Latest / APD Pod Squad / Season 2, Episode 14; Deputy Chief Sean Aardema, Detective Adam Roach, Forensics Supervisor Kristen Norman, and SPO Carrie Lee

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Season 2, Episode 14; Deputy Chief Sean Aardema, Detective Adam Roach, Forensics Supervisor Kristen Norman, and SPO Carrie Lee · APD Pod Squad

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_08: This is the APD Pop Squad.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_08: I'm Rick Wright.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_08: Coming up on this episode, following a particularly violent weekend in Asheville, Deputy Chief John Artemis joins me to discuss the proactive policing measures being implemented and steps APD is taking to prevent further violence.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_08: Getting to know forensic supervisor Krista Norman, a North Carolina native who spent a decade in Texas with lions, tigers, and bears before returning to the Tar Hill State, will also discuss her new role and the technology aiding their crime-solving efforts.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_08: Detective Adam Roach celebrates his 20th square versory this month as the Asheville area native was sworn in as an APD officer on March 17th, 2006.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_08: You might recognize some of the other names from his BLET class.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_08: And from community engagement, senior police officer Kerry Lee with the latest on the Citizens Police Academy, Emergent Academy, and Junior Police Academy.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_08: All the academies.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_08: That's coming up on season two, episode 14 of the APD Pod Squad.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_08: Deputy Chief Sean Artemis sitting down with me right now.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_08: It's been a minute since you've been in the podcast studio.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_08: I think the last time I was in here was when we were uh roasting Chief Lamb.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_08: That's right.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_08: That was a good one.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_08: That was fun.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_08: You still talk with Chief?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, yeah.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_08: All the time.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, is he enjoying himself down there?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, he uh his lunch break he alternates between walking the golf course at Kiowa or walking along the beach.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_07: That's his his daily walkabout.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_07: And he sends me photos.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_07: And I'm not gonna be specific on what emoji I use in response to the photos, uh-huh.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_07: But I'm sure the listeners can can hazard a guess.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_07: It's one of the fingers, probably.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_07: Have you been down there to that particular?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_07: I have not been to Kiowa, but my wife and I we go to Charleston area fairly regularly.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_08: So I would find myself on that island a lot because when I worked for Palmetto Brewing, they would sell our beer.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_08: And so I would go down there and just doing the schmoozing thing and doing all that.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_08: And they would invite me there for different things.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_08: And sometimes we do at least once a year, they would do like a tasting type thing, just as a free thing for their members.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_08: And so we would go down there.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_08: I got to visit there a lot.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_08: My wife and I have actually stayed there a couple of different times.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, when I was in the radio world way back in the thing, and so I've played the golf courses, we've eaten, you know, at the restaurants, we've been on the beach.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_08: It is basically paradise.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, it really is.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, based on the photos I've seen, yeah, I'd I would tend to agree with you, Rick.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_08: The sanctuary at Kiva has been ranked like as the number one resort in the world on multiple occasions.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_08: Wow.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_08: So there's one stairway that's like you've seen Gone with the Wind.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_08: So like at Terra, when she's walking down that grand staircase, yeah, that's like the staircase at the sanctuary at Kiva.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_08: It it's just and it's so opulent.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_08: So I'm glad he's found himself some some down.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_08: Sounds like a rough place.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, uh a little less stressful than working here.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_08: And uh speaking of that, we have uh we've had ourselves a heck of a week.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_08: Unlike anything that I've experienced, but I've only been here for two years.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_08: You've been here much, much longer.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_08: Uh we had basically four consecutive days of shootings, including two homicides.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_08: Yes.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_08: So a devastating weekend, long weekend all around, because it started on Friday and it went through to Monday.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_08: So have you experienced anything like that, or is this one of the biggest as far as the the things that happened over the period of days that it happened?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_07: That's a tough question.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_07: You know, you sit and think, I I do recall a day when I was a lieutenant in CID.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_07: I don't remember the year.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_07: I want to say 2018, 2019, maybe.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_07: Uh we had three homicides in a day.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_07: Wow.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_07: Three separate homicides.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_07: All of them unrelated, and we ended up solving all three, which was you know excellent work on the behalf of our patrol officers and detectives.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_07: But the magnitude of this past weekend was just different than that day.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_07: All of those were relatively isolated.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_07: It was just one offender, one victim.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_07: Case in point, the incident Saturday night on North Lexington Avenue.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_07: Nothing even remotely close to what that was.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_07: I've responded to calls for service throughout my 27 years where multiple people were shot, but nothing back to back consecutively like we saw this past weekend.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_08: So the Asheville Police Department, I know this from seeing it and hearing it, as soon as something like this happens to this level, everyone, it's all hands on deck.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_08: It's immediately all hands on deck as far as patrol and CID and everything is trying to solve and create a safe environment for the citizens.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_08: But at the executive staff level, where you are, yeah, I know that all the heads get together immediately, as well as how are the things working that we have going on behind the scenes, how can we make those better?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_08: Can you share with us now some of those efforts?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_08: Because the public may not be aware because it's happening behind the scenes.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_08: They don't physically see it with their eyes or hear about it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_07: And this wasn't a first thing Monday morning type thing.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_07: The executive staff was actually engaged, you know, over the weekend.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_07: You know, it began Friday night with the homicide in Pisca View apartments.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_07: You know, fortunately in that case, like you said, we had excellent patrol and CID response that night.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_07: So, you know, we trusted as a team that, you know, that was being handled the way, you know, the proper way, the way that we would expect.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_07: But then getting into Saturday night, you know, we recognized that, you know, this is a warm weekend.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_07: We need to make sure that we put some measures in place.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_07: And so, you know, CID, our detectives worked throughout the weekend.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_07: There were some detectives that probably put in 40, 50 hours in two days.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_07: Backing up a little bit though, we'd actually, you know, because of our excellent partnership with the housing authority, um, had already formed a housing task force to respond to what data was showing us was going to be a rise in violent crime in and around, in and around housing authority properties.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_07: So we had already formed that task force, and they'd been in place for a week or two prior to the events of this past weekend.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_07: So we were able to take that team and pivot them to address the incidents that happened in Pisga View immediately.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and they've been working it alongside our detectives in the street crimes unit ever since.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_07: Um, those are just two things.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_07: Bigger picture, if you're looking at a 10,000-foot view, you know, one of the things that we leveraged early on were our already existing partnerships with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_07: So we're talking Bunker County Sheriff's Office, we're talking State Bureau of Investigation, we're talking the ATF and the FBI.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_07: Um, we've been in constant contact with the District Attorney and the United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_07: So, you know, we're we're really fortunate to have already had those really good relationships and partnerships with those entities that we can just pick up the phone and call them as soon as this happened.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_07: And they've been boots on the ground alongside us almost from the beginning of the events of this weekend.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_07: One of the other things we've done is is leveraged our community partners.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_07: So I already mentioned the Housing Authority.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_07: We have an excellent relationship with them.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_07: They very much have an interest in resident safety for people that live in their communities.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_07: And they've been excellent partners and supportive of our efforts.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and they've continued to support.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_07: We've been in contact with them almost daily since this has happened, and they've made asks of us and us in turn to them.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_07: But again, it's it's just a matter of picking up the phone and and calling those folks.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_07: They're great people.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_07: Um, we've got some community partners.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_07: Captain Brown, for example, he had a meeting today with uh three community entities or business entities in and around downtown Asheville.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_07: Informational session to let them know.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_07: Here are the facts of the events that went on downtown this past weekend, here are the measures that we're taking to address it, and here are some ways, if you guys are willing and able to help us move the investigation forward and to keep people safe.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_07: So, you know, there's lots of things that are going on outside of, you know, something you may see in the first 48 or, you know, on a law and order episode.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_07: You know, we've got a lot of partners and relationships that we had already fostered that we are leaning on very heavily, and they they are stepping up and really helping us out.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_08: You mentioned warm weekend, and I know this is gonna maybe come as a surprise to some people that aren't in our universe, but the seasonality of certain crimes is a real thing.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, yeah.