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

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 8 Nov 2025, 1 h 30 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/68461691/tom_smith_nypd_audio.mp3

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/house use code "HOUSE" for 15% off! GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 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/TheTeamHouse To 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 guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support 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/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ 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/1501191241 The 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 Beginnings 09:11 – Policing Through the Crack Epidemic 13:40 – Anti-Crime Unit & First Shootout 30:11 – Assigned to Robbery Squad & 9/11 Strikes 39:12 – Joining the Joint Terrorism Task Force 45:11 – Afghanistan Kidnapping Case 52:18 – Preventing a School Shooting 55:46 – Saving an Infant & Memorable Cases 59:03 – Retirement & Mental Health Reflections 1:10:49 – Gold Shields Podcast & Closing Thoughts Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: The Team House with your hopes. Jack Murphy and David Park.
[0:11] Speaker 2: Hey everyone, this is episode three hundred and seventy nine
[0:14] Speaker 2: of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with our
[0:16] Speaker 2: guest tonight, Tom Smith, who served as an NYPD detective
[0:22] Speaker 2: for decades working anti crime units, NARCO, Anti Gang Robbery Squad,
[0:28] Speaker 2: and then was tasked to the FBI for a number
[0:31] Speaker 2: of different types of assignments, including counter terrorism. We'll get
[0:35] Speaker 2: into all of this stuff, but Tom, first, I just
[0:38] Speaker 2: want to say thanks for joining us on the show tonight.
[0:41] Speaker 1: Oh it's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
[0:44] Speaker 2: So the question I usually ask is about the person's
[0:48] Speaker 2: origin story, if you can tell us a little bit
[0:50] Speaker 2: about sort of like your upbringing. I remember you telling
[0:53] Speaker 2: me your dad was an NYPD cop two and sort
[0:56] Speaker 2: of how that took you into service.
[1:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's what it was. He was, you know,
[1:03] Speaker 1: my hero, my mentor. He was my best friend, and
[1:06] Speaker 1: I grew up in that world. You know. I watched
[1:09] Speaker 1: him go to work, have that great gold shield on
[1:12] Speaker 1: his belt when he would get home, which is the
[1:15] Speaker 1: only shield I ever wanted. From the time I was
[1:18] Speaker 1: probably eight years old, I wanted to be a member
[1:21] Speaker 1: of the NYPD, and that's all I ever wanted to do.
[1:25] Speaker 1: You have an influence when, you know, you go into
[1:28] Speaker 1: the precincts before Yankee Games and you're meeting all his
[1:31] Speaker 1: partners and his friends. Even after he retired, we would
[1:35] Speaker 1: go to Fort Apache, we'd go to the four to four,
[1:38] Speaker 1: you know, and visit everyone. So I got really entrenched
[1:42] Speaker 1: in that world of watching that friendship and the you know,
[1:46] Speaker 1: partnerships that he had which meant so much to him
[1:49] Speaker 1: and me. Even to this day, I still talked to
[1:54] Speaker 1: one of my dad's old partners families, you know, that
[1:57] Speaker 1: he worked with in the sixties, and we're still very
[2:01] Speaker 1: tight and very good friends with them. So that gives
[2:03] Speaker 1: you an idea of just what that bond was like
[2:06] Speaker 1: to me and wanting to be part of it. And luckily,
[2:10] Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety I got the opportunity to join the
[2:14] Speaker 1: NYPD and had a very fortunate, good career with my
[2:18] Speaker 1: dad next to me for probably most of it for sure.
[2:24] Speaker 2: So, I mean, there's a couple of things I'd like
[2:26] Speaker 2: to ask you about. I guess one of the sins
[2:29] Speaker 2: we're here right now, what do you think was the
[2:31] Speaker 2: difference between your dad service and NYPD going back to
[2:35] Speaker 2: the sixties and yours which started in nineteen ninety.
[2:39] Speaker 1: Wow, that's a great question. You know what it was.
[2:41] Speaker 1: It's what was going on in the city at the time.
[2:44] Speaker 1: You know, in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, especially the
[2:48] Speaker 1: fifties and sixties. You know, New York was what it was.
[2:51] Speaker 1: It was kind of booming. It was a good place. Yes,
[2:53] Speaker 1: you had the crime, but the respect factor that civilians
[2:57] Speaker 1: had for the police was dramatic different than in the
[3:02] Speaker 1: seventies eighties, and that what I went through and even today.
[3:06] Speaker 1: But back then, you know, they were people waved at them,
[3:09] Speaker 1: people talked to them on the street. You had that
[3:12] Speaker 1: beat cop that everyone knew in your neighborhood. And that
[3:16] Speaker 1: did go on, you know when I got on, but
[3:18] Speaker 1: not as much and much of a respect factor that
[3:22] Speaker 1: he dealt with. But I remember, you know, being around
[3:26] Speaker 1: him during that and getting the stories of of people
[3:29] Speaker 1: really respecting what the YOUNGYPD was. But then when I
[3:33] Speaker 1: got on in nineteen ninety, the city was completely different.
[3:36] Speaker 1: You know, you had you know, we were dealing with
[3:38] Speaker 1: almost three thousand homicides a year and one hundred and
[3:42] Speaker 1: twenty five thousand robberies. You know. In the early nineties,
[3:46] Speaker 1: I worked in a command in the three zero precinct,
[3:48] Speaker 1: which was one of the smallest precincts in the city,
[3:51] Speaker 1: but one of the most dangerous and violent and busiest.
[3:55] Speaker 1: You know, in one year in one square mile, we
[3:59] Speaker 1: had eighty eight homicie in one square mile in the city.
[4:03] Speaker 1: That's what New York City was. And you know, that
[4:06] Speaker 1: was the dramatic difference from him back in the fifties, obviously,
[4:10] Speaker 1: but it was something that we had to deal with
[4:12] Speaker 1: and get you know, trained for and be ready for
[4:14] Speaker 1: once we got on. We knew what the city was
[4:16] Speaker 1: like in the nineties when we were all getting hired,
[4:19] Speaker 1: so it was something to just prepare for. But I
[4:22] Speaker 1: had kind of a nason a hall with d at
[4:24] Speaker 1: home to get some good advice from, that's for sure.
[4:26] Speaker 2: And I guess the follow up to that is, I'd
[4:28] Speaker 2: like to ask you when you came on the force
[4:30] Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety, what is it like, specifically trying to
[4:34] Speaker 2: work as a cop in New York City? What are
[4:36] Speaker 2: the particular challenges that you face in New York which
[4:39] Speaker 2: I think now we have eight point five million people
[4:41] Speaker 2: in the city, was probably a little bit less than
[4:44] Speaker 2: that nineteen ninety but nonetheless, I mean a major metropolitan area.
[4:48] Speaker 1: Oh, it was enormous. And the priesting that I worked
[4:50] Speaker 1: in was so diverse. You had Dominicans, you had blacks
[4:53] Speaker 1: and white had, you know, a whole ton of different
[4:55] Speaker 1: people that were there. But I think the biggest challenge
[4:58] Speaker 1: was being ready for what was ahead of you and
[5:02] Speaker 1: being prepared for what was lying in the street waiting
[5:07] Speaker 1: for you. And you know, a lot of training, you
[5:10] Speaker 1: know takes place obviously, but a lot of instinctive things
[5:14] Speaker 1: gets put into your head really quick, especially when you're busy,
[5:17] Speaker 1: and it's learning from you know, other officers who've been there.
[5:21] Speaker 1: And that was one of the dramatic differences from when
[5:23] Speaker 1: I got on to what they're facing today. When I
[5:26] Speaker 1: got on and I was in uniform, you had cops
[5:30] Speaker 1: in uniform on patrol with twelve, fifteen, seventeen years on
[5:34] Speaker 1: the job that you learned from. You know, kids are
[5:37] Speaker 1: getting out of the academy today and relying on someone
[5:40] Speaker 1: that's got four or five years on the job, you know,
[5:42] Speaker 1: to train them and to show them or to mentor
[5:45] Speaker 1: them into what the job's all about. And I think
[5:47] Speaker 1: that is a dramatic difference in what is being faced
[5:51] Speaker 1: today and.
[5:52] Speaker 2: What I why do you think that is? Tom? Does
[5:54] Speaker 2: that have to do with like early retirement or career stuff.
[5:58] Speaker 2: Why don't we have these old schools guys still around?
[6:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a little of both. I think
[6:03] Speaker 1: it's people moving on and going to other departments, But
[6:06] Speaker 1: I think it's also that other units within the NYPD
[6:10] Speaker 1: want that experienced officer to be part of their unit.
[6:14] Speaker 1: So you know a lot of experience cops are going
[6:17] Speaker 1: in narcotics and going again Union, going to detective squads
[6:21] Speaker 1: because they had that experience that maybe some of these
[6:24] Speaker 1: units were lacking, so they were pulling them off of
[6:27] Speaker 1: patrol to backfill these other units. And that was to
[6:31] Speaker 1: the detriment of patrol when you had the new kids
[6:33] Speaker 1: coming in.
[6:35] Speaker 2: So nineteen ninety you go through the process. I assume
[6:39] Speaker 2: you had to take a New York City entrance exam
[6:42] Speaker 2: of some type to get in and then go to
[6:44] Speaker 2: the academy. Anything from that period of time you want
[6:47] Speaker 2: to lay on us before we jump into your first assignment.
[6:51] Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, I'm going to blow everyone's mind.
[6:54] Speaker 1: You think of how revered the NYPD was back then.
[6:58] Speaker 1: It was the job to have. And here's the number
[7:01] Speaker 1: we had. Eighty five thousand people took the test that
[7:05] Speaker 1: I was on. Wow, think about that. I mean, now
[7:08] Speaker 1: there there's a couple of hundred, there's a thousand, there's
[7:11] Speaker 1: this eighty five thousand people took that exam. So that
[7:16] Speaker 1: shows you just what that job meant to a lot
[7:18] Speaker 1: of people, including myself. And you know you did. You
[7:21] Speaker 1: went through the written test, you got batched into kind
[7:24] Speaker 1: of a bundle of people, and you went through medicals
[7:27] Speaker 1: and psychologicals and then you got appointed in. That was
[7:32] Speaker 1: the That was the start of a long, long career
[7:36] Speaker 1: that went really fast, if that makes any sense.
[7:39] Speaker 2: So your first assignment, you're a patrol cop, a beat cop.
[7:42] Speaker 2: Where did you get assigned?
[7:45] Speaker 1: The thirtieth Priestinct, which was in the west side of
[7:47] Speaker 1: Harlem and some of in the lower half of Washington
[7:50] Speaker 1: Heights on the west side of Manhattan.
[7:52] Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yep.
[7:53] Speaker 1: And it was a great place to work. You know,
[7:56] Speaker 1: it was small, but it was busy and you had
[7:59] Speaker 1: not always but to learn really quick, you know, what
[8:02] Speaker 1: was going on the street and how to be a cop.
[8:05] Speaker 2: What was that experience like for you being a beat
[8:07] Speaker 2: cop and now you're out on the streets.
[8:11] Speaker 1: It was everything you wanted, you know, Like I said,
[8:14] Speaker 1: from the time you're eight years old to stepping out
[8:17] Speaker 1: on the street, you waited for that moment. So being there,
[8:20] Speaker 1: I loved every part of it. And I tell people
[8:23] Speaker 1: all the time, in order to be successful, especially in
[8:26] Speaker 1: the NYPD, you have to love it. You can't like it.
[8:29] Speaker 1: If you just like it, you're not going to like
[8:31] Speaker 1: you know, be successful in it. So I loved every
[8:33] Speaker 1: part of it, and just I wanted to be busy.
[8:36] Speaker 1: I wanted to make a lot of arrest. I wanted
[8:38] Speaker 1: to make some sort of impact in my career and
[8:41] Speaker 1: learn really quick. Uh probably maybe too much too quick sometimes,
[8:47] Speaker 1: but that's just how I was wired and wanting, you know,
[8:50] Speaker 1: everything I could possibly do as quick as I could.
[8:54] Speaker 2: And as you're immersing yourself in all of this, I mean,
[8:57] Speaker 2: what was sort of the crime and the police situation
[9:00] Speaker 2: Like in Harlem in nineteen ninety.
[9:03] Speaker 1: Oh, it was wild. In my command in Washington Heights
[9:07] Speaker 1: was drugs. Drugs, drugs which deals with now robberies and
[9:12] Speaker 1: guns and everything like that. We were the you know,
[9:16] Speaker 1: narcotics center of the world. It was the direct line
[9:19] Speaker 1: from the South up the ninety five Carter up to
[9:22] Speaker 1: Washington Heights, and that was why we were so absolutely
[9:27] Speaker 1: busy with drugs and everything fueled narcotics, you know, like
[9:31] Speaker 1: you said, we had shootings because of narcotics. The robberies
[9:34] Speaker 1: were because of narcotics. And in nineteen ninety we were
[9:37] Speaker 1: still living through the crack epidemic, you know, so you
[9:42] Speaker 1: still had the crack effect going into the nineties when
[9:46] Speaker 1: I started from the mid eighties, you know, so that
[9:49] Speaker 1: was still around. So you know, it was a very
[9:52] Speaker 1: violent time in New York City from nineteen ninety to
[9:56] Speaker 1: the time I got on until ninety four, when the
[10:00] Speaker 1: political scheme in New York changed with Rudy Giuliani getting
[10:04] Speaker 1: elected and Bill Bratton coming in. So the department went
[10:08] Speaker 1: through a dramatic change at that point.
[10:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, tell us more about that.
