4: Under the Spotlight

Phoenix and the Rain City Superheroes hit the big time. But fame comes with a price. Phoenix starts to make some powerful enemies.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel. May I see a show of hands? How many
people in this room have ever dreamt of wearing spandex?
One day around two thousand and ten, a guy named
Peter Tangan was flipping through Rolling Stone magazine when an
article caught his eye. It was called the Legend of

(00:29):
Master Legend. I found out from this article that there
were more than a hundred people like minded costumed activists
that were in the country. You guys, there's really superheroes.
There's really superheroes. How exciting is this? Peter Tangan isn't
your average comic book fan. He's a photographer and you've
probably seen his work. One of his main gigs is

(00:52):
taking promo shots of Hollywood superheroes. He shot Christian Bail
for the Batman Begins poster, Chris Hemsworth as Door, and
also Will Ferrell as Elf. He likes to mix it up,
but sometimes living in the world of celebrities can feel
a little fake, and at a certain point in his career,
Peter longed to shoot something more real, and this article

(01:15):
about real life superheroes gave him an idea. In a
Ted talk he did in two thousand and fifteen, he
remembers the moment, and it hits me right then and there,
I say, I gotta figure out a way to make
Hollywood quality movie posters out of these guys. So Peter
started reaching out to the real life superheroes. He got

(01:36):
to know their work and shot them in glossy, big
budget photos where they posed with steely expressions against a
city backdrop. Inevitably, he decided to reach out to Phoenix Jones,
the greatest superhero of them all. Not long after, Phoenix
got a Facebook message from Peter and the two of
them talked on the phone, but it didn't go well.

(01:57):
Peter had met a lot of real life superheroes by
this point, and he was skeptical Phoenix's crime fighting approach.
And he's like, what you're doing is kind of dangerous
and actually maybe empathetical to the movement. You might want
to like calm yourself down, you know. Plus, I highly
doubt you're actually stopping as many crimes as you think.
He's like, I've seen it, maybe ten crimes that have
been stopped by realized superheroes maybe. And I was like, oh, okay,

(02:19):
well we're not friends. I don't like you. I'm not
going to talk to you again. And go fund yourself.
It's a wonder why none of Phoenix's old superhero buddies
or friends with him anymore. Anyway, after this initial call,
five months went by, and then Peter called Phoenix again,
and according to Phoenix, this time he was full of
praise you called me. He says, look, you need to

(02:40):
come to California. I need to take photos and videos
and shoot you. Allegedly, Peter told Phoenix that he should
sit down with the lesser real life superhero community and
tell them it was time to hang up their costumes.
You're trying to like bring them a place they should
not go. You can go there if you want to,
but he shouldn't, and you need to make that really

(03:01):
clear because they'll all get killed. And then he bought
me a plane ticket. I left two days later and
I flew down to California. Be Peter. The thing about
Peter Tangan is that he's a big Hollywood guy and
he lives in a big Hollywood house in the hills.
He lives in the giant glass house. And I have
a secret identity. So I wore my mask every single
day all day. It was terrible. It's so ridiculous. It

(03:23):
was in Vandis, California, and this glass house on the
side of a creaking cliff looks like the Iron Man House.
Literally every wall is a wucking window, Like, why would
you invite a superhero a secret identity to a place
where every wall is a bucking window. It was trash.
I slept in my mask. It was just horrible. As
horrible as it was, it actually turned out to be
a major turning point in Phoenix Jones life. Up until then,

(03:45):
he and his team had attracted some media coverage, but
according to Phoenix, he hadn't actively sought it out, and
every time media would call me, I be like, no,
I don't want to talk to you. And he was like,
no one knows what you're doing, who you are, what
you stand for me. He's like, and everyone wants to
talk to you, so just go out tell him what
you mean, what you plan on doing. No one's gonna
get mad at you for telling what you're doing. He's like,
you're doing the dangerous work anyway, you might as well

(04:06):
protect yourself. Phoenix agreed to the photo shoot. In the photos,
he stands in a rain soaked street, fully costumed and
glares down at the camera. He'd look a lot like
Batman if it weren't for the gold chevron across his chest,
which glows with an unearthly yellow light. When the pictures

(04:33):
were released, Peter's phone started ringing off the hook. Phoenix
wasn't just a local news curiosity anymore. People around the
country wanted to know who this mysterious crime fighter was.
Peter fielded so many calls for Phoenix that he ended
up becoming his semi official spokesperson. Peter is actually how
I got in touch with Phoenix in the first place,

(04:55):
and Phoenix was going to need his pr rep. The
photo shoot catapulted him to a new level of fame.
Phoenix's knack for grabbing people's attention is one of his
greatest assets, but it's also maybe his greatest weakness. From
the team's at Novel and I Heart Radio, This is

