Interview- From Bats to Batons with Sergeant Eric Cowans

Eric Cowans is a seasoned law enforcement officer with over 30 years of experience. He has spent his entire career at the same agency, specializing in narcotics. His passion for law enforcement was sparked by his personal experiences and a pivotal moment that changed his career path. Eric is not only a respected officer but also a mentor to many, having influenced the career paths of others in the field.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

The 148 project exists to give a voice to law enforcement from the officers' perspective, from their exposure in the communities they serve while honoring the experience of the victims they contact. Through honest conversation, lived experience, and the discipline of jujitsu, we explore resilience, accountability, healing, and the shared humanity that exists on all sides of the badge. Our mission is to foster understanding, strength, and growth on and off the mat.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Hello, everybody. We're here with myself and my wife Jocelyn for One Four Day Project. Really super excited today to have our new guest. He is a close personal friend of over 20 years. We were friends, partners. Well, I was his subordinate first. Then we became partners in different aspects of law enforcement. He has over 30 years of experience in law enforcement, starting at the same agency his entire career. And uh he has done basically everything you can do in law enforcement, but his his specialty is narcotics, and loved working with this guy, and he was one of the reasons why I became a sergeant. He told me when we were hoorking dope together, I was a detective, and he was my sergeant, and he told me I wasn't really wanting to put in for a sergeant. I was had a cushy job in narcotics and I liked what I did, but he told me better to be a coma sergeant and make the rules than have to be under somebody that you did not want to follow. So I took that and ran with it and was a sergeant for almost 14 years, and I owe it to him. His name is Eric Cowens. Welcome to the podcast, Eric.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

Hey, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

So very uh happy to be here. Awesome. Awesome. So let's start off with before you became a cop. You have a very interesting story with what you did before you became a cop and uh your baseball career. Can you just go into shortly how what you did in your baseball career and where it led you and then why you left baseball to become a cop?

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Yeah, I mean um you know, I started playing baseball like every other red-blooded American kid does in this country, and um it became uh an absolute passion of mine. Uh I had my father at the time was uh, you know, played an integral role in that and always, you know, coaching me and taking me out to play catch. And uh so it kind of grew from there and it was a sport that came extremely uh easy to me. Not to pat myself on the back, but I was I was just easy, especially hitting, you know, was just an easy thing for me to to pick up on. You know, I always wanted to be a professional baseball player and I played, you know, in high school and into college, but um but when I got into college um I there were several things that happened in a short period of time where I realized that uh I wanted to become I wanted to become a cop. And and so there were quick things that happened um where one, do you want me to tell you? Please so so I was up in San Francisco with uh with my girlfriend at the time. She took me to Hate Street and I had never I had never been to Hate Street. I, you know, growing up in the Bay Area or in the on the peninsula, I'd gone to the city all the time, but had never actually walked down Hate Street back back in uh this was in like the early 90s, 91, 92, somewhere in there. And it was incredible. Like the just what the you know you would picture San Francisco in the early 90s with the the open drug market back then. And uh, as soon as we got out of the car, we walked like, you know, maybe a half a block up to Hayton Ashbury, the corner, and there was this massive undercover drug bust with plain clothes San Francisco police officers and marked units came screaming in Code 3, and they started taking bottles from people in the apartment buildings above, and people on the street were throwing shit and rocks and stuff at them. And next thing you know, there were 30, 40 cops out on the street corner with a handful of people, you know, in custody, and you know, drugs were on the ground. And um, and I remember thinking right then, holy shit, this is what I want to do. It was like this, you know, even though I had worked my whole life wanting to play play professional baseball, and I I think I was definitely could have made it to some level of um I'm not saying I would have been uh played in the major leagues, but I definitely could have played some form of professional baseball. And right then and there, something clicked in me, and it was like you know, this is what I want to do.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

How old were you at the time?

SPEAKER_03 4:37

I was 20. 20, okay. And so the very I was literally that was on a Sunday, and the next day I walked uh into SFPD on uh A50 Bryant and tried to get an application to apply. And uh at the time to be a San Francisco cop, first you had to be 21. I should think you had to be 21 and a half to apply, which I I was, but you had to live in the city and county of San Francisco, and I I didn't. So that kind of stalled that. But it was at that moment though that I I kind of had an immediate change of course of what I wanted to do. Uh parents were not happy at the time I was playing baseball at CSM, College Team Mateo. It's funny though, because now looking back, there's no way I could have gone on anywhere to play college baseball because my I had such bad grades, you know, you know, getting out of high school that seeing what my son has gone through to to get into call to play college sports, never even two years of CSM wouldn't have prepared me for for the next step. So I probably made the the right decision by by changing uh because my college career would probably wouldn't have gone very far because of my grades. Not that I wasn't getting good grades in college at the time, but it was it was I didn't take it serious enough in high school, which ultimately became a problem.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Um now tell us about the the infamous photo of the newspaper that caught you as a catcher that's been passed around for years.

SPEAKER_03 6:02

Yeah, that um man, that uh I mean uh that's such a cool picture to have. So that was the summer of I want to say 1990 was my high school, the year I graduated from high school. Um it was probably in early June, and we had we were playing at uh Central Park in San Mateo. Um I played for San Mateo Joe DiMaggio, we're just a joke of a team. Uh we got into an all-out brawl, um, which it was funny because back we did almost every other week, we got into some kind of fight like that, um, different than kid sports today. But and so it was a bench clearing brawl, and my my buddy Rick, who was one of the actually he threw the first punch, my buddy Rick. And uh and so he was about to get his ass stomped on, and I hear him call out my name and I turn around, and it which you can see in the picture, one of the players from the San Carlos team, we were playing San Carlos Joe D, um which was all a great group of guys. I want I'll tell I'll get into that in a second, but but I turn and he's being pulled down by the by his shirt. Someone's got him by a hold of his, the top of his shirt, where you're you know, the neck of his shirt, and is pulling him down. In the picture, you can see Ricky is kicking, you can see his foot is like about to like he's kicking the guy, and he's going down like they're about to fall down. But what you can also see in the picture is I have my left hand, I'm reaching in and I'm holding the San Carlos player by hit the neck of his shirt, and it caught me in in the perfect, you know, as I'm about to punch him in in his face. And uh it's it's like uh just a perfect shot of a of a fight, if you can say.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

And for our listeners, I will pick up that photo and I'll attach it to this uh podcast. So for so you guys can get the full full uh ambiance of the photo, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_03 8:00

Yeah, and uh, you know, I do want to emphasize that I did not want to get in a fight. That was not my like I was never one to start, but I played with some guys like Rick, who that was their goal for that that game or that week. They were gonna get in a fight with somebody, you know, and uh and we did. And uh and then so what was funny was later that year, that team that we played, they they won like our conference or whatever it was, and they made it to the state championship in Yauntville for Joe DiMaggio, and they were allowed to bring, I think, two or three players, and they picked me to go with them. So I got to go and and check for them and play. So there was no animosity about the fight. In fact, we talked about it a lot with those guys, you know. So so yeah, that I mean, I I loved baseball, but it was also the reality of I was always had this fear of getting to a point in my life where I I didn't have anything to do where I did or I was jobless, or you know, I always wanted to be successful and have something, and I was I really feared not having a job.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

So you went you went and found a an apartment and uh did they send you to the academy or do you go through non-affiliate?

SPEAKER_03 9:11

Yeah, back then it was, I mean, almost impossible to find a job and and be put through the academy by the city. You had to put yourself through. In my academy class, I went to Evergreen. I want to say we had, you know, 40 guys in our class, whatever. I mean, it was a it was a full academy class, and at least 90% of us were non-affiliates. There were a handful of affiliates from Milpitas. God, I guess that was it. There was Milpitas and then maybe one or two other small agencies that had some of it, but there might have only been seven or eight affiliated guys in that class. Um, and here's another interesting part about that is is I don't know if they still do this. I'm sure they do when when things are good, but our academy class started in January, and then there was a another academy class that started like two months later, which was an all San Jose PD class. And within, I think when that when we were about to graduate, that class was about reaching the halfway point, and they got notified that they were all losing their job. And so they all got basically got pink slipped. Um, they were allowed to finish the academy and at least have their post certificate, but they did not have jobs. They stopped getting paid. Oh, Jesus, and they they didn't have a job when they got out. So it was tough. It was, it was it was to the point where if you didn't put yourself through the academy, you there was a really good chance you weren't gonna get hired.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

I went through the Gilroy Academy, you went through the uh Evergreen, and I recall back in the day we would always beef with the San Jose recruits. Was that the same for you guys?

SPEAKER_03 10:45

I don't I don't ever remember that being an issue. I think, I mean, at least when when we went through, you were so afraid of getting in trouble outside of the class. I mean, they were they were on you. Like we when we used to have to go on runs around the you know the hood. And back then in Evergreen, if you're familiar with that area of San Jose, back when I went through in '92, it was, yeah, 92, 93, um, there were still a lot of farms in that area. And there were uh, you know, one of the neighboring properties was a walnut grove or you know, walnut trees. And uh every once in a while we would cut through the trees on the on these runs. One time one of the guys got caught and got booted out of the academy. No, I mean they were they were really, really strict outside the class. Uh so there wasn't a lot of like when you were when you were outside the classroom and in the corridors or on the like pretty much everyone just stayed to themselves. Yeah, it was you shut your mouth and you just be quiet and get your car and and leave.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Unfortunately, from what I know now of the academy, it's it's complete opposite. You could it's pretty soft.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

What's crazy is when just in the from when I went and just like seven, eight years after, like when I hear stories of some of the guys that went after me five, six, seven years after, it was amazing how linear, much linear it got. You know, um I think I got a good tail end of that real kind of hardcore. Not that we're it was anything like being in the military, the Marines. Um, I would not want to, you know, steal that thunder, but it it it was pretty, pretty strict. Uh yeah, now I hear the stories, especially now.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Some some of the recruits are coming out, I'm like, did you do any PT in the academy? I was like, they're it's sad.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

You know, when I I remember the the first day of PT and and when I went through, we had to go on a mile and a half run. And my mindset at the time was fuck, I gotta show I'm a non-affiliate, I gotta, I gotta do good. And I wasn't much of a runner, but I finished pretty good. I think I was like the 13th guy to cross that out of 40 or 40, whatever our class was, I forget. But what I didn't realize was that was how they were grouping us. And I was literally the cut between that group A, right? I made group A, which yeah, great. I make group A. We'll get the the next day we're running five, six months. And I was like, I should have been in group B. Like, you know, so it kicked my ass, you know, those first few weeks of of running. I was not prepared for that.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

So you went to the academy and ended up, did you get picked up during the academy or after the academy? How was it, how long after, or was it in the academy or after the academy that you got picked up by the agency?

