From Patrol To Pro: How Narcotics And Gang Units Train, Work, And Win

You can spot a real cop’s education in the way they build a case, not just how they make a stop. We sit down with two seasoned pros who turned years in patrol, gangs, and narcotics into a clear, step-by-step blueprint for specialized work: how to get selected without the buddy system, how to train beyond “watch and learn,” and how to carry a case from probable cause to proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

We dig into the hiring signals that matter—bodycam audits from real weeks, not staged ride-alongs; 360 feedback from peers and those supervised; report samples that show articulation and judgment. Then we map the training path: drug ID and evolving slang, surveillance and countersurveillance, UC safety, entries, and the case law officers must master to survive cross-exam. On the gang side, you’ll get an inside look at a modern structure—enforcement, detectives, intel, and prevention—and how intel pushes timely forecasts to keep patrol from walking into “not your average loud party.”

The craft pieces are practical and blunt: why plainclothes isn’t 5.11 pants and a posture, how to run safe, controlled stops with LPRs and cameras miles away from the heat, and why your network is more valuable than your gear. We talk about national information-sharing, smarter takedowns, and report writing that won’t crumble in court. Just as important, we cover how to talk to people without faking it—respect first, honest questions, and the consistency that builds cooperation over time.

If you care about safer streets, better cases, and a career that lasts, this conversation delivers. Check out BS Narcotics for hands-on, active-duty-led training and details on their first annual Narcotics & Gangs conference (Nov 1–4, 2026, Central Texas). If this episode sharpened your edge, follow, share with your team, and leave a review so others can find it. Your feedback powers future episodes and better policing.

Peregrine.io: Turn your worst detectives into Sherlock Holmes, head to Peregrine.io tell them Two Cops One Donut sent you or direct message me and I'll get you directly connected and skip the salesmen.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intros, Nicknames, And Origins
• 6:40 Early Careers And Mindset Shifts
• 15:30 Why Narcotics And Gangs Pull Cops In
• 29:44 Patrol Stories That Change Perspectives
• 41:24 Choosing A Specialty And Unit Pathways
• 50:34 Hiring For Specialized Units That Works
• 1:01:24 Training New Narcotics Officers
• 1:09:24 Surveillance, Language, And Field Craft
• 1:18:44 Inside A Modern Gang Unit
• 1:26:24 What Policing Does Well And What Lags
• 1:35:04 Tech, Networking, And Smarter Takedowns
• 1:46:24 Building Real Training: BS Narcotics
• 1:56:24 Case Law, Report Writing, And Court

Transcript

SPEAKER_05: 0:00

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 hosts 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. 2 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 am your host, Eric Levine, and with me today, I got the big nasty.

SPEAKER_01: 0:55

What up?

SPEAKER_05: 0:55

What's up, brother? I won't use your real name just in case. Unless you want to use it. Go ahead and introduce yourself, sir.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01

Yeah, my name's Chris Mackinalty. Uh everybody knows me calls me nasty. So either way.

SPEAKER_05: 1:06

Why do they call you nasty? I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08

Man, I I wish it was a cooler story. I need to come up with a cooler story, but I guess Mackinalty's hard to say. And so my first day out as a solo officer, I was introducing myself, doing what I thought a good rookie officer should do in roll call, going around introducing myself. Hey, I'm Officer Mackinalty.

SPEAKER_04: 1:26

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27

Um, and then one guy was like, yo, I can't say that name. And I was like, oh, sorry. And he's like, I'm just gonna we're just gonna call you McNasty. It's my first day. I was like, you can call me whatever you want, I guess. Man, it's my first day, brother. Right. And it just stuck.

SPEAKER_05: 1:44

I'm just here to learn.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45

The Nick part dropped off and it just became nasty.

SPEAKER_05: 1:48

Okay, I like that. Not bad, sir.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50

Brandon Smith.

SPEAKER_05: 1:52

Okay, Brandon Smith.

SPEAKER_03: 1:53

Yep, that's me.

SPEAKER_05: 1:54

You in law enforcement, Brandon Smith?

SPEAKER_03: 1:55

Yes, sir. Central Texas Police Department.

SPEAKER_05: 1:58

Okay, Central Texas Police Department. All right. And I understand that you're not used to the formalities of podcasting, so I'm going to correct you guys as we go if you're gonna rock back and forth. Remember, bring that mic with you. No worries. No, you're good. You good, you good. I just hey it's like the temptations.

SPEAKER_01: 2:15

Circle back, come back to the microphone.

SPEAKER_05: 2:17

I like it. I like it. Um, all right. So how long, nasty, have you been in law enforcement, sir?

SPEAKER_01: 2:23

Uh since 2010 is when I started.

SPEAKER_05: 2:26

Okay, 2010, and for you?

SPEAKER_01: 2:28

2009.

SPEAKER_05: 2:29

Okay. Do you have any cool nicknames that they call you? No, just BS. Just BS, okay. Yeah. I I didn't want to point that out yet, but we're gonna get to that. Uh, but you boys, uh both you've been in law enforcement since 2010. So how many years is that total?

SPEAKER_01: 2:42

Uh 15 years.

SPEAKER_05: 2:44

15 years total. I can't do math. And you've been in since 16. 16 years. Okay. In that time, there was a draw to law enforcement, I'm assuming. And for those listening to this podcast, what we're in, we're what we're going to end up doing is we're going to gloss over, figure out why they both got in law enforcement, because it's kind of fun to hear the stories what drew people into law enforcement. But I want to get to the educational side, what you specialize in, what makes you uh the particular type of specialist officer you are. Um, and to think of it, if you're out there and you're like, what do you mean a specialist police officer? What I'm talking about is officers are like doctors. They're not as smart, but they usually specialize in something.

SPEAKER_01: 3:24

Speak for yourself.

SPEAKER_05: 3:24

Well, yeah. Um, they they usually specialize in something like you know, a foot doctor is a podiatrist, right? I'm going, I'm going, I'm going Seinfeld on you guys. Uh and then um, you know, a heart specialist is a cardiologist. So in law enforcement, we can do the same thing where we go for narcotics, canine, uh, what else we got? Vice, narc, uh, real-time crime center. Uh so all of these different things that you can specialize in, and we'll get into that part. And then the meat and potatoes at the end is going to be what we see we're doing really well in law enforcement, and then what needs to be improved. And that's what you guys are out there trying to do. So we'll get to that part. So if you're just jumping in and you got the too long didn't read, uh, we're gonna be talking about narcotic stuff today. So, and gangs. Have fun with that, enjoy, sit back, relax, and let nasty take you on a trip. Oh boy. A BS trip. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. All right, we'll start with our primary guest here first, sir. Um, what was your draw to law? Well, before we go down that path, we can't sit here and chit-chat without something. You you can partake, right?

SPEAKER_01: 4:30

I'm sober, so I will not partake.

SPEAKER_05: 4:33

Are you sober? Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 4:35

I will partake.

SPEAKER_05: 4:36

Hell yeah, brother. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 4:38

So we've got a four mine and bees drink.

SPEAKER_05: 4:40

I got you. We got uh we got a plethora here, all bourbon, of course, um, like a grown adult, and then a little bit of scotch. What would you prefer? We got Weller, we got some Makers Mark 46, some Jefferson's Reserve.

SPEAKER_03: 4:53

I'll go ahead and leave it up to the host. Oh, you're getting the good stuff. I like it.

SPEAKER_05: 4:57

Yeah. Um, we don't mix here, so I hopefully you drink your bourbon like an adult man.

SPEAKER_03: 5:04

I don't know, that's questionable at times.

SPEAKER_05: 5:08

There you are, sir. Pull this one over here and salute. You get left out, I guess.

SPEAKER_01: 5:17

That's fine. I'm good with it.

SPEAKER_05: 5:19

You sure? I don't want to hear you crying about it at work later.

SPEAKER_01: 5:22

My liver's good with it.

SPEAKER_05: 5:25

Nice. Okay. Now we can officially get into your story, sir. So what was the draw for law enforcement for you?

SPEAKER_03: 5:33

Well, dating back to my, I'd say, middle school years, I really was into the teaching and sports phase. That's all you can you can get from me. I wanted to get out there, uh play sports all my life, and uh in turn I wanted to be a coach. So I knew with coaching came teaching somehow, somehow. Uh ended up uh going to college, Stephen F. Austin in Nackados, Texas. All the way up to my junior year, my goal was to become a teacher and a coach. Uh my junior year ended up reality struck me in the face. And uh both of my parents worked for a uh Central Texas Police Department for 35 and a half years. And you know, growing up as a uh police officer's son isn't always the easiest, but it was fun at times. Hearing stories, seeing the good and the bad of law enforcement. And I think that was reality that struck me in the face and said, Hey man, you've grown up around this. This is something that interests you. And I decided to join the academy right after my junior year of college.

SPEAKER_05: 6:37

So you didn't decide to be a cop until after high school.

SPEAKER_03: 6:42

Absolutely. Yeah, I had no desire whatsoever.

SPEAKER_05: 6:45

Really? Yeah, that's that is not common.

SPEAKER_03: 6:48

Nope.

SPEAKER_05: 6:48

That's not common. I actually had I've told this before on the podcast, but I had somebody in the academy class with us, um, Witten, who joined because his buddy was taking the civil service test. Wow. Zero desire. He ends up acing the civil service test, and his buddy, Stofer, uh, did not pass the first or didn't pass high enough, I should say, the first time. So he ends up going to the academy with me, and then his buddy becomes a cop with us later on. But it was just kind of funny, no desire to be a cop, and then all of a sudden jumps into it. Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 7:18

Zero. What I one thing I will say about it, and my parents never pushed it on me either.

SPEAKER_05: 7:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 7:22

You know, they were pretty open about me doing what I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_05: 7:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 7:25

I I love sports, and that's that was life.

SPEAKER_05: 7:27

Right. What was there, what did they specialize in when they were uh my mom was the PIO. Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 7:33

And then my dad was a burglary detective.

SPEAKER_05: 7:36

That's my guy. Yeah. I did property crimes for for three years as a detective. Yeah. It's super fun. Yeah. We ended up having a field team, going out every day. Uh, it was pretty fun. Doing buybacks and catching people hitlic in the act. Um, they got Navarro while he was in his, he was working for Intel at the time. They started taking his catalytic converter off of his car while he was sitting in it. Tell me that wouldn't be so funny. He just calls out on the radio. Uh, I think somebody's trying to take the cat off my car. Then you hear somebody else on the radio, isn't it running? He goes, Yep. Car was running. If they only knew, yeah, so it's pretty fun, but no, property crime is good stuff. PIO, man, you should be used to all this then.

SPEAKER_03: 8:17

Yeah, it's to a certain extent. Yeah. You know, seeing her on the news all the time was pretty cool when people like, hey, I know your mom.

SPEAKER_05: 8:24

Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. Nasty, sir. What drew you to law enforcement?

SPEAKER_01: 8:29

Uh, I I think I have another unusual story, kind of like Brandon. Okay. Uh I had no desire growing up to be a cop. Uh, I worked after after college, so about 18. After I know you would think it would be longer than that, but yeah, I didn't go to college for too long.

SPEAKER_05: 8:46

Okay. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 8:49

She was super smart, right? Uh I got a job at Home Depot. So I spent the next uh three and a half, four years loading 80-pound bags of concrete in people's cars and trucks. And I was making uh like$11.57 an hour.

SPEAKER_05: 9:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 9:06

I knew some people in in that were cops that were police from coaches uh and pee-wee teams and things like that. And one day I said, I think I could do that. Surely if that guy can do this job, I can probably do this job.

SPEAKER_06: 9:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:24

And they're making a whole lot more money than I'm at, I'm making at Home Depot, loading 80-pound bags of concrete all day.

SPEAKER_06: 9:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:32

So I looked up the next civil service test, took the test, passed it high enough, and got into the first academy class off that test. Dang.

SPEAKER_05: 9:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 9:41

And been here ever since. Now, again, didn't had really have a desire to be a cop.

SPEAKER_05: 9:45

So the money drew you to it?

SPEAKER_01: 9:47

As sad as that sounds now, knowing that we don't make a lot of money in this job, that's how little I was making before I became a cop. Yeah. So I was like, yeah, let me do this. And I have fallen in love with it now, but there was no yeah, this is what I want to do. It wasn't I want to help the community, I want to m leave an impact. It was I want to make more money than I'm making right now at Home Depot.

SPEAKER_05: 10:13

Okay. So, in that, after you start doing the job for a little bit, how did that life of service change for you? Did it change? Absolutely. I was saying because I don't think it's about the money anymore, because it like you said, we don't make that we don't make that much, homie. No, so uh absolutely, man.

SPEAKER_01: 10:34

Uh going through the academy, getting out, working, uh obviously everybody goes kind of to patrol first. Um, you get to start seeing small impacts that you're making, dealing with the same people a lot of times, and especially with the beat concept in patrol, yeah. Of uh you have this particular beat that you're responsible for. Yeah. Um seeing those those kids that maybe you had to go and answer calls for them three or four times a week, yeah, to seeing a couple years later, like that same kid working at a convenience store doing or working at a restaurant that you gotta go eat at and and taking lunch break at, and really making that change in their life. Yeah. And just knowing that because of your interactions with them as a cop, and maybe you didn't take them to jail when you could have, or maybe you sat down and spoke with them instead of talking to them angrily and seeing that that little change in their life was impactful for for for me at that patrol level, patrol officer level, um, first starting out as a cop.