(05:18):
the Superhero Complex, Episode four, Under the Spotlight. After the

(05:39):
Peter Tangan photo shoot, journalists wanted to fly to Seattle
and meet the famous Phoenix Jones. One of those journalists
was the writer and broadcaster John Ronson. John and Phoenix
hooked up for a piece that John was writing for
g Q. John had flown over from England, and according
to Phoenix, the idea had been to try and uncover

(06:00):
a sex trafficking ring, but when they finally tracked down
some sex workers, things didn't go as planned. We couldn't
find anything right because none of them said they were trafficked,
which was a giant bust. And so instead I went
on patrol with John Ronson and took down thirty armed
crack dealers, you know, by myself. Phoenix and some of
the other members of the rain City Crew had taken

(06:20):
John on a patrol of the city. Instead, nothing was happening.
He couldn't find any crimes to thwart, and so he
pulled out the big guns. That's John. He told me
that they headed to the Belltown neighborhood. It was a
sketchy pass of town tact three in the morning. There
was about five or six different groups of track dealers

(06:43):
on different street corners, and farious bires going between them.
Phoenix described a fairly intimidating scene. See, I was an
open cary state. Dudes walk around their guns out, They
stand on the corner right and when people come out
of the club, they strong armed them for money to
get their car out of parking. Lots thirty dudes with
open carried weapons in a parking lot. This was clearly

(07:04):
a dangerous situation, but John wasn't sure that the superhero's
presence made things safer. The crack dealers all unified in saying,
what the fuck do you think you're doing here with
your superhero outfits? And one of them said this may
be funning games for you, but this isn't funny games
for us. This is how we feed our families. And

(07:26):
then one of them said, if you don't get off
our block, we're going to show you what the Bernard does.
And they had a point like what the funk were
we doing trying to break the back player whose business
was of ours? I mean, I'm saying ours? What I
really made his phoenix is the way Phoenix tells it.
This was a heroic standoff. I look a ghost and

(07:46):
I said, ghost man, there's a good chance we're gonna
die here, bro, are you? Are you good? Ghost is
like yep? And I looked at Jack and Jack's like,
you're stupid, Jones. This is like a movie, you know.
I looked at a caballero and Cabby's like, oh, I
already called the car man, He's like, I hope they
don't should have the cops get you. I hadn't call
the cops, but John told me the danger really did
seem genuine. They came back to us and they said,

(08:07):
you are stupid motherfucker's Do you know that? Do you
know that you were stupid? Motherfucker's We should shoot you.
And I've got to say at this point, I was terrified.
They showed us the shape of a gun and the sweatpants.
They were clearly coming up with a justification to commit

(08:27):
an active violence against Phoenix. And they said, we should
shoot you, but if you refuse to leave, I guess
we're going to have to go home. And they did.
They all went home, and so Phoenix one. When Phoenix
told me the story, he didn't paint John in a
very favorable light. John Ronson hailed a cab and they

(08:50):
got in the cab and told the cab to wait
and was hiding in the cab and then he wanted
to come back up control with us and we're like, no,
you're hit in the cab. Bro like you're crazy, Like
you can come back out with us? And how did
a cab with a card Again, when I asked John
about it. He told me he wasn't in the taxi,
but he did try to hail one down. They all
had bullet proofess the superheroes, and I had nothing. I

(09:12):
had a T shirt in the cardigan, so I was
close to the cab so I could like escape for
hat too, but also close to Phoenix so I could
hear what they were saying so I could write it
all down. But if Phoenix says that he didn't let
me patrol with him the next day because I had
hailed a cab, that's not true. Phoenix was thrilled that
I was there, and in fact, when I got back

(09:33):
to the hotel like six in the morning or whatever,
the first thing Phoenix did was like phone me to
talk excitedly about what had just happened, and he was
like hyper ventilating down the phone. That's not someone who
was so annoyed with a journalist that they didn't want
them to patrol with them the next day. And the
only reason why there was no patrol the next day
was because Phoenix was doing a personal appearance at a
comic book convention in town, and I don't think he

(09:54):
did any patrolling that night. So the cab was true.
The rest of it was not true. There really relationship
was not exactly smooth sailing. But John doesn't hold a grudge.
On a personal level, I liked Phoenix very much. He
was my favorite of all the superheroes that I met.
He was charming, charismatic, fun odd in a kind of

(10:17):
engaging way. I'd say the most negative thing I would
say about Phoenix is that he had an odd relationship
with crime fighting. It was clear that he was kind
of addicted to it. It felt like there was an
addiction there that he couldn't find any crimph to thwart.
He was getting more and more frustrated. It's like he
needs a cigarette and he can't find one. But during

