#436 | Carlton Hershman | Netflix Victim/Suspect | Retired Detective

Carlton Hershman joined The Protectors® to talk about his career, appearing on Netflix’s Victim/Suspect, training law enforcement, and a ton more.  Thanks to Laura for co-hosting.  

About Carl: Detective Carlton Hershman (Ret) is a 32-year veteran of the San Diego Police Department, retiring in 2017. Det. Hershman is a nationally recognized speaker. He has trained thousands of law enforcement professionals, prosecutors, military personnel, sexual assault nurse examiners, and advocates. Det. Hershman served as an instructor at the San Diego Regional Law Enforcement Academy on sex crimes investigations, Interviewing and Interrogation, and investigations 101. He has worked several assignments as an investigator including Special Investigations Unit, Homicide Unit, Sex Crimes Unit, Elder Abuse Unit, and the C.A.T.C.H. Team (Cyber Unit).

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Transcript

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That is one thing about the protectors podcast as we always forget to hit that good ol record button and we start getting into some great conversations. But today we have an excellent guest excellent guests, but we also have an excellent co host. Today's guest is Carl Hirshman decades and decades of just incredible experience, working all sorts of stuff, from Homicide to undercover operations, to sex crimes, to elder abuse, all sorts of incredible stuff, including cyber. Thank you for joining protectors podcast. And I'm really looking forward to this because I really want and that's the thing about this show is I'm pretty selfish is because I want to know, I know a lot about false confessions, I know a lot about when it comes to the criminal element and about people being interrogated. But there's a whole spectrum that really kind of gets overlooked. And that's when it comes to sexual assault, rape. And, yeah, well, thanks for coming on the show, Carl. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. So Carl, we'll jump right into it. You know, you kind of came to my attention, because Sam McCord told me about this show called victim suspect on Netflix. And it really opened my eyes. Because, you know, I came from the Fed world, and I never really looked at things like at the at the level of what's going on out there. So let's talk about how you got involved with with victim suspect. Yeah, so I was retired, retired in 2017, from the San Diego police department spent 32 years there. And my last 33 years, I was determined my last 21 years I was a detective and had gone through some units like, like you had said, and I retire and break before I retire, I actually just attorney gets a hold of me. And that basically asked me if, if I would help him on a case. And I said, Well, I can't I'm an active cop. And he just would just give me your opinion. I'm like, Why can't I'm an active cop, she calls me out five times. So finally leaves me alone. So I retired 2017, a couple months after that same attorney calls me and says, Hey, you retired now? And could you help me on this case? And I? And he was a defense attorney, by the way? And I was like, Well, yeah, sure. And I knew him through the courts. I mean, him and I was kind of battled back and forth, you know, in, in court. So I just gave him my my opinion, my verbal opinion, that was it didn't testify or anything. And then he might my name kind of got spread out there around the San Diego area, you know, to do this. So that's kind of how I started working in cases, fast forwarded to 2021. I'm, I'm minding my own business, I move back to Florida, and I'm working cases I'm traveling, I'm teaching across the nation. And I get this case from BuzzFeed, the world news organization. And they call me and said, hey, we'd like to have you take a look at a case we'd like to hire you. And basically, it was these two detectives who were suing BuzzFeed, they had done an article on them about this case down in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And where this female had was being charged with a crime, she ends up committing suicide. And they wrote an article and it goes around the world, because it's BuzzFeed. And these two detectives just get inundated with phone calls and emails. They attack them on social media. So they had to shut down all their social media, their their emails, and the phone calls that the department had to do that. So they decided they're going to sue BuzzFeed. So they do they hire me, I look at it. And I, when I get these cases, I say I generally say look, you know, you're probably not gonna like, but I have to say, cops do a pretty good job. You know, there's always little mistakes here and there. But that's, you know, that's just comes with the cost of doing business. So I really think, dude, this document dump on me a huge document dump and I started reading it 10 minutes in, I just get so mad. I just I feel the heat in my face, because I'm like, What are these cops doing? You know, I mean, it's, it's like embarrassing, you know, and I just couldn't understand some of the tactics they had used and some of the some of the things that they did and when I was looking at the interviews with what I just saw the victim interview, it just made me even more more mad. So I worked that case, there was a second case I got hired up in Virginia, I ended up testifying in that case. And it just so happens that Netflix was doing a case. They were working on four cases. And two of them I had worked worked on. And I actually bumped into them up in Virginia, like, along the state line where Bristol is, and this girl had been arrested and convicted of false reporting. And she got an appeal and like testified in that appeal. So ended up having a knock. Guilty, well doing that the attorneys like, oh, Netflix is here, they're going to film you and like, no, they're not. She's like, What? Like, I don't want to be on Netflix. I really don't trust the media. I don't like them. Like, no, no, no, this will be in a good light. I'm like, I don't care, I really don't care. I don't trust them, I don't want to be any part of them. So it's in this little town, it there's only one really nice hotel there. And it for they're super expensive. It was$130 a night that there was super expensive, right. And they have a little bar and grill on the top of the hotel. So I go there guests who stay in there. Everybody, like everybody that flew in for this ascent at the same place, including Netflix. So that night, we we go up to this little happy hour with the victim and her family, we go up to I go up to the bar, and I'm sitting there and when I walked in the door, they're all sitting there, all the Netflix, the camera people, I mean, they had made me you know, I'd say 567 people, something like that. So they sent me a drink over, they come