Latest / APD Pod Squad / Season 2, Episode 12; Senior Deputy Fire Marshal Charley Cox, Det. Aaron Buyanovsky, SPO Blake Fadler, and the History Minute with Hannah Silberman

Transcript

Season 2, Episode 12; Senior Deputy Fire Marshal Charley Cox, Det. Aaron Buyanovsky, SPO Blake Fadler, and the History Minute with Hannah Silberman · APD Pod Squad

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_05: This is the APD Pod Squad.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_05: I'm Rick Rice.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for tuning in.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_05: This week, 21 cadets will graduate from B L E T, and 20 of them will become Astral Police Officers.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_05: The other one?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_05: She returns to her day job with the Astral Fire Department.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_05: Senior Deputy Fire Marshal Charlie Cox joins me to discuss her experience in the police academy and how it benefits APD and AFD.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_05: Also, getting to know Detective Aaron Bayanofsky and the complicated fraud case that he began investigating as part of the intern program.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_05: From community engagement, senior police officer Blake Fadler, who joined the unit just recently, and welcome back, Hannah Silberman, with a history minute that takes us back 100 years to 1926.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_05: All that coming up on season two, episode 12 of the APD Pod Squad.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_05: Joining me now and getting to know Senior Deputy Fire Marshal Charlie Cox of the Asheville Fire Department.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_05: Charlie, thanks for joining me.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm happy to be here.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we love talking with people on the fireside.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_05: Your involvement here today is because you're with the APD right now in our B L E T program.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: I just finished up the six-month B L E T program, passed my state exam, and am doing a little post-BLET action with you guys in the interim.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_05: Pretty cool, right?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Very cool, I gotta say.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, so how did that work while you were doing B L E T?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_05: Did you do any of your fire responsibilities or was it just dedicated to the studying?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So luckily the fire department was pretty supportive in that sense.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: They put uh an individual that had uh that works in the division with me in an out-of-class position.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: So he actually was my job.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: He did my job for the six months that I was over here doing this.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't be more grateful to him and probably my wife at the same time, because she took care of all the responsibilities at home while he took care of all the responsibilities at work.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because there would have been absolutely impossible to be a recruit for APD and be uh supervising role over the investigations team for Ashville Fire Department.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's a full-time job, obviously.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_05: And then some.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_05: So the obvious question most people are going to have is okay, well, why did you do this?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the reason that this came to pass is I've kind of been pushing for this for several years now.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't had a proper sworn arson investigator, I don't know, probably for six or seven years now.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the last individual was uh Cutshaw, and he's since retired.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So what we've kind of been doing is we have a great working relationship with APD.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So what would happen is we would go to investigate a fire, we would determine it was criminal in nature, and then I would come over and ask for assistance with a detective.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then a detective would get assigned and we would work that case together.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: But in the midst of doing all those parts, you lose some time, some ground, some just some continuity.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so by design, an arson investigator is probably the only hybrid position around where you do two roles in emergency services.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: You are a police officer and you are a fire investigator.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you kind of have a foot in each world.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And to do that to the best of our ability for the community, you need to have that position be sworn.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the powers to be on both sides of the fence that it was uh they supported it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's how I landed in recruit school again at 50 years old.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_05: Which is different, right?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_05: When you get older a little bit, and I'm I'm older too.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_05: Learning isn't as easy as it was when you're 20 and you're like this sponge.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's it seems tougher.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I think as an adult learner, you kind of get a little bit, you're more invested in doing well.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like for me, it was very important that I put as much energy and effort into learning the material and understanding the material.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the 22-year-old, you know, Charlie Cox would probably have been like, I got this, because it, you know, you're invincible and nothing, nothing is hard.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so right.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think you know the learning was it was probably a little bit more exhausting because I put so much effort into it, but then it was just the act of being in the beginning inceptions of a field.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like I got a couple of months into it, and I was like, why is this so exhausting?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, because I'm learning a whole new profession.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah, brand new.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was in class with 20 other people who are going to be sworn in in a week, and then they're gonna get right into a police car and they're gonna be police officers all day, every day on their shifts.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, that's why I'm tired right now.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because I already have a proper profession that I've been in for 25 years.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so in real time, I'm also learning yet another profession.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it was the most fun I never want to do again.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean because they've turned their back, for lack of a better term, on whatever it was they were doing to enter this whole new world.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_05: And this is 100% of their world now going forward.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_05: Whereas you're doing all of the learning, but you're gonna be going back to your previous world.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't ever actually get to turn off from being in the role in the fire department.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: So like while I had my uh uh colleague who was in my assigned position, there was still a lot of communication back and forth and a lot of like, you know, making sure that things were getting done and any questions that needed to be answered, and if something would come up, I had to I happily needed to make myself available just in case.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it was never quite a complete disconnect from the fire department while an entry into the police department.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was a little bit of a straddling still.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: So but definitely was immensely supported by both organizations to be successful in this academy.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't have done it without the support from both.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_05: I think the people in your class, there's uh 20 people that will graduate, right?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's twenty-one.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_05: Twenty one.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the weird little duckling on the end.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_05: So there's twenty that will be APD officers.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_05: 21 that graduate and they're of all ages and come from all these different backgrounds, which I think would that have helped you, you think, instead of just being like a small class, they're all young kids and then there's you.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_05: Instead, you've got people that are actually older than you, younger than you, they're from here, they're from there, they're from everywhere.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Yeah, it was really fascinating to find out that there was a person older than me.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: I never in a million years thought at 50, yeah, that old Jerry O'Donnell, what a what an amazing human being that is.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, Arthur Nistra, who's 55.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: So again, somebody else older than me.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And both of those gentlemen were just profoundly amazing at just everything, as was the entire collective.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: The group was could not speak more highly of the APD officers that are about to hit the road when it comes to these young and older 20 collective individuals.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was very, very proud and humbled to be a part of that group.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the largerness, the largeness of it made it uh just more fun.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like we different backgrounds, you know, people from you know Puerto Rico, you have people who are bilingual, you have, you know, people of color.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like all it was just so very diverse.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, different walks of life, different perspectives and experiences based on age or ethnicity, and oh my gosh.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was so cool.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Powell What was your favorite part of it?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_05: Now, had had you fired firearms before?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I have I was not like a firearms expert by any stretch of the imagination.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a good Southern girl, and so I know how to shoot a gun.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I had not had to shoot like under pressure like that, because that is the the intent by design, is if you are going to have to utilize your weapon, there's going to be a lot of stress and pressure involved.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we do that in the fire service.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we create controlled stress when people go into burning buildings, and we do that in our own recruit school.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I wouldn't say that firearms was my most fun, because that was really stressful and a very steep learning curve for me.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I did enjoy it, and the firearms instructors were amazing and so beneficial.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody from APD has been so helpful and kind and encouraging.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I you know, because firefighters and police, you know, we've always got this thing, this banter back and forth.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, it's all still one brotherhood and sisterhood, no matter what the profession is when you're in this kind of high stress and and uh emergent profession.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_05: So you're wearing your AFD t-shirt today, I see.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_05: So you're pretty much done with the B L E T stuff.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_05: Until graduation next week, and you are gonna get to walk in graduation, right?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: I am, yes, sir.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, fantastic.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_05: I'll get to say your name because I'm the MC for for that event.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_05: And that's gonna be exciting.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_05: So some of your your fire co-workers are gonna be there to support you for that?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think that they would love to be there tomorrow when I get tased more than anything.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in fact, I think they've got like a running pool to see if they can pay to see who gets to tase me.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_05: So have you witnessed the other people get tased yet?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_05: I haven't, and I'm just not quite the experience.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_05: I I haven't had it done to me yet, but they've invited me in the room a couple of times to watch.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_05: It's something.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've had some uh detectives and other people already ask me the actual date and time so they put it in their calendars, because I think they all like to enjoy the you know, watching the new people come up and have it happen to them.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I think absolutely there will be some people from the fire department side that will come.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think that people from my administration will show up because they've been supportive and they'll want to see you know that all of this collectiveness that have come to fruition, and then my family will be there.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, like the the one thing that I noticed when I was watching for a while, everyone's different how they react to it.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_05: And you don't know what you're going to do.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, everyone, everybody is different.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_05: Some people don't react much, some people scream, some people it's like an utterance, like 40-year-old virgin, like Kelly Clarkson or something.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: It just I'm gonna do that tomorrow now, just for you.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_05: You gotta yell Kelly Clarkson.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna do that.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, if you could just sneak up on me and tase me, that's what I would prefer.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of like standing there bracing for it.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, why don't you just come around one of the corners in the hallway on the fourth floor and drop me like that?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: The anticipation is the part you're gonna do.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: I know, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I'm I'm gonna overthink that for the entire time that that thing makes that sound, and then the person says taser, taser, taser, and then before it hits me, that's gonna feel like an eternity.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_05: It's like when I did my polygraph exam for this job.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_05: In and of itself, it was not a difficult thing to do.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_05: It was the thinking about it in advance.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, oh my God, what are they gonna ask me?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: What if I say this?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm I'm nervous and I'm not lying, but it sounds like a lying.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_05: And it's just it's the whole thing, it's the mental game.
