanni with your Rolex and your picture of your grandfather, like, how do you just appear and put yourself out there so it makes sense and they have context of who you are? Well, let me say this. Like, I know nothing about the world you live in, right?

I know nothing about Austin. I know nothing about the podcast where all that. So if I wanted to, I'd get one of those people out there in your office and I'd say, I really want to get to know them. What do I do? And they would sit down and educate me and they'd say, and I'd say, I'm going to wear this off. Nobody's ever worn that to your office. Believe me, they would never wear that.

You could wear this. Then they'd tell me, so that's how we would do. We would get a friend of the bad guys or an informant. What's in it for them? Depends. Different guys, different things. Sometimes it's to lower their exposure. Sometimes it's money.

Sometimes it's revenge. It's one of the best ones is when a girl gets mistreated by a guy. Oh, yeah, you better not do it, guys. Oh, I've had some great cases that way. Don't fuck with the girl. It's really a mistake. I've got a great informant for my ex-boyfriends. Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, don't do it, guys. So when you plan and prep for this, I also wonder when you're in character, when you're able to come out. So, for instance, if you're talking to a bad guy and you're a mobster, when are you able to sort of take the uniform off and go home and what does that look like? Like are you, where are you like what if the bad guy follows you? Or is it during that period of time, you almost can't get out of it? You know, I think, look, I'll tell you the truth. I think, guys, this is the moment where I can sound very dramatic about how it is like the movies. It isn't. To me, it wasn't.

I didn't understand. To me, it was laughable. I'm not Richie Giovanni. Let's be for real here. Everybody knows me. I'm not Richard Giovanni. Never was. Never will. But I can play like Richard Giovanni for six, seven hours. Now, the thing that messed you up a little bit is some of the cases that I did long term, I ran a recording studio for a long time. And I was doing that. And every night, we were also going to the clubs every night. And I was through the drugs. I was spending tons of money. I could say that was a little bit appealing. That was a little bit harder to go back to being the pastor because I was also past at the same time. My pastor, my three daughters live in regular life when we had to pinch pennies to try to, you know, can we go on vacation or can we go to?

And then I'm back to work. And I'm a hundred dollar bill to every waiter and never. everything. So those kind of things, I'd say, but not in the sense like, you know, it was traumatic or something. No, it was just probably more fun to be. Just the just position of like, oh, I'm living large over here. Yeah, that's right. I got to go back to real life. Yeah. Here's where I don't understand it. If I'm a bad guy and you and you and I are partying until 2 a.m. And I suspect something's weird with you. And I decide to follow you home. Problem. Okay. So what do you do with that? Yeah. And what do you do even before, like, in the morning when You wait. Like, how do you like keep the character going all day long for the bad guy? The key is that the key is. This is really important. If you ever watch a movie, Donnie Brasco,

it's a great movie. It's a great movie. And it's legitimately a great story. And Johnny Depp, unbelievable role there. And I've met Joe Pistone, who did the, who really did the case. Now, that guy, he's the real thing. You need to get him on the show. That guy lived six years with the mop, lived with him. You see the difference? I never lived with these guys. It's a big difference. We don't do, I mean, you know, give up secrets, but we don't really do that anymore. Undercover's too dangerous. We have too many liability. We don't want undercoveres out there like that.

So we might use an informant, but to use a guy like they use Joe Pistone would be extremely unusual nowadays. So for me, I'd work in with these guys and I'd always have an out. I would have a reason that I'm leaving. You know, I live in Virginia, I have something I got to do in the morning, or I had so much money, I don't care what they do. I'm going to my thing. And then the following thing is you have to know your target. And 99%, listen, I did this for 22 years or so, almost straight. I had one really bad one like that where a guy followed me and it wrecked a case.

But other than that, I either, we tracked how they, you know, leaving, very careful leaving, didn't go straight home, that kind of thing. And then secondly, really knowing the bad guys and thinking we could out beat the bad guys. Question. And going back and quickly, and I want to go back to the guy that followed you. But when you first got into undercover work, why did you either choose or why were you selected to do that kind of work? So this is really funny. I think one of the things is you do things, never great athlete in high school, never great student, didn't really win much of that.

Got halfway through Bible College quit, became a policeman. And I was in the academy and I offered to do undercover work in the academy. And it's an all African American city, to be fair. And they said, like, you're kidding. That's laughable. You're not going to do undercover work. So that made me think like, wait a minute, maybe I can't do this. So I think I had something at the beginning.

I just wanted to try it. And that's how I tried. It was the first story I told you. But then from there, I found out that if I posed, there was always a Caucasian somewhere there. I just had to find a role. And so I created roles through my career that would give me a reason to be legitimately involved, whether it be a mobster, recording studio, body shop, import, export, business, anything I could create, that would be like, okay, now I understand what this guy would be.

here. Is this mostly going after narcotics and drug busts or? Yeah, narcotics, drugs, violence. Like, say we worked these violent crime rings, groups of guys. And I really enjoyed that. Where guys that were out doing robberies and shooting people and that kind of stuff. And then I would get to be friends with them, track with them maybe a case to a bank for one that was doing a bank robbery. I went in case the bank and took videos of the bank for them. And I walk out and tell them we went to Philadelphia to do that. So a lot of different case like that where you're in with these fellows and you're helping them, they think, to commit their crimes. But you're just getting them just right up to the point they're going to do it and then we arrest them. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.

