The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - American Vigilante Reveals How He Went To WAR Against The WORST Cartels In Mexico

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

In one of the most unbelievable redemption stories ever told, Johnny sits down with Dave Franke, a man whose life has taken him from the streets of North Hollywood to the front lines of Mexico’s war against the cartels. After losing custody of his daughter, he made the unthinkable choice — to move to Zacatecas, Mexico, and join the state police, fighting the same cartels that once supplied the drugs that nearly killed him. He opens up about: -Growing up amid gang violence and drug addiction in 1980s Los Angeles -Surviving attempted murder charges and life on the run -Finding faith and redemption after nearly losing everything -His shocking experience inside the Zacatecas State Police — from brutal training to real-life gun battles with cartel convoys -Corruption, U.S. involvement, and what it’s really like to fight the cartels from the inside Raw, intense, and deeply human — this episode dives into the darkness of addiction, the chaos of Mexico’s cartel war, and the unlikely redemption of a man who walked through both. Go Support Dave! Website: https://www.davefranke.com/ This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Ava! Download the Ava app today, and when you join using my promo code CONNECT20, you’ll save 20% for your first year—monthly or annual, your choice. Surfshark! Go to https://surfshark.com/connectmitchell or use code CONNECTMITCHELL at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN! Ridge! Upgrade your wallet today! Get 10% Off @Ridge with code CONNECT at https://www.Ridge.com/CONNECT #Ridgepod Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Intro: Violence in Mexico & Dave Franke's Quest 02:32 Dave's Background: Childhood & Gang Life in LA 08:26 Falling Into Drugs & Drug Dealing 13:19 Addiction, Violence & Attempted Murder 21:56 Rock Bottom and Getting Sober 24:18 This Episode Is Sponsored By AVA! 26:27 Losing Custody & The Move to Mexico 27:57 Motivation: Fighting the Cartels 29:34 State Police: Joining & Training in Mexico 35:34 Corruption, Human Rights & Reality of Policing 41:13 This Episode Is Sponsored By SURFSHARK and RIDGE! 45:46 Cartel Wars: Operations, Shootouts & Survival 55:49 Life in Zacatecas: Convoys, Shootings & Daily Danger 01:06:06 Cartel Corruption, Moles & Betrayal 01:21:05 Election Violence & Political Corruption 01:43:33 Did He Make a Difference? Reflections on Violence 01:49:49 Leaving the Force, Law School, & Life After 01:57:46 Reflections on Mexico & Closing Thoughts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. You survived the Miami weekend, nailed the speech, and maxed out your credit card in the name of friendship.

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They've gone in there and killed everybody in the bars. Your own brothers might kill you or something or kidnap you. I've been offered on three different occasions a chance to join a cartel indirectly. Dave Frank has one of the most interesting life stories I've ever heard. He grew up as a gangbanger in Skinhead gangs all over Los Angeles. California. And from a young age, he was a prolific drug dealer and a drug addict. When he was 30 years old after getting sober, Dave decided to move to Mexico to fight the very same cartels that he used to work for. He ended up in Zacatecas, Mexico, in the middle of the war between the Sinaloa cartel and the ultra-violent Zeta cartel. Dave managed to join the elite unit of the Zakateka's special police force and worked for five years in some of the most intense combat anywhere in Mexico. Dave reveals in shocking detail, the life of a Mexican law enforcement officer, the deep corruption and brutality that exists at the highest levels,

the insane shootouts and betrayals by his comrades, and admits that his unit was working as a pawn of the government, who was in bed with the Sinaloa cartel in their battle to defeat the Zetas. And for more content with Dave, where he reveals secrets he's unable to share with the public, head over to Patreon, patreon.com slash the Connect show. This was an amazing talk. The Gringo Policia himself,

Dave Frank, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. This is one of the most unique situations that I've ever seen. A white guy. I mean, first of all, your background is insane. We'll go into it later. But you've got a drug addict's story. You've got drug addict energy. You've been all over the world doing crazy shit.

I feel like your decision after you lost custody of your daughter to go to Mexico and join the Zacatecas state police. I feel like that was like how a junkie goes and says, I'm going to kill myself with drugs. You decided I'm just going to go down to the most dangerous part of Mexico and just lose myself. And if I die, fuck it. It's like a crusaders mission. 100%. So first of all, you grew up in LA. Tell us about your background with drugs, with the gangs of North Hollywood back in the day. Like tell us about childhood. and how that, you know. My mother, I'm a Vietnam War baby.

I was born in 70. My mom got pregnant with me when she was 16 years old. She was hanging out with Charles Manson right before the Tate La Bianca murders. And my grandmother was a 50s lady. I mean, she was born in the 20s, but she is the living embodiment of June Cleaver. And my grandfather was a very hardcore person. There's some mental stuff that goes back on that side of the 50s. family. But long story short, when he was 13 years old, he had to take care of all of his five

brothers and sisters because my great-grandmother was not capable of taking care of him. So he forged his birth certificate. And he was kind of a wild person. And he was not faithful. So my grandmother and my grandfather got divorced. And in that, my mom growing up in the 60s, being turbulent with drugs and stuff like that, found her way over to Charles Manson, dropping acid in this type of stuff. and wasn't able to raise a child and my biological father who became a post-op transsexual before it was cool. Got his stuff off at Dr. Stanley Biber and Nina Wisconsin in about 1996. I had a two-hour talk with him before he went to do this, trying to talk him out of it.

He was a millionaire, had his own factory, which is how I got into engineering and metallurgy and all these other things. but getting back to the 1969, 1979, 1970, my mom had me when she was only 17 by one month. So I got put up in an illegal adoption, got sent to some doctor and lawyer, wasn't even given a name, never sucked on my mom's sit. And so any of like the cement that normal people would have anchoring them to some place, it's non-existent in my case. And it's not because my mother was a bad woman or my biological parent was a bad, woman. My dad was knocking off a piece before he was getting sent over to Vietnam. The dad that raised me was a Marine that just got back from Vietnam. And when my mother and he had their first

son, they decided to get me back. Grew up in Iowa, because that's where he was from, anyone west of the Mississippi goes to Camp Pendleton, east of the camp, east of the Mississippi, goes to Paris Island. So my dad was from, I call him both dad. So the dad that raised me, Leland, was as far away from California as you could get without being on the other side of the Mississippi. So when they got together and had their son, we went to Iowa. I learned out to hunt, learned out to shoot, grew up on farms until they got divorced and we go back to LA. Hey guys, quick reminder to please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and hit that alert bell so you get updated whenever we drop new content and smash that like button. Do me a

solid. Leave us a comment. We really, really appreciate it. All right, back to the episode. Okay. And what age is that when you're back in LA? That's right 13 years old. Okay. And so you're just you're just primed to have your life fall apart. It was a culture shock because to be super honest in Iowa, I didn't see someone that wasn't white until we went to California on vacation. And I even pulled on my mom's shirt the first time I saw a black person in a grocery store. Mom. And I did not, I legitimately innocently didn't know because I'd never seen anyone like that. I'm like, mom, what's wrong with that person? And she was, like, embarrassed because we were visiting my grandmother.

But when we go back to L.A. and you're thrown in, and people are making pipes out of bamboo and stuff like that with the little copper or bronze screens, smoking marijuana. This isn't anything that you would ever see in Iowa. And in the San Fernando Valley, half my family stoners and drug addicts and stuff like that. And the other half is I told you my biological dad and the dad that raised me. They've got military and the family going back to the Revolutionary War in this country. So, I mean, just too complete. And you fell into the drug use side of things. I fell into both of them because I loved shooting.

I've always loved weapons. I've always loved being outdoors, camping, doing all that. But definitely fell into the drugs and the gangs 100%. Yeah, you've got the lightning bolts, the SS lightning bolts. You're getting those taken off. I've been getting these taken off for a long time. But what was that about? Well, okay, so when I went to school, they had the busing system going on in Los Angeles Unified School District.

So no matter where you went to school, we lived right next to some projects that were on, the corner of Parthenia, and it's in between Ben Alden and Wilbur. They have projects there, and mostly it's a Latino barrio, but there's black people there. But there was black Crip gangs and Blood Gangs at school where you'd go to, and six of them were Crips, and they decided to push them off my skate. from California. We skate. I still skateboard. And they beat me up and took my skateboard. And the next day I went back to school with a bat when I walked right into the classroom because back then you could walk in the back and the front door went right in and just brained a dude. Wow. Yeah. But that was gangs were in LA public schools back in the 90s and 80s. It was everybody was in a gang. Well, there's yeah, there's Sunday gang going back there. You can go back to you like all the

breakdancing and stuff of the period, but they had, uh, someone asked me a while ago, what was on MTV at the time because MTV had come out like 1981. In 1984, 85, they had like all that electric breakdown music, Grandmaster Flash, and they were trying to do breakdancing to get people out of gangs into breakdancing and having nonviolent conflicts. But when I went to started going to school there immediately, that was definitely what was going on. What it's like now these days, I don't know. I haven't been in. school for a long time, but back then, that was definitely the case. So did you join a gang?

Did you join a white gang? There was a bunch of us that were skinheads and stuff like that, but that kind of like evolved organically. I knew that there were skinheads and stuff because we didn't have online back then. You just see like people here and there, and it wasn't organized in Klicish, like a lot of people that lived in the same neighborhood would be. Because I said it the other day, there was like 10 or 15 of us. and we're similar-like people, minded people,

broken homes, into violence, doing drugs, and not going to put up with shit just because we're white. And that's kind of how that evolved or coalesced into becoming a thing. There's gang names that we would say, like Galt Street Gang or whatever, but it's not really a gang. And then it would go into becoming like a more formal skinhead gang. But even when you're a skinned, you're into all that stuff, a lot of times you're not calling it a gang,

even though the government would call it that. And it kind of is, but you're not throwing up graffiti on the walls and this type of thing. You just felt like it was protection against the other gangs, the black gangs, the Latino gangs. I didn't even feel like it was protection. I felt like it was just a personal affirmation. I'm not putting up with your shit.

I don't like to cuss. But, I mean, that's just what it was. And then at the same time, just because I'm white, somebody's going to beat me up because they're Latino and there's a bunch of them or there's black and a bunch of it. I'm not doing it. So you smashed a guy's skull with a baseball bat. Yeah, 100%. Wow. Yeah, wound up in juvenile hall, San Fernando Valley Juvenile. Wow. Wow. And then even there was introduced to Pekoyama, Pari, Paru. And I was not a big kid. I mean, just meeting you, you're

incredibly tall. I'm not a tiny guy, but I'm not like huge either. You're like six, five, six, six, six, six, seven, something. I'm a smidging under like five foot ten. You know, so I'm kind of like average. I'm about 220. So I'm strong, but I mean, I'm not like big. So I was constantly getting into fights because intimidation wasn't going to be a thing. And when you have a bunch of kids and you live right next to a project and you're not Latino and you're not black and you're white, you know, that was a daily thing for my brother and I was just fighting.

It was just going to be the way that it was. and when did the drug use start to ramp up? I'm glad that you asked that. My mom has had a boyfriend that was a member of a club. A biker club. A biker club. And so anyways, one day he brings in this saran wrap. His name was Bill.

