Corridor of Crime
Corridor of Crime takes you down the I-5 corridor, one case at a time—revisiting stories that don’t sit right. With a focus on marginalized voices, we examine what was missed, who was overlooked, and how time reshapes the truth.
Corridor of Crime
Flagged Down, Part 1: Pull Up A Chair
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A retired Homicide Detective joins Corridor of Crime to talk about the responsibilities, perspective and how the profession has changed over the years.
An anonymous and thoughtful conversation around what goes into being a detective. Part One.
A genuine Thank You to this Detective, for his years of dedicated service to our community, and for his willingness to sit down and share a snapshot of his experience and his time.
-Sarah Elle
Welcome, passengers. This is Sarah L, along with ML Browning, two lifelong friends who didn't just stay friends. We stayed curious. This is Corridor of Crime, and we're taking you with us. Every episode is an exit, and every exit is a story. So buckle up. And please remember to always check your blind spots.
SPEAKER_00Hi, this is ML Browning. Before we begin, this episode includes discussions of violence and sensitive topics. Please take care while listening.
SPEAKER_02Before we begin this episode, there are a couple of things I want to mention. First, because this interview is being done anonymously, listeners may notice a few edits or audio cuts where identifying locations or details were removed. We want to respect that privacy while still allowing space for an honest conversation. The second thing I noticed immediately while talking with this retired homicide detective was his humility. Anytime the conversation drifted towards moments that clearly mattered to people, meaning victims, families, cases that stayed with him, his instinct was almost always to redirect the attention away from himself, to downplay his role in it, to lessen his own impact, to make the conversation a we instead of a me conversation. And honestly, I found that interesting. Because sometimes what humility actually reveals is character. He's not someone who seems comfortable in the spotlight, and I'm sure well, I'm aware there's irony in pointing that out during an anonymous interview, but I think it says something important about the culture surrounding this kind of work. If policing is in many ways its own culture, then how many people like this exist quietly within it? People we never hear from because they aren't trying to become the center of the story. That was something I kept thinking about long after this conversation ended.
SPEAKER_01My son has a couple of friends who are detectives in Eugene. He's a cop up there, so um they have a pot they've retired and they have a podcast. And I think they started in Eugene and may have moved to Southern Cal. I've never listened to it, but he was on it for a little bit.
SPEAKER_02Are you referencing uh that's that's my son's friends?
SPEAKER_01They he's a detective with Eugene PD, and he used to work with these guys, and they retired and now they're doing the podcast thing.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow, that's a great podcast. Okay.
SPEAKER_01I haven't heard them though. Yeah, he said they're really good guys, and they're they they're they're you know real McCoys. They they really did work, you know, a myriad of crimes.
SPEAKER_02So Okay, those men are the ones who really impressed me, actually. Yeah. Solid um in the way they approach and the way they talk about cases, really impressed me and made me think about really what detectives sacrifice and the way they think and the way they really wanted to educate those coming behind them. So that's really what made me think about how I wanted to approach this podcast and just put out there not just victim-focused stories, but what do we want to share with with our listeners? And that really is um, you know, the perspective from a detective. And so tell me how long you were a homicide detective.
SPEAKER_01Um, I first went to investigations in January of 91, and I left there in July of 2010. So 19 years roughly. I worked 10 years of patrol prior to that, and I stayed on from 2010 to 2020 in kind of um a retired, just kind of um part-time role. But I worked missing persons and death investigations and stuff after that.
SPEAKER_02So and what led you to homicide?
SPEAKER_01Um, I actually, you know, um it was something I always wanted to do. I started as a youngster in Southern California in an explore program and got introduced to policemen and hung around policemen, and I just really fell in love with the kind of job and and got to know several people, and so that was what I always wanted to do. And then I always thought investigations was the apex of police work. I mean, I was never really uh an administrator or executive kind of person. I always wanted to be an investigator and try and solve problems and identify people who have done some terrible things and hold them accountable. So I was never really quote unquote a homicide investigator. I worked homicides, I was on the homicide team. I worked over probably a hundred homicides or more for several different agencies. We worked them for the city, uh, for the county and for the state police. Well, I also would do outside assist for other agencies that needed work done on their cases that involved Medford, but maybe their case originated in Southern California or back east somewhere. So um, but I was responsible for all kinds of crimes. I did everything from sexual assaults to robberies to uh regular assaults and to death investigation and homicide, to suicide and uh accidental death.
