2 Cops 1 Donut
We were asked “what exactly is the point of this show?”Answer: social media is an underutilized tool by police. Not just police, but firefighters, DA’s, nurses, military, ambulance, teachers; front liners. This show is designed to reveal the full potential of true communication through long discussion format. This will give a voice to these professions that often go unheard from those that do it. Furthermore, it’s designed to show authentic and genuine response; rather than the tiresome “look, cops petting puppies” approach. We are avoiding the sound bite narrative so the first responders and those associated can give fully articulated thought. The idea is the viewers both inside and outside these career fields can gain realistic and genuine perspective to make informed opinions on the content. Overall folks, we want to earn your respect, help create the change you want and need together through all channels of the criminal justice system and those that directly impact it. This comes from the heart with nothing but positive intentions. That is what this show is about. Disclaimer: The views shared by this podcast, the hosts, and/or the guests do not in anyway reflect their employer or the policies of their employer. Any views shared or content of this podcast is of their opinion and not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything. 2 Cops 1 Donut is not responsible and does not verify for accuracy any of the information contained in the podcast series available for listening on this site or for watching shared on this site or others. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
2 Cops 1 Donut
The Interdiction Game: High-Stakes Hide and Seek
What really happens when a state trooper pulls someone over on the highway? It might be a routine traffic violation – or it could be the first move in a high-stakes chess match between law enforcement and major criminal organizations.
Retired Michigan State Police Trooper Jose Patino pulls back the curtain on his 26-year career, revealing how a simple traffic stop for marijuana led him into the specialized world of drug interdiction. For over two decades, Patino worked the strategic corridor between Detroit and Chicago, seizing millions in drugs and cash while developing an uncanny ability to spot inconsistencies that most people would miss.
"Interdiction is the ultimate game of hide and seek," Patino explains, detailing how officers must compress complex investigative techniques into roadside conversations lasting just minutes. These aren't random encounters but calculated interdictions based on behavioral cues and travel patterns that don't quite add up. The results speak volumes – multi-kilo cocaine seizures, connections to the Sinaloa Cartel, and cases that eventually linked to major criminal enterprises like the Black Mafia Family.
Beyond war stories, Patino offers rare insights into trooper culture, training philosophies, and the evolution of law enforcement technology. From handheld x-ray scanners that can detect hidden compartments to the game-changing impact of license plate readers, we explore how modern policing has transformed during his career. Particularly fascinating is his perspective on when officers choose to write tickets versus simply educating drivers – a nuanced approach that contradicts popular stereotypes about "road pirates."
Whether you're interested in criminal psychology, curious about what really happens during traffic stops, or simply want to understand the complexities of modern policing, this conversation offers a rare glimpse into a world most citizens never see. Listen now to understand what that blue patrol car in your rearview mirror might really be looking for.
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Disclaimer Welcome to Two Cops One Donut podcast. The views and opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Two Cops One Donut, its host or affiliates. The podcast is intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. We do not endorse any guests' opinions or actions discussed during the show. Any content provided by guests is of their own volition and listeners are encouraged to form their own opinions. Furthermore, some content is graphic and has harsh language. Viewer discretion advised and is intended for mature audiences. Two Cops One Donut and its host do not accept any liability for statements or actions taken by guests. Thank you for listening. All right, welcome back to Cops One Donut. I'm your host, eric Levine. Today I got with me retired Michigan State Trooper Jose Patino. What's up, buddy? Hey, good to see you again. You too, sir. We met what a year ago.
Speaker 2:Probably. Yeah, it was at RTCC, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We met at the National Real-Time Crime Center Association's conference, the 2024 conference. This year's conference is going to be in Cobb County, Georgia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just outside of Atlanta. Yeah, just outside of Atlanta.
Speaker 1:And it's going to be crazy. We got a ton of huge, huge companies, a ton of other police agencies that are involved. Now, the last four years of growing has been insane. We're very, very blessed and they got very big.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I know some of these guys are going to be listening and be like what is all of that? That is not the point of today's podcast. Just kind of giving you guys where we met and came from. But Jose Michigan State Police, how long was that career?
Speaker 2:It's just short of 26 years 26 years Okay 25. And then we have the drop program, like a lot of agencies now and did about six months of that and called it quits.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I'm just curious what was it about writing tickets and not doing actual police work that drew you to being a trooper?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. Yeah, well, up here in Michigan you know we're full service state police.
Speaker 1:That is true, that is true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't start it in that world right, doing complaints and tickets and stuff, and then it kind of morphed into more of the drug world. So most of my career was spent uh running a drug interdiction unit. Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, let's, let's uh rewind a little bit. I know a lot of people get into law enforcement and there's always weird draws for people and you'll hear some of the counter um, police, you know, oh, you were probably bullied in high school and you just want to have, you know, uh, authority over people. The badge and the gun make you a tough guy, or, uh, you get that side of it. But then, like for me, I had law enforcement in my family. Um, that's not exactly why I became a cop, I would tell in.
Speaker 1:Most people that have been on listening to the show know that the thing that probably drew me into law enforcement or or life of service in general was the fact that when we would go to family reunions, everybody was always drawn and surrounded the people that were EMT, military police, firefighter, whatever it was, nurses everybody wanted to talk to them. They seemed to have what the family respected the most, and I think that was probably the biggest draw for me is I just wanted my family to be proud of me, like they to them. They seemed to have what the family respected the most, and that's I think that was probably the biggest draw for me is I just wanted my family to be proud of me like they were them? Yeah, so for you, what was the draw?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was that guy right, came from a family of it. So, uh, my dad, uh, he did 47 years ultimately, uh to an insurance department and the chief of the local PD, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know forever, you know, and unfortunately he passed away a couple of months after he retired. But, uh, that was all I knew, you know, and just growing up as a kid, right, you were surrounded. You know, in the world back then was a lot different, that those guys never left each other's side. You know, he was at a sheriff's department and those deputies would over and they were at our house every day, you know, and the weird thing is is, you know, one of my first memories as a kid was my dad's partner getting killed and I, you know, I can remember as a child, them showing up at the house telling him and my dad freaking out and losing his mind, and and then what happened after that?
Speaker 2:And, uh, you know, it made an impression, you know, whether good or bad, you could say, well, you would have thought that would have taken you the other way, but that camaraderie, right, I mean, there was nothing my dad, uh, would not ask for, or any of us family members or anybody would ask for, that they would not do. And uh, and I think that's probably more that draw for me, you know, I saw the impact that he made on the community and across the state, and then that camaraderie amongst the officers, you know, and for me that was a huge draw. You know, I was an athlete in high school and like teamwork and like working as a team, and so I think ultimately that's what pushed me into the life of service, as I say.
Speaker 1:Did you know that you were going to like? Is that something you always knew you were going to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think realistically. Yeah, my mom always said no, but uh, you know, it was that same, right, it's just, it's no different. You know, I got two kids and you know that's what my wife and I always said. You know, you're no way you're going to be in police work, which they're not, which is good with now in the world today. But uh, yeah, I was, yeah, I just was going to go that way.
Speaker 1:You know I went. Did you know you was going to be a trooper or did you? You're like three letter agency. How did you decide troopers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, that's a funny thing is I just assumed, you know, I'd be a deputy sheriff, for, like my dad, and and, uh, I was at our read in Michigan we have regional police academies and then a state trooper academy. They're completely separate. So I was actually in regional police academy, had gotten a few offers from some of the larger agencies, and then a state came knocking and said, hey, why don't you go through the process? And obviously I knew a few troopers growing up, but you know it was, you know you were amongst deputies, right? And so, yeah, I talked to my dad about it and he was like, yeah, he goes, I would prefer you go down that road. A lot more opportunities, you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:and, um, next thing, I knew I had, uh, about a two-week break from college and off the trooper school I went and spent 24 weeks to get beat up. So, okay, well, I remember growing up and michigan state police were. That was the creme de la creme like growing up and I get it bias. I'm from michigan, but now that you know a worldly traveler and have been in several states, lived in Montana, lived in Texas, michigan, visited plenty of places on training and all of that I will still uphold that Michigan State Police are probably in the top five, if not the top one, in my opinion, as far as professional all-around troopers like they do everything. I've seen them show up on domestics up there in saginaw where I was a cop, because they were so short that they were backing up local agencies to help out yeah, we still do that right, and uh, um, uh, um, especially as you go North.
Speaker 2:You know Michigan's so diverse, as you know, being from here where you're downstate, and you know it's a city, freeways, all that kind of stuff. And then you had eight, nine hours North and it was a whole nother world once you crossed the bridge. And so we have to be very diverse and uh, and like all agencies, we go through our peaks and valleys, right, Leadership problems, you know, and all that. But you know, when it comes down to it, you know the troop around the road and I was fortunate enough to travel all over the country and all over Canada, training, doing the drug stuff, helping out, and I mean we're still up there. I mean just the training we receive is quality. A lot of it's in-house. We do all the testing for the vehicles in the country, so there's no doubt we're still up there in that top. So there's a lot of good agencies and especially with my new world I guess I'm in I get to meet a lot of different officers that I wouldn't have saw before, like yourself.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of good cops in this country. A lot of cops right now. My favorite ones to watch, though, are the georgia state police. Oh, they're still doing it, man, aren't they?
Speaker 2:oh it's crazy. Yeah, they're still, uh, they're still operating in the late 80s early 90s. I love it oh, it's awesome it's awesome to see arkansas is like that too. You know, florida's not very hard mine. I spent a lot of time in Florida. Now. Man, there's some great guys down there, some good troopers, great local officers doing some good things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those guys are like a dog off leash man. They've got no rules, they just catch bad guys, that's all they do. Yeah, you know what? They still got a lot of respect, right, respect, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you put on in georgia, you know, even amongst the, the residents, you know whether you're downtown atlanta or you're in cop county, you know, or you you're upstate, you know, playing some golf man, those troopers still get a lot of respect down there. So it's not like they're seen as a bunch of renegades, right, just doing whatever they want and like the famous video.
Speaker 2:You see that guy pitting out that truck and jumping up on the yeah, man, I mean, everybody's loving that right, because you know you finally got a bunch of crime. You know, and there's a good way and a bad way to do it. You know as much time that you and I have been doing this. You know we've saw some bad stuff. We've saw cops do it the bad way, but you know what Sometimes good cops still got to do hard things and that's what they're doing down there.
Speaker 1:Man, and that's what they're doing down there. Man, just some awesome stuff though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to my young officers out there, don't do what you saw him do. Don't jump on the hood, don't do, don't do that shit, please.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've all did it, man, especially back in the day, but uh, yeah, it worked out for him. It looked cool as hell. That was a kodak moment for sure oh man, no doubt.
Speaker 2:But uh yeah, safety is paramount, right yeah, not worth it yeah, eight out of ten times that this is going to look so pretty. Yep exactly, I got some good friends down there in Georgia. Man, they're awesome guys, they do great work, they're command guys. You know good leaders, they do some really good stuff. It is tough down there right with everything they've got going in Atlanta. Yep, they got one in Atlanta. Oh, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Atlanta is one of those, especially through Cobb County. In some of the connections that I have out there they have some really good progressive technology stuff going on to help in the world of crime fighting. So I'm really digging what they got going on out there and I can't wait to highlight that stuff this year at the NRrt cca conference.
Speaker 1:But I got a question about trooper life. Okay, so part of what we do here is educate and anybody that's interested in getting into police work. They're like I don't know if I should be a sheriff, I don't know if I should be a city cop, I don't know if I should go work at a jail or be a trooper or go to a three-letter agency or any of that. Can you kind of explain what a Michigan state police officer is? Or a trooper? That's kind of one of the state police guys. They're always nicknamed troopers. So if you're wondering why it's not in the name, that's just what we nickname them, because they all wear that smoky the bear hat. So in that, sir, what is the difference between you know what does the state police do and what happens once you get hired by those guys?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's a little different process. In most states troopers have their own academy. I know Arizona. Sometimes they'll do a combined building academy but in the state police we're separated in Michigan right off, so our academy is completely independent. So, as far as a trooper life, you know you go through the training there. You know we're getting very similar training at the regional academy. The only thing that's a little bit more intense is the physical side of it. We have swimming involved as far as rescue, just because we don't know where you're going to be posted. We're surrounded, obviously, by the Great Lakes, so we do rescue swimming, cold water, immersion, stuff like that. But yeah, once the trooper left, you know the big difference is obviously I grew up in a Sheriff's Department, family right, so I was part of that. I did the Marine Patrol, you know, like a lot of cops, kids do, you know, during high school and college and stuff. So the big difference is the territory in which you cover, you know, and as a trooper, you know you're here today and there could be a riot across the state and I'm four hours away and I'm spending the next seven days over there.
Speaker 2:Um, natural disasters, um, as troopers will get in, and I know some locals are doing some awesome things too. As far as being deployed to hurricanes, uh uh, north carolina, when they had the flooding and all that, there was a lot of local officers being deployed into that and that's something as a trooper. Um, there's a lot of mutual aid packs, um uh, when you look at like the RNC, the DNC obviously in the last few years have had issues um the local state agency wherever it's being hosted. So I think the past RNC maybe was in Milwaukee, so the Wisconsin troopers can request mutual aid, and so troopers from Michigan went, and I think troopers from Ohio, and so that's the big thing.
