Episode 382: The Beat: Profiles of Police Nationwide: Sgt. Bert Gonzalez (Volume 21)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to the Mike to Do Even podcast hosted
by media personality and consultant Mike Globe.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
We're not out there fighting anything other than crime.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
WI see stuff that nobody should have to.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
You know, Shorge thirty one, he wrack it out?

Speaker 4 (01:08):
Did you make your car?

Speaker 1 (01:11):
You're listening to The Beat Profiles of Police Nationwide if
you're watching on YouTube. By the way, sorry, better late
than ever. We're fashionably late. But that's okay. We figured
out the audio issues, which thankfully, you know, my producers
not here. He's in New York City today visiting family
to bail me out. But I was able to figure
it out eventually. But if you're watching on YouTube, that

(01:32):
banner intro for The Beat Profiles of Police Nationwide features
a nineties era Miami Dade police card. I was taken
by my friend Aery Moss, who retired, as I believe it,
a sergeant in the New York City Police Department when
he was on a trip down to Miami in nineteen
ninety two. And I like going back because I loved
watching this show with my grandmother on Saturday nights on
Fox Cops. If you watch any of the old episodes,
from the nineties early nineties two about ninety six nineteen

(01:55):
ninety seven, so many of them were in the Miami
Dade area, and those are some of the more classic
episodes you could see though. That was a great era
for the program, and I have somebody that worked during
that era, so we'll talk about a lot of the
things that he did across almost four decades in law enforcement.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to this episode three hundred
and eighty two of the Mike the New Haven Podcast.
We're very happy to be back up and running on

(02:17):
this Monday, no show Friday, but you get you know. Nevertheless,
this show this week if you haven't checked out the
previous episode that was volume seventy six, I believe of
the best of the bravest interviews with the Fgan wise
Elite with a former New York City firefighter, Craig Montahan,
who began his career as a New York City transit
cop before moving to the fire department in nineteen ninety three.
Working his entire career in latter five down in Manhattan.

(02:40):
He lived through the Watch Street fire, which killed three
of his colleagues, sadly including his captain John Drennan, and then,
of course the events of September eleventh, in which several
more of his colleagues were killed that day in the
line of duty responding to the World Trade Center. So
definitely a moving episode and a fun episode to do,
as I'm sure tonight's episode will be fun to do.
So I'll run a couple of advertisements and then we'll

(03:00):
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the firefighter in your life a marquee helmet. Now from
the fireside to the police side with my next guest,
thirty seven year veteran of law enforcement. Law enforcement, excuse me,
whose career began in the heat and hustle of South
Florida and ended with the legacy of both instruction and leadership,

(05:08):
as well as mentorship too. From uniform patrol to plane
closed narcotics crisis response to Post nine to eleven port security,
he built a reputation as one of Miami Dade's most
versatile and respected police officers. A decorated sergeant, he was
instructored to over twenty five thousand officers, and he's now
a published author and podcast hosting his own right as
well continuing to educate the public on what really goes

(05:30):
on in the world of policing, especially as it pertains
to South Florida, and that for this volume twenty one
of our mini series The Beat Profiles of Police Nationwide,
retired Miami Dade Sergeant Burt Gonzalez Sarge.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
Welcome, I Mario, good Mike, thank you for having me.
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Oh, thank you for being here.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
It's funny. I get a lot of emails for potential guests,
and a lot of them are just kind of haphazard
press releases that don't really fit what this show is about,
which is primarily for responders. But Jessica Curtis sends an
email to me and I read it over I'm like
to have this guy. So I'm very glad she put
us in touch, and I'm very glad you're sitting here
and we were able to work out those audio issues
because you got a lot of stories and the audience

(06:08):
needs to hear it. Before I pry into any of that,
just tell me about where you grew up and where
that inclination began in your life to water pursue civil service.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
Well, I was born in Miami Beach and it was
a very brief stop. My mother was traveling from with
my father, a general electric while he was working down here.
But he was based in Manhattan, so right after I
was born, right back to Manhattan. So I grew up
in southern New York State. We lived in Queens for
a little while my brother was born, Pete. We moved

(06:40):
up to White Plains the Elmsford area, where my sister
Marissa was born, and then we settled in sixty nine
in Brewster. It's about fifty five miles north of New
York City. If you take Interstate eighty four straight across,
it goes right over to you in Connecticut. So I

(07:02):
spent my formative years growing up there and beautiful area
southern New York State once you get out of New
York City, as you know, at the New York State's beautiful.
I what got the bug? I'm not sure exactly when
it happened. My family moved to Miami in seventy nine.

(07:24):
My father got his transfer with General Electric, and I
stayed in Brewster to finish high school. I was a senior,
and then I started at Western Connecticut State College in Danbury,
down the road from you. A piece after that, I
moved to Miami with my family, and as it turns out,

(07:46):
the neighbor behind my parents' house was a Metro Dade sergeant,
and I got to know him quite well. We spent
some time together kicking a soccer ball around, talking, and
then I started to have a lot of interactions with
Metro police. We were called Metro daid back at that time,
not Miami Dade and now Miami Dade sheriff once again

(08:09):
after fifty eight years of not being officially designated to
the Sheriff's office, but we were always a sheriff's office
for Day County. I was working for first a drug
store chain down here, Ecker Drugs, and then a small
credit collections company, and then I really started to think
about what I wanted to do, and Bob, the sergeant

(08:32):
was really rubbing off on me, and I got to
see these guys in action. And then actually one day
at Ecker Drugs, I was an assistant manager there. I
was sitting in the back and something started hitting the
top of the wall right before you come into the floor.

(08:54):
I was in the storeroom sitting down on a break
and as it turns out, what I was hearing and
hitting the wall were bullets, and it was a drive
by shooting drug dealers. Nineteen eighty one. They tried to
kill a guy coming into the store, and they didn't

(09:18):
kill him, but he blooded him up pretty good and
they fled. And then I got to see the police
exactly how they worked, and it really got me thinking,
until finally I made the decision in eighty two that
I was going to apply to Metro Police and Metro
Fire and it was going to be one or the other.

(09:38):
And then in January of eighty three, I had my
final interview with Metro Date Fire and the hiring chief said,
we're going to hire you. You're going to start Fire
College as soon as the next one comes up, which
was really a few weeks away. And then my background
investigator called me and goes, you're starting the police academy

(10:00):
February eighth. And I wanted police more than fire, so
I did that, and then then you know, February I
started the academy and at that time it was five
months long at Miami Dade College North campus. The college
hosted the Southeast Institute of Criminal Justice where all cops

(10:25):
got trained. In Miami Dade County then Day County, no
one had their own police academy at that time. It
was the college that did it. So I started in
February and I graduated in June and hit the road
in our southwest district where I was assigned drug Dealers Central.

(10:45):
All the big drug dealers had homes in our district,
and it was the cocaine cowboys, and it was a
wild time and I was able to cut my teeth,
all of us, all of us together, handling a lot
of things related to the cocaine cowboys. I'm sure you're
familiar with the movie Scarface, of course, yes, yeah, classic movie.

(11:13):
But some of the things in there, even though the
movie was an exaggeration, a lot of the stuff was true.
And if you remember the scene where they're walking into
the bank with duffel bags full of cash, that was
absolutely true. Cash was flowing down here like like you
couldn't believe. And most of the money here was actually
reported as being tainted with cocaine, you know that circulated

(11:36):
around in South Florida, So there was that much of it.
But that's how that's how I started my career. You know.
I wanted to be a Metro Dad cop, and the
only two places I applied were police and fire, and
I got hired. Two years later. My brother followed me.
He came out of the army and he became a
Metro Dad cop, and then his wife, who was they

(12:00):
were military policemen in the army. She became a dispatcher
and then later a cop, and then their oldest daughter
Elena is now serving as a lieutenant with US. Later on,
my son followed. He's a sergeant with US now and
his wife, Michelle, is a robbery detective. And my youngest daughter, Lauren,

(12:20):
actually went through the academy, but it didn't follow through
with it, so she's a paralegal now and doing great.
Very proud of her, but not knowing. When I joined
the department, I started the family business because everybody followed me,
and my brother's now retired as well. He did thirty

(12:41):
and twenty three of his thirty was in crime scene,
so he was the real CSI Miami. But he didn't
wear a blazer and he didn't drive a hummer. He
wore cargo pants. And Apollo is very dirty, sweaty work surre.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
I can imagine. I can imagine. And that was the thing.
I mean, you look in moments in your life and
there's people like that. You know, there's people that they
would have been happy in either career field if things
broke differently and you became a firefighter't know, you want
to police more. As you just said, I'm sure you
could have carved out a great career there, but it's
not just how it worked. Out for you, as we'll
discuss tonight. You know, as we'll also discuss it worked

(13:14):
out great for your family. As you said, it started
the family business. And that era compared to what we're
seeing now, some things have stayed the same. A lot
has changed back then. I mean, the ports was all
the rage, because that's how these illegal narcotics were able
to make its way into South Florida. In New York
City was experiencing the same problem. A lot of supports
down there, but I feel like with Miami's proximity to

(13:36):
Cube that created even a larger problem. So just but
with that alone, back then, you really have to rely
on seeing your cops who've seen it all, been through
it all, and understand neighborhoods like that, and you know
interdiction operations like that very well. Who are the salty
guys that broke you in and really helped you find
your footing as a rookie cop during as you said,
a wild time.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
A lot of the guys started in the seventies, the
ones like my second field training officer, Al Goodall. I
had him on midnights for my second writing assignment out
of the academy. He started in seventy two. Yeah, he had.
He had about twelve years on before I started, So,
you know, he was one of those guys that came

(14:17):
on and he was really good at what he did.
He he and the guys from his generation, so to speak,
and a lot of them are former military. At that time,
a lot of Vietnam veterans came on. You know, a
lot of Vietnam veterans migrate to police work. It's a natural,

(14:40):
you know, segue for them. And they were able to
show us the ropes. The most important thing was officer safety.
These are the things that are going to happen, and
these are the things that you need to look for,
and you need to be able to read people. And
that's what keeps you alive is reading the science. You know,

(15:02):
the way somebody is acting, the way they're looking at you,
body language. I mean, some guys will just come out
and say, no, I'm not going to jail today, We're
going to dance and then it's on right and others.
You got to be a little more careful with the
quiet ones very dangerous. But officer safety and all the

(15:24):
older guys taught that to us, and they took us
under their wing. And when we made mistakes, they jumped
on us, and you know rightly. So later on in
my career I did the same thing as I became
a senior officer and a veteran. But the guys back then,
you know, it was a much different time. There was

(15:45):
a very limited resources for them to use, especially where
the homeless are concerned, or people with mental illness. There's
only a couple of places in Day County at the
time where you take someone that and crisis, you know,
with a psychotic break. Alcohol and drugs was a really

(16:07):
big thing at that time. Al showed me how to
do DUIs and we had plenty the clubs down here
it's cocaine and alcohol one hundred percent of the time,
and just private parties, there's cocaine everywhere. You couldn't throw
a rock without hitting cocaine someplace.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
There's a social drug. Second, there was a social drug
back then and it's kind of still as unfortunately.

Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yeah it is, it is. But it was a very
interesting time to start coming up in police work in
our department in general, and at that time it was
post nineteen eighty riots and the Mario boat lift in
nineteen eighty as well, and my department, Metro Dad along

(16:53):
with the city of Miami, police had to grow exponentially
to keep up with the flow of crime and the
amount of people that were moving into South Florida. Miami
experienced a lot of growing pains and the police departments
had to try and keep up with them, and they
were hiring left and right. I got hired in seven months.

(17:15):
My brother got hired in six months. That's unheard of
these days. Usually takes a year, year and a half,
two years for you to get hired. So I was fortunate.
And having a Latin surname, you know, they needed Spanish speakers.
So while my brother really doesn't speak Spanish much at all,

(17:37):
I did. And I'm the oldest in my family, so
I stayed with our family history. And you know where
my parents came from, Argentina, so I'm the one that
continued on with the way my parents were. They spoke
Spanish to us in the house and English outside of

(17:58):
the house. And most of my colleagues were Cuban or
at least of Cuban descent, so there's a lot of
Spanish speaking going on here. And of course my Spanish
was a little bit different than theirs. And I had
to learn a lot of new words, but I didn't
understand after I moved to Miami. It was a little
bit of a culture shock. But you know, the Miami

(18:22):
Day County's predominantly Cuban. Now my wife is Cuban and
my two previous wives are Cuban. I'm your typical cop,
married two three times. But it is it makes, you know,
for a very interesting place. It it's, you know the
old saying, a melting pot, but it's so diverse here

(18:45):
with all the different backgrounds, you know, and a lot
of them have their cultural nuances that you have to learn.
You know, you're responding to a Cuban household. Now you're
going to a nicer Roglan household. You know, the next call,
you know it Miami be There were a lot of
Argentinians also a Jewish household at Miami Beach in some

(19:06):
areas of the county. So there is a real big
mix of people here, much like New York City, just
less people. And you know, it was a great place
to do police work. And you know, having grown up
in New York, I didn't freeze my ass off down here.
It was good. You know, the middle of the night

(19:26):
patrolling in New York City or anywhere up north, like
in your neck of the woods, it gets cold, you know,
so I'll deal with the heat and sweat and everything,
and I like.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
It just fine. Yeah, it worked. It worked for your
career thirty seven years. As we said, And again I
don't envy the cops. And there was an old school
tactic that a lot of the NYPP guys you've been
on the show, I have talked about that even in
the dead of winter when it was really cold January February,
they'd have the windows down to hear what was going
on in the street. Now, you got used to that
after a while if you did it enough times. But
I don't envy that, especially when it's negative to outside.

(19:59):
That wasn't something you had to put up with. So
is a fair trade off, you know?

