Latest / Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment) / Infiltrating: ATF Agent Jay Dobyns: The Undercover Hells Angel

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Infiltrating: ATF Agent Jay Dobyns: The Undercover Hells Angel · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:23
  Speaker 2: As I lean forward to try to pick the keys up off the floorboard.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Now the other agents had surrounded a car and as he tried to roll forward with me, as I was leaning forward, his gun came off my head and ended up pressed against my back.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: And then this 10 or 20 second lead and glass storm of gunfire.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Hey, let's talk about Hells Angels.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: How'd you get involved in Hells Angels and walk me through that?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Well, when the opportunity came up to work on the Hells Angels case, I had about probably 15 years of undercover experience behind me.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I felt like I was as prepared as at least as I was going to be.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: The one thing that I had going for me is that I had a head start.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: I'd already I'd been working a case that was we were looking at some bounty hunters that were out of control, that were doing a lot of crazy stuff, and in that case I had started crossing paths with members of the Hells Angels.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I will say this I know what a hero looks like.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: I've worked alongside some heroes.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I've walked alongside some heroes.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: I surely am not one.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: I got too many things wrong.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I made too many mistakes to ever even allow anybody to say that about me.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: But my story has a hero, and the hero of my story is my wife.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music podcast.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: My name is Aaron, I'm your host and you guys are in for another great, great show.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: So here's what I got.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I got a great guest on the show tonight.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: His name is Jay Dobbins Jay Bird Dobbins Jay Dobbins you see, he started off in the early mid-80s as an absolute stud football player for the University of Arizona.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: After that he went on to play pro ball in both Canada and the United States.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: But his football career took an unexpected turn when he found out he just didn't make the cut in the pro world.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: He'll even tell you he was a great college ball player but not so good on the pro level.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Then he went into work for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as an undercover federal agent.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: During his career he worked over 500 undercover operations and he's been on a lot of crime scenes and a lot of cases that you know about Ruby Ridge, waco, columbine.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: He unfoiled a plan to bomb three casinos in Las Vegas A lot of stuff you guys have heard about.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: He has been on those front lines.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: But his biggest claim to fame he infiltrated the Hells Angels motorcycle gang out of Phoenix, arizona.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: He spent two years deep undercover and as a federal agent, undercover, as a Hell's Angel, but that entire time he was a father and a husband.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: He was trying to take care of his home life.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: He's out there risking his life every single day with the baddest cats in town, the most dangerous motorcycle gang out there, but he's still got a family at home.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: He's going to tell you all those stories tonight.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: He's going to talk about his mental health, his faith, all the stories of being in the Hell's Angels when he came out of law enforcement.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: He's been coaching football for the last 20 years.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: He's an adjunct professor.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: He's written two bestselling books, one called Catching Hell, one called no Angel, and you can find all of his information at jdobbinscom, d-o-b-y-n-scom.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: But without further ado, let's get into the show.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: So, jay, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: You know, before we get started, I know that you were born in Indiana and then shortly thereafter moved to Tucson.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little bit about, kind of those early years growing up, what your plans were, what your goals were, what your dreams were, in inhibition, in a minute Let me start over.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Hey, jay, thank you so much for coming on the show today, man, um, I've done a little bit of research right, because I like to come into these with a little bit of knowledge.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I know you were born in Indiana, raised in the Tucson area.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Can you tell me about those first few years, what your family was like, what your goals and aspirations were, and then we'll get into all the stories?
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: But can you just tell me a little bit about what you got going on?
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a very much happy days, white picket fence childhood.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: My folks stayed together, very middle class, blue collar upbringing.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I had a wonderful mother who took good care of her family and my dad was the best man that I've ever known.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: That I ever will know.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: He was my hero from when I was a kid and so I had like just I, you know, like I had an ideal childhood.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: I had a bike to ride, I had a baseball mitt on the handlebars, I played little league and and went and played with the kids in the neighborhood and went to school and um I I don't have one bad memory from, or or at least any memories that I didn't learn something from as a kid.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: And you were born in Indiana.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Am I correct?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was born, um, in Hammond, indiana, uh, just over the state line from Illinois, just south and east of Chicago.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: It felt like Chicago, it felt like a suburb of Chicago.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I lived in a town called Highland, which is in the northwest corner of Indiana, there what they call the region, and my dad was a carpenter, my dad was a construction worker and things dried, uh, things dried up a little bit, uh, when we were back there and he moved us to Arizona for work, I got you any siblings or anything I do.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: I have a younger sister, um and uh, that's five years younger, and I have a younger brother that's nine years younger.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And what did they do?
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Did they what's their career choice?
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: What are they doing now?
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like on the business side of employment of the world.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: They have bigger brains than I do.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Gotcha man.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I know the feeling, bro.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I know the feeling.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So you move out to Arizona.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: What was that like?
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: What did you do?
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Did you go to college?
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Walk me through that whole part of your life.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: I went to.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: You know, bulk of my schooling was here in Tucson, arizona.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: I went to elementary school, junior high, high school here.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: I went to the University of Arkansas for a year to play football and then I transferred to the University of Arizona and finished my school and my college football career there.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: And by all rights.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: When I look you up and talk about your football career.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: You were kind of a football star and did you go on to tell me about that, Walk me through that, and then did you go play some pro ball somewhere.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: What was that all about?
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, um, you know, with a lot of uh, marginal uh players, the longer it's been since you played, the better you were.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I hear you.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: And so you know, like it's the, those glory days come out.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Um, I had a nice college football career.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Um, I made, uh, the all pack 10 team.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Um, I was a wide receiver.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: You know, over the course of the last 40 years, you know, I've eaten my way into a four point stance, but I used to play in a two point stance and, um, yeah, I um had a chance to play in the Canadian football league, uh, for a short period of time, and then a chance to play in the United States football league, and I was actually in the USFL when that league folded.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Oh really, when was that?
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: 86, maybe something like that.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, and then that was your.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: So what are your goals and aspirations?
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: To be a pro football player?
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Were you just really good in college?
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And I mean, what were your goals?
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: They were.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: You know, I, as a young person, I I'd never had a plan B.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: I was going to play football and that's what was my ambition and I was obsessed with it.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Like I have OCD personality, I'm like organized and compartmentalized and I overthink things and overwork things.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: It's just an element of who I am, and so I was never the best athlete.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: I was never the best football player.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: My way to stay competitive was to try to outwork my competition and to play the game as recklessly as I could play it.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: And so that you know those lessons, a lot of the lessons I learned on sports field ended up translating into my law enforcement career, because a lot of the lessons I learned on sports field ended up translating into my law enforcement career, because a lot of those mentalities stay the same.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally Tell me about your law enforcement.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: How did I get started?
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: So I assume that is your second plan A, am I right?
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah well, plan B, my plan A crashed my plan A.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: I realized when it came down to it, when the opportunity was there, that I just I wasn't good enough to be at least a full-time professional football player.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: I could have hung around and probably made a squad here or there, but I needed to move on with my life.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: I felt like I had gotten everything that I could get out of my athleticism and my sports career, and so, like I had to pick a plan B and I I didn't really know what that was.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Uh, like a lot of young people you know.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Uh, your, your, your dreams crash and and you like, things don't always work out the way we want them to or the way we plan for them to.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, and at the time as hokey as this sounds, at the time in mid 80s, the television show Miami Vice came out and, like as an audience for television shows, all we'd really seen was police procedurals.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: We'd seen uniformed cops in marked units rolling around and detectives responding to crime scenes.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: And then Miami Vice hits and you got Sonny Crockett in his Lamborghini or Ferrari or whatever he was driving.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: He's running around South Beach and he's got like a shoulder rig on and a Hugo Boss suit and he's meeting with drug kingpins and he's going to these narco mansions and he's got these stripper models bringing him mojitos and everything was dynamic and dangerous and exciting and I didn't know if I could do it, but I knew that I wanted to try.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: And so that so you got into, so you got into ATF, Was ATF the only agency you applied with?
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Where did you apply with other federal agencies or state and local law enforcement?
