Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy a side of life the average person is
Speaker 1: never exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to part two of my chat with John Fariso,
Speaker 1: former veteran MYPD cop. If you listen to part one,
Speaker 1: we got a very detailed description of John's experiences when
Speaker 1: he was on the ground, not far aware the planes
Speaker 1: crashed into the Twin Towers on September eleventh. I've got
Speaker 1: to say, John, and I was speaking to you off
Speaker 1: camera off Mike that just hearing the story from someone
Speaker 1: that was there, it really it brings it home. You
Speaker 1: read about it, but unless you're hearing it from someone
Speaker 1: that was actually actually there, you don't fully appreciate the
Speaker 1: magnitude of the chaos that went on that day. So
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing that sharing that story. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's important that the story is not forgotten.
Speaker 1: It was horrendous. It changed the world that day, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something that's embedded in everyone's psyche, but certainly for
Speaker 1: a native of New York like you, you must carry it
Speaker 1: with you every day.
Speaker 2: Well, that's why I did it. I wanted to let
Speaker 2: people hear a different story than it's been told, and
Speaker 2: definitely not the Hollywood story. And I wanted the human
Speaker 2: side to it, and I put it free online because
Speaker 2: that's I would just want people to not forget. I
Speaker 2: guess if you have ever a chance to tell anybody, he
Speaker 2: basically just doesn't want people to forget the story because
Speaker 2: they were Like I've said before, there were a lot
Speaker 2: of people that didn't go home that day and they
Speaker 2: never got a chance to tell the story.
Speaker 1: I'm telling now part two, you're going to have to
Speaker 1: feed my fascination of what it's like being a cop
Speaker 1: in New York because I've been fascinated by it. I
Speaker 1: love policing. If you're a career cop, you're always curious
Speaker 1: what's going on. You can go to different jurisdictions, different countries,
Speaker 1: and there is a commonality that we all share in policing.
Speaker 1: We can talk shorthand we know the world. But there
Speaker 1: was something about New York that policing just seemed to
Speaker 1: be policing on steroids. It was good, the bad, and
Speaker 1: the ugly and everything in between. So I just want
Speaker 1: to I want to read out something that you've written
Speaker 1: about policing in that other book. You've created telling stories,
Speaker 1: just stories about what occurs in policing. But this is
Speaker 1: how you've described policing in New York. So if we
Speaker 1: just start the conversation with that, these separate tasks come
Speaker 1: to you at random times, So going to work is
Speaker 1: like a roll of the dice. One moment, you're driving
Speaker 1: with your partner talking about nonsense, and five minutes later
Speaker 1: you're coming face to face with dangerous people who just
Speaker 1: committed a criminal act. The way that these tasks become
Speaker 1: overwhelming and mentally draining, if you allow that to happen,
Speaker 1: that's describing policing. The joy I found in policing was
Speaker 1: you never knew what your day was going to bring.
Speaker 1: You could turn up, you could be some of the conversations.
Speaker 1: I think we should record some of the conversations between
Speaker 1: partners driving around in police cars because they go in
Speaker 1: some wild, strange places. But you can be doing that,
Speaker 1: and I think it's to take the pressure off because
Speaker 1: you know you're going to hear a bit on the
Speaker 1: radio and the next thing you're going to be in
Speaker 1: some chaotic, chaotic situation. New York policing, my perception of
Speaker 1: it is it's dangerous. There's guns around, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of crime. Do you want to talk us through
Speaker 1: some of the dangerous times you've been in policing, because
Speaker 1: we've all had it. If you're a street crop long enough,
Speaker 1: you've gone in the situations where you weren't sure how
Speaker 1: it was going to play out. Do you want to
Speaker 1: talk us through a couple of situations you experienced as
Speaker 1: a New York cop?
Speaker 2: Sure there is danger there, and you're told that as
Speaker 2: soon as you get in the police academy, and they
Speaker 2: would show us videos of the horrible videos of cops
Speaker 2: who got not just New York City cops, just cops
Speaker 2: throughout the country that got into very bad situations, and
Speaker 2: they would show it to you and they'd say, this
Speaker 2: is the profession you're taking. You need to be careful,
Speaker 2: which when you go to work, you need to be alert,
Speaker 2: you need to be in shape, you need to be ready.
Speaker 2: And I remember that we had an academy instructor and
Speaker 2: they would tell we used to call them war stories,
Speaker 2: and we wanted to hear the war stories. But I
Speaker 2: like the war stories because if it happened to them,
Speaker 2: it would happen to us. And they told us a
Speaker 2: story about how you need to be ready in the car.
Speaker 2: Don't you sit there with your head down and you know,
Speaker 2: not paying attention. So I remember that police academy story.
Speaker 2: And then I was had about five years on and
Speaker 2: we were driving around and my partner was talking about
Speaker 2: nonsense that had absolutely nothing to do with police work.
Speaker 2: And I wrote about this in my book It's called
Speaker 2: at the Window. And he was talking and we were
Speaker 2: driving and we had to pick up We used to
Speaker 2: have to pick up the prisoners meals because the prisoners
Speaker 2: would hang out the precinct. When this is New York City,
Speaker 2: you know, the courthouse is busy, like, don't send your
Speaker 2: prisoners here, keep them in the priests. So sometimes they
Speaker 2: would stay there hours, and you know, if they went
Speaker 2: into a meal, you'd have to feed them. So I
Speaker 2: had to go pick up a prisoner's meal because he
Speaker 2: missed he missed the scene the judge and we had
Speaker 2: to feed him, obviously. So we picked up the prison's
Speaker 2: meal and my partner got out of the car and
Speaker 2: I got complacent at that moment, and I picked up
Speaker 2: the newspaper. And it was before cell phones had picked
Speaker 2: up the newspaper, and I'm reading the newspaper to his day,
Speaker 2: I don't know what it was about. And I heard
Speaker 2: a thump at the window and I know now it
Speaker 2: was an elbow, and I looked out and there was
Speaker 2: a guy standing at the window with blood coming down
Speaker 2: his head and he had his hands duct taped like
Speaker 2: this and he was hitting the window at his elbow.
Speaker 2: So I, you know, I woke up. Man. The adrenaline
Speaker 2: just snapped to me and I was like, what just happened.
Speaker 2: So I started to open the door and the guy
Speaker 2: falls down and lays on the floor. So I'm thinking
Speaker 2: somebody just shot him in the head, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: what just happened. I'm looking around, and somebody comes running
Speaker 2: across the street goes, they were just at the store.
Speaker 2: They just ran out. So I'm like, who just ran out?
Speaker 2: What just happened? And my partner's not there. I got
Speaker 2: the police radio, but I still gotta find out. I
Speaker 2: can't just start yelling at the radio. I gotta find
Speaker 2: out what's going on. So the guy sits up as
Speaker 2: he's duct tape. He said that he was in the store,
Speaker 2: which was exactly in front of where I parked. I
Speaker 2: parked on the street, I parked, my partner walked across street.
Speaker 2: He said when I pulled up, he was being robbed
Speaker 2: inside and they were hitt him in the head with
Speaker 2: a shotgun because he wouldn't give up this the money
Speaker 2: or a safe. I don't I never got that full
Speaker 2: part of the story. And the other man that was
Speaker 2: there said, when I pulled up, there was a woman
Speaker 2: in front, saw me and my partner get out, saw me.
Speaker 2: She immediately ran inside. I would assume she told them
Speaker 2: The cops just pulled up. As my head was in
Speaker 2: the newspaper. Those guys ran out with shotguns, passed my car,
Speaker 2: or at least to the left of it. He ran out.
Speaker 2: And so if those guys wanted to take me out
Speaker 2: in the car shoot it out with me and my partner,
Speaker 2: they could have took my partner out without of snow,
Speaker 2: and they could have took me out. That's how quickly
Speaker 2: and how dangerous things were. Where I was just picking
Speaker 2: up a prison blowney sandwich and I drove into a
Speaker 2: hold up where they had a guy tied up and
Speaker 2: beating them with a shotgun right in front of me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that that is policing, isn't it. That? You know,
Speaker 1: you can let you let your guard down, but you've
Speaker 1: always got to be aware of what you might walk into,
Speaker 1: A walk around the corner straight into Do you get
Speaker 1: conditioned to that? I'm asking you, like you see, I
Speaker 1: know from my point of view, the impact that has.
Speaker 1: How did you deal with situations like that? Did you
Speaker 1: just go okay, well, I've learned a lesson, Now I've
Speaker 1: learned something more. I pay attention.
Speaker 2: Well, I immediately thought back to what the academy instructor
Speaker 2: told me, because he described almost the same exact situation
Speaker 2: that CUP officers were killed. In a situation like that
Speaker 2: where they drove up to a scene and they weren't
Speaker 2: paying attention, and the guys were they already there, and
Speaker 2: they thought they were there for another reason. You know,
Speaker 2: when I pulled up, those guys in that store probably
Speaker 2: assumed I was pulling up for them when it wasn't.