Speaker 4 (20:01):
And I did.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
There was something you mentioned earlier and I wanted to
touch on it. And our guest tonight is Sergeant Berkensalez
is volume twenty one of the beat profiles of police nationwide.
He did his career in Miami thirty seven years. As
I mentioned earlier, traffic stops are very dangerous. Domestics are
very dangerous, even just a typical street encounter. You're attentive
enough as a copy that guy doesn't look right. I
used to get out and talk to him and see
what his deal is. The quiet ones, like you said,

(20:24):
are very dangerous. The boisitious ones can be too, but
for the most part not so much. What's an encounter
early on rather than a call or a traffic stop
or just a you know again being a stute cop
and observing somebody who just didn't look right. Where afterwards
you found yourself saying, okay, man, thank god that turned
out like you did, because that could have went really.

Speaker 4 (20:41):
Bad, especially during the midnight shift. You know, people that
are out at night. You have party doers, You have
maybe students that are coming home late from class, college kids,
people coming home from work, hospitals, you know, getting off

(21:01):
the late shift and things like that, and you have
police out there. Everybody else is probably up to no
good when they're hanging out in certain places, you know
you can look at it and see something's off here,
like a shopping center. It's closed at night. Why are
you hanging out in the shopping center? Why are you

(21:22):
walking through the neighborhood? And then when you spot us
you're ducking or you're running. You have to be vigilant
when you're on patrol, and you've got to learn to
look for those signs people that are out of place.
Nights it's easy to spot. There's a lot of burglaries
in progress at night. You know, people trying to break

(21:43):
into houses even though people are home. You know, bad
guys are trying to get into the house. We catch
a lot of them. We've caught a lot of them.
Some you know, some get away, and that's just the
part of the cat and mouse game. But when you
do have someone that you confront, you pull up to them,
you're rolling up on them. You have to follow procedure

(22:07):
to the letter, meaning advise a dispatcher. You got somebody
that you're going to stop and talk to, let them
know you give it. You give first your location and
then you give a description of the subject. The reason
you do that is if it goes sideways, the dispatcher
already has a description to put out over the radio

(22:30):
in case they assault you and they're running or worse.
And you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, and if
you're going to confront somebody on midnights, it's always good
to get back up. So this way the dispatcher can
notify your teammates on your squad. So and so is
you know, on a subject check. You know who can
go back them up because it can go and you know,

(22:53):
from zero to one hundred in a couple of seconds.
And now, because he's out there up to no good.
Maybe he's drunk, maybe he's on alcohol, drugs, maybe his
mental illness, or maybe he's just a bad guy that
you happen to interrupt before he was doing something. And
it's odd. So keeping an eye out for people like

(23:16):
that is something that you learn to do and you
become good at If you care about your job, you
become good at this. And you can pick somebody out.
You know they're just acting. You know the word that
is used a lot, hinky, that goes a term that
goes way back.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, he's acting hinky.

Speaker 4 (23:35):
Yeah, yeah, and yeah, I say, okay, I got somebody
over here. Doesn't look right in front of a closed store,
or he's behind the store, or he's behind the house.
You happen to catch him on the road behind the house.
There's a lot of houses that have access roads behind him.
And you know, in a quiet neighborhood at three o'clock
in the morning. Nobody should be walking through there, so

(23:59):
you stop him each check them out, and then you know,
once in a while you'll find someone that is walking
home from something. You identify them, oh yeah, they live
right down the street, and then you make sure they
get home. But most of the time you're walking through
the neighborhood in the middle of the night, you're up
to no good. There was one night I got transferred

(24:19):
from one station or another. I was having a little
bit of a difficulty with a supervisor, and a lot
of us experienced that, especially those of us that are
vocal and open our mouths. So I lost some skin,
so to speak when I was young because I was vocal.
But after getting transferred to this other station, I ended

(24:40):
up on a midnight training squad and the sergeant took
me aside and he goes, hey, i've heard some things.
You got a clean slate with me and sent me out. Well,
I was driving a neighborhood with the lights out, windows down,
and I looked over and there's some walls between the properties.

(25:03):
This was some rather large properties with stone and concrete
walls dividing them and I'm looking at the wall. It's dark,
but I see something bobbing up and down on the wall.
So I figured I had myself a burglar, and I
called in the troops and we caught ourselves a burglar.

(25:24):
All you got to do is look. All you got
to do is listen. You know the thing about the
window when it's cold. It does get cold here during
January February, and for us when you're not used to it,
especially the guys that were born and raised here or
came from Cuba mostly and were raised here, they don't
do well with the cold, so we feel it. You know,

(25:46):
for us, fifty degrees out is cold, and when it's
normally in the eighties all the time, and all of
a sudden we get hit with that. It's cold. But
you put the heater on, you roll the windows down
a fit, and you listen for what's going on outside.
And when you're patrolling at night, especially in a neighborhood,
you've got to be able to listen. You got to

(26:06):
hear things, and that's how you catch bad guys or
maybe somebody in distress, or you hear a crash. You
know that you were driving by and you didn't know
it was there or a gunshot, and some of the
neighborhoods that are, you know, a bit more violent. You
hear gunshots back then, you needed to hear it. Now
there are shot spotters right all over the county, right

(26:29):
and pops up on the computer screen for the officers.
Shot spotters going off. You got shots fired in the area.
My son is really good at that. He's really good
with technology. Dad is terrible with technology. But I didn't
come up with it. I came up with a note
pad and pen, you know, and he's working off a laptop,

(26:52):
so it's different. But you you had to learn how
to do those things and it becomes intuitive and instinctive. So,
you know, we joke all the time between these generations
and we say, you know, you know, you guys know technology.
You know how to use computers and everything, and you
know how to use your phones. But let me tell

(27:14):
you Skippy's that's what my wife likes to call the
young guys. Skippy. There is no app on your phone
that's going to show you how to arrest that three
hundred pound guy who's pissed off at the world and
not going to jail today. Put your phone away, get
your game face on because it's time to dance. And

(27:36):
that's the way it is. No matter what the technology
is out there, it goes back down to you, yourself
and your partners. How are you going to handle it?
And I think that's one of the biggest differences between
us and this and these later generations is they rely
a little too much on technology. So, you know, to
the to the guys you were talking about the New

(27:57):
York ops, Yeah, you got to roll the wind down,
you got to listen. You could catch something, You could
save a life, you never know.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
It goes back to something I wanted to ask you
actually about presents too in the community, where it's not
just the arrest, but just the sheer presence and being
able to build relationships in the community. Part of being
an attentive officer is that too. You get out, you
talk to people a little bit, or even as your
cruising around your patrol car, you see a guy that
you know, he's an honest guy who works in the neighborhood.
You make a little conversation with him. You never know

(28:25):
down the road, if you're doing an investigation you're chasing
a bad guy, that same guy could turn around help
you and say hey he went that way or hey
I saw this. So when it came to building those
relationships in between the collars you were making, tell me
about that part of it too.

Speaker 4 (28:39):
Depending on where you work. So in Miami Dade County,
where are the Sheriff's office. We handle all the unincorporated
areas of the county, and I say we, and I'm
always going to say w even though I'm retired. No,
of course, we don't have downtown areas for our police department.
The city of Miami has downtown city with all the

(29:01):
tall buildings and all the businesses and everything, more like
New York City. You'll find that in the city Miami,
and you'll find it at Miami Beach, so there's a
lot of foot patrols down there. We don't have foot
patrols for our department because we don't have those types
of areas. We're very spread out, kind of like La County,
very spread out. You got shopping centers and neighborhoods. So

(29:25):
in your patrol zone, you've got to get out to
the shopping centers and contact the business owners and make
contact and just pop in and say, hey, how you
doing today, what's going on, and the business owners appreciate
that all over the county and it doesn't matter what
kind of neighborhood it is. They do like that when
you're going in and making personal contact. And then this

(29:46):
way to your point, when something does happen, if you've
established a relationship with those business owners, they're going to
tell you where things are happening, right especially after something
you know, caper happened, somebody robbed somebody or burglarized a
business or even a house. But you got you gotta

(30:09):
spend the time. We're very uh dependent on our cars
because that's the only way we can get around. Literally,
the car replace the horse for day county sheriff, you know,
And that's the way it is for a lot of places. Miami,
they have a lot of full patrols in downtown. They

(30:30):
got a lot of buildings, a lot of businesses that
way where they can deploy officers like that. But we
can't do that. So you got to stop, get out
of your car and go and make contact. It's the
only way to do it, and it does pay dividends.
We also have officers you know that work specifically community
relations that do those kinds of things and go to

(30:50):
the schools and go to you know, the crime watches
for the neighborhoods and the businesses as regular patrol. You know,
it is what you make it. Do you want to
be visible, you know where you're patrolling and have people
get to know you, or do you just want to
go on patrol, call to call to call and not

(31:11):
worry about that. You know, it all depends on the individual, right,
you know, you got to care. You got to care.
Sometimes we're so busy you don't have time to do
those things. The afternoon shift, especially for us in any district,
is super busy. It's called to call to call, the
call on day shift, you have some time to do that.

(31:31):
In some of the districts midnights, you know, as businesses
are closing down, then all you're doing is patrolling those
areas and keeping an eye out for what's going on.
You know. Rooftop burglars were a big problem back in
the eighties because the way they built the stores with
the roofs, you could take a screwdriver and break through

(31:53):
the roof. And we had a lot of that going
on with video stores back then. Remember even before Blockbuster,
uh privately owned video stores and gun shops. They got
broken in. We call them rooftops. And I worked playing
close for a while back then, and we were catching
rooftop burglars all the time, doing surveillances and watching them

(32:15):
on the roof and chasing them and a foot chase
on the roof. You know, it happened all the time.
Now everything is concrete roofs, so it's very difficult. They
got to get in through the back door. They got
to go in through the front door by breaking glass.
But another thing that we have down here, which a
lot of businesses are doing, just like my wife and
I have in our house, we have hurricane windows right,

(32:37):
very hard to break into. It's basically bulletproof glass. So
can you get into that? Yes you can. You can
destroy the frame with a crowbar or something, but it
makes it very difficult, and bad guys don't want to
spend that kind of time. They want to You want
to break in, get in and get out. But yes,
to your point, you've got to go out and make contact.

(32:59):
You've got to meet the folks. And for businesses that's.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Really important, absolutely, especially given the fact that in the
black market for spare parts, a black market you mentioned
firearm stores too. You break in, you steal some firearms,
you could sell that to in their world, the right
people make some money off of it. In addition to
the drug problem, now you have a gun problem too,
because those two oftentimes go hand in hand. Where there's
drugs to be found, there's guns to be found too,

(33:23):
So you never know what the motivation is. They don't
want to be interrupted, like you said, they want to
get in and get out and work and get really
dangerous cops roll up on that. They don't want to
go to jail. They don't want to get caught. Like
you said a few times already in our conversation, it's
time to dance. Now. Policing and uniform is dangerous enough
as it is, but before I get to field training,
which would come later, policing and playing clothes is a

(33:46):
whole different ballgame because, unfortunately, and you see this a
lot in larger cities too, you don't just have to
worry about the fact that you're trying to blend into
the neighborhood and not be seen. But you also have
to keep in mind too, if uniform cops are responding,
they may not know right away. I'm one of them,
and we've unfortunately seen a lot of instances across the
country the uniform cop thinks the plane closed cop is

(34:07):
one of the purps, and unfortunately that plain close cop
ends up getting hurt or ends up getting killed as
a result of that. So that's not an easy thing
to juggle. I'm sure you guys would communicate it before
to the patrol guys. Hey, if you see this guy
wearing this, he's one of ours. But nevertheless, tell me
about why you wanted to go into plane clothes and
balancing those two dangers.

Speaker 4 (34:25):
Back in eighty four, a little over a year after
I came on, every district had what was called crime
Suppression team. NYPD has their own version of it in
the precincts, or they work a certain area of several precincts.
For us, each district had its own crime suppression team.

(34:48):
So you work plain clothes, You're doing a lot of surveillances.
You're going after a lot of people boosting cars, breaking
into houses, committing robberies. And during the holidays, especially at
the shopping centers, they are a beehive of criminal activity.

(35:11):
In the malls. People are stealing cars, they're robbing people
in the parking lot. We had it so bad for
a while with the driveway robberies you called them. What
would happen is the bad guys would follow folks home
that are driving nice cars, follow them into their neighborhoods,

(35:33):
and rob them right in their driveway. So we did
a lot of that stuff, but doing playing close work surveillances.
When you're watching the crime, you know, you guys are
set up. You got an eyeball on some burglars or something,
or some guys are trying to steal a car. I
got to tell you, Mike, it's a real rush when

(35:54):
you're watching it going down. And I remember one time
we had a movie theater that was getting hit all
the time. The cars in the parking level get hit
all the time. So we set up a surveillance. We
had six of us, everybody in their own onmark car.
And then the cars, you know, are a variety of
different cars, from a van to an older car, you know,

(36:18):
nondescript cars. And I got out on foot and I
got up maybe within twenty feet of these guys trying
to break into a car, and I'm trying to be
as quiet as possible in the radio and I'm telling
the rest of the guys right, They're they're breaking they're
breaking into the car. They're trying to break into the truck.