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: local law enforcement.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: You know I focused on ATF because they had the premier undercover program in federal law enforcement and you know, if you're a shortstop you want to play shortstop for the Yankees.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: And as an undercover agent or someone who wanted to be an undercover agent, you know you wanted to do that at ATF because they really embraced the undercover world and the value of undercover operations and those types of cases and there was great mentors there.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: There was people that came before me that laid the groundwork, that helped train me, that helped encourage me, advised me, and then I was surrounded by peers who loved that game the way that I loved it and we tried to help each other and advance each other.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: And there was just this like unwritten, unspoken fraternity of support that we well, that, at least that I like embraced and tried to capitalize on.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: And I was just sucking up knowledge and trying to learn the trade craft.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: You know, little bits at a time.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to wind you up and I just want you to tell me the story.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: All right, and I think you could tell the story better just by letting you go than me asking a bunch of broken up questions, and I think it's better for the listeners.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: So, and it's my understanding, you started with the ATF in November of 87.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: That's correct.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Tell me about getting started there, tell me about your first week on the job and just walk me through this whole story.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: I had a crazy start right and so I came into the job.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: I didn't know anything about police work, I didn't have any background in it, I just I was intrigued by the profession and was intrigued with a desire to try to work undercover.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Like I said earlier, I didn't know if I was going to be any good at it, but I wanted to try and probably like my biggest superpower like both as an athlete and as a lawman was willingness.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: I was always willing to try.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: I wasn't afraid to fail.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I was afraid of how I would feel about myself if I didn't try.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: So I raised my hand for every assignment and opportunity I could get.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: I raised my hand for every assignment and opportunity I could get.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: But you know, to back up and get on point for your question, I got hired on a Monday.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I got sworn in, raised my right hand, took my oath and from the very first day it was an honor, a privilege for me to be given a badge and a gun and to be asked to stand up for the good and innocent people in the communities that I worked in against the predators.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: I took that very serious.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: It was very important to me that I did that the best that I could do it.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Four days later, on a Thursday, I was part of an arrest operation.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I was very much removed from the point.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I didn't have any real training at that point and the suspect ran from the arrest team and so I just joined in the chase, just naturally engaged.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: The suspect got loose, couldn't find him.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: We were searching for him through a trailer park and he had hidden and I got separated from the rest of my team and I, like almost accidentally not almost entirely accidentally stumbled across him and he came up out of the weeds, had a gun on me, of the weeds, had a gun on me.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: I didn't have much of an opportunity.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: He slid around behind me, like put his one arm around my neck like in a choke hold and use the other arm to hold a gun to my head.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: And then he walked me to one of our vehicles, one of the government vehicles that was there at the arrest scene, that had been left, and he was going to use me as his means of escape, and so he pushed me in the front seat, in the driver's seat, he climbed in the back seat behind me, the whole time holding the gun to my head and he was screaming at me like let's go get me out of here.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: And so, like, I'm trying to figure out what my solution is, and there was a telephone pole about I don't know 30 or 40 yards in front of us and my first plan was like, I'm going to drive this car as hard and as fast as I can into this telephone pole.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: I'm going to put an end to this while I have my partners here to help me.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: I did not want to drive this guy down the road and be executed in a ditch 20 miles away, and that's what my speculation was.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: So as I reached for the keys to start to the car, I came up with another plan and I dropped the keys to the floorboard and I told him.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I said man, I dropped the keys and as I leaned forward to try to pick the keys up off the floorboard, now the other agents had surrounded a car and as he tried to roll forward with me, as I was leaning forward, his gun came off my head and ended up pressed, pressed against my back, and then this 10 or 20 second lead and glass storm of gunfire.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: This took place.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: That was like like more wicked than anything you could imagine in a Hollywood film, like rounds were were being pumped into that passenger compartment of that car, like from both sides, from the rear window, and in that process, the suspect who had his gun now at my back, you know, he shot me point blank.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: The bullet went in my back, it went through my lung, it narrowly missed my heart, it exited my chest and so, like you know, four days on the job, I had a through and through sucking chest wound, gunshot wound, and you know, like I've said this many times, the one thing that I remember entirely clearly is that blood was squirting out of my chest, like you're holding your thumb over the end of a garden hose.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Wow, it was spraying out Um and like and I was bleeding to death.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Man, I was dying in this in this trailer park.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: And you know, like with the feds, we get paid every two weeks, like I hadn't gotten a paycheck yet, like that.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: That was.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: That one was on the house.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: It was a free test drive, you know so and he went back.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: That was a crazy, crazy, uh, dynamic and traumatic way to open a career.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: So what happened next?
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: How'd you get from the scene?
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: To walk me through that.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the, the, the suspect was killed at the scene.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, that dude got ventilated man.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: He got hit a dozen times in this gun battle.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: They pulled him out of the car the same car that the shooting took place in.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: They stuffed me into the back seat where the suspect had just been and I'm like choking and in and out of consciousness and got raced to the emergency room.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Consciousness and got raced to the emergency room and like in and out and like not knowing real what was happening.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: And I remember I'm on a gurney and they're pushing me into the operating room and I looked up at the nurse that was driving the gurney and I said am I going to die?
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: And she looked down and she said we're not sure yet.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Baby, just try to hang on.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: And I was like man, that's bad bedside manner, like you need to tell me what I want to hear right now.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Even if you got to lie to me, tell me you're going to be fine.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Totally so.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: When you guys were back at the scene and all this, all this stuff breaks down.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: First of all, were you wearing a vest?
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: I didn't have a vest on Um.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: We we'd, we, we had been vested up early.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: The guy ran, uh, we lost him.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: We regrouped Um and after we regrouped I like I just assumed like look, the guy beat us today.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: He got away Um and then a neighbor had seen him poking around, and so after we had like kind of dressed down, we went back into action and like I didn't have enough common sense or experience to even think like man, throw that vest back on we just got back in the fight.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: You were four days on the job and your our willingness, our hunt drive, our fight, drive, our chase drive.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: You know it gets turned on and you just don't think, um, you get a very narrow focus and at the focus of this we'll get the bad guy.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: I totally get it.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: I think that that anybody like especially those people in your audience who've been involved in a chase, whether it be a foot chase or a car chase um man, you're, you're firing on all cylinders mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, you're amped up.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: It truly is life and death.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: It's hard to come down from that.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: You don't just snap your fingers and de-escalate from that and relax.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: That stays in your system.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: That adrenaline is pumping.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: A friend of mine once told me he was was with Phoenix PD and he was a cop before I was.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: You know, I spent 21 years.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: He was a cop for probably five, six years before me with Phoenix and he was talking about and he was on their net squad neighborhood enforcement team and he was talking about going up and doing these you know high risk things.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: And he said he was trying to relate it to his wife and his wife didn't understand why the adrenaline spikes were there and why he'd come home all assed up and amped up, you know, and he's like look, babe, it's like you go into the copy machine every day and every day you push that copy machine button.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: It becomes routine.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: But one of these days when you push it it's going to blow up in your face.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: You know your anxiety level, your anticipation for that is so high because you don't know if the next time you push that button is the time it's going to end your life.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And it just really made sense to me.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: It resonated with me, you know, and that's kind of where we're at You're firing all cylinders, your adrenaline is high, your blood is flowing and you're absolutely right.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Unless people have ever done that.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: They just don't get it.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Well, and you know your, your copy machine analogy translates to what we were death decisions in igno-seconds.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: And then you know, after an event like that takes place, then we step back and step by step review it and critique it, and critique their decisions and watch their body cams and it's much easier to come up with a positive solution than it is when it's happening, almost faster than your brain can process the information.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, jay.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: You know, in those situations where, in working, homicide and officer-involved shootings and that type of stuff, that was my job was to investigate these kinds of incidents and officer-involved shootings and that type of stuff, that was my job was to investigate these kind of incidents.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: And you know, as an investigator I'm not too far removed from the street.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: So I still remember what these things are like.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: I remember what it's like to feel the blood pumping.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: But you and I both know the decision makers, the people who are really in charge, that are above us.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: They haven't been on the street in maybe 20 or 30 years and you lose this stuff, you lose the memories as to what it's like.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: But now they're making those armchair quarter pack decisions about what you did in a split second, you know, and that, I think, is where things get dangerous.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: And in today's society, when everything is posted out there and your body cam, you know, has been released to the media before you've had a chance to review it or be interviewed, that is a really, really dangerous place that we're at.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty slippery slope for law enforcement, would you agree?
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and you know, you know the whole defund movement that was so prevalent, you know, not all that long ago.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: That would.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: That's the exact opposite of the proper position to take or solution to take.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: You need to provide these guys not with less but with more, with more people, with more training, and don't take that away from them.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Help them improve, help them do their jobs better.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I agree, going back to you in the car.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: So you're in the car, you're trying to figure out what you're going to do and you decide you drop the keys.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Is this something you guys had spoke about before or is this something that came up?
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: You saw your cover around you.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: You know if you gave them an opportunity, they were going to take it.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Walk to take it, walk me through that.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I had not imagined myself in that situation.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: I had never theorized being there.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: So those decisions were being made really quick, but they were survival decisions.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: I've said this many times I I've gotten a lot of things wrong during the course of my career.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't get it right every day.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Um I, I.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: I got it wrong on a bunch of different levels.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: That day, um I, I.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't have engaged as aggressively as I did.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't have removed my vest.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Um, I should have stayed close to a partner.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: All these things that now in hindsight, knowing what the circumstances are, knowing what the outcome was, reliving those events like I have a perfect solution for it right now, totally, but at the time I was just doing the best I could to stay alive.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so there you are in the hospital.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: You're into surgery.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: You obviously survived, because you're talking to me today.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: What was that process like?
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: How long were you in the hospital?
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: What were your final injuries?
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was in really great shape when I got hurt.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: So I think that for all of us out there, I think physical fitness is a very important part of the job.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Physical fitness can and will play into your survival if you have a traumatic injury.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: I was blessed.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: The entire shooting event has been a blessing for me, one of the best things that happened to me in my life, not just in my career career and you know, aside from the injuries, I get to the hospital and there's this young but expert, dynamic trauma surgeon on duty.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: His name's Richard Carmona, dr Carmona.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: He ultimately becomes the Surgeon General of the United States.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: So I mean, this guy was a rising star in trauma medicine.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: You know, by God's grace, he was there on duty.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: They opened my side up, they put a chest tube in and, you know, carved out some of the bullet fragments and then, like I actually recovered much quicker than you would think Not fully recovered, but I got shot right before Thanksgiving and I walked into my office before Christmas, so let's say, five or six weeks and I remember I walked in and my boss was like what are you doing here?