[10:11] Speaker 1: What changed in ninety four, Well, we were allowed to
[10:14] Speaker 1: be cops again. You know, you had Bill Bratton came
[10:18] Speaker 1: in and got his team together, which we called the
[10:21] Speaker 1: Dream Team of Louis Anamo and John Timmody and you
[10:26] Speaker 1: know a number of others who were all school cops,
[10:30] Speaker 1: all from the seventies who just knew what policing in
[10:33] Speaker 1: New York City was all about. And they had our
[10:36] Speaker 1: back and told us, hey, go out and be cops again.
[10:39] Speaker 1: This is why he got hired. This is why you
[10:41] Speaker 1: took this job, to go out and clean the city up.
[10:44] Speaker 1: But here was the biggest dramatic difference in whyatt worked. Jack.
[10:48] Speaker 1: It wasn't just the cops going out there doing their job.
[10:51] Speaker 1: Juliani and Bratton had a deal with the DA's offices
[10:56] Speaker 1: throughout the city and they had a big sit down
[10:58] Speaker 1: one time and said, let's and if we're going to
[11:01] Speaker 1: send our cops out there to do their job, the
[11:03] Speaker 1: DA's better damn well do theirs and keep these people
[11:06] Speaker 1: in jail and have high enough bails that they don't
[11:09] Speaker 1: get out, and it's not a revolving door. So we
[11:12] Speaker 1: all worked together, which then allowed the federals. The FEDS
[11:17] Speaker 1: to come in and start trigger lock programs and enhancement programs,
[11:21] Speaker 1: which now had regular criminals facing federal charges, which dramatically
[11:26] Speaker 1: change how crimes were being committed and what we could
[11:30] Speaker 1: do even after arrests with enhancing arrests to make sure
[11:34] Speaker 1: they go federally or even just get boosted up A
[11:37] Speaker 1: little bit. But the DA's office was so on board
[11:40] Speaker 1: with what we were doing, and that's why we were
[11:43] Speaker 1: able to get the crime down starting in nineteen ninety four.
[11:47] Speaker 2: And I mean, did you see during this time frame,
[11:50] Speaker 2: like a pretty dramatic shift. I mean, being a cop
[11:52] Speaker 2: and walking the streets every day, you can feel the vibe, right,
[11:56] Speaker 2: I mean, did you start to see it both like
[11:58] Speaker 2: empirically but also just how you felt about the neighborhood.
[12:03] Speaker 1: You know. And and the thing was we may have
[12:05] Speaker 1: been might have been in a in a crime riddleday area,
[12:08] Speaker 1: and Washington Heights might have been kind of a you know,
[12:11] Speaker 1: New York City war zone, but you had so many
[12:14] Speaker 1: good people there that understood what had to be done.
[12:17] Speaker 1: And then once we started to clean up these streets
[12:20] Speaker 1: and lock up the groups of people that were just
[12:23] Speaker 1: creating this mayhem, you had the support of all these
[12:26] Speaker 1: neighborhoods and these these community centers and everything like that
[12:30] Speaker 1: were always on board with us because they saw the
[12:33] Speaker 1: hard work we were doing and what we were putting
[12:35] Speaker 1: into it.
[12:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean nowadays Harlin's actually a pretty nice place.
[12:41] Speaker 1: Oh. I drived through, I drive through arcs, you know,
[12:46] Speaker 1: and and all that and it's a it's a big
[12:48] Speaker 1: difference from when I was.
[12:49] Speaker 2: In I mean today the complaint is that it's getting gentrified,
[12:53] Speaker 2: right yep.
[12:55] Speaker 1: You know you have people sitting on their their you know,
[12:58] Speaker 1: stoops with their laptops, you know, on Riverside Drive and
[13:02] Speaker 1: on Amsterdam Avenue, which I mean back then that was
[13:06] Speaker 1: a you didn't walk through that neighborhood back then, you know,
[13:10] Speaker 1: that's how bad it was. And now you see just
[13:12] Speaker 1: all types of people. You know, a lot of kids
[13:15] Speaker 1: from Columbia University and now moving up to that area
[13:18] Speaker 1: because it's not too far away, and the neighborhood did
[13:21] Speaker 1: change dramatically right about that.
[13:23] Speaker 2: It's just on the other side of Morningside Park. You
[13:26] Speaker 2: go down the steps and you're right.
[13:27] Speaker 1: There, absolutely right yep.
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[15:27] Speaker 2: Thanks guys. And so pretty shortly around this timeframe, you
[15:33] Speaker 2: ended up in a anti crime plain clothes unit. You
[15:37] Speaker 2: want to tell us about that job?
[15:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, that was That was an awesome unit to work
[15:41] Speaker 1: in because you go from patrol and you get selected
[15:44] Speaker 1: to go into anti crime which was a plane closed
[15:47] Speaker 1: unit within the precinc and we're responsible for the robbery patterns.
[15:51] Speaker 1: We would respond to the in progress calls either shots
[15:54] Speaker 1: fire job or a man with a gun, or the
[15:57] Speaker 1: robbery or burglary calls we had on our cars. We
[16:00] Speaker 1: dressed in the street clothes. Small unit. There was only
[16:04] Speaker 1: five of us in the unit. We had two different teams.
[16:07] Speaker 1: There were five of us on each unit, and that
[16:10] Speaker 1: was just a great opportunity I had. My sergeant, who
[16:14] Speaker 1: was one of my best friends, had picked me up
[16:16] Speaker 1: to be part of that unit, and that was, you know,
[16:19] Speaker 1: the beginning of what you want what I wanted to
[16:22] Speaker 1: do in the job. I kind of had a checklist
[16:25] Speaker 1: in my head, which I tell young cops today and
[16:28] Speaker 1: I tell college students today when I go and speak
[16:30] Speaker 1: to them, to always have a plan, have an agenda
[16:33] Speaker 1: what you want to do in this job, and make
[16:35] Speaker 1: sure no one stops you from doing it. You want
[16:38] Speaker 1: to achieve it, go get it. And being part of
[16:40] Speaker 1: an anti crime unit was on the top of my list.
[16:43] Speaker 1: So once I got to that, then I could start
[16:46] Speaker 1: really planning out the rest of my career where I
[16:49] Speaker 1: wanted to go.
[16:51] Speaker 2: Were there any particular calls that stand out in your
[16:53] Speaker 2: mind from that time of your life?
[16:57] Speaker 1: How much time we got as much as you want?
[17:00] Speaker 1: I mean, you think about it. You know, back then
[17:02] Speaker 1: we were we were handling one hundred jobs a night,
[17:06] Speaker 1: you know, in an eight hour tour. It was insane.
[17:08] Speaker 1: I mean I was involved in nineteen ninety three a
[17:13] Speaker 1: pretty bad shootout that me and my partner were in
[17:16] Speaker 1: and one of our cops got shot during it. He survived.
[17:19] Speaker 1: He was shot in the leg. We ran across three
[17:22] Speaker 1: individuals who just robbed the supermarket and they were actually wanted.
[17:27] Speaker 1: We found out later they were wanting for seventeen supermarket
[17:30] Speaker 1: robberies throughout the city, and we got into a pretty
[17:34] Speaker 1: good gun battle with them and shot all three of them.
[17:39] Speaker 1: They lived, We caught three of them and they spent
[17:43] Speaker 1: about one hundred years each in jail. You know. So
[17:46] Speaker 1: who was shot was shot in the leg about ten
[17:49] Speaker 1: feet from me when when it happened, but he was
[17:52] Speaker 1: he got three quarters because it blew out his hamstring
[17:56] Speaker 1: when he got shot. But you know, you think about
[17:58] Speaker 1: being a young cop. I was only on the job
[18:00] Speaker 1: for three years when that happened, and talk about a
[18:04] Speaker 1: wake up call, you know of okay, you know, hopefully
[18:08] Speaker 1: that's it. Put that in your pocket. You know, we
[18:10] Speaker 1: got that part of your career over with, which was
[18:13] Speaker 1: the case. I didn't get another one, so one was
[18:17] Speaker 1: enough for sure.
[18:18] Speaker 2: What I mean, could you tell us a little bit
[18:19] Speaker 2: about like what that moment was like I imagine like something
[18:22] Speaker 2: at the OK Corral where it's like three cops meet
[18:25] Speaker 2: three robbers and like, you guys are looking at each
[18:27] Speaker 2: other like who's gonna pull first.
[18:29] Speaker 1: Well, it was. It was in a car and we
[18:31] Speaker 1: were outside the car. What had happened was they went
[18:34] Speaker 1: into the supermarket, robbed it, and while they were leaving,
[18:39] Speaker 1: someone came up to us because we just happened to
[18:41] Speaker 1: be right across the street in our car waiting for
[18:44] Speaker 1: an officer to cash a check in the bank, which
[18:46] Speaker 1: was right across the street, and someone had told us, hey,
[18:49] Speaker 1: you know, something's going on in the supermarket. So we
[18:51] Speaker 1: did a quick U turn and we encountered one of
[18:54] Speaker 1: the employees who told us, hey, there's three guys in
[18:56] Speaker 1: a car and they just robbed us. They tied up
[18:58] Speaker 1: the security guard and they're coming up one hundred and
[19:01] Speaker 1: forty fourth Street in a car they just carjacked. So
[19:05] Speaker 1: we went to one full fourth Street and cut them off,
[19:08] Speaker 1: and they just leaned out the window started shooting at us.
[19:11] Speaker 1: We shot back, the car took off. We ran actually
[19:14] Speaker 1: behind the car until Ralph came out of the bank
[19:18] Speaker 1: and stopped the car. They leaned out the car and
[19:21] Speaker 1: shot him. So we had a actual gun battle with
[19:25] Speaker 1: them in the backseat of a car because we blew
[19:27] Speaker 1: out the back windshield with them in the backseat of
[19:30] Speaker 1: the car and us at the trunk. So that was
[19:33] Speaker 1: that was how close we were to having a gun
[19:36] Speaker 1: battle with them in the middle of the afternoon, right
[19:40] Speaker 1: on Broadway on a Friday afternoon at one thirteen in
[19:43] Speaker 1: the afternoon.
[19:44] Speaker 2: Oh my god.
[19:45] Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know what it's not. It's not the movies,
[19:51] Speaker 1: it's not TV. It is the most It was the
[19:54] Speaker 1: oddest thing to go through, Jack, because we fired i
[19:58] Speaker 1: think I'm estimating now from what I remember, like forty
[20:02] Speaker 1: seven shots were fired in that battle. I think I
[20:06] Speaker 1: heard two of the shots. The rest were just really echoes,
[20:10] Speaker 1: like you were in a you know, a pillow. Everything's
[20:14] Speaker 1: in slow motion, your tunnel vision kicks in. It was
[20:18] Speaker 1: a very very bizarre situation to go through. But it
[20:22] Speaker 1: was amazing how much your training just absolutely kicks in
[20:27] Speaker 1: to get cover, get behind something, you know, make sure
[20:31] Speaker 1: you don't run out of bullets. Because at the time
[20:35] Speaker 1: we had this, we only had thirty eights. We didn't
[20:37] Speaker 1: even have nine gen man so when I get to
[20:41] Speaker 1: the number of fifty forty something rounds, they were with
[20:44] Speaker 1: thirty eights.
[20:45] Speaker 2: So you guys were having to use like speedloaders on
[20:48] Speaker 2: your thirty voters.
[20:49] Speaker 1: Yep. I actually got to reload once and then had
[20:53] Speaker 1: to pull up my off duty off out because I
[20:57] Speaker 1: didn't have time to reload again. Just at that time
[21:00] Speaker 1: they were all getting out of the car, which ensued
[21:03] Speaker 1: another gun battle. So this was, like I said, at
[21:06] Speaker 1: one o'clock in the afternoon on Broadway, so you can
[21:08] Speaker 1: imagine that scene when that was taking place. And to
[21:12] Speaker 1: make things worse on the family side, it was a
[21:16] Speaker 1: month after I got married, so you can imagine what
[21:20] Speaker 1: my wife was thinking of watching the news.
[21:24] Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I guess everything worked out, okay, I
[21:27] Speaker 2: mean I'm amazed. It's such at such close range that
[21:30] Speaker 2: you know, you guys didn't get hit, you know, the
[21:32] Speaker 2: one officer did, but not you two.
[21:35] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you heard them. They were certainly going by,
[21:37] Speaker 1: you know, you heard the zings going past you. But
[21:41] Speaker 1: there happened to be, thankfully a box truck that was
[21:45] Speaker 1: right next to me that I was able to get behind,
[21:48] Speaker 1: you know, to cover you know, while they were getting
[21:50] Speaker 1: out of the car. Then a foot pursuit took place
[21:53] Speaker 1: after that down in the subway and around the corner.
[21:56] Speaker 1: So it was a big dramatic yeah, for sure.
[22:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, you say it's not like in the movies, but
[22:02] Speaker 2: it sure sounds like a Law and Order episode right there.
[22:05] Speaker 1: Yeah, if I played it back, I probably look and go, wow,
[22:08] Speaker 1: that was pretty cool.
[22:09] Speaker 2: But at the time.
[22:12] Speaker 1: You know, you're not You're just making sure you're okay.
[22:15] Speaker 1: And thankfully Ralph was, you know, once we got up
[22:18] Speaker 1: to the hospital and saw him, you know, he was okay,
[22:21] Speaker 1: which was the main thing. And we got all three
[22:24] Speaker 1: and you know, the trials took place later on, so
[22:27] Speaker 1: that all worked out. But but like you said, if
[22:30] Speaker 1: you could rewind it and watch it from kind of
[22:32] Speaker 1: a thousand feet up in the air, you'd probably think
[22:34] Speaker 1: it was pretty cool.
[22:36] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, those guys shot a cop. They're going
[22:38] Speaker 2: away for a while.
[22:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, And they were career criminals.
[22:41] Speaker 2: They were.