Speaker 2:Right, it's just opening it up. It's quite a big world. There's a lot of great agencies. Like yourself, you know where you're at your agency. You have a lot of diverse things to do, but I could put I mean it wasn't totally uncommon to put 600 miles on a patrol car in a day, damn, yeah. I mean the average was probably in that 300 to 350, but if we were really humping and we were moving um, we could put a lot of miles on Um and so that's the big difference.
Speaker 1:Now, when you guys go to your academy, you're not going home for the weekends, are you?
Speaker 2:No, I know they do it a little bit different now. You know, as they always say, the academy you came out of was the last hard, rough academy, right? So shout out to the 117. We were the last hard academy for the Michigan State Police. But yeah, when I went through we would show up on Sunday afternoon and anywhere from noon to 2 or three o'clock and you'd get inspected to make sure all your gear and everything was good coming back and then you'd start in and then maybe you'd go home at seven or eight on Friday and maybe you'd go home at one or two in the morning on Saturday, depending on how the instructors were feeling that day.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:You'd stay. You'd stay there all week and like we weren't allowed to drink pop and not have candy and that kind of stuff, you know. So us young kids were Jones and you know, when we get out there on Friday, the first place they're going 7-Eleven for a big gulp, right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I know now they've loosened it up a little bit, kind of trying to make it a little bit more like a college atmosphere where I think they're letting them go home maybe one night out of the week. But that's the big difference Dorm life, right, you're? Just living the dorm style yeah.
Speaker 1:So for those that are wondering, like when you go to a city police department I've never heard of it, but you go home every night. I think the deputies for sheriff's offices do the same. There may be some out there for sheriff's departments where you actually have to bunk up at a spot, but I haven't heard of that personally. Uh, but the troopers, that's. That's one of the major differences. It's a lot like bootcamp, yeah.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, A lot like bootcamp. So if you guys are getting interested in doing that, just be ready for that lifestyle and it's longer. Just be ready for that lifestyle and it's longer. Typically their academies are what? Six and a half, eight months, somewhere in between.
Speaker 2:Depends. I know like Texas has a quite a long academy. Um, ours was 24 weeks. So I went through, uh, our regional academy which is at Grand Valley state university. So I went through that academy first and then I had a two week break and then went, jumped right into the state police academy. So I was basically in a police academy from April till January.
Speaker 2:And so I got to see both lives Right and so, like you said, uh, we would get there maybe five or six in the morning, pt for the first few hours, and grand Valley's a great police academy and there's a lot of great regional academies, um so, we'd. Pt, do the book work, uh, the shooting, do all that kind of stuff. But like you said, we get to go home at six or seven at night we go meet at B, dubs have a couple of beers, you know that kind of thing, and um, that's, that's the big difference.
Speaker 2:And and it is hard being isolated like that especially, I didn't have a family, but we had military guys that were squared away, marine guys, and they bailed, they bounced out, it just, you know they were over. You know a lot of you talk to it's just, it's not that they couldn't do it right, but they were just like hey, I've been there, I've done this, you know I don't need to be yelled at anymore, and you know, and they bounced out yeah, when I was an instructor at our police academy, we had several, you know, prior military.
Speaker 1:They'd get there and they just, I don't think they're like you said. It's not that they couldn't get through it, they just, man, they they got out of it because they wanted a break and they thought that they were just going to jump in and serve. But it's not that they're going at you, they just have to treat everybody the same in the academy. You get caught up in it and if you just your mind's not ready to deal with that, then that's what you get. You get these guys that bounce out and I've had people like yeah, I know some marines that dropped out of our stuff. Listen, friend, yeah, you're not harder than a marine no that's not.
Speaker 1:That's not what that means. You just you caught him at a spot in his life that he just didn't want to deal with it.
Speaker 2:He'd already been through it, just like you said. Yeah, he'd been through there, man, it wasn't for him. And, like you said, I think they thought, well, it was just a natural progression. Right, I was in the military, I'm going to go to the state, please, just a natural progression. And they're, like you know, every day yeah, I'm good, I'm good, you know, and I get it.
Speaker 1:You, just you do you get fatigued of it and you think you're going to get a break. And you jumped out of the service and you're going right back into. You know, your perception of it at the beginning is like I just jumped right back into the service. I could have just stayed and dealt with it. You know, I at least I knew what I was doing already- yeah, you know what and what I appreciated about the difference.
Speaker 2:when you talk about the difference between the state and the locals, um, like I said, growing I, I started tagging evidence when I was eight years old, right. So I, you know, I did everything in the sheriff's department. I lived, lived there during the summers and, uh, it was the state police is a little bit more regimented, right, like you're used to with your military service, and thank you for that. Um, but that that's what I really liked. I liked that command structure, I liked, you know, kind of knowing who you had to report to and you know, I like that rank and file kind of thing. And that's a big difference between the state police. You know, we do salute, we do, you know, do inspections and you know all that kind of stuff. So that is a big difference.
Speaker 2:If you're into, you're into into that, you know, and and you need that kind of guidance in your life. It's a good direction. But be honest with you. You know, like yourself and a lot of guys around this country, there's some great cops in every department, you know, and it's just what suits you. You know, your, your horizons broaden right, be able to fly a helicopter, drive a boat, uh, work a dog, be in a bomb squad, you know, over a whole state or you know, do some awesome things locally, you know.
Speaker 1:So, realistically, if somebody is going to join the troop, this is one of the things I tell people. I'm like, listen, if you, if your interest is to join the troopers, but you want to go, do you know boat patrol, you want to go? Do you know boat patrol? You want to go. Do you know whatever it is um outside of being on the freeway and dealing with stuff like that, like you gotta wait, you gotta wait your turn. You can't just jump, jump into that stuff. So can you tell people realistically, like what that process is? Like you're a trooper, you hit, you get your car, you know you're, you're on your own. You already went through FTO and all that. What is your next 10 years? Like?
Speaker 2:yeah, so um, like everybody else in this country, um, the Michigan State Police are still struggling than getting people right. You know last, I think I heard we're four or five hundred down, you know somewhere?
Speaker 2:in that neighborhood, yeah, and so we run a lot of the task force up here, or at least a part of them. So we talk about fugitive task force, narcotic as far as street level, uh, drug and dealing um canine bomb squad. Um, we have a very good uh that's called the es team, emergency support team, uh SWAT team like which, uh, same as you guys have helicopters, you know we have all.
Speaker 1:We have all that stuff and uh hey y'all, eric levine, two cops, one donut. I'm out here currently on my military time and I thought I'd take a second to kind of give a shout out to my sponsor, peregrine. I've roughly got about 18 years of law enforcement under my belt and I've seen a lot of really cool advancements in law enforcement. The biggest advancements in law enforcement, I think, are like fingerprints, dna testing and then, more recently I would say, license plate readers. Those things have all changed the game in law enforcement and now I think Peregrine is on that level that's going to change it up. But I've had people ask me what is Peregrine? And I want to talk about that. Now there's a caveat to it. Peregrine is so in depth. I'm only going to talk about one small feature that it's able to do, because I can't fit everything that they do in one little ad. All right, I'm going to take you on a little mental journey.
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Speaker 2:The age in which they're doing some of that is getting a little younger. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. I'm not going to say it's all bad because we got into the lateral world like a lot of locals did. We didn't do that for a while. We started doing it, good and bad. So, as you get off the FTO, so you're basically at the academy, you're in training, so you're at a year and a half two years. Finally, like you said, you get your break. You're out on the road driving around your blue goose, all by yourself.
Speaker 1:You got to explain that to people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we got the blue goose right. It's a blue car recognized anywhere in this country. So we've got the little g red bulb on top and it's an LED one now. We used to like the old aircraft ones because that made noise and you could pound on your ceiling to get the noise out. But yeah, we still got the stick on the front it says stop, stay please. You know, still into the tradition thing, which is awesome.
Speaker 1:Can you do you remember, can you explain what that tradition is like, what those were for?
Speaker 2:like what those were for. Yeah, so, uh, I guess, as it was told to me, um, that that back in the day they didn't obviously have all the LED lights and all that good stuff and siren stuff we had, so they would have a spotlight and the spotlight would be red and they would point it at the hood and it was on, it says stop, and then it says state police, and then they would point at that and that was their indication to pull over. Um, now, we would used to use it when we go on a complaint, maybe go at night into a domestic or something like that. We kill all our lights and we could just turn that light on and so if somebody looked out they could see. You know, if you went to an alarm and maybe they were there, but you could light that hood up and go still go in dark, so you were safe and you could look out and see it said stop, state police, and everybody knows that's our car and it just looks cool, I don't care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I don't still still the best state police car that's out there.
Speaker 2:Oh it is, yeah, we always get these. Yeah, these little turf wars with all these other uh state police. It's like georgia, they got a pretty cool car.
Speaker 1:Uh, florida's got cool ones florida and georgia both have cool I like the two-tone um is it? Is it florida's?
Speaker 2:that is blue and like a gold color they have yeah, they have that, and then they have a tan like a dark or tan, yeah, yeah, yep yep, and then, of course, georgia's trying to copy our blue, but uh, yes, that's what it was.
Speaker 1:It was georgia that had the blue. I saw that not a fan texas dps they have white hoods and like yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Everybody's got their own little signature right. It's all right. Ours is still the best, but yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, somebody's got to be second.
Speaker 2:Yeah, somebody's got to be man, yeah, so yeah, we're a little different, right, because we transport everybody in our front seat, that and we don't have cages or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Really, I didn't even know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, it's actually a violation for us to transport in a backseat and I can tell you, over 25 and a half years of transporting murder suspects, domestics, drunks, cartel members, you name it I've transported them all. Riot, you know all of them. I've never had a problem, really. No, it's used to be that close right, you're close to them and you know. You know, if I've ever had anybody spit on me, to be honest with you, I mean, obviously we know those people are out there, but, um, if I can remember a few times having one that you just knew it was going to go that way, maybe we had to use a Welch to kind of tie him up a little bit. We'd ask, you know, our local buddies to come over and we'd just throw him in a cage and transport him. But, yeah, a little different People always see us pulling. They're like you transporting the front seat. It's like, yeah, he's right there, there's nothing he can do, he's cuffed behind the seat.
Speaker 1:Our seat belts are locked in, you know, and so yeah, a little different, okay, okay, so they're the cup behind their back. That does make a difference yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then we like so we lock them in with a belt and then we have uh little clips that go over top of the seat belt thing so he can't undo the seat belt while he's okay, yeah, okay yeah, and it's nice if you gotta take a nap during a long shift and you can lay right back in that seat. You know, I thought about the cage. Yeah, absolutely not that that ever happened right, right, we never do that.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:All right. So after you do your time and you got all these specialized units and stuff, what is the process like? Is it just you're competing against everybody else that wants to put in, and is it best man, or is it seniority?
Speaker 2:No seniority comes into play, right, man? Or is it seniority? No seniority comes into play, right, and? And a lot of it's just because, if you're best man you talk about, uh, you know, because there's, there's always an interview, typically, and so a lot of the times the guys that crush that interview are the guys who got the experience right. Yeah, so I mean, you got, you got to have some of that in there. But in the same token, just because you only got two years in doesn't mean you don't have experience. That would come into play.
Speaker 2:And then I'll speak just like in our drug interdiction world, right, when we were, we were interviewing guys to bring them into interdiction. Well, yeah, a little bit's about being a cop, right, and a little bit's about safety and that kind of stuff, but a lot of it's about being able to talk to somebody. Got to be able to handle yourself all by yourself, because these interdiction stops are by yourself. Even though we worked as a team, you know we had as many as 14 guys working in a 10, 15 mile square area, but you still got to be able to handle yourself. So we could take somebody that was two or three years. I'm like I would always tell them man, I can make you into an interdiction person. I can help you become a good cop. I need somebody that knows how to talk to people. Yeah, there's no somebody. You know that. That can. That can not be confrontational on every traffic stop, right, we've seen them. Right, we've seen those guys were in and that's the cliche of a trooper is always a robot, right? Oh, you're the license registration. Here's your ticket. Move on about your way.
Speaker 2:You know, and, and that's not in, especially in your addiction world, that's not what we want, and so so for us, it dealt with some of that experience. Um, if you're doing maybe the SWAT team, which is our ES team, the dog, the helicopter, you, you know you have to have some of that experience. But, uh, each discipline, like the canine, has a really hard test where it's a big run, you know, and then they, then they do the physical part. Es teams, same thing. You know they do some working out stuff. Helicopter, you know maybe some experience in the past, drones, you know that kind of stuff. So you would go through that.
Speaker 2:So you, really, you know, back when I was younger, if you didn't have five to 10 years in, don't even bother, you know, because it you know it was so many people that wanted those spots so I don't even bother. But she fugitive spots and all that, because they got to know when four or five guys go in the door you're gonna be all handed yourself gotcha because you don't know what's gonna happen. You know there's no different in fort worth. Right, you got to be able to handle yourself, you know you. You know I talk about like, uh, uh, going into these, uh, high crime areas. You know stuff like that. You've got to be able to handle yourself and right.
