Interview with Todd: Cop, Marshal, ATF SRT Operator

On the first of three episodes featuring Todd (last name withheld) he discusses his background as a LEO.  Todd's provides a heartfelt telling of almost losing his wife in the Oklahoma City Bombing and other private details of his law enforcement journey.

Todd also dives into the common misconceptions about the ATF mission and what his actual experiences were like.

With almost a decade as a Deputy US Marshal and over a decade on ATF's Special Response Team, Todd brings an angle to the show that we haven't seen yet.

Enjoy!

-LEO

Note:  I know it ends suddenly.  Next episode will pick up where it left off!

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Good morning. It's Leo here with Todd Nunley. How are you doing, sir?

SPEAKER_00 0:10

I'm good, brother. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 0:12

I'm doing good. You have, I know you probably won't say it, but a pretty illustrious law enforcement background, now retired. And we just wanted to talk about some of the things you've done and experiences you've had today and maybe some lessons learned.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Well, you know, I'm I'm not guys who know me know I'm not very shy. I'm pretty outspoken on some stuff. Some of the things I get outspoken on tends to rub people stung people the wrong way, which I really don't care.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

So that's good listening, man. Most of my listeners are cops, so they you know they like a little conflict. That's a little on a little brutal honesty. Yeah. So you start started as a local cop in, was it Oklahoma City?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Yeah, actually down in southwest Oklahoma, near Lawton, Oklahoma. Okay. I was down there, started off small, small PD, small department. It was there. We had about 50 officers, spent six and a half years there, was patrol officer for four and a half years, and then ended up going into CID and assigned to narcotics, and then got pushed over to a multi multi-jurisdictional drug task force where we were working four counties, and it was that was kind of my introduction to to dealing with violent crime, drugs, which that tended to be the vast majority of my casework I did and was dope related. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Okay, gotcha. So you got away from the small town and got into some big-time drug stuff?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

I did. You know, I went with the Marshal Service at that time because I had I had a two-year degree, but I didn't have a four-year degree at the time. And so I ended up looking for agencies, really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And being young, and I started looking at the different agencies out there. And of course, the Marshall Service was one of the agencies that would hire you without a degree. And so I applied and got hired on, was assigned to Oklahoma City office, was there for eight years. And even in my time with the Marshal Service, you know, we did some fun stuff. We were involved in fugitive task force, fugitive apprehensions. And then in Oklahoma City, we had uh we worked really well with the State Bureau of Narcotics and then the Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA. And so here we go again back into the dope world. And so we did, we did a lot of the marijuana eradication. DEA's got a program called DSEP, domestic cannabis eradication program. And so they ended up sending a team of us through air assault school. Oh, nice. Through the Army and then went through that, and then the following year I went through air assault school or uh, I'm sorry, rappel master school, because they were trying to downsize the number of military personnel in these military aircraft, and so it was those of us in in law enforcement that were running.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

But you were a marshal doing that.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah, I was a U.S. marshal doing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Didn't they have some deputy marshals? I have a good friend that was DE agent that was killed in Afghanistan doing some eradication stuff, I think, in 09 in the helicopter crash. Might have been 06. I'm not sure. It must have been 09. D were the marshals over there doing that as well?

SPEAKER_00 3:25

You know, the marshals had a footprint in Iraq, but it was primarily dealing with the protection of the courts and the judicial system because they were trying to stand up the the courts and provide a protection, protective services for the judges and the court. Uh and so that's what that's the biggest part of what the marshals were involved in over there. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

That's kind of a wild mission going to Iraq to stop. I mean, they're clearly going to be targeted.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, and then the the the marshals ended up doing doing some stuff over there, and then their I think their funding through SOG, Special Operations Group, was a lot of their funding came from State Department, and then you know, that that funded the whole program from guys I talked to for quite some time. And then as the programs kind of kind of died off, some of the funding started dying off. And so, I mean, it was kind of a kind of hit or miss for a while, but but the Marshalls Special Operations Group, they've got a uh they've got a good team. You know, but they they their focus was a little bit different than some of the other agencies. When you like ATF, for instance, you start looking at the different federal agencies, and you start looking at that their their special operations groups or divisions or what have you. You know, for instance, Secret Service, they've got their cat team, uh, counterassault team.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

