Speaker 1: I've been in the job for about maybe three months,
Speaker 1: and I'm checking the drinks for open doors. Then I
Speaker 1: see these three guys there and they're getting their stuff
Speaker 1: for need to jump out. I go around and I'm
Speaker 1: waiting for him. So when they jump out, they jump
Speaker 1: out right by where the rescueation is. As soon as
Speaker 1: I told him to come over here, they all pull
Speaker 1: out their knives, all pissed off, and then I just
Speaker 1: tell them to stay right there, and then I just
Speaker 1: pulled my weapon. I speaking with Joe de Arte about
Speaker 1: working as a real broad security guard, where stand ups
Speaker 1: were part of his daily life, but it wasn't his
Speaker 1: job to fight armed hobos, so Joe called for backup.
Speaker 1: I knew the guys were at the cirky, which is
Speaker 1: half a mile away. I have my radio and I'm
Speaker 1: talking into it. I got these guys. They have knives.
Speaker 1: There's three of them, and I'm right by where you
Speaker 1: guys are at, and they're not listening to me. The guys,
Speaker 1: Joe called, we're rail cops. It's their job to protect
Speaker 1: the trains in the cargo, which means dealing with people
Speaker 1: who aren't supposed to be in the yard. But without backup.
Speaker 1: The hoboes weren't scared of Joe. They outnumbered him three
Speaker 1: to one, and I tell him, bro, put those doll
Speaker 1: I'm going to shoot you there like, yeah, shoot us.
Speaker 1: Just a security guard ran a cop and I'm calling
Speaker 1: it again. Finally one of the rail cops answered, no, Joe,
Speaker 1: just let him go. I go, oh, they put a
Speaker 1: knife on me, man, but the cops just laughed him off.
Speaker 1: Joe realized he was on his own. I see the
Speaker 1: dust cloud do he does the other turn? And I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell at first if it was one of our
Speaker 1: needs border patrol? Does she need damn camaro? I'm like,
Speaker 1: who the hell is this guy? Was that his backup?
Speaker 1: If it was, Joe'd be surprised, And five months he'd
Speaker 1: been working for the Union Pacific Railroad Police, they hadn't
Speaker 1: come to his rescue once. Who were the rail cops?
Speaker 1: I was shocked when I learned about how this private
Speaker 1: security force, with full local, state, and federal police powers,
Speaker 1: reports only to the railroads, and Joe's part of the
Speaker 1: country is the perfect place to see what rail cops
Speaker 1: are all about. So worried al Paso, where the edge
Speaker 1: of the country meets the edge of the train yard,
Speaker 1: with tracks running along the border with Mexico al Paso
Speaker 1: as a crossroads for everyone. And in the middle of
Speaker 1: all of this are the rail cops. I imagine Ruby
Speaker 1: and her friends crossing through rail Passo as they headed
Speaker 1: east from Los Angeles to New Orleans on the Sunset route.
Speaker 1: What happens to hoboes who get off in this wild territory?
Speaker 1: Were they more at risk on land controlled by the
Speaker 1: rail cops. Maybe it was more dangerous there. After all,
Speaker 1: hobos had written songs about how rough it was when
Speaker 1: you got to Texas. So in the train yards of
Speaker 1: a border town, is anyone really in charge? And then
Speaker 1: I'm warning in this the city of the rails, like
Speaker 1: a warrants, ain't Texas, saying I swear that I ain't
Speaker 1: going back a road. And I'm all a boy on
Speaker 1: that track like a warrants in Texas with the old
Speaker 1: dead band. When I'm telling me from you stood the
Speaker 1: mail them out again? I said, where will you go
Speaker 1: with the ball of my roof? Where will you go?
Speaker 1: Real old ward? Hide you? And where will you go
Speaker 1: with a light shine like beside you? You nut your
Speaker 1: mail blow and the whiskey is Brew and as I
Speaker 1: heard about the rail cops, I wanted to know more
Speaker 1: about the people who police the City of the Rails.
Speaker 1: It sounds so unbelievable to say that the nation's railroads
Speaker 1: have their own police who can pretty much do whatever
Speaker 1: they want. Imagine another industry with this kind of muscle,
Speaker 1: like say, Facebook, Google or Big Pharma have their own
Speaker 1: legal militia who could arrest you. That's what you have
Speaker 1: with the rail cops. It's real, real, real easy, especially,
Speaker 1: which is how he ended up in Texas, with Joe
Speaker 1: taking me around to places he used to patrol. Right
Speaker 1: over there, that's called the Roundhouse. How Passo is the
Speaker 1: western edge of Texas on the border of New Mexico.
Speaker 1: It's a scrubby, old west desert town and a basin
Speaker 1: between tall, dark mountains. This town is a hot bit
Speaker 1: of activity, making it the best place to see how
Speaker 1: rail cops fit into the City of the Rails. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's another place I will take it to. Union Pacific
Speaker 1: hired Joe to do the job that rail cops don't
Speaker 1: want to do. Get to know the Hoboes. Joe spent
Speaker 1: five years on the job, but before Union Pacific contracted
Speaker 1: him Joe was just a bouncer. I had no security experience,
Speaker 1: no railroad experience. I just had experience throwing guys out
Speaker 1: of a barge and venues. Joe didn't have much experience,
Speaker 1: and after some training on rail safety, the rail coops
Speaker 1: sort of punked Joe down in the train yard with
Speaker 1: his phone and a notepad and left him to figure
Speaker 1: it out for himself. And there was a lot to learn.
Speaker 1: The rail cops main job is to protect the trains
Speaker 1: and to nab cargo thieves, but it gets more complicated
Speaker 1: in El Paso. The area has always been in international
Speaker 1: crossroads and for more than a century a freight hub.
Speaker 1: Trains go north and south to and from factories on
Speaker 1: the Mexican side of the border, and they had east
Speaker 1: from California with goods from China. That means it every week,
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty eight trains come through El Paso
Speaker 1: on five hundred and thirty five miles of track that
Speaker 1: connect the city's six rail yards, and four million pedestrians
Speaker 1: cross over the bridges that span the Rio Grand And
Speaker 1: with so much movement, Joe had to make sense of
Speaker 1: it all and get a feel for all the different
Speaker 1: types of people the trains brought into the yard. There
Speaker 1: were the hoboes that were just regular travelers. So those
Speaker 1: guys were real cool, like they mostly want to beat
Speaker 1: to themselves. And then there were there were the gangs,
Speaker 1: and then there were the drug londs. Those guys were
Speaker 1: in the shadows. They did everything at night, and they
Speaker 1: were they were hidden everywhere. They scared everybody. That's some
Speaker 1: one thing about El Passo that you can score anything
Speaker 1: real easy. Oh, if you're a hobole, it's easy for
Speaker 1: you for to score some eyes, some cold, some marijuana easy.
Speaker 1: Nobody's gonna you know. You ask those guys. The trains
Speaker 1: make opportunities for everyone at the border, making El Passo
Speaker 1: a huge hot spot for train robbers. So in the
Speaker 1: day to day, hobos are low on a railcops priority list.
Speaker 1: That's why they brought in Joe. Joe's main priority was
Speaker 1: the interview the travelers they found in the yard, get
Speaker 1: their names, take pictures in personal details to add to
Speaker 1: Pacific's trespasser database. Leave the bigger stuff to the rail cops.
