Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Everything is a mental gang. So stay attentive. We're talking
about the drug cartel, but from a whole new perspective.
Break it down with some intelligence, psychology, and criminology.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
This is not for the faint of heart.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah, this is narcology, a look against oude, the culture,
the ideas in the minds of the law. Let's stay alert,
gotta be cautious, gonna keep it down. They might here's
you're talking. Let's pick it out, what makes them tick
and who's at the top. Make sure you tune in
because it gets deep. You do not want to miss
out narcology.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Welcome back everybody. Well, today we have a great guest.
I'm really excited today. Our guess is Matthew Thomas and
name of Arizona, but he's been employed with the Panal
County Sheriff's Office for over twenty nine years. If you're
familiar with the Panal County Sheriffs, then you know they're
not too far away from the borders. We're gonna be
talking about the border. We're gonna be talking about drug
cartels and a whole lot more. Matthew is a has
(00:56):
a current position of Chief Deputy serving specials several special
to units, detention, patrol, traffic training, the police Academy, motors
and arcotics and investigations. He started eighteen years in the
Panal Regional Swat Team as a member, team leader and
finishing as a team commander. And he's got a brand
new book that I'm really excited about exploring, and I
hope you check it out as well. It's called Interceptors,
(01:18):
The Untold Fight against the Mexican Cartels. Author Matthew Thomas
pulls back the curtain, will take a little look on
the description here for it, and takes the reader and
a rarely seen eyewitness journey spanning over twenty nine years,
Matthew's law enforcement career, an immersive life and the Hispanic cultures,
and eye opening, honest and unprecedented look into the ruthless
activities of dangerous cartel activity on our Southern Force doorstep,
(01:40):
which means the US doorstep over there in that border.
And by the way, folks, if you listen to our podcast,
you know you don't always get a lot of this
stuff in the regular news. Now, I will be curious
and I'll be asking Matthew a little bit later, because
I have found local news tends to be more accurate
because you can't really lie as much nor things, so
(02:01):
they tend to be covering more areas. I'd be curious
to see if the local news down there is covering
anything that's happening down there in Panal in regards to
cartels or anything activities. Will ask him in a minute
before we get started. You know what to do? Share,
subscribe hit that I like, but you know we like it.
It's not waste any more time. Looking to the show,
Deputy one Time, as he's known on Instagram, Deputy Underscore
one Time, Matthew Thomas, welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Sir, Hey, how are you doing? Good to join you?
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Thank you very much for joining us. Like we said
before the show, he seemed to have mutual friends Jason Jones,
Victor Vola, Sheriff Lamb Yep, pretty good crew.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Now I'm excited to talk to you because I know
you're down at that border and like I said, we
don't hear much of it ever for whatever reason, but
the national news. But I guess my first question to you,
do they cover it on a local news down there?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Not a lot really no, And I think we used
to have local news that was that was owned outside
of the big corporations, right, and I think that has
all gone away, so they are pretty much pushing the
same narratives as the big news.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
That's a good point.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, you know, I know.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I don't know if it applies to if you've seen
this or even know anyverything about this. I know a
lot of gang activities always interpreted as adolescents just shooting
guns is where they're describe it, right, three teams kill
five teams or something like that. I'm thinking, okay, well,
we know what that really is code for most of
the time is usually gang activity. And I get it.
The politicians don't want that because then nobody wants to
(03:29):
come visit and their income goes down in the whole city.
I get it. Do you find that's possible too for
counties like Pinale it might be having issues with cartels,
I think maybe, and say, hey, keep it on the
down low, because if not, we're not getting anybody over here.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
No, I don't. I don't think. I don't think our
county shies away from the truth. We try not to oversensationalize,
you know, what's going on one way or the other.
We just especially us as a sheriff's office. We just
put out the facts. Here's here's what we're seeing, Here's
what's going on, Here's what you need to be aware of.
(04:03):
Because we tell our community cops can never do this
by ourselves. We absolutely need our community to do our job.
And the best agencies in the world that are that
are really affecting crime have a good partnership with their community.
And the only way you can have a good partnership
is be open and honest with each other.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Right, that's a great point. That's excellent. Yeah, I know,
collective efficacy in the world of criminology, it's a big thing.
Having people see things, say things, and I get it.
Sometimes in certain environments that are really high crime, you
got to be carefully say something and.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Retribution RECOMBUSI yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah, that's a dangerous Now you've been in the law
of person for twenty nine years, So what motivated you
to now write a book on interceptors? Has it gotten
worse that you said? People got to know about it?
Or what happened here?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It was?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
There are several things that took place that kind of
pushed me forward into the book, one of them being
that that so the timeframe that I'm talking of out
in the book. The operational timeframe was what we called
the wild West days here in our county, and it
was like nine, twenty ten, twenty eleven, all the way
up into like fourteen, and that's when we were really
(05:14):
battling the cartaeils. The fight that Texas is seeing right now,
we were seeing back then, not so much humans, mostly dope,
but it was just an all out battle between us
and the cartails on American soil for ground, to stop
them from coming in, just everything you could think of.
And so that played into it a little bit because
(05:37):
a lot of the operations we did back then have
evolved and the technology that we're using these days, the
tactics that we're using these days are different, and so
I wasn't too worried about giving away any operational secrets
that would hurt us. So that was a driving factor.
The two main driving factors for me is Number one
(06:00):
was that a lot of good people, good cops, did
a lot of good work. And if you read the book,
you'll read the work I'm talking about a lot of
good cops did that stuff. Nobody knew about it. They
still don't know about the stuff that goes on out
in the middle of nowhere, where cops are out there
trying to protect US soil, US citizens and hold the
line against these big criminal organizations. So I wanted to
(06:24):
honor all those people that I knew were out there
doing that, and I wanted to show America kind of
some of the work that they have done and some
of the stuff they continue to do. And then the
other driving factor was to get these stories in front
of our regular public and educate them about what goes
(06:47):
on and how everything happens, because part of my book
discusses the actual structure of the cartel as we see it.
It discusses the narco culture and how they have transformed
the Mexican culture to what it is today, and talks
about even some of the religious beliefs and how they
have bastardized regular religion and turned it into kind of
a narco religion.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
That's interesting. That's a lot of this, a lot to
cover there. I think it's chapter four or five we
talk about narco culture, which is fascinating. And you make
a great point, is I know in l A, I
don't know what it's happening. Obviously in Arizona. That's what
we happy here, But I know in La we see
a lot of oh now.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Something worth, yeah something.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah you sorry? I see that pop up over in
Arizona or has it been there for the last decade?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
It's been here for a long time, and and uh
it's it's only gotten more and more prolific as time
has went on. And uh, for us, something worth. Those
were two iconic figures in the smuggling world.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yeah, that's interesting again, folks, I'm not criticizing those individuals
and O those individuals who are not Cartel members who
do believe in those well the Catholic Church does not
believe them to be saints, but a lot of people
do believe them to be saints. So I don't want
to get into that theological mess. But so we're not here.
I'm not here criticizing those individuals. I'm just seeing what
the Cartail has hijacked. We saw that with Isis. They
(08:12):
hijacked Islam and they distorted the hic out of that,
And now we see Cartail's kind of doing the same
thing over here.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Do you feel, like Matt, do you think it's a
a motivational component for them in regards to recruitment. Does
it keep them loyal, Does it keep them I guess,
bonded in a certain way. Is that something that's there
or does it rationalize their behavior at all, saying hey,
we're here to do good or something.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, I think I think it's some rationalization. And just
you know, from being kind of immersed in that culture,
what happens is as as you have younger generations come up,
some of them don't even know why they're praying to
what they're praying to, right, and they so you'll have
the younger generation that are now adults who have come up,
(09:02):
and their whole understanding is this is a saint that
protects us. We like candles, we say prayers, we give offerings,
and that saint protects us. And a lot of the
narcos believe that they're just doing work to make money
and take care of their family, and they don't acknowledge
the evil side of it, and they don't acknowledge the
evil that they do. And so I think it's a
(09:26):
little bit of rationalization. I think it's a little bit
of misunderstanding for those youngsters as to what they're even
praying to or praying about. And then a lot of
it is culture, right, And I liken the Narcos to
the nineteen eighties rap era when we had the gangster
rappers coming out and everybody emulated that and they were
(09:49):
kind of iconic figures, and then you saw a whole
culture develop out of that in the poverty stricken areas,
in the gang areas, they all started emulating those figures.
The same thing that's happened with the narcos now is
they have fast cars, fast women, a lot of jewelry,
exotic animals, cool just cool stuff, cool houses. They're living
(10:09):
a great life. And they're actually out there on social
media too, right, So they're putting it all out there,
and these young kids are emulating that. Because if I
grew up in a little pueblo and I had dirt floors,
and I say, you know, I just go to work
for this guy, and all of a sudden, I have women,
cars and houses, you know, that's that's a heavy, heavy
(10:30):
factor in driving recruitment.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
That's a great point. Yeah. I think they have their
music too, the corridas, right.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Oh yeah, yeah, the narco corriles are and those those
have a deep history too. There's there's corrillos that were
not narco corrillos. Back then they were just corridos, but
they talk about the narco trade and they talk about
the cartels and moving their product and all of that
kind of stuff. But now they've they've kind of progressed
into what is narco corriles where you have opposing groups
(10:59):
singing about each each other, threatening each other, all that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Because a pretty dangerous place with those singers too. Sometimes.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, there's been plenty of singers killed because they sung
for the cartel crazy stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
So yeah, it's amazing how much it's immersed in that culture.
And it's there's a restaurant oh in La and the
name has escaped me now because it's got a mixed
mixed bag, not because of the food. I don't know
how good the food, but they got mixed bags. But
they have they'll have like Al Chappo's table, and they'll
have Scarfaces table, and they'll have all this stuff and
(11:34):
a lot of it's cartel related. So people are kind
of like, you know, this isn't helping.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
No, no, not at all, because you're again, you're just
teaching the younger generations to idolize the wrong people. Right
that the wrong figures. Those should not be their heroic figures.
Looking up to Chapo Guzman should not be a thing.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
You know what. I hate this. I'm taking this into
the psychology route. We'll get back to the book in
a second. But it makes me think. Now, you know,
some people are probably thinking, wait a minute, you guys
had all the Mafia movies and everybody idolize, which actually
it is true. I saw the other day somebody had
on their wall. Uh what the scarface? They had the scarface? Yeah,
(12:16):
so it kind of goes back to your point. You know,
it seems like a not just a particular country, it
seems like it's almost a human thing to sometimes look
at these individuals certain ways. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I don't know, because I mean, if you think about it,
I mean, all the poor kids in the world, if
they look at Chapo Guzman and they see this guy
came from a small little town, Latuna, and he came
from nothing and became one of the most powerful men
on the wrong side of the law in the world.
You know, if you're in that situation as a kid,
(12:52):
you can't help but look up to that and think, like, man,
he made it, and uh, you know, maybe I can
make it, but they just made it do it the
wrong stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah, it's interesting in society. I guess there's three different
individuals there as the ones who fight for good, like yourself,
who've always been publy attracted to that. I always wanted
to do good things, always wanted to be the hero
kind of atmosphere. And then you have the other side
which kind of want to be the hero but on
the bad side, and then you have the third person.
