NYPD Detective Lawrence Hoffman

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

And the driver had the door open and he had the a Mach 10 on top of the roof, using the door for cover. And I just remember it bouncing off the roof as he's firing at us in the middle of the intersection. And Papa opens the door to get out. And I'm like, get the get back in. He gets in the car and we I skid over to the to the uh end of the intersection, and the field team saw what was going on, so they stopped at the other uh side of the intersection. And we just fired. We had a gun battle. I mean, you know, those gun battles last a matter of seconds, but in a matter of seconds, we fired 80 rounds, and they fired back over 30. So you can imagine what 120 rounds sounds like in a matter of under an L, no less. And after the shots had fired, the guy gets in the car and drives off.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Today's guest is retired NYPD detective Lawrence Hoffman. He's the author of two books, Turning Blue, A Life Beneath the Shield, and his latest, The Devil's Snow, from the Detective Alex Archer series, both are available on Amazon in paperback and ebook. Lawrence Hoffman, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. Fantastic. My pleasure, Larry. Larry, please tell a listener something a little something about yourself.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Okay, well, I was uh raised on Long Island, the South Shore of Long Island. I used cupcake, but there's no one in the job. And I did one year of college, really couldn't find myself, bounced around for a few jobs, doing this and that until I landed a nice job at Kennedy Airport. I was into import export and I loved it there. I did four or five years there, absolutely loved it. And then somehow, you know, my attention came to the radio one day, just came out with the uh advertisement to join the New York City Police Department. I said, Doc, you know what? That's intriguing. I'm gonna give that a shot. So I went through process. I did well. I got into band one and uh went through all this stuff and I got in and I got the call. I was like, I was really surprised, but I I got called and I got sworn in on February 3rd, 1984. And we were kind of uh it was only 250 of us. We were kind of considered the mini class. I guess the January class, uh, a lot of people either didn't make the requirements or quit or got fired, whatever it was. So they created this little mini class and we merged us into the larger class in January. So we had an expedited academy. We only had five months instead of six months, and they threw us like right into the gym, you know, a month after, and they've already been working these guys, and people were literally passing out left and right in that place. It was it was ridiculous. But it was a great experience and uh uh just probably the greatest decision of my lifetime.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Where where'd you do your field training?

SPEAKER_02 2:31

I got assigned to NSU 14, which is in Brooklyn North, it covered uh the 77, 79, 84, and 88 precincts.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

And after field training, you went to the 9-4?

SPEAKER_02 2:43

I went briefly to the 9-4. Actually, while I was in NSU, I got stopped. Uh, you know, we walk foot posts all the time. It was very hot, I remember. And this RP pulled up next to me, and they're like, I saw the initials BNTF on it. I was like, what the heck is that? And they're like, hey, why don't you come sit down, relax, we'll get some account? They said, uh, okay, no problem. So he told me all about the Brooklyn North Task Force that it was a mobilization unit, and you didn't walk foot posts. It was great. You weren't on the radio. I was like, oh, all right, this this sounds terrific. So I actually applied for it if they were expanding. And after my NSU, I got sent to the 9-4. The 9-4 is Green Point, Brooklyn. And back then, uh, even though it was in Brooklyn North, it was it was a very soft house. It was a dumping ground, basically. A lot of rubber gun people there at that time, and people didn't give a crap about the job. And so I was there, here I am, full of piss and vinegar, ready to go. And I think when I first got there, I made a collar on January 2nd of the new year, and they told me to slow down. You can imagine. So most precincts, they're at 12.01 on New Year's Day, they already made gun calls and this and that. Two days later, I'm making a fraudulent check, and somebody took some checks out of a mailbox, and they tell me to slow down. So I'm like, this is not really a good fit for what I'm looking for. And then I got the call. I only spent maybe a month in the 9-4, and then I got picked up right away by uh Brooklyn North Task Force.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

So for those of you who don't know, Brooklyn North, in my opinion, was the busiest and probably the most dangerous borough to work in. Having worked in the Bronx in Harlem, I thought I worked in some badass places. Then you start getting flown out to Brooklyn. Like, what the fuck is this? Like, Brooklyn North is way more dangerous than the Bronx in Harlem.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

I would say I I agree with that. And so the Brooklyn North Task Force, we kind of had like a little a reputation, I guess, to kind of get shit done, kind of. And whenever we go to the we'd always get to these details. I remember going to Princess Diana and was coming to Bam in this 8-8 Precinct, I think it was located over there. And they just shoved us way in the back. Like we were nowhere near the place. They put all the Manhattan guys up in front, the fancy, you know. And then when the shit hit the fan, you know, Washington Heights guests was like, All right, Brooklyn North, get them up here. We gotta, you know, we gotta get up there, hats and bats, and do battles, you know. It's it's crazy. But it was, it was I I wouldn't trade it for the world. Working at Brooklyn North, I don't know any other other than that. Other than I did work uh later in my career, I got to work citywide and stuff like that. But as far as working in precinct and stuff like that, Brooklyn North, and we used to call uh this Brooklyn's so large they divide it into Brooklyn North and Brooklyn South, and we refer to Brooklyn South as Brooklyn Soft, you know. So there's a little rivalry there, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Well, and you're right. I remember going on details, right? And they would always put Brooklyn North and the Bronx in the back. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Brooklyn North and the Bronx in the back. We'd be like at the parking lot, gardener parking lot or something. They did not people.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

Yeah, these guys, so they put the guys with the polished shoes on in the front and this stuff, you know. We got stain, we got pizza stains on the ties, you know, guns hanging down by your knees, you know, shirts unbuttoned, ties off to the side, you know, getting it back. You know, we want the for the for the cameras, we need the the pretty boys up front, the Manhattan South guys.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Well, I always I I was always in awe going on D especially like later on when I was in OCCP, you're going on more details, you're going on 16, 17, 20 details a year.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Yeah, easier.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Getting flown out to Brooklyn, and you'd see the Brooklyn North guys, and they everybody had a combat cross. I'm like, what the hell? What's the other one? Metal for Valorant and I'm like, the blue part, and I'm like, you know, it's like those guys they'd walk through a crowd and it was like Moses' part in the Red Sea. Everybody would just kind of like look at these guys and like, some guys had two. You know what I mean? It's like, what the hell is this?