Speaker 1: Joe got to know the hoboes in the yard so
Speaker 1: well he knew who to ask for traveling advice. One
Speaker 1: time I caught this three piece band trying to get
Speaker 1: to Denver. They had that big old base, So I'm like,
Speaker 1: what are you trying to do with you? I can
Speaker 1: see that base from everywhere. So finally I'm like, let
Speaker 1: me talk to a conductor. I go, which train is
Speaker 1: going to Denver? Man? Because this guy's gonna end up
Speaker 1: dead in the desert. Man, they didn't even have enough water.
Speaker 1: And then he goes, you know what, you better off
Speaker 1: talking to the hobos because they'll get him on the
Speaker 1: right train. The hobos. You're the schedules really quick. So
Speaker 1: Joe found an older writer who knew just what to do. Yeah, bro,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go that way and tell him to
Speaker 1: go with me. But they're gonna eat six yellons of
Speaker 1: water and they're gonna need no food for two days
Speaker 1: or whatever. But it was a three. I had caught
Speaker 1: him that day four times. What about they kept getting
Speaker 1: on the wrong train and you kept finding them the
Speaker 1: same day. Joe had a lot to keep track of
Speaker 1: lost musicians, hobos, smugglers, cargo thieves. The list goes on.
Speaker 1: People stuck through the yard for all sorts of reasons.
Speaker 1: So the rivers right there there's some tunnels that run
Speaker 1: right across, and the rescue mission was located right there,
Speaker 1: so what would happen? A lot of residents from Mexico
Speaker 1: will come in to eat at the rescue mission because
Speaker 1: they offered three meals. The rescue mistion of El Pasa
Speaker 1: was right by the train yard. Every serious tramp has
Speaker 1: gotten a free meal at its corner of hope, where
Speaker 1: they also can get closed in a shower. And these
Speaker 1: services are useful to locals from Warez too. With all
Speaker 1: these people moving through the yard, Joe never knew what
Speaker 1: to expect when he showed up for work. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, during another like another feeling. Sometimes it was fear,
Speaker 1: sometimes it was happiness. Sometimes it was even sadness. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you feel sorry for these guys. You'd be like, man,
Speaker 1: you know something bad had happened for these guys to
Speaker 1: be here. But it was always different. It's never the same,
Speaker 1: the same old crap. No. But despite all the things
Speaker 1: Joe faced in the yard, he wasn't getting much respect
Speaker 1: from the rail coops. They wouldn't even respond to his
Speaker 1: calls for backup. Joe was eager to show he was
Speaker 1: capable of more so he was excited when the rail
Speaker 1: coops called him in to give him a very important job.
Speaker 1: They're in the office and they go, Joe, we got
Speaker 1: a job for you. Got a special shipment. We need
Speaker 1: you to find it. You need you to look at
Speaker 1: all the yards, especially the one by the bridge. Joe
Speaker 1: was honored. Tracking cargo was important and he took it seriously.
Speaker 1: So they give me a paper and goes, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is a special shipment of sailboat fuel. Okay, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: very special. Man. I said that this explosive. I think
Speaker 1: it is. Man, so be careful and you don't smoke. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't smoke. Man, got the perfect guy for it.
Speaker 1: Joe went from yard to yard searching for this shipment.
Speaker 1: He even got a Border Patrol agent to help him. Look,
Speaker 1: we're looking at everything. We can't find it. And I
Speaker 1: was out there all day and I'm like, God, please
Speaker 1: help me find this. Help me find this shipment. I
Speaker 1: would look so good if I find it. And then
Speaker 1: it dawned on Joe Selbows don't need fuel. It's air.
Speaker 1: It's a shipment over sunk of pitches. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: these guys were just screwing with you. They were like
Speaker 1: ha ha, We're gonna get the security guard. Joe was
Speaker 1: working hard, walking the tracks and checking the trains. Well,
Speaker 1: these guys not only ignored him, but wasted his time
Speaker 1: and just hung out at the circle k and Joe's
Speaker 1: story squeared with what Hobos told me. Rail cops could
Speaker 1: do whatever they wanted, beat you up, strand you in
Speaker 1: the desert, you name it. So what was up with that?
Speaker 1: What makes these guys able to do whatever they want?
Speaker 1: It all ties back to the unique status of the
Speaker 1: rail cops. Their power is written into law and has
Speaker 1: been that way for more than a hundred years. When
Speaker 1: the Civil War ended in eighteen sixty five, the United
Speaker 1: States was subsidizing the rails willy nilly, laying track in
Speaker 1: all directions as a way of boosting the economy. The
Speaker 1: railroads were carving up the landscape, infuriating the indigenous people
Speaker 1: as they destroyed their land and killed off the buffalo.
Speaker 1: When tribes attacked railroad construction crews, Washington sent the US
Speaker 1: Army to protect the workers building the Transcontinental Railroad, But
Speaker 1: when the Transcontinental was completed in eighteen sixty nine, the
Speaker 1: Army went home. There was no force to protect the railroads.
Speaker 1: From thieves inside the cars or raiders from without. So
Speaker 1: the government allowed the states and the territories to charter
Speaker 1: the railroad Police as a private security force with full
Speaker 1: police powers nationwide along one hundred and forty thousand miles
Speaker 1: of track, supervised only by the railroads. Now you might
Speaker 1: think permission to operate outside the law sounds like an exaggeration.
Speaker 1: How could that be possible. It's one of those crazy
Speaker 1: legacy railroad things established in the nineteenth century when at
Speaker 1: the time the West was mostly territories with very few states.
Speaker 1: The government sanctioned rail cops were left up to the
Speaker 1: railroads to manage, and even after one by one Arizona
Speaker 1: and Nevada and the rest were brought into the United States,
Speaker 1: no one remembered to make the railroad police. Just like
Speaker 1: other security guards, railroad police are not subject to government oversight.
Speaker 1: And what does that mean. It means railroads don't have
Speaker 1: to answer public record requests, So we don't know how
Speaker 1: many people the rail cops arrest, under what circumstances, and
Speaker 1: what kind of altercations take place in the yard. I
Speaker 1: guess if you're thinking about this in the gentlest way possible,
Speaker 1: and I'm not you could say, why should this be
Speaker 1: a cause for alarm. The rail cops have a job
Speaker 1: to do and mostly it's confined to the yard, and
Speaker 1: when something big happens, they always interact with the local
Speaker 1: cops to jail the bad guys. Well, cops with no
Speaker 1: rules is never a good idea. Just look how it
Speaker 1: played out for Joe. In a job where he could
Speaker 1: get knives pulled on him, he likely wouldn't get back
Speaker 1: up from his team. This had a major impact on Joe.
