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,
retired ATF special agent, law enforcement instructor,
and the author of Becoming Fire, Jennifer Eskew.
Now, in this conversation, we discuss a host
of topics, from her journey into the world of
law enforcement, drug prohibition, her own powerful
mental health story, catharsis through writing,
and 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
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so I can get them to every single person on planet
Earth who needs to hear them. So with that being
said, I introduce to you Jennifer Eskew. Enjoy.
Well, Jennifer, I want to start by saying thank
you so much for taking the time and coming on
the Behind the Shield podcast today. Thank you
very much, James. I appreciate that. I appreciate
the invite a whole lot. Well, I'm glad you're
on here. So where on planet Earth are we finding
you today? I live in coastal Georgia. That's
where I. sort of semi -retired to at the end
of my law enforcement career and uh it's i want
to tell you it's beautiful warm and sunny but
that little cold nor 'easter kind of changed
our weather just a little bit but it's warming
back up i actually when i worked out this morning
i worked out outside so it's warm enough for
that excellent yeah that that one even in florida
we felt it it was not i like the cold because
we still have the blue skies but yeah it was
certainly pretty frigid here You get the blue
sky, the sunshine, and you're going, ooh, it's
chilly. Yeah, exactly. Well, let's start at the
very beginning of your timeline then. So tell
me where you were born and tell me a little bit
about your family dynamic, what your parents
did, how many siblings. Okay. I was born in Kenbridge,
Virginia. It's a little small town in the southern
part of Virginia, really close to the North Carolina
border. It's known as the South Side. When people
talk about Virginia, they usually know about
Nova or Northern Virginia. I'm exactly opposite
of that. So down in the south side, it's a lot
of farming communities. Tobacco used to be the
thing there for about 400 years, and now it's
a little variety of crops. The main activities
there are hunting, fishing, four -wheeling. That's
kind of it, family time. And there's a few other
things. Everybody goes to the same school. At
least when I grew up, we all went to the same
school because there was one school system. You
went to that school. So you grew up knowing everybody.
My parents, my dad, he is the oldest son of eight
kids. And he grew up as a sharecropper or the
oldest son of a sharecropper. And he did that
until he was about 15. He took a factory job
then and dropped out of school. And he was able
to go into the Navy during the Korean War. Served
for four years. Met my mom right at the very
end of that time. She was also from back at the
same time. Happened to come home one weekend
and they met. She grew up as the oldest kid of
10. And they got married in 1955 and stayed married
52 years until he passed away. That was 2006,
almost 2007. Anyway, let's see. From that, my
mom was a home beautician, full -time. Mom to
two kids, me and my younger sister, Katrina.
And she did everything. My mom did everything.
If you can name it, you know, my dad worked railroad,
but he also farmed tobacco full time, which meant
if you grew up on a farm, you worked a farm,
too. So we also had chickens and pigs and a calf
or two and things like that. We raised enough
garden that everybody got to raise and get garden
vegetables that needed it, that couldn't that
didn't have a garden. I lived in the woods. I
lived outside. I was an outdoor kid the whole
time. Tomboy from the get go. Right behind my
dad, every step he ever took, always with him.
My mom made sure we had everything we ever needed.
You know, between working, you know, Monday through
Friday and sometimes Saturdays, being called
into the funeral home occasionally to help out
to do someone's hair, things like that. She took
on jobs like that. But she was also a huge volunteer.
So her biggest thing with volunteering, besides
with her church, was giving people in the community
a ride if they had cancer and needed treatment
because the nearest place you could go was Richmond,
Virginia, which was a little over an hour away
to drive to. So she would take off a day just
to be able to take them. She did that for decades.
It wasn't just a one -time thing. She did it
for everybody, whether she knew you or didn't.
She got to know you. She sewed. She started sewing
when she was a little kid, when she was about
five or six. She bought her first sewing machine
when she was 17. I have it. Just before she met
my dad. She worked as a telephone operator back
then to save money to be able to do that. So
I came from the working class, straight up working
class. That's how we were. That's how everybody
was. I mean, when kids talked about, oh, you
had to work on the farm. That didn't faze anybody
because everybody that grew up in our community
worked on a farm someplace, if not their farm,
a family member's farm. So Kimmeridge was rural.
It was nice. You only had like a couple of police
officers, that sort of thing. You didn't really
see a lot of police. I never saw female police.
I saw them on TV. And I ended up going to college
at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
It was new, exciting, big, different. Loved it.
Loved every minute of it. Made great friends
there. In fact, my best friend, Sandy, we've
been friends since we were 18. So we're still
friends here at 63 and pushing. Well, going back
to your upbringing first, as we sit here in 2026,
there... There's a lot of fractures to community,
partly because in cities we've got so many human
beings just stacked vertically on top of each
other, partly because of the pigeonholing of
certain people on your political persuasion or
your religious persuasion or whatever it is.
And I feel like the remedy to a lot of the issues
that we have at the moment is exactly how we
used to live in these small communities where
people knew each other, where you policed yourself
so you didn't need the level of kind of tactical
wearing police that we see in the cities now.
When you reflect back now, talk to me about the
pros of that kind of upbringing where you had.
a small amount of people so that you were able
to to know everyone and as the the quote says
you know it takes a village you were able to
basically raise each other i think we've gotten
away from that and i i get it where there's there's
a lot more people um there's a lot of influx
of of people still coming in um but that's how
our country was built i mean that that's how
we started i mean you know The very first people
to arrive here came down, as they say, down through
the Bering Strait and down through Canada and
started settling all over North America and down
further, central, south. But at the same time,
they started coming from Europe. They also came
from the opposite end. I mean, they came from
everywhere to come here. We have a great country.
I love our country. I've traveled quite a bit
all over the world, mostly for work, sometimes
for pleasure. And you're not going to find a
better place in the United States, no matter
how many problems we seem to have. Somehow or
another, we get those things sorted out, and
we always step up for other people. We always
have. We always will. That's just who we are.
We are a country of fighters, and I don't mean
that in a bad way. I mean that as in, hey, you
don't push us. We're going to push back. We're
not going to let something get us down. We just
have to find our way. We have to figure out how
to get back on our feet to fight and what to
do. And we have to work out our differences every
once in a while. There's always going to be differences.
Oh, my goodness. Have you ever been to a Thanksgiving
with anybody? Yes. There's always differences.
It doesn't matter what you're talking about.
There's always differences. Everybody has their
own opinion. And they're entitled to it, and
they need to be able to keep that bit of those,
all the freedoms we've been given, need to be
able to keep those intact because people come
here from all over the world. They will die to
get here from all over the world seeking those
freedoms. I'm not saying open up the border wide
open. You still have to do the things that we've
set in motion to do it lawfully. Once those people
get here, you will see people who have always
struggled and worked to get ahead, to do, to
have something. They're entrepreneurs. And we
brought in some great minds from all over. What
I see in the small town life, and I think back,
I get to reflect on a lot, especially when I
was writing. I got to reflect on how I grew up.
A lot of us were still in this same sort of socioeconomic
level of money. There were people who were poor.
There were people who had more, but not to great
extremes. And I think that was something that
was good. But all the jobs were right there.
There were lots of factories in our community
and our region to offer jobs. in that area. Those
jobs all started going away in the early 80s.
I remember in the 70s when we were raising tobacco,
men from the government, as I would hear them
talk about it in a little country store, my aunt
and uncle's country store, had come by and they
were recruiting some of the farmers to see if
they wanted to go overseas to teach people how
to raise tobacco. And these men, they took it
all in. You know, a lot of these guys, they had
never graduated high school, but they were now
raising families and running 500 -acre farms
and doing everything they could to get by. And
they started asking questions back, like, well,
that pay is good, and it's this, it's that. But
where's this tobacco going? Who's buying this
tobacco? Oh, well, the American tobacco companies
are going to help. They're going to buy. We're
going to do this to help them develop their countries.
And the tobacco farmers are going, what about
the tobacco we grow? We're already having a hard
time. We're struggling. If we teach them and
they start buying from them, where's this market
coming from? What is the plan? What's the next
step? They were asking a lot of questions about
what was next when you start doing that. I see
and hear that with the cattle farming people
now. I do pay attention to some of the business
news. I like business news. And they ask these
questions and it's legitimate questions. You
know, we used to raise so much cattle that we
were selling beef all over the world that suddenly
now our beef prices are super high and it's become
very expensive. And so we're getting beef from
other parts of the world. We're bringing more
and more and more of that in and chicken and
seafood and you name it. Yeah, making that balance
and work for everybody, that's tough. I like
the idea of growing up and having the way I was
raised. I love the fact that my great nieces
and great nephews, I call them the giggly bunch,
that they are being raised in that way, that
the farm is still there. There are people who
do move down to that part of the state now and
think that they're going to. you know, get a
piece of land. They're going to do this. They're
going to do that. Then they find out it's hard
because it's like, no, we don't have a movie
theater. We don't have a McDonald's. They talked
about getting a McDonald's. It hadn't happened
yet. So if you want to get something, you know,
run by Timmy's Grocery in Victoria, Virginia
and get a Timmy dog because he's been right there
since, oh, I don't know, like 40, 45 years, you
know, or go by Vaughn's, you know, get something
there, you know, I mean. there's only a handful
of places you can stop. And then when you do
stop, you're going to see a bunch of people you
know, so you're going to get to chat with them
because everybody knows everybody. They used
to have a newspaper that came out once a week,
but that stopped. I don't think everybody's getting
their news from online. They're still getting
it from, well, texting on the cell phone now
instead of calling one another. But you learn
a lot about growing up in a small town or in
a rural area, and those rural areas are still
very much like that. And I think there are people
in the metropolitan areas who want to move out
to that. And at the same time, it kind of scares
them. You know, I don't think we're clinging
to God and guns as we've been accused of in the
past. Everything. But people do believe in freedom
of religion and they do believe in the right
to bear firearms in those communities, along
with everything else. They believe in all of
that. When you look at the older gentlemen who,
well, a lot of them have passed away now. the
ones I grew up, they fought in World War II.
They fought in Korea. They fought in Vietnam.
So they come home because they want the freedoms
that they've had in the U .S. and they want to
keep doing. They want their families to succeed,
then the next families to succeed. I've worked
in the metropolitan areas. I've seen how things
are. I wish there were more job opportunities
in some of those places. But I also wish the
jobs would come back to or hope they come back
to the rural areas, too. You know, our community,
one of the things that I grew up in, one of the
things that they now look at very close by is
the growth of the need for the clouds, the cloud
farms, you know, that sort of thing. So that's
going on there now. They're starting to look
at that and go, wait a minute, how much water
do you need? So there's a lot of things like
that. How much land is this going to take? How
many jobs is this actually going to bring to
our community? Or we're still not going to get
anything out of it? So everybody's wondering,
what are we getting for this? What's a cloud
farm? Educate me. Oh, what's a cloud farm? Oh,
yeah. Well, Microsoft showed up, I don't know
how many years ago now, probably 20, 25 maybe,
in Southside, Virginia. And they bought up this
huge chunk of land and they built, A lot of fences.
And it made it very, very secure. I understand
from the people who get to go there, it's like
Fort Knox Plus or Plus Plus. And there are these
giant types of warehouse building type things.
And inside is the cloud because the cloud's not
in the clouds. It's right here on ground. They
need a lot of power. They need a lot of energy.
And as AI technology grows and AI growth expands,
they need even more. And they need even more.
Because even though we're looking at micro SD
cards and little chips and things like that,
there's going to take a whole lot of space and
a whole lot of need to have those things. And
those things are growing everywhere. Virginia,
North Carolina, those are just some of the places.
