Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #124: Justin Bocock / Homicide Detective / Secret Service / True Crime Author

Transcript

#124: Justin Bocock / Homicide Detective / Secret Service / True Crime Author · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together
• 0:15
  and we're Live with Justin Bocock.
• 0:16
  Welcome and thank you for your many, many years of service.
• 0:20
  I really appreciate it. How are you?
• 0:22
  Good, good. Thank you very much.
• 0:24
  I'm really, I'm really excited to talk.
• 0:26
  I'm really excited to be in touch.
• 0:27
  So you had 22 years in a combined, over 22 years combined
• 0:33
  federal and local law enforcement career, correct?
• 0:39
  Yes, correct. And you want to tell me a little
• 0:41
  bit about how that started and how you got into it?
• 0:43
  Yeah. Yeah, You know, I really fell
• 0:46
  into law enforcement. It just kind of happened.
• 0:49
  So I graduate. I was born in Tucson, AZ and I
• 0:54
  graduated high school and college really wasn't going to
• 0:56
  be my thing. So I decided to join the Air
• 0:58
  Force. Well, I ended up being an
• 1:00
  aircraft mechanic on large cargo airplanes, C141 BS at McGuire
• 1:05
  Air Force Base, New Jersey. And part of what we did there
• 1:09
  was we transported the limos for presidential visits.
• 1:15
  So that's how I found out about a thing called the the Secret
• 1:17
  Service Uniform Division. So I did four years in the Air
• 1:21
  Force and I got out after four years and I actually got a job
• 1:25
  working in Seattle where I did heavy maintenance on United
• 1:30
  aircraft. And before that I started
• 1:33
  applying with the United States Secret Service Uniform Division.
• 1:36
  But it's about the uniform division.
• 1:39
  So yeah, the uniform division is basically, I didn't know what it
• 1:42
  was either until I talked to them.
• 1:44
  They basically secure the property.
• 1:46
  So agents will secure the people and uniform division.
• 1:50
  We were responsible for, like the residents, the motorcade,
• 1:54
  when it stops, if they go to a hotel, we'll secure that hotel.
• 1:59
  If you've ever been to a presidential event and you go
• 2:01
  through the magnetometers in the beginning, so stuff that look
• 2:06
  for metal and weapons and things like that, that's what uniform
• 2:09
  division does. And we all could wore uniforms.
• 2:12
  You know, you have to go to the White House and you see people
• 2:14
  with white shirts and a presidential seal on their arm
• 2:17
  in black pants. That's uniform division.
• 2:20
  Excellent. And it took three years to get
• 2:22
  the security clearance for the job.
• 2:23
  So I was out of the military for a year and a half, living in
• 2:27
  Seattle, working on airplanes. And I got a call at 4:00 in the
• 2:30
  morning and they said, hey, the Academy starts in two weeks.
• 2:35
  We want you to be there. And we need, we need a yes or no
• 2:39
  right now. So of course I said yes, yes.
• 2:43
  And I packed my stuff up and drove to Washington, DC, where I
• 2:48
  went through the Secret Service Academy, graduated from there,
• 2:51
  and I was assigned to the Naval Observatory, which is the
• 2:54
  official residence of the vice president.
• 2:57
  And at the time, that was Al Gore.
• 3:00
  I'm dating myself a little bit, but I was in, I was, I would
• 3:04
  watch Al Gore's house when he was there.
• 3:07
  I did that for about a year and a half.
• 3:08
  Secret Service uniform division was awesome, Great training.
• 3:13
  It was a lot of fun. What was the training like?
• 3:15
  Can you tell me about the training?
• 3:16
  Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it it was.
• 3:19
  So you start your training in Beltsville, MD, and then you go
• 3:23
  down to Fletzie, which is a federal law enforcement training
• 3:27
  center in Glencoe, Georgia. You go down there for 20 weeks
• 3:31
  and you get certified as a federal police officer.
• 3:33
  And basically down there you learn how to be a police
• 3:37
  officer. We learned the laws, the federal
• 3:40
  laws, what we can and cannot do, how to arrest somebody.
• 3:44
  It's basically like a police Academy.
• 3:46
  We went through scenarios where it was like a domestic violence
• 3:49
  call and you get called to it and you had to figure out how
• 3:52
  you and your partner had to figure out how to manage this
• 3:54
  situation. They taught us driving,
• 3:57
  obviously shooting a lot of firearm stuff, but it was your
• 4:00
  basic police type training. So after you graduate that
• 4:04
  Academy, you go back to Washington, DC or the Secret
• 4:10
  Service Academy is actually in Beltsville, MD.
• 4:13
  And there we got specialized training where it was.
• 4:16
  And honestly, we did a lot of PTA, lot of physical training.
• 4:20
  We did a lot of running. We had water survival stuff.
• 4:23
  And it was all centered around protecting the person.
• 4:27
  So they would have a dummy that would be the the same height and
• 4:31
  weight as Bill as Bill Clinton. He was the president at the
• 4:33
  time. And it would be like, OK, you're
• 4:35
  in a burning building, get him out, figure out as a team how to
• 4:38
  get him out of the building. Cool.
• 4:39
  We got to do all these things. There was a lot of team building
• 4:42
  and it was great training. I mean, we learned so many team
• 4:45
  building things and basic EMT stuff and obviously firearms.
• 4:51
  And it was, it was it was really, really good training.
• 4:55
  But your, your job is your training for the thing that you
• 4:58
  hope never happens, right? You're training for that thing
• 5:01
  that hopefully never happens. And when I got to the Naval
• 5:05
  Observatory, it was really boring.
• 5:08
  It was really boring. And then you're going to lie, it
• 5:11
  was really boring. It's a lot of sitting around and
• 5:14
  I'm like, and everybody I saw, I was still in Academy mode.
• 5:16
  So somebody would walk by. It's a public roadway right by
• 5:19
  the Naval Observatory there on Massachusetts Ave.
• 5:22
  And they're walking by and I'm watching them intently, you
• 5:24
  know, got the binoculars. And nothing ever happens.
• 5:27
  And I'm not saying I wanted things to happen.
• 5:29
  But you. Go through, you know, you go
• 5:31
  through, you know, 40 plus weeks of training.
• 5:34
  You want to do your job. You're like, I'm, I'm ready.
• 5:36
  Like I've been in the scenarios where a guy pops out with an
• 5:39
  AK47 and shoots paintball rounds at me.
• 5:42
  I'm ready. I'm ready to do this.
• 5:46
  Vigilant. Do they change?
• 5:47
  Do they train you, train you how to remain vigilant because they
• 5:49
  know that it's like you're going to be boring 98% of the time or
• 5:52
  something like that? Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:55
  And they do that in the scenarios.
• 5:57
  So when I've said the AK47, they obviously didn't shoot real
• 6:00
  guns, but everybody's probably heard of it now.
• 6:02
  It's called simunitions. And it's basically, it looks
• 6:05
  just like a bullet. It has a very small amount of
• 6:08
  gunpowder, but it has a little paint on the end and you can
• 6:12
  actually put it into regular guns.
• 6:15
  So we would carry our regular handgun, They would carry the
• 6:19
  bad guys would carry AK-40 Sevens or AR Fifteens or
• 6:22
  something a lot heavier than what we had because we mainly
• 6:24
  carried handguns. And they would say we would have
• 6:27
  scenarios where they would just simply say, I want you to walk
• 6:29
  down the street and you're going to lunch.
• 6:33
  You and your partner, you're on break, walk down the street, go
• 6:35
  to lunch. And we're in a controlled
• 6:37
  environment on, you know, the Secret Service training Academy,
• 6:40
  which they have a whole, they have like a three block city
• 6:42
  that they built there. And some, some scenarios you
• 6:46
  walk down the street and you're you're hand on gun.
• 6:49
  Like are you going to walk down the street with your hand on
• 6:50
  your gun? You know, I mean, you're in DC,
• 6:52
  you're going to lunch, just walk, go to lunch.
• 6:54
  There are sometimes where you would go and nothing would
• 6:57
  happen. You would just walk to lunch and
• 6:59
  you'd walk in the door and they'd go break scenarios over
• 7:03
  and you're kind of like, well, what, what, what is that?
• 7:05
  Because like not every situation is bad, but there's other times
• 7:08
  where they would say just walk to lunch and you're walking down
• 7:12
  and all of a sudden literally one of the one scenario that I
• 7:15
  had is a bank robbery occurred right in front of us.
• 7:19
  You know, 2 trucks come out, they people come out, automatic
• 7:22
  weapons. And they're like, and the
• 7:25
  instructors behind you, like a bank robbery's happening.
• 7:28
  What do you do? Well, I guess we get involved.
• 7:31
  You know, we're uniformed police officers.
• 7:33
  We have jurisdiction, we have handguns.
• 7:36
  Let's get involved. And you get into a gunfight with
• 7:38
  people with machine guns. So your simple lunch turned into
• 7:41
  something horrific. That's how they train you to be
• 7:47
  vigilant. And it's the same thing in the
• 7:49
  in the, in the Police Department, because that's the
• 7:51
  same thing. It's 90% boredom, 10% sheer
• 7:53
  terror is you always have to prepare and think for the worst.
• 7:57
  So you'll always be thinking about the worst.
• 8:00
  And if you're always thinking about the worst, if it happens,
• 8:04
  you're really not surprised, you're really not shocked, you
• 8:06
  know? So now, so we would always go to
• 8:08
  lunch in DC if you'd walk around and you'd always think like,
• 8:10
  Hey, that black car that just stopped, figure it out.
• 8:13
  What are you going to do? Oh, I'm going to take a couple
• 8:14
  over here and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that.
• 8:16
  Like they already have a game plan.
• 8:17
  So that's kind of how they, they, they, they, they, they
• 8:20
  train you on that. That's cool, that's cool.
• 8:23
  Do they have a high, do they have a high turnover rate
• 8:25
  because of the reasons that you left also?
• 8:28
  Or is it or you know from your experience at least, or do
• 8:30
  people tend to stick around and and stay there for a long time?
• 8:34
  From my experience, yes, from my graduating class, there's very
• 8:38
  few people that were in there. We all kind of because it, it is
• 8:43
  something where you don't need a college degree to get into the
• 8:47
  uniform division. You just need a high school
• 8:49
  diploma or military experience. So I had the military
• 8:53
  experience. I left and went to the local
• 8:55
  Police Department, ended up going to college there and kind
• 8:58
  of moving on there. A lot of people that I still
• 9:00
  keep in contact with, they went to like NYPD, Boston Police
• 9:03
  Department. I have two friends who were on
• 9:06
  who went to the FBI, one to the DEAA, couple of them got their
• 9:10
  degrees and then transferred over to the agent side of the
• 9:15
  speaker service. So it's kind of a good stepping
• 9:18
  stone. So when I was there, I don't
• 9:19
  know what it is now, when I was there, it was kind of a high
• 9:22
  turnover rate because it was kind of a stepping stone to get
• 9:25
  yourself into the federal service.
• 9:27
  You know, you can kind of get an idea of it.
• 9:29
  You get the training, get a name for yourself, get a reputation,
• 9:32
  learn about how the federal government works, and that helps
• 9:34
  you get other jobs. I'm going to say the amount of
• 9:37
  training, the amount of money and effort they put into
• 9:39
  training you, just to have you to have people leave on average
• 9:42
  after, you know, a couple of years feels a little crazy.
• 9:45
  But I guess the thing you're getting trained in is applicable
• 9:47
  for the rest of your life anyway.
• 9:48
  Especially if they figure that a lot of people would just be
• 9:50
  rotating to other kind of law enforcement or government roles.
• 9:54
  Yeah, I don't know the exact of it, but that would make sense
• 9:58
  because it did take a lot. I mean, I was a low level dude,
• 10:01
  but it did take, I imagine our training cost a lot, a lot of
• 10:04
  money. But like you said, very few
• 10:06
  people are going to go through that kind of training because it
• 10:09
  took a mount of commitment to do that.
• 10:11
  Like you had to say, I want to be here because they they put
• 10:15
  you through the ringer mentally and physically.
• 10:17
  And then, you know, test if you failed to test, you were out.
• 10:20
  So I mean it the people who who did it really wanted to be
• 10:24
  there. I don't know anybody that I have
• 10:26
  ever heard of that I know of that went through all that and
• 10:29
  then just said, you know what, I'm going to go work at the
• 10:31
  Safeway and work in the grocery store.
• 10:32
  You know what I mean? They they kind of stayed within
• 10:35
  federal or within law enforcement as a whole.
• 10:37
  So yeah, it's kind of a. Yeah, reference East Coast.
• 10:44
  They won't get that, but I don't think.
• 10:47
  Yeah, but I appreciate that. That's very funny.
• 10:50
  Then I see, I see, I see something.
• 10:52
  You know, if you decide to go local.
• 10:54
  Yeah. So again, I just happened to
• 10:56
  cross. I was at the White House.
• 10:59
  Al Gore had gone to the had gone to the White House for a meeting
• 11:02
  and I was in the motorcade park. So we went over there and I was
• 11:05
  just hanging out protecting the motorcade.
• 11:06
  And someone said, hey, you're from Arizona.
• 11:09
  There's a guy from Mesa, AZ Mesa Police Department.
• 11:12
  Have you ever heard of him? That's like Mesa is a small
• 11:13
  little town in outside of Phoenix.
• 11:18
  So I ended up just talking to him and he was really cool.
• 11:19
  He's like, we're a growing police agency and we have this
• 11:22
  and that and you know, we're, we're getting a lot of new
• 11:24
  equipment and all that. I'm like, you know what, I'll go
• 11:25
  ahead and apply. This was 2000.
• 11:27
  So I applied and I actually ended up getting the call and
• 11:30
  end up getting the job in early 2000, February of February of
• 11:35
  2001. So I was so I ended up leaving
• 11:38
  right after the inauguration in 2001 of Washington, DC and, and
• 11:42
  I went back to Arizona and I love the Secret Service and it
• 11:45
  was great. Like I said, it was just, it was
• 11:47
  boring. I didn't have a lot of friends
• 11:50
  in like the DC area. So I yeah.
• 11:52
  What is it in DC like? Did you like it?
• 11:56
  Being in being from Arizona, where I'm not, it's not big
• 11:59
  city, it was really hard for me to get used to the big city.
• 12:04
  And I lived in Alexandria, VA, but it was, yeah, everything is
• 12:07
  hustle bustle. Everything is kind of who are
• 12:10
  your parents? You know, like, oh, what school
• 12:12
  did you know, what school did you go to?
• 12:14
  And you know, and what degree do you have in here?
• 12:16
  And, and if you're like, oh, I'm from Arizona.
• 12:19
  Oh yeah. I don't know anybody from
• 12:20
  Arizona. You know, it's like it's kind of
• 12:22
  if you've ever been to DC, you kind of know that most people in
• 12:24
  DC are all from DC. Yeah, that's a stereotype,
• 12:28
  right? Yeah, yeah.
• 12:31
  So it was kind of weird. So I was a young person, I was
• 12:34
  in my mid 20s and I really could just kind of, I socially just
• 12:38
  kind of wasn't fitting in. So I was like, you know what,
• 12:40
  maybe I'm going to head back to the, maybe I'll head back back
• 12:42
  West. So I went there.