SPEAKER_03 13:29

Yeah. So when um the agency that I worked for um back then was almost exclusively you had to be a reserve officer to get hired full-time. Not that they wouldn't hire you if you were a lateral, but I would say at that time, at least 90% of the department started there as a reserve. And so one of my academy mates, Glenn, great, dude. I love that guy. Um, miss him a lot. I haven't, you know, I've lost touch with him over the years. But gosh, when I was in the I was, I turned 21 that first week of the academy. And he was 45. He he was the same age as my dad. And so um he and I hit it off great, but he was reserved for the agency that I work in. And he was like, hey, you you gotta, you know, come on a ride-along with me one day. So when he was going to the academy, they uh they let him still work on the weekends, and uh so I went on a ride-along with him. And back then in the early night was it was crazy. It was an eye-opening experience for me in that, you know, in that aid for with that agency in that that neighborhood. And um, so I immediately uh applied to be a reserve officer there because I knew um, well, at the time they didn't even have any um regular officer positions available.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

So this beat ninety three.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

This is ninety nineteen ninety three. Okay. So I um by the time I graduated, so I graduated in in May, it was like May 21st, and I think I started FTO like in September. So it they the process took a long time, obviously, as it does, but I pretty much had a job when I got out of the academy as a reserve.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Now, without without getting in, you know, we're we're gonna keep it kind of ambiguous on where Eric works, but you at that time were in a city that was bordered another city that at that time was the murder capital of the world. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:26

Um the United States.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

The United States kind of overreached on the yeah. Of the US. Yeah. Anyways, uh the agency um I worked at was the East Palo, and it was the murder capital of the world and it and it bordered uh Eric's agency, and that um it was a very in that era, and correct me if I'm wrong, was it was like a little Oakland or little LA, and there was and that's the crack epidemic. Um as a 21, 22-year-old man coming into that, was it just an eye-opening experience? Had you experienced anything like that growing up and then to be thrown into that kind of atmosphere to where, you know, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a crackhead.

SPEAKER_03 16:09

Yeah. That's so true, too. Well, did I have experience now where my family's from in Chicago? I'm from my I was my parents are from Illinois, Chicago area, and I have a lot of family still from the south suburbs of Chicago. And so when I would go visit them, they didn't live in the greatest of neighborhoods. And so I would spend, you know, parts of the summers there sometimes. And so I think, you know, experiencing some of, you know, just seeing it and being in it kind of in that environment. That was kind of like my first experience and hearing their stories, my cousin's stories about going to high school and what they dealt with. But then, you know, I went to San Mateo High School, and back then, where San Mateo High School is situated, that neighborhood which is in was also widely known as kind of a a um you know high prime neighborhood with crackheads and crack dealers. And so I went to high school with a lot of guys. I played football with guys that, you know, I wound up coming in contact with in my first early years as a police officer. Those neighborhoods of um, you know, East Palo Alto, um and San Mateo, the black communities that are are the they're tied in very closely together. I I I did have some experiences, but nothing nothing to what I was about to see, you know, and experience firsthand.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

How was your f your one? Do you remember your first call? Do you remember your first arrest? And how was your first year as uh an officer in this agency?

SPEAKER_03 17:42

Yeah, you know, it's crazy is in just in my first phase of FTO, I remember like I had a homicide, had a um, you know, arm robbery uh gas station get arm arm you know, arm robbery from a gas station where I picked up the car, got in a pursuit. Uh the and they actually pulled over and actually got to do my first felony car stop like right out of the phase one, you know, yeah. And I was like, when is that ever gonna happen again? You know, I don't think I've ever done a uh felony car stop like that one in 33 years since, you know. Um and of course the guys had crack on them, you know, big bags of crack actually. So um so yeah, just in in that first two-week phase of FTO, the calls for service and the things that I got to experience compared to today, like it it's guys will go a whole career or you know, a whole year and not get those kinds of calls. So my first arrest was was that arm robbery, you know, two guys from they're both from East Palo Alto, went up to San Francisco, did a carjacking in San Francisco, robbed a 7-Eleven in Daly City, and then came down and robbed a Chevron on Marsh Road. Actually, it was a BP gas station at that time. And then I picked them up at uh at Willow and Willbridge.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

How nice of them to pull over.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

Yeah, I couldn't believe it. Yeah, I was shocked. But my FTO was great. Um Don He was a guy who um started his career as a cop in Berkeley in the mid-60s, I think. And I remember vividly him telling me, he's like, Go to Willow and Eridge, Kiddi's cleaners, go, go just pull back in there and they'll come to us. I'm like, what? No, we gotta we gotta go to this. No, he's like, no, go right, they'll come by. And within 30 seconds, there it was. So he was he was dead right. What was your other question? First call.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

And how how was the first year of your of your career? God, it was off the hook.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

Yeah, and it was just so fun. It was experiencing something like um, it's hard to explain, you know, what it was like being a cop back then. And and, you know, I don't know, man. It's just it was it was so uh real, you know, and seeing the things that I got to see, you know, seeing your first dead body, you know, uh I think a lot of people don't realize when they get in this job what, yeah, you know, you think cops and robbers are stuff you see on TV, but what is it really like when you see someone's brains shot all over, you know, on the pavement or you know, and those first few times you see something like that, it uh it's it's just a different experience, you know. It's kind of hard to explain. Yeah. But man, there wasn't there wasn't an opportunity that I would pass up, you know, like, hey, can you work tomorrow? Come in and work like I would work every single day back then if I could have. You know, there it was like, oh, you want me to come in? Sure, I'll be in. Do you want me to really I'll stay, you know.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

You don't have to answer this, but do you remember how much you were making an hour when you started? $20 an hour.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

It was it was like $19.58 an hour. I remember that vividly. Basically what somebody in and out works. Yeah, now, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

That's insane.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

Yeah. And that, yeah, that and as a reserve, because uh when I went through the uh uh when I got hired as a reserve, I had to um we're the one of the few agencies that pays the reserves as level ones. And uh so I had to go through the FTO program on my own time. So I didn't make a dime. Oh, you didn't get paid. I did it all for free.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Yeah. So try getting somebody to do that today. Yeah, yeah, no way. So we're we're in the point of your life that you're a cop. Now I want to pause and I want to brag on you a little bit about your your story career for what I know about you and and spent many, many hours in in cars with you doing code five and and different kind of things.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

I'm drinking these bit bottles.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

All right. Since you brought it up, yes. We were on a on a surveillance watching a watching a house, and I was spitting in a Pepsi. Diet Coke. Diet Coke. And Eric was thirsty and he grabbed it and I thought it was mine.

SPEAKER_03 21:45

I hadn't I was drinking a diet coke too, and I accidentally grabbed yours.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

And he got a mouthful of my spin.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

We're doing ed embarrassing stories with this.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Fun times, fun times.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

That's a good that's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

And then we have another one.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

What other one?

SPEAKER_00 21:57

More ed do we have more Ed Embarrassing Stories? Or what Ed? Was like when he was you first met him.

SPEAKER_03 22:02

Yeah, oh I could go into that too.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Hold on, I was gonna get back to that. No, no, okay. Put a pin put a put a put a pin in that. We'll get back to that. I want to talk about you. All right. Your career is something that Hollywood should look at to make a movie. The things that you've done in your career in three decades, you started the narcotic enforcement team for the agency, started from nothing with you and a couple other guys, and in a time to where you guys were it was the Wild West, and you guys made that that part of the department something that people feared on the street, you know, and then going to different, you know, you were narcotic abatement officer, or narcotic detective, you're a homicide detective, or FTO, or I was never an FTO. You were an FTO? Good. I would hate to have you said, No, I wouldn't kill me. I would have to have you. I mean, you're you're but your entire career was basically around dope. Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong. And you were on the uh FBI uh Project Safe Street as a as a task force agent for many years. I think you're still are you still got to see your credits?

SPEAKER_03 23:08

I don't have them with me.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

No, anyways. So during your time, you did two large-scale takedowns with the FBI in an 09 and an 11, right? 2011. The nine was Operation Crackdown, 2011 was Operation Fallen Gardens. Two of the largest scale gang narcotic takedowns in California, and I think it's rate of the top 10 in the in the United States last time I checked. If not, if not, it should be. I could be making it up. Anyways, and I had the privilege to be the co-case agent with that, with Eric and then the FBI uh map. That looking back on my career, that was the funnest times that I ever had. Some of the scariest, some of the funnest. I started with East Palo Alto. I was attached to your agency as a detective, and I worked under you as a sergeant. And then um I saw how fun you guys had, and I eventually went over to that agency. But can you talk about how one, your narcotics experience, and then kind of go into those two cases that you worked and and and what you got out of it? And I look back and I and I look at these agencies that are that were affected by what we did. I know for a fact that you you and all the other cops made a huge difference in a lot of the people going to federal prison, state prison, and then leaving the areas. If you live in these towns that we're speaking of and you enjoy your safety, you owe it a lot to the guy that I'm talking to right now because he got rid of a lot of dangerous people. So can you just talk about how you got into narcotics, why you got into narcotics, your favorite stories, and then go into detail about the two operations that you worked with the Fitz?

