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The Protectors® Podcast
Welcome to The Protectors® Podcast, where the valor meets the storyteller. Hosted by Jason Piccolo, a seasoned veteran and retired special agent, this series is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the courage and tales of those who pledge to protect us. Beyond the front-line stories of bravery and dedication, this podcast goes a step further, weaving in the perspectives of those who bolster and narrate the protector's journey—featuring a remarkable lineup including New York Times Best Sellers and acclaimed Hollywood actors.
The Protectors® Podcast offers a diverse array of voices, from those who wear the uniform to the authors and entertainers who amplify their stories. It's a unique blend that highlights not only the raw realities faced by our protectors but also how their sacrifices inspire the narratives we cherish in literature and film. Each episode is a testament to the interconnected worlds of service and support, bringing listeners an unmatched depth of insight.
Dr. Jason Piccolo is a retired federal agent, former U.S. Army Infantry Captain (Iraq 2006), and author.
Past Guests Include:- Sean Patrick Flanery - Andrews & Wilson- Mark Greaney- Stephen Hunter- Remi Adeleke - Florent Groberg - Clint Emerson - Travis Mills
The Protectors® Podcast
#492 | REWIND | B.C. Sanders first appearance on The Protectors® Podcast
Rewind episode with the first appearance of BC Sanders.
Original Episode #191 | B.C Sanders | Skillset Writer | Gang Expert
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Hey, welcome to the protectors. This is a special episode, a little bit different. There's not going to be any video, and why is that? Because BC is still out in the field. He's still doing his thing. He's still targeting gangs, homicides and everything else you could possibly imagine, with his decade-plus years of service out there in the streets Not going to tell you where he's at or what he's doing. But he's doing a lot of good things, but he's got a lot of really good information and on the side he also writes for um skill set magazine. Is that right? Yes, that's right. Yeah, why is my brain you know everybody out there a little focus on moving, moving the studio and everything around right now? But, uh, yeah, skill set, and I kept telling us, I just, you know that's the first magazine in like I think, 20 years that I got a subscription to brother oh, you know, I just did it and I'm like what is that magazine?
Speaker 1:yeah, so how's it going out there, brother?
Speaker 3:how you doing, oh it's great it's great, uh, I'm glad to hear that someone's getting a subscription. Uh, once you, once you hold it, it's like you said, it's 20 years of um, the old days of magazines where you get, and it's like, legit articles, great photography and and with them it's, it's everything, it's all over the board where some humor, some serious, uh, military articles. Let me just, it's good, I'm glad to be on board and I've been with them for about three years writing so yeah, and you know, everybody had to really check out BC Sanders.
Speaker 1:His articles are really good and I'm not just blowing smoke as a pizzazz because he's my guest, but they're actually really good. I'm reading it the other day and I'm like I did not know that and that's what I want. I want a magazine in my hand to read. I don't want to just get this quick two-minute skew over the internet.
Speaker 3:That's really awesome, man. Yeah, that's, that was one of the things. When they started the magazine I came on about, uh, issue four. But but that was my thing is. I was always been an avid reader and I would read a lot of history and and think, how have I never heard of this? You know and everyone talks about? Oh, you can google, go on the internet, but, like you said, these little paragraphs that half the time are not really accurate and they don't give you the full um background on it. So they gave me the opportunity to write um kind of in that subject of historical badasses and just I'll pitch sometimes five, six, seven, eight ideas and they'll pick a few and I'll start writing them. But it it's just one of those things that it's. I think it's important. I want people to learn a lot about history and just kind of keep it relevant to today so we don't forget about it.
Speaker 1:No, you can't forget about history. And that's the thing man, you and I were just talking about, that with pre-interview is about everything cyclic people. People forget, and I say this, I think, every four or five episodes. Whenever I talk to a cop or I talk about terrorism stuff, I say, if you remember the 1970s and not everybody can, I mean I was less than 10 years old in the 70s, but in the 70s, if you know your history, you know that there was terrorist bombings, there was dissent everywhere, the country was not in a good place.