over, they sat down. And Ray, who is the journalist who's in the who did all this research, she's in the film, she was there because she's tracking all this stuff. And I bet raid a year before of conference that I was speaking at when she came up to me, we talked. So they sat there for about an hour and a half and about I'd say, maybe three drinks later. I'm going to be on Netflix. So they talked me into it because they're like, Carl, you have a message. You know, you get your message out of these conferences, you know, 2000 3000 people at a time. Sometimes it's hundreds people at the time. But you can go, you know, worldwide and I'm like, Yeah, I said, I don't have any control over what you're going to say not that I want to say anything bad. She's like, What? Are you afraid that you're going to show it to cops in a bad light? And I'm like, No, not at all the ones that need to be shown in the bad light need to be shown in a bad light. That's, that's a handful. I'm not talking. I'm not saying anything bad about all the cops because, like, again, we generally do a great job. It's just, you know, in this one area, we struggle. And that's how I ended up on Netflix. To talk about a tenacious reporter, you know, wow, she's really all over the place. Was it? had its Rachel daily own? Or you call her right here? Right? Yeah, I was really impressed with her. But in order for her to like, you know, get that conversation with you and, and for the crew at Netflix actually build rapport with you. That's a big thing. And I understand what you mean about the media. And you don't want to come across as like, hey, you know, what you can be the next one is going to be canceled, you could be the next one is going to be under fire. You could be the next one with a million different people coming after you. So you had to pick your battles and you know, coming from these, like, you know, your decades of experience working primarily for the prosecution side, I would say like, you know, 99.9 times and you said sparring with the defense side. But now all of a sudden, you have to take a big step. And you know how many and this is half long after you retire because your identity for three decades was a cop? And now you're, you know, we kind of concerned like, hey, you know, what, the the, the bad side but there really is no bad side when it comes to this. So what was that like taking that next step into into this world? Well, the first time I got contacted by defense was he says, Look, I got this kid when I say I'm 61 So when I got this kid, but he's actually 19 or 20. You know, he's been accused of you know, sexual assault and so on so forth. And this was I had already moved here back to Florida, my hometown, and they're in California. So I I said, Hey, you know, I'll come back there and I I mean, he gives me the whole story as to what he's being accused of. And there's a couple of things in there. And I thought, well, you know, it didn't sound like to me that maybe he was innocent that he didn't do this. So sorry about that. So I go out there, I speak with this kid, and I sit down and I, I got a good feeling that, you know, and I don't do investigations. Now, I will talk to a victim, maybe the first disclosure witness. And that's about it. Because I'm not a private investigator, forensic interviewer, and I use my expertise in sexual assault to kind of get to the bottom of you know, the thing. So when I speak, but when I spoke with him, he tells me something completely different than what was in the police report. You know, and I'm not saying just one little inconsistency, I mean, a huge, huge inconsistencies. So I talked to his the first exposure witness, which happened to be a female, and she told me, she told me that she told me that she can be actually what happened. And he, he was in a sense, I mean, he may, he felt that he had consent, he did have consent, and then to come to find out that this person had reported to other males before. Now, that said that she can't be sexually assaulted for a third time. But when I found when I looked into the other two, she pulled the same thing. And I want to discourage anybody from coming forward that has been sexually assaulted. But I still felt, even though I saw that helped him, and I did. And by the way, this, this young lady was, she was mentally ill, and she needed help. I still felt like, I worked for the defense, you know, even though this poor kid was not a suspect. Right now. And then the other was when the Netflix series where these girls are arrested for being accused of false reporting, it is a crime. So you do you have law enforcement, you know, pressing charges or issuing charges? And in the right now I have, I'm going to say, I think nine right now open cases that I'm working. And it's all for the defense for it, or are there for after the fact or for civil? But yeah, I put a bad taste in my mouth. I did tell you, but it isn't like, Yeah, I mean, I do get cases where I, I look at them, and I'm like, I'll call them and say, Well, I'm not going to work this case, you're you're applying is your clients are rapist, you know, your client committed a sexual assault? And they're like, oh, okay, well, that's what we thought, like, well, you know, so can you just send us your report? And I'm like, No, I'm not. And they're like, Well, why not? And like, I'm not gonna give you a blueprint to get him off, then that's what my report would be. And that's not going to happen. That was one of the biggest questions I was going to have for years. Because like taking these cases that you know, you know, these people are like, you know, just you what your your 1300 investigative experience 1300 cases of sexual assault case even investigated, but no, you just know, and to give over, like, kinda like your blueprint. That's like me, like, if I'm working a case, and I know how to work the case, I know how to put the pieces of puzzle together, and then all of a sudden a given to the criminal and saying, Hey, by the way, this is how we do the cases. So you could use this in the future. I was wondering how you did that. So yeah. Wow. I don't know. I don't take payment too, because I had one guy who was like, well, we paid you to do this. And like you did? You did it to so I have given you some information I'm not gonna give you on. And I'll tell you what, don't don't send me any money. That's where you feel about it. Because when we start off what we really need to know, that act like, Well, if he's guilty, we're good. You know, we know if he's not guilty, can you help us, but that's not what they're doing. I'm not all of them. Some of them do that. But not all of them are doing that. You know, there's a lot of things that Lauren I wanted to touch on today. One of them was like the myths. You know, when you're dealing with sexual assault and everything, a lot of people don't want to