The Team House - Inside REAL Human Trafficking Investigations | Carlos Rodriguez | Ep. 399

Episode Date: February 28, 2026

Carlos Rodriguez is a former Washington State Patrol detective and supervisor who led investigations into child exploitation, human trafficking, and online predator stings as part of the Missing & Exploited Children Task Force. He is the author of The Ugly Underneath, a book detailing the emotional toll of investigating crimes against children and the hidden psychological cost paid by those who protect the most vulnerable.https://theuglyunderneath.com/Today's Sponsors:Mando ⬇️Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with MANDO and get 20% off + free shipping with promo code [TEAMHOUSE] at https://shopmando.com/GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 25% off! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________PRE ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️https://a.co/d/0eOl8czUSubscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 — Start1:11 — Why He Became a State Trooper5:18 — Undercover Drug & Street Ops9:50 — Crimes Against Children Task Force17:54 — Predator Coach Case Breakdown27:58 — Female Offender & Shocking Abuse Case40:29 — Online Predator Stings (Demand Ops)48:38 — PTSD, Burnout & Compassion Fatigue56:23 — How Traffickers Get Prosecuted1:30:51 — NGOs, Prevention Programs & Fighting Trafficking TodayBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey everyone. I want to tell you about my new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, Out in June. It is a novel about a regimental reconnaissance company soldier who gets kidnapped while he's on a mission to West Africa. And when he wakes up, he finds that he is now being hunted for sport by a group of tech billionaires through the wilds of West Africa. This book is based on stories that I heard over the years about safari guides taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game resorts. in Africa. I took that and I took a century old short story, the most dangerous game, and modernized it. And the product is this book, which I think will feel contemporary and resonate with audiences today. Thank you and please check it out. Hey guys. Welcome to the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with tonight's guest Carlos Rodriguez. He was, is a former police officer with the Washington

state patrol. He is also the author of the book, upcoming book. Hopefully it'll be out by the time most of you guys hear this. The Ugly Underneath, navigating the emotional toll of investigating crimes against children. So Carlos did a whole series of different cases throughout his career, but one of them was getting involved in tracking down sexual predators, people who are engaged in human trafficking, and other nasty stuff. And, uh, I'm really happy to have Carlos here today because I feel like in the last couple years, maybe five to 10 years maybe a lot of different players have gotten involved in this topic. And I think there's a lot of misconceptions around trafficking and what it is.

So I'm really happy to have an expert like you on here, Carlos. Somebody who actually worked, you know, boots on the ground to really shed some light on what this job is and what it does to the police officers as well. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So let's start at the beginning, man. Tell us a little bit about how you grew up and why you became a cop. What pushed you in that direction? Well, I never ever thought I was going to be going to law enforcement. I actually worked for the Washington State Patrol as the mailboy. And I worked in the mailroom. And my girlfriend at the time, her, her oldest brother was killed by a DUI. So when that happened, it was tragic.

And I worked for the state patrol and I thought, well, who gets DUIs? It's state troopers. So I set out to become a state trooper and became a state trooper. And there was an interesting moment in your book where you were, you know, the mail office guy. And what you wrote a, you wrote a letter to was it the chief of police? I kind of jumped the chain of command a few, a few links there. Yeah, I remember. I drove to work and I was just I was stunned from what had happened with my girlfriend's brother had been killed and on Mother's Day of all days early in the morning.

And then I just went to work and I remember just feeling numb and I decided to write a letter to the chief. And I was the mailboy, so I'm the person who delivers everything. So I just wrote the letter, put it into an envelope, started to deliver everything down the hall and then went into his office and delivered. it. And then about 30 minutes after that, he came and talked to me. What was that conversation like? Well, first thing, I mean, I'd never seen the chief in the mail room. That's the first thing. And I didn't think he would even, I don't even think he'd get to it, read it. Because to me, I was, shoot, I was early 20s, maybe 20, 21. And just didn't have any interaction with him because I was low person on the,

totem pole. And, but I remember him coming in and he told me, um, first he said my name and I thought, shit, this guy knows my name. And then he, um, told me I needed to go home. And, um, I didn't want to go home. I thought I needed to stay there and, and do my job. Uh, so I, we had a little back and forth. And then he, he, basically, he assured me that I shouldn't be there and that I should go and, and, and help the family. And then that's when I told them, you know, I'm going to, I meant that I'm going to be a state trooper. I want to be a state trooper because I told them that in the letter that synopsis that what had happened is horrible, shouldn't have happened, and I'm going to be a state trooper so it doesn't happen to other people. And so yeah, you went home and you helped out the family

a bit. And what was the process like to actually, you know, fulfilling that, you know, kind of a dream or obligation that you felt to become a state trooper? Well, it was terrifying. I mean, I had never done anything like that before. I'm most people in Washington State, there used to be a requirement that he had to be six feet tall. I'm five, six. I'm just a little guy.

So people were really shocked. They were surprised when they thought, oh, you're going to, yeah, right, you're going to be a trooper. So, but I did it. You know, I went to the academy. I had asked some questions. I tried to get help. People told me, you know, you just got to blend in.

You'll get through it. If you don't want to be too good. You don't want to be really bad. If you're right in the middle, then the people will leave you alone. You'll get in. You'll get through it. And unfortunately, that didn't happen. The first day, I was singled out because this lady that I worked with,

who I delivered mail to, her husband was our tack officer. And he singled me out immediately. Because I look, I got gray hair now, so I don't look as young. But at the time, I looked like a kid. I looked super young. And yeah, so they used to call me kid. And I got to work. I got to do a bunch of cool stuff because of how I looked, though, because I looked really young.

Yeah, right. It lent itself to undercover work. Yeah, yeah. I got to do, when Fast and the Furious first came out, they threw me a little Honda hatchback. So I got to do sell stolen property, which was awesome. It was fun because kids used to show me that, hey, look at my car, you know, don't steal my shit. You know, so we got to do that. And then I also, and then my uncle, he's no longer here anymore, but he actually was on the other side of law enforcement.

He worked for some drug cartels in Washington State and ended up going to prison. He shot somebody. But he used to tell me, hey, miho, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, grow goatee. Just look how you look when you're going to go in before you do a deal with with whoever you're doing with. He goes, get some grease, put it all over your hands, then go wash your hands so you look like you work because cops don't look like they work. And you'll be good. Just be yourself. He goes, don't act like, you know, goatees, I don't know, the 511 pants, you know, your basic stuff. Yeah, like you didn't shave over the weekend.

Like, oh, wow, that's real convincing. Yeah, yeah. And it took me back to the Then, I mean, it took me a couple weeks just to get a little bit of facial hair. So now I have some, but this is like two weeks. Well, this is also, I mean, not way back in the day, but I mean, back in the day, undercover work was really like, oh, hey, you're a brown guy. You speak Spanish. Like, you can go out there and sling some drugs with the kids, right? Yeah, it was totally different. I remember when I was going through Detective Basic, they were teaching his class, and then one guy stops and he goes, you, are you Carlos?

And I was like, yeah. And I was like, I heard about you. We got plans for you. And then I was like, great. You know, so it was fun. I mean, I got to do some cool things. And then after I did the auto theft, I got into, I went to a trap or a drug trafficking task force where we focused on mid to upper level DTOs. And it was called Westnet, West Sound Narcotics Enforcement team.

So I did that for about four years. And that was a lot of fun. I really learned, that's where I learned how to be a cop. I was a state trooper, but when I went there and the people that I was with, because it was city, county, feds, that's where I learned from them how to actually be a police officer. Because state patrol, we had a different function. So I really learned a lot from that group, from my detectives. Hey guys, it's Jack.

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House. Promote code, House. Upgrade your sleep with GhostBed, the makers of the coolest beds in the world. Some exclusions apply. See site for details. And thank you, GhostBed for sponsoring the show. Please check out the link down in the description and support our sponsor. All right. So they pulled you into drug trafficking cases because you looked young and could do undercover work. And then I think was the next thing for you working on the personal security detachment for the governor? Yeah, so I got asked to go to, it's called the Executive Protection Unit. So I did that for a brief stint before going into crimes against children.

And then right towards the end of my career, I went back to that with the different administration. Yeah, I mean, the first time around it sounded like you kind of got jammed up in a shitty situation with, was it like the chief of staff for the governor? Yeah, so I'll say, you know, in that scenario, you know, people want to manage things in different ways, I think. And what ended up happening is there was a threat that had come in and the way that it was handled. They didn't really, I think, care for a press release that went out. And so because of that, I ended up having a talk with my principal. And I don't think I was the best person for that because if my principal needs to focus on how they're going to support their constituents, they shouldn't be worried about other things if they're not comfortable with a certain person.

And really, in that instance, I mean, if you've done protection work or people who do that, the job's not about the people doing the work. It's about your principal. And it's really thankless. And there's so much stuff that goes on behind the scenes that when everything, you're doing all these things, but it's, you're doing all these things. it looks like absolutely everything's smooth, and that's how it should be. No one should really know all of the things that you're doing. So in this instance, it didn't work out, and I left, I left the unit and went back to the road for a bit. And then how did you get pulled into this whole thing with crimes against children?