Speaker 2:And so, um, as far as being a trooper, having that experience, you know that's, that's what we looked at, right, it's just, hey, um, can you handle yourself in the, in the area or the discipline that you're interviewing for? And so, um, I would say two, three. You know a lot of these guys. You want two, three, four years on the road. Right, if you're out handling complaints, and you know this, you handle two, three, four years on the road. Right, if you're out handling complaints, and you know this, you handle two, three, four years worth of complaints. You've, you've seen a lot, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:If your guy answers the radio, cause we get dispatched just like everybody else. We get a call just like everybody else and we get put in a in a CAD system. You know, we're just like everybody else. And if you've been out there two, three, four years, you've worked all the different shifts because, as you know, nights is a whole lot different days, right, yep, on days it was all about fraud and I had my stuff stolen. Or you know, I come home from the weekend, found my house broken into right, a lot of long-term investigations where at night it was running the gun at domestics and home invasions and you know shootings and that kind of stuff. We handle homicides just like everybody else. And so you get two, three, four years in man you can handle yourself in an interview, right, and that's kind of where they're at now. You know, and the difference now is when I came in, you had to, had to be 125 miles from home.
Speaker 2:You couldn't be posted within that radius of 125 miles oh, okay so they didn't want you anywhere near your local area yeah, which was a good thing and I really liked it, just because you don't have to deal with anybody. You know, once you did I think it was three years, maybe five Once you did three or five years, you could go back home.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Once they thought you had yourself established, and you know, some confidence.
Speaker 2:Okay, and I really liked the rule Brought me down here, and what I liked about it is it allowed me to see other areas of the state that maybe I never would have saw previously. Now, you know, with the hiring issues that everybody has, plus, you know, maybe getting a little bit more older officers that are already established with families, you know, and you just can't pick up and move, and so you have a lot of people that now you can be posted right in your hometown Right, never, never leave. You know, we're 25 years and never see a different County. Um, I don't think that's great, but uh, if it, if it works for you and it works for your family and you're, you know you're a good asset to the department and the community, then then good for you.
Speaker 1:Can you do me a favor? Can you scoot over when?
Speaker 2:you were talking, you were starting to go out of frame.
Speaker 1:And I was like all right, if he's going to be a mover when he talks, we got to get him moved over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here we go. I got wheels on the chair. That's what's killing me.
Speaker 1:Okay, no worries. Yeah, I agree. When you work in your city that you grew up in, it does put you in a compromised position. It doesn't have to manifest, but if you do run across people that you grew up with, you knew it may put you in an unsafe situation. It may put you in a compromised situation where you, you know give favoritism towards something you know we're supposed to remain, you know, objective and straight across the board. So it doesn't do you a lot of favors to go work in the city that you grew up in. But I do see a benefit in it when it comes to the community policing aspect is you've already got community ties. You know the pulse of where you're at. So for those that would make the argument, I see both sides.
Speaker 2:I do, yeah, for sure, yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:But me personally, having copped outside of my like there's looking back now, I would never want to be a cop where I grew up. I just don't want to be in that position.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, and the opportunities that I had because I came outside of the county, that's what I knew. I knew the county where my dad worked. I knew the county where we lived, which was all the same county. I knew that sheriff's department. I knew that life, I knew those guys and the fact that I was able to get outside of that and see, oh, there's a bigger world, right, there's a lot of other things to do. That's a great department, a good department to work for. But you know, it was nice to see other opportunities, meet other people, and it's no different than, uh, I tell people now because they ask about my afterlife here, you know, with my, my new job after retirement, and then say, hey, what's awesome is I spent basically 20, 21 years, uh, working in drug interdiction with a whole lot of great people in the michigan state police.
Speaker 1:How did you transfer to that? So you were. You were a trooper on the road, shagging calls, what there's? There's all these different things that michigan state police do. What keyed in on you? You were like I gotta do this yeah, that wasn't one of them.
Speaker 2:Actually, when I when I started doing it, it wasn't uh you know they always say it was it's like destiny thing, right, and uh, yeah, I can remember. It's kind of a long story, it's got a lot of funny turns. But I got sent on a prisoner pickup uh to grand rapids, which is north of where I was posted. I was posted, basically uh, west of kalamazoo town called papa, on my way up freeways down to one lane because of construction. I'm coming up behind this car. I'm not in my post area anymore, I'm in another post area and just do what I was told. And this car is over in the right lane, driving in the closed off lane. So you're like, oh great, he's drunk, right. So I was like, well, I'll put him on his shoulder and check, see if he's drunk, and I get up there and he's not.
Speaker 2:Um, two guys coming out of chicago they were lost, headed to grand rapids and and they just kind of get that I had. I had no idea what I was doing. I was like a two-year trooper, maybe I might have been three years. I still had no idea what I was doing and I remember talking to these guys just like man, that's the thing. I just don't think that's right, you know it doesn't add up.
Speaker 2:It doesn't. So this old deputy pulls in behind me, you know, and he comes up basically asks this young trooper who's lost. You know what he's? Because in Michigan our plates signify where we're from. So the first two digits on our plate signify what post you're at, and so he could see my plate, knew I wasn't from there and I'm like, hey, you know, I explained it to him and I was like man, this isn't right. You know, I didn't care who you work for, you're a good cop, you're a good cop man. You know, I don't care, you're not guy. And and uh, he's like, yeah, let me go talk to him. And he comes back. He's like man, you're right, something's not right.
Speaker 2:So anyway, long story short, we call for canine a hundred and some pounds of weed in a trunk. Uh, back back then it was the old, uh, brick marijuana bale days, you know, not like the hydro they see now. And uh, so then, fast forward. Uh, I'm kind of a prankster. When I worked, the guy's phone rang that I had arrested for the dope, and I answered it in Spanish. And and this guy replies on the other end asking where his stuff is. So, fast forward.
Speaker 2:A few hours later we knocked him off trying to. He was trying to buy his stuff from us at a rest area. So we got all the money, got all the dope and I was like man, this stuff's kind of cool. And so then I just started going to some trainings and I got a pretty good opportunity from our commander, like hey, nobody's really doing this. You know, there was some guys that were kind of individually at the post doing it, doing some good work at the post, get some drugs and stuff. You're like hey, why don't you guys get together and and and see what you can do on 94, man In 94 between Detroit, chicago? At that time you know it was, uh, mid two thousands and man, we were just ripping it and just great great stuff and uh.
Speaker 2:So I just started going to a lot of trainings. I was fortunate enough to get in with uh uh, federal motor carrier safety administration and the drug interdiction assistance program at that time, and uh was able to come a certified instructor and um, so got in with some other great companies to do some instructing and had some good opportunities and yeah. So then we built an interdiction program for the state, me and a couple of guys I worked with. We kind of you know, just like you would right, you know, just like you're getting a new canine dog at your police, you know we built a program, we wrote up policies for it. We had really good command staff that that at that time that was very pro policing and they're like man, get after it. And we were doing some good work and we were humping. And next thing we knew we went from just three or four of us out there doing it to we were full-time, had 14 guys and and just going crazy, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were seizing tons of kilos and tons of money and it was awesome.
Speaker 1:So now, in that, if you are going to get a rookie or anybody out there on your side of what interdiction is and without giving away trade secrets, obviously but how would you explain it to the lay, the layman on this? What is interdiction? What are you guys looking for? How do you know that you're getting somebody that's trafficking stuff versus just some dude like help other people that have no, no knowledge of this world?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's a different world, different world, man, and it's a skill set, honestly. And so the way we always look at it for interdiction is, if you look in the drug world, the easiest place to interdict the drugs, to get bulk drugs, is when it's traveling between A and B. That's when they're most vulnerable, right, and usually that's in a freeway atmosphere, whether it's in a commercial vehicle or a passenger car. And so the world of interdiction really is just about communicating with people, right, you sit out there, and if you're a guy that thinks you know what it looks like in the car when it goes by, you're not going to get it Because either A you're profiling something you shouldn't be profiling, whether it's race or whatever, which is never good and then you're missing a whole lot because, you know, one of the biggest cases we had in Michigan was the guy after the movie the Mule that was basically Clint Eastwood's role. So that was here in Michigan, you know, and that guy was in his 70s and he was trafficking hundreds of kilos a week for the cartel. And so if you thought you knew what you were looking for, that guy drove right by you and waved at you, and so interdiction is just about sitting out there, right, you use the senses that God gave you and that hair stands up on the back of your head.
Speaker 2:A car goes by, it does some certain movements, maybe tries to get away from you and slows down, breaks. Something that's out of the ordinary is what you're looking for and that's what I always tell guys. I'm training and I'm like, hey, when you, when you, when you would borrow, uh, eric Levine's car, you know, and he just said, hey, can I borrow your 2020 Mercedes and drive it to California, he's probably going to say, no, I'm like it's good dude, great dude, but he's probably not going to let you do that, you know. And then when you say, oh well, his name's Eric I'm not really sure what his last name is and you're driving his brand new car, cross country. It's just common sense, right, but the interdiction is awesome, just because that's what it is.
Speaker 2:You're taking all this work that you do at a complaint. When you're talking, you're interviewing somebody on a criminal, sexual assault or a B&E or a larceny, you know, and you're trying to get that confession. You know, we're trying to do that in 90 seconds, sitting on a shoulder, the road, with cars buzzing us at 70, 80, 90 miles an hour, you know, and you're just focused in a little key things that they would say, but you're doing it in a really relaxed manner. You know, and that's always the thing that judges like the most when go to court. They're like man. You're not confrontational. We're not, because we encounter so many people and obviously not everybody's a drug dealer, not everybody's moving guns or everybody's moving money. We're just very casual in the questions we ask.
Speaker 2:But we're picking up on very small key things that they may say, very small key things. They say versus what the car is and obviously the license plate reader world opened up. You know a lot more as far as intelligence and being, all that conflicting stories. You know as far as where the plate was as opposed to where they said they were. You know that kind of stuff. And so interdiction is awesome. I mean it is. It is truly addicting. I mean I love a good bourbon but man, interdiction will kill that all day long, right? I just uh, yeah, there was times that we would. We would just go out there and set and say, hey, don't even pay us. I mean we, just we. I mean we just wanted to hit it so hard, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the ultimate hide and go seek baby.
Speaker 2:Oh a hundred percent, a hundred percent, no-transcript. Are you more comfortable in your home or mine? Well, you're probably more comfortable in your own right. So if I bring you in my home, it makes you uncomfortable, and so that's the easiest place that I can break you down, which was our patrol car. Right, that's where we lived, and so then, when these guys are traversing from point A to point B, that's the easiest place to get them, because once they we would as troopers call it topside Once you get into Detroit topside with 100 keys of coke, well, now you're in your own world, that's where you're comfortable. And it's harder for me because now you're bringing me into your world, and so that's always the easiest.
Speaker 2:And we would talk to command and all these states, you know, when they're trying to form interdiction teams. Why do interdiction just like hey, you know you're trying to do these reverse buys You're trying to do, you know, undercover operations in those guys' world when that stuff's already hit the ground. You know they could 50 keys could hit the ground in Detroit and be gone in 24 hours. I can get it all inside that Pontiac 6,000, you know, back in the day, driving up and down the road right or the Bronco, or you know, I can get it in one shebang, and I guess that's what drew me to it. Right, we had a team concept, the camaraderie and, like you said, the ultimate game of how you can go seek man. Yeah, yeah, you know, we were fortunate enough to knock off some Sinaloa and command leadership. And, man, when you sit there and talk to those guys, you're not talking to a dummy. These guys are very well educated, they're corporate style people. There's no bullying on them and you've got to be on top of your game to stay in the same way and like as them.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, there was nothing better than being able to take a guy and have him tell you where the dope was and how much dope was in there before you even start searching, just because of the relationship that you built on the side of the road. He knew you had him. You know that kind of stuff. And and there's still some guys around this country doing some awesome work. Yeah, michigan's kind of gotten away from the pro policing at the time being, um, with the the world the way it is, but there's still some guys, especially down south. Uh, these guys mississippi, john john's group down there and jeremy up to the north and, man, they're still doing some awesome work. Um, uh, it's, uh, it's. It's a world that, uh, I never thought I would get into because my dad was a detective. But, man, I do not regret one second of it, so didn't get a lot of sleep, worked all the time, but you know what the heck?
Speaker 1:so there's gonna be a lot of people that don't care for troopers because they consider them road pirates. Yeah, okay, now obviously you in the world of interdiction, you are no longer what we would call a road pirate necessarily. However, when you guys were making these stops, let's say you pull someone over, you suspect you know, okay, this kind of has the profile of somebody running drugs or whatever human trafficking, whatever it is, pull it over. It's not what you were looking for. Obviously, you were looking for a traffic offense to pull them over, whatever that is, you know, expired regs or failure to use their turn signal or changing lanes, whatever. You get it pulled over and you realize it's not what you were looking for. Are you writing a ticket?