Speaker 3:No, yeah, no, I was going to say. I mean that's one of the things that you look at in the mid to late 70s and you start to see activity in Chicago based around gangs that are focusing in on ties overseas. And Jeff Ford, I think, was the first American charged with domestic terrorism back then for basically a Libyan plot to shoot down an airline. And Jeff Ford is a longtime Chicago gang member. That's nuts man. Yeah, it's. I mean there's mean, there's a lot to that case. Plenty of books have written on it but if I remember everything correctly, it was the rumor had been put out there that he wanted to get into terrorism for hire and an informant went to the ATF, if I remember right, and basically they sold his people the old law, you know the Vietnam era light anti-weapon rocket yeah Sold them a lot Sold them an inert one?
Speaker 3:yeah, for however much money you know, shoot down an American airline. But, like you said, that was going on in the late 70s and people think you know every yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a buck, bro. A lot of people don't realize like terrorism, a lot of it is for money. It's not just about power and ideology. You know a lot of those ied makers and vbids and everything else overseas. A lot of that's money, bro, a lot of right. Hey, you know what? We blow up a humvee and if you get a k? A killed in action or whatever like that, you're going to get money for it. Your family's going to get money. If you get a K? A kill in action or whatever like that, you're going to get money for it. Your family is going to get money. If you're on a VBID or anything, you know, it's just craziness, man.
Speaker 3:Once you start kind of tapping into a network of people and do things like that and make money and, like you said, it's cyclical You'll see a lot of that knowledge start to filter through the US, through the prison systems where guys are locked up in federal custody, and start to share that ideology or information On the home front. Who says okay, they start buying into it, like you said. Then comes the money. Or sometimes they go lone wolf and they are the true believer and that's who we want to find, you know soon.
Speaker 1:You know the penal system is like the graduate level of education and any type of crime you want to learn. You know, if you go in there and you think about it like, hey, you know what I'm a criminal and I want to be a better criminal, when I get out, I'm not going to get reformed, you're going to go into jail or prison or whatever, and you're going to be like, hey, you know what, I'm going to link up with the right people and learn how to do it the right way so I don't get caught and spend some time next time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's where we've seen in the South how nationally recognized gangs have spread here. So you know, if I tell someone, oh look, we've got gangs in the South, people kind of laugh and go, it's a couple of neighborhood kids. Gangs in the south, people kind of laugh and go, it's a couple neighborhood kids. But most cities can trace, uh, you know eight trade crypts rolling, 60 neighborhood crypt. You know multiple blood sets, haru sets back to la or up to the east coast. We have a lot of bloods flowing in, a lot of blood sets flowing in out of new york and historically that's who's kind of controlled the South back in the late 90s, early 2000s, and now it's just a proliferation of Chicago gangs, LA gangs, and it's through population shifts, through people going away on federal charges and getting brought or recruited in a federal prison, and then they come back and go.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, y'all don't have five dudes who recruits here. So I'm going to go ahead. I got brought home or I got, you know, made or recruited in when I'm in federal prison and I get back to their you know home city, they, they can reign supreme and just start to recruit me like an infection man. It just spreads.
Speaker 1:Well, it's money and power, and think about it this way, it's almost like we're seeing pyramid schemes all the time. How? Many people are trying to sell you essential oils, I mean, if you really think about it in a really basic ideology of not even the crime aspect of it, but money and money and money, if you're the guy at the top and you're controlling all these sets and everything that money is going to.
Speaker 1:You know what. You start at $100 a street. $3 or $4 gets to you and the more people you have in a street, the more people you have spread out, the more money.
