Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, I want to tell you about my new novel,
Speaker 1: The Most Dangerous Man, out in June. It is a
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Speaker 1: while he's on a mission to West Africa, and when
Speaker 1: he wakes up, he finds that he is now being
Speaker 1: hunted for sport by a group of tech billionaires through
Speaker 1: the wilds of West Africa. This book is based on
Speaker 1: stories that I heard over the years about safari guides
Speaker 1: taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa.
Speaker 1: I took that and I took a century old short story,
Speaker 1: The Most Dangerous Game, and modernized it. And the product
Speaker 1: is this book, which I think will feel contemporary and
Speaker 1: resonate with audiences today. Thank you, and please check it out. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: welcome to the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with
Speaker 1: tonight's guest Carlos Rodriguez. He is a former police officer
Speaker 1: with the Washington State Patrol. He is also the author
Speaker 1: of the book upcoming book, Hopefully it'll be out by
Speaker 1: the time most of you guys hear this, The Ugly
Speaker 1: Underneath Navigating the emotional toll of investigating crimes against children.
Speaker 1: So Carlos did a whole series of different cases throughout
Speaker 1: his career, but one of them was getting involved in
Speaker 1: tracking down sexual predators, people who are engaged in human
Speaker 1: trafficking and other nasty stuff. And I'm really happy to
Speaker 1: have Carlos here today because I feel like in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, may five to ten years, maybe
Speaker 1: a lot of different players have gotten involved in this topic,
Speaker 1: and I think there's a lot of misconceptions around trafficking
Speaker 1: and what it is. So I'm really happy to have
Speaker 1: an expert like you on here, Carlows to somebody who
Speaker 1: actually worked, you know, boots on the ground, to really
Speaker 1: shed some light on what this job is and what
Speaker 1: it does to the police officers as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Soles. Start at the beginning, man, tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about how you grew up and why you became
Speaker 1: a cop. What pushed you in that direction.
Speaker 3: Well, I never ever thought I was going to be
Speaker 3: going to law enforcement. I actually worked for the Washington
Speaker 3: State Patrol as the mail boy, and I worked in
Speaker 3: the mail room and my girlfriend at the time, her
Speaker 3: oldest brother, was killed by a d UI. So when
Speaker 3: that happened was tragic, and I worked for the State
Speaker 3: Patrol and I thought, well, who gets duy s. It's
Speaker 3: state troopers. So I set out to become a state
Speaker 3: trooper and became a state trooper.
Speaker 1: And there was an interesting moment in your book where
Speaker 1: you were, you know, the mail office guy, and what
Speaker 1: you wrote. You wrote a letter to Was it the
Speaker 1: chief of police? I kind of jumped the chain to
Speaker 1: command a few links there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I remember I drove to work and I was just
Speaker 3: I was stunned from what had happened with my girlfriend's
Speaker 3: brother had been killed, and on Mother's Day of all days,
Speaker 3: early in the morning, and then I just went to
Speaker 3: work and I remember just feeling numb, and I decided
Speaker 3: to write a letter to the chief. And I was
Speaker 3: the mail boy, so I'm the person who delivers everything.
Speaker 3: So I just wrote the letter, put put it into
Speaker 3: an envelope, started to deliver everything down the hall, and
Speaker 3: then went into his office and delivered it. And then
Speaker 3: about thirty minutes after that, he came and talked to me.
Speaker 1: What was that conversation?
Speaker 3: Like, Well, first thing, I mean I'd never seen the
Speaker 3: chief in the mail room, that's the first thing. And
Speaker 3: I didn't think he would even I didn't even think
Speaker 3: he'd get to it read it, because to me, I
Speaker 3: was shoot. I was early twenties, maybe twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: and just didn't have any any interaction with him because
Speaker 3: I was low person on the totem pole. But I
Speaker 3: remember him coming in and he told me. First he
Speaker 3: said my name, and I thought, shit, this guy knows
Speaker 3: my name. And then he told me I needed to
Speaker 3: go home, and I didn't want to go home. I
Speaker 3: thought I needed to stay there and do my job.
Speaker 3: So we had a little back and forth and then
Speaker 3: he basically he assured me, assured me that I shouldn't
Speaker 3: be there and that I should go and help the family.
Speaker 3: And then that's when I told him, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: going to I meant it. I'm going to be a
Speaker 3: state trooper. I want to be a state trooper because
Speaker 3: I told him that in the letter that a synopsis
Speaker 3: that what had happened is horrible, shouldn't have happened, and
Speaker 3: I'm going to be a state trooper so it doesn't
Speaker 3: happen to other people.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, you went home and you helped out
Speaker 1: the family a bit. And what was the process like
Speaker 1: to actually, you know, fulfilling that uh you know, kind
Speaker 1: of a dream or obligation that you felt to become
Speaker 1: a state trooper.
Speaker 3: Well it it was terrifying. I mean I was I
Speaker 3: had never done anything like that before. I'm most people
Speaker 3: in Washington State. There used to be a requirement that
Speaker 3: you had to be six feet tall. I'm five six.
Speaker 3: I'm just a little guy. So people were really shocked.
Speaker 3: They were surprised when they thought, oh, you're gonna yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right, you're going to be a trooper.
Speaker 2: Uh So but I did it.
Speaker 3: You know, I went to the academy. I had asked
Speaker 3: some questions. I tried to get help. People told me,
Speaker 3: you know, you just got to blend in. You'll get
Speaker 3: through it. If you're if you're you don't want to
Speaker 3: be too good, you don't want to be really bad.
Speaker 3: If you're right in the middle, then then people will
Speaker 3: leave you alone. You'll get and you'll get through it.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately it didn't happen. The first day, I was
Speaker 3: singled out because this lady that I worked with, who
Speaker 3: I delivered mail to her husband, was our tack officer,
Speaker 3: and he singled me out immediately because I look, I
Speaker 3: got great here now, so I don't look as young,
Speaker 3: but I at the time I looked like a kid.
Speaker 3: I looked super young. And yeah, so they used to
Speaker 3: call me kid. And I got to work. I got
Speaker 3: to do a bunch of cool stuff because of how
Speaker 3: I look though, because I looked really young.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, it lent itself to undercover work.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I got to do When Fast and the
Speaker 3: Furious first came out, they threw me a little Honda hatchback.
Speaker 3: So I got to do sell stolen property, which was awesome.
Speaker 3: It was fun because kids used to show me that, hey,
Speaker 3: look at my car, you know, don't steal my shit,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: So we got to do that.
Speaker 3: And then and then I also so and then my
Speaker 3: uncle he's no longer here anymore. But he actually was
Speaker 3: on the other side of law enforcement. He worked for
Speaker 3: some drug cartels in Washington State and I ended up
Speaker 3: going to prison.
Speaker 2: He shot somebody.
Speaker 3: But he used to tell me, hey, mijo, don't don't
Speaker 3: uh don't grow go tea. Just look how you look
Speaker 3: when you're gonna go in before you do a deal
Speaker 3: with uh with whoever you're doing with. He goes, get
Speaker 3: some grease, put it all over your hands. Then go
Speaker 3: wash your hands so you look like you work, because
Speaker 3: cops don't look like they work, and you'll be good.
Speaker 2: Just be yourself.
Speaker 3: He goes, don't act like you know the Goateea's I
Speaker 3: don't know, the five eleven pants. You know that your
Speaker 3: basic stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you can shave over the weekend. Like oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's real convincing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And and and it took me back then. I mean,
Speaker 3: it took me a couple of weeks just to get
Speaker 3: a little bit of facial hair. So now I have
Speaker 3: I have some, but this is like two weeks.
Speaker 1: So well this is also I mean not way back
Speaker 1: in the day, but I mean back in the day,
Speaker 1: undercover work was really like oh, hey, you're a brown guy.
Speaker 1: You speak Spanish, Like you can go out there and
Speaker 1: sling some drugs with the kids, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was totally different.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was going through Detective Basic, they
Speaker 3: were teaching this class and then one guy stops and
Speaker 3: he goes, was you are you? Are you Carlos? And
Speaker 3: I was like yeah, And I was like I heard
Speaker 3: about you, we got plans for you. And then and
Speaker 3: then I was like great, you know, so it was
Speaker 3: fun I mean I got to do some some cool things.
Speaker 3: And then after I did the the auto theft I
Speaker 3: got into, I went to a trap or a drug
Speaker 3: trafficking UH task force where we focused on mid to
Speaker 3: upper level dt os and it was called West Net
Speaker 3: West Sound Ercotics Enforcement Team. So I did that for
Speaker 3: about four years and that that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: I really learned. That's that's where I learned how to
Speaker 2: be a cop. I was a state trooper.
Speaker 3: But when I went there and the people that I
Speaker 3: was with because we had it was city county FEDS,
Speaker 3: that's where I learned from them how to actually be
Speaker 3: a police officer. Because State patrol we had a different function.
Speaker 3: So I really learned a lot from from that group
Speaker 3: from my detectives.
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Speaker 1: All right, So they pulled you into drug trafficking cases
Speaker 1: because you looked young and could do undercover work, and
Speaker 1: then I think was the next thing for you working
Speaker 1: on the personal security detachment for the governor?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I got asked to go to it's called
Speaker 3: the Executive Protection Unit.
Speaker 2: So I did that.
Speaker 3: For a brief stint before going into crimes against children,
Speaker 3: and then right towards the end of my career, I
Speaker 3: went back to that with the different administration.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean the first time around, it sounded like
Speaker 1: you kind of got jammed up in a shitty situation
Speaker 1: with was it like the chief of staff for the governor.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'll say, you know, in that scenario, you know,
Speaker 3: people want to manage things in different ways. I think,
Speaker 3: And what ended up happening is there was a threat
Speaker 3: that had come in and the way that it was
Speaker 3: handled they didn't really I think, care for a press
Speaker 3: release that went out.
Speaker 2: And and and so.
Speaker 3: Because of that, I ended up having a talk with
Speaker 3: my principle, and I don't think I was the best
Speaker 3: person for that, because of my principle needs to focus
Speaker 3: on how they're going to support their constituents. They shouldn't
Speaker 3: be worried about other things that they're not comfortable with
Speaker 3: a certain personnel. And really, in that instance, I mean,
Speaker 3: if you've done protection work or people who do that,
Speaker 3: the job's not about the people doing the work, it's
Speaker 3: about your principle.
Speaker 2: And it's really thankless.
Speaker 3: And and there's so much stuff that goes on behind
Speaker 3: the scenes that when everything you're doing all these things,
Speaker 3: but it looks like absolutely everything's smooth, and that's how
Speaker 3: it should be. No one should really know all the
Speaker 3: things that you're doing. So in this instance, it didn't
Speaker 3: work out, and I left. I left the unit and
Speaker 3: went back to the road for a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then how did you get pulled into this
Speaker 1: whole thing with crimes against children?
Speaker 3: So I was actually trying to get on to our
Speaker 3: Washington State Fusion Center to work with someone I had
Speaker 3: worked with before. He was He was a person that
Speaker 3: recruited me to go into narcotics and he was at
Speaker 3: the Fusion Center and I wanted to work with him again.
Speaker 2: I'd learned a lot from him, and.
Speaker 3: So I was preparing to go to that spot and
Speaker 3: then someone who was in the division slid over to
Speaker 3: that spot, so I wasn't able to get it. And
Speaker 3: he said, Hey, do you know this guy. This guy's
Speaker 3: name was Bill Steen. He was a marine recon guy.
Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, I know Bill. Always to
Speaker 3: work together. And he's like, hey, why don't you contact him?
Speaker 3: He works for the Missing Unexploited Children's Task Force. I
Speaker 3: think you could do a lot of good there. They
Speaker 3: do a lot of good work. And I didn't even
Speaker 3: really know what the task force was. There's this other
Speaker 3: group that they're called Missing an Unidentified Person's Unit and
Speaker 3: they deal with they do with dental records, trying to
Speaker 3: recover people. They manage the AMBER program and they used
Speaker 3: to put pictures on the side of semi trucks to
Speaker 3: look for missing kids. And that's what I thought it was,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't like that at all. So I went
Speaker 3: and cross trained with them. I went and went to
Speaker 3: a warrant and saw how they were doing things, and
Speaker 3: I thought, how can I have not known that we
Speaker 3: even do this, you know? And the other thing is
Speaker 3: how can people trade these images of these horrible things,
Speaker 3: of these kids getting raped? How can I didn't even
Speaker 3: know it was a thing. So I thought, yeah, I
Speaker 3: want to do this, this is this is what I
Speaker 3: need to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Carlos told you, I mean, you're an audio
Speaker 1: cut out on my end, but you said you were
Speaker 1: talking about how you got into into investigating crimes against
Speaker 1: children and you wanted to work with your buddy, but
Speaker 1: that to work out, and where where did you end up?
Speaker 1: Where did you end up landing?
Speaker 3: So I I had I was, I was working the
Speaker 3: road and it's called Bremerton, Washington. And then uh he
Speaker 3: had told me, He's like, hey, have you heard of
Speaker 3: the Missing and Exploited Children's Task Force or MECHTEFT? And
Speaker 3: I thought it was I thought it was this. We
Speaker 3: had another group in the patrol that would put pictures
Speaker 3: of missing kids on the side of semi trucks and
Speaker 3: then they mantled. They managed dental records, they managed the
Speaker 3: Amber Alert program. I thought it was that, which it was,
Speaker 3: and he's like, no, that's that's not the same outfit.