It really just doesn't cure either one and understand it.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And that's what that's a big part of what we're
talking about is the apathy too. That's another reason for
the book is the apathy of people is what's really
going to kill us, because if they just don't understand,
don't care to understand, and don't pay attention, that's where
these bad guys gain ground. And so again to educate
(13:45):
and to interest people in it so that they at
least have some information and make an educated decision as
to how they want to get involved, if they want
to get involved.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
It's a fascinating read. Again, folks is called Interceptors. The
Untold Fight title the book come a one then told
fight against the drug cartels that highly recommend getting it.
It's a really interesting read. You learn a lot that
you don't usually get to hear about. Like I said again,
and you don't read it very much in other books
or other places. Let me ask you this then, tell
(14:17):
us a little bit about because I know when I've
talked to the officers over in Texas, they seem to
have a lot of issues with that Tango Blast and
other gangs that seem to cooperate with the drug cartels.
Did you see a lot of that down there? Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, we have all the in Arizona. We're a highly
Hispanic populated state, right, I mean, we're right against the
southwest border, so it only makes sense. And we have
the Mexican mafia, who is they have heavy influence in
the prisons, and they also have heavy influence on the
street gangs. And then the cartels also being of they're
(14:53):
not of Mexican descent, they're from Mexico, but having people
of Mexican descent on the US side that are involved
in criminal organizations, also dealing with criminal element from Mexico
who's Mexican. A lot of them have familial bonds, so
you'll have a gang member on the US side, and
he's born and raised here, but he's got family ties
(15:15):
to cartel members on the Mexican side, and so it
makes it an easy because that's where the biggest trust is,
right is the familial bonds. So if they have familial ties,
it makes these organizations tighter, harder to get into, harder
to break up because they have that tie. But even
without that, you have the gang nexus because the Mexicans understand,
(15:36):
and the Mexicans being the cartel members, understand that with
a criminal network already set up in the US, they
have a distribution network, right, and they have a protection network,
and they have a transportation network, and so it makes
logistics a lot easier for them.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Now, I've heard the cartels didn't discriminate a whole lot
in Texas. In other words, they use the omgs. They
used a lot of motorcycle gang folks. Yep, they use
all different types groups. Whoever really really was willing to distribute,
who had the corners covered? Is that apply there in
Arizona as well?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yep, yep, same thing. They're not. They're not race specific
or anything like that. We have omgs here, we have
the Hell's Angels, the Mongols. Those are two big ones.
We have the Bogos. We have plenty of Hispanic street gangs,
black street gangs, some with La ties, so crips, bloods,
that type of stuff. We even have some East Coast
(16:27):
gang influence with the gangster disciples and the vice lords.
Really we have quite the mixture here in Arizona.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, oh wow, I didn't realize they stretched out over there.
Where's Billy Jack when you need them? So let me
ask you this tell us a little bit about the
book with some I know it's hard to always the
interview individuals about their book is there's so much in
there and so much to cover. But I know, let
me do this. I'll pick and choose some stuff. I
guess probably the easiest. And if you want to highlight
anything please by all means. I know you started talking
(16:55):
about an alcric culture, which we just talked about a
little bit now, But you talked about the inner city
training ground. What was this all about?
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, So I grew up in the inner city. I
grew up in government subsidized housing. My mom was a
single mom from the time of I think I was
about four years old ish, and so I grew up
in a gang area, and it was predominantly a Mexican
gang area. And so spending my first fifteen years in
(17:27):
that inner city, you learn all this stuff that you
don't even realize you're learning. It's just it's normal stuff.
It's cultural stuff that's applicable just for that territory. So
you become very aware of your surroundings. You understand that
there are these invisible barriers that nobody else knows about.
(17:50):
So if somebody from out of town were to drive
through my neighborhood, they wouldn't know which street meant that
they were in the next neighborhood and out of our neighborhood.
And when you talk about a neighborhood, those areas you're
talking about gang lines. And so each neighborhood has its
own lines, certain streets you can't go past, certain allies
you can't go past, because then that is no longer
(18:11):
your neighborhood, where you may be protected by whatever gang
is in that neighborhood, and you're considered out of bounds.
And so all of that teaches you stuff, right, teaches
you stuff that you don't even realize your learning. It's
just the way you live. Stuff like playing basketball out
in the front yard with my friends, and when a
car would roll by and they would start to slow down,
(18:33):
everybody would get behind cover. You would grab a tree,
you would grab whatever you could get behind because there
was always the thread of drive bys and sometimes they
hit the right house and sometimes they don't. So whenever
a car was displaying any suspicious behavior to us, or
things that would look at normal or things that we
associate with past acts, everybody would react to that. And
(18:54):
so when you are removed from that environment, and this
is what happened with me. I moved out of the
inner city and moved out to the suburbs into a
farming area, low population, low crime, and then you start
to realize that you are doing things that don't make
(19:16):
sense to other people because they're not applicable in those situations,
such as when a car rolls by getting behind covered
people are like, what are you doing? Why did you
stop playing basketball? You know, like, well in case they
shoot at us, and they're like, why would they shoot
at us? You know, they just doesn't register for them.
So that's that inner city training and then learning how
(19:36):
to just read people because there's always danger because those
are high crime areas, and so you're constantly reading people,
reading situations, looking for escape routes, figuring out how to
get yourself out of situations. All that kind of stuff
just gets trained into you.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
One of the things I like about you book till
You called spiking the dope.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
But spiking the dope itself that that was what we
called spiking back then, was tired deflation devices. And so
we would deploy we would deploy the tired deflation devices
on these load vehicles that were running blacked out on
backcountry routes. And so they would drive from Mexico. They
(20:18):
would steal vehicles in the Phoenix area. They would drive
them south immediately and take them across the line into
Mexico in the middle of the desert. They would load
them with dope and like avalanche, for instance, an avalanche
Chevy truck was one of the favorites. And you would
hear them talk about them, the avalanche Avalanche. They would
want to steal the avalanches and they would take them south.
(20:39):
They could get about fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred pounds
in one of those trucks and then they would immediately
turn it around and take the same route north well,
we were the ones that were trying to intercept them
on the northern route, and a lot of times when
they ran those routes, they were running them without headlights,
so all their lights would be turned off. They would
(21:00):
have camouflage covering over the vehicle, and they would be
headed through the open desert in Arizona, coming right up
into our county. So we would have to set up
to intercept them. And a lot of times they would
run these small dirt roads or small paved roads that
were two lane highways completely blacked out, and we would
be set up to take them. And so if we
saw a vehicle running with no lights on some of
(21:22):
those back roads, we would spike them and deflate the
tires so that the pursuit didn't happen. Really, it would
just because we didn't want them to know we were there.
We would hit the dope truck with spikes, deflate all
four tires, and then the chase was short after that.
So that was when we would spike the dope.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So, but those are the ones that avoided obviously, the checkpoints.
I went through, the fences. I've heard from some Border
Patrol agency just ran right over them. Those are the
type of trucks you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, they would run over them, or they would pick
areas because there's areas south of our county. We're about
sixty five miles off the border, but there's areas south
of that that our barbed wire strands across the US border.
And then there's other areas where they would actually even
the big walls that you see that you typically associate
with the border, they built ramps where they would ramp
(22:14):
over that thing and just drive the vehicles straight over
from one side to the other.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Saw. That's incredible stuff. Yeah, it's interesting because I know
people don't realize how inconsistent the fencing is. What is
it twenty five hundred miles with the border and people
don't Some pockets have nothing, some pockets just have the
barbed wire. I know Trump tried his best prober to
put the high wall, but obviously that still had issues
(22:41):
too because they did all kinds of things to get
around that. It's really amazing. Just I don't know what
you could do.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
It's tough because there's there's actually so there's land that
is reservation and so some people don't know, but we
have a reservation in Arizona, the US the Tajona Odem
Reservation that actually goes into Mexico, so it's reservation Indian
reservation on both sides. And so obviously that's a sovereign nation.
(23:11):
So if they don't want a fence, there's that problem, right,
so the US government would have to work with them
to figure out can we actually do this. And then
there's some that is terrain prohibitive. So you have some
areas down there that are just sheer cliffs, and then
you know the other side of the cliff is Mexico,
so that's kind of a natural barrier. And then you
(23:32):
have other areas that are open desert where they have
either barbar offences or they may have the normandy barriers,
or they may have some of the regular wall. And
so there's a combo of that until you get over
to kind of EuMA sector they have the straight up
wall and then around no Gallas right around the pes
there tends to be a little bit of wall, but
then it just goes into open desert and so there's
(23:54):
a lot of gaps and that when people ask us
like would the wall help if they complay it absolutely
because it becomes a deterrent. Will it totally stop them,
Absolutely not. They're going to figure out a way around it.
But it's a deterrent, and it helps us have a
better response so they're not just free flowing across.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
That's a great point. I think people sometimes misunderstand that,
and reporters take advantage of it too. They know it
because people either all or nothing mentality, and it doesn't
work in most of the cases. And when it comes
to reducing crime, Oh, this doesn't work. It didn't stop
the murders. You'll never stop the murders, will never stop
people from crossing. It's just really, is it more effective
than the technique that was used before? Yeah? That people
(24:37):
don't always seem to get that. I don't think anybody
who understood the wall and the border realized there was
going to be one hundred percent effective. Yeah right, but
it stops eighty percent compared to sixty percent. Yeah. Hey,
it's a good start.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Well, and again, it allows it gives you a deterrent,
and then it also allows you to better use technology
because if we're slowing them down, we have a better
chance of spotting them and then reacting to that.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
That's what I've heard a lot of border guys. Tell
me that, you know, we can slow them down. It
gives us a chance to get there and at least
nab some of them. Yeah, that's interesting. So now in
the in the book, you talk about a shootout in
the desert. Tell us a little bit about this what
happened here?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
So that one that was where one of our guys,
one of our deputies, got shot. I believe that's the chapter.
I may be off on this one.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Twelve.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Now it's my turn.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Again, folks, talking to Matthew Thomas. You can find them
on Instagram a deputy Underscore one time. You can also
get the book Interceptors, The Untold Fight against the Drug Cartels.
So within that chapter, was it a shootout with their deputy?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, So that chapter was one of our deputies who
had been involved in some of the interdiction workout in
that area. On this particular day, he just kind of
went out there to look at some of the trails
and see if there was any activity, see what he
could find, and he found himself in an ambush. And
so he ended up getting ambushed by a crew who
had actually been identified as a rip crew, but they
(26:06):
had backpacked dope or marijuana up into that area and
he kind of stumbled into the group and so they
set him up for an ambush. He comes into kind
of comes through a little saddle into a kind of
a bowl, and they open up on them from different
angles and first round gets them kind of in the side.