Speaker 1: As Joe walked his bead, he interviewed writers and other trespassers,
Speaker 1: took notes and photographs, and filed them in the rail
Speaker 1: cops database. These reports were something everyone was supposed to
Speaker 1: be filing, but not everyone did. Everybody was doing the
Speaker 1: work except the Wildward police. I don't know why. Every
Speaker 1: morning I would hand out they'll field inspection reports to
Speaker 1: allow them because if not that we're going to get
Speaker 1: written up for that. And it was like, Joe, can
Speaker 1: I have five I needed? He's seven today and this
Speaker 1: and that. So you're saying you would stop trespassers and
Speaker 1: you would write them up, and that the other railroad
Speaker 1: police would come to you and go could I have
Speaker 1: some of your reports and I could file them as
Speaker 1: my own. Exactly. Joe began to realize those rail cops
Speaker 1: weren't worthy of his respect. As the months went on,
Speaker 1: he started to believe it might be than them just
Speaker 1: being lazy with plenty of time on their hands to
Speaker 1: pull pranks. They were all supposed to be protecting cargo,
Speaker 1: but sometimes the guys would tell Joe not to patrol
Speaker 1: one of the train yards on a specific day. Sometimes
Speaker 1: tell me to stay away from certain trains that were
Speaker 1: coming in. We got those strains and worry about them.
Speaker 1: And I'm not a copp or nothing like that, but
Speaker 1: I'm not done either. You know, why would you help
Speaker 1: me stay away from them? We'll have my guys stay
Speaker 1: away from that. I'd be suspicious too. When Joe was hired,
Speaker 1: it was to replace guards who'd been robbing the trains
Speaker 1: in the rail yard to run under the bulls noses.
Speaker 1: I wanted to find out if there was any proof
Speaker 1: of Joe's suspicions, so I scoured court filings and legal
Speaker 1: databases looking for rail cops convicted in smuggling cases, but
Speaker 1: could find none. Were the rail cops squeaky clean or
Speaker 1: was it no one reporting. So in the day, those
Speaker 1: three hoboes pulled niyes on Joe. He knew his backup
Speaker 1: wasn't coming. The bulls told Joe to let the hobo
Speaker 1: as go, but they'd already drained their weapons and so
Speaker 1: had Joe. And then Joe saw that cloud of dust
Speaker 1: and the car racing toward him. What the hell was that?
Speaker 1: She didn't look like backup cops didn't drive that kind
Speaker 1: of car. All of a sudden comes this Camaro. It's red,
Speaker 1: it's it's a beautiful car, man, beautiful, beautiful car. He
Speaker 1: gets off and I'm like, what the hell he's wearing
Speaker 1: this weird shirt. Uh, what's that movie? Uh? Ocean's a
Speaker 1: Living where his shirt back. Joe had never seen this
Speaker 1: guy before, but right away he took charge of the situation.
Speaker 1: It blew my mind. He talked to him real stern,
Speaker 1: in their lingual whatever, and then you they're usable, and
Speaker 1: I was like a bull so the first time I
Speaker 1: heard that he talked in their language, and he basically
Speaker 1: told him to throw their knives and walk away, and
Speaker 1: he was gonna let him go, and you know, to
Speaker 1: respect me. They kind of looked at him and they
Speaker 1: were watching them like, WHOA, something's up. They got this
Speaker 1: guy here. Now, I'm like, oh wow, man. And then
Speaker 1: he goes and picks up the knives and put them
Speaker 1: in a bag, and he comes and shakes my hand
Speaker 1: and he's like, I'm Larry Dias and I'm with organized crime.
Speaker 1: And this Miami Vice Entrance hadn't made it clear enough
Speaker 1: things were about to change in Joe's life. Joe's told
Speaker 1: Larry he was frustrated by how few arrest they're were
Speaker 1: in the yard, and as a security guard he couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything about it. I go, these guys are running
Speaker 1: our trains and nobody does nothing to him. And they
Speaker 1: just talked the ship to us and this and that
Speaker 1: and nothing happens. Man. And he goes, where's your backup?
Speaker 1: And I go got the circle k looking the Moody magazines.
Speaker 1: And he goes that things are going to change from
Speaker 1: now on. And then he told me one thing, Joe,
Speaker 1: don't trust none of these guys, not one of them.
Speaker 1: You mean, none of the trespassers, none of the people,
Speaker 1: none of the officers, the guy in the Camaro Union
Speaker 1: Pacific Special Agent Larry Diaz was right. Things were about
Speaker 1: to change for Joe and for the El Paso rail Coops.
Speaker 1: This was the beginning of a dynamic duo. Larry meets
Speaker 1: Joe as Batman meets Robin Sherlock and Watson, partners in
Speaker 1: crime fighting with complimentary skills. Yes, it was a mess,
Speaker 1: pure chaos at the border, but together Larry and Joe,
Speaker 1: they were going to take it on. We're together. Everything
Speaker 1: was about to change for Joe and Larry. With Larry around,
Speaker 1: Jordan have to worry about backup, and the two had
Speaker 1: bigger plans. They were taking on cargo theft. Larry had
Speaker 1: been transferred from LA by Union Pacific to crack down
Speaker 1: on the thefts in and around the El Paso yard,
Speaker 1: and when he met Joe, Larry was just starting to
Speaker 1: understand how complex the problem was in West Texas. In
Speaker 1: some ways, it was like LA but being so close
Speaker 1: to the border meant everything was much more complicated. Soon,
Speaker 1: Larry would teach Joe how to handle showdowns with hoboes
Speaker 1: and the two of them would focus on tapping into
Speaker 1: the hobo network. Joe and Larry brought different skills to this,
Speaker 1: which was reflected in the way they look. Larry's medium
Speaker 1: height with his salt and pepper, black hair pulled into
Speaker 1: a ponytail, and a mustache and goatee framing his face.
Speaker 1: He's muscular and energetic, someone whose intense eyes you can
Speaker 1: feel even when he's wearing his aviator sunglasses. Joe is larger,
Speaker 1: chunky in frame, but with a sweetness about him you
Speaker 1: can hear in his voice. These guys seemed like good cops,
Speaker 1: not like the bulls Hoboes described who had nicknames like
Speaker 1: Satan and Hitler. Those were the ones who scared me
Speaker 1: when I thought about Ruby in the yard. How did
Speaker 1: rail coops treat young women travelers they found on the trains?
Speaker 1: And what could they tell me about Ruby? That was
Speaker 1: one of the first questions I asked when I met
Speaker 1: Larry Diaz, Like if you would see somebody about my
Speaker 1: daughter's age, I mean, would you treat a young girl differently?
Speaker 1: When I saw females, I gave them a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: not just because they're females, but because they're vulnerable. But
Speaker 1: you know what, these chicks were as tough as nails.
Speaker 1: They knew the game, they knew that they had the attitude,
Speaker 1: and they were not afraid. Ruby was tougher now those
Speaker 1: ones on the rails had made their mark. Larry told
Speaker 1: me how female writers depended on that strength while writing.
Speaker 1: I never met a female train writer that was like
Speaker 1: timid or scared, unless it was like some of you
Speaker 1: just jumped on the train and was running away from
Speaker 1: home and doing they had no clue, And I ran
Speaker 1: into those, and of course those got my full attention.
Speaker 1: What if she wasn't with a trained family. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of scary men on the rails who traveled
Speaker 1: in packs and picked up young women who needed protection.
Speaker 1: If she fell in with those characters, would that change
Speaker 1: her prospects? I consider that group thinking, Okay, so how
Speaker 1: is she an asset for us? She could go bang
Speaker 1: for us, or maybe she would go steal some liquor.
