August 10, 2023 • 46 mins
Joe Fasanella joined The Protectors® to talk about his pivot from NYPD Counterterrorism to becoming a federal agent. We talk training, policing, small business ownership, and a ton more!
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, welcome to the protectors podcast.
I'm here with Joe Fesson.
Joe, what's going on, brother?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Same old my man.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
We are in person, yes , and the beautiful Staten
Island, yes.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
The forgotten borough , the forgotten borough.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Oh my gosh.
You know I've never been toStaten Island.
Now I'm like a veteran of theNYPD.
I mean all over New York, butStaten Island's a different
placement.
I like being out here becausethere is a lot of space.
Now, where are the Trinitytraining complex?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And where did?
Where did this concept comefrom?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So this is about.
I would like to say it's a fewyear project, but it's really
like almost a 10 year project.
We decided on Staten Island fora lot of reasons.
Number one I live here, I wasborn here, raised here, probably
going to die here.
The entry through the manner isthat's the only borough that
would kind of even tolerate ormaybe even be palatable for this
kind of complex.
It's typically a red citycompared to the rest of, you
(01:17):
know, the five boroughs.
I consider this the last lineof defense when it comes to
actual, real New Yorkers stillbeing here.
That's wind.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Okay, yeah, we don't know guys, but you know, what's
really cool about this is doingit in person podcast is it's
real man.
This is real as you get.
This isn't like zoom, thisisn't stream yard and all the
other stuff, but you were youstarted off in the PD, right?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yes, I started off in NYPD.
I got on the job in July of 04.
Spent about a little under 13years there and then, back in
2016, I flipped over to the airmotion service under DHS and it
was just, it was time kind of.
Everything kind of happened fora reason.
I was always looking for a fedjob.
Even when I first got on thisjob, prior to it, I was an
(02:02):
intern at Secret Service, so Ihad post 9 11, I joined the
Marine Corps, went from theMarine Corps pretty much in my
junior or senior year of college, finished my undergrad and I
was doing the reserve thing.
I had gotten my internship withSecret Service down on Adams
Street in Brooklyn with thehopes of never touching a PD
uniform but just going rightinto federal work.
(02:23):
And unfortunately I didn't haveenough work experience.
They like, like that.
I had military, but they didn'treally.
You know, I had nothing reallyto hang my hat on because I was
just a college kid.
They said, oh, go, go into thePD for a little bit, a year or
two, get it.
Get, you know, cut your teeth alittle bit and then come on
over.
And that was kind of like myplan and then got into the
police department that July.
I graduated college that May,got into the police department
(02:44):
in July of 04.
Immediately got out to the 61stprecinct which is in a ship's
of a Brooklyn, was doing thatfor a little bit and I got
activated with the military.
So I did my deployment with theMarine Corps, went to Fallujah
in 2006, came back and during mytransition back to like PD life
(03:05):
, I actually was taking like aintro to you know bomb awareness
or some some bullshit class andthe guy that was in the class
was showing really antiquatedpictures and I said, hey, you
know, I just left Iraq.
I said I have these cool likethis cool you know file of like
all different things that weuncovered while I was there.
I said Let me give it to him.
So I handed to him and the verynext day he goes hey, man, I
(03:25):
went through that dumb drive.
He goes that's some seriouslycool stuff.
Like where where's this from?
I said Well, I said I only leftthe contrary, like not even 90
days ago.
I'm like literally just justfresh out of Fallujah.
I said, and I was working withan Intel team that had you know
carte blanche, the old,different types of evidence.
So I kind of picked and choseand always took tough in because
I thought it was just.
You know, I'm going to want tolook back on this stuff one day.
(03:46):
And in doing so he goes hey,man, I, I like what you've been
through, I like where you'vebeen, I like what you're going
through and I think you havesome value, maybe with a friend
of mine.
Let me introduce you to thisguy.
So Richie the bomb guy, the bombtech.
He introduces me to this guy,ed Sloan.
Ed is unbeknownst to me at thetime, a first grade detective
(04:09):
which I didn't even know thedifference.
I was so boot on the job.
I didn't realize what the valueof a first grader was.
Like a first graders, like youknow, high on the point totem
pole, like this is very few ofthem.
And he introduces me to Ed andEd sitting down with another guy
, pete, and they say, hey, wewant to, we want to talk to you.
So they invite me to thecounterterrorism division which
is in Coney Island, brooklyn,and I go and I sat there and
(04:29):
they put me in this library andI sat down with Ed and Pete and
they just talk, much like we'retalking now and over the course
of the conversation.
Eventually he goes hey, youknow I like some of the
experiences you've been through.
We want to put that to good use.
But understand that this is avery passive unit, like we don't
kick indoors, we don't, none ofthat happens.
But the terrorism value isthere.
(04:50):
So would you be interested inmaybe applying for
counterterrorism division?
I was like Well, I mean,doesn't everybody want to be
here?
It's post 9, 11.
The unit's brand new, it's sexy, it's hard, super fun.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah funded.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
You know, of course I want to do that was a patrol
cop.
He goes, look I'm, I goes, I'mjust a detective, but let me see
what I could do.
I'll put in a good word.
I said Well, I appreciate that.
So fast forward, about a month,maybe two months.
I'm actually in the middle of atrial prep for homicide.
If I found a gun that waskilled the guy, they had it on
top of an elevator and Irecovered it.
(05:22):
So I was a piece of theevidence chain for the
detectives that were, you know,doing the enhancement.
I'm in the middle of that andI'm upstairs with the squad and
I'm, like you know, completelyunrelated to anything terrorism
or any, you know, transfers oranything like that and the boss
that on the desk is like hey,come, come downstairs.
So immediately I think I'm introuble Because I'm like there's
no way I'm getting called downto the desk for anything good.
(05:44):
And I get down there and,lieutenant, down there is
actually a good dude, I used todrive him a lot.
He's like hey, he's like comeover here.
So I go behind the desk BecauseI would never go behind the
desk Because back in the days wehad respect for our bosses and
he's like come here, come here.
And he's pointing at thetelephone message.
I'm like what?
I don't even know what the fuckthis is, you know.
So I look into it and it says,as a midnight hours, you know,
(06:05):
plf and all are transferred tocounterterrorism,
counterterrorism division.
So I'm looking at it and lookat him and I'm looking at him,
he's looking at me.
He's like he goes, you can goaway now.
I'm like okay.
So he's gonna like saysomething, you know.
And I go back up to the squadand the detectives looking at me
like you're all right, are youin trouble?
I'm like yeah, I said I'm good,I said I'm actually transferred
, I'm done.
I said I can't even do thetrial.
(06:26):
I said I'm going ontransferring as a midnight hours
tonight I had no idea what thehell that meant.
They're like to where I'm likecounterterrorism division and
everything just stops.
They're like fuck the case,let's, let's say, all of a
sudden they're pulling, like youknow, little bottles out from
their bags and stuff like thathe stepped in shit kid and have
a drink and I'm like whoa, likethis is another side of the
(06:47):
department I've never seen, youknow.
So it's cool.
It was, like you know, it waspretty much wet behind the years
.
And here I am, this like superjunior dude transferring to a
very senior unit, and it was.
It was nothing but trials andtribulations.
I spent the first probably twoyears just trying to figure out
my place amongst really seasonedpeople like we had, you know,
the proverbial first gradedetectives.
(07:08):
Guys who were, you know, cuttheir teeth and you know
organized crime Making names forthemselves in narcotics and all
these things.
And then they had this likewhite shield, mix it amongst it
and it's like, well, where doyou fit in this whole thing?
Well, my question was well,where do you guys fit in this
whole thing?
Like you know, why are you here?
You know, you just hanging yourhand on the fact that you were
this, that the other, like youknow, we're doing terrorism work
which pre 9-11 really didn'texist, and now this unit is just
(07:32):
boom, mm-hmm.
I come to find out that the guythat kind of vouched for me, the
guy Ed, was a navalintelligence officer.
He had spent a lot of time inCuba, you know, doing
get-most-off, and he was one ofthe people that they valued as
someone who says has knows alittle thing or two and he can
kind of Read between the lineswhen they're interviewing people
, and that's how I kind ofthat's kind of how I got in.
(07:53):
So I ended up gettingtransferred.
I didn't go right to thedivision, I ended up going to a
little offshoot which was Officeof Emergency Management.
So it was a little offshoot downin Cabin Plaza, down by the
Brooklyn Bridge, and I wasfucking miserable.
It was the worst, the worstthing I ever did.
But in retrospect, if I was on,if I was an 18 year veteran, it
would have been awesome becauseit was like the place you go to
(08:14):
die, yeah.
But with three years, fouryears on the job, I was like, ah
, it's not really where I wantto be.
So I was begging, you know,clawing my way back to the
division to get back toterrorism stuff.
But you listen, saying I got,I'd spent about a year there.
I was doing like watch controlwatch command, which was um Kind
of like you have a finger onthe pulse of everything that
goes on, so every agency has arepresentative in that building.
So I learned a little bit ofinteragency work and I spent my,
(08:37):
spent my year just basicallyWatching things unfold in real
time.
So I had the papal visit, wehad the crash in the Hudson, so
these are all things that I waslike I lived through and I and
in retrospect I'm like, wow,these are really notable events.
But at the time I didn't reallymean much of anything to make
because New York that happens,stuff like that happens all the
time, I'd say on any given dayback, especially back then.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
It was just wild.
This is New York, is so big man.
Yeah, there was like 40,000officers.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
So when I got on the job there was about 38,000 I
could.
We're nowhere near that.
No yeah, you know that's.
That's a bonnet contention weare, you know there's been a
mass exit.
That's because most of thehiring was right after 9-11.
So our numbers pre 9-11 weresmaller.
Then we bumped up, you know,with funding and all this other
stuff and in the post 9-11 pushwhen people actually wanted to
(09:25):
be a cop.
And then I'd say for me, I sawthe transition of people.
Son, to say, when we lookelsewhere Was probably around
the time.
I like to show on bell shooting, hmm, which was the first time
where I had ever experiencedlike riots.
Yeah and then that kepthappening, that it was occupied
Wall Street.
Zuccott about like yeah, likethese things were like great,
(09:45):
these things were happening andhappening, and like what would
be a small pocket of resistancewould turn into bigger and
bigger, and then eventually towhat we see now, now, now, today
.
So I think I'd like to say thatit's kind of started with that.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Now, when do you make the jumps to the feds?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
2016.
Okay, so I left in 16.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
So you had a decent amount.
Were you doing terrorism allthe up until then?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
yeah, from from about three years on right up until
the end, okay, and that's, youget your way back to the
division, or so I made it, mademy way to the division.
I eventually spend about eightyears in the C burn team so
doing Ken bio, rad, mucusexplosives, and that's kind of
where I learned a Lot of coolstuff.
So my first project was um.
I Was overseeing the suicidebomber interdiction team, so we
(10:28):
had some technology that came infrom Israel.
Mm-hmm, I was basically handedlike a 500,000 dollar machine
and said, hey, the Israelis aregonna come teach you how to use
this figure.
I had to implement it.
It was like a crash course andhow to like set up photography.
It was like a big camera thatwas on a gimbal mount.
I have no way, I'm a knuckledragon marine at the time.
So I have those crazy stuff andlike they like, don't drop the
lens at.
