This episode is sponsored by TeamBuildr, yet
another company that's doing great things for
the first responder community. As a strength
and conditioning coach myself who also trains
tactical athletes, dissemination of wellness
information is one of the biggest challenges.
Now TeamBuilder is the premier strength and conditioning
software for tactical athletes and there are
several features that really impress me. Firstly,
there is a full exercise library. So you, the
personal trainer, does not have to create that
within your own department. Secondly, you can
send out programming, but also individualize,
which I love. So you blanket program for everyone.
Now you can tweak based on someone's injury,
someone's need to maybe drop some body composition,
rather than having to write a program for every
single person on their own. TeamBuildr also
allows you to build custom questionnaires to
collate health and wellness data. It integrates
with wearables. And I think one of the most important
things is obviously it tracks. To me, it's imperative
that we as a profession start tracking our people
from day one and then over the full span of their
career, therefore catching potential wellness
issues and injuries before they happen. Now,
if you want to try TeamBuildr, they are offering
you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast,
a free 14 -day trial to experience all of the
features. And if you want to take a deeper dive
into Team Builder, listen to episode 1032 with
Melissa Mercado or go to teambuildr .com. And
I'll spell that to you because it's not as you
think, T -E -A -M -B -U -I -L -D -R .com. Welcome
to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always,
my name is James Geering, and this week it is
my absolute honor to welcome on the show Vietnam
veteran, former law enforcement officer, and
the author of Honorable Intentions, Russell Jones.
Now, Russell is definitely one of the most interesting
people I've had on the show, and I say that because
of the diverse spectrum of his career. From flying
helicopters in Vietnam, to working as a police
officer in California, then undercover intelligence
all over the world, including being part of a
team that uncovered Operation Tipped Kettle,
riding with the Hell's Angels, working as a forensic
expert in the psychological and physiological
effects of drugs and alcohol, and so, so much
more. Now, before we get to this incredible conversation,
as I say every week, please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe
to the show, Leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five -star rating truly does elevate
this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find. And this is a free library of
well over 1 ,100 episodes now. So all I ask in
return is that you help share these incredible
men and women's stories so I can get them to
every single person on planet Earth who needs
to hear them. So that being said... I introduce
to you, Russell Jones. Enjoy. Well, Russell,
I want to start by saying thank you so much for
taking the time and coming on the Behind the
Shield podcast today. Absolutely. It's my honor
to be here. I look forward to this. So where
on planet Earth are we finding you this afternoon?
I'm in the sunny, wonderful, beautiful Rolling
Hills in Texas on the Guadalupe River, right?
where all the drama was a couple of weeks ago
well talk to me about that as a resident in that
area you know what what were what were you know
the some of the sad stories you heard and then
some of the stories of heroism from someone who's
literally in that area well we were we're downstream
from canyon dam and the flooding was upstream
so we didn't we just knew we had a lot of rain
we woke up July 4th, thinking the day was normal.
And then, of course, started hearing all the
news. And I really don't know anymore. We didn't
see anything. We're less than an hour away, but
you knew not to drive up there. You were just
going to be in the way. And so we didn't know
any more about it than you did on the news. Gotcha.
And, of course, lots of story of heroism. Sadly,
though, a loss of life. I was talking to one
of my kind of, let's say friends, people that
I'm connected with online. And he was literally
at Guadalupe River as we were speaking with the
USAR team searching for people. And I think a
lot of times it seems like the media numbers
are woefully underreported. I know they're still
missing tens of people, I believe, at the moment.
So it's so sad. If you watch the footage of the
river dams breaking and then just rising through
some of these cities. Absolutely heartbreaking.
It's no wonder so many people were lost because
it was instantaneous almost. It's sad and people
not following protocol for situations like that.
We have an early warning system and the weather
service put out plenty of warnings that there
were going to be storms and flooding. One of
the problems is we hear this again and again
and again. Every time there's a rainstorm coming,
we get told possible flooding, you know, low
water crossings. And pretty soon it becomes kind
of, you hear it, but it just goes in one ear
and out the other as the old saying goes. And
then, of course, this time the warnings were
correct. I was literally having this conversation
yesterday with a group of men that I coach, and
there's women too, at the gym. And this particular
afternoon, we had a Florida storm blow in. So
one minute we're pushing metal sleds around.
The next minute lightning's hitting the cell
phone tower a few hundred feet away. And we're
like, okay, we need to not be pushing metal sleds
around now. But it's the same thing. I mean,
you know, you get these hurricanes come in and
all these, you know. Weather personalities, I
don't even know how well versed they are in meteorology,
but they become this kind of icon during the
hurricane and there's kind of fear mongering
going on. And I think sometimes we get way too
much information rather than, you know, when
it when it's deemed truly necessary, then you
give these reports rather than this kind of,
oh, there might be something coming because it
does. It just numbs people to the reality of
something really serious. Exactly. Exactly. uh
the news dramatizes um of course they want you
to they want you to watch and read so um they
dramatize it absolutely all right well let's
go to the very beginning of your timeline you
have pretty incredible kind of life stories so
tell me where you were born and tell me a little
bit about your family dynamic what your parents
did how many siblings I was born in the San Francisco,
San Jose Bay Area. A little background before
that, though. My father was stationed at Camp
Rucker, Alabama. And Sunday afternoon, they weren't
training. He was a sergeant training advanced
infantry. And Sunday afternoon, nothing going
on. But, of course, the attack on Pearl Harbor
occurred. drama, getting everybody ready. Their
whole division was to be loaded up on train,
sent to New York, from New York to the South
Pacific. My father's company and just his company
got misplaced on the train and they ended up
in California. And the Army didn't have time
to fool with them. This was the beginning of
the war. The Army had other things to do. So
my dad and his company bivouacked in downtown
San Jose, St. James Park, until they finally
sent them to Camp Roberts or Hunter Leggett,
which is in the Monterey area of California,
where they began training replacements. But it
was because of that. My father was introduced
to, he was born and raised in Tennessee, very
poor. He would never experience California otherwise.
But I like to call it the broken shoelace theory
or the sliding door theory. But for this little
innocuous event, how your life can go different
directions, how this little innocuous event.
My dad never saw action in World War II, obviously,
therefore wasn't wounded, and came back and settled
in California where I was born. So we were in
San Jose until I was about kindergarten. But
I remember watching my father ride to work on
a bicycle. He dug trenches and ditches, septic
tanks by hand back then. Around six or so when
we moved to Los Gatos. And Los Gatos, Saratoga,
Campbell, that's where I was raised for the rest
of my life, grew up. And my dad began his own
pest control service. Finally got a pickup. I
remember it was an old yellow beat -up 40s yellow
pickup. Started his own pest control business,
and from there he became very successful. But
he was also very involved in the Baptist church,
and he became an ordained minister. And when
I was 12, 13 range, well, when I was supposed
to be in seventh and eighth grade, we were missionaries
in Recife, Brazil, helping to establish a girls'
orphanage. So I never went to junior high school.
Which I regret because I missed out on a lot
of youth sports and things like that in those
development years. But when we returned from
missionary work, I entered my freshman year of
high school and we attended church. Everything
was church. The church made sure that they had
an activity going on the same night the schools
were having activities. So we had Boys Brigade
instead of... being able to go to Boy Scouts.
The church was always going skating or miniature
golf. Anytime the school was having a school
dance. So wasn't active in high school, didn't
really know a lot of people in high school. I
think socially, I think that hurt a little bit,
not growing up, being active in school and everything.
Unsupervised. I was always in trouble, constantly
in trouble. Before we moved from San Jose, there
was Santana Road today is a huge shopping center.
Well, back in the early 50s, it was a big grass
field. And I, playing with matches, making a
forward, I started that field on fire. Fire engines
came, and of course, someone saw me scooting
home, so I got caught. The only time I got caught,
by the way, in my shenanigans. In today's world,
I would have been maybe still diagnosed ADHD.
I disagree with the trend today in pathologizing
personalities. But yeah, what do we have? 300
disorders in the DSM today. The first edition
had 106. So over that short period of time, they
keep adding. We're diagnosing personalities is
one of my complaints about that. Exacerbating
medical treatment. I can remember the satanic
cult panic in the 80s. 12 ,000 unsubstantiated
cases were reported back then. What else? We
had other things. Oh, dissociative disorders,
multiple personalities. That was a big deal back
in the 90s. Growing up in high school, not a
good student. I couldn't sit still. I needed
to be doing things. And I used to make pipe bombs.
Back then in the early 60s, I could ride my bicycle
into Los Gatos, go to a pharmacy and buy everything
I needed to make pipe bombs. All the ingredients,
which they carry in pharmacies today. Pharmacies
are completely different today. But, you know,
I got potassium nitrate, sulfur, powdered charcoal.
I'd roll it out in a wet mixture and I would
dry it in my mom's oven in the house. I look
back and go, are you kidding? I'd make pipe bombs.
Just take a six inch piece of pipe, put a cap
on one end. The other cap, I'd drill a hole in
it for a fuse. Fill it with my homemade pipe,
my homemade gunpowder. I'd go out in the orchard.
We lived on five acres of orchards, mostly prune,
but we had peach, cherry. plums, apricots, but
I'd find an old dead prune tree and I'd bury
that pipe and of course I'd blow it up and I
had a lot of fun. It was great. One of my other
fun things to do is I learned how to make hydrogen
at home and I'd take a large coke bottle and
I'd make the hydrogen in that coke bottle and
put a large balloon on the top and as the hydrogen
filled up the balloon when it got full, I'd tie
it off. And then I'd attach a fuse to it, and
then I'd let it go in the neighborhood. And it'd
get up about 100, 200 feet and, of course, explode
in this big, cumulus, billowing cloud of fire
with a loud roar. Of course, the neighbors would
see it. They'd call in the cops. The cops would
come in looking to find out what's going on.
You know, did you see anything? Uh -uh. I had
fun. Just blowing things up, causing trouble.
Graduated from high school, just C's. Just a
solid C student. And so when I entered West Valley
College, which was there in Campbell, California,
I had no clue. No clue what I wanted to do. But
John Morgan, great guy. Chief John Morgan of
Campbell Police Department ran the administration
of justice program. And he talked me into going
into the admin of justice program. And I loved
it. A's and B's, solid A's and B's. But I had
graduated high school at only 17. So when I graduated
two years of college, I was only 19. I was a
long way away from being able to be hired by
a police department. A lot of my buddies that
were with me, Dan Jensen, Roger Malcolm, Mitch
Handa, those guys, they were within a year of
being able to be hired. And so they were able
to start the testing program, go through what
needed to be done. I had already had my pilot's
license. I had gotten my pilot's license the
same year I got my driver's license. And first
in gliders, then fixed wings. So I wanted to
go. I knew I was going to get drafted. At that
age, something's going to come up. So I went
to the Air Force. I went to the Navy. And they
said, no, you need a four -year degree. So then
I went to the Army. And I went in to the Army
recruiting. And I said, how about military police?
