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This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.

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I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and have used their products ever since.

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From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female

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responders, I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've worked for.

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Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they are

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also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance Project.

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We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier. I ended up buying real

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ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been my ride or die through

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Murph the last few years as well. But one area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous

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sponsorship spots is their brick and mortar element. They were predominantly an online

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company up till more recently but now they are approaching 100 stores all over the US.

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My local store is here in Gainesville Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts you see

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online are applied also in the stores. So as I mentioned 511 is offering you 15% off every

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purchase that you make but I do want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount

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especially around holiday times. But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order

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or in the stores every time you make a purchase. And if you want to hear more about 511, who they

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stand for and who works with them, listen to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with

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511 regional director Will Ayres. Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always my name is

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James Gearing and this week is my absolute honor to welcome on the show former NYPD detective,

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the ATF agent who rose through the ranks ultimately retiring as deputy assistant director

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and the author of the new book The Deadly Path, Pete Forcelli. Now in this conversation we discuss

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a host of topics from his powerful 9-11 experience, his own battle with cancer, joining the ATF,

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organized crime, cartels, domestic terrorism, the truth behind Operation Fast and Furious,

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school shootings, his new book and so much more. Now before he gets this incredibly powerful and

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important conversation as I say every week please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen

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to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five star rating

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truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for others to find and this is a free

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library of 950 episodes now so all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and

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women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said I introduce to you Pete Forcelli, enjoy.

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Well Pete I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming on the

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Behind the Shield podcast today. Honored to be here, thanks for having me. So where on planet

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earth we finding you this afternoon? I'm in Fairfax Virginia just outside of Washington D.C.

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where I live now. Beautiful. Rainy day but hey it's good to be here. Yeah it's not raining

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now I always feel so bad my guests are in Canada or the UK and I'm always looking out my window with

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Florida sunshine and going oh sorry about your day. All right well then first question I would

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love to start at the very beginning of your timeline so tell me where you were born and

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tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.

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Sure, sure I have one sister. I was born in Yorkers, New York just north of the Bronx,

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spent most of my time in Yorkers or Bronx, New York. My parents, my father was a construction

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worker, heavy equipment operator so he operated cranes and bulldozers and backhoes and stuff

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and my mother worked in a real estate office. Was your dad working in Manhattan, was he on any of

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the skyscraper projects? No he mostly worked in the Westchester county so there's a couple towns

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in Westchester that had some larger buildings and one of them is the county seat which is White

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Plains, New York. So he did a lot of work up there, not too much in New York City. He despised New

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York City, he didn't like to go into New York City, hated the traffic so he avoided the city like the

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plague. Gotcha, well what about sports? Obviously you ended up being in a very active profession,

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what were you playing in the school age? You know I was kind of small as a kid, real skinny so I

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mean I played baseball, I was actually pretty good at baseball. Wasn't big enough to be good at

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football or basketball so I played them but baseball was mostly what I put my efforts into

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because I enjoyed it and again I was pretty decent at it. Not good enough to make it into a

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scholarship or into any kind of league or anything but it was fun. I think that's a shame that

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a lot of us have that conversation like I was only this kind of athlete rather than looking

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at these sports like I loved playing baseball. It doesn't really matter what level we got to

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if we actually enjoyed simply playing it. Sure, sure absolutely, it was fun. Well what about

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career aspirations? What were you dreaming of becoming when you were a child? You know I didn't

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know, there was a period where I thought maybe I'll be a doctor but even though I hated school so

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that made absolutely no sense. I kind of wanted to go into law enforcement from a young age

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because I used to watch the shows on TV, you know Starsky and Hutch and all these police shows

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and I was lured into believing because it's actually very false that policing is very

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exciting. It has moments of excitement but for the most part a lot of your time is spent you know

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waiting for something or doing paperwork or administrative tasks but yes I was sold at a

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pretty young age. I would say maybe like 10 that I wanted to be in the law enforcement world and

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kind of never changed course. Did you have any extended family in military or first responders?

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My uncle served in the army, didn't talk much about it. This was during the Vietnam era but

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other than that no. My family was mostly in the construction industry and I think that's what my

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father wanted me to do. In fact I learned how to do carpentry, even went to a trade school during

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high school to learn carpentry but I didn't enjoy it and candidly I wasn't very good at it because

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I just you know if you don't want to do something if you're not passionate about it you won't be as

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good as the folks who are passionate about it. So let's just put it this way, I could hang sheet

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rock and do some of those things. You would not want me working on any fine woodworking projects

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for you, wasn't that good. I can relate but there were two classes when I was in senior school in

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England, there was CDT, Craft Design and Technology and then there was Home Economics which was cooking

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and sewing. I was so bad at the woodwork side I signed up for the cooking. So all right well then

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what about the kind of environment that you grew up in? In the neighborhood that you lived in was

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there crime around you? Was there any kind of underlying elements where you were exposed to

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the first responder professions? Oh yeah I grew up in a part of Yonkers that's very close like

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I said before to the Bronx so I mean I lived in a large house that had many apartments in it.

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Most of them were occupied by extended family members. My grandfather owned the house but on

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all sides of us were section 8 housing or public housing and you know we were one of maybe six

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white families that lived in the neighborhood. Most of the neighborhood was black and Latino

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and it wasn't an affluent community so I mean we had crime you know a lot of property crime but

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there was drug dealing that happened that you could watch it through our windows. So I mean I saw things

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growing up that gave me a pretty good realization of what you know crime looks like. In fact there

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was one time where across the street from my house the Yonkers police department was doing

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an undercover operation and shot a guy so I was like wow here I was at this young age just watching

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the crime scene tape and all of this stuff going on as the investigation unfolded. It wasn't a great

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neighborhood but you know you grew up learning how to deal with people you know how to have

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conversations with folks, how to de-escalate situations you know knowing what to look out

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for to not become a victim of crime hopefully. So it was you know I don't regret where I grew up. It

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was a I think a good learning experience. It certainly helped pave the path for me to be

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successful in my law enforcement profession. With this lens that you have now in 2024 when you look

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back from your upbringing all the way to the end of your law enforcement career, what do you identify

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as some of the factors that contribute to crime in some areas in the States?

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Well there's a lot of things a lot of it's socioeconomic. Some of it I would say is attributed

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to culture. You know I mean obviously with violent crime you watch the movies of today you know you

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watch you listen to some of the music of today and it's it's I don't know how else to describe it but

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it glorifies violence you know so I think that certainly contributes to to things and then

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currently I mean there's so much political animosity that I don't think that helps anything either.

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You know where you have people just out you know they just dislike people who don't think like they

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do which is not really what America was about me growing up. I mean most of the people I associated

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with were people who really didn't have much in common with me and you work to find that common

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ground but if you look at our society today it seems like if somebody doesn't share that exact

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same thought pattern that you have or like the same politics that you like or same sort of music

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that you're not supposed to get along with each other so I mean I think until we get over that

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we're in for some rough days you know. Absolutely well I think the word diversity in the first

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responder professions is a perfect example. If you look at it with the wrong lens you just want

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people the different colors and genders and sexual orientations in uniform in front of you.

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Diversity in my opinion is a spectrum of skills abilities and personalities that will become an

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asset on a call. So a domestic violence call where a woman has been assaulted there might be a

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compassionate female officer that's the perfect fit for that call. Now you need some you know

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door thumper and you ask the linebacker that's 300 pounds to grab the you know grab the halogen

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and make it happen you know. So I think this is the problem we focus so much on the minutiae on

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minutiae on the pigmentation on the orientation rather than realizing we've got so much in common

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and then you can celebrate the differences. Oh 100% there's nothing that you just said that I can't

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agree with entirely. I mean you know we should embrace what's different about each other just

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as much as we embrace what we have in common because look if everybody imagine how uninteresting

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the world would be if we all looked and thought exactly alike. You know I mean it would be really

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not a very fun place to live where here I mean you know I enjoy exploring other cultures you know

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getting to know about things you know it's funny I remember recently I had gotten in a cab with a

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guy who had an accent and I was in a cab with someone who's much younger than me it was for

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work and I asked hey where are you from and the person with me was like so offended like oh my

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god that's racist that you asked where he was from and in their mind they made an assumption

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that he wasn't from the U.S. because he had a very thick accent but in reality he was from Tibet.

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So you know I've never been to Tibet I've always been very intrigued by the Himalayas so I mean

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this conversation in the car was like for me it was like a chance to explore this different culture

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like I respected this person immensely I was like so excited to have this conversation

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but to this younger person who's been kind of I guess nurtured in this world where diversity is

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like different to them than it is to us like it was offensive like how dare you ask him what he

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and I both seem to really enjoy the conversation like he didn't seem the least bit offended but

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this much younger person was offended that I would ask hey where are you from because in their mind

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that was making an assumption that they weren't from here when the reality was I was celebrating

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their you know origins and learning a little bit about them like I've traveled the world

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through the conversations I've had with cab drivers and uber drivers you know throughout you

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know many decades of work and travel but yeah nowadays I guess that's frowned upon which is

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really sad when you think about it because that's how you get to know different things about different

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parts of the world and not to dislike them but to actually like explore them and embrace them and

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you know be intrigued by them and maybe even like try to sample some of those things yourself you

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know I don't know. No I agree completely my wife always groans when I start chatting to the the

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uber drivers and you know occasionally you have one like okay they don't want to talk and that's

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fine I'm not going to be like badgering them but it's amazing how many conversations you have and

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obviously be in English I can start with you know I moved from the UK where are you from another

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country originally so it comes a little bit more you know less loaded I guess you'd say but I've

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literally had DJ I mean uber drivers who are DJs play his tracks in the car you know and then he

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sends me his latest music on Facebook I mean it's you know there's so many great human beings out

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there and you know if you happen to engage with someone you know you're missing an opportunity to

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learn about as you said someone or a different culture or different religion just by simply

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having a conversation which is what humans have done since the beginning of their time.

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Well I listen I you know I have an accent I've traveled different places even within the United

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States I have a very thick New York accent so when I would travel down south people would ask me

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questions like I looked at it as as flattering that they would want to know a little bit about

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like where I'm from and everything and you know so I just think it's a good thing you know I think

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that's actually respectful to have those conversations so again it's just sad to see

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where we're at now where there's others who just they think that somehow that's not something that

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we should embrace and explore and get to know each other better because look the more I think we get

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to know each other as human beings the less animosity and the less you know less bad stuff

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we would see in our world today with you if you actually grew to respect one another as opposed

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to feel like you need to walk around with your guard up or just you know make these blanket

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assumptions that you shouldn't have conversations to learn more about your fellow human being you

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know it's crazy absolutely yeah I mean I get all the you know British teeth jokes and I saw one on

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social media the day and it said you know what what is the UK what is the UK's greatest achievement

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and then someone wrote given the world the most independence days so you know you've got to even

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you know it's not coming from a bad place we have to be able to joke that's another form of

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communication now being nasty is a whole entire conversation but this fear of even making jokes

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with each other because you might offend someone I think is very dangerous you know to your point

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growing up there were jokes and look some of it's you know it's taboo now there were ethnic jokes

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and I grew up like I said in a neighborhood where there weren't many people who looked like me I was

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one of the few white families but we joked with each other and it was never from a position of

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hatred or from a position of trying to be disrespectful it actually kind of made us I guess

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more humble because you could laugh at yourself where now man those are fighting words and it's

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just very sad to see where we've gone as a culture where you can't kind of poke fun in a respectful

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way at each other or laugh at things that look in some ways they're funny you know and look there's

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been plenty of Italian jokes over the years that I've heard that I don't I don't get mad I was never

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in the mafia you know I mean so but I just I just laugh it off and look some of it's funny you know

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so but yeah it's just it's a different time than when we grew up you know I mean I'm probably a

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bit older than you I'm I'm 58 years old so I mean but back when I grew up racial humor was

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we all did it to each other and it and nobody took offense the only thing that was offline back in

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those days were mother jokes you couldn't joke about somebody's mother. That's shifted. Everything else

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yeah everything else was fair game back then. Well let's get to law enforcement then so walk me

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through your journey into NYPD. Sure I took the test to be a New York City cop I actually took the

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test for the Yonkers police department the list was much shorter very difficult test took the New

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York City test I was 16 and a half when I took the test to be a New York City cop they were allowed

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that back then passed it so then I just had to wait to turn 20 to get hired so you know um finished

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school did some work as a carpenter at a New York medical college named New York Medical College in

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Valhalla eventually NYPD called me so um started back then there were three different departments

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in New York and they all came with the same list it was New York City Housing Authority police

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the Transit Authority police and the NYPD so I got called by the New York City Housing Authority

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police which at first I was disappointed because I didn't know much about them and I wanted to be an

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NYPD cop right so um when I started the job I was 20 walked the beat in the projects in the Bronx

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loved it great job best job I ever had I would say smaller department so everybody knew each other

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the bosses knew your kids names you knew your boss's kids names so I did that for uh you know

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in uniform on patrol for about five years then I went into plain clothes where I still did patrol

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duties but like dressed like a civilian for two years it's called anti-crime back in the day

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then um I got asked to go into the detective bureau I was referred and so I interviewed passed

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so I became a detective in January of 1994 which is around the time my daughter was born

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and then um then Rudy Giuliani merged the three departments together so um when that happened I

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stayed in the detective bureau but now I was in NYPD so I worked in the 47th precinct for a while

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in the 45th precinct which are both still in the Bronx which is where I worked most of my career

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and then um about two years later I was asked to go into the Bronx Homicide Task Force

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so um murders were off the hook in the Bronx at the time they average like 600 murders a year which

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is kind of appalling when you think the Bronx is just one county right so I went into the

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homicide squad started working on a lot of federal cases with the DEA ATF FBI and it really started

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to like that world because the sentences were much more strict um you had a lot more um just a lot

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more flexibility on working cases in a lot more time like with the regular cases in the Bronx it

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was like it was a grind you know they wanted to get the cases done churned in churned out and move

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on to the next case as fast as possible where with the federal stuff you took your time and I really

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liked that like being able to sink your teeth into something and follow like all the evidence not just

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the most prominent evidence so I took the test to become an ATF agent and I passed it and then I

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jumped ship in um June of 2001 became an ATF agent in New York City worked there for six years

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promoted to a supervisor's position in Phoenix which was a rough five years of my life um then I

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went back went into ATF headquarters for a very very short time then up to Canada for two years

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where I was the ATF liaison to the eastern part of Canada which was an amazing experience Canadian

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cops are absolutely great people a lot of fun I'm surprised my liver survived that assignment but

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but I made it back to headquarters for a year where I was put in charge of leadership training

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then I went down to Miami for roughly three years where I was the second in command of the office

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and then eventually promoted to run that office and then I got brought back to headquarters for

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my last just under four years where I was the head of training for ATF and then I retired.