SPEAKER_02So when you started out in homicide in the area that we're talking about, because I was born and raised in the area, left, came back, you've seen a lot of growth and a lot of changes.
SPEAKER_01A lot, tons. When I first came here, uh we were just doing fingerprint evidence, it was uh our primary source of evidence, and uh we had what they call an automated fingerprint identification system, which is called AFHIS, where you could just plug a name in or plug the prints in, and they'll if the person's ever been printed in a criminal manner, we would get a hit back and identify them that way. All the primary serology that was done at the time was just basic serology, which was blood enzymes and ABO typing and secretor status. It we didn't have DNA at the time, certainly no cell phone or GPS technology, uh, no facial recognition, none of that kind of stuff. And then when I got out of police work, um it we we were well into the DNA technology. Um, I I didn't personally do it, but our crime lab did. And um we had GPS technology and cell phone tracking and um facial recognition. The the genetic and familial DNA started really taking hold and started making some way, they've made some incredible cases off of just establishing uh family connections right through DNA, which is something that's just almost really grown. It's just gone crazy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. What was your favorite thing about detective work?
SPEAKER_01I absolutely love talking to people. Wow, I absolutely love talking to people. Um I try to um skill myself and train myself so that I could talk to anybody, but I could be completely um disgusted with something they've done, or but that's all part of it, you know. Um, and that was the thing I always loved. It was a challenge to, you know, come across somebody who had maybe done something really terrible to somebody, usually, and then knowing they they really didn't want to talk to me, or that they shouldn't talk to me, or that if they talk to me, it may get them in more trouble. But the still the challenge of doing it a correctly and respectfully. I don't, I never uh harmed anybody, and and with respect for all their rights, too. I mean that that's the important part of it. They um have the right not to talk to me, but I I tried to encourage them to like me and want to talk to me and want to tell me what goes on, and maybe want to make themselves look better uh in a better light, or maybe want to explain why they did a certain thing at that particular moment.
SPEAKER_02That makes sense to me because I didn't know you before a couple weeks ago, had never heard your name, but I've heard from people in the local department say amazing things about you, wonderful things about you. That's nice. Um, and I also understand now that you said today that your son is also a detective. I don't remember what you said, but you also have a daughter who is a detective. Is that accurate? So two kids, if you don't mind me asking? No, two kids and uh both in detectives, I'll just do it. Okay. Wow. So you must have influenced them in some way, whether it be through your the way you carried yourself. I mean, how how did that come about?
SPEAKER_01Well, I tried not to bring my work home, but it's hard to do. Um in police work, you're you're working all the weekends, and you're working holidays, you're working all the shifts. So sometimes it interfered with uh going to practices or going to games or you know, being there when they needed me. And I tried to make it up as best I could with I coached Little League, I coached girls' softball, I tried to be a part of their lives and do that together. So even though I didn't bring my work home and talk about it, they got to see me going off to work all the time, or some of the guys or gals that I work with interacting both on duty and off-duty. And uh when when you were in police work, it usually associate a lot with policemen or attorneys or people in the legal community, and so I think they probably just saw that um first of all, I love what I do or did, and um, I did it a lot. It seemed like when in investigation, we're in patrol, pretty structured. You work generally 40 hours a week, you got four days a week or five days a week that we worked at the time with two days off. But once you go to investigations, things change because um we're on the we're on uh call. We're subject when I first got there, we were subject to pagers. We would get paged out in the middle of the night or in the middle of the day. We would work seven, eight days in a row. Sometimes we work a couple weeks in a row, and just coming home to change clothes, get something to eat, get a little rest, and back to work again first several days. And then what when things start to slow down and wind down, you sit around and maybe have a debriefing. Things maybe you got the bad guy in custody, maybe you got the victim at the hospital, and now you're trying to sit down and assimilate what information you have, and sleeping in your chair, yeah. So that's the time when we kind of take a break. The boss says, Hey, you guys go home and grab about four or five hours of sleep and come back at noon, let's say, and uh we'll start off with a briefing and we'll and and that's how we generally put it together as far as our time. But it's really not as hard as it sounds. I mean, it's not easy, but it's not that hard. I mean, you it's something that you it just gets you going.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I am legitimately excited about this. It's called the whirly board because I've actually used bounce boards for years, and I'm kind of particular about them. They normally, in general, can range from ridiculously easy to pro-skater. But what's amazing about the whirly board is that you have options, you don't get bored with it within a week. This whirly board gets it right, it literally goes from beginner, like we're learning to stand baby deer mode, all the way to borderline reckless advanced level. So it can absolutely light you up so you don't outgrow it so quickly. If you snowboard, skate, paddleboard, ski, or just want better balance without leaving your house, this is legit. Link is in the show notes, and seriously, check this out. So when you first started locally, uh how much has the department grown?
