All Episodes

December 14, 2024 85 mins
Detective John Fleming, a 29-year veteran of New York City’s Office of Special Narcotics, joins the program for a look at one or more New York City’s more unique law enforcement agencies.

Connect With Mike Colón:

X: https://x.com/mikeinnewhaven
Instagram: https://instagram.com/mikecolo...
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MikeC...
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsl...
Media Website: https://mike-colon-media.com/
Consulting Website: https://www.mcmediaeditingserv...
Business Line: 917-781-6189
Media Email: thecolonreport@gmail.com
Consulting Email: mike@mcmediaeditingservicesllc.com

Connect With Producer Vick:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prod...

Connect With John Fleming:

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/john-fl...
Website: https://bsccfl.org/

Listen To The Podcast:

iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/...
iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast...
Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/...
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/...
PlayerFM: http://front.player.fm/series/...
Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/se...
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podca...
Buy My Book: https://a.co/d/cZb1Ez7
YouTube (Video Version): https://www.youtube.com/live/0...

Sponsors:

MC Media Editing Services:

https://www.mcmediaeditingserv...

Ryan Investigative Group LLC:
https://www.ryaninvestigators....

Outro Song: Tommy Keene - Places That Are Gone (1986)

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mic-d-in-new-haven--2828702/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to the Mic to do Avin podcast, hosted
by media personality and consultant Mike Gloge. You know, as

(00:43):
the show has progressed over the years of me doing it,
it's allowed me to take a look and do different
types of episodes that normally are outside of the format
that we conventionally do. And as I've noted in the
promo for this upcoming episode and welcome back, ladies and
gentlemen to this episode three hundred and forty six of
the Mike and We have a podcast, we always like
to do deep dives of some sorts in that we

(01:04):
have our police and fire interviews, which are normally pretty conventional.
Excuse me for a moment. That's the winter, folks, I
get a bad call from the winter usually. But what's
nice about this episode is that, as many of you know,
at least in the service level, at least I did,
there's several different law enforcement agencies or entities in the
five boroughs of New York City. Now we know about
the NYPD, for example, or the MTA Police or the

(01:26):
Port Afthority Police, but there's specific offices with specific functions
that are very vital to public safety in the city. Now,
we don't know a lot about it, and it's not
because they don't do great work. They certainly do, and
sometimes that work has to be kept under wraps for
confidentiality reasons, security reasons, or the offices are so small
they kind of operate in a subtle fashion. But tonight,

(01:47):
with this episode, we get to take a look at
a law enforcement agency in New York City that's been
around for a long time and it's very important in
its mission. And I reached out to tonight's guest via
LinkedIn and tonight he'll tell me just what that office
does is rolling it all the years, and some other
interesting anecdotes as well. So we'd like to welcome everybody
tuning in via YouTube, LinkedIn and of course Facebook, Helloda,

(02:08):
Joe Maliga, who's always here, Billy Ryan, Christian Williams, Steve Virado,
and Matt Shirley, the usual suspects, So John Costella, I
can't forget about Jack Costello, the usual Suspects tuning it
on this fine Friday evening, pretty cold here, and at
least the East Coast, Night's guest doesn't have to worry
about that. He's down in Florida, So I already envy him.
That might create some contention between us. And just before

(02:30):
I get into the advertisements, if you haven't checked out
the previous episode, that was volume sixty four of our
FD and Y mini series, the Best of the Bravest
interviews with the FDU.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Wis elite former.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
FD and Y Division chief Jase Withers, who is active
on the FD and Y ems side of things.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
All righty, so let's get into the ads.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
And the first thing, as always is MC Media Editing
Services heat advice on how to start your podcast. Frustrated
with the editing process, can't find a voiceover guide? Hi,
I'm Mike Colone and I'm here to help. I'm the
owner and founder of MC Media Editing Service. This is
your premier consulting company for all things media, where I
can offer you consulting advice on how to get started
and once you get started editing as well as voiceover work,

(03:09):
all for a very reasonable price. If you want to
reach me, you can contact me at nine one seven
seven eight one sixty one eight nine or the email
that you see listed here. I'm always available and I'm
always willing to help again. Nine one seven seven eight
one six one eight nine. Why go to some giant
consulting firm. It's going to charge you an arm and
a leg when you can just come to me. If
you want to be stressed free, the way to go
is to call mc mc Media Editing Services.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
You're premier consulting company.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
And now, good to see Joe Murray in the chat.
I haven't seen Joe in a while. Joe, I'm glad
you're tuning in. I know you've been very busy between
work and family, so I'm glad you're in the chat.
And that my friend and I said welcome side. And
of course, so as always there is the great Billy Rych.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
The Mike in.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Newaping podcast is proudly sponsored and supported by the Ryan
Investigative Group. If you need an elite PI, look no
further than the elite Ryan Investigative Group, which is run
by retired yp Detective Bill Ryant, a twenty year veteran
to the Department who served a majority of his career
in the Detective Bureau, most notably in the arson explosion squad.
So if you need a PI to handle anything from fraud,

(04:08):
legal services, and anything else that you might require, contact
Bill at three four seven four one seven sixteen ten
again three four seven four one seven sixteen ten. Reach
him at his website or the email that you see here. Again,
if you need a PI, look no further than Bill
Ryan and The Ryan Investigative. For a proud supporter and
sponsor of the Mike de new Haven podcast.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Thank you to Bill. As always.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
My next guest was involved in law enforcement for about
thirty one years between both a civilian role which will
tell me a little bit about and also involved in
New York City's Special Office of Narchives where he was
there from nineteen eighty nine until his retirement in twenty seventeen.
And he was involved not just in investigations, but behind
the scenes pure support and wellness programs, police recruitment, as

(04:50):
well as labor advocacy. It's a former union president, so
he knows firsthand how tricky that can be. There's a
lot of prosy and cons to a job like That's
never easy, but he did for long time. It'll talk
with me about that, and he knows it can go
into the insights of not only his office, but the
nature of investigations, how to coordinate those investigations, especially when
you're working for a District Attorney's office. So then hello

(05:12):
to Don Gonzalaz by the way, joining us tonight for
this episode three hundred and forty six is retired detective
out of the Office Especial Narcotics, mister John Fleming.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
John, Welcome, How are you hi?

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Mike Hello, Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I appreciate you being here.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
So before we get into the office and of course
your career in it, tell me a little bit about yourself, John,
where'd you grow up?

Speaker 3 (05:33):
I grew up in the Bronx, Pauk Chester to East Bronx.
I lived there most of my life. I lived in
the Bronx most of my life. When I got married,
I moved to Yonkers. Then about twenty seventeen, when I retired,
I moved down to Florida.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Alright, and early on, because your path, as we talked
about off the air and as we'll talk about on
there tonight, your path into law enforcement was a unique
one from the standpoint of the office you had the in.
But were you always interested in law enforcement or any
kind of civil service early on or was it something
you kind of discovered you were interested in a little
bit later, Maybe in your teenage years.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Well, my whole family were cops, starting with my grandfather,
four uncles, five cousins. My father worked for the New
York City Transit a already he was a motiman and
it was ingrained in my head when I was a
little kid. You got to get a pension. You gotta
get a pension. So that's where I wound up.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
So originally you worked for DOI. For those of you
that are from outside the New York City AREADI is
Department of Investigation, which is a kind of a law
enforcement agency in and of itself, although its functions vary.
You were civilian involved in that agency. Now you can
go into greater detail than I can explain to the audience.
Dois function and what a civilian can do with that agency?

Speaker 3 (06:52):
That's a good question. DOI was set up many many
years ago. When I got tired, there was a lot
of corruption, municipal corruption going on. Ed Koch was the mayor.
There were a lot of different scandals going on. Parking
violations Bureau was one of them. But when I got hired,
they placed me in the Doy squad. And what was

(07:13):
interesting about that was it was pretty much NYPD detectives
there was a police captain who was the commanding officer,
and I was hired as a special investigator. So I
took about a month, worked of classes, learned how to
do basic investigative work, and then I was signed to
that office and I worked an investigation for one year,

(07:35):
which wound up we had the New York City Sheriff
arrested and indicted. I think it was the highest level
case DI ever did. It really turned me on into
investigative work. I worked undercover. We did surveillance on this
guy for about seven months. I worked with a great
detective and it really was an eye opener, and that's

(07:57):
what really made me go to the DA's office.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
When you look at the headlines these days in New
York City, man, everything comes full circle.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
That's in a history.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, And for those of you that don't know what
I'm talking about, just google it and you'll understand. For
those of you that may have a question the chat
as well, for Detective Fleming, make sure you fired the
way and as always a the appropriate time.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Throughout tonight's episode, I'll be sure to highlight it.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Now.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
You mentioned going through the police academy off theear when
we were talking was the goal to lateral to the
NYPD originally or were you already involved in the Office
of Special Archidics.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
What happened was after doy I got called to the
Transit Police Academy, and back then it was two different academies.
I wanted to go to the NYPD, but Transit called
me first. I was in the Transit Academy and then
I got a phone call from the chief investigator at
a Special Narcotic Prosecutor's office. The detective I worked with,

(08:50):
Indy South Palmery. He had recommended me for the job.
And when I was working in DY, I had to
go to the Manhattan DA's office a bunch of times
because the case was sent over to the DA's office
for prosecution, so they knew me from that. I went
down for the interview. They said to me, when you
come out of the police academy, we're going to hire you.