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I'm going to go all the way back to the beginning of your new NYPD journey and we'll

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walk forward again firstly the anti-crime patrol um were you around was that an era where there

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was a lot more foot patrols a lot more kind of um being amongst the people that kind of what they

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refer to as community policing today? Not in anti-crime because in anti-crime we mostly were

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just going to areas where there was a lot of violent crime and mostly like felony reports

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like came over the radio but when I started walking a beat that's that's exactly what we did

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like I walked the footpost in the projects sometimes on a midnight shift sometimes on

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four to twelve shifts sometimes during the day and let me tell you it was the most rewarding

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part of the career because you got to know the people that lived in the neighborhood that you

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patrolled you knew who the residents were you knew where they lived you knew like which kid

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belonged to which parent you knew the merchants uh in the area and they got to know you so I mean

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it was personal so you built relationships with these people and look there were some people who

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were knuckleheads who broke the law and I arrested them and it was funny because when I would make

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arrests sometimes people resisted and you'd have to use force which I know was not always a pretty

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thing but the community was always very supportive because they knew because they knew me that I was

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fair and not like somebody who just came in and gave people a hard time like if somebody had to

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park the car and it was double parked to run upstairs and drop something off I would never

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go right to summons hey where you going okay hey come right back so I mean you have that relationship

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um you don't really get to do that in in other forms of policing really than than walking a bead

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or or being on patrol in uniform but it's really very rewarding and I even had like some fathers

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try to marry me off to their daughters and whatnot so I mean it was it was fun to get invited to

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birthday parties where you really couldn't go because the department would have looked upon that

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you know as as you know becoming too close with people but you'd always find like a nice way to

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bow out or just make an appearance at the party say hello to people and then leave without like

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indulging and you know taking their food or drinking any kind of alcohol or anything but no

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I that that to me is something that I think policing should do more of nowadays a lot more of

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um they got away from that and I don't understand why yeah I mean it's you know now you obviously

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have some departments that are doing well you know you see videos of cops playing basketball with kids

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or you know dancing on tiktok which may not be quite the right thing to do you kind of again

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find that middle ground but yeah I feel like you know especially now with the way that law enforcement

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has been painted in the media they've created a them and us so they've they've solidified the them

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and us you know between the people in uniform the people are not which has broken down you know any

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opportunity of that middle ground and I don't know if you've had the same you know experience in your

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career but for me when I look at you know the people that are ran on as a firefighter paramedic

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and just the people in general and you know this I feel like it's a projection of for example a

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hate of law enforcement but when you actually go into the communities that's not the case at all

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of course there are some people that dislike and whether they've been you know indoctrinated in some

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college or you know they grew up in a hood where the cops were the bad guys but most normal people

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stand squarely in the middle I believe and so I think if we were able to negate some of this

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media propaganda against the police and just bravely you know put officers back into communities I

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think that that middle ground would widen and widen those extremists would become smaller

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I think you're entirely correct look the media has done a lot to divide us for what

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look if it bleeds it leads I get it you know so them demonizing law enforcement you know

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I guess serves some of their purposes and I absolutely think some of our politicians

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have very dirty hands in that as well for varying reasons maybe it's getting money or donations or

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just stirring up the pot but I agree with you and I've seen some of the interviews where they talk

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to people in the inner city these are mostly people of color and they ask them their opinion of police

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and sure every now and then you'll see somebody who doesn't like the police but more often than

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not it's like hey we want more police but I think that would increase as we were saying look trust

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is a tremendous tool you know and when you build relationships with the community and the police

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departments you know builds those relationships with the community trust the police that's

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tremendous that's very powerful and I don't think it's entirely gone but I know it needs some love

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it needs some work so I just think that the departments that take the proper steps to do

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those things they fare better now as far as like stopping the car and getting out and playing

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basketball that's great I see nothing wrong with that because it humanizes the police but I mean

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it needs to be it needs to be consistent and it needs to be more than that one stop like you need

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to just not you can't just go someplace once shake hands and expect people to you got to go back you

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know you got to ask questions you got to listen more so than talk you know and hear what their

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problems are and then you got to kind of act on them you know or give good advice like I always

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viewed being a beat cop as someone who was I know it's going to sound horrible because cops aren't

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social workers but when I found it was sometimes just important to listen to them and hear them

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out and kind of tell them you know give them some good meaningful advice on how to protect themselves

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and their family and then of course be there for them when things went sideways but um you know

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nowadays too many police departments you've become like robotic where you're responding to 911 jobs

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taking a report and leaving and there's no relationship building I think that's where

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it is a lot of work that can be done and I think it would have a huge impact well that kind of

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ties in with what I was thinking you know as you were talking as far as the call load now

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going back to the homicide division and you've got 900 murders that year what impact does on that

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immense call load does that have on each individual case and and you know without overworking under

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staffing element can that increase the chances of you know a wrongful conviction or something like

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that well yeah in fact it's weird that you bring that up I just actually did a listen to a podcast

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that I had done with a woman from Fox News named Emily Campagno about wrongful convictions

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um yeah like when you know when I was in the Bronx homicide squad like I said before we had roughly

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600 murders a year now the way it worked back then was you had four days if you caught a murder

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you had four days where you got nothing else so that murder was your sole responsibility for four

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days then you caught other cases so you had that dynamic plus the dynamic of CompStat which was a

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good thing because it held people accountable but it was a bad thing because now bosses wanted results

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quick so what happened is you had people that if they had an informant that had some information

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or they they got some evidence they would develop tunnel vision and they would go and and try to make

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an arrest as soon as possible when sometimes there was other evidence that could have been followed

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so what happened is they would prioritize what looked promising and focus exclusively on that

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so what happened was um much later in my career I wound up actually getting um nine people out of

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jail for stuff they didn't do one of them was a robber eight of those were for murders though

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and of those eight seven were convicted and if you looked at the files like you know because

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and I never sought out specifically to go get people out of jail that's not what I was doing

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I wasn't like you know calling anybody's baby ugly but what happened is when I was working on

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federal cases we would interview defendants and like I said the difference was we had a lot of

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time so you would look at what the defendants would tell you and you don't just take what they

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say at face value you have to corroborate every little thing because if they're going to be a

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witness for you you want to make sure that they're credible and that they're nothing's going to blow

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up when they sit on the witness stand so but what happened is a couple times people would come in

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talk about murders they were involved in and we would pull the files and see wait a minute

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somebody was arrested for this right and then in like I said in most of those instances they were

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convicted so which is it's very difficult to get an innocent person now just so now you're looking

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at every little piece of evidence in that file and what this person is telling you and you're

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trying to put the so long story short in all of those cases these people had intimate knowledge

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of things that were in that murder that were in the file and then when you would look at the file

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more closely like more often than not and I would say in nine out of ten of these cases

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the the actual path to the correct bad guy was in there but somehow because of an you know an

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informant or because of something you know sometimes it was time that other leads weren't

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followed up on that would have taken them in the right path but instead because of again that

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volume and because of other factors they made an arrest and it turned out they arrested the wrong

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person but yeah to your point that grind was not necessarily always good for justice.

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Yeah I think it's important you know to paint the whole picture of all these incidents I mean I talk

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about sleep deprivation in some of the gray area officer-involved shootings you know had that

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officer been forced for another shift what was the level of training you know other than just

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hanging that individual up you know I mean it's it's horrendous as we have this conversation.

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I woke this morning to see that a young airman who was attached to one of the special forces

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divisions was killed in a kind of um I don't know if it was a warrant being served or what it was

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but they entered the wrong house and he heard this banging grabbed his arm you know his pistol as

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any of us would and then the door burst open and they shot him dead and they had the wrong house

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you know so that obviously is not those officers waking up saying I hope we're going to kill a

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black person today it's a series of failures that led to that catastrophic event and you know we

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have to kind of reverse engineer some of these. Yeah yeah no doubt but I mean the the thing that's

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troubling I think is a lot of times and for political reasons or most often people will

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look at an incident like that and right away jump to a conclusion that it was bad or that it was

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ill will in the heart of someone where look sometimes officers are making a decision that's

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based on bad information they got from an informant you know and again you should do what they can to

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corroborate as much as they can but sometimes you also you're limited but how much information you

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have to to do that but law enforcement often acts on split second decisions that people will then

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look at for minutes and hours and weeks and sometimes years and second guess and I don't

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think that that's necessarily always fair to law enforcement and look the reality is law enforcement

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these are organizations made up of people and people are fallible and they make mistakes

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and I think when that happens the the real like fix is to work on training and to discuss the

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problem and find ways to make it not happen again instead of always rushing to blame somebody and

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turn it into you know some sort of a scandal and I don't think that we as a country do that very

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well very often it's like you know what's going to cause the most news headlines and what's going to

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get the most news coverage for some politician that's looking for talking points you know to

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talk about whether it's too much you know fund the police or defund the police or or whatever

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you know I mean we see a lot of that now and the thing I'll say is when I started my policing

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career in New York New York was a very democratic city the mayor at the time was a mayor named Ed

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Koch the city council was very democratic they supported police you know there was never talk

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of defunding or hey let's do away with this training or let's cut this or cut that it was

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always about public safety and I wish folks would focus on those discussions more like what will

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really work for public safety instead of finger pointing which doesn't really fix anything.

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Well the other thing that you hardly ever hear anyone discuss is why are our streets so dangerous

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in the first place that our officers are put in these situations that sadly you know end fatally

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for the officer or for the person they're pursuing. When you look back at the homicide era of your

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career what impact did the illicit drug industry have on a lot of the crime that you were witnessing

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with your own eyes? Oh it was huge because look there's a lot of money to be made in drugs I would

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say the vast majority of the murders that I responded to had something to do whether directly

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or indirectly with the crack trade in the Bronx you know I mean they were people making millions

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of dollars and you know they got drunk and I say drunk I don't mean like you know literally they

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they were intoxicated with that that um the power that came with that money the ability to go out

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and go to a club and throw a ton of money around and have the women come after them I mean it was

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just um the guy used to used to interview these people after they were arrested or sometimes on

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these racketeering cases and when you look at the amount of money that they were making and the

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attention they were getting I mean rap songs uh written you know um glamorizing some of these

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people literally like peter rolock for example um I can understand why they would be enamored with

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that lifestyle uh but yeah that with that came a lot of despair and a lot of death on the streets

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of the Bronx and on other parts of the United States Baltimore you know many other cities on

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the east coast I know on the west coast it tended to be methamphetamine and some other drugs but I

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mean you name your city and you name your drug of choice and a lot of death follows um those paths

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this is always a difficult question to ask someone who spent a career in law enforcement and told to

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enforce certain laws that we have but as a firefighter paramedic as my career my career

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progressed and I pulled sheet after sheet over teenagers that had died over drug turf in some

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apartment complex or you know street I started realizing you know the the ripple effect of the

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prohibition laws now my ironically my parent my mom and my brother moved to Portugal about 20 years

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ago and when I started the podcast she said hey did you know what they did about decriminalization

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here and I went and she sat with the guy we had two conversations now and they kind of walked me

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through it and they had a horrendous epidemic of addiction in Portugal after one of the wars in

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Africa one of the colonies and rather than stay with the war on drugs model that you know they

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kind of viewed as not working they moved to decriminalization of addiction now the smugglers

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and the sellers got the full weight of the law but the addicts were funneled into addiction

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counseling job creation you know mental health counseling that was also funded so that was created

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as they did it not just change the laws and add no kind of resources for it and they ended up you

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know making a massive dent and then they freed up law enforcement and the court systems for the really

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bad people and the addicts were and most of them actually kind of got back on their feet and went

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back into the workforce and then some of course are still living on the streets and there's safe

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injection sites but you know a huge portion like we said that middle ground again they made a

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massive impact and they went to one of the lowest addiction rates in the whole of Europe less than

389
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:42,000
10 years for me personally this is just my perspective I feel like it's been an epic failure

390
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:48,160
when it comes to the war on drugs because we've kind of demonized addiction and therefore sent

391
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:52,560
our addicts into the shadows and empowered the underworld which is now trickled into obviously

392
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:58,640
not just this country but Colombia and Mexico and some of those other areas this is a huge you know

393
00:34:58,640 --> 00:35:05,760
prequel to the question but what is your perspective on the war on drugs and if you could be king for a

394
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:12,880
day what would you do to to change it so that maybe we could create a different kind of dynamic

395
00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:18,480
on the streets of the US? It's not very different from what you described look the first thing I'll

396
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:23,680
say is with marijuana and look I get it people say marijuana is a gateway drug and to some degree it

397
00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:28,160
is but is it any more of a gateway drug than alcohol or tobacco? No I don't believe it is

398
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:34,960
and then I look at the violence and again this is from 35 years of hands-on policing I never saw

399
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:39,120
somebody go out and commit a crime because they needed to get high on marijuana never just never

400
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:44,400
saw it right and so I've been around a long time I did see violence attributed to people selling

401
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:48,560
marijuana right dealer on dealer somebody protecting turf somebody doing a home invasion

402
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:53,520
because if I steal a bunch of marijuana I can sell it for entire profit as opposed to paying for it

403
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:58,400
and you know only making a portion of that money back so I mean I would say legalizing marijuana

404
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:04,560
is something that I would absolutely not oppose and I look do I want to see people getting high

405
00:36:04,560 --> 00:36:09,680
and do I think it makes you any smarter to smoke? No but again I've never seen a lot of violent

406
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:16,240
crime attributed to marijuana use just dealing so you know I don't think we've done that successfully

407
00:36:16,240 --> 00:36:20,320
here in the United States because in some of the areas where they have legalized marijuana like

408
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:26,080
Colorado they're seeing crime because it's still cheaper to buy or it's still it's still profitable

409
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:30,240
to smuggle marijuana in and sell it for less money than you'd pay the store so I mean they have to

410
00:36:30,240 --> 00:36:36,640
get it right now with the other drugs um look I've seen a lot of people and you have too

411
00:36:36,640 --> 00:36:42,240
overdoses you see things clearly it's not working I mean we've been in this war on drugs for

412
00:36:42,240 --> 00:36:48,640
generations do I think that we've done a good job at getting help for addicts no and look I am firmly

413
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:54,160
in the lane that addiction is not a crime addiction isn't illness right same thing with alcohol

414
00:36:54,160 --> 00:36:58,880
addiction right but people don't get as offended with that for some reason and when it's just as

415
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:04,320
deadly and it does just as many bad things to your body but when it comes to the dealers I think

416
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:09,760
Portugal gets it right you know incarcerate the dealers there needs to be repercussions

417
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:15,040
for the folks who engage in the trade now I don't know how much of a difference it would have made

418
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:19,680
but I can tell you many of the drug dealing arrests that I've made over the years the dealers

419
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:23,440
played it down to attempted possession or something like that and they got out just to continue to

420
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:28,720
deal so perhaps if there was actual penalty and in the federal system there normally is

421
00:37:28,720 --> 00:37:33,440
I mean there's people who did life for drug dealing federally and rarely in New York state

422
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:37,520
that I see that it would have to be a tremendous amount of cocaine or heroin or whatever but I

423
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:43,920
think that perhaps if they did a better job at disciplining those who trafficked in the narcotics

424
00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:49,680
and did a better job at caring for those who had drug problems we wouldn't be in a situation that

425
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:54,720
we're in so I look we haven't gotten it right and the fact that we're still fighting the war on drugs

426
00:37:54,720 --> 00:37:59,760
the fact that we've lost over a hundred thousand people roughly a year to fentanyl poisoning

427
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,400
it screams that we're failing so what do we do to fix it but it goes back to what we were saying

428
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:10,240
earlier until you can get politicians and leaders from various sectors to sit down and really talk

429
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:14,480
instead of point fingers at each other looking for donations I don't know that we'll see any

430
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:20,960
any real meaningful change no no I think it looking at it at the most basal economic

