True Stories: Drugs, Guns, Fights, Pursuits.

Over our careers, our experiences shape the officers and agents that we become.  The officers and agents we become shape our success, and then in a blink we're looking back on what we did as young men and women.  Reliving the "glory days."  

Let's get into some of my experiences and what I learned from them.  I hope by passing them onto you, you can adopt my changes in behavior with less blood and tears.

-LEO

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Good morning. It's Leo. And today I want to go ahead and get into some true stories that I've experienced and what my lessons were, you know, through the successes and failures that followed those experiences between patrol, narcotics, SWAT, and different kinds of operations and what I took away from those experiences. So the first one I wanted to talk about, I wrote down five. I'll probably have a couple more come to mind. Buddy of mine did a traffic stop. He called for a backup unit. So I got there and he didn't really like asking for consent a lot of the time to search. And so he was back, you know, working on a ticket or whatever. And he asked me, like, hey, can you go up and see if he'll give you consent to search the car? I was like, yeah, that's fine. So I go up there. The dude is huge. And he's in like a con a Pontiac Grand Prix or Grand Dam. So he like unfolds out of this car, much bigger than me. I'm 6'3, 2'10. He's got a lot of size on me. So I bring him back to the back of the car. I show him the reason for the violation. Hey, this tag light was out, tail light was out, whatever. And ask for consent to search the car. He says it's fine. So I go up and start searching. My partner's still back there. He's kind of keeping an eye on the guy and working on his ticket. He might have got out and stood with him. I don't know. I think the guy actually went back and stood by our car. And I remember the guy's name because his name was Alfredo. His first name was Alfredo. And I went and got chicken Alfredo afterwards. That was not the lesson learned. So I start searching the car when my partner's with the guy, and I lift out. And those in that year of Pontiac, I already knew that the center console, like the drink holder, you could lift out. And there was like a, we call it a natural void. There was a space under it. So I lifted out the drink holder, and under it, there was a big bag of crack, a pile of money, a scale, and a pistol. I was like, okay, we need to arrest this guy. So I went on the radio. I didn't want to go back and alert him and get in a fight with this large man. So I went on the radio and just said, I got a signal 20, which was the code for a gun in that city. And my partner didn't hear it. So I guess you could say one lesson learned is listen to your radio if your partner is searching. Well, he didn't pick up on it. So I came back because I didn't want to say, you know, we got a gun and get in a fight. Oh, like I said, I'll learn him. So I went back and there were beaties, which are like these little cigars that a lot of people were smoking at the time. There were a bunch of burnt out beaties in the ashtray. This dude smoked beaties. It's not weed, it's just beads. So I went back and I was like, all right, I don't, I don't want to risk getting in a fight with this dude. So I said, hey man, those, those little blunts in the ashtray, are those, is that beaties or that's weed? And he was like, oh, that's just beaties. That's nothing. I was like, all right, well, just because, you know, I'm a little nervous because you're much bigger than me, I'm gonna put you in handcuffs until I break those down and see if it's weed inside or if it's tobacco, if that's cool with you. And he was like, oh yeah, that's no problem. So I handcuffed him. And my partner had already told me he was a convicted felon. He had already checked his criminal history. So he went, what's the phrase? Voluntary compliance. He went voluntarily into handcuffs. And as soon as he was handcuffed, I just broke the news to him. I was like, hey man, you're under arrest for possession of fire by a felon, possession of crack with intent to distribute, so on and so forth. So if I can con somebody into handcuffs, if I know they're going to jail, I would much rather do that. You can look at it however you want, but if there's no fist fight, that's a good day. It doesn't matter their size. And I do remember putting in my report about the size difference. I don't know why it was relevant, but I did put that he was much bigger than me. And I remember the defense attorney questioning me on the stand about it because I'm taller than the guy. And he was like, you know, you discussed a size disparity, but you're in your report, but how tall are you, Leo? I was like 6'3. And