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: And I'm like man, I'm coming back to work.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: I know that I'm not physically capable of doing this job from top to bottom, but I didn't take a badge to sit on my couch and watch TV and feel sorry for myself.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: I wanted to get back.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: I wanted an opportunity to try again and see if I could do it right or see if I could do it better.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: And he was like man, like you don't understand how work comp works.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Like you can milk this thing.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: You got easily got 90 days and you can stretch that into 180 days and you could probably push it to a year if you wanted to.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: No one is going to question you or challenge you on that, but you know you go back to any of us.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: You know when we came on the job, like no one comes on the job with the mentality that they want to lay down, they want to be part of the action, like, like people sometimes burn out and get to the point where they're looking to avoid you know the real work, but, but young cops never do no, not at all, you know.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: And so work, um, but but young cops never do no not at all, you know.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: And so, looking at it from a um, law enforcement liability type of angle, right.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: So here we are, four days on the job, you're not trained, you're not experienced.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Uh, you've just got a badge and a gun.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: You can barely forget how to use them both and you get shot.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: There's obviously some liability there.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: On behalf of the ATF.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Were there any opportunities to sue?
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Did you think about suing Anything like that?
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, the liability attorneys were like lining up, literally lining up, and taking a number, you know, at the hospital and I was being told like how much money do you want for this?
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Like tell me how many zeros to get on the check and I'll get it for you.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: And this case will never see a courtroom, it will never be disputed.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: Like no, the agency wants you to go away.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Like this, this isn't good for them, this story isn't good for them, and like all I could say was man, like, get lost.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Like that's not why I took the job.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: There's no cop that ever took a job, ever even intending to become wealthy or rich or like make a lot of money.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: People that become involved in law enforcement have much different ideals and a much different purpose than to make money.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Like most of the cops I've known, all could have chosen another profession where they would have made more money, had a bigger bank account, a better house, better vacations, a boat in the driveway, a vacation house, easier time putting your kids through school All those things would have come with a different professional choice.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: But they chose to be in law enforcement for bigger reasons than money.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: You mean they could have been firefighters?
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: That sounds like you just described a firefighter.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: They could have been firefighters as well.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: And I you know we joke, you know the fireman cop rivalry, but like I've got immense respect for the people in the fire service community, like I don't want to be running into any burning buildings, I'll tell you that Amen.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: And if the building I'm in is on fire, you know what I want those guys coming to get me.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Both my boys are going into the fire service.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: One of them works on an ambulance now and he's going to go firefighter paramedic and my other one's going to go firefighter EMT.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of cool.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: I'm glad they're not following my steps, but I'm glad they're going into that public service emergency stuff.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they have such an important job, you know, and and they, they keep people alive.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: That's pretty cool and that's you know.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Ultimately, whatever we do, it always comes down to the people.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: So you had another incident a little bit down the road?
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I um, after my Tucson shooting I got transferred to Chicago um and and jumped in there.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Just tried to jump back in the fight in the game.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: So about a year later I was part of an undercover operation where we had done a machine gun reverse with some gang members in Joliet, illinois.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: What's a machine gun?
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Reverse what is that?
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Where, like we were, the gangsters were looking for guns and we, in an undercover capacity, had provided them some machine guns on a reverse sale with the intention of following those guns back to.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, these were kids that we were dealing with, so we were trying to follow them back to the shot callers, follow them back to the kingpins.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Like, who ultimately is benefiting from this?
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: It wasn't the kids.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: And in this surveillance of trying to figure out where they were going, they started running heat and we decided, like, look, we've got to knock this down.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: We cannot let our guns get loose.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: That is the last uh that.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: That that's not a solution, that's not an option.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: These guns can't get loose.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Um, and so we uh had a um string of uh units behind the suspects following them, and it ended up that me and my partner ended up being in front of the suspects, and so we were just going to perform a blocking maneuver and lock them in and squeeze them in so that they couldn't escape in their vehicle.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: So we called the shot, we moved into position and, right as we're ready to call for the takedown, like let's light these guys up and get them knocked down.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: There's a kid coming down the street on a bicycle, a little boy and my partner.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: He's like hey, hold on, everybody, hold tight, stand down, let's move this up the road a little bit and let this kid get out of the way.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: But it was that notice came out too late and the red lights and the blue lights were already spinning behind the suspects.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: So now we've we're not in a position to block anybody.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: There's a big gap between us, and so we jump out of our car, me and my partner, you know, in this lead vehicle, jump out of our car.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: And I remember hearing that suspect's vehicle.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: I remember hearing the gears drop down and the driver had his foot on the accelerator and I was pinned between my vehicle and a cornfield and there wasn't much room to work.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: And as I was trying to slide towards the cornfield, the driver was like keeping me in his sights, he was zeroing in on me and so, um, there was no, there was no escape for me.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Um, I ended up, uh, shooting at the driver.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: I shot the driver in the shoulder, like almost simultaneously with impact, and I got hit by, you know.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: I got hit by the front bumper of the car, got flipped up in the, you know, tumbled and spun in the air a couple of times, landed on the ground behind the car as it was, as it was leaving, continued to shoot from, you know, like a seated position which, like in hindsight, probably wasn't the most disciplined decision to make, which then turned into a vehicle chase.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: The suspects abandoned the car, it turned into a foot chase, it turned into a search.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: So, you know, within 18 months, I had been in two combat shootings and had been, you know, pretty critically injured in both.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: And so, like you know, but like I said, like I had this like willingness and probably a recklessness about how I was doing the job and I, I, I wasn't going to let those things stop me.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: I wasn't going to let those events prevent me from chasing my new plan A.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Did you guys ever catch the kids?
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we, we captured, captured them.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: They were kids, they were teenagers.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, like you know that they were, they were kids that were making bad decisions and were running with the wrong people.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Um, and you know, there's a price to pay for that.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so you had a rough start.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Your first 18 months was a rough start for you, I mean to say the least you know it was, and it brainwashed me in a bad way to some extent, in that, like I'd been, you know, I'd had a bullet go through my chest, I'd been in two shootouts, I'd been run over by a car, I'd shot a suspect and I felt like I was invincible.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: I felt like I was bulletproof and I was hearing stories of guys that had done 25, 30 years and had never broken leather on their service revolvers.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: I felt like man, I'm in it.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: But I was proud of that.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: I wasn't proud of the shootings or proud of necessarily even my actions in those shootings.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: I was proud that I was out there trying to make a difference.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: I was working.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the term shit magnet.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard it, were you one.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I probably fit the definition you know by lawman's terms.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definition you know by law man's terms, um, but like the magnet part, I'm not sure necessarily applies to me, because I don't think I was attracting it as much as I was looking for it.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was searching for it, I was, I was trying to find it, I.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: I, I didn't want to be in shootings, I didn't want to be in violent confrontations, but I was searching and looking for the people that were in those situations to see if I could do something about it.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, and this was this all happened in Chicago.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that second shooting was outside of Joliet Illinois, which is, you know, a town not far from from center city Chicago.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: So anything else happened while you were in that post or that assignment?
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: You know, that's where I like really started cutting my teeth in undercover work and developing the tricks of the trade and the trade craft of you know you don't just you don't just jump in and and work like long-term deep cover assignments.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: You know, you, you develop your expertise and you build that trade craft and you, sometimes, you, you, hopefully you build it through training, hopefully you build it through successful experience.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: A lot of times you build it through mistakes, um and, and you do something wrong or you say something wrong, and then you survive it and you're like man, I don't want to do that again, and it's a learning process, it's baby steps.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I heard a story, the business card story.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Did that happen during this assignment?
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: or was that somewhere else?
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: That was well it generated.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: It started like its core started in Joliet.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: You know, doing undercover work I'd cross paths with a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang in Joliet who had given me a business card and it was a very simple conversation.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: It wasn't an investigation that targeted the Outlaws, but that was a great piece of pocket litter from my undercover wallet.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: That was a great just something.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: If anybody ever looked in my wallet to see that, you know it was a benefit to me.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: It was a prop.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Years down the road I was working a case and I intentionally dropped my wallet.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: I'm in an undercover assignment.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: I intentionally dropped my wallet in a bar that the suspects were in, knowing that they were going to find it, wanting them to find it, wanting them to pick through it and see the things that were in my wallet.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: That would hopefully accelerate my credibility in their eyes, and one of those things was the outlaw card.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, the day after I dropped the wallet I called the suspects and said man, I think I lost my wallet in your bar.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Did you happen to find it?
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we found it, man, come over and pick it up.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: So we go to this tattoo parlor, me and my partner.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: The guy that has the wallet he's like, invites me into his office, like, hey, I got your wallet in here, let's chat for a minute.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: And he closes the door and my partner's trying to follow me in and he cuts my partner off and says, no, just Jaybird, like you stay outside.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: So we come in and then I thought it was pretty trippy he had a hinged lock, like a gate lock, on the inside of his office door and he locked the door and put a padlock on it from the inside.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: And I was like you know, okay, like you know, let's go Right.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: And so he pushes my wallet in front of me and he and he pushes the Outlaw card in front of me and he's like what's the story on this?
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: And I didn't have an undercover lie for it, I didn't need one, all I had to do was tell him the truth.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: I used to live outside Chicago.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: I was in Joliet.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: I crossed paths with this cat in this bar and he gave me this card and he said hang on to it.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: You know, sometime, maybe, you know, I might need to give him a call.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: And the suspect pushes this like jeweler's magnifying glass in front of me, like this one of those big domed magnifying glasses, like one of those big domed magnifying glasses, like a desktop magnifying glass, and he's like look at this card closer.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: He's like what can you tell me about it?
