Corruption Uncovered: NYC's Hidden Crime Web | Tony Hernandez DSH #1155

There's always crime happening.

Okay.

There is always crime happening.

I don't care what reports you see.

I don't care what news reports or articles that come out and stuff like that.

There is crime happening in the city 24-7, 365.

It's always going on.

The people that say crime is down and this and that, yeah, it might be, or it's just transition to another part of the city.

Crime does it, it's almost like a balloon.

When you squeeze it on one end, it expands on the other.

Tony Hernandez here from Queens.

My man's in Vegas now.

Welcome to the show.

Hey, what's up, Sean?

Thank you for having me, man.

Appreciate it.

Yeah, how long were you in Queens for?

My whole life, pretty much.

Yeah, I was born and raised in New York City, Queens.

I spent a lot of time in Brooklyn, Williamsburg section.

Yeah.

But for the most part, Queens.

And you had an interesting dynamic between the mafia and the police officer lifestyle, right?

Yeah, yeah.

If you asked me growing up if I ever would have been a cop, the answer definitely would have been no.

I've delved more towards like, you know, the street side.

You know, I was out.

You know, I wasn't a stay on the stoop kind of kid.

I was always running to the corner.

So, you know, I was enamored by the street lifestyle.

You know, you see the hustlers, the drug dealers, the mob guys, they have all the nice stuff.

Right.

The cars, the women, the clothes, the jewelry.

It's very captivating when you're a kid.

For sure.

Meanwhile, a cop's making, what, 100k your max?

Back then, fuck no.

And when I started, even less.

You know, when you have to put your time in to actually get to top pay where you're making that kind of money.

Yeah.

But,

you know.

I kind of was, you know,

dipping and dabbling in the street myself at that time, you know, as a kid growing up, up, you know, and I saw the money that these guys had.

And then, you know, being a cop, you know, when you're in those inner city kind of communities, it's not the most popular job.

You know, and I just grew up around a lot of people that, you know, were affiliated to organized crime or had like a connection.

Like my dad and my uncle worked for a very prominent organized crime figure.

His name was Virgil Alessi.

He was, if you look him up, he was involved in like the French Connection, stuff like that.

Really, in the 70s, he was considered the biggest heroin trafficker in New York City.

Damn.

Yeah.

So these guys had a piece of the French connection, him and Vinnie Papa.

Holy crap.

So my father and my uncle worked for him in his legitimate businesses.

You know, they both had the chance to go into that life, but they didn't want to.

You know, they surrounded by it like many other people.

And, you know, you're almost surrounded by it through family connections sometimes.

You know, it's almost unavoidable, especially when you go to like family parties, Christmas, and Fourth of July.

You know, you'd always have the perfect mix of cops and mobsters you know and that was kind of my family i have a lot of family that's in law enforcement but you know i also had my uncle and my father and a couple other members that were involved in you know around organized crime people and were they pretty secretive about it like were you aware of it growing up they don't talk they don't talk about it that kind of generation like a lot of like i have a channel now called corruption connection where i discuss mob history and this is history And some of my family is very upset with me talking about this stuff, even though it's 30-year-old, 40-year-old history.

It's just not something they believe in.

They just don't talk about it so growing up it was kind of that same way you know i knew that um

daddy's boss was someone serious you know i wouldn't see him all the time he's in and out of jail stuff like that but when i was coming of age you know i would see them on special kind of holidays i would accompany my dad to work sometimes fourth of july uh christmas eve and uh you know me and my cousin be running around opening the doors and stuff like that co-check we did when we were like 12 years old you know we would leave it hundreds of dollars at 12 that's crazy that's a lot of money you know so you want to go back to work every day after you get that kind of money, you know?

And especially when they knew, like, oh, you're Tony's son, 50 bucks, 100.

Wise guys throw money like it's water.

So, yeah.

And that was the peak of everything, too.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, like, 90s, like, I mean, you had the Gotti era and stuff like that, but it was still pretty prevalent.

You know, I would say the actual,

I want to say, I don't want to say the power because there is mob out there.

They're still powerful.

Maybe they've changed ethnicities, but there's still mafia out there or traditional Italian organized crime still exists.

Yeah, I feel like Italian was the top back then.

They were for a lot of years.

They held like, I guess, a 50-year run at the top, which is great for any kind of organization, especially an organization that rivals the United States government, which is the most powerful entity that man has ever known.