SPEAKER_05: 11:35

Gotcha. Yeah, I I I found when I first started, I was I was like everybody, I wanted to catch bad guys. And honestly, the thing that I wanted to change, I didn't like cops. I didn't like cops. Where I was at in Flint, I hate I I couldn't stand them, dude. I could not stand them. And my dad was a cop down here. I was a cop in I was I lived in Michigan, so I could not stand cops. Hated them.

SPEAKER_03: 12:00

What was the background behind that though?

SPEAKER_05: 12:02

Uh one, I was a shithead. Okay. That was a part of the problem. Uh full disclosure. Um, two, mom and dad weren't together. Dad was down here, mom was up there, so I had a little rebellious streak in me anyway. Um, and then three, the cops were not good. They were they were bad cops. Um, we were on the street playing ball, and I had a rollout hoop. They were new, like rollout hoops weren't like a big thing. So they weren't great, but they weren't cheap either. So I had this rollout hoop on a dead end street, and we're out there playing, and cops roll up. They're running two men, and driver gets out. Oh, throw me the rock, throw me the rock. Because we're, you know, we're like kind of just dribbling, like, oh shit, are we in trouble? Are we not in trouble? What's going on? I was and so immediately he's like, throw me the rock. I was like, Oh shit, he's gonna play ball. So I throw him the ball, and uh, he gets the ball and he puts it in his arm like that, and his partner's unass in the vehicle in the passenger seat, and uh he gets out of the stabs my ball. Yeah, stabs my ball. I was mad too because it was that um it was that carnival ball that you get at the county fair, like when you go shoot. Oh, you make a basket, you make the basket, and it was you know, it's a rubber, but it was the Jamaican colors. I love that basketball because all I could, you know, back in the cool runnings and all that shit was out. Yeah, like I was like, oh, this is awesome, you know. And Flint is a very black culture area anyway, so it just was it was a cool basketball. I liked it. And motherfucker popped that ball. So that pissed me off. And his partner pushed our hoop down, and they didn't have like the spring or anything like that on there. So when he threw it down, it cracked along the sides of the hoop on the fiberglass or with plastic. It broke the goal, yeah. Yeah, it broke it, but it, you know, you still you live in the hood, you make it work. Yeah, yeah, right. But um, I didn't even tell my mom. I just told her the wind pushed it over. Like we got rough and the wind like assisted it down and broke it. And called my dad. I was like, I fucking hate cops, dad. I know you're cool, but I was like, you know, 12, 14 years old, somewhere in that. And he made that philosophical comment where he's like, you know, you can be a part of the problem, you can be part of the solution. I wasn't hearing them then. I was not hearing them. I was like, whatever. And then uh 16, 17 started hitting. I knew I wanted to serve, like even younger, I knew I wanted to serve, just wasn't sure how. Military, firefighter, whatever. One cop necessarily. And then uh something just kept sticking with me about that comment, and then I'm stubborn. I'm like, you're not gonna tell me how policing's gonna be. I'm gonna show you how policing's gonna be. Like fuck these bad cops. I'm gonna go in there and be a good cop. So that's what I decided to do. Go in there and be a good cop. And then I get in there and I realize there's a lot of good cops. Like 99% of the ones I've worked around have been great cops. And even the ones that you would consider a bad cop, like they were good up until that moment. You know, there are some very rare ones that you run across where you're like, we all knew it's just a matter of time. We just we just trying to trying to warn people, trying to do something to get that person out of there. But you know, civil service and things like that that you you just can't get around.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

So yeah, that's but think about that one interaction as a kid, right? Right. You and your friends, and how that affected y'all's mindset, right? However many friends you have, five, six people there. Most of them are in jail. Those two, those two cops come up, having a bad day, a bad week. Maybe they're just bad people in general. Yeah. And how that affected every one of y'all's minds. Right. And that's stuck with y'all forever. Forever.

SPEAKER_05: 15:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:50

Nobody in that group of 12-year-olds is gonna forget that moment in Flint, Michigan, with the basketball goal.

SPEAKER_05: 15:57

Yep. And he told us too, he goes, This was the thing that tripped us out because he's like, We told y'all quit playing ball on the street. I live on a dead end road. It ain't traffic, it ain't us. So you somebody on one of the other streets, it was, you know, there's a lot of kids in the neighborhood, but it was one of the other streets, it wasn't us because if the cops told us not to do it, I wasn't, I don't, I ain't risking it.

SPEAKER_01: 16:17

But even then, it's some kids playing basketball. Basketball on the street. Yeah. You know what every kid from the beginning of time to I'm sure today does when a car comes down the road, game on. Oh yeah, car.

SPEAKER_03: 16:29

Yeah, everybody gets out the road. Yeah, they go, game on. Yep. The problem is we wish that would happen more nowadays than it did, than it really does.

SPEAKER_05: 16:37

We don't see that as much as it was when we were there. My shoot, my wife, you see where we live now. There's a Walgreens over yonder. And uh my daughter asked me if her and her friend could go walk up to the store. And I'm like, I I'm all about it. Because I guess where I walked around. Everywhere. Everywhere. And I feel like we're way too like, where where did that go? What changed that? Is it the one in 10,000 chances that somebody's gonna come pick them up? I it's it's pretty crowded where we're at in this city, Arlington anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 17:13

So I don't know, man. It's dark back here in the neighborhood. I couldn't see I didn't let her go at night, bro. For the podcast listener, it's nighttime. Yeah, oh man, I couldn't see nothing. I'm surprised that we got here.

SPEAKER_05: 17:26

But I was like, I I thought about it. I'm like, you know, and we've got the the Life 360 app and all that stuff. She got a phone, she got more than we ever had when we left the house because I left when the sun was coming up and I didn't come home until the street lights turned on.

SPEAKER_01: 17:39

Yep, so and that was the rule.

SPEAKER_05: 17:41

And that was the rule. Yeah, like you try to tell kids like, why didn't you, you know, how come you didn't play at home? I wasn't allowed to. Yeah, I wasn't allowed in the house. You gotta get out, hey. Why are you in the house? That water hose, Mom, I'm hungry. You just ate mine, it was like eight hours ago. It's breakfast. Yep. Get out of the house. You're like, damn. Yeah, it was a couple bucks. Ice cream man, yeah. Yeah, right. In Michigan, it was go collect pop cans. Oh. Yeah, because it's 10 cents a can. So we would collect, you know, you get 10 of them, and there's a dollar right there. You can go up to the we had a little local grocery store. It was called Kessels, 25 cent hot dogs. Shoot. Four hot dogs. Well, three hot dogs and a pop. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 18:25

You gotta get back to the house with that hot water hose. That's rookie move, bro.

SPEAKER_05: 18:30

You turn it on, you give it a second, and then you go. Oh, we're old. Ah, shit. Okay, let's get back on track here. This is what's fun about the podcast. So you get to hear weird shit. Um, all right. Let's go back. Let's go back to bullshit. Uh I'm gonna call you bullshit the whole time. I'm sorry. I'm all about it. The BS narcotics. It just messes with my brain. Okay. You go get your cop job, and uh, you guys know how we do it on this podcast. We don't mention departments. I don't want to out anybody or violate any policies, but you get to your department and you're rookie cop and you're starting to get a taste for a police world, right? You get past your rookie time and you start to see stuff that kind of calls to you, you know, whether that be being a school resource officer or being in narcotics, gang, vice, any of that. What started standing out to you, because it it it might not have been exactly what you went into right away, but what were the things that stood out to you and why did you end up picking what you picked?

SPEAKER_03: 19:31

Well, you know, let's let's go back to my rookie year. Let's go back to my first year on my first night, Christmas Eve.

SPEAKER_05: 19:38

That was your first night? Christmas Eve, man. Oh, hell yeah. Domestic scalore.

SPEAKER_03: 19:42

Well, yeah, absolutely. You know, the problem though is as a supervisor, as a patrol supervisor, what's the one of the things they tell you on Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving, things like that? No, don't know, yeah. Don't don't mess with nobody. Exactly.

SPEAKER_05: 19:55

Just go cruising neighborhoods and you know take your calls and that's it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03: 20:00

Well, the first FTO I ever had wasn't actually an official FTO. The my FTO was off because it was Christmas.

SPEAKER_05: 20:06

So he wanted to play FTO and teach you.

SPEAKER_03: 20:09

Well, he was told to play FTO. Right. But it was the most pro af proactive officer we had right there on the streets. He's like, listen, got yourself a Johnny Cox. This is tough for me, but we're we're just gonna go cruise. I'm gonna teach you, we're gonna do some geography, you know, little things like that.

SPEAKER_05: 20:25

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 20:25

Well, when when somebody shows you that they want to do work and they want to be part of the good, it's hard to pass that up. So I had a great um is Miguel Maribel. Day one, he says, Hey, this is how we do police work. There's no days off on police work. We can't just say because it's Christmas Eve, you just can't go get bad guys. You you you know, answer your phone, you answer your calls, your your domestics and all that, but you still got to be police one way or another. So that was a great jump start for me. Uh but get through my I had great FTOs, uh outstanding FTOs. I had the oldest of old, which was still go getters, and then I had the young bucks who wanted to get out there and chase and fight and do all that good stuff as well. So I can't I can't really complain about my FTO. Nowadays people can't compliment all their FTOs and say they had a good time. I think that's around the clock, around the board uh throughout all police work. But what really pushed me is the area that I'm in, it it's it's a univers I call it universal. It there's so many ins and outs because we got one of the largest military bases in the world where I'm from, the central Texas area. And for me to see different aspects of life on a daily, it pushed me into what is everybody, the bad guys have in common. Well, let's just be real, it's narcotics. Yeah, there's gangs coming and going. So those those were the first two things that really got me connected into what I specialize in now.

SPEAKER_06: 21:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 21:50

On top of narcotics is prostitution, you know, drugs, money, some gangs are associated with uh prostitution as well.

SPEAKER_05: 21:59

Does it count if you use a gift card?

SPEAKER_03: 22:01

It yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05: 22:03

Asking for a friendly you take this Walmart gift card, girl.

SPEAKER_03: 22:10

Hey, he'll snatch it right out of the belly and say, Yes, sir. So, but no, that that's what really got me into it is I love the the cat and mouse game.

SPEAKER_05: 22:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 22:20

In narcotics, you know, I always tell the bad guys, hey, I only got to win one time. You gotta win every time to stay free.

SPEAKER_05: 22:27

So that's so when you were doing that, was there was there a particular call that you were like, oh, this is a world. Was there a call like that? Or was there a like was there a McNasty on your team or somebody that you saw that was like for me? I almost went into the dope game a little bit because I had friends that would, you know, patrol buddies that they like to set up on known dope houses. And I'm like, what I never sat on a dope house. Like, what's that like? So you sit there and you watch and you see the car that goes five minutes in, five minutes, you know, they're out in five minutes, and you're like, huh, okay, I see a pattern here. That's kind of fun. And then you go fishing, see what they got, you know, and and and seeing how that it was a new part of policing for me. So seeing that verbiage and and how they get themselves into the cars and all that stuff. Okay, this is this is fun. This is a different part of policing. And started following that world for a little bit, thought that's where I was gonna go down, and then the whole intelligence side of policing really started appealing to me, and I just kind of changed my shifted my focus. But I see the allure to it, with like you said, the cat and mouse game. So was there something particular that stuck out to you?

SPEAKER_03: 23:34

No, I think basically the shift I was we called it AMs. It was 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. So we all we had the the worst hours, you know. If you're up at two o'clock in the morning driving around, more than likely you're not up to any good. So I guess that is what really lured me to the narcotic side of it. Uh I'm gonna stop you, I'm gonna talk to you just like a normal person. That's one thing I'm big on is respect. No matter who you are, we're gonna talk just like adults respectfully. And then uh you're gonna take it where you want to take it, and then I'll just follow your path.

SPEAKER_04: 24:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 24:05

So that is one thing that really got me. And then like you said, we're gonna go fishing. And and you we can hide dope anywhere in a car. Right. So it's it's my job to go find it. Uh we don't win all the time. Sometimes the bad guys get away, and and I think that is what it's always something different. You know, we can we can talk about domestics, we can talk about murders and robberies, but narcotics side of it is something different every day. No dealer, no user is gonna act or move the same way every day. Just like gangs. I mean, it's it's you know, gangs are somewhat the same, but narcotics never is.

SPEAKER_05: 24:40

Yeah. All right, nasty. Let's go over to you, sir. What drew you into law enforcement? And then once we go down that, did we already do that? No, we didn't do that, did we?

SPEAKER_01: 24:50

Yeah, I thought I was gonna make a whole bunch of money. That's right. And here I am 15 years later, waiting on that money.

SPEAKER_05: 24:56

That's right. My bad. Let's go into your your specialty. So you start out in law enforcement, you go through your your rookie phase, right? You're getting a little taste of everything, seeing all that the city has to offer you. Yep. And then something starts alluring you to certain things. What things drew your attention at first, but then how did you end up picking a focus?

SPEAKER_01: 28:12

Yeah, so I mean, as a patrol officer out there, I wanted to experience everything that I could. If I don't know something, what's the best way for me to learn it? Let me dive off into it and figure it out.

SPEAKER_05: 28:23

DWI, give me one. I don't know about that. I don't like them. Let's go with it.