Georgia. Everybody's looking at it. So it's not
just needing the chips and the processors and
all these things that they've decided they want
to bring back to the U .S. to make and where
to make those at, but it is also having a cloud
farm, a place to put all this stuff on the cloud
nowadays. And it has to be protected because
it can't ever shut down. It must always have
power. You can never have it hacked. You can
never have it turn off. So they're very secure
facilities and they're growing by leaps and bounds.
You mentioned tobacco and it's interesting. I'm
sure we'll get into this with drug prohibition
and all the stuff that you did in uniform. But
when we have this conversation about decriminalization
and therefore cutting the head off the snake
of the illicit drug trade, one of the things
as well, the farmers rely on the drug trade.
for whatever crops because they're being paid
for opium or marijuana, whatever the thing is.
But obviously, it's a very kind of tunnel vision
way of looking at it because they're farms. And
before all that stuff, these people were growing
oranges and almonds and whatever else was growing
at that time. Fruits and veggies. Exactly. And
then you look at the lessons that we learned
from COVID, which was there was a massive supply.
you know, bottleneck because we were relying
on these massive farms that in turn had put out,
you know, put small farms out of business for
a long time. I feel like we need to, going back
again to that community mentality, there needs
to be a push to support local farming, to have
local agriculture. So they don't have to grow,
you know, something that is detrimental like
tobacco. They can go back to growing food and
raising cattle. And the Shenandoah Valley is
obviously, is the regenerative farming you have
there with Joel Slatton. I just had a Navy SEAL
on the show, Sean, who's doing the same thing,
Primal Beef. So you're seeing those industries
trying to start again. And I think what we need
to do as a nation with all these subsidies that
we give. giant corporations is to give local
farming that so that every community has that
ability and then obviously they can grow enough
to then feed the cities as well which don't have
the capacity to grow because they're paved and
full of buildings but i think that the way we
breathe life back into smaller communities is
to do exactly what used to support them which
was agriculture very much um i'll I grew up on
fresh vegetables and stuff. Now, did I like picking
green beans? No, I didn't. They were a pain in
the ass. Okay. It's not just picking them. You
find yourself sitting on either grandma's porch
or on the back porch there at our house or whatever.
But you find yourself having to sit there with
a big old pan of them or basket of them. And
you have to snap the beans and string the beans.
You got to get the little ends off. You got to
do this. You got to break them in half. You got
to put. Okay. When you're a kid, that's the last
thing you want to do. And even worse than that
was butter beans, butter beans. I love butter
beans. That's the baby limas, but butter beans.
Those things, shelling those with your fingers,
and you're little, and you're like nine years
old, and my thumb is getting raw from doing this.
You hate that sort of thing. You know, that was
really picky. I always tell my dad, grow the
silver queen corn. I didn't like the golden.
I liked the silver queen corn because it was
sweeter. I loved that. It was much, much sweeter,
much better. And we grew everything. And my dad,
even when he got older, because I'm getting there
now, and he had retired. The next thing you know,
he increased garden space. He wasn't growing
tobacco. He increased garden space. Next thing
you know, he's got four gardens. And he's telling
me, because I'm asking him, why do you need so
much? Because it was a lot. We're talking acres.
And he goes, well, those old people at the church,
they need this. You're one of them. What are
you talking about, Dad? And, of course, my mom
was always on. My dog just walked in the door.
My mom was always canning and freezing and learning
the better ways to cook things. So most of the
stuff we grew up with as kids was fresh. off
the farm and then cooked for us and or it was
canned or frozen or maintained in some way so
that we like potatoes we kept them in the basement
um and so you could use them until the next year
when you grew more and and the cycle kept going
we were not we went to the grocery store but
that was to get the things you needed so much
you know the spices the things uh the loaf bread
because we didn't make bread um you know of course
everybody gets soda So to pop those sort of things
too and all, you know, those sort of things.
We would buy a ham from Dewey Folks because he
had a hog farm. I mean, so he, you know, so we
asked where our hams came from. We would, chickens,
we had our own chickens, we had our own eggs,
but a lot of neighbors had chickens and had eggs.
I was a little kid, and I mean, I'm little, like
six years old, and I remember chasing a chicken
down to the yard. and catching the chicken. And
as soon as I caught the chicken, the lady that
helped out at the house while my mom was working,
and my mom had a six -year -old and a three -year
-old, so she looked after us and helped clean
the house and all. Part of one of her things
that she would do is after I caught the chicken,
she would take care of, a nice way to put it,
was processing it, was processing that chicken
so that when my mama got off work, she could
then fix chicken that night for supper. you know
and uh you know so it was literally fresh off
the farm and i didn't realize that my chasing
down that chicken and catching it was going to
be my fried chicken i did but i didn't it just
it was one of those things going you know you
know you know you just catch that red hen okay
i got that um there's a lot of things like that
that um the uh People need to be able to go back
to farming. They need to be able to have that.
They have farmer's markets throughout. There's
a farmer's market in our hometown and stuff because
not everybody has the equipment to raise a garden
or has the land to raise a garden, and that's
perfectly fine. Or they don't raise every type
of vegetable that they want or every type of
fruit that they want. When my parents got rid
of the tobacco around 1981, my mother said, let's
raise blackberries. We'd always picked wild blackberries.
The next thing you know, my dad's putting in
these long rows up on trellises, blackberry vines
that they'd ordered and they had blackberries.
And so my Jerry's berries, that was her name,
Jerry. And so she had blackberries and that was
something that people would come out to the farm
and pick or my mom would go out there and pick
them. She loved it. She said it was therapeutic.
And I'm like, it looks like more work because
everything she did was always like more work.
But she said sewing was. therapeutic that she
sewed until she was in her 80s um um in the middle
of her dementia i actually took her to a sewing
store joanne's fabric and she came completely
out of the dementia and i thank goodness i recorded
it because it was just fabulous it was like oh
my goodness she was just she was at home again
she was in joanne's fabrics uh i think that's
gone out of business now which is sad but uh
yeah um There's things that we need in the tobacco
stuff you talked about. It supported this country
for 400 years. Now we're going way away from
tobacco. And I don't have a problem with people
not wanting to smoke. I didn't smoke. My dad
didn't want me to smoke. He smoked. I didn't.
My mom says that she smoked back in the 50s,
but that she stopped. And I never saw her smoke.
I gave it a try when I was working undercover.
Mostly as a sort of a stress thing. But I didn't
continue with it. It was like, you know, for
about a year. And I was like, nope, I don't need
this. I don't like this. It's not me. I don't
want it. We're going in a different direction
with that now. We're going towards everything
cannabis, marijuana, THC, vape. I don't know
that that's any better for you. Or any worse.
I mean, people tell me, yeah, I know. Hey, I
smoked weed way back. I understand. It's a different
kind of weed. The stuff I had back in the 70s,
80s, whatever, back then, that was maybe 3 %
THC. They're talking 28%, 30%, hallucinogenic
level THC. 65 % is something I've recently heard,
which just blows my mind. I can't even imagine.
And vaping it is a whole different process. I
mean, you talk about it's like a miniature bong,
you know, but you're not having to use a water
bong or fill a bong up or doing any of this stuff.
It's going straight in. And it's the same thing
on any other stuff that you're taking into your
lungs. I don't care. And then they're flavoring
things now. Well, the whole process of flavoring
things is to make it more appealing to your taste
buds. Hey, I love chocolate. I love grape. You
know, those flavors are. flavors that appeal
to me and a lot of other people make those things
flavored like bubble gum or grape or chocolate.
You're going to find people that are just like,
they love that. Um, I don't know if it's healthy.
I guess everybody gets to do what they want to
do and see what's going to happen to them with
it. Um, as to the tobacco level of things, you're
talking such a massive industry back in the day
and now big tobacco. well, many years ago, bought
into big food. And then they bought into big
cannabis, I guess, is the way to look at it.
But they also bought into big alcohol. And so
many of these things can be addictive. We already
know alcohol can be an addictive thing for some
people. And it causes problems, always has. But
we're never, ever, ever going to ban it. That's
just not happening. Tobacco, you know, definitely,
without a doubt, nicotine has its issues. And
we now know what the tobacco industry did. Not
the tobacco of the forefathers, not the tobacco
of the Native Americans, not the tobacco of previous,
but the tobacco now. And the tobacco that came
through the 70s, 80s, 90s, 60s, whatever. There
were things that were done in the processing
to make sure that people kept coming back to
the menthol and to other brands. I remember Virginia
Slims being advertised. They were advertised
to girls like me that was a teenager because
we needed to smoke a girls' brand, a women's
cigarette. So smoke the Virginia Slims because
all the ads would show. You know, very attractive,
young, 20 -something -year -old models smoking
these slimmer cigarettes. They're messing with
my head as a teenager to tell me I need to be
slim and attractive and smoke this cigarette.
You know, what happens, though, when that becomes
the thing that kills me? You know, I mean, because
it does. They don't want to blame them. Shame
on you for wanting to be slim and attractive.
You know, just one bad effect from these things.
A lot of different things we could be having
out there. And you're talking about the healthy
stuff. I love seeing the return to, I call it
the smaller farm. But the return to being able
to buy a half, I don't need a half a beef. or
half a side of beef nowadays, but even a quarter
size, or being able to order my hamburgers or
my steak or my roast and getting that from a
farm where I know that farmer. I know that rancher.
I know that person. I know the grass they're
running them on. I know the grains they're feeding.
I know that they're not using a ton of antibiotics.
I know that, and I love that. I am very much
pro that. Always have been. I've done that a
long time. I guess I grew up that way. And then
when it suddenly became something I could do
again, I did. My sister was in nursing for really
close to 40 years, if you think about it. I'm
aging you, yes, Katrina. During COVID, We were
looking after my mom, and my sister had ordered
a whole bunch of lavender plants, and it started
growing lavender and getting these little plants
shipped to her from all over on their farm. She
wanted to put her on her husband's farm. Now
she's 2 ,000 -plus plants out there, and she
owns Lunenberg Lavender right there back where
I grew up. And so she started making lavender
products and trying to test to see what she could
make to where things were more natural. edible
and things that people could use, things that
they wanted. And she made different kinds of
lavender products. And she's been doing that.
And her business has taken off on Shopify and
Facebook and stuff. Now she's retired from nursing.
She's able to do it more. She's able to make
even more products. And she's doing that same
thing, looking to what people want. You want
a deodorant? She makes that now, but it doesn't
have all of the chemical stuff and all that's
in the major manufacturing stuff. It's more wholesome,
more natural. I get a nasal spray from her because
occasionally my sinuses get clogged up, and it
works great for me. But I think people are looking
for that. Facial moisturizers, dog shampoos,
you name it. She's just coming up with all kinds
of creative things to do with lavender. But I'm
seeing a lot of other farmers do things like
that, too. You talked about the cattle up in
Shenandoah Valley. You know, there's always tons
of stuff up that way. And of course, the Mennonites
and the Amish have expanded quite a bit through
Virginia, through the farm country. And they're
doing a lot of the same thing. They're making
things and doing stuff, stuff that they've always
done, that their traditions and that their lifestyle
has always done, has now become. sought after.
A lot of city folks want to come out and buy
from the Mennonites and the Amish. They want
to go to their stores. They want to talk to them
on their farms. They want to get the fresh product.
