#124: Justin Bocock / Homicide Detective / Secret Service / True Crime Author

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together and we're Live with Justin Bocock. Welcome and thank you for your many, many years of service. I really appreciate it. How are you? Good, good. Thank you very much. I'm really, I'm really excited to talk. I'm really excited to be in touch. So you had 22 years in a combined, over 22 years combined federal and local law enforcement career, correct? Yes, correct. And you want to tell me a little bit about how that started and how you got into it?

0:43 Yeah. Yeah, You know, I really fell into law enforcement. It just kind of happened. So I graduate. I was born in Tucson, AZ and I graduated high school and college really wasn't going to be my thing. So I decided to join the Air Force. Well, I ended up being an aircraft mechanic on large cargo airplanes, C141 BS at McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey. And part of what we did there was we transported the limos for presidential visits. So that's how I found out about a thing called the the Secret Service Uniform Division. So I did four years in the Air Force and I got out after four years and I actually got a job working in Seattle where I did heavy maintenance on United aircraft. And before that I started applying with the United States Secret Service Uniform Division.

1:36 But it's about the uniform division. So yeah, the uniform division is basically, I didn't know what it was either until I talked to them. They basically secure the property. So agents will secure the people and uniform division. We were responsible for, like the residents, the motorcade, when it stops, if they go to a hotel, we'll secure that hotel. If you've ever been to a presidential event and you go through the magnetometers in the beginning, so stuff that look for metal and weapons and things like that, that's what uniform division does. And we all could wore uniforms. You know, you have to go to the White House and you see people with white shirts and a presidential seal on their arm in black pants. That's uniform division.

2:20 Excellent. And it took three years to get the security clearance for the job. So I was out of the military for a year and a half, living in Seattle, working on airplanes. And I got a call at 4:00 in the morning and they said, hey, the Academy starts in two weeks. We want you to be there. And we need, we need a yes or no right now. So of course I said yes, yes. And I packed my stuff up and drove to Washington, DC, where I went through the Secret Service Academy, graduated from there, and I was assigned to the Naval Observatory, which is the official residence of the vice president. And at the time, that was Al Gore.

3:00 I'm dating myself a little bit, but I was in, I was, I would watch Al Gore's house when he was there. I did that for about a year and a half. Secret Service uniform division was awesome, Great training. It was a lot of fun. What was the training like? Can you tell me about the training? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it it was. So you start your training in Beltsville, MD, and then you go down to Fletzie, which is a federal law enforcement training center in Glencoe, Georgia. You go down there for 20 weeks and you get certified as a federal police officer. And basically down there you learn how to be a police officer. We learned the laws, the federal laws, what we can and cannot do, how to arrest somebody.

3:44 It's basically like a police Academy. We went through scenarios where it was like a domestic violence call and you get called to it and you had to figure out how you and your partner had to figure out how to manage this situation. They taught us driving, obviously shooting a lot of firearm stuff, but it was your basic police type training. So after you graduate that Academy, you go back to Washington, DC or the Secret Service Academy is actually in Beltsville, MD. And there we got specialized training where it was. And honestly, we did a lot of PTA, lot of physical training. We did a lot of running. We had water survival stuff. And it was all centered around protecting the person.

4:27 So they would have a dummy that would be the the same height and weight as Bill as Bill Clinton. He was the president at the time. And it would be like, OK, you're in a burning building, get him out, figure out as a team how to get him out of the building. Cool. We got to do all these things. There was a lot of team building and it was great training. I mean, we learned so many team building things and basic EMT stuff and obviously firearms. And it was, it was it was really, really good training. But your, your job is your training for the thing that you hope never happens, right? You're training for that thing that hopefully never happens. And when I got to the Naval Observatory, it was really boring.

5:08 It was really boring. And then you're going to lie, it was really boring. It's a lot of sitting around and I'm like, and everybody I saw, I was still in Academy mode. So somebody would walk by. It's a public roadway right by the Naval Observatory there on Massachusetts Ave. And they're walking by and I'm watching them intently, you know, got the binoculars. And nothing ever happens. And I'm not saying I wanted things to happen. But you. Go through, you know, you go through, you know, 40 plus weeks of training. You want to do your job. You're like, I'm, I'm ready. Like I've been in the scenarios where a guy pops out with an AK47 and shoots paintball rounds at me. I'm ready. I'm ready to do this. Vigilant. Do they change? Do they train you, train you how to remain vigilant because they know that it's like you're going to be boring 98% of the time or something like that? Yeah, absolutely.

5:55 And they do that in the scenarios. So when I've said the AK47, they obviously didn't shoot real guns, but everybody's probably heard of it now. It's called simunitions. And it's basically, it looks just like a bullet. It has a very small amount of gunpowder, but it has a little paint on the end and you can actually put it into regular guns. So we would carry our regular handgun, They would carry the bad guys would carry AK-40 Sevens or AR Fifteens or something a lot heavier than what we had because we mainly carried handguns. And they would say we would have scenarios where they would just simply say, I want you to walk down the street and you're going to lunch. You and your partner, you're on break, walk down the street, go to lunch. And we're in a controlled environment on, you know, the Secret Service training Academy, which they have a whole, they have like a three block city that they built there. And some, some scenarios you walk down the street and you're you're hand on gun.

6:49 Like are you going to walk down the street with your hand on your gun? You know, I mean, you're in DC, you're going to lunch, just walk, go to lunch. There are sometimes where you would go and nothing would happen. You would just walk to lunch and you'd walk in the door and they'd go break scenarios over and you're kind of like, well, what, what, what is that? Because like not every situation is bad, but there's other times where they would say just walk to lunch and you're walking down and all of a sudden literally one of the one scenario that I had is a bank robbery occurred right in front of us. You know, 2 trucks come out, they people come out, automatic weapons. And they're like, and the instructors behind you, like a bank robbery's happening. What do you do? Well, I guess we get involved.

7:31 You know, we're uniformed police officers. We have jurisdiction, we have handguns. Let's get involved. And you get into a gunfight with people with machine guns. So your simple lunch turned into something horrific. That's how they train you to be vigilant. And it's the same thing in the in the, in the Police Department, because that's the same thing. It's 90% boredom, 10% sheer terror is you always have to prepare and think for the worst. So you'll always be thinking about the worst. And if you're always thinking about the worst, if it happens, you're really not surprised, you're really not shocked, you know? So now, so we would always go to lunch in DC if you'd walk around and you'd always think like, Hey, that black car that just stopped, figure it out.

8:13 What are you going to do? Oh, I'm going to take a couple over here and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. Like they already have a game plan. So that's kind of how they, they, they, they, they, they train you on that. That's cool, that's cool. Do they have a high, do they have a high turnover rate because of the reasons that you left also? Or is it or you know from your experience at least, or do people tend to stick around and and stay there for a long time? From my experience, yes, from my graduating class, there's very few people that were in there. We all kind of because it, it is something where you don't need a college degree to get into the uniform division. You just need a high school diploma or military experience. So I had the military experience. I left and went to the local Police Department, ended up going to college there and kind of moving on there. A lot of people that I still keep in contact with, they went to like NYPD, Boston Police Department. I have two friends who were on who went to the FBI, one to the DEAA, couple of them got their degrees and then transferred over to the agent side of the speaker service. So it's kind of a good stepping stone. So when I was there, I don't know what it is now, when I was there, it was kind of a high turnover rate because it was kind of a stepping stone to get yourself into the federal service.

9:27 You know, you can kind of get an idea of it. You get the training, get a name for yourself, get a reputation, learn about how the federal government works, and that helps you get other jobs. I'm going to say the amount of training, the amount of money and effort they put into training you, just to have you to have people leave on average after, you know, a couple of years feels a little crazy. But I guess the thing you're getting trained in is applicable for the rest of your life anyway. Especially if they figure that a lot of people would just be rotating to other kind of law enforcement or government roles. Yeah, I don't know the exact of it, but that would make sense because it did take a lot. I mean, I was a low level dude, but it did take, I imagine our training cost a lot, a lot of money. But like you said, very few people are going to go through that kind of training because it took a mount of commitment to do that.

10:11 Like you had to say, I want to be here because they they put you through the ringer mentally and physically. And then, you know, test if you failed to test, you were out. So I mean it the people who who did it really wanted to be there. I don't know anybody that I have ever heard of that I know of that went through all that and then just said, you know what, I'm going to go work at the Safeway and work in the grocery store. You know what I mean? They they kind of stayed within federal or within law enforcement as a whole. So yeah, it's kind of a. Yeah, reference East Coast. They won't get that, but I don't think. Yeah, but I appreciate that. That's very funny. Then I see, I see, I see something.

10:52 You know, if you decide to go local. Yeah. So again, I just happened to cross. I was at the White House. Al Gore had gone to the had gone to the White House for a meeting and I was in the motorcade park. So we went over there and I was just hanging out protecting the motorcade. And someone said, hey, you're from Arizona. There's a guy from Mesa, AZ Mesa Police Department. Have you ever heard of him? That's like Mesa is a small little town in outside of Phoenix. So I ended up just talking to him and he was really cool. He's like, we're a growing police agency and we have this and that and you know, we're, we're getting a lot of new equipment and all that. I'm like, you know what, I'll go ahead and apply. This was 2000. So I applied and I actually ended up getting the call and end up getting the job in early 2000, February of February of 2001. So I was so I ended up leaving right after the inauguration in 2001 of Washington, DC and, and I went back to Arizona and I love the Secret Service and it was great. Like I said, it was just, it was boring. I didn't have a lot of friends in like the DC area. So I yeah.

11:52 What is it in DC like? Did you like it? Being in being from Arizona, where I'm not, it's not big city, it was really hard for me to get used to the big city. And I lived in Alexandria, VA, but it was, yeah, everything is hustle bustle. Everything is kind of who are your parents? You know, like, oh, what school did you know, what school did you go to? And you know, and what degree do you have in here? And, and if you're like, oh, I'm from Arizona. Oh yeah. I don't know anybody from Arizona. You know, it's like it's kind of if you've ever been to DC, you kind of know that most people in DC are all from DC. Yeah, that's a stereotype, right? Yeah, yeah. So it was kind of weird. So I was a young person, I was in my mid 20s and I really could just kind of, I socially just kind of wasn't fitting in. So I was like, you know what, maybe I'm going to head back to the, maybe I'll head back back West. So I went there.