• 12:44
  Anyway, by the way, it's a better, it's a better, it's a
• 12:47
  better lifestyle, I think living in Arizona than living in DC,
• 12:50
  for sure. Yeah, and I've been back to DC
• 12:53
  since then, and it's cool. Like it was a lot of fun, but
• 12:59
  yeah, you're right. Like, you know the cost of.
• 13:01
  Place to visit, place to visit. It's a place to check into.
• 13:04
  I don't know about, you know, living there, especially
• 13:06
  lifestyle, you know, long term. I mean, I don't know many people
• 13:09
  that stick around DC forever. They find the suburb or they or
• 13:12
  they go to, you know, somewhere else.
• 13:15
  So you head. So you headed back to Mesa, AZ.
• 13:17
  Yeah, yeah. So I, so I, so I come.
• 13:18
  So I come to Mesa, AZ go to the Academy there, police officer.
• 13:22
  So I do police uniformed police officer for about 6 years on the
• 13:26
  streets. I'm a field training officer for
• 13:28
  a couple of those years. So I'm training new officers in
• 13:31
  it. And I loved the police work.
• 13:33
  So when I was in the Secret Service a year and a half there,
• 13:37
  I pulled my firearm twice, OK, in the line of duty, like, you
• 13:41
  know, for training it was all the time.
• 13:43
  But you know, in actual real life I had to draw my firearm
• 13:46
  and give commands twice. My first day on the street after
• 13:50
  graduating the Academy, I had already pointed my gun at like 4
• 13:53
  people and arrested, you know, 5 people.
• 13:55
  No way. What was the?
• 13:57
  What? What's the?
• 13:58
  Difference policing was so much different than, you know, than
• 14:04
  than the uniform division. It was way more fast-paced, way
• 14:08
  more, you know, I would say exciting because it is, you
• 14:10
  know, it's kind of exciting when you're a young guy.
• 14:12
  It's exciting now. I would be like, I'm not doing
• 14:14
  that. But yeah, when I was young, so I
• 14:16
  was like, I really enjoyed it and it was fun doing the police,
• 14:20
  the street level policing, you know, it was a lot of fun
• 14:23
  getting out there and just interacting with the with the
• 14:26
  people and helping the community.
• 14:27
  You really, some days you really felt like you help you help
• 14:29
  people out, you know, you're like, I, I really helped that
• 14:32
  community this week. You know, I really did a good
• 14:34
  job on that, but I really started liking investigations as
• 14:39
  well. I like getting a case and being
• 14:41
  able to run with it. But you can only go so far as a
• 14:43
  patrol officer because you have to, you know, answer 911 calls
• 14:47
  and you have to cover your area. So you really couldn't do all
• 14:50
  that. So I, I applied for detectives
• 14:53
  in 2012. No 2007, sorry, 2007.
• 14:57
  I applied for detectives and ended up getting, I tested into
• 15:01
  the detective role and I started out on the graveyard shift and I
• 15:05
  was the beer run detective. So I handled beer runs.
• 15:08
  And so really, yeah. So that's how you start.
• 15:11
  You start out at the very bottom.
• 15:13
  So like, you know, beer. Run.
• 15:14
  What's that right? What's the beer run detective
• 15:16
  do? So it's I say it's simple, but
• 15:19
  so you get so a beer run happens, right?
• 15:21
  And it's all on video. So then you would look for
• 15:24
  distinguishing marks, like tattoos, things like that.
• 15:27
  I would look up other cases and see if somebody matching that
• 15:30
  description was possibly in that area doing other crimes.
• 15:34
  And then I would get possibly like investigative leads, create
• 15:39
  a photo lineup. So I'd make you know where you
• 15:41
  have 6 pictures and five, you know, five of them are not the
• 15:44
  person and one is. And then I'd go to the clerks
• 15:47
  and I'd show them that we're on duty at the time and I'd show
• 15:49
  them the photo line and say, hey, do you recognize anybody?
• 15:51
  And sometimes they go, yeah, that dude right there, that's
• 15:53
  the, that's the guy that came in and, you know, grabbed 2 things
• 15:56
  and, and ran out the door. So then I would do the follow up
• 15:59
  and I'd go and knock on their door.
• 16:01
  In Arizona, that's a misdemeanor.
• 16:03
  So it's a ticket. It's not.
• 16:05
  So I would literally knock on their door and be like, hey, are
• 16:08
  you so and so and yeah, well, On this date and time, you stole
• 16:11
  some beer from the Circle K and the.
• 16:12
  Last time you're like. Yeah, yeah.
• 16:15
  How do you judge me? Well, it's on video and then
• 16:17
  I'll get KC some ID and here's your ticket.
• 16:20
  You know, it's a misdemeanor theft.
• 16:22
  Wow. And you know that kind of thing.
• 16:25
  And that's that's how it started out.
• 16:28
  And then one you had an. Experience like that though, no.
• 16:30
  You really want to work with people and really learn how to,
• 16:32
  how to really, I guess you really get your feet wet, you
• 16:36
  know? Yes, and it's like everything
• 16:38
  you have to start small. So by doing that you learn how
• 16:42
  to go through video, you learn how to do research on things.
• 16:45
  You learn how to look up other calls for service and try to
• 16:48
  link cases together. You learn how to make photo line
• 16:50
  UPS. You also learn that sometimes
• 16:53
  these guys, sometimes you look at it and you identify a person
• 16:56
  and you find out that they have a threat, a threat risk to them,
• 17:00
  like they're on parole or they've, you know, they've shot
• 17:03
  at cops before or they've been arrested for violent.
• 17:06
  So then you'd have to start thinking, OK, this isn't just a
• 17:08
  knock on the door. You guys should get a couple
• 17:10
  other detectives and we need to, you know, you know, put our
• 17:12
  bulletproof vest on and go knock on.
• 17:14
  This isn't just a suit and tie knock.
• 17:15
  You know, this is an actual, maybe we should approach it a
• 17:18
  little bit differently so it doesn't get your feet wet.
• 17:21
  Ready for the big ones. You know, I always say
• 17:23
  everything we do is training us for the next big one.
• 17:26
  And that's that mentality from the Secret Service.
• 17:28
  You know, you always got to be ready for when the big 1
• 17:30
  happens. And one night I was the only
• 17:33
  detective on duty in my division.
• 17:36
  I was like 3 in the morning and I hear on the radio, hot call
• 17:39
  comes out and it's shooting. Guy gets shot and he's laying in
• 17:42
  the middle of the street. Suspects running this and that.
• 17:45
  And they call me because they say, hey, we called the on call
• 17:49
  detectives. They're not coming out.
• 17:50
  They said you got it and like and like you got it.
• 17:53
  I'm like, yeah, I got it. I got it, sarge, I got this, I
• 17:55
  got it. So I'm like, I'm going to be a
• 17:57
  real detective now, you know, So I leave my desk and my beer runs
• 18:00
  and I go out. And yeah, so I, I got involved
• 18:02
  in an aggravated assault or a shooting case.
• 18:06
  And I did a lot of work that first night and I ended up
• 18:09
  identifying A suspect. And then the next morning I got
• 18:11
  a couple hours sleep. Next morning, the day shift
• 18:14
  detectives came in, you know, the real, the real detectives.
• 18:19
  And I worked with the violent crime guys and I said, hey, this
• 18:21
  is what I got. This is my game plan.
• 18:23
  And they're like, dude, great game plan, Let's make it happen.
• 18:25
  And we got the guy in custody that afternoon.
• 18:28
  And that's when I fell in love with violent crimes.
• 18:30
  I'm like, that's what I want to do.
• 18:31
  Like I want to do violent crimes so.
• 18:33
  Was there a lot of that where you were?
• 18:35
  What's mess? What's mess of Arizona like?
• 18:37
  Is that Arizona? So at the time, so it's, it's a
• 18:40
  suburb of Phoenix. So if you, you know, you always
• 18:42
  have like a big city and like little towns all around it.
• 18:45
  Sure. Yeah.
• 18:46
  Right next to Phoenix is Tempe and everything.
• 18:48
  And that's where the Arizona State University is.
• 18:51
  And a lot of good music music concerts are there too.
• 18:54
  Great, great, great. Yeah.
• 18:55
  That's like the nightlife. That's like the nightlife.
• 18:57
  And then right next to that is Mesa.
• 18:59
  So at the time, it's grown a lot since then.
• 19:01
  But back in the early 2000s, Mesa had a population of about
• 19:05
  450,000. Our Police Department was about
• 19:09
  750 police officers. So it was a fairly big area.
• 19:13
  I worked the central area which was the downtown area and also
• 19:18
  the high crime area. That's where I get all my
• 19:20
  greenies most. Downtown's a high crime, right?
• 19:22
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we had a lot of gang
• 19:25
  areas. We had little pockets of of
• 19:28
  Vadnais and that's and I liked the central area.
• 19:31
  The further out you went, it got more residential, it got more
• 19:34
  business. We actually have, we actually
• 19:36
  have an International Airport in Mesa.
• 19:38
  So very extremes of it. You have the airport, but there
• 19:41
  it's very mild crime. A multiple crime happened in
• 19:44
  kind of the downtown area, and it wasn't violent, but you had
• 19:52
  violent acts right now and then you had robberies, you had
• 19:54
  shootings, you had stuff like that.
• 19:57
  A majority of what we did, though, was, you know, just
• 19:59
  regular calls for service and domestic violence calls for
• 20:01
  service. Beer runs.
• 20:03
  There's a lot of beer runs. You build up relationships with
• 20:06
  people throughout like, you know, I guess quote UN quote
• 20:09
  civilians or whatever that would kind of get to know you or
• 20:12
  people like in the more high crime area that would come to
• 20:15
  that you'd come to recognize. Or was it just constantly just
• 20:18
  deflection of new people? Oh, that's a great question.
• 20:20
  No, absolutely. That's how you become a really
• 20:23
  good cop. Yeah.
• 20:26
  The community, you can't do it by yourself.
• 20:28
  And I did. I had a lot of the cigarette
• 20:30
  stores and liquor stores that would get robbed a lot when I
• 20:34
  was in robbery. I made good connections with
• 20:36
  those guys and gave them my phone number and said, hey,
• 20:38
  anything suspicious you call me directly.
• 20:40
  And they'd call me about all kinds of stuff and I'd pass it
• 20:43
  on. Like they would literally say,
• 20:44
  hey, you know, two guys bought some beer in my store and then
• 20:47
  they went out back to drink it. And he goes, I was just sweeping
• 20:50
  the, you know, I was sweeping the the sidewalk and I overheard
• 20:52
  him talking about doing a robbery on some guy in the
• 20:55
  neighborhood. So I'm like, OK, hey, Peg.
• 20:58
  So we look at it. We actually, we actually were
• 21:00
  able to prevent a crime, you know, from doing the whole
• 21:02
  thing. Yeah.
• 21:04
  It's all about, it's all about community.
• 21:06
  It really is. And policing is changed a little
• 21:10
  bit because we used to have what they called the community
• 21:13
  policing model where we would rely on the community to give us
• 21:17
  information. And that's also how we knew we
• 21:20
  were doing a good job is when the community.
• 21:23
  We trust you guys enough to call you.
• 21:25
  Yes, exactly. When your customer says you're
• 21:28
  doing a good job, you know you're doing a good job.
• 21:30
  And then about halfway through my career, we changed into the
• 21:34
  Comstat model, where Comstat actually started in New York and
• 21:38
  it was under I think Bill Bratton, but it was basically
• 21:41
  where you use statistics to solve crime.
• 21:45
  So basically you look at a map and say there's a bunch of
• 21:47
  burglaries in this area. So we're going to put all of our
• 21:50
  resources in that area to solve the burglaries, which makes
• 21:53
  sense. But when you're constantly
• 21:55
  moving people around, you really just push crime.
• 21:58
  And if you solve crimes in one area, it's still going to happen
• 22:01
  in another. So you go to the other.
• 22:03
  I mean, and when you do that to determine our success, we saw
• 22:08
  how our numbers went down. So we were kind of our own
• 22:11
  customer. So we would reduce the numbers
• 22:13
  and then pat ourselves in the back and say we're amazing, but
• 22:17
  we're not getting the buy in from the community.
• 22:19
  You know, it's easier or it's I think it's more efficient and
• 22:22
  better when you have the community telling you you're
• 22:24
  doing a good job and not you doing something and then saying,
• 22:27
  you know what, I'm pretty awesome.
• 22:29
  I did a good job on that. I would love to have a local cop
• 22:33
  that I had a, you know, a friendly association with that,
• 22:37
  you know, I, that I could talk, you know, that, that we, that we
• 22:39
  could talk to, you know, about anything.
• 22:40
  But I, I, I feel like associations of the cops in
• 22:43
  general are just so like, oh God, what's going to give you a
• 22:46
  ticket for now? You know, like.
• 22:47
  Yeah. You know, like and I try I
• 22:50
  really go on my way to try to be, you know, friendly or, you
• 22:53
  know, nice and and even like, you know, wave in the street
• 22:56
  wave, whatever, you know, just, you know, kind of be nice.
• 22:58
  Have a have a good day officer. Thanks so much, whatever it is,
• 23:00
  but I do think that it also helps establish the sense of
• 23:04
  trust within the community that like that there's a sense of
• 23:08
  we're, we're all, we're all working together.
• 23:11
  We're all like, you know, 11 crew.
• 23:13
  You know, it almost feels that, I mean, at at least growing up
• 23:17
  in my association with it, it was like, you know, the cops are
• 23:20
  out to get, give you tickets are out to get you, you know, and,
• 23:22
  and, and I don't and I, I think and like what you're saying,
• 23:25
  it's, it's unfortunate that's the case because everything
• 23:28
  would really be a lot better if it's a lot more collaborative.
• 23:30
  Yes, and you're absolutely right.
• 23:32
  And and like I said, I've been a cop and we've all been in jobs
• 23:36
  where there's people who are good in their job and there's
• 23:38
  people who are bad in their job or not very good at their job.
• 23:41
  It's the same thing with police officers.
• 23:43
  I was always the police officer that was very chatty and very
• 23:45
  friendly. You know, I'm I'm the guy that's
• 23:47
  got a story for everything. And I'll if you stop me on the
• 23:50
  street and said hello, I'd chat you up and we'd be best friends
• 23:53
  and shaking hands and you know, and next time I saw you, I'd be
• 23:55
  like, Hey, what's up for him? You know, you'd be hey, Officer
• 23:58
  Bocock, hey, what's up? Anything good Hacker Day?
• 24:01
  I'm like, no, I'm just chilling. But there are other cops who
• 24:04
  just don't like that, you know, And even we as cops knew who
• 24:07
  they were. They were just the sour bunch,
• 24:09
  you know, and sometimes they're the people who would be on the
• 24:12
  streets forever because there's some cops who don't change
• 24:15
  areas. They just stay in one spot and
• 24:17
  just become bitter and angry. And they're even better.
• 24:19
  And, and if the public would be feel any better about it,
• 24:23
  they're bitter and angry to their coworkers too.
• 24:25
  It's not just, it's not just the citizens, they're just angry
• 24:29
  people. And we've all met them.
• 24:30
  I've been pulled over by them. I've gotten tickets from them.
• 24:32
  You know where you know, it's just, that's just their
• 24:36
  personality. They are just, they're just sour
• 24:39
  people. And that's not just cops.