Speaker 2: The woman ran inside and told them. I found that
Speaker 2: all out later, So I definitely learned a lesson from that.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying you can't be pay attention hundred cent
Speaker 2: of the time, but you really have to keep your
Speaker 2: eyes focused. But I was just glad I was going
Speaker 2: home that day, and you know, the bad guys got away.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they ever caught them. I never
Speaker 2: found out. You know, detectives came and handled it, and it
Speaker 2: didn't matter to me. What maddened to me was because
Speaker 2: my partner walked out with his boloney sandwich in his
Speaker 2: hands for the prisoner, and I had explained Tom what happened.
Speaker 2: He saw the guy laying bleeding on the floor, and
Speaker 2: you know, we were just glad that we were going
Speaker 2: home that day, and we went back to the precinct
Speaker 2: and we went back of patrol duties. And you know,
Speaker 2: if I told that story to the guys they worked with,
Speaker 2: they'd be like wow, but it wouldn't make a difference
Speaker 2: because they were like, you're okay, right, A worry about
Speaker 2: he mad? The report there would be it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: that big of a deal.
Speaker 1: We tend to move on. We had an incident and
Speaker 1: talking about complacent in the building, I worked in the
Speaker 1: police headquarters where a person was waiting for someone to
Speaker 1: come out of the building and whoever came out, they
Speaker 1: were going to shoot, and sadly it was a public
Speaker 1: servant that came out out of the building and was shot.
Speaker 1: Curtis Chang. It was a horrible situation one Friday afternoon.
Speaker 1: I remember it, remember it clearly. But from that it's
Speaker 1: sort of police headquarters, it's major crime where all the
Speaker 1: detectives work, and it sort of wake everyone up to
Speaker 1: the fact that yeah, you'd go out to buy lunch
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't take your gun, or you do things
Speaker 1: and just drop your guard down a little bit, and
Speaker 1: it takes some horrific situation like that just to check
Speaker 1: yourself and go, Okay, well, if I'm on the street,
Speaker 1: I've got my gun, and yeah, you get complacent and
Speaker 1: Complaincency creates dangerous, dangerous situations. Policing isn't all bad, it's
Speaker 1: not all scary. I think every working cop has some
Speaker 1: funny stories or funny experiences or things that you've seen
Speaker 1: and you just think, I can't be seeing this. This
Speaker 1: is just ridiculous. And they don't have to be horrific.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're just bizarre situations. I'm sure working the streets
Speaker 1: in New York as long as you did, you've seen
Speaker 1: some strange and unbelievable things. Can you recall anyones that
Speaker 1: you want to share with us.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's a lot of these stories that are funny,
Speaker 2: but couldn't make it to the book because it happened
Speaker 2: so quickly. I guess in New York we're so conditioned.
Speaker 2: It's just things happen very fast and you just move on.
Speaker 2: And you know, you would just go out on patrol
Speaker 2: and people would just run up to you yelling and
Speaker 2: screaming about nonsense. Sometimes and sometimes it was legit. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it wasn't. Like I could tell you how many times
Speaker 2: like you would have a major crime happened in the
Speaker 2: middle of the street and there'd be the windows of
Speaker 2: a call would be shot out, and you know, nobody
Speaker 2: got shots. Everybody ran from the scene. So you pull
Speaker 2: up and you're like, Okay, everybody's gone, let's do a
Speaker 2: crime scene. And then people come running into the crime
Speaker 2: scene screaming and you're like, get out of my crime scene.
Speaker 2: And the woman's like, don't give my car a ticket.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, this is your car. She goes, no,
Speaker 2: I'm across the street and I'm looking to like, you
Speaker 2: really think I'm gonna walk away from crime scene to
Speaker 2: give you a ticket. I'm like, get out of here, lady.
Speaker 2: So there's just situations like that that it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: there are people that believe everything revolves around them and
Speaker 2: you're there for them. You're not. I'm there for something
Speaker 2: way more important than you're a double parks car. I
Speaker 2: mean here for what just happened in the middle of
Speaker 2: the street.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a real big presence of place uiform police
Speaker 1: in New York, and you describe that, you know, you're
Speaker 1: a show for sometimes or you're giving directions. Everyone comes
Speaker 1: to policing. I remember my early days in uniform. I
Speaker 1: always get confused when you dropped in the city and
Speaker 1: area you don't know, but everyone's coming up and asking
Speaker 1: you for directions and like, you know everything because you
Speaker 1: were in the uniform. I would imagine that plays out
Speaker 1: in New York a fair bit too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a joke Wheze to say, because New
Speaker 2: York is a very diverse area. You have like a
Speaker 2: lot of wealth and a lot of people that are
Speaker 2: not very wealthy, living sometimes right next to each other.
Speaker 2: And a lot of tourists come to New York, you know,
Speaker 2: so there's no accent or language you've never not heard.
Speaker 2: And I would be just you know, in Midtam Manhattan
Speaker 2: and you'd see these people wandering into a really bad area,
Speaker 2: sometimes not in mid toalm Manhattan, other areas of Brooklyn
Speaker 2: and stuff, and they'd hit you with this accent and
Speaker 2: you're like, what are you doing here? Why are you here?
Speaker 2: And they're like, we're lost, we're looking for the Statute
Speaker 2: of Liberty. I'm like, you're not even close to this.
Speaker 2: So my partner would say, they're walking sixty one. The
Speaker 2: reason we call a walking sixty one was st one
Speaker 2: was a complaint report and usually for robbery and burglary.
Speaker 2: So we're like, they're walking sixty one. If they keep
Speaker 2: walking around, they're going to get a sixty one. So
Speaker 2: the joke always was, why don't we just hand them
Speaker 2: the report and have them fill it out. So it
Speaker 2: got to the point when I had this nice old
Speaker 2: couple from the Midwest and they were looking for the
Speaker 2: I remember, they were looking for the Statue of Liberty
Speaker 2: and their van was out. I mean, they were going
Speaker 2: to get rolled. It was a matter of time. So
Speaker 2: me and my partner were like, I told the guy,
Speaker 2: you got to get out of here. Just follow me.
Speaker 2: So just we caravaned them out of the bad part
Speaker 2: of town and we put them in the highway and
Speaker 2: we just pointed, listen, get on to this exit and
Speaker 2: you're fine, just drive away. So, like, you know, you
Speaker 2: have the cop humor. You have to help people, but
Speaker 2: it gets the time when it's comical and you have
Speaker 2: to make a decision for something that's not even police work.
Speaker 2: You have to just be a good person and get
Speaker 2: the person that should not be there out of there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and look, I think it's important that you've got
Speaker 1: to check yourself as a cop, that you don't lose
Speaker 1: your humanity. And yeah, showing that little bit of humanity
Speaker 1: that keeps you sane. But it's also the best way
Speaker 1: to do policing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. You know, there was a lot of
Speaker 2: times we would be drinking coffee and we would think
Speaker 2: it's a quiet nate and like we get the call
Speaker 2: of an address and it's like next dought to where
Speaker 2: we're standing the next building. You're like, is this a joke?
Speaker 2: Like did he know we're here? We're having drinking coffee? Well,
Speaker 2: like we think we're in the same building, and you
Speaker 2: just step outside, make a rate, go upstairs. Now, like,
Speaker 2: how'd you get this off fast? Well, like when we
Speaker 2: were downstairs, they're like, oh, and then you're in the
Speaker 2: middle of a major crime again and you were just
Speaker 2: having your coffee and you're thinking, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 2: handle this situation. Everybody's lived, it's good, but you're not
Speaker 2: gonna get back to have my coffee. That was my
Speaker 2: break and that's what police workers about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. Now, New York had a reputation of high crime,
Speaker 1: and Mayor Giuliani bought in that zero tolerance like we're
Speaker 1: going to basically arrest our way out of this situation,
Speaker 1: and so the people were getting getting locked up for
Speaker 1: all sorts of crime. What's your take on that? In
Speaker 1: the New York Cop did it work or did it backfire.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting because that's still the ramifications that out
Speaker 2: is still going now and I could do it. You know,
Speaker 2: there were a lot of people talking about it, but
Speaker 2: I could tell you from experiences because when I was
Speaker 2: in the police academy, he got elected as the mayor
Speaker 2: and he was the no nonsense, I'm gonna stop crime mayor.
