The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How San Francisco Became A Haven For The Fentanyl Trade

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Former San Francisco undercover narcotics officer Britt Elmore exposes how the Tenderloin became one of America’s most notorious open-air drug markets — and how fentanyl, street dealers, weak prosecution, addiction, homelessness, and organized trafficking reshaped the city. In this episode, Britt breaks down the San Francisco fentanyl crisis from the inside. After 25 years working narcotics, undercover buys, federal task force cases, wiretaps, gun deals, stolen car operations, cartel-linked investigations, and street-level drug markets, Britt explains how the fentanyl trade operates in the Bay Area and why San Francisco became a magnet for addiction, homelessness, and open-air drug dealing. He discusses the Tenderloin drug market, Honduran street dealers, Mexican suppliers, fentanyl economics, undercover police work, drug trafficking routes, confidential informants, cartel connections, stolen property rings, car break-ins, retail theft, rehab fraud, Proposition 47, and why many officers believe the system has stopped holding repeat offenders accountable. This conversation is a raw, unfiltered look at crime, addiction, policing, fentanyl, and the collapse of public order in one of America’s most iconic cities. Topics covered: -San Francisco fentanyl crisis -Tenderloin open-air drug market -SFPD undercover narcotics work -Fentanyl trafficking in California -Honduran drug dealers in San Francisco -Mexican cartel supply chains -Drug addiction and homelessness -Proposition 47 and criminal justice reform -Retail theft, bipping, and stolen property rings -Confidential informants and federal wiretaps -Undercover gun and drug buys -How fentanyl changed the drug trade Go Support Britt! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/britt-elmore-5641a53a This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Mood! Head to https://mood.com, browse their amazing selection of functional gummies, and find the perfect gummy for whatever you're dealing with. Use promo code CONNECT at checkout to save 20% on your first order. Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. In San Francisco, they narcan people all day long. Fetano started coming in and I was like, dude, this is not like any other type of monster.

0.2 micrograms can overdose you. When you get high of fentanyl, your best high is when you're on the verge of death. I would go out into the tenderloin and I would buy like half ounce of fentanyl. And then I'd go back and buy an ounce. And I'd get up to where I'd buy like four ounces from a street corner guy. Put it in a bag and sell it to you. Broad Daylight. I would be buying watching cops drive by.

They've just created a perfect market for drug traffic. The Tenderloin, San Francisco, California, one of America's most lawless open-air drug markets. Three overdose deaths a day. Fentanyl sold openly on the streets, while drug gangs operate with near impunity. Officer Britt Ilmore spent years undercover infiltrating the drug crews that control the streets of the Tenderloin. Through surveillance, wiretaps, and confidential informants, he began working his way up the supply chain, from Honduran street dealers in San Francisco, all the way back to their suppliers in Sinaloa, Mexico. This is one badass cop, and today he's taking us inside one of the darkest corners of America's underworld. Hit that subscribe button, comment below, and enjoy the wildest crime stories you'll ever hear.

It's Britt Elmore, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Well, I've said this for a long time. If you arrest the drug users, then the drug, you'll have no more drug dealers in that. I mean, you'll have drug dealers, but not in the open-air markets because there's no business. That's correct. So it's, yeah, you kind of got to arrest the people using this shit. Yeah. Like you said, I'm not very strong on them going to jail, but they need a timeout somewhere. So if their timeout is only place as jail, you're better off to put them in there. And there was a time when the judges would pull them out and go, hey man, you want to go to a program, where you want to stay in here?

They'd only be in for five, ten days, let's say. But now it's like, I'm not holding anybody. Right. You got to leave them in there. And let them stay out here. You got to leave them in there for 30 days or whatever it is, 60 days. Like, let them dry out. You've got to get that clarity.

You've got to get that clarity. Yes. Nobody, dude, those people are suffering, like. They don't even know their names. They don't even know who they are. And they're like, it's okay. Leave them alone. They have a right to sleep on the ground.

They're zombies, man. They don't even know their names. And you think that's compassion, letting these people literally die on a busy street in one of the most important cities in the world. And that's, no, no, no, we don't want to send him to jail against his will. And I think it's wrong to say, well, let's put him up in rooms. So think of what, do they get died up there and nobody sees it? As I said, put him in a hospital that's guarded and people get searched when they go in so they can't bring drugs in. If you don't want to call it a prison, if you don't want to call it a jail,

Well, that's like the jails. There's a bunch of dope running through the jails because before when you went into the jails when I worked there, you got searched. No matter what, if you were doing weekends for a DUI, you got searched. And then some lady comes in and she's like, I was violated because I only came in for weekends

for misdemeanor, you know, like something, I don't know if it was a misdemeanor or what. It had to be something really low, like maybe a DUI. So the court said, no more searching. Oh, you mean strip searching. No more strip searching on non-violet crimes or long periods of time. So everybody comes in on the world.

weekends and brings all this dope on them, all stuffed up in their cavities, and it's just running rampant through the jails. Right. Because they can't control it. It's a party. Yeah. They're probably getting arrested on purpose. They want to come in.

For sure. So they get money wired from people in jail's family members to their accounts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it's a whole. Yeah. That's nuts.

Yeah. Look, they have open-air drug markets, you know, talking about the tenderloin. We were just down in Medellin, Columbia last year. And Medellin is like, dude, it looks like Barcelona or something. Like it's so westernized. It looks like a city in Europe. Yeah, there's foreigners everywhere. It's beautiful.

It's clean. And then they got one area downtown just to like the south of the city. They call it an oil, an oisho. It's a hole. And it's just, it's like the tenderloin times 20. They get pushed in there. Dope fiends just, it looks, it's like the walking dead. Like you think the tenderloin is bad.

this is times 20. But that's how a lot of cities are dealing with it. They're just like, let the animals. It was like on the wire, like when they said. Hamsterdam. Put them all in there, dude. They could do what they want. Or when I was in New York, I went to New York right after 9-11.

They sent 100 of us over there to help. So we went two months after. And I'm like, dude, there's no drug dealing out here. They can do all they want in those projects. You fucking step outside those projects. We got a problem. So everything was contained. You want to get dope.

You go on the projects. You carried a gun. You stayed in the projects. you didn't come out on the sidewalk. So it was like they were doing it back then. Yeah. Yeah, it's a rot. I don't know.

I'm not here to talk about the solution, you know, because the Western world is, sorry, you're meeting me at a weird time in my life. The Western world is inevitable decline and the fact that so many Americans are strung out on drugs, it could be a homeless guy in the tenderloin or a suburban mother on Perkinset. And there's more of that, actually,

than there are of the homeless guy. True. But because I've gotten older, I don't know if I've opened up my eyes or things are getting worse to where I'm like, do $20 billion being wasted on fucking hospice care bullshit.

Why isn't it a $20 million on fucking addiction and mental help? There's so much waste. All that money should be going to that. It's crazy. Why are people worried? Why are these people up in Sacramento worried about guys looking into this shit

when it's like, that money could be used for something else, man. We were in Baltimore recently, and let me put it this way. All the retired drug dealers are now running rehab clinics. That money is even bigger in rehab than there is in selling the drugs to the people. And it's clean. They don't have the potential of.

I mean, a lot of them, there are super dirty rehabs that are literally selling drugs to people are paying, paying fixers to. to pay junkies to come into the clinics for 30 days and dry out, and then the operators, you know, get the insurance money. Yeah, just get that insurance. There are people that are actually getting high inside of the clinics. But most of them are probably not doing that. They're just not really helping.

They're just taking the government money, the Medicaid, and then not giving the... The service. Yeah. Not helping, you know, rehabilitate the... Well, they have those in San Francisco where the people that are working there, usually the cleaned up people that rehabped, they tell them, don't call the cops for any. If someone's doing dope in here, don't call the cops. If somebody gets assaulted, don't call the cops.

Because we don't want to lose our nonprofit money. Which is fucking bullshit. It's crazy, well. Yeah. It's it doesn't work, man. It's it doesn't work. But it pains me because San Francisco is just objectively one of the greatest cities. One of the most beautiful cities.

California is the greatest state. And you'll never convince me otherwise. Obviously, I'm biased from there. I'm from Oregon. But California's by adopted home. Did you do a lot of time in California? I didn't do any time in California. No, but did you, did you?

Yeah, I lived there for a long time. Would you live? Decades. I lived in L.A. Oh, you did L.A.? Yeah. My brother lives in San Francisco, though, so we'd be up there. Oh, he does?

Yeah. And, yeah, so you grew up with, like, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Allman of Open AI, right? I know who they are. I'm just kidding. I know who they are. That's why San Francisco's so wild. It's a peek into the future because you have literally, literally the filthiest rich tech oligarchs.

I had a guy that I was buying from and he was, I sent it to you. He was, he was dealing to all those people. Oh, no shit. Yeah, because they were all getting these mind-altering drugs from him. Right. Because they said it opens up the fucking box in their brain to where I can create a new app. They could think outside the box and create these things. I had a guy selling me meth.

It's a pretty good story. I had a guy sell me meth. And then the hook that he used got put in jail up in Michigan or something. So electronically, we figured out where he was at because I didn't have his phone number. I had his phone number, but I wasn't supposed to have his phone number. So electronically, we figured out where he was at. I sat for four hours in a hotel holding food from inside the cafeteria there. And they all sat around the hotel and they said he's coming out of a room.

He's going to his Corvette right now. So I just go running out there. And I see him and I'm like, hey, Q, what's up? I was like, what the fuck you doing here? I go, I'm all working at the Facebook building on construction. I was all dressed like a construction guy. I said, dude, what happened to our boy? He goes, dude, he's in jail like in Michigan.

I was like, well, I still need a plug. And he was like, all right, here's my number. So I sat there for four hours to get his number. Got it, started dealing with him direct. We pop him, sold me like 10 pounds over a couple weeks. And he goes, I'll turn you on to a guy who sells to tech. Yeah. Well, man, you think about the guys, think about the lick if you're a drug dealer in the Bay Area and you get in with Google and Twitter.

He lived up in Redwood City in a nice area. So they arrest him. We arrest them. I get him to sell to me. He did like three, four sales to me, just below his house. We hit his house. FBI has to come with us. And then FBI said he's a person of our interest.

We need to take him. And then he's selling Coke? He was selling. His big thing was DMT. Yeah. LSD. Ketamine. Ketamine.

I bought a lot of ketamine from him. MDMA powder, pure form, all that stuff. Because the thing about it, those guys, those dorks that work in Silicon Valley, they all are overworked. They're crazy smart.

So they need ketamine to relax. MDMA to go crazy. The noise doesn't shut off. The noise doesn't shut off, so they have to fucking chemically do it. Yeah. Everybody in the Bay Area from the junkies, So the guy's making millions a year. He was dealing with a big time CEO.

I don't want to say his name because I can't prove it. Elon Musk. We all have seen how that guy's whacked out of his mind. Was somebody at his level? Oh, yeah. Come on, break it, dude. I can't have you. Because I don't, they never told me.

I'll pay for the lawyer after we get sent. No, I found out who it was. But he was in San Francisco for a while. Then he sold a business and moved out. So I'll leave it at that. Yo. He was a, he was. the man. He was a man. Like a huge, like a tech guy. Huge. Like a tech entrepreneur. Yeah.

Oh, Peter Thiel. Nope. Boom. No. It wasn't. Um, he'll, you know who, you know. He owned a big company in San Francisco. Okay. So I'm going to let you guys speculate in the comments. Who, which tech giant is he, is he talking about? Britt, it's good to have you. You know who got made their bones of Redwood City? the Mencho, the cartel of the generation. A Mentione used to sell at 16th admission.

My boys used to arrest him all time. Oseguera. Osgaro. Oseguera. Yeah. Yeah, he got arrested for sales

a bunch of times. A gun, caught with a gun. And then when he went back, dude, he became the man. He became the man. Yeah, he was well known in San Francisco

just as a street seller. Just as a street seller. Yeah, heroin. Yep. 16th admission. So, the Hondurans really run the tenderloin on the street level. Yes.

I noticed that when we were up there two, three years ago filming for this show, I saw, you know, because they're posted up on the corners like it's 1985, right? Just there trapping. And I was like, who are these skinny, good-looking Mexicans? They came during the crack era. Why did they pick, why does this one ethnic group pick that area? They just didn't pick this area. the tenderloin, they're up in Seattle, they're in Denver, they're in Ohio, there's these certain

areas that they picked. Portland? Portland, yes, up in Portland. You've got to pass the I-5 going to Seattle. Now, do you think that's because just a couple drug dealers way back in the day came and they were like, hey, here's, we're getting money here, and they just told everybody back home? There's a family, excuse me, there's a city in Honduras. They call it the valley.

I don't know the exact name of it. And all of them leave there, once they get old enough, to come up. And it just depends on if your families or your friends are in the tenderloin area, or they're doing up in Portland, or they're doing Denver, or they're doing Ohio. And that's where they'll gravitate towards. As soon as they get old enough to be able to travel, they'll head up there. And they all work as independent contractors. They're not working for a person.

They're not selling for a person and getting a certain amount of money taken off or anything. They deal on their own. They're all independent. It's a really weird. It's a horizontal playing field for the Honduran's. When usually you'll see a vertical playing field with drug dealers. You'll see this person's working for this person, who's working for this person, who's working for this person.

There in Honduran, dude, I'll go buy dope in the tenderloin, and I'll walk up to the guy and he'll be like, no, it's his turn. He'll give it to the guy next to him. They rotate off. They're not greedy. They're not greedy at all. Yeah, and then they make their money and they just send it back to Honduras. They make like this one guy I was buying from, we went up on a wire on him and then climbed the ladder up to the Mexicans for fentanyl.

$1,000 a day. It's insane money. A thousand days, seven days a week. And they were to send about half of it back and keep half. He had a guy that would hold for him. A lot of times they'll have the like the bombs or the disheveled guys holding the dope and the backpacks for them. And they call them over and they'll pull it out. and so they're clean when the cops come.

He was buying, he was, I was buying from him, and he had this one guy, this white dude that was always holding his dope. He went there one day, I asked. He goes, oh, it's hard to find good work. He said, you want to work for me? Because I was all disheveled looking too. And I said, how much?

He said, 300 a day. He said, I'll give you 300 bucks a day to stand out here and hold my backpack for me. What junkie wouldn't do that? Oh, yeah. And inside the backpack, you're going to have a pound of meth. You're going to have a bunch of heroin. You're going to have a bunch of heroin.

You're going to have a bunch of Coke. You're going to have a bunch of crack. You're going to have some M30 oxycodone pills. And you're going to have a shitload of fentanyl. Right. And is the in the tenderloin is the fent now? Because you just retired in 2024. So you're current.

Do all the other drugs contain fentanyl? Oh, wow. I have not seen a mix of it. The only time I've seen a mix of it was they were taking Coca-Cola. They're pouring it into big vats. and thickening it up and throwing some fentanyl in it and selling it as heroin. It didn't hit on heroin when it got tested, it hit on fentanyl. So they would throw fentanyl in there and just take a bunch of liters of Coke.

And as they heat it up and it thickens and thickens and thickens. They put it in and then it gets hard when it dries. And they were selling it like it was black tar. They were selling it as black tar. So can you actually go find pure heroin in the tenderloin? You could find black tar and you can find brown, which has a higher potency. Yeah. But you're not going to find any kind of white.

Right. But you can find, like, because we were just in Baltimore, and they now have their version of the tenderloin, like it's Fulton Street Market. You go down there, but all the heroin, even the meth, obviously the M30s, it won't sell unless it has fentanyl in it. The junkies just don't want it. It's not like that here because we would get it lab tested, and our meth would run high 90s, heroin would test. Black tar heroin, black tar heroin's weak. And the big thing was the black and whites, the one-in-ones. You get a balloon of heroin and a balloon of Coke.

It's kind of like a speedball. Yeah. So you would buy that. But you'd have to buy a decent amount of heroin to stay high for the day. But once the brown heroin came in, the brown herman holds a better potency. I was buying pounds of heroin on a wire from a guy out of East Pawalto, and he would tell me when he sold it to me, like, you could step on this one four times. you could step on this one three times.

You could step on this one six times. And it would just pen because they would test the potency when it came up and they knew how much you can step on it with filler to still make a good amount. Okay, so you don't think the fentanyl like overtook the opio. I mean, it obviously overtook the market, but there's still people that don't want it. There's still like old school heroin junkies that want the brown. You're going to get your functioning heroin addicts that are coming in buying it.

They don't want to fuck with the fentanylone. because they know once they fuck with the fentanyl, it's all over. It's all over. So what they'll do is you could still buy black tar out of there. But what will happen is if you buy black tar, they'll offer you some fentanyl for free. Hey, take a little of that and try that. That's the shit.

Because they want to get you on the fentanyl because the fentanyl, they make so much money off it. Yeah, tell us the economics of fentanyl after it's broken down from wholesale to retail are insane. Yeah, it is. You could buy, if you get pure fentanyl, which they get, and you break it down, it's 0.2 micrograms can overdose you. So they cut it with pounds and pounds of Manitol that they buy from Amazon, and it comes in and they blend it. So when you're doing it, the percentage of the fentanyl is very, very low.

So it's all profit. What they're making is all profit, other than the filler, the Manitol. What's a kilo? like what would a Honduran crew in the tenderloin buy a kilo of fentanyl from the Mexicans for? I've heard upwards 10 to 13,000, but that would make a shitload of when you broke it down for the street. Yeah, like how long you could be selling off that for a month? Yes, yes. And their connects are the Mexicans.