• 24:42
  You go anywhere in the world, any, any business you go into,
• 24:44
  there's going to be nice people and there's going to be people
• 24:46
  who just don't like their job and are just going to be that
• 24:49
  way. So it is unfortunate that they
• 24:51
  that we can't all be like that, you know what I mean?
• 24:53
  But every personality is different.
• 24:55
  You don't and ask the other team, you don't want a bunch of
• 24:57
  me on the police departments because I always said it's just
• 25:01
  like the military, you know, they always have, like I was Air
• 25:04
  Force and you need a Marine or an Army person and like, oh, you
• 25:07
  didn't carry a gun. That's true.
• 25:09
  But if it weren't for me, you would have to walk everywhere
• 25:12
  you went. Like, so if you wanted to go to
• 25:15
  war overseas, you had to get on our airplanes and fly over
• 25:17
  there. We need it.
• 25:18
  And and when I'm overseas, I need Marines and Army to protect
• 25:22
  my base so I can fix my airplane.
• 25:24
  We all have a position. So I was a very, I wouldn't say
• 25:28
  a lenient cop, but a very understanding cop.
• 25:30
  You know, if I went to a party call and it's a bunch of kids
• 25:34
  underage partying, I'm not going to sit here and say, OK,
• 25:38
  everybody's getting a ticket. I'm going to say you got called
• 25:41
  on you. You know what I'm saying?
• 25:42
  I'm going to be cool through this one time.
• 25:44
  But if I get called again, my boss is going to be is going to
• 25:47
  want me to do something and I'm going to pull everybody out and
• 25:50
  I'm going to do a breathalyzer test.
• 25:52
  And if you're under 21 and you have alcohol on you, I am going
• 25:55
  to give you a ticket. You know what I mean?
• 25:57
  So don't take my kindness as weakness.
• 26:01
  But this is your 1. You know, a lot of times like
• 26:03
  we're so sorry, We're so sorry. We'll turn the music down.
• 26:05
  We will don't tell my parents, but you just please be cool.
• 26:09
  I and there are other people who are not who would show up.
• 26:11
  And if it was their call, if they would lead on it and they
• 26:13
  would say, oh, no, I want everybody out.
• 26:14
  We're giving everybody tickets because they have to learn.
• 26:17
  And that's just expression, you know, So you different officers
• 26:21
  handle things different ways, but you can't have everybody
• 26:24
  handle the world like me because people would take it.
• 26:26
  People have taken advantage of me as a cop.
• 26:28
  I have. I've been nice to people and
• 26:30
  they have just totally taken advantage of me.
• 26:32
  And I was like, well, I got, I got duped and I got to go back.
• 26:36
  Like you duped me. And like, yeah, I did.
• 26:40
  Everybody has their place. What?
• 26:41
  Do you want to do about it? The problem is, and I guess this
• 26:46
  is my own little thing, I have too much.
• 26:48
  I have too hard of I have too hard of a time pushing back
• 26:51
  against authority to really even to even, you know, consider like
• 26:54
  if you came up to me and you're like, I'll give you a break.
• 26:56
  I'm like, Oh my God, what a hero.
• 26:58
  You know, like I wouldn't think like he had nothing on me
• 27:00
  anyway. You know, I wouldn't know.
• 27:02
  I wouldn't, I don't, I don't think like that.
• 27:03
  But I guess there are plenty of people that do.
• 27:06
  And so I guess like you say, you got to mix and match your
• 27:09
  personalities that you're dealing with.
• 27:11
  Yes, yeah, everybody, everybody has their puzzle piece that fits
• 27:14
  in the puzzle, that makes it a good puzzle.
• 27:17
  Yeah, But you got, you got to have people like me, but you
• 27:19
  guys also have to have those, you know, those hardcore cops,
• 27:22
  None of them, none of us like to deal with them.
• 27:24
  But if you're in a but I'll tell you what, if you're in a hostage
• 27:27
  situation or a tough situation, that's.
• 27:29
  Oh yeah, you want that? You know what I mean?
• 27:30
  That's the dude you want, not me, who's like, well, let's talk
• 27:33
  it out. You want him?
• 27:34
  He's like, you know, we're breaking the door in and we're
• 27:36
  shooting everybody like, oh, OK, yeah.
• 27:40
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's I wanted to ask, and I
• 27:44
  don't know if you have any experience or known or read
• 27:46
  anything or know anything about this or personal experience, but
• 27:49
  what, what's, what's corruption like within the police world?
• 27:52
  You know, that's a great question.
• 27:54
  So I will say this, East Coast, East Coast policing and West
• 27:58
  Coast policing way different. So when I was in the Secret
• 28:02
  Service, we were allowed to take free stuff, at least back then.
• 28:07
  I don't know what their policy is now, but this is back in
• 28:09
  1998. So like for example, we would go
• 28:13
  on details. There was some senator died when
• 28:16
  I was in when I was in and we ended up going to I got we did a
• 28:20
  detail to Massachusetts where they buried them and President
• 28:25
  Clinton went up. He wanted to go to the funeral.
• 28:27
  So he's in the funeral and I was outside uniform region securing
• 28:31
  the motorcade while he's in the funeral.
• 28:32
  So we have to there's uniform division.
• 28:34
  And that was my job was to stand there and people would come up
• 28:37
  to the rope line and they'd ask like, oh, is that the limo?
• 28:39
  Like, Yep, sure is. Well, people would come up and
• 28:42
  say, Hey, you know, we know who you are.
• 28:44
  Your Secret Service. Here's some free coffee, you
• 28:46
  know. And that's nice.
• 28:47
  Thank you very much. Like, I really appreciate that.
• 28:49
  You know, they're like, hey, you know, I'm going to give you guys
• 28:51
  a box of Donuts. Is that OK?
• 28:53
  Like absolutely, it's OK. You know, they were completely
• 28:56
  cool with that. And I'm not saying that it's
• 28:58
  that that's good or that's bad. That's just how it was Sure I.
• 29:03
  Wouldn't I Wouldn't be good. OK.
• 29:05
  I could see if someone came up to you and gave you 500 bucks
• 29:08
  and was like, hey, you know, took a couple of minutes.
• 29:10
  That's something else than giving you a coffee or a
• 29:12
  doughnut. No.
• 29:13
  Because it could be, it could be perceived as some sort of
• 29:17
  favoritism. So let's say that person that
• 29:19
  gives us coffee and doughnuts, let's say later that afternoon
• 29:22
  they do something where I have to intervene and maybe I have to
• 29:26
  put them in handcuffs. Like let's say they move their
• 29:27
  car in front of motorcade or something along those lines,
• 29:30
  right? And I'm like, you know, you need
• 29:31
  to move right now. Oh, I was cool to you.
• 29:33
  I gave you Donuts and you're going to do this to me?
• 29:36
  It kind of puts you as the cop in a bad spot.
• 29:40
  So it. I hear that that's.
• 29:42
  Always the best thing. Well, in Mesa they were big.
• 29:46
  Even in the Mesa Police Academy, they would test you where they
• 29:50
  would. First off, the Mesa Police
• 29:51
  Department policy was and still is, You don't take anything for
• 29:55
  free. There is no gratuity at all.
• 29:59
  If you find money, you turn it in.
• 30:01
  They would test us. They had vending machines at the
• 30:03
  Academy and if you bought something from the vending
• 30:05
  machine, they would put extra change in there.
• 30:07
  So if you bought for $0.50, you put a dollar in and $0.50 and a
• 30:13
  penny come out. You have to take that $0.50 and
• 30:16
  that penny. You have to go to your your,
• 30:18
  your off your training officer, report it, write a report and
• 30:23
  turn it in. If you don't.
• 30:25
  We actually had a recruit who did it and they they removed,
• 30:29
  they said, they said that's an integrity issue.
• 30:31
  They're like our policy is no gratuities.
• 30:34
  Wow, just like card you over to the actual morale of the
• 30:38
  officers throughout the years? Or is that only for like the
• 30:40
  training point? No, it's, it's for, it's, it
• 30:43
  goes on. So it's not just training, but
• 30:45
  it goes on and to the point of I don't know if you guys have
• 30:48
  quick trips for my for my West Coast people, there'll be quick
• 30:51
  trips. A quick trip for my East Coast
• 30:53
  folk are like a Wawa. OK, gotcha, gotcha.
• 30:58
  That's that's my language now. Imagine your local convenient
• 31:01
  gas station store that cops go to get coffee.
• 31:05
  Well, quick trip in Arizona, they have a corporate policy
• 31:09
  that cops get free coffee. So what we would have to do is
• 31:13
  is they would give us a free coffee.
• 31:14
  You would try to pay them and they're like, oh, I get, I get
• 31:17
  in trouble if I take money. So we would basically just give
• 31:19
  them the money for the coffee and then say, hey, just buy the
• 31:21
  person's coffee behind me or pay for somebody else's coffee.
• 31:25
  We had to do that because if and if you didn't and, and somebody
• 31:28
  found out you could be in, you could literally be in trouble.
• 31:32
  You would be fired once you were out of the Academy, but after a
• 31:35
  couple of violations. So this goes to the corruption
• 31:38
  side on the East Coast. Everybody talks about that thin
• 31:41
  blue line and how, you know, cops protect cops.
• 31:44
  I saw that back East. I was going to ask about that.
• 31:47
  Cops protect cops. I.
• 31:48
  Saw that, I, I straight up saw that back east in, in Arizona,
• 31:53
  not so much. If you screw up, you screw up.
• 31:57
  You're kind of on your own now. Has it changed?
• 32:00
  It definitely changed from in 2000 when I came to Mesa until I
• 32:04
  retired in 20/21. It had changed a little more
• 32:07
  because we had become a bigger city.
• 32:08
  We went from 400,000 almost 800,000, we doubled.
• 32:12
  So we got a lot and we got a lot of people from back east.
• 32:14
  We had some NYPD people come in, we had and they brought their
• 32:18
  back east policing and like, hey, no, it's cool to do that.
• 32:23
  So the paradigm is changed within law enforcement.
• 32:26
  But I will say East Coast, I always said East Coast and West
• 32:29
  Coast law enforcement are extremely different.
• 32:32
  So As for physical corruption, I only heard of it in my
• 32:38
  department once the guy got caught and we all knew he was
• 32:42
  shady. We all do it.
• 32:44
  It was the officer that always did shady stuff.
• 32:46
  He always would say, hey, you know, I got, hey, come with me
• 32:49
  to this house because I know that they got.
• 32:51
  I know right now they have, you know, like 2 kilos of cocaine.
• 32:56
  Yeah. And like, how do you know they
• 32:57
  have two cocaine? Like I'm not going with you
• 33:00
  because. This is but they don't.
• 33:01
  But they don't call you naive for that.
• 33:03
  Like I, I, I don't like, do they say like, oh, grow up.
• 33:06
  Like this is the world and we're making, you know, like.
• 33:09
  This is how you solve crime. This is how I, I, I got the
• 33:12
  information from a a, a, a a source on the street.
• 33:15
  And this is how you solve crime. And I remember telling that
• 33:18
  officer, I was like, I, I don't want to be involved.
• 33:20
  Grab somebody else. You know, I don't want to be
• 33:22
  your backup. Well, then a year later I had
• 33:24
  actually was in, I was in detectives and I heard that DEA
• 33:29
  actually did a sting operation and they caught that officer.
• 33:33
  He wasn't just getting information off the street.
• 33:36
  He was actually helping rival gang members.
• 33:39
  And they would tell him, Hey, I know that my rival gang member
• 33:41
  has drugs go bust them for me. And then he would go and he was
• 33:45
  straight corrupt and kind of like, we all knew that guy was
• 33:48
  shady. You know, I didn't know he was
• 33:49
  that corrupt, but he was shady, you know what I mean?
• 33:52
  And so police are police, you know, police are, that's the
• 33:57
  only real example that I have of it.
• 33:59
  But, you know, a lot of people think that and I get how they
• 34:01
  understand it. Like, because I've been involved
• 34:03
  in, you know, large scale homicide investigations where
• 34:08
  people will, management and staff will make public
• 34:11
  statements and then have to recant those statements or say
• 34:14
  something different later. And it looks like they're lying.
• 34:19
  And it really isn't that way. Like it really isn't.
• 34:22
  They really are not lying. They just don't know.
• 34:24
  They just don't. Know, I see, I see.
• 34:28
  I'm sorry, I'm just the reason why I'm I'm like I'm holding my
• 34:31
  phone actually right now is because I I, you reminded me
• 34:34
  while we were talking. I, I did a interview with ADA
• 34:37
  agent, super, super nice guy Brian.
• 34:42
  Oh gosh, I'll tell you his name in one second.
• 34:45
  Brian Townsend, awesome dude. And one thing that I he worked
• 34:49
  throughout the East Coast and through Texas.
• 34:51
  And one of the things that I had asked him and talked to him
• 34:53
  about was the relevance of geography on the particular drug
• 34:59
  trade that he was, you know, trying to catch prevent.
• 35:04
  Arizona is a big Arizona tends to be a big area where drugs go
• 35:09
  through right? Right.
• 35:10
  Yes, yes. So was, So was I guess.
• 35:15
  First of all, I'm sure that you saw over the years the increase
• 35:17
  in drug related crime. Does that also almost always
• 35:22
  include an increase in violent crime as well?
• 35:25
  Yes, absolutely, Absolutely. When I was on the streets as a
• 35:29
  patrol officer, methamphetamine was the thing.
• 35:32
  And almost all that methamphetamine was coming from
• 35:34
  Mexico. Yeah.
• 35:36
  And how far is Mexico from from there?
• 35:39
  It's about Tucson, so it's probably about 120 miles.
• 35:43
  So in two hours you could be in Mexico like we're.
• 35:46
  It's close. I mean, like if someone could
• 35:48
  just drive, drive through, they could just drive, right?
• 35:50
  You're one of the first big places they drive through.
• 35:52
  Yeah, the the first big place you'll drive through is Tucson.
• 35:55
  OK, 40 minutes away got a border and then after Tucson is 90
• 36:00
  minutes N kind of in the center of the state is Phoenix and
• 36:03
  Mason area. No, that's why as soon as we had
• 36:05
  a violent crime like a homicide, and if we had any indication
• 36:08
  they had Mexican ties, we automatically got Border Patrol
• 36:11
  and said, hey, look for this guy crossing the border.
• 36:13
  Because by the time we even get on scene, they're halfway to the
• 36:16
  border if they want to go so. They usually follow through with
• 36:21
  tips like that. Or do you back?
• 36:23
  If they follow through with tips, do they call you back and
• 36:25
  say, hey, thanks for the tip, that was great.
• 36:26
  Or do you used to read about in the newspaper and you're like,
• 36:28
  oh, they caught the guy? Oh, no, no, absolutely no.
• 36:30
  They'll they'll call us. So, for instance, if we had a
• 36:33
  homicide, and we have, we have a suspect identified and we
• 36:37
  believe that he has ties to Mexico and he may be headed to
• 36:39
  Mexico, we call the Border Patrol and we say, hey, if he
• 36:43
  crosses at any one of the things we want him detained, they will
• 36:46
  detain him for us. But they're federal officers.
• 36:49
  Yes, and. What will happen is we'll go
• 36:52
  down there and then we'll actually take custody of them.
• 36:54
  So now they'll stop them and say hey.