Unlimited money.

Well, you know, if you look at the government now, in my opinion, they stole a lot of the rackets from the mobsters, you know, through prohibition, through the boot.

If you want to go all the way back to the bootleggers, it was the mobsters who were the big still owners and they owned the beer barons, they called them and stuff like that.

The government, with the Volstead Act, they outlawed the alcohol, then they eventually made it legal, taxed it, took it over.

I mean, you could put the same thing now to the modern day prohibition in my

eyes is marijuana.

You know, when I was growing up, marijuana was illegal.

It was my drug of choice.

I experimented with drugs, you know, as a kid growing up in the city.

Nothing ever like street drug heroin and stuff like that.

It wasn't really my thing, but like party drugs, you know.

And I like marijuana.

But in my time growing.

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Growing up, if you got caught with a joint of marijuana, you were going to jail.

you know and now in vegas there's 81 dispensaries you know it's like as long as it's it's taxed, there's nothing wrong with it.

So that was kind of my philosophy growing up.

And I guess I was a little bit ahead of my time.

Like, I didn't do anything too crazy, but I was in the marijuana game.

I liked to gamble.

You know, you could always find me at the card games, playing with the old-timers, you know, depending if I was invited, you know,

certain places.

And I grew up in Flushing, place called The Hill.

It was a generational neighborhood, you know, kind of mixed with those early settlers of Irish, Italian, German.

It did have mafia undertones and stuff like that.

So you could find illegal gambling spots.

But then when the Asians started coming in and now you saw like a Chinese, the Asian wave, I call it.

It came up from downtown Flushing, which was Main Street by the L, excuse me, by Roosevelt Avenue, down by the Seven Line.

And then it kind of migrated up towards my way, which was like Main Street in the LIE.

And, you know, you're half Chinese.

You know, you guys love to gamble.

Oh, yeah.

So there was tons of Asian gambling spots.

And the one thing about them, they let anyone inside.

As long as you didn't cause a problem, if you knew someone, blah, blah, blah, this and that.

Massage parlors, Asian gambling spots, you'll still see them there to this day.

So that's kind of what I grew up around.

And if you ask me, they're kind of harmless vices.

I mean, does some people get hurt every once in a while?

Sure.

You know, there was just recently they tried to rob one of the gambling spots down in downtown Flushing, I believe, by Prince Street.

Somebody got shot in the head.

Damn.

But they tried to rob someone coming out of the game.

That's a different story.

You know, in mob games, in the mafia games, you weren't allowed to rob anybody coming out of there.

You know, those games were protected.

And if they found out you did it, you were in some serious shit.

Sopranos.

Yeah.

There you go.

Yeah, that last season, man.

Shit went down.

Yeah,

did you play a lot of poker?

You know, the old timers, we played seven-card stud, and this was almost like a family thing.

I remember, you know, being around the table at like Christmas when everything was done, or like a major holiday, New Year's.

We'd all get your quarters, dimes, nickels, dollars, and we would play cards around the table, whatever it might be.

And I mean, we're going back to I was like seven, eight years old at this time, yeah, teaching you young, yeah.

So, when I got older, when I was 15, I already had the balls to walk into a professional card game or an illegal card game.

And they didn't I do you?

This is illegal shit.

What are they IDing you for?

Whatever, you know, they didn't care, especially if you were, you know, I looked like a street guy.

I had like long hair.

Sometimes I would get it braided, like, you know, typical rapper style.

You know, we wanted to dress like hip-hop guys back in the day.

So that's what I would dress.

And like I said, as long as they didn't, I, uh, you didn't cause any problems.

They didn't, uh, they didn't, they didn't bother you, you know.

In those games, you had to have more of a connection with the Italian guys, which I did.

You know, I had family, friends that could bring me to these guys, yeah.

Yeah, so I would go in and the game of choice was usually seven-card stud.

I've never played that one actually.

Yeah, it's fun.

You know, you can mix it up.

It's two down, four up, and then one down.

But the four, they kind of go one by one.

So you're betting on each card.

Got it.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

I still to this day, I love the game.

It's kind of hard to find in Vegas, though.

Yeah, I don't see that one in Vegas.

Every once in a while, like on the off-strip casinos, like Red Rock, they might offer them, but like on a midday or something like that, they're very far and few between.

Hold them has taken over the world.

Yeah, it's fucking everywhere.

Did you make money gambling?