how tall is my client? I was like, I don't know, probably 5'11. Okay, so you are actually bigger than him, right? That's one of those loaded questions. I'm like, no. He's this dude's like 5'11, 250 muscle. That's bigger than me. So no. Uh so he tried to walk me into a trap or, you know, make it like I'd lied in the report or something. So another incident that happened, there were some hotel, if you want to call it that, called the Arbor Cottages, and they're just totally dilapidated. It's like 14 structures. There's nothing but crack, heroin, meth, prostitution in there, mostly crack and prostitution with the sprinkling of shootings and stabbings. So I was doing undercover for the narcotics unit, and I went in there and there were these two guys. I just walk in the front. You know, it's like horseshoe shape of these little dilapidated cottages. And usually there's some people out in the parking lot. This night there was nobody out there. So I walk in, and this dude opened the first cottage on the left. The dude opens the door. He was like, hey, what's up? I was like, ah shit, it's shopping. You know, so we start talking and they invite me in the room. It's two guys, and one of them, the guy who had let me in, was acting like a drug addict drug addict. I think he was a crack smoker that was just hanging out. I know he was. The other guy was the dealer, but he was being careful. He wanted to sell to people he knew and he didn't trust me. So him, the two guys basically went in the little bathroom and the dealer gave the smoker some crack rocks to sell me. So he gives them to me. I give the takedown signal. At the time, my takedown signal was A1. That's what I would say, because that's what they call good crack. So I'd be like, oh, this shit looks A1. And that meant I have the crack in my hand, come in and arrest these guys. So they give me the crack, I give them the money. I say it's A1. The smoker dude starts saying, Oh, I'll break something off for the house. Let's smoke real quick. And so I'm trying to talk my way out of it. I'm waiting for the takedown team to get there. It was cold out and it was nighttime. So he gives me like a crack pipe and a razor blade. He's like, I'll chop off a piece. I'm trying to smoke right now. Like it starts getting a little confrontational. And like he was expecting a cut for middling the deal, I guess. So finally the takedown team shows up. Well, you would think a good quality door is harder to breach, right? Like, oh, it's well built. But a lot of times, in my experience, the well-built doors and frames, they breach easily because they have no give. You know, if you hit something with give, it's like all your energy doesn't really transfer because it has give. So this place, they start ramming the door. They bang on the door and then they start ramming immediately. And I can see the whole wall bending in. And so they're unable to breach. I mean, they're a way, and the dude that we had on the breacher, he benches like 450. Like he's a big dude, short stocky guy. And so he's wailing on the door. Well, the dealer guy, I thought he was running for the bathroom to get rid of the drugs, but he just he like runs into me and starts punching me in the ribs. And he was hitting me with his cell phone. I thought I was getting stabbed because you know, you've always heard like, you know, you get stabbed, you get shot. I've never been stabbed or shot, but you've always heard like if you get stabbed, you might not know at the time because the adrenaline's up and then you feel the blood coming out. So I was like, man, this guy's stabbing the crap out of me. It was only lasted a second. It was like two or three little rabbit punches, and then he ran to the bathroom, dropping pills and crack everywhere and starts flushing. The other guy, I pointed at him and I'm like, open the fucking door because he was between me and the door. He turns around, the smoker unlocks the door, team comes in, arrests the dude in the bathroom, arrests them both. So some of my takeaways are just that kind of low budget undercover work. Is it worth it? Like if I'd been getting stabbed and he popped my spleen or something, like, is it worth it to bust this low-level drug dealer? I would say just let informants do that kind of work if they want to do it for a couple bucks, but let the officers skip it. You know, use officers for higher level UC if you want to. Also, the takeaway that shitty doors you might think they'd easily just fly open, but this whole thing was mush and it was just bending. And he is an experienced breacher with good form that has the fitness, and he could not get in that door. So, something to think about. Another one, I told you I had five, but I'd think of another one. I was on the Marshall Task Force, and we were doing