(10:48):
The lens alone is 50 grand.
I'm like, oh my god, but howmany do we have of these?
Like four.
I'm like, oh my god, like, andI'm responsible for this.
I was freaking out and thatturned into bigger and bigger
stuff and we basically would the.
The division has like thisunlimited budget.
Right, they have the, theaccount and all the money goes
through the division, so evenother units benefited from.
(11:09):
Can a terrorism having this oneway.
You know two-way street withthe federal budget, and it was
constantly flexed.
You know people always, youknow we need to kiss the ring of
counterterrorism are to makesure we get this unit, that
truck, this, that though.
So we had a lot of coolequipment.
We had a lot of cool training.
You know it wasn't uncommonthat, like you know, you'd be
getting email in the morning Igo.
(11:29):
Doctor Jane Oxley from Harvardis in town.
You know blah blah, blah, blahblah.
She's gonna be doing a class on, you know, improvised
explosives.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Well, think about it.
New York is like the epitome ofcounterterrorism and, and when
you talk about the budget andyou being on that unit as a
junior Officer, she's amazing.
That's where, like, I canimagine your experience bringing
it into the Fed world.
But not also that.
But everything happened sincethen.
You know, with understandingthe realities of what you need,
(11:59):
sure, realistically To mount acounterterrorism operation, but
also to be able to deal with,like a stressful environment,
like when you'd say you'redealing with this, hundreds of
thousand dollars of equipment,you, then you also have to think
about, okay, I'm like, if youdrop this, that's responsibility
, man, yeah.
But then when you get into like, okay, well, it's not just the
(12:21):
equipment, it's like what doesit do?
Right, how does it do it?
You have to be super.
You can't just be aknuckle-dragger anymore for sure
, for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You have to understand that camera sees Heat
, so you're ninety point sixdegrees roughly.
That camera has the ability tocool down.
Let's just say arbitrarily likenegative three hundred.
So any change in heat that'scoming out off your body or
something that's blocking heatfrom coming off your body Get
silhouetted as a thermal anomalyand that's how we determine.
(12:49):
All right, is that personconcealing something below their
clothes?
The trials and tribulations ofstopping people for those few.
You know years that we were kindof getting the system up and
running and trying to figure outhow to get it.
That was great, as gray areastuff which is going to tie into
why the company's calledcondition was why the call.
My initial company was calledcondition gray, because
Terrorism work at the time wasneither black nor white, because
(13:12):
we were still kind of figuringit out post on 11 policing.
It was very different than pre911 policing.
I won't pretend to explain that.
I even understand what a 90s copwent through in New York Cuz.
That was some crazy friggintimes.
But I also can't imagine a 90scop ever fathoming what's
happened post on 11, you know,if they had retired and saw that
.
I mean we're dealing some crazystuff and there's no shortage.
(13:34):
I say this whole time, isn't?
There's no shortage of assholesout there.
The activity post 911 was justas rampant as it was pre 911.
I think we were just more opento looking for it.
I think JTTF and units likethat, they really had their
hands full.
And there's a lot ofinter-agency issues too, like
between at the time I rememberwas like counter terrorism, jttf
in television.
(13:55):
Now I think since I've left thejob they've merged and you know
like it's.
You know there's a lot of likeweird.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, now that that's the other thing is.
Now you're in the Fed world,you understand the Fed, you're
on my god yeah yeah, we're notgonna.
I don't really want to get intoo much about your current.
That job is with the fans andeverything Cuz.
I understand the implicationsof that, but I could understand
leaving such a big agency to gowork for the feds.
I can understand wanting to dosomething different, something
(14:23):
that's not going to limit you,something's going to give you
more of a budget.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
And you're not.
You know, and I'd imagine 13years on a job, you're going to
have some sort of guilt ofleaving.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, like you know how you manage 13 years.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
I'm vested.
Do I leave?
What was that taking that steplike?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And it was a little easier for a guy like myself at
the time because I had prettymuch burnt my bridges in the
division.
I had an issue with a boss whoreally the best thing that ever
happened to me was he jammed meout.
You know he came in late in mycareer and I was still a white
shield who was young on the jobbut also senior in the unit.
That was kind of an anomaly.
(15:00):
There was only a handful of usthat had probably less than 10
years on and we happened to bethis now senior people in the
unit.
So you get this young hotshotboss.
He kind of came in with alittle bit of a yeah, I'm going
to do things my way.
But reality is in that a unitlike that bosses were only
really good for like overtimeslips and days off you know,
like I don't really need you forthe actual expert stuff because
(15:20):
you're not really much ofanything.
And this guy I actually startedout liking him and I thought we
had a little bit of rapport, butwhen everything, when push came
to shove, he actually tried tojam me up for military paperwork
so he screwed himself.
It led to a federal case andthe rest is kind of for another
day.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, departmentally case, for another day, the
military deployment.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah.
So he went the wrong way aboutit and it gave me, when
everything was said and done,gave me the ability to kind of
choose what I want to do in mylife and at the time I could
have went back to the job.
But I had this federal offerand I literally was on military
leave.
I came back from military leave, I came back to the job for one
day, that's it out, and by Iwas on a Thursday.
(16:06):
And the funny thing is aboutNYPD, like there's no like, it's
not like ceremony, like unlessyou're like a white shirt, you
know big time chief.
But at the time it was I wasmarried and my ex and I we went
up to one PP to turn in my stuffand at the time there was a guy
who was being federallyindicted, who was a chief, who
(16:28):
was being indicted because ofsome scandal that happened with
licensing division, which iskind of ironic.
That I don't I have the CCWkind of foothold now but
ironically he's getting awalkout, even though he's going
to jail or going to do some timeor whatever the heck was going
on with his life.
He was under the watchful eyeof the federal federal
government.
So this guy's getting a fullwalkout, full ceremony.
You know people stand insaluting and here I am a cop and
(16:50):
good standing and you know whatI got?
I got to go up to this halfbarn door where they put a
pillow up and a little pillowhas like a little bit of like
gold trim and it says you know,congratulations on your
retirement.
And you put your shield down onit and they go thank you for
your service.
Just cookies and coffee in thenext room.
And this minute you turn around, you know what you hear Clank,
clank.
That's thrown into a box withevery other fucking cop and my
(17:13):
wife at the time she looked atme and she goes, that's it.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
I said, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
She's like that's it, this is, this is the job.
She's like.
You killed yourself for thisplace.
You gave your best years tothis place.
I said onto bigger and betterthings, sure shit.
And eventually I would by.
Next to that, following Tuesday, I was in my New York field
office doing my you knowinitiation and I remember I hit
(17:40):
three hours of traffic that daybecause my office was in Queens
and I remember driving homegoing fuck, I shouldn't have
done this.
I can't stand traffic Like it's.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Like it's the bane of my existence in New York, you
know.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
But I go into the academy.
I kept my mouth shut, kept myears open, because now I'm older
dude, going through a federalacademy and just don't show your
cards and little by little, I,you know, I'd try to put myself.
Where did you work?
Worked at an MPD, yeah, but youcould shoot.
So you guys are not known forthat.
I train on the outside.
(18:11):
I'm kind of training.
I have a company oh, what doyou do?
I am this company calledCondition Gray.
What is that?
You know?
Immediately the next day theycome in.
They're like hey, man, you,I've seen your products before.
Okay, all right.
So by the time I left theacademy, people who had the bag
was out.
They would try to throw me allsorts of curveballs just for fun
, and you know I'm going tonavigate them.
(18:32):
I've been through seeing,seeing a lot of cool things over
my life and navigate a lot ofweird stuff.
Life was good.
So I graduate, I get to myfield office Right just prior to
COVID.
I was selected to work on Viper,which is like our kind of like
our ground team, which is kindof still kind of in its figuring
(18:53):
it out kind of stage.
It's kind of a weird unit, butthen they say nobody wants to go
out there.
I wanted a little break fromflying.
I was having issues with my exwhich would eventually lead to a
divorce, and I joined Viper andViper was supposed to be like a
two year stint and two yearsbecause COVID turned into three,
which turned into almost four,and then in that time the agency
(19:15):
had a lot of, I think,interesting dynamics.
We were being used for morethings.
I ended up going to the DCriots, some riots in other parts
of the country, riots in my ownhome city.
I'm seeing people at the borderall over the place.
Border, border was in.
That's a whole.
I was just there.
Border was interesting and, asNSSEs, let's backtrack.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
You mentioned that you started the company.
Where did this all start?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I mean like it started because when I was
jammed up.
So I get jammed up and I getbooted from Canada terrorism
because I have to go, you know,rub a gun squad, so to speak,
and I get sent to centralbooking, which is where we're
talking about with Aaron, and Ispent a few months there and in
that time, while I'm waiting formy case to kind of fall into
(20:07):
place, fighting with lawyers andthe PBA, trying to figure out
how to get back to work, back todoing the real work, and in
that time there was a pointwhere I was like, well, what if
I don't?
What if I can't get back to it?
I just spent a good portion ofmy life establishing these
skills that very few cops have.
What if this job, what if Idon't have a job?
(20:31):
When this is said and done?
So I was kind of like, man, letme take some money out, let me
establish something.
So I start investing in myself,I start seeking schools that I
knew I could go to and I end upgoing like self paid my way
through Darcy level one, Darcylevel two and all these shooting
courses and I said, let me seewhat's out there.
(20:51):
How do I structure this if Iwas to do this here Because
there was nobody out here.
And I come back and in that time, while I'm at Darcy, I had an
incident where I went to go dipout of a car under nods and my
sling got caught around theseatbelt because my rubber band
failed.
So check that in the back ofthe box, because we're going to
(21:12):
circle back to that and Ifinished the drill on.
I was completely humbled bythat course.
That course is an absolute kickin the nuts, Like if you think
you have any understanding oflike close quarters combat, go
there and then figure out if youreally do.
Because by Wednesday I was likemy head was like in between my
legs and my tail was stuck.
I was like man, this is an asskekka, but it was a good ass
kekka because it opened up myeyes to, as Richard put it, you
(21:34):
know, you don't know what youdon't know and we know.
We have this like King Kongtheory in New York, where the
NYPD were the biggest, were thebest.
We have this, we have that.
We're still so far behind andI'll get to that.
So condition gray opens.
I don't even know if I waslegally allowed to have it in
the eyes of the NYPD at the time, I didn't give a fuck, which is
pretty much my attitude, goingforward with it, with the job,
(21:57):
and you have to have an outlet.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
You have.
It's not just an outlet, youhave to have an out for sure.
You know, like when I was, whenI was going through the Fed, I
was having some issues there.
I had like five or sixdifferent things, like if a
happens, I'm going to do B.
Yeah, b happens, I'm going todo C, and if I got to go back to
A, I'll go back to A.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
So yeah, sometimes you got to take a few steps back
to go, to go forward andthere's like this unrelenting,
like grasp that, like policinghas over you like, oh what, I
can't do anything else.
You absolutely can't doanything else.
I laugh because I think, likethree year cops not seeking a
Fed job are out of their minds.
They are out of their mindsBecause in those three years
(22:36):
you're going to put your handson more people and interact with
more people than any Fed world.
You know that.
You know it's my.
If you saw my two sets ofhandcuffs and I wasn't even like
this, like super active cop,but like my Fed cop, my Fed
cuffs and like my NYPD cuffs, solike once pristine, you could
tell they've only been used inlike a training environment.