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yeah, I've I've had my little share of dabble in that stuff. You know, thank God, you know, everything went went my way or our way and uh it worked out uh for the better. You were involved in a shooting? Actually, two actually indirect or two shootings, one where I actually fired my weapon. It was when I was uh in narcotics. I was uh after I was in the Brooklyn North Task Force for eight and a half years. I got picked up by Brooklyn North Narcotics, and we were doing a uh just a normal buy and bus day. And I had a good friend of mine, George Flores, Popo, he's known as, and I just want to mention his name, God rest his soul. He passed away from 9-11 related cancer just recently. And it was actually his first day in narcotics. So he's coming on for the ride along. So I'm I'm I'm driving the boss. I got the Kel, which is the receiver for the undercovers in the back seat. And we're going about, we go to our first set, undercovers make a buy, everything goes as planned. Uh we we we lock up that one piece, throw him back in the prison in a van. We set up for the second set, and as we're sitting there, we're just bullshitting, you know, talking about the job, girls, wives, family, whatever, you know. And the kel erupts in the back seat, and it's like, shots fired, shots five, move in, move in. And you, when you hear that, your heart pounds out of your chest. So I'm the first one. I'm driving the boss, obviously, I'm the lead car. So I pull around the corner. It's like Snedeker and Glenmore in the 7-5 precinct. It was under the L at the time there. And I skid into the intersection. I can't really see, I see our undercars. They got their guns drawn and they're kind of backing up a little bit, but I don't see what they're what they're shooting at. So I skidd into the intersection, and all I could see is it was like a 1984 Cadillac that these guys were in the two of them. And the driver had the door open and he had a Mach 10 on top of the roof, using the door for cover, and I just remember it bouncing off the roof as he's firing at us in the middle of the intersection. And Papa opens the door to get out, and I'm like, get the get back in. He gets in the car and we I skid over to the to the uh end of the intersection, and the field team saw what was going on, so they stopped at the other uh side of the intersection, and we just fired. We had a gun battle. I mean, you know, those gun battles last a matter of seconds, but in a matter of seconds, we fired 80 rounds, and they fired back over 30. So you can imagine what 120 rounds sounds like in a matter of under an L no less. And after the shots had fired, the the guy gets in the car and drives off, and we're like, what the hell is going on? So the field scene starts to take off after I I had a 38 at the time, and I gave my gun to Papa on the back and said, Load me up, and we gotta give me the speed loader. I put it host, and I start to drive, and the kel comes alive in the back seat again. And I hear JC, one of the undercars, and he's Haitian. She can't hardly understand what to begin with. And when he's excited, he's yelling and screaming, I don't think he's shot. And I said, Boss, I'm going back. I'm gonna check it out. He said, Yeah, go, go, go. I went back and I see JC and one of the I think Kenny Lutz, he was in the the prisoner van, and they were just subduing this guy, he was fighting them, and it got him under control. And as we got we figured everything was good there, we got a call from the uh the field team that was two blocks away. The car went up, made a left, that he passed out and hit a pole. He subsequently died later on for gunshots from from the gunfight. And these two guys, they had literally, you know, 50 round clips in the glove box. They were there to do business, and they were enforcers for the for the for the spot that they were gonna hit. One of the lookouts said, Hey, I see this car coming around. You know, you guys should check it out. So they did, they confronted the undercovers as they were walking to the set. What was amazing about the whole thing is we fired 80 rounds. We didn't break one window, nobody got injured, we didn't hit a house, a cart, nothing. So literally the car looked like Bonnie and Clyde's car when it was done. And and thank God it was uh a clean shoot and you know everything. And we went to, I remember, you know, immediately as protocol tells us you got to go to the hospital. So we all went to the hospital. You can't talk to no supervisors or whatever anything. I remember our captain came in and he was so excited. He sat down because he's like, What happened? He was like, What happened? We're like, boss, we can't talk to you. You know what it is. I come on, you know. So you can't talk to you. But the other undercurrent, Patty, this guy was a huge guy. He had to be probably 260, 270. He's portraying a crack addict, you know. But he was just unlike he would fit in. I remember doing one set, he's carrying a transmission on his shoulder as he walks by us. You know, they do all these crazy things to fit into the set however they can, whether they're ghosting or buying, whatever. But he was so distraught and and uh affected by this because he thank God the ad he was using the the uh the uh extension of the uh train tracks of what was behind the pillar, and there was a stop sign right there. I remember the stop sign just fluttering from the shots going in and out of the, you know, making that noise, ping, and the the stop sign going. He's behind there, and he says, he goes, Larry, he only had a six-shot rebuttal, that's all we carried, whatever. He goes, I fired my six rounds, and I just stood there with an empty gun, clicking on an empty gun because I didn't want him to know that I was empty. He's like, Thank God you guys got there because I don't know what would happen. And he was just you had to get some volume, and he was rightfully very upset, you know. But you you know as well as I do, shit just jumps off in a half a second. And you just sitting there talking about your wife, your kids, and next thing you know, you know, your adrenaline is is is blown out of your out of your blood vessels, you know. So thank God uh that one that one went well. Thank God. And then we had another one less than a year later. Uh they changed our name from I was in a tactical narcotics team, the TNT, and they changed us to Brooklyn Snake, Brooklyn North, uh strategic narcotics and guns. So now they want us focusing on guns as well as narcotics. So the powers up e, the Compstead, the you know, the uh the playing with their pin maps and stuff, and they determined that uh the most gun activity is the guns recovered and nothing shots fired happened at this particular time and was in the 7-9 precinct, and they wanted us to dress, it was like 1.30 in the morning, something like that, right? So we had done uh buying bus earlier in the day, and they gave us like an eight-hour break, and we had to come back to work again, and we were not happy, going out again a second time, and I didn't even go home, I just stayed right. I we were at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, so I stayed there, worked out, did we get something to eat, whatever, just waited the time out, didn't pay to go back home. A lot of people did the same, or they they went somewhere else and hung out. So we come back in and we said, we're gonna have a talk with this captain because it's the same right. So the undercovers, you know, they they know what they're doing. And it was okay, Michael Stoney and Rodney Harrison. I mean, you might be familiar to her. Rodney Harrison later became the chief of department and later went on to become the police commissioner for Suffolk County Police Department, and he was the one that re-engaged the case in the Google Beach murders where they actually, you know, made an arrest years, many years later. So anyway, he was a White Shield at the time trying to get to earn his gold shield. So so we went up to the captain and they spoke. They said, Captain, what are we doing? I mean, it's hard enough for us to blend in at regular time during the day, you know, where we're working, and plus those guys that are shooting it up during the day, night, they're out there during the day. They're out there. And now you're putting us in a position where there's there's nobody out there really, other than people that live there and who know everybody. Now you're gonna put two people, strange people to the block. I said, we're asking for a problem. Then you're putting two undercovers and not wearing any body armor or nothing. You're asking them to go into this situation where the where the odds are against him if anything happens. And he pretty much said, you know, he's a company man. I understand, I get you, I got you. But you know, we got this is what we gotta do. All right, so we accept it, you know, being good soldiers. We we decide, you know, we gotta do what we gotta do. So I'm assigned to the field team again with Popo, George Flores, and we find our uh again, it's like 1.30 in the morning, and we're out there, and I find a spot blending and parking on the streets, and the sergeant gives the undercovers a green light to go ahead and you know see what they can find out. So they step. Stoney is the ghost, he's actually the person that's watching the undercover, Rodney's actually trying to do the box. So they were out there in an abnormal amount of time, in my opinion. They they worked this set a lot to trying to get something to happen. They're really trying to get it done. And again, that radio just comes alive, 1013, shots fired, move in, move in, move in, move in. I'm the first car out. Boop, I look at my mirror, I can see other cars coming to life behind me, the headlights going on. I'm zipping down to where the direction where we were, I think it was on Gates Avenue in the 7-9. And I see Stony, I make a left, I see him, he's standing, uh, he's by the streetlight there, and he's in the radio, he's going, Stoney, excuse me, Rodney's chasing him. They went up, made a left, they're going down the block, left, left, left. So now I'm backed up. Now I'm first car, now I'm the last car. All the cars are backing up, trying to get out of there. And say back up. So now I'm left and I'm starting to go, and I hear I'm hit. And I'm I've got goosebumps literally while I'm talking about this right now. And I happen to just I turn my head to the left and I see Michael Stone here. It was like the street light, it was under streetlight, it was like the rays of the streetlight were pushing him to the ground. He just collapsed right under the under the light there and just laid there. And I went right, me and Papa went over there, and you could already see blood form, you know, on the cement underneath him. So Papa, you know, reacts, he takes his shirt, takes his t-shirt off, he puts a tourniquet around his wrist, Michael's stomach wrist. And so we got no time to wait for an ambulance or anything like that. And I'm driving a bullshit Ultima, you know, I don't have cob caps, I got things barely runs, hasn't had the oil changed, and you know how those cars are. No lights, no siren package, nothing. So he picks him up under the arms, and I grab his feet, and we have the back door open, and and Papa just literally laid in the backseat, and they're both facing up at the ceiling of in the interior of the car. I shut the door, I get in, I start driving. I'm trying, I'm trying to get to White Cough Hospital, closest hospital that I know. I'm driving one way, this, that, and the other thing. And to his credit, to Michael Stoney's credit, he was just he just kept repeating the description of the male that he he believed that shot. He's like, you know, black shirt, black pants, Yankee hat, whatever it was. He kept repeating, repeating, repeating. And when he stopped talking, uh, I remember Papo just telling, Stoney, talk to me. And he's like, that black shirt, black. And he just repeated that thing over and over. I get, I'm trying this RP's blowing behind me and I'm waving out the car like this, like, eh, and they don't know the, you know, they don't realize the cargo that I'm carrying, you know. And I get him to White Cough Hospital. I guess I guess they were alerted with coming