The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Inside The Migrant Street Gangs TERRORIZING New York City: Former NYC Cop Issues Urgent Warning

Episode Date: June 22, 2024

Tony Hernandez grew up surrounded by the Mafia in Queens, New York. In fact, his uncle was one of the leaders of the French Connection. As a kid, Tony would hang out in the bars and social clubs that his uncle ran for the other wise guys. But for some reason, Tony went the other way. He became a New York City cop, where he worked for ten years down in the subway system. Despite having grown up around the criminal element, Tony says that crime in NYC NOW is out of control! Go Support Tony! YouTube: @CorruptionConnection IG: https://www.instagram.com/corruptionconnection This episode is sponsored by MOOD! Head over to https://hellomood.com/ and use code CONNECT20 for 20% OFF your first PLUS a FREE 5ct pack of gummies! Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When I actually got into the police department, I knew where I was going already. I told them transit, they did me the favor. They put me in transit. Transit crime in the last two years is up a significant percent. The brutal things that you see in the train are the people getting pushed in front of the train. Or people getting hit by a train. Slashings, forcibly tussings, robbery. Old lady going to church on a Sunday violently pushed down the stairs.

In the NYPD, we're taught not to fight fair. If you're one, we're two. If you're three, we're four. If you're five, we're ten. That's the way it goes. Biggest gang in New York City. You don't lose. Tony Hernandez grew up surrounded by the mafia in Queens, New York.

In fact, his uncle was one of the leaders of the French connection, the largest heroin distribution network in American history. As a kid, Tony would hang out in the bars and social clubs that his uncle ran for the other wise guys. But for some reason, Tony went the other way. He became a New York City cop where he worked. for 10 years down in the subway system. Tony tells us what it's like being a cop

in the grimyest place in the world with some of the grimyest criminals in the world. His stories are wild. He's got a great YouTube channel called Corruption Connection, which you should go check out. And for more content, we have a very special Patreon episode this week

with the one and only Ed Calderon. Go over to patreon.com slash the Connect show. Without further ado, this was one for the ages. You're going to love it. Tony Hernandez right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. I was born in a neighborhood called The Hill. Like many other Italian-American neighborhoods at the time,

you know, the mafia was very present. Like every young guy, don't you want to be in the street? You'll hear this story over and over again from the inner city kids in the ghetto all the way to the white kids in the suburbs. The cars, the clothes, the jewelry, the girls, like it all intertwines. And when you're a young, impressionable kid,

especially growing up in a fast place like New York City, you want to be in the middle. My father met so many wise guys. They were totally shocked when I said I wanted to become a cop. And the first thing that they told me was, what do you think about in the cover? That's when I see the lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think.

I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank. It's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours.

Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. I wonder God, dude, you could have, you were so close. You have all of the genetic and environmental factors to have been a criminal. It all could have pointed in that direction for me. Yeah, yeah. When I was young, you know, I was in the street. You know, like every young guy, don't you want to be in the street?

You know, you see the street guys what they have. And you'll hear this story over and over again from the inner city kids in the ghetto all the way to the white kids in the suburbs. The cars, the clothes, the jewelry, the girls. like it all intertwines, you know. And when you're a young, impressionable kid, especially growing up in a fast place like New York City, you have, you want to be in the mix, you know? But you literally witnessed it.

You're from Queens. You're from the boroughs. Yeah, I'm from Queens. It's the last place where there are wise guys. Yeah. I was from a neighborhood. I was born in a neighborhood called the Hill, okay? It's called Queensboro Hill on the map.

It's a section of flushing that borders the L.I. And Main Street. So it was a generational. Now, if you think of flushing, everybody's going to think Asians and stuff like that. There's a huge concentration of Asians and flushing now. But back then, it wasn't like that. It was a generational neighborhood. So when people would move from the more populated places like Manhattan, like my grandmother, was from Corona.

They came from National Street. Or by Spaghetti Park over there. It was still there in Corona. Spaghetti Park. It's a famous park by a parkside restaurant. It's another known wise guy spot, Tough Tony. Passed away. He was, supposedly, a captain with the west side of the Genevese.

That was, you know, their territory. That's like where my origins of my family is from. So in the 40s and 50s, like many others, they bought a house across the park in Flushing, you know, nice suburbs or whatever, and this place called The Hill. And this is your mother's side. This is my mother's side, right.

And she's Italian. Correct. All right. So, you know, during that time or whatever, like a lot of other neighborhood, like a lot of other people, they wanted, you know, front lawns. They were living in those tenements.

You know, they wanted lawns. They wanted big opportunities for the family. So they moved out there. So the kids that I hung out with in that neighborhood towards the tail end of let's say like the 90s or whatever, you know, early 2000s, they were the grandkids of these people. You know what I mean?

It was like their parents were born there. Their parents knew my parents and we knew each other. And like many other Italian-American neighborhoods at the time, you know, the mafia was very present. And you didn't look at it as the mafia. You know what I mean? It was just like, you know, Joey would come or whatever

and he would drop off the cigarettes to my grandma. My grandmother would buy packs of the cartons of cigarettes. Untaxed cigarettes. You know, my grandmother doing that. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, they used to, even the old ladies used to go to the card games. My grandmother's friends, they just named the last name is Rizzo, Di Giacomo, Danielle, Rickabono.

They all played in the mafia social clubs around the neighborhood. Because they're the customers. That's it. The customers are criminals. They smoked the cigarettes. They played the cards. They bought the alcohol, whatever, you know, so it was a thing. And then, you know, in the pizzerias, in the back of the pizzerreer, they had the joker poker machines.

I remember as a kid I used to want to go play that thing I used to go in there and get a slice with my grandmother and go run to the back like you know being a little shit You know and put numbers down You know you playing the numbers when that was a thing There was numbers all over the place Everybody was some kind of running numbers The local supermarket was a key food

You know anything about key food who owned it? Taps their parent company was owned by Patsy Conti He was a captain so I mean there was wise guys in there all the time You should see the guys in the suits Waiting with the trucks for the trucks to come in or whatever You know sitting there you know We'll know if it was on those trucks right Right.

But, you know, I were going there, I didn't see them as like, wise guys or bad guys. I'd go in there, they'd give me like a slice of bologna from the deli can with my grandmother, stuff like that. It was a family-oriented neighbor, you know. Businessmen. Businessmen, you know, but you knew as you got older, you know, you knew something, you know, it was a nice place to grow up or whatever, but you just knew that there was some kind of criminal underbelly, you know what I mean? When did you learn who your uncle was? So I, my uncle himself was not a man.

member of organized crime. I just want to make that clear. But his whole family that preceded him to this country was involved in organized crime. You're familiar with the French connection? Back in the 60s, they made a famous third in the movie

or whatever, the French connection. My uncle, when he came off the boat, he came here in the 70s. He was from Naples. His side of the family settled in Long Island City. And Long Island City, at the time, there was a very notable gangster

named Virgil Olesi, who, I don't know if you're familiar with that name. Him and Vinnie Papa, but they had the French connection. It was theirs. At one time during the 70s, there's an article you can look it up in the Daily News.

Virgil was named with Leroy, Nikki Barnes or whatever and all these big top drug guys as the 13 most powerful drug traffickers in New York City. He was number one in the metropolitan area. Wow. So he was getting the heroin from the French directly. There's a book, okay?

It's called The Heroin Trail that traces a kilo of heroin from the mountains of Indo-Denian, China to Virgil Lesse's hands in Long Island. Wow. The steps, it wound up all the way there to the air. These guys had links to the direct French connection because the heroin came from Indo-China, went to Marseilles processed, and then they took it through Canada and eventually

got here. At the first stop, this is where these guys were. So very few guys. Tell us that chain really quick. That was fascinating. Like the chain from, you know, the poppy harvest in, say, yeah, Thailand, Indochina to New York. What were the steps? the countries that had stopped in.

So most of the heroin came from Turkey, let's say, right? The opium and the opium gum, right? All of that was eventually smuggled through France. In Marseille, it was actually Corsicans that were involved in this, right? They had Corsican gangsters that were Paul Carbone, and you could look up the other guy's names. But they were able to smuggle, in labs, processed the heroin,

smuggle it to Canada and eventually to the United States. And the movie that they made about it was when they brought up. busted in the car. Yeah. You know, it was like 66 pounds of heroin. This is true story. You know, the guy who was actually involved in the French connection, Sonny Grasso, met him many times.

What a gentleman. I got a great picture of Sunny. He used to love, what was the name of at restaurant in Long Island? Monducadis. Mondiades in Long Island City. Yeah, he's a famed heroin detective. So when they busted that, the reason that Virgil and these guys actually rose to infamy, even though they were involved in the French connection and importation,

the reason that they became infamous is because they stole it back in the 70s. I don't know if you remember this. In 1972, in the property clerk's office, the NYPD Procally Clerk's Office down at 400 Broome Street in Manhattan, they needed the French connection dope

to bring it in front of the Congress or whatever to bring it out and say, you know what, we need to prosecute this is what it is. And when they were looking for the dope, they couldn't find it. Eventually when they found it, they discovered that they were red beetles inside. All this dope had was littered with bugs.

And when they tested it, they found out that it was corn, starch, and flour. So the story was that Virgil, along with Vinnie Popper, and a couple other guys bribed the notoriously infamous, fucking corrupt SIU detectives from the 70s. You know, American gangster, those kind of guys. And they signed out the drugs and returned flour. So during the whole process,

it was discovered that 388,000, pounds, 388 pounds of narcotics, was missing from that property, Kirk's oil. It's valued at $70 million in the 70s. So it made it back onto the street? Definitely made it back on the street. So your family was involved? Was your family, Virgil? Was he your uncle?

Virgil is related to my uncle Michael. I see. Okay. So my, Virgil, aside from being, you know, who he was or whatever, like many other of the mob guys, and he had legitimate businesses, social clubs, restaurants. You need someone that you can trust. trust in order to run those things. And my uncle was one of those men that he trusted.

Although he was family, my uncle also proved himself. In 1973, he was subpoenaed in front of the grand jury in regards to Virgil in order to testify, kept his mouth shut. Yeah. Didn't say a word. This is all proven. It's just, you know, indictments about this. So, you know, that just kind of bolstered his status a little bit more, you know,

to run one of Virgil's restaurants. So while Virgil was in prison, because the French connection was obviously busted up, right? your uncle basically ran all of his legitimate businesses. Not all. There was a lot of guys. It was a big operation. Virgil's story is so interesting. You know what I mean? Not just because, you know, I was around the guy. I met him when I was young many times, family parties, all that kind of stuff. It was, it's more along the lines of where he came from in the world of organized crime or what he did. You know what I mean? So we're talking about a guy who was a number, a phone man.

You remember like in Goodfellas, a guy answering all the phone calls? A phone man for Jigs Folano, who was one of the biggest number bookies in the whole country who's partnered with Ruby Stein. The Westie's cut his head off. I don't know if you know the story. But, yeah, Virgil worked for him. And he ran gambling joints for Jigs Falano. Eventually, if you go back in his record, he had early a lot of gambling bus or whatever, you know, during the 50s and stuff like that. And then somewhere around there, he developed a relationship, I guess, probably from the neighborhood, Vinnie Papa.

Vincent Papa, they wrote books about this, you know what I mean? and, you know, these guys became infamous during that, you know. And somehow they made a heroin connection that was... Vinnie Popper was supposedly, you know, he was a burglar. Like, you know, he went into houses. He did a lot of low-level crime. But somewhere during the 50s around there, he was probably one of the biggest heroin importers in the whole country. And Virgil was his partner.

Wow. And then Virgil basically took it over and ran with it. Vinnie Pop actually got killed in prison. He got stabbed up. Wow. He wasn't a rat, but he was planning on ratting on members of the SIU, the corrupt police department. Wow. You're familiar with the name Herbie Spurling?

Also a gentleman who was involved, a little Jewish guy, tough little Herbie Spurling. This guy goes back to some really big players in organized crime. You know, he's a legend himself. Jewish guy who also had a piece of the French connection. He was a rival of Papa. He supposedly pushed for it to get Papa killed. Because even though Papa wouldn't rat on anyone else, he said those guys were the scum of the earth, those corrupt cops,

and he wanted them to go down. The mob wasn't having it. The mob protected those cops. They had Papa killed. So that was considered snitching back then, even if you were riding on cops, that was still telling. Wow. There was a 302 or one of those reports that came out.

I'm not exactly sure what it was called at the time, but it came out where Vincent Poppe had sat down with the authorities to discuss, I won't give up anyone, but I will give up the SIEU, the scum of the earth. I believe it. Now, did your uncle, first of all, did you ever meet Virgil? I did. I was a kid many times.

So, we used to spend a lot of the Fourth of Julys together and stuff like that. You know, they hosted events and Christmas Eve, stuff like that. A handful of times. I was young. You know, he died at a young age. Virgil, he actually, he was ratted on by Sammy. When Sammy flipped, he named him. Sammy the Bull.

Yeah, Sammy the Bull named Virgil. And he did a couple of years for that. Over what, though? Just whatever. The government had a hard on for Virgil. You can just see throughout all his indictments after that whole French connection thing. They were throwing him in jail at any possible thing that they could.

I mean, there was a phone call that he made to a known associate that kind of violated his parole. They wanted him in jail because they knew he was behind it. And there's a wiretap conversation of Virgil's right-hand man, Rocky Evangelista, talking about this. They bugged Virgil's boat back in like, I don't remember the exact year, but they're all on the boat and they're counting the money from the heroin sales.

