The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Corrupt New York Cop Exposes MASSIVE Corruption Of NYPD | The Connect
Episode Date: October 14, 2023Mike Dowd, a former NYPD officer, explains how shortly after becoming a cop in Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct, he started taking dirty money and eventually became a drug dealer himself. He was taken down ...in one of the most notorious federal cases against police corruption in American history and served time in federal prison. Mike tells us his entire story from young hopeful police officer to reformed criminal. Check Out Mike On Social Media! IG: https://www.instagram.com/themikedowd/ X: https://twitter.com/TheMikeDowd This Episode Is Brought To You By The Following Sponsors: PrizePicks: https://www.prizepicks.com/connect Promo Code: CONNECT for up to $100 match on your first deposit MOOD: https://hellomood.co/ Promo Code: CONNECT20, CONNECTFREE Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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There's no moment where I found out what these cops were taken, but what I knew was that something was going on.
I was being harassed by other cops to stop making car stops in their sector.
I mean, when I say harassed, I was pulled over at gunpoint.
What's up, everybody?
Today's guest is Mike Dowd.
What are the best guests we've ever had.
You might have seen him on the 7-5.
It's a documentary on Netflix about his time as a cop in East New York.
in the 1980s and 90s. He started off trying to do the right thing. And of course, the allure of drug money
roped him over to the dark side. He started to work for drug kingpins who were running East New York
at the time. He would let them know when buss were going to happen. He would help collect cash. He would even
act as a bodyguard. In the early 90s, he started selling dope himself. And then in 1993, he got
roped into one of the biggest federal cases cracking down on New York cops and he got sent up to
the feds for about 13 years. He got out, did his time, and now he is here to tell us about
how New York has changed. And we go into politics, corruption, dope dealing. I mean, we've got
it all right here. I had so much fun doing this episode. Go see more bonus footage with Mike
over at patreon.com slash The Connect Show. Without further ado, everybody, Mike Dowd,
right here on The Connect.
I was facing life.
You offered me 34 years of my first play agreement.
It was 34.
34 years?
Are you serious?
That's when I see the lights behind me start to flash.
And I didn't even think.
I just hit it.
I was driving like my life depended on.
And then I parked the car,
popped out, closed the door,
and I started running.
And he pulls out a burner, shang.
It's like six inches.
And he passes it to me.
And he goes, here, that's yours.
Don't ever leave the cell block without this.
He was the reason I've made it.
out of that place alive.
Mike Dowd, Michael Dowd,
former New York,
one of New York's finest.
Should I shed the glasses for your audience?
No, I like it. I like it.
Do you have good Irish blue eyes?
No, I don't get the baby. You didn't get the baby blues.
No, but they're beautiful, like, brownish.
Take the glasses off. Take the glasses off.
Let us, let the audience see the man,
the man that you've become.
So you are, you were one of the dirtiest
cops in New York City in the 70s and 80s.
So you're the best kind.
Yes.
That's what I thought.
Yeah.
It didn't land me well, but...
I mean, look, every
every drug dealer, every street person back in those days
needs a guy like you.
Yeah.
Because they're going to survive on the street.
Yeah.
Five times as long.
Absolutely.
If they got the law in their pocket.
Yeah.
What a business decision.
No shit, right?
That's a business model.
Did you ever know, we have a friend,
we've had him on this podcast.
He goes by Unique?
Yes.
He's from Harlem?
I think I know Unique.
Yeah, black, super black Jamaican guy.
I've spoke to New York. I haven't met him, but we've spoken on the phone.
Oh, dude, you got to meet this guy.
He is from a different time, dude.
This guy was making $5 million a week.
Yeah, yeah. That kind of money.
That's when keys, that's when you're moving
100 bricks every two days kind of shit, right?
No, he couldn't make that kind of money selling bricks.
Not today.
No, no. He couldn't do it. He had to be selling pieces.
No, no.
Thousands and thousands of pieces.
Well, he was getting them.
He was dealing basically directly
through his business partner with the colleague,
cartel. So he was getting him for about
eight, flipping him for ten, but he was doing
that 200 times a week. So maybe $2 million.
Yeah. But listen, the most of the money
is made at the ground level, okay? Totally. That's how the
money is made. However, the guys
are going to make large amounts in one day.
Right. Guys are going to make
$300,000 in one day
where guys got to hustle, and he's going to
make a million in a day, but he's going to
24 hours and non-stop. Yeah, he's got to run a crack
spot. He's got to have 5,000 clients,
10,000 clients. This guy only needs
two. Right. Exactly. He's dropping 50 bricks off to this guy
from D.C. He's dropping 20 off to this guy in Queens and another 20 to this guy in Brooklyn.
Yeah. Unique, I know, I've spoken to Unique on the phone
within the last year. I just can't remember what the conversation was about.
I think he was in the entertainment stuff. Probably. Probably.
Was he hooked up with Eric Adams? Did he never mention he's got a relationship?
The mayor? Yeah. I don't know.
Because they were trying to get a bunch of guys to get together that had done things in the past.
to come out and, like, be community spokespeople now that they turn their lives around.
Right. It's pretty insane how many criminals come out of that era that are connected to politicians now.
Eric Adams knew, who are the kingpins out of Queens?
Yes, it's supreme.
The Supreme team. He was like, grew up with those guys, you know?
I know. I know. So you.
No, no, no, no, no, no. Hey, none of that. None of that. We're going to get that out.
There's no, there's no keeping it under your breath. We're an open book here.
It's all right. So you grew up in Brooklyn?
No, I was born in Brooklyn.
I left there three and a half years old, moved out to Brentwood, we call Brent Hood, Long Island.
And it was Hood out there?
No, wasn't then.
It is now?
Actually, it's gotten pretty, you know, and I hate to say this, this is a non-political show,
but since Trump got rid of MS-13 out there, the neighborhood, like, like, you kid,
did 180-degree switch.
It's really, it's really.
So it's coming back.
So it's coming back really good, really nice.
I mean, I grew up in it, and I wouldn't have been welcomed back in it 10 years ago.
Today, it's like lollipops in East New York when it was before it turned back again.
Yeah, right, right, right.
You know, when it started to get cleaned up, nice, and then now it's starting to fade back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it was big, huge, huge difference.
And are cops, do you have cops in your family?
So, I probably have eight to ten law enforcement, cousins, uncles, you know, two brothers, things like that, you know.
Wow.
So, but not no more.
We're all guys now.
Everybody's retired.
We're old school now.
Everybody's retired.
Yeah. We're all G's now.
Yeah.
And before every cop in New York was black, female, Puerto Rican, Dominican, right?
Nothing wrong with that.
No.
Cops in New York City were Irish.
Well, Irish, some Italian, we let them in.
We had to.
We had to, because we were banging their girls.
Well, what are you going to do, bang your girls?
Yeah, you can't bang.
We switch.
You can't bang an Irishman.
The sharks and the jets, right?
What was that about something, I forget?
No, they were church.
The Malton Church.
Right, right.
But that is why, you know, Colin Quinn, the great Irish comedian, he says the Irish become cops because of the church, because there is this discipline to a higher power, authority, right?
This hierarchy.
Totally.
The service.
And the Italians do what they get organized connections.
But you...
I mean, let's be real.
But you adopted a lot from...
Grab an Italian guy who's in his 60s or 50s.
And did he go to the police department?
They didn't want me that my family begged against it.
And the Irish community are like, go three more, add them on.
And the Italians like, don't you dare.
Right, right.
It was just insane.
Italians, if they weren't involved in it, they knew somebody involved in it.
They just couldn't help themselves back down.
You just too close.
It's like being Irish, and do you have a cop in your family?
Probably, probably, probably.
So how, but you really, I mean, clearly, as we know now from the documentary, from history,
you adopted a lot from the Italians.
You adopted a lot from the street guys.
Well, you know, the difference between an Irishman and Italian is like the color of their hair, you know, most of the time.
Because as we grew up in Brooklynese, Brooklyn guys, we all grew up basically the same.
You know, we went to the same churches for the most part.
We intermingled, we intermarried.
So, I mean, if you come to my house, you're going to get as good Italian sauce.
They call it gravy.
We still call it sauce in the Irish side.
You're going to get as good a source in my house as you're going to get an Italian house.
That's the way because we just, we intermingle.
so well, even though we always had that Italian-Irish competition, competitiveness,
you're a Guinea, you're a Mick. It was just the way it was, and we grew up. But we actually,
that was, it was love in many ways, in many ways. It was respect. I could do that to my Italian
friend called him McGinney and he called me a Mick a minute later. We'd be William Ball together.
Yeah, exactly. It wasn't like that offensive. Everything is offensive today. Yeah, no, it's crazy.
So did, but did you have any ambitions? When did you join the force? What year?
So I didn't want to be a police officer.
Go figure.
Right.
But it came up across.
When you're Irish, it just comes like, it just shows up here.
Right.
Right.
It's like a Jew, a Jew, you're going to become a lawyer.
A lawyer, a jeweler.
Right.
A Jew and a jewler?
My mother's a Jew.
Yeah.
I don't know what happens.
Is she really a Jew?
Oh, so you're a Jew.
Yeah, no way.
Wait, Mike Dowd is a Jew?
Potley.
Get the fuck out of here.
I cannot believe this.
I'm a shiver.
Wow.
Oh, my God.
You're Jewish God.
So we were raised Irish Catholic.
My mother was actually, my mother was a sad life, but a wonderful woman.
You know, she turned out, God bless her.
She's still running.
Wow, really?
Yes, she was putting like a home as a child.
She was raised by nuns, you know?
So we were raised Catholic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She had that whip out from the day we were born.
Sure, sure.
Just the bloodline, I guess, is Jewish.
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Let's get back into the episode.
So you didn't want to become a cop, but you got 10 uncles and cousins and brothers that are all cops.
This is kind of what you do.
It was a path.
It was they were lawyers in my house.
I may have been a lawyer.
Sure.
And that's, you know, it's a good city job, especially back then.
You know, you raise a family.
You buy a house out in Queens.
It was stability, right?
You take your civil service test.
You knew you weren't going to be loaded, but you'd pay your bills on time and you'd get a vacation once a year.
And that's how we were raised.
Simple.
This is when there were still working class white people in New York City.
And that's what you did.
You took your civil service test, became a fireman, you became a cop, whatever.
And now this is Dominicans and, you know, right?
I mean, a lot of Dominicans.
Totally, no, absolutely.
Puerto Ricans even, they've moved on.
They've moved on, too.
They've been here so long, too.
They're highfalutin.
They're highfalutin.
Don't disrespect, but they got, they're up a cut now.
Puerto Ricans are highfalut.
Someone didn't tell me that.
They're up a cut.
Come on, they're up a cut.
So, did you forget?
So you go in at what, 22?
21.
What year is that?
1982. Okay, so, so drugs are already, uh, permeating every neighborhood.
It's mostly, it's mostly cocaine.
Because crack hasn't hit quite yet, yeah, right. Quack doesn't come in quack. Crack doesn't come
until 83, 84. Right, right. And then it hits big. Yeah. So, so 82, coke is big, but heroin is
probably still as big on the streets. Yeah, not as, not as prevalent. Just not as prevalent.
Okay. So you go to work in the 75th precincts?
So I started out in Queens, Astoria, Jackson Heights, Corona,
and then I get transferred, what they call them training,
the NSU field training, they call it.
I went through field training over there.
And then by the time I was done with field training,
which is normally six months,
but it was a year for us because the class was so big.
We graduated 3,800, 3,600 cops graduated in one day.
So they had to train them in the field,
and it took a year for them to get them through their training.
The guys, so some guys are done in three months.
and they hit the street, you know.
And we all were in the street, by the way,
but just like sort of unsupervised, you know,
and now you become a cop, and you're seasoned at three months.
Right, right.
Three months of training, you're seasoned.
Good luck.
Yeah, no shit.
Go to East New York and tell me how seasoned you are.
Right, right.
So you end up in East New York after your training.
And tell us about East New York in 1982.
So I tell the story, and I'll tell it for your audience.
Yeah, please.
So I'm driving down Sutter Avenue.
and in the ghetto comes on by Elvis Presley.
It's about 6.40, 6.35 in the morning, maybe 6.28.
I want to be accurate because someone could go back and look at this day.
It was June 13th, I believe, 1983.
I'm driving down Sutter Avenue.
And I have Radio 1, which I very rarely listen to the radio, by the way.
I usually listen to 10-10 wins news, you know?
It's how crazy I am.
I don't want to miss anything.
And in the ghetto comes on by Elvis Presley.
And I just fucking break down in tears.
I just like, what am I doing?
I'm in the fucking ghetto.
Here I am.
And I'm driving down the street.
And in the ghetto comes on and the guy gets shot with the shotgun
and the mother cries and the baby dies in the ghetto.
And I look to my right and they're playing dice against a wall
which I would come to know as Eugene's bodega.
It's 6.30 in the morning.
It's a Saturday morning.
So Friday night they're still out from Saturday morning throwing dice up against the wall.
And I'm going, this is a little bit more than I think I'm ready for, ladies and gentlemen.
And, uh, lo and behold, within a week or two, I get my first murder scene that, not that I kill
anybody, sorry, but you know, I get my first murder scene. I got my first stabbing. I get, you know,
all the actions starts to come your way and you just begin to react and you stop thinking. Right.
Because you're in war. Because you're just there. You're blood deep. You just, what do you do?
You know, you just respond. Like, mostly as a human being would. And then you realize that you are the
police at the same time, you know? Right. So you have to be in control. You have to run this shit.