(26:29):
It was just a flesh wound, and he gets on
the radio calls out that he's you know, under fire
and he's been hit, and he proceeds to send some
rounds back their way, but he's really not sure of
their position. He's just shooting towards what he thinks is
them shooting at him. That activates pretty much everybody in
their mother So as soon as he gets on the
(26:50):
air on the radio and says here's what's going on,
then we're all hauling. But that way to try and
get to them, and ended up being a very long
operation that night, where with the help of Border Patrol HSI,
all the federal agencies were out there, all the local
agencies were out there, and we essentially locked down about
one hundred square mile area and started a hill by
(27:14):
hill search and we're using you know, technology to our advantage. Ultimately,
the bad guys got away and our guy was all right,
but it was just one hell of an incident and
just a big response and a lot of long hours
out in the desert for us.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
That's the amazing thing is how fast well there's a
response time.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I think our first guy got to him within about
five minutes, that's pretty much, yeah, which is good. And
the good thing was when they ambushed him, they didn't
They really didn't complete the job, right, So they ambushed him,
and then when he fired back, it seemed like everybody
kind of split. They weren't ready for any resistance, and
(27:54):
they kind of headed out of there and made a
run for it. And you know, we knew after the
fact from Intel that the cartels had kind of put
the word out like whoever did this did not have
permission and they are in deep shit because you brought
a whole bunch of heat down on their smuggling routes, right,
so you're interfering with their money.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
That's a good point. People don't realize that it's all
about business first, that's right. Killing a second just the
kind of a secondary nature for them. Again, I actually
got the title a little bit wrong, Folcus Interceptors, The
Untold fight against the Mexican cartels, not the drug cartels.
So let me ask you this. You kind of alluded
to marijuana. And this is again I'll give credit to
(28:39):
the media here, because they do cover that when they'd
laced the marijuana. When they lace the drugs, sometimes people think,
you know, Chopp was asking permission or whoever it is
down there from the FDA, but he's not. Is it true?
Are you saying that in the Arizona boards? Are you
seeing a lot of drugs coming over there from the
drug cartels being laced with other stuff?
Speaker 2 (28:59):
So I can't. I'd say that the loads that we're finding,
the big loads are laced. What we're finding is the
street level stuff is laced. But we do have what
they call polyloads, and polyloads means that they're mixing different
drugs together. So you might you might get a backpack
with two pounds of heroin, five pounds of meth and
(29:19):
three pounds of fentanyl in it, and so they're putting
all that together in one pack and shipping that up.
We are we do know that methamphetamine that they're they're
starting to find fentanyl and methamphetamine. They're starting to find
fentanyl in marijuana and even in cocaine, and the belief
(29:39):
is that it's done because of the addictive qualities of
the fentanyl to get them hooked on any drug that
the sinloans or the cartels are pushing up. And what
people need to understand also is we've made a shift.
So the US kind of helped this whole problem, as
they usually do. The US decided, let's legalize marijuana, that
(30:01):
that'll be that'll fix that, and so they legalize marijuana
in several states and then medical marijuana and other states.
And marijuana was the cash crop of the Sinaloa cartels
specifically in our area. That was their cash crop that
and you know, cocaine and methamphetamines were always running at
the top. And so when America starts legalizing marijuana, that
(30:25):
starts reducing the price, right that the black market price
starts dropping, and so the Mexican cartels specifically start losing
profit levels and they quickly figure out like, okay, let's
get out of that business because the US is kind
of you know, you have your your growth going on
in the US. Legally, Uh, it's much higher concentrate of marijuana,
(30:50):
you know, higher THHC levels, So it's better marijuana than
you're getting from Mexico. So the cartels are very nimble.
They quickly switched and switched their busines this model to
the other drugs, the methamphetamines and cocaine and heroin. Well,
fentanyl was starting to come into the picture then, and
they further morphed and got away from organics and so
(31:15):
meaning drugs you have to grow stuff for, right, So
cocoa plants you have to grow for cocaine, heroin you
need to poppy seeds. Marijuana is obviously you need the marijuana,
and switched over to synthetics because there's no growing season,
there's no harvesting, there's just getting the chemicals from China
and making the drugs in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
It's a lot easier, much more cost efficient for them.
And again it's kind of interesting, folks, But if you're
into learning about the drug Card tells it does be
wovey to look at them more as a business than
anything else. And I know they're trying. They have been
looking at ways to combat them more from the economics
side than they are from the military side or the
(31:57):
weapon side. I guess you could say combat side. Have
you seen anything changes in the last couple of years.
That says, hey, finally or still they don't have the
act together anything at all. What you're seeing out.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
There, well, we were seeing some progress under the last administration.
And again you have to kind of keep names out
of it because people get real emotional around names. Just
look at administrations and what their policies were. The last
administration and the policies of DHS were helping in the
policies of DEA and everybody who's fighting this fight had
(32:30):
they had better policies. They were attacking those bank accounts more,
they were you know, getting charges on more people, they
were extraditing more people, they were putting the bigger cases together,
they were partnering with locals a lot better. And so
we saw some progress and we were making making some headway.
(32:51):
And then we switched to administrations and the techniques, the
thought process, whatever of this administration being different. They kind
of headed in a different direction and we don't see
as much progress being made. And while some would argue, well, hey,
we have Choppo back in custody, that's a big deal,
which it is. It's a big deal, But I don't
(33:12):
think that the normal American citizen understands that when you
remove somebody like Chapo Guzman from the equation, you create
a power vacuum, just like we did with Saddam. When
we removed him, there was a power vacuum. It caused
everything that happened over there. Same thing is going on
in Mexico right now. Everybody's fighting for power. There's a
loss of control, there's a loss of organization, which causes havoc,
(33:37):
and the violence level goes up and up and up,
and they get more and more bold in what they're
doing because under those old narcos, like the Chapos of
the world, they had more of a code I guess
if that makes sense, they had more rules that they
(33:57):
followed that they wouldn't break. You know, they wouldn't include
women necessarily, they wouldn't include children. And all of those
lines have been crossed. And a lot of that has
to do with with the removal of Choppo and now
everybody fighting for position in that drug corridor.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
I think you have what is all those chopitos and
then his former right hand man battling it out for Sinaloa.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Right, Yeah, you've got the chopitos a Salazar's that they're
all in. Then you've got ca Cao Quintero who got
out and he has his own faction, and so they've
all yeah, they're all buying for power.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah, and sometimes I don't know. It's interesting because I
remember looking at isis Ice has had an interesting setup
because they really didn't follow their leader that much. It
was more of a network and so it didn't rely
on it, and cartels seemed to operate almost like the
hydra and the old days of the myth. Right, he
just cut the head off of the snake and another
one grows, right, And is that pretty much the way
(34:53):
they're still running now?
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah? They are. And that's that's one of the things
we've been pushing lately. Like when we like just a
little bit ago, I was meeting with one of our
congressmen from Arizona and we are having the discussion, and
the discussion is, you know, what do we do, and
what we in local law enforcement are asking is designate
them as what they are. They're terrorists, they're narco terrorists.
And if you give them, what people need to understand
(35:17):
is if you give them that designation, it opens up
a lot of doors to be able to combat the
problem because then you're allowed to take military action. You're
allowed to do a lot of different things that we
in law enforcement can't do right now.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Yeah, it really brings in the financial sector too, if
I remember correctly. You can also get companies who are
working with them in the States, right, a lot of
times money laundering goes through different channels and you can put.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Them and even the gangs if you think about the
street gangs, because if you designate them as terrorists and
all of a sudden, a street gang is accused of
working with a terrorist organization, that has a whole different
implication than just smuggling drugs.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
And if you're not really familiar with folks with the
local criminal justice system, compared to the federal justice system,
the federal prosecutors they don't lose. It's about ninety five
percent of the time they win. So if they get
a case, it's it's gonna go, it's gonna close. It's
very unlikely that anybody ever loses in those FED cases. Yeah,
(36:18):
the ol Chapel thing was interesting because it really didn't
make It caused more violence to happen, which everybody who
you understood the world knew it was going to happen anyway. Yeah,
that was not a huge surprise to I hate to say,
but I guess I'm part of it too, us. It
doesn't wasn't a huge surprise of it. And now the
Elmento thing is kind of like, okay, well, you know,
you know, if you catch Almento, it's going to be
(36:40):
all the whole kind of hell too. With Cartel Jalisco,
all of a sudden, they're so I guess my next
question is who are the players in your area? In
that area that's sixty five miles south of the border
for you guys, is a Cartel Halisco Because I know
they kind of divvy up to and they always always
move in. It's kind of hard to keep track of
who's who. But who's in down the area down there
is the Cartel Jaliscos. Is some law? Is it?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Both the cinel I mean, the Cartel Jalisco is kind of,
you know, a breakoff of the Cineloans, so they're all
kind of Cinalans. But the Cineloa cartel has traditionally controlled
Arizona the entire pretty much all of the border, all
the way to just west of New Mexico and then
over to Cali has traditionally been the Cinaloans under Chapo
and he had his capitos and they all had assigned plazas,
(37:25):
and so when Chapo got removed, there's the in fighting.
So they're fighting in it, and like you said, it's
constantly evolving. So you could have an area that maybe
Los Tapitos today and then the Salazars they're pushing back,
and so it's theirs tomorrow, and it goes back and forth.
But it's all based out of those Cineloa groups.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Okay, here's a Beltron Leva. I think they were in
California area.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I think, yeah, yeah, and there and again some of
those groups are starting to realign, like some of the
Beltron Lava organization or the Cadillo Fuentez organization, they're they're
starting to see a rise in some of those old
school names and people are aligning again.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
It seems kind of weird. I don't know. I haven't
really asked a whole lot of people about this, because
do you see that uptick in a lot of these
arm wing militias that they're starting to use, And it's
almost like they're using the gangs of that particular neighborhood.
You know, it's kind of like outsourcing or they're franchising,
whatever you want to use the term. I think those
Viaganas is one gang, and think down there and slow,
(38:27):
I think it is. Are you seeing any of these
arm wings over the border as well or just main
cartel members or so is this classified?
Speaker 1 (38:37):
So?
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yes and no. Well, I mean we know they're going
back and forth some of them. Some of them won't
cross over into the US because they don't want to
go to US jails or prisons, right, and so they'll
stay on the south side of the line. But we
definitely have soldiers and gang members going back and forth.
(38:58):
And as you saw when OLIVI though, I think it
was they got captured and they broke him out essentially,
or they assaulted the town until they gave him back.
That was street gangs. So essentially, the cartel started making
calls to all the local street gangs and said it
was a call to arms, get your guns, get out
to the street and start, you know, getting after it.
(39:21):
And so a lot of those armed caravans you saw
going around were not just cartel members, but were local
street gangs from that area all getting together to just
make a full on assault on the military and police,
and so they definitely the cartels definitely know what they're
doing in franchising out with those those smaller street gangs.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Oh it's crazy. Yeah, that was a crazy video. When
you saw the trucks, it's kind of blocking off the
streets and they basically surrounded the military. I think it
was with the police force.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
And that leads me to another question, and it's kind
of interesting to me. I want to get your intake
on your insight on this is that that's one of
the biggest problems I've heard from everybody who works with
against the cartels, not for the car but against the cartels,
is the issue with the Mexican government. And this isn't
anything to do with the Mexican people, just the government,
(40:11):
the politicians, the legal system, the judicial systems complicated and
they all suffer from the same thing, which is corruption
and connection with the cartels. We saw one of the
head guys I think just now indicted or something like that.
I can't remember who he wasn't secretary secretary or deputy
secretary of something of Calderon from years ago, and that
makes it extremely complicated, and I know when the intel guys.
(40:36):
There was before you can give information to They were
allowed to give information to the DEA. There are a
lot of information on the border patrol, HSI, stuff like that,
and then it kept quiet. Now they don't now if
we give them intel. I guess they changed their tune.