come forward because for one, they don't think they're going to be heard. And two, they might know that the suspect and three they might be intoxicated, so let's just try to unpack some of that. Yeah, sure. So relationships are huge when it comes between the victim and the suspect. And the closer that relationship the harder it is to work. Not for the legalese, but for it. But for emotions. And, you know, on a, given any given case, you have on average 1/3 to one half, we'll back out of the process. And that that can be in the middle of your investigation, you can be almost done, and they'll back out. And I, I understand why it's, so it's a tough thing to keep them on board. There's ways of doing that. And that's some of the stuff that I teach. But relationships are huge, especially if they've known each other, they were in high school together now college, or the longer that they've known each other, the harder it is to turn someone in. And the harder it is to say, Well, wait a minute, that person can go to prison. And then you have your friends. And even family is like, do you really want to do that to Billy, you know, do you really want to send him to prison? You know, okay, he, he screwed up, he went over the line, but he didn't rape you. But in the penal code he did. So, you know, there have all these pressures on them, too, to drop charges or to withdraw from the system. So it's not always just them themselves. It's having a hard time with it. It's, it's other people outside people who are pressuring them to do this. As far as the the alcohol driven cases, a lot of times they, they don't know what happened to them. So it's hard to come to the police and call the police and say, Yeah, I got drunk, right. And I'm 17 years old, 18 years old, I'm in college, I got drunk drinking underage, a man might have took the next to see. And I blacked out then passed out. And I woke up and my underwear was off in my vagina sore. But I don't know what happened to me. Now, most people in the call the police, it's, it was eight o'clock at night, I pulled up to the ATM, I got out, I was withdrawing money, this guy is about five, seven, add a handgun, you put it my face demand at my money, I gave it to me, he ran away. And oh, by the way he was wearing a block, they can be really detailed. Most of these drunken intox cases of all of them, they have a refracted memory. So they don't, they can't give you a step by step or a blow by blow of what happened to them. So that makes them delay reporting, which is about five to 10 days before they figure out. Alright, I talked to my friends, I was with this guy, I don't even know who this guy is. But I still got a call. Something happened to me. And they had this, this thing inside of them, you know, women know their bodies. They just know, they know something happened to them. They finally go Come to the police, you know, five to 10 days later and report a crime. And they may have a report something that it's not even in the penal code, right, it's missing an element or two. And law enforcement will sometimes turn them away saying well, you're reporting something that that you don't even know if a crime occurred. But what they're asking for is, you know, to understand the dynamics of how facilitated, you know, drugs, alcohol and drugs, facilitated assault works is are trumped by intox works is that they don't have that memories. They just don't. But that is part of the crime. And again, that that those are the toughest to work. Because usually your if your witnesses are there, they've all been drinking too. And then your victim does some bizarre things. Get to ride home from from the from the suspect gives him $20 for gas, exchange his phone numbers after the assault. I mean, these things that you're like, well come on this, you're asking me to believe too much. But what we're trying to say is to believe, you know, start by believing you don't have to believe them at the end. But you can start by believing don't turn them away when they, when they tell you give you a bizarre story as to what happened because I, in my experience, that the most bizarre stories tend to be true. I mean, except a little green Martians coming down, that you ain't got a whole nother thing going on there. But but other than that, I mean, you know, start by believing in other words, don't shut them down in the beginning and not, you know, do an investigation, but that's 85% of your caseload is is is raped by intoxication. If you say no enough, if you if you're not working those then you're not working much. You know and a lot of a lot of cops don't know how to work those because you know, consent is the number one defense And, you know, your your your suspect is claiming, you know, while I had consent, or at least I thought I had consent, where they go the diminished capacity, I was blacked out. I was trying to Detective, are you going to arrest her for having sex with me because I was drunk. You know, you hear all these these things. And a lot of investigators just kind of want to wipe their hands, and we don't want to deal with it. If they don't have training, and I don't blame them. Now, Laura, you know, Carl, you're bringing up some excellent points. And I, man, I can really, we can talk about this all day long. And I'd like to talk about as much as possible, because the myths and people just, they don't really understand what it's like to take that step forward to report something like this, especially when it comes to associate. Now, Laura, what is your experience with this? I mean, you, you're coming from the police aspect as well. What was your background with all of this stuff? And how do you what's your experience with that? So we talked about this a little bit. And, you know, I worked some six crimes of adults, where the adults were the victims. But Carl was making a point about, you know, what do you do if, if the victim doesn't remember? And so cops get stuck on? Oh, my gosh, you know, she or he can't remember what happened? How are we going to work this? You know, we need you to tell us what happened. You're our witness, you're our victim. But I always tell people in my unit, like, how about when you work, a abuse case of a child that is under whatever the age is to be able to talk? And so do you dismiss that? Or how about Homicide investigators, you know, their victim is not talking? So the we just dismiss that because we don't have the victim side of the story? No, we base it on other things. So I love the curl touch up on that, because that's not just okay, well, sorry, you can't tell us what happened to you. We can't work your case. And in as far as the alcohol I just, you know, a here Carl talking about, you know, the suspect being questioned and saying things like, well, you know, I was drinking too. And so then cops get into this hole. I mean, I've seen it happen. Other