The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - A Mexican Undercover Cop Reveals The HORRORS Of Cartel Violence, Surviving The War In Tijuana

Episode Date: December 9, 2023

Ed Calderon grew up in Tijuana, Mexico. At a young age he was a rebel committing petty crimes until one day he found himself as part of an elite squad of Mexican law enforcement, tasked with taking down the cartel. He came on the show to talk about being front line in one of the most notorious cartel wars in Mexican history, the current and future state of Tijuana, and the existential crisis that both Mexico and the U.S. are facing together. Go Support Ed! Website: https://www.edsmanifesto.com/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/manifestoradiopodcast/ YouTube: @manifestoradionetwork3191 This Episode Is Brought To You By The Following Sponsors: PrizePicks: https://www.prizepicks.com/connect Promo Code: CONNECT Magic Mind: https://try.magicmind.com/ Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I found myself in a refurbished prison being shaven, bawled by a bunch of Mexican special forces, the same people that turned into Zetas later on. Today's guest is the one and only Ed Calderon. Ed was a former federal police officer in Tijuana during the height of the cartel wars there. You might have seen him tell his story on Joe Rogan and Sean Ryan. He came on today to tell us all about his experience as an undercover. cop in one of the most violent cities in the world. He talked about Tijuana today and where he thinks the country is headed.

He exposes high-level Mexican police corruption and talks about what it's really like to battle it out with the cartels. By the way, for some of the even crazier stories, we can't tell here. Go over to patreon.com slash the Connect show. It is the one and only Ed Calderon right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Right now, what you're seeing in Mexico is targeted fights. against a few specific organizations and political candidates

running for presidency that have a cartel that is sponsoring. That's when I see lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think, I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank.

It's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. I was born and raised in Tijuana, Mexico. It's a border town, rowdy. Most people know it from the Simpsons, I guess. All the stories are true of Dihuana. So I grew up on that border, Americanized. Another reason why my English is kind of clear, you know, very Americanized. I grew up around Americans. Had some American friends at school, some deportees who grew up here and could speak very clear English.

And I had to translate for them at school because they were deported down and I had to figure things out. I got a lot of practice with it. It's Iguana. If you don't have English, you're not going to be able to get a job, a good job. And also, a lot of parts of Mexico, if you want a career path, you actually have to pass an English exam. And if you don't get that, you're screwed out of a degree. So it's like an essential thing, specifically on the border. That's where I get my English.

What did your parents do? What kind of family? My mom was a nurse. My mom was a nurse. She grew up in, she grew up in Tijuana's. Some people out there might be old enough to remember a shanty town on the border called Cartonlandia. It's basically a shanty town made a cardboard. Very, very hard place to grow up in.

My mom grew up there. She became a nurse after kind of getting out of that. Father? My dad was, my dad worked for my grandfather, a family business, electrical engineering stuff. of completely unattached from any of the nonsense that I did later on in life. Very religious, Catholic, Guadaluanos, the Virgin of Guadalupe, was always at the house, you know. Strict, kind of strict. Two brothers, bigger, older brothers, I'm the youngest, I'm the accident, you know.

Pretty amazing childhood, really. Yeah, this is a privileged Mexican family, comparatively. Yeah, we were lower middle class, Mexican family. You know, my dad worked, my mom worked. We all went to school. We were doing well. Yeah, you're not oligarchic. You're not from, you know, a landowning elite, white Mexico, but you're, you know, doing better than 98% of the population.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you bring us into how you get into law enforcement. My family, I was doing great until I turned 13. 13? Yeah. My brother died. A middle brother. He was 19.

I was 13 when he passed away. The death in the family and the death of a child does a shit ton of stuff to your parents. And to you, you know. So that basically, when my brother died, he was like the promised child. you know, his funeral was almost like a rave, you know, thousands of people showed up. So that destroyed my family, basically. My mom went psychiatric and my dad went alcoholic. Wow.

So at 13, I had to be a grown-up. Yeah. There's nobody home. I mean, there were people there, but there was nobody home after that. Yeah. So I went into petty crime, you know, fencing stuff. skateboarding, graffiti, music,

became kind of this super independent kid, I guess. I started making money for myself, figuring things out, getting into trouble. I eventually wound up trying to try my hand at medical school for about two years. And

that didn't work out for me. It was like late 2000, so 9-11 happened. and everything goes into toilet. Experimental police force that is being developed by a man named Lieutenant Colonel Lizaola. This time he was an unknown. Nobody knew really a lot about him.

Former Army officer basically decided to develop a police force from the ground up. He wants to be involved in their recruitment, training, and then he wants to head them up when they're outside. And what is the idea behind that? Basically, at this point, there is no federal police per se.

There is just army soldiers dressed in gray riding in the back of trucks. This is the federal police back then. They are trying to figure out of federal police, but it's not there yet. This is before Caledon. This is the early 2000s. So they figure that they would start experimenting at a state level. So they form this experiment. mental state police that I was a part of.

What I thought was going to be like, you know, what I thought about police academies was watching the police academy movie, you know? And then I found myself in a refurbished prison being shaven, bald by a bunch of Mexican special forces, the same people that turned into Zed does later on. Oh, that must have been scary as shit. These were, I mean, I don't want to say scary. because they were exactly who they were made to be. These were hard men that were trained to do brutal work in Mexico.

And they weren't about community policing. They didn't give a shit about forming cops. It was dehumanizing and breaking us down into our core components, basically, from the first day. Hey, guys, just a quick reminder that I am coming on the road this holiday season to do stand-up comedy on December 5th. 14th, I'm going to be in San Diego, California, headlining the American Comedy Company. Then on December 21st, right before Christmas, I'm going to be in Chicago at Zanee's Comedy Club. If you live in those cities, come out to see me. This is going to be the last time.

I'm going to be on the road doing comedy for a very long time. So please, come on out. Go to Johnny Mitchell. Dot biz for tickets, and I will see you out there. Thanks. Let's get back into the episode. And what was the function of this police force? Because this was pre-Caldron.

This is pre-2006. The war on drugs hadn't even started. It hadn't even started, but it was already, it's already there. There's already violence going on. While we're going through, while we're going through training, we find out that in the same space that we were training, they just did this mass arrest of state police and local police there. The army showed up and picked a bunch of them up

and sent them to Mexico City on organized crime charges. So, like, we know that something's going on, that some sort of effort at a high level is happening. what was happening and now hindsight being 2020 and kind of learning about some of these things now

private money in Baja was fed up and political influences were one-sided to a single party so that aligned and finally people had enough what do they have enough of

abductions protection schemes violence in the middle of the street I mean this is early 2000s, Tijuana, and people that were around from that time can tell you about this. They were rolling down the street in downtown Tijuana in the middle of the day and the middle of the night, armed with A case and shit like that. It's open convoys. Who is?

These are two criminal organizations at that time that were fighting for control of that area. This is the remnants of the Ariano Felix cartel back then, who was trying to keep control over its historic. dominant, the controlling grounds. And one of their lieutenants flipped on them at that time. A man, they nickname El Tres Letras, El Teo. He was an enforcer for them, and he flipped, and he joined the Cinaloa Cartel. Right. Basically taking his people with him and starting at war that raged so bad that, you know,

international attention was brought to it in Taiwan. And it made them trying to figure out things with us to form this. So essentially, and that's kind of what I think that was made famous in one of the seasons of Narcos Mexico. And there's, we know a lot about that time now. If you look at, if you're fascinated like we are with the history of the cartel battles in Mexico, that was one of the most important eras in the shifting of, you know, the established power of T.

Juana. The Ariano Felix had been around for what, 15 or 20 years. They were like an entrenched oligarchic drug trafficking. I grew up there and they were part of the background. You know, he's your a kid. You saw the cars and you knew. Did you know who they were? Yeah, yeah. Everybody knew who they were. Everybody knew who they were. It's not that every, it's not that they were hiding. They owned everybody. They owned the head of police. They had people in politics. They had people and high level business. Their kids would go to school, would go to some of the high value schools

with the other business owners' kids. And that's how you got the phenomenon of the Narca UJ juniors, which is basically rich upper middle class kids joining the cartels. That's happened in Tijuana because of this perfect storm. So they were very much in the background always. You knew who they were.

to respect them. They would carry around badges, you know, some of them, the federal badges. They had, I think the U.S. found out about it at some point

and actually plastered their pictures all over the border back then. I don't know people remember this, but you would see members of the high-level Argyano Fias Cartel, like you would see Ramon, Ben Camine,

all those guys wearing a black blazer, a black tie, and a white shirt. In the wanted posters on the border, people can figure out where those pictures were from. They were actually taken from the state prosecutor's office. They went and got official

state prosecutor IDs as members of the state police and Baja and federal police IDs, official ones. They're not bootleg. Like cops. Yeah. And they found out and they found out that somehow they found those pictures and they plattered him on the border. So the whole city is under the thumb. It's owned. It's owned. Back then it was owned. Yeah, in 90s. It's relatively calm. and then they have a riff with Sina Loa, and that's when things start coming to the surface. I think the first major shootout in Tijuana that was related to some of that

was next to this shopping center called El Mercado de Tos. It's like a swap meet. You had a shootout between federal police and local police, and basically both of them were taking care of their own cartel guys. So crazy.

And I think that started kind of like bringing stuff to the surface. And then of course, our ongoing war with the Sina Loa cartel back then. Did you have any, so you're coming of age at this time, did you have any friends that you grew up with who ended up getting involved, killed? Yeah. Yeah. How did it affect you personally? I have this one friend, Redhead kid. we have a lot of those down there

like Conno I think a whole contingency of the Irish an Irish contingency during the last Mexico-American war stayed down there I think there was like a story about that but so I grew up with this redhead kid

who was a friend of mine a nice kid like better family than I had you know like you know solid no tragedies when I was when I got out and I was active we would work with the Army, the Federal Police,

whatever the Federal Police was back then, which is basically the Army as well. We'd form these, they would call them Groups Boom, Basel operations mixed groups. Basically mixed operations groups. So basically it was in all of our jurisdictions, right? And during my time working with one of these groups during the start of my career,

I saw one of I I saw him I saw him he was uh he was working with one of the uh with one of the the the senior law cartel guys uh groups um I was a not in uniform I rarely was I was walking around my civilian attire and uh we were doing some basically surveillance just walking around seeing what we could see and we saw this massive amount of vehicles at this gas station so you know I volunteered like I usually did because I was crazy

just do a walk by when I did the walk by I heard my name from among that group and a whistle that I recognized you know you know that was the local whistle you would know that whistle so a whistle that whistle

at me and I looked at him and he came over and is my friend, Rojo, you know. He's wearing a chess rig with magazines, AK magazines. He's carrying around this little Draco AK, AK, without a stock on it on his hand. And they're on these suburbans and Tahos and stuff like that, just hanging out at this gas station. Some of them are wearing police uniforms. you know, which I know are not real, you know, because the boots don't match and shit like that.

So he, like, calls me over and it's like, hey, dude, what are you doing here? Like, ah, dude, it's like, I'm telling him, like, fuck, my, my tongue is in my throat, you know? It's like, I have a gun on me. I have a phone. I don't have anything else. But he's friendly. He's like, hey, what are you been doing? Like, I'm nothing, man.

I'm just hanging out, just looking for a job. last time he saw me I was working at a video store so this is a few years back and now we're there staring at each other small talk about family you know what we've been doing brags about some of the money he's making now you know and

it gets a call he has to go back we have this side hug you know you do with friends and he says I think I know what you do you should be careful he says to my ear. And you should get out. You should get out of here.

And I did. I left really quickly. Wow. Wow. So he didn't know you were a cop. Or he knew. Yeah. He didn't know I was working, you know.

Okay. So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about the different levels of policing in Tijuana. So you're deciding now to become a cop. How old are you at this point? 20? Wow. Yeah. Okay.

I'm 20. I'm working part-time with my dad. I'm working at this video store. Medical school didn't work out. It was depressed as shit. Yeah. You know, I don't know what to do with my life. Yeah.

Not a lot of options there. No. Of course not. Either work for a call center, which I tried to work for one. I put my paperwork in to work at one, but then didn't work out, not immediately at least. and then there's this ad in the newspaper about this experimental police force, you know. So literally created from just nothing. Nothing.

Federal money. Federal money. From political pressure, from the elite. We can't take the violence anymore. Yeah. And also a very smart individual at the center of it, basically orchestrating all of it named Lieutenant Colonel Lezola. Okay.

He had this vision of what he needed to, because they, told him, like, he was working towards getting to a position he could do something about it. So was the objective to root out police corruption or to eliminate cartels or both? Both. So he realized that you can have a group that you trust that if you pulled them from the police because everybody was on the take. Yeah. Yeah.

So was the idea then building a brand new force that couldn't be corrupted that wasn't already on the tag? Yeah. That was the idea. Mm-hmm. And, you know, everything goes bad after a while. Right. But one of the differences with us when we were recruited, for example, is that we had psychological evaluation, a very modern one, not like the ones in the past. And I had friends that went into police work before I did.

And they had no, like my uncle was in there. So he got me in. That was how it was before. Yeah. Still is kind of in some places, I guess. But they really did recruitment with us. Like basically, we had to pass a mental event. physical evaluation.

I pass all my physical cardio evaluations because I was skateboarding, so I had all the fucking cardio in the world, right? I remember doing my run in Edney's shoes. You know, it was fucking great. But they did a number on trying to really select who was going to work for them, basically. FBI background checks were done,

polygraph examinations, home visits. They would talk to your neighbors. That type of way. I want to make sure you weren't connected. You want to make sure you're not connected. Your family isn't connected and that you meet the profile for who they need. What about you made you so perfect?

I mean, I already can guess, but. Yeah, I guess I didn't have any boundaries back then. I was a young kid. I was really motivated. I was very energetic. I needed a purpose. They saw that I was kind of lost, I guess. You're the perfect soldier.

I want to prove myself. And I think that's what they were looking for. Just young people that want to prove. But you're directionless. You have no children. You have no ties, really. That's another thing that they posted that you can be married or have kids. Yeah.

There's nothing. And you're ostensibly willing to kill if they teach you how to do it. I think they'm a clean slate so they can make me into whatever they need to make me. And that's the same thing with everybody there in this crowd of bald. young people. How many people? At the start of it, it was 50 people probably around 50. At the end of it, we were probably like 20. So this is an elite unit. It was a unit of people that was used. Yeah, I mean, yeah, they were weeding us out. I thought you're going to tell me this was like, there was like 5,000 people in this new police force. No, no. It was they did these,

they did by generations, basically. They would, first off, recruiting people for police work in Mexico is very hard. Nobody wants to be a cop. Like, nobody knew that I was a cop. Like when I started, I kept that a secret. Right. Because in Mexico, that's mail stripper and cop. You hide that shit, I guess. You don't talk about it.