Now they can tell anybody and you have no clue
who's on that team. That's part of that, and that
(40:58):
makes it extremely complicated because they're tell me, how do
we work with them? We have no idea who we
can trust in ver we don't know who the moles are.
Is that pretty accurate still?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Oh? Yeah? Absolutely. There is a large amount of corruption
on the Mexican side. And I want to qualify it
by saying this because I don't want people to think
that I'm just saying all the Mexican government is bad.
Mexican cops are bad because even ones that switch over
and go to work for the cartels, sometimes those are
(41:29):
good people put in bad situations because the cartel absolutely
rules with the plata or plomo rule. Right, you're either
lead or silver, So they'll buy you off and you
can work for the cartail or they'll kill your whole
family and you can work for the cartel, and so
you know, with that kind of choice, it's easy to
corrupt the government when when you send pictures of just
(41:52):
think if you're sitting at home and you get a
picture of your wife and family and they're telling you, hey,
we're going to execute your whole family, or you can
do this, this, and this. That's a very tough choice
to make and easily turn somebody into a corrupted individual.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Absolutely, it kind of reminds me. I'm trying to look
up his name now. I knew he was going to
forget it because he's called the toughest man in Mexico.
He was the former mayor of Ty police chief. I
think it was.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
I know the story you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
I don't Yeah, Losada or Loyata, I can't remember. I apologize, folks,
but yeah, it's interesting how he was one of the
ones bucking that system. But it cost him a lot.
I think he made not a quadriplegic, but it maybe
a paraplegic. He couldn't walk anymore because the bullet hit
him in the spine. Yeah, there's a lot to risk there,
(42:46):
and you're right, there's a lot of great cops out there.
That I've known, and a lot of them in the
end of leaving they don't want to deal with it
anymore that way, and you know what sucks to man,
it's kind of sad. I never asked if I could
call you.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Matt, but yeah, I forgot. I've been called way worse.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
I don't know people understanding how complicated it is in
regards to the police system there too, because they're making
from what I hear, if you translate over to us
to dollars, some of them guys are making eight hundred
bucks a month, one thousand bucks a month, and there's
no way, there's no way they're going to take their
life for eight hundred bucks a month. It's not going
to go very far over there.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Yeah, no, they Yeah, And especially when you're talking about
making that in that environment where you not only are
you you're not just a crime fighters as it relates
to normal police work, right, You've got a large criminal
organization that essentially controls your government, and so you're being
(43:45):
hunted too. You're being hunted to be exploited or to
be moved out of the way, and so yeah, it's
not even close to being worth it. And there's been
times in my undercover days where I had a particular
boss that had a lot of Mexico connections, and he
would gather some of our old gear and boxes and
he would take it down to hand off to some
(44:05):
of them because they couldn't afford their own belts and
holsters and that kind of stuff. You know, So you
tell me, how how effective are they going to be
if they can't even get their basic equipment because they
can't afford it.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
It's crazy. They couldn't believe it's some of them. When
I talk to some of the Mexican police officers, they
were telling me they have to buy your own bullets.
It's like what, every department's different, but whoa, Yeah, that
was intense, Yeah, very different. That makes a huge impact
them in the border where you are, how this is
always one that meet. He's not going to like to
cover either, and I know a lot of places don't
(44:39):
want to cover. But how prevalent I guess are the
cartels in that area? Obviously they're not driving around like
they do in some certain spots like in Somemaloa driving
around their hummers with the fifty billits a caliber weaponar
But are they present there?
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah, absolutely, they're they're I can tell people without a
doubt they are in every town America, not just the
Southwest border. They're all over the US. They're forward deployed.
And you know, sometimes I don't want people to get
the impression that, you know, being an alarm is saying,
oh my god, you know, the cartail is taken over
the world. But you've got to think of it as
(45:16):
a business again. And so if it's a fortune five
hundred company and they have a bunch of money that
they are making from the US and it's they can
make that money anywhere in the US, they're going to
have their people working anywhere in the US that they
can make money. And so they have cartel members forward
deployed throughout the US and all the different cities you
(45:37):
can think of. If you have fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, if
you have that stuff in your area, most likely is
you have cartael members working in that area having some
level of input into those operations. And then you go
when you get down to the Southwest border, I think
(45:57):
what we see is you see more of the chance
of bigger bosses. So you know, lieutenant level, captain level
guys working on the US side operating on the US side.
That are higher ups in the cartels. And again they
don't drive around in armored vehicles and stuff, but they do.
They hold weight, They they make a lot of things happen,
(46:19):
and they're very dangerous individuals.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It's like if you have
the right, you have a special type of coffee and
everybody likes you, start opening up stores all over the country. Yeah, yeah,
that makes sense. You know, I guess this is kind
of a random question, but it made me think about
Enrique the boxer from the Mexican Mafia. Remember Enrique, he
had those interviews. He was one of the head guys there.
And if you ever see, if you've ever seen that
(46:44):
interview with him, when they're asking him, he doesn't sound
like a gang. Memory doesn't sound like you'll be the
head of the Mexican Mafia. You look at him. He's
clean cut, he's got the little glasses going on, and
I'm looking at him.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
You know what. I have not heard his in of you,
but I read his book yes.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Oh yeah, black Yeah, and it's really amazing because I
always show it to the class because they're just like,
you know, you just never know what they look like.
Sometimes they're going to help. Yeah, it's like a company, right,
They're going to have their accountants to hr department. And
you don't know who they are either on the streets,
do you.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
It's kind of no, not at all. I mean you
to your point. We one of the search warrants I
remember serving on a cartel stash house and it was
a heavily armed stash house, not really a stash house
so much as a stopping point kind of for higher
level guys. And so we went to a very affluent
neighborhood to conduct this search warrant, and we do the takedown,
(47:43):
get them in custody, guns everywhere in the house. There's
Ak's in the pantry, there's Ak's in the bathrooms, Ak's
in the bedroom. I mean he was he was stocked
for war. And uh, we get him out and one
of the neighbors comes over and it's like, oh my god,
what you know? Can I ask what's going on. We're like, yeah,
we're serving a search wart this is a cartelhouse. And
(48:03):
she's like what and it's like, yeah, these are cartel members.
But they were nice people, like our kids played soccer together,
Like yeah, and they they do that very well. They
assimilate very well, and they hide what they truly are
very well. But yeah, he probably chops some heads off
(48:23):
in Mexico and he's living next door to you.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Well, that's the interesting thing is they have certain players
and they'll fit the roles perfectly right. And because he
may not have ever chopped he might just you know what,
this guy fits the bill. He's got the education, he's
the accountant or whatever the hell it is, and then
they PLoP him in these cities and like you said,
they can't tell right anything.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
The Russians were really they had that big espionage case,
I think it was about a decade ago where they
had like five or six Russian spies. They're all married,
supposedly coming down here. They lived in the same neighborhoods
with academics were living and they were trying to get
into the community, to the university and trying to access
information about nuclear energy or whatever. And it was like
a ten year project for them. That's what they're known for.
(49:03):
They like to take a long time on their on
their espionage cases. But yeah, I kind of figured that
the Cartels would be doing the same thing. They probably
buy property because they have the money to buy whatever
property they wanted these high fluid areas, right, there's probably businesses.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Yeah, and they again they assimilate in and yeah, and
even you know, infiltrating government. They'll they'll have plants that
they have trained from the time they were kids to
stay clean, clean records, no trouble, so that they can
try and infiltrate into government positions and and you know,
(49:37):
become plants in border patrol or you know, stuff like that.
So they are definitely playing the long game.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
They had a judicial some woman who was working for
the the oh I forgot what it was. Was in Texas.
There was a court system down there. It was like
their supreme court of whatever particular city or county, and
she was working with the cartel. So she was giving
them information on the case is and things of that nature.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Yeah, that's scary stuff. People don't realize how far can reach.
That's for sure. The tentacles again, folks. The book Interceptors,
The Untold Fight against the Mexican Cartels. You can also
follow matt Over at Deputy Underscore one time, and you
know what, we got a few minutes leftist so the
one time kind of reminds me, Man, if you want
to get any message across that you really want people
(50:23):
to know about, the book will be one of the
biggest messages you want to make sure people get from
the book.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
I think the biggest thing I want people to take
from it is the education piece, right, understanding how first off,
understanding how the real streets work. And again as I
go through my background, my upbringing, understanding how crime ridden
areas work, gang infested areas work, Understanding the psychology the
(50:48):
social setting there, and the education of the culture of
the narcos, and then just how prolific and hard they
are to fight, and so giving them a try to
give them a full view of what this fight looks
like so that they have a good understanding of what
we're up against, because that's what's going to generate the support.
(51:09):
When they have a good understanding, that's how they can
help law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
I don't know if you ever see the show The Wires,
Every law enforcement officer always tells me the same thing.
We even talked to guys who worked in that Baltimore
group tell me the same thing. It was a pretty
dang accurate show. And when you mentioned working in the streets.
I've talked to several narcotic officers in the past. Fascinating
career there, that's for sure. You learn so much about
(51:35):
human behavior. Oh yeah, the Wire dealt a lot with
gang activity kind of stuff in the interplay between that
drug dealing, police, politicians, whatnot. Is it different with the
cartels mixed into the bag or is it a pretty
much the same as the Wire.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yeah, it's pretty much the same. It's just a different crew.
So you know, the Wire was based around the Baltimore
area and some of the black gangsters. This is based
around the Phoenix area and Mexican gangsters. So it's it's
pretty much the same game, just a different area, different players.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
Is it a little hotter down further down in Arizona
in the sense of heart being more crime, more danger
that way or is it does it start dissipating as
you go up north?
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Well, so that's tough because the crime is different. So
you know, you have you have Phoenix, which is, you know,
fifth largest city. I think we're still fifth, But you've
got a big city that has big city problems, big
city crime, a lot of stuff going on, a lot
(52:41):
of areas for bad guys to hide and to get
at each other. So you have all the crime that
goes along with the big city. As you get down
by the border, we have the same types of crimes, right.
We have assaults, we have extortions, kidnapping, rapes, murders, all
associated to cartels and muggling. But it is in a huge,
(53:03):
vast area, so you know, you don't see the concentration
of that crime. And sometimes those crimes actually go unnoticed
or unfound because they kill somebody in the middle of
the desert that never gets found and you never know
about it.
Speaker 3 (53:18):
Crazy stuff, all right, folks, Again, Matthew over the books
called Interceptors The Untold Fight against the Mexican Cartels, you
can find them a Deputy Underscore one time. Matthew, thank
you so much again for taking the time.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Absolutely thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (53:35):
Fascinating conversation. Folks, you know what to do. Make sure
go check it out. I highly recommend you get the
book to read it. It's a great read. It really
gives you a more realistic kind of feel of the
life in the US and drug cartels, especially in an
environment like that. Also, check out those Instagram account and
we will check everybody out next time. So make sure
(53:55):
to share, subscribe, and hit that I Like button. Are
you still there?
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Awesome?
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Op? Oh hold, I'm sorry. You know, I hit something
hit the wrong but then it bumped me out, so
I had to delete this part too. Okay, shoot, let
me redo that part because I don't know what happened
to the computer Screenkay, So make sure you go get
the book and folks here you don't remember, make sure
to share, subscribe, and hit that I like fucking folks
Everything is a mental gang. So stay attentive. We're talking
about the drug cartel, but from a whole new perspective.
