The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1161: Tegan Broadwater | How a White Cop Infiltrated the Crips Part Two
Episode Date: May 29, 2025Undercover work is psychological warfare in designer jeans. Ex-cop Tegan Broadwater explains how authenticity beats acting when lives are on the line. [Pt. 2/2 — Find Pt. 1/2 here!]Jordan's... must reads (including books from this episode): AcceleratEdFull show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1161What We Discuss with Tegan Broadwater:How Tegan Broadwater went undercover and infiltrated the Crips gang for 18 months, working mostly off-the-books without proper backup or supervision.What happened when Tegan discovered a corrupt police officer selling information to gang members and warning them of raids — while superiors ignored his detailed complaint and evidence.How budget constraints forced dangerous solo operations rather than proper surveillance teams, using a single patrol officer as backup via an open phone line.How Tegan's efforts successfully built a 51-person conspiracy case with FBI partnership, resulting in arrests averaging 19-year sentences and solving nine cold case murders.Why a focus on mentoring at-risk youth is society's best chance at breaking cycles of crime — supporting children of incarcerated parents through education, job skills, and positive role models creates lasting change.And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors:Northwest Registered Agent: northwestregisteredagent.com/jordanOura Ring: 10% off: ouraring.com/jordanCayman Jack: caymanjack.comAirbnb: airbnb.com/hostLand Rover Defender: landroverusa.comMiss the two-parter we did with Jack Barsky — author of Deep Undercover: My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America? Start with episode 285: Jack Barsky | Deep Undercover with a KGB Spy in America!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show.
How do I make this case survive?
I've been through the ringer, and I've ran giant operations,
and these punk gangbangers are trying to put a label on me that's going to get me killed in the street.
This is the lowest, next to a pedophile.
You can't put a label on somebody worse than this.
Do I want to die? No.
Was I willing to lose my job over making this successful?
Yes.
Welcome to the show.
I'm Jordan Harbinger.
On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people
and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.
Our mission is to help you become a better-informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks,
from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional drug trafficker, former jihadi,
gold smuggler, or Russian spy.
And if you're new to this show or you want to tell your friends about this show, and I appreciate it when you do that,
I suggest our episode starter packs.
These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion, negotiation, psychology, geopolitics,
disinformation, China, North Korea, crime, and cults, and more.
It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.
Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.
Today, part two with former undercover cop Tegan Broadwater who infiltrated the Cripp Street Gang.
Obviously, if you haven't heard part one, go back and listen to that.
Part two, even crazier, more wild stories are just getting more.
warmed up. Here we go, part two with Teigen Broadwater.
You said you did a lot of stuff off the books. What does that actually mean?
Sounds like something you're not supposed to be doing.
Yeah, it is something I'm not supposed to be doing. It was with the resources that we had,
here's how you would set up a deal typically. You would say, all right, this is my target.
This is the time I'm trying to go do XYZ. And then you get a team of five dudes from the gang
in it and Suburbanes and a bunch of white dudes of backwards baseball caps and beards hanging out
the hood three blocks away with listening devices. You go in, you give the date and time,
what you're going to do, and you go in and you try to accomplish whatever part of the mission is,
make the buy, whatever. It's just so freaking conspicuous and time-consuming to get that together.
And hey, these guys were saying, hey, man, B just went to Waco and he's going to be back,
are you interested in doing some business? And it's two in the morning. I'm not going to get eight
dudes out of their beds to come show up and do all this conspicuous stuff with a bunch of white dudes
Because that's the other thing.
These dudes parking in these enterprise lease cars all over the hood.
They're just like, I think something's up because these people also have lookout.
There are 13 Ford fusions in the neighborhood.
And usually there's zero.
What's going on?
It's not bad in a lot of cases.
Now, there are some real expert guys.
Again, if you're working with the FBI and you've certified your undercover status
and you have a team of people from different places that you're going, that's fine.
But I was also working in my own backyard.
and I had so little money and so little opportunity to just go in and start flashing money and
blowing up stuff that I had to leverage the time that I could spend down there. Sometimes I would go
down there specifically asking for someone I knew that was gone so that I had an opportunity to
just hang out. But not spend any money because the guy was gone. Yeah. And because I didn't have the
money too. I needed to establish relationships and find out who's who. And so I just go down there. And
before you knew it, after eight, 10, 12 months, I'm going down there and there and there. And
invite me. I'm bringing four pack of magnums and we're sharing malt liquor and playing Madden and
whatever and it's all good. But in the beginning, that's the idea is that's how you build relationships.
You know who I am. You've seen me. I'm asking for so and so not here. And so the rest is, hey,
what's up? You want a beer and just seeing what's going on. So that's a little bit different level
of pressure for somebody instead of me saying, well, can you get me something? It's not all business.
That makes a lot of sense.
Also, I think it's funny you had the budget issues.
So you have this wide, this big wad of cash.
You got $200 on the outside.
You're like, I hope he doesn't need any more than that.
Because once I rip off this first $100 bill, everything under that is once.
It's all about the Washington's, baby.
Yeah, we're taking them to the strip club after this deal.
That's right.
A little bit of sample and then we're going to go to the strip club.
We'll have a blast.
Oh, man.
You got word of a cop that sells Crips info on police action.
What was your initial reaction to that?
Because that's like the sinking feeling in your gut at that point, right?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It scared me to death because I knew the guy.
And I was a little bit over paranoid anyway because.
Oh, you knew the guy that sold the information.
I knew the guy that.
So you're like, oh, crap, he knows who I am.
He knows who I am.
He didn't know what I was doing that I was down there because when I started this thing,
I acted a little over paranoid.
Uh-huh.
When I would make a buy and go tag the evidence and have it analyzed,
I didn't put it to a long form report and put it in the system,
which other people could potentially access.
There are hard files in the narcotics office
and the gang offices where you could go in
and somebody could have essentially just followed my whole case
by coming in behind and checking out what reports I'd made.
So I would literally just say,
here's the report number and further details forthcoming.
I would keep my own reports to where I could go back after the fact.
Because I was just so paranoid.
I didn't even think it was going to come to that,
to be honest with you.
I just thought nobody really knew a lot of,
lot about what I was doing other than my immediate supervisor. That's all that needed to know. I just felt
like I was getting so deep that I don't need a bunch of people talking about anything that I'm doing.
There's too much to lose from general chatter. So when I found that out, it scared me to death.
I thought, oh, my gosh, first of all, I was so glad that I didn't have a report in the box because
these guys couldn't tell him who I was. And it wasn't like he was involved to the extent where he's down there at the
houses doing deals. He was working cases also, but he was just avoiding cases.
that involved any of them.
He didn't bust those guys.
Yeah, I don't even know that he was on the take
as much as he had personal relationships
having grown up around them.
Oh, I see.
So he might not have even been corrupt.
He just didn't want to bust his friends.