Yeah, the other ones are likethere's like probably DNA on it.
(22:56):
Still, you could probably likesaid like an okay, I'll logical
dig on them, they're just nasty,but my philosophy, too, is like
Treat it like a militaryenlistment.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
You want to serve.
They'll become a cop for fouror five years.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
You don't have to do a career man.
Right, right, go move on and itpays off.
And I find that NYPD is funny.
So a few guys that were comingon my job would sit on the panel
and I knew that they werecoming in or knew they were
coming into a panel interview.
I'd be like, how'd they do?
And they're like, oh they didterrible.
And I'm like why they're likethey wouldn't answer the
questions with them.
(23:28):
They would only answer thequestions with wait.
I'm like because that's the weis all they got.
I said it's programmed that thebig blue walls coming, it's
coming back up.
And NYPD was good about that.
And I think a lot of these guyshave a hard time individualizing
themselves as something beyondthe team.
So they come on the panelinterviews.
(23:50):
They botched the questionsbecause the person on the panel
is like, no, tell me what youdid.
I don't care what you guys did,I want to know what you did.
And that's kind of a inertia.
So we actually started doing acouple of years ago we would do
federal job, like workshops, tokind of tell guys, hey, how do
you navigate these?
Because it took me forever toget a job.
I went through the bureau, Iwent through the A, went through
(24:13):
all these different things andit took me a hundred tries
before I finally got the job Iwanted.
And you know, like anythingelse, like the stars have to
kind of align, like you have tofit the right, you know what
they want for that hiringprocess.
Let's just put it that way, youknow, for lack of better words.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
you know they may need to get the feds are
hemorrhaging now too, because Iwas like I retired March, but
you know I went in 2000 and 2001was a huge push.
That's going to become aspecial agent with customs back
then.
But now everybody's retired andnow trying to find people to
qualify and qualify atapplicants.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
They let them go over the past 10 years.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
You know, growing up on the East Coast, you know
because I grew up in Jersey andit was like everybody wanted to
be a cop.
I talked to another captain theother day and he was like you
know, we used to get like wehadn't hired an announcement.
We had 800 people.
Now we're lucky if we get 80 or90 and out of that we're lucky
if we get we can get a handfulthat can make it through the
process.
So then it comes down to likethe quality of people you're
(25:16):
getting is a lot different, butin there there is quality.
And then we have to look at thebig picture.
Is because there's such bigagencies and I always thought
I'm like ah, you're NYP, you'regoing to be able to go to
training in this and that, butnow you're in these small
departments, you're not going toget training.
You're lucky if you get thequala with 50 rounds or more.
(25:37):
You're lucky, right.
And there's just simply notraining.
Use a force Good luck with that.
Yeah, training, good luck withthat.
Blue on blue force training oranything, good luck with that.
So you get into the gear.
But then when do you startdoing the training?
Speaker 2 (25:54):
So training started in 2015.
My very first class is ironicit was a night vision class
because I was hot off the Darcyyou know, the Darcy grad, and I
was coming to bring this andthat's going to bring everyone
in.
And my first night vision classwas down in South Jersey
shooting club and we failed it.
But man, the skills were allover the place.
There are people that just havegear, just to have gear, and
(26:17):
there are people that were goodto go, but for the most part it
was a hodgepodge mix of people.
And what I realized was is thatbefore we can start doing stuff
like that, we have to kind ofsolidify the fact that people
need to have good weaponsmanipulations.
So we spent the kind of took astep back and said, all right,
well, what do we need to buildpeople up so they could take
classes like that?
And the answer was we need todo basic basic pistol, basic
(26:38):
rifle, basic pistol, basic rifle.
And we just loaded the schedulefor years, probably like two or
three years, to build up enoughalumni, just so that when you
do a specialty class, you havethat, that certain caliber of
student who can step in and not,you know, jeopardize the safety
of class, because it'sdifferent out here.
We're not born with guns in ourgranddaddy's rifle Weapon
(27:00):
safety is kind of a thing that'skind of implemented as they
kind of fall into their own.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
You know you just brought up a great point is like
you think about how many cops,how many feds, how many
everything live within this.
Like these square miles andlike the laws and everything
don't make it conducive to goand get even ammo to train on
your own.
And our do this.
Our find a range that you coulddo not just like, a flat range
or nothing dynamic at all.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
If anything, you're just shooting paper, no, no no,
unless you're doing competitions, you ain't moving a gun
anywhere on any of these rangesand they're just small.
I mean, we're looking at StatenIsland.
We have a couple of really niceranges, but you're still
dealing with antiquated mindset,that you have older range
officers who are dealing with ayounger generation who's now
(27:45):
like a GWAT level or era personwho wants to be dynamic, shoot
from a holster and that's partof their job, maybe, and they're
like freaking out about that.
Easy there, fellow Can't do arhythm Six round body.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Well, think about this too.
Rhythm drill.
You have like big departmentstoo, or even little ones, a lot
of times a range guys are likeold school, old school, oh yeah,
yeah.
And.
I think they started this tohot rub off.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, I think that we're getting past that now, but
there was a point where, likeyou know, if you were shooting
quick, they're like, oh, wecan't do that.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
So tell us about this complex.
So this place is and you showedme around.
I'm seriously impressed, Thankyou.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
I love this place.
It's kind of like an extensionof my brain, which is kind of
sad to say because it's so weird, but it's definitely me.
So one of my students, bob,who's now my business partner,
at one point about four or fiveyears ago he's like hey, man,
where you going with all this?
I said I had no idea.
He's like you got to do, yougot to have something in mind.
(28:43):
I said, well, he's like, what'sthe end state of doing classes
and putting out products?
I said, well, I guess to retireand have something, you know,
always have a back, you know,fall back.
You know dad got kids, gotcollege, you know, and then
they're young, I know I had todo something.
He's like well, in a perfectworld, what would you want?
I said, well, I'd want afacility that I could do
(29:04):
everything you know indoor, livefire, cqb, night vision,
whatever, If you, you know, thesky's the limit.
He goes all right.
Where would you put it?
So we spent about the first yearof looking in like Pennsylvania
for large plots of land.
Then we all was like, yeah,it's too far.
We were losing all our weekends, you know, with our kids and
stuff.
So then there was Jersey.
And then that was still kind offar and the gun laws are weird
(29:26):
and things were changing.
And then we were looking intoLong Island and I was like well,
fuck Long Island because I hatethe parkway.
And eventually I told him witha straight face I said I want to
be in the city.
He's like where.
I said stand down.
He's like, well, that'sconvenient.
I said it is because we havethree Rangers here.
We have a red leading kind ofclientele who are kind of pro
(29:49):
gun, pro cop, pro military.
I said honestly, like the lastreal New Yorkers left, I said
everyone else is like transients.
Even after COVID you still gotthat transient community of
people that are coming out fromlike God knows where to try to
make the name here and I thinklike when you're in Staten
Island you're dealing with anactual, real New Yorkers.
Like there's a different vibewhen you go to like a local
(30:10):
story that you can kind of feelit.
And so I told him stand out.
And then that started about ayear or more of just looking at
building after building and theprice is here on astronomical.
If I told you my overhead forthis building you'd fall off
your chair, but it had to bebuilt.
It's like if you build it, theywill come so fast forward to
(30:31):
last July we found this complex.
I passed this building 50 timesin our search, but this
building was in midreconstruction and at the point
where we were just about to giveup, this place finally came
available.
So we came.
We looked at it because we werelooking at another spot down
the block and it was a lotsmaller.
But then we got off for thisone and we're like you know what
(30:52):
?
Fuck it, let's take it.
So we go, we walked theproperty.
Everything was as you kind ofsee it now, but just wide open
and it was off to the drawingboard.
Well, how are we going to?
What's the aesthetic?
I want New York, I said.
I want to feel New York.
I want to walk in here and say,all right, that's the grind of
(31:12):
a New Yorker.
So we got this graffiti artistwho me, him and another staffer,
a good kid Frank.
We decided to go to Manhattanand we went to, like you know,
lower-glowery side where, likesome of the coolest art is, you
know where people are literallytagging up everything under the
sun, and we spent the entire dayday drinking and looking at
graffiti, eating ice cream,eating food and like eating
(31:36):
Cuban food, like we made a dayof it and we just went from
place to place taking pictures,Like I love that, I love that, I
love that.
And then we came back and wekind of set up a read book and
we were like, all right, well,this is the graffiti we wanted
to bring here and that's kind ofhow it came to be.
But then, with tweaks, so youknow, you'll see places in there
like oh, it's the pink housesthe pink houses.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, so for the people who are listening to this
, there's actually a room and ithas like just incredible
graffiti everywhere.
It's not just cop-centric too.
I mean, you got Biggie in thereand you got like everybody you
could imagine, oh, we're gonnastand out.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
And so you have that Wu-Tang, it's like you can't
grow up here without at leastlistening to one song, knowing
at least one song by heart.
But there's references in there.
So, like you know, my firstfield office was next to Queens
Ridge, so when we first go to doops, that's our homage to that.
The pink houses I had bricksthrown at me on the roof because
I was sitting on top of a firedepartment building doing
(32:26):
counter gun stuff with that samesystem I was telling you about
earlier.
So the pink houses I neverworked in a 7.5.
It's the first time I've everbeen out.
It was like a mythical place forme because I was a Brooklyn
South guy and then I was like,oh, we're going to the Brooklyn
North to do this.
And I'm like, oh, it soundsscary, it's funny because I got
a cop really good friends withit.
He's a housing cop.
He's like you were on top ofthat.
Ugh, I was like why?
(32:47):
I'm like I don't know, itsounds like a good idea at the
time.
The city's wild.
It's definitely worse than it'sever been now and that kind of
this place is kind of like ananswer to well, if the job's not
going to give you the trainingand there's no resource for you
elsewhere, what would you?
Speaker 1 (33:04):
have.
Now.
Where are you bringing in theinstructors from?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
A lot of them came with me over from condition gray
because they were tritured andtested.
We're a funny place, so weshoot for our job.
In other words, if you want towork on our staff in any
capacity that you're going totouch a firearm, you have to
shoot first, because everybodyhere has these tremendous
(33:28):
resumes and it's just you know.
10 pages of just.
You know I love me.
Okay, you're going to go withmy director training who's a
fucking, he's a shooter, he's amother motherfucker of a shooter
and you're going to go with himand you're going to shoot for
your job.
Do I want you to shoot like him?
No, not everyone can, I can't.
(33:49):
But you should be pretty close,because if you're going to step
in front of a crowd of yourpeers, they should look at you
and say, well, that's where Ican get to.
And if you can't do that, Ican't just hang your resume on
the target.
You have to be able to show it,and I think that that has
created animosity because peopleare like oh well, I don't want
(34:11):
to shoot for my job, then youdon't need to work for us, I
need other companies to gofollow and I'm okay with that.
That term comes from my currentjob, because the early post-911
agency was hey, you want to comework for us, come shoot for
your job.
And they had two buses and wealways get told the story, the
lineage of how the service wascreated, and it's like there's
(34:32):
two buses one for those whopassed and went on to training
and one that went back towhatever job they came from.
I always thought that wasimpressive and when you look
around the industry, some ofthese people are still in the
industry because they've nowthey've left up my agency and
now they're on their own andthey're doing their things.