I got a two -year degree in administration and
justice. And they said, yeah. And they start
putting out the paperwork because they're anxious
to sign someone up. And I noticed a poster on
the wall, Army helicopters. I said, do I need
a four -year degree to fly Army helicopters?
They said, oh, no. Two -year degree and you're
already a pilot? Again, they're all anxious.
We test on Saturday. Get you signed up. Off to
Mineral Wells, Texas for primary helicopter school.
Then we had Fort Rucker, Fort Rucker, Camp Rucker
back when my dad was in the Army. It's now Fort
Rucker, home of Army Aviation, but went through
Fort Rucker, Alabama, graduated as a warrant
officer, helicopter pilot. I married Susan. high
school sweetheart, and then I was off to Vietnam.
There we go. Excitement, blowing things up, shooting
things. I was looking forward to it. I was assigned
to the 196th Light Infantry Brigade, and that
was part of the Americal Division. And our aviation
unit had only four helicopters, two Hueys and
two LOHs. And the LOHs were scout helicopters
going back. Small helicopters that dated back
to the Korean War. I wasn't real excited about
that I was going to be flying those, but we flew
command and control for the brigade commander.
We flew ashen transmissions with the Hueys. With
the OH -23s, we flew liaison. personnel because
you could only carry one or two passengers between
division headquarters, brigade, or up to the
Korean unit or up to the 1st Mar Division, which
we bordered up there just south of Da Nang. But
we had one assignment that I loved. I volunteered
for it every time I could, and we flew scouts
for the 1st Mar Div. So we'd spent a whole week
up at the first Mars Day. We're looking for those
122 millimeter rocket sites. And those are the
rockets that they can fire from quite a distance
away. They land on the airports. They would land
in town. They were pretty indiscriminate about
where they would land. So I love that mission.
Low level. I mean, as low as you can get to the
ground. In between bushes, hopping over tree
lines. Caught. and dispatched via Kong on numerous
occasions, sometimes even NVA soldiers. Someone
asked me recently, what's it like to kill someone?
And I've never been asked that before. When you're
first in combat, it's stressful, but it's exciting.
Guys like me, it was exciting. There's nothing
more thrilling. For a guy like me to be shot
at and missed, it's great. And I love the combat.
So for me, when at first, when I had to dispatch,
take out a VC or an MBA, I was killing someone
who was going to harm other American soldiers
if I didn't take him out. That's the way I looked
at it. Other occasions, they're shooting at you.
You're shooting at them. You get a heck of a
gunfight going on. And so you're returning fire.
You're protecting yourself. You're defending
yourself. And, of course, the enemy ends up getting
killed. But, you know, how do you describe an
enemy soldier that is in a small area of bushes,
and you catch him, so he starts shooting at you.
You shoot back. Gunfire, dirt and dust flying
up. All of a sudden he gets up and he runs away
and he doesn't have his weapon. But he seems
to be carrying something in his arm. And it seems
to be dragging behind him like a big rope. And
when you swoop in again to finish off, you realize
he's carrying his intestines. You're sick. The
nauseous feeling that floods your body. There's
a form of stress. It's not easy sitting over
dinner to describe these events, which is probably
why a lot of people who've been in combat, their
family complains, well, he never talks about
it. That's why. I had an epiphany. About nine
months in, I was beginning to sense the futility
of that war. which, by the way, was measured
not by territory seized, not the way World War
II was fought or the Korean War was fought, but
it was a war of attrition. In 1800s, Carl von
Clausewitz, he declared that a war of attrition
was the pit of hell. In February of 69, I was
flying scouts for the 1st Marine Division south
of Marble Mountain. I caught a whole squad of
NVA who were sneaking up to attack a Marine patrol
unit. Once they knew we knew where they were
at, they shot at us. We fired back. We eventually
killed four and wounded one, which we took prisoner.
When I visually cleared the area out, I did as
I usually do. I landed and took all the weapons
off there. prisoners. And I, of course, looked
for paperwork. The weapons were great for trading
later from the Navy guys, cases of stakes and
stuff like that. But the NVA lieutenant was dead,
but on his person when I was going through his
paperwork were pictures of his wife and children.
And I realized then that I The American soldier,
I was no different than the French who had been
there years before or the Japanese who had occupied
Vietnam during World War II. I was no different
than that French soldier. That lieutenant was
serving his country honorably. I was the intruder.
I was a member of a foreign military invading
his country. That epiphany, that realization.
I found disturbing and stressful. And I didn't
want to fly scouts anymore. I didn't want any
more killing. I didn't want any more shooting.
And because I had seniority, I was able to be
assigned to the Hueys, flying what we call picnic
missions for the rest of my tour. I was down
to two months left. So on March 7th, 1969, I
was... Made two flights. There was a unit, Delta
Company, 3rd of the 21st, was in heavy combat.
They needed medevacs. None were available. I
was in the area. So I flew in twice into that
hot LZ and in and out, in and out. Recovered
10 wounded. But on that last mission, we had
over 50 holes in the helicopter. I was wounded
through the knee, through the calf. My door gunner
was wounded badly. In fact, everyone was wounded
except my co -pilot. In the Army, we call them
aircraft commander and pilot. So Terry was not
one of the only ones. But we made it back safe,
got the wounded off. I immediately had to go
into the medevac station and was sent to Da Nang
where they operated on me. They sent me to Camp
Zama, Japan, where I recovered a bit. And then
I was home. You know, our soldiers in Vietnam
served with honor. But what we didn't know at
the time was that Vietnam was a failed policy.
And after the war, all the major architects,
Robert McNamara, on down, admitted that the war
was a failed policy. A failed policy that resulted
in 58 ,000 deaths. That's a stress, all our soldiers,
the stress of knowing that you'd been over there
fighting in a war that was a failed policy, that
they knew was a failed policy. I was discharged
in 1970. Susan and I had a son, Joey, hired by
the San Jose Police Department. We had no academy
back then. This would be 1970. No academy, no
field training program. I was just sworn in by
Chief Blackmore, given a badge and told to go
be a cop. I worked a couple of weeks with a partner,
a senior officer, and then I was on my own working
a one -man car. And I know guys don't like to
hear this. I'm sure it's the same way in the
fire department. No one, none of the new guys
in the fire department want it. when I hear the
stories about how it was back when I was a fireman.
We had to pump our water by hand. We worked a
one -man car and we did not have cell radios.
We didn't have radios back then. We didn't have
cell phones either. So when you got out of your
car back then, you were on your own. You handled
it. I had rape cases. I arrested armed robbers.
I had to step over the crispy bodies of victims
from house fires. It was all police work. It's
the stress and trauma that comes from police
work. I had a hot chase where the suspect hit
me with his car, spun around on the road, and
came back at me again. He was definitely trying
to take me out. I shot him. He lived. More stress.
We were working 10 -hour shifts. So we worked
four days a week, 10 to 8. Because I was low
seniority, I worked midnights, 10 to 8. So you'd
get off at 10 in the morning. That last night
off, you work four days. Your last night off,
you get off at 8 in the morning. Well, now you
stay up all day. So that you can get back on
the regular cycle. So that's one day without
sleep. You go to sleep. Then you get two good
days of sleep. And then you're back at, it's
a day to go to work. Well, usually you've got
things to do. You're not tired. You stay up all
day and then you show up for work and you stay
up all night. Sleep deprivation. probably not
as serious as it is in the fire department, but
for those guys working those night shifts, it's
an issue. Two officers killed while I was on
San Jose, and one was a personal friend, Gordy
Silva, and another homeless man who had fallen
through the ever -widening cracks in society
where we find so many people a day. It was during
that time Nixon had declared the war on drugs.
As a police officer, I didn't see any evidence
of a drug problem, except for alcohol. Early
on, I had been working maybe a couple of weeks,
one -man car. I had an accident, 2, 2 .30, 3
in the morning, a car had hit a telephone pole.
No other cars were involved. I told communications,
you know, I'm present. I'm fine. Don't look like
I need help or anything. Walked up to the driver
and he had eaten the steering wheel. He was all
bloody and he was eyes glazed over. I knew he
was drunk. And I look through the window and
I see his passenger and she appeared to be unconscious.
So I went around the passenger side door, opened
it up and she just fell out onto the pavement.
And she was wearing a wedding gown. This was
the bride and groom. And cars are passing me,
honking their horns, blowing, you know, whistling,
yelling. They thought I just stopped a car. They
didn't even recognize it was the bride and groom.
Unfortunately, she passed away. When I went to
the hospital, she was already gone. Apparently,
she had. hit her forehead on the windshield and
broken her neck. Sad. I saw more problems with
alcohol than I did with drugs, no offense or
both. I worked as a K -9 officer for a while.
Then I became a field training officer. We just
had started the field training program in San
Jose. And by the way, San Jose Police Department's
FTO program is now the standard. across the state
of California and with many police departments
across the United States. Well, I had barely
been on the department three years when I was
transferred to the narcotics division. And all
the talk about the war on drugs, I thought, now
here's a war I can sink my teeth into, so to
speak. And I was put on the major violator team.
We had three teams in our narcotics unit. One
was what we called the street detail. And that
was three cops, three or four cops. I forget
how many were on the team. And they were clean
cut, but they wore civilian clothes and they
drove around in unmarked cars. Their job was
to go out and find people who were using drugs
under the influence of drugs, interview people
in jail who had been arrested for drugs. Of course,
their job was to find someone who would roll
over and say, I'll introduce you to my dealer
because I don't want to go to jail. The other
team was the buy team. And the buy team, they
were undercover. And depending on what type of
drug they were buying, and by the way, not every
undercover cop can buy every kind of drug. It's
kind of interesting, but you get your little
niches that you're good at. uh so they would
dress appropriately and they would uh if if the
street detail found someone who would turn informant
then the bike team would take them and they'd
go make buys and of course they'd try to work
themselves up the chain when they got so far
to where it was they they had the potential to
really make a big buy like a pound of cocaine
back then two pounds of cocaine sixty thousand
dollars They would then come to the major violator
team. We were all so undercover, looking skanky.
