The Team House - Only Two NYPD Cops Went to Afghanistan - He Was One of Them | Tom Smith | Ep. 379

Episode Date: November 8, 2025

Retired NYPD detective Tom Smith joins the show to recount three decades on the force — from the crack epidemic and 9/11 to counterterrorism and major international cases. He shares raw stories of trauma, resilience, and redemption, and reflects on the mental toll of policing, the evolution of the job, and his new mission through the Gold Shields podcast.Check out Tom's podcast Gold Shields here:https://thegoldshieldshow.com/https://www.carryimpact.com/Today's Sponsors TrueWerk ⬇️https://truewerk.com/houseuse code "HOUSE" for 15% off!GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 25% off sitewide! 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___________________________________________________Subscribe 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 – Early Career & NYPD Beginnings09:11 – Policing Through the Crack Epidemic13:40 – Anti-Crime Unit & First Shootout30:11 – Assigned to Robbery Squad & 9/11 Strikes39:12 – Joining the Joint Terrorism Task Force45:11 – Afghanistan Kidnapping Case52:18 – Preventing a School Shooting55:46 – Saving an Infant & Memorable Cases59:03 – Retirement & Mental Health Reflections1:10:49 – Gold Shields Podcast & Closing ThoughtsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone, this is episode 379 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with our guest tonight, Tom Smith, who served as an NYPD detective for decades working anti-crime units, narco, anti-gang, robbery squad, and then was tasked to the FBI for a number of different types of assignments, including counterterrorism. We'll get in all of this stuff. But Tom, first, I just want to say thanks for joining us on the show tonight.

No, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. So the question I usually ask is about the person's origin story. If you tell us a little bit about sort of like your upbringing, I remember you telling me your dad was a NYPD cop too and sort of how that took you into service. Yeah. And that's what it was. He was, you know, my hero, my mentor.

He was my best friend. And I grew up in that world. You know, I watched him go to work, have that great gold shield on his belt when he would get home, which is the only shield I ever wanted. From the time I was probably eight years old, I wanted to be a member of the NYPD. And that's all I ever wanted to do. You have an influence when, you know, you go into the precincts before Yankee games and you're meeting all his partners and his friends, even after he retired, we would go to Fort Apache,

we'd go to the 4-4, you know, and visit everyone. So I got really entrenched in that world of watching that friendship and the, you know, partnerships that he had, which meant so much to him and me. Even to this day, Jack, I still talk to one of my dad's old partners' families, you know, that he worked with in the 60s. and we're still very tight and very good friends with them. So that gives you an idea of just what that bond was like to me and wanting to be part of it.

And luckily in 1990, I got the opportunity to join the NYPD and had a very fortunate good career with my dad next to me for probably most of it, for sure. So, I mean, there's a couple of things I'd like to ask you about it. I guess since we're here right now, what do you think was the difference between your dad's service and NYPD going back to the 60s and yours, which started in 1990? Wow, that's a great question. You know what it was? It's what was going on in the city at the time. You know, in the 50s, 60s and 70s, especially the 50s and 60s, you know, New York was what it was.

It was kind of booming. It was a good place. Yes, you had the crime. but the respect factor that civilians had for the police was dramatically different than in the 70s, 80s, and then what I went through and even today. But back then, you know, they were people waved at them. People talked to them on the street.

You had that beat cop that everyone knew in your neighborhood. And that did go on, you know, when I got on, but not as much and much of a respect factor that he dealt with. But I remember, you know, being around him during that and getting the stories of people really respecting what the NYPD was. But then when I got on in 1990, the city was completely different. You know, you had, you know, we were dealing with almost 3,000 homicides a year and 125,000 robberies, you know, in the early 90s. I worked in a command in the 3-0 precinct, which was one of the smallest precincts in the city, but one of the most dangerous. and violent and busiest.

You know, in one year, in one square mile, we had 88 homicides. Holy shit. In one square mile in the city. That's how, that's what New York City was. And, you know, that was a dramatic difference from back in the 50s, obviously. But it was something that we had to deal with and get, you know, trained for and be ready for once we got on. We knew what the city was like in the 90s when we were all getting hired.

So it was something you just prepare for. But I had kind of an ace in a whole. with that at home to get some good advice from, that's for sure. And I guess the follow-up to that is I'd like to ask you, when you came on the force in 1990, what is it like specifically trying to work as a cop in New York City? Where are the particular challenges that you face in New York, which I think now we have 8.5 million people in the city was probably a little bit less than that in 1990, but nonetheless, I mean, a major metropolitan area.

Oh, it was enormous. And the precinct that I worked in was so diverse. She had Dominican, you had black, she had white, you had a whole ton of different people that were there. But I think the biggest challenge was being ready for what was ahead of you and being prepared for what was lying in the street waiting for you. And, you know, a lot of training, you know, takes place, obviously. But a lot of instinctive things gets put into your head really quick,

especially when you're busy. And it's learning from, you know, other officers who've been there. And that was one of the dramatic differences, Jack, from when I got on to what they're facing today. When I got on and I was in uniform, you had cops in uniform on patrol with 12, 15, 17 years on the job that you learned from. You know, kids are getting out of the academy today and relying on someone that's got four or five years on the job, you know, to train them and to show them or to mentor them into what the job is all about. And I think that is a dramatic difference in what is being faced today and what I. Why do you think that is, Tom? Does that have to do with like early retirement or career stuff?

Why don't we have these old school guys still around? Yeah, I think it's a little of both. I think it's people moving on and going to other departments. But I think it's also that other units within the NYPD want that experienced officer to be part of their unit. So, you know, a lot of experienced cops were going to narcotics and going to gang union and going to detective squads because they had that experience that maybe some of these units were lacking. So they were pulling them off of patrol to backfill these other units. And that was to the detriment of patrol when you had the new kids coming in. So 1990, you go through the process.

I assume you had to take a New York City entrance exam of some type to get in. then go to the academy. Anything from that period of time you want to lay on us before we jump into your first assignment? Yeah, you know what? I'm going to blow everyone's mind. You think of how revered the NYPD was back then. It was the job to have. And here's the number. We had 85,000 people took the test that I was on. Wow. Think about that. I mean, now there's a couple of hundred, there's a thousand. Is this 85,000 people took. that exam. So that shows you just what that job meant to a lot of people, including myself. And, you know, you did. You went through the written test. You got batched into kind of a bundle of

people. And you went through medicals and psychologicals. And then you got appointed. And that was the that was the start of a long, long career that went really fast, if that makes any sense. So your first assignment, you're a patrol cop, a beat cop. Where did you get assigned? The 30th precinct, which was in the west side of Harlem and the lower half of Washington Heights on the west side of Manhattan. Okay. Yeah. I know. Yep. And it was a great place to work. You know, it was small, but it was busy. And you had no choice but to learn really quick, you know, what was going on the street and how to be a cop. What was that experience like for you being a beat cop and now you're out on the streets? It was everything you wanted. You know, like I said.

said from the time you're eight years old to stepping out on the street, you waited for that moment. So being there, I loved every part of it. And I tell people all the time, in order to be successful, especially in the NYPD, you have to love it. You can't like it. If you just like it, you're not going to be successful in it. So I loved every part of it. And just, I wanted to be busy. I wanted to make a lot of arrests. I wanted to make some sort of impact in my career and learn really quick. Probably maybe too much too quick sometimes, but that's just how I was wired in wanting, you know, everything I could possibly do as quick as I could. As you're immersing yourself in all this. I mean, what was sort of the crime and the policing situation like in Harlem in 1990?