Yeah, sometimes.

You know, the life of a gambler has his ups and downs.

I don't know many successful gamblers.

And if they are successful,

their

source of revenue comes from other places.

You know, it could be sponsorship, could be something like that.

But somebody who's actually grinding out a living gambling, like rounder style, you know, very far and few between.

You'll meet them, but you know, very super rare.

And they're usually not flaunting on social media.

Yeah, a lot of those guys, they're bullshit.

You know, those guys that are flaunting on social media, they're all fully shocked.

Selling their sports picks.

They're selling their sports picks.

They're selling the brand.

I mean, mean, they're selling, they might have a partnership with the casino that you don't know about under the table.

You know, I've seen that a lot.

So it's

a huge revenue stream for the mob back then.

I think it was a huge revenue stream for them back then and now to this day.

Oh, yeah.

I think that a lot of people still gamble with the mob.

You think about it.

You don't really have to, you don't have to give a social security number, so you don't have to pay taxes on it.

You don't have to come with the money up front as long as they, you know, they know how to get in contact with you.

You can bet on credit.

And they're usually giving you better odds.

So it's like, why why wouldn't you?

I mean, yeah, there's always the fact that you get your legs broken, but

that's because you're not paying your debts.

If you pay your debts, they're going to treat you like gold, you know, because you're the golden goose here.

You know, I wouldn't want to owe the mob money.

I don't think anybody wants to owe the mob money.

I'm sure you witnessed some crazy stuff back then.

Oh, yeah.

So you leaned towards that side, but you ended up becoming police officer.

So what was that moment that kind of turned you over, I guess?

Well, I mean, like I said, so my foray into the restaurant business was doing that co-check, right?

And I saw that, but but I was still dipping and dabbling in the street life, you know, with my marijuana, with the gambling, and just being in a lot of certain unsavory locations that I shouldn't have been, you know, a lot of strip clubs where a lot of hustlers hang out.

You're at illegal dice games that could get really dicey right now.

You know, it's all like a bigos, the dice game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I talk about that in one of my interviews I've done that the, you know, the guy just got killed over a dice game.

It could happen at any time, you know, like guys get upset, you know, and it's thousands of dollars there.

And, you know, you might even be the bank, like, you know, just playing against everybody.

Like, it's a friendly game.

And somebody's waiting to take your money when you get out of there.

You know, and how are you going to defend yourself?

You got to have some kind of weapon.

So it does happen.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry to cut you off.

No, no, not at all.

You lean towards thousands of people.

So going like with my foray into the restaurant, you know,

I saw a lot of money legitimately.

You know what I mean?

Like the marijuana and the gambling was cool and stuff like that.

But working

a

mob-connected birthday or Sweet 16 or one of those kind of events that they would have.

And I would work in different, I followed in my father and uncle's footsteps.

I would work in different bars, restaurants, catering halls that these, you know, these wise guys had owned.

And I started making like legit serious money, cash, you know, way more than I was making doing all my other hustles, even though I left them there.

You know, I still was getting revenue from them.

And I guess at one point, after years of doing it, the fast lifestyle, like I had to network a lot.

You know what I mean?

So I would meet people behind a bar and people are so chummy with you when they have a couple of drinks in them and they like you that I mean, I would get invited to all these places.

What time you get out of work, Tony?

Oh, all right, meet us over here, whatever.

I meet owners of certain locations and I would show up.

fresh face or whatever.

If they just saw me and they had a couple of drinks, they might forget me by tomorrow.

But if I went right after I got out of work, like went home, showered real quick and got to the spot or whatever, they would

remember me.

And then I would continue my connections.

And that's kind of how I would network.

So who would be at these parties?

A lot of politicians, a lot of upper echelon police department people, chiefs, commissioners, deputy inspectors, all these kind of people.

And

mobsters.

They kind of just all run in the same circle, you know, people that are lobbyists or whatever you want to call them.

And some of them have connections to organized crime.

So throughout these parties, you know, I had made significant amount of connections.

And, you know, it just took a lot of toll on me, the years of partying.

Like, you know, you finish a long shift at a party where everybody's drinking and you're drinking too and then you go out and then you continue in drinking and sometimes I wouldn't even go home like I would go sleep in my car just so I would make it back to work for my next shift and go over and over you know and that's with all my other side hustles going on like I had a really successful eBay business before that was big

you know I still to this day or whatever if I can find a deal like I bulk by like if I can find something that I can kind of flip that's just always been my thing

you know and I've just been doing that forever it's just something that's been in me yeah you're

yeah it's just my thing so

after, you know, I want to say a significant run in the restaurant business.