(09:10):
So I had to go back to the Transit academy.
They didn't know what I was talking about. But the
minute I got out of that Transit Police Academy a
month later, I was working for Special Narcotics, A very
interesting way to get to the DA's office, and.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
I know This seems silly in nature, but I do
want to ask just so it gives me context for
further questions. Given the kind of work you guys are
doing in investigations, you guys are fully scored police officers,
you guys are are But I imagined.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yes, everyone has to go to a police academy. About
seventy five percent of the investigators in the five DA's
Office and Narcotics Prosecutor were NYPD detectives. What happens is
they retire on a Friday, and they get hired by
the DA's office, and they get to keep their pension,
collect it and they get a waiver so they can

(09:56):
get a pension and they can work. And that whole
thing really is because they come to the DA's office
with a specialized skill. The other twenty five percent, with
people like me, we got hired with two years investigative experience.
They send you to the police academy and then you
start work that way.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Then you go into it as a detective's at a
rank you gradually get like the police department as time
goes on.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
When I got hired, the title detective investigator was a
county title. When I got hired, the county titles were
removed from New York City government and it was switched
over to the city. So the test there was a
test for detective investigator and you got hired based on
the county you went to. But when I got hired,

(10:41):
they switched everything over to New York City. And when
I got hired, I got hired as a detective investigator.
That was my rank, but I never worked as a patrolman.
It was an unusual thing to get called a detective
right away, but it really wasn't the same thing as
getting promote it In the NYPD. You came on and

(11:02):
you were detective, and then there were three levels, so
you could be a senior and you could be a supervisor.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
No, And you know, and what's interesting with that is
it's not, as you said, it's not like you would
be patrolling because it's a specific function. It's a very
specific office. You know, they're after narcotics and that's the investigation.
It's not like a New York City Police Department at
that time, housing and transit to where there's the patrol
and then specialized units. You know, with a smaller office
like that, it makes sense you're not going to hop

(11:30):
in a sector car right away, and given the mission
at stake, especially during those days, why would you so?
And Joe Murray, I SI your question, I'll highlight it,
and momentarily, I just wanted to ask this question first
to you. Nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety when you got there,
narcotics is out of control, and unfortunately, narcotics and homicide
and really any violent crime, more times often than not,

(11:51):
tend to go hand in hand. And this was during
a time when the city had well over two thousand,
almost three thousand homicides a year, so it was the
wild West back then. Me about your rookie year and
being involved in what I imagine we're street level archaiic's
investigations and some of the bigger stuff too.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Because the city was.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Hurting well, the Special Narcotic Prosecutor had citywide jurisdiction and
the office was set up. I think in nineteen seventy
two there was a bunch of police scandals, and I
think the governor of the City of New York back then,
I think it was Hugh Carrey, I'm not sure, but
what he did was he tried to remove certain types

(12:28):
of investigations from the Police Department and put them in
the Special Narcotic Prosecutor's Office. At the time I was hired,
seventy five percent of the investigative staff was state troopers.
They moved them out and they slowly started to hire
people like myself and retired detectives. The person who hired
me was Sterling Johnson, and he was a retired New

(12:50):
York City Police sergeant. He's now a federal judge. But
Sterling had the idea of getting his own investigators, and
what he wanted to do is he wanted to focus
on cases that involved multi jurisdictional So there was a
point in time where I was assigned to a Dea
Task Force. Then I was assigned to a treasury the

(13:13):
Eldorado Task Force. So a lot of the investigations I
did as I got more and more experience, were more
of a long term type investigation. But the first year
I worked there, I worked with a retired first grade
detective and he taught me everything he knew about detective work.
I had informants. I had a very very influential partner

(13:36):
who really was like my mentor. He really helped me.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
A lot, and I was gonna say it and hello
to Scott Wagger, I see you in the chat as well.
You know, especially back then, patience is key. If you're
a young investigator, and this is any profession involving law enforcement,
naturally in a good way, you're all hopped up. You
want to make a difference, you want to make an
impact right away, But it's really that slow burn and
that methodical build towards making sure you have an iron

(14:00):
clad case. That way, making sure you can seek an
ironclad indictment, you learned very early on it's not so
much as the old saying goes, it's not so much
a sprint, it's a marathon. You really have to pace
yourself in these cases. And having a partner like that,
you learned that pretty quickly.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah, I mean a lot of what I did the
first couple of years was just all surveillance. We would
follow targets and a lot of the stuff that DA
investigators do is they have to take the case to conviction.
A police officer would go from the investigation to arrest.

(14:36):
With us, we worked with prosecutors and we had to
help them prepare for the case. So if a case
came in and it was an investigation, internally, we would
have the case from the beginning until prosecution. Then a
lot of times there would be cases where you would
have New York City Police Unit Narcotics come in. They

(14:59):
would bring the case to the DA's office and we'd
be responsible for preparing the case for prosecution. So a
lot of times what would happen would be there would
be a drugger, there would be a drug bust, and
then we had to go find witnesses. We had to
help the DA's.

Speaker 4 (15:13):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
If you ever watched the show laur in order, I
tell people with one hundred percent for us, okay, totally false.
A lot of the work that was done by in
there was by lawyers. Lawyers didn't do that type of work.
They got ready to prosecute the case. They weren't out
into ferent people.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
You mean TV lies?

Speaker 3 (15:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a yeah. And I got
I got into a heated fight with the guy who
was the producer for that show. Yeah, And I remember him.
They used to film it in my building, and I
remember I went up to see him one day and
he said, you're gonna be very happy. He says, we're
gonna be putting a TV show in where we're gonna

(15:54):
include DA investigators and at the time he told me
it was gonna be Jerry Orback and Watuning Lee. Jerry
Warbat died, but I remember talking to him and just
explaining because he had no idea what a DA investigator
was either.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
So I'm a huge fan of Lawndooring and I'm glad
you mentioned that. And of course Jerry Orbox portrayal of
Detective Lenny Briscoe easily my favorite portrayal of any TV cop,
and that includes Cippowitz. But it's funny because in the
last episode and that this is how you know I'm
a Law and Order com sort. It's the season finale
of season fourteen and Briscoe and Green are investigating a
gun related homicide where a wife set up a hit

(16:31):
her on her cheating husband, and as they're waiting for
Scooba to retrieve the handgun out of the water, you know,
he tells that his partner, Ed Green, portrayed by the
great Jesse Martin, Hey, I'm putting in my papers and
you know. Ed Green goes to Briscoe, what what are
you gonna do? It's like, oh, I'll pick up a
case with the DA's office. So's it's funny he would
say that, and he didn't even.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Know in real life what exactly the role was.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, it's interesting because they asked me since they filmed
on the eighth floor at eighty Center Street, they asked
me if I wanted to, you know, speak to somebody.
But they told me they had a couple of people
who will retired detectives who worked in the DA's office
and they worked in Manhattan and they so they had
some stuff down. But I told him, I said, from
my point of view, if you want to know like
what a Korea young guy does in the DA's office,

(17:16):
you know, I'd talk to you.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
No, And it's it's sad because when Jerry took that
role on, he was very sick with prostate camps. Yeah,
he didn't have a lot of time left. I only
did a couple episodes of a Trial by Jerry, that
was the name of the show. He did a couple
episodes and unfortunately he went back to the hospital and
he died in December of four back cancer at sixty nine.
The question Joe Murray had he's a former NFPD cop
turned criminal defense attorney. Does the MTA police fall under DOI.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
No. DY is for the most part, the internal affairs
for all mayoral agencies, with the exception of the New
York City Police Department. So if you worked in DY,
you can investigate almost any city employee except for the
New Yorks the police department.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
That makes sense.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
NYPD has its own internal affairs, so I can see
why they would be accepting that particular aspect. So in
terms of and you mentioned, lawyers aren't going out there
and doing it. So it's always funny to watch Jack
McCoy and whoever's partner was go out there and do
those interviews. You're doing them, and you have to get
people to trust you, especially in narcotics cases. You know,
you're talking about situations where people naturally are a free

(18:25):
to open their mouth. They open their mouth, they could
end up getting killed, Their loved ones could end up
getting killed, especially if they're higher profile traffickers you're going after.
So just tell me about gaining trust in order to
build cases, which is sometimes the biggest hurdle of all.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Well, Mike, I can give you a great example of that.
One time, there was a very large narcotics gang that
was working at a housing projects in Brooklyn and we
had the case. We picked it up from the police department,
and what we found out was that the amount of

(19:00):
these people had was tremendous and we were trying to
go We would go to the housing projects to try
to get people to testify, and I remember going into
apartments and the kids were doing their homework in the bedtub,
and I remember asking my partner, I said, why are
they't in the bantub and he said, the parents don't
want him getting shot. And at the time, we were

(19:23):
at a housing project in Flatbush and there was a
shootout across the street, and you know, we didn't have
radios to attach into the police department. Sometimes we got
a city wipe, but we had to call up, you know,
on our own. They came. But I used to feel
bad to ask people to testify because I had a

(19:45):
secondary concern. We did ask people to testify sometimes, and
there's always that thought in the back of your mind
that you're going to put the person in, you know,
in harm's way. But in the end, most people would
not testify. They were too afraid.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
You have to find alternate ways to build your Yes,
you mentioned surveillance, that's a big part of it, and
without getting tricks of the trade away. As far as
what you can discuss, what were some of the other
ways to make sure. Like we talked about earlier, when
that in Dight became down, it was ironclad and these
jerks weren't getting out of it.