And the government, the FBI had a bug in there. And you can hear Rocky Evangelises say, I personally made $180,000 or $188,000 from that stolen dope from the French connection there. So they were involved. So the government had a hard-off for them, you know, because they weren't able to convict them. Hey, guys, this episode is sponsored by our favorite longtime partner, Mood.

If you're a fan of the show, you know Mood by now. They're my favorite number one. and only online dispensary, and they're getting even better. Mood has long been associated with Delta 8, but now they have an offering of many other types of products, including Delta 9 and THCA. And what's better than their new wide variety of products? They're still fully, federally legal. Their online dispensary offers a wide variety of pre-rolls, edibles, gummies, vapes, and

concentrates. All products ship discreetly right to your door. Lately, I've been loving the Sleepy Time Delta 9 THC Gummys. After getting off stage at a show, I'm usually full of energy and adrenaline, which is a great feeling, but it makes it extremely difficult to get to bed. Luckily, these gummies are great for a night of blissful, deeply restorative sleep. American-grown Delta 9 THHC with the snoozy triumvirate, CBD, CBN, and melatonin. Head over to hellomood.co to find the perfect products for your needs, and while you're there, use my coupon code, Connect 20, to receive 20% off your order, plus you already know. that free five-count pack of gummies.

Again, that's Connect-20 at checkout at hellomood.co for 20% off your first order, plus a free five-count pack of gummies. Thank you so much, Mood. All right, let's get back into the episode. When did you realize who he was as a kid? Like, was it after he passed? Was it people telling you stories? Like, hey, this is who he really was.

So I would hear my father and my uncle talk about it pretty often or whatever. You know, they would say things. And it was just a regular thing. Like, my father met so many wise guys. I got a John Gotti story with my father. My father talked to John Gotti. He met John Gotti. Not in any kind of like official capacity, but it's actually a really great story.

Who's your father? He's, no, well, I'll get into that, whatever, but he's not affiliated to organized crime or anything like that. So, he's Mexican, though, right? He is. Right. Fascinating. How does a Mexican and Italian woman hook up? Spring break, Gakuco.

Of course. Of course. Yeah. Wow. been together for 40-something years, you know. But he wasn't involved. What did he do for a living coming out? He was in the restaurant business as well, my father.

He was in the hotel restaurant business, but, you know, he was very familiar with the cartel lifestyle. The place that he was from, you know, before cartels were a thing, we're talking about Felix Gallardo in the 80s and all that stuff. You know, my father grew up in the 50s.

So he hates that I talk about this. He doesn't like to talk about it because he saw the really disgusting side of that life. like his uncles were killed. One uncle in Acapulco, I don't know if you know like those boulders that they have on the side of the cliffs.

Somebody pushed a boulder on top of his uncle, like just wild stuff that he saw for being involved in like organized crime. So when you got to New York or whatever, he figured like, you know, it was like kind of an escape. He left that behind. But then when he met my mother,

you know, the brother-in-law, you know, he met Virgil, you know, fast-forward 1980. Now my fall is working with my uncle in Virgil's spot. So that's like how he kind of getting him in the picture. And what were Virgil's, businesses that your uncle and your dad were running. Restaurants, catering holes.

You know, they had stuff like at bars. You know, any place, think about a place back in Queens that you could run book out of. Could be anything, you know. They had the social clubs. Run book means what? Bookmaking. You lend money. You take bets, stuff like that.

Loan Shark, and they used to lend some money and take a lot of bets. You know, guys used to come and bet on the horses and stuff like that. Okay. So these weren't fully clean businesses. If you're running a book out of it. Any business that's fully clean, there's always something going on in the back. If it's owned by a wise guy. Let's just be honest.

They're never squeaky, squeaky clean. Whether you're cheating on the liquor, whether you're buying the stolen food, there's always something that you can quote unquote call illegal. You know what I mean? It just depends on the illegality. Were they killing people in there? Probably not. But were they, you know, having illegal car games in the back?

Was there a joke of poker machine and stuff like that? Probably, yeah, you know. So Virgil was making money while he was sitting in the can. Of course. Now, was he kicking up to a family? Was he involved in any one of the five families? Or did he have to, like, did your uncle have to pay anybody else besides him in the course of running these things? No.

So how it worked was basically that, like I said, they were family. So you need a family member to run your legitimate business or at least someone that you consider family. Someone that's kind of clean or whatever that doesn't. My uncle probably could have went the organized crime way and been, you know, successful because he was all his uncles. He was super connected. But it's not the life that he wanted either. I think that's how him and my father kind of bonded because, you know, they both saw the dirty side of organized crime. The stories that they would tell me were, you know, harsh.

Like I said, with my father and my uncle used to tell me stories, like, you know, same thing. Like, you know, back in Italy or whatever, you know, like uncles were killed and stuff like that. It's like, you know, you really don't want to get involved with those people. You know, even though you might be blood related, you do your thing, they do their thing. So in the course of time, whatever, you know, while these, you know, the restaurants being wrong or whatever, you know, my uncle ran the dining room and my father ran the catering side. So it was just a perfectly good fit. Yeah, but if they're running book out of it, that's a family.

That's a criminal element. Did your uncle have to let the wise guys in to run that business? Like who's calling the shots while Virgil's in the can? So there's tons of people. I'm not really sure how Virgil was integrated into the DeCalvo-Cante family. I mean, I speculate in this reports about it, whatever. But you're talking about they did, the New Jersey faction did have a faction in Queens. in Manhattan.

He integrated with them. It was pushed by certain people. But at the same time, it wasn't like he was a French connection guy. So he wasn't made. He was actually the inspiration and the godfather for Virgil Tulatsu.

If you're familiar with the character, obviously, right. So it was like it was a combination of him and Vinnie Poppe. That's who they were talking about. So he wasn't really tied to any of the five families, but he did business with all of them. Okay.

Because they were all involved in heroin. So he was kind of, of independent. He was just running, he basically was running these books and these, you know, little casinos by himself. Right. If he, if he was paying up to anyone doing that thing, that was probably a step above whatever my uncle knew. You know what I mean? But let's just say, like, the bartender, people coming in placing bets with him. You know, the bartender's a bookie. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, then the waiter or whatever, that's a tough guy. He did time in jail. Like, that's the guy you're going to call to break somebody's legs.

There was things like that. And your father is not policing any of the characters. that. He can't say no to that. They were friends. You know, they were all like, you everybody knew who the boss was, but at the same time, it's like, you know. Yeah. So this is the environment you grew up in. You grew up hanging out in these bars. I was co-checking at 12 years old without even knowing where I was, you know, 20s, 50s, 10s, you're Tony's son, you Michael's nephew, me and my cousin. He used to open the doors. They used to give us crazy money, you know. So it was fun. Well, clearly you're fascinated with the lifestyle. How did you not go that route.

I mean, first of all, you were hustling weed in high school and shit, right? Just like we all were. Running gambling, you said? Yeah. What was that about? So when I was a kid, right, I went to a pretty tough school, whatever,

right on the Queens, flushing Jamaica border, like Parsons. So it was a Crip school. It was in the middle of the project. It was all Crips and stuff like that. You know, I think that's where I developed a little bit of my street smarts and sense,

whatever, when you're around kids from the projects, you know what I mean? You know, they're very advanced at a young age. So, you know, I learned shit, you know, that my family didn't teach me per se and not even hanging around wise guys I would learn. These were street guys, you know what I mean? Gang members and stuff. So being there, you know, it molded me a little bit and I started to go that way.

You know what I mean? I was, I wanted the fast life, you know? Like, you'd see the guy who was 21 with the big chain. You wanted to dress like the rappers or whatever, you know? Gene Barrello talks about that, too, about Queens gangsters and guys from Queens. Like, the new generation of guys, we didn't want to wear suits and shoes. and stuff like that. We wanted to dress like hip hop guys.

Yeah. You know? So, you know, so that was the case. And I got into a little trouble. I hit like a little roadblock. First I got in trouble with my father.

My father found my stash. Right. Yeah. I had like, at the time I was, you know, maybe just buying in pounds. You know what I mean?

Breaking them up into ounces or whatever. Kind of just supplemented, but nothing crazy, you know what I mean? On any kind of scale. It's a lot of weed in high school, though. It is a lot of weed.

Yeah, it's a racket in high school. But I'm going to tell you the reason why I was buying so much, I was getting into a little trouble, whatever. And the gambling or whatever was just something that, I don't know, that came from birth. We used to play cards around the table at Christmas when I was a fucking kid. We used to gamble. Literally.

That was the thing. At Christmas, we used to have the quarters and stuff. So it wasn't any, like I was doing anything wrong when I sat down at a table in a cafe and played cards, even though I was 15. I knew how to play. Why wouldn't I sit down, you know?

And they used to let you smoke and you could drink. Nobody really questioned, you know, as long as you didn't create a problem. You know what I'm saying? So, um, so, yeah. So, yeah, so going forward, and the reason why I was buying so much was when I was kind of gearing towards that street life, my father saw it. And he said, you got two choices, my friend. You go to Catholic school? I'm shipping your ass to military school.

And I was like, fuck, you know, like, what am I going to do or whatever? You know, so I was like, I don't want to go to Catholic school. So I wound up going to St. Francis, St. Francis Prep. If anybody knows about St. Francis Prep, it's one of the most mafia-connected schools in Queens. It's like, you know, it's like the kids were 80 years old 17, they're with their lights, a brand new BMWs, Rolexes. It was one of those schools.

You know what I mean? A lot of Anthony juniors going there if you know what I mean. Anthony. Yeah, exactly. So it was like it was those guys. So, you know, now I was kind of thrown from this ghetto mentality of being in Parsons or whatever, you know, on the hood to more of a got to wear a uniform now. you know, and it was just like a whole different thing.

But what came with that? More money, more connections. These guys weren't smoking $5 bags or 10 like the kids in Parsons, maybe would. These guys were buying ounces for their fucking parties or whatever. They were looking for more serious stuff for the, you know, stuff like that. So that was where I kind of integrated myself as a little side hustle. And we did have the gambling too. There was, you used to find a football sheets.

And you knew it was mostly the Italian kids that ran it or whatever. You know, they had the football sheets and you come in. you bet with them, you know, they were probably, just like you said in the Sopranos, they were probably running it for their father or their uncle, whoever else. Or they just learned, they grew up watching them, hearing them talk about their sports books. Right. And then they're just making it their own, you know? That's the way it goes, you know.

You're a product to your environment. Of course. It's such a fascinating subculture. You know, like I'm telling you, most of the country doesn't work that way anymore. They have no idea. It's outside of the Northeast, really. Right. Yeah.

It's very different everywhere. You know, now I live in Vegas, which did have a mob history, but it's altruists and not many people even know about it, you know. So you get pop selling weed when you're in high school, and that kind of straightens you out. So I wasn't selling weed in the high school per se. You know, I didn't bring drugs to school. But it was like taking order. Maybe I did. Okay.

I'm not going to say I didn't. Because I would smoke myself after school, so I had to have it on me. But let's just say the majority of it was always outside of school. That's what I meant. I was during my high school years. Right. Yeah, you got popped. And then one night in the can kind of straighted you out.

It did. So I winded up getting popped by Queens narcotics. All right. So I'm in Jackson Heights. I just left the barbershop. Got a nice fresh shape up looking all good. And they needed to buy baggies. You know, the little apple bags they used to sell back in the day.

They sold it in a record store, right? So I'm on this record store on 37th Avenue. It was one block off the train. I'm walking there. and I thought I was getting robbed when I left. Okay? So a guy comes up to me, grabs my arm. And, you know, I square up.

I'm like, what the fuck? Gun comes out. So when the gun came out, obviously, I was like, ah, you got it. You know, I had a neckstail on, the old next tell on my hip, you know, the, you know, the chirp. So, you know, he grabs my phone and everything.

I'm like, shit, I'm getting robbed. But then he took out his shield. And he's like, police, you know, don't move, whatever. He gets me against the car. So I guess they were maybe watching the spot, You know what I mean? Not so much maybe watching me.

But when I came out and you know how much fucking 400 baggies, it looked like this in my pocket, whatever. Maybe they thought I had money, whatever. They literally illegally searched me or whatever. Boom, right in my pockets, took everything out, whatever. I ended up having some weed on me or whatever, which was a mistake going to buy those bags with weed or whatever. Did you get a felony for that?

No, no. It was a misdemeanor that I also had a knife. That's what really fucked me more was the weapon because they charged me with CPW. Yeah. So that was a little bit harder to knock down. but it wound up getting knocked down. Okay, so Ken...

So I went through there, and I went through the... It sucked because I went to the 110 precinct, whatever, which is the local precinct, and then I went to the bookings. So it was like I had to go through the whole fucking process 36 hours, and you're sleeping on the floor with dirty, disgusting people. You know, the guy that's sleeping right there on the floor

is the same guy sleeping in the subway or something, you know? So it was like, man, I'm in a Catholic school or whatever, you know? I missed the first week, whatever. I missed, like, during the first week, I missed the day of orientation, because I was in a fucking cell. That's how you know who's really about it and who's not. Every high school kid that's kind of doing dirt,

just throw his ass in jail for a couple of nights. And we'll see if he does it again, you know? Like I went to jail and to me, I was like, oh, this sucks. I just won't come back. But I kept doing what I was doing, you know. But you like, it, like, sent them. It scared you straight a little bit. In a way it did, but in a way it didn't because I didn't stop what I was doing.

I was just a lot smarter about it. It was no more risks. Like, I would never really. like walk around with weed. It was always like meetups. If you wanted to meet me, I would meet. If I was meeting my connect to go get it, it was like super fucking James Vaughn type stuff or whatever because it just wasn't worth it for me. And don't forget, like my fault, I was still living at home. So it was like my parents didn't know, you know, I was doing that whole kind of behind the scenes kind of thing. But from a good family. Yeah, yeah. My family's a good family.