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: And so I'm looking through this magnifying glass, at the card, and there's nothing really unusual about it.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: There's a little hole in the corner, a little pinhole in the corner of it.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: And when I look up from the magnifying glass, he has a.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: He's got his elbows bipodded on the desk and he's holding a pistol in my face.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: And he's like you don't have anything more to say about this.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: And like I I didn't know where we, where he was going or why he was pissed off to the point where he had to point a gun at my head, sure.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: And he's like, if you look close, there's a little pinhole in the corner of that card.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: And he's like my conclusion is that this was pinned up on the bullet bulletin board of some cop behind his desk as a trophy.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: And I was like, oh shit, like that's exactly right.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like he got it exactly right.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Sir, you're brilliant.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: And um, you know, like the lesson learned there, like talking about, like getting out, trying to do the job and making mistakes.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: The lesson there was never, ever underestimate, uh, who you're working on, especially never underestimate their intelligence.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: This guy was working on probably never got out of junior high school, um, but he was street smart, um, and and I never, like, gave him enough credit for his street intelligence.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: He was smarter on the street than I was, and so that was a lesson learned that I survived.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: But I think any of us that have been on this job long enough, you literally run out of fingers and toes counting all the events where, when you look back on it, you're thinking I probably should have died that day, but only by the grace of God am I still here.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: I probably should have died that day, but only by the grace of God am I still here.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: Like you literally lose count and lose track of those events that take place over the course of your career.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: If you've done the job long, enough.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: I totally agree with that.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: You said something a second ago, jay, that resonated with me and you said you never underestimate your opponent and I think that's something that in law enforcement we hear through the academy.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: But it's situations like this where it really concretes it.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Are you familiar with a cop named Jeff Hall?
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: I don't believe I am.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: So Jeff Hall was an Alaska State Trooper.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Prior to that he was, and there's a podcast on my.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: There's an episode on my podcast, an interview with Jeff.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: But long story short, Jeff was Vietnam, went from Vietnam to Africa, did some contract war stuff in Africa.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Back to the Alaska State Troopers responds out to a serial killer who left Chicago and he killed people all the way up the Alcan into Alaska.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Late 80s, early 90s.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: In Alaska he ended up killing eight people over a period of two days and the SWAT team up there at CERT gets fired up and gets sent out on helicopters out into the remote bush area to try to find this guy.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: And they know this guy is going to be in a boat with a canoe on a river system somewhere.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Two helicopters are flying patterns, they find him and prior to that, you know, during the briefing one of the guys asked hey, you know who is this guy.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Is he somebody real?
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Do we need to be worried about him?
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Is he Green Beret?
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: What is he?
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: And the guy giving the briefing said nah, he's just some fuck from Chicago.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, that's all we know about him.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: So they go out with that mentality.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Well, when they get into the encounter with him, jeff is hanging out of the helicopter, shoots a burst of rounds at him, hits the guys in front of the guy.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: The guy's on a boat, he's got a bolt-action rifle, two rounds in his mouth.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: He comes up as they exchange fire.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: The bad guy kills the Jeff's partner in the helicopter and the bullet goes through him and shoots the co-pilot of the helicopter.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: And then the second round that Jeff fired zippered him right up the middle and took him out.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, but that's just underestimating that opponent, right?
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: You never know.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Some fuck from Chicago just killed you.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: He shot off three rounds from a bolt action rifle.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: In the time you could get a burst off from a full auto M16.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: It just goes to show you never know what you're coming against.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, if someone's committed to doing damage, they're going to do damage.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: You know, and one thing I learned, you know, in the undercover game is you know our special forces operators and you know they're the greatest war fighters on the planet.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: You know, there's a mantra there that says get off the X, which means, like you know what?
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Like, get yourself out of the funnel man, don't stand in the target zone.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: Um, and in undercover work, like actually the opposite is true.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: You're trying to get on the X, you have to be willing to be vulnerable.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Um, you have to put yourself at the center of attention.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: A lot of times you have to be flamboyant about it and, um, you're not trying to get off the X, you're trying to get on the X and you're trying to stay there safely for as long as you can, yeah, so what?
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: what was your next assignment?
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Where did you go after Chicago?
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: I actually ended up getting transferred back to Tucson.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: They let me come back home after things chilled out and cooled out and I just continued to push.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: You know, and you know, during the course of my career, I, you know, I I bought guns, undercover everything from street guns to shoulder launched rockets.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: I bought narcotics from dime bags and eight balls to cartel level dope.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: I bought explosives from homemade PVC pipe bombs that some tweaker was making in his mom's garage to servo activated remote control C4 devices.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: I infiltrated home invasion crews, played a hitman and murder for hire investigations.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Um, I responded uh to the Rodney King riots.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: After the uh, the cops that had beaten Rodney King uh were acquitted and so you know, la was rioting and uh was was, you know, took gunfire on there.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: I was riding with the Los Angeles uh police department patrolman in a marked unit and our car got shot up outside the Imperial courts neighborhood in Watts, which, if anybody's familiar with the movie training day, that neighborhood that Denzel's character, alonzo, is going back and forth in, that's the Imperial Courts, that's like a real deal spot.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: Those are like rough boys in there.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: I responded to the Columbine High School massacre after the fact, which was actually a life-changing event for me.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Obviously, the event had taken place.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: I was there in response.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: You know, when I'm walking through the crime scene of this high school man, there's dead kids everywhere, there's blood everywhere and what really stood out to me a lot of the battle damage there took place in the library, but the initial attack started in the cafeteria and of all the trauma that I witnessed there, what really burned in my brain was that there was backpacks, book bags, scattered everywhere in that cafeteria.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: When that thing went down, eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold had planted propane tanks in the cafeteria and had wrapped them with pipe bombs.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Their intention was to detonate these propane tanks and then pick off kids who survived the fireball, and their plan didn't work according to how they had laid it out.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: They ended up ultimately making their way, like I said earlier, to the library and did a lot of damage there.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: But in that cafeteria, what stuck in my brain was those book bags on the floor and those kids and the terror they must have felt and the you know experience that not being equipped or prepared mentally or emotionally or physically to deal with something like that and like that day.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: It was almost like my DNA changed, like I got angry that day, wanting and wishing I had been able to do something about it, wanting to do something about whatever that next event might be.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: I responded to the ATF's raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, texas, and again I was after action a part.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: You know we had four agents killed that day and a couple dozen more chewed up and torn up that were out there doing the very best they could to do their job.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: Career thumbnail is that, on this job, if you're not mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually prepared to encounter violence, and then if you're not ready to use an equal or greater amount of violence that it takes to contain that situation, man, it's a good day to rethink what you're doing for a living.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: Or maybe go sell used cars, or or go back to school.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: Um, because, like the violence is hunting us as we hunt it, all you got to do is turn on the TV.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: The violence is hunting us at the same time.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, jay, I totally agree.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: I think that you need to be willing and prepared, uh, and not looking for the fight, but looking for the fight, because if not, the devil's going to jump up in front of you and you won't be ready for it.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: And in today's day and age I've been in law enforcement more recent than you have A lot of these people coming into the field are because of body cams, because of liability.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: They're scared there's a failure to engage.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: You get out there and there's a time to talk and there's a time to fight, and it's never at the same moment.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: When it's time to fight, it's not time to get on your radio and call for help.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: You'll have a moment, you can do that.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: In a moment it's time to go hands-on and do stuff.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: But the people that we're seeing come not all of them, but a lot of the folks we're seeing coming into law enforcement today are either failing to engage or so scared of ridicule, liability and being doxxed on the internet and their families being doxxed that they're not taking action.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: and failure to take action is going to get somebody killed there's there's lawmen out there and women who've been killed because, uh, instead of like engaging the battle that's in front of them, they're mentally like going through the force continuum, totally Like have I?
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Have I checked box a?
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: Have I checked box B?
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: Have I checked box C?
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: Boom, you take a round.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: You never get to box D or E because there's so many layers in the decision-making process that they know they're going to be critiqued on.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: They know they're going to be criticized for and, like I think you said it well, when the fight is on, it's on, and the objective at the end of the day is to go home and kiss your babies.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Hey, let's talk about Hell's Angels.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: How'd you get involved in Hell's Angels?
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: And walk me through that.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Hell's Angels, how'd you get involved in?
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Hell's Angels and walk me through that.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: Well, when the opportunity came up to work on the Hell's Angels case, I had about probably 15 years of undercover experience behind me.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: I felt like I was as prepared as at least as I was going to be, at least as I was going to be my case agent, a guy named Joe Slotella, the most dynamic case agent, the most intelligent case agent that I ever worked with or ever worked for.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: Absolutely like a dog on a bone guy.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: Joe was relentless and he was intellectually brilliant.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: So he approached me with the to lead an undercover operation into the Hells Angels in Arizona.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: Um, actually, my first reaction was that I, like I'm not sure I'm the right guy to lead this.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: Um, I had a lot of undercover experience, but it wasn't biker experience and that world has its own protocols and its own culture to follow.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: You know, I told Joe like I can name a dozen guys who focus their attention, you know, on that culture, who would probably be a better lead for you than I will be.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: I'd love to be a participant, I'm just not sure I'm the right guy to be.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: On the point, you know, and Joe was like, look he goes, you're good at figuring things out on the fly, and the one thing that I had going for me is that I had a headstart.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: I'd already I'd been working a case.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: That was, we were looking at some bounty hunters that were out of control, that were doing a lot of crazy stuff, and in that case I had started crossing paths with members of the Hells Angels.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: I had started crossing paths with members of the Hells Angels so I'd already had at least a base of a criminal reputation started.