12:44 Anyway, by the way, it's a better, it's a better, it's a better lifestyle, I think living in Arizona than living in DC, for sure. Yeah, and I've been back to DC since then, and it's cool. Like it was a lot of fun, but yeah, you're right. Like, you know the cost of. Place to visit, place to visit. It's a place to check into. I don't know about, you know, living there, especially lifestyle, you know, long term. I mean, I don't know many people that stick around DC forever. They find the suburb or they or they go to, you know, somewhere else. So you head. So you headed back to Mesa, AZ. Yeah, yeah. So I, so I, so I come. So I come to Mesa, AZ go to the Academy there, police officer. So I do police uniformed police officer for about 6 years on the streets. I'm a field training officer for a couple of those years. So I'm training new officers in it. And I loved the police work.

13:33 So when I was in the Secret Service a year and a half there, I pulled my firearm twice, OK, in the line of duty, like, you know, for training it was all the time. But you know, in actual real life I had to draw my firearm and give commands twice. My first day on the street after graduating the Academy, I had already pointed my gun at like 4 people and arrested, you know, 5 people. No way. What was the? What? What's the? Difference policing was so much different than, you know, than than the uniform division. It was way more fast-paced, way more, you know, I would say exciting because it is, you know, it's kind of exciting when you're a young guy. It's exciting now. I would be like, I'm not doing that. But yeah, when I was young, so I was like, I really enjoyed it and it was fun doing the police, the street level policing, you know, it was a lot of fun getting out there and just interacting with the with the people and helping the community.

14:27 You really, some days you really felt like you help you help people out, you know, you're like, I, I really helped that community this week. You know, I really did a good job on that, but I really started liking investigations as well. I like getting a case and being able to run with it. But you can only go so far as a patrol officer because you have to, you know, answer 911 calls and you have to cover your area. So you really couldn't do all that. So I, I applied for detectives in 2012. No 2007, sorry, 2007. I applied for detectives and ended up getting, I tested into the detective role and I started out on the graveyard shift and I was the beer run detective. So I handled beer runs.

15:08 And so really, yeah. So that's how you start. You start out at the very bottom. So like, you know, beer. Run. What's that right? What's the beer run detective do? So it's I say it's simple, but so you get so a beer run happens, right? And it's all on video. So then you would look for distinguishing marks, like tattoos, things like that. I would look up other cases and see if somebody matching that description was possibly in that area doing other crimes. And then I would get possibly like investigative leads, create a photo lineup. So I'd make you know where you have 6 pictures and five, you know, five of them are not the person and one is. And then I'd go to the clerks and I'd show them that we're on duty at the time and I'd show them the photo line and say, hey, do you recognize anybody?

15:51 And sometimes they go, yeah, that dude right there, that's the, that's the guy that came in and, you know, grabbed 2 things and, and ran out the door. So then I would do the follow up and I'd go and knock on their door. In Arizona, that's a misdemeanor. So it's a ticket. It's not. So I would literally knock on their door and be like, hey, are you so and so and yeah, well, On this date and time, you stole some beer from the Circle K and the. Last time you're like. Yeah, yeah. How do you judge me? Well, it's on video and then I'll get KC some ID and here's your ticket. You know, it's a misdemeanor theft. Wow. And you know that kind of thing. And that's that's how it started out. And then one you had an. Experience like that though, no. You really want to work with people and really learn how to, how to really, I guess you really get your feet wet, you know? Yes, and it's like everything you have to start small. So by doing that you learn how to go through video, you learn how to do research on things.

16:45 You learn how to look up other calls for service and try to link cases together. You learn how to make photo line UPS. You also learn that sometimes these guys, sometimes you look at it and you identify a person and you find out that they have a threat, a threat risk to them, like they're on parole or they've, you know, they've shot at cops before or they've been arrested for violent. So then you'd have to start thinking, OK, this isn't just a knock on the door. You guys should get a couple other detectives and we need to, you know, you know, put our bulletproof vest on and go knock on. This isn't just a suit and tie knock. You know, this is an actual, maybe we should approach it a little bit differently so it doesn't get your feet wet. Ready for the big ones. You know, I always say everything we do is training us for the next big one.

17:26 And that's that mentality from the Secret Service. You know, you always got to be ready for when the big 1 happens. And one night I was the only detective on duty in my division. I was like 3 in the morning and I hear on the radio, hot call comes out and it's shooting. Guy gets shot and he's laying in the middle of the street. Suspects running this and that. And they call me because they say, hey, we called the on call detectives. They're not coming out. They said you got it and like and like you got it. I'm like, yeah, I got it. I got it, sarge, I got this, I got it. So I'm like, I'm going to be a real detective now, you know, So I leave my desk and my beer runs and I go out. And yeah, so I, I got involved in an aggravated assault or a shooting case. And I did a lot of work that first night and I ended up identifying A suspect. And then the next morning I got a couple hours sleep. Next morning, the day shift detectives came in, you know, the real, the real detectives.

18:19 And I worked with the violent crime guys and I said, hey, this is what I got. This is my game plan. And they're like, dude, great game plan, Let's make it happen. And we got the guy in custody that afternoon. And that's when I fell in love with violent crimes. I'm like, that's what I want to do. Like I want to do violent crimes so. Was there a lot of that where you were? What's mess? What's mess of Arizona like? Is that Arizona? So at the time, so it's, it's a suburb of Phoenix. So if you, you know, you always have like a big city and like little towns all around it. Sure. Yeah. Right next to Phoenix is Tempe and everything. And that's where the Arizona State University is. And a lot of good music music concerts are there too. Great, great, great. Yeah. That's like the nightlife. That's like the nightlife. And then right next to that is Mesa.

18:59 So at the time, it's grown a lot since then. But back in the early 2000s, Mesa had a population of about 450,000. Our Police Department was about 750 police officers. So it was a fairly big area. I worked the central area which was the downtown area and also the high crime area. That's where I get all my greenies most. Downtown's a high crime, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we had a lot of gang areas. We had little pockets of of Vadnais and that's and I liked the central area. The further out you went, it got more residential, it got more business. We actually have, we actually have an International Airport in Mesa. So very extremes of it. You have the airport, but there it's very mild crime. A multiple crime happened in kind of the downtown area, and it wasn't violent, but you had violent acts right now and then you had robberies, you had shootings, you had stuff like that.

19:57 A majority of what we did, though, was, you know, just regular calls for service and domestic violence calls for service. Beer runs. There's a lot of beer runs. You build up relationships with people throughout like, you know, I guess quote UN quote civilians or whatever that would kind of get to know you or people like in the more high crime area that would come to that you'd come to recognize. Or was it just constantly just deflection of new people? Oh, that's a great question. No, absolutely. That's how you become a really good cop. Yeah. The community, you can't do it by yourself. And I did. I had a lot of the cigarette stores and liquor stores that would get robbed a lot when I was in robbery. I made good connections with those guys and gave them my phone number and said, hey, anything suspicious you call me directly.

20:40 And they'd call me about all kinds of stuff and I'd pass it on. Like they would literally say, hey, you know, two guys bought some beer in my store and then they went out back to drink it. And he goes, I was just sweeping the, you know, I was sweeping the the sidewalk and I overheard him talking about doing a robbery on some guy in the neighborhood. So I'm like, OK, hey, Peg. So we look at it. We actually, we actually were able to prevent a crime, you know, from doing the whole thing. Yeah. It's all about, it's all about community. It really is. And policing is changed a little bit because we used to have what they called the community policing model where we would rely on the community to give us information. And that's also how we knew we were doing a good job is when the community.

21:23 We trust you guys enough to call you. Yes, exactly. When your customer says you're doing a good job, you know you're doing a good job. And then about halfway through my career, we changed into the Comstat model, where Comstat actually started in New York and it was under I think Bill Bratton, but it was basically where you use statistics to solve crime. So basically you look at a map and say there's a bunch of burglaries in this area. So we're going to put all of our resources in that area to solve the burglaries, which makes sense. But when you're constantly moving people around, you really just push crime. And if you solve crimes in one area, it's still going to happen in another. So you go to the other.

22:03 I mean, and when you do that to determine our success, we saw how our numbers went down. So we were kind of our own customer. So we would reduce the numbers and then pat ourselves in the back and say we're amazing, but we're not getting the buy in from the community. You know, it's easier or it's I think it's more efficient and better when you have the community telling you you're doing a good job and not you doing something and then saying, you know what, I'm pretty awesome. I did a good job on that. I would love to have a local cop that I had a, you know, a friendly association with that, you know, I, that I could talk, you know, that, that we, that we could talk to, you know, about anything. But I, I, I feel like associations of the cops in general are just so like, oh God, what's going to give you a ticket for now? You know, like.

22:47 Yeah. You know, like and I try I really go on my way to try to be, you know, friendly or, you know, nice and and even like, you know, wave in the street wave, whatever, you know, just, you know, kind of be nice. Have a have a good day officer. Thanks so much, whatever it is, but I do think that it also helps establish the sense of trust within the community that like that there's a sense of we're, we're all, we're all working together. We're all like, you know, 11 crew. You know, it almost feels that, I mean, at at least growing up in my association with it, it was like, you know, the cops are out to get, give you tickets are out to get you, you know, and, and, and I don't and I, I think and like what you're saying, it's, it's unfortunate that's the case because everything would really be a lot better if it's a lot more collaborative.

23:30 Yes, and you're absolutely right. And and like I said, I've been a cop and we've all been in jobs where there's people who are good in their job and there's people who are bad in their job or not very good at their job. It's the same thing with police officers. I was always the police officer that was very chatty and very friendly. You know, I'm I'm the guy that's got a story for everything. And I'll if you stop me on the street and said hello, I'd chat you up and we'd be best friends and shaking hands and you know, and next time I saw you, I'd be like, Hey, what's up for him? You know, you'd be hey, Officer Bocock, hey, what's up? Anything good Hacker Day? I'm like, no, I'm just chilling. But there are other cops who just don't like that, you know, And even we as cops knew who they were. They were just the sour bunch, you know, and sometimes they're the people who would be on the streets forever because there's some cops who don't change areas. They just stay in one spot and just become bitter and angry. And they're even better.