Oh, it was wild. And my command in Washington Heights was drugs, drugs, drugs, which deals with now robberies and guns and everything like that. We were the, you know, narcotics center of the world. It was the direct line from the south of the 95 corridor up to Washington Heights. And that was why we was so absolutely busy with drugs. And everything fueled narcotics. You know, like you said, we had shootings because of narcotics. The robberies were because of narcotics.

And in 1990, we were still living through the crack epidemic. You know, so you still had the crack effect going into the 90s when I started from the mid-80s. You know, so that was still around. So, you know, it was a very violent time in New York City from 1990 to the time I got on until 94 when the political scheme in New York changed with Rudy Giuliani getting elected and Bill Bratton coming in. So the department went through a dramatic change at that point. Yeah. Tell us more about that. What changed in 94?

Well, we were allowed to be cops again. You know, you had Bill Bratton came in and got his team together, which we called the dream team of Louis Anamo and John Timony and, you know, a number of others who were old school cops, all from the 70s, who just knew what policing in New York City was all about. And they had our back and told us, hey, go out and be cops again. This is why he got hired. This is why you took this job to go out and clean the city up.

But here was the biggest dramatic difference in why it worked, Jack. It wasn't just the cops going out there doing their job. Giuliani and Bratton had a deal with the DA's offices throughout the city. And they had a big sit down one time and said, listen, if we're going to send our cops out there to do their job, the DA's better damn well do theirs and keep these people in jail and have high enough bails that they don't get out. and it's not a revolving door. So we all work together, which then allowed the feds,

the feds to come in and start Trigalock programs and enhancement programs, which now had regular criminals facing federal charges, which dramatically changed how crimes were being committed and what we could do even after arrests

with enhancing arrests to make sure they go federally or even just get boosted up a little bit. But the DA's office was so, on board with what we were doing, and that's why we were able to get the crime down starting in 1994. And I mean, did you see during this time frame like a pretty dramatic shift? I mean, being a cop and walking the streets every day, you can like feel the vibe, right? I mean, did you start to see it both like empirically, but also just how you felt about the neighborhood? Oh, 100%. You know, and the thing was, we might have been in a crime riddled area.

Washington Heights might have been kind of a, you know, New York City war zone. But you had so many good people there that understood what had to be done. And then once we started to clean up these streets and lock up the groups of people that were just creating this mayhem, you had the support of all these neighborhoods and these community centers and everything like that were always on board with us because they saw the hard work we were doing and what we were putting into it. Yeah. And I mean, nowadays, Harlem's actually a pretty nice place. Oh, I drive through my complaint. Complaints by saying that it's getting...

You know, and all that. And it's a big difference from when I was in, that's for sure. I mean, today the complaint is that it's getting gentrified, right? Yep. You know, you have people sitting on their stoops with their laptops, you know, on Riverside Drive and on Amsterdam Avenue, which, I mean, back then, that was a... You didn't walk through that neighborhood back then. You know, that's how bad it was.

And now you see just all types of people. You know, a lot of kids from Columbia University are now moving up to that area because it's not too far away. And the neighborhood did change dramatically. You're right about that. It's just on the other side of Morningside Park. You go down the steps and you're right there. Absolutely right. Yep.

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Thanks, guys. And so pretty shortly around this time frame, you ended up in a anti-crime plainclothes unit. You want to tell us about that job? Yeah, that was an awesome unit to work in because you go from patrol and you get selected to go into anti-crime, which was a plainclothes unit within the precinct and we're responsible for the robbery patterns.

We would respond to the in-progress calls, either shots fired job or a man with a gun or the robbery or burglary calls. We had unmarked cars, we dressed in the street clothes, small unit. There was only five of us in the unit. We had two different teams. There were five of us on each unit. And that was just a great opportunity. I had my sergeant, who was one of my best friends, had picked me up to be part of that unit. And that was, you know, the beginning of what you want, what I wanted to do in the job. I kind of had a checklist in my head, which I tell

young cops today, and I tell college students today when I go and speak to them to always have a plan, have an agenda what you want to do in this job and make sure no one stops you from doing it. You want to achieve it. Go get it. And being part of an anti-crime unit was on, you know, the top of my list. So once I got to that, then I could start really planning out the rest of my career where I wanted to go. Were there any particular calls that stand out in your mind from that time of your life? Oof, how much time we got? As much as you want. I mean, you think about it. You know, back then we were handling 100 jobs a night, you know, in an eight-hour tour. It was insane. I mean, I was involved in 1993, a pretty bad shootout that me and my partner were in and one of our

cops got shot during it. He survived. He was shot in the leg. We ran across three individuals who just robbed the supermarket, and they were actually wanted. We found out later. They were wanted for 17 supermarket robberies throughout the city. And we got into a pretty good gun battle with them and shot all three of them. They lived. We caught three of them. And they spent about 100 years each in jail. Oh, shit. The officer who was shot, was shot in the leg about 10 feet from me when it happened. But he was, he got three quarters because it blew out his hamstring when he got shot. But, you know, you think about being a young cop. I was only on the job for,

three years when that happened. And talk about a wake-up call, you know, okay, you know, hopefully that's it. Put that in your pocket. You know, we got that part of your career over with, which was the case. I didn't get another one. So one was enough for sure. I mean, could you tell us a little bit about like what that moment was like?

I imagine like something at the OK corral where it's like three cops meet three robbers. And like you guys are looking at each other. Like, who's going to pull first? Well, it was it was in a car. outside the car. What had happened was they went into the supermarket, robbed it, and while they were leaving, someone came up to us because we just happened to be right across the street in our car waiting for an officer to cash a check in the bank, which was right across the street. And someone told us, hey, you know, something's going on in the supermarket. So we did a quick U-turn, and we

encountered one of the employees who told us, hey, these three guys in a car, and they just robbed us, they tied up the security guard, and they're coming up, 100,000. 44th Street in a car, they just carjacked. So we went to 144th Street and cut them off. And they just leaned out the window, started shooting at us. We shot back. The car took off. We ran actually behind the car until Ralph came out of the bank and stopped the car. They leaned out the car and shot him. So we had a actual gun battle with them in the back seat of a car because we blew out the back windshield with them in the back seat of the car and us at the trunk. So that was how close we were to having a gun battle with them.

In the middle of the afternoon, right on Broadway on a Friday afternoon at 113 in the afternoon. Oh, my God. Yeah. And they each got a hundred years. You know what? It's not the movies. Yeah. It's not TV.

It was the oddest thing to go through, Jack, because we fired, I think, I'm guesstimating now from what I remember. remember, like 47 shots were fired in that battle. I think I heard two of the shots. The rest were just really echoes like you were in a, you know, a pillow. Everything's in slow motion. Your tunnel vision kicks in. It was a very, very bizarre situation to go through. But it was amazing how much your training just absolutely kicks in to get cover, get behind something, you know, make sure you don't run out of bullets. Because at the time, we had this. We only had 38s.