Right. So you've got to become a motherfucker. You got to be right there. You have to be an animal
to survive. You have to step up. You have to step up right there. Right. It's time to, I say sink or swim. So,
you know, if you sink, you got to go backwards. You got to leave. If you swim, you're with the
sharks and you got just keep, you know, making your way through the waters. Did a lot of cops in your
graduating class that got sent to East New York just put their hands up and say, I need to
transfer? Like, I can't, I can't deal with this?
Um, I would say no. So they turned in, they stepped up.
They all stepped up. Most of them stepped up. Some guys would find, try to find a way into
different details. But most guys back then, they were, they were pretty much manly men.
I hate to be, I hate to be a little, what is this called?
Fucking, cops were fucking tough as shit back then. They just had to be, man, you know.
You either, you either became tough if you weren't, or you got eaten. Yeah. So are we talking?
So when you talk about the sea, this, this,
street in the city and how the guys handled it.
First of all, the cameras...
There were no cameras. There was no cameras.
So you were the law and the fucking justice right there.
80% of the time. It was all taken care of right there in the street.
Arrests, of course, if you had to.
Right, but you would rather...
But you'd rather just justify...
Just take it out right there in the street, a couple lumps handed out, and everyone shakes
hands and goes on their way.
So you busted some heads?
When you had to.
Yeah.
Never over...
Listen, we never overdo it.
You don't kill a guy.
We all have overstepped at a moment.
I think, and anybody could say that about their own life, you know.
So I'm not going to be, I don't want to be, I don't want to be here and saying,
I was Lily White.
I never did.
There was times I gave the extra shot or two.
That's because the guy hurt me or something, you know.
Well, give us an example of that.
Well, why?
Because it's, I want the guy might be out there still.
No, no, no, he's from East New York.
He's been dead for years.
Yeah.
Well, so a guy gets the better of me, a big, big jacked up, dude, you know,
well, just came home, you know.
Yeah.
He just did three, four years.
He's jacked.
ripped. And I'm sort of like you, wiery strong, you know. And it was a weight differential
angles. And all of a sudden, I had one cuff on. And he was compliant and then he wasn't.
So when someone's compliant and then they're not, things don't always go well. Because I got
one cuff on, now what? Right. He's got the other cuff now, right? Because he's got the one on his arm.
I can't possibly control that better than he can. It's already clicked to his arm.
So now he's pulling and I got the other one cutting through my hand.
There's going on.
Long story short, he got a couple of them.
All right.
In the end, we were friends.
Right.
Because he realized what he did was wrong.
And I realized that, you know, I gave him a couple extra shots.
But you know what?
That's better than cops today who get scared and pull their guns out.
Yeah.
You know?
Well, that's because everybody's scared.
Everybody's scared.
Everybody's scared.
And they wait until the last minute to be physical.
That's going to cause more deaths and more accidental shootings.
and we're seeing it all the time.
I mean, accidental, legitimate, accidental,
or unintentional, or how's this?
And I've been watching a lot of the videos.
The escalation today is unnecessarily quick.
So a guy gets pulled off.
I saw one the other day on a video,
and I'll explain it to you why I'm trying to say this.
And the guy was a tatted up.
You can see he was a moxie Latino guy,
but a big white American Latino.
Does that make sense?
He's an American Latino,
And he speaks wide.
He has no accent.
So I would call him probably a Mexican-American.
Chicano.
Chicano, yeah.
And so he's been, and he's American.
And, but he's a little intimidating because he's a big dude.
And he's all tatted up.
And the cops handled him with care, like cautiousness.
But the cop handled it in a way that was deprecating.
And here's this guy sort of feeling punked out now by the cop.
And I'm saying to myself,
This isn't worth it.
None of this that's going on right here is worth it for a fucking ticket.
None of this that's going to happen is worth it for a ticket.
And guys got to understand that.
Guys and girls in law enforcement,
got to understand,
where are you taking this?
And sure enough,
it ends up in a fucking shootout over a fucking ticket.
Because the guy didn't want to be compliant.
And yes,
oh, I smell marijuana.
Oh, really?
You smell marijuana.
Yeah, I do all the time walking in the streets.
You smell marijuana.
Someone's going to get fucking shot and killed because you smell marijuana.
Yeah.
Is this worth it?
It's not.
Well, you know why?
These cops are kids, just like you were, and they've never been punched in the face.
They've never been in a fight.
They didn't grow up with neighborhood kids.
That's part of the problem, too.
We're all in the house doing this.
Absolutely.
Yelling at everybody on a fucking phone.
And they don't know how to talk.
They don't talk to each other.
Because being a cop is communicating.
It's like, hey, what's going on?
You have to have a level of decorum on how you approach everybody.
which is why on the way here we were welcome back from that location,
I said to you, I love the ghetto.
And you said to me, I said, I just love it.
And you're like, but I said, look, these people,
they like the rest of us.
Everybody's the fucking same.
Just treat people the way you want to be treated, and you're good.
And there's got to be a knucklehead in any crowd.
But if you treat people the way you want to be treated,
look them straight on, don't be money.
You know, just be straight up.
But to be fair, in East New York in 1983,
there were more than a few knuckleheads.
How many murders were happening?
How many calls would you get?
About a hundred a year.
But that means there's a thousand...
Just in East New York.
That's a thousand shootings, yeah.
That's so it's every day.
Every day.
It's every day.
There's a shooting.
Every day there's three, four shootings.
And every day, every other day is a murder.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you guys used to seeing dead bodies, blood scenes.
Yeah.
It was, it's just, it's, what's it called non-effects?
What's the type of word affect?
It's not, there's like...
Just numbed you out?
No effect.
What do you mean?
Oh, yeah.
No effect.
Did nothing to you.
Did nothing.
It was absolutely nothing.
Nothing.
Like the first body I saw
Trump fell off a roof in Queens
I jumped off a roof because he wanted to kill himself
and he did
and I'm looking at this egg head
that's all fucking weird
from hitting the ground
and I'm fucking getting sick
looking at this guy
you know within two years
I'm sitting there eating spaghetti next to the island
resting my
resting my plane on his back
while he's dead
so that I don't spill my fucking soda
I mean that's
of course I'm exaggerating a little
but not too much
Watch a Ranger game with the guy
He's dead
But it was good because he japped the pole
Okay
He had no electric
But he japped the pole from the street
So I could watch TV
I was so happy he japped the pole
But he died with a cigarette in his hand still
And the fucking
You know, the ash
The ash was burnt
He died while the cigarette was still lit
Because the ash burnt out in his hand
He got shot?
Yeah
Wow
In his fucking head
Now before you
But the neighbor got mad at him
Did you ever take shots?
Did people ever shoot at you
Before you were dirty
So I was never
shot at that I know of.
Did you ever have to pull your piece out? And I never
Oh, pull my pussy's out
15 times a day. Oh yeah. And
ready to use it 15 times a day. Did you ever
squeeze? Squows once,
didn't finish to squeeze once twice.
Maybe twice. I get confused sometimes.
It was a cop. I almost killed a cop.
I was squeezing on a cop.
Undercover, deep. Never saw him. Never knew who he was.
Wow. He's got a black guy on the ground with a gun to his head.
And he says he's a cop. I said, I don't give a fuck
who you are right now. You better have dropped that gun. He dropped
the gun the guy gets up and beats of shit out of him.
Oh, wow.
Yo.
Holy shit.
I was squeezing the trigger.
And it's funniest story in the world.
I shouldn't say these stories because they end up people.
I'm doing movies.
They're going to rob these stories, but.
Oh, yeah.
No, no, no.
You're going to get killed after this podcast.
They're not allowed.
They're not proprietary.
Preparietary.
Even my story?
Absolutely.
You sure?
They better not rob it.
I'm fucking.
there's a hooker in the window telling my partner about something.
And there's a little spot we had there.
Anyway, so she's telling my partner,
we're doing an accident report.
We're on New Lots Avenue,
where it crosses with Dumont,
looking at the projects on Fountain Avenue.
There's anybody out there who knows
know exactly what I'm talking about.
So it's the cross of Dumont and New Lots
and the progress straight ahead.
And the girl comes over and we're doing an action report.
I don't know.
He's probably doing it.
I don't do the paperwork.
And she says to him,
I see you looking because he's going to me, don't look up.
This is how my partner was.
Don't look up.
I go, of course I'm going to look up.
What do you mean?
Don't look up.
He goes, there's a guy with a gun to someone's head over there.
I go, and he goes, well, don't look up.
I don't want to have to go over there.
Like, I can't be bothered.
Come on.
I mean, and then this girl comes running over.
Cute little black chick around 16, 17, 18.
I don't know.
Those are 18.
and she looks in, back then you didn't matter.
Yeah, wishful, wishful thinking.
Yeah, okay, fine, fine, my.
I'd say 18ish.
She was 18, sure, sure.
Anyway, so she looks in a window and she goes,
I see you, you turned your head.
She's yelling at my partner.
Now I'm like, dude, we can't just turn our fucking heads here.
Yeah.
You know, this guy gets capped.
We're discussing it now.
Yeah.
I don't want to be the one that gets in trouble
because we let someone get murdered
instead of like just beeping a horn.
We just do something?
So he's like,
Oh, all right.
Should we take off, hit the siren?
Because this is 80 feet from us.
So we're going, oh, fuck.
So I hit the siren because they're like in, they're so tuned in to each other.
They have no clue to police are there.
I hit the fucking gas in the siren.
I go, I hit the break.
I take the gun out before I stop because I'm not coming out, drawn, right?
Ready to go.
I hit the break.
I jump out.
I open the door.
I forget to put the car and fuck.
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B-21.
The fucking car takes off my cover.
And I've got one leg in the car
because I'm going to come out over the door.
I got one leg in the car,
one leg in the street.
The car's going.
I'm trying to, I jump in,
I hit the fucking,
I put it, throw it and park.
The car starts lurching like this in the street.
I'm like, drop the gun, motherfucker.
Did he drop it or did he?
First, he goes, no, I'm the police.
Because he didn't want to come out.
He didn't want to acknowledge he was the police.
And then finally, he goes,
he's wearing his thin.
Back in the day, it was a leather jacket.
Those those, they look like they would be considered a dress leather jacket,
but it was so dirty and worn and skis from his undercover operations.
To look that way that he looked like ghetto rent low shit.
I mean, just low-end shit, you know.
All the guys in the piano look sweet next to this guy.
You're fucked up.
Was there communication between undercovers like that and beat cops like you?
No.
It doesn't seem like there was any.
It wasn't any.
It's so dangerous.
No, I was none.
Did, was that a DEA or just a New York undercover?
He was, you know what?
I, he was a New York City cop, but they get assigned to the DEA.
Right.
They do both, you know.
The New York City cops was a DEA.
Oversight.
Right, right.
That would be a joint task force case.
Right, right.
Did you ever want to work undercover?
Did you ever want to be a detective?
Yeah, I wanted to work undercover.
But you never ended up.
I'd be rich.
Right.
So tell us that.
I didn't know it.
They wouldn't let me.
Well, but tell us about why would you be rich as an undercover back there.
Well, so I know everything.
They're undercover.
They know everything.
They know there's a lot of undercover guys that did well.
Let me just tell you.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
So tell us about that.
How much were cops taken?
How many?
What percentage of detectives in East New York were on the take with drug dealers back there?
You're trying to get me in trouble?
I'm trying to become friends with the cops again.
I would say 40 to 50% would take.
Yeah.
And we're talking big money.
Big money.
We're talking 10, 15 Gs a week?
No, it wasn't a contract.
It was scores.
Okay, so explain that.
They roll up on a...
So, so...
Okay, Jesus is going to hit me in trouble here.
Oh, you're Serpico.
Yeah, well, woe is me.
Long-term investigations lead to deep money.
Yeah.
So if you get in undercover operation with a street guy, you don't want a street guy,
you want three guys up.
And they work that far in.
So you go from the street vendor to his supplier to his supplier.
Now, this guy...
may make a million a week, but this guy's moving four million of a day when he moves his stuff up top.
He's only making $500,000 on a $4 million move.
But his bank is millions.
It's banging.
It's banging.
Constant bulk.
So these guys, they now know where the top guy is.
Within two, three weeks, they know where the top guy is.
It doesn't take that one because they just follow the train backwards.
Right.
You tell me your guy, I grab your guy off duty if you want.
Yeah.
Listen, I'll let you fucking operate.
Who's your guy?
I mean, I'm not saying I did these things, but these are the things I wanted to do.
And so they, and so, and then...
Because I was, basically, I had given up.
Right.
I had given up being the good cop that I really should have been and, and even wanted to be at one point.
Hang on.
Let's return to that in a second.
So, so they move up in three weeks, they find the guy who's supplying, the guy who's supplying, the guy who's supplying the guy who's supplying the street.
A thousand kilos.
Yeah.
Boom.
So they hit four million dollars.
Boom.
And then they let...
See you.
Have a good night.
Everybody wins
Everybody wins
Nobody goes to jail
This guy gets paid
And now there's an understanding
This one on all the time
Wow
All the time
It's almost better that way
It's almost better
I'm so jealous
I'm so jealous
But Michael
Sweetie
Why did you give up?
Yeah well I feel bad
You made me hurt
When you said you were
It seems like you felt bad
That they wouldn't let you be an undercover
I mean look
They were a little smaller than me
I guess.
Their instincts were correct.
Well, you know, so that's unfortunate.
But why did they know?
Because initially their instincts would have been wrong if they had given me what I thought
I had deserved early on.
So you wanted to be a good cop?
I was a good cop.
I was a very good cop.
But you wanted to be a clean cop, an honest cop.
Yes, I did. Yeah.
Clean, honest, good cop.
Not a good cop like in the way I would say good.
Did you think you could actually have a positive effect on the community?
No.
No, but no, you don't think.
It's short notice.