Speaker 3: I think you should go and cross train there. He
Speaker 3: asked me if I knew a guy named Bill Steen,
Speaker 3: who's an old marine marine recon guy, and I'd worked
Speaker 3: the road with him, and he said, uh, yeah, uh
Speaker 3: I know Bill. You should go spend some time with Bill.
Speaker 3: So I connected with Bill cross trained there. I went
Speaker 3: to a search warrant where it was for uh, this
Speaker 3: this guy. But there was a residence that was suspected
Speaker 3: of trading child sexual abuse material or see SAM.
Speaker 2: And the reason why I.
Speaker 3: Say residents is we had a cyber tip that there
Speaker 3: was a or that they had a cyber tip that
Speaker 3: those images were being traded from an IP address. So
Speaker 3: they had written a warrant for the residents that the
Speaker 3: IP address belonged to. So you don't really know who's
Speaker 3: trading inside. I mean, there may be some clues and
Speaker 3: you figure that out when you interview people, but you
Speaker 3: don't always know. So the warrant was for the residents
Speaker 3: to recover those images.
Speaker 2: So I went and cross trained, and then I learned.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know as a thing that people would
Speaker 3: trade these images of kids getting great videos photos.
Speaker 2: I just that was totally new to me.
Speaker 3: It's just disgusting, and I thought, this is something I
Speaker 3: could get behind, This is something I could go and
Speaker 3: try to hold these help hold these people accountable. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I interviewed for it and it ultimately got the position.
Speaker 1: And what was that position?
Speaker 2: So I was the sergeant in the State Patrol.
Speaker 3: If you are a part of a task force or detective,
Speaker 3: then you're called detective sergeant. So I managed that task force.
Speaker 2: And you know, and.
Speaker 3: I'd been in the narcotics task force where I had
Speaker 3: I had a prosecutor assigned to me.
Speaker 2: I had.
Speaker 3: Six or seven detectives. People knew what we did, multiple agencies,
Speaker 3: I had admin support. When I went to this task force,
Speaker 3: I didn't have any of that. It was myself. I
Speaker 3: think I had two detectives at the time, and then uh,
Speaker 3: because one was just about to retire, one from another agency,
Speaker 3: and then Bill, the guy i'd met, We had no
Speaker 3: admin support.
Speaker 2: They just cut it.
Speaker 3: And I'd learned that they were actually looking at cutting
Speaker 3: the task force. They were going to eliminate it, which
Speaker 3: ultimately that never happens because you know.
Speaker 2: What, what.
Speaker 3: Member of the House or the Senate is going to
Speaker 3: vote on eliminating a team even if even if they
Speaker 3: don't provide the support to make that team successful. Because
Speaker 3: we didn't have enough people, we couldn't even serve a
Speaker 3: warrant on our own. We always had to partner with
Speaker 3: other people, ask people to help us so we could
Speaker 3: serve a warrant safely. So, yeah, I was it wasn't
Speaker 3: the most ideal when I got there. There was a
Speaker 3: lot that it needed. Yeah, so we didn't have the
Speaker 3: appropriate funding.
Speaker 1: Pretty severely under resourced.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we had, I think myself enough for two detectives,
Speaker 3: and then Bill ended up getting getting out of there.
Speaker 3: He promoted, and then we recruited two other people. One
Speaker 3: was from the Narcotics Task Force I worked at because
Speaker 3: I knew what he was about, so I recruited him over.
Speaker 3: And then one other guy was a trooper who he
Speaker 3: didn't really know how to do any detective work. But
Speaker 3: the guy just he had potential and he was just motivated,
Speaker 3: so he was he was a good fit. And then
Speaker 3: we just we just worked cases, made friends, and that's
Speaker 3: how we got stuff done.
Speaker 2: In the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yes, so tell us about, like, you know, your first
Speaker 1: big case that you recall, and like, how did those
Speaker 1: leads come about? Do they come about like people calling
Speaker 1: the cops, like I think this guy's up to no good?
Speaker 1: Or is it like I don't know how it works internally?
Speaker 1: Cyber crime reports like this guy's trading illegal materials or
Speaker 1: how's that come about?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there are a number of ways, yes, that
Speaker 3: your community can call and report something. Then there's you
Speaker 3: can have someone who's out in the field, who's a
Speaker 3: beat cop trooper on the road. They may see something
Speaker 3: and then they call another detective in another area that
Speaker 3: they don't have necessarily have the expertise to work with that.
Speaker 2: So we'd get those cases.
Speaker 3: And then there's something called cyber tips, and those are
Speaker 3: let's say, if you saw something thing online and you
Speaker 3: thought this isn't right, or someone approached you like right
Speaker 3: now it's roadblocks. So let's say there was something with
Speaker 3: roadblocks that was inappropriate, you could you could report a
Speaker 3: cyber tip through the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children.
Speaker 3: It's called neck MAK or Missing Kids dot org. So
Speaker 3: you can go there report whatever that you're seeing and
Speaker 3: then that goes to that's the clearing house, and then
Speaker 3: when those reports, those reports come in, they're sent out
Speaker 3: to one of sixty one Internet Crimes against Children task
Speaker 3: Forces i CAACKS and my task force was an affiliate,
Speaker 3: an ICAC affiliate, so we didn't manage it. We didn't
Speaker 3: manage IKAK for the entire state, even though we worked
Speaker 3: cases all over.
Speaker 2: The state, but we didn't manage the IKAC.
Speaker 3: So we'd get we'd get cases, so we'd get cyber
Speaker 3: tips and then proactive work. So once you have the
Speaker 3: appropriate training, you can do undercover ops online, and we
Speaker 3: did a lot of that towards the let's say after
Speaker 3: I was there two or three years, we started doing
Speaker 3: doing a lot of the under online undercover ops.
Speaker 1: What were some of the first cases that you worked
Speaker 1: on when you got there?
Speaker 3: Oh, so, I'll say the one that comes to mind.
Speaker 2: That I think, well, there's two. One was a coach
Speaker 2: case that I had.
Speaker 3: It was a coach who was a wrestling coach and
Speaker 3: a football coach for for little little kids. And the
Speaker 3: reason why that sticks out so much in my mind
Speaker 3: is Bill had already left, he was a sergeant. He said, Hey,
Speaker 3: this buddy, I knew him from wrestling. He called me,
Speaker 3: his kids told him something and this is gonna be
Speaker 3: a good case, but you should talk to him tomorrow
Speaker 3: because he's really angry and he's drunk.
Speaker 2: He got The.
Speaker 3: Guy got loaded when he found out what happened, and
Speaker 3: one of his boys was ranked number one in state
Speaker 3: at the time for wrestling and his his weight class,
Speaker 3: and was just under a lot of stress. He had
Speaker 3: recently reconnected with his mom, who had been out of
Speaker 3: his life for a while. She she had shared something
Speaker 3: that had happened in his life that was tragic. So
Speaker 3: then he shared, Hey, this is what coach did to
Speaker 3: me and my brother. And he goes, but I'm okay,
Speaker 3: I'm a man, you know I can deal with it.
Speaker 2: She couldn't.
Speaker 3: She gonna handle it, So she ends up calling dad.
Speaker 3: Dad ends up calling us, so and that one, you know,
Speaker 3: he wasn't even trying to report it to disclose it.
Speaker 3: So when we went and met with him. But the
Speaker 3: thing why that, I mean, I have hundreds of cases
Speaker 3: like that, I mean, but the reason why this one
Speaker 3: sticks out is when I went and looked at the
Speaker 3: guy's Facebook, he was hugging a kid and the kid
Speaker 3: he was hugging, wasn't ended up not being a victim,
Speaker 3: but the kid he was hugging, My son was at
Speaker 3: this kid's house the weekend before. So I'm I'm freaking
Speaker 3: out because I'm like, did this you know, all these
Speaker 3: things are going through my head.
Speaker 2: Did this guy do anything to my kid? You know what?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: Who is do I know any of these other children?
Speaker 3: So that that one really stuck out. And the thing
Speaker 3: that really sucked about that case is all of the offenses,
Speaker 3: all the times that he had offended on this this
Speaker 3: young man when he was a boy. Was they were
Speaker 3: all out of state. They weren't in Washington from what
Speaker 3: we had, so it was when he'd go on wrestling trips.
Speaker 3: So it was in California. I believe Reno were the
Speaker 3: two where the two areas, so we didn't have anything
Speaker 3: in our area. So I'm I'm trying to work with
Speaker 3: the Feds to see if they can do something. I'm
Speaker 3: working with law enforcement down in California to try to
Speaker 3: get something going on. And then they was saying we
Speaker 3: only had the one because the other brother didn't want
Speaker 3: to disclose what it happened, didn't want to meet with me.
Speaker 3: So We're interviewing all these other people trying to get
Speaker 3: other things, and we start following, following this coach around
Speaker 3: because we have information he's going to go to Canada.
Speaker 2: He's going to leave to Canada.
Speaker 3: We're thinking eventually he's going to figure something out because
Speaker 3: we're asking these questions.
Speaker 2: So we're he was surveilanced on the guy following him.
Speaker 2: Call him in. We don't we can't arrest him.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get a warrant a restaurant from California,
Speaker 3: and I'm trying to work with the a U s A.
Speaker 3: But they want the other brother to disclose before they
Speaker 3: do something because.
Speaker 1: They want mores attorney the prosecutor.
Speaker 3: Yes, they want more, so we don't have enough. So
Speaker 3: but we follow this guy around for a couple hours,
Speaker 3: call him. He says he's three hours away, which of
Speaker 3: course he isn't because we're watching him.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Then he ends up agreeing to come in, so we
Speaker 3: interview him. We ask him all these questions, We take
Speaker 3: him through this this processed timeline, and UH.
Speaker 2: Through that we weren't able. We didn't. We weren't able
Speaker 2: to arrest him that day, and he ended up going
Speaker 2: to Canada.
Speaker 3: But because of that, the timeline that he gave us
Speaker 3: of all the places he lived in different places, we
Speaker 3: were able to interview other people. And we had a
Speaker 3: lot of the lot of UH kids that came forward
Speaker 3: who are now adults. Some of them were adults, some
Speaker 3: we're still kids. So we partnered with FBI. They actually
Speaker 3: flew in two of their child friends interviewers and we
Speaker 3: spent a week just interviewing, doing safety interviews with all
Speaker 3: these kids. And we had ten ten that came forward
Speaker 3: in that case. And then the guy fled. We ended
Speaker 3: up putting a we we're tracking that We had a
Speaker 3: if he were to cross the border back and forth,
Speaker 3: we'd be notified through HSI, and we tried to go
Speaker 3: up on the guy's phone.
Speaker 2: We weren't able.
Speaker 3: He wasn't using the phone any longer. So the other
Speaker 3: thing about this story is where he was staying. He
Speaker 3: was living with his mom when he was in Washington,
Speaker 3: and I knew the neighbor, so I told the neighbor,
Speaker 3: I said, hey, if you see this car show up,
Speaker 3: you got to call me because it's this is bad dude.
Speaker 2: And we won him.
Speaker 3: So she calls one night and says, hey, the cars here,
Speaker 3: so we set up on the on the place. We
Speaker 3: didn't get notified that he had crossed, so we set
Speaker 3: up on the house, see a guy that looks like
Speaker 3: him and it ends up not being the guy we like,
Speaker 3: end up pulling him over once we do takeaway, pull
Speaker 3: him over and he the guy who it was. This
Speaker 3: guy's uncle used to be a detective who worked the
Speaker 3: same cases that that we did, and he was actually
Speaker 3: one of the guys that helped write the law that
Speaker 3: created the task force. Also was kind of weird, but
Speaker 3: he said, yeah, the car, the guy's car is here
Speaker 3: because he got arrested in Montana and his they hadn't
Speaker 3: cleared his warrant yet, so we didn't know because yeah,
Speaker 3: he got he got arrested in Montana, so his parents
Speaker 3: went up picked up the car, brought it down here
Speaker 3: and goes there's there's a bunch of laptops in there
Speaker 3: and digital media in the car.
Speaker 2: So we ended up getting a warrant for that, and he
Speaker 2: ends up coming down. We ended up in getting charges
Speaker 2: on him.
Speaker 3: He didn't he didn't submit to another interview, but because
Speaker 3: of that first day when we were following him around
Speaker 3: and all the places he went we had seen him
Speaker 3: go to a storage unit, so we're able to get
Speaker 3: a warrant for the storage unit, and we searched through
Speaker 3: this whole. It was about the size of a one
Speaker 3: car garage, and the very last box in the back
Speaker 3: that we were in there were we recovered a bunch
Speaker 3: of child sexual abuse material that he had staved in
Speaker 3: the very We searched the whole thing, pulled everything out
Speaker 3: and that's where we found the material.
Speaker 2: That that case. The the reason why I think about
Speaker 2: that one because that one haunts me a little bit
Speaker 2: because there's one one kid in there. We found some
Speaker 2: images and we were never never able to identify who
Speaker 2: that kid was, so.
