From Baghdad Streets To Healing First Responders

We trace a Muslim infantryman’s path from the Iraq surge and a life at a Baghdad outpost to a long run in New Jersey law enforcement, a brutal mental health spiral, and a mission to fix how first responders get help. Combat detail, identity strain, and leadership failures collide with practical answers that save lives.

• growing up Muslim near NYC and the post‑9/11 backlash
• enlisting, Fort Riley train‑up, and surge deployment
• Baghdad patrols, EFPs, rockets, and JSS life
• leadership that leads from the front and why it matters
• intelligence work, a CIA twist, and a midnight extraction
• the moral fog of war and grief for a fallen cousin
• coming home to county jail work and court duty
• organizational stress in policing and weakened mentorship
• a suicide attempt, failed starts, and real treatment
• building a fast, discreet pipeline for first responder care
• licensing, stigma, and what leaders must change now

Sign up at HectorBravoshow.com to watch explicit, uncensored, never before seen prison footage

Transcript

Meet The Guest: Muslim Infantryman

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Hector Bravo on chaos is now in session. Welcome back to our channels, Warriors. We are still growing as we bullhead through season two. Another special guest man flew all the way from New Jersey here in San Diego. A former army infantryman. My favorite type of people. He was in the surge, which was when George Bush, I believe. Yeah. Packed he packed Iraq full of troops from the year 2006 to 2008. I believe the surge was. We have none other than Tamar. What up, dude? What's up, brother? How are you? Good, man. So you mentioned right before we started filming that you don't do flight, so you don't like flying.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

No, dude. I don't know, man. Ever since I came home from Iraq, um flew back home uh home to the Middle East to visit some family and stuff, and uh it was just a different feeling. Like I don't know what it was.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

The turbulence? Yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

I mean, any bump in the air. I'm like shitting a brick, dude. It's fucking terrible. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Okay. Um you mentioned to me you were the only Muslim soldier in your unit.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Yes, I was the only one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15

Yep. With that being said, where were you born and where did you grow up in?

SPEAKER_02 1:19

So I was born in Wayne, New Jersey. Okay. Uh grew up in uh Passe County, uh in the township of Halden. Uh grew up there.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Uh is that a Muslim community?

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Uh, for the most part, there's a there's a lot of us. Yeah. There's a lot of us. I mean, my high school was I'd say in the 30 or 40 percent of uh Muslim students. I mean, it's a decent amount.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

That's up there.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

Is it so much so that they incorporate that into the studies or no?

SPEAKER_02 1:47

No, it was it wasn't uh how it is now. Like it's in today's day, like we're incorporating everything under the sun. Uh it was just regular English, regular history, regular everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Yeah, now you can pick whether you want to be a boy, girl, anything goes lamp, whatever, true. Uh Jersey. Did you go? Did you move from there or you stayed there?

SPEAKER_02 2:08

No, man. I was in Jersey my whole life, um, except for when I was uh in the army, I was stationed out Fort Riley. How old are you? Uh 39.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

I look like I'm 28.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

You do look young as fuck, dude. How do you do it? It's the A-Rab blood, dog.

SPEAKER_03 2:25

It has to be something, man. Uh the falafels. Yeah, yeah. Almost. So we're the same age. 9-11 hit.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

Right? Well, that was a major turning point in all of our lives.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Yeah, yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

You remember where you were and what went through your head at that time?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

I was in the library in my high school as a sophomore.

SPEAKER_04 2:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Uh, shortly after the towers got hit, they let us out of school. And in my town, there's like a little, there's a little hill uh where I grew up, where you you can see the city skyline. And I actually like I got to see the towers uh uh kind of smoking uh when that happened. Um again, I was a sophomore in high school. I I only lived, I grew up 20 minutes away from Manhattan with no traffic. Like I can get there, it's like an 11-mile drive. It wasn't it's not far at all. So I mean, we we saw it was just plain as day in the uh in the city skyline. Because what's that airport right there? Newark? Yeah, you got Newark.

SPEAKER_03 3:27

You live by that area? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Okay. Yeah. So Newark, Patterson, Hailden, Wayne, these kind of bigger towns, you know, then you got Hoboken, Edgewater, Jersey City. Those are all neighboring to Manhattan.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

Dude, I've never talked to anybody that was like could see the skyline from like your vantage point.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Oh no, dude, you go right up uh so anyone that watches this from Jersey will know where morningside flowers is. If you go up that hill, city skyline is directly in front of you. You can't miss it.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

You actually saw like the billowing smoke? Yeah. Yeah. Dude, at that time, as a sophomore, what went through your head? Were you confused? Did you not even know what was going on?

SPEAKER_02 4:07

I was confused. Um, I started grass getting an understanding to it when uh you know people started to not like Muslims. That's when I yeah, because like what when I I mean, dude, I wasn't exposed to terrorism as a as a fucking juvenile, you know, as a teenager. So when that happened, that was my first like real exposure to like fucking Arab.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Now, do you recall how soon after that blowback came from when the towers went down to you started seeing oh dude, it was immediate.

9/11, Backlash, And Identity

SPEAKER_02 4:40

No way, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was pretty quick. Uh, I remember uh I used to walk home from high school after football practice, right? So it's about a mile walk, nothing crazy. And um, you know, I was like, I I know everybody in my neighborhood. Like I grew up there and I got my ass kicked walking home one day by three dudes that I knew. Yeah, I got jumped uh for no reason other than what I believe to be because of my uh my background. And uh and then from there it just it just became comments and weird looks and all that shit. But it wasn't just for me, it was it was essentially the whole community. Like where where I grew up is such a melting pot of different cultures. I mean, you go to City of Patterson, the Dominicans got their own area, the Mexicans got their own area, um the Bengalis got their own area. I mean, it's very diverse. You wouldn't expect uh certain actions like that, but again, it's 2001, you know, coming up on 24, 25 years since this happened. So there wasn't there wasn't too much education, you know.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

Dude, I'm shocked as you're telling me this. Like I would have never known that people endured that shortly after 9-11, dude.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Yeah, no, man. Listen, there's stories out there of like some hijabi women, you know, getting harassed in the streets and all that. Listen, I get it, bro. I get it. If you're a freedom-loving dude, man, and someone comes and fucks your place up, you know, you're gonna talk shit. But what what what's what's like kind of off-putting is the fact that where we live is so diverse. If this shit happened in Kansas, I'd be like, all right, bro. Like, I get it. It's Kansas is all a bunch of country, country fed Arkansas. Yeah, yeah, especially Arkansas, Alabama, yeah, the cousin areas.

SPEAKER_03 6:39

Right. So did you do the ring finger or the fucking finger? Or both?

SPEAKER_02 6:45

So, but Jersey's uh, you know, it's it just sucks because there's like I said, there's so many different cultures out there, dude.

SPEAKER_03 6:53

That's I'm sorry that you hear that, bro, but I'm glad that you're saying it because uh one of the things I like that the crowd takes away is education, bro. Yeah, so they know not to like fucking stereotype people right off the top because I'm guilty of stereotyping, especially suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder when I left Iraq. When did the idea of joining the United States military j pop in your head?

SPEAKER_02 7:17

I wasn't exactly the uh model student, son, boyfriend, nothing growing up. I was a total turd, dude.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

Defined turd, man. Ditching school, drinking beer, yeah, ditching school.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

I didn't so I wasn't, I was never a drug guy, ever, thank God. Uh, but yeah, ditching school, I mean, my senior year, dude, I graduated like a one, one point something. Terrible. Um, I just wasn't on the right path, wasn't on the right track. Starting to like get in trouble, you know, cops bringing me home, cops calling my parents. And then um, you know, my dad had a conversation with me, and he's like, dude, you got you gotta do something. You know, I was the kid, my freshman year, I swear to god, bro. First day of school, you know, you remember that movie Animal House with Belushi? He had the shirt college. Right. I wore a shirt that said community college. Okay. Like I was a Juco bound fucking yeah, yeah, I was a total turd growing up. Total turd.

SPEAKER_03 8:15

It's funny that your dad's like, hey, you gotta do something, man, because that's totally typical.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

He didn't even give me much time though. Like, can you give me time to get in trouble? Like, he snapped he snapped me out of it right away. So I went down to Patterson, uh Patterson, New Jersey on Main Street, and uh uh first class Serrano, who's now uh he's an ICE, he works for, I think he works for Homeland Security in ICE. Um he's the one that recruited me, 82nd airborne guy.

SPEAKER_03 8:40

But did you go straight to the Army? Did you know you wanted to go Army?

SPEAKER_02 8:44

So I I have family that were Army. So my one cousin uh was 10th Mountain, retired NYPD detective. Oh shit. Yeah, he was uh he was a 10th mountain guy, but he was a Charlie though.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

Yeah, grunt's a grunt, but I hear you.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

But he he calls it smart infantry.

SPEAKER_03 8:58

Well, I hear that too. But you don't even get to pick in basic.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

No, no, no. Yeah, no, you just get steam uh streamlined wherever. Right. But uh yeah, so I had family in the military. My uncle served. Um, I had another cousin that's from Cali from uh uh I forget what what city it was in California, but he was KIA'd uh in Iraq. Uh he was 25th ID with 227 infantry. Your cousin? Yeah from California.

SPEAKER_03 9:24

Yeah, he was killed in action.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yeah, 2006, October 3rd.

SPEAKER_03 9:29

25th Infantry out of uh Hawaii or Schofield, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Fuck, dude. Yeah, staff sergeant Daniel Ishak. Yeah, he was killed in Iraq uh 06. Yeah. So um he was like my mentor, man. He when I was kind of in that that like uh that depth phase, you know, uh he like was on leave one day and he like ran me into the mud and beat the gr beat the crap out of me.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Damp, delayed entry program, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you enlisted at what age of what year in high school?

SPEAKER_02 9:59

I enlisted one month after my 18th birthday. Okay, or I mean my 19th birthday. So I joined September 25th, 2005, and I left October 13th. So I was like two weeks, dude.

SPEAKER_03 10:14

Damn, dude.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

Yeah, bro. Trajectory was fast.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

Now, you said you graduated with a 1.0 GPA. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you didn't score high on the ASVAB or did you?

SPEAKER_02 10:24

I did.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

I did, dude. I was open to every job.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

Yeah, yeah, bro.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

I I was in a I was in the mid-70s. I don't remember exactly.

SPEAKER_03 10:31

I got a 39, man. Yeah. So a lot of people talk shit and say only dumb motherfuckers go to the infantry. Clearly, you scored high. Yeah, yeah, no, I did. What drew what made you choose infantry?

SPEAKER_02 10:41

So my cousin I just told you about that was NYPD.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

I wanted to be an MP. Right?

SPEAKER_04 10:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

This is before I knew, this is before I knew the shit. Right. So I wanted to be an MP, and he had just come home from Afghanistan. And I was like, yo, dude, I joined the army, and he's like, fucking like, what are you gonna be an MP for? And you know, told me to lay to land, and I immediately switched to 11 Bravo. So that was like uh that was the turning point for me when he came back from Afghanistan.

SPEAKER_03 11:12

So 05, we were already in both both countries.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Yeah, Afghanistan 01, uh Iraq March 03.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

Yes, yeah. Did you ever recall watching it on TV prior to you going?

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Oh yeah, dude. Yeah, absolutely. Uh what was the operation? I forget what the operation was called when when they initially invaded Baghdad.

SPEAKER_03 11:31

Shock and awe.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Shock in awe. Yeah, shocking awe.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

March 2003.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Yeah, dude. I remember the first time it was like ever televised uh an invasion of a war, uh, invasion of a country.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Crazy. Correct. And then uh they captured Saddam. That was pretty big.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yeah, they so they captured Saddam, dude, in December. I want to say December of 06. No, no, no. Oh no, that's when they executed him. They executed him December of 2006. We deployed in March, uh March or February of 2007 is like right after they had executed him. So Baghdad was hot, boy. We're gonna get there.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

We're gonna get there, bro. We're gonna get there because it was actually like Iraq went through its phases. Yes, the invasion, OIF two, and OI, and then the surge, yeah, followed by whatever happened.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Can't forget about Fallujah and Ramadi, though. Fallujah Ramadi.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

OIF 4. Yeah. Or OIF 2, I mean 2004.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

Yeah. So what unit were you in in basic training?