• 9:44
  unknown: Wow.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_05: So but you're a firefighter, first and foremost.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Powell 100%.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_05: And how did that begin?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_05: How did you want to be a firefighter?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So my grandfather was in the Navy, and when he got out of the Navy, he uh worked for a volunteer service.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: So there's pictures of me at like four years old, and I'm strumming a guitar in my nightgown with a plastic red fire hat on.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I just kind of somewhere along that line, that love for the fire service started.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then so when I got old enough, I started putting out applications.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Asheville was one of the first ones that accepted uh my application for like the hiring process, and I went through the hiring process and back in 2000, you know, and then I've been doing firefighting ever since.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then just have progressed through my career from riding a truck, riding the back of a truck as a firefighter, then driving the truck, and then I moved into some community risk reduction stuff and then into investigations because I was always super excited about arson investigations.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you get a certain age in the fire search, and you're like, uh air packs are heavy, and that's like this is a young person's job.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And arson investigation is so fascinating.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're left with just a shell of something to try to determine not only origin and cause, but if it's criminal in nature, you're left with very little evidence.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you're kind of trying to reconstruct this crime from next to nothing and bring about like a completion and ending, you know, finding out who did it and why.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's one of the hardest crimes to prove because of you know the intent behind it.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_05: Well, and it's I've got to imagine I'm not somebody that likes to light a fire without a purpose, like just in my backyard or something, but I guess if I was an arsonist, it's pretty easy to light one and walk away.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_05: Because then it it's it starts small and grows and no one even notices it, and you're a mile down the road.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_05: And I mean, we've got, of course, a very big one here in Asheville Admission Hospital that is uh has has been unsolved.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_05: That claimed lives.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_05: And and you probably know enough about that.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_05: What was the frustrating part about that one?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_05: Is like the lack of evidence?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're it's the lack of being able to uh prove beyond a reasonable doubt what your suspicion is.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you can have a certain amount of evidence and you can have a theory, but if you don't if you can't prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, then you're kind of left with just those two things, kind of like a little bit of evidence and a and a theory of why it happened and how it happened.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: You really have to pull those together and create a cohesive concept that you can prove.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because without being able to prove it, and nowadays it's so hard to without like some CCTV footage or a confession, it's really hard.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because like you said, somebody can shove some stuff in a standpipe, and when we go to connect, we can't get water where we need to be, and then somebody loses their life, and then and then you're like, great, now I've got proof that somebody shoved something in a standpipe, but I mean now water has run through that, so there's no chance of getting any kind of DNA or fingerprints, and there's no camera footage to show you who put it in there, and then now what?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_05: Now we have a lot of little ones around town that are set by the homeless.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_05: That that's a we've got a unique issue there that a lot of towns don't deal with, but like this time of the year, seems like they're pretty willing to set fires wherever they want to stay warm, and sometimes it's inside a dwelling.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_05: Just happened last week at the Mountaineer End.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what's really awesome is that in just in this last six months that I've been with the uh the B L E T Academy for APD, we've had a couple of fires that have generated an actual arson charge, which we weren't actually having a lot of success with that, because I think there wasn't a lot of continuity because you know it's like we know what we do in fire and PD knows what APD does for criminal, but there was no nobody in between that could be like, hey, by the way, if this happens then it's this, or if it this happens, then it's this, or we should be looking at these two things because they align.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Setting a fire as a homeless individual in an unoccupied dwelling that is not their property is trespassing and it is second-degree arson if it's unoccupied, like the Mountaineer Inn.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: We need to hold that person accountable because the next fire they might set could be somebody close to an occupied dwelling.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: A family lives there, you know, middle of the night, and that's that would be terrible.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the balance of trying to have compassion for whatever the whatever the motive was, and then also understanding that there is some personal accountability that needs to be had so that people just don't feel they can do whatever they want wherever they want.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just go wherever you want and start a fire.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_05: Well, because how many fires started with maybe I just want to stay warm and next thing you know, it's beyond your control.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Absolutely.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then people lose their life or their property or both, and that's it's just unacceptable.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why they're it's like I tell my teenagers, that's why there are rules.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we abide by those rules because that's how we function and keep people safe and you know, living to their their best lives, so to speak.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Ross Powell Charlie Cox with the Asheville Fire Department is with me now, but she went through the B L E T program with the Asheville Police Department, a very unique thing.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_05: But since you're part of our family now, I can ask you the question that everyone sits in your chair does, which is name one thing that most people don't know about you.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_05: And I know you gave this a lot of thought.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I did.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I actually was thinking, I was like, I am such a chatty Kathy and pretty transparent about my myself and my life and whatnot.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, what don't people know about me?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what people probably don't know about me is that uh I'm the oldest of three girls, and my father was in the military, and we moved around a lot.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the coolest things that I got to do that I really appreciated later in life was able to share with my daughter is that I went to middle school and most of high school in Hawaii and learned to surf and have passed that on to not only my daughter, but my stepsons.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that we all like to do.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Go to the beach, pull out the boards, and now those are some waves though.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_05: We're talking Hawaii.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_05: Those are waves.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_05: Those are different.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_05: Those are not Folly Beach waves.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, but you know what?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Folly beach is a lot closer than you know, Waikiki Beach.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we do the Folly Beach waves, which are still fun.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_05: You know, so I lived right down the street from Folly for three years.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_05: I was in James Island.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_05: No way.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and my neighbor was a huge surfer.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_05: He would any moment that he could get down there, and especially with hurricanes coming in and all that stuff, he he has his wetsuit and his boards at the ready.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_05: So I and I've never surfed, but I would just go down there and hang out sometimes and stuff.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_05: And I almost got on a few times.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you should have.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: You get a big long board, it's totally like cruising.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_05: That's what he told me.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_05: So easy.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm not the only reason I probably didn't get on was by the time he made the offer, I'd had a couple of pops, as they say.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_05: So it's kind of you know, probably not the best time to be honest with the book.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_05: So I never did take him up on the offer, and then I moved, and so I've never been on a surfboard.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you, anytime you want to go, my family and I, we go all the time.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: We love Polly Beach, and we will throw those boards in the water.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: I just turned 50 last year, and one of my really good friends that uh she's also a big surfer, she got me a uh surf trip to the Kelly Slater Surf Ranch.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_08: Ooh.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so went not too long ago.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it was uh during recruit school, and I was so tired.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: But she had already purchased the package, and so I was like, we're going.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we flew out to California and went to this amazing surf camp in the middle of farm country in California where they generate waves.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: They've got like this pool and they a train goes up and down and it makes the waves as big as small as you want, depending on speed, and you just get to surf nonstop.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was amazing.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_05: See, I'm I'm not a surfer, but even I know who Kelly Slater is.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_05: It's one of those you hear about that, dude.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_05: It's like holy cow.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_05: So now Hawaii, is that where you were born, or just no, I was born in Kentucky.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: My middle sister was born in Germany, and then my youngest sister was born in Georgia.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of again, Army brats from all over the place.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_05: That runs the gamut.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_05: Kentucky, Germany, Hawaii, Georgia.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_05: We've been.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_05: Those are four distinctly different places.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've been uh we've been all over.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: That was really it was hard being an Army brat in the sense that you moved so often, but what a cool experience that you a lot of things that happened, I think, early on in your life, especially in childhood, that you're even then you might be like, in childhood you're like, oh, this seems like a bummer.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Then you become an adult and you're like, oh, you know what, that was that was kind of cool.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it shaped who I am.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Again, when I was trying to think of something that people don't know about me, it's uh part of the reason I'm so comfortable speaking with people and engaging the community and and talking and having great uh conversations with colleagues, be it AFD or APD.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's because my father moved us around all the time and it was either, you know, speak to people or don't have a conversation ever.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_05: That's your thing.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_05: Do you speak any German at all?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_05: Did you pick any up?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: That was uh something I wish I think my parents were too young to have grasped the concept that if she probably already has got a good base of the of the language, we should probably keep that going.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, they were this like young parents.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_05: I would guess enough people in Germany speak English that you could probably get away with.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_05: You know, what you need to you need to question answered, you could probably ask it in English and they would have figured out, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think mm yeah, most people understand that Americans aren't as proficient at second languages.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And from what I understand, English is a pretty easy second language to learn.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_05: It's not often I get to talk to somebody that's a legit firefighter about this.