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That's what I would. I'm just, that's what I'm always. No, wait a minute now. Let's challenge that just a little bit here. She also thinks she can win every reality show contest. I do. I know. I would notice that you were leaving a lot. Well, remember, I'm not leaving every 10 minutes. I'm leaving like at normal breaks in the evening.

You know, the club closes at two. Okay. What do we all go home together? We all got to live in a commune to be a drug dealer? I guess you're right. I guess you're right. And at some point I got to leave. Okay, can I ask you this?

But you do have to watch that. Look, you're right, though. Sometimes guys are doing that. Like, I can only be here 10 minutes. You can do that three times. You can't do that five times. You know what I mean? So you have to play.

Sure. And there's a lot of dumb mistakes like that. If I'm a criminal, I'm putting a shot of tequila on the table and a line of cocaine that's thick as fuck and saying, let's do this together. What do you do? Do you have to do the cocaine? No. You don't? Well, here's the thing.

This is an ongoing problem, of course. The cool thing in our city is if you in Washington, if you make money and sell drugs, you don't generally use drugs. That's just a rule. If you make money and sell drugs. drugs you don't generally use drugs wouldn't mean you wouldn't smoke weed certainly you would drink tequila certainly you would sleep with women certainly you would you know live a party in life or whatever but if you're a true money guy you don't mess with drugs that isn't true in every city and there's a lot of big drug dealers that use drugs in our city that just is really frowned on so that kind of helped me

but remember i bought street drugs all the time so you'd have some buildings you go into housing projects we'd go up in there and then the doors locked there'd be three guys there in order to get out of there you're supposed to use, you know, check the product or whatever. So you have to talk your way, you know, get really creative. What do the undercover cops do in the cities where people do use drugs? Do they have to, I mean, no, they can't. See, the problem is that's illegal. And nowadays, remember, it's drug tests. I mean, when I started, the drug tests were laughable. I mean, cops were using drugs all the time, you know, back in the 80s. How does every criminal not know who the undercover cops are because they're not doing drugs? Because, because again, not all

don't lower all criminals to drug users. This is an unusual thing. And you're saying at the level they're selling about these are the... You're trying to make money. And remember, they're dealing with buyers. Think of this. The giant at the grocery store clerk here, I'm trying to think of a drug grocery store down there that's popular.

How many clients do you see in the day? I mean, people come across her. She's checking grocery stores all day. That's what street drug users are like. They might see 150, 200 buyers in a day. They just don't have time to challenge every single person. And they don't want them stand there smoking crack in front of imagine if they got to do that 150 times a day.

It's a very, it's a, it doesn't, they're going like this. I think you've seen too many movies. I've maybe seen too many movies. But what do you do, if they keep offering you alcohol? Do you have to just drink? Alcohol, we drink. Yeah, we drink. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And what about women? What if there's like, what do you do? So I, I had this thing is funny. What you really do, I think the trick is you bring your own girl. That's what you beat. Oh, that's so smart. But the only problem is that you have to find a girl who can talk, who knows how to keep it going. So you know, just like if you were going to open a car business right now,

selling cars, to find two people that are good personality, jive together and can actually do a deal, like doing these interviews. This doesn't work if you leave tomorrow and you put somebody else in. Trust me. It would just, you'd have to adapt a lot. So you'd, if you had to do, yeah, yeah, it doesn't work. Yeah, so you'd have to, if you're going to go out and do a UC deal, and I got to bring a girl, she's got to be attractive, got to fit with my deal. And then she's also got to have this. You've got to be able to talk. And so would you find those types of girls? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty much.

We had some, you know, failures, but... And she does, she does have to be a cop, or she doesn't have to be a cop? Wouldn't absolutely have to be, no, wouldn't absolutely have to be, but would be good if she is. If you have to go back and do some kind of character thing, like a mob wife, can I be your girlfriend for a night? Absolutely. That's all I need is my wife going undercover.

Lauren, at this point, you might get recognized. I'll interview them. I'll be like, hi, welcome to the skinny. confidential him or she. That's right. All right, I'll call the cops in Austin see if they can use it. Okay. So you're doing this for 22 years,

is what you said, and you're undercover. At any point during all the time, are you ever scared for your life? Are you nervous? Or is this like, hey, I can go, get the job done, go home, next one.

First of all, I got to get back to this real quick just because this thing. So sometimes, back in the old days, when things weren't as governed as they are today for police, We used to do some crazy stuff.

And sometimes a guy, we would have church interns. Now remember, I'm a pastor a lot of this time. So I would have a church intern who wanted, they'd hear the stories. They'd say, I got to see this. So we would take them down. And when I'd go out buying, I'd let them sit in the car next to me. So they could, you know, ride along during a buy. And so I'd take these young kids out and I'd pick up a prostitute or buy crack cocaine or something.

So that wasn't. That's just a side down. We did do ride-alongs for buys. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. So we could have taken you. Could have come.