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Echo 258. The law the House of Pain? House of Pain, yeah. Right, bro. Right outside uh off it off of Sand Hill, I guess. It was like literally the last battalion before uh when you when when you were going out to ruck out to the field.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

What did you think of the initial training environment?

SPEAKER_02 12:52

It was foreign. It's totally foreign to me. I've never been through anything like that. I'm from a city boy, dude. Like I'm not I'm living with a bunch of country motherfuckers from all over, you know, all over the place. I I'm hearing accents for the first time. You know, it's I'm seeing dudes that like from from different places all over the country. So everything was brand new. But I immersed myself in it, man. I loved every second of being an infantryman, dude. It was the best.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

Uh did you go during the time period? Like what month did you get there?

SPEAKER_02 13:24

I got there October of 05.

SPEAKER_03 13:26

Okay, that's not when they send you home for Christmas, or it is.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

It is, yeah. I had that, I had that break.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

Wow. How is that? So they send you home for Christmas.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Terrible, bro. Terrible, terrible.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

I couldn't imagine doing that, bro. Bro, I I never in a million years thought like I'd get a break in boot camp. Right. But I did, and it was the worst because, like, you know, from September to December, I'm getting my ass whooped every day, dude. And they're like, all right, bro, go home. Like, wait, oh fuck. And as I I come back, I still got like six weeks left. Right. So those six weeks was torture because they knew we were all out fucking off drinking, hanging out, eating like shit. Eating like shit, fucking, yeah, it was terrible. And then the uh the the worst part was the piss test when we came back. They actually had a you guys piss test? They piss tested us when we as soon as we got back from from the airport. We went to uh you know the you know the air where the four where we form up, yeah, and uh dropped trial, dude. That's a trip.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

I would have not even thought that they would. I wouldn't have thought they were trying to get as much people through the door as possible.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Hell no, bro. They piss tested us, and I think like four dudes got kicked out. Weird, dude. Yeah, yeah. Guys going home doing shit they shouldn't be doing. Correct. Yeah, you know how it is. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 14:40

Uh as the time you're going through basic man, fucking house of pain 258. Are your drill sergeants combat veterans? Are they telling you, like, hey, you're about to fucking go overseas?

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Dude, I had uh Staff Sergeant Chinowski. Okay, some like six foot four Polish dude with a psychopath, bro. And then I had this like five foot five dude from Guam, Sarn First Class LaRope. He was there, he was in Desert Storm. Okay, so homeboy had CIBs long before we even thought about him. Right. And uh he was another unhinged psychopath, man. Like, you know, this is they were they were still like beating us up a little bit. It was starting to die down, you know. We weren't getting no little push cards for the phones and shit, but I hear you. Yeah, dude, they were uh they were rough, man.

SPEAKER_03 15:26

No, but it's great. It is, it is. It's great, man.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Builds character.

SPEAKER_03 15:30

It builds character, dude. I use that same terminology.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Yeah, it builds character, man.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

So you're a fucking hard-hitting fucking grunt. Yeah. You did you go home for hometown recruiting or did you go deep uh to your unit right away?

SPEAKER_02 15:46

No, I went uh I went to no, I went straight to my unit. No, I didn't get to go.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

Which was where?

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Fort Riley, Kansas. First Infantry Division, first 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kansas. I was in 128 infantry, uh, black lines. Well, are they mechanized? No, we were the only light infantry brigade in the division.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

I never had heard of a 1st infantry division, light infantry, bro.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Dude, let me tell you something. When I talked to other veterans and I explained to them that I was light, okay, they don't fucking believe it. I'm like, Google that shit, dude. We were a light infantry unit. We were the only ones in the division that were light infantry. Well, 118 and all these other units, they were all down the street. They got Bradley's tanks, everything all over the place. We just had rucksacks.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

For those that don't know, it's anything but light infantry, correct?

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:45

You're you're humping everything.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

Everything. It's terrible. It's a good time, though. You're at your boys, but yeah, it sucks.

SPEAKER_03 16:51

Bro, how much marching were you guys doing? Like how much fucking rucking? Were you guys rucking to the range?

SPEAKER_02 16:56

We were rucking everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 16:57

Everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Everywhere you can think of. We had this battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Pat Frank, who's now a three-star general. Okay. Um, he didn't believe in uh transportation to the range, transportation to the field, none of that.

SPEAKER_03 17:11

So these fucking dude, where are we how much miles are we talking from point A to point B to point A?

SPEAKER_02 17:16

So if you go if you go over the hills and plains of Kansas, okay, right, which it's like this, it's three miles. But you got an 80-pound sack on, and it's terrible. And if you're gonna do it, if you're gonna go tank trails, it's anywhere from eight to twelve. So pick your poison. You want to go three miles, you're gonna be miserable. You want to go 10, 12, you're gonna be miserable. Colonel Frank didn't give a fuck, dude. We're gonna be the best battalion in Baghdad.

SPEAKER_03 17:43

And what about your uh your like your field exercises where you would spend numerous weeks or something out in the field?

SPEAKER_02 17:50

There's you know, it's it's funny you bring this up, dude. There's one particular FTX that I will never forget for the rest of my life. Uh it was called NAIs, right? Known areas of interest, right? Okay. I don't know why it's not K A I or whatever, but anyways, so it's NAI 1, 2, and 3, right? So we rucked out there, so we get to point one. Point two is like five miles away. From point two to point three, it's another four, maybe it was a little bit less, three and a half to four. But to get to point one, it was like an eight-mile ruck. So we ended up rucking like 13, 14. I don't know the math right now, but it was some absurd number. And uh they're like, listen, you guys are good, you're gonna have trans on the way back, you're straight. We ain't have shit, dude. So they gave us an option. You guys want to march it back three miles up and down the hills, or you guys want to go tank trails? We're like, fuck it. Let's just three miles and let's just get it over with.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

You gotta do the three miles.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

We did the three miles, bro. Three miles is like you look at an infantry unit like fucking three miles ain't shit. Did it break you guys off? Bro, it broke everyone off. Wow, dude. Yeah, man. Everyone was hurting.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

It's Kansas is I don't fucking think I've ever been there, bro. What is it? Like hilly terrain?

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Everything is hills, terrains, mountains. I mean, you name it, dude. And winter is winter. Summer is summer.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

How cold are the winters?

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Brutal. Oh, fucking brutal. Yeah, negatives.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Never knew that.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

Oh, yeah. Yeah, you you can you can Google Fort Riley shit, man. It'll come up. It's miserable.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

So from the time that you hit your unit in Fort Riley, how long were you there until you shipped out to Baghdad?

SPEAKER_02 19:33

So I got there in February of about a year. 12-13 months. So we had a year train up.

SPEAKER_03 19:40

What was the tempo like of the training? Were they long days?

SPEAKER_02 19:44

So we would do um four to eight day fleet field exercises, come back for a short stint, turn right back around. That that was our that was our thing. We did like short spurts but consistent.

SPEAKER_03 19:58

Short spurts but consistent.

Kuwait To Baghdad: First Contact

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Yeah, like you know how like some units when they get it, yeah, 30 days, whatever. We didn't do any of that except for when we went out to Fort Irwin twice, NTC. Okay. So we did that two times, once as op four, once as blue four. But it the training tempo was was fast, like quick training, you know, week or two in the field, and then come back to the rear for a week or two. We just went back and forth.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

And at this time, what type of training were you guys doing? Because when I went through basic, it was fucking Vietnam training. Yes, uh, bounding through woodlines. Yeah, so yeah. Until the until the army realized, hey, we got to change our tactics.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

No, when I went when I went through basic, it was similar.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

What I went through?

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Yeah, it was similar to what you went through. There was a little bit of urban assault stuff.

SPEAKER_03 20:42

And then they went full urban assault.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

And then now, now I can only imagine. They probably got shoot houses in there now. Right. But uh, but when we when I was training at Riley, like it was it was good, man. We had it was a little bit of that Vietnam touch to it, but they still we still did um at Riley.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

Did you guys have any live firehouses?

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Not that I no, I don't think no.

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Germany did. It was sure it was fucking cool as fuck.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Yeah, I never did a live fire in a shoe. No, wait, no. Uh in NTC we did. Not at Riley, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:13

Okay. You landed in Kuwait first?

SPEAKER_02 21:15

Yeah. Camp Buring? Camp Bering? Which one? Camp Bering.

SPEAKER_03 21:20

Burin. Yeah. Okay, we were in Camp New York, middle of fucking nowhere.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Yeah, same.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

You guys were in the middle of nowhere, too? Yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Just you just stare at you like, what the fuck, bro?

SPEAKER_03 21:28

Now, when you were in Kuwait, did you guys train?

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Yeah, yeah. Trained ruck marches, PT, fucking PT. Yeah, swear to God, man. My platoon sergeant was some psycho from the from the 75th Ranger Regiment, man.

SPEAKER_03 21:41

As much as that sounds like it sucks, it's actually so beneficial, bro.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

Yeah. Yeah, because you could sit there and eat fucking dumplings all day and in the in the chat.

SPEAKER_03 21:48

Well, what I'm saying is like you need to train like that prior to going to war.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Yeah, they called it acclimation training. Correct. You know, it was it's it was, I mean, it it sucked, but we did it.

SPEAKER_03 21:59

Did you guys have orders to go to Baghdad already?

SPEAKER_02 22:02

So this was interesting, man. My parents found out I was going to I was going to Iraq before I did. So we we came back for our second cycle of NTC as Blue 4. Look, bro, we have an idea we're going, right? The surge is the surge is like, it's like right there, dude. Right. But we're tucked away in California at uh Irwin and we don't have access to shit. Right. So we get our phones back at the end, and and uh everyone's checking their shit, and people are getting calls from their wives. At that time, President Bush had announced, or someone from the DOD had announced the surge units deploying, and we were we were on that list. So and I when I called my dad, he he knew he's like, Yeah, I know, I know you're going. I'm like, all right, cool, man. I'll be home for leave soon.

SPEAKER_03 22:54

Now, when you got that, when you got the news that you were going to Iraq, how did you feel?

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Uh, I was excited, man, because I knew I was gonna be helpful. Okay, not just as an infantryman, but as someone that knows knows the culture, knows the communities, knows the people, knows the language. So for me, it was like I was I was even more jacked up to be going.

SPEAKER_03 23:17

Now, was your unit utilizing you as an asset pri prior to you deploying?

SPEAKER_02 23:22

So it's interesting. We had an interpreter in our unit. We did. Uh, we went through a couple civilian interpreters, and uh, once they experienced what an IED felt like, they're like, fuck this, I quit. And then they would just stay back in a rear and do Intel shit. So we ended up getting uh like an actual 09 Lima, like a specialist, like an E4.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

That's a trip.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Yeah, Moroccan. He's actually one of my best friends. He's like a big shot in the VA in DC now. His name's Jay. It's my boy. Um, he was with us, so he would do all the translating with the battalion commander and anybody else. Like he was very like, this dude should have been an 11 Bravo. I tell him, I tell him all the time he should have been. But a lot of the sh the stuff that I would do is, you know, whenever the our the the officers go into the little town hall meetings and all this other bullshit, I would kind of float in the background, just listening to everybody kind of talking. See who's gonna because it was a surge, man. Surge was terrible. So it was realistic to hear two elders saying, like, oh, are these IEDs implanted yet?

SPEAKER_03 24:24

You know, you're talking about in Iraq.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

In Iraq, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:28

Okay, I'm talking about like, did your unit before you got deployed know your history, know your capabilities? Oh my bad. Sorry. Did they start no? We'll get there.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:37

But uh, did they start utilize implementing your training then?

SPEAKER_02 24:41

I started being used in that regard when we were in NTC. That's when I had already been in my unit for a year. Cool. And then dudes finally like, oh shit, man. This guy. Yeah, and NTC has real role players. I've never been there, but Oh, yeah, no, they have like refugees from different Middle Eastern countries.