(36:38):
They're trying to get into the car. They got into
the car. They're trying to break the column to get
it started. These these two guys were a bunch of idiots,
a couple of idiots. They couldn't do anything right. And
I'm just calling it out. And when then everybody else
came in and just caught them, And when and when
you when you get to see that up close, it

(37:00):
really is a lot of fun for us. I know,
you know, some people in the audience may say, you know,
well it's so dangerous. Yeah, it's dangerous, but you know
it is kind of fun too, Yeah, it is. Catching
bad guys is a rush for sure. Doing a burglary
in the house, doing a burglary in a business, working

(37:21):
plain clothes, you do all those kinds of things. And
then part of it also was street level narcotics. You know,
you can make small buys. We have a narcotic squad,
so they handled the big stuff, but the crime suppression
teams in each district did street level narcotics. All the
little hand to hand stuff and things like that, and
then you would stop somebody you catch them and you're

(37:43):
catching drugs, so there you're carrying drugs. So then you
flip them. And then immediately people don't want to go
to jail and they want to be cooperative because you know,
they don't want to get convicted and do a year
or whatever. They're going to give you their supplier, and
then it just escalates upwards. You know, you're always going
after the bigger fish, and when it got big, we

(38:04):
would loop in narcotics because they had the more experienced
guys for narcotics and the resources to be able to
deal with them. And they also work with the DEA.
So if it got to be a really big case,
everybody's coming in and we just we hand it off.
We'll still participate. But I would say in plain clothes
doing surveillances was the most fun. Following bad guys in

(38:30):
their cars when they're going to go do a crime.
You know they're going to do a crime, and you're
you're doing tails, just like you're seeing TV and in
the movies. You know, all right, I got the eyeball
and you're following them for a few blocks and then
they make a turn, you keep going straight. Someone else
comes in behind them, and you do it with four
or five cars. They never know you're back there, and

(38:50):
you just follow them to the crime. It is a rush,
it's a blast, actually, but something would happen and now
we've got to do a takedown or whatever the case is.
It's hitting the fan. You have to let everybody else
know I'm wearing these clothes, I'm driving this car, you know,

(39:12):
because uniform is going to show up. Fortunately, within the district,
everybody knows each other, and the uniform guys will get
out of the car and they know it's me, or
they know it's less or that you know, they know
it's a table or you know, one of the guys.
The problem is if you have guys from other districts
to come into your district on something and then it

(39:32):
hits the fan, you may not know who they are,
you know, and then you could have what you're alluding
to is a possible blue on blue situation. Yeah, friendly fire, Yeah,
and if you're in uniform, anybody in playing clothes that
you don't know is a bad guy until we figure
out otherwise, Right, drop the gun, get down on the

(39:55):
ground whatever and cop. The cops know to do that
because they don't want to get shot. Yes, it happens
once in a while. Fortunately it hasn't happened here per se,
not in my experience. Although my my old partner who's

(40:17):
no longer with us, was shot by his backup on
a call. But it wasn't plain close situation. It was
that the other officer should have never been an officer
doing her job and panicked and fired off a shot
and hit my partner in the leg and it blew
out his for moral artery. He died of neurological issues

(40:40):
many years later. I'm sorry but that thank you, But
that's that's the exception. Fortunately for us, we didn't have
any you know, uniformed guys lighting up some some plain
clothes guys. You know, we try, we try to mitigate
that by saying we're working in this area, you know,
let everybody know, and even if we're going into another
day or another jurisdiction like one of the cities. What

(41:08):
I always what we always try to do is let
the sergeant of that area know that we're going to
be in the area doing an operation, so they're aware,
you know, it's a courtesy thing. I'm coming into the
city of Miami. We're going to do an operation. We
got to let them know because if something breaks, they're

(41:28):
going to be responding, not knowing that there's cops here,
you know, and vice versa. They don't. You know, it
doesn't always happen that way, but you do your best
to mitigate a possible blue on blue situation. It's just courtesy.
Let someone know you're playing in their in their in
their backyard.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
So that I'm glad you touched on that because I
brought this up before. I remember seeing a rerun of
a Miami Vice episode years ago, and obviously it's not
a reflection of real life, but I bring this up
it kind of correlates to what we're talking about. Uh
Don Johnson's character, Detective Crockett is carry is rather chasing
after a bad guy. A couple of uniform guys pull
up and they're telling him stop phrase and he's like,

(42:05):
he shouts as he's chasing the guy, oh my cop,
and he holds up his badge and then they assist
in the chase. Now it doesn't go down like that,
but nevertheless, you have enough to worry about as it is.
With these busts. You don't want that worry too, so
it mitigates again, good communication mitigates a lot of those
factors before they could even become factors. And I'll ask
you again, major cases get handed off, as you said earlier,

(42:28):
but this is the cocaine cowboys era, and even after
that era had particularly peaked, it's not like it stopped.
It may have declined a little bit, but it's still
kept on going. You know, you're not tracking the major dealers,
but the peasants doing the street work. You can get
and bust those guys all the time, and at least
inconvenience the major guys on top of you know, if
you're not going to be able to stop the whole operation.
You talked about the rush earlier. What's one bust from

(42:50):
that era that stands out is Man, that was a
really good takedown.

Speaker 4 (42:57):
Wow, it's hard to call those kinds of things. Usually
something that ended up in a chase, a crash, a
foot chase, a fight, and then take them in the custody.
And there is a lot of that. Chases were very
prevalent back then. They're not prevalent today. Back in the

(43:21):
late nineties, early two thousands. My department, as many departments,
made the chase policy more restrictive because we had civilians
getting killed getting hit by the bad guys, and we
also had officers getting hurt and killed nationwide. Yeah, so
chases are very dangerous. I got to tell you, though,
there is nothing like a police chase, you know, to

(43:42):
be involved in. It is the ultimate rush. You're scared
out of your mind at times. But driving like that,
especially when you get up on the turnpike or one
of the highways and you're chasing the rabbit as we
call it. I've been in a lot of fights. Fortunately

(44:08):
almost all of them were with other officers. I wasn't
in a fight one time by myself, and that was
my fault, but I got out of it. It is
sobering when you get into a situation like that, you know,

(44:31):
like one on one, you and I I stop you
in your car and you have a warrant for your arrest,
and I make the mistake of trying to arrest you
by myself. Never do that. There is no rush to
arrest anybody. There is no rush to get involved in
anything unless it's an exigen circumstance. That's happening right in
front of you right now. Other than that, you have

(44:55):
time get back up in there, you know, get two
or three guys with you, and this way you have
a show of force that you know the guy is
probably going to back down and comply doesn't know what's happened.
But that's the safest way of doing it. Any one incident,
I would have to say the most harrowing had to

(45:19):
be when my son's godfather, Gary and I we were
getting ready to transfer at the end of the shift.
It was about nine point thirty. We get off a ten.
We're driving up the road going towards our station, and
a call went out, man at the door with a gun.
And this was January seventh, nineteen eighty seven. Gary and

(45:44):
I looked at each other and said, listen, we're going
to be passing the other guys. We're not too far
from here. We need to go. And we roll up
on the house. Everything is dark and I pulled up
caddy corner to the house. One of the things you
never do on a crime or a domestic anything like that,
is pull up right in front of the house. I
see it on TV too many times. It drives me insane.

(46:08):
When officers are doing that, and when they stand in
front of the front door when they're knocking on it,
you never do that. So Gary went right on this
side of the house, and then I had to go
in front of the house. But I went down the
street and I came around the side. I didn't go
to the front door. And as I'm working my way

(46:29):
around the other side of the house, I get to
a big picture window and I peek in and I
see a guy looking out the peep hole at the
front door, and he's holding a thirty caliber carving rifle
in his hands, and I see a twelve gate shotgun

(46:49):
on the couch. I said, okay. I got on the
radio quietly. I told the dispatcher I got bad guys
inside with guns. I only saw him the first guy.
I made my way toward the kitchen sliding glass door,
and when I got to the sliding glass door, the
eighteen year old subject. The guy at the door was

(47:10):
fifty six. The eighteen year old subject met me right
at the glass door. I had my gun out. He
had a semi auto in his hand. He looked at
me and I looked at him, and we both did this,
and I said oh shit, okay, and then he ran
back in and then I ran to a big fire
pit that they had for barbecuing. It was concrete, so

(47:33):
I took cover behind that and I got on the
radio told the dispatcher I got another bad guy, would
have gun, just confronted him. Then while we were there,
I'm looking at it. Gary's on the side. The third subject,
the thirty two year old in a blue suit, comes
out of a bedroom which was next to the kitchen,

(47:54):
and behind him is the family in their pajamas. It
was a husband, wife, a couple of kids, and grandma
or abuela. And they made their way towards the sliding
glass door, and he's yelling at me, going everything okay,
everything okay. And I got my gun trained on him

(48:15):
and I'm telling him to come outside, and he wouldn't
do it. And then one of the family members unlocked
the sliding glass door and they pushed the door and
they pushed him out, and I ran up and I
grabbed him and I held him. I put my gun
to his head and I issued some sweet nothings in
his ear, and then I dragged him over to the

(48:36):
side and gave him to Gary. Pat him down really quick.
Gary cuffed him. He didn't have any weapons, and then
I went back to where I was. So, now we've
got three bad guys in the house. We got the family,
We rescued the family, and we held the perimeter. I'm
on the job four years at this point. You know,
I'm still new car smell as I'd like to call him.

(49:00):
The senior guys came, The sergeant came, called for Special
Response Team that's what we call our SWAP, and they
came and took over the perimeter and they ended up
talking the guys out after about two hours. One of
the guys on the SRT team later on became a
very good friend of mine and a partner, and they

(49:20):
basically told him come out or we're going to come
in and kill you. Well, these guys hit the wrong house.
The house next door had the cameras. That was the
doper house that they were trying to hit. So these
three guys, we took them in the custody. And then
when the State Attorney's office did the background check on

(49:42):
these animals, the fifty six year old at the front door,
his background was doing truck hijackings, and what he would
do he would follow his guys after they hijacked the truck,
and if a state trooper stopped him, he would drive
by and shoot the trooper. So he was the enforcer.

(50:04):
The guy in the blue suit ended up escaping from
the Day County stockade. Don't ask Mike, don't ask me
how he escaped. You got to have some inside help
to do it. But you know. And a couple of
months later, the Costa Rican police found him and he
was extradited back to us. But when they found him,

(50:26):
he was in an apartment on the fifth floor, and
I guess he couldn't fly because he went out the
fifth floor apartment and he came back in a body
cast with a broken arm and broken legs. And then
they went to trial, but they ended up pleading out.
Eventually they got the too bad. The thirty two year

(50:49):
old and the fifty six year old got twenty five
years to twenty five year sentences, and the eighteen year
old got twenty five years. I can tell you in
all sincerity that had Gary and I gone to the
front door, you and I would not be having this
conversation today because this guy would have killed us. I

(51:11):
would think that one really got my attention. Afterwards, you know,
when the adrenaline's going, you know you're all in, and
then afterwards you stop and think about it and go,
holy crap, that was really close. I've had a couple
of really close calls, but that one, I would say
is the most. You know, had the training from the

(51:34):
older guys and in the academy not kicked in and
we walked to the front door, it would have been over.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
And there's so many instances like that where it's happened again.
I mentioned traffic stops earlier. Cop doesn't know, you know,
I recall this story nineteen ninety eight or detective Randy
Bell and his partner. I forget who his partner's name was.
The guy has a gut in the back seat. They
didn't detect it. He I guess up executing both detectives.
These guys were from Tampa PD. And then later on,

(52:04):
you know, a trooper rolls up and I believe the
trooper had no idea as of that moment that a
manhunt was going on, and he's executed at a traffic stop.
So sometimes it's that situation like that that you rolled
up on. You know, you don't know for certain what's
going on, but your gut is telling you something's very wrong.
And that's the difference ultimately, like you describe, between being
able to make a great collar out of it or

(52:26):
being another face in the officer down memorial page.

Speaker 4 (52:29):
What the general public doesn't understand and they're not aware
of it because you know, they're not involved in the profession,
or you don't have family or friends that are on
the job. A traffic stop it's a single most dangerous
thing a cop does because, to your point, you stop
the car for a traffic violation, they roll the stop sign,

(52:53):
they've got a tail light out, and your intention is
just to tell them they have a tail light out.
So I don't know how many people have done this
with I stop you just to tell you, hey, you
got a tail light out or a break light out,
because if I don't stop and tell you, how would
you know? And you can't get it fixed? And that's
my only intention. But I really don't know who you are.

(53:14):
I don't know who's in that car. I don't know
what you're involved in. You could be a murderer or
a rapist, or a robber, or you could be somebody
would a warrant or you could just have a suspended
driver's license, or you panic. The police stop you and
you panic and you flee, but no one knows. We
don't know what that person is like in that car.

(53:35):
There's nothing telling us you can run the tag. Maybe
he just stole that car and it's not in the
system yet, so the officer doesn't know it's a stolen car,
but it just got stolen, or they just committed a crime.
So every traffic stop is very dangerous until you determine otherwise,

(53:56):
you know, you figure out who the person is, or
just Joe citizen, Jane citizen on their way to school
or work or coming home or to the store, and
you just stopped them for the violation or just to
tell them, you know, something was wrong with their car.
The second most dangerous thing and the most dangerous call,

(54:17):
and you said it earlier that police respond to with domestics.
On my own podcast, I mentioned every single cop and
firefighter that has died in the line of duty since
my last podcast, So I have an ongoing list and

(54:39):
I'm updating. I just updated my list for police for
my next episode. I had to add like fifteen names
since my last podcast, which was in July. Yes, and
when you're going through on the Officer down memorial page
where you find this information, and they do a really

(55:01):
good job of listing the officers that were killed in
a line of duty, like time and time again, responded
to a domestic, responded to a domestic, responded to a domestic,
and the officers that are that are responding and you're
walking up to that front door that's no man's land.