They haven't risen to the point where they're wholesale with kilos of food. Fent. No, and they don't want to. It's kind of a weird drug. You make more money selling on the street than you make selling bulk. When these guys sell bulk, they don't make as much. They don't, they have to do far less transactions. But if you're out in the street slinging and like in the tenderloin, you're making a lot of money. I mean, you're making, you can make up to a thousand or more a day. Well, plus, you barely stay in jail when you're just selling little spitters, you know, like the tiny little balls of heroin or of fentanyl in a place like San Francisco. you're not, whereas if you get coward with two keys of fentanyl,

now you're dealing with the feds. It's so extreme. Back in the day, I was at the end of the crack epidemic in the 90s when I went out there and I started buying. I've done thousands of buys in the tenderline. So they would use spitters. They would wrap up crack in their mouth and spit them out to you. In case cops came, they drink water, ingest it, and shit it out,

or puke it out and resell it. They don't even do that with the fentanyl now. They don't do, first of all, it's dangerous, but second of all, they don't have to. They just break a scale out on that sidewalk and they break it off and how much you want, you want three grams. There you go. If I can put it in a bag, sell it to you.

And broad daylight. Broad daylight. I would be buying watching cops drive by. Like, I felt like I was doing something wrong. I was like, oh, fuck, it's the cops. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, joined thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation.

Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.com.com.com. Yo, that sounds like a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. I had a whole lot of fun doing it. So, and you worked all different angles of it, man. Like, you were just like, a bruiser. Like if the DEA wanted you to go bust a huge, fucking, you know, meth ring, you'd go there. Stolen car ring, you'd go there.

Yeah. Huge weed grow, you'd go there. Yeah. That's what I did. I worked, my last 15 years was for a task force. My first, my, I got into narcotics in 1999, and all we did was buys. We did, we did from street level up to multiple ounce buys because of the money.

And then I would do buys for the feds on the side. The feds would call up and say, hey, we're going to start a wire. This guy wants to introduce you to the person we're going up on so we can get up on this wire. So I'd be like, sure. So I would do it. And then in 2009, I went up full time with them. So what I would do is I would still work for local agencies, San Mateo County, San Francisco, anybody that needed me.

I would go out to a local agency. but I would also work for ATF, DEA, HSI. I maybe did a couple things with the FBI, but we didn't really mess with them too much. Yeah, so you're like a jack of all trades. That's all I did. You're like a floater. Yeah, that's all I did was go out.

The metro unit I worked in when I did go up to DEA was like four DEA agents, a couple SFPD guys, a couple other local agencies like Daly City, San Mateo, And then we had CHP, HSI Postal Service. So it was a big mix of us. So I was there to be able to do stuff for everybody. Yeah. And so you're undercover much of this time.

Yeah, like almost all of it. All the time. They kept me off the street. Yeah. They kept me off. Did you ever get made by somebody who just looked at you and said, the black guys are really good at spot in a cop, I think. I got made doing street sales one day, but he had sold to me.

I had bought from him two times prior. and he got arrested. And then I seen him and he was like, hey, I haven't seen you in a while. I was like, I haven't seen you in a while. And he sold to me and when he put it in my hand, he goes, oh, fuck. Like, it flashed, like, he's a fucking cop.

God damn it. Yeah. So that was like on a by-bust operation. We used to do by-bust operations, which was really fun in the tenderloin. They still do him. Is there any violence down there? There's a lot of guns, a lot of knives.

But like, what if a black crew wants to set, wants to set up, you know, I don't know how many black drug dealers are down there anymore. There's a group of them, but they mainly do the heroin and the pills. That's their thing. The M80s? Nobody wants to mess with the fentanyl other than Hondurans. None of them want to. They have it perfect it.

They have it set up. They have it down. Because it's dangerous. Yeah. But you can get the prescription drugs. You can even get the Vicodins, the oxies, the Adderals, the Xanaxes, and the M30s from. You can get all those from, but it's, the blacks would usually sell those as well as heroin. Really?

And it's in a different section. It's just a couple blocks away. Everybody kind of minds their own business. Right. So it's kind of like an unspoken. Like, you guys are going to have the fentanyl down there. We get the heroin down here. You know, crack is down that way.

Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So I think Skid Row is kind of like that, too. But if you go to Honduran, he's a one-stop shop. He carries everything with him. Wow.

He does not want you to leave. He wants to make a sale. So if you get his backpack, whether he has it on or he's having some disheveled dude hold it for him or sitting in a corner holding it, you'll get the crack, you'll get the powdered Coke, you'll get the meth, you'll get the heroin, you'll get the M30 pills, and you'll get the fentanyl. It's all in there. Do Silicon Valley guys go to the tenderloin to score if they need powder? Have you ever seen that, like high class people down there? You will see people driving through there in nice cars with suits and stuff on. But you'll also see, like, you'll see parcel drivers pulling up to get it. You'll see, I've seen kids in Catholic uniforms going up. You know what I mean?

You'll see it's a one-stop shop. I've heard that some of the Hondurans, when they get smuggled over by the Mexicans, I've heard that that's how they make connects. Like sometimes they even work off the fee to bring them over with selling fentanyl. Is that true? In my experience, no. What will usually be because we were on a lot of Honduran wires and they'd be talking to Honduras, but they'd say, hey, I'm sending my cousin up or I'm sending my cousin and his friend up.

They would pick them up once they made it across. They would only pay, they don't even call it a coyote no more. They call it a taxi. The taxi would get them through, pass them over. They paid the fee. and then they bring them up to where they live. And all the Hondurans that deal in Tendellon, like 99% of them live in Oakland.

And they'll rent houses in Oakland, and you'll have 10, 15 of them there. And they'll get them started with a little bit of dope. And then they'll just tell them, hey, here's our connect. And once they hit the ground running, they're all independent contractors. Wow.

Yeah. Wow. And then they just come over to San Francisco to hustle during the day. They hustle in San Francisco, and then they just go back during the day or night. It just depends on what shift they're working. So they're running 24 hours. 24-7.

You can go out there at 3 in the morning and you're going to find somebody. And they don't really have a, not a boss. They don't have a connect there. Whoever brings them over, like the elder, gives them the wholesale connect. It's like a family thing. They'll pass it over to them.

Like, hey, I'll get you started. This is based off all my experience of listening to these wires. I'll get you started, save the money. And then you can buy a little more, a little more, little more from whoever we're buying it from. And from the wire. wire, we'll hear the Hondurans are smart. They'll have three, four, five Mexicans that they're

dealing with. And they don't want to just, they don't want to put all their eggs in one basket. And one of them will call and be like, hey, I haven't bought for me for a while. Oh, yeah, it's kind of slow right now, but they're buying from the other ones. So they always want to keep different connects and work the angle for the prices. Get the better price. But they want that one Mexican to think that, no, you're my soul, you're my sole provider. Right. It's like how you've got four girlfriends, you know, baby you're my everything. Yeah.

I'm busy. Exactly what it is. They're very smart market-wise. Do they go to places like San Francisco and Portland and Seattle and Denver because they're sanctuary cities? And when they get caught selling fentanyl or selling drugs, they know that their chances of getting deported are way lower than if they were, you know, in Arizona or something like? Do you think they choose those cities on purpose for that reason? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Absolutely. There'll be people we deal with that have five, six, seven, eight cases on them in a three to six month period because they get out the next day. They get out the next day. And the judge is like, okay, they look at it as not a violent crime. And they just look at it as a drug issue. Okay. So it's, yeah, it's weird. It's like a cycle that feeds itself. These, you have open-air drug markets because they don't prosecute drug dealers. So now you get addicts from all over the area and the country, which brings in more drug dealers. And now generations later, it's just, it's like a rinse and repeat. It's like 50% of the people that are users there aren't even from California. Right. We met truck drivers that are like, I came all the way here from Oklahoma,

because I heard you could just smoke meth. You could do the drugs outside. The weather's nice, so you're not freezing if you're sleeping on a curb, and you get money. You get money from the city. Is that true? Like, okay, just how? I want some money. I think it's, I was told by people that I had talked to, they get like $600 a month.

Right. And a phone. They give you a phone? The city of San Francisco gives you a phone. No, you can get one of those Obama phones because they're standing on every corner. People just fill the paper out and get a phone. Wow. Yeah.

Huh. So $600 a month, you could just claim homelessness. and now $600 a month, I can go get some fentanyl, and now I can start flipping it. And you can eat for free. And you can, yeah. So, yeah, they choose these cities. These Honduran guys are pretty sharp cookies.

Have you ever worked a wire from a street-level Honduran dealer all the way up to like a big-time cartel plug? We've done it quite a few times. Oh, shit. I would go out into the tenderloin and I would buy like half ounce of fentanyl. And I'd get the nump for his phone number. And then I go back and buy an ounce. And then I go back.

tell these guys that I'm selling this. I ain't using. I'm not a user. I sell this shit. And they'd be like, okay. And I give some backstory that I take it to Vegas or I take it over, I take it somewhere else, or I take it to work. I'm selling it at work. So what would happen? I'd get up to where I'd buy like four ounces from a street corner guy because I would call him up and tell him, hey, can I get four? And he'd be like, yeah, I'll bring it in tonight when I come in. So we're already up on his phone. So once we start crossing the numbers, we just start climbing the ladder. And we get, we just, we go all the way to Mexico. Okay.

Have you gotten into Mexico? Yeah. So that's possible. How do you do that if you're not working with like the CIA? Like how does the American DEA combine with, you know, a California cop? Do you have to work with the Mexicans feds, the Mexican feds? Or how does that? No, what we would do is we would be up on their phone and identify them.

And we'd end up. putting a warrant out for them when the wire came down. So if they ever came into the United States, they got arrested. And they had to pay it. They had to pay up for that wire. Today's episode is brought to you by my favorite company in the whole wide world, good friends of mine over at Mood. Mood is making federally compliant, hemp-derived cannabis, accessible, affordable, and convenient.

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Thank you, Mood. Okay, so tell the story of that. Tell us where it was, who was the boss, where was he located in Mexico, how were they moving shit across? I had one case where a guy,

got caught with two pounds of meth. State case. They told him you're going to have to introduce Britt. So he immediately takes me to this guy. So I start meeting this guy and I buy a pound of meth from him. He was a lawyer that got debarred from the Bay Area. And he was transporting dope all around for them. So, I mean, he was very, very inconspicuous looking, just driving around, minding his own business.

and I'm buying meth from him now. I'm buying multiple pounds from him. And he's talking about my boss, my boss. So he turns around and says, I said, how much for heroin? Can he get heroin? He's like, oh, yeah, he can get heroin. My boss can get heroin. So I said, we'll find out how much.

So he gets on Google phone and he starts doing an interpretation. And I'm like, I'm like, what are you doing? He goes, I don't speak Spanish. I go, oh, I'll talk to him in Spanish. So he's like, oh, okay, so he hands me the phone. So the guy's like, who are you? His name is Mani. I said, I'm Carlos.

I'm the guy, he's like, oh, he's selling to you right now. I go, yeah, he's like, take my number down and start dealing with me. So then I start dealing with him. Now I'm buying multiple pounds of meth from him. I'm buying heroin from him. Started introducing me into his crew, brother-in-law, ranch down in Stockton. That's where they were keeping it. The girlfriends, all this stuff.

And they were keeping it at the girlfriend's houses. They were married. And what happens is we do a takedown on the wire. We hit all doors that morning. This was like after probably nine months, over nine months, and he wasn't home. So we get everybody else but him. He's the ringleader. Yeah, him and his brother-in-law.

So he takes off and goes to Mexico. He goes a sin of law. So then he calls me up. And he was like, hey, Carlos, man, something happened. And I was like, I've been trying to get a hold of you. What happened? And he was like, dude, they arrested a bunch of my people. And I'm like, really?

And he's like, yeah, I'm not coming back. And I was like, oh, shit, okay. And he was like, I go, but I still need, I still need a plug. You know, I'll plug somebody that can provide you with dope. So I said, I still need a plug. And he was like, I got you. So he would introduce me to people up here in the Bay Area. And I'd buy multiple pounds from these guys.

So then I'll send, I'd be up on them. We'd be up on them. And then they start getting ripped. Right. So were you able to locate from the phone call? calls in Sinaloa, were you able to contact the cops? Oh, sending him money, too. Okay.

So. Where in Sina Loa? I don't know. Kulia Khan? I'm not sure. Badira I'm not sure. So. You're talking to a cracker that knows a lot about Mexico.

I know. It sounds like it. So could you in, well, of course you can locate anybody, depending on who you know in law enforcement, but could you? Electronic wise, they were able to locate them. But I don't know where it was. But electronic wise they were able. Who is able to locate them?

because it was a federal thing. Right. So on our side, they were able to use our technology to see into a foreign country where a guy was. They knew where he was, but they couldn't take him. Right. So they would then have to get the cooperation of the government down there. So you do an inner pool warrant.

Right. You send it out, which nothing happens with it. Not down there. Sometimes. If they don't like the guy, they'll be like, hey, we'll meet you at the border with him. Right. They do. But there was a reason why they gave him up and not anybody.

else. But they do. They'll give them up now and then. You're right. If they really want you, obviously, if you're a big, famous guy. He was born in San Jose, California, so he had dual citizenship. So I get a call like a year later from Arizona, and they go, hey, is this your target? We're like, yeah, we got a warrant out for off a wire. I said he was moving hundreds of pounds. And they said, hey, we're getting all these 40-foot trailers coming in with snow glows. And inside the snow glows is liquid meth. And it's him. It's his shit. So they sent me pictures.

Dude, it was just 40-foot containers. All of that worked to put liquid meth in a snow glow. And it looked like a real Christmas snow glow, but it was all liquid meth inside it. Yeah, I've heard that trick. So then he comes across, he tried coming across like two years later and where they snatched him. Even with the Interpol warrant. Yeah. They grabbed him.

Wow. Yeah. Why would he do that when he's got all these workers up here? I don't know. It's crazy. Yeah, that's, we talked to a guy whose plug on this show, whose plug was a Sinaloa, a American-born Mexican in Arizona.

And he said, yeah, like Phoenix area. He's like, I got the sheriff in my pocket paid off. And he was bringing in liquid meth. We, I hate to say, but we did have on several occasions where we would hear about the key maps. The keymaster will let you through it two in the morning. Make sure that lane you were in, stay in the next lane. Okay, so you're up on a wire listening.

Right? Yeah, it was Border Patrol. Customs, they were letting them, they would let them through. Who were you listening to on the wire when you heard that? The target was calling the transport guy and saying, hey, the gatekeeper, not keymaster, the gatekeeper will let you through, but you got to go between two and three in the morning. and that lane you were in last time, you go one to the right, and he'll be waiting. So one time we, on the wire, one time on that wire for that guy, the guy who went back to

Sinaloa, he was bringing a truck back and they were talking about putting it in the gas tank. It was a big one-ton truck. And they were talking about how you have to get gas right away because the gas tank's full of, there's a very small gas tank inside it. And we're able to figure out who it was because a couple of other trips he took, we were able to get it off the license plate reader. and we were like, okay, that's the truck. So it came through and he got pulled over to secondary.

And he goes, oh, my uncle's working tonight. And his uncle was border. Border Patrol. But they still busted it? They busted him and they got the Border Patrol agent after. The takedown didn't happen right away. I see. So they ended up getting them both.

They were able to get their phones. Yeah. But he was the gatekeeper. And he was just waving him in. Yeah. Waving him through. Because that's what they'll do is like, you'll put one car that's dirty with a pound of weed in it

and they'll secondary, the dog hits on it, they let all the other cars behind it go for a little bit. For sure. So you're sitting behind them with a loaded vehicle and you're like, fuck, clear. Go, go, go, baby. Yeah, that's it. I love when people get away with crime.

I got to be honest with you. I love when loads of dope get through. Dude, I hate the government so much. To me, it's a game. It's just a game. It is. And a lot of the real crooks act like it. They're like, I got caught on this one.

You did that kind of give a grin. Yeah, it's a grin, like, kind of like, I got caught slipping. And nothing personal, dude. I take nothing personal when it comes to this stuff. I really don't. Dude, you busted so many guys. You saw so many people get surprised. Yes.

Because you were Carlos. You had this alter ego because you're basically lying for a living. You're going out every day pretending to be somebody else. Correct. Which was easy to be because I grew up in that environment. Yeah, you had family members that were in the game. Oh, my friends were in the game. I had family members.

I dropped out of school at 15, and I went to work. I was living with a family member. We were doing construction. Our whole family would do swimming pool construction. He worked at a bar, at night, and he'd sell the bindles. Remember the little paper bindles, the little snow seals? Coke. Yeah, he would sell those all the time.

So I lived with him. So he ended up because he ended up hooking up with a bunch of NFL players that were in that area. The 49ers. Who else? So they would go into that bar. But I would wake up to people beating on the door like at 3 in the morning. And I would be like, fuck. But I was a little kid, dude.

I'm like 16 years old. You're like Joe Montana? I answer the door. door. I answered the door and there'd be some big ass fucking football player saying, hey, go get your uncle for me, man. Yeah. Did you get an autograph?