SPEAKER_01: 28:27

Oh, yeah, but um, but for me, it was we I I happened to work a patrol division that had a lot of gang activity in that patrol division. And it was a lot of gang activity that at first was flying over my head. I I didn't know. It wasn't until a senior officer was like, Hey, you know who these guys are, and kind of broke down these these gangs and how they were operating in that that West division that I was in. Yeah. Um that really caught my eye because I was like, oh, it's there's more to this than just riding around and traffic traffic stopping folks and answering these calls for service.

SPEAKER_05: 29:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 29:05

There's more to this puzzle. Um, like like Brandon said, I think uh any decent cop wants to play that cat and mouse game. Right. Wants to be able to solve that puzzle, solve that riddle. It is a challenge.

SPEAKER_05: 29:18

Yeah, it's a challenge.

SPEAKER_01: 29:19

Um, and so for me, that gang world, that gang lifestyle was the challenge for me to go, okay, you guys are operating in my division. I'm responsible for this beat.

SPEAKER_05: 29:29

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 29:29

And you guys are operating a criminal organization.

SPEAKER_05: 29:32

Not my beat.

SPEAKER_01: 29:33

In this beat. So let me let me figure out what y'all are about and how do I attack it from a law enforcement point of view.

SPEAKER_05: 29:40

You was like, the only nasty thing in this beat is gonna be me.

SPEAKER_01: 29:45

That's right.

SPEAKER_05: 29:46

Um you can get your McNasty, your McDouble. I got them both.

SPEAKER_01: 29:49

So, so luckily for me, I uh in patrol, I had some guys that I roll with that ended up going to the gang unit before I did. So they were already interested. I got it. Especially departments, right? If you if you have your eyes set on a certain unit, you're gonna tailor what you're doing in patrol to let me build my resume to go to this unit. They were already going that way, and I just hopped on for the ride and said, Oh, you guys are already into this. Let me let me come roll with you guys. Yeah, let me come figure it out. You guys are ahead of the game in this. Let me learn from you. And then as they went and moved on to the gang unit, then I was that guy that left with the damn, I'm still in patrol. I these gang gang members didn't go nowhere. I'm still here with them. Right. Okay, let me start working it. And then I started kind of building my resume, my path because it really interested me. I went on loan to multiple different divisions during patrol. Um I say, you know, I want to do something specialized. I want to do something out of patrol. That was just my focus. It's not, um, it's not good or bad. Uh, there's great, great officers that spend a career in patrol and do an amazing job. Um I said, hey, I want to do something a little bit different. So I went on loan to anybody that would take me. Hey, can I come ride with y'all for a week and see what you guys do? Can I come ride with y'all for a week? Hey, can I come on my days off and see what you guys do? Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I went on loan with the gang unit, that was the that was the final. I said, okay, yeah, this is what I want to do. What you guys are doing, that's what I want to do. Okay. Um, and then I I was lucky enough to get over there in 2014 and I'm still there today.

SPEAKER_05: 31:32

How many years in patrol did you do prior to doing that?

SPEAKER_01: 31:35

Four years in patrol.

SPEAKER_05: 31:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 31:37

Um at that time that's a good time, yeah. Well, at that time, it was a little bit different than now. Yeah. It was a four-year minimum in patrol before you could apply for a specialized unit. Um, so you could say I did my minimum amount of time, I guess. Yeah, but it's uh three to five years time now.

SPEAKER_05: 31:54

Yeah, three to five years in the street, depending on how you use that three to five years, that that makes you a seasoned street cop. And the way that things go now, like you gotta get in these specialized units when you can, because shit. You never know. You never know how long the specialized unit's gonna have an opening anymore. It's hard to get bodies, and then not let they don't let a whole lot of movement happen anymore.

SPEAKER_03: 32:18

So or those bodies never leave.

SPEAKER_05: 32:20

Yeah. Yeah. Look at this dude. He's yeah, but he's still productive, though. Yeah, absolutely. He got roots, you know. I know, people look at him now. Now, question Did you get a ghetto accent while you was in gang, or did you always have that?

SPEAKER_01: 32:38

Man, it's everybody always asked me that.

SPEAKER_05: 32:40

This is how I this is how I've been talking about all I think about is Malibu's most wana. I am too. I don't know what they believe me.

SPEAKER_01: 32:51

Yeah, a lot of people ask me if I'm from Louisiana, things like that, but I was I was born here in the in the Metroplex, and this is this is how I learned to talk, I guess.

SPEAKER_05: 33:05

Have you ever watched Malibu's Multiplater? Uh-uh. Oh my god, you have to. That is your next homework assignment. Bro, it is, you're gonna love it. You are gonna love it. It's one of the funniest movies only because of what you do.

SPEAKER_01: 33:18

Since we're giving out homework assignments.

SPEAKER_05: 33:20

What I got, tell me.

SPEAKER_01: 33:21

I know you've probably already seen this movie. I'm for sure you have, but you gotta watch the movie Colors.

SPEAKER_05: 33:26

Colors, yeah. Yeah, I am a knight. So not for you, for anybody watching this. Watch it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 33:31

You ain't seen it, Pac-Man. I don't know where to get it at. They don't have VHS players no more. Right. DVDs aren't really a thing, but go watch the movie Colors.

SPEAKER_05: 33:39

Hell yeah. I know that. I know, I know the song. I know, I know the joke of the old bull and the young calf. You know that one? Yeah, yeah. I'm not gonna tell it to y'all. The original Pac-Man is still out there. I know, I know the original. Is he really?

SPEAKER_01: 33:52

The movie was that his character was based on.

SPEAKER_05: 33:54

Yeah, he's still out there. Not a obviously. I got I hope so. Jesus. If he was a cop in the 80s when that that was based on the 80s, early 90s, right?

SPEAKER_01: 34:04

That first gang unit out in LA. That's right. The crash unit. Dang.

SPEAKER_05: 34:08

Is that what they was called? Crash? I think so, yeah. Yeah, California. I don't know. I don't know. Who knows? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 34:14

See, we talk about them roots. Y'all talking a foreign language to me over here.

SPEAKER_05: 34:18

How old are you?

SPEAKER_03: 34:19

Well, I'm I'm 40.

SPEAKER_05: 34:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 34:21

But I'm talking about movies in general. No, movies, I ain't seen neither one of those movies. Oh, Malibu. I have I'm take that back. I have seen Malibu most of it.

SPEAKER_01: 34:29

Okay. What about these movies? There's nerds.

SPEAKER_05: 34:34

You making fun of my Star Wars stuff, bro. Space Wizards. Come on, man.

SPEAKER_03: 34:39

I was waiting for you.

SPEAKER_05: 34:40

Did you watch Harry Potter? No. Lies. Never watch Harry Potter.

SPEAKER_01: 34:45

I'm sure I've seen pieces of movies. Come on now. Yeah. No. What? You're not gonna give me up here looking like no nerd in front of all these people on the internet, man. This goes worldwide.

SPEAKER_05: 34:54

I watch Harry Potter. I love Harry Potter. I bought a wand at Disney with my kids and we went around doing spells at Universal.

SPEAKER_03: 35:01

I did too.

SPEAKER_05: 35:04

Making the fountain go off and shit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 35:07

I was like, I didn't have a good time doing that game alive.

SPEAKER_05: 35:12

Watch out. Yeah, you would be bumping your kids out of the way. Somebody's taking too long, and you just like hurry up. Start. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:22

Come on, man. You ain't even no real wizard. No, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 35:26

Let me show you how it's done, and then you mess it up 18 times. Like, what the fuck? This one's broken. Oh shit. All right. Okay, so let's go, let's go back. Um, you get into narcotics or gang first? Or is it is it?

SPEAKER_03: 35:44

Ours is organized crime unit. It deals with narcotics, prostitution, gangs, and gambling all in one.

SPEAKER_05: 35:48

All in one, okay. So how big's your depart?

SPEAKER_03: 35:52

Uh we're just over 250 sworn-ish.

SPEAKER_05: 35:56

Okay. Yeah. That I was just curious because that explains more. Okay, so you've got uh kind of the whole shebang in one unit. Curious on the makeup of that unit. Do they like you're dealing with gang stuff? You're dealing with narc stuff, or is it like all one?

SPEAKER_03: 36:14

So I guess if you want to break it down, the easiest way is everybody narcs has some kind of narcotics investigations. Okay. We have a handful, maybe three, four people involved with gangs. They handle the majority of it. Um in today's lineup, I deal with mainly the prostitution side as well. And then gambling is whoever comes across it.

SPEAKER_06: 36:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 36:39

So yeah, we don't have an exact concentration per se. Um like nasty, nasty. If I need anything with gangs, I know exactly who to call. But if you call my department, you're gonna ask for an organized crime unit, and we're gonna help you with any four of those at once.

SPEAKER_05: 36:55

Okay. That makes sense. Now, in that when you started getting into going out there and dealing with Narc and gangs, while you're out prior to you getting on that unit, did they require you to come out and get like see how you did? Did they like assess you, anything like that, other than like maybe a hiring process?

SPEAKER_03: 37:20

No, actually, I begged. I mean, damn near begged. I mean, writing memos, emails, asking, can I come ride out with you? I want to make sure this is something I want to get into. They were so busy, or it just didn't allow officers to come and hang out and do things like that. I was lucky enough to to go make some entries with them, being on SWOT as well. So I got to see the back end of it, but I didn't get to see the beginning or the middle of the investigation.

SPEAKER_05: 37:46

Okay. So, and then with you, Nasty, when you started getting into the units and you're putting in, I know the process that you know they put an opening out there, you put in for it. But when you were going through the hiring process, how was the hiring environment? Was it more like we need to see people that have put in volunteer time? Like you said, you you went on loan quite a bit, or did they make you come out and see how you would deal with deal with dealing with gang members or anything like that to see what your mentality was uh towards it?

SPEAKER_01: 38:17

So it's changed since I put in.

SPEAKER_05: 38:19

Right. I I'm talking about the type when you put in.

SPEAKER_01: 38:22

Yeah, so I dropped uh what we call a packet. Okay. So it had like an interest letter, little resume. Resume. They might have asked for a couple of like self-initiated reports, like to see your report writing. Okay. Um what else did I have to put in there? Oh, my qualification scores and then my time and attendance record. Okay. Um, so that's what they asked for. That's what they judged the applicants on at that time. Uh obviously, me, I had went on loan multiple times before I had put in for the unit. So I guess I had at least a leg up that they at least knew who I was. I say I had a leg up. If I was a uh a crap officer over there, then they would have seen who I was as well and not been interested. But I guess if you being able to go over there and prove that, hey, this is something I'm interested in, I can fit in with this team. Uh, because it's hard to ride in a car 40 hours a week with somebody. There's times that the guys in our unit, I see them more than my wife and kids in a week. Um so that that's that's a part of this policing that uh doesn't really get talked about. Yeah. But especially in a tight-knit group, yo, you got to deal with this person for the majority of your weekend.

SPEAKER_05: 39:38

I could stare at Bear every day, though. Could you? Yeah, that's a gorgeous man. Okay. I got a little man crush on Bear.

SPEAKER_01: 39:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_05: 39:46

I hope he hears us. He won't, but hopefully it gets back to him.

SPEAKER_01: 39:50

Um, so yeah, going over there was a leg up for me, I guess. Um, but it at the time that process was submit your packets, and then we're gonna choose who we want. They had three openings at the time, and I was lucky enough that they picked me to go over.

SPEAKER_05: 40:05

Gotcha. So here's where I want to get from your two's experience levels now. Talked about how y'all got hired. We know that it's changed these days, but y'all have been in narcotics and gang for a long time. So I'm gonna go to you first, Brandon, correct? Correct. I don't want to keep saying BS. Uh you you've you've got how many years in in this for gang and and for for all of that? I keep looking at your hat. Yes. All of those things.

SPEAKER_03: 40:37

I've got uh 13 years in that unit.

SPEAKER_05: 40:41

Okay, so 13 years in that unit.

SPEAKER_03: 40:43

No, I'm sorry. Sorry, take that back. Eleven years. Okay. See, my master, either way, still, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 40:48

Long ass time, over a decade, right? Yep. You would be what we consider a seasoned expert. In that time, we both can agree. I know all three of us can agree that there's people that get in and we're like, how the fuck did this person get on this unit? Like, what the hell? What are we doing now hiring-wise? If we were to fix the hiring process with the specialized unit for what you all do, what how would you go about hiring somebody today?

SPEAKER_03: 41:17

Oh man, I think the number one thing is, and and this is I pretty sure US sh might be worldwide, is take the buddy system out. Just because we're buddies doesn't mean that's a good thing. So the good old boy system is go away. Okay. Yeah. And I'm not saying that's always a negative, but I think that is one thing that departments really stand on is hey, I'll take care of you. You scratched my back at one time, so I'm gonna scratch your back this time. Or in the future. Um, the second thing is we really need to go into more of what happened in the past and what kind of officer you are now.

SPEAKER_04: 41:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 41:52

People make mistakes. In my department, there's there's a guy that's make a made a ton must must a ton of mistakes. That's one of the best. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 42:00

Those are the best guys.

SPEAKER_03: 42:01

And but he's turned himself around in a positive way. Yeah. So getting out there and actually seeing what kind of officer he or she is. Uh, our department allows us to go do ride-alongs. The bad thing about ride-alongs is if I'm sitting with you in a car for these eight hours, you're not gonna act the same way you do those other 32 hours this week. Yeah. Because I got somebody to show off for. I know that he's here because I'm trying out for this unit. So going back and reviewing, actually sitting down, reviewing body cameras and seeing what type of person you really are.