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_08: Uh there are different things that go up at different times in the year.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_08: And larcenies and shopliftings go up right before the holidays, of course.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_08: And then you have some of the fires that get set happen in the winter where people are, you know, trying to hide somewhere in light of fire and keep themselves warm sometimes and burn a place down accidentally or something along those natures.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_08: And violent crime tends to go up as the weather gets warm and people are outside.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_08: It's just one of those things.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_07: And the data bears that out.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_07: And you know, this is not something that's unique to the city of Asheville.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_07: Like you see this nationwide.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_07: But yeah, this past weekend was the first weekend of solidly warm weather of 2026.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_07: And, you know, to a certain extent, we weren't surprised necessarily that there was an increase in violent crime, but the amount of violent crime in that relatively short period of time was really shocking.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_07: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_08: I think adding to the shock factor for members of the community is the fact that they happen on back-to-back to back-to-back days.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_08: The natural inclination, maybe for some folks, is to think that all of these were related when in fact that's not necessarily true.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_07: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_07: So there were two incidents that we believe are connected.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_07: There was the homicide Friday night, early Saturday morning in Piscaview apartments, and then there was a subsequent shooting in Piscaview apartments on Monday.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_07: We do believe that those two events are connected.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_07: The other two events, the shooting on North Lexington and the homicide on Patton Avenue early Monday morning, late Sunday night, those two do not appear to be connected to the events in Piscavie.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_08: And maybe a version of recency bias and that things happened in four consecutive days, whereas had they been spread out, maybe not as much.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_07: Shocking to us and uh it's undoubtedly shocking to the public as well.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_07: We just finished a year in 2025 where our violent crime went down at a pretty large amount.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_07: So, you know, our our community is a safe community, but you know, when things like this past weekend happen, you know, it it causes people to question that.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_07: And so, you know, we're sympathetic to that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_07: I've been remiss this whole time talking and saying, you know, not mentioning the impact that this has had on the friends, but more importantly, the family of the two people that lost their lives, but not not just them.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_07: You know, the people that were present in Pisca View Monday night, uh, the people that were struck by the gunfire on North Lexington Avenue, that has to be incredibly traumatic for them.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_07: And you know, we are here for them as well.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_08: I know the interim chief step and Mayor Mannheimer put out a joint statement about the uh the weekend and how we need the community's help to prevent these things in the future.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_08: Is there any kind of message you'd like to to send, an ask of the community right now as far as helping us in the future?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_08: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_07: The one ask that I would have, and again, we are very reliant on data and intelligence.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_07: And what we have been seeing over the last year or two specifically is again not something that's unique to Asheville.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_07: It's something that started happening nationwide, is the perpetrators of these violent crimes are getting younger and younger.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_07: We're talking teens that are carrying guns and committing violent crimes in our community.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_07: And we would ask, we would implore parents and guardians of young people to be attentive to what your kids are doing, be attentive to what they're saying, be attentive to their social media.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_07: Uh if you have cause to believe that they have a weapon, please take measures.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_07: And if we can help, give us a call.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_07: We have an anonymous tip line.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_07: Uh we have a number of different resources that can help you with an intervention to try to stop anything.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_07: Because the last thing we want to do is have to knock on a parent's door and tell them something terrible has happened to their child.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_07: And it had to happen this weekend, unfortunately.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_08: It did.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_08: Uh one of the assailants, a person that took his own life, uh, was a juvenile.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_08: Yes.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_08: And it's just a it's just a sad story for everyone involved, both the victim and then once again the the parents of both of those sets of kids.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_07: So yeah, because those are two young individuals.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_07: The victim was 20 years old and the person that pulled the trigger was under the age of 18.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_07: You know, and we have reason to believe that there may be some some young adults involved in the events in Piske View.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_07: So if no other message gets out, it's it's just to implore the parents and guardians of young people out here.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_07: Please, please be involved in your children's lives and be attentive to what they've got going on.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_08: Deputy Chief Sean Artima, thank you for joining me.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_08: Getting to know forensics supervisor, Kristen Norman.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_08: A new title, right?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: A new title.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: How about that?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_08: Well, thanks for joining me and sitting down.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_08: I I almost said it the wrong way.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_08: I almost said forensics specialists, but uh the supervisor role is about uh just a few months old, right?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, barely two, I think.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_08: You know, but you guys have all kind of worked together down there for a long time.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_08: It's it's like the same group.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: It is, yeah.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: We've had a pretty solid group for quite a few years now.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_08: So let's start at the beginning with you, because this is the first time we've really talked a lot.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_08: The question I ask everybody, of course, which is where were you born?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: I was born in North Carolina out on the coast in Wilmington.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, nice.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_08: So I escaped to Wilmington a lot when I lived in Fayetteville.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_08: Escaped is the right word because if you've ever been to Fayetteville, you know you don't want to stick around there.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_04: Not at all.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_08: So uh Wilmington was only a little over an hour away.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_08: You said to drive through the turkey farms and whatever to get there, which was in the summer.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_08: Ooh, that was quite the whiff.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: Smelled great, yeah.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, didn't it though?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_08: But so we would get there and I really enjoyed Wrightsville Beach.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_08: That was kind of my jam there, but Carolina Beach was nice as well.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_08: Uh it just it was a nice little escape, you know, to go there.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_08: But uh growing up there, you must have some pretty fond memories.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_08: I mean Wilmington's got a little bit of everything.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_08: It's got the downtown, it's got the beach.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: It does.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: I let's see, I was only there until 95, and then the family, my parents and sister and I moved into the Charlotte area.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know if I really got to partake in the downtown vibes at that age, but um I do have fond memories of the beach itself, fond and and scary ones.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's when Jaws became a very healthy thing in my mind during just my upbringing in general.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Jaws was big at that time.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm out there.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_08: The sharks are real and they're out there.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: They are.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: They are.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so little like what three, four-year-old Kristen was a bit overly cautious with sharks at that age.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: So me and the beach have a love-hate relationship.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: Plus, I don't like the sand all over me.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a mountain girl, which is why I am where I am now.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_08: Perfect, right?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_08: So you moved to Charlotte, and then of course, at some point you went away to college.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_08: Did you was that also in Charlotte?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_08: Did you stay there?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_08: Did you go away?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: I did.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: I ended up uh deciding to go to Charlotte.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I went to Charlotte University and got the bachelor's degree, but then oddly enough, packed it on up and moved out to Texas for like 10 years after that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_08: Texas.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_08: That's a that's a far cry from Wilmington and Charlotte.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was not in my, what do they call it, those little vision boards.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't really on there.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: It just kind of happened, opportunities showed up.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_08: So job-related type type thing.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_08: What part of Texas?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: Predominantly DFW, which they just lovingly mesh like Dallas and Fort Worth together.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: So kind of that main northern part of Texas.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_08: Aaron Powell Texas is so big that it is j I mean, it is huge.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_08: People don't quite realize how big it is.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_08: Even looking at a map, oh yeah, that's big.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_08: To drive from one side to the other, doesn't it take like 12 or 14 hours or something, crazy?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: Just about, yeah.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_08: It is nuts how big Texas is.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_08: So you literally get every bit of everything there.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_08: You've got, of course, the beaches, like Houston and south of that, and all that area down there and the coast.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_08: And then if you go up north, you're you're clearly in the Midwest.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: It does have a very strong Midwest feel.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: However, Texas is very proud about being just Texas.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know if they want to claim the Midwest feel, but they are just Texas.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_08: We're going to talk a little bit about uh TV shows and how they relate to your job in forensics, but since we're talking about Texas, have you seen Landman with some of it?