The guys we saw run out when uh shots were fired at the correspondence dinner.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Yeah, they're the black, typically black VDUs and the nods and stuff like that. But they don't do uh their their specialty is protection, providing the high threat protection detail, obviously, for the president and other dignitaries. So there they don't go out and do high-risk warrants, search warrants, arrest warrants. And so that's where we kind of differed within uh ATF on the SRT team. It's a national team. And being a part of that for 10 years, I mean, you have to go through a selection process and then you go through team basic training, and then if you make it through that, then you then you're on a certain team. We were located five different areas around the country, and it's one team, but you're you've got like you know, team one through five, and you're in different parts of the country. I was on team three, and we were centrally located in the country, and then we had a big area that we covered uh pretty much the whole southern part and southeastern part of the United States for a number of years.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Plenty of work. So you were local in Oklahoma, transitioned into narcotics, and then got hired by the Marshal Service. Did your thing there for, did you say, five years? Eight years. Eight years. Probably longer than a lot of my listeners have been cops, because I have a lot of newer listeners. So that little leg of your career was was significant. And then you switched to ATF. I did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

One of the things in our mutual buddy Rooster, he and I had a long conversation about this, and something that I don't typically share with a lot of guys. Some people I will, some of it, it depends on who it is. But I was there, you know, I obviously Oklahoma City, our office was downtown Oklahoma City, and our office was located in the federal courthouse, which is right across the street from the Murray building that was blown up on April 19th of 1995. So my wife actually worked in that building, and she was she was running late that day, or else I would have lost her and our youngest daughter. Yeah. Yeah. So we that was that had a a massive impact for both of us. And that that really was a, I guess you could call it the catalyst. And I started looking at different agencies to move to because I we didn't want to stay in Oklahoma City anymore. To me, bad memories. We both lost many friends. In her office, they lost 18. And, you know, she would help, she helped identify some of the matter of fact, it was her boss. Not being there to see it, but she had she was very instrumental in describing certain jewelry on on her body that we were able to identify her as who she was. But you know, that that caused some issues. And so we started looking at, you know, other agencies. I did started looking at agencies to leave and go to. So I you know what's funny is I sat and I talked to all the guys. I had friends and acquaintances from every alphabet soup there was in federal law enforcement. Everybody from ATF to DEA to FBI to Secret Service to Postal Inspectors, you name it, customs at that time. And I would ask them, if you were going to leave, where would you go? And why? And so I asked that question to everybody.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

That's a really simple and should be a good simple question and should be a pretty telling answer.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

It is. It was sense. Yeah. And everybody, hands down, every agency, every person I spoke to, they all said the same thing. They're like, dude, go to ATF. And I'm like, really? Why is that? And they said, because they get their hands dirty, because they work. And these guys, they they work more hand in hand with local law enforcement than any other federal agency out there. I mean, Undoubtedly. You know, with the Marshall Service, we had the Fugitive Task Force and FBI had their, you know, after with the JTTF and then then other stuff that they started standing up and DEA had their task force and stuff like that. But even talking to them, they're like, ATF works more hand in hand with local law enforcement than anybody. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

They're at every mass shooting scene. They're going out on all these criminals with, you know, these felons with guns. Yeah. Yeah, they're constantly out. I mean, my office when I was with ATF in Memphis was at the Memphis gang unit. So we sat in a room with about 30 detectives that worked, you know, either gang or non-fatal shootings. So we were completely interwoven, which is cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

I mean, and and there you go, there's a perfect example of how we worked hand in hand with the guys really involved in the most violent offenders that are on the streets of America. And I I loved that. That to me was a blast. It was it was fun because we got to to go out there and we were getting constantly getting in all kinds of issues. I mean, whether it was getting in in shootings or, you know, executing search warrants or arrest warrants or what have you, working undercover operations. So we had a, we really had a great time.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

I want to kind of pick your brain on something you just said because we've already talked offline and you know my opinion on it, but kind of get into some of the misconceptions that, you know, talking to you, I think most of the listeners aren't sitting there thinking, this guy's definitely coming to take my guns. Like this guy hates guns, right? Unless they're just absolute rocks, in which case, shut it off. But the misconceptions and get your opinion on, you know, the big ones, you know, David Kuresh and the Waco stuff, Ruby Ridge and the non-ATF shooter that killed, you know, took some shots, and how they take the rap for it and kind of what the mission is as opposed to what the public thinks, which I think is they're trying to create a gun registry. Eventually they're coming for the guns. They want to just regulate us into submission and all this bullshit. Do you mind just weighing in on some of that as you know, a career retired ATF agent, SRT guy? Uh, you know, you did the job.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