They're seeing it for themselves and they're
going, yeah. Also in construction. I mean, have
you ever actually seen some of the stuff that
the Amish build? Yeah. And then also, I think
one of the things that really blows me away,
if you watch the barn moving that they do and
how the community comes together, I think it
was even after the North Carolina storms. I think
they were one of the first groups that were going
in and helping people rebuild. Absolutely. Absolutely.
It was a group out of Virginia, not too far from
where I grew up, down in the south side. And
the Amish and all, yeah, unbelievable. They made
tiny houses. They did all kinds of things. The
hammers never stopped. They never stopped. Um,
it's amazing what they're able to do. And, uh,
you know, they're not going to put your electrical
in for you, but other than that, they will, they
will definitely do the rest of it for you and
they'll do it quickly. And they do it, um, in
an affordable way when, when it's something you're
buying, when you start looking out at, at who's,
who is doing and all my, uh, my nephew just had
a, um, a barn built, uh, with some of the Amish
workers. And, uh, He was amazed at their workmanship,
at their quality. And they always showed up.
I mean, they said what time they were going to
be there. They were there. I mean, you know,
they showed up. You know, and they don't step
outside their own traditions. They're doing their
thing. And, you know, they'll answer your questions.
You can talk to them and everything. But I think
it's good that we've got a lot of people that
are still like that, that are still resilient,
that are still. uh knowledgeable on how these
things are done and that you can learn from them
and we can keep doing it i think that we i think
other countries i think the world we could all
go back to doing fresh foods last year no i'm
sorry it's coming up on two years now i was in
uzbekistan for 30 days i don't know if you know
where uzbekistan is but if you're looking for
any of the countries that the last words are
staying all the whatever it's right in the middle
i just tell people just Right there, right in
the middle, Uzbekistan. Loved the people, loved
the country. Lived in Tashkent for most of it
while I was there. It's a city of three million.
It's the cleanest city I've ever been in for
three million people. Gorgeous. And they take
so much pride in their grass, their flowers,
their trees, and in keeping things clean and
nice. They have a lot of police, but the police
are there to make sure that everybody is safe
and okay and knows where they're getting to and
going and that their traffic accidents don't
block the road so that people can keep, they
don't let anything slow anything down. They're
welcoming to business all over the world right
now. So we were there. The South Koreans were
coming in to visit. India had come in to visit.
There were several people that were coming back
and forth doing trade deals with them. Just a
pleasant, humble people and a proud people. You
learn a lot about their history and all while
we were there. We went to Samar Khan. Quick weekend
visit because we wanted to see the stuff that
was from the Genghis Khan and before era. Because
Genghis Khan came there and he kind of conquered
them, but he actually let their leaders sort
of stay in charge because he liked them. He admired
their fighting abilities. And so he left them.
But you also see the influx of how things change
their country from being on the Silk Road. And
so the influx of China. through the Silk Road
with them and the trading and all of that that
has continued to carry on with their foods and
their traditions and their clothing. But then
you also saw the influx of the Middle East on
their religion and Islam. And then to add to
that, which made it kind of unusual, because
I have been to a lot of the Middle East. Their
influx from Russia, now they have had their freedom
from Russia since, I want to say, 91, 92, when
the Great Wall, when the wall came down in Germany
and the USSR disappeared. They gained their freedom
from the Soviet, but they still have a lot of
Russian influence. So I ate a lot of really good
Russian food while I was there. I'd never had
borscht before. It was great. There's a way that
the chicken is made by the Russian recipe that
I found fabulous. I've been looking for it here.
I haven't found it yet. Alcohol. So they have
a beer and they have some vodkas and things that
they make there. And you don't really think about
that so much in an Islamic country. And yet they
have that and they're perfectly fine with that.
So that was different. And then they're teaching
English at like every little school in the city
of Tuscan. Everybody's trying to learn English.
They want to be able to deal with the rest of
the world. But all of their fruits and their
vegetables, every food we had made at the hotel
or at the academy where we were teaching at,
by their cooks, everything, their chefs, whatever,
absolutely the freshest and best anywhere. Just
incredible. And I wish we were back to that level
because the breads don't make you bloated and
heavy and everything you could eat over there.
And you felt great. I lost weight. And yet I
was eating all the time. You hear that a lot
when people travel. And I think this is what's
so maddening is. And all the, like we were just
talking before I hit record, I've been doing
this podcast for nine years now, 1200 people
have come on here. So all these stories, whether
they're military and again, people seeing different
cultures overseas, whether they're actual nutritionists,
you know, farmers, whatever it is. And the common
denominator is basically if we roll back time
a hundred years, as far as how we eat, how we
move, how we forge community, we would solve.
80 90 of the problems right there now you know
generational trauma yeah 100 years ago it was
still pretty pretty prevalent with world war
one and you know the great depression and those
kind of things but you know the the quality of
the food the quality of the movement the quality
of the conversation the quality of the sleep
you know all those were the real pillars of health
were there So there's so much value in just looking
back, not having the arrogance of, you know,
the modern age where, yes, some of our technology
is absolutely phenomenal and we can weave that
in. But we've totally become disconnected on
all the things that got us here through millennia
as human beings and circling around and using
examples of, you know, like I talk about here
on the time, you know, Finland with education.
Norway with prisons, Portugal with decriminalization,
the British healthcare system when it's fully
funded and supported. These are all amazing models
that the rest of the world could go, well, they're
doing that really well. And Japan. They make
food from scratch in their schools and the kids
clean the schools. What an amazing concept. Let's
bring that in. 1960s California, the PE program,
that was phenomenal. So now you take everyone's
great ideas and you share knowledge and you're
humble enough to say, all right, you are doing
it better than us. And we do have an obesity
crisis. So let's start bringing in some of these.
We do that and we knowledge share globally. Imagine,
as I use this phrase all the time now, the rising
tide lifts all ships. Everyone around the planet
would benefit. And some of the technology that's
degrading our planet, like deforestation, because
one country is providing most of the beef or
one country has got all these servers that are
depleting the resources and the water and they're
overheating. Now if we're all back to more of
a microcosm, lots of communities around the world,
and we're eating well and we're moving well,
imagine the impact and the funds that are freed
up from not having to fight a horrendous opioid
crisis and not having to fill our hospitals and
our first responders on all the obesity -related
diseases and deaths. So, I mean, to me, if we
wrote a book saying how to fix most of the things,
you open it up and it would just say, do what
we did a hundred years ago. That's it. Well,
I think if we could all, and I know we don't
agree on things, that doesn't work that way.
I mean, but we already talked about it at the
front there. There are the things that we do
good, whether we do it in our country, other
countries, but that we do good. And I wish we
could just sit down and go, okay, these are the
things that really work and are good. And these
are the things that, have been failures. All
right, we can't fix these. We've tried, and this
is just, nah, let it go. Go back over here to
the ones that work really good and say, that's
what we want to do. We're going to work with
those and continue those processes. I'm just
going to say, RFK, I like him. I get it. There's
people that just don't like him for whatever
reason. The funny thing is, they did like him.
They just don't right now. He is right. Physical
fitness. It's so important. We've got to be moving.
A hundred years ago, you had to move. You had
to walk. You had to do a lot of things. You had
to do a lot of physical labor. They didn't have
all the fancy farm tractors that you could just
plug it in and the thing could do pretty much
on its own. And you had air conditioning and
all of that stuff inside. And you could eat your
lunch and talk on the phone and play a video
game. None of that. They didn't have any of that.
You were physically active, physically laboring.
My parents grew up that way. My sister and I
grew up that way until we got off the farm, went
to school, and got educations and found careers.
But that physical labor thing was like a part
of every day from the time your feet hit the
floor until the time your head hit the pillow
at night. You were in a physical labor type of
movement. In addition to if you happen to go
jogging or bicycling or horseback riding or whatever
it might be, or down to the gym lifting weights,
whatever it might have been. And those things
are good for you. So, yeah, physical fitness
is big. Getting the chemical junk out of our
food and out of the crop care. I'm not saying
that there aren't certain things we need. We
need those things fixed. I'm sorry. Big Pharma
got way out of control. I saw the worst of it
in my law enforcement career because of Purdue
Pharma with the OxyContin. Absolutely. When I
first saw OxyContin and heard about OxyContin,
nobody in this country knew what that was because
they introduced it in the southern Appalachia
of the United States first. We were the first.
We were on the cutting edge of hell. Purdue Pharma
sent their pharmaceutical reps down to see the
doctors in the coal mining regions and the timber
regions where people are working hard labor jobs.
And they told these doctors, and I know this,
this is a fact. I've read Dope Sick. I've watched
the Hulu. I love the Hulu series. I know those
guys. Randy Ramseyer and Rick Montcal, so I worked
with them for years. They were the prosecutors
in the office that I worked. with them to prosecute
our criminal cases. I know the Sheriff Gary Parsons
in Lee County. I've known him since the late
90s. We were out working in Lee County and we
get a call and Gary Parsons wants us to come
and help out. They got a problem with something
called an OC. Never heard of it. What is it?
We couldn't even call anybody to ask them what
the hell it was. And what we found out was an
OC was this prescription medication. And it came
in like a 10 milligram. And people were using
them. They were crushing them up and snorting
them. And they were chewing them up and doing.
And we're like, well, it's pharmaceutical. They
go, no, no, no, no, no. They're selling them.
And people are starting to do, we're seeing them.
Big increase in break -ins and burglaries, and
guns are getting stolen, and we want ATF, we
want you guys to come over and help us out. And
there was a business over there, Mr. Williams
and all, they had this really nice log cabin
company business. They made beautiful logs and
the log cabin homes and stuff. Well, in the middle
of the night one weekend, the log cabin business,
which employed quite a few people and was very
prominent there, right on the main drag there,
In Lee County, it started burning to the ground.
And all the volunteer fire departments and the
volunteer emergency squad and the sheriff's deputies,
state trooper that was working that night, everybody
was out there dealing with that because this
business was burning to the ground and it was
just the worst thing ever. Well, of course, the
owners are coming out, the neighbors are coming
out, everybody's out there. And while the owner's
out there and they're dealing with all of this
stuff, his home was broken into. And the firearms
in his home were stolen. And whoever was in his
house had plenty of time, and they knew they
had time because they knew he wasn't home. And
he had rushed out, and apparently whatever alarms
he had, not all of them were set. And so by the
time anybody realized that his home had been
broken into, it was all gone. We found that the
people who did that had set his business on fire
intentionally, you know, then took the— things
that they stole from his home and traveled just
a few short miles over into the Kentucky area
and got rid of stuff, everything. And the whole
purpose was OxyContin. And we're like, how do
you even spell that? Because that's not how,
how it's spelled is not how I spelled it to begin
with. But OxyContin was this OC. And it was like,
how bad is this? There's some people, they're
going down to Mexico because you can get a better
strength and you can get this and you can get
that. Yeah, and there's these doctors that are
selling it around here that you can just go to
their office and you just tell them that you
don't feel good. And shoulder's been kind of
hurting me lately. What did you do to it? It
just hurts me. Okay, we're going to prescribe
you this new medicine. And we're going to go
ahead and give you a 90 -day supply on these
things. And we got a 20 milligram now. We got
a 40 milligram now. We got a 60 milligram now.
We got an 80 milligram now. It just kept going
up, up, up. And, oh, we're going to make it so
that you can't do anything to it. They told some
of the doctors early on and the dentist, this
is going to replace aspirin. This is the next
aspirin. It's great for pain. So when a kid gets
their wisdom teeth cut out, go ahead and give
them a 90 -day supply, a 16 -year -old, a 17
-year -old, an 18 -year -old. They did that.