So I was actually trying to get on to our Washington State Fusion Center to work with someone I had worked with before. He was a person that recruited me to go into narcotics. And he was at the Fusion Center. And I wanted to work with him again. I'd learned a lot from him. And so I was preparing to go to that spot. And then someone who was in the division slid over to that spot. So I wasn't able to get it.

And he said, hey, do you know this guy? This guy's name was Bill Steen. He was a Marine recon guy. And I was like, yeah, I know, Bill. We used to work together. And he's like, hey, why don't you contact him? He works for the Missing and Exploited Children's Task Force. I think you could do a lot of good there.

They do a lot of good work. And I didn't even really know what the task force was. There's this other group that they're called missing an unidentified person's unit. And they deal with, they do with dental records, trying to recover people. they managed the Amber program, and they used to put pictures on the side of semi-trucks to look for missing kids. And that's what I thought it was,

but it wasn't like that at all. So I went and cross-train with them. I went and went to a warrant and saw how they were doing things, and I thought, how could I have not known that we even do this? And another thing is, how can people trade these images

of these horrible things, of these kids getting raped? How can, I didn't even know it was a thing. So I thought, I want to do this. This is what I need to do. Yeah, so Carlos told you, I mean, your audio cut out on my end, but you said you were talking about how you got into investigating crimes against children and you wanted to work with your buddy, but that didn't work out. And where did you end up landing? Where did you end up landing?

So I had, I was working the road and it's called Bremerton, Washington. And then, He had told me, he's like, hey, have you heard of the missing and exploited children task force or mechteth? And I thought it was, I thought it was this. We had another group in the patrol that would put pictures of missing kids on the side of semi-trucks. And then they managed dental records. They managed the Amber Alert program. I thought it was that, which it wasn't. He's like, no, that's not the same outfit.

I think you should go and cross-train there. He asked me if I knew a guy named Bill Steen, who's an old Marine Marine recon guy. and I'd worked the road with him. And he said, yeah, I know Bill. You should go spend some time with Bill. So I connected with Bill. Cross train there. I went to a search warrant where it was for this guy.

There was a residence that was suspected of trading child sexual abuse material or CSAM. And the reason why I say residents is we had a cyber tip that they had a cyber tip that those images were being traded from an IP address. So they had written a warrant for the residents that the IP address belonged to. So you don't really know who's trading inside. I mean, there may be some, some clues, and you figure that out when you interview people, but you don't always know. So the warrant was for the residents to recover those images. So I went cross-trained, and then I learned, I didn't even know as a thing that people would trade these images of kids getting great videos, photos. I just, that was.

totally new to me. It's just disgusting. And I thought, this is something I could get behind. This is something I could go and try to help hold these people accountable. So, yeah, I interviewed for it and it ultimately got the position. And what was that position? So I was the sergeant. So I was in the State Patrol. If you are a part of a task force or detective, then you're called Detective Sergeant. So I managed that task force. And, you know, and I'd been in, in the state patrol, in the narcotics task force where I had a prosecutor assigned to me. I had six or seven detectives. People knew what we did.

Multiple agencies, I had admin support. When I went to this task force, I didn't have any of that. It was myself, I think I had two detectives at the time. And then, because one was just about to retire, one from another agency, and then Bill, the guy I had met. We had no admin support. They'd just cut it. And I'd learned that they were actually looking at cutting the task force.

They were going to eliminate it, which ultimately that never happens because, you know, what, what member of the House or the Senate is going to vote on eliminating a team, even if they don't provide the support to make that team successful? Because we didn't have enough people. We couldn't even serve a warrant on our own. We always had to partner with other people, ask people to help us so we could serve a warrant. safely. So, yeah, I was, it wasn't the, the most ideal. When I got there, there was a lot that it needed. Yeah. So you didn't have the appropriate funding. Pretty severely under-resourced. Oh, yeah. We had, I think, myself, enough for two detectives. And then Bill ended up getting out of there. he promoted and then we recruited two other people. One was from the narcotics task force I worked at

because I knew what he was about. So I recruited him over. And then one other guy was a trooper who he didn't really know how to do any detective work, but the guy just, he had potential and he was just motivated. So he was, he was the good fit. And then we just, we just worked cases, made friends. And that's how we got stuff done in the beginning. Yes. So tell us about, like, like, you know, your first big case that you recall. And like, how did those leads come about? Do they come about like people calling the cops? Like, I think this guy's up to no good.

Or is it like, I don't know how it works internally, cyber crime reports like this guy's trading illegal materials or how's that come about? Yeah. So there are a number of ways. Yes, that your community can call and report something. Then there's, you can have someone who's out in the field. who's a beat cop, a trooper on the road, they may see something and then they call another detective in another area that they don't have necessarily have the expertise to work with that. So we'd get those cases.

And then there's something called cyber tips. And those are, let's say if you saw something online and you thought this isn't right or someone approached you. Like right now it's Roblox. So let's say there was something with Roblox that was inappropriate. You could report a cyber tip through the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children. It's called NECMEC or MissingKids.org. So you can go there, report whatever that you're seeing, and then that goes to, that's the clearinghouse. And then when those reports, those reports come in, they're sent out to one of 61 Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces, IACs.

And my task force was an affiliate, an ICAC affiliate. So we didn't manage it. We didn't manage ICAC for the entire state, even though we worked cases all over the state, but we didn't manage the ICAC. So we'd get cases. So we'd get cyber tips and then proactive work. So once you have the appropriate training, you can do undercover ops online. And we did a lot of that towards, I'd say, after I was there, two or three years,

we started doing a lot of the online undercover ops. What were some of the first cases that you worked on when you got there? Oh, so I'll say the one that comes to mind that I think, well, there's two. One was a coach case that I had. It was a coach who's a wrestling coach and a football coach for little kids. And the reason why that sticks out so much of my mind. mind is Bill had already left. He was a sergeant. He said, hey, this buddy, I knew him from wrestling. He called me. His kids told him something, and this is going to be a good case, but you should talk to him

tomorrow because he's really angry and he's drunk. He got the guy got loaded when he found out what happened. And one of his boys was ranked number one in state at the time for wrestling in his weight class, and was just under a lot of stress. He had recently reconnected with his mom who had been out of his life for a while. She had shared something that had happened in his life that was tragic. So then he shared, hey, this is what coach did to me and my brother. And he goes, but I'm okay. I'm a man.

You know, I can deal with it. She couldn't, she can't handle it. So she ends up calling dad. Dad ends up calling us. So on that one, you know, he wasn't even trying to report it to disclose it. So when we went and met with him. But the thing why that, I mean, I have hundreds of cases like that. I mean, but the reason why this one.

sticks out is when I went and looked at the guy's Facebook, he was hugging a kid. And the kid he was hugging wasn't, ended up not being a victim. But the kid he was hugging. My son was at this kid's house the weekend before. So I'm, I'm freaking out because I'm like, did this, you know, all these things are going through my head. Did this guy do anything to my kid? You know, what, what is?

Do I know any of these other children? So that, that one really stuck out. And the thing that that really sucked about, that case is all of the offenses, all the times that he had offended on this, this young man when he was a boy, was they were all out of state. They weren't in Washington from what we had. So it was when he'd go on wrestling trips. So it was in California, I believe Reno were the two areas. So we didn't have anything in our area. So I'm trying to work with the feds to see if they can do something. I'm working with the law enforcement down in California to try to get.

get something going on. And then they were saying, we only had the one because the other brother didn't want to disclose what had happened, didn't want to meet with me. So we're interviewing all these other people trying to get other things. And we start following this coach around because we have information he's going to go to Canada. He's going to leave to Canada. We're thinking eventually he's going to figure something out because we're asking these questions. So we're doing surveillance on the guy, following him, call him in. We don't, we can't arrest him. I'm trying to get a warrant, an arrest warrant from California, and I'm trying to work with the AUSA, but they want the other brother to disclose before they do something because they want more. The assistant United States Attorney, the prosecutor, want more evidence.

Yes. They want more. So we don't have enough. So we follow this guy around for a couple hours. Call him. He says he's three hours away, which, of course, he isn't because we're watching him. Then he ends up agreeing to come in. And so we interview him.

We ask him all these questions. We take him through this, this processed timeline. And through that, we weren't able to arrest him that day. And he ended up going to Canada. But because of that, the timeline that he gave us of all the places he lived in different places, we were able to interview other people. And we had a lot of kids that came forward who were now adults. Some of them were adults.

Some of them were adults. Some were still kids. So we partnered with the FBI. They actually flew in two of their. child forensics interviewers and we spent a week just interviewing doing safety interviews of all these kids and we had 10 10 that came forward in that case and then the guy fled we ended up putting a um we're we're tracking that we had a uh if he were to cross the border back and forth we'd be notified uh through hsi and um we tried to go up on the guy's phone uh we weren't able he wasn't using the phone any longer so um The other thing about this story is where he was staying. He was living with his mom when he was in Washington, and I knew the neighbor. So I told the neighbor, I said, hey, if you see this car show up, you got to call me because it's this bad dude and we want him.