Speaker 2: And I was a New York City resident and I
Speaker 2: remember it as a kid. My parents like, you don't
Speaker 2: go that section of town. You don't go to ask
Speaker 2: his section town. You don't go over there when it's
Speaker 2: dark out. You come home. And they were always telling
Speaker 2: us what way to go and what not to do
Speaker 2: and what you know. So I was like, there's no
Speaker 2: way this guy's going to clean up crime. And I
Speaker 2: was in the priest and I was a rookie cop,
Speaker 2: and they were like, we're going to start arresting everybody
Speaker 2: who commits minor crimes. And I was like, well, why
Speaker 2: would we do that. They're like, well, if a guy's
Speaker 2: urinating in the street, check if he has a warrant,
Speaker 2: because that guy probably has been committing crimes for years
Speaker 2: and he's never paying, he's never going to court. They
Speaker 2: were like, if he's urinating the street, if you don't
Speaker 2: see if he has a warran, if he doesn't give
Speaker 2: him a summons. So it started to make sense. They
Speaker 2: started with the turnstile jumpers, and if anyone's been in
Speaker 2: a New York City subway, you know it's not hard
Speaker 2: to jump the turnstyle, And so Juliani said, you jump turnstyle,
Speaker 2: you're getting arrested, and they start the transit cops started
Speaker 2: with that. And once they started with the turn style jumpers,
Speaker 2: like you know, they were catching guys with guns, they
Speaker 2: were catching guys with serious warrants. So I'm talking like
Speaker 2: murders and other states that came to New York. And
Speaker 2: you know, if you're a murder in another state, you're
Speaker 2: not that interested in paying your subway fare. But when
Speaker 2: they started arresting people for that, that's when they the
Speaker 2: criminals were like going underground almost they were, they were
Speaker 2: going behind. They would the weed deal is started to go,
Speaker 2: you know, on the beeper, through the payphone and through
Speaker 2: the they went inside. The prostitution went inside. So you
Speaker 2: had some old school guys who were like, you cannot
Speaker 2: arrest somebody for domestic violence. I'm like, well, they're telling
Speaker 2: me to do my crime. If if I go to
Speaker 2: a domestic violence situation and a woman has bruises, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm walking this guy up. They're like, you can't lest
Speaker 2: a drunk driver. I'm like, what do you mean a
Speaker 2: can He just hit six parked cars and he's passed
Speaker 2: down his calm taking. I'm locking this guy up. So
Speaker 2: it cleared stuff up pretty quick. Crime started to go
Speaker 2: down very quickly. They there's also people call it the
Speaker 2: broken windows theory, which definitely has that. And the c
Speaker 2: started to realize that they we were not just going
Speaker 2: to go to the scene. Like I would run into
Speaker 2: guys who'd just get out of prison, and they couldn't
Speaker 2: believe that we were harassing them for the things we
Speaker 2: did because they'd be like, Yo, what the fuck man
Speaker 2: I did prison time? No one bothered me for this shit. Well,
Speaker 2: like things are different now. They're like, oh, I heard
Speaker 2: about that, Like guys with shoplift and were like, you
Speaker 2: come with us, But all I did was steel. This
Speaker 2: I'm like doesn't matter. So we were locking guys for shoplifting.
Speaker 2: And then they started to realize that man if I
Speaker 2: got a fellonly warant I shouldn't be out shoplifting. So
Speaker 2: it definitely changed the city. It brought the tourists back.
Speaker 2: Another place was Times Square that went from the crap
Speaker 2: zone to people bringing their little kids there to watch
Speaker 2: Disney movies. That changed. That was I never expected that
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 1: So I was interested in it because when I was
Speaker 1: studying and on different things about policing, and the broken
Speaker 1: window effect is quite interesting and I like the concept
Speaker 1: of that was if you've got a street that's in
Speaker 1: that ghost street, so it were, Yeah, every city has them.
Speaker 1: There's graffiti, there's a band in, car, stolen smash windows.
Speaker 1: You go in and tidy that place up, get rid
Speaker 1: of the graffiti, clear the banding cars, put lighting in there.
Speaker 1: I think that combination is not a bad way to
Speaker 1: approach approach crime. I know in New York that's where
Speaker 1: it sort of originated from. Did you see the benefits
Speaker 1: of that type of approach to reducing crime.
Speaker 2: I definitely saw the benefits because I also lived in
Speaker 2: the city, so I noticed it. I noticed that nobody.
Speaker 1: Was breaking it's felt safe going home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that and it was a lot of the petty crime,
Speaker 2: like you know, when I was younger, you know I
Speaker 2: had this, It's pretty funny. I had my car. I
Speaker 2: was concerned with people stealing my radio because you know,
Speaker 2: they steal your readers one thing, but you got to
Speaker 2: get your window busted. They ripped the freaking thing out.
Speaker 2: You know, these guys are like a chop shop guys.
Speaker 2: How they steal your reader. So I used to have
Speaker 2: this plastic thing, Like in college, I had this phony
Speaker 2: plastic radio that was like a ten dollars am redo
Speaker 2: that I would put the plastic keys over my actual radio. Okay,
Speaker 2: I was like ry, And you know, people would put
Speaker 2: signs in their car there's nothing of value, please don't
Speaker 2: break the window. So you know, once they stopped, they
Speaker 2: started actually arresting these people, those petty criminals. They really
Speaker 2: I don't know where they went, but they weren't doing much.
Speaker 2: And I wrote about those stories in my book because
Speaker 2: I eventually went to a unit called the conditions unit.
Speaker 2: And what was interesting was we would take priests and
Speaker 2: conditions because you know, it's like the movies, the phones
Speaker 2: always ringing in the priest and somebody's complaining about something.
Speaker 2: So somebody did statistics and like, okay, we're getting nine
Speaker 2: complaints about graffiti. So they would narrow it down and
Speaker 2: they would say, graffiti is happening at this building at
Speaker 2: this time, and they would be in the conditions unit.
Speaker 2: They were like, okay, go plain clothes, go out and
Speaker 2: get graffiti. So we'd go out and we wouldn't know
Speaker 2: who to look for, but we knew the location, and
Speaker 2: we also knew that the city was going to lock
Speaker 2: this person up. Whether they did prison time or not,
Speaker 2: it didn't matter. It was important that they realized if
Speaker 2: you were going to get arrested for doing this and
Speaker 2: comed out. We started locking the graffiti people ups. And
Speaker 2: then the graffiti people weren't even really doing it in
Speaker 2: the open. They were either doing it late at night
Speaker 2: or well you couldn't find them.
Speaker 1: So you think, looking reflecting on it, you think it
Speaker 1: worked that that approach.
Speaker 2: Yes, it definitely worked, because right now they're going to
Speaker 2: doing the opposite and it's showing.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the opposite is and we're hearing it over here,
Speaker 1: like you're not going to police these minor offenses. Say yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting another thing about New York policing. And trust me,
Speaker 1: I'm not sitting here going oh, look, it's New York
Speaker 1: cops of the corrupt. Every jurisdiction in this country, every
Speaker 1: state police, federal police have all been through corruption inquiries.
Speaker 1: I was working major crime when a big Royal commission
Speaker 1: came through in New South Wales police at about corruption.
Speaker 1: So New York is not unique to corruption in police,
Speaker 1: but because it is New York, a lot of attention
Speaker 1: is played out. What's your take on the perception of
Speaker 1: the past corruption in New York police and where you're
Speaker 1: at these days.
Speaker 2: Past corruption before I was a police officer, from the
Speaker 2: stories I heard, was pretty more rampant and more in
Speaker 2: your face, where it was more like there's nothing to
Speaker 2: be done about it, and it was common. And then
Speaker 2: there was some movies made about it, and there was
Speaker 2: some real commissions that knocked out I wouldn't say knocked
Speaker 2: out the coruption because it never went away and I
Speaker 2: don't believe it ever will, but the old school corruption
Speaker 2: went out the window. And then when I was the
Speaker 2: police academy, they drilled it into us about corruption. If
Speaker 2: there's any police officers who are rookies listening to this,
Speaker 2: you need to know that police departments take corruption very seriously.
Speaker 2: If you they will put a lot of resources into
Speaker 2: finding out if that is correct what you're doing. So
Speaker 2: if there's an allegation, they're going to look at it,
Speaker 2: then it's not some burglary that nobody cares about. They're
Speaker 2: gonna spend a lot of money in time to look
Speaker 2: at if you did what they're saying you didn't. If
Speaker 2: you didn't, you'll get cleared. But people need to realize
Speaker 2: that corruption is dell will and it's a feather in
Speaker 2: the cap. I don't know about in Australia, in the
Speaker 2: United States, or especially in cities like New York, it
Speaker 2: is a feather in the cap for the prosecutor to
Speaker 2: get a corrupt cop, which means that look what we did,
Speaker 2: look at our integrity. We caught this guy. And sometimes
Speaker 2: the corruption is minor, but it's there and it is
Speaker 2: a feather in the cap. They will put the resources
Speaker 2: into getting them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. Look, if you've been in the police long enough,
Speaker 1: you've seen things or I'm not sure now like now,
Speaker 1: I think all police forces have seen I can only
Speaker 1: speak for this country. You need to be squeaky clean
Speaker 1: because you're going to get scrutinice because policing has changed people.
Speaker 1: It's don't worry. Nothing to see here, the cops are here.
Speaker 1: That mentality's gone. Now you get scrutinized. But corruption was
Speaker 1: a part of part of the police, and then you had
Speaker 1: to navigate your way through it. I worked with people.