• 36:57
  And a lot of times they'll just say hey, you know, you're wanted
• 37:00
  by Mesa PD. And they'll get out and try to
• 37:02
  run and then boom, they get handcuffs and they might get
• 37:04
  their own charges. But yeah, they they do the
• 37:06
  thing. And I will even say even the
• 37:08
  Mexican authorities were very helpful because we would tell
• 37:12
  our Border Patrol and then Border Patrol would say, can we
• 37:15
  tell the Mexican police on the other side?
• 37:17
  And we absolutely. So they would tell them so just
• 37:20
  in case they got past our Border Patrol if it.
• 37:24
  And then because then once you go through ours to get into
• 37:27
  Mexico, you got to go through Mexican customs.
• 37:29
  Sure. They would know.
• 37:31
  They never got through our Border Patrol, but it was always
• 37:33
  a secondary thing. And they were always more than
• 37:34
  willing to like, yeah, because we don't want him in our
• 37:36
  country. You know what I mean?
• 37:37
  Like if he, if he murdered somebody, we don't want him
• 37:39
  here. Just we'll absolutely hand them
• 37:41
  right back to you, but they'll just deny an entry into the
• 37:43
  country, give them back to Border Patrol, and then they
• 37:45
  hand them off to us. So yeah, it's very, very
• 37:47
  cooperative. Awesome, awesome.
• 37:49
  Yeah. So I was going to ask about that
• 37:50
  because I know that that, that depending who you talk to, the
• 37:52
  people say that the federal and the local, you know, I guess
• 37:57
  coordination could be a little patchy sometimes or other times.
• 38:01
  It's really wonderful. What's what's been your
• 38:02
  experience? What's been your experience
• 38:04
  working with the federal police as opposed in a in a local
• 38:07
  position? Great.
• 38:10
  But also I was in the homicide world, so it's a little
• 38:13
  different. I think it really depends on the
• 38:15
  crime. So we had and we used the feds
• 38:18
  almost exclusively. So if we got a murder suspect,
• 38:21
  so I have a murder, I identify a suspect, I develop probable
• 38:24
  cause and I can arrest them. We had a unit in our in Mesa
• 38:31
  Police Department called the major felon unit.
• 38:33
  They were Mesa and federal agencies.
• 38:36
  They had FBIDEA, they had all the different federal, all
• 38:40
  working together. So if I had probable cause, I
• 38:43
  would just go straight to them because the feds, they would get
• 38:46
  information that we didn't have access to.
• 38:49
  So if we had a phone number, the feds could do amazing things
• 38:52
  with that. That is classified to the point
• 38:54
  where as case agent, I didn't even know.
• 38:56
  They would just say, we know he's at this address.
• 39:00
  I can't tell you how I know that, but we're going there and
• 39:03
  going to arrest him. And I'm like, OK, you know,
• 39:05
  there's probable cause for arrest, so go for it.
• 39:07
  You know, you have, if anything goes, SI will vouch that yes,
• 39:11
  there's a there's a probable cause to arrest this individual
• 39:14
  and they would go and get him. So the coordination was amazing
• 39:18
  because it was a homicide. And that looks good for
• 39:20
  everybody. Nobody wants a homicide person
• 39:21
  on the street. Where you get dicey is if the
• 39:24
  crime is a little questionable. So let's say you had like a
• 39:28
  custodial interference kidnapping.
• 39:31
  So it's like a mom and dad are divorced and then the dad takes
• 39:35
  the kid and is holding them for a couple of days longer than he
• 39:38
  should. It's a crime.
• 39:40
  But are you going to have the FBI SWAT team breaking in your
• 39:43
  door? You know what I'm saying?
• 39:45
  That's where people say, that's where people say, oh, the, the
• 39:48
  feds in the state don't work real well together because those
• 39:51
  detectives would go to the feds and say, hey, it is a crime.
• 39:54
  It is a felony. Can you find the guy?
• 39:58
  And the feds are they're very because again, if they show up
• 40:01
  there and the guy says I'm not coming out, what are you going
• 40:03
  to do? I mean, are you going to because
• 40:05
  he kept his kid for a couple of days?
• 40:07
  You're going to get the media is going to have a heyday with you.
• 40:11
  Whereas if you're a murder suspect.
• 40:13
  It's kind of different, You know, most society will say,
• 40:16
  well, you know, I may not like how the arrest went down, but he
• 40:20
  did murder somebody. You, you, you know what I mean?
• 40:22
  So it really depends on the crime.
• 40:24
  So being in the homicide world, it was very, people were well
• 40:28
  more apt to to take our cases because it was a homicide.
• 40:32
  And society will, will believe, will buy that better.
• 40:35
  Was there any tension in sharing and sharing the credit or, you
• 40:39
  know, trying to take credit to progress careers or anything
• 40:41
  like that? Meaning if it's a big homicide
• 40:43
  case and you know, a bunch of people are involved, like,
• 40:45
  listen, this is a case that could really put me on, you
• 40:47
  know, could really advance my career and, you know, elevate my
• 40:51
  reputation. I, you know, and then the feds
• 40:54
  coming, you know, the next, you read in the newspaper that the
• 40:56
  feds, you know, caught this guy and you're like, wait a minute.
• 40:58
  I, I, you know, I'm on, I'm on page 10 of this, of this news
• 41:01
  story. You know, like what what did
• 41:03
  did? Did that ever?
• 41:04
  Does that get in the way? It doesn't.
• 41:07
  It never got in the way with me because I always checked my ego.
• 41:12
  It wasn't about me. It wasn't about me.
• 41:14
  It was about doing the job. Did it happen all the time?
• 41:18
  All the time. Because what I did was the
• 41:20
  boring stuff, you know, like I'm the one who shows up on the
• 41:22
  scene. I write the search warrants, you
• 41:24
  know, I do the administrative stuff.
• 41:27
  I I'm the one going through 1000 pages of telephone messages and
• 41:30
  figuring all that stuff out. That's very boring.
• 41:32
  You know, that's why they don't make movies about that of, you
• 41:34
  know, oh, this guy sat behind a computer for three days straight
• 41:37
  and looked at all the text messages and figured out it was
• 41:39
  this guy. That's not the fun stuff.
• 41:42
  So, yeah, as soon as the feds got involved and they would make
• 41:44
  the arrest, it would always be, you know, the FBIDEA and the
• 41:49
  Mesa felon unit arrested this guy for murder.
• 41:52
  It was never, you know, Detective Bocock who?
• 41:55
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I gotcha.
• 41:56
  Who looked at, you know, 30,000 Facebook pages for three days
• 41:59
  and identified the guy who? Should, by the way, you should
• 42:02
  get the credit for that because at the end of the day we got.
• 42:04
  The credit you didn't. Do that, we're going to do it.
• 42:06
  We got the credit within our unit and so we knew that we did
• 42:10
  it, you know what I mean? And also they knew that we did
• 42:12
  it. And sometimes they would even
• 42:14
  apologize. It'd be like, you know, there's
• 42:16
  times where one time it wasn't my case, but it was a high
• 42:19
  profile case. The unit that got that made the
• 42:21
  arrest, they got awards from the governor and the case agent
• 42:25
  detective didn't. And they fully apologized.
• 42:28
  They were like, dude, we're so sorry.
• 42:30
  And everybody in our unit was very like, hey, we get it, man,
• 42:32
  It's cool. Like, you know, you guys still
• 42:34
  did a really good job. You know, you did a really good
• 42:36
  job. And I think by doing that, it
• 42:39
  was a good working relationship because if we ever needed them,
• 42:42
  they would go above and beyond. Because I had a great working
• 42:45
  relationship with those guys. I always had their back on like
• 42:49
  the administrative side to where if something did go bad.
• 42:52
  And sometimes I have had situations where I authorized an
• 42:55
  arrest, they went to make the arrest and they had to shoot and
• 42:59
  kill the guy. Really.
• 43:01
  And it went to federal court. And I went to federal court and
• 43:04
  I said the truth and I looked right at the jury and I said I
• 43:07
  had probable cause for his arrest.
• 43:09
  And I told this person, this person, this person that there
• 43:12
  was probable cause for the arrest, you know?
• 43:14
  What I mean, what's the, what's the legal breakdown, I guess of
• 43:21
  that case, right. So you write up in the you, you
• 43:23
  give probable cause for an arrest and then the now when you
• 43:30
  write up the probable cause for arrest, does that obligate you,
• 43:33
  local police, you or anyone else working with you to go to that
• 43:38
  person's house or anyone can go there and use your probable
• 43:42
  cause as as a method of arrest? Yes, anybody can use that
• 43:46
  probable cause. And that's more on the civil
• 43:49
  side because the shooting itself will be judged on the shooting
• 43:53
  itself, right. So in in this particular case,
• 43:55
  they went to arrest him. He pulled a handgun out, he
• 43:58
  pointed it at him, and then they shot him.
• 44:01
  OK, so that part would be handled separately.
• 44:03
  But we got sued civilly because his family said you never should
• 44:07
  have been in his house. You never should have been
• 44:09
  contacting him because he wasn't a suspect.
• 44:11
  And that's where you have to have that good working
• 44:14
  relationship. Where I went and I said no, we
• 44:16
  did. And I had to, even though it was
• 44:18
  a civil deal, I broke down the evidence.
• 44:20
  This this is the forensic evidence.
• 44:22
  This is the circumstantial evidence.
• 44:23
  This is a direct evidence. And I was, you know, multiple
• 44:26
  days on the stand explaining exactly why they had it so the
• 44:29
  jury could say, oh, and in that case, the jury did say they go,
• 44:34
  yeah, there was probable cause, like the officers had a reason
• 44:37
  to go there where the family was just saying, oh, you just picked
• 44:40
  him out of nobody and just showed up in his house and
• 44:43
  started yelling at him. He was scared.
• 44:45
  He pulled a gun and then you shot him.
• 44:47
  No, no, no, no, no. If he, if he were to have
• 44:49
  survived that arrest, he would be in prison for murder because
• 44:53
  we had probable cause. You know what I mean?
• 44:54
  We had a lot of evidence that it was him, right.
• 44:57
  So it's a give and take thing. So they have to trust us to
• 44:59
  where when I say, hey, guys, I have probable cause, they have
• 45:03
  to trust that if it goes bad that I have and it's not, I'm
• 45:07
  not going to go on the stand and go.
• 45:09
  Yeah, it was 5050. You know, it might have been
• 45:13
  him. I really just wanted to question
• 45:15
  him, you know what I mean? I really just, I really just
• 45:17
  kind of wanted to get his fingerprints and then see where
• 45:19
  it goes from there. That's not going to fly then
• 45:22
  this, then civilly, you know, we're going to have to pay money
• 45:24
  to somebody because that's not appropriate.
• 45:26
  That's not appropriate. So I have to trust them to do
• 45:29
  the right thing and they have to trust me that I'm going to do
• 45:31
  the right thing. And so in that case, we had a
• 45:33
  good working relationship, but they always stole the credit.
• 45:37
  It was always the guys. It's always the guys that put
• 45:40
  the handcuffs on somebody that get the credit, you know what I
• 45:43
  mean? It's not behind the scenes.
• 45:45
  You never hear about the forensic people.
• 45:47
  You know, the person who identified the fingerprints.
• 45:49
  They never say, hey, the person who identified the fingerprint,
• 45:51
  they're a hero. Really, they are.
• 45:53
  They're the ones who solved the crime.
• 45:55
  And then they tell us. So we go out and put handcuffs
• 45:57
  on it and we're the hero. Yeah, I love.
• 46:00
  That's why I like to, you know, I, I was never aware until I was
• 46:06
  aware that there's more to the story.
• 46:08
  And then as soon as I realized there's more to the story, I
• 46:09
  became obsessed to learn, you know, with learning about what
• 46:12
  else went into it. You know, I I think that, you
• 46:15
  know, like when you see a finished product or like, for
• 46:18
  example, even with how like, you know, by so, you know, the, the
• 46:20
  example I think is Hollywood. You know, everyone associates a
• 46:22
  movie with an actor in it, you know, but you don't think about
• 46:24
  the writer that's putting the words in the actor's mouth.
• 46:26
  You don't you don't think about the director.
• 46:28
  You don't think about the team that edited that edit everything
• 46:30
  or the music supervisor that put the great soundtrack or the
• 46:33
  great score in there. And you're like, Oh yeah, that
• 46:35
  movie is amazing because of Leonardo DiCaprio.
• 46:37
  And you're like, well, yeah, you know, but also, like everyone
• 46:41
  involved is like incredible, you know?
• 46:43
  And so like, yeah, I, I feel, I feel that that's, that's, that's
• 46:47
  great. And I think it's beautiful that
• 46:49
  you appreciated that for what it was rather than letting your ego
• 46:53
  take, you know, take over. Because I think it's very easy
• 46:55
  for a lot of people to get resentful or to get, you know, a
• 46:58
  little bit more like, hey, man, like X amount of time.
• 47:02
  I probably should have been able to, you know, I should get some
• 47:04
  credit over here, you know. And on that movie thing, it's
• 47:08
  great that you bring that up because how many movies have you
• 47:10
  watched that have? And I've always said what
• 47:14
  exactly what you said, you have a list actors.
• 47:17
  They consider great actors, but they're in a movie and it's
• 47:21
  horrible and they're horrible and and you're like, it's got to
• 47:24
  be the writing because they're amazing actors, but it's got to
• 47:27
  be the writing wasn't very good. You know what I'm saying?
• 47:29
  So you're right. You're only as good as the
• 47:32
  people who support you. But the person who's getting all
• 47:36
  the credit is the person that you see.
• 47:38
  Yeah, and then they should be judges with that credit too.
• 47:41
  They got to be generous. They got to be generous with the
• 47:43
  credit and they got and they can't think that they're.
• 47:46
  The worst thing I think is that when people ultimately think
• 47:48
  that they that, you know, gets their head where they ultimately
• 47:50
  think, yeah, I am a one man show, you know, like I can do it
• 47:54
  all. You know, that's the worst
• 47:55
  because when they forget that it's my son, my 2 1/2 year old
• 48:00
  son is we watch the movie cars every day for the last six
• 48:03
  months, you know, and Lightning McQueen is the guy that didn't
• 48:06
  need the, you know, the crew. And at the end of the movie, you
• 48:08
  know, and he gets his whole, his whole crew and the whole family
• 48:10
  together, you know, like it saves the day.
• 48:13
  And like, it's, I, I love the idea of pushing that kind of
• 48:16
  concept, especially when in, in the form of education to, you
• 48:19
  know, just encourage people to evaluate.
• 48:22
  I, I felt what I was here, whether I heard about China or
• 48:25
  Russia, but that one of the two countries, the, if you ask, for
• 48:30
  example, like a high school teacher, like how important your
• 48:31
  job is, your job, Like, it's so important.
• 48:34
  Like I'm raising the people of tomorrow, you know, and then if
• 48:36
  you ask the mechanic how important his job is, my job is
• 48:40
  the most important to the motherland, you know, to China
• 48:42
  because, you know, without me knowing to get around.
• 48:44
  And I, I feel, and it, it doesn't feel like we have that
• 48:48
  kind of same priority, those same priorities or values in
• 48:50
  America the same way at the moment.
• 48:53
  I really would love to try to, you know, continue encouraging
• 48:56
  that people really understand and appreciate, you know, what
• 48:58
  their place in society is and that they should be proud of it,
• 49:02
  you know, and want to contribute and look at it like it's
• 49:04
  important, you know? No, absolutely, absolutely.