I'm going to leave his last name out. It starts with an L. And he brings in, and my brother and I are like 14 and 15 years old. He brings in a saran wrap that's burnt with a lighter ounce of, a ounce of speed and there's a lot of glazers in my family that have a glass company so that we had all these mirrors around he just pours that stuff out and it was the first time we did a line of speed and I mean previously we'd done marijuana but I don't really count that as like hard narcotic use or anything like that but that's where it started and then really after that we're like since we're into it

we had a cousin come out from Detroit and we just decided that we were going to start selling stuff and So we got some stuff from. I'm actually friends with the guy. I just had breakfast with him when I was in LA a couple weeks ago. Tony that had access to Latinos and stuff like that, and that's where we started selling cocaine. Okay. So it went from biker dope speed to Coke.

Coke immediately because that's what was available. I mean, we weren't always around my mom's boyfriend and stuff like that. He was off doing his thing. But Tony was always there because we went to school with him. Yeah. Okay. So you're selling Coke. Are you using Coke?

Yeah, totally, man. Okay. Of course. Okay. Did you become a full on tweaker, a full on junkie later on? Yeah, I would totally say that. You know, actually it's ironic that I've got 28 years sober, but before I got 28 years sober, I had two years sober and thought that I could drink normally,

but didn't want to use drugs. And as soon as I had a strawberry, Dacri, I was talking about it, I had a couple years sober and I showed up because I had a bike. I had money. They're asking, hey, do you want a pot? I'm like, no, I don't want a pot. I'm over at my friend's house playing poker. You want any speed?

No, I don't want any speed. You want a strawberry deck? I'm like a fucking love you. They're great, man. So as soon as I took that first drink, I knew that I couldn't even drink. And so I told them immediately, you either give me some dope

or I'm going to rob you because they didn't want to give me any because they felt like, not that they were afraid of me, they didn't want to give me any because they felt like they were contributing to my downfall or whatever. And they were,

but also I was responsible for it. So that's kind of like what happened. with that. So how bad did it get? Did you lose everything? Did your life fall apart? I've lost my first wife. I lost my home. I've lost jobs. I have given away every single thing in my life to drug addiction and stuff like that. And someone asked me the other day, were we bawling or something like that? Yeah, bawling sometimes not like hundreds of thousands of dollars, but definitely a few grand. I've watched your podcast for a long time. And I know a lot about cultivating marijuana. I know a lot about drugs. I know about making wax with butane, PVC tubes and nylon and running butane

through it. I know a lot about that whole life. But the thing that really brought you down was was dope, speed? Yeah, was with speed and cocaine, definitely. Speed in my case, cocaine and my brothers, but yeah, and it wasn't like a little bit. It was a lot. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What year, well, and then a lot of things happen. You clean yourself up. You got a job. Due to violence, my mom kicked me out when I was 16 years old. She kicked me out. She's like, you have to go due to skinhead violence and this type of stuff. Yeah. And so, yeah, that turned into like a long, down, downward spiral culminating in an attempted murder charge in 1991. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So did you go away for that? I fought it. And because I didn't do it, but the guy got his throat slit all from here to here.

And I feel terrible about it. But the guy I was with, we were, we thought, he was a cop, an undercover cop. And so I ran across the street and I bombed on the dude and dropped him. And we did that because we thought that he was trying to bust us or whatever, that maybe he was a cop and that the cops would come swooping in because it was right in front of our house. We had stuff there. We didn't want to get busted for possession and sales, which in California at the time

was a big offense. You're going away for a long time. But just bombing on some normal rampant. random guy is not that big of a deal. And if he hasn't identified himself as a cop, it's just like whatever. Turns out that the guy wasn't a cop and actually dealt drugs and we found this out. So we go over to the guy's house because we want to rob them. And this has all been brought up in court to anybody that wants to verify it can, van eyes.

But the guy gets his throat slit and he spends about a month in intensive care a little bit longer. And they only have so long to a rain, you only so long for your pretrial. hearing and stuff like that and they wanted us to waive our right to speedy trial and we didn't and we were fortunate because the guy that did it had just gotten out of state prison so he got a state appointed attorney which is a little bit better than a public defender uh man i don't know if i should throw it it's bad enough that our friends all have an attorney in l.A james blatt was a former prosecutor and he's defended a lot of uh a lot of our cases but this case the guy got out of intensive care on the very last day that they had to try us or pre-trial,

not pre-trial, but arraignment, whatever. And I don't remember what particular phase of it was, but he gets on the stand and he starts incriminating himself. It's like 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And the judge told everyone just to be quiet, wanted to see our attorneys in the prosecutor in his chambers, and they're like, you're guys up on the stand incriminating himself without a lawyer, without any representation. And this is your last day to put these guys away. And you're trying to give them 15 years of life

plus an extra five on top of it because of assault after the fact or something like that. And they came back out. And that was basically how we escaped that just through pure luck. Yeah, if it was Oregon, you would have been doing 25 to life. I'd still be in prison.

Well, yeah, I'd probably be in prison right now still. Thank God in California, they just deal, they got a, they're so backed up. help with those cases. I did a county year and they gave me a five year joint suspension and actually because they were counted off four year wobblers, I went back and got an attorney, got them dropped to misdemeanors and dismissed completely. What year did you first get sober and then just leave that life and start working? 1995 I got sober. May 27th of 1995 I got sober initially for almost two years because

nobody wanted anything to do with me. It was just horror. I had that whole thing going on with the attempted murder that had barely escaped. I was hanging back out with groups of prison-esque type white people. I don't want to leave the names out of it, but they were serious individuals. Enough that the top-tier white prison game put a green light on them. So this is who I'm hanging out with. Yeah, it's a big deal, man.

Yeah, Aryan Brotherhood type affiliated guys and shit like that. Yeah, definitely. Yep. Yep. Serious people. Yeah. Like, there's a news story where some of them stuck a dead guy in a U-Haul, like storage facility and stuff. Like, yeah, some people are getting killed. And, ah, man, not my story. But I mean, yeah, that's definitely what's going on around where I'm growing up. So I go back out and I have that strawberry DACA I'm talking about, wind up getting back into drugs and whatnot. And, man, how much do of this do I say?

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because a lot of people are like, hey, how come you're not being, like, more descriptive? There's stuff that goes on that you didn't get in trouble for. I get it. I get it. So anyways, long story short, we're, like doing drugs at this house, and there's a lot of witnesses there. And some people had come by to Unalivas.

Mm-hmm. Because my best friend was not affiliated with all those other people. And technically, I wasn't affiliated, but I was friends with all. And there was a love triangle going on. My best friend that wasn't affiliated at all had bombed on this guy and really hurt him bad. So they came back with guns to shoot us because I kind of helped him out. And they're sober today. And they're probably going to see this.

So was there a shootout? What happened when they came to the house? No, we were getting there. We weren't there because we'd been over there slinging dope. And it was like a house where a bunch of people, it was on Linley Avenue. A whole bunch of people were sitting there getting high. we had bounced for whatever reason. We go back and find out that these people, two of them,

had come over to shoot us. And so we went to go get to arm ourselves and come back. And the guy that wasn't affiliated with that, my best friend, he's dead now. God rest his soul. But he kind of like punked out and said he was going to look for a flackback or whatever. And there was two more of us involved in that.

One of them was Latino and there was myself. and we're like, fuck that. We're going back there to go get those guys because they're like looking for us. So it's kind of like a self-defense type thing. I go back there and I'm sitting there with something on the counter. I'm armed. I'm looking out that window.

And there was a stripper girl that a lot of us used to date. And she goes running out crying because one of these guys pulls up and I'm armed and I'm looking out the kitchen window right towards Lindley and I've got some dope in front of me. I've got a weapon. in front of me and I was afraid I was like man I'm like you got to be kidding me I was sober yeah I had a fucking strawberry dacry and now I'm gonna kill this guy or he's gonna come in in front of all these witnesses where he's gonna come in and he's gonna smoke me and I had like this dear god

prayer right then and there I'm like uh and these people were for real they'll kill you I mean it's it's not a joke and a lot of people would be like oh he's trying to make himself no I I was actually afraid in that moment because the only thing my life was ever going to be was being shot and killed in that place or smoking this full in front of a whole bunch of witnesses that are 1,000 percent going to testify against me. The second, the police say that there are accessories to murder. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life sitting in San Quentin. And so I said to dear God prayer, I'm like, God, if you get me out of this without dying or having to kill this guy, I'll get sober and I'll stay that way for the rest of my life. How did you escape this situation?

So C.C. went out there and told him, hey, burn dog's in there. They call call me Burn Dog. Burn dog's in there and he's got a weapon pointed at you right now. And she was crying. She's like, please don't go in there and create a scene. Because there was like probably, I want to say like 10 to 15 heads in this house. There's a lot of people in there. And she goes out there and begs him not to go into the house.

He gets in, he had a white Nova at the time. He gets back in his Nova and he takes off. And I'm like, I just escaped like a great big thing. Because when you're caught up in the moment, when someone's going to shoot you or something like that, of course you're like, you're going to go get them. But when you're sitting right there and you have time to think about it. And it wasn't like it was a long drawn out thing.

It was probably 10 or 15 seconds total, maybe a half a minute. But you, it's like time moves differently. And I had time to be cognizant about what, was going on. I went to my, I left my weapon there, left the dope there, went straight to my sister's apartment, called up one of my friends in recovery, told him, hey, if I don't get clean and sober, I'm going to die or spend the rest of my life in prison. And that's just the way it is. That's how I escaped that. And you kept your promise to God. I wouldn't go that far. I'd say God kept my promise to me, you know, because there's been a lot of

times you know i wound up in mexico you know working for the mexican government with a mexican machine gun i wound up in russia i wound up in the barring see i wound up in a lot of places and god has been there for me every step of the way and i don't like holy roller type people man totally not me i'm not joel austin or billy graham or anything like that at all in fact i'm probably the world's worst question but god did show up to me and i it hasn't been easy i mean uh my daughter got left in Russia. So God did look out for me even when I couldn't look out for myself as the way I would put that. So that was the seminal moment, though, that changed you. 16 years, that was about 1997. That was 19. That was May 4th, or July 18th, 1997 at 1 o'clock p.m. Wow. And I remember exactly

because there was a microwave right in front of me sitting in front of that kitchen window. Yeah. Today's episode is sponsored by Ava. You guys know Ava by now. They are one of my favorite and longtime sponsors of the show, Ava is a credit building app that makes it so easy to improve your credit fast so you can get better rates on loans, pay off debt faster, and keep more money in your pocket. I started using Ava this summer and in just one month, I saw my credit score improve a full 100 points. That's true. Most members see their credit go up in less than a week. That's because Ava reports all of your on-time payments to all of the major credit bureaus every single day in real time, helping you build solid credit history quickly. So they report all the payments you're going to make

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And when you join using my promo code, Connect 20, that's Connect 20. You'll save 20% off for your first year, monthly or annually. It's your choice. Again, get the Ava app and use my promo code Connect 20 so they know you heard it from me and get 20% off whatever plan you choose for up to $2.000. a year. Once again, connect 20, connect to zero. Thanks to Ava, and now go and get yourself some good credit. So 16 years later, you're sober, you're working, but you lose your daughter, your Russian baby mama takes her to Russia and then you haven't seen her since. That's heartbreaking.