investigators in my unit will say well, then who raped who? You know, can he alleged that she raped me because I was drunk too. So they will shy away from that. And then that they uncomfortable conversations of even just as little as hatless less cold body parts with their call it out. We're adults here, and they just get so uncomfortable saying, you know, vagina or intercourse or whatever it is, and, and they just don't want to work those cases they don't. So I think it takes a special person, I just want to tell you, Carl, if this attorney chase you down as much as he did, and Netflix and everything. That's because of the reputation you have you had and you still have. And so to me this this huge, because you continue to carry that with you. And I wanted to ask you this. So how much do you think that investigators are just even street cops opinion on whether this did happen or didn't happen? affect the case? So in other words, if this victim comes in, and the investigators already made up their mind, oh, she wasn't raped? How does that affect that investigation? I'm in the sense that 100% Because you're the investigator in you have that next step from let's say, it comes from patrol, right patrol goes out and they do their initial contact and maybe a report, hopefully report, and then it comes to you, you dictate where that's going to go, how you're going to work it how hard you're going to work it. It'll start in, it'll begin and end with you. If you figure that you, you know, you have this confirmation bias that after reading the initial report, this didn't happen. And now you're biased is I have to go find evidence as to this didn't happen. So that will direct you now, not to look for sexual assault, but to look for that it didn't happen or she's lying about it. Those are easy to work. You can work those within a couple of hours, maybe a half a day and get it off your desk versus working it in that's going to take you four to six weeks depending on the case. If you go in as a mindset that just didn't occur, that's how your investigation is going to end up. It didn't occur. If you go into it open minded like I am going to look for evidence. I'm going to dig for it as witnesses and so on, so forth. Basically, I'm going to get to the truth. And, by the way, if you get 80% of the truth, your stellar, right, you're going places, most of us, you know, we get right around 60% of the truth as to what happened. And mainly that has to do with drugs and alcohol on top of it. What the lead investigator does or doesn't do affects the case 100% Good or bad. And, you know, good, good is good or bad is is something that you would be difficult to try to resurrect a case or to bring it back and say, Okay, let's start over here. Because you lose so much information, right. And basically, our jobs is to gain knowledge and information. And that can be from interviews to irrigations evidence, that knowledge and information you can start piecing together that night, or what happened. And if your mindset is an unbeliever, for him from the very beginning, that puzzle, it's like, taking two different puzzles and putting them together, and then taking out a bunch of pieces, you'll you'll never get to the troops as to what happened. So so how, how do you think you can overcome that because, you know, imagine a supervisor over a unit, and you can be on top of all your your team and you have this investigator that as you say, you know, is going to be faster to prove that this person lied, because I have this, you know, she recanted. Versus, I'm going to put in extra time. Go give me some search warrants, interview more witnesses, I mean, all this pretty time consuming. So what would you tell that supervisor, what would you tell that person in charge of a, say, Sex Crimes Unit about how to keep up with what their investigators are doing? How this you know, victims are Canton doesn't affect their cases. But first of all, I tell them training, right training, training and the proper the proper training, not not, you know, not bill that's been doing this for 100 years, but he's been doing it wrong for 100 years, you know, and Bill's a nice guy, but he's just, you know, he's had no proper training. And there's a lot of training stuff, there's online, I speak for in Violence Against Women International, they have a full training or there that's free. You go through their motor, each section, and then you get like a, you answer, you take a test and you get a certificate. And it's really good training, plus, we put on regional trainings on a system from Baltimore, and then now I'm going to be in New Orleans here in a month or two. So anyway, on that supervisor, if you know, all that sub comes into that supervisor, and he or she can see who is shortcutting your cases or who is dissuading witnesses, you know, in other words, talking witnesses or victims out, for coming forward. The bottom line is that you have two people here, one did not get justice. And then the other is a rapist that walked away. And I think most cops don't like to hear that they, you know, we're all here because we're winners, right? And cops don't like to lose. We don't like losing, you know, foot pursuits, you know, vehicle pursuits, an argument, a fight. We don't like to lose any of that stuff. I would love to see, you know, that that Eisenhower speech, you know, from the supervisor to the troops saying, Look, if you're short cutting knees, or you're not doing them correctly, you're losing. You know, how come you have about literally 1% of cases across the nation see a jury. That's 1% Out of ammo 650,000 cases that are reported. Remember, just two thirds are not reported. So I mean, this is just an epidemic. So why is that? Why is it only 1% It doesn't make it makes any sense. It's just because we're doing them wrong, right? We're, we're not approaching these cases, you know, the proper way. And supervision if that layer that that we can have, you know, the sergeants and lieutenants understand, you know, your your your detectives are coming to you with a bad product. You know, instead of just Signing off like in our unit, we, our Sergeant would read them and sign off and give it back to us. Well, a lot of that was they look up at you, you had to tone they look down, they sign it, and then they give it back to you. They didn't even read it. And sometimes it's like, oh, well, I don't read his reports, because he's, you know, a great report writer. Look, there's a lot of great report writers. But what was in the report? What was the context of the report? Did he talk to everybody was, was there something that you could do? I might, my sergeant, I made him read them all. And my first sergeant, which was Joey and our CHambo, she founded in violence against women, she taught me how to do these cases. But when I got new sergeants, and I go, No, could you