But I only dealt with large major cases. And
we started making headlines in the sense of the
American news right off the bat. Headlines like,
and I keep them all, $60 ,000 in cocaine seized,
you know. I had boughten drugs and infiltrated
the Nuestra Familia and exposed them as a major
street gang headquartered in San Jose. You know,
we'd have pictures in the, you've seen them,
pictures in the newspaper with a table full of
dope, guns, and money, and the chief of police
standing back there, and the district attorney
standing back there, and they're talking about
the major dent they made in the drug narcotics,
the network. And we narcotics officers, standing
off to the side out of view of the cameras, a
couple of us would glance at each other and smirk
because we knew that by arresting drug dealers,
all we were doing is creating a job opening.
And when there's a job opening and there's a
fight for it, there's violence. Guns, shooting,
violence. Everyone wanted to be that next dealer
that you just took out. Gang violence through
the war on drugs really began to escalate about
two or three years after we started the war on
drugs. It really began to escalate. I had a fellow
police officer, Ted, was working. The buy team.
And he came to me one day and he says, hey, you
know, you're going to buy methamphetamine, which,
by the way, cocaine and methamphetamine were
the two drugs that I was best at. He said, I
got this gal and she says she can take us to
a ounce and more dealer of methamphetamine. So
I said, well, let's go talk to her. He had her
in an interrogation room. So we go off the interrogation
room and here's this. thin, skanky, needle marks
all over her, pimples, unwashed hair. And I said,
okay, who can you buy from? And she says, well,
the reason she wanted to turn, by the way, was
to keep her husband out of jail. Ted had bought
drugs from him and he had been in prison before,
so he was going away. So she wanted to turn evidence
to keep him from going to prison and to keep
him local. She started crying and bawling and
all this and that. She says, well, do you know
who Bill Perky is? Whoa, whoa. The hairs on the
back of my neck stood up because Bill Perky was
the vice president of the San Jose chapter of
the Hells Angels. So, yes. So I ended up buying.
She introduced me. I ended up buying drugs from
Bill Perky, amphetamine. But then she introduced
me to someone else, this guy named Thornton.
Thornton was a Hell's Angel wannabe. He dealt
a lot of their drugs. And so I came up with this
idea. I'm going to flash some automatic handguns,
which were just new, by the way. They were just
coming out. Law enforcement hadn't even switched
over to the 9mm automatics yet. But I checked
two out of the armory. Took him over to his house.
I flashed him. He went bonkers, being a typical
meth head, running around like a chicken with
his head off and flapping his arms. And oh, wow.
And oh, wow. So, of course, he mentioned it to
the Hells Angels that I could get him guns, which
I said I could. And then in another fluke, I
had met Dirty Doug Bontempi, a Hells Angel, through
another case. So now Dirty Doug has seen me.
While Bill Perky is seeing me, they start inviting
me around. So now I'm what's called a hanger
-on -er. And we'd ride the motorcycles over to
a bar and hang out and drink and talk. And there
would always be a – they never – as a group,
I never saw them talk drugs or anything like
that. They did want to buy guns. I also met Al
Pizarro. Altamont Alpizarro. Altamont. Does that
ring a bell? It does here in Florida. Altamont
was in California, the Altamont Racetrack. The
Rolling Stones did a big concert there in 69.
And Hells Angels were hired to do security. And
during the Rolling Stones concert, while Mick
Jagger's up there on stage. Trying to be nice
here. A guy made a bad decision and climbed up
on the stage with a gun. And Pizarro stabbed
him to death. So that was his nickname, Al Pizarro.
He was found not guilty, by the way, a jury.
They tried to try him for murder, but the jury
saw the footage. The whole concert was being
filmed. So you see this guy climbing up on stage
with a gun. He was found not guilty. I met him.
That case went on, I want to say, a couple of
years. And by the time it was done, working with
ATF and some DEA guys, we arrested 33 members
of the Hells Angels. One big roundup. The federal
attorneys wanted to do it as a RICO case, which
is Racketeer to Influence Criminal Organization,
which I was against because I, at least from
my testimony, would be any evidence I had, I
didn't see the Hells Angels as an organization
committing any crimes. You had all these individuals.
In my argument, let's try the individuals. Individually,
convict them. And sends them. But trying to do
the whole club, I didn't think that was going
to work. And guess what? It didn't work. I had
no way to tie individual crimes to the Hells
Angels. Neither did any ATF agent. The Rico case
fell apart. The jury hung. But every Hells Angel
that I personally had a case against, Dirty Doug,
Wild Bill, Altamont All, Sergey Walton, Jim Brandes.
Jim Jim Brandes, they were all found guilty.
So from my point of view, it was a very successful
case. Think about working undercover, if we can
go there for a minute. Working undercover, riding
Harleys, drinking, on the job, talking the talk.
They want you to walk like a duck, talk like
a duck. act like a duck, and pretty soon you
become a duck. You're hanging around with these
guys, you're taught, you're swearing, you're
drinking more than you normally drink, you're
hanging out. The Journal of Police and Criminal
Psychology did a qualitative study and found
that the secrecy required in undercover assignments
leads to high levels of stress. and difficulties
in maintaining personal relationships. And bingo.
Yeah. In the middle of all that, I got divorced.
I'm coming home looking like hell, looking like
a dirty biker who hasn't bathed in two weeks.
I stink. I've been drinking. My language has
been bringing that language home. Susan and I
unfortunately divorced. I married again, Lucy
Verunda, but I'm still working undercover, still
living in a world of deceit, and was soon divorced
again. You know, when I first came into law enforcement,
I treated everyone with respect. until they prove
themselves an asshole. And you reach a point
in law enforcement, most cops do, after a few
years, where pretty much you initially treat
everyone as an asshole until they prove themselves
worthy of respect. Pretty soon for me, I remember
one night, I'm riding through Los Gatos on my
Harley, coming home late at night, and I got
stopped by a Los Gatos cop. And I remember thinking,
what does this asshole want? I mean, even the
cops have become assholes to me. I remember one
night looking in the mirror. I was single then,
second time. Single, looking in the mirror after
all this. And I looked at myself in the mirror
and I saw an asshole. The war on drugs was a
failed policy. What I was doing was a failed
policy. Didn't feel good about myself. Early
in my tour at NARCO, if you go way back to the
beginning, they put me TDY to the FBI for a few
weeks. And I was running around, following up
on leads throughout the whole Bay Area, looking
for Patty Hearst. And I had studied her picture.
I studied the pictures of all the guys who supposedly
kidnapped her, she was running around with. So
I'd ride around on the Harley, and I'd go up
to the home where someone had reported that maybe
she was at. And I'd knock on the door, and I'd
say, hey, I'm looking for some girl, Sherry,
who owes me money. Nothing ever came of that,
other than it came to the attention of the FBI.
They liked what I did. And then, of course, the
Hells Angels case certainly brought my attention
to the FBI. So in 1980, an FBI agent introduced
me to a State Department intelligence officer
by the name of Siegel. And he wanted me to fly
helicopters in South America and gather intel
on the Contra War, which was just beginning in
Nicaragua. I didn't know much about it. But the
Nicaragua war basically was the communists were
taking over Nicaragua and the Contras were fighting,
didn't want the communists in there. During President
Carter's term, apparently he had really reduced
intel capacity throughout all our agencies. And
Reagan wanted us involved with the Contras. He
wanted them to be funded. State Department, I
guess it would be the State Department of Research
and Intelligence wanted boots on the ground.
And so I said, I'll do it. I want to do it. I
like the idea of getting back in helicopter.
I like the idea of a bigger picture, fighting
communism down in Central America, much closer
to home. I started going down there. I was considered
a not, by the way, non -official cover. So I
had no ties to anything. It was really important.
Well, I'll get in that in a minute, but back
up here. Congress had passed the Boland Agreement,
Amendment, I'm sorry, which cut off all the funds
for the Reagan administration to the Contras.
But Reagan wanted to support the Contras. So
the CIA, along with all the North Gang, secretly
started funding the Contras. They were selling,
against the international law, they were selling
major missiles to Iran, then using that money
to support the Contras in their fight against
the Sandinistas. And of course, what I wasn't
told... Being a contract, I was a contract employee.
And in intelligence, it's very narrow. Your window
of what you get to know or what you're told is
very narrow. So I didn't really know. But apparently
the CIA was not communicating with the State
Department. The State Department wanted to know
where all these small arms were coming from.
Apparently the contractors were getting... AK
-47s, they were getting grenades, they were getting
handguns. Where were these coming from? So the
State Department wanted to know, they wanted
to find out how the weapons were being smuggled
in Central America. And if you want to know that,
then you follow the established drug smuggling
routes. And I guess that's where they thought
I could come in and be of assistance to them.
I sailed down to Costa Rica nonstop, San Francisco
to Costa Rica, three weeks at sea. This was before
GPS, by the way, so I'm basically navigating
with a sextant, not much more than what Columbus
had. And showed up in Costa Rica as a boat bum,
a prior Army helicopter pilot, a former cop.
Every bit of my story had to be true. except
for the one item of talking to Siegel. Every
bit had to be true because the guys I was going
to be infiltrating down there had the ability
to check out my background thoroughly, completely.
Not like infiltrating the Hells Angels. These
guys had the means. I did some familiarity flights
in the helicopter. Never did any missions at
all. Flew fixed wing all over the country, though.
I traveled around northern Costa Rica on the
ground. I met Bill Crone, John Hull, Bruce Jones.
All these guys are CIA operatives. Admit it.
I mean, they said they were contract employees
for the CIA. John Hull is very well known. You
can Google him. and his background with the CIA
down during the Iran -Contra thing in Costa Rica.
I met and hung around with a lot of Cuban operatives,
guys who were working for Felix Rodriguez, also
known as Alex Gomez. He was Bay of Pigs. He was
the one who captured Che Guevara. He had flown
missions in Vietnam. He joined the army and became
a helicopter pilot and flew. This guy was something
else. These Cubans, they were tough guys. They
would not have tolerated what I was attempting
to find out if they knew. The Cubans arranged
a Costa Rican business visa for me, so it was
real easy for me to come and go from Costa Rica.
anytime I wanted to because of the type of visa
I had. Over the next several years, back and
forth, Honduras, the airport at Il Pongo, El
Salvador, of course, Costa Rica. I ran into pilots
who were flashing DEA credentials or CIA credentials,
claiming they were flying food and weapons to
the Contras. And then They would talk about flying
drugs back to the U .S. into Maine, Arkansas,
and Florida. A good example of that, by the way,
if you haven't watched it, the movie American
Made, the movie about Barry Seals, who was the
pilot who got caught. He was doing that, flying
supplies one way, flying drugs the other way.