[22:42] Speaker 1: They were just bad, bad guys. You know, just just
[22:46] Speaker 1: the number of robberies they were wanted for, just other
[22:49] Speaker 1: crimes that they committed. One of them was wanted for
[22:52] Speaker 1: a rape and homicide up in Boston. You know, so
[22:55] Speaker 1: they were they were bad, bad guys. Shit.
[22:59] Speaker 2: And your next assignment was was it narco or anti gang.
[23:05] Speaker 1: Narcotics? Narcotics was first yep, And then my narcotics team
[23:09] Speaker 1: actually became the first gang unit in the gang team
[23:12] Speaker 1: in the Bronx. But narcotics was, let me tell you,
[23:16] Speaker 1: other than JTTF, which was another world, you know, which
[23:19] Speaker 1: we'll get into, But narcotics was the most I say
[23:22] Speaker 1: this all the time, the most quote unquote fun I
[23:24] Speaker 1: ever had on the job because it was just non
[23:28] Speaker 1: stop all the time, and I had a phenomenal team
[23:32] Speaker 1: that I was on. We were busy, Me and my partner.
[23:35] Speaker 1: I still taught to my partner from narcotics today. We're
[23:38] Speaker 1: still tight and very good friends. And we were actually
[23:41] Speaker 1: partners again in the in the robbery squad in the Bronx.
[23:44] Speaker 1: But you know, Carlos taught me what being a detective
[23:48] Speaker 1: is all about, what doing casework was all about, and
[23:52] Speaker 1: never stopping or never giving up, you know, in pursuit
[23:55] Speaker 1: of you know, locking the bad guys up, especially when
[23:58] Speaker 1: it came to narcotics, and he was so good at it.
[24:00] Speaker 1: And you know, we we didn't not that we didn't bother,
[24:04] Speaker 1: but we wanted those big cases. We wanted those those
[24:08] Speaker 1: wire taps, those large seizures, search warrants. We did constantly,
[24:13] Speaker 1: you know, over and over again, and we got very
[24:15] Speaker 1: very good at it. But we had a just absolute
[24:18] Speaker 1: great team who always had each other's back. When we
[24:22] Speaker 1: would do a warrant, we did, you know, we were
[24:24] Speaker 1: all had the same role each and every time, so
[24:27] Speaker 1: we knew where each of us was going to be.
[24:29] Speaker 1: I actually, you know, again, my wife loving it that
[24:32] Speaker 1: I was the ram guy, you know, hitting the door,
[24:34] Speaker 1: which he you know, loved every time. Hey, we're going
[24:37] Speaker 1: to do a warrant, you know. So, but it was just,
[24:41] Speaker 1: you know, it fit in what we were doing. But
[24:43] Speaker 1: that was a great time in my career, and we
[24:46] Speaker 1: were so successful in what we did. It was it
[24:48] Speaker 1: was a lot of fun.
[24:49] Speaker 2: And I think you mentioned so this is in the
[24:51] Speaker 2: Bronx and it's sort of at the tail end I
[24:54] Speaker 2: guess of the crack cocaine epidemic.
[24:57] Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a Crack was still around, but not now.
[25:01] Speaker 1: It was becoming more weight and even Heroin. Now in
[25:04] Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six is when I got there, Heroin was
[25:07] Speaker 1: really starting to come back into a full force, especially
[25:11] Speaker 1: in the Bronx. We did a number of very large
[25:14] Speaker 1: Heroin cases in the Bronx that you know. We did
[25:18] Speaker 1: one case that Encompass doing eight search warrants and one
[25:24] Speaker 1: shot on three different streets in one neighborhood and ended
[25:27] Speaker 1: up locking up about fifteen people. One of them was
[25:30] Speaker 1: wanted by the DEA, so that that was one of
[25:34] Speaker 1: the big heroin cases that we had done.
[25:37] Speaker 2: And you said earlier, I think you were involved in
[25:41] Speaker 2: like some record setting bust.
[25:43] Speaker 1: During this time, my partner Carlos, started a case that
[25:48] Speaker 1: ended up being ended up at the time being the
[25:52] Speaker 1: largest kilo seizure in the Bronx narcotics history. We ended
[25:56] Speaker 1: up getting one hundred and twenty eight kilos of cocaine
[26:00] Speaker 1: which came up from Venezuela up through Miami and then
[26:05] Speaker 1: a tractor trailer up to the Bronx, which we knew
[26:08] Speaker 1: all that was going on. We even had the two locations.
[26:12] Speaker 1: They were two garages that we were up on different
[26:15] Speaker 1: sections of the Bronx that we knew they were going
[26:18] Speaker 1: to one of them. And it ended up on Memorial
[26:22] Speaker 1: Day of nineteen ninety seven. You know, all our beepers
[26:25] Speaker 1: go off and everything goes crazy, but everyone happened to
[26:28] Speaker 1: be at a barbecue Memorial Days, so we all had
[26:32] Speaker 1: to stop doing that, getting the car and fly down
[26:34] Speaker 1: to work and ended up getting all the kilos and
[26:38] Speaker 1: getting seven individuals that we locked up from Venezuela and
[26:42] Speaker 1: the Bronx as being part of this crew.
[26:46] Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if it was the situation
[26:48] Speaker 2: in this case, but I've had like DEA guys and
[26:51] Speaker 2: ATF guys described to me that, Yeah, sometimes they'll be
[26:54] Speaker 2: tracking the shipment down in South America and track it
[26:57] Speaker 2: all the way to the United States and they'll let
[27:00] Speaker 2: let it get to you know, kind of the end
[27:02] Speaker 2: point before it gets distributed, so you can bust everybody
[27:05] Speaker 2: involved up and down the chain.
[27:08] Speaker 1: Yeah, that was that was pretty much this. We're working
[27:11] Speaker 1: with one of the DA task forces in this case,
[27:14] Speaker 1: so we knew, uh, you know, we got told later
[27:17] Speaker 1: they were monitoring it. We knew it was coming, and
[27:19] Speaker 1: then once it went in one direction in the Bronx,
[27:22] Speaker 1: we knew the garage it was going to end up in.
[27:24] Speaker 1: So that was all set up and we were ready
[27:27] Speaker 1: for that, and that was That was a really good
[27:29] Speaker 1: one because when you're when you're a Bronx narchotics team,
[27:33] Speaker 1: to get a case like that up and running and
[27:35] Speaker 1: work with the DA team wasn't the norm. You know,
[27:39] Speaker 1: a lot of cases were buying busts and doing stars
[27:41] Speaker 1: warrants to getting a certain amount you know, of weight
[27:44] Speaker 1: when you locked up the people. But doing a case
[27:47] Speaker 1: like this was was great because no one think, no
[27:51] Speaker 1: one thought we could you know, we got a lot
[27:52] Speaker 1: of oh, you guys are chasing Kilo Ferry and nothing's
[27:56] Speaker 1: gonna happen and nothing you know, you guys don't get
[27:59] Speaker 1: anything like this. So once it all happened, Yeah, that
[28:02] Speaker 1: was a good feeling walking into the office. The next
[28:05] Speaker 1: couple of days was.
[28:06] Speaker 2: That kind of like a shift and approach, like you said,
[28:09] Speaker 2: like before it was search warrants and buy and busts
[28:12] Speaker 2: where it was kind of the idea of doing long
[28:14] Speaker 2: term like undercover work and things like that starting to percolate.
[28:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, we had a lot of that, and we were
[28:21] Speaker 1: fortunate to have two incredible undercovers that were on our
[28:25] Speaker 1: team that would actually starcases on their own from doing
[28:29] Speaker 1: B and B. They were that good, you know. And
[28:32] Speaker 1: the longtime case of what everybody wanted to do because
[28:36] Speaker 1: it was just more focused, more exciting. You know, you
[28:39] Speaker 1: got to do more things and you were you were
[28:42] Speaker 1: involved in a larger case so you could get that
[28:45] Speaker 1: mill or that distributor or where's it coming from, you know,
[28:49] Speaker 1: mentality than just the streak guy who's you know, slinging
[28:53] Speaker 1: a couple of ounces or a couple of you know,
[28:55] Speaker 1: glass scenes of heroin. So it was just a bigger
[28:58] Speaker 1: case to work on and always you know, hoping that
[29:02] Speaker 1: the success was what we had felt.
[29:06] Speaker 2: And next you guys became the counter gang squad.
[29:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, it got The gang unit just started kind of
[29:16] Speaker 1: getting up because we saw more and more gangs you know,
[29:19] Speaker 1: coming into the Bronx, So they wanted to start focusing
[29:23] Speaker 1: on the gangs that were you know, really taking over,
[29:26] Speaker 1: you know, but the gangs were We didn't change our
[29:29] Speaker 1: mentality because the gangs were involved in the same thing
[29:32] Speaker 1: just the street and narcotics guys were involved in. They
[29:34] Speaker 1: were selling dope, they were selling drugs to finance their
[29:38] Speaker 1: other parts of their gang activity. They were doing robberies.
[29:41] Speaker 1: So it wasn't a big dramatic change of what we
[29:44] Speaker 1: were doing, but it was just more of a focus
[29:46] Speaker 1: to go after, you know, the gangs. And we got
[29:50] Speaker 1: one case up and running that we worked with the
[29:53] Speaker 1: FBI with and we ended up locking up and arresting
[29:56] Speaker 1: the head of the East Coast bloods Og Mack, who
[30:01] Speaker 1: is now a guest at the Federal Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado,
[30:06] Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. So that case was
[30:10] Speaker 1: a really big case to do, getting him and his
[30:13] Speaker 1: entire crew that was stationed in the Bronx, off the
[30:18] Speaker 1: street and in jail for a really long time.
[30:20] Speaker 2: Yeah, out of curiosity, I'd like to ask a bit
[30:23] Speaker 2: more about that, like who were the drug gangs and
[30:26] Speaker 2: the street gangs, like who were kind of like the
[30:29] Speaker 2: organized crime of the time.
[30:32] Speaker 1: Yeah, the Bloods were a big part of it. That
[30:34] Speaker 1: you had the Latin Kings, you had the Nietas. The
[30:37] Speaker 1: Niettas were kind of an enforcement unit from the Latin Kings,
[30:42] Speaker 1: but they were involved. And then you had you had
[30:46] Speaker 1: five or six guys who would name themselves something you
[30:48] Speaker 1: know that you had to kind of you work through.
[30:52] Speaker 1: But they weren't the bloods, the crips. There were not
[30:55] Speaker 1: that many crips around, but there were people who just
[30:59] Speaker 1: identified as him. But you had to kind of filter
[31:02] Speaker 1: through the five idiots standing on the corner with a
[31:06] Speaker 1: red handkerchief in their pocket to the actual blood gang,
[31:10] Speaker 1: you know, who had a absolute hierarchy and put together,
[31:14] Speaker 1: like you said, like an organized crime contingent of you know,
[31:18] Speaker 1: you had the boss, you had lieutenant, you had captains,
[31:21] Speaker 1: you had enforcers, you know, and the bloods were set
[31:24] Speaker 1: up that way where you know, the street kids just
[31:27] Speaker 1: to identify with someone would come up with some stupid
[31:30] Speaker 1: name that you know, we had to run down every
[31:32] Speaker 1: once in a while. But that was all right.
[31:35] Speaker 2: And and then you got a sign to the robbery squad.
[31:39] Speaker 1: Yep, how we got that was you know, like I
[31:42] Speaker 1: mentioned before, my partner had got assigned to the five
[31:46] Speaker 1: two Precinct Robbery Squad and he's like, hey, we got
[31:48] Speaker 1: a couple of openings put in for it. You know,
[31:50] Speaker 1: let's get back together and you know, work together again.
[31:53] Speaker 1: And we were always just great friends and we worked
[31:55] Speaker 1: so well together that that was kind of a no brainer.
[31:59] Speaker 1: So you know, I put in for you know, did
[32:01] Speaker 1: a couple of interviews and got picked up on his
[32:04] Speaker 1: team and we were working together again, focusing on you know, robberies,
[32:09] Speaker 1: the patterns, everything they had to do in that command
[32:12] Speaker 1: for anything that had to do with robberies, and you know,
[32:15] Speaker 1: we had a great time. But while we were there
[32:18] Speaker 1: is when nine to eleven happened. So you know, in
[32:21] Speaker 1: one one hundred and two minute episode, the world changed
[32:24] Speaker 1: and our careers changed.
[32:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to ask you that. But for
[32:31] Speaker 2: the robbery squad, I imagine these weren't cat burglars repelling
[32:35] Speaker 2: from the skylights you're looking for. It's more like people
[32:37] Speaker 2: holding up liquor shops.
[32:39] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they were anything. Any robberies, strong arm robberies,
[32:42] Speaker 1: street level commercial robberies. They were all part of it.
[32:46] Speaker 1: You know. We handled them all, which was which was
[32:49] Speaker 1: great because it just kept me busy and you were
[32:51] Speaker 1: just bouncing from one to another. And you know, some
[32:54] Speaker 1: of the strong arm robberies ended up being robberies, but
[32:57] Speaker 1: people just owing people money, you know, then it becomes
[33:01] Speaker 1: a robbery. So we had to deal with that on
[33:03] Speaker 1: top of you know, like you said, the group going
[33:06] Speaker 1: into a store, you know, and doing a armed robbery,
[33:11] Speaker 1: you know, with weapons and things like that. So it
[33:13] Speaker 1: was a combination of a lot of different things.
[33:16] Speaker 2: So tell us where you were on nine to eleven
[33:19] Speaker 2: when you came into work that day.
[33:22] Speaker 1: So on nine to eleven, I was actually off that
[33:24] Speaker 1: day and I was home and I happened to be
[33:28] Speaker 1: in the car with my daughter who was only about
[33:32] Speaker 1: eighteen months old at the time, and my parents had
[33:35] Speaker 1: planned on coming up to the house to have lunch
[33:38] Speaker 1: that day, so we were running to the store pretty
[33:40] Speaker 1: early just to get some things, you know, some snacks
[33:43] Speaker 1: and dessert and things like that. And I'm sitting in
[33:46] Speaker 1: my car to red light and I happened to look
[33:49] Speaker 1: at the radio and notice that there was no music playing.