SPEAKER_05: 42:33

I like that. Yeah.

unknown: 42:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 42:35

And just doing the comparison. And when you come to that oral board and you say, Hey man, you you never cursed. You you went out and did this and went out and did that. But what happened to these other 32 hours on this body camera where you were cussing this dude up and down, or you weren't happy, or you're talking shit about the admin, you know, we can go through the whole list of things.

SPEAKER_05: 42:52

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 42:53

Uh, and I think that's one thing that we just want to do. to rush through a hiring process or a selection process. Yeah. Rather than taking the exact time that we need to.

SPEAKER_05: 43:01

I like that. All right, nasty, over to you, sir. If you're gonna start, if you were to start hiring today, you're the dude. You're like, this is my unit, this is how we're gonna hire, and these are the standards, standards I want for cops in general.

SPEAKER_01: 43:14

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_05: 43:16

For gang.

SPEAKER_01: 43:18

Yeah, I want to be able to see that you can um handle yourself with gang members. Okay. So whether it be reviewing body cam, that's something I had never even thought of before. That's a great idea.

SPEAKER_00: 43:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 43:31

Um I want to know that you can take what you saw when you answered this call and you can put it into a report.

SPEAKER_05: 43:38

Okay. Because we let me go back. Okay. I you you said go out and see how you handle yourself with gang members. How do you do that?

SPEAKER_01: 43:46

Uh with with professional presence?

SPEAKER_05: 43:48

No, no, no, no. How do you get them involved? Are you saying you're gonna go back and see if they got any body cam footage of them with gang members?

SPEAKER_01: 43:55

Or are you saying Yeah I mean if you come into the gang unit I would expect for you to have dealt with some gang members in the past.

SPEAKER_05: 44:01

So so you're gonna go review the cameras that way.

SPEAKER_01: 44:03

You can't where we work at depending on where you at in the city you can't flip a rock over and not find a gang member.

SPEAKER_06: 44:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 44:13

So I I want to see that they can handle it professionally but also with a command presence. Right. That you know hey I'm this I'm in control of this we there ain't no reason to to call you out your name or or to MF you um if it gets to that level it's because you've chosen that we're gonna go this route.

SPEAKER_05: 44:32

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 44:33

But I'm also gonna be in charge here but I'm gonna do it respectfully and there's no reason for me to call you out your name as long as you're doing what I'm asking you to do and it's and it's and it's professional.

SPEAKER_00: 44:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 44:45

Also report writing is a big thing for us man. We we as cops in general we end up losing a lot of cases that would be good cases on legitimate bad guys because we don't take the time to type it in a report. Right. We rush through that process. But at the end of the day that report is what's going to court when this when this court when this case goes to trial. And so if you rush through the report you forgot to put something in it I don't care what your body cam shows or your dash cam shows why didn't you document it in this police report? Yeah um so having having folks that can take in all the information but as well as that put all that information into a report.

SPEAKER_05: 45:32

Okay. So report writing getting seeing how they handle being with gang members I like that yeah it is a good idea um I actually used that with the last hiring process that I went through is went back I I don't think sergeants do enough homework. I think they rely on just doing the packets and then I like the whole 360 review how do you work with your coworkers how do your coworkers think you are I'm gonna talk I want to talk to your teammates I want to see what your teammates think about you.

SPEAKER_01: 46:01

I want to talk I've only experienced it once in my department in my department where I work and I can't remember what this guy was putting in for maybe like the SWAT commander or something. But they took the time to come to our roll call because he was previously our supervisor and say hey listen nobody's names are going on anything y'all are in here we just want to ask y'all how was he as a give us your experience of him as a supervisor. Yep which shows the dedication and and the the amount of effort that they go to because we work midnights yeah so shows the dedication they went to to to want to verify this person is a good supervisor that I haven't seen anybody else do in our department. Yeah or anybody else during the hiring like hey well if they're putting in to be a supervisor they were a supervisor somewhere else why are we not talking to those folks?

SPEAKER_05: 46:56

Right. I agree I think that's important. I think you need to see people they've worked with in the past people that they currently work with and then people that if it's a supervisor thing like who have you supervised let me see how you how your people thought you were as a supervisor.

SPEAKER_03: 47:11

Um you know one I'm sorry one one thing that we I think a lot of departments rely on too is recommendation letters we can always go to our our buddy our our supervisor that thinks good of us and get a good recommendation letter that doesn't always mean anything. Right.

SPEAKER_05: 47:28

So yep I agree it's it's nice to see when people have something um nice to say about you and see if it's based on any particular experience that's the only that's about the only time I really care for a reference letter like that is like they can list a call they're like case number such and such this occurred and this and now you're like okay this is a reference letter of substance there's something that they can show me that you did not just tell me how you felt because of working with them. I think that's important. But one of the things that I I like to get into before we start going down you know gang and narc life I want I want people to understand what it takes to get into it where you see problems particularly on getting on these units. And then so now that we kind of flush those out and try to improve the process hopefully somebody listens to this and they're like oh that's something that we should consider next time we we do some hiring and I get it there are some departments are going to be like we don't have the manpower to to be picky. Like we're taking who we can get yeah I get that and that's not what we're talking about. We're talking perfect world you got time you got tons of applicants um but I think what we're talking about is only going to get harder because report writing for instance you got a bunch of chat GPT babies that are going to be coming through that are dependent on that and just like you said people who can talk to gang members good luck writing a report trying to talk about language and shit that they have that isn't going to be in chat GPT.

SPEAKER_01: 49:03

That's what I'm saying you have to educate in that report you got to educate who you're who's reading it.

SPEAKER_05: 49:09

Yeah lieutenants the prosecution the jury the judge yes the defense attorney right these are important things so any officers out there listening like one of the things I hope you take away from this is learning it how you speak in patrol as a basic cop is not the same language that we use in gang. It's not the same language we use in intelligence it's all changes and you got to be willing to learn it. You got to be willing to adapt because it's constantly changing and the way the courts are is you get a good defense attorney which some of these dope guys they can afford awesome attorneys and they will embarrass your ass up there. So I want to get into next I want to talk about what it's like what can people expect training wise once they're in gang once they're in NARC like all right you're on the unit now here's how we start to teach you. Here's how we start to edit without breaking any sort of you know tactical issues or anything I don't want to give anyway trade secrets or anything like that but you get new people on I want a rookie officer out there that's listening is like I'm thinking about doing gang one day I'm thinking about doing Narc. I want them to understand at least in 2025 almost 2026 what you guys are teaching new people new onboards what what are they going through? So let's go with with Brandon first.

SPEAKER_03: 50:32

You know basically we're gonna bring you in and number one thing we need to teach you is how this unit works.

SPEAKER_05: 50:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 50:38

You know Nasty spoke about it earlier is I'm gonna spend more time with you than I'm gonna spend with my wife and kids. That's just the the way we work you know late nights early mornings uh extended hours so you've got to fit in with us how we work with coming in doing things the way the way our unit starts off with is you have chores I guess you can say to to do for our office within our office.

SPEAKER_05: 51:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 51:06

Kind of not not a haze like SWAT yeah okay I guess you can say that but there's certain things that hey you got to be willing to to do your part to fit into this unit because everybody else has done it already.

SPEAKER_05: 51:18

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 51:18

You know yeah so that's what how we start and then give me can you give me an example yeah absolutely so uh when our somebody knocks on our door me nasty you aren't gonna get up and answer it's gonna be the newest guys okay answer the door you smile at it I know y'all don't do that don't nobody knock on our door they just come they just come in right ours is keypad ours is keypad uh another thing is is is we don't let um janitorial services in right because we've got information on boards and at our desks so you know we need our we need our vac our carpet vacuumed I'm not vacuuming carpet nasty not vacuuming carpet the new guys are gonna vacuum the carpet so um we we've got we've got sanitation people so we're we're not just in our unit we're not gonna bigger department yeah yeah well no we have them yeah we just don't let them in our office they do everybody else around us obviously but that's just one thing we made up from the beginning is hey we're not gonna let them in here what if what if that person's aunt uncle cousin is on our board yeah you know so that's just you know it's a safety aspect for us so but that's can learn something here yeah yeah I'm getting a keypad for our door on our house but there's so many different things like that for example um but then when it comes to the education side is our supervisor is going to sit down and give them their expectations and then they're gonna give them a list of classes you got to attend.

SPEAKER_06: 52:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 52:47

Hey you got to do a basic narcotics class you got to do a surveillance class you know basic entries things like that.

SPEAKER_05: 52:53

So dope identity learning what type of narcotics are out there all the nicknames for them. Exactly um can you give me some examples of newer language because I'm out of the dope game for a long like they still say boy girl they still see is all that's is that still out there wet everything fry fry okay that's you know it used to be angel dust yeah it's that's gone.

SPEAKER_03: 53:15

Okay. So I mean if you if you reference it as Angel Dust we know what you're talking about. Yeah these young cats may not even know angel dust what what so what are they calling it now? It's fry they call it fry okay I haven't heard fry that's why I'm asking it's nothing over here you heard that one he's like I don't know blank stare my my words switches and not okay what are the anything new for weed other than I mean dro I okay that's not new loud yeah loud I ain't heard that one either no loud isn't that's the best of the best is it oh yeah because it's it makes your ears ring well I guess you can say yeah but no it's I bet that's what it I've heard people getting so high their ears ring. Man they ain't no telling what this hydroponic weed now I know it's like over 100% pure now.

SPEAKER_05: 54:05

Yeah yeah I don't know anything about it but I got you okay okay so they go through narcotics identification the language um what was the other one you said like entries surveillance techniques surveillance that was the one I wanted to get to as well like for officers out there that think you can just start following people it is a science behind it you gotta for any you guys tell me if you agree because this is your world but I did for the property crimes unit we follow people all the time and I learned really quick if you don't know your north south east west yeah you are lost quick and your people can't find you and you can't get to them because they're calling it out whoever's got the eye so things like that you got to know that stuff and getting surveillance training is huge understanding that if you're in a UC this is a big one so any officers out there listening if you find yourself in a UC and feel compelled to get out of your car to go help don't stay the fuck in your car don't burn your vehicle unless it is life or death stay the fuck in your vehicle so many times I see cops jumping out of their car and they're like hey but it looks cool man it does cool and attack vest right you want folks to see you looking cool because you're lucky they're wearing a tag vest. Right right shit if I was stumbling my Gatorade bottle would be falling out for anybody out there listening if you're wondering why you see cars always have Gatorade bottle at least that was my bottle of preference uh wider cap in case you get the shakes and you can't quite you'd be okay with a deciding bottle I would be fine it's just I can't aim that great so I need the wider mouth it ain't because I got a spam can over here no I self-deprecating sir trust me I was born for my or I was married for my humor not for my God given talents there. Okay so surveillance narcotics um in gang for the gang side of things like what type of stuff are you guys looking for on that?

SPEAKER_03: 56:16

Man it's it's basically the same when it comes to educational purposes you know you got to get the basics first. Right. You got to get the basics the surveillance goes along too you know narcotics and gangs the surveillance is not much different.

SPEAKER_04: 56:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 56:29

You know it might be a little more dangerous on the gang side at times but we get our biggest bang whenever you are in field training with us and you're just following us. Everyday stuff that we do on call. In our unit you're on call for eight straight weeks you know coming in tell your wife tell your kids hey it's gonna be a long two months you're eight straight weeks of when you get we get called out you're gone. Because we do on call one week at a time Friday to Friday.

SPEAKER_05: 56:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 56:57

So for us once that Friday at 7 a.m hits we know we're coming off we're chilling the next detective's up but in field training you got eight straight weeks of it.

SPEAKER_05: 57:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 57:07

So you're looking at 140 hour paychecks. Oh yeah but it's in it's you're you're just rolling your brain's going nonstop and that's the best learning is hands on. Yeah you you can't get better training than real life training.

SPEAKER_05: 57:20

Okay. In that are they are they in marked typically or are they they're not rolling marked?

SPEAKER_03: 57:26

No so once you're in our unit it's strictly plain clothes.

SPEAKER_05: 57:29

Okay so nobody so you don't have anybody that like is designated marked units or anything like that?

SPEAKER_03: 57:34

No we have a secondary unit that assists us. Oh okay so you just call them patrol guys and stuff or uh well they call them VCAT they're a they're like an enforcement unit. Okay. So whenever we need marked units those are the first calls.

SPEAKER_05: 57:45

Maybe kind of like our DRU. That's exactly okay yeah that makes sense okay all right nasty gangs what's that what's that what's that rookie training like for a new person on the unit?