I wish that I could have come. If anyone's listening who is an undercover cop DM me, I will be there. I will be in full character. I know how to ask questions. I can be really engaging. I feel like you'd blow it, Lauren, like for them. No way. There'd be you'd be like waving in the corner.

Dale, trust me. You kind of stick out a little bit. No, no, no. I would play myself down. I'd play it down. I would, I promise. You can't. Yeah, one of the problems with really attractive female undercovers for bad guys

is that I can only use you so many times. Because men don't forget, am I right? Men don't forget. Beauty, we don't forget. What do you mean? You're attractive, so we don't forget you. In other words, if I bring you in your round five drug dealers, with me, an ugly guy like me, I can switch my appearance a little bit.

I can come back as a different guy and maybe not be noticed. You're always noticed. We always remember you. They're going to see, oh, I've seen her before. It's like a six foot five undercover male. Six foot five undercovers are terrible. How does a woman undercover cop play that she's like a prostitute or something if you have to sleep with the guys.

She doesn't have to sleep with the guys. She doesn't. That doesn't work well. Yeah, that doesn't. No, no, no, we don't do that. Again, messes up. We're not allowed to do that stuff because you get to trial and then you say, you know, now I'm not saying that our intelligence services or something, don't do some of that stuff

in big case overseas and all that. I have no idea. But I'm saying for police, no. So in another life, if I need to go overseas and I wasn't married. To be honest, you're kind of a pain in the ass. Maybe go, maybe go tomorrow. But, okay. So wait, you're back to scary.

stuff. Yeah. So during all this, is this something we're like, oh, this was the job today? Or are there days where you're like, wow, that was a close call? And I'm sure, yeah. You know, and you've got to maybe like relocate or protect your family or whatever. Yeah, you know, listen, the

it's interesting. I'm scared of everything. I'm scared of bats. I'm scared of heights. I'm scared like baseball. Bats are like no, like bats, like real bats. Yeah, I don't care on baseball bats. Everyone's scared. We got a shit of them here in Austin. Go watch the bridge. Jeez. So anyway, I'm scared a lot of things. This is my point. But when I got into that stuff and doing

police work, for whatever reason, I say it's God's grace, I would pray for strike. And I did not feel afraid most of the time, however, which was stupid, frankly, a lot of the time. There's been several times. One time I went out to buy with an informant, and we were late. They had planned to kill us both. And we were 40 minutes late, because I'm always late everywhere. I was glad I've made it on time here. And we showed up 45 minutes late. So the bad guys had left, and he got out to go get them to come to the car and make the deal. And instead, they killed him. So they just killed him, didn't kill me. We would have both been killed, like I say, if we were on time. But he got shot 28 times. And, you know, when that first happened, I'm up at the hospital looking at the body on the gurney up

at our university hospital. And he had bullet holes from here to his ankle. He just had a kid. And he was, he was informing. But, you know, we were friends. And we just been in the car and spent a lot of time together. And you're staying there over his body. So yeah, that was a little, that was definitely, If you were there with him, made you think, like, wait, this actually could be real. So if you were there at the lot of time, you would have been done? Yeah, they were planning to kill us both. And why did they want to kill you both?

They thought you were. They decided we were informants. They decided we were informants because I made a mistake in the undercover. I was buying drugs. I was buying larger amounts and I was using all $100 bills. It was a new undercover. I wouldn't think it's smart. But, you know, drug dealers, think about it.

I know it sounds like on TV, but think about it. If you're selling drugs all day, people paying you in fresh $100 bills, no, they're paying you in 20s and four, you know, When you tip at the club, you said you tip at the club $100. Different undercover deal. Because it's mob. That was a different animal. Yeah, there was a different case.

Okay, that's interesting. So you have to know. These are street guys. You have to know exactly what you're dealing with. Better, yeah. You know what's the most intriguing thing to me? Gangs. How did you deal with gangs and maybe?

We dealt with a lot about a lot of drugs from, about a lot of guns from about more guns probably than drugs from them. built with and all the street gangs of the city. This guy I was telling you about a shot the informant. He had killed 12 or 13. And he was from the, he ran that. So that was like our little crews in the city. And so you tried to infiltrate him,

get to be friends with different ones of them, and get their confidence, make a case on each one of them, which is tough. And then be able to take them all down together is the ideal. What is the, for someone like me, who doesn't know a lot about it, what is the infrastructure of the gang?

Like, is it like 13-year-olds are in it? Is it like really young boys? How are they indoctrinated in it? Like, what did you see behind the scenes that the general public wouldn't know about gangs? Yeah, I think one thing is they're relegated to certain cities in the United States. The big cities for gangs are Los Angeles and Chicago and New York City. I think it's a, you know, big organized, you know, the jackets, the whole deal. In Washington, in many cities like ours, we're not that organized.

If they're more from that block or from that street. But what we found is mostly guys are about making money and defending their block, in essence. The nice thing was with me always obviously being an outsider, I didn't live in the part of town. I didn't really have the fear. Did you ever feel bad for any of the criminals, meaning like maybe you encountered some people that were selling drugs or guns? But they were doing it out of maybe what they thought was necessity in the way they came up or maybe opportunity. they didn't have and, you know, trying to, like you said, just make some money to support their family. Is there any cases that you remember, like, I just kind of feel bad for the person as opposed to, like,

the hardened criminals who are out beating old men and raping women? Well, remember, here I am a pastor. I want to see people's lives change. Right. That was what I started out to do, is I wanted to go in and help kids to meet Jesus and have their life change from the inside out. I really believe that was possible for everybody. Like, I see everybody and I say, there's a way out for this guy. And so here you are meeting.