It wasn't, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a check that you were a cop. You know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna see her again. So, yeah, it, it, uh, it was, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, you It was a strange attempt by them. They were trying to basically figure out how to create something that hadn't been done before in Mexico. But we were taking a lot of cues from the Americans. So it was very Americanized in the approach that they were trying to take as far as confidence exams.

We were even certified by an American police certification program called Kalea. So I think we were the first police unit that was certified by an American certification process called Kalea. you. So what kind of training, physical training do you have weapons training? So you get there, right? Head gets shaven. All your shit gets stumped out, you know. They make it a point to show you the door, the gates to the place and they're always open, you know? It's like, ah, you know, you're not here by force. You can leave whenever you want. And they keep, they keep repeating that whole aspect. You can leave whenever you want. It's like you're not here at Hell Hossage, which makes you want to fucking stay more, basically. I guess. First night is stripped down. They put us all in a room.

Everybody gets naked. And they're looking for tattoos like everywhere or signs of past tattoos. So everybody is standing in this dormitory and these army personnel are looking through

all of your crevices, basically. In between fingers, lips, behind ears, like everything. They're looking for any sign of affiliation, basically. While this is going on, people are recording and seeing reactions and hearing conversations and listening to shit as we're there. I only realized this later on when I was part of recruiting and myself. Oh, wow. Right?

But they're listening to everything, like any, like, interaction. Like, I hope they don't find this, you know? So that's, there's an act. aspect of that throughout, like a big brother aspect throughout the training where they're watching, listening to phone calls, all that. And you said they actually weeded down the first 50 recruits down to 20 at the end, yeah. I assume that's because they found something. While you're, while you're going through training, you know, you wake up in the morning, probably at four in the morning, you go out running like an idiot for about an hour and a half. And then you come back, take a shower,

you have to eat really quickly. The first day they tell you they have, we have, we have Pani verga de comer. Which means we have bread and dick for food. And bread ran out two weeks ago. And it was true, man. The food was horrible. They treated us like human garbage for the first few months. It's basically meant to make you quit, stand out in the sun, march in order and all that stuff.

There's an academic component that they put in there. You have to go and learn stuff and pass exams. And if you can't pass them, you get kicked out academically. So it's a process. It was a process. Just like the Navy Seals. I don't think, I don't think it's like the Navy Seals. I think it was a desperate attempt by the authorities to try and create a group of people that they could trust to do a very specific job.

They wanted to make people quit because those are the people that usually tend to break and or flip. Yeah. Right. weak-minded people, I guess. At least that's the way it was explained to me. Physically grueling stuff. I mean, there was a white

kid, Mexican white kid in the in the group with me who his head was shaven, you know, and he's not brown, so he's not getting tanner with it, so he had a giant blister just materialized on top of his head. Oh my God. I've never seen anything like that before. Somehow he made it through.

People from different backgrounds. he had a guy there who was a former army SF guy who fought in Chappas against the Sattelene. He was there. He was one of my dormitory mates. You had another guy there who came up from Michoacan and he worked on a farm, his old life, and he doesn't have a lot of opportunities.

He can barely kind of write. So we were helping him out with shit. So there's different types of people there, you know. Different backgrounds. different parts of the country. They just see a well-paying job for somebody of our age. Yeah. It was a rarity.

So people are legit killing themselves to try and get that job. But we didn't know enough about it. Like it was vague. It was nebulous. Like we're going to go out and you're going to do this and like, but how is that work? You know, how are four of us going to go out there and do this type of stuff? Like how many of us are out there? Today's episode is sponsored by PrizePix.

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some of the older guys that would come back to the academy to show us what was going on. It was then that it dawned on. how serious the shit they were going to go into was. When we were handed our life insurance policies by MetLife, and we're told that we were about to do the most dangerous job on the planet and the most dangerous city on the planet by numbers probably.

Our stomachs kind of sank a little bit, you know, signing those health insurance, life insurance policies, which they don't have now, by the way, which is pretty fucking fascinating. about that, the current state of affairs of that group now. It was apparent by the older guys coming back telling us, they don't give us rifles. We don't have enough guns for everybody. We're getting like two of our guys got killed on the roadside. And then the support lasted like 20 minutes to get there. We start hearing the stories about underfunded, under-equipped.

Like, what are we getting into? Like we're in there trying to figure it out. by this point, the guy that originated this program, Lieutenant Colonel Lizaola, he wasn't in charge of the people outside. He was just building up the, building up basically the pool of people he was going to draw from.

We graduate, we get a radio, a gun. We got a gun. In the academy, they show you how to shoot at 92, 92FS, Beretta. Okay. Pistol. It's a 9mm gun, 15 rounds. You shoot 10 rounds out of it at the academy and training.

And then when you graduate, you get handed a Glock, which I'd never seen in my life. I didn't know how to operate it. I had to go on. Wow. I got online to figure that out, you know. And then we're off. Graduation day heads up.

everybody in the group that survived this experience and when I say survived it sexual assaults happened

during training with some of the female candidates and some of them had to leave because of that by the staff or by the other

by the staff there was some instances of like I don't people stateside might not even in the military

they don't realize how much brutality can be done in training down there. I mean, I got an AK shot near my face to simulate reality. How loud is that? The first round is pretty loud,

and the rest you don't hear. You don't hear it because you're under water, basically. I still have fucking ear and loss on one ear because of that bullshit. Physical beatings. Physical beatings. What is it the

lack of empathy in Mexico that I've, I find really disturbing because Mexicans on an individual level are some of the coolest, friendliest people. I swear to God, it's like, it's not a racist thing. It's, it's just a fact. Like, they're incredible human beings, the spirit, but like collectively, it's such a brutal country. I think it's part of the genetic memory that we have from one, the culture that was already here when the Spanish came and then the Catholicism that was put on top of it basically

you know people want to talk about the times when you know the Mexica and the Aztecs were here and like a like a Lord of the Rings beautiful elven time where everything was perfect in Mexico yeah they kill the shit done of people skin people alive

sacrificed a bunch of people the Spanish didn't take down the Aztec Empire, their enemies did, that were there and allied themselves under the Spanish. That's who took down the Aztec Empire. Who were those people? Uh, who were those groups? A bunch of the, a bunch of the tribes around the Aztec that hated them because they were, they were oppressors. The Aztecs were an oppressive force in the region. So that's how they're taken out. Something about that mixture probably is what it's at the core of some of the stuff in in our culture, I guess.

At least for the at least for the training aspect and what we went through, this is before phone cameras. Yeah. This is before anything of that nature, that type of training was even done,

I think, in Mexico. So there was no references to something like that. So things were done, you know? Yeah. Like, let's figure out, let's figure this out on the go, basically it was

and a lot of people instructors were fired you know a lot of people instructors didn't show up the next day and you're like I wonder why didn't he didn't he didn't show up it was a free for all

in training there it was a it's not so when you say that it's like Navy Seals no it's not like Navy SEALs it's like it was almost like a clandestine training

of a sort you know they were trying to figure out how to freak us out how to show us how to operate in urban areas. They would bring in people that had experiences that were outside of the realm or scope of what I thought policing was.

How many, so you graduate, how many, what do you call yourself? What kind of, I'm just, I want to know how to refer you, your type of cop as. We were, we were members of the operations group is what we were called operatives. How many operatives were there in Tijuana actively at the time?

Probably 200 maybe, at the most. So what was your first objective? perspective. Basically, we were spread around the city in these groups. Some of them, you get to the office and you're like, you, you, you, you go there, you go there, you go there. Basically, it would divide us up into these groups with the, we're working with the army. Mind you, the army isn't in the drug war. The drug war hasn't started back then. This is 2004. So they don't know what they're doing, really. So they needed somebody that had arresting powers or somebody that knew the way around the area

to basically work with and coordination with. So a lot of the first work that I did was that type of work when I got out. Although my very first job, my very, very, very first job at the very first day, I was yelled at by one of the older guys, go get the old cutters. And in my mind, I'm like, yeah,

I'm going to go on a fucking raid or some shit like that, right? So I run, I run, get my gear, get the bolt cutters, get a battering ram as well. I think I got too much. It's like, what are you bringing that for? It's like, we're going to go on. We're going to go out, right? Yeah, but we're going to go cut off somebody off a bridge. Spring weekends are all about family, sunshine, and evenings on the patio.

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This is your first day? This is my first day. So I get in the car. I don't know what to expect. He's one of the older guys. He's probably screwing one of the forensic ladies. So this is like a weird favor. Like later on, I realized what it was.

So we're driving there. We get there. It's a pedestrian bridge. And there's a guy hanging from an electrical wire tied to his leg. He's tied by a single leg. His other leg is kind of crossed over. like a like the tarot card

of the hangman almost you know young kid uh probably is strangled with wire uh plastic on his face

and duct tape naked uh the narco manta was gone so I didn't get to see that Narco Monta is the banner yeah basically they leave banners behind as a way to communicate to their rivals

or just as for people to read them And basically it's a terrorist act of the highest degree. So I get there and climb up up there with the bolt cutters. Try to figure out how I cut them down because it's not just cut them down. It's cutting them down safely, you know? Right. Because you can't just clip them, then he'll just fall down onto some pedestrian car. So we try to pull them up and a dead body is heavier for some reason, you know.

Dead weight. Dead weight. I'm doing all this shit and I'm like, fuck, you know, in my mind, it's dawning on me where I am and what I'm doing. We put a flat bed under and just blow him down. I get down and I'm with my friend who's exchanging phone numbers with this forensic lady. You know, he did his thing, I guess, with that favor. And I'm there in shock and horror. And he's smoking.

Shaded fucker. Just look at it. He's like, what's wrong? New guy? It's like, fuck. This is horrible. This is fucking horrible. He said, no, they're being kind.

And I said, I didn't register this whole, they're being kind thing. I mean they're being kind. Yeah, most families don't get a body to cry over. So the fact that they left them a body is an act of kindness. So what would they do when they were being mean? They would put you in caustic soda and make your bodies appear. So the fact that they gave them a body to bury was an act of kindness. So what were the stats at the time in 2004?

How many murders were happening in the war every day? And I have no, I don't know the numbers, but we were the most dangerous city on the planet at that time. That was on the top of the list. And it was mostly, I mean, that just a regular night was like, five, six bodies in different parts of the city. And those are the bodies they found. The bodies found, you know, the usually bodies found had some sort of messages on them.

On top of that, you would have the forces appearances, you know, people that you never find, you know. And then the abductions for ransom, which were a rage back then, made a bunch of the businesses, business owners in Tijuana basically move up to places like San Diego. Right. There was a massive exodus of people. I mean, it was like every night they would go out and abduct a few. And why was that? Is it because they needed money? Because cartel wars are so expensive?

Yeah. I mean, so imagine you have this band of people with this mission of taking control of Tijuana from this historical owners of the Havana, the Arianikshias cartel, which at this time is being diminished slowly by some of their efforts. So these guys would go out at night. And the only exposed element of these organized crime organizations sometimes is are their sales points. That's the only thing that you could see or you can't really hide. So most of the murders you would see every night in Tijuana back then and you now are related to sales points.

To explain what a sales point is. So these cartel organizations, yes, they dedicate themselves to transnational cocaine and other drugs across the border. the United States, but they also maintain and run local drug markets in Mexico. That's important because we're led to believe that it's just America causing the violence in Mexico because of our demand for drugs. No, no, no, no, no. But there's actually a real robust domestic drug demand in Mexico. Yeah, yeah.

There's a there's a very, a large part of the violence in Mexico is related specifically to these criminal organizations controlling and maintaining control of a territory. And in this territory, anything that happens that is of an illicit nature has to go through them or is taxed by them. This is how it works. And if you have a rival group moving into your territory and you're a ninja that hides from the government that can't find you specifically or you have a lot of security. how can I start affecting your business? So the way they would do this, specifically this, these Sinaloa cartel guys that came in to try and take down the Ariano Fiatel is that they targeted their sales points, obviously,

which is something to this day is still happening. The names have changed, though. It's a new generation cartel now against the Sina Loan cartel, but it's kind of the same game. So you can attack them directly, so you attack their sales points. You kill the cops that are on the take that work for your rival. That's why you get a lot of murders of cops.

Right. It's not because they were just doing their jobs. Some of them is because they were working the other side. You would burn businesses or affect businesses that were under the rival's protection, these paid protection rackets. So this is how you get these cities, these cities all of a sudden just getting into chaos. The local dominion cartel getting challenged. by this other incoming cartel

and they start fucking causing havoc. That's what you see now in place like Tijuana. Tijuana is nicknamed San Diego South now. The majority of the marijuana trafficking is happening from San Diego to Tijuana now. I've heard that.

Which is hilarious. How amazing is that? Beautiful. It's a beautiful thing. But with that the American drug market that usually was on that side of the border in San Diego is now living in Tijuana.

Meaning Americans are moving to Tijuana. 90% of all new housing in Tijuana is being bought up by Americans. Do you view that as a positive thing? It hasn't been for locals because gentrification. Americans have experience with

gentrification. It's the same thing. Local drug markets are being grown and brought with them basically. There's more people there are consumed there. So that's going to be an So economy is booming though. So some business are doing better and you want to do them better as a whole economically. But security is it's back to, I was just at a security conference with my old boss and they're asking him to come back.

And he's asking, he wants to get the band back together basically. It's that desperate now again. Wow. What is the difference in the drug trade, the kind of drugs. Drugs, obviously we know about fentanyl. Everybody knows about fentanyl. But like what's the situation with the cartels? I know it's the CJNG versus...

So there's a bunch of cartels in Mexico, right? And Tijuana specifically. Tijuana specifically, there's a bunch of cartels. DeWana specifically too. A cartel could be like 50 people, you know? So there's a bunch of groups like that out there. But, you know, the biggest two ones are, new generation cartel who's basically taken over and or absorbed remnants of what the

ariano phoenix cartel used to be um they are different in the way they operate uh these are militaristic individuals that operate in militarized ways clandestinely they'll go into a town they'll kill the they'll kill every single police officers that works for the other side because they've done their intelligence before they get there. And then they'll recruit the rest. And they'll take on the next town and the next and the next.

They're brutal. They're not about the life. They're not about the hats and the pointy boots and stuff like that. They have a tendency to recruit former police officers, former military. It's just different. It's a different type of organization.

That's on one side. And on the other side is the there's just no other way of calling them, but what used to be the Sinaloa Cartel Federation. Right. We can say that, you know, which was actually born in L.A. So we can't call it the L.A. cartel,

but they were probably born in L.A. They learned their tradecraft up here. But you have these two organizations in Tijuana right now fighting out for control. And with the Sinaloa cartel, you see Lachapitos faction. who are currently being taken apart. Decimated.