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: I wasn't coming into it from ground zero and so, you know, I was like basically trying to figure things out on the fly and trying to relearn some things.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: And you know, in the one thing that stood out to me your audience will know this in law enforcement, for us knowledge is power.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: The more that we know about who we're working on, what we're working on, that's where we get an advantage, an intellectual advantage, an investigative advantage, sometimes a tactical advantage.
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: So in my research into the Hells Angels, trying to figure out who's who in the zoo, like what are these guys are about, there's one thing that jumped out on me, and it was their willingness to kill their own people if they felt compromised, if they felt betrayed.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: They had a long history of killing their own members when they'd been deceived, and so that was something that was always in the back of my mind, in the back of my head.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Like these dudes, if they figure out that you're lying to them, that you're deceiving them, that you're trying to, that you have bad intentions for their future, man, they're not going to ask you, don't come around here anymore.
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: They're going to hit you on the back of the head with a baseball bat or drag a straight razor across your throat.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: They had a history of it, wow.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: So how did your investigation get started?
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Why did it get started?
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: Why did it get kicked off?
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, the Hells Angels in Arizona were operating with violence, but with impunity.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: No one was really checking them.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: There was probably when the case started, when our infiltration or investigation started.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: It was, I think, 2001.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: There was probably 180 Hells Angels in Arizona.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: And I will say this not every Hells Angel that I crossed paths with, not every patch member that I crossed paths with, was a murderer or a rapist or a gun runner or a narcotics trafficker or anything but the ones that weren't.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: They didn't hold any interest.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: I didn't need to be friends with them, I didn't need to hang out with them.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: We were on the hunt for violence.
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: Who's ordering the violence?
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Who's executing the violence?
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: Who's benefiting from the violence?
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: There was a murder of a woman, a civilian.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: That started at the Mesa Arizona clubhouse.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: Mesa is a suburb of Phoenix At the Mesa Arizona clubhouse.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Mesa is a suburb of Phoenix.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: This woman, cynthia Garcia, is at a party with the Hells Angels, socializing just like being a party girl.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: She says the wrong thing at the wrong time in front of the wrong people, and they boot stomped her to the brink of death.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: They stuffed her in the trunk of a car.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: They drove her out into the desert outside of Mason Apache Junction, arizona, and they stabbed her 27 times and tried to cut her head off.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: We knew that that crime event was hanging out there.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: The Hells Angels also got into a massive riot with their West Coast rivals, the Mongols, at a biker rally in Laughlin Nevada, and that was also an important element to keep moving forward, in that you know you have hundreds of bikers on the floor of the Harrah's Casino in Laughlin Nevada that are shooting and stabbing and beating each other, all under hundreds of closed circuit television cameras.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: It became national news, but those are a couple of the events that at least helped inspire that we were moving in the right direction, that we were focused on the right people.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: Walk me through your investigation, tell me about it, kind of start to finish.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Highlights, lowlights, all that Sure.
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: It started tentatively trying to figure out like what is our play?
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: We had an informant that was a member of a motorcycle gang called the Solo Angels Motorcycle Gang that was based in Tijuana, mexico.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: We first gained membership in the Solo Angels Motorcycle Gang.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: We infiltrated their gang and became patch members of the Solo Angels, not to investigate the solo angels crime but to use that patch and that association for street cred in the eyes of the Hells Angels.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: So now we were coming in as someone that was already a part of that culture.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: Um, and we, you know, we ran around and exposed ourselves and made friends and and showed our loyalty and and our respect for the Hells Angels and we were ultimately asked to hang around with the Hells Angels, which is an official club title in the biker world.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: A hang around is someone who's exactly that, someone who's hanging around and that person is deciding is club life for me, can I keep up with it?
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: And the club members are also looking at you saying is this someone that we want to elevate?
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: Do we see potential in this person?
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: So from the hang around status we were asked to prospect, which is you're a prospective member.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: I was told when I got my prospect patch.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: You're a hell's angel without his patch.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: All the rules that we live by, all the protocols, all the bylaws that we adhere to, you're responsible for those as well.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: The investigation was initially it was never intended to be an infiltration investigation.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: It was intended to be a side-by-side investigation.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: We were going to run side-by-side with the Hells Angels as the solo angels, and that side-by-side element it gave us control.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: We could be where we wanted to be, when we wanted to be there, how we wanted to be there.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: We could show up when we wanted to and leave when we wanted to bang.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: Now they had control.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: Now they were telling us where to be, when to be there, how to be there, how long we could stay, when we could leave.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: And that was it.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: Changed the game to some extent because, like I said, we'd lost that independence, we'd lost that control.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: Now I was a step and fetch for the Hells Angels.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: If they snapped their fingers, I had to jump yeah.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: In your time.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: What was?
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Did you have a cover story?
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: I mean I've never worked any undercover.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: I mean let's just say I haven't worked any undercover.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: Uh, did you have a cover story?
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: What did you tell these people?
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: Who are you?
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: What's your background?
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: What's all that about?
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my, uh, my cover story.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: Uh, I, I operated under the name of Jay Davis, I went by the nickname of Jay Bird and I told them that I was a gun runner, that I would try to accumulate and acquire guns in Arizona or in the United States where guns could be bought cheap, and then I would traffic those guns into Mexico where they were worth you know, 10 times the face value that they were in Arizona.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: And that scheme it made sense.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: It made sense in the criminal world.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: It was the reverse or opposite of narcotics trafficking.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Narcotics are cheap in Mexico and in foreign countries and you bring them here and they're expensive.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: Well, guns are cheap here but they're expensive in Mexico and they're hard to get.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: That cover story made sense.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: I told them that I had an association with some mafia types, some traditional organized crime types, and then I did some debt collections on contract, and so they thought I was a debt collector, collections on contract and so they thought I was a debt collector.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: And so that was the core of my cover story that I was running guns into Mexico and that I was doing debt collections for the mob.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: So obviously these guys are going to vet you out.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: They're going to check your backstory.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: Were you padded?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, were you backstopped with all of your information and criminal history and all?
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: that 100%.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: I had amazing backstopping.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: We had an entire team in Washington DC that built our backstopping, kept reinforcing our backstopping, kept updating our backstopping.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: The truth is, during this, the Hells Angels case lasted two years.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: The truth is, during this, the Hells Angels case lasted two years.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: During that case, they had put private detectives, private investigators, on me and the backstopping was so solid.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: Those private investigators were reporting back to the Hells Angels exactly what I had been telling them.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: Their research was falling in line with my backstopping.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: So actually, their private investigators were reinforcing my cover story.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: That is awesome.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: Obviously, if you're running for the mafia mob type, you're doing gun running and you're running with the criminal enterprise or the Hells Angels or whatever you've got going there.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: Did those two worlds ever cross?
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: Were you ever able to bring the Hells Angels into your world for street cred or anything like that?
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: It did, and that's a good question.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: One of the techniques we used, which, at least at the time, was pretty cutting edge.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: Some of the things we were doing were pretty audacious.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: We were doing street theaters, we were setting up crime events, being involved in crime events and inviting the Hells Angels to witness those crime events with us.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: I bought and sold guns, I bought and sold narcotics, I did debt collections.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: What the Hells Angels didn't understand at the time was that those street theaters, they were ruses, they were hoaxes.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: The people that I was operating with, that they were being invited to witness to, were actually other undercover agents that we were following a script we were working out of a playbook.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: Street theater is inaccurate conclusions formed from accurate observations.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: Um, street theater is inaccurate conclusions formed from accurate observations.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: So we allowed the hell's angels to accurately see me with guns, with drugs, doing debt collections.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: They would inaccurately conclude that that was the lifestyle, that that was my profession.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: They didn't realize that, that it was all a giant ruse.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: Did you have a partner in any of this that worked with alongside you?
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: I know you probably had a handler.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: But did you have a partner or no?
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: I had a bunch of partners along the way.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: First off, we had a task force and every important element of a long-term deep cover investigation was covered by various members of that task force.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: Everybody had, like, their own specialization and their expertise and they were an amazing group of lawmen and law women.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: You know, anybody that's on this job knows that you never accomplish anything of significance by yourself.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: It always takes help, it always takes a team.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: I had undercover partners that were absolutely amazing, fearless, audacious, smart, experienced.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: So when I was operating with these guys, I was operating many times side by side with other undercover agents who were as good or better than I was at the job, and it allowed us to operate to some extent with some freedom because we almost many times almost had a built-in cover team right there by our side.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: We didn't have to necessarily worry about a bus signal or a bus code.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: Um, if things went bad, like you know, I had people on my shoulder uh, right there that were witnessing it real time and you know I'm gonna ask some questions that a lot of listeners are gonna want to know, so I'll just throw them out there.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: Let you answer them.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: Uh, first, what about wearing a wire?
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: Were you ever wired up?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: Did you ever get caught wearing a wire?
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: Was that a fear of yours?
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Walk me through that, all the above.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: All the above?
