Speaker 1: All right, Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to William
Speaker 1: Ramsey Investigates on today's show. I'm a very special guest,
Speaker 1: a returning guest. We spoke back in August about his
Speaker 1: book titled Crime Quick and Easy Ways to Avoid Becoming
Speaker 1: a Victim. His name is Robert L. Brian. But today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about another book. The title of
Speaker 1: that book is Sea Case, An Unlikely Journey from transit
Speaker 1: cop to Internal Affairs Bureau squad Commander. And again the
Speaker 1: author's name is Robert L. Brian. Really interesting book traces
Speaker 1: his career and some of the really interesting things he
Speaker 1: did for the IAB or the Internal Affairs Bureaus. So
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to have them back. So Robert Brian, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 2: How are you very good? Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Aweimer, thanks for returning. For people who may not have
Speaker 1: heard our earlier interview. Can you talk kind of a
Speaker 1: little bit about your career and what led you to
Speaker 1: write this book Sea Case.
Speaker 2: Well, I've spent my entire adult life in law enforcement
Speaker 2: and security. I had started off after leaving college. After
Speaker 2: graduating college, I spent a couple of years on the
Speaker 2: Mexican Border as a Border patrol agent. And then I'm
Speaker 2: a lifelong New Yorker, so that was the only time
Speaker 2: I was out of New York City. And when I returned,
Speaker 2: I joined the New York City Transit Police Department. I
Speaker 2: did twenty years there, retiring at the rank of captain.
Speaker 2: And it's during the time after I become a lieutenant
Speaker 2: is when I went into two years with the Internal
Speaker 2: Affairs Bureau.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, and they kind of had this assignment where they
Speaker 1: make you become an IAB member, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was that was an interesting thing at the
Speaker 2: time because this was right after. As I said, I
Speaker 2: was a member of the New York City Transit Police.
Speaker 2: New York City for most of the twentieth century, before
Speaker 2: until when the other departments began to exist, had three
Speaker 2: separate police departments. You always had since the middle of
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds had the New York City Police Department.
Speaker 2: But in the nineteen thirties and then shortly thereafter, the
Speaker 2: New York City Transit Police and the New York City
Speaker 2: Housing Police came into existence. So Transit dealt with policing
Speaker 2: the subways, while housing was the New York City housing projects.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen ninety five, however, there was a merger
Speaker 2: which brought all three departments together under the New York
Speaker 2: City Police Department. So in nineteen ninety five when its
Speaker 2: merger occurred, I was a lieutenant. So at that time
Speaker 2: I was working in what became a patrol command in
Speaker 2: the Transit Bureau, and I had learned that the New
Speaker 2: York City Police Department had a career path or sergeant's lieutenants,
Speaker 2: where you would apply for an investigative position. With the
Speaker 2: caveat that was known, I went into this with my
Speaker 2: eyes wide open. This wasn't a surprise, was that anybody
Speaker 2: who was accepted into this, Before you could get into
Speaker 2: either the Organized Crime Control Bureau or the Detective Bureau,
Speaker 2: you would have to do two years drafted into the
Speaker 2: Internal Affairs Bureau.
Speaker 1: Right, So had you had to go into the separate
Speaker 1: bureau that investigates the other police. Can you talk about
Speaker 1: what it was like just beginning in that. I think
Speaker 1: you went in as a in an authoritative position, right,
Speaker 1: you had to kind of manage other people who were
Speaker 1: already there.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, when it is a lieutenant and the basic
Speaker 2: the basic formation of an IAB group, they're called groups.
Speaker 2: I was in Group twenty seven. Is there are several
Speaker 2: teams of investigators that are headed by a lieutenant who's
Speaker 2: the commander of that squad. So when I went in
Speaker 2: as a lieutenant, I became the commander of one of
Speaker 2: the squads within Group twenty seven. And it was something
Speaker 2: that was very, very challenging because I was coming from
Speaker 2: Not only was I coming from just several months earlier
Speaker 2: being with the Transit Police Department, but my time had
Speaker 2: been on patrol, and I had done some time as
Speaker 2: a police Academy instructor also, but I really had no
Speaker 2: real investigative background, and now I was thrown into a
Speaker 2: position where I was managing a squad of seasoned sergeants
Speaker 2: and detectives who had worked many years in detective squads,
Speaker 2: in an arcotics division, in organized crime control. So that
Speaker 2: was a very challenging assignment.
Speaker 1: So they had all these experiences. So some of these
Speaker 1: other people were not on the same career path as you, right,
Speaker 1: they came from other departments or got assigned there from
Speaker 1: other places.
Speaker 2: Is that corupt Well no, pretty much everybody got a
Speaker 2: sign in the same way. But like, for instance, the
Speaker 2: sergeants that I had in my squad. One of them
Speaker 2: had been a detective in what's known as OCID, the
Speaker 2: Organized Crime Investigation Division, which is it's an elite investigative unit. Now,
Speaker 2: when he made sergeant, he is, you know, not going
Speaker 2: back to OCID. He's going out on patrol and he
Speaker 2: has to let anybody else he has to put in
Speaker 2: now for this career path as a sergeant or lieutenant.