Decimated. And then you see other factions of the same Cina Loa Federation who are not being touched. So it's a strange fair. It's a strange thing right now. Dig, it's more chaotic now than it was back in 2004. In terms of the splintering of power. I mean, yes. I think, so this is, I think, what makes it worse now.

What makes it worse now is that there's absolutely no political effort left to fight some of these criminal organizations as like a blanket fight. Right now, what you're seeing in Mexico is targeted fights against a few specific organizations and political candidates running for presidency that have a cartel that is sponsoring them. Come again? You have political candidates in Mexico that have a sponsored car. cartel that is behind. Now, Ed, that is quite the statement. That's quite the accusation. That's not an accusation. That's like a open secret. That's a fact. It's a fact. Of course. If you know anything about Mexico, you know that, you know, the government's been all the way up to the president. So taking bribes since like the 90s. People attack me online saying that

I'm like, you're corrupt cop and you're part of the whole problem and shit like that. Yeah, was part of the problem. You know, I worked for the government in Mexico and I thought they were on the up and up and in in their hole. But realistically, there's always segments of the government that have an interest at a high level. So imagine this. I was put on all of those, you know, countermeasures to keep me honest, you know? And the guy at the very top, Martinez Luna, the boss of bosses of all security operations in Mexico who was put in front of by Felipe Calderon. is now under federal arrest here because he was working for this. He was working for members of the familia. Right. And I mean, what's this cartels name? I forget. Beltran Lavia? They were working for the Veltron Lava organization.

And not only that, but like other factions of the Army in Mexico are all working on an angle. We recently went, like, and if people want to research this. And I really would advise people in the U.S. kind of look into the Wakamaya Leaks. Wakamaya Leaks was Mexico's version of the WikiLeaks situation. Right. They leaked a shit ton of Sedena documents.

This is the army, the Mexican army. And in these documents, they lay out how things work in Mexico through their intelligence services. This military outpost favors this cartel on this region. This military outpost favors this cartel on this region. this political organization is tied to this cartel. This state governor is tied to this cartel. It reveals all these things and these documents that are in the open for people to

if they want to research them. So it's not a secret that politics and government in Mexico is very much tied, if not at the hip with the cartels. Of course. And I think that's pretty common knowledge, even though just hearing it from such an insider, It never stops giving me chills. But why are there still these big headline busts, right?

Like obviously we know Sina Loa. Let's just take them because they're legacy now. They're probably the oldest cartel besides the guys on the east in Mexico. They're clearly paying some very high-level politicians. They're sponsoring probably a new candidate for president. Yeah. Why are the Chapitos being taken down and giving me? over to the DEA, though.

I don't know. So this is, then this is from observation. I'm not active anymore. I have friends who are and they keep me informed on things. It seems to be a concentrated effort against specifically the Chapitas. Right. That started from all the way from El Chapoosman. Yeah.

Who was never really the head of the Senaloa cartel. Right. This is all words that makes Americans feel. You know, we got them, you know. It make us feel warm inside. No more drugs. None of that is probably true. At some point, there was a rift in that organization with his arrest and the way that his sons basically took control of the business that have been counter to the ways that the status quo has classically been handled in that region with that organization.

Right. So I think they tried to do their own thing. And it never goes well in Mexico If you go against the grain No and mind you we have a president Who just went for the fifth time To El Chapaguzman's hometown

To inaugurate a road Because that's what he does a lot out there This is the fifth time he goes out there Wow Barayuato Yeah Latuna And the mountains of In Latuna

He's been there five times During his presidency Why would you go? It's a tiny little town with nothing going on. It's very strange. He's been there five times during this presidency, and the last time was recently to inaugurated a road. And after that, El Nini was arrested.

Yeah. It's, you know, it's like the craziest game of... So for me, so I'm Mexican, and I'm now up here as a permanent resident trying to figure things out as an American, I guess. I see a Mexico that is basically on its way to be a military dictatorship with a narco base. That's what I see, I guess.

Interesting. You see that you see democracy. You see actually there's no, there's no, there's no political rivals to the current ruling or in a party. And they're the liberals? they are very to their left. Yeah. So Morena is basically to the left

of a political spectrum. Mexico went through you know, two years of the right and then middle and then went straight to the left. Isn't that fascinating? And the left

and they're paid by the biggest capitalists on the planet. Yeah. And it shows like news news recently trans federal judge

gets murdered by his partner and that's like the news is that he's trans and that's like the focus of it there's some sort of conspiracy to kill trans lawyers judges in Mexico and it wasn't like a

just that they killed each other in domestic violence issue that that's what happened but that's like the woke of Mexico is moving in that direction, which is fascinating for a Catholic country like Mexico. The wokeness is growing. Wow. So you, you see this like ultra left wing. It's coming out of Central Mexico. It's an ultra. Yeah. It is sinking over across the country. But it's coalescing with criminal forces, criminal organizations to what, ultimately like suspend the Constitution? So on the left, their mindset is there's no problem if you don't make it a problem. So they said,

Abrazzo no lasso, you know, hugs not bullets. There is no cartel problem. There is no cartel war. It's just like it's gone. Recently, what you're seeing, though, is the army kind of try and re-indicate themselves. This is what leads me to think that they might have some sort of independent action going on. So El Nini, his arrest, one of the first thing that he stated when they arrested him, he was caught. without security unarmed in his underwear at his house with some sort somebody ratted him out obviously you know he was very comfortable where he was the first things that they the first thing that they said as far as why he was captured was that he was he participated in the liberation the first

liberation of o'tapaguzman's son when he was arrested and that he ordered the shooting of the families the military family's barracks in Sino-loa. So they went after him as a, like, a vengeance thing. Right? So that was one high-level arrest that happened. And then a few days later, the arrest of this new generation cartel head in Halisco,

the three, in the power structure for the new generation cartel, he was involved in the abduction of a colonel. So both of them have like a military, like a vengeance from the, the vengeance from the Mexican army, kind of revindicating their self and their power in the region, I guess.

So that's what leads me to believe that there's some sort of, you know, we're in charge thing going on with the Mexican army basically kind of like making some of these high-level arrests and also it's election season. We just kicked off presidential elections.

The candidates are out, and coincidentally, we have these two major arrests. So you think, you think the, left-wing government will stay in power. It's what's most optimal for the Mexican Army. Okay. Who is actually at the base

of the power in Mexico. The Mexican Army. Yeah. That's what you're seeing right now. They're getting all the contracts for the airport. They're getting contracts for trained building. All airspace in Mexico is now militarized. Wow. So like

all these things are leading the Guardia Nacional, the National Guard units or at the points of entry into Mexico. Yeah, I notice that. So there's, there's no more, like, customs officials. Right. It's just the, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, right.

Right. And they're at the airports as well. Mm hmm. So if people don't see the fact that these guys are taking over in, it's in, civilian realm. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think they're, I don't, I don't, so you think that leads to. to, again, some kind of suspension of civil liberties or the Constitution or what's the worst

case scenario? Like, where could that, where could that go? Venezuela? Wow. Wow. So you have imagine that. Imagine that. So for me, it's like, it's scary because of what it could invite. Uh-huh. You know, let's be clear about this. Mexico is currently in a very advantageous position. Totally. It's the next China. I agree. If it had the right leadership, but it doesn't. I'd much rather produce stuff in Mexico if I'm a factory owner.

And also another thing that people don't realize that a lot of Mexican companies actually have production in the U.S. Wow. So there's a vehicle glass company that has production facilities that's from Mexico that has production facilities in the U.S. And so we're basically tied together as like NAFTA tied us together years ago and we're all part of the same thing. part of the same thing. Right. China's all over Mexico. The Chinese influences all over Mexico specifically related to its ports, you know,

related to one specific cartel, the new generation cartel seems to be a proxy of this government, I guess. They're the only ones that didn't have fentanyl supplies cut to them during COVID. Right. They had no supply issues. Yeah. So it makes you think. but, and those are the U.S.'s

main rivals on the global stage, why wouldn't it make sense for China to basically use Mexico as a, of course. As a tire fire underneath you. Sure. So I just got to take a minute because I'm fried, I'm exhausted. I've been working really, really hard,

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feel jitters. It's tremendous, you guys. I cannot recommend them enough. Magic Mind. If you are like me, hardworking and need a focus and a boost at the beginning of the day, the middle of the day, go check them out. Magic Mind. Thank you so much for sending these over. Yeah. Let's get back to, you know, when you're on the ground dealing with, you know, the lowest rung of this gigantic almost faceless beast that is a Mexican criminal organization. How often were you cutting people down? Tell me about your first couple of months

on the ground as part of the organization. Sure, sure. Yeah, so, I mean, that first day, cutting this dude off of a bridge and realizing that that was kindness in the environment that it was now in. That kind of like really soaked into me. The lack of equipment, this is Mexico, they're not going to give you shit, you know.

So I went to this, we went to this house. And it was a, they killed two municipal cops and they ran and some of them ran to this house. And we found this house and that house led us to another house and it was basically, it's a rat's nest, you know. One thing leads to another. So we go to this house in this very upper, upper class neighborhood in Tijuana. And I'm walking towards this door with the army with me. They're all dressed in a coyote tan, you know. And I'm the only idiot that it doesn't not jeans and a t-shirt and a plate armor on me.

And an AR. It's walking towards this door. We hit it. We're using chains and a hook to rip doors off or just sledge hammers, basically, to get into these houses. I don't see any documentation that makes us or authorizes to be any there, but we're with the army, and I guess that's enough, you know? So I'm just fucking running with those guys. We go into this house. A second, we go up the stairs, reports of armed people hiding there.

There's a bunch of mattresses on the ground. It's a safe house. Wow. Right? It's a safe house. There's a baby, baby monitors that were improvised into like a makeshift surveillance system for those guys, you know? So we get there, but then out there, you know, they got wind of us. There's a ladder in the back, you know?

Right. These guys are fucking gone. Yeah. Go upstairs. I have training and I have protocols. So we start doing side exploitation, you know, basically seeing what's their dog. documents cell phones to collect them all in a bag and take them to give them to the intelligence guys.

And I start noticing that the army guys are not anywhere to be seen. So I'm just fucking doing that. And then I walk into this room, this next room and it had, have you seen the movie Predators? Yeah, of course. Predators 2 with Danny Glover. I stopped after the first one because it was so good. At the start of the movie, there's this scene where they're going to shoot out here in

L.A. And they go into this armory, it's just covered in guns all over the place. that's the room I walked into it was just a fucking armory 50 cows Barretts like on a wall

ARs AR parts all over the place magazines AKs you name it is there just and here you are the most

supposed to be the most incorruptible police officer tip of the spear with an AR 15 a semi auto AR 15 Colt with a with a suitcase strap on it.

Yeah. That's it. That's it. And a magazine in my back pocket, an extra magazine, a 20 round extra magazine in my back pocket. I look at all this shit and I start taking pictures of it. You know, it's like, ah, it's like evidence. And some of the army guys just bump me over and start grabbing magazines. Might as well.

You're like in a war. Yeah. You find the weapons. So I'm like. Take them. Yeah, so some of them started grabbing magazines and sites from the rifles. That's why, that's why when you ever see the cartel guys show they're, like, we got all these rifles. Yeah.

But none of them have like sites and shit like that. Yeah, because they get taken by the people. Oh, wow. So the military, if they hit a raid, if they raid a bunch of guns. Pops, military, they'll strip off everything cool from the rifle. Right. They'll leave the rifles, but take all the, all the accessories. Expensive accessories.

So being in that room, like everybody's kidding up, basically. Did you get, did you grab a couple? Everybody's kidding up, you know, everybody's kidding up. Everybody. What'd you take? Everybody's kidding up. Okay. So, this is why I realize that the rules don't apply here.

This is this, this is a weird place. Yeah. I go downstairs and they're all eating abalone out of cans that they found in the kitchen. And I'm like, this isn't, this is a bizarre space to be in. And I piled with them in the back of their home being just go off to the next house. It was, it, it, it, uh, kids mostly are they on the, on the other side of this. Like the guys that we're working against, yeah, kids, uh, American gang members, like people that were brought in from the LA gangs.

Right. Uh, this Conejo was an example of that. Of course. Um, so you're seeing all these, uh, kids that are being kind of recruited and brought into basically form these cells that were spread out all over the city. And they're not making any money. Real money, right? They're making garbage money.

Basically, there's a cell leader, and he hires a bunch of kids. They'll sleep over at a house like that, and they'll be called to, hey, go and hit this place or go and pick up this guy or do this or do that. And they're spread out in the city, so they can, whoever's in charge can call whoever's closest. Right. And they don't talk to each other. So if you get one cell, you have no idea what the other cell's doing.

And the cell leader, is he actually a member of the organization? The cell leader usually is a member of the organization. So whenever you would get a group of people, you would always look for the oldest. Right. That's one way. Right. Always look for the oldest to see leadership or see who had the most money in his pocket. See who had jewelry on.

Right. This is right at the dawn of social media. So we would also kind of look at them in that. way as well. What do you think the survival rate is for a kid in in one of those cells? Not much, man. It's pretty low, right? I got to see them a few times. The people who would get rab once or twice. Yeah. And then find them finally, you know? Right. Do you remember finding bodies of kids that, oh, I raided his house two months ago? There was a, it was a very big one. A 12, 12 of them were left on the on the roadside, all young, all from the same block. It was basically

basically they took out a whole generation of kids from a single block who were working for the other side. Right. And what do you mean they left them by the roadside? Decapitated or just shot up? So the main method of executing them back then, I don't know if it's, I don't know. They were probably murdering them in safe houses across the city. So no gunshots. They were usually strangled with wire.

Suffication and strangulation. was usually the murder, the way that they would kill some of these guys. Or they would just lay them on the side of the street and hit him and shoot them in the back of the head one by one, which is a mixture of that is what happened that night, 12 of them. The oldest was, I think, 19, and the youngest was 15 or 14. All men, all kids. Underwear, left on all of them. You know, that's all.

This is who was fighting. back then, not all of them. Every now and then you would find like hitters, you know, like professionals. Okay. Every now and then. Do you remember the first hitter you met where you like, oh, this guy's different?

Yeah, yeah. What was that like? What happened? This is, it's a, it's a wild shootout that happened. It's, it's La Sona Norte area. of Tijuana, it's right on the border. A guy's selling cocaine or something of that nature.

I'm not too sure about the details. I wasn't there for that part of it. Somebody shows up, tries to kill him because it's a sales point. He makes a run for it. While he's running, they're shooting and gunning and they're shooting a bunch of people. They're just there, you know? and then he gets into a car and drives

it is in his, drives to another house that's when he gets his shit, grabs a rifle, a backpack and comes out, engages these four guys and fucking kills him. Wow. Then he gets into his car

and fucking flees from the police and kills two cops on his way and fleeing out. And gets away. And gets away. finally, finally he gets into a wreck. He rolls his vehicle. It's all mangled up.