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not like all the way caught up with it, but it did pique my interest when I saw the the trailers for it.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I've seen a couple episodes so far.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_08: Aaron Ross Powell So any thoughts on the accuracy about just the state itself and just what it looks like and what it acts like?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's pretty accurate so far from what I've seen.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean basically it's flat and flat and a little bumpy and then flat.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then you you have hot, hotter, or get me the heck out of here for your weather seasons.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_08: My good friend just moved to Houston, and after spending one year there, uh he owns a business that has multiple locations in the United States, and he moved down there to be with somebody.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_08: And so after one summer in Houston, they now summer in Colorado.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_08: Houston is apparently just ungodly hot in the summer.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's ridiculous.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Dallas isn't any better.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I I can't say that I miss it in that sense.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: The friends and the in-laws that are out there and things like that, I miss, love them to death.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: But if I can get them to come to Tech to North Carolina for a visit, I'll go that route anytime.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_08: Aaron Powell Kristen Norman, forensics supervisor, joins me now.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_08: And so what made you interested in the science, the forensics science?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_08: When did that occur?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_08: Was it the later in the let's go to school and figure it out, or you always wanted to do that?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: It was definitely a later in life epiphany, if you will.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: I went to school.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: I've got my biology degree.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I went to school for was biology, but ironically enough, it was geared and emphasized towards a environmental population control type route for like either ecology or some sort of animal-related type degree, or that's how I was going to use the biology degree, which is what took me out to Texas.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because there, after I graduated, I was offered a position at the Fort Worth Zoo out in Texas.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Oh a little fun fact there.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: So ended up being a zoo keeper for like three years out there.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, that's cool.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_08: I love zoos, love animals.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_08: But of course, it it's not like visiting the zoo when you're working at the zoo.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_08: It's like any job.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_08: It's it's not what you know the people get to enjoy when you're working behind the scenes.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, for sure.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I I will say to date, because I've had a handful of unique jobs, the zoo probably still is the best in terms of just the most interesting and fun, because I specifically was with our carnivores, so our our kitty cats.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Big and small and pumas and lions and tigers and bears on the uh and then to kind of gear it back towards like the biology area, we have a species survival program.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: Most of your accredited zoos do.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was in charge or part of the group where we were making jaguar babies.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: We had a male and a female jaguar, we're making sure genetics across the US and whatnot.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we need that male for these genes because we don't want to cross it with this female.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: End of the day, I get to play with little baby jaguars for a little while.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: They come out angry though, so you don't get to play with them very long.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_08: Not like just regular kittens and stuff.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, they don't even have their eyes open or really any teeth, but they come out screaming and growling and not happy.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_08: Because uh do you know uh Chris Gentile from the Western North Carolina Nature Center?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: I do not.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_08: I got to know him years ago when the radio stations that I worked for did things with them.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_08: He knew that my wife was a massive fan of the kitty cats as well, right?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_08: She loved the the cougars, the mountain lions, like same thing.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_08: So when they were having uh a new one that came in from, I think it was Colorado, uh, one or maybe even two.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_08: They were just little things.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Little guys, little spotted guys.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, just these just but they were see, they weren't mean.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_08: Of course, I didn't see them at like the day they were born, but I kind of surprised her as a Christmas present.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_08: I got her to go behind the scenes before they're available to the public.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_08: So you didn't get to play in touch, but she got to kind of just see they're you know, they're being held by the and they acted just like cats, like literal mini cats.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and and that's kind of the one of the big fun facts, if you will, that we would give at the zoo for your mountain lions, cougars, pumas, catamounts, whatever title you want to give them, they've got many names.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: They are most related to the domestic cat.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: They don't roar, they purr.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: And the ones that I worked with directly at the zoo very much would bond with their primary keeper.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so they'll come and they want attention, they want affection from their primary keepers.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: So they are mostly like the house kitties.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_08: Speaking of adorable, uh, I found this in my phone the other day.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_08: Let me show you this.
• 20:54
  unknown: Oh my goodness.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: Is that the Red Wolf?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_08: Yes.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because we've got that set up here in North Carolina, and I I worked with the red wolves in Texas.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_08: So I was able to, you could see I could I'm holding him and playing him.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_08: He just acted like a dog.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like a little pup.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_08: That was like the coolest thing, and I'm so glad I got a chance to do that.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_08: You just look in my face.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_08: I'm like, part of like, okay, he's gonna, you know, bite my head off.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_08: But I'm like, nah, he's just acting like he was just a little pup.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: He's just a little guy.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_08: And it was so much fun that I'm so glad that I got to do that.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_08: Eventually he'll become like a hundred and something pound, you know, whatever, and then you don't want to go too near him.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_08: Uh but at that point, that was just super cool.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_08: I was trying to see I'm sure you've got thousands of photos of like so many pictures of so many pictures.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: I was trying to see if I could not try and one up yeah he was.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_08: Well, no, it wouldn't be difficult considering what your role was.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_08: So I just happened to have one, and I just wanted a little bit of a humble brag there that I got to play with it.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: This is about the age where we have to stop being hands-on.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_08: Oh my.
• 21:59
  unknown: Look at the
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_08: Baby Jaguar.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_08: So that's like it is the that's the size of a house cat at that point.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_08: It's probably what 10 pounds, maybe.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: If that.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_08: And he's just sitting there on your legs.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_08: Right about then, his claws are starting to get longer.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Claws and teeth, and then uh you we start going hands off at that point.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_08: That's an awesome photo, though.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's a uh short span, but then when they're old enough to go out on exhibit, oh my.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: They usually draw in gorgeous.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you, having worked with so many different cats in the uh zoo world, the jaguars doesn't matter if you are the keeper of one its whole life.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: It never trusts you, and if you turn your back to it, it will eat you at any any That's just their thing?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's just their thing.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Lion keepers can get to where they have a relationship.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: You see your cheetahs, all the handlers walk around like with the cheetahs on leashes and they're like big cuddly things.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: Not your Jaguar.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_08: So you'll be the one to settle the argument because you hear people say Jaguar or Jaguar.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Jaguar.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: I probably say Jaguar.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_08: I mean it's i you look at the spelling and you'd think it'd be jaguar.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_08: It'd be jaguar.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_08: Right?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_08: UAR.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: Jaguar.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_08: But so I've heard people literally say it like it's a wire, like a jaguar.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: I probably do pronounce it that way when not thinking.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_08: Is it one of those?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_08: I guess it just either one's fine?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: Either one's fine.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: I've heard it said numerous ways for many different people in the zoo world, so I don't really know what the correct one is.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_08: Well, so either way though, way different than what you're doing now.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, so what happened there?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_08: What what was the transition?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Ross Powell Transition.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: So oddly enough, you have to be wildly educated and come with all of these recommendations to work in zoos like this that are competitive, and especially in that line of work for when you're doing species survivals to keep the numbers up.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't pay well.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: Shocking, I know.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think when I started, I'd I started and I was maxed out at like$12.50 an hour.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: And mind you, I had just left college, left all the family from North Carolina.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: So totally out on my own, just up and move out to Texas, be like, we'll figure it out.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_08: All the bills, all the things.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: All the bills, all the things, all the second jobs after the full time.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: And then it got to a point where I was like, I I put too much work and effort into this bio degree and definitely enough student loans and stuff.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna need a little bit more of a return on this.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_08: So I had a similar thing going on with radio.