Speaker 3 (20:19):
Wyattaps was a big thing. Search warrants were a huge thing.
I mean a lot of these guys, they were major
drug dealers, but they were really stupid. And then when
social media came, they loved to go on social media
and show their jewelry and stuff. But before social media,
they would talk on the phone all the time, and

(20:41):
a lot of times it was very easy to get
a search warrant. So a lot of that was they
gave themselves up.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
That helps, you know, listen, it keeps you guys in business.
It's called job security. She always loved to see that.
I did want to ask this because this wasn't the
case earlier on the old school. Guys did not want
it and did not favor it. But when Gott he
had cast A Loto whacked. One of the reasons Castellano
originally wanted to whack Gotti and his crew is because
he found out they were dealing drugs. Now once got

(21:10):
he got cast Lona out of the picture. That was
something that the mafia became more brazen about getting into
in the early days, until, of course they got brought
down by the Commission Trials. Was narcotic something you ended
up investigating mobsters over.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Uh not really. Most of the cases I did, they
they labeled them. It was mostly Dominicans, Colombians. There were
some Cubans and a lot of it was street gangs.
They had sources to bring drugs in. They would they
would get them from places flown in. A lot of

(21:50):
times people would come up from Baltimore, Pennsylvania and they'd
wind up getting killed. They'd try to sell drugs in
certain areas. But I never really did and Knock caught
it investigation with additional organized crime. A lot of it
was Dominicans Colombians. That was really the most amount of people.
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
It's interesting you bring that up and we're talking with
technic John Fleming. He's retired out of New York City's
Office Especial Archatics, a law enforcement agency that we're learning
a lot about Tonight. Producer Vic has A questioned the
chat was one of the gangs that compania.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Yeah, there was a gang in Washington Heights like that.
But you know, a lot of the times what they
used me for was to go do surveillance. A lot
of times I really didn't know much about the case.
I would follow people on foot because a lot of
times I didn't blend in in certain areas like Washington Heights.
So if we were working in certain boroughs like Queens

(22:49):
or Staten Island, they would use me. But I had
two partners who were Hispanic, and I had one guy
who was Venezuelan, and he was an excellent cluber. He
was amazing on the cover. But for the most part
I would come in to do certain things. What cases
I had were to bring to trial. But a lot

(23:10):
of the names I really don't even remember.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
That blends in.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Of course, you were there for almost thirty years, you know,
during the early stages, I think eighty nine, really the
ninety three ninety four we're still in the crack as
whack era where the eighties was the worst of it,
but we're still not out of the woods yet. And
you worked in a lot of dangerous, gritty neighborhoods where
it really ravaged and destroyed those neighborhoods, and it took

(23:34):
those neighborhoods forever to climb out of those holes. And
it's not just York City experiencing this. Really a lot
of the major cities across the country were going through it.
LA is another one that comes to mind. So during
that particular snapshot of your career, if you will, how
many crack investigations and how much I mean, all drugs
are bad, obviously, but how much of an emphasis was
put specifically on making sure you got those who were

(23:55):
dealing that stuff off the street.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Well, I'll tell you from one, but I can gather
my office cared more about money than drugs. You know,
there was a lot of acid forfeiture. That's why they
put us in task force, and a lot of the
cases I had it wasn't street level, but it was

(24:18):
more of a you know, we're not just going to
arrest you, but we want to take all your money.
And my office took in a lot of money through
DEA and through the Elderado Task Force. I mean, if
we worked on the case and we were there, my
office got money. And so for the most part, I
never did a crack case in my life. Most of

(24:39):
it was heroin or cocaine, powder cocaine.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
The money trails interesting because sometimes, I mean with certain
investigations at least that can take you abroad because you
got dealers coming in, not just from out of state,
and you mentioned Dominicans, the Colombians and even the Balisoonans too.
They're coming from overseas. You know, they'll make their buys
or they'll make their seals and they'll try to hop
on a plane back and that's where the long term
patience comes in that we talked about earlier. So in

(25:04):
regards to that, would you sometimes find yourself having to
go overseas or have it to send people overseas in
order to keep track on these people or was it
a waiting game where you were waiting for them to
come back for the next drop and you could just
get them there.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
There were two cases that people in my office worked
in where they went to Israel. That case I really
didn't know much about it. I mean, these were probably
two of the most senior detectives. They went there a lot.
I did a lot of work in Miami, did some
work there, and I also did work in Chicago. I
would go there to work, but I never went overseas

(25:39):
or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
If you can discuss them, and if you can't's fine,
we'll just move on. Miami another narcotics hot bet. Unfortunately, Well,
you mentioned Cubans two cocaine is particularly popular down there.
As far as the pipeline from Miami to New York.
Tell me about that investigates or those types of investigations,
I should say.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
Well, I know that drugs were moved up on ninety five.
One of the times I went to Miami was to
interview someone who wanted to become an informant against his
old group. He was facing a lot of jail time
in Florida, and he said that he'd rather go to

(26:19):
jail up in New York than go to jail down
in Florida. And the DA's offices worked something out. He
came up and he testified against everybody, and it was
a major case. But a lot of the stuff was
just going down there, getting information from the from Miami
Dade detectives and then just trying to follow it back

(26:40):
up to see where the money was admitted. Drugs were
winding up up in New York, and certain people in
Miami had certain crews that they worked with in New
York and you were able to define those pretty quickly
because we did so much work with that.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
Definitely interesting to see that. And again it goes back
to conversations we had earlier about gaining people strug us
and people who are in I mean, it's imagine so
even though it's still tough, it's a little bit easier
to gain someone's trust when they know the crafts hit
the fan and if they either it's this or it's
a heavy jail sense where they may never get out, right.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
Yeah, they a lot of these people were facing very
long jail times and then to try sometimes to get
them to flip. Sometimes it was much easier again in
them to do it. Then it was witnesses were civilians.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Right right, you know, infress with people who are involved
in the life. You can see that in the case.
John Fleming's our guest tonight, Like I said earlier for
those of you just tuning in, he's retired detective out
of New York City's office especial archiics. I'm going to
get to the union stuff because that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
We'll touch on that.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
This will be a multi layer conversation tonight, But I
did want to ask you about as well. Once the
city started to turn around, we saw the impact broken
windows had on the NYPD, but there's other law enforcement
agencies at the time that benefit it. Certainly Transit did,
Bratton was there before, and certainly housing did to crime
went down.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
Across the board.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
But there's also the other agencies outside of the Big Three,
at least before the merger of ninety five that benefited you.
Guys were already given a pretty good greenlight as it
was to go after these people, but now there's.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Even more incentive. Now there's even more of an emphasis.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
So ninety six, those first years of the Giuliani era,
what was that like, any impact at all in terms
of more of an incentive or was it business as usual?

Speaker 3 (28:27):
Well, I can tell you right off the bat, the
amount of support that the citizens gave the cops during
Juliani was much better than it was before I left.
But again, my last seven years I did union work,
so you know, I would get feedback from detectives who
were doing work, but we didn't face the same amount

(28:49):
of criticism that THNYPD officers or you know, port authority.
You know, those guys are in it every day with us,
we were pretty much sheltered from that. Uh you know
we when we did a case, no one knew who
we were. We pretty much we were very lucky.

Speaker 4 (29:06):
That was that.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
A lot of politicians I met when I was a
union guy, they had no idea who we will.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
And you did? Do you involved in that for a
long time?

Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Before I touch on the union aspect, I wanted to touch.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
A little bit about recruitm and we'll get back to
your career in the trajectory of it as well. But
recruitment is something that your office is a little bit
different that way. But I know that's something we both
wanted to touch on tonight. It's tough now, it wasn't
easy then. The pay is not easy at first. It
can get better as time goes on, but it's even
in good times. Policing is a demanding job. It's a
cool job, but it's a very demanding one. So from

(29:41):
your vantish poison, especially as someone who was involved in
the union for such a long time, what's the good
aspect of recruiting?

Speaker 2 (29:47):
What do you like about it? But what do you
also feel can be better?

Speaker 3 (29:51):
Well, I'll tell you this. I think any police union
president in New York would share this that I have.
It was very hard when NASA Suffolk and up in Westchester,
they getting paid a lot more money than you. A
lot of people I spoke to who came to New
York they came because they had family with police officers.