read us orange? You know, and we have, you know, he's like, Well, we have grammar. Correct. I'm like, don't read it for grammar, read it for content, context, and content. And he's all like, you kind of look at me kind of weird. And you've been here a long time, ya know, same way with judges when I get a warrant sign. Oh, you know, they know your first name basis, and they start signing in the bottom? It's like, Your Honor, very respectfully Can Can you read it, I just want to make sure I got this one, right. And they get to know me. And as soon as I come in, they look down, I gotta read this thing. But it. I know, supervisors, a lot of supervisors are friends with the people that work under them. But you can still be friendly and just say, look, did you try pretext phone call it? Yeah, I didn't go so good. Did you try a second one? I can do two, you can do multiples. Did you try? Or she doesn't want to do a pre text phone call. Okay. Did? Did you get her best friend to call the suspect? I can do that. Yeah, you can get the best friend and call his best friend. You know, they just think they don't know, you know, they're not trying to hide anything. They just, they just don't know that. There's all these investigative tools that you can use. And when you, you know, properly, you can get a good case. Now, I'm over here looking at Jason law, he's probably right in, you know, training, training training, because you you just You said it. I mean, it's, it comes down to training. And if you don't know what, you know, what all tools we have, and you know how to follow a lead or anything like that, then we just feel like, Oh, we're stuck. This is all I got, I'm gonna present it where it's at. And Warren deny close, no prosecution, and like you said that victim will never get. It's not just about the justice, but I feel like, you know, that's part of their healing process. And so, training is big, right? Jason, what you think? Oh, yeah. And that's the thing is like, when you bring up training, and you brought up a good point is they don't know. And, you know, that's what like, you know, and I always bring up the Fed world, because we're like a weird animal. Like, you go to a duty station for three, four or five, six years, and you move on to somewhere else, that will state locals, you can stay in the same department for, you know, 1020 30 years. And you're building that that train, you're building that base, that investigative base, and you can pass on what you know. But in this environment, if you don't know, you don't know, and especially when it like you're bringing someone into doing sex crimes and dealing with really sensitive subjects. Some people don't look at him, like, hey, you know what, this is just like another investigation, you got to do all the different steps, you got to look at all the different angles and attack it from that angle. So I love the fact that you're doing these trainings. And that's one thing I liked about the end of the Netflix series. Was you out there training? Absolutely, I agree. And, you know, I'm looking at this, like, what about that person doesn't want to go to training? Oh, I don't want to go and talk about this. This is not an interesting topic. We're not kicking in doors and joining the SWAT team and doing all the fun things. Right. So I do think it takes a special person, but I think anybody can be trainable. I don't know if you've had anybody in training that you can just tell they're just they were told to be there. Right? Oh, absolutely. Especially like from smaller agencies where they don't have a big pool of people. I was in a boy, South Dakota, Aberdeen, Aberdeen, South Dakota, and their state puts on a whole training and they I noticed probably, I wouldn't say three 400 people, they're mostly law enforcement, but they're advocates and they had their Forensic Nurses and such too. But, and I love those little settings like that where I can, you know, go on breaks, people walk up to me or I walk up to them and, and there was this one agency, they had seven people from the chief on down and four of them was there, you know, and they said, Well, I said, Are you detectives so you know, he's out on the road and and Do they say, well, the chiefs work and today, you know, patrol and but we all what they do there is they they go to a radio call if they make an arrest or they write some paper, you know, write up a report, is there also the detective on it? And I thought, well, that's kind of cool. That's kind of an advantage, though, right? You're a first responder and you're the main detective on it. So you're seeing everything. But with that said, you know, they just don't have any training, they don't have time to go get it. Or say like a child protective. You know, CPS report comes in from child protective service, and it gets dumped on their lap. You're like, I'm gonna I don't know, and we'll give it to give it to Kathy, she, she's done one of these before. And it to them, it's just the work them as you know, the work and like any other case, right, discover the truth. Know, collect evidence. densified suspect exonerate the innocent, right, the big four. So they are going to do that. But it's like, well, that's much more than that in to work a child case versus an adult case. And even an adult cases, you have, basically, I don't know, 16 different sex crimes, and you don't work them all the same. You know, you wouldn't work a sex with a minor the same as, you know, sexual contact with a prisoner, you know, so, but yeah, they, they want to go to training, the ones I want to go to training, they sit there, they're taking notes, their head is up, if someone were taking notes on their laptop, and I hand out a PowerPoint to some follow along, and then other ones are sending an error with one eye open and one eye closed. You know, maybe they weren't third, watch the day before or whatever. And I am the type instructor. I don't call anybody out. But sometimes I'll go when I try to stand next to them, you know, because other things, I see other people looking at them, and kind of making fun of them. So kind of trying to save them that way, but it is distracting. But, you know, they'll come up to me, I'm sorry, you know, I don't even asked to go, you know, do these cases were from a small agency. So the guy that was one sex crimes, he got, he left and went to another agency. So now I'm stuck with them. I was like, Oh, my God, you know, I'm stuck with him. I really don't want to do them. And I'm thinking of the poor victims that this guy is going to have not hit if and it's not his fault, right? I mean, that's just, it is what it is. I mean, it's all true. I didn't want to go there. I didn't want to do these cases. And I got, I'm getting stuck with them in because not everybody. There's no line to go to a Sex Crimes Unit. There just isn't I mean, they all want