I want to say over a decade now, you know, I'm rocking and rolling.

I have all these connections.

I opened up my own spot.

I ended up opening up a pizzeria in the Bronx.

It did well, but I couldn't really take it to the next level.

You know, it was something that it was just like, it was lagging, you know, and it was just like, you know.

How do I transition into something where this hustling lifestyle where I'm all over the place can kind of be a little bit more concrete for my future.

And I don't know, it just dawned on me.

I wounded up getting a root canal.

And all this money I was making, I wanted to have this pay like $4,000 out of my pocket.

Like, dental work is crazy expensive.

And I was talking to a friend of mine.

I don't know if it was my cousin.

Well, it was my cousin too, whatever, because I had floated this around just to verify this information.

The NYPD covers complete dental.

Like, you pay zero out of your pocket.

Like, so later on, I realized it was true because I wounded up getting like 10 grand of work in my mouth for nothing.

So it looks like I made the right decision.

But I was like, you know, you got all that work in your mouth for nothing.

I was like, yeah, it's all free.

And things started to dawn on me.

I was like, you know, is this hustling lifestyle?

It's good.

I'm making a lot of money.

I have more money than anybody at my age that I knew that wasn't really that deep into the street.

You know, if you're deep into the street, obviously you're going to have more money than me because this is what you're doing constantly.

But if you're just dipping and dabbling like me and you have a legit job, it's almost just like a side hustle.

I was up there with the best of them.

You know, I was making crazy money for my age.

But the fast, as fast as you make it, as fast as you spend it.

You know what I mean?

i would have to be at a bar with the guy who owned it and have to buy drinks for everyone you know what i mean so that just round right there is 400 bucks you know what i mean you can go out two nights maybe as a single guy with 400 and buy drinks and still be okay but i would have to do that as a constant daily basis to network to show i belong to you i'm in the click you know i'm not just some fucking bartender you met that don't have money

yeah it was like you know it was a lot of money sometimes i i don't know if i would spend i would make a lot of money like i would leave i don't want to say what my best day was but thousands yeah yeah as a as as a male bartender, as a male bartender, I was always good looking, you know, I would flirt, I have personality, you know, girls would drop money just like the guys, you know, but

it was that kind of money, that kind of revenue that was coming in that I think spoiled me in a way, you know, because it's kind of hard to make that money anywhere else.

Unless you're like a hot chick or a stripper or whatever, maybe.

But, you know, I started seeing that.

The hustling lifestyle, I couldn't really maintain.

It wasn't sustainable.

You know, I couldn't really sleep in my car anymore or go out and drink.

Like, you know, I'd have hangovers now.

It was like getting to that point.

And I said, you know, know, I needed something more, a little more serious.

And I didn't think about it overnight.

Like, you know, it just kind of gradually started happening.

Like, signs were getting pointed at me.

You know, I'd have like maybe the shittiest night I ever had bartending.

And I was like, damn, what am I doing?

And then, like, certain things, like

just the marijuana game, you know, started drying up and certain connects I had would disappear and people act funny and just certain things, you know.

And I was like, you know what?

I know a lot of people.

I have a lot of family in law enforcement.

I said, you know what?

I'm going to reach out to a couple of chiefs I know.

I ended up meeting them at a networking event.

It was at a catering hole in Howard Beach.

And they kind of, I told

one of them who is,

I don't want to say his rank, but he's up there.

And he was like, I told him I want to become a cop.

He's like, you want to become a cop?

He's like, yeah.

He's like, he was totally blown away.

Like, no way.

Like, you know, and I said, yeah, you know, I want to, I want to become a cop.

All right.

You know, so he invites me to this.

I thought it was going to be like a dinner and I kind of got ambushed.

It was like three upper echelon people from the department and they were like you know what do you think about the co-work and i was like you know kind of ambushed you know i thought they were just going to tell me like oh it's great you know you want to be one of us we'll figure out where you want to go you know blah blah blah whatever but they immediately like latched on to me and were like you'd be perfect for it you know we'll put you here you'll do this and initially i had said yes i was like i was iffy i was on the wall about it but initially i had said yes

you know and uh i had ran it by my dad and he was completely against it like he flipped the gasket like because he comes from a time where you know informants got killed.

