Hector Bravo UNHINGED
Official Hector Bravo Podcast
Hector Bravo UNHINGED
Breaking Bad: Inside the Mind of an Undercover Cop
What does it take to become an effective police officer in today's complex world? Former narcotics officer Daryl takes us behind the badge, revealing the psychological chess match between law enforcement and criminal elements that most civilians never see.
Daryl's journey began after a baseball career-ending injury forced him to pivot his life plans. Growing up in an area regularly patrolled by law enforcement, he was drawn to the profession by officers who carried themselves with what he calls "command presence" - the ability to project authority and control situations without excessive force. This became central to his own policing philosophy: set the tone immediately, and you'll prevent situations from escalating.
The conversation ventures into the shadowy world of undercover narcotics work, where Daryl wore disguises, carried body wires, and purchased drugs to build cases against dealers. His vivid descriptions of massage parlor stings and undercover drug buys at public parks illuminate the psychological strain of maintaining cover while surrounded by dangerous individuals. "Undercover is more of a mindset than really clothing," he explains, revealing how officers must embody different personas while remaining tactically aware.
Perhaps most compelling is Daryl's candid discussion of his officer-involved shooting and the mental processing afterwards. With equal frankness, he addresses how legislative changes like Proposition 47 affected officer morale when they saw the same offenders back on the streets almost immediately after arrest.
Now focused on fitness training for law enforcement, Daryl emphasizes that physical readiness directly impacts psychological preparedness. His story offers rare insight into how effective officers balance mental toughness with tactical skill in a profession where split-second decisions can have life-altering consequences.
Hector Bravo. Unhinged chaos is now in session. Welcome back to our channels, warriors. Today, another banger back to back. We have a guy that was a former upland police officer, undercover narc, that did all kinds of operations ontario pd and would eventually go be law enforcement in arizona. Man dude has a full resume. His name is daryl. What up, daryl? What's up, man? Thanks for having me, thanks for making that trip out here. Dude, I didn't know you were going to commute yeah, it wasn't bad bro.
Speaker 2:Once I get on that freeway, start going west yeah, it's a nice ride on the eight right there from where I'm at.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah passed by the imperial valley, el centro valley el centro all the way through.
Speaker 2:What is it, julian, and the mountains and everything. It's nice right there, dude, all those ranches. So where did you grow up at, dude? So I was born in glendora, california, okay, um, I lived there until I was about three or and then my dad wanted a bigger house, because I have an older sister and a little brother, so we, we moved out to the inland from there. So you're the middle child, middle child Out of three. Out of three, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we moved out to Rancho Cucamonga, which was a pretty established area, but my dad bought a track. He found a track of homes. There were two story homes in the older part of town, so it was a new build. Story holes in the older part of town. So it was a new build, but, like in the video, kind of yeah, you know, um, that's where, that's where I grew up at, from there, from like five years old, all the way through my early college years, where'd you go to college at? So, uh, my first year I played at chafee college. Uh, I was a pitcher, played baseball with junior college ball. Then I played at citrus for a year another community college ball. Then I played at Citrus for a year, another community college, and then I played at University of La Verne for two years, which is a D3. Wasn't the best student, but wanted to pitch, you know.
Speaker 1:How were you academically in? High school and in college, terrible, terrible, yeah, terrible, mediocre or okay, have you heard the expression seeds get degrees? Never heard that expression. Well, that was me, bro. I was just doing enough to play ball. Now, is that because you weren't applying yourself or because you found the?
Speaker 2:material difficult. I wasn't applying myself. Okay, I just was not interested. Man, I just wanted to play baseball, yeah, and I thought I was going to be a pro ball player one day and not thinking like, well, if that falls through, what else are you going to do. So you didn't like think past that. I had like all my chips were stacked on being a pro ball player. Okay, I was throwing hard when I was younger, I was hitting the 90s and then I hurt my shoulder in college and then I'm like, all right, well, baseball got my foot in the door at Laverne because they wouldn't let me in with my grades.
Speaker 2:My grades were not good enough to get in there. It's more of like an Ivy League type of school. So played one year there, realized okay, my arm's hurting, I'm not going to go play pro ball, so what am I going to do now? So I ended up finishing my business degree there.
Speaker 1:Was it one injury or a series of prolonged injuries?
Speaker 2:Was it one injury or a series of prolonged I can kind of remember the one time I felt a pinch man, oh man. You know, and me and my buddy were playing catch and he's getting further and further away. We're actually at Newport Beach and there's a big grass field at Balboa and we're trying to throw it all the way across this field and I remember just letting one go as hard as I could. I remember like something didn't feel right, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I go back to practice the next day and I'm like oh man, like I think I I think I might've partially torn something, so I played around with trying different arm levels and everything like that, but it was how old were you at that time? I graduated high school when I was 17. So I was the way my birthday fell. It was in september, um, I think it was 19 you were 19.
Speaker 1:What about when you injured your arm playing college? Uh, sports in college, about 20, 20? How did that make you feel mentally?
Speaker 2:it's. It sucked, dude, because it was like you're used to. You're used to being able to overpower batters and stuff like that. You know, you're used to being kind of like the man on the mound and now all of a sudden you're having to find different ways to finesse and where your arm don't hurt, I tried throwing down from down here, tried throwing different angles, and my shoulder was still hurt. So it was like there was a gear shift going on in my head. Now, like what am I going to do now? I had put everything in baseball. In hindsight it's kind of silly. It's like the percentage of people that make it to the pros is pretty small right?
Speaker 1:no, it's not silly like I really want to know, like at the age when you put all your chips in one basket and you're passionate about something and then you know an unfortunate, because it's not uncommon, right? A lot of people encounter these types of situations. Um, did it devastate? You did it like take you out of commission, or were you able to focus?
Speaker 2:I was able to focus. Yeah, I mean I. I had some, some times where I was like I'm gonna miss baseball, you know, yeah, um, but the way I was brought up, my dad and my mom were always right there and encouraging me to that's good to jump into the next thing you know my dad did like I said.
Speaker 2:He did uh air force 30 years at uh mcdonald d, no Air Force for a couple years, yeah, and then worked at McDonald, douglas and Boeing as a mechanic. So he always instilled that work ethic in me. So I knew not to sound cocky but I knew like, whatever I chose to do, like I'm going to go hard at it you know.
Speaker 1:So you just got to make a shift. You have to make a shift at that point. Yep, 100%. And what shift did you decide to make? What was your next eye on the price?
Speaker 2:So I still didn't know what I wanted to do and everybody's telling me hey, if you get a business degree, that's a very versatile one. You know, you just get that degree and that piece of paper and you get your foot in the door you know wherever.
Speaker 2:So I'm like all right. So I made my way through, got the business degree and during this time, before I finished the degree, law enforcement started coming to my head. You know, I grew up in an area in Rancho Cucamonga called the Dog Patch it's the older part of the area. There's a serenity gang there. They're not big numbers, but the sheriff's department was on my street like every other day bro.
Speaker 2:Ghetto bird every night Fought pursuits through my backyard and I remember seeing those guys and thinking I just like the way they look in uniform, I like the way they carry themselves, you know, and it was intriguing to me and I thought, given my background and growing up where I grew up, I could excel at this you know, yeah, because I'm not coming from like some rich neighborhood where I've never seen a crook you know, like I grew up in it and I could have went one way or the other I mean, there's a time when being a cholo looked kind of cool, you know like it.
Speaker 2:So I I started really getting that law enforcement idea in my head.
Speaker 1:So at the time? How were those sheriffs conducting themselves or carrying themselves like like assholes or like professionals?
Speaker 2:um, so this was this would have been my memory of it was probably the mid-90s, yeah, yeah and um, they weren't assholes, but they weren't taking no shit either, you know like oh, that's a good then, yeah, they like they.
Speaker 2:they carried themselves a certain way. I don't remember seeing any fat cops. I don't remember seeing any dirty boots, you know, shiny, uh, gig lines straight, all that stuff, you know. And then that's appealing to me being a kid. And then I remember knowing friends that had dads and they were cops or moms or cops, and they made a decent living from what I could tell. You know, I didn't, I didn't crunch the numbers, but I'm like you know what. I think I could do this and provide for my family and I think I could be good at it.
Speaker 1:From your perspective and experience, why do you think law enforcement has gotten away as a whole from looking fit, looking sharp, looking clean, cut and presentable?
Speaker 2:I think a lot of it has to do with hiring standard. I mean hiring standards and trying to trying to just fill, fill spots, you know. I mean some agencies are trying to get their sworn numbers up to a certain number, right, yeah, so they're. They're hiring, they're lowering their standards little by little, and then some people are passing training they probably shouldn't have passed training and the next, you know, year after year, you have that cycle and now you're like what? What the hell happened to the department like this used to be a bunch of pipe hitting type dudes. Now we got a bunch of dudes that look like the pie eating.
Speaker 2:Type of dudes yeah, yeah, I was gonna say michelin man them too. Yeah, but I think it was pipe hitting to pie eating dude, right, and then, and then you know california specifically, you start to see like cops getting in trouble for things, right, and so a lot of the good guys that are probably, I think, that are thinking about getting into it, they're like I'm not gonna go do that, right, I'm going to get sued and lose my house.
Speaker 1:Or go to end up in fucking prison.
Speaker 2:Or the ones that were hard chargers. They take the fight out of them, absolutely. They didn't take it out of me. I kept going hard the whole time. You did yeah, because I know I can justify whatever I'm doing cross that bridge when we get there um so at what point did you apply and what agency did you apply first?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I applied for basically ontario and upland at the same time. Okay, in 2010 I'm sorry, the end of 2009, end of 2009 um had ontario actually hit me up first and I went did the oral board. Um, I had smoked marijuana too recent for their three-year cutoff. Um, I think I smoked like two and two and a half years prior to that I'd smoked I don't know, with a polygraph part of that examination that was, but no, that was just in the oral.
Speaker 2:I admitted that the oral interview and that's before the polygraph or is there even a polygraph in these?
Speaker 2:yeah, there is. Yeah, that's at the very end, though. Okay for for us, um. So they said hey, you know, you look Everything's good on paper, but the marijuana uses is too soon. So I waited and then all of a sudden, upland popped up as hiring and it was the. It was the perfect timing is the three years had passed, okay. So I applied for Upland, uh, took the test score. Back then they had the uh. They'd give you a T score for the post pellet B test and I got a high score on that. And I got a high score on that. I studied my ass off on this thing, the one thing I actually ever tried for academically. I got a police exam book from Barnes Noble. I studied the hell out of it. The chief then at the time he said I had the highest score he'd ever seen. So next thing, you know, I passed the physical agility test and I'm in the academy. April 2010. April 2010. Where was the?
Speaker 1:academy, April 2010. April 2010. Where was the?
Speaker 2:academy located. Most agencies in that area send their trainees to San Bernardino County Sheriffs.