Speaker 2:Well, to the chagrin of our command, 99% of the time, no, Okay, Because it was time to move on. You know, for us it was about education, right? And so we would always say, hey, there's a motor vehicle code that's got hundreds and hundreds of pages in it. For a reason it's so I can use it to find the and and. So that was the thing. It's just like every car you stop is not going to be the bad guy, but they may do certain things unbeknown to them that are the same thing that we would see from somebody two weeks ago that had 10 kilos.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and and maybe it's a soccer mom, you know, going to pick her kids up from school, or what college visit, you know, whatever. And so for us, and at the time we had a really good command that would just say we're about educating, right. And if somebody blew by us at a hundred miles an hour, yeah, we were putting them on his shoulder, yeah, we were cutting them a biscuit, right, okay, just because they deserved it, because they were making things unsafe. But for the most part we just said we'd educate. You know, there's a lot of laws out there that, as troops, that would drive us crazy, like somebody driving in the left lane with nobody in the right lane. It's a violation here in Michigan and we stopped all the time for that, and that was just because it drove us crazy. But a lot of it is education right.
Speaker 1:Well, they're the ones that end up causing traffic backups. It's hard to explain that to people. What will inevitably happen is you're going to be in the left lane, somebody's people like. What will inevitably happen is you're going to be in the left lane. Somebody's going to come up that's traveling quicker than you and you don't get over. And then that's where it starts. It's this big accordion effect and then inevitably accidents can be caused from that yeah, you know what else it causes road rage.
Speaker 2:And there, there you go. We saw that toward the end of my career, right, you see, these guys cut them off and then slam on their brakes and then now somebody's going into the fence or, uh, something like that, you know. So it's just a lot of that little stuff. But yeah, I mean, obviously everybody has to work on how their command is and, and so some command pushes that stuff. We were fortunate at the time to have a really strong command that believed in putting bad guys in jail and knew that that wasn't done through a traffic ticket a lot of times, even though, you know, sometimes you had to. But, um, yeah, a lot of times we didn't write tickets.
Speaker 1:So so I've made this argument before. I'm like troopers. In my experience it's a 50 50 shot of on getting a ticket. Yeah, the one that it's a hundred percent guaranteed, even if it's their own mother, is motor officers. Oh, if they're on a motorcycle you're screwed, you're not getting out of that. That's what they do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's it right. I mean, you look at those traffic cars and even some states that got highway patrol. Man, that's what they do, that's what they're out there for and they signed up for it. And I used to tell my guys, you know, they would be mad during, like, seatbelt enforcement, right. Or you know, driving while texting, you know something like that I'm like hey, did you cash your paycheck last week? Yeah, they go out there write that ticket. The boss says you're writing tickets for seatbelt. You know, would you stop cashing a paycheck? Then holler at me and I'll tell you you don't have to write tickets anymore, Right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. We would just do traffic enforcement days where we would focus on dangerous driving and all that, but other than that we would educate because we wanted. If you didn't have, we could be wrong, but if you didn't have drugs or guns or money or bombs or kidnapping in that car, I wanted you out of there as fast as I could get you out of there. Writing a ticket wasn't that way.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and that's kind of how I am in patrol. Where I'm at right now is we we're hunting for guns and dope and felons, like that's really it. I mean, we're not interested in writing, sitting there writing tickets out or anything like that, because we have such a high profile area where I am that and what I mean by high profile is just so many people I mean thousands of people walking around. It's just a dangerous spot if something were to hit the fan. So we have to be on our toes all the time trying to prevent that stuff, and the only way to prevent it is through proactive foot patrol, proactive traffic stops. But in that proactiveness, 99% of them are getting education. Hey, you got to get that taken care of. You got to do this. You can't drive with no front license plate. Uh, your tent's too dark. You need to get that stuff fixed. Like bro, you had to roll your windows down just to make that turn.
Speaker 2:We watched you yeah, oh yeah, windows are so dark at night you can't even see out your own window yeah, yeah, no, and a lot of it is just giving guys flexibility right and allowing them to make that decision yeah, the ground officer yeah 100, because if you got somebody you stopped.
Speaker 2:And let's say, you know, like we would stop somebody for going 76 and a 70 right, going six miles an hour, to speed them, and so it wasn't just because of that speed. They did some other things that were indicative, you know, potentially of of smuggling, and so we would stop them. And and if you looked and you said, oh, they've been stopped 22 times, because we could see if you were previously stopped, you would stop 22 times for speed. Well, yeah, yeah, okay, now it might be time to get catch one, you know, yeah that kind of stuff maybe.
Speaker 1:Maybe, because sometimes you find people, you look at their history and you're like this guy's hurting, he doesn't have a job right now, or maybe he just finally got a job and all we're going to be doing is adding to his cycle of, you know, relapsing and becoming another statistic because he can't get out of the hole that he already kind of dug. So sometimes, when the story you know and you can tell us as cops with experience, we see it. I've even shown up on some of my guys's calls and I always tell them like hey, I'm not gonna tell you how to run your call, like yeah, but this is what I see. So it's up to you. You make whatever decision you want. I support it either way. I'm just telling you what I'm looking at right now is I see a car full of construction equipment and handyman tools and a dude that looks like he's trying to do the right thing but, he just he's so far behind.
Speaker 1:He's got a lot, a lot to get out of this hole. So is this ticket best for everybody, or is it, you know? Are we in the best interest of this guy? Let's let's kind of weigh those things out.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, because you look at, you know what kind of impact am I going to have, right, yeah, I mean, that's what ultimately trying to do. Right, you're trying to corrective behavior on whether it's a traffic stop or domestic or whatever. Right, you're trying to correct some behavior, yeah, and so then you sat there and, like you said, you were like, okay, so this guy in the last five years ago, the previous five years, he got stopped 12 times. In the last two, three years he has nothing record but, like you said, he's still reaping benefits for the mad, expired, suspended license and all that kind of stuff. You know he's still got, you know, traffic warrants. He's trying to make up that he's trying to do at $12 an hour, you know, with three kids now, and and so okay Is, is your, what are you doing here?
Speaker 2:Is that, is that going to correct his behavior? Because he rolled that stop sign, because he's had a bad day or whatever and we all have had bad days. You know, just and I don't care who you are as a police officer You've had a bad day where you made a traffic stop and you got into it with somebody on the side of the road when they just said one thing and it triggered you and it wasn't anything that they meant. And I did it and I can remember a couple of times you stop them.
Speaker 2:They say one thing, and man, I'd be like you don't talk to a trooper like that, and I jump all over them. Then I'd sit back in my car and be like what am I doing? Yeah, you know, they didn't mean that and just because I'm having a bad day, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put this to them, you know, and I just say you know what. You're getting warned and get out of here, because this was, this was my bad. I came off wrong on this one. Yeah, because I'm trying to correct your behavior, me. All it is is going to make you yell back at me and then nobody's going to win on this one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I tell people, I'm like it's not necessarily our job as cops to fix you. I'm not trying to fix you, I'm trying to. I'm recognizing patterns and seeing what history is and all this stuff. I'm putting all those factors together and trying to make a decision. If a ticket's not in the best interest of you, necessarily, but is that the right thing here? And if I get emotional about it, I'm already thinking with the wrong part of my brain.
Speaker 1:Like you know, I should be thinking objective and logically, which is all prefrontal cortex and if I'm not thinking with that part of my brain, that means I'm thinking emotionally. And if I'm thinking emotionally I'm in the wrong spot. So, like you, if I catch myself thinking like that, I back off immediately. I'm like no, I'm not thinking in the right part of my brain right now. And I I mean that in a literal sense. You are literally not thinking with the right part of your brain, you're thinking with the emotional side. Can't let ourselves get caught up in it.
Speaker 1:That's the number one killer of an officer's career is the ego, and I don't mean necessarily that your ego's taken over. That typically is the root cause. We start to get emotional because we have unmet expectations. We're so used to 99% of people just going with the program All right, here's what we got, this is what we're doing, and you get that one person that they're having a bad day and they're not trained like we're trained, so they don't act the way we expect them to act, and that immediately triggers. We go from logical and objective to emotional and ego.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent. You know, and even honestly, you know you look at troopers, right, everybody was like oh, you know you will respect me, I'm a trooper, right, I'm. I'm looking good, head to toe. I got my hat shine, my boots are signed. You know I'm looking good, you will respect me. And so, the moment somebody didn't, you're like whoa, all right, it's game on. It's like well, is it? You know? Are are they just that, that, that small percentage of the society that is just respecting the police, that needs to be dealt with and not ignored? Are they that? Or are they just having a bad day, kind of like you had one yesterday? Yeah, you know, you need to. Like you say you need to slow down, figure out which, which, why, in the road we're going here, because you go left and you shouldn't have went left. It's going to get ugly and, like you said, it may end your career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you see.
Speaker 2:I mean obviously all over TikTok and everything else now, where you see that they chose to go left and no longer police officers.
Speaker 1:I've seen this video several times, but somebody sent it again to me today and it's this officer that he's getting into it with a young. He may be a teenager, maybe just a young adult, 18 to 21 years old, something like that but the kid's just mouthing off to him at in front of this house and the officer literally says like no gun, no badge, none of that. Let's throw hands like any. He tries to fight the kid and I'm like and they're they were basically asking me my opinion of it and I'm like that's an ego issue, like this guy has no business in law enforcement. And if you want to know what I would have done if that was my guy, you're fired, you're gone, you're not.
Speaker 1:I would hope you never get to be a cop again, because we have no room for that type of behavior in law enforcement. One it tells me you're not. You're not of the mindset that needs to be in this career field to begin with. That's not fixable, that's not something I can train out of you. Be in this career field to begin with, that's not fixable, that's not something I can train out of you. That's. It's an inherent, deep-seated issue within yourself that you thought it was a good idea to throw hands.
Speaker 1:Now I get it. The movies have portrayed, you know, end of watch and all that shit where they, you know it takes all this stuff off and fight like, okay, maybe back in the day, maybe that was an 80s thing and accepted by the public, but it isn't anymore. The job has evolved. We've gotten smarter, better, better technology, all this stuff. We should be the higher standard. So no, we shouldn't be doing that dumb shit out there.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't look as cool as the movies yeah, it definitely does not. No I mean, you got some of that, you know you got. Uh, there's always the famous video I think it's Connecticut. That trooper just goes into that guy, you're fucked. Oh yeah, man, we're all like this dude is awesome.
Speaker 1:Is it in the original?
Speaker 2:dispensary container.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the dude. For us, especially as troopers on the road, we're like man. We want to say that on every stop Some of these guys you look at like older guys. It's like what propelled you to get to that point? Did your command beat you down so much that you're at that point where you're like somebody's getting it? I can't yell internal.
Speaker 1:I'm the oldest kid right.
Speaker 2:Somebody's getting it. I saw good friends that have critical incidents or something like that come back to work too early and man, this never worked out for them right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's just it, no-transcript. And then have that conversation with them afterward Like, hey, because you know, right, you know your guys, when you're out, you know who who has that personality for who does it. And I think we see that lacking in command and leadership nowadays. Whether it's a colonel, a lieutenant colonel or a sergeant, you know down to recognize that, hey, man, that's not that guy, you know that's not, he's not like that. So where's he starting to slide? Let's grab him before he goes over there. Or, like you said, hey, he is that guy and he needs to go because he's about to get us two or three lawsuits. You know that we can't afford or worse, get one of the guys hurt because we get in this brawl that we never even were meant to be in. You know, we saw that too, right.
Speaker 1:And there's and there's another factor for troopers. Um, when we talk about stress levels and things like that, the number one killer of cops, as far as I've been told and I think it's still true is traffic accidents. So when we've got people pulled over on the side of the road, those lights are like magnets for DUIs. They tend to run into our vehicles and stuff like that. So when people don't understand why it seems like officers may be a little bit more on edge than normal, well, traffic stops are one of those. And when you are a trooper and you see just how much death and destruction traffic accidents cause and here you are on the side of the freeway, vulnerable outside of your cage that somebody says something that delays that process. And now you've just caused me to be out here even longer. So I think there's a subconsciousness to us that our stress level is like peaking already, cause we, we know, even if we're not thinking about it, we know like this is the most dangerous spot I can be in. It's more dangerous than the domestic, it's more dangerous than anything else that we do in this career, other than maybe heart attacks. But yeah, for you fat cops out there, you know. And so when we are out there on these traffic stops and somebody wants to, well, I'm only cracking the window. This far I know my rights. You can't tell me to roll the window down and try the sovereign citizen stuff and all that, and the cop gets an attitude.
Speaker 1:It isn't just it's not just ego. There's other factors involved. There is the stress of knowing you are in the most dangerous position and now, because you don't want to do what you agreed to do when you accepted a license assuming you have one when you accepted a state license is to follow the lawful orders of a police officer and you not rolling your window down and you trying to play these little stupid games so you can record and try to get an officer off his rocker. These things you got to consider, like you are prolonging one of the most dangerous things that cops can do and that is why they tend to get attitudes when things don't move smooth and quickly. They want to be out of there just as quickly as you oh, yeah, for sure, even just the little stuff.
