Ron Campise introduces Himself and his Podcast.

Ron Campise: Re-tired Night Supervisor L.A.P.D. Crime Scene Investigator/Documentarian, Introduces, This PodCast Series, Himself, His background in Police work and how he worked with his Crew and Sworn Officers.

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Transcript

Ron 0:00

I'm Ron Campise. Previously with the Los Angeles Police Department's Crime Scene Investigation Unit. I was a field supervisor there on the night shift. It was my destiny to work as a crime scene investigative documentarian, then later as a supervisor with the finest police department in the world, the LAPD, here in the City of Angels. I spent twenty years as a crime scene investigator, specializing in photography, also known as the CSI. Then, after 13 years, I became a supervisor on the busiest shift, which is the evening shift, from the hours of 10 30 p.m. to 5 30 a.m. during the hours of the spirits of the dead. I handled over 3,000 cases personally investigated and documented everything from run of the w run of the mill murders to celebrity shootings and a vast number of fatal accidents, officer shootings, robberies, at that time drug labs and drug houses. I still remember going to the meth houses and seeing drawers full of cash and literally going to other places and money was raining down from the ceiling. As the evening super, I coordinated with a squad and we handled over 10,000 cases. I had to monitor their health because uh seeing all that trauma day after day, it can cause problems not only mentally and physically, and it takes a toll on your very soul. And I know that from experience because earlier in my career I was late for my shift, I overslept, and I got a call that it was a murder. And what I did, I freaked out. I had already had such a week murder cases, there was a lot of murders back then, and I freaked out, and basically what I did is I broke my front door. I was yelling that I can't take this shit anymore. I can't, I can't do this anymore. And I woke up my son. Uh he was only about three at the time, three and a half, and he was standing there and I looked at him and he was so scared of me. And there were tears in his eyes, and he looked at me and he said, Daddy, you are a sad, strange little man. And that snapped me out of it. And I looked back at him and I told him, I go, and Daddy's gonna change from today. And so what happened is that we have psychological counseling available to us. I did not use it at that time, but I did use it, and uh they gave me the coping skills I needed to go on with my career, which uh lasted another 15 years. The way I dealt with the trauma spiritually, I never looked down on anyone at a crime scene. I never looked down on the victims, and in a lot of cases I didn't look down on the perpetrators, and I would quietly, silently say a prayer over them. And it didn't matter, it didn't matter who they were, where they came from, I would do that. And this is the way I dealt with it spiritually. I'm not gonna say at times that when I saw someone who had done some horrendous act against someone, that I didn't wish that they would go straight to hell. I'm only human. I'm just in the caller that I see it. But I did feel that way about some perpetrators when I was out there. And that scene I went at on after my freakout, the scene I was late to, was that in South Central Los Angeles, small store store owner had been had been murdered, and his dad was still in the store and his dad had been pummeled, just beaten up. What happened was that they gave them all the money. They started to beat his father senseless, so he came out to defend his father. He came out from behind the counter, and uh they shot him dead, and he was there on the floor. We had a new detective there, trainee, at the door, and one of his jobs is to keep the family from coming in. Well, he didn't do a real good job, and the uh dad's uh little girl, she was only three or four, came in, and she ran right up to her father's body, and she grabbed his arm and she started to say, Daddy, wake up. Daddy, wake up. I need you. I'm all alone in this world, and she kept repeating it over and over again. To be on a crime scene and you're covering the evidence, and the detectives are interviewing witnesses and doing their you know marking and things like that, and I'm doing my documentation and helping where I can. This only made it much, much harder to be there. But you know, that night was kind of like a test for me whether I was going to continue or not. And I did, and I said again, with the uh psychological counseling I received. The detective that night uh he decided to go back to patrol. For that I went to a meth lab. Uh we went to meth labs frequently back then. We had no protection. We wouldn't eat we didn't even have a mask to wear. We went there, and what was unusual about this meth lab is that it was in a pretty prominent area of Los Angeles. It was a meth lab in a daycare center at someone's home, and right next to the room where they kept the cribs of the babies, they were cooking meth in the next room, and I found that pretty incredible. You know, in the LAPD, I was considered an investigative sergeant, and they set up rank in the LAPD, and the thing is I was considered the same rank as a detective sergeant investigator. To the peeps I had, I was just the boss. But I did get the reputation in the LAPD and the detectives because I was I was on that shift for 13 years. I had the