Speaker 1:San Bernardino County Sheriffs.
Speaker 2:Yes, Frank Bland Training Center.
Speaker 1:And is that a mixture of different agencies going through a pipeline?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the sheriff's department basically owns the training, but the local agencies send their dudes through there do they keep the different agencies separated or they're all mixed? You're all mixed you're all me, I mean. They even give you tan and green. They don't care if you're a pd. Oh really, you're everybody's tan and green. They'll let you put your shoulder patch on where you're from, but really to everybody's tan and green until later on, like basically almost swearing, you'll start to give to wear your blues if you're a PD.
Speaker 1:Did it appear, militarized the academy? Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, we formed up. Mind you, I got a couple tips before I went. My dad's a buddy who's in the Marine Corps. Okay, we're in formation and I'm waiting there like what the hell is going to happen. I'm waiting for them to come out yelling. They threw like three flashbang grenades right in the middle of all of us.
Speaker 1:Really, because 2010, america was still normal at that time yeah. It didn't start going crazy until 2012.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kind of put my eye on it, it started getting a little weird. Yeah yeah, those flashbangs wasn't off and I'm like shit is I mean the yelling like in your face, spit going in your eye like hardcore?
Speaker 1:Were there a lot of candidates.
Speaker 2:I want to say we started. I'm going to probably screw this number up.
Speaker 1:I mean you don't need a number, Like I mean, when you look around, there are a lot of people. Yeah, there was a full formation, bro. It was probably 60 people in formation, okay, so a lot of people, yeah yeah, anybody quit, oh yeah, out of sheer weakness or fear, because like, hey, you know what I realize? This ain't for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's quite a few the next day that didn't come. Yeah, they didn't come back, you know, and I think they had a gut check because you're thinking it's a 23-week academy, right 23-week academy.
Speaker 1:How many fucking months is?
Speaker 2:23 weeks, dude. I told you I'm not good at school, hector. I think that's like six. Six months, though, or something like that right there, like almost six months?
Speaker 1:yeah, no way, bro. Are you getting paid a paycheck? Yeah, you're getting paid. Well, most people are. Let me ask you this, so I know that you can. A person can put themselves through an academy right and then another one the the agency sponsored you to go through right. Is that what you were going through?
Speaker 2:yeah, I, I was sponsored by Upland, pd by Upland, but there was a few dudes that were putting themselves through and are you getting paid any type of monetary?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm getting paid. From who? From Upland, pd, yep, the city of Upland. And you're getting paid what? Like academy pay scale, it's not quite if you're going to be going through some shitty experiences Especially for a dude like me.
Speaker 2:All I was doing before was jig sporting big five, sporting flipping burgers whatever. So that's what got me through, is I'm like I can get yelled at for $27 an hour. It's an incentive, can't hit me.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:They probably could hit you but yeah, yeah, they probably could. But I'm thinking like I can do this. You know the yelling. They can only yell so much. So yeah, it was a good experience, man, yeah.
Speaker 1:How was the driving portion for you and did other people struggle In the academy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, driving.
Speaker 1:Don't you got to do like this little circle? Yeah, you got to do a pursuit circle.
Speaker 2:They have a skid pan where you All that. Don't you got to do like this little circle. Yeah, you gotta do a pursuit circle. They have a skid pan where you all that you finish, you learn how to over correct for uh, for uh what do you call it when you're slipping on the highway, correct? Yeah, you learn how to over correct on that. You get a little like a little mock pursuit right, I didn't have any issues with it what about the firearms portion?
Speaker 2:I was good at that. I never shot a gun. Um, I mean a couple times with my dad out in blythe, you know, in the desert, but like never really been officially shot. So I didn't have any bad habits you know, oh, that's a good thing, so yeah, right when I came in, we had a uh, the corporal was the range master and his name was corporal warfield.
Speaker 2:all right, this was a, a former. All due respect, sir, if you're watching um former Marine named Corporal Warfield, hard mofo, dude, like he was good. I mean, he just had it like just squared away, you know. So yeah, I picked up all the things they were teaching me and I just applied them and I was probably one of the better shots. I didn't get top shot, but I was up there.
Speaker 1:Were there a high attrition rate? Were there still a lot of candidates remaining at the end graduation?
Speaker 2:I think we probably lost like maybe half the class. God damn dude. Yeah, yeah, and that's the way it needed to be.
Speaker 1:I mean because you know Now overall as a whole. I mean you're learning post, you're learning penal code tactics. How much is being embedded in you that the job you're going into, the line of work is no joke and your life can get?
Speaker 2:lost. It was a daily thing. They're hammering into you. I mean they'd walk up and turn your ear and say what are you still doing here? You're going to get fucking killed out there Just trying to see what your reaction would be. Right, this ain't a joke. When you get out there, you know, right, some people would. That would break them down. You know they start realizing all right, because some people are going in for the paycheck, you know, or the status, to look for the badge bunnies or whatever.
Speaker 1:I'm though like I'm not even knocking those guys for quitting, because, hey, at least they realize 100, yeah, fucking this ain't for me, man.
Speaker 2:I respect that more than just faking it and getting out there and now you're getting somebody hurt, getting hurt 100, you go hide you go hide and you don't go to the call and you know stuff like that. So facts, dude. Yeah, did you ever see any of that?
Speaker 1:oh yeah, cops that hide we had cops circle calls. We used to call it they circle waiting for someone else to get there first so I have a theory if I was ever a chicago pd, I would just hide behind a 7-eleven and just wait till the shooting was over.
Speaker 2:You said the auto's on there day on your video. That's where all the all the white people are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bro, I was busting I would just fucking post up somewhere, man, and they just go clean up the mess afterwards. Yeah, my yellow tape, and then they call that shy rack over there.
Speaker 2:That's a whole different.
Speaker 1:That's a whole different ball yeah that's a strategy that I would approach, yeah, so yeah, we had guys do that, though I bet dude, I was wanting to be there first, because I'm like no, I get it if chances are.
Speaker 2:If some fun's gonna be had, it's gonna be had by the first dude who gets there, correct, you know? So?
Speaker 1:yeah, and what was your first? Well, how long is your field training as a upland PD officer?
Speaker 2:Let's see there's four phases, I believe. Four phases, four phases Each one's like 16 weeks is the FTO field training.
Speaker 1:What are the phases? They take off the training wheels as you go along.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So first phase is I mean you're learning everything from the computer system, the paperwork, I mean the city, it's a lot. I mean you're learning everything from the computer system, the paperwork, I mean the city, it's a lot. I mean you're getting it's like drinking through a fire hose, as they say. You know, some FTOs won't even let their trainee drive until like a week or two in. They're like no, you just sit there and mess with the computer. You know like figure out what. Learn how to talk on the radio Does sound new, you know. So yeah, I was lucky.
Speaker 1:I mean my first training officer was a beast dude.
Speaker 2:Like he set the tone for the rest of my career, no doubt.
Speaker 1:That individual Like a mentor type of somebody to look up to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, his name was Marcus Simpson. I'll never forget man. He was a San Bernardino PD. He was up one before, went to San Bernardino PD, which is hood, san Bernardino, san Bernard, which is hood, and everybody like san mernodino, san bernardino, yeah, but san mernodino murdered, you know, yeah, yeah, we used to call it the dirty boo, but, dude, they like 100 homicides a year. I mean, oh, absolutely, west side verdugo, all that stuff you know. So he had been in like three shootings over there, um, I think, killed all three of them, paralyzed another. Like he had been in all kinds of stuff, so he was showing me, like, how to actually do the job, like we're not playing games and like, oh, go, take 20 statements that you don't even need like no oh so he just, he cut out the bullshit, cut the bullshit out like hey motherfucker, this is what you need to do to survive and get through your day.
Speaker 2:This is what you need to do to survive this. He wrote great reports, you know yeah articulate use of forces, and all that, and he set the tone for everything for me. Dude, you got lucky bro yeah yeah, and most people don't have that opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, and I had good ftos pretty much the whole time now, how difficult is it to because this seems like it'd be difficult, man, understanding where you're at getting on the radio, knowing what cardinal direction you are yeah, how difficult is that um, it was difficult and I was in a smaller town, you know.
Speaker 2:So the fear is is like you don't know where you're going sometimes. What?
Speaker 1:do you mean by?
Speaker 2:that it's like you're in a residential street or something. Right, You're not on one of the main boulevards and you were unfamiliar with the residential area. Yeah, because you would study your hunter blocks and all that.
Speaker 1:But they wouldn't let you use the map on the computer, so you had to memorize kind of where, where the east, west and south dividers are what would be considered a hundred block, a main route yeah like a main route, so like, let's say, uh, foothill and euclid, that's a divider for the town a hundred blocks start breaking up east and west as you go opposite directions 100 east, 200 west so that helps you kind of get in the general area where you got to go right.
Speaker 1:Now, at that time, were there any tricks or tips that they taught you?
Speaker 2:guys, there was like a street guide that you could use, but I mean, unless you had a photographic memory and like had it all down it would just take time. You just got to get used to it you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that was my fear is like I'm new and if somebody's crying out for help it's gonna. I mean, that was my thing is not being able to get there in time and help somebody not like the call can wait, you know, officer, time can handle the call. Enough time passes, that call is gone. But if, if, uh, if a partner is screaming out for help, like I wanted to be there, so, but I got it down, I drove. I used to drive around on my days off, you did, I lived. I lived in the neighboring city, rancho, and up on about like, but up to each other.
Speaker 1:So so you used to, on your own time, familiarize yourself with the area Yep, and I think that's the difference between people that excel in whatever they're doing or not.
Speaker 2:It's when they take their own time and dedicate something to a craft. Yeah, yeah, I would drive around man, and I would even look for good stops and stuff. I'm in my own car. I can't pull them over, but I'm just like getting used to kind of looking around.
Speaker 1:So cool man. I mean like I totally respect and understand that, especially because you're utilizing your gas money, but if you think about it, that's the type of shit that'll keep you alive and your partner's alive yeah, and that's all I cared about was that.
Speaker 2:And just being a good dude, so your partners can count on you. Right, that was everything. I didn't care about rank, I didn't care about any of that. I just wanted them to know hey, if I need Daryl, he's going to be there. I never set out with one day I want to be chief. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was never my aspirations.
Speaker 1:I just wanting to go out and work hard and then be a good dude, be a good partner I wanted to ask you another question about the area um, you said you said officer time or the calls will go away. Is there any calls that just continue to pester where they don't go away?
Speaker 2:and they just continue to call the dispatch and be like, yeah, there's, there's a.
Speaker 2:There's those types of calls that'll little noise complaints typically. Man, which one noise complaints complaints? It's usually some crazy lady that hears a cat on a roof or something you know, and so I would try to get them to come outside because I'm like I'm pretty sure they're high, right, right, if I can get them come outside, I'll balance them out. I'm gonna take them to the, take them to the big house you would if're high, because that'll stop them calling the cops.
