Speaker 1: Novel. On January six of two thousand and twenty, at
Speaker 1: four pm, Ben Photor got a text message from a
Speaker 1: number he didn't recognize. It was a single word. Ben
Speaker 1: replied with two question marks, and the stranger responded with
Speaker 1: a confusing series of messages about the weather and a
Speaker 1: pair of missing glasses, until they seemed to realize that
Speaker 1: they were texting the wrong person. Wait, ship is this Tommy?
Speaker 1: And then things got strange. Instead of the conversation ending,
Speaker 1: Ben asked the stranger what they were doing later that night,
Speaker 1: and the stranger typed getting high and watching Netflix. How
Speaker 1: about you, to which Ben replied, nice, We're going to
Speaker 1: get high and go to the arcade I want to join.
Speaker 1: They continued chatting until late at night. The stranger eventually
Speaker 1: told Ben that her name was Laura. Ben told Laura
Speaker 1: that he and his girlfriend were polyamorous and suggested that
Speaker 1: they all meet up, and he sent Laura a photo
Speaker 1: of him and his girlfriend. Laura replied, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: you are both hot. A yes, but I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make good decisions. But they kept texting over the next
Speaker 1: few days, and eventually Laura agreed to meet up with
Speaker 1: Ben and his girlfriend Andrea at the Silver Cloud Hotel
Speaker 1: near downtown Seattle. Laura told Ben a few of her
Speaker 1: friends were in town visiting from Los Angeles. She'd been
Speaker 1: planning to pick up drugs for them, but her dealer
Speaker 1: stood her up. Ben offered to bring some to the hotel.
Speaker 1: That would make it even easier for pre party, Laura replied. Then,
Speaker 1: on January nine, at five fifty pm, Ben texted, Hey,
Speaker 1: so I was not able to get m but I
Speaker 1: can get you c at eight U G or a
Speaker 1: ball for two. Laura replied, that's cool. We have money
Speaker 1: for a ball, meaning an eight ball or around three
Speaker 1: point five grams of cocaine. Four hours later, a Seattle
Speaker 1: Police Department detective held a meeting with members of her
Speaker 1: department along with some agents from the Homeland Security Investigation Unit.
Speaker 1: They were preparing for a narcotic takedown operation. At ten
Speaker 1: fIF pm, officers observed Ben Fodor and his girlfriend Andrea
Speaker 1: Bernstin parking orange smart car in front of the hotel
Speaker 1: and make their way into the lobby. According to court documents,
Speaker 1: Photor had a shiny gold backpack and was carrying a
Speaker 1: blue tackle box. Andrea exited the South Lobby door to
Speaker 1: smoke a cigarette at the point, the police moved in
Speaker 1: and arrested Ben and Andrea. Back at the precinct, the
Speaker 1: officers searched Ben and Andrea's belongings. Inside the tackle box,
Speaker 1: they found seven separate bundles of suspected cocaine, weighing a
Speaker 1: total of four grams. They also found a scale covered
Speaker 1: in what looked like drug residue and another unknown white
Speaker 1: powder substance weighing thirty one seven grams. Also inside the
Speaker 1: tackle box were two passports belonging to Ben and Andrea.
Speaker 1: There was, of course no Laura. It was a made
Speaker 1: up name by an undercover cop. This whole sting operation
Speaker 1: seems like a lot of work, and it appeared to
Speaker 1: be a shift in Phoenix's relationship with the police. This
Speaker 1: time they seemed to be taking the initiative to come
Speaker 1: after him, unlike in the past where they were reacting
Speaker 1: to his actions. According to Phoenix, he was under attack.
Speaker 1: In January of Phoenix was charged with two counts violation
Speaker 1: of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, and in March he
Speaker 1: pled guilty to the lesser charges of conspiracy. The self
Speaker 1: proclaimed Guardian of Seattle was no longer standing his ground
Speaker 1: against arm crack dealers. He was himself a convicted drug dealer.
Speaker 1: The world would never see him the same way again.
Speaker 1: I'm David Weinberg and from the Team's at Novel and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. This is the final installment of The
Speaker 1: Superhero Complex, Episode eight, The Hero We Deserve. When Phoenix
Speaker 1: got busted, the rain City superhero movement was a distant
Speaker 1: memory to most people in Seattle. They're fifteen minutes of
Speaker 1: fame had long been up. And then came the news
Speaker 1: of Phoenix's arrest for selling drugs to undercover cops. Phoenix
Speaker 1: was back in the spotlight. How have you dealt with
Speaker 1: the public perception of he was drug dealer? It's been terrible.
Speaker 1: Some of the worst times of my entire life walked
Speaker 1: me through. Like how you've dealt with it? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's been really crazy, man, It's been really bad. So,
Speaker 1: like after the indictment, everyone just turned their backs on
Speaker 1: me and said that I was doing all this crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: I had people spit on me on the streets. I
Speaker 1: went to a weird little suicidal phase for a second
Speaker 1: where I was feeling like I should just end everything,
Speaker 1: and and then I came to the same conclusion how
Speaker 1: he's come to you know, fuck you guys. If you
Speaker 1: read the transcript of the text exchanges between the undercover
Speaker 1: cop and Phoenix, he does not come across as a
Speaker 1: drug dealer. He seems more like a guy who thinks
Speaker 1: he's about to have a threesome and is only bringing
Speaker 1: some drugs to the party as a favor. He does
Speaker 1: mention drugs, but it's the undercover officer who brings them
Speaker 1: up first. My takeaway from looking at the evidence provided
Speaker 1: by the Seattle Police Department is that in this instance
Speaker 1: with Laura, Phoenix looks a lot more like a middleman
Speaker 1: and a drug deal than some kind of big time
Speaker 1: dealer himself. But there's more to the story, because this
Speaker 1: wasn't the first time Phoenix had been caught selling drugs
Speaker 1: to cops. On November five, two months before his arrest,
Speaker 1: the Silver Cloud Hotel, Phoenix got a text from Mike.
Speaker 1: Mike was actually to uncovered police officers. According to court documents,
Speaker 1: Mike and Phoenix texted back and forth for a few days,
Speaker 1: and on November Mike texted Phoenix asking to buy some
Speaker 1: M d M A. The cops say Phoenix asked for
Speaker 1: payment upfront and sent them his Venmo, which had a
Speaker 1: photo of him in profile. Also a fun fact I
Speaker 1: learned from reading the court documents, Phoenix's Venmo user name
Speaker 1: was Booty sweat Baby. Anyway, Mike and Phoenix agree to
Speaker 1: meet at a Starbucks and the Wells Fargo building downtown
Speaker 1: around noon. The next day, a team of officers met
Speaker 1: for a briefing. Officer Amy Brownham was running the bust
Speaker 1: and she showed everyone a picture of Phoenix. An officer
Speaker 1: of pretending to be Mike, along with four other undercover
Speaker 1: officers in plain clothes were stationed inside the coffee shop.
Speaker 1: Officer Brownham was also there watching from outside. At one pm,
Speaker 1: Phoenix rolled up dressed in a green tank top and jeans,
Speaker 1: carrying a brown paper bag. The whole exchange took less
Speaker 1: than a minute. Here's a condensed version of the police report.
Speaker 1: Phoenix is referred to by his last name Photor. Photoor
Speaker 1: and the undercover agent made eye contact with each other,
Speaker 1: and the undercover agent gave him a head nod. Photoor
Speaker 1: walked towards the undercover agent. They shook hands, and the
Speaker 1: undercover agent asked photo Or if he was bent. He
Speaker 1: replied yes, the undercover agent handed photo Or two d dollars,
Speaker 1: and photo Or accepted the money. He placed the brown
Speaker 1: paper bag that he was carrying on the table in
Speaker 1: front of the undercover agent. Photor stated that it was
Speaker 1: all there and packaged into separate baggies. He told the
Speaker 1: undercover agent he could check it if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: The undercover agent declined and told Photoor that he trusted him.