some big roundup for homicide. So SWAT was there. They had all these different units, and they had given my team a place to hit and a fugitive in some apartments called Fred Wessels at some project apartments on the east side of Savannah. And the SWAT commander told me like each group SWAT was given this guy, the Marshall team was given this guy, and I was the team lead for that operation. So I was, you know, planning the breach, who am I putting on breach or who am I putting on that, you know, the general operational plan. And he told me he was like, hey man, all these doors in Fred Wessels are new and they're strong as shit. So have a good backup plan. And I was like, okay, thanks. And then I kind of I was like, okay, we're sticking with the plan. So I had my backup plan. You always have a secondary breach point. So you always have a secondary breach point, but I didn't take it as seriously as I should have. So we had a failed breach. We started trying to breach the front door of that apartment. We had a big, strong guy, highly experienced breacher, just wailing on this door. He's now in SOG, Special Operation Group for the Marshalls. Great breacher. He was just wailing on this door and could not get in. We could see through the front window a rifle and body armor sitting just inside the door. Dude's a felon, dude's got these warrants, homicide wants. I'm like, we don't want to be locked outside while he has a right. It got bad enough that I don't remember if it was him or somebody else came to the door and they couldn't open the door because my buddy had like mangled the locking mechanism because he had rammed it so many times so hard, but the door still wouldn't open. So it ended up being a failed breach. Suspect couldn't even open his own door. So we had to like, I don't even remember what we did. If we went to a back door, we broke a window. But, you know, just trust the people with local knowledge and expect that failed breach. You know, hopefully you're training for these security doors and you have somebody that knows how to work the hoolie. If you don't get somebody to take their ass to a fire station and pick those guys' brains, because they they make entry all the time. They're very good at it. As far as security doors, my personal preferred way is to have somebody set it, but instead of trying to pry it, because sometimes they're strong and the locking mechanism is great. I rotate the the bar. So I basically lift up. If I push down, I only get my body weight. But if I lift up, I can use my arm and shoulder muscles and push against the ground. And it it bends that part of the locking mechanism. It doesn't defeat the lock. It just bends it so far that it's no longer engaged. It just bends the actual security door. Or you can get one of those rams, excuse me, that have chains on it and pull it. I've seen some teams use this where they have a ram, a two-man ram with two chains, and they go up and they quickly hook the chains on that security door, and then they like reverse ram. They swing the ram. You need helmets on because the door's probably going to fall on you, but you swing the ram away from the door and it jerks that thing off. I've never seen it fail. And then obviously they have the hydraulic stuff that they're, I think they're like, the last I looked, they were like $7,000. So they are expensive, but they like use hydraulics to pry it. Looks like a RAM, but it's got all these gizmos for any different kind of door. So kind of went down the hole on breaching, but there's tons of good classes out there. I had J-Bow on his Guild Solutions group. They teach explosive breaching. My department was uh all the agencies I've been at have been kind of shy to do explosive breaching. I think we did it once on SWAT, but generally they didn't want us doing that. I also took a class through a company called T's, Technical Energetic Entry Solutions or something. And we did, they they actually tweaked my form on the RAM and the Hoolie and made me better. So even if you're experienced, I mean that was like six years ago or less. So I'd been policing 10, 15 years at that point, over 10 years, and was and was able to learn from them and clean up my form. They kind of got me squashing the bug and getting better hip rotation and were able to show me because the doors I was trying to breach that I was failing on, or it was taking two or three hits, it changed to being a one-hitter quitter when I adopted their form. And then I practiced it. And then when I started doing operations, I very intentionally tweaked my form. So find a good class that'll teach you something that you're able to bring back and use. So apparently we're talking training now, too. So another incident, non-incident, really. I did a traffic stop, middle of the night, Kyler