Oh, so -and -so, he sprained his ankle playing
football last week, and he's not going to be
able to do practice. If he doesn't make practice
this week, he's not going to be able to play
football on Saturday. You know what? He needs
a 90 -day script. Everybody needs a 90 -day script.
We heard 90 -day scripts so many times, it just
blows your mind. Then I talked to a little 15
-year -old. God, I heard a lot of these stories,
but this little 15 -year -old girl, this is like
the one that kind of made my mouth just drop.
Everything just hits you. She was strung out,
really strung out. She was really, really addicted.
She'd been passed around by a lot of people by
this point in life when we're talking to her.
We're like, how did you get on these? How long
have you been on them? About eight months. Okay.
When did you start this? Well, I went to a party
with my friends and it was a Friday night. Okay,
great. And it was right after the high school
football game. Okay. Everything. And they said,
if I just tried it, if I just did a little bit
of it. So I just did one little line, you know,
whatever. And great. All right. Then on Saturday
afternoon, we were hanging out, and so -and -so
had a pill, and they crushed it up on a plate,
and then I did another line, all right, and stuff.
And I was thinking on Sunday if I could get a
hold of one of those pills. I was just wanting
one because it's just the way it made me feel.
Wow, okay. So on Monday, I saw so -and -so at
high school, and I told him what I was wanting,
and I got one, and I took home just a quarter
of a pill, a quarter of one pill. I took it home
with me Monday night and I used it. And by the
next weekend, I had been getting like a quarter
of a pill every day. And so then I wanted more.
And we're like, wow. But you heard these stories
over and over and over. And very quickly after
that, she was trading sexual favors because she
didn't have any money. She didn't have a job
to pay for this. And she wasn't going to get
this stuff for free. And then they found out
that there were some older people. seniors, retired
folks, who were getting prescriptions for this.
And sometimes their homes got broken into and
the pills were stolen. And sometimes some of
the older gentlemen could find that some of these
younger girls would be willing to trade sexual
favors for pills. So you just rattle that model
of pills. Here's three pills. Here's five pills.
Here's 10 pills. We'll trade that. Eventually,
we started dealing with people who were moving
like 10 ,000 pills a month easily. They were
trafficking them. They were selling them. They
were going to pill mills. Pill mills were where
the doctors were just writing out the scripts.
They were going all over the place, going to
pharmacies. They would hit six doctors in like
two days to get the scripts. Had 90 pills per
script. They were using people's Medicare card,
Medicaid, Medicare stuff to get a script for
a dollar. Using people's insurance cards. The
fraud, the identity fraud, all of that, that
was going into it. The traffic on the pills just
became just overwhelming. We couldn't catch up.
We started it in 1999. The pills had gotten introduced
as a 10 milligram in 1996, about the end of 96.
We got involved early 99 with our first cases
in our office. By 2000, we were seeing overdose
deaths because the milligrams were going up.
People were taking them and they were using Xanax.
That was a respiratory shutdown effect. That
was what was happening. They didn't realize that.
People started injecting them. That was the bigger
thing we were seeing. They were finding ways
to remove the coating off of them. But Purdue
didn't care. In 2002, 48 hours, a TV show came
down and talked to us out in Lake County at the
high school. I attended the meetings. I attended
meetings in Abingdon, Virginia at the high school.
The people were so mad and so angry. There were
lawyers that were trying their best to fight
back. There was a program called Octagon. It
was a project by the U .S. Attorney's Office
in the Western District of Virginia, mostly in
Abingdon, Virginia. That's where Randy Ramseyer
and Rick Moncastle worked at from, like I said,
the movie or the series Hulu had, Dope Sick.
But it's based on... Beth Macy's book, Dope Sick.
Octagon was targeting the bad doctors. Originally,
it was called Octagon because they were looking
at eight, just eight. I don't know how many doctors,
how many pharmacists, how many nurses we took
off, but between them and DEA and the Virginia
State Police and the rural county sheriff's departments
and the local city of Bristol, Virginia and Abingdon,
Virginia, Marion, Virginia. The problem was just
overwhelming. And then as we kept going, by 2006,
I was working on a project, and it was myself
and DEA agent named Brian. And we'd just gotten
into it. We realized we were going to need the
FBI, so we went and got an agent named Tom. Now,
there was only a handful of federal agents out
there. We were all in the same building. So you
know everybody by first name, of course. We named
it Operation Leaky Shield. Tom came up with that
because we had law enforcement officers that
were stealing drugs from their evidence and from
people that they were stopping on traffic stops
and from houses when they were doing search warrants
and from pharmacies. They broke into places.
They were stealing guns. They were stealing jewelry.
They were partying with underage girls. Lots
of things going on. It was out of control. police
departments and rural sheriff's departments,
they had an oxy problem, a real oxy problem,
because they had addicts on their departments.
Not a lot, but one or two in a department of,
say, 15 or 20 is not good by anybody's definition
anywhere. It was affecting a lot of people, and
it just got worse. We were arresting teachers,
lawyers. Of course, the doctors, There were doctors
who were using, pharmacists that were using,
pharmacists that overdosed. I know a pharmacist
that had the business, and his wife passed away
from an overdose from it. A little town in Big
Stone Gap, Virginia. I used to go there all the
time and work with Mark Jones. He was a detective
over there. He's retired now. Mark survived the
Beirut bombing of the barracks in 1983. as a
Marine, came home to be a law enforcement officer,
and then watched his little small rural southwest
Virginia Appalachian town of Big Stone Gap be
devastated by Oxycontin, by Purdue Pharma, by
the Sackler family. No one has been prosecuted,
criminally prosecuted, by the Department of Justice
to this day for what they did. Yeah, lots of
money after lots of court fights and decades
of people overdosing and dying, but not any one
person held responsible, not any two, not any
three, when it comes to the Department of Justice,
the Sackler family, Purdue Pharma, Big Pharma.
And I'm sitting here in my living room the other
night, and I happen to pay attention to a commercial
on TV. I normally don't. I normally don't even
see commercials because I thought I'd gotten
away from that with Netflix and Prime, but that's
not true anymore. They were advertising something
to me. They were advertising to me a drug to
get over my addiction. If me or a family member
or someone has an addiction to an opioid, that
I could get on this new pharmaceutical opioid
and it would get me off of it. Funny thing is,
I saw a lot of people that did methadone and
suboxone, and I never saw anybody get off of
it. Instead, I watched them at the methadone
clinics at 5 a .m., and by the end of the day,
they were hunting down oxys to get them through
the day, and then they were back at the methadone
clinic. It was like, this is unreal. I watched
them with suboxone. They told us when suboxone
came out, they told us. We were in the meetings
when they said, this is going to... fix this.
Suboxone, they'll get off of it. They'll get
off of the opioids. They'll quit and they'll
get off of it. That's funny because the teenagers
I dealt with in places like Lee County and other
areas of Southwest Virginia, when I met them
when they were in their 20s, they weren't off
Suboxone yet. They hadn't gotten squared away
yet. There were so few people that were getting
through this and all. And some of them were just
flat out drug dealing. A lot of them were just
flat out addicted. And that was never the intention.
Big Pharma did a huge, awful thing with Purdue
Pharma, with the Sackler family, with everybody
that's doing it. And now I'm watching this opioid
medicine being peddled as what's going to get
you off of an opioid. And everybody knows, because
we've been told this for decades, that opioids...
is the hardest substance to get off and get clean
from. So now we have a fentanyl problem. And
now fentanyl is being added to every drug being
brought into our country or being done here in
our country. When I say that, cocaine, the crack,
meth, molly, MDMA, all of those things. there's
a certain amount of fentanyl or carfentanil being
added to it to increase the addiction. If you
don't have a monitored vape, one that has been
actually checked out and made sure that it was
made legal, or if you're getting your marijuana
supply from someplace across the border that's
coming up to the U .S. or from outside, or even
as we call it, the California cartel, you don't
know that you're not getting stuff that hasn't
been laced with fentanyl or carfentanil because
they need you to keep on. Bring the business
back. Keep coming back. You want our vape. You
want our THC. You want our gummy. No, it hadn't
been really checked out by the FDA yet. No, it
hadn't really been approved this yet. So that's
where those things, those substances scare me.
You know. It just keeps perpetuating itself.
The war on drugs, I started in the war on drugs
as a law enforcement in 1986. I only recently
saw a start to win it. And unfortunately, we're
having to blow up people trying to bring this
stuff, you know, any way they can through boats,
having to blow them up because they won't stop.
taking a big toll. We're now seeing Mexico unravel
with the cartels because of this Almento. You
know, it's complicated, but their business has
been hurt. The border is shut down. And with
the border shut down, it's making it very hard
to smuggle into the country. But there is a large
operation now to bring meth out of Canada into
the U .S. It's going to keep coming. And China
and India, they produce the chemical drugs, the
chemicals that get mixed to create meth and to
create fentanyl and carfentanil. No matter how
many times we try to deal with them to stop doing
that, it continues to happen. So it's an ugly
thing. And yes, I'm still mad at Sacklers and
Purdue Pharma and DOJ for not prosecuting. uh
everyone involved uh and that's been 25 well
right at 30 years now i guess it is 30 years
since we first heard of something called an oc
which is what they stamped on the white little
oxycontin back in the day oc i had rig mountcastle
on only probably three months ago And it was
amazing. I had Sam Quinones who wrote Dreamland
about the opioid crisis and did a great job talking
about the Sacklers and then the cartels that
were on the back end once the pill mills were
closed. I also, my mom moved to Portugal a few
years ago, like 25 years ago. And when I started
the podcast, she said to me, hey, did you know
what they did about addiction here? And it was,
I mean, it's so incredible. They had a crippling.
addiction crisis i think the worst in europe
if not the world at that point they had a lot
of soldiers go to the portuguese colonies in
africa fighting one of the wars they came back
heavily addicted and they did a true democracy
they went to the people and they said hey this
you know american model the war on drugs just
isn't working arresting addicts is just not fixing
this problem we want to explore different different
ideas And so I sat down with the guy who spearheaded
this, Zhao Gulau in Lisbon. And what they did
is that, well, hey, addiction is a medical issue.
It's a mental health issue. So these people are
trying to deal with their trauma. Now they have
the shame and the guilt from this addiction.
Then it's spiraling them to getting a... Criminal
record, now their ability to work is diminished.
It's like this is set up for failure. It's not
going to work. So what they did, they took a
lot of the resources that they had, basically
arresting addicts, and they put it into drug
rehabilitation, mental health counseling, job
creation, housing. And so it didn't just decrim.
They put all the things in place to heal the
hurting human being, which freed up resources
for the dealers and the smugglers. So all those
cops could now go and chase the really bad people.
And within less than 10 years, Portugal completely
reversed their addiction crisis. And it's amazing.
So for me, with all these people that I've spoken
to, people just like you and Rick and, you know,
so many other, Jay Dobbins, all these other people
from your world. It's the same kind of message.
This war on drugs isn't working. And if you look,
I actually did a Google search. How many millions
and millions and millions and millions of dollars
a Purdue farmer has given Democrats and Republicans
lining their pockets? And then lo and behold,
wow, none of them are behind bars. And Richard
Sack is living in Boca Raton in a mansion as
we speak, 200 miles south of me. So I think,
and I had so many people. think this way now
and we see that for example naval special warfare
and ibogaine and psilocybin and the effects that
they're having healing addiction opioids alcohol
that i feel like well again you know like we're
talking about well who's doing this well because
this clearly isn't working you know we have more
gangs more cartels when are we going to have
the conversation of of separating addicts and
then the criminals true criminals you know smuggling
and dealing and putting the addicts in the hands
of the medical community, not with any kind of
disillusion that every single one of those is
going to heal and thrive after that, but a vast
majority is. Because as you talked about, teachers
and pharmacists and lawyers and log workers and
farmers, these are people that are just struggling.