You decide, you get a contract to work for this company that you're working for in Mexico. That's how you ended up in Zacatecas. Correct. one of the hottest areas now, probably even back then. Yeah, it was hot back then. And you decided that I'm staying down there. I'm going to fight drug cartels. 100%. Which is so interesting because you felt like it was an obligation to,

what did your drug abuse and your past? Like you think or thought that the problem with drug use in America falls on these Mexican cartels that are pumping the drugs? Well, we're all grown men, right? And so when someone does something to you that's unpleasant, something that you don't want, whether it's drug use as a child, when you become a man,

you can either sit there and be a victim or you can be like, I'm going to do something about it. Well, it's just interesting, though, because I wouldn't think that way. Like, I don't even think that way now. I think the problem of drug abuse in America, I mean, there's many, many sociological problems. I learned it when I was locked up over that attempted murder.

See, people, a lot of times they think like I like, I'm floating my own boat or I'm so courageous, I'm not. You know, I was a coward a lot when I was younger. When I first started going out, that whole attempt of murder was like trying to like become like the big homies and stuff like that. I'm pretty strong. I've lifted weights a lot. I grew up wrestling. I do judo. But I mean, uh, moral courage or jihad.

just courage in the face of people that will really hurt you, like, just end you. It's difficult, and I was a kitchen trustee when I was going through all my attempted murder thing. And this is going to lead into how you wind up fighting drug cartels. And there was a Latino guy in there, and they all rolled together. And he'd spilled some collate or whatever on a steel table. He's like, come over and clean this up. And it took me every bit of courage I had to tell him to pound sand because of the way that he'd come off to me. and when you're locked up, if you let people question you, like speak down to you,

the second they're questioning like, hey, let me see your paper. You know, whoa, because they're automatically assuming that they're above you. You can't let people do that. And when people try to treat you that way, it's a foregone conclusion that's going to become a violent encounter, right off the bat because they're already doing it to you. When people give drugs to you, that's a violent thing. And so when I got, it is. So you're going to let them punk you or whatever.

to stand up and fight and do something about. So I learned that when I was locked up. I'm like, hey, you know what? Okay, let's go. Spent over half my time in the hole. Well, that's interesting, though. So you, but let's, because I want to know about the why. That is the why. So you, so your belief is that, and I don't agree, but that's okay. I want to, to get your perspective, you think that pushing drugs across the border to Americans is an act of violence? A hundred percent. Okay. Well, I mean, you know, I think, think it's a response to a demand. It is.

It's a response to demand. And an artificial market that's made from the prohibition of drugs. It is. And I would agree with you if the drugs only wound up in the hands of adults. I would agree with you. And to be honest, you know, I agree with the legalization of drugs. I think that that would take a lot of the hot air or wind out of their sales as far as, like, the economy and stuff like that.

Legalize it the same way you do with marijuana. Make schools out of the tax dollars that you're getting off it or whatever. rehabilitation programs, just let it go. We do it with alcohol. We do it with prescription drugs that people are addicted to. But they won't do it with heroin or whatever else, you know? And yeah, I get if someone's breaking into, I don't want to get off a long wind thing. If there are crimes that are associated with supporting one's drug habit, breaking and entering whatever,

prosecute those crimes, of course, because you're victimizing somebody else. But when it comes to the simple act of ingesting something, that's up to the human. when they give it to children, though, that changes. Do they give it to children? I got drugs as a kid, didn't you? No. I did. I totally got drugs as a child.

I understand that. So, you know, now I'm not a child, and I know how to shoot, let's war. Wow. Okay. So is it, so you found yourself in Zacatecas working or going through training with the state police, right? State police. They were all of our instructors were Gaffei. Okay.

Not all, but several. Okay, Gaffé, the special Mexican special forces. Correct. A number of them broke off and became what started to become hitmen and collectors for the Gulf Cartel. For the Zeta Cartel. Yeah, they were the Gulf Cartel. They were the enforcers for the Gulf Cartel.

And then they broke up because they're like, why do the work for them? That's right. We'll do it for itself. And so they became the Zetas. Yeah, and when I first entered, Cartel de Calisco de Nueva Caneracion, was around or the four letters.

They were around. They started in like 2008 or 2009. 2011 is the historical marking for when they became a thing. Right. But there are some people, they'll say about that time was my understanding. But even with 2011, they were still there before I started because I started in March, May 1st of 2012 is when I started. So they're already there, but they weren't the big hitters at the time. The big hitters at the time, the people that really made people. people's hair stand up on the back of their neck with the Zetas.

Right. So the people training you were from the same organization that you are now fighting. Correct. Yeah. They're teaching us CQB and all of this. Wow. Breaching the whole thing. When I speak about this, Johnny, I'm speaking about this from the mind to someone

that's careful about what the American government and the Mexican government is going to think about everything that I say. Because I have a home in Mexico and I have a home here. And so, yeah, there's Gaffa training us. And all of my documents were signed off by the Secretary of the Defense of Nazi and Al. I'm totally loyal to my general. Now, how are you, is, how is that legal? Like, are you legally allowed?

You're not a citizen. They changed the Constitution. How are you legally allowed to be a soldier as a foreigner? I was not a soldier. I was law enforcement. Okay. And that's legal in Texas. Yes.

Yes, it was up until Amlo. Amel came in and changed the Constitution just a few years ago right before Shine bomb. That was one of the first things he did. And it says that any member of the Air Force Armedada have to be Mexican for nascento. So to translate that any member of the armed forces has to be Mexican by birth.

And I went to law school in Mexico. And there's probably seven different ways to become Mexican, either by birth, by descendancy, being born upon a nave or like a Mexican plan or vessel to naturalization. But in order to serve in the armed forces, you have to be born a Mexican. You cannot acquire citizenship. But even though you guys look and train and act like soldiers, you're not soldiers, you're not soldiers, your cops.

Agents. Agents. Correct. And that changed with ammo. So now you do have to be Mexican by birth to be an agent in the company. country of Mexico, but when I started, you didn't have to be. Right, right. So it was a very gray area. So you're going, you're going through this brutal training, uh, crazy, you know, like, really like the toughest, toughest training. I don't even think they have training like that in

these states. It's like Navy SEAL training. No, I wouldn't say I wouldn't go that far because they're legit and si la Muerta no sequenced, biennillas there are, if death finds a let it be welcome. They are, and my commandantes were Gaffes or ex-Gafes, and I have nothing but respect for what they went through. Our training was not nearly as brutal and hardcore as theirs were, as theirs was, and so I'm respecting their status as Gaffa. I want to make that super clear because my brothers and sisters at work are going to see this, and they're going to judge what I say, whether it's true or not, and I have a home and friends with her that I care about, but they are imparting a lot of the same lessons and training to us. So would we be qualified as Gaffey

operators? Definitely not. Are we qualified and capable of going out and confronting any cartel of Mexico? A thousand percent. One of the things I found interesting is that you guys have, you guys, during the training, you had human rights instructions. And you guys are really, really serious about not violating people's human rights. There's huge time met it out. You can get 40 or 50 years as a law enforcement officer or as a soldier. for violating people's human rights. But all I hear about, all the government hears about, all of citizens of the U.S. hear about

is the human rights abuses committed against Mexican people by Mexican law enforcement. Well, you have to be government to even be able to commit a human rights abuse because it means that you have authority that you're abusing. Of course, but there's so, I mean, the way the torture, I've talked to Mexican cops.

you know, Ed Calderon, just to go through training, he's getting tied naked to a chair and put, you know, electric shocked. And, you know, they did that to a lot of suspects, a lot of suspects. A lot of people get disappeared. There are a lot of things that go on in Mexico. And, man, yeah, there's stuff that goes on in Mexico. I've seen it firsthand. And it's not a judgment. It's just interesting that human rights is a thing that you go through.

You go specifically get trained up on human rights and human rights abuses. You're dealing with people that that desensitizes you rapidly. When you go in, I remember going to training. I remember the first day of having to fill out all my forms. The captain that was sitting there, he's like, did you fill out all the spaces on it? See? Oh, no. in his office and he was airborne and my specific group was a group of

armadival de la taqa operator gattepeee and so yeah you're going to go confront these people over a variety of things and there's going to be skirmishes or whatever you're going to be taking pot shots at you they're going to ambush ambush you yeah my first night on patrol we captured somebody and we went back to bay and it's a night there are things I cannot say that's okay and it's a night that I'm never going to forget and they're going to find out right off the bat where you're at with everything man well you guys are at war you really are at war so I understand there's atrocities that happen on both sides so it's not a judgment it's just a fact and there's a reason that

the Mexican people are until maybe recently much more scared of getting pulled over by the police or getting pulled over by cops than they are of the cartels. That's part of the reason that cartels were able to gain such social acceptance is because- In a lot of areas of the country, it's absolutely correct. For sure. Training was how long, six months? Six months. Okay. And now you're- And then there's additional training that you'll go to too, depending on if you're going to Gopin and stuff like that they have a base in Chamae, Halisco, where they send you for training that you'll go there. But total, it's about six months of training. And then you got an additional month of extra training for the Goppae stuff, learning repel,

breaching tactics. But, I mean, CQB and this other stuff that you'll go through. But yeah, your training's about six months. Wow. Okay. And then you made it. I did. Past.

You get sworn in. sworn in when I was going through training there was a group of us that we were called Secretaria because there's state police and I was not state police per se technically

they both operate out of the same base but there's a group of us that operate directly for our general and that's called Secretaria because we pertain to we're not Policiestatao Preventiva which is what most of the other guys were or not Polician Metropolitan or anything like that. We are second to the Eid de Sigura Publica.

And that is exactly who we work for. Anybody can go into the state police side of the base. Anybody, nobody can come over to where we're at. We're two platoons at work over there, and that's it. And if you come over there, you can't have your weapon, even if you're a cop, an agent, or whatever. Nobody comes into that side armed except for the Mexican military. That's it, and us.

Right. Okay. So what is your purview? Like what's your, what's your mission? What do you guys set up to do specifically? So glad you asked. In Mexico, they got this thing called, and Ed's talked about it. They call them bombs.

Basse de operations mixed as to where state police, federal police, the Eccurcito or the Army in La Marina, well, actually, Marine Corps infantry, Marine infantry. We get together and we have these security reunions to figure out what's going on in the area or if there's something going on in another area, or if there's even something going on in a neighboring state, and we figure out how we're going to deal with that thing. I was not at all involved in the gathering of intelligence or anything like that.

We were purely a reactionary force in Mexico. And I actually went to go apply to become a state agent. There are Mexican law enforcement agencies, state and federal, that are completely dedicated to receiving intelligence. Usually with preventative police, it's all about reaction going out and just busting heads. Today's episode is sponsored by Surfshark. Surfshark is the world's number one online VPN, virtual private network. That's pretty self-explanatory by now if you've got any kind of presence on the internet.

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Who's fighting for control of Zocatecas? Mostly it was at that point in time, there was cartel de Sinaloa up towards the north. There was the Zetas were all over. And then there's the Gulf Cartel. And it's been brought up that the Gulf Cartel doesn't have much territory in Zocatecas. And really they don't, but there is a presence there. The Zeta Cartel came from the Gulf Cartel. They do have a presence there.