431
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:28,080
way as well supply and demand if you can help your communities heal from their traumas that

432
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:33,600
they're drowning in illicit drugs and alcohol it doesn't matter what it is marijuana then

433
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:38,240
you're gonna remove customers from that illicit drug trade and I think that's the part that

434
00:38:38,240 --> 00:38:41,440
people don't seem to understand is that you know you cut the head off the snake then is

435
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:45,440
it gonna be completely gone of course not and then yes I understand that some people will shift

436
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:50,720
their criminal activities from over here to a different way but again I think you'd make a huge

437
00:38:50,720 --> 00:38:57,120
huge huge impact and then you know rather than 600 murders and or you know an agency maybe you'll

438
00:38:57,120 --> 00:39:03,120
have 50 murders and they'll have the resources to make sure it's done diligently yeah no there's no

439
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:07,680
doubt about it and look the more like the bigger the pool of people that you have to deal with is

440
00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:12,640
right then that's harder so I mean if you were to wean people off of drugs because of treatment or

441
00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:16,800
whatever and then that pool got smaller and smaller then there's even more effort you could

442
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:21,280
focus on that much smaller cadre of people who are still struggling with that problem

443
00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:27,280
but when you have so many people and and look it's not from any one group too I mean you know I you

444
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:32,640
see a lot more of it in urban areas because people don't have a house with property where they can

445
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:36,640
sit in the backyard out of sight of police they're sitting on the front stoop where the police drive

446
00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:40,480
by so I mean there's a lot of other things that factor into this too where people will like to

447
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:44,880
portray it as it's it's a problem that affects one sector of our population and not another it

448
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:49,920
affects everybody there are white kids dying just as much as there are black kids dying Latinos

449
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:56,240
Asians although I think the population of Asians who who um abuse substances is lower so I mean

450
00:39:56,240 --> 00:40:02,560
you also have to think about like cultural beyond the cultural beliefs beyond you know um just what

451
00:40:02,560 --> 00:40:08,400
happens in the streets too I mean how how kids are raised matters culture matters you know I mean

452
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:15,440
and but I mean holistically we need to attack this problem and fix it 100 well speaking of Manhattan

453
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:21,920
then I know that you entered the ATF and then shortly after that 9-11 happened so talk to me

454
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:27,520
about your ground experience excuse me ground zero experience that day sure I was actually

455
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:32,320
heading to federal court which was actually the US Attorney's Office was just in the federal court

456
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:38,320
which is about a quarter mile away from ground zero as the crow flies and I wasn't down there yet I

457
00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:43,120
was on the FDR drive which is the main road on the eastern side of Manhattan and I got a phone call

458
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:48,400
from my boss saying that a plane had struck the north tower and even though I wasn't that far from

459
00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:51,680
the World Trade Center there were and those were the two tallest buildings in New York City there

460
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:56,320
were plenty of skyscrapers between me and them so I couldn't see anything so in my mind I'm thinking

461
00:40:56,320 --> 00:41:01,600
some small propeller plane or a smaller you know commuter jet or something had hit the trade center

462
00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:07,040
so I started to drive in that direction got there somewhat quickly parked for the first time I found

463
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:11,440
a parking space but I haven't actually go look for one right I pulled up I remember when I pulled

464
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:16,560
up to the building I was on the north side of the north tower and I remember like leaning forward

465
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:19,840
in the car because you know you ever pull up too close to a traffic light you can't see it so you

466
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:23,600
got to lean forward to wait for it to change kind of like that and I was looking up at the building

467
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:28,720
and I saw people waving white cloths imagine t-shirts perhaps trying to get the attention

468
00:41:28,720 --> 00:41:33,760
of people but down below and I remember thinking to myself going back to the 1993 World Trade Center

469
00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:38,720
bombing that the helicopters rescued some people from the upper floors so my thoughts at that point

470
00:41:38,720 --> 00:41:43,760
were still not knowing it was a commercial airliner that hit the building I'm like wow those

471
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:47,520
people I guess they'll get rescued and then whoever's below the fire will get out and let

472
00:41:47,520 --> 00:41:52,640
me just get out and see what I can do to help so I put on a windbreaker that I had an ATF agent

473
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:58,560
written on the back so I remember walking out and I turned I went south on Greenwich Street and then

474
00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:02,960
I turned left and went on Bessie Street and I came to the corner of Church and Bessie Street

475
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:07,760
is this tremendous plane engine a little banged up but mostly intact that it's just sitting there

476
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:11,680
and I was like wow this is a commercial airliner because those things look big when it's on a plane

477
00:42:11,680 --> 00:42:16,880
when you see it standing in the street they're huge so at that point you know I realized I'm

478
00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:20,400
still trying to process in my head like what happened here did the pilot have a heart attack

479
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:28,240
is a computer error like what's still I guess not that sharp you know me personally so I just

480
00:42:28,240 --> 00:42:32,720
did what cops do tried to keep people moving so the ambulances could come in and the fire trucks

481
00:42:32,720 --> 00:42:37,680
would come in and I went up the stairs because the towers didn't sit at ground level they sat on like

482
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:42,160
a mezzanine I went up to the mezzanine and walked towards the south tower because people were

483
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:47,280
congregating and tried to get them to keep moving and then that's when the second plane hit and I

484
00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:50,800
remember just before the plane hit I remember looking to my left and there was a young

485
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:57,040
latina EMT who was taking care of a patient who was badly injured on the ground from the first

486
00:42:57,040 --> 00:43:02,560
plane strike and I remember looking back in her direction and I saw now she's laying down and I

487
00:43:02,560 --> 00:43:06,880
literally watched like the color leave her face and her eyes stopped blinking and I'm like wow she's

488
00:43:06,880 --> 00:43:11,840
she's dead I mean I didn't get a chance to take her pulse or anything but to me it appeared very

489
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:19,440
clear that she was gone and I remember turning back and looking at the north tower and just trying

490
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:22,960
to again trying to figure out because there's so much happening that what do I do next like what

491
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:28,320
hole can I fill at this very moment to be useful and I remember seeing for the first time somebody

492
00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:33,600
jump from the building and it was weird because as a cop I had responded to calls of jumpers

493
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:38,400
especially in New York City so usually it was a crime scene because the person jumped or

494
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:43,600
or it was somebody sitting on a ledge who really just wanted to be talked off the ledge so to speak

495
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:49,040
I never saw somebody actually jump and I remember I remember like when I saw the person jumping like

496
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:53,520
almost bracing like I was about to get punched in the face because I was terrified to hear the sound

497
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:58,480
that their body would make when it hit the ground so and I did I heard it and I still could hear it

498
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:03,600
and then I remember shortly afterwards I'm still kind of near the base of the south tower at this

499
00:44:03,600 --> 00:44:09,760
point the second person jumps that I saw and there were others and that person hit an overhang where

500
00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:13,120
they were you know when you go to be under the rain by the front of the building and that made

501
00:44:13,120 --> 00:44:16,800
like this thunderous noise and at this point I was like I just can't be here because I'm going to get

502
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:25,040
hit with either debris or a person so I went back down those steps on Vessi Street and I ran into

503
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:29,840
one of my managers who said hey you need to round up the rest of the ATF folks no one showed up at

504
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:33,440
the rendezvous location which you know you know with fire drills you're supposed to meet somewhere

505
00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:39,760
so they can do a headcount nobody showed up so I got sent back into the ground zero area I stayed

506
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:45,440
on the on the east side of it so I was on church street and I ran into a colleague of mine who's

507
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:51,760
just weeping because his wife was in one of the two towers and he couldn't find her and then I ran

508
00:44:51,760 --> 00:44:56,720
into two ATF agents you know who was supposed to show up at that location and didn't and I remember

509
00:44:56,720 --> 00:45:02,800
talking to two of them Sal the Sal and Jason and I was looking across the street at ground zero so

510
00:45:02,800 --> 00:45:07,840
I was on the other side of the street now and I see a bunch of New York City cops walking south

511
00:45:07,840 --> 00:45:13,200
and heading into the site and one of them was a guy named Vinny Dan so I had worked with I went

512
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:17,040
to the academy with and then we went to this thing called operation pressure point together so I knew

513
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:22,480
Vinny pretty well and he was with a guy named John Coughlin who was a big Irishman on the pipe band

514
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:27,840
played the bagpipes and Walter Weaver who was a younger cop who I knew who just we always used to

515
00:45:27,840 --> 00:45:32,880
talk about watches I used to love wristwatches he loved watches and I remember Vinny looks at me and

516
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:38,640
he grabs his shirt he's like like throws his hands up like hey what's up because when I left the NYPD

517
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:43,680
I quietly left there was no retirement party or anything like that I left on a Friday I went

518
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:47,680
to work with ATF on a Monday so Vinny didn't know so he was like what's up with the ATF jacket

519
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:52,560
and I kind of put my hands up like saying hey I guess we'll we'll talk about it later and then

520
00:45:52,560 --> 00:45:57,760
literally I'm watching those guys walk into the area where the south tower is and all of a sudden

521
00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:03,120
Jason the agent grabbed my shoulder like really hard and he just said one word he said run and I

522
00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:07,600
remember looking up and if you ever see the footage of the south tower when it fell the first top the

523
00:46:07,600 --> 00:46:13,200
top cant's over it looked like it was falling like a domino towards the east river but what happened

524
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:19,520
was the top canted and then it collapsed downward I just started running north and I got hit in the

525
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:23,440
back with something I didn't know what it was not and not it didn't injure me but it was enough to

526
00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:27,600
get my attention and I saw there was some police cars and a fire truck there so I remember getting

527
00:46:27,600 --> 00:46:33,440
on my hands and knees and rolling under the fire truck and then saying you know okay I felt safe

528
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:37,760
for about a minute probably was just a few seconds and then the dust cloud came and it hit me in the

529
00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:45,760
face and that cloud was very gritty like the particles were rough so as I would blink my eyes

530
00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:50,000
it felt like somebody was sandpapering my eyeballs and then it was tough to breathe and I was like

531
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:55,600
hey stupid you're gonna die here so I got out from under the truck and then just continued to run

532
00:46:55,600 --> 00:46:59,840
north and I heard somebody yelling they were saying over here over here but it didn't sound

533
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:04,320
like somebody who was like in distress so it sounded like somebody who maybe was offering like

534
00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:09,680
help so I ran towards that voice and then a person grabbed me by my collar brought me to a water

535
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:15,280
fountain and I washed out my eyes and then went out after you know that and tried to help rescue

536
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:20,160
people but either people were dead or they were moving on there so there really was no one to

537
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:24,720
help you were buried and gone and I know they rescued a few people I didn't see any of the

538
00:47:24,720 --> 00:47:31,440
people that were rescued so but I spent three days there on the scene you know took a nap on the

539
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:36,800
evening of night number two but for the most part just tried to see if we can help and recover

540
00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:43,040
people but it was it was really a very helpless feeling because again people got away or they

541
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:48,560
were gone so but yeah and then I spent like you know for about a month a couple days a week on

542
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:54,480
the pile trying to help and then you know for six months that followed either there or at the landfill

543
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:59,040
just trying to be a part of the recovery effort you know it was rough it's horrendous I've heard

544
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:03,520
several people say the exact same thing like there was nothing to rescue it was just everything was

545
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:08,160
vaporized and I actually had uh one of the port authority cops that they did pull out will him in

546
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:13,920
oh on the show and that was incredible to hear that story yeah yeah well I remember at one point on

547
00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:19,440
the first day we helped a colleague get to the hospital she was pregnant and um she it was

548
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:23,920
Beekman downtown hospital was not very far from ground zero so we probably about a half mile maybe

549
00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:28,800
three quarter of a mile walk and when I approached like you were coming down the stairs behind one

550
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:32,560
police plaza you could look under the Brooklyn bridge overpass you could start to see the front

551
00:48:32,560 --> 00:48:37,920
of the hospital there's gurneys out front and there's paramedics there's nurses there's doctors

552
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:42,640
there's lab coats people in scrubs not a single patient on a gurney so when we got there and

553
00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:45,520
actually some of them were like hey where is everybody like they seemed like upset like if

554
00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:50,160
it was our fault because they wanted to help they wanted to tend to patients but there were no

555
00:48:50,160 --> 00:48:55,360
patients which was good for the young lady camera that we brought there because she had like immediate

556
00:48:55,360 --> 00:49:01,840
meet medical attention from like a huge cast of people but yeah it was it was kind of surreal to

557
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:06,800
see all of these gurneys you know they had this mass triage you know set up and everything but no

558
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:12,400
one on a gurney no one getting the blood pressure taken no one getting treated you either walked

559
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:19,920
away or you were crushed a lot of people romanticized about 9 12 especially during the pandemic you know

560
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:24,560
and i think that was the kindness and compassion and community that a lot of us kind of you know

561
00:49:24,560 --> 00:49:29,360
yearn for again i think like i said it is there we just i think just need to see it on the screens

562
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:35,840
need to make it um visceral again what was your experience of the following days and the community

563
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:43,680
and the city banding together truthfully i think it's what i saw after 9 11 that helped me not lose

564
00:49:43,680 --> 00:49:49,040
my mind from 9 11 like i remember you know there were many examples but i mean i remember at one

565
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:55,360
point about two or three weeks after 9 11 you know because it i had a variety of duties mostly it was

566
00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:58,800
on the pile passing the bucket up bucket down because they didn't want to bring heavy equipment

567
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:02,800
because if there were people trapped the heavy equipment would shake the ground and crush and

568
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:08,400
kill them but sometimes i'd be stuck going to a command post and fbi had a command post that was

569
00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:12,400
banned by people from all different agencies and i sat there i don't think the phone ever rang once

570
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:16,560
to be honest with you but i remember one day going out and there were these people who were

571
00:50:16,560 --> 00:50:22,240
grilling on the 55 gallon drums that were cut in half they were grilling every day so i mean if

572
00:50:22,240 --> 00:50:28,080
so but i remember one day just asking them like hey you know who are you guys and the guy told me

573
00:50:28,080 --> 00:50:35,360
yeah we're from an alcoholics anonymous chapter in texas and what happened was they had saw what

574
00:50:35,360 --> 00:50:41,520
happened and they felt so moved that they threw their stuff in pickup trucks and cars and drove

575
00:50:41,520 --> 00:50:47,920
up to manhattan that's not a short drive as you know and they spent the many days out there grilling

576
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:53,520
food that was donated you know by variety of stores and whatnot but these guys slept in their

577
00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:59,520
cars and grilled food for first responders you know and i remember even many months after 9 11

578
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:05,440
i was at the landfill one day and it was just very nauseating work because i mean that particular day

579
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:09,280
i was tasked with working on a conveyor belt so what happened was they would take the larger

580
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:13,920
debris and they would barge it over to the landfill and then they would use heavy equipment to lay it

581
00:51:13,920 --> 00:51:19,360
out somewhat flat and you'd look to see if you could find anything a wedding ring a finger a bone

582
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:27,040
a picture anything to give back to family so then after that you would use rakes to break the stuff

583
00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:31,120
apart to continue to look for stuff and then the smaller stuff would get put on these conveyor belts

584
00:51:31,120 --> 00:51:36,000
and you would stand there for hours watching this stuff go by and you would look for again anything

585
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:42,320
a wedding ring a finger you know something and if you saw it you would stop the conveyor belt and