Speaker 1: So if your daughter had the ability to be a
Speaker 1: part of this team, even if he was just a
Speaker 1: funny girl, these guys are living this rough life by choice,
Speaker 1: that's her value. I mean, it could be anything. Larry
Speaker 1: knew this how my experience was at Hob's. Mostly didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk to me, and they'd be even less
Speaker 1: likely to talk to a cop. But the alliances people
Speaker 1: made in the train yard were always up for negotiation,
Speaker 1: and Larry was in a position to strike a bargain
Speaker 1: if he thought he could get some useful information. Hobs
Speaker 1: could be good informants. Most of them don't rob trains,
Speaker 1: they don't have much use for a big screen TV
Speaker 1: in a box car, but they are likely to have
Speaker 1: seen the people who swarm the yard broke up in
Speaker 1: a container and made off with the laptops. Guess what,
Speaker 1: these guys know the railroad, and they know the railroad schedule,
Speaker 1: and they know the routes and everything about the trains
Speaker 1: better than even the railroad coption. If the people who
Speaker 1: rode the train had that much intel, Larry would try
Speaker 1: to turn them into informants. And that's where Joe came in.
Speaker 1: Larry took Joe under his wing, showing him how the
Speaker 1: trespasser information he was already gathering could be a big
Speaker 1: help to Larry. Joe's familiarity with hobos, the photos and
Speaker 1: bios he'd blogged on his phone could be where Larry
Speaker 1: started his investigations. So Larry set him to work turning
Speaker 1: hoboes into informants. Joe did a phenomenal job, point actually
Speaker 1: and finding sources for me. I go. This is what
Speaker 1: I want from the guys. Asking these questions, do you
Speaker 1: know about railroad crime? Oh my god, you're do you
Speaker 1: write trains? What have you seen? And where do you
Speaker 1: ride at? What do you see? These questions were a
Speaker 1: way to start testing out how much a hobo knew.
Speaker 1: Larry also taught Joe how to take advantage of watching
Speaker 1: hoboes who had outstanding warrants for their arrest. But this
Speaker 1: wasn't as easy as walking up to a hobo asking
Speaker 1: them a couple of questions. Ahobo didn't want it to
Speaker 1: get around that he was working with the cops, so
Speaker 1: they would only agree if they could do their business
Speaker 1: in secret. Joe had a whole strategy for this approach.
Speaker 1: Give me something to work with, and you tell me
Speaker 1: you know what these guys are doing this. This guy's
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna know you're telling me this, and we're going
Speaker 1: to use you as a source. And I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: sure my guys don't mess with you. You're always going
Speaker 1: to have water, you know, and I'm always going to
Speaker 1: give you a right to the rescue mission. After meeting Larry,
Speaker 1: Joe had an eye out for the kind of traveler
Speaker 1: who could be a good source, but that was only
Speaker 1: part of what made Joe effective. Joe's genuine manner an
Speaker 1: open hearted approach, was in part thanks to his boss
Speaker 1: t J. Munson. He took care of me like he
Speaker 1: gave me a chance in my life to be something
Speaker 1: I always wanted to be, a cop. TJ's magical man.
Speaker 1: He's John Wayne Man, and I'll pass how I got
Speaker 1: to meet TJ. He's retired now and extremely proud of
Speaker 1: the decades he spent as a rail cop. It was
Speaker 1: part of his family's tradition. His dad had been a
Speaker 1: bull and TJ grew up in a small rail red
Speaker 1: town in Nevada. He watched his dad interact with travelers,
Speaker 1: and sometimes TJ worked alongside them in the garden. The
Speaker 1: old boy went over to my dad and I followed along,
Speaker 1: you know, and he said, sir, he said, anyway I
Speaker 1: could talk you out of getting a little grub. And
Speaker 1: my dad said, well, I'll tell you what he said.
Speaker 1: You worked for me today, help us out. He said,
Speaker 1: I'll give you some money and I'll give you some grub.
Speaker 1: TJ heard their stories and got to know the people
Speaker 1: his dad called old boys, and TJ instructed his force
Speaker 1: to see old boys as people, to treat them with kindness.
Speaker 1: You know one thing I told my guys when I
Speaker 1: hired them. If you ask an old boy what's your
Speaker 1: occupation and he tells you doctor, write doctor down because
Speaker 1: she's probab probably a doctor. He's had a bad time somewhere.
Speaker 1: His wife was leftyan, he's gotten into the bottle. Something
Speaker 1: has happened to where he just took off. You know,
Speaker 1: I needs ride in the realm. So TJ wanted his
Speaker 1: guys on the forest to grant the hobo's human dignity.
Speaker 1: And it was the same decency and humored TJ brought
Speaker 1: to his work at the border. He was amused by
Speaker 1: the chaos, and with four decades on the job, he
Speaker 1: had a lot of funny stories. Patton daughter guy one time,
Speaker 1: and I'm scared to death of snakes, and every pocket
Speaker 1: I touched moved. I joke, back, man, what do you
Speaker 1: got in that pocket? Parakeet? He had a bunch of birds.
Speaker 1: He had birds in all his pockets. They were pair
Speaker 1: of keets. Yeah, I mean, you don't go figure, I mean,
Speaker 1: when the hell does that? But somebody that rides your train,
Speaker 1: I get I don't know that compassion Joe learned from TJ.
Speaker 1: Came in handy at the border. He interacted with so
Speaker 1: many different kinds of people and still approached every traveler
Speaker 1: with understanding. He could appreciate how difficult life had been
Speaker 1: for some of them. These guys had been through so
Speaker 1: much stuff, you know. That's why t J would always
Speaker 1: tell me, the ali need is a little love, Joe,
Speaker 1: Just like the song, all you need is love, And
Speaker 1: that was very important about what I did. Man. Mostly,
Speaker 1: Joe approached people softly, with curiosity and compassion. At first,
Speaker 1: he recalled the time when a distraught man he found
Speaker 1: in the yard became one of Larry's best informants. When
Speaker 1: Joe found him, the hobo was racked with guilt about
Speaker 1: the mess he'd made of his life. It's because I've
Speaker 1: been doing some bad stuff, bro, You're never gonna understand.
Speaker 1: May come back. Go you're liking Donalds? He goes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: did McDonald's a long time bro? So I took him
Speaker 1: to McDonald's right there, and over lunch, Joe found out
Speaker 1: his guest knew a lot. Joe called Larry. This guy,
Speaker 1: he says he knows about smuggling and all that he goes,
Speaker 1: just keep him there, probably gonna stay here, man. He's
Speaker 1: loving every drink and this and that. And Joe kept
Speaker 1: the guy there till Larry showed up, and in the
Speaker 1: end he gave them valuable information about drug smuggling in
Speaker 1: the area. He's one of them, told me about coming
Speaker 1: across with loads of dope, and he had done it himself.