Speaker 3: That I mean that it really bugs me. It bothered
Speaker 3: me for a long time until this year recently because
Speaker 3: there's so many changes with with software and technology. The
Speaker 3: my detective he still works there, he says, hey, I
Speaker 3: think we found that kid. So I don't know if
Speaker 3: they've reached out to because me that he's an adult now,
Speaker 3: but at least see we can get him some resources
Speaker 3: and we knew that he had created. His name is
Speaker 3: Scott Carroll. He's in prison down in Oregon right now.
Speaker 3: But the reason why we knew it was him, and
Speaker 3: the images is he had this unique tattoo. He had
Speaker 3: a barbell on right here on his hand that was
Speaker 3: bent and it was in all the images, so we
Speaker 3: were able to track it to him. And we tried
Speaker 3: everything at the time to find that kid, and we
Speaker 3: had the GPS for his phone off all the towers.
Speaker 3: We looked to see where he was, the different timestamps.
Speaker 3: We contacted all the different school districts trying to identify
Speaker 3: who he was. And we went just up and down
Speaker 3: the I five corridor where he went and tried to
Speaker 3: see if we could identify this kid, and it just
Speaker 3: weren't able to do it at the time.
Speaker 2: But at least there's some closure now, so that's good.
Speaker 1: And you said, this guy's in prison now, thankfully. So
Speaker 1: this case did get prosecuted.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yes, yeah, I got prosecuted.
Speaker 3: We ended up working with law enforcement down in Oregon
Speaker 3: because some of the victims were from Oregon.
Speaker 2: So there he had offended on that.
Speaker 3: We know of people in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and
Speaker 3: we believe Canada, but we didn't get we didn't really
Speaker 3: get much feedback from from them.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like as an early case. You know,
Speaker 1: this one's a little haunting in the sense that you know,
Speaker 1: because of your personal connection, your son being at one
Speaker 1: of the victims' homes at at one point for just
Speaker 1: a normal you know, play day or whatever, that must
Speaker 1: have opened your eyes about how this stuff is all
Speaker 1: around us all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll tell you.
Speaker 3: You know, people always say, well, what like when you
Speaker 3: talk about crimes against you, it's everywhere.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are people out there.
Speaker 3: I mean we did our demand ops where people were
Speaker 3: seeking to have k sex with kids thirteen and younger.
Speaker 3: We'd average seven arrests a night doing that. And that
Speaker 3: was just that's not even that's not on the darknet.
Speaker 3: That was on Craigslist or these different apps where people
Speaker 3: want to meet each other.
Speaker 2: It was on those types of apps.
Speaker 3: And it's so it's easy as ordering pizza to get
Speaker 3: grabbing a door dash. I mean, that's that's how easy
Speaker 3: it was. And we could have worked around the clock.
Speaker 3: I just didn't have the resources because when you work
Speaker 3: those cases, you have to worry about one your people,
Speaker 3: uh and the fatigue of your people, because if you
Speaker 3: don't manage that, they're going to start to make little mistakes,
Speaker 3: they're gonna maybe they maybe it increases the chance of
Speaker 3: a use of force, Maybe they missed something in a report.
Speaker 3: And then someone gets off on some little you know,
Speaker 3: a problem that could have been avoided. Someone doesn't make
Speaker 3: the right decision, someone doesn't review something and they miss something.
Speaker 3: So we would when we built those teams and we're
Speaker 3: doing those operations, we would make sure that we we
Speaker 3: scheduled it a certain way.
Speaker 2: We'd cap it at a certain time.
Speaker 3: If there was a target that we needed to handle
Speaker 3: later that night or early in the morning, we'd have
Speaker 3: we'd pull a small team together and we'd focus on
Speaker 3: that so we can keep going.
Speaker 2: And we do those ops about a week at a time.
Speaker 2: When I was there, that's what we would do.
Speaker 1: So And what was that other case you mentioned from
Speaker 1: those early days that kind of stands out for you.
Speaker 3: Uh, there's another one where I'd say I'd been in
Speaker 3: there a couple of months in the Task force, and uh,
Speaker 3: but my buddy Bill called me and said, hey, we
Speaker 3: got a really bad one. And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'll drive in. He's like, no, no, you don't need
Speaker 3: to come in. We can we can handle it tomorrow.
Speaker 3: And I was like, well he cuss on here. I
Speaker 3: was like, well, you know, fuck dude.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: I was like, fuck dude, everything we do is bad,
Speaker 3: you know, and you're calling me. He's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: it's it's fine. We had a lot of cases going on.
Speaker 3: He was working a case, investigating a retired cop like that,
Speaker 3: was doing stuff. So I mean, we're doing everything. So
Speaker 3: I stayed home, went in the next day, went in early,
Speaker 3: read the cyber tip, and it was just horrific. It
Speaker 3: was these two they're like practically kids, they're in their twenties.
Speaker 3: They're on this application where they just go and meet
Speaker 3: each other. They can show pictures, they could do the
Speaker 3: live kind of like how TikTok is now, but as
Speaker 3: one of the earlier applications, and they're talking about doing
Speaker 3: things with their kids.
Speaker 2: Like she had a little baby boy who was six
Speaker 2: months old. So some of the contents pretty graphic, I'll
Speaker 2: sanitize it. But and then.
Speaker 3: The other guy was doing stuff with his sister and
Speaker 3: brother and then animals that were on the farm, and
Speaker 3: they were sharing these images. And she had shared an
Speaker 3: image with something that she had made with her kid.
Speaker 3: And so when I saw that, and I was new
Speaker 3: that this was the first time. I'll say it affected me.
Speaker 3: I mean I had to take a breath. Luckily, I'm
Speaker 3: glad I was the only one that I could come
Speaker 3: in early, so no one was there to see that
Speaker 3: it how it was affecting me, and I thought, we
Speaker 3: got to get this kid. I mean, I should have
Speaker 3: been out yesterday. So I called Bill and I was like, man,
Speaker 3: we gotta go get this kid. So on that case,
Speaker 3: I actually partner with someone else in our crew was
Speaker 3: great at interviewing because Bill was working.
Speaker 2: This other case with this former cop.
Speaker 3: And we had two addresses that were about about an
Speaker 3: hour from where my office was in one to two
Speaker 3: hours if I remember correctly, from each other. So we
Speaker 3: set up on one place to try to find the
Speaker 3: mom first because she had the youngest child and wasn't there.
Speaker 3: So then we went to another city, it's called Montesano,
Speaker 3: and we set up on the house and didn't see anything.
Speaker 3: But then my other detective who was with me, there
Speaker 3: was a soccer game or something and he saw a
Speaker 3: cop that he knew, and so we went talked to
Speaker 3: him and he's like, hey, do you know about this house.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, I know. The landlord, So call the landlord.
Speaker 3: Ended up, yes, she lives there, So we went out
Speaker 3: real early the next morning, ended up grabbing her and
Speaker 3: the kid off a bus.
Speaker 2: There was a school bus.
Speaker 3: While we had made contact at the residence and then
Speaker 3: interviewed her and she remember when we interviewed her, she
Speaker 3: was so matter of fact about what she had done,
Speaker 3: the different things that she was involved in. And actually
Speaker 3: later after that case, I went back and interviewed her
Speaker 3: in prison. I met with her a couple of times
Speaker 3: and she helped me develop my undercover role because I
Speaker 3: played the part of a mom with kids. But she
Speaker 3: she helped me with that.
Speaker 1: So we because when you interviewed her the first time,
Speaker 1: that like she felt that you were sitting there judging her. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So when we do interviews, we would have a
Speaker 3: one and a two. So if you're the one in
Speaker 3: an interview, you're the one who's asking most of the
Speaker 3: questions and explaining everything to the person. The two usually
Speaker 3: takes notes and then we'll come in and ask questions.
Speaker 3: That's how we were trained. So I was the two,
Speaker 3: and so I just really just sat there the whole
Speaker 3: time and listened because my detective is doing a great job,
Speaker 3: and she was just engaging with him, talking back and forth.
Speaker 3: We're getting the evidence that we needed, and so I
Speaker 3: didn't really say anything. Then we went back and talked
Speaker 3: to her and she's like, you you you just sat
Speaker 3: there the whole time and you judged me. And I thought, what, well,
Speaker 3: here's and then I explained what I just explained to
Speaker 3: you to her and she's like, well, you need to
Speaker 3: tell the people that you are talking to. You need
Speaker 3: to tell them that because that will help you. So
Speaker 3: we actually started to do that. So when we did interviews,
Speaker 3: we'd introduce ourselves, we talk about what's going on, do
Speaker 3: they have any questions, asked the questions, and we just
Speaker 3: told them what.
Speaker 2: We were doing to a certain you know sometimes yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we'd go through that and then say, you know,
Speaker 3: if you see me write something down and then scratch
Speaker 3: it off, that's because you already answered the question. So
Speaker 3: you know, don't think we're judging you in any way.
Speaker 3: So that's what we would do, just a real empathetic approach.
Speaker 1: Well, I take it you were trained on the read
Speaker 1: interrogation method.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we did read and I'll say, with uh,
Speaker 3: with interviewing, I think you really should take go to
Speaker 3: as many interview courses as you can, and you really
Speaker 3: need to develop your own style. The one that I
Speaker 3: really like that really changed how I interview people. It's
Speaker 3: called the guy's name is doctor Joe Sullivan. He's from
Speaker 3: Ireland and he trains people on how to interview people
Speaker 3: who are sexually attracted to kids. And he goes into
Speaker 3: the different behavioral analysis of different people and the personas
Speaker 3: that they would be present to you, whether they're a
Speaker 3: good guy, person of status, if it's a power control,
Speaker 3: what type of power control, more of a sadist, versus
Speaker 3: you can have someone else who's it is just about
Speaker 3: it is more about the sex or versus just the pain.
Speaker 3: So just these different different ways of these people may
Speaker 3: present to you this way. If you see this and
Speaker 3: you identify this, then these questions may work and these
Speaker 3: questions most likely won't. And going that approach and seeing
Speaker 3: how it changes, and then you can also use that
Speaker 3: when you're chatting undercover, because you're getting an idea of
Speaker 3: what type of person they're presenting and then seeing how
Speaker 3: they present when you're actually they've been caught and you're.
Speaker 2: Talking to them.
Speaker 3: So I think if you you know, you take that
Speaker 3: and that works can work for anything, not just sex predators.
Speaker 2: But I think you take.
Speaker 3: That, you take read, you take whatever whatever other trainings
Speaker 3: you've gone to, and you really develop your own, your
Speaker 3: own style so you can have a conversation. And I
Speaker 3: train on interviewing on these types of cases. And that's
Speaker 3: really what I what I try to push is you know,
Speaker 3: if you're here for my course, it's not I'm not
Speaker 3: going to teach you all of these things because if
Speaker 3: you do the read method and let's say you step
Speaker 3: you miss one of the steps, defense is going to
Speaker 3: try to attack you on that because you didn't do
Speaker 3: all of these things right. So as long as you
Speaker 3: can articulate it, you're usually okay. But sometimes your prosecutor
Speaker 3: is not as good. It's not going to ask the
Speaker 3: right question back if you can't get that information out.
Speaker 3: So really put something together and develop your style and
Speaker 3: then always improve and then just realizes when you interview somebody,
Speaker 3: really what you're doing is you're creating a roadmap for
Speaker 3: the prosecutor so when the case goes to them. Because
Speaker 3: I remember when I was new and we'd go to
Speaker 3: trial or whatever, and I'd have this I thought it
Speaker 3: was this great interview and it got the guy to
Speaker 3: say all this stuff. And then they wouldn't put me
Speaker 3: on for the interviewer. They wouldn't show the video. And
Speaker 3: I was like, why I did such a great job,
Speaker 3: why didn't you do this? And he's like, well, think
Speaker 3: of it this way. That's you're giving me the roadmap.
Speaker 3: You're giving me all the tools to ask the questions.
Speaker 3: If I put you on, the guy's not going to
Speaker 3: go on the stand. If I do this, there's a
Speaker 3: better chance that he's going to go on stand, and
Speaker 3: then I.
Speaker 2: Can ask all these questions while he's on the stand.
Speaker 3: And I was really helpful just learning from I've been
Speaker 3: very fortunate to work with a lot of different prosecutors
Speaker 3: since I got to go all around the state and
Speaker 3: just learn a lot from from them because it's really
Speaker 3: a team effort.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think I got off a tangent there.
Speaker 1: No, it's all good, Okay. I love the techniques and
Speaker 1: the trade craft. But as I recall, on this case,
Speaker 1: you guys did pick up the boyfriends too, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So after we recovered the little boy and the
Speaker 3: mom mom went to jail, then we needed to find
Speaker 3: the other guy's name was Chris, So we need to
Speaker 3: find Chris, and he was about an hour away. So
Speaker 3: same scenario. There were two houses that we had identified
Speaker 3: that he may be at, So I set up on
Speaker 3: one in an area called Spanaway, Washington. It's outside of Tacoma, Washington.
Speaker 3: And then the other house was actually close to our
Speaker 3: district headquarters in between pew All Up Lakewood area in
Speaker 3: Washington State, and so we had people with eyes on there.