And my original staff shirtswere Burgundy and Maroon for the
people who were with me thelongest, because that's a homage
(34:55):
to those instructors.
So there's a lot of.
We never do anything.
That's like unpurposeful, so tospeak.
If that's even a word, there'salways like a hidden agenda
behind it.
Like, oh, why do they wear thatcolor?
Well, also for instructors whohave been with me since day one,
because they shop for theirjobs and we have some sick
instructors on our staff.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Well, that's the thing too is like when you
brought up the resume,especially when it comes to
firearms a tactical, you couldbe former, whatever, and you
might not be a good instructor,you could shoot me, whatever,
but to be able to shoot andinstruct it's a tough thing.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
New Yorkers are like tough people, like to look and
press.
But you could out shoot theshit out of them and they'd be
like, yeah, he's good, yeah,whatever, yeah, whatever he's
good.
Like it's like the guy justfriggin' crushed the drill.
Like give him credit.
Where credit is there?
That guy's good, you knowwhatever.
That's just New York mantra.
But we've established ourselves.
I'm sure we have people thatlove us.
(35:51):
We have people that hate us.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
There's always going to be haters.
It could be the best company inthe world, but it's I don't
know if it's Ego or envy arejust unknowing.
For sure A lot of it isunknowing because they don't
know what goes on behind thedoors For sure.
Now, trinity I love that word,I love it.
It's so cool.
But also, what's your visionnow?
Speaker 2 (36:10):
To stay alive.
So we opened the doors quietly.
We didn't know if we were goingto have protesters outside our
front door.
We didn't push it, we didn'tlike advertise it, we just said
let's let the doors breathe andsee what walks in.
And we've survived.
We're actually just hit a yearthis year that we've been in
this building.
November would be really a yearsince we've been open, but
(36:33):
we've had a crazy year.
So in the past, since November,so however many months that is,
we've had close to 800 studentsfor just CCW alone.
So basically, july we take overthe building.
August we start construction.
September this crazy thingcalled the Bruin case All of a
sudden just emerges out ofnowhere.
We knew it was common, but wedidn't know what the outcome of
(36:55):
it was and it just changed thedynamic of what we were
intending to do, because thegoal was to train law
enforcement military lawenforcement military, because
it's really all we had and justcontinued the condition gray
model.
And now you have this variablethat comes out of the blue with
the Bruin case and now 18million people in the five
boroughs wants to now on a fire.
So where do you go?
Well, thank the gods, one ofthe prerequisites, or one of the
(37:19):
one of the aspects of CCW isthat you can have any type of
striker fire ammunition toinclude NLTA, which is what this
facility is.
So you can do your quality, youcould satisfy the needs of the
New York State DCJS, whatevercert is, whatever the
requirements are, with somemunitions, force on force, utm,
because those are striker firedmunitions.
(37:40):
So now, in the safety of thisbuilding, you can do your quail
and take your class all onto oneroof.
Now, where does that leave us?
What is my future?
Well, we have 800 people.
Probably by November will haveover a thousand, so that's a
thousand CCW holders who are inthe myriad of different aspects
(38:01):
of their process, some who havealready received their permit,
some who are still on the cuspof it, and then they're going to
get it and with the hopes thatthey say you know what, it
didn't end there, it juststarted there.
Where?
Speaker 1 (38:14):
do I go?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
to train Now.
I think the fruits of our laborare gone.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
And then, well then, you have all their friends and
family who want to get CCW.
Exactly, and you know what.
You brought up something beforeby being red.
I can tell you right now thatred, blue, green, purple,
everybody wants a CCW, 100%Everybody 100% these classes
nobody care.
You go in there and you'regoing to see like a grandma.
You're going to see like a 20year old kid with pink hair.
(38:38):
Jason, it's so diverse.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
It's ridiculous.
I kind of wish like peoplewould see no one wants to get
videoed in CCW and we always ask, okay, is everyone
uncomfortable before we do?
We could really advertise theshit out of it and make probably
double our profits, but we kindof keep it like hey, this is
your income we got you.
Word of mouth is fun.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
When I tell you the diversity that walks into this
building.
Some of it's fun, because theytell you why they're here and
some of them are like.
Well, in my country, before Ibecame a US citizen, we couldn't
own firearms and they were allthis turmoil.
But here you can, so is thatnot like the perfect?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
that's the second amendment.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Like you came here because you fled a country that
couldn't do that, and now you'rehere, and now you're exercising
that right because you can holdit and it's not just you need.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
you're finding people that don't look at a firearm as
a devil anymore.
Right, they look at it as like,okay, it's fun.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
When you like.
That's why I'm so big intotelling people to get into
shooting sports, because it'slike for sure, listen, I'm
training just to shoot in timeand move, and it's fun.
You're competing against otherpeople.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
So we have, if you haven't noticed when you pulled
in, we're wedged in between thegymnastics very, very lucrative
gymnastics gym.
So it's nothing.
But you know, moms in yogapants all day.
And then we're wedged in behindchili.
So we have all these moms thatwhen we first opened they were
like is this place safe?
Are the other bullets going tocome through the wall?
(40:04):
We had to deal with that.
And there is this misconceptionthat the only people that own
guns in America are, you know,middle age white guys.
And then, if you look at ourclientele, it's women, young,
old, everything in between,every color of the sun.
And I think now we've becomepalatable to the neighbors.
(40:25):
They have no issue with us andin fact some of them have come
through for CCW, some of themtake training, some of them have
done home defense, some of themhave done life wire clashes out
in one hour.
So I think that we're softeningthe blow.
I think that if we had camehard out the gate prior to the
opening and really screamed fromthe rafters that we existed, I
think we would have been shutdown.
But we've caused, we've kind oflike slowly, kind of eased into
(40:49):
it.
I think we become, you know atfirst we're all those are the
gun guys.
Now that's Joan Bob.
I think we're more self-taught.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Like you know, you're sewing classes.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I do yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Now, that's something that's like me, like I learned
to sew when I was a kid.
Yeah, and you know, when you'rein military you have to sew,
because you're always rippingshit button, button, button,
these buttons.
But anyway, you're alwayssewing.
But what's up in, like the gearman everybody loves gear let's
talk sewing man.
Let's talk into these differenttypes of classes, not just
shooting.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
If it was, if I could have my way right now, I would
just sit this out shop all day.
I could sit there and buildanything.
I love it, so gear.
So I came out of that course Iwas telling you about, I had a
rubber band fail on me and itcame back and I didn't know how
to sew.
So I talked, I reached out tosomebody who did and I said hey,
man, I want to bring thisconcept to life.
And he goes Okay, tell me aboutit.
(41:41):
And I told him.
I said it's like a thing tolike hold your sling so that it
doesn't fall off, like a sling,like a retention device.
And he goes oh, that's cool.
He's like I don't think it'sgonna sell.
It sounds like a dumb shit.
But yeah, I'll build it for you.
So I built the gen one the firstone is actually sitting
upstairs on show and I built itand I released it and it started
to like get a little bit oftraction.
(42:02):
And then I started doing alittle more further outreach.
I called units like hey, youwant to T&A this?
You know, give me feedback.
And that feedback led to thegen two, and the gen two led to
the gen three, and the gen threeis where we made our biggest
kind of gains, where we realizedit was more than just a sling
retention device.
We could also use it forholster use.
(42:22):
And that's when the kind of thepush kind of came out of
nowhere.
A lot of guys were taking thisproduct.
That doesn't change theliability of the holster,
because it doesn't changeanything on it.
So if you have issues, safariland, you just take it, you put
it on it doesn't change thescrews and it's still within
department needs but it's alsostill covered.
(42:43):
It's easy to take on and off.
So it started to become verypopular in law enforcement.
Eventually I start selling tosome agencies, to include a
local one being a month BD, wehave a.
We do sell to some of the unitsthere and then it just kind of
took off.
So for about a good three yearsthe gen three was just like I
(43:04):
was just turning them out andthen I started building other
stuff, not for the purposes ofwhat people asked for, just
because I wanted to build stuffmyself.
I kept saying, man, I havenowhere to like hide these
things costs by this, by that,because we have such a unique
job with my job, I said I maybuild these things.
So we started with the placardwhich is a deconfliction piece
and it started with the.
Then it was the hush rig and itwas our IWB patch for cuffs and
(43:27):
small radios.
Like we just started like kindof staying in our lane.
I could build other things butI like the EDC slash, low vis
kind of realm because it justmakes sense to underrepresented
market and if you do build thosethings I think you have a
smaller audience.
But also no bins reallycatering to them, to where, as
(43:49):
you know, when you're makingchess rigs and play carries and
stuff, everybody's doing thoseand those are.
Those are awesome things tomake too.
But I just like staying in therealm of our shop.
So I started selling the genone pretty much took us to
another, you know, took us intothe game, and then the gen three
is kind of where we're kind ofsolidified.
So I have the gen four is justrecently released.
(44:11):
The gen three and four is soldglobally.
So we have customers overseas.
I have customers throughout theUS.
It's been in conflict zones,it's been in videos, it's been
on the news.
I'll be watching the news likeoh, look at that guy getting you
know rested.
Oh, look, there's an SRC.
It's fucking awesome, it'sabsolutely awesome.
The other day with the riots inunion square, there was a cop
(44:32):
just I mean just wrestling androlling around and this SRC is
getting the shit kicked out ofit but it doesn't move.
Yeah, marketing opportunity.
Let me let everyone know that'smy product.
So we, you know we do, we havesome fun.
I get weird requests all thetime.
People like, hey, can you makeme this, can you make me that.
So that kind of what led tolet's do a social, let's do an
(44:53):
open social.
So we started doing open.
So come on, bring your favoritebeer and we'll sit and we'll
build shit Like why not?
You know, I think there's somany awesome people out there
with great ideas, but there's noout for figuring out how do I
bring this thing to life.
So you come into the shop, youshow it to us.
Okay, this is the direction Iwould go.
These are the materials I woulduse.
This is how I would get it done.
(45:14):
What do you want to do with it?
If it's something super cool,guess what?
We got you 100%.
If it's something that like heyman, this is like a one done, I
will tell you.
But you never know, I got told Igot laughed out of a military
chat for offering my src three,I remember.
Or I saying, hey, is there anyair force?
I was in the air force at times, was in the reserves guard
(45:34):
rather, and I offered it intothis group, which was like
senior mentors and all thisother shit, and they like left
me out of the group and I'm likeone guy stepped up and said hey
, I know your products, Iactually own bubble blah, blah,
blah.
Hey, that's awesome, my unitwould like it.
So here I am many years laterand all those people were like
stupid idea.
Really not a stupid idea, it'spretty, pretty lucrative idea,
(45:57):
to be honest with you.
But that's kind of what we'redealing with.
We're dealing with a lot of old.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I think most of it's gone but like the older crowd
was like you know, that's likeyou mentioned the 90s and I
remember the 90s when peoplewere starting to transition from
revolvers to semi-autos and Iwas like oh, there's no way, you
can't.
You know it's unreliable.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
And it's like it's different world.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Well, brother, I appreciate you having us up.
Yeah, thank you and lookingforward to it.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Thank you for coming and thanks for having me protect
yourself.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Please eat before you leave, because you're still,
like I said, you're in the bestbottle I need the best bagels.