SPEAKER_03 25:00

What'd you do is start yelling at a motherfucker in your language? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

They're like, what the fuck, dude? You speak I look like a white boy, dude. You know, and they're like, What's dude?

SPEAKER_03 25:08

We could use this guy, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

So I I got I got I I got the attention pretty quick from from from the uppers.

SPEAKER_03 25:15

That's good, dude. Yeah, yeah. So now you were in fucking Kuwait. How did you guys how did you get your bag then?

SPEAKER_02 25:22

Uh we Humvee or no, we took a C-130. So you flew in? Yeah, we flew into combat landing at BIOP and then Humvee straight to the file.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

So at that point, fucking Iraq was on fire, bro.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Yeah, it was I mean, it was from the rip, literally from the rip, like on left seat, right seat rides, it was on and popping.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

When you where walk me through the first moments you get, you land, you get convoyed somewhere. What what FOB camp did you ultimately end up at?

SPEAKER_02 25:57

So we landed in Biop. From there, obviously, uh my battalion, actually, my whole brigade ended up at FOB Falcon, okay, which is just south of um Route Irish. So from there, like we had checkpoint 543. So you know, if you look at a map of Baghdad, there's like a half circle in the middle of the city. So we had that whole half circle and everything south. It was the Rashid district, northwest Rashid. And then right on the outside of uh where by like where Bayop is, is where our AO ended. So we were in a pretty pr we were pretty we're in a pretty like rough section because Route Irish, everything south of Right Irish Route Irish was Shia Muslims, which was J. Shal Mahdi, and everything north of Route Irish was Al Qaeda. Sunni.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

We were south. Oh, you guys were south.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

So we had the Shia Muslims, and they're they're gangster.

SPEAKER_03 26:52

Who was that? Was that Mukhtar al-Sadir?

EFPs, Route Irish, And Daily Patrols

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Mukhtar al-Sadr, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

Where was Haifa Street in relation to all this?

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Haifa Street was not in my AO. Okay, yeah, no.

SPEAKER_03 27:00

But Mukhtar Al-Sadir and all those other guys were operating in your AO.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, they had the they call them jam special groups, like special groups. Wow. Is what they called them. Uh they had like their own, like I I guess the Iraqi equivalent, but I would say less than a Ranger Regiment.

SPEAKER_03 27:20

So they weren't your just regular ragtag fucking insurgents. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

I mean no.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

These motherfuckers were with it.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Yeah, they were with it. Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

So talk to me about your right seat, left seat. Who did you what unit did you guys replace?

SPEAKER_02 27:33

We didn't replace a unit. We we inserted. So we we we we got attached to first cavalry. Okay, and they kind of showed us a little bit of what's going on in the A.O. And then we just took over to How long had they been in the AO? Uh, wanna say maybe it was like six months. They weren't there that much longer than us.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

But were they there long enough to get fucked up or see some shit?

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone did. Yeah, yeah, dude. I mean, uh, we got there March, we had our first our I it was I feel I want to say end of March, kind of beginning of April's we lost our first three guys almost immediately uh on an IED strike on Route Irish. So it was uh for us, we had uh we had to transition very much.

SPEAKER_03 28:19

Yeah, yeah. You were on that patrol?

SPEAKER_02 28:20

I wasn't on that patrol. I responded my my platoon responded to it.

SPEAKER_03 28:24

What vehicles were what type of vehicles were you guys' units using?

SPEAKER_02 28:27

We had just gotten those new up armored Humvees.

SPEAKER_03 28:36

Heavy turret heavy duty glass turret, like a huge turret.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

The the the glass was super thick and heavy, and yeah, it was it was like the newer version of the Humvees for that era.

SPEAKER_03 28:48

Eventually, will EF would EFPs creep into your guys'?

SPEAKER_02 28:51

EFPs were with us from the start. From the fucking start, dude.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

So could you describe to the crowd what's the difference between an IED improvised explosive device and uh EFP?

SPEAKER_02 29:00

So an IED traditionally is like a 155 round or any type of shitty Soviet projectile that they've stolen from Kuwait or something. It's always it's always like some type of like mortar-looking uh munition. Artillery round. Yeah, artillery round or whatever. So you know, they they'll tie them up, put them together, daisy chain them or whoever, or they you know, they started getting slick. Remember the old CD players, the IRs?

SPEAKER_03 29:23

I didn't see it with a CD player.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Yeah, it was like they the little IR uh like.

SPEAKER_03 29:27

We had the garage door openers, yeah. Uh IRs.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

Okay, so it stuff like that would detonate deep buried IEDs, but the survivability rate on those things was was better than what we were introduced to with the EFPs. So the easiest way to describe an EFP is you take like a chalk full of nuts can, right? That circular uh circular can, stuff it with HME, and then you put like a cone, like a wide cone cylinder type of thing to cover it. And what happens is uh they do multiple arrays of them. So it'll Be like four, three, two, one, and now you're getting hit with essentially four, three, two. What's that? Seven, seven or eight uh EFPs in one shot.

SPEAKER_03 30:08

Damn, dude.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

And these things, man, so they come in, they look like a cone, right? And then when they detonate, they come outwards. So it's it's it's a projectile and it slices through our vehicles like nothing.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

It was slicing through uh M1 Abrams, I heard tanks. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Dude, even like reactive armor wasn't really working that well against it. Like it'll fuck you up. And uh those things are terrible, man. They're the it's probably their most, it's it is their most effective weapon. And then I obviously once that then you got secondary, right? RPGs or small arms fire. I mean, it wasn't it wasn't easy.

SPEAKER_03 30:46

Hey Warriors, if you haven't already signed up for our all new website, HectorBravoshow.com, make sure you sign up at the link below, HectorBravoshow.com to watch explicit, uncensored, never before seen prison footage. With that, love you, keep pushing forward.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

They did, they did, but it it was more the v-bids came from the Sunnis with Al Qaeda.

SPEAKER_04 31:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

So they would they would just drive into like markets where all the Shias were shopping and trying to get food and shit, yeah, and just and just detonate.

SPEAKER_03 31:20

I don't know why, but I'm getting anxiety talking about all these fucking um explosives, bro.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Yeah, yeah, man. It's it's scary, dude. Scary shit.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

So um you said you guys lost three platoon members in immediately.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

No, three unit members.

SPEAKER_03 31:39

Three unit members immediately. And then, and then how did the tempo pick up from there? And what were you guys doing? Were you guys doing route patrol raids at night?

SPEAKER_02 31:47

Yeah, so we were doing we were doing just basic combat patrols during the day, just trying to, you know how it is, man, meet and greet, kiss, kiss the baby, say hello, give them soccer balls, and try to hope we get some intel from somebody. That's something that's credible. Because at that time, there was already a target list that's been established, right? You're always getting intel from other units. Um, so we would just do our best to try to execute on those missions, right? At nighttime, we would we would, you know, do the raids and the missions and stuff as they came. Uh but for the most part, primarily, man, we were just literally on patrol every single day. Every day.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

And you guys patrol at night also?

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. We patrol at night, we patrol during the day. I was in our uh after NTC, I got called in by my battalion commander and battalion CSM, and they asked me to be in a scout platoon. So I'm like, fuck yeah, dude. Did you? Yeah, I hell hell yeah. I took it right away. But unbeknownst to me, the scout platoon was gonna get divvied up as PSD for the battalion for six and seven.

SPEAKER_04 32:50

Okay, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

And then the other guys were gonna be doing recon missions.

SPEAKER_04 32:54

So so okay.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Yeah, so half of our platoon was with the CSM and the BC, right, and then the other half was doing their their they were doing their thing on their own.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

Which half were you on?

SPEAKER_02 33:05

I was on the PSD side.

SPEAKER_03 33:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

So, which was I thought was gonna suck. Because I didn't know how big the balls were that much.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

You thought it was gonna suck because you thought you weren't gonna get action.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Oh, yeah, I was terrified of not getting action.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Correct. But I real quick, elaborate on that, man. Because maybe somebody wouldn't understand why the fuck would any man or young man want to face death.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

Well, well, we joined the greatest fraternity in the world, dude. We joined the infantry. Fucking EIB. You know what I mean? I want my CIB, I want the driver's license. And I got scared that I wasn't gonna get it. And that era of like blanket awards for platoons, that shit came to an end because people were getting exposed.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

Oh, it did? Yeah, I didn't realize that.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

So, my you know, my unit, like, I'm I'm like, listen, man, I don't want no one to ever get hurt, but we gotta earn our stripes, dude. We can't go backstayside without without our CIB.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

So you so you your motivating factor was your combat infantry badge.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_03 34:10

Yeah, absolutely. 100% I'm not knocking you, bro, because we all wanted this.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

Yeah, we all wanted everybody.

SPEAKER_03 34:15

You know, I didn't even know what one was until like halfway through basic when we realized there was something on our drill sergeant's fucking.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And then when they explained it, you're like, oh, I gotta get in that club. That's a nice club to be in.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

Right?

SPEAKER_02 34:28

Yeah, it's the best. I gotta tattoo down my whole forearm.

SPEAKER_03 34:31

Oh, fuck yeah, bro. I got my shit back here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, dude. Hell yeah. Yeah. My buddy Hinks has one tattooed too. Fuck yeah, dude. Yeah. So uh shit. So uh here you are getting attached to the command sergeant major and the battalion commander, and you're thinking, oh man, I'm just gonna be fucking riding around with these guys all day.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Yeah, that's what I thought.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

Well, what did it turn out to be?

SPEAKER_02 34:55

They're psychopaths.

SPEAKER_03 34:56

They were, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

One was from the 101st, the battalion commander from the 101st.

SPEAKER_03 35:00

Former combat infantry, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

They both were, both of them. And my sergeant major, I won it, he came from Alaska. He was a big Alaska guy. And you know, those guys, they got ran through the mud with deployments. So they were very seasoned leaders. And in the beginning, I was like a little nervous being around a battalion commander. You know, I'm a I'm fucking E3, bro. Yeah, and I have a skill set that nobody in my in my platoon has, and but I don't want to use it. I don't want to be a fucking interpreter.

SPEAKER_03 35:32

I hear you.

SPEAKER_02 35:32

You know, like I I went to Fort Benning. I didn't go to wherever they went, right? These other guys. So that's what I was afraid of. And thankfully, like he was a good enough boss to let me do my thing, let me be an infantryman. But it's just, hey man, just keep your ears open.

SPEAKER_03 35:50

Now, was he now when you say that? Were you able to get detached and go out on other patrols if you chose to?

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Yeah, I got used by a couple other units. So you were? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:58

So you were getting yours. You were like, okay, you can't.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Oh, yeah, it that actually ended up being the best thing that could have happened.

SPEAKER_03 36:02

I bet, dude. Yeah, yeah. I bet being you being around those types of leaders, because those type of leaders, I'm sure you'd agree, are rare.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:10

Almost non-existent in 2025.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

100%. And he is the I mean, I'm still in contact with him till today.

SPEAKER_03 36:16

What are some leadership uh leadership not abilities, but like qualities that you've seen from him?

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Responsiveness, man, acknowledgement, care. He put himself before everybody. Like he did the man wouldn't sleep. It was the scariest thing. Like I I almost thought he was a zombie, dude. Like he the guy would not sleep. He's on his emails when he's back in the rear, constantly trying to uh see you know, you know, connect with the other units that are out there. Uh just he cared so much. And anytime anybody got wounded or anyone was killed in action, he made it a point like every single time to be there. If we had a let's just say our alpha company got hit or something, we're going. If Bravo, if Bravo got hit, we're going. You know, any like he he didn't listen on the radio and give direction on the radio, he was on the ground. I mean, I've been in gunfights with him where he's literally right next to me, and my job is to protect him as his PSO, right? But we're both slinging lead, dude. And he's a fucking lieutenant colonel, right? Like, dude, that's hard as fuck, yeah, man, bro. Uh, these those type of leaders, man, they're like the patent of this generation, dude. The MacArthur's. Like, they're he's a legend, bro. Legend.