24:19 And, and if the public would be feel any better about it, they're bitter and angry to their coworkers too. It's not just, it's not just the citizens, they're just angry people. And we've all met them. I've been pulled over by them. I've gotten tickets from them. You know where you know, it's just, that's just their personality. They are just, they're just sour people. And that's not just cops. You go anywhere in the world, any, any business you go into, there's going to be nice people and there's going to be people who just don't like their job and are just going to be that way. So it is unfortunate that they that we can't all be like that, you know what I mean? But every personality is different. You don't and ask the other team, you don't want a bunch of me on the police departments because I always said it's just like the military, you know, they always have, like I was Air Force and you need a Marine or an Army person and like, oh, you didn't carry a gun. That's true.

25:09 But if it weren't for me, you would have to walk everywhere you went. Like, so if you wanted to go to war overseas, you had to get on our airplanes and fly over there. We need it. And and when I'm overseas, I need Marines and Army to protect my base so I can fix my airplane. We all have a position. So I was a very, I wouldn't say a lenient cop, but a very understanding cop. You know, if I went to a party call and it's a bunch of kids underage partying, I'm not going to sit here and say, OK, everybody's getting a ticket. I'm going to say you got called on you. You know what I'm saying? I'm going to be cool through this one time. But if I get called again, my boss is going to be is going to want me to do something and I'm going to pull everybody out and I'm going to do a breathalyzer test.

25:52 And if you're under 21 and you have alcohol on you, I am going to give you a ticket. You know what I mean? So don't take my kindness as weakness. But this is your 1. You know, a lot of times like we're so sorry, We're so sorry. We'll turn the music down. We will don't tell my parents, but you just please be cool. I and there are other people who are not who would show up. And if it was their call, if they would lead on it and they would say, oh, no, I want everybody out. We're giving everybody tickets because they have to learn. And that's just expression, you know, So you different officers handle things different ways, but you can't have everybody handle the world like me because people would take it. People have taken advantage of me as a cop. I have. I've been nice to people and they have just totally taken advantage of me.

26:32 And I was like, well, I got, I got duped and I got to go back. Like you duped me. And like, yeah, I did. Everybody has their place. What? Do you want to do about it? The problem is, and I guess this is my own little thing, I have too much. I have too hard of I have too hard of a time pushing back against authority to really even to even, you know, consider like if you came up to me and you're like, I'll give you a break. I'm like, Oh my God, what a hero. You know, like I wouldn't think like he had nothing on me anyway. You know, I wouldn't know. I wouldn't, I don't, I don't think like that. But I guess there are plenty of people that do. And so I guess like you say, you got to mix and match your personalities that you're dealing with. Yes, yeah, everybody, everybody has their puzzle piece that fits in the puzzle, that makes it a good puzzle.

27:17 Yeah, But you got, you got to have people like me, but you guys also have to have those, you know, those hardcore cops, None of them, none of us like to deal with them. But if you're in a but I'll tell you what, if you're in a hostage situation or a tough situation, that's. Oh yeah, you want that? You know what I mean? That's the dude you want, not me, who's like, well, let's talk it out. You want him? He's like, you know, we're breaking the door in and we're shooting everybody like, oh, OK, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's I wanted to ask, and I don't know if you have any experience or known or read anything or know anything about this or personal experience, but what, what's, what's corruption like within the police world? You know, that's a great question. So I will say this, East Coast, East Coast policing and West Coast policing way different. So when I was in the Secret Service, we were allowed to take free stuff, at least back then.

28:07 I don't know what their policy is now, but this is back in 1998. So like for example, we would go on details. There was some senator died when I was in when I was in and we ended up going to I got we did a detail to Massachusetts where they buried them and President Clinton went up. He wanted to go to the funeral. So he's in the funeral and I was outside uniform region securing the motorcade while he's in the funeral. So we have to there's uniform division. And that was my job was to stand there and people would come up to the rope line and they'd ask like, oh, is that the limo? Like, Yep, sure is. Well, people would come up and say, Hey, you know, we know who you are. Your Secret Service. Here's some free coffee, you know. And that's nice.

28:47 Thank you very much. Like, I really appreciate that. You know, they're like, hey, you know, I'm going to give you guys a box of Donuts. Is that OK? Like absolutely, it's OK. You know, they were completely cool with that. And I'm not saying that it's that that's good or that's bad. That's just how it was Sure I. Wouldn't I Wouldn't be good. OK. I could see if someone came up to you and gave you 500 bucks and was like, hey, you know, took a couple of minutes. That's something else than giving you a coffee or a doughnut. No. Because it could be, it could be perceived as some sort of favoritism. So let's say that person that gives us coffee and doughnuts, let's say later that afternoon they do something where I have to intervene and maybe I have to put them in handcuffs. Like let's say they move their car in front of motorcade or something along those lines, right? And I'm like, you know, you need to move right now. Oh, I was cool to you.

29:33 I gave you Donuts and you're going to do this to me? It kind of puts you as the cop in a bad spot. So it. I hear that that's. Always the best thing. Well, in Mesa they were big. Even in the Mesa Police Academy, they would test you where they would. First off, the Mesa Police Department policy was and still is, You don't take anything for free. There is no gratuity at all. If you find money, you turn it in. They would test us. They had vending machines at the Academy and if you bought something from the vending machine, they would put extra change in there. So if you bought for $0.50, you put a dollar in and $0.50 and a penny come out. You have to take that $0.50 and that penny. You have to go to your your, your off your training officer, report it, write a report and turn it in. If you don't.

30:25 We actually had a recruit who did it and they they removed, they said, they said that's an integrity issue. They're like our policy is no gratuities. Wow, just like card you over to the actual morale of the officers throughout the years? Or is that only for like the training point? No, it's, it's for, it's, it goes on. So it's not just training, but it goes on and to the point of I don't know if you guys have quick trips for my for my West Coast people, there'll be quick trips. A quick trip for my East Coast folk are like a Wawa. OK, gotcha, gotcha. That's that's my language now. Imagine your local convenient gas station store that cops go to get coffee.

31:05 Well, quick trip in Arizona, they have a corporate policy that cops get free coffee. So what we would have to do is is they would give us a free coffee. You would try to pay them and they're like, oh, I get, I get in trouble if I take money. So we would basically just give them the money for the coffee and then say, hey, just buy the person's coffee behind me or pay for somebody else's coffee. We had to do that because if and if you didn't and, and somebody found out you could be in, you could literally be in trouble. You would be fired once you were out of the Academy, but after a couple of violations. So this goes to the corruption side on the East Coast. Everybody talks about that thin blue line and how, you know, cops protect cops. I saw that back East. I was going to ask about that.

31:47 Cops protect cops. I. Saw that, I, I straight up saw that back east in, in Arizona, not so much. If you screw up, you screw up. You're kind of on your own now. Has it changed? It definitely changed from in 2000 when I came to Mesa until I retired in 20/21. It had changed a little more because we had become a bigger city. We went from 400,000 almost 800,000, we doubled. So we got a lot and we got a lot of people from back east. We had some NYPD people come in, we had and they brought their back east policing and like, hey, no, it's cool to do that. So the paradigm is changed within law enforcement. But I will say East Coast, I always said East Coast and West Coast law enforcement are extremely different.

32:32 So As for physical corruption, I only heard of it in my department once the guy got caught and we all knew he was shady. We all do it. It was the officer that always did shady stuff. He always would say, hey, you know, I got, hey, come with me to this house because I know that they got. I know right now they have, you know, like 2 kilos of cocaine. Yeah. And like, how do you know they have two cocaine? Like I'm not going with you because. This is but they don't. But they don't call you naive for that. Like I, I, I don't like, do they say like, oh, grow up. Like this is the world and we're making, you know, like. This is how you solve crime. This is how I, I, I got the information from a a, a, a a source on the street.

33:15 And this is how you solve crime. And I remember telling that officer, I was like, I, I don't want to be involved. Grab somebody else. You know, I don't want to be your backup. Well, then a year later I had actually was in, I was in detectives and I heard that DEA actually did a sting operation and they caught that officer. He wasn't just getting information off the street. He was actually helping rival gang members. And they would tell him, Hey, I know that my rival gang member has drugs go bust them for me. And then he would go and he was straight corrupt and kind of like, we all knew that guy was shady. You know, I didn't know he was that corrupt, but he was shady, you know what I mean? And so police are police, you know, police are, that's the only real example that I have of it.

33:59 But, you know, a lot of people think that and I get how they understand it. Like, because I've been involved in, you know, large scale homicide investigations where people will, management and staff will make public statements and then have to recant those statements or say something different later. And it looks like they're lying. And it really isn't that way. Like it really isn't. They really are not lying. They just don't know. They just don't. Know, I see, I see. I'm sorry, I'm just the reason why I'm I'm like I'm holding my phone actually right now is because I I, you reminded me while we were talking. I, I did a interview with ADA agent, super, super nice guy Brian.

34:42 Oh gosh, I'll tell you his name in one second. Brian Townsend, awesome dude. And one thing that I he worked throughout the East Coast and through Texas. And one of the things that I had asked him and talked to him about was the relevance of geography on the particular drug trade that he was, you know, trying to catch prevent. Arizona is a big Arizona tends to be a big area where drugs go through right? Right. Yes, yes. So was, So was I guess. First of all, I'm sure that you saw over the years the increase in drug related crime. Does that also almost always include an increase in violent crime as well?

35:25 Yes, absolutely, Absolutely. When I was on the streets as a patrol officer, methamphetamine was the thing. And almost all that methamphetamine was coming from Mexico. Yeah. And how far is Mexico from from there? It's about Tucson, so it's probably about 120 miles. So in two hours you could be in Mexico like we're. It's close. I mean, like if someone could just drive, drive through, they could just drive, right? You're one of the first big places they drive through. Yeah, the the first big place you'll drive through is Tucson. OK, 40 minutes away got a border and then after Tucson is 90 minutes N kind of in the center of the state is Phoenix and Mason area. No, that's why as soon as we had a violent crime like a homicide, and if we had any indication they had Mexican ties, we automatically got Border Patrol and said, hey, look for this guy crossing the border.