You're like, oh, this is going nowhere.
but you would have advanced your career
and you would have made some really impressive arrests.
Right, right.
It would have been nice on your badge.
It would look really good
when you get those different colored stuff up on top.
Right, right.
And you know what?
In some ways you would feel like you're contributing.
You know you're not changing anything.
You're putting your finger in the dike.
There's nobody would tell you any different.
Because if you're undercover, I know guys, in fact,
you'd be interesting interview one day, maybe, Jimmy, my buddy,
he was deep undercover for 17 years.
He was an Irish kid from the Bronx.
wherever the fuck he was from and he would go in the ghetto and cop and they'd say you're the
police he'd start fighting with them you'd call me the police you'd start fighting with them in the street
they were right but he'd get the dope anyway because he would fight with them yeah and they'd give
me the dope whatever it was whenever he was coping yeah you know so you would have liked up today but
right right so you would have liked to be that you wanted to be that deep I didn't need to be that
but I'd like to be involved in the case like investigations and stuff I let the I let the guy that
maybe fit the role a little better than me be the uh
what do you call the buyer, right?
You know, the infiltrator.
Sure.
And then I would be like doing the case.
It's your building up, okay, we got to watch Tommy today, Juan, Carlos, Jose.
Because there's some intellect that go into it, you know?
Like you're calling the shots, you're quarterback and the whole thing.
It's a chess game.
Yeah.
And I like chess, I found out.
So.
I've had a couple thousand games.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's a lot of that in there, that in spades.
Yes.
I'm not good in spades.
I don't touch them.
No, no, black people know.
Black people know spades.
I could never figure out spades.
Yeah.
I don't even look at it.
And they slam that thing on the table, man.
Whoa.
Must be something with the hearts.
So who's running the neighborhood?
Who's running East New York?
Who's running the dope traffic in 83, 84?
83, 84.
I mean, I know like the people on the street.
Cocaine is being run by the Colombians and the Puerto Ricans a street level.
Okay, gotcha.
What about the blacks?
The blacks?
they weren't big in the cocaine business early on until it turned to crack.
Why not?
It was a lot of money to get a kilo of cocaine back then.
Right.
So it was a high-end, it was a high-end interest of individuals that would purchase cocaine.
Right.
So it was difficult to get in on it.
Yeah, well, you have to spend at that time $35,000 to $45,000 a kilo for cocaine.
Yeah.
So it was, and the Puerto Ricans and the Republicans and there were races too.
The Colombians wouldn't deal with blacks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There was a lot of different things that I wasn't privy to, but I would suggest that there may
have been a lot of that.
They didn't trust each other.
So the Colombians did it and they dealt with the Puerto Ricans.
And I guess down Miami was the Cubans that they dealt with.
And they would distribute their stuff.
That would be up for them to trust the local black guy would repackage or something like that.
So the Ricans were moving it for the Colombians.
Yes.
Dominicans have not moved into East New York yet.
Not yet. Not yet. They'll be there, though.
It's coming. It's coming.
So at what, do you remember the moment that you found out how much money these cops were taken?
Do you remember the moment? You found out how dirty the precinct really was, like how it worked?
So there's no moment where I found out what these cops were taken.
But what I knew was that something was going on.
I was being harassed by other cops to stop making car stops in their sense.
sector. I'm like, I mean, when I say harassed, I was pulled over at gunpoint by detectives or
no, plain, beat cops with blue and white stripes on their cars and uniforms. And I was in the
middle of a car stop one time and a guy said, they pulled up alongside him. And I'm telling you,
he did a car stop on us. And I'm like, he pulled over the police. I'm like, I thought they were
there to help us. What's up? His name, guy's name was Terry. The other guy forget his name
but I could pick it out of the lineup.
I pick his picture.
Nice kid.
This is a nice kid.
This guy, he wasn't very nice.
Terry, Terry McGregor.
This is there.
Terry, hey, Terry.
I give you a little plug out there, Terry.
He knows I fuck with him.
He pulls me over.
He's got his gun.
He's got his hand on his fucking gun.
I go, what's up?
I do something for you?
He's like, what are you doing here?
I'm looking around.
I got a blue car.
I got a uniform on.
I got the 7-5 precinct on the car and on my lapel.
I work here.
He goes, not here, you know.
I go, really?
Something to that effect, you know.
Don't quote me if I say the wrong exact word because, you know, people out there,
they'll, oh, on this interview, you said that.
Anyway, so he says to me, we don't pull him calls over in my sector.
He said, well, he blew a stop sign right in front of us.
I know I probably shouldn't be doing this, but, you know, let me give it a shot.
You know, right in front of us, you know, when they do it in front of you,
if you don't do anything, it's fuck you.
Totally.
So, you know, you want to sort of maintain a decorum as a police officer.
You know, if you're going to sell drugs, turn away.
Yeah, have some kind of respect.
Yes. Otherwise, you're making me look like I'm involved and not getting paid for him.
So, you know, if you blow a stop sign in front of me, expect to be stopped.
Right.
I'm not necessarily going to give you a ticket, but expect to be stopped.
Anyway, so this guy happened to be getting a ticket from my partner, Sal Christy.
Hey, Sal, Sal, you know.
And Terry McGregor and his partner were pulling us over.
They wanted what we're doing here.
Stay out of our sector.
Don't pull any cars over in our sector.
Don't stop at any of our places to eat.
And don't come in our sector unless calls to come into our sector.
He said, and there'll be unlikely chances that that'll happen.
Wow.
So I'm like, what the, I mean, is it really that precious?
Right, right.
Is it really that precious here?
Right.
So it made me think something else was going on.
So you started to scratch your head.
Yeah, like, what's going on?
Is it really about turf?
Right.
And what's in this turf?
Sure.
So tell us what was really going on there?
Well, he was protecting whatever he had going on.
He didn't want me tripping across it or screwing up anything for him.
Right.
So with that, that leads me to believe that there were weekly quotas.
I mean, because I've spoken to other people in, you know, East New York cops, not from the early 80s, but from the 90s, who actually did have crack dealers every week who,
would pay them a salary, you know, 20 G's or whatever.
Well, where the fuck was on?
Exactly. I think you might have already been disgraced by them.
I set up, I set up the template.
Right, right.
The template was set.
Wow. So, so it seems like you almost, just like the movie Serpico, I bring that up, but
I'm not kidding. It seems like good cops are like, they're given no choice but to join
the game, but to join the party.
Right. So that's a fallacy, but it's almost not. So what do I mean by that? It's like,
There's peer pressure in every fucking neighborhood you walk into.
And the peer pressure is to either accept it or let it go.
Like accept it and be involved or just don't see it.
And a lot of guys chose not to see it.
But there was a significant number that saw it and partook.
But you're trying to do your job.
It gets to a point where you can barely do your job if everybody is essentially...
Yeah.
So it's not as disruptive as you think.
What it is is it's usually done on a nod and, you know, a bump in a nod, whatever you want, a bump and a nod, whatever you want to call.
It's more like if you have the chance to give the leeway to somebody that's that you're good with, then you will take that chance.
But you won't do it at your own expense or some other cop's expense.
Right.
So if you can, so for example, one time one of my guys got, well, that's fast-form.
a little bit, so we'll slow down.
And I was able to thwart something.
Yes. I think that was in the documentary, right?
Yes. That was great. Save that story. Because we're going to move into it. Now, were there
any situations with really dirty cops, not just guys who were, you know, taking the quota or,
you know, making things disappear at a bust? Were there any really dirty cops who actually
killed other cops or who were really, like, blatant and over the line with their corruption that
you remember?
Well, I mean, I could tell stories of other guys, but not...
Right, yeah, other guys.
They were mob cops.
You know, they called the mafia cops.
They were doing hits for gas pipe.
Gasso was his last name.
He was one of the bosses in the...
Gambino, Columbo, Lucchese?
Lucchese.
Wow.
Gaspipe.
His name is Gaspipe.
I don't know what family you're in gas pipe.
He's still in prison.
Okay.
Hopefully he stays there.
He cut a deal with the government, and then...
He slipped and slid and they fucked him and they threw him back under the bus and they gave him life.
But he was a mafia cop.
No, no.
He hired cops.
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
He hired cops and the cops did hits for him.
Wow.
They pulled guys over on the parkway, pulled him into the rest area and killed him in the rest area.
Holy shit.
I think one guy's name and I don't want to say the wrong name, but have been Lino.
And those were guys from...
What precinct?
They lived in the six.
They weren't cops.
They were organized crime cops.
Like that was their assignment.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
They were assigned to organize crime.
So they were getting all the inside information.
They call these guys up and say, you know, they're coming to get you tomorrow.
Right.
You know, maybe you want to take off or get rid of all your cash, you know.
You don't want to get, you know, if you have a million in cash under your bed, move it so they don't get it when they show up and take all your Rolexes because they're going too, you know, and make sure your gumata doesn't tell your wife.
Boy, how New York City has changed.
that is unreal. And this isn't that long. This is 40 years ago. This is the 1980s.
Not even 40, really. So bring us up to the point where you decide to change teams, so to speak.
So we sort of touched on it a little bit, but I end up, we talk about, I've talked about it too often to not say it.
It sort of ends up, the focal point is when I pull over to Puerto Rican mystery. And you might have heard that.
Okay. Retell, though.
It's been a few years.
So I pulled a car over, and it was no license, no registration, no insurance, no plates, nothing.
Nothing.
And it was a young Puerto Rican kid.
And so I pulled him all over, license rid of nothing.
He's got nothing.
But he's got a stack of hundreds.
Yeah.
Right.
There you go.
He's got a Corvette.
He doesn't speak English.
He's only come here a couple months from Puerto Rico, and that's when Puerto Ricans would come here like that back then.
Totally.
They would come, just arrive, and become because they're citizens.
They don't need anything.
They don't need ID because they're citizens.
So the guy goes out and buys a car, has no papers,
because he don't give his shit.
It's all good.
I own a car, you know?
And so he's driving around a car.
And I'm like, look, I've got to take this kid's car.
He's really not a bad kid.
What do he got to?
He got no plates on the car.
Confiscate his car.
Give fucking 2,000 tickets and all this shit.
Call it, whatever.
I probably would have drove it, impound it.
I'd probably would have drove it around for an hour or something.
I said, you know what?
Maybe there's a way we can work this out.
I like, I must have spoke enough fingers
because I said I want a lobster lunch
and he knew what that meant.
I said, not ham and cheese, lobster.
He goes, yeah, I understand.
So I left, I tell the story, I don't remember
because when I think back, I don't know if it was
100, 150, or 300.
I don't know what the fuck he left,
but it was significant enough at the time
for me to go, yeah,
this is going to get me at least a lobster lunch
or something out of it. Like 300 bucks?
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.
Instead of the 2,000 tickets.
And all the bullshit.
And all the bullshit.
And all the bullshit.
Yeah.
And after a couple hundred bucks under my briefcase, on the back seat.
He left.
And then we pulled away.
I was sort of nervous as hell.
I don't know if I was setting myself up for a problem or whatever.
And then about 15, 20 minutes later, I'm looking around.
I got the more.
No one burnt.
Didn't burn a hole in my hand on my pocket yet.
Yeah.
And how much were you making a week at that time?
Oh, I was making about $230 a week, $240.
maybe a week at that time.
So I got half my money in one shot.
Risking your life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he just casually...
You know, everybody says that.
And I have to be...
I have to downplay that statement
because you don't really necessarily
how you take the police job for the money.
What happens is you eventually realize
that you're not getting money.
Yeah.
You know, when you see the money,
and you see what you run into,
and you're like, I'm locking up this guy.
He's got $17,000 in cash in his pocket.
He don't have a job.
He's a night.
Time clerk, this one at the bowling alley, his mother bought him a brand new Jaguar.
I'm like, I don't have a mother like this.
And I live in a fucking home in Long Island in the suburbs.
What the fuck?
You just can't make this up.
So it turns you.
It begins to plant little seedlings in your brain and eventually they grow.
And so when you say, when people are I say, well, you weren't getting paid enough.
No, I wasn't.
No, I didn't say you weren't getting paid enough.
I just said that you were getting paid shit.
Yeah.
You know?
Which doesn't enough.
Shit ain't enough.
If you could eat shit, we never go hungry.
You didn't have paid shit.
You didn't have lobster money.
Yes, you didn't have lobster money.
So this kid, as casually as like finding some change in the couch, just passed you
$300.
So you felt scared but thrilled.
Yeah, excited.
If I can get away with this, this is not a bad little gig.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So how to progress from there?
Well, then it became opportunistic rather than organized.
Right.
So, well, you know, I mean, if I go to a house, so we go, back then there were drug, drug houses, drug dens, drug houses, where people would come, they'd meet, they'd buy their shit, they'd get high, and then the big guy over there selling it, well, you know, people are coming and going, they'd be on the couch.
So you'd hit a house and you'd find three, four grand under the couch, a bag of drugs, whatever, and you could either score it and keep it or voucher it.
No one's going to miss it, you know, who's going to claim it, the drug dealers, you know?
So it became property.
Now, now if you, if you scored a brick.
Bricks didn't come by very often, I'd be honest with you.
All right.
Four ounces.
Nine ounces, a quarter key.
Correct.
Who would you go sell that to?
Well, at some point, it didn't, it didn't start out that way, but at some point I would bring it home to people I knew that were involved in drugs in my neighborhood.
Out Long Island.
Yeah.
Who were they?
Irish guys.
Regular.
Regular guys?
White guys?
Human beings.
White guy.
Everybody was getting money back then.
Yes.
So white suburban drug dealers.
Yes.
Gotcha.
Gotcha.
So you didn't get it off
to other people in the ghetto?
Not initially.