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, to all the above.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: There was times when I wore a wire.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: I tried to wear a wire when I could.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: There was times when I didn't wear a wire, when I chose not to wear a wire, where I felt like it could be dangerous or compromising.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: I got patted down and searched for wires on occasion.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: Luckily, during those events were not days when I was wired, and so, yeah, the objective in undercover work is to gather intelligence and gather information.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: Sometimes that best information is captured electronically.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: You're having criminal conversations.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: It's not always buying drugs.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: It's not always buying a gun.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: A lot of times it's talking to people about crime events.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: Traditional detectives execute interviews in holding cells or out on the street.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: Uniformed officers are doing interviews out on the street.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: Undercover work is not all that different.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: You're, in essence, conducting an interview, but you're conducting it with sunglasses on over a pool table.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what know what would have happened if they would have caught you wearing a wire?
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: I can only imagine and only speculate that it would not have been a good day for Jaybird Davis to be found, you know, with a bug on him.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: That's a tough one to talk off.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: So.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: So in these situations where you're not wearing a wire you're not, you don't have that electronic evidence.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: I assume you're hot washing your information and by hot washing for the people out there listening, you go in, you do the interview, you immediately get back, download that information, write your report so it's fresh on your mind.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: If you wait a couple of weeks you're going to forget about it, I assume you were hot washing stuff.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we hot washed, you know, collectively, individually, as best we could, and I think that it never became more clear to me the value and the importance of being a good report writer as a lawman.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: Now you're not relying on that electronic recording to capture what was said or what was done.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: You're capturing it in writing, and detail is important.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: Little details are important.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: A lot of times I would write coded notes to myself of something.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: Someone said something, someone did, something I observed.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: I would write these coded notes to myself, like on bar napkins, so that if anybody ever shook me down, if everybody turned my pockets inside out and found one of these napkins, there'd be scribbles on it that they would not be able to decipher but for me would trigger key elements of a conversation or an event that I could then later reference.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: That, in essence, note that field note and make sure that I was writing my reports accurately.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Gotcha, what about drug use?
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: Did they ever test you with that and how'd you get through it?
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: It did.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: There was I mean, drug use was prevalent.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: There was always drugs around.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: There was always people, you know, snorting lines of Coke, taking knife tips of meth, getting high.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: I never saw people like injecting or using needles.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it was there.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: I just I didn't witness that.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: But I think that there's in that environment.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: There's this stereotype that every one of those guys is this burnout drug addict, and that wasn't the case.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: Like, I met a lot of members who weren't drug users.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: I actually met guys that, like, took pretty good care of themselves.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: They ate well, they got their rest, they went to the gym.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: Some of them went to the gym two or three times a day, and so what?
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: What I found is that you, you didn't necessarily have to be engaged in drug use to be believable.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: Um, did they ever test you?
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: Did you ever use drugs with them?
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: Or they ever challenge you?
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was, excuse me, there was times when there's no option, like you know what and I'll say this like none of that is worth dying over, when someone's holding a gun to your head and says you know, this is the test drive and you're going to hit that joint, or you're going to hit that line, or else I'm going to put a bullet in your head and you've done all the things you can to de-escalate that and and and dismiss that and and talk that off.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: Um and don't, don't take a bullet to preserve your freaking cover story.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: That's for sure.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, copy that.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: Tell me about committing crimes with them.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: Were you ever put in positions to commit crimes or setups to commit crimes, and if so, what were they and how did you get out of them?
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean for two years.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: You know you're running around and we were focused on the violence.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: And so there was fights, there was beatings, there was drug use, drug sales, guns, explosives, extortions, assaults.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: You know that's part of that world.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: You're trying to minimize those things.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: You're trying to capture that.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: You know who the participants are, who the.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: You know who the victims are.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: At times it's if you don't have the stomach for that, then that's the wrong assignment, because that's what you're looking for You're trying to get next to that Tell me about the banditos coming into Vegas.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: Well, the banditos were allegedly probably not allegedly they were planning to attend an event or make a stop in Las Vegas, nevada, and the Hells Angels felt like they owned Nevada.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: And the Bandidos didn't have a hall pass.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: They were coming through without approval hall pass.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: They were coming through without approval and so I was prospecting for the Skull Valley Hells Angels, the Skull Valley Charter, which was outside of Prescott, arizona, and I get a call one day like get to the clubhouse and bring all your hardware, with no other information.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: So I show up and I'm waiting for instructions.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on, but I know something's cooking.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: And then they lay out the plan to me Like the banditos are going to be in Vegas, we're going up there, you're going up there with us, we're going to put you on the point when the banditos show up, like you're either going to shoot them before they get their kickstands down down or we're going to shoot you, like you're going to have to prove yourself.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: And so in this trip between Skull Valley, arizona, and Las Vegas, which is probably a three or four hour drive, I was able to get a hold of Joe Slotella, the case agent, my handler.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: Give him a quick brief of what was going down and like, hey look, dude, like something's going to pop here.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: You know, something's got to give.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: And Joe made arrangements to have those banditos found and traffic stopped.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: And so we show up at this ambush point, this target location, and we're, you know, in the eyes of the hell's angels, we're there, we're ready, we're ready to take care of business and go to war.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: The banditos never made it there, but but we had circumvented their arrival, but but in the eyes of the hell's angels, as far as they knew, like we were there to take care of business.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what was uh tell me about the mob boss?
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: Well, with my debt collector background, um, I was constantly referring to, uh, to big Lou, mr Big um, this generic mobster that that I did collections for, um, and I use that story to like escape and buy time, sometimes, like if I needed to get home, if I needed to go see my family, I could say, hey, boys, I'm off the books for a couple of days, man, I got to go do a collection.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: I got to go back East, I got to go to Philly, I got to go to Jersey, I got to wherever, I got to go to Miami.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: You know I do that and I'd make calls, I would three-way calls from those locations so that they would believe that I was there.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: I'd come back with a lot of money in my pocket.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: So, again, an element of the street theater, of that street theater drug deal for them or, I'm sorry, a street theater gun deal for them earlier in the day.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: So I led them to believe that I had a gun trafficking job for the mob and they saw it and witnessed it.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Then I presented to them I said you want to meet Mr Big, you want to meet my boss, and they were like they were all in.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: They wanted part of that hustle.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: They knew that I always had money in my pocket and so I had coordinated with the Las Vegas Metro Organized Crime Squad who I had known and worked with before and like they were the consummate professionals, these guys were amazing and they had a couple operators that played that stereotypicalellas mob boss to a tee.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: Like these guys would show up and you know, with the $5,000 suits and the pinky rings and you know, and the slick back hair and they sounded like they were from New Jersey and they played it really great.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: So we briefed this Mr Big introduction and I show up at this location where this meeting is going to take place, and we're there to meet Mr Big and I get pulled over and there's some bodyguards there and out from the behind the bodyguards steps my Mr Big.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: But it wasn't the undercover operator that I'd rehearsed with.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: It was this old man who, like I'd never seen before and he just jumped into the role and he played the game and followed the script and I introduced him to the Hells Angels and he put on this big, very much believable mob show.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: And so now the Hells Angels had met Big Lou and it wasn't me just telling stories about it.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: They'd met him, they'd shaken his hand, they saw it with their own eyes, they smelled it, they heard it.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: In the end, the guy that played Big Lou was actually a mob boss who was an informant that was part of a witness security package that had been busted in Vegas for laundering money.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: The true undercover, mr Big, had been called out at the last minute on another assignment and wasn't available.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: And they plugged this guy in there and you know, obviously he wasn't acting, he wasn't playing, he wasn't undercover guy.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: They plugged this guy in there, um, and he could.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: You know, obviously he wasn't acting, he wasn't playing, he wasn't undercover guy, he was being who he was, he could walk the walk, talk the talk and 100% convince him.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: How did this whole thing come to an end and why did it come to an end?