You know, it's not, they still get killed, but it's not.

Ratting was a no-no.

All that kind of shit was a no-no.

So, you know, he was like, what are you going to do for?

You're going to get killed for this.

You're going to sacrifice your life.

And, you know, he was right in the end of the day, you know.

So I kind of backed away from the idea.

I told him, no, you know, the whole idea was for me to change my appearance, which I did.

Like, you know, I always had facial hair since I was like 14, I think, you know, maybe even younger.

And I shaved.

I stopped hanging out in the spots I was hanging out in.

And I put on some weight.

I totally looked like a different person.

And when it came down to it, when I really had to just go in there and say, I'm going to do this with you guys, I told them no, you know, and you know, they didn't back away right away.

You would think they'd be like, oh, okay, but no.

They were like, well, if you don't want to do it on the street, you know, I was like, listen, I know too many people.

I was hanging out in Washington Heights, you know, with the weed.

It's the best weed in the world up there.

I was gambling at spots in Middle Village, Flushings and Queens.

Spent a lot of time in Williamsburg and Brooklyn.

So I'm all over the city.

You know what I mean?

I'm all over the place.

Everybody knows me from different walks of life.

You know, I'm networking with a high

upper echelon chief of department one day, and then the next week or whatever, I'm hanging out in a strip club with a drug dealer.

You know, it's just the way that it was.

It's just kind of gravitated towards that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

So they tried to get me to go undercover in the academy.

They were like, you know, why don't you go into the academy, kind of weed out the corruption, all that kind of stuff.

And, you know, at first I was like, all right, maybe I could do that.

And then I started thinking about it.

And I was like, you know what?

It's not only about weeding out the corruption.

It's the NYPD is a business at the end of the day.

So they also want to weed out the guys that are maybe going to cost that a liability that'll cost them money down the line.

And I saw that a little bit as dirty work, you know, and I was like, you know, that's just not me.

Like, I might be ratting on a guy that's just, you know, you're making, you said about 100K.

You start, I started making $44,000 a year.

Damn.

That, like, talking about quarter-life prices, I was like, what the hell did I do here?

I was like, I'm making fucking hundreds of dollars a night or whatever.

And now I'm making $44,000 a year, which translates to,

I think, my paycheck in the academy was $1,150 every two weeks.

Damn.

In New York City.

In New York City, how do you survive on that?

You can't, I used to tell these guys, how do you have families and do all this shit?

It's like, you know, you must live like shit.

Your quality of life is disgusting.

And coming from throwing $400 on a round of drinks at the bar and living my lifestyle, it was like a little, like, you know, I was like, you know, I really had to.

to kind of question myself if I was doing the right thing.

But, you know, I understood the struggle of a lot of people.

So how was I going to inform on some guy who's maybe got a second job, which you're not allowed to do in the academy?

So I said, no.

I was like, you know what?

I can't do this undercover shit.

And

I picked the next best thing, which was transit.

I don't know if you ever seen the movie Money Train.

I haven't.

Wesley Snaps and Wood Harrelson.

They're like two plain clothes anti-crime cops and they work in the subway.

And I was like, I bet you those things still exist.

And I started looking into it.

Like, yeah, those are like plain clothes guys.

They can go citywide and stuff like that.

It's like, it's basically undercover work until you actually say, hey, you take out your shield.

You're not in uniform.

Yeah, in uniform.

You're riding the trains like an everyday civilian.

So eventually I knew I wanted to go somewhere along those lines for the most part.

So I got into the transit was a good place to be.

You get overtime and everything.

So I picked transit.

So they did me the favor and they put me in transit.

And that was kind of the start of my career.

How much crime was happening on transit on the subway?

There's always crime happening.

Okay.

There is always crime happening.

I don't care what reports you see.

I don't care what news reports or articles that come out and stuff like that.

There is crime happening in the city 24-7,

365.

It's always going on.

The people that say crime is down and this and that, yeah, it might be, or it's just transition to another part of the city.

Crime does it, it's almost like a balloon.

When you squeeze it on one end, it expands on the other.

And you could see that just with Times Square and the Bronx.

When Times Square was all prostitutes and stuff like that, when they decided to clean it up, all the pimps and prostitutes and all the peep shows and get them all out of there.

I know Giuliani was big in cleaning all that up.

Where do you think all the pimps and prostitutes went?