Speaker 2: So when he gets selected, he has to do his
Speaker 2: two years and ieb just like anybody else. So the
Speaker 2: thing was, though, I was kind of unique in that
Speaker 2: a lot of other people that were going through their
Speaker 2: two years were coming with a background as detectives before
Speaker 2: they got promoted to sergeant.
Speaker 1: I see, so you had done the transit and they
Speaker 1: had come from a different kind of angle. But I mean,
Speaker 1: you've talked to some of these other guys that were
Speaker 1: very experienced interrogators and actives, and so you kind of
Speaker 1: had to make you could basically kind of were thrown
Speaker 1: into it like sinker swim right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's where I had to write from the start,
Speaker 2: I had to make a decision that if this was
Speaker 2: going to work for me, I certainly couldn't go in
Speaker 2: there and try to fake that. I, you know, I
Speaker 2: knew it all because I knew very little and especially
Speaker 2: compared with the knowledge that was in my team, And
Speaker 2: so I tried to manage the actual logistics of the unit,
Speaker 2: the case assignments, keeping up with you know, how a
Speaker 2: case was going, and assignments and closing cases, while I
Speaker 2: learned from them actually how to run an investigation.
Speaker 1: So you had to do that. And I think you said,
Speaker 1: like each person in your twenty of the squad had
Speaker 1: almost twenty five files that were working on concurret the
Speaker 1: Can you talk about what it was like kind of
Speaker 1: juggling all those different investigations and then working within the group.
Speaker 2: I liked to Maya, my first commanding officer of the group,
Speaker 2: the way he put it in the way that I
Speaker 2: thought about it, because this kind of re you know,
Speaker 2: I kind of grabbed onto this and said it makes sense.
Speaker 2: He said, this case manage him and is like a
Speaker 2: murray go round. He said, when when cases come in,
Speaker 2: they get assigned, they get thrown onto the murray go round,
Speaker 2: and now your job is to try to pull them
Speaker 2: off the murray go around as quickly as you can
Speaker 2: thoroughly investigate him. But don't keep them on that Murray
Speaker 2: go round for any any minute longer than they have
Speaker 2: to be right.
Speaker 1: And I think you said that when you came in,
Speaker 1: you assigned somebody a case, and he said you should
Speaker 1: take this case because this will give you as some experience. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The first case that I went out on that
Speaker 2: I was with was that was one of the more
Speaker 2: interesting ones because it actually and again I had to
Speaker 2: learn this also that many times there were cases that
Speaker 2: when you started getting used to it, that you just
Speaker 2: kind of knew by the allegation you had to be
Speaker 2: objective with it, but you kind of knew that it
Speaker 2: was going to go no place either either it was
Speaker 2: obvious that there was nothing there, or even if there
Speaker 2: was something there, there was no way you were going
Speaker 2: to be able to prove it one way or the other.
Speaker 2: But sometimes, like with this first case, there was a
Speaker 2: live complainant. There was a gentleman who was an account accountant,
Speaker 2: and he sounded very credible on the phone, and when
Speaker 2: I was interviewing him on the phone, his allegation was
Speaker 2: that there was a NYPD sergeant who had broken into
Speaker 2: his apartment and was stealing possessions property out of his
Speaker 2: apartment that he had done this on more than one occasion.
Speaker 2: Now that's a very bizarre allegation to begin with, but
Speaker 2: he sounded very credible. And it even became more bizarre
Speaker 2: are when I went with a sergeant to interview him
Speaker 2: and he was in a high rise apartment building in Queens.
Speaker 2: It was it was a nice building, a nice building,
Speaker 2: and he was up on one of the like i'll say,
Speaker 2: maybe the fifteen sixteenth or one of the higher flaws.
Speaker 2: And when he led us in again, everything was making sense.
Speaker 2: As far as he was articulate, he was lucid, He
Speaker 2: you know, was very you know, by the numbers and
Speaker 2: talking about what had happened. But as I'm talking to him,
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to figure out because it looks like
Speaker 2: this is an apartment, there's only the front door to
Speaker 2: get into the apartment, and there's a balcony, and the
Speaker 2: balcony is fifteen floors up, and I can't grasp how
Speaker 2: this sergeant would be getting in if he wasn't coming
Speaker 2: through the door. So I finally get around to really
Speaker 2: pressing them on. I said, sir, I'm not really grasping
Speaker 2: this if he's not coming in through the door. I said,
Speaker 2: he's coming into that fifteenth floor balcony here, and he just,
Speaker 2: matter of fact he says no. And I said, you're
Speaker 2: really losing me here. If he's not coming into the door,
Speaker 2: he's not coming in through the through the balcony, how
Speaker 2: is he getting in here? And he just very matter
Speaker 2: of factly said, oh no, he comes in my dreams.