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_05: So looking for your opinion on one of my favorite movies in my formative years, backdraft, like what, 1990, 1991, whatever, Kurt Russell, Donald Sutherland.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sure you've seen it.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_05: So your opinion on backdraft.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Accurate So the concept is correct.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you deprive a fire of oxygen and then you introduce oxygen to that fire quickly, it will create an explosion.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: However, we do not run around with our turnout coats open and our helmets kicked off to the side.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was very much uh an inaccurate depiction of, you know, proper PPE and safety going into a burning structure.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty cool movie, though.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, again, I can see why people are drawn into that kind of stuff.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like now I've gone from where I watch fire stuff on TV and being like, well, that's not true, and that's not true.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm watching cop stuff on TV and going, that's not true, and that's not true.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_05: So I that's what I wondered.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_05: It's like there's a lot of fire shows right now.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_05: Actually, have you watched any of them?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't because it's I do it.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, I go home and I watch something else.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Powell And you'd find yourself picking picking it.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and and now I watch the cop shows and I'm like, oh come on.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_05: There's not a chase every five minutes.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_05: It doesn't work that way.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_05: There's not this going on, there's not that going on.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's a lot different than that.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now my favorite is the new is the pit.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think the pit is pretty accurate.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen the pit?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_05: I've seen a little bit of the pit.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_05: That's pretty good.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_05: So well, and of course, I and I lived near Pittsburgh for years.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, nice.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_05: So I I went to college in Erie, Pennsylvania, and my my radio stuff was all over Pennsylvania.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_05: A lot of my friends are from Pittsburgh, and I I love that area.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_05: It's a great town.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so by the time this episode lands, you'll have graduated from basic law enforcement training with the Asheville Police Department.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Phew, that's amazing.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_05: And so that journey, that about what, six months?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, sir.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_05: About that six months.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_05: And so after that, that's pretty much it for all of that, right?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_05: You're pretty much done now with that.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_05: And now you're back to the fireside.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm back on the fireside.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: I will have a um I will do so.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: All the folks that I have been in the academy with will go into an FTO in a patrol car.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And because I'm not going to be going as a sworn officer into like that kind of policing, I will be going into more of like a detective role as the arson investigator.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: I will go down to the criminal investigations division and work with some detectives on how to then carry my own caseload from beginning to end as the arson investigator because that was the design.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like I can do all the fire investigation part, but once it hit criminal, everything had to come to a stop and I had to loop somebody in from APD.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: So now there'll be no need to stop.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: It will be like I'll just keep going and I'll go take out my own search warrant or I'll go take care of arresting whomever is, you know, you know, the suspect or has, you know, committed the crime, that kind of stuff.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just it's completely made it a nice, smooth continuity.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited to get some of the other detectives up to speed on arson.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because like they're gonna get me up to speed on detectiving and how to do that correctly.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna love to get people, because I think there will be and there's interest in that.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Fire is fascinating.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And understanding how fire works, understanding how to investigate it is a very fascinating experience.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've even already had people being like, that kind of cool.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't mind.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I will take anybody who's interested in going to a fire scene and just understanding how I do what I do in one of those environments, one of those just shell of a structure anytime.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Powell So you said you started around what, 2000?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Well that means you got to be getting kind of close to retirement, right?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_05: Hopefully.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_05: So that being the case, is there somebody behind you that's going to follow in your steps and do the B L E T program at some point in the future?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's by design, that's what we're hoping for.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're hoping to try to create some succession planning in this.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's uh it's never good to just have one person who can do anything.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: That creates a point of failure by design.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I'm hoping that we can potentially again And send somebody through BLET and get that next person caught up to speed on the criminal aspect, as well as get some detectives that are already sworn and they're already part of APD.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Get them maybe some uh experience and some of the qualifications to do the arson component so they can just add that in their repertoire, put that on their CV, and just make them just another part of another facet of investigations that they can do.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_05: I think Sean Parker is your man for that.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Sean Parker's been my man nonstop.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: He's the one that's oh my god, I've got one.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, let's go do it.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, yeah.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_05: He's an enthusiastic one.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I love that guy.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_05: I like Sean.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: You do.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_05: Well, Charlie, uh congratulations in advance and graduating from BLET.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_05: I really appreciate it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_05: And looking forward to working with you in the future now.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: I know, right?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I get to see you so much more, and what a joy for me.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_05: Pretty cool.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks so much.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, sir.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_05: Getting to know Detective Aaron Bayanofsky, did I pronounce that right?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_05: You did, you nailed it.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_05: First time.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_05: It might be the only thing that comes in handy from all of my ears doing public address announcing.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_05: I see all these names.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_05: All these, you know, basketball players with all these names, and a lot of them come from, say, Eastern Bloc countries or things of that nature.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_05: I'm guessing that's that sounds like that's maybe.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_05: Are you from that side of Europe, your family?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_04: I was born in New York.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_04: My uh dad was born in uh one of the Soviet republics, Azerbaijan.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um towards the capital over there, Baku.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_04: And my mother was from St.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_04: Petersburg, Russia.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Powell Do you still have any family over there?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_04: Not really, no.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think most have passed.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_04: I visited them um when I was thirteen.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_04: Russia's a very interesting country.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_04: I I kind of I can't help but think of it as like Europe's Mexico, where the stratification between the very rich and the very poor is like very, you know, it's like a feature of daily life.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_04: Like a beautiful subway system, but then like most people seem to be struggling at the same time in the street.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_04: There's like the latest Mercedes and like even up armored ones.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_04: And I've read that in Moscow specifically, they have like this special suicide lane where all the bosses and like, you know, the the party big wigs, they could they basically play this game of chicken with their armored vehicles and their bodyguards, and they fly in and out of this suicide lane at the risk of everyone else's lives.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_04: And uh yeah.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_05: See some of the architecture over there.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_05: Some of those buildings are some of them are just beautiful.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_05: But then you also see if you dig deep and up the slums and all those things.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_05: So you I imagine crime, like probably organized crime, is a big deal over there.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_04: From what I've read about it, the Russian state and the security apparatus over there is virtually synonymous with organized crime.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_04: And the players in the Russian mafia, they float in and out of the nationalized industries over there, where oil, timber, whatever, trade, those guys are very much in deep and embedded with the Russian intelligence services and security apparatus and the FSB.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_04: They often rely on one another either for protection or for whatever other services they can provide, you know, via the black market or you know, under the quasi-legal protection of the state.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_05: I tell you the politicians over right there, and a lot of the citizens right now, they're probably not happy because they're not able to participate in the Winter Olympics in an area which uh Russia and uh it's been under different names at different times.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_05: USSR, whatever, you know, whatever it's been over the years has been very successful at the summer and the winter Olympics, especially the Winter Olympics.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_05: And so not being able to compete, boy, that's gotta chap their buttons.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_04: I can imagine in the same token, it is a place, like I said, with the extreme poverty on the one hand and the extreme wealth on the other, it's a place of extreme mixed feelings of pride and and shame and guilt that are also sort of tied up in that.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um the Russian history in general is tragic.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_04: It's not fun.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_04: Like if you look at Russian literature or culture in general, it it it it very quickly becomes bleak.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you go back to the Bolsheviks and that that revolution and all of it and then of course Stalin.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_05: Uh you know, all of that happened there.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you know, you don't hear his name mentioned as much as you would think.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_05: People throw the word Hitler around quite a bit.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_05: You could toss his name in that hat.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_05: You know, just as easily, if not more so, according to you know, a lot of historians.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_05: So there's yeah, there's a lot that's going on.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_05: It's a very complicated country.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_04: It is.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm a first generation American.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_04: I served in the U.S.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_04: Army, I'm a combat veteran, I love my country.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_04: Couldn't be more proud to be here and grateful for my parents for making that journey.