So she calls one night and says, hey, the car's here. So we set up on the place. We didn't get notified that he had crossed. So we set up on the house, see a guy that looks like him. And it ends up not being the guy. We like end up pulling him over. Once we do take away, pull him over. And the guy who it was, this guy's uncle used to be a detective who worked the same cases that we did.

And he was actually one of the guys that helped write the law that created the task force. I was kind of weird. But he said, yeah, the guy's car is here because he got arrested in Montana. And they hadn't cleared his warrant yet, so we didn't know. He goes, yeah, he got arrested in Montana, so his parents went up, picked up the car, brought it down here, and goes, there's a bunch of laptops in there and digital media in the car. So we ended up getting a warrant for that. And he ends up coming down. We end up getting charges on him.

He didn't submit to another interview. But because of that first day, when we were following him around and all the places he went, we had seen him go to a storage unit. So we were able to get a warrant for the storage unit. and we searched through this whole, it was about the size of a one car garage. In the very last box in the back that we were in there, we recovered a bunch of child sexual abuse material that he had staved in the very,

we searched the whole thing, pulled everything out, and that's where we found the material. That case, the other reason why I think about that one, because that one haunts me a little bit because there's one kid in there. We found some images, and we were neighbor, never able to identify who that kid was.

So that, I mean, that really bugs me. It bothered me for a long time until this year recently, because there's so many changes with software and technology. The, my detective, he still works there. He says, hey, I think we found that kit. So I don't know if they've reached out to because he's an adult now. Right. But at least see we can get him some resources.

And we knew that he had created those. His name is Scott Carroll. He's in prison down in Oregon right now. But the reason why we knew it was him in the images is he had this unique tattoo. He had a barbell right here on his hand that was bent. And it was in all the images. So we were able to track it to him. And we tried everything at the time to find that kid.

And we had the GPS for his phone off all the towers. We looked to see where he was. was the different time stamps. We contacted all the different school districts trying to identify who he was. And we went just up and down the I-5 corridor where he went and tried to see if if we could identify this kid. And it just weren't able to do it at the time. But at least there's some closure now. So that's good. And you said this guy's in prison now, thankfully. So this case did get prosecuted. Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah, I got prosecuted. We ended up working with law enforcement went down in Oregon because some of the victims were from Oregon. So he had offended on that we know of

people in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and we believe Canada, but we didn't get, we didn't really get much feedback from them. And it sounds like as an early case, you know, this one's a little haunting in the sense that, you know, because of your personal connection, your son being at one of the victim's homes at one point for just a normal, you know, play day or whatever. That must have opened your eyes about how this stuff is all around us all the time. Yeah, I'll tell you, you know, people always say, well, when you talk about crimes against children, it's everywhere. I mean, there are people out there. And we did our demand ops where people were seeking to have sex with kids, 13 and younger.

we'd average seven arrests a night doing that. And that was just, that's not on the darknet. That was on Craigslist or these different apps where people want to meet each other. It was on those types of apps. So it's easy as ordering pizza, grabbing a door dash. I mean, that's how easy it was. And we could have worked around the clock. I just didn't have the resources because when you work those cases,

you have to worry about, one, your people and the fatigue if your people, because if you don't manage that, they're going to start to make little mistakes. They're going to, maybe it increases the chance of a use of force. Maybe they miss something in a report and then someone gets off on some little, you know, a problem that could have been avoided. Someone doesn't make the right decision. Someone doesn't review something and they miss something. So we would, when we built those teams and we're doing those operations, we would make sure

that we scheduled it a certain way. We'd cap it at a certain time. If there was a target that we needed to handle later that night or early in the morning, we'd pull a small team together and we'd focus on that so we can keep going. And we do those ops about a week at a time. When I was there, that's what we would do. And what was that other case you mentioned from those early days that kind of stands out for you? There's another one where I'd say I'd been in there a couple months in the task force.

and my buddy Bill called me and said, hey, we got a really bad one. And I was like, okay, I'll drive in. He's like, no, no, you don't need to come in. We can handle it tomorrow? And I was like, well, can you cuss on here? I was like, well, you know, fuck, dude. Okay, I was like, fuck, dude.

Everything we do is bad, you know. Right. And you're calling me. He's like, no, no, it's fine. And we had a lot of cases going on. He was working a case investigating a retired cop that we, was doing stuff. So, I mean, we're doing everything. So I stayed home, went in the next day, went in early, read the cyber tip. And it was just horrific. It was these two, they're like

practically kids. They're in their 20s. They're on this application where they just go and meet each other. They can show pictures. They can do the live. Kind of like how TikTok is now, but it was one of the earlier applications. And they're talking about doing things with their kids like she had a little baby boy he was six months old um sorry some of the content's pretty graphic i'll sanitize it but uh and then um the other guy was doing stuff uh with his sister and brother and then animals that were on the farm and they were sharing these images and she had shared an image with um something that she had made with her kid and so when i saw that and i was new like this was the first time it it i'll say it affected me i mean i i had to take

breath. Luckily, I'm glad I was the only one had, I could come in early, so no one was there to see how it was affecting me. And I thought, we got to get this kid. I mean, I should have been out yesterday. So I called Bill and I was like, man, we got to go get this kid. So on that case, I actually partnered with someone else in our crew who's great at interviewing because Bill was working this other case with this former cop. And we had two, addresses that were about about an hour from where my office was in one to two hours, if I remember correctly, from each other. So we set up on one place to try to find the mom first because she had the youngest child and wasn't there. So then we went to another city. It's called Montesano.

And we set up on the house and didn't see anything. But then my other detective who was with me, he, there was a soccer game or something and he saw a cop that he knew. And so he went to talk to him and he's like, hey, do you know about this house? He's like, yeah, I know the landlord. So call the landlord. End up, yes, she lives there. So we went out real early the next morning, end up grabbing her and the kid off a bus. There was a school bus while we had made contact at the residence and then interviewed her.

And she remember when we interviewed her, she was so matter of fact about what what she had done, the different things that she was involved in. And actually later after that case, I went back and interviewed her in prison. I met with her a couple times. And she helped me develop my undercover role because I play the part of a mom with kids. But she helped me with that. So we interviewed her. When you interviewed her the first time that like she felt that you were sitting there judging her, right?

Yeah. So when we do interviews, we would have a one and a two. So if you're the one in an interview, you're the one who's asking most of the questions and explaining everything to the person. The two usually takes notes and then we'll come in and ask questions. That's how we were trained. So I was the two. And so I just really just sat there the whole time and listened because my detective was doing a great job. And she was just engaging with him, talking back and forth.

We're getting the evidence that we needed. And so I didn't really say anything. then we went back and talked to her and she's like you, you, you just sat there the whole time and you judged me. And I thought, well, here's, and then I explained what I just explained

to you to her. And she's like, well, you need to tell the people that you, you are talking to. You need to tell them that because that will help you. So we actually started to do that. So when we did interviews,

we'd introduce ourselves, we'd talk about what's going on, do they have any questions, ask the questions, and we just told them what we were doing to a certain existence. My note taker.

Yeah. Yeah. So we'd go through that and then say, you know, if you see me write something down and then scratch it off, that's because you already answered the question. So, you know, don't think we're judging you in any way. So that's what we would do. Just a real empathetic approach. Well, I take it you were trained on the read interrogation method.

Yeah. So we did read. And I'll say with interviewing, I think you really should take. go to as many interview courses as you can. And you really need to develop your own style. The one that I really like that really changed how I interview people. It's called the guy's name's Dr. Joe Sullivan. He's from Ireland.

And he trains people on how to interview people who are sexually attracted to kids. And he goes into the different behavioral analysis of different people and the personas that they may present to you, whether they're a good guy, person of status, if it's a power of control, what type of power of control, more of a sadist versus you can have someone else who's, it is just about,

it is more about the sex or versus just the pain. So just these different ways of these people may present to you this way. If you see this and you identify this, then these questions may work, and these questions most likely won't. and going that approach and seeing how it changes. And then you can also use that when you're chatting under cover because you're getting an idea of what type of person they're presenting

and then seeing how they present when you're actually, they've been caught and you're talking to them. So I think if you take that, and that works can work for anything, not just sex predators, but I think you take that, you take read, you take whatever other trainings you've gone to and you really develop your own style so you can have a conversation. And I train on interviewing on these types of cases.

And that's really what I try to push is, you know, if you're here for my course, it's not, I'm not going to teach you all of these things. Because if you do the read method and let's say you miss one of the steps, defense is going to try to attack you on that because you didn't do all of these things, right? So as long as you can articulate it, you're usually okay. But sometimes your prosecutor is not as good. It's not going to ask the right question back if you can't get that information out. So really put something together and develop your style and then always improve. And then just realizes when you interview somebody, really what you're doing is you're creating a roadmap for the prosecutor. So when the case goes to them.

Because I remember when I was new and we'd go to trial or whatever and I'd have this, I thought it was this great interview and it got the guy to say all this stuff. And then they wouldn't put me on for the interviewer. They wouldn't show the video. And I was like, why, I did such a great job. Why didn't you do this? And he's like, well, think of it this way. That's, you're giving me the roadmap. You're giving me all the tools to ask the questions.