Yeah, he was corrupt to the extent that he was also,
when we say we're doing the jumpouts and the warrants
and all that stuff before I came up with the undercover plan,
that's the reason why none of those houses had any people or dope or guns.
Oh, because he would call and say we're going to raise.
Oh, wow.
He was coming, and then they would just be gone.
Fortunately, that's how they handled it as opposed to let's arm up and put 20 people in here.
Sure.
But he was just telling him, hey, be gone.
Whatever, they'd clean the place out.
It'd look like, man, these people don't even know what they're doing, but you're swearing like, man, I swear this had some stuff in it yesterday.
That's really crazy.
So how do you handle that at that point?
My gut would be trying to ask for an introduction so that you can, quote, unquote, buy info on police activity.
I don't know.
But you don't really want to meet him because he'll be like, Teagan?
Yes.
I did not want to meet him.
I was curious about what information that he could provide because I told him I had some places
on other side of town that were catching a lot of heat. And if I gave you some addresses,
could you get them to him and see what he could find out? That was essentially what I was trying
to do. Oh, I see. So you get to use him slash prove that he's corrupt without actually going
face to face. That's more. Yeah. Ultimately, I wrote it up an inner office thing and said,
hey, here's the deal. Here's my complaint. This guy's completely crooked and blah, blah,
he's going to get somebody killed. What happened to him? Nothing.
nothing happy he retired happy wow that's really horrible yeah it's terrible and again look i'm a low
totem pole i was doing what i was doing but i send it to this supervisor who then says whoa this is a big
deal send it to this supervisor to that supervisor and then to the i don't know how far it got before
somebody just said i'm calling BS or whatever no one even asked me any further questions i submitted
the written document with the complaint on it with all of the details the legend about dates and
times and who said what and everything that I could give. And it came back with Jack Squad.
That's crazy. Yeah, I think so too. There's a part of me that wants to go, oh, he must have been
in another operation and it was only at the high level, but that doesn't even make any sense.
No, it doesn't make any sense. They would have explained that to me at some point. Hey,
there's stuff you don't know and just leave this alone. I wasn't told to leave it alone.
I would follow up and they said, I don't know. Because again, I'm handing it to you who has to get it
through four levels of command structure.
So it's almost like, oh, I've known Bill for years.
He wouldn't do that.
Throw this thing in the trash.
He plays golf with me on Saturdays.
He would never do this.
It could be.
I don't know.
That's crazy to me.
That's really scary.
Talk about not having your back.
Yeah.
He's lucky that I hit all my stuff.
Because, again, he could have figured out who I was and it stopped me in my tracks
before not only did I make any progress through the case, but the first time I show up when
they're notified that, oh, this guy's actually not T, he's not a source, he's a cop, then who knows
how they would have handled that? Because he wasn't going to tell me not to go. I just
ratted you out. He's going to wrap me out to them knowing it was me. And then I'm going to
keep showing up thinking I got my game still, which is who knows where that goes. Yeah. Oh, my God.
That's terrible. Jeez. You did say something that I hear from almost every undercover who's ever been on
the show, which is you're working like 80 hours.
week, 60, 80s, hours a week, you begin to forget who you really are. How did that show up in your
life? Because some guys really, they became more of their persona, methed-out biker, except maybe
more like hydroxycut out biker. Yeah. How did it sort of manifest in your life? Because it seems
unsustainable. It's like a game or an addiction almost. Yeah. I think it manifests most when,
you know, I would come home and my wife would notice that I was stressed. And, you know,
I don't want to make it cheesy. Like, I was just constantly in character and I couldn't get out.
But when you're living every day amongst those folks, you do develop an accent.
And I'm just going to be here for a minute.
And then you come back in three hours.
And she's like, you've been gone for three hours.
You said you're going to be gone for a minute.
I'm like, I mean, a minute, you know.
But I think ultimately what it is, and I think in a lot of cases, really what it is,
high stress, low sleep.
And I think over time, that just starts to take a toll in general in terms of how you treat people,
how you treat yourself.
I was a big super workout buff, but I lost tons of weight.
during this thing because I know I've heard of guys that are working out all crazy while they're,
I don't know where I would have found the time to do that.
I would sneak in, go into a kid's game on my UC car drive way out to wherever, but
I didn't have time for much else.
And then when we could go out and we had something that we wanted to do, I was freaking
exhausted.
I'd sleep through movies and would be snapping at people because I'm just irritated and tired
as hell.
And those are the types of things that start to take a toll on your relationship.
You've got to infiltrate a gang that works out every day.
Yeah.
And they're like, hey, man, you look rough.
You need to take a nap.
Go in the back.
Well, I would love to, you know.
I didn't even really think about it a lot.
I tried to exercise as much as I could.
But having worked out so hard before, and there's times where you work out.
There's times where you're like, eh, might call it a workout.
I might not.
I can just imagine like, hey, look here.
It's Southeast Side Crips, man.
We value self-care.
If you're going to be a part of this gang, man, you've got to take care of yourself.
Yes.
Brush and floss.
I wore a bunch of baggy clothes anyway, so I didn't even notice that I was
losing all the weight
I'd work so hard to get,
which is no big deal.
All that weight anyway,
just at my age now
causes me to have surgery.
I found it interesting.
You said the whole gang,
love, loyalty, stuff is just all fake.
It's just all bullshit.
And that they don't really care.
They just go right back to selling and banging.
Yeah, not all of them,
but yes, in general,
especially people that don't get long sentences,
most of the time these dudes,
when you're dealing with a police department
or whoever,
whatever investigative agency is coming in
and doing short-term busts, these guys get in and out.
The slap on the wrist is a slap on the wrist.
And if they think, hey, part of the penance that you pay to be in a gang is you might
have to do a year here and there, that's not a big penance to pay.
So when these guys got rounded up and they're doing 25 and 30, that's big penance to pay.
And you'd be amazed the things that will come out of people's mouth at that point.
And I was surprised at some of the people that didn't, because the ones that didn't,
I was hoping would.
And the guys that did, I was hoping wouldn't and would just eat the years.
but you just don't know.
But I think the vast majority of people
when they're facing some significant consequence
will change their behavior a little bit
or at the very least, my hope is
when you come out and you are 48,
that maybe now you'll be a little bit more mature
because you're not going to go out and gang bang at 48
and nobody's going to take you seriously anyway.
Although people still do, it's pretty amazing.
Let's see these old guys out there still talking about
they're at OG and everything else,
But my hope is that changes eventually.
But again, these are not mature people in general.
They grew up, hit the streets early, quit school, and then kept doing what they're doing,
and then went in prison and learned how to do bad stuff better.
And there are a few.
And the ones that make it and rehabilitate to whatever degree are really great people
because they're still people who take the sociopath out and they feel like they can learn a life lesson and go forward.
than they're great people when they have that experience.
That's somebody I can learn a ton from now.
It's actually had that kind of experience
and they can bring that forward,
take that lesson forward and teach other people.