And then you originally think drug dealers. terrible, awful people. Then you meet them. And just like us, they're just hustling a buck. In many cases, I'm not saying there aren't exceptions. So you're meeting these shooting, you know, these guys that are murderers and druglers and you find out they're not so different than me. And then you see them and you feel honestly, you almost, depending on the bad guy, at the end of the case, I would often feel bad and have a hard time interviewing them as a, you know, being honest, on the police, really the police. And you really build a friendship with these guys. And remember, again, it's anti to what I believe to lie and to cheat people and

deceive people. And yet that's what I would do. I mean, that's what I did for a living. I lie for a living. So I would convince you, I was, I don't know, a great friend of yours and whatever. And then we talk about your family and your wife and your kids and all that. And then I come out, it turns out I'm not who I said I was. So it's challenging. But frankly, empathy. I can remember one girl especially. It was during that Giovanni case, that mob case, she was really young. She was just 18. And she was just a mess, you know. And she just insisted on selling us drugs.

Like we did everything to try to get her to give us her supply and get out of it. And man, she just, I was just looking at the videos recently for this documentary thing. And man, it was torturous. I still feel bad about her. Like you wanted to get her to not. You did not want to have a case against her. I don't want to lock that kid up. I mean, she wasn't.

You know what I mean? Like granted, was she drugged her? Yes. We didn't trap her. I mean, nothing like that. She'll drugs all day long. but she needed something different. She didn't need jail.

It was my opinion. Yeah, no, the reason I asked you is because if you tell a story like you opened the show with about a killing like that, I think everyone listens like, that person's got to go. Absolutely. And, you know, life in prison may be a little too lenient for someone like that. But then you hear about an 18-year-old girl that's going to be falling on hard times. It doesn't understand, you know, life doing that. And you're like, oh, you're going to wreck a lot of her life, if not her whole life.

Yeah. You know, I think people can empathize with that. And I imagine, again, that's what I'm saying back to law enforcement. You guys have to see and do things and make decisions that really affect people's lives that the everyday person just, I don't think, can understand unless they're in your shoes. Yeah, I suppose there's, yeah. When it comes to kids, were you around a lot of kids when you were doing undercover work or was there not a lot of kids? You're saying like juvenile selling drugs, that kind of thing? Selling drugs, maybe.

Children of drug dealers. Yeah, children. Was there a lot of children around or was it not a lot of kids? Oh, yeah. I mean, remember, you're just in life. You're just a society. So, you know, they would bring their kids to drug drugs. I remember a guy having me hold his baby while he got the drugs out of his pocket.

I'm holding the baby. Then I'm the buyer and I hand back the so I give them the money and we're shifting like that. I was thinking about that the other day. I had three daughters my own. I have 13 grandkids. I love kids. We did a lot of ministry with kids.

And so it's really tough. That was the one thing. The guys used to always laugh at me because I had like no patience for guys who, We'd get on the search warrants and I'm cool with you having a drug problem or whatever you got to deal with, but not with your kid being abused. So that was where it was really tough for me, honestly. When you look back on your career as an undercover cop, and we're going to get to what you're doing now because it's incredible. But I just want to know if you look back on the career, is there a common denominator of these criminals, meaning did they come from a bad childhood? Like, do you look at them and see there's something across the board that's the same or is it really just all different?

Because I worked in one city a lot of the time, let's think that way first. Okay. I would say very similar backgrounds for most of the guys I dealt with, very similar. But then the last 10 years of my career, I focused mostly on Latino drug dealers from Central America. And I just dealt with larger amounts of drugs. And we were dealing with those guys a lot. And they had also a similar background, but from a different context, obviously, not from our city.

And what do you mean similar background? Well, they would all have come up with little. to know education, poverty background, got to the United States illegally or through difficult times, if not. I mean, they were coming on student visas, you know what I mean? And then meet me selling me drugs. You know, they were guys that had come here across the border. They'd come to their parents when they were little. That was a common story for us with the guys we were arrested and they were buying large amounts of drugs and stuff from. Speaking of that, and this is a hot button issue, obviously, but I just wanted people to listen in the context of what you just said,

which is a lot of times people that come illegally become criminals, not everyone. Yeah, sure. Say that, but clearly. But what you've seen. When you see what's going on on the border now, does that alarm you? Or is that, like, what do you think about that when you see the influx of more people coming to this country illegally? Well, of course. I mean, to me, okay, so I'm a Christian.

So I want to reach every soul. I want to help every person. So that's what I do now as a pastor. So I don't go down to the border and try to hold people back. That isn't what I do. When I was a policeman, we would lock them up. That was, I got awards from immigration for locking up drug dealing, killing guys that were illegals. And so certainly it's alarming.