SPEAKER_03 24:45

So when I well, so let's go back to FTO. When I was in FTO, one of my um FTOs was Carl Mand, who became one of my best friends at the time. Carl was one of my groomsmen in my wedding. Carl was a local kid who grew up in in the East Palo Alto area and became an Oakland cop. And he started at OPD like in, I want to say might have been like 1986, 85, somewhere in there. So when he was my FTO, I used to get like all the old timers would come up to me and be like, hey, you know, be careful when you're with Carl. He's gonna get you into foot chases and he's gonna get you into trouble. Be careful, mind your P's and Q's with him. And man, that first week of being in a car with Carl was awesome. It was so much fun. I mean, we're foot chases every day. We were, it was day shift. He would take me to all the hot areas within our town and within East Palo Alto, and every day we'd get a dope arrest, whether it was heroin or crack. Um, and it was just so much fun. Uh, you know, getting that first arrest, you know, getting getting someone in custody for dope, especially back then when it was a felony. When it was a felony, and God, it was so exciting. It was it was like being an athlete, you know. That's why I always say athletes make great cops, because we understand, you know, that that adrenaline rush, we understand, you know, how to work as a team, you know, things like that, and working with a partner in that, in, you know, in a patrol car or any car, and and going out and getting a dope arrest and and winning, getting the guy. And then you go back, you process him, you book him into custody, and you go back and do your paperwork and you book your evidence. And that that whole process was so stimulating to me. It was just, it was so exciting. It was like leaving the day knowing I I I did something, I accomplished something. And and what you were saying about the neighborhood, like there is no doubt in my mind that some of those neighborhoods that we worked were, you know, when I first started in '93, you could, you know, all night long you could drive around and every block you went down, there would be two, three people walking down the street, looking to break into a car, looking to steal something, you know, um, looking to buy their next rock or their, you know, their next bag of heroin. So we really had the freedom then to kind of, you know, do as much dope work on a street level as we could. But that also included sometimes, you know, parking your car and walking five blocks and getting out on foot and climbing fences to sneak up on people selling in the front yard, you know. And and that was what was so great about our department at the time was if you came up with a fun plan, if you wanted to do something like that, you had the freedom, absolutely, go do it, have fun with it. And so I always had great bosses and and great leadership within the department that allowed me to expand on that. I could have been like all the other guys and just drove call to call, you know, make stop here and there. But I got out, I loved it. It was exciting. I loved that that bit of danger. I always wanted the guy to take off. You know, I always wanted to get in the foot chase and I always wanted to prove to myself that I could I could catch this guy, you know. Sometimes he didn't, you know, but but more than not, we, you know, he caught him. And so I think early on I I I just loved going out and making the dope arrest. And uh so it was trying to so back then we had it was called the RDA, it was a redevelopment agency, it was a a special property tax that they would take, and that money would have to go to like um basically rebuilding the neighborhood with um, you know, making better streets, better lighting, things like that. And so our neighbor this neighborhood that I worked in was part of the RDA. So we had special funding, tax funding, that went towards narcotic enforcement. And at that time, the city had a narcotic abatement detective. I know that sounds kind of funny, but that was the position. It was a detective position that was geared towards narcotic enforcement. And so I got that position and um I was the only detective. Like I didn't have a partner, it was just me. I had the a boss at the time that let me run with it. Like, hey, you're by yourself, so uh, you do what you need to do. And so I used that to um to go out and network. It was like, okay, so if I don't have anybody let me, I'm gonna, okay, I know this parole agent. I've gotten to know him really well. Well, he's going to um San Francisco tomorrow to look for some some parolees at large. And uh he needs a bot, he needs someone to go with him. So I'd go with him. And then I'd go to San Francisco and and they and my department would let me. Uh so I would, I would start building a network of outside agency people. I would work a lot with our our the narcotics task force. Hey, I know you're serving a search warrant in Daily City tomorrow. Can I, you know, do you mind if I just tag along and give you guys an extra butt? And of course, they they always wanted to help. Or, hey, I got this guy, I have an informant who who can buy from this house on Newbridge in in my town. You know, uh, could you give me a hand with that? Oh, sure, we'll help you with the buys and we'll help you serve the search warrant. So I got, I I was able to pretty much do whatever I wanted and I produced. I brought, I brought in stats, and so they let me run with it. And so then you fast forward, I get I eventually get promoted to sergeant. And that was a tough decision because kind of like what you were saying, was like, well, God, I'm in this great detective position. I'm having a blast. In fact, I had no thought at all to put in for sergeant, and it was Glenn who pulled me aside. And it was actually him and Don who basically convinced me to put in for sergeant. I hadn't even thought about it. And at the time, we had the greatest chief, you know, at least one of the the top chiefs we've ever had in the city that I've been since I've been there, was uh Scott. And Scott had come from Rabbit City PD, and he had it was his idea. If I'm I hope I'm correct on this, on this, because I was I was actually thinking about it because I thought you might ask this. So my memory is that it was Scott had come up with the idea of creating this narcotic team, a narcotic unit that was funded through the the RDA, through the redevelopment agency. And and it was his idea to basically start up a little mini team, you know, with uh sergeant and two detectives, which it doesn't sound like a lot, but you could do a ton of stuff with that. Um and so the funny thing is at that time I was in backgrounds with Saroscope because I uh I wanted to go experience a bigger. I figured there's a ton of dope we're we're here where I'm working, but there's ten times more of that in the city. And it's the place where I always, you know, where I first decided I wanted to be cops. So they had changed their hiring processes and and allowed for outside applicants from uh, you know, you didn't have to live there anymore. So I was in the background process, and I remember, in fact, it was that night I was going to meet with my backgrounder in San Francisco, and the chief catches me in the parking lot and he pulls me aside and says, Hey, I know you, you know, you're in the process with San Francisco, and I don't blame you. You'd be great there, but I want to promote you, you know, and I think you have a really good shot of getting promoted if you if you go through the process. And it was like, you know, I trust Scott. I mean, he, you know, the chief, I trusted him. And uh I'm like, I was like, well, he's more or less telling me to put in, you know. So I did, and I went through it, it was a pretty grueling process at the time. There was like 13 of us that went through, and we had to go through this huge assessment center. But long story short, I get promoted to sergeant, and shortly thereafter, Scott left and went to Mountain View, and then Chris became the next chief. And um, I loved working for Chris, great, great chief. And he was the one that actually pulled the trigger and created the unit that actually then put it in place, which um which I I got that spot as the narcotic enforcement team. So one of the things that I was tasked with was come trying to, we had to I had to come up with a name. And uh, but it had to have the word narcotic in it because it was funded by the RDA and there's money earmarked for narcotics. And so, I mean, right or wrong, I don't know if it was the right name to come up with, but that's what I came up with the narcotic enforcement team. It stuck. Yeah, it definitely stuck. Uh and at the time it was, you know, uh it was way ahead of its time. Our department had never had anything like that. You know, at the time our detectives had, um, we didn't even have detective cars, we had to use our own vehicles for detective work, and we got a lease back allowance, is what they called it. And so each month you'd get a $250 stipend for your car. And uh, I remember that was one of the first things I said to him. I said, I can't. I'm not gonna use my own car for this. There's just no way. And so he made it happen. And he was able to get us, you know, better equipment, better car. We got good cars, and we got money to do buys, and so that that's really how it started. And I got to pick my team. And it was interesting at the time, I picked Tony and who was young, he was my age, um, but still considerably young. But then I picked an old timer, the old man, which went against like well when I told Chief Dot, his I remember like I could still see the look on his face when I told him I was picking Rump. And he looks at me like, Are you serious? You know, and not nothing against Ron, but he was older, he was more towards the uh the end of his career.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Because he had started in the 70s, didn't he?

SPEAKER_03 34:33

Yeah, one maybe. Yeah, I mean, he was definitely on the tail end of of his career, motor guy, you know. Um, but man, his stories um of working dope from the the 80s are just incredible because we we had a uh it was 11, 12, 1300 blocks, where like literally was like the heroin capital of of the Bay Area. And their stories, him and guys from that era of the the calls and the experiences they had, you know, out there was incredible. I remember vividly I told Chief I said, uh Tony and I are young and we're we're very energetic. I need someone to you know be the smart guy in the room or you know, be the be the you know the voice of reason. Yeah, exactly. And Ron was was great. He it was perfect, it was the perfect, you know, uh group of guys as far as um experience goes and and energy level. And and Ron really kind of leveled us out. But man, when you're you know in in the the middle of a fight or with something when it's you know shit's hitting the fan, Ron was like one of those guys where it's like, oh thank God he's here, you know, because he was solid as can be.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

I I used to love as when I first came over your agency as just an officer and he was a sergeant um walking by, hey sergeant, he'd he'd mention he'd wave me in and he's like, Did you get anything today? I'm like, Yeah, I tell him he would tell some stories about back in the day, and then he would tell stories about you and and your uh adventures, and it was always fun. He was a great storyteller.

SPEAKER_03 36:11

Yeah, yeah, he freaking hilarious. That's so funny, but I uh one of my vivid memories of him was um I had a guy I can't think of his name offhand, um, but he had taken off. It was we were driving down uh Kavanaugh and he was going the opposite way, and I flipped a bitch real quick and came after him. And by the time he turned the corner and we hit the corner where he just turned there's his car, you know, into a tree, and the door's open, and where is he? He's gone, right? And so I run up the side of the house, and as I as I as I'm getting to the fence, he falls out of the tree right in front of me, and you know, then he jumps on the over the fence, try to get over the gate. And you know, Ron's like six, four, right? He's tall, right? He's all is he taller. He's tall, he was taller than me. Yeah, and you know, so I'm holding the guy's legs, trying to pull him down, and Ron on there just reaches right over him over my back and grabs the guy by the collar of his shirt as he's you know over the fence and pulls him back over. And uh, you know, it was fun. It was it was so much fun working with him. You know, so that's that was kind of how how the net team started, the narcotic enforcement team team started. And same thing, once we got on the ground rolling, um, I did whatever I could to get us involved in more things. So um I remember there was I I don't know how or where I found I got some notice or someone told me about the U.S. Marshals that they did a they had kind of like a task force that you could be a part of. Any agency could be a part of. So I'm like, yeah, shit, we'll do it. So what they what it was was it was uh they did it out of Oakland police department, and it was for three days out of every month. It was always a uh like a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or something like that, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and it was start at 5 a.m. and you go till like one, and it was just serving arrest warrants in Oakland, in Hayward, Fremont, you know, the East Bay, Richmond. And so I'm like, yeah, we'll we'll do it. And only the only thing was you, you know, they wanted you to bring warrants if you ever had warrants, and they would come help you serve warrants in your area. So so I signed us up for that, and we got to meet a ton of guys. Like we were here, we are in you know, Oakland serving arrest warrants and parole warrants and stuff like that. And so then I got to meet guys from San Francisco PD, and then I met a guy, Bruno, who was a um inspector who ran, he was like their liaison to the U.S. Marshals. So I'm like, hey, do you guys do this in San Francisco? You do so? And he's like, well, kinda, but you're more than welcome to come, you know, bring any warrants. You got so like like two days a week or yeah, two days a month, I would go, we would go work on San Francisco and we work with him and his guys serving arrest warrants in the city. And so I tried to give, you know, Ron and Tony, and believe me, it was self-serving. I wanted to do it too. It was my own, and so we just kind of you know tried to get to know and meet as many people as we could. And we were always, you know, overwhelming trying to help them because one day, you know, when we need your help, and man, that happened many times where some odd thing would come up and like, hey, I we really need SFPD's help on this. Oh, I know the guy to call, you know, and so that really, really helped. And so it was it was fun at that time, you know.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

And I know throughout I think if I look back for your entire career, you spent like seven minutes working patrol, seven or eight minutes. Do you spend most of your career on specialty units?

SPEAKER_03 39:47

Yeah, I think as a sergeant in patrol, I I think total time is maybe a year.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:55

May I mean let's say two years tops. And I've been a sergeant since 2002, maybe I think, or two, no, two thousand one. So yeah, and I mean, since then I've spent most of my time in the narcotic world. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

How how did you get hooked up with the the FBI?

SPEAKER_03 40:12

Okay, so yeah, so the FBI that was a that's a great that yeah, that was that's probably the greatest single thing that that ever happened to me in my career. Was so during that time, the sheriff's office started their gang intelligence unit. And I at that time had worked really close with Tom, who was the sergeant in charge of uh putting GIU together. And so in those early stages, I worked hand in hand with with, you know, um God, I remember the first our first office was at Belmont PD or their first office at the old Belmont Police Department. So I remember we would spend days on end cleaning that dump out and you know, getting it ready to go. And and uh so in the ear the the first phase of GIU or GTF when it first started was were day shift. It was day shift serving uh arrest warrants. And um so at that time they had an officer or a deputy assigned to GTF, or actually he was a a GIU detective. Bill was tasked with working with the FBI. The FBI had a agent that they kind of assigned to San Mateo County to work gangs, and that agent was map kind of partner up and they're trying to get into, and at that time it was the the the Taliban.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

And when we say Taliban, it's not not Middle Eastern Taliban. Taliban was a uh African-American gang in our area that uh sold drugs, shot and killed people, and their their color of choice was camouflage. So don't don't mistake them, the real Taliban.

SPEAKER_03 41:47

Yeah, and and but correct me if I'm wrong, didn't they choose like they would put tattoos on them that were kind of confusing to the sense where they it was they would steal stuff from the real Taliban, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Like their they when they picked the name in the in the inception, they they picked it because, of course, of the fear that it brought to the public. And they would take, you know, they would use the AK-47s and and the the military jargon and clothing from the actual Taliban into their game to get that instant, I guess, fear factor to the public.