Speaker 3: I had eyes on in the other house, but we
Speaker 3: were we were spread. Then I didn't have many people,
Speaker 3: so were trying to get people to the area.
Speaker 2: And then we had.
Speaker 3: The detective was sitting at the PD getting ready to
Speaker 3: he was working on the warrant for the two locations.
Speaker 3: So Chris ends up rolling by and I see him
Speaker 3: at the house. So I'm like, hey, I got eyes
Speaker 3: on this guy, send me another leave someone with eyes
Speaker 3: on there, how far out of the other guys, so
Speaker 3: that we can go do a knock and.
Speaker 2: Talk on on on the house.
Speaker 3: And because I wanted to recover the phone when he
Speaker 3: when he parked and exited, he was on he was
Speaker 3: on an iPhone and we knew he had communicated. She
Speaker 3: said he had an iPhone and they had exchanged these images,
Speaker 3: so we wanted that piece of evidence. But yeah, so
Speaker 3: we ended up we ended up getting Chris and finding
Speaker 3: evidive evidence of he had received the image he had there.
Speaker 3: Through the search warrants, we found things he had done,
Speaker 3: horrible things he had done to his sister.
Speaker 2: He was I had conversations.
Speaker 1: He had his sister's panties in a box under the bed.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, yeah, okay, he did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you guys got him, Thank god. You know
Speaker 1: the thing I want to ask you too, from your
Speaker 1: experience in doing these interviews, and part of the interview
Speaker 1: process is you have to try to empathize with them
Speaker 1: a little bit to get them to open up. And
Speaker 1: I know that's a that's an interview technique. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you have a lot of insight. And
Speaker 1: I realize the average American has an attitude and I
Speaker 1: understand where it comes from, of course, of like we
Speaker 1: should just shoot these people in the street.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: You and people like you come to understand who these
Speaker 1: criminals are and why they do the things that they
Speaker 1: do in some cases, And I want to ask you about,
Speaker 1: like what insights you took away from that because it
Speaker 1: seems like there are two types of people. There are
Speaker 1: somes that are abused as children and they become abusers themselves,
Speaker 1: and then there's another type of person that gets abused
Speaker 1: and they come to the conclusion that I would never
Speaker 1: ever put another person through that. I want to know
Speaker 1: what your take is on it and what you think
Speaker 1: about all this.
Speaker 3: I'll say from my experience, well, a couple of things
Speaker 3: is there are some studies that try to support statistics
Speaker 3: on you know, what's more prevalent, but really it's a
Speaker 3: lot of that's unless it's documented that something happened to
Speaker 3: that person. You're having to listen, you know, are they
Speaker 3: telling you the truth or sure?
Speaker 2: Right? So, what I will.
Speaker 3: Say from my experience that if someone is offended upon,
Speaker 3: it does not mean that they're going to become someone
Speaker 3: that abuses another person or offends on someone. But from
Speaker 3: what I've seen is there have been a lot of
Speaker 3: people who have are abusing kids that they were abused,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense, there is more likely than not
Speaker 3: that did happen. From from what I've seen the people
Speaker 3: who have who I've talked to when they said some
Speaker 3: people they deny it. And then also like the training
Speaker 3: I went through with doctor Sullivan, he's he's a psycho
Speaker 3: psychiatrist or a psychologists, so when people talk to him,
Speaker 3: they're not looking at they're already arrested, so it's easier
Speaker 3: for them to be more forthright versus me and the
Speaker 3: law enforce. And that my capacity is a law enforcement
Speaker 3: officer interviewing them about things that even if I'm being
Speaker 3: successful with them giving me evidence, they still know the
Speaker 3: things I'm saying are it's going to get me in trouble,
Speaker 3: so they're they're not always as as forthright.
Speaker 1: Mm. And as time goes on, you started doing a
Speaker 1: lot of these I don't want to call them entrapment
Speaker 1: operations because because it's in trouble, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the law enforcement term is. But you're out there trying
Speaker 1: to kind of bait in potential predators and catch them
Speaker 1: before they're able to do something really bad, sort of
Speaker 1: the what's his face Chris Hansen, Uh, Yeah, that's operations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what everybody relates to what we used to do,
Speaker 3: except I think, well, first off, the major difference I
Speaker 3: think is when somebody shows up to rape a kid
Speaker 3: that's thirteen and younger, because that's what we focused on.
Speaker 3: The youngest was three years old. That someone showed up
Speaker 3: to try to do something to a child is we
Speaker 3: don't have a reporter there that's there to interview it.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of those cases, I don't know
Speaker 3: I'd have to do, I'd never have verified it. But
Speaker 3: I don't think a lot of them were held accountable
Speaker 3: as compared to like with us the cases we did.
Speaker 3: And we had a lot of challenges about it to
Speaker 3: say that we were entrapping and things like that. But
Speaker 3: and watch the state. When people show up, they have
Speaker 3: to take a substantial step up. And oftentimes these people
Speaker 3: took multiple substantial steps and then just leaving a way
Speaker 3: out where you know, they don't they don't have to
Speaker 3: show up. You know, we're not We're not We're not
Speaker 3: coercing them into doing this. These are things that they're
Speaker 3: set out to do. When we first started doing those ops,
Speaker 3: we did it on Craigslist and in an area called
Speaker 3: It's It's no longer there was they they Craigslist got
Speaker 3: rid of the section when Backpage went down around that
Speaker 3: same time, and and we'd go into an area called
Speaker 3: casual Encounters, and it's an area specifically designed for people
Speaker 3: wanting to hook up. So you're already there people talking
Speaker 3: about sex, and there was everything in this place.
Speaker 1: The people want to run of the mill prostitution as well.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: It could be people, you know, persons that are potentially trafficked,
Speaker 3: for people that are selling selling themselves for money. It
Speaker 3: could be hey, I'm I'm kinky, I'm looking, I'm looking
Speaker 3: to do this, and there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 3: it was kinky as fush, but it was legal, right,
Speaker 3: so and we're not that wasn't our focus, right, Our
Speaker 3: focus was you know, and when we first did it.
Speaker 3: So how I found out about doing this is I
Speaker 3: went to this training and I saw somebody do do
Speaker 3: something they were out of I believe it was Florida.
Speaker 3: I saw too, but I think with one of our
Speaker 3: remembers Florida, and they were doing and the ages were older,
Speaker 3: and I thought we could do something like this for
Speaker 3: younger because a lot of the images I'm seeing, you know,
Speaker 3: they're not all from a third world country of Eastern Europe,
Speaker 3: they're from here. We're seeing images from here. Or these
Speaker 3: kids that are running away and that are being trafficked,
Speaker 3: you know, what are they running from and where are
Speaker 3: they going? So there has to be a demand for this.
Speaker 3: You know, people are this is going on. And I
Speaker 3: remember the first time I posted an ad on Craigslist.
Speaker 3: It was one was flagged within about ten minutes. But
Speaker 3: I had hundreds of responses like that, and I thought
Speaker 3: we were going to fail. You know, when I was
Speaker 3: planning it, I was like, I got together with my
Speaker 3: old Drug Task Force unit, said hey, I don't have
Speaker 3: the bodies. Can you guys be arrest team surveillance. I'm
Speaker 3: already familiar with the prosecutor there. You know, what do
Speaker 3: you think about trying this in that area? First we
Speaker 3: got two apartments. One was our command post, the other
Speaker 3: one is where we'd send the people and where the
Speaker 3: mom would answer the door. And so we kind of
Speaker 3: we kind of ran it that way, and I thought,
Speaker 3: and I told them, I was like, hey, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know if people are going to show up,
Speaker 3: but we want to try to see if this would work.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it was. It was like Gangbusters. It was crazy.
Speaker 2: I think out of.
Speaker 3: The I participated in sixteen of the ops before I
Speaker 3: went to back to the go of detail, and I
Speaker 3: think the most at one was like twenty nine people
Speaker 3: within a four or five day period that we arrested.
Speaker 3: So and you look at the cases. I mean, they're
Speaker 3: used to not testify a lot when we work these cases.
Speaker 3: But these cases in Washington State, the what they were
Speaker 3: looking at, if for a temp rape of a child
Speaker 3: at the time, I don't know if the laws changed,
Speaker 3: but at the time, if it was eleven and younger,
Speaker 3: they were looking at potentially ten years to life because
Speaker 3: they're indeterminate sentences in Washington State sent them off to
Speaker 3: this island. They have an island in Washington where they
Speaker 3: go this Sexual Assessment Center or I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: what it's called, but it's on McNeil Island. And then
Speaker 3: but if it's ages twelve through thirteen, then it's five
Speaker 3: years to life that they can get. So we went
Speaker 3: to trial a lot more and the cases were solid.
Speaker 3: They're challenged. They went all the way up. We had
Speaker 3: some go all the way up to our Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: But the case law was good. There were some things
Speaker 3: where we learned, Okay, don't do it necessarily that way,
Speaker 3: we should maybe do it this way. And you know,
Speaker 3: you have to change and learn learn from that, you know,
Speaker 3: lessons learned. But overall, when you read the cases, I mean,
Speaker 3: what these people are showing up to do and the
Speaker 3: things that they say, Yeah, it's it's terrific and it's easy.
Speaker 3: I went and taught something down in Oregon, a class
Speaker 3: on how to run the ops at a conference, and
Speaker 3: I said, you guys want to see how easy it is.
Speaker 3: I pulled out the iPad, put my undercover persona on there.
Speaker 3: We had someone offer us. He had a choice. He
Speaker 3: wanted two girls. Ended up only doing oneting one and
Speaker 3: it was offering or I was. I was playing the
Speaker 3: part of a thirteen year old runaway and offered her
Speaker 3: two hundred bucks to meet. So got with the prosecutor
Speaker 3: and an officer that was there that worked in the unit,
Speaker 3: and they had actually this was a target of theirs
Speaker 3: that they hadn't got before. So they ended up arresting
Speaker 3: him two days later. So I mean, it's it's just
Speaker 3: that easy.
Speaker 1: Exact What was that difficult for you to, like, you're
Speaker 1: literally having a role play everything from a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old runaway to a mother or father that's trying to
Speaker 1: prostitute their children. Was that kind of like difficult for
Speaker 1: you to play that role.
Speaker 4: I'll say I wish I could say yes, But I
Speaker 4: think being surrounded with all of that material when you're
Speaker 4: doing the work, you have the subject matter.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're when you work those cases, you're you're
Speaker 3: just surrounded by this. It's just shit. I mean it's ugly.
Speaker 3: That's why it's called the ugly underneath. I call it
Speaker 3: the ugly. I mean you're just surrounded by ugliness. And
Speaker 3: so it was I had the subject matter to pull
Speaker 3: from to play the role.
Speaker 2: I think the part that was was difficult. Well, there
Speaker 2: were a couple things.
Speaker 3: One not getting not having that stuff stick to you
Speaker 3: so that you're thinking about it all the time, not
Speaker 3: becoming really skeptical and thinking everybody is like this because
Speaker 3: I'm in it all the time. And I had to
Speaker 3: remind myself not everyone wants to do this, you know,
Speaker 3: because I'm deep in it. And then so I had
Speaker 3: to I had to correct my thinking to know, hey,
Speaker 3: this is not how the world is. I'm here because
Speaker 3: I'm in this world trying to do this, but not
Speaker 3: everyone's like this. There there are good people out there.
Speaker 2: And then I think it was just dealing with it.
Speaker 3: And what you do is you start to oh, sorry,
Speaker 3: that's my cat getting paid or getting getting food. So
Speaker 3: I uh, I think for me it was sorry, I
Speaker 3: didn't know that was going to go on. But for
Speaker 3: me it was you start to turn off your emotions
Speaker 3: so you can deal with this. And I just think
Speaker 3: it happens. I mean, I'm sure with and I listened.
Speaker 3: I didn't finish your book by I listened to your
Speaker 3: book and listen to your podcast. But just some of
Speaker 3: the things I've here is, you know you have to
Speaker 3: in order to do the work, you have the capacity
Speaker 3: to do the work, you have to shut certain things
Speaker 3: off so you can do it.
Speaker 2: And to protect your lot.
Speaker 1: And disassociate from certain things.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think that the thing that I had an
Speaker 3: issue with is when I tried to turn things back on,
Speaker 3: it didn't always work, and I really I just became disassociated.
Speaker 3: I didn't it was hard for me to feel certain things.
Speaker 3: I compassion fatigue.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I would think, oh, well, I'm dealing with real problems,
Speaker 3: and I'd go home and you know, my wife's telling
Speaker 3: me about her day or my kids, and I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, those aren't problems.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So I had the compassion fatigue where I didn't really
Speaker 3: I wasn't really there for them to try to help
Speaker 3: them deal.
Speaker 2: With what they needed needed to do. So that was
Speaker 2: was difficult in an area that I think I could
Speaker 2: have done done better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I want to ask you more about that,
Speaker 1: about kind of the psychological toll that it takes on
Speaker 1: on the police that do this. You know, you're you're
Speaker 1: wearing your t shirt for the International Association of Human
Speaker 1: Trafficking Investigators and I got invited down to one of
Speaker 1: their symposiums years ago and it was a huge eye
Speaker 1: opener for me. I remember afterwards sitting down with one
Speaker 1: of the cops and talking to him about, you know,
Speaker 1: what his job is, and he he told me, he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, this morning, I walked out into the beach.
