8: The Hero We Deserve

After a final showdown with the police, it seems like Phoenix has fallen from grace once and for all. But in the world of real life superheroes, all is never quite as it seems. As protests erupt in Seattle in 2020, Phoenix Jones has one last shot at redemption.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel. On January six of two thousand and twenty, at
four pm, Ben Photor got a text message from a
number he didn't recognize. It was a single word. Ben
replied with two question marks, and the stranger responded with

(00:30):
a confusing series of messages about the weather and a
pair of missing glasses, until they seemed to realize that
they were texting the wrong person. Wait, ship is this Tommy?
And then things got strange. Instead of the conversation ending,
Ben asked the stranger what they were doing later that night,

(00:52):
and the stranger typed getting high and watching Netflix. How
about you, to which Ben replied, nice, We're going to
get high and go to the arcade I want to join.
They continued chatting until late at night. The stranger eventually
told Ben that her name was Laura. Ben told Laura

(01:12):
that he and his girlfriend were polyamorous and suggested that
they all meet up, and he sent Laura a photo
of him and his girlfriend. Laura replied, don't get me wrong,
you are both hot. A yes, but I'm trying to
make good decisions. But they kept texting over the next
few days, and eventually Laura agreed to meet up with

(01:33):
Ben and his girlfriend Andrea at the Silver Cloud Hotel
near downtown Seattle. Laura told Ben a few of her
friends were in town visiting from Los Angeles. She'd been
planning to pick up drugs for them, but her dealer
stood her up. Ben offered to bring some to the hotel.
That would make it even easier for pre party, Laura replied. Then,

(01:57):
on January nine, at five fifty pm, Ben texted, Hey,
so I was not able to get m but I
can get you c at eight U G or a
ball for two. Laura replied, that's cool. We have money
for a ball, meaning an eight ball or around three
point five grams of cocaine. Four hours later, a Seattle

(02:24):
Police Department detective held a meeting with members of her
department along with some agents from the Homeland Security Investigation Unit.
They were preparing for a narcotic takedown operation. At ten
fIF pm, officers observed Ben Fodor and his girlfriend Andrea
Bernstin parking orange smart car in front of the hotel

(02:45):
and make their way into the lobby. According to court documents,
Photor had a shiny gold backpack and was carrying a
blue tackle box. Andrea exited the South Lobby door to
smoke a cigarette at the point, the police moved in
and arrested Ben and Andrea. Back at the precinct, the

(03:07):
officers searched Ben and Andrea's belongings. Inside the tackle box,
they found seven separate bundles of suspected cocaine, weighing a
total of four grams. They also found a scale covered
in what looked like drug residue and another unknown white
powder substance weighing thirty one seven grams. Also inside the

(03:29):
tackle box were two passports belonging to Ben and Andrea.
There was, of course no Laura. It was a made
up name by an undercover cop. This whole sting operation
seems like a lot of work, and it appeared to
be a shift in Phoenix's relationship with the police. This

(03:52):
time they seemed to be taking the initiative to come
after him, unlike in the past where they were reacting
to his actions. According to Phoenix, he was under attack.
In January of Phoenix was charged with two counts violation
of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, and in March he

(04:14):
pled guilty to the lesser charges of conspiracy. The self
proclaimed Guardian of Seattle was no longer standing his ground
against arm crack dealers. He was himself a convicted drug dealer.
The world would never see him the same way again.
I'm David Weinberg and from the Team's at Novel and

(04:36):
I Heart Radio. This is the final installment of The
Superhero Complex, Episode eight, The Hero We Deserve. When Phoenix

(05:04):
got busted, the rain City superhero movement was a distant
memory to most people in Seattle. They're fifteen minutes of
fame had long been up. And then came the news
of Phoenix's arrest for selling drugs to undercover cops. Phoenix
was back in the spotlight. How have you dealt with
the public perception of he was drug dealer? It's been terrible.

(05:26):
Some of the worst times of my entire life walked
me through. Like how you've dealt with it? I mean,
it's been really crazy, man, It's been really bad. So,
like after the indictment, everyone just turned their backs on
me and said that I was doing all this crazy stuff.
I had people spit on me on the streets. I
went to a weird little suicidal phase for a second
where I was feeling like I should just end everything,
and and then I came to the same conclusion how

(05:49):
he's come to you know, fuck you guys. If you
read the transcript of the text exchanges between the undercover
cop and Phoenix, he does not come across as a
drug dealer. He seems more like a guy who thinks
he's about to have a threesome and is only bringing
some drugs to the party as a favor. He does
mention drugs, but it's the undercover officer who brings them

(06:09):
up first. My takeaway from looking at the evidence provided
by the Seattle Police Department is that in this instance
with Laura, Phoenix looks a lot more like a middleman
and a drug deal than some kind of big time
dealer himself. But there's more to the story, because this
wasn't the first time Phoenix had been caught selling drugs
to cops. On November five, two months before his arrest,

(06:35):
the Silver Cloud Hotel, Phoenix got a text from Mike.
Mike was actually to uncovered police officers. According to court documents,
Mike and Phoenix texted back and forth for a few days,
and on November Mike texted Phoenix asking to buy some
M d M A. The cops say Phoenix asked for

(06:56):
payment upfront and sent them his Venmo, which had a
photo of him in profile. Also a fun fact I
learned from reading the court documents, Phoenix's Venmo user name
was Booty sweat Baby. Anyway, Mike and Phoenix agree to
meet at a Starbucks and the Wells Fargo building downtown
around noon. The next day, a team of officers met

(07:19):
for a briefing. Officer Amy Brownham was running the bust
and she showed everyone a picture of Phoenix. An officer
of pretending to be Mike, along with four other undercover
officers in plain clothes were stationed inside the coffee shop.
Officer Brownham was also there watching from outside. At one pm,

(07:39):
Phoenix rolled up dressed in a green tank top and jeans,
carrying a brown paper bag. The whole exchange took less
than a minute. Here's a condensed version of the police report.
Phoenix is referred to by his last name Photor. Photoor
and the undercover agent made eye contact with each other,
and the undercover agent gave him a head nod. Photoor