SPEAKER_01: 57:57

Uh man honestly it's gonna be a bunch of OJT on-the-job training. Okay um we're gonna pair you up with a senior officer somebody who's been there the longest so you've been training a lot of people with your old ass. Come on man we're gonna we're gonna do this we're gonna we're gonna battle this we're gonna pair you up with a senior officer our the way our and we're divided up in our gang unit different elements of our unit between enforcement intel detectives things of that nature uh so when you come over you're gonna come to enforcement which is just the guys and girls wearing a uniform driving the marked units making traffic stops responding to the gang calls things of that nature um so on those enforcement teams every time there's a shooting a stabbing a fight that's gang related we have a board and whoever's the next one on the board is up to be the the sheet officer essentially the the report writer for that incident okay so coming over you know that you're gonna have to do at least the next three minimum okay you're gonna be the the sheet officer so when the new guy comes everybody's like fuck yeah enjoy the reports off man um but it was uh so you're gonna have to do at least that and then if those three are not didn't really roll real smooth you get some more then you're gonna get some more after that okay um but pairing you up with that senior officer is is giving them time to go hey look I've been here for a while here's what I know about these gangs this is what I have learned in my tenure being here let me impart that information on you and I'd say it's it's I'm thankful for those guys when I came on uh I I show them love every time I get a chance and I'm teaching a class um when I was in enforcement Bob Costa took me under his wing a guy who had been in a unit for a whole career 25 years and said come on young buck let me teach you how to do this and do it right yeah okay cool when I moved over to Intel man Bob was there as well with me Swede Jam Grope those guys again entire careers worth of experience in a gang unit each one of them each one of them imparted wisdom on me from their 25 30 years working nothing but gang crime yeah um so those those opportunities are invaluable because now that they've all retired there's nobody left that's a 25 years gang experience um so you create if there's any young young bucks watching this take advantage of that yeah go talk to those old guys go let them share their war stories go ask them how things have changed and how over the years in policing uh because they're they're they're really teaching you how to be the best investigator the best cop you can be um when they're imparting that wisdom on you um so for us it's a lot of on-the-job training and then we are gonna do our best I'm not saying it happens all the time to try to get you to a actual structured gang conference a gang class uh within that first year of you being in the in the unit okay um so whether it whether it be a a large like state gang training or whether it be a localized training or something we are going to try to get you there as long as we have some money to send you there which is oftentimes the the issue is is training budgets. Yeah well they got you now you the OG trainer so they can learn everything they need to know from the master rating I don't know about everything but I could teach them more than once or two things but um but that that's our goal really it's a lot of on-the-job training they're gonna and they'll though they're gonna put you in a position that maybe you haven't been in before but under a watchful eye gotcha they say we're gonna jump out on these is these five guys we know them they're gangbangers right they usually all have guns on them uh they stand outside the convenience store right now uh we're gonna pull up and just do a consensual encounter we're gonna pull up and just talk to them they're not breaking the law right now there's nothing illegal about what they're doing but we're just gonna go holler at them see what see what time it is and see if they want to talk to us. So we have some folks that's like well I never done that before we're about to do it right now here in about 15 seconds when we pull up in this parking lot you're about to do that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:21

And just making being comfortable being in an uncomfortable zone.

SPEAKER_05: 1:02:26

Right. Making conversation out of nothing. Yep it is a lost art that happens you mentioned uh something kind of interesting that I think we as cops kind of take for granted because we know it but you said depends on which part of gang you're in Intel, enforcement all that stuff. Can you kind of break that down of what that is?

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:48

Yeah yeah so our uh our unit the way it's compromised we kind of have four branches off of that gang unit tree If you're living, if if I can use a tree analogy. Right. So we have our enforcement, which is the largest part of our unit. Those are seven days a week coverage. And like I said, their primary job is to answer, is to respond to any gang-related violent crime in the city, whether it be a shooting, a stabbing, a fight. And then other than that, is to contact as many gang members as they can and give and shift. It's not necessarily to arrest gang members, but we need to contact them as much as we can. And then you have our gang detectives. So we have detectives assigned just to the unit that work our cases as well as adopt any cases that may have gang relation that maybe our our guys couldn't get out there to it or maybe it was missed. And we see it on the back end reviewing that report. You have gang intel, which is where I'm at. And so, man, our main job is to work uh kind of long-term cases with our federal partners. Um, also to push out intelligence that we're receiving, either through open source, through sources, through CIs about what's going on in the gang world and push that out to people that need that information, whether it be our gang enforcements, maybe it's a division. Hey, you're about to have some Crips are planning a party this weekend over here at this, and it's in your patrol division. Yeah. So you guys need just need to be aware that this is going on. I'm not, it's not our job to tell you how to do it or what to do with it, but you need to be aware that this this event is gonna happen.

SPEAKER_05: 1:04:30

It's a safety issue too. Right. You know, especially a patrol guy goes over there and doesn't realize he can't go into just any regular old house party issue. Yeah, it's not your standard loud music call. Right. And if you come over there talking disrespect, you might not walk out of there. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:45

So um, so we also work, uh we have a really good relationship with our prosecutor's office, um, which I think is a must in any any police department. Um is at the end of the day, I may be the one investigating the case, filing the case, but at the end of the day, those prosecutors are the ones presenting that case in court. Right. And so those we have to be on the same page together. Uh hey, if there's something you need at the prosecution level that I'm not getting to you at the officer level, let me know so we can make that correction.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:18

Or hey, what are we doing? What do you need? Here, here's an investigation I got. I'm thinking about this charge and this charge. What do you think about that? And being on the same page. Yep. And then one thing that we do different in our department that I think a lot of departments don't do, I think we're pretty rare in this, is we have an intervention and prevention arm on that tree as well. And their main job, those officers' main job, is to go out and work with the school district, the after hours programs, things like that, and catch those kids that are at a, I can never say this word, I'm sorry, susceptible. Did I say it correctly? We got it, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:52

Oh, we like you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:54

Thank you, God. Um, at that age range to try to intervene from them joining a gang, or to take kids who maybe have chosen that lifestyle and try to get them out of that gang lifestyle. Yeah. So, hey man, you want to play football? That's cool, man. Let me take you, and instead of you getting out of school and spending the next four hours out on the block with all the gang members, let me take you to the police athletic league. Yeah. And get you some training in football. You want to learn how to fight? Yep. Trust me, we can teach you how to fight. Let me take you to the boxing gym. Yeah. Or hey, let me, and they have different programs and different things that they do. And I I tell you, I know in police work, a lot of it is all about stats. Hey, what how many arrests did you make? How many citations did you write? How many reports did you take this week? There's not really a stat that you can associate with those dudes, but those dudes are very, very good at what they do. And again, it's impossible to stat it, but how many kids they've saved from falling victim to that gang life of going to jail or end up shot? Yeah. Is is amazing. It's an investment.

SPEAKER_05: 1:06:59

That's what it is. It's not just a we stopped a shooting. It's we just invested into our own community. We just started hopefully a trend that now this kid has an example and he can pass that on when he becomes a dad. You know, that's the way I look at it. Is you're not gonna win them all. And having the illusion that you are is, you know, a little rose, rose-colored glasses look to it, but you gotta try. I think that's important. We gotta try. We gotta be putting the effort in. So I think that's good. I think it's good that you put that out there, that that's something that we do that a lot don't do. Because now maybe it's one of those things, perspective. Maybe it's something nobody considered, and then we're like, we didn't even think about that. Just like you with the body cams when he brought that idea. Oh shit, I didn't even think about that. Yeah. Um, is that thing keep rocking on you? Yeah, you get it as I say, we can tighten it up. You get so um awesome, okay, cool. All right. So you get your you get your rookies on boarded, you train them up and stuff like that. Now, Brandon what are the most common like it doesn't have to be laughable, but I always laugh when you see new people come over and you're like, damn. You just you're like, really rookie? Like, you know, and and and officers out there listening to this, or even you know, citizen civilians, when you listen to this, when you go to a new unit, you're a rookie again. It's hard to explain. Even though you've been a cop 10-15 years, you're a rookie again. You go to SWAT, you're a rookie. Just like you said, you gotta clean, you gotta do all these things. There's hoops you gotta jump through, you're a rookie again. So being a rookie and doing something outside the norm of what you're used to in patrol, you make mistakes all the time. And it's fun for us seasoned guys to sit back and watch and be like, ah, I remember when I used to do that shit. What common problems are you seeing from kids today? I say kids, I don't mean kids, but new gang, narc people on your unit. What are some common mistakes that they're making that you want to help them avoid if they decide to come over to a unit like yours today?

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:03

Oh, that's an easy answer. Number one is you don't know everything about what union you're going to. Plain and simple. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be burglary, it could be homicide, it could be drugs, it could be gangs. You don't know everything you need to know. You're gonna have to take that step back. You can be a two-year officer, you can be a 20-year officer. You're never gonna know everything about that unit the first day you walk in.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:25

I think that's the easiest answer to give on the mistakes made by new new folks is you don't know everything. Sit in, absorb it all. You know? So we may have uh we may have a 10-year officer come in and he's learning from an eight-year officer, two years younger than him, but that two that eight-year officer's been there for four years.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:45

And has the gist, has the the upbringing of, like Nasty said, we we may have learned from that 25-year gang officer. Now we've gotten the the good baseline, and now we're ready to put it out there and teach you what we learned. So that's that's the number one thing. Number two is in the narcotics world, everybody wants to come in in the plain clothes, but a lot of officers are so stuck in dressing like police everywhere they go.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:11

They look like police even on it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:13

Damn right. The Meryl boots, the the 511 pants. Listen, we gotta get rid of those, man. Gas can and glasses.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:22

Yeah, so that's all they own, man. They don't own no regular clothes, right? Back to the wall, always looking around. Yeah, bro, you got cop written all over you.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:32

Damn right. So that's funny. Those are the two biggest ones is you you gotta get ready to learn. It's back, it's basically back in the academy, man. You're learning from day one of how to do now this specialized. You gotta get um programmed. Damn right. Yeah, damn right.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:46

Yeah, so it's so funny.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:48

It's a funny story. Can I tell a funny story about that? Yeah. So I did a lot of the training for our plain clothes. Uh, when we would go plain clothes for our enforcement guys, right? Riding regular car, dressing regular clothes. Um, and so I have a, and he's a great cop, good friend. So he ain't gonna mind me. I ain't gonna say his name, but he ain't gonna mind me telling this story. So it's his first day riding plain clothes. He's never, he's been in uniform his entire career. Okay. From patrol to enforcement. And I say, Come on, man, hey, you gonna roll with me tonight? Bring a regular change of clothes. We're gonna ride in the cool car tonight and get you some experience doing that. He's like, All right. And so we get in the car. I know it's his first time doing it, so I say, Hey, listen, man, first rule nobody knows that we the police except for me and you.

SPEAKER_06: 1:11:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:36

We the only ones who know we the police. Nobody else out here, once we leave this parking lot, knows that. So don't tell nobody. Yeah unless you want them to know.

SPEAKER_06: 1:11:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:47

I said, but nobody should know. He's like, okay, all right, boom. We leave the parking lot. What does every good cop do? We go to the gas station. Right. Right? We gotta load up. Let me get my supplies for the night.

SPEAKER_05: 1:11:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:00

The gas station is literally across the street. We've had this conversation. Hey, nobody knows what we the police. Five minutes later, we're in the in the gas station. I got my drink and my snacks there, and uh he's in front of me in line. And he puts down, I think he got like a pack of bubblegum or something. And the clerk, and mind you, I've been going to this gas station for five years now. The same clerk does not know that I'm the police. Knows me now. Hey, what's up, Nancy? Hey man, what's up, brother? I'm good. Hey, every day I'm going in there. Which he's not a bad guy. I don't have an investigation on him, but like he only knows. He puts his bubblegum up there, pulls out his credit card to pay, and on the machine, what does it say? 250 limit. You know, 200,$2.50 credit limit. Yeah. Well, the bubblegum is like a dollar.

SPEAKER_05: 1:12:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:58

And so the guy says, Hey, it's a$2.50 limit. Do you want to get something else? Or I got to charge you$250.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:05

And he's like, hey, man, you know that's illegal, right? You can't you can't have a limit on a credit card machine. This is against the law, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I go, oh man, you didn't listen to what we just said. I was like, Mo, just put my stuff with him, man. Look, I'll buy his bubble gum. I'll ring me up. We get back in the car and he's like, I probably shouldn't have said that, huh? And I go, nah, man. He comes to the to the convenience store and says that's illegal.

SPEAKER_05: 1:13:32

Right. Fucking cornball. Yeah, that is it's hard. It is hard. And well, I say that it wasn't hard for me. But I grew up in a different place. It depends on how you grow up, too. What do we draw in law enforcement? Mostly. Boy Scouts. We draw Boy Scouts. That's really what we draw. You got the Dudley Dew rights, they want to be cops, they want to do a good thing. Or you got some people like me, like I'm assuming you, just from your accent.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:08

Um what's that mean, man? Um that's my point. That's my point.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:17

You didn't learn that from the streets of being a cop. That's just nasty. That was nasty. He was born that. Watch him hoop. I bet he got a mouth.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:26

Man, you didn't even bring that up earlier when we're doing the intros. I know.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:29

Man, bet he got a mouth when he balls.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:31

Well, that's because I'm unathletic, man. That's the only way I could get in somebody. I had to get in their head. Yeah. And now they throw it off. I'm like, okay. My unathletic white self. Right below the three.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:44

He ain't shooting no threes. He's throwing them big-ass hips he had and pushing people out of the way. He played like Shaq. Yeah. Didn't you? Like whatever it takes. Didn't you? Yeah. Bodying everybody. Yep. 90s-style basketball. That's what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:00

Hey, I went through phases. I like it. I was a husky kid, then I slimmed down. Then I got back husky again.

SPEAKER_05: 1:15:05

Okay. Okay. Fair enough.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:07

All right.