(30:12):
It was very difficult, I think for police officers back
when I was doing police work to stay in as
a police officer. When they found the existing west Chester, Suffolk, Rockland,
they were making a lot more money and that was
a big issue. The other thing was when you did

(30:33):
recruitment in the DA's office, they would hire you sometimes
because of who you know, but you had to have
a lot of extensive investigative experience, so they would hire people.
For example, I had a good friend who was a
police officer in the Middle East. His name was Fred.
He was from Jordan. When he came to the United States.

(30:56):
He had a background in military intelligence and he got
hired by the Manhattan Office and in the nineteen nineties
he was working cases with the federal government and he
had a background like that and he was very very
successful in helping them with that. Also, there was a
detective in Queens who had a law background, and he

(31:19):
was doing cases that were mostly fraud cases. So some
of the people who came on at very unusual backgrounds
and very unique and usually the detectives who came off
from the police department, they had a very strong background.
I mean, the DA's would pick and hire people. So
they would call up a detective and say, you know,

(31:41):
I want to hire you. And that became a point
of contention for Ray Kelly because someone would make grade
like second grade and a month later they begne and
I know from talking to people in the DEA they
you know, they weren't too happy with that. So a
guy would make grades and then a month later he's retirement.

(32:01):
He goes to the DA's office and because he's a
second grade detective or first grade, he gets hired up
more money.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
And that's a tricky road to navigate. There was two
hurdles that they had with that. One was I didn't
know that was one of them. You just highlighted that.
The other one was guys would leave. They would do
the rollover, which for those of you, most of you
in the chat know that you can carry your pension
over to another city agency. They go to the fire department.
And let's say they were a cop for ten years,
they go to the fire department, they keep the top

(32:30):
pay they had the PD when they started the FP.
Ray Kelly put a stop to that. Stop both somebody rollers.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
So he didn't like the DA's officers. I know a
lot of times he lost people. I know a detective
who was a homicide detective in the Bronx and when
he made first grade the Bronx, Daight hired him like
a month later, and I'm sure that the NYPD was
not happy with that.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Well, you know what, let's talk about that for a second,
because and this has been a problem.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
It's not just recently.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
It's been going on for a long time now, to
where somebody drives a chief around and they get a
gold shield, you know, and they're not really out there
doing detective work. They weren't out there hustling as a
police officer. If you did your time on the street
for twenty years and you were a cops cop and
now you're driving a chief, hey all right, no problem,
cool with that. But if you're a two year three

(33:22):
year guy or girl and you're doing that and you
get a shield, had to slap the face to the
guy or girl that's out there for a long time,
busting their hump, making a lot of arrest to where
I guess the point is, by the time they do
get grade, it's too late. It's been so long now,
they've been passed over so many times where by the
time they actually do get it, they're ready in line
for a pension.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's unfortunate. A lot of my
family members, of all nine of them, none of them
became detectives. They all would take a test, they'd get promoted,
but none of them wanted to be detectives. There's nobody
in my family that was a detective. I had sogeants,
had some lieutenants and a captain, but they never understood

(34:03):
what I did for a living. They couldn't understand how
I left the police academy and all of a sudden,
I'm a detective and they had no idea what the
special knarchotic prosecutor's officers. So for a long time, no
one in my family had any idea what I did
for a living.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
You know, and listen, we love our white shields. Joe Murray,
you were a white shield. That's nothing against our white
if you want to be a white Shield your whole career.
I've said this before, and you have no desire to
go anywhere else.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
That's cool.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
You can do a lot as a white Shield and
have a lot of fun. But there are some people
like you know, Billy Ryan. Of course you were a detective,
Scotty Wagner, so were you. If the gold shield is
something that you want, it should be attainable from the
standpoint that, Okay, it's the only rank in the NYPD.
There's no exam for other departments around the country have
a different process to the NYPD. It's given to you.

(34:47):
You truly earn it in most cases. There are some cases, however,
where it's not.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
And I think that not only.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Hurts recruitment, because of recruit has this in mind for
down the road retention to John retention suffers as well.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah. You know a lot of times when I was
the union president, I would have somebody who came on
as a DA investigator like myself, and then they would
hire like a first grade detective and he'd be making
double the salary. And I tried telling him, well, this
guy got hired because he's worked twenty years and when
he's got that experience. You don't have that. But that

(35:21):
was a major point of contention for the union because
some guy would come on and he'd have a background,
a very strong background, so he'd get hired about twenty
thousand dollars more than one of guy who'd been there
five or six years made. And I understood that, Well,
you know what, that guy's coming on because he's had
a whole career. He's got that experience, you know. I

(35:42):
would tell the guy who was the younger guy, well,
you know what, if you're going to take the experience
and just take money, go work in the FEDS. Because
a lot of guys would leave the DA's officer, go
work with the FBI, DEA, or they'd work with the
Secret Service. I mean, most of the people who I
knew who went, they left, they went into the federal government.
They became an agent.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
And that's usually it's a good stepping stone. It gives
you valuable experience. If you want to stay in the office, hey,
you had a lot of fun, you did it for
a long time. As we're talking about tonight. You know,
that's cool too. But if you want to make that leap,
and certainly some people have those ambitions. You see people
do it from the police department as well. Pete Forcelley's
a friend of mine and he's spent on this program.
Before he was a detective of the NYPD was a

(36:24):
copp and Housing and the summer of two thousand and one,
a few months before nine to eleven, he ended up
heading on over to the ATF where he stayed for
the remainder of his career.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
So it's definitely not uncommon.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Scott Wagner's and former guests of this show, and a
freaking collaborator off there with myself says, the NYPD detective
shield is the most recognized shield in all of law enforcement.
This is true, very valuable shield and important shield to
where it's see and my friend, hope you're feeling better.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Back to your career.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
The timeline of it nineteen ninety eight, nineteen ninety nine,
two thousand. Now you got a little bit more timeline.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
I always like.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Asking this question to my PDNFD. I guess because here
you are now in a position where you were the
brand spanking new rookie in eighty nine walking in, had
a lot to learn, but you blink and now you're
the guy that you're not the oldest guy in the office,
but you have enough time on to where these younger
guys you can mentor you can give back a little
bit the same way guys gave to you in eighty
nine and ninety when you were first starting out. So

(37:20):
tell me about teaching these younger guys and some of
the guys that you were able to take under your
wing that really took off and gave you that proud
pop a feeling.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
Well, yeah, a couple of younger guys came on, especially
in arcotics. When you hit the late nineties, they hired
a lot of retired detectives, they hired a lot less
career as they would call them, investigators, and they hired
a lot more people who were retired DEA agents. But
one or two times investigator would come on out of
the police academy and they would tell you, Okay, you

(37:50):
know what, you're going to be with them for about
a year. You're going to teach them what the other
guys taught you. So it was very interesting to help
people to build up the experience they had, and working
in an office like the DA's office, you get introduced
to a lot of different types of cases. A lot
of what you do is working with prosecutors, so you
get to understand the case a little bit differently. And

(38:13):
the DA's offices, the investigators, they would want you to
work a certain way with a prosecutor. So really, my
boss a lot of time is ADA. You know. They
would tell you, Okay, you're gonna do it this way,
this way, And that's how I learned really to do investigations.
Not only with the guy who I sat with was
a detective. I would work a lot with attorneys, and

(38:35):
that's how I would train the other guys. I have
to tell, Okay, you know, the mindset is a little
bit different. The lawyers want you to look at it
a different way, and you're going to have to get
used to that because you work in a law firm. Really,
that's why I always look at I tell people I
worked in a law firm. The das, the ADA is
pretty much controlled everything once the case was brought to them,

(38:57):
And you.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Can correct me in my perspective is fault in this,
But I feel like with detectives, not to say detectives
don't care about detail, they certainly do. And that's something
that I've learned with the many that I've had the
good fortune to talk to both on the air with
this program over the years and off of it. But
there's more of a big bang boom factor where okay,
where you're dealing in the justifacts, bad mentality, here's what happened,

(39:20):
here's the suspect that did it, and here's the reasons
as to why we believe they committed this crime. I
feel like with the DA's office and you can get
it correct if I'm wrong, it's a little bit more intricate.
You know, there's a lot more involved in terms of
explaining not only each step, but maybe additional factors that
may be a detective not out of negligence, wouldn't consider
because again, you have to keep a straight line and investigation,

(39:41):
whereas maybe there's a bit more of a gray zone
in the dja's office.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
Well, I heard the term you don't have enough yet
more than anything. So we go back and say, okay,
we think we're going to make an arrest, and the
prosecutor was saying, no, get more, get more. So they
cared more about what you're brought to the courtroom as
opposed to what a detective would bring to the DA's office.
So they would make sure every t was crossed, every

(40:07):
eye was dotted, and after a while it became a
little frustrating because you thought you had everything, but again
the lawyer looks at it differently, so they may want more.
And a lot of times it results in arguments because
we'd say, no, you got enough, but they'd say, I'm
prosecuting the case. You got to give me more. And
that became a problem sometimes, But especially for guys who