• 49:08
  Because I and I, and I've been on both sides of that, like as a
• 49:10
  homicide detective, again, I was the face of of the
• 49:14
  investigation. But honestly, it was a lot of
• 49:17
  the forensics, the analysts, the people who made my job easier
• 49:22
  were the only reason I was able to do my job sometimes, you
• 49:25
  know, and I was on the other end of it in the Air Force.
• 49:28
  Whereas when we would do a good mission, the pilots, the
• 49:31
  officers, you know, they took all the credit for everything.
• 49:35
  If they flew a good mission, they got all the credit for it.
• 49:38
  But you know what, for every hour of flying, it took, you
• 49:40
  know, six to seven hours of maintenance.
• 49:42
  You know, I'm the guy up all night long put air in tires and
• 49:45
  fixing hydraulics and all that. But no one's ever thanking you,
• 49:47
  you know what I mean? So I've kind of been on both
• 49:49
  sides of that. And I agree 100% that everybody,
• 49:53
  no matter what you do, you are contributing to the greater
• 49:59
  cost. You know what I mean?
• 50:00
  From the, and you all, and people always think just like
• 50:02
  you said, like, oh, I got the smallest job or I'm, I'm, I'm
• 50:05
  just a barista, I'm just a custodian or something like
• 50:07
  that. No, you don't realize how
• 50:08
  important your job is sometimes because if you don't have that,
• 50:11
  don't have the morning coffee, you know, don't have the
• 50:14
  bathroom that works and see how other people can produce and
• 50:17
  work. They can't.
• 50:18
  It doesn't work. No, Yeah, that's a, that's a
• 50:21
  good lesson. I wanted to talk to you a little
• 50:25
  bit about it because I happen to love this particular field, but
• 50:29
  the psychological aspect of being a homicide detective and
• 50:35
  either your personal experiences in terms of coping mechanism
• 50:39
  mechanisms, therapy does, does the, there's the force, you
• 50:43
  know, offer, you know, substantial or adequate, you
• 50:46
  know, mental health, Because I mean, we're not meant to see the
• 50:51
  things that you see, you know, I, I don't think we are.
• 50:54
  And I think that exposure to this kind of stuff, I everyone
• 50:57
  PTSD is rampant in, in, in the country, you know, So what's,
• 51:02
  what's some of your thoughts or relationship to the mental
• 51:04
  health aspect of the of the job? So Mesa Police Department was
• 51:08
  really, really progressive in that they actually have what
• 51:10
  they call a peer support team. They were one of the first
• 51:12
  larger agencies to have that. And I was part of it for a while
• 51:16
  until I went to violent crimes because I can't, I, I, I
• 51:19
  couldn't do both. But they were very cognizant of
• 51:21
  it. And we did have counselors on
• 51:24
  duty that you could see anytime you wanted to that you could go
• 51:27
  talk to. A lot of cops just didn't
• 51:29
  though, you know, it's kind of that macho.
• 51:31
  There's still that macho mentality of, you know, I don't
• 51:34
  need that. I'm stronger.
• 51:36
  I'm, you know, better. As for the psychology of it, you
• 51:41
  have to really just be aware of it.
• 51:43
  I saw in my 8 years of being a homicide detective and before
• 51:48
  that, I saw that because even as a patrol officer, we would
• 51:49
  respond to death. And I still remember my first
• 51:51
  death call. I can still see her face.
• 51:54
  I still see that you have. I was noticing towards the end
• 51:57
  of my career that I was seeing those early signs of PTSD.
• 52:00
  I was more emotional with things I would cry for, you know, I'd
• 52:03
  watch a, a, a sad movie and I would just kind of tear up and
• 52:06
  my son would say, hey, are you OK?
• 52:07
  I'm like, yeah, it's just, it's just sad, you know, And I think
• 52:11
  you have to really recognize it. And once you recognize it, that
• 52:15
  helps. I've never been a big consumer
• 52:17
  of alcohol or anything like that, so I never really saw
• 52:20
  that. But I always paid attention to
• 52:21
  it. I always paid attention to like,
• 52:23
  hey, if my alcohol starts to increase, I'm going to start
• 52:25
  talking to somebody. A lot of cops unfortunately
• 52:28
  don't. And we kind of rely on each
• 52:31
  other to do it. So within our unit, we really
• 52:34
  relied on each other. I knew my other detectives when
• 52:37
  they were having a bad day. And maybe I would say, hey, I'm
• 52:41
  going to go ahead and take that part for you.
• 52:43
  You know, why don't you hang back, get some pizza and do this
• 52:46
  part and I'll go handle the sad part.
• 52:48
  And in some, some situations, it would affect me more.
• 52:51
  And it always affected people on a personal level.
• 52:53
  So like when I dealt with kids that were the same age as my
• 52:56
  son, it was to me. So people would step in and say,
• 52:59
  hey, why don't I go ahead and take care of that part.
• 53:01
  And you go, you know, why don't you go back to the office and
• 53:04
  write a search for it? And I'd be like, hey, thanks.
• 53:06
  And then other people would have situations.
• 53:07
  We had one, we had a female detective.
• 53:10
  She just had a baby and we had a baby death.
• 53:13
  And we're like, hey, why don't you hang back?
• 53:14
  And you know do not. Deal with that.
• 53:16
  Yeah, and you can do like the phones and and and the social
• 53:19
  media part. We'll go out to the scene.
• 53:21
  And she was like, hey, thanks, I got it.
• 53:24
  We all. So you watch, you take care of
• 53:26
  each other, you take care of each other.
• 53:28
  But yeah, there is a psychological part of it where
• 53:32
  but you also get desensitized to it.
• 53:34
  I'm not even going to lie. You just get desensitized
• 53:37
  because it's your job and you don't realize it because also
• 53:40
  it's your job. Like, you know, I've had to dig
• 53:43
  through brain matter and stuff looking for bullets and it's but
• 53:48
  you don't think about it at the time because you're thinking I
• 53:50
  got to find that bullet, you know?
• 53:51
  Like that, but you revisit it. It's exactly.
• 53:56
  It's kind of like, you know, you do it and at the time you don't
• 54:00
  even think about it. It's like 2 days later when you,
• 54:03
  when you, when you come down and you're like, oh, that was
• 54:07
  horrible. You know, that was just, that
• 54:09
  was, that was, that was really kind of messed up.
• 54:12
  So it's kind of when you leave, when you get out of it is when
• 54:15
  you start kind of dealing with it and realizing just how messed
• 54:19
  up the things are. Just like I've had to, I've
• 54:21
  never had to shoot anybody, but I've been very close and I've
• 54:23
  pointed my gun at people. I've, I've taken the slack out
• 54:27
  of the trigger. I was, I set my, my, my line.
• 54:29
  I almost did it. At that moment, I didn't have a
• 54:32
  whole lot of stress. I was focused on my training.
• 54:34
  I was like, stop or I, he was coming to me with a knife and I
• 54:37
  basically said stop or I will shoot you, you know, And he,
• 54:40
  he's like, no, he's like, he's kept coming, like stop it.
• 54:43
  And I said, if you cross that line, if you, I'm like, if you
• 54:45
  cross that curve, I will shoot you and you will die.
• 54:49
  Do you understand? He's like, no, you won't, yes, I
• 54:52
  will. I will shoot you.
• 54:53
  And he finally gave up. It's only so at the moment, all
• 54:56
  I thought about was a training, you know, I'm just doing my job.
• 54:59
  It's almost robotic. And then it's only afterwards.
• 55:04
  And in that situation, it was afterwards.
• 55:05
  And I was, I was debriefing, you know, because other people came
• 55:07
  out and I was like, kind of what happened?
• 55:09
  Only then it's like a dump. And I was like, oh, I got to sit
• 55:12
  down for a minute, like shot somebody like that was that was
• 55:15
  crazy. First off, he almost stabbed me
• 55:17
  with a kitchen knife. Second, I almost shot him.
• 55:20
  You know what I mean? So it's kind of, and that's kind
• 55:22
  of how it was in the homicide world.
• 55:23
  When you're in the in, when in the heat of the investigation,
• 55:28
  you're so focused on getting the evidence that you need, getting
• 55:31
  what you what you need, dealing and it's all sad and dealing
• 55:34
  with the sadness of even talking to the family and they're, and
• 55:37
  they're emotional and they're crying and you're trying to get
• 55:40
  information from them because you're trying to solve the case.
• 55:42
  It's only when it's all kind of solved and done that you sit
• 55:46
  back at your desk and kind of like, oh, like, what am I doing?
• 55:52
  Like this isn't normal. But then you kind of go into the
• 55:54
  mode again, you're like, OK, now I got to start writing this up.
• 55:58
  I got to get it ready for trial. And it's, it's almost a robotic
• 56:02
  thing. It's, it's almost like you just
• 56:04
  going along with like, this is my job and I have to do a good
• 56:07
  job for them. I can't break down right now
• 56:09
  because they need me. You know, I got to get this
• 56:11
  ready for trial and we got to get this guy prosecuted because,
• 56:14
  you know, we got to help this family out because that that was
• 56:17
  wrong. What happened to them?
• 56:19
  So, and then when I left, I noticed right, right.
• 56:22
  When I, when I retired, I stopped for 20 years in Mesa.
• 56:25
  You can retire and get a pension.
• 56:27
  So I left because I knew I was going to do other careers.
• 56:29
  I knew I was going to do other things.
• 56:31
  So I'm like, I, I, I have a lot of other interests and I just, I
• 56:34
  will, I will find something to do.
• 56:36
  And so I left and I noticed almost right away, like after
• 56:39
  six months of leaving, my emotions evened out and I just
• 56:44
  felt better. I just felt better.
• 56:45
  I was thinking more, yeah, it really does.
• 56:48
  And it still effects you a little bit, but not as much.
• 56:50
  Removing you from this, from the situation really does help.
• 56:54
  It really does help. So yeah, every police officer
• 56:56
  deals with bad things, and they all have the PTSD.
• 57:00
  It's just a matter of how they deal with it.
• 57:03
  Yeah, yeah, I hear. I I was kind of, yeah, I kind of
• 57:07
  hope that the notion of therapy becomes, you know, destigmatized
• 57:12
  to, you know, people in general, including macho men, because.
• 57:17
  And I actually think just I was thinking while you were, you
• 57:19
  know, describing everything that I think it's almost, it's
• 57:22
  absolutely necessary to have a process for you or for any
• 57:26
  officer to or anyone really under high intensity situations
• 57:30
  to be able to. There is a process and a line
• 57:34
  that I could turn to something and a clear set of instructions
• 57:37
  and how to go about this, you know, and so it's almost like
• 57:41
  there is an authority figure there in your head that's like,
• 57:44
  this is what you do. He takes a step over that curb.
• 57:47
  You do this, you know, when you, when you, when he does that, you
• 57:49
  do that. And I think that helps.
• 57:54
  I would imagine at least that that helps the panic, you know,
• 57:59
  the, the adrenaline rush, you know, the, the, I don't even
• 58:01
  know what you, I don't even know.
• 58:02
  Like I there was one time about a year ago now where I was
• 58:06
  driving my family back from Orlando to South Florida and I
• 58:10
  was getting over, I was getting gas.
• 58:12
  And I, I mean, it was so stupid. I don't even remember what
• 58:15
  exactly what happened. There's a woman that was
• 58:17
  fighting with her, with her, with her boyfriend or whatever
• 58:20
  it was. They were like screaming.
• 58:21
  And she was like, he's not letting me get out of the car,
• 58:23
  not let me take my stuff. And I, and please someone help.
• 58:26
  And everyone is ignoring her. And I just started like taking a
• 58:28
  couple of steps over like, is everything OK?
• 58:30
  And I didn't have a plan as I'm walking over, like my heart is
• 58:35
  like pounding and I'm like, I have no idea what's going to
• 58:38
  happen, Dan. Like I can't not like say
• 58:40
  anything like no one's doing anything.
• 58:42
  And like I had AI have a one year old and so and this woman
• 58:45
  had a kid in the car and I was like, I hope that like, I don't
• 58:47
  know what's going on, but is everything OK?
• 58:49
  And I had no plan. And I was, you know, and I think
• 58:52
  that made the whole experience a lot more shaky, you know, and
• 58:55
  then, you know, then to have here's a procedure and here's a
• 58:58
  step by step way to go. What So, so, So what are So what
• 59:04
  are some things you're going to pursue now?
• 59:05
  You wrote a couple of books I saw, which I want to talk to you
• 59:08
  about. So.
• 59:08
  Real quick on that. So how people how you explain
• 59:13
  that? So in all my training that I've
• 59:15
  had, it was explained the best. It was in the Secret Service and
• 59:18
  the Secret Service guy explained it, whereas he goes in all of
• 59:20
  our trainings. We're giving you note cards in
• 59:23
  your head. He says when you come on a
• 59:26
  situation that you've never done, he goes, you have a little
• 59:29
  monkey in your head that's going through the Rolodex and saying,
• 59:32
  OK, it's like your situation, a girl needs help in a in a thing.
• 59:36
  If he goes through the Rolodex and there's nothing there, I
• 59:39
  don't, I don't know what to do. Yeah, he goes in training, we're
• 59:42
  filling your Rolodex. So like, you know, so that
• 59:45
  situation would be there. And that's kind of how it is.
• 59:47
  That's why in those training and in training, you know, they
• 59:50
  always say training will help officers.
• 59:52
  It will because that way when you show up to a scene, very
• 59:55
  rarely have I ever been involved in something.
• 59:57
  There's only a couple times where I've been involved in
• 59:58
  something where I've been like, I have no idea, like this is
• 1:00:01
  completely brand. New What was that?
• 1:00:02
  What are those? Contacts the monkey is like
• 1:00:04
  going through things. One of them was had a homicide.
• 1:00:08
  The gal said she was possessed by the devil.
• 1:00:10
  She said that she was that she was a ritual was done on her
• 1:00:16
  when she was 10 years old and that she was possessed by the
• 1:00:18
  devil and she stabbed her, she stabbed her sister-in-law over
• 1:00:23
  270 times with a pair of scissors.
• 1:00:26
  And that one like, I was getting ready to go in and do the
• 1:00:28
  interview and I'm just, I'm just like your face.
• 1:00:30
  I'm like, I don't even know. I don't know.
• 1:00:32
  Like this is this is all new to me.
• 1:00:34
  Like what do I ask? So I just been in there.
• 1:00:37
  I just I and so I straight up said tell me about the
• 1:00:40
  possession and she wouldn't agree.
• 1:00:41
  What'd she say? She had a great day deal.
• 1:00:44
  She said she had a fever. She was from Mexico, and she had
• 1:00:46
  a fever when she was 10 years old.
• 1:00:48
  And her grandmother was a like a bruja or a witch or something.
• 1:00:53
  And she did a possession on her to put a good spirit into her.
• 1:00:57
  And she said that worked for a year.
• 1:00:58
  But after a year, I started hearing voices to kill my family
• 1:01:02
  and that I had learned that it was a batch of spirit had
• 1:01:05
  pretended to be good, but it was a bad spirit in me.
• 1:01:08
  And she's lived with this for almost 20 years.
• 1:01:10
  And I'm like, well, what do you mean live with it?
• 1:01:12
  And she would tell me like, oh, I got a job when I was 18.