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_08: I think some people assumed you're on the radio.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_08: You're almost a mini celebrity or what you are, you must make a lot of money.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_08: I don't know how to tell you this.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: Let me set you down.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_08: It is absolutely not true.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_08: My first radio job, although it was years ago.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_08: I was making$1,000 a month.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_08: I was making$12,000 a year.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, the the year was 1991.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_08: But still,$12,000 is only$12,000.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_08: That's it.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: That is it.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, I climbed up at some point to making a little more than that, but there was once again the second jobs, the third jobs.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_08: And I think the similarity there is I think in jobs where there's people that do it because of the passion for it, they take advantage of that.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell Oh, 100%.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_08: So like radio folks like me, we do it because we love it.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_08: And people that work with animals like that, you do it because you love it.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_08: Not because it pays a ton.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_08: And I think they know that.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: They do.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_08: And so unfortunately, you had to make a decision at some point that, you know, I'd like to pay the bills.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell Yeah, it it basically came down to that in a nutshell.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: And and I hate that because it just sounds so womp womp.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: But it's life.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: I got to figure out how to pay the basic necessities.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: So branched out a bit in Texas, and by that time I had made some new friends, I had new s new experiences, exposure to stuff, and I ended up over with the City of Irving.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: I essentially ended up wearing a lot of hats with the City of Irving, and I liked it, kept me busy, kept me go, go, go, which I was much younger then, so that was fine.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: But um I worked as their at first just supervisor over their animal service unit.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_08: Um made sense, natural transition.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of where I slowly started getting a taste of like enforcement in general.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, best of both worlds here.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: I can work with animals and kind of also get people in trouble when they don't do things right.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: But in Texas, they've got all sorts of wildlife of their own out there.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so I ended up transitioning into becoming their cruelty investigator.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I kind of pivoted to their CID department and would start working as a cruelty investigator, went to all the schools and the trainings.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: Also was then the liaison for our game warden in our region.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: So then I was wildlife officer too.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm dealing with the coyotes, the bobcats, the wild boars rampant out there in Texas.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I ended up doing a little bit of everything, and then they're like, hey, we need somebody to be the rabies coordinator for this region over here, because the coyotes, the bats, the raccoons are are big out there with being a rabies vector.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: So then I'm doing all that.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: So the more I work cruelty cases, the more I'm exposed to the law enforcement side of things, the more I'm going into court proceedings and testifying and I'm being shown how to create my own warrants and this, that, and the other.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: And it just kind of grew from there.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: When I started doing more of that cruelty investigator work and doing more scene work, going to locations, a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of dog fighting, cock fighting in my area.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: So working a lot of those scenes, which inevitably gets you working with your DEA drug guys or ATF guys, because with cockfighting and dog fighting comes betting and gambling and drugs and weapons and this, that, and the other.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I just kind of got a taste for all of that.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I kind of want to, I think I like this whole law enforcement thing.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Explore that a lot of it.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like exploring like investigative stuff, because my nerdy science side is really liking this getting on scene and digging around and putting pieces together.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I bit the bullet, went through the police academy out in Texas, went and was doing the sworn officer thing for a while, trying to move my way at that time, eventually trying to get into like the CID crime scene world.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of your your bigger well-off agencies at that time in Texas, your crime scene folks were sworn.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, well, I'll go be sworn for a bit, put my time in, try and get over there.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: Before that could happen, good old COVID hit.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: I had some deaths in the family, some sickness in the family.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: I really needed to be back home.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: I felt like I needed to be there to help out and just be more present.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so I made the difficult choice of having to leave and then kind of just start it all back over when I moved back here.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_08: So I also changed careers because of COVID, too.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_08: I was running a brewery down in Charleston.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_08: And so I was radio, then brewery, then back on the radio, and now here.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: Zookeeper gone animal services to wildlife officer to cruelty investigator to police officer.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_08: It's not that weird anymore, though, I don't think, for people.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_08: I don't there's not a whole lot of people anymore, I think, that go into one like career path and just stay in that straight line.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_08: You just don't see that as often.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: I very much made my parents uncomfortable because they are that rare few of that generation where they've worked their one job and retired from it.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_08: My dad went to work for a factory.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_08: He was there his whole life.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: And here I am bouncing around to different things.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, nobody's gonna hire you if you keep moving, because they were just afraid, like they're gonna look like you're just not gonna stick around.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody's gonna hire you.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, uh, this is kind of what everybody does.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, the first time I got and you get you get fired a lot in radio as well, just because of the buying and the selling of the properties and everything else like that.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_08: And now the the industry has changed so much that they're just going more toward automation and away from humans.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_08: I've been fired multiple times, right?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_08: The first time, of course, it's shocking, and your parents freak out because fired.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_08: And they immediately think that I did something wrong.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_08: Because you got fired.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_08: You must and my dad, well, you must have got must have done something.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm like, no, Dad.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_08: I go, I'm not lying.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_08: I did I didn't.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_08: I go, they fired everybody.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_08: I go, the whole staff was fired.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_08: I go, every what, everyone?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_08: How do you do that?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_08: And so he goes, that generation it doesn't work that way.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_08: No.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_08: And so but with ours, we move around a little different.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_08: We it's just so after a while you get used to losing your job and getting new ones, and it's no longer a real uncomfortable thing.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_08: And then trying new things is not that uncomfortable either.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_08: It's almost invigorating.
• 30:37
  unknown: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I yeah, having to all of a sudden go from because I I was a supervisory position in Texas.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: They put some of the officers under me and just being your own investigator and all of this stuff.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: I had kind of worked my way up the chain, if you will, out there to then come back here.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: And first off, when I came back to North Carolina, mind you, most of my like adulthood and growing up was done in Texas after college.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I was out there for like a solid 10 years.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Met my fiance, all of that stuff out there.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so then I come back here and I'm like, law enforcement gets paid what?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because it is nothing compared to a lot of states.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: North Carolina, we're kind of down here with what they paid the law enforcement at that time when I came back.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: I know it's improved some, but I was like, ooh, I was already like feeling like I wasn't really getting paid enough, getting shot at almost every day near Dallas when I was a cop, and now I'm coming out here and it's basically like half what I was making.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_08: The public sec sector jobs in general in the Carolinas and some of the deep south, they call them the Alabamas and whatnot.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_08: Teachers are just lower in general than some other places.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_08: But then again, cost of living is also a little bit lower than some other places.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_08: Not necessarily Asheville.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_08: Ooh, not here, not here, but in some places in the South, just not here.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: North Carolina compared to Texas in general, that was a bit of a wake-up call for me because I definitely made more and Texas were less, and things were cheaper in Texas at that time than they were for me when I came back to North Carolina.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that was a bit of a shock for me too.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean it's worked out.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: I I set my own personal goal to ideally be back in a leadership role.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: I like it.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: I like I like being helpful, I like being the person's go-to, and if I can't find the answer, I'll find the answer for you.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I I enjoy the teaching and training aspect of stuff and and just kind of helping plan and organize and keep the ball rolling.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, well, let's give it a go and try.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a little bit of a shift going sworn, you know, civilian to sworn to civilian, and the the responsibility's changing a bit, your focus changing a bit.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: I can't say you forget everything that you've learned when you're an officer, even if you're not actively a sworn officer anymore.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: So that that was an interesting transition, but I'm I'm happy.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm in a good spot.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it worked out in the end, which is which is nice.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_08: Forensics supervisor Kristen Norman is with me now.