(55:22):
Sometimes they get ambushed before they even get to the
house or the apartment. And if you do make it inside,
now you've got a couple of people that are going
at it and the emotions are at a peak level.
For whatever the reason the domestic took place, that's not
our concern. Our concern is that there's no physical violence

(55:44):
and that we can stop this at least for the
day or the evening. Doesn't always work, but in that
heated dispute between the two people, you've also got to
be wary of what is in that apartment or house.
You've got to do a cursory scan. You got to
look at the kitchen counter and see if there's any knives, screwdrivers,

(56:05):
scissors that are laying around that could be a weapon.
Against you, and you never ever let anybody sit on
the couch because they hide guns in the cushions. So
then I always, you know, like to you just use
the person as an example that I'm speaking with. Sure,
you and your wife are involved in a domestic and

(56:27):
we respond you battered her. That's usually the case. Usually
the man is the one that batters the wife. All
you know, it goes the other way too, yeah, sometimes,
So we're going to arrest you for domestic battery. Well,
she doesn't want us to arrest you, and now she
jumps on us as well, right, could pull a weapon,

(56:48):
Usually not the case with the woman, but she jumps
on us. So now we're arresting the husband boyfriend, and
now we're arresting the wife girlfriend. And we have taken
entire families to jail on domestics because they all jump in.
You never know how it's going to go, and you
might need more than just two cops. It's normally two

(57:09):
cops to go to these things. It's a two man
callers we call it down here. But if it's really violent,
you got multiple units going, and that's the way you
got to do it. You know, you got to have
three four or five cops there. I remember one time
on a domestic early in my career, where we responded

(57:31):
to the house and we're at the sliding glass door
and the guy is drunk. He is pissed, drunk, big,
and he's got his wife by the hair and they're
at the sliding glass door and she's crying, she's bleeding,
and he's, you know, giving us all this and telling
us staff off and all that stuff. And we're telling

(57:53):
him open the door, open the door, open the door.
We were seething that we wanted to get in. There's
so bad, right, because of what he was doing to her.
To her credit, she reached up unlocked the sliding glass door,
and here we go. He's got the football. We gang taklim.
Problem was that he didn't let go of his wife's hair.

(58:16):
She went down with the scrub. We're on this guy.
We're pounding him to get him to let go of
his wife's hair. Right, she's screaming and it's a mess.
He won't let go. He's so drunk, he's not feeling
the beating that we're giving him. The female offshore that
was with us, Billy O'Brien, good police. You know what

(58:38):
she does. She reaches in and grabs him right between
the legs and squeezes and pulls. He let go right
and then we were finally able to get him in
the custody and take him to jail and get fire
rescue for the wife and all that. We had a
fire rescue treat him also, then taken on to the

(59:00):
hospital before jail. It's funny because no male officer would
have ever thought of doing that, right, the family jewels
are too sacred. We're not going to do that. She
did it, and then she was able to make the
guy let go, and we laughed about it afterwards. You know, Billy,

(59:21):
that was a good move. But we never would have
thought of that. But this this was a bad one
and he was really hurting her bad. Yeah, but it worked.
You know, she was improvising, you know, adapt overcome, improvised,
like in the movie. Yeah, and it worked. But domestics,
domestics are bad. Too many cops get seriously injured or

(59:41):
killed on the domestics. So you got the traffic stopping
the domestics the two most dangerous things that we do.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
And sometimes I mean, listen, it's it's simply just a
matter of rage. That's already at the surface boiling over
because you see this a lot and alcohol doesn't help.
Cop walks into the house, he looks at his lady
or whatever the situation is, sibling, parent, even sometimes he
uses two guys beating up his parents. Sadly, you call
the cops on me. What's he do? Pulls out a knife,
pulls out a gun, usually a gun, and it goes sideways.

(01:00:11):
I mean, it happened in Connecticut not too long ago.
If you may recall him Bristol, you know it's been
three years now. There was a guy and one of
the police officers actually went to high school with this
perpetrator down here in Bristol, Connecticut, where he was drunk.
He had one too many. He'd gotten into it at
a bar with his brother. They go home, him and
the brother are fighting. Mom calls the cops. They're rolling up.

(01:00:31):
They're asking him to come out. He comes out. Hey,
there's three cops there. He ambushes him. He kills two
of them. The third cop a shop who was able
to shoot back and kill the perpetrator. Just like that.
They didn't even get the chance to ring the doorbell
to have him come out. On that domestic when this
animal comes out firing, and that was a very tragic
situation that took place. The anniversary just passed in October
of twenty twenty two. All of this is segueing perfectly

(01:00:54):
into what I wanted to hit on next with you,
which is all these experiences, some positive, some not so positive,
and dean with both of them, no matter how they went,
is they teach you something and you're able to take
that with you when you go into field training. And
that's they need experience, guys and gals like yourself to
be able to teach the next generation. You know, have
them understand it. Like you said earlier, right, doesn't matter

(01:01:15):
how much technology you have or how strong and physically
well built you may be. You have to be able
to use your mind with this job and be able
to improvise because things can change in a heartbeat. So
what made you, well, I'll ask you first, what made
you want to study for sergeant and what made you
want to take that step in training the next generation
given the fact that despite those difficult calls, you were

(01:01:36):
having fun out in the field.

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
So when I was a young officer, following the lead
of many of the guys, that came on before me,
either before me by a lot, like my second field
training officer or my other two field training officers who
had two two and a half years on respectively. Number One,
you want to, you want to You got to have

(01:01:59):
the desire to pay it forward to train other guys.
And we were hiring so many that veteran cops with
a lot of time on at least ten years or more.
There weren't enough of them to train the new guys
coming on. So didn't you have field training officers that
had only a couple of years on? But I can

(01:02:20):
tell you that two years working within our department anywhere
could be five or ten years in most other departments.
You gain experience so fast, especially at that time. So
at four plus years on, I decided to become a
field training officer. I wanted to help pay it forward.

(01:02:41):
I had really good field training officers, I had some
great sergeants, so I wanted to teach, and the department
was in desperate need of field training officers. So then
I did that for a little while. Then I stopped
field training and I got involved in driver training. I
became a driving instructor early on. So for thirty six

(01:03:03):
of my thirty seven years on and off, I taught
police driving, which I love to drive a car. I
mean I have a passion for it. I like motorsports,
racing Formula one Indie car and driving a police car,
like I told you, in a chase or running license sirens.
It's a lot of fun. So I did that. Then

(01:03:25):
I wasn't a field training officer for a few years,
and then I decided to do it again. It rekindled
my desire to teach again. And believe it or not,
you as a field training officer learned so many more
things while you're teaching than you did before you were teaching,

(01:03:46):
because now you're responsible for this new person that came
out of the academy and for everything that they do
for the month that you have. This this rookie as
we call, you know, the gout of the academy in
the Cana Academy, their cadets, you come out in road,
you're a rookie. Technically you're called a probationary police officer,
but colloquially, colloquially a rookie. And as you're teaching them,

(01:04:10):
you're learning things and then you say, oh, you know
what I didn't know that, and it makes you a
better cop too. So I had a lot of fun
teaching them and then watching someone get something. When something
clicks in your rookie and they go, ah, okay, I
figured it out. That is very gratifying to a field

(01:04:32):
training officer. And when the rookie figures it out, it's
kind of like your kid. I'm a dad, I have
three kids, I have five grandchildren. You figure it out that.
It's it's a very proud feeling that when your rookie
figure something out or they progress to the next level. Conversely,

(01:04:54):
you know if they're struggling, then it's on you to
try to fix that. You've got to work around whatever
their weaknesses and get them to do better. And that's
very gratifying and satisfying. So at the about fourteen year mark,

(01:05:16):
I had already been a field training officer. I was
currently a field training officer. On my second go round,
I decided that I needed a new challenge. I was
getting a little bored, so then I went for sergeant
and I got promoted in April of ninety eight. I
had fifteen years on already, so by no stretch was
I a rookie when I got promoted. Unfortunately, these days

(01:05:39):
we've got guys with five years on getting promoted to sergeant.
That is not we disagree with that. Yeah, you still
haven't learned how to be a cop yourself, let alone
supervise cops now, which can be very difficult, and becoming
a sergeant is very challenging. They say it's the hard

(01:06:00):
supervisory position to attain and to learn how to do,
because you went from an officer that you were responsible
for yourself and you had your peers to now you're
responsible for a group of officers with all of their
personalities and nuances as far as each individual's concerned. So

(01:06:28):
cops are usually alpha dogs, so now you are in
charge of an alpha dog or an alpha lion group.
You know you've got to be the lion tamer when
you take over a squad, and it can be difficult.
But I needed the challenge. I accepted it, I got it,

(01:06:50):
and it was a lot of fun. For twenty two
of my thirty seven years, I was a started so
and I never wanted to progress after that because now
you're starting to get more involved in more paperwork, staying
in the station, politics, dealing with the administration, whereas a sergeant,
you're more on the street. You're with your guys. When

(01:07:12):
it's hitting the fan, the sergeant's responsible for starting to
mitigate the scene. No matter how small or how large
it is, the sergeant has to take over. And I
enjoyed being out where the action was. I did not
want to be in the politics and you know, having
to be in the office all the time. I hated
being in the office. Even though I was a sergeant,
I had a lot of that I still had to do.

(01:07:35):
So sergeant for me was good. My wife Rosie kept
pushing me to try to go third, take the next test,
become a lieutenant, and take a next test and become
a captain. A captain is one administrative in the station,
politics all the time, headquarters and all that. That's not me.

(01:07:55):
That's not me at all. I like it on the street.
And then there was the other side of the training
aspect and the different things the disciplines that I was
involved in training. So that's why I became an FTO
and that's why I became a sergeant.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
And it played well, especially considering all the courses that
you would teach later. And there's some departments depending on
the size of them, or even as a lieutenant, you
can still be involved, but it's few and far between,
and there's a lot of guys who were smart sergeants
like yourself. A lot of people were pushing them to
go further, but exactly what you said, they love the
action of the street. They wanted to stay in the street.
To your point and experience, I feel like it's a

(01:08:32):
problem not just in law enforcement, but you see it
a lot in the fire service too. It could work
out well, but you have a guy, you know, four
or five, six years on, he's got a little bit
of time under his belt, but now he's a lieutenant,
and maybe that, you know, you can make the argument
that may be too soon of a jump. So experience.
I feel like seven eight, nine years in your case
fifteen practically almost, you know, that was a decade and

(01:08:54):
a half quite literally. That's a good time to move
up because you can take that experience with you. It
makes a transition, you know, a little less challenging, even
though there's still a lot of challenges to be had. Now,
you mentioned seem management and you touched on that pretty well.
You've seen this a lot recently and Parkland happened a
couple of years or so before you retired, and this

(01:09:14):
really came to the forefront of the nation's mind with
colum Mine really starting up in nineteen ninety nine active
shooter response a lot of population due to parties. We
think of Miami. I mean, even though you weren't involved
in this part of a downtown Miami. Of course, spring
break is going on any sort of public event where
there's enough people, rather be religious, sports, you name it.
It's a scary thought, but it's something we have to,

(01:09:35):
unfortunately have at the very forefront of our psyche these days.
Not an easy course to teach, But what did you
want without giving tricks to the trade away? Of course,
what did you want your officers to know specifically about that?
We'll run through some of the courses.

Speaker 4 (01:09:46):
You talk so. I in nineteen ninety eight, shortly after
I became sergeant, I was eligible to join the Mobile
Field Force Training Committee. This is a department wide committee
that trains all of our officers and crowd control and
it's a big group North end, South End. And during

(01:10:08):
that time post nineteen ninety nine, while we were doing
the crowd control training, every season, every spring was mobile
Field Force season for us because it wasn't quite so
hot because you got riok, you're on, you're outside. We're
running around with gear and sweating and fighting, you know,
simulating crowds and things like that, violent crowds. The department

(01:10:29):
needed to better train our officers in an active shooter response.
So the Mobile Field Force Committee, in addition to its
crowd control duties, also became active shooter instructors. So we
had SRT guys, Special Response Team guys train us in

(01:10:50):
active shooter protocols. So then we can turn around and
train the rest of the department. So after night, let's
go to night. You mentioned Columbine, that was the watershed
moment in the United States for active shooter response. Now
I'm going to get into a couple of things that's
going to upset a few people in your audience. I

(01:11:12):
have a chapter dedicated in my book to active shooter,
The Myths and the Truths of Active Shooter Training. In
response by police Columbine, the two kids from the trench
Coat Mafia went inside and they were doing their thing.
The uniform patrol officers responded and, per their training at

(01:11:34):
the time, set up a perimeter and held for SWAT.
They did not have the training and tactics and weapons
to go in after these kids. That was the industry
standard at the time perimeterize wait for specialized units i e. SWAT.

(01:11:55):
After that, we had to start changing our protocols what
was developed around the country, and this is the way
we started training for our department. You have an active
shooter case or incident. The first two, three four officers
that are responding form what we call a contact team.