Brownville neighborhood, 38th, or it's like 35th and Bullock area. If you know Savannah, you know, 2-3 in the morning, car with four guys in it. It's like a BMW with four guys. Like it's the poorest neighborhood in Savannah. You don't usually see a nice BMW with four 20-year-olds in it, not a stolen car in that neighborhood at 2.3 a.m. So we get them out. I'm getting consent to search, and somebody else goes up to search. People got out there to back me up quick. We were on some kind of like violent crime task force. So I had backup show up. Well, I start talking, it was right around Christmas time. Savannah has something called Jingle Bell Patrol, where basically crime always goes up around Christmas for whatever reason. I guess people need money for gifts or something. So they start robbing and stealing. But we always had extra patrol available where you could just go work OT. So I'm Jingle Bell and I'm out there stopping cars during the night. And so I start talking to these dudes, and I ask one of them, I'm like, hey man, like you listen to Christmas music? And he's like, Yeah. I was like, oh, what's your favorite? So I was kind of messing with him. So I was like, this dude doesn't listen to Christmas music at all. So I was like, what's your what's your favorite song? And he's like, oh, I like that one, you know, with the nuts on the fire. I was like, you're talking about chestnuts roasting over an open fire. And so I start like singing, I'm a goofball. So I start like singing it with him. The moral of this being, like, the more you can humanize, this was a potentially volatile situation. They could have flipped out about being stopped and feeling profiled. It just that neighborhood, people test you and and you know, don't care as much about the badge and demand respect. And stuff can turn very quickly in that neighborhood. The neighborhood can show up, and now you got a bunch of people out there talking shit, shooting guns in there, stupid stuff. And it it kind of diffused that. I got lucky that he actually liked Christmas carols. But the point is, just humanize if you can. You're not immune to danger. So it is always better if those four guys have guns that they choose not to use them because they're like, this dude ain't all bad. Like, this guy's not being an asshole to me. Just consider humanizing, you know, on your traffic stops. I use my first name. My first name's not Leo. That's my little moniker or whatever for this show. But I I don't say like, I'm Officer Jones, I'm agent Jones. I'm like, hey man, I'm Leo. I work for such and such agency. I'm Leo with Atlanta police. It just that difference right there. I don't think that's gonna break any rules. I've never gotten in trouble for using my first name. They can read my last name. If they want to call me by last name and get tough on me and get abrasive, they can read it and be like, okay, Officer Jones and do all that. Most people don't. I've never really had that experience when I talk to people as an equal. And I've found that I actually get more respect when I talk to them as an equal. There's something about saying, hey, I'm Officer Jones with, you know, APD. The reason I stopped you is this, and having that robotic speech, it creates this separation immediately. And I don't want that. I don't want them to feel threatened. Even if I'm planning to arrest them, I don't want them in the red. I don't want to be the one that escalates it into an armed conflict or a fist fight. I might lose. Or I just don't want to punch them in the face. Like, I don't, I have no desire to fight at this point in my career. I'll tell you about another lesson learned. We were doing a violent crime task force. I've talked about this somewhere before. So if this is repetitive, fast forward three minutes. I had a civilian employee with the police department riding with me. His title was Intel Commander. He had a he had an interesting background. He was like, he was young. He's like 28, but he had been active duty marine and reconnaissance. And then he commissioned as an officer in the Army and became a special forces officer. He was a captain in the Army National Guard Special Forces. So he's like Marine Recon, turned green beret. His civilian job was Intel commander at the time working for us. But he had a pretty, pretty interesting background, more decorated than most of the people you're used to running into. Doing recon and, you know, selection in the Q course. I mean, you're just a glutton for punishment, I guess. So I was supervising this violent crime task force where we just ride around and do a bunch of stops. And he was kind of bitching a little bit. And you know, he heard officers breaking off pursuits. They light up a car, the car takes off, they say, I'm discontinuing. In our area, what