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_08: So the other question that we asked in addition to where you were born, of course, and I gave you a little prep on this, but not much.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_08: But something came to mind right away when I asked you one thing that most people don't know about you.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_08: Now we've covered a lot of ground already, so did we cover that?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: We did.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say not many people know I started off as a a zookeeper.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_08: Well, I was thinking about the making jaguar babies as like something that people might not know about yourself.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Setting the candles and the music and the mood just right for the jaguars so I can get some babies.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I think that probably is something that most people would not know.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't naturally come up in conversation now.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_08: So Oh, by the way, you know, speaking of jaguars.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_08: What they really need to get in the mood is dun dun dun dun duh let's talk about the the forensics side of the world, because people watch the TV shows, right?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_08: I I know, you roll your eyes.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I do too.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_08: See, now that's something that not a lot of people do, though, because they can't stand it, because it's like either it's like that doesn't work, that doesn't happen, we can't do that, or or something along those lines.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_08: When I had Charlie Cox from Fire in here from the Asheville Fire Department, who went through B L E T with the Asheville Police Department, she told me she can't watch any of the fire shows.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_08: Because it's just it's like nothing like it really is.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell Well, I guess I should preface by saying I'm very selective with what shows I do watch.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_08: Well, some may be more accurate than others.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm a I'm a big forensic files fan, and that's pretty accurate.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: I do like me some dateline.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_08: How about show like the big the granddaddy of them all, as they say, is CSI, which is See now those I don't watch.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_08: Well, they're uh more dramatized.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's the issue for me is that how about the forensics that they do?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_08: Is any of that accurate stuff that they do with CSI stuff?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, when they're when they're testing bullets and all those different things.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_08: So you don't have the slow-mo camera like they do?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Ross Powell I do not.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: APD does not.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I boy do I wish all of the fingerprints were so perfect on all items of evidence where I just scan it and then the person's name and everything I would ever want to know is right there.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_08: But you put the DNA in, and then like three seconds later you got it, and you gotta catch the guy within a one episode.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: Man, wouldn't that be great?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_08: I do have something here though that uh Lieutenant Morgan gave me uh with some of your toys that you do have, though.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_08: So you do have some pretty cool things.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: We do have toys.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_08: I I mean th this 3D scanner that you got here.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_08: That's that's pretty super cool, right?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_08: Good photo when you go into court, and here is something about the fingerprinting, which is also super cool.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_08: So you've got some cool toys.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: We do have some very uh useful tools for us that does speed the process up some.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: It definitely does not give you the answers like you see on TV that promptly, just because we still we do still have to work in conjunction with like the state crime lab or other agencies or entities, and that's just time.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: But like our 3D scanner, fantastic.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody has to look at my my you know stick figure drawings anymore on sketchpad.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like we don't have to draw with pencil and a ruler and an eraser and stuff.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like that that guy takes care of all of that and just lets when it goes to trial, because in result, we're anticipating everything to go to trial.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: We want to get justice, gives that CSI effect to the jury in a more realistic way, because now they can walk through the crime scene with us and let them get a better look for yourself with your own eyes, what we saw kind of deal.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: So that 3D scanner is great for that for sure.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_08: In the years that you've been doing this, and how many years is that with the APD?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: With APD four.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_08: Four years.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_08: So what is your proudest moment, the the case that you cracked because of the forensics that was just like boom, we got this?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: One that sticks out for me, and by no means do I feel like forensics only kind of got the case, but it definitely sped the process up for the detectives to do their thing.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it was actually when we first got our rapid DNA machine.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's uh kind of fairly our our most recent toy that we've added to the the toolbox that we use.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was a homicide case, and we basically were trying to place the victim in the vehicle because our alleged suspect was like, no, nothing happened in the vehicle.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: I dropped him off and he was totally fine.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what happened to him.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: Long story short, when we got the search warrant for the alleged suspect's vehicle, we found a substance we thought could have been blood.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: It looked like a brown dark substance.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: We were able to do the phenophthalene test, fancy word for just we took a swab of some of it, put some chemicals on to see if it would react in a certain way to tell us that it was blood.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: When we got that positive reaction for blood, we took more samples.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: We take samples for the lab to hold off just for the lab, the state crime lab to have, but with us now having our kind of in-house DNA, we took samples for just ourselves to put into our rapid.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: So having our known standards from our victim from autopsy put that in our rapid machine.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: Then we put our evidence samples of what we thought were blood into the rapid machine, and it hit and said that these are a match.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we were able to then be like, hey guys, for some reason our victim was bleeding in the vehicle.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's not saying that he killed them, but I'm giving you something to run with in that sense.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then we were able to just send the rest of the samples off to the lab just to get it confirmed so it could be allowed into court as evidence when it went to trial.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was that was a big like, look at this new tool, and it's already helping us, it's making these connections, and we got answers.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: Takes an hour and a half to run a sample in our rapid machine.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: So in less than two hours, I was able to say, hey guys, he was in the vehicle bleeding.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: His blood was in the vehicle where your guy said he was totally fine when he left.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_08: So and you know, with these cases, a lot of times uh time is of the essence.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_08: It's like you need this stuff fast.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_08: You need it quick, and on TV it happens in one episode, less than an hour.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_08: But in reality, not usually.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_08: So to get something relatively quick like that that can help the detectives, that goes a long way.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: Man, getting something, especially on a DNA level in less than two hours, I don't know how you are gonna trump that.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: Even if you had a lab at your disposal, they're so backed up with other things, everybody's case is a rush priority.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like so the yeah, no, that definitely cuts down some waiting time, along with our BIQ as well, with all of our gun casings, gun violence, unfortunately, we've got going on, shootings.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, a lot of that lately.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: We get links in a matter of hours as well.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_08: Aaron Powell Speaking of that and timing, of course, uh this is very cool that occurred at the last city council meeting, the grant that was applied for.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_08: Yes.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_08: So tell us about that.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_08: In essence, what this grant is uh going to provide, if you know, if approved, is it's gonna turn around that ballistic time, like it make it so much faster to get a ballistic match, right?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_08: So explain that.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell So the biggest takeaway uh at least for for me and my side of the part that I'm playing in this grant is going to be the NIBEN entry.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: NIBEN is the Fed's little baby of uh database collection.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so every spent casing, either from collection of a crime scene or generated in lab as a test fire from a seized firearm, goes into this system across the U.S., goes into NIBAN.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: Essentially, this grant would allow for APD to have their own in-house NIBIN instead of us needing to send all of our casings to the state crime lab, which currently our Western lab is having to send all firearms out to our Raleigh lab.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: So even further and more time just due to staffing and budget constraints and things like that.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: So right now we're looking at an average of anywhere from three to seven months to try and get a NIBIN link report where it's like we had an examiner look and you shot this Glock and it produced this casing.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that characteristic of that firearm links to this shooting you had a week ago.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: Do with what you want with that.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then with the NIBIN leads, you can use those, they're confirmatory.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: So you can use that for any sort of probable cause.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: Our BIQ that we have now is great for like triaging when we get like 30 cases in at one time, like we did uh not too long ago.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: We can triage it out and send the one casing to the lab and be like, this is the best one recommended for NIBEN, and it'll give us our preliminary links that aren't confirmatory, but it at least gives the detectives a lead to work on at the time.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: So we've we've taken steps to try and cut down that turnaround time, but if we could get NIBIN in-house where I can run it through BIQ, this is my best casing, and then I'm gonna turn around and put it into NIBEN, and now we're having the confirmatory federal report saying this links to this in a matter of hours instead of three to seven months.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's crazy.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_08: Aaron Powell This could be a big deal.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: Big, big deal, yeah.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, it's that'll be a big game changer.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_08: Side note uh the confirmatory should also be one of the rooms in the game the game clue.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: It should in the confirmatory.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_08: Professor Plum could have done it with the rope in the confirmatory.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_08: That does sound like that.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_08: It does, doesn't it?