(01:12:16):
They don't perimeterize, they don't do anything but go inside
in a formation that we trained to give three to
sixty degree coverage of this formation, and you go towards
the sounds of the gunshots. The gunshots means people are dying.
Your only objective at that point is to go and
neutralize the threat. Now, when I say neutralized, what do

(01:12:40):
you think I mean kill them right exactly? Yeah. There
is no rescuing, There is no helping out people that
are wounded or anything like that. You go towards the
sound of the gunfire and you put down the bad
guy or bad guys. Okay, that is your only job.
You're not waiting for anybody else to respond. An SRT SQUAT,

(01:13:01):
nothing like that. No perimeters. The contact team goes in immediately,
and that became the industry standard, and it's been very effective.
We've had some incidents around the country where officers would
arrive and just form that contact team. A contact team
could be two guys, but you prefer three or four

(01:13:24):
or up to five because the more guns you have
trained down range towards the bad guys, the better it
is for you. No one wants to get into a confrontation.
It's bad for everybody. But when you respond to an
active shooter, chances are ninety percent. You have no idea
of the layout of the building, the mall, the office,

(01:13:47):
the school. You have no idea how many subjects there are.
You have no idea how many weapons they're carrying, or
what type of weapons they're carrying. Generally they carry rifles.
Because the effective range of an AR fifteen is like
five hundred yards, or in AK forty seven it's seven
hundred yards. That's a long distance. I mean when you
think about how long that is, you know, five football

(01:14:08):
fields long. That's how far you know you're in danger,
you know responding to this. But your job is to
go in there and neutralize a threat. And we trained
and trained and trained on this for years. Now. You
mentioned Parkland up the street from us, up in Broward County,
So this is the part where it may upset a
few people. Deputy Peterson responded to the active shooter. He

(01:14:34):
was at Building twelve where it was taking place. What
he should have done is say I'm at Building twelve,
have units meet me here so we can make entry.
Per the training. Broward Sheriff's Office trained the same way
we did contact teams and then followed by rescue teams

(01:14:55):
for the people that are wounded. He didn't do that. Now,
he's a thirty two year veteran, he was close to retirement.
Was he afraid. I'm sure he's afraid. We're all afraid.
All right, let's put that out there. We're all afraid.
But you've got to overcome that fear in order to
go in there and do your job. He didn't do that.

(01:15:16):
A lot of people were calling him a coward. Had
he gotten the units that he needed, the other deputies
and made entry and never would have been the controversy.
It would only have been the usual outrage about gun
control instead of he didn't go in and people died.
Part two to that is a captain from Broward Sheriff

(01:15:39):
responded to the scene, and the higher rank usually takes
over and starts managing the scene. This captain started setting
up a perimeter. You don't set up a perimeter. That
was a huge mistake. What you should have done was
send more officers to make contact teams or form contact
teams and get into that school. You can have one

(01:16:01):
contact team, you can have two, you can have three,
you can have four. It doesn't matter. You got to
go find a bad guy. That was a mistake. Coral
Springs Police swat guys arrived and went in and made entry.
Roward Sheriff never did, and it was their responsibility. Nicholas

(01:16:23):
cruized the shooter, mingled with the students as they were
fleeing out of the school, and they ended up finding
him in a McDonald's. He just put himself with the
other kids and went to hide in a McDonald's. The
Coral Springs officers actually got in trouble for responding. Don't
ask me why. That's politics, but I can tell you

(01:16:43):
that it was a mistake. The way Broward Sheriff handled that,
we'll never gonna know, you know how Officer Peterson felt.
I'm sure he was afraid, absolutely, But had they formed
the contact team and made entry, then it never would
have become the controversy that it did. Still, students would
die because by the time the call goes out to police,

(01:17:05):
people have already been shot. That's just the nature of
the beast. It's just how fast we can get there
and try to mitigate the problem. But those are the
truths about active shooter response. Now, after Parkland, my department
Miami Dade started training officers to go in by themselves.

(01:17:27):
I don't agree with that. Why you're probably going to
commit suicide because you're going into that unknown environment. You're
not familiar with the grounds, you don't know how many
subjects they are, what kind of weapons they have. Did
they set booby traps? A lot of active shooters set
booby traps. The two kids in Columbine took propane tanks

(01:17:49):
for barbecues and set them up as booby traps, knowing
the police would be coming. The booby traps are for
the police, and even afterwards at their homes they booby
trapped the doors and the winds, knowing the police eventually
are going to go there. Hopefully they can take out,
a couple of cops with them, you know, once more
onto the breach, after they've been killed or taken into custody,

(01:18:10):
or killed themselves. There was a point where fifty six
percent of all active shooters shot themselves before the police arrived.
But going in by yourself, if I respond to your house, Mike,
on an alarm call, that's a two man call. Because
there may be bad guys involved. An alarm call, a

(01:18:33):
domestic two man call, burdenary in progress two man call,
a robbery in progress two man call, we never send one.
So now in an active shooter environment, you want to
send one officer.

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
You're gonna make them a martyr.

Speaker 4 (01:18:49):
Most of us absolutely do not agree with that. And
this is what will happen. The officers responding, knowing that
now the department trained them go in by themselves, some
of them are going to be so scared they're going
to take the long way around and arrive late. If

(01:19:09):
you're not there, you can't get in trouble, can you sure? Right?
If you arrive now, you're obligated to take some kind
of action. I would never allow my officers to go
in by themselves if I had an active shooter case,
I'm the first one in. Okay, take my guys and
go in. And we had it at North Miami Beach

(01:19:30):
Senior one day where we happened to be right outside
the school having a meeting about something we were doing.
I had a semi uniform door kicker squad for the
detectors in our district. We went and found the bad
guys for the detectors. Well, the call goes out, there's
a kid in North Miami Beach Senior would a gun.
We didn't hesitate. We went right into the school, guns drawn,

(01:19:53):
looking for the guy. Fortunately, it was a bad call.
We don't know how the call came in. Somebody just
called it in a false call. Were we afraid? Sure,
but we went in. We went as a team. When
you work as a team, chances are very high you're
going to prevail. Here's a question. Does any military unit

(01:20:13):
work by one.

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
Soldier, Not at all, not the slightest.

Speaker 4 (01:20:18):
Does any fire unit work one firefighter going into an
engulfed structure?

Speaker 1 (01:20:24):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:20:25):
No, So, now you're expecting a loan police officer to
go into that kind of threat environment. No, that's the
politics of this. The reason the department did is because
of the optics, as we're always hearing in the news
and in politics, the optics it looked bad. No, I
would never allow an officer of mine to go in
by themselves. I tell them, hold, I'm a minute away.

(01:20:48):
We're going in together. That's the way it has to
be done. Going in by yourself, your chances are you're
going to get killed, especially if they have a long
weapon and this officer has a side. Yeah, you know,
so that those that's the absolute truth about actor shooter response.

(01:21:11):
There's going to be some people that disagree with me,
But you know what at the end of the day
is people like to say officers need to go home
as well. You're not going to sacrifice yourself by being stupid.
You may syncrifice yourself by doing your job. That happens.

(01:21:31):
That happens all the time. It happens every week in
the United States. Write that list that I told you
about the fallen officers, I have to update it all
the time. I mean, it's incredible, But you're going to
put yourself in that situation by yourself, with unknown subjects
and weapons. No, that's insane. In my opinion and the
opinion of many of my colleagues. That that doesn't work.

(01:21:55):
No one, no other, no other job. The soldiers, you know,
special forces, nobody works alone. Nobody's a Rambo, nobody's a Mandalorian.
We like the movies. It's exciting and everything, right, Chuck Norris,
Steven Segal. No, you don't function that way. You gotta
work as a team. You gotta go in together, and

(01:22:17):
that's the way it's done.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
I don't think anybody in this audience is going to
disagree with you. I think everybody is pretty much myself
included in lockstep with that. And you bring up fire
out So for context, I'm trying to become a firefighter
down here in Connecticut.

Speaker 4 (01:22:29):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
I'm a volunteer currently, and you hit the nail on
the headcase where I volunte it's a career department where
I volunteer, but it has a volunteer program. We run
two four man engines. Lieutenant in the front, driver who's
in charge of pumping water, one guy who's in charge
of the nozzle, one guy who's in charge of setting
up the hydrant as soon as the hydrant guy finishes
setting up or girl. Because we have women firefighters too,

(01:22:49):
setting up what they have to set up everybody gets staged.
Everybody mask up, make sure they have their airpack on,
and they go in. That's a structure fire, which is
very dangerous when somebody has a weapon. You would think
the same principle would apply, but I look at it,
and then of course you see these line of duty
funerals which are very sad, and they talk the fallen
officer up, and that's great and all. But the ugly

(01:23:10):
question that nobody wants to bring up is was this preventable?
In a situation like that, God forbid an officer gets killed,
it is preventable. You know, there's a difference, and there's
two seas I find from talking with police officers like
yourself on this program that you want to avoid in policing.
Cowardice is one, obviously, Cowboyism is the other one. What

(01:23:33):
you described, if that plan is in effect for police
departments throughout not only Florida but anywhere in the United States,
is cowboyism. Sometimes the cowboys lose the gun battle, and
if you can prevent that, you know, listen with proper tactics.
Proper tactics save lives. At the end of the day's
We talk about often on this program whether we're talking
with someone from law enforcement or from fire, then prevent it.

(01:23:53):
But again, it's unfortunate that optics overtake that, and it
shouldn't because at the end of the day, it leads
to bloodshed and necessary and avoidable bloodshed at that.

Speaker 4 (01:24:03):
You know, I don't know how some people would look
at it, but I'm not expendable.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
No nobody else. They're people, They're humans, they have people
who love them.

Speaker 4 (01:24:13):
Right, Yes, for the sake of your political career, I'm
not going into that threat environment by myself. Okay, that's stupid.
I will go in when I have my guys with
me in my team. My last commander, Major Ray mel Konick,
my International Airport District. He was in the Army. He

(01:24:36):
was an SRT. Great great guy, great tactician, thinker. He
was at a school function after Parkland and another parent
of one of the kids came up to him, knowing
that he's a police officer and he was a lawyer,
and he wanted his opinion on Parkland right because he

(01:24:59):
was trying to who sort of what's the word I'm
looking for. He's trying to pigeonhole Ray into saying something
that would be controversial, and Ray said, let me answer that.
Let me answer your question this way about the officer
not going in, said police and fire firefighters when they respond,

(01:25:23):
and you nailed it on the head. When they respond,
an engine company respond, you've got an officer and you've
got three firefighters. So you've got four together all the
time with a supervisor and a scene when a rescue
truck for US responds as well, and in our case,
it's three firefighters, one's an officer, two paramedics. Right. So
now if you have an engine company and a fire

(01:25:44):
rescue truck, you got seven firefighters with two supervisors. If
you have a couple of engines, it just grows right, right,
So they do exactly what you said. They stop, they
formulate a plan, They see what the structure is doing. Right,
this is how we're going to go in. This is
where how we're going to attack this. A firefighter never

(01:26:06):
goes in by him or herself into an engulfed building
with a fire extinguisher, do they, right? Okay, So now
what you're asking is for an officer to go in
with that fire extinguisher, which is the sidearm. Right, it's
akin to the same thing by themselves into an unknown

(01:26:27):
thread environment and a fully engulfed building in the case
with bad guys with weapons inside. That's an engulfed building.
Let's look at it that way. And he's going in
with his fire extinguisher, sidearm, maybe he has a rifle.
So while you would not condemn fire for stopping, staging,
formulating the plan, masking up, getting their gear on, got

(01:26:47):
the Scott packs on, they're charging hoses, and then they're
going to go in, you expect the officer to sacrifice
himself for the same type of environment, a fire or
guys with guns. What's more dangerous. You know, they're both

(01:27:08):
extremely dangerous, but the guy with the gun poses more
of a threat. They can see where the fire is, right.
You can't see where the guy with the guns exactly.
So I know it's a long winded way of getting
to that point, but it's so important that people understand that.
You know, when I hear congressional sub committees talking about

(01:27:29):
these things, and the congressmen and the senators are yelling
at some law enforcement official, nobody in there understands. There
is no law enforcement background in there. In the in
these hearings and everything that you and I just talked
about in the last ten minutes for active shooter is

(01:27:49):
never said in these congressional hearings. We just get blamed
for everything because we didn't do our job right. People die,
you know, Unfortunately, people die every day and can't stop that.
We win once in a while, you know, we're able
to save lives. But a guy with an actor shooter,
and you know, he goes into the school you've all did.

(01:28:10):
That was a major screw up by the police.

Speaker 1 (01:28:13):
Of course, you know, of course I'm not going.

Speaker 4 (01:28:15):
To sugarcoat it. You've got nineteen cops outside and nobody's
making entry into that, you know, into that classroom.

Speaker 1 (01:28:22):
For almost an hour. Yeah, where do you begin with that?

Speaker 4 (01:28:32):
During our train we would put sergeants and officers through
the training forming contact teams. We would set up booby
traps because as you're making your way towards the gunfire
and well we would we would have shotguns with blanks
so we could simulate the gunfire in some part of
our training center. We used his classrooms in a school,

(01:28:55):
we set up booby traps. The idea with the booby
traps is only to advise people back. I have booby
traps you don't stop and do anything with them. You
just go around them and you keep going towards the gunfire. Well,
what we did is we set up the shooter in
a classroom with students. Now the team has to make entry. Mike.

(01:29:18):
After we broke one scenario down with one group, a
sergeant and four officers, the sergeant turned to me and said,
I'm not going in there. I'm gonna get shot. I go.
What he goes, Yeah, I'm not going to go in there,
I'm gonna get shot.

Speaker 5 (01:29:37):
I go.

Speaker 4 (01:29:38):
You do understand that the shooter is killing kids in there, right,
and you have an entire team. Yes, you may get shot,
it is possible, but you need to make entry. And
we've trained you and talked to you how to make
entry into a roomb, just like a special responder NAM does.
And he goes, my son's not in there. I go,

(01:30:03):
w TF. I go, I can't believe that you just
said that to me.

Speaker 6 (01:30:07):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:30:08):
Wow. Suppose let me flip it to this guy and
I said, suppose I responded to your son's school. Would
you want me to make entry into that classroom to
try to prevent your son from being killed? Why would
you expect me to do it, but you wouldn't do

(01:30:29):
it yourself. That's a coward. And exactly everybody's afraid. You
just have to overcome. You have to fight, train, overcome
that fear. The bravery is not the absence of fear,
it's overcoming it. But this guy was a coward and

(01:30:52):
I could not believe he said that to me. And
I said, you know what, I hope it never happens.
And I hope i'm the guy that responds to your
kids' school and can do something to save your son's life,
because obviously you're not going to do it for somebody else.
And that's that's the stark reality. Not every cop can
overcome that. You know, we're not all the same. We

(01:31:16):
went through the same training and everything, but we're not
all the same. And unfortunately I had to work with
the guy. We were in the same district, but I
kept my distance as much as I could because I
knew the type of person that he is.