I always thought those were false credentials
that were being flashed to me. I suspect that
they may have been contract employees like I
was, but they weren't employees with IDs. I told
Siegel about this, the drug smuggling and all
the evidence that I built up on these guys. And
he says, no, he says, you're not a cop. We're
not interested in that. We want to know where
the guns are coming from. So running around northern
Costa Rica border with Bruce Jones. In fact,
in Life Magazine, February 85 issue of Life Magazine,
there's a whole article on Bruce Jones and his
running around on the border there. So I was
running around with him. And one day we're with
this ragtag so -called army of Contras. They
look like a joke to me. I couldn't believe that
this was a CIA operation. But I saw these crates
of AK -47s. And on the markings on the crate
were, I guessed, were Arabic. And so I busted
up one crate. I told Bruce that, hey, I need
this crate. I'm going to... In fact, his wife
had given me a rug. I said, I want to... pack
that rug up and ship it home. He never thought
anything of it. So I packed that crate up, but
I put the crate busted up in my luggage, flew
it home, and one of my meetings with Siegel,
I turned it over to him. And he, very pleasantly
surprised, apparently I hit the nail on the head
for what he was looking for. Those weapons turned
out to be part of Ollie Norris' operation called
Tipped Kettle. And that was an operation. In
1983, they transferred, Israel transferred the
Contras 300 metric tons of weapons and ammunition.
They did it again in 84, 100 containers full.
$30 to $40 million worth of guns donated by the
Israels in return. Now, what Israel wanted was
increased military assistance in what they were
doing in fighting the Arabs. So all this underhanded
stuff going on. CIA is not telling the State
Department what it's doing. CIA is not telling
the CIA what it's doing. We had a bombing in
Costa Rica in 1984, and it was an attempt on
leader. Pastora. And after that happened, Siegel
said, you need to get out. You've done your job.
Shit's going to hit the fan was his words. So
he wanted me to disappear. He wanted me to be
unable to be contacted by the news media and
by politicians who are looking to discredit the
Reagan administration. So with a girlfriend,
I sailed from San Francisco, a different boat
now, sailed from San Francisco to the Sea of
Cortez. So we lived 85 through the winter, through
the spring of 86 in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico,
just hanging out, staying away from everybody.
I wasn't contacting anybody. What a great life.
After a while, that got old. I went up to Northern
California where I bought a little ranch. hung
out there for a while, but you know, wasn't hearing
from anybody, staying away from friends and family.
Then, so I started going back to San Jose, but
that's when CIA operative Hassan Fuss got shot
down. Now, Hassan Fuss was a crew member on these
planes flying food and supplies into the countries.
Well, I don't know what Hassan Fuss was flying
back, but he was shot down. He was caught by
the communists. He was captured. That hit the
news and shit hit the fan, so to speak, because
the whole Reagan thing, the whole Ali North thing,
everything's exposed. The Cristic Institute started
looking for me. Most people don't know who the
Cristic Institute was. It was a public interest
law firm. And they had represented the cases
in Silkwood involving Three Mile Island, health
issues dealing with nuclear facilities. But for
some reason, they were really interested in nailing
the CIA and the Reagan administration on this
whole Iran -Contra thing. Office of Maxine Waters
was after me. Some guy from her office was trying
to track me down, leaving messages, trying to
call. Gary Webb was a reporter who wrote a book
called Dark Alliance. And in that book stirred
a lot of controversy because he suggested that
the CIA was aware of drug trafficking by its
contract employees. So in 87, I testified at
a closed -door hearing before a Senate subcommittee.
Interesting, one side of that table only wanted
to know about government assets running drugs,
which I testified I had no direct knowledge of.
They were looking for intel to discredit the
Reagan administration. No one wanted to ask questions
about Israel's involvement. I guess politically,
it was a sensitive topic for both sides of the
aisle. 88 State Department set me up with the
Office of International Criminal Justice, University
of Illinois. And they had established a program
with the Soviet Ministry of Interior so law enforcement
could go over there and exchange ideas and visit
and kind of work with Soviet law enforcement.
So I, official cover, of course, under that program
that the Soviet Union had set up. I work with
Soviet narcotics officers all over Russia, Leningrad,
Moscow, Ukraine, the border of Turkey. Now, remember,
this was before the fall of the Iron Curtain.
This was still the Soviet Union. What I saw was
a low economic status for all citizens over there.
It was a poor, broken country. An example. They
wanted to show me Gump's department store. I
think it was called Gump's. And there was a long
line of people waiting. It's a big department
store, like we would see a Macy's or something.
But there was a big line to get in. And so they
said, oh, we're not going to get in. Too big
a line. So one of the guys, though, one of the
Soviet police officers, everyone was playing
close, jumped out, ran up to find out what was
going on in the... in the store. Excuse me there.
He came back and said, everyone's in line. The
store has shoes. That's all it has today, shoes.
And everyone's buying shoes. And I noticed a
big crowd of people off to the side where people
would come out of the store and join that crowd.
And they explained to me, you go into the store.
Once you get in line, you go into the store.
you go to the counter you buy a pair of shoes
they give you a pair of shoes regardless of what
size you wore then you went outside of the crowd
and you start changing and bidding to trying
to find someone who had a pair size you wanted
and it was a ridiculous system it was falling
apart police the police officers We went to drug
-related crimes. I mean, I would say, okay, come
on, guys, you know, let's do something. Let's
go to, let's do some police work. And so I kind
of, all they wanted to do was eat and drink.
But I said, you know, we went to a meth lab.
And as soon as they looked, meth lab, yeah, we
know where one's at. I'm like, well, come on,
let's go see a meth lab. So we raided meth labs.
We visited drug rehab programs. We went to the
scene of drug violent crimes. But none of the
police officers, whether it be uniform or the
detectives, wanted to make an arrest. And their
supervisors didn't get involved. The attitude
over there was we pretend to work and they pretend
to pay us. And I just saw, I didn't know it at
the time. I had no idea that we were months away
from the wall falling. But I could see why. I
came home from the Soviet Union, though. I came
home from behind the Iron Curtain. If the Soviet
Union cannot control illegal drugs, then how
are we in the U .S. living in freedom ever going
to solve the war on drugs? In 89... Again, through
the Office of International Criminal Justice,
the State Department sent me to China, Beijing,
Shanghai, Chengdu, Tibet, which is a great place
if you ever get a chance to go. It's not a tourist
spot. There's no five -star hotels. It's a great
place to visit. The State Department wanted boots
on the ground to observe not only the drug problem
in China, but they wanted visual confirmation
of Chinese troops in Tibet. This was at a time
China was pretty much denying that they had troops
in Tibet. So, yeah, I was able to track down
troops, take pictures of them, you know, the
old secret stuff, hide the film. But on the drug
issue in the big cities, I would talk to businessmen
and they'd say, yeah, there's guys who use cocaine
and amphetamines on the job to stay awake, long
hours of business, stuff like that. But on the
streets, I saw no evidence of drug use or drug
abuse in China. None. China does not condone
criminal behavior, period. And crime is dealt
harshly. Drug trafficking carries a death sentence.
While I was over there, they invited me to an
execution of some drug dealers. And no, I didn't
need to see that. An interesting side note here,
China's prisons kind of run like the military.
Everyone is up early. You go to breakfast. Everyone
works at the company. By the way, every prison
in China is a company. China, the government,
does not give any money to a prison. The prison
warden is really running a company. And in Chengdu,
the prison I went to had a 12 -foot wall with
a single strand of barbed wire on top, and that
was it. Could have easily escaped. The problem
with China is the way they control everything.
You can't just show up somewhere and start living.
It would be hard to be on the run in China. And
the third offense, of course, trying to escape
from prison is a death penalty. So everyone works.
Everyone works. At lunchtime, they played recreational
games like softball. Then back to work, they'd
have dinner together. Everyone went to classes
in the evening. Everyone. And when I asked about
what kind of classes, the answer I got in the
broken translation, but basically civics, how
Chinese government works, how your officials
become officials, how laws are made, why you
need to obey the law, why we do this, just basic
civics. There was no hanging around the yard,
no lifting weights, no reading in the library,
no playing cards. Everybody worked. And the success
of that company where they were working depended
on the quality of the food they ate, the clothes
they wore. It was an interesting, I like that
concept. You know, I can already hear people
saying, oh, that's prison labor, you know, slave
labor. Well, I don't know. You committed a crime.
You're paying for that crime. I don't understand
what the big deal is. Go to work. So law enforcement
is serving honorably in the war on drugs. All
our law enforcement officers, local, state, DEA.
I think it's a failed policy, though. Drugs today
are cheaper. They're more available, they're
stronger, more lethal than they were when the
war on drugs was declared in 71. In today's environment,
besides the normal trauma, you know, police,
firefighters, military soldiers, they live with
an additional stress caused by their superiors
who throw them under the bus for political reasons.
I mean, we could bring up, not to get into politics,
but we could bring up... What happened with politicians
and chiefs of police in Minneapolis, recently
carrying bass in LA in the conflict with the
firefighters there. I picture the loved ones
of people who died during prohibition, alcohol
prohibition. People who died either because of
the bad booze, they were forced to drink if they
were going to drink booze. They died because
of the violence. I picture them hugging each
other back then when prohibition was lifted and
saying, why? Why did we have alcohol prohibition
to begin with? And after Vietnam, loved ones
of those who were killed or wounded, when that
war was over, had to ask why. Hold each other
and say, why? Why did we have that war to begin
with? Especially now that we know that they knew
it was a failed policy. Someday I expect that
the loved ones of those who've died in the war
on drugs, not only the drug addicts, but police
officers killed and raids have gone wrong and
shootings, civilians, as I said, they're going
to hold each other and say, why? Why did we have
this war on drugs? And the stress, not only they,
not only that. soldiers, police officers, firemen.
How do you live with that stress? How do you
deal with it? I became active in the drug courts.
When I was all done with the State Department
and all that, I became pretty active in drug
courts and developed a 13 -week program. And
it came more from a cognitive point of view than,
say, an AA. In fact, I got a lot of static from
AA, a lot of static from my program. But, you
know, I come from the point of view, what if
one thought? could make your day or if one thought
could make your week? How about if one thought
could forever transform the quality of your life?
Because what does stress do? It keeps us from
being happy. And that's what we want. Most people
think that their life results from their circumstances,
what's happened to them. Sadly, this is true
for most people. My life is this because of that
and this because of that. I believe that if we
could know intellectually, but also experientially,
that we are the creators of our realities, transform
the quality of our life. As I said, happiness,
stress and trauma get in the way of happiness.