And this damn drug came in and it was the thing
to fill the void at that moment. The pain initially
and then the mental pain. So you get people the
tools to heal their mental pain. Now you've just
taken a customer out of the drug trade. And so
that supply and demand is diminished. So it makes
perfect sense to me. We've tried the other way.
We know it doesn't work. This is like an 80 plus
year longitudinal study. You know, there's crips
and bloods, not because. They didn't like each
other's colors. It's because the drug trade.
So that is I mean, that's a huge monologue. I
apologize. But that's kind of where I'm at now
in my mind. Now, without loading the question,
cleaning it again, what is your perspective on
our war on drugs model? And is there an alternative
that you think we should try in this country?
I think we can go with things differently. I
see we're trying to turn it around right now
and do some things differently. I have no problem
with blowing up drug runners, bringing this stuff
coming up. That's my opinion. If that's the way
it stops, it stops it. If shutting down the border
to, one, force people who want to come here lawfully
to come the lawful way, that you have to come
the proper way, then that's great. If that cuts
down on the people who are mulling people across
that line who are coyotes, because you know that
they're bringing children, they're bringing women,
they're bringing young boys, teens, those things.
They're bringing terrorists. They're bringing
all kinds of people. And the back doorway, well,
we have to shut the door if we have to to make
that happen. But they've also been bringing dope
that way forever. So if that's making that drug
supply a lot center, then I'm happy with that.
Okay, because we have to stop the flu. That'll
help. That gives law enforcement a chance to
do something. From my own agency's perspective
of ATF, I am not this huge person where I think
that there needs to be a lot of gun laws and
another gun law and a gun law and a gun law and
a gun law because that's going to fix the problem
because people who murder, A homicide is against
the law. People who do an armed robbery, that's
already against the law. I mean, you don't steal.
You know, the thing of, okay, well, you can't
have a gun this, you can't have a gun that, well,
it hasn't really ever affected a criminal. It
hasn't really affected anybody who's mentally
ill. Yeah, I would like people to secure their
firearms better if they're not going to have
them with them. You know, definitely teach safety.
I think when we were teaching safety, particularly
in the schools and things like that back in the
40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, that probably worked a lot
better than the not teaching people about safety.
I mean, we teach them about the safety of automobiles
and driving under the influence. We should teach
about the safety of firearms, too, because they're
out there. You're certainly not going to. have
anybody pick up 400 million firearms out of the
United States, it's not going to happen. Then
you're not going to stop criminals from obtaining
what they want. So approach things, as we talked
about, with other things like farming and all.
Approach it differently. This war on drugs, yeah.
We have to have a better thing of what we're
going to do for the addict. And we have to go
after the people who profit in ways like the
Sacklers did with the Purdue Pharma and the way
they did that. And let me tell you, Big Tobacco
did the exact same damn thing in putting all
that crap into tobacco. It is not the same as
an organic tobacco or the tobaccos that you perhaps
get over in the Middle East. I've tried the hookah
pipes. It's different. And yet it's tobacco.
When you start to make that as a substance that's
more appealing, that's more addictive, you're
doing wrong. I know people are going to probably
hate, oh, vapes are okay. No, you know what?
No, they're not. So when you make a really nice
flavored vape and stuff, and my 16 -year -old
grandkid decides to try it, and the next thing
you know, that's something that is happening.
One, Nanogen is not going to be happy. But two,
a lot of other people in the family aren't going
to be. And three, it's like, why did they make
it in this flavors? You know, why? Because that
makes it more appealing. And it's like, well,
OK, yeah. So in other words, that is there to
make it addictive. That's not that's not entrepreneurship.
That's not business. You are giving people something
bad for them and all. I mean, I'm sorry if you
tried to make me eat Brussels sprouts. It's not
my thing at all. But maybe if you could make
them taste like dark chocolate, I'd probably
like Brussels sprouts. I'd be addicted. It's
just, it's that sort of thing. So now you are
making something that's not healthy for the body.
Good. Those people have to be held responsible.
I'm watching this commercial. I told you. and
they are offering an opioid for an opioid, I
don't care. They're offering a synthetic for
a synthetic, I still don't care. Maybe if these
people had a job out on a farm and had a chance
to sweat this stuff out of their system, but
that's not going to work for everybody, but that's
just sort of my little mind concept. Give them
a chance. Let them get clean for 30 days and
get going and give them the programs they need.
Now, how am I going to keep this stuff away from
them? Well, I'd like to be able to keep the people
who are bringing it in from bringing it in. I'd
like to be able to keep the dealing people from
doing. And I go back to the firearms again. The
people who are using the firearms, who are enforcing
their business with firearms, who are obtaining
the firearms. in an unlawful way, such as stealing
them or making them on a 3D printer, who are
modifying them to use on the street, not unlike
what we used to see back in the late 80s with
all of the violence that used to be heavy duty.
The people who are using them to gun down their
competitors on the street, that sort of thing.
That's where ATF needs to be so focused, so heavily
focused. Go after the criminals who are doing
the actual felony criminal damage that are harming
other people. That's the ones you go after. You
don't just suddenly say, hey, we don't like that
particular thing that's on a firearm, so that's
now going to be against the law to have. That's
going to be an illegal item, and it's a brace.
It's just a brace thing. It's not going to change.
It didn't change something enough that you make
that illegal. And now the 20 million people who
own that, you now suddenly, that's not legal
anymore, so I give it back. And we're like, okay,
how many of those are actually being used to
commit crimes? Well, it's not really being used
to commit crimes. Why is this? Why are we messing
with this? So I didn't agree with any of that.
I didn't like that. And there's those little
things that stay in a lane and let's go after
the really bad guys. Let's go after the people
who are really, really evil. And in my opinion,
the people who are creating drugs or creating
an addictive substance in order to keep people's
money and to keep them still buying, that's wrong.
I mentioned that California cartel thing, that
creating vapes and creating THC products with
this higher and higher and higher and higher
level. of THC and, oh, well, THC is legal now.
It's okay now. It's like, what level are we at?
Is anybody regulating that? Because it is still
hallucinogenic. It's not the same. It's not the
3%. It's not the 5%. You've gone to a level now.
There's a woman who stabbed her boyfriend 108
times and she got off on the murder charge, homicide,
because THC was something like 28%, 30 % in the
marijuana that she smoked that her boyfriend
gave her. Up until then, people said, oh, no,
people who smoke marijuana, they're not going
to do anything violent. They're laid back. They're
going to be eating chips. That changes when hallucinogenic
effects take effect. And if there is anything
that's being added to it to make it more addictive,
any kind of fentanyl or carfentanil. Those things
have to be stopped. We've got to do whatever
we've got to do to make China and India and anybody
else that wants to produce that chemical stuff
to stop it. If we have to blow up labs that are
making it, then we have to blow up those labs
to keep them from making it. I know they'll build
another one and another one. We have to find
places to put people. We can't just warehouse
people and say, okay, you're a bunch of addicts.
We're going to warehouse you. There's got to
be better ways. You talk about what Portugal
did. I think there's a few countries that have
done good with it. I also think that there are
a few countries that we don't want to follow
their models because it's not been successful
in any way at all. You just have addicts laying
on the street. I don't want to see more cities.
I mean, I've seen plenty, but I don't want to
keep seeing cities like what's happened in Philly
with the Kensington area. People just gave up
on that area, and they've given up on parts of
L .A. and San Francisco and Portland and Seattle,
but there's more cities than that that are being
affected. We can name Richmond and Charlotte,
Columbia, South Carolina, Greenville. There's
addicts in all those cities, too, and they are
on the streets. They are homeless. They're not
getting the nutrition they need. They've got
their addiction issues. Crime is up because of
them because they are committing small crimes,
vandalism, all kinds of things in order to get
whatever they need to get the next high. I can't
even... I remember in the 70s people talking
about shooting up heroin. And they were talking
about Harlem for some reason. I don't know how
it all tied in. but shooting up heroin in this
needle in their arm. And I never thought I would
ever see that day. And by 2000, I saw people
shooting up Oxy. And we're 25 years, well, 26
years, I'm sorry. I forget what year I'm in.
We're 26 years past that, and needles are everywhere.
Everybody seems to be shooting up something.
I just didn't see that very much back in the
70s, 80s, 90s, but you do now. Everybody's used
to it. You've got to teach kids not to touch
those, not to pick them up. It's like, can we
teach them about the firearms too while we're
at it? But let's definitely teach them, don't
touch that stuff. We've had to retrain everybody
because of the fentanyl stuff, air -soling, and
possibly, yeah, and everybody. Like every law
enforcement, paramedic, firefighter and stuff
has now got to carry some kind of Narcan with
them. Narcan's everywhere now. People have it
in their homes now. Who would have thought that,
yeah, you got to have Narcan? So we've got to
fix some of that. And I do think that some of
the things that RFK and them are offering, I
mean, you know, I don't have to agree with everything
that anybody says on what they want, is that
physical fitness is important. Let's push that
with our kids. Let's say, hey, let's stop, get
out from behind that screen and let's get outside
and do things. Eating fresh vegetables, eating
fresh fruits, those things are great. Let's do
those things. Rooftop gardens are awesome. I
saw some people that were taking the old abandoned
homes up in the Detroit area and raising those
and then turning those areas into gardens. I
thought that was the coolest thing. I was hoping
that that would really take off for them in a
lot of areas. I saw a young black woman who started
farming and doing it up around the Charlotte.
area of North Carolina, watched a couple of stories
on her. And she was teaching farming and teaching
people how to raise crops and the agricultural
and doing and getting people to come out and
getting fresh things, healthy things. I guess
if we could keep pushing and promoting, be healthy,
not unhealthy, do the healthier things, not the
unhealthy things, it would help with our medical
issues in this country. And it would maybe help
steer some people away from messing with drugs.
I would like to see people not mess with the
drugs. You know, the drug problem is so huge.
And I'm sure if you had Rick on, I'm sure he
overwhelmed you with his knowledge of all of
the issues that have been dealt with. Well, they
say insanity is doing the same thing, expecting
different results. No one will say anything other
than it's just got worse. The gangs have got
worse. The violence got worse. I mean, look at
what's happening in our schools now. It's a mental
health crisis. Addiction is a mental health crisis.
Violence is a mental health crisis. And even,
I've said this more recently, I had an aha moment
listening to a Joe Rogan episode a couple of
years ago now. But if you are Richard Sackler
and you sleep well, knowing that to this day,
100 ,000 Americans die from the opioid crisis
that you created, that's a mental health problem.
If you're the head of William Morris, knowing
that your tobacco kills 8 million people around
the planet every year, that's a mental health
problem. So we've also got to acknowledge that
some of these politicians, some of these CEOs...
are no different than the addicts that are addicted
to their mcdonald's or their tobacco or their
you know whatever the thing is so once we acknowledge
that there is a mental health problem from the
blue collar worker to the president and everything
in between Then we can start deconstructing and
figuring out, all right, what are the issues?
What are the proactive solutions? What are the
holistic solutions? Like you said, diet and exercise
and meditation and community and all the things
that, again, here we are at the beginning of
the episode, growing up 100 years ago or growing
up in a small town. That is how we reverse this.
But just by digging our heels in and saying,
no, we're just going to keep doing the same thing.