Speaker 1: The undercover agent asked photo Or if he could hit
Speaker 1: him up next week if he needed more. Photoor said
Speaker 1: he could. Photo Or exited the Starbucks and jogged northbound.
Speaker 1: The version of events laid out in the police report
Speaker 1: is a pretty straightforward drug deal, But according to Phoenix,
Speaker 1: the media weren't interested in his side of the story.
Speaker 1: I got indicted, and people would not take my interview
Speaker 1: to talk to them about my indictment. They didn't want
Speaker 1: to go into the gritty of what happened. They wanted
Speaker 1: to just basically slander my name, and they wrote all
Speaker 1: these articles that were inaccurate. They wanted to go with
Speaker 1: the falling hero line, and that's what they wanted to
Speaker 1: go with. So if the story the rest of the
Speaker 1: world heard is all wrong, what is the real story.
Speaker 1: I think, UM, not holding my friends and people I
Speaker 1: hang out with to the same standards of accountability that
Speaker 1: I would hold myself to makes me guilty by association.
Speaker 1: In both the hotel and the Starbucks drug busts, Phoenix
Speaker 1: claims he was only facilitating other people's deals. He's basically
Speaker 1: saying he was nothing but a middleman. In the M
Speaker 1: d M A bust at the coffee shop, Phoenix says
Speaker 1: his friend was the dealer, not him, but Mike. The
Speaker 1: undercover cop told this friend he'd only accept the drugs
Speaker 1: from Phoenix, So Phoenix agreed to deliver the drugs, and
Speaker 1: then he says, here's a hundred dollar tip for being here.
Speaker 1: Gave me a tip. I was like sweet, took that
Speaker 1: money and then handed him the bag and I left like, dude,
Speaker 1: I know what in the bag though, for sure? For sure?
Speaker 1: So am I still guilty? Definitely? But the person you texted,
Speaker 1: the person who showed up, the person who brought the drugs,
Speaker 1: the person who bought the drugs, all of that wasn't me.
Speaker 1: And as for the hotel bust, Phoenix says he was
Speaker 1: only near the drugs, not using or selling them. I
Speaker 1: wasn't on drugs. The Daily arrested us. I had no
Speaker 1: drugs in my system. They checked my fingerprints. My fingerprints
Speaker 1: were not anywhere on the drug paraphernalia. The drug parapetet
Speaker 1: he wasn't found on me or near me. But did
Speaker 1: I know they had it for sure? Just facts like yep,
Speaker 1: and that's a crime, which it is. Conspiracy. Now there's
Speaker 1: a lot to unpack here, but let's start with the
Speaker 1: Starbucks bust. I have a very hard time believing Phoenix's
Speaker 1: version of the story. Here's why. Phoenix is a guy
Speaker 1: who believes that the Seattle police are out to get him.
Speaker 1: He knows he has to be perfect and everything he
Speaker 1: does because he thinks the police are chomping at the
Speaker 1: bit to arrest him. And then this drug dealer friend
Speaker 1: of his comes along and says, Hey, I'm about to
Speaker 1: sell some drugs to this random guy to Starbucks. But
Speaker 1: for some reason, he says he will only accept the
Speaker 1: drugs if you deliver them, and Phoenix says, sure, no problem,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to help. This all seems totally normal. For
Speaker 1: Phoenix to agree to that, he would have to be
Speaker 1: incredibly stupid, and Phoenix maybe many things, but stupid he
Speaker 1: is not. Also, who tips a drug dealer a hundred dollars? Now,
Speaker 1: as for the hotel bust, that one is a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated. Again, Phoenix makes the claim that he was
Speaker 1: merely the middleman, and I do think that the text
Speaker 1: exchange seems like he isn't some drug kingpin. But if
Speaker 1: he didn't have anything to do with supplying the cocaine,
Speaker 1: why were his and his girlfriend's passports inside the tackle
Speaker 1: box with the drugs. I still can't make sense of
Speaker 1: that detail. And on the other hand, if the cops
Speaker 1: had such a clear cut case against him, why did
Speaker 1: Phoenix get off so easy? It seems odd to me
Speaker 1: that the police would put so much money in manpower
Speaker 1: into a sting operation to ultimately let him off with
Speaker 1: a slap on the wrist. Maybe it's proof of Phoenix's
Speaker 1: theory that their goal was simply to ruin his reputation
Speaker 1: by making his arrest public. Or maybe Phoenix's lawyer just
Speaker 1: did what lawyers do and got the charges reduced. Or
Speaker 1: maybe Phoenix snitched on his supplier in exchange for a
Speaker 1: lesser charge. Those all seem like plausible theories. What we
Speaker 1: do know for sure is that when the charges were
Speaker 1: first brought in January. There was account of cocaine possession
Speaker 1: with intent to distribute and one of feloniously delivering M
Speaker 1: d m A, but on March they were dropped to
Speaker 1: conspiracy charges. And a conspiracy charge basically means that two
Speaker 1: or more people agree to commit a crime at some
Speaker 1: point in the future. I was with people who had drugs.
Speaker 1: I was aware that there were definitely drugs involved, and
Speaker 1: you know, as far as a conspiracy goes, it's just
Speaker 1: knowing that someone was trying to do something illegal and
Speaker 1: not stopping them. And I'm definitely guilty of that. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I believe in America, I believe the Constitution.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna plead guilty because I'm gilty of that. But
Speaker 1: it's disingenuous the way that it was said. And Phoenix
Speaker 1: did plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit
Speaker 1: violation of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, one for the
Speaker 1: M d M A bust and one for the cocaine.
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to four days in jail, time served,
Speaker 1: and find five dollars plus an additional one for the
Speaker 1: DNA test. I feel like that detail gets lost in
Speaker 1: the media narrative, like no one cares what the charges.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, you're a drug dealer, right, but they're
Speaker 1: not accusing me of being a drug delar right. But
Speaker 1: like what I'm saying is like, I know that's the
Speaker 1: stories that I'm a drugular, but that's not what he
Speaker 1: was accusing me of. How many days did you serve
Speaker 1: in jail? Zero? They said they wouldn't delete my charge,
Speaker 1: but if I pledged, which I had already done, they
Speaker 1: would give me zero days in jail, and in four
Speaker 1: years they'll delete my felony. But they just want me
Speaker 1: to be guilty. Does that make sense? Like if I'm
Speaker 1: a danger to society, why would you release me the
Speaker 1: day that you I say that I'm guilty with no
Speaker 1: release conditions, there's literally nothing, but they wanted to give
Speaker 1: me like a felony tag. Phoenix claims that the Seattle
Speaker 1: Police deviated from their own policies and an effort to
Speaker 1: bring him down. So is what happened to Phoenix unusual
Speaker 1: for Seattle? We should probably start by saying that the
Speaker 1: Seattle Police Department is under a federal consent decree for
Speaker 1: their history of biased policing. This is Rich Smith a
Speaker 1: journalist at the Stranger local paper in Seattle. The Seattle
Speaker 1: Police Department is a moribund institution that's overfunded. They'd spent
Speaker 1: a lot more of their time responding to non violent
Speaker 1: crimes than violent crimes. Lots of investment and new training strategy,
Speaker 1: his new ways to get him to stop arresting black
Speaker 1: and brown people at higher rates than white people for
Speaker 1: the same crimes. There hasn't been a ton of progress
Speaker 1: on that bias. That's the reputation of the Seattle Police Department.