They still do. I don't know if they do now because I've been out of it for a couple of years. But at that point in time, the big hitters were the Zetka cartel. And I mean, to be fair, they have been. military discipline, they're trained, and even the people that they brought in after the fact that weren't military still come from that still same type of mindset and discipline of this is the way that we're going to do it. And the way that I know that is when you're interrogating members of the Gulf cartel, when you're interrogating members of other cartels, they all have

these cookie cutter answers, man. You can ask them, how much you get paid per month, and the answer is always the same. I don't care what cartel it is, that you get paid 5,000 pesos Al-Lekin which is about what we, I just showed you my paycheck stuff right before we started this. It's about exactly what we get paid. And the cartels do that. It's like $300 every two weeks or something. Correct. Yeah, it's about $600 a month. And the cartels pay that amount on purpose to show the government kind of is like sticking their nose in the air at them. Like, we have the same amount of power you do that we're going to pay our guys, the same amount. that you pay your soldiers and your police.

So there's those answers that are the same. How long you've been working? It's always like one or two weeks, so they just started. Where's the Kahayat? Where do you get paid from? They don't know because they just started. So when you're interrogating these guys, the answers are always the same.

Except for the Zeta cartel. And the Zeta cartel, they never answer the questions. They're very, I'm just going to say very, very strong but you have to ask why because the other members are also strong of the other cartels i mean they deal with incredible danger but why these guys why are they different i have to think because of their way that they and the way that they deal with the politics internally or the way that they govern their organization internally it's going to mean like the price of your entire family if you

say anything so there are things that you come to learn when you're dealing with this in the course of work in there. Cartel de Echolisco de Nueva Caneracion, I think, is kind of one-up that. They've raised the bar a little bit. But at that point in time, it was a Zeta drug cartel, the Gulf Cartel, Cartel, Cartel de Sinaloa, and people like the Talibanes and Cartel de Acolisco de Nueva Caneracion, they were still in their infancy, not like they are now. I think that really changed.

There was 14 police. There was a convoy of 14 police that were murdered. in Haleisco that kind of like won up the bar on it. And we've run into convoys before. And we'll attack those as state, federal army. Sometimes the Marines, not always. The Marines like to hang off, and they have these mobile bases throughout the country.

And so sometimes they'll be involved in what you're doing. A lot of times they won't. And to be honest, that's kind of a good thing. They're psychotic. the Mexican they just they're really the Marines are unlike anybody else

in the entire country and the reason why is military service in Mexico is compulsory it's obligatory you have to do it you'll go down and you'll draw either a black or a white ball

out of a bag and if you draw the wrong color you're getting put it's the equivalent of being drafted the Marine infantry or the Marines in general in Mexico have to have a college degree. So these are people that could have chose a different profession, could have chose a wealthy profession,

and they still chose to go do something that's just bloody, vicious, and that's the type of mentality you get in there. That's why they're the hardest to flip, too. If you're part of the cartel, they're the hardest to pay off. They are 1,000% committed to doing what they want to do, whereas someone that goes in the Army might have a junior high school education. That might be their only out, the same as here in the United States.

Right, right. Yeah, they're true believers, the Marina. Yeah. Everybody's scared of them. They are. So. I had one of them pointed 50 caliber, uh,

and I, and, um, machine gun had me one day in Fresnoe, Zacatecas. He was just, we were sitting there having a security meeting in a, not us,

but our bosses were having a security meeting at a restaurant. Well, they went there after they had their meeting. And when we're leaving, he's just like sitting there. He's like, pinning towards me and I'm just like, man.

But yeah, that's kind of like their mentality. Yeah. So you've got basically three or four groups, the Zetas, Nuevo Halisco, Sinola. And Sinaloa, we know from history now and from Gaffet, the guy on the internet, they were working

in cahoots with the American CIA probably, but definitely the Mexican government at the time to combat the Zetas. It's part of the reason that Chappo, gained so much power and thought he was basically immune to prosecution because he was. Right. They were there to working with the government to take the Zetas out.

Now, there's no way you would have known that at the time. Not even most of the Ghafiz do that. I did see things that were suspicious when I was there. I've seen members of the State Department one day. So my general lives at base, and we are always with my general. What our general does, if you have a general that doesn't want to work or prosecute, computers have worked with them to sometimes to a lesser extent. But if you have a boss that doesn't want to work, if they just want to let stuff go on,

if they have some type of agreement or whatever, you're going to hang out at base and stuff like that. That was not my general. My general grew up from a lowly beginning and went all the way through Coletio, hydrolyco militare in Ledefe, and he was a true believer. Yeah. So we're going to work a lot. And one day I'm in there.

We're protecting my general because he lives at base. We work 43 hours straight, five hours off, 365 days a year, and that's just the way it is. So we're always there is what I'm saying. And one day, a white guy, just like us, walks in, I'm like, whoa. And he's in like normal civilian clothing. And he looks at me and I look at him because he wasn't expecting to see me there. I wasn't expect to see him. And I was on duty guarding my general at the time.

And it was at night, but not super late. Maybe 8 o'clock. And I'm like, whoa, what the fuck are you doing here? and he was a member of the state department. What he said or did with my general, I don't know. And I've seen that happen on a couple different occasions where Americans are coming down to our base. And it's not some tourist.

It's not a business thing. It's nothing to do with that. And I've got pictures with Mexican governors standing right next to them. Two of them, as a fact. As a matter of fact, they might have something to do with business investment and stuff like that, which is kind of how I wound up in Mexico. But these guys are there doing something to do, having something to do with the cartel and this type of thing.

I've seen it happen a couple times, so I'm aware of the fact that there is, and this isn't cross-border cooperation, like might be the case with Ed Calderon. This is your 700 miles south of the Texas border deep in Mexico and what's almost central Mexico and one of the hottest zones of the country, your lily white ass just comes walking,

and nah, do I know what agency he worked for? it's the state department, but you know, that could be anything. Yeah. Yeah. Gaffa told me that they had suspicions. They couldn't put their finger out of. There's no, because they don't tell you anything when you're just a rank and file. Right. But he was like, we had suspicions and history proved that they were using us. We thought we were fighting for this just cause. I saw this myself on two different occasions. I also saw the sheriffs come down on one point in time. What they were doing there? I don't know. They were taking.

Texas sheriffs. I don't remember what county. I saw that on one occasion, but I do know that there are American people that come down into places where they got no business being. What they do, I don't know, because when they go into my general's office, if you invite some in, that's as far as I go with it. But yeah, I've seen it happen more than once. So Zacatecas, why is that such a crucial piece of territory for the cartels? There's two highways that go through. There's Highway 45 and Highway 54. depending on what way you're going. One goes up towards Sonora and Seniloa.

Well, Senaloa, then Sonora in that order. And the other ones go up through Salteo and Coila and all of this. And if you're trying to smuggle drugs into the states or if you're trying to get weapons through them, the highways, it would be the equivalent of the five freeway, the 405. You would take in control of that. You need to have that if you're logistically speaking.

Because these roots are so important, and because it's so far away from people's, established camps or bases of operations from a cartel perspective, no one really owns them. And when you look at the maps of Mexico as far as where a cartel hotspots, they'll always put these states in red where people have their established camps. I've been in Los Mochi's. In fact, we were talking about.

I've been in Los Mochi's, Kuala, Mazadlan, and Sinolo. I've been all over that. I haven't spent a lot of time in Sonora. But all of that's a stronghold for Chappalo. So these states are typically They're pacified. They're calm because they're owned. Right.

But they put them as red because they are owned by a certain cartel. Zocotakis isn't owned by any of those cartels and it's mostly an agricultural state. So there's a lot of places for people to be out in the middle of nowhere doing anything that they want training camps. And it is a very, I don't want to say it's the Wild West, but you don't know what you're going to get. get. Yeah. There's plenty of room to get in a huge, have a huge convoy with 50 cows and

armsicados. Yeah, there's convoys with 100 people with 100 trucks. Oh my God. Yeah. There are convoys. They had the Florentia ballocera. People think that I'm exaggerating a lot of times, but I'm not. They had right next to my house in downtown Zococatikis, when my wife and I first lived together. We lived in an apartment building on the second floor of a building. building directly next to Klub Kactus or Club Kactus, which was a known cartel bar. And it wasn't the apartment that I wanted. I didn't get it on purpose. It was what was available.

Catholics aren't going to let you shack up with their children. You need to be 100% committed. We got our own place and we're going to do our thing. And one night, there was like five or six rounds out of a nine millimeter. and then five minutes later, they came back with AK-47s, and it was two hours and 45 minutes of AK-47 rounds, something like 700 rounds. In fact, you know what, I've got the video,

and I'm going to shoot it to you the next day, the aftermath. This is in downtown, and I'm thinking, I've got all my uniforms there. I'm working at the time. It took me forever to get my paychecks. My wife and I are surviving on spaghetti and tuna for months, and I'm thinking my brother's going to come, rescue me because you know you're working for them now they shut off the city they let these two

cartels just shoot it out for two hours and 45 minutes my wife's in the bathroom with her teeth chattering because she's a reporter and i'm running around my apartment butt naked and i don't have any weapon at home so i had to grab my can of propane gas go to the door with a liner getting ready to torch him in case they came up and figure out how i was going to most humanely end my wife's existence with my K-bar knife in case they came in and decided they were going to torture and kill us, which is, and if anyone that knows me knows how much I love my wife, she's the center of my universe, man. And to have to just the brutality of that, man, and people say that I have PTSD. I don't think I do, but you do see some stuff. And when you were forced with how you're going to kill your own wife

to humanely rescue her from being raped and tortured brutally, and then they're going to do the same to you. It's just it puts a whole other level on it. So I've got the video of that and I'll show you that. So it's a three hours shootout. Two hours and 45 minutes. Three hours of automatic rifle like automatic fire like you're in Afghanistan, Baghdad. Correct.

Yeah. And those bullet holes are on that door and you can look them up to this day. There's two wood doors in the front of it. They're closed old school style like monks with steel and iron spikes through it. and there are AK-47 rounds through that building to this day. And it's not even a street separating the bar in my house or my apartment, as it were. It's what's in Spanish. You speak Spanish.

It's called a Cajajon. But for the people that don't speak Spanish, Cajon means like not even like a street, like a narrow walkway going through. And that's how far we are from this. And yeah, it was terrifying. What was the aftermath? How many dead bodies? I want to say, and to be honest, I don't know.

I do know that when we went out, there was blood all over the street. They said there was one dead body. And from my perspective, if I'm not armed, I don't want to go out there. But we waited until it was all done. And they came in and they dragged out bodies before we went outside because we wanted to make sure it was over. And they said that there was one. But I think realistically, there's more like 10 or 15. I don't know if there was 15, but there was probably 10.

When would you see the biggest flare-ups of violence? Like, and when they're fighting for freeways, people don't understand this. Like, they're fighting to get the best access to be able to drive big semi-trucks full of drugs up to the border. How do they defend that or take that from a different, an opposing cartel? Well, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll, they have plaza bosses and they know who's doing what there. They have, uh, and on the outskirts of Zacatecas. On either side, they have a zone of de Tolerancia, which is like a tolerance zone where they let people really is for prostitution, but there's other things that go on there to drugs and this type of stuff.