If I put you on, the guy's not going to go on the stand. If I do this, there's a better chance that he's going to go on the stand. And then I can ask all these questions while he's on the stand. And that was really helpful just learning from, I've been very fortunate to work with a lot of different prosecutors since I got to go all around the state and just learn a lot from them. because it's really a team effort. But yeah, I think it got off a tangent there a little bit. No, it's all good. I love the techniques and the tradecraft.

But as I recall on this case, you guys did pick up the boyfriend, too, right? Yeah, so after we recovered the little boy and the mom, mom went to jail. Then we needed to find the other guys. The name was Chris. So we needed to find Chris, and he was about an hour. away. So same scenario. There were two houses that we had identified that he may be at. So I set up on one in an area called Spanoa, Washington. It's outside of Tacoma, Washington. And then the other house was actually close to our district headquarters in between Pueallup Lakewood area in Washington State. And so we had

people with eyes on there. I had eyes on the other house, but we were we were spread thin. I didn't have many people. So we're trying to get people to the area. And then we're, we had people. And then we had the detective was sitting at the PD getting ready to, he was working on the warrant for the two locations. So Chris ends up rolling by and I see him at the house. So I'm like, hey, I got eyes on this guy. Send me another. Leave someone with eyes on there, how far out of the other guys so that we can go do a knock and talk on on the house. And because I wanted to recover the phone. When he, when he parked and exited, he was on, he was on an iPhone. And we knew he had communicated. She said he had an iPhone and they had exchanged these images. So we wanted

that piece of evidence. But yeah, so we ended up, we ended up getting Chris and finding evidence of, he had received the image. He had, through the search warrants, we found things he had, horrible things he had done to his sister. He was, he had, just the conversations he had. He had his sister's panties in a box under the bed, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. He did. Yeah. So you guys got him. Thank God. Um, you know, the thing I want to ask you, too, from your experience in doing these interviews and part of the interview process is you have to try to empathize with them a little bit to get them to open up. And I know that's, that's an interview technique. But at the same time, you have a lot of insight. And I realize the average American has an attitude. And I understand where a company. from, of course, of like, we should just shoot these people in the street. But you and people like you come to understand who these criminals are and why they do the things that they do in some cases.

And I want to ask you about, like, what insights you took away from that because it seems like there are two types of people. There are some that are abused as children and they become abusers themselves. And then there's another type of person that gets abused and they come to the conclusion that I would never, ever put another person through that. I want to know what your take is on it and what you think about all this. I'll say from my experience, well, a couple of things is there are some studies that try to support statistics on, you know, what's more prevalent. But really, it's a lot of that, unless it's documented, that something happened to that person. you're having to listen, you know, are they telling you the truth or not, right?

So what I will say from my experience that if someone is offended upon, it does not mean that they're going to become someone that abuses another person or offends on someone. But from what I've seen is there have been a lot of people who have, who are abusing kids that they were abused. If that makes sense, there's more likely than not that did happen. from what I've seen the people who I've talked to when they said. Some people, they deny it. And then also, like the training I went through with Dr. Sullivan, he's a psychiatrist or psychologist.

So when people talk to him, they're not looking at, they're already arrested. So it's easier for them to be more forthright versus me in my capacity as a law enforcement officer, interviewing them about things that even if I'm being successful with them giving me evidence, they still know the things I'm saying are, it's going to get me in trouble. So they're not always as forthright. And as time goes on, you started doing a lot of these. I don't want to call them entrapment operations because that'll get us in trouble. I don't know what the law enforcement term is, but you're out there trying to kind of bait in potential predators and catch them before they're able to do something really bad.

sort of the what's his face, Chris Hanson his operations. Yeah, that's what everybody relates to what we used to do, except I think, well, first off, the major difference, I think, is when somebody shows up to rape a kid

that's 13 and younger, because that's what we focused on. The youngest was three years old that someone showed up to try to do something to a child. is we don't have a reporter there that's there to interview it. You know, a lot of those cases, I don't know, I'd have to do, I never have verified it, but I don't think a lot of them were held accountable as compared to, like with us, the cases we did. And we had a lot of challenges about it to say that we were entrapping and things like that.

But in Washington State, when people show up, they have to take a substantial step. And oftentimes these people took multiple substantial steps and then just leaving a way out where, you know, they don't, they don't have to show up. You know, we're not, we're not, we're not, we're not, we're not coercing them into doing this. These are things that they're set out to do. When we first started doing those ops, we did it on Craigslist. And in an area called, it's not, it's no longer there was they, they, the, they, Craigslist got rid of the section when Backpage went down around that same time. And, um, and we'd go into an area called, um, casual encounters. And it's an area specifically designed. And it's an area specifically designed.

for people wanting to hook up. So you're already there people talking about sex. And there was everything in this place that people wanted to do. Like run-of-the-mill prostitution as well. Well, it could be people, you know, persons that are potentially trafficked

for people that are selling themselves for money. It could be, hey, I'm, I'm kinky. I'm looking to do this. And there's a lot of stuff that's, it was kinky as fuck, but it was legal, right?

So, and we're not, that wasn't our focus, right? Our focus was, you know, and when we first did it, so how I found out about doing this is I went to this training and I saw somebody do do something. They were out of, I believe it was Florida. I saw two, but I think the one I remember was Florida. And they were doing it and the ages were older. And I thought we could do something like this for younger because a lot of the images I'm seeing, you know, they're not all from a third world country. They're from here. We're seeing images from here.

Or these kids that are running away and that are being trafficked, you know, what are they, one, what are they running from and where are they going? So there has to be a demand for this. You know, people are, this is going on. And I remember the first time I posted an ad on Craigslist, it was, one was flagged within about 10 minutes, but I had hundreds of responses like, like that. And I thought we were going to fail. You know, when I was planning it, I was like, I got together with my old Drug Task Force unit. hey, I don't have the bodies. Can you guys be arrest team surveillance?

I'm already familiar with the prosecutor there. You know, what do you think about trying this in that area first? We got two apartments. One was our command post. The other one was where we'd send the people, where the mom would answer the door. And so we kind of ran it that way. And I thought, and I told them it was like, hey, I don't know. I don't know if people were going to show up, but we want to try to see if this would work.

And, yeah, it was like gangbusters. It was crazy. I participated in 16 of the ops before I went to, back to the Gov detail. And I think the most at one was like 29 people within a four or five-day period that we arrested. So, and you look at the cases. I mean, they're used to not testify a lot when we worked these cases. But these cases in Washington State, what they were looking at,

if for attempt rape of a child at the time, I don't know if the loss changed, but at the time, if it was 11 and younger, they were looking at potentially 10 years to life. Because they're indeterminate sentences in Washington State. Send them off to this island. They have an island in Washington where they go, this sexual assessment center. I don't know exactly what it's called, but it's on McNeil Island. And then, but if it's ages 12 through 13, then it's five years to life that they can get. So we went to trial a lot more.

The cases were solved. They're challenged. They went all the way up. We had some go all the way up to our Supreme Court. But the case law was good. There were some things where we learned, okay, don't do it necessarily that way. We should maybe do it this way. And you have to change and learn from that, you know, lessons learned.

But overall, when you read the cases, I mean, what these people are showing up to do. Yeah. And the things that they say, yeah, it's, it's, it's, And it's easy. I went and taught something down in Oregon, a class on how to run the ops at a conference. And I said, you guys want to see how easy it is? I pulled out the iPad, put my undercover persona on there. We had someone offer us, he had a choice.

He wanted two girls. Ended up only doing one and he was offering her. I was playing the part of a 13-year-old runaway and offered her 200 bucks to meet. So got with the prosecutor and an officer that was there that worked in the unit. And they had actually, this was a target of theirs that they hadn't got before. So they ended up arresting him two days later. So, I mean, it's just, it's just that easy. It's that quick.

Was that difficult for you to, like, you're literally having to roleplay everything from a 13-year-old runaway to a mother or father that's trying to prostitute their children? Was that kind of like difficult for you to play that role? I'll say, I wish I could say yes. But I think being surrounded with all of that material when you're doing the work, you have the subject matter. I mean, when you work those cases, you're just surrounded by this. It's just shit. I mean, it's ugly. That's why it's called the ugly underneath.

I call it the ugly. I mean, you're just surrounded by ugliness. And so it was, I had the subject matter to pull from to play the role. I think the part that was difficult well there were a couple things one

not getting not having that stuff stick to you so that you're thinking about it all the time not becoming really skeptical and thinking everybody is like this

because I'm in it all the time and I had to remind myself not everyone wants to do this you know because I'm deep in it and then so I had to

correct my thinking to know, hey, this is not how the world is. I'm here because I'm in this world trying to do this, but not everyone's like this. There are good people out there. And then I think it was just dealing with it. And what you do is you start to, you start, oh, sorry, that's my cat getting paid. No, it's okay.

Or getting food. So I think for me it was, sorry. I didn't know that was going to go on. But for me, it was you start to turn off your emotions so you can deal with this stuff. I just think it happens. I mean, I'm sure with, I listened. I didn't finish your book, but I listened to your book, I was to your podcast, but just some of the things I've hear is, you know, you have to, in order to do the work, you have the capacity to do the work, you have to shut certain things off so you can do it. Yeah.