(08:02):
walked towards the undercover agent. They shook hands, and the
undercover agent asked photo Or if he was bent. He
replied yes, the undercover agent handed photo Or two d dollars,
and photo Or accepted the money. He placed the brown
paper bag that he was carrying on the table in
front of the undercover agent. Photor stated that it was
all there and packaged into separate baggies. He told the

(08:24):
undercover agent he could check it if you wanted to.
The undercover agent declined and told Photoor that he trusted him.
The undercover agent asked photo Or if he could hit
him up next week if he needed more. Photoor said
he could. Photo Or exited the Starbucks and jogged northbound.
The version of events laid out in the police report

(08:45):
is a pretty straightforward drug deal, But according to Phoenix,
the media weren't interested in his side of the story.
I got indicted, and people would not take my interview
to talk to them about my indictment. They didn't want
to go into the gritty of what happened. They wanted
to just basically slander my name, and they wrote all
these articles that were inaccurate. They wanted to go with

(09:06):
the falling hero line, and that's what they wanted to
go with. So if the story the rest of the
world heard is all wrong, what is the real story.
I think, UM, not holding my friends and people I
hang out with to the same standards of accountability that
I would hold myself to makes me guilty by association.
In both the hotel and the Starbucks drug busts, Phoenix

(09:29):
claims he was only facilitating other people's deals. He's basically
saying he was nothing but a middleman. In the M
d M A bust at the coffee shop, Phoenix says
his friend was the dealer, not him, but Mike. The
undercover cop told this friend he'd only accept the drugs
from Phoenix, So Phoenix agreed to deliver the drugs, and

(09:51):
then he says, here's a hundred dollar tip for being here.
Gave me a tip. I was like sweet, took that
money and then handed him the bag and I left like, dude,
I know what in the bag though, for sure? For sure?
So am I still guilty? Definitely? But the person you texted,
the person who showed up, the person who brought the drugs,
the person who bought the drugs, all of that wasn't me.
And as for the hotel bust, Phoenix says he was

(10:14):
only near the drugs, not using or selling them. I
wasn't on drugs. The Daily arrested us. I had no
drugs in my system. They checked my fingerprints. My fingerprints
were not anywhere on the drug paraphernalia. The drug parapetet
he wasn't found on me or near me. But did
I know they had it for sure? Just facts like yep,
and that's a crime, which it is. Conspiracy. Now there's

(10:38):
a lot to unpack here, but let's start with the
Starbucks bust. I have a very hard time believing Phoenix's
version of the story. Here's why. Phoenix is a guy
who believes that the Seattle police are out to get him.
He knows he has to be perfect and everything he
does because he thinks the police are chomping at the
bit to arrest him. And then this drug dealer friend

(10:59):
of his comes along and says, Hey, I'm about to
sell some drugs to this random guy to Starbucks. But
for some reason, he says he will only accept the
drugs if you deliver them, and Phoenix says, sure, no problem,
I'm happy to help. This all seems totally normal. For
Phoenix to agree to that, he would have to be
incredibly stupid, and Phoenix maybe many things, but stupid he

(11:23):
is not. Also, who tips a drug dealer a hundred dollars? Now,
as for the hotel bust, that one is a lot
more complicated. Again, Phoenix makes the claim that he was
merely the middleman, and I do think that the text
exchange seems like he isn't some drug kingpin. But if
he didn't have anything to do with supplying the cocaine,

(11:44):
why were his and his girlfriend's passports inside the tackle
box with the drugs. I still can't make sense of
that detail. And on the other hand, if the cops
had such a clear cut case against him, why did
Phoenix get off so easy? It seems odd to me
that the police would put so much money in manpower
into a sting operation to ultimately let him off with

(12:07):
a slap on the wrist. Maybe it's proof of Phoenix's
theory that their goal was simply to ruin his reputation
by making his arrest public. Or maybe Phoenix's lawyer just
did what lawyers do and got the charges reduced. Or
maybe Phoenix snitched on his supplier in exchange for a
lesser charge. Those all seem like plausible theories. What we

(12:29):
do know for sure is that when the charges were
first brought in January. There was account of cocaine possession
with intent to distribute and one of feloniously delivering M
d m A, but on March they were dropped to
conspiracy charges. And a conspiracy charge basically means that two

(12:49):
or more people agree to commit a crime at some
point in the future. I was with people who had drugs.
I was aware that there were definitely drugs involved, and
you know, as far as a conspiracy goes, it's just
knowing that someone was trying to do something illegal and
not stopping them. And I'm definitely guilty of that. So,
I mean, I believe in America, I believe the Constitution.

(13:10):
I'm gonna plead guilty because I'm gilty of that. But
it's disingenuous the way that it was said. And Phoenix
did plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit
violation of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, one for the
M d M A bust and one for the cocaine.
He was sentenced to four days in jail, time served,

(13:32):
and find five dollars plus an additional one for the
DNA test. I feel like that detail gets lost in
the media narrative, like no one cares what the charges.
It's like, oh, you're a drug dealer, right, but they're
not accusing me of being a drug delar right. But
like what I'm saying is like, I know that's the
stories that I'm a drugular, but that's not what he

(13:53):
was accusing me of. How many days did you serve
in jail? Zero? They said they wouldn't delete my charge,
but if I pledged, which I had already done, they
would give me zero days in jail, and in four
years they'll delete my felony. But they just want me
to be guilty. Does that make sense? Like if I'm
a danger to society, why would you release me the
day that you I say that I'm guilty with no

(14:14):
release conditions, there's literally nothing, but they wanted to give
me like a felony tag. Phoenix claims that the Seattle
Police deviated from their own policies and an effort to
bring him down. So is what happened to Phoenix unusual
for Seattle? We should probably start by saying that the