(10:37):
his time with Phoenix, John got a sense that crime
fighting wasn't the only thing he cared about. I think
got our first night, we heard a woman screaming and
Phoenix was like yacht Sie, running towards the Saga's family
had someone in distress he could save, and that as

(10:57):
he was running towards the sound of the woman screaming,
this cop pulled up and these guys spot down the
window and it's the guy from YouTube. Can we get
a picture with you and fix It's like sure, so
you like stopped and took a picture with these guys
and from the time they were satisfied, so that the
screaming woman was nowhere to be seen ahead. According to Phoenix,
his relationship with fame is practical. It's what keeps him

(11:20):
from getting arrested or worse, and that protection is all
the more important if, like Phoenix, you're trying to do
superhero work as a person of color. I'm a black
guy in body armor running down the street punching white people.
I need some media coverage. So what does that look
like to you? Like, what's your strategy? Like what do
you hope to get out of being covered with the

(11:41):
media like that kind of stuff, not being arrested. I
think what people don't know is that, um, especially currently right,
there are two different Americas. Being a six ft tall
black dude in body armor running up to people who
have been previously assaulted in the streets is not a
solid look. People don't approach it the way that you

(12:01):
think that they would. But yeah, but when they see
Phoenix Jones, they see the symbol, the one that I
set up, the one they're aware of. They know what
my mission statement is they know why I'm there, and
it puts them as much at ease as a costume vigilante.
Can you know, as I shouldn't use that word as
a costume crime prevention specialist. That's what my attorneys told
me to use. Phoenix always has an answer for everything.

(12:24):
He always manages to come up with a reasonable explanation
for why he is right and everyone else is wrong.
When I spoke to Phoenix's former team members, they all
brought up his relationship with publicity. Here's El Caballero. A
lot of it. I felt like Jones's heart was for
protecting people, but then there was also this part that

(12:45):
I saw was actually his ultimate self at that time,
which was publicity. Midnight Jack told me that the rain
City Superheroes initially started out courting the media for strategic reasons.
It was a way to get a lot of attention
on crime trends, to call attention to problem areas the
police were not enforcing. But as things blew up that changed.

(13:07):
Ben was so hooked on the attention on the media
following and the celebrity status and things like that that
it was a problem. So then he started having us
fucking not not necessarily fake footage, but kind of stage ship.
When we talked about his relationship with the cameras, Phoenix
never admitted to staging patrol videos, but it was an

(13:28):
accusation I kept hearing. Cabby told me once that you
guys were doing some media interview and you started making
stuff up, and he was like, too, that didn't happen,
and you leaned over and he said, hey, man, the
history is told by the victors, you know. Oh no,
I didn't. I leaned over and I said history has
written by the winners, So you were just making stuff up.

(13:49):
Phoenix even clarified for me the story Cabby had been
talking about was when the rain City Superheroes were on
Good Morning America. They're like, what's your biggest crime you
ever stopped? And I was like, Arson, can you give
some details? Like I can't give details. Phoenix couldn't give
any details because there was no Arson, Like, we didn't
have a lot of credentials at that moment, but we're

(14:09):
I'm good going in America and we're about to go
on TV. And I was like, fuck it, yeah, straight up,
and I don't feel bad about it. I wouldn't take
it back, and I would do it again if you
admittedly just like make stuff up to the media, like,
how do I know what you're saying is true? It
wasn't admittedly making that hold on. If there's a way
for me to tell a story that makes it sound
better and doesn't change the core facts that are on
a police report, I will probably do that to Phoenix

(14:32):
is just giving the world when it wants. I don't
want to do interviews. I don't want to talk to
these people. I don't like you. I want to stop
bad people from doing bad things, and I want to
make people do it themselves and understand it. But the
government and the world we live in would not let me.
So I gave you what you wanted. You wanted a superhero,
because that's what you think what I was doing was,
So I gave you a superhero check. But no point

(14:53):
in any of this was this my like idea or goal.
It's these types of statements from Phoenix that I have
a hard time believing. But I wouldn't necessarily say that
Phoenix is lying when he says them. I think he
probably believes them to be true. And it's certainly true
that as a black man trying to fight crime on
the streets of America. The publicity provides him with a

(15:15):
level of protection that any of his former team members
who were white might not have needed. But I find
his unwillingness to admit that he enjoyed being a celebrity
as a kind of dishonesty for what it's worth. I
think Phoenix liked all the attention, and not just because
it made it easier for him to catch criminals. But

(15:37):
one thing does ring true and what Phoenix is saying here,
he spends his whole life attempting to live up to
a particular ideal of a superhero, and that's a lot
of pressure, and not everyone has the same idea of
what a superhero is. When those interpretations clashed, things got messy.