36:13 Because by the time we even get on scene, they're halfway to the border if they want to go so. They usually follow through with tips like that. Or do you back? If they follow through with tips, do they call you back and say, hey, thanks for the tip, that was great. Or do you used to read about in the newspaper and you're like, oh, they caught the guy? Oh, no, no, absolutely no. They'll they'll call us. So, for instance, if we had a homicide, and we have, we have a suspect identified and we believe that he has ties to Mexico and he may be headed to Mexico, we call the Border Patrol and we say, hey, if he crosses at any one of the things we want him detained, they will detain him for us. But they're federal officers. Yes, and. What will happen is we'll go down there and then we'll actually take custody of them.

36:54 So now they'll stop them and say hey. And a lot of times they'll just say hey, you know, you're wanted by Mesa PD. And they'll get out and try to run and then boom, they get handcuffs and they might get their own charges. But yeah, they they do the thing. And I will even say even the Mexican authorities were very helpful because we would tell our Border Patrol and then Border Patrol would say, can we tell the Mexican police on the other side? And we absolutely. So they would tell them so just in case they got past our Border Patrol if it. And then because then once you go through ours to get into Mexico, you got to go through Mexican customs. Sure. They would know. They never got through our Border Patrol, but it was always a secondary thing. And they were always more than willing to like, yeah, because we don't want him in our country. You know what I mean?

37:37 Like if he, if he murdered somebody, we don't want him here. Just we'll absolutely hand them right back to you, but they'll just deny an entry into the country, give them back to Border Patrol, and then they hand them off to us. So yeah, it's very, very cooperative. Awesome, awesome. Yeah. So I was going to ask about that because I know that that, that depending who you talk to, the people say that the federal and the local, you know, I guess coordination could be a little patchy sometimes or other times. It's really wonderful. What's what's been your experience? What's been your experience working with the federal police as opposed in a in a local position? Great. But also I was in the homicide world, so it's a little different. I think it really depends on the crime. So we had and we used the feds almost exclusively. So if we got a murder suspect, so I have a murder, I identify a suspect, I develop probable cause and I can arrest them. We had a unit in our in Mesa Police Department called the major felon unit.

38:33 They were Mesa and federal agencies. They had FBIDEA, they had all the different federal, all working together. So if I had probable cause, I would just go straight to them because the feds, they would get information that we didn't have access to. So if we had a phone number, the feds could do amazing things with that. That is classified to the point where as case agent, I didn't even know. They would just say, we know he's at this address. I can't tell you how I know that, but we're going there and going to arrest him. And I'm like, OK, you know, there's probable cause for arrest, so go for it. You know, you have, if anything goes, SI will vouch that yes, there's a there's a probable cause to arrest this individual and they would go and get him. So the coordination was amazing because it was a homicide. And that looks good for everybody. Nobody wants a homicide person on the street. Where you get dicey is if the crime is a little questionable. So let's say you had like a custodial interference kidnapping.

39:31 So it's like a mom and dad are divorced and then the dad takes the kid and is holding them for a couple of days longer than he should. It's a crime. But are you going to have the FBI SWAT team breaking in your door? You know what I'm saying? That's where people say, that's where people say, oh, the, the feds in the state don't work real well together because those detectives would go to the feds and say, hey, it is a crime. It is a felony. Can you find the guy? And the feds are they're very because again, if they show up there and the guy says I'm not coming out, what are you going to do? I mean, are you going to because he kept his kid for a couple of days? You're going to get the media is going to have a heyday with you. Whereas if you're a murder suspect.

40:13 It's kind of different, You know, most society will say, well, you know, I may not like how the arrest went down, but he did murder somebody. You, you, you know what I mean? So it really depends on the crime. So being in the homicide world, it was very, people were well more apt to to take our cases because it was a homicide. And society will, will believe, will buy that better. Was there any tension in sharing and sharing the credit or, you know, trying to take credit to progress careers or anything like that? Meaning if it's a big homicide case and you know, a bunch of people are involved, like, listen, this is a case that could really put me on, you know, could really advance my career and, you know, elevate my reputation. I, you know, and then the feds coming, you know, the next, you read in the newspaper that the feds, you know, caught this guy and you're like, wait a minute.

40:58 I, I, you know, I'm on, I'm on page 10 of this, of this news story. You know, like what what did did? Did that ever? Does that get in the way? It doesn't. It never got in the way with me because I always checked my ego. It wasn't about me. It wasn't about me. It was about doing the job. Did it happen all the time? All the time. Because what I did was the boring stuff, you know, like I'm the one who shows up on the scene. I write the search warrants, you know, I do the administrative stuff. I I'm the one going through 1000 pages of telephone messages and figuring all that stuff out. That's very boring. You know, that's why they don't make movies about that of, you know, oh, this guy sat behind a computer for three days straight and looked at all the text messages and figured out it was this guy. That's not the fun stuff.

41:42 So, yeah, as soon as the feds got involved and they would make the arrest, it would always be, you know, the FBIDEA and the Mesa felon unit arrested this guy for murder. It was never, you know, Detective Bocock who? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I gotcha. Who looked at, you know, 30,000 Facebook pages for three days and identified the guy who? Should, by the way, you should get the credit for that because at the end of the day we got. The credit you didn't. Do that, we're going to do it. We got the credit within our unit and so we knew that we did it, you know what I mean? And also they knew that we did it. And sometimes they would even apologize. It'd be like, you know, there's times where one time it wasn't my case, but it was a high profile case. The unit that got that made the arrest, they got awards from the governor and the case agent detective didn't. And they fully apologized.

42:28 They were like, dude, we're so sorry. And everybody in our unit was very like, hey, we get it, man, It's cool. Like, you know, you guys still did a really good job. You know, you did a really good job. And I think by doing that, it was a good working relationship because if we ever needed them, they would go above and beyond. Because I had a great working relationship with those guys. I always had their back on like the administrative side to where if something did go bad. And sometimes I have had situations where I authorized an arrest, they went to make the arrest and they had to shoot and kill the guy. Really. And it went to federal court. And I went to federal court and I said the truth and I looked right at the jury and I said I had probable cause for his arrest.

43:09 And I told this person, this person, this person that there was probable cause for the arrest, you know? What I mean, what's the, what's the legal breakdown, I guess of that case, right. So you write up in the you, you give probable cause for an arrest and then the now when you write up the probable cause for arrest, does that obligate you, local police, you or anyone else working with you to go to that person's house or anyone can go there and use your probable cause as as a method of arrest? Yes, anybody can use that probable cause. And that's more on the civil side because the shooting itself will be judged on the shooting itself, right. So in in this particular case, they went to arrest him. He pulled a handgun out, he pointed it at him, and then they shot him.

44:01 OK, so that part would be handled separately. But we got sued civilly because his family said you never should have been in his house. You never should have been contacting him because he wasn't a suspect. And that's where you have to have that good working relationship. Where I went and I said no, we did. And I had to, even though it was a civil deal, I broke down the evidence. This this is the forensic evidence. This is the circumstantial evidence. This is a direct evidence. And I was, you know, multiple days on the stand explaining exactly why they had it so the jury could say, oh, and in that case, the jury did say they go, yeah, there was probable cause, like the officers had a reason to go there where the family was just saying, oh, you just picked him out of nobody and just showed up in his house and started yelling at him. He was scared.

44:45 He pulled a gun and then you shot him. No, no, no, no, no. If he, if he were to have survived that arrest, he would be in prison for murder because we had probable cause. You know what I mean? We had a lot of evidence that it was him, right. So it's a give and take thing. So they have to trust us to where when I say, hey, guys, I have probable cause, they have to trust that if it goes bad that I have and it's not, I'm not going to go on the stand and go. Yeah, it was 5050. You know, it might have been him. I really just wanted to question him, you know what I mean? I really just, I really just kind of wanted to get his fingerprints and then see where it goes from there. That's not going to fly then this, then civilly, you know, we're going to have to pay money to somebody because that's not appropriate.

45:26 That's not appropriate. So I have to trust them to do the right thing and they have to trust me that I'm going to do the right thing. And so in that case, we had a good working relationship, but they always stole the credit. It was always the guys. It's always the guys that put the handcuffs on somebody that get the credit, you know what I mean? It's not behind the scenes. You never hear about the forensic people. You know, the person who identified the fingerprints. They never say, hey, the person who identified the fingerprint, they're a hero. Really, they are. They're the ones who solved the crime. And then they tell us. So we go out and put handcuffs on it and we're the hero. Yeah, I love. That's why I like to, you know, I, I was never aware until I was aware that there's more to the story.

46:08 And then as soon as I realized there's more to the story, I became obsessed to learn, you know, with learning about what else went into it. You know, I I think that, you know, like when you see a finished product or like, for example, even with how like, you know, by so, you know, the, the example I think is Hollywood. You know, everyone associates a movie with an actor in it, you know, but you don't think about the writer that's putting the words in the actor's mouth. You don't you don't think about the director. You don't think about the team that edited that edit everything or the music supervisor that put the great soundtrack or the great score in there. And you're like, Oh yeah, that movie is amazing because of Leonardo DiCaprio. And you're like, well, yeah, you know, but also, like everyone involved is like incredible, you know? And so like, yeah, I, I feel, I feel that that's, that's, that's great. And I think it's beautiful that you appreciated that for what it was rather than letting your ego take, you know, take over. Because I think it's very easy for a lot of people to get resentful or to get, you know, a little bit more like, hey, man, like X amount of time.

47:02 I probably should have been able to, you know, I should get some credit over here, you know. And on that movie thing, it's great that you bring that up because how many movies have you watched that have? And I've always said what exactly what you said, you have a list actors. They consider great actors, but they're in a movie and it's horrible and they're horrible and and you're like, it's got to be the writing because they're amazing actors, but it's got to be the writing wasn't very good. You know what I'm saying? So you're right. You're only as good as the people who support you. But the person who's getting all the credit is the person that you see. Yeah, and then they should be judges with that credit too. They got to be generous. They got to be generous with the credit and they got and they can't think that they're.