Speaker 1: They put the narcotics in a backpack about three rail
Speaker 1: cars away in front of them usually or behind them,
Speaker 1: and then they ride with the load to Chicago or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, passo through Larry and Joe. My eyes were
Speaker 1: open to just how many different criminals use the rails
Speaker 1: to do their business. I didn't expect Maryby to be
Speaker 1: riding alongside potential narcotics traffickers. I asked Joe if young
Speaker 1: women were ever informants, but Joe said the one time
Speaker 1: he caught young women in the yard, but they were
Speaker 1: expecting shocked him. I pulled him off the train and
Speaker 1: then I just told him to stand by my vehicle
Speaker 1: and I was getting all their stuff. And then she's like, so,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna fuckers right now? Or what are
Speaker 1: you gonna take us somewhere? I go fuck you right now,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? I go, no, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take you the rescue mission. She gets you could get
Speaker 1: a shower and eat something, and then she goes, well,
Speaker 1: because where are you used to getting abused and hit
Speaker 1: and raped? And I go, well, what are you doing
Speaker 1: here in the first place? And then she's like you
Speaker 1: probably would understand had Ruby ever faced this, I wondered
Speaker 1: how common it was. My guest was not very Although
Speaker 1: young women travelers had told me stories about angry cops
Speaker 1: taking their packs as evidence or patting them down in
Speaker 1: a sexual manner, I'd never heard a story like the
Speaker 1: one Joe told. Still, considering how much leeway cops had,
Speaker 1: it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. What I found
Speaker 1: out about the rails is there's different levels of eableness.
Speaker 1: Right if you want to play with the devil, you're
Speaker 1: gonna find them down the rail yard. And that's where
Speaker 1: he catched her prey. So this was the Batman Robin
Speaker 1: balance in action. Joe was the quieter guy, the one
Speaker 1: on the scene who patrolled the tracks. Meanwhile, Larry worked
Speaker 1: the streets. And because Larry had more power than other cops,
Speaker 1: his mission to fight cargo. Theft had no bounds, which
Speaker 1: was a good thing for Larry for many reasons. For one,
Speaker 1: Larry is the aggressive type, wiley and confrontational, someone who
Speaker 1: stood out among the other cops and enjoyed that when
Speaker 1: he showed up in El Paso, he didn't mind provoking people,
Speaker 1: like with his taste in music. When Larry was a teenager,
Speaker 1: he discovered Jimmy Hendrix. Jimmy showed him another world was possible,
Speaker 1: more than what he saw in his neighborhood. And I
Speaker 1: prayed to Jimmy Hendrix every morning. Larry brought his superfandom
Speaker 1: with him to the Union Pacific Rail coup offices, where
Speaker 1: he built a little shrine to Hendrix. A lot of
Speaker 1: other cops didn't like that, and in this mancho crowd,
Speaker 1: a confrontation was inevitable. And every time Larry describes a
Speaker 1: confrontation with authority, it feels like we're in a scene
Speaker 1: from a lethal weapon movie. I remember the captain tell
Speaker 1: you take that shit off the wall. You said, motherfucker,
Speaker 1: that's God. Don't you fuck with my God? And they
Speaker 1: were everybody everybody's got guns, didn't shit, And you're like
Speaker 1: fucking screaming at him a god motherfucker and ars like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck is going on here? Larry brought this
Speaker 1: same determination with him on the beach. So while Joe
Speaker 1: moved through the yard trying to find hoboes it could
Speaker 1: tell him something about cargo theft, Larry moved outside it.
Speaker 1: He worked the streets, even the local swap meets, to
Speaker 1: get intel on cargo thieves. They had this space called
Speaker 1: La Tita Edo. It was a sanctioned swap meet in
Speaker 1: downtown El Paso. And I would look at the space,
Speaker 1: so this is a fucking gold mine. And so went
Speaker 1: in there and I would see these boxes and cases
Speaker 1: of stuff stacked up, nikes and blenders and VCRs. Why
Speaker 1: are the why of these poor people have this ship?
Speaker 1: It would take like four or five boxes or whatever
Speaker 1: recept that they had just stolen off the train the
Speaker 1: night before. And then you could say, hey, dude, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna open a store over here on our pastle Dude,
Speaker 1: how many of these can you get? I'll buy this
Speaker 1: one right here. How many can you get? Bro? Oh,
Speaker 1: I got fucking three hundred of those, okay, ar we're
Speaker 1: losing three hundred. You see how this rich bubble I
Speaker 1: do Larry, but only because you explained it to me.
Speaker 1: Cargo Fest was a seemingly unsolvable puzzle with a million
Speaker 1: pieces of it scattered all over the border. It took
Speaker 1: a special kind of mind to put those pieces together,
Speaker 1: and Larry he came to this as his birthright. Larry
Speaker 1: was raised in a working class neighborhood in Whittier, California,
Speaker 1: twenty miles southeast of Los Angeles. His parents immigrated from
Speaker 1: Mexico before Larry was born in Hollywood, and both worked
Speaker 1: several jobs to support the family. Before he finished elementary school,
Speaker 1: he joined a gang and it wasn't long before he
Speaker 1: and the whole gang got in trouble with the law.
Speaker 1: So in sixth grade, I got arrested with nineteen of
Speaker 1: us got arrested. We had broken into my own school.
Speaker 1: This gang vandalized his elementary school and did some real damage.
Speaker 1: And this arrest was a turning point for Larry. Sitting
Speaker 1: on a bench in the sheriff station, Larry got a
Speaker 1: good look at the detectives and admired their style. I
Speaker 1: remember them very clearly, like cussing. They had their guns exposed,
Speaker 1: they had like t shirts on their guns out their
Speaker 1: badge and their handcuffs tucked around their belt, and I
Speaker 1: just liked the way that look. In addition to that,
Speaker 1: they were like pushing each other, saying hey, fuck you,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you know, they were like friends, the
Speaker 1: same stuff that we did in the street. And I said, hmm,
Speaker 1: this is like, this is like a gang right here,
Speaker 1: and look at they've got guns. So Larry left the
Speaker 1: gang and enrolled in the Sheriff's Academy, and shortly after
Speaker 1: he graduated, he was recruited by Union Pacific to become
Speaker 1: a rail cup Larry was intrigued as a kid. Trains
Speaker 1: had run right behind his house, and he and his
Speaker 1: gang sometimes broke into them to steal cases of beer.
Speaker 1: He was still fascinated by trains, and this job offered
Speaker 1: even more money, so Larry applied to the railroad police,
Speaker 1: and in that uniquely Larry way, he decided not to
Speaker 1: hide his gang pass. When he was interviewed by the railroad,
Speaker 1: he bragged about it and guess what, I know how
Speaker 1: to hop those trains. They're going what I know how
Speaker 1: to pull the air and make the trains stop. They're
Speaker 1: like what And somehow you think this is a good thing?
Speaker 1: To be chainas fucking qualified, bro. I'm better qualified anybody
Speaker 1: you know. Larry got hired and when he started he
Speaker 1: didn't know the full story of the railcops. On his
Speaker 1: first day, his training officer explained, absolute impunity came with
Speaker 1: the job. He goes everything you learned in the sheriff academy,
Speaker 1: forget it. This is a whole different role. That's all garbage.
Speaker 1: This is different. This is the railroad police. I mean
Speaker 1: that they don't have to follow a certain rule exactly.
Speaker 1: They make their own. This is how we operate here.
Speaker 1: We're bulls. We have the power, fed and stay. We
Speaker 1: do what we want. We're in control. FBI. They can't
Speaker 1: stop apart give him a ticket for going through a
Speaker 1: red light. We can't. We give tickets too. LAPD can't
Speaker 1: go to the US Attorney's office and file the case.
Speaker 1: We can't. We're Feds too. We got both and there's
Speaker 1: no public scrutiny, thank you none. You are a lawless
Speaker 1: police force. We had some guidelines, but they're not mandatory.