No. I knew all those guys from that. Can you imagine of Jerry Rice if you sold Coke to Jerry Rice? You have to tell me if your uncle sold Coke to Jerry Rice. He did. He did not. But there'd be these big ass football players and it was so funny because they were like little kids. Back in that day, you didn't make a lot of money as a football player compared to

what you do now. Sure. These guys, like, these guys lived in the same area and everything. But they'd be like, hey, man, give me a half ounce. I'll catch you on tomorrow for it. I just need it right now. I'd pawn my ring, dude. I would be sleeping there.

I'm like, all right, let me go get it for you. Yeah, you definitely could have got into the game. Like, you have the wiring for it. You have the environment for it. You've got, like, the brolic, but you just, you know, thank God. It just wasn't my thing. I was around it. I watched it all the time, but it just wasn't my thing.

I wasn't like a big anti-drug guy. I just didn't do it, man. I just didn't. You could have got into the game. Yeah, but I just didn't get into any dope, and I just didn't get in any marketing for it either. I just didn't. Yeah.

So you worked all kinds of crazy stories, like all kinds of crazy, like stolen car rings. You posed as like a fence? Yeah, we did a fencing operation. in Colma just outside San Francisco. It was a warehouse. ATF ran it. DEA work was the other group that assisted, CHP, San Francisco PD,

Daly City PD. And it was just this tight-lipped group. Nobody knew what we were doing. We did it for a year and a half. And ATF brought a bunch of these. I call them mercenaries. They bring them over. And they just sprinkle them out into the area.

You know, talk to us about what mercenaries. are. This will fucking blow your mind. They get, they get paid to go out and find customers or clientele to draw in and they get a hotel, they get a car rent, rental, and they go out and they just hit the bars, hit the gambling shacks, hit all the places where they know they can find somebody. And the whole thing was, I was Carlos, I was up at a warehouse. It was me, Jared, Luis, Alex. There was a bunch of us that were the fencers, but I was kind of like the main fencer there. So these mercenaries are snitches.

They're paid. That's all they do. They're paid, like literally being caught really bad. They do some time, and then they work for the feds. And they get paid a salary? They get paid a salary. They're literally employees. When they're working, correct.

Okay. So they get brought up to like San Francisco for, they brought up San Francisco probably for eight months that time. So they're, in this instance, they're trying to get people in. to buy under the guys of buying to sell. Okay. They're going in there saying, hey, there's a guy named Carlos, got a warehouse up in coma,

and he's buying guns, dope, and stolen cars. If you got it, we got a buyer for you. You get a quick sale. So I would get these guys calling me from everywhere on my burner phone and saying, hey, so-and-so told me to call you, I got a car, I got a gun, I got a rifle. I'd be like, okay, come on up.

And I had a whole rules. The whole rules is when we had that operation going at the warehouse, you didn't just show up. You called. Because I would tell them, you don't want somebody seeing your business so you don't pull up here and beat on this door. You call me and I'll give you when it's appropriate for you to come inside. So we'd have cars rolling in. Roll-up door comes down. They bring out what they got. We buy it. You know, we had like 10 grand at a time. We'd buy dope. We'd buy guns. We'd buy stolen cars. And it just fucking took off. It just took off. My phone was ringing all night long, all morning, early morning long.

Hey, I just stole the car. I got to bring it to you. I'm like, I'm not there until five, man. You got to come at five. I don't know where I'm going to put this thing. I don't know where you're going to put it, dude. Come at five. And then another guy would call. I got two rifles I want to sell. It would be like, okay, you're going to be around six. I'll call you one when you can come in. And you guys that are built this warehouse out. It was a warehouse inside of. warehouse. So it had like rooms all the way around it with cameras and joystick zooming in and out and audio and a whole a whole crew that would immediately this wall would come down never had never happened. But this wall would come down and they'd be all they were all strapped ready to go all

geared up. You guys built a movie set. That's what it was. And it was outside too. We'd have a whole crew of outside people that would follow those cars in, follow those cars off, get the license plates, get pictures of them, follow them to, if they went to a residence or something, because we were doing search once later. It went for a year and a half. I think we ended up with 135 bodies just off of those. That's fucking... A lot of guns, a lot of rifles, a lot of stolen cars.

I mean, I would get guys that call up and go, open up the roll-up door. And they would steal a car from the dealership up the street. And they'd come flying in with it. Yeah. Or they'd come in with a car that was kind of wrecked, and I'm like, dude, it's got a dent. CHP tried to stop me in Oakland. I hit the car. I hit the CHP car to get here.

Wow. But CHP took all the vehicles, went and parked them somewhere. And then when this whole operation was over, they called all the people up and said, hey, you're stolen car. We have it for you. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. Yeah, that's insane. Dude, so none of those people, they're all dead to rights. They're on camera. There's audio recordings of them. No, everybody's pleading out. No. I did the prelims on the state cases for the stolen cars.

I did all the Fed cases for the doping guns. No, they, they. So did most of those? They applied right away. Is that most of the gun and dope cases went federal? They did. All of them did. Yes.

Just the stolen cars. What were state cases? Yeah. And you don't do any time for stolen cars, right? I always recommend to people. Sam Mateo County, you might, San Francisco. wouldn't, but Sammanteau County, you might. A minute, a minute. Yeah, everywhere, like, even up in Oregon where I did time, you know, everybody that was in there, I'm in here for, what do they call it?

Joyriding. Yeah. When you steal a car, they can get you for joyriding because they didn't see you specifically steal it. Yeah, yeah. They call it like a DMV, no, DM, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. Oh, okay. That's how they, you know, UMV. And I'm like, dude, this is a great crime. You're doing like county time. Yeah. So if anybody's listening out here, I can't recommend car theft enough, dude. But these ones would bring them to me and they tell me where they stole it. They told me how they got into it.

They told me they'd be like, hey, this is what we did to the ignition. You're going to have to fix it. So they stole the car. There's so many stupid-ass criminals. And then some people were bringing me, there's these companies that you can buy a car and then you can rent it out. Turo. Turo.

They bring me Turoes. And I'd be like, there's a fucking tracker on this thing. dude, get this thing out of here. Dude, I'm the cops. Get out of here. How stupid are you? Because Colma didn't know we were doing it. And Colma in Daily City, they would get tips.

Like someone would call and be like, hey, my Hummer was stolen and it's pinging at this warehouse. So we'd be like, get this fucking thing out of here. You didn't want to blow the- We didn't want Colma showing up and saying, what are you guys doing? And you also would get guys that get arrested in San Francisco and Daily City and be like, hey, there's this dude Carlos up in Colma, man. I can hook you up with him.

He's buying all kinds of stolen goods, guns, dope, cars. So we'd have to vet those out and be like, oh, yeah, we're looking into it. You know, like narcotics would say, oh, yeah, we're looking into it. We know who he is. So you're Carlos. That's your alter-meaginal. That was one of the names I used mainly, yes. Like, and you have a family.

Would you ever be out with your family on weekends and, like, run into a guy? And he'd be like, hell, you've got to put me in jail. You're not Carlos? Yes. They knew right away. When they get arrested, it comes out in discovery. Right. But I would think like you've got to keep yourself hidden, like on your free time, right? Because I did. I kept a very low profile. Yeah. I kept a very low profile. I had been in stores and stuff and seen somebody and was like, oh, fuck, I'm going to go out the back.

Did you keep the tool on you? I carry that thing if I put my garbage out. I do not want somebody to decide they won't pay back. Yeah. Let's talk race. What race in the Bay Area is committing the most? crime. Well. I was sort of kidding, but I love that you're taking it seriously. No, it's like you're like if you wanted to look and see what race would be, it would just be the cops aren't proactive anymore. They're reactive. So you can never say that the police department, San Francisco PD, is picking on a certain race.

Because that's very diverse. Things are so bad, they're reactive to a crime. we would go out and find crime. They don't find it no more. Now it's like, hey, there's a car being broken into at the corner of Franklin and Turk. Can some units respond? Yeah, but you said before we started filming

that you were, your floor, these flock and license play camera readers, and you said it's reduced crime by 40% in the city. So it's, that is a way, maybe that's why you don't think they're reacting anymore because they don't have to. They're just sitting behind a, But this is just my opinion.

Just my opinion. Policing has became a reactive thing. Right. After like Floyd and stuff like that. Nobody wants to get complaints on you. Nobody wants to. I remember when I was at narcotics, I was on a HUD unit, housing urban development unit. We did all the, there were projects then, now they're housing developments.

But that's all we did. And we would get complaints every day. He broke my door. He cracked my door. He did this. He did that. And they're all legit investigations. Now you get those complaints.

And you've got watchdog groups going after you, calling IA. You need to look into this. So a lot of the cops, I think, have more of a reactive thoughts instead of proactive. Yeah, but you said crime, on the one hand, you're saying things have gotten so bad. But then on the other hand, you say crimes way down. Crime, no, crime is down. No, but I'm saying crime's down, but I'm saying like when it comes to the mindset of the officer, like if you stop somebody in a tenderloin and they're injecting or smoking fentanyl on a foil,

they're giving them a ticket, giving a parking ticket. And they reach in their pocket and pull out 20 of them and put it with the other 20 and push it in there. Do I really want to stop if I see them doing that? Yeah, good point. So you guys just crimes down because maybe you're not looking for. for as much crime. Yes, before you would go out and search, you'd hunt. You'd hunt.

Now it's more reactive stuff. If somebody says there's someone smoking fentany all in the corner of Eddie and Taylor, you're going to go out there and deal with it. But like I said, when I was getting my dope weight out in broad daylight, they're driving by because it's like, the fuck I want to do. Yeah. I want to go spend. And I'm not saying that towards them in a bar.

bad way. I'm saying that I feel society has made it has made it so much easier for breaking the law that it makes them want to think like, do I want to grab this guy with some dope and spend four hours on a report and a booking and he's getting out before I get off my shift? I'd hate to think that it's like that, but it feels like it. Yeah. On the one, hand, you're right, low-level crime, like street-level drug dealing, injecting, using, the cities have just given up. Cops have given up. I mean, because it's exhausting.

It's like, it's never ending. And it's nothing that's going to get any better. No. With what we're doing now. It's like they put a cop at Target. And they just, they just walk out all day. And they're like, it's only $600 worth of stuff. Give me a ticket.

No, put it all down and fucking stop. then they'll come back out, like two hours later with the same amount. It's like... So, cops, like, doing math. He's, like, checking the receipts. He's like, oh, yeah, you're right. This is under 900 bucks. You're good.

You're good to go. It just sucks. Yeah. It just really sucks. I mean, it makes you feel like... Before, when you arrested somebody... I felt good when I arrested a user back in the day. Because I was like, I'm doing you a favor, dude.

Yeah. You are a mess. And I'm going to put you somewhere for a minute. And you give you some time to think. I'm not a big incarceration. Everybody goes to jail. I don't think like that. But you're going to have a timeout, maybe get some clarity.

And I didn't feel bad about it. Now I'm seeing that you're not going to jail. You can get stopped every single day doing dope, and every single day you're going to get a fucking ticket. And it might turn into warrants later for not showing up to court. But the courts don't really care about that. Yeah. They don't care about that.

You have 50 tickets for using. It's like we're stuck. America's stuck. It can't decide if it wants to be full totalitarian or completely dystopian. So you've got these pretty soon to be drone cameras that could spy on everybody, violate everybody's Fourth Amendment rights. I drive by a camera and it can read everything where I've been. And that's like, you know, straight up Chinese big brother nightmare shit.

And San Francisco has all that. But then you allow shoplifting and open-air drug use and people shitting on the... So which one is it, guys? Like, why do I have to live in a digital prison if I also still have to step over dead people in San Francisco? That's true. You know what I mean? No, you're absolutely right when it comes to that. I like that the real-time crime center they have with all the flock and drones and license plate readers.

I like that they can respond immediately for violent crimes. Yeah. Robberies, car break-ins. Because when you get a car break-in, if somebody bips your car, they do 30 that night. Right. They come over from Oakland, they come over from other cities,

and they'll ride through, and they'll just hit air. And then they'll pull up to some lot, and they'll just push out. It looks like a dump, because it's all the shit they don't want. It's all the luggage and everything that they, after they sift through it,

all the purses, all the jackets and shoes, and all this shit. Okay, for people that don't know what bipping is, this is a very San Francisco Bay Area, a specific criminal racket. Tell us what the phenomenon of bipping means. It's going through and breaking into cars. And you're going to have a lot of it in San Francisco because of tourism.

These tourists don't understand. They come from the airport and they're like, let's hit Pier 39. And they leave all their luggage in there. Let's go out of the wharf. It's a lovely white family from Iowa. And they're like, we want to come see Alcatraz. Let's go watch the seals out on the pier. And they come back and all their shit's gone.

Right. And what will happen. is you'll listen to dispatch and they'll say, hey, there's a white Lexus with stolen plates on it. It's going through the northern. It's breaking into cars. Well, the cops can't chase the car because it's a property crime. Because then that car will take off and hit somebody and the cops are going to be responsible for it. Now you'll hear all day long, now that car is by Pier 39.

Now that cops by, now that car is by the marina. Now that car's over by Golden Gate Park. It'll be the same damn car. And they know that all I got to do is get on the wrong side of the road or something and punch it. They're going to back off me. Wow. They don't want you chasing them. They don't want you boxing them in.

That's why the real Tram Crime Center, you put a drone up above them, and you watch them break in the cars. As soon as they stop to get gas or they get hungry because they've been breaking into cars all day, you grab them. I've worked up an appetite. Yes. Wow. Okay. Okay, so basically, it's cars of, let's face it, usually black kids from the East Bay coming in,

and they're just looking for luggage that's visible. They're looking for valuables that are visible in a car. You will see them pull up, two, three cars at a tandem, and they'll look in windows of the car, they'll jump in the car, the looking windows of cars, they'll jump in the car, and then they'll circle back around, they'll be like, at that one, there's got luggage in it. And then they go up, do they use the things

that the cops use to break your? They'll just pop the window. They're in and out. They'll do you a window punch. Yeah. They climb inside, pull all the luggage out. Yeah. And then they're gone.

Then they're gone. And have you ever gotten a wire up on, are these organized rings? Like, do they actually go sell to like, you know, higher up fences? They will fence the stuff. Yes, they will fence the stuff. If you go down to Market Street, you can get rid of all your electronics down there. You can get rid of all your iPads, your laptops, your cell phones. They'll buy all that stuff.

But is there anything? on a grander scale. Like, did they sell to Asian gangs that repackage the stolen goods and ship it overseas or anything like that? What it usually does, it'll go down to Market Street and you'll have some Asians, you'll have some Hondurans, some Venezuelans. And what they'll do is they'll store all that stuff. And they usually blow it into trailers and send it out of the country. So those will be like big containers with tons of electronics, cell phones,

laptops, iPads. Or they'll be sending out, if you're talking about retail theft, they're going to go into Union Square and they're going to steal all the $500 tennis shoes and sweatsuits and all that stuff. And they'll buy that as well for like $10. And for a dope fiend just to get as high,

and those will get loaded up too, and those get sent out. And right out of the port of San Francisco. Yeah. Wow. Did you ever work any big cases like that? One of my buddies did. He worked a huge one. where it ended up being Russians across the bay.

They hit a warehouse, a huge warehouse. It was so big. Might be wrong on this, but like CVS, Longs or Walgreens, maybe Gap went in and they had to scan all the stuff and load it onto pallets and wrap it. Like, that's mine, that's mine. That's from us, that's from us.

Wow. Yeah, and it was massive. They brought in like 40-foot trailers and we're just wrapping pallets and loading it up. And that's all from bipping and theft? Retail theft. All from retail theft. And that's way better than drugs.

If you're a criminal, you're like, this is huge money. It's drug money, but with something that gets me a fourth of the time in prison. Yes. And I was doing things like we would hook up with Walgreens, we'd hook up with Gap, and then what would happen is I would dress dishevelled and I would go into the corner markets in the tenderloin. And I'd be like, hey, I'm working at a warehouse on Walgreens. I can get what you need.

They're like, give me axe spray, get me toothpaste, get me shampoo, get me, and I would walk in with boxes of stuff. They'd give me pennies on the dollar for it. So what would happen is, and a good one is, if I acted like I was a dope fiend, and I'd be like, hey, can you get one of those guys to sell to me? They'd be like, oh, I got it. Yeah, hey, take care of him. So then if I bought dope, the city attorneys would go after the store.

Okay. And they would tell the store like, hey, dude, you're selling stolen shit. You're buying stolen shit, which you're reselling. And you're letting people deal drugs inside your store. And these are people, the reason this is so fascinating is because this is Baltimore Rust Belt level crime in a place that's got more wealth than entire continents, practically. We're talking about the Bay Area. We're talking about trillions and trillions of dollars in wealth and this sliver.

of the city that's just packed with people and their whole goal is to do crime and get high. Yeah. It's, you'll go down to Market Street, it'll be retail theft. It'll be just shit all over and they're just dealing. People are coming in, selling them stuff, and they're just taking it, and the stuff they want, they'll take it to their car,

and the other stuff, they'll resell it out there. They're selling it for them. And nobody's arresting them? You arrest them, but then it becomes an issue when you take the seize the property. You got to figure out where the property belongs and stuff. And that's almost impossible. Who's got the time? It's like a victimless. They don't spend any time in jail. No. Do you see what this is like? It's San Francisco is a microcosm of what the United States is becoming, both economically, right? You have this vast, unbelievably, unimaginably wealthy elite. And then they're

letting the underclass literally kill each other and wither away. And, yeah, you know, it's completely dystopian. It's like out of a sci-fi novel. 2014's Proposition 47 in California. That was to turn users into misdemeanors. And anything under $950 that was stolen is a misdemeanor, which is a sidel offense with a ticket. Once they did that, it was fucking game over, dude.