SPEAKER_03 37:46

Was he smart about going out? I mean, well, he wasn't just recklessly trying to go out and get you into it.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Wasn't reckless, super calculated, knew what to do, when to do it. Like, very on point. And his his battlefield rhythm was insane.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

What would the terrain look like? Like neighborhoods or yeah, it was neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

I mean, you had your mahalas, right? Like the the whatever, the sand style concrete that they would use their houses in. But we also had giant apartment complexes as well.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

No way.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Yeah, we were in like, you know, we were in the city. So we had the apartments. We had a bunch of neighborhoods with regular houses. Uh Saddam's former generals, like all the generals, like uh their area where they lived, like their quarters, like all castles and shit was in our area, but totally blown out. But yeah, we had it, it was a nice mixture. Like behind our compound was like a whole mess of apartment complexes. In front of our compound was all neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

From your compound, did you guys ever take like direct fire from the neighboring neighborhoods? Or were they always just out on patrol?

SPEAKER_02 38:53

No, no, no. We would get mortared, we'd get rocketed, they would uh shoot at our towers. Um we've been in we had one gunfight in particular, man, where it was like from sunup to sundown. Like it just depends what day of the week it is and how much ammo they got. If they're if they're if they're about it, they're gonna line up in different windows in all the neighborhoods and they're gonna start shooting at us. That's just that's just what they did. Did you guys ever go to the point of origin for the mortars that they would launch on you guys to try to find we would do we'd find the skids, we'd find all that shit, but they're they're gone by then. Absolutely, you know what I mean? Like you're not gonna you're not gonna find these guys, right? You know? You you you you'll walk around and knock on some doors, like, hey, did you guys hear us? They're like, Yeah, yeah. But they were they were gone so fast. All right, bro. All right, Sadiqi, take care.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Alibaba, no sila, no, sila. No, mista, no, mister. You see Sila? No, Silah. Yeah, no sla, no sla.

SPEAKER_03 39:52

So uh, so when you said you would go out and they would be uh with the elders, you said you would overhear them talking about IDs or something?

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Yeah, so uh big part of my job when I was rolling with the BC was you know, the interpreter would do his thing, and I would try to gather intel on the other side, right? Just walking around acting like I was some dumb Jundy, right? Standing there pulling security, but I'm listening to all the side conversations. And what kind of stuff would you hear? Oh, dude, they would talk so much shit about us. Like like what, bro? Oh, they'd make fun of us, look at these guys, look at this guy. Oh, yeah, they just dude, it's the same shit that we would do if someone was in our country and they didn't know our language. Like, fuck this guy, dude. You know, but that's what they would do. And there was other, there wasn't any particular instance where like there was an there was something waiting for us when we left. There was just a lot of them saying, like, if I ever get a chance to kill you, I'm gonna do it. It's just shit talk with their buddies. That's really essentially what it was. But when I would hear that, I'd snatch them the fuck up and take him out of the room. So I had like like he gave me fair, like fair game. You hear something, pull him out, and then he would come out and and talk to him.

SPEAKER_03 41:03

Now Iraq was a very tricky place, bro. It was like chasing ghosts. You didn't know who the fuck was who.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

No.

SPEAKER_03 41:08

You did you guys have Iraqi police, Iraqi National Guard? Were some of those guys in the house that were just talking trash? Were some of them bad dudes?

SPEAKER_02 41:16

No, they were the just the local elders. Okay, yeah, because the the IPs, yeah. So you had the Iraqi police and national police, then you had the Iraqi army, and the Iraqi army was there was like the Kurdish army, then the Shia army, then the Sunni army. There were so many branches of of defense, or if you want to call it that, um, all over the place, man. But for the first half little more than half of my deployment, we had the Kurds with us.

SPEAKER_03 41:42

Interesting.

JSS Life Under Fire

SPEAKER_02 41:43

Thank God. Thank God, bro. Because we ended up getting the Shias after, and they were just disasters. Oh, I feel you. Yeah, man, they're the fucking worst, soldier-wise. Um, half of them are Jay Shal Mahdi to begin with. Right. Um, but working with the Kurds was great because they're not Arabs, they're Kurds, they're Kurdish. So they have a different mentality, they got a different way of thinking, speaking, everything.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

I'm just surprised that there was Kurds that far down south.

SPEAKER_02 42:11

Well, at that point, they had integrated the militaries because the Kurds were originally the Peshmerga.

SPEAKER_04 42:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

So they, you know, that that was they don't had that like Aladdin style uniform with the baggy pants and shit. Now they're wearing DCUs. You know what I mean? So they looked like they looked like soldiers, but dude, they were incredible to work with. They were the best partner that we could have had in that in that era.

SPEAKER_03 42:34

What were some fucking like wild or sketchy moments that you encounter where you're like, holy shit?

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Well, there's the so like I never really spoke Arabic out in the streets, but I had a I had we we used to give out these like little paper business cards with our with a with our cell phone number on it if they want to pass intel. And we would give, I mean, dude, everyone in Northwest Rashid had one of those. Everybody. So the phone would be ringing like crazy. Oh, this guy's got this, this guy's got that. Um, there was a a period of time where um they were stealing chlorine from like the pools.

SPEAKER_03 43:12

Who was stealing chlorine? The insurgents?

SPEAKER_02 43:14

The insurgency, yeah. So primarily, well, and my AO was primarily J. Shaw Mahdi. So they were stealing the chlorine, but what they were doing was they were attaching chlorine to the IEDs. Of course. So you're burning and drowning at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 43:24

Like chlorine bombs.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Yeah, yeah. It was fucking terrible. And uh I remember there was there's the at that time during that this whole little chlorine phase, um, the guy that told us about the chlorine was very uh he was very involved with several different he's your typical snitch fucking rat fuck, right?

SPEAKER_03 43:47

Got you. Typical tracking.

SPEAKER_02 43:48

Yeah. There was an Iraqi army soldier, Kurdish kid, that got kidnapped uh when we're in Baghdad. Uh he tried to go to a brothel, right? Okay. And he gets snatched up by jam and they take him. So I'm calling our our sources that I know have given us like legit intel, because like when we're on our compound, I would speak in Arabic and they just didn't know it was me. Okay. Because I never spoke it really to them. I would a little bit. Certain guys that like I fucked with, I would speak Arabic with them in person, but a lot of a lot of the phone stuff, they never knew who I was. So I I called him up, the the chlorine guy. He knows me. Like, he knows I speak Arabic, he knows who I am, and everything. And I'm like, hey man, you hear anything about this like Iraqi soldier that got kidnapped or whatever? He's like, uh, I can't really talk about it. I'm like, listen, bro, it's like we're gonna have fucking drones on top, a UAV. We're gonna have UAVs on top of it. We're tracking your number right. I just talking shit.

SPEAKER_04 44:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

And um I didn't think nothing of it, he didn't give me nothing. And then like 15, 20 minutes later, the cell phone rings. I pick up in like the Arabic tone. I'm like, hello, right? Like a like, you know, and uh it's like a white dude on the line. Put your battalion commander on a phone or put your commander on the phone. I'm like, oh shit. I'm like, yeah, dog, not gonna happen. Who are you? And then you know he told me who he was, but didn't tell me like who he was. Told me his name was uh Jeremy. I'll never forget that name, Jeremy, because it scared the shit out of me. So Jeremy is speaking to me and shitting on me. I want to speak to your commander, give me your your your voIP the voiceover IP number, uh, or s the uh sippernet phone number, whatever. I gave it to him. Uh after I confirmed with my BC, I'm like, hey sir, I think I fucked up. This guy wants to speak to you. So he ends up calling. I guess I threatened this guy. Apparently, I I had given up national security. He was just trying to, I feel like he was just trying to intimidate me because I told this dude, like, hey, we're tracking you and we're gonna- Who was he? He was a Jeremy. Jeremy ended up being uh agency, he was CIA.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

No fucking way, bro. Yeah, were you a PFC? Yeah, it was a PFC. Here you are, yeah.

unknown 45:58

Here you are.

SPEAKER_02 45:59

Responsibilities, Doc.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

Here you are threatening what I was CIA and he was a CIA snitch, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:04

100%, dude.

SPEAKER_03 46:05

I mean, Mohmer probably like, hey, fucking. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:08

He so he must have called him and was like, this guy's threatening to kill me. And dude, that's just how we talked to them back then.

SPEAKER_03 46:14

Well, that's how you buddy talk, that's how you talk to your friends.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

Yeah. So he calls my BC and he tells him, like, you know, if he's gonna be talking to people on the phone, like he shouldn't be, you know, saying what type of weapons we use or what type of assets we have. So I, you know, he didn't like yell at me. He's like, just don't do that again. I'm like, all right, Roger, sir. Too easy, right? But what was interesting, uh, he sent us an op order to go pick up this Iraqi soldier. This guy that called my cell phone knew exactly where this kidnapped Iraqi soldier was. Sent us a 10-digit grid, way out of our A.O. We can only we had to leave in the middle of the night, go pick up this kid. There was very specific, detailed instructions. If you, if you take, if you take contact, do not return contact, shit like that. Get your guy and get the fuck out.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

And we went there and it was So what do you think happened on the other end of the line? You think like Jeremy asked uh Iraq, like, hey, what the fuck is he talking about? Give him the information, give me the information.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

No, what my my my thought is this guy's very this guy, this agency guy's very well aware of this missing soldier, Iraqi soldier. Right, and it's just the government not giving a fuck.

SPEAKER_03 47:28

Correct. Just sitting on it, sitting on a fucking mission.

SPEAKER_02 47:30

Sitting on a guy that's getting his ass whooped by whoever whoever took him, and and that was it. But yo, we got him. Dude, that is fucking nuts. We took that drive and we got him. We got him, we brought him back. The Kurds took him. Did you go after on that mission? Yeah, yeah, it was my my my platoon with the battalion commander and the battalion CSP.

SPEAKER_03 47:48

Pretty sure you could write a book on just that operation alone.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

That operation alone, bro, was the most terrifying thing I've ever been on. Because it wasn't in Baghdad anymore. It was completely out of our AO.

SPEAKER_03 47:59

So far.

Kurds, Intel, And The CIA Interlude

SPEAKER_02 48:00

But it was like an hour, hour and a half drive. It was completely what direction you fucking. It was so it was southwest of Baghdad. Um, and it was like brush, real high brush. It was like a rural area, you know, legit clay huts, like not like the Baghdad huts. And uh it was it was a it was like I don't I don't know who was operating in that A. I don't know if it was Al Qaeda or Jam, but fair game. P can you see the victim? The soldier? Yeah. I'm the one that got out of the Humvee and put him in my Humvee. What was he doing? He had a bag over his head and he was bound.

SPEAKER_03 48:37

The guy that the guy that walked me through this shit, bro. This is the fucking nuts, dude. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:41

So we we we take the drive down. Okay. It's a very rural area. It's nighttime. Yeah, it's two, three in the morning. Absolutely. So it's a very rural area. We got brush coming up real high up on the Humvee. And uh Are you driving blacked out with nods? Yeah, blacked out with nods. Um, can't really see anything else. Like there's no buildings there. So we get it's just it's literally like a remote little village, right? And part of the instructions was if you take contact, do not return contact. So in my head, it's like I wonder what the thought process behind that is. Well, the thought process is probably someone in there is working with this Jeremy character, right? So, whatever, that's fine. We just want to get this guy and look good. Like correct, you know, and it you know, I talked a lot of shit. I gotta back it up.

SPEAKER_04 49:26

Right.

SPEAKER_02 49:27

So we get to like remember the point of this entire well, not one, but one of the key elements of this op was if you take contact, do not return contact. Bro, we get there. There's dudes on the roof with PKCs, guys sitting up like on crates with RPGs like leaned up against the wall. It was like uh lawless. There was no Iraqi police, there was no electricity, there was nothing. It was just a remote little section of Iraq. We get to exactly where the 10-digit grid was. I jump out of the Humvee with the interpreter and one more guy. And bro, they opened the door, they let this dude out. We fucking pat search him real quick, take his his sandbag off his head, confirmed his name, put him in a Humvee, and we left. So And these guys were literally, dude, I'm standing four feet away from an RPG that just leaned up against the wall.