You compartmentalize and. disassociate from certain things. Yep. Yeah. And I think the thing that I had an issue with is when I tried to turn things back on, it didn't always work. Right. And I really, I just became disassociated.

I didn't, it was hard for me to feel certain things. I, um, I compassion fatigue. You know, I would think, oh, well, I'm dealing with real problems and I'd go home and, you know, my wife's telling me about her day or my kids. And I was like, you know, those aren't problems. You know, so I had the compassion fatigue where I didn't really, I wasn't really there for them to try to help them deal with what, what they needed, needed to do.

So that was, was difficult in an area that I think I could have done, done better. Yeah, no, I want to ask you more about that, about kind of the psychological toll that it takes on, on the police that do this. you're wearing your t-shirt for the international association of human trafficking investigators and I got invited down to one of their symposiums years ago and it was a huge eye-opener for me. I remember afterwards sitting down with one of the cops and talking to him about, you know,

what his job is. And he told me he's like, you know, this morning I walked out into the beach. this was out in Tampa. And he's like, I just looked out at the ocean. And I just thought, it feels so good to not have to look at kitty porn today. And that struck me like, imagine what this dude's day-to-day life is like, that this conference is like a break from the horrible stuff that he has to see all the time. So I can only imagine what the police officers go through.

Yeah, I, you know, I was just talking to a guy. I'm going to a conference in April and I was talking to the person who handles the vendors. And I actually told him about the book and he's like, wow, he goes, you know, I used to work those cases. And, you know, I wish I would have. I was telling you about this training. It's called the shift training. It's by the Innocent Justice Foundation. They provide mental health and wellness for, people who do this type of work and they travel around at different conferences. And I was telling him about it and he's like, yeah, I never got to go to any of that. He goes, I wish I would have done that. And it's just, it's something that I know at least our task force, it was mandatory. So we'd go. And I know the ICAT task forces want you to do it, but I just don't think everybody does it. And I know with me doing the work, I tried to be a really good example for my people and take care of my people. But I didn't always follow what I said to do. And that took a toll, you know, about taking breaks when having that disconnect for when you're looking at that material and you work in the cases, you know,

you bring that stuff home, but having a built-in process so that you have a break before you go home so you can be present for your family. And because really, I mean, I don't know, do you have kids? Yeah. Yeah? So when you go home, you used to go home and you say, hey, give me 15 minutes. I mean, you don't ever get the 15 minutes. And that's because they want to see you. You know, Dad's home. They're happy.

They want to tell you about their day. They want to do these things. They love you. And your significant other, it's the same thing. So you don't always get that. So we had built something in where if you, before you went home, you had to have at least two hours where you weren't focused on any of that stuff. You do something else. where you're not looking at the images.

You're not looking at the ugly. You're doing something. And then we had an hour commute home. So it was an hour at the end of the day. Then you had her drive home. And then you go and you be with your family. You had some ritual where you'd go and get like an iced tea at Dunkin' Donuts or something, right? Yeah.

So I like, I mean, I was worked in, you know, near Seattle. So a big Starbucks thing up there. My daughter worked for Starbucks for a time. So I'd go to Starbucks and I'd get, I don't drink coffee. I just never liked it. But I drink tea. So I would go there, I'd get a tea. I'd park behind.

There was a sizzler there. So I'd park behind a sizzlers. And I'd just play this little game. I think they still have it. Clash of Clans. It's like this dumb game. So I'd play that for a little bit, get my head straight. And then I'd drive home.

And I'd see, you know, my kids. And I wish I could say I did that every day. Because I think that would have helped me to get my, my head on straight and be present for them. When we switched offices, because that's when we were in Olympia, Washington, we ended up being co-located with the FBI's SE, their C-TF. And so their child exploitation task force. And that changed my routine of going home.

There wasn't a Starbucks on the way home. So I noticed, well, actually, it was my ex-wife. She noticed that I was angry. It was a lot angrier sometimes. I take things out on her or the kids. I'd like snap in them or something like that. And then she brought it to my attention. And then I changed for a little bit.

But I went back to what I was doing. I really wasn't. I didn't hold myself accountable with my own mental wellness as much as I think as I could have. It's hard when you're in it and you feel such a sense of urgency, right, that you're seeing these kids that are victimized. And, you know, for reasons. that you can kind of write off in your mind. You're like, I'm sacrificing family life because I'm on this, you know,

righteous mission. And I think finding that balance is something that's so hard and most of us don't get it right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why. So this whole, this whole book journey is I actually was writing it to try to write my own ship. It wasn't to write a book. Like right through your experience and.

contextual act to yourself. I was going to therapy and she was like, hey, you know, have you ever thought that maybe some people could learn from this if you were to share this when you can write a book or do a blog? And I was like, oh yeah, I'll write a book. And then I just started talk about it. And so that's how that's how this journey started and where I'm at now. but yeah, I think I think I have found that people who do this work, they tend to be very selfless, and they're helping all of these other people that they don't even really know their life of service. But they're, I found that they can be kind of selfish because they're keeping themselves away from those who do love them, their family. and that's one of the things I talk about is you just be being mindful that you have to carve out time and have the conversations with the people that love you so that they can they can help you stay on your mission.

Right. Because if you take breaks, you take care of yourself, you're actually going to be better at what you're setting out to do instead of just burning out. Yep. Yep. And making, you know, it can just, you can just make some horrible mistakes. You just, it just can eat you up. So, yeah, I want to get deeper into some of the fallout. But before we move on to the next part of your career, are any other big cases from this time that kind of stand out that you'd like to talk about?

I mean, there are tons. I think the demands, the demand ones we did were pretty cool just because of what we did and the different people that we saw. I'm trying to think of another one that it would be good to share. There was, so there aren't, I already talked about one where there's a female offender. There aren't, there aren't, you don't always hear a lot of female offenders. And there was one case that I had, I just finished an op with, I think we had, I, we had arrested 22 people or something like that. And I get a call from our FBI officer and, or agent.

And he says, hey, Lose. So my nickname is Lowe's short for Carlos. Hey, can you talk to, there was another TFO task force officer. Can you talk to him and help him out? We've got something here. And I was like, and I really don't have the time. You know, I'm putting all this stuff together. I got to get it for the process.

scooter's office. So he's like he just hear him out. So I get on the phone with him, his name is Ryan. I get on the phone with him and he um takes me through, uh, that he has a CI that was, who's a sex offender who's talking to, and they're trying to recover a, a juvenile who's, who's potentially being trafficked by this person, uh, who's a female. And, uh, so as they're talking, the CI says, hey man, this lady, she's like, she's like looking to, she wants to have sex with kids. She talks about hurting animals, like all this weird stuff. And I remember as he's talking to me, just thinking, one, I got all this stuff I got to deal with. I'm going to turn these cases over.

But if I don't take this case, then what's going to happen? And then if nobody does this, then if something happens and she finds a kid, then it's my fault. so I need to do this. So I told the guys, like, yeah, I'll do it. So we had software program where I generated a phone number for him to use to give, and then I was going to be the bad actor who had access to two little girls for this girl. So within, she hit me up pretty quick, and we start talking. We end up setting up a meet, and she wanted to have, she wanted to have these kids drugged,

these two little girls drugged. And we're talking, you know, pre-pebessant kids. And who are, so we set up, set up the deal. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So what, and that's good to point out. So when we're, when we're doing these cases, we're not offering up.

We're not using real kids there. Now, I will say when we've worked these ops and looking at the evidence after the fact, we're not just arresting all these people and then we're done. You're looking through digital media, looking for potential of, is there a live victim? Have they been hands-on? That's what we call it hands-on with somebody. And actually, the first person that we ever arrested doing this, it took two years before the kids disclosed, but they disclosed what had happened. So we have that instances where we're removing these kids from harm and getting them the services or resources that they need.

So, but in this instance, but the person that, was live is she was potentially trying to traffic this other this other girl I believe she was 16 and so the goal was we had identified who she was try to recover the trafficked girl and then get her on see if she's done anything with any other kids and then and bring her in for um what she was trying to do with these these two young kids so she ends up she agrees she ends up showing up she brings some cash not a ton of cash to pay for the axe. And then she brings all of these sex toys. Like she had dildo glass dildos,

speculum, all these clamps that she could put on her body. And then just went through the interview with her. And she was a sadist. So she was really someone who enjoyed, I think, the pain of it. And she was someone who had been abused growing up. And she had had a horrible life. but that doesn't, I'm a firm believer that that does not give you any, um, a pass. Yeah.

To be able to do this. Right. So, um, so yeah, she, she got, I, I don't remember. She didn't, I think eight years, eight years in prison. She's still in prison. And she was early 20s. Jesus. That showed up.

