#123 "Living the Lie: Undercover with the Mafia" with Giovanni Rocco Part 2

In Part 2 of this gripping two-part series, Giovanni Rocco pulls back the curtain on life after the takedown.
What happens when the mission ends—but the mask doesn’t come off?

This episode explores the personal cost of living undercover: the toll it took on Gio’s mental health, the strain on his marriage, and the distance that grew between him and his children. With raw honesty, Gio shares what it was like to lose himself in the role—and the long road to finding his way back.

Today, his mission continues in a new form. No longer infiltrating criminal organizations, Gio now works on the frontlines of mental wellness for law enforcement and first responders, helping others navigate the same darkness he once lived through.

It’s a story of redemption, resilience, and redefining what it means to serve.

Check out his book here- https://a.co/d/9Oix3EW
Inside the Life Podcast- https://insidethelife.org/episodes/

Chapters

• 0:00 Adrenaline, Burnout, And Getting Unplugged
• 3:30 Feeling Replaced And Missing Milestones
• 6:20 Hard Truth: The Job Moves On
• 9:00 Kicking Doors And What It Cost
• 12:10 Family, Oaths, And Who You Owe
• 15:30 Guilt In Deep Cover And Collateral Pain
• 19:10 Empathy That Changed Policing
• 23:30 Small Town Policing And Public Perception
• 26:30 Coping, Stigma, And Real Treatment
• 30:00 Building First Responder Programs
• 33:20 Fit For Duty And Real Trauma Work
• 36:40 Aftercare, Triggers, And A Second Chance
• 40:10 Night Terrors, Barbecues, And Reframing
• 44:10 Tools, Breath Work, And Equine Therapy

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

And realized how bad I was. And then I reached out to some friends in our program. We had what's called a safeguard program. Every nine months I had to go for a mental health check. And they did that for us. But it was mostly because we were we were tool in the toolbox of the federal government. So they did it. But it's the greatest tool we had because when I had psychological services, I could talk to people. I realized how bad I was when I reached out right there. So again, I came to work one night on my chopper. And actually it was my uncle's bike and I barred it. And when I came, my chief found me and it was totally straight illegal. And that just opened the door to my undercover world. You a rat, you're a cop. You know, the typical if you're a cop, you gotta tell me you're a cop. And then you brush it off and go, Really, really stupid? That's what you're gonna say to me. And you gotta be careful because again, what I said before is if I tick this guy off, or I feel like, you know, oh, so you think you're smarter than me, Giovanni? Yeah, now I'll just I'll just shoot you in this case. It was the I swear to God, it was like adrenaline was the substance, and it was horrible for me. I didn't realize how out of control I was. They unplugged me. Now I'm sitting home. Now I'm just what do I do? I'm like a caged rat. And I was like, look, I I need some help. I gotta come in and get a tune up or talk to somebody because my my home life is terrible. That's when I realized it. It was about maybe four or five months after when I was sitting home like a caged animal, waiting, waiting, waiting.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21

Let's let's touch on that because I think it's important to hit on that. I I felt the same way to a to a certain degree, and I felt like you're missing out on the action, not because of yourself, but you felt like your team is out there serving uh their communities and serving the mission and you're nowhere there. One, that's the first part that that that really makes you feel vacant. Second is that, and it's really weird to say this, and for those that have been any kind of specialized unit, you'll completely understand, is that they're doing it without you and they're being successful with without you there. They are, they don't really need you there. No, and so you you start practicing you start contemplating, well, damn, like all those times that did miss, you know, little Jimmy's birthday or little Sally's, you know, or the wedding anniversaries, you know, I this is no shit. And in in my situation, it was our wedding anniversary. There was a homicide warrant where a guy had chopped up a woman and threw her in some lake or beach in Florida, came to Texas, and it was our wedding anniversary. We had made plans and the Marshal Service started pinging him, and he was in the area. And I'm trying to justify to her, like this is the for the greater good, and went out and did that. But me after I unplugged was me justifying to myself, they're can they're they're gonna continue. And that's that's that was the realization to me that life was gonna go on.