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_04: On the same token, there is that sort of like uh nostalgia and love for and like a wistfulness for a country that was never really my own.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, you you do have empathy for folks who who have lived through all that because, you know, by and large, that story is a story of like Russian oligarchs either through you know, because they enjoy it or because cruelty is the nature of the position and a necessity, like they have to do what they have to do to stay in power or to stay alive.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it's it's one of like really depressing anecdotes over and over and over again.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, I got a lot of sympathy for those folks.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um but at the same time, I know that if you were to ask people, you know, over there, like, what about the Olympics?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_04: You know, well how you know you're not participating this year, they'd probably be he more than happy to thumb their noses at the rest of the world and be like, we don't need your Olympics.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_04: We're happy where we are.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_05: So your story, born and raised in New York, you go to way to school, you leave school, go to the military, and out of the military you decide on law enforcement?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_04: Um went back to New York for a time, met my uh now wife, Jamie, and we were taking trips, cross country, road trips, and you know, something about Asheville kind of clicked with us, and um, you know, we really like the mountains and you know, like the food scene here.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_04: And uh you know, moved down and got married a few years later.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_04: I had joined the department maybe back in 2019, um, a couple months after we'd after we'd moved.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_05: And so you were an intern detective that has become a detective, which is why you were introduced as Detective Aaron Bayanofsky.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_05: And uh we kind of got a chance to talk a bunch because of a certain case that you were working on that's it fascinating, really, and how you figured it out, and with of course the help of others, uh, you know, your mentor and and uh how this whole case of Messiah Morgan, who is still at large with additional charges pending, uh, came to be.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_05: So walk us through that.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_05: For people that aren't familiar with it, essentially it's a person that's been charged with multiple cases of fraud, and the fraud that he executed is on the scheme of leasing out apartments that were not his, which is to me, to even come up with that idea is a little fascinating.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_05: So st walk us through it a little bit through that, how you stumbled across it and then where it went.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think his name would pop up over and over again in other investigations.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_04: And I think he was warned at a certain point that he needed to knock it off because he was found to have leased an apartment and the paperwork was maybe a mistake at best, and fraudulent, more than likely, and he was warned off his behavior a year or two ago, something like that, um, by investigators.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_04: And he didn't take that to heart, I don't think.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_05: It's worth mentioning.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_05: He's only like maybe nineteen now and was probably a lot younger when this started, which is a lot of criminality for somebody at such a young age, pretty advanced, too.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_04: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we had brought up Russia earlier.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_04: One of the things that in my time in academia that I learned was that in the absence of active governance, the criminal element quickly swoops in as sort of the only other alternative.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_04: And they have no qualms about getting over on people, kind of taking advantage of them, seeing them get hurt.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_04: Like it doesn't bother them because they're they're criminals.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_04: And that's kind of in my mind what happens in places like Russia where they have this other arm of the state essentially is organized crime.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_04: The crooks on top use it to operate, and I hate to see or to think of my country, of the states, as sliding anywhere near towards that sort of dynamic, but it's um you know, little cases like this one, and I hate to think that like this is an example of something bigger, but when you let one little thing slide and and suddenly it becomes a way of life, you know, a lot of folks I've talked to in the past few months, they seem to think stuff like this is just like, you know, no big deal.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_04: Like who who really cares?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, who's the victims?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_05: It's a victimless crime is a phrase you sometimes hear.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_05: But there there is victims, though.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_04: And like identity fraud's no joke, and like it happens to a lot of folks, and you know, it'll ruin your life.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_04: You can't get a car, an apartment, you can't step outside your parents' house and put your name to something without those questions and without those red flags popping up.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Powell So this is your first case, really, kind of your first big case that you've had as a detective?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_04: Aaron Ross Powell, yeah, I mean it's I definitely you know say it occupies more of my time than some of the other work I'm doing.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_04: But uh yeah, I I I I can't speak highly enough of like the work this agency does and uh the stuff that detectives and patrol officers put together.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's really incredible to you know, work with these uh guys and gals and learn from them.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Ross Powell So you started in patrol and were there for what, I guess about five years, give or take.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, five, six years, about five, six years.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_05: And then so what made you want to be a detective?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_04: Aaron Powell I think I could have a better impact, help you know, address more of these crimes from this position, you know, from the road, you're kind of beholden to whatever the next call is, and it's a little more near-term responsiveness versus the medium and longer term investigative aspect that I think is in this day and age applies better to holding some of these folks accountable.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_04: Aaron Powell Yeah.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_05: A little more reactive than say proactive.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_04: Like as a detective, you can you know look into things and you need the time to do it.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_04: Because in some instances, like in this case, you scratch one thing, find one lead, and suddenly it's generated another, however many people to talk to, places to call, things to look up, and it really before you know it, that's your entire day.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_04: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_05: And we've got a great program with this uh kind of an intern detective program, which is how you started.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_05: It's a great way to kind of continue to do your job on patrol while learning what you'll need to be a detective, and then it's a little more seamless.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_04: Aaron Powell Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um I found it a great way to work those overtime hours and to do something a little different than the patrol aspect for those of a mind to uh work that angle of things and to to learn the trade, as it were.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um I couldn't encourage it enough uh to to sign up and to express an interest and to uh get your foot in the door and start working cases.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Powell Is this where you see yourself now for your future with the APD?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_05: Staying as a detective, hoping to stay as a detective?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm told um that most folks who go to CID either promote or retire from there, and that seems accurate.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, as interesting and overwhelming as I found patrol at first, I feel like a lot of cops do, just because there are so many different things to learn and uh, you know, a whole city and the people there and the and the and the crooks and the victims, I mean there's a and the and and the forms and the bureaucracy of it all.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_04: There's a million different things for a cop a new cop to learn and to figure out and to behave and to work in a way that's befitting the role.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_04: The same's true for an investigator.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_04: Now, granted, you've got the years of experience from the road to help you along, but now now it's a different aspect and a different side of the beast, and you're trying to get a handle on that.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_04: So it's a little maybe intimidating, but uh, I think I've gotten old enough where I'm a little more comfortable and a little, you know, quicker to embrace that kind of challenge than I was as a younger man.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_05: Detective Aaron Bayanosky joins me now.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_05: So what do you like to do when you're not investigating something in your spare time?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_04: Aaron Powell I've told my wife before that maybe and maybe this is just specific to me, that it's a man's goal in life to do nothing and it's a woman's goal to stop him.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_04: And it's just something about the idea of like not having to be on the clock and not having a responsibility at the moment.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_04: I find that time just blissful.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_04: I just the idea and like you you need to earn it.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_04: If you haven't done anything there, earn it.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_04: If you haven't worked out or, you know, done something that day around the house to help out or whatever.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe I learned it from the army of having to get up like, you know, 0-4, 0-5, get your stuff on, get going.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_04: I I hated that more than anything.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_04: I I resented, I used to I'd push the alarm forward just five more minutes at a time, just five more minutes at a time, just because it was mine.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_04: I can close my eyes for again for a second.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_04: I wouldn't get any sleep, mind you.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_04: But I it was my five minutes before I had to move.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_04: And then I'd still somehow wind up being late sometimes.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_05: No, there's there's something about that time of the day.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_05: I was a morning radio guy, so I I woke up at the I was waking up at 3 30.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_05: 3 30 in the morning.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_05: I was starting to get miserable the previous day around six o'clock.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_05: Knowing that 3 30 was coming.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's like six o'clock for most people is they're sitting down eating dinner.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_05: For me, it was two hours from bedtime.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_05: You know, and you're just like, I've got two hours left in my life, yeah.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_05: And then I've got to try to fall asleep so I can wake up in the middle of the night essentially to start my day.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so that I get it.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_05: I get that.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_05: And and maybe I'm just incredibly lazy.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_04: I I like to think I have a f fairly decent work ethic.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_04: There's something to be said for just sitting in a room or or or or toning out.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_04: It could be a book.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_04: Just just to have the options.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_04: Just whatever it is I wanted, like that ability to decide for myself how my time is going to be spent is a luxury.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_04: And it's not one I think most people get to enjoy enough.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_04: I agree.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_04: And my wife, Jamie, God bless her, she's learned and she's helped me figure out, like, hey, doing nothing's pretty cool.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_04: It's important to get outside and to do something.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_04: And I've learned to appreciate that.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_04: Whereas once I was maybe a little resentful and petty of like being made like, all right, let's go for a walk with the dogs, let's go for a hike, or like, you know, see a museum or whatever.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_04: I I, you know, used to puff and drag my feet, like, oh, so I've worked all damn day.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_04: I gotta go out to the museum.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_04: You could look up online, you could see the pictures right here, they're on the website.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_04: And but no, there is, you know, a very important aspect of actually making that step.