[33:53] Speaker 1: It was just somebody talking, which was odd at a
[33:56] Speaker 1: thirty in the morning. So I turned it up and
[34:00] Speaker 1: the DJ was talking to this woman and she's describing
[34:05] Speaker 1: a plane hitting one of the towers in the World
[34:07] Speaker 1: Trade Center. So the very first thing I did, like
[34:10] Speaker 1: everyone did that day, I looked out my windshield and
[34:13] Speaker 1: just said, all I had to screw that up because
[34:15] Speaker 1: it was a gorgeous day and there wasn't a cloud
[34:17] Speaker 1: in the sky. So the very first thing I thought
[34:20] Speaker 1: of was, you know what happened, and thinking it was
[34:23] Speaker 1: just one of the tourist planes that fly around Manhattan
[34:26] Speaker 1: all the time, or maybe it's a helicopter, and they're
[34:29] Speaker 1: saying it was a plane, you know, so I wasn't
[34:32] Speaker 1: too concerned about it because, you know, they're just having
[34:36] Speaker 1: a conversation about it. Then I pulled into the parking
[34:39] Speaker 1: lot of the store. I was going to go in,
[34:42] Speaker 1: and the woman on the radio starts hysterically screaming on
[34:45] Speaker 1: the radio, and I stopped my car, and you're kind
[34:48] Speaker 1: of staring at your radar, going, man, what is she doing?
[34:51] Speaker 1: Why is she screaming? And the DJ can't get her
[34:53] Speaker 1: to stop because he doesn't know what's going on. And
[34:56] Speaker 1: then she finally got the words out that another plane
[34:59] Speaker 1: just hit the other building, the other tower. So I
[35:02] Speaker 1: right there knew something was wrong. This was some sort
[35:05] Speaker 1: of an attack. So I just did a U turn
[35:07] Speaker 1: in the park lint and I called my partner, Paulo,
[35:10] Speaker 1: so I was working with at the time, and I
[35:13] Speaker 1: didn't even get a word out, and he just said,
[35:15] Speaker 1: where are you. I said, listen, I'm with Nikki. What's
[35:18] Speaker 1: going on. I'm not home, I'm not near a TV.
[35:20] Speaker 1: What's going on? And he said, we're being attacked. Come
[35:23] Speaker 1: drive and take care of the kids. That college knew
[35:25] Speaker 1: my whole family, so he knew my wife, he knew everybody.
[35:28] Speaker 1: He's like, listen, get them settled, come and pick me
[35:30] Speaker 1: up and we'll get down there. So I did that,
[35:33] Speaker 1: got the family all settled, went and picked him up.
[35:35] Speaker 1: And we had to take a really wild long way
[35:39] Speaker 1: into the city because at that point everything was shut down.
[35:42] Speaker 1: So we found a way down there and got right
[35:44] Speaker 1: down to ground zero, had to park on the FDR
[35:49] Speaker 1: drive and run through the tunnel, you know, up to
[35:52] Speaker 1: the west side because you couldn't get near it. And
[35:57] Speaker 1: let me tell you, it was the most dramatic scene
[36:02] Speaker 1: obviously anyone ever saw. But it looked fake. It just
[36:07] Speaker 1: looked like it was plastic. It looked like a movie set,
[36:11] Speaker 1: you know, with the lights that were there and the
[36:14] Speaker 1: couple of things that always jumped out. Jack and again
[36:17] Speaker 1: asked this all the time. We're two main things. One
[36:21] Speaker 1: was the smell of burning cement. That smell I'll never
[36:26] Speaker 1: forget that. You smell just for days and days and
[36:30] Speaker 1: days of that just odd smell of cement and jet fuel,
[36:36] Speaker 1: you know, and all that, which was just all over
[36:39] Speaker 1: the area. And the other thing was having military fighter
[36:44] Speaker 1: jets bank around Manhattan. You know, that was the scene
[36:48] Speaker 1: that you just went a right, the world just changed
[36:50] Speaker 1: and everything about everything in the world is going to
[36:53] Speaker 1: be different. And watching these fighter jets just buzz around
[36:56] Speaker 1: Manhattan was some scene too, remember.
[37:03] Speaker 2: And I mean that must have been a really long
[37:05] Speaker 2: day for you and your partner.
[37:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, we were down there. We got down there after
[37:10] Speaker 1: they collapsed, but I don't think we left until probably
[37:15] Speaker 1: around five am. And you left, You went home, you
[37:19] Speaker 1: change your clothes, you got something to eat, and we
[37:21] Speaker 1: went right back down the next day. And that went
[37:25] Speaker 1: on for a couple of days, and then things started
[37:28] Speaker 1: to kind of settle in of having specific assignments of
[37:32] Speaker 1: what was going to go on. And one of the
[37:36] Speaker 1: worst assignments that you could get but desperately needed, was
[37:39] Speaker 1: going out to the landfill in Staten Island where all
[37:43] Speaker 1: the debris that they were taking out of Ground zero
[37:46] Speaker 1: was being brought to a landfill in Staten Island, where
[37:49] Speaker 1: we had to go through every part of it. And
[37:53] Speaker 1: let me tell you, that was worse than being down
[37:55] Speaker 1: to Ground zero. What we had to go through and
[37:59] Speaker 1: sift through and find and categorize and all that, and
[38:05] Speaker 1: the freshkilled landfill was was not talked about a lot
[38:08] Speaker 1: on the news within the department because of what we
[38:12] Speaker 1: were doing out there, and that was a really hard
[38:16] Speaker 1: place to go to because there is where you really
[38:19] Speaker 1: felt and understood the impact of what just happened, because
[38:22] Speaker 1: you were going through everything and finding IDs and purses
[38:28] Speaker 1: and other stuff that you can use your imagination about
[38:31] Speaker 1: what you know we were finding in these piles which
[38:36] Speaker 1: you'll never unsee. You'll never forget whether it's twenty five
[38:40] Speaker 1: years later or eighty years later. You know, it doesn't matter.
[38:45] Speaker 1: Those images that we had to go through will never forget.
[38:49] Speaker 2: One of the things that I sometimes try to communicate
[38:52] Speaker 2: the people like younger people who were born, you know,
[38:56] Speaker 2: around that timeframe. You know, these gen z Ers or
[39:00] Speaker 2: whoever they are, people who are like our kids age. Frankly,
[39:03] Speaker 2: I don't think they understand like how terrified the entire
[39:06] Speaker 2: country was after that happened.
[39:09] Speaker 1: Absolutely not, not not even close. That's why I whenever
[39:15] Speaker 1: I go to an academy or I go to a
[39:17] Speaker 1: college to speak, I implore them to go down to
[39:20] Speaker 1: the nine to eleven Museum, because that's when you'll see
[39:23] Speaker 1: what actually took place that day and really feel it
[39:27] Speaker 1: when you walk into that museum. But you know, that's
[39:30] Speaker 1: a lot with the schools. You know, they just got
[39:33] Speaker 1: away from teaching what went on that day. And I
[39:36] Speaker 1: can't tell you the number of college kids jack then
[39:39] Speaker 1: I'll talk to that have no idea what happened that day.
[39:42] Speaker 1: Wid you know, they don't understand it, you know. And
[39:44] Speaker 1: I'll ask them all the time, and this blows their mind.
[39:47] Speaker 1: I'll ask them, how long do you think all those
[39:50] Speaker 1: attacks took? And you'll get a day, two days, you know,
[39:56] Speaker 1: nine hours, you know whatever, And they have no idea
[39:59] Speaker 1: that when I tell then that every event that happened
[40:02] Speaker 1: on nine to eleven took one hundred and two minutes,
[40:05] Speaker 1: they cannot believe it because they were never taught that.
[40:08] Speaker 1: And I don't know why it's not taught or shown
[40:12] Speaker 1: the reverence of other attacks that took place in other
[40:15] Speaker 1: wars that took place in this country, but it's part
[40:18] Speaker 1: of our history that certainly should be taught much more
[40:21] Speaker 1: than it already is.
[40:23] Speaker 2: And as we point out, I mean, it changed the
[40:25] Speaker 2: entire country and the entire world in a way, Yeah,
[40:29] Speaker 2: I did.
[40:29] Speaker 1: Everything changed. I mean, we're still twenty five years later
[40:34] Speaker 1: doing things that we didn't do on September tenth, you know,
[40:38] Speaker 1: So that just shows you the cost of it, and
[40:41] Speaker 1: that what that attack did to this this whole world,
[40:44] Speaker 1: not just the country, but around the world.
[40:46] Speaker 2: And so this changed obviously, this had an immense personal
[40:50] Speaker 2: impact on you but it also impacted your career professionally, right,
[40:54] Speaker 2: did it sort of change the trajectory that you were
[40:57] Speaker 2: on that you started going into the counter terrorism Oh,
[41:01] Speaker 2: no doubt.
[41:02] Speaker 1: I would have been Listen. Like I mentioned in the
[41:04] Speaker 1: beginning of this, you know, my dad was a homicide
[41:06] Speaker 1: cop in the Bronx. That is all I wanted to be.
[41:09] Speaker 1: I would have been extremely happy with the rest of
[41:11] Speaker 1: my career being a homicide detective. That was what I
[41:16] Speaker 1: wanted to do. That was my goal. That's where I
[41:18] Speaker 1: wanted to end up, and that was it. And it
[41:22] Speaker 1: just shows you how you have to be ready for
[41:24] Speaker 1: anything when you join this department, when you join any department,
[41:28] Speaker 1: to be ready for your career and your life to
[41:32] Speaker 1: change in one day, which just did you know after
[41:37] Speaker 1: nine to eleven, I got contacted by a sergeant that
[41:40] Speaker 1: I used to work with when I was in the
[41:41] Speaker 1: three to zero and said, hey, where are you. I said,
[41:45] Speaker 1: I'm in a five to two RAM, which was short
[41:47] Speaker 1: for a robbery squad, and he said, all right, get
[41:50] Speaker 1: down to twenty six Federal Plaza tomorrow. I'm going to
[41:53] Speaker 1: hand you a bunch of paperwork, fill it out and
[41:55] Speaker 1: get it back to me because I need you to
[41:57] Speaker 1: get down here to his asforce and with that you go, Okay.
[42:03] Speaker 1: That was as simple as it gets. And I met
[42:06] Speaker 1: Mike the next day and he handed me a stack
[42:08] Speaker 1: of papers about this big you know, with everything that
[42:12] Speaker 1: conceived your life from high school to college to every
[42:18] Speaker 1: neighbor you have, because it was a national security clearance
[42:22] Speaker 1: packet that we had to fill out in order to
[42:24] Speaker 1: get down there, and that took about almost a year
[42:30] Speaker 1: to finish your background check in order to get all
[42:32] Speaker 1: the TS clearances and everything else you need to be
[42:35] Speaker 1: down there working there. And as soon as that got
[42:38] Speaker 1: all cleared, I was down at the Joint Terrorism Task Force,
[42:41] Speaker 1: which the FBI ran, and the New York office is
[42:44] Speaker 1: the largest in the country, and for good reason, obviously,
[42:49] Speaker 1: But that was a game changer and life changing detail
[42:54] Speaker 1: when I went down there. For sure.
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[44:38] Speaker 2: And when you got to the Jttfuh, what kind of
[44:42] Speaker 2: assignments did they give you?
[44:45] Speaker 1: What kind of what?
[44:45] Speaker 2: What kind of cases did you end up?
[44:47] Speaker 1: Oh, you're working you know obviously all on the international team.
[44:50] Speaker 1: So we're working international cases that you know, impact in
[44:54] Speaker 1: New York or other parts of the United States, but
[44:56] Speaker 1: mostly anything that impacted New York we were working on.
[44:59] Speaker 1: So you you had different teams that work different groups.
[45:02] Speaker 1: You had al Qaeda teams, you had his bullet teams,
[45:05] Speaker 1: you had homegrown teams, domestic teams. So you know, it
[45:10] Speaker 1: was an enormous on taking. You know, before I tell everyone,
[45:15] Speaker 1: on September tenth, there were eleven NYPD detectives assigned to
[45:19] Speaker 1: JTTF after nine to eleven happened. We had the largest
[45:24] Speaker 1: JTTF in the country. We had about one hundred and
[45:27] Speaker 1: twenty five NYPD officers, detectives and sergeants assigned to the
[45:32] Speaker 1: task force. And we ran that with the FBI, obviously
[45:36] Speaker 1: because it's our city and we had the resources and
[45:40] Speaker 1: connections and all that to play a big, major role
[45:44] Speaker 1: in the task force. And you know, you switch gears
[45:50] Speaker 1: quite dramatically from doing a narcotics case in the Bronxton
[45:54] Speaker 1: now doing an international terrorism case with someone who wants
[45:57] Speaker 1: to blow the world up. So you know what I did,
[46:00] Speaker 1: and discussing with you earlier, my mindset was to make
[46:05] Speaker 1: it and keep it as simple as possible, don't overblow it,
[46:08] Speaker 1: don't make it more than it is. It's a case,
[46:12] Speaker 1: and run it just like a case. And you know
[46:14] Speaker 1: that worked for me. But you know, as an NYPD detective, Jack,
[46:19] Speaker 1: you're you're happy if you take a day trip to Jersey.
[46:22] Speaker 1: You know that's a big deal for the day. And
[46:25] Speaker 1: now you're getting on a plane going anywhere in the
[46:27] Speaker 1: world that you need to go. You know, in a
[46:31] Speaker 1: moment's notice, Hey, I need to go to Germany because
[46:33] Speaker 1: this guy's there. Need to talk to them, Okay, book it,
[46:37] Speaker 1: you know, do the proper paperwork, You're good to go.