47:46 The worst thing I think is that when people ultimately think that they that, you know, gets their head where they ultimately think, yeah, I am a one man show, you know, like I can do it all. You know, that's the worst because when they forget that it's my son, my 2 1/2 year old son is we watch the movie cars every day for the last six months, you know, and Lightning McQueen is the guy that didn't need the, you know, the crew. And at the end of the movie, you know, and he gets his whole, his whole crew and the whole family together, you know, like it saves the day. And like, it's, I, I love the idea of pushing that kind of concept, especially when in, in the form of education to, you know, just encourage people to evaluate. I, I felt what I was here, whether I heard about China or Russia, but that one of the two countries, the, if you ask, for example, like a high school teacher, like how important your job is, your job, Like, it's so important.

48:34 Like I'm raising the people of tomorrow, you know, and then if you ask the mechanic how important his job is, my job is the most important to the motherland, you know, to China because, you know, without me knowing to get around. And I, I feel, and it, it doesn't feel like we have that kind of same priority, those same priorities or values in America the same way at the moment. I really would love to try to, you know, continue encouraging that people really understand and appreciate, you know, what their place in society is and that they should be proud of it, you know, and want to contribute and look at it like it's important, you know? No, absolutely, absolutely. Because I and I, and I've been on both sides of that, like as a homicide detective, again, I was the face of of the investigation. But honestly, it was a lot of the forensics, the analysts, the people who made my job easier were the only reason I was able to do my job sometimes, you know, and I was on the other end of it in the Air Force.

49:28 Whereas when we would do a good mission, the pilots, the officers, you know, they took all the credit for everything. If they flew a good mission, they got all the credit for it. But you know what, for every hour of flying, it took, you know, six to seven hours of maintenance. You know, I'm the guy up all night long put air in tires and fixing hydraulics and all that. But no one's ever thanking you, you know what I mean? So I've kind of been on both sides of that. And I agree 100% that everybody, no matter what you do, you are contributing to the greater cost. You know what I mean? From the, and you all, and people always think just like you said, like, oh, I got the smallest job or I'm, I'm, I'm just a barista, I'm just a custodian or something like that. No, you don't realize how important your job is sometimes because if you don't have that, don't have the morning coffee, you know, don't have the bathroom that works and see how other people can produce and work. They can't.

50:18 It doesn't work. No, Yeah, that's a, that's a good lesson. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about it because I happen to love this particular field, but the psychological aspect of being a homicide detective and either your personal experiences in terms of coping mechanism mechanisms, therapy does, does the, there's the force, you know, offer, you know, substantial or adequate, you know, mental health, Because I mean, we're not meant to see the things that you see, you know, I, I don't think we are. And I think that exposure to this kind of stuff, I everyone PTSD is rampant in, in, in the country, you know, So what's, what's some of your thoughts or relationship to the mental health aspect of the of the job? So Mesa Police Department was really, really progressive in that they actually have what they call a peer support team. They were one of the first larger agencies to have that. And I was part of it for a while until I went to violent crimes because I can't, I, I, I couldn't do both. But they were very cognizant of it. And we did have counselors on duty that you could see anytime you wanted to that you could go talk to. A lot of cops just didn't though, you know, it's kind of that macho.

51:31 There's still that macho mentality of, you know, I don't need that. I'm stronger. I'm, you know, better. As for the psychology of it, you have to really just be aware of it. I saw in my 8 years of being a homicide detective and before that, I saw that because even as a patrol officer, we would respond to death. And I still remember my first death call. I can still see her face. I still see that you have. I was noticing towards the end of my career that I was seeing those early signs of PTSD. I was more emotional with things I would cry for, you know, I'd watch a, a, a sad movie and I would just kind of tear up and my son would say, hey, are you OK? I'm like, yeah, it's just, it's just sad, you know, And I think you have to really recognize it. And once you recognize it, that helps. I've never been a big consumer of alcohol or anything like that, so I never really saw that. But I always paid attention to it. I always paid attention to like, hey, if my alcohol starts to increase, I'm going to start talking to somebody. A lot of cops unfortunately don't. And we kind of rely on each other to do it. So within our unit, we really relied on each other. I knew my other detectives when they were having a bad day. And maybe I would say, hey, I'm going to go ahead and take that part for you.

52:43 You know, why don't you hang back, get some pizza and do this part and I'll go handle the sad part. And in some, some situations, it would affect me more. And it always affected people on a personal level. So like when I dealt with kids that were the same age as my son, it was to me. So people would step in and say, hey, why don't I go ahead and take care of that part. And you go, you know, why don't you go back to the office and write a search for it? And I'd be like, hey, thanks. And then other people would have situations. We had one, we had a female detective. She just had a baby and we had a baby death. And we're like, hey, why don't you hang back? And you know do not. Deal with that. Yeah, and you can do like the phones and and and the social media part. We'll go out to the scene. And she was like, hey, thanks, I got it.

53:24 We all. So you watch, you take care of each other, you take care of each other. But yeah, there is a psychological part of it where but you also get desensitized to it. I'm not even going to lie. You just get desensitized because it's your job and you don't realize it because also it's your job. Like, you know, I've had to dig through brain matter and stuff looking for bullets and it's but you don't think about it at the time because you're thinking I got to find that bullet, you know? Like that, but you revisit it. It's exactly. It's kind of like, you know, you do it and at the time you don't even think about it. It's like 2 days later when you, when you, when you come down and you're like, oh, that was horrible. You know, that was just, that was, that was, that was really kind of messed up.

54:12 So it's kind of when you leave, when you get out of it is when you start kind of dealing with it and realizing just how messed up the things are. Just like I've had to, I've never had to shoot anybody, but I've been very close and I've pointed my gun at people. I've, I've taken the slack out of the trigger. I was, I set my, my, my line. I almost did it. At that moment, I didn't have a whole lot of stress. I was focused on my training. I was like, stop or I, he was coming to me with a knife and I basically said stop or I will shoot you, you know, And he, he's like, no, he's like, he's kept coming, like stop it. And I said, if you cross that line, if you, I'm like, if you cross that curve, I will shoot you and you will die. Do you understand? He's like, no, you won't, yes, I will. I will shoot you.

54:53 And he finally gave up. It's only so at the moment, all I thought about was a training, you know, I'm just doing my job. It's almost robotic. And then it's only afterwards. And in that situation, it was afterwards. And I was, I was debriefing, you know, because other people came out and I was like, kind of what happened? Only then it's like a dump. And I was like, oh, I got to sit down for a minute, like shot somebody like that was that was crazy. First off, he almost stabbed me with a kitchen knife. Second, I almost shot him. You know what I mean? So it's kind of, and that's kind of how it was in the homicide world. When you're in the in, when in the heat of the investigation, you're so focused on getting the evidence that you need, getting what you what you need, dealing and it's all sad and dealing with the sadness of even talking to the family and they're, and they're emotional and they're crying and you're trying to get information from them because you're trying to solve the case.

55:42 It's only when it's all kind of solved and done that you sit back at your desk and kind of like, oh, like, what am I doing? Like this isn't normal. But then you kind of go into the mode again, you're like, OK, now I got to start writing this up. I got to get it ready for trial. And it's, it's almost a robotic thing. It's, it's almost like you just going along with like, this is my job and I have to do a good job for them. I can't break down right now because they need me. You know, I got to get this ready for trial and we got to get this guy prosecuted because, you know, we got to help this family out because that that was wrong. What happened to them? So, and then when I left, I noticed right, right. When I, when I retired, I stopped for 20 years in Mesa.

56:25 You can retire and get a pension. So I left because I knew I was going to do other careers. I knew I was going to do other things. So I'm like, I, I, I have a lot of other interests and I just, I will, I will find something to do. And so I left and I noticed almost right away, like after six months of leaving, my emotions evened out and I just felt better. I just felt better. I was thinking more, yeah, it really does. And it still effects you a little bit, but not as much. Removing you from this, from the situation really does help. It really does help. So yeah, every police officer deals with bad things, and they all have the PTSD. It's just a matter of how they deal with it. Yeah, yeah, I hear. I I was kind of, yeah, I kind of hope that the notion of therapy becomes, you know, destigmatized to, you know, people in general, including macho men, because.

57:17 And I actually think just I was thinking while you were, you know, describing everything that I think it's almost, it's absolutely necessary to have a process for you or for any officer to or anyone really under high intensity situations to be able to. There is a process and a line that I could turn to something and a clear set of instructions and how to go about this, you know, and so it's almost like there is an authority figure there in your head that's like, this is what you do. He takes a step over that curb. You do this, you know, when you, when you, when he does that, you do that. And I think that helps. I would imagine at least that that helps the panic, you know, the, the adrenaline rush, you know, the, the, I don't even know what you, I don't even know.

58:02 Like I there was one time about a year ago now where I was driving my family back from Orlando to South Florida and I was getting over, I was getting gas. And I, I mean, it was so stupid. I don't even remember what exactly what happened. There's a woman that was fighting with her, with her, with her boyfriend or whatever it was. They were like screaming. And she was like, he's not letting me get out of the car, not let me take my stuff. And I, and please someone help. And everyone is ignoring her. And I just started like taking a couple of steps over like, is everything OK? And I didn't have a plan as I'm walking over, like my heart is like pounding and I'm like, I have no idea what's going to happen, Dan. Like I can't not like say anything like no one's doing anything. And like I had AI have a one year old and so and this woman had a kid in the car and I was like, I hope that like, I don't know what's going on, but is everything OK?

58:49 And I had no plan. And I was, you know, and I think that made the whole experience a lot more shaky, you know, and then, you know, then to have here's a procedure and here's a step by step way to go. What So, so, So what are So what are some things you're going to pursue now? You wrote a couple of books I saw, which I want to talk to you about. So. Real quick on that. So how people how you explain that? So in all my training that I've had, it was explained the best. It was in the Secret Service and the Secret Service guy explained it, whereas he goes in all of our trainings. We're giving you note cards in your head. He says when you come on a situation that you've never done, he goes, you have a little monkey in your head that's going through the Rolodex and saying, OK, it's like your situation, a girl needs help in a in a thing.