I'm an American and I don't, we have to control the borders. So in that sense, of course, anytime you have people coming in that are not filtered and also because they don't have proper immigration, they also don't have any opportunity, illegal opportunity. So what do you have for options? So from the filter that you see it in, is that what you see the greatest vulnerability is that then maybe don't have some of the options of coming here legally. So now they have to resort in many cases. In many cases, not all, of course.

So there could potentially the fall. It could be a rise in more crime for people that are falling on desperate times. Yeah, I think anytime you have people with little resources that find a way, yeah, there's a circuit of guys in Guatemala and Mexico, another place who look for guys like that to try to get them to sell even small amounts of drugs and make money from them. And that creates an income stream for them that isn't. So maybe guys that are more established here in the criminal world will seek those kind of people out. They're like, hey, you don't have a lot of opportunity here.

Here's a good amount of money. You haven't seen this kind of money? That is exactly. We just watched the show Griselda. And that's what she... It's so good. I know the story a little bit. I read the story.

It's so good. And that's exactly what she did to get her army around her. She strategically made sure that the people she was getting were like... With a lot of the Cuban refugees. Yeah. Right? Yeah. She kind of made a lot of them soldiers.

Can I ask a total random off the cuff tangent question? Did you ever deal? My favorite show is Sons of Anarchy? Really? Jacks, Teller. I'm sorry. That's why you like it. No, I just love hell.

I guess it's not Hell's Angels. It's Sons of Anarchy. But like, what is the Hell's Angels and motorcycle gangs what we see on television or is it different? I only know from what other guys have told me. I have almost about as much experience. as you do, except that I've talked to other agents and other undercover. You've worked them.

So I hear a little bit more. But yeah, I mean, I think a lot of what you see in those shows was put on by, they've got some technical guys standing next to them saying, no, not that, this. Now, I'm not saying they always listen because there's a lot of stupidity on cop shells. But I would say that the overall, the overall persona, you know, the violence, the anger, those things are fairly similar. Now, I did work. I did pose as that some of my buyers were pagans or drug, excuse me, bikers, because it was, again, creating reasons why a Caucasian guy would be in an all-black city buying large amounts of drugs.

So I had to have a customer base. So sometimes it was, you know, college kids. Other times it was bikers, that kind of thing. So my hack is I do coffee every single morning. I have to have my cup of coffee. But then later in the day, instead of doing coffee, so I don't get too like high strung. I'll do tea. And I have switched recently to a green tea. And that is what I drink when I'm podcasting. Because when you talk a lot, your voice gets like really hoarse and sore, so you always need a good cup of green tea. Lipton green tea has flavonoids in it, which are amazing for your health, and they support your immunity, which I am all about. If you want to make it iced, sometimes I'll take like a glass pitcher and I'll put a bunch of ice in it, and then I'll put mint in it and ginger,

and some honey. I have like a raw honey and some lemon, and I'll put a bunch of Lipton Green Tea tea tea bags in the iced tea and I'll just let it brew. Michael's obsessed with it this way and also my kids love it and I love that they're getting their flavonoids in. You should know that Lipton Green Tea is one of America's most beloved tea brands since 1871, which is wild. Other fun ways to drink a hot cup of tea are when you're at work, when you're winding down in the bathtub. I even like to nightcap my night with it. So I'll get a good. get my magnesium water and my hot green tea and I'll get my Kindle with my red light, put on some 5 to 8 frequencies and sit and enjoy a hot cup of tea. I am all about the tea these days,

whether it's iced or hot, it's absolutely such a delicious treat. If you're looking for naturally occurring bioactives to support your health, you definitely have to check out Lipton's green tea because it contains so many flavonoids. Try some of this delicious Lipton green tea today. Who doesn't want a shot of clean energy with no sugar or caffeine? So I decided to curb my coffee. I do one cup of coffee. Then I'll switch to tea. But in between that, I do a ketone IQ. This was recommended to me probably a year ago. I heard it actually through a bunch of athletes. They would come on the podcast and talk about this product. And essentially what it does, we actually had the founder on our show is it helps to put your body in ketosis, I guess, and it gives you a lot of energy.

Like, but not energy that's like coffee energy, just like calm, sustained energy. And you can take it at any time of the day. So sometimes I'll do it when I have a podcast at 5 p.m. at night. I sent this to my dad. And I was like, Daddy, you have to try this. Like, they've worked with the top Olympic athletes. Trust me, you're going to love it. And he called me and he goes, holy shit, that is amazing. It's like the cleanest energy he said he's ever had. He asked me to send him more. Like people are obsessed with them. This is something that a lot of cyclists are talking about, athletes, really top performers. It's kind of like a secret. So it's this shot. You take it, you shoot it. And it has this technology in it that's absolutely amazing and just

gives you the best energy. You guys got to try it. You can save 30% off your first subscription order of Ketone IQ at ketone.com slash skinny. Two products from one of our favorite partners, just thrive. Lauren and I take their probiotic every single day for almost six years now, and we have noticed a huge improvement in our gut health, our mood, our stress, our anxiety. Let's face it, life can be stressful, it can be overwhelming, and it's not just your mind that suffers when you're feeling tense and anxious. Stress can also make a mess of your digestion and your immune system.