We didn't even have 9-Jet. So when I get to the number of 50, 40-something rounds, they were with 38s. So you guys were having to use like speed loaders on your 38th? Yep. Oh, man. I actually got to reload once. and then had to pull up my off duty off out because I didn't have time to reload again

and set that time. They were all getting out of the car, which ensued another gun battle. So this was, like I said, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon on Broadway, so you can imagine that scene when that was taking place. And to make things worse, on the family side,

it was a month after I got married. So you can imagine what my wife was thinking of watching the news. Well, I mean, I guess everything worked out okay. I mean, I'm amazed at such close range that, you know, you guys didn't get hit. You know, the one officer did, but not you two. Oh, yeah, you heard them. They were certainly going by, you know, you heard the zings going past you. But there happened to be, thankfully, a box truck that was right next to me that I was able to get behind, you know, to cover, you know, while they were getting out of the car.

then a foot pursuit took place after that down in the subway and around the corner. So it was a big dramatic thing for sure. Yeah, you say it's not like in the movies, but it sure sounds like a Law & Order episode right there. Yeah. If I played it back, I'd probably look at it and go, wow, that was pretty cool. But at the time, you're not, you're just making sure you're okay. And thankfully, Ralph was, you know, once we got up to the hospital and saw him, you know, he was okay, which was the main thing.

And we got all three. And, you know, the trials took place later on. So that all worked out. But like you said, if you could rewind it and watch it from kind of a thousand feet up in the air, you'd probably think it was pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, those guys shot a cop. They're going away for a while. Yeah.

And they were career criminals. They were just bad, bad guys. You know, just the number of robberies they were wanted for, just other crimes that they committed. One of them was wanted for a rape and a homicide up in Boston. You know, so they were, they were bad, bad guys. Shit. And your next assignment was it narco or anti-gang?

Narcotics. Narcotics was first, yep. And then my narcotics team actually became the first gang unit in the gang team in the Bronx. But narcotics was, let me tell you, other than JTTF, which was another world, you know, which we'll get into. but narcotics was the most, I say this all the time, the most quote unquote fun I ever had on the job because it was just nonstop all the time. And I had a phenomenal team that I was on. We were busy.

Me and my partner, I still talk to my partner from narcotics today. We're still tight and very good friends. And we were actually partners again in the robbery squad in the Bronx. But, you know, Carlos taught me what being a detective is all about. doing casework was all about and and never stopping or never giving up, you know, in pursuit of, you know, locking the bad guys up, especially when it came to narcotics and he was so good at it. And, you know, we, we didn't, not that we didn't bother, but we wanted those big cases. We wanted those, those wire taps, those large seizures.

Search warrants we did constantly, you know, over and over again. And we got very, very good at it. but we had a just absolute great team who always had each other's back. When we would do a warrant, we did, you know, we all had the same role each and every time. So we knew where each of us was going to be. I actually, you know, again, my wife loving it that I was the ram guy, you know, hitting the door, which she, you know, loved every time, hey, we're going to do a warrant, you know. So, but it was just, you know, it fit in what we were doing.

But that was a great time in my career. We were so successful in what we did. It was a lot of fun. And I think you mentioned, so this is in the Bronx, and it's sort of at the tail end, I guess, of the crack cocaine epidemic. Yeah, I got in. Crack was still around, but not. Now it was becoming more weight.

And even heroin now in 1996 is when I got there. Heroin was really starting to come back into a full force, especially in the Bronx. We did a number of very large heroin cases. in the Bronx said, you know, we did one case that encompass doing eight search warrants and one shot on three different streets in one neighborhood. And ended up locking up about 15 people. One of them was wanted by the DEA. So that was one of the big heroin cases that we had done. And you said earlier, I think you were involved in like some record setting bust during this time.

Yeah, my partner, Carlos, started a case that ended up being, ended up at the time being the largest kilo seizure in the Bronx narcotics history. We ended up getting 128 kilos of cocaine, which came up from Venezuela, up through Miami, and then a tractor trailer up to the Bronx, which we knew all that was going on. We even had the two locations. There were two garages that we were up off. on different sections of the Bronx that we knew they were going to one of them. And it ended up on Memorial Day of 1997. You know, all our beepers go off and everything goes crazy. But everyone happened to be at a barbecue on Memorial Day.

So we all had to stop doing that, getting the car, flying down to work, and ended up getting all the kilos and getting seven individuals that we locked up from Venezuela and the Bronx as being part of this crew. I mean, I don't know if who's the situation in this case, but I've had like DEA guys and ATF guys described to me that, yeah, sometimes they'll be tracking the shipment down in South America and track it all the way to the United States and they'll let it get to, you know,

kind of the endpoint before it gets distributed so you can bust everybody involved up and down the chain. Yeah, that was pretty much this. We were working with one of the DEA task forces in this case. So we knew, you know, we got told later they were monitoring it. We knew it was coming. And then once it went in one direction in the Bronx, we knew the garage it was going to end up in. So that was all set up and we were ready for that. And that was a really good one. Because when you're a Bronx narcotics team to get a case like that up and running and work with the DEA team wasn't the norm.

You know, a lot of cases were buying bust and doing search warrants and getting a certain amount. you know, of weight when you locked up the people. But doing a case like this was great because no one thought we could. You know, we got a lot of, oh, you guys chasing the kilo ferry, and nothing's going to happen and nothing, you know, you guys don't get anything like this. So once it all happened, yeah, it was a good feeling walking into the office the next couple of days. Was that kind of like a shift in approach? Like you said, like before it was search warrants and buy and busts was kind of the idea of doing long-term like undercover work and things like that starting to percolate?

Yeah, we had a lot of that and we were fortunate to have two incredible undercovers that were on our team that would actually start cases on their own from doing B&B. They were that good. You know, and the long-time case is what everybody wanted to do because it was just more focused, more exciting. You know, you got to do more things and you were. you were involved in a larger case so you could get that mill or that distributor or where's it coming from mentality than just the street guy who's, you know, slinging a couple ounces or a couple of, you know,

glass scenes of heroin. So it was just a bigger case to work on and always, you know, hoping that the success was what we had felt. And next, you guys became the counter gang squad. Yeah, the gang unit just started kind of getting up because we saw more and more gangs, you know, coming into the Bronx. So they wanted to start focusing on the gangs that were, you know, really taken over, you know. But the gangs were, we didn't change our mentality because the gangs were involved in the same thing, just as street narcotics guys were involved in. They were selling dope. They were selling drugs to finance their other parts of their gang activity.

They were doing robberies. So it wasn't a big dramatic change of what we were doing, but it was just more of a focus to go after, you know, the gangs. And we got one case up and running that we worked with the FBI with, and we ended up locking up and arresting the head of the East Coast Bloods, O.G. Mack, who is now a guest at the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado for the rest of his life. So that case was a really big case to do, getting him and his entire crew that was stationed in the Bronx off the street and in jail for a really long time. Yeah, out of curiosity, I'd like to ask a bit more about that. Like, who were the drug gangs and the street gangs? Like who were kind of like the organized crime of the time? Yeah, the bloods were a big part of it.

You had the Latin Kings. you had the Nyethas. The Nietas were kind of an enforcement unit from the Latin Kings, but they were involved. And then you had five or six guys who would name themselves something, you know, that you had to kind of work through, but they weren't the bloods, the crypts. There were not that many crypts around,

but there were people who just identified as them. But you had to kind of filter through the five idiots stand in, on a corner with a red handkerchief in their pocket to the actual blood gang, you know, who had a absolute hierarchy and put together, like you said, like an organized crime contingent of, you know, you had the boss, you had lieutenants, you had captains, you had enforcers, you know, and the bloods were set up that way where, you know, the street kids, just to identify with someone would come up with some stupid name that, you know, we had to run down every once a while, but that was all right.