Speaker 1: One of my first partners when I went to detectives
Speaker 1: was locked up for corruption. I was shielded from that corruption,
Speaker 1: but that was only because I made made it very
Speaker 1: clear I'm not interested in going down that path. But
Speaker 1: there is a difficult way to navigate through your policing
Speaker 1: career if there are corrupt police and they bring shame
Speaker 1: on us all if they are corrupt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've wrote a story about that in my book
Speaker 2: where I had a navigate around it as a supervisor.
Speaker 2: It's called Welcome to the Jungle. It was mainor corruption,
Speaker 2: but it was there, and it had to do with
Speaker 2: street vendors who were taking cops under their wing and
Speaker 2: befriending them. And you know, as a cop or just
Speaker 2: as a person in general, but as a cop, really
Speaker 2: we get a sixth sense and you just know when
Speaker 2: someone is not legit. So I always felt as a rookie,
Speaker 2: I noticed this too. If somebody who I do not
Speaker 2: know I'm talking to civilian, somebody on the street. If
Speaker 2: they're trying to befriend me, I'm skeptical. Why is this
Speaker 2: person trying to talk to me? Why are they interested
Speaker 2: in pronouncing my name correctly?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: I saw you yesterday with your partner, and you got
Speaker 2: to put the brakes on. You say yeah, and you
Speaker 2: got to tell them I'm good, thanks man, Naha, you
Speaker 2: got my name wrong, don't worry about it. And then
Speaker 2: they realize, Okay, this guy we can't approach, and those
Speaker 2: same guys will search until they find a cop that
Speaker 2: they can get to, and I think I have to
Speaker 2: tell them, like, I'm not that guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll approach mat That's good advice, John, because you've
Speaker 1: got to be a wary of that. Those people that
Speaker 1: are overly friendly to you going for a drink or whatever,
Speaker 1: or someone just turns up. You're drinking with a group
Speaker 1: of detectives and someone turns up, I let me buy
Speaker 1: you a some drinks and stuff like that. You've got
Speaker 1: to be that little bit a little bit wary. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about missing persons, because I know that's a passion
Speaker 1: the views. How did you get into that area and
Speaker 1: tell us about what your role was in the Missing
Speaker 1: Person's Unit.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, I said in the very beginning of the
Speaker 2: first episode. There was two incidents when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: so once again I was still interested in police work
Speaker 2: at a young age. And it was nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 2: and there was a kid had went to school, never
Speaker 2: made it. He was only I was nine, he was seven.
Speaker 2: Happened in here in Manhattan, Loneman that and his name
Speaker 2: was Eton Pets And it was a very famous case
Speaker 2: in the United States at the time. And this was
Speaker 2: New York City when New York City was dangerous. But
Speaker 2: he basically didn't come home from school, and it was
Speaker 2: on the news every night, and I was very interested
Speaker 2: in police related stuff on the news, so I would
Speaker 2: watch it. But unfortunately, I was nine years old and
Speaker 2: there's a kid a little younger than me that got abducted,
Speaker 2: and they were basically saying this kid was abducted, he
Speaker 2: just never came home. So I would watch this night
Speaker 2: if the night on television. And my parents were funny.
Speaker 2: They never said, you know, maybe you shouldn't be watching
Speaker 2: these crime shows late at night, you're only nine years old,
Speaker 2: But you know, they they didn't say that. So I'd
Speaker 2: watch it and then something strange that'd happened. I was
Speaker 2: afraid of being lost. So because the news started reporting this,
Speaker 2: as you know, they did the shock value. Even in
Speaker 2: the seventies. Oh, there was a cab driver who saw
Speaker 2: a young blonde head boy with two men and they
Speaker 2: were flying out of the country. So the news did this,
Speaker 2: spun this story where this kid was in a pedophile ring,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, my gosh, there's creepy people
Speaker 2: in my neighborhood. I was in Queens and it's Manhattan, Manhattan,
Speaker 2: but I knew this could happen in my neighborhood. So,
Speaker 2: like I said before, I was getting afraid to leave
Speaker 2: the house and I would ask my parents if I
Speaker 2: got lost, would you find me. They're like, yeah, we'd
Speaker 2: find you. Who would I talk to if I got lost?
Speaker 2: So I remembered locking the doors. Even though it was
Speaker 2: a safe neighborhood. I remembered locking the doors, and I
Speaker 2: remembered still watching it on television. So they never the
Speaker 2: news kept going with the shock value, and they had
Speaker 2: a suspect, but it turned out to be nothing. So
Speaker 2: that stayed with me, that missing person story. So as
Speaker 2: I got a little older, you know, I forgot about
Speaker 2: that story. I forgot about the kid. I remember his name,
Speaker 2: Metson Paids. And then when I went to the NYPD,
Speaker 2: I was a big cop. And then when I went
Speaker 2: to the missing person squad, I said, wow, that sounds interesting.
Speaker 2: You know. I wanted to be a detective, like I
Speaker 2: said earlier, So I got a specialty unit because I
Speaker 2: had already. I already did my time investigating police corruption.
Speaker 2: So they said where do you want to go? I said,
Speaker 2: I was off of the missing person squad and I
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, I could do it. They said, you'll
Speaker 2: focused on one type of case. I says no. They said,
Speaker 2: can you focus the detectives doing missing person cases? I
Speaker 2: said sure, I could do it. So I stepped into
Speaker 2: the office and my supervisor says, okay, we have a
Speaker 2: lot of cold cases here. You know. He told us
Speaker 2: everything we have to do, and I saw the Eton
Speaker 2: Pais photo and I said, wow, that's this case when
Speaker 2: I was a kid. That made me think and I
Speaker 2: was like, my gosh, he's like So he told me
Speaker 2: everything we're going to have to do with that case.
Speaker 2: And I met the detective who had it. I wasn't
Speaker 2: a detective. Supervisor and then I'm going to fast forward here.
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about the missing person cases. But
Speaker 2: I ended up working on it on that case, and
Speaker 2: I ended up working on the same case that I
Speaker 2: had a fear of as a kid. And at one
Speaker 2: point they were digging a basement in the city and
Speaker 2: I me, I was kept back from the dig and
Speaker 2: I was a little not happy about that. I was like,
Speaker 2: I want to dig. I want to be part of
Speaker 2: this investigation. So ME and one detective were kept back,
Speaker 2: and as we were sitting in the office, the phone
Speaker 2: rang and civilian came running out. She says, he knows
Speaker 2: who the kid is. He knows who killed the kid.
Speaker 2: So I thought I had another case of which I
Speaker 2: wrote about in my book. But I have another case
Speaker 2: of a kid that went missing. So the detective wrote
Speaker 2: down the name's on Pats in the paper and that
Speaker 2: was how they solved the case through that phone call
Speaker 2: when I was sitting in the office. So the same
Speaker 2: case there's a kid that scared me, I ended up
Speaker 2: working on. I was in the office when that call
Speaker 2: came in that solved it.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's uh yeah, chilling, chilling and interesting that you
Speaker 1: carry that through. I had some cases that I knew
Speaker 1: that were occurred, high profile cases before I was in
Speaker 1: the cops and got to work on them. And it's
Speaker 1: something about policing. You think, how did I get to
Speaker 1: this point? Like it's good, it's great. You know something
Speaker 1: that you've been curious about, and here you find the
Speaker 1: out exactly what's gone on other missing person's cases that
Speaker 1: you worked on. Because in America, I would imagine there's
Speaker 1: a lot of missing persons cases. Majority of them turn
Speaker 1: out to we find them, but there's a lot that
Speaker 1: just disappear in Some are a little bit more sinister
Speaker 1: than just wandering off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a few that are sinister. Now it's funny
Speaker 2: as I see it on the movies a lot there's
Speaker 2: like that twenty four hour rule that doesn't exist. You
Speaker 2: can't call miss persons for twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: That doesn't that's just anyone, John, Can you yield that
Speaker 1: from the rooftop? Because I am so I get people
Speaker 1: fane me I'm out of the cops, and when I
Speaker 1: was in the cops, and they go, well, but we
Speaker 1: can't report it because they've got to be missing for
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. And whatever I say, if any cop
Speaker 1: has told you that they're lazy, and there you can
Speaker 1: report it, like, just walk in there if you've got concerns. Sorry,
Speaker 1: it's just it's a beer in my bonnet. About that.
Speaker 1: I get so sick of hearing people go, oh, but
Speaker 1: we can't report the person missing because it hasn't been
Speaker 1: twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: I always wanted to wear that urban legend began. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's an old movie. It had to
Speaker 2: begin somewhere, and there's no truth behind it, and people
Speaker 2: still believe it. And there are people who wait twenty
Speaker 2: four hours to report the husband's missing.
Speaker 1: I blame you God. It must have been one of
Speaker 1: those New York cop shows that came.
Speaker 2: Out, definitely. So when I went to Missing Persons, I
Speaker 2: was surprised with the volume of cases because New York's
Speaker 2: a big city. You know, you get tourists, you get locals,
Speaker 2: you get everything. And so we I was the supervisor
Speaker 2: of eight detectives and there was other supervisors with the detectives.