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vitamins and minerals they need to stay healthy and strong. And take control today with Just Thriverive. Again, that's Just Thrivehealth.com. promo code skinny. I have a question. When you caught the bad guy and the bad guy now knows you're an undercover cop, are you actually in a room interviewing them? And what does it look like when they know that the person that they've been hanging out with

deceived them? Do they want to punch you? Are they mad? Are you actually face to face with them? What does the aftermath look like of being an undercover cop? Sometimes you're halfway through a case and a guy's, let's say, so violent, we had some guys we were buying guns from and they were carjacking people every night. So we had to create a way to arrest them mid-case and not arrest all the other drug dealers who knew them.

So at that point, I couldn't reveal I was the undercover. So picture this all makes sense to me. My daughter says nobody knows what you're talking about. So I'm going to try to explain what I mean. You two guys are carjackers and robbery guys. Okay. And you're selling me guns. But you know other drug dealers.

Okay. Okay. So the problem is we're all friends. We're all friends. I had set up an undercover business. They were all coming over to my business and I was buying drugs from them. And me and another undercover. So it goes along a little while.

Now, these guys are starting to go crazy. They're carjacking like real victims and it's dangerous and we're afraid they're going to go kill some innocent person. So the chief of police says, you've got to do something. You've got to wrap this up. And we don't want to wrap it up because they're going to wrap it up. because these guys aren't done yet. You know, they're still baking. We've still got them at ounces.

We want to be in a kilo or whatever. So you have to create a way to get those guys without them knowing on the undercover. So let's say they know they're coming with a gun. You try to get a uniform guy to track them and pull them over and just arrest them for the gun. Got it. And get them locked up, get them off the street, try to stop the, you know, the every night carjacking. So in that case, no, I don't go talk to them. It might be at the end of the case.

I'd go talk to them. So what do they do? Yeah. So then what I do, though, a lot of times is the way to get a guy to turn or to get a guy to tell like I'm really done for is for me to walk in the room. You know what I mean? Then like there's a question, man, you don't have anything on me. You don't have anything on me. And then I walk in and say, what do they do?

Different guys, different ways. But I remember one guy is saying to me, he was new at the game, you know? And he looked at me and he said, you know, I thought you were my friend. Oh, that's hard. I felt bad for the guy like I thought. I mean, most guys, they say you were doing your thing. I was doing my thing, you know, shame on it. And if ever, they got the chance.

So they act like, they act like, like, all kinds of different reactions. You don't know, you're doing your thing. So they still sort of play into the character of it. More like an F.U type attitude. Like, like, they, like, they, like, they were the, like, they know what they're like. Were you ever worried that, like, someone that you caught is going to tell a friend in jail to do something to you?

Was that not a worry for you? We, that happened sometimes. Like, we had a, there was a, it was a, there was a, a list that was floating around DC jail. and it was the two kill list. These are not, you know, essay writers. So it's the to kill list. And so I made the list. It was a list of policemen.

And I made the list. It was, you know, I felt like it was quite complimentary that I made the list. That of 4,000 policemen, they were, I was selected. So anyway, yes, you have some of that where there are guys. But the truth is, again, in our city, we did not have guys being tracked. This isn't Bogota. They don't track cops post arrest. They do do it, but it's rare.

It would make the big news when that happens, you know. They're not out trying to kill cops. No, they don't because it'll just ripple effect on their life. Now, you tell if any one of those guys could, oh, they'd still like to see me. I mean, yes, absolutely. Yes, there's some people who really, really hate me in the world for sure. So do you worry about that at this point with the people you've put away if some of them are getting out and coming out now knowing, you're out, your public, you're vocal about what you're, do, does that a concern for you? There are certain places I wouldn't go, I suppose the answer for that without a gun.

because they would love to, they would love to kill me, but they could get away with beating me half to death and really have little, but if they, they're not going to take action, generally speaking, against the policeman arrest, or the policeman, because that just ripple effect on that is, now I've got to go back to prison again. It's not worth it.

It's going to go right back. That's general. Does that mean, though, you know and I know, you read the newspaper like I do, and they're nutty people that I arrest? Some of the most dangerous people, there was a guy I, we did a cover work on, who was suspected in kidnapping and killing multiple prostitutes,

and they never made that case on him, but I made a drug case on him. And he threatened to kill me. I remember we were at his house, and he was pulling out pictures of girls. He used to trick her, he was a bouncer in a bar. He used to trick girls in the coming back. He was a model, you know, the typical thing,

like I'm going to take picture, make you famous type deal. So he was showing me all these pictures of half naked girls that he had taken pictures of back the house. And it turns out, then I find out he's like suspecting the serial killer deal. So when he threatened to kill me at the end, that made a little more difference to me than the guys. Is he in jail? He's out now, yeah.

He's out now. This is like so confusing to me that you can literally be a serial killer of. Well, they never made that case. Never made the case. The case was never made. Never made the case. He made the case. He'd be locked out.

How do you not make the case though if he was doing it? It's hard. It's really hard to make, you know. Yeah, it's really hard. There's a lot of bad people out there. I'm sweating. Tons of bad people out there that are, I'm sorry to say. Which is our conversation yesterday was about justice. So this is like really, I mean.