And then you got assigned to the robbery squad. Yep. How we got that was, you know, like I mentioned before, my partner had got assigned to the 5-2 precinct robbery squad. And he's like, hey, we got a couple openings, put in for it, you know, let's get back together and, you know, work together again. And we were always just great friends and we worked so well together that that was kind of a no-brainer. So, you know, I put in for, you know, did a couple of interviews and got picked up on his team. and we were working together again, focusing on, you know, robberies, the patterns, everything they had to do in that command for anything that had to do with robberies.

And, you know, we had a great time. But while we were there, is what 9-11 happened. So, you know, in one 102-minute episode, the world changed and our careers changed. Yeah, I was about to ask you that. But for the robbery squad, I imagine these weren't cap-border. burglars repelling from the skylights you're looking for. It's more like people holding up liquor shops. Oh, yeah. There were anything, any robbery, strong arm robberies, street level, uh, commercial robberies. They were all part of it. You know, we handled them all, which was,

which was great because it just kept you busy and you were just bouncing from one to another. And, you know, some of the strong arm robberies, uh, ended up being robberies, but people just oweing people money, you know, but then that it becomes a robbery. Uh, so we had to deal with that on top of, Like you said, the group going into a store, you know, and doing a armed robbery, you know, with weapons and things like that. So it was a combination of a lot of different things. So tell us where you were on 9-11 when you came into work that day. So on 9-11, I was actually off that day.

And I was home. And I happened to be in the car with my daughter, who was only about 18 months old at the time. and my parents had planned on coming up to the house to have lunch that day. So we were running to the store pretty early just to get some things, you know, some snacks and dessert and things like that. And I'm sitting in my car at a red light and I happen to look at the radio and notice that there was no music playing. It was just somebody talking, which was odd at 8.30 in the morning.

So I turned it up and the DJ was talking to this woman. And she's describing a plane hitting one of the towers in the World Trade Center. So the very first thing I did, like everyone did that day, I looked out by windshield and just said, I had to screw that up because it was a gorgeous day. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. So the very first thing I thought of was, you know, what happened and thinking it was just one of the tourist planes that fly around Manhattan all the time. Or maybe there's a helicopter and they're saying it was a plane, you know. So I wasn't too concerned about it because, you know, they're just having a conversation about it.

Then I pulled into the parking lot of the store I was going to go in, and the woman on the radio starts hysterically screaming on the radio. And I stopped my car and you kind of staring at your radio going, man, what is she doing? Why is she screaming? And the DJ can't get her to stop because he doesn't know what's going on. And then she finally got the words out that another plane just hit the other building, the other town. hour. So I right there knew something was wrong. This was some sort of an attack. So I just did a U-turn to the parking line. I called my partner, Carlos, who I was working with at the time. And I didn't even get a word out. And he just said, where are you? I said, listen, I'm with Nikki. What's going on?

I'm not home. I'm not near TV. What's going on? And he said, we're being attacked. Come, drive, take care of the kids. Zah Carlos knew my whole family. So he knew my wife. He knew everybody he's like listen get them settled come and pick me up and we'll get down there uh so i did that got the family all settled went and picked him up and we had to take a really wild long way into the city because at that point everything was shut down uh so we found a way down there and got right down to ground zero uh had to park on the fDR drive and run through the tunnel you know up to the west side because you couldn't get near it. And let me tell you, it was the most dramatic scene.

Obviously, anyone ever saw, but it looked fake. It just looked like it was plastic. It looked like a movie set, you know, with the lights that were there. And the couple of things that always jumped out, Jack, and again, asked this all the time, were two main things. one was the smell of burning cement. That smell I'll never forget that you smell just for days and days and days of that just odd smell of cement and jet fuel, you know, and all that, which was just all over the area. And the other thing was having military fighter jets bank around Manhattan.

You know, that was the scene that you just went, all right, the world just changed. and everything about everything in the world is going to be different. And watching these fighter jets just buzz around Manhattan was some scene to remember. And I mean, that must have been a really long day for you and your partner. Yeah, we were down there. We got down there after they collapsed. But I don't think we left until probably around 5 a.m. And you left, you went home, you changed your clothes, you got something to eat.

and we went right back down the next day. And that went on for a couple of days. And then things started to kind of settle in of having specific assignments of what was going to go on. And one of the worst assignments that you could get, but desperately needed was going out to the landfill in Staten Island, where all the debris that they were taking out of Ground Zero was being brought to a landfill in Staten Island

where we had to go through every part of it. And let me tell you, that was worse than being down on ground zero. What we had to go through and sift through and find and categorize and all that. And the Fresh Hill landfill was not talked about a lot on the news within the department because of what we were doing out there. And that was a really hard place to go to because there is where you really felt and understood the impact of. of what just happened because you were going through everything and finding IDs and purses and other stuff that you can use your imagination about what we were finding

in these piles, which you'll never unsee, you'll never forget, whether it's 25 years later or 80 years later, you know, it doesn't matter. Those images that we had to go through, we'll never forget. One of the things that I sometimes try to communicate, communicate to people, younger people, who were born, you know, around that time frame, you know, these Gen Zers or whoever they are, people who are like our kids age, frankly. I don't think they understand, like, how terrified the entire country was after that happened. Absolutely not. Not even, not even close. That's why I, whenever I go to an academy or I go to a college to speak, I implore them to go down to the 9-11 museum.

because that's when you'll see what actually took place that day and really feel it when you walk into that museum. But, you know, that's a lot with the schools. You know, they just got away from teaching what went on that day. And I can't tell you the number of college kids, Jack, that I'll talk to that have no idea what happened that day. That's wild. You know, they don't understand it.

You know, and I'll ask them all the time, and this blows their mind. I'll ask them, how long do you think all those attacks took? And you'll get, oh, a day, two days, you know, nine hours, you know, whatever. And they have no idea. Then when I tell them that every event that happened on 9-11 took 102 minutes, they cannot believe it because they were never taught that. And I don't know why it's not taught or shown the reverence of other attacks that took place in other wars that took place in this country.

But it's part of our history that certainly should be taught much more. than it already is. And as you point out, I mean, it changed the entire country and the entire world in a way. Yeah, it did. Everything changed. I mean, we're still 25 years later doing things that we didn't do on September 10th. You know, so that just shows you the cost of it and what that attack did to this whole world, not just the country, but around the world.

And so this changed. Obviously, this had an immense personal impact on you. but it also impacted your career professionally, right? That it sort of changed the trajectory that you were on, that you started going into the counterterrorism direction? Oh, no doubt. I would have been, listen, like I mentioned in the beginning of this, you know, my dad was a homicide cop in the Bronx.

That is all I wanted to be. I would have been extremely happy with the rest of my career being a Bronx homicide detective. That was what I wanted to do. That was my goal. That's where I wanted to end up. And that was it. And it just shows you how you have to be ready for anything when you join this department,

when you join any department to be ready for your career and your life to change in one day, which just did. You know, after 9-11, I got contacted by a sergeant that I used to work with when I was in the 30 and said, hey, where are you? I said, I'm in a 5-2 RAM, which was short for robbery squad. and he said, all right, get down to 26 federal plaza tomorrow. I'm going to hand you a bunch of paperwork, fill it out and get it back to me because I need you to get down here to the S-Fords.