SPEAKER_00: 2:39

Yeah, you know. So my old man, I call him old man because my father, with all you know, with the greatest respect in the world, my dad warned me as I was rising up to the ranks of what I was doing, he said to me, Listen to me, you're not a unicorn, you're not this, you're not some pot of gold. They're gonna do it without you. Understand something. The minute you retire and you hand your badge in, you're done. No matter what rank you are, no matter what department you are. He and I got so offended by this. And I was like, You don't even know what I'm doing. I can't even tell you what I'm doing. All these things I'm doing, I'm trained to do a I'm trained like a spy. I mean, I can't even tell you the shit that I'm doing. Like, how dare you say that to me? And he warned me, he says, listen to me. The minute you're done, they're gonna move on. Your department moves on, the city moves on, everybody moves on like you were never there. And I realized that, not in an offensive way, but you're right, Tyler. I don't need to be at every mission. I have I want to be. Yes. My guys, I didn't want my guys hitting a door when I was in narcotics. We fought over who's going through the door first. Yeah. In the days where we didn't wear bulletproof vests, or have a shield, or have a shield. We didn't go, it was there was no serpentine going to room. We literally hit a door and like everybody, it was rush to the bathroom all the way in the back, and first one to the and it was more about the narcotics, other than our safety, right? Don't get don't let the drugs flush because we can't, we got to come up positive. The stuff we did, and guys and girls still do it to this day for love of the job, but what are you missing? And it's funny you mentioned or risking, or risking. Yeah. For what? Yeah, for what, man? And when I speak and I do my presentations, I often start with the day you took your oath. Who was there? Who held the Bible for you? Because I I always open up with it. Who held the Bible for you? Who was standing next to your side? Maybe in 25 years, maybe the girlfriend you had, or the mother or father that was there, stood at your side, or your uncle who held it for you. Maybe they're still here, maybe they're still walking the earth. Maybe the people you marry along the way and had a spouse and family with, maybe they're waiting for you. Those are the people waiting at at the end of the marathon. It's a 25-year marathon. Those people, and you owe it to them. You were picked to be the cream of the crop. When you applied for your job and your job and my job, we were the best of the best of the candidates. We rose to the top in what we did physical tests, mental tests, you know, agility tests, whatever tests we took, we were the best candidates. We got picked 25 years later. We're calloused, we're beat up, we're a little bit broken, but at the end of the line, that family is who who spent the whole career with you. Maybe you went through a couple of even the family that you divorced. I've been through a divorce. Maybe those loved ones that are with you and still wanted the best for you are waiting for you at the end of the line. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to them to be the best you can be when you retire, but you owe it more to yourself. We invest in money, we invest in time, we invest in our family. The one thing we as first responders don't do is invest in ourselves enough. Because they don't care. Ask your spouse, would you rather have money or me? See what their answer is. Maybe you married a greedy person, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 5:34

Depending on when you ask them that in your relationship, when you're getting a response. Right. But you know I I I do think it's a great way to, or time to kind of segue in, maybe with this next one for sure. So hit me.

SPEAKER_00: 5:47

Not like my wife does. No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01: 5:49

No. So one of the things that I did I did my my share of undercover work, never that far, never that long. So I didn't have any guilt. You must have had some guilt being around certain parts of this organization for so long who felt that you were like family to them. So when it all went down, take us through that.

SPEAKER_00: 6:17

So I have this discussion on my podcast with my co-host a lot, and we talk about that. You know, sometimes that's the hardest part of the job, right? Like we can predicate, we had to predicate our targets in the FBI. And sometimes the hardest thing is watching a family burn, right? The individual committed the crime, the family did not, very much like our families. Like they were invested in us, but they didn't know where we were putting him in unwittingly. So sometimes it's hard. Sometimes when you hold you show up for domestic, it's the same when you show up for domestic and you have to take a child into family services. And you know that you're ripping that child away from its environment, from its environment, not from the parent. The parent committed the crime. So it's the same feeling of that. That's why I say the two are they're you know, the feelings are the same. I'm sitting there, and when you work deep cover, it's much different. With Charlie, my my capo, my boss in the mafia, he loved me like a son, and I had to pretend I loved him like a father, but he would bring me around people. He brought me around the mafia family, the crime family, but then he brought me around his family and other families. Some of the most difficult times were when I made a recording against an older guy, he was a capo in the family, and I paid him, and I had a conversation with him, and I paid him. We I think we did like a hijacking or something. So I went there to kick up to him. I had to pay him money. And uh his granddaughter walks in, and she walks in and he says, Oh, hey, tell your cousins. Now I'm a cousin, because it's Italian, right? So he goes, tell your cousins. Now I'm sitting here with my mob boss's son, me, and this old guy. And he says to his granddaughter, tell your cousins the good news. Well, I got accepted to whatever college she got accepted to, right? And I you have to pretend, oh my God, that's great. You know, and you're literally celebrating, and in your mind, you know, oh, in a short period of time, when this case comes to an end, pop pop's probably not gonna be there to watch you go to school, you know. Yep, yeah or watch it. Or walk you down the aisle because I'm gonna put him in prison. But he puts himself there. So it's uh it's sometimes a hard thing to swallow. That's why I was always careful. Sometimes in law enforcement, you take it personal when you're doing your investigations, and you want that you want that collar, right? And you have to sometimes think, all right, how bad is this? Like, you know in me in narcotics as a young kid, I realized what happened was I was from the street. I told you I grew up in the street. So I I arrested a girl, and it kind of has to do with the world I'm in now with substance abuse and and treatment. I arrested a girl, and she's cuffed to my bar. I'm processing her in my office in narcotics, and she says to me, gee, I'm just dope sick. I just can't find a bed. And I'm like, Sandy, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to tell you. She says, I swear to God, like I want to get I want to get better. And I'm looking at her, and I could see my cousin, who I knew was a heroin addict. And I'm I'm looking at her, I go, Are you serious right now? Have you called anywhere? I swear to God, I called this place, I called that place, this place, and nobody has a bed for me. So I sat there and I go, All right, you know what? If you're serious, I'll make a phone call and see if I can get you a bed. You know, my narcotics guys, my old salty guys that train me, they're looking at me, going, What are you doing? Yeah, what are you doing? Yeah, this isn't the YMTA. Yeah, this is collars for dollars. Lock her up, process her, and let's get back to the street and go catch another one so we can get more court time next week. Back on the road. Right, back on the road. So I sat there and I said, You guys go ahead. That was a young buck, and I said, Go ahead, I'm gonna see what I could do for her. I got her a bed, right? And when I got her a bed, she went in and she stayed her 30, 40 days, and she got out. And do you know at the time she we didn't have the pagers or anything, she called the narcotics office and asked for me. And she just started giving me tips on information. Hey, gee, somebody's coming from Manhattan through the Holland tunnel, they're gonna have this much PCP on them, they're gonna have this much heroin on them. She started, she was the best informant I ever had. All because I helped her, all because and I didn't do it for that reason, but then it it changed the culture because some of the older dogs were like, So who gave you his tip on this? You know, they saw I was 100 bags of heroin, 200 bags of heroin. They saw good collars and they're like, shit, you're making good collars. Yeah, well, that girl, I I got her a bed and it it paid forward. Empathy. Empathy. So those things along the way is I see people, you have to see them for the humor. You don't see them as a piece of meat when you process them. Right.