(15:58):
That's coming up O. Well, Phoenix Jones was making the
most of his newfound celebrity. One of his many appearances
got the attention of Seadellite Crystal Marks. That's her real name,

(16:21):
by the way, So she was kind of born with
a brilliant superhero alias. I've grown up in love with
superheroes my entire life. My dad was a huge NERD
into D and D. He was in the Navy where
they played D and D all the time, and he
got a friend of his to actually get my name
worked into a Superman comic book. I thought that was
the coolest thing. So when I heard that someone was

(16:41):
dressing up like one and doing something that a superhero
would do, it was irresistible. When Crystal saw the news
coverage of Phoenix Jones and his crew, she was immediately captivated.
Late one night, she set out to see what Phoenix
was really about. I ended up kind of stalking his team.
The rain City superhero moved went through the streets of Seattle,

(17:01):
watching them break up fights. Crystal didn't want the rain
City Superheroes to see her. I threw my hair upon
a ponytail, and I wore a hat and sunglasses at
night in the middle of Belltown in Seattle. It was
not the wisest choice. She hid behind street corners and
counted thirty seconds before creeping along behind the superheroes. I realized, like, Wow,
anyone can do this, that's really cool. But I wasn't

(17:21):
seeing the things happening that mattered to me. Homeless outreach.
As a kid growing up in Aberdeen, Washington, Crystal had
some rough patches in her childhood. When I was eight
years old, my biological mom and I were kicked out
of my grandmother's house and we were homeless. We had
nowhere to go, living in our car, we lived under
a bridge, living on my mom's friends couches, and we

(17:43):
did that for a little over six months, and that
stuck with me. I was homeless as a kid, and
I wanted to see people reached out to in a
compassionate way. For Crystal, Phoenix's team didn't seem like the
heroes she'd been looking for. I was like, do we
need to just be breaking up drunk fights? Can we
be doing more? So she started looking for alternatives. It

(18:04):
turned out Phoenix's Crew weren't the only superheroes in town.
Crystal ended up joining another group called the Washington Initiative.
They started out by patrolling around Belltown, that's Phoenix's turf.
It was a little bit of a not so friendly competition,
but we realized very quickly after the first couple of patrols,
where we were just seeing people stumbling to their cars,

(18:26):
we weren't really making a difference. So our team, the
Washington Initiatives, switched over to more homeless outreach Phoenix did
not take kindly to his fellow crime fighters. Evocatus soft
Phoenix's reaction firsthand. He would get in very animated, all screeching,
yelling matches about how other teams are just trying to

(18:49):
copy us or trying to draw his Facebook likes and
his fans his words away from him and ticket for
their own, which didn't make a lot of sense or
mean anything to me. He felt incredibly threatened by anyone
else that would try to do this line of work
in his city. Phoenix used his social media to rail
against his new enemies. It was this feud online. If

(19:11):
I do this better, No, I do this better. Phoenix
Jones was constantly saying, like, fine, you can say that
you do homeless outreach better. I'm sure you do, but
that doesn't really matter. That's not really taking care of
a community as long as you acknowledge that I'm the
better fighter. The feud between Phoenix and the other Seattle
superheroes speaks to something I've noticed a lot in the
world of real life superheroes. There seems to be an

(19:34):
ideological split at the heart of the community over what
a superhero should actually do. Some of the real life
superheroes are all about action. They want to take down
criminals and stop violent crime. But there are a lot
like Crystal who see real superhero work as the humanitarian
stuff like homeless outreach. They are interested in getting into fights.

(19:56):
In fact, they see the flashy, action packed crime fighting
is reckless, irresponsible. Personally, I don't understand why these two
models can't co exist peacefully, but then I'm not Phoenix Jones.
Among the rest of Phoenix's crew, the reaction to their
superhero arrivals was mixed. Midnight Jack was more action oriented.

(20:17):
He was all about dousing people with flour and pepper spray.
Crystal didn't think much of his tactics though. Midnight Jack
as someone out on patrol, he's just not right, Like
there were plenty of time so I've heard of things
where he had like a flash grenade or like a
smoke bomb or something, and he would set it off
on accident, Like you don't carry equipment that you don't

(20:38):
know how to use. On the flip side, Jack thought
the other groups like the Washington Initiative or nothing but
attention seekers for whatever reason, they don't feel secure in
themselves or maybe they hate their job. They hate how
their life turned out, and so they're gonna go and
dress up like Spider Man and run around take selfies
and should lie down. I seen another crew kick a

(21:01):
homeless dude awake to give him a water bottle so
they could take a selfie of it, you know what
I mean, Like, I watched that happen. At the other
end of the rain City Superhero spectrum, Evo had been
getting tired of the media circus around Phoenix and of
the constant need to seek out drama in the streets.
He felt inspired by his group's new costumed rivals. Holy shit,
these guys are really professional. They're on top of this.