You know, we I wish we had a long time to talk about this because we could talk about this one for hours. I got time. We, you know what? We, we, we, and when I say we, I'm talking about guys that were in ATF, yourself, myself, guys we know, buddies we know. You talk to guys, and it's like, and that was the huge misconception in the public is the fact that they think ATF agents are coming out there to try to grab everybody's gun. And it's like, where in the name of peace did you come up with this garbage? And it's like, no, I love to hunt. Love to shoot. I'm an avid shooter, even though I don't get to do as much as I used to.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

I just went to try to sell a minivan and I had my Glock 19 on my hip. I carry a gun everywhere I go, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

You know, I do too. And I I think it's important that there are good people out there carrying guns because it's always a good guy with a gun who has to face the bad guy with the gun. So it people have this conjured up idea, and I'm sitting there thinking, man, y'all are, I don't know where you're getting your news from, but it is completely off base. But anyway, you know, there's this big misconception that we're we want to take people's guns with. No, the vast majority, like what we talked about offline, vast majority of us, whether you're you're agents or agents assigned on the team or whatever, we don't want your guns. I don't care if you've got a gun. Dude, go buy another one, go buy two or three or more. I don't care. You know, the the misconception is so damaging, really, to guys that did the job, and it's like, man, you that's a completely retarded uh belief system there. But but anyway, I was telling you offline, I have a got a very good friend of mine who is a PJ, Air Force PJ, pararescue jumper, tier one, tier one special operations community. I have many friends that are in the uh tier one elements and that good dudes, every single one of them. But but I was talking to him, and we were chit catching up and chit-chatting here just a few weeks ago, and he has his own podcast, which I listen to, and I get a kick out of it because there's some stuff that he's he comments on, and he goes, Well, you really need to consider doing one yourself. And I'm like, who would listen to me? He goes, dude, you'd be very surprised. But in but anyway, in our conversation, we start talking about things that are misconceptions that people have about ATF. He goes, give me an example. I said, here's one. Back before I got on the team, when I was assigned to a hydra group, I was working dope in gun cases, working violent crime. We ended up on one particular case, in the life of the case, I ended up seizing a hundred or just over a hundred firearms, two machine guns. I don't know how much dope. It was all meth. And then the products to manufacture methamphetamine. I mean, it was it was a big case. But anyway, in the guns that we we seized, uh it was our job to go back in. You'll remember this. It was our job to go in and to do a trace on all these firearms and try to figure out where they came from. Who was it that this came from? Well, I happened to trace this this one particular gun. It was older, it was early, if I remember right, it was early 70s model rifle. And you could tell it was somebody's heirloom. So anyway, I tracked it down, traced it, started tracking the guy down. I found him, called him on the phone. I said, Hey, this is who I am, this is who I'm with. Did you happen to own a particular rifle? And I had described it to a T. And he goes, I did. And he goes, but it was stolen. And I said, When was it stolen? And he said, It's been stolen now for a couple of years. I said, Did you report it to local police? He goes, Yeah, I did. I said, Do you have a report that shows the serial number and all of this describing it? He goes, I sure do. And so I I got that from him and I said, Well, I want to give you your gun back. And he goes, Hold on a second. You said you were with ATF, right? I said, Yeah. He goes, and you want to give me my gun back? And I said, Yeah. And he goes, Wait a second, that to me sounds odd because I'm hearing all this stuff. And I'm like, dude, I don't want your gun. We don't want your gun. And it was a family heirloom of of his that was handed down from his his father.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

But he's been provided false info that we're gun snatchers.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Yeah, well, and and true, and they they have this misconception. But this man, he started literally, he started crying on the phone because he was about to get his gun handed back to him by an ATF agent who didn't want his gun. So, you know, that's just one. And I've got countless stories like that where people think that we're out there, and it's like, where are you getting this stuff from? Because I know where they're getting it from, but it's like they're being lied to.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Exactly. And that's I'm glad you're saying that because man, I I mean, I lived in Savannah, Georgia, and I was in the Marine Corps. So I got Marine buddies, there's a Ranger Regiment in Savannah. And those guys, mostly across the board, hate the ATF, right? They all like, you know, suppressed SBRs with uh nice triggers in it, either FRTs or drop-in auto sears or something cool. Yeah, and then they think we're like out to get them to check their tax stamp at the range. And so and I just correct them all exactly. You're shaking your head, and I would just correct them and be like, dude, we don't do any of that. It's the guys, picture a dude that like smokes meth every day and he's a three-time convict for shooting people. Yes. That's who we're targeting. Yes. They're people that they uh yes, they have Glock switches and they leave crime scenes with 600 shell casings. Like, do you think they're hitting their target? They're not even hitting their target, they're hitting three six-year-olds. Like those are the crime scenes we go to. Yeah, exactly. And not a dude with a switch that likes to shoot off in his backyard. Is that a crime? Yes. Is does anybody pursue that? No, it's the sh it's the trigger pullers, is the motto.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah. And and that's the travesty, you know. And I I like I said, I I enjoyed my career. It was it was a good time. Missed it. And I think, you know, from there transitioning over to the team and then being on the team for the last 10 years, uh I think of all the things I look back at my career, that's the one thing I missed the most because there was truly a it was there was more camaraderie there. Yeah. Unfortunately, you don't see that a whole lot after you retire because guys have their life and life goes on, and I get it. Yeah. But you do, you go through that and you you miss certain things. I know there are some guys that that I tend to to stay in contact with because we just had a good bond, good relationship there.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