Speaker 1: They were mandatory, But did we follow him? Who's going
Speaker 1: to keep our feet to the fire on that. After
Speaker 1: seeing how Joe got treated by his co workers, their
Speaker 1: lack of effort should be no surprise. I mean, why
Speaker 1: do too much if no one's really watching? The guys
Speaker 1: like Joe and Larry, they were different. Larry believes he
Speaker 1: was one of the first Hispanic men hired as a
Speaker 1: Union Pacific rail coop back in the nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 1: the rail cop bosses told him straight out that he
Speaker 1: was a diversity higher and they'd be happy to see
Speaker 1: him quit. This put a chip on Larry's shoulder. He
Speaker 1: would show them he'd work harder and smarter than anyone
Speaker 1: else more arrest, stop more cargo theft using these broad
Speaker 1: police powers in a world where there were a few boundaries.
Speaker 1: Larry saw the possibilities he could become a legend, and
Speaker 1: he did. He Pacific recognized his skills could help handle
Speaker 1: the growing cargo theft problem in ol Passau. Assembling the
Speaker 1: pieces of this puzzle brought him to the slopes of
Speaker 1: Mount Christo Ray And that's where you see how all
Speaker 1: of this happened. And I know these mounds like the
Speaker 1: back of my hand because we used to walk up
Speaker 1: here all the time and set up sir balances on
Speaker 1: the US side. After gathering information about robbers Larry knew
Speaker 1: how the thieves thought. He could see their trucks parked
Speaker 1: on the other side of the border. A sure sign
Speaker 1: of raid was on the horizon. This is obviously Mexico.
Speaker 1: We're like, what fifty feet from the border, so this
Speaker 1: was a real hard area to contain. The spot Larry's
Speaker 1: showing me is one of the most dangerous and desperate
Speaker 1: neighborhoods in this section of the border. The Book of
Speaker 1: the Lobo. The Wolf's mouth is at the base of
Speaker 1: the mountains where the trains have to slow down before
Speaker 1: they ascend. It's literally a stone's throw from the tracks,
Speaker 1: making it the perfect place for thieves to snap up cargo.
Speaker 1: From his informants, Larry knew when there was a valuable
Speaker 1: of train coming into the yard, one with flat screen
Speaker 1: TVs or Nike shoes, and if his fellow rail cups
Speaker 1: were too busy at the circle k, Larry had a plan.
Speaker 1: So we were talking about source development and the FBI
Speaker 1: was telling you how I had more informants than dated.
Speaker 1: Big government agencies don't get involved unless the thefts are
Speaker 1: large enough, and some are at the Book of the Lobo.
Speaker 1: So Larry developed allies and other agencies. Larry told me
Speaker 1: about the setup for one of his big raids. You
Speaker 1: see the highest point of the first hill in front
Speaker 1: of us right here, So we used to set up
Speaker 1: in that saddle. Everybody was involved, the Phoebees, the customs,
Speaker 1: the railroad police, border Patrol, sun and park last apartment.
Speaker 1: We used to set up over there at night ten
Speaker 1: o'clock till you know, six am, while it was dark.
Speaker 1: We had blackhawks and night vision and everything. Once the
Speaker 1: guys were in place, Larry would command the operation from
Speaker 1: up in the saddle. That's from Border Patrol, I mean,
Speaker 1: and digged themselves a hole maybe two days before low
Speaker 1: crawl all the way across through the bushes, dressed like
Speaker 1: a damn bush themselves. They went in there with their
Speaker 1: little shovels and get in the dirt and cover themselves up.
Speaker 1: And they lived there for twelve hours, yeah, eating, shitting
Speaker 1: their pants, peat in their pants, just so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be found out and you know discovered. From the saddle,
Speaker 1: the force had a great view of the trains route
Speaker 1: through the Wolf's Mouth. As a train approaches, everyone is
Speaker 1: in position up next. How the rate unfolds with the
Speaker 1: train tracks running right by the border. The book of
Speaker 1: the Lobo was the perfect place for thieves to strike,
Speaker 1: judging from there. So what's in that train? Everything? Everything
Speaker 1: you can possibly think of, from makeup to I mean everything, shoes, clothing, food,
Speaker 1: I mean anything you can think of there, and all
Speaker 1: those goods were vulnerable in this stretch of desert. After
Speaker 1: driving in fast from the west. Trains slowed down right
Speaker 1: by the border as they approach El Paso to climb
Speaker 1: Mount Christo Ray. So the railroad police out here would
Speaker 1: have a hell of a time because of trains, as
Speaker 1: I was saying, would go up the hill a mile
Speaker 1: and a half long train. But these trains are now
Speaker 1: two and three miles long, offering a lot of cargo
Speaker 1: theft opportunities. So no matter how many street gang and
Speaker 1: cargo theft informants Show and Larry had, the trains were vulnerable.
Speaker 1: And from up in the saddle, Larry could see the
Speaker 1: whole thing play out. The train would only be going
Speaker 1: twenty miles an hour or whatever. And believe it or not, yes,
Speaker 1: these guys can jump on a train while I was
Speaker 1: moving at twenty twenty five miles an hour without any problem.
Speaker 1: Hopping a train moving at twenty miles an hour is
Speaker 1: no joke. But these experienced thieves had no problem. They
Speaker 1: just knew how to time it. They would jump on
Speaker 1: it and grab onto a ladder, and they did it
Speaker 1: sometimes with twenty thirty forty fifty pound backpacks on their
Speaker 1: back full of dope. Once that first group hopped on
Speaker 1: a train, the next step was to make it stop.
Speaker 1: They would pull out the pins to make the train
Speaker 1: lose it's air. The train would stop and these guys
Speaker 1: would come across five fifteen, twenty thirty, maybe even forty
Speaker 1: would come and start looting the training. And then it
Speaker 1: was an all or nothing, free for all that These
Speaker 1: cracked open containers as easily as they had hopped the train,
Speaker 1: and they would come with bowl cutters. Some of them
Speaker 1: just had pipes that fit around the high security seals,
Speaker 1: and they would just work it back and forth until
Speaker 1: they broke off and they opened up the container and
Speaker 1: they'd have like six or seven, ten fifteen guys there
Speaker 1: and they would just start unloading it incredibly. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: robbery was even simpler than that. I mean, why bother
Speaker 1: stopping the train at all. They would burglarize the train
Speaker 1: as it moved. Also, they said, you know what, I
Speaker 1: need to go to Alpasso. I'm going to burglarize the
Speaker 1: train as it's moving and get some stuff and then
Speaker 1: go sell it downtown. And it's a win win for them.
Speaker 1: They get a free ride, they get their product, and
Speaker 1: they sell it they make their money, etc. Etc. So,
Speaker 1: as the train nears the book of the Lobo cargo
Speaker 1: thieves emerge from the Mexican side of the border and
Speaker 1: the whole operation commences. The black Hawks swooped down, light
Speaker 1: scanned the tracks, Swarms of officers pop out of the bushes,
Speaker 1: and dozens of cargo thieves are hauled off to jail.
Speaker 1: But despite all this, despite all the fancy equipment and
Speaker 1: the government budgets, Larry and his team weren't able to
Speaker 1: make much of a dent in things. You know what,
Speaker 1: we weren't very successful. They just this is their neighborhood,
Speaker 1: this is their territory. They were in full control. The
Speaker 1: thieves knew the area and were experienced at avoiding detection.