59:36 If he goes through the Rolodex and there's nothing there, I don't, I don't know what to do. Yeah, he goes in training, we're filling your Rolodex. So like, you know, so that situation would be there. And that's kind of how it is. That's why in those training and in training, you know, they always say training will help officers. It will because that way when you show up to a scene, very rarely have I ever been involved in something. There's only a couple times where I've been involved in something where I've been like, I have no idea, like this is completely brand. New What was that? What are those? Contacts the monkey is like going through things. One of them was had a homicide. The gal said she was possessed by the devil. She said that she was that she was a ritual was done on her when she was 10 years old and that she was possessed by the devil and she stabbed her, she stabbed her sister-in-law over 270 times with a pair of scissors.

1:00:26 And that one like, I was getting ready to go in and do the interview and I'm just, I'm just like your face. I'm like, I don't even know. I don't know. Like this is this is all new to me. Like what do I ask? So I just been in there. I just I and so I straight up said tell me about the possession and she wouldn't agree. What'd she say? She had a great day deal. She said she had a fever. She was from Mexico, and she had a fever when she was 10 years old. And her grandmother was a like a bruja or a witch or something. And she did a possession on her to put a good spirit into her. And she said that worked for a year. But after a year, I started hearing voices to kill my family and that I had learned that it was a batch of spirit had pretended to be good, but it was a bad spirit in me.

1:01:08 And she's lived with this for almost 20 years. And I'm like, well, what do you mean live with it? And she would tell me like, oh, I got a job when I was 18. They came to America and she's like, I got a job when I was 18 and I almost murdered my manager because I showed up to work and I was working at like a like a, it was like a fast food restaurant. And she said, the boy said, you need to kill your manager or I'm going to hurt your family. And she's like, I almost did. But I convinced them that it was OK. And it's like, so that's kind of schizophrenic, but I'm not a psychologist, you know what I mean? So OK, maybe this is psychologist, but then I talked to the family and the grandma confirmed it. I talked to grandma. And again, what do you ask grandma? So I just said, I'm going to ask her the truth. Did you do a ritual on your granddaughter when you're dead?

1:01:50 She's like, yeah, Oh yeah, I'm a I'm a witch. My, my mother was a witch. I come from a long line of it. And we put and she like had the name of the, of the spirit. She was, I put this spirit, this is his name. And he said, and she's like, I know it's a good spirit. She's just using this as an excuse because she thinks it's a bad spirit, but it's a really a good spirit because and there it was all this spiritual and. What the heck do you? What do you make of that? I kind of like, I kind of believe them. I believe that they believe it and maybe it is true, Like, you know what I mean? Like maybe it is true. Maybe she is possessed and also the courts found her to be meant mentally incompetent, so we couldn't. She's in a state hospital now basically forever until she's able to stand trial, which I don't think she ever will be. Do the grandmothers?

1:02:38 They can't. Train you for like they can't train you for demonology in the Academy because how often is that going to come out That's. Crazy. That's such a crazy story in that scene. Must have been crazy. Yeah, it was weird. It was absolutely weird. It was just weird doing the interview because you're like, I'm not going to, I'm just going to ask her directly, you know, what's the name of what do you do? You have a hard time talking to murderers. Yeah. Yeah. Is it. Is it hard to sit across from someone and be and know that they just killed someone and be like, how am I going to treat you like, like, how am I going to treat you like a person? Yeah. It's hard in the beginning, but that's where homicide detectives aren't just come straight out of the Academy. That comes with years of interviewing people because you have to like I've interviewed a lot of people on the street, robbery people, rapists, things like that. And you can't judge them.

1:03:26 The minute you start judging them, they're going to shut down on you. So you do kind of have, and again, it's just doing the job, you know what I mean? Like your job is to elicit a confession or if not, elicit as much information as possible. And it's one of those things, the Rolodex, you know, every interview you learn a new technique. So like a lot of times you would with murderers just make it like not a big thing. Like, OK, so you know, and then it asked them, did you defend yourself? And some people like, no, I didn't want to defend him. I just wanted to kill him. Well, why? You know what? Why would make you think, do you think that's wrong? And just kind of have a conversation and not judge them? Because the minute you go in there and you start judging people and being like you're a murderer, you're going to prison forever. They're either going to be confrontational back or they're going to shut down.

1:04:10 My experience is is they usually shut down and say, I want a lawyer. You're not going to listen to me. But if you just like, say, hey, I know a murder just happened, you know, you're in a lot of trouble. But why? Like, you know, like, tell me your side of the story. I'm going to, I'm not going to ask any questions, you know, just you talk and let me know. Why did this go down? And they'll start from when they were six years old and talk for 40 minutes. But that's huge information. You have to listen because you're going to learn a lot. They'll tell you everything. You know what I mean? It may not be exactly how you want every like, well, where'd you get the gun? I don't know, because they probably don't know. Like, I just shot somebody. I'm having an adrenaline drunk too, you know what I mean? Like, I'm in police custody. I'm a little worked up. I don't have those details, you know, but we're like, no.

1:04:51 You're seeing those, those absurd, you're saying those absurd Hollywood monologues actually happened in real life. You know I, we. Actually do. Yeah, we actually do, yeah. It's so funny. It's all the movies, the it's the least favorite part of all those movies for me, you know, or the monologues. I'm like, when does this actually ever happened? This is the first time I'm ever hearing about actually happening in real life. Yeah. Oh, totally. I will tell you if you most, most detectives and police officers and people in general, when they ask a question, they're not listening. They're already thinking about the next question that they're that they're that they're asking. I mean, we all do it. I do it all the time. I've done it, I've I've done it while we're talking, you've said things I'm saying in my mind, I want to talk about, you know, a list actors with bad writing, you know what I mean?

1:05:36 So we all do it as human beings. But if we just step back and kind of say, hey, recognize that and acknowledge it and really listen to each other, you would be amazed at like, I will ask people something and then they'll, you know, ask them something and they'll answer it. And just their answer alone is very damning. Where you're like, woah, did he just say that? Like, you know, and same thing where you just say, hey, you give me your side of the story, No judgement, no nothing. All right. But I'd always tell them, I'm not your lawyer, I'm not your priest. I'm still a detective. I'm not going to judge you, but you tell me why this went down. And you would be amazed at the most people would just say, OK, well, I felt disrespected and I felt wrong.

1:06:17 And, you know, and when I was seven, I was disrespected and I swear I would never do it again. And that's why I got a gun and I shot that guy because all right, then you can get into the details, which sometimes they just don't want to tell you the details or again, they just don't remember because we as cops always forget that. And in movies they always have these things where these criminals are masterminds, you know, we're these super genius masterminds. And that's not always the case. The masterminds we don't catch, I've always said this, we don't catch the smart ones, you know what I mean? It's kind of like you have the lions thing. Lions don't go to the center of the herd to get the the zebra, you know. Lions, not the ones on the outside. Lions get the outside buns. You know, they're really, really smart criminals. We don't catch because they are smarter than us or they're thinking they have the advantage. They straight up have the advantage. Yeah, there was a great show.

1:07:08 Have you ever watched Trafficked with Marianna Van Zeller? No, I haven't. Oh, it's on Hulu. It's on Hulu. She's been on Joe Rogan's podcast a bunch of times. I think every time she records a new season. But one thing that she does is, I mean, she basically each episode is a particular aspect of crime that she's investigative, you know, doing investigative journalism on. And so it's the fentanyl crisis. It's mail order brides. It's you know, it's illegal street fighting. It's it's and each episode is something incredible. And one thing that she does super, super well is also that no judgement judge, like why'd you do that? You know, like, what do you? So one thing, there's an episode where she was talking to assassins in I think South South Africa, and this guy got into assassin assassinations, becoming a hitman because because his parents, his dad was killed or something like that.

1:08:02 And she said to him, have you ever thought about the fact that you're, you know, you're putting someone, some, some other kid in that same situation, you know, and the guy's like, no, I never thought about that in my entire life. He's like. And then apparently she came up to him afterward. He came up to her after, after they finished rolling and said, I really, you change, you change the way that I perceive things. And I don't know if he's necessarily even happy about that because that's his livelihood, right? But he was like, I, I, you know, like I look at this guy like he's a bad guy and I got to make a living and I don't care what it is. And he's like, I never thought about the fact that he has a kid that was feeling the exact same way that I felt, you know, and, and so just having these conversations a lot of time is just like you wouldn't even imagine.

1:08:43 But it I guess, I guess it works, you know. No, that's interesting. I'm going to have to check that out. That sounds. Yeah, you should. It also makes me a question. I feel like the idea that people talk when talk to like a people, like a person is pretty well known, has been pretty well known for a long time. And so it really, really astonishes me when we hear stories about, like, people try, you know, especially, you know, stories in our government, unfortunately about times a week torture people for information. We're like, don't we know like, beforehand that that's a bad method? Like, don't you know that that's not a good idea? Who told you that you thought you were going to get a good information, you know? No. And, and that's absolutely right. And I learned that as a patrol officer. My FTO taught me and then I taught it to newer officers. And I always said, if you're dealing with a homeless person, if you want to get compliance, call him Sir or ma'am. And I will tell you, you ask a person like Sir, can I just ask you, you know, like a homeless person loitering out front of a store and they call you, right?

1:09:43 And they call the police. That's a regular police story. If you show up there. These are already people in society who have nothing to lose. They've already lost everything. They're in the worst possible situation. Yelling at them is not going to make them any better or any happier. You know what I mean? And just like you were saying, they're probably anti defiant. So they're probably going to say, you know, I'm not going to listen to you anyway. If you treat people with respect. I always call everybody Sir and ma'am. If you come up there and say Sir, I'm sorry to bother you, but I have a call. And I've had some people say, hey, you called me Sir. You seem like a decent guy. What you want me to do? They just don't want you here. OK, I'll leave. You know what I mean? Some of them still aren't going to be that way. But same thing. I've had so many people where have just said, you know, even people who are known criminals and gang members and they have the, you know, the F the police tattoo on their neck. And I call him Sir.