Aristotle wrote over, what, 2 ,300 years ago,
2 ,400 years ago? Aristotle wrote that happiness
is the ultimate purpose of human existence. Happiness
is the only thing we desire for its own sake.
In other words, the objective of happiness is
happiness. How do we define happiness? We know
it when we feel it. Joseph Campbell described
happiness as feeling the rapture of being alive.
But how do we achieve lasting happiness, especially
when we've been through the stress and trauma
that our jobs as military men, firefighters,
and police officers have had? We don't even know
who we are. We ask people who they are, and they
give us their business card. Or today, they refer
us to their Facebook page. We do not find happiness.
We think it's where we live, it's the job I have.
You know, I ask someone who they are, well, I
got this job on the police force, or I'm a fireman
for this county. They think their happiness depends
on their position, where they live. I have this
home in this neighborhood. I have this job. And
I'm happy, but that of course doesn't last very
long because pretty soon it's, you get settled
into that, that group of friends, that job, and
pretty soon, well, if I could just get that promotion
to captain, you know, if I could just get that
promotion, I'd get enough money and I could live
in that neighborhood. That'll make me happy.
So we think happiness is having goals of having
and doing. Not it. We're all in search for happiness.
We would like to forget. We're anxious, worried,
angry, frustrated, depressed, hankering, unhappy,
and we'd like to forget those stressful and traumatic
moments. You know, we grow up with this. The
advertisements on TV, on the newspaper, and now
on the internet, that there is a substance out
there we can take that'll make us feel better,
make us happy. You look at the advertisements
on TV trying to get you to ask your doctor about
this drug, and everybody seems so happy. Kids
grow up seeing this, by the way. They see, hey,
there's something I can take that'll make me
feel better. Of course, we can go to a therapist.
Out of all the diagnosis, they'll certainly find
something that ails you. Neurodevelopment disorders,
psychotic disorders, dissociative disorders,
gender dysphoria, personality disorders. I think,
though, when we start looking at therapy, the
therapist relies on our memory of behaviors.
and our memory of events that are getting in
our way of happiness. So the therapist is relying
on our memory of the trauma, you know, the stress
that's getting in our way. See, the problem is
we cannot describe what is happening because
it's already happened once you try to describe
it. You can't even describe what happened in
your life. You can only express your memory.
You can only express your memory of what happened.
And our memory of what happened is not the same
as what happened. We all remember the gist of
an event. We forget some details. We'll fill
in those details with commonly held beliefs based
on other experiences. We forget a particular
detail for the simple fact that we need to be
right. But our memories are chock full. of errors.
When I was teaching law enforcement report writing
classes, at the beginning of the class, at the
very first session of the class, we'd be going
through some of the basic classroom requirements
and stuff like that. But I would arrange for
a couple to burst into the classroom up front,
arguing and fighting, and one pushed the other
one. And then they were supposed to act surprised
like, whoops, we didn't know there were people
in this class. And they would leave. And I'd
say something like, what the heck was that about?
I'd look out the end of the hallway and they're
gone. So I'd go back to my class. The last 10
minutes of that class, though, I'd go pull out
a piece of paper. You witnessed an event. Write
it down. You just witnessed a crime. Write what
happened. And it's amazing how different those
memories were. They all saw the same event, but
their memories would be different. And some would
actually see a more violent act than what happened.
But the purpose of that was to show students
when they become police officers that you need
to be wary of witness statements. You take witness
statements, but don't take them as the absolute
truth. In fact, I used to teach, if you have
three witness statements and they are all identical
in what they saw and heard, then you know they
colluded. You wouldn't see it the same. Our reality
is not what happened. Our reality is our memory
of what happened. It's like driving down the...
Of course, people focus on the past, so they
focus on... That's why they're unhappy. They're
focusing on the stress, the trauma, the events
that happened, the things that were done to them.
Most people are going down life's highway not
with their hands on the steering wheel, but they're
going down life's highway with their hands on
the rearview mirror. traveling down the highway
of life. And then we wonder why we have so many
accidents in our personal, family, social, and
work life. It reminds me of a story. Years after
Vietnam, I think it was 25 years after Vietnam,
a guy I hadn't seen in 25 years, we met and started
bringing up memories. And he believed that a
mutual classmate named Charlie had died. He had
believed that. He believed that Charlie died
leaving behind a wife and a kid. And he had believed
that for 25 years. And I go, no, no, no, no.
Charlie, here. I pull out my phone. Here's where
he lives. Here's his phone number. Here's his
email address. Contact him. Here's an example
of his reality. Now, that's a narrow slice of
his reality. But still, it's an example of how
your reality based on a false memory. can affect
your life. That many years later, he was still
sad that Charlie had died and left behind a wife
and a kid. I like to use an example. Again, this
work I did in this area about cognitive and memory
and your life was written for people at the level
of people that are in drug court. I'm trying
to, it's not the best way to articulate it, but
picture two students studying for exams and they're
sitting under different trees on campus and they
happen to be orange trees and they're alone,
no one to interact with. And 10 feet above them
is a quarter pound orange that falls and strikes
them on the head. Equal force. One of the student
gets annoyed. He moves out from under the tree.
That student's reality of that event is negative.
While the other student laughs and they move
to a spot where they assure themselves they won't
be hit again. Well, that student's reality of
that event is certainly more positive. The event
of an orange falling and striking a student with
a specific force, that's science. It's math and
physics. We can duplicate it on paper, in a lab,
or under the same tree. A quarter pound orange
falling 10 feet will hit with the same force
every time we try it. Two plus two is four. Two
molecules of hydrogen mixed with a molecule of
oxygen is going to give us water every time.
That is science. But what is not science? We
can't predict on paper in a laboratory. We can't
predict what the two students' reactions would
be. We can spend hours in psychoanalysis and
therapy. We can refer to the DSM. It can never
be predicted with any accuracy what one person
will choose to think and how they will react.
I like to use the example of two accountants
going to work, and while at a red light, they're
together in the car in the rear seat, and someone's
driving them, and they get rear -ended by a 3
,000 -pound vehicle moving at 10 miles an hour.
The force they're hit with, the damage to their
car, can be predicted and replicated in a laboratory.
A 3 ,000 -pound vehicle moving at 10 miles an
hour with no external force isn't going to hit
with the same force every time. There are recognized
forensic experts in the field of accident reconstruction
who, given the same circumstances, can predict
the resultant force and damage. We cannot predict
or replicate, though, the reaction of the occupants.
One of the occupants will jump out and start
screaming and yelling at the other driver, you
know, how the hell did you not see us? Look at
the damage. Now I'm late for my meeting. The
other occupant gets out. And she's concerned
with ensuring that no one was injured. And then
she wants to make sure that the car is moving
out of the road so that the traffic can get moving
again. Because the other driver wants it left
right there. He wants the police to see what
happened. Out of one event, though, two completely
different realities. They get back to the office
and... The secretary hands Tom, the guy, a note
that's saying, oh, by the way, your appointment
this morning was canceled because this reason
and that reason. So Tom had been angry, fretting,
and stewing over a meeting that never occurred.
People are going to say, yeah, but he thought
he missed the meeting. That's my point. It's
all thought. He didn't miss a meeting. He just
thought he missed a meeting. And I know we're
talking about innocuous events here, an orange
car, minor traffic accident. But as police officers,
EMS personnel, firemen, soldiers, we've had serious
circumstances in life that need to be dealt with.
We've all witnessed and experienced violence
in some form, fired from a job, divorce, death
of a loved one, death of a co -worker. Your memory,
though, of those circumstances is influencing
your happiness. You choose how to think about
those memories. It's your decision. Any thoughts
as we're going along here? Yeah, no, I've just
been sitting. You've just been so fluid in your
storytelling. There's no point in me even jumping
in. Well, the first thing, I kind of want to
go on the individual and their thoughts and their
ownership and then the environment as well. But
one thing that has really kind of come to light
over a thousand conversations now, whether it
was father in your case, whether it was grandfather
in a lot of the cases of the guests, is how often...
world war ii veteran you know at that time parents
grandparents were actually struggling and we
gave the you know this whole facade of they just
came back and they rolled up their sleeves and
they were fine they were cut from a different
cloth and you know they were human human beings
as well and i can't help but feel like that unaddressed
trauma because i believe that trauma can be processed
and absolutely become a strength there's no question
post -traumatic growth is a real thing but if
it's buried and now you you won't even allow
that generation to be vulnerable and speak openly
because you've said well don't say anything because
you're the greatest generation i feel like that's
now one of the and it may have gone way prior
to that but certainly from that point we've got
the dominoes that then fall you know to my parents
generation and then my generation and then we
have this multi -generational trauma not excuses
But reasons, you know, is that, you know, when
we look back, we have to acknowledge some of
these things, you know, what our upbringing was
like, what our parents upbringing was like. So
you talked about your father, you know, not going
to combat, but I'm assuming obviously he had,
you know, friends and generations that did. What
is your observation as far as going, you know,
80 plus years back as far as the origin story
of some of these? mental health challenges that
have created this generational trauma? Well,
I don't know. My mind may have understood that
differently than you directed at me. But I see,
you know, we tried to hide it. World War II vets,
they called it shell shock, I think. And they
just didn't talk about it. And today we talk
about it a lot. Therapy is a big business. And
my problem, though, with that therapy is, for
most parts, that type of therapy, is that we're
rehashing memories. And as I just kind of discussed
earlier, our memories aren't always correct.
And we keep rehashing them, and they become hardwired.
And that just keeps, that circuit just keeps
running of that memory that has given us the
stress that continues to hang on from these traumatic
experiences. See, what's interesting is having
all these conversations, again, understanding
that multi -generational trauma is... definitely
a thing that there are struggles that you know
then create a household that might be domestic
abuse or you know sexual abuse or alcoholism
or just you know one or both parents leaving
or the child not feeling loved and whatever that
person's experience is um but up until very very
recently the solutions were really you can drug
the person and like you said you can sit down
and talk about it over and over and over and
over again but now as so many other kind of options
have emerged, I think this is what's exciting
about this mental health conversation is, yeah,
you can do talk therapy, absolutely. Or you can
do EMDR, or you can do a diving retreat, or you
can get an animal, a therapy dog, for example.
Or you can do ayahuasca or ibogaine or MDMA -led
counseling. So now some of these ones outside
of the traditional... or non -traditional depending
on how you look at it um you know talk therapy
and medications you're getting away from that
repetitive you know conversation over and over
again what's bothering you what's bothering you
what's bothering you and you're leaning into
health time in nature community even some of
these psychedelics maybe unlocking some things
that were deep in your mind that you weren't
aware of so This is why I think that we're starting
to see now a kind of renaissance when it comes
to the treatments available and the options for
people. Because there's a lot of people that
we've lost because they thought talk therapy
was the only thing or the meds. And it simply
didn't work. And probably, like you said, one
of the reasons was you're rehashing the same
thing. And either just revisiting isn't working
or it's slowly morphing, as you're telling it,
versus actually getting outside, actually being
amongst other people. having the ability to truly
be vulnerable, maybe through some sort of medication
that's taken you out of yourself, like MDMA.