or something because they were already starting to come out. So we we backtrack him out of the out of the back seat of the car. I get, I put his good arm around my shoulder, and we start going up the steps to the gurney's there. And he just says, Hold on, hold on a second. And he literally just throws up like this blood and bile, and I'm just all over my pants and shoes, and we get him out to the gurney, and they get them on and they start taking him in. And now Papo gets out of the car. Now he's got no shirt, covered in blood, and they're like, get another gurney, we need the gurney. He's like, No, no, he's moving rolls. I'm good, I'm good. It's not me, it's him. He's moving rolls, but I'm good. I don't need one. So they take him in, and I'm like, I'm scared to death. I'm literally, this is this guy is literally my brother, you know. My brother is is lying. You see a lot of things on the job, and then you kind of compartmentalize it. But when it's a brother, you consider somebody family and brother that's injured as as as serious as he is. I'm scared, but I don't want to let him know what I had. And I told him, listen, I said, Stoney, I said, I'm not leaving you. I'm gonna hold your hand the whole time we're here. Got him into the emergency room, and I just held his hand, and when he got a shot of pain, I'm going, Stoney, squeeze, squeeze my hand, squeeze, squeeze. And he was a strong kid. And he was squeezing, my hand was white. I had no blood on my hand. I'm going, squeeze, squeeze, Stony. I'm gonna take that pain away from him so bad. And the doctors, I don't know, they I don't know how they operate, but they roll him onto his side, they cut his clothes off and stuff. They roll him onto the side, and I could see the bullet went uh in under his arm, but it went through his arm, it broke that bone in half, went into his side, uh, fractured a rib, the rib punctured his lung, and deflected it down into his uh I don't know if it's his spleen, went down to his spleen. And he literally lost 50% of his blood. And I made the right decision. They they were telling me we had we blocked off to go to Bellevue. I'm like, I didn't know that at the time. My thing was just the nearest hospital, so I got him to White Call. So I think my decision was the right one. Who knows if any extra time getting the hospital would have cost. But I saw he's squeezing my hand, and this they roll him on the side, and he's you know, obviously in spruciating pain, and the doctor wipes the blood away and it quickly fills up and drains onto the table again. But he sticks his finger in the hole. I guess he's feeling for the projectile or whatever, but it was like he got electrocuted, like he's like screaming, and I'm like, squeeze my hand, squeeze my hand, start on feeling. I'm almost to tears. And then they're laying back down. And they start, you got the IV going, people are working, you know, they're hooking them up, the machines, all this is going on. And another guy comes over, does the same thing, he sticks his finger in the hole. I said, That's fucking it. I said, Nobody fucking touches him. You fucking guys are killing them. What are you doing? Supposed to be helping him, you're fucking killing the guy. And so they're laying back down, they're prepping them and stuff, and I'm like, I go, he's like, call my wife, call my wife, let her know I'm okay. So now I'm I release his hand, I get out, my little phone, I die. All I have is, like I said, we're famineed. I had his wife's number on my phone, and I call her, and reception is horrible in the emergency room. And I call her and I said, Hey, I'm trying to be as pleasant as hey Maria, it's Larry, hey. Listen, I'm in the hospital with with Mike, but he's okay, and the phone cuts out. I don't know if she heard the okay part. I know she heard he's in the hospital, and it's two o'clock in the morning. So I can imagine every every wife or partner of anybody working for the police department, that's the worst kind of phone call you want to get in your life. And I couldn't get any service yet. I'm like, Jesus Christ. You know, I I now I'm like, I got hurt panicking, or whatever. Luckily, people in the field team were able to reach her as well. Well, she reached out to somebody and alerted him that he was at uh where it was at White Cough Hospital. So they're stabilizing, do what he's gotta do, and and I guess it's like it's after two o'clock now. Who walks in is Mayor Giuliani and Bill Braddon walk into the building. And they kind of, you know, look us over and he sees me. Uh he looks, goes right up, I watch his eyes go up Stoney's body, and he sees me holding his hand, and he watch follows my hand right up to me and gives me a little nod, you know. And he looks at Stoney and he can kind of grab his toes. His hand gives his toes a little wiggle and he goes, How you doing, son? And I'll never forget still in his undercover persona, he kind of uses his head to like adjust himself on the bed, and he goes, Yo, he goes, Don't ever get shot. That shit hurts like a motherfucker. That's what he tells the mayor and the police commission. And there was like silence for a second, and then Giuliani broke out in a laugh and they said, Oh, I guess he's gonna be okay, you know? So it kind of broke the silence. And and moments after that, his wife comes barreling into the into the emergency show, right? So I immediately let go of his hand, I let her get there to take my position, and she let them and she hit them too with boat barrel. She's like, They never should have been out there. What are you doing to them? There's no reason for them to be out there, but and and they were like, What you let us know, what can we do? What can we do? And she goes, You better promote him to detective. She tells him right there as his bedside. So luckily, uh they they stabilized the next morning and moved him to Bellevue Hospital, and I got to see him the next day. And uh that's a whole nother story. Just but uh so true to his word, Mayor Julian. We had a private session in a blue room at uh Gracie Mansion, and he promoted both Michael Stoney and Rodney Harrison to detective. Tony got three quarters due to his injuries, but he's still alive and kicking and uh he's doing very well for himself. So yeah, we still stay in touch, obviously. And uh yeah, that's that's family right there.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Larry, you you once made a uh a homicide collar when you were in uniform.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Yeah, I was working again, Brooklyn North Task Force, working in the A3 precinct at a time, and uh call came over for uh dispute. We just came over as a dispute, two males fighting. And you know, that's you know, those calls are a dime a dozen every day. You don't really pay too much attention to it. And then it started to escalate. It's uh two men, uh one's got a butcher knife, the other one's got a baseball bat, they're chasing each other up and down, up and down Gates Avenue near Broadway. So it's escalated a little bit, and then I then they come out and say, Man down, possible homicide. So of course that alerts everybody. So as we're heading to the to the crime scene, there's cops already are on the scene and there's a body laying in the street. And I just remember Officer Tichion, he was my police instructor in the academy, and I just his words just kind of kicked into me. He says, Don't be one of those guys that just shows up and gawks at the body and stands around. He goes, take a look around, see what's going on. And so we pull up and I tell Billy, uh who I'm working with at the time, I said, Billy, don't stop, keep going, just go, go. And they put out a description of male black, no sh no shirt, blood all over him. So we go up into the 8-1 precinct, because I was on the board of the 8-3. Now they're on different frequencies, so they don't even know what happened literally a block away from where they were. So I drive, we driving up, and I'm kind of, you know, got my head out the window, trying to cover all the angles. I see this old lady sitting in this folding chair, and the straps are broken and hanging off the bottom. She's just sitting there and I'm looking out the window, she goes, He went that way. I said, How you know I'm look with somebody? He goes, He went that way. I said, All right. So I follow up, we make the left, and I see him, and he goes into this bodega. He's up like two blocks, he goes into this bodega. And this guy was like, Vic, he was like, if you took clay and made a statue out of somebody, zero fat, just lumps of his shoulders with just boulders, chest, and and he just murdered somebody, right? So I don't really know what to do. So we pull up and he comes out of the bodega, all bloody and stuff. So I'm like, okay, what do I do? Do I they jump out? I get my gun, whatever. So Billy turns around, walked next to him, and I said, just ride alongside. They'll go, hey, how you doing? He's like, All right. I said, You look injured. Can I help you? Are you alright? Can I get you to the hospital? He's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can take me to the hospital. So we put this guy that just murdered somebody in the backseat of a car with no handcuffs on, and he's sitting there, and I'm on my radio, I'm trying to be nonchalant. Yeah, I got possible coming back to the scene and stuff. And so he thinks we're going to the hospital, which is Woodhole Hospital, is right over there, too. Bring her back to the scene, and we got him in the RP, and I see the uh lead detective from the 8-3. I said, I think I got the guy in the back seat right now. I said, You gotta be quick. And he was interviewing a witness, and he says, Can you ID him? Yeah, absolutely. So you take him over there. He gets closer to the car, goes, That's him, that's him. And this guy went ballistic in the car. Like he literally went, he realized what was going on, and he just started uh like trashing the car, tried to get him out of the car and put cuffs on it. It was a major took four of us to get him in handcuffs. And you know how you especially in the movies that you know you put your hand on the back of the head and you guide him into the back of the police car. I tried that. I put my hand, it was like his neck was going nowhere. It was just a it was just a block of a brick. He goes, I'll get in myself. I said, Okay, all right. Gets in the seat and to a friend of ours, Pete Palazzo, who was also an overcrying with yourself. I went in his car and he drove, he drove my car. He became the operator, right? I know I'm sorry. Billy was still driving. Pete was in the front seat and he had the he had the uh uh the fire hydrant wrench, and he's still going crazy and he's like, he's looking at me and he's going, shoot me, shoot me, he's looking at my gun. I'm gonna go, I go, Billy, drive, let's go. And Pete's like, I'll crack him with this thing if I have to. Don't worry, I'll crack him with this thing. And we get him to the get him to the priest and get him out of there. And so, long story short, it was uh basically it was two best friends. These guys were just hanging out, partying, and escalated into a little verbal altercation. And then one guy just decided they picked up weapons. Well, I said, Well, I had a butcher knife and the baseball bat. And when they put that over, I was joking with Bill, I said, I said, Who you betting on? You betting on the baseball or the butchers? He says, I got the butchers. I'll take the baseball bat. Sure enough, uh, this guy's name was Doctor, John Doctor, too, of all names. He had hit this guy with a with an Aaron Judge swing and with the bat, and it broke, knocked him unconscious, and he took the the bat shattered the tip, and he just jabbed him in the back of the head with this bat and ripped all his neck all apart in the back. He flipped him over, he broke a bottle and ripped his face off with a broken bottle. Now these are best friends, imagine. Yeah, imagine he's the enemy of this guy. Yeah, so luckily again, you know, the guards were with us, and you know, and I realized what this guy had done, and I got him in the backseat behind me, uncuffed and all that. I mean, it's crazy. You're not gonna find that in any patrol guard, I'll tell you that.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