[46:41] Speaker 1: You know. So you had to get in that mindset
[46:43] Speaker 1: as well that the resources that were available were limitless.
[46:48] Speaker 1: You know, we had to go to do anything we
[46:51] Speaker 1: needed to do to make sure nine to eleven didn't
[46:54] Speaker 1: happen again.
[46:56] Speaker 2: And you got involved in a large scale instigation around
[47:00] Speaker 2: this time, right, that was driven by the nine to
[47:03] Speaker 2: eleven attacks.
[47:05] Speaker 1: Yeah, I did. I was running a very large international
[47:08] Speaker 1: case which unfortunately I would love to get into but
[47:12] Speaker 1: can't write this minute, but maybe maybe one day soon.
[47:16] Speaker 1: We're keeping our fingers cross that more about what we're
[47:19] Speaker 1: working on comes out more and more. But it was
[47:24] Speaker 1: a lot, you know, when you when you're dealing with
[47:25] Speaker 1: cases that especially involved nine to eleven, you know, it
[47:30] Speaker 1: was a big responsibility to make sure it didn't happen again.
[47:34] Speaker 1: And we all felt that our city got attacked, our
[47:37] Speaker 1: cops got killed, our fireman got killed, our civilians got killed,
[47:41] Speaker 1: and we took it very personally in JTTF to make
[47:45] Speaker 1: sure that we could do whatever we needed to do
[47:48] Speaker 1: and we had the okay to do it. So when
[47:51] Speaker 1: you started running these large scale cases, especially the one
[47:54] Speaker 1: I was running, which touched five or six different cities
[47:59] Speaker 1: in the United States. It's on top of a bunch
[48:02] Speaker 1: of international countries that we had to travel to. You know,
[48:05] Speaker 1: it was good to know that you had the resources
[48:08] Speaker 1: to do and you had the backing to do it
[48:10] Speaker 1: because everyone understood what was at stake.
[48:13] Speaker 2: This is a case that hasn't been prosecuted yet.
[48:16] Speaker 1: No, it's still not prosecuted and out there a little bit.
[48:21] Speaker 1: But again, hopefully one day we'll talk about it even more. Yeah,
[48:27] Speaker 1: but everyone's going to realize what it is.
[48:30] Speaker 2: Once it comes to Okay, I got you, and let's
[48:36] Speaker 2: see let's get into Afghanistan.
[48:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, one of those other things that you
[48:44] Speaker 1: damn well better be ready for anything because you don't
[48:46] Speaker 1: know what's going to happen. Walked into the office one
[48:50] Speaker 1: day and got grabbed by my supervisoring special agent, who
[48:55] Speaker 1: was a great guy at the time, and when he
[48:57] Speaker 1: told me to come in his office, I fully anticipated
[49:00] Speaker 1: talking about the case I was running, and walked in
[49:03] Speaker 1: and kind of sat on his couch and his big
[49:05] Speaker 1: office went Okay, what's up, what do we got? And
[49:08] Speaker 1: I actually just start briefing him on my case of
[49:12] Speaker 1: any new information that I had. Anyway, well, hold on
[49:14] Speaker 1: a minute, it's not about that. And he told me
[49:17] Speaker 1: about a kidnapping that took place in Afghanistan with a
[49:21] Speaker 1: New York Times reporter, and I was going to run
[49:24] Speaker 1: it with one of the other detectives. So again you
[49:27] Speaker 1: kind of sit back logo, Okay, you know, now you're
[49:30] Speaker 1: running a case in a war zone, and we had
[49:34] Speaker 1: to prepare to go there. Jim was one of the
[49:38] Speaker 1: guys I was doing it with, and we had made
[49:40] Speaker 1: the decision that he was going to shoot out there
[49:44] Speaker 1: first and I was going to be back here coordinating
[49:48] Speaker 1: the numerous agencies that we had to have on board
[49:52] Speaker 1: with us in order to do this properly and to
[49:55] Speaker 1: try to track down where he was. Again, you're not
[49:59] Speaker 1: in the Bronx, you know, following someone in Brooklyn. You're
[50:02] Speaker 1: talking about Afghanistan where there's a war going on. Much
[50:05] Speaker 1: less the normality of Afghanistan and the size of it
[50:09] Speaker 1: and the mountainous terrain and all that is what you
[50:13] Speaker 1: have to you know, deal with. So we had to
[50:15] Speaker 1: have every agency possible on board with us to assist
[50:20] Speaker 1: us in that, which we did. Everyone was great. So
[50:24] Speaker 1: running it here, you know, for a couple of months
[50:27] Speaker 1: and then switching. So now I'm a New York City
[50:31] Speaker 1: detective who now has to go to Afghanistan for three
[50:34] Speaker 1: months and try to track down somebody, and you know,
[50:39] Speaker 1: you had to be ready for that. You know, I
[50:41] Speaker 1: knew Jack, I was going to be tactically okay, because
[50:44] Speaker 1: I was just a tactical guy, and I knew tactically
[50:48] Speaker 1: it was going to be okay. But I had to
[50:49] Speaker 1: get into the proper mindset of you know, like I
[50:52] Speaker 1: said before, I'm not going to the Bronx. You know,
[50:54] Speaker 1: you're going into a war zone and I'm not in
[50:56] Speaker 1: the military, you know, so had to be prepared for
[51:00] Speaker 1: being armed with an M four and a side arm
[51:03] Speaker 1: and a heavy vest and an armor plated car and
[51:06] Speaker 1: tracking devices so everyone knew where you were, you know,
[51:10] Speaker 1: all day long, and being seriously on point when you're
[51:13] Speaker 1: trying to drive around there, because that's when you're most
[51:16] Speaker 1: vulnerable to snipers, to IED's, to suicide bombers, is when
[51:21] Speaker 1: you're in your car. And one of the things that
[51:23] Speaker 1: we learned very quickly was you didn't stop your car
[51:27] Speaker 1: for anything, not a light, not traffic, not a person.
[51:31] Speaker 1: You kept that car moving, so there were traffic circles
[51:34] Speaker 1: in and around Cobble when I got there that we
[51:37] Speaker 1: would actually push cars out of the way to make
[51:39] Speaker 1: sure we didn't stop our car and drive up on
[51:41] Speaker 1: a sidewalk or whatever it might be. But that was
[51:46] Speaker 1: a time in my life and in my career that
[51:50] Speaker 1: was a lot different because the stakes were really high,
[51:53] Speaker 1: not just for the person we were looking for, but
[51:56] Speaker 1: for me. You know, leaving my family for that amount
[51:59] Speaker 1: of time is not the norm. I was only one
[52:02] Speaker 1: of two NYPD detectives to be in Afghanistan, and the
[52:07] Speaker 1: other one I knew very well. He was a good
[52:08] Speaker 1: friend of mine, a co worker, and he was there
[52:10] Speaker 1: before me. So we were the only two that had
[52:13] Speaker 1: ever been there. And being there was dangerous and you
[52:19] Speaker 1: tried not to think about it too much because you
[52:22] Speaker 1: couldn't have it encapsulate your brain. You had to work.
[52:25] Speaker 1: You had you had a mission. You had to focus
[52:28] Speaker 1: on that, and that's what I did.
[52:30] Speaker 2: So I got to ask, like, when we think of,
[52:34] Speaker 2: you know, this New York Times journalist who has been
[52:36] Speaker 2: kidnapped in Afghanistan, my mind thinks, well, this is like
[52:40] Speaker 2: a Seal Team six or a Delta Force hostage rescue mission.
[52:44] Speaker 2: But you're coming a New York Police Department guy coming
[52:47] Speaker 2: to Afghanistan and running it as sort of a kidnapping case,
[52:51] Speaker 2: Like what is that like? Interagency process?
[52:53] Speaker 1: Like, yeah, they were great. We worked with every agency
[52:57] Speaker 1: over there, every three letter agency you can think, we
[53:00] Speaker 1: were involved with on top of special operations up in Bogram,
[53:04] Speaker 1: and they were on us on our side. What do
[53:08] Speaker 1: you need, we're here. You know, we had dedicated teams
[53:12] Speaker 1: assigned to us that were on call twenty four to seven.
[53:15] Speaker 1: If we got some information or some intel about a
[53:18] Speaker 1: location or someone who could provide information to us, they
[53:22] Speaker 1: were right there with us. And uh, it couldn't have
[53:26] Speaker 1: worked out any better. You know, everyone coordinated the right way.
[53:30] Speaker 1: It was always on the same page. If we had
[53:32] Speaker 1: to drive up to Bogram for a meeting, we were there.
[53:35] Speaker 1: You know that was a dangerous trip. No one ever
[53:38] Speaker 1: liked doing that, but you know it had to be done.
[53:41] Speaker 1: Or we would take one of the Blackhawks up there
[53:43] Speaker 1: if they were available, which again, as the New York
[53:47] Speaker 1: City detective is different, you know, you know, jumping into
[53:52] Speaker 1: a black Hawk in Manhattan, which you have to do
[53:54] Speaker 1: it there just to get a ride up to a
[53:56] Speaker 1: military base. So the coordination was key to this because
[54:03] Speaker 1: intel changed by the minute, by the hour, so everyone
[54:07] Speaker 1: always had to be in communication with one another. And
[54:10] Speaker 1: it worked out great, and it worked out to a
[54:12] Speaker 1: point where it was successful ending to this and we
[54:17] Speaker 1: got them home.
[54:17] Speaker 2: Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about how
[54:19] Speaker 2: the case was resolved.
[54:22] Speaker 1: Well, it just evolved just by getting a lot of
[54:25] Speaker 1: intel throughout this time, of sources and information and just
[54:31] Speaker 1: great work with human stuff and SIGT stuff, you know
[54:36] Speaker 1: all that. So all of it came to a conclusion.
[54:39] Speaker 1: And you know, there's some things that it just still
[54:42] Speaker 1: can't get into because it's just the classifications of some
[54:44] Speaker 1: of the operational stuff that we went through. But it
[54:48] Speaker 1: was a great and highly coordinated effort with a lot
[54:53] Speaker 1: of departments that just like I said, continuously stayed on
[54:56] Speaker 1: top of each other, and timelines were set up and
[55:00] Speaker 1: locations was set up, and the proper time to end
[55:05] Speaker 1: this took place and we were successful.
[55:08] Speaker 2: In doing that and he was released like through nonviolent means, right, correct, Right,
[55:14] Speaker 2: So good good situation for everyone from when them comes home.
[55:17] Speaker 1: For everyone, absolutely right, And that's what I meant. It
[55:20] Speaker 1: was just it was the timing of it, and what
[55:23] Speaker 1: was worked out was perfect that no one got hurt,
[55:27] Speaker 1: no one got injured, no one was even put in
[55:29] Speaker 1: harm's way when the conclusion of this took place.
[55:34] Speaker 2: I look forward to hearing the rest of that story sometime.
[55:38] Speaker 2: And so when you came home, you continued on the
[55:42] Speaker 2: other larger investigation. But there was also a school shooting,
[55:47] Speaker 2: potential school shooting that you guys got involved in.
[55:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a big case that came to about,
[55:54] Speaker 1: you know, came about in where I was working. I
[55:57] Speaker 1: was at a I moved to a sad Light office
[56:00] Speaker 1: in upstate New York, outside the city that I was
[56:05] Speaker 1: fortunate enough to be asked to go to, so I
[56:07] Speaker 1: wasn't commuting into the city anymore, and it was pretty
[56:10] Speaker 1: close to my home. So that was a tough offer
[56:13] Speaker 1: to turn down, you know. So I started working up here.
[56:17] Speaker 1: We got wind of an individual who was planning a
[56:20] Speaker 1: school shooting on social media and we were assigned to it,
[56:25] Speaker 1: me and my partner, and she did a phenomenal job
[56:28] Speaker 1: with what she had to do with with the internet
[56:31] Speaker 1: stuff and social media stuff and getting into that, and
[56:35] Speaker 1: it ended up being a school that that hit close
[56:39] Speaker 1: to home with my family, scary situation with balancing that
[56:44] Speaker 1: of just being a dad and having to stop you know,
[56:48] Speaker 1: this individual from committing a school shooting, which all of
[56:53] Speaker 1: us have had way too much of. But luckily, a
[56:57] Speaker 1: couple of days before he was playing to do this,
[57:01] Speaker 1: we were able to get enough evidence and enough problem
[57:04] Speaker 1: cause and got the DA's office on board with the
[57:08] Speaker 1: search warrants that we needed that we conducted and ended
[57:11] Speaker 1: up arresting the individual for the threats and stop the
[57:17] Speaker 1: attack from happening, which would have happened on the last
[57:20] Speaker 1: day of school.
[57:22] Speaker 2: And how did he end up getting convicted?
[57:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, we ended up actually arrested him three different times.
[57:29] Speaker 1: The last time was on a federal charge, and he
[57:32] Speaker 1: ended up doing five years in a federal prison.
[57:36] Speaker 2: So you guys, even you know, I can understand these
[57:39] Speaker 2: cases are very difficult to prosecute. But you say he
[57:41] Speaker 2: was arrested three times where they having trouble making the
[57:44] Speaker 2: charges stick.
[57:46] Speaker 1: No, it was you know, the great criminal justice system
[57:49] Speaker 1: in New York. You know, we locked them up one
[57:51] Speaker 1: time and they let him go home, and he continued
[57:54] Speaker 1: the threats, and we locked him up again and they
[57:57] Speaker 1: let him out again, and he ended up getting enough
[58:01] Speaker 1: on the federal level to put him you know, through
[58:04] Speaker 1: the federal system the last time we got him. So yeah, dude,
[58:08] Speaker 1: that was that was what put him away. Chargers were
[58:12] Speaker 1: exactly what we're still facing in New York right now. Yeah, Okay,
[58:17] Speaker 1: let him go home of you know, a two hundred
[58:20] Speaker 1: and fifty dollars bail, you know, all things.