And that's invaluable.
Sure.
They can certainly speak for a position of credibility
if they go to, I don't know, a middle school
and like, oh, yeah, you think being in a gang of school,
here's what my life was like.
Yeah.
And then I went to prison for 25 years.
You want to know what prison's like?
And it's like, oh, geez, maybe not.
You said you wanted to get to know your informant enough
so that you could steer them into a normal,
vocation. Is that so you're getting to know these guys and you're like, hey, have ever thought about
not doing crime for a living? How possible is that? Informants are a different breed altogether.
They're stuck between wanting to be endearing themselves to you for alter your minds. Yeah,
they're getting paid, yeah. And wanting to play the gang game, but they're not really accepted as much as
you would think they were or else they'd be the ones you're chasing. Sure. So it's an interesting thing.
and you get to know them really well,
because essentially, if you're working with an informant,
they know who you are already,
and you're still going into a dangerous situation,
and they already know who you are.
So the level of trust that you have to have
with somebody at that point is pretty intense.
And so you learn a lot more about them
than you would somebody else,
because in those instances,
you can't ask those hard questions.
They're going through a questionnaire
in order to be certified and blah, blah, blah.
You do meet their families,
and you ask them a bunch of questions.
You're like, man,
why are you not showing up on time?
I mean, you freaking using, you bastard, you're going through the stuff.
You feel like a big brother or something to them.
So, yeah, you wish the best for them.
You want them to succeed.
It's a long shot with a lot of folks, but I've seen some actually go pretty far,
seen others that are dead now.
So, I mean, it kind of runs the gambit there, too.
You always want the best for people, though.
Yeah, of course.
You're making, at one point, triple the amount of drug bias, whatever,
but you're not making that many arrests building up, trying to find the top.
Don't get pressure like, hey, can't you arrest some of these guys?
Isn't there pressure?
Like, you're spending a lot of money.
I'm not seeing a whole lot of warrants or whatever coming through from you, pal.
Yeah, and that's exactly how it works, is they want to see you spending the little NARC budget,
which is not that big in the first place.
And then I work up to the point where I'm dealing with so many people and buying little samples
because I'm looking for the big guy, but all these other guys know that T's this big time dude
and they want to sell me something.
I'm like, hey, man, give me 100.
I'll see if I can move what you got or whatever, just as then I'll do something.
for you, that kind of thing once I got to that point. But I'm spending the budget for the
week for the old team. And my sergeant of the time was the only reason why I was able to
succeed because I kept him apprised of what I was trying to do. He knew I had targets. He's known me
for a long time by then and knew that these other dudes had come in at 10 o'clock, hang around the
office, fart around a couple of cases or whatever, go to lunch from 12 to 3, 7 deep, and then
whatever. And meanwhile, I'm nowhere to be found. So these guys were complaining about me.
being some kind of loaner and I'm just like, dude.
Yeah.
I'm happy to have you along working with Dave if you want to actually get off your ass.
It was just exciting work for me.
I just, I couldn't sit around.
You actually wanted to be a cop.
Yes.
Wanted to get a paycheck.
Yeah.
So, yeah, he saw that and understood and allowed that to happen essentially covered for me.
Yeah.
Knowing that I was working what results I was getting to a reasonable extent.
It would meet with them once a week and at least say, you know,
this is kind of where I'm getting in close with this guy, blah, blah, blah.
There was a lot that I couldn't explain to him.
Obviously, because if I'm going in off the books, when I'm going into work,
and essentially nobody knows I'm at work except one of the patrolmen I used to work with,
just telling him on a midnight shift, hey, man, I'm fixing to go do this thing.
You might stand it by?
They don't know the process, but, yeah, man, I got you.
And I'll just say, hey, stay far enough away, blah, blah, and I'll keep the phone line open.
That was my wire, so to speak.
You just have your phone call going to him?
Yeah.
So that if anything goes wrong, he can roll up with the lights and sirens.
I just drive through the front door, man, because these are all like burglar, barred, fortified, whatever.
Is it just come save my ass?
Jeez.
And he's just hanging out at Tim Horton's waiting for the call?
Yeah, basically, yeah.
But he's thinking about it as a patrol officer.
That's exciting stuff to do, too.
I guess it's better than, yeah.
I mean, he's Carl Winslow and diehard, right?
Yeah.
Hes.
Hanging out outside of Nakatomi Plaza.
It's something cool to do.
Answer a call or waiting for a call or whatever.
Somebody called and say, you know, homicide detective.
And you go out hunting.
Something to do.
Sure.
Somebody who actually wants to work.
No kidding.
So you mentioned you did a bunch of stuff off the book.
We touched on that, but why did you need to do that again?
I needed to do it primarily because time was a key factor.
And essentially, I was spent so much time that it was a non-starter.
There was no team that could stay down there every single day, including weekends and everything else.
So it's expensive.
So you're just like, I'm going to go do it by myself, even though I'm not supposed to do it.
Yeah, and even just the hangouts, every day of the week, I would spend some time.
I would at least drive through and say, well, what's up if I'm on a Saturday and I'm doing something with my family,
I would still roll through there and give it what's a day.
up. They saw me almost every single day for that straight 18 months. People saw my face rolling
through there. And that was part of it, though, and never just disappeared for periods of time.
That's when people start thinking, where are you been? Like, what's going on? And I have to make
up some kind of ruse about I got locked up or wherever else I was supposed to be. And unfortunately,
I lived in the same city, which was part of the other anomaly in this case, is that I'm
crapp it in my own backyard, essentially. So that made it more difficult. But that's why off the
books, I would say other than a couple of the things that I was involving myself with that would
have been, once you go up the chain and say, hey, I want to go, you know, hang on with these dudes
and I'm playing video games, me talk with smack, I'm going to try to meet some new people,
wherever.
You do that on a daily basis.
Just some of it's prohibitive.
You don't have enough manpower.
Some of it is just the stuff they wouldn't want you to do, just for safety sake or whatever.
Because, again, they want you to be wired.
I wanted absolutely not to be wired.
The time all we had was that primitive crab that just taped all over yourself.
And how wired do you need to be when you're just playing John Madden to build rapport?
You're just taking unnecessary risk at that point.
But of course, their protocol is, no, you're wired at all time.
We have a team ready to help you.
And you're like, we're going to be here for five hours drinking and playing John Madden.
It's a waste of time.
So I see the temptation to be like, I'm just going to go do this.
Yeah.
And it gets so much easier, too, to where if somebody does call you to in the morning and saying,
hey, man, this, XYZ.
And I say, I'll be there in a minute.
and I literally roll up in 25 minutes later,
that would be something that would take three hours
to get guys on call to get their cars,
go gear up, meet at the office,
wire me up, figure out a game plan.
Now, time to Crip Walk Your Way
to some deals and discounts
on the fine products and services
that support this show.
We'll be right back.