So Yeah, I'm sure with the the level of missions and you know, I don't know how much we can go into it. I think it's all out in the open, you know, the URIs and things like that. You guys had some pretty intense work on some really violent people. You know, you know everybody you're dealing with is a murderer and probably planning a murder.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

You know, we one of the things that I have seen, and even in post-retirement as an instructor, I go on and I teach around the country, I teach around the world and certain programs. And, you know, the the misconception, another misconception is the fact that that people don't really know a whole lot about ATF's SRT team. And they think because they haven't heard about it, that you don't do, there's not much you guys do, you just got the uh got the tab, and that's it. No, we're the most, we were the most, and I think we still are. I say we're retired. We were the most active tactical unit in federal law enforcement, hands down. DEA didn't have a team. I think they're just now starting to stand up teams. And and here's a point there, DEA is now patented after ATF's team, and they actually sought out ATF to help stand them up as far as training and certain gear and equipment.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

That's good. I I respect that. Find one that works and does a great job and steal from them, they'll give it to you.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

But we were the most active. I mean, we were, I think, the heaviest year from you know, if memory serves me correctly, we had one particular year, we were running 300, over 330 operations in one year. And that's across the country. So when you're talking a few number of guys, and when I say few, you know, somewhere between 125 and 150 guys on a team, when you're running, you know, large numbers per operation across the country and then including our territories. I mean, you look at the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico and Hawaii and Guam and all these other areas that we have, Alaska. I mean, we we were doing operations all over.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Just raiding those igloos. So an operation as well, I think most people think of a search warrant as like a one-day thing. Like you guys are hitting the door. But the reality is there's much more in the planning, the gear. I mean, you can speak to it more than me. I was not on SRT, but it's a lot that goes into it to do it right.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

This is another area where we've pretty much set ourselves apart from others. The operational planning, the mission planning is probably the most detailed of any other agency out there. Matter of fact, my last seven years, I was the DTA of the division. Tactical advisor. And as the tactical advisor for the division, it was my job to go back and review operational plans. Even the regular agents doing their jobs in executing whether it's undercover operations, surveillance, search warrant, arrest warrant, they had to do an operational plan. You remember this.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Yeah. We turn them into RDTA in Nashville, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Yes. And I had copies of pretty much all the agencies' operational plans. I had copies of an FBI op plan, a DEA op plan, ATFs, Marshalls didn't do them, which that's a whole other issue. But but you start looking at the agencies and their operational plans, ATFs was the most detailed. And I think that's why when we got into situations, and even on the team, the SRT team is even more detailed than your standard agent's operational plan. We were doing medical threat assessments. I mean, we were doing stuff that that only the military did. And so that's pretty much what set us apart from all these other teams out there. And then when you mention that, they're like, well, we've never heard of you. It's like, well, it's because you know you ever heard that term, like quite professional. We don't go out there thumping our chest and saying, hey, we've done all this, that, and the other. You know, we know what we've done. We we're very proud of what we've done, but we don't need to tell everybody either.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

And I mean, the URI stuff was crazy. And I mean, one of my cases that actually SRT was tied up. They were out of the air, they were, they were on other stuff. That's how busy y'all are. I was like, hey, I need to request y'all. And they were like, there's no way we can do it. I think they were all in Puerto Rico or something. Yeah. But like everybody was somewhere else. But it was a gang leader who was known to have like a three to four man armed security contingent. Like when he went anywhere, he had a team with him. The team would spend the night with him. Like that was y'all's kind of mission. That's not That's not who I think most citizens think of when they think of an ATF SRT op. Like this is a dangerous murdering dude, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Yeah.