Speaker 2:Right when you stop somebody on the interstate and you'd light them up in a nice open flat area where, because you're concerned about everybody, yeah, you're trying to get this guy maybe that was going 85. And so you're trying to deal with him, but you're concerned about the people going by you too, because it's not their problem that you can't follow the traffic law. So I got to put you on his shoulder. But then you're like no, I'm just going to keep driving because I'm going to find a safe area.
Speaker 1:We'd always get that. Well, I thought this was safer to pull right up alongside the guardrail underneath an overpass.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on the other side of the bridge a hill. Yeah, yeah, oh great, thanks bro. You know, like, and then. So now you got to get out and you got to deal with them, because you get on your mic and they can't hear you because of the freeway traffic, and now you hear the brakes locking up behind you. You know, in 94 we had a lot of 18 wheelers and you're like, well, here it comes. Yep, you know, just just because I stopped this guy for going to 85, you know.
Speaker 1:But yep, just go limp, yeah, just go loose.
Speaker 2:Try not to anticipate it yeah, yeah, I know then, because then you get complacent right then. That's the other side of it is that we dealt with it so much that I just stand on a white line, somebody going by at 80, well, that was close, you just go back to you know doing your business Right. And so you see now, like crossing the street with a buddy or a wife, I just start walking on this street, oh my.
Speaker 2:God that car's close. I might try standing on a freeway when they're going 80. I'm like this's snowing. You know I'm up here, michigan and and uh, that's a whole another world dealing with crashes. You know we'd be out 12 to 16 hours. Um, one of the things that our interdiction team would do during the winter is we would deal with large, uh pileups. Um, I think we worked 25, 30 wrecks over 25 cars, with one of them being 193 cars and uh and so all day long.
Speaker 1:What's that I said? It's 77 here, by the way is it?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, I think it might hit 38 today. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Yeah, like two inches of snow this morning, it's killing me, but uh, yeah, so you know. Then you're, you're clenched onto a steering wheel all day long and you're constantly on edge all day long, and then all it takes is one person to say something wrong and you've been doing that 12 hours and you just snap on them. You know for now.
Speaker 2:You know they do, maybe some stupid little fender bender, you know where it's like. Hey, it happens, but you're snapped on them because you've been dealing with wrecks all day and idiots driving too fast and you know you're always going to get that one person.
Speaker 1:there are a couple people that are like, well, you knew what you signed up for? Yeah, we do, but we're human and we're susceptible, just like anybody else, to stress and the things that happen, and guess what, we don't have the outs, um, to just say, okay, I'm not going to come in tomorrow because I feel, stressed out, we may get a couple of those, but we're not going to get enough of those.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, here in Michigan when it snows too hard that they close businesses. Oh yeah, that's when we have to go to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Right Schools get closed.
Speaker 1:That's when I have to go to work and you guys need to understand that it isn't like Texas, where I'm at, and a light dusting will close everything In Michigan. If they close due to snow, it is hellacious. It is the old-school Alberta Clipper. Do you remember ever hearing?
Speaker 2:those. Oh yeah, the old-school Alberta Clipper. I think we had that a couple weeks ago. We still get those, yeah Well.
Speaker 1:I haven't heard that term since I moved out of michigan, so I try to explain to people. I'm like you ever heard of alberta clipper, like that's that?
Speaker 2:oh man, that's a blizzard you don't want to be in uh, when it's january, february, and that wind switch is on northwest, you're like here it comes. Yeah, obviously we got lake michigan right, so I'm on the west side of michigan. So when everybody else across the state gets two inches, we get 12, 14, 16, 20, yeah, and uh, yeah, so you know, it's just all that right, like you said. You're like oh yeah, you signed up for it, did I? Did I sign up for you to drive too fast and cause crashes on the freeway and me have to worry about them? I don't think I did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm pretty sure I didn't do that, you know I signed up because I want to help, yeah, but at the same time, like that, it's just such a weak argument. Well, you signed up for it, you knew you could be shot at? Like yeah, I knew I could be shot, you could be shot at. Like it's just things that can happen. That doesn't mean it's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't mean I have to tolerate it. It doesn't mean I got to be okay with it. It doesn't mean I got to go to work thinking, hey, I hope today's the day I get shot at yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:So, man, okay, all right, sir. So I think we've. I'm trying to think of some other questions before I want to get down the rabbit hole of interdiction, where it led to um and where it's at today. Some of the things I want to educate the public in is so, if they're getting pulled out over on the freeway, what do you recommend that they do? Because there's, there's always going to be, the people that they turn their hazards on. They're like I'm going to find my own perfect spot. Or you know, as you as a trooper, if you're going to recommend to people okay, you got caught, you were speeding, or your expired registration, or whatever, we're on the freeway, what do you suggest to them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean like to your question earlier, well, I'm going to find a safe spot. Well, I wouldn't have turned on my lights if it wasn't safe. First off, second off, I'm the guy that's out here every day, so I know where it's safe and you don't. You know, so you know, I always tell, you, know, family members and all that. Even my kids, right, they're a little bit older now in college. They're older now in college, so they're driving across multiple states and it's just like hey, just act, natural the lights come on. It sucks. Maybe you didn't think you were doing anything. We've all been speeding, you and I included, where we didn't realize we were. It happens, we understand it.
Speaker 2:Or you touch the fog line, hey, they're doing an OWI detail and you touch the fog line three times, they're going to check you OW detail and you touch the fog line three times, they're gonna check you owi stands for oh, operating while intoxicated okay, not everybody knows our lingo dwi owi.
Speaker 1:There's a whole bunch of them I don't know.
Speaker 2:Half you guys is lingo. When I go down south, it seems like everybody's got going. So right, yeah, but no, you just act natural. Right, hey, the lights come on. Maybe you don't know why they're on. Maybe you do pull over the shoulder. Get over as far as you can, which side uh well that's one that drives me nuts yeah, yeah, you're always supposed to go to the right, but to the right times.
Speaker 2:Yep, well, there are times where you'll have to go to the left maybe. Uh, based on traffic patterns. If you're, if we stop you, what would you call the hammer lane, the far left lane, and it's three lanes to get over to the right, we're probably expecting you to go left. Unfortunately, um, unless we will indicate you a lot of times, you'll see troopers, you'll see the car start to go right before you, which is the indication that he wants you to go right as well. And then, with his lights on, you know, there was, oh, there were other cars there. Well, with your lights on, everybody's going to get out of the way. So it you know, I wouldn't take you over there just to have you get hit Cause. Then I got to work the wreck.
Speaker 1:So I wouldn't do that, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, but then it's just that natural, like you said, just that little stuff, right, and a lot of troopers hopefully you'll see them go up the pasture side or whoever you know. Like you said, put the window down, you know, and maybe you have your documentation, maybe you don't. I mean, they don't expect you to have it ready. So just you know, just sit there with your hands on the steering wheel and you know, if you don't maybe trust the police or don't care for police because of past experience or something like that, we don't expect you to be like, yes, sir, no sir, you know all that kind of stuff. Um, that's what I always preach with my kids because it's this respectful thing and I, I don't care what profession you're in, you know you do deserve some respect. But, um, and then from there, just and I always tell people that you know, let's say he says, hey, I stopped you for going 89 and a 70, and you're like there's no way I was going 89. And when you do it on the side of the interstate or roadway or in Fort Worth, downtown is not the place to have an argument on whether you agree with what that traffic stop was for, and so all that is is just gonna, like you said, we don't wanna be there any longer than you. Wanna be First off, the second off. I know what could happen. The longer I sit there and all it is going to make me more mad, the longer I have to sit there.
Speaker 2:And if you're going to sit there and argue with me and just say I'm not handing you my stuff because I didn't think I was going that far, I always tell people hey, that is not the place to argue. You want to argue it out? We can go to court. Everybody has the right to go to court, no matter what you did, and you got a right to go see either a magistrate or a judge, depending on you know what level you want to do. We can hash it out there.
Speaker 2:You can yell at me all you want there the side of this roadway, when I believed beyond a reasonable doubt or at least probable cause to believe that you did this infraction. To put you on the shoulder whether you agree with that or not is not the place to have that and and and. Yeah, I, I have been wrong. There's no question. There's a few times that I was wrong on the traffic stop whether I read the wrong digit, or I saw the wrong tab, or you know, whatever the infraction was, there was no question I was wrong, and so the side of the freeway is not the place to have that that argument, you know. And I always tell people hey, just just take it, just just do what you're told.
Speaker 2:If you write your ticket, just you know, then from there you know, you can argue that, um, now, yeah, but don't get all crazy, you know, on the side of the road and it's that is not the place to do it so when you're doing traffic enforcement and you're running radar, lidar, you're doing speed enforcement.
Speaker 1:So you're out there, you're on the freeway. Let's say there's three, four lanes of traffic. You got cars. How do you know that you have the right car and you're reading the right speed, or there's a bunch of cars out there?
Speaker 2:So when we get trained on radar up here, one of the things you have to do first is you have to be able to go out on the freeway and you're with your instructor and you have to be able to look at a vehicle and tell within five miles an hour of how fast it's going.
Speaker 2:So visually you're kind of looking at a car and so obviously I pretty much primarily work traffic for my 25 and a half years, so kind of get good at reading speed and so the instructor would know the speed and then you would say 77, 78. And then they'd say no, he's going 85, you know, and so they would set there and then just visually you kind of judge that distance, right that the cars travel, and then all that kind of stuff. Um, so usually that's what happens. Is you know whether we're stationary or we're moving? We're, I can look at a car, or troopers, or even the local guys too, they look at a car and you say, okay, that car looks like it's going faster than everybody else. Common sense, because it's passing everybody else, right?
Speaker 2:And then you're saying, okay, he's the lead car, you hit him with the radar, you hit him with a LIDAR or whatever, and now you get your speed, and you've already kind of got a speed in your head. Maybe you say, all right, he looks like he's going about 90, 87, yep, that's him. And then make the turn um, so then obviously you have a pack of cars. It's not like.
Speaker 2:So what's happening on that radar typically on the ones at least we had here in the state police is it's grabbing the fastest car. Um, so it'll show you a slow speed, but it'll also show you the fastest speed, which is typically the person in front, um, of a pack maybe of traffic. And so then it'll show you the following sequential cars after that okay, and so we, we can usually see, and then a laser or lidar uh, what we're using is that's actually sending a beam into your windshield and so it is only seeing one vehicle. And so if we're sitting there on the freeway and you see the passenger side windows down and you see that, you know gun-like object, you know that little square brick object pointing out the window, he's actually sending a beam into that windshield and he's getting that each individual car so lidar would be arguably more accurate and less likely for confusion yeah, less like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the accuracy and the radar and the light are going to be the same. But you could if, if you're not paying attention right to, to those pre-speed stuff that you're trying to do before you're engaging that radar, if you're not paying attention to that, yeah, there could be so the the point I'm getting to is that if you are going to fight in court, you have a better chance of arguing.
Speaker 1:If you got a good defense, you have a better chance of arguing. If you've got a good defense, you have a better chance of arguing against a radar versus a LIDAR?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, he's going to tell you how many feet you were away Everything, because you know typically reading about 1,000 to 1,500 feet, he's going to write down 1,237 feet at 82 miles an hour. Yeah, just beg for mercy at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, miles an hour, yeah, just beg for mercy at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, and I love you know I I tell people all the time I'm always rooting for the underdog.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's just fun so when you go, to court and you fight a ticket like I've. You know, I go to court too and I'll see him in there fighting there and I'm like, oh man, I hope this guy gets it like he's. He got a good argument up there like you know why he's doing what he did, or whatever it is, and I'll give people the tips and tricks like listen. One thing to argue is was their equipment calibrated prior to?
Speaker 2:shift that's. That's the easy one prior to and prior after and after yep.
Speaker 1:So that's one way and they will use a tuning fork and the tuning fork's got to be matched up with their equipment and certified and all of those different things 21st century.
Speaker 2:Now, bro, you just hit test and it runs it through all four, you know? Oh really, yeah, so ours get tuned and forked when they come out and they get put in the car, uh-huh and then after that it's just test button. It runs it through a hole. You'll see a whole cycle go through and then on your daily it's got a low spot check. I tested it all. And then after your shift you check, I tested it. And and then after your shift you check, I tested it.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know any of that, because I do real police work and I don't bother road pirating. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:It's not ingrained in you to have to do every single day.
Speaker 1:No, not at all. We don't even have radar lighters in the cars.
Speaker 2:Oh really.
Speaker 1:Nope, you got to go check that shit out if that's what you're wanting to do. I'm nope, you got to go check that shit out.
Speaker 2:If that's what you're wanting to do, like my guys, I'm like we got too many calls holding you ain't sitting out there running it's. Now they're running radar. Yeah, yeah, well, as troopers we just say, hey, we're on our way like uh. So at the post, you know they take complaints and we were separate. We didn't take complaints as uh interdiction guys. But you know, when they leave the post know they run that radar all the way to the complaint.