Speaker 1:Even if they're high in their own house.
Speaker 2:If they come outside, they ain't in their own house. Oh shit, bro, you know what I mean. It's you're in your own public now. So, like they got kind of hip to that trick, you know. So they wouldn't come out, they did. Well, we, they would call constantly. And finally, yeah, I'm like this chick's on dope man like no, she's not, she's crazy.
Speaker 2:So one night she invites us in and you, under the influence of a controlled substance, you can't even be in your own pad in california I didn't even know that drunk I didn't know that yeah, drunk in public you can, but under the influence of controlled substance, so meth heroin so basically, nobody can be under the, under the um, the influence of a controlled substance. If, if long, like I wouldn't go there just to come knock on the door like hey, are you high?
Speaker 1:but if I'm right, because the probable cause and fucking.
Speaker 2:Fourth amendment if I'm there on for a lawful purpose, you know. And she said come in. I'm hearing this and I'm like checking the attic and I'm like what's the charge on that 11 550? Health and safety code 11 550. You use that in the in right.
Speaker 1:You're legit, I don't know, bro. We just fucking left them in the cell. Hufflucker's high, don't let them out. Cap the cell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel you. Yeah, Problem solver, yeah, so I'll never forget. I'm like this lady's high and they're like no, no, no and dude lady.
Speaker 1:Now we're probably thinking 2011, 2012, the time frame at about this. Yep, this is before prop 47 and all that bullshit. Okay, before prop 47. Now, what about mental health and homelessness? Because, as you can see, right now it is fucking zombie apocalypse. Yeah, back then it wasn't, huh, or was it from what you were seeing in the square? It's worse now it's. Was it prevalent? Was it around? Was it a thing?
Speaker 2:when I first started um, the mental health, didn't? It was mostly junkies, bro, like it was we had. We'd have our the stereotypical hypes, right, or tweakers. That got those, uh, heroin addicts, yeah, yeah on the black. And then we got tweakers. They were, and then every night uh-huh, yeah, dude, he's. He got on a bike at night, three in the morning, yeah, but that's what I'm from brawley might as well just throw them the cuffs and have them hook himself.
Speaker 2:Um yeah, yeah, brawley, yeah, I know exactly. Um yeah, so and then we we did run into some weird stuff every now and like spice every now and then because you first hit the smoke shops and people were smoking it. I drive upstream with some dude, butt-ass, naked walking, just that PCP stare.
Speaker 2:And I'm like I only had a year on. I'm like, hey, paul, whatever, I got a guy naked in the middle of the street so I'm parking, he proned out. But I was thinking I'm going to have to tase this naked dude, Did that?
Speaker 1:agency have a partner.
Speaker 1:Because some agencies don't have partners, right? Yeah, we run solo, one per car. Okay, what's your take on whether a person rides solo or does not ride solo? Hey guys, consider becoming a patron, where you will get first exclusive dibs on the video before it airs to the public and you'll get to ask the guests special questions that you have in mind. So that's also another way to support the channel. Thank you, guys. Appreciate all of you. Keep pushing forward. Make sure you hit that link in description below I can see pluses to both.
Speaker 2:Man. I mean, um, well, the good thing with the two-man unit. Every now and we do a two-man unit and we call it a felony car. So you weren't going to calls, you were just proactive, going to try to find parolees at large. That was a big thing. I don't even know if anyone's on parole anymore, but oh, it doesn't nothing.
Speaker 1:Nothing matters anymore. There's no more laws.
Speaker 2:Here in california we'd have a list of pals you know at large and we go look for them and um, so we go two man on those.
Speaker 1:So it was nice having your back there right away, all right, but if you get a partner you don't like, it's like bro, the time frame you're talking about is so weird, because it's like hey, you actually see a parolee at large, you do the right thing and you book them, and then you fucking oh dude, yeah, now it's that, doesn't happen anymore.
Speaker 2:Sad man. I'll tell you this we had a dude that was always a pal, so I've seen him.
Speaker 1:He was a pal so I think now in 2025, if you have a parolee at large, you just give them a gift card to walmart and then you yeah, yeah, let's say that they call it the hug a thug program.
Speaker 2:I don't know what the fuck it is, man, but that's literally what they do I can't, I I can't even wrap my head around that dude, like that was all we were looking for, because they're gonna run a prole that's upscouting like that dude's gonna take off, you know what race, ethnicity?
Speaker 1:what was like the breakdown um where I was at? Yeah, gang wise, yeah up uplands gangs was.
Speaker 2:They only had one homegrown gang there. There was, uh, upland ghost town, I believe, or upland outlaws, and they were really low in numbers, man. But what? What ethnicity? What Hispanic? Hispanic yeah we had some nazi lowriders too that lived up in the in the higher up area, but they had already locked it up by then.
Speaker 2:I think, there was a couple of big name guys that I ended up looking up later and you stop them and they're OGs. They'd put you up on game and tell you about stuff, but that's all I would use them for. They weren't doing anything anymore.
Speaker 1:So at what point did you become aware of the NARC group?
Speaker 2:So when I first started, when I first got on my own, I'm just trying to like I'm writing tickets at first. You know like, oh, stop sign, sarge is going to be happy. Look, I turned on the stop sign. Do you ever have angry customers? Oh yeah, because you start writing fix-it tickets, dude and window tint and your, your personal car's got tent, you know like so we stopped doing that, because they come complaining.
Speaker 2:Well, your cops got window tent yeah so, um, I, shortly after I finally got my feet wet, I'm like all right, I need to. I need to hone my, my scope of of focus in here spirit of the law versus letter, exactly, and I need to go after what. I started this for right.
Speaker 1:So I started looking around for tweakers and um I mean, anybody could spot one, and you know, was there any satisfaction from taking a tweaker off the streets, um, or did you just see it as a job duty?
Speaker 2:there was because I worked graveyard. My first, almost my whole patrol career at uppland was graveyard. So one or two in the morning you see one of these dudes on a bike. That's a burglar. Is it a burglar though? Potentially Okay, you might be preventing a burglary, true, you know what I mean. Or door handle checking, or copper wire I hear you Copper wire was a big thing Catalytic converters. Catalytic converters, catalytic converters, bro. So that's why I looked at it. And if you're in a busy city where your call volume's high and you're getting some priority one calls, you probably don't want to be running all these tweakers in, right. But if there ain't nothing else to do, there's only good guys and bad guys out, run them in Makes sense. And back in those days of the influence, arrests would put them on probation. Didn't even know that. So if you got them twice, two convictions, they're on probation. Now they got search terms.
Speaker 1:Now I want you to break down to me from a legal perspective about the Fourth Amendment, the right to reasonable cause, probable cause, and then how that varies with parolees at large.
Speaker 2:Fourth waivers yeah, so I don't know if it's still the same.
Speaker 1:No, but from your knowledge and experience.
Speaker 2:Parolees had no rights and if they got stopped on foot, subject to search, we didn't even have to call their agent and say, yeah, they got search terms and no, you're on parole, you've waived that right. What I used to tell guys is you should still be in prison, you're just out here because somebody voted you to come out here or whatever. So they're they're, we would search them, research their cars.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, they didn't have any rights, man what kind of stuff would you find, uh guns, dope drop up rollies a lot yeah, knives. What would you find?
Speaker 2:so back then they had the penal code 120. You remember that? No, it was a prohibited weapons charge. So oh yeah, um that that covered everything. So you dirk and dagger billy club, you know, you find a parolee um the cholo rolling around with a little dodger uh the little baseball bat dodger bat.
Speaker 2:That's bill, I don't know, it's a billy club, could be Right, correct. So some guys would get creative like that. Am I saying yeah, and then a lot of them get right back in the game, man, I mean, they might get a little better at their hiding spot or something like that, but they're going back to what?
Speaker 1:they know, creatures of habit.
Speaker 2:Creatures of habit. Creatures of habit and you get out and you got no money and all you know is a dope game, and you know that you can go by and flip a sack real quick to get some money.
Speaker 1:Then you know, if a parole, during your experience, if a parolee, was in possession of a cell phone, do you have the right to go through his cell phone Back then?
Speaker 2:yes, Okay, yeah, and we used to be able to search phones incident to arrest also. What does that mean? So after they're in custody, yeah, so after they're in custody you can search their person before you take them to jail and all that. Their phone we can search just for them being under arrest. And the law has changed and they say now you need a search warrant for that.
Speaker 1:For the parolees or for anybody? No, just for anybody. Hold on.
Speaker 2:So a regular civilian gets arrested?
Speaker 1:you were able to go through their phone.
Speaker 2:Oh hell, no, back then yeah, no way no, and it wouldn't really be needed, unless you're like working on a sales case, right?
Speaker 2:okay like if you're looking for, because payout sheets weren't a thing anymore, like it was all the drug transactions were on their phone. So let's say you got a sack of dope at a scale and you're like I think this dude's selling dope. So you you hook them on the dope and then you start going to their phone and seeing it somebody's sending them up for a dub, or then that would be evidence of sales right and you, which is um, could be used as evidence in court yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we, I take, usually take like a still photo of the text and then tag the whole phone in evidence and the da could, the da could get all of it later on. Damn yeah, that's how I started cutting my teeth in the dope.
Speaker 1:I'm starting to see that man. So what was the process of going over to that dope unit?
Speaker 2:so the way I looked at it is uh, there's only two spots from upland on that team.
Speaker 2:All right, so it's ontario, there's only two spots yeah, so two officers from upland go to that ontario task force. Okay, ontario was like the big dog in town, right. Okay, they're foreign sworn. They had, they had black angels, they had plenty of ma guys that came out of there, so it was their team. We were just there to to help out with any uploads and any issues in upland, and also we got a piece of the asset forfeiture if they got a good seizure or what, whatnot. So what I did is I just put my head down and just kept trying to get as many dope hooks as I could, because I'm like you want to be a traffic cop, write tickets.
Speaker 2:You want to be a dope cop, big dope arrest, you know yeah and gang you know we used to get gang enhancements and anything we could try to do um, so that's what I focused on man I wanted to lead or interest with dope arrest and um flipping informants and figuring out where it's coming from, all that.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so, five years on, I got a chance to test for that five years on, you got a chance to go over there. Is there a selection process?
Speaker 2:yeah, so there's a, there's a panel, it's uh to ontario brass. Uh yeah, brass or narc cops or there was I, I don't know that term. Brass is like a bad word.
Speaker 1:Now, dude no, not brass.