Speaker 3:It's 100%, yeah, 100%, and that's what has taken a lot of agencies down here, because I'll do classes that I designed from the ground up. But but and I'll actually explain how certain sets operate, because not all the gangs are operating exactly the same but what we've noticed is the ones that have spread the quickest are the ones, like you said, that establish a quick pyramid and they'll give someone rank and then that person will then be able to recruit and you certain percentage. So like, like some of the east coast blood sets started charging like 31 a month, or some of them are 31 a week. So they hold these meetings once a week and you've got 15, 16, 17 year old, kidsyear-old kids having to pay $31 a week and they can't pay, and then the organization or the set will say you know, all right, get in the bullpen, and they get beat by three or five people, you know, depending on what the set is, and they're getting punished in front of their peers, which then creates that cycle of well, next week I'm going to have my money One way or another.
Speaker 3:You know, some of these guys I debriefed and kind of built rapport with not all of them are gun-toting killers, you know they're getting involved in, like you said, like that pyramid scheme where they need support. They want that network. So they're kind of told this is all about the community, we're going to take care of one another. You pay these $31. We put it basically in a lockbox. You get arrested. We got money on your books, we'll take care of you people. You know you'll be taken care of. And then these guys go out there and put in work for the higher-ups, get locked up, and then you listen to jail phone calls and I mean it's sad, but they're crying to their higher-ups saying, hey, where's my money? You know what's going on. These higher ups are saying like, sorry, I don't have any money for you right now. Time's tight. So it starts to kind of break down that resolve. But the middle management wants to keep recruiting because they want to keep getting those dues. Like you were talking about, pyramid dues man it's it's you don't.
Speaker 1:If you know the bad thing about crime, let's say no-transcript our world. You never have like someone working the same crimes for like two decades, and if they are, they're very specialized, right. You know, I might imagine the same things in a pd. People need to move up and rank, or you know you're not going to have as many.
Speaker 1:You know different. You're losing a knowledge base. So you and I are having the same conversation that you and I probably would have had 10 years ago, and then two guys would have had the same conversation 10 years before that yeah, because I remember man, like when I started out in the 90s uh, in the army and everything learning about gangs, because obviously yeah there's a bunch of people that came from gangs yeah, yeah, especially in the 90s.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the 90s is when it peaked or when it first got on CID's radar.
Speaker 1:Weird man, it's just bizarre.
Speaker 3:I remember, yeah, I remember in the 90s they had the assault down at Bragg. I wasn't stationed at Bragg, I was at Fort Campbell, but they had basically a Nazi skinhead go out, if I remember right, and kill a biracial couple which put on the map for Army CID, and they started coming to all these infantry units and I remember having to get buck naked, you know, company commander, and if you had tattoos you had to explain every tattoo, explain every tattoo. And if, from what I understand from, uh, some people is that CID learned well, our, our Nazi skinhead, um movement or infection or whatever is somewhat small, but our street gangs, we just realized, got a lot of them, you know, just based off of the tattoos.
Speaker 1:And you know, growing up in Jersey and getting into the army and you know I was in artillery, so we had a lot, lot of. It was very diverse and I didn't. I was guys from compton, you know, and all sorts of shit. I'm like what is going on, man? I never heard about this stuff and then learning about it and then later on getting into law enforcement and getting uh out in san diego and seeing all the gangs and all the different things, and it's just yeah so it's listen man, it's.
Speaker 1:So it's. Listen man, it's unless. Unless you come up with a way to kill that pyramid scheme and go to the top and get all that.
Speaker 3:So there is a way that there there is a possibility not not to cure the problem but at least disrupt the cycle of violence that happens in the cities, and a lot of it is kind of geared around the intel side, knowing who the sets are, knowing everything from their hand signs, their rank structure. I mean some sets will do things um with tattoos, how they wear their flag or how they wear their bandana, all those. The more intel a police department learns, the more they can develop those sources, because then put them down and explain to them Like I would do, like I would explain to people. I know everything, from your hand sign to the day you got brought home, where that nine was or where that meeting was. So you're already on the losing end. We don't want that, you know, because I truly don't. It's like if I can convince a young man or woman, nowadays and we've got quite a few girls that have joined in their shooters they're not just carrying guns, you know, like in a purse or something crazy like a backpack. It's like they're carrying them in their waistband, wanting to put in work and shoot people. But if I can convince that person, person they are not part of the secret society that has all this power and that they're going to move through these ranks and and not have any problems. You see it almost like the recognition, their micro expressions where they realize, wow, all this time I thought that the police were just in uniform answering calls and harassing people in traffic stops. I had no clue. You know, these units are plain clothes and know all this.