And they stay out of there because there are federal deals. I got to be careful how I state that there are probably federal deals that allow that thing to go on to where you stay out of there. We've only ever been in looking for someone on two different occasions, which is out of the normal, and we were in pursuit. on the other side of the city they have these brothels that are absolutely run by cartels and so they've gone in there and killed everybody in the bars including the people that own them they'll do stuff like capture their guys put their heads in coolers and with a big narco mantra or a sign telling this is what happens to the people but there's a balacerra the la ballaceira de florencia was another one to where it went on for several hours and it was one cartel going out of

and taking out another cartel, and even the government authorities that happened right before I started, immediately before I started, had to dress and disguise and women's clothes to try to escape. And people don't believe that because it's so wild, but that absolutely happened. And there's videos of it online people can go look at, and it's all over the news. It was a major thing. And in fact, it dropped my general's helicopter out of this guy because it was so hardcore. They didn't even have time to let the helicopter warm up. and when he got over there, the helicopter fell out of the sky as a result.

This is all in the news. So this is when did it really start heating up right before I started there? Some people say the drug war, and you're maybe more knowledgeable than I am on that because I don't know the entire history or context of it. I just know what I saw where I was working. Some people say it started in 2006. I think the drug war started in 2008. But when I started there, it absolutely was like in full.

full swing as far, and it's gotten worse. It was full swing as far as like normalizing cartels, having convoys, shooting each other. And then once they killed those 14 cops in Haleisco, it was just, the level of violence in Mexico is just on a whole other level. It's just what we would consider normal there is. It would North Hollywood bank robbery. It was two guys, kidded up, took on 300 LAPD for 44 minutes, and that was like, a big thing. In Mexico, that's just a daily occurrence, man. I mean, really. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So

do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants to switch you to MintMobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at midmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Well, the cities have actually gotten safer, a lot of them, especially the border cities. I mean, we were in Sonora last month.

It's as quiet as, you know, you're a suburban American town. I mean, it is. Tijuana, especially. Anywhere where there's the presence, heavy presence of gringoes, it's just calmed down. You can't have convoys anymore. too hot but Zocatecas is not like that. There's no gringoes. It's in the smack dab in the center of the country, but north a little bit. And that is one of those wild west places. There is some tourism. There's a cathedral there that's like 500 or five centuries old and it's beautiful. It's

just, but that's about it. It's not Mazatlan. It's not La Paz. It's not any of these other like big ticket tourist agencies or destinations I want to say. So Zocatatatian. So Zocatatian, Takeas does try to present itself as type of a touristy type thing, but really it's not. It's in the middle of the desert. There's mining places all over. The only thing that really do there, and I love Zacatecas, it's my home. I have a home there. I love the Zocataka's people.

But really, after you've done the Tiraleza, which is like the zip line, after you've seen La Mena, which is like an underground bar, that's in the cathedral, a couple museum, that's about it. There's not things that people would typically classify as a tourist destination type thing. Yeah. So, yeah, it lends itself to a lot of violence. And plus, with nobody actually owning the territory, that may have changed now with Cartel de Holisco, but I don't know. Well, the guy, when we were in Halisco, they said, one of the guys who spoke with a commander

that runs, you know, a branch of cicadios down there, he said when they send 10 people off to fight. in Zacatecas, one of them comes back. Yeah. It's, uh, there's one night in particular. We were over by, um, Las Quintas, which is like on the outskirts and we were chasing a convoy. We got a radio that there's a convoy moving through by Tranjito Pasado, which is like, uh,

it's where all the trucks, the semi-trucks go out, Transito Pasado for the people that don't speak Spanish is where all the, it's very desolate. There's not a lot going on. the cartel convoys a lot of times we'll use that route to go through. Yeah, we caught a route. We caught nine trucks and half of them got away. The other half were dispatched and one we captured alive. And when you say dispatch, you mean shot up.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, they were dispatched. Yeah, yeah, they were sent to a better place. Yeah, just to work. Now tell, when you're, tell us about your convoy. Like when you go out on, you got a call, how many trucks are in your convoy? It depends on what you're doing. Like at one time, if there was an election,

there was one time where we were going to. No, I just, that particular night, there was only a couple of us because we got called that this was already in action. So we're hauling ass over there. There's like two units of us that go over there. Typically, we operate with two to three trucks. Really, you want a minimum of three trucks.

And each truck has got six people in it. And what do you guys, do you guys have the 50 cow? No, no, no, no, no, we're not allowed. Secretary of the Seguraaupublica, we're not allowed to have 50-cali. That's only the military. And usually you're not even allowed to have a belt-fed. We had Negev-NG7 belt-fed machine guns, 7-62 by 51-millimeter, which are great. The Army has Minimi, which is a Belgian belt-fed machine guns, same caliber.

It can be chambered in 223. So you're going out, and you've definitely got the firepower to put people down. But 50. Even against, you know, even against these armored vehicles that the cartels have? Yeah, we got a picture. I got a picture of armored vehicles. So you guys can take, even with those weapons you have, you could stop an armored truck. Yeah, there are ways that you can stop them.

What do you do? You shoot the engine, shoot the front of it or? You would need a 50 cal for that. But if you can get them to sectioned off by the side of the road to run them off the rotor or whatever, and you can stop the vehicle in one way or another, taking out their tires. There are weak points on armored vehicles, typically the pillars that are not armored to where if they don't surrender, you could attack them feasibly through either side of the uprights on either side of the windshield or through the roof.

There are different ways to get the people in there. And now when you go on a chase, when the cartels see you. And I've got a picture of it too. I'll send it to you. How often do they surrender? Usually if they know that they're going to die, then they'll surrender. But I mean, if there's just starting, none of them are going to surrender because they know that there's consequences that happened. We would do inspections of the prison.

And I want people to understand this because there's going to be a lot of people that would think that, no, that's just not true. The prisons in Mexico are full of cartel people that surrendered or were captured. They have them in different blocks. And so this thing that the cartel is going to fight to the death to the bitter end, yes and no, it depends on what's going on. And it depends on where and when, just like anything else. Are there instances where they're going to fight to the last man 100%? That does happen.

And then there are also instances where maybe their commander's not there or their commander was killed and they're like, okay, well, we're going to give up and go in. Or maybe they're just going to roll the dice and hope that they can survive. I don't know what goes on because I was never a member of a cartel. I don't know what their mindset is on that. level like if they're going to surrender but a lot of them are very much of the minds that they are not going to surrender and they are killed there's been several hundred thousands of people killed there because of this but also the prisons are in Mexico are full for a reason okay so with this convoy that you guys were chasing you had to take out three of the trucks and then after that the fourth truck

saw and they just gave up yeah half of them split off and kept going and there was one that we got that was alive. The other ones were dispatched. The army was there, state police, federal police, and so it's like a multiple age. Just like you would have joint task force here, this time, type of the same type of thing. Okay. So then you arrest these guys and, you know, after you've questioned them or you give them, you know, put a bag over their head or, you know, whatever. You wouldn't do that, but no. Other people might do that. After there, whatever. after they're processed, are they given over to the prosecution of the state of Zucca? Like, one of the big problems in Mexico is there's no consequences for killing people.

It's a big issue because it doesn't matter what you guys do, what cartels in power. If you can violently go take territory and essentially get away with murder or not do life in prison for murder, there will always be violence. There's definitely consequences for government agents if they're killing people. extrajudicially. Right. Without a doubt, in fact, the Commissione

Nacional de Derechos Humanos makes sure that any time someone's feathers might be ruffled a little too roughly, they're going to be right there on us to make sure

that we're being accountable. Right, but I asked about the cartels. Like, that's... The cartels... They have it reversed. They have it. It's kind of a problem. They absolutely have it reversed.

Yeah, you can... From a cartel standpoint, yeah, you can kill anybody in the entire country that you want. But say you're shooting at a... federal cop and you give up, right? Or a state cop, whatever, a cop, you're shooting at them, you give up. What is that, Sicario? What are his charges going to be? And how much time in prison

is he going to get? For killing a cop in Mexico, and I went to law school, so I know exactly what. It depends on whether or not it's charged on a federal or a state level. Just like in the United States, murder can be charged at a state level or a federal level. The state has decided it's going to go forward with capital punishment, whereas on a federal level they do, the Charlie Kirk thing, for example, if they're charging federally, that guy's going to be facing the death penalty. Same thing in Mexico. So if it's a federal level crime, it's going to be, they're going to be getting 30 years in prison. They won't give them the death penalty, but they will give them 30 years in prison. If it's on a state level, depending on who it is, they might be out in 10 years.

I mean, that does, yeah, that does happen. Wow. And why 10 years? years. Why not 10 years? That you've got 10 years. People will stab someone and get out of prison here in a couple years for for nothing. So I mean, this is something that happens in the legal world with, with regularity. It depends on who it was, when, what happened. If you're shooting at a federal cop or a state cop or the military, they're going to throw the book at you. You're getting 30 years in prison. How many times, how many shootouts with convoys do you remember getting in? Personally, from my case, I'd say there was probably 12. Wow.

Were there any close calls where you thought you guys might get out-manned and out-gunned? Yeah, there's been times. I talked about it one time on Via de Coast where they, in fact, there's a pitcher. They tried to take out the driver and shattered the crystal on it. Not the crystal. It was ballistic glass, but I mean, did that. There was a round that hit just below my shield above me. So, yeah, I mean, you're very much afraid when you're going.

through this, they're shooting at you. Wow. And you know, I want to address that some more, too, because how do I convey this? There are little details when you're going through something like that that you'll remember like trying to rack and chamber around on your fall. I had a fall. F and fall, I was thinking zero one, two, two, three, three was a serial number on my weapon. But we use 20 round magazines when you're using 760 by 51 millimeter. And the front fingers on these stamped cartridges will bend in. So you got people that are like shooting at you and stuff like that, but you're thinking about like the stamped metal on my magazines because I hit Petro Oswelo,

which means like your chest of your dirt, bends the fingers or the front guiding fins on your magazine into where it won't chamber around. So I'm sitting there shuffling through magazines trying to get around the chamber. There are things that are going on and you are hearing gunfire around you and stuff like that. Yeah, it's kind of intense. I've got friends that are on Facebook that they've had, we've all had Facebooks in our pictures for, for a long time.

And we're not afraid of really being kidnapped or something like that. But there's also, yeah, your brothers and stuff like that are killed. You know, they'll kill you. Are you, there's lots of videos showing a lot of this that goes on. And it does go on. Well, did some of your comrades get killed? Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, for sure. Did any of their families get kidnapped? Were there any kidnappings or anything, any kind of reprisals later on? Yeah, okay. John Casarra. John Casarra, the case of John Casarra, I got a lot of things going through my head. Like my wife, our well-being, my well-being of my family in Mexico, my brothers, being loyal to my general.

I've got all that's going around. And so, uh, There was a guy by the name of John Kasari. He's sitting in a Mexican prison right now. I worked with him. He was a hitman for the Zeta Drug Cartel. He came in after signing on in Rio Grande, Zakateca, says an instructor, which is when I first got here, I showed you my instructor, Acuse document, which is how I entered also.

And he got pulled in, and he was in charge of training Gotpe Special Force Police also. which I'm attached to. Years later, he's sitting in prison for having been a hitman for the Zeta drug cartel. This is stuff that you can look up. I worked with him. I got a picture with him somewhere. There's only one picture. He's an American.