[58:23] Speaker 2: Like that, A guy who's threat monitoring.
[58:25] Speaker 1: Him and kept staying on top of him. We didn't
[58:27] Speaker 1: let the case go because we knew, you know, he
[58:31] Speaker 1: wasn't done and we were right, you know, the threats
[58:34] Speaker 1: kept coming and just the arrest kept coming. And then finally,
[58:38] Speaker 1: like I said, we had enough on the federal level
[58:40] Speaker 1: to go that route.
[58:42] Speaker 2: Thank God. Any other big cases that you want to
[58:47] Speaker 2: talk about before we move.
[58:48] Speaker 1: On big cases, well, you know, there was one when
[58:52] Speaker 1: I get asked all the time, you know, Jack, and
[58:55] Speaker 1: I'll tell you, uh, what was a memorable memorable night
[59:00] Speaker 1: that you had, you know, and to put it in
[59:02] Speaker 1: a thirty year career is hard. With a number of
[59:06] Speaker 1: places I was lucky enough, you know, to be involved with.
[59:10] Speaker 1: But there was a night back in the early or
[59:14] Speaker 1: mid nineties that we ended up saving a eight day
[59:19] Speaker 1: old baby who we got thrown in our arms by
[59:24] Speaker 1: his mother that wasn't breathing, that was unresponsive, you know,
[59:28] Speaker 1: on the sixth floor of a building, and had to
[59:31] Speaker 1: run down to the car and do one hundred miles
[59:34] Speaker 1: an hour up riverside drive with the license sirens and
[59:37] Speaker 1: other cops shutting streets down while we're doing CPR on
[59:42] Speaker 1: an eight day old baby in the front seat of
[59:44] Speaker 1: a car with my partner breathing in his mouth and
[59:48] Speaker 1: me pumping his chest while I'm trying to drive the car,
[59:52] Speaker 1: and then slid kind of sideways into the emergency room
[59:56] Speaker 1: at Columbia Presbyteria Medical Center. And as I did at
[1:00:00] Speaker 1: the baby started crying. So that was that was one
[1:00:04] Speaker 1: of those memorable nights that you know, I'll never forget.
[1:00:09] Speaker 1: A crying baby was the best sound in the world
[1:00:11] Speaker 1: I heard that night. You want, you know, it's funny,
[1:00:15] Speaker 1: you want it to happen, but when it does, you
[1:00:18] Speaker 1: get shocked. Yeah, like, oh my god. You know, everything
[1:00:20] Speaker 1: we got trained to do, and everything that we thought
[1:00:24] Speaker 1: was a waste of time sitting in a classroom listening
[1:00:27] Speaker 1: to CPR classes and first aid classes that you want
[1:00:31] Speaker 1: to just go eat or go home, all paid off.
[1:00:34] Speaker 1: Because everything they taught us, we did and it worked perfectly,
[1:00:39] Speaker 1: and that baby became a healthy, you know, toddler and
[1:00:45] Speaker 1: adult and right now is probably thirty five years old
[1:00:49] Speaker 1: right now.
[1:00:51] Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's really interesting that, you know,
[1:00:54] Speaker 2: you have these great stories about the robbery squad and
[1:00:59] Speaker 2: getting in a shootout with robbers and going after El Cada.
[1:01:04] Speaker 2: That that's that is kind of the movie stuff. But
[1:01:05] Speaker 2: there's like so much else that goes into being a cop.
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: Oh god, there there's so much. And that's a big
[1:01:13] Speaker 1: part of you know, when I go into classes and
[1:01:15] Speaker 1: speak and I go into the criminal investigation course down
[1:01:18] Speaker 1: the NYPD Academy with new detectives, when I go and
[1:01:21] Speaker 1: speak in there, there's so much that that goes into this,
[1:01:26] Speaker 1: you know. And I tell people all the time, I
[1:01:28] Speaker 1: tell you new cops all the time that one of
[1:01:31] Speaker 1: the biggest things I get asked all the time is
[1:01:33] Speaker 1: how do you become a good cop? How do you know?
[1:01:35] Speaker 1: How do you get how do I get the career
[1:01:36] Speaker 1: you had? You know? And I tell people, probably the
[1:01:40] Speaker 1: number one thing that that cops need to do today
[1:01:45] Speaker 1: is get their communication skills in order, because if you
[1:01:48] Speaker 1: can't talk to people, you're not going to be successful.
[1:01:51] Speaker 1: And you have to be able to communicate with the
[1:01:55] Speaker 1: CEO of a company or the lowest crackhead that's on
[1:01:58] Speaker 1: a corner, you know, or interview someone in a nice
[1:02:03] Speaker 1: setting in a precinct detective squad, or speak to a
[1:02:06] Speaker 1: bad guy in a cave in Afghanistan. You have to
[1:02:09] Speaker 1: have those skills communication wise in order to do that.
[1:02:13] Speaker 1: And if you don't, if you don't get out there
[1:02:16] Speaker 1: and talk to people and learn about people and their
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: cultures and what they like and what they don't like,
[1:02:22] Speaker 1: you're not going to be successful at this job no
[1:02:24] Speaker 1: matter where you are. And I tell young cops that
[1:02:27] Speaker 1: every single time I'm in front of them.
[1:02:29] Speaker 2: No, that's awesome. So at this point, I mean, I
[1:02:34] Speaker 2: guess I want to ask you about retirement, Like when
[1:02:37] Speaker 2: do you reach mandatory retirement age at NYPD or does
[1:02:41] Speaker 2: there just come a time for you? You're like, I'm
[1:02:42] Speaker 2: ready to move on?
[1:02:44] Speaker 1: Yeah, I did? You know? I did thirty years in
[1:02:47] Speaker 1: the YPD, and you know that wasn't the plan. You know,
[1:02:50] Speaker 1: when I got on in nineteen ninety, you know, twenty
[1:02:52] Speaker 1: years was the mark. You know, get to twenty and
[1:02:55] Speaker 1: then start kind of a second career, but being in JTTF,
[1:02:58] Speaker 1: I was seeing such a you know, good rhythm and
[1:03:02] Speaker 1: cases that I was doing. I was still enjoying it,
[1:03:05] Speaker 1: you know. And that was the other thing I mentioned
[1:03:07] Speaker 1: before in the beginning of this. You have to love
[1:03:09] Speaker 1: what you do. And I love my job to the
[1:03:11] Speaker 1: day I stopped, and I still love it. I do
[1:03:13] Speaker 1: it again tomorrow. But there comes that time that you
[1:03:19] Speaker 1: just go, you know, what, what else am I going
[1:03:22] Speaker 1: to do? I'm still young enough, I'm still healthy, I
[1:03:25] Speaker 1: still got my brain going. There's other things I can do.
[1:03:29] Speaker 1: And thirty was a nice round number to call it
[1:03:33] Speaker 1: a day. And that's what I did in twenty twenty.
[1:03:38] Speaker 1: You know, on March sixth was the end of a
[1:03:41] Speaker 1: really good run that I had.
[1:03:43] Speaker 2: So what is the last five years been like for you?
[1:03:46] Speaker 1: Then?
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: Like, what has it been like transitioning from being a
[1:03:49] Speaker 2: career detective to civilian on the streets.
[1:03:54] Speaker 1: Just a regular person.
[1:03:55] Speaker 2: Just a regular dude.
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: I don't like the rest of us, what it's different.
[1:04:01] Speaker 1: It's just, you know, it's it's something that I tell
[1:04:04] Speaker 1: people all the time, and I and this is the
[1:04:06] Speaker 1: way I equate it. It's like someone telling you know,
[1:04:08] Speaker 1: you're walking forwards for thirty years and then someone telling
[1:04:11] Speaker 1: you got to walk backwards. Uh. You know, you'll you'll
[1:04:14] Speaker 1: get used to it. It's going to be rough at times, uh,
[1:04:18] Speaker 1: but you know you'll get used to it. But it's
[1:04:20] Speaker 1: it's weird. And you know what the one thing is,
[1:04:23] Speaker 1: when you start looking back on your career, Jack, you
[1:04:26] Speaker 1: don't when you're going through things, you don't realize what
[1:04:30] Speaker 1: you're going through because you're just doing it and it's
[1:04:32] Speaker 1: a reaction, and it's one day at a time, one
[1:04:35] Speaker 1: day after another, one day after another, and you know,
[1:04:38] Speaker 1: it's just a normal, you know, craziness that you're doing.
[1:04:41] Speaker 1: But when you're all done and you look back and
[1:04:45] Speaker 1: you kind of take stock and what you did, you go, wow, yeah,
[1:04:48] Speaker 1: you know that was that was a heavy thirty years.
[1:04:52] Speaker 1: And you know, just as much of a physical part
[1:04:56] Speaker 1: of it is is a mental part as well, you know.
[1:04:59] Speaker 1: And I I had my little things come out in
[1:05:02] Speaker 1: thirty years and my big you know, my big mental
[1:05:05] Speaker 1: thing was nightmares. You know, I went through a lot
[1:05:09] Speaker 1: of years of having really violent, nasty, you know nightmares.
[1:05:13] Speaker 1: You know. The one good thing about me is I
[1:05:15] Speaker 1: never drank and never smoked, you know, so I didn't
[1:05:18] Speaker 1: have that to lean on or be worried about because
[1:05:21] Speaker 1: it wasn't just something I did. But you know, people
[1:05:25] Speaker 1: have to realize the mental toll that goes into being
[1:05:29] Speaker 1: in law enforcement, and it's a dramatic hit that your
[1:05:34] Speaker 1: psyche takes, and a lot of times while you going
[1:05:37] Speaker 1: through it, you don't realize it. Yeah, especially you know
[1:05:42] Speaker 1: back then when we were told, you know, when we
[1:05:45] Speaker 1: first got an the job, and it was wrong, but
[1:05:47] Speaker 1: at the time we didn't know it was wrong. When
[1:05:49] Speaker 1: you get told, hey, to shut your mouth, you're a cop,
[1:05:51] Speaker 1: deal with it. What did you expect to happen to you?
[1:05:54] Speaker 1: You know, and you take that as a young god, go, okay,
[1:05:57] Speaker 1: I'll just I won't tell anyone I'm having dramatic nightmares
[1:06:00] Speaker 1: or you know, not me, but other people. I have
[1:06:02] Speaker 1: a drinking problem, or I have this kind of problem,
[1:06:05] Speaker 1: or I'm having a domestic problem. Because back then, there
[1:06:10] Speaker 1: was no questions to ask you get your gun, your
[1:06:12] Speaker 1: shield taken from you, You got put on a midnight
[1:06:14] Speaker 1: tour on a desk watch in a parking lot, and
[1:06:17] Speaker 1: that was the end of your career. You know. So
[1:06:19] Speaker 1: people and guys and girls didn't talk about it. And
[1:06:23] Speaker 1: that's a dramatic difference in today's policing that there's so
[1:06:27] Speaker 1: many private avenues and organizations that have the backs of
[1:06:32] Speaker 1: law enforcement officers that they can talk to now and
[1:06:36] Speaker 1: get the help that they need in order to just
[1:06:40] Speaker 1: go on with their life. Even you know, when you retire,
[1:06:44] Speaker 1: you know, because it doesn't go away. You know, I
[1:06:47] Speaker 1: still every once in a while, not as many as
[1:06:49] Speaker 1: I had, but there's still, you know, nightmares that pop
[1:06:52] Speaker 1: up of past events and stuff, and it's just something
[1:06:55] Speaker 1: that you know, you fight through and you go through,
[1:06:58] Speaker 1: but it's something that people have to realize law enforcement
[1:07:02] Speaker 1: officers go through every day.
[1:07:04] Speaker 2: One of the things I think about in regards to
[1:07:07] Speaker 2: this issue is, you know, when we talk about mental
[1:07:10] Speaker 2: health or PTSD with military veterans, with soldiers, they are
[1:07:16] Speaker 2: doing their training in the United States, get ready to go,
[1:07:19] Speaker 2: and then they're getting on an airplane flying to another country,
[1:07:22] Speaker 2: doing their job, coming back home. So at least there's
[1:07:26] Speaker 2: this like separation. But if you're a police officer, you're
[1:07:29] Speaker 2: out there sometimes seeing really horrible things all day and
[1:07:33] Speaker 2: then that night your home in your house with your family,
[1:07:37] Speaker 2: and that has got to be like a very dramatic
[1:07:40] Speaker 2: and very difficult thing to juggle those two things in
[1:07:45] Speaker 2: your psychological life.
[1:07:46] Speaker 1: I guess, Oh, you nailed it. You absolutely nailed it.
[1:07:50] Speaker 1: You know. Yes, there's a big correlation between what goes
[1:07:53] Speaker 1: on in military lives and law enforcement lives. There is,
[1:07:56] Speaker 1: But in law enforcement it's every single day. And like
[1:08:01] Speaker 1: you said, you know you're going out, you're leaving the house,
[1:08:04] Speaker 1: and everyone in that house is hoping to God you
[1:08:06] Speaker 1: walk back through that door later on that night. But
[1:08:08] Speaker 1: while you're out there, like you said, you're dealing with
[1:08:11] Speaker 1: people's worst days. You know, there's no good things that
[1:08:15] Speaker 1: police is showing up to. You know, they're calling us
[1:08:18] Speaker 1: for a reason, and sometimes they're life changing events of
[1:08:23] Speaker 1: people losing their lives or children being heard and so
[1:08:26] Speaker 1: on and so forth. You know. The most dramatic stat
[1:08:29] Speaker 1: that I throw out there all the time, Jack, and
[1:08:32] Speaker 1: this blows people's minds that the average person in a
[1:08:37] Speaker 1: lifetime will go through two or three traumatic events in
[1:08:42] Speaker 1: their life. Two or three. I could do two or
[1:08:45] Speaker 1: three in an hour when I was on the street.