Speaker 2:Brass I hear what you're saying upper management yeah, I mean brass yeah, yeah, I think there was two sergeants, honestly so two sergeants and then a upland lieutenant, if I remember right. Okay, and um, yeah, they just ask you questions in there, like kind of what your experience is, what have you done to prepare for this? And I'm like, well, and I've made this, I already knew how many dope cases I've made, probably heard of you through word of mouth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and then I'll never forget. They asked me like what, what's one word to describe yourself? And I'm like damn, I didn't. That's one thing I didn't prepare for, like it was weird and know I'm like um chameleon you fucking said chameleon they're like they're like chameleon.
Speaker 2:I'm like, yeah, because like I can morph into anything. I need to be like you know, if I'm going to recover, I could change color, that I'm like I was like trying to justify that stupid one word answer, bro, and they were like they liked it. Yeah, but I'm like we said one word, not one animal, bro, or one reptile chameleon bro, I like it I don't know where that came from or why I said that man, but yeah, I just flowed out.
Speaker 1:So so it was a competitive process. Like you were going heads up against other candidates yeah, there was.
Speaker 2:There was quite a few people that were they were testing for it. Um, I kind of set myself apart just because there's people testing for it, like I'm not gonna get'm not going to get it.
Speaker 1:They're always going to get it.
Speaker 2:Like, okay, he's been crushing it, but they would put in for it. Okay, probably just in case I go bomb the interview or something you know, yeah, no, I say chameleon, and they just get this guy out of here bro. Yeah, so he's also a good dope cop. We both got it. Oh, that's cool, dude, I was best man at his wedding, that's awesome bro.
Speaker 1:It's like the movie. End of Watch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly bro, Yep. So yeah, I was stoked, man, when I got that spot, because your whole life changes.
Speaker 1:So, as a police officer, you're wearing a uniform, correct. When you go to the NARC unit, what are you wearing? Plain clothes now, I'm sure you were reporting to work at Upland police station prior. Yeah, so yeah. And now where are you reporting?
Speaker 2:So now I'm reporting to an office. Ontario PD has an offsite location Don't be giving up? No, they did. It's actually not there anymore. Okay, so I can talk about it. It was fun. It was called the zoo the zoo, the zoo, the zoo. What the zoo I mean. What can you tell? Can you tell us about it?
Speaker 2:yeah, so you know safari land, like the company that makes uh sam browns and all that. So there's a safari land building in ontario that's got the zoo printer all around the top, like um, giraffes and all kinds of animals. So there was a bay that the pd paid for. That was they called the zoo. That's where all the narcs went. No one's supposed to know it's there. I think over the years someone left the bay door open and probably seen us dressing out, putting on our getting ready to go to sleep.
Speaker 1:What did it look like inside? Like a warehouse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it looked like a warehouse. So you pull in and there's parking right here there's like a table that we'd go brief at. Oh, it's like Den of Thieves, bro. Yeah, exactly like that. And then we'd walk upstairs and that's where our little desks were.
Speaker 1:You guys had desks.
Speaker 2:Your little desk where you keep your caseload.
Speaker 1:You have lockers or gear equipment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was lockers downstairs. We kept all our equipment in our car, though, really. Because, sometimes we'd have to hit a warrant on the fly and you'd throw your vest on and your helmet. Any workout helmet and any workout equipment in that zoo. No, no, straight prison bro. Burpees push-ups in there, though no, I'm just kidding at the station. At the station they had.
Speaker 1:They had a gym, yeah. So yeah, were you guys getting any workouts at the zoo, or he's just always so busy and on the go.
Speaker 2:We were on the go a lot, a lot, a lot, and then back in those days it was kind of like, you know, there was a lot of older dudes on that team and they weren't really about the lifetime fitness you know older as in like crusty seasoned, salty bearded yeah, but like good though, like still like that.
Speaker 2:Oh, I get it you know what I'm saying, like bosh yeah type of fucking for sure, I watch a lot of cop shows bro yeah, dude like like that, like that type of old, old dude you know, like that had been around and been in a whole bunch of shit, had been uc before in their time so d were you a cherry like a new guy.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, in their presence yeah, so my first day I get there, man, and I'm like so my buddy went down, the same guy that got it from upland. Yeah, he went down six months before me Because they were still waiting for another spot to open. Okay, so he got there. He already knew some people and everything. Man and I walk in, I don't know anything and I'm pulling in there and I'm like trying not to crash because the cars are all parked in here and they had one of the starters. He looked like Clint Eastwood, so it's just intimidating walking there. You know, everybody else has kind of got a little bit of facial hair already or long hair. I'm like trying to start growing a beard, but it's like not really you know growing out yet, so I still look like a straight cop, you know.
Speaker 2:So yeah, the first few days were pretty intimidating, and then you think you know like you're comfortable on patrol, right?
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 2:I know what's up with this. You know like I'm ready to go up with this.
Speaker 1:You know like I'm ready to go well no, you don't know shit, because it's a whole another learning curve.
Speaker 2:What is the learning curve like? Developing cases from the ground up? Okay, like so. So me I'm like see bad guy, stop, bad guy, right. Oh, dope in the car. These are more like hey, this house, we got a tip, this house is selling dope. We got to do some surveillance, we got to get a car stopped out of there, we got to see what's in that car. So we flip them and get the house dirty. So we get a warrant.
Speaker 2:So it was more. It wasn't just roll up and hit it. You know you gotta put some time into it.
Speaker 1:So if we know that the drugs are coming from mexico, right, and you're a narc cop in the ie inland empire, what is your ultimate goal? As far as the bad guy? How high up the chain are you trying to go?
Speaker 2:As high as you can. I mean because back in those days so we had it was a street-level team but we had a task force officer with the DEA, so if you got a certain quantity on a bus on a search warrant he could actually write for a wiretap. I want to say the cutoff back then was two pounds of meth and 10 pounds of weed.
Speaker 2:I forget what the heroin cutoff was. If you got a seizure above that, you could start to try to develop a wire investigation. So you just keep following it up as high as you can, you know.
Speaker 1:As a NARCOP street level? Did they reach a certain point where you now have to hand off information to the DEA and they take over? Did they reach a certain point where you now have?
Speaker 2:to hand off information to the DEA and they and they take over. No, we, uh, we never got to that point. It seemed like they were happy for us to just handle shit locally. You know, the DEA offices out there were pretty busy dealing with, like the border stuff.
Speaker 1:Okay, Um do you guys talk to the left hand, talk to the right hand?
Speaker 2:Not. Not on that street level team, really at all.
Speaker 1:No later on I'll get to that, but that street level team was so street level, street level cop, uh, street level narcs um, there is probably known drug houses, or even a regular civilian can be like oh yeah, I'm pretty sure my neighbor sells dope. I always see fucking people on bikes go in and out To the narc cop. What is that? Is it a target? What is that in the chain of importance or what does that fall in?
Speaker 2:It would depend on, kind of like if we had anything else going on at the time. But if we got a tip like that, we start working it from the ground up. I mean, a lot of the local, a lot of the patrol cops are probably like yeah, that's dope house bro. You know like this bike's coming in now there. So we'd probably put a little surveillance in it. We'd we'd run plates, see who. They come back to the house all whole boys on parole. Cool, I don't even need a warrant, you know, I would just go hit the house on a parole search.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you this so is there? Wait a minute. If there's a house and a parolee enters that house, does that give you access to the house?
Speaker 2:if he lives there. If he lives there, we have access to everywhere he has access to, okay, which is damn near everywhere, right, because he's in the kitchen, he's in the bathroom, right? Um, so that that would be a case. Sometimes we would do um. We had we had 12 to 15 guys on the team back then, so 12 to 15, and we had street level dope vice. We had um, were you vice, uc for vice?
Speaker 1:I wasn't a vice detective, but I went uc on vice yeah, and how did you prepare yourself for the role for undercover, um, for the vice, yeah, like, how did you prepare yourself for undercover?
Speaker 2:so you read books, watch documentaries well, I've seen, you know, I've seen the movies that we've all seen, you know, like donnie brosco and all that kind of stuff, but I didn't read anything. Man, like, I went um when I first got there. I wanted to to contribute to the team. You know, I didn't have any informants, I didn't know what I was really, what I was doing, and I remember they were saying, like who's interested in going uc? I'm like who's interested in being a breacher? I'm just volunteering for everything right, and I'm like I the way I grew up. I grew up in a diverse area where I've been around solos, you know, um, I've every, I've been around everybody. So in my mind I thought I think he could be good at this, you know.
Speaker 1:So once my beard got a little longer, how long were we talking Longer than what it is right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like down to here Doesn't even look like me.
Speaker 1:Were you portraying to be a Mexican gang member or a biker, or what was your that?
Speaker 2:was the weird thing for me, bro, because I'm half Mexican, right, so I could fit in with both, but what I went for was like a biker look.
Speaker 1:You're half Mexican. What's the other half?
Speaker 2:My mom's Mexican, my dad's white.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I can kind of see that now that you mentioned that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I got dark hair and all that. So once I grow my beard long and I grew my hair out, I would get a dirty-ass long-sleeve Harley shirt with oil stains on it, some baggy-ass pants, some beat-up Chuck Taylors. And then, my first time out, they sent a guy with me. They'd already been out a couple times and he looked like a paisa. So we go hit the park and we're walking around. Oh they, let us get a prop. One of the props we get to take with us is a tall can and a pack of smokes. So of course we go get the talk in and we get the whatever. The strongest one is, you know, 211 or whatever and we're walking around. So that helps take the edge off too and what helps take the edge off the booze.
Speaker 2:You're drinking alcohol on the op. Yeah, we're allowed to drink a beer on the on the uc op hold on, hold on as an undercover cop.
Speaker 1:Nart you can, you're allowed to consume alcohol.
Speaker 2:I didn't even know that yeah, the policy says I think one beer so you said prop.
Speaker 1:When you said prop, I thought it was an empty beer, like a tall cat.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, right yeah, that was the running joke, is they?
Speaker 1:let's go to some props, but they weren't like they weren't actually probably me and on your jokes, bro. That's why I'm asking you these questions?
Speaker 2:no, we would actually stop on the way, dude, and get like 7-eleven, yeah, or the drive-thru dairy, get a tall can of whatever beer is right there, get a pack of marlboro reds. I don't even know how to smoke a cigarette, you know, so I'm not even inhaling or anything, but so you start walking around the park and just kind of no one's seen you there, right, like no one's ever seen me for sure. The other dude had went to UC a couple times in that park and so I'm trying to undercover is more of a mindset than really a clothing. Anyways, you know, if you walk out there and you're all stiff and all that, yeah, looking around.
Speaker 2:It smells like bacon in this, motherfucker. You know like. So I just kind of walk around with a little swag and you know whatever. So my buddy goes uh, he speaks spanish fluently. So he finds some other like paisa guy. Um, he's like, hey, who's on deck for um, scante or whatever you know. He's like you got to go over there on the other side of the park, so we start making our way over there. Well, now we get in the area where there's some. There's some like some gangbangers, you know, and those are the ones that are on deck with the dope.