(21:23):
This is very different from what's been going on on
our team, where it's all about the Facebook likes and
it's all about how many followers do you have. Eva
reached out to the Washington Initiative and struck up a relationship.
At one point, he met Crystal Marks for coffee. Phoenix
fell two pieces over it, and he he wanted to

(21:44):
pat me down to make sure I didn't have any
bugs or microchips planted on me, because their entire existences
around spying on Phoenix. According to him, despite Phoenix's paranoia.
Eva was undeterred and he and Crystal hit it off.
In fact, a couple of years later their relationship turned
to more than a superhero collaboration. You know, her hands
would brush on on a patrol and like, and then

(22:08):
he and I started dating and we got married. These days,
Crystal isn't involved in the superhero movement, but she is
still a public servant from She was the deputy mayor
of Burian, a city just south of Seattle, and when
she campaigned for office, she did not hide her past

(22:28):
as a real life superhero. It took me sitting down
with my husband and saying, like, does this actually translate?
Does this type of real world experience of breaking up fights,
doing homeless outreach, does that actually translate into public office?
And he helped me list out all the ways that
it did, leading groups, making decisions, strategic planning, all of
this stuff. And so I ran in seen. I took
out the incumbent in the primary with five people in

(22:50):
the race, and then I came in first in the
general and I became deputy mayor two years into my arm.
When I interviewed Phoenix, this was one of the parts
of his story. I was was interested in asking him
about I'd heard stories of him referring to people like
crystal marks with a derogatory term. It's a story I'd
heard from a lot of people who knew him. Apparently,

(23:10):
Phoenix called the heroes who focused on homeless outreach real
life sandwich handlers. That seemed to be one of the
centers of beef around certain members of the rainsyt Haris
was that, like you were like, if you want to
help people, like giving them a food, like you can't
be on my team anymore. That's not what I said,
say what happened. Like, for sure, if you want to

(23:31):
take our main focus and make it humanitarian aid, then
you should find another team, because we do humanitarian aid
for sure. But the concept is stopping crime. No point
in feeding people if the food you feed them gets
robbed at their house. It's that simple. I've never seen
a comic book with who runs around feeding people cheeseburgers,
except for the handblurger cartoons that I got from the

(23:51):
McDonald's in Like the Nights. We just have different concepts apparently,
of like what fighting crime is. You can definitely hand
out food. You should definitely do that. There's nothing wrong
with that, you don't need to wear an outfit for
that at all. Actually wearing an outfit to hand out
food to regular ass homeless people makes you an asshole.
Why why is that? Because you're showing up and saying,
you guys are so disadvantaged to look at me and

(24:12):
my giant suit handing you sandwiches that I made in
my own house. I mean, it's absurd. I think showing
up in a suit and saying, hey, I put on
this armor to protect you guys because I care about
you being stuck out here makes way more sense than
to me saying, hey, here's a fucking cheeseburger. By the way,
look at my outfit. Amazing, insane, It's just incredible. It's
like the disconnect between that in fighting crime is mind

(24:33):
blowing to me. I don't even get it. Phoenix has
a very specific vision of what it means to be
a superhero, and for him, anything less than active crime
fighting doesn't measure up. But when you make busting criminals
your goal, it isn't just the criminals you have to

(24:53):
watch out for. Phoenix's daredevil crime stopping approach brought him
onto the radar of a powerful To me, the Seattle
Police Department. That's coming up For a while. At least,

(25:18):
it seemed that Phoenix Jones had managed to fulfill his
dream of becoming Seattle's very own Night Wing, the superhero
Phoenix had looked up to as a kid. Things weren't
always perfect in the rain City superhero movement, but for now,
Phoenix was patrolling the streets several nights a week, chasing
down criminals and snapping photos with fans. But the more

(25:39):
attention he got, the more he rankled the local authorities.
The problem was that Seattle already had its own force
of professional crime fighters, and they felt that Phoenix Jones
was stepping on their toes. Police worry Phoenix has recently
taste of fame, He pushes him to put himself in
harm's way. They insert themselves into a potentially volatile situation

(26:01):
and then they end up being victimized as well. Don't
insert yourself into those situations. If you see something called
nine and one police, hope he stops before it's too late.
A pattern began to emerge. Phoenix and his crew would
make the news for their latest active costumed heroism, and
the Seattle Police Department would issue an increasingly exasperated statement

(26:24):
to the effect of, thanks, but you can leave the
crime fighting to us. I didn't know anybody who actually
thought it was a good idea for then to put
themselves in harm's way, put on these outfits, if you will,
and make themselves a target for others. Carmen Best was
the chief of the Seattle Police Department from two thousand
and eighteen to two thousand and twenty. She was the