And with that, you go, okay, that was as simple as it gets, and I met Mike the next day, and he handed me a stack of papers about this big, you know, with everything that conceived your life from high school to college to every neighbor you have because it was a national security clearance packet that we had to fill out in order to get down there. And that took about almost a year to finish your background check in order to get all the T.S. clearances and everything else you need to be down there working there. And as soon as that got all cleared, I was down at the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which the FBI ran. And the New York office is the largest in the country. And for good reason.

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What kind of cases did you end up? Oh, you were working, you know, I was on the international teams. So we were working international cases that, you know, impacted New York or other parts of the United States. But mostly anything that impacted New York, we were working on. So you had different teams that worked different groups. Al-Qaeda teams. You had Hizbollah teams. You had homegrown teams, domestic teams.

So, you know, it was an enormous on-taking. You know, before I tell everyone, on September 10th, there were 11 NYPD detectives assigned to JTTF. After 9-11 happened, we had the largest JTTF in the country. We had about 125 NYPD officers, detectives, and sergeants assigned to the task force. And we ran that with the FBI, obviously, because it's our city. And we had the resources and connections and all that to play a big, major role in the task force. And you know, you switch gears quite dramatically from doing a narcotics case to now doing an international terrorism case with someone who wants to blow the world up.

So, you know, what I did and I discussed it with you earlier, my mindset was to make it and keep it as simple as possible. Don't overblow it. Don't make it more than it is. It's a case and run it just like a case. And, you know, that worked for me. But, you know, as an NYPD detective, Jack, you're, you're happy if you take a day trip to Jersey. You know, that's a big deal for the day. And now you're getting on a plane going anywhere in the world that you need to go. You know, in a moment's notice, hey, I need to go to Germany because this guy's there. I need to talk to them. Okay. Book it. You know, do the proper paperwork. You're good to go. You know, so you had to get in that. That mind.

said as well that the resources that were available were limitless. You know, we had to go to do anything we needed to do to make sure 9-11 didn't happen again. And you got involved in a large-scale investigation around this time, right, that was driven by the 9-11 attacks? Yeah, I did. I was running a very large international case, which unfortunately I would love to get into, but can't write this minute. But maybe one day soon we're keeping our fingers crossed that more about what we're working

on comes out more and more. But it was a lot. You know, when you're dealing with cases that especially involved 9-11, you know, it was a big responsibility to make sure it didn't happen again. And we all felt that. Our city got attacked. Our cops got killed. Our firemen got killed.

Our civilians got killed. And we took it very personally in JTTF to make sure that we could do whatever we needed to do and we had the okay to do it. So when you started running these large-scale cases, especially the one I was running, which touched five or six different cities in the United States on top of a bunch of international countries that we had to travel to, you know, it was good to know that you had the resources to do and you had the backing to do it. because everyone understood what was at stake. This is a case that hasn't been prosecuted yet. No, it's still not prosecuted and out there a little bit. But again, hopefully one day we'll talk about it even more. But everyone's going to realize what it is once it comes on.

Okay. I got you. And let's see. Let's get into Afghanistan. Stan. Yeah. You know, one of those other things that you damn well better be ready for anything because you don't know what's going to happen. Walked into the office one day and got grabbed by my supervisory special agent who was a great guy at the time. And when he told me to come in his office, I fully anticipated talking about the case I was running and walked in and kind of sat on his couch and his big office went, okay, what's up? What do we got? And I actually just start

briefing him on my case of any new information that I had. He went, whoa, hold on a minute. It's not about that. And he told me about a kidnapping that took place in Afghanistan with a New York Times reporter, and I was going to run it with one of the other detectives. So again, you kind of sit back a little ago, okay, you know, now you're running a case in a war zone, and we had to prepare to go there. Jim was one of the guys I was doing it with, and we had made the decision that he was going to shoot out there first, and I was going to be back here coordinating the numerous agencies that we had to have on board with us in order to do this properly

and to try to track down where he was. Again, you're not in the Bronx. You're not following someone in Brooklyn. You're talking about Afghanistan where there's a war going on, much less the enormity of Afghanistan and the size of it. and the mountainous terrain and all that is what you have to, you know, deal with. So we had to have every agency possible on board with us to assist us in that, which we did. Everyone was great.

So running it here, you know, for a couple of months and then switching. So now I'm a New York City detective who now has to go to Afghanistan for three months and try to track down somebody. And, you know, you had to be ready for that. You know, I knew Jack, I was going to be tactically okay because I was just a tactical guy, and I knew tactically it was going to be okay. But I had to get into the proper mindset of, you know,

like I said before, I'm not going to the Bronx. You know, you're going into a war zone, and I'm not in the military. You know, so it had to be prepared for being armed with an M4 and a sidearm and a heavy vest and an armor-plated car and tracking devices. So everyone knew where you were, you know, all day long and being seriously on point when you're trying to drive around there because that's when you're most vulnerable to snipers, to IEDs, to suicide bombers is when you're in your car. And one of the things that we learned very quickly was you didn't stop your car for anything. Not a light, not traffic, not a person.

You kept that car moving. So there were traffic circles in and around Kabul when I got there that we were. actually pushed cars out of the way to make sure we didn't stop our car and drive up on a sidewalk or whatever it might be. But that was a time in my life and in my career that was a lot different because the stakes were really high, not just for the person we were looking for, but for me. You know, leaving my family for that amount of time is not the norm. I was only one of two NYPD detectives to be in Afghanistan. And the other one I knew

very well, he was a good friend of mine, a co-worker, and he was there before me. So we were the only two that had ever been there. And being there was dangerous and you tried not to think about it too much because you couldn't have it

encapsulate your brain. You had to work, you had a mission, you had to focus on that, and that's what I did. So I got to ask, like, would we think of, you know, this New York Times journalist who's been kidnapped in Afghanistan, my mind thinks, well, this is like a SEAL Team 6 or a Delta Force hostage rescue mission, but you're coming, a New York police department guy coming to Afghanistan and running it as sort of a kidnapping case.

Like, what is that like interagency process like? Yeah, they were great. We worked with every agency over there. Every three-letter agency you can think of, we were involved with on top of special operations up in Bogram. And they were on us, on our side. What do you need? We're here. You know, we had dedicated teams assigned to us that were on call 24-7.

If we got some information or some intel about a location or someone who could provide information to us, they were right there with us. And it couldn't have worked out any better. You know, everyone coordinated the right way. It was always on the same page. If we had to drive up to Boggham for a meeting, we were there. You know, that was a dangerous trip. No one ever liked doing that.

But, you know, it had to be done. Or we would take one of the Blackhawks up there if they were available, which, again, as the New York City detective, is different. You know, you're not jumping into a Black Hawk in Manhattan, but you have to do it there just to get a ride up to a military base. So the coordination was key to this. because Intel changed by the minute, by the hour. So everyone always had to be in communication with one another,

and it worked out great. And it worked out to a point where it was a successful ending to this, and we got them home. Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about how the case was resolved? Well, it just evolved just by getting a lot of intel throughout this time of sources and information and just, great work with humid stuff and SIGET stuff, you know, all that. So all of it came to a conclusion and, you know, there's some things that I just still can't get into

because it's just the classifications of some of the operational stuff that we went through. But it was a great and highly coordinated effort with a lot of departments that just, like I said, continuously stayed on top of each other. And timelines were set up and locations were set up. And the proper time to end this took place and we were successful in doing that. And he was released like through nonviolent means, right? Correct. Right.