He's handcuffed to a red cross gurney. And we walk in. I'm walking with a sub-director. I'm his bodyguard. But also I'm basically part of his group. So we walk in there. And this guy's a serious-looking motherfucker, you know, looking at us, like, suspiciously.

We already gone through his phone and everything. We went to his place, so we knew a lot about him already. He is a former Mexican army. Former Mexican army. Gaffé guy. Gaffet is a group of Aeromobile de Forces Speciales, basically an aeromobile group that was formed probably in the late 80s, early 90s, as a special forces unit, basically.

this guy had books in English and Spanish at his house so he's bilingual you know he had his rifle sited you know he had a marker marks where the screws

were put to tighten on the site of the optic so he had training as far as shooting at a distance and precision he's a killer it's a professional killer How often or how common was that? Every now and then, it would show up. Do you remember Zeta's incursions into the city while you were on the force?

They were part of a breakout from the Tijuana prison. They broke out a few cartel members. I'm not too sure about the details back then. At some point in the mid-2000, there was an ally ship within the prison system of members of the Gulf Guard. members of the Zetas and the Ariano Felix leadership because all the leaderships that were arrested were housed in the same federal prison. So at some point there was some sort of weird friendship struck. So the Zeta sent a contingency of their men to break out some people from the Tijuana prison during that time. Were they successful?

They dressed like doctors for it. They showed up in an ambulance. they on the inside they had weapons already there so it was how many people do they have to kill to get the kingpins out I think they

I think they took out like five maybe three or five I'm not I don't remember exactly but at least one of the guard towers that was there was shot completely up nobody put up a fight no no nobody put up a fight

and then you would see the shot people can probably look up some of the pictures from that breakout online. You'll see the guard tower pictures and you'll see the concentrated fire from the full auto rifles that were utilizing, which is impressive to see it at that distance. Yeah. See these concentrated shot marks on those bulletproof glass.

Total pros. Capable, experienced people, professionals. Yeah. US trained. Yeah. How were the Zetas trained by the U.S.? The Sets does, we're trained at like some. of them, and again, I don't know a lot of details. I'm not part of that organization or any of that, but

I had people that I work with who were part of that organization, you know, part of the Gaffes, where the Zetas were pulled from. And they tell me that they had training in Texas. They had training in Fort Bragg. Some of them had Fort Bragg training. Some of them. Of course. That makes sense. Some of them went through, some of them went through free fall training. Some of them went through knew how to operate night vision, explosives, long distance shooting. The only instances of cartels utilizing long distance shooting

or precise shooting that I was ever privy didn't know about, we're done by this. That does. Wow. Yeah. But they didn't try to actually battle it out for Tijuana or any of the drug routes. They were just there on contract. There was a weird moment in the history

of like organized crime in Tijuana where they showed up and again something happened within the prison system with the leadership of the ariano field cartel the golf cartel and some of the zettos something happened so they they showed up for a few times in tijuana but then then they went away what about the guns you know we spoke off pod about you know you were there for the era of obama and the fast and the furious campaign and that was obviously super famous that's what fucked up but tell us a little bit about how that affected you yeah and tijuana So I'm pro-gun. Before I go into all of this stuff, you know, I'm very pro-gun.

It's one of the main reasons. You know, I came up here because I could have the responsibility to protect myself and my family if I have to. Do you actually, do you think Mexico should have Second Amendment rights? Do you think it would be better if ordinary people are allowed to protect themselves? It does, but the army suppresses it. Mexico has some of the most liberal firearms laws on the books in its constitution. That's right.

But it also, yeah, the right to bear arms is in the Mexican constitution. to defend your house and your family. It's there. But yet, ordinary citizens don't have guns. Because there's a giant federal firearms law that is enforced by the army in Mexico that has slowly but surely been growing as we.

When I got started in police work, there were few gun stores in Mexico still. It's a few. Now there's just one. And it's won by the military. Right. And if you're not, if you can't afford a plane ticket,

or the paperwork involved in getting that gun that are sometimes usually insanely expensive. Yeah. You're not going to get a gun. So obviously they make it like that on purpose. Why? What is the benefit to keeping guns away from

ordinary people? On unarmed populace is the easiest populist to fucking control and maintain. This is something that's been happening since the 60s. During the 60s, you saw an attempted communist uprising in Mexico. and somehow they armed themselves with hunting rifles

is what the investigation showed and the army didn't like that so never again so it started cutting down on the rights of Mexicans to possess arms I think after the 60s and 70s that that right slowly shifted and went away like I grew up on a ranch

we had hunting rifles that's unheard of now most people don't have that unless they have a permit or some sort of like I grew up running around hunting raves with a 22-calder rifle at that family ranch at my grandfather's ranch. Of course. That's gone now.

Do you think murder would decrease if ordinary Mexican citizens were strapped? I mean, you would have a deterrent factor. You would have options. I was involved in a lot of eradication stuff, you know, every now and then we'd go out to the fucking hillsides of Ensenada somewhere in the middle of nowhere and find places. They were used as grows. And as what? As grows for marijuana, for other stuff. There's a few laboratories out in the middle of nowhere.

Every now and then we would run into ranch houses in the middle of nowhere. And they would have guns there. There's no cops. There's no 911 service out there. Some of these guys had daughters. They're not cartel members. You think I'm going to take their guns from them? right so I would I would empty out the the the bullets put them in a bag and leave them in the

outside for them I would leave it but we would leave the guns wow because it's I couldn't disarm somebody like that you know I think that's that was a line for me internally do you there's a lot of money in trafficking guns oh from the U.S. to Mexico yeah were you involved in any gun busts like that yeah I mean most of the guns that we would find were from the U.S. Obviously. Every now and then we would find places that make globos. Globos are basically hidden compartments or containers inside of vehicles. Tijuana is that,

Tijuana is basically the Wakanda of that, of the world. Tijuana. Clavos are traps. Clavos are traps. Basically, if you put the volume knob here and this here, the sea will pop open,

that type of shit. Insanely hard to find. I mean, U.S. Customs had a shit done a hard time finding. Right. The way we started finding them is we basically had to go to school with the guys that were building them. Right. So we could figure them out.

So we found a few loads through basically finding associates of the people that were building those things and then would find, you know, like four, four glocks, you know, shrink wrapped on a, behind the boom, boom box thing, stereo thing on the back of a car or something like that. Yeah. But some of the Fast or Furious guns that we're talking about, those were way different. I mean, it's like, like in a week, in the span of a week, you started, most of the guns we would see back then were civilian, civilian ARs, some stolen or captured police and military rifles, AK-47s, you know, Noreenko AKs, some Soviet block stuff, rare, you know, coveted guns. you know, pistols. And all of a sudden you saw FN57 pistols, P90s, calibers that were meant to gun a cop killer bullets as they were known up here.

50-Cal rifles in the box, Barrett 50-Cal rifles in the box that were obviously selected because they wanted to be able to pierce armored vehicles, you know, because we started using armored vehicles. So they wanted to have a way to pierce those. And they're undoubtedly American. Because everything that we would find had Magpull dynamics on it,

had Black Hawk, had, you named the tactical brand of choice back then, it was just covered in it. And also the brands that were on these rifles. You know, I'm not going to mention the brands on those rifles, but name brand stuff that was in vogue in the U.S. I'm just kidding. That's like the oldest. Yeah, I mean, Knights Armament.

Yeah. Magpull stuff on accessories on things. just these obviously American rifles that were being bought in straw purchases in the U.S. sent down there and a machine piece

a piece of metal dropped into this year and some things drilled out and now all of them are full auto capable. The AARs. The straw buyers in these are they affiliates of the cartel? Like is it, could it be

Tijuana? They've got family who are Mexican Americans in the U.S. who have clean backgrounds. Is it that organized or is it usually just, is it from what, from what I saw independent operators? From what I saw back then, these cartels, and when I say these, probably the Sina Lua cartel has people, family and just Americans living up here that worked for them for decades now. Like full time. Full time. So they're not sending their Sina Lua cartelope operas from Sina Lua. to convince straw purchase buyers to get, no, this is like organized crime

that already exist there. And they're like, hey, guys, get us rifles. And that's what they did. And that's what they do. And that's what they do. So the big controversy around it was that these guns ended up in the hands. Explain the Fast and the Furious scandal.

I won't go into too much detail on the US side because I didn't experience it on the US side. But according to what I've heard, the ATF under a program that ran from the Bush administration all the way to the Obama administration, had a surveillance program where they were observing large straw purchases of firearms that were basically and clearly part of a shopping list that was being sent over by somebody, probably the Senegal cartel or factions of the Senegal cartel. and they didn't do anything about it. They just observed, recorded, heard the concerns of the people selling those guns and just let them walk down to Mexico. And the reason why the U.S. learned about it is a man named Ryan Terry.

It was a federal Asian who was killed by a cartel member that had one of these guns that was allowed to walk across the border. He literally walked across the border? I mean, those guns were literally let walk across the border. And one of those guns was used to murder Ryan Terry. In Mexico? Wow. So if that hadn't happened, the scandal wouldn't have broken.

Right. But by this time, a few of my friends had already been killed with those guns. And I always tell the story of this specific one because I thought it was a tragedy. It was really bad. One of our guys was leaving his home with his wife and his daughter in the back. seat and two kids showed up with a FN57 pistols. These are very expensive pistols with a very specific short, high velocity round. So there's weird odd pistols to use in a thing like that. They murder him and his wife and his daughter loses an arm in the attempt and the assassination.

And that's the first time we see these guns, you know? So we started finding them everywhere. I have a picture of me holding some of them. We would put him in the database and federal agencies in the U.S. would come and look at them. Somebody at high level allowed all of those guns and has a responsibility. Yes, a federal agent in the U.S. was killed and I've actually raised money for his charity here in the state.

And the reason I do it is to bring attention to the fact that, yeah, he was murdered, and it was a great tragedy and great loss to this nation. But there was a bunch of my friends murdered, too. And nobody knows anything about them. A lot more of them murdered. Yeah. And also just citizens as well. Citizens. A high velocity rounds out of a pistol going through cars, you know, hitting a lady that was buying a pair of reading glasses because she does piano lessons and she needed new glasses to be able to read the music.

And she gets shot with one of these guns. You know, these are the stories that you never hear about. Right. So this is not stopped, though. That was just a scandal, but this is not. That was a scandal because it had direct involvement with people letting them walk. But now it's, now, now it's just like anything bullet related, magazine related or rifle related, can see used to pay for shit down there.

So if you have enough of those up here, you can send them down there and pay off a debt. that you have. That's how valuable guns are. They can be used as currency in Mexico. Yeah, bullets. I've heard about bullets being utilized to pay off debts, bullets, rifles.

And also, whenever you see an uptake in the, and trafficking of this nature, or if you get one bust on the border, it means that there's like 50 of them. Right.

If you get one of them, but if you get two or three, it means that there's a lot of volume going down. That's what people should notice about that. And you're starting, I mean, what you saw specifically during these past few years, people are getting ready for a war of some sort. You know, they're stockpiling.

Wow. Rounds, munitions are being stockpiled. During COVID, it was cheaper to get ammo black market in Mexico, which is a hilarious thing. Remember COVID there was a shortage of ammo in the States? Yeah. You can get black market nine millimeter cheaper in some parts of Mexico than in the United States, which is hilarious. Wow. Because they were stockpiling.

They've been stockpiling there. So is that actually a business for the cartels too that have a bunch of excess bullets? Do they actually sell them on the free market? It's like a hoardering thing. Every now and then there's like weird places where they do shit like that. Yeah. I haven't. And we're going to go into a weird place.

Mexico City is a place like that. Mexico City has a place called tepito in it. I've heard of it. Teppito, it's not as spicy as it used to be. I went to Tepeto when it was fucking spicy. You know? I went to Tepeto when I was still a cop. And it's 2008, 2009, maybe, 2010.

I don't remember, like, around that area, I went down there regularly. I grew up with a weird faith. Weird, I say weird, because to Americans, like they always get freaked out by it because their only exposure to it is breaking bad probably. I grew up as a Santa Morte practitioner.

So Santa Morte is in my religious background. Yeah. And Teppito, they have an altar there. So when I would go down there, I would go to the Santa Morte altar in Tapito. And, you know, leave flowers, leave a candle. It's a thing, right? Catholic, and it's kind of like

in that Mexican Catholic weirdness. And then I would go away. walk the markets with some of the locals. You know, if you go to that altar and they see you venerate there and do your thing, you're cool. So they'll hang out with you, right? You talk to them. So they took me to this open-air market there.

They would rent out a pistol and the bullets. So they'll rent you a gun and the bullets. So you can go off and do your robberies. You're going to go do some work. But if you shoot somebody, you're going to have to, there's like a pay. penalty if you shoot somebody or if you if you're missing around from your magazine you have to get back right since like a deposit it's like it was like blockbuster for the guns oh my god in one of these little weird corners that i found in there did you ever get in a shootout yeah yeah how many i don't i mean it's

it's tijuana uh what was your first shoot out was that like do you remember how was it exciting Because I imagine, like, being in a shootout, the adrenaline, there's got to be some dopamine rush to that, you know? No. You didn't find it like that? I don't think it's so, so whatever adrenaline, whatever people say adrenaline rushes are, that happens like a little bit at the start. And then the rest of it is just, I mean, if you're in a, if you're in a job like that in a place like that, you're, it's like somebody drinking coffee constantly. Cup of coffee is not going to do shit for you. Right. It's not about you being cool or anything.

that it's like the first time that something like that happens to you the first time it happened to me i don't know what the fuck was going on i don't know where front was back was you know you hear if anybody's ever actually been in a situation where rifles are being shot next to you and rifles are being shot at you from over there i mean the sound of it alone is deafening go boom just like you there's no you can't communicate

with people around you you know all you know is that the people around you are firing that way so probably shoot that way you know how far out of the job

were you when you got in your first shootout that was probably a few months in like a month like a month a month in yeah a bunch of suburbans

picked up a dude somewhere in downtown Tijuana, and we rushed there to try and figure something out, do something. We're stupid. We're young. We're motivated. It's like 40 of them and like four or five of us, you know. They were kidnapping a guy. Yeah.

Kidnapping a guy. Somebody called it in. Called it in and respond. And we're new. We don't know this at this time. We had a like a command. C4 is what they call it. It's basically a radio station.

All the cops, all the fire departments, all the emergency service are tied into that. You would hear out a call. Reports of shots, fired, vehicles, armed men, and in our minds, so let's go. But what actually happens is nobody goes. Nobody shows up because everybody knows who it is. So nobody shows up. So nobody would show up to these things, except us. So the first time that happened, there was a bunch of new guys there with me.

one older guy. And we went, we responded. Stupidity. We shouldn't respond, probably. We should have waited, you know. We responded and, uh, I don't know, why is it stupid to respond? I'm not, it's a, it's, it's, we almost died. You don't know what you're going into.