Game over. Should we go sell drugs in the tender line? Like, this podcast shit, this might be for the bird. I mean, I'm cool off this. We could just go bubble real quick. Yeah, it's quite a circus out there. All right, so yeah, tell me about that story

about the Hondurans with stolen cars going up to Seattle. Well, they weren't stolen cars. What it was was they would get X-Fives. X-Fives has a space beneath the seats, so they would cut out the seat and put trap doors in there. And they would load it, and they would go to, It was for Washington, Portland. They would drop dope off there.

Oh, I see. Large amounts. Okay. These are BMW, X-5s. X-Fives. Okay. So the drivers would dress in three-piece suits with ties, and they knew that if, like, they would have, like, you would hear from the wire. Like, CHP looked up, pulled up next to them, looked over at them, were like, that's, that's a normal person in a suit and tie.

That's a normal person in a suit and tie. So would you. follow wires, would you follow loads of dope from wiretaps all the way up through Oregon into Washington, all the way from San Francisco? Yes, and you would also notify them over there, the feds that are over there in Washington, Oregon, and let them know. And we would have calls with their people so they would do spin-offs and they would go up on their wire off of it. That's the easiest way to go up on a wiretap. Wiretops are really hard to do, to get a judge to sign. But if you do spin-offs and you're like, hey, this guy, Jose keeps calling,

this guy, Manuel, in California, and he keeps bringing him dope up, like large amounts, like, 15 pounds of crack, 20 pounds of meth, you know, like coming up there on a regular basis, the judges will allow the phone. Okay, so tell us about getting a wire. Would you actually, did you know judges? Did you call up judges and get wiretaps authorized, or was that your, like, supervisor? That would be the feds would do that. Okay, so none of these taps were local.

or state-level wiretaps? We've done some state ones, but we would usually go through the feds. Why is X? It's just easier? It's easier and cheaper. Okay. Fed's got money. For sure.

So they could spend, dude, going up on a wire can cost you upwards more than $30,000 a month with the monitors and the transcribers and all the other shit, and that's not including buying the dope. Right. So because they have to, how do they do it? They have somebody in a federal building, take the number. And can you explain how that works, the mechanism for actually? Yeah, what you would do is you would build a case up and you get hooked with an AUSA, which is a federal lawyer.

Right. And they would connect with the case with you and they'd work it alongside you. So I would go out and do buys in the, let's say I could do buys in the tend to owner. I do buys in the peninsula, buying multiple pounds. And then they have to write an affidavit to show that this guy's a drug dealer. and not just based off of me. It has to be based off of other things as well. You need dirty phone calls.

You need numbers that are from other drug dealers that are purchasing from as well. So I can't just go buy dope from a guy and go click his phone. We're going up on him. It's a lot more intense than that. So you have to give the AUSA all that proof. You're working directly with them?

You're writing that affidavit and you're like Brits out there buying multiple pounds from this guy. One of the numbers we have, corresponds with the person who's out on two open cases for large amounts of narcotics. We followed this guy around. There's a whole bunch of stuff you have to do. You have to exercise a lot of different things that I went through this.

I went through this. I went through this. Look at it. I got all this mess. I can't follow him because he cleans himself up when he's driving. He's sending other people. He's using multiple cars so we can't put trackers on the cars, just stuff like that. and the judge will read the affidavit in Washington.

The lawyers there will wash it clear. And then it'll come to a judge here. Once they clear it in Washington, it'll come to a judge here, local, whatever, like Northern District of California. And that judge will read it and decide whether he signs it or not. Fascinating. So everything has got to go through Washington, D.C. first. Yeah. Interesting.

Dude, you're like the bald guy. You're like Herc from the wire, dude. I'm talking to the real live Herc, man. But I never did that. I would do a lot of reports and a lot of, to my buys, I do buy reports and all this stuff and add stuff to affidavits, but I never wrote a whole, dude, an affidavit's like, could be 150, 200 pages.

Crazy. Just to get one wire. To do one wire. And then you go up on that person, and then you find out who their supplier is. So now you've got to do this whole thing again to get up on that person. You've got your dirty call from the guy you were up on going, but then you have to tie him into other people and you have to do all this shit. Right.

Did you ever have to get dirty? I'm talking about like really beat the shit out of someone, like manhandle them. Did you ever get, yeah, did you ever get written up for being too rough with a suspect? No, I've never got, I've never got written up for excessive force. God, I would have been, if I was a cop, I, they would have had to take my badge. I was, I was, I was choking guys out in the tenderloin that were holding. mouth dope. And then I was told not to do it anymore. Because they used to keep the, keep all the crack in their mouth. Yeah. So what you do, you'd walk up behind them and they'd show

you crack in their mouth thinking that you wanted to sell to them. Then you'd spin behind them and you'd put them in a figure four. But they said, I said, I was saving their lives because they're going to ingest that crack. And they're like, no, dude. No more of that. So was that one of the, because you guys consulted on Training Day. Remember in the movie Training Day where Denzel, it's Snoop Dog's in the wheelchair and he's selling crack? I met Snoop Dog and everything. We were there for that filming.

Okay. And then he sticks a pen in his mouth and he gets him to puke it out. Because he swallowed it. That was one of our thoughts because of the Hondurans. They'd do it. Funny thing, you'd pull up to the Hondurans and they'd look at you and you look at them and the minute you crack your door, then do the water and they drink it and then you drive away.

And they're like, motherfucker, I got all this shit in my gut. I got to go puke it out and shit it out or do something. I got $500 in my- That's all you had to do is pop the door. And they'd be looking at you holding their water. And then they don't do it. So this is not, they don't sound as sophisticated as like the corner crews from Baltimore. That really, they have one, they have the dope hidden behind, you know, an old tire, right?

In an alleyway. They got another guy holding the money. They don't have to be. Right. because they don't stay in jail. But a lot of times, like, on a buy, if I did a buy, the guy would tell him, hey, give me a 50 shot. He's buying a 50 shot. He'd hand it to me.

I'd hand to the money. He'd hand someone else the fucking money. And then I'd tell him take all three. And it'd be conspiracy. Right. But it, they would hide the dope and underneath the cars with magnets and stuff like that. But, I mean, you don't really have to. I mean, the consequences were very.

very, very low. Was there ever a case you stumbled on that, like, shocked you by, like, who was selling drugs or the magnitude of something? Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of

cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. The cases were weird. It's like you could do a case thinking, okay, I'm going to get this guy for a couple pounds, and then you hit his place and he's got 50 pounds. And you're like, oh, shit, you know, and everything is timing. Everything's timing. We've hit places, We hit a place in a Rialto, California. We had an informant that told us that was dope down there at this ranch. And DEA was going to do it, but then DEA boss was being shitty down there,

so he was pushing back. And so we were going to do with the HSI, and then they got mad that HSI was in, so we just said, fuck it, we're just going to go do it. So we told Rialto, please, hey, you want to do a search warrant with us? They're like, absolutely, we'll make entry. So they did.

And your, what jurisdiction? Down in Southern California, like Central, Central Valley. Right. Alto's in the Central Valley. So we tell these guys, hey, we're going to hit this house. And they're like, oh, yeah, we'll do the SWAT hit because they want to work. So we do the house. We're fucking searching like crazy.

And we finally figured out it's in the wall. It was 82 pounds of meth inside a wall. there was this little, these little bookshelves, and one of them slid open, and they would just drop it, drop it, drop it, and open up the other one and drop it. So we tore the wall down, pulled 82 pounds of meth out of there. But you hit the stash. They just came. It just came. So they hadn't dispersed it yet. So everything's timing. You might hit one and get dry and you're like, fuck, this guy's a big drug dealer. Or you might hit one and go, oh, fuck, dude. And they were like, yeah, it just came in. So. And you've hit houses where you come. up nothing. Yes. And we told Rialto, you want to take this? And they're like, take what?

Or like, you take the 82 pounds. It's your case. Because we don't want to give it to the feds because they were fighting back and forth amongst themselves. They're like, can we? We're like, oh, hell yeah, dude. You see the headline the next day. Rialto police take 50 pounds of meth.

82. 82 pounds. Yeah, but only 50 showed up. Those motherfuckers are those little bum towns. Oh, that's out in the sticks, dude. Oh, they're so dirty out there, dude. That's out of sticks. Did a lot of police officers have drug problems?

The only police officer I know that had drug problems were pill-induced from doctors. Opiates. There you go. That's how it starts. Ophids is the worst, man. Obesies is the worst. Probably 90% of the people that are in the tenderline that are doing pills first got them from the doctor. And the doctor took them away.

And they got nothing to do. And then they got fucked up because they went down Tentaloy and they started buying their vikidens and their oxies and all this shit. And they were like, hey, try this one. It's better. The next thing you know, they go to heroin. Next thing you know, they go to fentanyl and they're fucking done. So those just zombies, those withering away skeleton fentanyl addicts could have started

as like normal citizens that just got pills from the doctor? 1,000%. I would see like. cleaned up, attractive people going in there, and I'd see them like four months later, and I'd be like, oh, fuck. No way. You're done.

You're done. Yeah. You've got that 1,000-mile stare. Yeah. Yeah, it goes back to, like, kind of really what I've been thinking lately is, like, our government, on a high level, is trying to kill us.

So did you ever see any people like that make it out? get clean. Did you ever arrest a junkie? And then later on he calls you and thanks you. Oh, I've seen them on the street where they stopped me. I didn't know who they were. But man, far and few between. Far and few between. Yeah. And that's why you've got to get to them

before they get to that point. They need that clarity. They need that time out before they get to that point. I mean, you'll see these people just laying in the gutter with their mouth open. Waters running down the gutter on them. they got shit all over them, piss all over them. They can't take care of themselves. And then you have liberal people saying they have a right to do what they want.

They're not even there, man, mentally. They need to be taken somewhere and they need to be cleaned up and have the opportunity. Well, you wouldn't treat an animal that way. That's correct. You know what I'm saying? That's correct. I didn't think of it like that, yes. You wouldn't, if a dog was like bleeding to death on the street, you're shitting itself, you would go clean it up.

You know, say animal control. And a lot of it's self-medicating. You've got a lot of people with mental issues. And what they do, they gravitate sort of the tenderloin. And they're self-medicating because they're not getting the right medication that they need it. Because there's nobody there to give it to them. Right. If you try to give somebody rehab, you'll see in court.

Your Honor, I put a request in. We're standing by waiting to see if any beds are available. Dude, if you can't shove somebody into rehab that day. Right. Dude, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's what I mean. Like, if you look at what they did with San Quentin, it's basically a television studio now. Like, it's not even a hard prison anymore. They're having basketball leagues. I used to go there when it was hard. I used to go there for, we used to have to do hearings. So if somebody got parole violation, we'd have to do a hearing on them, like, show up and say, yeah, this is what he did. Right.

So you can't wear jeans there. And I always wore jeans. and they would be like, dude, you're wearing a fucking paper suit. So they'd put me in a white zip-up paper suit, and I'd have to walk through the yard in a paper suit. Crazy. I got a funny story, San Quentin. Back in the day, we arrested these people on wires.

We took a bunch of them down. There was one at San Quentin that we were taking federal. So I go out there, me and another guy, and I was driving a, back in the day, I had a 535 BMW blacked out, lowered. It was a seizure car that we seized from a drug dealer. and that was my car. Nice. So I go...

Is that legal? Yeah, because the seizures, we would take everything that... You can't seize them now, but you used to take their property, their vehicles, all their stuff, as long as you can prove that it was bought in with money. Now they auction them off. Right. So that's the car I drove. So I go into San Quentin and I go, hey, I got a writ to take this guy out of here and take

him federal. And they're like, okay, and they open the gates up. They go drive all the way around that baseball field. then you're going to go over by death row. And he's going to be over there. So I'm driving through. Dude, this BMW is like a fucking 90 or 92 BMW. Old as hell.

And these guys are just running next to me on the car. Like, what kind of car is that? So you're in the prison, within the prison walls, driving. Oh, no, I'm driving right through the yard. That's fucking wild. And they're running up to me going, what kind of car is this? And I'm like, it's a BMW. They're like, oh my God.

It's like they had been there so long. Yeah. They thought I was in a spaceship. They thought I was flying in in a spaceship, dude. Yeah, yeah. And I picked this guy up. I shackled him and put ankle irons on them and put him in the car. And they were just lined up around it going, oh, my God.

Like, like I could die tomorrow and I've seen it, dude. I seen it. A BMW. Yeah, now they're all on smartphones. Everybody's watching YouTube. Everybody's current now in the joint. Like, they turn that yard from, like, people used to get butchered in there. Oh, yeah.

And now everybody's on their best behavior because, like, hey, we get the Cal State tennis team coming in. You can look at this white girl. You got jack material later. You can play tennis with her. I was when I worked, I was a correctional officer for three years prior to going to San Francisco PD in San Mateo County. And we went up to San Quentin and went through a training thing with them for a few days. And, oh, I was out on that yard, dude. When that buzzer went off, if you didn't hit the wall, if you were in an inmate and you didn't get a

against the wall, they would just crank you up with a stick, dude. Because they'd be run into a fight and you'd hear the buzzers going off. And if you didn't grab a wall, man, they would lay into you with a stick, right? And drop you. Because it was like, everybody hit a wall when the buzzer goes off. If you're standing out in the middle, you're a fair game. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My brother's going there because he coaches basketball at a school in the bay. And they're about to go up there. And he just, he was like, yeah, they made me sign a, like a release form. I'm saying like, oh, we can like shoot through you. If we have to hit a guy in a riot, we can shoot that.

I'm like, don't sign that. That's bullshit. Work around that. That's not cool. Yes. But my point is like they turn that whole place around by like changing the mentality of it. It's not even a prison. It's a rehabilitation.

Right. So like if you can do that to those dudes, you can compassionately arrest these addicts in the tenderloin and make them, make them being a place like that and make them program. Clean them up, make them program, send them through rehab, but you have to do it by force. When I first was working at narcotics, we used to have these days, which we hated to do when there were 11, 550 days. Anybody in an influence went. We hated it because we were always doing like dealers.

We weren't doing users. Right. But they tell us, you got to do 11550 today because it was grant funded money from the government. So we'd go in there and grab a bunch of bodies. and if they were ingesting or smoking or whatever, they were under arrest. We'd take them to this room down in the tenderloin, and there would be people there, and they'd be like, here's the deal. You go to jail today or you go to rehab today.

We'd take you immediately to rehab and give them an opportunity to do it. Now they're trying to find beds to put people in. I mean, you've got all this money that's being wasted and stolen through nonprofits and stuff, but you have nowhere to take these people, man. They have a thing called the reset center now in San Francisco that if you get caught used and they can bring you up to it. But it's hard to bring a person up there who's high

and then offer him programs and stuff because you're considered not like in jail. Yeah. You're in a center. But as soon as they stay there for a period of time, like a drying out period, like a drunken public, they could leave. You're not going to get somebody high and them say while they're high.

I don't want to do this anymore. You've got to get the person that's been out for a while off the street to say, I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah, you don't have to put the addicts in with the hardcore criminals. Keep them in their own separate, you know, just like they do with the chomos. Keep them in a separate place, but they got to be there against their will by force, and they can't get drugs in there. And, hey, if you want to get out, you got to go to AA meetings, NAA meetings every day,

and you've got to, you know, fill out booklets. That's what they do at court. they're like, oh, you'll check in and do a day program. You can't do a day program. No. You need to be somewhere that you are there and you're going to sit your time out and decide what you want to do. Yeah. You know, you can't, you can't do that.

If you 50-150 somebody, it's really hard to get someone 51-50 now because they're so full and they don't want to take people. Like, oh, he's able to care for himself. He's able to care for herself. Go ahead and let them. We're not taking them. Yeah. You see these guys and girls walking around the middle of Market Street in front of cars and traffic and shit. How could you say they have a right to do that?

I mean, they're going to get hit and killed. Whose fault is that? So they come from all over the United States. Oh, yeah. I mean, over 50% of them when you arrest them are not from here. And do they say they came to San Francisco to get high? Yes. Because they can get high and not be arrested.

Yes. Wow. Yeah. And the weather's nice. They can sleep on the street. I mean, California's got great weather. Dude, if you live in the Midwest or the East Coast, you'd die out there in the winter.

So they've just created a whole perfect, they've just created a perfect market for drug trafficking. Well, sometimes you wonder, I don't know, but sometimes I wonder, did you create that for, did you create that to keep the cycle going, the money flowing? Yeah, well, that's the homeless industry is huge. It's huge.

It's huge. It's huge. And all this housing that they built, especially in L.A., they've given billions of dollars to real estate developers and entrepreneurs, right? They've given billions of dollars of tax money so they can build all this housing. There's plenty of housing, but nobody goes there. And if they do, they're getting high in the housing. That's the thing is they put them in these SRO, single room occupancies. There's these little places in the tenderloin.

Plus, you're keeping them in the tenderloin. Get them out of there. Get them out of the area. Get them where there's no drugs. And they put them in these single rooms with a bathroom in the hallway. Oh, yeah, we've been up into one of them. It's fascinating. Yeah, it's terrible.