Break it down with some intelligence, psychology, and criminology.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
This is not for the faint of heart.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah, this is narcology, a look against oude, the culture,
the ideas in the minds of the law. Let's stay alert,
gotta be cautious, gonna keep it down. They might here's
you're talking. Let's pick it out, what makes them tick
and who's at the top. Make sure you tune in
because it gets deep. You do not want to miss
out narcology.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Welcome back everybody. Well, today we have a great guest.
I'm really excited today. Our guess is Matthew Thomas and
name of Arizona, but he's been employed with the Panal
County Sheriff's Office for over twenty nine years. If you're
familiar with the Panal County Sheriffs, then you know they're
not too far away from the borders. We're gonna be
talking about the border. We're gonna be talking about drug
cartels and a whole lot more. Matthew is a has
(00:56):
a current position of Chief Deputy serving specials several special
to units, detention, patrol, traffic training, the police Academy, motors
and arcotics and investigations. He started eighteen years in the
Panal Regional Swat Team as a member, team leader and
finishing as a team commander. And he's got a brand
new book that I'm really excited about exploring, and I
hope you check it out as well. It's called Interceptors,
(01:18):
The Untold Fight against the Mexican Cartels. Author Matthew Thomas
pulls back the curtain, will take a little look on
the description here for it, and takes the reader and
a rarely seen eyewitness journey spanning over twenty nine years,
Matthew's law enforcement career, an immersive life and the Hispanic cultures,
and eye opening, honest and unprecedented look into the ruthless
activities of dangerous cartel activity on our Southern Force doorstep,
(01:40):
which means the US doorstep over there in that border.
And by the way, folks, if you listen to our podcast,
you know you don't always get a lot of this
stuff in the regular news. Now, I will be curious
and I'll be asking Matthew a little bit later, because
I have found local news tends to be more accurate
because you can't really lie as much nor things, so
(02:01):
they tend to be covering more areas. I'd be curious
to see if the local news down there is covering
anything that's happening down there in Panal in regards to
cartels or anything activities. Will ask him in a minute
before we get started. You know what to do? Share,
subscribe hit that I like, but you know we like it.
It's not waste any more time. Looking to the show,
Deputy one Time, as he's known on Instagram, Deputy Underscore
one Time, Matthew Thomas, welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Sir, Hey, how are you doing? Good to join you?
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Thank you very much for joining us. Like we said
before the show, he seemed to have mutual friends Jason Jones,
Victor Vola, Sheriff Lamb Yep, pretty good crew.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Now I'm excited to talk to you because I know
you're down at that border and like I said, we
don't hear much of it ever for whatever reason, but
the national news. But I guess my first question to you,
do they cover it on a local news down there?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Not a lot really no, And I think we used
to have local news that was that was owned outside
of the big corporations, right, and I think that has
all gone away, so they are pretty much pushing the
same narratives as the big news.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
That's a good point.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, you know, I know.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I don't know if it applies to if you've seen
this or even know anyverything about this. I know a
lot of gang activities always interpreted as adolescents just shooting
guns is where they're describe it, right, three teams kill
five teams or something like that. I'm thinking, okay, well,
we know what that really is code for most of
the time is usually gang activity. And I get it.
The politicians don't want that because then nobody wants to
(03:29):
come visit and their income goes down in the whole city.
I get it. Do you find that's possible too for
counties like Pinale it might be having issues with cartels,
I think maybe, and say, hey, keep it on the
down low, because if not, we're not getting anybody over here.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
No, I don't. I don't think. I don't think our
county shies away from the truth. We try not to oversensationalize,
you know, what's going on one way or the other.
We just especially us as a sheriff's office. We just
put out the facts. Here's here's what we're seeing, Here's
what's going on, Here's what you need to be aware of.
(04:03):
Because we tell our community cops can never do this
by ourselves. We absolutely need our community to do our job.
And the best agencies in the world that are that
are really affecting crime have a good partnership with their community.
And the only way you can have a good partnership
is be open and honest with each other.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Right, that's a great point. That's excellent. Yeah, I know,
collective efficacy in the world of criminology, it's a big thing.
Having people see things, say things, and I get it.
Sometimes in certain environments that are really high crime, you
got to be carefully say something and.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Retribution RECOMBUSI yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah, that's a dangerous Now you've been in the law
of person for twenty nine years, So what motivated you
to now write a book on interceptors? Has it gotten
worse that you said? People got to know about it?
Or what happened here?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It was?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
There are several things that took place that kind of
pushed me forward into the book, one of them being
that that so the timeframe that I'm talking of out
in the book. The operational timeframe was what we called
the wild West days here in our county, and it
was like nine, twenty ten, twenty eleven, all the way
up into like fourteen, and that's when we were really
(05:14):
battling the cartaeils. The fight that Texas is seeing right now,
we were seeing back then, not so much humans, mostly dope,
but it was just an all out battle between us
and the cartails on American soil for ground, to stop
them from coming in, just everything you could think of.
And so that played into it a little bit because
(05:37):
a lot of the operations we did back then have
evolved and the technology that we're using these days, the
tactics that we're using these days are different, and so
I wasn't too worried about giving away any operational secrets
that would hurt us. So that was a driving factor.
The two main driving factors for me is Number one
(06:00):
was that a lot of good people, good cops, did
a lot of good work. And if you read the book,
you'll read the work I'm talking about a lot of
good cops did that stuff. Nobody knew about it. They
still don't know about the stuff that goes on out
in the middle of nowhere, where cops are out there
trying to protect US soil, US citizens and hold the
line against these big criminal organizations. So I wanted to
(06:24):
honor all those people that I knew were out there
doing that, and I wanted to show America kind of
some of the work that they have done and some
of the stuff they continue to do. And then the
other driving factor was to get these stories in front
of our regular public and educate them about what goes
(06:47):
on and how everything happens, because part of my book
discusses the actual structure of the cartel as we see it.
It discusses the narco culture and how they have transformed
the Mexican culture to what it is today, and talks
about even some of the religious beliefs and how they
have bastardized regular religion and turned it into kind of
a narco religion.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
That's interesting. That's a lot of this, a lot to
cover there. I think it's chapter four or five we
talk about narco culture, which is fascinating. And you make
a great point, is I know in l A, I
don't know what it's happening. Obviously in Arizona. That's what
we happy here, But I know in La we see
a lot of oh now.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Something worth, yeah something.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah you sorry? I see that pop up over in
Arizona or has it been there for the last decade?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
It's been here for a long time, and and uh
it's it's only gotten more and more prolific as time
has went on. And uh, for us, something worth. Those
were two iconic figures in the smuggling world.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yeah, that's interesting again, folks, I'm not criticizing those individuals
and O those individuals who are not Cartel members who
do believe in those well the Catholic Church does not
believe them to be saints, but a lot of people
do believe them to be saints. So I don't want
to get into that theological mess. But so we're not here.
I'm not here criticizing those individuals. I'm just seeing what
the Cartail has hijacked. We saw that with Isis. They
(08:12):
hijacked Islam and they distorted the hic out of that,
And now we see Cartail's kind of doing the same
thing over here.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Do you feel, like Matt, do you think it's a
a motivational component for them in regards to recruitment. Does
it keep them loyal, Does it keep them I guess,
bonded in a certain way. Is that something that's there
or does it rationalize their behavior at all, saying hey,
we're here to do good or something.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, I think I think it's some rationalization. And just
you know, from being kind of immersed in that culture,
what happens is as as you have younger generations come up,
some of them don't even know why they're praying to
what they're praying to, right, and they so you'll have
the younger generation that are now adults who have come up,
(09:02):
and their whole understanding is this is a saint that
protects us. We like candles, we say prayers, we give offerings,
and that saint protects us. And a lot of the
narcos believe that they're just doing work to make money
and take care of their family, and they don't acknowledge
the evil side of it, and they don't acknowledge the
evil that they do. And so I think it's a
(09:26):
little bit of rationalization. I think it's a little bit
of misunderstanding for those youngsters as to what they're even
praying to or praying about. And then a lot of
it is culture, right, And I liken the Narcos to
the nineteen eighties rap era when we had the gangster
rappers coming out and everybody emulated that and they were
(09:49):
kind of iconic figures, and then you saw a whole
culture develop out of that in the poverty stricken areas,
in the gang areas, they all started emulating those figures.
The same thing that's happened with the narcos now is
they have fast cars, fast women, a lot of jewelry,
exotic animals, cool just cool stuff, cool houses. They're living
(10:09):
a great life. And they're actually out there on social
media too, right, So they're putting it all out there,
and these young kids are emulating that. Because if I
grew up in a little pueblo and I had dirt floors,
and I say, you know, I just go to work
for this guy, and all of a sudden, I have women,
cars and houses, you know, that's that's a heavy, heavy
(10:30):
factor in driving recruitment.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
That's a great point. Yeah. I think they have their
music too, the corridas, right.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Oh yeah, yeah, the narco corriles are and those those
have a deep history too. There's there's corrillos that were
not narco corrillos. Back then they were just corridos, but
they talk about the narco trade and they talk about
the cartels and moving their product and all of that
kind of stuff. But now they've they've kind of progressed
into what is narco corriles where you have opposing groups
(10:59):
singing about each each other, threatening each other, all that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Because a pretty dangerous place with those singers too. Sometimes.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, there's been plenty of singers killed because they sung
for the cartel crazy stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
So yeah, it's amazing how much it's immersed in that culture.
And it's there's a restaurant oh in La and the
name has escaped me now because it's got a mixed
mixed bag, not because of the food. I don't know
how good the food, but they got mixed bags. But
they have they'll have like Al Chappo's table, and they'll
have Scarfaces table, and they'll have all this stuff and
(11:34):
a lot of it's cartel related. So people are kind
of like, you know, this isn't helping.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
No, no, not at all, because you're again, you're just
teaching the younger generations to idolize the wrong people. Right
that the wrong figures. Those should not be their heroic figures.
Looking up to Chapo Guzman should not be a thing.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
You know what. I hate this. I'm taking this into
the psychology route. We'll get back to the book in
a second. But it makes me think. Now, you know,
some people are probably thinking, wait a minute, you guys
had all the Mafia movies and everybody idolize, which actually
it is true. I saw the other day somebody had
on their wall. Uh what the scarface? They had the scarface? Yeah,
(12:16):
so it kind of goes back to your point. You know,
it seems like a not just a particular country, it
seems like it's almost a human thing to sometimes look
at these individuals certain ways. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I don't know, because I mean, if you think about it,
I mean, all the poor kids in the world, if
they look at Chapo Guzman and they see this guy
came from a small little town, Latuna, and he came
from nothing and became one of the most powerful men
on the wrong side of the law in the world.
You know, if you're in that situation as a kid,
(12:52):
you can't help but look up to that and think, like, man,
he made it, and uh, you know, maybe I can
make it, but they just made it do it the
wrong stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah, it's interesting in society. I guess there's three different
individuals there as the ones who fight for good, like yourself,
who've always been publy attracted to that. I always wanted
to do good things, always wanted to be the hero
kind of atmosphere. And then you have the other side
which kind of want to be the hero but on
the bad side, and then you have the third person.