to go to homicide. It's an only way to get him to go to child abuse and homicide as well. You got to go over to sex crimes and child abuse for a year or two, and then you know, and then get on the relief list. And then that's how you get in. I don't you know, how does those two units have to go to homicide? I don't know. Because I did this. I did that eventually with the homicide. And then I ended up coming back after my daughter was born. But I'm like, that's just a scam. Right to get people in. I mean, some of them are long term, you know, investigations. And you do do a lot more at the lab. But other than that, you know? And so yeah, you just don't have, you know, there's some people like, oh, yeah, I wanted to be in the Sex Crimes Unit. But that's like one out of 100. I mean, I got recruited to come in there. I, I got a call from the sergeant. And she's like, Hey, your name was given to me. I'm just like, oh, man, I gotta go find somebody to kill them. Right. Your name was given to me. And would you like to come to such crimes? I'm like, Well, that sounds cool. Not knowing, right? I've been a detective. I was an active detective render detector for about four years. And I've worked our eastern we had nine divisions and I worked very, very busy. You know, Eastern Eastern San Diego is not the beach. Trust me. So. So I talked to my wife. Because what you want and I don't even look into it. Yep, I'll do it. I go down there. And because I'm gonna catch rapist, and then my first like, 20 cases, were all drunk people. And I hated it. And I went to my sergeant and I said, Hey, I want to be moved. And she was like, what? You just got here, and I've been there like four months. And I said, sorry, I know I'm new. And I normally get these crappy cases. And I just, you know, she goes, Well, what's happening? I said, they don't call me back. They lied to me. They're all drunk. They can't give me a solid interview. Someone cussed me out. I'm like, I did not know it was like this. I thought I was gonna catch serial rapist and I didn't know I didn't know it was like this. And then she goes, you know Carl, I know you can do this. You know she she starts buttering me up and starts giving me my bread. As in May and stuff and like, well, she says, Look, just give it a year and she goes, You have to be here a year anyway before you can transfer out. So, and I'm like, okay, and I remember right before I left her cubicle, she goes, Carl, and I go, yes, sorry. She goes. Somebody told me to play softball. And I said, I do. And she says, are you good at it? I said, Well, I'm okay. My team is good at it, but I'm okay. And she says, What night Do you play? And I was like, I play Tuesday nights. And she goes, Oh, so do you? Do you go out there like, knowing you're going to lose? And I said, No, I said, there's one team that could could beat up on us. But she says, But you go out there knowing you're going to lose. And I said, No. And she goes, Why would you go back to your cubicle? Think of the same thing. Go back there knowing that you're not going to lose. I love that. Yeah. So great. Damage, he got me. He challenged me. When a cop to do anything, you challenge them. And I tell you, when I did when I started getting training, and I went back in all those cases, I reworked them. And I looked at them differently. And that is a huge step. It's just keeping that open mind and approaching it differently. Like, I have to win this. If it's if it's a game, I can play it. I can play it. That's right. Okay, so you, we talk training and I love that's like one of my favorite words. So you're out there training people? How would people find your training? Well, it's to get on the in Violence Against Women International. website. And it'll come up and it'll say, training, one line Training Institute. And they just tap on that. And that's that that's the training there. They also have the a cadre of experts, which I'm one of them, there's I think 22 of us. And a lot of people find me there, though, the work on there to have instructors come out and teach in their community. And each one of us teach some of his teachers that same thing. And then others teach something completely different. And we have prosecutors on there we have lab people, we have research people. So there's a pretty much all the disciplines are covered in our our countries of experts. And then some of its word of mouth. They'll say, you know, one county will have me and then the the other the other training director from another county will come over and watch and they're like, oh, yeah, we'd love to have you and before you know it, you know, you teach all over the state of Ohio or South Dakota never Hawaii. And I've never never trained Hawaii but but have been Pearl Harbor 1000 times on a warship, but another never training so. But that that's how, and then sometimes one of my colleagues will get a hold of me and say, Hey, Carl, I was at this conference and somebody was they wanted to you presentation on false reporting, which seems like right now I get a lot of that to train. And I do like a two and a half hour, one hour, three hour class on that. So they you know, that that's also by word of mouth. And I was up in teaching or training at the New York State Police, your academy and man, you want to talk about money. These guys up in New York got it, man, their state police. It's like a college campus. I walked around, I was like, where's all the college kids? And it was beautiful. I mean, it was a beautiful campus. And I taught I was training in this like, half moon dome thing. You know, it's like, I'm down here and there's like all these all these chairs up it was looking down on me. It's like wow, this is cool. But um, I there was a couple people that they had invited not just their, their pops from New York, but other people invited other disciplines. About five or six came up to me and said, Hey, can they give me their card? Are they took down my email and they said, Hey, we want you to come out. You know, we're over in, you know, near Buffalo or we're down south or whatever. So, that's kind of that's kind of how I got in podcasts like this. And certainly, we've already had one of the podcasts that I get, but certainly through the Netflix show I've gotten man probably be 50 or 60. people contacting me asking me to come to training, your training. So, yeah, that's great. I think, you know, a part of it is all this Smith's that Jason was mentioning earlier. You know, people don't understand cops don't understand that, you know, there's certain things that, you know, we we grew up thinking, you know, man cannot be raped. And, you know, women are not rapists. And, you know, if both parties are drunk, then that's not a, you know, one couldn't have sexually assaulted the other, or why did it take you so long? So you get into the late disclosures. And, you know, I