SPEAKER_03 50:21

And it was I don't know what that was, bro. Like what type of government mission that was, bro.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

That was kind of the start of like where I was like, question like WMDs, like start questioning.

SPEAKER_03 50:35

Like the movie Green Zone, bro.

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Yeah, yeah. You start questioning shit, dude. And uh, you know, for me, like it's not a crazy op. You go in, it's like you're picking up a bagel and you leave. Like it wasn't nothing, there was nothing like no, it was the circumstances all around it. Yeah, exactly. Everything that built up to how we got this this kid back was he seemed grateful? Oh, yeah, dude. He was crying, he was he was happy as hell, but the Kurds whooped his ass, boy. Yeah, it's it's AWOL. So they they beat him up pretty good. Yeah, yeah, man.

SPEAKER_03 51:06

Oh, because he went to the brothel. Yeah, he was trying to get lost. Wait, talk to me about brothels. Well, did they exist?

SPEAKER_02 51:12

Nothing that I ever came across. But did they exist? In Iraq?

SPEAKER_03 51:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:17

I mean, the uh what is it, the perfume palace apparently was No, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 51:20

Where I was at, they didn't I never even heard of anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 51:23

We know that the this kid leaving to go to a brothel was like the first time I've ever heard of a brothel being even a possibility during that time, especially. Right. Um, but I know Saddam had a a palace that he would bring.

SPEAKER_03 51:38

Oh, I'm sure Saddam back in the day.

SPEAKER_02 51:39

I'm talking about when we were there, like the only time I've heard of a brothel is when this kid decided to just walk off the compound.

SPEAKER_03 51:46

And then the Kurs just beat his fucking ass.

SPEAKER_02 51:47

Yeah, they beat his ass, put him in their cell and their jail cell, the little makeshift jail cell, and then I don't know what happened to him afterwards. Yeah. I know I do know when I I we did drop off some detainees in there one time. He was missing eyebrows. They shaved his eyes, they shaved his eyebrows.

SPEAKER_03 52:02

Did you guys ever have did you ever have to do detainee guard in that facility?

SPEAKER_02 52:06

No, I would go and speak to the detainees though.

SPEAKER_03 52:09

And how did they look?

SPEAKER_02 52:10

Fucked up. Yeah, dude. These guys love fucking butt stocking motherfuckers, dude. Who, the Kurds? The Kurds, man. That's the their favorite thing to do, is just stomp you out with the butt stock of their AK.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

They had AKs? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:23

Yeah. Dude, they're shocked.

SPEAKER_03 52:25

I don't know why we're laughing, bro.

SPEAKER_02 52:27

But it's true. Because they're crazy, bro. Like, they're crazy. It listen, we take someone takes a pop shot at us, right? Three D's, right? Distance direction description. You take a pop shot at these guys, every single one of them is shooting in a 360.

SPEAKER_03 52:41

Yeah. Yeah, it's they're well that's what used to be our ROE back in the day, bro. Yeah, bro.

SPEAKER_02 52:46

Things changed for us, but not for them, apparently, man, because yeah, they were nuts, man. It was a sad day when they left us. It was a sad day, man. They were very helpful, man.

SPEAKER_03 52:56

I bet, bro.

SPEAKER_02 52:58

They would beat the intel out of you.

SPEAKER_03 53:00

Uh yeah, yeah, I'm tracking, bro. I'm tracking 100%. So, so like uh, damn, dude, that's fucking hilarious, bro. I mean, there's nothing funny about beating people up, but I I got the visual, I got the audio. It's like I'm there, bro.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

You know, those like dirty ass tiles they use there, shit. The ground's all fucked up. And like would you agree that they scream? They scream, they like too much, bro.

SPEAKER_03 53:25

They go over the top, they put a scene on sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 53:26

Yeah, the screaming is just extra.

SPEAKER_03 53:28

I'm like, not even hitting you that hard. Yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_02 53:30

Like, shut the fuck up, dude. It's like I'm slapping you, bro.

SPEAKER_03 53:36

Yeah, from what I heard. Yeah, dude, it's interesting. So what else are you guys doing, man? You guys are like fucking um, are you guys doing any route convoys?

SPEAKER_02 53:49

So we would do, we wouldn't do any route convoys. A lot, like I said, a lot of our stuff was just regular combat patrols. Obviously, we had route clearance going out there and doing their thing every day, which God bless those guys, man, because you know they they color our roads, right? Like green, red, black, whatever. So God bless those guys, man. But as far as like any type of convoys where we're like doing deliver, like none of that. Nah, man, everything was very intel gathering combat patrols. Let's find let's try to figure out a way.

SPEAKER_03 54:18

Yeah, what about civilian on civilian violence?

SPEAKER_02 54:22

Constantly. Constantly. Talk to me about that. Because it's Sunni versus Shia, right? The dividing line. Oh, I'm sorry. No, you're different. So the dividing line is Route Irish. Our our attack company was on literally Route Irish. And the Sunnis on the other side of Irish would shoot at the Shias on this side of Irish, and then we're stuck in or our attack company was stuck in the middle. So they couldn't, like, they couldn't decipher, like, shit, are they shooting at us? Are they shooting at each other? It's just a it's just a very weird while it was. We're in the middle of their civil war. Like, yeah, they want to kill us. Don't get me wrong, kill an American. Yo, yeah, 72 virgins, baby. But like, you know, uh, but with them, like who had the priority?

SPEAKER_03 55:10

Who would they rather kill the opposition or or uh an American?

SPEAKER_02 55:14

That's a great question. But if I had to guess from your perspective, being that I'm Muslim, and if I can think like them, I'd say killing an American. Really? Yeah. Because if I tell you right now, like if I grew up where my parents grew up and you know, the infidels came, like, oh bro, I'm arming up, dog. Like it's happening.

SPEAKER_03 55:32

Now, being Muslim, and fuck, bro, even me being an American, uh I think the majority of Americans now understand that first of all, that war was a bunch of bullshit, yeah, lies. Yeah, but can you see their point of view of taking arms against us the I do now? Now, now can you see that?

SPEAKER_02 55:50

Yeah, yeah, now 100%. Absolutely. Like, I look them?

SPEAKER_01 55:55

No.

SPEAKER_02 55:56

I'm not even mad at these guys. Because, man, listen, bro, I live, I live on a coast, right? So do you. So if someone's flying in or like, I got some naval ship coming, bro. I'm going to the hood, man. Let's arm up, dude. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna revolutionize against this this foreigner, you know?

SPEAKER_03 56:14

But what was your mindset when you were boots on the ground?

SPEAKER_02 56:17

When I was boots on the ground, my mindset was I have to be very particular in how I word this, because my mom might watch this, right? No, I'm just kidding. But uh, so for me it was it was very personal, not in a sense because um, you know, my family lives a four-hour drive away from Baghdad, but because my cousin was just killed there. Okay, so for me, it was like fucking game on, dude.

SPEAKER_04 56:47

Right.

SPEAKER_02 56:47

I like listen, I get I get we're in a war, but you you killed my boy, dude. Right. That was my fucking mentor. So any chance I got to to give someone the business, I gave it to them. Yeah. Without hesitation. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to. You got receipts, bro. Killed my family, bro. You know, so in that regard, yeah, like my my excitement was I get to get payback for for my cousin. That was very important for me. And then on the other hand, I also was cognizant that listen, I'm not ever gonna put my hands on on an Iraqi mom, right? But when her son is you know chopped up from a 50 cal and she's picking up his body, like that scream that she's giving is the same type of scream my mother would give.

SPEAKER_04 57:42

Absolutely.

The Midnight Extraction Op

SPEAKER_02 57:42

So for me, like a lot of that stuff was it would fuck with me while I was out there. Like it was it's nasty, bro. Like, don't get me wrong, like we're talking about the fun shit and everything. I I think I I caught um Iraq paid me back when I came home. They didn't hurt me physically when I was there, it hurt me mentally when I came home.

SPEAKER_03 58:07

When you were in Iraq, what was the most traumatic experience that you experienced?

SPEAKER_02 58:15

It's tough to that's that's tough to say, man. I I I really did turn off my brain when I went out there. Uh the the violence the the the violence part of it really never it never affected me. My issue with your violence or their violence? Any any side. My issue was like the identity part. Like I am these people, okay, but I'm with these people. Okay. That's where my trauma lies. Dang, dude.

SPEAKER_03 58:43

Can you elaborate on that?

SPEAKER_02 58:46

This is the easiest way to put it for someone to understand. I'm not white enough for the white boys, and I'm not Muslim enough for the Muslims.

SPEAKER_03 58:54

Right? I see you as a fucking American though, bro. But I understand you are a Muslim and you have a love for your religion and faith.

SPEAKER_02 59:02

Yeah, 100%. But you gotta understand, listen, these my boys are never gonna turn their back on me. Never. Never. But they might not question me, but they'll question someone else like me.

SPEAKER_03 59:14

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 59:14

When I'm with them, right? When I'm with my community, uh, you're the guy that went overseas and fought against Muslims. Right, dude. So for me, I always uh it was always a battle on where how do I fit in? You almost gotta be here's the kicker though. You are you 100%. And I'll tell a guy, I'll tell a motherfucker to fuck off, dude. Like I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 59:37

You got you got the best of both worlds, not the worst of both worlds.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

I'm starting to realize that little by little, working with my therapist, that uh I do have the best of both worlds. But it's that that's uh that's gonna be a very long process for me to kind of come to terms with because like my mom was on vacation, like summer vacation in Jordan. When I was in Iraq. Like my mom was a four-hour drive away from me. And it was like, she's right there, dude. She's right. I can literally pay one of these Iraqis 50 bucks. I'll throw throw on some garb and I'll bounce. You know, like that's my brain would go there. Obviously, I never did that, but like, dude, it's it's it's a it it it fucks with you, man. It it it really does, bro. The identity portion of of uh of you know my you my circumstance was is something that like has affected me tremendously throughout the years. Yeah and I came home in 08, you know what ultimately how long was that deployment? It was just under just under 16, just under 16 months or 15 months. 16 months? Yeah, it was like 15, 16, like in between there.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:52

Did you get an R and R?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:54

Yeah, I got an R and R I want to say four or five months in.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:59

Did you go home or to Qatar or where'd you go?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:01

I went home. I went home, quick turnaround, two weeks, came back. Um, but we were only supposed to be there for nine months. We ended up getting extended twice to go army. And uh yeah, so I had uh you know a little a little bit shy of 11, 12 months left on my deployment. And um, yeah, so I I was running and gunning the whole time I came back. So it was like really like broken up. Like I had the first part of my deployment, came back, and then I thought I had this the the back half. I ended up. And only the half. Yeah, I came back at day one. Right. Like so I had a full year.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:35

Oh, that fucking sucks.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:36

Yeah, so towards I want to say about a little over halfway through that, I'll never forget my chap, my chaplain called me and he's like, Yeah, dude, we're gonna send you to Qatar, man. Okay, yeah, you're not you're not doing well. We're gonna send you over. So they sent me over to Qatar for a couple days. I literally sat in a tent, got got my two beers a day, and was just waiting to go back.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:58

Yeah, yeah. It was just bullshit.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:03

Another question I was gonna ask you was um you were there for 16 months. Yeah. R and R. When they oh, the stop loss. That's what I was gonna ask you. Did you have stop loss dudes in your unit?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:22

I did, yeah. They came from the BSB and the uh the the support battalions. They had a couple guys get called back or or kept over. No, no one in particular, like in my platoon specifically, but you know, we'd go to the to the uh to to the yard uh where the mechanics were, we're fixing our hump fees, and there was a couple maintenance bay? Maintenance bay. Yeah, there's a couple guys in there that were stop loss and miserable as hell, just fucking angry at the world.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:49

How was the chow where you guys were at?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:51

On the so whenever we did go back to the fob, it was nice. Yeah, it was beautiful because you're on a fob and all the fobits are there, you got green bean costs.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:01

When you were not on the fob, where were you?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:02

On a on our uh JSS, we had a combat outpost.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:06

Where?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:06

Uh in bad in the city.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:08

You failed to mention that, bro.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:09