Because I didn't know who to go to.
Right.
And then eventually I found out who to go to.
Which would be Barron.
Right.
True Barron.
Not Barron.
Barron actually never really sold a drug in his life.
But he connected people.
Right.
Who was Barron?
Barron owned the Autob Sound City in Brooklyn,
on Atlantic Air.
you in Crescent Street.
That's right.
Which comes a major focal point.
Right.
Part in the documentary,
it's mentioned and whatnot as well.
So Barron had this for people
who haven't seen the documentary,
which you must go see.
One of the best Netflix documentaries.
Is there one better?
Just tell me.
Let's see.
Maybe Tiger King.
Okay.
If you're a white trash,
nothing.
Okay.
So none.
So none.
Go ahead.
I always say it's one of the best.
They always say.
I'm like,
well, you tell me which one was better.
I just want to know.
Just for the record.
I want to,
I don't see what's...
That we didn't beat.
So Barron owns this auto body shop, and obviously this is East New York in the 1980s.
His customers coming in, he would put in sound systems, things like that.
Boomboxes, all that.
But did he also put in traps, or did he not?
In the cars?
Like compartments and stuff?
Yeah, compartments.
Yeah.
So he put in traps.
His customers are drug dealers, like exclusively.
Exclusively.
So he knows everybody.
In the neighborhood.
And out of the neighborhood.
And out of the neighborhood.
They're coming here to get their cars customized.
Correct.
How does that figure into your story?
So because I became friendly with Barron and trusted.
How did you do that?
How did you come to know him?
You know, it starts out as a law, and then it starts out as, hey, can you do something for me?
Can I do something for you?
And then all of a sudden, we realize there's a trust going on here.
And, hey, all your customers are drug dealers.
you know, is there any way we can do something?
And then all of a sudden he calls me up and says,
we got a guy that wants to fucking be protected.
Simple as that.
Yeah.
I mean, he wasn't afraid to approach me
because we had gotten that trust level between us.
And, you know, guys can quickly form a bond of trust
and where they can broach subjects
that you might not necessarily broach
with a law enforcement officer
if you're not friends with them.
But, you know, you could sample waters, you know, slowly and gently, you slip your toe in a little bit.
I can't tell you how he groomed me.
Yeah, yeah.
But it didn't help that he had a brand new corvette and he had a lovely wife standing in front of it when I met the two.
Right, right.
It was disarming, to say the least, you know.
What year did you meet Baron?
I met Baron in 80, I could say four or five.
I don't know exactly.
About 85, crack is taken over.
Oh.
Like, it's, do you remember how fast the crack epidemic?
swept New York neighborhoods?
So I found my first crack.
I want to say, I could be off.
It was my first, but when a guy standing on the corner on Crescent and Fulton,
and we got a call for a drug sale, we showed up, and there was a guy standing there's
talking about this.
I go, what's going on?
He goes, not that.
I go, someone says you're selling drugs.
He goes, mm-hmm, what's the matter?
He goes, drink.
I said, oh,
Dentist.
Of course.
Makes sense, dentists.
And I'm about to leave, and I go,
something's not right.
I grab him by the throat.
I go, over your mouth, motherfucker.
All these fucking,
he had vials rimmed his fucking jaw here.
And he probably had 15, 20 vials in his mouth, right?
And I go, spit him out.
He spits him into the, I don't know what it is, by the way.
I have no idea what this is.
He spits him into the sewer.
All right.
We're condition corrected.
Yeah.
Street justice.
It's over.
Go-bye.
You go, I go.
And did you look at it?
Like, what the fuck is this like off white thing?
I might touch it?
Spit it out.
Yeah.
So I didn't even know what it actually was.
I didn't even really get a good look.
I knew it was something plastic in his mouth looking, whatever.
Glassine looking, I don't know what the fuck.
It was in his mouth.
Get in there.
Well, nobody knew what it was at first.
So he spits it out.
And then I get a call back about.
15 minutes later, at the time we were five,
five George, respond to
back to Crescent and Fulton,
the sewer plate has been removed,
the guys inside the sewer.
So I said, wait a minute, there must be worth something.
This shit must be worth something.
If he took a 400 pound sewer plate off
to get like 10, 10, 9,
I don't know what it was.
Yeah.
And then so from that moment forward,
we knew there must be,
there must be money in that game.
And then shortly there after we,
The tricks and the trade were really brilliant, son of a bitches.
Really?
Brilliant.
Really?
Brilliant.
Can you remember, like, what was that?
Oh, putting it in.
Tennis ball.
Right.
Tennis balls bounce.
Yeah.
With holes in them.
Yeah.
The milk cartons, you know,
that guy's been drinking the same cotton for like three days.
What the fuck?
It actually looks like it's three days old.
Right.
You know, just the way they would do it,
or they'd leave it over here, they'd put it over there under a rock.
It just, it was just, it was.
just... Well, you weren't involved in, like, street rips of crack dealers, were you?
It was just so blatant. Yeah. I mean...
How could you not? We would get phone... We get 9-11 phone calls.
Male Hispanic, male black on the corner of Riverdale and Hinsdale, wearing P.F. Flyers
and a beige khaki outfit, you know, and then you roll up and the guy be standing there,
hi, how you doing? Turn around, we toss them, you know, you come up with some crack or they
threw it over there, so when you pulled up, he ain't got it, but it's over there. And then you
He's popped up. He ain't got it, but it's over there. Now what do you do? You know, is this? She goes, no. No, it was mine. It's, you know, so it was just...
How did crack dealing change the street, the neighborhood? Violent. It got more violent. Violent.
So there's 100 murders when you go in in 82, 83. No, no. There was only 60 murders when I got there.
Okay. So by 85, 86? There's 85 to 100 murders a year. And the shootings double, triple.
It breaks down to like one death, 10 shootings.
That's about how...
So a lot of people survived these people.
Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, they don't know how to shoot.
They're shooting sideways still.
White boys, much higher fatality with it.
It's all right.
Because they train.
They shoot better on the basketball court.
We shoot better with this.
Watch out when those redneck come.
So, and there's corner crews everywhere now, right?
Running it.
Every corner has a different crew.
selling tops.
Well, every corner is controlled by one organization.
So they have like a certain section that's theirs, and they would fight for them.
That's what the bodies would come from.
And are the blacks are controlling the corners now?
Pretty much, yes.
Any Puerto Ricans?
Yes, yes, yes.
Certain neighborhoods, you can't be black in the cell.
Right.
You know, and there's neighborhoods divide it up racially.
You know, you wouldn't be selling in front of the pink houses if a Puerto Rican, let me tell you right now.
or the Mawcy projects.
You had to be black.
I mean, if you were Puerto Rican, it's because you were working with them.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
So now, and it is this time that you meet and get friendly with Baron.
Correct.
And Baron comes to you and says, there's a man who wants to work with us.
And cello.
One of the most charismatic people in that documentary.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tell us who he was.
No, not cello.
That's Adam, you're talking about.
That's Adam.
Chello's the guy that ends up dead by his own people.
Okay.
Chello ends up, he runs a spot up on Fulton and Norwood.
Who is he? Who is Chello?
He's in charge of a major street-level organization.
Dominican.
Dominican guy.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm trying of a big Dominican group that are running this section of East New York.
So, Dominicans now immigrating pretty much en masse from the island.
Yes, correct.
They're starting to make their way into New York City.
They're known, of course, for their stronghold is Uptown, Washington Heights, Harlem.
Washington Heights, Harlem.
And that's where all these guys live.
Right, but they would come.
They buy and own bodegas in Brooklyn, and they set them up as fronts.
Now, the bodegas do very well, but they also sell crack.
And not necessarily in and out of the bodega, but outside of the bodega.
So they own the bodega, and that's their front.
And they hold the work.
And it all gets controlled from the bodega inside and out, but you might not necessarily buy inside the bodega if you're buying small pieces.
You know, the big pieces in the bigger business get sold right out of the bodega
where you go in for your papers and your milk and underneath your papers is your brick.
So, I mean, that's a different way of operation.
Wow.
So those guys lived in the heights, but they would come down to hustle?
Correct.
Or to really hit the streets off wholesale.
Correct.
Wow.
How many bricks do you think we're moving in and out of those bodegas every day?
Well, so Adam would do 50 a day.
50 kilos out of...
He had 475 cups.
customers.
Drug dealers.
Yeah.
He's hitting off drug dealers.
Those are his customers.
And they're breaking it down into crack or, you know, pieces.
They're just coming in.
Usually it's a half a kilo and up, but he would have some guys that would take big eights, which is four and a half.
Yeah.
I forget.
It's been such a long time.
Wow.
So how does...
450 customers, if they're coming in for a half a brick, just say, you know, twice a week.
It's a lot of kilos.
The streets are flooded with.
with...
Gold chains.
No, no, no, but think about the economy.
Goose neck.
Goose neck equal...
Think about the economy of that, though.
It was killing.
There's millions of dollars moving in and out of those ghetto streets every day.
Richest places in America.
God, if they had saved that money and bought those buildings.
If those have been Jewish drug dealers, we would have never had gentrification, man.
God damn, dude, but you can't blame them.
They had never had anything.
You know, you give people no education.
They were living quick.
Yeah.
Fast and hard.
So how do things progress before Adam comes in?
Tell us about how things progress with cello.
So cello and I, we were flashing the pan because cello ends up shortening me the first
opportunity he gets.
Hold on.
What was the agreement?
The agreement was that we would monitor and inform him on his availability for the
weekend of 4th of July.
So the intimate wisdom in my mind was in 4th of July weekend, most cops are on a detail
doing the ferry boats and the 4th of July fireworks.
And if you take a detail in narcotics,
usually you get the holiday off
because that's why you take a detail.
So you might work undercover and shitholes and whatnot,
but you get 40 July off with your family.
So, I mean, that was my score.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, OQ could give me $8,000 to tell you
that you'll have a good weekend, I promise.
Right, right.
Even though I wasn't working it.
Right.
So you were essentially just getting paid for information.
Yeah.
Right.
I'm going to tell you how many cops are going to be in this area at this time.
Correct.
Or not.
If that would be the case.
If I were there.
Did you ever...
This is what I'd say is don't or do.
That's all.
You can work or don't work.
Right.
Or they're in a blue car today.
Don't sell when they pull up.
Don't hand them anything.
Right.
And how much was the agreement at first to be paid?
$8,000 a week.
That is a no-brainer.
Yeah.
That's a no-brainer.
It's good money.
And you're not doing, you're just, you know, saying you're consulting.
This is a consulting fee.
Yeah, right.
It wasn't like I was saying, oh, go after the police.
It wasn't, you know, I'm trying to justify my actions.
That's all right.
No, no, is that okay?
I'm in a jumpsuit.
Come on, it's a crowd podcast.
It's not a pro-law podcast.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Here you go.
So, yeah, so, no, I got to point this.
It wasn't, I'm not to justify my actions and say, you know, I didn't really do anything
because I really didn't, but that doesn't matter.
The perception that I was doing something,
was enough for him to pay and enough for me,
almost like the Bidens, you know?
Right, exactly.
They didn't do anything,
but they just, the perception was.
Yeah.
We should erase that,
fuck him.
Yeah, seriously, we'll end up dead, dude.
You don't want to cross them or the Clintons.
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What's up, everyone? I'm coming on the road to do stand up. October 12th, I'll be in Toledo,
October 15th. I'll be at hilarities in Cleveland. November 1st, I'll be at,
at the Stress Factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut, November 2nd.
I will be in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
On the 5th of November, I'm going to be at the New York Comedy Club doing the New York
Comedy Festival right here in New York City.
November 15th, I'm in Dallas at Hyenas.
November 16th, I'm in Austin at the Vulcan.
Do not miss that one.
On December 14th, I'm in San Diego.
And on December 21st, Zanis in Chicago, this is a big one.
I got a lot of fans in Shytown.
Come out to that. Let's pack it out.
Get your tickets at Johnny Mitchell.
Dot biz.
All right.
Let's get into the episode.
So, did you ever, when you were consulting like this?
Plausible deniability.
Did they ever?
Was anybody ever trying to set up a hit and need you, you know, you know a guy's going to be in this location?
So you want to get a shot off.
So I come to you, the cop and say, hey, is there going to be any patrols around here?
Are you asking me if there was going to be a hit?
No, I'm sorry.
saying like, when you were consulting
with these dope dealers, at
any point, like letting him know
where the cops were being, where they weren't, did they
ever use you for information because they were
trying to set up a hit on somebody?
Maybe. Yeah.
What, you know, and you won't tell us?
Can we do it on the Patreon? Maybe.
You save them for the Patreon?
Go to patreon.com slash the Kineck Show
where we get the full story.
We've got to get him drunk. What we've got to do is get you a couple more
drinks. I don't drink anymore. You know that. I don't drink.
Yeah, says tell that to me an hour ago.
Yeah.
I don't take.
No, my father's, we have a deal.
I won't drink anymore.
Was your father still living?
Yeah, amen.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Okay, so how long, and so what happened with Chello?
So he shorted me $700, and I told him, and I put pressure on his store, closed down his business.
Over shorted $700.
Yeah.
But he was paying $8,000.
What are the thing?
So, what do you mean?
what's the big deal.
Right.
See, that's why you survived and I wouldn't have.
Because I would have said, that's $700.
No, no, no, no.
Because then you'll never get paid.
Right.
Because you can't give an inch in that life.
It's the way it is.
I had a guy turn his podcast off because he wouldn't give me.
What do you mean?
No, I'm paying you, motherfucker.
Don't worry about that.
Don't worry about that.
I ain't showing you.
So how did you close?
It's a principle.
An agreement is principle to me.
That's it.