I mean, we heard, we heard reports and we didn't read the reports specifically. Like if you hear four vehicles armed men, you should do the math about how many people are probably in those four vehicles, you know? four vehicles, it means at least three rifles per vehicle are active and one dude's behind the wheel. Yeah. At least. Yeah. You know?

And there's four of us. So there was a stupidity there. Yeah. We got there and one of the guys that was, I figured I'd be better if I put myself in the back of the truck instead of in the front. So you guys are riding in the truck. Yeah. So I get out of the passenger side and go into the, in the back of the truck and I'm just, you know, ready. What do you got?

An AR. Okay. 223 AR cult. Three magazines. The guy in the front has a shotgun. Not good. It raises that you stop at this intersection. We see them slowly just pass by.

They were in a red, up-armored suburban, some of them. They show us the wooden stocks of their AKs. And some of them point at us. And they know your cops? Yeah. Yeah. And the guy in front of us driving has a radio in his hand. And he's going to do this.

And that's when I scream at him, did not move. You know? They passed by. They didn't light us up. They probably saw us as, like, oh, shit. They fucked. So let's just fucking leave. So they move.

Further on down the road, that's when the shot started. And we basically went there and joined a bunch of other people. They were Army specifically that were shooting at these guys. The thing is that it's an urban environment. These vehicles are not marked. And a bunch of cars are leaving the area. So all you have to do is turn four vehicles into single vehicles and just spread them. I remember that was the first time.

There was rounds going around, and I was like, am I supposed to shoot too? Like, I was looking around me for somebody to tell me if I should shoot or not. And then all of a sudden, everybody was shooting towards a direction. So I said, let's just shoot in that general direction. It's true what they say, though. Like most of the gunshots shot and wore and stuff like that, nobody knows where the fuck they're going. Right. Just fucking peeking that out and shooting it that way.

There was a lot of Mogadishu shooting. going on. Yeah. Erratic, chaotic, chaotic, not cool. Cold sweat stomach. Weird almond sense and taste in your nose

because of your brain jostling in and out of your head with all those rounds going off. Weird stiffness in your knees and your hands because they're like locked into place. And your jaw is locked as well.

You're just fucking in a ball. Your body wants to go into a little ball, but your brain says you have to shoot, so you have to stretch out and shoot. So it's a weird push and pull that your body's going through, where it's like you should be in a hole somewhere covering, but you're doing this shit.

So you're going against your very nature. So after that, diarrhea. After that, diarrhea from all the toxins releasing your body a few hours later, just nervousness laughing, playing it off,

you know, being a fucking, yeah, everything's fine. Did anybody get hit? Did anybody? I don't know. Not with me,

no. Did they capture the, what was the protocol when you were on the job when there was a situation like that where you just allowed to engage? Yeah. It's a thing,

man, there's no supervision. There's nobody there with you talking about it. So crazy. There's no, it's like, You don't have like a commanding officer.

Sometimes you didn't. Sometimes you were there with the army. And the army's like, who's in charge? And everybody was looking at everybody. Like, it was chaotic. It was chaotic. There was no, at the start of it, man, there was no real leadership. It was basically like, let's figure the shit out.

It was improvised. It was. What was the exact objective? What were you trying to, what did they tell you that you were there to achieve? Nobody told the shit until lieutenant. a colonel showed up. The guy that basically orchestrated this whole group that we were

a part of and the effort that was about to take place. He gets named the director of the group that I was in basically. And his first day, he shows up. And he's like, it's Gordon Ramsey.

You know, that's his... Yeah. Like, he shows up and he, like, you know he's in charge. first day he shows up he's like why are you wearing that cut that off take that out

that rifle is that right is that rifle fixed that looks like that's broken and take that to be fixed what do you guys need what else do you need who knows his way around the city who wants to be my bodyguard one step forward and he just points at me

and I am his driver for his first day of patrolling Dijuana as the new director of the institution that I was in. Army officer. He was part of Operation Condor, like the first operations in Tina Law to eradicate shit. That was his first experience in the military when he was like 18 or 17 or some crazy shit like that. So he was highly experienced man, highly educated, war college graduate.

Very smart. he viewed the problem in Tijuana specifically as a counterinsurgency problem. That's how he viewed it. So what does that mean? Basically, he says we're going to operate as a counterinsurgency and not as a, this isn't a policing problem. These people are operating very much like an insurgency, so we're going to work counterinsurgency on them in a lot of ways. So first thing he does is basically set up a coordination table of security with all of the people in charge. the head of municipal police, the head of the army, the governor, municipal president,

and everybody, everybody's there. And he says, who's in charge? You know, and everybody puts, everybody there agrees to put him in charge. And basically it's game time. That's when that happened. Basically, now we have this full support of the politics, private money there because members of the private industry. were there and now we were you know we had leadership so that's when things really started raging you

know as the objective to kill the insurgents the objective is to by the way i assume the insurgents being cartels everybody that's not there from tijuana yeah so in because the cartel's always been in tijuana yeah yeah yeah the way that he the way that the process would put forth is that there are two warring entities in Tijuana that are trying to figure things out here. We can't allow neither of them to take control of everything. So let's just do a blanket process.

Now, when this was happening, he realized quickly that the main arm or the main support system of these cartels was the Tijuana Municipal Police. My mind is blown. So, repeat that again. The Tijuana Municipal Police

was basically what allowed these criminal organizations to operate, and openly move around the city. And if you want a municipal police, police were their main intelligence service. And within the police department, it wasn't like the whole of the municipal police department would work with one cartel.

It was like, this precinct work with that one. This precinct worked with that one. And slowly but surely, he started figuring this out. We start figuring it out. And how are you going to change the hat? How? How?

So he figured out a way to get himself named the head of the DeWyne Municipal Police. Oh my God. So is this guy a marked man? He has, he had, yeah, he was marked. How many assassination attempts? He had nine assassination attempts. The last one took the use of his legs. He's in a wheelchair now.

And he's still, I am still afraid of him. Were you ever with him when they tried to kill him? Not, not, I was there. I responded to some of them. of the attempts, but not during one of the attempts now. He became the head of the municipal police and then later on turned into the, he basically figured out how to fix that issue internally by doing that. So what, how do you fix a police force that corrupt?

Do you just fire the cops and you find out that he quickly realized that the municipal police and the local police is essential in figuring out how to change the power dynamics in a city when it comes to cartels? I mean, there's no way you, like the local cop on the street corner is going to be way more important and essential for cartel operations than a federal cop that comes from out of the state. It shows up there doesn't know shit. And he's going to leave. He doesn't have a vet's an interest there. So that's the valuable to it.

So then what's what do you do with that guy? So the chief, what do you do with that guy on the corner of the cop? The same process he did with us as far as certification. and confidence exams and all of that was then instituted towards them. And so I imagine tons of police were let go. There was a

there was a lot of them to quit. Right. Immediately. And the people that didn't want to quit so he would go into a place and say that precinct over there is run by a guy that works for one of the cartels.

Yeah. Well, hey, I know you're working for one of these cartels. Yeah. Tomorrow you're going to work at that other precinct with the rival that the rival

cartel works out no I'm not I quit I quit right yeah so he started doing that yeah and systematically

I think is after his time but the whole of the municipal police was disarmed and all of their guns were put through forensics and a lot of them

were found to be have bodies on them these are officially issued firearms wow there was a massive massive arrest of

state police and municipal police leadership at that time. They were taken to the... Who arrests them? The Army members of some of our guys, you know, were involved in some of that, some of that. They get picked up with... This is the kickoff of the drug war. So people want to have in their minds like a post-9-11,

you know, where anything goes, like patriarchy. era. Yeah. Shit. This is, this is the political attitude and climate back then. Like anything goes.

Oh, you don't have any evidence on these guys? Take them. We don't care. We don't care. Arrest them. Yeah.

So there was a lot of stupid shit done with these arrest and detentions. So a lot of them went with organized crime charges to Mexico City. And a lot of them got out because they were,

their case were thrown out of court because of lack of evidence or not appropriate evidence. And a lot of the arrests arrests were done by the military, which doesn't have that function. Interesting. So there was a lot of stuff like that got happening during that time. The whole of municipal police was disarmed at one point in Tijuana, which was fascinating.

Fascinating. Every single, I imagine every single cop in Los Angeles gets stripped of their badge. They were walking around with like slingshots. They were walking as president, sign of protest. And at this time, a lot of our guys and a lot of the military was basically put in charge of different segments of the city. Yeah. So like we were the,

we were the local police for a while, you know, just covering. So he figured out quickly. So that really worked. It would, it dramatically worked.

So did you see a decrease in the level of murder? When we saw a decrease, so this is how it started to manifest the effects of his, his, the changes that he was implementing. Number one, murders were still happening.

She would ask were still happening and shit like that. still going on. But they weren't in the open as much. Like that convoy that I found, that we found, I almost got fucking killed by. Or the, in the middle of the day,

convoy showing up at a TGI Friday's that they have in, in Zona Rio and Tijuana with a cartel guy and had like just fuck close that. It would all happen in the open. These fucking guys started hiding. Right.

They started hiding. Right. So they started, that's when we knew that we were making a, And if they were having an effect, you know, they switched from moving around in, you know, at the start they were moving around in Suburban's and Tahoe's. Obvious.

And then they started cloning police vehicles and pretending to be like federal agents. Yeah. And after some of these changes started occurring, they started switching to taxis and more discreet vehicles and operating differently. So you started seeing that they started to change the. way they worked. There was a change there. What is it like today in terms of the municipal police in T.J? So he brought the city back from the break.

Okay. People can argue about this and they're still arguing about it now. When he left the city, he left the city better. He got tasked with doing the same job he didn't Tijuana in Juarez. and he's the same thing in Juarez. Wow. It involved a lot of things in lining. He had the right people that he trained

from early on that he could trust. He had political backing. He had money, the private sector backing. And people that were just fed up with it. Because it's unsustainable. Live like that. After he left, he was,

there was an arrest warrant put out after investigations led to some of the people that he arrested, including some of those cops, and basically that had five were now as enemies. Yeah. And some of them had political influences and allegiances and led to him to basically have a standing arrest warrant for years. Wow. So he had to go into hiding. Wow. When I interviewed him for my podcast for about four hours.

And he had an active arrest warrant while I was interviewing him. we had to do some squarely shit to try to move around. But he was vilified. All of us were. All of us were. Like everybody that was involved in all that shit became a villain.

And it's probably because of the politics. So if you're a part of a successful political effort to quell violence in Tijuana, and you represent that other political system that did that, when the new one comes in, you're, you're out. You're out. You're an enemy.

All the polygraph examinations that were done. All of the background checks, all that shit went away. A lot of that stopped. Or was declared unconstitutional by more woke to the left politics that came in to the US. Just like, again, 9-11 Patriot Act, everybody was cool with it. and then people start not being cool with it. Same phenomenon happened down there. So, yeah, everybody, like, all of, like,

that's what happened to me. I had to leave the job because of how it turned into a unsustainable office. So a lot of us started to have, we had to leave. Were you, what year is this? This is 2016, 17 era. Okay. Okay, so you were, you felt like you were forced out.

Oh, yeah, all of us, all of us is, as soon as he left and the politics changed, we were celebrated and all of a sudden we were, fuck you guys. Did you feel like they could have put a warrant out for your arrest? Yeah. Under what guys? I mean, you can, I can have somebody show up somewhere and just come up with them

complain about me. Yeah. You know, how do you, do you move, you know, you live down there. Are you, do you watch where you go? Yeah. Are you still, I mean, you're a cop in Mexico. Yeah. So even an ex cop.

Yeah. You still got to be careful. I still have to be careful. Number one thing, though, I never worked for any side. And you can quote me on that. If somebody out there says that I have, like tell me which side I worked. I never worked a single one because I knew for a fact. And this is a lesson we learned from the old guys that were there before we got there.

As soon as you pick a side, you paint a giant mark on your back. Right. Because it's a matter of time as soon as you pick a side. When you were on the job, did you have any fellow cops that ended up choosing sides? Fucking hey, yeah. A shit ton of them. Can you tell us about one that sticks out? I'll tell you about this one.

This is a pretty cool one, I guess. I never talked about this one. It's a few people probably know about it maybe. There's a bunch of beachside property between Playa San Rosarito. It's a bunch of houses, you know. it's also a giant rat's nest you know that's where a lot of the you know the nefarious types hide

um I wasn't there for that like was there respond I responded to it though uh this uh report of a laboratory that was found you know laboratory when and down there

there's no hazmat teams we don't have like a hazmat team and this is Mexico man we don't have shit we call the fire department you know yeah so they there's a report of that that they found one. And it's our guys that found it. And they're working with the army. So everybody clears out.

I'm talking to meth lab? Yeah. Everybody clears out. When they find one of those, basically it's, you know, clear out, contain, then people come in, handle the hazardous shit,

and then we figure that out. So these guys on the inside call and say, hey, there's some shit happening in here. We found some stuff, chemicals. Everybody clear out. And then they don't hear about, They don't hear from them for an hour. And then they walk into this property and the radios and their phones are in the middle of the table,

a table in this room and this house. And the rumor is, and I don't know, it was for certain, that they found a shit ton of money there. These two guys that I used to work with found a shit ton of money there. And they left their radios in their phones and disappeared with their families that same night. I don't know how much money they fucking found. Wow. But that's like that shit like that happened. Wow.

So they took the money and fled. Wow. They went to look at their houses and shit like that. Fucking gone. Did you have anybody? That happened. Like that shit like that would happen. Do you remember any recruits from your era that actually ended up getting killed because they got to to involve with the side?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's so there's no internal. fairs per se. There's just us keeping each other honest. Yeah. And us keeping each other safe.

If one of us is compromised from going somewhere, we're going to get an ambush and there's a shit going to happen. Yeah. We don't want any of that. So we keep each other safe, you know?

And also, we had all these background checks and stuff like that. Every year, people would come to our houses. Surprise, house business. Counted a number of TVs in our house. And like, when did you get that? Did you have the receipt for it?

Like, this is the level of scrutiny. you were getting. Wow. Right. So, but we were cool with it because everybody's, you know, so everybody's on, you know, you're like, we can trust each other. But the problem with it is the dimension of time and need changes with each individual. I mean, you could be uncorruptible because you're unmarried and don't have, you know, but then you get married and you have kids. And the needs change. Yeah. And the desperation changes. And it's Mexico. And pay cops shit. How much were they paying you as kind of these elite federal?

I was a regional sub commander so I was running somewhere in the vicinity of $3,000 a month. Good money though. In Mexico. Regional sub commander. That's pretty good money. Roughly around. Yeah. To 200, $2,700 to $3,000 a month.