Speaker 1: This is out in Tampa, and he's like, I just
Speaker 1: looked out at the ocean and I just thought, it
Speaker 1: feels so good to not have to look at kiddie
Speaker 1: porn today. And Yeah, that's like struck me, Like, imagine
Speaker 1: what this dude's day to day life is like. That
Speaker 1: this conference is like a break from from the horrible
Speaker 1: stuff that he has to see all the time. So
Speaker 1: I can only imagine what the police officers go through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I you know, I was just talking to a guy.
Speaker 3: I'm going to a conference in April, and I was
Speaker 3: talking to the person who handles the vendors and I
Speaker 3: actually told him about the book and he's like wow.
Speaker 2: He goes, uh, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I used to work those cases, and you know,
Speaker 3: I wish, I wish I would have. I was telling
Speaker 3: you about this training. It's called the Shift Training. It's
Speaker 3: by the Innocent Justice Innocent Justice Foundation. They provide mental
Speaker 3: health and wellness for people who do this type of
Speaker 3: work and they travel around a different conferences and I
Speaker 3: was telling him about it and he's like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: never got to go to any of that. He goes,
Speaker 3: I wish I would have done that. And it's just
Speaker 3: it's something that I know, at least our task force,
Speaker 3: it was mandatory, so we'd go. And I know that
Speaker 3: I capt task forces want you to do it, but
Speaker 3: I just don't think everybody does it. And I know
Speaker 3: with me doing the work, I tried to be a
Speaker 3: really good example for my people and take care of
Speaker 3: my people, but I didn't always follow what I said
Speaker 3: to do, and that took a a toll. You know,
Speaker 3: about taking breaks when having that disconnect for when you're
Speaker 3: looking at that material and you work in the cases,
Speaker 3: you know, you bring that stuff home, but having a
Speaker 3: built in process so that you have a break before
Speaker 3: you go home so you can be present for your family.
Speaker 3: And because really, I mean, I don't know, do you
Speaker 3: have kids. Yeah, yeah, So when you go home. You
Speaker 3: used to go home and you say, hey, give me
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes. I mean, you don't ever get the fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: And that's because they want to see, you know, a
Speaker 3: dad's home. They're happy, they want to tell you about
Speaker 3: their day, they want to do these things. They love
Speaker 3: you and your significant other that it's the same thing.
Speaker 3: So you don't always get that. So we had built
Speaker 3: something in where if you before you went home, you
Speaker 3: had to have at least two hours where you weren't
Speaker 3: focused on any of that stuff. You do something else,
Speaker 3: you do where you're not looking at the images, you're
Speaker 3: not looking at the ugly you're doing something. And then
Speaker 3: we had an hour commute home, so it was an
Speaker 3: hour at the end of the day. Then you we
Speaker 3: had to drive home and then you you go and
Speaker 3: you be with your fans.
Speaker 1: You go and get like an iced tea, at Dunkin
Speaker 1: Donuts or something, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I like, I mean, I was worked in
Speaker 3: you know, near Seattle, so a big Starbucks thing up there.
Speaker 2: My daughter worked for Starbucks for a time.
Speaker 3: So I'd go to Starbucks and I'd get I don't
Speaker 3: drink coffee, don't. I just never liked it, but I
Speaker 3: drink tea. So I would go there, I'd get a tea.
Speaker 3: I'd park behind. There was a Sizzler there, so I'd
Speaker 3: parked behind the Sizzlers and I'd just play this little game.
Speaker 3: I think they still have a clash of clans. It's
Speaker 3: like this dumb game. So I'd play that for a
Speaker 3: little bit, get my head straight, and then i'd uh.
Speaker 3: I'd drive home and i'd see, you know, my kids,
Speaker 3: and and I I wish I could say I did
Speaker 3: that every day because I think that would have helped
Speaker 3: me get my my head on straight and be present
Speaker 3: for them.
Speaker 2: When we switched offices, because that's when we were in Olympi, Washington.
Speaker 2: We ended up being co located with the FBI's se
Speaker 2: their c TEFT, and.
Speaker 3: So the child explotation tasks for us, and that changed
Speaker 3: my routine of going home. There wasn't a Starbucks on
Speaker 3: the way home. So I noticed, well, actually it was
Speaker 3: my ex wife. She noticed that I was angry. It
Speaker 3: was a lot angrier. Sometimes I take things out on
Speaker 3: her or the kids. I'd like snap at them or
Speaker 3: something like that. And then she brought it to my attention,
Speaker 3: and then I changed for a little bit, but I
Speaker 3: went back to what I was doing.
Speaker 2: I really, I really wasn't.
Speaker 3: I hold myself accountable with my own mental illness as
Speaker 3: much as I think as I could have.
Speaker 1: It's hard when you're when you're in it, and you
Speaker 1: feel such a sense of urgency, right that you're seeing
Speaker 1: these kids that are victimized, and you know for reasons
Speaker 1: that you can kind of write off in your mind.
Speaker 1: You're like, I have, I'm sacrificing family life because I'm
Speaker 1: on this you know, righteous mission and finding that balance
Speaker 1: is something that's so hard and most of us don't
Speaker 1: get it, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's that's one of the reasons why so
Speaker 3: this whole, this whole book journeys I I. I actually
Speaker 3: was writing it to try to write my own ship.
Speaker 2: It wasn't to write a.
Speaker 1: Book experience and contextual.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was going to therapy and she was like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, have you ever thought that maybe some people
Speaker 3: could learn from this if you were to share this
Speaker 3: and you could write a book or do a blog.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, yeah, I'll write a book.
Speaker 2: And then I just started to talk about it.
Speaker 3: And so that's how that's how this journey started and
Speaker 3: where I'm at now. But but yeah, I think I
Speaker 3: think I have found that people who do this work,
Speaker 3: they tend to be very selfless and they're helping all
Speaker 3: of these other people that they don't even really know
Speaker 3: their life of service. But there I found that they
Speaker 3: can be kind of self selfish because they're keeping themselves
Speaker 3: away from those who do love them, their family, and
Speaker 3: and it's that's one of the things I talk about
Speaker 3: is you just be be mindful that you have to
Speaker 3: carve out time and have the conversations with the people
Speaker 3: that love you so that they can they can help
Speaker 3: you stay on your mission, right, because if you take breaks,
Speaker 3: you take care of yourself, you're actually going to be
Speaker 3: better at what you're setting out to do instead of
Speaker 3: just burning out and making you know, or it can just.
Speaker 2: You can just make some horrible mistakes. You just it
Speaker 2: just can eat you up to.
Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, before I want to get deeper into some
Speaker 1: of the fallout, but before we move on to the
Speaker 1: next part of your career, are any other big cases
Speaker 1: from this time that kind of stand out that you'd
Speaker 1: like to talk about?
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean there are tons, Uh. I think
Speaker 3: the demands, the demand ones we did, we were pretty
Speaker 3: cool just because of what we did and the different
Speaker 3: people that we saw. I'm trying to think of another
Speaker 3: one that would be good to share. There there was
Speaker 3: a so there are I already talked about one where
Speaker 3: there's a female offender.
Speaker 2: There aren't. There aren't. You don't always hear a lot
Speaker 2: of female offenders. And there was one case that I
Speaker 2: had I just finished an up.
Speaker 3: With I think we had we had arrested twenty two
Speaker 3: people or something like that, and I get a call
Speaker 3: from from our FBI officer and our agent and he says, hey,
Speaker 3: Los so my nicknames Los short for Carlos. Hey can
Speaker 3: you talk to there was another TFO Task Force officer.
Speaker 3: Can you talk to him and help him out? We've
Speaker 3: we've got something here. And I was like, and I
Speaker 3: I really don't have the time, you know, I'm putting
Speaker 3: all this stuff together. I got to get it for
Speaker 3: the prosecutor's office. So he's like he just hear him out.
Speaker 3: So I get on the phone with him, same as Ryan.
Speaker 3: I get on the phone with them, and he takes
Speaker 3: me through that he has a CI that was who's
Speaker 3: a sex offender who's talking to and they're trying to
Speaker 3: recover a juvenile who's who's potentially being trafficked by this person.
Speaker 2: Who's a female. And uh So.
Speaker 3: As they're talking, the CI says, hey, man, this this lady.
Speaker 3: She's like, she's like looking to she wants to have
Speaker 3: sex with kids. She talks about hurting animals, like all
Speaker 3: this weird stuff. And I remember, as he's talking to me,
Speaker 3: just thinking, One, I got all this stuff I got
Speaker 3: to deal with, and I gotta turn these cases over.
Speaker 3: But if I don't take this case, then what's going
Speaker 3: to happen? And then if nobody does this, then if
Speaker 3: something happens and she finds a kid, then it's my fault.
Speaker 3: So so I need to do this. So I told
Speaker 3: the guys like, yeah, I'll do it. So I get
Speaker 3: we have we have a software program where I generated
Speaker 3: a phone number for him to use to give and
Speaker 3: then I was going to be the bad actor who
Speaker 3: had access to to two little girls for this this
Speaker 3: girl so within she hit me up pretty quick and
Speaker 3: we start we start talking. We end up setting up
Speaker 3: a meet and she wanted to have she wanted to
Speaker 3: have these kids drugged, these two little girls drugged, and
Speaker 3: we're talking, you know, pre pbescent kids.
Speaker 1: And who are set up? God in this case?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, so when And that's good to point out.
Speaker 3: So when we're when we're doing these cases, we're not
Speaker 3: offering it. We're not using real kids there. Now, I
Speaker 3: will say, when we've worked these ops and looking at
Speaker 3: the evidence after the fact, we're not just arresting all
Speaker 3: these people and then we're done. You're looking through digital evidence,
Speaker 3: digital media looking for potential of is there a live victim?
Speaker 3: Have they been hands on that's what we call it,
Speaker 3: hands on with somebody? Uh And actually the first person
Speaker 3: that we ever arrested doing this, it took two years
Speaker 3: before the kids disclosed, but they disclosed what had happened.
Speaker 3: So we we have had instances where we're removing these
Speaker 3: kids from harm and getting them the services and resources
Speaker 3: that they need. So but in this instance, but the
Speaker 3: person that was live is she was potentially trying to
Speaker 3: traffic this other this other girl.
Speaker 2: I believe she was sixteen.
Speaker 3: And so the goal was we had identified who she was,
Speaker 3: try to recover the trafficked girl, and then get her
Speaker 3: on see if she's done anything with any other kids,
Speaker 3: and then and bring her in for what she was
Speaker 3: trying to do with.
Speaker 2: These these two young kids. So she ends up, she agreed,
Speaker 2: She ends up showing up.
Speaker 3: She brings some cash, not a ton of cash, to
Speaker 3: pay for the acts, and then she brings all of
Speaker 3: these sex toys like she she had dildo glass, dildo's speculum,
Speaker 3: all these clamps that she could put on her body.
Speaker 3: And then just went through the interview with her, and
Speaker 3: she was she was a statist. So she was really
Speaker 3: someone who enjoyed.
Speaker 2: The I think the pain of it.
Speaker 3: And she she had she was someone who had been
Speaker 3: abused growing up something that she had had a horrible life.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't I'm a firm believer that that does
Speaker 3: not give you any a pass to be able.
Speaker 2: To do this, right. So so yeah, she she I
Speaker 2: don't remember she did I think eight years eight years
Speaker 2: in prison. She's still in prison, and she was early twenties.
Speaker 2: Jesus that showed up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, one of the things, one of the other
Speaker 1: things that jumped out at me from that conference as
Speaker 1: far as the difficulty in prosecuting these cases was that,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously, when a minor is abused by somebody
Speaker 1: who's like a parent or someone who's in the circle
Speaker 1: of trust, it creates a whole added dimension of difficulty
Speaker 1: in getting the victim to disclose. But even when you
Speaker 1: have a woman who is being trafficked by a pimp
Speaker 1: who is either very violent or very manipulative or both,
Speaker 1: that many times when law enforcement moves in and makes
Speaker 1: the rests that the victims don't see themselves as victims,
Speaker 1: that they don't feel that they have been victimized. They
Speaker 1: still have in their mind they think that they're in
Speaker 1: love with the pimp. And for police officers, you know,
Speaker 1: legally you have to have a victim in order to
Speaker 1: prosecute a crime. Was that something that you encountered during
Speaker 1: your career.
Speaker 2: So a couple things.
Speaker 3: So, yes, I did encounter where you have people who
Speaker 3: weren't aware that they were being trafficked.
Speaker 2: You know, they did think they were doing this for
Speaker 2: whatever purpose, for love or for whatever.