Oh, yeah, no. So what was that like this whole time we were operating from within within Baghdad? It was like we were like a professional QRF.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:17

What was that like, bro? That's fucking nuts. See, I didn't deal with that shit. I was on a we operated out of a fob. Oh no, yeah. Not a fucking house or a combat outpost. Well, what was it? A house?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:26

No, it was uh we just we took over like two buildings, two, three buildings, put uh T-walls around it, towers, and that was it.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

And what how would you what would you guys eat? Uh we had mermites delivered.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:38

Yeah, mermites were delivered and MREs. And you remember the that canned chili with you poke the holes in it to get it warm? Yeah, we have yeah, I must ate about a thousand of those things.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:48

Fuck, what the fuck, bro? So like it's not that large of a living quarters.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:52

No, no, it's no, it's tiny.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:54

And what were you guys shitting in the inner?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:56

We had uh Portageons.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:57

You guys had portagons? Yeah, and would the shit sucker come and suck the fucking shit once we get away from it?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:01

Eventually, but we had a stick in there to push the turds down when it started getting full. And then we but like you gotta it was weird, like you almost gotta piss first and then take a dump. So we had like the piss poles outside because they didn't want to fill the the the shit away. Yeah, yeah. So and then uh we eventually got uh one of the you know I remember we used to cut the 55 gallon drum in half and pull the turds.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:27

Did you guys have to burn it?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:28

Eventually, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think we still no, yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. We did. I don't remember what we got first, though. If it was a Porta John's or that.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:36

You probably had that first in Porta Johns.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:38

Yeah, yeah, I would assume.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:39

So this you guys would get shot at at this combat outpost.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:43

Because you're right in the middle of the fucking neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:45

Yeah. Well, I when you when when we were talking about the rockets and all that, that's what I was referring.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:50

I was referring to Now, did these rockets ever fucking hit the neighbor's house and fuck some shit up?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:53

They they hit our building one time and almost killed my my team leader and squad leader. Thank God they weren't in the room. It was on the roof. They it was a fucking direct hit. They weren't in the room, thank God. But yeah, it was a big giant hole. But yeah, they would miss all the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:06

Did it fucking come through?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:08

Uh came it came out, it didn't come through the roof. It was like a direct impact hit.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:13

Did it fuck up the inside interior?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:16

No, it fucked it up, but it wasn't like catastrophic. It was we just had to sweep up the rubble.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:21

What did you guys have on there, bro? Electricity, uh TV, yeah, we had Xbox or anything.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:25

We had electricity, we had Xbox, we had uh satellite uh watch TV stuff. No, no, no. We would we'd get the Haji DVDs from the fob and bring them back. And whoever had porn on a the old iPod when the color iPods came out, dudes would put porn on there. So we had porn there. Uh we had a gym.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:42

Um what do you mean you had a gym?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:44

We had like a little makeshift gym uh in the next room over. It's like one bench, one squat rack, and like four four to eight, four to six plates, like nothing crazy, a couple dumbbells. Um yeah, there wasn't the amenities weren't very uh my bed, bro. Yeah, no, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:01

It was I slept that also builds character.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:03

I was the only one that slept on a cot.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:05

What did everybody else sleep on?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:07

Bunk beds. I didn't want to sleep on a bunk bed, so I was like, I'll take the cot.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:11

I slept on a cot the whole entire 13 months. Yeah, yeah. With a no, I was gonna say with a little hodge mat, but everybody else had the little mattress.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

Yeah, yeah. I didn't have shit, dude.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:19

I I just cots are comfortable.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:21

I love them.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:22

Yeah, yeah, they're the best. Better than the floor, even the floor's comfortable.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:25

I'd take I'll take the cot any day of the week, dude. Yeah, I don't I don't'm opposed to a cot, bro.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:30

Yeah. So you get home. Yeah, is this are you reaching your tail end of your deployment or your contract, I mean?

Moral Fog, Grief, And Resolve

SPEAKER_02 1:06:38

Yeah, yeah, I was. So when I came back, um my battalion commander took over G3 for division. So he immediately came back. We did our couple ceremonies or whatever, and then he went to division headquarters as a G3. Um, we got we were getting ready to get cycled back to Iraq the following year. And I I wanted to get out, dude. Like, I'm done. This deployment wore me out, like I'm good, I'm not doing this shit again. So um he ended up asking me if I wanted to be his his his delta, his G3 delta, his driver. I only had like six or seven months left, and I initially was like, hell no, I'm not doing no pogue-ass job. Yeah, I was like, all right, enjoy stop loss. I'm like, never mind, I'm coming.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:24

That's what he told you, enjoy stop loss?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:26

Yeah, so I ended up going, I left my battalion right after I went to G3. Uh and I just sat in a cubicle for like six months.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:35

Did he kind of throw you a bone by like telling you to fucking come over here?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:38

Yeah, 100%. He took care of me, dude. He really did.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:41

Is that the same leader you were with in Iraq?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:43

Mm-hmm. Oh shit, dude. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:46

You owe that guy, bro.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:47

Oh, dude, he's the man. He's the man, bro. He's a fucking legend.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:51

Yeah, is he? Oh, yeah, bro.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:52

Dude's a fucking warrior, bro. He's he's he's he's he's he's something special, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:59

But uh So you're sitting in a cubicle.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:02

How the fuck, dude, do you go from fighting in Baghdad to sitting in a cubicle? I just how was your mental health doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:08

My mental health was fine because oh, I wouldn't say fine, but like I I I wasn't there. So like I can I it was a it was a good time for me to unwind. So I got to unwind the last couple months. I was planning my future, wanted to get on the job, get into law enforcement, I wanted to go to school. So I wanted to do all these things so that like that's where my focus was. My focus was was on career progression. So it I knew I wasn't staying in, you know, I I knew I was getting out, and uh I ended up putting in like a college packet for early release on my ETS. They approved it. I got out quickly.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:44

Early release or uh terminal leave.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:47

No, it was early release. So I was supposed to get out in in January, January of 09. They let me out in November of 08 to prep for winter semester so I can go back to school.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:00

Now on your DD 214, will it show November or would it show January?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:04

It shows January. So it shows your full contract. It shows the full contract, but there's uh there's like a blurb at the bottom of my 214 that says uh something about early release for college or something. It was it was less than 60 days early, so they just threw me a bone, let me out. There was no chance retention was getting me.

unknown 1:09:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:20

So I was out, yeah. So I ended up getting out. Uh I come home, and that's when I started my uh my law enforcement life.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:29

What agency did you join first?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:31

I was with I was with the Passaic County Sheriff's Office. So I started corrections there for the first uh two and a half years of my career, and then the following I took our civil service test and became a sheriff's officer.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:44

So you were in the jails first, then you went out to the streets?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:47

Courts. Courts. Yeah. By us in Jersey, the courts and our our road guys, like they they essentially run the same certification. So it you you could bounce back and forth.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:00

What was your experience like working in the jail? Was there only one jail for the city you were in?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:04

Or for the county, yeah. For the county, yeah, it was a county jail. We were the only maximum security county jail in the state. No way, yeah, yeah. Bars, everything was bars, cranks, you know, like it was it was uh it was very, very old. Our our jail was very notorious. Murders? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was a full spectrum of uh gang members? Yeah, bloods on the fourth floor, bro. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:28

How many floors were there?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:30

Four floors, uh, bloods on a fourth, Dominicans on the third, or yeah, on a third, second floor was Chomos and Mac's and females, and then we had our you know, our our set seg our our segregation or uh uh uh the hole uh on the first floor.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:49

How does an inmate make it to the hole in New Jersey jail?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:52

Well, it's I can speak from my jail. I mean it's very simple. Say fuck around and find out. Like I thank God I worked in the the time frame that I worked in that jail from 09 to about 11 going into 12. Man, I worked with some assassins, dude. Yeah, one of them just texted me today after reply to his text, my old sergeant. Phenomenal bosses, dude. Like they taught me the right way. They taught me to never be scared of a fucking inmate. If inmate talks shit, we're gonna fuck, we're gonna pull his ass out.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:25

Like that do inmates talk shit there? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:28

Oh, God, yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:29

Why do you think they talk shit? Because they don't understand what's gonna happen next or uh they try you, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:34

They see like a new, especially when you're a new guy, bro.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:36

Um they'll fucking try.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:38

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I I've I've listened to a bunch of your old stories, bro, and God bless you for doing state, man. I especially in this state. This state is fucking this shit is crazy.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:49

Well, in the beginning, it was good. Like you said in the beginning, it was good.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:51

Yeah, but we I don't think Jersey will ever experience this the shit that you talk about. Because the your your guys' corruption is on a whole nother level. You guys are very unique, you know. So when I look back at my time in the jail, we were a smaller county jail. We're only supposed to house, like I want to say it was like anywhere between four and five hundred inmates. Okay, but our jail was notorious under previous administrations for having over 2,000. Damn, dude. And then having INS as well. INS holds. So you're talking dudes on you you remember the boat?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:24

Fucking on the boat, sleeping under the the picnic tables we got in there for them, the steel ones. And it was I didn't work in that era, but I was trained by the guys that came from that era.

Coming Home And Cubicles

SPEAKER_03 1:12:34

So, what does an ideal trip look like for a jail inmate? You go to court, you go to jail, then you go to prison, or do these guys get a DUI, they hang out in jail, and then they go home?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:46

No, man, DUIs in New Jersey aren't criminal unless you unless you hurt somebody or damage property or whatever. So a DUI in New Jersey is a motor vehicle offense. You're gonna get locked up, you're gonna go to that municipality, and then you're gonna get our reward. Like you're good. Wow. Yeah, it's not a crime. Some states it's a crime.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:06

So basically, everybody that came through your jail was prison bound.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:12

If they took a deal or they took it to trial, yeah. I mean, we would we would have guys on a on a six-month bid or 364, we call it, which is one day shy of a year. Because in Jersey, the policy in Jersey is one year and one day prison. Anything less, county jail.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:27

Now, did prison-bound dudes ever mix with 364 guys?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:32

We tried not to, but it's hard to do that sometimes. Like state state inmates would come in thinking they're the shit.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:38

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:38

Right? Like, well, I'm doing a state bid, you know. They like they they think because uh they're under state property, yeah, that they can't get it. They can't get it when you're in the county. County, listen, I understand the dynamic of state prison, but county's a revolving door, dude. You're here now, right? We'll fuck you up here. You're gonna come back, we'll get you again.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:59

Like chill out. You're you're hanging out in that your pad for a little bit and then you're gonna go elsewhere.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:03

Just be nice, dude. You know? Oh, yeah, yeah.

unknown 1:14:07

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:09

Um did you guys ever have to do cell cell extractions? Did you guys ever have you ever have to do a cell extraction?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:15

Yeah, we I've done plenty of cell extractions with uh with the like with our shift. We had like uh our officers that worked on the first floor of our building.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:24

And sick, uh the hole.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:26

Yeah, but we had like a booking crew. So our jail was the goon squad was the booking crew. So like whenever towns would come in, they'd book, we'd book the inmate, whatever. And then but that crew that worked on the first floor, those were that was like you know, I worked midnight, so that was like the you know, like What were the hours that you worked? 11 to 7, 11, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Did you like that? Uh with because of the guys.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:53

Well, besides the guys, I'm talking about did you like the time of day?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:56

No, I didn't, but I quickly adjusted to it and I learned to love it, right? And uh I eventually made my way to work on the first floor. I proved myself to leadership and bosses took care of me, got me down on the first floor, and that's when I really got to experience jail. Because, like, yeah, we're booking an inmate. If he comes in all fucked up, whatever, we deal with it, say medical or medical SDU or whatever. Anyways, but if something happened on the second, third, fourth floor, all the hall men are going upstairs, and that's that's the crew that's gonna extract, right? That's gonna fuck you up. Like, don't you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:31

How do you guys get from the first floor up to your take an elevator or you run downstairs?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:35

Situational. If the elevators are if there is an elevator, yeah, yeah. Okay. If elevators are good to go, yeah, we'll take the elevator.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:42