Speaker 2: And at that point I was said, okay, you know,
Speaker 2: let's wrap this up. But my partner at the time,
Speaker 2: the sergeant, he was going to begin now because he
Speaker 2: wanted to have some fun with this as far as
Speaker 2: you know, asking him what does he do, what does
Speaker 2: he say? And uh, And the guy was very seriously
Speaker 2: answering all these questions, you know, he h oh, yeah.
Speaker 2: He sometimes he curses at me. Sometimes he says, I
Speaker 2: see your underwear, and so it just you know, that's
Speaker 2: that was the opening case where I realized that, you know,
Speaker 2: not everything here is going to be a crime of
Speaker 2: the century, and probably, like most of them, was gonna
Speaker 2: end up being nothing right.
Speaker 1: And I mean, you're kind of in that thing where
Speaker 1: you're in to getting the other police officers, what is
Speaker 1: the opinion of the internal affairs while you were there
Speaker 1: amongst you know, the blue line or so to speak.
Speaker 2: Well, that's why, that's why, in my opinion, that the
Speaker 2: MYP went to this draft system for for sergeants and
Speaker 2: lieutenants because you know, naturally i AB is not a
Speaker 2: very popular assignment, not a very popular unit within the
Speaker 2: police department because you know, whether it's in police culture
Speaker 2: or any other culture. I mean, let's face it, one
Speaker 2: of the worst things you can be perceived as is
Speaker 2: a rat. And you know, of course, if you have
Speaker 2: any type of logical thought process, you have to understand
Speaker 2: that any police department, especially a department as large as
Speaker 2: the m YPD, needs some kind of an internal investigation
Speaker 2: branch too, because any time, I mean, I'm I'm a
Speaker 2: big fan of cops. I you know, I don't think
Speaker 2: there's a more noble profession on the planet. But if
Speaker 2: you put at the time there was forty thousand people
Speaker 2: in the MYPD, you put forty thousand apples in any
Speaker 2: in barrels, you're going to find a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: rotten ones, certainly not going to be near the majority.
Speaker 2: Same thing. The you know, probably well over ninety five
Speaker 2: ninety eight percent of cops are hard working doing the
Speaker 2: right thing. But you do have the police departments in
Speaker 2: microcosm of society, you know, so just like you have murderers,
Speaker 2: drug abusers, drug sellers, uh, you know, domestic abusers in society,
Speaker 2: you're going to find them in a department with forty
Speaker 2: thousand people. So but still there wasn't will always be
Speaker 2: a stigma attached to working internal affairs. And I think
Speaker 2: that draft system helped to fight that stigma a bit
Speaker 2: because you know, people realized after a while that when
Speaker 2: you were in IAB, you were going through that two
Speaker 2: year draft.
Speaker 1: Right, so you weren't in a position of total antagonism.
Speaker 1: You're in a short short you know, kind of doing
Speaker 1: your duty in getting out. And you I mean you
Speaker 1: had so many different cases too, like you had the
Speaker 1: full Swath or a murder, to insurance fraud to criminality
Speaker 1: shot shoplifty. Can you talk about that? I mean one
Speaker 1: of the introductory chapters is the guy who had some
Speaker 1: kind of interesting insurance claims. Can you talk about like
Speaker 1: some of your investigations that one in particular.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one, you know, and these when I said
Speaker 2: before that I spoke to the claimant on the phone.
Speaker 2: We're not just answering phones that some somebody's got a
Speaker 2: number and calls in a complaint. Everything in IB works
Speaker 2: through what's called the Action desk. Whether it comes in
Speaker 2: because a police officer in the field is given the
Speaker 2: allegation from a member of the public and he or
Speaker 2: she reports it, whether it whether it comes from a
Speaker 2: letter to the Police Commission, however the complaint comes in,
Speaker 2: it works its way to the Action Desk, which was
Speaker 2: a unit in IB headquarters. Then they assess it, They
Speaker 2: assess what the complaint is, and then they send it
Speaker 2: out as they seem appropriate, whether it as they deem appropriate,
Speaker 2: whether it should be sent out as which is the
Speaker 2: title of the book, as a c case, which is
Speaker 2: a corruption case, which is the you know, the bread
Speaker 2: and butter of ID investigations. That's something which if it
Speaker 2: was proven, could be a crime or would be a crime.
Speaker 2: There were less serious ones that were m cases, some
Speaker 2: type of misconduct. There could be complaints from other departments,
Speaker 2: other city agencies that were they never just told, never
Speaker 2: told the complaint, we don't take this. They always took
Speaker 2: the complaint and referred it as necessary. But in this case,
Speaker 2: the the they call them a log. We'd get logs
Speaker 2: that would come in say you know uh C number
Speaker 2: C one four, five to eight, and it says gives
Speaker 2: the information on it. And in this case, there was
Speaker 2: an insurance investigator had called made a complaint to actually
Speaker 2: to i AB direct that this police officer had made
Speaker 2: a really absurd insurance claim. And when you looked into it,
Speaker 2: it really was because it ended up the uh it
Speaker 2: started off with was a fender bender, and all the
Speaker 2: documentation it was an off duty fender bender, by the way,
Speaker 2: and all the documentation from the accident report, and it
Speaker 2: was in Narsau County, not New York City. Everything was
Speaker 2: reflective as an actual just offender vender somebody. It really
Speaker 2: was an accident. This elderly gentleman had just kind of
Speaker 2: rolled into the subject at a when he was stopped
Speaker 2: at a light, and he just rolled into him at
Speaker 2: like maybe two miles an hour. But he must have
Speaker 2: seen some had an opportunity here, and he he went
Speaker 2: to the He didn't go to the hospital with ambulance.