Speaker 3:And then two want to take a step extra and go. You know, you know what is your background, what do you want to do? I always ask a lot of guys what do you want to do legitimately? What kind of job? If I can find an interest they have, I do my best to network and get them at least lined up with some type of employer, or at least show them this is how everyone else is living. And then I also explain to them the next few months of your life are going to be like this. You know you're going to be riding in cars, guys are going to be flashing guns. If they're a new person, you're going to have to put in work, which means trigger time, get the charges and when you get locked up, this is going to happen. So I'd explain to them when these things start to happen in your life, you will understand I care and my team cares more about you than your own set and at any time you can contact us and say you want out or you want to at least work or cooperate or whatever you want in life. We're going to try our best to help you out. But if you sever that tie and continue down that path and when you're looking at life in prison life in prison, sadly you only have yourself to reflect on that we're doing everything we can right now to help you.
Speaker 3:So years ago I couldn't really do that when I was on patrol because I didn't know enough and I would ask senior officers and drug detectives about the gang aspect and they would just blow me off Like, look, rookie, just go answer your calls. But I was trained in the academy that mindset of this is your area or your beat, and if someone gets hurt or shot or killed, not that it's your fault, but you better be part of the solution either solving the crime, getting information from a network of sources in the neighborhood store clerk, I don't care who it is, department manager, somebody needs to be providing information. And that mindset 15, 18 years ago was utilized to start building rapport. And then every gang member I encountered, I just asked them a bunch of questions and explained to them hey, I'm going to be here for 30 years. You're apparently going to be. You know, whatever, whichever set you are, I'm going to be here for 30 years, you're apparently going to be. You know, whatever, whichever set you are, you're going to be here too. So you know, we can work together and build a rapport, oftentimes on the common enemy.
Speaker 3:So if I knew, you know, one set had problems with another set, we would kind of laugh and joke about that set. But in turn, you know, try to build that rapport, because I would never expect a gang member, you know, inside of a one minute conversation to you know, put information out there or say, yeah, you're right, everything people told me is a lie. But once I can have longer conversations with them and spend more encounters with them, then they understand this is a losing situation. Even if they make it to the top of that pyramid, that just means they graduated to the alphabet. Boys or the ATF are going to focus on them and they're going to go away federally on RICO charges or OSDEF charges to. You know, the local drug units picking off the lower hanging fruit.
Speaker 3:So using, like I was saying earlier about the, not necessarily we can solve the gang problem, but by implementing proactive measures on okay, this is our most violent set in the city.
Speaker 3:This is how we know that.
Speaker 3:We know what their future moves are, because we've developed sources in middle management who are telling us what these plans are and this is how we can disrupt it. And then it's just complete focus every drug charge, every type of investigation. Guys are committing frauds now so you bring in a fraud unit and go okay, this guy hates this guy. We know this guy's got an AK, but he's also running fraudulent credit cards or whatever. So we want to hammer him and get those guys off the criminal landscape. In the world's most violent dodgeball game, where it's just shots fired every night and then after a while that starts to break that cycle and then so you can have another unit actually dismantling the full set in a Rico, and it's sometimes it feels like playing whack-a-mole, like you're just kind of hitting around an area. But if you do it strategically and you actually kind of apply, knowing who the gang members are and what their motives in the gang are and sometimes what they're capable of, then you can focus on that Understanding and having human, like you said.