You're lucky that guy didn't go ballistic before.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

Before he didn't realize that he literally thought we were taking him to the hospital. Yeah, yeah. It was crazy. He and he actually I had to go to court on that. Oh, what's the trial? I was there outside the courtroom and ready to go and do my spiel and all that. And all of a sudden all the attorneys came outside and everybody's leaving, and the AD goes, he called his mom and he decided to take 25 to life. It took a it took a clea. So thank God I'd have to testify and that. Not that it mattered, but yeah. Yeah, he was dead to rights anyway. But crazy. Just and that was in the middle of the day as as well. Shit happens in the middle of the day. I could tell you another story if you're Oh boy. Okay. So there's another day, you know, Brooklyn North Task Force. We're again, we're not on a clock. When I say that, we're not we're not in a rundown, we're not in a queue to pick up jobs and stuff. We're more of a mobilization unit when you need a lot of guys in a hurry so you don't deplete the precinct guys, you call us and we go where we gotta go. So I'm and I was in the Water Lawson, you know, we're a pretty active unit. And it was 12 o'clock in the afternoon, I'll never forget it. And a beautiful day was on Flushing Avenue, which was like the divider of the 8-3 and the 9-0 precincts, the Williamsburg and Bushwick. And I write it in my book, I tell it like it is. I had my feet up on the dashboard, just sitting there, laying back, and between my feet, I see a guy running, and he ducks down behind a car, and I'm looking through my feet like this, and I go, Oh no, that can't be good. What's that all about? So my partner, Frank Napoli, we pull up, I go, I go, hey, what's going on? He goes, They got guns, they got guns, and I look up and I see three guys running and they're carrying these big white bags, huge bags, and they're running. They get in this car, uh, it's like a maroon car, and the plate, the license plate was bent up, so you couldn't give a license plate over. And so now you know we're in a we're in a vehicle pursuit. So we're trying to put over, make a left here, right here, eastbound, you know, doing all that stuff. And we pull up close to them, almost next to them in the street, and the guy in the passenger seat on the left side, uh, behind the driver, puts a machine gun out the window at me. And I was like, oh, Frank kissed the brakes, we stopped, so now we're standing behind him. All of a sudden, this uh black Lincoln pulls up alongside us. I'm like, I'm like, who the hell is this? You know, I don't know who this is. And luckily the passenger held out the police pike over the window, so we knew it was a police car. And of course, their that car was in much better shape than our piece of crap. So they took the lead and they did the same thing. They pulled up alongside the guy on the other side, the front passenger seat, hangs a machine gun, I think a Mach 10, out the front of them. They hit the brakes. So we're we're going through this pursuit, putting it over the air. Another task force van joins us in the pursuit. So you got uh two marked vehicles, and we got an undercover car riding along with us. So a tractor trailer, it was just kind of going through a commercial area of Williamsburg, and he cut the car off using his tractor trailer, didn't give me a room, and he slammed into a forklift, and the fork actually dislocated the rear axle of the car. The wheels were literally coming off the car and they they pulled off on the side of the road. And I jump out and there was a light pole right on the other side. I was a I was the recorder, I was in the passenger seat. I ran around, I got behind his light pole. Now, a light pole is, you know, yay big. You know, I'm I'm trying to fit every inch of my body behind this little light pole. You know, I don't know if it's gonna do any good. But as they're trying to get out, the the passenger in the front seat opens the door and the black vehicle rams into it. Literally full force, rip pins the door back the other way, the guy can't get out. The task force van sees I go, he rams the rear door. So now that it's got two vehicle legs, the whole right side of the car is crushed. The guy that was put the gun out of me, he gets out and as the door is open, he comes over the top of the window with a gun. He points it at me. My hair is shot, and I'm like, Am I hit? I mean, I don't I don't know. Does it hurt later? I don't know. I what's going on? You know, I didn't know what was going on, and the shot actually came from the driver of the unmarked vehicle, happened to be Captain Freelingsdorf from Vice. He was with an undercover and they were just checking out the, they were looking for prostitutes along Flushing Avenue, and they just saw us in pursuit of what was going on, and they joined in, and luckily it did. So he fired right through the bottom of his holster. He had to put it blew the bottom of the holster out, didn't hit anything, but it was enough to this guy dropped to the ground. The driver kind of started to run off. But once he dropped to the ground, we just charged him and we we locked up. We got four guys, four guns, and they they actually did a uh a robbery of uh like a brinch truck set up and they did a care uh check caching uh for this big business there. They set up in the afternoon so the employees come down and cash their checks, and those big wig, big leg were sealed, still had the seals of money. So they had a hundred we recovered over a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in cash, four guns, vests, handcuffs, the whole night. They went in, they shot into the ceiling, and now it's a holdup. They took the security guy's gun, and we caught them. And luckily they ran into uh the great crime fighting duo of uh Larry Hoffman and Frank Napoli looking through my feet, and we just happened to run it at the right time. And again, here's another chance that could have literally gone the other way. It was and so I was still in your I have very high integrity. I'm not gonna throw away a job for some bullshit stuff, you know. And so when he so that was all day thing, so the joint bank robbery task force came down because it was a FDIC, it was a federal crime, so they took the collars from me. I still got credit, I went to Central Book and got my little numbers for arrest, whatever. But they took the collars, they took all the money, the guns, everything, and they went down to 26th Federal Plaza. So now, so we were there forever, and the news was there, we had the camera was there, you know, news trucks outside. It was a big to-do, it was a whole big thing. And so the four to twelve guys came in, and it was 62, 62, actually, and say, Like, hey, we need to take your car. We gotta use it. I said, Yeah, no problem. So they took my car and I had to get they said, just need my hat and bat, my hat, and you know, my memo book and stuff. So they bring it up, and one of the guys looks at me, he's like looking around. He's got my hat and he squished it in half. And he's holding, he's like looking around. He goes, Hey, Larry, he goes, This was in this was in the car. I said, What is it? He opens it up and there's like 14 enrolled coins in there. Because they were cash and chimps. You know, rolls of quarters and dimes and whatever and stuff. And it's like 14, 15 dollars. And I'm like, I'm like, oh my God. I said, What do we got? They left already. They already took everything downtown, they already took care of it. I said, now we got this money, they're gonna take. I'm like, oh my god. I said, what are we? I said, we just gotta go down there. We just gotta turn in there. We'll let them know it was in the car, we're sorry, we'd all this stuff, right? So we go down, and Frank go down and go to 26 Federal Plaza. Now you're working in in like the 8th precinct, you know, they mop the floor with dirty water, the cigar butts, cigarette butts all over the place. Walking to 26th Federal Plaza, it's like it's like walking, yeah. It was like going to Atlantic City or Vegas or somewhere, like to Caesars Palace. I was like, I was like, holy god, I said, I'm gonna work here one day. So we get up to their floor and get up there and I see the detective, or I don't know if it was the uh FBI agent, what he was, but I called them all and he's like, hey, hey, what's up, guys? They go, hey, you want a slice of pizza? It had they have pizzas and beer. They're up there, pizza and beer, and I'm worried about 15. I go, listen, I started stumbling. I said, Listen, I'm so sorry about this. It just, you know, I didn't know, I forgot it was there, and it was rolling. It's like, what? What do you what's the matter? I go, and I open up my hat and I go, I go, this is left in the car. And he looks at me and he looks at Frank and goes, Don't you have kids at home with a piggy bank? Why are you bothering me with this? I mean, I literally drove all the way down, worried about $15. And like, you could have gave it to your kids. We don't give a shit. We don't need it. But that's how my mind frame was. I'm like, I'm not gonna be losing a job over fifty. That's how I thought, I'm gonna lose my job for $15, you know, or anything for that.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

I don't, you know.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

So it was a good experience.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

And that's the NYPD mindset of, you know, if you're a good cop and and you're paranoid about someone leaving a screwdriver in the car, you're like, I I gotta get this back to this guy. You think you just made this great collar, but you're so hyper-focused on $50 back so you don't go to IEB for something. Exactly. People yeah, people think it's like the 1970s. It's not.