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_04: I think, again, the older I get, I'm learning to embrace that side of, well, it's not just the doing nothing that counts and that feels good, buddy.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's the doing something.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_05: And then it makes the doing nothing feel even better.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's finding that balance.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_05: No, I get you, because most of my life I have had two or three jobs.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_05: And so to find those times when you can do nothing, those are precious.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_05: And and so if if you are having experiencing a life where you're constantly on the go, yeah, then that hour or two, and and I've started to carve out Sundays, Sunday afternoons is my time.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_05: And that is my sit on my side porch with my cigar and my beverage, and please don't interrupt me.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_05: Heck yeah.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_05: That's that is my time.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_05: That's your and I can spend it with somebody too.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_05: Somebody else is allowed sometimes, but it's gotta be casual.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_05: It can't be crazy.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_05: It's just gotta be give me a few hours to do this.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_05: I'll usually be watching golf if it's that time of the year.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_05: Hell yeah.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm just watching these guys hit a white ball while I smoke a cigar.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_04: It's just life.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_05: I'm just stuff.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and hopefully it's a nice day, and you're feeling the breeze and all those things.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_04: My father-in-law, I met him, I don't know, nine, ten years back now.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_04: The guy is a workaholic, and he he's done incredibly well for himself.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_04: Lovely human being.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_04: His name's Marty.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_04: My wife, James, she proposed that we go out for a run.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_04: And this dude is, at the time, I think he's approaching 70.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_04: I didn't know him from Adams.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_04: So just, you know, I met this older fella who comes along to the trail that we're gonna we're gonna go running on.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_04: That was the proposal.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, you know, we would go for a run.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_04: Like, all right.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_04: So I I I start running, and I'm I'm a few years removed from the Army, so I'm in fairly good shape.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_04: I look behind, he's he's running my heels.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, all right, I'm not gonna let him catch up to me.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_04: I got my new girlfriend here.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_04: I've met her meeting her dad for the first time.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_04: Let me take off on.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_04: So I I you know, I get ahead.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_04: And damned if not, like, you know, 10 minutes later, he again, he's on my heels.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, this is getting annoying.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_04: I take off on him again.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um and like that would repeat for like miles.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_04: And then after the run, like, we're gonna go eat somewhere.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_04: And like my wife, you know, Jane pulls me aside.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_04: She's like, what did you do?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, what do you mean?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_04: She's like, he's exhausted, he's 70 years old, basically, and you're just gonna run ahead of him like that.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_04: He needs to keep up with people.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_04: Do you not understand that?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, I didn't he wanted to keep up with me.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_04: I just thought I was running.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_04: And um, but that's the kind of guy that he is, he can't like he needs to get after, wakes up at like 5 a.m.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_04: to go swim, go run, go for a uh a bicycle ride.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_04: And like he doesn't have to work.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, he could retire, I imagine.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_04: But that's um, but that's something he needs to do.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_04: And and and like the God bless him, may be at least a little unhappy on the days that there's like a party at the house or he has to entertain or it's a day off.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_04: Like you can see him start stirring, like trying to find a car to fix or like something to do.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I I've learned from him and from my pops in that like work is all well and good.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's very important, very absolutely important to get stuff done.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_04: But what's it all worth if you can't appreciate the time when you don't have to?
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_04: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, absolutely.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_05: And if you'd known that dynamic, you wouldn't have tried to get away from it.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, I would have had a nice pleasant jog with him.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_04: But I didn't know that.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm sure since that day you might have had some.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, since then he's I mean, yeah, he's honestly probably in better shape than I can ever hope to be.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_04: You know, he's running Iron Man's at his age.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_04: I get it.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's we went through a trip to Argentina some months back.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_04: I was huffing and puffing.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: This guy's just on the trails, just trucking.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_04: He's like, you know, Aaron Buddy, I do this all the time.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_04: You don't feel bad.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, I'm half your age.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, I'm going to feel bad.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_05: You're twice my age.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_05: I should be able to do this.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_05: But that's enjoyed talking with you, Detective Aaron Bayanofsky.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_05: Uh best of luck uh catching Mr.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_05: Morgan.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you, sir.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_05: And uh and I'm sure we'll hear when that happens.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_05: All right, take care.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_05: Getting to know Senior Police Officer Blake Fatler, thanks for joining me.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, happy to be here, man.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_05: So it is Blake, right?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_05: We've discussed this because there was uh a little bit of uh wonder on my behalf, because I've seen you on some roster sheets or on the composite boards or whatever, and it's listed as Jonathan.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_05: And I even asked your captain, uh, who's also a Jonathan.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_05: I go, is it Jonathan or is it Blake?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_05: And he said, You better ask him.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know a hundred percent.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_05: So it is Blake.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, sir.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_05: And is that a middle name then?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_05: It is.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_05: So I think you're one of only, I think, two Blakes in the department then.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, sir.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: We're uh it's a few.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_05: We have a crap ton of Jonathans, though.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_05: We got a plethora.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_05: We have a lot of Jonathans.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_05: There's a lot.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_05: I think you're also the only member of the department with a rockin' mullet.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_05: As somebody that grew up on the border of Canada, I saw a lot of mullets growing up.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_05: Tried to grow one myself, couldn't pull it off.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_05: My brother managed to pull one.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_05: I did not.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_05: And so I'm a little bit jealous.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: You still got time.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_05: I mean No, I don't.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_05: I I don't.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_05: You look at my hair, dude.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_05: There's nothing, there's nothing left.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's just even as a young kid, this hair did nothing.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_05: It just, it was just straight as an arrow.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_05: It wouldn't do a thing.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_05: It wouldn't even grow very long.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_05: Really.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_05: And you gotta get the you know, party in the back to really pull off the mullet.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_05: Anybody can shave the sides.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_05: I also saw a photo of you.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know if it's your official photo for the Asheville Police Department wearing a cowboy hat.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_05: Is that going to be in the official composite board next year?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_05: Is that Bubba?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: Listen, you you can try to push it.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: There is an official photo of me in a cowboy hat.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: I brought it during picture day and Will took it.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: So I'd love it.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: If that could be posted as like the uh the picture whenever the podcast is sent out, that'd be great.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_05: So what's with the do you just like the cowboy life?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_05: Do you like the hat?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_05: It's just a thing.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I mean I grew up pretty southern.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I was raised by two sets of grandparents, and both of them had farms.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I grew up around cows, horses, lots of chickens, goats.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm not like a cowboy, but the the cowboy hat, it it fits.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I just grew up southern, so it's something I enjoy.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_05: Well, it's a working man's hat, really.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_05: It is a working man's hat.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_05: Ultimately.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's become like an accessory now, but really it's a working hat.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_05: I've got a bunch myself, so I can appreciate it.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_05: So a friend of mine uh ran a I guess a haberdashery, you would say, an official one on King Street in Charleston when I lived down on the coast.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_05: And he was a good friend of mine.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_05: Uh Gurin Brothers was the name of the company.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_05: So he would occasionally give me the damaged hats, and I couldn't tell they were damaged at all, but it was a high-end hat hat place.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_05: So they couldn't sell it.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_05: So I would get some of these hats.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_05: So I've got a few cowboy hats, I've got a few very nice fedoras, I've got a few of those, what do you call, newsboy type hats, and uh I've got a few of the straw, I guess you'd call them Bahama hats or whatever, Panama hats.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't want to wear them.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_05: They look too fancy.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_05: He goes, dude, that's a working hat.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_05: He goes, Where are the cut in the grass?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm like, it's a$200 hat.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_05: Handmade.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, I can't goes, ah, here, watch.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_05: He dips it into water, slaps it on my head, and I'm like, okay.