Speaker 1: And these train robberies were a sophisticated operation. We didn't
Speaker 1: have what it took to catch them. Yeah, we caught
Speaker 1: a bunch of them a lot of times, but we
Speaker 1: didn't catch them as much as I think we should have.
Speaker 1: They were just quicker than us. They're desperate, I mean,
Speaker 1: they wanted to eat, they wanted to get high, they
Speaker 1: were motivated. How could Joe and Larry ever wrap their
Speaker 1: arms around all this chaos. They could turn informants, pull
Speaker 1: in Phoebees, bring in the Blackhawks. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, they were outnumbered. But even if Larry didn't
Speaker 1: make a big dent in the cargo, theft and Opasso,
Speaker 1: bringing in those government agencies was significant. Here was a
Speaker 1: rail coup leading a multi agency government raid. History left
Speaker 1: rail cops with overarching powers, and for Larry that meant
Speaker 1: a chance to climb from La Sheriff's department training to
Speaker 1: commanding the FBI. Thanks in part to the railroads and
Speaker 1: from his perch in the saddle, Larry was the king
Speaker 1: of the hill, able to use all of his colorful
Speaker 1: background on the job, and he'd certainly shown those guys
Speaker 1: who called him a diversity hire. Running this raid, Larry
Speaker 1: felt powerful and like he was making an impact. At least,
Speaker 1: he felt so good. Nothing could bring him down, even
Speaker 1: the fact that the residence of the Book of the
Speaker 1: Lobo were not Jimmie Hendricks fans. I learned Mexican music
Speaker 1: because I sat up there so long. I would have
Speaker 1: words and I would listen to words, and I'd be
Speaker 1: up there tapping my toe, rocking out, listen to music
Speaker 1: that they were playing down here, because it was the same,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty songs, you know, day after day, and
Speaker 1: they was loud, and they would all gather. It'd be like,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty thirty forty of them out here dancing, laughing.
Speaker 1: You can hear girls giggling and you gun fire, and
Speaker 1: this just crazy. Larry's teammates would look up using their
Speaker 1: night vision goggles and wonder what Larry was doing up there.
Speaker 1: They would be on this mace up here and they
Speaker 1: would see me over there and they good, to you,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. I'm dancing, dog. He's not answering
Speaker 1: because he's dancing right now. He's rocking out. And I
Speaker 1: would they go away. They're gonna see you, man, No
Speaker 1: fuck are. They ain't got night vision. I can't even
Speaker 1: see the guy sitting two feet away from me. I'll
Speaker 1: they gonna see me. Lay back down, shut up. This
Speaker 1: is my operation. I'm gonna dance if I want to
Speaker 1: Larry was dancing because even though he didn't stop cargo theft,
Speaker 1: through this raid, he could get a piece that brought
Speaker 1: him closer to solving this puzzle. By capturing thieves and
Speaker 1: interrogating them, Larry might get information not just about cargo theft,
Speaker 1: but about drug smuggling. The smugglers find every which way
Speaker 1: they can to small little narcotics in the US, because
Speaker 1: I knew about Tucson, I knew about Phoenix, I knew
Speaker 1: about la I knew about you know, east and west
Speaker 1: of here, one hundred miles several hundred miles. And then
Speaker 1: they ride with the load to like they'll end up
Speaker 1: going in the end to Chicago or whatever. And it
Speaker 1: happens too on the way going south. We're always looking
Speaker 1: for money in rail cars going back south into Mexico.
Speaker 1: This smuggling network reaches everywhere the railroads do. But when
Speaker 1: you talk about illegal immigration and drug smuggling, somehow the
Speaker 1: trains rarely come up. In fact, what I asked Larry
Speaker 1: to characterize the extent of the problem, he didn't mince words.
Speaker 1: I will tell you every train's got it. Every single
Speaker 1: train that comes across has got some contraband not just narcotics,
Speaker 1: but like even merchandise that has not been cleared by
Speaker 1: customs and they're sneaking it across because customs would delay
Speaker 1: it or it costs too much to bring it across. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: no doubt, every single train. This might sound like a
Speaker 1: bold claim at first, but it happens in plain sight
Speaker 1: on the Mexican side of the border. Alexei, who I
Speaker 1: spoke with in episode three, told me about riding a
Speaker 1: train through the state of Chihuahua, where Warez is. He
Speaker 1: decided to hop a train home to Texas. After finding
Speaker 1: his way to the tracks, Alexei was surprised to discovery
Speaker 1: that in Mexico, train hopping is not a crime. It
Speaker 1: takes place out in the open at whatever time at night.
Speaker 1: The ground crews like Chowawa Chiwawa, just yelling it out.
Speaker 1: And then all these people that I didn't see that
Speaker 1: we're in the bushes all loaded up on the train
Speaker 1: at once. I mean they were all up on top
Speaker 1: of grainers. I mean it was probably like thirty something
Speaker 1: people on this train. So I get on the train
Speaker 1: and I remember being either a full moon or real
Speaker 1: close to the full moon. With his new companions on
Speaker 1: the train, Alexei moved through one of the most beautiful
Speaker 1: landscapes he'd ever seen Chihuaha was Copper Canyon. I was
Speaker 1: riding the train through Copper Canyon, which is just spectacularly gorgeous,
Speaker 1: and I remember the moon reflecting on ponds and lakes
Speaker 1: and just so so gorgeous. Lulled by the beauty, Alexey
Speaker 1: was surprised when the train became in the slow and
Speaker 1: then stop. You saw a dust cloud in the distance,
Speaker 1: and then you got a close up view of the
Speaker 1: drug trade from the Mexican side of the border, and
Speaker 1: that dust pile gets closer and closer and closer and closer,
Speaker 1: and this train went right before it stops, people busted
Speaker 1: the locks on the top of the grainers and then
Speaker 1: took out bales, hay bale size of weed, just bales
Speaker 1: and bales and bales and weed. And then that dust
Speaker 1: clue that I saw in the background was a truck
Speaker 1: that was Ronnie doing this. Weed wasn't crossing the border
Speaker 1: in the train, but the train was bringing it closer,
Speaker 1: so smaller amounts could be smuggled across using other methods
Speaker 1: of transport like vans or backpacks. And then they just
Speaker 1: dumped all this weed on the side of the side
Speaker 1: of the train, and then probably about say like ten
Speaker 1: people or something like that all got off and loaded
Speaker 1: up that truck burned off. Alexei witnessed a smuggling operation
Speaker 1: pulled off without a hitch, in and out easy. He
Speaker 1: was just a normal routine thing. The engineer must have
Speaker 1: been in it. Yeah, like everybody was on it. Speaking
Speaker 1: with Alexei, it's hard not to sympathize with Larry. He
Speaker 1: had Joe, he had government resources, but in the end
Speaker 1: he was another cop fighting against a challenge that has
Speaker 1: thousands of people on the other side. No matter how
Speaker 1: hard Larry worked, the problem of cargo fest was going
Speaker 1: on before he got there, and still goes on now
Speaker 1: that he's gone. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: and never has been and never will be the railroad's
Speaker 1: top priority. When the Border Patrol confiscated drugs smuggle on
Speaker 1: Unie Pacific trains, it issued heavy fines to try to
Speaker 1: encourage the railroad to get better control of its business.