nickname as the Prince of Darkness. They would even call up on the phone and they go, Is the Prince of Darkness in? And I get on the phone and they go, He's right here, and I would talk to them. And as I stated earlier, I was on that evening shift for 13 years. The two previous supervisors who held that position, one died of a major heart attack, and the other had a major heart attack and had to retire. But you know, a short story of how I really took care of my people. Right before COVID on December 26th at about one in the morning, we got a call that a plane had come in from mainland China and that there were two passengers who had expired. And this is so unusual for this to happen. I sent out a team of people out there too. And these were kind of trainee people, one you know knew and the other one wasn't, so I told them you guys take care of each other. And you know, this involved multiple jurisdictions uh because it was an international flight. And the LAPD, though, was in charge because the plane landed and they found that these people were dead. And it was a mother and daughter, and actually they died in their arms. It was about a 10-year-old girl and the mom. The peeps I sent out there, they called me and they go, We've never seen anything like this. They go, Ron, what do we do? They go, we're afraid to go on the plane. And I told them, I want you in full hazmat gear with respirators, and they did it, and they went on the plane. That nearly caused another incident because I got calls, screaming calls, that I had overreacted, telling them to ordering them into their hazmat gear, and that I had caused a near international incident by doing so. And what I told them, and I told the detective, I go, I'm always gonna take care of my people. And I go, from my experience, there is something wrong here. There is something going on we don't know about. And I go, they're gonna stay and they're gonna finish a job in their hazmat gear. I never heard another word after that. Although, like I said, I've been in plenty of trouble in the LAPD, everybody winds up that way, and it's all called in the uh lingo, it's called being in the biz bag for some reason. They had all these things for everything you can do. But the thing is though, to go on uh about my reputation. I always took care of my people. One thing to illustrate of who I was in the LAPD, there was a scene, a murder scene, where a mom had been killed in the shower by her husband. Yeah, I don't know, he was deranged or drunk or whatever. He also had stabbed his son, threw him off a balcony, even killed the dog, the family dog, threw the dog off the balcony. What I did that night, they asked me to do, was to not only photograph the scene, but also to videotape it for training purposes, and I did so. And also, when we got to the body, which had been the mom's body, was thrown down the stairs. We went up and she was uh, you know, she was there, and the detective was explaining the procedures on how to handle this and handle the scene and the homicide. Finally, when we were videotaping the last part of it, he reached out and he took the sheet off the body. He removed it and was explaining the wounds and everything. You know, the protocol is only the detective and only the coroner can remove the sheet from a body. And so when we got back, of course the tape was the documentation I did was reviewed, and they looked at the tape and they really liked it. And when they got to the part of the hand reaching out and taking the sheet off the body, they start they said, stop everything. And this one person who was reviewing what I did, because we had peer review and also detective review, his name was Willie. He looked at me and he very seriously asked this question. He goes, Ron, you know the protocol in this department. We don't do that to the body, we don't remove the sheet. Did you take the sheet off that body? And I looked at him and I said, Willie, I'm Ron Campise. You know my reputation. I take no sheet off of anybody. And what he did, he was silence for a moment, and he just busted out laughing. And all the all the other people revealing, they were just laughing. And they said, Yes, they go, We understand what you did now. And they used the tape, and they used it for training, and the detective eventually got promoted to an elite unit, which is called the robbery homicide unit, and I met him later. Now I just wanted to uh close with a little, you know, history about Los Angeles. You know, the original Native American village that became the City of Angels was named because the Spanish explorers and missionaries at that time, they talked to the inhabitants, and you know, the inhabitants said that there were angels with them who were always helping them. And you know, and then that's why they called the city of LA, the city of angels, Los Angeles. And I really felt that during, you know, the time I was on nights, especially, somehow these otherworldly beings, or what they call angels, were always with me. They were always helping me, and they were always with people. Even sometimes I thought I I saw like a sideways glance at them. I'm just saying from my perspective, you know, and it actually helped me that perspective deal with the uh murder and mayhem on a nightly basis. Made me go through an entire career, and I'm still here, and I'm able to tell my La La Land stories. And now I want to begin with the first extraordinary true crime story podcast in this city of angels, Gooey Eyes.