Speaker 2: He ended up going by himself. And when they tried
Speaker 2: to kind of throw him out after they said, okay,
Speaker 2: we'll treat you here, but there's nothing wrong with you.
Speaker 2: He then stayed in the waiting room all night. This
Speaker 2: is I got this from interviewing a nurse and emergency
Speaker 2: room nurse. So because he wanted to be able to say,
Speaker 2: he spent the night in the hospital, and then he
Speaker 2: went and with his insurance company, he put in this
Speaker 2: claim that just went on and on that he had
Speaker 2: in the accident, he had broken he was wearing some
Speaker 2: collectible Superman watch that was worth a lot of money,
Speaker 2: he had some rare tea set from Japan, and the
Speaker 2: trunk even when as far as they had a leg
Speaker 2: of lamb that got destroyed that was in the car.
Speaker 2: There was a whole long list. And that was just
Speaker 2: the beginning. Because then he put in a claim that
Speaker 2: he because of his back being injured, he had to
Speaker 2: get permanent in the wall air conditioning unit put in
Speaker 2: his house because he could no longer play take them
Speaker 2: in and out of the window. He needed to get
Speaker 2: a gardening landscaping services. He couldn't do it himself. He
Speaker 2: had to get a home health aid to bathe them
Speaker 2: several times a week. And the kude g raw was
Speaker 2: that he had claimed and was what was the most
Speaker 2: monetary damages he was he was or compensation. He was
Speaker 2: seeking was because he said that he could no longer
Speaker 2: perform sexually, and he had a notarized statement from his
Speaker 2: fiance attesting to that. But then as you as you
Speaker 2: just start covering bases on how to handle things, you
Speaker 2: start names that are involved in it. You start you're
Speaker 2: running those names to see if they come up anywhere.
Speaker 2: And two of the names showed up as police department employees.
Speaker 2: The person that he had listed as the home health
Speaker 2: aid and the person he had listed as his fiance.
Speaker 2: They both, you know, miraculously, both of them also worked
Speaker 2: in the same unit that he worked in. And it
Speaker 2: didn't take too long to determine that the home health
Speaker 2: aid who really did have this is why he probably
Speaker 2: did it. She really did have a New York State
Speaker 2: home health aid license, but she hadn't gone and done
Speaker 2: any kind of spongebaiting form. He had just she she
Speaker 2: gave a statement that said that he had just said,
Speaker 2: you know, there's some money in it for you if
Speaker 2: you just say that, you know, a couple of times
Speaker 2: a week, you do have to perform this for me.
Speaker 2: And it turned out that the fiance was not a fiance,
Speaker 2: It was just somebody that worked in the same office
Speaker 2: and the same thing. He had told her, Look, I'll
Speaker 2: give you X amount of dollars if you say that
Speaker 2: we were engaged and that I can't perform anymore. And
Speaker 2: they both folded very very quickly. We did what is
Speaker 2: called in the investigative jog and has offered them clean
Speaker 2: for a day. Picked him up on the street and
Speaker 2: just said, look, you don't have to come with us,
Speaker 2: you don't have to talk with us, but it'll be
Speaker 2: in your best interest and this is a one time deal.
Speaker 2: If you do not talk to us now, you're not
Speaker 2: going to get this opportunity again. And they both talked,
Speaker 2: and they both threw him under the bus really really quickly.
Speaker 1: And then he was yeah, he was a homosexual too, so.
Speaker 2: Like yes, So the whole idea this was a female
Speaker 2: that you know, he was saying, was the That was
Speaker 2: the first thing she did. She left and she said, fiance,
Speaker 2: he's he's gay.
Speaker 1: And so what I mean in your book you kind
Speaker 1: of show what the outcomes are. So in some of
Speaker 1: these cases, the DA doesn't always prosecute, but there are
Speaker 1: administrative steps that are taken.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, there's really two there's two steps in these
Speaker 2: processes that could be criminal, you go to within the
Speaker 2: District Attorney's office, and in this case in Queens, there's
Speaker 2: a publicly called a Public Integrity Department. They're the ones
Speaker 2: that actually work on cases that have anything to do
Speaker 2: with whether it's prosecuting a police officer or any other
Speaker 2: type of a of a government worker. So you always
Speaker 2: have to go through them and keep them abreast and
Speaker 2: then when you finally get because you can't move administratively
Speaker 2: if there could possibly be a criminal aspect of it,
Speaker 2: you can't do those at the same time. So what
Speaker 2: happens is once if there could be criminal you go
Speaker 2: there first, and once the DA makes a decision. In
Speaker 2: this case, for whatever reason, the DA decided now we
Speaker 2: don't want this, We're not going to do it, then
Speaker 2: we go departmentally, and departmentally he got fired, which is
Speaker 2: which is not an easy thing in in the police department.