Speaker 2:And so you know they may stop cars on the way to the complaint. That's why you'll see a lot of times we would call it topside, or in a city You'll see the state police on a stop downtown where he's probably in between complaints and, you know, saw something and he's going to put you on the shoulder that way.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Okay, yeah, I like if. I can help people beat tickets to like man. Let's, let's help everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's help everybody in this. Yeah, we don't get paid based on the ticket. So if you if you lose it? You just get mad for about an hour and then move on about your day Shoot.
Speaker 1:I don't get mad at all, I'm just like, oh well, is what it is. Yeah, I tried, you know. And sometimes you screw up. Sometimes you're like, ah, okay, fair enough. And, like I said, I've had some people make some arguments and I'm like what the like?
Speaker 1:One? One time I think I did have when I first started being a cop, and they, they fought the ticket and uh, I got asked the question what color was the car car? And I was like it was red. And they're like what color was the car behind it? And I was like I don't know. Well, they had camera footage from like 7-Eleven or a bank or something. They went and got it and when they passed by there was like two red cars and they're like which car is my client's?
Speaker 1:And I'm like I don't know, uh, the first one I? I? I didn't know how to like, you know, I was a new car, I didn't know how to argue it and I was like it's the first one, obviously, and it wasn't, it was the second one. But I didn't write that in my report. I don't remember, you know, because when you fight the ticket, it happened so long ago. So, yeah, I got spanked, like I lost because I didn't know what I was doing and how to argue and I knew I had the right car. It was absolutely the right car.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but education right. Sometimes you get educated too.
Speaker 1:My inexperience and you know that defense attorney helped me become a better cop. You win some, you lose some, but as long as you're learning and getting better as you go. And then some people are going to look at that and they're like, well, you shouldn't pull over if you weren't sure. I was sure the day of. I was not sure six months later when we had to go to court. Finally, over this and you know, try them.
Speaker 2:Well, I remember being on stops where they'd be like, oh, you know that other car, and I'm like who was it?
Speaker 1:yeah, you got me doubting myself. Yeah, I'm like ah like ah.
Speaker 2:They're just messing with me now. Yep, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yep, absolutely. Oh man, I got eye crusties going on here. How long have I had those on there? Yeah it happens. I know, yeah, so but all right, sir, let's move on. I want to get to what I call phase three, the perspective and future of policing. And and future of policing. And you did interdiction for so long you got into mostly dope and money, I'm assuming, but you also did you touch on human trafficking, because that is a big thing these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did for sure. Yeah, there was times where, especially between Detroit and Chicago, you'd see maybe kids that were put into the prostitution world out of their control or against their will, maybe they ran away and got into a bad environment or something like that. Yeah, we'd see the human smuggling, obviously international type, you know, whether it was from Mexico or China or Canada, you know any of those areas there just because of where we're located. So we'd see that. We'd see runaways and semis and and and the Romeo and Juliet kind of mindset, right, two kids run away in a car and dang on a missing person. And so, yeah, we, we did deal a lot in that. You know we'd see fraud, you know somebody stealing your credit card and buying a whole bunch of stuff at Home Depot. We, you know we your credit card and buying a whole bunch of stuff at home depot. We, you know we'd stop those people. So, um, there was a lot of different things that we did on the freeway that wasn't, like you're saying, just drugs, gun and money.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, a lot of other things yep, and it's important for people to understand that, that that disdain traffic stops, I'm, I'm not. I don't disdain them, I I like, it's just not my style policing that you know on, especially on the freeway, and that is a trooper's you know backyard versus you know you make the argument that, like, listen, traffic stops lead to all of these things that we're out there dealing with, and you can get the skill set to start to recognize patterns and indicators of these types of crimes. So you're not just guessing, you're not guessing. So to speak.
Speaker 1:There's, there's education and there's reason.
Speaker 2:Oh no, yeah yeah, no, there's a skill set, for sure, and you know, when you look at policing, you know there's a lot of different components to serve in the community, right, and, and you have to have investigators, you have to have people, you know, like yourself in your unit, you know, that are shagging, these calls that are humping, they got calls backed up, um, I know you do a lot of work in um, where you're in the stockyards, you know, and you have to deal with, uh, out of towners, right, maybe get carried away, drinking too much, know that kind of stuff. And then you start looking at inner city crime or violent crime. You're looking at the guns and all that. Well, those guns had to get there, right, how did they get there? Drugs got in the community. A lot of the shootings and stuff are over drugs. You know that's just the fact of reality and it doesn't matter what race it is, everybody, you know everybody's doing it, yeah, and so there's a lot of components in that that you got to put them all together.
Speaker 2:And so you see, in some agencies where it's just like, well, we don't, you know, basically do pro policing in Mona, we're just do reactive policing. Well, then you're seeing this violence kind of expand. You know, because the pro policing going after it, getting after disrupting, you know, these networks, whether it's the network in the city or the network on the freeway going from California to Detroit, that is a component of having to kind of get this violence and this crime under control. You know, when you take that component out within, you know you're left to run free. You know, like, unfortunately, look on that 94 right now and it's just a wide, open autobahn of drugs and guns and money.
Speaker 2:They've gotten away from the pro policing style at the moment and it's a. It's a component, you know, and I've seen it in other cities around here to where they had real strong pro policing and all of a sudden they backed off. And you could see it, when the pro-policing backed off, the violence would start going up. And that was just part of a component in there, with community servicing being part of that component, everybody having a role in that, and so, yeah, it's definitely a different art form right In that interdiction side. But I've been able to see a lot just because our unit was sent into more of the violent crime stuff.
Speaker 2:So, you know we had expertise in working drugs on surface street stuff and guns and we'd spent a fair amount of time in some violent areas. So I was able to. I was very fortunate I was able to see a lot Okay.
Speaker 1:Now through your career. Obviously you know you did 26 years, so you were back in the old school where your only real piece of equipment were a radio, your radar, lidar if they had it, and just good old-fashioned instincts. Then the internet came out and our training got better and we started to learn a little bit about habits and stuff that you know without having to go to a conference, so to speak, and opening up network channels to talk to other departments and what they're dealing with and things of that nature. Social media started becoming a thing. Then we started learning that criminals really love to brag about what they did on. Social media started becoming a thing. Then we started learning that criminals really love to brag about what they did on social media. So that was another way to start checking into people.
Speaker 1:And then we get to today's time. We've got drones, we've got LPRs, we've got AI, we've got facial recognition. We've got all of these different things to help and every state's a little different what they allow. But out of all of these things that have been out there, what in interdiction? What have been some of the best new tools that you guys have had, and why?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely think license plate readers played a very key role in interdiction good and bad. Because, like you said back in the day, you use your instincts't have the basic skill set to be an officer. Right now it's well, if my internet is not working, my modem is down in my patrol car. The world is over, I can't police, no more, I can't do this, no more. Right. And then you know, and then I would have my guys call me and say, hey, the license plate reader's down, okay. Well, it's not working. Okay, well, can you get it fixed? Yeah, when I have time, go out there and do your job.
Speaker 2:You know there was a time where we didn't have it, you know, and lo and behold, we used to arrest people without it, you know. So now agreed, it's all great stuff, there's no question about it. But you know, it's got, it's good and it's bad, and, and so it definitely license plate readers. Uh, played a big role. There was some small technology stuff that were like handheld x-ray scanners.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah, I haven't heard of those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we got turned on to those. There's a couple of companies out there that are doing some great guys. Old school interdiction guys Dominguez and Tamez and these guys that were rock stars helped a lot of us become better interdiction guys, but they kind of introduced us into that world. So you know they're a little bit. You would put them in a backseat of your patrol car, pull them out and then they could scan doors so you could see packages and doors. Okay, scan the back of seats.
Speaker 1:Bed of trucks, stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like yeah, you could just put it in the bed and scan it and then you know it's looking for organic material. So if it was kilos, it would show you squares. I mean, you would actually see the squares in the back of a seat okay.
Speaker 1:Did you act like the dentist does and put like a, a big no?
Speaker 2:no, I think they say you get more uh, radiation flying in a plane than you did from this thing. Okay, fair enough. It was very focal, like if you were on the receiving end of it and your buddy was trying to mess with you.
Speaker 1:Maybe you wouldn't have kids anymore. But yeah, I was gonna say pointed at his junk, keep talking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're not gonna have kids I can guarantee some of the yahoo's just work for me. Got pictures of those guys, but uh, yeah technology like that. But yeah, like you said, the internet was a big one, right, being able to communicate across the country.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know we would all go to conferences, we would do these in-class trainings, you know, which I loved, because I got to meet officers from Alaska and Mexico, and you know Florida and everywhere in between. But the advent of some technology there did help, you know, and they always say well, you were tracking this person. When you talk about license plate readers had nothing to do with that, right, it had to do with you doing conflicting stories, you know, trying to get a basis, you know, for I don't know you, I got 90 seconds to figure out on the side of the freeway. You know, whether you're doing good or bad. Um, throw me a bone, right?
Speaker 2:So you know this license plate reader. If you say, hey, I'm coming from California, but it showed you in Florida yesterday, well, you know, it's probably there's a reason you're lying, right? Because if you're, you know, if you and me were on vacation and we were going to go catch a ball game down in Florida, we would say we're headed to Florida to catch a ball game. We're not trying to hide anything, yeah, and so? So the advent of that technology obviously was big and you know now it's skyrocketing, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:And I try to tell people because I'm a proponent of LPRs and there's the argument, you know it's, it's you know big brother watching everything you do. One of the important things I like to point out, as far as I've been told, what I've learned about LPRs is they're not looking in your vehicles, they're not trying to invade your privacy and it's basically a force multiplier for cops that are hurting for bodies anyway, and they're on public roadways where anybody and their mom could be looking and taking pictures of your plates anyway. So the argument that I make is me, as a cop, I can run your plates at any time I want. While I'm working, that's what we do. When I've got downtime, or if I see a car that's standing out, I'm like gosh, I'm done.
Speaker 1:Okay, let me look. Boom, oh, weird. Now I got warrant hits on your car like I it. That's what an lpr is doing. Just it's an unblinking, you know static cop just standing there checking plates. They're not trying to mess with anybody's plate. That doesn't have nothing wrong, like no, it's not writing you a ticket.
Speaker 1:It's not doing any of those things, it not? It is looking for people that are already of interest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent. And I, uh, I helped start the uh state's license plate reader program here for Michigan and kind of expand it. And uh, I remember I met with some senators and and, uh, house guys had the same same concerns that the general public did. I mean, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. And I remember telling him, you know, because one of them wasn't exactly friendly towards law enforcement, and he's like, well, I don't want you knowing when I go to the bar or when I go get a haircut. And I said there's, you know, a million people that drive around the state hitting my license plate readers every day. I'm like, a, I would never want to look through all that data because I don't have time for that. And B, I don't really care. I care if you go to the bar and shoot somebody and they decide to go home. Well then, now I'm probably going to look for your license plate, yeah, and so I mean, that's the indicative mindset.
Speaker 2:It's just like, well, they're a big brother watching. What are we watching? Like you said, you're driving on a public roadway and it's really, if you are a good, upstanding citizen, you haven't done anything wrong and you're just traversing, you know, as far as law enforcement. Law enforcement doesn't care right, law enforcement cares when a crime has been involved, or your kid's been kidnapped, or you know you have a missing elderly grandpa or something like that. That's when they start caring. And so, like you said, they're not. They're not pulling data out of a car. You know they're not. We've heard everything from the reading cell phones. They get all the contacts as they drive by them. Um, I mean, maybe that technology exists somewhere. I'm not aware of it. Um, and I can assure you police agencies don't have it. Um, and then, like you said, it's just getting you know we would open source right information. It's just reading the license plate as it goes by.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm, you know, and I think it's important for guys like me that are still doing the job. Like, one of the things that I absolutely try to make sure is there isn't any overstep, Because I still, like you know, if there's somebody will abuse it, like that's a somebody's going to use it to where's my girlfriend at? I'm trying to, and they're going to get caught, and that's the thing with these systems that I want to give the public assurance on is that everything is tracked If I log in and I try to figure out something.
Speaker 1:All of that is tracked. That information is logged.
Speaker 2:Oh, 100% yeah, Audit trails. You know it's no different than running somebody's license right? There's a CJIS audit trail within whatever system you use.
Speaker 1:You know yeah, because it has to be compliant with CJIS and all of that. So that's one of the things that I encourage people to look at it in the way of. It helps keep cops more honest, Because if they do try to abuse it, they're caught and it's a freaking. You know what do they call it? Not a red flag, it's a smoking gun.
Speaker 2:Smoking gun right.
Speaker 1:Smoking gun yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't care what profession you're in, right, nobody has a perfect profession where everybody in the profession is angels, right? There's no question that either A people get into the profession for the wrong reason, to do the wrong things, which happens in every profession or, b something happened while they were there that turned them and they started doing the wrong things. You know whether they were trying to track their girlfriend or you know whatever and there's no doubt that has the potential to be taken advantage of. But and I always tell these police agencies that I meet with now or before, when I was starting it up it's just like hey, as long as you have the right policies in place and you follow the policies and you enforce the policy yeah okay.