Yeah, you're surrounded by myfriend, surrounded by it.
Hey, welcome to the protectors podcast.
I'm here with Joe Fesson.
Joe, what's going on, brother?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Same old my man.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
We are in person, yes , and the beautiful Staten
Island, yes.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
The forgotten borough , the forgotten borough.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Oh my gosh.
You know I've never been toStaten Island.
Now I'm like a veteran of theNYPD.
I mean all over New York, butStaten Island's a different
placement.
I like being out here becausethere is a lot of space.
Now, where are the Trinitytraining complex?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And where did?
Where did this concept comefrom?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So this is about.
I would like to say it's a fewyear project, but it's really
like almost a 10 year project.
We decided on Staten Island fora lot of reasons.
Number one I live here, I wasborn here, raised here, probably
going to die here.
The entry through the manner isthat's the only borough that
would kind of even tolerate ormaybe even be palatable for this
kind of complex.
It's typically a red citycompared to the rest of, you
(01:17):
know, the five boroughs.
I consider this the last lineof defense when it comes to
actual, real New Yorkers stillbeing here.
That's wind.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Okay, yeah, we don't know guys, but you know, what's
really cool about this is doingit in person podcast is it's
real man.
This is real as you get.
This isn't like zoom, thisisn't stream yard and all the
other stuff, but you were youstarted off in the PD, right?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yes, I started off in NYPD.
I got on the job in July of 04.
Spent about a little under 13years there and then, back in
2016, I flipped over to the airmotion service under DHS and it
was just, it was time kind of.
Everything kind of happened fora reason.
I was always looking for a fedjob.
Even when I first got on thisjob, prior to it, I was an
(02:02):
intern at Secret Service, so Ihad post 9 11, I joined the
Marine Corps, went from theMarine Corps pretty much in my
junior or senior year of college, finished my undergrad and I
was doing the reserve thing.
I had gotten my internship withSecret Service down on Adams
Street in Brooklyn with thehopes of never touching a PD
uniform but just going rightinto federal work.
(02:23):
And unfortunately I didn't haveenough work experience.
They like, like that.
I had military, but they didn'treally.
You know, I had nothing reallyto hang my hat on because I was
just a college kid.
They said, oh, go, go into thePD for a little bit, a year or
two, get it.
Get, you know, cut your teeth alittle bit and then come on
over.
And that was kind of like myplan and then got into the
police department that July.
I graduated college that May,got into the police department
(02:44):
in July of 04.
Immediately got out to the 61stprecinct which is in a ship's
of a Brooklyn, was doing thatfor a little bit and I got
activated with the military.
So I did my deployment with theMarine Corps, went to Fallujah
in 2006, came back and during mytransition back to like PD life
(03:05):
, I actually was taking like aintro to you know bomb awareness
or some some bullshit class andthe guy that was in the class
was showing really antiquatedpictures and I said, hey, you
know, I just left Iraq.
I said I have these cool likethis cool you know file of like
all different things that weuncovered while I was there.
I said Let me give it to him.
So I handed to him and the verynext day he goes hey, man, I
(03:25):
went through that dumb drive.
He goes that's some seriouslycool stuff.
Like where where's this from?
I said Well, I said I only leftthe contrary, like not even 90
days ago.
I'm like literally just justfresh out of Fallujah.
I said, and I was working withan Intel team that had you know
carte blanche, the old,different types of evidence.
So I kind of picked and choseand always took tough in because
I thought it was just.
You know, I'm going to want tolook back on this stuff one day.
(03:46):
And in doing so he goes hey,man, I, I like what you've been
through, I like where you'vebeen, I like what you're going
through and I think you havesome value, maybe with a friend
of mine.
Let me introduce you to thisguy.
So Richie the bomb guy, the bombtech.
He introduces me to this guy,ed Sloan.
Ed is unbeknownst to me at thetime, a first grade detective
(04:09):
which I didn't even know thedifference.
I was so boot on the job.
I didn't realize what the valueof a first grader was.
Like a first graders, like youknow, high on the point totem
pole, like this is very few ofthem.
And he introduces me to Ed andEd sitting down with another guy
, pete, and they say, hey, wewant to, we want to talk to you.
So they invite me to thecounterterrorism division which
is in Coney Island, brooklyn,and I go and I sat there and
(04:29):
they put me in this library andI sat down with Ed and Pete and
they just talk, much like we'retalking now and over the course
of the conversation.
Eventually he goes hey, youknow I like some of the
experiences you've been through.
We want to put that to good use.
But understand that this is avery passive unit, like we don't
kick indoors, we don't, none ofthat happens.
But the terrorism value isthere.
(04:50):
So would you be interested inmaybe applying for
counterterrorism division?
I was like Well, I mean,doesn't everybody want to be
here?
It's post 9, 11.
The unit's brand new, it's sexy, it's hard, super fun.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah funded.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
You know, of course I want to do that was a patrol
cop.
He goes, look I'm, I goes, I'mjust a detective, but let me see
what I could do.
I'll put in a good word.
I said Well, I appreciate that.
So fast forward, about a month,maybe two months.
I'm actually in the middle of atrial prep for homicide.
If I found a gun that waskilled the guy, they had it on
top of an elevator and Irecovered it.
(05:22):
So I was a piece of theevidence chain for the
detectives that were, you know,doing the enhancement.
I'm in the middle of that andI'm upstairs with the squad and
I'm, like you know, completelyunrelated to anything terrorism
or any, you know, transfers oranything like that and the boss
that on the desk is like hey,come, come downstairs.
So immediately I think I'm introuble Because I'm like there's
no way I'm getting called downto the desk for anything good.
(05:44):
And I get down there and,lieutenant, down there is
actually a good dude, I used todrive him a lot.
He's like hey, he's like comeover here.
So I go behind the desk BecauseI would never go behind the
desk Because back in the days wehad respect for our bosses and
he's like come here, come here.
And he's pointing at thetelephone message.
I'm like what?
I don't even know what the fuckthis is, you know.
So I look into it and it says,as a midnight hours, you know,
(06:05):
plf and all are transferred tocounterterrorism,
counterterrorism division.
So I'm looking at it and lookat him and I'm looking at him,
he's looking at me.
He's like he goes, you can goaway now.
I'm like okay.
So he's gonna like saysomething, you know.
And I go back up to the squadand the detectives looking at me
like you're all right, are youin trouble?
I'm like yeah, I said I'm good,I said I'm actually transferred
, I'm done.
I said I can't even do thetrial.
(06:26):
I said I'm going ontransferring as a midnight hours
tonight I had no idea what thehell that meant.
They're like to where I'm likecounterterrorism division and
everything just stops.
They're like fuck the case,let's, let's say, all of a
sudden they're pulling, like youknow, little bottles out from
their bags and stuff like thathe stepped in shit kid and have
a drink and I'm like whoa, likethis is another side of the
(06:47):
department I've never seen, youknow.
So it's cool.
It was, like you know, it waspretty much wet behind the years
.
And here I am, this like superjunior dude transferring to a
very senior unit, and it was.
It was nothing but trials andtribulations.
I spent the first probably twoyears just trying to figure out
my place amongst really seasonedpeople like we had, you know,
the proverbial first gradedetectives.
(07:08):
Guys who were, you know, cuttheir teeth and you know
organized crime Making names forthemselves in narcotics and all
these things.
And then they had this likewhite shield, mix it amongst it
and it's like, well, where doyou fit in this whole thing?
Well, my question was well,where do you guys fit in this
whole thing?
Like you know, why are you here?
You know, you just hanging yourhand on the fact that you were
this, that the other, like youknow, we're doing terrorism work
which pre 9-11 really didn'texist, and now this unit is just
(07:32):
boom, mm-hmm.
I come to find out that the guythat kind of vouched for me, the
guy Ed, was a navalintelligence officer.
He had spent a lot of time inCuba, you know, doing
get-most-off, and he was one ofthe people that they valued as
someone who says has knows alittle thing or two and he can
kind of Read between the lineswhen they're interviewing people
, and that's how I kind ofthat's kind of how I got in.
(07:53):
So I ended up gettingtransferred.
I didn't go right to thedivision, I ended up going to a
little offshoot which was Officeof Emergency Management.
So it was a little offshoot downin Cabin Plaza, down by the
Brooklyn Bridge, and I wasfucking miserable.
It was the worst, the worstthing I ever did.
But in retrospect, if I was on,if I was an 18 year veteran, it
would have been awesome becauseit was like the place you go to
(08:14):
die, yeah.
But with three years, fouryears on the job, I was like, ah
, it's not really where I wantto be.
So I was begging, you know,clawing my way back to the
division to get back toterrorism stuff.
But you listen, saying I got,I'd spent about a year there.
I was doing like watch controlwatch command, which was um Kind
of like you have a finger onthe pulse of everything that
goes on, so every agency has arepresentative in that building.
So I learned a little bit ofinteragency work and I spent my,
(08:37):
spent my year just basicallyWatching things unfold in real
time.
So I had the papal visit, wehad the crash in the Hudson, so
these are all things that I waslike I lived through and I and
in retrospect I'm like, wow,these are really notable events.
But at the time I didn't reallymean much of anything to make
because New York that happens,stuff like that happens all the
time, I'd say on any given dayback, especially back then.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
It was just wild.
This is New York, is so big man.
Yeah, there was like 40,000officers.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
So when I got on the job there was about 38,000 I
could.
We're nowhere near that.
No yeah, you know that's.
That's a bonnet contention weare, you know there's been a
mass exit.
That's because most of thehiring was right after 9-11.
So our numbers pre 9-11 weresmaller.
Then we bumped up, you know,with funding and all this other
stuff and in the post 9-11 pushwhen people actually wanted to
(09:25):
be a cop.
And then I'd say for me, I sawthe transition of people.
Son, to say, when we lookelsewhere Was probably around
the time.
I like to show on bell shooting, hmm, which was the first time
where I had ever experiencedlike riots.
Yeah and then that kepthappening, that it was occupied
Wall Street.
Zuccott about like yeah, likethese things were like great,
(09:45):
these things were happening andhappening, and like what would
be a small pocket of resistancewould turn into bigger and
bigger, and then eventually towhat we see now, now, now, today
.
So I think I'd like to say thatit's kind of started with that.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Now, when do you make the jumps to the feds?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
2016.
Okay, so I left in 16.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
So you had a decent amount.
Were you doing terrorism allthe up until then?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
yeah, from from about three years on right up until
the end, okay, and that's, youget your way back to the
division, or so I made it, mademy way to the division.
I eventually spend about eightyears in the C burn team so
doing Ken bio, rad, mucusexplosives, and that's kind of
where I learned a Lot of coolstuff.
So my first project was um.
I Was overseeing the suicidebomber interdiction team, so we
(10:28):
had some technology that came infrom Israel.
Mm-hmm, I was basically handedlike a 500,000 dollar machine
and said, hey, the Israelis aregonna come teach you how to use
this figure.
I had to implement it.
It was like a crash course andhow to like set up photography.
It was like a big camera thatwas on a gimbal mount.
I have no way, I'm a knuckledragon marine at the time.
So I have those crazy stuff andlike they like, don't drop the
lens at.
(10:48):
The lens alone is 50 grand.
I'm like, oh my god, but howmany do we have of these?