Yeah. Well, one of the things, one of the other things that jumped out at me from that conference. as far as the difficulty in prosecuting these cases was that, you know, obviously when a minor is abused by somebody who's like a parent or someone who's in the circle of trust, it creates a whole added dimension of difficulty in getting the victim to disclose. But even when you have a woman who is being trafficked by a pimp who is either very violent or very manipulative or both, that many times when law enforcement moves in, and makes arrests that the victims don't see themselves as victims, that they don't feel that they have been victimized. They still have in their mind, they think that they're in love with the pimp.

And for police officers, you know, legally, you have to have a victim in order to prosecute a crime. Was that something that you encountered during your career? So a couple things. So yes, I did encounter where you have people who weren't aware that they were being trafficked. You know, and they did think they were doing us for whatever purpose, for love or for whatever. When we built our cases dealing with trafficking, which is slightly different than what we were talking about earlier, we would build those cases so that we wanted a solid case so that if the person who was being trafficked,

or abused, raped, was not, we didn't need them. We didn't need their testimony. So we did extra work to make sure we had the records we had. If they were at hotels, we had all the receipts, we had the cameras doing surveillance so we can actually see what's going on. If they choose to, if the trafficker, the pimp decides to talk to you, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It really depends on really their ego or if, you know,

have if they're make a wise decision or not. So trying to build it in such a way where if if the person doesn't go that way, we don't really need them to testify. Because you have all of these other things. You just have all of these, the records of what happened. And do you have coercion? Was there, did they force them? Did they defraud them? You know, who's, where's the money going? You know, who's keeping the money? Do you have your, do you have your own ID? Who's getting the hotel rooms? And then as, as, as you build more cases, then PIMP start to realize, okay, well, now I don't do that. You know, they learn, they go back and forth. They get, they get the public disclosure and read the cases and try to see what your tactics are. So you kind of do, you have to change things up a little bit,

but ultimately, in order for it to work, you, someone has to show up, you have the exchange, and then you watch it. So they're still at risk. So it's just depending on how you do it. And then sometimes people get tired of being in that life, or they, maybe they were, They chose up or they were, they're with a different trafficker. And they won't talk about their trafficker, but they'll talk about their other one. And you can build a case on that. So that happens a lot. I have, I have friends that have life experience and, you know, just hearing, hearing their stories.

Actually, one of them, before she was my friend, I listened to her speak. Her name's Rebecca Bender. She's amazing. And listening to her story and what she went through changed how we, we did things, how my task force did things. And I remember talking about, I remember talking about, you know, that's, you know, pointing up at her at the stage when we were watching her, that's why we do this, you know, because of someone like that.

You know, look at, this is, even though everything that she went through, that, look, she's a success. You know, she's still here. She's a fighter. And so what can we do to try to keep other people from going through that? So, and then we changed how we did it. We made sure that we had, it's called trauma-informed approach where we're truly, where we're actually spending the time, making sure that they get resources and not, like when we would do ops, you'd set dates to try to recover somebody,

but still you have your arrest team in a portion of the house, calling the dates, maybe the pimp drop, trafficker drops a person off, person comes in, they get the buy, you get this, push a little button, so okay, arrest team come in. You go in, but even if you're doing it really low key, you're still in, you're still the police with guns out. It isn't really, right. It's very traumatic because when you see, you know,

when you're a civilian and you see people with guns out, that they're not really processing everything that you're saying, guaranteed. They're not remembering everything. And so just kind of changing how you do different things. I know there's a up in Canada, they have a way of doing things where, They actually have someone with life experience who's in their task force and they'll set up the dates.

And then they just go knock on the door, explain who they are. She goes in and talks. They make sure it's clear safe. She goes in and talks to them, says, hey, here's why we're here. She goes through her spiel because she knows how to speak with the person. Goes through the spiel, offer resources. This is why we're here. We're not here to arrest you.

If you want to get out of this life, give me a call. And then they would leave. And, you know, if they could build the case on the trafficker and they said, The majority of the people that came back, they were very successful, they were able to build. I think it was over 90% they actually were able to convict charge and convict the traffickers from doing it a different way. And because when you meet people, like when I'd meet kids that are being trafficked or you'd meet adults that are being trafficked that are in that life, they don't want to talk to you.

You know, you're the cops and look at their life experience before. You know, did they have someone that was a dick to them? did to have someone, you know, who just kind of looked at them or treated them like they were nothing or trash. And it takes a while to build that up. I used to have one case where she was 14 years old and was being trafficked. I remember the first time I talked to her and I said, hey, look, I'm, I, here's who I am. I know you don't trust me.

You're not going to really trust me until, you know, we meet again. I said, no offense, I hope we don't meet again. I said, but when I'm doing this work, oftentimes I meet people again. And then she would say, so if I run and I go to Oregon, are you going to come get me? And I was like, yeah, it may not be me, but we're going to come find you. She goes, what I went to New York? When I went to California, and she was asking all these questions. And she ran, she ran a lot.

So she, we got, she had three traffickers. Two were the main one. The other one was just a brother trying to be cool, like his older brother. So two went to prison. She ran again. We got her in Oregon. We got her in California. And then I think the last time I saw her, I got her out of a hotel.

And it was always during the holidays. It was Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve that we'd recover her. And the last one, I think it was Christmas Eve and pull her out of this hotel. And she's in the back of the car. And I just remember telling her. I was like, hey, you know what? I'm not your dad. But, you know, I just hate seeing me like this.

And she's like, I know. She goes, I don't have a dad. And I, she goes, I don't hate you. And I said, you probably hate me. And I was like, I don't, she goes, I don't hate you. But she points to the FBI guy. She goes, I hate that motherfucker. And I don't know why, I don't know why she hated the guy.

His name is Kyle was the nicest guy for Minnesota. He talks like, he talks like Owen Wilson, you know, Jeepers. I mean, that was this guy. And he's like, but she just hated him. She could not stand him. And he was so nice. Well, he's still alive. So he's still, he's still nice.

But I just remember that conversation with her. And it was horrible. I mean, part of what I missed about being in the work is I had these undercover profiles and I was friends with her on Facebook. So I could kind of see. And she didn't know it was me. So I could kind of see when she'd post stuff that she was doing okay, which was really cool to see. And then when I retired or when I got out of it, you don't have access to that anymore. So it's like you don't know what's happening in some of these people's lives.

But hopefully, you know, in my mind, hopefully she's still doing really well. Before we move on, I mean, are there any other ones you'd like to talk about that were particularly insightful as far as how law enforcement and prosecutors go after these cases or in how people are victimized? Maybe there's some lessons learned. I'll say, you know, if you're if you're doing this work and you have a prosecutor that's really. motivated, you know, one, don't be afraid to go meet with your prosecutors and because it is a team effort. And, but not all prosecutors are the same. Some suck. But you have some that are really good and really good at what they're doing and working together to just asking the questions, you know, what do you need? What do you need for me to build a case? Because everyone does things

differently. So if you can get them the information that they need and jump through those extra hoops, it's totally worth it because what I mean what are you really doing this for you're doing it to protect vulnerable people you're doing it to keep kids from harm get them out of a bad situation so I mean that's that's the goal right so if it means that you have to do an extra report or go talk to another person or do something a certain way that you don't normally do it within reason then you do it you need to do it um so I think I think that's important And just learning from that, learning from all your experiences. When you first start to testify, you're not going to be as good as the next time you testify.

So just getting the feedback from those cases, I think, is really important. I don't know if that's what you asked, but that's what sticks out my mind with those cases. The next thing I wanted to roll into was sort of you leaving this task force. Did you decide that you had had enough and you needed a break or did the police actually decide like, okay, this guy did his, time and we need to cycle him off this job? It was not quite that. What had happened was the position opened back in the governor's detail. And it was when my principal at the time was also running for president.

And he didn't win. But they had two teams going. And the person who they thought would take that spot wasn't interested in staying there. only there temporarily. So they were trying to get people to go in to manage the executive protection unit and they really weren't having, no one was really interested in it. I mean, it's a tough job. So I got asked a couple times, hey, you should put in for this.

And I was like, oh, okay, well, I'll do it if you give, if you make sure there's a MECTEP in every district in the state patrol, because there's eight districts. I go, well, if you give me this, then I'll leave, you know, and then we can go to this. I was joking. But then I started to get calls from different people saying, hey, just listen to me. You should do this. And I was like, no, I've been there, done that.

That's not what I want to do. And then one of my buddies called and said, hey, we're on the street is you're just going to get put there. So if no one's interested, you have the experience, maybe you should just go have the big man safe face. That's a call I got. So I was like, okay, so I put in for it. and I'll say if that hadn't happened, I guaranteed I wouldn't have retired and I'd still be there

work in those cases for sure. But I'm glad that that happened because, one, I retired as after I did my short stint there and then I retired after 25 years because you can go at 25 years with the State Patrol. and it also showed me that it showed me that I was actually affected by the work by the by that that that ugly as I like to call it that it was affecting me and and I didn't realize how it was had affected me just decisions I had made in my life and and I and I say you know I started to realize it then it didn't really hit me until I moved to San Diego where I live now and the work I had done. And I didn't have the same support structure. And I just, you know, things would just trigger me on different things. And I just, my emotions started to flood back and I didn't really know how to manage them. So just like I'd see something and, you know, I'd get really super emotional.