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: But what kind of room would that be?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_08: I uh you tell me a lab, I would guess.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: It does kind of sound more like a lab.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: Who has a lab in their house?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_08: Well So well, congratulations on the supervisor position.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_08: I think they chose the right person.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_08: I think you'll be a great leader in that department.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_08: Uh you've seen a lot of different things, and I think that helps sometimes.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_08: You know, coming from different areas and uh working in different capacities.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, everything from zoology to you know policing and all those different things, it all lends itself to knowledge.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_08: Knowledge is power.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: I agree one hundred percent.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: Never stop learning.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: Seen a lot of things.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_08: Done a lot of things.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks for chatting with me.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_08: No, thank you, Krista Norman, forensics supervisor.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_08: Appreciate you.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_08: Getting to know Detective Adam Roach.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_08: Thanks for joining me.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_08: Well, thanks for having me.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_08: I have right here a copy, you can see it, of the APD informant.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_08: It's a little newsletter of sorts that your captain, Captain Joe Silberman, puts out, or used to, at least.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_08: And this particular one was mustache March 2024.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_08: And it's got a picture of uh now retired Chief Lamb with his with his mustache.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_08: It featured mustaches throughout the whole thing.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_08: But one thing I noticed under sweariversaries was Adam Roach 317 2006, which makes this month and right about now your 20th sweariversary.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_08: Twenty years.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_08: So 20 years of uh being a sworn officer.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_08: And your fellow classmates that also swore in there, current interim chief Jackie Stepp, Brian Griffin, and Charles Wells.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_08: Fellow detective.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_08: That's kind of the Who's who of the APD right there?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_08: Some A listers.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_08: So that was your class.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_08: Yep.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_08: That was the class.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_08: And that was uh that was an internal APD B L E T, right?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_06: It was the first one.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_06: Uh it was 0105.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it was the first one.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_06: So it was kind of interesting to uh uh go through that.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_06: You know, it was quite different.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_06: A lot of people were at the time, old guys, you know, they all thought it was a little odd, you know, because they did it differently.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_06: They all went to A B Tech.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_05: Mm-hmm.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_06: Um and we did too for some schooling, but we you know we did a lot of in-house stuff, so it was a lot different.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_06: But you know, once you you get on the road and you get through the FTO process and stuff, and they they see how you turn out, they all end up saying, Oh, he's all right.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_08: And we had our internal academy four years, and I think it was what 14 or 15 that I think they stopped doing it.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_08: Uh around then.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_08: And now we've gone back to it.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, somewhere in there.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_08: And we've had some pretty big classes too.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_08: We've had uh just had a class of twenty graduate.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_08: That was the first uh of the new uh the revitalized uh in-house academy.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_08: Now there's ten going through currently, and we're hoping for another large class uh which will start, I think, in August, okay, which will be the next one.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_08: So as we get larger numbers, I mean that that's good for everybody.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's great.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_08: But when you were here, when you were going through the B L E T, we were a full apartment.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_08: You know, there wasn't these big gaps of, you know, we need 50 officers, we need a hundred officers.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_06: They may have been short, but I I I remember there were quite a few people applying, and um it was they were selective.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_06: I didn't think I was gonna get in.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_06: Somehow I I skated right in.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_06: So where were you born, Adam?
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_08: I was born and raised here in Asheville.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, so a local?
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_08: A real local.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_08: That's a rare breed right there.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_08: There's uh there's not too many.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_08: So which high school did you go to?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_06: I actually I went to North Buncombe High School.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_06: We lived in North Asheville and uh we started out in We Reveal, went to high school to North Buncombe, and um so when we moved back to North Asheville, I stayed there.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_08: So what made you want to be a law enforcement officer?
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_08: Was that something early in life, or did you go to college and kind of figure things out?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_06: To be honest with you, my brother started, he did it.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_06: So I took an interest in it and thought, well, you know, if he can do it, I can do it.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_06: That's kind of how it happened.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_06: Um I had a couple of guys that would come in when I worked in the engineering department for the city.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_06: You know, they were part of the police department then and and so they encouraged me to to put in because I'd already had a I already had a degree by that point.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_06: Where'd you go to college?
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_08: I went to A B Tech.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_08: A B Tech?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_08: That's where my wife went.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_08: Okay But you didn't go to the law enforcement academy, which is interesting.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_08: So you went to A B Tech as just as a school and then into the in-house academy to be B L E T.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_06: And at the time that I went to A B Tech, that was where people were going, was just for B L E T through A B Tech at A B Tech.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_06: So, you know, the in-house stuff was all new, you know, very new.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_08: So when I saw this, when I saw this was your 20th swear versory, and I, you know, went to Captain Silberman just to ask him, I go, Yeah, I saw that Detective Roach is having his 20th swear versus would he be good for the the podcast?
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_08: And he and he thought about it for a second.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_08: He goes, Yeah, he's got a cool story.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_08: So what do you suppose he means by that?
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_08: I have no idea.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_08: We're gonna have to ask him what it would Adam's got a cool story.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, well, what's your story?
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_08: Let's find out if it's cool.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I don't have much of a story.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_06: I just I've been here for 20 years working sworn for 20 years.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_06: I've been at the PD for a little over 20 years.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_06: We started in 05, but that's about it.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_08: I think you're hiding something.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, I have stories, but I just don't know what one he's talking about.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, well, you you never know with Joe, do you really, quite frankly.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_08: But how long have you been a detective?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_06: I've been a detective since 2018.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_06: All right.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_08: So that's a good amount of time then.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_08: So and I'm guessing it is one of those things.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, you always learn on the job about all kinds of things.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_08: As a detective, though, I'm guessing the longer you're on the job, the more kind of things you notice.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_08: How to develop a case.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_08: How to So longevity I would think would certainly land at to a success rate, wouldn't it?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, for sure.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_06: You know, having the experience of patrol certainly helped because you know, you you have a lot of interaction with people.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_06: You spend years on the road and you you have a lot of good interaction with people and you get to understand like people's quirks and you get to learn your gut feelings and you know, um using that intuition um to your advantage as long as you can articulate.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_06: Especially in investigations, you know, you you get a notion about somebody and you kind of just you work on that to see where it takes you.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_08: I know you're working on one right now.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_08: Your whole department's working on one or more because of the weekend that we recently had.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_08: Uh one of the the busier weekends, and I don't know if we've ever had one that was quite like that before with the amount of things that occurred in four days.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_08: But you're working on one of those cases right now.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_08: How how many cases do you have at any given time?
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_08: Is it just one that you hyperfocus on or are you working on multiple?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_06: Well, uh in major case, um yes.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_06: In in the sense of major case, because we you know, we work violent crimes and homicides.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_06: And so, yes, in that sense you will, you know, focus on one case for a period of time.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_06: But you have to manage your time and and work on all your cases uh a little bit here and there.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_06: But if you're in general assignment, you're you're gonna be working a lot of cases and and having your hands in a lot of stuff at all times.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_06: But major cases um a little bit slower, but then when you know a situation like say this weekend happened, it's a whole lot faster.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_06: You know, and so you gotta pick up the pace and and um start working.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_08: I've seen the progress you've made on the case you're working on from Lexington Avenue, the people that are it's highly publicized, the shooting that occurred down there outside an establishment.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_08: I've seen the progress that you have made throughout the week as you've the whiteboard with the the people of you know that are involved in that.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_08: There's names, there's nicknames, you're trying to find out who is this person, uh how are they connected to this person and how did this occur?
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_08: And it's been interesting to watch the process, you know, how that develops.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_08: And even still today, you're still trying to find identities because all these people they have nicknames.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_08: They're going by nicknames.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_08: And so you're trying to figure out real names, and you and your fellow officers, with the people that you know, the people that you've seen, everyone kind of chips in a little, don't they?