(40:28):
came from the police department, they had to get to
understand that mindset. But that was a big issue. No,
I don't have enough, keep getting more, keep getting more, I.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Think the concern.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
I can understand it from their perspective, and I can
understand both sides of the coin. But maybe is all
it takes is one competent defense attorney to undo it.
You get it, like, for example, a Bill Kunstler in
the courts room. That's a bit of a different story.
He was very high profile attorney. But someone in that
vein that can see the little opening and boom like
a needle, just undo everything, and you know, make you

(40:59):
guys look like amateurs, which you're certainly not right.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
And a lot of these drug dealers could afford really
good attorneys. So you know, after a while I understood
what they were saying, because a lot of times you
testify and they would tell you you better be ready.
And you know, there were times I would testify and
you know, it was like the guy knew everything I
was going to say before I said it. I would
always have notes with me, you know, because a lot

(41:25):
of the prosecutors knew who the lawyers were, and a
lot of times they would tell you, look, you're going
up against this attorney. You know this guy's going to
be show up. You better have everything down. And a
lot of times they wanted to make sure you had
that extra piece of evidence because they knew that that
would have to be.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Brought in absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
And you know one thing, actually, i'll highlight this question
before I get to the next aspect of what I
was going to ask you. Joe Murray again, former New
York City police officer, now a criminal defense attorney. Do
you remember an eighty A Bill Viiskovitch from Specially Archaics
in the nineties. Great guy loves cops. He's now at
judging queens.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
I don't think so. The way the prosecutors, the ADAS
were brought on. They came from all five DA's officers.
So the five prosecutors had to give the DA's office
legal staff and they'd come and they would go. The
detectors were hired by the DA and the support staff
was but the adas they all came from different offices

(42:30):
and that was the That was the deal that they
had when they set the office up. So a lot
of times people would come and go. The trial attorneys
I knew very well, but a lot of times you'd
have ada's working in different bureaus. For example, there was
a whole unit that investigated doctors and you'd have prosecutors

(42:51):
for that. You had people who would do drug the
drug court. People would get arrested first time felons and
they'd go to what's called DETAP and that was a
drug treatment program, and you had a lot of prosecutors
who did that. So the office had a lot of
different areas that were somewhere more drug investigative, somewhere more regulatory,

(43:16):
you know.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
And it's of course around ninety nine to two thousand,
the city's in a good spot and narcotics wise, but
there's in crime wise in general. You know, a lot
of the crime that you had seen in the first
time that you would come on the job in eighty
nine to ninety that first decade, you saw the pendulum
really swing from one end to the other, and it
was a good evolution. It was an interesting evolution, both
personally and professionally.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
So we know it was.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Heroin and cocaine in the early years two thousand, heading
into two thousand and one, again pre nine to eleven,
when the focus shifted a little bit. Was that still
the problem for you guys, but it's still the main
goal or had it shifted to another form of arcotics?

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Well, I know oxyconton became a big thing, big thing,
especially when they set up a unit to investigate doctors.
But by that time I was in a federal task
force called El Dorado, and El Dorado was the IRS.
The it was all Treasury, it was IRS Secret Service,

(44:17):
and they cared more about money. So that that was
that part of my career was all money laundering and
it wasn't drugs. It was just money laundering. That's all
I did. If I made an arrest, my office got
a plot of the money. And every arrest I made
there was one hundreds of thousands of dollars, so they
would they would divvy it up between the offices that

(44:40):
weren't volved, So the FEDS got their part, but then
each agency, whether it was state or local, they would
get a piece of the part.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
So tell me about that, because El Dorado is something
I've heard a lot about, did a lot of great
work during that time frame being involved in that. Talking
about hot and heavy, tell me about how that opportunity
came to be. In the notable cases, if you can
discuss them, stand out well.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
I worked for a year with inspectors from Customs and
what we would do is we would target flights that
were leaving the country going to what they called source
countries Nigeria, Peru, things like that, where people would be
bringing drugs money back to where they came from. And
when you leave, when you leave the country, you got

(45:23):
to declare what you have as far as finances, and
if you have ten thousand dollars well more, you got
to declare it. And a lot of times people wouldn't
declare it, so you would check them. They fit a
profile and so if you check them and they had money,
then you could take the money. And one day my

(45:43):
boss called me and said, we're going to put you
in this task force with Customs, but it's the building
was at five World Trade and they worked out of there,
and I got assigned, and when I went there, they
put me with a group that was run by the
IRS and they told us, Okay, you're going to be
cross designated, you're going to work with IRS and Secret Service.

(46:06):
And every case I did was more about how much
money can you get? So I never really saw any
type of drug investigation in the task force.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
And it's interesting because at this time, it's worth noting
Customs is not merged yet with Border Patrol.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
They've since merged. That happened in two thousand and three.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
When you were in that task force, Customs was by itself,
so they had a bit of a different focus back then.
Their focus has since changed. So it's amazing that you
mentioned that, because again we talk about the money trail.
Money is at a lot of these crimes, really the
root of all evil. You see it in financial type
crimes in the white collar world. You see it in
the more violent crimes, and the common threat and all

(46:42):
these is money. And it's amazing sometimes even businesses or
people that may present themselves as legitimate that you would
never think would be involved these type of things. And
it had to be an eye opener, even for a
season investigator like you.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
I never saw that much money in my life. An example,
what would be you'd stop delivery driver and he'd have
in his trunk duffel bags and you know it'd be
full of money, and you know they'd say, it's not
my money, but a lot of times we just take
the money. They were also informants, but they made a

(47:18):
lot of money in that and my office made a
lot of money. And that's why I stood there and
I could work as much over time as possible. They
paid for it, so I didn't care.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Right, you know, go out there and get the job done.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
And then hey, you know security had that pension if
you can as well, which you certainly did during that time,
and that work was definitely appreciated. Nine to eleven happens,
and you know, the shift from from narcotics or colon
crimes into more of a counter terror counter terrorism, I
should say environment does occur. Now that wasn't the office

(47:50):
of specially narcotics case, but sometimes you mentioned overseas drug dealers.
Sometimes those who are trafficking narcotics. It's not uncommon to
read stories, but they're also linked to terrors them as well.
Was that an angle your office explored at times a
little bit post nine to eleven.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Or not really it was more just kind of status.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Well, well, I mentioned the Israel case. I know they
did work in Germany, but those detectives who worked those
cases were probably the most seasoned detectives. So by around
two thousand and one, I was getting ready to do
the union stuff. I had got elected in two thousand

(48:28):
and two and I started in two thousand and three,
so by that in that time period, I was getting
ready to be the union president.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Now that's a segue into what we want to talk
about with the union. Now we can get into the
meat and potatoes of it, where again, not an easy job,
even if it's a smaller agency, a lot of responsibility
because you're looking out for everybody and that involves a
lot of haggling, both one on one and collectively as
a group, and you want to make sure everybody's satisfied.
Some people are going to be satisfied. There's some people

(48:56):
that no matter what you do, and you could bend
over backwards, they're going to have a right about something.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
So what made you want to do that?

Speaker 1 (49:03):
And early on what were the biggest challenges and successes
that you noted.

Speaker 3 (49:08):
Well. I wanted to do it because some friends I
knew and co workers were getting really sick from nine
to eleven, and back then there was nothing that you
could do for them, and we used to tell the offices,
you know, the DA's officers, to spend money to send
the people to get treatment. And I remember three or
four friends my friends died. The guy from Israel I

(49:32):
told you about the Middle East. He died very quickly,
So I was really concerned about that. Plus, the DA's
offices were not too investigated friendly back then. So when
I ran for the union president and I got elected,
our union was unusual. We were like a local of
the DEEA, the Detectors and Dowment Association, so they would

(49:55):
handle most of our benefits. They we could used them
as far as attorneys and stuff. So once I became
the union president, it was really hard to understand about
collective bargaining. I had no background in that, but I
hired a very good lawyer, and like I mentioned too,

(50:16):
I had two very good mentors. Floyd Holloway, who was
very well known. He was the chief lobbyist up in
Albany and he was the lobbyist for something called the
New York State Association of PBAs and it there's a
lobby group up in Albany. I don't know if it's
still there, but it was made up of about seventeen

(50:40):
police unions from all over the state. State police to
all the police unions in New York City were there
and we were in there and we would lobby up
there for benefits. So Floyd was a big help to
me and Jimmy Boyle. Jimmy Boyle at the time was
the labor relations directive for the for Joe in Brooklyn

(51:01):
and I met him. He replaced someone named Bill mcketney,
and mckeckney had worked in transit. But Jimmy really helped
me understand a lot of the ins and outs.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Now we talked about Jimmy last episode with Cheves Withers.
We'll get into him now as well. He died five
years ago, but he left his impact on the Ft
and Lion and what he went through with losing his
son in Idol is something you wouldn't wish on any parent.
Very smart guy, very you know, savvy guy, not just
in terms of operations on the firefighting side, but the
union side as well. When you look back at him

(51:36):
not only as a union official and learning from him
on a professional level, but also your friendship with them,
what are your favorite memories of him and how would
you define them, both as a union official and as person.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
Well, I know when I first went to Albany, there
was the big thing. There was a senator named Guy
Valella and he was from the Bronx and the Manhattan
DA's offer did an investigation on him, and the Manhattan
DA was all over him for a number of years.
And when we went to Albany, we had to go

(52:09):
through a Guy Vaalella, and he hated the DA's officers,
so he wouldn't even talk to me. And Floyd took
me to his office one day and he helped me
get some traction on a bill, and I remember him
telling Floyd he said, I wouldn't do this for any
one other than you. And then Floyd tried to explain
to me how you got to make relations with the politics.