Speaker 1:Human man, you need it, yes, and if you're not developing sources out there, I always tell people you can never put anybody behind jail. Put anybody in jail behind a computer. Right.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, you know, but not really Right, yeah, you know if you really want to disrupt and dismantle a major organization. But you know, the other thing you brought up too is you know you and I grew up probably normal regular go to high school, go to school, whatever, get out, go to college. If you don't want to, you go to the army. But if you don't grow up with a moral compass and you just see the gang life, you just see the drug life. You just see the gang life. You just see the drug life. You just see this kind of life. You don't understand what's out there. And having a PD and having people having a first encounter with anybody with authority is going to skew their mindset. Is this guy just busting me, this girl or whatever?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Even if they hit a social worker, they hit juvie or whatever. It all depends on what that first encounter is going to be. Yes, and that's so. So for me, my background I had a very, uh, solid um family. You know background. I mean, parents were divorced but mom worked two jobs, made the rules, you know, you follow them.
Speaker 3:But I was a little skater kid in the 80s. Punk rock and hardcore ran from the police quite a bit. I was always respectful if I got caught. But I also saw the end of that where, you know, cops are kind of on that power trip and when that would occur then we were kind of like all right, now it's more of not anti-police, but more of you can understand how someone can get not aggressive but can understand why someone may not trust the police or may not like the police Because their last encounter was you know multiple curse words being frisked and never really.
Speaker 3:You know. I mean I got searched with a buddy of mine in a town we were seeing some bands play. Officers walked up behind us, snatched us, put us up against the wall and started frisking us. I was probably about 14, had no clue why or what was going on and then. Then it was all the making fun of the haircuts and that sort of thing. Of course, like I said, late 80s, uh, very early 90s, somewhere around there. So but but going, you know, growing up in an era where I had to have some type of um focus, I had to know what I was going to do and for me it was the army. I didn't really have, I didn't care about college, I don't want to do that but went to army and did, did four years in the infantry, then got out and got a psychology degree for free, because the government paid for it and I worked for UPS and they paid for college as well. So, graduating debt free, I could go into law enforcement and not worry about making any money.
Speaker 1:Well, exactly, man, that's where it's at. You know, I always tell people, if you're going to go in, make sure you get everything college, yeah, knowledge fund, gi bill, whatever. Uh, it's worth it. Man, they paid for everything I've got. I mean, I paid a little bit here and there, but all we have to do, so I'm never going to uh, never going to kick the time in the service at all man no that yeah go ahead.
Speaker 3:No, you go ahead bro yeah, no, no, I was just going to say that is one of the things that I always tell a lot of young people that I encounter is for me, that changed the trajectory completely. I mean, if I wouldn't have gone in the Army, I never would have gone to college ever, I probably never would have pursued law enforcement and would not be as happy as I am now. And knowing that the things that I've done on the job we're not harassing people and, you know, just sitting in a parking lot waiting for a 911 call I've been able to do a lot of really good work and and actually see a lot of the effects. So I always praise the military and I usually will post something every now and then about being in the land of the BDUs back when the camera, you know, but just just trying to, I guess, show my respect and be very appreciative of what the military gave me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I'm on a the twilight of my career. Whenever I talk to anybody that's an LAO. I'm like man, I can go back and do some more because my days of, you know, putting cuffs on people or putting anybody in jail are over and it's just. It's really weird, man, it's really weird yeah, and it's, it's, it's changing.
Speaker 3:Like you, you talked about earlier everything being, you know, cyclical, that a lot of people now will talk about. You know, community policing. We got to be about the community community policing. What's interesting to me, because I'm like that, that's the way it's always been.
Speaker 1:You know broken windows. Nineteen, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm like. I mean we're pushing. I'm pushing almost 20 or almost 20 years, and it was that way when I came out of the patrol, because you better, like I said earlier, you better know your people get the information and work it. You know, be proactive.
Speaker 1:And that the information and and work it you know be proactive. It's so. That's that's what community policing is. It's knowing, yeah, people. It's not looking. You know, targeted enforcement where there's a broken window. No, no knowing your people and being a human.
Speaker 3:Yes, I call it.