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_05: So, you know, I guess it for you, I guess it's a it's both, probably, right?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_05: A little bit of fashion, a little bit of work in this.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yep, which lends itself.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_05: You said Southern boy.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_05: So where were you born?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: I was born in uh Canton, North Carolina.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_05: Local kid then.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_05: Real local, Haywood County.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, sir.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_05: I love it out there.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_05: Honestly, I I go golfing there.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_05: A few of my favorite breweries are there.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_05: I got friends that live out there.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_05: So what brought you to the Asheville Police Department instead of, say, one of the outfits out there?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, that's a good question.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: So, as you know, Asheville Police Department's a lot bigger than Canton Police Department or Haywood County Sheriff's Office.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh growing up in a small town like Canton, pretty much all the jobs I've had have been in Asheville.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I started off at the Biltmore estate, worked security for several years.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_03: Then after that, I went over to the Bunklam County Sheriff's Office and worked in the jail for several years, and then came over to APD.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I had uh my career envisioned out years ago, and that's just kind of how it played out.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I've been here since.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_05: My wife and I used to have uh season passes to Biltmore.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_05: We used to really enjoy going when I first moved here.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so for the first five or six or seven years that I lived here, we had season passes, and then I just got too big.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_05: Busy that we just weren't going often enough.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_05: And so and the passes started getting more and more expensive too.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_05: Those I mean, it used to be to get a season pass was just a few more dollars than just going for one day.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_05: There were the tickets for one day were like 70, 75 bucks.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_05: And a season pass was like 90.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_05: And so you're like, well, geez, why not?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_05: But now, like a day ticket is like a hundred something.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_05: And like a season pass is like two hundred.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_05: I get it.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_05: It they've put a lot of money into the estate, too.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_05: So I mean there's a lot more to do there now.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_05: Antler Hill Village wasn't even there when I was, you know, when we were starting to go.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_05: And so there's a lot of things that horseback riding and all the different things.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_05: So uh they have certainly put a lot of money into the estate, and I guess it justifies the cost, but it is not a cheap ticket to get into that place.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's uh you're definitely gonna have some type of investment to go to it.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's a day thing.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_05: My wife says that back when she was in high school, she had passes then.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_05: She would just go there and take her books and just sit on that the back patio there.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_05: And it wasn't crowded at all.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_05: She would just sometimes do her homework back there when it wasn't that crowded.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_05: You're talking about the the 90s.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's incredible.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_05: I isn't that nuts?
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_05: And now it's just slammed.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_05: They're making Hallmark movies there and the whole thing.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_05: How many years were you there?
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh worked there for right at three years.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_05: Enjoyed it?
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: It was a really good like first adult job.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of freedom to like walk around the house.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: And they have like uh if you work security, you have access to the keys that go into every room in the house.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, granted, you can't touch anything, you know, it's heavily monitored, but you can go look at like Ming Dynasty silverware and like all kinds of stuff that the public doesn't get to see.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_05: So there's a lot of rooms uh that are not accessible at any given time because they're constantly working on those rooms.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_05: It's an old building, it's an old house, house really.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_05: But yes, there's usually a multitude of rooms that are off limits.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_05: And I think part of that too is to keep that mystery up.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_05: It's like they never want to have the whole house open so you can see everything.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_05: It's so you can see about 80% of it, and then you gotta come back.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's not a bad formula.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_05: That's not, quite frankly.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_05: So you recently joined community engagement.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, sir.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_05: Which seems like a really good fit for you because I keep seeing things about you working with the public.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_05: Is that what you enjoy the most about your job?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's just the interactions with the public.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, man.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: I I've been blessed, you know, able-bodied and able-minded.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and I kind of have this drive to help the younger and uh older community out.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_03: Man, there's just something about doing events for kids.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: Because I had really good in interactions as a kid with law enforcement.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and I think that's what drove me to be a cop.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_03: So hopefully I can be that for someone out there.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: And especially the elderly, you know, like I mentioned earlier, like uh I was raised by grandparents.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of people who are elderly in this area that live in nursing homes and stuff like that, that don't have family here, that don't get regular regular visitors.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so a couple times a year I like to do big events at nursing homes or rehab facilities and stuff like that.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_03: So that's just a drive.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's something I'm very passionate about.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_05: Senior police officer Blake Fadler joins me right now.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_05: I saw a story, I guess it was maybe a year.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_05: Was it last summer or the summer before, where you just took the initiative, you saw these kids, and the wheels started instantly turning.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_05: And what can I do to help these kids this summer?
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_05: I think they were participating in HAND.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the uh I forgot the acronym, but it's HAND.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: It was the Maple Crest Apartments.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we responded to a domestic out there, and then I saw a group of kids running around in the middle of the summer.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I just kind of watched and I saw them, you know, hunkered in one classroom.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I spoke with the organizer, and you know, I was like, how can we as an agency help?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_03: She was like, you know, we're kind of running low on water.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: So topped up a donation letter, went to Sam's Club, got him a bunch of stuff.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: Sam's Club was super generous with giving uh stuff for that.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: And then I was able to go to Mellow Mushroom and get like nine or ten pizzas to take over there a couple days later, and we had a big pizza party.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_03: So there's still times, and that was last year, where I'll come across some of those kids, and they were like, Oh, you're the guy.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_03: Because I have a mullet and I'm easily recognizable.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_05: That's not why.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_05: They remembered you in the kind gesture, but the the mullet probably doesn't hurt.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_05: But it those are the kind of things that do go a long way and create memories.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_05: And really, for a lot of these kids, their interactions with police might not be under the best circumstances because of what happens around them and the surroundings, and they could see something, or not that they're directly involved, but just it's a rough world out there.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_05: It is.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_05: And something like that goes a long way towards them having a totally different opinion about police officers.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_05: That could change their life, quite frankly.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_03: It could, yeah.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_03: I was dealt a good hand growing up.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I I wasn't raised in like the worst circumstances, but there are some kids out there that, you know, don't really have it the best.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_05: So And you were officer of the month for something, and was it October?
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_05: I think it was for November.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_05: November, okay.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_03: I helped out at the Arthur Editing Center.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: Rhonda Mapp, who's a local, she was in the WNBA, she's a local celebrity.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, heck of a basketball player.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh worked with her and we organized what's called racing to feed.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so we fed, I think it was over a thousand people, made to go plates.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_03: We had the Arthur Editing Center, you know, blocked out where people could come and get food there.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a big event, man.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_03: It took months and months of planning, but I think that's what I got it for.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_05: I think you did, and that was awesome.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_05: Speaking of getting involved in the public with community engagement, now that you're in that division, let's talk about what is coming up.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_05: I know we've got a few things in the next few weeks.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_05: So, what do we have?
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_05: What can we expect, and how can people participate?
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so uh we have a couple things.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: We have the Battle of the Badges, it's a blood drive that's gonna be taking place on Wednesday the 25th.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh 8 a.m.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: to 5 30, and that's gonna be at the First Baptist Church located at 5 Oak Street.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_05: So it's basically police versus fire, and people can come and donate blood and say, I'm donating on behalf of this department or that department.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_05: And it's kind of a little fun internal competition that we have with them for a good cause.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like you said, you have that drive, you know, who's who's gonna get the most votes and stuff like that.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I think we've taken the trophy a pretty good bit of times.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: I th I think we're primarily the winners when it comes to that.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_05: And everyone donates this year.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_05: I believe they get a twenty dollar gift card and a t-shirt for the Battle of the Badges, too.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_05: So a little bit of incentive as well.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, sir.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_05: There is an incentive.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_05: What else we got?