Speaker 2:So I'm like my, uh, my partner's like hey, bro, I'm done with my beer, lady wanna. I'm like, yeah, I'll take it, drink is. And then, um, so they come, walk up to us and this dude I'll never forget he's an obs guy or he might. You know he was a black angel and he had the horns tattoo on his forehead and everything. He said, hey, what are you guys looking for? I said, let me get a 20 white. He's like all right, give me the money and I'll go down the street and grab it real quick for you. I don't know where I came up with this. I'm like nah, fuck that dude.
Speaker 2:Last time I got burned you know, I don't let my money walk Like I was all right. So he walks to this house, gets the dope, comes back and sells it to me. So now not only do we have him hand-in-hand with the man, but now we have that house dirty, because that's where he went and got the dope from.
Speaker 2:So we went and served a search warrant right after that at that house, how long after they secured it almost immediately Secured, meaning right after I walk away and I'm wearing a body wire with my partner. I get on there and say, hey, we got a good deal $20 worth of crystal, All right, cool. He went to 314 East Phillips Street to get it. So we're going to go secure that location, freeze it and get a search warrant.
Speaker 2:Freeze. It means like everybody stays where they're at Knock on the door, detain everybody while we go get a search warrant?
Speaker 1:What happens to the individual that sold you the dope?
Speaker 2:We went 10-15. We took him to jail. At what point? Uh like right away.
Speaker 1:They even sent a mark black or white, and they kept snatch him up oh, okay, yeah, well, like I want you to, I want to know the process yeah, so once I do, uh, once I put out that it was a good deal, then they the the mark, so you walk away, get far enough away get back. But then now let me ask you this man, because now they know your face and now they know that after you bought that dope, the cops came and swooped. Doesn't that burn your cover?
Speaker 2:that's why, for every, every other op that we're doing like if it's a search warrant or we wear ski masks, now I might be burned for a minute at that park just because you know I got to do with the black beard is the one he's blah, blah, whatever. But um, so we we'd like let it chill out for a little bit and then we come. We'd go to another park, because there's plenty of parks where you know they're selling dope and we'd start was it only parks where that we would sit in ucs was typically parks.
Speaker 2:I did do a cold knock at a house one time. A cold knock meaning a house, one time A cold knock meaning me and my partner walked up because we heard this house was selling weed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was a low-level weed sale house, so the supervision was okay with it, because normally you wouldn't just walk up to a dope house that doesn't know you. They're like who the fuck are you doing here? So we knock and we're buying weed from this guy, like who sent you you? We knock and we even buying weed from this guy, like who sent you? You know, you make up some fucking name. Uh, luis, luis, who I don't know, dude, fucking Luis said I can come back here and get some chronic. So we did that once, but typically it was at parks.
Speaker 1:Now I would be under the impression that if I was a drug dealer from my location, I would know who's who and I would have regular customers. I mean, if I didn't ever know you when you approached me, did you ever get that type of vibe where they're like who the hell are you?
Speaker 2:a lot. Yeah, I got. They're like hey man, you a cop, or like you know they're doing like they ask where you're from yeah, a lot and I would. We would have a story kind of made up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like hey, I'm, I'm actually not from here, dude, I'm from la puente. I'm out here visiting my aunt, you know know, and just trying to score. I got some, I got this chick. I'm trying to take the hotel later, you know. And you just start kind of building a story, a rapport with them. And you know right off the bat, we wouldn't just start asking for dope, We'd kind of sit there, drink a beer, just kind of build a little rapport, and then then you get to the point where you're like hey, so you know you, you know where I can get some shit.
Speaker 2:What about sketchy situations where you get pressed by gang members? Yeah, so I'm trying to think there was one again. I look back now and I was never scared when I did these. But now I look back and I'm like some of the decisions I made I'm like I should have probably been a little more scared than I was, you know. But we had one. Um, I had been on the team for a couple years already. I was the the most experienced UC NARC on that team and we had a lady cop join us on our unit and they wanted me to take her out her first day to go buy dope and I'm like all right.
Speaker 2:I was confident enough to where she could just kind of be quiet, act like my girlfriend or something like that. So we go to a park and we sit on a table. Some guy walks up to us and starts making small talk with us and we I'm like, hey, do you know where I can get some, um, some white? He's like, uh, I don't ever seen you guys around here before. Yeah, you know, I'm not. I'm not from around here. I play the story up. I'm here visiting my aunt, and this is my old lady and I go to the side. I'm like, hey, I'm trying to take her to the hotel, a little bit dude, but she wants to get high first. He's like, oh, all right, all right. So he's like, give me a minute. So he walks away. Some other dude walks up. He's like, hey, I don't. And, um, he looked like at one point he might have been a cholo, but he's washed the fuck up now like he was all shot out looking yeah he's like you guys got 30 seconds to get out of this part.
Speaker 2:I've never seen you fucking here before. And I'm like I was like all right, bro, you got a soft watch or what, because I ain't fucking going anywhere. And then he walks away and I'm like we'll see how this plays out. You know like, because we had a cover van you see cover vans all around, so if it goes down they're gonna come in. And he walked away and just never came back. So I called his buff. Well, the dude the initial dude went, came back with dope and he did the same thing. He walked the surveillance units, watch him walk to a house, get it, come back, sell it to me. And then now we had that house probable cause on house for another search warrant, you know. So yeah, it's fun, man, when you start doing stuff like that. Did you ever personally?
Speaker 2:enter the houses yeah, that, that first one I was telling you about, um, where the uh, the obs gangster sold me it. Yeah, I helped serve the war on that. I threw my bali clove on suited up, they didn't have enough guys for the stick to.
Speaker 1:Yeah to hit it. What are some? What are some? Some things you see inside of a dope house skills, money, weapons you see, I mean a lot of them.
Speaker 2:The ones we went into were just pig size and like just trash everywhere like a tweaker pad, okay you know, because these guys are selling like lower level amounts of dope, right. So, uh, we'd see like doggy pee pads on top of clothes and that's fucking disgusting bro.
Speaker 1:I bet it smells in there yeah, sex toys, bro sex toys yeah, wow I mean, it's you ever see anything so fucked up where there's actually like kids living in these fucking dope houses? No, I, I've been fortunate, I've never seen one I'm sure there are kids, it happens, living in fucking dope house yeah, there hasn't been any like on scene when we've hit it.
Speaker 2:That's a good. You know, you see kids, toys there and stuff, so you're like you know there's kids here at some point. Right, it's fucked up you know, but yeah, dude, there was, there was sex toys all over these places. One time I took one and um you know that you know ar bag dump pouches yeah I threw one a dildo in my buddy's dump pouch. He didn't even notice it. He went all the way back to the station.
Speaker 1:Oh fuck I'll be pissed, bro. He's like oh hell especially if I grabbed it without a glove dude.
Speaker 2:Those types of things were like normal pranks back in those days really yeah, now they probably call hr and get me all wrapped up in a case or something.
Speaker 1:But how many would you say? During that time frame that area had a drug problem yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 2:They had cleaned up prior to me getting there. They had put a dent in the gang problem big time so they put a dent in the gang problem. Yes, yeah, they what the rico x we go? Yeah, they hit them with. It was called operations wings clipped. You heard of it. No, what or what was that one about? I want to say it was 05-ish Okay when they were targeting the Black Angels, because, as far as I know, ontario Black Angels, oh, I did hear about.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know details, but I did hear about that and I don't know a lot of details either, because I wasn't there yet, so I was just kind of learning as I went. But they wrapped. They wrapped up a whole bunch of big homies, because Ontario for a while had the most MA members it's hard to believe out of all of Southern California. But Daryl Castorhom went disappearing, ronnie Baiza, tupi, there's a whole bunch of them. So when they hit that Rico, the whole gang thing just kind of shut down. What about King Cobras?
Speaker 1:King Cobras, the gang I haven't heard of them.
Speaker 2:Okay, they're from that area, Hispanic, yeah. Yeah, I haven't heard of them.
Speaker 1:For us it was OVS, which was like the minor leagues junior black angels and then the black angels and you said you served on a wire tap or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What was that about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's see that. Yeah so, um, what was that about? Yeah, so, let's see, this is gonna be about two years into my assignment on that street level team. One of the gang detectives said he had, uh info that, um, one of the the ma guys uh, I can talk about it now. I want to say this case is closed out but that his old lady was driving around town collecting taxes for for ma, so we started doing surveillance. Um, we his he was working with the haida team, la haida, um, they still hit a couple warrants where they're getting what is that?
Speaker 2:it's, uh, the high interdiction drug trafficking area. Holy shit. Yeah, it's harder for me to even remember, but yeah, it's, it's just a, it's a task force, yeah, you know. And um, so they got enough to where they they're up on a couple wires listening to game members phone. And so we would. We would do surveillance on this dude's chick driving around and she would stop in all the hood spots, you know it was a mexican mafia member's wife, girlfriend, girlfriend okay, yeah, um, and he would.
Speaker 2:she would drive around all the dope spots, you know so, and collect money. That's what we thought you know, Okay, I think in hindsight I don't. I mean, I'm pretty sure she was, but when we served paper on the, we served a search warrant on the on the MA guy's house. We didn't get nothing.
Speaker 1:So it might've been. Where was he? Was he on the streets or was he incarcerated? He was on the streets or was he incarcerated?
Speaker 2:He was on the streets. Okay, yeah, he lived on.
Speaker 1:You guys found nothing.
Speaker 2:Nothing, nothing. And this dude was. This guy was shot out man. Like still on heroin.
Speaker 2:You know, he still had that big broach on his stash, but he came out of the house like an old man, you know, and I'm like I don't know if this dude's still in the game or not, you know, like I don't know, but all her activities seemed like she was out collecting taxes, you know, and they had some phone calls and stuff. I think that interesting, yeah. Yeah, it's tough to say but it's funny because he's in that book with, uh, the black hand, you know. So some of the names of the guys I used to deal with are in that book. Interesting, yeah, so it was. There's a lot of history there in the in the gang you know world. It started in the 1950s and car club and then so yeah it's not as not what it used to be
Speaker 1:though I always hear the term informant, right informant. Can you break it down to me in layman's terms what an informant is?
Speaker 2:so, um, you could have a signed up informant, which is someone who there's a couple of different ways they're signed up as an informant to work off a case, like on a payroll of some sort. Yeah, they're on the file as hey, if you provide us information that results in a seizure, we'll get rid of this case for you.
Speaker 2:All right, it's usually got to be either equal or more, All right. So let's say to be either equal or more, All right. So let's say you got pinched with an ounce. Whatever information you give us has got to be at least an ounce, and then we'll talk to the district attorney about getting rid of your case. So that's one one we have. We used to call them mercs or mercenaries.
Speaker 1:They're informants that just want money. They're not fighting, they're not working off any cases.