• 1:01:14
  They came to America and she's like, I got a job when I was 18
• 1:01:17
  and I almost murdered my manager because I showed up to work and
• 1:01:21
  I was working at like a like a, it was like a fast food
• 1:01:24
  restaurant. And she said, the boy said, you
• 1:01:27
  need to kill your manager or I'm going to hurt your family.
• 1:01:30
  And she's like, I almost did. But I convinced them that it was
• 1:01:33
  OK. And it's like, so that's kind of
• 1:01:35
  schizophrenic, but I'm not a psychologist, you know what I
• 1:01:37
  mean? So OK, maybe this is
• 1:01:39
  psychologist, but then I talked to the family and the grandma
• 1:01:42
  confirmed it. I talked to grandma.
• 1:01:44
  And again, what do you ask grandma?
• 1:01:45
  So I just said, I'm going to ask her the truth.
• 1:01:47
  Did you do a ritual on your granddaughter when you're dead?
• 1:01:50
  She's like, yeah, Oh yeah, I'm a I'm a witch.
• 1:01:53
  My, my mother was a witch. I come from a long line of it.
• 1:01:56
  And we put and she like had the name of the, of the spirit.
• 1:01:59
  She was, I put this spirit, this is his name.
• 1:02:01
  And he said, and she's like, I know it's a good spirit.
• 1:02:03
  She's just using this as an excuse because she thinks it's a
• 1:02:06
  bad spirit, but it's a really a good spirit because and there it
• 1:02:09
  was all this spiritual and. What the heck do you?
• 1:02:12
  What do you make of that? I kind of like, I kind of
• 1:02:16
  believe them. I believe that they believe it
• 1:02:19
  and maybe it is true, Like, you know what I mean?
• 1:02:21
  Like maybe it is true. Maybe she is possessed and also
• 1:02:25
  the courts found her to be meant mentally incompetent, so we
• 1:02:29
  couldn't. She's in a state hospital now
• 1:02:32
  basically forever until she's able to stand trial, which I
• 1:02:34
  don't think she ever will be. Do the grandmothers?
• 1:02:38
  They can't. Train you for like they can't
• 1:02:40
  train you for demonology in the Academy because how often is
• 1:02:43
  that going to come out That's. Crazy.
• 1:02:46
  That's such a crazy story in that scene.
• 1:02:48
  Must have been crazy. Yeah, it was weird.
• 1:02:51
  It was absolutely weird. It was just weird doing the
• 1:02:53
  interview because you're like, I'm not going to, I'm just going
• 1:02:54
  to ask her directly, you know, what's the name of what do you
• 1:02:57
  do? You have a hard time talking to
• 1:03:00
  murderers. Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  Yeah. Is it.
• 1:03:03
  Is it hard to sit across from someone and be and know that
• 1:03:05
  they just killed someone and be like, how am I going to treat
• 1:03:07
  you like, like, how am I going to treat you like a person?
• 1:03:09
  Yeah. It's hard in the beginning, but
• 1:03:11
  that's where homicide detectives aren't just come straight out of
• 1:03:15
  the Academy. That comes with years of
• 1:03:17
  interviewing people because you have to like I've interviewed a
• 1:03:21
  lot of people on the street, robbery people, rapists, things
• 1:03:25
  like that. And you can't judge them.
• 1:03:26
  The minute you start judging them, they're going to shut down
• 1:03:29
  on you. So you do kind of have, and
• 1:03:31
  again, it's just doing the job, you know what I mean?
• 1:03:34
  Like your job is to elicit a confession or if not, elicit as
• 1:03:38
  much information as possible. And it's one of those things,
• 1:03:41
  the Rolodex, you know, every interview you learn a new
• 1:03:44
  technique. So like a lot of times you would
• 1:03:47
  with murderers just make it like not a big thing.
• 1:03:51
  Like, OK, so you know, and then it asked them, did you defend
• 1:03:53
  yourself? And some people like, no, I
• 1:03:55
  didn't want to defend him. I just wanted to kill him.
• 1:03:57
  Well, why? You know what?
• 1:03:58
  Why would make you think, do you think that's wrong?
• 1:04:00
  And just kind of have a conversation and not judge them?
• 1:04:03
  Because the minute you go in there and you start judging
• 1:04:04
  people and being like you're a murderer, you're going to prison
• 1:04:07
  forever. They're either going to be
• 1:04:08
  confrontational back or they're going to shut down.
• 1:04:10
  My experience is is they usually shut down and say, I want a
• 1:04:12
  lawyer. You're not going to listen to
• 1:04:14
  me. But if you just like, say, hey,
• 1:04:16
  I know a murder just happened, you know, you're in a lot of
• 1:04:18
  trouble. But why?
• 1:04:20
  Like, you know, like, tell me your side of the story.
• 1:04:22
  I'm going to, I'm not going to ask any questions, you know,
• 1:04:24
  just you talk and let me know. Why did this go down?
• 1:04:27
  And they'll start from when they were six years old and talk for
• 1:04:30
  40 minutes. But that's huge information.
• 1:04:32
  You have to listen because you're going to learn a lot.
• 1:04:35
  They'll tell you everything. You know what I mean?
• 1:04:37
  It may not be exactly how you want every like, well, where'd
• 1:04:39
  you get the gun? I don't know, because they
• 1:04:41
  probably don't know. Like, I just shot somebody.
• 1:04:43
  I'm having an adrenaline drunk too, you know what I mean?
• 1:04:45
  Like, I'm in police custody. I'm a little worked up.
• 1:04:49
  I don't have those details, you know, but we're like, no.
• 1:04:51
  You're seeing those, those absurd, you're saying those
• 1:04:54
  absurd Hollywood monologues actually happened in real life.
• 1:04:57
  You know I, we. Actually do.
• 1:04:58
  Yeah, we actually do, yeah. It's so funny.
• 1:05:01
  It's all the movies, the it's the least favorite part of all
• 1:05:05
  those movies for me, you know, or the monologues.
• 1:05:07
  I'm like, when does this actually ever happened?
• 1:05:09
  This is the first time I'm ever hearing about actually happening
• 1:05:11
  in real life. Yeah.
• 1:05:12
  Oh, totally. I will tell you if you most,
• 1:05:14
  most detectives and police officers and people in general,
• 1:05:18
  when they ask a question, they're not listening.
• 1:05:20
  They're already thinking about the next question that they're
• 1:05:22
  that they're that they're asking.
• 1:05:24
  I mean, we all do it. I do it all the time.
• 1:05:25
  I've done it, I've I've done it while we're talking, you've said
• 1:05:28
  things I'm saying in my mind, I want to talk about, you know, a
• 1:05:32
  list actors with bad writing, you know what I mean?
• 1:05:36
  So we all do it as human beings. But if we just step back and
• 1:05:39
  kind of say, hey, recognize that and acknowledge it and really
• 1:05:43
  listen to each other, you would be amazed at like, I will ask
• 1:05:48
  people something and then they'll, you know, ask them
• 1:05:50
  something and they'll answer it. And just their answer alone is
• 1:05:53
  very damning. Where you're like, woah, did he
• 1:05:54
  just say that? Like, you know, and same thing
• 1:05:58
  where you just say, hey, you give me your side of the story,
• 1:06:00
  No judgement, no nothing. All right.
• 1:06:03
  But I'd always tell them, I'm not your lawyer, I'm not your
• 1:06:05
  priest. I'm still a detective.
• 1:06:07
  I'm not going to judge you, but you tell me why this went down.
• 1:06:10
  And you would be amazed at the most people would just say, OK,
• 1:06:14
  well, I felt disrespected and I felt wrong.
• 1:06:17
  And, you know, and when I was seven, I was disrespected and I
• 1:06:20
  swear I would never do it again. And that's why I got a gun and I
• 1:06:23
  shot that guy because all right, then you can get into the
• 1:06:26
  details, which sometimes they just don't want to tell you the
• 1:06:28
  details or again, they just don't remember because we as
• 1:06:31
  cops always forget that. And in movies they always have
• 1:06:34
  these things where these criminals are masterminds, you
• 1:06:37
  know, we're these super genius masterminds.
• 1:06:40
  And that's not always the case. The masterminds we don't catch,
• 1:06:43
  I've always said this, we don't catch the smart ones, you know
• 1:06:46
  what I mean? It's kind of like you have the
• 1:06:47
  lions thing. Lions don't go to the center of
• 1:06:50
  the herd to get the the zebra, you know.
• 1:06:53
  Lions, not the ones on the outside.
• 1:06:55
  Lions get the outside buns. You know, they're really, really
• 1:06:58
  smart criminals. We don't catch because they are
• 1:07:00
  smarter than us or they're thinking they have the
• 1:07:02
  advantage. They straight up have the
• 1:07:04
  advantage. Yeah, there was a great show.
• 1:07:08
  Have you ever watched Trafficked with Marianna Van Zeller?
• 1:07:12
  No, I haven't. Oh, it's on Hulu.
• 1:07:15
  It's on Hulu. She's been on Joe Rogan's
• 1:07:18
  podcast a bunch of times. I think every time she records a
• 1:07:21
  new season. But one thing that she does is,
• 1:07:24
  I mean, she basically each episode is a particular aspect
• 1:07:27
  of crime that she's investigative, you know, doing
• 1:07:30
  investigative journalism on. And so it's the fentanyl crisis.
• 1:07:34
  It's mail order brides. It's you know, it's illegal
• 1:07:38
  street fighting. It's it's and each episode is
• 1:07:40
  something incredible. And one thing that she does
• 1:07:42
  super, super well is also that no judgement judge, like why'd
• 1:07:46
  you do that? You know, like, what do you?
• 1:07:48
  So one thing, there's an episode where she was talking to
• 1:07:51
  assassins in I think South South Africa, and this guy got into
• 1:07:55
  assassin assassinations, becoming a hitman because
• 1:08:00
  because his parents, his dad was killed or something like that.
• 1:08:02
  And she said to him, have you ever thought about the fact that
• 1:08:06
  you're, you know, you're putting someone, some, some other kid in
• 1:08:09
  that same situation, you know, and the guy's like, no, I never
• 1:08:14
  thought about that in my entire life.
• 1:08:15
  He's like. And then apparently she came up
• 1:08:17
  to him afterward. He came up to her after, after
• 1:08:19
  they finished rolling and said, I really, you change, you change
• 1:08:23
  the way that I perceive things. And I don't know if he's
• 1:08:26
  necessarily even happy about that because that's his
• 1:08:27
  livelihood, right? But he was like, I, I, you know,
• 1:08:29
  like I look at this guy like he's a bad guy and I got to make
• 1:08:32
  a living and I don't care what it is.
• 1:08:33
  And he's like, I never thought about the fact that he has a kid
• 1:08:36
  that was feeling the exact same way that I felt, you know, and,
• 1:08:39
  and so just having these conversations a lot of time is
• 1:08:41
  just like you wouldn't even imagine.
• 1:08:43
  But it I guess, I guess it works, you know.
• 1:08:47
  No, that's interesting. I'm going to have to check that
• 1:08:49
  out. That sounds.
• 1:08:49
  Yeah, you should. It also makes me a question.
• 1:08:53
  I feel like the idea that people talk when talk to like a people,
• 1:08:57
  like a person is pretty well known, has been pretty well
• 1:09:02
  known for a long time. And so it really, really
• 1:09:05
  astonishes me when we hear stories about, like, people try,
• 1:09:09
  you know, especially, you know, stories in our government,
• 1:09:11
  unfortunately about times a week torture people for information.
• 1:09:14
  We're like, don't we know like, beforehand that that's a bad
• 1:09:17
  method? Like, don't you know that that's
• 1:09:19
  not a good idea? Who told you that you thought
• 1:09:20
  you were going to get a good information, you know?
• 1:09:22
  No. And, and that's absolutely
• 1:09:23
  right. And I learned that as a patrol
• 1:09:24
  officer. My FTO taught me and then I
• 1:09:27
  taught it to newer officers. And I always said, if you're
• 1:09:30
  dealing with a homeless person, if you want to get compliance,
• 1:09:33
  call him Sir or ma'am. And I will tell you, you ask a
• 1:09:37
  person like Sir, can I just ask you, you know, like a homeless
• 1:09:41
  person loitering out front of a store and they call you, right?
• 1:09:43
  And they call the police. That's a regular police story.
• 1:09:46
  If you show up there. These are already people in
• 1:09:48
  society who have nothing to lose.
• 1:09:49
  They've already lost everything. They're in the worst possible
• 1:09:52
  situation. Yelling at them is not going to
• 1:09:54
  make them any better or any happier.
• 1:09:56
  You know what I mean? And just like you were saying,
• 1:09:57
  they're probably anti defiant. So they're probably going to
• 1:09:59
  say, you know, I'm not going to listen to you anyway.
• 1:10:01
  If you treat people with respect.
• 1:10:03
  I always call everybody Sir and ma'am.
• 1:10:05
  If you come up there and say Sir, I'm sorry to bother you,
• 1:10:08
  but I have a call. And I've had some people say,
• 1:10:11
  hey, you called me Sir. You seem like a decent guy.
• 1:10:13
  What you want me to do? They just don't want you here.
• 1:10:15
  OK, I'll leave. You know what I mean?
• 1:10:17
  Some of them still aren't going to be that way.
• 1:10:19
  But same thing. I've had so many people where
• 1:10:21
  have just said, you know, even people who are known criminals
• 1:10:26
  and gang members and they have the, you know, the F the police
• 1:10:28
  tattoo on their neck. And I call him Sir.
• 1:10:31
  And there's one guy who's an old time Mexican mafia guy gangster.
• 1:10:34
  And he did, he was a robber. He robbed a bank.
• 1:10:36
  And I was interviewing him and he had F he had F the police on
• 1:10:39
  his neck. He clearly did not like police.
• 1:10:41
  And I called him Sir the whole time.
• 1:10:42
  And as I'm walking into jail, he actually said, thanks for
• 1:10:45
  treating me with respect to dignity.
• 1:10:47
  I appreciate it. He's like, if I see you on the
• 1:10:49
  street, I'd probably try to kill you.
• 1:10:51
  But he goes, I appreciate you being cool with me.
• 1:10:53
  And I'm like, hey, Sir, you know, you're a human being.
• 1:10:55
  And I appreciate you and I and I wish you the best of luck.
• 1:10:58
  You're right. I always found being nice to
• 1:11:00
  people, it gets you way for the. Some folks you just can't be
• 1:11:04
  nice with because they're going to try to kill.
• 1:11:05
  Like the guy just tried to stab me with a knife.
• 1:11:06
  You know what I mean? Like, yeah, my niceness was only
• 1:11:09
  going so far, you know? But 98% of the time, you're
• 1:11:13
  absolutely right. If we just talk to people and be
• 1:11:16
  nice and show a little respect, they may show some respect back.
• 1:11:20
  Yeah, yeah. So.
• 1:11:22
  So what's coming up for you? So actually, before you even you
• 1:11:24
  tell me what's coming up, I want to ask, I wanted to ask you
• 1:11:26
  about the process of writing a book or writing multiple books
• 1:11:29
  because I was a creative writing literature major in college.
• 1:11:33
  And I came very, I came to the realization very quickly that
• 1:11:37
  I'm never going to write a book or very unlikely to write a book
• 1:11:40
  because I have a very, very hard time keeping one overarching
• 1:11:45
  concept in my head and then breaking it down into a lot of
• 1:11:48
  different chapters and ideas and stuff like that.