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_03: Special Olympics polar plunge.
• 50:12
  unknown: Oof.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's gonna be February 28th, and that's gonna be at the Grant Southside Pool.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's at 10 a.m.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm hoping it's not that cold.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so a couple years ago, uh maybe longer than a couple, but I was in a polar plunge with my former job, the radio station.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_05: We had it at the uh what's that one in Hendersonville Road?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_05: The right is it the racket club on Hendersonville Road down there just south of the Blue Ridge Parkway?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, sir.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so that's where it was.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_05: It was in a particularly cold snap, kind of like we just got through.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so this week's been nice, but last week was really, really cold.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: It was rough.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_05: They had to break the ice in the pool, the outdoor pool, before we did the polar plunge.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_05: I'm here to tell you a little bit of a shock to the system.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_03: So it was an actual polar plunge.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, it was a legit polar plunge.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_03: Man, I couldn't imagine.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_05: I had to laugh.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, during that little cold snap we had, the annual Myrtle Beach Polar Plunge was canceled.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_05: Which to me, isn't that the whole reason, the whole thing behind it?
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_05: It's supposed to be cold in a pot and they're canceling it because it's cold.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, at this point, just have it in July.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_03: That doesn't make much sense.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_05: It doesn't make any sense at all.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_05: So how can people participate and what can they do for that for our polar plunge going up?
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure if we're going to going to uh put it on our website where you can register.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_03: I think we will be making social media posts about it, but you're definitely able to donate.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you're definitely able to participate.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: If you do, say you're there for APD.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we're seeing how much money we can raise.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to a conference at the end of this month for to learn how to be a coordinator for the Special Olympics.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_03: So it's going to be something I'm going to be heavily involved in for this foreseeable future.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_05: I MC'd the uh there they had two Special Olympics events last year.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_05: They had one at Reynolds and then one at Robertson.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_05: And I did the one at Reynolds.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_05: I had to MC that one.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_05: It's just fun watching those kids.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_05: They get so excited.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_05: They don't have to win.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_05: It just they just finish and they're getting the high fives and the hugs and the whole thing.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_05: And it's just an amazing day.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_05: So any way to help with the Special Olympics, man, that's just I'm all in on that.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's super fulfilling for everybody.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's a great day.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_05: Well, welcome to community engagement.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you, sir.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_05: All right.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_05: So how long with the APD so far?
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_03: I started in December of 2019.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_03: So just a few years.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: More than a few.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_05: I I always get in that debate with my wife.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, what is a couple, what is a few.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_05: I think by the time you get to six or seven, I I think you're officially established here with the Asheville Police Department.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_05: With the legendary haircut as well.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_05: Blake Fadler, thank you so much for joining me.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you, sir.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_05: It's time once again for a history minute with Hannah Silberman.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome back.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_05: I missed our history talks.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we had a big 2025, and look at what you got in your lap right there.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_05: For the longest time, you had a stack of papers that was going to become the 150th anniversary book, and now you've got the actual book.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_05: How cool was that to finally birth that baby to kind of I mean the because it became a Christmas present, really, is what it became for all the officers and all the professional staff of the Asheville Police Department.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_05: And I've thumbed through it a little bit.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_05: I haven't had a chance to go in depth to it because there's a lot there.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you're talking about 150 years.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_08: Yep.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_05: Pretty cool to see it finally come to fruition.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_05: I know that this is just audio and people can't see this, but imagine a yearbook of sorts.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_05: It kind of has that vibe to it, like a in a thick thicker than like a high school yearbook or something.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_05: There's certainly more of a so somewhere between a textbook and a yearbook is probably the way to go, but it it doesn't read like a textbook because it's much more interesting.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_05: It's not like, you know, formulas and math and grammar and stuff.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_05: It's the history of the APD.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_05: So what is your favorite part about the book?
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_05: It can be anything.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_05: It could be a story, it could be a look, it could be what's your favorite part about the book now that it's done?
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell, the pictures turned out very nicely.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that most people just pick it up and look at the pictures, and that's okay.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_05: Well, they start there and maybe hopefully they go into it a little bit further.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_05: So that was last year.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_05: That was the 150th anniversary of the Asheville Police Department.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_05: But we're gonna celebrate a big anniversary here in uh well just about a couple of weeks, and and based on when people listen to this, it could be uh occurring then.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_05: But in March of 1926, okay, so that would then be 100 years ago.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_05: The building that we are in was, I guess you would say ribbon cutting, open to the public.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_05: It was actually constructed in January and complete just a few months prior to that.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_05: But it opened to the public.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_05: This building, the municipal building, which houses the Asheville Police Department and the Asheville Fire Department, their downtown location, in March of 1926.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_05: So that celebrates 100 years as well.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_08: That's right.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_05: It's a funky building.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_08: It is.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_05: So tell us a little bit about that and the things that have happened over the years, too.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_05: It originally was what, a two-story building?
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: So a little bit of background is that initially the police department existed in the city hall building, which was on Pack Square, which was something they built in the late 1800s.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it was also home to a city market, but over time it got kind of gross.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody in the city decided that there wasn't enough room for the city hall, the market, which apparently was infested with rats, and the police department.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why they decided to build our city hall, and then also the municipal building.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the municipal building was first, and then they used it as a transition.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like they moved the city offices over, and then they as city hall is being built, they moved over there.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_05: So City Hall is younger than this building.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_05: Do you know what year that was offhand?
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_05: Less than a hundred.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_05: We know that much.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: City Hall was finished in 1928.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus So just a couple of years after this.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_05: So they probably just the same people that were working on this building probably just rolled right down the street and started working on that one.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_05: I knew it was also historic, so we'll have an anniversary there coming up as well just in a couple of years.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_05: People know it as City County, so I then I imagine the county building probably came even later than that.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_05: It's obviously more modern.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell They actually built them at the same time.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, did they?
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the you know, this the county courthouse was supposed to have the same design on the top as City Hall, but they backed out and made it the square.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't know that.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a little monument in the park with the original design.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_05: I'll have to read that.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_05: And and now then of course they built the addition on it, everything else that goes along with that.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_05: But we're talking about the municipal building.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_05: So I would you were telling me it was originally constructed as two stories and a basement.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_05: Well, we still kind of have a basement, but they call it the first floor.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_05: And it's a four-story building.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_05: So things happened over the years.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_05: So what were the changes that were made to it eventually?
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: The building initially, when it was built, was supposed to be primarily a city market.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: The police and the fire department occupied the front spaces of the building that face the square.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, that nice little balcony in the front was built there because that was the dormitory for the firemen.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then the city jail was also in the front corner on the other side.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_08: Gotcha.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the building was empty.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a bunch of stalls, and I'll I'll tell you a little about it.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: The funny thing, too, is that they initially budgeted$250,000, which was a lot in the 1920s, but every bid they got came over for, well,$300,000.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that's five and a half million dollars in 2025, if you count for inflation.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_05: Which is still not a lot of money, really, for a big building like this.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_05: And it it's just kind of funny realizing what money is then and now.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_05: You can't even get a home in Asheville with four walls for$250,000.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: So and the construction took a super long time.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it was done a full year at later than they hoped because it was supposed to open in 1925.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: They were very, very proud of the sparkling clean market facilities.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it had 128 feet by 138-foot room with tile floors and glassed counters with nine meat, five vegetable and fruit, and five fish stands.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: They had a delicatessen, a soda fountain, and a really fancy thing, which was a women's bathroom.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they said this was, quote, a luxury not often encountered.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: So if you imagine it the way it used to be laid out, is when you walked in the front door from the square, you walked in a central corridor that took you to the big market, and on the right was the fire department, and on the left was the police department.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then the 1930s, because of the Great Depression, they closed the market.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so the police and fire departments very slowly took over more and more of the space in the back.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: They rented it out for a long time.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was storage.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: The city schools used it.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: They rented out office space to make money.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: By the 1980s, it was really patched together what we had inside of the building.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: We renovated it once very well in the 1960s and then didn't really touch it after that.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Powell Wasn't there a big renovation though in like the 90s or something here?