Speaker 2: So we'd get about seven thousand cases a year. So
Speaker 2: now it's interesting, is seven thousand is at a very
Speaker 2: low number. The reason I'm saying a very low number
Speaker 2: is because it would go to the local priests and
Speaker 2: first and you know, people would call number one and say, okay,
Speaker 2: my daughter ran away, and then detective would go there
Speaker 2: and then maybe they talked to the neighbor and they
Speaker 2: would say, you know what, she's staying at the park
Speaker 2: and they find her. So technically it's a report, it's
Speaker 2: a runaway, it's a missing person, but it's located quickly.
Speaker 2: So by the time the cases we got, we got
Speaker 2: the ones that they didn't return in seven days, so
Speaker 2: the priests couldn't find them, detectives couldn't find them. They
Speaker 2: would send it to OSCUS. We were the experts, and
Speaker 2: ninety percent of them we found within or I say found,
Speaker 2: I mean there's unfortunately a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: homice not there are some homicides, but a lot of
Speaker 2: suicides and we'd find almost all of them I would say,
Speaker 2: ninety to ninety five percent within the first week. And
Speaker 2: that's as it located. It was that five percent that
Speaker 2: out of those seven thousand cases that you're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: something is going on here, there's something that's not right.
Speaker 2: And you know another thing that the media has wrong.
Speaker 2: People don't just fake their disappearance is that's very very rare.
Speaker 2: That's almost impossible to do now to faked disappearance. And
Speaker 2: if you fake it disappearance, you're probably coming up a
Speaker 2: crime to begin with. So they're looking for you for
Speaker 2: the crime. It's not really you being missing. They're looking
Speaker 2: at you what you did for fake it. Nobody fakes
Speaker 2: their disappearance for no reason. So we had to look
Speaker 2: at those those cases. But I got very good at
Speaker 2: quickly knowing, like, you know, you can't judge it, you
Speaker 2: know exactly, but you're like, this sounds like a suicide.
Speaker 2: This sounds like a runaway. There's a lot of human
Speaker 2: trafficking that's happening too, and human trafficking is not really
Speaker 2: someone from another country. A lot of times it's a
Speaker 2: young girl who meets the wrong person and he starts
Speaker 2: offering her money and she has to turn tricks for him,
Speaker 2: and then she goes missing, which is the pimp takes her.
Speaker 2: She's making money, he takes it to the cheap hotel,
Speaker 2: and the mother's reporting and missing. And that's a good
Speaker 2: example of the five percent that you know, you have
Speaker 2: to find this girl before something really bad happens to her,
Speaker 2: and quite often we would. But that's an example of
Speaker 2: one of the cases that we had to spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time on with these human trafficking cases. To
Speaker 2: get these kids, it was usually a female fifteen years old.
Speaker 2: We'd have to find them and get them.
Speaker 1: Back and that must give a lot of job satisfaction too,
Speaker 1: I think stepping in and bringing some comfort to the
Speaker 1: families or hopefully comfort if they can break away from
Speaker 1: what's happened to them. It's a very important role missing persons,
Speaker 1: isn't it, because the impact that has on families. You
Speaker 1: were the saying that, yeah.
Speaker 2: We did see it. We didn't always hear it from
Speaker 2: the family, but was quite often when you know, we
Speaker 2: thought that this was an easy case. We used to
Speaker 2: say easy case, which meant that, you know, you get
Speaker 2: a guy, he's binging on whatever drug and okay, we're
Speaker 2: gonna find him soon in he's going to be at
Speaker 2: the rehab or he's going to be the local shooting gallery,
Speaker 2: shooting gallery heroin. That's what we would say. So you know,
Speaker 2: you don't want to tell the family that, but you
Speaker 2: have to figure, okay, he's a junkie, we're gonna know,
Speaker 2: we're gonna find this guy, and then you know, you'd
Speaker 2: put up a flyer or two, and then one of
Speaker 2: the local guys would just you know, because missing persons
Speaker 2: isn't a crime, you would get some people would talk
Speaker 2: to you a little quicker because they know no one's
Speaker 2: going to prison, so they would say, yeah, I know him.
Speaker 2: He's I ain't given you my name, but he's always
Speaker 2: on the corner every night. And then you go to
Speaker 2: the corner and you'd find him. And if he's an adult,
Speaker 2: technically he doesn't have to go home. You'd call the family.
Speaker 2: He's on this corner. He's not missing. The family would
Speaker 2: be very thankful quite often that we put that effort in.
Speaker 2: To me, it wasn't a big deal to find the
Speaker 2: case like that, it was an easy one, but to
Speaker 2: that family it was very important that that person was located.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, yeah, they've come to the place for help,
Speaker 1: and if he can help them in that way. In
Speaker 1: your book, there was an interesting chapter about some missing persons,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't a missing person. You actually had the
Speaker 1: person but didn't know who the person was. A fifteen
Speaker 1: year old girl, I think it was. Do you want
Speaker 1: to tell us that story? I just found an interesting
Speaker 1: looking at it from a different perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the first story in the book. It's called
Speaker 2: even a little incident Could go a long way, and
Speaker 2: that is I would say, my favorite story. I don't
Speaker 2: like to use the word favorite, but I like to
Speaker 2: talk about that one because it was very different from
Speaker 2: what we did. Because very rarely do you have a
Speaker 2: living person who says they don't know who they are.
Speaker 2: We'd get the local drunk who ends up in the
Speaker 2: emergency room hitting the head. Okay, you know something, key fella,
Speaker 2: he came out of a bar, he hit his head.
Speaker 2: We'll find out who this guy is. So this woman
Speaker 2: just walks into a shelter and says, I don't know
Speaker 2: who I am. I have amnesia who am I? And
Speaker 2: I was working that office that night and it was
Speaker 2: just me and a few detectives, and I didn't think
Speaker 2: much of it until I saw the girl's picture because
Speaker 2: they sent me a picture. I said, oh no, this
Speaker 2: is going to go viral. Because I saw the girl's picture.
Speaker 2: There is missing persons. There are people. If you have
Speaker 2: anybody that's missing, put the best picture you can of
Speaker 2: them out. That's all I got to say. Don't put
Speaker 2: the guy with the mohawk. Put him when he looks
Speaker 2: the best, because he'll get more attention. So yeah, so
Speaker 2: you know what I'm talking about with that, and that's
Speaker 2: for a family. You want the best picture of the
Speaker 2: person out there. So they put this picture out. I said,
Speaker 2: this is going to go viral. I know it. So
Speaker 2: the detective called me. He's like, listen, my supervisor is
Speaker 2: putting this on the news tonight. So I said, okay,
Speaker 2: now it's really going to go viral. So I told
Speaker 2: the detectives, I go, when this hits the news, the
Speaker 2: phones are going to light up. We used to use
Speaker 2: the term light up, which means that's going to call.
Speaker 2: So we used to have a book to sign out,
Speaker 2: and it was always the ongoing joke as the supervisor
Speaker 2: they hide the books and no one signs out and
Speaker 2: gets the heck out of there before you get told
Speaker 2: they tell them what to do. So I took the book,
Speaker 2: and once they took the book, they knew it. They
Speaker 2: were like, we're pulling an all nighty here. I could
Speaker 2: have called her reinforcements to help us, but it was
Speaker 2: just me and a few detectives. And then sure enough
Speaker 2: the phone call started and there was a girl that
Speaker 2: looked like her in a building and we had to
Speaker 2: send people to the location and it wasn't her. It
Speaker 2: was just another girl that looked Tika. But we got
Speaker 2: a lot of calls on that and so it wasn't her.
Speaker 2: And then as time went by, the detective called me back.
Speaker 2: He goes, my supervisor is putting it on a major network. Now,
Speaker 2: this major network in the United States goes all fifty states,
Speaker 2: all over the country and probably throughout the outside of
Speaker 2: the United States. I said, my gosh, every drunk amulus
Speaker 2: amateur salute and Wacko's going to stop calling. They put
Speaker 2: a picture up. It was like who am I, Please
Speaker 2: help me find myself. I was like, oh, my gosh.
Speaker 2: And the phone call started and we could not feel
Speaker 2: the phone calls fast enough. And I talked to two
Speaker 2: truck drivers who said that they transported her from one
Speaker 2: state to another, and they described it pretty well. When
Speaker 2: a truck driver calls, you know, he's those guys are observed,
Speaker 2: they see what's going on, they pick up a hitchhiker,
Speaker 2: they're gonna remember it. So those two guys describe the
Speaker 2: same situation in two different states. So I'm like, I
Speaker 2: think this is h So then We had all these
Speaker 2: amateur slutes calling, and we found out that some of
Speaker 2: them just wanted to put themselves in the case and
Speaker 2: talk to us like they were an investigator. And it
Speaker 2: got to the point I started I knew the voices.