If it was for $3,000 and we agreed on it,
and I realized I should have asked for $3,000,
I take the $3,000, and I know next time I ask for $3,000.
Right. That's it.
That's the way it is.
I mean, you can't do that to people because you make an agreement.
That's it.
So how did you close his spot down?
I put a cop there.
Yeah.
I paid the cop to sit there.
$1,000 for four nights.
And what does that do?
He was fucking hit a lot.
Right.
Sitting large.
Right.
So then the fiends.
stop coming to that spot. They stop going to a spot. And so they don't make any money.
They put it on me. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari.
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Some balzy sons of bitches.
Like I said, New York ain't the same.
He put a fucking hit on a cop.
What was the contract for?
They didn't tell me, but I would say 50 grand, you know, to shoot me.
I don't know if they wanted to kill me, but shoot me.
Yeah.
Somebody would take that in East New York back in 1988.
Oh, yeah. Fuck yeah.
How did you find out about the hit from Barron?
Yeah.
So then what?
How did that conclude?
How did that beef include?
9-11 on my pager.
Back then we had beepers.
You ever see a beeper?
No.
No, he's a boy.
You haven't seen a beeper.
And from Barron, and he says,
come out to me, I got to talk to you.
So I went to his office.
What's out?
They put it on you.
It's okay.
And the funny story is the precinct no.
What?
And they never told me.
The 75 no?
And they never told me.
They wanted you gone.
They never fucking told me.
They wanted you fucking gone.
They never fucking told me.
They never fucking told me.
And how do you know?
Because Joe Hall, you know, the detective in the film, he was in with the Dominicans.
He was deep in them.
And he knew all, he had people telling him information that there's a hit on Mike the cop.
He didn't, he never told me.
And I never was told by anybody.
Why?
Why did they want you gone?
Oh, because, uh, whatever.
They don't give a fuck.
I can't ask.
I can't answer for that.
Were you just not well liked?
I was loved.
So then why the fuck would they not tell you that you had a hit at?
embarrassing those that knew what I was doing.
Oh, like the clean cops didn't like...
But you're like, you're only got your toes in now.
You're not...
Yeah, but to them it's still a disparagement,
and they'd rather see you dead.
See, that's the one...
It's the one thing about cops.
That's...
Which is, I guess, honorable, but not.
You can fuck up as a cop
and your whole life you're destroyed in their eyes.
Right.
You can't come back and be redeemed.
Like, like...
I think I've been sort of...
working my way through redemption in my life.
Right.
This slip-ups, we all, we live a, by the grace of God, we live a long life.
And we're going to make mistakes along the way.
But when a cop falls from grace, does he get a chance?
Right.
Or is he no good, dirty cop till he's 93.
Right.
I mean, by the grace of God, I'll live to 90, 93.
Do you Lord?
A good guy, a good 93.
Don't keep me alive if I'm not doing good.
Well, you know, cops, let's be honest, most of them.
not you. They're not the most nuanced intellectual people. And they're Irish guys. They think
in binary. Good and bad. Evil. And going to have. You know what? You have a point, Dan.
So, no offense, if you're a cop, be a smarter one. It's, you know, and that's kind of what
the country is now like that. You're either a woke liberal, leftist commie or you're, you know,
a hardcore Trumper. Yeah. There's nothing. There's no room for like, I don't know,
See, that's sad because I'm that guy.
I like to bridge that cat.
You know who I am.
You know, I'm a hardcore Trump, or I'm not going to lie to my people out of you.
But I respect, I respect your opinion.
Yeah.
You just don't force it on me.
Right.
That's all.
That's it.
Right.
Go forward.
Go to work.
Get laid.
Sucker.
If that's what you do.
I don't care.
Amen.
Thank you.
I don't care.
I don't give a fuck.
Just don't make me do it.
Unless it's a nice big fat.
If I'm going to go down
If I'm going down
Make sure it's more memorable
Make it memorable
All right
I went to 14
12 and a half years of prison
I never so I'm still working on my first
All right so
It better be amazing
Man you went 12 and 5 years without sucking
The black guys did love you
They did love you
You did good on the street
Mikey
There was many that were begging though
Yeah I bet
I was pretty
at one time. You were a good looking kid.
You were a good looking kid. What a good hairline.
So listen, so cello's
got a hit out on you for 50 large.
The cops in the 7-5
don't give a shit. They don't want you
gone. Right, so I find cello the same day.
I have never met him in my life, but I found him that day.
And he was there, and he didn't know. I pulled him
over. And what happened?
And I licensed registration, insurance gone. He doesn't know.
He doesn't know. It's you.
How is he paying you? Through like a conduit?
Through Barron.
Okay, gotcha.
So you actually never met him.
Okay, wow.
Yeah, that was on purpose.
I didn't need to.
Yeah.
And license registration.
He never met me.
He didn't know who I was.
And I happened to be working that day with Lisa.
I want to say her last name was Breeland.
She was internal affairs.
They said her to work with me because they wanted to keep an eye on me.
And I broke her.
She said to me, Dow, I'm really not here to get you, so don't worry.
Oh, my God.
See, I'm here to cool off.
She says, I'm just.
jammed a few people up in the 114.
They sent me here to cool off.
But this was not yet.
I didn't know that yet.
So pull the guy over.
I said, I'll be right back.
He's a friend of mine.
I tell her.
License registration.
He hands him his papers like this.
He's a little uncomfortable.
And I'm praying because he always has a Mac 10 in his fucking car.
Wow.
He opens the glove box.
I don't see a Mac 10.
I don't see one laying around.
And I'm fucking pissed because I could kill him, right?
Yeah.
I could kill him.
Oh, right, because he got a Mac 10.
He'd just pull out, blows head off.
He's got a Mac 10.
The word is he's going to kill me.
I'm either just kill him here.
No Mac 10.
Were you waiting for him to reach for it?
Yeah.
Oh, great.
So, well, because I was, you know, of course.
No, I get it.
Now he's looking to kill me.
Right?
He's put a hit on me.
Yeah.
I'm going to end it right here.
It's as serious as it gets.
You know, this is exactly it.
And back in 85, like it seems unfathable now that you kill a cop in New York.
But back in 80, it happened.
It happened.
That's how they took down the Supreme.
team. They murdered a rookie cop.
Eddie Burns. Yeah. So, yeah. So here
I'm...
So,
I catch a lot of hit for that. Anyway,
um...
But he doesn't reach for it. So he doesn't reach
and he gives me his license for...
And I said, I just looked at him. I took the paper and I threw it right in his lap.
I go, you know who I am?
He looks up at me. I go,
you put a fucking hit on me? He goes,
I said, yeah, motherfucker.
Why don't we do it right here?
Once you get out of the car,
I'll let you get out,
and we can do it.
We'll turn around,
we'll do the Mexican fucking standoff,
we'll take ten paces,
we'll turn around,
I'll give you all that.
We can do it right here.
Under the L on Fulton Avenue,
Fulton Street.
Oh, no, man, no man.
I said,
Nicole the fucking hit off.
I left, got in the car.
About 15 minutes later,
my beeper goes off.
Barron.
I go over, what's up?
I go over to the shop,
left her in the car.
She don't know what's going on.
He goes, he called it off.
I said, all right.
And here's your, he's your $300.
$700.
He's your $700.
Got that fucking $700.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I might have went to jail for life for killing him, but I got that $700.
Yeah, goddamn right.
And the hit got called off.
So you got straightened out.
And so cello ended up being murdered?
By his own people, yeah.
Shortly after that?
I don't know the exact time, but it wasn't far after that because when I went away in 92,
I think he had already been murdered.
Wow.
Yeah.
Do you know what that was over?
Like he was fucking his own people?
He's fucking his own people over for money.
Half the time it's over a girl, you know?
He sounded like kind of a jerk off anyways, right?
Yeah, he was full of himself.
Wow.
Okay, so...
I mean, I could find out if you want to make a phone call.
I could find out Wednesday actually killed him over.
To be honest with you, you make...
You make being a cop sound like a lot of fun.
It was.
You know?
It was.
Because you get to talk shit.
I did.
Try it.
Try it.
Oh, try it.
Listen, back in the days when we were running the street, we were a gang.
Yeah.
You were.
We were a gang.
No question.
But let me tell you something.
In defensive police, if you were not skirting the law, you were treated with dignity and respect.
Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Peruvian, whatever you were.
What do you mean?
You as a cop or treated with respect?
No, no.
A civilian.
Really?
For civilians were treated...
Well, people in L.A., you know, the LAPD was notorious for fucking with civilians, right?
Yeah, but not in the ghetto, in the street.
Why would you?
There's so many other people that need you to fuck with them.
You know, it's just...
I don't care about L.A.
I'm talking about here.
You know, guys would leave here and go to L.A. and go, oh, my God.
I know that because I know guys...
In fact, I know one out there right now.
That's a friend of mine.
That was his cop in Brooklyn.
That's his sergeant out there right now.
He was running their gang squad.
No shit.
And he said the LAPD is...
Knocko Nolan.
And he said the LAPD is dirtier or worse?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
It was not the way he liked policing.
It wasn't about dirty.
It was more about just...
He didn't like the policing tactic.
The whole approach.
I don't know.
I didn't get into it with him.
And then he came back to New York City to become a cop again.
Then he said, you know what?
He was shoveling snow or something one day.
He said, what am I fucking crazy?
I can do this.
same thing out there. I just adjust
my lifestyle. Exactly. Exactly.
Wow. Okay, so
cello, cello's gone.
You're back.
You need another, you know,
you need another client.
Yeah. How does...
Hell yeah. I like this money.
That's right. So, how long after
the thing with cello ends did you meet Adam?
Two weeks. Two weeks.
Through Barron. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Adam, I got to, can I
get Adam on the podcast?
You'd have to go to the R.
Oh, is he fled to the DR?
No, no.
Or you got deported.
He got deported.
That's right.
Adam is a...
You book a trip, I'll take you to Adam's house.
For real?
I swear to Christ, we'll do it.
No, he's never been podcasted.
Adam is a...
Never been live podcasted.
Never.
Wow. Adam is a fucking G.
Adam is...
I mean, go watch the 7-5.
He's got a velour suit on.
He's got gazelles with...
Giselle shades with no lenses in him.
I mean, he's got like a red beard.
I mean, the guy's wild, bro.
I mean, the guy, it's just like you can't make this stuff
up. You can't, Hollywood screenwriters can't
write it. No, no. Did you get that impression
of him when you first met him? Well, I thought
he was cute.
Don't forget, when I met him, he had little capizios
on a brand new red Porsche. Yeah,
yeah. Blonde hand, blue eyes.
I'm like, what the fuck? You're Dominican?
Well, he's a fucking Dominican. He's got a full accent.
He's a real Dominican.
Yeah, he was a...
You met him,
and what kind of weight
was he moving? Give us an idea of the
level of drug dealer he was. He was
moving two, three hundred kilos a week.
Yeah. He had 475 customers. Yeah.
As you said, he was moving it all through the bodegas.
200 a week, 300 a week, 40 a day? 40 times 7, 280.
And was that just in Washington, or excuse me, in East New York?
No, he had other locations.
Yeah, other locations. Other bodegas.
Yeah. Other bodegas, yeah.
Who were his connects?
He had five bodegas.
What Colombians he had to be working with Colombians?
He was getting directly not from Pablo, but the guy from Pablo.
A Median cartel.
Yeah, he was got 1,500 at a time.
Right.
It's a lot of fucking kilos.
Fresh off the boat.
Yeah.
Fresh off the boat.
Yeah.
I don't know if they weren't coming from JFK at the time, but, you know, that's what I think.
Could you get that kind of work through the airport?
Well, if you get 50 at a clip, you know, you get three people.
Right.
You know, Avianca Airlines was bringing it in.
Eastern Airlines at one time for the CIA.
You know, you can go down a list.
TWA was bringing it in.
Right.
Pan American was bringing it in.
Of course.
That was a CIA front, Pan American.
Some of them were.
I don't know the exact.
But the bottom line is that.
that all the airlines, don't forget,
the confluence of LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark.
That triangle.
And they all came in from Colombia and South America.
Okay?
And they were doing four, five flights a day, even if it was empty.
Yeah, that's right.
And it's the truth.
That's right.
That's the fucking truth.
So I don't know what was going on.
Right.
That's a lot of stuff.
So Adam's getting 1,500 joints at a time.
I'll tell you a story.
I was working in Brooklyn.
and I just had left east New York
and I went to the rehab.
I got out of rehab and I was in the 9-4.
Where's the 9-4?
What neighborhood is that?
Greenpoint.
Okay.
Where you were you, South 12th and North 12th
and that area over by McCarran Park?
Okay, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, essentially.
Yeah, Brooklyn, Bushwick over there.
So something breaks out, a story breaks out,
and it comes in the news and there's
there's a toilet paper, I could be wrong,
but I think it's a toilet paper making machine.
I don't know what one looks like,
but I saw a picture of one,
and it's a giant barrel,
like 10 feet high and round,
and by 10 feet deep, let's say.
And that was shipped from Columbia.
I guess they make the best toilet paper.
They make the best toilet paper barrel makers, I guess, in the world.
And inside that barrel of toilet paper maker was loaded with kilos.
Yeah.
You know, like, like 2,000, 3,000 kilos.
Yeah.
So they found so many different ways to just bring it in.
It's just insane.
And so, and in the 80s it was getting bombed daily.
Didn't matter how it got through, any and all ways.
Any and always.
Any in all ways. It was relentless.
Relatless.
And it would go.
That was the best shit in the fucking world.
Untouched.
Pink.
Pink, right?
Pink, Peruvian fucking flake.
And so they.
Sure.