From a statistical standpoint of all the people you make arrests on how many of them do you actually make a case against? I imagine with you. Do we prosecuted? No, 95% or something. But actually get, you know, convicted. Yeah, yeah, sure. But just not at the level maybe we want. You know what I mean?

Like the court would be this and that's what we're going for. And then they end up getting a year or six months or something. Is that frustrating when you find something? It's very frustrating. I mean, it's very frustrating. Yeah. Heck yeah. You work and you put yourself at risk.

Some of the most dangerous guys I ever dealt with, yeah, it's pretty maddening, yeah, when they don't get to. What is the epiphany to get out of law enforcement? Do you remember where you were and where you decided that you were done and you were going to switch to ministry? No, I actually wasn't done. So halfway through my career, well, I was always volunteering like you do, I'm sure, and volunteering at my church and volunteering at different ministry things. But then when I had about 12 years left, they needed a youth minister. at my church. My kid, my oldest was in ninth grade. And the pastor asked me to help out as a big church, it's a megachurch. And so I said, okay, I'll try to do it for 30 days or whatever. And I stayed for 12 years. And I did the pastor know what you were doing in your day to day? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we were in the suburbs. You can picture this. And I was working in the city. It was really two

different animals completely. So anyway, so I would do that during the day, I'd be the youth guy in and even then I'd go in and be a drug, you know. And then my phone would be going off. I'd be in the middle of counseling, some family and some guy from some Dominican from New York bringing down a kilo, I'd be calling me. And then I'd be in the middle of buying from the Dominican at night. And some family would call me saying their daughter just ran away from home or something. I'd say, give me a minute.

Not a boring lifestyle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was weird. It was weird, definitely weird. A lot of fun, though. So when did you decide to switch full time and what does that look like? Yeah, so they asked me to when I could, retire, they said, you know, you ought to retire and do this full time. And I'd always, I think, felt a little guilt like I should have probably done that from the beginning, you know, and maybe I'm

just doing this because I like it too much. Now I have a little different perspective. But so I did. So I left earlier than I would have liked to probably. Why do you have a different perspective? Well, now I think, you know, I used to think like we think good people, uh, our mother Teresa. Right. Regular folks like us working regular jobs, earn a living, whatever. We're kind of, you know, way below. And now I really think I understand the scriptures better to say God creates ways for all of us to work and contribute and that it was great what I was doing as a policeman, that it wasn't substandard to being a minister or whatever. You know what I mean? So there was value in both. I would tell you just from an outside perspective that I believe that you are probably a better

minister because of what you did with the undercover cops. I bet you learned human nature, psychology, how to listen to people, how to understand people. people, I think all of that, like, probably made you a 10 times better minister, I would think. I would say the one, yeah, listen, and being human longer. So the longer you fail, the more you fail in life, the less judgmental you are of others, you know what I mean? So that mixed with that world I was in, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Very hard to throw the, you know, to be mad at somebody else for something I was doing four or five hours a night. You know, you know what I mean? Like I could understand at least.

What does your day look like now? You know, I'm involved. So I help my son-in-law with his church, so I'm pastor there. So trying to help other ministers get started. I do this undercover pastor ministry. And Code 3, which is a police. So a lot of nonprofit work in the city and around the world. But the one that we do that goes to some of your questions is some of the guys that I arrested, that I made case on, are now friends of mine doing ministry with me.

Wow. So there's a couple of guys like that, not hundreds, but a couple of guys like that. And so we work in the same city, you know, used to work in. And so now we're doing to, we say, you used to lock people up, now we set them free. So we locked up the body, but I couldn't change you that way. You know what I mean? I can't change the inside. But now we feel like through Code 3 and through undercover pastor, we're able to actually get, hopefully, the heart, give people hope and another reason to live differently than.

So how do you start working with some of those guys? Do you approach them when they're getting out, when they're still in jail? Different stories for different guys, you can imagine. One guy, like this guy, so in 1992, I arrested, I bought drugs from him, and he went to jail for five years. He went to trial, said I entrapped him. I mean, he was, and he scared me to death. I actually thought he was going to kill me at the end of he. He was like, he's six foot five, played basketball in San Diego State.

He was a big monster. I was buying drugs from him. We arrest him. Then he's mad at the arrest two. He goes away five years. I never hear anything else about him. Most guys didn't make me feel the owner. He made me feel the owner.

When he got out, though, people started telling me, hey, that guy became a minister. I was like, yeah, whatever. He's just trying to hustle a buck now doing that. That's terrible, but that's cynical police, you know. So years passed. Now I retire. And I got thinking about it.

I don't know, the Lord brought in my mind. And I looked him up online. Sure enough, he's a minister right here in the D.C. area, right? So I found his number. I asked somebody who's figured out. They found his number. I called him. I said, hey, Dale Slelander, if you remember.

Actually, what I did, I texted, you know, that's more polite communication, I think, to start up a relationship. So I texted him. You put someone away for five years. Yeah, yeah, for a long time, yeah. And the last time I heard him, he didn't like me much. So I text him, and he calls me right back, and he's doing great and remembered me right away. We had breakfast.