SPEAKER_01Tons. When I first started, I think uh there were 41 um sworn officers.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01Uh and then that didn't include just some of our command staff. That was generally, I think, just some patrol sergeants. Um and I think it included about six detectives. But now they're they're talking 150 people, probably. There's they're probably there's uh probably close to 100 folks just working patrol, and so it's grown considerably. And the specialties have gone through the roof. I mean, back in the day we had a patrolman supervisors, which uh kinda uh was a sergeant, and then we had deputy chiefs or lieutenants working middle management, and then we had the uh deputy chiefs and the chief doing the executive work. Now they've got in patrol, you can work dogs, you can work drugs, you can work um street crimes, they've got livability team. In investigations, they've got marijuana eradication teams, they've got uh they still have oh, I guess they would for yeah, okay. There because there's illegal marijuana growth still, right? And there's unlawful sales and distribution of marijuana.
SPEAKER_02So um For our listeners, we live in a state that has personal growth is legal for I don't I don't know, up to a certain number of plants or something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's a certain amount of marijuana, dry marijuana, and processed marijuana that's permissible, and certain amount of plants that's permissible. And I'm not sure we've got to never work the drum part of it.
SPEAKER_02Right. And I don't grow any, so I don't keep up on the number that's allowed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Let's talk police culture. This is something that's really interesting to me because I've noticed um with my very minimal contact with police, just being pulled over or whatever it may be. Do you think that there is a difference in departments or cities with police culture? Um, for example, like I where you had worked and retired from, I've always had great experience with them. They're very professional. Um, do you think that comes from the top? Do you think that comes from what does that come from?
SPEAKER_01I absolutely think it comes from the top. And and I absolutely think there's there's a difference. Um, the agency I'm from, I'm super proud. They were very strict. We um had a very strict code of conduct that we were to adhere by, and we and there's gonna be people who stray from that because we're human, right? And um the department was really good about if if somebody did stray from that, if it was something that was um a personality trait, they may that person may have been moved on, they may have been terminated and moved on uh out of our agency. If it was an issue that needed additional training, we would train them.
SPEAKER_02Every type of business has a culture, right? And it can be really toxic or it can be fun and healthy, and that's no matter where you go, who you work for. And I think that just the police department gets, if it's one that's not necessarily great, yeah, um, can get extra backlash for that. And that's unfortunate, but and people are people, but it it does need to be addressed sometimes when there is so I in in full transparency, I had been a court clerk locally for two different um cities. One was amazing, and then one was known for not being so amazing, and it was not so amazing. Yeah, and uh you know it's really interesting how that came to fruition, but and it really was the um department that I and I think they hired really young and experienced um gentlemen, um, and they they really I think enjoyed um the power they had, and it was really it made me sad, truthfully. And even the um judge working in that area, and it was like, gosh, you know, it just it really made me sad, so I couldn't stay. But yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I I see that in police work. I mean, there's there's officers that have bad reputations, and some of them aren't are deserved, and some of them aren't.
SPEAKER_02Right, that's fair too.
SPEAKER_01The sometimes you have, I mean, most of the contact that a police officer has with most people is not maybe the most positive. I mean, we're stopping them and giving them citations for driving problems, you know. Maybe if we're stopping them and accusing them of maybe stealing something or speeding, I deserved it.
SPEAKER_02Exactly, exactly. We all do it. But that's yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um so sometimes people uh take offense to that. Sometimes they make up stories, and officers get reputations that aren't deserving, right? And uh so it's hard to it's hard to determine, but the word of mouth travels, nobody wants to have um an officer on that's uh abusive, rude, disrespectful, um, that's heavy-handed, certainly that's criminal. Other agencies in the South and the East where officers have been accused of homicides and um famous case in Southern California, a female detective that worked uh for a large agency down there was 20-some years experienced, was arrested for a homicide that happened like 20 years earlier in her career.
SPEAKER_02I know the one you're speaking of. Yeah, and she had murdered um her lover's new wife. Exactly. Yes, yep.