Speaker 1 (01:31:30):
I can't believe. It's shocking. Yeah, it happens, It happens.
It happens. You know, not everybody's built for it. Some
people just want the recognition and want to say how
cool it is to wear the patch and both professions
you see it and fire too. Unfortunately, there's people that
just want to wear the patch and just want to
collect the check. They don't care. They don't have the
heart for it. That guy, I hope he's still not

(01:31:51):
on the job because he definitely doesn't have the heart
for me.

Speaker 4 (01:31:53):
He's retired now, fortunately, and it never came to pass.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
Good.

Speaker 4 (01:31:56):
I'm glad to say so good.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
What a terrible answer, But again, I appreciate it wasn't
long winded at all. I appreciate how you broke it down.
That was a very good insight. And like I said,
I think most of my audience they're not going to
disagree with you on that one. Most of my audience
is in lockstep with you one hundred and ten percent.
I'm gonna merge airports and ports together because nine to
eleven happens. And as I've covered before with the NYPD

(01:32:20):
guys and the FDNY guys who've been on the program,
particularly the NYPD guys who worked, you know, in units
like counter terrorism or the bomb squad. Nineteen ninety three,
the first attack of the Trade Center kind of got
everybody's attention.

Speaker 4 (01:32:30):
Hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:32:31):
Okay, something's going on here, And we see the attacks
abroad Cobar Towers in ninety six and Loaden blows up
the embassy's in ninety eight in Africa, but it hadn't
really struck American soil in such a way because ninety three,
although a big event, six people died, thousands injured, the
tower still stood. And even with the coal in two thousand,
again involving the US, but again not necessarily on US soil,

(01:32:53):
nine to eleven changed everything, and not only New York City,
but every major city across America is wondering, now, what
are we going to do about terrorism? You have enough
of innitie as it is with drug trades and trying
to make sure you keep a bottle on that. Now
you've got to incorporate this. Now you weren't the only
one involved. But as fears were really at their crescendo

(01:33:14):
in two thousand and one, two two thousand and three,
especially as the Iraq War kicked off, and now there's
more concerns about more attacks, tell me about the game
plan for that. And again same thing with active shooter
not revealing tricks of the trade. What you guys were
able to come up with Tighten the security even further
than you already had it after such a terrible tragedy.

Speaker 4 (01:33:33):
Let's go with the Port of Miami. Security is very lax.
You have the Port of Miami, the busiest, largest cruise
ship port in the world, and it goes back and
forth with Fort Lauderdale, which is neck and neck. You
want to go take a cruise, usually come to Miami
Fort Lockdale. You got megashifs and lots of them during

(01:33:55):
the season, and then you got the cargo side, which
is very busy as well. Nobody gave a rats ass
about security pre nine to eleven, so then it happens.
And if you recall, we had the National Guard and
all the ports and airports following nine to eleven, you
got soldiers walking around with M sixteen's and that was

(01:34:19):
the visible security. So in two thousand and two and April,
we took over from the National Guard at the Port
of Miami, so the ports and airports are more homeland
security than they are traditional policing. Security was really laxed,
and the State of Florida passed a new statue about

(01:34:43):
deep water ports security three eleven twelve, and it enacted
a whole bunch of new security regulations for the deep
water ports in Florida. We had Miami Day Police had
a very small footprint on the port prior to nine
to eleven. After that, when we took over, Customs was

(01:35:04):
the chief law enforcement agency for the most part on
the port. Now we became the chief law enforcement agency.
We had to come up with new security plans and
lock that place down. I can tell you Mike that
nobody in the cruise or cargo industry has wanted anything
to do with security because it cost them money. While

(01:35:24):
the while the cruise lines had some security, they screened
passengers before they go on board, just like at the airport,
it wasn't really tight and there was a lot of
movement on the port. Areas were not locked down. When
you go into the cargo area, that's a secured area, Okay,
people were driving through you know there. It was a

(01:35:48):
free flow. And you have the long shoremen that worked
there that in my opinion, is a criminal organization. They
know or all the drugs and the contraband and the
stolen cars, and they know where everything's going on.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
I mean, they got exactly exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:36:07):
So we had to come up with all kinds of
new security plans. In addition, and in order to enact
those security plans, posting officers all over the port, checkpoints,
checking passenger cars, random cars coming in going out. We
had to hire a lot of officers on overtime, so
the contingent of us that were at the port. We

(01:36:31):
had to train several hundred officers over the course of
a few months so they can come work at the
port because the port is not normal police. But like
I said, it's not normal patrol. You've got to learn
the nuances of how the port functions. There's a lot
of hazards, especially in the cargo area. Yeah, you've seen

(01:36:51):
the car, the container cranes, the uh, the gantry cranes
at seaports lifting the containers on and off the ship, right,
You've seen it on TV and in movies. That's a
very hazardous work area. We have to train our officers.
You do not drive under a raised container because something

(01:37:14):
could happen and if that container falls on your patrol car,
you're gone. Or the hatches off the cargo ships that
they take off and put on to the dock, those
weigh thirty tons. You don't drive in those areas. You've
got to stay away from all that stuff. You got
to learn all these different things. And then the security
procedures all these stores coming in to the cruise ships

(01:37:38):
on a daily basis. A cruise ship comes back in
the morning, six six thirty in the morning, they dock,
They got to let all the passengers off. They have
to go through Customs to get cleared because they went
out into international waters. Now Customs has to clear everybody
coming back into the United States. All the provisions that
are going on the cruise ship for the next sailing

(01:38:00):
to get inspected. They have private security, but sometimes that
private security is lax, and we've got to check in
the trucks. We've got to search the trucks, do cursory searches. Sometimes.
We finally got bomb dogs at the port. The first
two officers ever with bomb dogs at the port were
two of my guys. And you have to treat it

(01:38:22):
as if you're in a terrorist environment. A piece of
you know, you come to the port for a cruise,
you and your wife, you accidentally left your piece of
luggage laying out someplace. That's a threat. We have to
call the dog and run the dog by it to
see if it alerts or not. Sometimes we have alerts.
Sometimes we've had to call the bomb squad to come

(01:38:42):
out and X ray things and do stuff. So it's
a completely different environment, very high security, but nobody wants
that security because it costs money, especially the cargo lines.
The cargo companies, they don't want anything to do with
our security and they complain. The Port of Miami has
about eight thousand employees on it, so we've had to

(01:39:04):
change that culture completely, the cadre of supervisors and aufstters
at the Port office, the port station, and it was
very difficult. And then, like I said, the ISLA fought
us tooth and nail all the time. What we did
have the power to do is if you didn't comply
with our orders, we take your port ID and you

(01:39:24):
can't work now, and then a hearing has to be held,
you know, as to why you should get your port
ID back. We made plenty of arrests, and then any
time there was an incident of some kind, the Coastguard
has ultimate jurisdiction on the ports, we'd have to call
the coast Guard, So we worked with the coast Guards.
We worked with customs who work with Florida Department of Law,

(01:39:46):
enforcement who oversaw that new state statute and they would
do port inspections and then you know, they come in
and they look at us and all the things that
we're doing and did we fail the inspection, did we
pass it? What are we doing wrong? Or what do
we do right? And it made for a lot of
stress a lot for us. It was interesting. It was

(01:40:08):
kind of fun most of the time because it was
all new to us. We didn't know how to work
a port. The airport is a similar environment. So I
finished my career at my international airport station, and you've
got to get a federal ID in order to be
able to go to the secured areas and go on
board airplanes and all that. It's very interesting, but it's

(01:40:32):
homeland security more than it is traditional policing. The traditional
policing comes in with all the drunk idiots in the
terminal waiting to go on their flight, or they get
on board and they're drunk and they're causing a problem.
We've got to go get them off. But the rest
of it is homeland security working with TSA, finding things

(01:40:52):
in the machines guns. You'd be surprised, Mike as to
how many people try to go through a checkpoint with
a gun in their backs. Oh, I forgot it was there. Really,
you forgot where your gun was. Well, that's an automatic arrest,
and the fine starts at thirty eight hundred dollars with
Homeland security. So they are two unique environments. They are

(01:41:19):
economic engines for the county. Tens and tens of billions
of dollars are generated by those two places. So you
can see why people push back because security slows that
machine down. But we have to make sure that the
public is safe. A bag left in a terminal on airport,

(01:41:43):
it can cause a lot of problems because you have
to shut down a terminal if something's wrong with that
bag or suspected. We've got to evacuate everybody at least
three hundred feet in every direction, because that's the protocol
that we use most explosives of that type. You got
to stay away at least three hundred feet, all right,
that's the you know, just outside the blastzone of something

(01:42:06):
that small short of a dirty bomb. Of course, if
it's a dirty bomb, all bets are off. Everybody dies,
you know, that's just the way it is. But shutting
down a terminal, let's say the American Airlines concourse here
in Miami, which is the main one. It's Americans. The
American has a hub here. If we were to shut

(01:42:27):
that down, you could imagine the screaming that would be
coming from the American Airlines executives because time is money
and we're keeping them from making money. But we have
an unattended bag that may or not be a device,
you know. So it's a delicate balance, interesting environment, but

(01:42:51):
you have to think more homeland security than traditional policing.
Not a burglar, but a terrorist, and it's a whole
different dynamic.

Speaker 1 (01:43:03):
And changed your space environment. I'm sorry, let's say it
changed in the space of course, in terms of mindset
after two thousand and one.

Speaker 4 (01:43:10):
Absolutely absolutely, and everything is based on two thousand and one.
You know the protocols at TSA, and people complain they
got to take their shoes off and stuff. But let
me tell you, I went to the TSA. I had
a lot of meetings with the TSA with their supervisors
and command staff at the airport, and they have a

(01:43:31):
showcase in the lobby to their office at the airport
of the things that they take out of carry on baggage.
It's kind of like a shrine to all the cocker.
Maybe things that people try to take on board. A
circular saw that you're using the garage, you know for
cutting wood and stuff. Someone actually tried to take that

(01:43:52):
on board, knives, all kinds of things. I mean, what
are you thinking? You say to yourself, what are you thinking?
How did you think that you were going to get
that on board? But they're going to let you do that,
you know. So they get a lot of flak for
the job that they do and holding up lines and

(01:44:14):
can you take your shoes off and stuff, But you
know what, I'm glad that they're doing it. I can
tell you having worked there, and the things that people
try to get on board, even innocently, you know, they
don't think it's it's a hazard or anything like that.
I'm glad that they're doing their job. Is it one
hundred percent? No, it's not. They miss a lot of things.

(01:44:34):
They get tested all the time. Officials will try to
get through with something and if it doesn't get caught
and then they hear about it later on. But nine
to eleven, boyd, I can I can say for you
and me and our generation, that's our generation's pearl harbor.
Without doubt they caught our attention. Okay, it really did.

(01:45:00):
I was working two thousand and one, I was on
midnights and I was homelessleep. My ex calls me and
she says, we're under attack. And to me, being a
war history buff and understanding what under attack means, I

(01:45:22):
think we have incoming missiles. That's the first thing I thought.
And I put the TV on and I couldn't believe
what I was watching. And there's two numbers that I'll
remember for the rest of my life. And I have
a departmental ring and I haven't engraved on the inside.
You know, it's got our badge on it. It's got

(01:45:43):
my name and sergeant, my badge number and all that.
By the inside I have engraved. I remember three seventy four, No,
three hundred and forty two and seventy four, I remember correctly.

Speaker 1 (01:45:58):
I'm getting older, So three forty three seventy one.

Speaker 4 (01:46:01):
Three. There you go, three forty three seventy one. Thank you.
How brave were those guys? I can't imagine. I can't imagine.
You know, they knew going in that they may not

(01:46:22):
be coming out. What do you what do you say
about that?

Speaker 7 (01:46:27):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:46:29):
Nothing? To be said, yeah, yeah, yeah, And those stories
have been told on this program before, the one that
always and there's many of them from the you know,
the police and fire stories from the NYPDFD and y
Guy's Port Authority police too. I have a mini series
in the show that focuses and retired members of the
New York City Police Department Bomb Squad. It's one of
a few mini series that I have, including this one.

(01:46:51):
And one of the twenty three New York City cops
that got killed that day was detective by the name
of Claude Richards. He was in the bomb Squad for
about fifteen years. Former Army ranger, was on the arm
of during the Carter administration. Had really lived a life.
He was off duty in Greenwich Village that day. He
wasn't supposed to get into work until ten am. Saw
what was going on, he could walk to work, took
his car. He drove an eighty nine Chevy Blazer, wrote

(01:47:12):
it down to the station, clocked in, got some a
jumpsuit on, got some helmets on, got a few of
his fellow detectives and officers. Together they shot down the
West Side highway lights and sirens. Inn advanced screaming, police
fans screaming down to the scene. First tower come down,
second tower still standing, the rescuing people. As they're trying
to rescue people, second tower comes down. Detective Richards gets killed.
A few days later, his lieutenant told me the story

(01:47:34):
and a few other guys that work with him. Jerry
Sheen was his lieutenant the time. Go into his apartment
in Greenwich Village that he went out of on that
morning and never returned to, and they go into his desk.
He's got light music playing his department. His apartment was immaculate,
as he was a very meticulous guy. They opened up
his drawer his detective shield. Because detectives in New York
they never carry their actual shield. They carry a replica.