(14:35):
Seattle Police Department is under a federal consent decree for
their history of biased policing. This is Rich Smith a
journalist at the Stranger local paper in Seattle. The Seattle
Police Department is a moribund institution that's overfunded. They'd spent
a lot more of their time responding to non violent
crimes than violent crimes. Lots of investment and new training strategy,

(15:00):
his new ways to get him to stop arresting black
and brown people at higher rates than white people for
the same crimes. There hasn't been a ton of progress
on that bias. That's the reputation of the Seattle Police Department.
The two main people in charge of prosecutions in Seattle
at the time of Phoenix's arrest were King County prosecuting

(15:20):
Attorney Dan Saderberg and Phoenix's old arch nemesis, former Seattle
City Attorney Pete Holmes. Pete Holmes's progressive era as a prosecutor.
He came in swinging a big bat and just stopped
prosecuting a lot of marijuana arrests. Pete Holmes covered misdemeanors
and Dan Saderberg was in charge of felonies. When Phoenix

(15:41):
talked to me, he directed a lot of his anger
at Pete Holmes, but it was actually Saderberg who was
in charge of his case. He first started making reforms
in the office related to drugs when he came on
in two thousand eight, where he reduced filing standards for
people who are caught simply possessing a certain amount of drugs.

(16:02):
So both prosecutors are viewed as being relatively liberal on drugs.
But the Seattle Police do have a track record of
questionable sting operations. Pete Holmes and the SPD came under
fire for sting operations they executed in massage parlors in
an effort to catch people paying sex workers. Those things were,
at least among public defenders, considered pretty wasteful uses of

(16:26):
city resources and pretty unsuccessful. A lot of the guys
ended up getting off because of shoddy police work. They
were pretty incompetently run. Examples like this lend credibility to
Phoenix's claims that the Seattle Police unnecessarily spent massive amounts
of public money on his relatively small crime. If they're
accusing him of being some kind of kingpin, then you know,

(16:49):
maybe some kind of sting operation would make sense like that.
But when I put it past the Seattle Police Department,
not at all. Putting too many recent sources into a
dubious sounding Let's say a case like this would cops
lie or waste a bunch of time and resources going

(17:11):
after a group or a person who was a thorn
in their side. I would not be surprised in the least.
Pete Holmes declined an interview, and Dan Saderberg didn't respond
to interview requests. The SPD also declined to put up
a spokesperson, and the undercover officers we reached out to

(17:32):
and former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best all declined to
comment as well. We put all of Phoenix's allegations to
the SPD in writing and asked them about why so
much time and money was spent on an investigation that
ultimately resulted in two minor drug charges, six hundred dollars
in fines, and four days in jail. The Seattle Police

(17:53):
Communications Department responded that narcotics investigations routinely involved multiple officers
and detectives, both for investigative and safety reasons, and are
conducted over months and even years. In some cases, our
department arrested Mr Phodor for crimes he committed. Regardless of
what is true either, The Phoenix is a small time

(18:14):
coke and ecstasy dealer, or he simply has a soft
spot for helping out his drug dealer friends and as
the victim of an over zealous police force at the
end of the day, he got off with a very
light punishment, and he knew very well the risks he
was taking when he agreed to get involved in the
legal drugs, So I don't have a lot of sympathy
for him. Everybody hates me already. I got split on

(18:35):
the street yesterday. Someone call me the drug dealers, but
I'm on the street to day in regular ass life.
Because you think I sold drugs for real, what I didn't.
And I don't care what you fucking think. Like people
don't like me. They've never liked me, that's not new.
But we're gonna talk about me showing up with literally
three point four grams of cocaine in a bag I
am not touching, while completely sober at a hotel trying

(18:55):
to meet a consenting adult to go play pinball. I mean,
go fund yourself. When Phoenix landed in trouble with the police,
he really wasn't in the superhero game much at all,
and now that most people in the city were convinced
that he was nothing but a drug dealing hypocrite. It
was starting to look like this was the end for

(19:16):
Seattle's most famous costumed crime fighter. But the year brought
unprecedented changes to the entire world, and in the midst
of a global pandemic and a wave of social unrest
in the streets, Phoenix would get his chance to rise
from the ashes and down his mask one more time.

(19:38):
That's coming up. By May of Phoenix Jones had basically
retired from being a superhero. No more shaky body cam videos,

(20:01):
no more railing against the police like he had in
the past. It looked as though Seattle police had finally
convinced Phoenix to hang up his super suit and leave
the crime fighting to the professionals. And then the world exploded.
Waves of peaceful protesters marched on bigger than ever before,

(20:24):
from Washington's newly named Black Drives Matter Plazia to Philadelphia,
turning violent in Portland, Oregon, Broo police clashed with protests
jes the world had spent months being locked down, and
then people in cities all across America and beyond erupted
in protests and clashes with police. After a white police

(20:44):
officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis.
Rioters have taken over the shopping district in downtown Seattle.
They've set fire to multiple police vehicles. They have broken
into multiple businesses, including Nordstrom and Old Navy, and are
starting to loot. On May, four days after Floyd's death,

(21:06):
protesters marched through Seattle and gathered at hing Hay Park
in Seattle's International District to protest police brutality. Protesters laid
down the roads, chanting George Floyd's name. The windows of
a Ferrari dealership were smashed in, and some demonstrators curled fireworks.
By May, the police were launching flash bangs, tear gas,

(21:29):
and pepper spray at the crowds. Mayor Jenny Durkin and
stated a five pm to five am curfew. This is
a statewide emergency alert. The City of Seattle is asking
all residents to immediately disperse from downtown and then on mate.