Speaker 2: You have to you have to do something pretty heavy
Speaker 2: to actually lose your job.
Speaker 1: He got fired, right because there's other things you said,
Speaker 1: like there's administer, there's misdemeanor m cases or other things
Speaker 1: were the police could take other steps, right, So not
Speaker 1: necessarily environment So unfortunately for him, he crossed that line.
Speaker 1: And you had other cases. You talk about the one
Speaker 1: guy who's a police officer who was had some suspicious
Speaker 1: connections to a chop shop. Can you kind of explain
Speaker 1: what that is and what he did and why you
Speaker 1: investigated him.
Speaker 2: Okay, The allegation that came in was that this particular
Speaker 2: police officer had ties with an auto body shop that
Speaker 2: had organized crime connections and it was in looking at
Speaker 2: it wasn't known chop shop that it had several complaints
Speaker 2: in auto crime. Now, a chop shop is a on
Speaker 2: face value, it's in autobody shop, but in reality it's
Speaker 2: actually taking in stolen cars, chopping them up for parts,
Speaker 2: and then they're getting rid of the parts and it
Speaker 2: makes it appear as if the car never existed and
Speaker 2: they have some kind of an avenue to actually dispose
Speaker 2: of or sell these parts, you know in the black
Speaker 2: market of auto parts.
Speaker 1: And some of those parts are super expensive. They need
Speaker 1: some care. They were just taking rear view mirrors from
Speaker 1: Mercedes Benzes, and each one of those mirrors is like
Speaker 1: on the street, my value was like crazy three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty bucks or something like that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, in my area right now, I don't know
Speaker 2: if there's just nationwide or just New York wise, there's
Speaker 2: a big thing now with catalytic converters getting taken out
Speaker 2: of cars. You know, it's always going to be the
Speaker 2: you know, the auto parts industry is always going to
Speaker 2: have this criminal aspect to it. But in this case,
Speaker 2: you know, it's one of these things where you kind
Speaker 2: of hope you can get this off the murray go
Speaker 2: around quickly, and because it's very vague as far as
Speaker 2: that allegation goes, so the easy way to do this
Speaker 2: is to just watch that that shop for a little
Speaker 2: while and see if this guy ever shows up there.
Speaker 2: And the problem was, after a couple of days, sure enough,
Speaker 2: he does show up there, and he does spend several
Speaker 2: hours in there and actually with sending. So actually I
Speaker 2: was the one that went inside and made like I
Speaker 2: was looking for some kind of servicing for my car
Speaker 2: or repair work, and it did appear that he was
Speaker 2: actually more than just some kind of a customer in there.
Speaker 2: So now you know, we have to do this full
Speaker 2: blown with surveillance and seeing what he does. And that's
Speaker 2: where it got a little more complicated because what didn't
Speaker 2: make sense and still today day doesn't make sense is
Speaker 2: in doing the surveillance of him, it turned out that
Speaker 2: he was going to Laguardier Airport a lot, a lot,
Speaker 2: to the point that and we would always lose him
Speaker 2: in there and we're wondering where he was going, And
Speaker 2: it turned out he was actually working for one of
Speaker 2: the airlines in there. It's working as a baggage handler.
Speaker 2: And so now you have the question, if you know,
Speaker 2: if this guy is hooked up with OC, what's he
Speaker 2: doing hauling bags at the airport. But we ended up
Speaker 2: in all the surveillance of this guy, he was, you know,
Speaker 2: on face Valley who was a happily married family man.
Speaker 2: But everything that we saw during our surveillances you do
Speaker 2: is call a lifestyle and you see where he goes,
Speaker 2: what he does, who he associates with. One of the
Speaker 2: profiles that was coming through loud and clear is that
Speaker 2: he was a real ladies man. So what we decided
Speaker 2: to do to bring this to a head was that
Speaker 2: since he always parked this truck in the same place,
Speaker 2: which was a public, public municipal parking field at the airport,
Speaker 2: we tried to create a situation where there would be
Speaker 2: a female in distress that he could come to our aid.
Speaker 2: So we were able to get a rental car parked
Speaker 2: right next to his truck and we disabled that car.
Speaker 2: There was a just a switch in the trunk that
Speaker 2: disabled the gas. I think it's I think it's there.