unknown 24:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

We dealt with a lot of, well, you know, the the general theme that we we knew. I mean, we're dealing with the worst of the worst. When you're dealing with the worst of humanity on America's streets. And like you said, you when you start dealing with gangbangers, dudes with guns, or guys involved in uh meth uh methamphetamine trafficking or drug trafficking in general, and you're you're you're using firearms to for protective measures for those guys involved in in uh drug trafficking crimes. I mean, those are the type of guys that we went after. And we and we we prided ourselves on that.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Yeah. When I was a patrol officer, my area had, you know, the usual city stuff. It had drugs, guns, shootings, you know, kids falling victim to gang violence on one side or the other of it, you know, receiving end of the gun or getting locked up and throwing their life away. And the only agency I saw in my beat, my little part of the city, was ATF. And the agents that work the area, one of them who runs the National Academy now, he was an agent at the time, would call me and be like, Hey, I got this house at the dead end of Griffin Street. Here's what he's doing. And then I I'd be so excited when I could call him the next morning and be like, hey, I picked off two cars from there. They both had crack and said they got it from a dude named T, and they described the guy, you know, whatever. And then they'd stick me on perimeter and I thought I was a super cop. But the point is they were in the neighborhoods and they would show up. If I called them at 2 a.m., they answered.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

And that was different than I experienced with some others.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Yes. Yeah. And that that's the other thing is we you know, we understand, at least the vast majority, I won't say everybody, but the vast majority of agents, good agents, working agents, we understand, we know that our work is developed from local agencies. Those who don't understand that, there's some other agencies who don't. I'll leave that without being said. But I'm sure you could read between the lines, but they're we understand and we knew that the vast majority of our work came from the local departments. That's why it was important for us to work hand in hand with these guys. And so, you know, we we're not gonna go out there and tell them, oh yeah, we'll come out, give me a call anytime, and then don't ask your phone call at one o'clock in the morning. Yeah. And I told guys that I worked with even before going to the team and being assigned to a hida group and working the dope and guns and all that stuff. I don't care what time of day or night it is, call me. I'll come out. And that right there goes for a person's reputation. And, you know, I like to think that my reputation spoke for itself. The guys, they knew that if they needed something, regardless of what time of day or night it was, they could call and I'm up. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Yeah. It's uh to me, it's almost the difference. I mean, uh, what they taught us in the academy when I went through was two things no better partner and we're looking for trigger pullers.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

So no better partner speaks to itself. And the culture that I experienced, it wasn't one where if you go to a mass shooting scene, which we went through all of them, anybody with I think it was four plus bodies down is considered a mass shooting, which happens every big city, happens all the time. You think of like, you know, 18 down at a nightclub, but in reality, half these don't even hardly hit the news in big cities. It's gangland. And so we would go out there and we didn't take over the scene. Some federal agencies, you've seen them like basically like this is my scene now. Like, okay, I'm I'm a big drug guy. It has now become my case. I'm gonna manage the search warrant. I'm doing everything. Who's in charge? No, wrong answer. I'm in charge. That's right. As opposed to I felt I was expected when I got out there, we'd be a step behind the homicide investigator because they got called first and then they'd call us. And my first thing was, what can I do to help you?

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

And if they said nothing, we got it. I'd kind of tinker around and then I'd be like, all right, do you have a vehicle description? There's a gang neighborhood called Spring Valley right up the street. How about I ride that and see if I can spot the car?

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Like, how about I don't stand on your perimeter and update my supervisor and send out notifications?