(21:51):
Phoenix Jones resurfaced in his first tweet in over six months.
He posted in all caps the following message, if you're
in downtown Seattle and have been injured, need medical assistance,
or help evacuating. Tweet me see you in the streets.
Perhaps inevitably someone replies that they need help getting some

(22:12):
m d M A. But although Phoenix's reputation had taken
a dent, it seemed like he was serious about his comeback.
This is Phoenix Jones. I wanted to make a couple
of things straight before I start at the child today.
Later that day, Phoenix live streamed from a car decked
out in his super suit, though he changed up his
look a bit. Instead of his rubber batman style mask,
he had on a helmet. He announced that he was

(22:33):
heading into the fray. It was a full blown relaunch.
If you're injured and you need my help, give me
a call, hit me off on Twitter. I'll come help you.
Your buildings on fire, you've got something going on like
that and you need help and you have it called
nine one one already give me plus I'll come put
out that fire. He posts more videos that day. In
the next Guys, Jones make sybody stay safe through medical attention,
keeping everybody good. He live streams himself striding down the

(22:54):
streets of Seattle carrying a fire extinguisher, and he claims
he stopped to break it. I thought some people breaking
into a bartheuse, so I stopped breaking into the bartel
as much as I could. Otherwise, you know, the vandalism
will just continue. Phoenix is back. Meanwhile, the protests are escalating.

(23:18):
By June six, the police are firing blast balls into
crowds of demonstrators. On June seven, a man drives a
car into protests at Capitol Hill and shoots a protester
in the arm. The Seattle police use so much tear
gas against protesters that people in the neighborhood say it's
seeping into their homes, and then comes June eight. We

(23:44):
have to stand together and be one family pool. The
birth of the Chop or chas, the push to defund
and reform the Seattle Police Department, and the Black Lives
Matter movement is how six city blocks have been transformed
now called Chop. Officers retreated from the area to de

(24:05):
escalate the tension, effectively abandoning their station. Protesters say they
won't be intimidated by threats and say they planned to
stay as long as it takes to bring about change.
It started when the police boarded up the East Precinct
and vacated the property following clashes with protesters, so the
protesters rearranged the barricades and established a six block area

(24:28):
that included cal Anderson Park, a seven acre green space,
and Capitol Hill. Protesters pitched tents and dugout community gardens
in the park. They called it the CHOP, an acronym
that stands for Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, though some prefer
the name CHAZ Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, and depending on

(24:49):
which news outlets you believe, the CHAS was either a
giant block party and safe space for protesters and community
activists to organize, or it's an anarchist stronghold full of
criminals and delusional hippies. One of the more fascinating things
about the chairs for the purposes of this story is
that the chairs unintentionally became perhaps the largest test case

(25:11):
for the work of real life superheroes because cops were
not allowed into the chairs, though I suspect the place
was crawling with plainclothes officers, but you know who was
allowed to patrol this newly founded urban experiment. Hey guys,
this is Phoenix Jones doing a day patrol the Capitol
Hill in downtown Always back. You guessed it Phoenix Jones.

(25:35):
On June twelve, four days after the birth of the Chairs,
Phoenix makes his comeback official. In a tweet in all caps,
of course, he proclaims, I'm out of retirement. Streets need
me Seattle, hold it together. I'm on my way. Two
days later, on Sunday, June, he's back live streaming from

(25:57):
the Chairs. He starts to film what he says is
going to be an interview with some of the CHAZ organizers. Hey, guys,
what's up. I'm live inside the chat zone. Obviously, I'm
just trying to find out one of the other people
that we're speaking with. So I should be right back
on in the next five or so minutes. But as
the night wears on, things take a turn. So uh,

(26:20):
sorry about that. In the middle of trying to give
an interview, and right in the process of giving this interview,
we hear this person saying that there's a guy with
a gun breaking into a place on twelfth Avenue. So
we take off towards twelve and we get there and
they have the suspect behind a car. There's a gathering
of people outside an auto repair shop called car Tender,
where Phoenix says he thwarted an attempted break in. I

(26:42):
took off on foot around the corner, jumped over the fence,
and went into the actual building itself to make sure
he didn't have any you know, backup of friends inside.
No one was in the building. I was able to
locate the box that had all the keys that he
was planning to steal to come back and steal the cars,
and then in the parking lot, so I was able
to get the key, returned the key to the owner,
and then I hid in the parking lot while a
mom decided to yell at I love him suck. According

(27:04):
to Phoenix, the crowd that has gathered is demanding that
the owner of the business let the suspected thief go free.
I'm out here the place. There's probably at people. I'm
gonna stop them from getting violence, and this is gonna
get shitty, so I'll see you in the streets. Something

(27:28):
clearly went down at the car tender, but from the
videos that Phoenix posted, it's not clear what he was
up to. We spoke to the owner of the store
to get their account of what happened, and he said
that Phoenix didn't jump the fence or save the car Keys.
He actually doesn't remember Phoenix being there at all. Anyway,
despite the negative reaction that Phoenix says he received, he

(27:48):
wasn't deterred. In fact, his ambitions seemed to be getting bolder.
That same night, he posts a picture of Batman with
the caption let's try and find a middle ground and
I'm bringing great ideas and solutions to this problem. And
the next day, Monday, June, it gets interviewed on local
radio by Jason Rants. Over the course of the last

(28:11):
couple of days, it sounds like you have this goal
of trying to bring people together. Take us through how
that's gone so far. Well, I mean that's funny, Like
the last couple of days, my goal has not been
to bring people together. My goalp has bring people together
by a entire life. In spite of his recent running
with the SPD, Phoenix expresses his frustration at what he
sees as their lack of policing. It's been incredibly challenging
because the Black Lives Matter movement is like a blanket word, right,

(28:35):
black Lives matter. Obviously everyone agrees with that, bec there's
a lot of other stuff in there that's kind of weird.
And then there's the Antifa angle and all these other
different things, but no matter what it is, taking over
six city blocks is just illegal. And when the police
decide could not respond to one calls in that area,
that is like name on you. And then, in one

(28:56):
of the craziest turn of events and the Phoenix Jones storyline,
Poenix shows up in the Chas that same night, claiming
that the Seattle Police Department have contacted him and basically
asked him to be a negotiator on their behalf with
the people leading the protests. The response on social media
is swift. How long has he been out of jail? Four?