Speaker 2:They just want to get paid. So they would get paid according to whatever their info led to. So that was that's now. Are they previous or current criminals? Yeah, yeah there's um.
Speaker 1:So like me personally I'm I don't have a fucking job, bro like could I go to the police station and be, like I want to be, a fucking informant man.
Speaker 2:Basically, I'll be my own undercover, if you know enough in my own head I thought about doing that over there in arizona where I was at, no, but uh uh, no they're. They're plugged in still, because they people trust. Plugged in, people trust them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you said the first one, and then the mercs. Who else? What else um?
Speaker 2:other than that would just be, uh, an informant you talk to on patrol you know what does that consist?
Speaker 2:of so for me, one thing you got to remember is if you're gonna, if someone's gonna, give you information on patrol, if I'm just a patrol officer, I have no, I have no access to department funds or anything, right? Um, you got to make it clear to them and which. What I would do is look, if you want to give me this information out of the kindness of your heart, that's fine, but I can't pay you. I can't help you work off a case, right?
Speaker 2:you're basically just a glorified neighborhood watch you know, so, um, and some people they're, they're good with that.
Speaker 1:You know now the cops buy them like a cheeseburger or anything to kick them down, or is just now just strictly a bro?
Speaker 2:you're giving me information, thank you, yeah, just strictly info, because then you kick them a cheeseburger. The next week they want a family pack of chicken or something you know like it's just a question.
Speaker 1:I don't know what the process is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never have. I mean I'm yeah, I don't know what the process is yeah, that's the key if you're gonna work in performance on a patrol level like the movie training day, bro, you fucking. Alonzo brings a toaster to the road yeah, taking care of my informers, he's locked up in Pelican Bay or whatever. Yeah, no, yeah, I'm sure that's gone on. You know I'm probably has. But yeah, that was the one thing that was real clear is, I didn't want anybody thinking like this guy thought he was getting something out of this.
Speaker 1:So I am huge on morals and ethics. Huge, I have heard numerous times where there are law enforcement agents that do not give a shit about the informant's life Meaning. Yeah, we'll burn this dude's cover. I don't give a fuck, knowing he's going to result in death. What's your stance on that?
Speaker 2:No, we didn't play like that, like at all, like that was. But do you know what I'm getting at? Yeah, yeah, and I have heard of certain teams uh, operating that way. But that was one of those scenes with us. It was like if there was any chance at all of burning this informant, we just put the op down. It's just dope. You know, like we, we get this guy killed, you know. So if we did um like, for instance, if we did a ci buy, so if we had an informant go to a house and buy dope from a house and bring it back to us saying, yeah, I bought the dope from there, their body wired up everything. Now we have probable cause to search that house, but we would wait. There's like a 10-day window, right, we get to get the paper signed by the judge and we'd wait and by then more customers will come through.
Speaker 1:And it's just. You can't pin it on that dude yep, and then there's a wall.
Speaker 2:You wall all that information off your report. So it's it's not discoverable unless it's an in-camera hearing. So you wall off of that information. I'm sorry, not wall, the word is hobs, hobs, hobs. So you cut out like you'd have the information for a probable cause, but you'd cut out the buy part and it goes into a separate, uh, sealed, uh, memo. That way the defense attorney can't get a hold of it.
Speaker 2:The defense attorney cannot get a hold of it it has to be a special in-camera hearing with the judge, without the the defendant not present, because is there ever mistakes? I'm sure there is. I mean, you know the court system, I don't know, man.
Speaker 1:I oh, bro, speaking of fucking mistakes, man, did you recently see on youtube? You had a? I think it just happened. You had a judge, it was like a zoom call, and then you had an inmate and he goes hey, sir, before we get started, I just want to say I'm an informant and the judge is like oh wait, wait, man, like he gave himself up and he was in jail. No, I didn't see that. The judge was like hey, dude, you're on a live video right now.
Speaker 2:Man, I didn't see that dummy. He probably had a pc up after that. Huh, mandatory, holy moly. Mandatory, bro, it's just so eager to like proud of it hey I'm an informant, I'm for it. That's the difference, man. Yeah it's, it's crazy man, but yeah, we, we went out of our way to protect them. You know, yeah, because one way you could burn him for sure is like you tell him go buy dope from that dude and then, like you, jam him up while he's with the dude or something. Does that happen?
Speaker 1:No, we never did that Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think theoretically you could probably throw cuffs on both of them and make it seem like, because that's what I've seen in the movies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the movies do that a lot. We never did that.
Speaker 2:And I don't know if other agencies do. I just know like Ontario didn't roll that way you know, so that was. And then you build rapport with your informants when they know like, hey, we're going to do our best to keep you out of harm's way. There's never a perfect scenario, I mean because they tell people the problem with informants. They'll tell their old lady like yeah, I'm working with the police. And then they, she tells somebody and from your perspective?
Speaker 1:do you believe these informants are doing it out of the kindness of their heart or they're trying to get time off of their sentence?
Speaker 2:charges dropped. Well, the ones that are working off a case they're definitely doing it to get their charges dropped. Okay, if they're working off a case, um, the other highly driving force for these would be getting paid. Um, the ones that are just completely doing out of the kindness of heart no case, no money, no, nothing. I mean, I think they probably exist, but it's probably going to be somebody who's more likely trying to clean up their street, like okay, you okay, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Where they? They may not be really that well plugged in. They might just be like this I think this house is selling, or what is the career lifespan of an informant? Man. We had one on the books, so I got there in 2015. There was one that was on the books since 95. Yeah, he had three. He had four hash marks on his. I'll throw this out there because some people will know what I'm talking about. But yeah, they call this is he alive?
Speaker 1:I don't know man, I might have to bleep that out. Bro, what are you still on the fucking?
Speaker 2:no, I don't know. I don't know, it's too late. Force gump or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Damn dude. So you had mentioned an officer involved shooting. When did that transpire in your career?
Speaker 2:So in 2012, I was still in Upland on patrol and we had a homicide that took place in the southeast part of the city, which bordered Ontario, and we didn't have a person of interest id or suspect id or anything but, um, they, they thought it was a gang related thing, and ontario came up and and shot this dude.
Speaker 2:so I'm over there, roaming around that area where the homicide took place it's not even in my beat. And I see I'm driving down the street and I see a dude on a um, on a little bmx bike you bike paddling with a girl, and I can see the back of his head just blasted with the cats and he's got the whole cholo getup man. So he sees me and he dips down the street and starts hitting the sidewalk. The girl goes somewhere else. So I get behind him, I turn on my lights and the pursuit's on. So he starts dipping through alleys, up and down north-south alleys, eventually ditches the bike, gets out on foot.
Speaker 2:So I get out on foot, pursuit of him. He runs over two walls and then comes to like a short wall behind an apartment complex. Well, I see him put his bike down no, not his bike Like pulling his pants up or whatever. He's looking over the wall, looks back at me and then jumps the wall. So I get up to the wall, you know, and I'm I'm approaching it slowly because I don't, I don't know what's on the other side of that, you know.
Speaker 2:so I'm looking over, was it a brick wall, yeah, brick wall, and I look over it and the wall where I'm at it's only about three feet, but there's like a 20-foot drop on the other side. So I look down and he's there on the ground and I can't tell if he rolled his ankle or he's hurt or what. So I got my gun out and I'm like you know, show me your hands, show me your hands. Well, as I'm yelling that, he grabs his waist and starts going like this and he's got a pistol in his waist. So I opened up on him. Know, um, I didn't find, I didn't even have time to find front sight or anything like that.
Speaker 1:I just started shooting. What was what? Was it a three foot wall? What was the 20 foot drop? Like what? So it?
Speaker 2:was like leading into a separate corridor for apartments, so there was like a uh, a breezeway. So he jumped over the wall for one apartment complex and then he ended up in, like the, the courtyard of another one he more than likely ate shit when he hit the bottom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he had to. It was like a 15-foot drop, yeah. So I'm thinking I don't want to jump this wall with him, because then I'm going to mess myself up, and so I'm keeping him at gunpoint waiting. I know units are coming, I could hear sirens and everything, and so I'm sitting there waiting and then all of a sudden I see him turn like this and he's got a pistol right here. You know, he gets it about not even all the way out of his waistband, and I fired off 10 rounds at him Downwards, downwards from the top of the wall. So like, basically like bird's eye view, mm-hmm, but like, not straight down, but like pretty.
Speaker 1:Okay, kind of like angled a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, and I swear it was like like they're splashing through water. You know, and I I'll never forget, I saw one go right by his head and and he limped off and I'm like I didn't know if I hit him or if he was limping from jumping the wall right. So I put out his direction of travel and they end up finding him. Uh, so my sergeant rolls up. He's counting the case. He's like damn, he's been fired off 10 rounds. I'm like I was just squeezing man. So he's like. They find him a couple blocks down trying to get into a house, banging on the door. Let me in, let me in.
Speaker 2:He fights with the police, gets kind of, you know, use of force happens. He tells them that he got hit in the leg. The fire department checks him, checks him. They don't find any bullet wounds. So he gets booked. Um, was he in possession of a hangar toy? So we, we went back to where he jumped. He had a toy pistol that he left right there, um, and he had gloves and a ski mask. So what I think is I interrupted him he was, there was a liquor store right there.
Speaker 2:He was gonna go do a 211 on a robbery on that liquor store, um, so he ended up getting three years in corcoran for brandishing an imitation firearm and resisting arrest, and he was also probably at large, so he got three years. So I ended up getting a letter from us marshals one day and I opened it up and it's handwritten and it's got like that like cholo calligraphy, you know, it's like perfect little letters. And I'm reading it. I'm like I'm reading it. I'm like I'm reading it. And he's saying I can't sleep at night because I can hear bullets going past my head, because this officer shot at me for no reason. I have PTSD. So I take it to my watch, commander. And I'm like, hey, I guess I'm being sued. He's like, no, this ain't how you do it, like you have to go to the city attorney, like he can't just write you directly. And I'm like, all right, cool, so I still got that letter in my house. You said us marshals.
Speaker 1:I came from the us marshal service or something.
Speaker 2:It was a u I'm pretty sure it's us marshals envelope. So basically he wrote you a letter, just a straight handwritten letter telling me, he was suing me yeah, wait a minute.
Speaker 1:How did he know your information? Or did he send it to the pd?
Speaker 2:he did yeah, yeah. So I'm like me being kind of new. I'm like is this how you get sued like this? Right, it seems weird, you know. He's like no, this ain't the process.
Speaker 2:Like no, he's gonna get called into like a legal, like your department will have like a legal, yeah yeah department to say come in, you gotta sign right suit, yeah he uh yeah, he so he, I'm like looking at it and I give it to the watch commander and he's like, oh, let's take it home and put in your shadow box one day, bro, he can't, he can't see you like that. Yeah, so I was. That was. That was the only time I've been in a shooting, even close, to a few other times, but he was an obs, um ontario gangster, was he? Sun kiss, sun kiss is a big street block out there, just blasted with that on him and what type of mentality is needed for a police officer to be out on the streets?