So just so I thought, you know, I should probably go talk to somebody. So and then that's, I started to talk to someone. And then I realized what a toll that it took on me. and you know how and I thought I was doing things really well and I wasn't I was just I was just putting things into a box and putting it into a shelf you know up in my brain and that's not the best way to manage things I mean everybody when you do this work you have to you have to have the ability to compartmentalize certain things or you're just not going to get anything done but you also need to make sure that you're mindful that you're taking care of yourself or pretty soon you're going to be to run out of boxes and you're not, you know, you're, you're, you're not going to be able to function in at all with anything that you do. So, um, so yeah, so that, that's why, that's kind of how I left. I'm glad that it happened that way because now I'm still, I'm still involved. I don't, I don't do the work, but I still help train. Um, I'm still, uh, do the conference circuit.

The job I do now, uh, I still, I do title nine investigations, um, sex, salt type stuff on the policy side for the school district. So work in San Diego. It's the second largest school district in California. And so I do employee investigations. I also do some law enforcement investigations because we have our own police department. And just really focused on accountability, compliance, and then making sure that kids are safe and they're able to go to school and learn and not have to worry about someone creeping on them or, you know, salting them in some way. What were some of the things that you did to start to, like, recover from working this

kind of job? As it started to, like, affect your personal life, you said you mentioned that you're, you know, often being triggered by different things that kind of bring you back to that bad place. How did you start to deal with that? I'll say, well, the first thing I did, I mean, I still have some good friends. so I talked to them. But really, I interviewed a number of therapists, and I just called them, and I said, hey, here's, here's what I used to do. I see that your background you deal with, because down here, there's a lot of military personnel.

So there are a lot of people who say they're kind of, they try to advertise towards that for the PTSD. So I contacted a number of people, and I said, well, I was law enforcement. I didn't really, I mean, I grew up in, my dad was in the service and family members in the service. So I kind of lived, you know, the cursory, but I wasn't in it. So, but I still, I think there's some similarities as far as the stress that you see and the things that you see. And then I finally found one that felt right and started to go see her. And that helped me a lot. And then just, and then actually listening and then actually.

saying, oh, okay, well, maybe that's why I did that. Because I think I had a really hard time with, I used to get really mad at people that were in law enforcement that said, oh, I can't do, I can never do what you do. And I was like, well, you're a fucking cop. Why can't you do this? You're supposed to help people. And I was angry.

I still was pissed off about that all the way until when I moved here in 23. And one of the sessions, she's like, as I shared that with her, and she's like, well, can you do this? Can you, are you on an NBA team? Can you build a rocket? I was like, well, no. She goes, well, everybody has their different skill set. It goes, you did it because you could do it. That's why you did it.

And I never thought of it that way. And so I know now that that's not, you know, it wasn't necessarily fair for me to get angry. But it did. It used to piss me off. I was like, fucker, ain't you guys doing this. Come on. Let's all go get these guys. But so I think, I think that was, that was really big. And then really writing, writing things out. I'm a big Stephen King fan. So as a kid. And I, so I got his book on writing. It's called On Writing. And I, I listen to that on Audible a couple times. So he's like, you know, this is your job. If this is your job, you should be doing this every day for this and of time or it's not really your job.

So I just set one to two hours a day to write to go through things once I decided it was going to be a book. But that was really good. I couldn't, it wasn't always every day because sometimes when I got to something that was heavy, I didn't want to have that stuff in my head when I went to bed. So I'd skip a day or maybe wait until I was off and then write during the day when before I went to sleep. I think that that was helpful.

So it took a little longer to get things to go. But I've never written a book. I mean, it was, but the whole journey's been pretty cool. And then I got to meet, get to meet a bunch of cool people so far. So that's fun. And hopefully I can, I'll be able to help people. That's, that's the big goal. And when is the release date for the book?

So the launch date is March 31st. I think it'll be available before then. But we're trying to launch it on the 31st just to make sure everything is available on the website. So March 31st is the launch date. So the ugly underneath. We'll put some links down in the description, too, for folks to go and find the book. I really appreciate you doing this because I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions about this subject. and I'm glad to hear a real expert on it.

And I did want to touch upon briefly. In the last five to ten years, I think there's been sort of an explosion of interest is the wrong word, but concern about human trafficking. And there's good reason. And I think that can lead to a lot of good things, passing new laws, reforming the existing system and all kinds of things that, you know, could be done to help. But that has also led, I feel like, to a lot more misconceptions and a lot of groups coming out there that, you know, some of them mean well, I'm sure, but a lot of them are,

I mean, the extreme end of it was, what was that that group saved the children or something like that, where the guy was actually a predator himself? I'm not sure which organization, but there are, I mean, something I learned with work in these cases is people tend to create, to put themselves where they can create an opportunity to get what they want. So if you like cars, you're going to go to car shows, right? If you like sports, you're going to go to sporting events. If you're sexually attracted to kids, you're going to do things where there are kids around and you have the opportunity to offend. So that's why you see people. I'm not saying everyone who's bad who's a coach or a janitor or a teacher or, you know,

people who are around kids. But that's why you see those instances where there are people that are in those professions that are doing those things because they're around it. They have this. It's available. So. But yeah, I'll say there, I do, I agree with you. There are a lot of organizations that, you know, I don't.

I don't know all of these people that come up. You have people who have the same background as, you know, you or they're, or say they do in special ops. And I don't know because I'm vet any of them. But people say that they've done all these things. And I'm sure they're very good at what some of them are very good at what they do. But if you're not involved in training, you don't have the training and you don't know how to handle these cases, you've got no business doing that type of work.

And then if you're just going to go rip someone, go to another country and rip someone out of a situation and say, yeah, we saved this kid, what happens afterwards? What's going to happen? Why are they in that situation in the first place? Are they doing that because, are they being trafficked or are they doing that because they don't have any other options? So why don't we focus on, you know, do they have water?

Do they have food? What other things that we can do there where they can get a job where maybe that isn't a choice anymore? There's so many other ways to tackle it. You can't arrest your way out of this problem. You can't just go in and grab people. Then you see organizations where they're doing and they're doing a documentary of it.

And, you know, how does that look? They're running with the boom mic. I mean, that's like, I mean, that stuff is crazy to me. And then you see influencers that are out there and they call a pedophile. They're trying to, you know, and then they try to beat the guy up and everyone thinks it's cool.

But you're keeping someone from being able to do the work because we had a case where there was someone who would go meet with, People that they were called pedophiles. I don't know because I didn't work any of those cases because they would get in the way of us being able to work the case. And they tried to beat the guy up. But how is that person ever going to be held accountable? Maybe they meet the guy or this person or what other victims do they have?

Are they able to do a forensic dump and look at their? Who else have they talked to? Are there any other kids? Do they have kids that they're offending upon? So those are things I think people don't think about. But back to the nonprofits, you know, you know, have, I'm sure there are, there are tons of organizations that have a really good, you know, knee-jerk reaction.

They want to do good. You know, they may have a good heart and want to do these good things. But there are so many organizations that are already out there that are really good at what they do and have the training. And they can get these other people. They can get, they can do awareness. So just support those groups that are already there. You don't need, seems like for a while, I quit following it because it gets old.

But you see like, it seems like every month you'd have one or two new NGOs up and they're saying, oh, I was a SWAT commander or I was, you know, this member of this special operations group and member of this. And I'm thinking, well, what, what did you do in, yeah, what did you do in trafficking? Do you know how to work a case? Do you know how do you see? Are you trauma informed? Have you worked with anyone who has live, live life experience? It's actually lived it. You know, how do you know? Because I was in law first when I had all the training, I first went to the task force, I don't know what the fuck I was doing. I mean, I knew how to work dope. I applied that to that, but I didn't, I didn't know that.

I hadn't listened to a survivor yet. I hadn't, I hadn't seen that. I hadn't been confronted yet with those images and what these people are doing. I mean, you learn those things and the best way to do it is you build your team with people who have won the potential and then the capacity to do it and you get them the resources so they're successful. That's mentally. And then also just the training so that they can stay, they can stay sharp and they can do the work. And it's ever changing. And you always have to be on top of things. And that's why you mentioned earlier about the IOTI when you got to go to that. I love, I love going to those events because you do get to unwind, but then you meet other like-minded people who are experts and they know what they're doing and you can sit down, you can have a drink

with them, you pizza or whatever you do, have a conversation with them, ask how they're doing it in their area and they go, oh, that's something I think we can do over here. Here's what we do. Have you experienced this? And then you just come back, just rejuvenated and going back and you just knock it out of the park when you get back. And that's what kept our people going. And then supervisors, if you're a supervisor, you're listening to this and you're, you're one of these teams, you got to get your people the resources they need. Your people are your number one resource. If you don't, if you don't take care of them, you're, you're losing it. I mean, I stayed with the State Patrol because I felt I could have went to another department

who got paid twice as much because we didn't get paid. You didn't get paid a ton with State Patrol until just towards the end of my career. And but I felt like I felt valued. I felt valued by my command staff and the people that were there. And then I had a good team. It was like another family. And that was important. And then we were able to do a lot of great, good things. So I think a lot of agencies get that wrong. I went off on a tangent. I do that a lot. No, no, it's all good. No, I have my tangent, too, that, you know, just because you were a Navy SEAL doesn't mean that you should be going into human trafficking interdiction in foreign countries down in Central America or whatever the case may be. And, you know, some of these guys are, again, I know some mean well.