SPEAKER_03: 10:28

Sometimes and I and it kind of hit on what what Mike was asking, isn't I think the the the average patrolman right now is most likely the ones that's listening or watching this podcast that are that are actually law enforcement officers is this is that sadly we uh typically live and serve in the communities that we're tight with, right? Uh for those listening or watching, you'll you've you've been in a situation where you've had to arrest uh a fellow little league coach, a a you know, gas station clerks and cops are the best friends when you work nights, right? Right. And I think that we've all been put in that predicament where you've got professional relationships that kind of semi-turn personal when you do wear this badge. And I think that's probably the similar feeling that you hate to do this. You honestly you have a gut-wrenching aspect when you put handcuffs on somebody that you care about. Sure. It's not doesn't that doesn't mean sexually or or that you have a an uh you know infatuation with this person, but you care about them because they've shown empathy and shown you care. And I think that's probably the similar the similarities that you've probably felt to a greater degree, obviously, with being involved with you know families as deep as you as you were. But that's probably the best analogy, I think, that just off the off the cuff of what I can probably you know explain to the audience.

SPEAKER_00: 11:41

Yeah, and I think working in a small community like out here in Texas, even Jersey, we have small communities. So you're a cop in a very small community. If you did lock up a teacher, you locked up a nurse, or you locked up somebody that's a pillar of the community, right? They were doing something illegal. You did your job, but all of a sudden you become the bad guy. Oh man, you know, Tyler, yeah, what a he could have let her go. Now they start judging you. And there's hard ass that could be very difficult. It could be straining on a responder, too. You know, like it could be you become the bad, you become the hard ass and this and that. Now he's this. So you have to be mentally aware. I'm not saying suck up to the public, but what can you do to change that image? You know, what can you do on the job instead of just going and if you're not getting any calls for service, you're not just sitting in the car binge watching something on Netflix now, right? You know, or you're not just doing car-to-car therapy for four hours of sleeping somewhere. What are you doing proactively to change the community's mind to make them understand who you are? You can do something. You have eight to ten hours in the shift that you can change that dynamic. You it's up to you to do it. Invest in yourself.

SPEAKER_03: 12:41

Yeah, and I think segueing into this other part is that I think people cope differently. And I think people, uh sadly, within our profession, they don't feel and and I I'll and I will say this mental health recognizate recognizing mental health within our profession is getting far better than what it was absolutely when you started and better when I started and you too, Mike. And I think back to my point, you're involved with something pretty cool now across the nation, but specifically here in Texas, there's been two facilities that have been opened up, and you're very proud uh to kind of discuss what they offer uh and where they're located and more information. And sadly, our our our profession has some addiction issues, and I think it goes back to dealing with uh guilt whenever they have to do their jobs and and how they cope with it and not being able to express what they deal with on a day-to-day basis. Talk about those facilities here in Texas and also what you do now nationwide because of your experience.