SPEAKER_05: 1:15:08

Mistakes that they make. Got that out of the way. Let's get into the meat and potatoes training. Just in general. What are NARC units, gang units in general? What are we doing well today? And then what are we not doing so well that you think we need to fix quick, fast, and in a hurry? So, Brandon, I'll let you go first.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:32

Uh doing well.

SPEAKER_05: 1:15:33

Yeah, what are we doing well?

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:34

Hitting the streets. Man, we are we are getting out there and doing enforcement acts, you know, enforcement operations and really putting our face out there. If we're not in a UC role, what we're doing is actually putting our face out there to tell the bad guys, hey, we're here. We're not going anywhere. Do what you do. We understand it's a game in the end, but we're out here. So the enforcement operations, what we're doing really, really well. Uh we're putting bad guys in jails, doing what we can, no matter if the justice system is broken or not. We're doing our part. And there's only so far we can go with it.

SPEAKER_06: 1:16:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:07

Uh that's I think my personal opinion is that's what we're doing well. I think one thing that we aren't doing the greatest on is the first budget line cut is always training. We're gonna pull from that training budget and we're gonna put it to where we need it elsewhere.

SPEAKER_06: 1:16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:25

But in in reality, if we're not keeping up with the Joneses with all these new laws, the case law and how how we how we enforce those on the streets, all we're doing is hurting ourselves, helping our brothers and sisters on the other side of that blue line as well. So that that I think that's the best thing we're doing, showing face, getting out there doing real police work. And the thing we might need to improve is let's stop taking money from that training budget necessarily and really put forth the effort to getting our guys up to date on the newest, greatest laws and the way to do things.

SPEAKER_05: 1:16:57

Okay. Nasty. What are we doing really well in the gang life?

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:02

I think we're trying really hard.

SPEAKER_05: 1:17:05

Putting maximum effort.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:07

No, no, in all seriousness, I think that we I think that officers on the on as it comes to gang crime are doing a very good job at letting these guys know, hey, we are here. If you mess up, we are gonna take action. Um and we're going to take you to jail if if the if that meets the criteria. If we got an arrestable offense, you're gonna go to jail. Um sometimes it doesn't work out how we how we planned it when it comes to uh uh guilty verdict and then a sentence given out. But that's fine. We have done everything we can. I learned a long time ago that the only person's actions I can control is myself. I can't control a jury, I can't control a judge, I can't control a prosecutor defense attorney. So what I can do is give them the best case packet I can give them, and whatever they choose to do with that is is gonna be on them. Even I've had really strong, I thought for sure this guy's gonna go to jail for a long time. He's a really bad dude. And the jury comes back with a very light sentence. That's 12 random people that were asking to be experts in laws. Yeah. Um, essentially. Yeah. Um, hey, did this guy violate this law? And then not only did he violate here, I'm gonna give you the law, but it's in all this lawyer talk that don't none of us know what these words mean. Yeah. So um I think we're doing really good at when these guys uh and girls start to commit these brazen criminal acts of getting out there, getting in front of it, and stopping it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:44

Um, and and being in their face to tell them, hey, man, this is not gonna happen here. One thing that I think we're maybe not doing as good a job on is focusing our attention on everybody. It's easy to it's like a pendulum, in my in my opinion. It's like a pendulum. We'll get reports, hey, this gang over here on the south side of town is tearing it up. Y'all go handle that gang.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:12

Okay, we're going and we're gonna address that specific gang. Meanwhile, all of our assets are focused on that gang in that particular area. Well, now the folks that we weren't having an issue with in the North Division or East Division or West Division, it's all building up. They're like, yo, ain't no gang units out here.

SPEAKER_05: 1:19:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:33

And now we spent so much time focusing on one one small, which I understand you have to when they're when they're when they're shooting each other, when when innocent bodies are are getting shot. That all of a sudden it's just a pendulum now. Oh, hey, this gang on the north side is really acting up. Yeah, we know that's just where we came from before we started dealing with these guys. So I think if I don't know, I don't know the answer to the solution. That's why it's hard to say there's a problem, because I don't I can't I can't give a good answer to fix it. But being able to focus our attention and give everybody some love. Right. Give everybody the the needed attention that they need from law enforcement.

SPEAKER_05: 1:20:11

Okay. I will point out from an outsider's perspective, because obviously nasty knows for sure. I never worked gang, never worked Narc. It's not my life. But being on the Intel side of things, I get to see the good work. I get to see the products, I get to see all that stuff. So I will say one thing that I noticed that gang and narc do really well these days is the uh the use of technology. The the getting getting ahead of stuff and communicating with each other on the teams, like the communication side of things have changed big time. You're not just talking to people in your unit anymore, you're talking to people across the state. You're not just talking to people across the state, you're talking to people across the country. So our communication style has really changed. We're not stuck in our own little bubble anymore. I think we're also really good at using the technology itself. Like we're using LPRs, we're we're sitting back and using cameras from a distance instead of putting ourselves in a possibility of getting burned. Um, we're controlling our stops better. We're not just rushing in, we're not doing officer safety issue things anymore. Um, I don't know if that's a training thing. I don't know if that's because technology has gotten so good we just kind of figured it out. I don't know how that's going, but from the outside looking in, that's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing much more intelligent stops, work, and safer. It seems like it seems like we're a lot safer than we ever used to be without being kid gloves. I don't mean safer, like we're not we're not out there doing the job anymore. No, we're still out there. But when we do a takedown, unless this shit hit the fan in front of us, it's smart. We're doing it well away from everything that could possibly come out and bite us. And most of the time when these stops are being done, the bad guys rolling the dice that we're just doing a random stop. They don't realize we've been following your ass for 10 miles and 12 hours. We we know everything you've done today. Yeah, I think that that's I think that's where you guys from the outside looking and seeing your success. And when I watch a case or I look at a case, I'm like, damn, that was good. That was smart. Like that is that's the direction I hope we take, not just in gang and narc, but all of law enforcement. That's why I'm in the real-time crime center aspect. Is like I saw the writing on the wall a long time ago. I'm like, we can do this job safer and more efficiently from a distance. Yeah. And it's just getting that light bulb to go off with people, and they start to see it. You're like, oh shit, we used to, we all moved in at the location. So we see all the bad shit happen. Because we're showing a force, we're showing a presence. I think that's fucked up. I don't think that's the right way to do it. I think it's okay. Gun, gun, gun. Cool. They all got guns. Oh, they just dealt guns out of the back of that trunk. Okay, cool. You see, this is the car. We're watching them on camera. They're going southbound. Pick them up a mile down the road. Cool. They pick them up, leapfrog down. Now they're doing a traffic stop six miles away. And they have no clue they were being followed. They're like, oh, it's just a traffic stop. I'll get out of this. And then all of a sudden Calvary's there, and they're like, fuck. Yeah. You got me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:27

I'll tell you something that Brandon and I are both big proponents on is when you get when you get the opportunity to go to those trainings, it's cool. You're going to learn some stuff, right? Hopefully, you have a good instructor. You can take a couple nuggets away and take it back to your AOR and apply those nuggets and use them.

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:43

Fucking network basically.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:44

That's great. Take the opportunity to network with everybody in that room. If you're not exchanging business cards, if you're not exchanging information, you're missing the point of going to training. Yep. And that's something I picked up from Brandon and watching him teach that I have incorporated now whenever I teach is yo, hold on. We're going to take a timeout right here. Yeah. Y'all not here to listen to me or listen to Brandon. We're going to do the most important thing. We're going to take 15 minutes and let me catch a breather. And everybody here, we're going to exchange business cards. Everybody in here, we're going to exchange our information. I may not need a contact in Las Vegas right now today. But in six months, what if my gang member goes to Las Vegas and he's got a felony warrant?

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:28

Now I got an actual number. I can call the number that's listed online and hope that I get connected to somebody.

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:36

Yeah, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:37

Or you know what's much easier? Yeah. Calling on myself on somebody that I know and go, hey man, this is nasty. You remember we went to that training about six months ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey man, I got a favor to ask. I got this dude over here. His his dope world. That's not localized. Right. That's not going across borders. Yeah. The only folks who win when we care about jurisdictional lines are the bad guys.

SPEAKER_05: 1:25:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:04

That's the only folks that win.

SPEAKER_05: 1:25:05

Yep. I agree. And it it is fun when you because we've all I've been there. Google. All right. Las Vegas PD dispatch. Hey, this is Eric Levine from Such and Such. It's a long shot, but I'm looking for somebody in your narcotics unit. Can you help me out? It's so embarrassing. It takes forever. But yeah, when you got somebody that you can go right to, that's the beauty of the phones now, man. Technology, like I said, like I I just start typing in the name of an agency. I don't even remember who I talked to. But I know it's John Smith. You know, I don't even know his name, but I type in Las Vegas PD and John Smith pops up. Oh, yeah, that's that dude. Exactly. Let me. Yeah, that's how it works.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:47

Everybody has a phone. We carry our phone everywhere. Yep. We barely care carry business cards anymore.

SPEAKER_05: 1:25:52

Yep. That's why. If anybody ever asks to use your phone, just give them that warning. It goes everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. Yep. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. I think I think we have sufficiently covered the growing pains, the getting into Narc and Gang and all that stuff. But I want to get to our special guest, Brandon. Nasty's already talked about going to your classes. So you put classes on, you teach. You are in the world so much that you are spreading your knowledge now across the country with the gang and narcotics life. What is it that you are doing out there and how are you changing the way that we're doing things?

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:40

So back in 2014, when I entered my organized crime unit, I was welcomed to the unit, great people. But they just said, hey, find some training. Follow the lead. Learn as you go. It talks about OJT, right? It wasn't OJT as in let me direct you and show you. It was follow along, watch how we do this, and uh pick up the good things and the bad things. Well, as we all know, in narcotics, gangs, prostitution, that's not always the best way to train or learn. So I learned from my mistakes. I learned from my growing pains. And I just realized, hey, I never was able to crawl. I was either walking or running right off the bat like that. And that's not the best way to learn.

SPEAKER_05: 1:27:29

Trial by fire, baby.

SPEAKER_03: 1:27:31

Damn right. Not always the best thing to do. So what I did was I created this business to help people learn from step one. And by the end of that class, whether it's a one-day class or a four-day class, we're gonna be all together at step 100. And you're gonna be able to take everything in that training time frame, put it together, take it back, and be able to push it on to your people as well. So what what we what you ask, what do you do? We take cases from probable cause to proof beyond reasonable doubt for you. The little things we can do old school police work in our training, we're still going old school techniques that work today.

SPEAKER_04: 1:28:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:28:18

And we're just showing you how to put that that into play and put your case over the top so that like Nasty says, we're gonna help you present the best possible case out there. What happens when it leaves our desk? We have no control over that. And that's what our training business does for you is we're gonna put the best possible case out there so your prosecutor number one is happy. And in turn, everybody else is happy in the long run.

SPEAKER_05: 1:28:43

Okay. So if people want to get your class, how do they go about setting that up?

SPEAKER_03: 1:28:48

So we have a website, obviously, www.bsnarcotics.com. Uh the BS, obviously, Eric believes it stands for bullshit. Uh but I thought it was a catchy name when I when I created.

SPEAKER_05: 1:29:04

Yeah, yeah. I get two girls, one cup every time somebody says two cups, one donut.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:07

So that's yeah, and we all know what that is. So I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Um, but I you know what, talking about the name, I thought it was catchy. I was like, man, bullshit. Everybody thinks bullshit as soon as you hear BS, it's bullshit. But it's my initials. So and I concentrate on narcotics at first. So my website, you can get all of our classes, has all the instructors that you need to look into. If you have any questions, we got an email there. We answer every single email ourselves. Okay. We don't have a secretary that goes out and and answers for you, or it's not computer generated. Uh, we're we're big on networking. We talked about it just a second ago. We are huge on networking. We can't succeed by ourselves. So I used to be that guy back in the day. I was in the back row. I was gonna get my information, and I was gonna jet my butt out of class as soon as possible. Now you're not gonna get away from me. Hey, Eric, sorry, man, I didn't catch you. Where are you from? Yeah, yeah. Mind if I get you contact? Because guess what? That one time I need your department, I start putting your department name in. I may not remember Eric six, eight months down the road, but I'm gonna remember your department.

SPEAKER_05: 1:30:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:16

Hit you up, like, hey, this is Brandon, remember me? No, I don't. Well, this is what I can I get, can I get some help your way? So but going back to the business, we were created um to put our case in front of probable cause to reason proof beyond reasonable doubt, and we do it in a in a easy to understandable, easy to understand and hands-on way. Every single one of our classes is mandated that you have something hands-on.

SPEAKER_04: 1:30:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:46

I mean, and then that comes from strictly Brandon. Brandon's a hands-on learner. You can't read black and white to me and me, take it out of that classroom and learn it. So I gotta have something, whether it's tabletop or we're outside doing hands-on activities, that's how I'm gonna learn.

SPEAKER_05: 1:31:01

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:02

So we've had a lot of compliments on that, and I can guarantee you when we put on some of the best training you've ever attended.

SPEAKER_05: 1:31:07

I like it. Uh, how long have you been doing it now?

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:10

The training business was created in 2014.

SPEAKER_05: 1:31:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:13

And we've really been hitting hard for the last four or five years or so.

SPEAKER_05: 1:31:18

Now, are you people are gonna ask, um, do they get any sort of state credit uh like T-Cole, for instance? Are they getting T-Cole credits if they come to your class?