So I think this interesting perspective that
you have does align with a lot of the successes
that we're seeing outside of the traditional
counseling and psychiatric meds. Well, there's
a big movement on all of that. And I'm certainly
not, while I've been a federal and state court
recognized expert in drugs and narcotics, I'm
not and was never really up to speed on the hallucinogenics.
But what they're doing today in that field, the
treatment they're doing today in that field,
and I've talked to military guys, special forces.
These treatments are not new, but they're finally
being accepted. We've got the whole University
of Texas here, just up the street in Austin,
has a big department that's studying the use
of psychedelics in mental health care. But it's
still, though, you're still fighting hardcore,
older. politicians who who don't want to even
have a discussion about legalizing even for medical
reasons a lot of these substances you talked
about alcohol prohibition this is something I
was educated with a few years ago as a guy, Johan
Hari wrote a book called Chasing the Scream.
And he does such a great job of talking about
the very beginning in the 30s of drug prohibition.
But you just underlined it perfectly. The end
of alcohol prohibition, people are like, oh,
thank goodness, because we had people like Al
Capone that were terrorizing people back then
and profiting off the, you know, putting people
that want to drink into the underworld's hands.
That ends, you know, oh my goodness, I'm forgetting
his name now. God, what is his name? Anyway,
it'll come to me in a moment. The next person
who's going to put in that position as far as
the government role is a screaming racist and
has to justify his job. And that's really the
birth of drug prohibition and the Reaper madness
and all these other things. And then as you talk
about, there are other chapters as you move through
the decades where it gets worse and worse. I
come into the first responder profession like
boots on the ground in 2004. foreign boy from
england moved to america now i'm in the urban
setting you know watching the prostitution and
the homelessness and the overdoses and the gang
membership and the violence and over you know
a 14 -year career in my specific example you
you it's just undeniable that this is not working
it's not getting better like you said i hear
so many of my law enforcement guests say the
moment you take someone off a street corner the
next you know there's not even another one that
replaces it now you create a gang war and then
ultimately someone replaces it so more people
die so as we progress through and then my mother
who moved to portugal about 22 years ago told
me what they do what they did over there and
they decriminalized addiction not smuggling not
not selling but the addicts they put in the in
the hands of the medical community and they also
gave it the funding and the support for mental
health counseling drug creation sorry um addiction
uh counseling job creation housing you know so
they did it properly not piecemeal like like
places in the northwest of tribe and you see
it works And then you hear about our warfighters
that literally go overseas, fight for this country,
and then have to go to another country to get,
as you said, some of the psychedelic therapies
that are working. All these pieces start to come
together and you're like, why are we not having
this discussion? Why are we not talking about
the 80 -year longitudinal study on drug prohibition
and how it hasn't made things better? It's made
things so much worse. Well, you cannot have...
the conversation if you're in law enforcement.
There are agencies where if you do a public talk,
like we're doing our discussion and even bring
up the topic of legalization, you'll be fired.
You'll be fired. My boss at San Jose, Joe McNamara,
he helped me with my MA and my BA at University
of San Francisco. And he had come up from New
York, rose to the ranks, and then became chief
of police of San Jose. And he couldn't admit
it at the time, but he had already written a
thesis on the failure of the war on drugs. But
he couldn't publicly, he couldn't even produce
the paper. He couldn't have it published. He
couldn't publicly. And he helped me a heck of
a lot. But he never was able to come out and
tell me his point of view until when I came back
from living in the Caribbean and he found out
I was stateside now for good. He got a hold of
me and he was at the Hoover Institute. So Joe
Mack and I worked together for almost 20 years
on this field. And so there are people today,
Judge Jim Gray, you know, who will speak out.
Milton Friedman was a big fan of. advocate of
legalizing drugs. But you go back to the politics
of it, you go back to marijuana. Marijuana was
initially fought against by Randolph Hearst,
because Hearst owned huge amounts of forest to
make newspaper paper. And he didn't want the
competition from the hemp industry. So he was
the first to go to Congress and fight for, donate
money toward the cause of making all forms of
hemp and marijuana illegal. And then you had
Ann Swinger to try to justify it. He goes and
says, oh, people using marijuana are just blacks
and Mexicans. I forget. Somewhere in my notes,
I've got the quote. And then they make this movie,
Reefer Madness, which I saw as black and white.
I don't know what age I was. And it's such a
joke as to what the reality is. But the politics
and trying to get people to change their mind,
it's the same issue with the psychedelics today.
But what we're doing today. What we're doing
today in the United States, I want to get back
to Portugal, by the way, because I was just over
there. I saw no outwardly evident evidence of
a drug problem in Portugal. Not like I could
go to Austin and point it out to you real quickly,
the evidence of drug prohibition. But a point
I want to make here is people prefer. their mind
-altering substances in the milder form. If it's
legal, they'll take it in the mildest form. Beer,
wine, it's the most commonly used way of drinking
alcohol. When we drink liquor, how do most people
drink liquor? In a mixed drink, or they sip it.
Is our alcohol policies, are they perfect? No.
But we know it's much better than prohibition.
During alcohol prohibition, we had hard, adulterated
booze that killed. My grandfather, when he was
26 years of old, got so drunk on adulterated
booze that he laid in a ditch all night in the
winter and he died from bad booze in prohibition.
Black market drives dealers. So you want it in
the milder form. Go to Bolivia. You can use cocaine
there. How do they use it? They chew on the leaves.
When cocaine was legal here in the States, we
used it the same way we use caffeine today. It
was in drinks and things like that. It was Coca
-Cola, wasn't it? Yeah. You make caffeine. illegal
in the States today. And pretty soon on the black
market, you'll be able to buy tablets, you know,
big tablets of caffeine. And then the black market
also, though, it drives dealers to produce and
transport their substance in the strongest form.
Meyer Lansky and Al Capone weren't bringing in
barrels of beer across the Canadian border. or
over from the Palmas. No, they were bringing
in very hard, ever clear liquor. Ricky Ross,
you know who Ricky Ross was? So Ricky Ross is
this cocaine dealer and he's getting his cocaine
from Michael Blanton. Michael Blanton was a operative
in Central America, like I was talking about
those guys. Blanton was bringing cocaine back.
Blanton was giving it to Ricky Ross. Ricky Ross
was making millions of dollars selling cocaine.
But cocaine in its powder form is hard to carry.
It's very water -soluble. I mean, if you've got
sweaty hands and you put a little bit of cocaine
in your hand, it'll just go away. It'll just
be like magic. It dissolves. So cocaine's hard
to carry. It's hard to transport. So Ricky Ross
came up with a way of mixing it with baking powder
and baking soda. I don't know what he does. But
he made it, and it comes out, and it's called
crack because it's chunks. And it's not water
-soluble. I can take a chunk of crack and put
it in my lip and walk around with it, talk to
a cop. You got any drugs on you? No. It's in
my cheek. A line of cocaine back in my day cost
$120. That's expensive for the kids in the hood.
But crack, you can chip it off in a $25 dose,
which kids in the hood can't afford, and you
smoke it. So the war on drugs has brought us
crack. It has brought us ice. It has brought
us the drugs, fentanyl. And now we got fentanyl.
Here's an example of, we know what the problem
is with fentanyl, but here's an example of buying
drugs that are not pharmaceutically produced.
You do not know here in Texas, if you go by Houston,
Austin, you can find dealers who will sell marijuana
that's been laced with fentanyl. Now, how do
you know that, though, unless he tells you? And
if you're turning around and you're buying some
of it and you say, I really got some good stuff,
and you start selling it to 18 -year -old kids
or 16 -year -old kids, and they really like it,
of course, and then some of that fentanyl that
was sprinkled in there is just a little too much,
now we've got a dead kid. So those are the kind
of things. We wouldn't have fentanyl. We wouldn't
have crack. We wouldn't have, no. People would
take it in a milder form. Is it the perfect answer?
No. But in looking for the perfect, we shouldn't
underlook the better. And there's a better way
to handle the war on drugs than what we're doing.
Drugs is up. Before I leave marijuana, one of
the biggest claims for how many years, marijuana
is a gateway drug. If you use marijuana, then
you're going to start using heroin. Well, you
know, I experienced a gateway drug when I was
like probably six or seven. I was given some
chocolate. I liked chocolate. It tasted good.
I know other substances liked it. I wanted more
of it. Chocolate for me was a gateway. It was
a gateway into more candies. Anything can be
a gateway. And food can be as worse of addiction
as drugs are for some people. It's a whole other
topic, but you're eating. But we have two types
of loss. We have mala and se. This is, here we
go again, another poof, Latin. Mala and se and
mala prohibita. Mala and se are crimes like drugs
that are mala and se, rape. robbery, murder,
they're bad in themselves. We all know they're
bad. Then we have malaprohibited, and those are
laws only bad because we say so. There is nothing
inherently wrong with most malaprohibited laws,
seatbelt laws, which, by the way, when a police
officer, when they started that crap, I stood
up in briefing and said, this is bullshit. citing
people for not wearing a seatbelt, that's between
them and their insurance company. And we were
told, no, no, no, no, no. For example, if you're
at the scene of a traffic accident and someone
was injured and they obviously, one of the drivers
didn't have a seatbelt on, then you can write
a ticket for it. But I said, bullshit, that's
not what's going to evolve though. and today
you will be stopped and cited for not wearing
a seatbelt but there is nothing inherently wrong
with not wearing a seatbelt uh trying to think
of some other examples real bad seatbelt laws
gambling well loitering loitering was put in
around the same time you know where all of a
sudden you know people were ending up in prison
that were literally just standing in you know
in a public place Yeah, I don't know if we still
have loitering anymore. Gambling, though, so,
of course, drug use, prostitution, regulated
and controlled. There's nothing inherently wrong
with them, yet we make them against the law.
And that's one of the problems with working undercover.
Most of your model prohibitive law is light against
gambling and prostitution and drugs and stuff
like that. You use undercover officers. And undercover
work has so many pitfalls in it. So many pitfalls.
It gets, I already mentioned it. There was a,
I'm going to segue off for a second and then
we'll come back. In flight school, in your helicopters,
you're learning to fly in formation and you're
getting near the end. So you're flying big formations.