the officers had to do was turn off the lights, turn so that you're not even following the car and announce that over the radio. You have to say, I'm discontinuing, my lights are off, vehicle's continuing northbound on Bullock Street, I've turned east on 35th, I let it go. And then you're expected to not like run parallels and go like kind of chase it and try to find it. So he's kind of bitching. He heard this happen a couple times. He's like, How are we supposed to catch criminals if we just break off every chase? And I was like, Yeah, I hear what you're saying. He said it a couple of times. And so finally I'm like, let me show you the problem with a pursuit real quick. Because like I used to be just like that. And now I'm not. Once I saw like some eyeballs hanging out of heads and, you know, some from some gnarly car crashes and pregnant women leaving on stretchers that were uninvolved in the incident, I'm like, eh, just let it go. Like it's okay. Live to fight another day. Especially because we didn't have a means of ending pursuits, which I'll talk about momentarily. So I'm like, I'm like, all right, let me find a car that's gonna flee. You know, at this point, I've been a cop close to 10 years. So like you can spot the car that has crime going on and is likely to flee at 2 a.m. So I spot it and it's a rental car. It's got a couple guys in it. I see it pull up and serve some crack to somebody, and I'm sure it was crack, and then pull off. So I'm like, all right, there's our guy. I ain't stopping. So I pull up behind them, I hit the blue lights. We're at, if you know Savannah, we're around 39th and MLK. They're going southbound on I picked them up around like 38th and Burroughs. And so they went east on 38th, and they turn south on MLK. So I light them up on MLK, and he immediately shuts off his headlights, cuts through the parking lot as fast as he can, foot on the gas, jump in the curbs of that store at 39th and MLK, and goes as fast as he can, foot in the floor westbound, down 39th, I guess it was. Foot is on the floor, probably going 80 by the end of the first block. They're thin blocks, cars park on both sides of the street, kids are out at nighttime, all that kind of stuff. Stuff that comes with these very poor, you know, gang-infested neighborhoods. People are out. And I mean, I'm behind in less than one block with my blue lights and sirens still on. I need to confirm he is fleeing. He is. And I look over at the Intel commander, and he looks like he's about to crap his pants. So I shut off my blue lights, do what I'm supposed to do, break it off. And I'm like, do you see that he was going to kill somebody? Like he was going to wreck and probably hit an innocent person. And he's like, Yeah, that guy was driving like an asshole. I was like, Yeah. He was we were five seconds from him killing somebody. So whatever. Love it or hate it, it's what we had to do. I did when I worked there try to get one adjustment to the pursuit policy, which was having a way to end it. Georgia State Patrol could do pit maneuvers. Uh, some of you may have seen the recent story involving GSP troopers. A few of them got fired, pitting people and then uh hiring a lawyer and filing lawsuits against the person they pitted and getting paid for, getting like $25. But I digress. So I told them like we had several incidents where we needed a pursuit to stop. And we we couldn't pit, we couldn't use stop sticks. So we were allowed to chase for violent felonies, but we couldn't end the pursuit unless they crashed or they stopped voluntarily. But if they just keep driving, we just keep following them. It's kind of asinine. So like we had a bank robbery one time. They hit the Navy Federal on Southside. We're on this car's ass, just following it all over town, hoping state patrol shows up. There was another one where a lady was driving up the Truman Parkway. Her husband had said she was suicidal. Officers could see her stabbing herself in the car. And you might say, I'd just pit that car anyway. Like that's life or death. I would crash her and save her life. Sure. And you are out of policy. That's confirmed. So that's a decision each officer has to make is do I flagrantly violate policy by doing a maneuver I haven't been trained in to save this life? Because at the end of the day, you need your money. So yeah, okay, you're a hero. You did the right thing. And you may get an unpaid suspension or a termination, or God knows what. That lady may sue you for doing that and say, they weren't even trained. I, you know, I was cutting myself and I'm allowed to do that. Or I wasn't even cutting myself. They just thought they saw something, whatever. But I pushed it up. I tried to get it to where like at least one officer per shift was pit trained for certain circumstances, not