• 1:11:51
  It's really, really hard for me. I'm not good at writing.
• 1:11:53
  I'm good at writing short form fiction and poetry and
• 1:11:55
  everything. But tell me about what your what
• 1:11:58
  your what your strategy came to you know was when it comes to
• 1:12:01
  writing and what your goals were and what you wrote about.
• 1:12:04
  OK so I wrote a book. So when I first got out so I
• 1:12:07
  wrote a book called On Call Put. The link in the show not
• 1:12:11
  caption. Awesome.
• 1:12:13
  So it, it kind of came, I never thought again.
• 1:12:15
  I just kind of fell into it because I never really thought
• 1:12:17
  about writing a book. But when we were doing our, you
• 1:12:20
  know, doing our, our crime scene, you're tired.
• 1:12:23
  And I remember thinking like, I'm tired and I'm stressed and
• 1:12:27
  this kind of sucks, but there's so many people in this world
• 1:12:29
  that this is an interesting job. Like we have an I have an
• 1:12:32
  interesting job. Not many people get to say
• 1:12:34
  they're homicide detectives. So I was like, it's kind of
• 1:12:36
  almost like a morale booster for me at times where it's like,
• 1:12:38
  instead of being a Debbie Downer and saying, you know, you know,
• 1:12:43
  like, oh, what was me? And this is sucky and this is
• 1:12:46
  bad. Hey, I'm doing something that a
• 1:12:48
  lot of people would probably want to be involved in.
• 1:12:51
  And then my wife loves watching those two crime shows and I'm
• 1:12:56
  always watching and I'm like that's how it goes.
• 1:12:58
  Like they miss because like they say like OK, so this murder
• 1:13:01
  happened and then we went and we knocked on this guys door and we
• 1:13:04
  got him in custody. And I'm like they missed
• 1:13:06
  something because you know, they went from they went from A-Z and
• 1:13:10
  they didn't tell us anything in the middle.
• 1:13:11
  Like that's not how it works. So I kind of started getting the
• 1:13:15
  idea in my head of like it would be, I think people would be
• 1:13:18
  really interested to see how they really unfold and how
• 1:13:20
  sometimes it's really clean, right?
• 1:13:23
  And sometimes it's really not. Like sometimes you spend a lot
• 1:13:26
  of time looking for the wrong person only to realize they're
• 1:13:30
  the wrong person and have to go right back to the beginning and
• 1:13:32
  start from scratch or you're biased.
• 1:13:35
  You know, that was AII talk about that in the book about not
• 1:13:38
  being biased. And I show some examples of how
• 1:13:40
  my bias affected the direction I was going.
• 1:13:44
  And once I said, Hey, you got to stop that, Let's let's go back
• 1:13:48
  to logic and facts and reason. And it led me in a direction
• 1:13:51
  that led me to the truth. So I was like, I think people
• 1:13:54
  would be interested in that. So I retired in 2021 and then
• 1:13:58
  about a month after retirement is actually a former a person I
• 1:14:02
  used to work with in the Secret Service was a subject matter
• 1:14:06
  expert for textbooks and they wanted more subject matter
• 1:14:08
  experts for textbooks. Cool.
• 1:14:09
  So they contacted me. So for my first year off of in
• 1:14:13
  retirement, I was a subject matter expert writer for two
• 1:14:17
  criminal justice textbooks that they use in college right now.
• 1:14:20
  And I wrote PowerPoints and also scenarios.
• 1:14:23
  So, you know, they were like, we want a scenario where you have
• 1:14:26
  to use or there's an exception to the search warrant or the
• 1:14:29
  search rule or a Terry pat down example.
• 1:14:31
  So I would use real life example.
• 1:14:33
  You know, you're walking, you're a cop and you're walking down
• 1:14:35
  the street at 2O clock in the morning and you see a hand to
• 1:14:37
  hand, you know, and then you see somebody lighting up drugs, you
• 1:14:40
  know, to approach them. So I did that and that's why I
• 1:14:44
  started learning about the academic world and I started
• 1:14:47
  saying that academic policing and real life policing are two
• 1:14:51
  different things. You know, because you can read
• 1:14:54
  it in a textbook, but it doesn't happen that way in real life.
• 1:14:56
  And again on the homicide thing. So then I said, you know what,
• 1:14:59
  I'm going to write a book. I wrote the first draft.
• 1:15:01
  I pitched it to some publishers. They liked it, but they didn't
• 1:15:04
  like the content too much. So I actually got a professional
• 1:15:07
  editor who gave me some really good ideas to include call outs.
• 1:15:11
  The the published book actually has call outs.
• 1:15:14
  So it explains, it's almost like a textbook as we talk about
• 1:15:18
  search warrants and physical characteristics and things like
• 1:15:21
  that. There's actually little call
• 1:15:22
  outs in there that tell you exactly what they are.
• 1:15:26
  So like on the side of the book, like this one's about firearm
• 1:15:29
  technology. So this one, we're talking about
• 1:15:31
  firearms and then over here we'll talk about the actual
• 1:15:34
  terminology that you'll that you'll use.
• 1:15:36
  Like. Casing, fired cartridges,
• 1:15:40
  stippling, things like that. So little things that you can
• 1:15:43
  learn that the true crime reader can learn and be more educated.
• 1:15:48
  So with that I did a complete rewrite.
• 1:15:51
  I basically I kept the old draft.
• 1:15:52
  It's all digital now, but I kept the old draft.
• 1:15:54
  But I basically started from the from scratch and rewrote the
• 1:15:57
  whole thing. And just like you, I don't sit
• 1:16:02
  stillwell, So I decided that each chapter was going to be
• 1:16:05
  about 20 to 30 pages and cover one case.
• 1:16:09
  So you can sit in one in one sitting and read because also
• 1:16:13
  not a lot of people have time to sit and read a 300 page book
• 1:16:16
  about 1 case. You're going to walk away from
• 1:16:18
  it for a couple days and you're going to lose track of what's
• 1:16:21
  going on. So each chapter, there's 11
• 1:16:24
  chapters that cover 13 cases. And that that case is broken
• 1:16:27
  down from the call out being the first time that you're called
• 1:16:31
  out as a detective all the way to prosecution and sentencing.
• 1:16:35
  And you break it down in 25 pages.
• 1:16:37
  And each and each chapter talks about a legal aspect.
• 1:16:41
  I talk about jury selection, I talk about testifying, about
• 1:16:46
  search warrants, making photo line UPS, how photo lamps are
• 1:16:50
  good, how photo lamps are bad, the difference in crimes.
• 1:16:52
  Everybody always if you, if somebody breaks in your house,
• 1:16:55
  you always say I got robbed. Actually you did, you got
• 1:16:57
  burgled. So I explained robbery is where
• 1:17:01
  somebody takes something from your person by force.
• 1:17:03
  Burglary is if they take something from your property by
• 1:17:05
  force. But even the media is like, oh,
• 1:17:07
  there was a robbery, not a robbery, that's a burglary.
• 1:17:10
  So I'm trying because I wanted people to be knowledgeable and
• 1:17:14
  educated and also question what they hear and see both in the
• 1:17:18
  news and on TV and question it and say, OK, they're saying
• 1:17:22
  this, but what really happened on the back end?
• 1:17:24
  Like what did they really have on there?
• 1:17:26
  And don't just take what you're told for fact because we're just
• 1:17:29
  sometimes we're just told things.
• 1:17:31
  So after the full rewrite. And so then it a publisher liked
• 1:17:35
  it, they published it and it it was about a 2 1/2 year process
• 1:17:40
  for writing the book. And I really enjoyed it and we.
• 1:17:43
  Enjoyed it? I enjoyed it.
• 1:17:45
  I enjoyed it was fun. As for my writing style, I kind
• 1:17:48
  of tried to write it like a police report almost cool.
• 1:17:51
  I tried to write it like it's. I wanted it to be for true crime
• 1:17:56
  readers, but also for younger detectives because as you're
• 1:17:59
  growing up in the detective world, like when I became a beer
• 1:18:01
  run detective, that's because there's no detective school.
• 1:18:05
  You have a recruit Academy to be an officer.
• 1:18:07
  There's no Academy for being a detective.
• 1:18:10
  You have to learn as you go. So by the time you become a
• 1:18:14
  homicide detective, you you test into it.
• 1:18:16
  You have to have a good reputation and you have to have
• 1:18:18
  a knowledge of it. You can't be brand new and go to
• 1:18:20
  homicide because you're just not going to know it.
• 1:18:22
  This is kind of a little bit of a learning tool where if
• 1:18:25
  somebody's interested in doing that as a career or in the
• 1:18:27
  career and interested in doing violent crime, homicide or
• 1:18:31
  complex investigations, it gives them an idea of kind of things
• 1:18:35
  that I did. And I really focus on this 5050
• 1:18:38
  of my successes and my failures. I really focus on that because
• 1:18:42
  I, I, I did things where I thought out-of-the-box.
• 1:18:44
  I'm like, I'm thinking out-of-the-box.
• 1:18:45
  I'm smarter than everybody. Let's do this.
• 1:18:47
  And it totally didn't work. And I want to let people know
• 1:18:50
  that because it might work in your case, but it didn't.
• 1:18:52
  Work in other times where? I think out-of-the-box and it
• 1:18:54
  worked. And it's like they go, wow, that
• 1:18:57
  I didn't even think about that. But yeah, I, I just, I literally
• 1:19:00
  just thought of it so. Can, can I, I guess I want to
• 1:19:04
  actually ask your thoughts on two, I guess recent and very
• 1:19:08
  famous, you know, scenarios, I guess that you'd probably have
• 1:19:11
  experienced both in first of all, the last year when when
• 1:19:17
  Trump got shot at. And I get, I know that the
• 1:19:22
  Secret Service got grilled for that, but that would that have
• 1:19:25
  been part of the field work that would have been responsible for
• 1:19:30
  to see the different potential positions that people could have
• 1:19:33
  been entering? And if so, were they held
• 1:19:36
  responsible or should they have? Or what would you have done
• 1:19:39
  differently about that? Or from your experience, what
• 1:19:41
  what? What went right or wrong about
• 1:19:42
  that? Yeah, so, so I was not, so I was
• 1:19:46
  not in the Secret Service at the time.
• 1:19:47
  I have no inside knowledge on it at all.
• 1:19:50
  I I. Yes, of course, and.
• 1:19:51
  I and I also. Just take the day.
• 1:19:54
  Some time for that kind of stuff.
• 1:19:56
  But what I would say is, is that on from my perspective as having
• 1:20:01
  been in those events. Yeah, that was a lapse in the
• 1:20:04
  advance. So when a president goes
• 1:20:06
  somewhere or any dictionary goes somewhere, they'll do an advance
• 1:20:09
  where they'll say, hey, we need this kind of resource.
• 1:20:12
  So we need a cop here, We need a cop here.
• 1:20:14
  This is going to be the entry point.
• 1:20:15
  These are the vehicles we're going to stay at.
• 1:20:17
  You know, they would even plan like if something bad happens,
• 1:20:19
  this is the this is the airport we're going to, this is the
• 1:20:22
  hospital we're going to. All of that.
• 1:20:24
  What I saw when I saw that and, and I watched it on the news
• 1:20:27
  like everybody else. And, and I was also kind of
• 1:20:29
  enthralled in it because it was my old thing.
• 1:20:31
  That was a huge lapse of communication, I think, and
• 1:20:36
  advanced planning because I still am not clear as a citizen
• 1:20:41
  who was responsible for watching that roof.
• 1:20:43
  Because the Secret Service said, oh, that was the locals and the
• 1:20:46
  locals are saying that was Secret Service.
• 1:20:48
  So clearly they were not communicating, you know what I
• 1:20:51
  mean? So.
• 1:20:52
  I, I I. Think it was poor communication,
• 1:20:56
  I think it was poor planning and I also think complacency.
• 1:21:00
  Yeah. When I was in the Secret
• 1:21:02
  Service, we were also very complacent and, and right after
• 1:21:06
  I left, I left in February of 2001, September 2020 of 2001,
• 1:21:11
  911 happened. And talking to people that I had
• 1:21:14
  been in the Secret Service and I was in the PD at the time, the
• 1:21:18
  local PD, but I would talk to my friends that were still in and
• 1:21:21
  they had said it changed like no more, you know, sleeping on duty
• 1:21:25
  or things like that because it was very complacent.
• 1:21:27
  Nothing was ever happened. So when I was in, no one had
• 1:21:31
  ever tried. The last attempt on a
• 1:21:32
  president's life serious attempt was Reagan.
• 1:21:36
  And that was in the 80s. So that had been almost what,
• 1:21:39
  almost 1819 years? They didn't even happen.
• 1:21:42
  And people get complacent. And I think that's what happened
• 1:21:45
  here is they were thinking it's Pennsylvania, it's small town
• 1:21:48
  Pennsylvania. Everybody loves Trump.
• 1:21:51
  He's not in really any danger. No one's going to shoot him.
• 1:21:53
  You know what I mean? Like, you don't think that, you
• 1:21:55
  know, but unfortunately in the protective world, you have to
• 1:21:59
  think worst case scenario, you know, your little member, the
• 1:22:01
  Rolodex and the monkey has to go, ooh, guy on the rooftop
• 1:22:04
  shooting. And I think so now for the next
• 1:22:06
  1015 years, that's all they'll focus on his rooftops.
• 1:22:10
  Sure you with that. And the Charlie Kirk thing,
• 1:22:11
  they'll focus on rooftop, but then some criminal will figure
• 1:22:15
  another thing out that we didn't think of.
• 1:22:18
  And then we're going to have to add that Rolodex in there again
• 1:22:20
  and go, oh, now we got to think about this.
• 1:22:21
  You know, before 911, we never thought about airplanes into a
• 1:22:24
  building. Nobody ever thought about that.
• 1:22:26
  That wasn't a thing. You know, if you mentioned that,
• 1:22:27
  you'd be like, I mean, it's even possible.
• 1:22:30
  You know. It's something you've seen in a
• 1:22:32
  movie, like no one's going to do that.
• 1:22:35
  So that's kind of my thing on that is I think it was really
• 1:22:38
  lack of plan, complacency, lack of planning.
• 1:22:41
  And like I said, as a private citizen who watched it, I still
• 1:22:46
  am not clear who was supposed to be watching that rooftop.
• 1:22:48
  And I don't think they were either.
• 1:22:50
  I think everybody else kind of had that thing of like, oh,
• 1:22:52
  that's their responsibility. I'm going to focus on this and.
• 1:22:55
  Yeah, The other thing I was thinking, the other thing I was
• 1:22:57
  thinking about that was also, and I forgot where I heard this
• 1:23:02
  from recently, It's probably ATV show or a movie or something.
• 1:23:05
  No, maybe it was a book, but it was that we don't know all the
• 1:23:10
  right times that they've stopped hundreds of thousands of
• 1:23:13
  attempts, you know, because we don't, because they don't
• 1:23:15
  publicize it very often, you know, unless it's unless it's,
• 1:23:18
  unless it's happened in such a public way that it gets reported
• 1:23:21
  on. Right.
• 1:23:22
  But I mean, if, if the, if the, if the agents do their job the
• 1:23:25
  right way, they can eliminate the threat before anyone even
• 1:23:30
  knows about it. And then they don't want anyone
• 1:23:32
  to know about it because they don't want to hear about how
• 1:23:34
  they caught it. You know, how they caught the
• 1:23:35
  person, you know that they're trying to perpetrate it.