(52:30):
With the politicians, he was very knowledgeable about how to
speak to them. And then Jimmy Boyle in New York.
He explained to me how you deal with the city council.
So back when I was the union president of city
council and police unions didn't have a great relationship, but
they didn't look at us the same way, so they

(52:52):
looked at us more like employees with the DA's offices.
So a lot of times I was able to get
some help that way, and Jimmy Boyle was very helpful,
as was Lou Mattirazo, who was the lobbyist for the
DEA and he was also the union president for the PBA.
But you know, those three guys who had all that experience,

(53:13):
and Floyd Holloway and Jimmy Boyle pretty much gave me
my labor attorney. His name was Harry Greenberg, and he
was the attorney for the Nasall County PBA, and he
also was retired police detective. But he was an excellent lawyer.
When we negotiated, we had the five DA's offices represented,

(53:35):
plus we had the Director of Labor Relations, so it
was really a ridiculous way to negotiate, and the DA's
offices were not really supportive of a lot of the
things we wanted. Harry Greenberg was able to get us
in the right places. We never had PERB. The police,
the NYPD, police unions try to get PERB. The p

(53:59):
BA did get it well. We got PURB very early
on and we were able to negotiate like the State
of County agency, so we could ask the things that
the PBA couldn't. But it was all because of Floyd
Holloway and Harry Greenberg that really pushed away for us.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
It could be stressful because it is essentially a twenty
four to seven job. As anybody's ever done, it can
tell you it doesn't matter how big or small a
union is where I work. I'm not a firefighter there,
but I'm a Sevilian employee for a fire department here
in Connecticut. And one of the captains I answered to
he does that, and you know, I see sometimes he's
got a lot of work on his hands in addition
to being a ship commander.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
So it's worked no matter what. Tell me about.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Balancing handling everything, but knowing when to take a step
back for the sake of your own mental health and decompressing.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
How did you manage that?

Speaker 3 (54:51):
Well, there were two things that really got to me.
One was contract negotiations, and I remember they would tell me,
don't take it personally, this is just our negotiations are.
The other was when someone would get they'd have psychological problems.
A lot of it was from nine to eleven. But

(55:11):
that's how the wellness program came into effect. We never
had anything like that and at the time Mount Sinai
and they still do today. They have a medical monitoring
program for nine to eleven workers. And I had gone
up to one of the guys who was involved in
the nine to eleven program, and I asked him, would

(55:33):
you be open to setting up some sort of wellness
program with the detectives and the DA's officers, And after
about six months we actually had something on the books.
I then went to someone in the DEA who helped
me get a woman who came in and they trained
about twelve detectives to be peer support officers. So you

(55:55):
could call up a detective and if you had if
you go into a really hard time, they were doing it,
they'd come talk to you. There was no you know,
there was no pressing, there was no questions about what
it was. You would just talk to the person. And
peer support is a really important thing. I've always advocated

(56:15):
it for it to me, it's much easier talking to
someone who's your you know, who's also a cop. H
But we had a very successful peer support program, and
then we had with the nine to eleven with Mount Sinai,
we had a really good program. So the city helped coverage.
They decided they would accept everything that Mount Sinai offered

(56:39):
because it was all really preventive. So if once a
year you can go to a doctor in this program,
you can go to a dietitian, you can go psychologist,
and you could get all these benefits, and it really
mirrored a lot of what the nine to eleven program was.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
I'll talk more about wellness momentarily, but just since you
mentioned it, I know you guys were helping out in
the aftermath, as everyone was. But that day, it doesn't
matter where you were from, if you were any kind
of first responder, which you guys certainly were, it was
all hands on deck. Did you and other members of
your agency get down there that day or was it
more in the days afterward.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
There was about eighteen detectives from Manhattan and Special Narcotics
and Brooklyn that were there, but later on they went
to go work on what they called the pile, and
a lot of the detectives who got sick and died.
They all worked there, and a lot of them got

(57:37):
sick very quickly. I actually wasn't even in the state
when that happened. I was working down in Miami on
a case. So I didn't get home for nine days
because we were going to bring that guy back with us.
The guy I told you wanted to flip. And we
went Monday morning, the tenth, and when we got there,
we had a meet with the detectives from Miami. And

(58:00):
that next morning was September eleventh, and we were interviewing
the guy and he actually gave us all the information
we needed. During the interview, the Wooden came in and
told us we had to go speak to him. He
showed us to TV, so, I mean, I had no
idea what was going on. The interview was going on

(58:22):
from six thirty in the morning until nine o'clock, ten o'clock,
but once the second plane hit, they came in and
told him you got to leave. You got to come
call your office. The next day we went to bring
the guy back. In the airport, everything closed down, so
we had this guy for nine days, and we you know,

(58:43):
we would bring the guy back to prison, to the prison,
but we'd go to the airport and finally they told us, look,
you know, it's going to be a number of days.
He just got to wait. And that's what we did.
We just waited. So I missed all of that.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
Was there anybody on the NYPD side or any sort
of police agency portaword the police that you knew who
perished that day?

Speaker 3 (59:09):
I had a friend who was a he was a
fire marshal.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
His name was Ba Roddie Buka.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
Yep, yeah, and he was very good friends with a
friend of mine. They were they were friends for a
very long time. I knew him, and when I got back,
I was told that he had died and two other
friends that I had died, But most of them who
died died later on. From from the nine to.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
Eleven illness right and Roddie Buka.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
For most of you the chat know this, but for
those of you that are from outside the New York
City area, fire marshals are equivalent to police officers in
New York City. They're armed, they have full police powers,
they could arrestue the carry guns as well, so Roddie
was not only responding as a firefighter that day, he
was also responding as a as.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
A police officer in a sense.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
He got all the way up to the seven hay
floor of the South Tower with Chief Oriol Palmer. He
ran marathons and he was a military man, so he
was in great condition and they were the only ones
to get that far before the collapse happened.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
He's a great guy, very really, him and his wife,
they were great people to be with, very funny, you know,
and it was very easy being with him because you
love to talk with him. So you know, he was
a great guy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
Yeah, and you know what, he had a lot of guts,
goes without saying, because he had a horrible injury. He
had a bad fall. They called him the flying Fireman
because he felt multiple stories, caught himself on the way down,
but was still badly hurt. He'd been i think and
rescued one at the time of Manhattan and fought his
way back to the job.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
You know, went through a.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Lot physically to get back, but definitely a man of
resilience in that day. He acted very very heroically. You
mentioned wellness. It's important now and we talk about it
a lot on the podcast between our PD and FT guests.
Let's face it, you're seeing terrible things, you're seeing the
worst in humanity, and you're seeing people at their worst.

(01:01:04):
It weighs you down, and I think it's timely. We
just had an NYPD detective out of the one to
zero five squad and Queens commit suicide a few days ago,
left behind a wife and two young daughters. And you
say to yourself in your head, why, But then again,
we're thinking rationally. It's easy for us to say that
from our standpoint because we're in the right state of mind. Eventually,
seeing these things breaks you down to where you're not

(01:01:24):
in the right state of mind. And you talked about
establishing that wellness program. I think it's ahead of the
curve because again, you want to help these guys and
gals before it's too late. So tell me about the
emphasis of that and the success stories. You don't have
to name names, but the success stories of people that
were really jammed up mentally as we all can get
sometimes with that program really did wonders to help them
get out of that run.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Yeah, we had in Queens and we had in Brooklyn
two detectives committed suicide in the office, oh goodness. And
you know the detectives who work in the DA's office,
the average age was like fifty three. So when I
went to Mount Sinai, I told him, I said, you know,
if you were to come up with a program for

(01:02:04):
people this age, you could probably market this to you know,
Wall Street stuff like that. I said, you know, the
people you're going to be seeing really abused themselves for
a number of years. We got a lot of guys
who will overweight, blood pressure was high, and a lot
of them had, you know, some psychological issues which built

(01:02:24):
up throughout their career. So when I spoke to Mount Sinai,
they they put me in touch with the administrator who
started the original program and a doctor who was involved,
and we spent about six months working on it, and
then I had to get the five DA's to go
along with it. The City of New York went along

(01:02:46):
with it right away, so did GHI. But I'll tell
you some of the DA's we did set against it,
and that infuriated me. I mean, we had to get
the das. The city told us, you got to get
the das to approve this, And I tell you some
of them. Will I don't want to use the words
because it's tea up because it's uh, you know, I

(01:03:08):
tell you they would dead set against it, and it
finally we embarrassed them going to the news. I went
to the Daily News and I went to the New
Old Post, and I embarrassed to them, and they deserve
to be embarrassed. But in the end they all came
on and they all supported it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
And it's like, why would you not, like, you know,
is it? And these are people's lives we're talking about,
so and there's no other way to put it. These
are people's lives. Do you want them to go home
and put a gun to their head and end it all?
Because then what are you gonna say afterwards? Oh, we'll
miss them, we love them.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
You could have helped them William's life.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
So it's just like, you know, anybody that's against something
like that, I'm like, hello or earth to whoever you are,
especially now in today's day and age.

Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
Right, I don't get it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
I don't get it, but good on you for doing that, because.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
I'm like, yeah, you can't mess around listen, health in general,
physical ornment, so you can't mess around with but I
think people learn it now, especially when it comes to
mental health. You really can't mess around with that. It's
just as important as any physical ailment one may have.

Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
Right, Yeah, a big day. And also there was something
called critical incident stress debriefing and the woman who did
the training, her name was Cindy Goss, and she brought
someone from Texas and he had done a lot of
work with the federal government. His name was Grady Bray

(01:04:25):
and he had actually done a lot of work with
Bill Clinton's staff during the Monica Lewinsky thing. I mean,
but he had a very very unique background. Cindy Goss
had done a lot of work in Buffalo, and also
Paul de Jacomo, who at the time was a board
officer with the DA. He was very helpful. So had

(01:04:46):
all these people helping me put something together. And then
there was somebody from the NYPD. I forgot his name,
but he did pop up. I forgot his name, I think, so, yeah,
So he helped. So we put all this stuff together
on our own. And you know, when they trained the
peer support offices, they we had these people who were

(01:05:07):
professionals actually monitor them and they'd come back and they'd say,
you know what. This guy's good, this guy isn't. Uh.
They did a lot of personality evaluation and they would say,
you know, certain types of brains are more have more
empathy than others, and you need to have empathy and
you need to understand, you know, about communication. So when

(01:05:29):
they did all this work with them, they'd come back
and they'd say, a lot of your guys are very
very you know, knowledgeable, they're very good with communication. And
they said, you know, maybe it's because they had detectives. Well,
we got twelve people right away. Three of them were women.
We made sure that we had women, and then we
had one person who was a Muslim. At the time

(01:05:51):
they were starting to hire people, so then we would
try to have people who were uh, you know, different backgrounds,
and we also had our own chaplains. He went to
the end YPD and they you know, they gave us
access to them.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
Drabble done in that aspect. Again, wellness is wellness, and
it doesn't matter what one may be going to the
point is it's got to be handled. It's got to
be dealt with in a way that helps that person.
And I think that's something that you know, again, as
I've covered before in this program. There's a lot of
societal evolutions that are not positive these days. That is
one that I'll make an exception for that is a positive.

(01:06:26):
There's more of an emphasis now on the importance of
mental health, and there was that because twenty thirty forty
years ago, heck, even ten to fifteen years ago, the
mentality was they'll suck it up.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
What do you you know?

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
What are yours?

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Sissy?

Speaker 5 (01:06:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
No, that's it's not the weak.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
Yeah, And that was a big thing in the beginning
trying to get people to you know, buy into this.
They were like, I am not doing that. And you know,
after a while, people would talk to other people and say,
you know what, I went through this and this is
you know, this is pretty good. And then you get
people that way. And we try to get people detectives
who had a really good reputation so that you know,

(01:06:59):
if you went to so and so, maybe you didn't
trust them, but if you went to someone who's a
PEA support officer, I could guarantee you we someone with
an excellent reputation the cop the cops cop type thing,
and you know, there would be people in a squad
room who you know, if you wanted to talk to
who you trusted, you'd go to this guy. Well, a
lot of times that was a peer support officer.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
For that office.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
Nice and again another good way to go about it.
There's no shame in it. There's no shame in it.
It doesn't mean I think that's an unfortunate thing that
a lot of guys don't realize and unfortunately they don't
think about it until it's too late, and unfortunately we've
lost them. Where No, it doesn't make you weak, it's
the opposite. It actually makes you look really strong. It's
strong to admit that, hey, I'm not doing good.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
I need some help.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Man, I can't go about this alone. I think the
strong person to do that. It's the opposite. A week,
but I think until that stigma gets broken through, it's
tough because you got guys and gals of by God era.
They were brought up with a much different mentality that
they have trouble believe in.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
No, no, no, it's okay. We watch you to talk
about this. This is a good thing. You talk about this.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
We rather you open about it than not. But program
like that goes a long way in helping that. So again,
thank you for diving into that, you know, moving ahead
to twenty seventeen. A long time in that office, almost
thirty years. Different roles, investigator for a long time, union
guy for a long time. You wore different hats, but
you had a successful run. And then comes to point

(01:08:20):
in time where you said, all right, you know what,
I'm going to retire. I always like asking this to guys,
to series of moments or one particular moment that made
you say, all right, you know what.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
I've had my fun time ago.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
I grew tyed in New York. In twenty seventeen, I
moved to Florida. All my family members, who will cops retire?
It on Saint Patrick's Day? So I retired Saint Patrick's
Day twenty seventeen. Four months later I was building a
house in Florida, and yeah, later I moved down there
full time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
Must be nice.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
As I sit to you from New Haven, Connecticut, where
it's twenty eight degrees outside and freezing, and you're in
the nice Florida sun, I'm not mad.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Don't worry about man, Well be you got to be
in Florida in the summer when there's hurricanes. I've been
down here for four hurricanes, So you know, that's not
something I'm used to in New York. But that's the
bad part hurricanes.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
Yeah, yeah, and unfortunately Florida just went through it. And
shout out to everyone who went through Helene. And hopefully
you guys are doing okay and recovering well from that.
When you look back at your career again, I'm very
glad you came on because, as I mentioned the promo,
this is an agency. Not a lot of people unless
you're really familiar and did the work across paths with them,
know about and I certainly didn't know a lot about
the office until we talked via LinkedIn. So this was

(01:09:34):
a really good show. When you look back on your career,
what are you proud of stuff? Because you got accomplished
a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
Well, I'd say that the peer support stuff I was.
I did some work with the police unions and the
first responding unions to get Governor Pataki to sign that
original bill where if you retired with annoyinary pension and

(01:10:02):
you got sick years later, we had explained to the
governor that you know it shouldn't be you should be
able to go back and change that and make it
a disability and actually he was very supportive. Rudy Giuliani
was not, but I could tell you George Pataki was.

(01:10:24):
He had the door open. The Public Employees Conference in
the New York State Association of PBAs pushed it very strongly.
They wanted all the unions to, you know, really push
their elected officials. So when Governor Pataki signed that, that
was a big thing because no one knew back then

(01:10:46):
how many people would die from nine to eleven years later.
And as long as you registered when you retired, you
can go back and you could change your pension. So
I had a lot of detectives, a lot of friends
who three, four, five, six years later came down with
cancer and then you would go and if you if
you signed the paperwork when you left, you could go

(01:11:07):
back and change your pension. And that that's for really
any city employee who was involved in nine to eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
And it's the day that's still killing. We're still losing people. Yeah,
they're still losing people. And it's been twenty three years.
At the sad part, we're gonna keep losing people.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
But again thanks for doing that. Really good question from
Christian Williams in the chat and we're gonna highlight it.
He says, sorry that it's late. It's fine, Christian, no worries.
But did the DAS and he mentioned Giuliani as well
in a follow up question, did the DAS and Juliani,
who were against the wellness program ever say why they
were against it?

Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
Well, Juliani was against using city money for nine to
eleven workers who was sick. And I remember at the
time he said something like go to the Feds. That's
not my problem. But if anyone would remember, about six

(01:12:02):
or seven months later, one of his deputy mayors, Rudy Washington,
got sick and he came all out to get him
work as compensation benefits. And that personally, for me, was
the last day I respected Rudy Giuliani. I hate the
guy today. I don't care what he did for the city.

(01:12:24):
In my mind, he turned his back on the first responders.
He made a career of mister mass whatever they called him.
But I'll tell you my opinion, he did nothing for us.
As far as the DA's with why they didn't support
the wellness program. One told me that he didn't trust

(01:12:47):
someone going to a peer support or officer who was
also a DA investigator and him telling him things. And
at the time we had to find out, do you
have any detections if someone comes to you and says, hey,
I did this and this, you know, is it like
a priest? And at the time that was a big issue.