(26:46):
first black woman to lead the force. But before Carmen
became chief, she held a lot of different roles, and
she was there during the height of the Seattle superhero movement.
While you truly respect what they were trying to do,
I was very concerned one for their safety and two
for their full motive, because we really discourage as profession

(27:08):
people doing what we would view as a vigilanteism. Carmen
told me that the police department had been watching the
superheroes out on patrol and making their TV appearances with
growing concern. They don't have all the same protections that
a law enforcement officer who's sworn in, who's had the
training that we have in place. There was an instance

(27:28):
when one of them was injured pretty significantly and was stabbed.
You know, we definitely were coutuming them when that occurred.
You know, it was our you know, our worst fears
realized in that situation and also intervening in the manner
that they did, they put themselves in some legal jeopardy
as well. Carmen didn't know which would be superhero was

(27:49):
in this instance, but Phoenix claims he's been stabbed on
patrol more than once and she definitely remembers him. Of course,
his name came up. He did the most amount of
interviews and was pretty extroverted, if you will, and how
he approached this whole thing. In my opinion, I think
the opinion of many within the police department, this seemed
a little bit like fantasy work, you know, putting on

(28:11):
a uniform or an outfit, because you're actually not a superhero.
You're a person who's intervening and what can ostensibly be
some pretty dangerous situations, and you can interfere in such
a way that causes harm to you, not only yourself,
but to the person you're trying to assist as well.
So we were very concerned about it. I understand this argument,
and I think it applies to a lot of people
in the real life superhero community. But I also think

(28:34):
that this is one of the areas where Phoenix does
have a point. He's not the type of Yahoo who
simply put on a costume and jumped into this job
without thinking about it. He actually put in the time
to train. I can't imagine being a cop and not
having these certain skills. You know. It's not like going
lifting weights. It's like running and training my knife disarms

(28:55):
like I have. I do Wednesday knife disarms, right, I
do Saturday hand to hand combat like that all the time, always.
And he isn't only prepared for physical altercations. He also
has clearly spent time studying the laws around what he
can and can't do when fighting crime. Oh I don't
hire a lawyer anymore because I know all this stuff.
I mean, you can see I know all of the laws.

(29:19):
The hard part for me is filling out the paperwork appropriately.
I've won them all, just be clear, every single one
of them I've won, except for one I consider a win,
but technically it was not. It was like a no contest.
The guy just didn't show up. But I mean that's
still kind of a win. A lot of the media
reports and statements from the Seattle Police around two thousand

(29:39):
and eleven seemed to speak to an underlying worry that
Phoenix might use excessive force in his crime fighting or
that he wasn't accountable for his behavior. But those are
the same accusations that the US Department of Justice made
about the Seattle Police Department in the same year. The
d j's Civil Rights Division receive the letter in two

(30:00):
thousand and ten from the Washington a c l U
and thirty four other civil rights and community based organizations.
The letter requested an investigation into multiple incidents of excessive
force by the Seattle Police Department, particularly force used against
persons of color. The d o J launched an investigation,

(30:21):
and their report found that the SPD were engaging in
a pattern or practice of unnecessary or excessive force, and
that the chain of command does not properly investigate, analyze,
or demand accountability from its subordinate officers for their uses
of force. They also found serious concerns about biased policing.

(30:44):
To date, in April, the Seattle Police are still under
federal oversight as a result of that report, though a
lot of activists in the city think their reforms haven't
gone far enough. It's also a reminder of what Phoenix
was talking about earlier, of the additional risk that he
faces because he's trying to fight crime as a black man.

(31:06):
Phoenix talks about crime fighting like it's his whole reason
for being. It's intense, but it's also not unique. A
lot of people are drawn to this line of work,
but very few of them grind the nipples off a
batman outfit and go around hiding trampolines and alleys. I
feel like a lot of people like the more traditional

(31:28):
path for someone who had those ideals about fighting crime
would be to just join the police force. I'm curious
why that was not appealing to you, because I want
to help people, and you don't see the police as
being helpful. The police are very very helpful in certain
situations when they understand it, and the right day, when
you catch the right officer and you happen to have
an open in chet situation. But that's not what I

(31:49):
consider policing. Where police really shine is investigating crimes that
have already taken place. But that is not justice to me.
That's legalized retribution. I think if you're a police officer
or a crime fighter, your job is intervened between the
incident and the person at the moment of that incident,
not to investigate afterwards, like investigating afterwards is what you've

(32:13):
done when a plan fails. Talking to Phoenix, the biggest
beef he seemed to have with the cops was that
he thinks they aren't effective at stopping crime. But Phoenix
saw that as an opportunity, a gap the cops weren't
able to fill, but a superhero might. Cabby also saw
the rain City Superheroes as a way of making up