586
00:51:42,320 --> 00:51:46,800
take it to the medical examiner's tent but i mean it was very nauseating to stand there all day just

587
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:51,280
watch stuff go by you know on these belts but i remember one time looking to my right and there

588
00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:56,880
was a gentleman who had a patch on his uniform it said charlotte had a hornet's nest on it was a

589
00:51:56,880 --> 00:52:00,640
charlotte mecklenburg police department or something along those lines and i asked him i

590
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:06,400
said hey what are you doing here and his response was you know my um my kid was born on september

591
00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:10,480
11th i couldn't come up here this is the soonest i can get up here i didn't want to leave my wife

592
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:15,040
alone with the baby so here's a guy many months later who's a police officer from another part of

593
00:52:15,040 --> 00:52:21,520
the country who took the trek up to new york to be a part of something that i thought was pretty

594
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:27,280
important and then like i remember the very famous footage of george bush on the pile with old

595
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:34,000
firemen who recently passed god bless him um i was probably about 20 yards from george bush when he

596
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:42,080
made that speech with the bullhorn um behind me were probably 50 to 60 chicago firefighters

597
00:52:42,080 --> 00:52:47,120
there were cops there from toronto vancouver police from all different parts of the country

598
00:52:47,120 --> 00:52:52,480
so i mean yeah to your point the way people came together was amazing the other thing is to get

599
00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:57,040
into that scene it was only one way in and one way out and i was on the west side highway and

600
00:52:57,040 --> 00:53:01,440
there was like a gate that you'd have to pass through now policing in new york city was a very

601
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:05,200
thankless profession people never thanked you for doing your job with some exceptions like there

602
00:53:05,200 --> 00:53:09,840
were a couple cases where i made an arrest for a murder or for a couple times for like rapes

603
00:53:10,560 --> 00:53:15,440
where the family would thank you for catching the bad guy that hurt their family member but for the

604
00:53:15,440 --> 00:53:20,560
most part you weren't thanked but i remember if you would go into the site and you would dig for

605
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:25,920
hours and you'd be exhausted i mean just ground down and then as you're leaving there would be

606
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:30,640
thousands of people standing there with bottles of water trying to hand them in the car window

607
00:53:30,640 --> 00:53:35,280
cheering like literally cheering like we were rock stars to the point where you just wanted to

608
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:41,360
turn around and go back in and dig some more because the energy that the crowd their appreciation

609
00:53:41,360 --> 00:53:48,320
gave us so yeah it was unbelievable um so yeah 912 uh i think that if we could ever get back to

610
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:53,680
living with that sort of mentality consistently this would be one hell of a country to live in

611
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:58,400
and it's already a great country but yeah it was amazing it was really amazing yeah and i couldn't

612
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:03,600
agree more you know and this is the thing when we bring some of these issues to the forefront and

613
00:54:03,600 --> 00:54:08,480
have conversations with people that really understand like yourself that bring solutions to these

614
00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:14,560
it's investing in the country you know it's pushing back from the the negativity in division

615
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:19,280
and the pigeonholing that's kind of pushing everyone apart when we think about the first

616
00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:24,640
responders even you know as as beautiful as that was now that kind of fades and now we've got

617
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:31,120
firefighters begging for some sort of financial support as their men and women are dying from

618
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:36,000
the 9-eleven related cancers i know you had a personal experience with that too so talk to me

619
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:40,560
about that kind of side of it you've already served selflessly on the pile talk to me about the cost

620
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:47,520
well there were a few things one is i lost seven friends on 9-eleven um six cops one firefighter so

621
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:51,360
i went into a really dark place after that because i lost friends in the line of duty before you know

622
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:57,120
i had friends killed in line of duty paul heidelberger bosh john williamson hector fontanez

623
00:54:57,120 --> 00:55:04,320
all died but they died in separate incidents right and it was far apart from one another to lose seven

624
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:09,040
friends in one time really brought me into a very dark place like i couldn't even go to police

625
00:55:09,040 --> 00:55:13,280
funerals i never missed a police funeral because i thought it was my duty to pay respect to the

626
00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:18,240
fallen but because i was so close to the tower that fell and i saw three of those guys walk in

627
00:55:18,240 --> 00:55:22,720
the tower i felt really guilty that i was still alive so i i dealt with something that i thought

628
00:55:22,720 --> 00:55:29,920
was fake called survivor's guilt but it it haunted me for a while where i just didn't feel good to be

629
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:38,880
here um and then that later manifested into ptsd but then um ironically in 2018 i was diagnosed

630
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:43,680
with lung cancer which they attributed to 9-eleven i never smoked a cigarette in my life so i lost my

631
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:48,960
right lung um to lung cancer didn't end at that time it's funny because it was around this time

632
00:55:48,960 --> 00:55:52,480
that the parkland shooting happened that i responded to when i was kind of coping with my own

633
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:57,040
mortality at this point because i didn't know had it spread yet because the lung was removed

634
00:55:57,040 --> 00:56:01,920
i had just gotten back to work about two weeks three weeks before parkland so i mean i wasn't

635
00:56:01,920 --> 00:56:07,360
sure what my long-time prognosis was going to be but it was also around this time that i you know

636
00:56:07,360 --> 00:56:14,080
realized hey man i really spent so much time being so into the job right and then you know dealing

637
00:56:14,080 --> 00:56:18,400
with the stuff that was going on in my head from 9-eleven that i really wasn't a very good father

638
00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:24,640
husband because i put everything else first i put the job first i let things get to me were to the

639
00:56:24,640 --> 00:56:31,360
point where it was bothering me mentally that i decided to finally get some help to get you know

640
00:56:31,360 --> 00:56:35,280
past all the things that i had dealt with because i said hey man i came into this profession hole i

641
00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:39,440
want to leave hole so i mean that was something i had to cope with after 9-eleven but luckily the

642
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:45,040
lung cancer we took out the right lung which took some time to get used to moving around with less

643
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:49,680
oxygen capacity but now i'm fine i just can't go for long runs or anything but i did the tunnel

644
00:56:49,680 --> 00:56:54,960
to towers around a couple years ago how did you see even sell it yeah yeah i did what a great

645
00:56:54,960 --> 00:57:00,000
charity but that that man should he should be a saint he's just he should get the presidential

646
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:07,520
medal of freedom but um it just yeah it took some time um but i thankfully i was one of the lucky

647
00:57:07,520 --> 00:57:11,680
ones i didn't need chemo didn't need radiation because those things can kill you too and now

648
00:57:11,680 --> 00:57:17,360
it's um you know it's six years cancer-free so it's it's something that i have in the rearview mirror

649
00:57:17,360 --> 00:57:22,960
you know i look back occasionally but i don't stare beautiful yeah i mean it's i don't think

650
00:57:22,960 --> 00:57:26,480
i've ever had anyone that's literally had a lung removed but i agree with you completely what

651
00:57:26,480 --> 00:57:31,680
terrifies me about chemo is i think it does kill more people than it saves i really do it just

652
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:36,560
doesn't make any sense to me that you basically age and orange the entire body and then cross

653
00:57:36,560 --> 00:57:41,440
your fingers and hope that you know it regenerates and restarts in a healthy way but i think there's

654
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:46,720
a lot of immunotherapy um technology coming through that's actually kind of targeting a much

655
00:57:46,720 --> 00:57:53,680
more precise way i think even bolstering the body's own ability to fight those cancers now but um so

656
00:57:53,680 --> 00:57:59,360
yeah i mean the surgery only i mean thank goodness that was uh that was a solution for you yeah well

657
00:57:59,360 --> 00:58:04,880
i'll tell you you know one of the scariest moments of that entire ordeal frankly was you know again i

658
00:58:04,880 --> 00:58:09,680
didn't know so to find out my prognosis i was sent to the moffitt cancer institute which is in tampa

659
00:58:10,640 --> 00:58:14,960
and um you know when i pulled up and i saw all these people sitting out front you know in

660
00:58:14,960 --> 00:58:18,560
wheelchairs and whatnot or showing up for either leaving their treatment or arriving in their

661
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:22,080
treatment i saw these people who were like great you know they're complex you could tell they were

662
00:58:22,080 --> 00:58:29,120
struggling um and you know i that's the only moment during my time you know figuring out what was

663
00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:34,800
going to happen with me that i actually lost it you know i i choked up i broke down and um in having

664
00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:42,160
the conversations at that hospital i realized the heroes that work at that hospital every single day

665
00:58:42,160 --> 00:58:47,280
that see people who are fighting for their lives and see people like i couldn't look at these folks

666
00:58:47,280 --> 00:58:52,400
without breaking down myself how do they go to work every day and deal with people some of them

667
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:59,200
children who are in you know in battles life and death battles with a variety of different cancers

668
00:58:59,200 --> 00:59:03,600
and then you realize like we always think of heroes we think of cops and firemen and emts

669
00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:08,080
that are out there rushing to the scene there are plenty of other heroes that you never really

670
00:59:08,080 --> 00:59:12,560
think about right what's the old saying that not all heroes wear capes some of them wear lab coach

671
00:59:12,560 --> 00:59:17,600
you know uh but i was i was really just moved by the professionalism and just what those folks at

672
00:59:17,600 --> 00:59:22,960
that center deal with and that's just one of many cancer centers throughout the country so you know

673
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:27,360
it was a real eye-opener for me absolutely well you mentioned parkland i know we're jumping ahead

674
00:59:27,360 --> 00:59:31,920
a little bit but i actually had a couple of you know groups of guests on that particular you know

675
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:36,960
topic and it's just down the road for me i live in the central florida central florida but i had

676
00:59:36,960 --> 00:59:42,720
tony and tori gonzalez tori was in the school um one of her um excuse me one of her her boyfriend

677
00:59:42,720 --> 00:59:47,440
wakim was one of the the guys that was killed the teenagers that was killed and then tony was on

678
00:59:47,440 --> 00:59:51,680
shift as a firefighter that day and responded to the shooting in his daughter's school and then i

679
00:59:51,680 --> 00:59:57,760
had the one of the battalion chiefs and the fire chief at the time from coral springs who was one

680
00:59:57,760 --> 01:00:02,320
of the departments that responded and so you had the kind of pre-plan response view and then you

681
01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:08,080
had the real kind of human father daughter experience as well and it was just devastating

682
01:00:08,080 --> 01:00:13,840
you hear the the dispatch tapes from you know how it happened and you see the kind of diagram they

683
01:00:13,840 --> 01:00:18,720
created where the shooter went and just the mass execution that occurred you know it was it was

684
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:23,520
horrendous but at least in that particular event you know the the law enforcement and the fire

685
01:00:23,520 --> 01:00:28,800
response was you know excellent and they they saved a lot of lives even though they lost a lot

686
01:00:28,800 --> 01:00:35,360
talk to me about your experience in that particular shooting sure well i wasn't close by i was down in

687
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:41,200
our office in um in miami we actually was in darrell right near the dolphin mall and i remember it

688
01:00:41,200 --> 01:00:45,520
came on tv that there was a mass shooting in school and every now and then there would be like false

689
01:00:45,520 --> 01:00:50,400
alarms or a report of a shooting that would turn out to be false so i was i didn't jump in the car

690
01:00:50,400 --> 01:00:55,120
and respond right away but then i remember there was coverage and a helicopter was flown over and

691
01:00:55,120 --> 01:01:00,000
and in the footage you could see the body of the coach and there was a coach who tried to defend

692
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:05,280
the kids he was killed outside and when i saw that this was you know being aired on television i

693
01:01:05,280 --> 01:01:09,680
realized okay this isn't a false alarm so i got in the car and drove up to the scene lights and

694
01:01:09,680 --> 01:01:14,560
sirens took me probably about a half an hour to get there because doral was not that close to parkland

695
01:01:14,560 --> 01:01:18,640
but i remember getting there and a sheriff israel was already on the scene there was a massive

696
01:01:18,640 --> 01:01:23,440
police presence in fact the crime scene at that point had already been so big that it was quite

697
01:01:23,440 --> 01:01:29,520
a walk to get from where my car was parked to where the sheriff and the command staff were and

698
01:01:29,520 --> 01:01:35,040
this was shortly after i came back to work from the surgery so let me tell you like there's footage

699
01:01:35,040 --> 01:01:39,120
of me giving a press conference with them as well with these other law enforcement professionals

700
01:01:39,120 --> 01:01:44,080
and i remember that day and this is after i did the walkthrough of the scene my thought process

701
01:01:44,080 --> 01:01:49,920
was don't faint because i was so winded from having to walk around and be moving around on my feet

702
01:01:49,920 --> 01:01:55,360
not used to being diminished lung capacity that i don't even remember what i said at the press

703
01:01:55,360 --> 01:02:00,080
conference but i just as i was talking i was just thinking to myself try to say something intelligent

704
01:02:00,080 --> 01:02:07,360
and don't faint but um what i remember is um you know when i did the walkthrough of the scene it was

705
01:02:07,360 --> 01:02:11,840
difficult and i had seen a lot of dead bodies by that point between 9 11 which was horrific

706
01:02:13,040 --> 01:02:17,680
and my time as a homicide detective you know i hate to say it you build up a shield when you see a

707
01:02:17,680 --> 01:02:23,920
lot of death because you have to protect yourself but i it had been so long since that that my shield

708
01:02:23,920 --> 01:02:28,640
was down plus i was at this point i didn't know if my cancer had spread i didn't know my situation

709
01:02:28,640 --> 01:02:31,840
was and i hate to sound that because i don't want to make it sound like i'm worried about me

710
01:02:31,840 --> 01:02:36,480
but i mean i was grappling with a number of things my own mortality being one of them and i'm looking

711
01:02:36,480 --> 01:02:42,240
at these bodies of these young kids who you know many of them look like they were seniors perhaps

712
01:02:42,240 --> 01:02:46,080
some juniors in high school who were you know in the prime of their lives like about in the most

713
01:02:46,080 --> 01:02:51,280
exciting time of our life right you leave in high school and going about to do some really important

714
01:02:51,280 --> 01:02:59,040
things go to college whatever and i remember some of the kids obviously died sheltering other kids

715
01:02:59,040 --> 01:03:05,040
with their own bodies like they were on top and uh and you say to yourself like wow like

716
01:03:06,080 --> 01:03:10,240
how impactful is that here you have kids right you know you don't think about like

717
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:18,160
that put themselves in front of their colleagues like you you almost think of soldiers and policemen

718
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:22,160
and firemen you know risking their lives for others you don't think of it from teenagers

719
01:03:23,120 --> 01:03:29,200
and it was a just a difficult thing to comprehend and it really had a profound impact on me but by

720
01:03:29,200 --> 01:03:33,360
the time i got there nicholas cruz had already been apprehended we weren't sure yet where he

721
01:03:33,360 --> 01:03:37,360
got the gun we that was our role find out how he got the gun we found that he bought like seven

722
01:03:37,360 --> 01:03:42,000
other guns over the course of a year from a variety of different gun stores so then our

723
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:45,920
concern is is there it was he working with somebody else is another kid gonna go do a

724
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:49,840
shooting somewhere else like was there some sort of a grievance you know because sometimes kids

725
01:03:49,840 --> 01:03:55,200
get upset and they spin each other up and people do dumb things uh it turned out thank god that

726
01:03:55,200 --> 01:04:01,200
nicholas cruz acted alone but again it was a tough scene because you know i i my guard was down you