Speaker 2:I mean you. In my opinion, you need to be aggressive like, yes, you have to, you have to wear more than one hat, you have to be able to turn that off if you need to go talk to a little kid or take a report. But I was always default aggressive because I I could turn that off. But it's really hard to get up to that level if you're not, if you're not mentally and physically prepared for it, right, um?
Speaker 1:so a civilian watching this with no experience might think oh, aggressive, no, we need less aggressive cops. So can you elaborate on what you mean by that? Yeah, so it it. And you know, in this beating corrections, if you set the tone right away, you can avoid a lot of useful forces facts.
Speaker 2:Can you elaborate on what you mean by that? Yeah, so it. It. And you know, in this speed and corrections, if you set the tone right away, you can avoid a lot of useful forces facts. Dude, yeah, if you get out of the car and I would do this, and especially if you're in shape if you get out of the car and they're looking like this dude's feeling out of sleeves and he looks like he can run, he's not gonna go running nowhere. And the way you approach them too, like hey, sit down, cross your legs, this is the way I would command presence, command presence. And they're like all right, this dude ain't messing around.
Speaker 1:And then what I did so that that stops a lot of problems, because as soon as they start thinking they could take an inch, they're going to try to get a mile bro, I don't understand how these new officers right now I'm not, it's not a stereotype, but don't understand that concept they are making their fucking job harder for themselves by being weak and feeble. Yeah, it's like these, these, these suspects are just feeding off of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of it. I blame the media, man, cause they the way they demonize cops for a while and the cops are like scared to be aggressive or something, and I I don't know man, but to me it's like.
Speaker 1:I'd rather. Is this mind-boggling to you?
Speaker 2:Completely mind-boggling. I mean, I can't wrap my head around it, because you're in one of the most dangerous professions that you could do. Oh yeah, and you're out here trying to do verbal judo for like two hours. This dude should have already been wrapped up in the clink. What are we doing?
Speaker 1:Now I need to ask you this, man, because you said it. You said a lot of these cops are afraid of the backlash they're going to get from their departments, getting terminated, getting put under investigation, fear of the media, but the other to me, the other alternative is getting killed. Yeah, so how?
Speaker 2:do you see it? Well, it started when body cams started coming out and all that. We were audio recorders when I first started, so we were supposed to turn on a Puma audio recorder. Um, and I saw a lot of guys start to get timid or they wouldn't be proactive anymore, they would hide. And in my mind I'm thinking, if I'm doing everything right, correct, I got nothing to hide. You know, yeah, we used to call it lawful but awful. I'm doing everything right. It might not look good, I like that. It's lawful but awful.
Speaker 2:I like that it has to be done I know exactly what you mean, yeah, and to the general public they might be like, well, he didn't have to do that.
Speaker 1:He didn't have to punch him in the face like that. Well, yeah, he did, because by him punching him in the face he actually stopped it.
Speaker 2:It stopped the whole problem you know, and I, I one of my buddies growing up, his, his dad, was lapd uh smash unit or crash unit, smash unit, uh, crash smash was the sheriff's yeah, yeah, no, he was lapd crash at newton, shooting newton, out in la right, which is south central hood. Yeah, and he said you overcome resistance with extreme violence, overwhelming violence, overwhelming violence. All right, so dude, pulls away. Panel it quick, be be done. The whole Rodney King stuff and all that. Why did that happen? Because there's a whole bunch of ineffective baton strikes. Right, that's what that was. If one dude would have came in there and took charge and wrapped him up and put him in the car. Or George Floyd, hook him up, put him in the car.
Speaker 1:Correct, because there was another incident. There was another incident. There was another incident like, I think, the east coast or the midwest, where these cops were just beating the shit out of this guy. He ended up dying, I believe.
Speaker 2:And um, I was thinking, fuck, nobody went in there with the handcuffs and just slapped hands, slapped the fucking handcuffs on it could be in a lot of the guys that use force too much like that, are the ones that are scared, correct? Because they get like, they get hyper like, all of a sudden it's like, oh my god, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1:Condition black exactly or just like shit bags right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And that's when you'll see like they go from zero to a thousand, because they weren't mentally prepared for that. So now they're. Now they're. They're like they're fighter flights kicking in. You know what I mean, instead of you being like I always come and collect. Yeah, I always had the, the idea like, as soon as I'm allowed to use force, I'm using it. All right, as soon as they give me a reason to I'm.
Speaker 1:It's because you have a understanding of your use of force, policy, the law, your ability and you're right. As soon as that person takes it there, then he took it there, then you're're done. It's easy. Huh, it's easy. It almost seems like a really easy concept. It is, and.
Speaker 2:I don't know if what causes the current not all of them, like we said but what causes the current breed of officer not to understand that, Because I was like always. Well, I want to solve this quickly. I don't want to be out here wrestling this guy for forever, you know.
Speaker 1:And then because there's multiple reasons why you don't want to wrestle a guy forever.
Speaker 2:No, you don't. And then, on the same time you're you're setting the tone for future contacts. It's like last time I stood up to that dude. He fucked me up like not like you know, he I hear what you're saying he dealt with the problem quick, like I'm not gonna mess with hall. But that dude over there he looks like I could probably get away with something you know. So you're setting the tone. And then what do you think he's going to do? He's going to go tell his homeboys.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, if you see.
Speaker 2:Hall dude, like mind your P's and Q's, because you know it's just the word spreads and you're going to avoid a lot of stuff. I mean, I probably had a lot of guys that would have taken off running on me or tried to square up, but they didn because, well, from your experience, do you believe these criminals and suspects?
Speaker 1:do you believe they size officers up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean it's um, did you size criminals up? Yeah, I mean, I remember, right when I get out of the car, there's like this, this little moment in time where you're both sizing each other up. Yeah, that's, that's what I felt about it, you know, and yeah, and especially when I started lifting more, you know, because then you get out and your uniform is a little tighter and all of a sudden they're like dang bro, you know, want to have a push-up contest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they'll joke around with you like that.
Speaker 2:And? But with I've seen it happen to like small female cops or really thin cops that look like they need to put on some weight or whatever. You can just see them, dude, and it looks like even sucking their teeth at these guys. You know, we don't know what that means, Like that's old school, Like that's a sign of disrespect, Correct, you know? So yeah, I've seen it and it can go both ways.
Speaker 2:You can get out of the car and you can act and not knowledgeable in the environment that they're actually in either learn the policy, be comfortable with it, and then get comfortable with that, that level of aggression, or get out, because that's if you try to walk the fence and and baby foot around everything, you're going to get yourself hurt or someone else hurt or the suspect, because now it's escalated because you didn't handle it right away. So learn the policy, be comfortable with it, be in shape, know how to use all your weapon systems, your personal weapons, and, when the opportunity comes, use them should.
Speaker 1:Is the profession of police officer a job or a career?
Speaker 2:career 100 and not not every agency takes it that treats it like that you know, I walked in some and I'm like this just looks like a group of security guards or something. I don't even know what this is, you know, like there's none of that prestige, like I remember walking in the station. I'm just like man, this is cool, like I, my uniform looks good, I'm around. A bunch of guys like that have been been here for a while. There's that level of respect we hold ourselves to like a higher level, um, and you just you feel proud about it. I kind of see that going away and everybody just kind of shows up and, all right, let's go punch the clock, let's see what's on netflix, you know, and it's just I don't know, I don't know what's gonna need to take to turn that all the way around.
Speaker 1:But maybe a couple more podcast episodes, bro.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking, yeah, getting the truth out there, man, yeah yeah, that's what I'm here for, man, and again, I'm not. There's a lot of good ones out there, correct? You know I'm not trying to to demean anything that they're doing but no.
Speaker 1:Is that when they're watching this, they're going to understand what?
Speaker 2:you're speaking yeah, and if you're doing everything right, um you, you cannot operate in a, in an area where you're afraid to be sued. You just can't, or the district attorney is gonna um not file this case. If you're doing everything you're doing right, you're going to be okay.
Speaker 2:You might end up in a couple IAs yeah, I mean it comes with the territory, the territory I was told once if a cop that doesn't get complaints is not a good cop, because you're gonna you're gonna drum up some complaints if you're out being proactive and you know doing police work at any point in your career did you have to wear a body-worn camera? Yeah, when I went to Ontario, they, they, they when I lateral to ontario in 2017.
Speaker 1:So after your narc time you went lateral over to ontario. Yep, did that body worn camera prevent you from doing your job?
Speaker 2:no, no, not at all. Um, and the hardest part was just getting you to turn it on, because you hop out of the car and like a critical incident and last thing you think of at first is right. Eventually you get the muscle memory and it didn't change anything. It like the, it's been said. Uh, the body cam helps cops more than it does you know a correction officer? Yeah, it helps more, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Evidence preservation.
Speaker 2:It's a great training tool and it's great for, like, you have to write your report first, then you can review the body on camera. Yeah, no, we could, we. Can we go back and watch it a thousand?
Speaker 1:times.
Speaker 2:Yeah and yeah. So that's a big part too, because you remember things that the, the suspect did or you did, that you can articulate it, because when that gets played in court're like well, you, you hit this dude five times, but you only, you know you only put down three or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:so have you had to do the whole court process.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, how was that for you? I just treated like it, like a game man.
Speaker 1:I get up there and um, I just would they try to break you down?
Speaker 2:there's a couple of the public defenders that go hard in the paint. They do go hard in the paint, man, like for grammar. They'd be like right here, you know. You said and, but there's no comma, like, did you mean to put a comma there? I'm like what does it have to do with the like? What does that do with anything you know? Or? Or just a typo, or um. So they try to make you look dumb up there. You just got to be professional answer everything. For me it was always yes or no. If they want you to expand more than they'll ask more questions. Guys get in trouble on the stand as they start talking too much and no one's even asked them this question and they're explaining the next part of the investigation. So I was always taught yes or no. I try to keep it light. If I can throw a little joke in there to like light really well, I wouldn't fucking joke on the stand.
Speaker 2:There's a crowd there's a crowd in there, you know you got to keep the people entertained, bro, you can't just go in there I just want to get the fuck out of there soon as possible.
Speaker 1:Dude ask my question.
Speaker 2:I was nervous to tell the first time that I was that I'm like. This feels like a game to me, like they're trying to. The public defender is trying to play me. There's some a preliminary hearing. Um, they'll be held to answer or we'll throw the case out you know, um, only went into one jury trial, so it's. But yeah, we were in. I was in court a lot.
Speaker 1:If you're making arrests, you're gonna be in court, like quite a bit how demanding or taxing is the profession of police officer to include working forced overtime in court?