There's a lot of law enforcement in my family as well, you know. Yeah. Tell us about that. Who's, who's in law enforcement, which is kind of ironic. You know, I have a lot of had some uncles on the job, you know, one of my uncles, he got fired actually from the job. Yeah, he did some wild shit, pulled out his gun in the 80s and like, in order for you to get fucking fired in the 80s, you had to do some wild stuff. So he was at, he was at a party, wedding, got drunk. He was with the SIU guys, that kind of thing, pulled out his gun, wound up getting fired. But, you know, my, going back or whatever, like, my, my aunt tells me this, but I don't know if it's true. My grandfather was one of the first horseback cops to ride

in New York City, and he ran with Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. No shit. Yeah, my Aunt Linda. Spring weekends are all about family, sunshine, and evenings on the patio. Before everyone arrives, I stop by my local total wine and more to grab a great bottle to share.

With such a wide selection and the lowest prices, it's easy to find something amazing for everyone to enjoy. If you're not sure what to pick, their friendly guides can help. Find what you love and love what you find, only at Total Wine and More.

Shop total wine and more in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B-21. So it's the Italian side. Yes. Yeah. So that side or whatever, basically,

you know, they developed, they grew up, we mostly all grew up in Queens or whatever, you know, and everybody kind of just did their own thing, but wound up being cops, you know, and like by no, chance at all. I have one, I guess, one of the most successful stories in my family as far as law enforcement is my cousin. He was an FBI agent. Yeah, he just recently retired. He was on,

you're familiar with Martin Screlli, you know? Yeah. He was the lead officer on the case. Yeah, there's an episode I think he did on American Greed or something like that. He's on in my cousin, Chris Donner, yeah. I like Martin. Yeah. Martin Screlli seems like an all right guy. He's got some points. I mean, he bought the Wu-Tang album. I want to see what's up with that. They really fucked him. Like the feds, man, when they want you, you don't have to, really commit much crime. They'll, they'll figure out something for you, you know.

Hey, everyone, just a quick intermission. I want to tell you about my stand-up comedy dates this summer. July 19th and 20th, I'm going to be in Chicago, Illinois at the comedy bar. Come on out. I got four shows there. And then in September, September 27th to the 29th, I'm going to be in Vegas doing Skank Fest.

I'm on a ton of shows there. That's the greatest comedy festival in the world. Get tickets at Link, tree.com slash Johnny Mitchell. Once again, that's linktree.com slash Johnny Mitchell. I'll see you on the road this summer. All right. Let's get back to this

interview with Tony. But, okay, so you really got like, you're running in a complete like Queens cliche. One side of the family and your friends, gangsters, the other side cops. Yep. And these are the boroughs. These are the environments

that New York City cops come from. They grow up around drug dealers, and Crips and uncles who are connected. And, you know, it's in your bones, right? Why do people become cops in New York now? Is it because it's a good government job still? Do they still consider it a good job? Well, I mean, to be honest with you,

that was one of the reasons that I said. Like, when they asked you, like, why do you want to become a cop? I didn't say that bullshit, like, protect and serve, you know, none of that stuff. I was just like career opportunity and benefits, you know? Like, let's be honest or whatever, you know? Like, I saw, I was, it was kind of like a quarter-life crisis for me.

You know what I mean? because I was making a lot of money, you know what I mean? Like, not even like selling the weed or whatever. That sometimes would just be like supplemental or whatever. My real moneymaker was working in these mob-connected restaurants, you know, and bartending in the bars. Anybody knows wise guys, they throw money like it's water. You know what I mean?

Everybody wants to be a big shot, you know, especially after a couple of drinks. I was on the receiving end of that. So you could be a big shot. I call you, sir, boss, whatever the fuck you want, whatever, as long as you're dropping 100. You know what I mean? one of the spots actually you know where Joe's Pizzer is

in Williamsburg? It's like over there Yeah on the north side That was a mob joint Wow Guy named Rocky He used to run book out of there It's a little dope

Yeah Yeah I bartended there for a little bit I mean there was just so many Little pockets like you said You know And you know I spoke with Gene Borrello

about this And we kind of ran into each other ourselves when Gene was running around in the street You know the strip clubs I used to love the strip clubs Why these guys always hang out the strip clubs.

You know. So do cops. Yeah. A story is like the strip club capital of fucking America. There's like so many strip clubs in the story and like good ones too. So at the time, whatever, you know, I used to see Gene Burrell. You know, I always say like we were friends, but I know he was. You know where I came from for the most part.

Was he a big shot? Like, did people know him as like a trigger man, like a gangster? Yeah. He had the reputation of a shooter, Gene. Yeah. For sure. There was no. He'd fight you.

Like he says this himself or whatever. He'll fight you. But he, you got. got to know who you're going to fight with. There's guys that'll throw hands. There's guys that'll straight stab you. There is no fighting with them. It's like knife's coming out.

You know, Gene was a shooter. Always with a gun and shoot you. It's that simple. He's not going to get a black guy. He's going to just shoot you in the stomach and keep it moving, you know? So did you, when you decided to go into the force, did you have aspirations to, like, be work narcotics, be a detective, maybe be in the DEA or the FBI? Yes and no.

but it was kind of a double-edged sword. So one of the reasons that actually, you're probably wondering how a guy can be so, because like I said, jail didn't scare me enough to stop doing what I was doing. I would still be at the card games. I was still drinking like a fish

with connected people. I was around, you know, in connected bars, all over Queens there was, you know, bars, Brooklyn, Manhattan. So it was like, I knew to avoid those places if I didn't want to get in truck.

I forbid I got caught in a bus or whatever. They raided the joint. You know, I'm risking myself here. you know, for what? A couple dollars, I might gambling or whatever. So, you know, I wanted to transition to something. I just didn't know what. I had no why aspirations of law enforcement whatsoever. I know that.

I'm asking, like, would you have been hesitant to take a job working narcotics in Queens knowing you could maybe investigate people that you grew up with? Like, would you feel like that's like a conflict of interest? Thousand percent, thousand percent. So when I actually got into the, the police department. You know, I was sworn in in 2013, but I was approached in 2012.

You know, I had a significant amount of connections throughout my years working in the restaurant business, you know. I mean, I'd work one party that would be FBI agents, and then the next party would be, you know, people from NYPD, and a third party would be Rise guys. You know, it was a whole mix of people.

So I hadn't met a lot of people, made a lot of friends and stuff like that. So, you know, when I decided that I was actually going to be a cop, I was influenced by some of these detectives, I saw and his bar was hanging out in Bushwick, you know. They were real suave detectives. They were able to come around, come and go as they please.

So I was like, you know, these are not just those straight-edge kind of cops or whatever. These are a little, you know, they got a little swagger to them. So I reached out to some of my connections that I had and they were totally shocked when I said I wanted to become a cop. I didn't, everybody that reached out to a chief. I had a hook in the chief of department's office or whatever. They were shocked. When I told them that, I kind of got ambushed.

They invited me to a dinner. I would go to these dinners to network and stuff like that. It was at Romervue. It's in Howard Beach, notorious mom neighborhood, right? Yeah. Meeting three high echelon cops in a mob neighborhood carrying home, right? It's right next to Rousseau's over there. So I get there and is a retired undercut...

No, he's not retired. He's not in undercover anymore. He's in the intelligence unit now. My hook from the chief of department's office, who was a full bird inspector and a chief from Intel. And the first thing that they told me was, what do you think about undercover work? It's like ambush me, whatever.

Sat me down. It was just like going into all the work. We could use you. This would be great or whatever. You won't even go into the academy. You won't have a number. Nobody will know who you are. We just put you right down to the street or whatever.

We vouch for you know all this. And it brings me back to what you just said. I knew way too many people from so many different walks of life. I hung out in every single neighbor. I was buying weed in Washington Heights. I'm gambling in middle village. You know what I mean? I'm going to a restaurant in Manhattan

that has a legal shit going on. the back. It's all over me. It's all around me. You know what I mean? So I was just like, eh, you know, I'll think about it. You know what I mean? Then they floated a different idea after they saw that I was a little hesitant. They said, all right, how about you go undercover into police academy? Kind of weed out the corruption kind of thing. You know what I'm saying? So I was a little hesitant, but I had said, okay. So the deal was to change my appearance. So I had to put on a lot of weight, shave my beard. I got this little fucking pencil mustache That I'm, you know what I mean?

And at the last second, I said no. So you felt like that would have been snitching. Yeah. You'd rather be a cop that actually, like, does good for the whole society and not, you know, somebody that takes down these people that you grew up with that you like. Exactly. So it was definitely a conflict of interest, but it's also, it's a moral compass that you do. You know what I mean? Like, it's not, fuck that the police department.

Fuck all the bureaucracy. Right. Do I like you? Did I grow up with you? Did we, you know, we go to the same school? Like, do you spend Christmas with me and my family? Yeah. I don't give you shit about me.

It's not going to happen. Yeah. I'm not that way, you know? So you, did you want to be a transit cop working in the subway? Did you float that as like the next idea? That was my first pick because like I said, I had, I had family. And it's wild to say that. And people are like, who the fuck wants to be in the cellgo?

That's a grimy in August. Oh, man. When there's garb on garbage day. Bro. Dude, it's like it's Dante's Inferno down there. It is. It is.

And the smell of piss you get to be very used to in a short amount of time. Damn, you got to, man. So what happened was like I was saying before, you know, I had some relatives, whatever, who were going to be, who were in law enforcement already. And everybody was telling me,

don't do transit. You know, I had one cousin who was like, you'll like it. But then the majority of the people were like, when I had told those same upper echelon people that met with me that day. You know, they, when, when Academy Day comes and everybody gets their orders

or where they want to go, everybody's waiting in so, but I was a surprise. I knew where I was going already. I told them transit, they did me the favor. They put me in transit. So I knew, I didn't get a pick of which transit, but I was going to be in that bureau. You know what I mean?

So once you're in the bureau, you're good. So, yeah, so they put me in the transit bureau. And then I guess I kind of in the beginning was like, damn, like it's hot. It was summertime, like you said or whatever. So you're like, you're kind of overwhelmed or whatever, you know what I mean? Once you get down there. But it was the place I wanted to be.

And my first week or whatever, I saw something crazy, like ridiculously right out of the gate. Old lady going to church on a Sunday violently pushed down the stairs. Didn't even know that she was pushed down the stairs. When I, okay, so we get a call, right? Call comes over the radio. Lady falls down the stairs, right? So we happen to be there. We were maybe a stop away, actually.

We get off the train, we go there. The ladies in the scorpion position, kind of like this at the bottom of the stairway. As she's at that bottom of the stairway, I go over, her nose and mouth were here on this side of her face. She's talking to me like this. Oh, fuck. I'm like, blood everywhere.

Big blood. You know fresh blood? It's real rich and dark and red. That was like my first four-hand to see that much blood. She was in a puddle. It looked like she got shot or something. So I was like, She was conscious, though, which was weird.

And ambulance came. I was like, what happened? You know, do you remember? She's like, I think I fell. You know, they winded up, like you were saying, whatever. Who goes and investigates all that stuff? Check the cameras, right? The detectives check.

She was fucking pushed, bro. Wow. No reason at all. Pushed down the stairs on her face. That's why it was all smushed to the side. When the ambulance picked her up, her face went over like this, like a flap. Like, whoop. This is like my second or third day on the job in transit.

And that's one of the dangers when you, walk being in NY and just passing literally millions of humans every day, somebody's going to be in a bad mood. Right. And you can't control if randomly somebody just found out he's getting cheated on or lost his job or he bet his entire life savings on the horses and lost. And yeah, you might be an old lady walking down the subway stairs at the wrong time, right? Or standing, God forbid, in front of the subway, which you saw too.

you saw somebody get pushed out of the tracks. That wasn't even, I mean, the lady, that was just my entry into the subway system. Okay, it gets crazier. Are you uniformed at the beginning? At this time, I'm uniformed. Okay. When I first got out, I was uniform. Everybody is.

Unless you're actually, like I was saying before, in that specialized unit or something, and you already put your time in, then they'll let you go, your detective route because you already, you know, went that way. So, uh, so same thing. I'm in uniform. and the brutal things that you see in the train are the people getting pushed in front of the train or people getting hit by a train. It's like nothing you've ever seen or experienced.

I mean, one story really sticks out. Well, there's a few stories, but like one that sticks out, whatever, was... So this guy was drunk, okay? We're at Jamaica Center. A lot of things happened. Jamaica Center, Pauce's Archer. It's a hotbed for crime.

You name the crime, criminal activity, crazy people. It's just that's where it goes down. Jamaica, Queens. It'll never be. be gentrified. I doubt it. I doubt it. It's a tough area,

especially in the south side. You know, it's a tough area still to this day. So, you know, that being said or whatever, right, there's a guy,

got into a beef for the guy or whatever. It looks like they were arguing, you know. We saw the argument, whatever, but it was just words at this point. It wasn't really

to the point where it was going to be anything. You know, hey, you know, come on, you go, you're just trying to do this. And it looked like it was going to be okay. Like, you know, me and my partner,

we turned around to walk, away and you know you hear the scuffle when you turn around. Jamaica Sen is the last stop before the trains go to the train yard to get clean the service. So you don't see that train coming out of the tunnel. You have no idea that it's coming from that direction. You think it's coming from this direction. The guy pushes him as he, they're fighting. We turn around as he pushes them.