(32:34):
for the police's ineffectiveness. They show up after a crime
has happened, and a lot of things happened in between
when a crime is happening and when law enforcement actually
arrives or medical services arrived to actually deal with the problem.
That in between space was where the rain City Superheroes
saw work to be done. But even at their most intrepid,

(32:56):
they always got law enforcement involved, despite their own bivalent
relationship with the cops. In fact, on their patrols, Evil
told me there was even a role dedicated to police liaison.
I started being all one, which means if we saw
an actual crime happen, we would call Seattle Police, right away.
That was like step one was called them always know

(33:19):
where we're at, the street corners and the intersections. You
know exactly where we're at so we can report it.
But when the police did show up, things could get tense.
Cabby told me a story about a patrol when things
went south. We rolled up in Belltown and saw this
guy harassing this man and woman who were a mixed
race couple, and instantly we knew, like we felt like

(33:42):
this guy was racist, like trying to attack this couple.
According to Cabby, one of the other rain City superheroes,
Captain Karma, approached the man and told him to leave
the couple alone. And this guy, like Butterfly, kicked him
running the chest and threw him out in the street,
and I was like what the Cabby says, he ran
over and pin the guy in a wrestling hold until

(34:04):
the police finally arrived. They pull up and they pull
out their guns. They're like, let him go, let him go.
We're like, we want to press charges. This guy just
attacked a couple with their baby. We think he's a
racist or whatever. Like they're like let him go, and
like this guy's violent and they're like let him go.
So the rain City Superheroes did what they were told,

(34:24):
and they let the guy go. When he runs up
and he punches the cop in the face. So then
all of a sudden, the cops, who have their weapons drawn,
are wrestling with this guy and the guns are pointing
around like to all these different people, putting everyone's life
in danger. And so I grabbed the guy again. Cabby

(34:45):
claims he broke the guy's wrist. The police demanded that
the superheroes unmasked and hand over their footage, which they
agreed to, but then the police let the guy they
had just subdued go free. I'm like, nope, I want
to press charges. Sorry, we can't press charges against him,
Like why is that? Because that's crazy, and they're like

(35:05):
diplomatic community, he's from the Russian embassy. So they ended
up letting him fucking go pardon my language, and we're
there looking like dumbasses like guess, I don't know, sitting
there with their mass of like hands on the hood,
like we were criminals Russian diplomats. Aside, there are a

(35:26):
lot of videos that showcase the dysfunctional relationship Phoenix and
his crew had with the Seattle police and Phoenix became
increasingly vocal online with his criticisms of the cops. Let's
make sure I understand this guy assaults person, the guy
walks away clean and free. Nothing happens. Police won't take
my statement, won't take my paperwork. I am pretty piste

(35:48):
off right now. Phoenix had a couple of favorite targets
to beef with. Seattle has lost its mind when it
comes to what a real crime is. Has lost its mind,
and part of that is Pete Holmes and his inability
to do his job. Phoenix is talking about former Seattle
City Attorney Pete Holmes. Me and Pete Holmes have a
history of hatting each other. To the distric attorney of

(36:10):
Seattle is a complete joke because trash trash from Holmes
was in charge of all misdemeanor prosecutions in Seattle. He
has sandy gray hair parted at the side and glasses,
and he embraced a lot of left leaning policies when
he was in office. He declined to be interviewed for

(36:30):
this series, but he's gone on record multiple times telling
Phoenix to stand down. Holmes once said to the press quote, Mr.
Photor is no hero, just a deeply misguided individual. He
also argued that Phoenix couldn't rely on Seattle's Good Samaritan
laws to protect him. He said, quote, our state's Good

(36:53):
Samaritan statutes are designed to protect individuals who happened upon,
rather than actively seek out opportunities to render assistance to others.
These laws are not designed to protect a branded, costumed character,
his roving video crew, or their copyrighted videos from the
reach of torte plaintiffs. It's not surprising that Phoenix and

(37:16):
Pete Holmes kept butting heads the first couple of times.
The first like ten or twelve times, it was just
me pleading with him to actually charge the criminals and
him explaining to me how I'm not a police officer,
and me being like, yeah, no, ship idiot, I don't
need to be a police officer, and him saying, well,
it draws a weird precedents. No, which draws a president
is a guy running around a rubber suit and actually
finding crime that draws a precedence. Maybe should do your job.
Throughout things were getting increasingly tense between Phoenix and Seattle's

(37:40):
law enforcement, and while his fellow superheroes didn't necessarily disagree
with him, they worried that Phoenix's outspokenness would provoke a backlash.
Jones really instigated the hatred of SPD. That's Cabby. He
was just always like an interviews anything, He's like, cops,
if they would do their job, blah blah. I was like, dude,

(38:01):
I mean, that's not really how it is. He's a
total dick to them, which I understand. A young black dude,
I get it, And I'm not an apologist for law enforcement. Basically,
people call and they show up afterwards. It's like trash collectors.
It was like, you deal with it afterwards. But at
the same time, we got all put under the whole blanket. Oh,