Yeah. Which it sounds great that it's not that. that. Another issue is that you, at that time, and I don't know now, at that time, there's no way in hell you could get credit for anything as a cop in Mexico. So think about this. You go to work as a cop in Mexico, which means now means you can't get a credit card. You can't get a credit loan. You can't credit to get a car or a house automatically. Why would you become a cop? Why, though? What is that? It's a cultural thing. And I don't know why that is. There's some places that make exceptions. But as soon as you walk into a bank and ask to get a line of credit and you say that you're a cop, you, there was there was a conversation and you wouldn't get it. This is Mexico.

And if people had never heard this before, this is what I'm here for, I guess. These are the details that I want to share. That's, well, first of all, how is that? They're not been some kind of class action lawsuit. I may sound like the most naive person in the world. But why is that not, that's like a constitutional discrimination issue? Mexican police are probably one of the most neutered when it comes to rights. Yeah.

Organizations in Mexico. They don't have a right to unionize. They don't have a right to strike. Like it's, they can't speak to the press. Like it's in the contracts. it's it's it's it's it's it's it's one of the here's another one and this might have changed if you're a cop in mex if you go if during the time that I was active

if you went into one of these police organizations in any state in Mexico and then you decided to quit because you had an issue or something like that and you wanted to come back you're automatically disqualified from joining any single police agency in all of Mexico unless you have some sort of connection if you believe to a police organization in the past. Wow.

It's like vendetta. It's like vengeance. If you want to create your worst enemy, that's how you do it. And that's why Mexico is the way it is. It made enemies out of people like myself. I'm currently in the U.S. I get paid by the government to train to show them how to do interesting stuff. And people in that realm are impressed by whatever.

I know how to do. And I always tell them most of the people that I used to work with knew way more than I do. Wow. And where do you think they're working now? Yeah. Do you think they stayed on? Of course. To be treated like second class citizens literally.

It is one of the most hard. It's one of the most difficult jobs on the planet, realistically. And they make it really hard down there. The government does. Why do you think that is? What do you think is really going on? It's a stigma. It's a stigma.

You know, it's a authority thing. You know, I get this. It kills me here in the U.S. Man, most of the online attacks I get are from the fact that it was a cop in Mexico. And there's no way in hell you can be a cop in Mexico without being corrupted somehow or being a horrible person. You know, you get that in these states when you say that. Hey, it was a cop in Mexico. What comes to your mind?

Corruption. How much money did you get? You know, all that shit. So it's, think about that. Every now and then I tell people that like approach me about that job. Like, would you change anything? Fucking everything, man. Culture is just, the policing in Mexico and the culture around it and the way the cops are treated in general.

In a lot of ways, deserved. Yeah, there's horrible police officers in Mexico that have done horrible things. Yeah. but there's others that haven't, you know, and you don't hear about them, you know? And you don't see that getting, improving with the political class that keeps going to the left or the world left.

So I recently did some training down there for some agencies in Mexico through the company that I'm now a part of. And it was shocking to see how backwards things are. When I was active, the federal police before I left, the federal police was

professionalized. I mean, some of them had career paths. They had an online crimes division. Like, legit. They were doing shit. They were doing stuff. They were corrupt shit, too. There was some of corrupt shit going on and stuff. But they were trying, you know? All that's gone. all of that is militarized now what used to be a command center

with a communication sour an intelligence thing surveillance now it's just a military barracks with a bunch of mattresses on the ground and a bunch of dudes in the back of trucks patrolling so there's any effort to legit do something

professional or scientific or figuring out how to create this police force to fight this organized crime in Mexico all that's gone it's reverted to stand your ground patrol nothing's happening and we'll

go after them on our own terms you know that's what you see now and you see the big busts of headline kingpins I call them kingpins that make the headlines uh how is that how is the military

able to do that if they don't have good cops like you doing like real investigative police work I mean cops again cops are going away in Mexico I think we're that's what it's feels like the whole aspect of Mexico being militarized now. Yeah. And that's where we're heading towards, I guess.

A national military police of some sort. Yeah. They're not interested in young guys that were, you know, from the ground up to do a professional police effort, like the ones we did. That's not the current approach is to basically simplify everything and, you know, militarize everything, I guess. What about the war on drugs? Like, you know, clearly in the U.S., there's the paradigm is shifted to this place where we see that the, you know, draconian sentencing laws of the Reagan era. And, you know, going after drug dealers hasn't stopped drugs. Yeah. Hasn't stopped drug use.

But it's great for business. It's great for business, of course. Ford Mordorra Company. Chevrolet sells a bunch of cop cars in Mexico that are paid for by tax dollars from you and me. Yeah. So, but what about in the war on drugs in Mexico? Yeah. Because, you know, we see this, as you've shown us, there's a huge demand for drugs in Mexico. Yeah.

And you guys have your own war on drugs internally and fighting the people that are setting drugs to us. Where is that at now, opinion-wise? I think there is no war on drugs in Mexico. There's no war on drugs in Mexico. There's what you see is like you see this mention of like by the federal authorities. They mentioned them as criminal organizations and criminal groups that are being sponsored by what they're dealing with the United States. That's that's kind of like the narrative. These are these are threats that are endemic to Mexico, they're endemic to Mexico, but they're being formalized and created by the United States.

So the blame is here in the minds of the of the Mexicans, I guess, you know. When it comes to like a drug war, that's something that people in Mexico equate to Felipe Calderon because he's the one that has that rhetoric. But with the current state of affairs, with the current president, there is no drug war. Nothing's happening. You know, we're safe. Everything's fine. They're just making it up and it's all, you know, it's all the past administration.

administration's fault, basically. That's the, that's the way they handle it. Most, most of Mexico is segmented. You have Monterey, you have Baja, you have Mexico City, you have all these, these specific states are very important where some of these cartels come out of, it's like Sina Loa. But most of politics comes from central Mexico, and it's very detached from the realities of most of Mexico. It's our California. totally it's our california you know completely detached from the realities of other parts of mexico like uh we have uh we had a situation in chappas um where uh local local new generation cartel started fucking fighting for power yeah and we had il mayosamba of the scene of law cartel

federation send a whole contingent of armed personnel across the fucking country into Chappas. Somehow they weren't seen on the roads by the military down there. And they basically got into a firefight over control of the territory. Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, the army of the

the Kaibiles SF guys and the Guatemalans were basically ready to shoot across the border. All this shit is happening in Mexico. The Zetleana the revolutionary groups basically said that

that they're taking a vacation because it's one thing to fight the government, but it's another thing to fight the cartels. Right. And they're not about that life. So a lot of the co-ups are actually being closed. Wow. So think about it. Decades-long revolutionary fight by the SETLN is being ended within the span of a few days

by two revival cartels fighting and out for control in the area. Mexico is in such a bad state. in general. I mean, it's one of the most violent presidential periods on the planet. It's more violent than the one Calderon had. And I'm not comparing them both because both of them were horrible. Both of them were mismanaged.

Both of them had a shit ton of corruption in them. But there's something has to give. And I think that's what we're seeing now. I think at some levels of government, specifically the military levels of the government, they're looking for some sort of control or restraint at a national level as we head into the elections. This rhetoric that is being bipartisanly talked about here in the U.S.

about naming cartels, a cartels a terrorist organization, is making them really nervous. Wow. It's making it really nervous. And I think that's what we're seeing now, this election season push to try and make the citizenship like, oh, these guys are actually making a dent and the problems. As you said, you know,

You cut one head off the snake. We just caught three heads off snakes recently. And they're already, you know, the head of security for the Chapo Guzman's sons was probably, you know, not on the job that day. Right. Which means that somebody else is probably on that job now. You already saw some high-level assassinations on this side of the border recently. Really? In L.A.

of certain people that were related or associated with some of these cartels down south. So there's already, the pieces are already moved. I think whatever is settling down in Mexico is specifically related to creating a new status quo where it's not afraid of the U.S. sending Reaper drones down there to try and kill the terrorists down in Mexico. Because realize this. If the U.S. does, you know, declare them a terrorist organization. It's going to give the U.S. a bunch of excuses to take out everybody that isn't part of the program, just like it did before.

So there's all, there's, there's, you know, Saddam Hussein was not a part of Al Qaeda. Can we connect? Correct. Can we agree with that? Sure. But he was a state sponsor of terrorists. Do you actually see that happening? I think that's, I think that's where headed.

Do you think the military in Mexico wants that? Do you think the cartel wants that? Nobody wants that. I think the U.S. is finding itself against the wall now. Think about this. What's the U.S.? Think about what the only foreign policy issue in the U.S. that we have right now that is bipartisan.

Coming from Mexico? No, but as foreign policy in general. That's bipartisan. The only ones that I've seen is the committee. The support of Israel. is this. It's poor for Israel. It's pretty bipartisan. Not really. But I don't know.

But I see this effort right now and this real big effort to try and put these people into the category of a narco-terrorist organization, right? And do they fall into that category? I mean, you tell me. I mean, ISIS learned how to use videos of people getting murdered and assassinated by the cartels. That's who they learned that shit from. All those I produced videos, they learned that shit from the cartels. Those drones that were utilized in Ukraine

and some of the drones that utilized in the attack on Israel, some of that technology was perfected in Mijokan. Wow. Wow. Right? And Mexico has a tendency to basically be at the center of some of these creation of things,

like these weapons, designs and the first time I saw a drone being utilized criminally wasn't Tijuana. You know? Oh my God. A quad drone. A big ass quadrone that crash landed near

the San Diego port of entry. It had a big meth brick on it. And I saw it. I didn't know what it was. I never seen a drone. I saw, I've seen drones before but not that big with those it was a quad drone.

thing with these tubes and had a made in China logo on there. But this big, and then I was like, wow, this is going to be a thing, right? Yeah. We shut off. Are they doing those? Are they still using drones to bring in bricks? I think so. I'm not, I mean, I don't know. You've been out for a little bit. I've been out for a little bit, but they were utilizing them a lot at a certain period down there. And would you shoot those down?

No. No, you can see them. It's a dark sky above. They would focus on dark nights. So you would just pick it up on the radar. No radars. One of them crashed. Everybody shot off their sirens. Uh, so you're not going to shoot anything.

Oh, my God. But this is a while back. This is 2011 or some shit like that. In the course of your investigation, did you discover any drug tunnels in T.J? Yeah, we found a, we found a few. Yeah. Well, the Army then, you know.

because the army was always responsible for finding drug tunnels, you know? Yeah. And when somebody found a drug tunnel, I mean, that's a big fuck up. That costs the cartel a lot of money. So is that a rival? Is that a rival snitching on another one? I will say this.

It was never through investigative police work. It was never through just doing good cop work. It was always through a snitch. It was always a snitch. Yeah. And when you would get shit like that, it was, you know, immediately apparent that

somebody was fucking somebody over you know as far as cartel and cartel shit you know the army was always called what do they do after they find him shut it shut the tunnel down do they fill it in

uh so there's always a volunteer you know that goes down uh you know the depending on you know I remember this one it had a

a very very sophisticated ventilation system in there. It had air and light, had a drainage system. It had a very specific little weird machine that they used to circulate circulate oxygen in there. So everything was documented

when they found that space. Basically, they found some sort of weird connection with mining in Guanawhateau, in a mining industry in Guantua. silver mining industry in Juanawato. Basically, mining engineers, who were trying to figure out what to do, we're basically building some of these tunnels.

Some of them were sophisticated. Some of them were fucking garbage. Yeah. Like a few stories about cavens and some of them, basically people finding half tunnels, you know, people that attempted. Yeah. Yeah.

They're usually reported on both sides, you know. usually somebody walks them to see where they come out unarmed yeah yeah the soil in that part of the country

and the part of the country is different I've heard multiple attempts by companies that were very successful in Israel detecting tunnels the tunnels that go under the wall there trying to implement that shit in this part of the world

doesn't work you tell me wow so I've seen attempts to try and figure that out but I haven't seen them work specifically on my end I don't know

how many of them are operating if I did I would probably be a dead man you know yeah but there's there's a lot of tunnels on that border that's a that's a certainty were you ever approached by one of the sides

during the war constantly yeah it's always through it's always through intermediaries Yeah, lawyers. Oh, please, tell us. And how did you not take the money, Ed?

So I don't want to die, number one. So in Mexico, if you're a cop, you, depending on the, on the, on the arrest or whatever it is, we found this guy that had a shit ton of rhihpnal pills. Rihpnal is heart medication. It's a downer. shit done guy distributed through hypnol pills

for somebody so he caught him with all that shit and in Mexico you're supposed to do a caro back then it was this way

Mexican legal system actually changed while I was in it right so it's not like here where you go to a courtroom and there's like a jury and shit like that

the judge is right there and there's a dude right there writing everything down And the accusatory part is over there and there's the other part is over here and they're just there with them in this fucking room. Just going back and forth. You said that you found him like this. Yes, I did.

This is what I wrote in there. Okay. But how could you have found him like this if this video shows he's there? You know, that's how they work on it. These fucking cartel lawyers are fucking sharks. Yeah. Sharks. They'll take everything apart.

So I was one in one of those rooms. and they were taking the shit apart of me, you know, and my documentation and some of the arrests that we did. They get them out, you know. While I'm walking outside, I get approached by one of them. And he's like, yeah, you look like you need like a lawyer like me on your side. And he has me one of his lawyer cards. And he says, if you ever want to talk about, like, actual work.

work. We can talk. There's people out there that are interested in. You're working for them. Wow. And you're like, you know. Yeah. And, you know, what do you say to that?

And there's no, there's no training for that. No. And that you hear about it to other people. And you just take the card and the, the, what I've learned out of all of these is best thing you can do is not say anything. Just take the car. Just be quiet about it. Yeah. So cartel lawyers are about as honest as cops down there. Oh, yeah. So they're not, you know, because obviously mob lawyers, criminal lawyers in the U.S.,

they know most of their clients are guilty. That's pretty obvious. And also, it also realized, this is Mexico. The judges are cartel judges too. The state prosecutor or the federal prosecutor might be on one of those sides. I was going to ask you that. So did you ever have to go to court? if you would make a pinch, arrest somebody for on a body or on some drugs. That drugs were gone or the cash was gone out of the documentation? Yes. That happened a lot.

Yeah. So would you show up like excited to make, like help make a prosecution? And then you never show up excited to any fucking federal anything in Mexico. So you show up and you're obligated to show up in some of these things, you know, or else you're, you're subject to arrest if you don't show up to some of these things. So I remember showing up to one where it was clear that there was a lot of money involved and it was stated in the documentation. And then I was told several times that that money wasn't in the documentation

and that we shouldn't talk about that because it wasn't relevant to anything that we were talking about there. How much money was it? You remember? A lot, at 300 grand. Gone. And then do you remember, do you remember a judge dismissing a case or letting something go that was obviously prosecutable? Constantly. Constantly.