We're just like ready, you know. Um, but so basically, is there officers assigned to the fourth floor? Yeah, yeah. What if they're getting their ass kicked? They the radio call comes out. Do you guys on the first floor respond to the fourth floor?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:55

So there each floor in our facility had different posts. And there was a roving guy that went back and forth on all the floors. But whenever uh something happened, it was a big fight or a melee or whatever, yeah, like we'd all we'd all go up for anything. Like just call us, we'll be there.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:13

Like that's maybe even go up to talk shit with a friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:16

That that was that was what it was. We're here for you guys. Like call us, we're coming.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:19

Now, these big melees or riots or big giant staff assaults, how often did these happen?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:24

We didn't have too many staff assaults, and I'll I'll tell you why, because uh our facility was very um was quick turnarounds. We started having bail reform. Yeah, dudes weren't staying in jail long, right? Um, so that kind of lessened the impact on that, which was great because you know, obviously officer safety is very it's it's it's priority. Yeah, it's priority.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:45

It should be priority.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:46

Yeah. So um as far, I mean, yeah, I have I seen assaults? Yes. Have I been assaulted? Yes, but it wasn't to the level of like getting stabbed or get or you know, get 10 on one. These inmates had no contact with us.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:01

How? What do you mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:02

It was the it's a maximum security. We didn't have like uh that open room? Yeah, yeah, it was all day room. They eat shit and sleep in the same big giant day room. They didn't come out unless it was.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:14

No officers go in there?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:15

No. Why? We have a catwalk on the outside, we're separated by bars.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:19

It it it's uh it's what if you have to do a cell search or a search of the common areas.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:24

Well, if we did a cell search, what we would do is we would pull them out one by one, line them up against the wall, and we would do our cell searches and put them back. What the hell, man? This is a very old style jail. Like it, like the new style jails, like this, the jails that you're used to, right? Officers sitting in the middle with the desk, right? Right. And then they got top floor, bottom floor, and then the doors, they come out of their room, their bedrooms or whatever. We didn't have that. So it's like let's just say this whole room was one day room.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:54

I'm tracking.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:55

Yeah, that's that's I totally understand.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:57

Yeah, that's exactly what it's like. But I'm wondering why there was a policy saying that officers cannot be in the area where the inmates are at.

County Jail Wars And Court Duty

SPEAKER_02 1:18:04

No, it's just the way our jail was designed. We never our jail's not even there anymore. It's been knocked down this year. Yeah, we have no more jail.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:11

What did it get knocked down for? Uh corruption?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:13

Yeah, our our county officials from one county to another made a deal to save money.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:18

So that's like a historical you work there and it's no longer there anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:21

Yeah, it's no longer there.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:23

At least you could say you worked there, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:24

Dude, I tried when they were knocking it down, I drove past it.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:28

And uh I was like, man, fuck this. I pulled the car over. I jumped out of my car. I tried to go behind the fence and like take like a piece of like the bar that was like kind of like just dangling off, and cops saw me. He's like, hey man, what are you doing? I'm like, nothing. Yeah, I was like, I just wanted that bar. You know, I used to work here. He was cool. He he didn't, it wasn't an issue, but like, yeah, it's it's weird to see it not there anymore. It's weird. Like all our inmates now, like we have like a hub at our headquarters, um, but they all go to different counties.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:56

So was there B for fights between the inmate population?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:00

Yeah, you couldn't um like like there's like two pretty predominant gangs within the Dominican community Trinitarios and DDP. Like you couldn't really house Dominicans don't play, so you can't really house them together.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:15

Like you can't Trinitarios. Yeah, they're from Trinidad?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:18

No, they're Dominicans. Okay, yeah, they're both from Dominican Republic, but they just had two different gangs and excuse my lack of trophical educated California.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:27

I'm from Brawley, California.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:28

It's a Jersey thing, dude. We're okay, it's a whole nother beast, dude. Um, yeah, so we couldn't really house them together. Then the bloods were all on the fourth floor, but are the bloods black? Uh for the most, like 98%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:40

We had a couple and are they from Jersey?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:42

Yeah, Jersey, northern Jersey.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:45

So you mentioned earlier it was a melting pot of different ethnic groups and stuff like that. So you're talking about gangs from every race.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:55

Yeah, yeah. I would say I would it's not really race separated over there, is it? No, a lot of it was like by blocks, like where you're from, like neighborhood, you know, like like the bloods had have several different sets, and a lot of those sets are relative to where they live. And are they rivaled with each other? It depends. It it really is, it's like it depends what day of the week it is.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:16

Was there ever any murders there?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:18

In my facility, I've never been uh I've never seen one. I've seen a ton of assaults on on each other, but never a homicide or a murder, no. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:30

What uh so from you go from there to the street cop or for to the to the No, you went from there to the courts.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:36

Yeah, I went from there to the courts, man. Uh it was weird transition.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:40

I bet, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:41

Yeah, Monday to Friday, uniforms always clean. Monday through Friday. Yeah, weekends and holidays off, if inclement weather.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:48

Weekend and holiday, though. How the fuck did you land the courts, bro?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:51

It's not a desirable, uh, it's not a desirable position, especially if you're like a go-getter.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:56

But you had already been through combat.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:58

Yeah, but in my department, that's kind of the the the courthouse guys are kind of like the redheaded stepchildren, right? And it's and it's fucked up because some of the best cops in our department work in the courthouse. It's just very uh a little political on who goes out and who doesn't.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:17

But but you got the opportunity to go out there.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:19

Mm-mm. No, I don't I don't I don't play games. I don't uh I don't partake in in uh stuff that I don't believe in. Right. Yeah so guys like me will would never I mean yeah, like I I did I was on transportation unit for a while. I did uh I worked the the cells down where we would house the inmates while they're going to court primarily, but it was just court, yeah. I just I worked everywhere in the facility in our courts. I I've done every job you can think of in that place. I've been on a bunch of details where we go outside and assist other units or whatever, but as far as being physically assigned as a road road guy, like it didn't happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:02

Yeah. Eventually you left the law enforcement and then you said you started your own business?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:08

No, no. So I I left law enforcement. I uh I left law enforcement in 2023.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:16

Yeah, after just about 15 years. And that's a long time, yeah. Yeah. So I left just about 15 years. I ended up leaving on a on a psych on a psych disability. Uh I eventually cycled out from PTSD. I had a pretty uh shitty suicide attempt that kind of led me into treatment uh a few times in a row.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:36

You attempted suicide?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:39

Did you tell me what happened?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:41

Um it was St. Patrick's Day of 21. Um 22, I'm sorry. St. Patrick's Day of 22. Uh St. Patrick's Day is a big drinking day for uh for for the community where I'm from because New York and New Jersey, it's a big that it's like the the cop holiday and the firefighters, and everyone gets together and it's just like a huge party everywhere. Um I was going through a separation with my ex, and I was starting to get some bad uh uh uh PTSD issues, kind of uh reliving some certain uh shitty situations, and um I got really, really, really intoxicated, and I walked across the street from this bar and I made an uh an attempt on myself. And um I don't recall much of it, but I do know I posted something that people saw, and then it took them a little bit, but they found me, uh, took me to the hospital, um, and then you know, from there ultimately led me to uh the beginning of my treatment journey. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:55

Where did they take you? Did they take you to a VA hospital, a local hospital?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:00

So I went to local hospital, St. Joe's in Patterson. I um it was there I met with, you know, obviously the whole cavalry is out looking for me. Like literally everybody, every town from the state police in that area, every town in that area was out looking for me. Um so the hospital was jam-packed with people. I was really, really messed up. The attempt that I made like was putting me out until they found me. Um I'm convinced if it was like five more minutes, I would have been done. What'd you do? I was trying to, I I I wrapped a really, really strong uh piece of garb around my throat and kind of just laid there and let myself uh attempt to uh to suffocate. So and uh I was going out until the cops found me and then uh they took me to the hospital. So from there um they sent me to a facility in Arizona, it's called uh Sierra Tucson. Um I didn't want to go to any VA style uh facilities. Um you know, as first responders, we have facilities across the country that are dedicated to our community where you can get the help that you need. So from there they sent me to Sierra Tucson. They had a they had a first responder unit, and um I checked myself out after like 24 hours.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:31

What did that process look like of you checking yourself out? Were they like, no, please stay in the back of the channel?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:35

Yeah, they they made an attempt to keep me there, but I absolutely refused because of the treatment that I got. They didn't treat me good, and on top of that, um they wouldn't even give me my clothes to take a shower. Like I from the time of me attempting suicide until I got there, I hadn't showered.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:52

Oh, that fucking sucks, dude. Yeah, so you're fucking hung over and stinking like alcohol, probably.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:57

Yeah, I was I was all jacked up, man, and uh they wouldn't give it to me. So it was like one o'clock in the morning that very first day. I just walked up. I was like, I want to sign myself out.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:05

Okay, so now you're out in Tucson.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:08

So now what do you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:09

So they let me leave at like seven, eight o'clock in the morning. I take uh I had to walk a little bit till I got some service on my phone because it's in the middle of nowhere. And um I got some service on my phone, got a got a cab, went back, went to a hotel in Tucson. There was a Mexican restaurant right next door that was open. It was like a little dive bar restaurant. I was like, I'm gonna go hang with the natives. So I put my shit in my room and I went to that bar and I just started drinking.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:35

I was gonna ask you to start consuming alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:38

Immediately, uh, I wasn't ready for treatment. So when I was sitting there, I had this bright idea. Um, I'm gonna go to LA.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:47

So it's a hell of a fucking idea, bro.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:50

Yeah. Um, so I'm sitting there at the bar, I book a ticket to LA thinking it was for the next day, but I was so inebriated that it was for like four hours later, and uh I get a notification on my phone, like, yeah, you could check in. I'm like, what? It's early. Um, so I end up leaving, pay my tab, leave, I take an Uber to the airport and I go to LA, and now my union, God bless my my old union president, man. I drove him fucking crazy.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:18

Were you still a law enforcement officer?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:19

Yeah, I wasn't terminated. Dude, that is wild, bro. Yeah, I wasn't terminated at all.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:24

But I'm not judging by any means. I totally understand. That's wild, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:28

I I I told you, man, I cycled out bad.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:31

So I went to LA. I kind of floated around for a week.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:35

Uh floated around for a week?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hotel to hotel. Then I ended up at my uncle's house.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:40

Were you still in your stinky clothes?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:42

No, no, no. I went when they flew me out to Arizona, my old union, my old union boss, they stopped at Walmart, got me a whole bunch of shit. So I was I was clean. I already showered, I'm squared away, I shaved, I was good.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:53

Um thought you were like that guy that we fucked in.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:56

Yeah, no, no, no, no. Um so I I went there for a week. My uncle ended up making me stay by his house in Victorville. So I I went there, booked a flight, came back, and then um I checked into the intensive outpatient program at the VA hospital. In Jersey. In Jersey, because I was afraid of what the job was gonna do, because I had just one AWOL for a week. I didn't I didn't commit to training uh uh treatment because I had I had left. I have A AMA'd out of a program.