Speaker 2: I'm like, stop calling, we know what we're doing. Then
Speaker 2: the case got sad, and I say sad is because
Speaker 2: I started getting phone calls from women in California because
Speaker 2: they were getting phone calls that their daughters were missing
Speaker 2: and they thought we had their daughter.
Speaker 1: Oh they other families, Yeah.
Speaker 2: The families of the legit missing started calling us, and
Speaker 2: I had to do my own, you know, cold case
Speaker 2: investigation through the computer, and I started to find out
Speaker 2: that wow, these two women are looking for their daughters
Speaker 2: and they're looking at us for hope. And we had
Speaker 2: somebody who claimed she didn't know who she was and.
Speaker 1: Check it out.
Speaker 2: One of the mothers called me back and said that no,
Speaker 2: it's not my daughter just looks like her because we
Speaker 2: compared the photos. But I felt for those women because
Speaker 2: this woman with this story that she didn't know who
Speaker 2: she was went viral, went across the country. It was
Speaker 2: twenty four hour news cycle and it kept going and
Speaker 2: I was the lead investigator on it, and I pulled
Speaker 2: an all nighter on that one, and you know, we
Speaker 2: had all types of people getting involved in that. And
Speaker 2: it turns out we found out later on who she
Speaker 2: was because her father eventually called because she wasn't missing
Speaker 2: in another part of the country. And then I would
Speaker 2: find out later on that those two women that were
Speaker 2: calling me, they their kids were victims of a serial
Speaker 2: killer and they did look like her, so they had
Speaker 2: the concern that we possibly had their daughter. And after
Speaker 2: I believe possibly after I retired, the serial killer came
Speaker 2: forward from prison and said that he had murdered these women.
Speaker 2: So I eventually did find out who their kids were,
Speaker 2: but it was not the girl that we had with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's missing persons. Working homicide as long as I did,
Speaker 1: I saw the impact that homicide have on families, but
Speaker 1: I also the increased impact when someone's just disappeared, where
Speaker 1: the families haven't got answers and they haven't found out
Speaker 1: what's happened to their loved one. It's painful and it's
Speaker 1: an area that policing them. I'm glad we've jumped on
Speaker 1: the twenty four hour. 'll throw that one out the door.
Speaker 1: But quite often if you've got a good missing person's
Speaker 1: unit and set up in whatever police force or jurisdiction,
Speaker 1: it can make a big difference because they are solvable
Speaker 1: if a little bit of attentions put into them at
Speaker 1: the time they were reported. And if they're not, if
Speaker 1: they just sit in sitting in the draw somewhere or
Speaker 1: just on the computer and no one's looking at them,
Speaker 1: that's when they become problematic, when the trail has slowed down.
Speaker 1: What other areas of policing you spent twenty years in
Speaker 1: the cops?
Speaker 2: Sure is this?
Speaker 1: And this is again I might have learned this from TV.
Speaker 1: But that's the standard career for a New York cop.
Speaker 1: Twenty years and then you can retire. Is that the
Speaker 1: way it plays out? Or am I misreading.
Speaker 2: It right now? It's twenty five years? But when I
Speaker 2: was there, you could do twenty years or retire, and
Speaker 2: most people do twenty retire.
Speaker 1: You've done your service, You go out, there's a pension
Speaker 1: of whatever, but you've done done your service. Was that
Speaker 1: because of the intensity of being the New York cop
Speaker 1: twenty years? We don't have that in New South Wales police.
Speaker 1: We can stay until we decide to retire, but that
Speaker 1: brings problems in itself because a lot of people burn out.
Speaker 1: Do you think it was a good idea twenty years
Speaker 1: and now probably twenty five because people are working longer.
Speaker 2: I think it is a good idea because you do
Speaker 2: need younger people to come in, and you know, the
Speaker 2: younger people that could do more, and I say do
Speaker 2: more as more physical and they could do the hours,
Speaker 2: the tours. Although when I left at the height of
Speaker 2: my career with the most experience I had, and I
Speaker 2: was at the height of my investigations, and I could
Speaker 2: handle anything thrown at me. But you know, when it's time,
Speaker 2: you don't want to stay past you're welcome, you don't
Speaker 2: want to I started to get a little complacent again,
Speaker 2: and my head wasn't in the game as much I
Speaker 2: figured I did twenty years. I wanted to start seeing
Speaker 2: my family again. I know you wrote about it in
Speaker 2: your book. It gets to a point when you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: the kid's missing, he's riding a skateboard. I'm looking at
Speaker 2: parks all over the city, and but yet my kids
Speaker 2: are playing soccer and I'm out looking for somebody else's kid.
Speaker 2: So it gets to a point when let somebody else
Speaker 2: take the rein and let somebody else come in and
Speaker 2: learn the experience. And it was time for me to
Speaker 2: move on to back to the civilian world, because twenty
Speaker 2: years in the NYPD is a very long time, because
Speaker 2: I did eight years of just straight over time where
Speaker 2: I was working two jobs almost during those eight years,
Speaker 2: and it's in the candle at both ends at one point.
Speaker 1: And it does have the impact on the family, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to walk away from when you're a
Speaker 1: dedicated police officer. You're on the case and it's not
Speaker 1: a nine to five job. But your family. Were they
Speaker 1: happy when you retired? Yeah?
Speaker 2: They were. Even my kids kind of said it. They
Speaker 2: were like, oh, you could be homebore, you could do this,
Speaker 2: you could do that. And my wife was glad, you
Speaker 2: know she she basically said that she didn't watch the
Speaker 2: news most of the time. And then I had to
Speaker 2: tell her how many stories I shielded for her from that.
Speaker 2: I decided not. She's like, when were you going to
Speaker 2: tell me this? I wasn't going to. I told her,
Speaker 2: why should I come home and burden you with the
Speaker 2: madness that's going on at work, because you know, I
Speaker 2: don't want to upset, you know, and people don't understand.
Speaker 2: You know, my wife has family that a police officer,
Speaker 2: but she still couldn't, not one hundred percent understand when
Speaker 2: I was getting out and there was no reason to
Speaker 2: cloud her mind with all that. And even my own
Speaker 2: family they would ask me about work. I would tell
Speaker 2: them the funny things, the funny stories, but I didn't
Speaker 2: get into the nitty gritty of the real politics that
Speaker 2: were going on or the real it's a shock tank.
Speaker 2: It's you know, at times I used to joke around,
Speaker 2: I go, sometimes you feel like you're the goldfish with
Speaker 2: the piranhas and there's a glass ball. I used to
Speaker 2: say that.
Speaker 1: In the detective bureau, it's a pressure environment. And I
Speaker 1: speak to a lot of cops on this show, and
Speaker 1: no people through my career, a lot of us say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can handle the pressure of the work. It was
Speaker 1: the internal politics that where you're down because it is
Speaker 1: a I don't know, it's a very nature of policing.
Speaker 1: It it's a combative area to work, and it's funny
Speaker 1: reading stuff and preparing. You talk about the supervisors and this,
Speaker 1: and there's always a clash. It's a difficult area to
Speaker 1: work in, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's definitely difficult. I expected it. I expected more of
Speaker 2: the difficulty to come from the people on the street.
Speaker 2: I really got there thinking us first down mentality, and
Speaker 2: I realized that some of the biggest obstacles were your
Speaker 2: co workers or your supervisors. Whether they meant it or not,
Speaker 2: they were the biggest obstacles to you actually doing your
Speaker 2: job the way it should be done, or going home
Speaker 2: on time. There's a lot of politics in New York City,
Speaker 2: because this is New York City. There's politics involved in
Speaker 2: police work and it shows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, if you've read my book, you can see
Speaker 1: that I agree with that in the conflict that you
Speaker 1: can have in the workplace. Hi, guys, just a quick
Speaker 1: interruption to let you know about a new podcast from
Speaker 1: the team behind Eye Catch Killers. It's called The Mushroom Cook.
Speaker 1: It's about a case that made headlines around the world
Speaker 1: last year, the prosecution of a Victorian woman called Aaron
Speaker 1: Patterson over a family lunch that left three people dead.
Speaker 1: The podcast goes deep into what we know about those
Speaker 1: alleged murders in the coming months. It will also follow
Speaker 1: the twists and turns as erin who's denied any wrongdoing
Speaker 1: faces trial. If you subscribe to crimex Plus, you'll get
Speaker 1: access to the Mushroom Cook early and ad free. Just
Speaker 1: search for the Mushroom Cook on crimex plus on Apple podcasts.
Speaker 1: What are you doing with yourself now? You running an investigation?
Speaker 1: Sure business.
Speaker 2: I When I retired, I you know, I thought about
Speaker 2: getting away from all types of police work in general.
Speaker 2: And uh, I got very bored, very fast. And I
Speaker 2: realized that I went from a rollercoaster and then was
Speaker 2: told to sit and that wasn't me. So I I
Speaker 2: told my wife, I got to get a part time job.
