The Front Seat with Nick Jackson
The Front Seat with Nick Jackson takes you inside the world of real roadside policing and criminal interdiction. Hosted by Nick Jackson, this podcast peels back The Interdiction Layer — exposing the behaviors, deception cues, and interview tactics that reveal the truth when seconds count.
Expect raw conversations about building rapport, spotting subtle behavioral shifts, and turning everyday stops into career-making cases. Weekly shows include solo Front Seat breakdowns, Border to Border interviews with proactive cops across the country, and deep-dive case studies from real-world interdiction work.
Whether you’re a new Law Enforcement Officer learning the craft or a seasoned pro sharpening your edge, this is where the layers of interdiction get peeled back — one stop at a time.
The Front Seat with Nick Jackson
Episode #6: The Interdiction Blueprint: Built on Integrity. Beyond the Seizure.
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🎙️ Welcome back to The Front Seat with Nick Jackson — where we take you inside the real world of highway interdiction, leadership, and decision-making when it matters most.
In this episode, Nick sits down with Brent Hill — a seasoned interdiction supervisor with decades of experience and millions seized over his career. But this conversation goes beyond the numbers.
We break down what it really takes to build strong cases, lead interdiction teams the right way, and operate with integrity in today’s high-scrutiny environment.
🔥 Topics include:
• Building cases vs. chasing seizures
• K9 utilization and doing it right
• Articulation and operating in the bodycamera
• Starting and leading a successful interdiction team
• Staying on the right side of the ethical line
This is a real conversation about professionalism, discipline, and doing interdiction the right way — no shortcuts, no fluff.
👉 If you’re in law enforcement, or just want a real look behind the scenes of highway policing, this one delivers.
🎧 Listen on Apple, Spotify, and more:
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Brent, what's going on, brother? How are you, man?
SPEAKER_01Oh, doing good, doing good.
SPEAKER_00Heck yeah, man. Always good to see you, brother.
SPEAKER_01You too. You too. Y'all been busy?
SPEAKER_00Y'all yeah, man. Been busy, man. Like I said, I'm still out, uh, have my ankle injury, but uh, yeah, man, I know the guys are still busy for sure, man. Heck yeah, dude. Well, let's get it rolling, man. Um, kind of want to open it up, talking about a little bit, you know, career mind shift uh change a little bit. Uh for you, man. When did uh you know criminal interdiction stops stop being about big seizures for you? Uh and then kind of start being about you know building up real cases, and then you know, at what what was there a moment or a case that particularly changed you know your your vision on big seizures?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, I think that that like one of the probably the biggest change was having guys come on and seeing their work.
SPEAKER_02Like seeing seeing them get excited from going to like being in patrol and then being assigned to the task force that we're with, taking the time to sit out there and listen to what other successful guys have seen, and then basically like growing with them, seeing how they grow, you know, how they grow, because everybody's got their own approach with doing it, including paperwork. Um, you know, and and it gets kind of hard here because it's it's a competitive thing anyway. Like there's fun competition and then there's like angry competition, you know. But you you still have to ask those guys what do you see? Like what made you hone in on this particular one? What did you like about it versus the other 200 that went by? And I don't know if it's just in the delivery or some people take offense to that. Like they think that you're questioning their stop when you're really not. You just want to know what they saw that they liked about it, so that if you see it, maybe you saw it too and just didn't pay attention to it or it didn't stick out to you. You know what I mean? So that that's kind of you got a lot of barriers that you have to break uh in the interdiction world. But I guess that that one of the one of the biggest game changers for me was seeing people come on after me, start being successful, and then learning from those guys, and then learning going to court with them, hearing the questions that the lawyers ask them, preparing yourself for the same, you know, making adjustments in your own in your own skill set would probably be the biggest the biggest game changer of all. And that came that came years, years later, because for a while we don't we don't have openings often. So for a while, I was the new guy that was learning, you know, learning how to do it and all that. And now, unfortunately, I'm the old guy, but still learning.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So absolutely, man. We're always still learning. And you kind of had a good question uh or a good topic you kind of made me think about a little bit. So you talk a little bit about target selection, and lots of guys and girls that reach out to me, and I'm sure you as well, you know, did you and and that's the other thing I want to clarify too. Like when I say target selection, uh, for guys that or guys and girls that are listening may not understand, like, we're not talking profiling, we're talking, you know, looking for vehicles that are reacting to our presence, showing driving behavior, and then we're still looking for reason, suspicion, and probable cause. So we're not just stopping a car to stop it. So just to clarify for anyone that might be listening in, but when did you or when did target selection or picking the right cars, when did that really click for you, man? Did it take you a few years?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, I mean it it was kind of a and I'm still I still don't consider myself great at it. I mean it it changes all the time.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's something that you gotta definitely stay up on with it. Um I worked 155 before I came out to Interstate 40, which was a game changer in itself. But the there's different building blocks to it, in my opinion, just the way I describe it. You you learn behavior and then you learn how to weed out that behavior. Like you you see driving behavior in uh a guy that's got a warrant for child support, or a guy that's driving on a remote license, and sometimes they'll throw you for a loop and not be driving a park avenue or an ESON center, you know. So you gotta kind of hone that into to where maybe you you find yourself looking for one or two more uh driving behaviors that you wouldn't normally look for out there, you know, and and being close to where we are, we're close to the to the Arkansas state line with Shelby County and Memphis, right close to that, and then we're like right in the middle between Memphis and Jackson, which is the next bigger city outside of Memphis on the Tennessee side. So traffic's going back and forth there a lot uh with it. But when I first came out, if you if you just look at it from an outside perspective, like it takes a lot to make a case. Not in the aspect of paperwork, but you gotta be on the road at the same time this guy's going by, you gotta identify him amongst the 500 cars that are coming. You gotta get behind him, you gotta get out of the hole first, which is you know, busy interstates, you gotta get out of the hole, you gotta get caught up, you gotta find a reason to stop it, you gotta ask the right questions, you gotta find it if it's in the car. It's overwhelming. When you come out new, like when I first came out, they told me don't expect to make a case within your first year. You're learning traffic flow, you're learning people, we're learning you, you're learning us, you know, all this different stuff that goes in with it, and then one day it just clicks. Like the hardest case, I I I I do feel like the hardest case for anybody to ever make is their first one. Because you get it out of the way and it's over with, and then you're you you learn from that one. And it it the best way, like when I teach classes and stuff, the way that I describe it, I I I kind of compare cops and criminals with it.
SPEAKER_01But if you if you stop a car and you smell weed, and the dude's got Viazine, like patrol level stuff, dude's got Vizine and a blunt splitter and blunt wraps, and he's got a uh a warrant, you arrest him, you search him incidental arrest, you find uh a dime bag of weed in his car.
SPEAKER_02And you do that three or four times to where you get that routine down, but then you stop a guy that's doing the same exact thing, but he don't have a warrant.
SPEAKER_01But he's got a blunt splitter on the keychain, he's got vine in the center console, he's got blunt wraps, so then you go a little bit further and say, hey man, you know, you don't mind if I patch you down, you know, you don't have a possession of any drugs, or he's got a dime back too.
SPEAKER_02So you build it's the building blocks that lead up to it. And to bring that back around to what I was talking about with learning traffic behavior, it it sounds a lot harder and it's described a lot harder, in my opinion, than what it really is. Because if you're out there every day, you you know, Nick, because you do it too, after a while of sitting out there watching cars every day at 75 to 80 miles an hour, you can just about tell what somebody, what kind of sandwich somebody's eating when they drive by because you you've trained yourself to it, and to eliminate the amount of traffic that you're looking at, you know what cars are gonna be coming through at what time. I know I know every day that I'm out there at 6:30, there's gonna be a guy that drives a maroon escalade with Michigan tags. It looks like he just got the hell beat out of him that got off work at the hospital in Jackson and he's going to Memphis. So I weed him out. You know what I mean? Like when I see him coming, I don't I don't look for him. There's another guy that comes through that does carpenter work that drives one of those uh Honda truck car, whatever thing it's called, I can't remember the name of it right now. But anyway, he comes through every day. So I know you know I can cut him out, and people will pass him and and so on and so forth. But uh, and and I think that that driving behavior has a lot to do with the the driver's culture, too. Um my opinion on that is you know, if you take somebody that's in constant contact with the police, it's not gonna be that big of a deal as a person that that is not in constant contact with the police, you know. But you see, you see, you learn, you grow, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, spot on, man. And you have some good points too, because like you said, someone who regularly has contact with law enforcement probably is not a good thing if you're having regular contact with law enforcement, uh, you know, whether you're getting charged or whether they're just interviewing you because of a call for service. So, yeah, when when those individuals, you know, uh, especially when they're actively uh doing you know criminal activity in route or coming from doing criminal activity, yes, they're inherently going to have a bigger, you know, uh change in behavior, approaching us and passing us versus the general voting public who not doing anything wrong. Maybe even they're going a few miles over the speed limit. Like they're gonna, you know, those their flight reactions are not gonna be the same uh type of reactions that you know, people that are actively involved in criminal activity. And you know, I I tell a lot of students as well as well that come into my class, man, sometimes you just gotta go out there and you just gotta watch traffic. You gotta build, you know, like a pattern and you'll see it. You know, when that pattern changes, out of those hundreds and hundreds of cars that pass you, it's gonna stand out like a sore thumb. And, you know, if you're working in your city, you know, a lot of times these cars they don't want to be on the road, they'll pull in the gas stations, they'll they'll beeline right into the store just to get out of the car so you can't contact them. And then they just wait for you to leave the area and then try to go out again. So it could be various different things, but it's gonna be a pattern that is rarely happening and it's gonna stand out like a sore thumb. So I think that's uh some definitely some great relevant points for some of the young guys out there watch watching right now.