Speaker 1: The two main people in charge of prosecutions in Seattle
Speaker 1: at the time of Phoenix's arrest were King County prosecuting
Speaker 1: Attorney Dan Saderberg and Phoenix's old arch nemesis, former Seattle
Speaker 1: City Attorney Pete Holmes. Pete Holmes's progressive era as a prosecutor.
Speaker 1: He came in swinging a big bat and just stopped
Speaker 1: prosecuting a lot of marijuana arrests. Pete Holmes covered misdemeanors
Speaker 1: and Dan Saderberg was in charge of felonies. When Phoenix
Speaker 1: talked to me, he directed a lot of his anger
Speaker 1: at Pete Holmes, but it was actually Saderberg who was
Speaker 1: in charge of his case. He first started making reforms
Speaker 1: in the office related to drugs when he came on
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight, where he reduced filing standards for
Speaker 1: people who are caught simply possessing a certain amount of drugs.
Speaker 1: So both prosecutors are viewed as being relatively liberal on drugs.
Speaker 1: But the Seattle Police do have a track record of
Speaker 1: questionable sting operations. Pete Holmes and the SPD came under
Speaker 1: fire for sting operations they executed in massage parlors in
Speaker 1: an effort to catch people paying sex workers. Those things were,
Speaker 1: at least among public defenders, considered pretty wasteful uses of
Speaker 1: city resources and pretty unsuccessful. A lot of the guys
Speaker 1: ended up getting off because of shoddy police work. They
Speaker 1: were pretty incompetently run. Examples like this lend credibility to
Speaker 1: Phoenix's claims that the Seattle Police unnecessarily spent massive amounts
Speaker 1: of public money on his relatively small crime. If they're
Speaker 1: accusing him of being some kind of kingpin, then you know,
Speaker 1: maybe some kind of sting operation would make sense like that.
Speaker 1: But when I put it past the Seattle Police Department,
Speaker 1: not at all. Putting too many recent sources into a
Speaker 1: dubious sounding Let's say a case like this would cops
Speaker 1: lie or waste a bunch of time and resources going
Speaker 1: after a group or a person who was a thorn
Speaker 1: in their side. I would not be surprised in the least.
Speaker 1: Pete Holmes declined an interview, and Dan Saderberg didn't respond
Speaker 1: to interview requests. The SPD also declined to put up
Speaker 1: a spokesperson, and the undercover officers we reached out to
Speaker 1: and former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best all declined to
Speaker 1: comment as well. We put all of Phoenix's allegations to
Speaker 1: the SPD in writing and asked them about why so
Speaker 1: much time and money was spent on an investigation that
Speaker 1: ultimately resulted in two minor drug charges, six hundred dollars
Speaker 1: in fines, and four days in jail. The Seattle Police
Speaker 1: Communications Department responded that narcotics investigations routinely involved multiple officers
Speaker 1: and detectives, both for investigative and safety reasons, and are
Speaker 1: conducted over months and even years. In some cases, our
Speaker 1: department arrested Mr Phodor for crimes he committed. Regardless of
Speaker 1: what is true either, The Phoenix is a small time
Speaker 1: coke and ecstasy dealer, or he simply has a soft
Speaker 1: spot for helping out his drug dealer friends and as
Speaker 1: the victim of an over zealous police force at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, he got off with a very
Speaker 1: light punishment, and he knew very well the risks he
Speaker 1: was taking when he agreed to get involved in the
Speaker 1: legal drugs, So I don't have a lot of sympathy
Speaker 1: for him. Everybody hates me already. I got split on
Speaker 1: the street yesterday. Someone call me the drug dealers, but
Speaker 1: I'm on the street to day in regular ass life.
Speaker 1: Because you think I sold drugs for real, what I didn't.
Speaker 1: And I don't care what you fucking think. Like people
Speaker 1: don't like me. They've never liked me, that's not new.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna talk about me showing up with literally
Speaker 1: three point four grams of cocaine in a bag I
Speaker 1: am not touching, while completely sober at a hotel trying
Speaker 1: to meet a consenting adult to go play pinball. I mean,
Speaker 1: go fund yourself. When Phoenix landed in trouble with the police,
Speaker 1: he really wasn't in the superhero game much at all,
Speaker 1: and now that most people in the city were convinced
Speaker 1: that he was nothing but a drug dealing hypocrite. It
Speaker 1: was starting to look like this was the end for
Speaker 1: Seattle's most famous costumed crime fighter. But the year brought
Speaker 1: unprecedented changes to the entire world, and in the midst
Speaker 1: of a global pandemic and a wave of social unrest
Speaker 1: in the streets, Phoenix would get his chance to rise
Speaker 1: from the ashes and down his mask one more time.
Speaker 1: That's coming up. By May of Phoenix Jones had basically
Speaker 1: retired from being a superhero. No more shaky body cam videos,
Speaker 1: no more railing against the police like he had in
Speaker 1: the past. It looked as though Seattle police had finally
Speaker 1: convinced Phoenix to hang up his super suit and leave
Speaker 1: the crime fighting to the professionals. And then the world exploded.
Speaker 1: Waves of peaceful protesters marched on bigger than ever before,
Speaker 1: from Washington's newly named Black Drives Matter Plazia to Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: turning violent in Portland, Oregon, Broo police clashed with protests
Speaker 1: jes the world had spent months being locked down, and
Speaker 1: then people in cities all across America and beyond erupted
Speaker 1: in protests and clashes with police. After a white police
Speaker 1: officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: Rioters have taken over the shopping district in downtown Seattle.
Speaker 1: They've set fire to multiple police vehicles. They have broken
Speaker 1: into multiple businesses, including Nordstrom and Old Navy, and are
Speaker 1: starting to loot. On May, four days after Floyd's death,
Speaker 1: protesters marched through Seattle and gathered at hing Hay Park
Speaker 1: in Seattle's International District to protest police brutality. Protesters laid
Speaker 1: down the roads, chanting George Floyd's name. The windows of
Speaker 1: a Ferrari dealership were smashed in, and some demonstrators curled fireworks.
Speaker 1: By May, the police were launching flash bangs, tear gas,
Speaker 1: and pepper spray at the crowds. Mayor Jenny Durkin and
Speaker 1: stated a five pm to five am curfew. This is
Speaker 1: a statewide emergency alert. The City of Seattle is asking
Speaker 1: all residents to immediately disperse from downtown and then on mate.
Speaker 1: Phoenix Jones resurfaced in his first tweet in over six months.
Speaker 1: He posted in all caps the following message, if you're
Speaker 1: in downtown Seattle and have been injured, need medical assistance,
Speaker 1: or help evacuating. Tweet me see you in the streets.
Speaker 1: Perhaps inevitably someone replies that they need help getting some
Speaker 1: m d M A. But although Phoenix's reputation had taken
Speaker 1: a dent, it seemed like he was serious about his comeback.
Speaker 1: This is Phoenix Jones. I wanted to make a couple
Speaker 1: of things straight before I start at the child today.
Speaker 1: Later that day, Phoenix live streamed from a car decked
Speaker 1: out in his super suit, though he changed up his
Speaker 1: look a bit. Instead of his rubber batman style mask,
Speaker 1: he had on a helmet. He announced that he was
Speaker 1: heading into the fray. It was a full blown relaunch.
Speaker 1: If you're injured and you need my help, give me
Speaker 1: a call, hit me off on Twitter. I'll come help you.