Speaker 3:I call it authoritative, but you have to be human yeah, it's, this is what I teach this a lot to the recruits and to in my classes make a ripple arrest.
Speaker 3:You know you, when you make an arrest on a 12 hour shift or however long the shift is, you make an arrest, you're going to be at the jail processing.
Speaker 3:That means somebody in uniform is not in your area Keeping people's heads down, you know, with guns or what, and worst case scenario.
Speaker 3:But I worked a very active beat like that to have multiple gang sets so I knew I had to be in the area. But if I were going to make an arrest I wanted to be somebody with a gun, or somebody with a beef with someone or someone that the neighborhood or someone has said that kid sitting on the power boxes out here every friday night and usually you know are gunshots or something goes on over there and we want to get rid of people hanging out here or whatever it is. So it's always that ripple arrest. But then someone may look at, say my numbers and go, wow, you stopped 20 cars last night but you wrote one ticket. Every car I'm stopping, I'm finding out they live in my area and I want to know where the problems you know, get your headlights fixed, whatever where your seatbelt? I don't want to see you down a wreck, but give me some information about the problems in your area and so that way we can focus on it.
Speaker 1:And it should never be about numbers and it should never be fiscal. No. And by fiscal I mean, you know, traffic stops for money. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Right yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of that hold on. Let me. Let me clarify that for the audience I'm talking about like speeding tickets issuing citations that are eventually bring money.
Speaker 3:I'm not talking about like shaking people down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you clarified that Cause I was about to jump in.
Speaker 3:But but I know what you mean, that a lot of um information's come out the last few years about research and agencies maybe not understanding that effect of you're patrolling an area because there's violence there, so you have more officers there, you're stopping more cars, but if you're writing tickets on every little violation, on a person who's already battling financial hardship yes, yeah, exactly. On a person who's already battling financial hardship, yes, you're only, yeah, exactly. So that that was always my argument, for you know, I'd stop a lot of cars but I always hated writing tickets. Um, for that reason, and I think now I do think that most jurisdictions have kind of realized that you don't go into an area just because there's a lot of drug sales and just start arresting everybody, because you're picking up random people that just happen to be in the area or riding a bunch of traffic and patting yourself on the back and saying we made 15 arrests last night in this area where we had two homicides, and it's like you didn't you didn't arrest.
Speaker 3:Get the people who did the killing right yeah yeah, you could have stopped those people and and basically said, hey, this is what's going on. Sorry, I've gotten these types of misdemeanor violations with you, but I'm really here because I want to solve this homicide or get information, and nine times out of ten if they live in that area they may know something and they say, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep it moving. It's like, okay, hey, what, what have you got? Let me get that info and then put it into the puzzle pieces and see if we get it.
Speaker 1:It's not us against them, and they're not. No. And it's been like that since policing started.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where you get skewed. You know warriors and every they get it to where they hey. You know what I just went. They're getting home at the end of your shift thing and I'm like you can stay at home at the end of your shift and still be a human you have to want to turn it on you don't turn on 99% of the time because you're going to burn.
Speaker 3:Well, right, and this is like one of the things that I teach to recruits A lot of times are newer officers in my gang classes. You know you have to build rapport with the citizens and the citizens will know who you are. You may not know who they are because you're encountering so many different people, but they'll know who you are and oftentimes give you a nickname and everybody will know you by that nickname. But by doing that and building that rapport that reduces the uses of force or the encounters where violence is going to happen against an officer, because the citizens in the area already kind of know that officer. They see that officer every day. They're a known quantity, you know Exactly, and so they can kind of read what's going to happen and what's going to go on.
Speaker 3:If someone walks up as a robot and their hands are in a steeple and they're yes sir, no sir. This is what you need to do. Put your hands here, put your hands here to it and you can. You can, you can come across in a very relaxed posture and a very nice posture and an inviting posture, but still know what your plan is in your mind if they run for the cut or they reach or if they're already giving you those indicators of an armed citizen. You know. You know that I mean you know how to handle yourself. Like you said, that switchstone warrior type of mentality is very tough to overcome for some areas when officers have done that for several months and sometimes kind of get in the department of bad image.