SPEAKER_00: 13:30

Yeah, I started speaking across the country and learned more about my own mental health and my own processing and my own healing along the way. And I kind of fell into the industry of addiction. You know, I didn't intend to get a job in that. I thought I'd do anti-human trafficking or something like that, and that's what I was doing after retirement for a while. But after I was asked to come into this industry, I realized, wow, there's something here that's healing for me. I didn't do it selfishly, but I realized I fit into it. And there was a need for first responder programming. So I had gotten in and I got into a group of investors that asked me to do something, and that kind of was the trajectory for the last six years of my service in that field. So I started out and I started developing programs for first responders. And then, of course, everybody's like, well, it's got to be a first responder-only program, right? Because you know, we're special people. And that was the absolutely yeah, yeah. No, nobody understands us. Cops are cops, and you know, first responders are first responders. But it goes to everything we just discussed five minutes ago about the empathy. So when I came in, I was I scratching my head and I go, okay, so let me give this a let me give it a shot. So I started developing it, and along the way, you know my colleague Jose Ortiz. I met Jose Ortiz along the way, and he's got a great history in working in this field, and he himself has an amazing story. And when I hooked up with him, we kind of started, all right, let's see what we can do with this. So uh there was about four or five facilities I worked for along the way developing programming for them, but nobody ever committed to doing a true first responder program, like a good solid program with great modalities. And but for the last six years, seven years I've been bouncing around in it. And finally I landed recently with Bradford Health Services, and they have tremendous programs. Everything that Jose and I have tried to create it over the last few years together, four or five years together, um, they have it, you know. And when I say that, I mean it's you have to be culturally competent, you have to understand our demographic, you have to understand what we go through, your clinicians have to understand, your facility has to understand, all your staff has to understand it. And you have to have a great, a great clinical component to treat us because we are complex, right? The trauma that we experience, typically, to give you an example, when somebody goes into treatment, it might be trauma they had from childhood trauma, sexual trauma, something they had alone away, or got into a car accident and developed an addiction program or addiction habit. They're typically processing that and in treatment 30 to 45 days, they're gonna be good to go and they can get past that event that happened 20 years ago. Right. With us, it's different. With us, it's like, okay, we're we're treating all this trauma and this addiction that we've had, but now we got to prepare to be found fit for duty. And you know us, Murphy's Law says the minute you go back and you take a midnight shift, that's the first event, the first shift you take, that's when you're gonna get another critical call, or it's gonna be a bad crisis intervention you have to do, or something like that. So you have to prepare for that. That's what we're bringing to the table with Bradford Health. Yeah. So there are comp there are treatment centers we have here in Smithville, just outside of Smithville, we have one, the last resort. We have a lot of equine therapy. Our staff is just fully immersed in it and fully committed to treating first responders. We have other ones, 17 on the southeast, and you know, from here, Alabama, Mississippi. So there's several of them, but the two we have right now that we're focusing on is Alabama, and and we'll we'll focus on opening several of them, but right now it's here in Texas, outside, and we do that one at the last resort, and then we have the Warrior Project in Alabama.

SPEAKER_01: 16:55

You know, I can't I cannot strain enough how important it is that whatever treatment you're receiving, that there is treatment after the fact. You know, you know, I have a good friend of mine who was involved in a shooting years back, and back then you didn't get anything. You saw a doctor the next day, and yeah, you're here to go back to work. And it was sometimes just a phone call and you're back to work. You know, my friend had to take someone out and then two months later, three months later, he gets another call with a domestic and the guy with a knife coming at him, and instead of assessing the threat or taking out the threat, he took a chance and jumped over a second story balcony to get away from it. Wow. To get away from it so that he wouldn't have to pull that trigger again and go through all that all over again. Now, when he hit the ground, he came to and said, Holy shit, I just left the family up there, ran back up there and and took care of business. Right. But that that that second of I'm not going through this shit again, I'm out. Yeah. You know, can you imagine jumping off a second story balcony just to avoid that? I mean, just so he would not pull the trigger. I mean, and it's so important, and I'm glad you you hit on that because if you're you don't get the treatment after the fact or or or stick with it, you don't know what's going to happen after that.