The train speeding into the stop hits him in the face. This guy does a 360 in the air. It like swiped his upper part of his body here. shoulder face. I watched this. Boom. Smacked him. He did like a three-sixth in the air and hit the pavement. The other guy was so scared. But he didn't fall onto the tracks. He didn't, that one, he didn't fall onto the tracks.

But his, the force of that train, what it did to his body was like if a giant came and just went like a Hulk and just threw him. He was like, boom. Did you ever witness like the aftermath of somebody jumping in front of a train? Yeah, a few times. Yeah. The leg. So on the seven line, the leg fell down from.

the street from the elevator subway right on to the street. Oh no. Yeah. Oh, okay. So for people who don't know, the seven line is the purple line. And when it goes into Queens from Manhattan, it goes above ground. So it's on those, it's the big famous scene in every

New York movie. It's going above the neighborhoods. Right. Oh. Yeah, it runs through. So it starts in Long Island City and then it runs through all the neighbors. Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, Corona, Woodside. So was it a jumper or someone got pushed? So, well, I'll give you two stories.

All right. So one time, this was, I think it was on 82nd Street, Jackson Heights. Two guys had gotten into a fight. Okay? These guys were South American gangbangers. You know how it goes. They don't give a fuck if you're cops. They don't care about anything.

It's on site. They don't care about life. It's on site if I see you and you're from a different hood or body or whatever they call it, right? So these two gang members had a beef. They see each other in a thing. Fuck, shoot out. Right? in the train. I wasn't there. I responded to

my idea. I wasn't there for that. In the train station, right there. It's on video. Somebody put it on Instagram or YouTube. It's actually on video. This is what I'm talking about. So you can find it. They're two like short Hispanic guys. One's wearing like a Knicks jersey, I think. And you see he was dead. He got shot right in the head. Pomp, pop, pop, pop, shot right there.

At this same station, it was like a hotbed for activity. There was always stuff going on there as well. Because you had downstairs, you have all those neighborhoods with Colombian, Ecuadorian, Mexican, and they're A lot of them are gang members, you know what I mean? So they fight over just petty bullshit like, you know, you're wearing the wrong ink, you know, like LA style out here. You know, you know how it is.

So in that same station, it was a, I'm not sure if this was a scuffle. I'm not sure. I don't want to misquote on it or whatever. But something happened, traffic, you know, somebody pushed or whatever, guy falls in the train. Gets right when the train's coming, boom, run over. his leg pops like this down the tracks

and falls down to the street below. He had to go pick up his leg and stuff. Oh shit. The guys are sending me pictures.

Yeah, the guys are sending me pictures. The blood's still leaking down on all the cars passing. Imagine you had your sunroof open? What kind of shoe

was the guy wearing? Do you remember? I don't know. Who knows? It's probably that's in the picture. I'll find it. Hopefully it's not some knockoffs.

Yeah. Hopefully he died with some dignity. Some J's on his feet. Dude, I always think about that because people are jumping in front of the train all the time. It's like a common New York City way to kill yourself. But it seems like one of the most painful ways to go. Like that's not an

instant death. That's not an instant death. He got mangled. This is better though. There's something that we call space cases. You know what the space case is? No. Okay. This is kind of actually brutal. Compared to the last story. Elementary school right there. Yeah. This is a precursor. So let's say you get pushed or you jump in front of the train and you don't die. What happens? You get caught between the train and the platform. There's only one way to get you out of there. We call emergency service unit.

We yes you. They come and they bring something. It's like an airbag. They call an airbag. They put it right next to you and they blow the train back. So they only think to rock the train off the track. You got to reverse it like this so you can get in. The only problem is that you're mangled in there.

So as soon as they do that, your insides fall out. Of course. Your body just, yeah. So there's been times. I haven't seen it personally or whatever, but there was a guy that I work with who he actually had to make this call. Call your loved ones. Yeah. Tell me you're going to die.

Yeah. Literally because you're going to die because once ESU comes and does that, your inside is going to fall out. So once you're mangled in there, you're alive. We don't know just because you're like this. The train's keeping you alive right now. As soon as we separate, you're going to die. So make your last wishes and phone calls and all that kind of shit. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, God, you've got to be glad you never had to do that. Because that's some shit where... I've seen space cases. I've seen them. You know, but I haven't... I've seen them get mangled, yeah, and still alive. And then they die after.

I haven't made the phone call to do the last wish of space. Are they shrieking in pain? Sometimes. Sometimes people are in shock, complete shock, like wide open or whatever like this. And then other time, there should be video of this, too. It was a Spanish guy, ponytail. In Manhattan, and I haven't seen this really in other boroughs. In Manhattan, because of the way that the tracks are aligned,

there's gates that come out and go back. They retract every time the train comes close. So nobody falls in between. It looks like he got stuck in between that. So when the gate came back, it kind of crushed him. And it was a brutal thing to see. Do you think he died? Do you think most of those people are did it on purpose?

Yes and no. I know some people there's horror stories. You have to. People get. So immediately there's an investigation done. Like immediately. The second that you put over a man under and a man under constitutes anyone that's under the train

or gets, comes into contact with the train. It's like a little loophole they got there. If you come into contact with the train, if the train conductor says, I hit a person or whatever, immediately there has to be a complete investigation, even if the guy walks away from it. Right.

So they'll come to, they'll determine what happens. So if the case was in that case that the guy fell, there was nobody to pursue. But yeah, people get pushed all the time. Yeah. I want to like tap civilians. You know, you never talk to,

Rangers in New York, right? I know the rules, but when I see a white girl at a stop, at the two stop in Crown Heights, right? Not exactly gentrifying, yes, but it's, uh, it gets ugly after 10 p.m. Trust me. I spent a lot of time out there. And she's on her iPad. She's waiting for the train on her iPad with her headphones in looking down two feet from the tracks. I want to be like, I want to push you on GP and then pull you back up just so you, you don't forget, like have some responsibility for your surroundings, for your personal safety. Zero street smarts. And the phone, these things, they make it even worse, bro.

Even myself, I'm guilty sometimes. You know, I have excellent situational awareness. But I even find myself getting caught in the phone. So can you imagine someone, like you said, from the Midwest that has no street smarts whatsoever. And comes to New York City, they are a prime target. And they get hit all the time. Okay.

So tell us about some of that crime done against transplants, we call them out there. Like, did you see that? Like, the phone swiping, when you first joined the force, iPhones were starting to become ubiquitous everywhere. Yeah. Was that a hustle, like snatching phones or what were some of the main crimes you saw when you first got on the force? That was big. The phone snatched thing was huge. I mean, you know, I saw that more when I got into the plane clothes unit, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

But just like uniform patrol, what you're experiencing is something like you've never seen before. You know what I mean? Because you're not right in the subway as a normal. civilian. Me, I was a little numb to it because I was on the trains as in New York already. I understand. But you got to take action now. You don't just fucking mind your own business like you normally do and just keep it going. You know what I mean? So you put yourself into situations sometimes that you really don't want to put yourself in, but it's inevitable. So a lot of the things that I would see was that's really, really rampant is sexual abuse,

like sexual touching and all that stuff. And I'm not just forcible touching. I'm not torture, just forcible touching, which is, Subways crowded. I rub my thing on you because I'm a little close, so, you know, we swipe each other. Now, I'm talking about, like, deviant, violent stuff. I had a girl one time. She came out to me, 14th Street, me and my partner. We weren't working in Manhattan at this time. We had come upstairs just to get some air.

I don't know where we were passing through or whatever. She comes up to his complete shock. White girl from the Midwest, just like you were saying transplant or whatever, complete shock. It's like, what happened? She's like, I think I was like, Touch, whatever. So long story short, we get into it. She wasn't only touched.

The guy rolled up her skirt. She was in shock. Didn't know what to do. She froze. Rolled up her skirt and put his fingers in her. Put his fingers in her. Right midday Manhattan, 14th Street on the train. And kept going.

Yeah. She ran away. The guy kept going on the train. So when she came up, I mean, you know, we, obviously made the report sent her to proper authorities. But she's like, go get him. Like, aren't you going to get him? Like what?

I'm like, miss, this guy could be in Jersey by now. You know what I mean? How long? She's like, five minutes ago. I was like, the train, you know, you're 14th Street. Like, he just hops off, he goes to Port Authority. He's gone, you know? Wow.

When that happens, can you, could you like identify? Because obviously, that's got to be on camera, right? There's no cameras inside the train cars. Okay, hold on. Fuck off. Are you serious? Back then there wasn't. No, zero.

I don't think there's, I don't know if there's any now. I don't think so. No, yeah. There's no cameras inside. the train cars. There's only cameras inside the stations. Okay, so you could get robbed, groped, beat up on the train as it's moving. Correct. And it's not filmed.

Correct. I don't think anybody actually realizes that. Because everybody thinks they're on video all of the time when they're in New York, 24-7. How do they not have cameras on the train cars? That's insane to me. When I was a cop, there was no, and I only retired in 22. Yeah. There was no subway cameras on the train cars.

train. It costs too much money to equip every single car. I don't think the city would even float that idea. Wow. Yeah. Just to put one CCTV at the back of the car? I don't know. But there might be one CCTV at the back of the car, but that's one car.

There's how many cars in the whole thing? They're not going to put one in each one. They won't do it. They'll put one where the conductor is maybe, you know, stuff like that. But they're not going to put one in every single car. Okay. So crime will never go away in the subway then. When they put the cameras, but even so, like you see,

the cameras everywhere. It's not really deterring crime, though. You think it is? I mean, I don't know. If you're a criminal and you're a lush worker or you're somebody that's going to rob or grope or do your thing on the train, you don't, some of these guys Instagram their crimes now, they record themselves. So they don't give a shit about the camera. It's not going to deter them. They're going to do what they got to do. You know? So the lush workers, this is another fascinating thing. These are gangs that specify in robbing, like, passed out people or sleeping people on the train, right? Tell us about them. So, you know, most of these lush workers, they're older.

It's very rare that you'll find a young one, but they're just basically opportunistic. And there's groups to them that work together. You know, they'll give each other heads up or whatever. They'll stay at certain stops. But sometimes they're lone wolf operations. So what they'll do is the reason we call them lush, obviously. They'll go after drunk passengers or maybe somebody sleeping on the train. It's not always drunk.

You know, you've got a long shift at work or whatever you're coming home. Seven line, you're coming from Manhattan all the way to flush. That's a long ride. Of course. You're going to fall asleep, maybe. You know, I'm guilty of it. I've closed my mind. on the train. I don't know if you ever have been

there, but these rides get long sometimes. So, you know, they would prey on the people coming out of work or the clubs and drunk and they would fall asleep. They'd have razor blades. They would take the razor blades and unsuspecting to the victim cut their pockets open.

Wow. Or their belongs. Like I'd say, a girl had a pocketbook or something. The bottom of a pocketbook would just slice open. They'd take everything out. The critical cars, the IDs, the phone, all that stuff. I mean, it was hilarious sometimes because even in uniform, you knew that somebody just got hit by a lush worker. The guy's pockets are all cut up and he's

looking around like, what the fuck? Like, yeah. And these guys are so good. They don't even wake here. These people don't even know what happened to them. They're so good. Sitting in there chiseling away your pockets, you don't even feel it. And they're probably old school junkies, right? A lot of them, yeah, a lot of them are old school. So they, you know, they're used to

New York in the 80s, those old school, Jimmy and Lox and they're real slick characters. Right, right. Arrest records long, tall than you. Right, for sure. Yeah, right. God, I imagine, like, you bust some of those guys. There's no way they remember how many times I've been to jail.

Can't even. Like, you don't even want to look at their rap sheet. When you go to, it's hilarious when you got to fucking arrest one of them because you go to hit the, you go to hit the button on the print report or whatever and you'll see the thing at the bottom's like 100 page. You're like, load paper. Yeah. Load paper.

It's like, you got to just sit there. It's like, yo, when's your first arrest? Like, oh, 1980. Like, it's like, holy shit. You've been doing this this whole time. Yeah. So there's a lot of those guys, you know? And then there's the more.

violent ones. You know what I mean? And that's when it gets to another degree. Those guys are a little harmless with the cutting and stuff like that. Maybe they'll run away if you catch them. Sometimes they'll fight you. But most of the time they'll run away. But the violence.

And you know what the violence is masked a lot of times as in the subway system? The dancers. No shit. Showtime. Right. Let's go. You know those guys? Yeah.

They get on and they put the little boom box. Those guys are all perps. All of them are. Some of them are legit hardcore perps. Really? Yeah. And they're strong, too. You know, they're all fucking muscled up from swinging on those poles.

Some of them are little, you know, real skinny, 120-pound punks. But, you know, some of them are like grown men who are from the, you know, they spend years in prison or whatever. They used to bar workouts and activity. And they come on the soul. They got brolic. So the charge itself for somebody dancing on the subway is reckless endangerment. Still a really good collar. But.

Oh, really? So that's a crime. That's a crime. Yeah. that's a big crime. Because they're on there all the time and nobody even bats an eye. Like everybody's just coming back from work,

reading a book, and you've got some little black kids doing monkey bars on the pedestrian poles. There's a long list of crimes and prohibited behavior in the MTA. Technically you're not even allowed to eat on a subway car. It's like stupid shit that they put.

But one of the crimes they do take serious is the dancing because it's reckless endangerment. You can hurt the public by doing this stupid shit. They take it a step further, though, these guys you put the hat in the face. If you don't give them anything, they might sock you. They might punch you right in the mouth.