If you're wondering how I managed to book
all these authors, thinkers, creators every week,
it is because of my network.
And funnily enough, I have been teaching this class
two, three-letter agencies
because they are using it in their undercover
and not-so-undercover work.
and I've set this up in a free course for you,
six minute networking.com.
I don't need your credit card.
It's not like a bait and switch type thing.
It's a course about improving
your relationship building skills
in ways that are decidedly non-cringy
and not weird.
It'll make you a better connector.
In six minutes a day is all it takes
many, many of the guests on the show.
Subscribe and contribute to this course.
So come on and join us.
You'll be in smart company where you belong.
The course, again, for free, no shenanigans,
over at six-minute networking.com.
All right, now back to Teagan Broadwater.
So the budget gets exceeded
and you go to the feds, but they want to take over the case?
Is that normal?
Yeah, I think it is.
It doesn't make any sense, though, because you're the guy who ran the case.
What is their best argument, if you can sort of steal man this?
What's their best argument for taking this case away from you?
Because they just think we'll take the case that you brought to us thus far,
and if they feel like they could put their own undercover in there and insert them
or just take the case and run it up through the AUSA at that point
and take all their credit for the case.
The U.S. attorney.
Yeah, because they're federal.
agencies. And obviously, the DEA would have people that are fully equipped to try to get an
undercover in or whatever. But I already knew. It's like, man, this is ridiculous to try to insert
someone else when I'm already in there. What's the point? All you're doing is complicating it,
putting more risk on someone else. When the case is already rolling forward, it's rolling
downhill now if I had the funds and the equipment. That's what I was looking for. So that's when
the FBI was the obvious thing. And what's interesting is that they have a whole trained undercover
program, but they appreciated the fact that this was already being accomplished. And I think it's
just common sense. And of course, the FBI still gets all the credit for the case. They filed
the case federally and all that stuff. So I'm working undercover. So honestly, the last person
that gets credit for anything is the undercover because that's what you do. So you're not there for
a glorification. You get done with a case like that and then raise your hand and say, I'm undercover,
then you're never working again. So essentially everyone else is taking whatever credit they want,
the gang unit and the FBI and the this and this and they're all due press conferences,
but I'm not showing my face.
Sure.
Yeah, no, it seems like a bad idea.
I'm surprised they didn't offer you a job after that because it seems like you did a pretty good job on the case.
Yeah, that's not how it works.
When you're in a civil service-based department, you test for every promotion and you either make it or you don't.
That's how it goes.
There's good things and bad things about that because it's a competency test and you cover leadership
at different things like that.
But it doesn't necessarily mean you have great leaders either because if you can take the test better than me,
now you're the next leader.
Sure.
So.
I'm just surprised the FBI wasn't like, you should apply here, citing your undercover work here.
I was probably too old by then.
I don't know what the FBI cutoff is, but I was 35-ish, whatever.
It's probably like 36.
And I was pretending to be 29 or whatever it was.
Sure.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Tell me this story about you going into a dope house and then you end up, you were on TV at the same time.
This is such a good story, man.
This is the worst story, actually.
No, I assume you can laugh at it.
Yes.
You have to laugh at it.
Otherwise, I tear up every time.
But, yeah, I was at a level to where guys were coming to me all the time.
And I was moving out of the fishbowl because obviously the Crip Territory was more than those six square blocks.
That was just a violent hub.
But a lot of the supplies were coming from outside that neighborhood, still all interconnected and Crip-wise.
So I was really careful about who I was talking to because moving from guy to guy was I could do dope deals all day long.
But if they're not a Crip, I'm not interested in talking to it.
at all because I'm still working. Even if the FBI's given me money to spend, I have to spend it
wisely. I have to still justify how the money, especially with the FBI. You have to justify how
the money's being spent. So we had this cat that pulls up. I happened to pick up my informant just to
get a brief and see what he's been doing at this little corner store. We're driving around,
having a little sip. And this dude pulls up and flags down. I see the car, it's just a goal
Lexus, and it keeps driving around. Like, who's this fool? He pulls up and he's like,
T, man, hey, what's going on?
I met you once through whatever and explained who he is.
And I'm looking over at my informant, who knows that this guy needs to be a
Crip for me to even.
But he's trying to sell me something, man, I got this great stuff and whatever.
I'm like, hey, man, it's all good.
You don't need nothing, but it's good to meet you, whatever.
And then my, I look at my informant, gives me a little, like, man, he's a Crip.
He's probably a low-level Crip.
But again, the level of Crip is insignificant to me.
I'm creating a conspiracy case of a whole bunch of Crips that are causing a bunch of violent crime.
in the city. So basically, this is like a RICO organized crime. Yeah, that's the idea is tying all that
together, not the dope. At that point, it was a risk for me to say, I'm going to come in and do a low-level
dove deal because I'm supposed to be this big dude when he wants to sell me the whatever. But at that
point, I'm also trying to say, well, this is a crip. A lower-level crip is still a crip. And a lot of
times they're doing a lot of the violent acts themselves anyway. So I said, all right, man, that's cool.
Where are you going? He said, just follow me. He said, my house, whatever. And we pull in, pull up the
driveway like a normal. It's a little shotgun little house with little burglar bars on
the top built in the 50s. Little hood house. Typical thing, fence out in the front yard and
everything else. He goes through the front gate and up the stairs, open the burglal bar,
lock everything up back behind us, have a typical room set up with a little coffee table,
couch on one side, giant screen TV on the other side, practically nothing else in the apartment
besides a gun, a scale and some dope. PlayStation floor. Of course. And somewhere there's a Bible in
porn somewhere. A Bible and porn? Yes, those have to be present in order for you to
solidify a perfor-dome. It's ridiculous. Percentage-wise, pretty amazing. That's really
ridiculous. And so we just start chatting, just familiarizing whatever he's talking about,
whatever his stuff was, the TV happens to be on. And this is back in 2006-7-ish. So again,
you realize there's four channels on TV for the most part at that time. It's not like everybody
They had 2,600 choices.
And when they have TV in the county jail, it's running one of those channels all the time.
Cops happen to be one of the most popular.
So cops is on in the trap house.
Cops a haven't been on in the trap house.
I don't even notice the cops on the trap house until I'm standing up.
Those two are sitting down.
My informant sits down and this other fool sits down.
We're just jaw-javing about stuff or whatever.
And I hear a voice behind me.
You talk about the feeling of dread that comes over.
you get that adrenaline, S&S dump, and my auto exclusion happens,
and I'm seeing in tunnel vision, and my heart rate's racing,
and I recognize that it's me from several years back.
At that time, I did an episode in 1999 that was on replay.
Fort Worth did a crap load of episodes.
They used to be on reruns all the time.
I didn't even volunteer to go.
My sergeant made me go on this day when I was on the cops episode,
but there's a giant-ass TV behind me with my big white,
Nordic mug on there in a police uniform driving a police car arresting this fool on the freeway.