Yeah. Because all they're going to do is stop breathing because of fentanyl in their bedroom and there's no one there to save them. In San Francisco, they narcan people all day long. Cops Narcan, firemen Narcan, the citizens are Narcan and people. And they're Narcan and people two, three times a day. Because the whole thing about it is like when you get high of fentanyl, your best high is when you're on the verge of death.

When you're barely breathing is your best high. Dude, you narc on those people, they get pissed. They get pissed because you fuck their high up. They get violent. That's gnarly. Because you fuck their high up. That's gnarly. Yeah.

So they really want to feel like almost, like I almost an OD'd. I guess it's so euphoric feeling is what they're saying when they're just like at following the light, man, at the gate. Yeah, yeah. That's why people like DMT because it's like a, it's like a, death. It's like, oh, man, I was talking to God right there on my fentanyl high. And then you shove something up my

nose and made me come out of it. Fucking dickhead. Do you think some of these guys, the ODs drive the junkies, like if you got a new package of fentanyl, if you're a Honduran, and somebody ODs on your shit, that means you got a bomb package, right?

Yes. Yes. They're not afraid of it. If it's stronger, they're happier. Did you worry about that at all? You're busting all these buying all, making all these buys with, especially in the early days of fentanyl where nobody knew what it was. Did you ever worry about contamination? We were told that if you touch it or go through your skin and get you high and all this stuff. I dealt with it for so long.

I learned about it. When it's cut, you're not going to. If I touch my eyes, nose, or mouth, yeah, I'm going to get high. But if I put it on my hands and carry it, if they dump a gram of it in my hand, I'm good. and all I do is put it into like a dollar bill and fold it up. I just don't use alcohol because it'll pull it through the skin. I use water and soap when I wash it off. Okay.

Did you ever come into contact with pure fent? Oh, yeah. One time we cut a kilo open in DEA and thought it was a Coke. And then I go test it with the tester. It says fentanyl. We were like, oh, shit. It was a, yeah. Damn.

It was a pure kilo. Good thing we did. The good thing we didn't do a line. And that's why people go, that's why people say, oh, they're cutting it with Coke. A lot of times they're not because the Hondurans don't understand. When some guy pulls up and says, hey, give me white, give me a gram of white. Well, they give them a gram of white fentanyl. Oh.

So a lot of it's not cut with fentanyl. Right. It's a lot of it is they're misunderstanding. There's our language communication problem. And they're getting fentanyl instead of Coke because everybody's getting fentanyl. So could white fentanyl? I've never seen fentanyl. Oh, yeah.

But could you mistake that for Coke? Absolutely. It's fluffy. Absolutely. It's got little chunks in it. It's like you cut it off a brick. Wow. Oh, absolutely.

That makes so much sense now. Yeah, because everyone keeps saying, oh, they cut the coke with fentanyl. No, they didn't. And there's some people that died. There were some people in San Mateo County who found a bag in a bar, and they snorted it thinking that they got Coke and they died, man. Right. Because nobody nowadays is dying from bad Coke cut with fentanyl anymore.

No. So that might have never happened. I don't think it did. That's just my assumption is that it didn't. You go up and ask for white. They're going to give you fentanyl. Damn. You go up and ask for powder.

They're going to give you fentanyl. Okay, because you know these guys. You know these Hondurans. You've been over. You've spent time as a seat, you know, an undercover with drug dealers. I've had tons of Hondurine informants. Right. They're not doing this.

They don't intentionally want to kill people. And they don't need to stretch. like they're making so much money selling fentanyl, I don't need to like stretch my cocaine out by diluting it with fent. No, no, no, no. It doesn't make any economic sense. But when you arrest them,

you run them through some questions and you tell them, hey, you know this shit's killing people and they go, yeah, I know. They'll tell you, I know. I know this fentanyl's killing people. They'll admit it. But they're not being cut. They're talking about fentanyl alone.

Yeah. When I sell this shit on the street, yeah, I know it's killing people. Right. But my point is like, it doesn't make any economic sense. Like, you know, my boomer dad used to be like oh be careful if you buy weed on the street they're sprinkling cocaine on it

dad why would they sprinkle they're putting PCP in it you don't know how drug economics work yes let me take something that's expensive and put it on something that's less expensive and take a loss when I sell it to you well that's why cocaine this is my opinion this is why you think cocaine's coming back into the picture because a lot of guys I was buying large amounts from I was working major vendors out of like you know Mexican cartel guys, I would hit them up for crystal, and I'd buy five, 10 pounds of crystal. You got Coke? Yeah, I got Coke. We didn't want to buy Coke because it was so damn expensive. So for the feds to have to pay for it. So we'll buy a lot of crystal. And I'd ask them, they got Coke. They're like, oh, yeah, I got Coke. I can get you Coke for

12, 5 a kilo. I'd be like, okay, but they don't want to spend 12, 5 a kilo for it. They'd rather me buy, I could buy crystal, man, if I buy multiples, I was buying it for like 900 bucks a pound, 850 a pound for multiples. So they're like, no, spend that money on bigger volume. Right. So I would ask him, you got fentanyl? And they're like, oh, fuck, no, dude. My guys down there are staying away from fentanyl.

Because they said, dude, it brings a lot of drama. It does. And I think that's why you're starting to see Coke come back up again. Right. Because they're starting to, before it was like, we'd be on the wire and we'd stop a load vehicle. And we'd hear it coming up. What we do is we'd stop it with CHP on a, you know, like a, on a traffic violation. And they'd have like 50 pounds of meth, 10 pounds of heroin, two kilos of Coke.

They didn't have a lot of Coke. Now you're starting to see Coke come back up again. Do they, so a load vehicle, would that be like a semi-truck? No, it would be a car. Okay. So they would, and that's loads that just hopped the border and they- Or it's leaving L.A. And the guy's ordering on the phone.

I need 50, 10, and 5. Oh. And we know it's coming up. So, L.A. is the big hub. Central Valley is. L.A. is central valley, mainly Central Valley. So you've seen cocaine have a resurgence? I have.

Okay. I have. Well, they're also producing a ton of it in South America now. Yeah. Like way more. So they've got to move it a lot more, too. Of the Mexican organizations, I don't like to call them cartels, because that word is way over you.

but Sinaloa and what was another big region. Did you see a lot of people from Mutual Khan? Yes, a lot of Mitrocon, a lot of Sinolawa. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The Mituquacan... Mituquitonos like the crystal meth. Yeah. They really run the superlabs down there. They'd make 500 pounds a day of it. They have superlabs that make 500 pounds a day.

They'd flunk out of here. And that's why I was buying it for so cheap. We went up on a wire. We did a wire on the Hell's Angels. And it was, it really wasn't the Hells Angels. We thought we were going up on the Hells Angels. All it was was two people, the president, and the Sergeant Arms were dealing meth. We thought it was going to be the organization, but it wasn't.

So it was a, if, to say we went up on the Hells Angels, we didn't. We went up on two guys that worked, which we thought it was going to be the organization. They were buying all their stuff from Nortaniels that we knew. So we were grabbing the Nortaniels. And when we took it down, we took down the two. the two members and when we took down a bunch of Nortennios. But they, they had like tons of meth, tons of coke, rifles, grenades.

They had all this shit, but it was, it was, it ended up being a Latin cartel thing. Or like you said, don't say cartel, but like an organization. Yeah. A Latin organization that was bringing it in. Right. Yeah. So they're a lie, obviously, Nortenos, they're a line. culturally with, you know, the Mexicans.

Correct. Yeah. Correct. And like I would grab guys. You knew if you grabbed somebody, if somebody sold me a kilo of Coke or sold me multiple pounds of meth and we arrested him and he didn't want to say anything. And he's like, I'll do my time. And he'd plead guilty and go.

You knew it was family members. Because they're not going to talk about their family members. They're going to suck it up and eat it. But if they talked, then it's like, okay, they're working with a group and they don't want to go away. Okay. That makes total sense. Yeah, because I would flip a lot of guys.

I would flip a lot of guys we, you know, like, guys that even sold to me, they'd be like, can you introduce him to so-and-so? And they'd be like, fuck, yeah, I will. I'm looking at 10 years. I'm going to introduce him. Right. Okay. So of the people you arrested, I'm talking about, you know, people at a substantial level.

Forget the Hondurans in the tenderloin. I'm talking about, like, people at a federal level or a state. level that you bust, what percentage of them do you think you get to flip? Like, who talked? On the state level, it was everybody. But then it was nobody because they didn't get no time. What the hell am I going to talk to you for if I'm getting out tomorrow? And I'm just going to drag this case out for a year. And then the judge is going to tell me, don't do it again. Even people that you got with quantity? Yes. Really? Yeah. It's not a violent crime. So even if you caught a guy with two pounds of meth and the feds don't pick it up,

that guy could be, that guy's not going to face any state time. He's not doing state time. Hell, no, he's not going to do state time. And before, you got a guy with a gun, federal and state. Federal, we'd trigger lock them. They had a prior felony and they got caught with a gun. Dude, that was no go. They'd get in 10 years. They'd plead a five.

Now, he didn't use it. He didn't use it. He was going to use it. He's not supposed to have a firearm, dude. There's so many guns out there right now. So everybody's got a gun. Right. Okay.

So you noticed over time, it was getting harder for you to flip guys at the state level because they knew that the consequences were way less. You're like, I'll do it. And I could flip anybody federally unless his family was involved. Okay. I could flip anybody federally. Because they would go to their first appearance. And their first appearance was, you're looking at 25 to life if you're found guilty of

this in a trial. They'd be like 25 to life. They'd be like, oh, hell no. They'd tell their lawyer. I want to sit down. I want to do a proffer. So in a proffer, they have to admit to what they did. They don't have to talk about anybody else, but then they also have to talk about what they can do. So would you get guys out facing federal time? Would you actually get them out of wherever they were locked up and get them? It wouldn't get locked up because even with the feds now, if it's a dope case, unless they're flight risk, they're going to do their case outside.

Really? Yeah. Unless it's some huge amount, like, Your Honor, you got caught with the 500 kilos or 100 kilos, and I know he's going to flee. Right.

Or if you're... But if you're up on a wire, a lot of them went, unless they put deportation holds on. Right. So you get the, if you're an illegal immigrant, you get caught.

It's an automatic ice hold, right? unless you're a Honduran in San Francisco. So you were saying those judges wouldn't even hold that. Okay. On state cases. But there were guys, we would do cases like I would buy like a pound and two pounds and five pounds. And we'd have somebody we wanted that knew him. We would pull him over and go, hey, dude, here's the deal.

The guy you're selling to Carlos is a cop. We're going to do a grand jury on you. unless you come clean. We want to sit down with you. We want to talk about so-and-so. If we don't, we're going to do the indictment. So you will see a federal warrant coming your way. So the guy's like, I'm not on paper or anything right now.

No, you're not. I'll be there tomorrow morning to sit down and talk. So there's drug dealers all over the Bay Area right now that are working and they're working. Well, you've got to dance with the devil. I don't know if it's right or wrong. I'm not judging, but I'm saying, no, no, no, I'm saying there's a significant... You're no good to me.

If you're my informant, you're no good to me if you're not in the game. Of course. You have to be... Yes. You can't... That's how you get people. You have to let them... That's the bargain that...

But they sign a waiver saying, I will not sell drugs. I will not act as an agent of law enforcement. I will not do anything. So if they get caught, I'm like, there's nothing I can do, dude. Hmm. And they're like, well, and then they're like, well, I'm working for you. We'll tell your defense. He's not going to say that in open court.

Okay. So when you have a CI out on the street at the state level, he's only allowed to sell drugs that you, like in controlled, controlled sales. No, no. He can't sell drugs at all, federal or state. But then what's he doing? We just tell them.

We're telling you that you need to do X, Y, and Z. Okay, so one of those things you tell me. We're telling you you can't sell drugs. Okay, so what are those things you have them do? Information or intro. Intro's huge. Oh, okay. So what they say is,

I got this boy Carlos that I know, blah, blah, blah. And I always tell them, like, some of them would screw up and go, he's my cousin. I'm like, dude, it's going to come out. I'm a cop after. Don't say you're my cousin. Say you know me and I've been asking and buying good amounts of dope from other people. Do you want me to get Carlos's number? Or do you want to hit Carlos up?

I would get guys calling my burner phone and going, hey, so-and-so gave me your number. Or someone gave me your number. Who? I'm not going to say. I heard you're looking for a plug. I am. And they'd be like, okay, well, let's meet. then I'd meet with them and they'd be like, what do you need?

And I said, I'm buying X, Y, and Z. And they'd be like, I could furnish that to you. Did anybody look at you and maybe not make you, but say, no, I'm good. Like, did anybody, like, sniff you out and then back out of a deal that you were trying to set them up in? I really didn't on a big level. On the street, they're so fucking greedy and there's so many drug dealers out there, they'd say, I'd be like, that's cool. I'll get it right from him.

And then they'd be like, all right, all right, all right. I'll sell to you. There's too many people out there. But on a bigger level, they want that sale. So you get it. Yeah, I just had the gift of gab, man. I would tell them like, hey, my boy that hooked me up is a fucking flake. I can't get him on the phone a lot.

I'm a businessman. I move shit. When somebody needs something, I got to be able to provide it for him. If I'm spending three days trying to get a hold of him, this ain't going to work. And you have your tattoos out. And they would be like, they'd be like, okay, just call me. It's greed.

It's greed every time. That's all it is is greed. But I mean, I would dress like construction clothes, that dirty clothes. I'd drive a truck with tools in the back, you know, whatever I needed at that time to, I would do a lot of things to help convince them. To look the part. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you had a fake scar down the side.

If we're out buying dope, we'd put fake scars on our face. We'd take permanent pen and draw a tattoo on our eye or something. You know, something that they'd look at you and go. Hey, man, what smells like Sharpie? But a lot of them would be, a lot of them I would tell them like, hey, dude, I got a good job. I'm making good money. And I'm in a union job and they're testing me. I ain't fucking doing dope.

I'm making money off a dope. So if you want to sell me larger amounts, I'll buy them. If you don't, we're all good. So they would never expect me to do anything. Right. That's also a myth. Like, if you're a drug dealer, cops can do drugs with you and you're still getting busted.

Like, you know what I mean? I've never seen it. But that's one of those entrapment myths that is never going to fly. The big entrapment myth is, are you a cop? Because you need to tell me. That's the,

that's not a, that's absurd. That's absurd. And I'd be like, yeah, I'm a cop. And laugh. And they'd be like, all right. Oh, this bull's crazy, eh? Yeah, yeah.

Garnelow's, man, you ain't a cop. Because you have to tell me, and I've had guys to tell me, dude, if you're a cop or you're a snitch, I'm going to fucking kill you as soon as I fucking can if it comes out. I'd be like, no problem. And then I loved arresting them. Fuck you. You know, yeah.

Yeah. And there's a lot of people I didn't want to. If I did buys from guys, and I'm like, this guy's a hook, dude. He's making like 50 bucks running this dope over here. I don't want him. I don't want him. If I can't get to his boss, fucking squash the case. I don't want to...

You want to ruin somebody's life if they're not really. People do things for certain reasons. Just like that guy, that lawyer got debarred. He was fucking looking for something to do. Doesn't make it right what he's doing, but he's doing what he has to do to survive. I want the dealers. I didn't want, I don't want the hooks.

And it was really easy for me to figure out real quick. And there's a lot of guys like, If you're on a wire or if you get a tip on a transportation vehicle, transportation vehicle, those people don't know anything. They gave them $500 and they told them, there's something in the trunk, don't look at it. You're going to keep this phone with you and you're going to call me every hour on the hour.

And they would call and check in, take that fucking vehicle, load it with 100 pounds of shit and it up. So if you found 100 pounds of meth on a load vehicle, it's possible that they don't even know who they're working for. They have, yeah, a lot of them. We were getting the M30s coming in across the board. order. And all these girls were putting them in these sewn bras that were sewn in. The M30 pills were sewn into the bras. And they would have like a thousand pills. They didn't know

anybody. Right. Yeah. I mean, I don't get any satisfaction out of that. No. No, they're just trying to, especially at that level, man, they're just impoverished. You're just stupid. You're just stupid. Yeah. You're not a drug dealer. You're just stupid. I want drug dealers. I would get a lot of money coming back on wires, coming back into Mexico. Tell us about that. Oh, shit. We would get millions of dollars. Oh, please, tell, inform us.

We would get vehicles, load vehicles going back in, get CHP to stop them right before, like, maybe L.A. San Diego. And, dude, there was one week. They stopped, and they walked right up to it, and the guy's like, I don't have a license. And they're like, okay. They're like, do you want to get out of the car and leave? And he's like, I want to leave. They're like, go ahead and leave. and it was like, I think it was 1.7.

And he calls and goes, they stopped me. And the guy's like, okay, what did you do? I got out of the car and walked away. They're like, go back and say, you've got to need those bags that are in the trunk. He's like, I ain't fucking going back to say those bags are mine. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, joined thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer

Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. They didn't even give a fuck about this guy. They just knew the money was in there. Yes. Wow. Yeah. Have you ever seen really sophisticated ways that they smuggle the money back? One of the ways they would do it, which was kind of weird to me, they would go down to the garment industry in L.A., and they buy tons of designer clothing by the pound, and then bring it into Mexico. So that's a big money laundering way. So you don't even bring the money back. You bring the clothing back.