SPEAKER_03 42:18

And so Matt and Bill were tasked with with trying to get a case going against against the Taliban. And so I remember working, what what had happened was I got assigned as a sergeant to work GTF, the gang task force for whatever it was like uh, you know, for one rotation. One rotation. It was like it was me. I don't actually I might have been by myself uh because I didn't have at at that moment in time, I had no officers assigned to me. I was I was purely by myself. And so I would go work with with um GTF. So I I'm on this team running the South County team, and I had uh Aaron with me who was in my car, and in front of us, we're at a stoplight, and I see Jason who uh uh is in front of me at a at a stoplight. And Jason from from the neighborhood that I knew from the time he was like 10, but I always got along with the kid. I always liked him. Um he was always very respectful to me. And and uh I mean, I always I had a heart for the kid, you know, like he I felt bad for him at times. But I see him and I know he's a Taliban associate, and whether or not he was a Taliban, I don't, I don't know. I mean, he definitely hung with those guys. Always struck me as kind of a wannabe. But nonetheless, I tell Aaron, I go, I guarantee he's got a gun in that car. And um, so we traffic stop him because he was 14 6 or had no, he was driving on a spending license that I knew he didn't have a valid license. So we stop him. Long story short, I just asked him, where's your gun? And he's like, Fuck, it's under the seat, get out. So we arrest him, have the get him with the felon in possession of a firearm, put him in a jail. And it was literally like the next day where um MAP hit me up. They're like, hey, you know, we're trying to build this. And they're like, yeah, we want to fill you in on this case. We're trying to build. We've got, you know, something, but we're really looking for an informant. And that that would be what is would really help this case get going. And I remember I'm like, well, I just arrested Jason yesterday, and he's he's worked with like that in the past, not as not as like a legit signed up informant, paid informant, but you know, he was more like Give me intel. Give me intel. He'd be like, hey, I know this guy's gonna be driving by, or if you see me in the car with him, you know, he usually got a gun, that kind of stuff. He was just giving me good intel. That always turned out. So I told him, I go, he's in custody right now on some serious charges because of his his history. And back then in this county, people actually got some time. Went to prison. Yeah. And um, so we um we went and interviewed him and he was ready to go. He he wanted to do it. And I can't remember. We we had to still go to the prelim. Like the the the DA wasn't gonna just cut him loose, but somehow they finagled something or he was able to to walk on his charges as long as he came and and worked for us and uh upheld his end of the bargain, which by far he did. And so he basically was my informant that you know I bring along to with you know to the FBI. And um during that process, once he started working and and started producing some things really early on, Matt realized I think I didn't supervise anybody at the time, I had a lot of free time. So I started working like every day with Matt. And we would start, we kind of just started getting the case going. And he came to me, said, Hey, do you want to be a TFO? You want to be a task force officer with the FBI and get you a new car and I get you, you know, your your FBI creds.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

And I was like, Hell yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

Yeah, why not? So within, you know, a month or so, I was signed up as a federal task force officer, and that case kind of really grew from there. And um, and what was great about that case was you know, I I I know I get I a lot of like I take a lot of credit for that case, no doubt. Matt that case was would have gone nowhere without Matt. He was a savant when it came to I've never to names and cases. Yeah, incredible. I mean, uh, you know, his recollection of things and and like you said, names and faces. What you know when he blew me away with I remember like we would have these meetings up in his office and he would start naming guys, you know, right on top of his head. And I'm like, dude, are you are is this guy full of shit? Like, is he a total fraud? Like, how are you gonna start like you've never worked out here? You you your office is in San Francisco and you're naming off gangsters from Miss Palo Alto, you know, and how do you how do you yeah, I get it, you can read a paper and you can, you know, you can read a printed sheet that's got intel from you know local agencies, but it wasn't until one day we were driving and we passed by the 76th gas station, and there's like a car full of four guys out, you know, all Taliban guys, and he named every one of them, like, oh, that's so and so and that's so and so and that's and I'm like, oh my god, he's like that's when it hit me like this guy knows what the fuck he's talking about. Like he he's not a fake. And fuck, man, Matt was the guy was a workaholic if there ever was one. I mean, he he gave everything he had to do.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

And he wrote all the ref 302s. Oh my god. He wouldn't, we I remember we both tell him, let us write it.

SPEAKER_03 47:48

Yeah, I'll write it. Yeah, with all those buys we did all the surveillance and and I remember like, hey, dude, I'll I'll write this up just to, you know, nope, no, no, I got it. Just send it to me and I'll take care of it. And he was incredible to work for. That's why I don't think he ever paid for a lunch or no drinks or anything, because I always I always, you know, he I got I got so much from working with him, he was incredible.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

And I and I have you two to thank for me not getting arrested by the feds for keeping keeping my creds. Yeah. So at the time I I was on the task force with another agent working in East Palo Alto, a different gang, and we were on the tail end of ours. Something happened, we're out, I don't know, I guess I didn't turn in my creds or something. And you guys came and saved me and brought me into the fold of the Taliban.

SPEAKER_03 48:34

Yeah, you know, it was funny because um, you know, Matt Matt's nickname was uh Sunshine. If you remember that, they and that was from his own, uh I'm pretty sure from his own co-agents that he worked with up there, and it was obviously it was a a play on words that he was no sunshine. And uh he like he had no, you know, like he did not hesitate to tell you what he was thinking. And if if someone said or did something that he didn't like, he was gonna tell you. And so you always knew where Matt stood, and which was great. I mean, it it was uh he was he was just um it was fun to work with because there was never there would be something would come up and be like, oh man, we can't do that. And he'd be like, Oh yeah, we can do that, we're gonna do that. Remember, I don't know if you remember this, but the whole that whole case was supposed to start off as being a uh like a front, a fake front. We were gonna get a warehouse and and we did, we got all that rolling and we were gonna do the um but something happened on his end on the FBI side where they they shut it down. But we had the whole storefront and and everything, it was all ready to go. And then it got it got pushed off. Um But you know, and to this day, what made that for the you know the listeners, I guess, is that that case eventually what it was was it was a drug case that um we targeted the Taliban and we used the drug trafficking angle and conspiracy angles to try to tie up as many guys as we could with um with drug trafficking. And we found a couple of the top players in the neighborhoods and kind of went after them, and then it branched out from there. But what made that case so successful was that we not only did we have that undercover investigative part of that case, but it was when we would go, you, me, the other guy, we would go suit up and work the streets and do like high-profile stuff. And remember, we would do rolling surveillance in that in the Tahoe that they knew was a cop, they knew it was us, and some of our best surveillance was done right out in the open, and they just assumed we were just jacking people, just jacking people. But it was like, no, we're getting plates, we're getting like it was that's what made that case so successful. And then being able to go target guys and get random arrests that we could then tie back, you know. Um there was so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

I mean, we had the everybody called we had a Tahoe that everybody called the black truck.

SPEAKER_03 51:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

And remember, even on the wire, the black truck's out. Yeah. Black truck's out. And a lot of a lot of times the the criminal element would go inside. Oh, yeah. You know, as soon as we were we'd roll out, business would stop.

SPEAKER_03 51:22

We knew that as soon as remember Matt would tell us they would be in the city monitoring the wire and the traffic and everything and the cameras that they had. And um, as soon as, okay, we're we're about two minutes out, we're gonna be in the neighborhood, and we start rolling and phone calls start going, their the their comms would start to liften it up, and then yeah, within minutes it would shut everything down. And there were call multiple times where they had calls where they were saying, Hey, we're out of here, we're leaving, we're not, they're out, you know, the black trucks out, we're we're done for the day. No.

SPEAKER_01 51:53

The the one of the best things that I still laugh about is there there's a specific department within the FBI that all they do is surveillance.

SPEAKER_03 52:00

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:01

S O G I Yeah, they're they're like the Navy seagulls of of surveillance, you know, and they're you know, you can't ever see them. They're in the shadows, and I can remember us being out in the black truck, and s this unit of the feds was out surveilling different different targets and they were getting picked off.

SPEAKER_02 52:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

Right and left. Oh, there's a Fed. There's a Fed. There's a Fed. I think it's probably because they're all wearing North Faith jackets. But but we would do surveillance and and they were like, oh, they're just out.

SPEAKER_03 52:28

Yeah. They didn't tie they never would tie it together. Um that reminds me when you said the S the surveillance teams with the remember the great cars that we got being on that. And at the time we got uh there were rental cars. Well, no, actually, this was before the rental cars. But so I get this brand new the day that I go up and get my creds and Mac gives me my car, he gave me it was a brand new Ford Explorer, but the pickup truck version. I I forget what the name, but it was an explorer pickup truck, and that thing stuck out like a sore thumb. There's no way you were gonna be able to do surveillance in that car in any neighborhood. You know, in the city you could, but not in this small area. And I remember Matt's like, yeah, fuck this. We're not, you're not gonna drive this thing. And he's like, hang on a second. He goes and he calls one of the task force officers, and this is why he gets the name Sunshine. There's this kind of shit right here. He calls the San Francisco TFO, who had a brand new Dodge Charger SRT, badass. And he's like, Hey, where are you? And the guy, oh and he's like, Yeah, come on over here, we got to switch a car. And the guy's like, What? And he's like, Yeah, come on, and and literally the guy comes over, and Matt goes, oops, sorry. Matt's like, yeah, switch, you guys are gonna switch cars. So I wind up leaving him with that badass Dodge Charger, brand new, like fastest car ever driven at the time, you know.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

Yeah, the feds were were weird with their cars. My first Fed car wasn't even a car. It was a it was a Chevy 3500 four-door long bed four-wheel drive truck. And like, I'm gonna do an 18-point turn on some of these streets. It was like this stuck out. I'm uh, you know, I end up getting I ended up getting one of those X4 things, but and then I had a Kia.

SPEAKER_03 54:07

Yeah. Yeah, but your I remember your the four X4 you had was the was like gray, right? With like uh tan colors from what that one I had with like bright blue, sky blue, or it was just like one time around the block.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

So I mean the buys that we did. I I the when I go back to both how this was the funnest part, it was the the the before and after buys that we did of just sitting around waiting to BS in it, and then a lot of times we'd be sitting around BSing and on view something and getting a foot pursuit right now.

SPEAKER_03 54:40

Yeah, the flippers they got across the train track, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

And and just some of the the the crazy, and then not only were we doing, you know, the 18th month loan under convict, we were still doing street enforcement and working with GIU and GTF, and you know, not to say we put them to shame, but we would end up getting like three, four guns a night. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:00

You know, and well, there was that one week we went to GTF and we got a gun every single night. Like all four nights we got a gun.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

And then the one on Verbena where the dude had two guns on him. Nick pepper sprayed us both.

SPEAKER_03 55:13

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

Uh uh, do you mi I should have I should have done the research. I should know. Do you remember how many people that went to jail? I mean, we end up the the briefing that we did had to be at a large scale.

SPEAKER_03 55:27

It was a Marvel Field.

SPEAKER_01 55:30

Over 500 law enforcement officers.

SPEAKER_03 55:32

There was over a thousand.

SPEAKER_01 55:32

Over a thousand. And from multi-agencies, we did search warrants throughout the United States all simultaneously. You know, I don't remember what at the end, because even after months and months, people were on the run and we were catching them, but we put such a dent or everybody put such a dent into the Taliban. It was it it was awesome. And just I still look at pictures at some of the the things we did that day. And even, you know, you and I stayed up the whole entire night before because we had we had planned the the the takedown and then the the f dude they were looking for was on the wire and we thought we had got burned, so we came in and ended up just doing street enforcement the entire night to to to pass the time. Yeah, yeah. I look back with fond memories.

SPEAKER_03 56:16

Um I remember vividly it we had gone home for the night from it was like uh probably three or so we left and went home, like we'll say we'll be back at three in the morning or whatever. And it was literally right when I get home that Matt calls me and says, We're burned. Like they know. And the something had happened where word got out, I think, in the jail from a criminal like so I can't remember exactly how it happened, but I mean when you have a thousand people showing up the next day, like it's I I get it. It's somebody said something to somebody and it got out. And so our main guy went on the run. And I remember calling you and we're like, well, let's go back in. And we went out checking a few locations, right? Or we went out looking for them. And but yeah, that was that night, it was so memorable though.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Yeah, we hit we drank like 15 lobsters.

SPEAKER_03 57:11

We're at the Chevron at Donahoe University. It's like like two in the morning, and the rock star guy driving the rock star van pulls into that gas station and starts handing out cases of free rock stars to the crackheads to the crackheads, and they thought it was like Christmas free crack.

SPEAKER_01 57:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:29

That one remember they're open drinking, like pounding them like they're gonna try to get high off in a rock star.

SPEAKER_01 57:34

Some lady tried to sell we of course we weren't in uniform, we were in plain clothes. Some lady tried to sell me a uh uh cassette deck through the window stereo or something.