So as we all know, the Colombian kingpins, if he was either Medellin or Collie, they would
get it to the Dominicans, who were the ones that supplied the streets.
Yeah, correct.
And Adam is one of these guys, and he's thorough.
Did you strike, he was a thorough guy?
Very, very efficient.
He had an operation, and he ran his business like a business.
Yeah.
You know, he wasn't a slipshod.
Yeah.
It was all tucked in.
I mean, they would pay $200 to $3.3.000.
$300,000 for the corner.
What do you mean?
So,
he would buy a bodega
here, and then
there's a guy in the corner selling, and he'd
tell the guy, it's going to be my corner, and the guy's
like, no, it's my corner. Well, here's
200,000. Go two blocks away.
Beat it. Yeah.
200,000? Yeah. I'll take it.
Yeah. Think about that, not one gunshot.
No, no need.
Just, hey, here. This is my corner now.
Here, you better go. Yeah. Okay.
or you're going to go.
Right, right.
And he had...
We'll figure it out.
One of us is going to run this corner.
I'm offering you a nice price to leave.
And did he have hitters like that on his squad?
You'll have to ask him.
But did he have soldiers?
Did he have guys...
He had backup.
Deep. Okay, tell us about all this story
I'm getting chills when his bodega gets robbed.
I don't know if you had anything to do with that,
but that's a wild-ass story.
I was there.
Okay.
Robin Rob it.
No, I'm not saying you rob it.
I'm not saying you rod.
But, like, because, you know, you have all millions of dollars going through these little corner stores every day.
Stick up kids, wolves.
Professionals.
They're professional.
They would be like the police stalking the joint.
Right.
And sometimes they would pretend they were the police.
Wow.
Did they actually go that far?
Oh, yeah.
They had patrol cars and everything.
Wow.
Well, you know about the wild cowboys.
Of course.
Uptown.
They would pose his police.
They'd pull over dope dealers.
guy, the black guy and Spanish guy.
They'll come in. Yeah. Arrest you
and then put you in a vacant building and call your people
and say, I'm going to need $100,000 by noon
or this guy, his head's going to be in a duffel bag.
And they did it. Yeah, they did it. And they did it. Yeah, they did it.
So one of these crews tries to hit
one of Adams' Bodegas. It wasn't, it was a stick-up
crew, not those guys. Not the Wild Cowboys, no.
The stick-up true. I met the half of them. I know, I met all these guys.
Wow. I went to stay old in the 90s. Oh, yeah, yeah.
So I hit 92, and they start coming in 92, 93, 94.
Talk about coming into jail.
Yeah, they started getting arrested, but right after me.
Right.
And I met all of them, every single one.
So tell us about when these stick-up kids try to hit Adam's sore.
So they hit him, and it wasn't their first time they went after him.
It was their first or second.
I can't remember.
Anyway, so I had moved Adam to different locations because I wanted control of his spots.
So I suggested this spot or this spot.
Because I want to be able to see who's coming and going and not be able to be laid on.
So if you're on a busy two-way street, you can be easily unaware.
Yeah.
But if you're on a one-way street, of course.
You know all the cars coming and who's going the right way and who's circled.
Right.
And who's stopped.
Who's pulled over?
You can gauge the unfamiliar more quickly.
And so we made some adjustments with him.
And in one of these places, in particular we put them on.
I didn't necessarily like the location,
but there was a benefit to it,
which it had to do with Barron was across the street
in his old shop.
And we knew the owner of this shop would allow Adam
to take over the bodega and set up upstairs.
Anyway, upstairs was perfect
because it was an apartment
that they can do a shoot straight down through.
What is that?
There would be a pipe line
that can go straight from the upstairs apartment
outside of the bodega,
through a private house, into the bodega with the merchandise,
and they shoot the money back upstairs.
So you never really actually, you never witness any transaction in the store.
Right.
The money goes up, the shit comes down, and you leave.
So no one has to move it around.
You have to walk out, expose yourself.
He was coming down the streets, coming down the block.
Brilliant.
No one ever touches anybody.
It's like that money at the drive-through banks.
It's like the bank.
Wow.
Oh, by the way, with these bodegas,
that he would just buy out the owner and cash right there.
there. He goes and retires on the island.
Yeah, yeah, does what he wants. Nothing. Okay, gotcha.
And nobody ever said no.
Too much money. Yeah, I mean, the offer was
so good. The offer was sufficient. They're working
every day. They're putting, you know, 400 in their pocket.
Now they can put $75,000 in their pocket,
and they're gone. Yeah, okay.
Gotcha. So at this particular spot,
it sounds like strategically, it's very
advantageous. Yeah. And it proved to be
so when we showed up.
Right, right. Because when we showed up, we only
We knew there was no one coming at us.
Right.
Because it was actually Atlantic Avenue, but it was three lanes in each direction.
So if you were to leave that bodega, you'd have to go only one way, this way,
unless you jumped the curb, made a scene and made a U-turn and went the opposite direction.
So you would have made a scene to leave the bodega.
It would have been like, because oftentimes a robbery is goes unnoticed.
For example, if I went into a store to rob the store and came out and got in the car, you wouldn't know.
Of course.
I just leave.
Unless someone says,
He just robbed me!
You'd be going,
ooh.
Yeah.
Right?
But when a guy jumps a curb and makes a U-turn,
and screeches out to get away,
I think that looks like that might be the guy that might have robbed the place.
Right.
So there's a telltale signs that can give things away.
Now,
did you have a cop,
or was it you yourself posted up,
guarding it, watching it?
At that little time?
Yeah.
I had just left it.
I had been gone about 15 minutes.
Holy shit.
Because I would do my rounds.
Right.
And that would be in my rounds
that I'd be covering the store.
And I had just left the store
and I think I was at Barron Shop,
which was directly down the block,
about a mile.
And a call comes in,
stick up at the fucking bodega.
And I'm like, you motherfuckers.
And I don't know who it is yet, of course.
I'm not there.
And we show up and we squelch the whole thing.
Meaning?
We got rid of the job.
It didn't happen.
Right.
So you called it off.
You're like, it was a...
Yeah, 90 X-X-ray.
unfounded, it didn't happen.
It's a forced call.
Yeah.
And then so many cops converge on the scene
because it sounded like a real one.
It was a bodega getting a stuck up, stick up.
That doesn't happen very often that call.
And so I had it all squelched.
Everything was done.
They were leaving.
And some fucking 11-year-old kid comes out with a shotgun.
I says, officer, I found this.
And it was to the sergeant.
Oh, fuck.
The cop would have been good.
I would have, give me that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fuck out of it.
He handed the shot, the sergeant turns around and says, where was this?
The kid says it was on the hallway on the floor.
Oh.
So now he goes, search the building.
Oh, fuck.
So now I had it all taken care of.
Who left the shotgun?
The guy's doing the robbery?
Probably not.
Probably the guy's inside.
They probably went and got the guns in case there was a return.
Right, right, whatever.
Right, right.
Maybe it was posted up.
Yeah.
Maybe it was posted up in case someone pushed them in.
They had a shotgun to reach for it.
Right.
I don't know.
Right.
that's something you could ask Adam.
But yeah, so then the whole thing got opened up,
and they searched the whole building,
and then they, it's still not to be thwarted,
I go upstairs,
because now I'm going back to the scene.
By the way, how much work did they make off with?
So I'm going back to the scene now,
because I left, because I want, now,
everything's cool, good, everyone leaving?
Let's go.
It just doesn't exist.
Very ten.
Never happened.
It's not happening.
I'm looking to fucking get away.
Let's go.
Everybody go.
Watch, follow me.
Where I'm leaving.
If I'm leaving, you should all leave.
Let's go.
So, finally,
I got to turn around and go back.
I go back and I go upstairs
and sure enough,
there's a cop in the fucking,
in the apartment,
loading with bags of cocaine and money.
Oh, no.
So I go, what are you doing?
He goes, well, I, he goes in front.
I said, do you have a search warrant?
I said, do you have a search warrant to the cop?
How dare you?
Yes.
He goes, no, I go, what are you doing here?
Yeah.
We can't be doing this.
Get the fuck out of here.
This is Adam's work.
What are you doing?
My boys.
His fucking cop puts the shit back and says, you're right.
I don't have a search warrant.
I said, you better go get a search warrant.
But in the meantime, you're a very honest cop, Mike.
See, I didn't follow the Constitution.
The cop puts the shit back.
But then, so they got,
they put the shit back.
And what happens is,
they go upstairs from the bodega.
They get it?
And the cops circled back.
The sergeant and the other guys circled back.
Just to do a sweep.
And the guys,
the guy's walking down.
Fucking duffel bag full of cocaine and money.
So they arrested, was it Adam?
So they arrested the guy that used to,
saw on the video with the glasses and the fake beer. Oh, that guy's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. He's
amazing. No, no, no, as a character. Elvis. Elvis. His name is Elvis. And Adam's cousin. Right,
right. Right. And he ended up turning state's evidence. Oh, no shit. Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What an amazing guy. Wow. No, as a character, though, he was real charismatic.
Then he heard, and I heard quiet. Yeah, the whole story of how that robbery went is, is crazy.
But I thought they, so they didn't get everything.
Clearly.
No, no.
The guys who did the robbery got about 700,000 and a couple of bricks.
I don't know how much.
They wanted the money.
They'd take anything.
It's cash either way.
But what was the easiest thing to get?
Cash.
They got the money and they got some drugs, but they left behind some money and the drugs.
So when they went and they went to clean out the guys from downstairs, went back upstairs
to get the remainder to rob it from Adam and say they took everything.
That's what was really happening there.
They got caught by the cops coming down.
And now they're coming to the precinct
and the guy's looking at me.
Elvis, I'm going, uh-oh.
Elvis, be cool, man.
Don't start singing you, motherfucker.
Don't you start singing, hitting the high notes.
It's him.
Yes, it's he.
His el, his.
My hermano.
Is there a policeman.
He's a corrupto.
And he started singing.
He started singing.
How much work did they get him with?
Coming out of those, about five kilos and 150,000, something like that.
I guess it's enough for, it's enough for a 20-year bid, I guess.
Oh, yeah.
You know?
Were there any guns on him?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, okay.
So, yeah, you probably get 20.
You have a good Dominican guy.
Face of 20 probably do 10, 15.
Wow, that's a bitch-made move, though.
You know the guidelines pretty well, huh?
I do, unfortunately.
So that was...
So that was the beginning of the investigation that led to you as well?
Correct. Correct. Okay. How long did it take for them to finally arrest you?
Well, that was 87, so I got arrested in 92. Because that's five years. That's a long time.
They had like a couple weeks left of statute of limitations would have run out on them.
Wow. How did it take them so long? Because they weren't coming to get me.
What do you mean? Like they didn't, they just ignored it? It was going away.
It was going away.
Kenny got pitched.
Explain that.
Kenny was your partner.
Kenny was my partner who was retired on three-quarters disability living on Long Island that I got him a pension.
He was living at home, retired, and he got bored, and he wanted to start selling drugs.
So he calls me up and says, yeah, you know, my pension's getting eaten away.
I need a little help.
Can you get me some bricks?
Jesus.
So, you know, I can get anything.
Right.
Okay, okay, okay.
In this interim, this five-year period.
Right.
Is it a Fed case?
that it's got to be, right?
It's a Fed case, yeah.
Well, the organization was big.
So city cases and state cases,
when it starts getting multi-layered,
they start to bring the feds in
because they can do deeper dives.
Of course.
And they can take their time.
And they have unlimited resources.
And get a bigger case.
And then they take all the money anyway.
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Now, and you're working with Adam this entire time,
yeah, 87 to 92.
No, but we have a relationship.
What becomes of Adam?
At some point, I go to DR to chase him down for some money.
They follow me.
They strip search me.
It's a whole big, it's a good show.
It's a good three-fourths shows on a TV series.
Right.
So why is he in the DR?
Because he's on the lamb a little bit.
I gotcha.
He's laying quiet because of all the shit that just happened and the outgrowth of it.
I get the word that Elvis is singing.
I call him up, let him know.
He puts the word, shut the fuck up.
He sends money in, tells people how him to shut up.
He takes care of the family, you know, sends money to his family.
Switch everything up.
Just hang in there, calm down, shut your mouth.
Stay back.
Do they switch the spots up?
No, they've had a business for now.
So Diaz moves his business in different directions.
He leaves the country.
He's taking a break.
He's taking a hiatus.
Wow. Very rare for a drug dealer.
And the funny thing is his spots still stay active because people fill in the gap.
Yeah, of course.
It's not him.
It's crazy.
Because his spot stays hot.
Yeah.
You know, and it turns out it's the bodega Joe, the owner, his son, who ends up ratting on me, too.
It just doesn't end.
Wow.
So who do you go to work for?
Who do you go to work for?
How do you make money after Adam leaves?
I don't.
I start making my own money.
I start selling drugs.
Wow.
Here we go.
It was leading it to it.
Leading it to it.
Okay.
Tell us about it.
Who were you getting it from?
How much were you moving?
So initially I was getting it from Adam on the cuff.
And then.
On front.
Yeah.
No, no, free.
What is?
Oh, on cuff?
On the cuff.
Free.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
In lieu of like payment?
Yeah.
Mostly it was a bonus that added to the payment.
And then when the payments got cut because of all the robberies took place,
you can't clean a guy out when he's got no money.
So I said, listen, just give me two, three ounces, you know,
which at that time probably cost him 200 an ounce.
So it's costing him 600.
I'm turning into 1,500.
Yeah.
Who are you selling it to?
Local people.
Yes.
I got a lawyer.
I got a liquor store owner.
I got a couple guys that worked the bars on Long Island.
So now all the bars on Long Island in my area become mine.