Do you think they just died?

No.

They went to places like East New York, the South Bronx.

it's like a balloon just inflates in other areas so they might be like oh my god look crime in times square is so much down yeah but you're you're not accounting for other parts of the city and also the fact that a lot of crime goes unreported you know a lot of people will not report the crime just because they don't want to lose time out of their day if you're a tried and tested New Yorker, you already know how the system works.

You're going to go down to the precinct.

You're going to

stand for somebody lining you up and you got to sit through the lineup or you might have to go through books of pictures and this and that.

Then you have to come by, come back.

All it is, it's costing you time and money to put this scumbag away.

Why should you do it?

That's a lot of people think.

Like, I can't do it.

I don't have anybody to take care of my kid.

I don't have anybody to work my shift.

My boss won't give me off.

I'm behind on my rent.

You name it.

Everybody has an excuse in New York.

And it's a valid excuse a lot of these times because you got to have 10,000 hustles just to survive.

So why am I going to take my time out of my day?

And that...

is something that I think needs to be accounted for.

And if it is, the numbers are definitely skewed.

I think whatever percent that they're given, it's a lot higher a lot of new yorkers seem to be desensitized to crime when you see the videos of people on the subway and there's a crime right on the video and they don't even care you know what it is they had to make a campaign in new york if you see something say something because we're used to minding our business and i think that was kind of just us growing up in these neighborhoods like you saw something or whatever you kept your mouth shut and mind your business unless you wanted it to be affected you wanted to be affected by it you know what i mean and that's just i think that's a rule that kind of carries over for the whole world Even nowadays, you know, like people don't want to get involved because if you get involved, something could happen to you.

I mean, we're talking about subway situations.

Look at the recent case with Daniel Penny.

He was acquitted.

Thank God.

You know, but what was he doing?

And next morning, trying to help someone on the train.

Crazy person on the train, attacking,

menacing, whatever you want to do, harassing, whatever you want to say, harassing people.

He put a stop to that.

Sometimes you got to put people down.

Words don't matter.

People are crazy.

Don't you understand?

Like, they're not going to have the same common sense as you.

And I mean, when I say don't you, I'm talking to the general public that says like, oh, well, there's other ways of handling it.

There is no other way of handling talking to a crazy person sometimes.

Sometimes it's hands-on.

I got to put you down before something happens to someone else here.

And I think that's being a Marine.

That's what he was trained as eliminate the threat.

And that guy was a threat.

And in my opinion, he was a hero.

But what do heroes get?

They get thrown in jail.

They get accused of murder and all that other stuff.

So why the fuck would I step?

Why would I step in anywhere and stop anything?

Even me nowadays.

I mean, I I won't do.

If I see a kid getting hurt, that's why I draw a line.

Like, yo, don't put your hands on a kid.

And I saw that once, like a guy, a grown man attacking a kid and I hopped out of the car.

That guy's lucky when he almost got fucked up because it was like six grown guys that got out of their cars and was like, yo, what's going on here?

He was right.

He was fucking fighting with like a 12-year-old, 14-year-old.

The kid talked shit to him.

All right.

He's a kid.

Whatever.

They're supposed to talk shit.

You know what I mean?

You don't put your hands on a kid like that.

That's kind of the only way I would stop out.

Even a guy and a woman, you know, like nowadays, equal rights, equal lefts, I guess.

You know,

if you're equal as a woman and you you throw hands at a man, you better be ready to get hit back.

You see the woman that got burned?

That was terrible.

That was crazy.

That was terrible.

But that's the migrant crisis.

That guy was a migrant, Ecuadorian, excuse me, a Guatemalan migrant that came over illegally.

You know, he was so, that's what I mean about sick people.

The guy lit the person on fire and they found him like this on a subway train sleeping.

Crazy.

If you just lit someone on fire, my adrenaline would be through the roof.

I wouldn't be able to stay still or whatever.

Any normal person, at least, if you just lit someone on fire, you know?

it was like another day in the park for him.

Did you see when the officers caught him?

He was literally knocked out.

Like, he just worked a shift.

Like, you know, like the normal, you know, little Paisano you see on the train that just worked hard in the restaurant or construction or whatever that's heading home.

Fucking sick, man.

Sick.

How can you do that?

And just like nothing happened, you know?

I don't understand.

How many illegal migrants got into New York, you think?

They said 200,000.

I think it's more.