Speaker 1: Your buildings on fire, you've got something going on like
Speaker 1: that and you need help and you have it called
Speaker 1: nine one one already give me plus I'll come put
Speaker 1: out that fire. He posts more videos that day. In
Speaker 1: the next Guys, Jones make sybody stay safe through medical attention,
Speaker 1: keeping everybody good. He live streams himself striding down the
Speaker 1: streets of Seattle carrying a fire extinguisher, and he claims
Speaker 1: he stopped to break it. I thought some people breaking
Speaker 1: into a bartheuse, so I stopped breaking into the bartel
Speaker 1: as much as I could. Otherwise, you know, the vandalism
Speaker 1: will just continue. Phoenix is back. Meanwhile, the protests are escalating.
Speaker 1: By June six, the police are firing blast balls into
Speaker 1: crowds of demonstrators. On June seven, a man drives a
Speaker 1: car into protests at Capitol Hill and shoots a protester
Speaker 1: in the arm. The Seattle police use so much tear
Speaker 1: gas against protesters that people in the neighborhood say it's
Speaker 1: seeping into their homes, and then comes June eight. We
Speaker 1: have to stand together and be one family pool. The
Speaker 1: birth of the Chop or chas, the push to defund
Speaker 1: and reform the Seattle Police Department, and the Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter movement is how six city blocks have been transformed
Speaker 1: now called Chop. Officers retreated from the area to de
Speaker 1: escalate the tension, effectively abandoning their station. Protesters say they
Speaker 1: won't be intimidated by threats and say they planned to
Speaker 1: stay as long as it takes to bring about change.
Speaker 1: It started when the police boarded up the East Precinct
Speaker 1: and vacated the property following clashes with protesters, so the
Speaker 1: protesters rearranged the barricades and established a six block area
Speaker 1: that included cal Anderson Park, a seven acre green space,
Speaker 1: and Capitol Hill. Protesters pitched tents and dugout community gardens
Speaker 1: in the park. They called it the CHOP, an acronym
Speaker 1: that stands for Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, though some prefer
Speaker 1: the name CHAZ Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, and depending on
Speaker 1: which news outlets you believe, the CHAS was either a
Speaker 1: giant block party and safe space for protesters and community
Speaker 1: activists to organize, or it's an anarchist stronghold full of
Speaker 1: criminals and delusional hippies. One of the more fascinating things
Speaker 1: about the chairs for the purposes of this story is
Speaker 1: that the chairs unintentionally became perhaps the largest test case
Speaker 1: for the work of real life superheroes because cops were
Speaker 1: not allowed into the chairs, though I suspect the place
Speaker 1: was crawling with plainclothes officers, but you know who was
Speaker 1: allowed to patrol this newly founded urban experiment. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: this is Phoenix Jones doing a day patrol the Capitol
Speaker 1: Hill in downtown Always back. You guessed it Phoenix Jones.
Speaker 1: On June twelve, four days after the birth of the Chairs,
Speaker 1: Phoenix makes his comeback official. In a tweet in all caps,
Speaker 1: of course, he proclaims, I'm out of retirement. Streets need
Speaker 1: me Seattle, hold it together. I'm on my way. Two
Speaker 1: days later, on Sunday, June, he's back live streaming from
Speaker 1: the Chairs. He starts to film what he says is
Speaker 1: going to be an interview with some of the CHAZ organizers. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: what's up. I'm live inside the chat zone. Obviously, I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to find out one of the other people
Speaker 1: that we're speaking with. So I should be right back
Speaker 1: on in the next five or so minutes. But as
Speaker 1: the night wears on, things take a turn. So uh,
Speaker 1: sorry about that. In the middle of trying to give
Speaker 1: an interview, and right in the process of giving this interview,
Speaker 1: we hear this person saying that there's a guy with
Speaker 1: a gun breaking into a place on twelfth Avenue. So
Speaker 1: we take off towards twelve and we get there and
Speaker 1: they have the suspect behind a car. There's a gathering
Speaker 1: of people outside an auto repair shop called car Tender,
Speaker 1: where Phoenix says he thwarted an attempted break in. I
Speaker 1: took off on foot around the corner, jumped over the fence,
Speaker 1: and went into the actual building itself to make sure
Speaker 1: he didn't have any you know, backup of friends inside.
Speaker 1: No one was in the building. I was able to
Speaker 1: locate the box that had all the keys that he
Speaker 1: was planning to steal to come back and steal the cars,
Speaker 1: and then in the parking lot, so I was able
Speaker 1: to get the key, returned the key to the owner,
Speaker 1: and then I hid in the parking lot while a
Speaker 1: mom decided to yell at I love him suck. According
Speaker 1: to Phoenix, the crowd that has gathered is demanding that
Speaker 1: the owner of the business let the suspected thief go free.
Speaker 1: I'm out here the place. There's probably at people. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stop them from getting violence, and this is gonna
Speaker 1: get shitty, so I'll see you in the streets. Something
Speaker 1: clearly went down at the car tender, but from the
Speaker 1: videos that Phoenix posted, it's not clear what he was
Speaker 1: up to. We spoke to the owner of the store
Speaker 1: to get their account of what happened, and he said
Speaker 1: that Phoenix didn't jump the fence or save the car Keys.
Speaker 1: He actually doesn't remember Phoenix being there at all. Anyway,
Speaker 1: despite the negative reaction that Phoenix says he received, he
Speaker 1: wasn't deterred. In fact, his ambitions seemed to be getting bolder.
Speaker 1: That same night, he posts a picture of Batman with
Speaker 1: the caption let's try and find a middle ground and
Speaker 1: I'm bringing great ideas and solutions to this problem. And
Speaker 1: the next day, Monday, June, it gets interviewed on local
Speaker 1: radio by Jason Rants. Over the course of the last
Speaker 1: couple of days, it sounds like you have this goal
Speaker 1: of trying to bring people together. Take us through how
Speaker 1: that's gone so far. Well, I mean that's funny, Like
Speaker 1: the last couple of days, my goal has not been
Speaker 1: to bring people together. My goalp has bring people together
Speaker 1: by a entire life. In spite of his recent running
Speaker 1: with the SPD, Phoenix expresses his frustration at what he
Speaker 1: sees as their lack of policing. It's been incredibly challenging
Speaker 1: because the Black Lives Matter movement is like a blanket word, right,
Speaker 1: black Lives matter. Obviously everyone agrees with that, bec there's
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff in there that's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: And then there's the Antifa angle and all these other
Speaker 1: different things, but no matter what it is, taking over
Speaker 1: six city blocks is just illegal. And when the police
Speaker 1: decide could not respond to one calls in that area,
Speaker 1: that is like name on you. And then, in one
Speaker 1: of the craziest turn of events and the Phoenix Jones storyline,
Speaker 1: Poenix shows up in the Chas that same night, claiming
Speaker 1: that the Seattle Police Department have contacted him and basically
Speaker 1: asked him to be a negotiator on their behalf with
Speaker 1: the people leading the protests. The response on social media
Speaker 1: is swift. How long has he been out of jail? Four?
Speaker 1: This ship is excruciating with hilarious. I thought he hung
Speaker 1: up the tights. It just keeps getting weirder. Is Seattle
Speaker 1: Police actually set of Phoenix Jones to do this? I
Speaker 1: will follow the dead from laughter and I hope you
Speaker 1: will attend my funeral. He's a joke and I want
Speaker 1: to be cop. Isn't his superpower selling ecstasy? It wasn't
Speaker 1: quite the glorious comeback Phoenix had hoped for. But while
Speaker 1: he was busy playing the Seattle Police Department's unofficial mediator,
Speaker 1: a few streets away, another band of superheroes had arrived
Speaker 1: to answer the call of their city in need. May
Speaker 1: stay safe. We're here rendering a Okay, Red Ranger and
Speaker 1: justin Service we met in the previous episode. We're also
Speaker 1: hard at work in the Chaz with their team Echo,
Speaker 1: the Emerald City Heroes organization. They were trying to represent
Speaker 1: a different kind of real life superhero. You're welcome, but
Speaker 1: please get the sat gotta staff. We're doing our best.