[1:08:47] Speaker 1: You know, Now take that over an eight hour period,
[1:08:50] Speaker 1: and now times that by thirty days in a month.
[1:08:53] Speaker 1: I mean, you know what we had to go through
[1:08:56] Speaker 1: in certain situations and then like you said, hit a switch,
[1:09:00] Speaker 1: go home and be dad. You know, that's really hard
[1:09:03] Speaker 1: to do, and there's some people that could do it.
[1:09:06] Speaker 1: I was fortunate enough that I had. I loved the
[1:09:11] Speaker 1: longer ride home. I had, you know, to kind of
[1:09:14] Speaker 1: decompress and turn the radio on and open a window
[1:09:17] Speaker 1: and just kind of, you know, calm down a little
[1:09:20] Speaker 1: before I got home. And I think that was a big,
[1:09:22] Speaker 1: big benefit that I had in my career in order
[1:09:27] Speaker 1: to do that, living outside the city and having that
[1:09:30] Speaker 1: ride home at night to kind of, you know, calm
[1:09:33] Speaker 1: down and get back to neutral before you walked in
[1:09:36] Speaker 1: the door. That did that happen every night? No, And
[1:09:40] Speaker 1: you know, thankfully, you know, I got thirty three years
[1:09:44] Speaker 1: of the best wife in the world. That I walked
[1:09:47] Speaker 1: in the door and she knew the night I had immediately,
[1:09:51] Speaker 1: you know, whether to hey, are you okay? Or hey, han,
[1:09:54] Speaker 1: what's up? You know, she knew right away and that
[1:09:58] Speaker 1: dictated what happened the first few minutes, and it said
[1:10:00] Speaker 1: I was home of let's talk it out. You know,
[1:10:03] Speaker 1: she's a guidance counselor so so talking to her and
[1:10:06] Speaker 1: realizing what what was wrong with me was pretty easy
[1:10:08] Speaker 1: for her, you know. But I had that that fortunate
[1:10:12] Speaker 1: outlet to have her. Uh And there were some nights
[1:10:15] Speaker 1: that you know, hey, let's hear it. What happened? What'd
[1:10:18] Speaker 1: you do? Because you can't keep it inside you because
[1:10:23] Speaker 1: the more you do that, there's there's a point it's
[1:10:26] Speaker 1: not going to stay in anymore, and that's when it
[1:10:28] Speaker 1: explodes and really really bad things happen. You know.
[1:10:32] Speaker 2: I was thinking about how, you know, difficult that it's
[1:10:35] Speaker 2: got to be to work that job and then come
[1:10:38] Speaker 2: home at the end of the day, like, well, I'm
[1:10:39] Speaker 2: going to mow my lawn now and sit down and
[1:10:42] Speaker 2: have dinner with the kids. But it's actually really amazing though,
[1:10:45] Speaker 2: that you had a wife that you were able to
[1:10:47] Speaker 2: come home and have that conversation with every day if
[1:10:50] Speaker 2: need be.
[1:10:51] Speaker 1: Oh I was. I was lucky as hell, you know,
[1:10:54] Speaker 1: to have her because she got it, you know, after
[1:10:57] Speaker 1: dealing with what I went through in my career. You know,
[1:11:00] Speaker 1: she understood what the job was all about. I have.
[1:11:03] Speaker 1: You know, she was lucky too that, you know, my
[1:11:06] Speaker 1: mom and her had a great relationship. So my mom
[1:11:08] Speaker 1: would talk to her about what she went through with
[1:11:10] Speaker 1: my dad. My four older sisters would talk to her
[1:11:13] Speaker 1: about how they dealt with my father's you know schedule.
[1:11:17] Speaker 1: You know, so she had a lot of resources in
[1:11:19] Speaker 1: educating herself into what this job was all about. But
[1:11:23] Speaker 1: then on top of her being you know, the best
[1:11:26] Speaker 1: in the world, and I gotta throw a prop to her,
[1:11:29] Speaker 1: she is, I don't know if I'd be here sitting
[1:11:33] Speaker 1: here without her, you know, And I tell her that
[1:11:36] Speaker 1: all the time. And I'm lucky, but like you said,
[1:11:39] Speaker 1: to have someone that I was lucky enough to walk
[1:11:41] Speaker 1: in the house and have someone to just grab me
[1:11:43] Speaker 1: by my shirt and go nope, to sit down. What
[1:11:46] Speaker 1: happened was a big difference in that. And you know,
[1:11:50] Speaker 1: she was the one laying in bed next to me
[1:11:53] Speaker 1: when I had the nightmares and and got got poked
[1:11:56] Speaker 1: and punched a couple of times, unfortunately, and her hair
[1:12:00] Speaker 1: rammed a couple of times. So you know, she lived
[1:12:03] Speaker 1: through that that mental part of it as well. Yeah.
[1:12:07] Speaker 2: Yeah, I also wanted to ask you nowadays, is it
[1:12:11] Speaker 2: a little bit better for cops out there, specially I
[1:12:14] Speaker 2: guess NYPD cops, but others as well. As far as
[1:12:17] Speaker 2: the mental health stuff, or they're more avenues for them
[1:12:20] Speaker 2: to pursue.
[1:12:21] Speaker 1: Oh, there's a ton of avenues. There's still that stigma though,
[1:12:24] Speaker 1: that we're still fighting through and still wanting to break through.
[1:12:29] Speaker 1: But that comes from leadership of these departments, and that's
[1:12:33] Speaker 1: where it starts, because these leaders have to instill in
[1:12:37] Speaker 1: their officers that it's okay to not be okay, and
[1:12:41] Speaker 1: they have to tell them I got you back, no
[1:12:44] Speaker 1: matter what it is, I will be here supporting you.
[1:12:47] Speaker 1: This department will be here supporting you. And cops need
[1:12:51] Speaker 1: to hear that because cops don't trust anyone, all right,
[1:12:54] Speaker 1: let's be honest. They don't. You could have someone standing
[1:12:57] Speaker 1: in front of them going, hey, you're fine, I got
[1:12:58] Speaker 1: your back. Maybe not, you know, and the next thing
[1:13:01] Speaker 1: is you're sitting at that desk on to midnight watching
[1:13:03] Speaker 1: a parking lot, like I said before, and that filters down.
[1:13:08] Speaker 1: You know, people hear about it. Law enforcing communities are big,
[1:13:11] Speaker 1: but they're very small into how you know, information gets
[1:13:15] Speaker 1: out there about how cops are being treated when they
[1:13:18] Speaker 1: admit to having difficulties, and the leadership of these departments
[1:13:24] Speaker 1: have to be in these cops corner. But just to
[1:13:26] Speaker 1: answer your question, Jack, there's so many good avenues out
[1:13:29] Speaker 1: there with these these groups and these counseling groups that
[1:13:33] Speaker 1: are out there now. Compared to what we used to have.
[1:13:35] Speaker 1: I mean, it's a dramatic difference. And these cops today,
[1:13:39] Speaker 1: I think, are very fortunate to have these these organizations
[1:13:43] Speaker 1: out there that they can lean on. Just make a
[1:13:46] Speaker 1: phone call. We tell people all the time on the show.
[1:13:49] Speaker 1: You know, we can help one person, one cop, save themselves.
[1:13:54] Speaker 1: It's all worth it. And if you have to pick
[1:13:56] Speaker 1: the phone up and have a five minute conversation with someone,
[1:14:00] Speaker 1: are one of these phone you know banks that are
[1:14:03] Speaker 1: armed and held by cops and retired cops to get
[1:14:07] Speaker 1: you just over humped it. You're okay for a five
[1:14:10] Speaker 1: minute conversation, then it's all worth it.
[1:14:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, it is absolutely And some of the things that
[1:14:17] Speaker 2: you've gotten into since your retirement from the police force.
[1:14:21] Speaker 2: Tell us about this podcast that you run.
[1:14:24] Speaker 1: Yeah, Dan Murphy and I Dan was my partner and
[1:14:29] Speaker 1: he's my partner and my sergeant in the Gang Unit
[1:14:31] Speaker 1: and then again in JTTF. We've been friends for twenty
[1:14:35] Speaker 1: five years and we thought of doing a podcast almost
[1:14:39] Speaker 1: four years ago now, and the purpose of it was
[1:14:44] Speaker 1: to get these high profile stories out there from law enforcement,
[1:14:48] Speaker 1: from the military, from victims, from survivors that people might
[1:14:53] Speaker 1: have heard about but not heard the whole story about
[1:14:56] Speaker 1: what happened. You know, I know about the night stalker,
[1:14:59] Speaker 1: but having the detective on who actually locked him up,
[1:15:02] Speaker 1: people don't hear. So that's what we do on gold Shields,
[1:15:07] Speaker 1: and we get these stories out there that even at times,
[1:15:10] Speaker 1: you know, surprised Dan and I because we have kind
[1:15:14] Speaker 1: of one rule with our guests that we have on
[1:15:17] Speaker 1: our show that we don't want to hear the whole
[1:15:19] Speaker 1: story before we do the show. Yeah, because we like
[1:15:23] Speaker 1: our you know, our reaction to be authentic and when
[1:15:28] Speaker 1: we look into camera, go, holy crap, that's legit that
[1:15:31] Speaker 1: we didn't know something about the case. And and we
[1:15:34] Speaker 1: do that specifically and intentionally, and it's been a great run.
[1:15:38] Speaker 1: You know, we look at going into season four with
[1:15:43] Speaker 1: one hundred and you know, forty something, one hundred and
[1:15:45] Speaker 1: fifty shows that we've done, when we had seven shows
[1:15:48] Speaker 1: scheduled in the beginning of it and had no idea
[1:15:50] Speaker 1: what number eight was going to be. You know, looking
[1:15:54] Speaker 1: at each other, we're up to like episode six, like
[1:15:56] Speaker 1: all right, we got to book somebody else and then
[1:16:00] Speaker 1: it just hit a point where it took off and
[1:16:03] Speaker 1: UH is being you know, viewed around the world now,
[1:16:06] Speaker 1: which still freaks this out a little bit that you know,
[1:16:09] Speaker 1: someone on the other side of the world's driving around
[1:16:11] Speaker 1: the car listening to us. You know that that's a
[1:16:14] Speaker 1: little weird still, But it's so much fun and the
[1:16:18] Speaker 1: people the best part of it, Jag And you're gonna
[1:16:20] Speaker 1: say the same thing because you do you know what
[1:16:23] Speaker 1: we do. The friendships that we have now and the
[1:16:27] Speaker 1: people who are friends of ours, we would have never imagined,
[1:16:32] Speaker 1: you know, four years ago, and we hold them very
[1:16:35] Speaker 1: close to us because they're they're airing their their stories
[1:16:40] Speaker 1: out to us and you know, our listeners, and we
[1:16:43] Speaker 1: you know, we respect them so much for that. I mean,
[1:16:46] Speaker 1: who in that world four years ago would have thought that,
[1:16:50] Speaker 1: you know, right now, I could pick the phone up
[1:16:52] Speaker 1: and call Tayo Kyle, you know, and just say hello
[1:16:55] Speaker 1: and what's going on, and have the kids and you know,
[1:16:58] Speaker 1: all that which would have never thought of years ago,
[1:17:01] Speaker 1: and now she's a dear friend of ours.
[1:17:04] Speaker 2: To hype the show a little bit, can you give
[1:17:07] Speaker 2: people like your top three podcasts that like people's jaws
[1:17:11] Speaker 2: are going to hit the ground that they should go
[1:17:13] Speaker 2: check out right now.
[1:17:15] Speaker 1: You putting me on the spot, bro with three You
[1:17:20] Speaker 1: know what, We did a show. There's a Netflix series
[1:17:24] Speaker 1: called The Vatican Girl. Oh yeah's out there, okay. So
[1:17:30] Speaker 1: we interviewed the brother Pietro on our show and he
[1:17:34] Speaker 1: was the first We were the first interview he did
[1:17:36] Speaker 1: in the United States about his sister Emmanuela. So that
[1:17:42] Speaker 1: was a big show. We had an interpreter and it
[1:17:45] Speaker 1: went awesome. It went so well. We were so happy
[1:17:49] Speaker 1: with that episode. We're actually going to do a follow
[1:17:51] Speaker 1: up because once we did the episode, whether we had
[1:17:55] Speaker 1: an impact in it or not, three of the investigations
[1:17:59] Speaker 1: reopened into looking for Emmanuela.
[1:18:01] Speaker 2: Because yeah, that one's still that's one was never solved.
[1:18:05] Speaker 1: No, it's still open in three different agencies are running
[1:18:09] Speaker 1: investigations into her disappearance. And so Pietro has been asked
[1:18:14] Speaker 1: a lot of about new information. So we're actually going
[1:18:17] Speaker 1: to have him back on the show as a follow
[1:18:20] Speaker 1: up or kind of a part two to The Vatican Girl.
[1:18:25] Speaker 1: Another one we've done. I mentioned it. We had Gil
[1:18:29] Speaker 1: Correa on who was one of the detectives who locked
[1:18:32] Speaker 1: up the night stalker, who was incredible. His account of
[1:18:37] Speaker 1: the manhunt for this maniac going on when he was
[1:18:42] Speaker 1: told by every department in LA you're out of your mind,
[1:18:45] Speaker 1: you're nuts, you're wasting everyone's time. It's not a serial guy,
[1:18:50] Speaker 1: it's a group of people. And he would not budge
[1:18:53] Speaker 1: from it, and then got another detective on board with
[1:18:56] Speaker 1: him and linked it all together that it was one
[1:18:59] Speaker 1: guy and ended up locking up Richard Ramirez. But his
[1:19:04] Speaker 1: interview was absolutely amazing, and I give you the last one.