And so since then, we've done a few ministry things together and hope to do more. So was he like, hey, I've moved on. I'm not mad as you. You were doing anything? Yeah, yeah. He said, now, I don't think that he's in love with. what I did. I still don't get that impression. Like some guys are like, hey, you're doing your thing. I don't think this guy was in love with what I did. But, but he says it was a dark time in

his life and it turned his life around when he was in jail. And he came out a different man. And he's lived 30 years now. The most common things that people come to you for when it comes to ministry. Like what, is it marital issues? What is it? Well, it depends what kind of role you're in. But about a lot, I would say, I deal a lot with men and men trying to be better people. I think that's a lot of what I do with. You know, everybody wants to get better. I don't think there's anybody on the planet, I mean, unless you're a sociopath or something that doesn't want to be a better dad or a better human or whatever.

And so I think I work now with a lot of men who've had some success in life and then are trying to figure out how they can make impact or how they can be a better way to raise, everybody's interested to raise their kids first, but then other thing. What could I do to make a difference? And so hopefully giving them what I think God's perspective is on that and trying to help them understand what I think the scriptures give them hope as to how they can best be used and not waste their life. There's a lot of discussion these days, and it's been a while now, about the prison system

here in this country. And, you know, there's some that would argue that people go in criminals and come out, worse criminals. But from, you know, and it's because of the environment. In some are cases like you talk about where they come out better. Putting people away, do you ever worry that, you know, you put an 18-year-old girl away, she's going to go, she's going to get thrown around in the system and come out worse? Is that a concern that you think about? And when you think about the modern prison system, how do you?

You know, I used to pray for the people I would arrest, pray that in jail they would find a chaplain, they would find something where God would reach them in jail. And I say that, I worry that I say that I sound like some great. I'm not a great guy. I just knew that I hadn't done it very well. I had never been able to explain to him another direction to go. So I just would pray, Lord, help them maybe to find some hope in the jail because you're right. I mean, it's not a good place. A prison is not a good place. It's not like we're going to make people better there. What is it like there? You know what? I'm like you. I'm as fascinated by I have, I have a guy now we work with who was locked up for 20 years and another guy we work with who's again, a former inmate who's, I'm like, yeah, I'm all. always asking him questions. Yeah, I got a hundred questions. If you're, if you've been in prison for more than 10 years, you're welcome on the show. I would love to interview you. Just invite anybody over. There's this show deal that like they take normal people and they put them in jail and the jailmates don't know that they're normal people. Have you seen this show? It's called, what's it called? Maybe lock up, Carson, but you look at it. There's a few shows like that. They take like us three. Well, there's the youth show. And they'll put us in prison with other prisoners. And we have to protect. 10 like more prisoners to get information. I'd rather just read a book. Yeah, I think so. And let me just tell you,

just to give fairness to the prisoners so they get their fair ado. That's usually what you see, all those shows are in like county jails and stuff, which is guys that are doing under a year. They might have murdered or something. I've never seen one in a prison. They're never like San Quentin or at, you know,

well, here in Huntsville, I mean, these are some, this is a heck of a prison system you got here in Texas. So, I mean, these are serious criminals in here. You go into those places? I don't think you do it. I've never seen one film. I can't imagine you go in there.

I mean, I don't know, who would go in there. Like on TV when you see a cop go undercover in jail, that's utterly insane. There are some cops that have done, we had a case where we had a guy meet him in the visitor room, an undercover that would meet the bad guy there and make deals there. But that's very different from going to sleep in So Block B, you know. Oh, man, I'm with you. You mentioned that you were in India and you have a ministry there? Is that what you said?

Well, one of the things with undercover pastor, we've found ways to find ways to find, A lot of folks want to give to the right thing, but it's hard to know who to give to. And so as a cop, as a detective, whatever, I've learned how to vet what I think are good people to give to that are legitimate and we can trust and everything. And so we created this thing to help people like that innovate. So it's India. There's a lot in the U.S., a lot in D.C., but a lot in other countries, too. We're in Africa and a couple of other places where we find ministries that we really think we

can help and the right people. And then we would go visit them to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. We'll give them a lot of money or allotment of money. It's not a lot of money. And I was just there to visit to see what this next phase is he wants to do to launch an orphanage there for 24 little kids. And I want to go see where they're going to sleep. And it's everybody living by the laws. And everybody who are these kids and all that kind of stuff. So we do some of that to like inspect what we've invested in. How fulfilling what you do. If someone is interested in getting in touch with you, tell us where to find you, what you're working on, the documentary, all the things before

you go. Sure. What is it, uh, it's terrible because I don't know how to look at social media. So it's the undercover pastor on Instagram and Facebook and, and that's these way. Can you, you can reach me that way too, right? Yeah. So they can reach me through that and, you know, the website has, I think, my email and all that stuff too. So. And the documentary you mentioned that they're working on. Well, they finished this documentary in France and it's being sold here in the U.S. now, but it's a four-part documentary on my life. It's weird. They named it Dale Undercover. I thought that was very creative. So anyway, so it's done there.

We just went to the Cannes Film Festival, the Series Festival, and we're completed for an award there. So it's fun. That's awesome. I love it. Dale, that was a great interview. Thank you for coming on. We can talk to you for hours.

That was great. Yes. All right. Well, good. It was fun. Thank you very much. Thank you.