727
01:04:01,200 --> 01:04:05,120
know and even if my guard was up i don't know that i would have been able to get through that

728
01:04:05,120 --> 01:04:09,440
scene without being impacted by it but so much other stuff was going on at the time that it just

729
01:04:09,440 --> 01:04:15,680
really it hit me and i you know there's things in your life that you see in our profession whether

730
01:04:15,680 --> 01:04:20,480
you're a paramedic a fireman a cop that you can't unsee that bother you and that scene is one of the

731
01:04:20,480 --> 01:04:26,000
things of my 35 year career that creeps in at night sometimes and you know it caused me to lose some

732
01:04:26,000 --> 01:04:34,480
sleep and really feel bad um about how it happened and how how we fail as a as a culture to prepare

733
01:04:34,480 --> 01:04:40,880
to prevent violence you know in these sorts of instances because i mean it's happening far too

734
01:04:40,880 --> 01:04:47,280
frequently and i think the politicians love to blame the gun which is an inanimate object right

735
01:04:47,280 --> 01:04:51,760
and and we don't often think of the other contributing factors because there's a lot of

736
01:04:51,760 --> 01:04:57,840
them i would argue video games i would argue music i would argue just the the culture of today where

737
01:04:57,840 --> 01:05:05,040
we glamorize violence you know the the ease of getting firearms you know for for some people

738
01:05:05,040 --> 01:05:10,000
you know some people just are engaged in trafficking guns to others but you know i

739
01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:14,720
nobody wants to have the important discussions i remember at the scene you had certain politicians

740
01:05:14,720 --> 01:05:19,120
were talking about we need to ban guns and then you had other politicians saying no no we need

741
01:05:19,120 --> 01:05:23,120
to arm all teachers well i know some teachers and some of them are i would be frightened if they had

742
01:05:23,120 --> 01:05:28,240
a gun but but again no rational discussion just like many of the other problems we're discussing

743
01:05:28,240 --> 01:05:33,360
today people don't want to talk about it they want to take sides so nothing gets solved i couldn't

744
01:05:33,360 --> 01:05:39,760
agree more and it breaks my heart when those same i guess the media stations of each of those sides

745
01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:45,040
start shoving their microphones into these you know traumatized parents faces and start asking them

746
01:05:45,600 --> 01:05:49,760
about that and you know we've got these children lying dead in these classrooms

747
01:05:49,760 --> 01:05:54,160
and a coach lying dead as you said out on the playing field and yet immediately it's like

748
01:05:54,160 --> 01:05:59,680
world war one and you've got two trenches pro gun and anti-gun and if you read i had that lieutenant

749
01:05:59,680 --> 01:06:03,840
colonel dave grossman on a couple of times and his book assassination generation is phenomenal

750
01:06:03,840 --> 01:06:09,200
i mean you look at the programming that happens with video games i mean the the sleep deprivation

751
01:06:09,200 --> 01:06:13,680
which no one talks about these kids that are up all night drinking energy drinks and gaming are

752
01:06:13,680 --> 01:06:18,640
slowly creating psychosis you got the side effects of psychiatric meds you got unadressed

753
01:06:18,640 --> 01:06:23,680
unadressed trauma i mean all these other compounding elements that make the pie chart

754
01:06:23,680 --> 01:06:29,040
for that vicious i mean that excuse me that perfect storm of psychosis if you're just looking at that

755
01:06:29,040 --> 01:06:33,760
one piece of the pie over and over again we're going to keep burying our children and this is

756
01:06:33,760 --> 01:06:39,520
the problem it's not a political discussion it's a horrendous issue that we have to come together

757
01:06:39,520 --> 01:06:45,440
get all the greatest minds and finally stop but if you're just using it to incentivize your political

758
01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:52,160
career then you know shame on you it's fucking disgusting i couldn't say it better and look i'm

759
01:06:52,160 --> 01:06:56,720
glad that you've read uh and hadn't spoken colonel grossman because i'm a firm believer in his work

760
01:06:56,720 --> 01:07:00,480
i think it's very well researched i think it's very accurate when you look at some of these video

761
01:07:00,480 --> 01:07:05,520
games like you know like the what is it the miami um the ones with the yeah the grand theft yeah

762
01:07:05,520 --> 01:07:10,800
number five the number five supposedly made more money than the entire music industry collectively

763
01:07:10,800 --> 01:07:16,240
from what he says in his book i don't doubt it but i mean when you look at how it desensitizes

764
01:07:16,240 --> 01:07:22,720
young people from killing right and then we have to realize not everybody is stable there are some

765
01:07:22,720 --> 01:07:27,440
amongst us who are emotionally unstable and they're the ones who are perhaps most profoundly impacted

766
01:07:27,440 --> 01:07:31,920
by this i mean but that's the discussion that you can you can't talk about media you can't talk about

767
01:07:31,920 --> 01:07:37,840
the movies i remember growing up as a kid um they couldn't show like if you ever watched the shows

768
01:07:37,840 --> 01:07:42,400
from the 1970s when they shot the gun out of somebody's hand very unrealistic right but that

769
01:07:42,400 --> 01:07:47,040
was because they couldn't show people getting shot on tv back then it was considered too obscene to

770
01:07:47,040 --> 01:07:52,640
show now look at the stuff that they're showing in tv and movies it's it's i mean people basically

771
01:07:53,360 --> 01:07:58,000
exploding from like 50 caliber bullets going through their bodies it's become so graphic

772
01:07:58,000 --> 01:08:03,760
that i think it's desensitized us as a population so i mean there are so many different layers to

773
01:08:03,760 --> 01:08:08,560
the onion and unless you're willing to address them all then it's you're never going to fix the

774
01:08:08,560 --> 01:08:11,040
problem that's why i wish some people would just if you're not going to talk about the thing

775
01:08:11,040 --> 01:08:17,440
holistically just shut up you know i agree 100 and it's a complete disservice to all these children

776
01:08:17,440 --> 01:08:22,240
that are laying in graves you know i mean it's that simple if you have a tragedy there is only

777
01:08:22,240 --> 01:08:26,800
one thing left to learn from that tragedy and make sure it doesn't happen again it's your only your

778
01:08:26,800 --> 01:08:31,760
only option they're already dead all you can do is try and fix it in their memory yeah well what's

779
01:08:31,760 --> 01:08:37,680
the saying if you don't know history you're bound to repeat it exactly well speaking of firearms is

780
01:08:37,680 --> 01:08:44,640
a good kind of segue to 2009 so you you're in the atf you know you find yourself in arizona

781
01:08:44,640 --> 01:08:49,680
kind of walk me through the the kind of years and weeks leading up to operation fast and furious

782
01:08:49,680 --> 01:08:55,440
and then let's talk about god forbid whistleblowing which ironically the initial i looked up the term

783
01:08:55,440 --> 01:08:59,600
and originally it was you know to warn people of danger it was a good thing now it seems to be a

784
01:08:59,600 --> 01:09:05,920
dirty word well when i had gotten out to arizona i had spent years before that in new york working

785
01:09:05,920 --> 01:09:10,240
on mostly gun cases and making big cases other little cases because that's your job so you'd go

786
01:09:10,240 --> 01:09:15,600
after the low-hanging fruit charge them with a gun violation and then you did what worked in the

787
01:09:15,600 --> 01:09:20,960
judicial system you proffer them you're superseding indictments you build cases against co-defendants

788
01:09:20,960 --> 01:09:25,760
you know i mean it just was putting a puzzle together so i had done roughly 200 or so gun

789
01:09:25,760 --> 01:09:30,640
cases in new york so and i'm not saying that to brag i just wanted i had some experience doing it

790
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:34,640
in new york before i got to arizona so i didn't just you know fall off of the turnip truck or

791
01:09:34,640 --> 01:09:40,160
something so i get out to arizona and um my first weekend out there i get a call from one of my

792
01:09:40,160 --> 01:09:44,560
agents who got a call from a licensed gun dealer a business saying that somebody had come in and

793
01:09:44,560 --> 01:09:49,920
wanted to buy all the ak-47 variant rifles they had on the shelves person had a bag of money

794
01:09:49,920 --> 01:09:55,040
unusual so the dealer would call us again i'm only in town now for about a week so we would

795
01:09:55,040 --> 01:10:00,080
roll out there the transaction takes place where the dealer didn't sell till we were nearby we

796
01:10:00,080 --> 01:10:04,480
follow the car we stop the car we separate the people in the car we start asking them a bunch

797
01:10:04,480 --> 01:10:12,320
of questions we catch them in lies we wind up seizing 13 ak-47 variant rifles so and my agents

798
01:10:12,320 --> 01:10:17,280
called the u.s attorney's office to get these people prosecuted and the u.s attorney said okay

799
01:10:17,280 --> 01:10:22,160
let them go we'll indict it later so in new york what would have happened is take them to jail

800
01:10:22,160 --> 01:10:26,240
you know and we'll just you know so you take them to the county jail which was bronx central booking

801
01:10:26,240 --> 01:10:29,520
they would draw up a criminal complaint and then we would go get them the next day and take them

802
01:10:29,520 --> 01:10:34,000
to federal court so the idea of letting them go was somewhat foreign to me but i'm new in a

803
01:10:34,000 --> 01:10:37,840
different part of the country and things operate differently in different regions so i'm like okay

804
01:10:37,840 --> 01:10:44,320
didn't like it but all right so watch that happen and then i would see that similar dynamic unfold

805
01:10:44,320 --> 01:10:50,480
again and again and again where a licensed dealer would call us tip us off to suspicious information

806
01:10:50,480 --> 01:10:56,960
we would do what cops do all over the country every single day right everywhere which was stop

807
01:10:56,960 --> 01:11:01,520
the car ask the questions build a case build probable cause seize the weapons but again and

808
01:11:01,520 --> 01:11:06,320
again and again those indictments never came so then we had some other things that would happen

809
01:11:06,320 --> 01:11:11,600
like for example there was a case where a gun was trafficked now the dealer didn't suspect a straw

810
01:11:11,600 --> 01:11:15,360
purchase which is straw purchase which is when somebody buys a gun for somebody else it's an

811
01:11:15,360 --> 01:11:20,160
act of deception so when the dealers would notice it they would call us but sometimes if the

812
01:11:20,160 --> 01:11:25,120
straw purchaser was good they would notice and the gun would wind up somewhere in this particular

813
01:11:25,120 --> 01:11:30,480
instance the gun wound up at a shooting scene in canonea mexico which is 42 miles south of the

814
01:11:30,480 --> 01:11:37,120
arizona border and 21 people who did four of them are cops mexican cops four other mexican cops were

815
01:11:37,120 --> 01:11:43,760
kidnapped and brought into the desert and beaten and left for dead they survived so my agents

816
01:11:43,760 --> 01:11:49,360
identify the straw purchaser he confesses to his role in the scheme tells who we gave the gun to

817
01:11:49,360 --> 01:11:54,000
they find him that person confesses as well the u.s attorney's office declines that case for

818
01:11:54,000 --> 01:11:58,720
prosecution saying well the gun is in mexico and from that point forward they came up with this

819
01:11:58,720 --> 01:12:03,120
finding which they were the only u.s attorney's office in the country to do this that once the

820
01:12:03,120 --> 01:12:08,480
bot once the gun is in mexico the body of the crime is in mexico so you can't prosecute the case

821
01:12:08,480 --> 01:12:12,240
well realistically what you're charging them for is lying on the form right because they're

822
01:12:12,240 --> 01:12:17,600
checking a box this is are you buying this gun for yourself um or you know and they were saying yes

823
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:22,320
so we had the forms in hand but they would develop body of the crime corpus electi corpus

824
01:12:22,320 --> 01:12:28,480
electi we heard it over and over and over again so we wound up having to take some cases to the

825
01:12:28,480 --> 01:12:33,360
county prosecutors we had a formulated relationship with the state attorney general's office which

826
01:12:33,360 --> 01:12:37,600
didn't even have a gun trafficking unit but they were kind enough to fill that void but yet the

827
01:12:37,600 --> 01:12:42,000
prosecutors whose job it was to enforce the federal gun laws were punting constantly punting

828
01:12:42,000 --> 01:12:48,560
so anyway um in 2009 my group's mission changed phoenix had become the capital of home invasions

829
01:12:48,560 --> 01:12:52,640
and kidnappings in the united states and second in this hemisphere behind mexico city which was a

830
01:12:52,640 --> 01:12:57,920
distinction that they did not like so i had some experience work in those kinds of cases so my

831
01:12:57,920 --> 01:13:03,280
group was tasked with working with the phoenix police department on those cases and a new group

832
01:13:03,280 --> 01:13:09,360
was stood up to work mexico bound firearms trafficking cases so um we don't know what's

833
01:13:09,360 --> 01:13:12,880
going on in that group but i attended a couple meetings where they were talking about this one

834
01:13:12,880 --> 01:13:16,800
case that had a lot of guns the first meeting i remember was roughly 600 guns and my thoughts

835
01:13:16,800 --> 01:13:21,440
were that they found some treasure trove of old intelligence and they were going to work backwards

836
01:13:21,440 --> 01:13:25,680
and build this case but then as the numbers would go up we would start asking hey are you guys

837
01:13:25,680 --> 01:13:29,040
interviewing these straw purchasers like what's going on and we were today we're doing something

838
01:13:29,040 --> 01:13:36,240
different but we still didn't know what's happening so now in december of 2010 border patrol agent

839
01:13:36,240 --> 01:13:42,880
brian terry gets killed and we didn't know this at the time but there was rumblings um that one of

840
01:13:42,880 --> 01:13:48,400
the guns or two of the guns that were found at the scene were trafficked as part of this investigation

841
01:13:48,400 --> 01:13:53,680
that was called jacob chambers and others but it was actually nicknamed fast and furious because

842
01:13:53,680 --> 01:14:01,520
the defendants drove those souped up japanese cars like they did in the movie so water cooler

843
01:14:01,520 --> 01:14:06,640
starts uh talk starts happening and then we start getting calls from dealers who are saying hey man

844
01:14:07,360 --> 01:14:10,560
why are our guns getting traced from crime scenes because when we would do interdictions

845
01:14:10,560 --> 01:14:13,520
the guns would never get traced because there was no need to trace them because we knew where they

846
01:14:13,520 --> 01:14:19,680
came from so now the dealers are calling saying hey why are our guns getting traced we're hearing

847
01:14:19,680 --> 01:14:24,640
this water cooler talk about brian terry his death being linked to two guns well at a subsequent

848
01:14:24,640 --> 01:14:30,240
meeting the head of the atf phoenix office named bill newell comes he's talking to all of the

849
01:14:30,240 --> 01:14:34,720
supervisors i was one of those supervisors and he's like hey my suggestion is you folks stay away

850
01:14:34,720 --> 01:14:40,320
from john dotson who was an agent in that group um he's contacted senator grassley's office and

851
01:14:40,320 --> 01:14:44,880
don't be surprised if john doesn't find himself indicted so at this point i'm saying to myself

852
01:14:44,880 --> 01:14:50,320
wait a minute time out we had dozens and dozens and dozens of firearms traffickers that we referred

853
01:14:50,320 --> 01:14:55,680
to this u.s attorney's office of prosecution right including one dirty dealer who admitted that about

854
01:14:55,680 --> 01:15:01,600
a thousand of his guns made it to mexico now they're talking about a dining john like for me that