(29:18):
This ship is excruciating with hilarious. I thought he hung
up the tights. It just keeps getting weirder. Is Seattle
Police actually set of Phoenix Jones to do this? I
will follow the dead from laughter and I hope you
will attend my funeral. He's a joke and I want
to be cop. Isn't his superpower selling ecstasy? It wasn't
quite the glorious comeback Phoenix had hoped for. But while

(29:42):
he was busy playing the Seattle Police Department's unofficial mediator,
a few streets away, another band of superheroes had arrived
to answer the call of their city in need. May
stay safe. We're here rendering a Okay, Red Ranger and

(30:02):
justin Service we met in the previous episode. We're also
hard at work in the Chaz with their team Echo,
the Emerald City Heroes organization. They were trying to represent
a different kind of real life superhero. You're welcome, but
please get the sat gotta staff. We're doing our best.
Please get. They were supportive of the protests and said

(30:23):
they wanted to be on hand to help anyone who
needed assistance. But in addition to tear gas and flash bangs,
Red Ranger and the Echo crew also had to contend
with the fact that Seattle's superhero movement had sustained some
serious reputational damage. No, he's not a member of our organization.
He's not No, no, no association. No we don't. You

(30:45):
want to make that very clear. There's you're not on
our Phoenix has always said that one of the main
reasons he created his superhero persona was to inspire others
to take on injustice in the world and to stand
up for those in need. But by the character he
created became a punchline a symbol of hypocrisy and absurdity

(31:06):
above all else, and as the most famous member of
the community, his fall from grace cast a shadow over
the whole real life superhero universe. While on patrol, Red
Ranger and Justin Service repeatedly distanced themselves from Phoenix. Phoenix
Jones is another not really not anymore. He's in a

(31:26):
bad what's the had we had? He's limitted criminal activities.
I'm not going to get into it. Yeah, he's not
a good example. At one point, they walked past a
poster of Phoenix that said Officer Jones Pepper Spray and
neighborhood near you. Holy take a picture of that. I can't. Oh,

(31:49):
no worries, I gotta get this holy crap. All through
June of clashes between the police and protest is continued,
and then on Saturday June, all hell broke loose and
the Seattle superheroes had to step into a deadly situation

(32:11):
where the police were nowhere to be found until it
was too late. Around midnight, Justin Service and Red Ranger
started their patrol of the Chaz Red Ranger, who was
a registered nurse, had been giving medical care to folks
and trying to de escalate some arguments. There was a
group of people setting off fireworks, but then around two

(32:32):
am they heard gunfire. Phoenix was also in the area.
At just after three am, he tweeted bullets and chaos.
I'm in chopped, stay away, seen confusing shoot her on
the loose. Red Ranger and Justin's Service ran toward the
sound of the gunfire and arrived on the scene of

(32:52):
the shooting. It was total chaos, and laying on the
ground was nineteen year old Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr. He
had been shot. Come on, everybody back here back. We
were doing CPR and trying to provide medical intervention with
the volunteer medics that were on scene, and we were

(33:14):
calling for an ambulance. Well, the ambulance wouldn't come in
because they can't come in until the police cleared the scene.
Watch get out of here drive. The police claimed that
it was the protesters we prevented law enforcement from entering
the chaz But based on reporting by kow's Ashley Haruko,
who reviewed videos from that night along with the dispatch

(33:36):
recordings and eyewitness testimony, it was not the protesters it
caused the delay, but miscommunication between the Seattle fire and
police departments. Everybody, get back, get back, get back. I
get shot, get back, get back. Someone was shot. We
ended up losing a poor young man, you know, when

(33:56):
we tried to save him. We didn't get the help
we needed that night, and I wish we had. There's
a lot of factors that went into that, but it's
still a regret that that young man lost his life.
Every Holy Cross Horace Lorenzo Anderson's father, currently has an

(34:19):
active lawsuit for wrongful death filed against the city of Seattle. Meanwhile,
Phoenix had apparently left the scene. He tweeted that he
hadn't been able to get a description of the shooter,
and I get the sense that he was reaching a
breaking point. Later that same night, in the early hours
of Saturday morning, he goes on to tweet too much,

(34:42):
too damn much. We need to do something now. People
are dying and my fucking city is under attack. I
arrived on the scene after the shooting, directed via Twitter,
no police chaos, people grabbing the evidence and moving things,
and had no description of the shooter, and medical was
already there. I was drawing attention and with an active shooter,
I had to be back. I have no idea how

(35:04):
to combat this threat of real life ending magnitude and
at the same time protect people's right to protest. I
am so angry. Why are the mayor, governor and police
standing outside an imaginary border when citizens of Seattle are
fucking dying? Then a long series of a's and h

(35:24):
ah okay. If the brief moment in time when the
Chads existed was a test case for letting superheroes stand
in for cops in emergency situations, it did not go
well for the superheroes. They had failed in their mission
to intercede in those moments before a crime takes place,

(35:48):
and when things did go horribly wrong, they weren't able
to prevent the death of Horace Lorenzo Anderson or catch
the person who killed him. And at the end of
the day, it is Phoenix him Health who is angrily
demanding that the police show up and do something to
protect the people because he and his fellow superheroes have failed.

(36:10):
In the days that followed. He then got into a
Twitter beef with an account claiming to be the official
CHAS account. It posted that Phoenix was banned from the
CHAS and that the Chas Solidarity community had issued orders
for security to deny access to the chairs to all
members of superhero movements attempting to enter the area. Whether

(36:33):
the account was really representing CHAZ organizers is contested, but
Phoenix took it as the truth and railed against them.
In another all caps tweet, he said, I do not
respect your imaginary borders. Citizens are dying. Grow up. I'll

(36:54):
see you to night in the streets, Jones out. Finally,
on Wednesday, July one, the city moved in and started
dismantling the CHAZ barricades. Protests and conversations about police abolition
and reform would continue, but one thing seemed clearer than ever.
In the city of Seattle. There seemed to be very

(37:17):
little appetite for our masked adventurer Phoenix Jones. His triumph
of return only seemed to make him more enemies in
the hometown he had sworn to protect. But even then,
Phoenix Jones would not be deterred. He'd continue to take
to the streets in search of crimes to thwart, and soon,

(37:38):
at long last, I'd be going with him. That's coming up.
Phoenix Jones had become a running joke in Seattle, his

(38:01):
superhero squad was a distant memory. He pled guilty to
two drug conspiracy charges, and his relaunch at the Chas
had been a flop. At this point, most people would
probably decide to give up on the whole real life
superhero thing, but Phoenix Jones isn't most people. When I

(38:22):
visited Phoenix in Seattle, he agreed to take me on
one of his patrols so I could see firsthand how
he fights crime these days. I am here to pick
up Phoenix Jones at his apartment it is when I
am on the summer one, but to go on patrol.