Speaker 2:It's when you don't follow the policy and you don't enforce it that you'll you'll start having these, these issues where they're using the system not for what it's meant to be used for yep, yeah, I agree, yeah, but they've been man, they have been game changers.
Speaker 1:Um, I had done an interview for a local news station at one point and I told them I said to me license plate readers for law enforcement is like when we learned about fingerprinting, when we learned about DNA checking that is how big of an impact it has had in policing. Impact it has had in policing, yeah, and so it's vitally important that we keep good checks and balances so also cops don't lose the ability to have a good law enforcement tool. And I think, I think you know, because it technically it's still in its infancy when it comes to law enforcement.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah, what's it?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, on the side of law enforcement, policing yeah, when you think of how long policing has been around and in in the tactics and tools and stuff that we've had available, you know tasers have been around longer than LPRs. You know pepper spray has been along longer than LPRs, and look at where we're at. We still haven't got those perfected.
Speaker 2:You know tasers still fail a lot, Usually user error, not the taser itself but you know, your pepper, your oc spray, that fails yeah, yeah, guns fail right, yeah, issues with guns and yeah, I look how long in car cameras have been around yeah, basically what kicked that off was rodney king yeah so, and you have police the environments that still don't have those they still don't have body cameras they still don't have body cameras, right?
Speaker 1:let's say 90 to 95 percent. I think that was the latest statistic I heard.
Speaker 2:Have body cameras now yeah, okay, it's gotten a lot higher so they're still.
Speaker 1:You know, they're still 10. That's a large amount of departments that don't have them yeah.
Speaker 2:So you look at technology like we're talking about radars, you don't have a manual patrol car and how long are those things been around, right? You know, yeah, right. So I mean, just because you know that technology is there doesn't mean everybody has a and then b, like you said. It's still in infancy, you know, yeah, still very early in its stages, and there's a lot of agencies that are still trying to work that out, so trying to figure out how that plays a role in what they're doing. Maybe it's a small PD, maybe it's a large PD. They're still trying to figure that out.
Speaker 1:My mouth and talking on the camera. I don't know what happened there, but anyway. Um so, as you're starting to see the emergence of lprs and getting them implemented and things like that, um what, how were you guys using them?
Speaker 2:uh. So for us is, uh, we'd make a stop and and and talk to maybe you right, hey, where you come from, coming from fort worth Worth. I went to California and then came to Michigan. Oh, okay, well, we had, uh, at the time we had created a program within Michigan that we had on my, on our freeways, at the entrances and exits of the state, so we knew who was coming and going, for obvious reasons, and so we could just compare that other areas obviously had license plate readers too.
Speaker 2:Um, if we had access to those, we could compare, so we could check your license plate and say, you know, we would have other indications. It wouldn't be just, hey, you're just driving down the road and we stopped you for speed and we're going to check it. We would have other things. We were looking at other suspicions. We would articulate that we would like, hey, we have suspicions to believe that criminal activity is afoot, so we're going to do some further investigations.
Speaker 2:One of those further investigations would be an investigation into your license plate. So we type your license plate in and you say, yeah, I'm coming from Fort Worth, I went to California and now I'm headed to Detroit. And we see, you went from Miami to New York, to Chicago, then now you're headed to Detroit. So then we got to figure out well, okay, he's lying, why is he lying? So that was just a way to conflict a statement or conflict travel that somebody would have, and so that's a lot of times how we would use them.
Speaker 2:Then obviously we connect the system, so we'd have license plate, so the reader runs the plate through either the NCIC, which is the National Database for Stolen Vehicles, stolen Plates, that kind of stuff, or in Michigan we have one called LEAN, which is Law Enforcement Information Network, which is our local one. Each state typically has their own. It runs the license plate against that, so that if you stole the car in Chicago and it was entered in NCIC, that our camera would trigger and say, okay, this car is stolen, we'd see it, we'd run it, verify, yep, it's stolen, and then we put you on the shoulder and and figure out whether it's legitimate or not yeah, it's important to do rookies.
Speaker 1:Don't just rely on your lpr hits as a stolen vehicle. You have to verify through your ncic to make sure that it's stolen verify through ncic, verify through dispatch, maybe one more time, just for yes, for shits and giggles, you know yes yeah, yeah we, we do. We start getting too reliant on all of these technologies that we have, and that's one of the problems with license plate readers is you get a little lazy and you're like, oh, stolen car yeah you didn't verify.
Speaker 1:And the next, a little lazy, and you're like oh, stolen car, yeah, you didn't verify. And the next thing, you know you, you're pulling over the owner of the car, because their car was recovered and you didn't do the right research.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or it's a, it's a rental and it's been rerented.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they just yeah, there was just one not too long ago made national news or these guys were sitting outside of a gas station or in a restaurant or something and cops roll up because they somebody had run the plate and the plate was shown stolen. Now the car was still stolen, showing stolen, yeah. So the cops did their job, they verified, yeah, this car stolen. The thing was is it was never removed from the system, so somebody dropped the ball. And typically, how that happens, if you're listening, you're like, how does that happen? Well, sometimes people recover their own vehicle and they don't report it.
Speaker 1:So it ends up getting stolen by a family member or something like that, and they're like oh, frank took my car and I went to uncle frank's house and got my car back and I didn't call the cops and tell them, so they didn't take, the cops couldn't take it out of the system. Then you get cops that recover the car and they forget to let we call them id where we're at, but we don't let our pic or id know. Hey, we recovered this car, take it out of the system, we we forget that step. Or the third one, is you do tell them and then they drop the ball and they forget to take it out because they've got five other things lined up that they're doing.
Speaker 1:Major cities like where I'm located, like that's definitely something that's possible. I haven't seen it happen yet, but they do. They got 10 things stacked up with all these officers asking them to do stuff, so they're writing it down. They're like, okay, I gotta get to this one, get to this one. And then they're supposed to let you know yeah, we got it out of the system and it never happened.
Speaker 2:You get busy and you forget, so yeah, which that's just see it in the rental world, right, because they're flipping those rentals so fast yeah, you see it in dfw right, there's hardly any cars there. They're having to roll those things out, and so they got it towed back in and it was in good working order. They clean it up, gas it up and it's going right back out and they're not checking their due diligence to see if it was removed. And now you're just the next guy. It's not your fault.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this one was through Turo, which is and we've rented a couple turtles actually pretty cool. They're not a spot of ours, but I did it in alaska, yeah yeah, we did it in florida, I think it was, and it was great, great car, it was very easy. They met us at the airport, which was amazing. I was like this is this is great so it's different, yeah it is you know, and um no, anyway.
Speaker 1:So okay, now you guys, you're you're working with the lpr stuff. When you worked with the x-ray stuff, was there any other like cool tools and stuff like that that y'all were operating?
Speaker 2:yeah, I know, you know a lot of time. You know we would carry a full gamma in our car, um, so all my guys had full tool kits. I mean we could take seats out on inside the road, we could take tires off, bumpers off, really, um, yeah, the radio was out, you know special tools, remove radios?
Speaker 2:um, we would. We do a lot of training. We'd go to a lot of uh areas like texas, uh, arkansas, georgia, that were arizona, that these guys just kill it in interdiction. They've been doing a long time well-established programs, mississippi, and we'd go down there and we'd work with them and they would teach us how to do it and we'd kind of bring that knowledge back to the north.
Speaker 2:And I worked with Border Patrol a lot. You know they have a special unit down there at the border. I don't know if they still have it with everything going on, but they would do what they call secondary searches of the car. Once searches of the car, once they seized the car, found drugs, this car would go to a secondary location. It was set in an impound lot and then these guys would go research it again. So these guys knew every little spot. So we would go work with them and so, yeah, they would carry full toolkits, drills, whatever they needed to operate off. I tried to keep technology to a minimum right Not to overwhelm yourself. You know there's you got so much going on in your head and a lot of times you miss the easy and simple clues when you're trying to take in too much information okay now with all of that and you know we always tend to be fine-tuning our craft but you'll hit a peak where you're like, damn, I'm killing it out here.
Speaker 1:Now, when you were at your peak and you were killing it, what were some of the biggest cases? Was there any cool stories that you got?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had a lot of awesome cases. I can remember one partner, he was working, stops a car coming eastbound, coming out of Chicago. You know, it's a normal stop. A young female she gets out of the car. Pretty little female. She was a school teacher in Detroit and he was a very seasoned veteran, very good at his job, and so he's talking to her and she's just, you know, gives him this story and he's just like you know, and his big thing, looking back on it was quite funny. She had one little duffel bag set in the middle of the backseat and the story she gave he's like I remember, walking up, he goes, something's not right. I go what he goes? She only has one duffel bag in there. I go, yeah, he goes, it's a girl.
Speaker 1:He goes.
Speaker 2:How many girls do you know? Only take one duffel bag anywhere, like she had, went from Detroit to Chicago for a couple of days.
Speaker 2:He's like there's no way she's only going to have one duffel bag. You know that kind of stuff, those little stuff you know that we looked at. But anyways, fast forward. We find in the rear of her car it's all trapped out. She had 25 keys of coke, a couple of keys of heroin, some money.
Speaker 2:Then we were able to go deliver that in Detroit, take down some fellows over there. One of them ended up being linked into the Black Mafia family, ended up into a huge case. They did a couple of shows on it and so, yeah, it was a really fun case and we had some where we had a million, 1.5 million, $2 million stops that just broke into these awesome, awesome cases. So, yeah, it was just because of where we were located. You know, I remember one time one of the guys on the unit stops this guy and we ended up finding a compartment in a Jeep has, you know, 50, 60 grand. It wasn't a lot, but the guy was a upper leadership for the Sinaloa cartel and so they actually had he'd been hiding under a different identity and uh, he's. He basically got ripped at his drug house and they stole his fake passport and so he was left with his true identity and he, so we stop him. He has no identity. Well, we had fingerprint readers that we would carry on our car, the mobile one, like rapid ID and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're just a little Bluetooth one, so I'm going to never forget he's like man. I knew I was screwed when I saw you guys walk up with that thing and I remember he's like you, goddamn troopers and your technology. And so, yeah, we ran his prints. He comes back with a DEA warrant and so we. So we spent a lot of time talking with him just trying to learn the game. And this guy had actually met with Chapo Guzman back when Chapo was on the loose, and so that's how he was. So it was cool, you know, to learn from him. And I remember I drove him to the federal holding facility and we were just talking about traps in cars and you know this and that, and so, yeah, we had a lot of awesome cases like that, just because of where we are located, right between Detroit and Chicago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now when they're getting their, their dope and their money and all that stuff, obviously anything cartels coming out of Mexico usually. But, um, were you guys getting anything coming through Canada a lot or going for sure, were they coming into the States or were they trying to leave?
Speaker 2:Uh, you had both. So, uh, it's kind of swung a little bit. You're still. You'll get cocaine coming down from Canada. Uh, it's. It is somewhat rare, um, but what we would see come out of Canada a lot, was a lot of ecstasy, so a lot of MDMA and then a lot of back.
Speaker 1:Canadians like to party, huh.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah. Well, you know a lot of it comes in. Uh, they had pill presses, so they're, they're, so they're bringing the powder in or whatever. And then in British Columbia, in Ontario, they'll have these giant pill presses where they're making millions of XTC pills and they're shipping them into the United States. And with our relationship with the border between Detroit port, here on at Sault Ste Marie, we would get a lot of influx of that because of the commercial traffic. So a lot of it would come in on semis and whatever um not salt saint mary guys not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely not salt. No, not salt, yep, um, but yeah, so we get a lot of that um. Back before marijuana was legal um in the united states, we'd see a lot of hydro, um or uh, commercial grown marijuana that would come down in through and they would trade it. You know, back then it was five, six thousand a pound because it wasn't quite as prevalent as it is now. They would trade it for cocaine. So you would see the reverse go back.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, there's a fair amount of drugs, especially in through Michigan, that come down in. And then the other side you would see trucking companies or passenger cars that would come in from canada, go to california, go to arizona, go to texas, pick up cocaine, uh, pick up heroin, fentanyl, and then they would be taking it back to canada. So we would stop them going back in. Um, that's awesome, yeah, we would see. I think we had 65 kilos one time that was sitting on the bunk of a semi um. So yeah, we would see various things from the Canadian side. A lot of Russian mafia influence up there, so we saw a little bit of that.
Speaker 1:Really yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Albanian. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, it's a cool world because you know a criminal is a criminal, right, and so you got to see a lot of different sides. Yeah, everybody talks about Mexican cartel, but what about the Hells Angels? You know? What about the Russian mafia? What about the Albanians? Yeah, you know you would see all these different facets. So I always tell people when I train and I'm like, if you think that a certain race is committing a crime, a, that's not right, but B, you are way over your head in your profession. Yeah, because that's just not the case, right, yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean they've got the money to get people that you can buy and not fit. You know they're trying to look as would it be conspicuous as possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah just trying to blend in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just trying to blend.
Speaker 2:Into the yeah, yeah. So, and that was the big thing because people always say and, like you said, you're trying to educate the public. Well, why'd you stop me? You know what'd you stop me?