Now you just escalated to an assault. Some of them, if they, you know, see that you're a week and they can run over you or whatever, and we've got calls for this all the time. What happened? They got robbed by the dancers. Yeah, it was like, they beat me up.

I wouldn't give him any money, so they fucking beat me up and took my money. Yeah, so it's all the show until they want the money and then they just take it from you. And what percentage, I know it's impossible to say the exact percentage,

but how many of these crimes are actually solved. I mean, you'll have to look at the reports, man, to be honest with you, because if you are not, you've seen the show the first 48, whatever, you know, it applies to the same thing when you're dealing with those initial street crimes. It doesn't have to be murder.

But if you don't catch that guy on the scene, I got a male Hispanic, 5-9, black hair, brown eyes, light skin, running down Roosevelt Avenue, and then you just disappear. Like, you know, if you're not catching him then, if you're not getting an accurate description or know who he is or some kind of camera footage, you're not getting

those guys. And there's not enough manpower or time to even look through all that. To go through the footage, even if he's on camera. The only way that I've seen that they'll do that is if it makes the news or it's something highly publicized that they'll put the best detectives on it or something like that to show that they're doing something. Right. So I guess, do they tell you specifically, like only these crimes and up?

Yeah. Are we going to go look, actually pull the CCTV footage and try to match it? They didn't say things like that. They won't say things like that. But if the crime is violent, let's say, most likely you'll have somebody follow up on it. You know what I mean? If it's something a little less and it's happening more frequent, like, hey, I got my cell phone stolen and the guy pushed me down. You hurt?

No, I'm okay. But he pushed me or whatever. So it's a harassment and, you know, grand lawsuit, whatever. We're not looking. We're not going to take the time. We're looking for aggregated assault, murders. The guy's notorious of pushing people in the subway, stuff like that. But like, yeah.

So if somebody got punched by one of the dancers, and they ran off. The dancer ran off? Yeah, the dancers ran off. I know would actually somebody from the NYPD go to that stops CCT? I mean, because by the time... A simple assault? Because by the time you pull the footage, you already got five more calls.

Right. So it's just volumes. You have to decide what's important enough to follow up with and what's just simply not. No, a thousand percent. If you see a pattern, okay? And that's where the crime teams come in, like myself, what I did later, you know, the crime to anti-crime, playing-close stuff. That's where they come in.

Okay? So when you're saying the follow-ups, we'll follow up with that. So the CEO of the precept might read all the reports and say, listen, there's an uptick of robberies on the F-line between 6 and 10 o'clock. Need you guys there. You know what I mean? Need you in plain clothes, blending in, see what happens. You know, and many times or whatever it's happened.

I remember at Queensboro Plaza, I caught a guy in the act, pickpocketing somebody. Very hard to prosecute, though, because the victim doesn't want. Like, no, no, no, no, I got my phone. And I'll miss. I saw. He just put that phone back in your pocket. When he saw him, he go grab him. He slipped it back in.

I was like, you know, just sign this for me or try to get him so I could take this guy and people don't want nothing to do with it. So I had to let him go. You know, things like that happen often, you know. But pickpocket is a real big thing. And, you know, the violent assaults, man. That's what they'll, once there's patterns or makes the news, that's when it's all hands on deck.

When you started to see more like you were working there in like the mid-20, 10s where you start to see a lot of like Central American immigrants, a lot of South American immigrants coming into New York. Did you see an uptick in slashings? Because those cats are known for I mean, Dominicans are too, but they're known for just using, cutting people

with knives. Did you see an uptick in that? Not so much, but you saw an uptick of gang on gang violence, you know, and they don't only just fight with knives. They had guns too, you know, all kinds of weapons, you know. Those gang, the gang was more concentrated towards like the Roosevelt Avenue,

what you see now is like a really hot bed for all the choir. You know, they got the Venezuelan gang coming over at Tren de Aragua. You're familiar with them. You know, they're known as the cancer of South America. And they're just wreaking havoc

all over New York. You know what I mean? So around that time, you know, you saw more of like the Sureanos, let's say, and like the little Ecuadorian cliques. And Dominicans were a little further down in Corona. But like that Jackson Heights particular area is where you saw most of the gang violence

and like you said, stabbing shootings, whatever. So still in Queens. You're still in Queens, working those stops. Were those some of the hottest gang stops in those deep Queens boroughs? We were concentrated on flushing

for the last stop, for the lush workers and robberies and that kind of stuff. And the more you branched out from flushing changed. So obviously you went to Corona and there was a heavy gang initiative. then you went to 82nd Street was robbery and the swipers

you know and it was just a whole bunch of different shit going down on the line you know you went to Queensborough Plaza now you're dealing with the guys from Queensbridge you know what I mean or the guys that just got out of Rikers or they went to horizons you know so they're all passing through the station

so it was a cast of characters at every station you went to and this is just Queens when I first came out I was all over the place they sent us to the Bronx you know it was by Yankee Stadium everybody knows people talk about something in the water

in the Bronx they all fight and it's a tough place. You know what I mean? Bronx is wild. Bronx is like old school like like black people. Like I'm not talking about old school black people. I'm talking about like old school like packs of teenage black kids will be on the subway just like.

And it's intimidating. Yeah. You know, because they're loud and they just don't, they don't give a shit about manners. And you look at them and you're like, I don't want a profile. But like somebody is carrying. Somebody's dirty. They don't give a shit about the. consequences either. You know what I mean? So it's like these kids nowadays, they respect,

disrespect. You know what I mean? So it's like those, we call them roving bands in the roving bands. Yeah, that's coming back in New York. We had to put that over the radio when we saw them. You'd usually see them during the festivals when they would get wild. You know what I mean? Like they would, we'd get called to a detail, whatever, you know what I mean? They'd be like, there's a roving band coming down 55th Street, you know, after the parades and stuff. And they would cause anarchy, you know? They'd rope the women and, you know, rob guys, fuck guys up, slashings, all that kind of stuff, you know what I mean? Wow.

Did you ever have to put down a roving gang? Break it up. Yeah, definitely. You know, like, I forget what parade it was. Might have been Dominican and Puerto Rican Day parade. Oh, man. And they get wild, you know? Were those some of the, like, busiest weekends for callers?

Like, do you remember, like, specific, like, high crime? They don't want you to collar during that time. They want you on the street. Oh, right. You used to get in trouble if you made a collar. If it was a must-arrest, it was a must-er-rest. But if you made, like, a little shodagh. a little shitty collar to get off the street.

You were in some trouble, man. We want you out there policing. We don't want you doing paperwork back in the thing. How do you think the nature of the criminal element in the subway change from 2013 when you began until 22 when you retired in the most starkest way? Honestly, I think it's gotten way worse. Yeah, I mean, it was bad at that time,

but now you just see it like a prevalent thing every day. New York City subway, New York City subway, transit crime in the last two years is up a significant percent. I don't want to miss quote, but we're talking like every category. Slashings, forcible tussing, sexual abuse, robbery. The numbers are skyrocketing through the roof. And it's been following a pattern like that for the last, you know, five years, six years, I want to say.

I want to say like, yeah, around that time. A lot of it's probably driven by the migrant crisis in NYC. Oh, a thousand percent. I mean, you know, I go back there now or whatever, and I see what's being done. Like, you know, the sanctuary city shit, it's not working. You know what I mean?

And the problem, like we were saying, with the migrant crisis, is that, yeah, there's some people just like every other generation. They want to come over here. They do it the right way. You know, they come over. They want a better life.

But in that mix is a bunch of people that don't give a shit about America and they definitely don't care about New York City. They're here to commit crime. One of them, like I was saying before, is Trin de Aragua. You know, they called them the cancer of South America. They're involved in migrant smuggling in Chile.

You know what I mean? Like they dominated. You know what I mean? So then coming over to the U.S., you hear about them in Texas, California, Miami, now New York. And these aren't just gang members. They're significant criminal organizations, transnational organizations, that are just kind of putting their tentacles around, you know, the major cities. Yeah, well, they shot that tourist and the cops just like a month or two ago.

Two separate shootings committed by this gang. They'll shoot anybody. Both times he was trying to shoot at cops, by the way. The guy, the first one, he was a 15-year-old kid. You know, you know the story. He came out of one of those stores in Times Square. The security stopped him, pulled out the gun and just started shooting. He didn't care that.

He turned around. There's a picture of it. He's got the gun behind his back shooting at the cops. Wow. Right. Yeah. And this recent shooting as well, the cop actually survived. Thank God.

You know, he got shot. Yeah. Same thing. Migrant. When you were on the job, did you have anybody, any coworkers close to you that got shot? or you heard about people getting shot on the job? Well, there was a lot of police deaths during my tenure, you know, cop shot. I don't want to misquote anyone's name or say,

I don't know all their names on top of my head, so I don't want to mention some guys without mentioning the other. But one that stuck out in a lot for me was the Randolph Holder. He got assassinated, you know, he was shot in the face. Oh, what was that? Yeah, he was. What was that case? I don't remember.

I'm not sure of the specific. Is he an Asian guy that got assassinated? No, he's a black guy. He's the black dude. He got killed uptown. Yeah. He was an officer for a while, I believe, like 10 years on the job. And he was chasing down a career criminal, I believe it happened by an overpass.

And he got shot in the face. Yeah. Yeah. So I heard that come over to radio. Did you? That's why it was little, you know. I know you mostly were like were taking knives off of people while you were down there. But did you...

That was my specialty. Yeah. Taking big ass knives. I had tons. of knives collars, man. Like my CPWs for knives. I don't know. I think it was just something about me,

like my time in the street and growing up. I knew what to look for. Yeah. Like, I'll never forget one guy who we had come at the academy and we're like on the first day ago. He's like, don't lie to me, man. I was like, you were a cop somewhere else.

Like, there's no way. Like, how do you like, I'm like, nah, man, I just, I'm from the street. I'm from Queens. I know how to do this stuff. I know what? You know what I mean?

They were just like kind of blown away with how much I knew. I knew all the streets like the back of my hand. So, to drive because I knew how to get around or hey go pick this guy up he needs to you know transport stuff like that you know so you know when a guy's walking funny you're like he's carrying it was just certain tells that people give away especially when they see a cop you know they don't even realize they do whatever you see a cop the first thing they do is they grab to check if they have it I'm like what the fuck are you doing I just I just watched you touch it you know what I mean so that was a

tell so do you just say get over here get on the wall sometimes depends it would depend on the circumstances of a situation you know why am I stopping them what they do you know so guy just does this and he looks suspicious you can't really stop it so it would be something along the lines where i would watch his behavior and if he did something to initiate the stop it was like great but hang on so you know stop and frisk is the famous rudy juliani policy that's still in existence and i think Bloomberg michael bloomberg famously used it more even though he was a democrat and supposed to be like you know more liberal he implemented it even more than juliani did and basically that was essentially suspended people's constitutional rights.

And if you fit a profile and a cop had a reasonable suspicion, not even reasonable, like burden of proof, reasonable suspicion that you were committing a crime, if you had drugs, weapons on you, you could just be subject to search. That's all you needed. You didn't even have to be, you know, any act of doing a crime.

So like, how much of that did you employ while you were working? And are there any rules that you have to follow? So there's a caveat to what you just said as far as it comes to drugs and stuff like that. The stop and frist law is supposed to be if you see a bulge, which resembles a gun. If I see a big bulge like this, like I was telling you before when I got arrested, which was totally illegal why they arrested me, and they just thought that I was doing something wrong. They didn't see my knife, which I had stashed away. They saw a big bulge in my pocket.

There's no way that bulge can be interpreted as a weapon or a gun. You understand? Now there's a pipe and it's fitting a pipe and it's in the side of my pocket. I want to stop and frisk you. I want to see what that is. The problem is like most other laws and rules or whatever, people abuse them. So the cops were using the stop and frisk to jump out on anyone and everybody. Oh, I saw an object.

Oh, I saw it. I felt, you know. Or they went to touch here and then they felt back here. How can you feel back here? you didn't even see that. You know, so it kind of... And who are you going to believe? This kid or the cop?

Exactly. So that's where the laws kind of got abused and cops just went crazy with it. You know, stop literally jump out boys, we call them. Right. You used to jump out on me as a kid. Anybody, just jump out on you and just get you. See what you got?

Shake you up. Okay, bye. Okay. So you see, there is a rule around that law. You have to see a bulge. You have to see something that resembles a weapon. Something that can do physical harm, let's say. I see.

I see physical. So you've got to look out for that first. It can't just be a kid. touch in his pocket. Did you try to get people, would you be standing on the platform waiting for the subway to come? Sometimes.

I mean, when was the best time to catch him, I guess? Sometimes it was, going back to what you said, it was spontaneous utterance, where they just say shit. So I would just ask him,

like, what's your pocket? And they would tell me, like, they would be like, I got a knife. Let me see it. And they take it out. And that's plain view. It's kind of like,

shitty on my phone. I don't know if you'd call, it's not really entrapment, but it's just like, it's the rules, you know? like, what do you got? And like, can I see it? Yeah, now it's in plain view.

And now you come with me. You know what I mean? So with things like that. But at the same time, in regular uniform, if you're, that's what we're there for, to deter, you know, crime and stuff like that. So it's kind of hard to get an arrest sometimes or do that when you're sitting there in uniform. So what we would do is we would break into these MTA rooms.

We had access to them. They gave us subway keys. But we would get in there and we would like bend the vents of all the vents that were coming into, aim towards the turnstiles and the subway system and kind of hide back in there. If you ever seen the movie Money Train, they do that. They go with the binoculars. You know, it's a little Hollywood,

but we did that in a really raw and gritty sense. I'm talking about rats all over the places, roaches, just homeless people. You'd run into people that actually live down there in the subway while you were looking for a collar. Like, where you go? I'm going to the vent to look up there, and it'd be like some guy sleeping on the floor.