So good, good situation for everyone comes home. For everyone. Absolutely right. And that's what I meant. It was just, it was the timing of it. And what was worked out was perfect that no one got hurt, no one got injured, no one was even put in harm's way when the conclusion. of this took place.

I look forward to hearing the rest of that story sometime. And so when you came home, you continued on the other larger investigation. But there's also a school shooting, potential school shooting that you guys got involved in. Yeah, that was a big case that came about, you know, came about in where I was working. I moved to a satellite office in upstate New York outside the city that I was fortunate enough to be asked to go to. So I wasn't commuting into the city anymore and it was pretty close to my home. So that was a tough offer to turn down. So I started working up here.

We got wind of an individual who was planning a school shooting on social media. And we were assigned to it, me and my partner. and she did a phenomenal job with what she had to do with the internet stuff and social media stuff and getting into that. And it ended up being a school that hit close to home with my family. Scary situation with balancing that of just being a dad and having to stop, you know, this individual from committing a school shooting, which all of us have had way too much of. But luckily, a couple of days before he was planning to do this, we were able to get enough evidence and enough probable cause

and got the DA's office on board with the search warrants that we needed, that we conducted, and ended up arresting the individual for the threats and stop the attack from happening, which would have happened on the last day of school. And how did he end up getting convicted? Yeah, we ended up actually arrested him three different times. The last time was on a federal charge, and he ended up doing five years in a federal prison. So you guys even, you know, I can understand these cases are very difficult to prosecute,

but you say he was arrested three times where they have in trouble making the charges stick? No, it was, you know, the great criminal justice system in New York. We locked them up one time and they let him go home. And he continued the threats and we locked them up again and they let him out again. And we ended up getting enough on the federal level to put him, you know, through the federal system the last time we got him. So that was that was what put him away. Call me crazy.

The state charges were exactly what we're still facing in New York right now. Yeah, I mean, call me crazy. It's okay, let him go home of, you know, a $250 ban. you know, all things like that. Yeah, a guy who's threatened. And kept monitoring him and kept staying on top. And we didn't let the case go because we knew, you know, he wasn't done. And we were right.

You know, the threats kept coming and just the arrest kept coming. And then finally, like I said, we had enough on a federal level to go that route. Thank God. Any other big cases that you want to talk about before we move on? Big cases. Well, you know, there was one, I get asked all the time, you know, Jagged, and I'll tell you, what was a memorable night that you had, you know, and to put it in a 30-year career is hard with a number of places I was lucky enough, you know, to be involved with.

But there was a night back in the early 90s, or mid-90s that we ended up saving a, eight-day-old baby who we got thrown in our arms by his mother that wasn't breathing, that was unresponsive, you know, on the sixth floor of a building and had to run down to the car and do 100 miles an hour up Riverside Drive with the lights and sirens and other cops shutting streets down while we're doing CPR on an eight-day-old baby in the front seat of a car with my partner breathing in his mouth and me pumping his chest while I'm trying to drive the car and then slid kind of sideways into the emergency room at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and as I did that the baby started crying so that was that was one of those memorable nights that

you know I'll never forget a crying baby was the was the best sound in the world I heard that night you want you know it's funny you want it to happen but when it does you get shocked yeah like oh my god you know everything we got trained to do and everything that we thought was a waste of time sitting in a classroom listening to CPR classes and first aid classes that you want to just go eat or go home all paid off uh because everything they taught us we did and it worked perfectly and uh that baby became a healthy, you know, toddler and adult. And right now is probably 35 years old right now. Wow.

I mean, I think it's really interesting that, you know, you have these great stories about the robbery squad and getting in a shootouts with robbers and going after Al-Qaeda. That is kind of the movie stuff. But there's like so much else that goes into being a cop. Oh, God. there's so much and that's a big part of you know when i go into classes and speak and i go into the criminal investigation course down the nypd academy with new detectives when i go and speak in there

there's so much that that goes into this you know and i tell people all the time i tell new cops all the time that one of the biggest things i get asked all the time is how do he become a good cop how do you know how do you get how do i get the career you had uh you know and i tell people probably the number one thing that cops need to do today is get their communication skills in order. Because if you can't talk to people, you're not going to be

successful. And you have to be able to communicate with the CEO of a company or the lowest crackhead that's on a corner. You know, or interview someone in a nice setting in a precinct detective squad or speak to

a bad guy in a cave in Afghanistan. You have to have those skills. communication-wise in order to do that. And if you don't, if you don't get out there and talk to people and learn about people and their cultures and what they like and what they don't like, you're not going to be successful at this job no matter where you are. And I tell young cops that every single time I'm in front of them. No, that's awesome. So at this point, I mean, I guess I want to ask you about retirement. Like when, do you reach mandatory retirement age at NYPD or does there just come a time for you? You're like, I'm ready to move on. Yeah, I did, you know,

I did 30 years in the NYPD. And, you know, that wasn't the plan. You know, when I got on in 1990, you know, 20 years was the mark, you know, get to 20 and then start kind of a second career. But being in JTTF, I was in such a, you know, good rhythm and cases that I was doing. I was still enjoying it, you know, and that was the other thing I mentioned before in the beginning of this. You have to love what you do. And I love my job to the day I stopped, and I still love it. I do it again tomorrow. But there comes that time that you just go, you know what?

What else am I going to do? I'm still young enough. I'm still healthy. I still got my brain going. There's other things I can do. And 30 was a nice round number to call it a day. And that's what I did. And in 2020, you know, I'm a lot of.

March 6th was the end of a really good run that I had. So what has the last five years been like for you then? Like what has it been like transitioning from being a career detective to civilian on the streets? To just a regular person. Just a regular dude. You know what? It's different.

It's just, you know, it's something that I tell people all the time and I, and this is the way I equate it. It's like someone telling, you. you know, you're walking forwards for 30 years and then someone telling you you got to walk backwards. Uh, you know, you'll, you'll get used to it. It's going to be rough at times, uh, but, you know, you'll get used to it, but it's weird. And you know what the one thing is, when you start looking back on your career, Jack, you don't, when you're going through things, you don't realize what you're going through because you're just doing it. And it's a reaction.

And it's one day at a time, one day after another, one day after another. And, you know, know, it's just a normal, you know, craziness that you're doing. But when you're all done and you look back and you kind of take stock in what you did, you go, wow. Yeah. You know, that was, that was a heavy 30 years. And, you know, just as much of a physical part of it is is a mental part as well. You know, and I had my little things come out in 30 years. And my big, you know, my big mental thing was nightmares. You know, I went through a, a lot of years of having really violent, nasty, you know, nightmares. You know, the one good thing about me is I never drank, I never smoked, you know, so I didn't have that to lean on or be worried about because it wasn't just something I did.

But, you know, people have to realize the mental toll that goes into being in law enforcement. And it's a dramatic hit that your psyche takes. and a lot of times while you're going through it, you don't realize it. Especially, you know, back then, when we were told, you know, when we first got on the job and it was wrong, but at the time we didn't know it was wrong, when you get told, hey, just shut your mouth, you're a cop, deal with it. What did you expect to happen to you? You know, and you take that as a young cop, go, okay, I'll just, I won't tell anyone I'm having

dramatic nightmares or, you know, not me, but other people, I have a drinking problem, or I have this kind of problem or I'm having a domestic problem because back then there was no questions asked. You got your gun, your shield taken from you. You got put on a midnight tour on a desk watching a parking lot. And that was the end of your career. You know, so people and guys and girls didn't talk about it. And that's a dramatic difference in today's policing that there's so many private avenues

and organizations that have the backs of law enforcement. officers that they can talk to now and get the help that they need in order to just go on with their life even, you know, when you retire, you know, because it doesn't go away. You know, I still, every once in a while, not as many as I had, but there's still, you know, nightmares that pop up of past events and stuff. And it's just something that, you know, you fight through and you go through. But it's something that people have to realize law enforcement officers go through every day. One of the things I think about in regards to this issue is, you know, when we talk about mental health or PTSD with military veterans, with soldiers, they are doing their training in the United States, getting ready to go.