Speaker 1:for I don't look like a drug dealer, what's a drug dealer look like yeah, tell me what they look like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're trying to look like you so I, you know I'm sorry that. You know you were committing these violations and I, you know, end up, you know you were not a drug dealer no good for you. But they're trying to look like you. So you know they're driving during the day, they're driving during rush hour, you know that kind of stuff. So you know that's what we would see, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know you'll get the people. Well, drugs are nonviolent offenses, da dah, dah, dah dah. Well, and what you're talking about, the interdiction side, like that's what causes the violence, the black market, and gets these cartels and organized crime syndicates going, and that is that is what the basis of a lot of violence stems from. So when you can cut off, you know that type of traffic you're, you're you're making a significant dent in what they're able to do and where they're able to cause violence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, Because, like I said, we would see guns, we would see cell phones wrapped in cellophane in hidden compartments because they're trying to get information, you know, moved from one cartel to the next, and so they just wrap a cell phone up and send it. Yeah, you know all the tricks and trade, you know tradecraft I guess you could call it. You know within that community. But the other side, you know, we dealt with a lot of fraud where they would steal your credit card and go buy you know five, six thousand dollars in gift cards and we would stop them and they'd have Home Depot and they'd have this and they'd have that, and so we were dealing with all that crime too. So it wasn't just you know, the drug which we felt pretty good that we were making, you know, a small percentage debt, but at least it was a little debt in saving lives, especially once the fentanyl came in. You know when we would seize a lot of times in interdiction. Like I said, you're dealing with bulk form, when it's being moved from a to b. So it's bulk form, a drug. So we would seize a whole kilo of pure fentanyl or be a whole kilo of cocaine.
Speaker 2:So a lot of these interdiction guys around the country when they see it, it's in its pure form. So cocaine at 90, 95, you know, and then so that one kilo might get broke down two or three times before it gets sold out in the street. So you, you went from 2.2 pounds to 6.6 pounds, you know. So the one kilo was actually, you know, five to seven pounds worth of street product, and then it's sold by Graham. So these interdiction guys are making a huge dent and then drug teams are too right when they're they're doing their undercover work and all that. But it's, it's not easy, it's a it's, it's definitely a trade in its own to do interdiction. But that's the easiest point where you're going to see that that bulk stuff, okay, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, sir, um, I am, I think I'm I'm comfortable with all the questions that I was going to ask. Is there anything I haven't hit on that you were like, oh, we should talk about this or we didn't mention that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, you talk about technology and all that. You know with the license plate reader stuff, and I always tell people it's just like hey, like you said, it's a force multiplier. You know it's in a time when police agencies are hurting all over this country. I don't know that I've been to one yet in my new career here working for a license plate reader company to where the agency is like oh man, we're fat with people we can't take on any more. You know, I haven't seen that yet. And so in order to keep officers safe and then keep the community safe, you know you have to rely on that technology. You know, and I get it, it comes at a cost. But you know, and I get it, it comes at a cost, but you know what is the cost to the community. When we're talking about violence and when we're talking about school shootings and when we're talking about shootings I think I saw at a mall we're talking about trying to solve those crimes, terrorism incidents like you saw in New Orleans. You know stuff like that. You know license plate readers play a very key role in that and it is in its infancy within law enforcement, no doubt. But it's a technology that is going to keep evolving. And for you know if there's agencies or officers out there, you know that don't have them yet. There's some good companies out there and obviously I work for one of them now. Where they, you know that that technology can help you.
Speaker 2:And then, and then you talk about a patrol car environment. You know you think about all the crap you have to do in your car used to be back in the day we wrote our stuff on a piece of paper that we did. It was a daily log. You know we didn't have these computers and all that stuff. And then now, because of all these technologies, like you talk about facial recognition, fingerprints, open source information, social media, license plate readers. You know all that. You're going to put it now all within a ball in your patrol car. And the big word right now, as you know, in the RTCC world, is integration, right, trying to integrate that data. So it's all in one point and that's becoming big right now um, companies that want to integrate and then other companies that may may not want to integrate to protect their data.
Speaker 2:Um yep and so that's, that's, it's a it's. I think that's the big word of 2025. You know, this year, probably the tail end of 2024, was integration.
Speaker 1:Yep, integration and regionalization. So if you guys are, if you want your police department, let's say you're not involved as a cop. But you know, one of the things that you should be concerned about as a citizen is saving money for one, because these technologies are not cheap and they do come at a cost. So when doing so, you have to make sure that everybody is able to play together, so to speak. So if I get a technology like an iPhone, you know I've got my Apple iPhone. The beauty of having my Apple iPhone is it connects to my iPad, it also connects to my MacBook. They all play together.
Speaker 1:However, they don't really play with anything else, which kind of hamstrings me. Now I'm kind of stuck with Apple at my house, like that's literally the, that's what I'm in. I've had an iPhone since iPhones came out. Now I feel like I'm kind of stuck and now I'm, you know, paying for a super expensive phone because all of my past stuff goes to that and it's going to cost me money and a headache to learn how to get everything else to kind of transfer over if I were to get a new type of phone and then now I don't have the communication ability. So that is where integration is important. So when we are talking about license plate readers or we're talking about what's another technology, readers, or we're talking about uh, what's another technology?
Speaker 2:um?
Speaker 1:you know, your your rapid uh id, which is your out, your your wireless fingerprinting stuff. That's got to work with your computer system in your car and it's also got to work with the computer system in your office, because if your in-car computer isn't the same type of computer as what's in the office, the software is going to be the same.
Speaker 1:Typically it doesn't matter what computer you're running it from, so they need to be able to talk to each other. And your local agencies that surround your agency need to be able to talk to each other, and they may have different systems. They may have different softwares. So because we are not private police departments aren't't private we have to be able to work together. That is how we become successful and how we can be of the best benefit to our citizens. And by doing that, when you guys go to pick these technologies, that's something to consider make sure that they are integration friendly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, cause, unfortunately not not everybody is right, right and I get it, they're, they're out to make money.
Speaker 1:That is what businesses bottom line is, but when it comes to public safety, when it comes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it comes. Yeah, it's public safety and community safety Cause even if I was a community member, I would want the crime solved a as quick, as quick as possible, but B as accurate as possible. So the wrong person's not getting locked up, the wrong person's not getting interviewed, and there's technologies out there and all that that these police departments don't have. You know your top 5% departments have, but these other ones don't have. So when you talk about affordability and then being able to integrate within man, if you want your officer to be as good as he can be, you know you gotta, you gotta set them up for success, don't set them up for failure. Right, get them the correct program, get them with the companies that are willing to integrate and talk to each other. Then, that way that data is open. I mean, yeah, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's unfortunate, but, like you said, said it's a business, I get it. It's somewhere built one way and somewhere built another, it's no different than anything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now I'm lucky, I get to do this podcast and I'm a part of the Real-Time Crime Center Association out there and my work where I'm at and being able to use some of these technologies personally and I just get to, I'm always immersed in it, which is kind of fun. I get to see the good, bad and the ugly of all of it. And the one that you currently work for, insight LPR, I've worked with in the past. They've actually sponsored some past seasons of the show that we've done, along with a company like Peregrine Peregrine's another one that has helped sponsor the show. And you guys my audience knows me I'm not going to plug or put anybody out there that I don't think would be good for law enforcement.
Speaker 1:If I'm talking about you, it's because I personally think that you guys are legit and that's one of the things I do really like about insight um is the ability to, the willingness to just integrate and peregrine um. I think that's a company you all have integrated with yeah 100, so that's kind of cool. The two techs that I've worked with in the past and have been able to have working relationships with and totally put my seal of approval behind on all of them is Peregrine and Insight, two cool ones. And the integration, the ability to talk to each other and make sure your stuff works together without charging the citizens anything to do so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's just it too, and that's I'm kind of in your boat, right, I'm old, I've been around a long time, so now it's just about honesty, right, I'm retired now and I wouldn't come work for a company if I didn't believe in what they were doing. I've obviously dealt with a lot of lpr companies, having started an lpr program and having traveled around the country and, and so I've seen them all, I've helped a lot of them, worked with a lot of them, uh, and so they're not all the same. They they all have some good, good technology to them. You know that there's some good things with each company, um, but yeah, the integration. Integration is a big one, you know, and that's what I do like about our company motto. It's just like, hey, we understand, we're not trying to say that, you got to be just insight, you are an insight, only you only deal with that.
Speaker 2:Maybe you deal, you know, with another company. You know, like, access is a company that makes license plate reader cameras, no problem, hey, just call us up because we'll integrate those cameras into our system, because those cameras alone don't do you any good, right, because they don't have the technology or the platform to kind of go through that data Whereas we do. And then you took, like you said, peregrine, you talk about a company like that. Then well, now maybe they house all your data and then we integrate with them. So we will integrate all our information into there. So then it's just one login, that's one stop. Um, you know, there's a couple other companies out there that do that type of uh kind of centralized data location. Well, we will integrate with all of them. We're not going to say, hey, we're only going to give you the plate, we're not going to give you any other information, hey, man it's your information, it's your license plate camera.
Speaker 2:If we have your camera and you say, hey, hey, will you integrate with this other company? Yep, no problem, give us your phone number, we're going to call them, we're going to integrate, and no, we're not going to charge you through the roof to do that. That is your camera. And then for us it's to say that's your safety At the end of the. But I would never work for a company like I held your data back and that caused you injury or that caused somebody else injury. I would never, I could never live with myself first off, and I don't believe there are any companies out there like that.
Speaker 2:But knowledge is power, right, yeah? And when you're talking about internet and when you talk about policing in the 21st century, it's data. Data is power, you know, and that integration's key. I mean, if you've got to log into, like, I'll log into one thing and that's all I'm logging into, and so think about all the data he might, you know, be missing that could keep him safe or somebody else safe or help him solve a crime, something like that, right? So, so that's a big one. That's why you know, inside LPR, I've only obviously I've only been retired now in just less than a year, and so that's why I went to work for them.
Speaker 2:Just because when I looked at the company, when I looked at their background, I looked at the people working there, they actually believed it. They weren't just pitching me something. I had a lot of license plate reader experience. Shoot, I got in bucket trucks, I hung cameras, I programmed cameras for the company we were using. So I knew a lot about them and I would have never joined them if I didn't believe that what they were telling me they believed in yeah, plus, you saw the fruits of it, yeah, as a trooper, so that that makes a big difference, and yeah, 100.
Speaker 1:I've got quite a few buddies that now they're working. You know, I got some friends that work for a company called first two. These guys are all these ones that I'm you're going to hear me listing. These are all law enforcement companies. I got friends that are working at Peregrine. I got friends that work for Insight. I've got friends that work for Axis you had mentioned Axis, so it's funny, these officers that they. It's a second way to serve when you really think about it.
Speaker 1:It's kind of a you know you're not doing the law enforcement side anymore, but you're still surrounded by the culture and it's a way that you know, know the product you're helping put out there is putting bad guys in jail, so that to me that's fun, like just knowing.
Speaker 2:That's what I tell people. Now they look oh, how's the retirement life, you know, and you know, is it going to be bad going in there? And I said, look, I still get to hang out with the cops. I was like I still get to drink bourbon with them and hang out, I just don't get woke up at night.
Speaker 1:I don't have to answer the phone 24-7.
Speaker 2:If I want to leave my phone at home, I'm leaving my phone at home Even though, if you called me on a Saturday, I'm going to holler at you. Maybe you need some help with something or run a plate or whatever. I'm definitely going to do that, but I don't need to.
Speaker 1:When it's snowing out, I get to stay home now.
Speaker 2:Bad weather doesn't mean I got to work. Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent, yeah, so, uh, yeah, so, yeah, it's a. It's a good way to kind of transition over, still see the brotherhood, you know, and that's why it's a lot of people I've met guys like yourself and all that that I never would have met because I was part of the drug world, you know, as an extra, extra world and that's a very close world. Um, a lot of us are super good friends. There were some awesome people out there. Um, that taught me everything.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:I, I mean, I knew nothing and they taught me everything, um, but now I got friends in Miami Dade now, and I got friends in Miami gardens, and I got friends in Texas and Louisiana that I never, never, would have met before, and so it's, it's been a god's calling to kind of come over to this side to try to help out where I can, right, yeah, I can give you some technology, right, right, yeah, yeah, twist some, twist some prices in the sales department or whatever. Yeah, however, I can help a brother out.
Speaker 1:so I like it very cool. Well, sir, I got nothing else for you. Um, I appreciate your time, I appreciate your service, so you made it, you made it. You got to retirement, you got to retirement before becoming a viral video.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right yeah. I know I'm not going to lie that I wouldn't have wanted to have been that Connecticut Trooper one time on a viral video.
Speaker 1:Right. That guy's a legend.
Speaker 2:I stayed away from TikTok. It's much less good.
Speaker 1:Good job. All right brother stayed away from tiktok is messed that good, so good job. All right, brother, we will uh just stick around after this and uh, everybody else, thanks for listening, and we'll catch you on the next one. Take it easy, yes, sir.
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