And is that, is there a Tijuana political elite that is. It was a state level thing. So it's a Baja. Yeah. There's a Baja political elite. Is there a political elite that, and clearly, you know, from judges to lawyers to, yes, politicians that, that. operate on the surface as legitimate characters, but they're all dirty. They all go to the same country club. Is that like a, is that a myth or is that pretty much how it goes? It's not,

that's not where, that's not where the power lies, I guess. So with some of these judges, you have to realize there's three levels in Mexico, so local, state and federal. So depending on the issue you're facing, if it's something related to firearms or drugs of a large quantity, that's a federal thing. And these judges aren't appointed by the local anything. These guys are appointed by Mexico. Yeah. Like this Mexico City basically, the capital.

Right. So they come in with interest of their own. So it's a shit show. So they're even less loyal. Yeah. And also they'll just leave after they're done. Oh, so they'll fly in. If there's a federal case in TJ.

They'll be there for a while. Yeah. And then they'll leave. Yeah. And they'll be reassigned somewhere else. So it's the corrupt. is everywhere. Also, another

reason why cops, like being a cop in Mexico sucks, do you think that my office sent me along to some of these processes with my own legal representation? You would be lucky. You would be fucking lucky if you

had somebody with you from your legal apartment. Sometimes we would show up there alone. When I say alone, I mean, with our guys outside, taking care of us if some shit happened, but we were there alone talking to some of these fuckers, you know? Yeah. So it's, you talk about the levels of this and how complex it is and how bad it is.

And I also realized this, while I was in, the legal system changed in Mexico. How so? It became, basically it became more like the U.S. where there's a judge and a jury and there's a like it turned into that later on a little bit more it became a bit more streamlined

and professional. You actually had to write a shit ton of documentation for a single arrest now which hampered even things even more because there's more paperwork involved to imagine this. I came out of the Academy at 21

I had to teach myself how to write some of the documentation and how to write some of the reports for myself. And all of a sudden, I learned this from people that were there older than I was that were part of this old legal system. And all of a sudden, I'm midway there and I'm basically have to learn this new legal system that's going to be about to be adopted. And I have to learn all the protocols, paperwork, and all the ways that I have to now process a detainee, an object that the detainee had or witness interviews. And basically all of us had to go through retraining.

I had to go back to the academy for about sick, for about three months. What you're was that? It's a 2012-ish era, I think. Okay. So what year did you really see the war start to turn? And what eventually, how did that resolve itself? Yeah. Who won? What happened? And when did the bodies start to, when did the murders start to go down? When did everything start to calm down? So my part of the war was Baja specifically. So you saw You saw a municipal police that was cleansed, not completely, but it was cleansed. Yeah. You saw a actual, effective municipal local police force responding to things again.

You saw a diminished and weakened cartel presence in Baja because now they were not only afraid of the military, of the police, of the cops, the cops, the municipal police showing up to something. But now they're worried about us, the army, and the federal police showing up as well. And you can pay one of them off, but not all them off. Nobody's that rich. So things started to change. Eventually, they arrested the main guy that was causing all these issues. Who was it?

El Teo. Three Letters, they used to call him. They arrested him in Baja Sur. Okay. He was hiding out there. And this is a story that as I recently heard this part of the story from Lizaola himself. He got to see his interview, his arrest interview. And he mentions that the reason why he was living in Bahasur is because Tijuana became too dangerous for them.

And the danger was made by us. Right. So that's why they left. Wow. So that changed things. I think what probably happened is that that part of his, that part of the conflict in their ultra-violent efforts, because they had no issues, was changed by another more discreet organized crime element that came in behind them. And they quieted things down, basically, because it was bad for business across the board. So there were some sort of weird.

Yeah, it's hard to keep up that level of violence for too long. Do you think the cartels have been weakened by marijuana becoming legal in the U.S.? Not at all. Really? Okay. Not at all. So this is an exclusive because that's what we all assumed, including myself, you know, the idea was, let's make drugs legal in the U.S. or as legal as possible. and that will eliminate the cartels in Mexico.

Well, it did kill a lot of their business. You know, 60% of the wheat, 60% of their revenues in drugs were from U.S. marijuana sales. But what did those fields now, what do those fields now contain? I don't know. Poppy. They just, they switch crops. They don't only switch crops, but you think they don't make more money off a poppy field with a fentanyly-laced heroin than a brick of marijuana back then? Sure, but less people consume, far less people consume, fentanyl than heroin.

Most of these criminal organizations were already involved in illegal marijuana, manufacturing and packaging in sales in the U.S. before the legalization happened. So when the legalization happened, I imagine that some of these people were already in the kitchen cooking up the legal side of it as well. Right. So, no, it didn't affect them at all.

Not on our side, when we saw the legalization aspect of it. All we saw was a shift. Poppy fields are now the thing. Tell us about those. You said they're heroin, they're growing fentanyl-laced heroin. No, no, no. They're not growing fentanyl.

How do that? They're growing heroin? Yeah. They're growing poppy fields, basically. Some of these classic historical marijuana, rich places where they would grow some of these plants, then put them in bricks, press them,

cross the Gulf of Baja. Yeah. You know, I'm preaching to. Yeah. Cross the, Cross the Sea of Cortez. Get put on cars.

Mm-hmm. All the way up. That pipeline is still there. But now it's guns going down and other things coming up in that pipeline. When the legalization happened on our end, we noticed weed coming down. and heroin coming up. And we were weirded out about the heroin because heroin's always been

a thing in Mexico. It's always been there. But I remember the first time I saw heroin. It was in La Libertat. Colonna Libertad. It's a neighborhood right on the border. I walked into this room and I smelled it before I saw it.

If you ever smelled like black tar heroin, it's a very memorable smell. I mean, I remember the smell of it just from junkies sweating it out. Yeah, that's how pungent it is. It was a ball about that big that was in the middle of a table. It was being, you know, pinched off. And so I remember that smell. This wasn't like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, uh, this heroin that we were seeing now was not like that.

It was a light brown color, powdery, uh, heroin. And, um, it's just different, you know, um, um, we started seeing. what we were confusing with meth or meth precursors. And then people just interested in the fact that there's this new thing called fentanyl. And we didn't know anything about it. You know, we just vague, you know, drawings of all the molecule looks, you know, side exploitation shit that we got to see from certain places. There was a place that actually cooked it in Mexico.

that was one of the first fentanyl fabrication spaces that they found in Mexico. Where was that in Mexico? I think it was around some of the pharmaceutical industry in Mexico. So like on the east side. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a moment in time, like around this time where marijuana legalization happened and this whole change was happening. Where it started to be very apparent that the way.

ways that people were manufacturing meth at an industrial scale in Mexico was because they were utilizing legal channels that are related to a pharmaceutical industry in Mexico to basically bring in everything they would need and just cook it and within the pharmaceutical industry. So they weren't they weren't being that clandestine in that time and they had, you know, a lot of connections to China. that's where we first started to see some of those connections. The high-level arrest of a businessman, Sen Li J. Gagon, then had like $100 million at his house in Mexico City, who was related to some of these pharmaceutical practices and industry. He was like Mexican Chinese, Chinese-Mexican?

Yeah. And he was like, hey, give me my money back. They didn't give that money back $100 million. So were they actually, were the cartels actually experimenting with fentanyl sales before that they opened up an American market for it? That's the stories that we heard, like certain drug markets on the northern part of the country,

infusing this low-quality heroin that they were trying to figure out if they could sell. I'm not sure where the idea it came from. I've heard stories of Chinese chemist, you know, figuring things out and fentanyl already being a thing in and of itself by its own and somebody saying peanut butter and jelly. Somebody at some point said that.

There's this, and again, these are hearsay things. I don't know anything as a fact, but these are things I hear from colleagues and people that are still working down there of this homeless population situation that they had somewhere down there. And a certain criminal organization

basically utilizing fentanyl to eliminate the homeless population down there. They lowered the yield, they lowered the potency of a single yield for a month. Of heroin. Of heroin. Yeah. Because they would lace it with fentany. Right.

And then they kicked it up. And basically overdosed everybody in that space. Make everybody's tolerance, go down. and then kick the pose. This is something I've heard. This is like some scary stories on the campfire. I believe it.

Yeah. And that's the first time I heard about Fenton. Mm-hmm. You know, what we saw is after marijuana legalization is that these guys were already, they're ready for it already. Right. They saw within an opportunity to launder money, something we've seen recently in a place like Colorado.

Of course. Of course. which is fascinating. It only makes sense, though. So I know they were ready for that legalization. So I didn't, I don't see it as any sort of a catastrophic thing for. And if we're talking about that period, the main cartel back then was the Cina Law Federation of Cartels. I guess.

Cina Law Cartel. It didn't hit it. It didn't hurt them. So then what is the situation with the cartels? Are they weakened? are they stronger or are they the same as they were a generation ago, 15 years ago, during the big wars? I think you're, I think you're, what you're seeing now, you know, we're seeing El Mayo Sambada of the Sina Llora cartel operating all the way into Chappas to fight the new generation cartel. Right.

So these guys are moving across the fucking map. So you're seeing these two large organizations. and I think that's where we're heading towards just two. You think it's going back? Oh, you think it's just going to become two organizations? I think it's going to become two organizations that are controlling the border. And when this happens, that's when the U.S. needs to fucking figure shit out. That I know of, and people can correct me out there,

there's no large segment of the border wall that is controlled by the new generation cartel right now. There's fights and skirmishes happening on the eastern part of the border wall in Tijuana. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And people need to have realized that that is probably related to some sort of push for control of the area by the new generation cartel. But once a new generation cartel has a corridor into the United States, like controls a major segment of that border wall, just like Cina Loa does now, that means that their next fight is going to be up here. It's not going to be up down there anymore.

Now they're going to be fighting for a market up here because now they have a corridor and now they have a pipeline competitor to see. Sina Loa here. That's what's coming. All right. Interesting. It's different than our friend Luis Chaparro, good friend of the show. Respect his work. He's great. He's great. He has a different take. He thinks his theory is that

the cartel only fights up to that wall and then everything that happens on our side, on state side is all loose independent networks. A lot of white guys, a lot of Americans or Mexican Americans, but nobody's on payroll.

anymore. Yeah. You know, everything has been decentralized. And kind of what you're saying is the opposite. I don't know. For me, so this is, he's saying that there's nobody fighting up here. It's true. But there will be.

The thing is, this is the thing I think that I'm, it's a, it's a forecast. We had a operation on a Kana happening here in the States and arrested about 80 members of the cartel, the CJ&E, the new generation cartel. So they're here. So saying that they're not here is wrong. The people that are operating up here from my perception of what I see, second generation, third generation, Mexican American, some of them. Yeah, white people.

People in politics as well. There's a lot of that in there. And in the States too, if you look deep enough. what I'm saying is that these Cina Lola definitely has a presence in the States go to Chicago go to the Garmin District in L.A. Yeah.

You know, go to a few places here in the States and tell me that they're not here. You know, they don't do things overtly in the United States like they do in Mexico. Right. And even in Mexico, they're very restrained. They try and be. Yeah.

That's not the United Generation Cartel. Right. You know. what I'm saying is that they will eventually make it up to the border wall, which they already are there, gain control over a large section of it. Now that they have control over a large section of it means that they have a large pipeline of substances now coming into the states that they control.

And who are they going to compete with? And that's when you start seeing the violence up here. I'm not saying that the cartel is going to, the senologue cartel is going to roll up with a convoy here. But you're going to start seeing it. elements are very familiar of cartel on cartel warfare and violence that happened down there right you're gonna start seeing some of that stuff up here that's my theory i don't know i might be wrong what's life like for you now and what were some of the when you left the force when you're forced

to leave what were like some of the hardest parts about becoming a civilian well i mean most of us were pushed out. Yeah. I didn't have a lot of choices, so at that point I had a two-year-old and a path to citizenship. Her mom's American, and she's American too. Oh, nice.

So I was trying to figure that out. But realistically, it wasn't in my... No. Yeah. changes happened down there a lot of a lot of the people that were fired got back and it was a shit show all the white people or the americans san diegans moving down to tijuana for cost of living we all know that's driving cost of living up in tj will that do anything to change uh some of the violence or the the politics it's it's uh it's back it's so bad violence wise right now and again it's a

perception, people feel unsafe in the Tijuana right now. It's so bad that they're calling my former boss back and he's about to run for mayor. Wow. That's how bad it is. Wow. He had a security conference and I was there for the security conference and he was like,

yeah, if you wanted to bring the back, we can bring the band back together basically, he said, you know. What do you think you'll go back? I don't think I would. There's better money in the private sector, you know. I just want to I just want to, it's just one piece of mind in life, I guess.

When I left that, when I left that job, I didn't have a plan, you know? Also, there's no retirement in police work in Mexico that I know of. So another reason why you should fucking be a cop in Mexico. Oh,

dude. So, and also they owe me my, my liquidation, money. They haven't paid me. What is liquidation? I mean,

basically, if you, if you leave that job, they'll give you like a portion of money. Oh, like severance pay. severance. Okay.

They haven't. To this day. I'm waiting for my severance pay. But so that stopped and I had to look for options. So I crossed a border and figured my shit out. Yeah. I think number one is the learning about words that I didn't know about in the States. So when I first moved to the States, I was living around Camp Pendleton.

So most of my weird. weird-ass friends were, you know, Marines. I was living with a Navy SEAL. Like my host family in the States, I was a Navy SEAL, a Navy SEAL, a guy named Dan Stan Stan Shelfield. Amazing guy. His wife, Kelly.

So I was like learning about words like PTSD from these people or TBIs or alcoholism. Or depression. So I started figuring out that a lot of the issues that I had weren't normal, I guess. My alcoholism started being glaringly apparent to me because now I was

I was in a place where people don't get blacked out drunk every time they go drinking. You know, I'm in the States now, I guess. At least they don't get in their car afterwards, you know. Oh, yeah. Well, we do a lot of that in Mexico. So I started figuring things out my issues, specifically mental issues. Right. You know, there's no therapist down there.

PTSD doesn't exist. I didn't know about PTSD or anything like that. And they give you no support, I assume, mental health-wise as a cop. I went through a prison riot. The second prison riot in Tijuana, it's a pretty bad one. I was part of the group that went there to pacify it.

It was horrible. It was a fucking horrible. thing that we responded to. And after that, you mind telling us a little bit? Cartels were fighting on the outside and they had people on the inside and wanted to figure out if they could break them out. So they started right inside of the prison. This is a prison that is in the center of Tijuana, basically. So as soon as they break out, there's houses there.

So every single cop in Baja responded to that shit, I guess. There's people shooting from the inside out. somehow they gained firearms, executed a bunch of people inside. It was a shit show. And you saw those bodies? Yeah, so I saw them playing soccer with a head in that football field.