(01:47:56):
They keep the actual shield safeguarded as a keepsake. Is
sitting there in its case. Below it is last will
and testament. Man new, I'm going to walk out this door.
Chances are I may not be coming home. Made the
decision to walk anyway, walked out that door. And there's
a lot of people walking around today because of what
Claude Richards and his team did that day. There's a

(01:48:16):
lot of stories that have been told, but that one,
to your point about bravery always sticks with me. You know,
you've done a lot. Moving back to your career, you'd
covered a lot between training and of course being out
in the field. Twenty twenty, you know, twenty twenty was
just such a crapp year. We'll call it what we'll
call it, you know, between of course what unfolded on

(01:48:36):
a national and later international level with of course Minnesota,
and then just the pandemic on top of that, wasn't
an easy time to be anybody, let alone somebody on
the front lines. Rather you were ems, Rather you were
involved in any portion of the medical field for that matter,
fire and certainly police were you. And that's the year
you decided, of course to go. Were you thinking about
going as it was? Did you age out or was

(01:48:59):
it that year that made you say I'm done?

Speaker 4 (01:49:02):
There's no aging out. In early twenty nineteen, when I
had thirty six years, I started thinking about retirement and
I really was giving it some serious thought and saying,
you know, I've been doing this a really long time now.

(01:49:23):
My last two and a half years was at Miam
International Airport. I loved it, and what a great place
to work. It's so interesting. I got to ride a
bicycle in the terminals, you know, to go from one
end because it's very long and the easiest way for
us to get around is on bicycles. But I got
to go on airplanes. I'm annaviation buff. I got to
drive on the tarmac. I was having a blest, but

(01:49:45):
I was getting along in the tooth, you know. I
was fifty fifty, really turned fifty eight that June, and
I said, okay, I think I've done about all that
I can do. The body hurts, everything is sore. And

(01:50:07):
I was, you know, very sports busy with sports, and
you know, so between that and police work, I'm pretty
beaten up. I went to my financial advisor at Wells
Fargo and we said, okay, start putting the plan together.
They have what they call the envisioned plant where they
take everything you've earned and all your projected future earnings

(01:50:27):
and your social security and he puts it together in
a package. It takes a while, and everything my wife
would eventually contribute to that package. So in May of
twenty nineteen, Alex came to the house and had some
one in orders. He laid out the plan and I said,
bottom line, can I retire next February. He said absolutely, okay.

(01:50:54):
So I started on February eighth, nineteen eighty three, and
since I opted for a retirement plan that I could
pick my retirement date, I retired on February eighth, twenty.

Speaker 1 (01:51:08):
Twenty, nick of time, exactly thirty seven years.

Speaker 4 (01:51:13):
And it was a Saturday. My partner, Tony, the other
one of the other sergeants, who was one of my
was one of my canine officers at the port when
he was an officer and then later on we were
sergeants together. We left the station. Tony drove me home
and that was it. It was over, just like that. But

(01:51:36):
I decided to go. It was time for me to go.
Do I miss it, because I'm sure that's going to
be one of your questions. Yes, I do. How could
you not miss something like this that you've done for
thirty seven years or thirty years, or twenty five years

(01:51:57):
or twenty because while it had its ups and downs
and the internal politics and administrative headaches, so we all
hate that, whether you're police or fired, you hate that.
I had a blast, you know when I missed the guys,
and I do miss the job. But I also know

(01:52:20):
that it was time for me to go, and as
soon as I went, I had my retirement party on
February twenty second, and a couple of weeks later, we're
in lockdown for COVID. So, like you said, twenty twenty
was a terrible year. I didn't get to experience anything

(01:52:41):
that my other colleagues that retired before me. You know, Oh,
I'm so busy, I'm doing this and that, I'm getting
to all the projects, and we're traveling. Couldn't do check,
you know, because we were you know, you weren't doing anything.
And then my wife, she was laboratory director at a
major hospital here, she was COVID central. Yeah, stressed out

(01:53:01):
to the max. They all were, you know. So it
was a bad year. Finally, you know, twenty twenty one
started easing up, and then, you know, I started to
enjoy my retirement. The first year, I didn't enjoy it
at all because I was locked in my house for
the most part, couldn't do much, couldn't go play tennis.
All the tennis courts were closed down, you know, and
I've been playing all my life. I got out on

(01:53:23):
my motorcycle once in a while by myself, because nobody
could ride together. You got to stay away from each
other six feet and all that bs. But Mike, it
was it was time for me to go. You know,
we don't have an age limit here like maybe some
departments do. But all in all, thirty seven was enough

(01:53:44):
for me. I've got other guys that did around the
same time, a little less. There's something did a little more.
We don't do, you know, twenty and out like let's
say NYPD does. But a lot of people don't understand.
You do your twenty and out. You're only a fifty
percent pension. And a lot of these guys have to
go back to work. I didn't. I don't have to.

(01:54:05):
Whatever I do, I do for fun. You know my podcast,
wherever it may end up going. You know, my book,
it's for fun. So now I'm over five and a
half years into my retirement and it's all good, nice
and I meet with the other guys, we have breakfast together,
We still get together. You know, you maintain the context.

(01:54:27):
That's what's important, is that even though we're all numbers,
and when you walk away a lot, you know, you're
forgotten a lot. But you got to stay in touch
with the other guys and spend time together and commiserate,
you know, and talk crap and you know, complain about
this or that or the other. Break you're just having fun,
you know, and you were happy. We're happy, We're glad

(01:54:51):
we did it. Now we're glad we're out.

Speaker 1 (01:54:55):
And that's it's a good way to put it too,
you know. And again, you were able to have your fill,
you were able to have your fun. You were able
to pretty much end on your terms. And there's a
lot of guys and gals that unfortunately don't get that chance.
So that's a good thing. And like I said earlier, Nika,
time you missed all that, you know, say, at least
you're able to leave before it really kicked into effect
while you were still on duty, if you had it
retired when you did. I don't want to before I

(01:55:16):
get to the concluding segment because I don't want to
gloss over it. I don't want to gloss over your book,
and I don't want to gloss over your podcast. So
we'll hit on that briefly. You know, someone that's written
a book, I can tell you and I know you
can relate to this. The process. It's easy. You have
a lot of stories you can put together, but to
actually streamline it in book form and make it coherent
and make it flow is a very hard process. It's
the same thing when you're starting a podcast. Just tell

(01:55:38):
me about your process for both and what you enjoy
most about both.

Speaker 4 (01:55:43):
With the book. And this happens to all of us,
or most of us, during our travels and meeting with
the with the public, handling calls or whatever. I've had
people say to me many times, you know, with all
of your all that you've seen and done, you should
write a book. And I've gotten that a lot. So
in twenty eighteen I started giving it some serious thought.

(01:56:05):
I said, you know what, let me see if I
can do this. Now. I spent a career writing reports
as an officer, writing incident reports and the rest forms
and crashes and tickets and all that as a sergeant
administrative reports. What's funny is, you know, I tell this story.
My mother was a school teacher in Argentina, so doing

(01:56:28):
my homework at home or my class work, you know,
it was very important to her. Except I never did
a book report. I just refused to. I didn't want
to do it. So she would do my reports for me.
So I wouldn't fail the course, and what do I do?
I pick a career with all I did was write reports.
You know the irony If my mother was alive today

(01:56:49):
and then I actually wrote a book, she would be
very proud of me. But then she would also grab
me by the ear and go, why did you write
those reports in school? So I decided to give it
a try, and then I had to decide what the
book should be about. My book is not a murder
mystery Mickey Spalaane type novel. It had to be the

(01:57:12):
unfiltered truth of policing in America. Unfiltered meaning like the
active shooter stuff I told you about. It had to
be the good, the bad, and the ugly about our
profession because it's not all, you know, boxes of candy
and bowls of cherries. Okay, it's not. So I had
to come up with all the different things that I

(01:57:33):
wanted to write about, and like I said, it had
to be unapologetic, unfiltered in your face, because these are
the truths about policing. You know. I didn't sugarcoat anything,
from why someone wants to be a police officer, the
training and academy, coming out on the street, for the

(01:57:55):
first time domestics active shooter use of force, which is
a big one, right use of force? When when and
I asked this question of everybody that I talked to,
any civilian, when you see a police involved incident on
TV where force is used, does it look ugly.

Speaker 1 (01:58:21):
Something?

Speaker 4 (01:58:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:58:22):
A lot of Most of the times it's going to.

Speaker 4 (01:58:23):
Yeah, exactly exactly. But the question you have to ask
yourself is how did it get there? Right? Right? You
get where did it start? And why did it end
up that way? Because ninety nine percent of the time
it's completely justified, but it looks bad.

Speaker 1 (01:58:39):
What was happening before the camera started rolling?

Speaker 4 (01:58:41):
Exactly exactly. So those are the types of things that
I wanted to talk about. I have a chapter on
traffic stops. I have a chapter on body cams. I
have a chapter on internal affairs and why internal affairs
is needed.

Speaker 1 (01:58:57):
Absolutely Nope, no.

Speaker 4 (01:58:59):
Cops don't like it to affairs, but we need to
have it. So I have a chapter on relationships, and
the way that goes is starting out with you're young,
You're in uniform, hopefully you're in shape. Girls like uniforms, right,
and then the second part, the sub chapter to the
one that on relationships after the Girls is marriage, divorce, marriage,

(01:59:25):
again and again, because most of us of my generation
are divorced and married several times. And then that segues
into partners the other marriage, and then I talk about
what it's like having a partner and how close you become.
So I cover all these different things that people take

(01:59:45):
little pieces from and TV shows and movies, but it's
never been put together in this manner. And I am
not only telling my story. I have my stories throughout
the book telling our story as cops everywhere. Because I'm
not unique. I'm the same as all these other guys

(02:00:07):
and gals around the country, or like I like to say,
and you know, the western world of civilized policing, We're
all mostly the same. All these things happened to us.
And to add legitimacy to what I was writing about
in my stories, the last chapter is stories from other

(02:00:30):
cops things that have happened to them, that include my brother,
my son, and my niece and a lot of folks
that I worked with. So to make my point is
that I'm not unique. These happen These things happened to
cops all the where. And you've talked to a lot
of cops. We have similar stories. Maybe they're all just
a little bit different, but these things happen to all

(02:00:53):
of us, and that's what the book is about. It's
called the real greatest show on Earth because it's a
circus out there is yeah, and we're the ring masters. Yeah,
And that's the way I looked at it. So it
was a lot of fun writing the book, stressful at times,

(02:01:14):
and then getting published afterwards was very difficult. And I
know you know that, but everyone that's read the book,
police and civilian alike, I've gotten great reviews from it,
and they say once they start reading, it grabs them.

(02:01:35):
And that was my intent. I wanted you to feel
that I was standing in front of you telling you
a story, and it's worked out that way. I just
wish that, you know, I could get the book out,
you know, a nationally, you know, with a lot of popularity.
It's it's difficult. And then in the last a year

(02:02:01):
or so, I started thinking about a podcast. And my son,
like I mentioned, he's my engineer, because I don't know
how to do any of the stuff that you've do.
My okay, I've got two left feet when it comes
to technology. I can only talk. I can't do computers.

(02:02:22):
So my son has set it up and I'm early
in my podcast career. I have three three episodes under
my belt and it's called Sergeant Maverick the Podcast, and
it's all things police work, politics in life. So while

(02:02:44):
I had my academy buddy Carlos, who worked for Miami
Beach Police, not Miami Dade, but we were in the
same academy class. And then one of my partners, Tom Gilligan,
who was NYPD for six years before coming down to
Miami Dade. And then Mario Gutierrez and his wife. That

(02:03:04):
was my first family segment, as I call it. Mario
got into an altercation with an illegal that had already
committed murder in the United States in California and made
his way across the country. He was released and he
tried to set a shell gas station on fire, and
Mario witnessed this and he was by himself and he

(02:03:27):
got into a confrontation where the guy stabbed him twelve times.
Oh my god, Mario finally ended up shooting this guy.
It's the stories in my book and it's my third episode.
But the difference is I just don't have Cops on.
I had Mario's wife Laura on because I wanted to

(02:03:49):
get the family side of being married to a cop
that no one ever talks about, you know, or at
least I haven't seen it a lot. And how is
it are being married to a cop first of all
all these years? And how was that knight like for you?
And she got to tell her story, and Mario told

(02:04:13):
me afterwards that it brought back a lot of trauma
for her, but it was also very cathartic for her
to be able to talk about it because no one
ever asked her. Mario gives speeches about his incident at
academy classes, but no one ever asked his wife. So
I want in my podcast, I want to be able
to get the family side of these things. My kids

(02:04:35):
are going to be on. We're going to do an
episode with my kids. What's it like having a parent
as a cop? Right? Nobody talks about that? And then
they get to trash me a little bit, you know,
whatever they're going to say, my nieces, they have two
parents that were cops, what's it like for you? One's
a cop, one's a nurse. And so I'm going to

(02:04:58):
have them on in addition, I'm going to be talking
about health issues. My cardiologist has agreed to come on
to talk about our cardiac health, what's important, the things
you should be doing in your life so you can
have a fulfilling retirement. And my urologist is going to

(02:05:19):
come on. I had a little issue with the prostate
and he's agreed to come on to talk about men's
health where it pertains to the prostate, because a lot
of guys don't know, especially young guys, you're probably going
to get prostate cancer if you make it to old age,
and that's almost a given. I know it doesn't sound great,

(02:05:42):
but nobody talks about these things. So if I can
shed a little light on these things with some professional,
you know, medical people, I will. And then the other
aspect of all things police are politics in life. I'm
going to have my financial advisor out from Wells Fargo
on to talk about those investments that we do as

(02:06:03):
we're going through our careers and you're putting money aside,
which works for everybody, but we're not trained to manage money.
We're never taught that unless you go to school for
that specifically. So he's going to talk about proper investing
and then the other side of that coin, as I'm
going to have my accountant Tom on to talk about
the tax implications on those investments when you start drawing

(02:06:25):
them in your retirement. People don't understand that you may
be putting money away deferred tax deferred during your career,
but when you retire and start using those funds, you
have to pay taxes on it, and too many people
get themselves into trouble by not paying those taxes. Next
thing you know, the IRS is coming down on you
because you withdrew two hundred thousand dollars you didn't pay

(02:06:47):
any taxes on it. So my podcast is going to
be well rounded in that sense of not just police
work and all the different things that come with police work.
And for your colleague, I have a couple of firefighter
buddies on. I'm gonna have on to talk about the
fire service and then the similarities and differences between our jobs, right,

(02:07:10):
and poke some fun at each other. Also, Yeah, we
eat donuts and you guys lay around on recliners in
your station watching football. You know, I get it, you know,
and you know we can have some fun doing that.
But I got to tell you we Miami Day Police.
We always had a great relationship with Miami Dade Fire.