SPEAKER_03 57:43

Yeah. You know what I regret so much about looking back on that time is it was all like right when iPhones had come out. You know, real like I think we I think I had a cracker a um uh what do you call it, Blackberry at the time. So like I this missed out on so many pictures and video opportunities that we, you know, today would have been so incredible to have uh you know captured.

SPEAKER_01 58:09

I have a few pictures of us, you, me and Matt together with some of the things that we seized the the the yellow charger. And you look at our faces and we are dead tired. We've been up for 48 hours. Yeah. And that day, I remember you you ran half, I ran the other half with the CP and and and hitting houses, and it was just you look back on that, that'll never happen again in this area.

SPEAKER_03 58:32

Not to that magnet. I don't think so. Yeah, I mean Yeah, it was pretty stressful too. I mean, it was um all the press conferences that we had that day, and um I think we I think we seized over twenty cars that day. Like where they brought them back to that that warehouse and um the amount of drugs and money and guns. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty cool. It was definitely a uh very memorable, you know.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

Uh I was with the I was a detective with East Ball Oalth at the time, and that that seeing you how you worked and your apartment worked, it ran so much better than where I was from. That brought me over to to to that agency and and and uh started, I think I did a very small amount of time on on patrol before I went back to detectives. Yeah, and then and then went in detectives and then was never assigned an actual detective case because I kept on coming back to net and working with you guys, and then finally went to to be under you that uh and then how did you get into the 2011 operation fallen gardens?

SPEAKER_03 59:34

So it more or less it was that first case just kind of spun into the next one. You know, I remember that that big takedown day. I remember the net it was there was so much going on. I remember the very next day we came in and went back out on the street and grabbed a few more people that we were looking for. There was another dude that we got out in the gardens who was like, Oh, there you that's it, right? We and he didn't get wrapped up the first day, and we grabbed him, he's got a big ass sack of crack on him. And um, I mean, it was uh yeah, there was so the fallen gardens case was just going after a whole nother set of um you know higher up people that were involved in the larger scale, you know, bringing in the buying the powder cocaine and then rocking it up into to cracker and it man, just so many fun stories.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:25

Some we can say, some we can't.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:26

Yeah, yeah. Um, but then the second case, you wound by the time we really got going with that one, you wound up getting promoted promoted to sergeant, which was crazy to think that you transfer a lateral over and then within two years two years, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

I I came over in 09, and then by 2011 I got promoted.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:45

Yeah, so like I mean uh thing about that not a lot of people not a lot of people at that agency was happy that yeah, no, you come over, become a detective almost immediately, go then go into net and then get promoted. Yeah, that that's an impressive role there, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:01

I and then uh you know, one of the other things that you had impressed upon me as becoming a sergeant is one, have fun, and two, make it like you want it to be. Make make your and I basically tried to make my patrol team an a narcotic enforcement team that just was in uniform and just going out. And my thing about being a sergeant is I didn't want to sit behind a desk and and review reports. I was I was a working sergeant to where I went and did arrest and made, you know, feline arrest and and did things and stuff like that. And I remember I think not too I can't remember what year it was shortly on patrol. I was working night shift, you, Manny, Del were out. There was a shooting, and then I I think we broke briefing because you got in a foot pursuit with the suspect and got him in custody, but you end up getting the worst injury that I've ever seen a cop get that hadn't been shot. I mean, I can honestly any other person that got injured that bad probably would have retired. I mean, I showed up on scene and you were white as a ghost holding your hand, and when you removed your hand from your other hand, it looked like the top of your hand had been flayed open where you can see all the muscles and bones, and I had thought you were shot.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:11

And can can you and it ended up being looking back, it's a funny story. It wasn't funny then because I was like, here's my good friend and and ex-partner hurt, and I wanted to find the guy that did it. But can you go in and how that ended up being a little funny and and we can we can call out the detective that yeah, it was uh Pepperjack Delman Um who I love dearly, no ill will against him.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:33

Yeah, so what had happened was early in that mor that on that day, there was a a shooting that happened on at a a residential in our a residential neighborhood. And so me, Manny, John, I can't remember if I don't think it was I think it was just a three. We went out that day looking for the suspect. I if I remember, I think we had a pretty good idea who it was. And it was that gang, right? Wasn't it that was going back to the room?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:58

Midtown Menlo.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:59

Yeah, and it was every other day they were shooting somebody's house or something like that. And so we go out, we're looking for them, and and um we're it's like maybe one or two o'clock in the afternoon or three three. I think it was later.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

I think it was later because I was just break clearing briefing at night.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:15

Yeah, so then it was later. It was closer to but it was still daylight. Yeah, so it must have been closer to six, I guess. Um and it was summer or yeah, it was summertime. August, yeah, it was, and it was August. And so they uh we get a call of uh shots fired that there's a 415 active going on in the 1300 block of Willow, and we were literally at the other end of the 1300 block of Willow where we were parked at the time when the call came out. We could see all the way down, you know, to the other side, the end of the block where this activity was going on, and we could see that there was something happening. But I had to get there, I had to drive, I had to U-turn. It wasn't like a straight shot where I could just drive down the street and get to him. I had to kind of, you know, jockey around some corners and and do some maneuvering and lost sight of of the action that was going on. So we turn around, get going, and by the time we come back around, to now we can see all the way down the street again. The suspect, they put out the description who's now running westbound, Willow, and they put out his description, and here he's coming right at us down the street. And, you know, even though everyone knew that Black Tahoe was a cock car, it did give you sometimes that immediate, you know, there were that split second of let's just a truck, you know, or whatever, you know, and he didn't didn't spot us and he kept running right at us. So I start heading right at him, and then he is we get closer, he realizes it, and we jump, we go to jump out, and he starts, you know, doing the shuffle in the street, not knowing which way to go, and he he throws a gun over the the sound wall, or at least one of the guns, because you know, we didn't know if he had another one or what exactly it happened. And so, long story short, I get in a in a foot chase right down the street with him, like kind of out in the open. And as I'm gaining on him, we're kind of on the sidewalk, and there's apartment, the faces or the front doors of the apartments are you know, like five feet up from the sidewalk. At each residence, there's this like short little three-foot fence that comes out from the wall to the sidewalk. Doesn't really mean it. It's almost like a little property line fence. And for whatever reason, this dumbass decides that he's run, he's gonna jump over that, but it gave me just enough time to where as he's going over the top, I went around it to the front, if that makes any sense, and I corner him and I have my um or what RCB RCB, which is a big thick uh steel rapid control baton.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

Yeah, like a steel pipe is what it is.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:44

Um, and uh it's like a ass for those of you who don't know, but it's bigger, it's massive. And so I have it out and he goes to stand up and I I go to swing and I hit him, and then he goes back over that little three foot fence, now going back the other way. And he's and he falls down to the ground just on the other side. And it was just kind of awkward because the this I don't know what this there was no reason to jump over this thing. And as he starts to get up, I'm trying to get a hold of him. And then Del comes now from you know, catches up to us, and I go to hit him again with my the RCB, as did John, but John completely misses him. Maybe because it was the eyes John's eyes rolled to the back of his head. Like a shark. Yeah, and um misses his target and hits me in the back of my hand. And because I was it was my right hand, which I'm swinging the RCB with, and because I was clenching tightly, uh, at the end of the RCB, there's a small, like, I don't want to say it's not a ball, but it's like a squared off knob almost. He hits me on the back of my hand on the with the top of that knob and like comes down on it, and my whole hand just explodes, like ruptures, and it splits from knuckle to knuckle um and just fillets open. And I remember like when he hit me, I dropped the RCB because I couldn't hold on, and I quickly pulled my hand, you know, into my chest and I looked at him like, oh my god. And I remember the the funny what you think of in those moments, and the very first thing I thought of was, I'm gonna get a lot of time off. This is gonna be good. You know, that was the very first thing that popped in my head. But luckily, the guy, you know, the guy stayed on the ground. John jumped on and I was able to come around to back over to that side, and I I still stayed in the fight because I remember thinking to myself, I'm not gonna not finish this. You know, I am not gonna just walk away. And I like, you know, John could have cut my hand off with that thing, and I still would have stayed. It's you know, like I said, it's what you think of in those moments, and um, I was like, okay, I'm not gonna push out. I'm I'm gonna stay in this. And um John, myself, and I think even Tony was one of the next ones that come over and we got him in into custody. And then after that, I remember Jaime was running up. And was he in your sergeant at the time?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:18

He was Dacia's sergeant. I was nightship sergeant.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:20

So he comes running up and he's like, What's going on? What do you need? And I showed him my hand, I go, uh, which was my biggest mistake. I showed him my hand and I go, I think I need an ambulance. And he thought I was shot. And he's like, Who shot you? And I'm like, No, no, no, I'm not shot. But what I should have done was I should have said, get me to Stanford. Yeah. Like that, you know, because that was that weekend, what had happened was it was the the weekend they were closing the Bay Bridge. They were doing something for the new bridge that they had built. And so all that traffic had come down to Willow Road or to yeah, Willow Road, and it created an absolute nightmare for traffic. And the first medical unit was dealing with the shooting victim. And so I think we waited 45 minutes. Yeah, it was a long time. Yeah. And uh, I remember sitting on the ground and there was a huge crowd had had showed up, and I remember sitting on the curb, and I wanted to pass out so bad. And I, you know, like it's funny because I remember, like, in you know, you watch movies, and uh one of my favorite movies is Ronan with uh Al Pacino Al Pacino and no, not it's not Al Pacino, it's um Danero. Danero, that's right. Yeah, I always get them confused. Yeah, uh Deiro. And there's a scene where he he's shot and he's basically telling this guy how to remove the bullet. And when he's done, he tells the guy, and he's like real calmly, okay, I'm gonna pass out now. And he closes his eyes and he passes out. And I remember vividly sitting there thinking, okay, now I know what he means. Like, I'm like, okay, I could close my eyes right now. Take a nap. I could go to sleep in a heartbeat and be calm, and it would be so much nicer. But with all that crowd out there, I was there was no way I was gonna let those people see weakness see me pass out. And I thought, because if I pass out, I'm probably gonna piss my pants. I'm gonna run up and take a photo. Yeah, you know, like I'll who knows what'll happen. I'll shit myself or I'll piss my pants, you know. So it was like, there's no fucking way. There is no way I'm gonna pass out, you know. So they said, Well, I don't I remember when the Amos got there, they were like, Here, lay down and we'll put, we'll pick you up. And I'm like, That I'm gonna sit on, I can get on the journey, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:25

So um, yeah, that was that was that was that was a memorable night. And I bring that up not just for you know the the call or what happened, but I bring it up for a specific reason. It's one, your entire career you've been in shape. You've worked out your mental toughness is second to none of anybody I've ever worked with. You know, I've worked out with you in the gym on a soccer field, throwing sandbags, and we've always worked out together, and you've always been one of the the top one percent in the department that kept himself in shape physically and mentally. And I I look at some of the injuries, and that's not that's one of many injuries that you've had throughout your career. Any one of the injuries that you had could have been career ending, especially the last one, because you've had how many surgeries have you had since on your hand?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:14

I think it was a total of seven of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:16

Yeah, anybody else would have retired, hands down.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:18

Yeah, I remember Chief came in uh that night at the hospital, and I mean, I love I he was he was great. I loved working for Chief. But I remember he looked at me and he goes, you know, this is probably the you're probably gonna have to retire up yet. And I think you know, he was just being sincere, like letting me know, like, hey, this this one's not it might be tough to come back from. But I remember even then thinking, what? No.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:42

I got more work to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:43

No, yeah, this I'll be fine. You're like, this will be all right, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:46