And then they sell it down there. You bring 40-footer of clothing. Right. You dump a million dollars on designer clothes. Wow. And you bring it down there. Wow. Yeah.

So your wiretaps got you that information? Yeah. Wow. That's fucking crazy. And what can you do at that point? If you stop the car before it gets to the garment industry, because everything's cash down there when it comes to that. But it would be like last year's stuff, you know, like new.

It's all brand new, but it was like last year's stuff. But we did a lot of cases where we'd get like a million bucks and shit like that. Wow. Yeah. What do you think the tenderloin brings, like, I know it's an impossible question, but what do you think it turns over every week, the combined drug sales? You think 100,000 bucks?

Over 100. Over 100 on an eight block radius. Yeah. And that's 10 pieces, right? Oh, dude, that's like... That's like... That's like... 10 pops.

Yeah. So we're talking tens of thousands of transactions every week. Oh, yeah. I mean, a guy's making $1,000 a day, and he's making maybe 20, 30 sales? Yeah. Times lots of drug dealers. And the stuff's gone down on it.

You could buy three grams of fentanyl for a hundred bucks. I was paying a hundred bucks to buy a gram at first. And now it's going to be three for, probably even less than that now. Okay. So I want to talk about the CI's a little more. Okay. So how many CIs would you have running out at a time? When I was at narcotics, I had tons of them.

I had tons of CIs. And they wouldn't just do drug cases for me. I had some CIs that were like affiliate to gangs and would be able to tell who killed who immediately. So we can call homicide and say, this is going to be your suspect. Robbery series. This is the crew of guys. They're working out of the Northern District. And here's a couple of their names call robbery and let them know.

So it wasn't just narcotics that we used them for. Did you guys bust murders that way? Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. We'd put them on a hot path immediately when they didn't have anything. Wow. Yeah. And these are guys that just didn't want to go back.

No, they end up being your friends in a sense. Right. I have CIs that still wish me happy holidays on the phone of shit. I mean, I still, they're just like checking in with you. I'm good, dude. They know I'm out of the game. They're out of the game. Yeah.

And they're like, just checking in, dude. Because we ended up bonding. For sure. They trusted me. They trusted me with their life because I could have put their name out there and something would have happened to them. I could have fronted them out. I would have, sometimes people would ask me, can your CI do this?

And I'd be like, I'm not going to let them. Because I'm not going to let them put himself out like that. Or the feds would say, hey, you got a CI that can do this for us. And I'd be like, I could, but I'm not going to. Because the feds, that name comes out right away. When we did the Hell's Angel Wire, there was a girl. I watched her going down the tube, dude. She was going down the drain.

And her boyfriend and her were my informants. And she was moving dope for Sergeant Arms, meth. pounds and pounds, and I let the feds have her. I was like, she's going to fucking end up dead. So she left, she met with him, she picked up two pounds. We had her traffic stopped by a narcotics guy in a marked unit in a uniform and said, you're on probation. I'm going to search a car, and she says, I need to talk to Bridal Moore.

They're like, who's that? They knew because he worked in the office with me, and she's like, he's a narcotics officer. I need to talk to him. So he went out on the radio, hey, Brick. can you come out here. So I went out there and I'm like, what's wrong? She's like, I got two pounds in the car. I'm like, I know you do. And she's like, oh, fuck, I'm going to jump. I jumped in her car. They followed me up. I took her narcotics. FBI was up there. That's one of the only times I

worked with FBI. And they said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to have you continue to buy from him. Everything you get will pay for. And you're going to wear a wire. And when you're done, we're going to put you in another state under another name and get you a job and everything. because you're not going to live out. You're not going to make it right now with doing what you're doing. Right. And this is trying to take down

the bosses of the Hells Angels. Correct. And this is the Hells Angels San Francisco? Correct. Damn. So you took down the president and the Sergeant of Arms? Yes, but it was,

but it wasn't an organizational thing. No, no, I understand. I don't want people think that. It was, it was, there were a lot of guys in that group who... Most of them don't. Most of the Hells Angels guys are just... It's different.

It's different. Yeah. Yes. But they were selling Matt. The president was selling meth. Yeah. Wow. Out of the, out of the office? No, no, no, no, no. They were doing, they didn't even let the, the, the, the members didn't even know they were doing. Okay. Yeah. Now, did you end up getting them to flip or do they go? No, no, no, they went away.

They went to their time. Yeah. Um, so say you've got a CI, right, drugs. It's federal, you know, and then he says, okay, I'm, I'm, I'll work for you. How long do you keep him on the hook for before you say, okay, you're good. You're free to go. I'm different. A lot of guys are like, you got to give me three cases. I'm just like, okay, dude, let's just do one and see how it goes. And I'm not, yeah, I'm not. They feel relaxed with me and cool with me.

I know they're going to stick around. So back in the day, we were able to pull their file out of being charged. Can't do that now. Now you've got to do a letter of cooperation, and you've got to get all the, jump through all these hoops to do it. But before we would just go down to rebookings and pull their file and hold it. Okay. So you as an officer had the discretion about how long you wanted to use a CI before they were good.

If I pulled his file, I could have him do one for me. And we were cool. You get caught on another one that's on you. So we're like, the feds aren't even going to know about this yet until you work for me and I see how it goes. On a state level. When I had state informants, not federal informants. Okay. Fed's is a whole different thing.

They do their thing. I just step back. I just let them do their thing. Okay. I didn't even want to run federal informants. I ran my state informants. I didn't want them to run federal informants because the fed's a whole different ballgame. I mean, your name comes out immediately as discovery.

Right. So my name comes out immediately for discovery as an officer. They call me and tell me, hey, we're dropping your name. I'm like, that's fine. Okay. So when a suspect or a defendant goes to federal trial, when they pull the discovery. Not trial.

He goes to his hearing. And that's when he's going to find out who's the rat. Correct. But he already knew. Well, no, he might. I can't say he knew it was me. He'll know right then. I see.

The, the, the defense attorney will say that guy Carlos was a cop. Right. And then they give my true name. But then they'll know the CIs too. They'll know who the CIs. So they have to disclose all that. That's why I told CIs, you don't know me that well. when you introduce me.

You just know me of some guy out there trying to buy fentanyl, trying to buy meth, trying to buy guns. You know, I got this guy looking for rifles. And you want to distance yourself from me because you want to be like, fucking dude, I didn't know. But the informing game is different now. Before you can grab somebody and they would be like, I say shit, I'll do my time.

And as times progressed, when people have progressed, everybody talks on everybody now. They do. Everybody talks on everyone. That's what everybody says. Dude, we grab a wire. We grab 20 people on a wire. 15 of them are proffering to talk about what they did and what other people on the wire did. And then they just go, hey, he's going to talk on you.

He's going to talk in you. They're like, fucking just plea them. Let them plea. It's kind of smarter, though. It is for us because I went to court very little. But it's smarter for the defendants because if everybody tells on each other, then there's... If you're one of the guys that hold your own, you're going to fucking ride it hard. Yeah.

You are. You're going to fucking get the 10 years. You get 15 years. So as a legal strategy, if everybody tells in each other, then everybody gets credit for snitching, but nobody gets an organizational... Correct. So you get, let's just say you get five, six years, you do 85% of that. I like the Fed system because when I arrested guys on the Fed system, the first one's not bad. Maybe in your case it was.

The first one wasn't bad, a lot of these guys. Oh, you mean the first sentence? Yes. Right. Your second and third, dude, they're going to be stronger and stronger every time. So you think the feds on a first time drug charge actually give fair sentences, but it's the, if you continue to get caught, that's where they get aggressively higher. Right.

I mean, I had a guy selling me automatic glocks with a switch on him with 100 round drums. Dude, I could squeeze it and unload, dump 100 rounds in seconds. And I was buying those and rifles from him. And then his cousin turned me, he turned me on to his cousin. I was buying meth from them. I was hanging out with these guys in their house. So we ended up taking them down. He had a real bad record.

He immediately says, I'll take 10 right now. because he was looking at 25. Right. He's like, I'll take 10 right now. Don't want to go to court. Don't want to waste anybody's time. Dude, I saw a guy do that on the chain with me when I used to have to go back and forth to court

because I didn't have any bail, but I was there just on a state case, but you'd be in there with guys, you know, facing serious federal time. And it was like literally the first, whatever they call it when you first go before the judge. Your arraignment. Yeah, he goes, I did it.

He's got the cops on. Yes, it's me. It's me. And they were like, no, no, no, no, just. Can't speak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, and he's like, no, I did it, I did it, I did it. I did it. And he was like a professional criminal, and it was for over some guns.

And he was like, I want whatever you want to. My guilt, please show some leniency on me. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I bought a ton of guns, dude. I was buying guns from people where I'd buy like six to ten at a time in a pillowcase. And that's what would bug me. Because if you're selling to me and you think I'm a fucking monster,

You're selling to other people, too. Right. Yeah. I was buying Dracos. I was buying fully auto AK-47s with 100-round drums. Wow. I was buying all kinds of shit. Where the fuck does a Draco even come from?

Dude, I was buying multiple Dracos. For people that don't know what a Draco is, we'll pop it up on the screen. They're beautiful. Yeah, they're amazing guns, but they're fully automatic machine guns with huge banana clips. And just this pine grip and pine stalk. Yeah. They're not pretty. They're just cool looking.

They're cool as fuck. But they're completely illegal. Yeah. Like there's no state where you can own. And I would ask him on video. You shoot this? He's like, fuck yeah, I shot it. He's a felon.

Folk yeah, I shot it. You have to put your arm. He was on the video. He's like, you got to put your arm underneath it because it fucking winds up and starts going up. So I had to put my arm down because it's too small to hold. Fuck. So I want to get him admitting using it because he's a felon.

Not that he used on anything, but that he fired it. So does that make a difference? Yeah. It furtherances. And also furtherances if you know that I'm a felon and you're selling to me. Oh.

So those guys are going federal. If you're selling you a Draco and you have a criminal record? ATF's really good about spending money. ATF would spend a lot of money. To buy guns? Yes. I would go down. There were crews I'd go buy six to ten at a time from several different crews.

And it was real easy for me to call Alex over at ATF and go, I need like $8,000. And she'd be like, not a problem. Where are these crews, these gun crews, these dope crews, where are they in the bay? Because you're not buying Dracos from somebody in the tenderloin. Yeah, you are. Really? You are.

But what they're doing, they're going outside. They're going Arizona, Nevada. They're going to Vegas. They're going to the gun shows down in Arizona. They're going to all these places. and they're buying these guns at like gun shows. Because those gun shows like in Arizona, these guys are taking pictures of it saying you want it.

It was like two little shorties, ARs. And I'd be like, yeah, I'll take them both. But they would buy them outside the back from that guy. Like that guy's selling to him out in the parking lot later. No paperwork on it. So but then how does it, if he's buying illegally, how does it become illegal? Do they retro-frey?

He's not buying it illegally. He's a felon. He can't have a gun. So when he tells that guy, how much you sell it to me if we go buy it in the parking lot, when this place closes. And the guy's like, I'll sell them to you for like a thousand apiece. So that guy's committing a felony too?

He is. He's straw purchasing. We have, I would buy like multiple glocks in the cases. And there were these, there was these gun dealers in Arizona, which was really good for ATF. As soon as we took this case down, they arrested a bunch of people down there. There are gun dealers and they'd buy like 10 glocks, but they'd put a different name on each one of them. But they'd sell all 10 of them to the felon.

And I had serial numbers on them. Right. So they'd call me up and be like, hey, I got 10 clocks. I'd be like, I'll take them all. Do you think that's how most of those kind of weapons make it onto the street? Yes. Right. And some people are making them.

Like, you'll go into a place and you'll see that they order to lower, order to upper. Right. Or they, or they had the poly bottom on it, like the P80s, the ones with no serial numbers on them and stuff. But like a fully automatic, you can't buy that at a gun. gun show anywhere. No. So where do those come from? Like, are most of those made?

You're getting them out of state, and some people are altering them. Right. But like the Glockes, you buy that switch that goes on the back of those Glockes. They buy them from China. You drop that on the back. It'll fucking unload the whole clip in a matter of seconds. I see. And with ATF, having that switch alone is considered an automatic weapon.

Just the switch in a bag, not even attached to a gun. So that was a big thing. I was buying a ton of glocks with buttons on them. You get to keep any of them? No. I'm not even a gun guy, man. I swear to God, I'm not even into guns. I'm not either.

I'd just barely qualify when I'd be like I'd have to qualify at work. I'd barely qualify. It's funny because I'd work in that warehouse and these guys would bring in these ARs and AK-47s and shit. And I'd be like, oh, yeah. I didn't even know how to like pull the thing back on it, dude. You didn't even watch a tutorial to tell me a good with? I put like cotton gloves on because I didn't want my prints on them.

I tell them in case somebody grabs them right now, they'll see that I have my prints on it. And they're like, oh, yeah, no, you know, they're holding it with fucking towel and shit. But I would ask him, is any blood on this? Like, it's been used? Some of them would be like, yeah, that one does have blood on it. So that would be a case that they can investigate when they do a nibon test on it to see where that shell casing came from. Okay, so these guys, when you were working in that warehouse that you guys set up, and you have people selling you all these guns and drugs,

you would let them go. They would sell it. They would sell it to you. It took a year and a half till we took everybody down. Okay. So they would come in there, and then after they sold you the guns, you would come in and dust for prints.

As soon as they rolled out that roll-up door and as soon as the outside surveillance team was following him off, all the doors would open in the warehouse, like behind bookcases and all this stuff, they'd come out, they'd take the guns, they'd swab it, they'd DNA swab it, They'd put it in a box, wrap it.

DEA would come out and take the dope and weigh it and test it and put it in a bag. And then we'd get the next customer. Okay. And then I'd tell the guy like, hey, give me 15 minutes. And then I'd be like, okay, roll through the door. That's how busy it was. Yes. It was like a dope spot.

Yeah. Literally. Okay. So did you, in the process of buying all those guns, were you able to, like, just stumble across like murders? There were cases of, there were cases that they were looking at. And I don't know because I don't go that far with them. But there were cases.

is that they said, yeah, it has blood on it, like it was used. So then you would let, like, the homicide division of whatever. No, ATF would do it. And they would nibund test the gun and they would get the slug. And then they would, I would, they would go to like homicide and stuff and say, hey, did you get any shell casings on a homicide that matches this, this, this, this, cartridge. Criminal's got to know that, like, nobody sells guns and drugs in a warehouse.

What is this the fucking, a 90s movie? Well, what they thought was I was sending it all out. If you pulled into the warehouse and had all this counterfeit clothing, shoes, perfumes, watches, it was all shit that was seized off the port by CHP. So they just loaded this place up. And I'd be like, yeah, you want some pants, take some fucking pants. You want some shoes? Because it was all counterfeit.

I guess they do do that, though, with clothes to get bipped and stuff. And like I would tell them, like, if this has blood on it, tell me, because I'm going to ship this out to Mexico. If it doesn't have blood on it, I'm going to sell it either local or in another state. And I became so close with these guys, they'd be like, that one has blood on. I'd be careful with it. And I'd be like, okay. So they would, they would come forward and say it.

Just getting people to fucking tell on themselves, man. Brent, you son of a gun. But I had some guy, I had guys like, I'd see him in federal court, and they'd be like, hey, can I talk to you for a second? And I'd be like, yeah, and I'd be like, oh, fuck. And they'd be like, hey, man, it's all good. It's a game. I got caught.

I slipped and I got caught. And those are true criminals. Definitely. True criminals who say I got caught. I'd have other people. yelling. I mean, hey, fuck you, you fucking pig. And I'd be like, whatever, dude. But the ones that are like, dude, it's a game. And I slipped. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about the weed. You took down, you went with, uh, I would do the eradication in DEA. Yeah, tell us about this. Would you ever go to,

did you ever go to Northern Cal? Of course. You did? Of course. Whenever, whenever it would dry out, southern Oregon was the main spot because it's closer to Portland. And they were growing up there? Of course. Okay. I didn't know. They didn't have the quantity. these that Northern California. You got the Emerald Triangle there. That's right. But we have Southern Oregon, you know, Ashland, all those little surrounding counties. It's the same climate essentially as Northern California, right?

So we would go to those guys. But those growers, they would get a couple hundred pounds. They were like small, like communal. Sure. I didn't even consider them criminals. And so when we sold out of that load, though, as it went deeper into summer and all the loads got sold out that were grown the season before, then you got to go deeper into Northern California, you've got to go meet with the Mexicans and the bigger criminal

groups. So we'd be as far down as like Arcada. Arcadia, yeah. We would stay in Arcada. Okay. When we would drive up and we drive up in our vehicles in the radio station would say, feds are coming up, dude, feds are coming up. Here's the fucking, they got six SUVs. Don't know where they're going, but here's what the plates are on them. They do it on the radio. That's wild. It is like a wild west culture up there. It absolutely is. And when you're in a small town like that, and a six-caravan with fed vehicles,

you're going to stand out. We would park at a hotel that would let us hide the cars. Okay. But we would stay there for a week. I didn't think of them as criminals. They're farmers. They're farmers, right.

But a funny thing about it is, it's kind of a misnomer. We would go up to their place, and a lot of times we would hit it, like in August, September. And where are these in greenhouses or are these up in the forest? Both. Okay.

Not in the BLM land. We'd do that sometimes, but we'd go on to people's property. Okay. I'd search once in a day. Got it, got it. They weren't mad. They were disappointed, but they were like, dude, as long as you don't make this legal, we're good.