Speaker 2: I'm no car guy, but I think it's if there
Speaker 2: was ever an accident and impact and it would stop
Speaker 2: the gas from flowing and you'd have less chance of
Speaker 2: some kind of a fire. But if you just flipped
Speaker 2: the switch, it would stop the gas frow. So naturally,
Speaker 2: if you'll start trying to start the car, it's not
Speaker 2: going to turn over. So we had an undercover. There
Speaker 2: was a unit with an IEB that did just add
Speaker 2: supplied undercovers for investigations, and he had a female undercover
Speaker 2: that was wired up so we could we were sitting
Speaker 2: maybe one hundred yards away in the lot, we could
Speaker 2: hear the conversation going on, and when he returned from
Speaker 2: his shift, we were going to have her there trying
Speaker 2: to start the car and unable to start the car
Speaker 2: and standing with the hood up and looking very confused
Speaker 2: and hoping he would actually come to a raid and
Speaker 2: then that his instincts would go from there and it worked.
Speaker 2: It worked a little too well that first night, because
Speaker 2: after about five minutes of conversation, he actually offered to
Speaker 2: take the car back to his shop. And one of
Speaker 2: the other things I'm leaving out is she was throwing
Speaker 2: in there in the windows, like this car has been
Speaker 2: nothing but a money pick for me. I wish I
Speaker 2: could get rid of it. And he actually offered to
Speaker 2: take it back to his shop, and the sergeant that
Speaker 2: I'm sitting with when we're listening there is like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you know it's your call. What are we going to do?
Speaker 2: Because that's the one thing I hadn't planned on. I
Speaker 2: hadn't planned on him offering to take it right there,
Speaker 2: because now I have visions of we rented this car,
Speaker 2: we don't tell the rental company what we're using it for,
Speaker 2: and I have visions of now, first off, that he's
Speaker 2: going to have to be taking this undercover inside this shop,
Speaker 2: and I wasn't comfortable with that. And secondly, now by
Speaker 2: the time I got a warrant and got in there,
Speaker 2: that car could be in a million pieces. And so
Speaker 2: we had a thing that worked out where we had
Speaker 2: a cell phone with the sergeant calling her up and
Speaker 2: playing the role of a brother and saying so she
Speaker 2: could say, first off, he was able to tell him, no,
Speaker 2: don't go through with this, and tell him that your
Speaker 2: brother's coming to pick you up here now, so it's okay.
Speaker 2: But he took her phone number, and we were hoping
Speaker 2: he was gonna call her, and sure enough he did,
Speaker 2: so they went out on a date, and that we
Speaker 2: had the whole thing again wired up. We have teams
Speaker 2: in different restaurants in this area because we told her, look,
Speaker 2: if he wants to bounce from one restaurant to another,
Speaker 2: make sure that you go from here to here so
Speaker 2: we can always keep eyes on you. And she was
Speaker 2: wired up, and we got a lot of interesting stuff
Speaker 2: on the on that on that recording. You know, he
Speaker 2: had excuse me that he had he had said that
Speaker 2: in the there that he had he had did have
Speaker 2: some type of an interest in that uh in that
Speaker 2: water body shop, and that one of the first week
Speaker 2: or two that he was in there, that some guys
Speaker 2: came in and said, where your new uh, you know,
Speaker 2: waste disposal company, And he said, I don't need a
Speaker 2: waste disposal company. I came in and took this over
Speaker 2: and there's a waste disposal company here, and he said,
Speaker 2: I don't think you're reading us where you're a new
Speaker 2: waste disposal company. And he said, get out of here.
Speaker 2: I don't need you. And he said about an hour later,
Speaker 2: he's in the office, it's at night, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, his front window gets sprayed with automatic gunfire,
Speaker 2: machine gun fire, which he's hitting the floor and hoping
Speaker 2: he doesn't get hit. You know. So I had a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff on on the on the on the
Speaker 2: audio recording like that, and you know it was you know,
Speaker 2: he had a lot of similar statements like that too.
Speaker 2: But it ended up where he he wouldn't really commit
Speaker 2: to taking the car that night because he was more
Speaker 2: focused on his date and it was starting to get
Speaker 2: She even called from the bathroom once that she's getting uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: It's starting to get very physical. So I knew I
Speaker 2: had to I had to cut this off and try
Speaker 2: to do it another day. And she was able to
Speaker 2: get away from him that night without any damage, let's say,
Speaker 2: but it just never She tried a few times to
Speaker 2: get an the day, but I don't know what he
Speaker 2: was if he was getting raised up or anything, but
Speaker 2: never got it going. Again to the point where I said,
Speaker 2: now it's got to get off the murray ground here.