SPEAKER_00: 18:18

You don't. And it's those things where you carry that for years after Mike. Like I didn't realize how long I carried my trauma, right? And a similar incident when I had when I was two years on a job. I had a guy try hacking it. He hacked his brother up with a butcher knife. We showed up for domestic, he went back in the kitchen, got the knife, and then he tried. I wrestled the guy. I get to the hospital, we win. He almost stabbed two of the officers I was with. They write me up for all kinds of awards, all this crazy stuff, and then they go, gee, come here. My sergeant calls me up. He goes, So I want to know what happened. Now here I was, this young guy thinking, oh shit, I'm gonna get me. Exactly. So I'm going, oh man, what am I gonna tell this guy? He goes, So did this happen? Yeah. Did this guy grab the knife? Yeah, did you do this? Did you did you grab him? Did you bang his head on a radiator? I did. Well, that's why he's getting, you know, I put him in a pretty much a coma, you know, to save my own life. And he's like, is that what happened? Yeah, he goes, Well, let me ask you something. Why the hell didn't you just shoot him? And I literally, my my response was as a 22-year-old kid, I go, Sarge, to be honest with you, I forgot I had a gun. Because I was so emotionally deregulated, right? But again, it it's and it's not just the addiction component. Guys go, well, I'm not going to treatment for addiction. I don't have an addiction. Well, listen, the mental health stuff catches up to you. I talk about and I share for years I was haunted. I was haunted by the things I saw, especially with kids. I had one child at a fire, she died in my arms. I had multiple people. I I held, you know, and it's how you process this trauma, right? How what I understand now, and I understand it from our facilities and our clinicians helping us process it. I would carry these people around like they were ghosts in my head. I would get, and I thought I wore it like a badge of honor. They would say, when I went for trainings, they would say, All right, everybody, you know, when we slept like uh in the state police barracks for trainings and stuff, you're like, all right, everybody grab a bunk, um, gee, you're over there and uh you can take that room over there. Well, why does he get his own room? Well, does he pay for EIP? No, no, you don't want to sleep in a room with Giovanni. Why? Well, he has night terrors. And do you know for years I did that night terror thing, but I wore it because we're cops, and I said, uh and they go, no, no, he sleeps in a room, the door gets locked, because if he wakes up, he'll choke the shit out of you. You don't know what's gonna happen. And me and one other guy had him, and we wore it like badges of honor. I didn't realize until, and not to go down a story road, but this little kid, one specific, would haunt me for 10 years. And she would come to me, haunt what I thought was haunting. And then I would sit there as a young officer, and I was young in my first marriage, and sit there and watch TV. And again, TV was different. Now you have The Walking Dead and all these shows. It's very graphic. But I would see something that triggered me and be like, now I know I could feel my body. I'm getting hot, I'm getting I'm getting anxious, I'm getting uncomfortable, and I go, listen, you might want to sleep in another room tonight. It's gonna be a bad night. Like, I'm I'm wearing it again, like a badge of honor, because I'm a you know, I'm a tough cop. Yeah, you're a tough guy. And then what happened was I carried this and I did it for years. And then when I became an FBI undercover, I had a psychologist, and he kept bringing this kid up to me. So I got angry. And one of the like every nine months I'd talk about it. So, how's the dreams going? Jesus Christ, John, what this what's what do you keep bringing this up for? He goes, Well, let's talk about it. And then he helped me understand. And this is what you get in treatment. I'm just giving you an example. I carried this and carried it like it was a rucksack that weighed a thousand pounds. All these incidences, I just take them and put them in my backpack, put them in, put them in. You hear that all the time. This guy's turned around, a psychologist, uh, FBI psychologist, and he said, Look, let's talk about the little girl. Oh my God, here we go. I went to this kid. Yeah, go ahead. Well, you know, let me ask you something. Where what do you think is the biggest problem? I don't know. He says, Do it, are you drinking a lot? No. I go to barbecues with my wife, my ex-wife at the time, and I said, you know, I gotta leave a barbecue because I'm a cop. I'm hard to be around. People don't get me. You're gonna put me in a room with a gym teacher, a dentist. So I'm in this backyard at this barbecue. I'm a cop. I'm Superman. Like you said before, I have this hypermasculinity about me. And I go, so I have a couple beers, and I get a little belligerent. Oh, so you're a gym teacher, huh? So you spend all day with kids, do you? Oh, you're a dentist, are you? And I, you know, I get I I poke, I start poking, you know, because again, I have this piece of metal on my hip or on my chest that says who I gives me this authority, and I feel like I can do this to people. Imagine doing this. So he would say, Okay, stop there. What's going on at the barbecue? I don't know. What do you mean what's going on? He goes, uh, well, just tell me about the barbecue. I don't know, it's a barbecue. And you know about barbecue. I go, kids playing, kids are in the pool? Yeah, there's kids. All right, there's people playing, yeah, yeah, yeah. People cooking, people doing, yeah, yeah. What are they cooking? I don't know. I don't know. What are they cooking barbecues? I don't know. Hamburgers, hot dogs, steaks, maybe? Yeah, yeah, some steaks, sure. If you're high-end barbecueing, sure. Not where I come from, but yeah. All right. Well, what do you think is uh happening to you? And he explained triggers to me. And he goes, What's happening to you is not the dentist and not the gym teacher. He says, You're being deregulated, and what's happening is the smoke and the burning f the burning fat on the steaks and the hamburgers is wafting into your sinuses. And he goes, and it's reminding you of that incident you had with the little girl in your arms who had died in my arms and was burned to death. He goes, That's what's triggering you. It's a trigger. So what the hell? So what do I do about it? And he helped me sit down and he goes, Did you set the fire? Did you put her in a room? Her mom was a crackhead, was smoking crack, went downstairs, started a fire. She didn't pay the bills, the candles were burning, the two kids died upstairs. And uh he goes, Did you start the fire? Did you respond? You know, and then he helped me understand and he said, Look, we have to reframe the trauma. Yep. That's what you're getting in treatment. All this shit, and I hate to say it, but all this shit that you're carrying for years, and you think it's something, uh a badge of honor to be carrying, you can't talk to anybody about, once you get it off your chest, you know, before it becomes an issue, right? And before you go down that road, it might not be an addiction to a substance, it might be an addiction to the job, it might be something else, but it's causing you a mental health issue, it's causing you a behavioral health issue, and that's what you're getting in treatment. Get ahead of it, invest in yourself. So once I learn to reframe, game changer. All the people and all the ghosts in the past, they help me understand, listen to me. And again, it's a little bit emotional, but he goes, When that little girl passed, she passed into your arms. She wasn't alone, she didn't die by herself in a room, she died in your arms, and this is crazy, it still touches me. And again, I don't care if you have a faith or not. When she when she passed and she was called home to heaven, you held her and you comforted her. And then it changed, it was this rush of just almost like a waterfall of all these people coming past me that I old ladies that I held their hands as they passed, people that died, crime scenes you went to, moms that chopped the kids up, or whatever they did. Like I started processing it much different, saying, Well, that child and that crime scene was processed because I was there to do it. And that's what you that's how you have to reframe it and look at it and talk about it.