(38:45):
I actually ended up going on three different patrols with Phoenix,
and every single time we had to use my rental
car because Phoenix was having various car troubles. On one
of those patrols, the plan had been to begin the
night by doing a homeless handout, which surprised me given
Phoenix has past disdain for this type of superhero work.
But in the end it never happened because Phoenix claimed

(39:06):
his car got broken into and someone stole all the
stuff we were going to give out, so we had
to go with Plan B. What's the plan for tonight?
So we're going to Capitol Hill. We're gonna check that
out and safely have people on foot walking around. Then
if Capitohill's lame, we're going to check out the second
and third and Pike and Aaria. We're gonna get out
and walk around there a little bit. We never ended
up getting out of the car that night. Phoenix was
just in superhero casual. He wasn't wearing his full super suit,

(39:29):
just the molded breastplate with the gold chevron and a
black leather trench coat and helmet so bullet proof. I
still got all my stuff on. I'm a little less
NiFe re sistant, but he had stuff time. We can
still go fight crime. The stakes were very high for Phoenix.
He told me because he's on probation, there can't be
any slip ups, pepper spray related or otherwise, because if

(39:49):
he gets into any trouble, he says, he will go
straight to prison for two years. You're a journalist, right,
so if we if we stopped and we stop a
crime and it goes badly, right, they're not going to
rescue you. There's no legal ramifications for you. But me,
I'm on probation. I've been asked to stop several different times.
It's like every time I come out, my entire life

(40:10):
could possibly be on the line. With Phoenix behind the wheel,
we made our way through the darkened streets of the city,
keeping our eyes peeled for signs of trouble. When you
start like a patrol and I'll like drive around and
sort of feel it out, and I'll hit a spot
like feels like this could be that spot, you know
what I mean. But we weren't having much luck finding

(40:32):
any crime. What percentage of patrols would you say you
end up stopping a crap? Mm hm, So I would
say this on average, probably stop about two crimes a
week or do with citizens help, like where I do
something that's like above helping, right, But it's not always
stopping a crime, and that's not always on patrol, right,
Like today I fixed that tire for that person dressed
up super suited up Phoenix Jones death right, But it

(40:54):
didn't have anything to do with patrol. Right. Phoenix told
me the reason he was late to tonight's patrols because
he and his son had pulled over to help a
stranded motorist. Apparently he'd been wearing part of his supersuit,
and his son had worn a Batman mask. Phoenix had
lots of stories like this. He told me that the
day before he had another heroic encounter. This time he

(41:15):
had saved his neighbor's life. One of my neighbors overdosed
on drugs had a reaction that have CPR. Phoenix's need
to help people impact every part of his life, even
things like mundane trips to the grocery store. I went
to the check in scan and I was trying to
scan thing, and this thing would not scan my stuff. Now,

(41:36):
US civilians would probably just head over to another register,
but for Phoenix, this was his time to shine. He
told me that when the checkout clerk didn't know how
to fix the scanner, he got down on his hands
and knees to find the problem. He even called up
the manufacturer himself to get the reset code for the machine.
I popped it in, the machine worked, and I was like,

(41:57):
They're problem solved, and I'm like, now, you don't do
it next time, Phoenix said. His girlfriend, who was with
him at the time, did not swoon or look into
his eyes and say, oh, Phoenix, You're my hero. She
was more like, can we just get the hell out
of here and get on with our day. And like,
what what would you prefer me to do? You know?
She's like, well, I guess I prefer you just to
go another machine. I'm like, okay, so what besides obscating

(42:17):
my responsibility to help my people, what other than that
would you like me to do? I can see how
it would be hard to be with someone like Phoenix,
who seems to be addicted to being the hero. I
think people love uncompromising characters, right, and just because I'm
an uncompromising character, people are drawn to that. But if
they really understood what that entails, I don't think they
would like it very much, you know what I mean.

(42:43):
Phoenix is well aware that fighting crime can damage his
personal relationships, but in another of our interviews, he told
me he couldn't quit even if he wanted to. I
think I have a compulsion to do the things that
I believe in, and I don't care about the cost.
Whatever makes me stop bad guys. It's a compulsion I
cannot fight. I don't know what it is. I can't

(43:04):
put my finger on it, but it's a compulsion that
could cost me everything that I could not stop doing.
I think that compulsion was one of the things that
made Phoenix as successful and as famous as he was
at his peak. But alongside that compulsion to take down
bad guys is Phoenix's compulsion to be better than everyone
around him, and I think his intense competitiveness and his

(43:27):
ego made it impossible for him to live up to
his own ideals of what a superhero is. And even
though I believe his heart is in the right place,
there were moments when I was with Phoenix where I
came away thinking this guy is just an asshole. One
of those moments happened after we'd finished up a patrol

(43:49):
and I had to give Phoenix a ride to go
pick up a car he was borrowing. Sorry about this
going around circles. It's definitely not my fault. Hello, alright, cool,
I have to be on the right street, but the
address you gave me does not take me here. Frustration. Coincidentally,

(44:12):
the person he was borrowing the car from was his neighbor,
the one whose life he said he had saved from
a drug overtose. Anyway, this guy had texted Phoenix the
address where we were supposed to meet him, but the
guy was drunk and sent the wrong address. This was
around three in the morning, and when we got to
where we were supposed to meet him, he was nowhere
to be found. So Phoenix started honking the car horn