Speaker 1: Please get. They were supportive of the protests and said
Speaker 1: they wanted to be on hand to help anyone who
Speaker 1: needed assistance. But in addition to tear gas and flash bangs,
Speaker 1: Red Ranger and the Echo crew also had to contend
Speaker 1: with the fact that Seattle's superhero movement had sustained some
Speaker 1: serious reputational damage. No, he's not a member of our organization.
Speaker 1: He's not No, no, no association. No we don't. You
Speaker 1: want to make that very clear. There's you're not on
Speaker 1: our Phoenix has always said that one of the main
Speaker 1: reasons he created his superhero persona was to inspire others
Speaker 1: to take on injustice in the world and to stand
Speaker 1: up for those in need. But by the character he
Speaker 1: created became a punchline a symbol of hypocrisy and absurdity
Speaker 1: above all else, and as the most famous member of
Speaker 1: the community, his fall from grace cast a shadow over
Speaker 1: the whole real life superhero universe. While on patrol, Red
Speaker 1: Ranger and Justin Service repeatedly distanced themselves from Phoenix. Phoenix
Speaker 1: Jones is another not really not anymore. He's in a
Speaker 1: bad what's the had we had? He's limitted criminal activities.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get into it. Yeah, he's not
Speaker 1: a good example. At one point, they walked past a
Speaker 1: poster of Phoenix that said Officer Jones Pepper Spray and
Speaker 1: neighborhood near you. Holy take a picture of that. I can't. Oh,
Speaker 1: no worries, I gotta get this holy crap. All through
Speaker 1: June of clashes between the police and protest is continued,
Speaker 1: and then on Saturday June, all hell broke loose and
Speaker 1: the Seattle superheroes had to step into a deadly situation
Speaker 1: where the police were nowhere to be found until it
Speaker 1: was too late. Around midnight, Justin Service and Red Ranger
Speaker 1: started their patrol of the Chaz Red Ranger, who was
Speaker 1: a registered nurse, had been giving medical care to folks
Speaker 1: and trying to de escalate some arguments. There was a
Speaker 1: group of people setting off fireworks, but then around two
Speaker 1: am they heard gunfire. Phoenix was also in the area.
Speaker 1: At just after three am, he tweeted bullets and chaos.
Speaker 1: I'm in chopped, stay away, seen confusing shoot her on
Speaker 1: the loose. Red Ranger and Justin's Service ran toward the
Speaker 1: sound of the gunfire and arrived on the scene of
Speaker 1: the shooting. It was total chaos, and laying on the
Speaker 1: ground was nineteen year old Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr. He
Speaker 1: had been shot. Come on, everybody back here back. We
Speaker 1: were doing CPR and trying to provide medical intervention with
Speaker 1: the volunteer medics that were on scene, and we were
Speaker 1: calling for an ambulance. Well, the ambulance wouldn't come in
Speaker 1: because they can't come in until the police cleared the scene.
Speaker 1: Watch get out of here drive. The police claimed that
Speaker 1: it was the protesters we prevented law enforcement from entering
Speaker 1: the chaz But based on reporting by kow's Ashley Haruko,
Speaker 1: who reviewed videos from that night along with the dispatch
Speaker 1: recordings and eyewitness testimony, it was not the protesters it
Speaker 1: caused the delay, but miscommunication between the Seattle fire and
Speaker 1: police departments. Everybody, get back, get back, get back. I
Speaker 1: get shot, get back, get back. Someone was shot. We
Speaker 1: ended up losing a poor young man, you know, when
Speaker 1: we tried to save him. We didn't get the help
Speaker 1: we needed that night, and I wish we had. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of factors that went into that, but it's
Speaker 1: still a regret that that young man lost his life.
Speaker 1: Every Holy Cross Horace Lorenzo Anderson's father, currently has an
Speaker 1: active lawsuit for wrongful death filed against the city of Seattle. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Phoenix had apparently left the scene. He tweeted that he
Speaker 1: hadn't been able to get a description of the shooter,
Speaker 1: and I get the sense that he was reaching a
Speaker 1: breaking point. Later that same night, in the early hours
Speaker 1: of Saturday morning, he goes on to tweet too much,
Speaker 1: too damn much. We need to do something now. People
Speaker 1: are dying and my fucking city is under attack. I
Speaker 1: arrived on the scene after the shooting, directed via Twitter,
Speaker 1: no police chaos, people grabbing the evidence and moving things,
Speaker 1: and had no description of the shooter, and medical was
Speaker 1: already there. I was drawing attention and with an active shooter,
Speaker 1: I had to be back. I have no idea how
Speaker 1: to combat this threat of real life ending magnitude and
Speaker 1: at the same time protect people's right to protest. I
Speaker 1: am so angry. Why are the mayor, governor and police
Speaker 1: standing outside an imaginary border when citizens of Seattle are
Speaker 1: fucking dying? Then a long series of a's and h
Speaker 1: ah okay. If the brief moment in time when the
Speaker 1: Chads existed was a test case for letting superheroes stand
Speaker 1: in for cops in emergency situations, it did not go
Speaker 1: well for the superheroes. They had failed in their mission
Speaker 1: to intercede in those moments before a crime takes place,
Speaker 1: and when things did go horribly wrong, they weren't able
Speaker 1: to prevent the death of Horace Lorenzo Anderson or catch
Speaker 1: the person who killed him. And at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it is Phoenix him Health who is angrily
Speaker 1: demanding that the police show up and do something to
Speaker 1: protect the people because he and his fellow superheroes have failed.
Speaker 1: In the days that followed. He then got into a
Speaker 1: Twitter beef with an account claiming to be the official
Speaker 1: CHAS account. It posted that Phoenix was banned from the
Speaker 1: CHAS and that the Chas Solidarity community had issued orders
Speaker 1: for security to deny access to the chairs to all
Speaker 1: members of superhero movements attempting to enter the area. Whether
Speaker 1: the account was really representing CHAZ organizers is contested, but
Speaker 1: Phoenix took it as the truth and railed against them.
Speaker 1: In another all caps tweet, he said, I do not
Speaker 1: respect your imaginary borders. Citizens are dying. Grow up. I'll
Speaker 1: see you to night in the streets, Jones out. Finally,
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, July one, the city moved in and started
Speaker 1: dismantling the CHAZ barricades. Protests and conversations about police abolition
Speaker 1: and reform would continue, but one thing seemed clearer than ever.
Speaker 1: In the city of Seattle. There seemed to be very
Speaker 1: little appetite for our masked adventurer Phoenix Jones. His triumph
Speaker 1: of return only seemed to make him more enemies in
Speaker 1: the hometown he had sworn to protect. But even then,
Speaker 1: Phoenix Jones would not be deterred. He'd continue to take
Speaker 1: to the streets in search of crimes to thwart, and soon,
Speaker 1: at long last, I'd be going with him. That's coming up.
Speaker 1: Phoenix Jones had become a running joke in Seattle, his
Speaker 1: superhero squad was a distant memory. He pled guilty to
Speaker 1: two drug conspiracy charges, and his relaunch at the Chas
Speaker 1: had been a flop. At this point, most people would
Speaker 1: probably decide to give up on the whole real life
Speaker 1: superhero thing, but Phoenix Jones isn't most people. When I
Speaker 1: visited Phoenix in Seattle, he agreed to take me on
Speaker 1: one of his patrols so I could see firsthand how
Speaker 1: he fights crime these days. I am here to pick
Speaker 1: up Phoenix Jones at his apartment it is when I
Speaker 1: am on the summer one, but to go on patrol.