SPEAKER_02So far, I've I've had great success with this when I instruct like patrol level classes and things like that in the past. I don't I don't teach much now, but find the busiest intersection in your city. If you've got time to sit there and just watch cars long enough, and if you don't catch it today, go back tomorrow. But find the busiest intersection in your city and watch who stays at the stop sign longer. They'll they'll check both ways 13 times before they ever pull out, and then you know you get you get out behind them, you find a reason to pull them over. That's behavior. And it's not always trophy shots and high fives and large-scale seizures, it's it's criminal activity, which everybody everybody harps on that, you know, yada yada yada. But you gotta stop 300 to know not to stop number 301. And and it's the same way with searching, you know, it's the same way with searching, uh, searching cars. Like a lot of these guys will come out, new guys will come out, and they're dead set that the car's loaded, and call us down there, and I'm not trying to hinder them on what they're doing, but I know not to search it because I've searched a hundred just like it. So if I tell you you're wasting your time, you got two choices. You can practice searching a car that you're not gonna find anything in, or we can roll on and catch the next one. Because you can sit out there all day and you'll never see the greatest looking cars as you do when you're backing somebody else up. You're like, Jesus Christ, where were you 30 minutes ago? When you know what I mean? Because you're always paying attention and scanning to what is going by and realizing like what you're stuck out on or whatever. But if you want to search 100 cars a day, we'll search 100 cars a day. That's that's what we're all here for, whether we think it's there or not. But if we can save everybody else time and the experience speaks and says you're wasting your time, then you're just wasting your time.
SPEAKER_00So I I have a slightly different approach to it. So when I'm training younger officers, you know, and just like you said, we've we've we know what we're looking for, we we know exactly what we what we need to do, especially when it comes to searching vehicles. But one of the things I do is when a younger officer calls me to the scene, I'll go and you know, I'll help them on a consent search or probably all cost search, whatever type of search they may be on. I may mentally know there's nothing gonna be there. And I will help them search that car, you know, legally from front to back as long as we need to. And then in the end, after they finish their enforcement action and they cut the driver loose, cameras go off. Let's talk. Okay, why did you stop that car? Uh, how did your interview go? Let's sit down and maybe watch your body camera or your or your dash camera, let's see how your interview went. You know, what what caused you to want to search this vehicle? If it was, if it was a consent search and it wasn't probable cause, what led you to believe, you know, your regional suspicion that there was criminal activity afoot? Like, let's go through it and because I try to get their mindset as an officer, because again, my perception and how I perceive things is completely different. And I just try to put myself in like their shoes, so to speak. So I like to try to figure that out. And then after I figure out, okay, I kind of have a good idea of what you saw, but let me guide you a little bit and let me give you some some advice. And then, like, hey, maybe next time in your interview, do this, don't do this too much. You know, maybe you're causing the nervousness because that happens a lot. I did that when I was young. I realized that my tone and things like that were causing behavior, but clearly as I got you know more professional and more wise in my career field, I've learned to take a step back, laugh, talk to people, you know, and just kind of be more laid back. So that's kind of the one of the approaches I take now when I try to help younger officers out there. Just trying to figure out why you want to search that car. Like, especially if it wasn't a probable cost search and it was a consent search. Let's figure it out so you you're not going down the path of guessing and just searching random cars because I try my hardest not to search a car. You know, you have to give me an overwhelming amount of reasonable suspicion to make me want to search your car till I even get to that point. And that's why, you know, when I'm working, maybe one car, maybe two a day, and that's that's that's still high for me in a lot of cases, right? You gotta, I call it, you gotta earn a search. Like, you know, I don't want to search people cars if I don't have to. And that's, you know, I'm again trying to build that relationship with the community. Uh, but also, you know, I'm looking in search for criminals, you know, that's criminal interdiction. It's not always drugs, it's not always big money seizures. It could be, you know, saving a young kid from being kidnapped. Uh, so like those are the ones that we're we're out there trying to target and go after.
SPEAKER_02So when you when you ask that question to the guys, do you get uh the response that they're afraid they'll miss it pretty pretty often?
SPEAKER_00I I think that's a it's a decent amount. Uh they're afraid that they'll miss it. And you know, in some cases, especially when they've when they've when I've taught them put on some training so they have a good baseline on where to where to start, so to speak, you know, they're looking at some things, but a lot of times they're causing that behavior. You know, uh when people lie to me, and I know it's a flat out lie, one of the things I had a big problem when I was young, and I still see in a lot of new officers, uh, hey, why are you lying to me? I know you lying to me. And then it's like, hey, man, you don't got to call them out on the lie. Just make a mental note and move on. Because what happens? You and I both know the moment you start challenging people on the side of the road, they're gonna shut down. And the moment they shut down, it's just gonna make you're probably not gonna finish the rest of your interview because they're gonna feel like you don't believe them. And yes, they know that they're lying, but if you come off a little less uh um, you know, approachive, more approachable, uh, I think people are more kind and more likely to speak to you. So I think it's a combination of a couple factors, but that's definitely one I do see a lot. They just don't want to miss it. And you know, uh they may have seen a video from somebody else's class or my class or who whatever, and they're not putting the full pieces together because like I tell officers all the time, it's the totality of the stop. It's not just one factor, it's not just you know, single key ignition. No, there's a totality of factors behind that that lead us to our reason suspicion for why we need to go a little bit deeper in this particular stop uh legally. Really quick, man, looking back at your earlier years, you know, what's your what has your mindset changed from then to now? And you know, if you know what the trigger was, what triggered the change in your mindset working uh criminal interdiction?
SPEAKER_02Uh I mean, there's I think that we we all change pretty regularly. Uh, you know, if what you're doing's not working, you're gonna change. One of the the biggest things for me was I I just worked dope side and and was dead set. I wasn't I wasn't going to the money side. They had guys over, you know, guys on the money side already. And uh I think I think just like everybody else that's in the in the the same game that we are, you want to be the best. And I realize that you can't be the best if you're just one-sided, so you gotta do the other. You know, you gotta you gotta do the hard things, I guess. And the dope side was I guess I kind of viewed it somewhat easy, uh, because it was I was able to make case after case after case. I mean, there's been a few times I made two cases one a week, which is unheard of for us because of the way, you know, the way things work. But it just so happened there was a few times I was able to do that. Um and I got with another guy that's over in a different drug task force down the road uh that I had talked to for years. Like we've been buddies long before I ever even got on the interstate. I got his advice before I came out here, you know, because you you come out chasing a dream, but you don't you leave if you with us, like if you get hired on full time or you take an assignment, it's with uh an assigning agency, which may not be your agency. So we'll offer you the opportunity to leave your agency, and nobody wants to go back to their to their original agency and show that they failed, you know, on the interstate. Um but the biggest game changer of all was him taking his time and explaining to me what he looked for, the way he did it. And no joke, like I went and rode with him one night, counted it as a workday type deal, and came back, and four days later I hit my first money load, all because of what I had learned from him and and the things that I learned from him. Uh Scott Owens is his name. I don't know if you if you're familiar with him or not, but yeah, so Scott, you know, Scott took the time with me to sit down and he always answered my calls, and he always gave me a rock solid answer, whether it was what I wanted to hear or not. You know, and and it it being a new guy, it does suck knowing you can't make it be there. Like no matter how bad you want it to be there, you can't make it be there. It's you there or it's not, you know. And if it's not in the interview, it's not in the car. Stop, you know, stop trying to push it to make it be there because it won't be. But um, but anyway, so learning, you know, learning the method with him, and then I got in the in the situation where like my first money load was like 47,000. And then I felt like that I was just stuck in that that twenty to fifty thousand dollar range forever. And and I didn't be on night shift. Uh by the time that I had swapped over to the money side, I was kind of like a senior guy. And to me, there's nobody to grow from. Like you can't learn from anybody when you're the senior guy, and people are asking you, you know, where should I look? Look where you would always look. I don't I don't know any more about this car than you do, you know, and and we're learning together type type deal. And then uh finally broke out of that and then like moved up in in levels, and that's just the way it worked for me. Like I was I felt like that I was stuck in that particular range, and I would seek out schools and I would seek out advice uh from different people, you know, what do you what do you do? Yada yada yada, and then their method is just completely different than what I had already been doing and had success with. So you kind of blend it, you know, what this guy does versus what that guy does, and it just it winds up coming together and you and you're doing your own thing. It's kind of like the the I kind of view it like an FTO program, like you you learn the department's ways, but when you're riding with your three FTOs, you learn their way, and then you kind of make a mix of it all to have your own way uh with it. And that's kind of the way it was for me coming out here on the interstate. Um but I think that was probably the biggest growth. And now I'll go to the dope side and we're if we're short staffed or whatever the case may be with it, and the whole time I can't focus because I'm worried about what's going westbound. Just because I that that's what I enjoy doing now. And I I avoided it like a plague when I first came out. Yeah, I just I didn't want anything to do with it. And and I think it was probably just because it was it was hard. I mean, I I tried it like one or two days and it just didn't work, you know. But back in the day, uh early 90s and stuff, when guys would come out, you had to ride with a with a senior guy, and you had to hit a load on both sides before you were cut free on your own. Well, if we do that now, we'd be stuck with somebody in our car for a year sometimes, you know, because it just that's just the way it works, you know. Back then it was two guys in a box truck and living on hope and a prayer, and they could pick them out pretty easy, you know. Which I do think that interdiction is a lot harder now than it was. You talk to the old head, they'll tell you it wasn't. But I I feel like there's different avenues now that that smuggling techniques take, uh, a lot of electronics and things of that nature. But that's probably way off course of what you were asking.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. No, no, it's still it still brings it all that that that whole point home. So you had a good point when you talked about, you know, officers scared to work the the money side, right? What do you think some of the fears are? What why do you think officers are fearful to work to work the money side?