855
01:15:01,600 --> 01:15:05,280
was like a bridge too far and it's around this time that we're finding out was actually happening

856
01:15:05,280 --> 01:15:10,000
in that group so well i went home that night had a conversation with my wife and told her what was

857
01:15:10,000 --> 01:15:14,960
going on and i said i'm thinking of calling senator grassley's office myself and her response was

858
01:15:14,960 --> 01:15:20,080
if you don't you're not the guy i'm married i just talked about some extra pressure right so um so the

859
01:15:20,080 --> 01:15:24,080
next day i called up senator grassley's office i remember that brian downey was the guy who answered

860
01:15:24,080 --> 01:15:28,560
the phone and i told him i said brian i know that eric holder and the department of justice and atf

861
01:15:28,560 --> 01:15:33,040
are telling you that john thompson's a liar and that atf doesn't want guns well i'm here to tell

862
01:15:33,040 --> 01:15:37,120
you john's not lying and if you give me a subpoena i'll tell you everything that you need to know

863
01:15:37,120 --> 01:15:43,280
and they did so i got a subpoena i was deposed uh in a roughly six seven eight hour deposition

864
01:15:43,280 --> 01:15:46,960
where i put everything that i experienced in the previous three years on the table

865
01:15:47,520 --> 01:15:52,880
and then later was um you know uh testified in front of the committee which is a dogged pony show

866
01:15:52,880 --> 01:15:57,920
because that's where the politicians themselves get to quite a view and with them it's 90 of its

867
01:15:57,920 --> 01:16:03,520
talking points rarely is it about getting to the truth but yeah from it was around that point where

868
01:16:03,520 --> 01:16:08,000
um the u.s attorney's office decided that they didn't like what i had to say so it turned into

869
01:16:08,000 --> 01:16:13,360
a lot of accusations and it's been four years battling to clear my name from accusations that

870
01:16:13,360 --> 01:16:17,760
they made because they didn't want to admit to their malfeasance in passing up on all those cases

871
01:16:17,760 --> 01:16:23,040
talk to me about the the philosophy of of whistleblowing again like i said it's become a

872
01:16:23,040 --> 01:16:30,880
buzzword now a dirty word you know it's one of those phrases that seems to um almost imply like

873
01:16:30,880 --> 01:16:35,680
oh it's some you know someone whining but it's funny i had the joker willink on the show a while

874
01:16:35,680 --> 01:16:40,000
ago now and i was talking about the problems we have in the fire service and you know that

875
01:16:40,720 --> 01:16:44,720
unless we pull this out the shadows we're going to keep burying firefighters and he actually used

876
01:16:44,720 --> 01:16:48,880
the word you know well if you're you know a whistleblower and i'm like is that a good thing or a bad

877
01:16:48,880 --> 01:16:52,640
thing and now when you again like i said you look up the origin of the word it's a good thing

878
01:16:52,640 --> 01:16:56,640
you know police officers will blow in a whistle when an armed robber is running through a community

879
01:16:56,640 --> 01:17:04,400
to warn everyone you know what i mean so how how was talk to me about the courage it took to to

880
01:17:04,400 --> 01:17:09,840
stand up and advocate for your friend and do the right thing and then how have you seen that phrase

881
01:17:09,840 --> 01:17:16,240
the uh you know the act of simply saying you know this is wrong kind of torn apart the last 10 years

882
01:17:16,240 --> 01:17:22,560
or so well i mean full disclosure john wasn't my friend i had not met john over to that point

883
01:17:22,560 --> 01:17:27,440
and if i had crossed paths with him i don't remember it um so it wasn't like i was trying

884
01:17:27,440 --> 01:17:30,960
to defend a friend it's just that what was happening there to me we saw appalling because

885
01:17:30,960 --> 01:17:36,240
it went beyond just them indicting john frankly in my mind at that point because i mean like i

886
01:17:36,240 --> 01:17:41,520
enjoyed what i did in my career with atf because i made progress on a lot of cases like i did things

887
01:17:41,520 --> 01:17:45,600
i never thought i would be able to do but i did it because i had partnership with prosecutors

888
01:17:46,160 --> 01:17:50,960
i mean so like to reach your full potential as an investigator you need that so i saw my agents try

889
01:17:50,960 --> 01:17:56,880
and try and try and because of things that were beyond their control i realized them they're never

890
01:17:56,880 --> 01:18:00,720
going to be able to do they're never going to get that satisfaction that i got and it's not because

891
01:18:00,720 --> 01:18:04,160
of them it was because these prosecutors were either too much or too little or too much

892
01:18:04,160 --> 01:18:09,040
it was because these prosecutors were either too lazy or didn't care so that was one of the things

893
01:18:09,040 --> 01:18:13,520
that factored in and of course there was a dead border patrol agent so i didn't view it as anything

894
01:18:13,520 --> 01:18:19,280
other than my duty really you know now with whistleblowing in general what i will say is

895
01:18:19,280 --> 01:18:23,520
once i did step forward a couple things first i was warned hey man they're going to come for you

896
01:18:23,520 --> 01:18:28,240
by a guy who previously blew the whistle i named jay dobbins who was the first atf agent to

897
01:18:28,240 --> 01:18:34,080
infiltrate the hell's angels who did through hell i had jay on the show amazing story yeah well i

898
01:18:34,080 --> 01:18:39,520
yeah well you heard about the fire bombing of his house i was in arizona when that all happened so i

899
01:18:39,520 --> 01:18:43,920
knew what jay went through when i was like oh shit i guess i'm in for it so i was accused of

900
01:18:43,920 --> 01:18:47,920
perjury there were some other things that the u.s attorneys over tried to push back on me

901
01:18:47,920 --> 01:18:53,360
but i mean for me it was never about what required courage it was more like i felt this was what i

902
01:18:53,360 --> 01:19:00,640
had to do the funny thing is when when i was engaged in the whistleblowing i was told by

903
01:19:00,640 --> 01:19:04,800
someone who i respected atf who was the chief of staff or became the chief of staff who said you

904
01:19:04,800 --> 01:19:08,560
know they're really upset with you people because you're a supervisor you know you should have

905
01:19:08,560 --> 01:19:13,200
they're in their mind like as a member of the leadership team i should have been the last one

906
01:19:13,200 --> 01:19:18,400
to come forward now this is department of justice not just atf and i'm like wait a minute if if i'm

907
01:19:18,400 --> 01:19:23,120
supposedly a member of the leadership team and i see something that's really messed up and needs

908
01:19:23,120 --> 01:19:28,080
to be fixed i would think as a leader it's my duty to come forward so i mean that's what i think

909
01:19:28,080 --> 01:19:33,600
you know if you raised your hand and took an oath to serve the constitution you're really serving

910
01:19:33,600 --> 01:19:38,400
the people right i never took an oath and named the president or a cabinet secretary or some

911
01:19:38,400 --> 01:19:44,560
director it was about the people so i viewed it as it just was my duty to do it but um by the same

912
01:19:44,560 --> 01:19:49,840
token though i i had people afterwards like hey you blew the whistle on fast and furious right

913
01:19:50,880 --> 01:19:54,720
you know i have a boss who you know i think he drinks too much at night you know sometimes he

914
01:19:54,720 --> 01:19:59,120
comes in with a hangover it's like so wait that's because i blew the whistle now i'm like the town

915
01:19:59,120 --> 01:20:03,360
rat like you think it's my job i think if you don't like what you're seeing then report it you

916
01:20:03,360 --> 01:20:06,640
know i mean i don't know what to tell you so there is a connotation where some people think that

917
01:20:06,640 --> 01:20:12,640
whistleblowers have an axe to grind with the organization or people or somehow they're

918
01:20:12,640 --> 01:20:18,880
malcontented i loved my job i i even was very good friends with some of the people who were on the

919
01:20:18,880 --> 01:20:25,280
wrong side of fast and furious but the reality was is again brian terry was dead his family wanted

920
01:20:25,280 --> 01:20:28,880
answers as to what happened they were never given the answers which is one of the reasons why i

921
01:20:28,880 --> 01:20:33,520
wrote the book and it just went against the grain of everything that we did and look i made plenty

922
01:20:33,520 --> 01:20:40,480
of mistakes in my career plenty um some of them i even talk about in my book and my opinion is

923
01:20:40,480 --> 01:20:45,600
if you're out there and you do things trying to do the right thing and you fail something happens

924
01:20:45,600 --> 01:20:50,720
own it right you have a duty explain what happened and i've done that like hey this is what i try to

925
01:20:50,720 --> 01:20:55,920
do here's where we are this you know and every time i was like all right dust me off get me back

926
01:20:55,920 --> 01:21:01,120
in the fight right but to sit there and lie to the people and to lie to the people you're working

927
01:21:01,120 --> 01:21:06,400
with to me was a bridge too far so i mean that's look i think whistleblowing can be noble but i

928
01:21:06,400 --> 01:21:11,200
think there's some people's points there are some whistleblowers who do it for the wrong reasons

929
01:21:11,200 --> 01:21:16,240
they do it because it's personal for me it wasn't personal at all it was more about this is broken

930
01:21:16,240 --> 01:21:21,280
here and this needs to be fixed because people were dying in mexico on the other end of those

931
01:21:21,280 --> 01:21:25,680
guns that were being trafficked that the u.s attorney's office didn't care about brian terry's

932
01:21:25,680 --> 01:21:29,760
dead my agents were never going to be able to do cases the way they should have been able to do

933
01:21:29,760 --> 01:21:35,360
them so there were just so many things that just all together i felt needed to be fixed and you

934
01:21:35,360 --> 01:21:39,760
can't fix what you're not willing to talk about i couldn't agree more and it's it's amazing because

935
01:21:39,760 --> 01:21:44,480
if you look at the profession the only one that i know which is obviously fire and ems there are

936
01:21:44,480 --> 01:21:51,120
so many great people in that in that job and they love doing that job but what's happened is a

937
01:21:51,120 --> 01:21:56,000
devolution of the environment they work in you know they work more hours they run more calls they

938
01:21:56,000 --> 01:22:00,720
get less staffing and you watch this slow destruction and you know the the overdoses and

939
01:22:00,720 --> 01:22:05,680
suicides and the heart attacks and the cancers and that is what i'm trying to bring out to the light

940
01:22:05,680 --> 01:22:10,240
is that if if burying firefighters doesn't move you then maybe you should fucking find someone else

941
01:22:10,240 --> 01:22:16,640
to be in that seat because that should move you to the very core and you know so advocating for that

942
01:22:16,640 --> 01:22:20,800
and bringing that to the forefront i think is imperative and what i also see which is so

943
01:22:20,800 --> 01:22:25,280
heartbreaking and i don't know if you had this experience you know in those four years i see

944
01:22:25,920 --> 01:22:31,840
the immense mental health impact that organizational betrayal has on great firefighters

945
01:22:31,840 --> 01:22:38,480
and paramedics and police officers and dispatches who have service burning in their heart but the

946
01:22:38,480 --> 01:22:43,280
organization they work for you know turns their back on them or doesn't support them when they

947
01:22:43,280 --> 01:22:47,440
need it or creates an environment that they're barely seeing their family because they're being

948
01:22:47,440 --> 01:22:54,960
forced to stay shift after shift after shift yeah no it's rough and look i full disclosure i was

949
01:22:54,960 --> 01:22:59,440
blessed like many whistleblowers whether it's people that blow the whistle on local police

950
01:22:59,440 --> 01:23:06,160
departments or federal agencies are crushed right um i think some of them it happens because they

951
01:23:06,160 --> 01:23:10,880
they make it personal about me versus you me versus the organization like i tried not to do that

952
01:23:10,880 --> 01:23:15,280
but i was blessed in a way that i had a couple of people in atf that had moved up in the ranks who

953
01:23:15,280 --> 01:23:20,400
were like hey man as long as you're telling the truth right i have your back just don't embellish

954
01:23:20,400 --> 01:23:25,040
don't lie don't stretch any truths so they gave me the space they didn't really fight for me but

955
01:23:25,040 --> 01:23:31,440
they gave me the space to fight for myself so but i mean there was a period where um you know i

956
01:23:31,440 --> 01:23:36,560
the lawyer's bills were crippling my wife had any replacement so for me to even make the mortgage

957
01:23:36,560 --> 01:23:41,120
i had a pawn watches that i had acquired as a detective used to collect watches i had a pawn

958
01:23:41,120 --> 01:23:47,520
the rifle my grandfather left me this old rifle it was a family for generations had a pawn it

959
01:23:47,520 --> 01:23:53,360
um there was one one one month where we literally had to take all my power tools and have a yard

960
01:23:53,360 --> 01:23:59,360
sale and there's nothing as humbling machine said nothing it's very humbling to be standing in your

961
01:23:59,360 --> 01:24:06,480
driveway selling a 200 drill right for 50 only to have some guy say i'm not going to give you a

962
01:24:06,480 --> 01:24:12,560
penny more than 15 for it um and you know that hey man i don't want to sell this but i gotta make

963
01:24:12,560 --> 01:24:17,200
the mortgage payment or we're gonna get thrown out of this house so i mean it was a rough four

964
01:24:17,200 --> 01:24:25,280
years man i mean got to the point where um we we were broke and what saved us was a tax refund

965
01:24:25,280 --> 01:24:30,960
and then a short sale of our house and me beaten feet to get to washington dc and leaving phoenix

966
01:24:30,960 --> 01:24:36,080
behind and in some ways leaving all the you know the stuff i was dealing with behind but it was

967
01:24:36,080 --> 01:24:39,840
it was rough so and i know a lot of whistleblowers go through that and for many of them it's worse

968
01:24:39,840 --> 01:24:44,880
because there there is no support i had a couple people supporting me and then for them often is

969
01:24:44,880 --> 01:24:51,200
divorce there's alcoholism because it just spirals so i had a very thin thread of support but that

970
01:24:51,200 --> 01:24:56,480
thin thread was enough for me to cling on to to keep my sanity and to get me through it which

971
01:24:56,480 --> 01:25:01,280
again i mean i think that's something that that with these situations when people do blow the

972
01:25:01,280 --> 01:25:07,120
whistle on something that's legitimate i think the right thing to do is say hey man you know i know

973
01:25:07,120 --> 01:25:11,600
what you're doing is tough um i'm here for you if you want to have a conversation you know just not

974
01:25:11,600 --> 01:25:16,240
ostracize that person because the other thing you know there were people who i would see in the

975
01:25:16,240 --> 01:25:21,200
bathroom or i would see in a stairwell like i mean washing my hands hey thanks for what you did

976
01:25:21,920 --> 01:25:27,040
but in public they avoided me like i was like radioactive because they were afraid if i get

977
01:25:27,040 --> 01:25:34,800
seen talking to pete then that could hurt my career so they supported me quietly but which really is

978
01:25:34,800 --> 01:25:38,720
not very helpful but if they saw me in the atrium at headquarters they would run away from me like

979
01:25:38,720 --> 01:25:43,120
i was on fire so i mean that's the other thing is you know you do get somewhat ostracized and

980
01:25:43,120 --> 01:25:48,160
you become a pariah within your own organization which eventually that wore off for me thank god

981
01:25:48,160 --> 01:25:53,600
but for some people that that never does you know so they leave and especially the people that love