Speaker 3: When we built our cases, dealing with trafficking, which is
Speaker 3: slightly different than what we were talking about earlier. We
Speaker 3: would build those cases so that we wanted a solid case,
Speaker 3: so that if the person who was being trafficked or abused,
Speaker 3: raped was not we didn't need them. We didn't need
Speaker 3: their testimony. So we did extra work to make sure
Speaker 3: we had the records. We had if they were at hotels,
Speaker 3: we had all the receipts. We had the cameras doing surveillance,
Speaker 3: so we can actually see what's going on if they
Speaker 3: choose to. If the trafficker, the pimp decides to talk
Speaker 3: to you, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It really
Speaker 3: depends on really their ego or if you know, they
Speaker 3: have their make a wise decision or not. So trying
Speaker 3: to build it in such a way where if the
Speaker 3: person doesn't go that way, we don't really need them
Speaker 3: to testify because you have all of these other things.
Speaker 3: You have all of these the records of what happened,
Speaker 3: and uh, do you have coercion?
Speaker 2: Was there?
Speaker 3: Did they force them? Did they defraud them? You know
Speaker 3: who's where's the money going? You know who's keeping the money?
Speaker 3: Do you have your do you have your own ID?
Speaker 3: Who's getting the hotel rooms. And then as as you
Speaker 3: build more cases, then pimps start to realize, okay, well
Speaker 3: now I don't do that. You know, they learn, they
Speaker 3: go back and forth, they get they get the public
Speaker 3: disclosure and read the cases and try to see what
Speaker 3: your tactics are, so you kind of do you have
Speaker 3: to change things up a little bit. But but ultimately,
Speaker 3: in order for it to work, you someone has to
Speaker 3: show up. You have the exchange, and then you watch
Speaker 3: this so they're still at risk. So it's just depending
Speaker 3: on how you do it. And then sometimes people get
Speaker 3: tired of being in that life or they maybe they
Speaker 3: were they chose up, or they were they were with
Speaker 3: a different trafficker, and they won't talk about their trafficker,
Speaker 3: but they'll talk about their other one, and you can
Speaker 3: build a case on that. So that that that happens
Speaker 3: a lot. I have I have friends that have life
Speaker 3: experience and you know, just hearing hearing their stories. Actually
Speaker 3: one of them before she was my friend, I listened
Speaker 3: to her speak. Her name is Rebecca Bender. She's amazing,
Speaker 3: and listening to her story and and and what she
Speaker 3: went through changed how we we did things, how my
Speaker 3: task force did things and at the end, I remember
Speaker 3: talking about I remember talking about, you know that's you know,
Speaker 3: pointing up at her at the stage when we were
Speaker 3: watching her, that that's why we do this, you know,
Speaker 3: because because of someone like that. You know, look at
Speaker 3: look this is even though everything that she went through that, look,
Speaker 3: she's a success.
Speaker 2: You know, she's still here.
Speaker 3: She's a fighter, and so what can we do to
Speaker 3: try to keep other people from going through that?
Speaker 2: So and then we changed how we did that.
Speaker 3: We we made sure that we had it's called trauma
Speaker 3: informed approach, where were truly where we're actually spending the
Speaker 3: time making sure that they get resources and not I
Speaker 3: when we would do options, you'd set dates to try
Speaker 3: to recover somebody, but still you have your your arrest
Speaker 3: team in a part portion of the house calling the dates.
Speaker 3: Maybe the pimp, drop trafficker, drops person off. Person comes in,
Speaker 3: they get the buy, you get this, push a little button,
Speaker 3: so okay, rest team come in, you go in. But
Speaker 3: you still, even if you're doing it really low key,
Speaker 3: you're still in.
Speaker 2: You're still the police with guns out. It isn't really right.
Speaker 3: It's it's very traumatic because when you see, you know,
Speaker 3: when you're a civilian and you see people with guns
Speaker 3: out that they're not really processing everything that you're saying.
Speaker 2: Guaranteed they're not remembering everything. Uh. And so just kind
Speaker 2: of changing how you you do different things. I know
Speaker 2: there's a up in Canada. They have a way of
Speaker 2: doing things where they actually have someone with life experience
Speaker 2: who's in their task force and they'll set up the
Speaker 2: dates and then they just go knock on the door,
Speaker 2: explain who they are.
Speaker 3: She goes in and talks. They make sure it's clear safe.
Speaker 3: She goes in and talks to them, says, hey, here's
Speaker 3: why we hear. She goes through her spiel because she's
Speaker 3: she knows how to speak with the person, goes through
Speaker 3: the spiell offer resources. This is why we're here. We're
Speaker 3: not here to arrest you. Do you want to get
Speaker 3: out of this life? Give me a call and then
Speaker 3: they would leave and you know, if they could build
Speaker 3: the case on the trafficker, and they said the majority
Speaker 3: of the people that came back, they were very successful.
Speaker 2: They were able to build I think goes over ninety percent.
Speaker 3: They actually were able to convict, charge and convict the
Speaker 3: traffickers from doing it a different way.
Speaker 2: And because when you when you.
Speaker 3: Meet people, like when i'd meet kids that are being trafficked,
Speaker 3: or you'd be adults that are being trafficked that were
Speaker 3: in that life, they don't want to talk to you.
Speaker 3: You know, you're you're the cops and look at their
Speaker 3: life experience before you know we're Did they have someone
Speaker 3: with it was addict to them? Did they have someone
Speaker 3: you know who just kind of looked at them or
Speaker 3: treated them like they were nothing or trash And it
Speaker 3: takes while, It takes a while to build that up.
Speaker 3: I used to have one case where those she was
Speaker 3: fourteen years old, that was being trafficked. I remember the
Speaker 3: first time I talked to her and I said, hey,
Speaker 3: look I'm I am. Here's who I am. I know
Speaker 3: you don't trust me. You're not gonna really trust me
Speaker 3: until you know we meet again. I said, no offense.
Speaker 3: I hope we don't meet again. I said, but I
Speaker 3: when I'm doing this work, oftentimes I meet people again.
Speaker 3: And then she was saying, so if I if I
Speaker 3: run and I go to Oregon, are you gonna come
Speaker 3: get me? And I was like, yeah, I go. It
Speaker 3: may not be me, but we're gonna come find you.
Speaker 3: She goes, what I went to New York when I
Speaker 3: went to California, and she was asking all these questions
Speaker 3: and she ran. She ran a lot, so we got
Speaker 3: she had three traffickers. Two were the main one, the
Speaker 3: other one was just a brother trying to be cool
Speaker 3: like his older brother. Also two went to prison.
Speaker 2: She ran again. We got her in Oregon, we got
Speaker 2: her in California, and then I think the last time
Speaker 2: I saw her, I got her out of a hotel.
Speaker 3: And it was always during the holidays. It was Christmas
Speaker 3: Eve or New Year's Eve. We we we recover her.
Speaker 3: And the last one, I think it was Christmas Eve
Speaker 3: and pull her out of this hotel and she's in
Speaker 3: the back of the car and I just remember telling her.
Speaker 3: I was like, hey, you know, I'm not your dad,
Speaker 3: but you know, I just.
Speaker 2: I just hate seeing you like this. And she's like
Speaker 2: I know. She goes, I don't have a dad, and
Speaker 2: I she goes, I don't hate and I said, you
Speaker 2: probably hate me, and it's like, I don't She goes,
Speaker 2: I don't hate you, but she points to the f
Speaker 2: b I guy. She goes, I hate that motherfucker. I
Speaker 2: don't know why.
Speaker 3: I don't know why she hated the guy. His name
Speaker 3: was Kyle, was the nicest guy from Minnesota. He talks
Speaker 3: like he talks like Owen Wilson, you know, Jeepers.
Speaker 2: I mean, that was this guy and he's like but
Speaker 2: she just hated him. She could not stand him me
Speaker 2: and he was so nice. Well he's still alive, so
Speaker 2: he's still he's still nice. But but I just remember that.
Speaker 3: Conversation with her, and it was horrible. I mean, part
Speaker 3: of what I missed about being in the work is
Speaker 3: I had these undercover profiles, and I was friends with
Speaker 3: her on Facebook. It's like a kind of see and
Speaker 3: she didn't know it was me, so I could kind
Speaker 3: of see when she'd post stuff that she was doing okay,
Speaker 3: which was really cool to see. And then when I
Speaker 3: retired or when I got out of it, you don't
Speaker 3: have access to that anymore. So it's like, you don't
Speaker 3: you don't know what's happening in some of these people's lives.
Speaker 3: But hopefully, you know, in my mind, hopefully she's still
Speaker 3: doing really well.
Speaker 1: Before we move on, I mean, are there any other
Speaker 1: ones you'd like to talk about that were particularly insightful
Speaker 1: as far as how law enforcement and prosecutors go after
Speaker 1: these cases or in how people are victimized, maybe there's
Speaker 1: some lessons learned.
Speaker 3: I'll say, you know, if you're if you're doing this
Speaker 3: work and you you have a prosecutor that's really motivated,
Speaker 3: you know, don't well one, don't be afraid to go
Speaker 3: meet with your prosecutors. And because it is a team effort.
Speaker 3: But not all prosecutors are the same. Some suck, but
Speaker 3: you have some that are really good and really good
Speaker 3: at what they're doing and working together to just asking
Speaker 3: the questions, you know, what do you need? What do
Speaker 3: you need for me to build a case? What are
Speaker 3: you Because everyone does things differently, So if you can
Speaker 3: get them the information that they need and jump through
Speaker 3: those extra hoops, it's totally worth it. Because what I mean,
Speaker 3: what are you really doing this for. You're doing it
Speaker 3: to protect vulnerable people. You're doing it to keep kids
Speaker 3: from harm, get them out of a bad situation. So
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's the goal.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So if it means that you have to do an
Speaker 3: extra report or go talk to another person, or do
Speaker 3: something a certain way that you don't normally do it
Speaker 3: within reason, then.
Speaker 2: You do it.
Speaker 3: You need to do it so I think I think
Speaker 3: that's important, and just learning from that, learning from all
Speaker 3: your experiences. When you first start to testify, you're not
Speaker 3: gonna be as good as the next time you testify.
Speaker 3: So just getting the feedback from from those cases, I
Speaker 3: think is really important. I don't know if that's what
Speaker 3: you what you asked, but that's what sticks out in
Speaker 3: my mind with those cases.
Speaker 1: The next thing I want to roll into was sort
Speaker 1: of you leaving this task force. Did you decide that
Speaker 1: you had had enough and you needed a break, or
Speaker 1: did the police actually decide like, Okay, this guy did
Speaker 1: his time and we need to cycle him off this job.
Speaker 3: It was not quite that. What had happened was the
Speaker 3: position opened back in the Governor's detail, and it was
Speaker 3: when my principal at the time was also running for
Speaker 3: president and he didn't win. But they had two teams
Speaker 3: going and the person who they thought would take that
Speaker 3: spot wasn't interested in staying there.
Speaker 2: He was only there temporarily.
Speaker 3: So they were trying to get people to go in
Speaker 3: to manage the executive Protection Unit, and they really weren't
Speaker 3: having No one was really interested in it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a tough job.
Speaker 3: So I got asked a couple of times, Hey, you
Speaker 3: should put in for this, and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: well I'll do it if you give if you make
Speaker 3: sure there's a mechtef in every district in the state patrol,
Speaker 3: because there's eight districts.
Speaker 2: I go, well, you give me this and I'll leave,
Speaker 2: you know, and then we can go do this. I
Speaker 2: was joking.
Speaker 3: But then then I started to get calls from different
Speaker 3: people saying, hey, just listen to me, you should do this,
Speaker 3: and I was like, no, I've been there, done that.
Speaker 3: That's not my not what I want to do. And
Speaker 3: then one of my buddies called and said, hey, we're
Speaker 3: on the street. Is you're just going to get put there,
Speaker 3: So because no one's interested, you have the experience, maybe
Speaker 3: you should just go have the big men safe face.
Speaker 3: That's a call I got. So I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: so I put in for it. And I'll say, if
Speaker 3: that hadn't happened, I guaranteed I wouldn't have retired and.
Speaker 2: I'd still be there work in those cases for sure.
Speaker 3: And but I'm glad that that happened because one I
Speaker 3: retired as after I did my short stint there, and
Speaker 3: then I retired after twenty five years, because you can
Speaker 3: go at twenty five years with the State Patrol. And
Speaker 3: it also showed me that it showed me that I
Speaker 3: was actually affected by the work by the by that
Speaker 3: ugly is I like to call.
Speaker 2: It, that it was affecting me, and I didn't realize
Speaker 2: how it was had affected me, just decisions I had
Speaker 2: made in my life and and I and I'd say,
Speaker 2: you know, I started to realize it. Then it didn't
Speaker 2: really hit me until I moved to San Diego.
Speaker 3: Where I live now, and the work I had done
Speaker 3: and I didn't have the same support structure, and I just,
Speaker 3: you know, things would just trigger me on different things,
Speaker 3: and I just my emotions started to flood back and
Speaker 3: I didn't really know how to manage them. So just
Speaker 3: like i'd see something and you know, I get really
Speaker 3: super emotional. So just so I thought, you know, I
Speaker 3: should probably go talk to somebody. So and then that's
Speaker 3: I started to talk to someone. And then I realized
Speaker 3: what a toll that it took on me. And you
Speaker 3: know how, and I thought I was doing things really well,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't. I was just I was just putting
Speaker 3: things into a box and putting it into a shelf,
Speaker 3: you know, up in my brain, and that's not the
Speaker 3: best way to manage things. I mean, everybody, when you
Speaker 3: do this work, you have to you have to have
Speaker 3: the ability to departmentalize certain things or you're just not
Speaker 3: going to get anything done. But you also need to
Speaker 3: make sure that you're mindful that you're taking care of
Speaker 3: yourself or pretty soon you're going to run out of
Speaker 3: boxes and you're not you know, you're you're not going
Speaker 3: to be able to function and at all with anything
Speaker 3: that you do.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, so that that's why, that's kind of
Speaker 2: how I left. But I'm glad that happened that way
Speaker 2: because now I'm still I'm still involved. I don't I
Speaker 2: don't do the work, but I still help train and
Speaker 2: still do the conference circuit. The job I do now now,
Speaker 2: I still I do Title nine investigations sex assault type
Speaker 2: stuff on the policy side for the school district. So
Speaker 2: we're in San Diego.