SPEAKER_02I I think the biggest fear is going to remain the same as it always has been. They're they're the fear of asking consensus search. Uh that's you know, that's one of the bigger fears. And you can't smell money. You can smell marijuana. So you gotta better odds at being on the dope side, and if nothing else, you smell it. You know what I mean? and and so they kind of kind of go that route with it. Dope, marijuana-wise, is is a lot harder to conceal than money is. And I think that they listen to other people talk and they go to these classes and stuff like that. And the experienced smugglers are the ones taking the money. So they don't really want to take that challenge on, much like the intimidating factor of track or trailer. You know, a lot of guys don't want to stop those solely because they're in their mind about it already. That this is going to take forever. Uh it should be underneath the bunk and it's not there. You know, like I think I think that has a lot to do with it. I think that that the big I guess if you ask what I think the biggest holdback and the biggest problem is is they get in their head about it before they ever even take the first step. And you have to you have to eliminate that all the way around.
SPEAKER_00Yeah no I agree with you man and you're right man I was just having a conversation just the other day and I was telling a young deputy and I was like hey look go out stop some big trucks and just clearly very fearful and was like no I don't know anything about them. And I was like well do you want to learn I could I can show you some stuff you know at least get you started in the right track. But you know just like passenger cars, you know, it's not much different there's a little extra paperwork and guys like you and me, we know the answer sometimes lie in the paperwork. So why not take the extra paperwork and take a few extra minutes to look over that stuff. And uh and yeah I think training uh and that mental process of getting out of the car walking alongside these long big box trucks and and commercial trucks I think is just very fearful them. And you know what? Me and you we both know it's rewarding especially when you hit hit one or two like that's that's a good day because when you hit a commercial truck it's probably not going to be personal amounts. It's definitely going to be something very fruitful and your department's probably going to be very happy that you are actually out there working some of those big trucks so for sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah that's that's a that's a good point with that I think the get out of your head out of it.
SPEAKER_02But like making adjustments after I became the supervisor we don't I don't really feel like we need supervisor. I feel like a good shift to run itself but my title as a supervisor anyway I don't like my guys to sit in the same hole. I don't want anybody sitting beside each other because nobody has a better set of eyes than a new guy because everything looks good. And if you take a new guy that's sitting beside a seasoned guy and a car goes by and the new guy looks at the seasoned guy and says what do you think you like it? And he looks and he's like you know we've never got anything out of a car like that and no and nobody stops it then or we don't you know what I mean like if it looked good it looked good for a reason. Don't talk yourself out of it. That's a big big thing that I've noticed over the years. Don't talk yourself out of it. And a lot of a lot of new guys coming out do that. But these are all things that you learn through time. You're not going to learn them right now and immediately you know just like just like I was talking about with the cars you search you know you you've seen it a thousand times I'm sure in in your career that like you said you have to earn the search I'm not out here searching cards just to be searching cars.
SPEAKER_00No not at all. So yeah yeah man give give the viewers and the uh and the listeners uh give them a pro tip man what's uh walk us through your mental process when you're conducting like a criminal interdiction stop you know uh what are you what are you evaluating in real time man I am all over the place uh I have to generally like get back to my car and play it all back while I'm writing out the warning citation and still try to carry on the conversation uh with it uh some of the things that I that I look for right out of the gate uh whenever I walk up to a car is I try to find something in that car to to make a conversation about whether it's a keychain or a one guy had a deer foot hanging from the rear view mirror and tell me about this you know yada yada yada but it it throws everything off you know they've already got it in the in in the line of thinking of they know what I've got this is why this is why they stopped me.
SPEAKER_02So I try to I try to throw that off but it also helps establish a baseline because they see that you're not the like you said in one of your old your previous podcasts the the knife hand you're not you're not doing that you know because you're you're basically being a human with them and it it kind of lets their guard down a little bit uh with it and then I go back to the car uh but I look at their I try to find something in the car to make a conversation about and then immediately like I rest my light on the passenger side door frame where the window frame is and it goes to both occupants' stomach and uh you know if you got two people sitting up front I want to see what their stomach's doing. If it's pulsating like a heartbeat we fix it right this and just go as far as it's gonna let us go. You know what I mean? And uh but that's that's one of the things that I do and then like I said I I take it back and and sometimes I miss things. Like there was a guy one time that he had something shiny behind his ear uh when I got him out of the car and got to talking to him and just the story just fell apart like rapidly and I was gonna ask him about that but the story just kept evolving and it it slipped my mind to to ask him about that and going back and watching the camera he swallowed it was actually magnets that controlled the compartment on the trunk latch and uh we found the we found the dough and then um later on the next day when we went back to the impound lot we we were trying to figure out like what triggered it and all it was is he had a magnet where the dome lights are in the Saho uh it was just a magnet there that when you drove a magnet across it it triggered the trunk lot where the uh airbag was but that was that was something I missed uh because my mind was focused on something else so I I don't really know that there's a a I think every car is different every story's different every situation's different and one hard thing to comprehend is people do weird shit. It don't make it illegal. You know what I mean? And that that's probably real hard to understand uh a lot of times uh in these introducing classes you go to you know always ask yourself would I do what they're doing and if I'm not if I wouldn't do what they're doing why are they doing it? People do weird things. Like it's just it's just part of uh I there's no telling how many people I have stopped over the course of my career from British Columbia that have come all the way down here and they want to do two things. They want to see Graceland where Elvis live and they want to meet some guy that they play video games with on the internet. And to me that's weird. To them it's normal. You know just you have to understand all of that. And that goes back to what I was talking about earlier like it to look at it from up above to make a case seems like it takes everything under the sun because you have to know so much stuff on top of being at the right time at the right place and you know so on and so forth. But the way that I learned that was uh we were stopping a lot I mean we were stopping an astronomical amount of pipeline workers and the guys that I didn't think were loaded I just drilled them for as many questions as I could just to kind of learn the norm of that industry and I don't have anything about it.
SPEAKER_00But now when I stop the next guy I got something to relate with him about and ask him you know about whatever uh are you an inspector you know do you this that another and that has helped tremendously and then you just take that on to the next occupation you know you you have to know the norm for the for the un the the unnorm to to really stick out uh during your roadside interview yeah no you and that's absolutely correct and one of the things I get asked a lot hey Nick do you have a list of questions that that I can use and uh so that I can ask you know people questions and I'm telling them I don't I don't have a set list of questions that I follow I don't try to come off robotic and trying to find little things maybe a hat a shirt you know uh a necklace something that I can relate to I might know a little bit about it might not even be my actual football team or basketball team but it's a conversation starter and then from there I'll just go from there and I'll I'll weed in all my other questions not in chronological order because we all know when people plan the lie to you they plan in chronological order. That's well known scientifically proven in a lot of cases from a lot of researchers and professionals out there. But yeah I really just tell people just come off normal come off relaxed and just find ways to talk to people and this is why interdiction guys and girls are some of the best at what we do because we're able to talk to people and I think it's actually really beneficial when we're doing consensual encounters. You know we're going up and I may not know half may not know this person from today or tomorrow but I'll look at something that they're wearing shoes something I can relate to and I'll pop a question in there and then we'll start having you know just a general conversation and just wherever it goes is where it goes. But you just have to learn to just talk to people and a lot of officers especially trying to get into criminal addiction that's where I see a lot of them struggle you know because they just don't know how to talk to people and that's just a big big problem across law enforcement especially for those that are in small cities and things like that and they may not have a big population and they're they struggle with communication and if that's really hard you know and that and to touch on a couple points here to to find something to relate to a stranger shoes are a great topic all the way around because there's so many of those shoe people that collect shoes they have a nickname but I can't remember what they're called but I studied shoes just to have a conversation with people out there and I don't know all of them but one of the most common shoes I see in people's collections are the Jordan 12 Chinese New Year.