remember getting cases that, you know, happen, we don't have statute of limitations in my state. And so I will get cases with dates of, you know, 10 years before I was even born. And I'm like, how am I going to do this? Right, no evidence is gone. And people will say, Well, I just don't understand how you were sexually assaulted, and, you know, the 1970s, and you're just coming forward, and they get stuck on, that's just not possible. Because if I was raped, you know, I immediately go to the hospital, and I'll immediately bow now on one, and I will tell my best friend, and you know, and so all this meds, right, you know, parents, you get into insects. I mean, don't get me started, right. So all this myths, you know, that you have and need to be addressed in training. Even, not just cops, but you need to train juries and prosecutors and judges. Right. Right. And I tell like, I'll tell the prosecutors, if you're closing, and if you're opening and closing arguments are, you know, usually openings about 30 minutes and your closing is about an hour and a half you need you need to triple that. You know, you need to have experts take the stand so we can explain instead of you know, saying yes or no, I don't know. Because I can I can have an open ended answer, right. I can explain things and delete, you know, delete reporting and inconsistent statements are the two biggest things that is thrown at the jury as as red herrings. You know, that. Oh, come on, you know, like you were saying, if you were really sexually assaulted, you were to call 911. Okay, so you call your friend first, but you shouldn't call 911. But I'll tell you, I mean, I had I've had cases well, I've had cases of Stranger, sexual assault. i This lady, she's 55 years old. She's an MD. She's a doctor. She's home. It's two o'clock in the morning. Her husband is also a physician and he goes down to Baja California on a fishing trip. He's down here for a week. She sexually assaulted in her own bed at three o'clock in the morning. After the assault is done, and the the suspect flees first person she contrasts her calls her husband, now he's down to Mexico. She can't get through. She calls multiple times. She ends up calling her sister who lives up in Northern California and she tells her what happened. She goes well hang up and call call 911 Call the police. She hangs up Who does she call she calls her mom. Now she made like six phone calls. I mean, this is on a stranger rape. I'm literally mask, had a knife calls to the window gets into her home. Because of because of trauma. She's not this is how she's reacting to this is just like when we're in a gunfight or we're in a fight for our lives or we're going to chase him. There's a lot of things. I don't know how many stop signs I've been through. I know there was a lot. But I don't know how many, you know, because you're so tunnel vision. But she something horrific happened to her. And that was her go to her safest place was her husband. So she called him and then it literally five or six times within a 20 minute period. So she ends up her sister. And so her mom hangs up and calls her sister Sister ends up calling 911 for her. And there is a big delay because she's out of county and mean by the time that police get there, it was a little over an hour. But you know, I mean, this guy was linked to others sexual assaults. But this same phenomenon happens across the gamut of sex crimes. I don't care what type you're talking about. I mean, like child child abuse, right, child sexual abuse. Does an eight year old calls. 911. No. Does a 12 year old call 911 No, they don't. They never call law enforcement. They may tell somebody when they get a little older, usually a best friend like you said, and then usually the best friend will they'll take that extra step and that's how it's told. It's very rare. And I mean, very rare. You that the victim calls directly. That almost immediately, right? Yeah. Oh, that just never happens. But that is you know if you're a defense attorney Hmm, that's, that's, there's my one my one hook into her line, right? Because you were you were, you know, trying to think of what to say and you were acting this out. And then you put somebody like me up on the stand I can explain that. That 99.9% of my cases were delayed reports. Well, why so many? Detective? Well, because they're either blacked out passed out don't know what happened to them. They were with somebody they shouldn't have been with, you know, she's married. And you know, and she's maybe seen, you know, having an affair and gets raped by the person. She's having an affair. That's not a 911 call. Okay, you're not supposed to be out with Kathy at the beach. Oh, no, Mom, I'm going to I'm going with Sally to the to the movies while I get sexually assaulted beach. That's not my 911 call. Okay, my, my best friend's boyfriend. I woke up and he was having sex with me. When I you know, when I was drunk, that's not a 911. I mean, I could sit here all the rest of the afternoon. And tell you these are not what one calls now when they are not what one calls, it's, you know, female goes to party. At the party, she gets severely intoxicated, they take her to the back bedroom or friends let her sleep it off why the party continues, then you have suspect goes down, is having sex with her, one of her friends walks in and sees that her friend is completely out. This guy is having sex with her. There might be some scream and get the hell out here. And then. And then they can't wake her up. And now they're calling 911 Not because of the assault, but they're calling 911 Because they can't get her to wake up. So the fear for you know, it's a medical situation, and then the sexual assault comes second. That's about the only way that that occurs. Other than that you're running and gunning as a as a investigator. You know, yeah. And sometimes it's days and weeks of months. And sometimes years later, you're like, Okay, let's open up a case. But as you know, you know, Laura, that the longer you wait to work on a case, the harder it is, you know, memories fade, you lose, you know, evidence, you know, and also the person that comes forward now. You know, there's a lot of explaining to do, if you will, I mean, I understand why you waited, but now for me and you. We have to explain that what she was going through when she went to counseling and all this. At some point, she was ready to come forward. Sorry, this happened to be two years down the road. Now we have in California, their statute limitations. So it's three, six or nine years child molesters? There's none. So they just they just changed that two years ago. Well, we only have it for spouse, spousal sexual assault. Yeah, but if there's you know, anybody but your, your spouse, then then yeah, no, I mean, I got cases from 60s and 70s. And I'm like, Alright, let's try to do the best we can. Right. All right, Jason. We are could I was gonna say we but I could talk about this all day. I'll let you all wrap it up for us. Yeah, we could talk about this all day long. But there is one last thing I want to touch on, Carl. I was looking at your resume. 