[1:19:09] Speaker 1: We'll switching from detectives to a victim. We had Kathy
[1:19:12] Speaker 1: Kleiner Rubinon, who was one of the survivors of a
[1:19:16] Speaker 1: Ted Bundy attack.
[1:19:17] Speaker 3: Oh wow.
[1:19:18] Speaker 1: She was one of the students at Florida State University
[1:19:21] Speaker 1: who survived being attacked by him. He broke her jaw.
[1:19:26] Speaker 1: He was just about to kill her when he just
[1:19:29] Speaker 1: finished killing two of her sorority sisters down the hall
[1:19:33] Speaker 1: from her, got into her room, attacked her roommate, knocked
[1:19:38] Speaker 1: her unconscious, then jumped on Kathy and started to strangle
[1:19:42] Speaker 1: her after hitting her with a two by four across
[1:19:46] Speaker 1: the jaw and broke her join. The only thing that
[1:19:48] Speaker 1: saved her life was where her room was backed up
[1:19:52] Speaker 1: to the parking lot of the building, and a car
[1:19:56] Speaker 1: happened to pull into the parking lot and the headlights
[1:19:58] Speaker 1: shined into the room and it scared him and he
[1:20:01] Speaker 1: took off and ran. Talking to Kathy about that account
[1:20:06] Speaker 1: and her first hand account of living through that was
[1:20:10] Speaker 1: an amazing interview that we had the opportunity to do.
[1:20:14] Speaker 2: That's yeah, okay, those are pretty good ones. And the
[1:20:20] Speaker 2: other thing that you're involved with is Impact Solutions. What's
[1:20:24] Speaker 2: going on there?
[1:20:25] Speaker 1: Yep. Dan and I developed an alternative to pepper spray
[1:20:30] Speaker 1: for law enforcement officers, security departments throughout this country and
[1:20:35] Speaker 1: also civilians because we found that pepper spray was just
[1:20:39] Speaker 1: not good in what's going on in society today because
[1:20:42] Speaker 1: of the blowback, because of the cross contamination of you
[1:20:46] Speaker 1: worrying about spraying it and then you getting affected by
[1:20:49] Speaker 1: the spray and being incapacitated when you're trying to save
[1:20:53] Speaker 1: your own life or help yourself. So we developed a
[1:20:57] Speaker 1: spray called Impact and Impact is a extreme I irritant.
[1:21:02] Speaker 1: It's sprayed directly in the eyes and you cannot open
[1:21:06] Speaker 1: your eyes. Your eyes burn, and it's like broken glass
[1:21:09] Speaker 1: in your eye. You cannot open your eye, and it
[1:21:12] Speaker 1: gives you the amount of time you need to either
[1:21:15] Speaker 1: take a perpetrator into custody or get out of that
[1:21:18] Speaker 1: situation if you're a civilian. And the best parts about
[1:21:22] Speaker 1: our spray is there's no cross contamination. A police officer
[1:21:26] Speaker 1: can spray a bad guy and jump right on him
[1:21:28] Speaker 1: and nothing's getting on him whatsoever. Our bottles are nitrogen propels,
[1:21:33] Speaker 1: so it's a targeted stream that is good for about
[1:21:37] Speaker 1: ten to twelve or fourteen feet away, so you don't
[1:21:40] Speaker 1: have to wait for that perpetrator or a criminal to be
[1:21:43] Speaker 1: on top of you. You can get him beforehand. Our
[1:21:46] Speaker 1: spray you can also use inside in an elevator, in
[1:21:50] Speaker 1: a car, in a stairwell, and you are not going
[1:21:53] Speaker 1: to be affected by just the bad guy. And one
[1:21:56] Speaker 1: of the best parts about it, we have an invisible
[1:21:59] Speaker 1: UV die marker in it. So if you spray the
[1:22:02] Speaker 1: individual and get the hell out of there and call
[1:22:04] Speaker 1: nine one one, the officers can come back later with
[1:22:07] Speaker 1: a black light and spray and flash it on them,
[1:22:10] Speaker 1: which is good for identification in court, and apprehend him
[1:22:16] Speaker 1: later on.
[1:22:16] Speaker 2: So I don't know if this is like the secret
[1:22:19] Speaker 2: formula of Coca Cola. But can you talk about what
[1:22:22] Speaker 2: your proprietary blend is for this spray.
[1:22:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's made up, believe it or not, of three
[1:22:29] Speaker 1: acidic acids, citrus acid, acidic acid, and another hydrogen kind
[1:22:33] Speaker 1: of peroxide which just balances the pH of it out.
[1:22:37] Speaker 1: And it's made up of seventy percent water. So all
[1:22:41] Speaker 1: those combined give you a vinegar type hit in the eyes.
[1:22:48] Speaker 1: Just imagine, you know, or pouring a glass of orange
[1:22:51] Speaker 1: juice in your eyes is basically what it is. And
[1:22:55] Speaker 1: the three combined ingredients along with the water is a powerful,
[1:23:00] Speaker 1: powerful punch. I've been sprayed actually, you know, because I'm
[1:23:03] Speaker 1: the vice president of the company. So when we were developing,
[1:23:07] Speaker 1: it had to be sprayed numerous times to test it out,
[1:23:09] Speaker 1: which was, you got to the thrill of my life.
[1:23:12] Speaker 1: But you know, we had to go through it. But
[1:23:15] Speaker 1: it is highly effective and there's so many departments that
[1:23:19] Speaker 1: we're in touch with right now that are switching to
[1:23:21] Speaker 1: it because you know, a lot of the departments carry
[1:23:24] Speaker 1: pepper spray, but they don't use it because they don't
[1:23:27] Speaker 1: want to hurt their partner, they don't want to hit
[1:23:28] Speaker 1: an innocent bystander, They don't want it blow them back
[1:23:31] Speaker 1: in their face. So our stuff eliminates all that and
[1:23:35] Speaker 1: gets it in the hands of these officers who drastically
[1:23:38] Speaker 1: need it before just jumping to the next you know,
[1:23:41] Speaker 1: continuum of a taser or your firearm. You have that
[1:23:45] Speaker 1: middle option to take someone into custody, which is which
[1:23:49] Speaker 1: is really important these days.
[1:23:52] Speaker 2: Dmitri, Do we have any questions other than this one
[1:23:54] Speaker 2: you handed me? Okay, we got one question here for
[1:23:58] Speaker 2: you from the audience. Was there friction between NYPD officers
[1:24:03] Speaker 2: and FBI agents in the JTTF Oh.
[1:24:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, uh, and not not in a not
[1:24:13] Speaker 1: in a kind of vicious way. But the FBI and
[1:24:18] Speaker 1: and NYPD are two completely different mindsets, They're two different personalities,
[1:24:23] Speaker 1: they're two different ways that they work. Uh. The FBI
[1:24:27] Speaker 1: is very methodical in what they do in building cases
[1:24:30] Speaker 1: that takes sometimes years to do, whereas if you take
[1:24:35] Speaker 1: the the just regular NYPD guy, it's immediate, get a
[1:24:39] Speaker 1: bad guy. There's a he's behind the door, kick the
[1:24:42] Speaker 1: door and go get them, you know. So there was
[1:24:44] Speaker 1: a lot to work out in the the days after
[1:24:47] Speaker 1: nine to eleven and even a couple of years after
[1:24:49] Speaker 1: nine to eleven. Uh, to get the proper balance of
[1:24:52] Speaker 1: of who you want to work with, how squads were
[1:24:54] Speaker 1: conducted or constructed, I should say, in getting you know,
[1:24:58] Speaker 1: the right personalities to together. And you know, when I
[1:25:02] Speaker 1: was there, you saw that happen. And after, like I said,
[1:25:05] Speaker 1: the beginning stages were kind of rough, but then became
[1:25:09] Speaker 1: a very well good working machine between the two agencies.
[1:25:15] Speaker 2: Before we get going tonight, Tom, is there anything else
[1:25:17] Speaker 2: you want to talk about, anything that I didn't ask
[1:25:19] Speaker 2: that you'd like to discuss or put out there.
[1:25:22] Speaker 1: No, you know what one of the things I love
[1:25:24] Speaker 1: saying is is, you know, when it comes to law enforcement,
[1:25:28] Speaker 1: you know, don't jump to conclusions of what you see
[1:25:31] Speaker 1: on TV, you know, on the news and all that.
[1:25:34] Speaker 1: You know a lot of times that's not the case.
[1:25:37] Speaker 1: And and that's why I was so glad, and I
[1:25:40] Speaker 1: was a big proponent of body cams because if you
[1:25:43] Speaker 1: noticed over the last few years, when more and more
[1:25:47] Speaker 1: departments are getting these body cams, there's less crap on
[1:25:51] Speaker 1: the news about cops being wrong because most of the
[1:25:55] Speaker 1: time they're right. You know, our mistakes made and things
[1:25:59] Speaker 1: happen on the street, no doubt about it, absolutely, And
[1:26:02] Speaker 1: those are you know, accountable. But if you've noticed in
[1:26:06] Speaker 1: the news, there's there's many stories that don't come out
[1:26:10] Speaker 1: anymore because people are realizing how fast situations occur, how
[1:26:15] Speaker 1: quickly law enforced officers have to make life changing decisions,
[1:26:20] Speaker 1: both for themselves and others out there. And I'm glad
[1:26:24] Speaker 1: that there's shows like All Patrol Live that people get
[1:26:28] Speaker 1: to watch how quick things happen and how fast police
[1:26:32] Speaker 1: officers need to make decisions, and like I said, ninety
[1:26:36] Speaker 1: plus percent of the time they're right. And I think
[1:26:39] Speaker 1: society is getting that now, which is uh, which is
[1:26:43] Speaker 1: very welcomed in the law enforcement community.
[1:26:46] Speaker 2: I don't think I've met a police officer who didn't
[1:26:49] Speaker 2: at least eventually come around to the body cams because like, yeah,
[1:26:53] Speaker 2: like ninety ninety five percent, like the complaints kind of
[1:26:56] Speaker 2: get thrown out right away.
[1:26:59] Speaker 1: Right, yep. Absolutely, And I always said that you're gonna
[1:27:02] Speaker 1: they're gonna prevent, they're gonna protect the police officer more
[1:27:05] Speaker 1: than hurt them. And you know, like I said, if
[1:27:08] Speaker 1: things go wrong and the police officers are wrong and
[1:27:11] Speaker 1: it's shown, then those departments will take that into into hand,
[1:27:15] Speaker 1: you know. But I always thought they were going to
[1:27:18] Speaker 1: show the right things and and you know, get people
[1:27:21] Speaker 1: to really look at it differently and go oh wow,
[1:27:24] Speaker 1: you know I couldn't do that or I couldn't make
[1:27:26] Speaker 1: that decision that quick. Yeah. Uh, And I think that's
[1:27:29] Speaker 1: where the change in the view of law enforcement is
[1:27:33] Speaker 1: coming today.
[1:27:35] Speaker 2: Well, Tom, thank you very much for spending a evening
[1:27:39] Speaker 2: with us here and sharing your story with us.
[1:27:42] Speaker 1: Oh, I really appreciate. Jake had a great time. Thank
[1:27:44] Speaker 1: you for asking me.
[1:27:46] Speaker 2: It's so folks, go out and check out the gold
[1:27:48] Speaker 2: Shields podcast. A lot of interesting episodes up on there already.
[1:27:53] Speaker 2: You're going into season four and we'll have some links
[1:27:56] Speaker 2: down the description to it, so people who are viewing
[1:27:58] Speaker 2: this on YouTube or whatever and click on that and
[1:28:00] Speaker 2: get to it real easy. Yeah, Tom, thank you again,
[1:28:05] Speaker 2: and everyone else out there. We'll see you again next week. Hey, guys,
[1:28:09] Speaker 2: I want to tell all of you today about a
[1:28:11] Speaker 2: new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team
[1:28:14] Speaker 2: House podcast, the eyes On podcast, and the high Side
[1:28:19] Speaker 2: News outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter
[1:28:24] Speaker 2: is gonna be once a week. It's gonna come into
[1:28:26] Speaker 2: your inbox and you're gonna get the most current podcasts
[1:28:30] Speaker 2: on eyes On and the Teamhouse and whatever's topical or
[1:28:34] Speaker 2: current on the high side. So it's another way for
[1:28:37] Speaker 2: us to get the information out to you as social
[1:28:39] Speaker 2: media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know
[1:28:42] Speaker 2: what you're gonna get. So this is a once a
[1:28:45] Speaker 2: week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will
[1:28:47] Speaker 2: have you know the greatest hits of that week.
[1:28:50] Speaker 1: It's really good checking it out.
[1:28:53] Speaker 2: The website for it is Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot
[1:28:57] Speaker 2: com slash Join Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com slash join.
[1:29:03] Speaker 1: Uh.
[1:29:03] Speaker 2: You go there and you enter into your email lists
[1:29:05] Speaker 2: or you enter your email into the little thing on
[1:29:09] Speaker 2: the website and you're good to go and that'll be it.
[1:29:12] Speaker 2: So we really appreciate your support and I hope you'll
[1:29:15] Speaker 2: consider signing up.
[1:29:16] Speaker 1: Where's the link.
[1:29:17] Speaker 2: The link will also be down the description if you're
[1:29:20] Speaker 2: looking for it there, and that's Teamhouse Podcast, dot Kit,
[1:29:24] Speaker 2: k I t Kilo India, Tango dot com backslash joint
[1:30:01] Speaker 2: assass

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