Speaker 1: I actually ended up going on three different patrols with Phoenix,
Speaker 1: and every single time we had to use my rental
Speaker 1: car because Phoenix was having various car troubles. On one
Speaker 1: of those patrols, the plan had been to begin the
Speaker 1: night by doing a homeless handout, which surprised me given
Speaker 1: Phoenix has past disdain for this type of superhero work.
Speaker 1: But in the end it never happened because Phoenix claimed
Speaker 1: his car got broken into and someone stole all the
Speaker 1: stuff we were going to give out, so we had
Speaker 1: to go with Plan B. What's the plan for tonight?
Speaker 1: So we're going to Capitol Hill. We're gonna check that
Speaker 1: out and safely have people on foot walking around. Then
Speaker 1: if Capitohill's lame, we're going to check out the second
Speaker 1: and third and Pike and Aaria. We're gonna get out
Speaker 1: and walk around there a little bit. We never ended
Speaker 1: up getting out of the car that night. Phoenix was
Speaker 1: just in superhero casual. He wasn't wearing his full super suit,
Speaker 1: just the molded breastplate with the gold chevron and a
Speaker 1: black leather trench coat and helmet so bullet proof. I
Speaker 1: still got all my stuff on. I'm a little less
Speaker 1: NiFe re sistant, but he had stuff time. We can
Speaker 1: still go fight crime. The stakes were very high for Phoenix.
Speaker 1: He told me because he's on probation, there can't be
Speaker 1: any slip ups, pepper spray related or otherwise, because if
Speaker 1: he gets into any trouble, he says, he will go
Speaker 1: straight to prison for two years. You're a journalist, right,
Speaker 1: so if we if we stopped and we stop a
Speaker 1: crime and it goes badly, right, they're not going to
Speaker 1: rescue you. There's no legal ramifications for you. But me,
Speaker 1: I'm on probation. I've been asked to stop several different times.
Speaker 1: It's like every time I come out, my entire life
Speaker 1: could possibly be on the line. With Phoenix behind the wheel,
Speaker 1: we made our way through the darkened streets of the city,
Speaker 1: keeping our eyes peeled for signs of trouble. When you
Speaker 1: start like a patrol and I'll like drive around and
Speaker 1: sort of feel it out, and I'll hit a spot
Speaker 1: like feels like this could be that spot, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. But we weren't having much luck finding
Speaker 1: any crime. What percentage of patrols would you say you
Speaker 1: end up stopping a crap? Mm hm, So I would
Speaker 1: say this on average, probably stop about two crimes a
Speaker 1: week or do with citizens help, like where I do
Speaker 1: something that's like above helping, right, But it's not always
Speaker 1: stopping a crime, and that's not always on patrol, right,
Speaker 1: Like today I fixed that tire for that person dressed
Speaker 1: up super suited up Phoenix Jones death right, But it
Speaker 1: didn't have anything to do with patrol. Right. Phoenix told
Speaker 1: me the reason he was late to tonight's patrols because
Speaker 1: he and his son had pulled over to help a
Speaker 1: stranded motorist. Apparently he'd been wearing part of his supersuit,
Speaker 1: and his son had worn a Batman mask. Phoenix had
Speaker 1: lots of stories like this. He told me that the
Speaker 1: day before he had another heroic encounter. This time he
Speaker 1: had saved his neighbor's life. One of my neighbors overdosed
Speaker 1: on drugs had a reaction that have CPR. Phoenix's need
Speaker 1: to help people impact every part of his life, even
Speaker 1: things like mundane trips to the grocery store. I went
Speaker 1: to the check in scan and I was trying to
Speaker 1: scan thing, and this thing would not scan my stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: US civilians would probably just head over to another register,
Speaker 1: but for Phoenix, this was his time to shine. He
Speaker 1: told me that when the checkout clerk didn't know how
Speaker 1: to fix the scanner, he got down on his hands
Speaker 1: and knees to find the problem. He even called up
Speaker 1: the manufacturer himself to get the reset code for the machine.
Speaker 1: I popped it in, the machine worked, and I was like,
Speaker 1: They're problem solved, and I'm like, now, you don't do
Speaker 1: it next time, Phoenix said. His girlfriend, who was with
Speaker 1: him at the time, did not swoon or look into
Speaker 1: his eyes and say, oh, Phoenix, You're my hero. She
Speaker 1: was more like, can we just get the hell out
Speaker 1: of here and get on with our day. And like,
Speaker 1: what what would you prefer me to do? You know?
Speaker 1: She's like, well, I guess I prefer you just to
Speaker 1: go another machine. I'm like, okay, so what besides obscating
Speaker 1: my responsibility to help my people, what other than that
Speaker 1: would you like me to do? I can see how
Speaker 1: it would be hard to be with someone like Phoenix,
Speaker 1: who seems to be addicted to being the hero. I
Speaker 1: think people love uncompromising characters, right, and just because I'm
Speaker 1: an uncompromising character, people are drawn to that. But if
Speaker 1: they really understood what that entails, I don't think they
Speaker 1: would like it very much, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Phoenix is well aware that fighting crime can damage his
Speaker 1: personal relationships, but in another of our interviews, he told
Speaker 1: me he couldn't quit even if he wanted to. I
Speaker 1: think I have a compulsion to do the things that
Speaker 1: I believe in, and I don't care about the cost.
Speaker 1: Whatever makes me stop bad guys. It's a compulsion I
Speaker 1: cannot fight. I don't know what it is. I can't
Speaker 1: put my finger on it, but it's a compulsion that
Speaker 1: could cost me everything that I could not stop doing.
Speaker 1: I think that compulsion was one of the things that
Speaker 1: made Phoenix as successful and as famous as he was
Speaker 1: at his peak. But alongside that compulsion to take down
Speaker 1: bad guys is Phoenix's compulsion to be better than everyone
Speaker 1: around him, and I think his intense competitiveness and his
Speaker 1: ego made it impossible for him to live up to
Speaker 1: his own ideals of what a superhero is. And even
Speaker 1: though I believe his heart is in the right place,
Speaker 1: there were moments when I was with Phoenix where I
Speaker 1: came away thinking this guy is just an asshole. One
Speaker 1: of those moments happened after we'd finished up a patrol
Speaker 1: and I had to give Phoenix a ride to go
Speaker 1: pick up a car he was borrowing. Sorry about this
Speaker 1: going around circles. It's definitely not my fault. Hello, alright, cool,
Speaker 1: I have to be on the right street, but the
Speaker 1: address you gave me does not take me here. Frustration. Coincidentally,
Speaker 1: the person he was borrowing the car from was his neighbor,
Speaker 1: the one whose life he said he had saved from
Speaker 1: a drug overtose. Anyway, this guy had texted Phoenix the
Speaker 1: address where we were supposed to meet him, but the
Speaker 1: guy was drunk and sent the wrong address. This was
Speaker 1: around three in the morning, and when we got to
Speaker 1: where we were supposed to meet him, he was nowhere
Speaker 1: to be found. So Phoenix started honking the car horn
Speaker 1: so his friend could hear where we were and come
Speaker 1: find us. Unfortunately, the batteries in my recorder had just
Speaker 1: died and I was in the process of replacing them
Speaker 1: when this sonically rich moment happened. We were parked right
Speaker 1: outside of an apartment and I called Phoenix out for
Speaker 1: what I thought was an asshole thing to do. I
Speaker 1: remember saying, there are people all around us trying to sleep,
Speaker 1: and blasting your horn outside their window at three am
Speaker 1: is a dickhead move. By the time I was able
Speaker 1: to start recording again, Phoenix was in the middle of
Speaker 1: defending himself. So I don't know why that it's not
Speaker 1: chill like. Even when it's explained to me, it still doesn't.