(01:13:08):
So the das were very very They were very secretive
about what went on in their offices, and I don't
think they wanted certain things to come out. They were
all politicians. But the other thing was they didn't want
their own people to be going to doctors to have
some sort of psychological or medical problem that they didn't

(01:13:30):
know about. So that was and again that was the
first few months. But I did get people in the
police department who were very pro wellness to speak to
their chiefs, their executive adas, and in the end they
all bought into it. The first person to buy in
was Judge Brown. He was the first person to come

(01:13:51):
on board. He supported a bunch and he really got
some of the other das to go along with it.
So I appreciated what he did back then.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
I don't agree with their philosophy, but I can understand
where they were coming from to an extent, if that
makes any sense, Because as Joe murray mentions in the chat.
No doctor patient privilege or attorney client privilege, and subpoenis
can be involved in that too, so it kind of
gives context as to why they were.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
I can see why they were originally.

Speaker 3 (01:14:19):
They're all lawyers, you know, so it's an example of
them thinking like lawyers. And again in the end it
all worked out.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
Yeah, I'm glad it did. That puts context to that.
This brings us to the rapid fire. This was a
really fun conversation and now it's time for the five
hit and run questions for me. Five hit run answers
to you you can save pass if you want, and well,
you kind of talked about it early on some of
these questions you may have answered already, but we'll go
into some of them. And there's a lot of rewards
to peer support. What would you say was the most

(01:14:49):
rewarding part of volunteering for peer support and being a.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
Part of that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
Hearing someone tell tell you that you saved my career
by fall, you know, you would hear people say come
back and give you feedback and they say, you know what,
my term my life around, I can still keep working awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
How do you feel law enforcement can improve recruitment efforts today.

Speaker 3 (01:15:11):
Well, I look at it this way. Cops are never
more under the microscope than they are now, Yet at
the same time, they keep lowering standards, So it makes
no sense. Now they bring people on who might not
be as qualified as they should be, yet they expect
more from those people. And I don't think that that's fair.

(01:15:31):
I think if you're going to expect a certain amount
of qualification, a certain amount of knowledge, then you should
be hiring the best possible people, not using anything else
other than their qualification skills.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
That should be it Merit Merrit Merrick, Marrit Matters, best
advice anyone ever gave you about life or the job.

Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
Very easily. I was told something by my partner. He says,
write this down. You're never gonna get it. No good
deed goes unpunished. So okay, that's what he told me
very early on. And he says, write that down. He said,
don't ever forget that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Fourth, and this is a question I definitely like asking
to some of all the eras of your career encompassed
into those twenty eight years. If there's a certain time
period in your career, you can go back to that
was really the sweet spot of your career. If you
go back to work tomorrow at a time machine, what
part of your career whatever are you going back to.

Speaker 3 (01:16:32):
Well, the beginning of being a union president. That was
the lowest time because I didn't know what I was doing.
If it wasn't for people like the drug the detectives
and Dowmind Association who helped me try to understand it.
Floyd Holloway, Jimmy Boyle. So that's what those were the
roughest three or four years that I had. Regard to

(01:16:53):
the police work. I always loved it, you know, that
was something that was a little I loved.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
That's a snapchat there about the first twelve thirteen years.
Then if we're going back in.

Speaker 3 (01:17:05):
Time, yeah, I'd say the most amount of fun I
had was like nineteen ninety six to nineteen ninety eight,
and then the low point was two thousand and three,
two thousand and four because a lot of it was
friends getting sick. There's no options for them. And then
you had people who we had a lot of psychological

(01:17:26):
issues at the time, we didn't have anything to help them.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
I'm glad you came out of it, and a lot
of great work was done. So a lot of challenges
early on, but a lot of great work came out
of that. And the fifth and final question, advice you'd
give to a newly promoted investigator. You were a detective
investigator for a long time. You know a lot about investigations.
A new sleuth, what advice you've given them?

Speaker 3 (01:17:46):
I don't know how do DA's offices operate today. I
would never want to work in the Manhattan DA's office.
I don't even know what they do today. So I
would tell someone, if you want to be a DA investigator,
go work for the Drug Enforcement and Minute Stration. Go
work for a das. You could be a DA's office
in a county in the state. Go to Long Island,
go to Westchester, don't go to New York City.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Don't unfortunate.

Speaker 1 (01:18:11):
Sorry, you know, sorry to hear that, but's the packs
these days. Unfortunately. This has been a heck of a
conversation with a lot of insight. The audience is commenting
they really enjoyed it as well. You did a great job.
Stick around, we'll talk off fair. Don't go anywhere just yet.
Before I say goodbye to them, any shout outs to
anyone or anything you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
Want to give.

Speaker 3 (01:18:28):
I don't know who's really on. I saw that people
from LinkedIn could could be on it. You know, I
met a lot of nice people on LinkedIn, a lot
of very interesting people. But I wish everyone in law
enforcement the best. Good luck to you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
Yes, absolutely well. One person sends his regards when I
put the promo out on Facebook. He says he's known
you since you guys were kids. He was an ESU cop.
Patty Pogan says, Hi, who Patti Pogan. He says he
grew up with you. He says he's known you. Says, yeah,
you guys were kids. He ended up working in two
truck and the JTTF. I don't know if that Chester.

(01:19:06):
I don't know if it was in Parkchester, but he
says he remembers you. Patty Pogan's his name. He's been
on the show before, so I don't know what the
connection is there. But I guess you guys must have
cross passed at some point.

Speaker 3 (01:19:16):
Yeah. Maybe maybe he was a detective from the police department.
He came on in to work at the DA's office.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
Might have been because he was in JTTF at the
end of his career. Okay, know each other.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
Yeah, yeah, so any in any event, he does send
his regards and I'll tell him you send.

Speaker 3 (01:19:32):
Your tell him good and hope everything's going well.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Yep, indeed certainly will.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
Again thanks to everybody in the chat Brad you were
watching tonight via YouTube, LinkedIn or Facebook and for those
of you that will listened to the audio side later
on coming up next to the Mike the New Even Podcast.
We're working on a guest for this Monday. We don't
have anybody lined up right now. Fortunately, John Coglin open,
We're going to reschedule that one, so hopefully we get
him on January ideally, Uh so hopefully we will have

(01:20:00):
a guest. Then if we're not able to have one,
I'll let you know. We do have a guest for
Friday lined up and looking forward to this one. He
was an actor on many different shows including Law and Daughter,
and he was actually an NFPD captain for twenty four years.
And that's Joelsi who'll be here next Friday at six pm.
Had definitely an interesting career between Law and Daughter, Third
Watch and many other shows he appeared on.

Speaker 3 (01:20:20):
He worked in dy he worked in Special Narcotics too.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):
He did Joe.

Speaker 3 (01:20:26):
He was yes, yes, and actually I recognized him. It's
funny because he was on Kojak he went one day,
I was watching Kojack and I saw him. Yeah. Yeah,
he worked in special narcotics. He was a I believe
a captain or lieutenant.

Speaker 4 (01:20:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:44):
When when I got hired, he was the CEO for
the there was a small NYPD unit. But yes, you
can mention to him if you remember. His name was
Leon Schwartzman. That was the chief at the time. So yeah,
and uh yeah, because he got replaced by a Irish

(01:21:06):
guy named Jim McNulty, John McNulty, so he took him. Yeah,
but yeah, he was gone. He left about a year
afore I got there, so he would know Sterling Johnson too.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
Okay, I'll definitely have to mention that when we're talking
before the show because in they are small world they
love that connection guests to guess, so I'll definitely tell
them that you said hello as well. All right, like
I said, stick.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
Around, we'll talk off there.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
A great job to produce victors always and like I said, guys,
we'll try to figure out a show for this Monday.
For tonight's outro song on the audio, side. A shout
out to my buddy Steve Stephanachis from ten truck ESU
for putting me on this artist. It's from his nineteen
eighty six album Songs from the film The Late Great
Tommy Keene with Places that Are Gone in the Meantime
on behalf of producer Victor and John Fleming. I am

(01:21:49):
Mike cloone. We will see you next time and have
a great week. And everybody stay sa.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
Stay next time. Now you're finding your NWS whipping. We

(01:22:20):
were standing the circuses down the home.

Speaker 4 (01:22:27):
Just looking back before they take your way. I am
almost glad that we have the warst because these.

Speaker 5 (01:22:40):
Are places that come now.

Speaker 4 (01:22:44):
We can go on.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):
That be for your new Well, we're.

Speaker 5 (01:22:50):
Astracted inside the shell, relate all the dust from your mind.

Speaker 4 (01:23:00):
And putting the shove to behind.

Speaker 5 (01:23:06):
Because I helped you win the new to the pot
and I'm not looking ahead.

Speaker 4 (01:23:15):
I just want to make it up. These are places
that come now.

Speaker 5 (01:23:24):
We getting out.

Speaker 4 (01:23:27):
That being Audian new me well, I was stoped inside
a show.

Speaker 5 (01:23:39):
That's time to my open comes can't on.

Speaker 4 (01:23:48):
My fist shot that so just just looking back people taking.

Speaker 3 (01:24:23):
Almost God that.

Speaker 5 (01:24:26):
Never still because these are places that do Come now
we can go on and know that big bullion new
New Wow ours trapt inside a show, these outplaces that
of God.

Speaker 4 (01:24:46):
Now we can go. I then that big audion new
were distracting side a show.

Speaker 5 (01:25:01):
Us s
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.