SPEAKER_02 35:34

No, yeah, yeah. They make even a cup of coffee or something. You you know, you were good, don't worry, I'm all right, you know.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

You were fortunate. You worked in the narcotics division and and you worked out a major case. Could you go into that a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 35:48

It was in narcotics. We're doing just a regular buy and bus, uh daily routine. And we hit uh we hit the 7-5 precinct again, East New York. That was uh that was a money pit for us. And there was this one particular building that no one could ever get inside of it. It was just you pick up some pieces outside, but that was it. And they just continue, they just replace the pieces like uh, you know, they got replacements on standby, they call them and hey, it's your turn up, you know, go pitch, whatever it is. So we did our you know, we got our allotted bodies for the month, and I wasn't the arresting officer at the time, I was part of the field team. So part of the field team, you take the perps into the bathroom, you got a strip search, you know. So we each take a guy into the into the stall, and I had the father's stall, and this guy I got, he was like, he's nodding his head, he's going, he's pointing. Somebody goes, That's the ball, that boy eat the boy. He he's trying to rat out the guy. Next time I'm like, okay, all right, relax, just relax, just hang on. So everything he just kept saying, I was like, Great, relax, brother, don't worry about it. Don't worry, we're gonna talk. Don't worry. Go through the whole thing, throw him back in the pen, and I go to a sergeant and I said, uh I said, Sergeant, I got this guy, he's looking to cooperate. He says, Well, you know, it's customary to whoever the arresting officer is, you give them first crack at it. I said, Hey Don, I got this guy, he's looking to cooperate. You're interested? Ah, if you want, you can work him. Go ahead, you work. So I got him, I I pulled him out of the pen. I said, You need to use a bathroom. I didn't let you use it before. You need to use a bathroom. He comes out. So I give him my phone number, a little piece of paper. He goes to jail, gets out. Sure enough, calls me up. Sergeant and I, we go meet him, and he's he's uh this is his third time getting arrested, so he's looking to do some heavy time. He's trying to get out from under. And so he's I can give you, I can get you into this place, because we were trying to get in there for a long time. So we got him. I said, Okay, this is what I need. I need you to get some looks, see what's in there, tell me, you know. So how they this particular place, they ran it out of the storefront of the bodega downstairs. We had a stage apartment upstairs, and actually had a buzzer in intercom that were right up to the apartment that if they need to be re-upped, you know, they bring it back down into the store. Because they they don't keep everything in one place, you know, they keep minimal amounts in case of a rate or something. They don't want to lose all the product, so they separated. So he informed us about this, how it worked, and so we're able to had another undercover another guy, it wasn't undercover, but Steve Brown, what a terrific guy. He went up into the floor where the apartment was, he able to, because he gave a description of the door and we able to locate what apartment it was. And so he took him first time you used an informant, you gotta bring him before the judge, you gotta get credibility. So he took him before the judge, and she granted us a search warrant to go hit the place. And so that's where it started. We got we got uh we locked up a few pieces there. We were the only team that actually got into the place. We kind of shut them down for a while. And so from there, he started to work, get us bigger and better cases. He worked on another guy, we clear we called him uh his name was Boca. I mean Mouth. And uh he was a big cocaine in in Brownsville. And so we got we got him uh got an undercover involved in there. He hit it off with our unconscious Eddie Vasquez, what a terrific guy, a little skinny Porterine guy with a huge set of balls on him. He would do anything he asked him. And we let we called our CI was called Hammer, because we were gonna use him the hammer of the drug dealers. That was his code name. So all these cases, we built a lot of cases, we called them the hammer files collectively. But uh he got Eddie into a bunch of places on Fulton Street. We bought we ended up buying like 20-something guns, a bunch of uh we took the case down, we got a bunch of kilos of heroin, we got several more guns. Actually, because we got so many guns, uh, we hooked up with ATF. ATF got involved with it, and they had more money to play with. And usually the police department, they don't like to spend too much money. You can spend this money when we brought the we had unlimited funds and we could stretch the case out as long as we want. So we expanded it greatly, and we brought it really took in a couple of huge uh gangs or drug drug cartels, well, mini cartels, I would say, dangerous ones, you know, people with murders and all kinds of stuff. And so we're able to, when we took the case down, it was very fruitful, and so the ATF supervisor, Billy Fredericks, he requested a they wrote a letter to Mike Inspector of Narcotics and sent it up to the chief and said, I would like uh Lawrence Hoffman to be transferred to us to continue the fruits of this investigation and keep what he started going. And so I literally, unbeknownst to me, because the the at that time ATF had a group of like five housing officers that were assigned to them. So I said, I want to go to his team, you know. They got all the benefits, they had federal cars, you know, I had everything, you know, it was a good place to be. So I got a call from OCID for an interview. And my dumbass, I'm like, I didn't even know where OCID was at the time. Like, I I don't want to, I don't want to go OCIT, I want to go to this ATF team. And so I lied. They said, Yeah, come down for an interview. And I said, I go, ah, I'm not gonna be able to make that. I got I'm on trial. I got a I got a uh court case to you know, I gotta testify in the court because all right, well, call back another time. I'm like, okay, what OCI, what the hell is that? So I go into my lieutenant, uh very, very Jack Walsh. This guy Jack Walsh, I go sit down with him, I tell him what's going on, and I say, Yeah, I got a call from OCID. He goes, What happened? I said, I blew it off. I don't want to go to ATF. He goes, he might as well have said this. He's like, Jackass. He didn't say that, but he's with his face, he said it. He goes, Billy's team is getting absorbed into a project called Haida, high-intensity drug trafficking era. That's part of Billy's team. I said, Oh my god, you gotta be kidding me. He said, Yeah, I said, I turned it down. I said, I like I didn't turn it out, I blew it off. Luckily for me, they called back and I said, Yeah, absolutely, I'll come down, come down for the interview. And luckily I got picked up by uh OSID there, and I eventually made it into the Haida team. And from there on I fent the rest of my career there. And uh OSID did a lot of traveling. I had wiretaps up in the Dominican Republic in one case with uh my partner Tommy Grimes. We actually went to LA, went to Miami, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Boston, all related to the same case. It was actually his case. I was his assistant. But uh what a great I mean it just expanded my eyes. OCID was considered like the big boys, they had all the big newsworthy cases. And there were 26 teams in OCID, they had all the five families, they had a team for each family, they had the Colombians they were doing, they had uh trademark infringement, which I started. I was there like three months there until I rolled over to Haida. So it was an exciting place to work, and I made just some you know lifetime friends there as well. And I made it to 26 Federal Plaza. I made it to a clean bathroom where there was soap in a dispenser, and there was actually toilet seat covers and the and the paper towels.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

It was fantastic. Speaking about great friends, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a mutual friend of ours that we brought up earlier, Pete Palazzo, who worked with you in Brooklyn North Task Force, and later with me in Autocrime. And Pete was quite the practical joker. Could you share the story you told me about Pete in the hospital?