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:27

Yep. All Texas peace officers get T-Call. Every single one of our classes are T-Call approved.

SPEAKER_05: 1:31:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:32

Uh, we actually, if your department hosts a class and you don't want to report our T Call hours, we've got an organization that takes care of that for us. Oh. Yep.

SPEAKER_05: 1:31:41

Very nice.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:42

And uh and you mentioned earlier that we travel throughout the United States and we do East Coast, West Coast, North and South. And we are also post um accepted. Okay. We just fill out the forms and and get you what you need so that you can present it to your chain of command for the post credit.

SPEAKER_05: 1:31:58

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:59

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_05: 1:32:00

That is awesome. Uh in doing this, any any cool success stories that have come out?

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:05

Oh man, there's a ton of them. Okay. Absolutely a ton of them.

SPEAKER_05: 1:32:07

I was gonna say, you've been doing it since 14. I'm sure there's a bunch, but any any that kind of stand out to you?

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:12

Yeah, so we put on um an undercover class.

SPEAKER_05: 1:32:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:17

And uh the the department far south, Brownsville PD.

SPEAKER_05: 1:32:23

I I know, I know that department, actually.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:26

Great people. You talk about outstanding people. They did one case, they called us with like 10 different success stories. Well, you'd be amazed what happened, Brandon. This, this because of your guys, and it's just not it's just not Brandon, it's our entire instructor lineup that helps us. So uh they came back and you don't put this, you don't put this knucklehead up there, dude. Absolutely. We get him, and he he he tells his uh his old school basketball stories, right? Yeah, but then it's all about it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:32:53

So there it was, me and Iverson.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:55

Me and Iverson.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:56

Yeah, yeah. You see Iverson stepping over to Aaron Lou.

SPEAKER_05: 1:33:01

So Jason Kidd was giving me a personal lesson, and I looked over at the kid and I was like, let me show you how to bounce it off your elbow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:09

But that's what one thing. So Brandon I know each other way before uh our relationship through BS Narcotics. Yeah. Um, but that's one thing to grinder when we whatever makes him. I had to catch him. I had to catch him in thought. But that's one thing that we talked about was hey, Brandon, look, I'm not a dope cop. I don't pretend to be a dope cop. I don't pretend to be a narcotics officer. Do gang members have dope? Absolutely. I can if I pull some meth out of this gang member's pocket, I could be like, I think that's some meth.

SPEAKER_06: 1:33:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:43

But I'm gonna wait for the lab to tell me it's meth because I don't really know for sure. Yeah, like that's just not my world. Um, so one thing that we say is hey, hey, Brandon, listen, I'm never going to teach a narcotics class. Right. Because that's that's not your business teaching a narcotics class. Could I get through the PowerPoint? For sure.

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:02

But I got no business teaching folks about narcotics.

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:05

It comes across unauthentic too, because we don't know what the fuck we're talking about. Like, I was sitting here, I'm like, what's the new language? I don't even fucking know. Yeah.

unknown: 1:34:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:12

And just like Brandon was like, and that's fine because I'm not a gang cop.

SPEAKER_06: 1:34:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:16

So I'm not ever gonna teach a gang class. Yeah, because that's not my world. Um, so uh uh us being on that same page as that was what really flourished our relationship to go, okay, cool, man. As long as you know I'm not I'm not doing that, yeah, and you have the same thinking that I have when you gang stuff, yeah. Uh not even stay in your lanes, but let's let's provide a top quality training with folks who know what they're training about. Um and it's not just somebody that hey, I happen to catch a load of dope. Yeah, I got lucky, not from skill, which don't get me wrong, I'd rather be lucky than skillful any day of the week. That's cool with me. But now I'm gonna go teach about catching loads of dope.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:01

Well, what you mean, man? You got lucky. Yeah, you haven't to pull over the right car. So that's that's not what we're about, is teaching something that we're not doing on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_05: 1:35:11

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. It goes back to like grappling. Like I'm a big jujitsu guy, done that for a lot of years. Judo, boxing, I'm big into control tactics and stuff. The moment you have somebody step out on the mats that took a 40-hour certificate class that's teaching this shit, everybody sees through it. Absolutely, everybody sees through it, and I get so frustrated with shit like that. Sounds like you're modeling your instruction on that same principle.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:42

Like, you know, I we absolutely are in, and it's not taken away from any other instruction company. I'll in uh training company, I'll never talk, I'll never ever talk negative about another. I'll do it for you. Okay.

SPEAKER_05: 1:35:54

One thing I would say I'll call out bullshit training in a heartbeat.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:57

Not bullshit narcotics, but I'll call out bullshit training. One thing I will tell you is one thing we stand on is every single one of our instructors are active duty in law enforcement for what we teach, what we instruct. They're current, they're doing the things up to date, doing it on the streets. And what worked for us yesterday is gonna work for us tomorrow because we're doing it. Yep. So we do stand on that and stand behind it as well.

SPEAKER_05: 1:36:22

Not in just in case somebody listens to this and they're like, I did it for I was an ARC for 40 years. Like, cool. Like, I'm not saying you don't bring value to a class too. People that did it for a long time absolutely do. And just because you're not still in the game doesn't mean you don't bring value to a training. Because I absolutely think the OGs bring a lot to it. Because at the end of the day, crime's a crime, bad guys are bad guys, yeah. Like some things just don't change. Uh, so I I'm used, I'm good with that, but you do need people that are currently out there doing it and giving you the new, the way things are changing, adapting, because crimes are changing. Look at drones. Yeah, I know gang guys that are using drones, I know NARC guys that are in. I'm not talking the good guys, I'm talking the bad guys. They're out delivering dope to prisons. They're you know, the gang guys are using it to go use it to hit people, you know, and like doing their own surveillance. Yeah, doing their own surveillance. I'm like, that's pretty fucking slick, you know. Um that's where the real-time crime center comes in. Because if you launch that bitch, we're gonna know. Yeah, yeah, we'll be paying attention to that now. We got we got radar.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:32

But that's just this. So, like, especially if we teach in in Texas, right? Where we both work at.

SPEAKER_05: 1:37:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:37

If you're sitting in the class, guess what? I gotta deal with the same legislative changes that you're dealing with. If there was a shift in the laws that affects how we do things, I'm dealing with those same shifts in the law. If there's a new case law that came up that affects how we can, if a case is gonna get prosecuted or not, we're dealing with those same case laws that you're dealing with. Yep. And here's a way that we're dealing with that case law.

SPEAKER_05: 1:38:03

Yeah. I'm glad you brought up case law because that is a highly, highly overlooked but critical part of what we do. And if you, as even a street cop, are out there and you're not keeping up on case laws, you're wrong. Like it is huge. Um Penn versus Mims, Pennsylvania vs. Mims. Like that's a that's a big stop right there. And understanding the dynamics behind it are important, but it isn't just doing Pennsylvania. For those listening, if you wonder what Pennsylvania vs. Mims is, is basically saying that we have the right to pull you out of a car on a traffic stop. It was based on the premise of officer safety. They saw a gun in the car, pulled the person out of the car. Courts ruled that it's a minor inconvenience to be pulled out. It's not a Fourth Amendment violation. That's important to know. But I think it's important to understand the case and realize, kind of like to what you were getting with. If I jeopardize the integrity of my case just a little bit, what if I pull you out for no reason? Can I do that according to Pennsylvania Viz Mims? Yeah, I can. Should I? I don't think so. I think we should be able to articulate reasons why we're doing anything. So if we're gonna hold the integrity of a case, let's articulate reasons. That case in particular is based on officer safety. So if I'm gonna pull someone out, I've always for myself, no one's ever trained me in this, but I've always said I'm going to do it for an officer safety reason that I can articulate. And that goes into the meticulous nature that we need to have, even starting in patrol. It gets even more important for specialized units. And I think to what you're getting at, when we're talking about putting, you can put anybody can put a case together, but it's having a lock solid case that makes the big difference. So it sounds like that's what y'all are out there trying to do.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:57

No, that that's absolutely, and and I think we're going above trying. I think we're doing it. Yeah. You know, we're able to we're able to go around and do exactly what you're talking about, is we help you understand case law too. We can all read it in the black and white, like I was mentioning earlier, but do you actually understand it like we should?

SPEAKER_05: 1:40:13

To practically apply it? Correct. Yeah, that's a different thing. You can know the const. I tell this to people all the time. You can know the constitution, but the moment I put you in a scenario and I'm like, all right, you got a call, go deal with that. And the first thing you do is violate that person's rights because you're like, Well, I got called here. I'm like, oh, but you know the constitution. Yep, it fucks with you. It does. Practical application and seeing something in black and white are two totally different things. 100%. Yeah, totally different things.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40:40

And that's why we're big on hands-on training. Yes. You're gonna get up out of that seat and you're gonna move around and we're gonna get there.

SPEAKER_05: 1:40:47

And it it's good to do that because it's different types of learners. You know, kinesthetics is that's me. I'm when I study for a promotional test, like I I have the memory of a goldfish. I don't remember shit until I start writing. If I write what I'm learning, or if I type it, that's a it doesn't do as well for me to type, but it does help. So typically what I'll do is I'll read, write out my flashcards, and then I type out my flashcards so then I can study it on like quizzlet or whatever. But by you doing offering that, that's something rare. Not a lot of classes do that unless it's something you just can't avoid, like drones. You have to go fly a drone. Exactly. Like to get it to be able to fly a drone as a cop, you gotta go out there and actually fucking fly one. Right. How many classes get you to do anything? Very rare, very rare. Unless you just know you're going into some weird firefighters. They, I'm sure most of the stuff they do is outside of a classroom. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, but no, that's cool. I'm glad I'm I'm glad that it sounds successful. Sounds like you being a part of this, because nasty ain't gonna ever say, but the dude is not just nationally known, he is known worldwide for his gang knowledge. Absolutely. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03: 1:42:01

It was it's a still having him part of our family. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_05: 1:42:05

You look at him and you're like, come on, man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:09

I didn't save my hair.

SPEAKER_05: 1:42:10

You look at him and you're like, what the fuck is this guy gonna teach me? He don't know shit. But you talk, you start talking to him like, God dang, it ain't just ain't just a pretty face, you know. Look at knowledge, man. You right? I know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:22

You know what it is, man. We are all of the instructors. Um, I think we are all we all have our specialty that we do on a daily basis, which is what makes it a specialty for us. And we are all just I don't want to say chess pieces, because I don't know how all those pieces move exactly, but we're all checkers on the board, right? If you're an agency and you got a lot of you got a big prostitution, you got a lot of prostitution problems or vice problems. That's not my That's not my angle, yeah. But Brandon gonna come down there and show you how to how to do a prostitution reversals thing, how to set it up, how to be successful. What are your prosts? What does the law say? What do we have to have to put somebody in jail for this? Uh, if you got a big dope problem, not my lane, yeah. But Brandon and several of the other instructors, that's what they do on the regular every single day. So here, here's here's how to work it, here's how to be successful in it. These are tried and true tactics that work, that or get convictions. You got some gang problems? Cool, let's talk about them. I could talk gangs all day long with you. I'm a nerd over that with over gang stuff. Like that, I I enjoy that. So cool, let's talk about it. But everybody plays their piece on that checkerboard. Yeah. So hopefully one of us get to the other side and can king us. Yeah. But everybody plays their their role. It's uh it's uh as basic as it sounds, it's a phenomenal way to set up for success because you're dealing with folks, you're learning from folks, you're interacting with folks that do it on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_05: 1:44:04

Yeah. And you both still love it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:07

I love it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:08

Yeah, absolutely. That's what I like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:44:10

If you got a passion for it, man, I what I do. I I'm an all day like all day late. If we go back in the house, I'm gonna show you some product that was sent to me through my nerdness that absolutely has very little to do with real time, but is fully invested in real time. Uh okay, I just it's a fucking AED. It's an AED. But what I what I nerd out about it is it connects to real time. Like you can, that's how you can set it up so I can know the locations of all these AEDs if we get this particular brand. And if it turns on, you get a notification. If you're at a dispatch center, same thing, they'd get a notification. It's an AED, the yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the shock thing. Okay, I think I use this save hobby.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:55

What's it what's it do nasty? I feel like my boy's about to do a Chris Brown over there.

SPEAKER_05: 1:45:05

Oh, his heart just came out of his chest. Oh, he's passing it. You might need to go get that thing out.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45:10

And my heart rate's going up.

SPEAKER_05: 1:45:14

But having the passion for it, I think that's the big part. You know, if we're gonna talk real, like training people, you have to have a passion. You cannot, if you're doing it for the money, you're in the wrong. And people make big money training, they can. Um, and I know if nasty's involved with you, you guys ain't out there just raking people. Yeah, you ain't raking people over the coals. I know, I know his heart. He wouldn't, he wouldn't be about that. Um, he's just wanting to get people good training. So, but no, that sounds cool, man. I'm glad you guys are out there doing it. I'm glad that you guys have that. That's why I harp, that's why I build it up. I want people to understand where you came from, why you got into it, so they can kind of buy into you or not buy into you. They make, oh, they're full of shit. And then understand what you saw. So you you guys had that experience, you you got into the the gang in Narc Life. Um, you were able to speak to problems you saw. So the people that are in this world that are wanting to learn, they're gonna know right away if you was full of shit. And based on the way that you're talking and the way that you looked at things up until now, we mentioned that you're teaching classes, there is not a a cop out there that can listen to this and say that you don't have a clue of what you're talking about or that you're full of shit. We just built it up to show that not only do you know what the fuck you're talking about, you're in it. You're in it today. So I think that that helps not to sell you, that's not what I mean, but I think it helps give you credibility. And so that's kind of what I was trying to do is build up your credibility without saying that. And I think you guys proved it with uh how much prep did we have when we zero prep. I wasn't supposed to be on it. He wasn't even supposed to be on it. Yeah, he they both look at me and they're like, So what are we gonna talk about? I'm like, don't fucking worry about it. I will guide you. I will I will take you through.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:04

Um I'm glad to see you took copious amounts of notes tonight.