Speaker 3: It's the second largest school district in California, and so
Speaker 3: I do employee investigations. I also do some law enforcement
Speaker 3: investigations because we have our own police department and just
Speaker 3: really focused on accountability compliance and then making sure that
Speaker 3: kids are safe and they're able to go to school
Speaker 3: and learn and not have to worry about someone creeping
Speaker 3: on them or you know, assaulting them in some way.
Speaker 1: So what were some of the things that you did
Speaker 1: to start to like recover from working this kind of
Speaker 1: job as it started to like affect your personal life.
Speaker 1: You said you mentioned that you're, you know, often being
Speaker 1: triggered by different things that kind of bring you back
Speaker 1: to that bad place. How did you start to deal
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: Let'll say, well, the first thing I did.
Speaker 3: I mean, I still have some good friends, so I
Speaker 3: talked to them, but really I I interviewed a number
Speaker 3: of therapists and I just called them and I said, hey,
Speaker 3: here's here's what I used to do. I see that
Speaker 3: your background you deal with because down here there there's
Speaker 3: a lot of military personnel, so there are a lot
Speaker 3: of people who say that they they're kind of they
Speaker 3: try to advertise towards that for the PTSD. So I
Speaker 3: contacted a number of people and I said, well, I
Speaker 3: was law enforcement. I didn't really, I mean I grew
Speaker 3: up and my dad was in the service and family
Speaker 3: members in the service, so I've kind of lived you know,
Speaker 3: the cursorary, but I wasn't in it, so but I
Speaker 3: still I think there's some similarities as far as the
Speaker 3: stress that you see and the things that you see.
Speaker 3: And then I finally found one that felt right and
Speaker 3: started to go see her and that that helped me
Speaker 3: a lot, and then just and then actually listening and
Speaker 3: then actually saying oh, okay, Well maybe that's why I
Speaker 3: did that, or because.
Speaker 2: I think I had a really hard time with.
Speaker 3: I used to get really mad at people when that
Speaker 3: we're in law enforcement that said oh I can't do
Speaker 3: I can never do what you do. And I was like, well,
Speaker 3: you're fucking cop, why can't you do this? You're supposed
Speaker 3: to help people?
Speaker 2: And I was angry. I still was pissed off about
Speaker 2: that all the way till when I moved here in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three and one of the sessions she's like
Speaker 2: as I shared that with her, and she's like, well,
Speaker 2: well can you do this? Can you?
Speaker 3: Are you on an NBA team? Can you build a rocket?
Speaker 3: I was like, well no, She goes, well, everybody has
Speaker 3: their different skill set. It goes you did it because
Speaker 3: you could do it. That's why you did it. And
Speaker 3: I'd never thought of it that way, and then so
Speaker 3: I know now that that's not you know, it wasn't
Speaker 3: necessarily fair meat for me to get angry, but it did.
Speaker 2: It used to pissed me off. I was like, fuck,
Speaker 2: ain't you guys doing this? Come on, let's all go
Speaker 2: get these guys.
Speaker 3: But so, I think I think that was that was
Speaker 3: really big. And then really writing writing things out.
Speaker 2: I'm a big Stephen.
Speaker 3: King fan so as a kid, and I so I
Speaker 3: got his book on writing. It's called On Writing, and
Speaker 3: I listened to that on audible a couple of times.
Speaker 3: So he's like, you know, this is your job. If
Speaker 3: this is your job, you should be doing this every
Speaker 3: day for this amount of time, or it's not really
Speaker 3: your job. So I just set one to two hours
Speaker 3: a day to write to go through things. Once I
Speaker 3: decided it was going to be a book. But that
Speaker 3: was really good.
Speaker 2: I couldn't It.
Speaker 3: Wasn't always every day because sometimes when I got to
Speaker 3: something that was heavy, I didn't want to have that
Speaker 3: stuff in my head when I went to bed, so
Speaker 3: i'd skip a day or maybe wait till I was off,
Speaker 3: and then write during the day when before I went
Speaker 3: to sleep. I think that that was helpful. So it
Speaker 3: took a little longer to get things to go. But
Speaker 3: I've never written a book.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was but the whole journey's been been
Speaker 2: pretty cool. And then I got to meet get to
Speaker 2: meet a bunch of cool people so far, so that's fine.
Speaker 2: And hopefully you can be able to help people. That's
Speaker 2: that's a big goal.
Speaker 1: So and when is the release date for the book?
Speaker 3: So the launch date is March thirty first. I think
Speaker 3: it'll be available before then, but we're trying to trying
Speaker 3: to launch it on the thirty first, just to make
Speaker 3: sure everything is is available on the website.
Speaker 2: So March thirty first is the launch date.
Speaker 1: So the ugly underneath. We'll put some links down the
Speaker 1: description too, for folks to go and find the book.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you doing this because I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of misconceptions about this subject and I'm
Speaker 1: glad to you know, hear a real expert on it.
Speaker 1: And I did want to touch upon briefly. In the
Speaker 1: last you know, five to ten years, I think there's
Speaker 1: been sort of an explosion of interest is the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but concern about human trafficking.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: There's good reason and I think that can lead to
Speaker 1: a lot of good things, passing new laws, reforming the
Speaker 1: existing system, and all kinds of things that you know
Speaker 1: could be done to help. But that has also led
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of more misconceptions and a
Speaker 1: lot of groups coming out there that you know, some
Speaker 1: of them mean, well, I'm sure, but a lot a
Speaker 1: lot of them are. I mean, the extreme end of
Speaker 1: it was what was that that group Save the children
Speaker 1: or something like that where the guy was actually a
Speaker 1: predator himself.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure which organization, but there there are. I Mean,
Speaker 3: something I learned with work in these cases is people
Speaker 3: tend to create to put themselves where they can create.
Speaker 2: An opportunity to get what they want. So if you like.
Speaker 3: Cars, you're going to go to car shows, right, If
Speaker 3: you like sports, you're gonna go to sporting events. You're
Speaker 3: sexually attracted to kids, you're going to do things where
Speaker 3: they're kids around and you have the opportunity to offend.
Speaker 3: So that's why you see people. I'm not saying everyone
Speaker 3: who is bad. Who's who's a coach or a janitor
Speaker 3: or a teacher or you know, people who are around kids,
Speaker 3: but that's why you see those instances where there are
Speaker 3: people that are in those professions that are doing those
Speaker 3: things because they're they're around it. There, they have this,
Speaker 3: it's it's available.
Speaker 2: So but yeah, I'll say there I do. I agree
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of organizations that you know, I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't know all of these people that come up.
Speaker 3: You have people who who have the same background as
Speaker 3: you know you or they were or say they do
Speaker 3: in special ops. And I don't know invent any of them.
Speaker 3: But people say that they've done all these things, and
Speaker 3: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: They're very good at what some of them are very
Speaker 2: good at what they do.
Speaker 3: But if you're not involved in training, you don't have
Speaker 3: the training, and you don't know how to handle these cases,
Speaker 3: you've got no business doing that type of work. And
Speaker 3: then if you're just gonna go rip someone, go to
Speaker 3: another country and rip someone out of a situation and say, yeah,
Speaker 3: we save this kid, But what happens afterwards, what's going
Speaker 3: to happen? Why are they why are they in that
Speaker 3: situation in the first place? Are they doing that because
Speaker 3: are they being trafficked? Or are they doing that because
Speaker 3: they don't have any other options? So why don't we
Speaker 3: focus on on. You know, do they have water, do
Speaker 3: they have food? What other things? Or we can do
Speaker 3: there where they can get a job where that maybe
Speaker 3: that isn't a choice anymore. You know, there's so many
Speaker 3: other ways to tackle it. You can't arrest your way
Speaker 3: out of this problem. You can't just go in and
Speaker 3: grab people. And then you see organizations that they're doing
Speaker 3: and they're doing a documentary of it, and you know,
Speaker 3: how does that look? There is running with the boom mic?
Speaker 3: I mean that's like, I mean that that stuff is
Speaker 3: crazy to me. But and then you see influencers that
Speaker 3: are out there and they call a pedophile. They're trying
Speaker 3: to you know, and then they try to beat the
Speaker 3: guy up and everyone thinks it's cool, but you're keeping
Speaker 3: someone from being able to do the work because that
Speaker 3: we had a case where there was someone who would
Speaker 3: go meet with people that they were called pedophiles. I
Speaker 3: don't know, because I didn't work any of those cases
Speaker 3: because they would get in the way of us being
Speaker 3: able to work the case. They tried to beat the
Speaker 3: guy up, But how's that person ever going to be
Speaker 3: held accountable? Maybe they meet the guy or this person
Speaker 3: or what other victims do they have are they are
Speaker 3: they able to do a forensic dump and look at there?
Speaker 3: Who else have they talked to? Are there any other
Speaker 3: kids or you know, do they have kids that they're
Speaker 3: offending upon? So those are things I think people don't
Speaker 3: think about. But back back to the nonprofits you know
Speaker 3: you have. I'm sure there are there are tons of
Speaker 3: organizations that have a really good, you know, knee jerk reaction.
Speaker 2: They want to do good.
Speaker 3: You know, they may have a good heart and want
Speaker 3: to do these good things, But there are so many
Speaker 3: organizations that are already out there that are really good
Speaker 3: at what they do and have the training and they
Speaker 3: and they can get these other people, they can get,
Speaker 3: they can do awareness.
Speaker 2: So just support those groups that are already there. You
Speaker 2: don't need it.
Speaker 3: Seems like for a while I quit following it because
Speaker 3: it gets old. But you see, like it seemed like
Speaker 3: every month you'd have one or two new NGOs up
Speaker 3: and they're saying, oh, I was a swat commander or
Speaker 3: I was you know, this member of this special Operations
Speaker 3: group and remember this, and I'm thinking, well, what what
Speaker 3: did you do in Yeah, what did you do in trafficking?
Speaker 3: Do you know how to work a case. You know,
Speaker 3: how do you see? Are you trauma informed? Have you
Speaker 3: worked with anyone who has lived lived life experience it's
Speaker 3: actually lived it?
Speaker 2: You know? How do you know?
Speaker 3: Because I was in law enforcement, I had all the training.
Speaker 3: I first went to the task force, I don't know
Speaker 3: what the fuck I was doing. I mean, I knew
Speaker 3: how to work dope. I applied that to that, but
Speaker 3: I didn't I didn't know that. I hadn't listened to
Speaker 3: a survivory yet. I hadn't I hadn't seen that. I
Speaker 3: hadn't been confronted yet with those images and what these
Speaker 3: people are doing. I mean, you learn those things, and
Speaker 3: the best way to do it is you build your
Speaker 3: team with people who have won the potential and then
Speaker 3: the capacity to do it, and you get them the
Speaker 3: resources so they're successful, that's mentally, and then also just
Speaker 3: the training so that they can stay they can stay
Speaker 3: sharp and they can do the work. And it's ever changing.
Speaker 3: I mean, you always have to be on top of things.
Speaker 3: And that's why you mentioned earlier about the IODI when
Speaker 3: you got to go to that.
Speaker 2: I love.
Speaker 3: I love going to those events because you do get
Speaker 3: to unwind, but then you meet other like minded people
Speaker 3: who are experts and they know what they're doing, and
Speaker 3: you can sit down, you can.
Speaker 2: You can have a drink with them, e pizza or whatever.
Speaker 3: You do, have a conversation with them, ask how they're
Speaker 3: doing it in their area, and they go, oh, that's
Speaker 3: something I think we can do over here.
Speaker 2: Here's what we do.
Speaker 3: Have you experienced this, and then you just you just
Speaker 3: come back, just rejuvenated and going back and you just
Speaker 3: knock it out of the park when you get back.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what kept kept our people going. And
Speaker 3: then supervisors. If you're a supervisor, you're listening to this
Speaker 3: and you're you're one of these teams. You got to
Speaker 3: get your people the resources they need. Your Your people
Speaker 3: are your number one resource. If you don't, if you
Speaker 3: don't take care of them, you're you're you're you're losing it.
Speaker 3: I mean I stayed with the State Patrol because I
Speaker 3: felt I could have went to another department who got
Speaker 3: paid twice as much, because we didn't get paid. We
Speaker 3: didn't get paid a ton with State Patrol till till uh,
Speaker 3: just towards the end of my career, and but I
Speaker 3: felt like I felt valued. I felt valued by my
Speaker 3: command staff and the people that were there. And then
Speaker 3: I had a good team. It was like another family
Speaker 3: and that was important, and then we were able to
Speaker 3: do a lot of great good things. So I think
Speaker 3: a lot of agencies get that wrong. I went off
Speaker 3: on a tangent. I do that a lot.