1:10:31 And there's one guy who's an old time Mexican mafia guy gangster. And he did, he was a robber. He robbed a bank. And I was interviewing him and he had F he had F the police on his neck. He clearly did not like police. And I called him Sir the whole time. And as I'm walking into jail, he actually said, thanks for treating me with respect to dignity. I appreciate it. He's like, if I see you on the street, I'd probably try to kill you. But he goes, I appreciate you being cool with me. And I'm like, hey, Sir, you know, you're a human being. And I appreciate you and I and I wish you the best of luck. You're right. I always found being nice to people, it gets you way for the. Some folks you just can't be nice with because they're going to try to kill. Like the guy just tried to stab me with a knife. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, my niceness was only going so far, you know? But 98% of the time, you're absolutely right. If we just talk to people and be nice and show a little respect, they may show some respect back.

1:11:20 Yeah, yeah. So. So what's coming up for you? So actually, before you even you tell me what's coming up, I want to ask, I wanted to ask you about the process of writing a book or writing multiple books because I was a creative writing literature major in college. And I came very, I came to the realization very quickly that I'm never going to write a book or very unlikely to write a book because I have a very, very hard time keeping one overarching concept in my head and then breaking it down into a lot of different chapters and ideas and stuff like that. It's really, really hard for me. I'm not good at writing. I'm good at writing short form fiction and poetry and everything. But tell me about what your what your what your strategy came to you know was when it comes to writing and what your goals were and what you wrote about.

1:12:04 OK so I wrote a book. So when I first got out so I wrote a book called On Call Put. The link in the show not caption. Awesome. So it, it kind of came, I never thought again. I just kind of fell into it because I never really thought about writing a book. But when we were doing our, you know, doing our, our crime scene, you're tired. And I remember thinking like, I'm tired and I'm stressed and this kind of sucks, but there's so many people in this world that this is an interesting job. Like we have an I have an interesting job. Not many people get to say they're homicide detectives. So I was like, it's kind of almost like a morale booster for me at times where it's like, instead of being a Debbie Downer and saying, you know, you know, like, oh, what was me? And this is sucky and this is bad. Hey, I'm doing something that a lot of people would probably want to be involved in.

1:12:51 And then my wife loves watching those two crime shows and I'm always watching and I'm like that's how it goes. Like they miss because like they say like OK, so this murder happened and then we went and we knocked on this guys door and we got him in custody. And I'm like they missed something because you know, they went from they went from A-Z and they didn't tell us anything in the middle. Like that's not how it works. So I kind of started getting the idea in my head of like it would be, I think people would be really interested to see how they really unfold and how sometimes it's really clean, right? And sometimes it's really not. Like sometimes you spend a lot of time looking for the wrong person only to realize they're the wrong person and have to go right back to the beginning and start from scratch or you're biased.

1:13:35 You know, that was AII talk about that in the book about not being biased. And I show some examples of how my bias affected the direction I was going. And once I said, Hey, you got to stop that, Let's let's go back to logic and facts and reason. And it led me in a direction that led me to the truth. So I was like, I think people would be interested in that. So I retired in 2021 and then about a month after retirement is actually a former a person I used to work with in the Secret Service was a subject matter expert for textbooks and they wanted more subject matter experts for textbooks. Cool. So they contacted me. So for my first year off of in retirement, I was a subject matter expert writer for two criminal justice textbooks that they use in college right now.

1:14:20 And I wrote PowerPoints and also scenarios. So, you know, they were like, we want a scenario where you have to use or there's an exception to the search warrant or the search rule or a Terry pat down example. So I would use real life example. You know, you're walking, you're a cop and you're walking down the street at 2O clock in the morning and you see a hand to hand, you know, and then you see somebody lighting up drugs, you know, to approach them. So I did that and that's why I started learning about the academic world and I started saying that academic policing and real life policing are two different things. You know, because you can read it in a textbook, but it doesn't happen that way in real life. And again on the homicide thing. So then I said, you know what, I'm going to write a book. I wrote the first draft.

1:15:01 I pitched it to some publishers. They liked it, but they didn't like the content too much. So I actually got a professional editor who gave me some really good ideas to include call outs. The the published book actually has call outs. So it explains, it's almost like a textbook as we talk about search warrants and physical characteristics and things like that. There's actually little call outs in there that tell you exactly what they are. So like on the side of the book, like this one's about firearm technology. So this one, we're talking about firearms and then over here we'll talk about the actual terminology that you'll that you'll use. Like. Casing, fired cartridges, stippling, things like that. So little things that you can learn that the true crime reader can learn and be more educated.

1:15:48 So with that I did a complete rewrite. I basically I kept the old draft. It's all digital now, but I kept the old draft. But I basically started from the from scratch and rewrote the whole thing. And just like you, I don't sit stillwell, So I decided that each chapter was going to be about 20 to 30 pages and cover one case. So you can sit in one in one sitting and read because also not a lot of people have time to sit and read a 300 page book about 1 case. You're going to walk away from it for a couple days and you're going to lose track of what's going on. So each chapter, there's 11 chapters that cover 13 cases. And that that case is broken down from the call out being the first time that you're called out as a detective all the way to prosecution and sentencing.

1:16:35 And you break it down in 25 pages. And each and each chapter talks about a legal aspect. I talk about jury selection, I talk about testifying, about search warrants, making photo line UPS, how photo lamps are good, how photo lamps are bad, the difference in crimes. Everybody always if you, if somebody breaks in your house, you always say I got robbed. Actually you did, you got burgled. So I explained robbery is where somebody takes something from your person by force. Burglary is if they take something from your property by force. But even the media is like, oh, there was a robbery, not a robbery, that's a burglary. So I'm trying because I wanted people to be knowledgeable and educated and also question what they hear and see both in the news and on TV and question it and say, OK, they're saying this, but what really happened on the back end?

1:17:24 Like what did they really have on there? And don't just take what you're told for fact because we're just sometimes we're just told things. So after the full rewrite. And so then it a publisher liked it, they published it and it it was about a 2 1/2 year process for writing the book. And I really enjoyed it and we. Enjoyed it? I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it was fun. As for my writing style, I kind of tried to write it like a police report almost cool. I tried to write it like it's. I wanted it to be for true crime readers, but also for younger detectives because as you're growing up in the detective world, like when I became a beer run detective, that's because there's no detective school.

1:18:05 You have a recruit Academy to be an officer. There's no Academy for being a detective. You have to learn as you go. So by the time you become a homicide detective, you you test into it. You have to have a good reputation and you have to have a knowledge of it. You can't be brand new and go to homicide because you're just not going to know it. This is kind of a little bit of a learning tool where if somebody's interested in doing that as a career or in the career and interested in doing violent crime, homicide or complex investigations, it gives them an idea of kind of things that I did. And I really focus on this 5050 of my successes and my failures. I really focus on that because I, I, I did things where I thought out-of-the-box. I'm like, I'm thinking out-of-the-box.

1:18:45 I'm smarter than everybody. Let's do this. And it totally didn't work. And I want to let people know that because it might work in your case, but it didn't. Work in other times where? I think out-of-the-box and it worked. And it's like they go, wow, that I didn't even think about that. But yeah, I, I just, I literally just thought of it so. Can, can I, I guess I want to actually ask your thoughts on two, I guess recent and very famous, you know, scenarios, I guess that you'd probably have experienced both in first of all, the last year when when Trump got shot at. And I get, I know that the Secret Service got grilled for that, but that would that have been part of the field work that would have been responsible for to see the different potential positions that people could have been entering? And if so, were they held responsible or should they have? Or what would you have done differently about that? Or from your experience, what what? What went right or wrong about that? Yeah, so, so I was not, so I was not in the Secret Service at the time.

1:19:47 I have no inside knowledge on it at all. I I. Yes, of course, and. I and I also. Just take the day. Some time for that kind of stuff. But what I would say is, is that on from my perspective as having been in those events. Yeah, that was a lapse in the advance. So when a president goes somewhere or any dictionary goes somewhere, they'll do an advance where they'll say, hey, we need this kind of resource. So we need a cop here, We need a cop here. This is going to be the entry point. These are the vehicles we're going to stay at. You know, they would even plan like if something bad happens, this is the this is the airport we're going to, this is the hospital we're going to. All of that. What I saw when I saw that and, and I watched it on the news like everybody else. And, and I was also kind of enthralled in it because it was my old thing.

1:20:31 That was a huge lapse of communication, I think, and advanced planning because I still am not clear as a citizen who was responsible for watching that roof. Because the Secret Service said, oh, that was the locals and the locals are saying that was Secret Service. So clearly they were not communicating, you know what I mean? So. I, I I. Think it was poor communication, I think it was poor planning and I also think complacency. Yeah. When I was in the Secret Service, we were also very complacent and, and right after I left, I left in February of 2001, September 2020 of 2001, 911 happened. And talking to people that I had been in the Secret Service and I was in the PD at the time, the local PD, but I would talk to my friends that were still in and they had said it changed like no more, you know, sleeping on duty or things like that because it was very complacent.

1:21:27 Nothing was ever happened. So when I was in, no one had ever tried. The last attempt on a president's life serious attempt was Reagan. And that was in the 80s. So that had been almost what, almost 1819 years? They didn't even happen. And people get complacent. And I think that's what happened here is they were thinking it's Pennsylvania, it's small town Pennsylvania. Everybody loves Trump. He's not in really any danger. No one's going to shoot him. You know what I mean? Like, you don't think that, you know, but unfortunately in the protective world, you have to think worst case scenario, you know, your little member, the Rolodex and the monkey has to go, ooh, guy on the rooftop shooting. And I think so now for the next 1015 years, that's all they'll focus on his rooftops.

1:22:10 Sure you with that. And the Charlie Kirk thing, they'll focus on rooftop, but then some criminal will figure another thing out that we didn't think of. And then we're going to have to add that Rolodex in there again and go, oh, now we got to think about this. You know, before 911, we never thought about airplanes into a building. Nobody ever thought about that. That wasn't a thing. You know, if you mentioned that, you'd be like, I mean, it's even possible. You know. It's something you've seen in a movie, like no one's going to do that. So that's kind of my thing on that is I think it was really lack of plan, complacency, lack of planning. And like I said, as a private citizen who watched it, I still am not clear who was supposed to be watching that rooftop. And I don't think they were either. I think everybody else kind of had that thing of like, oh, that's their responsibility. I'm going to focus on this and.