He's a Colombian special force military operator that came to Mexico looking for a job because he didn't want to live in Zacatecas anymore. There's another one that was Gaffei at Colinas del Padre, where we fight our way to the end of this. cannon, and that was a golf cartel, and one of our instructors was working as a hitman for the golf cartel. This is another one, and we get there, and there's four or five golf guys that were dispatched, and we got their weapons, and we get all the way to the end, and there's one of us. He wasn't in uniform at the time, but he had just shot somebody in the fucking head.

and when you shoot someone on the head and sit there and they've got this breathing fighting to breathe and you know he's not going to make it and I've got pictures of that too where I don't know how they did it but the journalist that were covering that there's a little red Nissan pickup up in front

and there's a gray truck that's ours and we're standing right there and there's another picture where I'm standing right there with my hand on the guy's neck when we arrest him it was one of ours It was a guy that taught me how to Australian repel, and this guy is a hitman for the Gulf cartel, and he goes to prison in Zacatecas. And not only that, but I've got brothers and sisters that got their Facebook pages that I'm

friends with right now that can go down and validate every single thing. And it's important to me to say that because so many people are going to be like, that's so far-fetched, it just couldn't happen. No, you know what? It's real. you go to work every single day thinking that your own brothers might kill you or something or kidnap you. Your family's definitely on the table.

That guy that was a hitman at the Cleinas del Padre thing has a pair of, I like call you, scream of martial arts. I've been in his house. I signed him a pair of sticks and he put it in there. He's got his little Mexican gold smile. He was my commandante. He's the one that taught me half the stuff that I know. Wow.

Straight up. And if anybody wants to take any issue. with any of that. You know, I can have other people potentially that my brothers and sisters at work that can also validate that. I don't think anybody doubts this. I don't think anybody doubts this. It's for real.

So John Casara, getting back to him. I'm going to law school and trying to learn about, like, all these things in the law. And even school might be being funded by illicit money. It's so prevalent. When I got to Mexico, Johnny, I didn't even know because I was a tourist. You've been to Mexico, too, and so we get there, and we even speak Spanish. You speak Spanish, I speak Spanish, Ablamo's Espionoctamente bin. So we're not like your typical gringoes that would go to Mexico.

We know what's up. You were just in Sonorges, and I know what's up. I've lived in Mexico for over 10 years. Yeah, but you never know what's up. That's the problem. When you first get there, once you find out that everyone everywhere, so many people are either Halconez looking out. for the cartel to people running the businesses.

I wanted to open a bar when I first got there when I was still in charge of managing that factory, at least the machining and the engineering components to it. So I was looking into opening a bar. There was this guy by the name of Hakobo. And so he wants like 30,000 paces to start getting the licenses rolling on this. And even that probably had something to do with the cartel because nothing happens in that place without the cartel having something to do.

it okay so you found out pretty quickly that you couldn't trust a lot of the people in your own your own battalion your own unit yeah well yeah in our own unit because uh our general so we live at base my wife almost left me because i was always at work and so even when we're at base typically a typical work day we get up at four o'clock in the morning we run five kilometers with all our gear on and then when we're done doing that and our general does too and when we're done with that Our general goes in. They're making him breakfast. He's reading his paper, and we are, yeah, let me just break down a typical day at work.

So we wake up every morning at 4 o'clock. Even if you're off duty and you get five hours off, you're back at base at 5 o'clock. So typically you would get off at 2,300 or 11 o'clock, and you'd be back by 4 o'clock in the morning because we got to go run every single day except for Sunday. After we get done running in our gear, we're washing the truck, we're shaving. There's a room that's right there next to our general, and then another one that we have upstairs. And since I left, they've reved on base.

They've revamped and added a lot onto it. But when I was there, there's a room off to the side that we still have, and there's a room up on top where we'd go up and we shower, shave. Uniform has to be immaculate because of the representation of our general. And then after that, he's going to have a security meeting with the Onsiaba Military Zone, Federal Police, State Police, which is a different general that's in charge of that. And based on that, we're going to figure out what we're going to do.

There's a lot of military checkpoints and stuff. Typically, we'll run all over the state or other states going through San Luis Potosi, Halisco, even Nairite, depending on where we're at. And we'll go check out all these different places. Make sure they've got everything to need. There are things are functioning in the way they're supposed to. Or we'll be doing tactical operations where we're going to take somebody down, which is going to be an interagency type thing because it's by,

Lhasa de operas and he mixed us. So we're not intelligence at all. There is intelligence that works where we're at, but that's not our scope. So we are strictly following orders doing what we're told to do, taking people down. Sometimes it's out in the middle of nowhere.

Sometimes it might even be in town, like a small... There was one place by Ciudadatimak, which was Cete Cartel Stronghold. We spent the night, hold up in a school, waiting for these people to get in, and then we went and took down. than when they got back to their house. And it's just you don't know what you're going to get.

I asked you about the corruption in your squadron. You're in the police. Okay. So thanks for keeping me on point. I got off track. My apologies. I've been offered on three different occasions a chance to offer to join a cartel indirectly. Wow.

How did that work? They found you off duty or something? No. called me because we got each other's phone numbers. So corruption. Most agents and soldiers are not. They're not corrupt. They're very honorable, honorable, noble people that are very brave.

And they don't make a lot of money. And I am extremely proud. So I want to say this because people will see it. One of the proudest moments of my life was working with these people. It's the best and worst job I ever had my entire life. There was a guy. I'm going to leave his name out of it and his wife, who are both agents,

and he called me up on my phone and he told me that his friend had gotten kidnapped. And I told him, I'm like, we'll just take it to my general and he'll get it sorted out. He's like, nah, me, Frank. He's like, no, my frank. Like, when you call someone me, me kind of all,

it means like a closeness. It's endearment, yeah. Yeah, and dearmament. That's a good word for it. And so he wanted me to go with and he's like, what happened? I thought you were like Super Bravo or whatever. And I'm like, you need to go to our general and have us go get your friend. We don't have, and we're allowed to carry our 9mm outside of base.

We're not allowed to carry our primary weapons outside of base unless we're on duty, period. I mean, that's a hard, fast line. You are not allowed to do that. So I told them, I'm like, how are we going to go get your friend back with? 9mm pistols right off the top just tactically speaking you're not going to go confront someone that's carrying primary weapons battle rifles and this type of stuff with a 9 millimeter so automatically that implies that he's got weapons that he shouldn't have outside of base which is a major felony in Mexico 100% that automatically means that he's got something to do with the cartel and it really

scared it scared the bejesus out of me because now you know what side he's on and you wonder what you do with it not only does he know what side he's on so he called me a couple times and he had his wife call me too because his wife was also at work and uh fortunately it was right towards the end of when i was working there but i mean really the corruption that goes on that is the type of corruption that goes on there and this isn't like some like junior cadet or something like that he's a cummonde like i showed you my rank Wow. My official rank was superficial operativo, which means I have basically the rank of a sergeant that's an operator, tactical operator.

That's what's on my gaffete. And he outranked me by far. And so this is someone that's working there. Corruption. So that's overtly corrupt because he's got weapons and stuff like that he has access to. There's subtle corruption too. someone that might not have been corrupt, but someone threatened their family. They need money for an operation for one of their relatives, so they are inclined that goes that way.

But I mean, as far as like deep-seated corruption, which there is, because clearly one of my commandantes was sitting there working for the other side and training. At the same time. Well, training even members of the cartel at the same time. That's what he was doing with all those cartel. So we fight our way to the end of this canyon. And there's like four or five of them. Plus my commandante, my ex-comendante. So he's out there teaching them how to kill people.

And we got all their AK-47s and stuff. We get to the end of this canyon. He's out there with a guy that's dying that he just shot in the head. And he was in prison too. But there's deep-seated corruption like that. that even the people that run the whole place, my general is not corrupt. I've never seen my general take a single penny or do anything illegal. And at the same time, this guy's working for him.

So I mean... Yeah, that's what I mean. So you could have people that go out on duty with you that might get into firefights with the same cartel that they're taking money from. Right, exactly. Now, what was the main function of those moles? Was it to let the cartel know your locations, where you're going to be? It's a lot of it is intelligence gathering

Because a lot of times in Mexico Everyone's so It's not about just the violence It's about the movement of money About being able to make agreements with people To where you'll find a way to stuff That's way more intelligent than I am And I'm not stupid

But I mean these people are very smart They're not stupid They've been doing this for a long time With a very high consequence atmosphere Or environment They have a greenest worked out with each other. And so a lot of it is intelligence gathering,

not like Sigintel or anything like that, like just figuring out who's what, who's where, who does what, who works with what, and then looking for weak links in order to be able to take advantage of that. Yeah. So that's basically what they're doing. Yeah, Intel is everything. Not just in the state police everywhere, including in the military.

A lot of people think that the military, including the Marines, are uncorruptible. Most of them are very brave and are not corrupt, but there are some that are corrupt. It's Mexico. Yeah. Well, that's how all the watchy coal happens

is super high level. It's marinas, it's generals. Right. Because that can't happen without... No, you have to have people in leadership, in leadership positions that are complicit. Yeah, definitely. Or it wouldn't happen.

What about ambushes? Did you guys ever get ambushed? Yeah, no, we've been ambushed. In fact, that one place where I was telling you, about in Via de Coast. That was an ambush right off the top. We're right at it. Vita Coast has a checkpoint by it and it's way out in the middle of nowhere. And so they'll try to get you far away from your base. There's a place called Concepcion de Oro in the north of the state, which has got mines out by there, but there is nothing there. So we're going over there to check up on the checkpoint

at Vida Coast and then there's gunfire. Some police start taking gunfire out of nowhere. So we go to respond and they have these things called Finkas that are half-finished house is made out of bricks. And so we're driving up and all of a sudden we're taking fire at it. In the middle of the night, they've got flash suppressors on their weapons and stuff like that. So it's hard to be telling where everything's coming from and suppressed weapons. They're firing out of these Finkas. And they try to take out the driver and they try to take out me because I'm up in the top of the truck.

I get hit from the side laterally in my plate. It spins me, but like we start taking fire, so we get out of the truck, we drop down, we're going through house after house or Finkka after Finka trying to clear this thing out. And there's probably three platoons of us up there working. So, yeah. Wow. Did you find the guys? Yeah, we go find the guys.

And so anyways, you get the guy, semaphore comes out. Semaphore is like Mexican corner. And so they take the guy. all the bullet casings that are on the ground, you have to leave those where they're at, because they're going to come through and do ballistic studies. People think Mexico is corrupt. It is and it isn't. There are people that take their jobs very seriously, so they'll come around and police all the

casings, do all the ballistic studies that go along with who shot who, when and where. This is just one ambush that I'm talking about. More typical, it wouldn't be on that scale. What they'll do is when we're coming back to base or whatever. They got this boulevard, Lopez-Meteo, when we're going back to base through the center of the city. And there are a lot of places to conceal yourself, and they'll take pot shots at us as we're going through back to base. And you can't really pull off. So the Vida Coast thing, getting back out in the middle of nowhere, you have to go through all these things.

And so we get the people, semaphose going to come over and take the bodies after they do a full investigation, everything they're going to do, forensically speaking. As far as the vehicles, once you have the vehicles, we have to do. drive those back, we don't put them on a tow truck. We drive them back to the Pejari. Well, now they've changed it. It's Fiscalia, general de la Republic. Back then, it was Procuraria, General de la Republic, or

prosecutor of the Republic, and we have to turn those in immediately. If there's anybody surviving, we have to turn those over the ministerial police, either federal or state, and they're the ones that are going to conduct their investigations, and that's exactly what happens with an ambush or a firefight. Wow.