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, after, uh, two years of, you know, 18, 20 hour days every day, day after day, month after month, year after year, I mean those days were like, were like dog days.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: Those years were like dog years, it was.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: You know, we packed a lot of work into that amount of time we're the case is getting ready to get wrapped up.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: We probably had what we needed, uh, for the indictments.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, like, like, we had gone, we had built a very strong, solid case, um, but I still had not gotten my Hell's Angels patch and I, like I were.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: I started making decisions that were not the best decision for the investigation.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: I started making selfish decisions.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: I wanted to get that patch.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: I was determined to get that patch.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: I wasn't going to walk away after all that and be left as a prospect on the edge.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: And so, based on my cover story, that solo angels cover story with the gun trafficking angle into Mexico, I approached the Hells Angels and said there's a Mongol who was again their West Coast rival.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: There's a Mongol in Mexico who's running his mouth and he's saying that they kicked our ass in Laughlin and they're going to start pushing Mexican methamphetamine up into Arizona, even though we own Arizona.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: There's nothing we're going to be able to do about it.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: They're going to start pushing Mexican methamphetamine up into Arizona, even though we own Arizona.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: There's nothing we're going to be able to do about it.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: They're going to get a foothold.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: They're going to set up business here.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: And I volunteered.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: I said I want to go down there and take care of business.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: I want to go down there and kill that guy.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: I want to go down and kill that Mongol.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: And they completely embraced the idea, like yeah, this is your opportunity to prove yourself.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: They gave me the gun, they gave me instructions on how to do it, and so what we did is I let the Hells Angels believe that I was going to Mexico to find this Mongol and assassinate him.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: What we really did is we just went in the desert outside of Phoenix.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: We took a seized Mongol vest.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: We put it on a member of our task force.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: We dug a shallow grave.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: We duct taped our victim.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: We put the Mongol vest on him.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: We duct taped his ankle and his feet.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: We put him in the shallow grave.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: We had a homicide detective come and help us, who had obtained some cow blood and some cow guts to make it look like our victim had been beaten with a baseball bat, dragged out to the desert and shot in the head.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: Then we took pictures of our fabricated crime scene.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: We cut the bloody Mongol vest off of our victim, we FedExed, or dressed up a FedEx box to make it appear that we'd FedExed this murder evidence from Mexico back to ourselves in Arizona.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: And then we invited the Hells Angels to come and hear the story and once again it was beyond just telling a story, like I was putting physical evidence of this murder in their hands.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: They saw the pictures of the dead Mongol.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: They saw him with his brains blown out in the dirt in the shallow grave, duct, taped, beaten.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: They had the bloody Mongol vest in their hands.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: And at that point me and my partner, they said hey man, you guys have shown you got what it takes.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: Like you know, welcome to the hell's angels.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: They put loaner cuts on our back and they, you know they said look, we've got to get a national vote.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: This isn't fully sanctioned at this point, but as far as we're concerned, you're hell's angels now.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: You're hell's angels now, and so really you know the the the case.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: You know, during the course of this two years there'd probably been eight or 10 murders that took place that we were in and around um, uh, an immense amount of violence, like I said, cynthia Garcia's murder, the Harris riot, uh, these murders, um, it was deemed that that it was just too out of control, like the, the life had gotten too crazy, it had gotten too violent, um, and so we executed our indictments.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: I think we indicted 55, uh suspects, 16 on Rico, and then it actually ended in a very traditional way, a very law enforcement traditional way, with raids, arrests, search warrants, and so you know, at least the proactive, undercover element of the case was complete.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: And I assume they learned about your involvement through the discovery process.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they did through discovery and you know, if people don't understand what discovery is, as the government like, we're required evidence that they're going to use to try to prosecute you for whatever that alleged crime is.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: So in that process, you know, the Hells Angels learned that that Jay Bird Davis, the gun runner, debt collector, hit man, was actually Jay Dobbins, an ATF agent, and you know, as you can imagine, that did not go over very well.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: How long did it take for the death threats to start happening and you to get greenlit?
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they came pretty quick Once it was out.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: The tiger doesn't change his stripes.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: The Hells Angels are the Hells Angels.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: They're.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: The tiger doesn't change his stripes.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: The hell's angels are the hell's angels.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: They're the hell's angels for a reason they're some of the baddest cats on the planet.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: They were not afraid of me.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: They were not afraid of the government.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: They were not intimidated by who had infiltrated them.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: There was contracts farmed out.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: They were exposed to the MS-13, farmed out.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: They were exposed to the MS-13, to the Aryan Brotherhood to 18th Street gang in Los Angeles.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: This is all documented, verified, corroborated intel.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: There was lone wolf people sniffing around them and so, and so it, it, it got, uh, it got pretty crazy.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: Uh, without a doubt.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: So I want to talk about two more things and then we're going to bring it to an end, but uh, I want to talk about the ATF.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about how they responded to you after this.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: What was your exit like?
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Um, tell me about that.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: Um, tell me about that.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, before I, I, I tell, uh, the dirty part of that story.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: Um, I, I, I, I want to say that I love ATF.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: I've always loved ATF.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: Um, I, I admire the men and women with their boots on the ground out there trying to keep the rest of us safe, and doing it without, you know, with a lot of criticism and without any glory.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: There's some amazing, amazing ATF employees.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: When the death threats started stacking up on me, I complained to ATF that they weren't being reacted to and I wasn't trying to say like they're valid threats.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: I was saying you have an obligation to chase these down, to run them into the ground.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: And you know I've got some very good friends with the FBI that have done deep cover infiltrations for the FBI, specifically Joe Pistone, donnie Brasco and Jackie Garcia, jackie Falcone and Jackie Garcia, jackie Falcone.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: When those guys came out of role from long-term deep cover infiltrations with the mob, the FBI went to the heads of the crime families in New York and said like this is what went down.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: We understand you don't like it, but nothing's going to happen to our guys.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: Don't like it, but nothing's going to happen to our guys, like the blue wave that is going to hit you.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: We'll wipe you guys off the face of the earth.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: Our guys are untouchable and they were smart enough to understand that ATF was never willing to do that for me.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 2: Atf was never willing to try to cap any of this off.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: That actually, I was being told you're on your own Like too many people hate you, jay.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: Too many people want you dead.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: Where do you want us to start?
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: You want to start with the Hells Angels, or should we go to the MS-13?
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: Or should we go to the Aryan Brotherhood?
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: Or should we start trying to track these lone wolves down?
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: And when I say they, I had a handful of people that were my supervisors at ATF that were beyond corrupt.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: They were criminals.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: They never had any business having a gun or a badge.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: So I complained.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: These guys are underreacting, like I'm not getting any support.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: And when I complained I got labeled as a whistleblower.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: I got isolated.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: They started a smear campaign on me.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, they came after me.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: They came after me with both barrels, both barrels.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: They came after me the way that I had hoped that they would go after the threats against me.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: And there weren't just threats against me, there were threats against my family against my wife and my kids that didn't sign up for this, that it wasn't the cost of doing business In this dispute process.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: In this argument I got into with ATF the first and only time in the history of the agency they withdrew all my backstopping, they pulled all my backstopping and they made all my personal, private information public record.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: Three months after they exposed me and unmasked me, my house was burned to the ground by arsonists.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: Wow, these same people that were orchestrating all this then doubled down on me and tried to frame me as the arsonist of my own house and in doing so, they were saying, like you're willing, they were trying to sell that I was willing to kill my own family by a fire.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: Sell that I was willing to kill my own family by a fire, which resulted in a lawsuit.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: The lawsuit went up and down, through trials, appellate courts.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: It actually got to the footsteps of the Supreme Court and in the end, the legal decision was that all these things that you've alleged, all these crimes, plus the lying that the government did about it, the hiding of evidence they were recording me illegally, they were electronically recording me this whole scheme to try to frame me was exposed, was proven to be true and the court said we're not disputing the facts of this, like you've proven the facts of this, but there's no law that says that this agency had to protect you.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: There's no law that says they have to defend you.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: They didn't break the law.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: So too bad, so sad.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: You know we wish that hadn't happened to you, but good luck.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: No one was held accountable for that.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: It was a handful of people.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: It was this perfect storm of corrupt and criminal management.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: It wasn't ATF, this big 30,000 foot view of ATF.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: It was a handful of people that were in control of it and they all got away with it.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: Scott free.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: You know my story is obviously different than yours, but the one thing that is the constant and parallel to your story is that you do this for your whole life.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: You risk your life, you sacrifice your family, you sacrifice yourself.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about mental health here in a second, but a lot, of, a lot of that stuff changes and then, at the end of the day, that thin blue line that was supposed to protect you and your brothers and sisters in blue it's just not there.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: You know it's there until it's not.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: Um, and for me that was a really rough time.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: For me it was a rough realization that I'm on my own and I'm by myself and everybody I thought was going to be at my back isn't there.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: Well, the way I was treated, again by a handful of people, it caused me to question everything that I believe, that I stood for.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: All those things that I had done over the course of my year I felt were pure and were true, and like I didn't get it right every day.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: I wasn't the perfect employee, I wasn't, you know, like some boy scout model citizen, but like every day I came and tried to do my job the very best I could do it.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: And it caused me to question that, like everything I'd been led to believe, everything I'd been told wasn't true and I wrongly believed.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: Now, in hindsight, that I had hundreds or thousands of friends.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: What I found out is that I had hundreds of thousands of acquaintances.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: I had a handful of friends that were going to stand by my side, that believed in me, that were going to stick up for me.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: They showed their colors.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: But it was a hard time learning that lesson in a hard way, so true.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: Jay, you think you have these people that got your back.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: You know, and I was talking to my therapist the other day about this and we're specifically talking about, uh, law enforcement.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: And you know, and I was minimizing it in my head, I'm like you know what, maybe them not having my back, you know, wasn't that maybe I'm making it a bigger deal than it was?
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: And she's like don't minimize it.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: You know, she said and I said, I said well, I said it's kind of like me get into a fight on the street and nobody shows up.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: I call for cover and my partners don't show up.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: They leave me to die on my own.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: You know, and in my world and in your world, you're out there, you're vulnerable, you're exposed and you turn around and look and those people that have been behind you for years are nowhere to be found.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: That's a really tough realization.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll say this.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: I'm not bitter, I'm not angry, I'm not resentful the people that intended harm on me, like I don't have any ill wishes for them, um, because the best way to pay those people back, uh, for those bad things is to live a happy life, um, and to be positive and find some other or new way to make an impact and make a difference.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: Um, uh, like I, I truly hope that they learned a lesson from it, um, that that there's a better way to do business, um, and that we don't have to treat each other that way, uh, that that we don't have to we, we, you don't have to put people through that.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: Like you may have learned the way I did, they're very, very good at making you feel isolated.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they're very good at making you feel like no one believes you, no one likes you, no one wants you around.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: Um, they, they are the masters of convincing you of that.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was told by my Lieutenant that, uh, you know, I was just a cog in the wheel and the machine keeps moving and it, you know, basically chew me up, spit me out, and you know people don't have time to come back and help you out because we're too busy moving forward on our own and it's a pretty insensitive uh you know, as insensitive as that is, um, I actually think it's true Um, in my case, the, the machine of government was was too big and and and too massive and too powerful to worry about Jay Dobbins not being happy to worry about me feeling like I wasn't being taken care of.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: You know, the machine of government is a steamroller, and like they were basically saying like look, this steamroller is going to keep moving forward.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: You need to be smart enough to get out the way.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: Don't stand in front of it, step aside and choke it down, and if you stand in front of it, it's going to run right over the top of you and keep going.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: Totally so.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: You mentioned your wife and kids.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: Uh, were you married during this whole time?