Speaker 2: So she's like, yeah, yeah, get out of the house,
Speaker 2: get a pot time job.
Speaker 1: So she was telling me you did to get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah the house, j'all I would have mentioned you a pine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: I It's just I'm not saying I missed the police work.
Speaker 2: I missed the excitement, I guess, but I was definitely
Speaker 2: glad with dumb with the bureaucracy. So the first building
Speaker 2: was the I mean, the first job I got was
Speaker 2: actually the Empire State Building. And everybody's like, Okay, you
Speaker 2: just went to the second biggest building in the city.
Speaker 2: You sure, you want to work here, So I sure.
Speaker 2: So I was working the I was managing the security there.
Speaker 2: So I did that for a number of years, and
Speaker 2: then what I was getting was a lot of people
Speaker 2: were asking me missing person questions. They were like, John,
Speaker 2: I know this guy, and I'm like, listen, I haven't
Speaker 2: done missing persons in years. They were like, no, but
Speaker 2: you were the missing person guy. So I found myself
Speaker 2: fielding all these missing person questions and I said, wow,
Speaker 2: I must have a lot of experience with this and
Speaker 2: I shouldn't forget it. And I felt that if the
Speaker 2: NYPD gave me that experience and I had it and
Speaker 2: I lived it and I learned it, I need to
Speaker 2: put that experience back out there, whether it's on a
Speaker 2: podcast like this, whether it's writing my book, whether it's
Speaker 2: mentoring somebody or a private eye business. So I did
Speaker 2: the cop route and I did the private eye business.
Speaker 2: And I didn't want to do the cheating spouses. That's
Speaker 2: like a big thing here with people are making money.
Speaker 2: I really my days of cheat, you know, watching people
Speaker 2: in cheap hotels at two in the morning. I didn't
Speaker 2: retire anything that. So I turned those cases down. I
Speaker 2: know other people make money with it. I got some
Speaker 2: interesting cases during COVID where people were moving people to
Speaker 2: their houses and they were not who they were, and
Speaker 2: then they just disappeared on them. They tried to report
Speaker 2: a missing and the police wouldn't take it. I was like,
Speaker 2: all right, this sounds of something I could do, and
Speaker 2: it was fraud. They were definitely fraud cases. And so
Speaker 2: I keep gravitating back to missing person cases, and like
Speaker 2: I said, I network with a lot of private investigators.
Speaker 2: So I opened up a company and I still do
Speaker 2: miss some person cases. But what happens is another thing
Speaker 2: which I didn't expect is a lot of nonprofits reach
Speaker 2: out to me. I don't know if you have nonprofits there, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this sign thing I heat, yep.
Speaker 2: Oh you do. So there's a lot of you'll know,
Speaker 2: cold cases are you know, it's not like Hollywood where
Speaker 2: the cold cases everybody's focusing on it. The fold case,
Speaker 2: I hate to say it. It's in the back room,
Speaker 2: it's up on a shelf, it's got dust, and unless
Speaker 2: a call comes in or someone gives a quote a tip,
Speaker 2: that case is going to sit there for a very
Speaker 2: long time. So a lot of these nonprofits will help
Speaker 2: the family, and I look at the old cases, and
Speaker 2: so they'll approach me and they'll say, listen, this is
Speaker 2: the information we have. And I look at it where
Speaker 2: I almost off from the beginning. I don't say men
Speaker 2: soft them meeting like I get out there and do
Speaker 2: the work. I say, was this done? Was? And I
Speaker 2: have a list, and I sometimes I don't even ask
Speaker 2: totally about the case. I go, okay, this person was
Speaker 2: missing from here with all these steps done. And there's
Speaker 2: a lot of times, you know, I could be honest.
Speaker 2: I'm retired now. The steps would never done for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: A steps were missed early on. I'm like, man, you
Speaker 2: almost had this solved in the very beginning. Sometimes you
Speaker 2: can go back to those steps because there are people
Speaker 2: still alive, and you notice people will talk. I've had
Speaker 2: people on the phone from something fifty years ago and
Speaker 2: they're talking about it like it was yesterday. So there
Speaker 2: are people who will talk, and there are steps. Cold
Speaker 2: cases still, kills still can be investigated. And I tell
Speaker 2: the family that the chances of me finding dismissing person,
Speaker 2: finding the body, or having some arrested is slim, but
Speaker 2: I can guarantee you I'll do the work on it,
Speaker 2: and that's something somebody these families have not heard in
Speaker 2: a long time. And I do the work on it,
Speaker 2: and I've had through this nonprofit, And something fulfilling for
Speaker 2: me is I've had one case reopened through the NYPD
Speaker 2: because I handed them the information that they needed and
Speaker 2: I said, listen, you guys solved this. I'm fine with it,
Speaker 2: just you need to reopen this. And the family got
Speaker 2: on them and they got me and I got on
Speaker 2: the investigators and I had a case reopened. And there's
Speaker 2: another case in another state that's not even New York
Speaker 2: where I can't work on it, but they're pretty close
Speaker 2: to arresting somebody. And this is a person that got
Speaker 2: under the radar murdered somebody when as a missing person,
Speaker 2: but it was a homicide and they just need somebody
Speaker 2: to confess our talk. But they're very close to an
Speaker 2: arrest on it. And that's something that the nonprofit had
Speaker 2: me really look at.
Speaker 1: John. I fully understand that, and I've get involved in
Speaker 1: similar stuff since I've left the police, and it starts
Speaker 1: with the families reaching out to me, reaching out to me,
Speaker 1: can you have a look at this. Sometimes I have
Speaker 1: a look at it, whether they've got the cranial brief
Speaker 1: or the brief of events. I look at it and
Speaker 1: I will say in my opinion and have a sort
Speaker 1: of circle of other experienced detectives and people from the
Speaker 1: lawyers and different things. We have a look at these things,
Speaker 1: and if the police haven't done their work, I'll type
Speaker 1: something up and say, well, look, these are the things
Speaker 1: I think should be done. I try not I want
Speaker 1: to work with the police. I don't want conflict. You
Speaker 1: don't want to get Hey, you guys, stuff this up.
Speaker 1: I'm saying this can be helped, but it is rewarding.
Speaker 1: I'm going from this podcast to have a look of
Speaker 1: brief of evidence of the families sent to me in
Speaker 1: a gain. It was just a matter where someone that
Speaker 1: was written off as a suicide and they've got some doubts.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it is or isn't, but I'll
Speaker 1: look through the brief and to me, I'm talking about me,
Speaker 1: but I get the sense you feel the same way.
Speaker 1: If you can help a family with the skills that
Speaker 1: you develop from when you're in the cops. It's not
Speaker 1: a big ask, is it.
Speaker 2: No, it's not a big ass because anybody who retires
Speaker 2: from laur enforcement. Even if you work on a slow
Speaker 2: police you have a tremendous amount of experience that people
Speaker 2: just don't have. And people are very interested in police work.
Speaker 2: It's obvious and because movies and books are written about it.
Speaker 2: So and there are people that need your help and it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not like the PI that goes out
Speaker 2: there and kicks indoors. But you could shed light or
Speaker 2: look at a situation from a different angle that maybe
Speaker 2: the police in nineteen seventy five didn't see. Maybe they
Speaker 2: didn't you know, didn't look at let's match. You know,
Speaker 2: it was common to not match a kese in one
Speaker 2: borrow would have come with the keys in another where
Speaker 2: they were almost the same was a mirror image of
Speaker 2: the same thing. Well, that happened five miles away. It's
Speaker 2: a different jurisdiction. That doesn't mean the serial killer knows that,
Speaker 2: you know, he's doing his work. So you have to
Speaker 2: re look at it.
Speaker 1: And quite often it's not the failings of the police,
Speaker 1: it's just a system that was you know, when I
Speaker 1: first started investigating homicides, they had cards. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: computer system, it was cards. Yeah, So sometimes the mistakes
Speaker 1: have made and I always say that investigative opportunities were missed.
Speaker 1: But the benefit we have now is a benefit of
Speaker 1: hindsight looking back and all the DNA everything that we've
Speaker 1: got in our favor and now forensic science that helps
Speaker 1: with investigations. But would you recommend policing to if someone
Speaker 1: came to you, a member of your family or some
Speaker 1: young person that you knew, came up to you and said,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking to join the police, so I want to
Speaker 1: be a New York cop. What would your responsible to them?
Speaker 2: Well, if I know the person, I know the person,
Speaker 2: their personality, I would know if they would fit it better.
Speaker 2: I have a family member that's on the job right now,
Speaker 2: and I was approached with that exact question, and other
Speaker 2: people approached and people even said, you're going to talk
Speaker 2: this person out of it. It says no, I said,
Speaker 2: this is what this person wants to do. If you
Speaker 2: want to be a police officer, there is a job
Speaker 2: for you there, and if you want to do it, it
Speaker 2: makes your job a lot easier. Fall from perfect, and
Speaker 2: I tell them it's not going to be an easy job.