And I I remember the night uh John and I went to the hospital as you were coming out of surgery in the wheelchair getting the nurse wheeling out, and you were so high, so high. Yeah, and you looked at John and you're like, Hey John, how are you? And he was so upset at himself. He was he was like, Sergeant's gonna kill me. I'm like, now he's high. Yeah, yeah. But getting back to your physical fitness, and I can't even quantify how many foot pursuits we've got into, how many fights we've gotten into with subjects with guns that not only wanted to get away but wanted to hurt us, but you were one of the only partners, supervisors, that I always knew that if you were running with me, that that the fight was gonna go in our in our favor. And you're, you know Well, likewise, pal.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:38

It's easy to run when when I know I'm running with you, you know, we could conquer the world together.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:43

So I will bring up one time that you were always 99.9% faster than me, because I was never a runner. But the one time I'll always remember I outran you because you did the legs that morning and you were you were beat and I outran you.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:00

Yeah, but but one thing we both know is that was also the the third part of that was that Nick would be the one that would drive the car to come pick us up. Yeah, because he'd be three blocks away. Yeah, but you know, okay, let's talk about that because that foot pursuit was one of the fucking coolest foot pursuits I've ever been in. You know, you watch movies and you see these foot pursuits, and it's like, man, that is bullshit. You know, these nobody can run that fast, that long, that after jumping. Like, I don't think the average person knows how tiring it is. And then your adrenaline's already through the roof to begin with.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:34

With the tack with the tack vest on and all that.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:36

Yes. And I will tell you, you know, you got such a jump on that guy that I remember every stage of that, I would come around the corner and you weren't there. And I'm like, like I was following your sound, like I could hear you, and I knew because you were yelling at him the whole way. And but each time I thought I was getting closer, and then it wasn't until like there's a point where now I'm climbing on the roof, and I'm like, This, like, what are you doing? Like, and I just and you and then we finally caught her, or you caught him in the side yard of that house. And but man, that that foot pursuit was freaking badass.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:12

I just wish I had been closer there with you to see what like I wish we had it on camera because we went over fences over roofs, down roofs, and it was like, this guy's a jet.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:22

That was cool. And I remember we get them all handcuffed, and when he when you got him down, and when I get there to you, and we're we're wrestling him on the ground, he had fallen on that makeshift piece of plywood that was like a side fence, and all the sh his shit's thrown out, and there were drugs and shit, but we're like, where the fuck's the gun? Yeah, like he had to have a gun on and then we go and we lift up that board, and there it was the gun. Right in there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:47

And then I I know we had Puma, the audio at the time. Oh, yeah, and you hear it's at the end, Nick, Nick, where are you at? He's two blocks away trying to get the car. Yep. Yeah, oh yeah, that was good. You know, and and just the you know, now now the flood of of uh emotions and the flood of of memories are coming back in the foot pursuits of guys in handcuffs. Uh I don't want this to turn into a you know war story, but some of these have to be told. On Tulane, we uh arrested some guys for for for sales, and I had a guy handcuffed uh on the on the the the curb.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:22

Well, you know, wait, you know, it's funny to interrupt you, but so I remember that so vividly. We were doing surveillance for our for our the the FBI case. And it was like, oh, we gotta jump out on these guys, and we stopped, get them handcuffed, we're we put them on the curb.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:37

And it was we were using next next tels, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:40

I said, I'm gonna go grab the next tell I left so we don't miss.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:44

And and and I turned back to say, okay, Eric, and I look back, and that dude popped up from a seated position in handcuffs and takes off running and jumped over a six-foot fence, handcuffed. Yeah, most impressive thing I've ever seen a man do. Chased him all the way into the bay front and into the to the bay lands where there's nowhere to go. It's a swamp. I end up catching him.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:06

So I remember going towards the car and I I hear you scream like yell at him like, hey, you you you know something. I turn around and I see you running up the driveway, and I can see dude's like dreads as it goes over the fence, like just in the air, like, and he's out of view. I'm like, oh, I just jumped the fence and gone.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:26

Yeah, you know, and so get sidetracked, but get back your level of fitness. You know, can you speak on that? And what was your mindset throughout your career? Uh, you know, you were you were an athlete coming into the profession, you stayed physically fit, you know, and that was the reason why you were able to catch all these guys and and stay in the fight and get absolutely demolished by RCB on your hand and still be able to be in the fight, keep with your partners, handcuff the guy, and then when the call is done, then worry about yourself. That is a thing that that cops now today I don't think have. And I and I wish and that's what the 148 project is all about, getting taking your mindset and trying to impose it on today's generation. What is it that has kept you in for three decades still being in tip-top shape, better shape than some of the cops are coming out of the academy today?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:23

You know, I well, I think like you and like many other guys like us, I was a fat kid. I mean, I like I do not have good genes, you know, obesity runs in my family, and I think, you know, it wasn't until I was like eight, you know, 16, 17, 18 where I figured like I kind of figured out how I have to be. And it's funny, my wife and I were talking about this today, about, you know, isn't it is it an obsession with food and exercise that I have? Or is it just what I know I have to do to stay, you know, to stay fit? And I I it's just, you know, I wasn't gifted with a, you know, a naturally uh, you know, fit body. I guess some people are. I mean, like I I look at some like my son is gifted with a naturally fit body. You know, no matter what he can do, he can eat, but but eventually he's that's gonna change, right? And for a lot of people it does. And so I don't know. I I I don't wanna be ever I always had this fear of being taken over in a fight and and losing. You know, as a police officer, I've always first off, that would be embarrassing. It would be embarrassing not only for myself, but for law enforcement as a whole, you know, and I I don't ever I I didn't ever want to be put in that position. And now, you know, I'm not saying that I mean that my invincible, there's plenty of people out there who could kick my ass, but I'll stay in the fight long as long as I have to, at least till I can get, you know, to get more people there to help me. Uh and so, you know, I don't know. I think working out, I and I enjoy it too, you know. I mean, my God, some of the we used to have so much fun, you know, back when we were working that case and and going to the gym and we'd go to 48-hour fitness at the same hotel. It was fun. I mean, we, you know, you build a camaraderie in the gym with people, and um, you know, um I don't know, it's it's who you are, it's who who I am, and um you feel good to be in shape. I I you know, I like the fact that I'm I'm 54 and I'm like you say, you know, I know I'm in better shape than most people that come out of the cabin. You know, I'm proud of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:36

You know, I do you think that being in shape has helped you mentally through the ups and downs of police work and and you have you found it more as an outlet to kind of decompress? Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:48

Yeah, um I mean even through the most stressful times of my life, I mean, the one constant is I always I'm always gonna work out that day. I'm always gonna do something. And even, you know, through the worst of times, I figure out a way. Now it might not be the greatest workout or or you know, but it to have that kind of mindset to okay, I gotta get it in. And you know, there was another there was a doctor that I listened to, and I wish I knew his name. And I think you and I have talked about this guy before. It was I think he did a talk at one of the gang conferences. And I remember I thought like his maybe his nickname was Dr. Dr.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:23

Deadlift, Deadlift, yeah. I don't remember his name.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:26

When I I remember listening to him give a like a talk at that conference. And I remember because like when I was working patrol for the short period of time that I didn't, but I do remember getting off at seven in the morning working midnights and I'd go to the gym. I'd go to the to you know the and I'd work out and it was brutal, like fucking brutal, but I did it. And and I remember hearing that that doctor gave in in that conference, he said, Look, if if you can't get to the gym after a midnight shift and work out, and if you can't get your mind right to do that, how the fuck are you gonna get into a fight and be on your back and stay alive to keep yourself alive or to keep your partner alive? It's like really you can't you can't work through some adversity to go to the gym today. So how the hell are you gonna do it when you really need how are you gonna get your mind right? And that always stuck with me. Like, God, that makes so much sense. If I if I don't have the the willingness and the the ability to get my ass off the couch and go to the gym right now when I feel like shit. Yeah, I remember that literally the day after my first surgery, that night the next day, I walked my kids to school three miles. You know, it was like I could have driven them, but I was like, no, let's go for a walk. Because I I knew okay, I'm not gonna do much today. So and then that progressed to where I started carrying that sandbag. I would walk them to school, walk back, walk back in the afternoon to pick them up. And you know, so it was like I'm gonna figure out something, some way to to get get something in today.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:03

Yeah, and it doesn't matter what it is, do something 30 minutes, 20 minutes a day.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:08

And you know, too, what I find is and once you get to a certain level of physical fit, it doesn't take that much to maintain it. You know, um I mean you always have to stay on top of it, but you don't always have to bust your ass, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:23

And it becomes second nature to where y it's just an integral part of your day that and a lot of times if I skip a workout, man, it weighs on me too. Oh, okay. You know, it's like, oh shit, I missed a workout, you know. Um that being said, what piece of information or or would you give a new officer coming out of the academy now to imprint that kind of attitude to them? And have, you know, I've been out two years, you're seeing more of the new guys come in. Have you tried to help them at all or what's are they receptive to that? You know, because you are you are the senior sergeant, you're the most senior, you're a Sam one. You've been there the the longest out of everybody in an apartment. You are the leader in that apartment that everybody looks up to, that everybody wants to be on their team. Do you see any of the new officers trying to pick your brain or anything like that?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:15

No, but uh, you know, to be honest, in in the position I'm in in detectives, I'm kind of removed from the you know, the new guys that come in. I don't really spend much time with them, but I would like I mean, you know, we have that great uh wellness program, which is which Daniel like really spearheaded and started and and man is it like I I so much credit to her for that program. Um and uh, you know, all honesty on it, you know, out there, I don't I don't participate in it because I I've been so set and regimented in my own process, but I do see a lot of the the like all the other detectives all you know participate in it. And so my first thing would be any of the new guys need to jump on board with that because it is it's it's you do it while you're at work, you know. They're they can work around your schedule or they you know, and it's anything any blood work, you know, you need to program for weight loss or if you want to build muscle, whatever. It's we have that whole that whole plan is right there.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:17

And you have one of the best gyms I've ever seen a department have upstairs.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:22

Yeah, it's and they they keep making it better, you know. It's great. I the only the one thing I wish is that, you know, no offense to the other city employees, but we need our own gym. We need our own department gym. We work 24 hours a day, every day of the year. We need our own gym. You know, that that is the one downside to to it, but it is fantastic to have that right right there, you know. I do remember during COVID when um when I was working patrol, this kind of was disappointing. Was I would tell my guys, I'm like, hey, we've we're here for 12 hours. If anyone wants to go work out for an hour on your break, let's do it. You know, we'll rotate, just let your bee partner know, let me know, and we'll we'll get we'll we'll make it happen. Nobody would take me up on it. I was the only one who would do it, you know, and so that to me, when when you're like, hey, look, you can get paid right now to go work out and people don't take you up on it. That's it's like something's missing, you know. And I just I don't know how you you can you're never gonna be able to force people to do that. No, you know, I think part of what you're asking me, what you're talking about, is it's I think something we're born with, or you know, that you know, I think it becomes an addiction as well. For sure. Absolutely. You know, yeah, and you you know, you just hope you can pass it along. You know.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:41

And that leads into your leadership style, where you know, being working as a subordinate, then working alongside you as a supervisor, and we work together on several different cases. Where did you learn your leadership style? And then what would you tell a new sergeant coming into the the position? You have you have such a unique style of supervision to where I don't think even when I worked under you and as a partner, I don't remember one arc. Maybe I remember one argument we've had uh on a on just a a simple line you wanted in a report, and I think we were tired and we kind of yelled at each other. That being said, it you were such a great sergeant and you allowed your your people so much freedom and to where did you get that? Do you have a specific person that you could point out or did you just trial and error?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:30