Speaker 1: It still doesn't like change my mind on it. It
Speaker 1: just makes me think, like, well, if you don't like
Speaker 1: horn hawk, you shouldn't live in right next will road
Speaker 1: like that. No one will ever convince me. But honking
Speaker 1: your horn outside someone's home at three am so you
Speaker 1: can find your drunk friend is an acceptable thing to do,
Speaker 1: but instead of Phoenix admitting that it's a dickhead move,
Speaker 1: he blamed the people sleeping inside their homes. It's not
Speaker 1: like this is a grave injustice or anything, but I
Speaker 1: think Phoenix's attitude about it says a lot about who
Speaker 1: he is. The thing I find so infuriating about Phoenix
Speaker 1: that he claims to be out here in the streets
Speaker 1: because he wants to serve and protect the citizens of
Speaker 1: his city, unless he needs to find a drunk friend
Speaker 1: at three am, in which case, fun those people they
Speaker 1: should go find another street to live on. I think
Speaker 1: his willingness to disrupt these people those lives while also
Speaker 1: claiming to care so much about them that he puts
Speaker 1: his life in danger for them, it's hypocrisy. And this
Speaker 1: is just one small example of many in which I
Speaker 1: believe Phoenix is a hypocrite. That's the thing that bothers
Speaker 1: me the most about Phoenix. I don't think there's anything
Speaker 1: morally wrong with using drugs, so I don't really care
Speaker 1: whether or not Phoenix does drugs, and I personally believe
Speaker 1: all drugs should be decriminalized and treated as a public
Speaker 1: health issue, not a criminal one, so I don't have
Speaker 1: a problem with Phoenix's small time coke and ecstasy deals
Speaker 1: on their own. The thing I just like about Phoenix
Speaker 1: is that he acts like he's better than everyone, that
Speaker 1: he claims to live up to a higher moral code
Speaker 1: than everyone around him, which I think is total bullshit.
Speaker 1: I do think he does more than most to help
Speaker 1: the people in his community, and I think he deserves
Speaker 1: credit for that, But I found so many instances where
Speaker 1: he lied to me that it makes it hard to
Speaker 1: believe his endless tales of heroic deeds. Though. There was
Speaker 1: this one moment when we were out on patrol and
Speaker 1: we came across a concrete piece of evidence of at
Speaker 1: least one time when Phoenix really was the kind of
Speaker 1: superhero you read about in comic books. We were doing
Speaker 1: a U turn at an intersection when our headlights illuminated
Speaker 1: a mural on the side of a fence. There, in
Speaker 1: bright colors was a painting of Phoenix, drones and his
Speaker 1: full supersuited glory. There, I am. Yeah, it's Purple over
Speaker 1: there getting pushed on the swing by be right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's random. In the mural, Phoenix is pushing his ex
Speaker 1: girlfriend purple rain on a swing. They're painted to look
Speaker 1: like kids. Behind the mural was a playground. The building
Speaker 1: used to be a daycare. Phoenix had told me the
Speaker 1: story of the mural during one of our interviews. I
Speaker 1: stopped the building from catching on fire. I smashed in
Speaker 1: the building and I put the fire out when the
Speaker 1: building was burning where the children's daycare is in the like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at this cool mural of these little kids. Know
Speaker 1: that mural is there because that building is there, because
Speaker 1: I'm here, Like, you can't forget what we did, even midnight, Jack,
Speaker 1: even though Caballero, because that guy men, Jack was cool
Speaker 1: enough to go run back to the car and if
Speaker 1: you bring me back to the fire extinguisher, so I
Speaker 1: only had to stomp out one floor of fires. He
Speaker 1: did that. It was real, So thanks Jack. I dedicated
Speaker 1: to a decade of my life to doing dangerous real
Speaker 1: life ship. As we sat there staring at the mural
Speaker 1: and the headlights, Phoenix was feeling reflective and seemed genuinely
Speaker 1: sad that more people didn't talk about these moments in
Speaker 1: his life when he was a real hero, rather than
Speaker 1: focusing on his fall from Chris. I really did not
Speaker 1: think that my life would turn out this way, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, like if I could have redrawn it, It's
Speaker 1: not quite what I had in my mind. What did
Speaker 1: you have in your mind? I mean I have I
Speaker 1: have one drug charge, but I mean like nothing of
Speaker 1: any consequence. Right. I imagine that people would talk about
Speaker 1: my work. It's shocking that people don't. It makes me
Speaker 1: almost feel less. Uh well, I feel like your work
Speaker 1: is too unconventional for people to wrap their heads around it.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know what's unconvincaal about helping people
Speaker 1: like it's people is one thing, but putting on a
Speaker 1: superhero costume and calling yourself a real life superhero is
Speaker 1: a totally different thing. Agreed, but it's still the same.
Speaker 1: Suber often doesn't change the work. At the end of
Speaker 1: the patrol that night, Phoenix apologized for not finding any
Speaker 1: crimes to thwart. Sorry, we didn't find any crime. It's
Speaker 1: a random conversations. Yeah, we never did come across any
Speaker 1: crime during any of the patrols that he took me on.
Speaker 1: We also didn't help anyone. We didn't administer any first
Speaker 1: aid or hand out any food or socks or water
Speaker 1: like Justin's service, and Red Ranger had done on their patrol.
Speaker 1: I said good night to Phoenix, and I assume it
Speaker 1: was the last time I'd ever see him. This was
Speaker 1: my last reporting trip to Seattle, and I was heading
Speaker 1: back home to Los Angeles in a couple of days,
Speaker 1: and we had no plans to meet up again. All right,
Speaker 1: signing off, But then a funny thing happened. When I
Speaker 1: got back to my hotel, I noticed that Phoenix had
Speaker 1: left his helmet on the backseat of my car. So
Speaker 1: I texted him and he said he would stop by
Speaker 1: the next day to pick it up. Just before the
Speaker 1: sun came up, I got another text from Phoenix. It
Speaker 1: said three to one, then another text that said three
Speaker 1: minus two equals one. It was one of his number codes,
Speaker 1: the kind he told me he sends to his friends
Speaker 1: to let them know he's thinking about them. The next day,
Speaker 1: Phoenix came over to my hotel. He was parked on
Speaker 1: the street outside. I came out and opened the passenger
Speaker 1: side door of his car and handed him the helmet.
Speaker 1: And then I looked down and saw it plane his day,
Speaker 1: just sitting there and the arm rest of the car
Speaker 1: door a small bag of drugs. At least I assume
Speaker 1: it was drugs. It wasn't much, just a bit of
Speaker 1: white powder inside one of those tiny zip blocked bags,
Speaker 1: the kind only drugs come in. I held it up
Speaker 1: and I looked at Phoenix and said, you should be
Speaker 1: careful with this stuff. It's illegal and you're on felony probation.
Speaker 1: He seemed very surprised and laughed nervously. Then he took
Speaker 1: the bag from me throughout the window and drove off,
Speaker 1: And that was the last time I ever saw Phoenix Jones. Now,
Speaker 1: the thing is, it wasn't Phoenix's car. He was borrowing
Speaker 1: it from his neighbor. So there's a good chance that
Speaker 1: Phoenix had no idea it was there, But that probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have mattered to the police. After I got back
Speaker 1: from that last trip to Seattle, I looked into what
Speaker 1: Phoenix had said about his probation, and I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to verify if it was true. According to the court documents,
Speaker 1: the sentence he received did not include commune any custody,
Speaker 1: and the King County Community Corrections Division said he isn't
Speaker 1: under their supervision for the charges. But whatever the terms
Speaker 1: of his release are, if Phoenix got pulled over and
Speaker 1: the cops found drugs in the car he was driving.