982
01:25:53,600 --> 01:25:58,320
their profession they feel like this true sense of betrayal because the thing that they loved

983
01:25:58,320 --> 01:26:04,640
didn't love them back absolutely well speaking of this entire kind of story that we walked through

984
01:26:04,640 --> 01:26:08,720
today then what made you decide to sit down and write a book and let's talk about what people

985
01:26:08,720 --> 01:26:15,200
can find between the covers sure well a couple things one is my last assignment was the head of

986
01:26:15,200 --> 01:26:21,840
training for atf and i would run into people who would this happened in phoenix in phoenix there

987
01:26:21,840 --> 01:26:28,400
were seven groups one group did this right but if you talk to people who atf agents walked guns well

988
01:26:28,400 --> 01:26:32,240
if you talk to agents in other parts of the country they had no idea what happened so we had

989
01:26:32,240 --> 01:26:36,720
suggested why not do like the military does do an after action report and a training so people will

990
01:26:36,720 --> 01:26:41,360
know what happened so it never gets repeated again and we would be told by atf management

991
01:26:42,240 --> 01:26:48,800
and the oj no we don't talk about fast and furious it's like like um i think what's it

992
01:26:48,800 --> 01:26:54,080
valdermort from uh not that i have or like fight club right we don't talk about fight club so

993
01:26:54,080 --> 01:26:59,440
going back to what i said earlier like if you don't know history you can repeat history so and

994
01:26:59,440 --> 01:27:02,720
what happened in fast and furious is not what a lot of people think it was basically like they

995
01:27:02,720 --> 01:27:09,760
abandoned a lot of basic policing techniques to try to get fancy and then prosecutors um you know

996
01:27:09,760 --> 01:27:15,840
heavily involved in it so i was offended that you know agents didn't know and we couldn't tell them

997
01:27:15,840 --> 01:27:20,000
so there were a lot of agents that just wanted to hear it so i said let me write the story for them

998
01:27:20,000 --> 01:27:27,040
and then brian terry's family like i testified at the hearing on june 15 2011 in front of congress

999
01:27:27,040 --> 01:27:32,160
it was on c-span not that anybody watches c-span i get that but brian terry's mother sat at the

1000
01:27:32,160 --> 01:27:37,040
other end of the table that i sat at so i got to meet her before and briefly after the hearing

1001
01:27:37,040 --> 01:27:43,520
she was a kind woman like she reminded me of my mother my friends she's like a woman probably

1002
01:27:43,520 --> 01:27:48,720
like the woman living next door to you on either side just good person a good american her son was

1003
01:27:48,720 --> 01:27:54,560
a hero and her son was part of this elite team within the border patrol i met brian's cousin

1004
01:27:54,560 --> 01:28:00,240
bob great guy secret service agent he wanted answers didn't get him i stayed in touch with

1005
01:28:00,240 --> 01:28:07,040
brian's brother kent great guy mechanic works on old cars up in michigan and his two sisters who

1006
01:28:07,040 --> 01:28:12,640
i've interacted with on social media a bit they're just kind good people and all they wanted to know

1007
01:28:12,640 --> 01:28:18,320
is what happened so i mean i know i couldn't answer all of their questions but i wanted to

1008
01:28:18,320 --> 01:28:23,760
answer as many of them as i could so that people will know what really happened in phoenix and

1009
01:28:23,760 --> 01:28:29,280
here's the other thing some of the people who had the most blood on their hands are still working

1010
01:28:29,280 --> 01:28:33,840
in government i named them i say where they're at but i mean there's nothing in the book that i

1011
01:28:33,840 --> 01:28:39,760
couldn't prove through either evidence or through witnesses and nothing in the book is speculation

1012
01:28:39,760 --> 01:28:44,720
it's all stuff that i personally experienced or personally witnessed um because i you know again

1013
01:28:44,720 --> 01:28:48,960
you got to be able to defend yourself from lawsuits and when the people you're writing about are

1014
01:28:48,960 --> 01:28:53,200
federal prosecutors you better make damn sure you can do that so but i want folks to know what

1015
01:28:53,200 --> 01:28:57,040
really happened then look there's another part of that case that that wasn't spoken of and that was

1016
01:28:57,040 --> 01:29:01,920
that there was a guy who was smuggling grenades to the sinaloa cartel that the same prosecutor

1017
01:29:01,920 --> 01:29:06,240
the champion fast and furious was dealing with and he let this guy keep making grenades for the

1018
01:29:06,240 --> 01:29:12,320
cartel for years so it's all in the book just as a i don't think i even asked you this part

1019
01:29:13,120 --> 01:29:19,840
when you kind of overlook or excuse me look over all the elements that led to these oversights

1020
01:29:19,840 --> 01:29:26,560
what was some of the main failures as a cautionary tale well that is a great question and i'm so glad

1021
01:29:26,560 --> 01:29:33,520
you asked it inexperience and the failure to lead look on the prosecutor side i would say laziness

1022
01:29:33,520 --> 01:29:38,640
and incompetence but there were people in atf who promoted very very quickly right um to the point

1023
01:29:38,640 --> 01:29:44,000
where they didn't have much street experience they didn't do things like our profession isn't

1024
01:29:44,000 --> 01:29:48,160
something you learn overnight you know like say this stuff that you did as a paramedic or amt or

1025
01:29:48,160 --> 01:29:53,280
a firefighter you learn by doing and as you spend more time you learn what to look out for

1026
01:29:53,920 --> 01:29:58,400
i think that if someone with more experience was running the phoenix field division fast and furious

1027
01:29:58,400 --> 01:30:02,560
would have never happened i think that there were people in that chain of command it's the same thing

1028
01:30:02,560 --> 01:30:08,240
so i mean and again it goes to as to why i think knowing history helps prevent repeating history

1029
01:30:08,240 --> 01:30:12,720
so yeah it was inexperienced poor leadership a leader that wanted to make everybody happy

1030
01:30:12,720 --> 01:30:18,240
didn't know how to say no coupled with some really bad lawyers that led to a lot of death and

1031
01:30:18,240 --> 01:30:22,240
destruction on the south of the border and led to the death of brian terry who was a hero

1032
01:30:23,520 --> 01:30:28,320
well thank you for that i wanted to shift to some closing questions so i can be mindful of your time

1033
01:30:28,320 --> 01:30:33,520
um we talked about your book what about other books are there any books that you love to recommend

1034
01:30:33,520 --> 01:30:40,000
to people that can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated sure no there's

1035
01:30:40,000 --> 01:30:48,640
plenty of good books one would be a man hunters by the guys who narcos was based on steve murphy

1036
01:30:48,640 --> 01:30:55,200
and javier peña it's about the takedown of pablo escobar because of my fascination with the cartels

1037
01:30:55,200 --> 01:31:00,240
and having dealt with all that is fast and furious stuff you know i read in that book was really

1038
01:31:00,240 --> 01:31:05,760
pretty enlightening and the narcos series on netflix was also quite good there was another

1039
01:31:05,760 --> 01:31:11,280
book written by jonathan green he's a um he's a british journalist who now lives in massachusetts

1040
01:31:12,080 --> 01:31:18,960
it's jonathan um from uh springfield massachusetts he he did a deep dive into a

1041
01:31:18,960 --> 01:31:24,880
bronx gang called the sex money murder gang that really gives a interesting perspective because

1042
01:31:24,880 --> 01:31:30,240
he actually spent a lot of time with the suspects got to know them on a very very personal level and

1043
01:31:30,240 --> 01:31:37,200
it kind of shows how our society has managed to take young kids from inner cities and just turn

1044
01:31:37,200 --> 01:31:43,200
them into something um frightening actually i mean some of these kids were involved in shootings at

1045
01:31:43,200 --> 01:31:48,720
age 11 you know so i mean jonathan really i mean he really went out there and put himself in harm's

1046
01:31:48,720 --> 01:31:54,480
way to get this story and i think he accurately told the story about like urban crime in a way

1047
01:31:54,480 --> 01:32:01,760
that most folks would really appreciate reading um so the book is called sex money murder a tale of

1048
01:32:01,760 --> 01:32:07,280
cracked blood and betrayal and i think it's a really excellent read and then a favorite of mine

1049
01:32:07,280 --> 01:32:14,880
that i read recently uh was it's an old one serpico um about the story of frank serpico somebody said

1050
01:32:14,880 --> 01:32:20,320
hey your situation reminds me of serpico uh what let me tell you what man i nothing like frank

1051
01:32:20,320 --> 01:32:25,200
serpico he really put himself in harm's way and got shot in the face for speaking truth to power

1052
01:32:25,200 --> 01:32:30,880
so i mean if somebody wants to read an old story it's from the 70s but a very very good book just

1053
01:32:30,880 --> 01:32:37,920
talking about the cartels quickly when we go back to our prohibition conversation if we were able to

1054
01:32:37,920 --> 01:32:44,080
massively reduce addiction and put the other world of addiction back into the hands of the medical

1055
01:32:44,080 --> 01:32:49,920
profession what impact would that have on the violence over our borders because i'm just making

1056
01:32:49,920 --> 01:32:55,360
an assumption that i know there's also avocados and you know guns and other things too but a lot

1057
01:32:55,360 --> 01:33:01,600
of this is still you know narcotics based so for me going back to that cut the head off the snake

1058
01:33:01,600 --> 01:33:08,400
if we didn't have consumers for the illicit drug trade in the u.s then basic economics would

1059
01:33:08,400 --> 01:33:15,200
dictate that that would weaken some of the cartels over the border yes and no like the cartels made a

1060
01:33:15,200 --> 01:33:21,360
lot of their money in drugs i mean that was the lion's share of their profits for decades now it's

1061
01:33:21,360 --> 01:33:26,720
human smuggling right so and you know look the gun trafficking goes south so if they didn't need to

1062
01:33:26,720 --> 01:33:30,720
protect their turf they wouldn't need all of those guns where they're taking on mexican military and

1063
01:33:30,720 --> 01:33:35,600
police and in some instances winning but now they're making a lot more money in smuggling people

1064
01:33:35,600 --> 01:33:39,920
than they are in smuggling drugs or as much money but look they'll get their hands in anything

1065
01:33:39,920 --> 01:33:45,760
for example it's funny um we're having this discussion right now last year um i read that

1066
01:33:45,760 --> 01:33:52,640
the sinaloa cartel and cjng which is the jalisco cartel the new generation they they made four

1067
01:33:52,640 --> 01:33:58,640
billion dollars each in recent years tobacco smuggling so i mean i think you know and here

1068
01:33:58,640 --> 01:34:02,480
in this country we were looking at the mental ban and they were talking about potentially a

1069
01:34:02,480 --> 01:34:08,800
combustible nicotine ban i think anytime we ban anything right someone is going to capitalize

1070
01:34:08,800 --> 01:34:12,880
on the black market that's created like i know in the northeast for example it's just really

1071
01:34:12,880 --> 01:34:18,800
because of the tax charges uh hesbala and organized crime italian and asian organized crime

1072
01:34:18,800 --> 01:34:23,040
were making a ton of money smuggling cigarettes from cheap places like virginia to new york and

1073
01:34:23,040 --> 01:34:27,680
selling them not having to pay those taxes so you know they were basically stealing what the new

1074
01:34:27,680 --> 01:34:33,040
yorkers thought was tax money um they were putting it in their pockets and using it for other things

1075
01:34:33,040 --> 01:34:38,080
so i i think first we do need to secure our borders they're not secured but yeah i think

1076
01:34:38,080 --> 01:34:42,640
stopping the flow of drugs or the demand for drugs would be a huge step in the right direction

1077
01:34:42,640 --> 01:34:47,360
but there's other things i mean we just need to be mindful that every time look it's a cat and mouse

1078
01:34:47,360 --> 01:34:52,000
game right with these cartels and with criminal groups so you know when law enforcement or the

1079
01:34:52,000 --> 01:34:56,880
country or laws pivot to change things they they change as well they try to adapt like if i can't

1080
01:34:56,880 --> 01:35:01,440
make money doing this where do i go to next to make money because it's not going to be working in a

1081
01:35:01,440 --> 01:35:06,720
store or doing legitimate business that's not the kind of folks we're dealing with so i do think

1082
01:35:06,720 --> 01:35:14,080
drugs is a huge part of their motivation and their profits um and look just for the sake of americans

1083
01:35:14,080 --> 01:35:18,480
and people's lives i think it would be great to fix that problem but then the next problem i think

1084
01:35:18,480 --> 01:35:24,400
is human trafficking and sealing the border when you look at mexico for example because i think

1085
01:35:24,400 --> 01:35:30,000
the other conversation of the border crisis is why are so many people fleeing if you could be king

1086
01:35:30,000 --> 01:35:34,560
for a day obviously we're talking about someone else's country now what are the elements of that

1087
01:35:34,560 --> 01:35:41,520
nation um that you would fix to maybe stop so many people flooding into our country in the first place

1088
01:35:42,720 --> 01:35:46,960
well i think that's a question and i probably am not smart enough to answer because i know like

1089
01:35:46,960 --> 01:35:53,200
in some countries it's it's the culture i mean it's it's um you know dictatorships you know

1090
01:35:54,080 --> 01:35:58,720
you look at india for example i mean they still have a caste system i know in some other countries

1091
01:35:58,720 --> 01:36:03,280
you know there are there are pecking orders as to who's you know who's treated certain ways so i

1092
01:36:03,280 --> 01:36:07,440
think if you feel oppressed you're going to try to get away from that and come here i think some of

1093
01:36:07,440 --> 01:36:12,960
its political some of its environmental some of its people think that there's more opportunity here

1094
01:36:12,960 --> 01:36:17,200
so i you know i don't know how i would fix those things some of them are fleeing crime i mean if

1095
01:36:17,200 --> 01:36:22,960
you look at honduras and some of those other countries the crime is insane um so i mean you

1096
01:36:22,960 --> 01:36:29,840
know it's just that's just a tremendous tremendous um task even figure out how you would fix those

1097
01:36:29,840 --> 01:36:34,400
problems in other countries i think look first thing we need to do is clean up our own house

1098
01:36:34,400 --> 01:36:38,480
before we start telling other people how to clean up theirs you know absolutely well speaking of

1099
01:36:38,480 --> 01:36:43,200
other going back to another country when you were assigned to miami did you have any excuse me any

1100
01:36:43,200 --> 01:36:49,600
interaction with haiti at all i did very very limited um obviously haiti is a mess poorest

1101
01:36:49,600 --> 01:36:54,400
country in this hemisphere but even there like i would deal with um other federal agencies like if

1102
01:36:54,960 --> 01:36:59,120
if we went to another country to arrest somebody usually there's a judicial process where you have

1103
01:36:59,120 --> 01:37:04,560
to arrest them take them to courts in their country there's a process in haiti you just show up they

1104
01:37:04,560 --> 01:37:10,320
give you leave i mean that that country is so dysfunctional and so poor and so corrupt

1105
01:37:10,320 --> 01:37:15,600
that really that they just need to start from the beginning i mean i don't even know where they

1106
01:37:15,600 --> 01:37:20,160
would start but i mean there there's almost not a government there even when there was a government

1107
01:37:20,160 --> 01:37:25,920
there it was almost there you know i guess symbolically but haiti's a mess i feel bad for

1108
01:37:25,920 --> 01:37:30,400
the folks that live there um but yeah they got a long way to go i think before they're back on