SPEAKER_02 42:44

Yeah, I'm sure he'd be so proud. Well, it's actually it's already in the Library of Congress in my first book, so I guess I could tell the story. So again, uniforms I have to Brooklyn North Task Force, just doing, I think we were down in the 8-4 precinct at the time. There was a sergeant that got T-boned right by the Brooklyn Bridge, and had a the fire department had to come and they'd do the drawers of light to cut them out, and put them on a stretcher, neck brace, the whole thing. Drove him down to Bellevue. My partner and Pete and his partner, we uh went down there, we kind of secured his weapon and just stood with him to make sure he had a familiar face with him at the time. So he's laying on his gurning and he seems to be all right. You know, he's got some aches and pains. Obviously, it was just a pretty brutal accent. But for the most part, he's doing okay. And he says to Pete, he goes, Hey, Pete, would you mind just calling my wife? You know, let her know I'm okay, gives her the number. No problem, boss, I'll take care. He steps out. He's gone making a phone call. So in that time, uh doctor comes in and he says, Listen, you know, because of your injuries and uh what you went through, I need to check if you have any blood in your stool. He's like, What okay, well, what does that mean? He goes, Well, you know, if I break it down, he's literally, I just I gotta stick my finger in your ass to see if there's any residue of blood and stuff. And where he we're like, Go for it. Yeah, we're here. We're all for it. And he's like, You mind these guys here? He goes, nah. And he rolls them over out to his side and he's grimacing from the just from rolling out the side. And you can see him loop up his finger and he bends down. And you could actually see takeoff. When that finger entered his asshole, he just his eyes bulged out of his head, and he was like, whoa, whoa. We're like, you know, of course, he pulls out, he goes, Nah you're good. Everything looks good. He lays him down, thank God. And of course, we're like the word they doc. I got a nightstick. We'd probably get deeper with this. If you want to use this, you know, offer all these suggestions. You know, he's like, shut up, get out of here. So he does his finger thing. I know how much time passes. So Petey walks back in. The doctor's long gone. He comes in and he's very dramatic. He goes, You're not gonna believe this. Like, what? I don't know how anybody can fall for this shit. You gotta be a complete moron. I'm sure the guy's like, you know, all these cops, there's no way he's gonna show up on this floor. I heard the nurses saying, There's a guy going around the hospital. He's got the lab coat, the statistical, everything. And he's going, he's asking, he wants to stick his finger in people's asses. Can you believe that? Who'd be a fucking idiot to fall for that? And this remember the sergeant just with the brace on, just staring, like, oh my God. Like we were just dumbfounded. And Benny's like, ah, I'm just breaking your balls, don't worry about it. He just yelled at get out of here, all you just get the hell out of here. But yeah, that was quite the quite the sorry.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

He was quite deprected. Pete would, I don't know if he did this in Brooklyn or Task Force. And to describe Pete, he was probably about 5'7, 5'8, probably about 260 pounds, but he was solid. He he would he was built like a tank. And he would when a new guy would come to the office, he would find like a shill to be like a carnival barker to get into an argument with him that he couldn't jump up on a desk. Yeah. He didn't break with no, you know, I I shilled for him one time. There's no way you can jump on the desk. And you always hook the new guy, and the new guy's looking at him like, there's no way. I'll bet you 20 bucks, I'll bet you 50 bucks. People start putting money up on the desk, and Pete would just, I mean, the amount of thrust and liftoff shows you he probably could have played in the NFL. He would just jump up on that desk, jump down, and take the money off the desk and walk away.

SPEAKER_02 46:11

And the guy would be like, What the what what the fuck just happened? He did the same thing in the Brooklyn Hotel. So don't forget that. But he was also fast for a guy that size, but you know, he's good for short distance. He's not uh he's not a marathon guy, but in a short distance, he can get up and go. And his hands, he had like saucer's hands, his hands were like sledgehammers. Literally, his calf muscle was a size, literally the size of my head. I got a tiny head, but his calf, like he would he would just pose. Look at that. Take a look at that. You know, he's so proud of his of his calf muscles. But guy, he's just he's got a heart of goal, tremendous detective. He's mentioned I got him a few stories in uh my book Turning Blue, but just uh a gentleman, and like I said, a great, great detective and good friend. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Yeah, he he he got he was in Queens for many years in the Queens Auto Crime Office, and when he came to the Bronx, I liked him, but I would break his balls unmercifully. And one day he was going out to get something to eat. I made one comment too many, and he went, and he turned around and I said, Oh shit. So I tried jumping up on a deck, he just grabbed me like a toy.

unknown 47:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

Yeah, I weighed 175, 180 pounds. He grabbed me like a toy and just threw me on the floor and got on top of me. He goes, What are you gonna do now, tough guy? And I was like, All right, all right, you got me. That's enough. You got me. Yeah. Speaking of friends in common, there's another friend we have in common that basically put us together to do this interview. You want to go into that?

SPEAKER_02 47:35

Yeah, crazy as it seems. But my first novel, of course, The Turning Blue, Light Beneath Shield, came out in 2015. But while I'm here in Florida now, and I received a letter in the mail from you know, nobody I know. I thought it was garbage mail. It looked like I didn't throw it out, but I opened it up and it was a it was a uh typed letter and signed. And there's a gentleman by the name of Danny Van Bommel, and he wrote me, like I I'm still impressed to this day that he took the time, first of all, to find me and to write this letter, go out of his way. And he just told me how much he enjoyed my book. He said he laughed and I cried, and then I always says, I was right along with you there. I mean, it was such a brilliantly written book. I have so much respect for you. You're an American hero, all this kind of stuff. And he's like, if you're ever in this area, you know, stop by. You know, I'd love to meet you, and you could sign my book. So I was actually working for Hillsborough County at the time, and I had a meeting a couple miles away, and I said, you know what? Nobody's looking for you, I'm not going anywhere. I said, let me call him, see he was available, because it was not too far from where I was. So I gave him a call, and he's like, Absolutely, come by, come by. So he was actually a drug counselor, and I went to the office building, I came in, there was like a reception behind the glass there, and I kind of checked in. I said, Hey, I'm looking for Danny uh Van Baumel. He's like, Yeah, called him over. He comes out, Vicky, he opens this door and he looks at me. He might have been looking at Denzel Washington. That's how he made me feel. He was like, Oh my god, I can't believe you're here. Thank you so much for coming. Can I shake your hand? I was like, Yeah, of course. You shake my hand. He was coming, come into your office. He comes out, and as we're going down the hall, he's like, Barbara, whatever, Barbara, this is the guy I was telling you about. I was like, oh my God, this is like unbelievable. I've never been treated like that before. We sat down in the office and he just literally told me about this part and how it affected him and this part, and I really, you know, I really felt this and I was right there in the 9-11 store. I just can't get over the 911, you know, and I would just made me feel like like royalty almost, you know. I just never been treated like that. And we became friends ever since then. He'd, you know, he'd send me a text every so, like, you know, um, you know, Merry Christmas, Happy Thanksgiving, kept in touch that way. And then recently he reached out to me again when uh my new book came out, The Devil Snow, and I actually created a character for him. I put his name in the book. He's a FBI agent, Van Baumel. I let him know that, so he was thrilled to death. I mean, I would be too if somebody put my name in a book like that. So he said, Can we meet up for lunch? I got I got questions. I want you to sign the new book, and I got questions about Eternity Blue. I said, Danny, that book is 11 years older. What do you mean I I got it all these sticking those? I gotta ask you about this. So Long Sorge, we met up, had a fantastic time, great conversation. I learned a lot about him and what a what the what struggles in his life that he went through. And he's pretty much a hero on his own, coming to drug counselor, what what he's gone through in his life. I'm very impressed how he turns his life around. And he's, you know, doing a fantastic job helping other people with with addiction. But and he reached out to me and he says, uh I'm gonna get in touch with uh Vic Ferrari. I said, You know who he is? I said, Yeah, I know you've got a few police books out. Yeah. I've seen his podcast, go I'm gonna reach out to him. I said, All right, Danny, no problem. So didn't think anything of it. And I think, I don't know, a couple days later, I get a I get a text from you. And I'm like, oh my god, I mean this is coming, this is this is true, this is gonna actually happen. And we ended up talking on the phone and we appreciated. And now we are today, but thanks to uh to Danny, who I appreciate, and he enjoys he's he's a big fan of your work as well, and uh just a great, great guy. I just really appreciate him.

SPEAKER_01 51:11

Well, the funny thing is, like, he he wrote some really nice reviews on my Amazon books.

SPEAKER_02 51:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

And I wrote a book, Confessions of a Catholic High School Graduate, about growing up in the Bronx and the neighborhood, which we grew up in right next to he grew he's from Morris Park, I think, and I grew up in Drogsnet. So it I guess the book resonated with him. He wrote some really glowing reviews. So about a week or two ago, he reached out to me on social media and he says, Hey, he says, uh, you know who'd make a great guest for your podcast, Lawrence Hoffman. I says, Okay, I'll I'll reach out to him. I've but I've been I've just been so busy, right? Yeah. So I don't know, on Facebook, you popped up with your new book. And I go, but this guy's name before Lawrence Hoffman, right? So I says, you know what? I got no guests this week. I had one cancel. I said, let me reach out to Lawrence Hoffman. So me and you go back and forth, and then I call you, and then you're like, who put you in touch with me, Danny Van Bomble? And I go, Yes. Because I totally forgot where I heard your name from. But it was just so funny. So, Danny, if you're listening, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for putting putting me in touch with with Larry. Yes, Larry, Larry, you got two books out. Can you please tell us about them?