And these guys are facing me. So behind me, I'm thinking I got this giant backdrop. Lord only
knows. And I've told you about all the things that I've prepared for. Sure. And these people pull guns.
I got this. I think I'm tactically sound as long as I have somebody else worry about it. I'm going to this.
If they ask me this, I'm thinking all these things so that I can just focus solely on whatever important scenario is
placed in front of me instead of thinking of all these incillary things.
and this son of a bitch just confused the hell out of it.
You're just on TV in a police uniform behind you
while you're dealing with these crips
telling drugs in the trap house.
That must have felt like in eternity
until that Arby's commercial or whatever comes out.
It may have been Arby's.
I think I would love Arby's.
I don't know what it was
because I would subconsciously just think,
oh, I love Arby's.
It's cops, so it's either that or $2.99 or yada you,
and you're like, oh, thank God,
Denny's commercials.
Hey, can we turn off this TV?
It's really distracting.
At that point, you could have left it on, go, I don't know what I said.
There was the most difficult part to actually put into the book because I don't know what I said.
Everything else, I had notes and memorialized little things on napkins that I'd wad up like snot rags.
If there were something significant or write the story when I got home in my report that I never filed.
But this, I was just like, I have no earthly idea what I said.
And I was scared to death.
And I know I talked, which they tell me now is a part of a training protocol.
You keep talking through these stressful situations.
I don't know what I said, but I was talking just thinking, I am so freaking screwed right now.
And honestly, I was as paranoid about having a violent confrontation as I was about this thing ending before I got to the head of the snake.
I mean, I was a little bit overly psycho about what I was willing to keep this case going because I had put in so much time and effort.
And there was nobody else working with me, obviously outside the scenes.
I had an agent assigned to the case.
But I was in there alone doing all these hours and putting in all this time.
I was going to be damned if I had to cut it short because the freaking TV show came on.
But I was certain this is not going to end well.
I don't have the key to the Berkla bar door.
This is going to do bad.
Oh, man.
So I just, the most anticlimactic part about it is that I just filibustered.
I call it a filibuster.
I was just talking about whatever it is.
I'm going to keep talking until this is over and thank goodness it's over.
And then I'm hauling through the deal.
And I probably look like a complete amateur doing this dope deal.
But they couldn't have been on point at that time.
Got the deal done.
Was hauling ass, man.
I just remembered I got something else.
and we go out the door, my informant jumps in the pasture seat,
and I'm just looking at him.
He's, what is up with you?
He was all looking at me confused, too.
He had no freaking idea.
Oh, he didn't notice.
No, obviously nobody noticed.
Yeah.
Or that would have come around.
But at that point, once I left with my life and my sanity, I thought,
that's not good that this is in my mind now.
Now I'm super paranoid.
If that thing's still showing to the extent that we could be in a trap,
and this is literally what they're watching.
Who else is watching cops at this exact moment?
I also work with right now.
How many times are they rolling?
I mean, I don't know how many times this comes on all the time because it's Fort Worth.
I don't know.
It's the middle of the night.
Half these folks are up.
Am I going to walk into the next house and they'd be like, saw you on TV?
You look familiar.
Yeah.
But there's something beautiful, I think, about guys in uniform.
I used to know people that I'd work with and then I would see them out of uniform and just not recognize them.
And I think civilians think even more like that.
If they know who a police officer is, they just have a particular kind of look and you put them in street clothes
and they just didn't recognize them the same way.
I think that was fortunate in this case
that it would just think there was a separation.
Not to mention the high and tight,
barely any hair look when I could have
damn sure could have grown out any hair I wanted
and I didn't.
You get labeled as a snitch eventually.
How did that happen?
And what do you do about that?
This was the difficult part.
And this is why had I gone through training,
I would have figured out that this is really against the rules.
Not that I didn't know it was against the rules,
but look, I'm trying to be a big-time guy
And obviously if I've been working with cartel guys and had this big operation going,
I can't be out here dealing with these little punk gangbangers and then somebody call me out.
The worst thing they can do is call you a snitch even better than if you're deemed a cop.
You just run the risk of getting some kind of violent repercussions.
But almost certainly you would if you're a snitch because there's a lot less repercussions for you
if they find a snitch in a ditch versus finding a cop in the ditch.
There's going to be a hunting party coming out.
Yeah.
So I think I was so well known by then that they just thought it was a snitch.
Nobody really thought about a cop.
And the reason why it happened was it was the same little gangster hopping that I did where I was talking to this one dude.
And in typical doper gangbanger fashion, he was giving me what I needed.
And so he thought he was doing me righteous, but would show up late all the time because my intermediate level doper or whatever show up.
And so I leverage that as, hey, man, I don't.
play like this. I need people to be on time. I'm running a business. I don't know what you think
you're doing or whatever. And I just had to play it off because again, I have a case on you
already. For me to just keep buying is just wasting a bunch of money. Sure. I need to be spending
somewhere else because I need to put other crips on this conspiracy case. So I end up going up the
street literally around the corner from where this cat is when he doesn't show up on time. I just take off.
I go around the corner and I start talking to somebody else around there. By this time,
it's not even hard for me to go talk to other people because everybody at least has heard of me,
so at least can stop by and have a conversation.
I don't even remember at the time.
I know I ended up getting something from them,
but I don't even remember if I was actually buying anything significant.
It was probably just, I'm just going to go over here and feel these guys out
because I at least have that excuse in my mind.
Like, man, you need to show up on time.
I can't be sitting around in the curb.
We got cops all over the place.
You know, find some white dude in a Mercedes.
Hello.
And apparently he drove by and saw me,
and that's when he started saying,
man, this dude's a snitch because he's thinking in his mind,
I've been selling this guy righteous and now all of a sudden he's over here.
What is he even doing over here?
There's no reason to be going to one of my fellow guys.
And so he puts this jacket on me is what they call.
They give you the jacket.
It's a label as a snitch.
And my informant is calling me in a panic because he knows the risk that he runs.
If he made an introduction to this guy four months ago and then all of a sudden it comes
out that I'm some kind of snitch, he's going to be the first guy they drag in and try to figure out what's going on too.
So he calls me in a panic in the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle of
the night. One of those guys, he's infamous for just calling. I'm like, and he'll say,
T-mas, it's really important. It's an emergency tea calling. And they'd be like, hey, man,
you got any money for a beer, man? Can you meet me out to whatever? Oh, geez.
Yeah. So I'm ignoring because, like, late in the night. And so when I finally picked up,
he said, man, there's a word out on the street that manage your snitch. They gave me the jacket
and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's coming from this guy. Yeah. Blah, blah, blah,
he explains whatever the deal is. He doesn't know why or anything like that, but words getting to him.
and so he's freaking out because he's got a high penance to pay at this point.
Yeah, sure.
And so in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, when I'd say off the books,
so very far removed from working with anybody who's covering me almost ever at this point.