(44:35):
so his friend could hear where we were and come
find us. Unfortunately, the batteries in my recorder had just
died and I was in the process of replacing them
when this sonically rich moment happened. We were parked right
outside of an apartment and I called Phoenix out for
what I thought was an asshole thing to do. I
remember saying, there are people all around us trying to sleep,

(44:56):
and blasting your horn outside their window at three am
is a dickhead move. By the time I was able
to start recording again, Phoenix was in the middle of
defending himself. So I don't know why that it's not
chill like. Even when it's explained to me, it still doesn't.
It still doesn't like change my mind on it. It
just makes me think, like, well, if you don't like
horn hawk, you shouldn't live in right next will road

(45:17):
like that. No one will ever convince me. But honking
your horn outside someone's home at three am so you
can find your drunk friend is an acceptable thing to do,
but instead of Phoenix admitting that it's a dickhead move,
he blamed the people sleeping inside their homes. It's not
like this is a grave injustice or anything, but I
think Phoenix's attitude about it says a lot about who

(45:39):
he is. The thing I find so infuriating about Phoenix
that he claims to be out here in the streets
because he wants to serve and protect the citizens of
his city, unless he needs to find a drunk friend
at three am, in which case, fun those people they
should go find another street to live on. I think
his willingness to disrupt these people those lives while also

(46:01):
claiming to care so much about them that he puts
his life in danger for them, it's hypocrisy. And this
is just one small example of many in which I
believe Phoenix is a hypocrite. That's the thing that bothers
me the most about Phoenix. I don't think there's anything
morally wrong with using drugs, so I don't really care
whether or not Phoenix does drugs, and I personally believe

(46:24):
all drugs should be decriminalized and treated as a public
health issue, not a criminal one, so I don't have
a problem with Phoenix's small time coke and ecstasy deals
on their own. The thing I just like about Phoenix
is that he acts like he's better than everyone, that
he claims to live up to a higher moral code
than everyone around him, which I think is total bullshit.
I do think he does more than most to help

(46:46):
the people in his community, and I think he deserves
credit for that, But I found so many instances where
he lied to me that it makes it hard to
believe his endless tales of heroic deeds. Though. There was
this one moment when we were out on patrol and
we came across a concrete piece of evidence of at
least one time when Phoenix really was the kind of

(47:09):
superhero you read about in comic books. We were doing
a U turn at an intersection when our headlights illuminated
a mural on the side of a fence. There, in
bright colors was a painting of Phoenix, drones and his
full supersuited glory. There, I am. Yeah, it's Purple over

(47:32):
there getting pushed on the swing by be right there. Yeah,
it's random. In the mural, Phoenix is pushing his ex
girlfriend purple rain on a swing. They're painted to look
like kids. Behind the mural was a playground. The building
used to be a daycare. Phoenix had told me the
story of the mural during one of our interviews. I

(47:52):
stopped the building from catching on fire. I smashed in
the building and I put the fire out when the
building was burning where the children's daycare is in the like, oh,
look at this cool mural of these little kids. Know
that mural is there because that building is there, because
I'm here, Like, you can't forget what we did, even midnight, Jack,
even though Caballero, because that guy men, Jack was cool
enough to go run back to the car and if

(48:13):
you bring me back to the fire extinguisher, so I
only had to stomp out one floor of fires. He
did that. It was real, So thanks Jack. I dedicated
to a decade of my life to doing dangerous real
life ship. As we sat there staring at the mural
and the headlights, Phoenix was feeling reflective and seemed genuinely
sad that more people didn't talk about these moments in

(48:35):
his life when he was a real hero, rather than
focusing on his fall from Chris. I really did not
think that my life would turn out this way, you know.
I mean, like if I could have redrawn it, It's
not quite what I had in my mind. What did
you have in your mind? I mean I have I
have one drug charge, but I mean like nothing of
any consequence. Right. I imagine that people would talk about

(48:57):
my work. It's shocking that people don't. It makes me
almost feel less. Uh well, I feel like your work
is too unconventional for people to wrap their heads around it.
You know, I don't know what's unconvincaal about helping people
like it's people is one thing, but putting on a
superhero costume and calling yourself a real life superhero is
a totally different thing. Agreed, but it's still the same.

(49:20):
Suber often doesn't change the work. At the end of
the patrol that night, Phoenix apologized for not finding any
crimes to thwart. Sorry, we didn't find any crime. It's
a random conversations. Yeah, we never did come across any
crime during any of the patrols that he took me on.
We also didn't help anyone. We didn't administer any first

(49:40):
aid or hand out any food or socks or water
like Justin's service, and Red Ranger had done on their patrol.
I said good night to Phoenix, and I assume it
was the last time I'd ever see him. This was
my last reporting trip to Seattle, and I was heading
back home to Los Angeles in a couple of days,
and we had no plans to meet up again. All right,

(50:03):
signing off, But then a funny thing happened. When I
got back to my hotel, I noticed that Phoenix had
left his helmet on the backseat of my car. So
I texted him and he said he would stop by
the next day to pick it up. Just before the
sun came up, I got another text from Phoenix. It

(50:24):
said three to one, then another text that said three
minus two equals one. It was one of his number codes,
the kind he told me he sends to his friends
to let them know he's thinking about them. The next day,
Phoenix came over to my hotel. He was parked on
the street outside. I came out and opened the passenger

(50:46):
side door of his car and handed him the helmet.
And then I looked down and saw it plane his day,
just sitting there and the arm rest of the car
door a small bag of drugs. At least I assume
it was drugs. It wasn't much, just a bit of
white powder inside one of those tiny zip blocked bags,
the kind only drugs come in. I held it up

(51:08):
and I looked at Phoenix and said, you should be
careful with this stuff. It's illegal and you're on felony probation.
He seemed very surprised and laughed nervously. Then he took
the bag from me throughout the window and drove off,
And that was the last time I ever saw Phoenix Jones. Now,