SPEAKER_03: 25:17

No, it's a great point. I think and I think talking about it makes it it doesn't, it it doesn't recallus you, but I think it it it it re-emphasizes that you're you're human, right? And you speak of triggers, and I've got buddies now that they they have a fire truck go by or a cop car go by, and it's the sound of the sirens, you know, on foot chases where they've lost, you know, buddies at work, and it's just it's just interesting how they can reprogram. You one of our past presidents, James Babb, had driven past the same intersection for years. And for whatever reason, this one day, this specific day, he passed by this same intersection where multi, you know, 15 years prior to that, he had driven by an accident that was pretty bad. It was one of those significant deals, very similar to kind of what you dealt with. And and he started, it was later in life he started getting these triggers. But he was he was talking about some treatment that he went through where they kind of reprogrammed the brain with uh some photo, some phototherapy uh stuff that was really beneficial to him. So again, for the you know, for those right now that are that are kind of going through what Gio went through, man, you know, the longer that you don't seek help, you're affecting your your not only your life, but uh the ones around you that love you and the ones that are around you that that that truly want to see you successful, you're impacting their life and you're making it difficult to deal with you. So I encourage you guys and gals and ladies to you know reach out for help. You're uh it's it's okay to not be okay. Uh that's kind of a hashtag that I think we in law enforcements use that for a long time and it's kind of getting old. I think we need to change it. Yeah. But reach out for help. And there's places here in Texas.

SPEAKER_00: 26:40

You're right. And listen to the ones that love you. Yeah. The ones that are saying you're a little bit off, they're not being accusatory, they're not being judgmental of you. They're letting you know you're not, you know, you're not the Giovanni you used to be. Yeah. You're not the man I love, you're not the woman I loved. You're not the, you know, when you hear those cues, your initial reaction is to get mad and and lash out at that. Take that and start to reflect on it and then start to see everything. One of the important things I said, when you come home from the job, if you work the double, or you come home from I had a thing with my wife on the job where we said, if I had a bad event and I went to a bad crime scene or I had some a very stressful day, she and I had a code. And if she was with the kids before me, I would call her up and say, Look, I'm on my way home. I'm running late. The bridge is up. The drawbridge is up. There's no drawbridges by my house in the city, right? But in case she had me on speakerphone with the kids, I'm telling her I had a bad day. I can't talk. I'm gonna come in like a beast, okay? And when I come in like a beast, because again, if something happens in Austin, Texas, everybody's calling you to find out the details. Everybody wants the juicy details because all the wives and all the moms and every little parents, they know that you have the juicy details, so they're calling for that. A lot of times, first responders, why uh uh spouses, they get bombarded. Oh my goodness, what happened? I saw the news. Do you have any details? Do you have any juicy news? Do you have this? You have that. So imagine, yes, we're going through it, but our families are going through it as well. So have that code where you say, Look, baby, I'm on my way home, the bridge is up. Okay, I'm letting you know I had a bad day. So when I come home, just give me a couple of minutes. Don't just hit me. Because a lot of times we use it at deflection too, like, hey, I'm running late. I'm gonna be out with the boy. While I want to go, I don't want you breaking my horns that I'm gonna go to the bar. So I'm gonna tell you I got stuck on an arrest, I got stuck on a collar, I got here. You know, what are your actions, you know, and really what's the most important thing to you? And when you come home, I found myself Dawson sitting on a couch. And I'm what are you talking about? I'm here. I'm present. You wanted me home. I gave up an overtime shift. I'm here, but I'm not. You want to be here. Right, exactly, Mike. I'm here. I'm here, I'm sitting on a couch. Yeah, but you're not playing with the kids. Or more importantly, she lifts me, she left me with the kids. You know, I'm gonna run out or I'm gonna go work my job. So I'm sitting on a couch, just you know, a thousand channels and nothing's on. I'm just flipping through and the kids are playing. And the worst thing is when you, you know, my little guy was playing with the noisy toy, I go, hey, you know, what are you doing? Knock it off. Knock it off, knock it off. What's with the noise? Stop. I'm trying to watch something. Yep. You haven't seen these kids in three days. Now that could be a horrible guilt, right? So but acknowledging it and realizing there's nothing wrong with that kid.

SPEAKER_03: 29:13

It's a two-year-old kid. And and I think back to your point about these, these new, this new generation. We've got all these different distractions going on in life. We've got TVs now, smart TVs, we've got cell phones, and I think people get lost in the fact that you're just quiet when you get home and you're stuck on your phone, or if your phone's not there, you're watching TV. And so it's a different aspect now for the American police officer to get home because there's different things that they can get lost in and different distractions and blinders they can put up uh to not be seen. And so I think it and it it which is why even more that we need to encourage than to reach out, get help, uh, because it's it's it's a part of life, it's it's a part of the profession.

SPEAKER_00: 29:48

It is, and before the profession gets you, you know. Unfortunately, I lost my brother to suicide. He used the service once his service weapon to kill himself. Yeah. You know, and I when I tell you I have lived this job and experienced this job in every aspect. You know, as a son, as a spouse, is this. And again, please don't take it as I'm sitting here, we're all sitting here amongst the the audience. We're not fixed. You know, it's just that you're learning to cope with it. You hit on something really important to say about the sirens. I was the 9-11. You know, we were there, my wife and I, my father-in-law was he perished in the buildings, and she and I were right there immersed in it days after, and just to me, to this day, I can't do multiple sirens. If I go to I can't go to parades. I can go to parades. I choose not to go, but for the longest time, even though I was in this treatment world and I understand my triggers, it's still very if I hear if fire trucks and car cop cars go by and ambling multiple at the same time, I will get clammy, my hair will stand up, I'll start to get deregulated. Now, what do I the thing is, I'm not fixed, but what do I do to get myself out of that? What am I doing to pull myself up? Well, you've been given tools in order to do that. And that's what you talk about. Research it. Yep. Invest in yourself. That's the best thing you could do. On a car stop, when you start to get nervous, you don't want to start breathing. You know, if you find it, you got to do your breath work. You got to calm yourself down. You got to lower your heart rate. And again, it we talked about earlier with the equine therapy we do at the last resort. It's important to understand the importance of breath work because it's applicable on the job. You'll do it on the job, but you won't do it at home. I don't mean to call people out about that, but if you're doing it for the good of the job and the squad needs you to do it for training, you'll do it, right? Us, you know, for us and our squad. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 31:27