SPEAKER_02Like every collector has them so that's a you know conversation starter and if they they've got some collect uh a collection of Jordans I I've I've got the I've got the Jordan 12 Chinese New Year. Now they think that you are are a shoey too or whatever the nickname is for them and then the conversation just completely changes. Their demeanor changes all the way around and it it's a large industry in the shoe market you know uh people make a killing off of it and uh so that that was one of the conversations still there that that I do. But you you hit a point well ago I think that one of the hardest things to teach anybody and in today's generation it's extremely hard with all the technology and things of that nature the art of conversation you it it's a lost art. Like you you can't go to any fast food restaurant and walk in and say I want a number one with a large code and them comprehend it because it it it throws them for a loop. And and it it could be because they have a computer and they're not able to to do split level thinking or whatever the case may be but they will ask you you want a what what do you say you want a a number one okay do you want what is what do you want to drain a large code. And you can tell them large code they'll literally ask you what size like you just told them and in that so like when we when we get to select the people that we bring onto our team during the interview process I'm not necessarily interested in what you did in patrol whatever you did in patrol you did patrol like if you were successful great it's a different line of thinking out here. The the people that I seek out for what I do have had a job in the past in the public I like bartenders I like waiters I like people that had to earn their living to pay their bills through conversation and the people that struggle with conversation I have them I try to have them seek those people out. Like if you go to a restaurant uh during your lunch break or whatever and you're new and you're having trouble with conversation I want you to find out as much about this waitress or waiter as you can don't be a creep but just find out as much as you can about that person because they're waiting your table they're obligated to talk back and then take something from that conversation and start a different one with them on that. And it's it's very hard to to get people to teach the art of conversation and I've listened to like Kenny's podcast and stuff where he where he says that he's an uh introvert you know but I've also watched Kenny's videos where he's just awesome. You know what I mean? Like he's great in in the art of conversation. And just because you're great at it at work doesn't mean you have to be a social butterfly when you're off a lot of times when I'm off I'm done peopling. Like I don't even want I don't want to talk to nobody I don't want my phone ringing you know I'm not really a phone talker I'm a texter but there's some people that I if I don't have hours to spend I I can't answer the phone because I've just I don't have it. But those guys are also excellent introduction people like all the way around. And we had we had one guy that that worked for us uh he talked nonstop like it was just nonstop talking whatever and we were searching a car and I I remember he was standing with a driver and I walked back to get my scope and somehow in the short period of time of us searching and me going back to get my scope they got to talking about Giants baseball and just went on and and I'm mind blown because I I talk you know we talk to people for a living and I'm just like how did how did you get to that conversation this guy's not wearing anything that indicates he even likes baseball y'all talking statistics that's impressive like it just it's pretty impressive you know what I mean but those guys you got some that struggle with conversation you got some that never never meet a stranger and I think that those my personal opinion those are the ones that make great interdiction off and I got a I got another guy that works with me Caleb he he doesn't talk a whole lot on traffic stops he's awesome but in reality he he I'm hard of hearing so it sounds like he mumbles and you just about have to drag a conversation out of it.
SPEAKER_00But on traffic stops and at work he is absolutely awesome he uh he really has the the the ability to start and carry on conversations and I think that that his background before he was out on the interstate plays a lot into that yeah no and and and that's good too dude I I did some training for one of my one of my buddies uh we're good friends you know but yeah when I first got him out there on the road man I just couldn't like I'm standing next to him and he's can't see your life insurance car I'm like bro speak up like nobody can hear you I was like you got to be a little bit more energetic and now hindsight 2020 I look at him now and the dude is an amazing interviewer but like you said when he's off he doesn't really want to talk to a whole lot of people uh but you know communication is just massively important for what we do I don't think just interdiction I think also just law enforcement as a whole because if we're good communicators and effective communicators I think we can talk ourselves you know or talk people out of a lot of dangerous situations. But I think people a lot of cops just struggle with commun uh effective communication skills and I think that should be you know a little bit more focused uh to some degree but you know where do academies really start with that you know and the scenarios are they do the best they can but you know a lot of situations I think the officers if they just had a little bit of you know slick tongue you know and just learn to just communicate people you could else a lot of information out of other you know CIA you know all these spooks and you know organizations when they recruit these people and they're going out yeah they're having to go out and like I said we see the stuff in Hollywood but it's actual you know they have to go out and talk to someone randomly and get some information from them. These are actually very important things. And that's all we really do as interdiction authors we're just listening information and there's certain things of that we pick out on what's dead and how it's dead you know that uh we you I know we both go in more detail in classes uh but you know it's there's just some some key things that when it comes to just detecting deception I think you know we pick up on a lot easier and like you said it just comes with time and that's just what it really boils down to.
SPEAKER_02Do you go do you attack it immediately or do you do the the the doctor routine of does this hurt? Does this hurt? Does this hurt?
SPEAKER_00Oh okay well what about this does this hurt and then come back to it like if you pick up on something right away do you do you attack it then immediately I don't uh I have a good memory I will recall something I'll and then I'll lock them in. I'll make an example really quick. If I ask someone hey where are you guys coming from let's say I may already have a good idea uh and I know for a fact they're coming from Phoenix and they go I'm coming from LA oh awesome did you go anywhere else? Nope just in LA okay how long were you there? I was there for a whole week and I went to the beach and I'm driving straight back on I-40 I'm going to Oklahoma City okay and just verifying you didn't go anywhere else nope that's it now I've locked you in I'll I'll let it settle a little bit because usually they're starting to build up oh does he know does he know I may go off topic something else man this is a nice car man you got you had it for a while uh if you rented it you know hey is that car good on gas and then boom I'll come back to it later on so so you told me you weren't in in anywhere else other than LA uh you know your buddy maybe I'll I talk to a passenger hey your buddy told me you guys went to Phoenix oh yeah yeah yeah I forgot about that right so now they have to kind of go back and dig themselves out of a deeper lie so yeah I like to play around with it but I'm not really one to just like harp on it to the point where uh they start building a lot of an anxiety and that anxiety turns into a lot of people shut down because they feel like you don't believe them and you don't go in there. And then a lot of times after I finish the warning and I give everything back and I'm going into clarifying questions then I might go a little bit deeper right because probably by that time on I probably have several topics that are in the realm of deception that now when I'm in clarifying questions I want to clarify some things. And I may be a little bit more uh not even aggressive I may be just being more direct uh in my questioning and very specific questioning so if they continue to lie or be deceptive obviously that's just gonna feed into more reason suspicion uh that's gonna further my want me to further that investigation legally so yeah um I'm just really not one to target uh a lot because I used to do that but my problem is when I did it people would shut down and then my interview stopped so I've just kind of learned to just baby step and there's no real reason to rush into it and uh it sounds like a lot most traffic stops at least for myself I can say range and it's right this also depends on what type of equipment I have if I'm right having a handwriter ticket and do we have scanners is my printer working right so a bunch of combination factors but in the grand scheme of things I would say my stops range between 10 to 16 minutes maybe a little bit longer if I have to use a translator or format with a commercial truck. So I I feel it's a it's a lot it doesn't sound like a lot of time to a lot of young officers but to more experienced officers such as ourselves we know how to get to the point without beating a dead horse.
SPEAKER_02Right and I I do the same uh whenever I've like you said like I would attack it right away and then just trying different methods um came up with this one and I I in my mind I kind of felt like that by attacking it right away they were kind of predicting the next question being asked and had a had a a rehearsed response for it right away but by coming back to it it throws them off and what you know the the lie lies are hard to recall the the truth is just the truth you know what I mean and and the truth has no agenda so that that that's kind of where where I got to doing that I learned a lot through failure. I mean that's just that's just all there is to it all the way around and I still fail today but I hope to learn from it later uh down the road. On the road.
SPEAKER_00Yeah same and kind of on that that same topic man like what do you think are the biggest articulation failures that you see especially as a supervisor within the criminal interdiction realm maybe through reports or maybe you're out there working with one of your guys what do you see officers uh failing articulation uh wise I think patience is their biggest failure um they're not patient enough to trust the process because they want to they want to hit and once they don't they start finding excuses for why they haven't um and and it it's it's weird because these people come from different agencies different areas they come out here to work and and it's always the same like they they haven't made a case and they know that their home agency is wondering why so they they go out and start writing traffic tickets to prove that they're making stops and I'm like your camera shows that you're making stops like stop stop with this traffic ticket crap like just get past the ticket and and get get on you know get on to what we're what we're supposed to be doing out here.