It was wild, you know? Did you have to pull out? Or, like, would people try to run? Or if you saw him with a knife and you said, get over here, hands on the wall. If I see you with a knife and you're running, I'm going to chase you. But for the most part, whatever, at that time,

you know, I was a stern guy. You know what I mean? Like, I'm real nice and everything, but I don't know how to turn it on. Right. So when those guys, when you mean business, it's the fight of flight. They're going to fight with you or they're going to run.

So you can kind of see that. They're mostly just, you know, all right. Yeah. Fight flight or give up. You know what I mean like that. Right. Right. Do you, when, now that you have these guys, these Venezuelan gangs and these Ecuadorian gangs and these people, like, we don't know what they're about, except they clearly have no regard for life.

Right. Because they're from horrible places and they learn this stuff, right? It's like the early generation, Mario Litos from Cuba. It's the same kind of thing. They bring the violence that they saw in their home countries. Do you, are these people getting processed by, like, immigration? Like you see one of these guys with a knife or a gun. You arrest them in the subway.

You book them at the precinct. Are these people like getting immigration holds? Absolutely not. Not from what I see. I mean, I know that like I said, when you asked me before or whatever, if it's do all these crimes get followed up on? Do you think that we even have the NYPD even has the manpower to follow up on every single migrant that got arrested and do all that or push them to the feds?

They don't. They only would do it if it's a highly publicized. case, like the shooting of the migrants or the guy who said that he's getting all that free money and stuff like that, then they'll go after you and put stuff. But how do you think that happens? That happens from a guy with a gun. Like, that's how you stop

the shootings by getting tough on people that are carrying guns. I agree with you. I mean, I don't see how the laws are making sense too much, but if you can, we have no, there's no bail in New York. It's a bail, the bail reform. You know, they have no bail up to attempted murder.

Can you explain that? So it's a revolving door of crime. So I saw the beginning stages of it when I was a cop, when I would get declined prosecutions from the ADAs. Right. You know, it was like, why are you declining this prosecution? And it was like, some of them were legitimate arrest, but they cherry pick what arrest they want. You know what I mean? It's, it's intricate, but I guess it's been going on forever, you know, it's just the way that the system works. So, you know, the COs, your commanding officer might fight with the ADA. Why are you declining and everything is okay? And I mean, it would be some serious crimes, you know, aggravated assaults, robberies and stuff like that that happened within

the subway system. Right. You know, and they would just decline to prosecute. So the writing was on the wall back then, I guess, and then now, like, you know, after pandemic, just blew up, everything up to attempted murder is literally like a revolving door. These guys that get arrested like 30 times and it's still out on the street. For felonies? Yeah, yeah, for felonies. Yeah, anything up to attempted murder. So I think like attempted murder might be something that they can give you zero cash bail to get out on. but everything below that. So what's below attempt to murder? There's a lot of felons.

Right. So if I do, so if I like just pistol with the guy. If you rob somebody's phone, that's a felony. Yeah. Right? So I can get out without,

I don't even have to put up bail. Zero cash bill. Wow. It's a powder cake, man. It's just waiting for a disaster, you know? Like if I'm a criminal, especially from another country where I don't even really respect the law like that,

fuck the rules or whatever, come here doing whatever I want. Why would I care to stay? to stop doing it if I'm getting out of jail every time I do this. I mean, all right, it's like work. Like, all right, I'm robbing somebody. I got myself, I did this, whatever.

I got caught today. I got to spend a night in jail. But I'll be out tomorrow, so I'll go back to work. You know, that's right. You know, it's a revolving door. And they're figuring that out. Well, they've already figured it out. Yeah, they'll figure it out.

And that's why cops are quitting or retiring early at like a record clip. Dude. So what's the NYPD? How it was 150 years old, something like that, whatever. I think it was, you know, enacted, maybe 1860s, within the last five or 10 years,

and don't quote me on this exactly, but within the last five or 10 years, it's been the biggest exodus of cops from the New York City Police Department in its history since its origination. That's crazy. Crazy. That's crazy.

And the thing is, they're not refilling the ranks of all the guys that are retiring. So not only are you retiring, you're not getting an influx of new people coming in. And the influx that you might be getting is so bottom of the barrel. Yeah, they're fat Jamaican ladies,

as we said. They're TSA workers. And now they're carrying a badge and it's the typical motor vehicle employee that all of a sudden has a gun in a shield now. You know what I mean? It's crazy. It's like they lowered the standards so much. So I was talking to a friend of mine. And this guy was a legend in the academy.

You know, like he trained everybody. He was in the academy for 25, 30 years. People all know who I'm talking about. And I sat on the desk with him one night and we were speaking about it. And he was just saying these new recruits. I would never want to work with them. Never want to work with them. They can't even get over a wall.

So I was like, so what do you do? Like, upper echelon is just telling them to walk around the wall. I'm like, so you pass them? He's like, what is he going to do? He's being told to do something. We need, boost the number. What is it that they can't do? Oh, they can do everything except get over the wall.

Tell them to close the door and walk around it. It's like those kind of things. You know what I mean? So when you're changing the standards, we call it the JST, they made that super lax. You just have to run a mile and a half. I don't even think you have to run anymore. You know, like, they took away all these things to kind of get a new influx of candidates, but you're not getting the best of the best.

No. You know, which is really relevant to recent day. I don't know if you just saw cop was placed on modified duty. Look like it was in the Bronx. His partner, somebody's recording this on the street. His partner isn't in a brawl with a guy. They're going at it, whatever. They're fighting back and forth.

He's literally so nonchalantly. You wouldn't even thought he was a cop. He's on the radio just standing there. just literally looking around or whatever. Like he's lost in space. Watching his partner and go toe to toe to with this guy. Wow.

You imagine that? I'll tell you, if I was a cop with that guy and we got back to the priest and I would throw hands with him. I'd throw hands with shit in the locker room. I would throw hands with, we're going to fight, me and you. Is you supposed to have my back? Like, I'm supposed to have yours. You just left me out there, you know?

It would be a problem. I have a problem with that. Did you have to get ones when you were a cop? It was a little hazing involved in the beginning. It was two guys in the unit. Oh, no, I meant with like a perp. Oh, me get on one-on-on-one? Oh, okay, yeah, I thought you meant like,

get-on-one with another cop. Yeah, yeah, all the time. Holy shit, knuckle up. Knuckle up, straight up, yeah. You'd have to fight. You had to throw hands. Like, hey, get up. No, I don't want to get up.

Get up, bro. No, I don't want to get up. I'm going to ask you one more time to get out. I used to just do three. I didn't really like to go. Because once you say it so many times, your words lose power. Right, you know what I mean?

Right. So you're telling the guy to get up because you're arrested. Get up. Yeah, you're under arrest. get up. Fuck you. You're under rest. Get up.

I'm going to ask you one more time. And then the hands come. So, you know, I got a background in martial arts when I was a kid and stuff like that. So I train. I'm confident in what I'm in my abilities to know how to handle myself. You know what I mean? So, you know, you start fighting. And when you go to grab the arm, the fist comes up right away.

You know, you get punched. You know, I've got to be punched in the face. Yeah. And do you sometimes did you kind of hope for that? Because you're like, I want to fucking, I want to fuck this dude up. I just won't just touch me, bro. bro, touch me. Oh, the touch me?

Yeah. Not like in that situation when you're under arrest, but like when they egg you on. That's what I mean. Like if he gets in your, if somebody gets in your, did anybody do that?

Get in your face, push you and then you just take off on him. The taunting gets to a point. So I'll tell you a story with one of my old partners. I love this guy to death. He's great. But he's very hands on. He should have been a cop in the fucking 80s.

He smashes people around. Doesn't care. Like, bro, are you nuts? You're going to get like, it's all on camera. I don't give a fuck. Whatever. you know, we're on one side of the,

so we're at 74th Street at Roosevelt. It's an interchange for many trains. So there's one side of platform another side of platform. EF7, couple trains stopped there. There's a kid on the other side of platform going like this. He's giving him the finger or whatever, you know, and he's like, all right. And now he's getting

a little more vulgar with it, and he's shouting. So my part, he can't take it. He should have been a cop in the 80s. I'm telling him, trigger temper. He was a Marine. So, you know, he's a tough motherfucker. He comes down the stairs, whatever, and starts fucking this kid up. Beat the shit out of him.

He's like, what did you say? You said, fuck me. He's like, yeah, fuck you. Punch him right in the mouth. Wow. Hit him right in the face. That's the old school guy. He got in trouble for it and everything.

But you know what? You work with those kind of guys. I like that. I mean, and that's what you deal with, you know? So there was times, you know, I was always level-headed. I was cool, you know what I mean? But there was times where I got pushed like that. One time I was in Coney Island.

And, you know, during the summer detail, they would send some people down there. one of the sergeants I was working with at the time, whatever, you know, we would do plainclothes stuff and stuff like that. Sometimes just me and him. He was an FIO. So it was a field intelligence officer. So he had the ability to cultivate informants and stuff like that,

and he had a direct line to Intel. You know what I mean? So anybody that's connected to Intel, you're somebody of importance or you know someone important on the job. You know what I mean? So, you know, we went down to Coney Island once, and we were just chilling, man.

It was like a regular day. We were in uniform. And this guy must have had too much. much to drink. He starts talking shit. We were by the boardwalk or whatever. And he goes, my partner, the, the sergeant goes to, like, arrest one of his friends, right? And he's like, put this guy in cuffs. So when there's that, a lot of people like that, we got a van waiting. Because you can't, like, take, you just got to give him to the van, put him in the van, and then they'll transport, especially when there's that large crowds or whatever. And this guy was

pissed that we locked up his friend. He's like, oh, you know, you don't think, you're fucking pussy or whatever. Fuck both the other. I would, that guy. guy, I was begging for him to touch me to do something. Because the stuff that he was saying was like, we were ready. So we wanted it up day to rest of him because he put his hands on the sergeant. He thought that he could get close enough with, you know, all the phone or whatever. And he like tapped the sergeant like this and that's all we needed. Nice.

We tuned them up a little. You tune them up. You tune them up. You tune them on the ground. I start right away with the cuffs. I put those cuffs. You want to fight with me? I tell him right away, don't fight.

Don't fight with me, you know? Well, my famous thing was, don't make me run. Because I put on some weights. I wasn't really ready to fucking boot the right. I was, don't make me run. Don't just don't make me run. You know, I would yell it or whatever. And they would kind of like mess with their psyche.

They wouldn't run. What was the best fight you had? Meaning like, what was like the street? No, no, I'm talking about where, yeah, somebody knuckled up and they were kind of, it was like a fair fight. Like he was almost getting you. We don't fight for him. I don't fight for him. What do you mean?

So how do you describe it? If I know I'm going to have a problem with you. Like I'm a big guy. Somebody in my eyes eyes. Six foot six and I'm high out of my mind. PCP and I'm talking big shit and I and maybe I punch you I push you there's what do to me there's no knuckle back with you I'm taking out of my ass and I'm going straight for your shins I'm going to swipe your legs out of you I'm going to hit you as hard as I can or whatever

until you feel that pain that you you know what I mean that stinging pain or whatever or um well I mean you ask you two questions here so like there's one that I could think of like a brawl that went crazy but then like a one-on-one there wasn't any one-on-one we don't fight for it Like if in the NYPD, we're taught not to fight fair. Yeah. If you're one, we're two. If you're three, we're four. If you're five, we're ten.

That's the way it goes. We don't lose. We don't lose. That's simple. Biggest gang in New York City. We don't lose. So, you know, that being said, there was, you know, some significant fights. But if it was a big guy like you, let's say, or somebody that I was like,

damn, I'm going to have a problem with this guy or whatever. It was mace, ass. And sometimes the mace sucks because you don't want, if you mace a guy and you rest of, some around with him, you get it in your eyes, it's all over your clothes, and it makes it ten times harder to fight. What's the ASP? The ASP is the expendable baton.

Right. Extendable baton. So if you think there's a chance that you could lose in a stand-up fade, you're taking your baton out and taking their legs. I would already have it in my hand sometimes if I knew I was going to fight,

because if you hold that, you hit somebody, if you punch with that, it's almost like brass knuckles or something. You know, you have like a roll of quarters in your hand. Boom. Oh, that thing hurts.

Yeah, it does damage. I've hit people with that, man. I don't know. I hit a guy once that was so high, bro. I don't know how he didn't get effective from it. He was off his mind. It was probably off of PCP. Yeah.

Right? I tapped him. I tapped myself with that thing and I see stars. I tapped him just punk, like one of those or whatever, and it didn't even get his attention. Okay. Now, you know, they teach you in the academy, like swing like this. Like, yeah, stream they like this.

I'm fucking baseball batting this guy's shins. Like, bah, like Babe Ruth style. You know what I mean? Going hard. And that just made. basically maybe, you know, it was like somebody annoying at your clothes like this, like that kind of annoyance, you know, like that's how it affected him. That guy, you can't take him down.

You got to call ESU. They got to, they can wrap them up in a burrito called the burrito. What about your taser, though? Wouldn't even if, I didn't have a taser at that time. Oh, because you're, if you're playing clothes. We were allowed to carry them. At that time, I think it was only sergeants that had them, but we were allowed to carry them in plain clothes.

Because I feel like that's an effective thing for like. I've seen tasers, not work on people. Really? I've seen a guy, the sergeant was chasing this fucking guy one time. And I swear this, he dropped his radio is the only reason why I knew he was chasing him. I saw his radio on the floor. I lost sight of him. And I go down to get the radio and the sergeant's running after this guy.