Speaker 2: So we closed this by just bringing him in and
Speaker 2: they called it GEO fifteen, where you officially interrogate the individual,
Speaker 2: you know, for departmental purposes. And I'm also leaving one
Speaker 2: thing important now, all the surveillances we did at the
Speaker 2: airport where we could see him out working hauling bags
Speaker 2: on the tarmac, and this was during the summer. It
Speaker 2: must have been over one hundred degrees out in that
Speaker 2: tarmac and over the couple of week we did this surveillance,
Speaker 2: he was out sick from the police department at the time,
Speaker 2: which that's actually a pretty heavy departmental violation where you know,
Speaker 2: you're not only are you working a job, the second
Speaker 2: job that you don't have authorization for where you need
Speaker 2: if you're going to work a part time job, you
Speaker 2: need to get departmental authorization for it, which he didn't
Speaker 2: have and he was outsick working that job. So you know,
Speaker 2: that was another issue that actually sunk him more because
Speaker 2: when we interrogated him, we did that official interview, I
Speaker 2: got to give him credit because he was one of
Speaker 2: these guys that was really cool as a cucumber. Like
Speaker 2: when when I actually played the tape for him where
Speaker 2: he's talking about the machine gun fire, he just sat
Speaker 2: back and he said, Lieutenant, what do you want me
Speaker 2: to say? You know, I like to impress girls. I
Speaker 2: go out with him. Sometimes I tell him I'm a cowboy.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I tell him I'm a I'm involved with organized crime?
Speaker 2: Is I'm a bullshit artist with the girls. What do
Speaker 2: you want me to say? You know? So it was
Speaker 2: actually it was a pretty good answer actually because he
Speaker 2: showed up with his attorney too, right, So I mean, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: union attorney with that. Yeah, but he was in trouble
Speaker 2: actually departmentally, it was the same thing. He he couldn't
Speaker 2: he had no way out of that being out sick,
Speaker 2: and he ended up also he got fired with that
Speaker 2: because that was that was a kind of a heavy
Speaker 2: duty thing with being out sick with on an open
Speaker 2: working another job for several weeks out sick.
Speaker 1: With no authorization, right, So I mean, being sick you
Speaker 1: have to like fill out forms and things like that.
Speaker 2: You actually have to with the police department. You actually
Speaker 2: have to stay in your house because since since the
Speaker 2: NYPD has unlimited sick you don't have twelve six days,
Speaker 2: twenty six days. That's the beauty of it. You could
Speaker 2: be sick for months and months and you just have
Speaker 2: unlimited sick But there are a lot of controls on that.
Speaker 2: So when you call out sick, you have to stay
Speaker 2: in your primary residence and you have to call a
Speaker 2: sick desk to get permission to actually leave, to go
Speaker 2: to a drug store to go get some to eat.
Speaker 2: And there are actually investigators sergeants that go out and visit.
Speaker 2: They'll knock on a door to make sure the person's home.
Speaker 2: So this sick leave is a big thing with the
Speaker 2: with the police department.
Speaker 1: Wow, really interesting, And there's other controls, like you're also
Speaker 1: doing these integrity testings to see if these people are
Speaker 1: engaging corrupt behavior. Can you talk about some of the
Speaker 1: things that you did kind of to see if police
Speaker 1: officers remained on the up and up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was that was kind of a There were
Speaker 2: a lot there was. I mean, this iab experience for
Speaker 2: two years. For me, it was the greatest learning experience
Speaker 2: I had on the job during the twenty years. But
Speaker 2: there was some distasteful parts to it, and this integrity
Speaker 2: testing was one because the main thing was. It took
Speaker 2: up time from trying to work these cases because you
Speaker 2: had to do I forget if it was one a
Speaker 2: month or a couple of months, but every team had
Speaker 2: to do these integrity tests where you would set up
Speaker 2: an artificial circumstance to try to see if the cop
Speaker 2: would do the right thing or the wrong thing, and
Speaker 2: it was sometimes it was very difficult to set things
Speaker 2: things up. So we used to do what we called
Speaker 2: throwing a bag, where you'd have a lady's pocketbook and
Speaker 2: we had a lot of different props, and we'd throw
Speaker 2: like persons with identification, all kinds of things that would
Speaker 2: make it look like a lady's active pocketbook, and we'd
Speaker 2: throw cash in there. And then we'd either let's say,
Speaker 2: have a have one of our guys who had rented
Speaker 2: a cab that would now pull over, get the attention
Speaker 2: of some cops either on patrol or in a vehicle
Speaker 2: or an R and P and say, hey, a lady
Speaker 2: a while back, I just noticed that she left this
Speaker 2: in the cab, Or call in an anonymous nine one
Speaker 2: one call for a very benign very you gotta be
Speaker 2: careful with this, couldn't be a serious you couldn't say
Speaker 2: there was a robbery in progress or something, but just
Speaker 2: something like it may look like somebody's selling drugs in
Speaker 2: a park or something, something that's going to prompt a response,
Speaker 2: and then have you know, a bag sitting there. And
Speaker 2: you know, the one that I remember is because we
Speaker 2: tried to get away from just throwing the bag, because
Speaker 2: the CEO at the time was having a problem with that.