SPEAKER_02And then and then it's also easy for them to find reasons to be off the road. Uh I gotta run over here and get my oil changed. I gotta go here and get tired. I gotta go uh I got a meeting you know this, that and another so they they kind of get discouraged uh with it um more than what they should because one thing that that like everybody's got their own hole that they set in in the area that we work. And the new guy has to take what's left over. Like, you want this guy's spot, knock him out. Make more cases than you. And that's that's not being an asshole. That's just like competitive type deal. You know what I mean? Like, learn, learn it, and then we'll all roll on together with it. And so they're they kind of already got that. Well, it made it past him, so I'm not really going to stop it. Uh, if it was good, he would have pulled it over. And then that frustration grows, and then the senior guys have made three cases, and you haven't made one yet at all. You know, so I think I think patience is is probably like the biggest failure that I see in uh newer guys that come out on the road.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. No, and I I think that's a a very relevant point. And they're not patients, and they're really just ready to get out there and then just like make that stop, and they just prefer to remember, like, slow down. You know, I see a lot of officers, you know, they share videos with me, and I'm like, slow your interview down, you know, just take a breath. Sometimes it's okay to sit in silence. I love to sit in silence sometimes. Uh, because sometimes, you know, people when they're in that criminal mindset and they're just trying to think or prepare for like you said earlier, like the next set of questions, their brain just can't handle the silence. And but for the officer, that allows them to kind of reset. Okay, cool. I asked about maybe origin and length of trip. Okay, let me focus on destination and let me let me try to focus on you know, uh relationship in regards to the ownership of the car, right? To third party, third-party vehicle. Let me ask more questions about that. But it just allows you to just set up, you know, for that next response. And I just think a lot of officers just gotta slow it down a little bit, man, and breathe. Because, you know, especially I know you guys like you and I, man, right before we hit our first stop, you know, we look back and we could probably rewatch some of those videos and we were just like, yeah, I was pretty nervous. And especially when we found whatever was in the car or whatever, whatever came from that particular investigation. Um, I think we just realized, like, okay, I can do this better, I can do this better, let me slow down so I can talk to people more effectively and be a better communicator. And then to this to this day, like you said, man, we're still learning through our failures, and that's just how we grow. And you have to be willing to fail so you can continue to grow.
SPEAKER_02Right. And the only way to learn is to do it. Don't don't be afraid to fail. Get out there, stop your cars. Maybe this line of questioning doesn't work. Like you said, you made adjustments, but you also I also think that you have to go back and watch your own videos because you can you can catch a lot more watching it head on during your interview than you can trying to look over where they're sitting in the pasture seat and write out your warning citation and look back over and all that. I mean it it becomes just like being able to see what somebody's doing inside their car when they drive by, and it it just all becomes, you know, becomes a fluid machine that that that continues rolling on, but it it it takes time and it takes the failure to do that, and I think that that's I think people are really afraid of of that. And and another thing too, like I I've noticed I think I may have said on the last podcast you had me on, like one of the absolute hardest things for anybody to do in my area is admit they can't do this job. They just don't have they just don't have what it takes. And and we had one guy that it shocked us that he was leaving, but we went to dinner one night, uh, and he's like, Yeah, I'm going back. I'm um this is probably my last shift. What's going on? You know, you don't like us, you know. And uh his his response was he said, I just can't not be good at something, and I'm not good at this. And I feel like that I'm holding up the team. So I put in a request to go back. The last guy that left was out here three months after he quit, and they told me I'm coming back tomorrow. So this is my last shift. And then we got you know, we got another guy, you know, after that or whatever. But he and and all the people that we've had out here since I've been out here, he's the first one that has has stepped up to the plate and said, I just don't have it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's not for everybody, man. It's like SWAT, it's like you know, hossers negotiation, child exploitation cases, like it's not for everybody, whatever your particular career field is. So everybody has their niche, everybody has their strengths, and everybody has their weaknesses. So it's just part of being human.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I also think that everybody brings something to the table. Uh, even if even if it's not um trying to think of how to word what I'm saying here. Uh, even if it's not great and they don't always have a positive attitude or whatever, they bring you the experience on how to deal with those people, you know, because you get exposed to that that type behavior, and they're not the only person that's gonna have that type of behavior. So I mean everybody brings something to the table, regardless of what it is. You just gotta be willing to identify it and use it as a strength. Like we've got we we had a guy that was, for lack of better words, a bigger asshole than me. And if somebody was acting up, I'd bring him down there, let him deal with it. You know, he he'd argue with a light bulb. So he was he was the guy for that. You know what I mean? Like I use that to my advantage, and while I'm searching the car, he's arguing with somebody. So I mean it just that's the way it worked out, you know. But um I learned that from other people too. It's not that's not one of my my own things. Uh we've all yeah, we've got uh we've got three now uh that are I don't I don't manage that aspect of it. So the the uh deputy director was the former canine trainer for Memphis Police Department before he retired, and that's his gig. And then we've got another guy that just went to training school uh that works for Memphis Police Department that I don't necessarily know he took his place over the canine unit, but he he he loves it and uh and he trains dogs and stuff too. So that's that's kind of their thing. I've I've got a dog, I am not, nor have I ever been a canine handler. Like I am not a dog guy. Um I've been to all the schools, I've tried to develop it, I've had three, I had to put one down, which was horrible. It's like putting your kid down. Um but I just I think that it takes the right person to be a canine handler, and I am a professional dog chauffeur. I will ride that thing around better than anybody you've ever seen. Uh and that's you know, that's that's my take on it. I'm glad that we've got guys that love doing it because it it helps us out tremendously. I gave it a good run, and I hate it. Like it's not for me. But but another reason that I hate it is because of the way that it's time consuming. Like it takes us off the road to do the the required training, and just that that's the part that I don't like about it. And then and then there's other parts like if you work night shift, you got to cut shift early because you got to be at training the next morning, and then we've adjusted where uh the dog trainer comes in at night and you you do a little bit of training at nighttime, you know, so you kind of get the full circle of everything, and I just want to be on the road. I don't I don't want to do all that, I don't want to deal with it. Uh, I have a dog and I'm responsible for it, and I try to take the best care of it as I can. But when they somebody needs a dog, I know they're not calling me, they're calling somebody else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Now, like you, you and I, we probably have both heard this, but uh probably heard an officer say, well, if I had a canine, I can go out there and I can find drugs like you guys too. What's your take on a kind of statement like that, man?
SPEAKER_02I think that whatever officer you have before you give them a dog is the same officer you're gonna have after you give them a dog. Uh a dog is a tool. Uh if you know how to talk to people, you can get where you're going. And if you don't know how to talk to people, there's there's other ways around it with a dog. I mean, dogs are a great tool. I think that they're great. But the dog is not gonna tell you what car to pull over, the dog is not gonna tell you what questions to ask. Going back to the if it's not in the interview, it's not in the car. Um, and it it it's very beneficial to have a dog, but I I've heard that too. Yeah, if I had a dog, I could do well, if some butts were candies and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas. So, you know, we can we can sit here and talk about it all day. But I had a guy tell me uh years ago when I got my first dog back in 2008, it is a lot more romantic to want to be a canine hammer than it is to actually be one. And that's a true story all the way around, especially for me. But that's that's a I view that as a weakness. Like I don't I'm just not good at it, and and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna act like I am and go through the motions and tie everybody's time uh with all that. So that's that's where I'm I'm at with it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, nope, I I agree, man. And you know, I'm not a canine trainer by any means, but uh yes, I do agree with you. Working a dog and trying to work full-time interdiction, you're gonna lose time on the road because you have to go out there and you have to, you know, do those canine training hours, which is very important, keeping that stuff up to par. Uh Florida, Florida via Harris, you know, uh Supreme Court. So we got to make sure that we're keeping up those logbooks and uh for those dogs and uh keeping those training records uh pretty much in tight. Uh so yeah, it it does take you off the road, but I tell guys all the time, man, you do not need a dog to work criminal interdiction. A dog is just a tool, like you said, and those of us that work interdiction full-time, we know that they're just a tool, and that's it. You pull them out when you get denied consent, uh, or you're doing the Illinois v. Cabellus method, and you're running the dog around the car during the uh during the initial contact, and you're not making any breaks. So maybe somebody's working on the enforcement action, the other hand or the other individual is running the dog on the car, right? So now you don't have to worry about the Rodriguez versus US. And mostly the only thing that's gonna usually come up from that is they're gonna challenge the stop, uh, and then they're gonna challenge the dog records, and they can't get any of that thrown out. Usually that's that's gonna be pretty much a nail in the coffin uh right there. Because a canine sniff on the exterior of the vehicle, as you you and I both know, it's not a search. So yeah, man, I I think that's just really important. A lot of young officers just gotta understand, like, you don't need a dog to do this. And if you learn some verbal judo, you actually get into more cars, especially when you start thinking about high-level, mid-level, like you and I know, because most people are gonna have like mid-level, high level, they're gonna have a better concealment than some of the low-level or street street individuals that are just you know behind the center console or inside the cup holder or the visor, like, or the backpack, or something on the back seat, right? Like those are easy, but the ones that that make it a little bit more challenging are those those deep aftermarket hidden compartments and concealments. That's where you're gonna get to that next level, and that's a whole class in itself. And you and I both know it takes years. I still have to call guys depending on what I'm what I'm dealing with, if I have to have that expertise. But and that's the part of you know, still learning and just uh always remembering that yes, there may be someone out there better than you, and networking and law enforcement, especially criminal interdiction, is great because you know, guys like you and I, we can reach out halfway across the country, if not the other side of the country, and we can get an interdiction guy on whatever we need help with. So that's just the powers of interdiction, man. I I really love this community, it's uh it's great. And man, I I wish more people would communicate, man.