He tased him. I saw the things go out. The guy ripped him out of his thing, kept running. Ripped him right out of his side and kept running. Who knows what drugs he was on. Right. You know what I mean? So, but I have seen the tays of work, which is kind of cool.

Same thing. You know, they lock up and they stop. I mean, like, and I know that sometimes there's accidental deaths, but like, we don't know what happened just before the cameras started rolling. Right. Dude, it's like, yeah, man, it's a tough job. It really, if you're doing it right, if you're actually, like, trying to help,

it seems like a tough job. But if you're a fat Jamaican lady who seems like they're hiring, it's like they're going to look the other way while their partners get their ass beat by a dude that's been smoking angel dust, you know? I think that's exactly what's going on. The cops are getting villainized,

whether they do their job or they don't do the job. Yeah. So it's kind of like, if I'm going to get paid either way, why am I even going to do anything? And that's shameful, you know, because you have to take some kind of police action. Like I said, was there times that I turn my head to certain things?

Sure. What? Serious crimes or, like, if there was ever somebody getting hurt, then I definitely wouldn't turn my head, you know what I mean? Like, you're there to help, you know? There was some scumbag bosses, though, that would.

Like, you know, like, if you saw somebody, like trying to wave you down, they'd be like, keep driving, keep driving, you know? Yeah, there was a lot of that. Yeah, I got to get to my kids a little league game. I got to get to the bar. No, yeah, I want to go home, whatever.

I got something to do. There was a lot of that. But, you know, I guess with the cameras, you know, it kind of changed up a little bit. Okay. So when did cameras, what did body camps come into play? I want to say the pilot program came in 15, 16, somewhere around there. But it wasn't completely rolled out to the department until I want to say maybe 18. Okay.

But you're playing close. I'm playing close. They didn't, we didn't have to have it. It wasn't necessary. Because you're playing close. Right. So you obviously. enjoyed that more because you're you're busting higher level crime um did you ever feel

man that's it seems it seems pretty fucking cool to be playing clothes i don't know i gotta be honest with you it seems like it seems like you get to be in your own like spy movie all the time thousand percent man it was you could do pretty much what whatever you wanted throughout the day you know with some leeway you know what i mean especially there was no cameras no tracker yeah It was a lot of fun, but at the same time, you had responsibilities. You weren't just in the crime team for show. You know, they wanted your, they wanted numbers from you. Right.

They expected numbers. There was guys that have been kicked off the crime team. A lot of guys get kicked out of the crime teams. They think like, oh, it's cool now. You know, I'm at, when you, when you hit that mark, you're kind of like separated from the regular, you know, B cops or the, you know, the patrol cops or whatever. It's almost like a step up, you know what I mean? So it's a coveted position. In the beginning, I didn't even really look at that.

I actually wanted to go field intelligence officer. I wanted to be the assistant to the field intelligence officer, cultivate some informants. I'm good with talking with people, you know what I mean? So it was like I related to some of those guys from the street. I could talk with them. I could probably maybe turn them, you know? There was a lot of guys that used to run in. And I used to see them out in the bars.

I didn't out them and let them know that they were fucking informants and stuff, whatever. But these guys are actively talking to the cops while doing criminal shit in the Queens, Brooklyn, surrounding areas. What kind of rat is committing suburbies? What kind of CIA is? A guy who gets caught for something so stupid that he's actually going to do jail time for because of his record will spill the beans faster than anyone. For a misdemeanor that might be like, yo, this is my 10th misdemeanor or like, I got a felony case.

They told me if I get locked up and doing the full felony. Like, you don't know some of their cases. You know, they might have attempted murder case and the conditions of their parole. They're not even allowed to be out of their house. So how are you going to explain to your parole officer or whoever, the judge, that you just got locked off a death disservice or smoking weed in public or you know what I mean? Right. Because a lot of times, like I said,

back then we used to be able to run names over the radio. So it was different. Now they got phones and shit. So if Central came back over the radio and you were waiting for a disposition, you didn't know the guy's record. You didn't know what he did. She just told you he's going or he's not. So if he's not going, you let him go. Now they pull up your name.

These cops can see every single thing you did and it's a different, you can just get arrested. But then what information would they have? that a subway cop would even want, I guess, is... Depends on where you're from. That's true. What neighborhood you're in? That's the thing.

Everybody takes the subway. You know what I mean? Like, especially if you're from those neighborhoods where shit's going on. You know what I mean? Like, for example, I cultivated, I brought an informant. I cultivated this informant. I told him, I was like, he was a dancer. Yeah, he was from the Bronx.

He was from a Bronx. Okay, he's probably still out there. Who knows? I introduced him to the FIO, and I was like, this kid's a dancer. why he wants to talk. They get paid for this shit. So it's kind of incentivized too for them.

You know what I mean? So it's like, you know, and he would give us like, yo, all right, this guy, he's, this guy just dances. This guy robs people. This guy sells drugs. This, you were getting all the information. You know what I mean? So it's like, you let them live.

Yeah. You know what I mean? But then you were getting it on the back end with all the information. So when I had cultivated him, I thought that was kind of cool, you know, I was like, well, you know, he's giving us a lot of shit. And it was scumbed guy. like you've seen their records, you know, they had like dirty crimes. You know what I mean?

So it was like, I didn't mind like, yeah, put that fucker in jail. You know, you deserve it. Totally. So it was like, you know, that was the cool part about it. That's what I mean. And we were saying that off camera, like you're into the people in the neighborhood, the wise guys that you grew up with, they probably wouldn't have looked down on you for choosing to be a cop, especially a subway cop because everybody, including high-level criminals, want the streets to be.

be clean. They want these like low level scumbags in jail. We all want that. I wanted that as a high level drug trafficker. I didn't want, you know, I'd be like, yeah, good cops. Take care of, uh, you know, let me, let me live in peace. Right. You know?

I agree with you. I mean, and that was a sentiment with the guys I grew up with. Yeah. And a lot of those guys. For me, it was just a little different though, you know, because regardless, even though I was a solid dude, I always have been and nobody, I never rattled, or nobody ever got in trouble with the things that I did, you know, and I still would see these guys.

It's just a bad look sometimes to say that you're wearing blue. Right. Because you just in the back of your head never know, is this guy going to choose me or is he going to choose the blue? You know what I mean? So people distance themselves from you. You know, it's just natural. Right.

Did that hurt? Like, did that kind of, to have the old neighborhood sort of turn their back on you? I wouldn't say they turn their back on me. It did bother me that some guys would be, like, oh, don't say that, you know, he's a cop, he's a cop. Like, that shit annoyed me. Because I'm like, I don't give a fuck what you're doing right now. You could do whatever you want, you know what I mean?

I'm a cop. That's my job. You know what I mean? I'm not a cop. I'm Tony. You know what I mean? That's my name. I do what I want to do.

That's my thing. But, you know, I don't bleed blue and take it home with me. And that's my life. That wasn't me. I wasn't that guy. So you could smoke weed and I wouldn't care at the time. It was illegal. You know, let's say things like that.

You could have a dice game. What the fuck would I kid? You know what I mean? Maybe I would want to get in. I couldn't have able illegally. But the things that I love to do as a kid are now very legal as long as you're doing with the government. You know what I mean? So that's what I meant when I said harmless vices and harmless crimes like things like that.

You know what I mean? So it wasn't like those guys, even though a lot of them, you know, they were sons of Maidman or like the guy three houses down. I grew up down the guy that grew up three houses away from me is doing 30 years right now. You know what I mean? He's with the West Side. You know? So, you know, he's.

owned the local deli. There was things or whatever that, you know, I avoided just for my own well-being and their own well-being because, you know, when you get on the NYPD, you're not allowed to associate with known criminals. Right. That's one of the rules. So a very loose rule, though.

Yeah. Very loose, you know, because you'll see, like I said before, with my time in the catering, you know, and one guy's an outlawed biker, the other guy's a lieutenant, you know? One guy's an FBI agent, the other's a mobster, and they're at the same party. So go figure. Right.

But, you know, work in subway crimes, I imagine that that part of the police force is there's not that much opportunity for corruption. Exactly. When you're collaring, you know, fentanyl addicts and people swiping cell phones. Which is exactly, you're pretty quick, Johnny. That's exactly one of the reasons why I figured it would be one of the best places for me. Because I would, I hung out in so many different neighborhoods. I can never put myself in a position to say like, damn. I'm going to be working in the 7-9 precinct or whatever.

Like I know fucking Tyrone smells weed out of that spot, whatever, you know? I can't work in the 104 in Middle Village because I know Vinnie's got the cafe that I like to go in and they run the numbers. Right. So it was like things like that. So many conflicts of interest. And you were pulling up in a Mercedes to work. So imagine being from the 7-9. Oh, they would have thought I was on a take.

Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did well for myself before, you know, I was on the job. You know, I saved some money and I did O'R. And, you know, my thing was cars. I like cars or whatever. So I had a nice Mercedes. Alexis and nice Mercedes, you know.

But cops are haters, man. They're the biggest haters. You'll notice, like, the number one cops that call, I have a friend that works in IAB. The number one people that call on cops are other cops. Snitching on them. That's the way it is. He said the public rarely even calls.

It's one cop usually calling about another. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And he's a supervisor, so all that shit passes by his desk. There's all, it seems like the gossip in the police force is like what makes the job bearable. It's like how you pass. For sure. called the high school with guns.

Who's, who's having an affair with this other cop? They're all fucking each other. It's, you know, this guy is dating the, this politician's, you know,

X or whatever. That's, his cousins, his wife's a chief or this one, his father, so and so. It's all the same shit. Yeah.

So the years are moving by. Did you see the encroachment of fentanyl moving up to the pandemic, working, playing clothes? Was that a big thing out there? Um, so the concentrated areas for the drugs. Yeah. Okay.

And you would see a lot of drug addicts in the system. And these are not the people you're stopping. You jump that test out. You walk to that gate. You'll be my guest. I'm not fucking stopping you. You know what I mean? Because you just don't even want to touch him.

Don't even want to get close. Like I seen one guy picking bugs off himself. Literally like going in his pants and flinging off bugs. Like, you know? Every New Yorker's biggest fear, bed bugs. This guy's walking around. Oh, forget it. And he's got them all on his crotch and everything.

I'm like, you want to touch that and bring that home? You know how many times it was bedbugs outbreaks in the precinct? You would get fucking chastised or whatever if you brought back somebody that looked like that. They didn't like it. You got punished if you walked in the door with that. Somebody knew that they assigned you that collar because maybe you didn't have one for the month

or you pissed somebody off. And they called it a bag of shit. It's like, who brought in this bag of shit? Wow. It was like, oh, like you stink up the whole cells. It's just terrible. Okay, so for the junkies that are just running around the subway system, you do nothing about them.

Pretty much now. They got car blanche. And most cars will tell you this, unless there is a homeless initiative, we'll call homeless outreach, and they'll come and get them and stuff like that. But there's really nothing besides loitering

that's illegal about walking around the subway station. You know what I mean? Or hopping on one cart and then going to the other one, doing it all night. So when fentanyl that came around, what you saw was a change in that to an extent. It was more like the walking dead. You know, like zombie land.

You saw the dope The dope feeling, you know, like you saw that on 125th and Lex Like I said, that's methadone Classic heroin New York Symptoms behavior. Yeah.

Right. Guy touches his head down to his ankles Comes back up or whatever He looks like a gymnast That's the dope feeling. Uh-huh. So. You know, you still saw that.

That was there. But those are those old addicts that been fucking shooting this stuff since the 80s. They don't die. They're going to be there. They're still there. The new group,

the younger, group was when you saw the fentanyl. And that's where you saw like ravaged behavior. And I mean, the high spot for it in the city, in my opinion, was 125th in Lex. Okay. So Harlem. The old Pat, Harlem. Yeah.

You know, it was a run on the sixth line. Once you walked upstairs, we used to get detailed there all the time. If you worked in Manhattan, if you worked an event, you knew that you had maybe had to be there. And it sucked because it was such a shinny corner. But there was always a detail there as far as transit. So are you, and these are like young people? younger people? Well, what's younger

than like your average maybe 50, 6-year-old heroin addict that's been around the street? You know he's got like maybe 20 years on the street. We're talking like the newer generation, maybe like 5, 10, maybe tops of years on the street, a couple years on the street, running and hustling or whatever.

You saw them in the deterioration of them, you know? And you'd ask him what they'd do, you know? Remember it was like bad salts? They were doing that one time? I was eating somebody's face. Yeah. Something like that.

That's the level of behavior. Wow. Excuse me. That's the level of behavior that you saw in those areas. Wow. From fentanyl. From fentanyl, yeah. And you, did you witness some of that?

Did you call her anything that was super like fentanyl driven? No, thank God. I never had to deal with it. Did you ever take drugs off people? Yes. Yes. I had a lot of drug arrests. What did you see?

Heroin, crack mostly. Okay. So crack still? Crack was around. I wonder if that's still around. It is still around. But nowadays, I don't know how much, but I know it's still around. It was about around back then.

Time square. Things change now so much that people don't even do Coke anymore. No. It's too si. Everybody's talking about toocy. You know where that comes from? That's the Colombians. That's right.

Yeah, that's right. Wow. So somebody, a junkie gets arrested with possession? He's going in? So it depends. Okay? Remember what I told you before? CEO's complaining, news, this and that.