And all of a sudden there's like. 40 helicopters
out in this big field and you're all cranked
up and you can just feel through your body, the
thumping of all those rotor blades and you take
off and all those in your information. And it's
a thrill. I get goosebumps now thinking about
it. It's an unimaginable thrill, that sound,
that noise, that seeing all those other helicopters.
And then riding, we did a, I did a ride with
the Hells Angels from San Jose up to Oakland.
Of course, the president of the clubs are riding
up front and then the Hells Angels, and then
you have the prospects who have the lower, and
I became a prospect, but you get the lower thing,
but you're at the back. But the roar of those
Harley -Davidson's and the vibrations you get
from all of them around you, all in synchrony,
and you're riding down the freeway and riding
down the street. And pretty soon, the lines begin
to blur between what you're really supposed to
be doing. Yeah, it was interesting. Marijuana,
back to marijuana. The National Library of Medicine.
They've posted studies that conclude that...
Most marijuana intoxicated drivers show only
a modest impairment on an actual road test. Now,
I've done these actual road tests with alcohol,
where we had the big San Jose State University,
a big parking lot, and they test you. I think
there were like 15 of us, and they tested us.
to make sure we were alcohol free. Then we did
this drug test. You're driving in cones and these
temporary stoplights come in and, you know, light
would come up at the last minute and you stop,
you know, and then you go and you back in and
you do this kind of a drug test. And then they
give you a drink. They get you up to, usually
one drink would get you up to about 0 .03. And
then they get you at 0 .06. Then they get you
at 0 .08. And after, of course, once you Once
they know you're at 0 .03, you drive the test
again. And everybody about 0 .06, you start showing
a decline in your driving skills. By the time
when I did that test, it was 0 .10 in California,
the legal limit. And the test we did, we could
all see the results of it afterwards. Of course,
it's all being filled. CHP was filming it all
on it. So you could see that there was impairment.
There was impairment. But marijuana smokers who
drive on a set course show almost no functional
impairment under the influence of marijuana,
except when it's combined with alcohol. The problem
of driving any influence is alcohol. You know
what's interesting as well, as this sleep medicine
kind of conversation and the studies have really
come to light the last 10 years or so, one of
the stats that's always talked about is 24 hours
without sleep is the same as having a blood alcohol
of 0 .1. which you can imagine, like you said,
was probably a cohort of university students
that were usually in their beds, maybe some late
nights on weekends, and then do this 24 -hour
sleep study, and they do probably the same kind
of test that you did or cognitive test. But now
you think about a firefighter or a cop, certainly
in my profession where it's 24 hours, a lot of
times with disrupted or no sleep for 10, 20,
30 years. At what point, at what cognitive...
comparable alcohol content or are people driving
around because of the shifts that are forcing
them. And then now with this recruitment crisis,
all this mandatory overtime is forcing them.
And we see these intersection wrecks and getting
lost in fires and pushing the wrong medication
and, you know, being too aggressive or shooting
the wrong person. And there's never a conversation
of the element of rest and recovery and how that
affects our cognition. And luckily, I guess,
or at least I don't remember with memories again,
a problem where I was so tired that I felt it
interfered. But it had to when my first night
back to work was on a Sunday when I worked patrol.
I preferred because I gave you all day. It gave
you most of the week off. You know, I had Monday,
Monday off, Tuesday off, Wednesday off and almost
all of Thursday. So I could do other. I had other
income jobs to do. So you go back that first
night, you're up all day Sunday, and then you're
up all night. And three, four in the morning,
you're getting tired. But I can't, I'm sure I'd
like to see a study like that, where they get
people, you know, doing the same time and drive,
it'd take a lot longer to do it. But this idea.
which I've been reading, well, I probably read
it about on some of your stuff. We're going to
a 24 on, 72 off. Yes, sir. Sounds like a pretty
good deal. I don't know how we could do that
with, how that can be done with law enforcement.
The 10 -4 plan works pretty good. I think I would,
I think a good training program on how to make
better use of your and get better sleep under
a 10 -4 plan. A course could be taught that would,
and if they followed it, of course, would be
worth having a course developed like that. Yeah.
Yours is a tricky community, the same as Corrections
and Dispatch and the ER. And obviously... As
we see the corporate space moving to four -day
work weeks, 32 -hour weeks, and having the same
level of efficiency and production and all those
things, I think maybe questioning for the people
that life and death is in their hands, do we
need them to be working 40 hours? Is there an
opportunity to give our frontline personnel that
work 12s or 10s a little bit more rest and recovery
in between? And then if you are having a recruitment
crisis, figure out what you were doing wrong.
So these people aren't being forced to work more
and more shifts. And then, you know, the pay
is the other thing. You know, a lot of these
people in first responder professions, as you
mentioned, have a second job, not because they've
dreamed of working two jobs, because it's a necessity
to pay a mortgage in the area that they live.
So I think, you know, ours is like, let's stop
working 56. It's a pretty obvious thing to me,
even though it's been. such a fight to get that
out there but you know when you get down to when
we're talking about 40 hour work week for law
enforcement is like okay well then it's still
a rest and recovery issue and i think the other
thing is we are more resilient where we're younger
so maybe early in the career those are the ones
that tend to work more of the the night shifts
and then as you progress and you mature and you
earn your your place then you start transitioning
to the ones where you you know you're working
in the day because there's no question you know
when i was first in the fire service It bothered
me a lot less than when I got into my 40s working
these shifts. So I think there are some opportunities
to explore that in law enforcement. But if the
corporate space is moving to a 32 hour work week,
maybe just maybe the men and women with guns
on their hips or, you know, working on people
in the trauma bay in the ER, maybe they need
some more rest and recovery, too. Yeah, my experience
with law enforcement and I've stayed. I stayed
pretty active in all this, in the consulting
and testifying in court and working with Joe
McNamara right up until about the time, number
one, Joe passed away. And that was also the same
time period when my wife of 30 years passed away.
And so all my, when she got diagnosed, it was
when it started, of course, I was no longer able
to do the traveling that I was doing because
I used to speak. whether it be Rutgers or Hastings
School of Law in California or University of
Chicago. I was speaking all over the nation and
are testifying in court cases all over the nation.
So that came to a stop when Sally got diagnosed.
I became a caretaker and I never got back into
it. But up to that time, up until about 2010,
I was active in associating with, working with
large police departments. And the pay, I never
found the pay to be an issue with any police
officers of the department. I was hanging around.
Even back in my day, the pay was not an issue.
I worked extra jobs just because, number one,
I loved real estate. I loved building homes.
One thing about building homes was when I built
a home, I could stand back and say, wow. I did
this. I built this. There is nothing in law enforcement
where you stand back and go, wow, I did this.
Yeah, it's a different, it's so, I never found
too much of a problem, but what I'm finding today,
or what it sounds to me like today, it's not,
they're having a hard time finding police officers,
but not because of the pay. It's because, and
too many times, law enforcement officers are
thrown under the bus. And they say it's not worth
it. This is not a field I want to work in anymore.
So they're leaving law enforcement or they're
just not going into it. They're like, why the
hell? You try to get an educated minority African
-American to go into law enforcement. Why the
hell would I want to do that? You know, I'm not
going to do it. Not here in Austin. or uh san
jose or la and stuff it's it's hard it's um the
job isn't as rewarding as as it was in my opinion
just harder to do the job one one more area and
i want to go to some closing questions so i'll
be mindful of your time but this ties into what
we've been talking about we've we've got the
you know either decriminalize or even legalize
as far as how that will benefit the addicts and
how that will help poor resources in and hopefully
start healing people. Because, you know, not
only is that the people that just simply buy
drugs and, you know, aside from that functioning
member of society, we also have the ripple effects
of addiction causes, you know, robberies and
burglaries and all these other things too. But
watching. This kind of downward spiral that I've
seen and all the violence and, like I said, the
gang membership, and as you alluded to, whether
it's the Hells Angels or the Crips or the Bloods
or the crack epidemic, it's created so much crime
because of the desperation of the people that
are suffering and then the people that are making
money from them. And then you look overseas.
You talk about Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia,
these countries that... Our illicit drug trade
ultimately created a consumer that then empowered,
you know, crime even in other countries. And
then now we're turning around and saying they're
bad people without looking in the mirror and
say, hey, you know, our history created this
in the first place. So just talk to me about,
you know, if you believe this, I believe this.
If there was a decriminalization or legalization
of addiction, to be clear, not that, again, addicts,
not the smugglers, when Portugal was found that
they freed up all the resources to then attack
those people because they weren't arresting addicts
anymore, what would you see as far as the impact
of crime within this country and then also some
of the border problems that we're having as far
as the wrong people trying to come into this
country or the violence in their own country?
Yeah, my... BA thesis at University of San Francisco
was titled The Impact of Drug Use on the Crime
Index. So I was able to show that so much of
our crime and so many of our people in jail were
in drug -related crimes, not necessarily the
drug itself, but committing burglaries, car theft,
scams, shoplifting, because they needed to raise
money. for the illicit drug. Most of these drugs
would be pennies on the dollars if they were
legal. You go to the other end of the spectrum
of legalization or decriminalization, the other
end, which would be hardcore, really. Stiff enforcement.
I'm looking for a word and I can't find it right
now. But an example, when someone flew an airplane
into a tower and killed thousands of people,
we went full strength against that group. We
went overseas. If they found one of those guys
driving in a car, we'd take it out with a drone.
We'd find a house where... The guy who planned
the whole thing was living, and we took him out.
What if we declared war a real war on drugs and
started using drones overseas and taking out?
They had to quit trying to just take them out.
If someone comes into the country and is spreading
fentanyl, And it's killing thousands of people.
What's the difference between those thousands
and the thousands in the tower? Fentanyl kills.
It's no different than if you stood and just
fired shots randomly into a crowd of people,
you're going to kill some people. And that's
what we're doing when we're spreading this fentanyl
across the country. So if we took the other approach
and just said, okay, it's the death penalty.
And you're bringing that stuff into our country.
You're killing people. We're coming after you.
We're going to use drones. We're going to wipe
out your homes. We're going to wipe out the laboratories.
We're going to. Which would create a hell of
an international problem. That's the problem.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I don't think we're
ever going to go hardcore in a fight against
sworn drugs. It's just not going to happen. And
I'm arguing this middle of the ground stuff would
be completely eliminated. No one would be smuggling
drugs across the country if we turn, for example,
amphetamines over. Well, amphetamines are already
made pharmaceutically. I mean, kids take Ritalin.