What kind of caliber to spin you around after a hit? That was a 223 round that hit that. I've got pictures of that too. How many times you get shot? Just once. Once was enough. Is that the scary, is that the most dangerous place to be is standing up in the truck? Yeah. Must be, right? It was, uh, I think they did it to me because I was a gringo. I mean, they'll see this, but. Did the cartels know about you? Yeah. Oh, without a doubt. The first night when we got back to base, I was telling you about, um, they told me not to talk. They said, don't say anything because they're going to hear your voice.

And then things happen. Like when you go out on raids, don't talk. Yeah, well, we got this guy, and they were going to hear me. My coworkers, some of them are compromised. And I just figured it out that they know who I am. Anytime they want me to be dead, I will be. And so, you know, I'm here. And if they want to take me, they will.

That's it. Yeah, but they didn't. They did not because I'm not that important. And I never did. I'm not that important. I'm a guy that carried a weapon for a Mexican general doing this. I would train people at base sometimes, primarily in hand-to-hand combat, sometimes other things.

But mostly I was not that important, and I never did anything illegal as far as, like, trying to sell drugs, make money, or whatever. I made 5,722 pesos every two weeks, and I was fine with that because it's a pretty good living in Mexico. plus we got 8,000 pesos a month called Viatikos because we lived at base, which is like your per diem. So total I'm making like 16,000 pesos or 20,000 pesos a month depending. Didn't need any more money. The people that do get in trouble are the people that want more money, people that do things that they're not supposed to be doing. And I think that it had a lot to do with me not getting killed.

Is not taking the money. Not taking the money and not doing. Do only what you're told to do, no more or no less. don't do anything that you're not told to do. Show up at work on time. If there's something that's not your business, don't ask. These type of things. I mean...

Would any of your comrades, would they be found dead off duty? And you're like, oh, yeah, that turns out he was taking money. There's some that were a... No, they were captured. I don't know what happened with it, but there's a couple that were captured and killed. They weren't beheaded, but they were shot, yeah. Were beheading still a thing?

Yeah. In fact, the first gunfighted, I went to was in Haraez, in Zacatecas. There was four people that were beheaded, three of them were men, and one was a woman. And I remember seeing that. I got yelled at by a Mexican lieutenant because I was advancing. I was brand new. I was advancing right down the middle of the street in the night towards his house. And I got yelled at because I wasn't using concealment or cover. He's like, you fucking get out of the street. And we go there, and all the fighting was over by the time I got there. So it wasn't like something I was actively in.

But we get into that house and there was four people that were beheaded and one of them was a woman and something that's going to stick with me. It's the things, small things. Another guy that got in Fresneo, he had his weapon in his hand and around hit him right here that we were a part of, took his hand right off and he still had his weapon holding his hand.

Just little things, you know. Did you notice during elections the violence would spike? Towards politicians. Yeah. Yeah, there are politicians that will get killed. We do a lot of VIP security. I know Ed talks about security too.

That's a big function of police work in Mexico. Because it's not the United States. And if they want to get rid of a political candidate, that's absolutely on the table. So the governor, for example, as, one of these belt-fed machine guns sitting, and one of my brothers was sitting there manning that thing right in his living room. So, yeah, there's violence as far as...

What do you mean? Explain that. The governor has a mansion in the middle of Zacatecas, and there are details that are signed directly to his house, and I wouldn't say it's a mansion, but it's a very nice, ritty house, and the governor of the state lives there. And so there are belt-fed machine guns, This is Governor Miguel Alonzo Reyes.

And then followed up by Governor Teo. I live in the same house. And anyways, in that house, there's a great big picturesque window. There's a Negev. We use a lot of Israeli weapons in Mexico because they're just great. They've been battle-proven. So there's a Negev-NG7 belt-fed weapon right there at the front picturesque window where normally you would consider it like a view out of a house.

nice living room and it's set up for war. And one day, Houdicom, my brother took a picture of it and sent it to me because I wasn't assigned to the governor's house, but he was. And he sends me this and it's just the thought of that in that mansion with that amount of luxury,

but you're still living. You're not safe. Yeah, you're not safe. You have two platoons of agents assigned directly to your house. Everything's closed up. and still you have to have that level of security in Mexico. So yeah, there's a lot of violence in Mexico as far as politicians are concerned.

That's definitely how things get done. Well, when it's election time, that's when bodies start dropping because they're trying to jockey. They want you working for me, not for the other side. Exactly. Like that governor's probably in the pocket, especially in Zacatecas, he's for sure. Well, there was one thing with working for one side of the other. It's crazy. They're absolutely, I got pictures of this too.

So we're in the middle of this little Pueblo. I don't remember what it was, but it was election time. And so we catch these members of this cartel, and I don't even know what cartel they were working for. And this was what was really weird. And I've got pictures. I'll send all of it to you. We get these guys, and we're in the middle of the Pueblo,

and everyone's filming us getting these guys because it's in broad daylight, which is not optimal. man. I mean, you know, they're going to ID you. They are cartel. These cartel guys have high-end cameras, which isn't something that's rolling around in your typical Pueblo in Mexico because that amount, the buying power just doesn't exist. They have fuel coupons, and it's election time. And so they're going around buying everybody's votes, which is completely illegal. It's a federal crime. Wow. So we get these guys. And there's no firefighter or anything, but this guy's like super buff. jacked. And it takes like four of us to get this guy into handcuffs. And then there's his other two

buddies. We get them and we take them over to the ministerial police like we're supposed to. As soon as you capture somebody, if you're preventative police, you better be dragging those guys directly over to ministerial police because if you don't, you're probably breaking a law. We get them over there. These guys have attorneys there within three minutes of us getting there, which means that there were other people there watching everything that they were doing. doing. Because these guys had to even have a chance to call anyone yet. Right.

And as soon as we get over to the ministry police, they're lawyers, which are top-notch lawyers, are over there and they're getting these guys out like in 15 minutes. You just got done committing a federal offense in eyesight of us, in broad daylight. So that's the amount of power that they have. So somebody on the inside saw them get dragged in, and then they made the call of their attorneys.

So we wind up hanging out outside of this Pueblo, because we're expecting a cartel response all night. And so you sit in there all night waiting not knowing if there's going to be a convoy of people coming through just to light you up because they do do that. And it was terrifying, man. We were there until probably 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock in the morning waiting to see if they're going to come back through because they're holding elections another night as far as like political violence that you're talking about. We had to go detain the entire municipal police force of Fresno.

and keep them in their base while they're there because they're out intimidating the voters in order to put in a political party. So we've got all the municipal police and Fresnoe gathered at their base and it's not just it's it's state and it's the military from Zocatakis and Zocatakes is three battalions of military there.

They've got the 52nd, which is usually in the 11th military zone, but the north end of the state, I think it's the 9th. And we're there and we've got all the military or all the police officers. So you basically have all these police held at gunpoint so they can't go intimidate the voters. That's absolutely correct. This happened.

And it was when the mayor was not happy with the way that the vote was going in Fresno. Right. And he comes over the mayor with his security squad because he's got his own security detail. And he comes over and he starts taking pictures of us. with a camera in our trucks. And remember, I'm up in the top of my truck with my weapon. And he's going around to everybody that's there guarding the police to make sure that they don't go out to intimidate the voters. Taking pictures of us is a direct threat against us.

And this person has a family that's involved in the federal Senate. And this person very well in the future may become president of Mexico. this person goes on from being married to become governor of the state. And not only that, but his, I don't know if it's his uncle or his father, but there's several of them. They're all lawyers. They've been in politics as a business for a long time. And one of his family members, Ricardo, goes on to write his book called

Esquadronas de Muerrete, which is about death squads in Mexico with data that, nobody outside of military or agents should have, and he's got all this insider access to inner workings of the cartel, better than I have. Oh, my God. And so that, no consequences. He's governor now. Right.

Was he part of the Morena party? Yes. Okay. I just say that, yeah, they have a lot of power. Morena is, it's a very, it's a very, I have the chills right now. It's a very popular movement. And I see why.

a lot of campasinos or farmers that come from very impoverished places. And in fact, even my own professors at school, some of them, lean socialist. I am very, we would debate all the time. But there's a reason why they feel that they do, because they grow up in abject poverty. So I get it. And they'll shut down. So Morena being a movement of the people, for the people, has been very different than what pre or any other the um oh hell it's escaping me right now the mexican version of conservatives pre pared a day but it's the other one the blue guys they're very conservative morana has championed itself as a movement of the people and so throughout the entire country they've had a lot of success in becoming elected in office and whatnot and this they're very embedded

with, you know, the Sinaloa cartel and now who knows where they're going to go. I think that's what they're fighting about now in Kulia Khan is who's going to get, who's going to be with Morena? And it might be Halisco, who knows? Right. I don't know, but I mean,

they've definitely taken control of the purse strings without a doubt and they continue to do so throughout the entire country. It's not just Zacateek. It's all over. That's amazing. So 2014 comes around and Chapo gets arrested for the first time.

How did, did you notice a change in Zacatecas when that happened? There was definitely a change. When that happened, we started going after leaders like Zeta Quarenta and other things. Zeta Quenta was operating in Zocatica's around there, and I was not personally involved in taking him down, but there was definitely an upswing and going after. Zeta, you probably know it, but I don't know if other people do. it comes from the military

habit or of calling them like by their call signs. So that's where the Zeta name comes from. So there's a whole bunch of Zeta Quarenta and there's other numbers. But when Chappo got taken down, there was definitely a push to eradicate the Zeta drug cartel

without a doubt. I don't know why I'm not that privy to all the information about the strategy behind taking them down. But did you, okay, it's weird. But there was definitely an uptick in going after people without a doubt. Right. After the Zeta specifically. After the Zeta specifically. After the Sina Loa boss goes down.

So do you see what I'm alluding to here? Right. I do. So I think that there are people that are in power that favor some cartels over others and because they have agreements with them, which I actually kind of alluded to earlier when I said that we wouldn't go into Zonis de Tolerontia. There are absolutely illegal things that go in there. In fact, I will never, ever, ever, ever. step foot in the tolerance zone by myself on duty, off duty, or whatever, unless I'm specifically told to go in there. Because government does allow certain people to operate to a certain extent, without a doubt. Well, I think the, it was just like a, just like a movie. There's the bad guys and then there's the really bad guys. So you'd rather have the normal bad guys running

things. And so they, really, the government had, because we knew they were now, we know now that they were working directly with Sinaloa, they wanted to get rid of the Zetas. They were using Sinaloa to do that. Without a doubt, you know what? When Choppel went down, they were like, okay, we need to really push to eliminate the rest of the Zetas because we have an agreement. We're getting paid from the Sinaloa cartel. Without a doubt, I think that it was a smart move, because just a level of brutality that those guys have exhibited throughout the. years. But I think that it's come full circle again now because the Cartel de Helisco de Nueva Canteracion is exhibiting the same amount of violence, if not more.