You know, it's a good question. I I think I took bits and pieces from different different sergeants that I had. I you know, I had this one of my favorite sergeants I worked for was a guy named Rich, and he was the sergeant that everyone wanted to work for because he was easygoing, he was, you know, I don't say laxadaisical, but he was just easy peasy, you know. So I I think I took a part of that, but then, you know, there was another sergeant we had Larry who everybody fucking hated Larry, but I didn't because I loved work for that guy because he was a hard worker and he he expected a lot out of you. You know, he had a you know, not the greatest way to deliver, but once you got to know him, I loved working for him. So I think I I I'm kind of a cross between the two, or a mixture of of each each of them. But I also, you know, one of the other sergeants I had was this guy named Dan, and he's still alive as well. Larry unfortunately passed away. Rich is still alive. Dan, I remember early on in my career. In fact, I was an FTO with Don, and we went to an active 415 between two apartment compotches, like families, and there had to be 50 people in the street, and bottles are being thrown, and it was it was pandemonium. I think we had there were three of us there. It was me, Don, and and Dan and here I'm brand. I was like, I have no clue what to do. And I and Dan was just like, what are you gonna do? You know, they'll figure it out, they'll They'll stop eventually, you know, like and it was like, okay, I kind of like that too. Like, what are we gonna what are we gonna do with 50 people? You know, like they're fighting the street of us. We're gonna call a co 30 for or you know, ask for. So I think um one of the things I always try to I always try to put everything we do in perspective. And then the, you know, sometimes in the big scale thing, what we're dealing with is so fucking minor. You know, it's so minor, it's so it really doesn't matter, you know, is you know, I I try to put um an emphasis on the things that are really important and what really need attention. And in so much of what we do, I think sometimes is just it's just bullshit, it's just fluff. There's no point in getting upset over it or, you know, worked up over it. You know, and and I think the biggest is I just try to treat everyone like they're an adult, you know. I think so many sergeants get wrapped up in, you know, trying to treat everyone like they're they're, you know, a kid or you know, it's like they're a grown adult. Let like let them make their own decision, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:03

So And what I liked about you too is you always and and I you were one of the sergeants that I that I emulated was because you always worked. You weren't afraid to cut paper, you weren't afraid to chase people, you weren't afraid to fight people and get in the mix. And I took that from you. And and I think a lot of sergeants nowadays they don't they're just paper pushers.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:24

Yeah, you know, um I used to get dinged in my evaluations from Terr, you know, Terry Locades, who was obviously one of my f most favorite people ever in this job. And um but she used to like, hey, you gotta s you know, when she was the commander, she's like, You gotta stop making arrests. So like I come in and you're the sergeant you're the patrol sergeant and you made two arrests last night, and you know, nobody in your team made an arrest, you know. And I was like, Well, well, uh I'm still a cop. But you know what's funny is is what ruined me from doing that was going when I went to NTF. When I went there, I went there with that same mindset I had in net. I'm gonna do cases, I'm gonna write my own search ones. I'm I have my own set of CIs that I'm gonna bring. And I get there, and man, it just doesn't work that way up there. Like I would set up a bye with one one of many of the CIs we used to have. And there are so many guys that, you know, especially the deputies, where they're so they're very concerned on stats. Keeping their job, you know, yeah. And so it's like, oh, I'll take that. I got you know, no problem, I'll take that. And I'm like, no, I'm gonna no, no, no, no, no, I got it, I got and which is fantastic that they're willing to do that. And so it kind of ruined me in the sense that I stopped doing my own cases when I and man, then I come back to patrol after being gone for all those years at the test, and they come back, and I wouldn't know how to write a start or and then COVID happened. COVID ruined everything. Yeah, yeah, you're right. COVID was next. I come back, and literally two months later, COVID hits, and that was the single worst thing that's ever happened to law enforcement.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:01

And and and it produced COVID cups. That all they do is they're reactive, yeah, and a lot of them don't know how to be proactive.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:09

No, and th think about it, it's it's almost six years ago that COVID hit the like literally it were just hit the anniversary. And man, that and so we have guys in our department that never have been cop were never cops before. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:26

Like they were COVID cops. They were just they were state house mouses, they had the department.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:30

Yeah, they went to the academy during COVID. They went to, you know, they've yeah, and it's no no fault of theirs, but it's COVID created a whole generation of like I don't know, I just the law what law enforcement is today, it's just everything is bullshit. I mean, I I hate to say it, it's just everything's bullshit. You have these politicians that talk out of both sides of their mouth that they, oh, you know, we're tough on crime. No, you're not. You want gun gun control law? No, you don't. Yeah. Because there are plenty of laws right now with it. And if if we make an arrest for a guy with a gun and we book him, then what happens? Then there's all the same people that are saying they want gun control, are then the same ones that do their best to get this guy off the gun charge. Or they don't, they they drop the charge to you know, yeah, we can't put we can't put this guy in prison because our prisons are we need to close prison because we have too many people. So it's just law enforcement has it's so sad because San Mateo County used to be, you know, it I mean, man, you if you you surround in this county, you got caught, and you were uh you know, you had prior convictions, you were going to jail. You know, you you were gonna spend some time in jail. And now, and it's it's not necessarily that you know anyone in our county's fault, it's just the the laws in this state are a joke.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:47

Yeah. I I remember I remember being in East Palo Alto and the you know, we were severely understaffed. A lot of times we were two and a sergeant for the entire city, but then hearing the criminals in the shit bag saying that they will not go into because they'll get caught. And that was one of the reasons why I was like, oh, maybe I'll go because during before COVID when things were really good, I mean I can remember when I went there that sometimes I'd have eight cops on my team.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:16

You know?

SPEAKER_03 1:33:17

Do you what so what's crazy is I remember during COVID, your team was incredible. Your patrol team. The amount of guns you guys took off. I think if the average person in this county knew how many guns you guys were taking off the street every day, it was insane. It was like every single day you guys were ripping guns off people.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:39

I I think did the stats for the one year it was 57 guns.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:43

That's insane. And and you know, and so being a part of the task force with the federal government with the FBI, I remember at least 15 of those cases I tried getting federal prosecution on because these were they were hardened criminals. Hardened criminals with prior felony, gun, drug, violence. No, not a one, not one got filed under that FBI.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:08

Yeah, insane. I remember and did a stop and popped Taliban, Taliban guy with a gun. We papered up his house. Yeah, like two days later, three days later, hit the house, you know, 7 a.m. We end up finding 17 guns in his house.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:23

I remember.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:24

And they're like, oh well, somewhere in the attic, we really can't prove they were all assault rifles and and tech nines, and you know, it's like, I don't think that guy did a a dime in in prison at all.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:36

No, that's one of the he had prior felony conviction, right? I want to say he's one of the ones that we tried filing federally on. They didn't want to touch it, you know. I I don't know if that I don't think well, I no, I don't think I know that wouldn't happen today under the FBI in San Francisco today. Total different you know, mindset.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:56

I also think that the reason why that our team was able to get so many guns because for so prior to that, nobody was doing any enforcement.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:03

Oh my god, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:04

You know, and then when we started, everybody was comfortable doing crimes and carrying guns. So when we went out and be productive, we were it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:12

Yeah, COVID, everyone, like not a cop in the world out out there driving. And you guys, man, it was good that was crazy. Yeah, I I've never seen anything like that on a patrol.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:22

At the team level, it was like, all right, we we'd leave briefing and it'd be like, all right, who's the first one to go get a gun?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:28

It was you guys were getting more guns than we used to get crack pipes off people. Like it was it was crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:34

Yeah, you know, and the amount of you know, and they hamstring us too on the on the gang enhancement too, so we really couldn't do a lot. They took away that that teeth, you know, the one in six two.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:45

You know what else is another huge um thing that's really hurt law enforcement in in this state is is when they basically decriminalized everything and made everything a misdemeanor, you know, drug charges become misdemeanors now. The amount of experience that I got from testifying in felony drug cases was you know unhurt. Like I got so good at testifying in court. I learned so much in how the system works and how how court trials work. Like these cops today, you know, you you well, we have guys that have been here five, six years have testified in like one prelim, yeah, never a jury trial because nothing goes to court anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:26

Yeah, when's the last time you heard of a new cop being deemed an expert? Yeah, oh no, you know, in in gangs or narcotics or what have you?

SPEAKER_03 1:36:33

Nobody goes to court.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:34

Yeah, and it it really helped when they decriminalized well, they made things miss, but it was harder for us to get informants too, because nobody wanted to work off a misdemeanor.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:41

Yeah, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:42

So kind of got it go down the weeds there. What if you were to looking back your last three decades, what is that one call that is that always the most funnest call, the the coolest call, the one that sticks out in your mind that that you'll always think of as as a cop good, bad, and indifferent.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:00

Wow, man, that's hard. That is that is so hard. You know, I don't I don't know. One of the coolest things I ever got to do was when I was uh for a short period of time, I was the d the detective sergeant before I was the sergeant in charge of n narcotics. I was the general detective sergeant. And we worked a burglary case. It wasn't anything too exciting, but we worked a burglary case out in the valley that started out in uh like Fresno. We drove out to Fresno for the and we went we probably went to 15 different locations, and each location we went, we got another tip on this guy where he was, and another tip, and the the shit that we experienced that we went to a dairy farm. We drive into this farm, and there's this hillbilly riding. Kid you knock, he was wearing a speedo with cowboy boots on, and he's riding a tractor mowing the lawn, but he's going over and he's and his feet are up in the air, and he's and then this girl comes out in a bikini, and it was the weirdest thing, and she gives me a tour of the dairy farm. And anyway, this guy we were looking for used to work there, and it was it was just so odd. And then that took us to another place, and then and that day we finally catch this guy in a uh working in a junkyard, and like working on a car out in the middle of this massive junkyard. It's 110 degrees, and and we're walking through, and there he is. But that day was I'll never forget it was just it was fun, it was just so much fun going from one place to the next. You know, as far as I can't, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:33

It's I look I look back at what we did together and I wish I would have written shit down. Yeah, yeah. I look back and was like, some of the things we did, now we were talking, things are coming to mind, but it's like, man, if we would have written things down.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:44

Well, that's again why I say I wish like I I so badly wish we had iPhones back then. Uh and when I look at the time that we're those time like Yeah, you could have written a book of of those events and though and it was every day was like that. Um and I think that's probably part of it is it was so commonplace. You know, for us to get in a footprint, a fight, a gun, and uh move on to the next one, that like all those kind of blend in.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:14

And and and every call, I don't everything that we did, there was always laughter, whether it was it was it was you know hairy or what have you, you know. On the east side, look, I can't remember where we were looking for. I was riding around on that bicycle with that wig on. And you we ended up finding the dude, and you thought he had a gun, or you said he had a gun. He had a gun, and I'm like, no, he and we chased him to the house and we got him, and I'm like, he didn't have a gun, he had a cell phone. Eric, he's like, no, he had a gun, and then we found a gun and I had to apologize. It's like, and that guy ended up having three guns in the house. Yeah. But it was like, and and the laughter and the fun, and like said before, I would have done this job for free.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:52

Oh my god, there were so many days just sitting doing surveillance day in and day out, like just having the funnest time just sitting there bullshitting for hours, drinking each other's spit in.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:04

Yeah, and then go then going, then going, what was the bar in Palo Alto that had the bull? Was it blue chalk?

SPEAKER_03 1:40:09

The one where you broke Manny's leg. Yeah. No, it wasn't blue chalk, it was uh old pro.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:13

Old pro. Yeah. Where Manny was drunk and try to thought he was a bull rider and lasted two seconds.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:18

And Matt always had to show his FBI batch.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:21

How long would it take for do you know until Matt showed somebody his FBI bats?