Speaker 1: I don't think the outcome would be good at the
Speaker 1: end of the day. I do think that Phoenix is
Speaker 1: a liar, and maybe he conned a few of his
Speaker 1: supporters and friends out of some cash. We have yet
Speaker 1: to see the super suit the Phoenix said he would
Speaker 1: build after reportedly collecting over three thousand dollars and go
Speaker 1: fund me and sure, the guy is super arrogant, admittedly uncompromising,
Speaker 1: and also a total hypocrite. But there is no part
Speaker 1: of me that thinks he should be in jail. I
Speaker 1: do believe there's a good chance that he might slip
Speaker 1: up and end up serving time, largely because his personal
Speaker 1: life seems so out of control. In one of our interviews,
Speaker 1: he was telling me about the court mandated therapy sessions
Speaker 1: that he goes to. Do you feel like you've gotten
Speaker 1: anything out of therapy? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I've learned what
Speaker 1: is wrong with other people a lot. Phoenix told me
Speaker 1: that his therapist had her own theory about why Phoenix
Speaker 1: has so many struggles in his life. You feel like
Speaker 1: you're out of control of your world because your family
Speaker 1: got rid of you. Maybe, but my family did get
Speaker 1: rid of me. That's a real thing. And if I
Speaker 1: feel out of control, maybe you should talk to those
Speaker 1: motherfuckers who put kids on a doorstep, not talk to
Speaker 1: the kid who make sure other kids don't end up
Speaker 1: on a doorstep. That ain't a problem to me. There's
Speaker 1: no logic gap from me there. You're not gonna convince
Speaker 1: me into feeling better. I'll never feel better ever, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to. It's almost as if underneath his
Speaker 1: super suit, Phoenix has this protective layer. This reflectsive attitude
Speaker 1: that surfaces anytime someone challenges him. I'll leave it to
Speaker 1: Phoenix and his therapist to figure out why Phoenix feels
Speaker 1: this need to be above reproach. I do hope he
Speaker 1: works it out. I think it would do him some
Speaker 1: good to listen to criticism and think honestly about how
Speaker 1: his actions affect other people. I think that would make
Speaker 1: him better at crime fighting and improve his personal relationships.
Speaker 1: And I know that's not just an important thing for
Speaker 1: Phoenix himself, because he's also a parent. Which brings me
Speaker 1: to one last story that I'd like to tell you
Speaker 1: before I bid farewell. It's a story that Phoenix told
Speaker 1: me about his twelve year old son. He was at
Speaker 1: the park one day after school, just hanging out with
Speaker 1: some friends, and he noticed a suspicious looking guy standing
Speaker 1: outside a liquor store holding a knife. The guy went
Speaker 1: into the liquor store, and Phoenix's son walked over and
Speaker 1: peered into the store through the glass door and saw
Speaker 1: this guy robbed the woman working behind the register. She's
Speaker 1: an old middle Eastern lady. She's like seventy as a
Speaker 1: mobility scooter. She's like defenseless. Sounds like, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: So he goes over his store. He waits by the
Speaker 1: door and the door slides both ways open right. I
Speaker 1: love his ingenuity. So he pulls the door this way
Speaker 1: so it's opening towards the front right, and when the
Speaker 1: guy tries to run out of the store, he just bang.
Speaker 1: He hit the dude straight in the face with the door.
Speaker 1: The alcohol goes down, the knife flops out of his hand.
Speaker 1: I said, Chase is this guy and now he's got
Speaker 1: no knife, and he turns around to face off with
Speaker 1: my son. My son just straight kicked him straight in
Speaker 1: the face. Matt. Shortly after the police arrived on the scene.
Speaker 1: A cop show up and he's just karate and kicked
Speaker 1: this dude down the hill. And then the girl in
Speaker 1: the store said that, you know, he'd hit it with
Speaker 1: the door, and they cracked the glass of the door
Speaker 1: in the store. So the police were saying that they
Speaker 1: were going to charge him with breaking the glass, and
Speaker 1: the woman was like, absolutely not. That guy had a
Speaker 1: knife and he came into my store. The store clerk
Speaker 1: convinced the police not to charge Phoenix's son with a
Speaker 1: crime for breaking the door, and instead, Phoenix says, the
Speaker 1: cops gave his son a token of their appreciation for
Speaker 1: his act of civilian heroism. The police gave him this
Speaker 1: like little crime stopping pendant. It's really cool. I'll show you.
Speaker 1: I'll pull it up. It's really cool. And as his
Speaker 1: first crime he had ever stopped. You know, at the time,
Speaker 1: the cops didn't know it was Phoenix's son. They came
Speaker 1: by the house to give him the little pendant and
Speaker 1: talked to about it, you know. And when they came
Speaker 1: by the house, I was there, and the cup was like,
Speaker 1: oh man. He's like, I don't know what my boss
Speaker 1: is gonna think of this, Phoenix says. The police told
Speaker 1: his son he could keep the award, but that he
Speaker 1: had to keep it a secret. There was a definite
Speaker 1: conversation between the police and my attorney because they in
Speaker 1: no way endorsed my behavior, which is hilarious because they
Speaker 1: endorsed my behavior entirely right, because my son used every
Speaker 1: skill I've ever taught him. It's not that the fun crime.
Speaker 1: It's that he recognized the same thing that I recognized
Speaker 1: and put the responsibility on himself. He's not the kind
Speaker 1: of person that sees a problem and goes, oh, that's
Speaker 1: for somebody else. For that person is not my person.
Speaker 1: Like he sees something, takes responsibility for it, and fixes it.
Speaker 1: That's what I love about it. It's not that he
Speaker 1: stopped the crime, it's that he did it for someone else.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Would you want him to have
Speaker 1: the life that you do? No? I would never want
Speaker 1: anyone to life I have. Was this the origin story
Speaker 1: of Seattle's next great real life superhero? With this twelve
Speaker 1: year old boy following his father's footsteps and grow up
Speaker 1: to become a masked adventurer, a defender of the innocent
Speaker 1: and protector of the downtrodden. Maybe he would even be
Speaker 1: better at it than his father because he'd had loving
Speaker 1: parents who looked after him and was not burdened by
Speaker 1: the baggage of being abandoned as a child. Maybe he
Speaker 1: would build his own supersuit and find some like minded
Speaker 1: friends and spend years training for a righteous goal. Maybe
Speaker 1: he would become the hero that Seattle deserves. Or maybe
Speaker 1: this is just an they're made up story, like the
Speaker 1: kind you'd read in a comic book. The Superhero Complex
Speaker 1: is hosted and written by Me, David Weinberg and reported
Speaker 1: by Me, Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornhum. Production from Mamalia
Speaker 1: Shortland and Caroline Thornhum. Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien and David
Speaker 1: Waters are executive producers. Fact checking by Andrew Schwartz. Production
Speaker 1: management from Shari Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design,
Speaker 1: mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music
Speaker 1: supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Original music is
Speaker 1: composed by Paul Housden. Special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton,
Speaker 1: Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norville, Beth and Macaluso, Rin Roe, Zimbaum,
Speaker 1: Shelby Shenkman, and All the team at U t A.
Speaker 1: For more from Novel, visit novel dot audio m