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's when by the 1980s, 1990s, it the conditions in here were very poor.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we did a massive renovation.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: And when they did it, they essentially gutted this place.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was just down to the walls on the outside.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's why this building is so confusing in a way is because there was a mezzanine and then they sandwiched a floor where there wasn't a floor before.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: So now it went from three stories to four stories, but only one floor only exists in the back of the building and not the front.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, for people that have been in this building, they understand.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_05: For people that have not, we'll try and explain.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_05: So first of all, the building uh slopes from front to back.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_05: Pretty severe little hill.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_05: So when you come in like the back door, as we call it, which is where we have our evidence area, and then fire, of course, has their side as well.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_05: You kind of go up a ramp of sorts.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_05: Now there's stairs in the front, stairs in the back.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_05: There's also two sets of elevators, but there's also these ramps.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_05: So there is parts of this building where two floors are almost the same floor.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm telling you, the first month that I was here, I swear I was just like a weird Willy Wonka type thing where you walk into a room and it becomes a different room and you don't know where you are and you don't know how to get out.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_05: And it they tell me to go find somebody, and sometimes it would take me half an afternoon to figure that out.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_05: It is a very confusing building, especially for newcomers.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell For sure.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's again trying to make as much space as they could out of the footprint that they had and then the basement, which was created for the initial fancy refrigeration system that they created for the fish market.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_05: We're talking bathrooms and refrigeration, man.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_05: We're getting up there.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_05: I know my particular area of the third floor was part of, I believe, probably the 90s renovation or whatever it is.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_05: I know this because they are currently experimenting with my HBAC system in my particular room.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_05: And if you walk into my office, there is a large vent hose that is sticking out of my ceiling.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_05: They've removed a tile, and it literally is dropped down into my office, and people look at it when they walk in, they're like, what is that?
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_05: And I said, that is an experiment because they're trying to figure it out.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_05: Because what I guess when they did the HVAC, I don't know what they did at the time.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_05: They pinched some things off, they added some different things.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_05: So none of these rooms really work well as far as heating and cooling.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_05: But you get that with a hundred-year-old building, I guess, right?
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus They spent eleven point five million dollars in 1997 to 1998 to totally revamp the insides of this building, but it's been 30 years.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they opened the fully renovated building in 2000.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_05: There is a lot to appreciate about an older building in general, and this building in particular, though.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_05: If you look at the front facade, with just a little bit of work and modernization, it could be a beautiful building.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_05: I've always liked brick myself.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_05: I've always liked it.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: These are pictures of what it was like before.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_05: So we're all this is an improvement.
• 1:01:35
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: All of the windows were bricked over that still had the old jail on the fourth floor, which was just old storage, you know, wood paneling, and they busted out holes in the walls to try to fit AC units.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it didn't have it was still heated by coal, I think.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it was there's definitely some nice architectural features in this building and now they've been revealed, like in the chief's office, for example.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh the chief has a corn corner office on the third floor, and there is a very nice arched window that allows him to look east and to see the the mountains and bowcatcher and all that.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_05: And it's it's a beautiful piece, but it looks like at one point it was bricked over.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_05: It wasn't even a window, and this must have been a really depressing building to be inside without like any natural light.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_05: You know?
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_05: So that was 1926.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_05: Also in 1926, the interesting story of one Fred Jones.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_05: You were telling me about Fred.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_05: I read a few things on him here.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_05: This is a guy that was with the police and then left the police and then back to the police, and a lot of circumstances surrounding him and his role.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_05: So tell us what you know about Fred Jones.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: Fred Jones was an incredibly interesting member of our police department from 1906 to I think 1951.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: He served most of that time as a detective or our chief of detectives.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it says here he retired in 1951 on his 75th or our 75th anniversary, gotcha.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_05: Hired in 1906 to replace an officer murdered by Will Harris, a story which we've told.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so he was actually one of the people who was hunting down Will Harris, and they said that he did such a good job that Silas Bernard, who was our chief at the time, chose him as one of the replacements.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: But Fred was very tied to local law enforcement.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: He was related to Herschel Springfield's Harkins.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite names of all time.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was his I can't remember if it was his grandfather or his uncle, but I think his stepfather was also Thomas Hunter.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: He is the guy with the excellent mustache in the 1904 and the the hat in the front.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_06: Uh-huh.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: He was appointed in the 1912 when they created our first detective division as our first lieutenant over and it was our first detective lieutenant.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was briefly ousted because of politics, so he went to be a private detective for a number of years.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: But due to some controversy with the quality of our investigations in the 1920s, they brought Fred back to be our chief of detectives because he was so well known as a good investigator.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_05: We've talked about the whole the pul the politics before, uh and how police officers were more assigned and like voted in and things like and chief would change every year and all of that, and how disorienting that would be for a police force.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_05: So thankfully we finally settled on a system.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell So yes, so from 1927 until 1951, he was our chief of detectives.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Powell So obviously a very successful career, even though one that was kind of up and down based on politics, as they say.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_05: Nothing foreign to us in the year 2026.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_05: We know all about politics and how it can influence things.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, quite an interesting story.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_05: It looks like he came back after the previous chief of detectives uh had cancer and had to step down.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_00: So in 1926, one of the reasons they were able to bring him back is that the chief of detectives, Earl Hall, had brain cancer.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they they kept him on for as long as they could and actually demoted him to the lieutenant's position until his death because he couldn't work.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: But that's how Fred Jones they also moved him back into the place.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron Powell And apparently Fred gets credit for bringing in a private detective which has a rather interesting story and a distinction too, right?
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_05: With Bill Joyner, C.B.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_05: Joyner.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell That's right.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: So when Fred comes back in 1926, he had been on the private detective scene and he had gotten to know a local private detective named Bill Joyner.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, come work for me as a detective, and Bill said yes.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he works for our department for I think 20 years and retires.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: But he's the only police officer that never worked in uniform.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he just went straight to being a detective.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: So he is the only person in the history of our department that has that distinction.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_05: It just went straight through go, as they say, didn't bother collecting$200, just went right to detectives.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_05: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody else had to work a beat.
• 1:05:42
  unknown: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_05: That probably meant for a little bit of resentment, I would think, amongst some of the patrol folks that are like, wait a second.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus Well, like I said, at the time they brought Fred back because there had been a series of accusations that the quality of investigations were very bad.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the idea, the chief or the commissioner probably approved of that when he was like, give me this detective.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a very unusual set of circumstances.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_05: Did it, to your knowledge, solve the problem?
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_05: Did they become more effective?
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell, yes, I think they did.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_05: Well, see, there's here's the problem solvers.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_05: All right.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_05: So there's the story of uh Bill Joyner, the story of Fred Jones, and the story of the municipal building, which are are we doing anything here to recognize the 100th anniversary?
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_05: Should we go outside and just get a ribbon and a pair of scissors?
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_05: And people are gonna say, what are Rick and Hannah doing standing out front?
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_05: We could have a little ceremony of our own.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: Celebrating a hundred years and just let everyone be confused.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it seems like a big deal.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you don't often celebrate a building, you know, for turning a certain birthday, but I don't know.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_05: Uh based on the heels of our 150th anniversary of a department, it seems kind of important.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_05: So maybe you can nudge somebody about that.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_05: I heard you know somebody.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_05: So maybe we can get that done.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_05: Hannah Silberman, thank you once again.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_05: I missed our little talks, our history minute with Hannah Silberman.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_08: Thank you.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_05: That's it for another episode of the APD Pod Squad.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you to my guests, senior Deputy Fire Marshal Charlie Cox, Detective Aaron Bayanofsky, senior police officer Blake Fadler, and Hannah Silberman with the History Minute.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_05: And thank you for listening.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_05: If you've got a question or suggestion, call 828-250-8800 and leave a voicemail.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_05: That's 828-250-8800.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_05: Or you can just email APD Podcast Feedback at AshevilleNC.gov.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_05: Listen and subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts and don't miss a single episode.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_05: I'm Rick Rice, and this is the APD Pod Squad.