Speaker 2: You're going to have to do a lot that you
Speaker 2: didn't expect. But if it's what you want to do,
Speaker 2: you have to go in it, and you have to
Speaker 2: be your own person and be good at what you do.
Speaker 2: So I would not talk anybody out of it. If
Speaker 2: it is what they want to do, if their head's
Speaker 2: in the game and they want to do that job,
Speaker 2: I would tell them yes, because I made a good
Speaker 2: life out of it. I mean, I'm sitting on this
Speaker 2: podcast for you, talking across the world, and very few
Speaker 2: professions can do this. That they could. It's interesting they
Speaker 2: could write about it like me and you did. We
Speaker 2: wrote about it. So I would suggest it is if
Speaker 2: it's you want, if it's what you want to do,
Speaker 2: and it almost as if it's was you're calling all along,
Speaker 2: like you know when you watch those movies as a kid,
Speaker 2: and said I could do that, I could sit in
Speaker 2: that police call. And if that stays with you over
Speaker 2: the years, and you're going to college and you going
Speaker 2: to do I went to school, I thought for education,
Speaker 2: but I knew I was going to be a cop,
Speaker 2: So I never once said I wished I was a teacher.
Speaker 2: I did what I was I wanted to do, which
Speaker 2: was police work. So off you have that in you.
Speaker 2: I would tell a person to take the job.
Speaker 1: Yes, I like that. I like that advice. What do
Speaker 1: you think is the qualities of a good cop? What
Speaker 1: are the qualities you look for when you're a supervisor
Speaker 1: and you're looking for a term, or you're making up
Speaker 1: an investigative group. What sort of qualities do you look
Speaker 1: for in a person to be a good cop.
Speaker 2: To be a good cop, you have to really be
Speaker 2: able to talk to people, talk down a situation. Look
Speaker 2: at something like, Okay, this person's drunk. He just told
Speaker 2: me to f myself. Okay, I'm going to step back. Okay,
Speaker 2: don't call them me the f myself, no one. You
Speaker 2: say it in a nice way, but you tell them
Speaker 2: I'm not going to continue with this. But you also
Speaker 2: understand that, you know you can't be the tough guy,
Speaker 2: because if you're the tough guy all the time, doesn't
Speaker 2: matter how big he was, somebody's going to eventually punch
Speaker 2: in the nose. So you have to realize, who's the
Speaker 2: officer that could talk down a situation. Who's the officer
Speaker 2: that could tell the hardened criminal listen. And I've had
Speaker 2: to do this. I've looked at these guys like I
Speaker 2: can't fake this guy. But I tell him to put
Speaker 2: his hands behind his back and come with me. And
Speaker 2: I would say, let's go, let's put your hands on
Speaker 2: your back, let's go. Ain' going okay, Well, I'll call
Speaker 2: five people then and they'll then you'll have to go.
Speaker 2: And he's like, all right, I understand. So a good
Speaker 2: cup nose to look at the situation and doesn't run
Speaker 2: into it. But when you mentioned investigator, you said something
Speaker 2: very interesting. You need a different set of skill set.
Speaker 2: I was the supervisor investigators when I noticed the best
Speaker 2: investigators were the ones who think outside the box.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd agree with that. I'd agree with that because
Speaker 1: it's anyone. Could I say this with homicide investigations, anyone
Speaker 1: can investigate certain the smoking gun type murder. It's like
Speaker 1: tracking an elephant through the snow. It's the difficult ones,
Speaker 1: the protracted ones, the ones that people give up on.
Speaker 1: I look for the investigators that want to hang in
Speaker 1: there and just go hard and think outside of the square,
Speaker 1: because you got to. You've got to be creative in
Speaker 1: your thinking on what you're how are you going to
Speaker 1: go about it? That just brings us about to the
Speaker 1: end of time of our talk. Here book, what's the
Speaker 1: book called and where can we get it? For people
Speaker 1: that want to hear all the stories of a real,
Speaker 1: live New York cop. And you've listened to him now,
Speaker 1: so you know he's a real deal. Where can they
Speaker 1: get access to the book?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm the real deal. It is sixty one, so
Speaker 3: we check that out. We only have people with a
Speaker 3: real deal on the podcast. But yeah, sorry, there's no
Speaker 3: AI here. If anyone's writing with AI, please stop. You know,
Speaker 3: I was the New York City Police officer.
Speaker 2: I did it, and I worked different units that a
Speaker 2: lot of people never saw and never understood. And I'm
Speaker 2: writing about stuff that really people don't talk about all
Speaker 2: in a day's work and officers accounts twenty years NYPD.
Speaker 2: You get it on Amazon Kindle. It's sixty one short stories.
Speaker 2: They're short, from one page to seven page. It's everything
Speaker 2: from cop humor to the nitty gritty. I left out
Speaker 2: the gore, so it's just it's just funny police stories.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of investigation work, internal affairs work.
Speaker 2: There is miss in person cases and just stuff on
Speaker 2: patrol that the truth is stranger than fiction, which means
Speaker 2: that if you had told me, wouldn't believed it. But
Speaker 2: it happened that I wrote about it in a book.
Speaker 1: Well, the bits that I've had available to me that
Speaker 1: I'm reading, they're all interesting stories. And I got to say,
Speaker 1: I can just relate so much to the police. And
Speaker 1: I've seen that with different areas that I've worked in
Speaker 1: the police or different jurisdictions, that there's a commonality that
Speaker 1: runs through through policing, whether it's New York or New
Speaker 1: South Wales, that you understand it. And you mentioned there,
Speaker 1: and we just finish off on the cop humor because
Speaker 1: a lot of times I feel, and we spoke about
Speaker 1: this off camera, you feel bad talking about crime or
Speaker 1: you glorifying crime or whatever when people are listening to
Speaker 1: two of us talk and they might think, well, they're laughing,
Speaker 1: that's a little bit inappropriate. But what I'm at pains
Speaker 1: to explain to people is that you need to be
Speaker 1: able to see some light in all the darkness you
Speaker 1: see as a cop. Otherwise you're not going to last
Speaker 1: to twenty years. It's going to wear you down. You
Speaker 1: find you've got to find something to hang on to,
Speaker 1: whether it's a little bit of humor or a little
Speaker 1: bit of humanity to get you through the darkness. Would
Speaker 1: you agree on that.
Speaker 2: I definitely agree. I saw it in your book too.
Speaker 2: You need you know, you're at work and you're dealing
Speaker 2: with these situations that are thrown at you, and you
Speaker 2: need the humor behind it. And if you go in
Speaker 2: with a sense of humor, you're gonna be it's gonna
Speaker 2: be a little easier. You can't be stiff as a
Speaker 2: board soldiering on. You can't do that all the time.
Speaker 2: And when I say cop humor, I don't want anybody
Speaker 2: to think that we were making jokes in front of
Speaker 2: family members. That never happens. These cop humor happens in
Speaker 2: the cars driving away. It happened in the squad room,
Speaker 2: and it was It was funny because you learn it,
Speaker 2: you see it, and some movies have it correct, and
Speaker 2: some cops. If you have a sense of humor, and
Speaker 2: then you see a crazy situation and then you start
Speaker 2: to joke around about it and you drive away just
Speaker 2: shaking your head, and then sure enough you're back into
Speaker 2: a real situation again. And not every situation the cop
Speaker 2: humor comes in. But you need the cop humor almost
Speaker 2: like your exhaling everything you just saw and you make
Speaker 2: light of it. And it almost shows that, Okay, here's
Speaker 2: my thick skin. But at times you have to I
Speaker 2: wrote a lot about that in my book, and sometimes
Speaker 2: you have to just wow, that just happens. Let's move on,
Speaker 2: Let's go on to something else, and you'll talk about
Speaker 2: it in a copume away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good way of describing it. John. Well, look,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for the chat and taking this
Speaker 1: into the life of a New York cop. I think
Speaker 1: our listeners are going to find your stories and what
Speaker 1: you've spoken about fascinating. I also, and I say this
Speaker 1: to the cops, and yeah, thank you for the service
Speaker 1: to the community. I know what a working cop has
Speaker 1: to put in and the sacrifices you make. So thanks
Speaker 1: for making a difference a difference over there, and all
Speaker 1: the best with your future endeavors.
Speaker 2: Great, thank you for having me on the show.
Speaker 3: Was a great time.
Speaker 1: Enjoyed it. Cheers, cheers. Well John three so didn't disappoint.
Speaker 1: He is everything I expected the New York cop to be.
Speaker 1: But what an impressive, impressive fella and a good storyteller.
Speaker 1: And I can imagine he would have been a good cop.
Speaker 1: And I've got to say he's account been on the
Speaker 1: ground on September eleven. I've read about that it's embedded
Speaker 1: in all our memories, but hearing someone that was there
Speaker 1: and the experiences it was quite chilling. And any stories
Speaker 1: have just been in New York cop I've always had
Speaker 1: a fascination with New York cops, so it was great
Speaker 1: to finally sit down and have a chat with one