Others, I think, are more involved in fundraising and grifting than they are in actually helping people. And then the other thing is that it gets blended in with like Christian evangelical stuff. And they start talking about spiritual warfare and fighting demons and all kinds of weird shit. Yeah. I, um, I, so I grew up in the Bible belt and I used to carry Bible to school. And, um, but I'm not, I, the what I, and I don't anymore. I mean, when I moved to Washington and I kind of got out of that area, I realized, you know, well, this doesn't make sense or that doesn't make sense. But my philosophy is do good, put good out there. I mean, you can't tell me if I don't do all of these good things in the world, that if they're right and I get up there and they're, and they're,

there's a pearly gates that some guy's not going to let me in, you know, because I, because I, I didn't say, yes, I did this or, you know, or it did that way. And then there's so many different religions, you know, how do you know which one's right? I mean, some people are probably going to hate me for saying that, but that's, that's my belief, you know, do good, help people, help people, protect others less fortunate from you. And then, you know, be present. You know, we don't, something we say, you don't get these days back. You have to be present in the moment. Take care of the people that love you, tell people that you care about them because there's so many, you know, that life is short.

You don't get, you do not get these days back. But that's what I think, do good. Yeah, there are. There are a lot of NGOs that are like that. I'm very skeptical when I'm, I am connected with somebody like that because I have prior experience in that world. And it should be about what's the mission? And in this case, when you're talking about kids and keeping people from being raped for money or for anything of value and then putting that on the internet for people to share, the cost is too high.

You know, what's more important than that? That's the mission. It shouldn't be the man over the mission or the person over the mission. It's the mission. How do you focus and work together to build a team to make sure that you can come. combat that on multiple, multiple areas. And it isn't just one team. That's why we, in law enforcement, we have multidisciplinary teams because my lane is,

I'm good at logistics. I can do the undercover stuff. Some tech, I mean, I'm not, I was never a SWAT guy. I was lucky I got to go to subgun school, which was awesome. But, you know, that wasn't my lane. I didn't pretend to be. But I had people on my team that were SWAT or SWAT commanders and they knew what to do. Digital forensics, you have them.

and that's their lane. And you pull that team together and you build them so you can, you can support the mission the best that you can. And if you get, you don't do something quite right, you accept it and you make the change so it is right. Because what's, what are we doing it for to protect others? So you got to, you're going to be a little selfless there. Are there any NGOs that you are involved with that you'd feel comfortable shouting out? Oh, yeah. The one, internet, or the internet, or the internet. International Association of Human Trafficking Investigators. Great group of guys.

They have a conference they do. The main conference they do is in St. Pete's now, it's a new venue this year in Florida. But they're doing stuff in Maryland, conferences of Maryland, Canada. They're doing a bunch of stuff in Canada. And they're great because they provide training to people who have the commission. They're tasked to do this work. They're providing them the training that they need. They're providing a venue where you can go to a location and learn from others that are doing this.

And they bring subject matter experts together. And not just law enforcement. You have, or prosecutors are part of law enforcement. But you have prosecutors. You have social workers. You have people with lived in experience. So survivors of sex trafficking from all over. And I've got tons of friends from that.

And you learn how to do that. So they're great. They provide that. There's an organization called raven. dot us. And the thing that's great about them is there are subject matter experts in the space. Some of them were retired ICAC commanders. You have people who are writing the laws. If you're familiar with the laws they've had recently, like the Safe Act, the Take It Down Act, things dealing with protecting children. The CEO of that group, she's the one who was helped write those

bills. And so they're working on the policy side and getting funding for those that are doing the work and funding these ICAC organizations. So they're great. Raven, raven.us are working in the policy side. Rebecca Bender has an organization that helps survivors. It's called Elevate Academy. Awesome. I know I'm going to miss them. There's tons.

In Seattle, there's a place called Rest. They provide housing, low barrier housing for trafficking victims. So they're great. I know I'm going to miss them. There's so many of them. Everstrong. They used to be called Stolen Youth. They're in the Washington area.

They're great. They help raise money for funding, training in schools. In San Diego, San Diego with youth services. They provide wraparound services for families and potential traffic victims. They have bullying programs, training for kids in school, so they're changing. Because how do you prevent someone from becoming a sex buyer? You got to focus on the people who are buying when they're younger, right? So they have training on, hey, this is why this is wrong.

This is how you build a healthy relationship. So that's something we partnered with in San Diego so that we have that available to our students when we start to have these, see these problems. We'd actually just launched our human trafficking prevention program in at San Diego Unified School District. Pretty excited about that way we can track different things and get students' resources. And it's like another job, but it's well worth it. I'm sure I'm Miss. NECMEC National Center, Missing Exploited Children, Missing Kids. That's the big one.

But they, the clearinghouse for all the cyber tips. So the book due out in March, the ugly underneath. Is there, I mean, you told us a little bit about where you're at today and you're still involved in investigations. Is there anything else you want to talk about or anything else you want to shout out before we wrap up tonight? I'd say the big thing is if you, if you're in this line of work, you know, just know, that it affects you and you need to make sure you take breaks.

Take breaks so you can care for yourself and you can care for your family because if you don't it's going to tear you down and surround yourself with good people. I'd say that's number one for those that are in the work. If you are someone who is not, but there are a lot of people who are interested in this, like with all the true crime stuff, if they read the book, they'll get a look into what that's about and support those that are that are out there protecting your kids and protecting your family and trying to get them to a better place because they need it. And it's, you don't get, you don't get a lot of thank yous.

Usually when you're a cop and you're in a restaurant, it's usually like, oh, be aver, he's going to arrest you. You know, it isn't like the fireman. You get like, you know, all the cool stuff. It's like people usually only reach out to you when you're a cop if, you know, when they need you, they need your help or, or they're trying to scare their kid, you know, on a pizza head or something. I did want to point that out to tonight that, you know, I understand there's a thought process out there that all cops are bastards and defund the police and this sort of stuff. And I totally get that there are corrupt cops out there. There are racist cops. There are guys that should not have a gun and a badge for sure.

But absolutely. On the other hand, there are cops out there who are heroic and are doing vitally important work to protect our citizens every day. And like I mentioned earlier, I think back to that cop I spoke to who is like looking out over at the ocean like it feels good not to have to look at that crap today. Think about that guy. And what and what him and people like him are doing every day to protect our citizens. And as you point out, the psychological toll that it takes on them. And, you know, you guys really, you know, and I think most police departments get it now that, you know, you guys need to be cycled on and off this job, you know, to protect your own well-being. Yeah.

And, you know, the part about, you know, the good and the bad, there, I think what maybe a lot of people, this is what I hate when someone does something really bad, it used to make me so angry. that's law enforcement. Because no matter what uniform they have on, it's still a police uniform. And they represent everybody else. And they need, that's why that you need to have good investigations when someone doesn't abide by their policy.

So they're held accountable. So they can't do that because they're making it bad for everybody. And if they're not doing what they should, then they shouldn't be a cop. You know, just get rid of them. Yeah. That's,

That's my two cents on that. I think accountability is important. When we went in the academy, one of the first things they said on day one was you live in a glass house and you're held to a higher standard. And if you're not okay with that, this isn't the job for you. You are. Yeah, it's different. You're held to a higher standard because of what you do. The community has it.

They're trusting you with their safety. and if you do anything to mess that up, you're not going to have the trust of your community. And it's just, and that's, I mean, you see a lot of that. I've been seeing a lot of that lately. And where can people find you online? Do you have a website, a LinkedIn, anywhere you'd like to direct people? Yeah.

So the website right now is the ugly underneath.com. on TikTok or Instagram, it's, I should have it memorized, but it's, I believe it's C underscore Rodriguez 198. But Carlos Rodriguez, that's my name. But the website has that, the ugly underneath. There's a link for it. So not everything's up yet until the book's published. I think the links will start to work on the website.

And we will shout. it out when it comes out. And actually, you reminded me, this conversation reminded me something. I want to shout out real quick. A previous guest on the show, General Remo Butler, because of the interview he did on this show, he went ahead and he wrote his memoir. The book is out on Amazon now. It's called Lead from the Front, Lessons and Legacy from the First Black U.S. Army Special Forces General. Author again is Remo Butler. Previous guest on the the show. I just want to shout out to our listeners, let you know that his book is out now, and you should go check it out on Amazon. So Carlos, again, thank you for coming on the show.

Best of luck with the book. I thought it was great. I read it on the airplane over to Japan, went right through it. I mean, it's a quick read, and it's really engaging and really informative. So I hope that people, whether they're in law enforcement or their civilians out there hoping to gain a bit of better understanding about this topic. We'll go and check it out. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. It's great to meet you. Yeah, you too, Carlos. Thank you. And for all of our listeners out there, we will see you next week. Thank you for joining us tonight. Hey, guys, I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Eyes on podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor.

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