Right.
I start supplying them.
Gotcha.
Sorry!
So it's good money, but it's not a lot of Coke.
Three ounces is not, you know...
No, I mean, I'm doing...
400 bricks.
No, no.
I'm doing maybe a little more than that, probably six ounces a week.
It's good money.
Okay.
So good.
You're making 4 Gs a week?
I'm making...
Two, three grand a week.
Yeah, okay.
Good.
So you're doing that?
Are you looking out for other dope dealers?
Are you just move a Coke?
No, I'm just moving it.
Okay.
And then I'd be end up getting relationships with other people.
and I find other avenues, and so when this one fades away, that one, and then I end up on an overtime
footpost in the 7-5.
Wow.
That's the worst post, is it not?
No, because I was transferred away.
Yeah.
And then one Christmas time season, they're asking people to go to East New York and work a footpost
for overtime.
It's called a robbery, holiday season robbery overtime footpost because they want high visibility
during the holidays for the police so that people can carry their packages up and down the block without
getting robbed, mostly.
Anyway, and so I end up meeting my first night out.
They wouldn't leave me alone.
The sergeant was fucking scratching me every like 15 minutes.
I'm getting annoyed.
I'm getting pissed.
Like, what the fuck?
I'm inside counting cash with the dope dealer.
I'm there 15 minutes.
I'm counting cash and weighing bricks with the dope dealer.
I'm there 15 minutes.
And he gives me his car.
Fuck on my first.
I hadn't been in East New York in three years.
I'm there one hour
I got the fucking
I got the bodega owner
giving me a fucking jetta
I got him giving me a jetta
it's an 86 jetty
it wasn't brand new
all right
it was 89
that was a hot car
though back then
yeah it was a great
yeah
the jetta was a great cause
Ford door
four door
blue valore interior jetta
that was a ghetto fabulous
back in the
yeah he gave it to me
he gave me a car
and we made a deal
on some merchandise
I said
what's your number
he goes 17
five. I said, I'll give you 16, and he said, fine.
Ah, so you're buying a whole brick. So now I'm
getting bricks from him. Wow. I'm there
one day. Not even about four hours.
Fuck. God damn it, Mike.
He's like, his name was comfy.
Compi, where are you, comfy?
He turned on me, too. They all did.
So, so all these dope
dealers ended up
telling the feds about you.
Yeah. Okay, but how
this is 90. So
92 is when it all
goes down. Goes down. Yeah. So
are the
Fed's gathering information this whole time?
Feds gather information every day of their life.
But what it is is Kenny ends up...
Right. So Kenny, I'm sorry. Yes. So let's get back to Kenny.
So it goes to Kenny. So I'm out here floating around in the universe.
Right.
With no problems.
And then Kenny calls you...
And then Kenny calls me, unbeknownst to Kenny and me, his phone's hot.
Wow.
Because he sold to somebody who sold to undercover.
Wow.
So they trailed it back to Kenny.
Then they hit Kenny's phone within a couple of days.
his phones.
Yeah.
And it found out that Kenny was dealing with cops from the 73rd precinct.
They were robbing people in Brownsville in the 7-3.
Right.
And they were bringing Nicole home to Kenny to sell.
As unfortunate as it would turn out around Easter time, the Colombians are very religious.
And they don't move cocaine around Easter time.
I heard that.
And around, they take the holidays off too.
Yeah.
Yes.
So what happens is the facts from my knowledge.
I could be wrong, and I've been wrong before, but what I've been told.
They're very religious.
They don't move cocaine around Easter.
So anyway, so supply dries up, price doubles.
So who they call, ghost bust.
So I'm on the phone making some moves.
So I got the price.
I could throw any number in the world.
It don't matter.
I got the better price that he could get because he can never get it.
When I could get it at, and these guys weren't talking to drug dealers.
They were robbing them, so they couldn't get it at a price.
They had to go rob someone.
And the supply was lean.
And they couldn't get it.
I ended up making a call for them, and now they got my phone eventually.
And they're like, oh shit, this is Mike Dowd from fucking 75th talking to him.
And they know, and they've been wanting me for years.
Right.
Oh.
So once they found out that I was involved, it became massive.
Because internal affairs has been docking me and putting notes in on me for years,
but not being able to do anything.
So what happens is this is how this case blows up.
Suffolk County has a task force that's called a joint state task force
with probably a DEA liaison.
They have 89 people
work in this case.
It's a big case.
I get hooked in now
they want to see where this leads.
Which it wasn't very wide my circle
because basically I was the pinnacle.
And a couple of people I dealt with
they ended up grabbing,
which they all did okay, thank God.
And now I'm in charge of Kenny's whole fucking group,
53 people, who I don't know any
of them, but because I supplied Kenny
and Kenny supplied this group,
I become the head of that group.
You were a kingpin.
I'm a kingpin for the feds.
Now I'm a kingpin.
Yeah.
Even though it's not that much dope.
A couple bricks, whatever.
Come on.
Yeah.
It's bullshit.
Yeah.
It's a story.
It's a great story.
It makes great ink.
Right.
Of course.
And so they start telling me for,
I keep, now I'm finding them everywhere.
Yeah.
Everywhere.
Feds.
Feds and county.
Yeah.
And I'm going,
this isn't right.
I've had this corvette now for a year and a half,
and I've never had a woman,
two good-looking young girls pull up alongside me, wink and wave.
Right.
And they would pull that shit.
And the feds?
Wow.
And I mean, and it just became more obvious.
I'm like, I know I'm not doing a lot of blow.
I was doing some.
Yeah.
Am I becoming paranoid?
You're right.
Am I fucking paranoid?
It just got out of hand.
Anyway, so.
P.S. they take me down, and then we get out on bail, and the county, the state took me down.
So the Suffolk County and the state task force took me down.
But what happened was this, New York City Internal Affairs signed 147 or 148 men to the case.
Wow.
To assist Suffolk County.
They wanted you.
They just said, we got to get, you.
We got to do this.
That was like on the top of their food chain.
Yeah.
And Giuliani at this time is always not in.
Oh, he's not in until 94.
No, no, no, I get him in.
What the fuck does that mean?
I get him his job.
How?
As mayor?
Yeah, I make him the mayor of New York City.
You didn't know?
No.
I crowned him.
I anointed him.
I anointed and coronated.
Yes.
How?
They had a hearing in New York City called the Malin Commission hearings,
where I testify before the commission and tell him how I did this and how I got away with it.
But it was run and instituted by Mayor Dinkins.
So Dinkins was trying to show how he's cleaning up the police department
and how I'm going to expose the corruption.
And that Mayor Dinkins is not the problem.
It's just us white Irish guys from Long Island.
That are the problem.
And now that he's got this guy all jammed up in the feds, we're good.
We took care of it.
Right.
And Dinkins and Giuliani faced off and Giuliani beat him.
So in a way, you're you getting arrested and going down.
was Giuliani's
gave him this job.
Yeah, I'm tough on crime, I'm cleaning up the mob,
I'm cleaning up, you know,
cleaned up these fucking mix from Long Island on the force.
Right, wow.
So I gave him a job, and I changed the police department all in one week.
Wow.
Look at you.
You've been wearing many hats.
92 you go down.
How long did you bail out?
Or they keep you at NBC.
So I bailed out of the state, and then when the feds picked me up.
ain't no bail.
I mean, yeah, if you want a million five,
I'll start my time.
I'll start my time.
I'll just start the time now.
I'll play space.
Just start that clock.
I'll get in shape, I swear.
I'll play chess.
I'll lift these water bags.
Boy, they held you at Rikers?
No, no, no.
I was in Riverhead for a couple days, bailed out,
went back to Riverhead when they reindite you.
Because you know, they reindite you all the time.
They always reindite you.
Especially when you're a cop and law enforcement.
Oh, yeah, because if you're a cop and they can't send you in a general population.
Generally no.
Even though you would have been fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you're never fine.
You're never fine initially.
Right.
Until you get a little salt and experience in jail.
Did they send you to...
FCC in a hole.
Okay, so you...
Nine months.
Oh, that's brutal.
Yeah.
Nine months and one.
Yeah.
One phone call a day?
Yeah, not that bad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But 23 and one is bad, though.
Yeah.
I'm only going to call after a while.
Right.
My ex-wife to be?
So she broke up with you?
Well, not right away.
She waited a couple hours.
Did your family turn their back on you or did they stay down?
No, they were good.
Good.
What about the other cops?
Yeah, they stayed good.
Yeah.
That's our brother.
Yeah, that is.
That's true.
My brother.
I mean, they could be mad at me, but they're still not going to, they, I'm still their brother.
And that's how we treat each other.
Did you take it to the box or did you cop out?
Eventually, I fought him and fought him and then I had the cop a play.
I mean, I fought him for two years.
What were you facing?
Life.
For what?
A RICO?
Yeah.
I mean, I guess so.
The statute is like, dude, they can give you life.
I was facing life.
You offered me 34 years of my first plea agreement.
It was 34.
Were they trying to make an example of you?
I think so.
I think it might have been.
I said, well, excuse me.
Time out.
34 years.
Is it an offer?
This is a plea?
Like, that's not a fucking plea?
Yeah, yeah, it's insulting.
That's a fucking life sentence.
I was 31.
and maybe 32 when they made their first plea offer.
Wow.
34 years?
Are you serious?
Actually, it was like 28 to 34.
My lawyer goes, don't look at the 28.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Thank you.
Don't you hate those lawyers?
Watch, I'm a first timer.
Yeah, that's not going to go over well in front of a judge.
Wow.
What do they have on you?
How many dope sales?
It was the volume in the conspiracy.
Which was how much?
500 plus.
500 plus.
kilos.
Wow.
So they had you distributing that many kilos?
Because I was tied to Diaz.
Oh, wow.
So they roped him in?
They wrote me into that whole conspiracy.
Because I was getting paid by them.
Okay, so they still, so you were still taking money from Adam, even as you were dealing
with Larry on the hot phone?
No.
So, oh, they went all the way back to 86, 87.
Because I continued crimes.
God damn, dude.
Ain't that Rico a motherfucker?
God damn it.
God damn it.
Like, how do I get this guy?
Right. And then how did...
I took money from drug dealers.
My sake.
I'm a good boy.
I swear.
What are you supposed to do?
I'm a good boy.
I swear I'm good.
My mother loved me until she found out about this.
So how did you get them down?
How did you get the plea from 34 to 12 and a half?
I just kept saying no.
Just by holding on, right?
That's what they do.
They keep you in there, try to squeeze you, torture you.
Because it is torture.
Yeah.
And they try to say, okay, I can't take it.
They're trying to financially break you, which they're trying to do to President Trump right now.
They're trying to break him financially.
Good luck.
Good luck with that.
Keep trying, boys.
I mean, thankfully, he's a bill.
Listen, you don't have to like the guy, and I'm not, I don't advocate.
But could you imagine if he didn't have that money?
They're busting.
That's how, everybody under him who's like worked in his administration.
Yeah, I know.
These guys took a job to help the country.
Whether you like the guy or not, it doesn't matter.
It's not even really a bankrupting thing.
It's a politically motivated.
Yeah, but they're bankrupting those people.
Oh, right, yeah.
The underlings, like the guy took a job.
He went from being, let's say, a state senator and I want to be the head of your urban
development program.
Or even Dr. Carson, it's funny, they haven't gone after him, even though the disparages
credit.
Ben Carson?
Yeah, they haven't tried to arrest him.
I mean, he was just an advocate.
Like, well, the other guys, they arrested.
He's an advisor.
Lock him up.
They didn't lock him up.
That's funny.
Let's save this for the Patreon.
We're trying to get this episode monetize.
You thought this was your run club era.
Turns out, it was more of a thinking about run club era.
The good news?
Someone's marathon training is about to start.
Sell your workout gear on Deepop.
Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest.
They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying.
Someone on Deepop wants what you've got.
Start selling now.
Deepop where taste recognizes taste
Then cut that out
Leave it in, leave it in
So you just held on two years
That's brutal
And they finally
Did you have a good lawyer?
Listen, he was as good as you could be
As good as could be
So you got 12 and a half
Signed for 12 and a half
Signed for
Or you did 12 and a half
Yeah, I signed for 12 and a half
half to 15 and a half.
Wait, do the feds sentence you that way?
The sliding scale?
So, do you...
I thought that was just a state.
No, no, no.
The plea, the number, the guidelines called for 12.5 to 15 a minute.
That was the guideline.
So my guideline could have given me 12.5 or 15 and a half.
So when I went and got sentenced, the judge gave me smack in the middle, 14 years.
And you did about 12.5.
I did 12.5. Which is 85%.
That's Fed time.
Yeah, 87, whatever.
How many facilities are you?
were you in? Started out in MCC, New York, ended up
they jetted me down to Mariana, Florida.
You go through a couple of trans-places.
Yeah, Conair. Yeah, yeah. So you're locked up with all these hoods?
Yeah, no, no, no, no. That's so funny, dude.
I was in a four-man jet. I was in the Leah. They took me in the Leah.
Oh, you got the Leia. I got the Leia. I got the Leia. I did get treated a little special.
You called out the PJ, the private jet. I was specially treated.
don't show, black box off.
Anyway, so I got the Leia.
And then, of course, after that, I didn't get the Lear anymore.
But anyway, and I moved from Mariana, Florida.
I did four and a half, five, maybe five, six years, five and a half years.
Sounds nice.
Mariana was nice.
Overall.
So there were like medium, medium facilities?
It's just a high.
Really?
Yeah, it's a high.
But you're not walking mainline as a cop, are you?
Really?
Oh, yeah.
First day.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Well, I went from the hole, I went,
to main line in MCC New York.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, so when they transferred me to Mariana,
there's probably,
there's probably a hundred cops of Mariana.