They had the football space they had inside. They burned a bunch of the rivals in the middle of that place. It could smell the bodies when you were driving there. It was a bad time. Yeah, it's something you see in Baghdad. It was a bad time.

Any wartime. When we went back to the office after that, the guy was in charge, I just pulled out a six-pack. And that was the therapy. And that was the therapy, sure. And most of these events that happened like that was like, hey, take a few days off.

And somebody was put in charge to grab you and take you out drinking. That was like the official guideline. It's also that and also suicide watch. So you're always, if you had somebody They went through some shit. You would have somebody, a buddy system, you would attach him to him. So you'd take him out to get chit-faced drunk and get his hand off shit.

Yeah. And take his gun when he's drunk. Right. So he doesn't shoot himself. Did that happen? A shit ton of times. Did you know guys that killed themselves? The suicide was very prevalent in my life.

Again, you've heard me describe police work in Mexico so you can see why that I learned about all that, but I didn't know that it was like, oh, this is not how it works everywhere. Yeah. So it dawned on me how abnormal my life. life was up here. So I started figuring shit out, you know, processing it, writing some of that down. Yeah. At this point, I had a weird, nameless, faceless Tumblr account that turned into a

Facebook account and then turned into an Instagram account where I was posting pictures and lessons learned and just weird stuff about my experiences in Mexico. And I already had a weird cult following. Right. Right. So when I came to the States, I had that already there. Oh, did Rogan see that? You were on Joe Rogan before the years ago, before the pandemic.

Yes, three years ago. Yeah, he was a fan of the Instagram account. So I have a bunch of WhatsApp groups that are part of people that are still active in Mexico. So they send me the wildest shit. Like, the wild. That is gold. Yeah. You can charge people money just to watch that.

Well, I'd probably pay a monthly subscription just to see what you get sent. So we put, I started putting some of those videos up and, uh, and he started liking himself, some of them, you know. Yeah. It caught, it caught his attention. Uh, it caught a few people's attention. I, like, uh, news, I've talked, I've commented on the news, quoted a bunch of news agencies a bunch of times.

Uh, they started realizing that, oh, in my mind, I was kind of come to the U.S. and remake myself and turn myself into like, uh, I don't know, man, the yoga instructor? Yeah. I don't know. Sure. Something. And then it's then that it dawned on me that my experience is what is of value.

Yeah. So I had to relive those horrible experiences over and over again, basically, as a way to make a living through training that I do, the commentary, talking about some of these things. Yeah. So it's been complex on my end. Yeah. Has anyone ever tried you? Any old, like since you retired from the force, you never got an attempt on your life? I was never, again, I never played a side.

You never played a side. Number one. Most of the threats that are out there now probably stem from people that I used to work with. So I'm not worried about any of them, you know? And also, I'm not doing anything. Right. anything I speak about or talk about on any of these interviews or podcast isn't anything secret and or, you know, that nobody knows. You know, I'm not going to reveal any sort of sensitive information.

I'm just giving an opinion on how I see things. I know for a fact that some of them watch these, you know. Do you have any, are there any active cartel members in T.J that know you or, like, reach out to try to, like, I don't know. I don't have, I don't have any lines of communication that are direct to me because I don't want to. I don't want to be involved in any of that. And again, I'm not a cartel reporter. Yeah, yeah. I have, we have a news agency in Tijuana and Mexico specifically that we work with directly.

Demolet is the name of the New Jersey. It's an English news agency that reports from Mexico on cartel situations. So if anything of that nature, that goes to them. So again, I'm not involved in any of that. And yet, it's a worry. It's a worry. I've had it, but most of the negativity I've gotten, you know, of the issues that I've gotten, has been from Americans who are either offended by the way that I describe my home country. Yeah.

Which is kind of hilarious. Or that don't see me as trustworthy or shady because I was a cop in Mexico. Right. And I'm like, yeah. Defund the police. Trust me, they're defunded. It's a mixture of defunded police and just hate, man. It's, it's, uh, anybody, anybody from Mexico will tell you this. The worst enemy of Mexican is going to be another Mexican.

We can't see each other to succeed up here. So most of the threats that I've gotten, most of that negativity I've gotten has been from, you know, fellow, fellow Mexicans up here trying to figure their, their lives out. Yeah. That's most of it for me. What do you, where does such a loaded question? So to wrap, it sounds like Tijuana in some ways is better than it used to be. And some ways is even worse. Yeah.

It sounds like one half is like, you know, the zone al-Roha downtown is like, it's nice or never. Yeah. You could just walk around there, you know, it's like I feel no, I feel no, I feel no, fear when I'm down there. A bunch of Americans live there. A bunch of remote workers. Great. They built that new park right by the border wall, like by the ocean.

Yeah. You know? And then the dark side. But like the darkness is always there. Yeah. What do you think it goes in the next two years? Two to five years. Morena doesn't have a political rival.

so I think we're on a straight path. So whatever's happening now it's going to get consistently whatever that is. There is, Baja has always been like a beacon of change across Mexico. We had the first governor

that was from a rival political party in the history of Mexico in Baja. That was the first time that somebody was elected that was counter to the PRI party in Mexico. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Right. So Baha is a place where it has a tendency to influence change.

It's probably because it's right next to San Diego in California. Right. Which is the beginning of the change in America. It all starts on the left. So there's something about that. And if you can see some of the things that are happening now, we have a mayor in Tijuana who is hiding in the military and the army barracks right now because he has safety issues and concerns.

Meanwhile, the people in Tijuana are like, we can't hide in the military barracks. Right. Why are you there? Mm-hmm. Her head of security, former under-investigation cartel associate, apparently. So she basically brought a bunch of the people back that were arrested or under investigation by Lisaola. And she says that she had an attempt on her life, which nobody knows anything about.

And a lot of people are basically saying the attempt was on your security staff, not on you. That's what people are kind of saying. I'm not sure about it. But that's who we have as a mayor in Tijuana right now, and she's part of the Morena Party. And since security is such a big issue, it's going to be a big issue politically in the coming elections, there's no other name out there in Mexico

that has the power of Lizaola when it comes to security, and he's done it before. So that's going to be very disruptive if he goes in, if he comes into power. Right. So I don't know. When I say disrupt, I mean, he's, he has a tendency to change things.

And those changes usually, usually bring with them some turbulence. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like it could be, it's almost history repeating itself, you know? History, this is something that he told me, history doesn't repeat itself, but it oftentimes rhymes. Yeah, for sure. Sure.

The tools are different now, you know? Back when we were active and did our thing, nobody, we didn't have to worry about everybody being a camera. Yeah. So that's going to be a factor now. Some of the shit that we did, you know, we can get away with that shit now with everybody having a camera on. So that's going to be an issue. Legislation and legal systems have changed now.

So a lot of the freedoms he had back then are gone now because they've been legislated over and over again. And like all these things are now in place. He's going to be an enemy of the political class that is ruling the country. right now if he goes against them. Wow. So. Sounds like a populist. Populism's, it's all the rage, you know, from Trump to RFK.

I think, I think Mexico has gone through five years of left. And it's, I think in the next few years, it's going to grab the steering wheel. And it's probably going to do in Argentina. Wow. And we're going to go all the way to right at some point, maybe. Yeah, well, whatever works. You've got to try something, man. Yeah.

I'm hopeful. Good. I'm hopeful. Mexico has so much potential as a country. And there's a saying in Mexico, so far from God, but close to the United States, we are tied in many ways as a country to the United States. By blood, you know. When it's Christmas time, in Tijuana,

That's how you know that Mexico and the U.S. are not, you know, they're not separate. All the American families down there visiting their Aweelas and their team was fucking. You just realized that this is one big fucking group of people. And I understand that there is a need for separation and a political need for separation and building walls and borders and all that. It's needed. It's a safety feature for some people. and I get it. It's understandable.

As a region and as a country, the United States needs Mexico for what's coming. Yeah. Adwindling China, a bunch of enemies abroad. You know, Europe is about to kick it maybe at some point. So we're going to have to focus clear and near. I agree. China is, the next China is probably going to be Mexico. Yeah.

Yeah. Totally. So that's why people should be paying a lot of attention to what's happening on that border. what's happening in Mexico politically. Yeah. And what their tax dollars are doing in Mexico. Because to this day, American tax dollars are being utilized to pay for vehicles, gasoline, weapons, programs related to fighting cartels in Mexico. What's the solution, Ed?

Do you make drugs legal? Like full legalization? Some version of it. Where? Here in the States. Both countries. Mexico has absolutely not even the outline of a medical or welfare system of any kind that would be able to handle. Sustain that.

Full legalization. We would basically have to set up open air gravesites, I guess, where people dying in a long while, I guess. We're just not made. You don't have that. But I'm not an enemy of full legalization, you know. I'm really big really big supporter of personal responsibility but I

whatever whatever killing blow we thought that full legalization would have on criminal organizations is gone they're diverse they're diversified they've been diversified for years they're into really legitimate business

they're into real estate on both sides of the border they're into they're into mining yeah gas stealing gas for Pemex they're into you name it, they're into it,

protection rackets, they're into it, man. So whatever, whatever full legalization would do, I don't think, I don't think it's,

I don't think it's even, uh, anything that's going to change a lot. I mean, yeah, like we, where's full legalization worked before? Portugal,

countries, yeah, Portugal, uh, Switzerland, there was a big heroin problem in Switzerland. And so they, the government gives it out.

None of these countries are Mexico. No. These countries are Mexico and none of these countries have the problems that Mexico has. And that's going to add, I don't know, man. There are interests on the U.S. side that want to keep those drugs illicit. There are people making and companies making a shit ton of money from this drug war going on. There are new things on the horizon when it comes to do. drugs, you know.

Such as? Now, I mean, we're talking about pill presses being the new norm when it comes to some of the safe houses being found down south. Oh, right. Like for, for synthetics. Yeah. So you're in all. I mean, why would you have to have a drug tunnel when you can, you know, smuggle a shit done of

stuff in your purse? Yeah. In the form of a pill. You know, I think we're moving towards that. And also, like, it used to be. that you would find a joint on the ground, you'd be happy about it. Those days are gone now.

Yeah. So it's this weird new paranoid drug culture that were, there were kind of like seeing being brought up and these kamikaze users who are there just to fucking burn out.

Yeah, I don't get it. So I don't understand how. I don't know what the end game is for the market. So for me, I think what's coming is what's going to happen when, legit, this starts killing the market. What are they going to do next? You know? We've been asking that question. Yeah. And we can't get an answer except that it's worth it now because they're just making so much money off of it. They can't stop. Well, what's going to happen next,

and usually this is what happens, when you have an organization like that, that grows directly related to the sale and distribution of a substance like that or an activity, you know? We saw this in organizations that were specific tied to abduction for ransom. When that ends and the guy at the top can't pay the guys at the bottom, the guys at the bottom break off and go independent. Which they've already done so much of that it's like how much more can it splinter, you know? Well, maybe it kills all the drug addicts.

Maybe people stop taking drugs. Because they die. Well, I think we're inching. If you look at social media, if you look at TikTok, if you look at a lot of of the stories online. People are scared, you know. If you want to talk about all that don't use to Scruff McGruff bullshit

that they had in the 80s, all that stuff, I think if kids off drugs. That's because drugs were that fun. I know. But now this is the best counter drug. Totally. The propaganda out there. If you've used anything, you could die.

Just the very high probability of OD. Just a little bump cocaine, fentanyl. Yeah. Just a little, this pill, fentanyl. Hey, just this, fentanyl. So in a roundabout way, the cartels could be cleaning up the country. They could be eliminating drugs. They're eliminating a vast amount of the youth of this country.

And that, I think the loss of the generation of young people in this country from fentanyl is not going to be felt until. until we get into a period when we see this massive hole in our... Yeah. Like, where are all the people from this generation? You know? Where are all the innovations from these guys? You know?

Why aren't these guys starting a band like the doors and singing about the end? They're dead. That's why. Because this is a dead end drug, I guess. Yeah. Well, Ed, we're going to cut it off there because we could go all day. And it was a great time, dude.

I'm really honored to have you. Where can they find you? What would you like to plug? Sure. A few things I would want to plug. Please. So if people want to find out more, just follow along. We have a website called www.

www.edsmanifesto.com. That's where people can find a little bit about all the stuff we do. We have a charity. We support a bunch of up-income fighters in Mexico out of a gym in Dulume. So we feed them basically two times a day. Oh, wow. We do classes all over the world country and all over Mexico related to counter-abduction, personal safety, and how to figure, how to take responsibly for your own situation.

And also we basically talk about a lot of these issues with different people that survived that fought it. You know, we just had a guy that was in the California penal system on the podcast, and we talked a little bit about some of those issues. Nice. So if people want to find out more, just go to www.edu. It'smanifesto.com or follow us on Ed's Manifestal Radio podcast on Instagram on Instagram. And then your podcast is on your website too? Yeah. Manifesto Radio podcast on YouTube.

And you can find us on Instagram as well. So before this go, before like I cut it off. I've been up here for a few years now in the States. I love this country a lot. I wouldn't want to be in any other place. I don't like the politics here, you know? Like I joke around with it that I can't vote at the moment, but I will at some point in the next year

once I go through my process. I think there is hope. I'm not a fearmonger that everything's fucking bad and he's going to go to hell. but I think it needs dialogue and its voices like my own of people that are actually in the fight down there being included in some of these conversations. The problems that are down there have been made by years of abuse of the people that are in power down there. That have taken advantage of their positions of power to set up corruption networks that span the border

that involved trafficking of people, of children, of women, of women, of women, of women, of women, women of drugs and some of these people are still in power down there when i got started in 2004 the government's answer to organized crime was putting a bunch of people like myself in the back of a truck and having them patrol a city to see if they could find somebody you know that was 2004 i just went back down there to train a group of people who are basically are the version of who we were now and what do you think they're doing the same thing rolling around on the back of a Nothing. But it's an electric truck.

It's a green vehicle. It has better gas mileage and that little green leaf on the side of it, but they're doing the same thing. And we're paying for it with our taxes. So the U.S., Americans should be very adamant about demanding what that money is doing now and there and what it is. How are tax dollars funding them? So there's a thing called Plan Medida, which is like a binational security agreement between Mexico and the United States, where basically, hires the Mexican government to fight its drug war for it on the other side of the border. Kind of the way that the U.S. is using the Mexican Guardia National to patrol its borders.

Oh, okay. So it's essentially like a military aid package. You're outsourcing your drug war to Mexico to Mexico. And I don't see a lot of people going down there with a fine-to-come to see where that money is going. And also the fact that, hey, we're paying for. this effort for things to change and this is the worst year when it comes to violence and trafficking in history. Wow. How is that possible? Yeah. So questions, I guess. Graft. Questions. Hell yeah. All right, Ed. Thank you for the man. Thank you for having me. It's a lot to chew on. Thanks, guys.

Take care.