Like four.
I'm like, oh my god, like, andI'm responsible for this.
I was freaking out and thatturned into bigger and bigger
stuff and we basically would the.
The division has like thisunlimited budget.
Right, they have the, theaccount and all the money goes
through the division, so evenother units benefited from.
(11:09):
Can a terrorism having this oneway.
You know two-way street withthe federal budget, and it was
constantly flexed.
You know people always, youknow we need to kiss the ring of
counterterrorism are to makesure we get this unit, that
truck, this, that though.
So we had a lot of coolequipment.
We had a lot of cool training.
You know it wasn't uncommonthat, like you know, you'd be
getting email in the morning Igo.
(11:29):
Doctor Jane Oxley from Harvardis in town.
You know blah blah, blah, blahblah.
She's gonna be doing a class on, you know, improvised
explosives.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Well, think about it.
New York is like the epitome ofcounterterrorism and, and when
you talk about the budget andyou being on that unit as a
junior Officer, she's amazing.
That's where, like, I canimagine your experience bringing
it into the Fed world.
But not also that.
But everything happened sincethen.
You know, with understandingthe realities of what you need,
(11:59):
sure, realistically To mount acounterterrorism operation, but
also to be able to deal with,like a stressful environment,
like when you'd say you'redealing with this, hundreds of
thousand dollars of equipment,you, then you also have to think
about, okay, I'm like, if youdrop this, that's responsibility
, man, yeah.
But then when you get into like, okay, well, it's not just the
(12:21):
equipment, it's like what doesit do?
Right, how does it do it?
You have to be super.
You can't just be aknuckle-dragger anymore for sure
, for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You have to understand that camera sees Heat
, so you're ninety point sixdegrees roughly.
That camera has the ability tocool down.
Let's just say arbitrarily likenegative three hundred.
So any change in heat that'scoming out off your body or
something that's blocking heatfrom coming off your body Get
silhouetted as a thermal anomalyand that's how we determine.
(12:49):
All right, is that personconcealing something below their
clothes?
The trials and tribulations ofstopping people for those few.
You know years that we were kindof getting the system up and
running and trying to figure outhow to get it.
That was great, as gray areastuff which is going to tie into
why the company's calledcondition was why the call.
My initial company was calledcondition gray, because
Terrorism work at the time wasneither black nor white, because
(13:12):
we were still kind of figuringit out post on 11 policing.
It was very different than pre911 policing.
I won't pretend to explain that.
I even understand what a 90s copwent through in New York Cuz.
That was some crazy friggintimes.
But I also can't imagine a 90scop ever fathoming what's
happened post on 11, you know,if they had retired and saw that
.
I mean we're dealing some crazystuff and there's no shortage.
(13:34):
I say this whole time, isn't?
There's no shortage of assholesout there.
The activity post 911 was justas rampant as it was pre 911.
I think we were just more opento looking for it.
I think JTTF and units likethat, they really had their
hands full.
And there's a lot ofinter-agency issues too, like
between at the time I rememberwas like counter terrorism, jttf
in television.
(13:55):
Now I think since I've left thejob they've merged and you know
like it's.
You know there's a lot of likeweird.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, now that that's the other thing is.
Now you're in the Fed world,you understand the Fed, you're
on my god yeah yeah, we're notgonna.
I don't really want to get intoo much about your current.
That job is with the fans andeverything Cuz.
I understand the implicationsof that, but I could understand
leaving such a big agency to gowork for the feds.
I can understand wanting to dosomething different, something
(14:23):
that's not going to limit you,something's going to give you
more of a budget.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
And you're not.
You know, and I'd imagine 13years on a job, you're going to
have some sort of guilt ofleaving.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, like you know how you manage 13 years.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
I'm vested.
Do I leave?
What was that taking that steplike?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And it was a little easier for a guy like myself at
the time because I had prettymuch burnt my bridges in the
division.
I had an issue with a boss whoreally the best thing that ever
happened to me was he jammed meout.
You know he came in late in mycareer and I was still a white
shield who was young on the jobbut also senior in the unit.
That was kind of an anomaly.
(15:00):
There was only a handful of usthat had probably less than 10
years on and we happened to bethis now senior people in the
unit.
So you get this young hotshotboss.
He kind of came in with alittle bit of a yeah, I'm going
to do things my way.
But reality is in that a unitlike that bosses were only
really good for like overtimeslips and days off you know,
like I don't really need you forthe actual expert stuff because
(15:20):
you're not really much ofanything.
And this guy I actually startedout liking him and I thought we
had a little bit of rapport, butwhen everything, when push came
to shove, he actually tried tojam me up for military paperwork
so he screwed himself.
It led to a federal case andthe rest is kind of for another
day.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, departmentally case, for another day, the
military deployment.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah.
So he went the wrong way aboutit and it gave me, when
everything was said and done,gave me the ability to kind of
choose what I want to do in mylife and at the time I could
have went back to the job.
But I had this federal offerand I literally was on military
leave.
I came back from military leave, I came back to the job for one
day, that's it out, and by Iwas on a Thursday.
(16:06):
And the funny thing is aboutNYPD, like there's no like, it's
not like ceremony, like unlessyou're like a white shirt, you
know big time chief.
But at the time it was I wasmarried and my ex and I we went
up to one PP to turn in my stuffand at the time there was a guy
who was being federallyindicted, who was a chief, who
(16:28):
was being indicted because ofsome scandal that happened with
licensing division, which iskind of ironic.
That I don't I have the CCWkind of foothold now but
ironically he's getting awalkout, even though he's going
to jail or going to do some timeor whatever the heck was going
on with his life.
He was under the watchful eyeof the federal federal
government.
So this guy's getting a fullwalkout, full ceremony.
You know people stand insaluting and here I am a cop and
(16:50):
good standing and you know whatI got?
I got to go up to this halfbarn door where they put a
pillow up and a little pillowhas like a little bit of like
gold trim and it says you know,congratulations on your
retirement.
And you put your shield down onit and they go thank you for
your service.
Just cookies and coffee in thenext room.
And this minute you turn around, you know what you hear Clank,
clank.
That's thrown into a box withevery other fucking cop and my
(17:13):
wife at the time she looked atme and she goes, that's it.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
I said, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
She's like that's it, this is, this is the job.
She's like.
You killed yourself for thisplace.
You gave your best years tothis place.
I said onto bigger and betterthings, sure shit.
And eventually I would by.
Next to that, following Tuesday, I was in my New York field
office doing my you knowinitiation and I remember I hit
(17:40):
three hours of traffic that daybecause my office was in Queens
and I remember driving homegoing fuck, I shouldn't have
done this.
I can't stand traffic Like it's.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Like it's the bane of my existence in New York, you
know.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
But I go into the academy.
I kept my mouth shut, kept myears open, because now I'm older
dude, going through a federalacademy and just don't show your
cards and little by little, I,you know, I'd try to put myself.
Where did you work?
Worked at an MPD, yeah, but youcould shoot.
So you guys are not known forthat.
I train on the outside.
(18:11):
I'm kind of training.
I have a company oh, what doyou do?
I am this company calledCondition Gray.
What is that?
You know?
Immediately the next day theycome in.
They're like hey, man, you,I've seen your products before.
Okay, all right.
So by the time I left theacademy, people who had the bag
was out.
They would try to throw me allsorts of curveballs just for fun
, and you know I'm going tonavigate them.
(18:32):
I've been through seeing,seeing a lot of cool things over
my life and navigate a lot ofweird stuff.
Life was good.
So I graduate, I get to myfield office Right just prior to
COVID.
I was selected to work on Viper,which is like our kind of like
our ground team, which is kindof still kind of in its figuring
(18:53):
it out kind of stage.
It's kind of a weird unit, butthen they say nobody wants to go
out there.
I wanted a little break fromflying.
I was having issues with my exwhich would eventually lead to a
divorce, and I joined Viper andViper was supposed to be like a
two year stint and two yearsbecause COVID turned into three,
which turned into almost four,and then in that time the agency
(19:15):
had a lot of, I think,interesting dynamics.
We were being used for morethings.
I ended up going to the DCriots, some riots in other parts
of the country, riots in my ownhome city.
I'm seeing people at the borderall over the place.
Border, border was in.
That's a whole.
I was just there.
Border was interesting and, asNSSEs, let's backtrack.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
You mentioned that you started the company.
Where did this all start?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I mean like it started because when I was
jammed up.
So I get jammed up and I getbooted from Canada terrorism
because I have to go, you know,rub a gun squad, so to speak,
and I get sent to centralbooking, which is where we're
talking about with Aaron, and Ispent a few months there and in
that time, while I'm waiting formy case to kind of fall into
(20:07):
place, fighting with lawyers andthe PBA, trying to figure out
how to get back to work, back todoing the real work, and in
that time there was a pointwhere I was like, well, what if
I don't?
What if I can't get back to it?
I just spent a good portion ofmy life establishing these
skills that very few cops have.
What if this job, what if Idon't have a job?
(20:31):
When this is said and done?
So I was kind of like, man, letme take some money out, let me
establish something.
So I start investing in myself,I start seeking schools that I
knew I could go to and I end upgoing like self paid my way
through Darcy level one, Darcylevel two and all these shooting
courses and I said, let me seewhat's out there.
(20:51):
How do I structure this if Iwas to do this here Because
there was nobody out here.
And I come back and in that time, while I'm at Darcy, I had an
incident where I went to go dipout of a car under nods and my
sling got caught around theseatbelt because my rubber band
failed.
So check that in the back ofthe box, because we're going to
(21:12):
circle back to that and Ifinished the drill on.
I was completely humbled bythat course.
That course is an absolute kickin the nuts, Like if you think
you have any understanding oflike close quarters combat, go
there and then figure out if youreally do.
Because by Wednesday I was likemy head was like in between my
legs and my tail was stuck.
I was like man, this is an asskekka, but it was a good ass
kekka because it opened up myeyes to, as Richard put it, you
(21:34):
know, you don't know what youdon't know and we know.
We have this like King Kongtheory in New York, where the
NYPD were the biggest, were thebest.
We have this, we have that.
We're still so far behind andI'll get to that.
So condition gray opens.
I don't even know if I waslegally allowed to have it in
the eyes of the NYPD at the time, I didn't give a fuck, which is
pretty much my attitude, goingforward with it, with the job,
(21:57):
and you have to have an outlet.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
You have.
It's not just an outlet, youhave to have an out for sure.
You know, like when I was, whenI was going through the Fed, I
was having some issues there.
I had like five or sixdifferent things, like if a
happens, I'm going to do B.
Yeah, b happens, I'm going todo C, and if I got to go back to
A, I'll go back to A.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
So yeah, sometimes you got to take a few steps back
to go, to go forward andthere's like this unrelenting,
like grasp that, like policinghas over you like, oh what, I
can't do anything else.
You absolutely can't doanything else.
I laugh because I think, likethree year cops not seeking a
Fed job are out of their minds.
They are out of their mindsBecause in those three years
(22:36):
you're going to put your handson more people and interact with
more people than any Fed world.
You know that.
You know it's my.
If you saw my two sets ofhandcuffs and I wasn't even like
this, like super active cop,but like my Fed cop, my Fed
cuffs and like my NYPD cuffs, solike once pristine, you could
tell they've only been used inlike a training environment.