But they make a lot more money. They do. So, I mean, the government is personal feeling. I feel, I don't know. I feel like that they do have help from government because they wouldn't be allowed to exist or operate at that level unless there are people that were complicit in it. Yeah. Period. Okay. So, when did you, how did you feel? So you worked in the state police for about four years. I worked there from May 1st, 2012 until the end of August, 2016. And was that like a normal, did you get discharged or how did that wrap up? What happened, what happened was my general, the new governor was coming in, Governor Teo. And- Who used to be mayor? No, this was, no, this was one

cycle back. Okay. So I have no issues with Governor Teo. I don't. I've got pictures with him when I was going through law school and stuff like that. But as far as like working for him, I never did. And the reason why I got out at exactly that point of time was because, as you know, Mexican election cycles run in six-year cycles. And so I got in at the very beginning of a six-year cycle. And at the very end of it, my general was retiring and was no longer going to be in charge of that. And so to avoid any type of problems or the appearance of impropriety or anything, when my general was leaving, I decided to leave too because that was enough. That's what happened specifically.

Wow. Okay. And it was a good move because going forward, looking at AMLO, changing the Constitution itself to where anyone of the armed forces has to be Mexican by birth, they change that to include police and agents as well. Right, right. So it was definitely the right thing. Plus, there was the John Casarra fiasco.

Right. And there was a lot of things. And I would go to work every single day wondering if they were going to arrest me next because they arrested John. There's all this stuff going on. And now just, it was time to go. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And it would have been an unfriendly place to be, for sure. It's already an unfriendly place to be. You go to work every day, stressed out to the max, not knowing if one of your own partners is going to kill you, not knowing if they're going to try to pull you into a cartel, not knowing if you're going to be arrested, not knowing what's going to happen to you,

if it's going to happen to your family. And I got tired of the stress of it, to be honest. Did you feel like you were making a difference? No, no, that Vita Coast ballacerra. So I like 308 because it doesn't respect plates. It goes right through them. And if you're going to get in that type of thing, you want to destroy whatever you're hitting with your weapon.

As a result, I would carry 10, 20-round magazines plus one round in my weapon of 3.7.60 by 51-millimeter cartridges. So you have like 220 rounds, and we get into this gunfight, and I'm thinking, wow, that's a lot of power. You can kill 220 of these people. And the next day I got back to base, and I thought, I'm like, you're an idiot because you could kill all 220 of those people, and there would still be another 300 to take their places because there's no jobs. no opportunity. They might be forced into it if they're in it, whether they want to or not, you're not going to solve this problem with bullets, ever, ever.

And that was also towards the end of my general. So everything was like coming around and it was just, I knew I wasn't going to make a difference doing that. In law school seemed like to be the more appropriate. Do you regret it? Because you went down there to combat the violence that you say is trafficking. trafficking drugs is giving drugs to children and, you know, it permeates throughout the country, the United States. Do you, yeah, do you regret that decision? No, not at all. There was a lot of

what we would do was be executive protection, too, including my general. So we'd go to marches or whatnot. One day, there was a little Mexican girl hiding behind her mom, and I've got a picture of it and she sticks her head out and I don't care that she's Mexican but no I do not regret it at all and I thought in that moment yeah I would technically work for my general but that little girl is my boss hmm I'm here to save that little girl so anything if the cartel caught me leaving your studio right now and decided to do something it would be in service of that little girl anything that I suffer would be in service of trying to have done the right thing which is better than doing nothing.

No, I don't regret it, Johnny, at all. Do you think it would be better, it would reduce the violence if they just, if Mexico just allowed one organization to rule over a territory? 100%. But I guess Zacatecas, though, it's impossible to control.

So, you know what I mean? There is that, but when you have one over the top, the federal government, here in the United States. They have control over everything. You know, are they little... They just arrested a whole bunch of Mongols this weekend or whatever. There are people that are going to do their things,

but when you have one government that basically keeps a tight lid on most of the stuff, you get... It's the 80-20 rule, you know. You're letting one person have control over everything, but you're getting rid of most of the problems. So you're left with 20... My view on it, people want to do drugs. You stated that...

a while ago, you know, the demand for it here in the United States, they want it. They've wanted this for a long time. They wanted it during prohibition with alcohol. That being the case, I think that allowing one group to govern it in Mexico, openly, the way that they do with tolerance zones and stuff like that would be the smarter play. But, I mean, a lot of people disagree with me. I take a lot of heat on that position. But I think that with all the violence that goes on right now,

it's pretty clear that the strategy that we've been using this whole time hasn't worked the drug war's gone on since 2006 2008 and we're here in 2025 i don't i'm not smart enough i have things that i'm very smart with i program at home i'm not a political scientist i don't know the answer to that but what i have seen personally no none of those bullets that i ever had or ever fired nor any of my brothers bullets has ever solved anything. I've got proof. We're still going through it all right now. Do you talk to people in Zucketecas that are still working for the police? What do they say the situation is now? They're paying their rent. They go there and they show up and they want to make a difference, but it's never going to change because it's so much bigger than they are. They know it.

And they're born Mexicans. Yeah, I talked to them. In fact, one of them just posted something on my Facebook page last night. I talked to them all the time. And I have interviews that I've done with them, too, on my own little stupid thing. But you're not, that's a national and an international problem that you're trying to solve with the state level. You're not going to change that. Well, in Kuala, you know, they've basically rid the state of Kuala, which we filmed in earlier this year, also with Ed Calderon. They've basically purged that place of cartels. Now, they say it's because the governor, there's an agreement.

the governor is part of the pre, the old school, not Morena. So he's got high level. Yeah, my general is pre-eced too. Okay. So, you know, and they say that the pre-s got high-level contacts with the cartel, kind of an agreement, like, we'll let your families live here in exchange for having no active cartel activity in the state. Who knows?

But, you know, like, I don't know. it seemed like an example of how you can achieve peace in other states in Mexico. You could, but I wouldn't say that that's actually getting rid of it. I'd say that that's an example of cooperation amongst very powerful entities that are just deciding not to allow the violence to flow out on the street level. Yeah. Which in Zocatakis, that isn't the case. In Zocatakas, there are bodies hanging from bridges.

Inzakotakas, there are heads and coolers. And not just then, but still to this day. day and then trying to be like, well, the cartel doesn't exist, it just looks like it doesn't exist, but they're very much there. Yeah. Yeah. As long as you have poverty at that level and corruption at that level, you probably won't ever get rid of it.

And that was actually, that was what I wanted to stay is getting back to base that next day. And I'm thinking about how many people would replace them. there's got to be social and economic changes and opportunities that are brought about in order for any of that to change. Because until people have a valid way to support their family, until people have a way of filling up their stomachs, until people have a way of feeling safe in their communities. And by feeling safe, everybody has these economic opportunities to where they don't seek to go out and do something violent to make a living that would include threatening,

people and pulling them into an organization they might not otherwise as they've been a part of you're not ever going to solve this problem yeah yeah i agree okay so after you left the force you went to law school yeah also in mexico also in mexico did you become a lawyer did you pass the bar no um no i was i brought actually i brought my paper from school i was in uh my sixth trimestry I was working for a law office, and I was doing primarily agrarian law for Campesinos trying to help out poor people, farmers. I met a woman that fell in love in Mexico, Johnny. I mean, this woman is just the best thing that ever happened to me. There's more of my backstory, my daughter getting left in Russia, how I wound up there.

But I did meet a woman that's a reporter in Mexico, and she changed my whole life and worked three jobs to put me through law school. Mexico. And so I started doing agrarian law. It's not very high speed. It's not flashy, but it's helping out a lot of, here's another economic problem. With the mass influx of Mexicans that leave Mexico and come into the United States, a lot of these properties are divided up into what's where they're called Ehitos, which is a agricultural community. It's like a commune. Right. And so people have rights to land either through ownership, through use or sembrando,

cocechando, like they're harvesting it. But sometimes these properties wind up with a very murky ownership of who has a right to actually use it, usofruco and all these different legal terms. So when people leave Mexico in such large numbers, large tracts of land get left without ownership or even worse, someone owned it left and then someone else was farming it, they left.

And then now who has... a legal right to it. So you wind up with all these problems and these agricultural communities, and we help iron that out. That's what I was doing. So then when did you come back? I came back in late 2018. Wow.

Okay. Do you miss Mexico? Very much. In fact, I'll die and be buried there, yeah? Wow. No, a thousand percent, man. What a journey, man. No, it's Mexico, man.

You've been there. You love Mexico. You loved it enough to figure out how to speak Spanish. I love it more than anything. Yeah. It's just, it's hard. It's hard. They're all hard people.

There are noble people. Somewhat. What does noble mean? Noble? The government's taking money from the cartel. No, man. I mean, that's just, I went to Mexico, man, with no opportunities. And I wound up getting everything.

And I mean, I know my story might not be as flashier as zingy as other people's were, but that's definitely what happened with me. I went there. was on the out with a major international corporation, had a job managing a factory, and decided I wanted to do something about the drug problem, so that's what I did. And they left you alive.

They did. I'm still here, so. There you go. That can't be, well, so animalistic. No. But I think it's, I think it was, it's a rational decision. They're like, we don't need to kill this guy.

No, I think. He's not. You know, people, he's not a threat. People, people will say that sometimes. They're like, how the fuck did you? you survive that? And really, I wasn't that important, man. I mean, what I did was extraordinary in the sense that it's just not done. A lot of people don't have the courage to face down cartel or even show up where they're at. I did do that, but also at the end of the day, I was at Gringo on a

leash, a very short leash, working directly for a general, only doing what I was told to do. I did go in to become a ministerial agent where I would have had investigative powers. And I've talked about that. The guy had come to the United States in order to for vacation or something like that, and they arrested him. I don't remember exactly what his name was, but I do remember the interview. And I'd gone in there. There was a huge rift between military and civilian police in Mexico.

They do not like each other at all. And so he was surprised that I was going in there, and it was when my general was returning. tiring. I'd gone in there and I wanted to become a state agent for the ministry. And he told me, he's like, how many, how many years have you been working? I told me already a few. And he's like, well, he's like, so you're already involved in all of this. I'm like, yeah. And in the end, he never hired me. He came to the United States, got arrested, they let him go. But when he went back, they murdered him. So if my life had gone some other way and I had actually

gotten a job doing that. I would probably have a lot more to say because then you're doing investigative work directly. And they call them who does. You know, you've heard of them. Very sketchy people. But, you know, that's just what happened with my story, John. Okay, Dave. You got anything to plug? No, man. Maybe a YouTube channel. You know, I've got my own channel. It's called Fusil Automatikoujero. I'd like to give a shout out to Burpees plumbing in L.A. I told him I would. Burpees. I know about Burpees plumbing.

Do you? I used to work property management. We would call Burpees plumbing all the time for fucking broken toilets and shit. Yeah, man. He's plumbing. Yeah. Burpees plumbing. Well, you know what?

Small world, dude. It is. I'm glad to bring that up because it's just a lot of time people will think that I'm like making stuff up. And more than anything, what I want to plug, I love your channel. I've watched it for a long time. And the reason why I love your channel is even if I don't always agree with everything that's on it, you're doing your best to inform people to where they can make a rational decision that's well-rounded.

And that I do 100% support. And I appreciate the platform. Of course, man. I appreciate you coming all the way to Texas. We'll jump over to the Patreon now and do like a bonus talk. Yeah, okay. If you want, you know, you're here. Might as well.

Thank you so much, Dave. And shout out to Burpees plumbing and, you know, Viva, Mexico. Shout out, shout out to Zacatecas. Zocatakas. I love Zocatakas. All right, guys, appreciate it. See you later.