And I'm probably easily over a year in and been out there so often that I'm just figuring out,
how do I make this case survive?
Do I want to die?
No.
Was I willing to lose my job over making this successful?
Yes.
And that's an interesting thought in retrospect.
But I thought, okay, if T is who he is, and I purport myself to be some kind of big time dude, and I've been through the ringer and I've ran giant operations, and these punk gangbangers are trying to put a label on me that's going to get me killed in the street, this is the lowest next to a pedophile.
You can't put a label on somebody worse than this.
What would T actually do?
So I flip back over, I had my plan, and I set my alarm for 6 o'clock in the morning.
I got up and got myself all psyched.
I knew this dude does his drop.
He had a little port-a-chaise over the side of garage,
and he had at the bottom there was a little missing piece of concrete,
and that's where the larger stash would go.
Make his drop every morning.
And so I pulled up and waited for him to show up on time,
which, of course, he did not.
But I was there when he got there.
And when he got up there, I just got out of my car
and made a straight B-line for him.
He's like, hey, man, what's up?
And I just started beating the shit out of it.
This is what you do.
Now, obviously, I had planned.
plenty of training. I wasn't trying to kill the dude, but this is the least of what I would do. There's
a lot worse that I could have done, but obviously I'm not trying to do anything other than
convince him that this jacket needs to be taken off me because people are going to die if I just
ignore it. People are going to die, starting with my informant. And that's what a gangster would do.
We got into it, and I ended up rolling around the grass down the hill and then ended up with a good
knee into his rib cage, and he was having a hard time catching his breath. And I told him to
take the jacket off of me and just walked away. And that's the last I heard of it. Really?
Yeah, it's the last I heard of it. And I don't think it was atypical. I think it probably gave me
a little more street cred, but I also don't think he just got up and went around and told everybody
just got his ass kicked. I don't think it was made into a bigger to do because what would you say?
I said he was a snitch and he just kicked my ass. I don't think so. I'm curious. You just say,
I think I was mistaken about that, my bad. Yeah, that I don't know because I left it up to him.
Obviously, if he's the one talking about it, this is how I'm going to handle it.
I'm not going to go around and justify myself because I feel like I'd already had.
And I thought, that's where I'm going to handle it.
And then hopefully that word gets out.
And that's how it went down.
That's exactly what happened.
It just got squashed.
But again, the concern comes back into my mind when somebody says, I only find out in retrospect that it was because he's seeing me these other places.
I'm starting to think, oh, my God.
Is this freaking cops episode coming on?
Yeah, everywhere.
And all these people are figuring it out.
It's still making me just 10 times more paranoid.
And now I'd done that and obviously would not be permissible under any circumstance.
Yeah, of course.
And so I thought, well, I'm really sticking myself out there.
But I felt like I really had a purpose.
I know, interestingly, too, in retrospect, saving that neighborhood was already accomplished,
saving a larger part of the entire portion of that neighborhood and further into the city
based on the same violent, corrupt grips that were there.
It changed my perspective on kind of what I was doing.
but I was in it really deep, and I just, I don't know how logical I was.
In my age now, I'm so much more logical.
Sure.
Predictable and how I perform because some things are just so not worth it.
I already know.
I got so much more to lose, but the younger, you go back and figure out, man, I got this to gain.
I'm willing to do all these other things, and you're like, man, are you sure you've weighed all
these consequences?
Yeah, no kidding.
But, yeah, that was one of the more extraordinary parts of that case.
You know, it's a good use of your off-the-book's drug money.
the fine products and services that support this show.
We'll be right back.
If you like this episode of the show,
I invite you to do what other smart
and considerate listeners do.
Take a moment and support our amazing sponsors.
They make this show possible after all.
All the deals, discount codes,
and ways to support the podcast
are searchable and clickable over
at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals.
If you can't find something,
you're not sure if something exists
or if it's not working, just email me.
Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com.
We are happy to surface that code for you,
help you get stuff from the sponsors.
It is that important that you support those.
who support the show.
Now, for the rest of my conversation
with Teigen Broadwater.
You pull this clever move
where you switch up in order
at the last minute
and it leads to a big supplier.
Tell me how that worked.
Yeah, one of the same typical deals
where I'm cruising around with this cat
who we're supposed to get this deal done,
he's picking it up from a cook
and this guy's name was Dee.
We go in his house and he's actually cooking all this stuff up.
So that's why I knew that this guy
had gotten all of his stuff from this particular cook.
So I have an order, I don't remember, quarter key, something moderate.
I didn't have an extraordinary budget like a lot of people think about with federal money.
Even when I had money, it wasn't extraordinary.
But we set this deal up and when he gets there, it's crack.
It's like, dude, you know me.
I can't do the crack, man.
I need the powder, man.
He's, man, I thought you said crack.
We were just at the cookhouse and my boss, man, can you help me out any other way?
He's like, man, let me try to think.
So I'm actually rolling around with him.
This is one of those paranoid dudes.
tells you to meet him somewhere, and then five other places after he moves, then we finally do the deal.
But now I'm riding him around with me. So we're driving around in my ride. He shakes me to this place and goes in and picks up something else.
The guy says he can get it, but to park and wait, and we go back to the place where we're supposed to meet where they're having this house party.
And so we're just hanging out at that point because we're waiting to do a deal, but I'm essentially put in a situation where, hey, this is like the greatest networking event ever.
I'm in the middle of the hood at a house party, a bunch of crips playing poker inside.
There's dudes in the backyard cooking.
There's people hanging out in the front as overt as you can imagine, a house party being with a bunch of criminals at it.
And while I'm still waiting, actually, I'm trying to remember if it was right after the deal.
The guy showed up and we did the deal or if it was right before it.
So this blue SUV pulls up, they call it a blue Jeep no matter what it is if it's a Jeep or if it's a Durango.
Everyone in the hood calls it a jeep.
but it was, I think it was a Durango, Blue Durango,
pulls up and everybody starts flocking over to it.
Now, my Kingpin, I'd known who the Kingpin was
since before the case started.
I had run-ins with him just doing warrants and stuff.
He never got busted for anything.
So I knew he was the guy.
I didn't know how big he actually was in real life.
And he had been laying low.
He split town and there was a lot of heat from the feds or whatever.
I don't remember who he said he caught heat from.
I was thinking, it was not heat from me
because I haven't been at your doorstep.
but I wish I had been.
So he apparently was back in town.
This window lowers down,
and I see from his nose up,
he's out poking his head out,
the back of his own car like somebody's driving him around.
And all these people are gathering around.
It's like the freaking king has showed up into the town.
And I'm thinking, man, this is unbelievable.
I walk over,
and of course I'm with these two dudes
that I'm doing deals with.
One guy's linking me with a new guy,
and we're getting what I need.
It's a natural symbiotic situation.
and walk over with the crowd or whatever.
And I see him, I know exactly who is.