SPEAKER_02And I agree with that, but you know, like you were talking about with the dogs and and all that stuff, you don't have to have a dog to do interdiction. A lot of these administrators, that's one of their first go-to's. Like, hey, we're gonna give you this guy here, we're working on getting him a dog, yada yada yada. I've got dogs. I I don't I don't need dogs. I've got I got plenty of them. But for the guys that are coming out that don't have the experience, they're trying to learn to be a dog handler and learn to work the interstate, and that is horrible to do. Which they're already kind of, I kind of feel like they've come in upside down anyway, because they've still got their chain of command at their home agency and then the chain of command with us that they have to give answers to everybody, and that's not easy to do. Uh when you've got a captain that wants to know why you ain't hit anything. Well, my response is I don't know when I'm gonna hit. If I did, I'd only work those days. You know, it's that's just how it works, you know what I mean? So, but but I've been lucky with where I'm at to have a real relaxed administration that that knows I I think that that our bosses realize, uh one of my bosses said this, you know, he's like, everybody that's out there wants to be the best, and everybody wants to make more than the last guy did. So they're out there trying. We know that. There's no reason in asking why you have it. You know, we're we're out there every day, and sometimes like we don't we work four tens, and if it's slow, we'll work seven days straight just so that we don't miss something, you know. And dry spells are a real thing.
SPEAKER_00So yes, they are, man. And on that topic, what's your longest dry spell, man? Don't ask me that. What's wrong with you?
SPEAKER_01Trying to be.
SPEAKER_00Hey man, a lot of young guys they they just think that we just hit every day and we never have dry spells. You know, uh let's give them the harsh reality of the truth.
SPEAKER_02I apologize, I didn't hear you.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, no, let's let's give them the harsh reality of the let's give them the truth, man. Like what's what's your longest dry spell?
SPEAKER_02Man, uh the case that we talked about um the last time with that tour bus, my biggest money seizure ever was the the 1.5, and I didn't make another case till a year and two months later. And it wasn't for lack of trying, it just wasn't happening. Like it wasn't happening at all, no matter what I did or what I stopped or whatever, it just didn't happen, you know. So my longest drive spell was a year and two months, and that was just 24. So into 25, like nothing. And then it started back, you know, it started back clicking. And and I think a lot of things have to do with uh just kind of listen to the universe, you know, like if not saying that anything had to do with anything at all, and and I'm not a political guy by any means. I I I know very little about politics and and I don't generally discuss it. But for this particular instance, uh we saw nothing, like it was dry. And then they had the presidential election and um they announced the winner, and then it was like everything that they'd been hoarding up, they just sent all at once. And you saw you saw large-scale seizures across the country, like all the way around. And then uh like now, if you go back and look from the presidential election until when they announced the winner before the the current president took the office, it was seizures like back in the 90s, dude. Like it was 99 kilos of cocaine in the trunk of a of a car and uh you know, all this, everything but money. Like we didn't see any money. It was just massive amounts of dough. I got a thousand pounds of weed, which for here is just astronomical, coming out of California, going to New York. And that was all during that time period between the transition. And in my mindset, like they didn't know necessarily what was gonna happen with a border, so they just flooded the market with as much as they could. You know, there was a news article floating around, I think you probably saw it. Some guy came out from a truck stop and there was like 900 kilos of cocaine in the trailer, in his trailer, you know, like that what is this? What is this? You know, you you don't you don't hear about this type of stuff. And now, if you look on uh different websites where people post things, uh interdiction-based Facebook posts and stuff, you know, people are hitting nine there's a guy that hit 900,000 down in Georgia last week. Um AJ posted something on his page where somebody hit another 900,000, you know, and then uh Chris and them over in Mississippi hit 250, and then Scott hit 250. And it's it's starting to flow again. Uh I don't know that I don't know the rhyme or reason behind it, but I'm glad to see it. I'm just glad I'll be glad to see it when it's on on our end where we can all high-five, you know, with that. But I think that that a lot of it has to do with what's going on in the universe. And there were I I don't know how deep you want to dabble into this podcast of like things that I saw uh through that, but when all of the um when all of the the the marriage same-sex marriage things was taken on and and the the world was in an uproar, I went from no cases to four cases with with that uh group, if you will, or whatever. So it's kind of like whatever whatever is popular or not popular at the time, I kind of focus in on that, and it's it's paid it's paid rewards for me. Um when uh there I hit I hit a lot, a lot of cases last year and the year before with uh Middle Eastern descent. Just no rhyme or reason. One was 680,000, the next one was 940,000. And it just out of the blue, but the interview was still the same. The the stories didn't make any sense. And learn from your buddies. Um Caleb, the guy that I was talking about, he hit a guy with 360,000, and uh he had all kind of just different stuff, like where did you get this money from? Yada yada yada. I play the casinos, Atlantic City, you know, all this stuff. Well, it it wound up being a situation. I I think that the seizure was made, you know, obviously with that, but but a lot of it was uh was based on there was an issue with with the uh with the casino on that. So when I hit the 900 and whatever I said it was a while ago, um I think it was 980, whenever I hit it, they were coming from Atlantic City. So I asked, you do any gambling or anything while you out there? You put old slap machines, you know, a little poker or something? No, I don't do any of that. Well, that eliminates that from being a probability, you know, a possibility that they're gonna bring up whenever we do the post-interview or whenever they so look, can I I'm gonna ask you a question. Uh, have y'all seen a large increase in people filing a claim to the currency that you've seized?
SPEAKER_00No. Short answer is no. Uh typically we see them just disclaim it and give it up. Uh, didn't know that was even in there. Uh, one of my guys actually not too like a week or two ago, actually uh stopped a uh um uh I believe it was an Asian male, and uh he had like 20, 30, maybe even probably just higher 40 grand behind the dash uh in a uh Toyota of a van. And yeah, you know, uh the guy was like, I don't know whose money that was. And then I think he did kind of double back and then try to start claiming it. But typically what we see is they they just disclaim it, they don't they don't want anything to do with it. Um, you know, and we tell them, look, if it's yours, it's yours. Just we just need to know because there's certain forms that we may need to pull out uh or have you review if you're willing to sign. So uh yeah, I we don't see many, but I I hear teams, you know, like some of the guys I know out in California, uh, when they're dealing with a particular, you know, uh group of individuals that they deal with uh on a regular, they're seeing that these people are it's the same lawyers calling to get the money back.