All right, well, then you're signing off on the
end of humanity, ultimately. Yeah, you are. You
are. You're giving up. And you want things to
be better and you want the next ones to have
it better and all. Technology is great. I like
it to a certain point. There's other things out
there. I would like people to find other ways
to be entertained. If I had an addiction... It
would have been adrenaline. I guess adrenaline
would still be it. I don't do what I used to
do. But I spent 32 years in law enforcement,
and there was a certain level of adrenaline that
came from that. And so every once in a while,
I have to get out here and do something that
is different, something that really gets me energized.
Kite surfing is that next thing I kind of really
feel like I'm going to have to do. That looks
like fun. It does look like fun. It looks like
so much fun. I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, if
they'd have had that back when I was 18. Yes.
I mean, to the level of what they got now, it
would have been just I'd have been addicted to
that probably. But things like that, I would
love to see people get addicted to more things
of that nature than to be, you know, like I told
you about my mom sewing. That was her outlet,
picking blackberries and making blackberry jelly
and blackberry roll and things like that. Those
things, taking care of her family, that was kind
of her addiction. My dad was a smoker. He smoked
Kools, which K -O -O -L, don't even know if you
know what those are. They were menthol cigarettes.
But he would tell us, don't smoke, don't smoke.
Yes, he liked his beer after work. Get a cold
beer, then go out, get on that tractor and farm,
come back in, have one more cold beer, sit down
and have his supper. Watch a little TV, go to
bed, get up for the next morning, go to work.
I don't know if he had a time to really get addicted
to anything except to Kool's. But I think everybody's
got something. Everybody has something that keeps
them whatever they want to do. I just wish people
could be... I wish that healthy things were more
addictive. Because people don't seem to fight
over those. They certainly don't kill each other
over those things. It would be pleasant. It would
be very nice to do life that way. And I don't
know how to fix all of the issues that come out
on the street. Maybe we work it all together
and we get it all squared away. And I do want
to see RFK do good with... staying on top of
the pharmaceutical industries, staying on top
of these food manufacturers, staying on top of
that and looking at what they're putting out
and seeing if we can't do a little bit better
or a whole lot better. I just think we're not
going to move a needle on that until we stop
them funding the presidential campaigns. You
know what I mean? Oh, wouldn't it be nice to
see PACs go away and just say, nope, you have
to do it all on your own personal money or on
donations that can't be more than $100 from any
one individual. And there's like no other money,
no money from the foreign governments ever, like
at all. And no PAC money, no fancy $50 million
Hollywood dunk that you just suddenly got that
was a Hollywood PAC. And it's like, what? What
is that? And why do they care about southern
Louisiana? You know, so instead of doing that,
it'd be nice if all the little packs would just
go away and quit. And I get that all these very,
very wealthy people. I mean, I just was sitting
there watching something trying to decide, you
know, Bill Gates wants to apologize because he
ever knew Epstein. And it's like, yeah, right.
OK, don't believe you. Little things like that.
I just wish everybody was held accountable. I
wish we would hold people accountable. I wish
that wealth was not the distinguishing thing
that keeps people from being held accountable.
Way back in 1993, I worked a criminal case. Not
a make -or -break case, nothing big. But I always
had this thought, if I catch you... and you are
involved in what we used to do a lot, what they
call gun and dope. But if you've got a gun and
you've got dope, which back in that time was
cocaine, crack, and you've got all that, then
I arrest you, I catch you with it, you're getting
prosecuted, and then I really don't care who
you know or who you are. It doesn't matter. You
got caught. What bothered me was seeing what
they call prosecutorial discretion. And the prosecutors
could decide if this person got prosecuted or
not. I didn't see prosecutorial discretion used
on the street drug dealers. I bought a lot of
dope from them. Didn't see it used with them.
Occasionally, there would be one that I would
speak out for in the process because I would
let them know that that person and what they
did that I found decent. And I thought that they
actually could, they would learn more if they
didn't sit the next seven years in a state or
federal prison. But for the most part, no. And
then I saw people that they didn't even get a
smack on the hand. They just got told, oh, don't
do that anymore. Bye. And they didn't, nothing.
So in 93, I ended up catching someone who was
in the community that was super wealthy. super
duper wealthy from a family that was super duper
wealthy. They were edging up to the billion level
in money and they were powerful in the community.
They just built a brand new gigantic golf course
and all kinds of other things going on in the
community. Very influential. And I was told that
through his defense attorney, that if he were
to be prosecuted, lots of people would be put
out of jobs because of it. And I was like, he
should have thought of that. Not my problem.
Then I was told that if he gets prosecuted, it's
going to make the newspapers and it's going to
cause them problems with international business
and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, well,
so far, everybody's done a very good job of not
allowing the newspapers to know what's going
on. And it's not in the newspapers. Again, not
my problem. Back in the day, I didn't talk to
the media. Wasn't my problem. If they found out,
they did. If they didn't, they didn't. Life goes
on. I got other cases to work. This thing piddled
around for two years, but I was really appreciative
of the U .S. attorney. Because the U .S. Attorney
for the Western District of Virginia caught me
in the parking lot one day as I was heading out
to my car after a long meeting regarding that
same case, that same person. And he said, I promise
you, this is not going to be swept under the
rug. It's not going away. It's not going to disappear.
I have a lot of respect for that man and that
moment. I thanked him. I went, got in my car.
Two months later, we were standing in the courthouse,
no media, no anybody, and the wealthy gentleman
played guilty, and he got his sentencing, and
he got his ankle monitor, and everything was
set up for him, and he had a felony conviction
for the drug and gun, et cetera. He had all of
that. He had an ankle monitor. He wasn't going
to go to prison, but he was. on an ankle monitor,
had a probation officer, he was probation signed
to him, had his helicopter license pulled so
that he would not be flying while they made sure
that he wasn't, because that was kind of one
of those concerns. It's like, you know, he does
a lot of coke and he's flying a helicopter. Weird
rules about that too. Strange. Anyway, he threw
a fit because That might interfere with him being
able to travel over the holidays, Christmas,
with the family because they weren't going to
celebrate there locally. They were going to go
somewhere else, and that ankle monitor, he wasn't
going to be able to do things with the family
for the holidays. Luckily, the federal judge
in that case really didn't care. So that was
nice. It was like, it's not my problem. This
is what it is. We've told you what it is. This
is it. You've signed your plea agreement. You've
signed this. You've signed that. Do you know
what? The earth didn't quit turning. Nothing
changed. No one lost jobs. Nothing bad happened
from the fallout of him getting a conviction
for his two handguns and his cocaine and all
of the other stuff. Nothing, nothing at all.
Birds didn't fall out of nests and the sun come
crashing down and rising in the west. None of
those things happened just because he got prosecuted
like he was supposed to be. So I don't partake
when they tell me all these bad things will happen
if these wealthy people go to jail. It's like,
that won't. I don't know if you've seen on the
internet, there was that one, I forget who it
was, it was Pam Bondi or someone, but saying,
well, you know, if we arrested everyone on the
list, then the whole system would fail. And everyone's
comment was like, and there's a downside to this?
Like, no, this sounds amazing. Let's control
or delete, you know, perfect. But, you know,
it's funny, the UK have been prosecuting people,
you know, the former Prince Andrew, and then
I think the envoy or whatever he was, diplomat
to the US. But it's not the Ford things. But
it's not for the horrid crimes with the underage
girls. It's not for that. It's not for the trafficking.
It's not for any of that. It's not for the sex
trafficking. It's not for the disgusting, perverted
pedophile type stuff. It's for passing off government
secrets and things that probably help people
make money. So the insider trading is what it
was. I mean, let's admit it. There's a lot of
insider trading because we have congressmen and
senators and people who have made hundreds of
millions and tens of millions and whatever in
their careers. And they do better than the stock
exchange because how? No, really? Come on, Nancy,
Paul, you don't. No, there's a lot going on that
you shouldn't be allowed to profit here. So,
I mean, but drug dealers want to profiteer. So
do elected officials. And it's like, really?
That's not how. Well, wait a minute. Wrong. No,
I look at that and I think, yeah, why don't we
get people done? And then I remember that Ms.
Maxwell was on trial out in California and all
this stuff was going on and something in New
York. Everything was going back and forth. And
then there was this federal judge with that trial.
And there was a. I call it the black book, but
I don't know what color it was, and I don't know
exactly what format it was in. It was a list
of people that they dealt with that were involved
with the Epstein and Maxwell. I don't know what
they were doing in their dealings, but it was
a list. It was people. It was information on
those folks. And the federal judge in the case
at the end, when they wanted it released, said
no. that that would cause unnecessary harm, undue
harm to people and other businesses in other
areas. And there was no proof, no anything like
that. And so it was sealed and it was not unsealed
until 2025. And that took a really huge push
by the DOJ to actually get that unsealed so that
that information could be out there. And it's
like. You have the Lolita Express people that
were traveling. You know people who were going.
There's photos of them at the island, you know,
tickled to death to be there. I remember seeing
one, I guess it was Chris Wallace. He's tickled
to death, and he's waving and smiling, getting
off some boat or something, going there. You
know, and I'm thinking, there's these people.
We know they were going there, and they were
going long after 2008 when Epstein had had the
conviction. You know, they were still going,
still partying, still hanging out with him. And
it continued over and over and over. And I'm
supposed to think the world is going to collapse
because those names were revealed. It was like,
who? But they're lawyers for all of those people
that did not want that information out. And they
were pressuring out and pressuring. And for some
reason, the system said, you know, you're right.
And so for some 2019 to 2025, we didn't get to
know the names. even from that list. And it's
like, come on. And there's so much more. Which
spans both sides of the political aisle as well,
which we're still seeing now. You know, we were
assuming that, oh, this was this one side protecting
it, this other side, the moment they get in,
they're going to blow it open. Like, wait a second
here. This seems to be a rich person thing, not
a left or right thing. It's a huge money thing
and stuff. It was like finding out that the assistant
director to FBI, James Denny, who was forced
to retire last year, to find out that he had
taken the New York City documents that had been
taken from the New York City home, and they weren't
put into the evidence locker. They weren't processed
the correct way. He had them placed in a locked
closet that he had there in FBI's New York headquarters,
and no one was allowed access to it, which meant
that the case agent, who was down in the D .C.
area, didn't even know about the things that
were up there in New York, locked up in a closet,
didn't have access. They certainly hadn't gone
through the processing the way they should or
getting the barcoding for every piece of evidence
like they're supposed to so they can be accessed
through a computer when you scan documents in
and stuff. They weren't there. They'd all been
locked away. And until somebody was a whistleblower
last year and made that clear, that... There
were documents that were up there. And so when
you have somebody on TV saying, these are all
the documents that are on my desk, it's like,
no, they're not. There's a whole closet up here
we're not allowed to go in. It's like, what kind
of closet? Well, it's where the evidence is at.
Why is it in a closet locked up with no one having
access except that guy? What's going on? Oh,
well, he didn't want to put it in evidence locker.
That stuff was taken way back. Why is it locked
there? Who made that decision? Who made that
decision back in, what was that, 2019? Something
like that, 2020? Who made the decision to put
things of evidence in a closet and then never
let anybody have access or see it? I mean, might
as well have thrown it away. It just boggles
the mind that there are people willing to do
this, and it's all about... protecting wealthy
people and it like you said it's not a political
thing it's people willing to protect people with
money and why they haven't done anything for
you they're not going to do anything for you
i've always said it nauseates me with the michael
jackson case don't get me wrong yeah clearly
there was childhood trauma we know that but if
if you take michael out of the equation you put
that creepy guy from down the street in your
neighborhood Put it in the exact thing. All right.