1109
01:37:30,400 --> 01:37:35,280
their feet they've been the poorest country in this hemisphere for decades i mean it's so sad i

1110
01:37:35,280 --> 01:37:40,160
went there on a cruise and there's a little tiny corner of it called labadee that they've got

1111
01:37:40,160 --> 01:37:46,160
fenced off it's the ship comedian referred to it as uh fake haiti or jurassic park but you know when

1112
01:37:46,160 --> 01:37:50,720
you're pulling into it it is one of the most beautiful places i've ever been to i mean these

1113
01:37:50,720 --> 01:37:55,760
beautiful mountainous you know tree-covered mountains so the irony is if they were able to

1114
01:37:55,760 --> 01:38:01,760
stabilize the government they would probably make a fortune as a country in tourism alone but instead

1115
01:38:01,760 --> 01:38:06,320
you know that they're literally murdering each other because of the complete crisis that's going

1116
01:38:06,320 --> 01:38:11,920
on and we literally you know if if whoever it was if a nation was able to stabilize it i think the

1117
01:38:11,920 --> 01:38:17,520
potential for wealth for that country is literally across the ocean oh thousand percent i mean look

1118
01:38:17,520 --> 01:38:21,200
they're on the same island as the dominican republic they're on hispanola the dominican

1119
01:38:21,200 --> 01:38:26,240
republic has a thriving tourist industry and you could say the same for gaza right i mean you know

1120
01:38:26,240 --> 01:38:30,240
obviously there's a lot of things there the thousands of years of hatred a lot of political

1121
01:38:30,240 --> 01:38:34,960
unrest you know i mean that's that's an even bigger fish to fry but i mean gaza is on the

1122
01:38:34,960 --> 01:38:40,080
mediterranean i mean waterfront property they if if they could stabilize themselves and have a

1123
01:38:40,080 --> 01:38:44,800
tourist industry they could probably make a ton of money it's from what i understand it's beautiful

1124
01:38:44,800 --> 01:38:51,120
waterfront property it's just been decimated by years of hatred and political unrest and religious

1125
01:38:51,120 --> 01:38:55,760
animosity and you name it you know yeah it's heartbreaking i had a doctor on the show who's

1126
01:38:55,760 --> 01:39:02,000
a chicago er physician who was over there kind of earlier this year and he talked about landing you

1127
01:39:02,000 --> 01:39:06,960
know in in israel going to jerusalem and seeing muslims and jews and christians all praying

1128
01:39:06,960 --> 01:39:11,360
alongside each other and then you go into gaza and it's fenced off and there's guards and you

1129
01:39:11,360 --> 01:39:15,920
know obviously what's happening now is unfolding him right in front of his eyes you know and it's

1130
01:39:15,920 --> 01:39:19,840
it's just horrendous because again as we said at the beginning of this conversation

1131
01:39:20,560 --> 01:39:25,600
those people have way more in common than they do differences but the you know the powers that be

1132
01:39:25,600 --> 01:39:32,560
had persuaded them that they are each other's enemy yeah look that's a problem everywhere in this

1133
01:39:32,560 --> 01:39:37,840
on our planet you know i mean we're all human we all bleed the same right we're all the same

1134
01:39:37,840 --> 01:39:42,560
um instead we focus on what's different and that's just unfortunate if we could if we could all just

1135
01:39:42,560 --> 01:39:47,440
get along on a global level what a great place this would be right absolutely all right well i

1136
01:39:47,440 --> 01:39:51,120
asked you about books what about films and documentaries any of those that you love

1137
01:39:52,320 --> 01:39:56,720
you know something i haven't been to the movies in such a long time i think the last movie i saw

1138
01:39:56,720 --> 01:40:01,600
in the theater was inception so i'm not the person i guess that you would go to for that there's been

1139
01:40:01,600 --> 01:40:07,840
some good documentaries other than i've seen i saw one recently about the the the

1140
01:40:08,880 --> 01:40:16,560
the baghwan shri rajneesh the indian guru who came here and created a city just outside of um

1141
01:40:16,560 --> 01:40:21,680
i believe it's not too far from portland oregon i forgot the name of it i think it's called it's a

1142
01:40:21,680 --> 01:40:28,160
weird world or something that was very interesting um i know narcos isn't a documentary per se it's

1143
01:40:28,160 --> 01:40:33,040
kind of like a docudrama that i thought was great i did i did like breaking bad in some of those

1144
01:40:33,040 --> 01:40:37,920
shows that were on but there i haven't really been engaged in watching much tv or movies lately

1145
01:40:37,920 --> 01:40:42,720
because i'm so busy between writing and you know just speaking about the book just trying to get

1146
01:40:42,720 --> 01:40:48,400
the book to sell that's kind of taking a lot of my time they just made an excellent documentary

1147
01:40:48,400 --> 01:40:54,160
i think it was on netflix about timothy mcvay and the oklahoma bombing and they did an amazing job

1148
01:40:54,160 --> 01:40:59,120
of really kind of rolling back the origins of some of the white supremacy movements and

1149
01:40:59,680 --> 01:41:03,440
you know some of the failures you know obviously waco and how all these just like we talked about

1150
01:41:03,440 --> 01:41:08,560
that pie chart how they all came together to create that moment of psychosis and you know

1151
01:41:08,560 --> 01:41:13,680
send that i use this term not with endearment you know the foot soldier out to to commit that

1152
01:41:13,680 --> 01:41:19,120
atrocity yeah yeah horrible horrible thing i remember i remember the pictures of the children

1153
01:41:19,120 --> 01:41:24,640
being taken out of the daycare center from that event heartbreaking horrendous all right well then

1154
01:41:24,640 --> 01:41:28,720
speaking of great people because one of my friends chris was the firefighter that was you know holding

1155
01:41:28,720 --> 01:41:33,120
that child iconically in that picture and that that you talk about mental health that crushed him

1156
01:41:33,120 --> 01:41:38,400
absolutely crushed him um are there any people that you recommend to come on this podcast as a

1157
01:41:38,400 --> 01:41:44,640
guest to speak to the first responders military and associated professions of the world sure it

1158
01:41:44,640 --> 01:41:50,480
is a few actually i mean obviously ken croak who i work with at atf recently wrote a book about his

1159
01:41:50,480 --> 01:41:56,560
infiltration of the pagans motorcycle gang and you know anytime you do a case like that that involves

1160
01:41:56,560 --> 01:42:01,280
you know um deep deep undercover work you know there's a physical and emotional toll that that

1161
01:42:01,280 --> 01:42:06,240
takes on you or your family he just published a book it's called riding with evil um great great

1162
01:42:06,240 --> 01:42:13,440
guy very honest guy which i think is important um who else trying to think lou valo's did some

1163
01:42:13,440 --> 01:42:20,960
undercover work um he had a storefront where they basically posed as a corrupt business to get people

1164
01:42:20,960 --> 01:42:30,000
to command and sell contraband to them um i know he's uh it's v e l a v no v a l o z e lou valo's

1165
01:42:31,120 --> 01:42:36,000
so he'd be another great guy to have on and then i'm sure you've probably had steve murphy

1166
01:42:36,000 --> 01:42:42,800
um from uh the uh he's one of the characters that narcos is actually based on um he's doing some

1167
01:42:42,800 --> 01:42:48,240
interesting stuff now he's out actually in french polynesia or something trying to recover one of

1168
01:42:48,240 --> 01:42:54,880
the first ships that was sunk during the war between the u.s and japan um very interesting guy

1169
01:42:55,840 --> 01:42:59,840
so steve murphy brilliant no i haven't had him on either so some great people there thank you

1170
01:43:00,320 --> 01:43:03,920
all right well then the last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you and

1171
01:43:03,920 --> 01:43:08,560
the book online and i normally say what do you what do you do to decompress i'm going to extend

1172
01:43:08,560 --> 01:43:13,680
that because you talked about some of the mental health struggles and understandably so after you

1173
01:43:13,680 --> 01:43:17,440
know some of the traumatic calls your own near-death experience with the cancer

1174
01:43:18,080 --> 01:43:22,880
what were the tools that you found helped navigate you out of some of those darknesses

1175
01:43:24,400 --> 01:43:29,920
sure i actually met a gentleman named anthony profeta he's a meditation coach that lives down

1176
01:43:29,920 --> 01:43:34,640
in florida he's a former medical student who went into medicine and then didn't like medicine

1177
01:43:34,640 --> 01:43:39,600
because he found that you know there was a lot of pressure to prescribe drugs to people so he left

1178
01:43:39,600 --> 01:43:47,200
medicine and started to study meditation so when i had cancer one of the byproducts was uh stroke

1179
01:43:47,200 --> 01:43:51,520
level high blood pressure so i didn't know if i was going to live or die i had a family i mean

1180
01:43:51,520 --> 01:43:55,280
there's so many things that went through my mind and he kind of coached me on meditating which at

1181
01:43:55,280 --> 01:43:59,680
first i thought meditation was for weirdos you know they're in a consortium position you know

1182
01:43:59,680 --> 01:44:04,000
you chant and i didn't realize that there's so many different ways to meditate and so many different

1183
01:44:04,000 --> 01:44:08,960
things to do so he actually managed to coach me in such a way that i never needed to go on blood

1184
01:44:08,960 --> 01:44:12,160
pressure medication even though my doctor thought i was gonna have a stroke so i mean my blood

1185
01:44:12,160 --> 01:44:18,640
pressure is now controlled through meditation so that that worked for me um and then truthfully i

1186
01:44:18,640 --> 01:44:24,000
now speak at the 9-eleven memorial and museum a few times a year uh sometimes like three times

1187
01:44:24,000 --> 01:44:30,160
sometimes five and it's at first i couldn't set foot on ground zero and now i actually find it

1188
01:44:30,160 --> 01:44:35,920
therapeutic to talk about it because i think that it just helps relieve some of that pressure but it

1189
01:44:35,920 --> 01:44:41,840
also i think is important to remember the heroism of that day you know that people you know there

1190
01:44:41,840 --> 01:44:46,480
wasn't just people in uniform that lost their lives there were people in those buildings who

1191
01:44:46,480 --> 01:44:51,440
could have left but they had a colleague who was paralyzed with fear or physically handicapped who

1192
01:44:51,440 --> 01:44:54,720
couldn't get down the stairs and they're like hey instead of leaving them there and saying hey i'll

1193
01:44:54,720 --> 01:44:59,840
see you they stayed with them you know and even when when the south tower collapsed people stayed

1194
01:44:59,840 --> 01:45:04,560
in the north tower knowing hey that's probably going to be our fate too but i'm not leaving you

1195
01:45:04,560 --> 01:45:10,000
so i mean this is just such amazing stories that i now find some some peace in going there and

1196
01:45:10,000 --> 01:45:14,800
talking about it so i do that and sometimes i've been asked to give that same presentation to law

1197
01:45:14,800 --> 01:45:19,680
enforcement groups or a couple different coast guard stations which i love to coast guard great

1198
01:45:19,680 --> 01:45:25,520
people so i mean just talking about it i think is therapeutic and granted that some people meditation

1199
01:45:25,520 --> 01:45:29,120
is not going to work they're going to need medication for some people talking about it

1200
01:45:29,120 --> 01:45:34,880
might not be the answer so i just think the trick is to find what works for you but the most important

1201
01:45:34,880 --> 01:45:40,000
thing is to talk to somebody whether it's a priest a neighbor someone who went through the same thing

1202
01:45:40,000 --> 01:45:45,520
that you went through keeping it inside is not the answer and i did that for way way way too long and

1203
01:45:45,520 --> 01:45:51,840
it looked like it cost me um it cost me a lot of enjoyment in life where you spend so much time

1204
01:45:51,840 --> 01:45:56,560
inside your head just thinking about things and it really you know they're not worth thinking

1205
01:45:56,560 --> 01:46:03,200
about because you can't undo what's done did you find the writing process writing process cathartic

1206
01:46:05,040 --> 01:46:10,400
yes and no i found it to be a pain in the ass to be honest with you but i thought it was a story

1207
01:46:10,400 --> 01:46:14,880
that had to be told i'll tell you selling books is way way harder than writing books because he

1208
01:46:14,880 --> 01:46:20,000
the problem that the publishers don't really do that that much to help you so um you know just

1209
01:46:20,000 --> 01:46:25,360
you're kind of left to your own devices to market the book um it was somewhat therapeutic and at

1210
01:46:25,360 --> 01:46:30,800
least knowing that the story is told so hopefully someone will read it and maybe they won't go down

1211
01:46:30,800 --> 01:46:35,760
that path of abandoning the basics and maybe they'll just say hey maybe we shouldn't do this so and

1212
01:46:35,760 --> 01:46:42,240
then like i have heard from the terry family um they they've really enjoyed reading it and getting

1213
01:46:42,240 --> 01:46:48,480
some answers and that to me was worth all the money in the world that they appreciated it

1214
01:46:48,480 --> 01:46:52,880
because like i said they were good people and they lost a hero and they deserve to know what happened

1215
01:46:54,400 --> 01:46:58,560
absolutely well speaking of the book then for people listening where are the best places to

1216
01:46:58,560 --> 01:47:05,440
find the book and or yourself on online sure the book is on amazon or wrote any of the major

1217
01:47:05,440 --> 01:47:11,520
retailers barnes and noble books a million target even has it it's not on a lot of shelves for some

1218
01:47:11,520 --> 01:47:16,560
reason but they have it so i you know so far the feedback has been good so you can check the reviews

1219
01:47:16,560 --> 01:47:20,480
if somebody chooses to read it please leave a review because that helps but as far as like

1220
01:47:20,480 --> 01:47:28,480
reaching out to me i have a website it's www peterjforseli.com so signed copies of the book can be

1221
01:47:28,480 --> 01:47:32,960
gotten there but i mean if somebody wants to reach out about like some of these conversations

1222
01:47:32,960 --> 01:47:39,520
about um you know surviving 9-eleven and you know just you know understanding the importance of

1223
01:47:39,520 --> 01:47:43,920
taking care of yourself you know i do speak for the coast guard for a couple other organizations

1224
01:47:43,920 --> 01:47:47,760
in the past and i'm open to doing that for others as well because i think it's important that we

1225
01:47:47,760 --> 01:47:52,400
take care of each other as a community you know i mean we're all in this together you know we're

1226
01:47:52,400 --> 01:47:57,120
all on this planet it's you know it's just important to look out for your fellow human being

1227
01:47:58,000 --> 01:48:02,880
i couldn't agree more well pete i want to thank you so so much it's been such an amazing conversation

1228
01:48:02,880 --> 01:48:06,640
you know and i think again some of the questions through the lens of someone who is in a senior

1229
01:48:06,640 --> 01:48:11,760
position in the atf that had stood up for what was right through their career that it stood on ground

1230
01:48:11,760 --> 01:48:16,640
zero for weeks and weeks and weeks um you know it's it's been invaluable so i want to thank you so

1231
01:48:16,640 --> 01:48:20,560
so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the behind the shield podcast today

1232
01:48:21,520 --> 01:48:24,960
oh it's been an honor james and listen thanks for what you're doing because i mean

1233
01:48:24,960 --> 01:48:29,120
you know some of the stuff especially with self-care and pdst you know that stuff awareness

1234
01:48:29,120 --> 01:48:42,000
it's it's vitally important so thank you for having me and god bless