SPEAKER_05: 1:47:08

Um yeah. Those the only thing I typically write down here are things I need to take out. So if you would have mentioned departments or anything like that, but you didn't. So because you didn't, I don't have to take anything out. I think we stayed pretty true to what we need to get. Um, but with that, I want to, before we get out of here, any big stories, any big like things that you guys are like, ah, this is the thing I always tell in a class that everybody loves. Is there any little little trinkets before we get off of here that you want to get out there?

SPEAKER_03: 1:47:43

Well, I got two things before we get off.

SPEAKER_05: 1:47:46

Oh, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_03: 1:47:47

Number one is I gotta give a shout out to all of our instructors. It's the the BS Narcotics is not just me and Nasty. We've got some outstanding instructors who are willing to travel the United States. Uh we we reach from South Texas. We got Jeremy and Feeds down south. We got more Central Texas, we got Dave Cole, we got Seuss, we got Leewack, we got people uh up north, Nasty. We got Cameron up in Montana.

SPEAKER_05: 1:48:15

Ah, I was stationed in Montana. Which part? Billings in Montana. Billings, okay, not bad.

SPEAKER_03: 1:48:20

So um we've got some of the best of the best, and like I said, it is the guy these guys.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:26

I mean, hold on. Don't forget Bo. Nope, I'm not, I'm not, not I saved you, Bo. No, he didn't, actually.

SPEAKER_03: 1:48:35

But going back to is Bo is the last person I was gonna mention, is because a lot of people in the gang world may know his dad, uh senior. So I I I learned this past month that uh you don't call them by their name anymore as it's junior and senior. That's that's how you identify them. Okay. But we've got we've got those instructors, uh outstanding individuals who are far from selfish and are willing to get out there and put on the best training we got. Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:49:03

So that's what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:05

Uh we got two things.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:07

Let me let me go first, and then you go. It might be a little flip-flip. No, no, that's not what you want to do. Uh you see, that's the dang shit right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dang.

SPEAKER_05: 1:49:16

Dang, don't disrespect me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:19

I don't have no cool story to share. Um, I will say I second Brandon, man. The only reason I joined this team is because of the phenomenal people already associated with BS Narcotics before I before I got involved. Um, it's a phenomenal team.

SPEAKER_05: 1:49:34

You can't say that with a straight face and then not expect me to laugh every time. Every time.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:40

I want to share for for my folks in law enforcement that may listen to this, I just want to share a quote. And I'm not even going to explain it. I just want to share a quote that I think is important in law enforcement. Um, it's a quote by Mark Twain. He wasn't even a cop.

SPEAKER_05: 1:49:56

Okay. But little racist, but cool.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:58

Oh, is it yeah. Okay, let's just worry about the quote. Yeah, okay, the quote. I don't know about it, his lifestyle. But um, he has a quote um that I think is pretty pretty powerful when you apply it to law enforcement, and it says the problem with the world is not that people know too little, it's the fact that people know so much of something that just isn't true. So just think about it. That's all. Yeah, you see. Let him marinate. Dr. Nasty in this joke. Dr. Nasty.

SPEAKER_05: 1:50:28

D nasty. I like it. I'm thinking about it. Yeah, see. Okay. I'm thinking about it. He probably says that shit in your courses. You don't even know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:50:34

No, he died he broke it down yesterday, too. He didn't want I was like, okay, nasty. Okay. Come on now. Oh man. Uh no, we we don't. I mean, we got a bunch of cool stories. Let's just be real. We've we've been able to get out there. Um, we went up to Pennsylvania, learned what a uh a tray of red is. You ever heard of a tray of red? It's pizza. It's pizza.

SPEAKER_05: 1:50:58

A tray of red?

SPEAKER_03: 1:50:59

Yeah. Tray of red.

SPEAKER_05: 1:51:00

Pennsylvania could be stupid.

SPEAKER_03: 1:51:02

Yeah. Jim, Jim took us out in uh Scranton, Pennsylvania. Oh shit, that's where they filmed uh Scranton what? Scranton what? Electric City. No, Jim took us out there. He's ordering all this cool stuff, and he was like, You want a tray of red? I'm like, Yeah, okay, yeah. I feel like I'm ordering narcotics. I will have one narcotics, please. Yeah, yeah. Best pizza out there, Trey Red. So no, we got a bunch of stories that but the best thing for us is the people we've been able to meet. Yeah. Yeah. We get out there, we try to hang out, and we network, network, network, network. If I can tell anybody anything in this entire um podcast, is you gotta get out there as law enforcement and network your ass off.

SPEAKER_05: 1:51:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:51:44

So that's the only way you're gonna be successful in the long run.

SPEAKER_05: 1:51:48

What it's funny too, because when we like when we host these types of classes, it's funny to watch the the younger cops see y'all walk in the hallway and like, especially if it's just one or two of you, and they it's that double take. They're like, does somebody perp walk through through the academy? Who is that guy? Like McMeans. I remember when McMeans looked like a fucking grand wizard for the clan. Dude, beard down to here. Just oh my god. Seeing him the first time I saw him, I was I remember looking around, like, what the fuck? Like, what's this? Who's this dude with? Is he is he an informant? What's going on? And uh no, he's one of ours.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:28

Before my lieutenant said he didn't like my beard, you know. I had the beard down. But anytime I walk to the academy, they'd be like, Sir, can we help you? Right. No, you can't help me, man. You ain't about this life. Yeah, you can't help me. You ain't about this life. I know where I'm going. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:52:44

Yeah. No, it's that is the that is the fun part of seeing y'all come into the academy and and just watching people's reactions when three-fourths of the class is walking out because they they work some sort of UC life, or they just just being out and about and gives them a little more street cred. Um the one question that I have for y'all is, and and I I know this from personal, but it's where I grew up. And not everybody has that advantage. Talking to people that have never grown up with the type of behavior or manners, or I don't even I don't want to call it manners, because they got their own set of manners in in a way. But talking to people in gangs and talking to people in the dope life and stuff like that, it takes a certain way of speaking. And it doesn't mean you have to come in and talk down. That's I think that's one of the biggest mistakes I see. Even patrol officers, when they realize that they're dealing with the gang member, they're dealing with a dope you know dealer or whatever, like they start that talking down, and it gets them it either one, it shuts down any information that officers are gonna be able to get from them later or using them later on, not using them, but being able to get something from them later on. Uh, because for for cops that don't know, dope is a state charge. We can work with state charges. Uh it's it's hard for patrol to wrap their mind around that stuff if they haven't learned it yet. So talking to people. Nasty, you're really good at talking to people. What is your recommendation to officers out there about talking to people in that life?

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:24

Number one, you be genuine to yourself. Just be yourself. Don't change who you are. Right. Because that's fake, and folks immediately see through the fakeness. Yep. If if if you're a yes ma'am, no ma'am, that's how you talk on a regular basis, that's how you talk to yourself. Don't you don't change anything up about you. Uh, there are a bunch of guys I work with on a daily basis that come from a bunch of different backgrounds. And the ones who are just genuine and speak to everybody how they speak to folks are the best ones when it comes to talking to people. Yeah. You don't gotta change the flavor in your voice when you realize you're dealing with a gang member. Yeah, you don't have to change who you are or start using words that you don't use on a regular basis just because you're talking to a gang member. If you're not genuine, your conversation is not going anywhere. And the other thing is, we have a lot of officers who have been used to communicating like this most of their life and not speaking to folks. So I know and that's not a shot at younger officers or younger people. Uh, I prefer texting now too. Just because it's easier, I don't really have to I get a second to figure out what I want to text back. But you're not gonna be a cop and be successful and not talk to people. Yeah, so you have to be comfortable talking to people and people anywhere in life. Whether they no matter who they are, what background they come from, you have to talk to people. Yeah. If you are out there and you don't normally talk to folks, walk into the convenience store and say what's up to everybody. Hey, what's up, how y'all doing? Hey, hey, how you doing? I do it anytime we walk into a restaurant, whoever the hostess is, hey, how you doing? Yeah, yeah, me and my boys, we got seven, we got three, we got four. Guys at the bar, hey, what's up, fellas? What y'all watching? Okay, boom, boom, boom. Be comfortable just speaking to people.

SPEAKER_05: 1:56:25

Yep. Agreed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:27

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05: 1:56:28

Got anything to add to that, sir?

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:29

Nah, just the respect thing. Okay. If you show respect, you're gonna get respect a lot of times too.

SPEAKER_05: 1:56:34

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:34

You know, you know, don't always have to be the yes, sir, no, sir. Yes, ma'am, no, ma'am. But the respect. Yep. You know, don't disrespect them off the debat just because you wear that badge. No need for it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:56:45

I agree. Yeah, it the genuine thing is the that's the most important. Just be genuine. And you may get shut down for being the new guy and coming across like a nerd. And that's if that's you though, give it time. There's no rush. It's a marathon when it comes to doing this. It's a marathon. Like you may not get them today, but if you if you're gonna do this for the long haul and it's what you like and you're into the gang world of the dope world, be that, be yourself, be that nerd, you know, Boy Scout, whatever it is. But if over time they're just gonna realize, oh, this is just you're investing in a relationship that pays off, I promise you. So I'm with you guys on that. I think that's good words of advice.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:26

I say ask questions too.

SPEAKER_05: 1:57:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:29

There's a lot of gang members, there's a lot of dopers that think it's cool, whatever, whatever the whatever they may think.

SPEAKER_00: 1:57:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:35

That when you as a gang cop come up and go, hey man, what does this tattoo mean?

SPEAKER_00: 1:57:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:41

They think it's cool to educate the police. Yeah. Or that they're they're they're showing some type of superior knowledge. Oh, you don't know what this means? Yeah. Let me break it down for you. Yeah. Don't be afraid to ask those questions to those guys. And guess what? If you ask a question and they tell you to F off, then you didn't know the answer before, then you still don't know the answer. You didn't lose no ground. Right. You still don't know. So you didn't lose no ground. But what if he goes, Oh man, this is this dance for this, this, and this. Now you got the answers to your questions.

SPEAKER_05: 1:58:10

Yep. All right, boys. I think we had a very successful educational podcast here. Is there any parting words that you have before we get off here?

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:19

Oh, yeah, I got I got a big word here.

SPEAKER_05: 1:58:21

Okay, what you got?

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:21

I want to put out uh we are hosting our first annual conference. Okay. It's for narcotics and gangs training. I guarantee it's gonna be one of the best out there. We've learned from all the different gangs. You know, nasty, nasty go to 18,000 gang conferences a year. Right. He teaches at every single one of them. We're bringing all of our knowledge and our experiences and putting them into one at our first annual. It's gonna be November 1st through the 4th, 2026. Okay, in Central Texas. You can visit our website, www.bsnarcotics.com, get additional information, or follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

SPEAKER_05: 1:58:56

You're doing it at like a hotel?

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:58

Yeah, we've got the entire hotel along with the conference center next door for all the the classroom instruction.

SPEAKER_05: 1:59:03

Heck yeah. How many days?

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:04

It's the first through the fourth. First through the fourth.

SPEAKER_05: 1:59:07

So three days. Well, some people have a setup day, some people have this. Right. So I'm trying to flush out. So when they stay, when they come out, you got the whole hotel. They're not gonna have to walk. Nope.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:17

Well, they'll have to walk across the street basically. Right. But I mean, you gotta walk across the front yard, baby.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:23

Don't be lazy.

SPEAKER_05: 1:59:24

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But no, we when then I'm trying to set up, it's a one-stop shop, y'all. Absolutely. So when they come out there, that's a good once you park, you don't have to leave. Yeah, that's a good conference right there.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:34

And that's for after hours networking and everything.

SPEAKER_05: 1:59:37

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:37

Uh lunchtime, you won't have to leave. We're gonna pull pull up lunch for you.

SPEAKER_05: 1:59:40

There you go.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:41

So yeah, it's gonna be one hell of a a time. Um, but for additional information, website and Instagram, obviously.

SPEAKER_05: 1:59:47

Okay. Nasty, you got anything before we go?

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:50

Be safe. Keep your mind in check. Uh, if anybody out there is dealing with anything, thinking that uh that maybe this ain't worth it, reach out to somebody. Uh reach out to somebody you know if you're not dealing with that, reach out to your folks that you work with, make sure they're not dealing with it. It's too many of us in law enforcement killing ourselves that think that it's the only way out that we have is to take our own lives. Um, I'm a standby that. I'm a firm believer in that. Uh, we got to do better at seeking help when we need help.

SPEAKER_05: 2:00:19

Wellness, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:20

Um, if you're if you're somebody dealing with those thoughts, you're you're in that struggle right now. I I was right there with you. I'm not ashamed to tell you I was right there with you. Um reach out for some help, reach out for some guidance, reach out to anybody that you.