Spiral, Attempt, And Seeking Help

SPEAKER_03 1:28:30

Right now, as you sit here in this chair looking back in hindsight, what was the source of that whole entire fucking episode?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:39

Uh I couldn't tell you. You couldn't tell me. No, I was going through like a very bad manic psychosis episode, man, where I just I really couldn't pay attention to anything going around me. I couldn't talk. I couldn't, I just wanted to be left alone. I didn't want to deal with anything or anyone or none of that. It wasn't Iraq triggering you, it was a combination of everything. The job treatment, the deployment, uh a nasty divorce that was paid. Were you married? I was married at the time, yeah. Um, you know, all these things combined. Uh yeah, and you know, I eventually can only take so much, man. And I just didn't want to be here anymore. That was my thing. I did not want to be here anymore. So for me, it was like any opportunity I got, like, you better keep your eyes on me because I'll fucking disappear. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:31

And um I'm surprised you did you went back to Jersey and did uh enhanced outpatient or extreme outpatient. Why not an inpatient? I wasn't ready. Oh, you weren't ready yet? Yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:44

Like I they sent me to Arizona. I was like, Right. So I eventually ended up going to Florida House, which is uh a treatment center for first responders that are all over the country. They got a program called the Shatterproof Program. program. I ran through that program three times.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:03

Where's that one located?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:04

In Deerfield Beach, Florida. So I I got I have some I got a decent amount of time in that facility. I got times in. I went there a few times and um eventually I I I eventually got my head out of my ass and was like I can't keep living like this. Like this, you know, my life is just too chaotic. I had to make make the fucking change, dude. Like I it was either I was just gonna cycle out again or I'm gonna have to to to get back on the right path, dude. And you know I I eventually after a couple stays down a Florida house I you know I got my shit together and then um and then eventually you know the job sends you sends you for a fitness for duty exam.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:50

I failed and then I was uh essentially put out on a psych disability seems like they took care of you though they did yeah when you were in these recovery homes what was like the um kind of like the homework the studies what were they teaching you it was a lot of group therapy okay group therapy art therapy there's all all types of stuff and then you got the round table stuff at the end of the day with the guys guys and girls right and then you have you know uh chow like every every night we we had the grill we were grilling hanging out so the the it's a very simple program like you wake up in the morning you go to groups from like 9 to 12 go to chow then you go afternoon groups and you go to an AA meeting you do some art therapy go to the gym you do all that stuff but the whole point is like you're getting together with the community of first responders in treatment right like you're in there you're locked in with these guys well you're not locked in but like you're in with these guys that are all first responders got corrections you got police fire ems military I mean all together it's a very community based program style that works it's great would you agree that there's a high suicide rate in law enforcement yes disgusting it's it that comes down to leadership would you say that had certain individuals and again right we're not we can't make shit happen but would you say that the people that did commit suicide maybe that treatment would have been help uh helpful for them if they were ready or willing to try it it would have absolutely been helpful to them it also would have been helpful if they didn't have bosses bullying them a lot of these guys that have committed suicide it it the biggest stress in law enforcement is organizational stress. Facts bro it's not like it's not the fucking inmate dude that's so easy dude you know what I'm saying that's the easy part bro like you go out on a stop or you're dealing with some somebody in court or whatever the case is like that's not the problem dude that's I don't care about that it's like you want to have a boss that's gonna like there needs to be more recognition of of of signs. There's no the leaders aren't noticing the signs and symptoms of somebody try on the verge of cycling out. Well we don't even have leaders anymore bro yeah we have managers it's a great way to put it and they're not even trying to uh look at symptoms because they don't give a fuck about anybody but themselves and upward mobility yeah everything is cover your ass protect your pension right like that's that's that's the name of the game so if if if a if a supervisor um is gonna have to answer questions because of something you did right like uh what is the probability that they're actually gonna get your back slim than very slim no you know it's very rare that you'll get guys like that like the sergeant I told you that texted me today yeah he caught days for me well I back back in the day I get it you know what I mean and it's just like it's it's gone gone are those days of good leaders yeah I truly believe that I was uh born and born into this life in the wrong generation like I would have the right generation I think I would have excelled very well if in World War II I I'll take that but like that that the law enforcement style of like the 60s and 70s and that was that that was prime time you know today you know law enfor a lot of law enforcement officers today that I'm coming across the job wasn't their first choice meaning I always wanted to be a cop oh I hear you today you have a kid that couldn't make it working at JP Morgan and Chase fuck it I'll take the civil service test get the protection and a pension so I couldn't make it as a banker or shit I can't be an influencer right so like let me just do something else it's not a primary choice. A lot of the guys that I came up with that was their primary choice. That's what they wanted to do. Today that's not the case.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:02

I agree the youngsters treat it more as a job instead of a career oh without a doubt absolutely I get fired I get fired yeah they don't give a fuck dude they don't give a fuck yeah man it's it's crazy and it's so sad to see because this this job can be rewarding you know but it can also be dangerous and I want to use your 11 Bravo experience in I mean I love to hound on these youngsters bro and I call them baristas and you know um how important is it to be able to be capable of inflicting violence as a law enforcement officer?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:42

It's the most important thing ever you don't have to just walk around and do it but just know you can and you'll be fine I I I really think presentation is everything right delivery is everything. If someone's disrespecting you and it's gonna it's got you know it's gonna turn into a hands on hands on situation.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:03

Like I know for me like But these guys are don't even see the red flags that are about it's about to be motherfuckers are getting slapped in the face and barely realizing we're in this that's something look man I'm from your era dude like that's something I just don't understand.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:16

I don't understand it I don't get it. I don't understand how somebody can let that happen but what's even more distasteful is leadership not getting these guys backs.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:26

No bro there that's a whole there they're to me it's a lost cause there you we cannot convince these current leaders to change their mind and all of a start all of a sudden start giving a fuck.

Treatment, Relapse, And Recovery

SPEAKER_02 1:36:36

Yeah I think you got to drain the swamp as my uncle Donald Trump says yeah no I I agree man I agree there yeah you gotta yeah definitely right and would you agree that change starts at the top yes of course change does start at the top having leadership that uh puts the the the livelihood and the mental health and the putting all that stuff first for their guys is the most important thing. Like I I've been dude I I'm gonna tell you man like I have been genuinely blessed with the type of leaders that I've had there's a couple that I could just rag on all day long and these guys are just they're just bitches okay but for the most part the leaders that I have had my God bro like I'll run through any fucking door for these guys any day of the week and um do you want to be remembered as that leader or the leader that I don't even want to mention your name because you're just a bitch. Correct you know what I'm saying like for me like I want my If I was to be a supervisor when I was on a job clearly I'm not there anymore but like I want guys I would want guys to remember me as someone I had their back and gave a fuck about them. Facts bro what is it that you do now so uh once I left law enforcement I um I did my first corporate gig um yeah dude I don't like to circle back to shit that's like their favorite term tracking circle back and table this and table that I don't understand this vernacular dude right I'm not built for that uh but great people though great people the boss was a retired Air Force colonel great guy uh just wasn't for me um I I got an opportunity to um work with a mental health group that is primarily responsible for first responders in New Jersey so now basically what I do is I I'm like the frontline guy for any police officer firefighter military guy that's in crisis and help helping them place them into treatment into therapy with us like I've built a resource network of uh inpatient outpatient and my group uh where I if I need to get somebody into treatment they're there within 24 hours do they need to be a resident of New Jersey? So for for where I work yes but within the last uh I want to say since August we've teamed up with these two uh one retired chief and deputy retired chief deputy chief retired uh Bill Mazer and Joe Collins these guys do it nationally so now we have the ability like we have our own jersey network but now we have a national community.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:26

So if anybody watching this and they're struggling and they feel comfortable can they reach out to the Instagram and they will be plugged into some sort of help?

SPEAKER_02 1:39:35

Oh yeah absolutely like if I get a text or a call what's the Instagram the Instagram's Cognosis Health that's it's cognosis health at it's uh I will link it on the bottom yeah yeah at Cognosis Health um that's our group page um and from there like I I have the page on my phone and I monitor it so is it active law enforcement only oh no no no man no no it's active retired uh guys that were terminated yeah it's we don't we're ne uh we're never especially me am I ever gonna turn my fucking back on anyone that needs help because of yeah bro because of the amount of people that were involved in getting me where I where I needed to be so that and the fucking illegal firings and terminations for not playing the game yeah that have transpired. Yeah but for me like I said man like the the the the certain angels in my life that took care of me you're one of them now bro yeah so now I I literally pay it forward man like for example a couple weeks ago I was in Florida uh you know with my wife and we're hanging out and I get a phone call uh it was a crisis call yeah I took to 45 minutes bro on the phone talked the guy down good he just had his first therapy session sweet dude yeah just hit me up hey man thank you so much whatever like that that's that's the shit that that makes everything like where I started to where I am now that's what makes it worth it I have law enforcement executives right like these guys are bosses within their agencies and you know I'm helping them with their with their cases right and it's a very like I'm a work in the shadows kind of guy I don't want to speak to and you know to hey listen man if we got to meet in the basement of your precinct fine no big deal right like I and I've been able to be fortunate enough to partner up with two of the biggest agencies in New Jersey which is the New Jersey State Police and the Newark PD dude that's fucking awesome bro so I work hand in hand with the New Jersey State Police's peer team daily dude every single day Newark PD same thing every single day we have another guy from the Bergen County prosecutor's office he's like a big state resiliency guy I mean these guys are listen these guys are still on the front lines they're still dealing with these guys but like if you want some something done without anybody knowing and we get a guy in and out seen and taken care of they're calling you know you you gotta call me because I'll I don't have anyone holding my leash I don't have a boss that's gonna tell me no the owners of my group are like handle it it's all you yeah you know and thank God for them because I don't have to the the oversight uh they trust me enough to not be so much involved the just handle handle the business bro too easy I got this yeah we'll get a motherfucker in treatment like that I that's the one thing man is like I've built a network like I the the one guy in particular from the state police name is Brian Markowski he's a sergeant first class for them dude's a maniac he's been in treatment he's done his thing and now he's he's essentially the number two or three in that unit but he's he's the face of it dude you know uh I work with him daily on all types of guys that need to get the help that they get think about this man in Jersey we look and I'm a county guy right yeah you got municipal cops and you got the state police so we're right in in that middle government right the county guys and the municipal guys always look at the state police as like these fucking stormtroopers from Star Wars right um you remember Storman Norman Schwarzkopf? Yeah his father or grandfather was the first state police colonel in New Jersey yeah so that that uniform model comes from that from that World War II era style and they still wear it till today but that that department man like for the longest time when I was on a job I was like man these guys are they're just robots dude they got no personality no nothing yeah but now that I've I've worked with them for the last year and change I'm like dude these guys are just as vulnerable to mental health issues as all of us are absolutely and and you don't take that into account the problem with with with mental health and law enforcement is this New Jersey just went into a licensing we became a licensing state okay so in order to maintain your status as a police officer you're licensed yearly or it's it's one two and three every one two or three years has to get renewed by the state. All right before that we were a civil service state we still are but now licensing is attached 10 years ago if you got jammed up on something you had a mental health issue or something man you go talk to the cop doc, take a couple weeks, you come back to work, everything's good to go today if you if you're going through a mental health crisis today, you go up ALT, you gotta take my gun, bro. I need a break you got to take my gun that shit has to go on paper now. This dude now has to go to a program he cannot get back into work until he completes that program because now you have to build a whole evidence case uh a whole case right saying that this guy's mentally fit to be back on the job to put on that application for your license.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:56

So they've they've completely taken away the ability to just take care of a guy without damn that sucks. Yeah so it makes makes my job a little complex because now I got to partner with different organizations and different groups now and maintain that relationship so that when I have a guy that says hey Cap, I need you to take my gun we got a place for him to go that day.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:19

For sure. Yeah no that's fucking awesome bro yeah well I want to thank you for flying all the way out here from New Jersey dude sharing your story and putting yourself out there.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:29

Is there anything last final words you want to say to the audience bro um this is more towards leaders in law enforcement uh take care of your people look after your fucking people don't let outsiders make uh influence decisions for your people because you suck at being a boss yeah okay if you know guys are going through a divorce if you know guys are having substance abuse issues if you know guys are having issues with other peers or or their bosses work to fix it don't wait till it's too late because uh that 22 a day for veterans uh can be very quickly translated into law enforcement or transitioned into law enforcement as well it's embarrassing when leaders have an officer in crisis and don't know what the fuck to do take care of your fucking people.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:24

Nah dude you hit the nail on the head bro so once again man thank you for coming over here and sharing that I'm gonna put your links on the bottom so people can tap in.

Fixing First Responder Mental Health

SPEAKER_00 1:46:31

I'm gonna push your episode out fucking faster than normal bro because I think the message needs to get out I believe excuse me I believe that our first responders are hurting right now dude yeah big too mentally but I appreciate you having me man this has uh it's been awesome for sure bro likewise there you guys have it folks another banger both of us doing the Lord's work over here always trying to help somebody if you like what you saw make sure you hit the subscribe button love you keep pushing forward actors legendary living life never been from the pen fruit and storming up