• 1:23:37
  So, so the other thing is like we give everyone, we give them a
• 1:23:40
  very, very hard time, but we have no idea how many thousands
• 1:23:43
  of other opportunities, you know, situations had occurred
• 1:23:45
  leading up to that or in the, you know, previously been
• 1:23:48
  assessed or acted on that may have led that someone to act
• 1:23:51
  differently because of their previous experience they thought
• 1:23:54
  had, you know, would have been successful.
• 1:23:56
  I don't know. It's just something else that
• 1:23:58
  that that came to mind. And the second question also was
• 1:24:00
  also I guess, and that this would be more about your your,
• 1:24:04
  your homicide experience. Was it Charlie Kirk?
• 1:24:08
  I was going to ask about that. What are some of your thoughts?
• 1:24:11
  And I am not a conspiracy nut by any stretch of the imagination,
• 1:24:16
  although I hear I hear some of them out and kind of try to do
• 1:24:19
  my own homework on some of them. And I don't honestly, I don't
• 1:24:23
  know what to make of any of it other than just how terrible it
• 1:24:27
  is. But do you have any?
• 1:24:28
  Did you have any thoughts or observations as it was happening
• 1:24:31
  or anything since then? I haven't really.
• 1:24:33
  I've been paying a lot to the conspiracy.
• 1:24:35
  I remember I watched it when it first happened and I remember
• 1:24:38
  when it first happened, there was that really close up video
• 1:24:41
  on on YouTube or TikTok, one of the two.
• 1:24:46
  And I remember I downloaded the video and I went frame by frame
• 1:24:48
  like I used to do in the old days.
• 1:24:50
  You. Know.
• 1:24:50
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Frame.
• 1:24:51
  And I can tell that that, you know, as a homicide detective,
• 1:24:55
  when I saw that shot, you know, and they were like always in the
• 1:24:58
  hospital and, you know, and one news report was like, oh, he's
• 1:25:01
  standing. I'm like, I don't think that's a
• 1:25:02
  survivable shot. That was a really bad place.
• 1:25:07
  That's a bad place to get shot in, in the neck.
• 1:25:13
  And again, and, and, and the conspiracy theories, I haven't
• 1:25:15
  heard a whole lot of them because I kind of don't buy some
• 1:25:18
  of those conspiracy theories. You know, I, I, I kind of don't.
• 1:25:22
  And I know like he was asked a question about either a shooter
• 1:25:26
  or something and then the shot came off.
• 1:25:29
  But for that to happen, do you realize and being a firearms
• 1:25:32
  person, it's hard to shoot somebody anyway, right?
• 1:25:37
  It's hard. And even though the guy had a
• 1:25:39
  hunting rifle and it wasn't that hard of a shot, it still takes a
• 1:25:42
  little bit of concentration. But but to place a shot, right,
• 1:25:48
  when somebody says to shoot, yeah.
• 1:25:51
  And then actually making that shot, that's like Navy SEAL type
• 1:25:54
  stuff, right? And this guy is no Navy SEAL.
• 1:25:57
  He was a hunter who had a little bit of hunting experience with
• 1:25:59
  that rifle and, and and he shot somebody with that rifle.
• 1:26:03
  So I don't necessarily buy that. Yeah, I don't.
• 1:26:06
  I, I, I'm not, I, I don't, I'm not convinced of much.
• 1:26:11
  It has to be like one of those things where it's a very clear
• 1:26:17
  correlation or connection and then there's just absolutely no
• 1:26:19
  response for me to be like, how come there's no response but
• 1:26:21
  like this doesn't that that did not seem like a particularly.
• 1:26:24
  What makes you think there's a conspiracy?
• 1:26:26
  Is it because there's not a lot of information available?
• 1:26:28
  I think so. I think so.
• 1:26:30
  And apparently there's a gag order just placed on like
• 1:26:33
  several 1000 people, which is also the and again, maybe it's
• 1:26:37
  not a conspiracy and maybe by the way, it's just, it's just a
• 1:26:40
  case that they're working on. And in, in cases are really hard
• 1:26:43
  to, you know, when my when my students were asking me like,
• 1:26:46
  how did they get the wrong guy? And I'm like, if I was like, you
• 1:26:49
  don't understand. You're gonna be in College in a
• 1:26:51
  couple of years, guys. You're gonna have a guy come to
• 1:26:54
  your campus that's considered controversial.
• 1:26:57
  And you're gonna go with your friends and drink a lot of beer
• 1:26:59
  and hang out and maybe smoke a Jay.
• 1:27:01
  And then you're gonna go with the whole crowd of people and
• 1:27:02
  watch them fight with people. And you gonna be like, this is a
• 1:27:04
  great time. And then I was like, and then
• 1:27:06
  something happens and everyone's panicking.
• 1:27:08
  I was like, who's a reliable witness?
• 1:27:10
  Who's, who recounts what they saw?
• 1:27:11
  Who's paying any attention to anything going on over there?
• 1:27:14
  And maybe just that there's so much information and there's
• 1:27:17
  such little accurate, you know, accounting of what's going on
• 1:27:20
  that that's just really hard to find.
• 1:27:22
  You know, I, I'm not, I'm not sold.
• 1:27:24
  I'm not sold any way on anything other than just it was a
• 1:27:26
  tragedy, you know? And and a lot of times I think
• 1:27:29
  the gaggler so arresting that one dude.
• 1:27:31
  First off, I mean, you can't blame local police because at
• 1:27:34
  first I was like, well, why would they arrest him?
• 1:27:35
  But apparently he started yelling.
• 1:27:38
  I did it. I did it.
• 1:27:39
  You can't as a cop just be like, no, you didn't and just walk
• 1:27:42
  away like you're a crazy dude. No, you didn't.
• 1:27:44
  No, you'd pounce on him, put him in handcuffs, even though more
• 1:27:47
  than likely he didn't do it. Like, he doesn't have a rifle.
• 1:27:49
  He's right there. I mean, you know, But you, yeah,
• 1:27:53
  as a responsible, like, I think most people would understand,
• 1:27:55
  you can't just walk away from that guy and go go away, crazy
• 1:27:57
  man. So they're focused on getting
• 1:27:59
  him in custody. The gag order.
• 1:28:02
  I can see a lot of times we try cases in the media and in social
• 1:28:08
  and in the social world before they even go to trial.
• 1:28:12
  And I think they're from the gag order in my perception is
• 1:28:15
  they're trying to stop that. But when you do that, it does
• 1:28:18
  seem like they're hiding something.
• 1:28:19
  I'm not even going to lie. And and the conspiracy, when I
• 1:28:22
  was in the military, I was really big on the JFK conspiracy
• 1:28:25
  conspiracy. And all those books have just
• 1:28:27
  come out. JFK, the movie just came out.
• 1:28:29
  And I remember when I was in the military, I read all the books
• 1:28:31
  and I was convinced the CIA and the mob did it and this and
• 1:28:34
  that. And then as I got older and I
• 1:28:37
  read more to it and I started seeing it.
• 1:28:39
  I went to Dealey Plaza once on, you know, vacation when I saw
• 1:28:41
  where that all of it happened. And you're kind of like, maybe
• 1:28:44
  he did just do it. You know what I mean?
• 1:28:46
  It's really odd and weird, but maybe he did, you know?
• 1:28:50
  And then it comes out, they release all the files, and
• 1:28:52
  everybody's kind of like, yeah, it looks like he probably did it
• 1:28:55
  on his own. Were there things behind the
• 1:28:57
  scenes? Maybe.
• 1:28:59
  But yeah, I, I think sometimes we want things to be bigger than
• 1:29:02
  they are and not just realize that sometimes, like this
• 1:29:06
  Charlie Kirk situation, that guy had the perfect opportunity at
• 1:29:10
  the perfect moment, was able to get into the perfect spot, make
• 1:29:13
  a shot. That was.
• 1:29:14
  Everybody says it was, oh, that's an easy shot.
• 1:29:17
  I've shot at 200 yards, even with a rifle, it's kind of easy,
• 1:29:21
  but it's not. If you've never handled a gun,
• 1:29:23
  you're not doing it. You know, you got to have a
• 1:29:25
  little bit and you're shooting another human being, you're
• 1:29:28
  stressed, you're thinking about am I going to get caught?
• 1:29:31
  Am I going to get that? So you got to add the stress
• 1:29:32
  factor on there as well. So that probably.
• 1:29:35
  On some couple of drugs you probably drugged up in some sort
• 1:29:37
  of way. Yeah, that's true.
• 1:29:38
  That's true. So you know.
• 1:29:40
  It was there was a lot of things that went on that guy's side
• 1:29:43
  that make that come true. So I don't know, is there AI
• 1:29:50
  kind of try to stay away from the conspiracies because
• 1:29:53
  everything turns into a conspiracy because we think
• 1:29:56
  everybody's lying to us. And if you think everybody's
• 1:29:58
  lying to us, then you really have to start wondering what do
• 1:30:01
  I believe on anything? And then we just start believing
• 1:30:03
  from people that we that we want to believe and then we're biased
• 1:30:06
  on that. So.
• 1:30:07
  Yeah, that becomes a lot harder, right?
• 1:30:08
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:30:09
  And that's what makes. That's what you got to do a lot
• 1:30:12
  of these things per diem almost, you know, But like, you know,
• 1:30:15
  the question of do are any conspiracy theories real?
• 1:30:19
  It's like, well, you think the government is 100% telling the
• 1:30:21
  truth on everything that's ever happened, you know, in the last
• 1:30:24
  100 years, like, well, probably not 100%, you know.
• 1:30:26
  So of the ones that they are, which ones is true and which
• 1:30:29
  ones not? And I actually think that, you
• 1:30:33
  know, to be able to and, and it's never, ever going to
• 1:30:36
  happen. But like in this hopelessly
• 1:30:37
  romantic, you know, world or this idealistic world where
• 1:30:41
  people would say, Hey, you know what, we did it, we screwed up.
• 1:30:44
  There's accountability. This person's, you know, this
• 1:30:45
  person's in jail, this person's fired.
• 1:30:47
  This person, you know, loses their classification, will never
• 1:30:49
  go, you know, step foot into public service again.
• 1:30:51
  And then you say, now do you know, we, we now illicit trust,
• 1:30:56
  like we say, you know, now we are now, now we, now we're
• 1:30:58
  standing, you know, but to, to, I think that, I think that what
• 1:31:01
  gets a lot of people frustrated is the feeling of being gaslit
• 1:31:04
  or being told no, no, no, no, no, you know, and, and so then
• 1:31:08
  that's when the slippery slope kind of starts happening.
• 1:31:11
  It's hard, but it's, it's also, it's also like you said, you
• 1:31:14
  know, once you don't know who to believe, you don't believe, you
• 1:31:16
  become biased and you just start thinking everything about
• 1:31:18
  everyone, you know, and it's like, OK, forget about it.
• 1:31:21
  I'm sorry. I've seen some experience media
• 1:31:25
  and people with public fig or with with a public voice will
• 1:31:28
  make a statement that is absolutely not true, that is
• 1:31:32
  straight up not true. But they have a voice, you know
• 1:31:35
  what I mean? And people believe them, so they
• 1:31:37
  believe that. And I always bring up the thing
• 1:31:41
  of the George Floyd murder. When it first happened, they
• 1:31:48
  mentioned excited delirium and I remember watching a news thing
• 1:31:52
  where they said excited delirium isn't a thing.
• 1:31:55
  It's a made-up word and it's not a thing.
• 1:31:58
  And regardless of the of the whole George Floyd thing, I
• 1:32:01
  remember hearing that. I think no, it's not because
• 1:32:05
  police officers have been trained in it.
• 1:32:07
  Like we have had hours and hours and hours of training.
• 1:32:10
  Excited delirium is a real thing.
• 1:32:12
  But I was watching these people and there's like 3 experts and
• 1:32:16
  they're all saying no, excited delirium isn't a thing.
• 1:32:18
  It's proven in court not to be a thing.
• 1:32:19
  It's like, no, they're wrong. It is, you know what I mean?
• 1:32:23
  But nobody's going to listen to me.
• 1:32:24
  I'm at the time I was a detective and I'm not saying
• 1:32:27
  anything. I'm like, yeah, you, you believe
• 1:32:29
  you, You know what I mean? Let let the court forgot.
• 1:32:31
  So that was an example where I saw for certain that people had
• 1:32:34
  no idea what they were talking about and then saying it.
• 1:32:37
  And I'm sure it happens a lot because I don't know everything.
• 1:32:40
  And people say things that I believe because I trust them,
• 1:32:44
  but I don't do the research on it, you know what I mean?
• 1:32:46
  And maybe I should, maybe I should be Googling more of like,
• 1:32:48
  hey, is this real? And and then you got to wonder,
• 1:32:51
  is that real? So, so if you go down the
• 1:32:53
  conspiratorial thing, it just goes forever and ever and ever.
• 1:32:56
  But I think that's a big thing. It's a lot of.
• 1:32:58
  From experience, it does and you have to pull yourself out of it
• 1:33:01
  before it before it drives you nuts.
• 1:33:02
  You know I. Think we always have to remember
• 1:33:04
  this is that we think everything is a conspiracy.
• 1:33:07
  And I think more than likely it's incompetence.
• 1:33:10
  There's a lot, there's a lot of people.
• 1:33:12
  I've met a lot of politicians. I've met a lot of people in
• 1:33:14
  power and things like that. And I will say not all of them
• 1:33:17
  are competent people. You know, they're not all
• 1:33:20
  politicians are good people. There are politicians who are
• 1:33:23
  I've met them. They are bad people and but they
• 1:33:26
  get elected and that's the thing.
• 1:33:28
  That's fine. That's their job.
• 1:33:29
  But I think we have to stop taking everybody just because we
• 1:33:33
  see it on a podcast and go, oh, that's, that's the truth.
• 1:33:37
  When you watch another podcast and go, OK, now that's the
• 1:33:39
  truth. Yeah, for ourselves a little
• 1:33:41
  bit. And we have the world at our
• 1:33:43
  fingertips with AI and Google and the Internet, whatever you
• 1:33:47
  use, we have the world at our fingertips.
• 1:33:50
  We should be our own detectives and figure our own stuff out and
• 1:33:52
  maybe listen to ourselves because we're not all experts,
• 1:33:55
  you know? We're not all experts on
• 1:33:56
  everything, right? Right, right, right.
• 1:33:58
  It reminds me of, what do you call it, that scene ever in
• 1:34:01
  Cheers when Woody Harrelson runs for runs for office and he wins
• 1:34:07
  by saying all the wrong things. It's like, yeah, well, there you
• 1:34:11
  go. Anyway, Justin, I really
• 1:34:13
  appreciate your time. This is such a this is such a
• 1:34:15
  fun and fascinating conversation.
• 1:34:17
  And this has really been really, really informative and a lot of
• 1:34:20
  fun. And I I really appreciate your
• 1:34:23
  time and thank you so much. Thank you for all the service
• 1:34:28
  and all the great work throughout the years.
• 1:34:29
  This really means a lot and I wish you lots of luck, hopefully
• 1:34:32
  be in touch and I'm very excited to hear about what you got
• 1:34:35
  coming up next, OK? Yes.
• 1:34:36
  Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.
• 1:34:38
  All right, take care. Bye, bye now.