And a lot of people don't understand that. They're like, dude, I'm making good money selling this shit. And I, like you said, I store it for when, towards the end of the year before the next harvest, so I make a lot off of my shit. Right. And they would have like, dude, they'd have $60, $100,000 in buckets and stuff on the property

or hidden under their bed in a case, a canvas case. But they would be like, just don't make it legal. Because when you make it legal, we're all fucked. And that's what happened. So you go bust people. This is post-legalization, right? Post-legalization.

Okay. Yeah, got it. And they were like, hey, dude, this is a game. We got caught, but don't make this shit legal. So how did they have warrants they were growing over the legal amount? The plane would fly over and we were able to detect it. Okay. So we'd go in and they'd be like, hey, there's 1,000 plants, approximately 1,000 plants out there.

What was that about what was worth it to you guys? Like, what was like the minimum amount of plants on a grow that you guys would say, all right, we'll make it. We'll get the feds involved. have to be pretty big. They'd have to be pretty big. And the thing about it, it was federal grant money. So you had to spend it. So they would send us up there and we'd go up there like four or five times for a week at a time. Huh. So you'd haul out a thousand marijuana plants? We cut a thousand marijuana plants and fucking put it through a wood chipper. Put it through a wood chipper. Would that hurt you a little bit? That beautiful plant? No, I'm not a weed dude, man. Yeah, I know, but just a plant.

They were beautiful. Yeah. I got pictures of me standing, I swear to God, and It's like a 30-foot tree. And I'm at the top of it on this ladder. At least 20 feet. At least 20 feet. Yeah. And it looks like a freaking redwood dude. And it's just huge buds.

Oh. Yeah. So you got... Just dripping. Right. Yeah. Right. And these were white guys?

A lot of them were... So these weren't cartel grows. No, no, no. We'd get those in the BLM land. Mm-hmm. But we'd get a lot of Russians, a lot of Armenians. We're buying property up there and growing. Yeah.

And Chinese at all? On the BLM land. On the BLM, right. Yeah, but we would woodchip it. And then... So would you get, would you take those guys in? Or would you just seize their load and then... Not just seize it.

Yeah. And then Humboldt would charge them so much per plant as a fine. Oh, so did they get their shit taken and then they would get charged with a county? For X amount of plant. I don't even know what it was per plant. Right, because you're only allowed to have like a couple hundred plants. I don't even know. I'm not sure.

Right. Okay. And they have to be rooted. Like if you went to a greenhouse or we go into a, if they have a lot of indoor hydroponics, the Asians do in San Francisco where they buy a house and they just turn that whole house into a hydroponic. And, but the plants have to be rooted. So when you pull them out, you can't charge it unless it's rooted.

I see. But it got to where we would be like, hey, we got a thousand plants in the AOSA's office. It would be like, eh, not that sexy. Would you bust those indoor Asian? grows? Yeah. The reason we would bust those mainly is because the neighbors were complaining and it was such a hazard, such a fucking hazard. Wires going everywhere. The fucking house was going to catch on fire, man. Yeah. They had one in the sunset where the guy was doing a, making that honey oil. The THC oil. Yeah. And the fucking

house blew up. Blew the mother-law. Was it the mother-in-law or the wife died? No fucking way. Kids got burnt. Oh, dude, that is highly flammable when they do that. Yeah, and those conditions are not good. They gut the house. They put some, like, illegal Chinese migrant in there. Yes.

Who's a nobody? Yeah. He's just tending plants. Yeah. Yeah. What about the mail? You say you worked at the mail. Did you catch packages coming through the post office?

All day long. You know, that was my bread and button. Was that your get down? Yeah, yeah. You know what? I didn't want the shit going out. I wanted the money coming in on the next day. Oh, okay.

Go into this, yeah. So how would you get up? How would you get up on it? And then, yeah, how would you tell you? I had a dog. And I had a really good, uh, dope dog. And, uh, we would get packages that fit a profile. Which is?

What's the profile? Well, they just, they just don't look like they're going to the right place. You know, I mean, if the guy writes Mickey Mouse from Donald Duck, right. Fuck you, dude. I mean, there you go. And I'd run the dog across them. The dog would alert.

And I'd say that package there, that package there, that package there. And we would knock on their doors. And the sender. You would find the address to the sender. Receiver. Because the money's coming in. It's coming in first thing in the morning. Okay.

From the East Coast. I got you. So how would you connect, but how would you connect a package of weed, probably, that was leaving the Bay going to the East Coast? How would you connect that to the money coming back? I didn't connect it. My dog alerted to it. I see.

Okay. So you're, oh, you're sending the dog through the inbound mail. You find these packages. You lay them out, the inbound.

I run the dog across. Dog alerts to, he's trained in marijuana. He alerts these packages. We would go to people's house and say, expecting a package. Sometimes they said yes. Sometimes they said no.

Will you open the package for us? We believe there's contraband in it. They would open it up. And it would be like, fucking 40, 60s, 80 grand. He'd be like, this is ours. We'll give your receipt for it as long as you can prove where it came from. Within 90 days, you'll get it back.

Wow. But we would hit some huge ones, huge hits. Like, I could pull a million dollars out in four days out of postal. Wow. A million dollars. Yeah. All that drug money coming back. Yeah, all that weed money.

Yeah, it's weed money. All weed. Big money. I mean, you knew back in the day, what, East Coast three, four times, what you pay for it. Yeah. Yeah. And you can sell it, you can send so many hundreds at a time and, you know, if it gets busted,

I got so much more. But people didn't even hide it. I mean, you'd get a box squash and you'd look inside and see vacuum packing, clear vacuum pack would just stack some money in it. Yeah. Nobody even tried, they didn't even conceal it because they were just, send that money, send that money. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. 400,000. In one package. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And we were hooked up with the partial companies, the companies that get private companies,

we were cool with them. They'd call up and say, hey, this guy gets this wooden box, sends it out and he gets it back like in a week. And he's just stupid about it. He just keeps calling. Did it come? Did it come? And then I'd open it up and there'd be like 200 grand in there.

Because he sent out the dope with that box. I cut my dog loose. He'd go, he'd alert immediately. get a search warrant for it, open it up, and there's like 200 Gs in it. And then he's not going to claim it. You go confront him with it. He's not going to claim it. So then what do you guys do with that seize money?

That sees money all goes to the feds, and then the feds would break it off to the locals who were involved in the case. So I was bringing a ton of money to my department. A ton of money. I mean, my dog was probably good. I'm not lying. He was probably good for $3, $4 million a year. And that was gross.

and then we'd get a percentage of it. Yeah. It's a money-making scheme. That weed money was huge. That's why you guys didn't want to go and you didn't want to become illegal. I say you guys, I mean, both sides. My side didn't want it and your side didn't want it. Yeah, your side, they would tell us, man, like as soon as you make it legal,

these corporations are going to come in here and fucking cut us out. And that's not what happened, but, you know, in a sense, it did reduce the amount of racket, definitely, in many ways, reduced the amount of out of racket. And I mean, look, the biggest, I learned this when I was in prison, and I read that the California Corrections Union was the biggest donor to the anti-legalization fund, obviously. Like, everybody is getting money out of this war on drugs. Yeah. People make money off a war. It's kind of the point of war, mostly. We didn't really give two shits about it. It was a law. they broke it, we go up there and seize the dope. But they would, we'd seize the money,

which was lots of money. And like their trucks, every year they had a $100,000 lifted truck because they would buy it from the dealerships up there. The dealerships aren't supposed to be, dealerships aren't supposed to accept cash. So like one of the salesmen would buy the truck and then just sell it to that guy and make it. And I mean, they had like $100,000. diesel lifted, just sick-ass three-quarter-ton trucks and stuff. Every year they got a new one. But these guys, they grew their shit. Let's say they make 100, 200 for the year.

Do it again the next year. Yeah. It was like farmers. It was a way of life. Totally. Totally. Wow. So you did that for, this is 25 years.

You're doing this. 25 years I did it, yes. Yes. Yeah. So many drugs. Your life, you're doing. You know the game as well or better than a drug trafficker? Yes, because I know the different avenues of the drugs.

A lot of times a drug trafficker will be wrapped up in just one type of drug. Yeah. And they got it down. But we had like, in San Francisco, we had guys moving kilos. They would have a girl. They'd get like a white girl to go order a pod. And they drop that pod. This is probably stuff you get it.

They dropped the pod in a driveway of a house for rent. They throw some couches in it. tear the bottoms out of the couches, load it up with Coke, put the things back down, and say, hey, that, uh,

that pod's ready to pick up. It's going to New York. Yeah. And then I'll say they'd get delivered at a house that was for rent or for sale there. And they'd fucking take the key, open it up, pull the shit out of it,

and leave the pod there with all the couches and shit inside it. And dude, they would put like, they could put 100 kilos of Coke in it. Yeah. Were there guys moving hundreds of keys? Oh, yeah. Like that?

Yeah. Out of the bay? Yeah. Wow. There's a lot of guys that moved a lot and made a lot of money, Bay Area guys. But when they got wrapped with the feds, one of their deals was like, I'll plea, let's just end this.

Don't, eat my assets alone. Yeah. Don't look for, don't dig in to find out where my money's at. I'll plea right now. They'd go ride it for five, ten years. When they got out, they were doing well because they had all that money sitting there waiting for them. And the feds would do that if you're like, if you don't fight me on this and just plead guilty, I'll.

Yes, in a way, it was like, like, hey, he's going to plea. He wants it all to end right now. And pretty much that's what he's saying. Like, he's going to admit his guilt. Let's stop. And most of the time, the AUSA is going to say, all right, move him through because I got to get to the next guy. And unless you're IRS, you're not, I mean, there's some people that are savvy on finances.

But most of the, most of the DEA guys and the HSI guys and ATF people, they're not financial people to go find money. Yeah. To go find out where it's being put. or taken or something, unless you're IRS. So a lot of, you know, like all they want to do is get guns and dope off the street and move on to the next one. All right. So you, but being like the first line of defense, you saw the different, you were like the first person to see the changing drug trends. Oh, I've been through crack and then meth got really big.

The early 2000s? Early 2000s. Heroin was always stable. It was always there. There's always a stable opioid. Correct. And it still is. I mean, you can go in the tenderloin and buy heroin

or whatever you want. I'm going to go buy some heroin, I think, when I'm back in San Francisco. I want pure smack. I'm so sick of fentanyl. I'm sick of hearing about it. But the meth was big for a while, dude, meth was crazy.

I was paying $14,000 a pound. How much? $14,000 a pound when it first came out. I was, when it first came out, dude, like early 2000s, when meth was coming out, it was 99% pure. We flipped a couple of guys, one off that hell's angel wire, Nortagno.

And he was like, I'll turn you on to every one of my dealer, which was family members. And I was like, let's go. So I was buying multiple pounds from those guys. And I was paying like, dude, I could pay between 9 and 12, 14,000 for a pound of it because it was so rare. And now, $8.50 a pound because they just flooded the market with it. Sent so much. But meth stayed in the race for a long time because a lot of people are functioning. need meth addicts. Yeah. I mean, you could do meth and still deal with society unless you do too much and start

getting paranoia. Yeah, and it's still pretty big. It's just maybe not in the cities as much. I can get it whenever I want it. I mean, Crystal, you ask for Crystal, they'll sell to you from grams to ounces. Yeah. Meth's huge in Mexico because it's, you know, a lot of working class people, you know, it's, they cut the Coke up. It's good Coke in Mexico. Don't ask me how I know. It's expensive. It's like American prices. I'm like, $70 for a gram of Coke in Mexico City. Now, I'm just because I'm talking to the cab drivers, and they're like, I'll get you whatever you need. Let's go. And I'm like, no, I don't need anything. But how much is this shit selling for? Most Mexicans in Tijuana, in Sonora, don't have $70 to spend on a gram, but they can spend $10 on meth. You know what I mean?

And get a high for the whole day. Yes. And get a different kind of high, but you'd get that long, like you drank 100 cups of coffee for a whole day. Oh, it sounds good. I love coffee. But, but, uh. So you saw I go from meth, you saw it go from crack to meth, heroin. Always there. And then the, obviously 2014, 15 is like the fentanyl.

Fetnal sort of coming in and I was like, dude, this is not like any other type of monster. Yeah. And once you get into those synthetics, like the whole MDA era where they change it one molecule, so it wasn't illegal federally because they changed the chemical on it. Yeah. And it's the same thing with. with the fentanyl because now it's a blanket. But if you test fentanyl, test fentanyl, test isofetanol, it tests aceretanol.

It tests carapetanol. It's all these different because all it is is just a different type of synthetic. So they had to blanket it. I see. But when that came in, I was like, dude, this is no joke, man. These motherfuckers are zombies. It's fucking taking people out. Do they have that trank shit on the West Coast in the center alone?

They have some of it. They have some of it in there. Oh. And now you see like powder cocaine coming back being in trend, right? Yes. And you also see a lot of people at bars with the little $20 bags and stuff now. Getting back into that like guys in bars and girls in bars, little sniffing bags, a little zip lock with a,

not you don't see the snow seals anymore, but you'll see a little zip lock with a little 20 little paquette, they call it. Yeah. Fuck, dude. It's just constant. How do you feel? Did you get exhausted? after a time?

Like, I'm not even leaving a dent. Or did you just look at it as like, I'm having fun? I'm having fun, dude. Yeah. I was having fun. Meeting new people doing new cases. Move on to the next one. I never took it personal.

If I took a personal, there's a lot of people that take it personal and they're jaded as fuck when they leave. Even in just like patrol and stuff. Like guys who came in, like, I'm going to make a difference. Yeah, I didn't. I wasn't like that.

I was like, they're going to let me be a cop. Fuck, yeah, I'll be a cop. I never thought I was going to be a cop. I was a blue-collar working guy, and I knew that's what I'm going to be. My buddy was a fireman Ed. He turned around and said, hey, man, you got to get a fucking job like a fireman or a cop. I was like, yeah, sure. So I got a GED, put it in, and San Mateo Sheriff's Office picked me up as a correctional officer.

And I went there, and I was like, oh, my God, dude, this is fucking great. It is. It's fucking entertaining. I get to be around the funniest people, the weirdest people. And I got along with all those inmates because they were fucking people. Like, I knew. I clicked with them. And they didn't give me any slack and I didn't give me any.

You respect me. I respect you. The people that had problems are the ones that didn't respect the inmates. And they thought of them as pieces of shit. And that's not how I think. Did you ever get approached by family or people who knew that you were a cop and say, hey, man, like, if you could just feed me information, I'm not saying anything, but, you know. Regarding.

I give you an envelope every month. just you let me know if, you know, I got, if they're setting up on me for a case or anything like that? No. Never did. I never did. Yeah. And the thing is, is like, with the feds, like, I was buying guns from a couple of people

that were family members of cops. And I didn't know until after. Oh. And I couldn't stop it. You know, I'm not that I would. I'm just saying I couldn't. Right. With the feds, dude, they're strict as fuck, dude.

Yeah. They go to polygraph every year. They can be acknowledged to polygraph. They get dope tested all the time. Right. They stay on them. Yeah. You know, they stay on them.

And that's what protects them from, that's what protects them from doing anything dirty, the feds. You'll get like a broken arrow. But most of the time it's like, dude, they're getting polygraphed at any time and they're getting tested all the time. Yeah. So. No, we've got to flip some local pigs.

me and you. Well, the West Coast, you're going to have trouble doing the West Coast because we make so much fucking money. Right. Well, you guys think

it's a lot of money, but to a kingpin, you're like, dude, I can change your life. No, no, no, absolutely. But there's, dude, you could be a patrol officer making $400,000 a year.

Fuck up. Really? Swear to God. Sward of God with the overtime. Swear to God with the overtime. That's why a cup of coffee in California costs $11 because I got to pay a fucking

a patrol officer who's getting his dick sucked by a hooker on the job. Dude. Half a million dollars a year. Fuck off. A patrol officer's making almost 100. An hour. And that's why you don't get a lot of broken arrows.

You get those guys in the East Coast, Midwest. South. South, New Orleans. You get places. Dude. Dale corrupt Texas is. You should hear the stories. I'm embarrassed when someone tells me what I make.

I went to 9-11. They sent 100 of us to 9-11 to help for, like, a week. We brought a bunch of money over from the POA to them. And we went over there. And it was kind of a moral support thing because those guys were so fucking beat up, those cops and firemen. So they sent 100 us on a, they put on a United plane and they flew us over for a week. So those fucking New York cops are making like 36,000 a year. And they're asking, I'm not going to tell you what I'm making. I'm like, yeah, I kind of made the same. I was making 136. And this is in 2001. Yes. That's fucking great. And these guys are like,

Yeah, I mean, I had my best year this year. I made 36,000. I was like, oh, that's good. They're like, what'd you make? I was like, about the same. So you hear that? I never want to hear this bullshit about, yeah, liberals are trying to defund the police.

The police have so much fucking funding, dude, in Los Angeles. Like where, like communist Los Angeles? The big cities do. The big cities do. The small cities don't. But that's where we're going to flip the cops. Dude, the big cities like...

We're going to flip the cops. San Francisco, dude, they get federally funded. The L.A. gets federally funded. Boston, New York. You've got your major cities. And San Francisco's not even a big city. It's seven miles by seven miles. Yeah.