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_08: I mean the whole department ends up being a contributing detective in a way.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_06: You know, over the years you figure out what your strengths are as far as like investigations or even patrol work.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_06: You know, you have some people that are like a steel trap and they know exactly who so and so is or you know who this person is with this nickname and and um just based on you know the nickname itself, you know.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_06: Um some people are, you know, notorious, some people are just you've never heard of them before, and but there's just somebody out there that just knows who it is.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_08: Retired Chief Lamb was that way with names and nicknames and stories.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_08: He was.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_08: I'd be up there in the third floor and we'd just be having coffee sometimes in the morning, he'd be just done with his workout, and and he and Deputy Chief Artemis would just start going back and forth with stories.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_08: And and Chief Lamb would just he would rattle off dates and names and nicknames and things, and he just had a memory for those things.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_06: I remember him being very good at that.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_06: And um I know a couple of cases I had when I first went into Major Case that were some shootings, um, and I remember him sending me some emails or or seeing me in passing saying, Hey, uh, I know I know who you're talking about, and this is who it is, you know.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_06: And um so it was kind of neat because um I knew that from patrol, my time on patrol, I knew that about him because there's other people in within a department that are like that that can really remember people, you know.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_06: And um I I'm I'm good with faces, I'm not good with names, you know, and so that's helpful.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_06: Um and and um but yeah, that's that's always neat to see people that can you know come up with somebody on the dime and you don't you're like wow, that's pretty good.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_08: Detective Adam Roach joins me right now.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_08: On the lighter side, I planted a seed for this question, and you seem to have an idea instantly what this the answer would be.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_08: And the question is, what's one thing that most people don't know about you personally?
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_06: A lot of people don't know, but I I worked for the city years before I came to the PD.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_06: I actually worked for the city as a summer youth when I was fifteen.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_06: Um I worked in the uh public works department and the sign shop.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_06: I painted roads and put signs up on the side of the roads.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_06: Is that right?
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I did that a couple of summers as a summer youth.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_06: And then I worked as an inter intern for the engineering department while I was going through school, and then full-time as a um uh signal technician for the uh engineering department, the traffic engineer department.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_06: And I did that for about four years before I came to the PD.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_08: So does that work for the city count towards your retirement?
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_08: I hope so.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_08: I'm just I'm like, okay, that adds some years to it.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_06: The full-time part for sure.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, the full-time.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, not the part-time.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_06: I don't I don't think that adds to it.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_08: But still, that helps show along a little bit.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, yeah, I would think, right?
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_08: See, no, I thought you were going to mention your Hot Wheels that I saw in your cubicle.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_08: Because though so I collected Hot Wheels as well.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_08: I saw you've got a bunch in your cubicle, right?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_08: But they're all still in the box.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_08: See, when I was growing up, I'm older than you.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_08: When I was growing up, I had Hot Wheels.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_08: I had a ton of Hot Wheels, but we played with them.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_08: We didn't leave them in the box.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, dude, I ran the wheels off those things until the paint was chipped.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_06: Well, those are kind of special.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_06: Those are from my son.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_06: When he was younger, he loved Hot Wheels.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_06: But uh I saw one of those cars and I don't remember which one.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_06: Actually, one of those is from my fellow detective, Albert Ball.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_06: But uh that one's I think the little Batmobile that's there.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_06: But uh well, I know that's that's the one he got me.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_06: But uh yeah, my son, he saw that I had some interest in the one of the Hot Wheels that's up there, and so he got me a few more.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_08: So did you guys have any of the tracks?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_08: Like, did you play?
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, yeah.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, he had the loop-to-loop one, the word goes around.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I I had all those.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_08: I'm telling you.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, we would spend a whole whole afternoon putting them up through the house.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_06: He just so he could run a couple of cars through there and call it a day.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_08: So we would take him down the street where we had like it was like it was like an old construction site that was like abandoned, so it was just all dirty and muddy.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_08: And we create like dirt tracks out there and stuff.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_08: So my Hot Wheels got beat up pretty good.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, yeah.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_08: So I I don't have any to show for.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_08: I think they all just got thrown away at some point because they were so beat up.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_06: As far as I remember, I have a few old Hot Wheels from when I was a kid, uh, but they're in storage somewhere.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_06: But um but they are definitely beat up.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_06: The paint, I know for sure the paints off of them, you know, beat all the pieces.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_06: But um he he grew out of the Hot Wheels, so we don't have that many left anymore.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_06: But uh he he uh he wanted me to have those, so I was very appreciative of that.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_08: I've got a few of the adult versions of the Hot Wheels, which are the like the NASCAR die casts.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_08: Oh okay.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_08: I have a few of those that have been gifted to me over the years when I was more into NASCAR than I am now.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_08: So some of them are even signed by some people because I was we used to go down to Daytona and broadcast for uh I guess it was what nine or ten years.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_08: Uh when the radio station I was working at, we were a NASCAR affiliate.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_08: So they would send me down in a motorhome and I would stay in the infield for a week of the Daytona 500 and just interview everybody and all these different things, and and some of them would just kind of give you memorabilia and things like that.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_08: So I've got some pretty cool ones.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, that's neat.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, and I've got a whole bunch of like autograph stuff lying around that I don't really do much with anymore because I was an Earnhardt guy.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, yeah, me too.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_08: And so, you know, Dale Sr.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_08: died.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_08: And then root for Dale Jr., of course, and then he retired.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_08: And I just haven't been able to find another driver, so I just really don't watch anymore.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_06: No, I don't either.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_06: My dad watched it and I started getting into it as I got older, but then when Sr.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_06: died, that was pretty much it for me.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_08: We we just had the anniversary of that uh just a few weeks ago, which I think was well, I guess what, the 25th anniversary of that?
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_08: I would have uh 25th or 20th.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_08: It was one of the two uh in in the anniversary of his passing at Daytona.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_08: And and so that kind of brought it all back to me, uh, that particular but I if you don't have a driver, it's just it's hard to watch the races.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_08: It's yeah, and and I can't force myself to root for somebody that I'm not interested in.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_08: You know, and it's I've tried actually.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_08: I'm like, well, this guy drives hard.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_08: I'll I'll kind of watch.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_08: And then I'm like, no, not the same.
• 55:55
  unknown: Yeah.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_06: No.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_08: Have you been to some tracks?
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_06: Uh no.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_08: Bristol or Atlanta or Rockingham or any of them or Charlotte, none of them.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_06: Just watched it on TV.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_06: I think you'd enjoy going in person.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I think so too.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_06: I might I might do that with my son one day.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_06: That would be good.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_08: It in Bristol's a good one to go to because it's so small, you can see the whole no matter where you are in the stands, you see the whole race.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_08: As opposed to Daytona, which is two and a half miles.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, yeah.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_08: All you're gonna see is like a corner or a straightaway.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_08: And the rest of the race is taking place like a mile away.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_08: And you literally can't, but it's a different experience.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_08: They're so entirely different.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_08: You know, that it's it's fun to experience all of those.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_08: And so I always recommend people to kind of do each, you know, one of each.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_08: And it's just it's a fun experience, too.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_08: The tailgating that goes along with some of that, oh yeah.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_08: It's kind of like going to like an SEC football game or something along those lines.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_08: So I bet so.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_08: Have you still figured out the the cool story that Joe's?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_06: I sure have it.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_08: You got to get back to me on that.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_08: When you two figure out what that cool story is, I'll I'll let you know for sure.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_08: We'll have you back in here.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, that'll be good.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_08: Detective Adam Roach, thanks for joining me.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, thanks for having me.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_06: I appreciate it.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_08: Joining me now, Senior Police Officer Kerry Lee from APD.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_08: That's me.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_08: I enjoy saying that.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's really catchy.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_08: It really, really is.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_08: Well, welcome back.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_08: It's been a minute.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_08: You guys have been busy.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_08: I know we had a big blood drive and some other stuff.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_08: Let's just start right off the top because uh USA.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_08: USA.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_08: I don't know.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_08: That's the thing now, right?