SPEAKER_02 52:24

Okay. I've mentioned several times before. It's called the first one is called Turning Blue, Life Beneath the Shield. It's it's a memoir, basically why I wanted to become a cop. And I wrote it. I I didn't really start out writing a book. I just like to do little, you know, scenarios like what my first roll call was like or a case I had. And I wrote it for nobody's eyes but my own. And I decided to challenge myself. I was always interested in acting. So I lived in Queens at the time, and there was a theater group that were advertising for uh auditions, and the name of the play was called The Detective. I was like, that is written for me. I said, I gotta do it. As nervous as I was, I said, I gotta do it. So I went there, I got a small part in the play, and the people there are so different than the people, they're very archy people, and I was just so so much different from their lifestyle. And they would ask me questions about, you know, did you ever do this, you ever do that? And I'd say I said, Well, I wrote some stuff, and I'd give them, you know, a sample of my writing, and they are the ones that really encouraged me to keep going. It wasn't for them, you and I wouldn't be sitting here right now, but they encouraged me to to pursue that career. So I did, I bought I took all these stories of what I went through, and I wove my life in in between. I stitched it together with my life. And the reason why I call it a life beneath the shield, and a lot of it has to do with my childhood and growing up, which, you know, who cares pretty much about, you know, you grew up in this place, whatever. But I re I did it specifically because I remember being on the Brooklyn Bridge one day, and Al Sharpton was marching and they were looking to take over the Brooklyn Bridge, and I stood shoulder to shoulder, hats and bats, and there was an angry mob of hundreds of people, literally, you know, a foot from my face, and I'm staring into this guy's eyes, and he I could see he literally wanted to tear me to shreds. And so I thought about that kind of bothered me, and I thought about that. I said, This guy doesn't even know me, you know. I said, he's he just angry at the at the patch on my arm or that shield on my shirt. That's who he's angry at. He doesn't know anything about me. So my uh motivation was booked. I want to show people that, hey, there's a life beneath that shield. You know, I had my same struggles. My father abandoned me at two, three months. I never met him in my life before. So I have some of the same kind of struggles that other people do, and you never know somebody's story unless you really listen to it. I try to give break that all down and put a face behind the uniform. And then I escalate into, you know, why I became a cop. And in this book, I left all the blemishes in and hopes that whoever reads it will learn from my mistakes. If I could, Victor, there's one story that I would love to tell if you don't mind. And this one I still use till this day. So I was uh in NSU and had a foot post on on Fulton Street, no strength and filtering and then 79 Prec. And I'm doing my, you know, walking. It's I think it was I think we were doing a late tour there, 4 to 12. I'm doing my beat and then I get approached by this uh this guy and he's got a rag up to his head, and his head is busted. I could see the blood running down his face, and I go, yo, you what's going on? He says, I just got attacked by this guy, and he's with this girl. I said, Okay, let me call your bus. Let me get your name. She goes, No, no, I don't want to go to the hospital. I said, All right, I had a key to the transit place. I had a key to get him into the bathroom. We kind of cleaned up his head. He could definitely use a stitch or two, but he didn't want to go. So as we're coming up street level, who's coming down? Is the guy and the girl. So Harry, I'm brand new out of the box, you know, my leather still smells, you know, everything's creased, you know, hair tying. And I draw my weapon, I do right as the camera. Police, don't boom, let me see your hands, the whole nine years. He actually cooperates, put him against the wall, put the cuffs on him. But his girlfriend was a to say a pain in the ass, you can't even imagine. She gave me such a he didn't do nothing. What are you doing? You know, this is illegal. He's got right, you know the whole deal, right? So I'm like, shut up. I call for a sector car to give me transport to 7-9 precinct. They show up, male, female. So the female officer's dealing with the female, the girlfriend there, and she just wouldn't quit. She just wouldn't shut up. I think she pushes the cop, and that's it. We're putting bracelets on her, too. So she's gone. So the two of them are gone, getting transported to the 7-9 precinct. As protocol suggests, I sit behind the driver. I got the bad guy in the middle, and the girlfriend's on the passenger side in the rear seat. And he's moving around and moving, and the girlfriend won't shut the hell up, and I'm young, shut up, scream. And he's just moving, and I can't go. So anyway, we get to the precinct. Unload him out of the precinct. I bring him up to the front desk, and you know, he could see I still got the PBBN brasses, lets everybody know that you're, you know, you're right out of the box. And he's like, What do you got, kid? You know, one of those kind of guys. And he's looking down at you, you know, he looked down from the desk at you, and I go, I got one for a salt, one for disorderly content. He goes, All right, did you toss him? I was like, I must I must have tossed him. I thought, yeah, yeah, I tossed him. I gave him, I gave him a toss. He goes, What? Toss him again. So I spread his legs, wore up his leg, went up the other leg, right away. I pull his his uh wrist back from his back, check the back of this thing. Oh my god. I pull out a loaded firearm from the back of this guy's pants. I'm I'm embarrassed. I I mean, I I don't have no words for say. So being the jackass as I was, how embarrassed and nervous and so I take the firearm and I reach up and I go, We had this arm, boss, and I put the gun down with the barrel facing the desk. You want to talk about getting your ass chewed out? You could hear him three pieces away, and right like so, he ripped me a new ass, and I was just mortified. I'm like questioning, am I am I why am I on this job? I want to buy, do I know what I'm doing? And I thought about it, I said, this girl was creating all this distraction for him to either dump the gun in the back of the car or to use it. I'm thinking he could possibly have have shot me with this thing. And it scared the bejesus out of me. So I I I go in the back of the muster room and I'm there with my online booking sheet and I'm filling out my stuff. And it's just written all over my face, the embarrassment and my my shoulders are song. You know, I'm just totally mortified and I'm just going through the motions. And I wish I got this guy's name, this cop. Anyway, he comes to the back of the room and goes, Hey, how you doing? I said, you know, because that's word spreads, you know. Kid just came up and did the other, you know, everybody knows about it. So he came over to me and he says, Hey, listen, he goes, You did a good thing out there. You gotta you got a loaded gun off the street. Nobody got hurt, thank God. I was like, Yeah. He goes, 'cause but use this as a learning tool. Because remember these words. We're gonna tell you this. He goes, when you find one gun, you look for two. If you find two guns, you look for three. You got me? I was like, yeah, man. I said, that's that absolutely makes sense. I go, listen, I go, he goes, again, don't worry about these guys. You know, everybody makes mistakes of everything worked out. This is a great learning tool for you. He says, keep your head up, you gotta load a gun off the street, just keep doing what you're doing. And that lifted Vic that lifted the world off my shoulders, and I never forgot, I never forgot the those words. And I passed him along as much as I could, and then I said, That's the kind of cop I want to be. I don't want to rip on somebody if somebody made a mistake. I want to encourage him, learn from it. So I'm gonna fast forward, I'm already off the job. Um, I don't know how many how many years later it is, probably 25, 22 years later, I'm on the Long Island Railroad, going into Manhattan for something, and I see a recruit there, and he's wearing a he's blonde hair, blue eyes, and he's wearing the gray uniform. We wore the blues back in the day. But in essence, I was looking at myself 22 years ago. That kid on the train, riding, carrying the bag, and all that stuff. And I'm just staring at him, you know, and just thinking about my experience and stuff. And I guess he felt me, you know, I guess in that uniform every day, you kind of you get used to that kind of stare. So I started talking to him, and I just said, uh I said, when do you get out? He goes, Oh, I get out uh right before New Year's. Time for New Year's Eve. You're gonna probably put us out on New Year's Eve. I said, I go, that was the last day of my job. I actually worked on the job. He's like, excuse me? I go, I go, oh. He wasn't privy to the conversations I had in my head. I said, Oh, I'm sorry, I just I retired from the job in New Year's. I worked 20 years, and he still made me work New Year's Eve on my last day of work. I had to work New Year's Eve. And so we chit-chatted a little bit. We kind of bonded and laughed and joked about stuff. We got off actually at the same stop on the Long Island Railroad, and he was going one way on the stair uh on the platform, I was going the other way. I said, Hey, I called him back. I said, listen. I said, this may not make sense to you right now, but I just I just want to tell you something. I said, just listen to what I'm talking about. I said, if you find one gun, look for two. If you find two guns, look for three. And I just I just felt like I needed to pass along that little thing. I hope that I hear it to him. But that's that story resonated with me through all 20 years of my career. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:12