1987 in 1988. Undercover in high school. Heck, yeah. This is what I'm talking about this like 21 Jump Street back. But I was gonna say, oh, my god. Um, let me tell you, it was the most stressful thing I did in all of law enforcement. And yeah, somebody was telling me, somebody just saw that too. And they were telling me that, that, let 1% less than 1% of 1% of law enforcement has ever done that, but I have a youthful appearance. Jason, so just bear with me. I'm not. I didn't go to high school to two weeks ago looking like this. So I looked really young. I went into the Navy. I was 17. My mom signed for me, I went in. And my first day of boot camp. We call them CCS, not drilling truckers. So we call them company commanders and our CCS coming down. He's yelling at everybody. This is 1979. So he comes up to me and he looks down and I'm still growing. I didn't finish growing. I was like, 21, but my hair is gone. My ears are sticking out. And he goes, Oh my God who brought their little brother to boot camp. I was like, horrified, and I looked really young. So that kind of followed me all the way through the Navy. And I did eight years in the Navy and four and C and Fort shore. And when I was on shore duty, that's how I ended up becoming a cop. So I get into the police department, I get into the academy, I graduate the academy, I'm out on my field training. And my second phase, some NARC, some cop with the ponytail. older guy meets up with my, my field training officer. And he's over there talking to him. And I'm sitting there going like a report, you know, that we had just came from, I don't know, I have no clue what they're talking about. So the way me out and I come up to him, and he starts talking to me, Oh, tell me something about yourself. This guy and his ponytail and a beard. And I was like, I knew you know, he's a cop. So I'm like, so I just started telling me about myself and I go, who are you? And he goes, Oh, I'm I'm Jim Clem. I'm, I've worked in narcotics, you know, like, oh, he goes, what would you think about working undercover? And I looked at that. I'm like, Well, I don't quite look like a goodbye drugs. I mean, look at me. I just came out military. So I'm like military haircut, which by the way I liked. I don't look like he goes, Hey, soccer moms buy drugs. And when he said those, like, does he want me to be a soccer mom? What is going on here? So I remember jumped street 21 Jump Street as a television show in the 70s. I didn't know it's a real thing. So he goes, No, no, you would buy drugs in high school. I'm like, oh, still, I'm thinking driving on at lunchtime or something driving off. And he goes, so I'm like, Oh, I said, Yes. Sure. When what school? He says, Well, wait a minute, because you'd be in an undercover capacity. I'm like, Okay. I go, whoa. I would actually go to school. And he goes, Yeah, you would go to the classes. And I'm like and the thing that flashed in my mind was navy. You know what Navy stands for? Never again, volunteer yourself. Yeah. Oh, wow. I'm thinking, navy, Navy Navy. And but I'm new. Sure why not? And I went to the 21 Jump Street School is up in LA. And it's in the basement of this building. And it's like a school down there. They have school rooms and chalkboards. And when they had chalkboards, they had all that stuff down here and they had so this thing was six weeks long. And I had to learn how to like I never rolled a marijuana cigarette in my life. Right so they give you real marijuana and putting these little boxes and they said okay, and then they gave you like cocaine, but it was fake it was you put it like it was in a little bin and you had to do a bindle those I could do is reason. So they they take take these boxes, they put them all out and I'm sitting there trying and not keep breaking the paper though the guy next to me. He's like, look done. It looks because when you do a Hirshman I'm like I can't do this. I looked over and he had these perfectly rolled marijuana cigarettes and I'm like, how did you? How did you know how to do that? He gives me this like look like you never smoked in. In high school. I'm like, I never even touched marijuana until now he goes, Oh, come on, like I'd never had. So when the Strucker would walk by, he'd sneak over and he's showing me how to do one to make one to this day. I still can't. But he's good at it. And then I'm like, How did you become a cop? You know, back in the 70s was still a felony by the way. Yeah, that's so I tell you that like I couldn't carry a gun on so it worked for schools throughout the year. buying drugs buying guns, sold a couple cars. But I my gun I had little snubnose 38 Smith and Wesson and I kept the put a holster underneath my seat and my car. But I couldn't bring it into into the school. Because they were afraid somebody would see it or you know, I get in a fight or something. But yeah, I tell you, man, I had to carry a pack of marbles with me. And like I smoke and I hate smoking eighths. It's a stunk. So every day I leave school I go straight home and just take three showers. That Smoke Gets In Your hair gets in your clothes. I have a special bag I put my clothes on That's how much I hated it. But I tell you what it worked. I had go out to the have a little smoking chain. It was the other side of the chain that It was off school campus. And you go out there with a pack of Marlboro, you're going in with a MP pack Mr. BURROWS because they bumped cigarettes. And that's how you I made all my connections. So made 138 Arrest out of four schools. And so many schools are huge. I mean, you know, 1000s of kids in schools. Most of it was from marijuana, some crack. But a lot of marijuana, I love, bought a few guns and sold like the real, the real 21 gems free. I mean, we really need to have you back on the show. Because there is so much we could talk about. And believe me, we could talk all day long. And I want to talk all day long. But we typically we just tried to touch on a couple of things. And that's what man definitely car you got to come back on. Yes. And I loved you want to thank you. And as well. I'm so glad I'm here. Very first podcast as well. Well, Carl, you gotta you gotta buy one podcast. Definitely Welcome back on I'd really like to really unpack a lot more stuff when it comes to this. Sure, definitely, definitely want to talk to you offline again sometime. Sure. And I would love to I mean, there's quite a few issues I'd like to talk to you about as far as where we're kind of going wrong on these things and sex crimes and you know, and how we can correct that and so, yeah, just give me yeah, yes, actually