Our military pilots on long missions take forms
of amphetamines. So there is a, it's already
in place. So if we made amphetamines much more
easier to get, when I was in college, way before
the war on drugs, I could go to my doctor and
say, doc, I got an exam. I really need to cram
this weekend. I need some help staying awake.
They'd give you a prescription for amphetamines.
When they started the war on drugs and DEA started
clamping down on doctors prescribing medications,
then it forced everyone to the illegal market.
And on that subject, only because it just popped
into my head, you know, when the war on drugs
started, it took a while, but they started arresting
a lot of doctors and nurses. And these are doctors
and nurses who were using... a morphine -based
product on a daily basis. Those doctors and nurses
were never caught because of the way they were
acting. No one ever said something wrong with
that person on this reporting. They were only
caught because of an audit of drug supplies.
And someone says, whoa, our stock is lower than
it should be. Someone's dipping into the supply
here. It's the same thing when we started. You
remember when there was that rash of athletes
being kicked off teams or arrested for drug use?
Initially, they weren't acting out on the influence
of amphetamines or cocaine. They were using it
to enhance their performance, which it does,
by the way, amphetamines and cocaine. uh increase
your reaction time they make you more alert uh
they were caught because of a drug test not because
of the effects of the drugs yeah and this is
this is my point is that like you said if we
can't Take drones. And obviously, there should
be an element of wherever you can addressing
the criminals that are at the heart of this.
Because again, the violence, for example, in
Mexico, you can't tell me that some of that isn't
forcing people across our borders. So if we're
talking about the immigration crisis, air quotes,
then what are we doing to undo the mistakes that
we've made that are negatively impacting the
country? But I think you also supply and demand.
If you want to hit them where it hurts, then
you heal Americans. You know, I mean, look at
the obesity crisis. I mean, you know, there's
this whole claim of we're going to make America
healthy again. Now, I haven't seen anything about
that in the last six months. I haven't seen anything
about that in the last 20 years. It's not about
one side or the other. But when you make Americans
healthy again, all this money that we need for
education and first responder professions and
all these other areas, it's already there. It's
proactively investing in your people. And it's
the same with this. If we invest in the mental
health of our people and creating healthy, happy
children, you know, all these things that we
can do, then, you know, the number of addicts
that you will have, whether it's a professional
like a doctor or nurse or someone living under
a bridge, is going to reduce dramatically. But
the problem that we see in this country is they'll
point to that one guy it didn't work on and go,
oh, you see, it doesn't work. Or they'll do a
Seattle model and say, we decriminalized it.
It's like, okay, but what did you do to heal
people? Oh, nothing. We just don't arrest them
anymore. Well, of course, that's not going to
work either. So I think this is it. As you said,
the middle of the road conversation is there
are countries around the world that have done
this really well. Portugal has their model. I
think Switzerland is one. I believe one of the
either South or Central American countries has
done really well. So why are we not learning
from them and then creating a hybrid model that's
even better that we then apply here? But what
I know doesn't work is what you saw in your career
and I saw in a much, much, much shorter career
is sending everyone who's struggling with a mental
health issue into the hands of a criminal. Well,
we don't spend any money on it. We don't want
to spend any money on it. It's because of our
political system. I grew up kind of naive up
until I until I got in the army. I believe that
politicians were elected. And they they were
going to do what was best for the country. They
had the country's best. And of course, what I
now know now is no politician has only two things
he's interested in. One is getting elected. And
one is getting reelected. And that's all they
care about. And so they don't go out with these
ideas and get sold on them and try to get the
public behind them. They listen to what the public
says and then they do it. And the public doesn't
want to spend the money on it. They don't want
to spend the money. You know, education, public
awareness works. And let me give you a perfect
example. Tobacco. Tobacco is the most addicting
of all the drugs. In 1970, when we started to
warn drugs, the use of tobacco was over 70%.
Today, we're down to 13 % of the population smokes
tobacco. And we did that not by kicking down
doors, not by arresting anyone. We did it simply
by education. in public awareness. And so pretty
brutal PSAs, which worked, you know, the Marlboro
man with a frickin hole in his throat, for example.
Yeah. Yeah, Sonny. Sonny. Here we go again. The
president of the chapter of the Oakland chapter
of the Hells Angels. Yeah, what was his name?
I arrested him, as you know. Anyway, yeah, he
died with one of those. Terrible, terrible, terrible,
terrible. So, yeah, the war on drugs needs to
be addressed. And I'm not right here today necessarily
advocating one way or the other. What I want
to do is just get the facts out there. And I
think the facts I've showed is the war on drugs
is a failure. It would be very hard for anyone.
Because every reason we started the war on drugs
has been a failure. We haven't stopped drug use.
We haven't stopped drug overdose. We haven't
stopped the manufacturing. We've accomplished
nothing. We've got this whole drug war industrial
complex, though, that doesn't want to stop the
war on drugs. The drug cartels do not want to
stop the war on drugs. No, Al Capone and Meyer
Lansky didn't want to stop the war, the prohibition,
the war on alcohol. So they don't want to stop
it. You know, DEA, it's a huge, huge, humongous,
their budgets in the billions. They don't want
to stop the war on drugs. It's their job. You
know, drug counselors, it's their job. These
court mandated clients where I said I had so,
you know, I set up a program for that. And in
my program, it came from the point of view of
thought. And it's your thought about things that
lead you to be depressed, that lead you to use
drugs or lead you to drink. And AA pretty much
had a string of hold on all those. court programs
up until that time. And of course, they come
from the point of view that once you're an addict,
you're always an addict. Once an alcoholic, you're
always an alcoholic. You know, hi, you know,
my name is John and I'm an alcoholic. And I came
from the point of view of that's kind of limiting,
branding yourself like that for the rest of your
life. And no, you can stand up one day and say,
I had a problem, but I'm free and clear of it.
But I read so much resistance. But there is so
much money in the drug treatment program. the
way it's run today. And most, I taught those
classes. I would say the vast majority of those
classes are not addicts. They're just people
who got arrested. Traffic stopped. They had a
small amount of drugs on them. They got arrested.
And what they have to do is go to drug court
for 13 weeks. That's what they were. And they
pay money to go and they pay money to the therapist
and they pay money to this. I mean, therapists
have a role. But they also don't want to end
the war on drugs. So the drug war industrial
complex is big and hard to fight against. And
you're just, when you're in a nation that's already
so far in debt, it's basically broke. Nobody
wants to spend money on programs that we know
would work. They can't see, they just can't imagine
just shutting down, just saying like, Trump has
done on some other program. Just close it down.
Shut it down. Close it out. Close the DEA down
and let the local law enforcement handle it.
That would be my first step. And then training
and education. And get people's minds right.
Why are they using to begin with? There's something
wrong in our society where a kid sits down in
front of the TV. Mom sets him down, gives him
something to do, get the kid out of their hair.
And the kid's watching TV and he's watching these
advertisements about how if you take this drug,
you're going to feel better. You'll be happier.
And then we wonder why they get in high school
and they start buying drugs. This will make you
happier. This will make you feel better. You
know, I don't. I don't say that you can, with
a cognitive approach and the way I write about
it in my book, I don't say that you can prevent
sad, troubling, negative thoughts. Because they
will occur. Those thoughts of stress and trauma
will come up. But when you realize that you're
the source of that thinking, you can nip it in
the bud. You can change it. I catch myself all
the time. I'll start to think about something
and I'll just say, hey, stop it. You had a good
sentence for it. There is value in those stressful
situations, as hard as it might be. A powerful
example for me was growing up because of my age.
I grew up with kids my age whose parents had
that tattoo on their arm. Holocaust survivors.
One particular family from Poland. When I was
middle -aged, when my mom got to the point where
we had to put her in assisted living for a while,
there was a large group of Holocaust survivors
at that assisted living home. And I sat at the
lunch table on many occasions and talked to them.
And a lot of them carried a lot of bitterness
and resentment. And understandably so. But I
met many who, despite what they experienced in
the concentration camps, they were happy. They
had found meaning and joy in life. They still
believed in the goodness of mankind. And these
people focused on rebuilding their lives, finding
joy in their family and their community. making
the world a better place. They stayed focused
on the future. In other words, they were driving
down the highway. Once they got out of that,
they were released from the camps. Wherever country
they went to, the United States, they got back
to life. They got their hands on the steering
wheel, and they focused ahead. They were not
looking in the rearview mirror all the time like
a lot of them were. Eddie Jack, who he... He
survived the Holocaust and dedicated the rest
of his life to promoting kindness. Amazing man.
He proclaimed himself the happiest man on earth.
And the difference between those two groups is
along that continuum is how they chose to think
about it and what they chose. What was the movie?
True story of Holocaust survivor Rubino Salmoni.
Life is beautiful. That's a great movie. He keeps
a good attitude because his son was also in that
camp through the whole experience. So who we
are, everything about us is the result of thought.
And the one thought that can change the quality
of your life is the idea that you. Control your
thoughts. Absolutely. Well, I know you have a
couple of books, Just One Thought and then Honorable
Intentions. So for people listening, give them
an overview of each and then where can they find
them? Honorable Intentions is my life story.
And of course, the conclusion is failed policies,
failed policy of Vietnam, failed policy of the
war on drugs. And that's Honorable Intentions
by Russell Jones. My full name is Robert Russell
Jones. Only the IRS usually uses it. The other
book that I've used in my court stuff is called
Just One Thought, and that's by Robert Russell
Jones. Brilliant. And that book deals with the
stuff I was talking about here. I give examples
of how we use thought in our lives and then how
it affects us, how we're wrong. Our memories
are wrong. They really are. We can get all worked
up about that divorce, but you really stop and
think about it. There's some roles that we play
in the divorce. We want to be bitter with the
spouse, but there's roles we play, and we need
to remember those. We tend to want to shut them
out. It's a short book, very interesting, but
short. I think they'd like it. Brilliant. And
where can they find those? Amazon. I'm sorry.
That's okay. Amazon .com, Honorable Intentions
by Russell Jones. Brilliant. Well, I want to
thank you so much. It's been such an amazing
conversation. Truly, I could talk to you for
another two hours, no problem. There's so many
other things from your past that I'd love to
unpack and maybe we'll do a part two down the
road. But just everything that the perspective
that you've had with the life story that you
have on some of these issues that I truly believe,
you know, we can change, we can improve, we can
kind of take a step back, whether it's our own
personal well -being and mental health or whether
it's advocating for that on a national level.
I want to thank you so much for being so generous
with your time and coming on the Behind the Shield
podcast today. Well, I enjoyed it. It was my
pleasure. And I would like to come back. I have,
you know, at my age, that's all I have is time.
So have fun with your time.