Yeah, the other ones are likethere's like probably DNA on it.
(22:56):
Still, you could probably likesaid like an okay, I'll logical
dig on them, they're just nasty,but my philosophy, too, is like
Treat it like a militaryenlistment.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
You want to serve.
They'll become a cop for fouror five years.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
You don't have to do a career man.
Right, right, go move on and itpays off.
And I find that NYPD is funny.
So a few guys that were comingon my job would sit on the panel
and I knew that they werecoming in or knew they were
coming into a panel interview.
I'd be like, how'd they do?
And they're like, oh they didterrible.
And I'm like why they're likethey wouldn't answer the
questions with them.
(23:28):
They would only answer thequestions with wait.
I'm like because that's the weis all they got.
I said it's programmed that thebig blue walls coming, it's
coming back up.
And NYPD was good about that.
And I think a lot of these guyshave a hard time individualizing
themselves as something beyondthe team.
So they come on the panelinterviews.
(23:50):
They botched the questionsbecause the person on the panel
is like, no, tell me what youdid.
I don't care what you guys did,I want to know what you did.
And that's kind of a inertia.
So we actually started doing acouple of years ago we would do
federal job, like workshops, tokind of tell guys, hey, how do
you navigate these?
Because it took me forever toget a job.
I went through the bureau, Iwent through the A, went through
(24:13):
all these different things andit took me a hundred tries
before I finally got the job Iwanted.
And you know, like anythingelse, like the stars have to
kind of align, like you have tofit the right, you know what
they want for that hiringprocess.
Let's just put it that way, youknow, for lack of better words.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
you know they may need to get the feds are
hemorrhaging now too, because Iwas like I retired March, but
you know I went in 2000 and 2001was a huge push.
That's going to become aspecial agent with customs back
then.
But now everybody's retired andnow trying to find people to
qualify and qualify atapplicants.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
They let them go over the past 10 years.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
You know, growing up on the East Coast, you know
because I grew up in Jersey andit was like everybody wanted to
be a cop.
I talked to another captain theother day and he was like you
know, we used to get like wehadn't hired an announcement.
We had 800 people.
Now we're lucky if we get 80 or90 and out of that we're lucky
if we get we can get a handfulthat can make it through the
process.
So then it comes down to likethe quality of people you're
(25:16):
getting is a lot different, butin there there is quality.
And then we have to look at thebig picture.
Is because there's such bigagencies and I always thought
I'm like ah, you're NYP, you'regoing to be able to go to
training in this and that, butnow you're in these small
departments, you're not going toget training.
You're lucky if you get thequala with 50 rounds or more.
(25:37):
You're lucky, right.
And there's just simply notraining.
Use a force Good luck with that.
Yeah, training, good luck withthat.
Blue on blue force training oranything, good luck with that.
So you get into the gear.
But then when do you startdoing the training?
Speaker 2 (25:54):
So training started in 2015.
My very first class is ironicit was a night vision class
because I was hot off the Darcyyou know, the Darcy grad, and I
was coming to bring this andthat's going to bring everyone
in.
And my first night vision classwas down in South Jersey
shooting club and we failed it.
But man, the skills were allover the place.
There are people that just havegear, just to have gear, and
(26:17):
there are people that were goodto go, but for the most part it
was a hodgepodge mix of people.
And what I realized was is thatbefore we can start doing stuff
like that, we have to kind ofsolidify the fact that people
need to have good weaponsmanipulations.
So we spent the kind of took astep back and said, all right,
well, what do we need to buildpeople up so they could take
classes like that?
And the answer was we need todo basic basic pistol, basic
(26:38):
rifle, basic pistol, basic rifle.
And we just loaded the schedulefor years, probably like two or
three years, to build up enoughalumni, just so that when you
do a specialty class, you havethat, that certain caliber of
student who can step in and not,you know, jeopardize the safety
of class, because it'sdifferent out here.
We're not born with guns in ourgranddaddy's rifle Weapon
(27:00):
safety is kind of a thing that'skind of implemented as they
kind of fall into their own.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
You know you just brought up a great point is like
you think about how many cops,how many feds, how many
everything live within this.
Like these square miles andlike the laws and everything
don't make it conducive to goand get even ammo to train on
your own.
And our do this.
Our find a range that you coulddo not just like, a flat range
or nothing dynamic at all.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
If anything, you're just shooting paper, no, no no,
unless you're doing competitions, you ain't moving a gun
anywhere on any of these rangesand they're just small.
I mean, we're looking at StatenIsland.
We have a couple of really niceranges, but you're still
dealing with antiquated mindset,that you have older range
officers who are dealing with ayounger generation who's now
(27:45):
like a GWAT level or era personwho wants to be dynamic, shoot
from a holster and that's partof their job, maybe, and they're
like freaking out about that.
Easy there, fellow Can't do arhythm Six round body.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Well, think about this too.
Rhythm drill.
You have like big departmentstoo, or even little ones, a lot
of times a range guys are likeold school, old school, oh yeah,
yeah.
And.
I think they started this tohot rub off.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, I think that we're getting past that now, but
there was a point where, likeyou know, if you were shooting
quick, they're like, oh, wecan't do that.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
So tell us about this complex.
So this place is and you showedme around.
I'm seriously impressed, Thankyou.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
I love this place.
It's kind of like an extensionof my brain, which is kind of
sad to say because it's so weird, but it's definitely me.
So one of my students, bob,who's now my business partner,
at one point about four or fiveyears ago he's like hey, man,
where you going with all this?
I said I had no idea.
He's like you got to do, yougot to have something in mind.
(28:43):
I said, well, he's like, what'sthe end state of doing classes
and putting out products?
I said, well, I guess to retireand have something, you know,
always have a back, you know,fall back.
You know dad got kids, gotcollege, you know, and then
they're young, I know I had todo something.
He's like well, in a perfectworld, what would you want?
I said, well, I'd want afacility that I could do
(29:04):
everything you know indoor, livefire, cqb, night vision,
whatever, If you, you know, thesky's the limit.
He goes all right.
Where would you put it?
So we spent about the first yearof looking in like Pennsylvania
for large plots of land.
Then we all was like, yeah,it's too far.
We were losing all our weekends, you know, with our kids and
stuff.
So then there was Jersey.
And then that was still kind offar and the gun laws are weird
(29:26):
and things were changing.
And then we were looking intoLong Island and I was like well,
fuck Long Island because I hatethe parkway.
And eventually I told him witha straight face I said I want to
be in the city.
He's like where.
I said stand down.
He's like, well, that'sconvenient.
I said it is because we havethree Rangers here.
We have a red leading kind ofclientele who are kind of pro
(29:49):
gun, pro cop, pro military.
I said honestly, like the lastreal New Yorkers left, I said
everyone else is like transients.
Even after COVID you still gotthat transient community of
people that are coming out fromlike God knows where to try to
make the name here and I thinklike when you're in Staten
Island you're dealing with anactual, real New Yorkers.
Like there's a different vibewhen you go to like a local
(30:10):
story that you can kind of feelit.
And so I told him stand out.
And then that started about ayear or more of just looking at
building after building and theprice is here on astronomical.
If I told you my overhead forthis building you'd fall off
your chair, but it had to bebuilt.
It's like if you build it, theywill come so fast forward to
(30:31):
last July we found this complex.
I passed this building 50 timesin our search, but this
building was in midreconstruction and at the point
where we were just about to giveup, this place finally came
available.
So we came.
We looked at it because we werelooking at another spot down
the block and it was a lotsmaller.
But then we got off for thisone and we're like you know what
(30:52):
?
Fuck it, let's take it.
So we go, we walked theproperty.
Everything was as you kind ofsee it now, but just wide open
and it was off to the drawingboard.
Well, how are we going to?
What's the aesthetic?
I want New York, I said.
I want to feel New York.
I want to walk in here and say,all right, that's the grind of
(31:12):
a New Yorker.
So we got this graffiti artistwho me, him and another staffer,
a good kid Frank.
We decided to go to Manhattanand we went to, like you know,
lower-glowery side where, likesome of the coolest art is, you
know where people are literallytagging up everything under the
sun, and we spent the entire dayday drinking and looking at
graffiti, eating ice cream,eating food and like eating
(31:36):
Cuban food, like we made a dayof it and we just went from
place to place taking pictures,Like I love that, I love that, I
love that.
And then we came back and wekind of set up a read book and
we were like, all right, well,this is the graffiti we wanted
to bring here and that's kind ofhow it came to be.
But then, with tweaks, so youknow, you'll see places in there
like oh, it's the pink housesthe pink houses.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, so for the people who are listening to this
, there's actually a room and ithas like just incredible
graffiti everywhere.
It's not just cop-centric too.
I mean, you got Biggie in thereand you got like everybody you
could imagine, oh, we're gonnastand out.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
And so you have that Wu-Tang, it's like you can't
grow up here without at leastlistening to one song, knowing
at least one song by heart.
But there's references in there.
So, like you know, my firstfield office was next to Queens
Ridge, so when we first go to doops, that's our homage to that.
The pink houses I had bricksthrown at me on the roof because
I was sitting on top of a firedepartment building doing
(32:26):
counter gun stuff with that samesystem I was telling you about
earlier.
So the pink houses I neverworked in a 7.5.
It's the first time I've everbeen out.
It was like a mythical place forme because I was a Brooklyn
South guy and then I was like,oh, we're going to the Brooklyn
North to do this.
And I'm like, oh, it soundsscary, it's funny because I got
a cop really good friends withit.
He's a housing cop.
He's like you were on top ofthat.
Ugh, I was like why?
(32:47):
I'm like I don't know, itsounds like a good idea at the
time.
The city's wild.
It's definitely worse than it'sever been now and that kind of
this place is kind of like ananswer to well, if the job's not
going to give you the trainingand there's no resource for you
elsewhere, what would you?
Speaker 1 (33:04):
have.
Now.
Where are you bringing in theinstructors from?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
A lot of them came with me over from condition gray
because they were tritured andtested.
We're a funny place, so weshoot for our job.
In other words, if you want towork on our staff in any
capacity that you're going totouch a firearm, you have to
shoot first, because everybodyhere has these tremendous
(33:28):
resumes and it's just you know.
10 pages of just.
You know I love me.
Okay, you're going to go withmy director training who's a
fucking, he's a shooter, he's amother motherfucker of a shooter
and you're going to go with himand you're going to shoot for
your job.
Do I want you to shoot like him?
No, not everyone can, I can't.
(33:49):
But you should be pretty close,because if you're going to step
in front of a crowd of yourpeers, they should look at you
and say, well, that's where Ican get to.
And if you can't do that, Ican't just hang your resume on
the target.
You have to be able to show it,and I think that that has
created animosity because peopleare like oh well, I don't want
(34:11):
to shoot for my job, then youdon't need to work for us, I
need other companies to gofollow and I'm okay with that.
That term comes from my currentjob, because the early post-911
agency was hey, you want to comework for us, come shoot for
your job.
And they had two buses and wealways get told the story, the
lineage of how the service wascreated, and it's like there's
(34:32):
two buses one for those whopassed and went on to training
and one that went back towhatever job they came from.
I always thought that wasimpressive and when you look
around the industry, some ofthese people are still in the
industry because they've nowthey've left up my agency and
now they're on their own andthey're doing their things.