It really just doesn't cure either one and understand it.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And that's what that's a big part of what we're
talking about is the apathy too. That's another reason for
the book is the apathy of people is what's really
going to kill us, because if they just don't understand,
don't care to understand, and don't pay attention, that's where
these bad guys gain ground. And so again to educate
(13:45):
and to interest people in it so that they at
least have some information and make an educated decision as
to how they want to get involved, if they want
to get involved.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
It's a fascinating read. Again, folks is called Interceptors. The
Untold Fight title the book come a one then told
fight against the drug cartels that highly recommend getting it.
It's a really interesting read. You learn a lot that
you don't usually get to hear about. Like I said again,
and you don't read it very much in other books
or other places. Let me ask you this then, tell
(14:17):
us a little bit about because I know when I've
talked to the officers over in Texas, they seem to
have a lot of issues with that Tango Blast and
other gangs that seem to cooperate with the drug cartels.
Did you see a lot of that down there? Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, we have all the in Arizona. We're a highly
Hispanic populated state, right, I mean, we're right against the
southwest border, so it only makes sense. And we have
the Mexican mafia, who is they have heavy influence in
the prisons, and they also have heavy influence on the
street gangs. And then the cartels also being of they're
(14:53):
not of Mexican descent, they're from Mexico, but having people
of Mexican descent on the US side that are involved
in criminal organizations, also dealing with criminal element from Mexico
who's Mexican. A lot of them have familial bonds, so
you'll have a gang member on the US side, and
he's born and raised here, but he's got family ties
(15:15):
to cartel members on the Mexican side, and so it
makes it an easy because that's where the biggest trust is,
right is the familial bonds. So if they have familial ties,
it makes these organizations tighter, harder to get into, harder
to break up because they have that tie. But even
without that, you have the gang nexus because the Mexicans understand,
(15:36):
and the Mexicans being the cartel members, understand that with
a criminal network already set up in the US, they
have a distribution network, right, and they have a protection network,
and they have a transportation network, and so it makes
logistics a lot easier for them.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Now, I've heard the cartels didn't discriminate a whole lot
in Texas. In other words, they use the omgs. They
used a lot of motorcycle gang folks. Yep, they use
all different types groups. Whoever really really was willing to distribute,
who had the corners covered? Is that apply there in
Arizona as well?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yep, yep, same thing. They're not. They're not race specific
or anything like that. We have omgs here, we have
the Hell's Angels, the Mongols. Those are two big ones.
We have the Bogos. We have plenty of Hispanic street gangs,
black street gangs, some with La ties, so crips, bloods,
that type of stuff. We even have some East Coast
(16:27):
gang influence with the gangster disciples and the vice lords.
Really we have quite the mixture here in Arizona.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, oh wow, I didn't realize they stretched out over there.
Where's Billy Jack when you need them? So let me
ask you this tell us a little bit about the
book with some I know it's hard to always the
interview individuals about their book is there's so much in
there and so much to cover. But I know, let
me do this. I'll pick and choose some stuff. I
guess probably the easiest. And if you want to highlight
anything please by all means. I know you started talking
(16:55):
about an alcric culture, which we just talked about a
little bit now, But you talked about the inner city
training ground. What was this all about?
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, So I grew up in the inner city. I
grew up in government subsidized housing. My mom was a
single mom from the time of I think I was
about four years old ish, and so I grew up
in a gang area, and it was predominantly a Mexican
gang area. And so spending my first fifteen years in
(17:27):
that inner city, you learn all this stuff that you
don't even realize you're learning. It's just it's normal stuff.
It's cultural stuff that's applicable just for that territory. So
you become very aware of your surroundings. You understand that
there are these invisible barriers that nobody else knows about.
(17:50):
So if somebody from out of town were to drive
through my neighborhood, they wouldn't know which street meant that
they were in the next neighborhood and out of our neighborhood.
And when you talk about a neighborhood, those areas you're
talking about gang lines. And so each neighborhood has its
own lines, certain streets you can't go past, certain allies
you can't go past, because then that is no longer
(18:11):
your neighborhood, where you may be protected by whatever gang
is in that neighborhood, and you're considered out of bounds.
And so all of that teaches you stuff, right, teaches
you stuff that you don't even realize your learning. It's
just the way you live. Stuff like playing basketball out
in the front yard with my friends, and when a
car would roll by and they would start to slow down,
(18:33):
everybody would get behind cover. You would grab a tree,
you would grab whatever you could get behind because there
was always the thread of drive bys and sometimes they
hit the right house and sometimes they don't. So whenever
a car was displaying any suspicious behavior to us, or
things that would look at normal or things that we
associate with past acts, everybody would react to that. And
(18:54):
so when you are removed from that environment, and this
is what happened with me. I moved out of the
inner city and moved out to the suburbs into a
farming area, low population, low crime, and then you start
to realize that you are doing things that don't make
(19:16):
sense to other people because they're not applicable in those situations,
such as when a car rolls by getting behind covered
people are like, what are you doing? Why did you
stop playing basketball? You know, like, well in case they
shoot at us, and they're like, why would they shoot
at us? You know, they just doesn't register for them.
So that's that inner city training and then learning how
(19:36):
to just read people because there's always danger because those
are high crime areas, and so you're constantly reading people,
reading situations, looking for escape routes, figuring out how to
get yourself out of situations. All that kind of stuff
just gets trained into you.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
One of the things I like about you book till
You called spiking the dope.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
But spiking the dope itself that that was what we
called spiking back then, was tired deflation devices. And so
we would deploy we would deploy the tired deflation devices
on these load vehicles that were running blacked out on
backcountry routes. And so they would drive from Mexico. They
(20:18):
would steal vehicles in the Phoenix area. They would drive
them south immediately and take them across the line into
Mexico in the middle of the desert. They would load
them with dope and like avalanche, for instance, an avalanche
Chevy truck was one of the favorites. And you would
hear them talk about them, the avalanche Avalanche. They would
want to steal the avalanches and they would take them south.
(20:39):
They could get about fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred pounds
in one of those trucks and then they would immediately
turn it around and take the same route north well,
we were the ones that were trying to intercept them
on the northern route, and a lot of times when
they ran those routes, they were running them without headlights,
so all their lights would be turned off. They would
(21:00):
have camouflage covering over the vehicle, and they would be
headed through the open desert in Arizona, coming right up
into our county. So we would have to set up
to intercept them. And a lot of times they would
run these small dirt roads or small paved roads that
were two lane highways completely blacked out, and we would
be set up to take them. And so if we
saw a vehicle running with no lights on some of
(21:22):
those back roads, we would spike them and deflate the
tires so that the pursuit didn't happen. Really, it would
just because we didn't want them to know we were there.
We would hit the dope truck with spikes, deflate all
four tires, and then the chase was short after that.
So that was when we would spike the dope.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So, but those are the ones that avoided obviously, the checkpoints.
I went through, the fences. I've heard from some Border
Patrol agency just ran right over them. Those are the
type of trucks you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, they would run over them, or they would pick
areas because there's areas south of our county. We're about
sixty five miles off the border, but there's areas south
of that that our barbed wire strands across the US border.
And then there's other areas where they would actually even
the big walls that you see that you typically associate
with the border, they built ramps where they would ramp
(22:14):
over that thing and just drive the vehicles straight over
from one side to the other.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Saw. That's incredible stuff. Yeah, it's interesting because I know
people don't realize how inconsistent the fencing is. What is
it twenty five hundred miles with the border and people
don't Some pockets have nothing, some pockets just have the
barbed wire. I know Trump tried his best prober to
put the high wall, but obviously that still had issues
(22:41):
too because they did all kinds of things to get
around that. It's really amazing. Just I don't know what
you could do.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
It's tough because there's there's actually so there's land that
is reservation and so some people don't know, but we
have a reservation in Arizona, the US the Tajona Odem
Reservation that actually goes into Mexico, so it's reservation Indian
reservation on both sides. And so obviously that's a sovereign nation.
(23:11):
So if they don't want a fence, there's that problem, right,
so the US government would have to work with them
to figure out can we actually do this. And then
there's some that is terrain prohibitive. So you have some
areas down there that are just sheer cliffs, and then
you know the other side of the cliff is Mexico,
so that's kind of a natural barrier. And then you
(23:32):
have other areas that are open desert where they have
either barbar offences or they may have the normandy barriers,
or they may have some of the regular wall. And
so there's a combo of that until you get over
to kind of EuMA sector they have the straight up
wall and then around no Gallas right around the pes
there tends to be a little bit of wall, but
then it just goes into open desert and so there's
(23:54):
a lot of gaps and that when people ask us
like would the wall help if they complay it absolutely
because it becomes a deterrent. Will it totally stop them,
Absolutely not. They're going to figure out a way around it.
But it's a deterrent, and it helps us have a
better response so they're not just free flowing across.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
That's a great point. I think people sometimes misunderstand that,
and reporters take advantage of it too. They know it
because people either all or nothing mentality, and it doesn't
work in most of the cases. And when it comes
to reducing crime, Oh, this doesn't work. It didn't stop
the murders. You'll never stop the murders, will never stop
people from crossing. It's just really, is it more effective
than the technique that was used before? Yeah? That people
(24:37):
don't always seem to get that. I don't think anybody
who understood the wall and the border realized there was
going to be one hundred percent effective. Yeah right, but
it stops eighty percent compared to sixty percent. Yeah. Hey,
it's a good start.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Well, and again, it allows it gives you a deterrent,
and then it also allows you to better use technology
because if we're slowing them down, we have a better
chance of spotting them and then reacting to that.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
That's what I've heard a lot of border guys. Tell
me that, you know, we can slow them down. It
gives us a chance to get there and at least
nab some of them. Yeah, that's interesting. So now in
the in the book, you talk about a shootout in
the desert. Tell us a little bit about this what
happened here?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
So that one that was where one of our guys,
one of our deputies, got shot. I believe that's the chapter.
I may be off on this one.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Twelve.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Now it's my turn.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Again, folks, talking to Matthew Thomas. You can find them
on Instagram a deputy Underscore one time. You can also
get the book Interceptors, The Untold Fight against the Drug Cartels.
So within that chapter, was it a shootout with their deputy?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, So that chapter was one of our deputies who
had been involved in some of the interdiction workout in
that area. On this particular day, he just kind of
went out there to look at some of the trails
and see if there was any activity, see what he
could find, and he found himself in an ambush. And
so he ended up getting ambushed by a crew who
had actually been identified as a rip crew, but they
(26:06):
had backpacked dope or marijuana up into that area and
he kind of stumbled into the group and so they
set him up for an ambush. He comes into kind
of comes through a little saddle into a kind of
a bowl, and they open up on them from different
angles and first round gets them kind of in the side.