Speaker 1: But you and Pacific maintained that it couldn't control was
Speaker 1: placed on its trains in Mexico. After all, it has
Speaker 1: no jurisdiction in a foreign country. Surely the government could
Speaker 1: understand that. How could Union Pacific forget that it owns
Speaker 1: twenty four percent of Pharaoh Max, the same railroad that
Speaker 1: brings Union Pacific cargo over the border to El Paso.
Speaker 1: That was another dimension to my understanding of the rails.
Speaker 1: Sure I knew about the risks of the train and
Speaker 1: the hoboes, but smugglers and thieves that was something else.
Speaker 1: Yet again, this world remains hidden in plain sight. Trains
Speaker 1: spread their way through all sorts of terrible neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: crime infested industrial sites, and no one thinks of them
Speaker 1: as the connectors of one crime scene to another. And
Speaker 1: there was Ruby making her way through it all. I
Speaker 1: was exhausted when I got back from El Paso. There
Speaker 1: was something about learning how the rail coops operated that
Speaker 1: made me think maybe I'd had my fill of the darkness,
Speaker 1: Like when Joe described young women in the train yard
Speaker 1: bargaining for their safety. Maybe I didn't need to know that.
Speaker 1: Yet there is that maternal obligation to worry and to
Speaker 1: convince yourself that worrying is a form of love. If
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing this mad investigation, running around the country,
Speaker 1: talking to hundreds of people. Was I giving up hope?
Speaker 1: Was I abandoning Ruby? So it was in my state
Speaker 1: of frustrated energy that Ruby called. I was still unpacking
Speaker 1: my stuff in my room at the barn, but the
Speaker 1: first thing I had put together was my desk, my
Speaker 1: reporting station for collecting info about what was going on
Speaker 1: with Ruby, so my cell phone rang. I sat down
Speaker 1: and pulled out my Ruby notebook to jot down the
Speaker 1: number she was calling from. But the second she started talking,
Speaker 1: I realized I wouldn't need my notebook. Ruby told me
Speaker 1: she was coming home. She would take her time, but
Speaker 1: she was on her way back when she left. Part
Speaker 1: of her goal she'd had a goal was to see
Speaker 1: the United States. On her way home, she would circumnavigate
Speaker 1: the nation, starting in New York with a visit to
Speaker 1: her brother, then up to Vermont and across the top
Speaker 1: of the country. She had no idea how long it
Speaker 1: would take, but I didn't care. There was an end date,
Speaker 1: date uncertain, but there was an end. So just as
Speaker 1: I was about to surrender, this brought me back. There
Speaker 1: was a problem with all that I had learned. Instead
Speaker 1: of some soothing image of Ruby in the box car,
Speaker 1: gazing at fields of grain, I could actually imagine the
Speaker 1: steps it took to hop a train, the dangers in
Speaker 1: the box car, and the scary people in and near
Speaker 1: the yard. Maybe my time in the City of the
Speaker 1: Rails was coming to an end with Ruby's return, But
Speaker 1: there was just one more story I wanted to get
Speaker 1: before I left. It was a story about the people
Speaker 1: who run the City of the Rails. It was about
Speaker 1: the workers in the train yard. The power of the
Speaker 1: railroad works in the favor of the rail coops, but
Speaker 1: often that power doesn't serve the rest of its employees. Well,
Speaker 1: when I'd been in Colton, I went to a retirement
Speaker 1: party where I met Carrie Westcott. The guests were all
Speaker 1: congratulating themselves for having made it all the way to
Speaker 1: retirement because so few do. And then of them said
Speaker 1: it was a shame that they did to Nikki, and
Speaker 1: another one said it should be illegal, but it's just
Speaker 1: the way of the railroad. So who was Nikki? Nikki
Speaker 1: is just one of those people that you just always
Speaker 1: want to do more for Gosh, she's just such a
Speaker 1: good person, you know, and just has such a good energy.
Speaker 1: They didn't like Nikki. Nikki carries herself in a way
Speaker 1: that they don't like the alpha of male, black or female,
Speaker 1: and everybody knows once Union Pacific puts their claws and
Speaker 1: they're not going to stop until they can tamrinate you.
Speaker 1: Like I used to say on Norfolk Southern, I said,
Speaker 1: we hate them, and the reason we hate them is
Speaker 1: because they hate us. Nobody treats other human beings in
Speaker 1: the way that we are being treated unless they actually
Speaker 1: hate us. Next we'll look into the relationship between those
Speaker 1: who drive the trains and those who own them and
Speaker 1: how it got to be this way. That's next episode
Speaker 1: on City of the Rails se Montica seven, Motica Douster fourteen,
Speaker 1: as well be drinking gasol. Look what You've done. City
Speaker 1: of the Rails is written and hosted by me then
Speaker 1: El Morton and developed in partnership between Flip Turn Studios
Speaker 1: and iHeart Podcasts. Thank you to everyone who's been calling us.
Speaker 1: I'm hearing from housewives, artists, current hoboes, and retired ones.
Speaker 1: It's great when a story can touch so many different people.
Speaker 1: We love to hear it, so please keep calling. The
Speaker 1: number is seven oh seven six five three three three nine.
Speaker 1: I want to help us out. You can do it
Speaker 1: very quickly by leaving us a rating or a review
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to this. It will help more people
Speaker 1: find the show, and it means a lot to us.
Speaker 1: Want to follow along, find us on Instagram at flip
Speaker 1: turn pods. Our team is executive producer and showrunner Julian
Speaker 1: Weller and executive producer Mark Healey from Flip Turn, Senior
Speaker 1: producer and editing master Abu Zafar, and producers Shina Ozaki
Speaker 1: and Zoe Dnkla. Shout out to the Lady Squad. It's
Speaker 1: just Zoe and Mean now that Emily and Sheina have
Speaker 1: gone on to other shows, but we have new recruits,
Speaker 1: Tricia Mukerjee and Jackie Huntington. Thanks for stepping in production
Speaker 1: support from Marcy to Pina. Original music every episode by
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman. I was so honored that Aaron wrote music
Speaker 1: for this show. Those intriguing themes that I'm describing a
Speaker 1: dark part of the train yard are the light ironic
Speaker 1: ones when something unexpectedly funny is going down. That's all Aaron.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Aaron for your deft touch and your occasional
Speaker 1: editorial advice. You're a truth teller who doesn't blink in
Speaker 1: addition to being a very talented composer. Our theme music
Speaker 1: for this episode is Warrenson, Texas, performed by Barefoot Surrender,
Speaker 1: Our logos by Lucy quing Tinia and uses a photograph
Speaker 1: by Mike Brodie. Thank you to the Nation Institute for
Speaker 1: Investigative Journalism and the George Polk Foundation for their generous
Speaker 1: grants and support of my reporting on the rail cops.
Speaker 1: I got these grants and more than ten years ago,
Speaker 1: which shows just how hard it is to report this story.
Speaker 1: And I'm not done yet. Any rail cops who want
Speaker 1: to give me a call, You've got my number and
Speaker 1: at iHeart. Thanks to Nikki Etour at Bethan Macaluso. We'll
Speaker 1: be back next week in Colton, because I cannot get
Speaker 1: enough of Colton on City of the Rails