Speaker 1:Once you realize and you remember that the thin blue line is actually a line between the good and the evil and it's not a line that's like, hey, you know what. A code of silence, or something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3:And the interesting thing is, when people research, the amount of corruption now and I'll say now, like within the last 10 or even 20 years maybe in law enforcement is dramatically decreased, you know, 40 or 50 years ago.
Speaker 3:So I do hear people say that a lot of times, that thin blue line or that blue wall of silence, and I'm like I don't. I don't understand that, because as long as I've been an officer I've never even experienced that. The worst things I've seen is maybe someone violating a policy or something, but I've never seen criminal actions. I've never even heard of on a mass scale these agencies with corruption and the Serpico days, I mean, luckily, like as a profession, it is amazing that officers go out there and encounter people and are getting guns off of people who actively are trying to get away and are still able to do that, often without harming anyone and are not, you know, doing like most TV shows where these cops are crooked and they're stealing money from drug dealers and they're actually worse than the gangs. I'm kind of sick of that the whole mentality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so silly. And now it's like every TV show you watch always has the good cops. If it's a police procedural, there's always bad cops, man Right, and it puts on the mentality of it. It's like you know.
Speaker 3:And usually they don't last. That's the thing that early on most agencies will pick it out. If they don't get it in the hiring process, they'll pick it out on patrol. A person will either get what we call that golden option of resigning or getting fired, and that's a good thing. You see, a lot of times early on and go, ah, that person sometimes may not make the best decisions, like I said, not like some corrupt cop or anything, it's just a person who's probably not going to make really solid decisions and eventually they resign or, you know, get fired for violating too many policies or whatever. Get fired for violating too many policies or whatever.
Speaker 3:But yeah, I would not be so focused on gangs or working homicide as different assignments throughout. If I were like in the Serpico era, that's what I would have been would have been internal affairs and going after crooked cops. Fortunately, that's not the number one problem, that's it's just become such a great profession Constant training, I mean push for education, constantly reading. Some of the smartest people I've met are cops and some of them did not even go to college. You know they may have gone to military.
Speaker 1:You know, education is fine. I tell people, Mike, the only reason I have all this education is because, for one, I just love learning. And two, the Army paid for it all. So I'm like, hey, if you're going to give me, free education. I'll do it.
Speaker 3:Well, that was yeah.
Speaker 1:I was just tacked on $100,000 and I don't know about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, that was my thing. I was able to do a bachelor's in psychology. Like I said, it was free, but I also I enjoyed learning. Once I got out of the Army and realized you know, you go to class, you go to library, study, go to class, fall back to library. And I did that for four years and wanted to graduate as high as I could in my class and actually learn something to apply it out in the field. Because I knew in college I knew I was going to be a cop. But yeah, that's awesome. And the big thing is just the reading and constantly learning and people taking pride in what they do and actually most citizens reflect that. I know the news won't show that sometimes, but it really is nice when citizens will go the other way and say, hey, you know, I know y'all have a tough job, you know, and that's always. It always feels good, it's just kind of reassured.
Speaker 1:Well, brother, I do appreciate you coming on, yeah man. Read you on a skillset magazine where I have my first subscription. You know, my dream has always been to be in a magazine. You know, I don't care how many times I've done like the news or court tv or written books I've only ever wanted to just be in a magazine, oh okay, okay, just you know when I retire?
Speaker 3:whatever, just put me in a magazine, oh yeah that, um, okay, just, it's a good pitch. No, no, I was gonna say that's, I said I pitch, so if they pick it up, or for even if somebody else can do a better job of it I like it, I like it out there, brother yes sir, yes sir, we'll do it buddy.
Speaker 2:Yes sir, we'll do it buddy. Yes sir, we'll do it buddy. Yes, sir, we'll do it buddy. Yes, sir, we'll do it buddy.
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