I only can guess that he might know maybe who I am,
but I've seen him and talked to him with a bala-clava years before,
but he wouldn't recognize me otherwise.
And I just remember catching some eye contact
as he's talking to people and kind of high-five and whatever,
and I kind of looked over and I was to give him the what's-up.
He gives me a what's-up.
And it wasn't curious or suspicious or anything.
He just gave me a what's up, and I thought, that's cool.
Normally, who's the snowman?
here in the middle of the crew. Who is this dude? So I thought it was cool. I got the little
was up. And that was my first inkling that, man, this connection, this is like a manifestation
in real life of these people all lead to this. We're all standing here right now. This is
ultimately what the goal is to get all these people out of here. And this is the Kingpin who's
running the whole show. Yeah. So how do you eventually get all these guys indicted and arrested?
Does it happen kind of all at once? It seems like it has to, otherwise everybody goes to ground, right?
You hope it happens all at once. That's the plan anyway. There was the FBI agent, assistant U.S. attorney, and several people from the FBI field office in Dallas were working tirelessly and overnight to help write all these search and arrest warrants for all these target locations. We had 51 people in the conspiracy at the very end, 41 of whom went federal sentencing and 10 went state. So we're writing warrants all over the city for these people to do all at once. And so they're having this big,
to do in a gymnasium full of 7, 8, 8, 9 agencies.
We've got ATF and FBI.
We've got Fort Worth SWAT.
We've got gang unit.
All these people are all gathered as 200 plus officers
in this gymnasium talking about what we're going to do the next morning at 6 a.m.
To me, I'm just, my mind's blowing.
Are you nervous?
Are you excited?
I'm both.
And honestly, it was surreal because by then I'd been doing it for so long.
Just the fact that it was actually going to culminate in anything that meant it was done
was weird for me. It was just something where I felt like my behavior, I was willing to just keep
doing crazier and crazier stuff to just keep this thing building. So it was surreal that it was
even ending at all. And normally, too, you do a case and then you crack the door down. That's the fun part.
And everybody else is doing this for me. I'm working from the end of the FBI. And I'm following
their lead too, because I'm just assigned to the FBI as a TFO. I'm not actually an FBI agent.
So I'm following all the protocols that they have to go through.
TFO, just like a liaison.
A task course officer, a municipal or a sheriff department or somebody that signed to the FBI.
They get credentials and work in the office.
So it was surreal for me there, too, because it was just enough old school.
We walk in the room the next morning at 6 a.m.
They got this long table with big red telephones, old school dial-in, hardline telephones lined up and down.
I think the FBI, honestly, many agencies had all these passei technological things when they worked in their office.
Word Perfect.
Oh, my gosh.
Word Perfect had been defunct almost for a decade.
They still used it.
But it's hard to actually pull up a file.
You steal something from there, put it on a thumb drive, and try to pull it up.
Most computers at that time, they essentially is naturally encrypted, you know, behind the times.
But all these big boards, all the targets are listed and whatever's going on.
I was a nervous wreck knowing all this stuff was supposed to go down.
So they launch everybody.
They give a green light over the radio at 6 a.m.
and all these tactical teams are hitting all these different locations at 6 o'clock in
morning all over the city.
We only got 17 of the people in the first day.
Oh, wow.
So there was a bunch of more people over the next couple of weeks that we were working on rounding up.
And that was the most nerve-racking time.
I bet.
I bet.
Oh, we didn't get so-and-so.
Oh, no.
So now he knows.
Yeah.
Where is he?
Oh, okay, three weeks later.
We found him.
He was hiding out in somebody's house.
Yeah, in your backyard.
Yeah.
With a sniper rifle.
Jeez.
So, yeah, it took a couple of weeks.
Most of them got rounded up within the following weekish because it was still an aggressive thing.
When that roundup came out, there was a lot of attention brought to the case, news conferences
and everything else.
There was a lot of patrolmen and everything else that were also actively interested in finding
some of these guys.
So we got lots of help.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, it was a nerve-wracking time, though.
Jeez.
Happy, sad, too, for the guys that you get to know and that you really like and knowing that's
the end of that is also kind of nerve-wracking, too.
So what was the result then?
A lot of these guys got some decent time.
Yeah, the lowest was, I think we had seven went to trial.
All the rest of them pled and shared information.
Of the ones that went to trial, I testified on behalf of several of them also in terms of behalf of their character.
Because they were people that I thought deserved to be in the conspiracy.
Once these arrests are made, I have no control over what sentences they get.
Or you've got a federal judge.
It's tough on crime guy and you lose control.
The only thing that I could do is try to convince them to cooperate and give them my word.
And I didn't do this for everyone, but give them my word.
I'll testify on behalf of you and your character.
Most people didn't believe me.
And I kind of didn't blame them, even though it was traumatic for me because I'm thinking in my mind, like, no, dude, we really did have a connection.
I really like you.
But you've also known me for two years as T.
And now I'm telling you I was lying the whole time.
So I also understand why you don't believe me.
But it was traumatic for me when they would just give you the bird and move on because you were just really.
had these high hopes for the guys that you thought had a chance. You really wanted to get the
lowest sentences. And since I didn't get to pick, that's the only thing I could do. Once I testified
for one person and just said, man, I think they have a lot of social redeeming value. They've made a lot of
mistakes. They are tied in with this. But I think I would be even comfortable as the undercover
undercover with them getting out with a lighter sentence, whatever that needs to be. I'm just, I have a
testify on their behalf. And once I did that, a few others perked up and decided to cooperate and I
ended up doing that. So the lowest sentence,
was two years, and the average sentence was 19 years.
Oh, wow.
So you add a ton of dope into this situation and it turned into what people considered a dope case,
but again, it's not a dope case.
These are violent criminals selling guns, doing drive-by, everything else,
and you debrief all these fools, and they're sharing who murdered so-and-so at the stop-the-shop,
whatever.
We had nine cold-case murders that got reinvestigated.
So that's really who these folks are.
And the last three are getting out. Biden actually, this last hurrah, let the last three guys out, one of which is actually a pen pal of mine.
I've been trying to get out for years, me and another attorney of trying to get it, because I think he got really screwed on the Senate.
I see.
The other two are those kind of folks that you want someone to let you know when they get out.
So you can just watch yourself.
Sure.
But again, the only reason I can even think that even happened, because it happened without any instigating from me, we're working from behind the scenes and trying to put together.
case to get my guy out. And all of a sudden he calls it, man, I just, he's getting down in July,
is that, again, they think this is a dope case. These are nonviolent, whatever is his drugs and
blah, blah, blah. Well, that's not the case. There's so much more context in the situation.