(38:22):
these guys think they're vigilantes. They're taking the low their
own hands. It's like, no, we're not. In the early
hours of October nine, two thousand eleven, Phoenix was out
in downtown Seattle patrolling with Ghost, a videographer named Ryan McNamee,

(38:42):
and the journalist t Krulos. And we met back in
episode one. It had been a long night and Phoenix
was nearly ready to wrap things up. Then he says
one of his crew spotted a fight outside of bar.
Phoenix looked out and I take off running towards because
I could see these eyes are kicking this person on
the ground, just beating him up. When they're kicking each other,

(39:06):
punching each other, that's tea pushing each other down the street.
Phoenix ran at full tilt and leapt into the middle
of it. I'm like, breaking up, fight, breaks up, everything's cool.
Then they start yelling about getting a gun and all
kinds of other stuff. They take up to their car.
They try to chase me around. The guy chased me

(39:27):
comes at me, so I just spotted with pepper spray.
No big deal. He pepper sprays them, and the pepper
spray dissipated into the air and everyone was coughing and
rubbing their eyes. In the midst of this chaos, a
woman started attacking Phoenix with her shoes. I have body armors, all, okay,

(39:50):
but I started and then she fell on her face.
The minute she fell, those dudes went crazy and he
started coming back at us. It all sort of grouped together,
and then they rushed us. What Jesus and attacked us.

(40:12):
I actually got punched in the face, and I was like,
don't don't punch me. We were in a very kayak situation.
I was genuinely very afraid for my safety. Seriously, your
camera put your camera camera is up. At one point
it looked like they might be looking for a gun.

(40:35):
Phoenix pulled out his trusty pepper spray again and gave
the attackers another dose. Ghost got kicked and fell over
our trash can busted his finger up. I have hand
surgery from how bad you are its hand. We're not.
They started throwing rocks at us and then tried to
run us over with a car. Finally the cops showed up,

(41:09):
and they were pissed. The first thing this officer said
was Phoenix Jones, I'm tired of playing these games with you, man,
I'm tired of this game. We're about this rest the
whole bunch of year clean. According to both Tea and Phoenix,
the police officers were not interested in hearing what Phoenix

(41:30):
had to say. They wouldn't look at our video, they
wouldn't listen to us. They're like, we've had enough, you stupid.
You've already pupiseday three people today, which is true, but
you arrested the other two. Like maybe you don't understand
how this works, you know, And then your cop was
saying stuff about like, you're not a police officer, you
don't have any authority. You guys are really arrogant that
you can make a difference, and I was like, yeah,
it's crazy to think you can get into a car,

(41:51):
drive to a crime and make a difference, right, douche.
The cops arrested Phoenix and took them away in their car.
The people who Phoenix said had been fighting would let go,
and the other Rain City superheroes melted into the night.

(42:11):
He was left standing on the street corner alone, and
that's when I looked down at my hands, and I
saw that my hands were shaking from the adrenaline of
what had just happened. I've always liked Phoenix personally, and
I think that he's done some good things for the
city of Seattle. But it made me realize that the

(42:34):
real life superhero thing could be really dangerous. And in
that circumstance, I think that his intention was to help
save people because he saw people fighting, but that's his
interaction made the situation a lot worse. The pepper spray
made everyone angry, and it turned the scene into total chaos.

(42:58):
The tables had turned on Seattle's comic book crusader. This
time it was Phoenix who ended up behind bars. Phoenix
Jones was arrested by saddle P d on suspicion of assault.
Officers st Jones told them he spotted two men fighting,
but could not explain why four people, including two women,
got pepper spray. Pepper sprayed priest reports of citizens being

(43:21):
pepper sprayed by Jones and his group pepper Spray, No
big deal, pepper sprayed made everyone angry. The officer wrote
that Jones had a history of injecting himself in these incidents.
No deal. Everyone was coughing and rubbing their eyes, and
deal turned the scene into total chaos. Jones has been
advised to observe and report incidents to only smokes that man.

(43:44):
I bet this never happens to you. What's a superhero
to do when his back is against the wall. That's
coming up on The Superhero Complex. The Superhero Complex is

(44:19):
hosted and written by Me, David Weinberg and reported by Me,
Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham. Production from Amalia Shortland and
Caroline Thornham. Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien and David Waters are
executive producers. Fact checking by Andrew Schwartz. Production management from
Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing

(44:43):
and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision
by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Original music is composed
by Paul Housden and special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton,
Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norvelle Beth and Macaluso, Rin Rosenbaum, Shelby Shenkman,

(45:04):
and all the team at U t A. For more
from Novel, visit novel dot Audio m