(51:34):
the thing is, it wasn't Phoenix's car. He was borrowing
it from his neighbor. So there's a good chance that
Phoenix had no idea it was there, But that probably
wouldn't have mattered to the police. After I got back
from that last trip to Seattle, I looked into what
Phoenix had said about his probation, and I wasn't able
to verify if it was true. According to the court documents,

(51:57):
the sentence he received did not include commune any custody,
and the King County Community Corrections Division said he isn't
under their supervision for the charges. But whatever the terms
of his release are, if Phoenix got pulled over and
the cops found drugs in the car he was driving.
I don't think the outcome would be good at the

(52:19):
end of the day. I do think that Phoenix is
a liar, and maybe he conned a few of his
supporters and friends out of some cash. We have yet
to see the super suit the Phoenix said he would
build after reportedly collecting over three thousand dollars and go
fund me and sure, the guy is super arrogant, admittedly uncompromising,
and also a total hypocrite. But there is no part

(52:42):
of me that thinks he should be in jail. I
do believe there's a good chance that he might slip
up and end up serving time, largely because his personal
life seems so out of control. In one of our interviews,
he was telling me about the court mandated therapy sessions
that he goes to. Do you feel like you've gotten
anything out of therapy? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I've learned what

(53:04):
is wrong with other people a lot. Phoenix told me
that his therapist had her own theory about why Phoenix
has so many struggles in his life. You feel like
you're out of control of your world because your family
got rid of you. Maybe, but my family did get
rid of me. That's a real thing. And if I
feel out of control, maybe you should talk to those
motherfuckers who put kids on a doorstep, not talk to

(53:25):
the kid who make sure other kids don't end up
on a doorstep. That ain't a problem to me. There's
no logic gap from me there. You're not gonna convince
me into feeling better. I'll never feel better ever, and
I don't want to. It's almost as if underneath his
super suit, Phoenix has this protective layer. This reflectsive attitude
that surfaces anytime someone challenges him. I'll leave it to

(53:47):
Phoenix and his therapist to figure out why Phoenix feels
this need to be above reproach. I do hope he
works it out. I think it would do him some
good to listen to criticism and think honestly about how
his actions affect other people. I think that would make
him better at crime fighting and improve his personal relationships.
And I know that's not just an important thing for
Phoenix himself, because he's also a parent. Which brings me

(54:11):
to one last story that I'd like to tell you
before I bid farewell. It's a story that Phoenix told
me about his twelve year old son. He was at
the park one day after school, just hanging out with
some friends, and he noticed a suspicious looking guy standing
outside a liquor store holding a knife. The guy went

(54:33):
into the liquor store, and Phoenix's son walked over and
peered into the store through the glass door and saw
this guy robbed the woman working behind the register. She's
an old middle Eastern lady. She's like seventy as a
mobility scooter. She's like defenseless. Sounds like, I don't think so.
So he goes over his store. He waits by the

(54:53):
door and the door slides both ways open right. I
love his ingenuity. So he pulls the door this way
so it's opening towards the front right, and when the
guy tries to run out of the store, he just bang.
He hit the dude straight in the face with the door.
The alcohol goes down, the knife flops out of his hand.
I said, Chase is this guy and now he's got
no knife, and he turns around to face off with

(55:15):
my son. My son just straight kicked him straight in
the face. Matt. Shortly after the police arrived on the scene.
A cop show up and he's just karate and kicked
this dude down the hill. And then the girl in
the store said that, you know, he'd hit it with
the door, and they cracked the glass of the door
in the store. So the police were saying that they
were going to charge him with breaking the glass, and

(55:35):
the woman was like, absolutely not. That guy had a
knife and he came into my store. The store clerk
convinced the police not to charge Phoenix's son with a
crime for breaking the door, and instead, Phoenix says, the
cops gave his son a token of their appreciation for
his act of civilian heroism. The police gave him this

(55:56):
like little crime stopping pendant. It's really cool. I'll show you.
I'll pull it up. It's really cool. And as his
first crime he had ever stopped. You know, at the time,
the cops didn't know it was Phoenix's son. They came
by the house to give him the little pendant and
talked to about it, you know. And when they came
by the house, I was there, and the cup was like,
oh man. He's like, I don't know what my boss

(56:16):
is gonna think of this, Phoenix says. The police told
his son he could keep the award, but that he
had to keep it a secret. There was a definite
conversation between the police and my attorney because they in
no way endorsed my behavior, which is hilarious because they
endorsed my behavior entirely right, because my son used every
skill I've ever taught him. It's not that the fun crime.
It's that he recognized the same thing that I recognized

(56:40):
and put the responsibility on himself. He's not the kind
of person that sees a problem and goes, oh, that's
for somebody else. For that person is not my person.
Like he sees something, takes responsibility for it, and fixes it.
That's what I love about it. It's not that he
stopped the crime, it's that he did it for someone else.

(57:01):
Does that make sense? Would you want him to have
the life that you do? No? I would never want
anyone to life I have. Was this the origin story
of Seattle's next great real life superhero? With this twelve

(57:25):
year old boy following his father's footsteps and grow up
to become a masked adventurer, a defender of the innocent
and protector of the downtrodden. Maybe he would even be
better at it than his father because he'd had loving
parents who looked after him and was not burdened by
the baggage of being abandoned as a child. Maybe he

(57:46):
would build his own supersuit and find some like minded
friends and spend years training for a righteous goal. Maybe
he would become the hero that Seattle deserves. Or maybe
this is just an they're made up story, like the
kind you'd read in a comic book. The Superhero Complex

(58:18):
is hosted and written by Me, David Weinberg and reported
by Me, Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornhum. Production from Mamalia
Shortland and Caroline Thornhum. Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien and David
Waters are executive producers. Fact checking by Andrew Schwartz. Production
management from Shari Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design,

(58:40):
mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music
supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Original music is
composed by Paul Housden. Special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton,
Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norville, Beth and Macaluso, Rin Roe, Zimbaum,

(59:00):
Shelby Shenkman, and All the team at U t A.
For more from Novel, visit novel dot audio m