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: I was Wow, tell me, and tell me about that.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: How did this investigation in your career?
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, just to recap, we're talking two shootings in the first 18 months.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: You've been shot, you've been ran over.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: You've dealt with all these bad guys.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: There's a fear of never coming home.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: There's a fear of exposure to your family.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: You have Columbine.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: You're walking through the halls.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: I've been to two active shooters myself.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: I understand what you're saying.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: I understand what you hero looks like.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: I've worked alongside some heroes.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: I've walked alongside some heroes I surely am not one.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: I got too many things wrong.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: I made too many mistakes to ever even allow anybody to say that about me.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: But my story has a hero, and the hero of my story is my wife.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: And, and the hero of my story is my wife, um, there were a thousand times where I should have came home and everything that I own should have been laying out in the front yard and the blocks changed.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: Um, she continued to hang in there, um and um, you know, like, so that is that.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: That is an amazing positive that came from all this.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: I'm constantly trying to grab onto the good things now and let go of the bad things.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: Good for you.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: Maybe even more important than that, and that's of extreme importance to me, is that all these experiences elevated my faith, and that's what I truly hold on to.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, throughout my career and even today, um, like I, I loved Psalm 23,.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: Four, though, I walked through the valley of shadow of death.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: I fear no evil, for you are with me, um, through all this, um, like, like God has had his hand on my shoulder and, like we said earlier, I've made a million mistakes in my life.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: I've done a million things wrong.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: I carry regret and I carry shame and humiliation and embarrassment.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: That's by my own hand, but between God and Gwen and my kids, they've given me a million and one second chances to try to get it right.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: So cool man, and second chances and forgiveness are super important.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: If I wanted a second chance, I have to extend second chances.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: If I want forgiveness in my life, I've got to extend forgiveness, and that has what helped me overcome that bitterness and that resentfulness that I was holding on to for a while.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: I was like, let it go, just forgive them, give them a second chance, whether they deserve it or not, because those are the things that I wanted.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: I wanted to be forgiven, I wanted a second chance, whether I deserved it or not.
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: Man, you're striking a chord that you don't even know right now.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: You know what, and I think you can relate to this.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: I can see the way you're reacting to it.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: I found personally it's much easier to forgive other people than it is to forgive ourselves.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: True that, buddy?
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: True that?
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, you know it's.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: Uh, the same conversations happened in the last week, just in a different setting.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Um, so I'm glad to hear you say it.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: You're helping me out.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: You know, last night I was having dinner with, uh, my new job.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: I was out with some clients last night and some factory folks and we were talking about this very conversation, talking about how law enforcement changes you as a person.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: You got the shield of armor.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: Your views change the way you talk, your attitude, your language of armor, your views change the way you talk, your attitude, your language.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: All of that changes who you are on the outside, but on the inside you still hope to be that God-fearing man and husband and father and provider.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: You know that God intended you to be and we were talking about it last night and the fact that you call your wife the hero.
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: I had the same conversation.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: It's only because of my wife's tenacity to love me and not quit that we haven't been divorced 27 times, you know, over a 21 year career.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: And uh, it's just, it's amazing to have that strong backbone and support in your corner.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: It's, it's way cool, way cool and faith.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: You know, my wife would have quit if it wasn't for faith in God, if it wasn't for her Christian upbringing and her background and her faith and divorce not being an option.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: You know, god is what has kept us together and kept me alive for these years, and it sounds like you have the same story and it's super cool to hear somebody else talking about it super cool to hear somebody else talking about it.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, um, uh, like I went through a phase in my life and it's when I when I say a phase, that's like probably trying to protect myself.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: For a big part of my life, um, like I was entirely selfish.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: I made decisions for me, about me, about my career, about my challenges, about my objectives.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: I didn't factor in, like, what those decisions meant to my wife and to my kids.
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: This is a very unflattering statement to make about yourself, and I'm especially like to an anonymous audience out there.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know who's hearing this or who's going to see it, but if I'm not transparent, if I don't tell the truth, then nothing I've said in this interview is worthwhile.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: Like I was a bad husband.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: I was a bad father.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: I failed my family many times.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: I spent my professional life gaining people's trust, gaining their loyalty and, on occasion, gaining their love, all to betray it in a courtroom and testify against them.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: And then, when I look back at myself, I'm like you know, you did it to your family too.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: You betrayed your family too.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: You betrayed them for your selfish reasons.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: You know there's one event like I'd been gone on an operation for an extended period of time.
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: I walk in the door and my wife told me you cannot be gone for a long time and then walk in here and speak to me and the kids like we're street gangsters.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: And in my defense I was like I can't turn this on and off.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: I'm not a light switch.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: People that treat what I do for a living as a hobby end up dead.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: And then her response was I understand that and I understand that you're like under uh, you know pressures and stress, but when you come to this house, instead of a light switch you better install a dimmer switch and dial that attitude down.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: And if you can't do that, don't come home, cause you're not welcome here.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: Wow, that is, that is what I had done.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: I'll say again like I'm not trying to humiliate myself, I'm just trying to be transparent with your audience, that's what this?
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: that's what this podcast is all about Transparency, transparency, authenticity.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: The, the.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: The people that loved me the most, the people that were the most loyal to me my wife and my kids, people that were the most loyal to me my wife and my kids I treated the shittiest.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: I took them for granted, and you know what I get to live with that.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally get it, it's the same way.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: 21 years and it was 21 years of the Aaron show, 21 years of what I wanted to progress my career, 21 years of working around the clock and missing all the stuff that I could have opted to opt in for.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: But I opted to take an overtime shift or to push the extra clock on a homicide or whatever it may be.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: And it's not when you're in it.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: You don't get it.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: It's not until you're on the, at least for me.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: I'm on the outside, on the healing side of life, the better side of life, looking back, thinking, holy shit, you know, all this time I thought everybody else was a problem.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: Guess what, it was really me, I was the problem.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: You know, I'll say this and I think that, like, maybe I'm trying to protect us in saying this.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: I don't feel defensive in saying it, but I think it's worth saying.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: There's people who go through life content to be average, and that's fine.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: There's people that want to be great, which is better.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: There's people that strive for excellence, which is wonderful.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: But then there's a handful of people that want to be elite.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: They want to be the very best at whatever it is they do.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: But to be elite, you have to be obsessed.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: Obsession comes with it, and that obsession is a double-edged sword.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: That obsession will push you to great heights and allow you to accomplish amazing things, but there's a penalty to be paid for that, and a lot of times our families are the ones that pay for our obsession to try to be elite.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: And I was just.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: I was ignorant of that for so long and I, like I, basically had to have my ass kicked emotionally and spiritually to figure it out.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: You know I couldn't have said any better myself, man.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: That was totally great.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: Dude, thank you so much for coming on and chatting tonight and opening up and being vulnerable about the mental health, your marriage, the story is the story.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: People can Google you and they can find your story a hundred different places.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: The one thing I've never heard anybody talk about is, or you speak about in any of the things I've watched, is the effect on the ATF, the mental health, the marriage component, and at the end of the day, you know, especially the mental health and marriage component, that's what we get to live with for the rest of our lives, long after the badge says retired.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: So thank you for coming and talking about that and be willing to share your story with everybody.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: Maybe, maybe we, maybe we help somebody in this conversation.
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: Maybe great man.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: You know, go out there, man, like go be amazing, put your dent in the universe.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: That's it, bro.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: You know, and this podcast has been great over the last year, coming up on a year, I think I've got 53 or 54 episodes right now, and all these episodes is this vulnerability.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: It's what we're talking about.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: It's the shit that nobody wants to talk about.
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: It's the loss of identity.
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: And you know, you've done this for so long and I guarantee you had a loss of identity.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: We just didn't even touch on it where, like I did this yesterday, you know who am I today?
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: Um, and you know, and you don't have to be a cop to understand that you could be a pharmacist and understand what a loss of identity looks like.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: You know, and that's what I like to tell these stories and relay these messages in such a way that, no matter what walk of life you're in, you can glean something from it, and hopefully there's some entertainment and value that goes with that.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: Well, I think you know, regardless of what you're doing for a living like my stories and the people that I know are predominantly in the law enforcement field but they go through these amazing, dynamic careers and they do all kinds of like unimaginable things and have unimaginable experiences and then they retire and they're lost because they've lost their sense of purpose.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: Like when you're a lawman or a law woman, it's super easy to define your purpose and then, when that's taken away from you, it's like who am I?
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: What do I stand for?
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: Especially people that have a desire to serve others in their heart.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: Who am I serving?
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: Who am I helping now, when they've spent their whole lives helping people and now they're lost, and man, that's a hard time.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: It really is, buddy.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: Well, jay, thank you so much, man, for coming on the show, thanks for taking the time to share with my audience and share your personal insight, your stories and even some of the sensitive stuff.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate it, dude, and I wish you the best of luck in the future.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: I'll pray for you and, uh, I'm so glad that faith is back in your world and your family's there around you.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: You need great support.
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, my friend.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you.