I know we're closing here, but before I forget, one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode
with you was because you are donating some of the money from this book. Tell me about that,
where that's going. Yeah, I was encouraged to write a book after this, and I had no
interest in writing a book at all, till somebody brought me to one particular organization that
got me turned on to this whole thing where we calculate all the kids that were left behind after this
roundups. You have 51 people off the street, one female, 50 dudes, and you try to think of,
all right, now how many fatherless kids are there going to be on the street in that same poor
neighborhood, being raised by aunts and grandmothers in that same place who are going to take the next
opportunity, and then you've got to get some dude in 18 years to go in and take them all to jail
I'm just thinking, this is salvaging that neighborhood in a certain way, but it's not a long-term solution. The arrest is not a long-term solution. You're getting the violent people away so that this neighborhood could potentially thrive, but what are we doing for that neighborhood to thrive? And this organization is an after-school organization that mentors children have incarcerated and murdered parents. They teach them. They have to come in and report their conduct grade every single day. They talk about their test scores. They get mentored in art class.
in their homework stuff.
They do music.
They do athletics.
They have a little after school.
Dallas Maverick guy will come out and do some kind of thing at the basketball court or whatever.
It's a fantastic program.
They essentially teach these kids table manners and how to apply for jobs.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Smart.
But takes her ceiling from this level and makes it sky high, which we take for granted.
Our parents have always thought, you can do anything you want.
Sure.
If you just do this, this is the path and whatever.
It's like Chris Rock bit.
You ever remember that Chris Rock bit where he's like, you tell a white kid, he can do whatever you want.
turns around and says, I can know that.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
It is right.
I think it's funny because it's ironic because these kids, again, that was their dad.
That's what they knew.
Their dads grew up in that same environment, got into the bad stuff.
I will concede most of these guys were not actually great fathers at all.
Yeah.
I was going to say like absentee father, but your father before was staying up all night, killing people.
Yes.
Yeah, not a pillar of the community.
But still it illustrates the problem ultimately, which is why, okay, I thought,
That's a purpose to write the book.
And so we donate all the profits, actually, from this book, to organizations that we've donated to that organization in particular, as well as others that are the same objective as just mentoring children of incarcerated parents, so that the cycle has some potential for fixing itself.
You're teaching them ways in which they can succeed in other ways besides grabbing a gang member and Latchenon in sixth grade or whatever that is.
Yeah, wow, that's really awesome.
And I hope that it's successful.
I mean, it sounds like it is so far.
But, man, how do we get out of this mess?
It seems like a huge chunk of the next generation
doesn't have functional parents,
doesn't have role models,
and we can't really arrest our way out of this dope problem.
It sort of reminds me of that scene in the movie below
where they're interrogating the guy
and they're like, what do you think of doing selling drugs?
And you can't arrest your way out of this problem.
There's all these drugs that go across the border.
It's all about demand.
There's always a market for it.
What do we do about this?
Politics and graft and everything else.
Yeah, I don't think in terms of drugs,
Obviously, I think the war on drugs, I think everyone would agree that doesn't work.
It's been how many decades now that's been in play.
You're putting a lot of lives at risk for us to continue spinning the wheel so that it doesn't get worse, which is the only real progress I think we make when you're fighting the dope, is you're just putting people in harm's way, law enforcement, doing all this different stuff just to make sure it doesn't get worse.
Because if you quit fighting it, it will get worse.
Fighting it is not beating it either.
Yeah.
So I don't know exactly a solution.
I think if I did, I'd be speaking all over the world, giving them the magic key.
But I do think too many people pass on making an impact because they think it's this giant undertaking.
And if you can impact one person that is of an age that can be enlightened by some kind of wisdom or encouragement or whatever, I think that's really the keys.
If more people would think a small difference adds up in total, I think that's really where.
comes in, educating people and acknowledging consequences, most of the people in the dope game
are not accountable people and they get pissed off when they get caught. But if you actually
understand consequences and value other things that you can do, you'll make better choices in general.
And it's not that we can do that in mass with one kind of turnkey thing, but I think people that have
a struggling kid or something that may listen to you, even if you tell them the exact same stuff
their dad tells them and they don't listen, a lot of times it could be as simple as that, just saving
that one dude, because he's going to then have a testimony about how he managed to get away from
some of that stuff. And then that spreads. Other people are doing that. So I really think it's just
an individual thing where most of us get old and you realize, wow, I was trying to do all this
stuff to make myself successful. And once I get to a certain age, I realize it's all about making
other people successful. That's when life really becomes real. It's so much better. But not
everybody sees things like that until you can help a single person out and appreciate what that does.
That's a legacy, even if you don't get your name put on a plaque for it. So I think we could
solve some of those problems. Teagan Broadwater, thanks so much, man, for coming in. We went way over.
I appreciate you hanging in there. I'm honored to be here, man. Thank you for let me come on.
If you're looking for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show to check out, here's a trailer
of our interview with Jack Barski, former KGB spy, who posed as an American in a truer-than-life version
of a Hollywood movie. This is one of our most popular episodes of the show. Jack not only dodged
the FBI for decades, but also defected from the Soviet Union secretly becoming a real American.
We'll learn how spies were recruited and trained during the Cold War and what skills Jack used
to assimilate seamlessly into American culture. I was untouchable. I was above the law. I was always
bypassing customs and passport control. So a young person, it really feels good because I never liked
rules. How did you flip to eventually becoming full American? I know they tried to call you home. Can you
take us through that? They called me back as an emergency departure. They've done this in the past.
They called back an agent, and as soon as they step on Soviet soil, they are jailed or even executed.
I was stalling the Soviets, and then one day they sent one of their resident agents, and he said to
me, you've got to come home or else you're dead. It was a threat. I decided I would defy them,
Tell him that I'm not returning. I will not betray any secrets, and please give the money on my account to my German family.
Wow. Tell us how you got caught, because the story is just not complete until you, like you said, had to face your past.
I was stopped on the other side of a toll gate. It was a state trooper. Just like to check your license and registration.
And could you step out of the car? I step out of the car. Still not having a clue what was going on.
out of the corner of my eye, somebody approaching me from the back.
The fellow introduced himself, he says, Joe Riley, FBI, and he showed me this badge.
We would like to talk with you.
The first question I asked, am I under arrest?
And the answer was no.
Then I said, what took you so long?
For more from Jack Barski, including how Jack was finally caught by the FBI, and what happened after that,
check out episode 285 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.
All things Teigen Broadwater will be.
in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com, advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show,
all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.
Our newsletter, by the way, great companion to the show, specific, practical, two-minute read,
maximum. Every Wednesday-ish, Jordanharbinger.com slash news is where you can find it.
And don't forget about six-minute networking as well. That's free over at six-minute networking.com.
I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.
in this show? Well, it's created an association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger,
Jace, Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Tadasidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.
Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends
when you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us
is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in
this kind of undercover work, drug trafficking, police work, et cetera, definitely share this episode
with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you
learn and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know
podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you
like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike
Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same
curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast, focused format. Mike brings on top experts and
asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in
the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people
think the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you
or not, the through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something
you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star
reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that
I want to understand how people in the world really work itch, search for something you should
know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank
me later.