Yeah. I mean, when I went to hostile negotiator school, man, I practiced that on my wife at the time all the time. It was fun, you know. It was fun. You know, I know how to keep you talking, or that you think that I'm listening to you when I'm really not. Right. You know. Uh I I want to be sure that I we bring this up. You know, we talk about recognizing that we're all broken, we all need someone to talk to, or some type of intervention at some point in our careers, or I mean you know, after. But let's talk about our partners, or not our spouses. I'm talking the people we work with who identify something, who see something and don't do anything about it. Right. You know, some guy, you know, does something wrong, comes to work drunk, or whatever, and you hear everybody say, Well, I saw that coming. Yeah, you saw it coming, but what did you do about it? You know, and some of us probably live with some of that guilt, not doing anything about people we knew who hurt themselves or did something stupid to get themselves in trouble and terminated, lost their jobs.

SPEAKER_00: 32:28

So this is where I get emotional. The gangster comes out at me. I'm on a police, so I could say because it's TMPA. I won't get really raw where I start dropping F bombs, but this really gets my goat. Because don't don't sit here, and I can say this because I'm third generation cop. Don't sit here and wear your shirts to say I got your six. And I get emotional. I I really I will turn into a gangster. Don't sit here and wear your shirts to say I got your six, I got your back, I got this, I got that. Don't stand there at my funeral when a cat because I've seen it. I I've laid too many people to rest and I've watched it. And I didn't realize until I was retired, and it's too late to realize it. Realize it now. Don't say you have my back and don't cry at my funeral. If you're gonna sit there when my casket goes by and go, man, what a shame. I knew it. I told you he was gonna do it. Or man, what a shame he's gone. Like, and I go, it's emotional and it's hard sometimes to look at that, but I mean that, and I mean it as a third generation cop. Don't sit here and say you have my back if you don't have my back. If you see there's something wrong with me because we're afraid of being a rat, like the mafia, right? Nobody's gonna kill you. You don't want to be ostracized, you don't want to be looked at as a rat. But you know what? If I was in a shooting and I was taking fire and you came and had my back, you'd be a hero. But if you saw me in distress and you didn't say anything, and I wound up something happened to me, or I left the job, or I just quit or whatever, and would you you just let him you just let him hang like that? You know, you just let him out you left him out to dry like that, you let him retire and leave the job. He could have gotten help, he could have gone to get treatment, he could have got mental health services that are available to him. And now, especially nowadays, health service, it's more accepted. Yeah, there's no more stigma to it. Let's break the stigma of that. Let's let's get ahead of it. So, again, example car to card therapy. If you don't know what car to card therapy is, it's sitting there for three hours of downtime, me and you at our windows, right? You know, whether it's snowing or raining or whatever, we crack the windows and we bullshit about everything on the earth and we figure out all the world's problems. We figure out world peace, we figure out racial divides, we figure out everything together. And then I pause and Mike says to me, Yeah, man, my my marriage is in the toilet. I think she's gonna leave me. I don't know what I'm gonna do. She's gonna, you know, or I I'm I'm financially distraught. All right, Mike, I gotta go. I gotta hit the head, so uh, I gotta go. I think I just gotta call and I speed off. Really? Is that really how I have your back? Or do I sometimes I I I encourage people now because being generational in this thing, that again, we're taught in read interrogation school years ago. When you want to get the confession out of the bad guy, give him a touch on a leg. Touch him, say a prayer, reach out and touch the minute you have human contact, it's a game changer. It is. I'll do it for the for because I'm in an interrogation room. So I'll reach out. But my own flesh and like my own blood, my own blue blood. I can't reach out and touch you because this is uncomfortable. So, hey, are you all right, man? Are you sure you're okay? You know, sometimes a touch or just letting them know, listen, you do know I'm here. I wish I don't have a lot of regret, but I wish the last conversation I had with my baby brother could be rewound and I could find out what was wrong with him. Because again, this is horrible to say. He told me everything was great, he told me everything was fine, he was happy, three-month-old baby, everything was great, just got married, nope, I'm good. He left the job, he left, he was working corrections, he left the job, he was gonna go back to IT work, he was gonna, I was gonna get him a job with the government. Smiles, love you. Two days later, gone. You know, and then I fast forward nine months and I'm trying to, you know, heal from this with my parents and you know, talk to my family members, and I'm like, I just didn't see it coming. You know, what did I miss? I work in this world, I work in this field now. What did I miss? And what the response was, and I I hate to share, but it's like, well, there were some issues. You know, well, he had some things going on. You know, you know what I do for, and I'm not putting it on somebody else, but it's like you know what I do for a living. You know, you know, I could have, we could have done something. So don't wait. If you see somebody struggling and you know what it looks like, the guy or girl is not the same. You know something's off. We're great, we're great readers of human behavior. Yep. You know, see something, say something. We we're good at planting that message when it comes to terrorism and protecting the country and protecting our community, but within our own, sometimes it's like, all right, listen, man, you're not you're not okay. So and it's okay. You should not be okay. Some of the shit that we have to see and some of the things that we have to deal with on this job, man, nobody in this earth should see it. Actually, I'm human beings do the most horrific things to other human beings. We shouldn't have to see it, but it's what we do for the love of our country, it's what we do to be true patriots. Not heroes, I hate the word heroes, but true patriots. We're the guys and girls that are willing to step in and take a bullet for people we never even met. Yeah. Yeah. So well put. Well put. Well, hey, grab your book. Where can people get your book at? They can get it anywhere. Amazon, Barnes and Noble. You can order online, you can go to mind geobonniesring.com. I feel terrible that we focus so much, but it was important that we focus. No. It's a great mob story. It's how I infiltrated the DeCapacante crime family. I spent three years inside the Real Sopranos, and um, it was a wild ride. A bit of a familiar with the Sopranos, that's what I lived and breathed. Um, and again, more importantly, on the mental health side of things, please reach out to me, Giovanni.bo at Bradford Health.com. Reach out to me, reach out to my team, give us a call on a number, go to the website, anybody, your family, your loved ones are struggling, reach out to us and let us know. We're here and we're here right in the backyard of Texas, so it just makes sense. Connect with me if you have a peer team, please. I encourage everybody. If you have a peer team, you want to start a peer team, you want to start a conversation in your department, and it's not quite there yet, or you just need sources, resources, and services, reach out and let us know. This has been a tremendous platform for me. It's not about selling a book. I've been gifted a tremendous life. Yeah, and for a guy that should have been dead or in jail by 25, I have a I have a podcast, it's inside the life uh with Giovanni and Dutch. It's hosted by the Mob Museum in Vegas. Um, we hadn't had this facility now. Um, I don't want to speak because I'm I'm afraid it's bad juju, but I'm in productions for I'm in talks for production for uh a TV show, not based on this, based on something else. I'm still waiting for Spiel um Scorsese Scorsese. Yeah, I'm waiting for Scorsese to call me, but apparently nobody gave me my cell number yet. So um, but that's it, you know, and and again, hopefully reading this book, they'll realize uh the sacrifices we all do. You don't have to do deep cover, undercover work to do to make sacrifices for your family. Please, I encourage everybody to invest in themselves, invest in your family, invest in your loved ones. And Bradford Health is not just for first responders. We have services for everybody. So if you have loved ones, if you have somebody adolescence, whatever you need to be sources of there or phone call away, so just reach out to us and give us a couple.