pitting out everybody that, you know, has a tag light out. But if it's a violent felony, if they just robbed a bank, let's go ahead and put that guy in a ditch and end this pursuit because it's extremely high risk chasing somebody like that. The moral of that is my view changed over my career from I can't believe we break off chases to it actually makes sense. Seriously, once you see a pregnant lady that they t-boned leaving and you were chasing for something that didn't need to be chased, you're like, fuck, I'm not doing this again. I don't ever want to see this again. Let's talk butt drugs. We used to jokingly call ourselves the butt drug unit or BDU because people would always they regularly would shove drugs into their cavities to hide it. Now the questions and concerns come with how do I ethically and legally get the butt drugs or the vaginal drugs or the bra drugs? You know, how do I make that not just a safe place to shove drugs, but also we can't be doing strip searches on the side of the highway, right? That's a quick way to get yourself into real hot water. So my method was always this. I'm patting somebody down, I get consent to search. This was on dudes. I'm not running my hands on chicks' butts, but on men, I would run my hand down their backside. I'm not getting intrusive at all, but regularly I would feel something sticking out. I know that's gross, but it is what it is. And so then what do you do from there? My methodology was I would handcuff them and I would say, You got something back there. And a lot of time I had a guy say, Ah, that's my ball sack. And I was like, Ah, your ball sack's not back there, dude. I got one too. And it's not in the back sticking out. I had people say it's hemorrhoids, all kinds of stuff. They'll say anything, but most people at the end of the day will just take it out once they realize that they're caught. I've I've also had it's gonna be a little graphic, but that's okay. I was doing UC work and I was buying from it, it was like two chicks in the back seat, and it was a dude in the driver's seat, and then I was in the front passenger seat. We were pulling into some apartments on the south side. I'd been buying from them all for a little bit. The dude was the main dealer, the chicks would like middle deals. We called it blade running. They would like, you know, get it and then hike up the price a bit or pinch a little bit. It was heroin I was buying, little foil bindles of heroin. So these two girls are in the back, and the guys got all the dope. We're pulling into these apartments, and the takedown team comes in. Usually I would get the drugs in hand, but for whatever reason, they were just gonna block this vehicle in and, you know, just arrest everybody in place, not even let the deal go. Probably because I wasn't buying all the drugs anyway that he had, so it was time. So we pull in a space, they block us in, and as soon as they block us in and the blue lights come on, they were in an unmarked car with blue lights. They block us in, blue lights come on, and the dude takes all this heroin out and hands it to the girl in the back and one of the girls in the back, and she shoves it straight down her pants, and she says, and this is a quote, this isn't Leo talking, this is just what she said. She said, if they want this shit, they're gonna have to get pussy juice all over their hands. And I was like, Yikes, bro. First off, you could definitely OD. Like, all you need is one bindle, and that shit is straight in your bloodstream, probably, and you're dead. But that's I'm glad I was in the car. We never would have found that. So they handcuff everybody, and I tell the case agent, I'm like, I got bad news, man. She stuffed it. It's down there. They're like, oh God. And I've had I've had an experience where a chick put a crack pipe in there in the same place, and I had a and it broke. And I had a female sergeant that took her in the bathroom and helped to retrieve it. I can't imagine having a broken crack pipe floating around in there. That's pretty freaking tragic. Probably not a great day, not worth it to me. But I guess she really didn't want to go to jail for that crack pipe or whatever. So that's just a few of my personal stories and some of the lessons that I took away from them. If people like this, I was planning to do it with somebody else, but logistically, sometimes it's tough to get stuff set up, or, you know, my Zoom is limited to 40 minutes because I'm a cheap bastard. So this way I don't really have to think about that. And I'll do another one with somebody else about some of the lessons they've learned and we'll trade it off. I know that's probably more fun, but hopefully this isn't too hard on the ears. And I hope you all have a great day and are staying cool this summer. Bye.