SPEAKER_01So uh it so I mean those are people, those are people, but human behavior is those are very rare, right? Those those not those are the exception and not the rule, and you know, those people are weeded out, and uh hopefully, I mean right, of course. Um so that's kind of the culture aspect of it. I mean, we we strive for the best, and we we diligent about watching for any deviation, and we jump on it quickly for you know corrective matters if that's available. And if a person's behavior is such that can't be corrected or it's over the top, and they maybe they've committed a crime and they need to be dealt with, then they are. And here locally, I don't know of any agency that doesn't feel that way. I mean, they're all um doing their best, doing the best they can. So that's kind of the the culture of things, and nobody, I mean, there's that they always talk about the thin blue line where you know we're gonna turn our avert our attention from an officer doing bad stuff. I don't know of anybody that would turn their back or look the other way and to allow an officer or one of their fellow policemen to do anything, either on duty or off duty, that was inappropriate or unacceptable or certainly illegal.
SPEAKER_02And this is why you are so admired. Um I think that that's probably accurate, especially for your agency. Like I said, um, I've had nothing but professional interactions with your agency. Um, not that I've had a lot with anywhere, but it just has always been good from my experience.
SPEAKER_01It's always been important to, and we talked about from the top down, it's always been important for people, but it's always important for everybody. Everybody there would say if they you could take anybody, guy or gal from any agency probably around and sit them in this chair and ask them the same question, and they're gonna tell you the same thing. It's real important to us to be to be above board and to be a professional and and dignified and respectful. That that's important. If somebody truly thought that I was deceptive or right, it would it would destroy me. I could I I would feel terrible.
SPEAKER_02So let's talk about crime in this area over the years. Um, what kind of changes? Obviously, drugs, we know this area, but in terms of like Um, maybe a little more specifics on that, but what other crimes and has it been significant in this area from what you've seen?
SPEAKER_01Of course, I'm in the business of hailing crimes, so yeah, I see a lot of it. But um, as it compares to other places, we probably are on par with most um, I would say metropolitan areas. You get the places like Portland and Eugene and Salem, a little bit bigger agencies, a little bit more diversity of culture there. You're gonna have a little bit different types of crimes and come through. But one of the things that I noticed here, we were on I-5, a major corridor between Southern California and of course the Canadian border, and we had a flow of drugs that traveled that corridor, and and um uh with drugs came a lot of extra crimes. We had traveling bank robbers, you know, robbers who would come through at Sacramento, hit Reading, at Bedford, go to Eugene and Portland, and on and on, and we would try and interdict them or intercept them along the way, vice versa. Same with um large quantities of drugs. I mean, when I first started police work, I think an eight-ball of of like crank or heroin or um coke was oh god, that's huge. Now they're dealing with multi-kilo loads. I mean, the amount of drugs that our people are our people's season are staggering to me. Um the shootings were not so common. We would have a shooting every once in a while. Now they're they're a lot more common. They have them more routinely. Um we used to have uh seemed like a a lot more uh anonymous kind of crimes where it was uh burglars. We would have uh we I can think of a half dozen uh serial burglars who would go around just randomly burglarizing homes. I don't think that's as prevalent as it used to be. We had cat burglars who would break into apartments and steal uh the residents' purses or stuff oftentimes when they were in bed sleeping. Wow. And um it wasn't unfortunate. That's scary. Yeah, we would have several of those. Uh and I don't think they have those very often anymore. And I think you know what's caused that is people with surveillance cameras, people with residential arms, people with Dutch DNA, people with guns. People with guns. That's a great point. We've had a lot, some of those where people are defending their their personal safety and their personal property and have committed um killed people or shot people or stabbed people. So there's a lot more, yeah, exactly. But so as far as that I was I thought that was kind of an interesting thing I thought of. Um not me, but several people had talked about over the years that the series or the spontaneity of crimes has changed.
SPEAKER_02The trend of crimes. Yeah, exactly. Is there uh a certain case or cases that stick out to you, or and if so, why? Some cases close on paper and some don't. In part two, we'll talk about an investigation that stayed with this detective long after the scene was cleaned up. Thanks so much for listening. All of our sources are in the show notes. Please find a full list and our affiliate links at corridorofcrime.com. We'd love for you to follow us on social media at Corridor of Crime on the platform of your choice. We'd appreciate it if you'd consider liking, rating, and subscribing to allow us to keep putting content out. Corridor of Crime is hosted and produced by Sarah L and ML Browning. Executive produced by Sarah L, and music is composed by Matthew Langdon Music. We will see you at the next exit. Until then, don't forget to buckle up and remember to always check your blind spots.