Speaker 2:It's pretty demanding because, especially if you're an aggressive, proactive cop, I mean you're going to be getting subpoenas all the time, right, and so if you're on your days off you might have to go to court. The shift work which you know, you know, I mean it's like graveyard's brutal. If you got, if you got a family, like you're coming home in the morning, they're going to school, like it's just, it's tough, man, um. And then you add in if you're on a special detail, like I mean, now you're, you're all over the place. I'm in la, then I'm in victorville, now I'm in paris, you know, like it's all, it's all over the place, you know.
Speaker 1:So how important strong system at home which brings you to my next question how is important is a physical and mental health?
Speaker 2:It's paramount.
Speaker 2:So they go hand in hand to me, cause I've been on both sides of this you know I, for the first few years of my career I was kind of taking care of fitness wise. For the first few years of my career I was kind of taking care of fitness wise. But then I just started drinking all my days off and I'm like, okay, well, this, I've seen how this goes. You know I seen plenty of cops to three, four or five divorces. I don't want to be that guy. I'd already been with my wife for for a lot of years dating and then then married.
Speaker 1:So I this around, but if you don't take care of your mental health and physical health, you're gonna turn to another vice, whether that's um usually oh shit, I was gonna say sex addiction, that too dude real quick before I mean fuck you did the little massage partners, you did yeah yeah, what the hell was that about bro?
Speaker 2:yeah, I almost forgot about that too. I told you, man, I got a lot of stories, dude because you said you turned to another vice.
Speaker 1:I actually thought sex addiction yeah I mean I'm not a fucking pervert or anything but no, yeah, so we had.
Speaker 2:I don't even know if they call it the vice, you know. Now I don't know, but um, so we had. We had massage parlors in town that were dirty and it was known that what area?
Speaker 1:on holt, holt boulevard no, not what area, bro? Like what city?
Speaker 2:oh, this is when I was in ontario, okay, yeah, um, so there was, there were several um massage parlors in town that happy ending, happy endings, right. So again they're like he wants to go. You see a massage parlor, you know. So I'm like, all right, how does this work? All right, so you wear a, you know, wear a body wire when you go in step. Twenty dollars on the table right when you walk in. Now they know like you're not there for just a massage you know, because that's not how you pay for a massage.
Speaker 2:And uh, they're like oh cool, so when do I like, how do I let you guys know to come in? Or like, what's the get down on this? Like well, as soon as the massage therapist does something that's not part of a traditional massage, they go anywhere near your junk at all. That's not a normal massage. Right? Have you had a normal massage? Yeah, all right. So if she starts going down yonder, you got to give the bus signal. So we had a bus signal that I would say over the wire and the team would come in.
Speaker 1:Abracadabra.
Speaker 2:No, I've been waiting for this all day, no way bro.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been waiting for this all day, bitch, I've been waiting for this all day.
Speaker 2:Bah, get out, dude. One time I said it and um, she looked at me like I guess I said it kind of weird or loud. She looked and she, she knew, she knew, I think she knew I was giving the signal. Was she asian, brazilian?
Speaker 1:or something, no way yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So next, you know, um, you're fully naked too, right, all right, let me back up. So you go. You go in there, you lay down naked, with a towel over you, um, so wait a minute. You said your wire, though how the wire? You leave it in your jeans, like, okay, stack them right next to you so you can back. Then the wires were not like body wires anymore, it's like a little iphone. Yeah, um, so you say loud enough for that wire to pick it up?
Speaker 2:Well, she, she heard me say it and I guess she got. She got figure, someone was up, tried to grab my junk. So now I'm like sitting there like tug of war with with my junk, bro and the team's coming in and I'm like I don't want to be in here naked when all these fools come in here. So she takes off bolts around the the uh down the hallway and I'm trying to get dressed real quick. I'm like, hey, she took off down the hallway. I don't know what. She thought like I was gonna cancel them coming in or something if she grabbed me or what. But yeah, I did. I did quite a few of those massage bars like that. So who gets booked? The lady? So the ultimate goal is so she gets booked for prostitution. God damn.
Speaker 2:The ultimate goal is to find who's running the shop and then book them on a pimping, a pimping and pantering charge so now would that be called like human trafficking yeah, that takes a lot of investigative work because you got to, really you have to. You have to prove that they knew what was going on and you know the money proceeds and all that it's. It gets funny in depth.
Speaker 1:So as a regular civilian, you know, I see, fuck dude, I see people smoking crack on the fucking streets, fucking slamming fentanyl, uh, hookers, homeless. Why is it that a cop cannot stop that type of behavior?
Speaker 2:they can. I mean it. It would depend on a lot of times it's going to depend on how busy they are. I mean, if they have a call like call volume that's pretty stacked up and their priority calls, they're probably gonna turn a blind eye to that. You know you'd almost need a city like san diego should have a call volume that's pretty stacked up in their priority calls. They're probably going to turn a blind eye to that. You know you'd almost need a city like San Diego should have a proactive team.
Speaker 1:That that's all they do which they may, I don't know. So that's the question that I was asking is like is it like a busy thing, is it just a manpower, or it could be that, or I mean hours.
Speaker 2:In all honesty, it could be a lazy thing, too Lazy thing. It could be a lazy thing, you know, if there's no cost holding.
Speaker 1:Can it be like picking?
Speaker 2:and choosing which crime priority. Yeah well, if you're talking, they're actually in the act of using dope, like that's pretty, I guess.
Speaker 1:what I'm trying to say is is it humanly feasible for police officers to stop all this type of behavior?
Speaker 2:Stop all of it. No, I don't think it's feasible. Just because unless I mean you would you would need a separate team to handle all these problems like this, and then, let's say you do go clean all these dudes up. What are they going to get in california? A ticket to rewrite a cow.
Speaker 1:I mean the, the inks oh, you know what they're going to get in california, bro fucking methadone syringes narcan yep.
Speaker 2:So now it's like I think that discourages cops too, right, because it's like why am I gonna go book this dude and spend two hours at wherever the county jail is here, um, and then my beats go into shit and all of a sudden now this guy's back, he, that dude gets back to my beat before I do you. You know what I mean. So I think that discourages cops too, because it's like I'm not fixing anything Now. Before Prop 47 hit, it was different man.
Speaker 1:Were you on the job when all these laws changed? Mm-hmm, how the fuck was that for you man? It was weird because it was AB 109. Did you see a change out on the streets?
Speaker 2:yeah, I was out there when prcs hit, when uh post-release community supervision and what did you see?
Speaker 2:more gang, more parolees. Yeah, you saw parolees and you couldn't get holds on them or for anything, right? So you saw a guy that was on parole and but it was like oh, he's, it's a non-violent, it's a non-sexual offense. I'm like so I call their agent. I'm like, yeah, but this dude's got a bunch of dope and he's causing problems with her. Yeah, we can't buy it. We can do a 10-day flash hold maybe. So I call him back. No, we can't do that either. I'm like well, so what's the point? Like what's PRCS then? How did that make you feel? It was like it was a turning, didn't know what. Like so I'm going to still go out and try to find dope. But now I'm like I'm not really. I'm not really looking for warrants or anybody that's on PRCS anymore. Like I'm trying to put new cases on dudes, cause I know if I come up with a new, if I got a new case on a guy, then you know during your time in the profession, did you notice a change in the generation between gangster or doper?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the traditional cholo look, is that what you're talking about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, demeanorisms yeah, mannerisms yeah.
Speaker 2:It started like when I first started. It was still like that old school, like Dickies white shirt shaved head Like 90s, fucking cholo yeah.
Speaker 2:And then it turned into like skinny jeans, edgar, looking dudes that are supposedly cholos, but it was almost more like a tagger vibe that they were putting out. And then OVS was still Ontario Varios, who was still active, but it sounds like these kids were all on dope and none of the stuff they were doing was was sanctioned by anybody above them. They're out thinking they're putting in work, right, but it's not. It's not like work that's gonna count. You know what I mean. Like they're, if anything, they're making the, the big homies mad. Like what are you guys doing? Like it's stupid, like we don't tag, like like I'm seeing obs tagging around now and they never tag. That was like that's Benita, that's you know. So that was a change for sure, you know, and I think with that RICO act I was talking about earlier, that really that really stomped a lot of that out. Put the nail in the coffin. The ones that are still around, they moved out of the city. The Ontario Black Angels you see them in the high desert. You see them.
Speaker 1:Is that area relatively safe for a family to live in? I actually live there.
Speaker 2:I lived there for a while. Yeah, so it's getting better and better too. I mean they're building more houses down by where the dairy farms used to be.
Speaker 1:The gang problem is really nothing like it used to be.
Speaker 2:Like not at all was it was. It was barely even still around when I was there.
Speaker 1:I used to go to the ontario mills skate park, the van skateboard oh yeah, I remember that one.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, the mills. Um, ontario is a great pd man, I'll go ahead and plug them. I don't have a problem with it. Good, good, I would have never left that police department wasn't to go take care of my mom, they got everything. Nice dude, top line equipment, all the assignments you could ever want, but you know, you go there and work, though they don't need no lazy people, no lops, no, no station slugs.
Speaker 1:So what is it that you're doing now, man?
Speaker 2:So I'm retired now, a little earlier than was planned, but I'm doing some online fitness training, nice, just trying to help cops Bailey, that's where my passion is, because I know how easy it is to get out of shape. Working those, the shift work and the eating in the car, the fast food, all that stuff, man. So that's what I'm doing now. How can people reach out to you, dude? So I have my Instagram, which is thenarrowpath, my Instagram, which is the period narrow path period. So, I'm sorry, the period, path period, narrow period, the narrow path, the narrow path. Yeah, it's a lot of periods in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, instagram makes you do all this, this weird stuff. But yeah, hit me up on there. I post a lot of stuff too. Like I'll post old big dope seizures from when I was on that. I saw those pictures. Yeah, I'll post majors, uh, narcotic seizures and stuff like that and then just kind of put my story in there so and just reach out to me on there and yeah, but I was doing that before I, while I was still a cop. I was doing that, you know, helping out other cops get in shape and yeah, and it was cool watching that, you know, because now they're there's their uniforms loose on them and you can see their confidence come back.
Speaker 2:Yeah yep, and I think a lot of people just think that it's like something they can't do or unattainable. You know it's not man. If I can do it, then anybody can do it. A couple little change, adjustments to your diet, and you're good. I agree, dude 100, that's all it is so cool man.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to thank you, dude, for making the trip out here and sharing your experience, bro, I learned a lot, dude. I learned a lot about being a cop yeah, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:I'll come back, man, I appreciate you having me man we'll do a round two, man. Yeah, we'll make the next one be the major narco version. Cool for sure, he's there for sure hell yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, there you guys have it, folks. Another banger for you guys. If you like what you saw, make sure you hit that subscribe button. Love you guys, keep pushing forward fold. Thank you.