Really? Okay.
So, no one knows that.
Why?
Because they're all deep, you know.
They're not public in the front page.
Although many of them were Miami cops.
The Miami River cops were there with me.
So that everybody knew them.
And they ran the place, you know.
Wow.
Just like they were regular inmates.
Regular inmates.
They ran the weight room.
They ran this.
They were, you know.
They were Cuban guys.
They were also care of each other, bro.
And they were in there for fucking taking down big numbers.
Taking, big numbers.
Yeah.
Did they actually move drugs?
Roman Rodriguez, the whole crew.
Did they run drugs in prison, too?
No.
No.
No.
No, they were legit.
They were legit dirty cops.
They were dirty.
Right, right.
So they did not.
Well, they grew up at Willie Falcone and Salmabluda.
They grew up with, they were their best friends from high school.
So when they hit it big and, you know.
What are you going to do?
It's hard.
How do you turn your friends?
Give me some money.
Come on. Just give me some money. Feed me. God, can't this country just accept a little corruption, a little squeeze? But you know what? They want to monopolize corruption. They want to say, I want, we want state corruption. We want to say, I'm a politico. You donate as much to my campaign as you can. And when I get in, and that's not corruption, though. I just want to wet my beak a little bit. See, there's not enough Italians in the fucking government. That's why, you know what I mean? So, okay, wow. I mean, Jesus Christ.
What have you done with the rest of your life since then?
So, yeah.
So, listen, I've had a good life, right?
I mean, think about it.
I mean, we sit here talking today.
Most guys that lived my life probably wouldn't be here.
Right.
I don't mean in this interview, it'd be here on the above this part of the world.
This part of the earth.
The moral coil.
Yeah, yeah, where every day still have choices.
Right, right.
Sometimes it's limited.
But the choices.
Yeah.
So, and I, right now I have a lot of things going on.
In fact, before I got here, I left a meeting about discussing potential activity with a TV series and, and a movie.
And actually, yesterday I got a call from a cop from Philadelphia.
He wants to team up with me and do a podcast, which might be a nice mix.
Yeah.
Like the good guy and the bad guy, but staying from the cop world, that might be a nice mix, you know.
I get that cool.
Actually, it's not the first time.
I get it quite often.
What happens is I move around so much, and I'm really, like, one of the best guests.
You are. You are. This has been a finale.
I'm really a good guest. So I find that it's less of a burden on me to have to run a show than I can be a guest. And I do well.
Get invited to shows and stuff like that. And it keeps me relevant. Right, right. How did they find you?
I mean, if you don't keep yourself relevant, you guess what, you're not relevant. Right. Of course.
Because no one else is going to do it. How did Netflix find you? How did they find this story?
Oh, no. So it was a documentary. It wasn't done by Netflix. It was done by a Jewish guy, Eli Holstman, who watched the Molly.
Commission hearings when he was 18 years old.
Oh, no shit. And he was the first show ever
broadcasted on New York One News. It was their opening day
and their first thing they ever broadcasted was me.
Wow, that's a scoop. Yeah, so Eli, the young kid,
was watching it from his home in Queens and he was fascinated by it.
Fast forward 20 years later, he goes, well, it might have been 18 years later,
but around 20, and he goes, I wonder what they ever did with this.
So he looks it up, he puts his guys on it. Because Eli,
hostman is considered the
king of
reality TV. He's
done undercover boss. Everybody knows that show. Oh, no shit. Oh, he's a
whale. Yeah. Okay. Runway
the runway model shows.
Runway bride? No.
All of them.
Right. He was the, he had 15 to 20
reality shows that made it really big when they first
started, like the Godi Boys, which I'm not saying that was one of his shows, but
he had all those reality shows. Oh, so he's killing it. He made something.
He was killing it. He was killing it. He did good. He did good.
And then he calls up and contacts me, he's through his people.
Right.
And we set up something up.
And then Netflix bought it from him.
Netflix, I think they rented it.
Yeah, or licensed it.
They licensed it for three years, which is...
Where is it now?
I think it's on Tooby.
I think, Tooby.
I think, tooby, that's a shit channel.
Yeah, tooby, maybe clacks.
Because I wanted to go home and rewatch it.
Yeah, yeah. It's a great watch.
Now, did you get a little bit, you get a few shackles for it?
A little, but not enough.
Yeah.
You never get enough.
No.
So that's why I'm trying to make something happen right now.
Yeah.
Did you ever have kids?
Yeah, I have two boys and four grandkids.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All in this just happened, right?
Yeah.
It was such a great deal.
I didn't have to raise them, right?
Oh, dude, this is amazing.
I didn't have to raise them.
This is the blueprint.
And they love me.
Wow.
Have kids spawn, do your evolutionary duty, and then go to a bid.
Yeah.
And they're good kids.
Wow, that's awesome.
They've had a rough gig.
Right.
They, they're, they're my legacy, right?
Right.
So, and they've got some, they've dealt with some issues themselves.
I don't want to put their personal business out there, but they're good guys.
You know, and this is a touching moment for me by now.
We just took our first picture together.
Because, like, everybody gets together for a wedding, a christening, a mitzvah, whatever it is, right?
An anniversary, we all take pictures together.
But we had our first actual picture together.
yesterday, the day before yesterday.
The three of us was just sitting together
having a burrito at Bubba's burrito in Islip.
That's a free plug.
Bubba's burrito's banging.
Wow.
Banging place.
If you're on the island.
Yeah.
No question.
Bubba you owe me, mother.
But I don't really bang in place.
Wow.
And we sat there and I looked at it.
I said, we've got to take a picture here.
Right.
Because we've never actually done this.
Like most guys say, I want to out for a beer with my dad and sit down.
We've never actually done this, the three of us together.
Wow.
because my son was in California.
They're the ones on Long Island.
They become cops?
No, no, no.
Thank God, right?
Yeah, no.
You know, I wouldn't, I would have been okay with it.
But I, I prefer that they didn't because their career would have been really difficult.
Right.
Being their, your son?
Yeah, this would have been difficult.
And, but I feel bad that that was maybe denied in their head, too, if they wanted that.
I feel like they probably said, I don't want to be a cop.
My dad was.
He got a little jammed up.
Yeah.
But one of the things that's interesting,
they actually get treated fairly well by the police
when they get pulled over.
I don't.
I don't, but they do.
Like the cops have some compassion for them.
Oh, that was your dad?
Yeah, how was he?
All right, go ahead.
You know, I got some, yeah, yeah, you know,
because they're a little compassion in them, oh, yeah.
I'll tell you, my funny story,
my first time I actually got pulled over,
I was coming.
I can't believe this.
I'm coming.
I shouldn't say my first time
because I've been pulled over,
a dozen times in the last 15, 20 years now.
Did they pull you over still, like intentionally?
No.
No.
Okay, okay, okay, okay.
You're just a crazy driver.
I'm a cop.
Don't say that.
No, I was a cop.
Oh, no, you really never wore a cop.
You were bad.
Okay.
Anyway, so I'm coming over the, the Gini Gangplank.
What's the Staten Island?
Yeah, there we go.
The Verrazana.
The Gitton Gangplank.
Well, that's what they call it, right?
It's great.
Isn't that's what it's called?
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know.
My Italian friends, they know.
You put your wife beat her on, you go over to get a guy plank.
So anyway, so actually I was coming over from Jersey into Staten Island,
and I'm hitting 440 and making moves.
And when you come off, it's 65, 70 in Jersey, right?
When you hit Staten Island, it's 45.
Yeah, it's cold over there.
It's the breeze.
No, it's 45 degrees, 45 miles an hour.
Oh, oops.
The breeze, too.
The breeze slows down.
It's been a long day.
So I slow it down.
but not fast enough, and the cop pulls right in behind me,
pulls me over, and he gets out of his car.
Now, you got to realize he's got these stripes
that I've never seen on cops today.
They wear these stripes on their sleeves.
Now, we had them in the patrol guide when we were young cops.
No one wore them because no one gave a shit.
But I see this guy walks up with his stripes on his sleeve,
and I'm looking at him, I'm like, what is this?
What is this, corporals?
I don't know.
what these are, but I've seen them.
And they're the stripes that you wanted.
The other, well, these are the stripes that give you longevity.
Every stripe is five years.
This guy had five or six of them on his sleeve.
So he'd been around.
So he pulls me over.
License registration, I go,
my license.
Michael down.
I'm like, oh, boy, I don't even know.
I don't even remember what I said to him.
I might have said, I used to be on the job.
I just went to something.
My mind is, I don't remember.
And he comes back and he goes, he looks at me, he goes, I was on the job when you got jammed up.
Wow.
I said, yeah, he goes, slow it down, have a good day.
Nice.
There you go.
There you go.
It was nice.
And most cops are most cops like that, if they know you and know your story?
I would say that they probably would be.
It might be against their inherent grain to be.
kind to me. But if they take a moment and think, you know, the guy's all champed up and lost his
career. He went to prison. You know, he, you know, I'm a knockaround guy. What did I do? I want
a little fast. Can you give me a break? You know what I mean? Most guys are probably going to give me a
break, but not everyone. Right. Well, because they don't work in an environment that you worked in.
They don't know what it's like to be in the hood. They're starting to know. Yeah. They're starting to know.
Oh, really? It's starting to get rough out there? They're starting to realize. I get calls all the time.
I get them all the time.
You're talking about, like, local guys now calling me or sending me messages.
I don't blame you.
This is getting ridiculous.
We can't do our job.
Right.
This is dangerous.
What's the worst precinct now, do you think, in the city?
In the five boroughs.
Well, Brooklyn 7-5 is still the worst.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brownsville.
He's the New York.
That whole section there.
But I would say that's it in the city.
You may have something in Harlem.
The Bronx, it seems like everybody's getting shot there.
The Bronx, you know, the Bronx is.
very condensed. It's a lot of high-rise condensed
situation. So people elbow you, you shoot them quick, you know.
There's no room to spread out. Do you, last question, do you think
cops are on the take anymore? Does it happen at all? It still happens, but it's
less and less. Who's doing the payoffs? Who's running the city
when it comes to dope? I mean, you could have the Mexicans. The Mexicans and
Guadalans, the Mexicans, the, I don't know about the Venezuelans, because they're from a different
culture.
Right, right.
But yeah, MS-13 was doing a lot of it, you know, so, you know, there's a lot of infiltration
now with the Mexicans.
And I don't mean to be slangging Mexicans.
No, you're not.
You're not.
I love, of course.
No, listen, you know, I have Mexican friends that aren't slinging, you know, but I have
Guatemalan friends that I work with, you know, because if you work in the trades, you work
with these people.
Right.
And they're hardworking.
Yeah, they're great.
But they're also the kingpins.
They control the supply now.
They control everything.
And they put their people in places throughout the cities.
And it still may be being distributed by the local black guy or a local Hispanic guy or some white guys got his own little internet site.
Right.
Keep it clean.
They're selling dope on the internet now.
Yeah, I mean, I guess, I'm not in the dope game.
So I don't know it as well, but I know how it operates.
Right.
I mean, people talk to me.
Right.
of course. But if cops are on the take,
it's hush, hush, and it's
not institutionalized like it was
back in the 60s through the 80s.
It wasn't as acceptable.
Right. I wouldn't call it institutionalized. It wasn't as
acceptable. Back then it was, all right, just don't
say nothing. Right. He's that guy. Yeah, right.
Today it's like, you wouldn't
want them to know. No. Like, or have a
clue. Very individualized.
Very individualized. Small pocket.
I've heard some recent stories
that guys are still getting paid somewhere.
but I don't know the depths or the details.
Right.
And I don't want to know.
Michael Dowd, where can they find you, brother?
Do you have an Instagram?
I have Instagram.
Is that how you found?
No, I found it through some guy I never met.
It was like a baron, you know what I mean?
It was like, you know.
The Mike Dowd out on Instagram.
Yeah.
The Mike Dowd out on Twitter.
I hardly go on X much anymore.
Do you have a book?
I don't have, you know, I'm not selling anything.
I do have T-shirts.
Okay.
I add one in the bag, maybe.
Good idea.
You got a website or anything?
You know what it is?
I basically just meet people through Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, and they ask for a shirt.
But I used to have a website, and I'm going to rekindle it.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, go follow them on Instagram.
That's what I would say.
That's the lowest barrier to entry.
And then, like, let's get your show made, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's time, dude.
It's, I'm tirelessly working at it right now as we speak.
We're on the cutting edge of big things.
And this right of strike really isn't helping right now.
It's not helping.
It'll be over by the end of the year.
I think it might be over the end of the day.
this week. Really? That's what the birdie says? Or January. Right. It's either going to be now
within the next 10 days or January. Because if it don't happen now, they're just going to cancel
everything else. We'll use this episode and try, if it helps, if this, you, because you know,
people in Hollywood are stupid, they don't read nothing. If this helps, then God bless you. Use it.
We're going to switch over to the Patreon just for some quick little chit-chat. We'll probably talk
about the text you sent me the other day to get your real feelings on Joe Biden.
If you haven't figured out his
Mike Dow's feelings on Joe Biden
I love you Joe
We're going to switch on to Patreon
And we're going to talk about it
I love you my brother
Patreon.com
My brother Joe
Yeah
Uncle Joe
Patreon.com slash the Connect show
This has been Mike Dowd
One of the greatest interviews
that's happened on the Connect
And I'm not surprised
Tell me the greater one
Thank you
I'll go after
Where is it?
It's unique, unique
He's up in Harlem right now
Yeah
I know you introduce you guys
We've spoken
Yeah
Okay, you guys, take care.
We'll see you on the Patreon.
Peace.