They know what goes on in their precinct is CEO. If they want to get, it's political at that point. If they want to get, it's political at that point. or they want to show that they're doing their job and making a difference in the community, they'll do an initiative. That initiative might be, we're going to put a big spotlight on this corner because it's a shooting post and we have cops there. So for that instance, when there's a heavy intake of drugs and drug addicts and just those zombies

walk in there, they're going more community-based. You know what I mean? They're getting the outreach groups and stuff like that. So they're not really policing drug possession. You know what I'm trying to say? Gotcha. Yeah, it's moved more towards the softer. hand of the law. Right, because if it's not, if you could beat somebody up and you're getting

R&R'd, if you got a shot of heroin, I imagine you're also going to get out without bail. Yeah. You're not going to need a bail, you know? For what? Like I said, it's all the way up to attempt to murder. So you could, you could rob somebody's phone, have a bag of heroin in your pocket, and be totally disorderly and probably get charged with those three and be right out. Wow. So what do you recommend for like a tourist or somebody that lives in New York, a civilian, you know, Somebody who lives in Manhattan and they just ride the subway because they're just one of the damned. They've got to do that shit. What do you recommend?

Because you can't have a gun in New York. There's no concealed carry laws. What can they do to prevent being assaulted, pickpocketed? But assaulted definitely because that's the most serious of the usually what's happening to people or slashed. Right. You know? Yeah. recently, as you see, a lot of people getting punched in the face.

And that started a long time ago. I don't know if you remember Mike Tyson talks about it. They used to play a knockout game or whatever. Just knock people out. You heard about that shit happening, you know? When I was growing up, it was famous for the Bloods to be like, who that? And then you turn around and they slice your face. That was the thing growing up, you know?

So I think now with them actually attacking civilians and knocking them out, you know, it's led to you have to be more aware of your surrounding situational awareness is paramount in New York, you know what I mean? So, you know, when you're in the subway, it's definitely don't stand too close to the

platform, stuff like that, you know, watch your back, don't have your head buried in your phone, you know, just the typical things that you might recommend to, you know, anyone that's coming into New York City or any other big city, you know? Make sure you're wallets or your front pockets and stuff like that because pig pocket and so

and robberies, they happen. Don't fall asleep on the train? Definitely don't fall asleep. I would avoid the subway at night all the way. All the way. I mean, I'm talking about daytime here. Yeah, I'm talking about just a regular day. Because like I said, things that happen in the day.

Officers getting shot. The girl I told you, that happened during daylight, 14th Street. You know what I mean? So after 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, don't ride the subway. Yeah, I would say, you know, the old saying, it's 10 o'clock. Do you know what you're choosing? After 10 o'clock, nothing really happens that's particularly safe,

especially in the subway system. So if you're a tourist, you know, or somebody just visit in the city, I would try to avoid it as much as you can. But what can they carry? What's a white girl that lives in bed stye? Mace.

Mace is the safest thing. Yeah, cops, you can buy it pretty much at every store. Cops won't really judge you for having Mace. You know, I used to do bag checks a lot in the subway, you know, where you look in people's bag,

the random bag search or whatever, you know what I mean? So you find some real comical stuff in there. Really? Never came across a weapon, per se, like a gun, even though some cops have arrested people for finding guns in their bags.

It's weird that you would actually go to the booth and open up your bag at the little table and when you know you have a gun in there. Oh. You know? I didn't even know about this random bag check thing. So the New York City implemented this years ago. It's supposed to be random.

And I believe it was enacted after 9-11. Right. Check, you know, for bombs and explosives or something like that. They enacted a set of rules that dictates rules and regulations to the riders and how you're supposed to behave with them. New York City subway system. And one of those rules is that you're allowed to be searched at random on entry into any entry of the New York City subway system, any stop, anywhere in the whole city.

So they would be random. A lot of the times we'd have them at sensitive locations, but it might just be Woodhaven Boulevard on the J-line. Right. You know what I mean? And you might get a guy that had no idea that you were going to be there and just kind of gets caught or freezes or whatever. Sometimes they would run.

They would see you and be like, oh, fuck this. We were like, hey, can I check your bag? And they'd be like, no. You know, you really can't say anything. You just can't let them into the subway. Oh, I see. I see. Interesting.

So it's kind of like the airport. Kind of. Like you're subject to random search. Right. Now, about that, because, you know, we see every generation or so, we see a bomb go off in, like, a subway station in Russia and the subway station in Spain. Like, are New York's best and brightest that these fat Jamaican ladies are. Are they the ones, are they our first line of defense against terrorism in the New York City Subways? Or what is the, are there federal agents that are working amongst you guys that you don't even know about?

Right. So, regardless of what you see on the front lines, there's always somebody behind this. Right. You know, kind of controlling things. So I think that, you know, I don't want to completely shit on the NYPD here, whatever. I think they're a respected organization. They've been around for a long time. I just think that they're going through some growing pains right now.

Sure. You know, with. whole city is. The whole political climate and the crime and everything else. But at the same time, you know, there's a lot of qualified gentleman behind the scenes that when shit hits the fan, I believe you'll call and they'll take care of it kind of thing, you know, and those being those units that you said more specialized behind the scenes. Right.

You know, are they jointly working with the FBI? Thousand percent. The NYPD has the exact same technology that the FBI uses. So they work tandem, you know, hand-to-hand with each other. You have joint federal task forces. regards to terrorism in regards to drugs. They called Haida, you know, so. But I don't know.

I mean, the fact that there's not even cameras in the subway cars to me is like so 20th century. I'm shocked. That's, I'm about to go get in a fight, bro. I'm about to go beat somebody up in the subway, bro. It's going to happen.

So how did you, how did this whole career end? You weren't a cop for very long, you know? I did just under 10 years. Yeah. Yeah, just under 10 years.

So I was supposed to get sworn on in 12 with the whole undercover thing. And, And it's funny though because, so going from like plain clothes, like being in there, I attracted the attention of even more people that wanted to recruit me to go undercover. So I was at this actually, it was at a dinner. It was an Italian charity's dinner. And same thing. I had met an individual who was like, yo, I used to do undercover work.

He was older and stuff like that. Same connection I had in the chief of department's office introduced us and stuff like that. Got me a meeting with Bill Brett. police commissioner at the time. You know what I mean? James Jay Bratton. Second round, because he was a commissioner before.

Then I think he went out to L.A. He came here to L.A. And I cleaned up the city and did all that stuff. And I had a one-on-one with Bratton. We sat down or whatever and we talked and, you know, he heard about me. He said I was doing good things in the transit system where I don't want to go to do undercover

and all this kind of stuff. And I politely turned it down, you know. And then the last, there was only, it was three times. That was the first. That was the second. third time, I was with the crime team, actually. Right?

We went to this spot in Queens. Again, what did I say before? Cops and mobsers rubbed together. It's a spot on Queens Boulevard. We go to the Italian Association. Okay? So the NYPD has all these clubs and associations. Right.

And you kind of just intermingling with the community kind of. So we go to the Italian Association. And there was an inspector that I knew they. Tony, I know for years. I worked his daughter Sweet 16 when I was in the caterer business. This is how long ago this was. Get over here. What are you doing?

He used to be doing narcotics. He did narcotics and Ben Stein arrested Jay Z back in the day. He told me a Mawkes Projects. Yeah. So this guy and now he's a D.I. Yeah. D.I. is what? a deputy inspector.

Okay. He was maybe a full bird at the time, but he was somewhere up there, one of the other. Wow. Yeah. So he was like, why don't you want to do narcotics? Come into narcotics. You got to come in. You don't have to do undercover.

Don't worry. I know we got you like, just come in. Come over to narcotics. You'll be good. you know, have you as an investigator. Does your pay go up? Yeah, because then you get on your track, you know what I mean,

to get your detective shield. So there was a couple times where, you know, that was why they wanted me really, they were like, they were floating that. You were on the cover, you, you're in a head, you get your detective shield, blah, blah, blah. It's like a dream that they sell you. Yeah.

You were a good cop. I was good. I was active. I took my time and turned my head when I needed to, but when shit, and I was the guy you wanted there when shit went down because I wasn't scared

and I was used to the, you know, I grew up around that. So it was nothing for me to walk into the project. Some of these kids at work was the first time they ever stepped in a project building. Right. It's a whole different animal. And they hear the stories. They get scared.

I wasn't like that. You know what I mean? Not saying I didn't have fear. Of course, I have fear of the unknown. You can get shot at any time, whatever. But it was more along the lines is I'm not out of my element here. I'm good. You know what I mean?

Unbeknownst to that inspector at that time, one of the guys in the unit was fucking dying to get on to the narcotics team. He went on like three different interviews trying to get on his team. And he's next to me. So that was when it kind of like got out a little bit more like, yo, this kid's like hooked up, you know, he's got like connections all over the place, you know. So you just, you just ended it. You said, I'm going to retire and move to Vegas. Yeah, pretty much, you know, I had enough of it.

I had the opportunity to go back. So I wound up getting hurt and then after I got hurt, you know, I wound up in the medical division. Okay. This is now when the medical division is rocking and rolling. I mean, pandemic is crazy. The riots are all over the place. The radio's going nuts. Cops getting hurt.

all the, you know, they needed someone to do the paperwork, all that kind of stuff or whatever. It really wasn't a fun time. Not for cops on the street and definitely not for cops that were stuck inside or whatever else. You know, it was just a shit show all the way around. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, what are you doing now? Tell us where we can find you. So I retired in 22. Didn't really want to know what I wanted to do with my life. But I started a podcast. Like, you're a little inspiration from you, I think, John. I see your success, man. You know, I'm trying to follow on your footsteps.

It's called Corruption Connection. It's on YouTube. It's more of a crime noir kind of thing. You know, like the old gum shoe detectives talking about the crime stories. I talk about a lot of unheard mafia stories. Some things that, you know, people are interested in nowadays. Mob genre's huge.

And, you know, things like that. My life and time in the NYPD growing up in New York City. You know, stuff like that. Yeah. Cool. Corruption connection on YouTube. On YouTube. Plug.

Instagram? Yeah, I'm on Instagram as well. Corruption connection. Yeah, the whole thing. Okay, great. So we're going to switch over to the Patreon. And let's talk about some of that mob shit. But man, what a fascinating job.

That's like to the layperson. I know it's normal for you. But yeah, that's pretty crazy, man. What was your favorite thing about the job and least favorite thing before we get out of here? The favorite thing I'd have to say was the freedom when I was in plain clothes. I mean, we did pretty much whatever we wanted within reason. We had Carl Blanche in the whole city. We had a van because we were all around with a sergeant.

So it was unmarked. Nobody knew we were cops. So you could just imagine some of the trouble we would get into. Man. Power? No cameras. Do you feel like that was... I don't know if it was power, but it was definitely the connections.

You know what I mean? It was like, hey, what do you do? Oh, he's under the NYPD banner. You know what I mean? So they didn't know who you were, but they knew that you were somehow affiliated with that and nobody, you know... But I don't think the power to arrest somebody that's being a cock sucker. And you could just, bam, hit him in the face, cuff him and throw him into the van. Like, that's got to feel good.

This guy's a scumbag. It's fun getting your frustrations out on the people that deserve it. I'll tell you that much. You know what I mean? Like, like I said, that guy moutting off to me in Coney Island or whatever. It was a pleasure to put those cuffs as tight as I could and throw around with him a little. Or even the guy, like I said, that I throw hands with or whatever, you know. I don't fight fair, but you'll respect the guy that wants to actually throw hands with you, you know?

And when my thing was, when the cuffs were on, it was over. Right. That was it. You know, I wasn't a scumbag to, like, you know, you're a cuff, then I'm going to kick you down the stairs. is not. I didn't do that kind of stuff. Right. But, you know, I would go. What was your least favorite part about the job? Bureaucratical bullshit, bro.

Everything is red tape. You can't get things done. Like I said, with the arrests. How am I making these quality arrests and the DAs refusing to prosecute? Or the sergeant's telling me, don't go out and make an arrest today. We want physical presence and stuff like that. It was just a lot of red tape and a lot of roads that led back to nowhere. Meaning this guy's following this guy's order. It was following this guy's order.

and this guy at the top don't even know what the fuck he's talking about. So the order is kind of like a game of telephone that just gets so wired down that the things that we did, as cops sometimes, just didn't make any sense. Yeah. You know, wholly run. Every cop says that about the higher-ups.

What do you think Eric Adams... They're out of touch with the street. That's what it is. Do you think Eric Adams is bad for the city as a whole? It's a bad mayor? I think so. He's making a lot of different... He's making a lot of bad moves right now.

You know what I mean? Being seen out in public. He calls himself the swagger mayor. Some of the things that he's saying, it's crazy, you know. I'm not an Eric Adam fans or a hater or whatever, but I think that we could find somebody a little more qualified.

We're the New York City. We're the best. You can't find somebody a little more qualified, you know? Makes me think or whatever that maybe there's a little something deeper behind it. You know what I mean? Maybe they want somebody like that who's easily controllable or, you know, doing that kind of thing

because his priority is not the city. You could see that. Right. He was in Miami or whatever every couple of weeks, you know? Exactly. How you're running the city from South Beach? Yeah. Exactly.

Wow. Well, I hope it turns for the best. I mean, everything swings back. I just don't know how long it's going to be in this rut, you know, because it's my favorite city on earth. Mine too. I miss the food, man. Of course, of course. You guys got shit food out of here.

You think you know what pizza is, but you don't. That's a fact. I totally agree with you. Tony, corruption connection. Thanks so much for coming by, brother. That was great. Appreciate you having me, man. It's been a pleasure, man.

Thank you. All right. Thanks, guys. We'll see you on Patreon. Peace.