Speaker 1: No, No, it's all good.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I I have my tangent too that you know, just
Speaker 1: because you were in Navy seal doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: should be uh going into human trafficking interdiction in foreign
Speaker 1: countries down in Central America, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1: And you know some of these guys are again I know,
Speaker 1: some mean well yeah, others I think are more involved
Speaker 1: in fundraising and grifting than they are in actually helping people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing is that the it gets
Speaker 1: blended in with like Christian evangelical stuff and they start
Speaker 1: talking about spiritual warfare and fighting demons and all kinds
Speaker 1: of weird shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I So I grew up in the Bible belt and
Speaker 3: I used to carry a Bible to school, and.
Speaker 2: But I'm not what I and I don't anymore. I mean,
Speaker 2: when I moved to Washington and I kind of got
Speaker 2: out of that area, I realized you know, well, this
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense or that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3: But my philosophy is do good, put good out there.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can't tell me if I don't do
Speaker 3: all of these good things in the world that if
Speaker 3: they're right and I get up there and there's a
Speaker 3: parlyage gate so that some guys not gonna let me in,
Speaker 3: you know, because I because I I didn't Yes, I
Speaker 3: did this or you know, or did that way. And
Speaker 3: then there's so many different religions, you know, how do
Speaker 3: you know which one's right. I mean, some people are
Speaker 3: probably gonna hate me for saying that, but that's that's
Speaker 3: my belief. You know, do do good, help people, protect
Speaker 3: others less fortunate from you, and then you know, be present.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't something we say, you don't get
Speaker 3: these days back. You have to be present in the moment,
Speaker 3: take care of the people that love you, tell people
Speaker 3: that you care about them. Because there's so many you
Speaker 3: know that life is short. You don't get you do
Speaker 3: not get these days back.
Speaker 2: But that's that's what I think. Do good. Yeah, there
Speaker 2: are there are a lot of NGOs that are like that.
Speaker 2: I'm very skeptical.
Speaker 3: When I'm I am connected with somebody like that because
Speaker 3: I've I have prior experience in that world. And it
Speaker 3: should be about what's the mission. And in this case,
Speaker 3: when you're talking about kids and keeping people from being
Speaker 3: raped for money or for anything of value, and then
Speaker 3: putting that on the internet for people to share, the
Speaker 3: cost is too high. You know, that's what's more important
Speaker 3: than that. That's the mission. It shouldn't be the man
Speaker 3: over the mission or the person over the mission. It's
Speaker 3: the mission. How do you focus and work together to
Speaker 3: build a team to make sure that you can come
Speaker 3: back that on multiple multiple areas, and it isn't just
Speaker 3: one team. That's why we in law enforcement we have
Speaker 3: multidisciplinary teams. Because my lane is I'm good at logistics.
Speaker 3: I can do the undercover stuff some tach I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not. I was never a SWAT guy. I was
Speaker 3: lucky I got to go to subgun school, which was awesome.
Speaker 3: But you know that wasn't my lane. I didn't pretend
Speaker 3: to be. But I had people on my team that
Speaker 3: were SWAT or SWAT commanders and they knew what to
Speaker 3: do digital forensics. You have them there and that's their lane,
Speaker 3: and you pull that team together and you build them
Speaker 3: so you can you can support the mission the best
Speaker 3: that you can. And if you get you don't do
Speaker 3: something quite right ex and you make the change so
Speaker 3: it is right because what what are we doing it for?
Speaker 3: To protect others? So you got to you gotta be
Speaker 3: a little selfless, sir.
Speaker 1: Are there any NGOs that you are involved with that
Speaker 1: you'd feel comfortable shouting out?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the One Internet or the International Association of Human
Speaker 3: Trafficking Investigators. Great group of guys. They have a conference
Speaker 3: they do. The main conference they do is in Saint
Speaker 3: Pete's now it's a new venue this year in Florida.
Speaker 3: They but they're they're doing stuff in Maryland, conferences in Maryland, Canada.
Speaker 3: They're doing a bunch of stuff in Canada. And they're
Speaker 3: great because they provide training to people who have the commission,
Speaker 3: they're tasked to do this work. They're providing them the
Speaker 3: training that they need. They're providing a venue where you
Speaker 3: can go to a location and learn from others that
Speaker 3: are doing this. And they bring subject matter experts together
Speaker 3: and not just law enforcement. You have well prosepcut is
Speaker 3: a part of lot of course, so you have prosecutors,
Speaker 3: you have social workers. You have people with lived in experience,
Speaker 3: so survivors of sex trafficking from all over and and
Speaker 3: you get to to I've got tons of friends from that,
Speaker 3: and you learn how to do that. So they're great.
Speaker 3: They provide that. There's an organization called raven dot Us.
Speaker 3: And the thing that's great about them is, uh, there
Speaker 3: are subject matter experts in the space. Some of them
Speaker 3: were retired IKAC commanders. You have people who are writing
Speaker 3: the laws. If you're familiar with the laws they've had recently,
Speaker 3: like the say fact that Take It Down Act, things
Speaker 3: dealing with protecting children. The CEO of that group, she's
Speaker 3: the one who was helped write those bills. And so
Speaker 3: they're working on the policy side and getting funding for
Speaker 3: those that are doing the work and funding these IICAC organizations.
Speaker 2: So they're great.
Speaker 3: Raven dot Us work in the policy side. Rebecca Bender
Speaker 3: has an organization that helps survivors. It's called Elevate Academy.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 3: I know I'm going to miss them. There's there's tons,
Speaker 3: there's in Seattle. There's a place called rest. They provide housing,
Speaker 3: low barrier housing for for trafficking victims.
Speaker 2: So they're great. I know I'm going to miss them.
Speaker 3: There's so many of them, ever strong. They used to
Speaker 3: be called stolen Youth. They're in the Washington area.
Speaker 2: They're great.
Speaker 3: They help raise money for funding training in schools in
Speaker 3: San Diego. San Diego Youth Services they provide wrap around
Speaker 3: services for families and potential traffic victims. They have bullying programs,
Speaker 3: training for kids in school. So they're changing because how
Speaker 3: do you prevent someone from becoming a sex buyer. You
Speaker 3: got to focus on the people who are buying when
Speaker 3: they're younger, right, So they have training on hey, this
Speaker 3: is why this is wrong, this is how you build
Speaker 3: a healthy relationship.
Speaker 2: So that's something we partnered with in San Diego.
Speaker 3: So that we have that available to our students when
Speaker 3: we start to have these see these problems. We'd actually
Speaker 3: just launched our human trafficking prevention program in at San
Speaker 3: Diego Unified School District.
Speaker 2: Pretty excited about that. Way we can track different things
Speaker 2: and get get students resources and it's.
Speaker 3: Like another job, but it's it's well worth it. So
Speaker 3: I'm sure I missed a neck mech National Center Missing
Speaker 3: Exploited Children, Missing Kids dot Org. That's the big one.
Speaker 3: But they the clearinghouse for all the cyber tips.
Speaker 1: So the book do out in March. The ugly underneath
Speaker 1: is there? I mean, you told us a little bit
Speaker 1: about where you're at today and you're still involved in investigations.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else you want to talk about or
Speaker 1: anything else you want to shout out before we wrap
Speaker 1: up tonight.
Speaker 2: I'd say the big thing is if you.
Speaker 3: If you're in this line of work, you know, just
Speaker 3: know that it affects you, and you need to make
Speaker 3: sure you take breaks, take breaks so you can you
Speaker 3: can care for yourself and you can care for your
Speaker 3: family because if you don't, it's going to tear you down.
Speaker 3: And and surround yourself with good people.
Speaker 2: I'd say that's that's.
Speaker 3: Number one for those that are in in the work.
Speaker 3: If you are someone who is not, But there are
Speaker 3: a lot of people who are interested in this, like
Speaker 3: with all the true crime stuff.
Speaker 2: Uh, if they read the book, they'll get it. They'll
Speaker 2: get a look.
Speaker 3: Into what that's about. And support those that are that
Speaker 3: are out there protecting your kids and protecting your family
Speaker 3: and and trying to get them to a better place
Speaker 3: because they need it. I mean, it's you don't get
Speaker 3: you don't get a lot of thank yous. Usually when
Speaker 3: you're a cop, I mean you're in a restaurant, it's
Speaker 3: usually like, oh, behavior, he's.
Speaker 2: Gonna arrest you. You know.
Speaker 3: It isn't like the firemen who get like, you know,
Speaker 3: all the cool stuff. It's like people usually only reach
Speaker 3: out to you.
Speaker 2: When you're a cop.
Speaker 3: If you know, they when they need you, they need
Speaker 3: your help, or or they're trying to scare their kid,
Speaker 3: you know, a pizza hut or something.
Speaker 1: I did want to point that out to tonight that
Speaker 1: you know, I I I understand there's a thought process
Speaker 1: out there all cops are bastards and defund the police
Speaker 1: and this sort of stuff. And I totally get that
Speaker 1: there are corrupt cops out there. There are racist cops,
Speaker 1: There are guys that should not have a gun and
Speaker 1: a badge, for sure, But absolutely, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: there are cops out there who are heroic and are
Speaker 1: doing vitally important work to protect our citizens every day.
Speaker 1: And like I mentioned earlier, I think back to that
Speaker 1: cop I spoke to who is like looking out over
Speaker 1: at the ocean, like it feels good not to have
Speaker 1: to look at that crap today. Think about that guy
Speaker 1: and what and what. Yeah, him and people like him
Speaker 1: are doing every day to protect our citizens and as
Speaker 1: you point out, the psychological toll that it takes on them.
Speaker 1: And you know, you guys really you know, and I
Speaker 1: think most police departments get it now that you know,
Speaker 1: you guys need to be cycled on and off this job,
Speaker 1: you know, to protect your own well being.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: You know the part about you know, the good and
Speaker 3: the bad they're I think what maybe a lot of people,
Speaker 3: this is what what I hate when someone does something
Speaker 3: really bad.
Speaker 2: It used to make me so angry.
Speaker 3: That's law enforcement because no matter what uniform they have on,
Speaker 3: it's still a police uniform and they represent everybody else
Speaker 3: and they need That's why you need to have good
Speaker 3: investigations when someone doesn't abide by their policy, so they're
Speaker 3: held accountable. So they can't do that because they're making
Speaker 3: it bad for everybody. And if they're not doing what
Speaker 3: they should, then they shouldn't be a cop.
Speaker 2: You know, it's get rid of them. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 2: my two cents on that. I think accountability is important.
Speaker 3: When when we went in the academy, one of the
Speaker 3: first things they said on day one was you live
Speaker 3: in a glasshouse, and you're held to a higher standard. And
Speaker 3: if if you're not okay with that, this isn't the
Speaker 3: job for you. You are, Yeah, it's different. You're hell
Speaker 3: to a higher standard because of what you do. The
Speaker 3: community has it. They're trusting you with their safety and
Speaker 3: if you do anything to mess that up, you're you're
Speaker 3: not going to have the trust of your community. And
Speaker 3: it's just and that's I mean, you see a lot
Speaker 3: of that. We've been seeing a lot of that lately.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and where can people find you online? Do
Speaker 1: you have a website, a LinkedIn anywhere you'd like to
Speaker 1: direct people?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the website right now is the ugly underneath
Speaker 3: dot com on TikTok or Instagram, it's I should have
Speaker 3: it memorized, but it's I believe it's c Underscore Rodriguez
Speaker 3: one night, but Carlos Rodriguez, that's my name. But the
Speaker 3: website has that the ugly underneath.
Speaker 2: There's a link for it. So not everything's up yet
Speaker 2: till the book's published. I think that the links will
Speaker 2: to work on the website and.
Speaker 1: We will shout it out when it comes out. And actually,
Speaker 1: you reminded me this conversation reminded me something I want
Speaker 1: to shout out real quick. A previous guest on the show,
Speaker 1: General Remo Butler. Because of the interview he did on
Speaker 1: the show, he went ahead and he wrote his memoir.
Speaker 1: The book is out on Amazon now. It's called Lead
Speaker 1: from the Front Lessons and Legacy from the First Black
Speaker 1: US Army Special Forces General. Author again is Remo Butler,
Speaker 1: previous guest on the show. I just want to shout
Speaker 1: out to our listeners, let you know that his book
Speaker 1: is out now and you should go check it out
Speaker 1: on Amazon. So Carlos again, thank you for coming on
Speaker 1: the show. Best of luck with the book. I thought
Speaker 1: it was great. I read it on the on the
Speaker 1: airplane over to Japan, went right right through it. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's a quick read, and it's really engaging
Speaker 1: and really informative. So I hope that people whether they're
Speaker 1: in law enforcement or they're civilians out there hoping to
Speaker 1: gain a bit of better understanding about this topic. We'll
Speaker 1: go and check it out.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 3: It's great to meet you.
Speaker 1: Yeah you too, Carlos, thank you, and for all of
Speaker 1: our listeners out there. We will see you next week.
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