1:22:55 Yeah, The other thing I was thinking, the other thing I was thinking about that was also, and I forgot where I heard this from recently, It's probably ATV show or a movie or something. No, maybe it was a book, but it was that we don't know all the right times that they've stopped hundreds of thousands of attempts, you know, because we don't, because they don't publicize it very often, you know, unless it's unless it's, unless it's happened in such a public way that it gets reported on. Right. But I mean, if, if the, if the, if the agents do their job the right way, they can eliminate the threat before anyone even knows about it. And then they don't want anyone to know about it because they don't want to hear about how they caught it. You know, how they caught the person, you know that they're trying to perpetrate it.

1:23:37 So, so the other thing is like we give everyone, we give them a very, very hard time, but we have no idea how many thousands of other opportunities, you know, situations had occurred leading up to that or in the, you know, previously been assessed or acted on that may have led that someone to act differently because of their previous experience they thought had, you know, would have been successful. I don't know. It's just something else that that that came to mind. And the second question also was also I guess, and that this would be more about your your, your homicide experience. Was it Charlie Kirk? I was going to ask about that. What are some of your thoughts? And I am not a conspiracy nut by any stretch of the imagination, although I hear I hear some of them out and kind of try to do my own homework on some of them. And I don't honestly, I don't know what to make of any of it other than just how terrible it is. But do you have any?

1:24:28 Did you have any thoughts or observations as it was happening or anything since then? I haven't really. I've been paying a lot to the conspiracy. I remember I watched it when it first happened and I remember when it first happened, there was that really close up video on on YouTube or TikTok, one of the two. And I remember I downloaded the video and I went frame by frame like I used to do in the old days. You. Know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Frame. And I can tell that that, you know, as a homicide detective, when I saw that shot, you know, and they were like always in the hospital and, you know, and one news report was like, oh, he's standing. I'm like, I don't think that's a survivable shot. That was a really bad place. That's a bad place to get shot in, in the neck.

1:25:13 And again, and, and, and the conspiracy theories, I haven't heard a whole lot of them because I kind of don't buy some of those conspiracy theories. You know, I, I, I kind of don't. And I know like he was asked a question about either a shooter or something and then the shot came off. But for that to happen, do you realize and being a firearms person, it's hard to shoot somebody anyway, right? It's hard. And even though the guy had a hunting rifle and it wasn't that hard of a shot, it still takes a little bit of concentration. But but to place a shot, right, when somebody says to shoot, yeah. And then actually making that shot, that's like Navy SEAL type stuff, right? And this guy is no Navy SEAL.

1:25:57 He was a hunter who had a little bit of hunting experience with that rifle and, and and he shot somebody with that rifle. So I don't necessarily buy that. Yeah, I don't. I, I, I'm not, I, I don't, I'm not convinced of much. It has to be like one of those things where it's a very clear correlation or connection and then there's just absolutely no response for me to be like, how come there's no response but like this doesn't that that did not seem like a particularly. What makes you think there's a conspiracy? Is it because there's not a lot of information available? I think so. I think so. And apparently there's a gag order just placed on like several 1000 people, which is also the and again, maybe it's not a conspiracy and maybe by the way, it's just, it's just a case that they're working on. And in, in cases are really hard to, you know, when my when my students were asking me like, how did they get the wrong guy? And I'm like, if I was like, you don't understand. You're gonna be in College in a couple of years, guys. You're gonna have a guy come to your campus that's considered controversial.

1:26:57 And you're gonna go with your friends and drink a lot of beer and hang out and maybe smoke a Jay. And then you're gonna go with the whole crowd of people and watch them fight with people. And you gonna be like, this is a great time. And then I was like, and then something happens and everyone's panicking. I was like, who's a reliable witness? Who's, who recounts what they saw? Who's paying any attention to anything going on over there? And maybe just that there's so much information and there's such little accurate, you know, accounting of what's going on that that's just really hard to find. You know, I, I'm not, I'm not sold. I'm not sold any way on anything other than just it was a tragedy, you know? And and a lot of times I think the gaggler so arresting that one dude. First off, I mean, you can't blame local police because at first I was like, well, why would they arrest him? But apparently he started yelling.

1:27:38 I did it. I did it. You can't as a cop just be like, no, you didn't and just walk away like you're a crazy dude. No, you didn't. No, you'd pounce on him, put him in handcuffs, even though more than likely he didn't do it. Like, he doesn't have a rifle. He's right there. I mean, you know, But you, yeah, as a responsible, like, I think most people would understand, you can't just walk away from that guy and go go away, crazy man. So they're focused on getting him in custody. The gag order. I can see a lot of times we try cases in the media and in social and in the social world before they even go to trial. And I think they're from the gag order in my perception is they're trying to stop that. But when you do that, it does seem like they're hiding something.

1:28:19 I'm not even going to lie. And and the conspiracy, when I was in the military, I was really big on the JFK conspiracy conspiracy. And all those books have just come out. JFK, the movie just came out. And I remember when I was in the military, I read all the books and I was convinced the CIA and the mob did it and this and that. And then as I got older and I read more to it and I started seeing it. I went to Dealey Plaza once on, you know, vacation when I saw where that all of it happened. And you're kind of like, maybe he did just do it. You know what I mean? It's really odd and weird, but maybe he did, you know? And then it comes out, they release all the files, and everybody's kind of like, yeah, it looks like he probably did it on his own. Were there things behind the scenes? Maybe. But yeah, I, I think sometimes we want things to be bigger than they are and not just realize that sometimes, like this Charlie Kirk situation, that guy had the perfect opportunity at the perfect moment, was able to get into the perfect spot, make a shot. That was.

1:29:14 Everybody says it was, oh, that's an easy shot. I've shot at 200 yards, even with a rifle, it's kind of easy, but it's not. If you've never handled a gun, you're not doing it. You know, you got to have a little bit and you're shooting another human being, you're stressed, you're thinking about am I going to get caught? Am I going to get that? So you got to add the stress factor on there as well. So that probably. On some couple of drugs you probably drugged up in some sort of way. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So you know. It was there was a lot of things that went on that guy's side that make that come true. So I don't know, is there AI kind of try to stay away from the conspiracies because everything turns into a conspiracy because we think everybody's lying to us. And if you think everybody's lying to us, then you really have to start wondering what do I believe on anything? And then we just start believing from people that we that we want to believe and then we're biased on that. So.

1:30:07 Yeah, that becomes a lot harder, right? Exactly. Yeah. And that's what makes. That's what you got to do a lot of these things per diem almost, you know, But like, you know, the question of do are any conspiracy theories real? It's like, well, you think the government is 100% telling the truth on everything that's ever happened, you know, in the last 100 years, like, well, probably not 100%, you know. So of the ones that they are, which ones is true and which ones not? And I actually think that, you know, to be able to and, and it's never, ever going to happen. But like in this hopelessly romantic, you know, world or this idealistic world where people would say, Hey, you know what, we did it, we screwed up. There's accountability. This person's, you know, this person's in jail, this person's fired.

1:30:47 This person, you know, loses their classification, will never go, you know, step foot into public service again. And then you say, now do you know, we, we now illicit trust, like we say, you know, now we are now, now we, now we're standing, you know, but to, to, I think that, I think that what gets a lot of people frustrated is the feeling of being gaslit or being told no, no, no, no, no, you know, and, and so then that's when the slippery slope kind of starts happening. It's hard, but it's, it's also, it's also like you said, you know, once you don't know who to believe, you don't believe, you become biased and you just start thinking everything about everyone, you know, and it's like, OK, forget about it. I'm sorry. I've seen some experience media and people with public fig or with with a public voice will make a statement that is absolutely not true, that is straight up not true. But they have a voice, you know what I mean? And people believe them, so they believe that. And I always bring up the thing of the George Floyd murder. When it first happened, they mentioned excited delirium and I remember watching a news thing where they said excited delirium isn't a thing.

1:31:55 It's a made-up word and it's not a thing. And regardless of the of the whole George Floyd thing, I remember hearing that. I think no, it's not because police officers have been trained in it. Like we have had hours and hours and hours of training. Excited delirium is a real thing. But I was watching these people and there's like 3 experts and they're all saying no, excited delirium isn't a thing. It's proven in court not to be a thing. It's like, no, they're wrong. It is, you know what I mean? But nobody's going to listen to me. I'm at the time I was a detective and I'm not saying anything. I'm like, yeah, you, you believe you, You know what I mean? Let let the court forgot. So that was an example where I saw for certain that people had no idea what they were talking about and then saying it.

1:32:37 And I'm sure it happens a lot because I don't know everything. And people say things that I believe because I trust them, but I don't do the research on it, you know what I mean? And maybe I should, maybe I should be Googling more of like, hey, is this real? And and then you got to wonder, is that real? So, so if you go down the conspiratorial thing, it just goes forever and ever and ever. But I think that's a big thing. It's a lot of. From experience, it does and you have to pull yourself out of it before it before it drives you nuts. You know I. Think we always have to remember this is that we think everything is a conspiracy. And I think more than likely it's incompetence. There's a lot, there's a lot of people. I've met a lot of politicians. I've met a lot of people in power and things like that. And I will say not all of them are competent people. You know, they're not all politicians are good people. There are politicians who are I've met them. They are bad people and but they get elected and that's the thing.

1:33:28 That's fine. That's their job. But I think we have to stop taking everybody just because we see it on a podcast and go, oh, that's, that's the truth. When you watch another podcast and go, OK, now that's the truth. Yeah, for ourselves a little bit. And we have the world at our fingertips with AI and Google and the Internet, whatever you use, we have the world at our fingertips. We should be our own detectives and figure our own stuff out and maybe listen to ourselves because we're not all experts, you know? We're not all experts on everything, right? Right, right, right. It reminds me of, what do you call it, that scene ever in Cheers when Woody Harrelson runs for runs for office and he wins by saying all the wrong things. It's like, yeah, well, there you go. Anyway, Justin, I really appreciate your time. This is such a this is such a fun and fascinating conversation.

1:34:17 And this has really been really, really informative and a lot of fun. And I I really appreciate your time and thank you so much. Thank you for all the service and all the great work throughout the years. This really means a lot and I wish you lots of luck, hopefully be in touch and I'm very excited to hear about what you got coming up next, OK? Yes. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. All right, take care. Bye, bye now.