Damn.

Yeah.

And it's a lot.

You know what?

Like, I say this all the time.

I'm not against immigration.

I'm against illegal immigration.

That's for sure.

Because we're all children of immigrants.

And is it fair that maybe your uncle who's worked very hard in his own country or your cousin or your brother that's been on a waiting list and doing all the right things doesn't get a shot?

And all these people get a shot first?

You know what I mean?

Back in the day, they used to put people on Ellis Island.

If you had this kind of disease or this, it was almost like a incubation period or kind of like waiting period to see if you passed to go on to the mainland or whatever.

We should bring back something like that.

Just letting them come over unvetted.

You don't don't know who it is.

There's tons of single males.

This is not like, you know, South Americans trying to come over to work better.

We've got a significant gang problem now in this country because of this open border.

You know, the Venezuelan gangs, El Trende Aragua, they call themselves, the Araguan train.

They are.

a transnational organized crime syndicate.

We're not talking about just some regular gang members here.

I mean, they have tentacles that stretch back to Venezuela.

They control migrant smuggling in Chile.

I mean, if you look at all the recent articles

in the news, I mean, they raided, supposedly took over an apartment complex in Colorado.

They shot at cops in Times Square,

a place in Miami.

You know, they're running a huge cell phone and drug trafficking organization.

I mean, these guys are established and they're not here to, they came over the border with everyone else.

And they're not here to help or benefit this country in any way.

They're here to rob, rape, and pillage.

And that's what they've been doing.

When you were a police officer, did you have any run-ins with those gangs?

I had a lot of run-ins with South American gangs because I used to work a majority of my career, I worked in Queens.

I did hop around.

I worked in Brooklyn.

I did a little in the Bronx.

Everybody fights in the Bronx.

That's one thing.

But it's like that homegrown New York feeling in the Bronx.

The Bronx is still like 1980s, kind of feels like that, you know, some areas.

But I worked a lot on the Seven Line.

And if you go on the Seven Line on Roosevelt Avenue, it's gotten significantly worse throughout the years.

As you can see, there's tons and tons of videos.

I see them all the time about the prostitutes.

Someone getting pushed in at the door.

Or somebody getting pushed and stuff like that.

Prostitutes, the gangs, the shootings, the stabbings.

So when I worked there, they were still there.

I don't know if it was out in the, it was still out in the open, but now it's like right in your face.

You know, they've tried to do initiatives if you see it, but it's all smoking mirrors.

You've seen the former police commissioner and the assistant commissioner, and they do this Operation Roosevelt Avenue.

That shit is smoking mirrors, man, and they know it.

They crack down on one spot, it goes into another one.

These guys are coming over and doing all this crime, and

they're so entrenched in this neighborhood that it's nothing new so when i was working out in the seven line you didn't have trendiaragua but you did have ms 13.

uh there's other gangs called abk some of the dominican gangs the triniditadios and stuff like that they'd be more on the corona side the latin kings throughout my day were growing up there uh they were there um they kind of veered off to brooklyn and uh the bronx now but you have a significant amount uh um significant amount of uh South American gang bangers, 18th Street.

They're all there.

I posted a video on my channel.

I have this channel where I talk about organized crime, a time and type called corruption connection.

And there's one segment that actually got taken down by YouTube.

Really?

Yeah, and I got flagged for it, actually, which sucks.

I was talking about it in my other interview, and people are like, oh, you're full of shit.

That didn't happen.

There was two gang members who got into a fight on the platform.

I believe it was either 82nd or 90th Street.

They get into a scuffle.

The guy takes out a gun and kills the guy right on the platform.

Bomb bomb bomb.

It's all on video.

gets shot or whatever these are gang members one had like a nicks jersey on okay so i repost the context i like i blurted out and i was talking about it or whatever on the context of my story and it actually got um it got taken down by youtube they're strict with guns but this is going back that video was going back years when i was a cop that's what i'm saying like the violent the gang violence has always been there i think i believe those guys were 18th street one one gang from one gang for another gang they saw each other right on the platform just got into it and boom boom boom shot him like it was like he was a dog so that kind kind of a violence always existed, you know.

But I think now you're seeing it in way greater numbers.

You know, before a lot of people didn't even know about like, oh, whatever, two gangbangers shot each other.

But now, like a lady getting set on fire on the train recently, when the Venezuelan migrant had come over, he got into a fight with some guy.