SPEAKER_03 1:40:25

Yeah, you know, the those times were nothing will ever come close to that experience in either one of our lives, I think. You know, uh it was great. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, like you said, I would have done it for free. I wouldn't trade that for anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:39

What's the craziest, funniest, stupidest thing you've seen me do?

SPEAKER_03 1:40:43

God, ride around that bike with the freaking wig on. I had that it was trying to buy crack. It was a backwards baseball hat that had long hair built into it. It was like a Halloween costume. And it was we were at the corner of O'Connor and Utah. Uh, yep. And we were doing surveillance on a house for someone who was wanted. Yeah. And some crackhead left their bike on the street, and you jumped out of the car and got on the bike, and you started riding around up and down the street and blended right in, and it's hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:13

No matter what we did, we were getting into something. One of your nicknames is is Teflon. Because, let me explain that is out of all the things we did, I would be the always the one to get the complaint. And you would be the one yelling at the person, and I would get the complaint. And and every time, nothing stuck on you. Nobody complained on poor old little nice Eric Cowens. It was the mean tattooed guy. I got a complaint when I wasn't even working with you. You remember that?

SPEAKER_03 1:41:43

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But so, like, okay, I remember vividly we stopped right when we first started working together. I can't remember who the driver was, but Richard was in the passenger seat. Remember, you wound up arresting him with a trainee on I think he ran down Newbridge with a gun.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:00

It was you in the race, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:02

At like several many years after this. But and Richard, I remember when he from he was like 16, he was a little burglar. And I always got along with him though. And but on this traffic stop, whoever was the driver was being a mouth even. And so I started giving it back. But at the end of that, he goes, you know what, Calendy? He goes, You used to be real cool and you started hitting around with this asshole. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:24

I don't know in my younger years. I wasn't as nice as as the listeners know Coachette is now.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:29

Coachette, yeah. Oh, I'm sure we all change. I'm I'm nowhere near, like, I don't like I I had a really bad temper back then.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:37

You don't say.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:38

But now I just nothing gets me excited anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:43

I mean, we we talked before offline. One of the funniest things that I ever saw you do with your temper was yell at it at a cop in Stanford ER. Oh, yeah. I was still an East Palo Alto cop, and and but you and I were partnered up. Manny and was he what's they end up getting a pursuit, Hell Ace's pursuit. The car ended up crashing, rolled over, and they were all juveniles, and they all had to be transported. And we get to the hospital and Manny's area, and I remember, was it we were in McDonald's parking lot or trying to get a chicken sandwich?

SPEAKER_03 1:43:18

No, that's a different one.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:19

Oh, the different okay. All right, I'm blending my story together. Anyways, we make it to Stanford, and Manny does his thing, he interviews and gets confessions. They stole the car, they ran, all this stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:29

Confessions come out and gets one from the driver.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:32

Yes, yeah, yes, complete confession confession, and it comes out and uh he's like, Sarge, I I they all confessed. He's like, he's great. Get it on tape? No. He's like, Man, you gotta get it on tape. He's like, I I gotta, I I wrote it down, they told me. And then you guys proceeded to yell at each other. Nobody I've ever seen before, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:50

No, no, no, no. Let's be real. I didn't yell at them. I I remembered bittenly because I wouldn't just yell at man, you have too much responsible. What I said is I go, okay. I said, so you didn't you didn't record it thinking they're juveniles that all had head injuries, they're right. And I said, no, no, I didn't. He goes, No, uh, it doesn't matter. I got they told me. And I go, okay, right. It does, I get it. You're a law, like there was plenty of times, in fact, 90% of the cases I've ever testified on, there was no recording of it, right? We come from an era where we didn't have video cameras on our chest, and you know, but I just remember saying, okay, because this car rolled and these people are in the hospital, or just go back. I said, go back and try and re-talk to him and just just talk to them about it and get it on tape surreptitiously. You don't have to tell him you're recording it, just go, hey, you remember, you know, and he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't, nope, no, there's no need for that. And I was like, come on, Manny, just get it on tape. It's just for it's better for both of us. I think I had to warn him to go talk to him.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:50

And it was funny, the nurses and the and the the doctors are looking like yeah, it did get her the other one.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:55

And not, you know, I'll throw myself under the bus. Many years later with Manny, I was a brand new sergeant, and you guys were just finishing uh purchasing Fallen Gardens. And I no, the second one, because I I got promoted and I was working day shift patrol. It was like my first or second day or something as as a patrol sergeant, and we got a call upstairs of a of a Spanish, a Spanish-speaking victim upstairs.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:21

I'll never let you live.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:22

No. I didn't have I don't speak Spanish. I didn't have any of my teen that spoke Spanish, and here come walks in Manny, plain clothes, and I knew sergeant, thought I was full of myself, and I just throw down an order, and damn it, somebody's gonna somebody's gonna do what I say. Well, I love Manny. I started with Eddie's Palo Alto Manny, who we have he's my buddy, I would do anything for him. But I as a sergeant, Manny, I need you to go upstairs and take that to what I meant yeah, what I meant to say was like, hey, can you what I should have said in retrospect is hey Manny, you're the only Spanish speaking here. Can you just go figure out what this is going on? But no, that's not what came out of my mouth. It was I need you or you will go upstairs and take this case. You're the only Spanish. And he said no. And I was like, what do I do now? Now what do I do? He called my blood. And we got an argument to Manny's credit. He stuck to his cuz. He did not go upstairs. And I was like, oh shit, I guess I'm gonna figure it out. But yeah, Manny will never let me and nobody else, because there was a lot of people that heard it. Yeah, nobody that was that was one of the the the stupidest news sergeant things that were.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:26

Like second day?

SPEAKER_01 1:46:27

First or second day, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:28

You know, my first day, my very first night on as a sergeant, uh, I was working midnights, and uh the UPS facility, this was right after 9-11. 9-11 happened, and um I get promoted in October. Uh so just several weeks after, and uh that's when I don't know if you remember when people were mailing uh what do you call it? What was it?

SPEAKER_01 1:46:52

Yeah, was a white powder racing? No, anthrax. Thank you. That's a smart one over here.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:58

Some jackass who works on the line at UPS at like two in the morning dropped a box that he felt was it was some unknown white powder came out of this box. And we had protocols at the time on what to do with envelopes or whatever that so we secured the building. Well, the fire department tried to secure me into the quarantine. You are not I I never went in and they're like, No, you were here on the crawl, and we get in this 415, and I'm like, I don't give a fuck what you do. I'm yeah, I'm stepping off. So that I had to call my chief and be like, hey, this, you know, my first night, you know, it was not good.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:34

Yeah. My uh remember the the first week as a sergeant, that guy's got in a pursuit. We end up first week, pursuit over the bridge, crash, another one I ended up we arrested the Stanford professor on 42 Council in uh Chelsea.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:49

Main national news. Yeah, yeah, so good times. Looking back, would you do anything different?

SPEAKER_03 1:47:54

Yeah, I would have gone to Sam. Well, you know, I don't know. Uh I oftentimes think I should have I should have stuck with going with my what my dream was was to work San Swapiti. Um oftentimes I kick myself for not doing it, but I also look at what I have and what you know, you know, working here I was able to take such a uh huge role in my kids' lives and be a part of raising them and having the freedom of what we have and for where you know we both worked and so I don't know. So I mean that would be the only thing maybe I should have done that, you know, because I yeah I think had I done that I I would have had way more opportunities. I mean I think I did pretty freaking well with what my agency has to offer and I I think I took full, full, full, full advantage of it to the extent where I made it work for me the best that I think anybody could have.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:50

Not to put you on the spot, but y you got so much time in when when are you gonna pull a plug?

SPEAKER_03 1:48:54

Or do you do you have any inclination of I would like to do it like as soon as possible. Just you know, I'm I'm honestly I'm a little afraid. There and not I mean not afraid. I'm afraid to, you know, to go out into the real world. You know, I mean we're I mean when you really look at it, you know, I'm very protected in in my job. You know, I mean I have I make a good living, I have a lot of freedom and there's a lot of benefits with with where I'm at. So I don't know. I think if the r I mean I just I need that right thing, you know, to make me wanna wanna do it. And I just haven't found it yet. You know.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:29

How come how come and I know you've you've stepped into the the role of acting commander numerous times.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:36

Any reason why you didn't promote up the chain or do Um, you know, the biggest reason was at the time, well to to the to some extent, it's the the pay difference between what I make as a sergeant with all my roll ups is what a commander makes. It just it financially wasn't worth it, you know, because they it, you know, I'd have I wouldn't get over time, I wouldn't have got on call pay. Uh you know, so financially it was a huge burden and the risk wasn't like, okay, I could be a commander, you know, you know, I could be a commander, but it it really what am I gonna de what am I gonna get out of that? Staying a sergeant is way better.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:13

Get a bigger office, that's about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:16

And and you know, y you're Sam one and you have more pull than any commander anyways. Probably yeah, who who's who's gonna tell you no? You're you're one bad day away from retirement.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:27

Yeah. I mean then it there is there is uh that I mean there's some comfort in that every day knowing that what's the worst that can happen to me. You know, there's I would love to say this is it. Uh tomorrow I'm done. Because I it's I I think I've kind of reached a you know a point where I don't know what else I can do. I am going back to patrol in June for the first time in you know 20 plus years. I um there is a little bit of me that's excited for that. Um there's another part I'm a little nervous because I I don't even know how to use the you know the computers in the car.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:02

I'm gonna have to go through like FTO.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:04

Yeah. Would would you know how to do an auto-site ticket?

SPEAKER_03 1:51:07

No. No, no way. No, I don't even know how to log into that thing anymore. I really don't. Well, I worked at DUI checkpoint back during you know, January or December, and they put me in the car to be the chase car. I didn't even know how to work that car, like I would not like there's cameras all over the place, the computer, I didn't even know how to turn the lights on. So it's like, what am I what am I doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:51:29

Which which is sad because you have so much experience and uh, you know, if you do go back to patrol, I can tell you right now, your your officers are gonna be extremely lucky and they're gonna get a lot of experience.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:39

But you know, you know what's funny about that to have all the 20 20 plus guys, 20 year plus guys. So they're gonna it's just gonna be a continuous, they're gonna be they're gonna be so easy to work with that it's gonna be, you know, so there was a part of me like, okay, maybe first rotation all good days, and then maybe I'll spend my last one on nights. Get your nightship ritual.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:59

Yeah, and you know I'll give it a week before you get into something.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:04

Yeah, remember the first day I come back from NTF and I'm clueless and I jump in the car with you, and we get in that freaking pursuit through the gardens. And you remember? No. Yeah, first day back and yeah. You don't remember that? No. Yeah, right but um it was right before COVID. I came back from from NTF and I got it was like my first day back. I jumped in a uniform, I go, let's go, I'll double up with you. And we got in a pursuit. Yeah, caught that guy in that yard and he you rolled him as a CI for something.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:30

See, we should write wreck things down. Uh Eric, it has been a pleasure going down memory lane with you and talking about some of the stuff. And I know on the drive home, I'm like, I'll be like, I should have talked about this, but you know, luckily having your own podcast, I can have you on again, or we can have you on again and have part two. Thank you. Anything in closing you want to say this has been really cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:51

My first podcast experience.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:53

This is your first one? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:54

Yeah, this is cool. I want to come back.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:56

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The day the day after you retire, you're coming back.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:59

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:01

All right. Thank you for your time. Yeah, of course. All right, bye-bye.