And then they're getting on an airplane flying to another country, doing their job, coming back home. So at least there's this like separation. But if you're a police officer, you're out there sometimes seeing really horrible things all day. And then that night, your home in your house with your family. And that has got to be like a very dramatic and very difficult thing to juggle those two things in your psychological life, I guess. Oh, you nailed it. You absolutely nailed it. You know, yes, there's a big correlation between what goes on in military lives and law enforcement lives there is.

But in law enforcement, it's every single day. And like you said, you know, you're going out. you're leaving the house and everyone in that house is hoping to God you walk back through that door later on that night. But while you're out there, like you said, you're dealing with people's worst days. You know, there's no good things that police are showing up to. You know, they're calling us for a reason. And sometimes they're their life-changing events of people losing their lives or children being hurt and so on and so forth. You know, the most dramatic stat that I throw out there all the time, Jack, and this blows people's minds that the average person in a lifetime

will go through two or three traumatic events in their life. Two or three. I could do two or three in an hour when I was on the street. You know, now take that over an eight-hour period and that times that by 30 days in a month. I mean, you know, what we had to go through in certain situations. And then like you said, hit a switch and go home and be dad. You know, that's really hard to do. And there's some people that could do it.

I was fortunate enough that I had, I love the longer ride home I had, you know, to kind of decompress and turn the radio on and open a window and just kind of, you know, calm down a little before I got home. And I think that was a big, big benefit that I had in my career in order to do that living outside the city and having that ride home at night to kind of, you know, calm down and get back to neutral before you walked in the door. Did that happen every night? No.

And, you know, thankfully, you know, I got 33 years of the best wife in the world that I walked into the door and she knew the night I had immediately, you know, whether to, hey, are you okay? Or, hey, hon, what's up? you know, she knew right away, and that dictated what happened the first few minutes that I was home of, of let's talk it out. You know, she's a guidance counselor. So talking to her and her realizing what was wrong with me was pretty easy for her. You know, but I had that fortunate outlet to have her. And there were some nights that, you know, hey, let's hear it.

What happened? What did you do? Because you can't keep it inside you. Yeah. Because the more you do that, there's a time. There's a point it's not going to stay in anymore. And that's when it explodes and really, really bad things happen. I was thinking about how, you know, difficult that has got to be to work that job and then come home at the end of the day and like, well, I'm going to mow my lawn now and sit down and have dinner with the kids.

But it's actually really amazing, though, that you had a wife that you were able to come home and have that conversation with every day if need be. Oh, I was lucky as hell, you know, to have her because she got it. You know, after dealing with what I went through in my career, you know, she understood what the job was all about. I have, you know, she was lucky, too, that, you know, my mom and her had a great relationship. So my mom would talk to her about what she went through with my dad. My four older sisters would talk to her about how they dealt with my father's, you know, schedule. You know, so she had a lot of resources in educating herself. into what this job is all about.

But then on top of her being, you know, the best in the world, and I got to throw a prop to her. Yeah. She is. I don't know if I'd be here sitting here without her, you know, and I tell her that all the time, and I'm lucky. But like you said, to have someone that I was lucky enough to walk in the house and have someone to just grab me by my shirt and go, nope, sit down. What happened?

Yeah. was a big difference in that. And, you know, she was the one laying in bed next to me when I had the nightmares and got, got poked and punched a couple of times, unfortunately, and her hair grabbed a couple of times. So, you know, she lived through that mental part of it as well. Yeah, yeah. I also wanted to ask you nowadays, is it a little bit better for cops out there,

especially, I guess, NYPD cops, but others as well, as far as the, mental health stuff. Are there more avenues for them to pursue? Oh, there's a ton of avenues. There's still that stigma, though, that we're still fighting through and still wanting to break through. But that comes from leadership of these departments. And that's where it starts, because these leaders have to instill in their officers that it's okay to not be okay. And they have to tell them, I got your back. No matter what it is, I will be here supporting you. This department will be here supporting you.

And cops need to hear that because cops don't trust anyone. All right, let's be honest. They don't. You could have someone standing in front of them going, hey, you're fine. I got your back. Well, maybe not. You know, and the next thing is you're sitting at that desk on a midnight watching a parking lot, like I said before.

And that filters down. You know, people hear about it. Law enforcement communities are big, but they're very small into how, you know, information gets out there. about how cops are being treated when they admit to having difficulties. And the leadership of these departments have to be in these cops' corner. But just to answer your question, Jack, there's so many good avenues out there with these groups and these counseling groups that are out there now compared to what we used to have.

I mean, it's a dramatic difference. And these cops today, I think, are very fortunate to have these organizations out there that they can lean on just. make a phone call. We tell people all the time on the show, you know, we can help one person, one cop save themselves. It's all worth it. And if you have to pick the phone up and have a five-minute conversation with someone on one of these phone, you know, banks that are armed and held by cops and retired cops to get you just over a hump that you're okay for a five-minute conversation, then it's all worth it. Yeah, it is. Absolutely.

And some of the things that you've gotten into since your retirement from the police force, tell us about this podcast that you run. Yeah. Dan Murphy and I, Dan was my partner in my partner and my sergeant in the gang unit, and then again in JTTF. We've been friends for 25 years and we thought of doing a podcast almost four years ago now. And the purpose of it was to get these high-profile. file stories out there from law enforcement, from the military, from victims, from survivors that people might have heard about but not heard the whole story about what happened. You know, I know about

the night stalker, but having the detective on who actually locked him up, people don't hear. So that's what we do on Gold Shields. And we get these stories out there that even at times, you know, surprised Dan and I. Because we have kind of one rule with our. guests that we have on our show that we don't want to hear the whole story before we do the show yeah yeah because we like our you know our reaction to be authentic and when we look in the camera go holy crap that's legit that we didn't know something about the case and and we do that specifically and intentionally and it's been a great run you know we look at going into season and four with 140-something 150 shows that we've done when we had seven shows scheduled in the

beginning of it and had no idea what number eight was going to be. You know, looking at each other. We're up to like episode six like, all right, we got to book somebody else. And then it just hit a point where it took off and is being, you know, viewed around the world now, which still freaks this out a little bit that, you know, someone on the other side the world's driving around the car listening to us you know that that's a little weird still but it's so much fun and the people the best part of it jag and you're going to say the same thing because you do you know what we do the friendships that we have now and the people who are

friends of ours we would have never imagined you know four years ago and and we hold them very close to us uh because they're there they're in their their stories out of to us and, you know, our listeners. And we, you know, we respect them so much for that. I mean, who in their world four years ago would have thought that, you know, right now I can pick the phone up and call Taya Kyle, you know, and just say hello and what's going on and have the kids and, you know, all that, which I would have never thought of years ago. And now she's a dear friend of ours. To hype the show a little bit, can you give people like your top three podcasts that people's jaws are going to hit the ground that they should go check out right now?