He invites all these children over to play in
his bedroom. He sends away the parents. What
would you think? But all of a sudden, because
he can dance and he's got one glove on his hand,
then, oh, no, no, but Michael's okay. No, Michael
was also a multi -multi -millionaire. OJ was
very, very, you know what I mean? It doesn't
matter about the color of your skin. It's about
whether you have money or whether you don't.
you know and so yeah so that's that that really
irks me they'll they'll you know for a far lesser
thing they'll remove someone from spotify and
i'm all right so are you going to remove michael
jackson from spotify it's true you know i mean
it's the same exact thing but we pick and choose
who the bad guys are depending on oh yeah but
i really like beat it so we'll just leave him
alone no how about you know if you if you're
chasing predators then chase predators all of
them Catch them all. Put everybody away. I always
was that way. I said, all I ever wanted to do
when I got into law enforcement, I said, when
I realized criminal investigation, actually working
criminal investigations, felonies, that sort
of thing, and doing that kind of work and crime
scene work. I like crime scene stuff. But all
I ever really wanted to do was let me catch bad
guys. I don't want to supervise people. I don't
want to go up a management ladder. I didn't want
to do that. I spent my 32 years in law enforcement.
I wanted to catch bad guys. Let me catch the
people who hurt other people. Let me help a community
or an individual by catching the people who bring
harm. Whatever it is that they're doing. If you're
an arsonist, I'll catch you. If you're a bomber,
I'll catch you. I'll work with every resource
I can, which means a lot of people. Whatever
it's going to take to catch you. I will do my
best to collect all the evidence. to know what
the evidence is, to see it all. It's not going
to be locked in some closet somewhere. I'm going
to go through it every day. I'm going to have
as much invested in it as the victim and as much
as the victim's family because I want to catch
that person. Let me catch bad guys. Let me lock
them away. But it's not, oh, well, I don't want
to lock that one away because, you know, they're
wealthy. They're famous. And I was like, I don't
care. It doesn't mean anything to me. It never
did. People are always asking me, you always
got to, when you traveled and you were doing
these little details and things, didn't you get
to meet some celebrities? And I was like, I saw
them. They didn't mean anything to me. And I
was like, isn't that really cool? I was like,
I guess. I don't know. I mean, they were just
there. I don't really care. I mean, I don't.
They're just people. I'm not enamored with that.
And so I didn't understand it. I had a guy that
was giving me a lot of grief back in 1992 because
he insisted that he and his family had to go
a certain way. And I was working on detail for
the Secret Service. And the gentleman was very,
very, very rude and very, very belligerent and
just couldn't do it anyway. And I was like...
I am not to allow anyone through here. It's blocked
off. You can't get anywhere past here, whatever.
But he made it clear that he was from Delaware.
He knew there that he knew and he was expected.
And I'm like trying to get the supervisor to
come out. And the supervisor does come out and
they do redirect the gentleman and his family.
And they put a Secret Service person with him
to. Take him back the way he's supposed to go
because we're trying to have a polite conversation.
But he's just very adamant that he was famous
and he was important. I had no idea who this
guy named Joe Biden was. I had no clue. That's
what his name was. And so I leave and he said,
you know who that was? And he said his name was
Joe Biden or something. And they're like, he's
the senator or something like that. I said, OK.
What does that mean? He was a senator. He's from
here. I was like, okay. You still can't drive
a golf cart and go down that way. It's blocked
off. There's all kinds of stuff down that way.
I said, why didn't he follow directions? Why
did he keep telling me who he was? What was the
importance of that? You don't understand who
I am. It's not going to make the wall and the
fencing go away. But it's just people like that.
You meet them all the time. And it's just like,
you don't know who I am. I guess I don't. I don't
know. I had people when I was a state trooper
back in the day that would always tell me, my
lawyer is so -and -so. Your career is over. It's
like, all righty. Whatever you think. It's a
weird thing. People think that that matters.
Yeah. Well, I know some celebrities. I know them.
I'm friends with them because they're good people
that happen to be actors or good people that
happen to be, you know, whatever the thing. So
that fame doesn't make you a dick. You know,
you're a dick that became famous. No, it doesn't
make me a dick. Anybody can be a dick. Anybody
can. I'm sure I can. But the thing being is,
it's... I don't find myself needing to be extra
special to them or not be extra special. I will
hold a door open for anybody. I will help anybody
that happens to need help with their groceries
in the grocery store. I don't care. Whatever.
I was raised that way. You're supposed to be
nice to everyone, help everybody out, be polite
to everyone, treat people the way you want to
be treated. And if you happen to be famous, well,
that's nice. I'm proud of your success. Good
for you. And if you happen to be wealthy, well,
I hope that you got it honest. And I hope you
do the right things with the wealth. Absolutely.
Because I've seen a whole lot of people that
are poor people that are wealthy with friends.
And they give you the shirt off their back without
thinking about it. They give you a bed in their
home. They give you food to eat. You know, you
can put your feet under their table and they'd
never question it. They do anything for you in
the world and they really don't care. They just
would help you. And when people are going around,
I always think about it when we were kids and
we would all have to sell Girl Scout cookies.
Well, it's a little small town. We're all in
the Girl Scouts. So every little girl is trying
to sell Girl Scout cookies to their family, to
their friends. But so were all the other little
girls in town, in their church and in their school,
etc. And here these people were. It was so nice
because everybody was working, but they would
always buy that box of cookies and do. Or, I
just bought a box of cookies from so -and -so.
And I always felt sorry for my grandmother because
she had so many little granddaughters that were
selling boxes of cookies. It was the thing. But
it's that sort of thing. There are people who
will reach down in their pocket and... hand you
their last dollar and they don't even, they don't
question it, you know? Um, you know, and it's
there to me, those are famous people. They just
aren't known. And yeah. Well, I want to transition
to the book. I mean, we've been very philosophical
in our conversation. We haven't hit it deep into
your career. So let's talk about where people
can, can learn more. So what made you, uh, right.
Becoming fire. And then also, Was there any element
of catharsis of putting pen to paper at the end
of a career? Oh, yeah. Yeah. People are always
asking me about my career and what I did. And
I used to tell all the funny stories from work
or the stuff that I thought they would find funny
because I didn't want them to get into the heavy
duty stuff. And they didn't need to know some
of the stuff I saw or dealt with. And over the
years, I kept looking for women who'd written
books about their law enforcement career. I really
wasn't finding too many that I was chasing after
that I thought were really cool. I did look,
Danny Brooke wrote one about her undercover work,
Undercover Copper. Danny Brooke out of the UK.
I liked her book. I just read that a couple of
years ago. And there's a few others that did
their stories that I really liked. But I kept
thinking there's not a lot out there, and there
really aren't a lot of books by women who had
a law enforcement career, if you really look.
In fact, Police One magazine did a research on
it back in 2007. I found that in my research.
There were 600 -plus books written by men, and
there were 21 by women at that time. There's
probably somewhere between 35 and 40 books by
women right now, including mine. And that's not
a lot more increase. And I thought women ought
to tell their story, what they did and how they
got to where they were, what they were doing.
So I started writing my story. Yes, it's very
cathartic because there's a lot of things you
think back on and you think through and that
you remember and people that you remember. So
I tried to be just respectful of the people that
passed away doing the job. and make sure that
they did not get forget. I'm very big on the
never forgotten issue. Very big on that with
9 -11 and with everything else. And I decided
that I would write a book. So I talked to a book
coach and a few other people, and they said,
you had 32 years, and you stayed in the field,
and you worked all these things. You've seen
a lot of things. You're very active in your work.
Have you thought about writing more than one
book? And I was like, I'm going to be lucky to
write one. Anyway, they talked me into breaking
it up a little bit. So this is my book. This
is Becoming Fire. It's Chasing the Passion to
Protect, Serve, and Love. And it's a true crime
memoir. I wrote about my first five years in
the law enforcement career where I started with
the Virginia State Police. When I started in
1986, I was one of the very first females that
came on. with the Virginia State Police. They'd
been hiring women since about 1976, but had not
hired very many at the time. And so it was very,
very slow in the process of growing. So there
were not very many of us. I always tell people
it was maybe 22 to 25 females, and there were
1 ,200 men that worked for the Virginia State
Police at the time. That was the real numbers.
They never really would tell us. Then I stayed
there, and I became the very first female full
-time undercover Virginia state trooper with
the state police, and I did that for about a
year. And in the time I was with the Virginia
state police, it started in 1986, and I left
in the middle of 1990 and became an ATF special
agent where I stayed for the next 28 years in
law enforcement. It goes from the academy, my
rookie mistakes, high stakes decisions that I
had to make in, you know, split second, and delves
into the undercover world and how long I was
under. I lived my very first six months in undercover.
I got a brand new name, date of birth, social
security number, everything, a car, undercover
apartment, and a housing project. Worked with
another female undercover from a city department.
She was fresh out of the academy. And they just
told us if the girls play it safe, they should
be okay. And we worked with gangs, lots of drugs,
lots of guns, violence, homicide, overdoses,
things, problems. And we were around it all the
time. It was like a 24 -7, 365. And we had a
topside agent. She had a topside detective, and
I had a topside agent that looked after me, Charlie.
And that was it. And we had our body wires and
wire up, and then we went out. Originally, we
tried to work together. They finally went to
split up because we just kept getting asked to
parties and dates, and that's not working with
drugs. So we split it up. We started working.
We started working with more informants, started
meeting a lot more dealers, and we were just
buying drugs all over. Most of Shenandoah Valley,
actually, from Stanton, Augusta County, up into
Harrisonburg, over to Charlottesville, up on
Afton Mountain, Stewart's Draft, all those regions,
all that area. And we bought a lot of dope from
a lot of people. And at the time, they said it
was the largest drug bust, at least in central
Virginia, if not the largest drug bust in Virginia
at that particular time. I bought drugs from
Mennonites. out on the farm uh so yeah you can
buy drugs from a lot of people uh saw a lot of
things and it was not the lifestyle that i had
grown up in it was not the lifestyle she had
grown up in so it was a daily lesson to find
out what it's like to go full -time undercover
and become somebody else but That's the book.
And like I said, I do like to pay homage to the
law enforcement people that were killed or died
in the line of duty with my book as well. That
sounds amazing. I haven't really touched on this,
but just before we progress to the closing questions,
so many of us in the first responder professions,
we have... a lot of times challenging early lives,
and then we find ourselves in uniform. And now,
you know, in my profession, we were mainly seeing
horrendous things, you know, in undercover is
another entire level of stress, for example,
what were the lowest points that you got throughout
your career? And then what were the tools that
helped you, you know, climb out of that hole
if you have one? In my law enforcement career,
and most all of it, only to the very end. And
by that time I wasn't doing undercover to the
very end. But, or I spent my very last three
years teaching at the academy. So it took me
off the street and away from stuff, teaching
the arson training program. There weren't a lot
of things. You saw it, moved on, kept on. So
if you worked a fatality accident, if you were
there and somebody died and you, were there,
and you were dealing with it, and trying to save
them, you got to go, because when you get all
that done, get all that stuff handled, if you're
still on shift, you may have to work another
fatality, so just move on, got things to do,
it's, I think they, you know, what's important
now, so stay focused right here, what's important
now, got to do it, got to do it, try to stay
focused, because I got to work tomorrow, because
tomorrow, I may have to work another fatality
accident, or I may get shot at tomorrow, or somebody
may shoot me tomorrow, I got things to do. what's
important now, just keep going. So there wasn't
any time to sit down and have a, that was no
hugs. Nobody hugged. It was just, we didn't hug.