SPEAKER_03: 39:12

Well, we can't thank you enough for coming on. And hopefully, maybe next time you're in Austin, because you've got the place right down the Smithfield, we'll we're gonna dive off into this book and talk about the Soprano uh story. We can do that. Yeah, I feel bad.

SPEAKER_00: 39:23

Those who come back and we'll do that, and I'll I'll unravel it, and which is great because Mike probably has more questions about it too. So it's a wild ride.

SPEAKER_03: 39:30

Well, hey, we're gonna end the podcast by saying this. There's three questions, rapid fire questions we typically end them on, and I hope you study for them because they're pretty basic, right?

SPEAKER_00: 39:37

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03: 39:37

What's your favorite line from a cop movie or your favorite cop movie?

SPEAKER_00: 39:42

I never watch cop movies. It's gotta be Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry. Gotta be dirty Harry.

SPEAKER_03: 39:48

Most common answer here on the podcast is always Dirty Harry. Is it great choice? Yes, yeah. Most common. What's your favorite drink of choice whenever you're hanging out, hanging out with G? Oh, that's an old-fashioned. Old fashioned. That's the official TMPA drink.

SPEAKER_00: 40:00

Is it really? Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_03: 40:01

Pretty much, yeah. And this is my favorite. What's your favorite cop car you ever drove whenever you're on board?

SPEAKER_00: 40:05

Oh my god, Square Body Chevy. Yeah. Square body Chevy is the best, the fastest car in the world. And again, in the world where pursuits, I came on a job before pursuit guidelines were a thing, you know? And I hate to say it now, but we were hanging out the windows. Sure. Full ones.

SPEAKER_01: 40:19

Because you had vinyl seats. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 40:21

It was the fastest car, the most agile car. We and let me tell you, you can put that through anything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 40:26

Yeah, there was nothing like a four-barrel carburetor.

SPEAKER_00: 40:29

No, no. We're going, moving, moving, now. And it wasn't the thing when you're on a microphone and you're driving, you always hit the gas a little electric so you can hear it on your background.

SPEAKER_03: 40:38

And that's really how you kind of depend on. You can really tell where a pursuit's headed by the sound of the background. But man, again, we can't thank you enough for coming on. You guys go grab this book on all the platforms out there and check out his podcast. Go ahead and tell him what the podcast name is again. Inside the life with Giovanni and Dutch. On all your favorite plat uh favorite podcast platforms. You guys take care. I can't thank you enough, D. Thank you. I can't thank you. We're gonna put all the information there in the podcast description in our YouTube channel. You guys take care. Stay safe. God bless you. And as always, may God bless Texas. We're out of the way.