You put me on this spot, bro, with three. You know what? We did a show. There's a Netflix series called The Vatican Girl. Oh, yeah. That's out there. Okay. So we interviewed the brother, Pietro, on our show.

Holy shit. And we were the first interview he did in the United States about, his sister Emmanuelella. So that was a big show. We had an interpreter and it went awesome. It went so well. We was so happy with that episode. We're actually going to do a follow-up because once we did the episode,

whether we had an impact in it or not, three of the investigations reopened into looking for Emmanuela. Because, yeah, that one's still, that's one was never solved. No, it's still open in three different agencies are running. investigations into her disappearance. And so Pietro's been asked a lot of new information. So we're actually going to have him back on the show as a follow-up, kind of a part two to the Vatican girl.

Another one we've done, I mentioned it. We had Gil Correa on, who was one of the detectives who locked up the Nightstalker, who was incredible. His account of the manhunt, for this maniac going on when he was told by every department in LA. You're out of your mind. You're nuts. You're wasting everyone's time.

It's not a serial guy. It's a group of people. And he would not budge from it. And then got another detective on board with him and linked it all together that it was one guy and ended up locking up Richard Ramirez. But his interview was absolutely amazing. And I give you the last one. We'll switch it from detectives to a victim. We had Kathy Kleiner Rubin on, who was one of the survivors of a Ted Bundy attack.

Oh, wow. She was one of the students at Florida State University who survived being attacked by him. He broke her jaw. He was just about to kill her when he just finished killing two of her sorority sisters down the hall from her, got into her room, attacked her roommate, knocked her unconscious, then jumped on Kathy and started to strangle her after hitting her with a two-by-four across the jaw and broke her jaw. And the only thing that saved her life was where her room was backed up to the parking lot of the building. And a car happened to pull into the parking lot and the headlights shined into the room and it scared him and he took off and ran.

talking to Kathy about that account and her first-hand account of living through that was an amazing interview that we had the opportunity to do. That's, yeah. Okay, those are pretty good ones. And the other thing that you're involved with is impact solutions. What's going on there? Yep, Dan and I developed a alternative to pepper spray for law enforcement. officers, security departments throughout this country and also civilians because we found that pepper spray was just not good in what's going on in society today because of the blowback, because

to the cross-contamination of you worried about spraying it and then you getting affected by the spray and being incapacitated when you're trying to save your own life or help yourself. So we develop a spray called Impact. And impact is an extreme eye irritant. It's sprayed directly in the eyes and you cannot open your eyes. Your eyes burn and it's like broken glass in your eye. You cannot open your eye and it gives you the amount of time you need to either take a perpetrator into custody or get out of that situation if you're a civilian.

And the best part's about our spray is there's no cross-contamination. A police officer can spray a bad guy and jump right on. and nothing's getting on him whatsoever. Our bottles are nitrogen propelled, so it's a targeted stream that is good for about 10 to 12 to 14 feet away. So you don't have to wait for that perpetrator or criminal to be on top of you. You can get him beforehand. Hour spray you can also use inside in an elevator, in a car, in a stairwell, and you are not going to be affected by just the bad guy.

And one of the best parts about it, we have a invisible UV dye marker in it. So if you spray the individual and get the hell out of there and call 911, the officers can come back later with a black light and spray and flash it on them, which is good for identification in court and apprehended him later on. So I don't know if this is like the secret formula of Coca-Cola, but can you talk about what your proprietary blend is for this spray? Yeah, it's made up, believe it or not, of three acidic acids, citrus acid, acidic acid, and another hydrogen kind of peroxide, which just balances the pH of it out.

And it's made up of 70% water. So all those combined give you a vinegar-type hit in the eyes. Just imagine, you know, or pour a glass of orange juice in your eyes is basically what it is. and the three combined ingredients along with the water is a powerful, powerful punch. I've been sprayed actually, you know, because I'm the vice president of the company. So when we were developing it, it had to be sprayed numerous times to test it out, which was not the thrill of my life, but, you know, we had to go through it. But it is highly effective, and there's so many departments that we're in touch with right now

that are switching to it because, you know, a lot of the departments carry, pepper spray, but they don't use it because they don't want to hurt their partner. They don't want to hit an innocent bystand or they don't want it blowing back in their face. So our stuff eliminates all that and gets it in the hands of these officers who drastically need it before just jumping to the next, you know, continuum of a taser or your firearm. You have that middle option to take someone into custody, which is really important these days. Dmitri, do we have any questions other than this one handed me okay uh we got one question here uh for you from the audience uh was there friction between nypd officers and fbi agents in the j ttf oh yeah oh yeah uh and not not in a not in a

kind of vicious way but the fbi and and nypd are two completely different mindsets they're two different personalities they're two different ways they're two different that they work. The FBI is very methodical in what they do and building cases that takes sometimes years to do, whereas if you take the just regular NYPD guy, it's immediate. Get a bad guy. He's behind the door, kick the door, and go get him. So there was a lot to work out in the days after 9-11, or even a couple of years after 9-11 to get the proper balance of who you want to work with how squads were conducted or constructed, I should say, in getting, you know, the right personalities together. And, you know, when I was there, you saw that happen. And after, like I said,

the beginning stages were kind of rough, but then became a very well good working machine between the two agencies. Before we get going tonight, Tom, is there anything else you want to talk about, anything that I didn't ask that you'd like to discuss or put out there? No, I just, you know what? One of the things I love saying is, you know, when it comes to law enforcement, you know, don't jump to conclusions of what you see on TV, you know, on the news and all that. You know, a lot of times that's not the case. And that's why I was so glad. And I was a big proponent of body cams.

Because if you notice over the last few years when more and more departments are getting these body cams, there's less crap on the news about. cops being wrong because most of the time they're right. You know, our mistakes made and things happen on the street, no doubt about it, absolutely. And those are, you know, accountable. But if you've noticed in the news, there's many stories that don't come out anymore because people are realizing how fast situations occur, how quickly law enforcement officers have to make life-changing decisions, both for themselves and others out there. And I'm glad that there shows like on Patrol Live

that people get to watch how quick things happen and how fast police officers need to make decisions. And like I said, 90 plus percent of the time they're right. And I think society is getting that now, which is very welcomed in the law enforcement community. I don't think I've met a police officer who didn't at least eventually come. around to the body cams because like yeah like 90 95 percent like the complaints kind of get thrown

out right away right yep absolutely and and i always said that you're gonna they're gonna prevent they're going to protect the police officer more than hurt them and you know like i said if things go wrong and the police officers are wrong and it's shown then those departments will take that into into hand you know but i always thought they were going to show the right things and get people to really look at it differently and go, oh, wow, you know, I couldn't do that or I couldn't make that decision that quick. Yeah. And I think that's where the change in the view of law enforcement is coming today.

Well, Tom, thank you very much for spending an evening with us here and sharing your story with us. Oh, I really appreciate you. I had a great time. Thank you for asking me. So, folks, go out and check out the Gold Shields podcast. A lot of interesting episodes up on there already. You're going into season four. And we'll have some links down the description to it.

So people who are viewing this on YouTube or whatever can click on that and get to it real easy. Yeah, Tom, thank you again. And everyone else out there will see you again next week. 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 outlets. it, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox, and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the high side.

So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy, and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox, and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week. It's really good, man. I'm checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast. Dot kit.com slash join.

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