We didn't talk about it. You moved on. If you
did find somebody to talk to about it, you talked
about it just a little bit, just to kind of get
it out there and just move on. Basically just
you, I guess the walk it off phrase. And so,
yeah, I can see how people did turn to things
like alcohol or even drugs or whatever else might
have because the more that builds up. I think
I dealt with it pretty well for the most part.
I'm sure I had my issues of getting mad or getting
angry about things and not quite sure why I would
snap or why I'd get mad. But that was it. I wasn't
very good at relationships, I think. On my personal
level, not with friends, lots of friends, but
to keep a romantic relationship going, I am sure
I was definitely a good 50 % of the problem.
If I'm going to take half credit, but I was probably
a little bit more than that. And it just because
you get used to your ways and doing and not everybody's
going to handle somebody who's been in law enforcement
or who's running out the door to go do undercover
or. as I had a tendency to do, and I don't regret
putting the job first a lot of times, pretty
much all the time. You just do, and it just becomes
a way of life. Last summer I got diagnosed PTSD,
so I said, so what's next? Nobody just said,
hey, we've got a magic pill for you, because
I didn't want a magic pill anyway. But that's
it. Okay, you might want to find somebody to
talk to. So, all right. Sure, whatever. No, it
wasn't one of those things. You just like, oh,
well, look, okay. You do have some issues with
PTSD and that's it. Nobody's saying, hey, whatever,
we're going to fix you. There's no that. They
would, that comes back to World Trade Center,
Pentagon work, according to them. And I was like,
I saw so much worse. I mean, I saw, that was
horrid what we saw. But over a career, you see
so much so often. You compartmentalize every
piece of it. And I think we all did. I think
everybody does. And I don't think I meant to
say so much worse. It's just, you just saw and
you just keep seeing over and over. There's a
lot of dreadful things I saw and dealt with.
I think you find a way to forgive yourself. Because
most of those things, I did everything I possibly
could for people or survivors. So I don't think
I did anything, nothing on my part. And I don't
call it survivor guilt, but maybe you sometimes
just have that. regret that you weren't able
to stop that or to prevent that or if you'd just
been two minutes faster getting there um if you'd
just been you know if something if this had happened
then this might have happened you know and at
some point you have to realize you don't have
any control over that and uh that And that's
one of those things you have to rationalize with
and you have to sort it out in your head. So,
yeah, the book got to be cathartic on some of
those things because the what -ifs, you can what
-if yourself into the ground. And that's not
going to fix anything. It's not going to change
the past. Like we talked about, you want to fix
the drug issues and the drug war or anything
else, we've got to figure out what we did really,
really good and what we did really, really bad
and then go for the good stuff. I could have
been at a scene or something five minutes faster,
but could I? Or would it have been a worse wreck
out there because I was going that much faster?
We'll never know. Yeah. I think that there's
the PTSD, obviously, which is the diagnosis of
certain symptoms. But I think a lot of us also
suffer from moral injury, which is exactly that.
I was talking yesterday. to uh one of our guests
and i never had a cardiac arrest safe in 14 years
and it i hope it wasn't because i'm a shitty
paramedic it was just i always got that kind
of patient the one that you know it exploded
internally or whatever happened and so it's the
same thing it's like well what what did i do
wrong i did i did the compressions right i did
the you know the cardio version i did i pushed
the drugs whatever the thing was but it's It's
because when we're in school and you said, well,
if you do A, B and C, then, you know, you'll
stop the person. They'll be in handcuffs in your
world or they'll wake up and then they'll bring
the cake to the station the next week. But that's
not how it works. We're not God. We're just trying
to do our best. And, you know, if that is enough
one day, then you will save that person. If it's
still not enough, then at least the family will
know that you did everything you could to try
and get to that person and try and pull that
person back from death's door. I don't think
the average people realize that kind of weight
on the first responder's shoulders that, you
know, we're left feeling like we weren't enough,
like we failed and we didn't fail. Yeah. No,
you didn't. You just have to find that way to
forgive yourself for that. And I think the longest
I was functioning, one of the things I heard
someone talk about, if I ever find this guy,
I'm going to make sure that you get to talk to
him if you haven't. He was being interviewed.
I cannot remember. Maybe it was Sean Ryan, but
anyway, being interviewed by him, but I'm not
positive. I want to say he was a SEAL or Delta
Force or something, but he was talking about
the fact that a friend had told him, and of course
it resonated with me perfectly, lack of traumatic
stress. It's lack. Post -traumatic stress, yes.
No, it's lack of traumatic stress. I spent 32
years, as they called it, running and gunning,
gun and dope, all of that stuff, working undercover,
high -speed chases, getting to accidents, bad
timing, I guess, getting there just before the
medical crew gets there, things of that nature.
But then beyond that, going to bombings, going
to arsons, seeing the aftermath of some really
horrific things. Just going, answering the phone
at 3 a .m., getting up and going. And I know
lots of people who didn't because they were my
friends and we all did the same kind of work.
So it's not just me. But that adrenaline pump,
I told you that was my addiction, was adrenaline.
So the adrenaline thing, when that goes away,
when you don't have that, I was programmed to
what's important now, to deal with stress, to
stay focused, to stay in control. I got used
to that. That's how I function day to day to
day. And, you know, something happened. You had
to change gears. I was like, okay, we're going
to change gears. I'm flexible. Let's move. Let's
do it. Okay. Yeah, we got to go do that. You
know, five minutes before we were going to go
get something to eat, but we're not going to
do that now because this has happened and there's
a shooting and we need to go to the scene because
there's, you know, all kinds of issues going
on. You just switch. You just switch right away.
So it made sense, lack of stress disorder. And
the moment I retired, it was like, what did you
do? I said, recliner and remote control. And
I got little buttons on the side of my recliner
so I don't even have to do it manually. I can
just touch them and like, you know, I said, what
do you do tomorrow? I said that too. So writing
the book gave me that chance to. go back, redo
things, get back in touch with some folks, think
on some stuff that went on, and put the perspective
back where I maybe had just compartmentalized
it and tried to move on from it and revisit with
that. And if I need adrenaline now, I have grandchildren
that are teenagers, and that in itself should
probably be enough, but it's not, you know, knowing
that two of them are now driving. Should be maybe
enough, but it's not. There's a little bit more.
It's like, what else is it? I took my grandson
and we went to that iFly thing and did the indoor
air flying thing. And that was great. My husband
took me to the Daytona racetrack and I got to
go around the track at 150. And I think, well,
if I ever get to be wealthy, I'm going to go
do that all the time. I loved it. I haven't ridden,
I used to ride horses and I had horses for a
very long time. I have not ridden horses in a
while, but it has occurred to me that perhaps
I need to go and get on a horse again and do
that a little bit more. I have a motorcycle.
I've been riding motorcycles on my own at least
since 2004. I used to ride on the back. Then
I got my own and I don't need to ride on the
back anymore. And I love that. And I tell people,
yes, I do ride helmetless and helmetless in states
that don't require it. bad for me but then i'm
like i don't know i just i like it um we've ridden
most of the u .s a lot of canada most all i can't
say most all of canada but most all the areas
you can get to in canada we've ridden on bikes
except for the far west coast i need to do all
of that um i love that i love traveling either
for work or just for pleasure to just go and
meet people and eat different foods and uh realize
that, oh, I shouldn't have eaten that. I'm okay
with that, too. It's a little bit of adrenaline.
But I do like an adrenaline rush, and it makes
my day. And it gets me past whatever might be
going on in my head if I get to thinking about
things too much or get too much melancholy going
on. I try to shake that off and move on, go have
some fun. And maybe what I need is one of those
little mini bike things that the kids are riding
on the streets nowadays. Just something for me
to fall off of, I guess. But maybe that would
do it too. I think the horse riding as well.
I mean, the equine therapy that we know works
as well. So not only just the act of horse riding,
but that relationship. And they're a mirror to
your soul. So you're kind of seeing, well, how
am I really doing now? They have a lot of equine
therapy programs that I really like. Blue Mountain.
in abingdon virginia has got a fantastic bunch
of people working their equine program and then
i just found out here a few months ago that a
good friend of mine that i did martial arts with
back in the day thor he is running a huge equine
therapy program A lot of veterans, but a lot
of other people up in the Connecticut area and
having super success with it. And it's for everybody.
I mean, it's for people who are physically challenged.
It is for people who are having depression or
mental health issues. It's just amazing what
horses can do for you. I know I used to come
home and it'd be night and I'd go up to the barn
and just rubbing on the horses and petting them
and standing there with them and just breathing.
Horses smell good. They just do. And just having
that. Of course, my dog was always with me, but
I'd sit up at the barn with him in the middle
of the night, you know, just grooming them and
just being there with them for a little bit.
And sometimes going out and riding at night as
well. And did that, well, did that more than
once, I'm sure. But it always felt good. Cleaning
the saddle made me feel good. It's just something
about just cleaning the saddle. Yeah, I grew
up on a farm and that was a veterinary surgeon.
So we had we had usually other people's horses.
But yeah, that was that was something I was around
my whole my whole childhood. Well, for people
listening, firstly, let's go to the book. Where
can they find the book? OK, the book is at Amazon
or. All the online ordering places. If you like
to order books from Walmart, Amazon, Target,
Barnes & Noble, or if you go and you use the
name of the book, The Becoming Fire, Chasing
the Passion, To Protect, Serve, Love, True Crime
Memoir, and My Name, Jennifer Clark Esquire.
And if you do that at your local retailer bookstore,
it's distributed through IngramSpark, and you
can get it that way. Um, and the other way to
get it is you can go to my website, which is
the www .jenniferclarkescue, like you see it
on the screen there, .com. And you can order
it from me. I'll autograph it for you, personalize
it, throw in a couple of little, I think they
call it swag. I got a couple of little items
I toss in with it and I'll ship it to you personally.
Got some great fans already. I've got someone
from Australia, somebody from New Zealand. I've
got a lady from Nova Scotia. We're texting quite
a bit. So if you want to write me or text with
me or find me on social media, I'm on pretty
much everything from YouTube to I'm learning
TikTok. I'm not good. I'm trying it. I'm on LinkedIn.
I'm on places like that, Facebook. And you can
find me fairly easily on those things. I'll try
to answer your questions, and if you just want
to troll me, I have a pretty good sense of humor.
Other than that, I'm probably not going to respond
for trolls. But other than that, I'm enjoying
this. This is good therapy. It's been good for
my PTSD, I guess. It's just good for—I'm enjoying
seeing people and getting out and meeting people
with the signings and stuff. That's been very
rewarding, especially all these people want to
come up and talk to me, and particularly young
women. who are wanting to do something, not necessarily
law enforcement, but do something that may have
been previously viewed as more of a male career
and stuff. I'm talking to people who are wanting
to do paramedic -type work and a variety of things
and all, and they're just coming up and thanking
me, and I'm like, you don't have to thank me,
but good luck to you, and I'm wishing them the
best. Brilliant. Well, I want to thank you so
much. We only dipped our toes into your actual
career. So maybe down the road, we'll have to
do a part two. But it was so important because
these are actionable things that we talked about
from the farming and the physical health to your
very powerful perspective on the opioid crisis
and decriminalization and all the things that
we talked about. So I want to thank you so much
for being so generous with your time and coming
on the Behind the Shield podcast today. Thank
you very much. I appreciate you, James, and wish
you the best.