(26:29):
It was just a flesh wound, and he gets on
the radio calls out that he's you know, under fire
and he's been hit, and he proceeds to send some
rounds back their way, but he's really not sure of
their position. He's just shooting towards what he thinks is
them shooting at him. That activates pretty much everybody in
their mother So as soon as he gets on the
(26:50):
air on the radio and says here's what's going on,
then we're all hauling. But that way to try and
get to them, and ended up being a very long
operation that night, where with the help of Border Patrol HSI,
all the federal agencies were out there, all the local
agencies were out there, and we essentially locked down about
one hundred square mile area and started a hill by
(27:14):
hill search and we're using you know, technology to our advantage. Ultimately,
the bad guys got away and our guy was all right,
but it was just one hell of an incident and
just a big response and a lot of long hours
out in the desert for us.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
That's the amazing thing is how fast well there's a
response time.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I think our first guy got to him within about
five minutes, that's pretty much, yeah, which is good. And
the good thing was when they ambushed him, they didn't
They really didn't complete the job, right, So they ambushed him,
and then when he fired back, it seemed like everybody
kind of split. They weren't ready for any resistance, and
(27:54):
they kind of headed out of there and made a
run for it. And you know, we knew after the
fact from Intel that the cartels had kind of put
the word out like whoever did this did not have
permission and they are in deep shit because you brought
a whole bunch of heat down on their smuggling routes, right,
so you're interfering with their money.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
That's a good point. People don't realize that it's all
about business first, that's right. Killing a second just the
kind of a secondary nature for them. Again, I actually
got the title a little bit wrong, Folcus Interceptors, The
Untold fight against the Mexican cartels, not the drug cartels.
So let me ask you this. You kind of alluded
to marijuana. And this is again I'll give credit to
(28:39):
the media here, because they do cover that when they'd
laced the marijuana. When they lace the drugs, sometimes people think,
you know, Chopp was asking permission or whoever it is
down there from the FDA, but he's not. Is it true?
Are you saying that in the Arizona boards? Are you
seeing a lot of drugs coming over there from the
drug cartels being laced with other stuff?
Speaker 2 (28:59):
So I can't. I'd say that the loads that we're finding,
the big loads are laced. What we're finding is the
street level stuff is laced. But we do have what
they call polyloads, and polyloads means that they're mixing different
drugs together. So you might you might get a backpack
with two pounds of heroin, five pounds of meth and
(29:19):
three pounds of fentanyl in it, and so they're putting
all that together in one pack and shipping that up.
We are we do know that methamphetamine that they're they're
starting to find fentanyl and methamphetamine. They're starting to find
fentanyl in marijuana and even in cocaine, and the belief
(29:39):
is that it's done because of the addictive qualities of
the fentanyl to get them hooked on any drug that
the sinloans or the cartels are pushing up. And what
people need to understand also is we've made a shift.
So the US kind of helped this whole problem, as
they usually do. The US decided, let's legalize marijuana, that
(30:01):
that'll be that'll fix that, and so they legalize marijuana
in several states and then medical marijuana and other states.
And marijuana was the cash crop of the Sinaloa cartels
specifically in our area. That was their cash crop that
and you know, cocaine and methamphetamines were always running at
the top. And so when America starts legalizing marijuana, that
(30:25):
starts reducing the price, right that the black market price
starts dropping, and so the Mexican cartels specifically start losing
profit levels and they quickly figure out like, okay, let's
get out of that business because the US is kind
of you know, you have your your growth going on
in the US. Legally, Uh, it's much higher concentrate of marijuana,
(30:50):
you know, higher THHC levels, So it's better marijuana than
you're getting from Mexico. So the cartels are very nimble.
They quickly switched and switched their busines this model to
the other drugs, the methamphetamines and cocaine and heroin. Well,
fentanyl was starting to come into the picture then, and
they further morphed and got away from organics and so
(31:15):
meaning drugs you have to grow stuff for, right, So
cocoa plants you have to grow for cocaine, heroin you
need to poppy seeds. Marijuana is obviously you need the marijuana,
and switched over to synthetics because there's no growing season,
there's no harvesting, there's just getting the chemicals from China
and making the drugs in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
It's a lot easier, much more cost efficient for them.
And again it's kind of interesting, folks, But if you're
into learning about the drug Card tells it does be
wovey to look at them more as a business than
anything else. And I know they're trying. They have been
looking at ways to combat them more from the economics
side than they are from the military side or the
(31:57):
weapon side. I guess you could say combat side. Have
you seen anything changes in the last couple of years.
That says, hey, finally or still they don't have the
act together anything at all. What you're seeing out.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
There, well, we were seeing some progress under the last administration.
And again you have to kind of keep names out
of it because people get real emotional around names. Just
look at administrations and what their policies were. The last
administration and the policies of DHS were helping in the
policies of DEA and everybody who's fighting this fight had
(32:30):
they had better policies. They were attacking those bank accounts more,
they were you know, getting charges on more people, they
were extraditing more people, they were putting the bigger cases together,
they were partnering with locals a lot better. And so
we saw some progress and we were making making some headway.
(32:51):
And then we switched to administrations and the techniques, the
thought process, whatever of this administration being different. They kind
of headed in a different direction and we don't see
as much progress being made. And while some would argue, well, hey,
we have Choppo back in custody, that's a big deal,
which it is. It's a big deal, But I don't
(33:12):
think that the normal American citizen understands that when you
remove somebody like Chapo Guzman from the equation, you create
a power vacuum, just like we did with Saddam. When
we removed him, there was a power vacuum. It caused
everything that happened over there. Same thing is going on
in Mexico right now. Everybody's fighting for power. There's a
loss of control, there's a loss of organization, which causes havoc,
(33:37):
and the violence level goes up and up and up,
and they get more and more bold in what they're
doing because under those old narcos, like the Chapos of
the world, they had more of a code I guess
if that makes sense, they had more rules that they
(33:57):
followed that they wouldn't break. You know, they wouldn't include
women necessarily, they wouldn't include children. And all of those
lines have been crossed. And a lot of that has
to do with with the removal of Choppo and now
everybody fighting for position in that drug corridor.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
I think you have what is all those chopitos and
then his former right hand man battling it out for Sinaloa.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Right, Yeah, you've got the chopitos a Salazar's that they're
all in. Then you've got ca Cao Quintero who got
out and he has his own faction, and so they've
all yeah, they're all buying for power.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah, and sometimes I don't know. It's interesting because I
remember looking at isis Ice has had an interesting setup
because they really didn't follow their leader that much. It
was more of a network and so it didn't rely
on it, and cartels seemed to operate almost like the
hydra and the old days of the myth. Right, he
just cut the head off of the snake and another
one grows, right, And is that pretty much the way
(34:53):
they're still running now?
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah? They are. And that's that's one of the things
we've been pushing lately. Like when we like just a
little bit ago, I was meeting with one of our
congressmen from Arizona and we are having the discussion, and
the discussion is, you know, what do we do, and
what we in local law enforcement are asking is designate
them as what they are. They're terrorists, they're narco terrorists.
And if you give them, what people need to understand
(35:17):
is if you give them that designation, it opens up
a lot of doors to be able to combat the
problem because then you're allowed to take military action. You're
allowed to do a lot of different things that we
in law enforcement can't do right now.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Yeah, it really brings in the financial sector too, if
I remember correctly. You can also get companies who are
working with them in the States, right, a lot of
times money laundering goes through different channels and you can put.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Them and even the gangs if you think about the
street gangs, because if you designate them as terrorists and
all of a sudden, a street gang is accused of
working with a terrorist organization, that has a whole different
implication than just smuggling drugs.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
And if you're not really familiar with folks with the
local criminal justice system, compared to the federal justice system,
the federal prosecutors they don't lose. It's about ninety five
percent of the time they win. So if they get
a case, it's it's gonna go, it's gonna close. It's
very unlikely that anybody ever loses in those FED cases. Yeah,
(36:18):
the ol Chapel thing was interesting because it really didn't
make It caused more violence to happen, which everybody who
you understood the world knew it was going to happen anyway. Yeah,
that was not a huge surprise to I hate to say,
but I guess I'm part of it too, us. It
doesn't wasn't a huge surprise of it. And now the
Elmento thing is kind of like, okay, well, you know,
you know, if you catch Almento, it's going to be
(36:40):
all the whole kind of hell too. With Cartel Jalisco,
all of a sudden, they're so I guess my next
question is who are the players in your area? In
that area that's sixty five miles south of the border
for you guys, is a Cartel Halisco Because I know
they kind of divvy up to and they always always
move in. It's kind of hard to keep track of
who's who. But who's in down the area down there
is the Cartel Jaliscos. Is some law? Is it?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Both the cinel I mean, the Cartel Jalisco is kind of,
you know, a breakoff of the Cineloans, so they're all
kind of Cinalans. But the Cineloa cartel has traditionally controlled
Arizona the entire pretty much all of the border, all
the way to just west of New Mexico and then
over to Cali has traditionally been the Cinaloans under Chapo
and he had his capitos and they all had assigned plazas,
(37:25):
and so when Chapo got removed, there's the in fighting.
So they're fighting in it, and like you said, it's
constantly evolving. So you could have an area that maybe
Los Tapitos today and then the Salazars they're pushing back,
and so it's theirs tomorrow, and it goes back and forth.
But it's all based out of those Cineloa groups.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Okay, here's a Beltron Leva. I think they were in
California area.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I think, yeah, yeah, and there and again some of
those groups are starting to realign, like some of the
Beltron Lava organization or the Cadillo Fuentez organization, they're they're
starting to see a rise in some of those old
school names and people are aligning again.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
It seems kind of weird. I don't know. I haven't
really asked a whole lot of people about this, because
do you see that uptick in a lot of these
arm wing militias that they're starting to use, And it's
almost like they're using the gangs of that particular neighborhood.
You know, it's kind of like outsourcing or they're franchising,
whatever you want to use the term. I think those
Viaganas is one gang, and think down there and slow,
(38:27):
I think it is. Are you seeing any of these
arm wings over the border as well or just main
cartel members or so is this classified?
Speaker 1 (38:37):
So?
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yes and no. Well, I mean we know they're going
back and forth some of them. Some of them won't
cross over into the US because they don't want to
go to US jails or prisons, right, and so they'll
stay on the south side of the line. But we
definitely have soldiers and gang members going back and forth.
(38:58):
And as you saw when OLIVI though, I think it
was they got captured and they broke him out essentially,
or they assaulted the town until they gave him back.
That was street gangs. So essentially, the cartel started making
calls to all the local street gangs and said it
was a call to arms, get your guns, get out
to the street and start, you know, getting after it.
(39:21):
And so a lot of those armed caravans you saw
going around were not just cartel members, but were local
street gangs from that area all getting together to just
make a full on assault on the military and police,
and so they definitely the cartels definitely know what they're
doing in franchising out with those those smaller street gangs.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Oh it's crazy. Yeah, that was a crazy video. When
you saw the trucks, it's kind of blocking off the
streets and they basically surrounded the military. I think it
was with the police force.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
And that leads me to another question, and it's kind
of interesting to me. I want to get your intake
on your insight on this is that that's one of
the biggest problems I've heard from everybody who works with
against the cartels, not for the car but against the cartels,
is the issue with the Mexican government. And this isn't
anything to do with the Mexican people, just the government,
(40:11):
the politicians, the legal system, the judicial systems complicated and
they all suffer from the same thing, which is corruption
and connection with the cartels. We saw one of the
head guys I think just now indicted or something like that.
I can't remember who he wasn't secretary secretary or deputy
secretary of something of Calderon from years ago, and that
makes it extremely complicated, and I know when the intel guys.
(40:36):
There was before you can give information to They were
allowed to give information to the DEA. There are a
lot of information on the border patrol, HSI, stuff like that,
and then it kept quiet. Now they don't now if
we give them intel. I guess they changed their tune.