SPEAKER_02So it's it's like a network, man. It's like a network. Like you, yeah, they just they come in and take all the big weed cases, and then the next lawyer comes in and takes all the currency seizures. And I don't know how I don't know how it all works out, but it it is working well for them uh with that. We've seen it, we've seen an increase in in people filing on their on the uh assets that they disclaimed and didn't know anything about, and so on and so forth, and I have an opinion of why, but that's not what this is for. It takes everybody. Like the uh the the best way that I know how to describe it is if you go to a nice restaurant and you order a meal, you get a nice meal, and that's what everybody sees. You see see the nice meal. But it takes the dude washing the dishes, it takes the cook that knows how to do it, it takes the waiter bringing it over. Like it takes everything. And and we've got some guys and have had some guys that are not just what you would consider rock stars out there, but when you've got a group of rock stars working, it is a tremendous help for that guy that's willing to run evidence down to the evidence room and come back and and help fill out forms and stuff like that. Like, don't rule everybody out until they rule themselves out. You can you can try to help people as as much as you can, uh, as much as they'll allow you to, and then sometimes you do have to cut ties, but successful interdiction teams are not built overnight. They're they're it's it's something that is a continuous effort every day that you're out there to grow and build and be the best. Um and I think that's the goal that we all have. We all you know interdiction is is is uh a trained skill set, but uh everybody also wants to be the best and they want to be known. And you get on this website and that website and all this stuff. Like I fell in that mess too for a while, and then now I don't know, like if you get 19 kilos, I'm hunting 20 just because I want to I want to rub it in your face that I got 20, you know what I mean? And it's all in fun, and I would expect you to do the same, but all Also, like building a team from the ground up is hard work. And for administrators, you can't take a team that has zero experience and put a guy that has zero experience over them and expect to pay everything within, I would say within the first two years. Like it's it's just not feasible. You've got this guy who has zero experience in the interdiction world or interstate world that's now over eight or nine guys, and you're having to answer why they're not producing when you don't really know yourself. Like I was I was a meth guy in in when at the PD that I worked at before I came out here, and the narcotics sergeant who doesn't know anything about meth was signing off on my reports. And I was like, How can you sign off my reports and you don't know what I'm doing? Like you don't know if I did it right or wrong. And his response was, Well, your reports are long enough to know you did it right. Oh, sounds good, man. Let's go, you know. But like you have to know, you have to know if you're if you're leading the charge, you have to know what you're doing to help others correct their actions with it. And you still learn from from other people, like I learned from from my guys every time they make a case. And even if I'm not there, like they're sending me picture after picture after picture, and I'm asking the same questions I would ask if I was there. But to make a successful team, and that's that's that's very hard up. A lot of guys that I used to see in the past were hey, I'm looking to start an introduction team at my agency. What's the best way to approach my administrator about this? Don't like if you you the the reality of life in law enforcement at a police department, not a task force, not uh, you know, maybe a sheriff's department, all that stuff, but the reality of life is you will be as successful as a man above you allows you to be. If you want to be on the interstate and they want you out checking for light poles, that the light's no longer working, that's what you're going to do. That's just that that's your job detail. You can do interdiction on your downtime. But also don't let that stop you. Like invest in yourself. That's that's one of the biggest kickers that people don't realize is that if you if you don't invest in yourself, then how do you expect anybody else to invest in you? And that was, you know, a conversation. A lot of guys call me with different things uh to get my opinion. And I don't know why. I don't even think I give good advice. I just tell them whatever I think is you know the deal. And uh just recently a guy called me and and he was like complaining because he kind of got in trouble at work, and uh I listened to it and I heard him out, and it's it was one of these uh they get on to me for this, and they don't get on to him for that, and and and I get wrote up for this, and he did that over there. And finally I just asked him, let me ask you a question. Are you better than him? Are you a better officer, better cop than that guy is? Well, yeah, okay, then why should you not be held to a higher standard? If you have a guy that you know is great, you can hold him to a higher standard. If you've got a guy that you know is a screw up, you're not shocked when he screws up. Like it's what he does. You know what I mean? But stop complaining, make the adjustments, and and go from there. Like that's that's probably a whole different topic for a different time. But investing in yourself, I think, is is key to a lot of success. And another thing, too, that we were talking about earlier with interdiction teams. Um, I don't know how you were when you first started, but for me, I think that that a lot of it had to do is it was not a job as much as it was a hobby. Like I was studying this stuff when I was off. I was reading the books, I was watching the videos. This is a time where technology is the greatest that you know ever been, where you you have access to just about anything you want. Uh the there's the like world police cams or whatever. If you want to, if you want to learn behavior and you want to learn interview tactics, go to that page on YouTube. I don't know who owns it. I'm not promoting it, I'm just telling you what works what has worked for me. Arkansas State Police has got some phenomenal videos on there where they're not wrecking out cars, believe it or not. But they're doing roadside interviews, making real cases, and it's from beginning till end. Like you see them turn the lights on and you see them pull up at the jail. Take the time and invest in it and go from there. Um, with with me, I don't necessarily know that my administrators were as interested in interdiction as I was, but I had a goal in mind of what I wanted to do, and it seemed like completely impossible. Like when I when I tell you impossible, I never dreamed that I would ever get a phone call where they said, Hey, would you be willing to drive 80 miles to work every day to do what we do? And I'm like, absolutely, you know, could sign me up, you know. But so, and then I'll come back to that in a minute, but you have to invest in yourself with it. So I would put in for interdiction classes, and they were like, Well, what do you think about doing this governor's highway safety child safety seat certification? What about that? And I'm like, I don't want to put in car seats, I want to work interstates, you know. And there was an interstate in our in our city, and um they they had some guys that were out there, uh, but it was one of those type deals where on a good day you may have 200 cars from 7A to 7A the next day. It's just not a heavily trafficked road. Uh most of the traffic out there is factory workers in the next day over over Missouri. Uh so, but I would put in for all these schools, you know, part Asian school, desert snow school, uh, just whatever the hot topic was at the time, I would put in for it and get denied. So every year uh I would take my income tax check and I would pay my own way to those schools, and that covered the tuition, that covered um hotel, lodging, gas, you know, all that stuff that that it takes to go to that. But I knew what my goal was to go to that, yeah, to get where I was going. And it it took all of that to do it. And I was I'll just be, I was a horrible cop, like absolutely horrible. Uh I would go on the scene, I didn't care anything about it, I just had to do it, you know, to be able to make traffic stops. I had to answer calls. And I can literally remember going on domestics and listening to all the the squabbles, and my backup officer was there, and I was like, let me talk to you just a second. Somebody needs to go to jail. And they're like, uh, yeah. And I'm like, yeah. If you was to take one of them to jail, which one would you take? Well, it he's gotta go. And you would charge him domestic right. Yeah, put your ass over here. You know, like that was how I would handle costs because I didn't I didn't care enough about it to learn it because I was they they I've got many evals that say I put all my eggs in one basket, but I knew what my goal was. I just didn't know how I was gonna get there. I didn't know the avenue. But I wanted to make sure that when the time came that the avenue presented itself, that I had all of the right documentation and paperwork and and things going to my in my favor the best possible way. Um, and that's you know, that's what I did. And then I got the opportunity to come out here, and the kicker to that was is I came out here through a local sheriff's department and cut my salary in half. I went from 60,000 a year to 30,000 to chase a dream, and it paid off. I mean, I I wound up getting hired on full time with a task force and do very well now. But you you've got to be willing to risk it, and you've got to be willing to invest in yourself and don't get mad at other people that don't invest in yourself or invest in you if you're not willing to do it for yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, uh, I I I I love that because you do have to invest in yourself, and a lot of departments, you know, they'll invest in it to a certain degree, but if it's something that doesn't meet their mission and their goals, yeah, you'll still get denied for these types of training. So it's very important, yeah. I I agree that you invest in yourself. And you had a good point uh you talked about earlier that kind of maybe think about something, you know, a lot of the newer departments are kind of like uh start of color things, they kind of look focused, right? So they want to go out to promote addiction, but then they get to a field, hey, that's a highway safety thing, so we need to get some numbers. We gotta justify these guys out here. And what's your take on that? You know, quality versus quality, uh citation versus warning. You got to need good feedback that you can get to potential supervisors because they want interdictions, they want big drug teachers or cash users or whatever they're chasing, um, but then they want the officers to go out and write a bunch of tickets.
SPEAKER_02Uh I'm not a big ticket guy myself. I do, I do believe the that warning citation is a great uh time filler. It gives you the opportunity to ask the questions that you want. And we don't do e-citations. If you do e-sites, I don't I think that really kind of cuts your Achilles when you do that, uh, because it's just scanning and printing and all that stuff, which I'm sure there's ways around it. I'm just I don't know it. I'm not a computer guy by any means. I can check my email and it's a wonder I'm able to do this. But um, you make it easy because you just click a link, right? But uh the everybody answers to somebody else, and and I can remember having this conversation with uh the chief of police at the at the previous agency, and I was like, this is what we like why are we being pulled off of the road to do this crap? Like what what's going on? What am I not seeing? And it's you know, Ottoman and this that there was uh a lot of people were raising cane that we were out on the interstate working traffic enforcement, and then the chief is in the board meeting asking for four more guys. Well, if you need four more guys, why do you have two out there? And then that was that was things that that I didn't understand because I knew what I wanted and didn't understand their level of it. But I was also willing to do what they wanted done to do what I wanted to do. If they wanted me to do traffic enforcement in the the restaurant district of the town, I would do it nine hours of my 10-hour shift because that's what they told me to do. Because tomorrow I'm gonna get to go back out here on the interstate and not answer any calls. And that was a great thing with uh with being a canine there. If if you had a full if you had a full shift, the canine guy was kind of a floater. So you could go out and do whatever you want to do in whatever area you want to do it in, and not have to answer calls unless somebody needed you know assistance with whatever, and then you would cover their zone for them while they were out of pocket transporting or whatever the case may be with it. But it do what the administrator wants done, they'll let you do what you want to do in the long run. Don't get frustrated every time that you get slapped. As long as if you're in it and you're getting slapped, then you still have the ability to do it. It's it's when they stop slapping you and put you somewhere else where you can't do it anymore. That's when you have a big problem.
SPEAKER_00So in your team, uh, how do you guys keep or how do you, you know, because you I mean you're running your team, and I know you guys like to try to, you know, run it as you know one big uh one big team, but how do you guys handle egos uh when your team is dealing with you know large seizures? Do you guys have that issue? Have you ever run into that in your career?