And my original staff shirtswere Burgundy and Maroon for the
people who were with me thelongest, because that's a homage
(34:55):
to those instructors.
So there's a lot of.
We never do anything.
That's like unpurposeful, so tospeak.
If that's even a word, there'salways like a hidden agenda
behind it.
Like, oh, why do they wear thatcolor?
Well, also for instructors whohave been with me since day one,
because they shop for theirjobs and we have some sick
instructors on our staff.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Well, that's the thing too is like when you
brought up the resume,especially when it comes to
firearms a tactical, you couldbe former, whatever, and you
might not be a good instructor,you could shoot me, whatever,
but to be able to shoot andinstruct it's a tough thing.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
New Yorkers are like tough people, like to look and
press.
But you could out shoot theshit out of them and they'd be
like, yeah, he's good, yeah,whatever, yeah, whatever he's
good.
Like it's like the guy justfriggin' crushed the drill.
Like give him credit.
Where credit is there?
That guy's good, you knowwhatever.
That's just New York mantra.
But we've established ourselves.
I'm sure we have people thatlove us.
(35:51):
We have people that hate us.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
There's always going to be haters.
It could be the best company inthe world, but it's I don't
know if it's Ego or envy arejust unknowing.
For sure A lot of it isunknowing because they don't
know what goes on behind thedoors For sure.
Now, trinity I love that word,I love it.
It's so cool.
But also, what's your visionnow?
Speaker 2 (36:10):
To stay alive.
So we opened the doors quietly.
We didn't know if we were goingto have protesters outside our
front door.
We didn't push it, we didn'tlike advertise it, we just said
let's let the doors breathe andsee what walks in.
And we've survived.
We're actually just hit a yearthis year that we've been in
this building.
November would be really a yearsince we've been open, but
(36:33):
we've had a crazy year.
So in the past, since November,so however many months that is,
we've had close to 800 studentsfor just CCW alone.
So basically, july we take overthe building.
August we start construction.
September this crazy thingcalled the Bruin case All of a
sudden just emerges out ofnowhere.
We knew it was common, but wedidn't know what the outcome of
(36:55):
it was and it just changed thedynamic of what we were
intending to do, because thegoal was to train law
enforcement military lawenforcement military, because
it's really all we had and justcontinued the condition gray
model.
And now you have this variablethat comes out of the blue with
the Bruin case and now 18million people in the five
boroughs wants to now on a fire.
So where do you go?
Well, thank the gods, one ofthe prerequisites, or one of the
(37:19):
one of the aspects of CCW isthat you can have any type of
striker fire ammunition toinclude NLTA, which is what this
facility is.
So you can do your quality, youcould satisfy the needs of the
New York State DCJS, whatevercert is, whatever the
requirements are, with somemunitions, force on force, utm,
because those are striker firedmunitions.
(37:40):
So now, in the safety of thisbuilding, you can do your quail
and take your class all onto oneroof.
Now, where does that leave us?
What is my future?
Well, we have 800 people.
Probably by November will haveover a thousand, so that's a
thousand CCW holders who are inthe myriad of different aspects
(38:01):
of their process, some who havealready received their permit,
some who are still on the cuspof it, and then they're going to
get it and with the hopes thatthey say you know what, it
didn't end there, it juststarted there.
Where?
Speaker 1 (38:14):
do I go?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
to train Now.
I think the fruits of our laborare gone.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
And then, well then, you have all their friends and
family who want to get CCW.
Exactly, and you know what.
You brought up something beforeby being red.
I can tell you right now thatred, blue, green, purple,
everybody wants a CCW, 100%Everybody 100% these classes
nobody care.
You go in there and you'regoing to see like a grandma.
You're going to see like a 20year old kid with pink hair.
(38:38):
Jason, it's so diverse.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
It's ridiculous.
I kind of wish like peoplewould see no one wants to get
videoed in CCW and we always ask, okay, is everyone
uncomfortable before we do?
We could really advertise theshit out of it and make probably
double our profits, but we kindof keep it like hey, this is
your income we got you.
Word of mouth is fun.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
When I tell you the diversity that walks into this
building.
Some of it's fun, because theytell you why they're here and
some of them are like.
Well, in my country, before Ibecame a US citizen, we couldn't
own firearms and they were allthis turmoil.
But here you can, so is thatnot like the perfect?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
that's the second amendment.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Like you came here because you fled a country that
couldn't do that, and now you'rehere, and now you're exercising
that right because you can holdit and it's not just you need.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
you're finding people that don't look at a firearm as
a devil anymore.
Right, they look at it as like,okay, it's fun.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
When you like.
That's why I'm so big intotelling people to get into
shooting sports, because it'slike for sure, listen, I'm
training just to shoot in timeand move, and it's fun.
You're competing against otherpeople.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
So we have, if you haven't noticed when you pulled
in, we're wedged in between thegymnastics very, very lucrative
gymnastics gym.
So it's nothing.
But you know, moms in yogapants all day.
And then we're wedged in behindchili.
So we have all these moms thatwhen we first opened they were
like is this place safe?
Are the other bullets going tocome through the wall?
(40:04):
We had to deal with that.
And there is this misconceptionthat the only people that own
guns in America are, you know,middle age white guys.
And then, if you look at ourclientele, it's women, young,
old, everything in between,every color of the sun.
And I think now we've becomepalatable to the neighbors.
(40:25):
They have no issue with us andin fact some of them have come
through for CCW, some of themtake training, some of them have
done home defense, some of themhave done life wire clashes out
in one hour.
So I think that we're softeningthe blow.
I think that if we had camehard out the gate prior to the
opening and really screamed fromthe rafters that we existed, I
think we would have been shutdown.
But we've caused, we've kind oflike slowly, kind of eased into
(40:49):
it.
I think we become, you know atfirst we're all those are the
gun guys.
Now that's Joan Bob.
I think we're more self-taught.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Like you know, you're sewing classes.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I do yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Now, that's something that's like me, like I learned
to sew when I was a kid.
Yeah, and you know, when you'rein military you have to sew,
because you're always rippingshit button, button, button,
these buttons.
But anyway, you're alwayssewing.
But what's up in, like the gearman everybody loves gear let's
talk sewing man.
Let's talk into these differenttypes of classes, not just
shooting.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
If it was, if I could have my way right now, I would
just sit this out shop all day.
I could sit there and buildanything.
I love it, so gear.
So I came out of that course Iwas telling you about, I had a
rubber band fail on me and itcame back and I didn't know how
to sew.
So I talked, I reached out tosomebody who did and I said hey,
man, I want to bring thisconcept to life.
And he goes Okay, tell me aboutit.
(41:41):
And I told him.
I said it's like a thing tolike hold your sling so that it
doesn't fall off, like a sling,like a retention device.
And he goes oh, that's cool.
He's like I don't think it'sgonna sell.
It sounds like a dumb shit.
But yeah, I'll build it for you.
So I built the gen one the firstone is actually sitting
upstairs on show and I built itand I released it and it started
to like get a little bit oftraction.
(42:02):
And then I started doing alittle more further outreach.
I called units like hey, youwant to T&A this?
You know, give me feedback.
And that feedback led to thegen two, and the gen two led to
the gen three, and the gen threeis where we made our biggest
kind of gains, where we realizedit was more than just a sling
retention device.
We could also use it forholster use.
(42:22):
And that's when the kind of thepush kind of came out of
nowhere.
A lot of guys were taking thisproduct.
That doesn't change theliability of the holster,
because it doesn't changeanything on it.
So if you have issues, safariland, you just take it, you put
it on it doesn't change thescrews and it's still within
department needs but it's alsostill covered.
(42:43):
It's easy to take on and off.
So it started to become verypopular in law enforcement.
Eventually I start selling tosome agencies, to include a
local one being a month BD, wehave a.
We do sell to some of the unitsthere and then it just kind of
took off.
So for about a good three yearsthe gen three was just like I
(43:04):
was just turning them out andthen I started building other
stuff, not for the purposes ofwhat people asked for, just
because I wanted to build stuffmyself.
I kept saying, man, I havenowhere to like hide these
things costs by this, by that,because we have such a unique
job with my job, I said I maybuild these things.
So we started with the placardwhich is a deconfliction piece
and it started with the.
Then it was the hush rig and itwas our IWB patch for cuffs and
(43:27):
small radios.
Like we just started like kindof staying in our lane.
I could build other things butI like the EDC slash, low vis
kind of realm because it justmakes sense to underrepresented
market and if you do build thosethings I think you have a
smaller audience.
But also no bins reallycatering to them, to where, as
(43:49):
you know, when you're makingchess rigs and play carries and
stuff, everybody's doing thoseand those are.
Those are awesome things tomake too.
But I just like staying in therealm of our shop.
So I started selling the genone pretty much took us to
another, you know, took us intothe game, and then the gen three
is kind of where we're kind ofsolidified.
So I have the gen four is justrecently released.
(44:11):
The gen three and four is soldglobally.
So we have customers overseas.
I have customers throughout theUS.
It's been in conflict zones,it's been in videos, it's been
on the news.
I'll be watching the news likeoh, look at that guy getting you
know rested.
Oh, look, there's an SRC.
It's fucking awesome, it'sabsolutely awesome.
The other day with the riots inunion square, there was a cop
(44:32):
just I mean just wrestling androlling around and this SRC is
getting the shit kicked out ofit but it doesn't move.
Yeah, marketing opportunity.
Let me let everyone know that'smy product.
So we, you know we do, we havesome fun.
I get weird requests all thetime.
People like, hey, can you makeme this, can you make me that.
So that kind of what led tolet's do a social, let's do an
(44:53):
open social.
So we started doing open.
So come on, bring your favoritebeer and we'll sit and we'll
build shit Like why not?
You know, I think there's somany awesome people out there
with great ideas, but there's noout for figuring out how do I
bring this thing to life.
So you come into the shop, youshow it to us.
Okay, this is the direction Iwould go.
These are the materials I woulduse.
This is how I would get it done.
(45:14):
What do you want to do with it?
If it's something super cool,guess what?
We got you 100%.
If it's something that like heyman, this is like a one done, I
will tell you.
But you never know, I got told Igot laughed out of a military
chat for offering my src three,I remember.
Or I saying, hey, is there anyair force?
I was in the air force at times, was in the reserves guard
(45:34):
rather, and I offered it intothis group, which was like
senior mentors and all thisother shit, and they like left
me out of the group and I'm likeone guy stepped up and said hey
, I know your products, Iactually own bubble blah, blah,
blah.
Hey, that's awesome, my unitwould like it.
So here I am many years laterand all those people were like
stupid idea.
Really not a stupid idea, it'spretty, pretty lucrative idea,
(45:57):
to be honest with you.
But that's kind of what we'redealing with.
We're dealing with a lot of old.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I think most of it's gone but like the older crowd
was like you know, that's likeyou mentioned the 90s and I
remember the 90s when peoplewere starting to transition from
revolvers to semi-autos and Iwas like oh, there's no way, you
can't.
You know it's unreliable.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
And it's like it's different world.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Well, brother, I appreciate you having us up.
Yeah, thank you and lookingforward to it.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Thank you for coming and thanks for having me protect
yourself.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Please eat before you leave, because you're still,
like I said, you're in the bestbottle I need the best bagels.
Yeah, you're surrounded by myfriend, surrounded by it.
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