(02:07:30):
I'm proud to say that always gotten along with the
fire department. We're on scenes, it's great. And then these
guys they take care of us. I can tell you
more than one time, I'm mom, I'm back looking up
at a paramedic who's taking care of me. You know,
he's the guy that's going to take me to the hospital.
And that's happened a couple of times. So, you know,

(02:07:52):
one hand washes the other. You know, we're both sides,
two sides of the first responder coin. And that's what
the podcast is about. So and also talking about stuff
on the book. My guests that contributed to the book
are also guests on the podcast. I'm sorry. Guys that
contributed to the book are also guests on the podcast,
and they get to tell their own story after I

(02:08:13):
go through their careers and their lives and their personal
lives and you know who they are and things like that.
A human side, so to speak. That's just a cop talk,
cop talk, cop talk.

Speaker 1 (02:08:25):
Yeah, you know, you're not defined by your profession, which
I think is good. So for the audience that doesn't
know what's the name of the show.

Speaker 4 (02:08:32):
Sergeant Maverick the podcast. Okay, very simple, all thanks police
for politics in life. But you can find me on
YouTube for that sergeant under that Sergeant Maverick the Podcast.
And then I have a new website that someone helped
build for me, because like I told you, I don't
know how to do those things. Sergeantmaverick dot com Sgt

(02:08:53):
Maverick dot com and Maverick is the nickname that was
given to me many years ago on the job. And
I've got all the links to the podcast as well
as sixteen opinion editorials that I've written for Jessica on
Thinkamericant News, most relating around law enforcement, some into politics

(02:09:16):
because I do enjoy presidential politics, but it's all. Most
of them are from a law enforcement perspective of things
that are happening currently. My last one was on Chicago
police and their refusal to respond to back up ice.

Speaker 1 (02:09:35):
Yeah, that was in the news. That's a big story.

Speaker 4 (02:09:38):
I can tell you. In the police world, you never
ever not back up somebody else, regardless of the politics,
the ideology. You and I can hate each other, but
I'll back you up. And that's the way it's supposed
to be. So all that is on my website as well,

(02:09:59):
you know, IO for me and a lot of gallery,
a lot of pictures of me during my career with
a lot of other guys, my family that are all
on the job or we're on the job. So you know,
this is a whole new world for me, you know,
trying something new in retirement, a new challenge, so to speak.
You know, I get bored, got to do something else.

Speaker 1 (02:10:21):
Keep yourself busy, keep yourself going. I like it. We'll
get to the rabid fire momentarily. Be first a word
from our friends over at the Ryan Investigative Group, of course,
run by retired New York City Police Detective Bill Ryan.
The Mike Thing to Have in 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 NYP Detective Bill Ryant,

(02:10:43):
a twenty year veteran of the department who served the
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, 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 them at his website
or the email that you see here. Again, if you

(02:11:04):
need a PI, look no further than Bill Ryan and
The Ryan Investigative, A proud supporter and sponsor of the
Mike de Newhaven Podcast. Proud supporter indeed. Now that brings
us into the rapid fire. Five hit and run questions
for me, Five hit run answers for me. You could
say pass if you want. They're not necessarily hard ones,
but you can if you want to. The first one
is favorite memory from your early years on patrol.

Speaker 4 (02:11:30):
Chases.

Speaker 1 (02:11:32):
I don't blame it. I don't blame They're pretty fun,
especially the way you described them. Second one training course.
There's a lot of them. But what's one training course
you believe every cop, no matter where they work, big city,
small town, should take.

Speaker 4 (02:11:49):
There's two christ to have a shooting course where you
walk down what was known as Hogan's Alley with targets
popping out at you at different moments. You know, either
like the target's holding a gun or it's got a
phone in his hand, or something like that and it

(02:12:09):
makes you react shoot don't shoot scenarios. The other is
ground fighting, a knife defense. You're gonna dance during your career,
and you better be able to take care of business.
Even if you lose. You gotta get your licks in,
you gotta prevail, you gotta survive no matter what. So

(02:12:31):
I think a combination of those two things, because anything
can happen either way.

Speaker 1 (02:12:36):
Absolutely absolutely. I like the way you put that you're
gonna dance, fight, it's gonna be on. You don't want
it to be on. You'd rather avoid it, but sometimes
you can't, as we've talked about tonight. Third, if this
is applicable, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But if
there was, what's the most intense or unforgettable moment you
had down at the port or was it relatively chill?

Speaker 4 (02:12:53):
The port was pretty chill. It was. Yeah, it's a
low key place, just a lot of passage years and
cargo coming and going. We never really had a major
incident during my time at the port.

Speaker 1 (02:13:05):
So good. That's the way we like to keep it.
You've talked a lot too about major supervising rather major scenes,
and it could be anything. It could be a major MBA.
It could be a shooting, anything that's going to involve
a lot of units responding. What's the hardest part about
supervising a major scene in What should every boss, sergeant,
lieutenant and up know in your opinion about supervising those

(02:13:25):
kinds of scenes.

Speaker 4 (02:13:27):
There was an instructor for major scene management with a
group of really great supervisors where we taught sergeants and
lieutenants how to handle major scenes. Be calm and methodically.
Just start breaking down the scene. Okay, you don't have
to yell and scream on the radio. You have to
contain the incident, and you've got to set up your

(02:13:50):
officers to do that. To contain the incident. Do not panic, Okay,
no matter what's happening inside that box, it is your
responsibility as the responding supervisor. Just keep a level head,
stay calm, and start, as we call the plate, start

(02:14:12):
taking things off of your plate because there's so much
on there. All right, You've got this position, you've got
to handle that. Give a supervisor that thing over there,
you handle that, and before you know it, you're managing
this scene. If you panic, it's all going to go
to help. You've got to be under control. That's probably
the most important thing I could say to someone who

(02:14:34):
wants to become a supervisor or a sergeant, you know,
like the like the Brits like to say, remain calm
and carry on.

Speaker 1 (02:14:44):
Colm's contagious. So it's chaos, but Colm's contagious too. You
want to let the former win as opposed to the ladder.
The last question the rapid fire. We kind of talked
about it, but you can expand that in a bit
here as we conclude, what do you hope civilians? We
talked about cops. What do you take? What do you
hope civilians take away from your podcast and your books?

Speaker 4 (02:15:04):
Number One, that we are like everybody else. We have families,
We bleed, we hurt, we have suffered mental illness, we
suffer alcoholism. We take our children to the games, to
the theater, we go to the schools. We have Christmases,
we have Thanksgivings. We do all the things that everybody

(02:15:27):
else does. But also we go in harm's way, just
like the fire Service, when we run towards the danger
when everybody else is running away from it. When you
see police officers and firefighters and military, thank them because
they're doing this for you. Yes, we do it for ourselves.

(02:15:50):
Of course, these are our careers, but we do this
for the public. And when you do see a police
involved incident, do not jump to conclusions. Wait till the
investigation ensues and peels back all the layers of the
onion so you can see exactly what happened. How do

(02:16:10):
we go from A to B or A to Z,
so to speak. Sometimes it takes a little while to
get there. Sometimes it goes just like that. But understand
that we're human and we're also going to make mistakes,
but we have our hearts in the right place and
you can still make a mistake. But mostly that we're

(02:16:32):
just like everybody else. But we do this job for
the general public, right. We're here to serve and protect.
The same thing you said the first day of the academy,
why did you want to be a police officer? I
want to help people, you know what. I've been able
to help people, and I've saved lives and I put

(02:16:53):
a lot of bad people in jail, you know. And
one of the things I'm proud oft of is the
officers are trained in my So that's who we are.

Speaker 1 (02:17:05):
Decent people doing extraordinary things. Decent people doing really really amazing.

Speaker 4 (02:17:11):
You're a volunteer firefighter and you want to go full time,
and I thank you for your service and you desire
to do that job. You know it take special kind
of person sometimes, well, we all come from the same ranks.
You come from the general public. You know, you know,
you're not bred to be a police officer. Firefighter is
just something that you find inside yourself.

Speaker 1 (02:17:34):
Absolutely, and hopefully a year from now, I'm a full
time guy and I'm working on an engine or I'm
working on a truck somewhere in the city that I
want to go to, so I will see what happens there.
But thank you very much for this conversation. Stick around.
I'll talk to you off there before I bid farewell
to the audience tonight. If you have any shout outs
that you want to give, Flora's yours.

Speaker 4 (02:17:54):
All the police officers, firefighters and military out there are
my heroes, every last one of them, you know, So
be safe out there, take care of each other, back
each other up. And thank you Mike for having me.
I really appreciate it. I enjoyed my time with you.

Speaker 1 (02:18:09):
I enjoyed a pleasure is all mine, very very very
good episode that I'm really glad we got the chance
to do this evening stick around. As I said, we'll
talk off the air, and thanks to all of you
who tuned in the night rather you watched on YouTube,
LinkedIn Facebook or Twitter. So coming up next to the
Mike the New even Podcast. As I said before, I
have a scheduling conflict Friday, so there's no show Friday,
but they'll be hopefully two shows next week, both of

(02:18:31):
them or will be FD and Y themed in nature.
And let me just double check my calendar here. So
for November tenth, former Captain Steve Elliott, who did thirty
three years the New York City Fire Department, will be
here for what will be volume seventy seven of the
best of the Bravest interviews with the FD and y's elite.
And if we're off and running for Friday next Friday,
six pm. Another FD and Y captain, that's Nick Gaudiosi,

(02:18:52):
who did twenty four years nineteen seventy nine until two
thousand and three, also with the FD and Y. He'll
be here for volume seventy So it'll be FD and
Y were coming up on the Mike the New Aven Podcast.
Now for those of you listening on the audio side
Finally Tonight, from her nineteen eighty four album Self Control,
The late Laura Branigan plays us out Tonight with Self
Control in the Meantime on behalf of retired Miami Dade

(02:19:15):
Sergeant Burt Maverick Gonzales. I am Mike Cologonne. We will
see you next time. Take care everyone, take care of
each other, Take care of yourselves. We'll see you next week.

Speaker 6 (02:19:23):
Take care, Good night, day.

Speaker 2 (02:20:00):
Thing matter, it's the knight, turn the matter in the night.
No control through the walk, something breaking, worry, Why that's
no walking down the street?

Speaker 4 (02:20:22):
Help that soul?

Speaker 2 (02:20:25):
Can take myself, can take myself control.

Speaker 5 (02:20:30):
You can't relate.

Speaker 2 (02:20:31):
The only pall the life, the boat, the ball become
no story from you. Change yourself, You take myself coron night,
another day, got another sup myself to the app you

(02:20:53):
get to malade, I rod, you take yourself, You take
hers out.

Speaker 4 (02:20:59):
Of t.

Speaker 8 (02:21:03):
I live among the creatures of the night. I haven't
got the will to try and fight against the marble.
Ford yourself. Disbelieve that the mar will never come.

Speaker 6 (02:21:18):
A sad night.

Speaker 8 (02:21:21):
And the vain in the mast of the dream.

Speaker 7 (02:21:25):
I know the night is not as would seem.

Speaker 2 (02:21:30):
I must be in something, so ill make myself believe
that this night will never go.

Speaker 6 (02:21:38):
Oh oh.

Speaker 1 (02:21:54):
S f the night.

Speaker 6 (02:21:56):
It's my.

Speaker 2 (02:21:58):
City light painted good.

Speaker 6 (02:22:03):
In the day.

Speaker 2 (02:22:05):
Nothing matters, it's the night turn matter.

Speaker 4 (02:22:13):
You take.

Speaker 2 (02:22:14):
You take myself some bo. You can't believe the name
of the mom stor result.

Speaker 6 (02:22:26):
You take yourself.

Speaker 4 (02:22:27):
You make no sense.

Speaker 8 (02:22:28):
Consult hi, I remember along the creatures of the night.

Speaker 2 (02:22:37):
I haven't about the will of child, of guessing tomorrow's
work yourself. Just believe the tomorrow devil passa night. I'm
the bad in the past a dream.

Speaker 6 (02:22:55):
I know the night is nice.

Speaker 2 (02:22:59):
I'm a and somethings. Well, make myself believe this night
will never go.

Speaker 7 (02:23:15):
You take your master, You take the s you take these,
you take, you take master, you take, you take these.

Speaker 5 (02:23:35):
I don't belong the free childs are the night. I
have the where to find a bit. I'm not being
in the farm start the great.

Speaker 6 (02:23:48):
I don't know.

Speaker 7 (02:23:49):
I'm not as.

Speaker 6 (02:23:52):
It's just gol.

Speaker 2 (02:24:01):
You tay parsons some from you, you pay box something

Speaker 6 (02:24:10):
You pay

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Episode 382: The Beat: Profiles of Police Nationwide: Sgt. Bert Gonzalez (Volume 21)

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