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Yeah. What's the hell? I worked a one particular case that I worked. There was another federal agency. Again, I'll leave them out, but they started a big conspiracy case in one of the suburbs of Dallas. And one of the local narcs, one of the guys from a local PD narcotics unit, got my name and number from somebody else. I don't remember who it was now, but he called me and he said, Hey, I understand that you're wanting to work. I said, Absolutely. I'll like getting my hands dirty. What do you got? And he said, Well, if you could stop by, I could show you what I got. And he had a little bitty file folder with some names and addresses and some police reports and stuff like that. And I said, Well, tell me the concept. What were you guys planning on doing with this? And he said, Well, the general idea was to take this and do a conspiracy investigation and wrap up this one particular family that was involved in introducing crack cocaine into our city way back into the 80s. And I'm like, Sounds cool to me. Yeah, righteous. Let's let's let's run with it. Long story short, we ended up running that case. We were on that for probably two years. And in that, at the end of it, we ended up indicting 33 people. We knocked off the entire family and then some of their friends that were cohorts that were involved in this. But we took the whole family down. And then we were we were successful in that because every single one of them were were either found guilty or they pled guilty. So, you know, 33 uh defendants in one particular case and a conspiracy case. And that that's the thing that kind of boggles my mind when he talked to some of the local agencies. We lived in Florida for about seven years before moving uh back home to Texas. And I talked with local detectives down there. I said, Do you guys work any conspiracy cases? No. And I'm like, Oh, okay. Have you ever thought about doing conspiracy cases? I mean, you're gonna get some pretty heavy hammers Fed time when you start looking at doing a multi-defendant conspiracy cases and taking it federal. And that's the part a lot I think a lot of guys don't understand. That was kind of my specialty. We we ended up doing a historical conspiracy and was able to go back many years and show that this was an ongoing criminal enterprise for decades.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

And you can use that total weight of drug sold, whatever you can prove, right? As opposed to a lot of local statutes where you need that one incident.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Yes, absolutely. Cumulative. In in the midst of that particular case, there were they had a quadruple homicide in the city. And so they're like, Hey, you're here. Can you help us with this too? I went, what do you got? Long story short, there was two brothers. Uh, we tried to tie it into the conspiracy we were working, and it wasn't there. There were two brothers involved in that case, and both of them, one of them was hit with state charges and convicted, and then I hit the other brother on federal charges and he was convicted. They didn't have enough to get him on state murder charges, so I hit him on a gun count, federal gun count. That was the only thing we could get on him. But he was still used and he got the maximum sentence for that because there was relevant conduct. Cross-reference, right? Yes, in association with this murder that took place.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Yeah, I've I've done the same thing several times where and some of the I had one of the MPD detective sergeants who supervised like laughing because I solved one of the shootings. It didn't take that, I didn't do anything miraculous, but I was able to put it together. I had time. Yeah. You know, one of their detectives might show up and have three new shootings on his desk that happened, and they just get so much. So I had the time to work it and was able to charge the guy on the show casings for fire and by felon and then do search warrants on the house. And then you get the gun and you know, knibe and connect it. And then next thing you know, he's eating a G1, a firearm by a felon case with a cross. And he's like, Okay, I'm looking at my little 60 months, and it's like, no, you got a murder cross-reference. You're looking at you're looking at or attempted murder cross-reference, you're looking at 10 to 15, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And then you get other which is awesome. That's that's much better than they skated because you know, for whatever reason. So it's it feels good that and so that detective sergeant was like, you can take any cases you want. He's like, I got five more for you if you want them. Because I kept calling him and I'd be like, hey man, am I overstepping? Like, I don't want to step on your homicide detective's hands. I'm working a gun case, or it was an attempted murder. He like shot a guy in the face and his eyeballs fell out. So he's blind now. So pretty egregious. But I kept, and finally he was just like, dude, you don't have to call, you don't need to ask my permission. But that's that's a big difference in vibe that you get at ATF. Then like I don't report to that guy, that local yokel. Like, I'm running it. Like to us, man. I remember my supervisor. I was working with the violent crime unit, which in Memphis is like a really high-speed, solid, plain clothes carjacking unit. They used to have like 80 car, 80 violent carjackings a month. But we started taking them federally, and these guys were getting like 30 years for carjacking, whereas they'd been getting nothing through the state. So they start getting hammered, carjackings went down. And I was brand new to ATF. And my boss that I told you about earlier, he had me over with this guy. And so I told him something I was gonna do. And he was like, Oh, did you run it by the investigator? And I don't remember what I said, but maybe I sounded a little arrogant. And he was like, No, I wasn't asking your opinion. I was telling you to go talk to him because he's really fucking smart. So, like you should kind of be following him right now. And I was like, Oh, okay. Oh, I just got channels a little bit. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Yeah, I I'm um I I enjoyed the investigative side of it because you you were really putting true bad guys in prison. I remember one one particular case. You you mentioned the the showcasings. There was one particular guy. I remember he was he was involved in a lot of violent crime. He was the guy who was a multi-defendant felon and a multi-convicted felon, and this dude had been convicted multiple times in and out of prison for I don't know, pretty much all his life. And we didn't we found something and were able to shut this dude down on it. I think I remember I was at a traffic stop and didn't have a gun on him, but in and just a a a pat down.