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I haven't had much time to watch TV lately.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_08: So let's just say that APD.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_08: Because we won the blood drive.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_08: We did again.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh first of all, I want to thank everybody who came out to either donate their time or donate their blood.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: We really appreciate it.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: The goal was 160 pints.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you all, we had 196 total pints of blood donated.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_08: Yo.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: That has the implications to impact um possibly 588 lives.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that is incredible.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: Just to break on APD a little bit, 108 of those units was donated by people that voted for APD.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_04: We matched it, yeah.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: Either employees of APD or citizens that came out and uh gave us our vote.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you to everybody.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: That was amazing.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we also had another really cool thing that happened during the blood drive.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: We now have a Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: So a bunch of folks that have gone through our past Citizens Police Academies have come together and are like, hey, we want to be involved with the police department.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: How can we do that?
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: One of the ways was showing up to the blood drive to help us man a couple different tables.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: So several of those folks came out to man the tables and also donate blood.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: So big shout out to our Citizens Police Academy alumni.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_08: You know, which is pretty much it's super cool that that even exists.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_08: They did that on their own.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_08: Nobody said, hey, you guys that have all done this thing, how about you all get together and pretend you like each other?
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_08: Instead, it was them wanting to continue the relationships they built during that.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's been really neat.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: They also came out for the last graduation we had for our last 20 cadets that graduated.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: Several of them came out to show their support to the department.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_08: I think that's awesome.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_08: And that group will hopefully just continue to grow as we have more Citizens Police Academies.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_08: We're about to start another edition, right?
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: We are Thursday the 19th.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_08: Holy cow.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_08: Yes.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_08: It's that close.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_08: Yes.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, so we got that kicking in.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_08: And of course, that's already fully folded up.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_08: But the Immersion Academy.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we have a couple really cool things.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_08: We've mentioned it before on the podcast, but this is something brand new.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_08: So it's almost like we're covering all the bases.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_08: We've got the Citizens Police Academy, which can be anybody of almost any age.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: 18 plus.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_08: So we've got the Junior Police Academy, which is kind of like a we'll call it a summer camp.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_08: But that's kind of and it's a fun thing.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_08: I know a lot of them experience that.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_08: Now this Immersion Academy takes a different approach.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_08: It is targeting people directly that say to themselves, I've thought about being a police officer and joining the APD, but I think I just need a little more information, a little more hands-on experience.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_08: And that's what this provides.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: So applications are now open for the Immersion Academy.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: You only have until April 2nd to get your application in, so go ahead and get those apps in.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: This will be an opportunity for you to come and have a sample of what it means to be a police officer.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: What does training look like?
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: What does our day-to-day look like?
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: What do investigations and patrol look like?
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: You get to come do some PT every day with us and see how that feels.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you realize, oh, I need to work on my push-ups or I need to work on my sit-ups, but I can do this.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_08: Aaron Powell And it's set up a little differently than some of their ones as well.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_08: They all have different formats.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_08: For example, a CPA is once a week for ten weeks.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_08: The junior academy the junior police academy is one week.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_08: I think it's one week.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's also one week.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_08: And so this, this immersion academy, is only what, three or four days?
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's still a week-long program.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, it's one week.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, but we're gonna pack a whole lot into it.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_08: Aaron Powell, yeah.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_08: You literally are gonna get to touch and feel and see everything, at least parts of everything that the APD officers do on a daily basis and get a good idea of what it might be for you.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_08: So that's pretty awesome.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_08: Uh do you have the link?
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_08: What's the best way?
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_08: Just to Google uh Immersion Academy APD?
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, just Google Asheville PD Immersion Academy.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_08: You will find that.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_08: So as part of the community engagement division, you guys are always out and about.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_08: What do we have coming up that the public can look forward to?
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: We will have lots of stuff coming up in April and beyond.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: March is a little bit quieter for us, so we're just kind of dealing with a few in-house things and can continuing to prepare for the Immersion Academy and the Junior Police Academy.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I mean we're coming off a busy time of the year, of course, coming out of the holidays, the start of the year, and then getting the CPA started, getting the Immersion Academy started.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_08: So it's a good time to kind of take a breath, gather yourself, and get ready to get some more things on the calendar that people enjoy.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_08: Uh one thing we should probably mention, because we're close to this, is the uh West Asheville Resource Center at Tanger Outlets is close.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_08: Not necessarily a community engagement thing, but it's a way for the community to engage with us because unlike some of our other resource centers, you can physically go there and say file a report or talk to an officer.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it'll be really neat.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: So for folks shopping around the outlets, you'll be seeing officers walking around as well.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, stop by the uh the Under Armour outlet, grab yourself some shorts, stop by the APD resource center.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_08: There you go.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, say hi.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_08: And we want to thank them too for a relationship that really kind of began and was fortified and developed during Hurricane Helene and how they stepped up to help us in so many ways.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_08: And now with this, just one more way.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you might even see some officers riding some e-bikes out there doing some bike patrol as well.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_08: That's pretty cool.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's very easy on us.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that pedal assist is real nice.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_08: Aaron Powell The more we grow our ranks, too, you might be starting to see uh people on more traditional bicycles in downtown Asheville again with the bike patrol hopefully coming back soon.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_08: It's one of the things we want to do.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_08: Uh and and of course, more officers on the streets is better for everybody.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_08: Can you develop those relationships with the community?
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll be seeing us as community engagement.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody in our unit is certified on bike patrol.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I made sure I got my bike uniform out the other day.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know temperatures are supposed to be a little cold for a while, but uh I'm ready to ride.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_08: Aaron Powell They've been warm the last couple of days.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_08: Yes.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, it gives you a little taste of what so they've been unseasonably warm, which is a little bit of a yank because you kind of you get starting to think this is what it's going to be like, and it's not.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_08: It's still March.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_08: So we got a while to wait until the 80s settle in for good.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_08: Yes.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_08: But looking forward to it.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_08: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, with the warm temperatures came the pollen, which has attacked me.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I am not happy about that.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I have been enjoying the warmth.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_08: I started taking my uh my pills last week in advance of the SOCON tournament.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_08: Because you can't be all snotty when you're on the microphone because they do the PA down there.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they'll appreciate you blowing your nose.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_08: No.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_08: I keep a box right there with me and it was used, but not nonstop.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_08: So the Zertech D has been popped like skills since last week and so far doing its job.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: So also, quick reminder the junior police academy applications open on April 1st.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: They will be open for one month.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is not an April Foolish joke, okay?
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you know maybe they should have picked April 2nd, but wait a minute.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_08: It's real.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: So yes, April 1st through May 1st, the Junior Police Academy applications will be open.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you know of a 14 to 18 year old who is interested, tell them to keep their eye out on our social media and get an application in because they will go quick.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_08: I know the bomb squad day is always very popular.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a lot of fun.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_08: And the canine day and all the day.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: Every single day is fun.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, these guys are.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_08: Every single day.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_08: They work really hard in the programming for that.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_08: So if you're anywhere even borderline interested in that, the signups are on April 1st.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_08: No fooling.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_08: Carrie Lee from APD, thank you again.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Rick.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_08: That's it for another episode.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_08: Thank you to my guests, Deputy Chief Sean Artima, Forensics Supervisor Kristen Norman, Detective Adam Roach, and Senior Police Officer Carrie Lee.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_08: And thank you for listening.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_08: You're one of the reasons we're approaching another milestone.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_08: 6,000 downloads.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_08: We've covered a lot of ground, but if there's something you'd like to hear discussed or someone you'd like to hear from, just call 828-250-8800 and leave a voicemail.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_08: That number again is 828-250-8800.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_08: Or you can email APD Podcast Feedback at AshevilleNC.gov.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_08: Listen and subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts and don't miss a single episode.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_08: I'm Rick Rice, and this is the APD Pod Squad.