Speaker 2: Everything everybody was going out, all the teams were going
Speaker 2: out and just using handbags throwing bags. So we did
Speaker 2: a little variation of it. We got some simulated narcotics
Speaker 2: pills in a bag just then we put them in
Speaker 2: a brown bag and put it in a next to
Speaker 2: a trash can in a public park in Cleans and
Speaker 2: then called in a job on nine to one one
Speaker 2: that you know, suspected drug deal and just we're gonna
Speaker 2: you know, sit back. We had a surveillance van that
Speaker 2: was useless, and sit back and see what happens that
Speaker 2: you know, what should happen is the cops show up,
Speaker 2: they take the bag that has the pills and we
Speaker 2: have cash inside the bag also, they take it back
Speaker 2: and then a day later we go to the command
Speaker 2: and there should be what's called a voucher, a property
Speaker 2: clerk's invoice that shows that there were simulated narcotics and
Speaker 2: x amount of dollars that were vouchered, and in this case,
Speaker 2: ultimately that happened. But there was while this call was
Speaker 2: out there there were a couple of more serious jobs
Speaker 2: that went over the air in this sector. A motor
Speaker 2: vehicle accident with injuries, which is natural, they're going to
Speaker 2: go to that first. So myself and the sergeant that
Speaker 2: I was with were in this surveillance van that was
Speaker 2: insanely hot inside of it and trying to hopefully, you know,
Speaker 2: that they were going to show up, you know, sometime soon.
Speaker 2: And you know, during the time, he's doing all kinds
Speaker 2: of things to keep busy, you know, going back and
Speaker 2: forth in the van. And there it was in a park.
Speaker 2: There was somebody to pull up next to us, and
Speaker 2: since the van was sitting up higher, I could actually
Speaker 2: see out through this little peephole thing there that the
Speaker 2: guy was sitting there, older gentleman was sitting there. Looks
Speaker 2: they just reading the paper. But at one point I
Speaker 2: also noticed that it looked like he took note of
Speaker 2: the fact that the van was brocking back and forth
Speaker 2: because he was just getting very antsy inside there and
Speaker 2: kind of moving back and forth. My partner was so finally,
Speaker 2: finally the cops show up. They go to where this
Speaker 2: report was for the trash can, they see the bag,
Speaker 2: they look inside, they take it, and they leave so
Speaker 2: we can finally come out. They opened the door. We're
Speaker 2: drenched in sweat, and then as we are standing there,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, this guy that was next to us,
Speaker 2: he backs out and goes to leave, and as he's leaving,
Speaker 2: he just looks at us and yells, you freaks. And
Speaker 2: it took a minute for me to understand what was
Speaker 2: going on there, and it was actually the sogeant my partner,
Speaker 2: who started cracking up and got it. He said, this
Speaker 2: guy just thinks he goes he's sitting there and he's
Speaker 2: seeing this van rocking back and forth, and then he
Speaker 2: sees two sweatsiak guys compiling out of the side of
Speaker 2: the van. He says, he thinks we've been We've been
Speaker 2: sitting in this parks parking lot in there, having a
Speaker 2: good time with each other back there.
Speaker 1: And it's funny, because you there are these funny moments
Speaker 1: all through this book, like you guys make you know,
Speaker 1: I have jokes for each other, and you can see
Speaker 1: the kind of camaraderie and things to do while you're
Speaker 1: doing the job. I think that comes through in the book.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more in the book too. I mean,
Speaker 1: you cover a murder case, shoplifting, all kinds of really
Speaker 1: different variety of different challenges. It was really interesting.
Speaker 2: That was the thing with I why I said it
Speaker 2: was the greatest learning experience because you know, just like
Speaker 2: you have, like I said, at microcosms society, just like
Speaker 2: you have murders in society. Somewhere in the NYPD with
Speaker 2: forty thousand people, you've got a murderer there too, you know.
Speaker 2: And so one day, you know, we're working a murder case.
Speaker 2: The next day we're working a drug case, the next
Speaker 2: day we're working a fraud case. It ran the gamut
Speaker 2: of all these different investigations.
Speaker 1: It's really fascinating. Like you heard the stories about the
Speaker 1: internal investigation groups, but this is really the insight. So
Speaker 1: I recommend people check this out. Where's the best place
Speaker 1: to get this book?
Speaker 2: Robert Amazon and go on to my author page and
Speaker 2: just look up. Look up Robert O'Brien on Amazon and
Speaker 2: you'll find that book and my other books.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tons of other books too. How many books have
Speaker 1: you written at this point.
Speaker 2: I'm close to thirty right now. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, either it was a long list. And do you
Speaker 1: have like social media.
Speaker 2: Or h I do have. I have a Facebook page
Speaker 2: Robert O'Brien, and I also have a group that I
Speaker 2: moderate police books. And I do have a website Robert
Speaker 2: Brian author.
Speaker 1: Robert Brian author. If people want to reach out to you,
Speaker 1: they can do it through that website Robert Elbrian dot com.
Speaker 1: Really interesting book and conversation. Thanks so much for your time. Again,
Speaker 1: the title of the book is CCASE, An Unlikely Journey
Speaker 1: from Transit cop to Internal Affairs Bureau Squad Commander by
Speaker 1: Robert Lbrian And there's a lot more stories and things
Speaker 1: in there, so people take that step and go check
Speaker 1: out this book. So thanks so much for your time, Robert,
Speaker 1: my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Take care,