But it's considered a big city. Yeah. Yeah, we live in a police state, guys. So don't think whenever a cop comes in here and's like, I was at war. No, you fucking weren't. Shut up. I'm saying that inside.

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kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. No. Dude. If you ask my wife, she'd be like, no, dude, you fucking played all day.

Exactly. You had a great gig. You have all of the laws of society that make it impossible for the criminal. You have you're backed up by courts of law. The feds are backed up by, in my opinion, completely draconian drug laws. The only place that you're, it's unfair is you're right. when you're trying to get illegal immigrants that are selling Fent in the city of San Francisco,

that's where it is. That is where it's kind of against you a little bit. I agree. The feds need the locals. Because a Fed can't arrest on robbery, car theft. They can't arrest on any of that. They have to arrest on federal charges.

There's no federal charges for that. Right. So what they needed, they needed us to work as task force officers because I can grab that guy in a state charge and charge them. And then we can start working our way up. But they can't do anything.

If somebody, if they caught somebody robbing somebody, they have to do a citizen's arrest because they could only live off those federal laws. Right. And I was able to, I had dual, I had federal in-state. Right. So I can do them both. I, I'd rather see local governments take more control and, and if you, be tougher on, on crime that actually affects the citizens. A guy bringing in 100 kilos of Coke does not affect.

the average person's day-to-day life at all. It really doesn't. Most of that Coke's being sniffed by people that are lawyers and functional people. Like, let's not lie to it. Let's be adults. You people blowing up drug boats in the government, you were all sniffing Coke in D.C. Before you got on. Hang on.

Rand almost over. Me stepping, yes, me getting my car bipped in San Francisco. That fucks people up, dude. That's, that's, people need to be prosecuted. They call that a property crime. That's not a property crime. Because when I got to pay for a fucking window and I got to fucking clean out my car and I just lost all this shit in here, how are you calling it a property crime?

When I'm a tourist and I come in and lose everything and I spent $10,000 to fly across from the East Coast and I lost everything, how could you call that a property crime? And just the way of life, like if I'm a citizen and it's already expensive and maybe I've got to get to work and now I can't work. I mean, you're harming the person in so many ways. You know what I mean? So yeah, we just got to get these feds. We got to, we got to, I told you before the podcast, I want, when I become governor

of California, I'm going to basically appoint me. Yeah. Oh, you're going to be like, buddy, you're going to be up there. You're going to, you're going to, you're going to keep me fucking safe from all these fucking Israelis are going to try to whack me, okay? I'm going to use, I asked James Fishback, who's running for, I interviewed him in Florida. he's running for a Republican governor there, like as we speak, as we're recording this, I asked him straight up, would you as governor use the National Guard to defend yourselves

against the federal government? And he goes, absolutely. So I think that- You got his vote, right? Yeah, I think the tyranny that's coming, the states are going to basically have to turn the guns on the feds and say, no, you will not turn, my country, my state into China. No, you will not. In our lifetime?

Well, when I'm governor, yeah. In our lifetime, do you think it's going to get that bad? I don't know. Probably. Probably. Or we all give up. They don't want to do that. What they want is to have us all high, all the time. It starts from the prescription drugs that they give us all the way down to we're not arresting for fentanyl. We want you on screens all the time, looking at

entertainment all the time. Go read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was written in like the 1950s, right? It's, it's you live in a dictatorship, a digital prison where you're observed all the time. Every movie you make is tracked. All of your money. Because by the way, we've printed all, we've devalued your currency so much that now nobody can afford anything, much like California. Yeah. So now we're going to, it's okay, because we're going to give you digital tokens like we did over COVID. take away at any time. But don't worry because you're going to be high and you're going to be entertained. And that, to me, I would rather, I'd rather blow my brains out. No, it makes me think. I mean, I own a house, my kids own houses. It's like we're going to get those taken away eventually

because they tax it so much that we can't afford it anymore. So they would rather have that option. But if they have to, like with a draft, you know what I mean? Like some people say like with this war in Iran, they are going to go in. with troops and the morale is so low. Nobody wants to fight. Everybody knows that this is a war for the elites and for probably, you know, the foreign intervention. Nobody believes in this war. So they're going to have to literally go conscript people, young men. That is where I, I, they don't want to do that, but if it gets that bad, I think, I think they may. And that's why you have all these data centers popping up is because we need to be able to be able to,

able to store all of your information. And if you've been a bad boy, like, we worked, I worked in the war demos when they had them. What does that mean? War demos. They demonstrate in San Francisco for everything. Oh, yeah. And dude, those war demos, people were for it, against it. We were out there in uniforms with helmets and sticks and all the time. Yeah. It was just protest after protest after protest. Well, I'll say, I know liberal protesters from San Francisco are annoying. I understand that. But at least they're, at least they're aware. You know, it's easy to shit on San Francisco. It's easy to shit on California.

But we are, we are the, I don't know, man, it's, the culture starts in California. And progress starts in California. I was then to take the guns away from the felons who shouldn't have them. Right. And be more stricter on it. Before, when I first started, they tripped. or Triggerlock anybody with a felon in possession of a firearm. Not now.

Dude, you get caught with the firearm on you and you're a big-time felon, big-time felon with a big record. Judge releases you for your court date. Just come to court, just come to court. It's like before it wasn't like that. You got shipped away right away. But I think that's a good... There's no fear of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

But don't you worry that that steps on people's Second Amendment rights? I don't think it does when you're a felon with a violent crime. I don't think that you should... For trigger lock, you had to have drugs or a firearm. violent crime. So I don't think that does when it comes to that because if you're carrying that gun and you're, you have violent past and you're a drug dealer, you're going to use that. You're going to eventually use that gun that I stopped you with and is sitting in your waistband. And the judge is like, oh, he didn't use it. So he didn't use it. But there's a propensity for him to use it is huge.

And drugs, I think fentanyl should be in a whole different, I think anything synthetic should be in a whole different category. I think, dude, that's shit's like anthrax. I mean, it's, it's, dude, it's terrible. It's, there's no, I mean, like you said, dude, people in bars sniffing a little coke, doing this and that. To me, it's not right, but it's not, it's not like some fucking zombie that's walking around with shit all over him, eating out of a garbage can because he doesn't even know his own

name or her own name. Yeah. I don't think that's cool. No, it's definitely not cool. And like I said, like, this is not a solution. based podcast. No, no, no. But I'm cool with like, I'm cool with a governor that would be like, yeah, we're going

hard on street crime, property crime, because that's where the society starts to come apart when you see that your neighbor with the broken window and the graffiti, right? But you also got to come after the oligarchs because they're the ones on a large, high level that are the cause of it. they're the cause of the cultural rot, the cause of the cultural despair. It's not my fellow American. Like, we have to love our fellow American

that's suffering. It's like the dispensaries. They opened up the dispensaries and all the shit areas, well, not shit areas, all the lower class areas. And then they tried to put one up in Pacific Heights and they're like,

they're the ones that were like, that's fine. Go ahead, go ahead. They're like, not in my fucking backyard, dude. You ain't doing that. You're not doing that at all. That's the problem with, you know, a society that's too stratified

is because rich people don't have to feel the consequences of what they vote for. You know what I mean? So, trust me, your enemy is Elon Musk. Your enemy is Peter Thiel. Your enemy is, are the people donating money and buying our politicians?

Your enemy is not the drug dealer. Not that he should be allowed to... I hate to say this, but I work for one as executive protection for one. For who? For a drug dealer? No, for a rich person. I'm not...

Tech world. Okay. So, yeah, those guys are the enemy. Not being rich is awesome. I'm not, I'm not shitting on all rich people. So nice to me. That family's so nice to me, dude. Oh, yeah.

No, they're lovely people, dude. I'm sure one-on-one. You know who else was nice to you? Was, you know, cartel members. That's true. So on a high level... Sometimes they cared more about me than the cops. It's true.

I never felt good about a restaurant. Westing people. Really? Only vicious devil people I did. I was like, yes. But, dude, a lot of the people I arrested, everyone's like, yes. Dude, I was on the fence.

Would you ever, like, pat somebody on the back after cuffing them and just be like, it'll be okay, buddy? That's what the cops did to me because they could tell I was not, like, you'll be out of a few years. I'm like, don't. Don't say that.

Tell me, tell me my life's over, man. They would ask me if I wanted to see them and I would be like, no, I don't want to see them. Because you build a relationship with them. They would call me and go, let's go to dinner tonight. Or they'd be like, hey, we're at the bar tonight. What are you doing this weekend? Dude, you want to go with us to Tahoe?

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Always had to make an excuse. Or they'd reach out and go, hey, I haven't talked to you in a couple days. You're good? And I'd be like, I'm good. Dude, no cops are fucking asking me if I'm good. But I'll tell you, when I was, when I got into as a correctional officer,

I was like, wow, this is fucking different. And then I got picked up by San Francisco PD. And once I got there, I never wanted to be undercover. I didn't think I would be. I was just lucky to be getting paid by the city. So I go through there. And the whole time I was like, dude, this is like, I hate to call it like it, but it's a gang of your own.

These people will take a bullet for you, these cops. You create your own little, your group. I mean, dude, when there was an emergency, every fucking black and white came. Every officer came because you're fucking with one of our people. Did you get in any shootouts? Did you ever have to discharge a weapon? Oh, yeah.

I've been in some shootouts where my partners were shooting people. I never did. The only time I really shot, I had two pit bulls come at me. And I shot, boom, boom. And they screamed and ran away and I missed them. They fucking came back. With their tail between their legs. Good dog.

Good dog. Fuck. Yeah. I don't blame you, bro. I would have fucking shot those muds too. Oh, dude, they were coming at me hard. But it was, I felt a sense of team with SFPD. Right.

Against other groups that other gangs. Other gangs of... Other gangs. I would be working in the projects. Yeah. And they would know, like, dude, he'll bring that whole fucking team down here and flip this place over. You know, and I felt good

about it that you're not necessarily doing it because of me, you're doing it for who I work for. It's like if there were shootings in the projects, we would just go in there and saturate the place. All the cars that were sitting out there were scofflaught and towed away. Anybody that had a warrant went to jail, it was

like, we're going to put the pressure on you now because you fucked up and you're making this hard for all these people that have to live here. Yeah. So, and that doesn't happen now. But it did before. It was like everybody from traffic to narcotics to gangs were spending the next week inside that project because two people got shot. Right. Yeah.

So I felt like I had an impact. Yeah, it was coroner. Do you think you were one of the most active undercovers? Do you think you did the most buys in your career out of anybody in that precinct or any cop that you knew? No, there were a couple guys that did like scrap. Kevin Healy, he, he, uh, Bobby Sanchez, those guys on the street in the tenderloin, they could fucking buy. They could buy like crazy.

Like how many buys do you think you did? Thousands. They did more than me. Wow. And, uh, but when it got to go on upper level, when it got into the ounces and the pounds and all that, by far I was, I was, um, I was the one who did all that. Um, they were happy doing the tenderloin stuff. And they just wanted to stay in tenderloin, do buys.

They fit the part. They looked, when they dressed up, they looked rough. Yeah. And they can buy dope. So you're kind of living this as an undercover for, you know, decades. You're kind of living this constant lie. Did your wife ever get suspicious? Like, did your, if your wife was like, you could lie so good to these criminals.

Like, are you lying to me? That's the thing. I don't think I was lying. I don't think I was lying because I was just acting like Brit when I was young. Right. Seriously, there's a difference. I didn't put it on in acting. Everything I said and did or where I worked or what I did was something I was accustomed to.

If I said I was an elevator mechanic, my cousins, my brother, all them are elevator mechanics. I know about it. If I said I was working, doing construction, concrete, I did construction. I did concrete. So all I did was take bits and pieces of growing up and convinced them that way. And then I wasn't scared. that's the thing I wasn't scared. You'll send some new buyers out, even in the tenderloin,

and they're just like, just shaking while they're walking up. I have, like, a big martial arts background and stuff, so I'm not scared of you, like, if you come at me. And I didn't care, like, if you swung on me or something. It doesn't bother me. I wouldn't care. And also, like, I probably had, like, tombstone courage. I'd be sitting in a car with a guy,

and he had a gun on him, and we're buying dope, and we're arguing over the price, I would be like, fucking, this dude could probably shoot me or stab me at any time. Nobody's going to get to me in time. Right. They're far away. Yeah.

They're far away. It's over by the time they do. And I got a really big high out of that. Dude, when I was done, it was like, I was like, that was good. Right. It really was. It was addicting, right? It was addicting, man.

The fear factor of, like, we're arguing over a price. Some shit's going to come down. And then I'll send it works itself out, and I'm driving away going, yeah, that fucking felt good. Not, yeah, I got the buy. It was like, yeah, I got good. Buying guns from guys, and they got a gun on them, and I can see it, and they know I got 10 grand in my pocket. And they're like, they can pull that motherfucker out right now and say, fucking break yourself,

motherfucker, give you that 10 grand. And if somebody pulls a gun out on you, you better go for their gun. Because there's no way you're going to be able to reach in and pull a gun out from wherever you're holding it at and try to defend yourself. Do they teach you that, or is that just something that you put together? It's something you put together. I never carried a gun on my waist. If I have the drop on you, there's no way.

There's no way. You've got to reach for it, yeah. If I'm sitting in a car with you and you pull it out, dude, I got to climb on top of you and just try to push that in a direction that I'm not going to get hit and just wait for them to come. Well, thank God that never happened. But that was a big high. For sure.

It was a huge high. It was so much that people would call and HSI goes, hey, we just ripped a guy. And he says he can introduce you to buy multiple rifles today. Let's go. I didn't care who he was. I didn't care who the guy was. I didn't need to see what his profile was.

Somebody, DEA, we got a guy right now that we flipped, but we're going to book him. So we have to get you to go by right now before he goes to jail. I'm like, just hook it up. I'll go do it. And it was a big high for me just to show up and meet somebody I never knew. And we're now, we're now doing a deal. That sounds so fun, to be honest.

It was, it was, dude. Most cops don't have such a good privileged career. Absolutely. If I died tomorrow, man, I did it all. I swear to God. I never thought I'd be a cop because I just, I just didn't. I was working. And I didn't even know what cops did.

You know what I mean? Like when you're, like, doing construction and I'd see some guys, I don't know how he became a cop. I don't know what he did. And then when I got in, I was like, shit. And then I was working Engelside. I only worked in a uniform for like six months. And then they put me on a playing clothes team out of station. And I was working plain clothes.

And I was like, oh, this is fucking fun. And then the narcotics guys would come around and I would gravitate towards them. I'd be like, hey, can I help you? You know, let me do something. So this guy, Paul, my boy, Paul is out. He was like, let him ram the door on a search warrant. I'd be like, oh, fuck, I'd get to ram the door. So then I do it.

And then he was like, hey, you want to come down? I think you get the captain to bring you down here. So they said, okay, we'll bring you down. for six weeks and all you're going to do is buy dope in the tenderloin. And I never bought before, but they said that's all you're going to do. If you want to come down, you can come down. And I was like, fuck yeah, I'll come down. And I never left. I stayed my whole career there. So I stayed from 99 until 2024. So what are you doing now, man? Do executive protection for a family. Really nice family. I work part-time as a sworn officer

for an investigative bureau in the city, not for the cops, for a different, division. Do you have social media? I want to plug something, but I'm trying to do a, me, I'm hooked up with this guy, Matt Murphy, he's a retired DE agent from the East Coast. We have an outline of a book that we did. So I'm just trying to get a publisher to, to step on with us and get this thing rolling. Do you have social media people can follow? LinkedIn. Okay. And if they see you, reach out, get a hold of you for some work. You got some money you want to spend on you. You're going to be, I want you as executive protection person, my personal bodyguard for when I am governor. Not in Columbia. No, no, no. We're going to be in California.

Yeah, not when you go to Columbia. No, those days are gone, thank God. But yeah, man, well, what a, what an amazing journey. And yeah, dude, just cool fucking cop, man. Cool cop. I would have been, would have been a privilege to have been arrested from you by you. Oh, we would have laughed. For sure. I never took anything serious. Yeah. Would you ever have to tell, like, rookies or, like, young, you know, Sean Penn from colors that, yo, go up, gear it down. I teach classes in that.

So I teach classes, like, dirty shoes, dirty hands. First thing a drug dealer is going to do is look at your nails and shit. Yeah. So you want to, like, go up to the rim of the tire and get it all dirty and rub all that shit inside your nails. So, because you're not going to be all clean. So dirty shoes, dirty hands. I tell them look them directly in the eye. Would you have to lose weight?

No. Because most of my shit was I'm buying dope to sell. Oh, right, because you came up as a drug dealer, right? Yes. And those other guys that I told you, they're like skinny. They look, they fit the dope fiend part when they put on the clothes and stuff. Right. Yeah.

The Honduran's still there? Oh, yeah. Losing two a day. These people are overdosing off of something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just in the tenderloin.

Oh, fucking A. Well, Brett, thank you so much, man. No, I appreciate it. Really, really appreciate it. I had a fun time. Fuck yeah, dude. We'll come out and film in San Francisco sometime. I'll come down there.

Hell you. I walk the street with you, dude. You still live in the Bay? Yes, I do. I live in the peninsula. Ah, nice. Good living up there. Good salary.

We learned a lot, dude. You taught people out to sell drugs, talk people out of launder money. And you could become a cop and live pretty good out there in California, man. All right, you guys. It's been Brent Elmore, and we will see you next time. Thanks for watching. Take care. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

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