Well, and you hit the nail on the head because had that cop not come into the um arrest processing room and and given you those words of encouragement, your career might have gone in another direction because guy they will jump all over you. And it's it's the guys that got one or six months more than you. And they know everything, and they just will beat up on you. And everyone has made a mistake like that. Or absolutely. Just you you're new and and that it's overwhelming, but you know, thank God things turned out the way they did.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:39

Yeah. And actually it happened later just after that, not too long later after that. Guys in the 7-7 made a uh stolen car. They had to chase a guy, he smashed the car up, they locked him up, they put him in the back seat.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:53

And I don't know, I don't know if nobody tossed him or anything like that, but he had a gun in his back. He got it out, turned sideways, shot both of them through the back seats through the seats of the car. And uh later, somebody from the task force joined the case and gunned the guy down and killed him out in the street. But yeah, as a perfect example, you get lax. You know, that's the thing. You uh even down here, I watch people do car stops. It's uh, you know, it's our nature to watch these things. And they they're standing there, they get their license registration, then they blade their body towards the street, and the gun is literally an inch from the guy's window. I'm like, what are you doing? Don't, you know, turn your hips, you know, don't give them that opportunity. Yeah, you know. But of course, it's a totally different policing down here. You know, the stuff doesn't happen like it does up up north and what we went to, especially in during the 80s, which was crazy, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

So Larry, tell us about your book, The Devil's Snow.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:43

So The Devil's Snow is a it's a work of fiction, and I had kind of a writer's block for a while. I started a whole bunch of uh different characters and books and stuff, and I never seemed to to follow through on them. And I kept trying to push myself, push myself to ri to to get over the writer's block, and it just wasn't coming. Then one day I said, I gotta just sit down. And I went through and I found this his name wasn't Alex Archer, who was my protagonist. It wasn't his name, but I did some research and trying to get a strong masculine name. And so I came up with that name. And I just started to write about that. It's kind of modeled a little bit after myself. He's basically a young detective who went through 9 11, was down there in 9-11 when the the plane said he was at the US Attorney's Office producing a uh prisoner who wanted to cooperate. The planes hit, he goes out to investigate, starts getting people out of the area, and feels the heat from the buildings and and the people just you know, he witnesses people jumping from the building, holding hands and crashing to the ground, and and the towers come down and then whole the whole covered in the smoke and stuff, and then also digging through uh, you know, rescue and uh recovery, you know, uh recovery efforts. And so I had the character who he's going through a PTSD from all that, and he's going through a failing marriage and decides to move to Florida, hoping that the the Gulf Coast, the sunny Gulf Coast of Florida is gonna make things right in his life. And it doesn't. The marriage falls apart, and he ends up getting divorced, but in the meantime, Tampa Police Department's looking for expansion police officers. He gets a job with TPD, he's a detective with their detective there, and he's there. Yeah, I I I associate him as kind of like uh Murtaug from from the movie with the Lethal Weapon. Like he's a guy that kind of lost everything, kind of flies by the seat of his pants, doesn't follow you know department regulations stuff, but he's a guy that you want to go to if you want something done. He hasn't really followed the rules so much, but they overlooked that because he's he's a guy, you want something done, he's been through it all, you call him. So here's my protagonist. And I was thinking about pretty much like what scares me. And to me, current events, what's going on now with all the immigration issues and and the uh the war with Iran and going through the 9-11 stuff, and I believe that we're gonna have another 9-11 somewhere. I I just hope to God I'm wrong, but I just feel like that's gonna happen. So I kind of took that as the uh my storyline. And I thought about who my who the antagonist would be. So I did a lot of research on that, and I I learned that right after 9-11, George Bush started the Operation Enduring Freedom. And October 7th and 9th of 2001, it began and British uh British and American troops started bombing Afghanistan for uh Al-Qaeda and and uh Taliban strong points. And there was actually, and this is a true story, it was an errant missile from a US one hundred thirty gunship that didn't find its target and destroyed a village in the mountains. Just a simple village where people were goat herders, and that was their survival. Their their day was just surviving the day, food, you know, uh working with the the the goats and stuff like that. And they you know they weren't really, you know, into politics or they didn't have TVs. Nothing like that. They were just, you know, surviving tribal people surviving. So I thought about that. And I thought about which possibly could have happened. And in this little village, there was this nine-year-old boy, and he's got a his mother, he's living with his mom. His his father died in the tribal war defending the some another tribe uh was trying to steal their goats, and they got into a little thing and he was killed, but they got the goats back. So he's nine years old. He wants to kind of become the head of the family. He's got two three younger siblings and his mother. And so his mother's kind of cleaning the house up, and she's like, tell him, go outside. His name is I named him Saif Abdullah. Tell him, Saif, go outside and play. Go out and play with the other kids. And he's so he goes outside and they don't have much to play. He's got this soccer ball. And it doesn't really hold air. It's filthy, dirty. And so he starts juggling with his feet, playing with it, and hitting it against the wall. And he turns to his to his mother and says, try and stop my amazing shot. And he kicks the ball towards the house. And his mother laughs and blocks it with the straw broom. And she says, You gotta do much better than that because I was a much better. I was a I was quite the player when I was your age as well. And she kicks the ball, kicks it way over his head. So he's laughing, joking, and he takes off running after this ball. As he picks it up, he hears this whizzing noise. That whizzing is that errant missile. Hits his home, he loses his entire family, press part of the village, and he's distraught, he's got no family, nowhere to live. And of course that the Taliban comes in to inspect the damage, and the field commander there sees how distraught this young boy is, and he takes him in, he raises him as his brother, and he raises him to become a Taliban fighter, puts him through the camps and everything. He excels in the camps and he, you know, they they quote the Quran every day and they show him videos of you know people burning the Quran and people beating up Muslims, so he he they build this mindset in him. And he eventually gets sent to America where he's a manager of a uh gas station mark place. And so he runs it uh runs that every day and he's there for years and years and years until he's got a beeper that goes off and he's been granted his lifetime wish to activate, become the leader of a cell that's gonna try and create um the amount of deaths, four times the amount of deaths from 9-11. So he gets together with this uh facilitator, another uh he's he's like an entrepreneur, a jihadist, and that's his business to put together these operations. Gets together the field uh call them the field team, but all the jihadists the fighters, and he puts together the operations, so he wants to conduct these smaller operations to instill fear in people. I'm not gonna give away too much about that, but does these smaller ones which are gonna lead up to his his desired thing where he's become the become a martyr and hopefully take out twelve to thirteen thousand Americans and he's gonna live his life, it's gonna be uh sort of forever celebrated in the uh radical life. That's basically that's that's the premise I got for in it. And a lot of research went into it. I'm I hope it's pretty accurate because everything that I wrote in there could very well happen. I just hope I didn't give him any ideas. That's what they are. There's one unique thing. I'm like, God, I hope they don't get any ideas from that. But but uh you know, Archer, like I said, is kind of you know semi-biographical in certain ways, but you know, I gave him the gallows humor and that stuff. He's very sarcastic as you have to be. That's your that's that's basically our bulletproof for the soul is that gallows humor, you know, protects us. Not because we don't care, because I believe we care too much. So we need that separation, you know. So yeah, I hope uh everybody enjoys it. It's a fantastic car. I'm getting great feedback on it. And I also have a sequel that's ready to go. It's not out yet, but would I be able to just show to cover that? But yeah, I just have a just printed it out. This is basically trying to get this up. Tell me what I'm you got it. Okay. So it's so this it's called the Banished Twins, Alec Charger series. It'll be the second book. And this one deals it's more of a psychological horror thriller. Combination of that, it's a satanic cult and there's gruesome murders and and symbols, symbolism, and stuff like that. It's and uh people who read it proofreader for me enjoy very much, very much. So I'm I'm looking forward to releasing that one as well pretty soon.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:11

Well, I I'll have you on again when that book is ready to go. So the the two books that you have available on Amazon, one last time. What are the names of the books and where can our listeners pick up a copy?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:20

Okay, so the the first one is called Turning Blue, A Life Beneath the Shield, and the new book out is called The Devil's Snow.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:27

Larry Hoffman, thank you so much for spending your time with us today. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And as always, I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in, especially my listeners in West End, North Carolina, Duncan, British Columbia, Newcumberland, Pennsylvania, Bridgeton, New Jersey. If you worked in law enforcement and had an interesting criminal background, please drop me a note on Twitter or Instagram at VicFerrari50. If you're watching on YouTube, please hit the like and subscribe buttons. If you enjoy the content, check out my Amazon Author page and type in my name, Vic Ferrari Like the Car, where you can preview all my NYPD books for free. Thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you next week.