Now they can tell anybody and you have no clue
who's on that team. That's part of that, and that
(40:58):
makes it extremely complicated because they're tell me, how do
we work with them? We have no idea who we
can trust in ver we don't know who the moles are.
Is that pretty accurate still?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Oh? Yeah? Absolutely. There is a large amount of corruption
on the Mexican side. And I want to qualify it
by saying this because I don't want people to think
that I'm just saying all the Mexican government is bad.
Mexican cops are bad because even ones that switch over
and go to work for the cartels, sometimes those are
(41:29):
good people put in bad situations because the cartel absolutely
rules with the plata or plomo rule. Right, you're either
lead or silver, So they'll buy you off and you
can work for the cartail or they'll kill your whole
family and you can work for the cartel, and so
you know, with that kind of choice, it's easy to
corrupt the government when when you send pictures of just
(41:52):
think if you're sitting at home and you get a
picture of your wife and family and they're telling you, hey,
we're going to execute your whole family, or you can
do this, this, and this. That's a very tough choice
to make and easily turn somebody into a corrupted individual.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Absolutely, it kind of reminds me. I'm trying to look
up his name now. I knew he was going to
forget it because he's called the toughest man in Mexico.
He was the former mayor of Ty police chief. I
think it was.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
I know the story you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
I don't Yeah, Losada or Loyata, I can't remember. I apologize, folks,
but yeah, it's interesting how he was one of the
ones bucking that system. But it cost him a lot.
I think he made not a quadriplegic, but it maybe
a paraplegic. He couldn't walk anymore because the bullet hit
him in the spine. Yeah, there's a lot to risk there,
(42:46):
and you're right, there's a lot of great cops out there.
That I've known, and a lot of them in the
end of leaving they don't want to deal with it
anymore that way, and you know what sucks to man,
it's kind of sad. I never asked if I could
call you.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Matt, but yeah, I forgot. I've been called way worse.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
I don't know people understanding how complicated it is in
regards to the police system there too, because they're making
from what I hear, if you translate over to us
to dollars, some of them guys are making eight hundred
bucks a month, one thousand bucks a month, and there's
no way, there's no way they're going to take their
life for eight hundred bucks a month. It's not going
to go very far over there.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Yeah, no, they Yeah, And especially when you're talking about
making that in that environment where you not only are
you you're not just a crime fighters as it relates
to normal police work, right, You've got a large criminal
organization that essentially controls your government, and so you're being
(43:45):
hunted too. You're being hunted to be exploited or to
be moved out of the way, and so yeah, it's
not even close to being worth it. And there's been
times in my undercover days where I had a particular
boss that had a lot of Mexico connections, and he
would gather some of our old gear and boxes and
he would take it down to hand off to some
(44:05):
of them because they couldn't afford their own belts and
holsters and that kind of stuff. You know, So you
tell me, how how effective are they going to be
if they can't even get their basic equipment because they
can't afford it.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
It's crazy. They couldn't believe it's some of them. When
I talk to some of the Mexican police officers, they
were telling me they have to buy your own bullets.
It's like what, every department's different, but whoa, Yeah, that
was intense, Yeah, very different. That makes a huge impact
them in the border where you are, how this is
always one that meet. He's not going to like to
cover either, and I know a lot of places don't
(44:39):
want to cover. But how prevalent I guess are the
cartels in that area? Obviously they're not driving around like
they do in some certain spots like in Somemaloa driving
around their hummers with the fifty billits a caliber weaponar
But are they present there?
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah, absolutely, they're they're I can tell people without a
doubt they are in every town America, not just the
Southwest border. They're all over the US. They're forward deployed.
And you know, sometimes I don't want people to get
the impression that, you know, being an alarm is saying,
oh my god, you know, the cartail is taken over
the world. But you've got to think of it as
(45:16):
a business again. And so if it's a fortune five
hundred company and they have a bunch of money that
they are making from the US and it's they can
make that money anywhere in the US, they're going to
have their people working anywhere in the US that they
can make money. And so they have cartel members forward
deployed throughout the US and all the different cities you
(45:37):
can think of. If you have fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, if
you have that stuff in your area, most likely is
you have cartael members working in that area having some
level of input into those operations. And then you go
when you get down to the Southwest border, I think
(45:57):
what we see is you see more of the chance
of bigger bosses. So you know, lieutenant level, captain level
guys working on the US side operating on the US side.
That are higher ups in the cartels. And again they
don't drive around in armored vehicles and stuff, but they do.
They hold weight, They they make a lot of things happen,
(46:19):
and they're very dangerous individuals.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It's like if you have
the right, you have a special type of coffee and
everybody likes you, start opening up stores all over the country. Yeah, yeah,
that makes sense. You know, I guess this is kind
of a random question, but it made me think about
Enrique the boxer from the Mexican Mafia. Remember Enrique, he
had those interviews. He was one of the head guys there.
And if you ever see, if you've ever seen that
(46:44):
interview with him, when they're asking him, he doesn't sound
like a gang. Memory doesn't sound like you'll be the
head of the Mexican Mafia. You look at him. He's
clean cut, he's got the little glasses going on, and
I'm looking at him.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
You know what. I have not heard his in of you,
but I read his book yes.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Oh yeah, black Yeah, and it's really amazing because I
always show it to the class because they're just like,
you know, you just never know what they look like.
Sometimes they're going to help. Yeah, it's like a company, right,
They're going to have their accountants to hr department. And
you don't know who they are either on the streets,
do you.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
It's kind of no, not at all. I mean you
to your point. We one of the search warrants I
remember serving on a cartel stash house and it was
a heavily armed stash house, not really a stash house
so much as a stopping point kind of for higher
level guys. And so we went to a very affluent
neighborhood to conduct this search warrant, and we do the takedown,
(47:43):
get them in custody, guns everywhere in the house. There's
Ak's in the pantry, there's Ak's in the bathrooms, Ak's
in the bedroom. I mean he was he was stocked
for war. And uh, we get him out and one
of the neighbors comes over and it's like, oh my god,
what you know? Can I ask what's going on. We're like, yeah,
we're serving a search wart this is a cartelhouse. And
(48:03):
she's like what and it's like, yeah, these are cartel members.
But they were nice people, like our kids played soccer together,
Like yeah, and they they do that very well. They
assimilate very well, and they hide what they truly are
very well. But yeah, he probably chops some heads off
(48:23):
in Mexico and he's living next door to you.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Well, that's the interesting thing is they have certain players
and they'll fit the roles perfectly right. And because he
may not have ever chopped he might just you know what,
this guy fits the bill. He's got the education, he's
the accountant or whatever the hell it is, and then
they PLoP him in these cities and like you said,
they can't tell right anything.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
The Russians were really they had that big espionage case,
I think it was about a decade ago where they
had like five or six Russian spies. They're all married,
supposedly coming down here. They lived in the same neighborhoods
with academics were living and they were trying to get
into the community, to the university and trying to access
information about nuclear energy or whatever. And it was like
a ten year project for them. That's what they're known for.
(49:03):
They like to take a long time on their on
their espionage cases. But yeah, I kind of figured that
the Cartels would be doing the same thing. They probably
buy property because they have the money to buy whatever
property they wanted these high fluid areas, right, there's probably businesses.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Yeah, and they again they assimilate in and yeah, and
even you know, infiltrating government. They'll they'll have plants that
they have trained from the time they were kids to
stay clean, clean records, no trouble, so that they can
try and infiltrate into government positions and and you know,
(49:37):
become plants in border patrol or you know, stuff like that.
So they are definitely playing the long game.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
They had a judicial some woman who was working for
the the oh I forgot what it was. Was in Texas.
There was a court system down there. It was like
their supreme court of whatever particular city or county, and
she was working with the cartel. So she was giving
them information on the case is and things of that nature.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Yeah, that's scary stuff. People don't realize how far can reach.
That's for sure. The tentacles again, folks. The book Interceptors,
The Untold Fight against the Mexican Cartels. You can also
follow matt Over at Deputy Underscore one time, and you
know what, we got a few minutes leftist so the
one time kind of reminds me, Man, if you want
to get any message across that you really want people
(50:23):
to know about, the book will be one of the
biggest messages you want to make sure people get from
the book.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
I think the biggest thing I want people to take
from it is the education piece, right, understanding how first off,
understanding how the real streets work. And again as I
go through my background, my upbringing, understanding how crime ridden
areas work, gang infested areas work, Understanding the psychology the
(50:48):
social setting there, and the education of the culture of
the narcos, and then just how prolific and hard they
are to fight, and so giving them a try to
give them a full view of what this fight looks
like so that they have a good understanding of what
we're up against, because that's what's going to generate the support.
(51:09):
When they have a good understanding, that's how they can
help law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
I don't know if you ever see the show The Wires,
Every law enforcement officer always tells me the same thing.
We even talked to guys who worked in that Baltimore
group tell me the same thing. It was a pretty
dang accurate show. And when you mentioned working in the streets.
I've talked to several narcotic officers in the past. Fascinating
career there, that's for sure. You learn so much about
(51:35):
human behavior. Oh yeah, the Wire dealt a lot with
gang activity kind of stuff in the interplay between that
drug dealing, police, politicians, whatnot. Is it different with the
cartels mixed into the bag or is it a pretty
much the same as the Wire.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yeah, it's pretty much the same. It's just a different crew.
So you know, the Wire was based around the Baltimore
area and some of the black gangsters. This is based
around the Phoenix area and Mexican gangsters. So it's it's
pretty much the same game, just a different area, different players.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
Is it a little hotter down further down in Arizona
in the sense of heart being more crime, more danger
that way or is it does it start dissipating as
you go up north?
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Well, so that's tough because the crime is different. So
you know, you have you have Phoenix, which is, you know,
fifth largest city. I think we're still fifth, But you've
got a big city that has big city problems, big
city crime, a lot of stuff going on, a lot
(52:41):
of areas for bad guys to hide and to get
at each other. So you have all the crime that
goes along with the big city. As you get down
by the border, we have the same types of crimes, right.
We have assaults, we have extortions, kidnapping, rapes, murders, all
associated to cartels and muggling. But it is in a huge,
(53:03):
vast area, so you know, you don't see the concentration
of that crime. And sometimes those crimes actually go unnoticed
or unfound because they kill somebody in the middle of
the desert that never gets found and you never know
about it.
Speaker 3 (53:18):
Crazy stuff, all right, folks, Again, Matthew over the books
called Interceptors The Untold Fight against the Mexican Cartels, you
can find them a Deputy Underscore one time. Matthew, thank
you so much again for taking the time.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Absolutely thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (53:35):
Fascinating conversation. Folks, you know what to do. Make sure
go check it out. I highly recommend you get the
book to read it. It's a great read. It really
gives you a more realistic kind of feel of the
life in the US and drug cartels, especially in an
environment like that. Also, check out those Instagram account and
we will check everybody out next time. So make sure
(53:55):
to share, subscribe, and hit that I Like button. Are
you still there?
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Awesome?
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Op? Oh hold, I'm sorry. You know, I hit something
hit the wrong but then it bumped me out, so
I had to delete this part too. Okay, shoot, let
me redo that part because I don't know what happened
to the computer Screenkay, So make sure you go get
the book and folks here you don't remember, make sure
to share, subscribe, and hit that I like fucking folks
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