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, I mean I I think that that uh uh a lot of that has to do with perception. Um a lot of people like I come across as a guy that has an ego. Um I just like to have fun. Like if I'm gonna if I can clown on it, I'm gonna clown on it. I I can make a joke out of it, I'm gonna make a joke out of it. Um the we had one guy that would run back years ago, he's not with us anymore, but he would if he made a case, everybody and their brother knew about it. I mean, they they run back, and and he told anybody that would listen, whether it was Whisperstop or whatever, and finally one day I just had to tell him, When you're good, other people talk about you. Let people come to you about this case. Just let them come to you, and then and then you just pour your heart out all about it. But take this one case, see how it works, and you'll realize that you get along with a lot more people than you will throwing it in everybody's face that I did this and I did that. Now, don't get me wrong, if I make a big case, I'm sending pictures out left and right to buddies and people that I know, and you know, this, that, and other. Because it's fun. Like that that's that's part of the fun of doing it is also bragging rights, right? But there's a certain way to go about doing it, and you know that but that's something that is possibly learned. I just I have fun with it. Uh and a lot of times somebody's demeanor can be seen as an ego. Uh like that there's there comes a time as a supervisor that you just have to cut ties with people. And you don't necessarily dislike them because your job is to make sure that you have a successful team, and the way to have a successful team is to have the best possibility of people out there. You know, there's uh I like I like football, I like the Tennessee balls football. We big rivals with with Alabama, you know, but Nick Saban has a video on YouTube that talks about it's a leadership video, and I watched it somewhere that I went, and it's got a lot of truth in it. He said, you know, one of the hardest parts about his job was to make sure that the right people were in the right seats on the bus, and the wrong people got the hell off the bus. So you you find yourself trying to do what's best for the team, and then you wind up catching flag because this person says that you didn't want them to be more successful than you, so you cut them. I'm not worried about your success. I've got my own. Like I'm I'm gonna do my best to outwork all of them. And sometimes I don't have that. Like there's days that I come in that you're gonna get about 25% out of me, because it's just that that's the mindset that I'm in. Um, but there's other days that I'm gonna come out there and and and do the best I can to smoke it down. And if you stop 11, I'm looking for 13. I mean, that's just the way it works out, and we feed off of each other on that. And and if you have a bad day out there, let your teammate know, hey man, I got a bad day. And they'll you can back, you can be back up. Just come on out here while I search this car or whatever, and you don't have you know, you don't have to do anything. You're sick, cool. Just come to work, stay in your car, don't make any contact with anybody. I need you here so that I can work, you know. And we we run a little bit different because our day shift is from four in the morning till like two in the afternoon, and then um we come in at six until four. So we never see each other. Like I don't see uh the day shift guys, they don't see us because they start in a different county than we do because we're multi-multiple counties, and it's closer for them to start there, whereas my guys is closer for us to start here. And I'm on paper over them, I guess, like as the supervisor goes, but there's a guy that runs that shift over there, and I let him, I don't want to say let him, but I mean he he runs it a good show. There's no reason, there's no reason for me to interject in that at all. If it's working and it's working well, leave it alone. And if they I'll send a message every couple months, hey man, y'all need anything? Any equipment you want? Uh, you know, yada yada yada, go on going down the list, and nine times out of ten, he'll say no. We don't need anything, everything's going good. And he'll he'll let me know. Uh they send an email, I'm gonna be off the road uh for whatever reason. Thanks for letting me know. You know, whatever. But that was the way that was the way that we had a supervisor that retired not long ago. Like he would call, and the first words out of his mouth, hey man, y'all working today? Who do you know that don't work on Wednesday? Yeah, we're here. Like, no matter what you're doing, you know. But it was cool because it was like we had that liberty and and he didn't keep tabs on everybody. So that's that's a luxury of being a part of a task force is you don't have to have your thumb over on top of everybody to to still see the benefits of being successful. Um but it egos are a real thing, and they're a real thing in police work. I mean, you go to any police school across the country. I've been to several states, it's always the same. You walk into a police school or training class, and you've probably noticed it too, and you're it's always the same. It's tight t-shirts and shitty tattoos and and egos. It's it's the way it works out. Like that's that's part of the part of the uh the business that we're in. But also, you've got to be able to take criticism. If if some guy's clowning you, we're grown men. Don't get your feelings hurt and and talk about this, that. I don't care. I made a joke. It was funny. People laughed, move on. Like, don't I don't know you, you know what I mean? I don't even necessarily have to know you. We were we went to uh a uh sea of blue for an officer that was that was killed in the line of duty, and then we went out to eat after it was over with. And there was a guy that was in full dress uniform, like had the old school police jacket with the fur collar and all that. And I was like, Where do you work at? And I've never met this guy, but where do you work at? And he told me, I said, Man, you look like you fell in a damn gallz magazine looking good out of here. Everybody laughed. He didn't take offense to it. You know what I mean? He didn't take offense to it, he laughed and rolled on with it. But egos will will I it's worked for some, it doesn't, it doesn't work for everybody, you know. But you're gonna run into that. You're gonna run into it's it's it's a lot like any other agency where you have supervisors. Sometimes supervisors get it in their head that they have to get you in trouble to look like they're doing their job, and that's not the case. Like that that's not your you know. I had a great I had a great line of supervisors, and one of them, the the thing that he taught me is why did you do what you did, and how can we prevent you from doing it again? And that that's a learning, that's a learning experience, you know what I mean? I didn't want to have to have that conversation with him again, so I corrected my actions, you know. And but but he didn't have an ego about it. Like he was he was a lieutenant and didn't have an ego at all and made it easier to work with. But egos are a part of the job. That's just something something.
SPEAKER_00I I just recently got rid of a shithead supervisor. Same thing, man. And that it just it just didn't get me mad. Like every little thing turned into a big thing, but then there's other people that don't come to work, you know, work from home, not supposed to be at home, supposed to be out working on the road, and you know, uh, as a producer, you know, within the department, man, like I just it just boggled me, man. But uh yeah, uh something I've been trying to like, you know, in in a nutshell, kind of like uh phrase in and just kind of like wrap up our conversations, man. And I think this is a good one for you. So if your career ended tomorrow uh and you left this profession, you know, what were some things that you know your team would say about you uh and your leadership?
SPEAKER_02I think the best that any of us can hope for in law enforcement in general, not just interdiction, is that somewhere along the lines, if your name is brought up, somebody says you were good. I I think that that that covers a lot of grounds that uh you are a good supervisor, you were a good police officer, you you learned and you taught. I think that's the best that anybody can ask for uh with it. And if it ended tomorrow, it's been a hell of a ride. I enjoyed it. But I we've been doing about the same length of time uh from what I've listened to other podcasts and stuff. I still enjoy coming to work. Like everybody talks about that guru mentality and oh, you'll grow out of this, that, and other. Like, I still enjoy, I look forward to coming to work every day and hate seeing that the the time to go home is now. Like, you know, you know, are you the same way? Like you look forward to it.
SPEAKER_00And uh there's days, bro, like I worked, didn't even claim the hours, just wanted to just go out and work. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that's that's that's the same way we we do it too. Uh and but you do you get to work alone or do you have to have somebody with you?
SPEAKER_00Uh a lot of times I am. I I just recently got a newer partner, so yeah, a lot of times, yeah, I would work alone. Yeah, you catch a lot of flag for that, or it was just no, just kind of the way the department is built. I mean, I I don't have a partner sometimes. So um no, it's not that bad. If I need backup, uh depending on where I am, uh wherever I'm working, backup could be about an hour, uh, sometimes faster. So I try to work.
SPEAKER_01Were you in Alaska?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man. I try to work in you know uh strategic locations so that way if I need a backup, I can get one decently fast.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's kind of that's the way we are with the turnarounds. Like if I if I like what I see on the on the driving behavior, I try to stop it where they're not having to go 14 miles to the next turnaround and and get there, you know, if I need them or whatever uh with that. So that that's pretty interesting. An hour away.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it can be an hour sometimes, man. And yeah, that's just just the nature of the beast.
SPEAKER_02So are you on a task force as well?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yep. So yeah, it it just really varies. It really does.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think that I think the best that that I can hope for is that somebody remembers your name at the end of the day. Because it's it's always and it and that's very difficult too. Like that's a whole nother part of it. You can have buddies that move on to different different assignments, like they promote up at the department or they get put in CID or whatever. And it's it's not a beef and it's not anger, but if you're not around, you're just not around. Like we don't we don't see each other, so therefore we're not gonna talk. I didn't forget about you. I I just I've got my own stuff going on and you've got your own stuff going on. It's not that I'm I'm shunning you or whatever. And and sometimes you have to explain that. Like you have to explain to people, hey, you know, I'm I'm just busy. Like that's just all there is to it. And and once you once you leave, like you leave an agency or whatever, that you just lose contact with those people. And I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that you're just not around.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, 100%, man. Yeah, you don't mean anything foul by by any means, but you know, there's some relationships that you're gonna hang on to, and so or other relationships, yeah. You might run into them at a conference. Oh man, I haven't seen you in forever. Uh, what's been going on, type of deal. So yeah, it happens, man. And that's life. That's life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, I agree.
SPEAKER_00I agree. 100%. Well, Britt, I appreciate you coming on, man. Uh, thank you for giving all of us and my viewers uh just you know your time. And dude, it was it was great having you on, dude. I really appreciate you coming on, man. I thank you all for allowing me to come on. I appreciate it. Yeah, man. Did you have anything you want to add before we get out of here, brother?
SPEAKER_02I don't have a thing to add after we we turned Everstone.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we did, brother. Well, thanks for coming on the show, bro. I appreciate you, man. Thank you. All right, brother. Later.