The guy pulled out a gun, but the migrant took the gun and shot him on.

You know, it's like, it's a lot of shootings, a lot of stabbings.

And the greatest part about it is that New York City, just now, this past weekend, implemented congestion pricing, which makes it so expensive to drive into Manhattan.

Why are they doing that?

They're trying to push people into the subway system.

But people are scared.

How can you raise the price on them going into the city or whatever, driving?

They're like, oh, it's a win for New Yorkers.

What New Yorkers?

Who's winning when you got to pay more at the toll?

Or forcing me to go...

take my life in my hands now riding the subway.

You know, I could maybe afford the Uber or whatever for 10 bucks, you know, but and they raised the price of the subway.

So it's like, maybe I could afford the Uber for $10, $12, whatever, $20.

But now I got to pay whatever the subway price is.

I don't know what they raised it to, but let's say for a round trip, like $7, which is half the thing, but I got to deal with possibly getting set on fire.

God forbid, I close my eyes and somebody snatches my phone, which happens every day, or somebody puts a knife on me.

Like, you know, you're on edge, yeah.

Yeah, it's like, come on, I don't know.

The tolls are already like 20 bucks, man, from Jersey.

That's that's crazy.

They raised that.

Well, now it's congestion pricing.

So anywhere below, it's like they raise the tolls, but then they put this pricing on, they don't, they want less traffic.

But I mean, that just affects almost the common everyday New Yorker, you know?

Like, if you're, if you're just, if you have a business, let's say, you know, I don't know how it works with the Ubers and everything, but let's say you have like a delivery business where you're going back and forth into the city over the Williamsburg Bridge, which I think was once free, you know, and

now you got to pay a congestion toll from 60th Street below.

You know, it's like, who the fuck is going to want to go there?

Who can even afford to go there?

It's going to eat away your bottom line.

That's nuts.

You know?

Who's to blame for all the gang stuff right now?

Do you think it's the mayor, Eric Adams?

I think it's a combination of failed leadership all across the board.

I think it's Governor Hochel who actually made that statement.

This is a huge win for New Yorkers in regards to congestion pricing.

I don't know how that's a win at all.

I mean, I don't, but whatever.

Her

being very out of touch with

society.

I believe she had made a statement about kids in the Bronx don't even know how to use computers.

Little black kids in the Bronx don't even know how to use computers.

Something along those lines.

They're very out of touch, a lot of these politicians.

She shouldn't have been governor at all.

But and then you you have Eric Adams, who's the mayor, who's currently under indictment.

And, you know, he,

I mean, in my opinion, he's corrupt.

You know, if you look at all the evidence around him,

his chief of department or one of his top chiefs just got indicted and suspended for a pay-to-play sex for overtime kind of scandal that's going on right now.

And this is.

all under Eric Adams watch.

He's indicted on his own case.

There's tons of indictments flying all over the the place.

I mean, the whole thing stinks of corruption.

It's one of the most popular topics right now.

Yeah, it's never happened to America to get indicted federally, right?

I don't believe so.

I think there was one that maybe got indicted, but he stepped down.

Was it Jimmy Walker, maybe?

No, this was a big one.

Plus, they found out he was having parties during the pandemic.

The guy was in Miami.

They caught him on cell phone or whatever.

Well, he's supposed to be taking care of the city.

He got in Miami.

Now he's taking money from the Turkish government.

He's in Saudi Arabia.

I mean, he's crossing the line.

He's just like, it was almost like the old school Tammany Hall.

You know, I'm a student of history.

You know, it was a pay-to-play.

You know, as long as you had the money or whatever, you could corrupt all these politicians.

And what it's looking like or whatever is that he's been bought and paid for.

Now he's trying to get pardoned, it looks like.

It's funny, man, you know, because he was like a staunch, like, you know, I'm for the migrants.

You know, don't tell us how to, we're New Yorkers, you know, but stop waiting for me to fail the ship, you know, and all this like, hoorah, leftist shit.

And then you see him at the UFC fight, all kissing Trump's ass when he gets elected, you know, when he get,

you know, when he got voted in.

Not too.

New York, to me personally, hasn't felt the same since the pandemic.

Like, I feel like the pandemic messed it up.

Thousand percent.

Like everyone was dipping.

Thousand percent.

I mean, you know, I can kind of attest to that myself.

You know, during the pandemic, I started coming out to Vegas a lot more than usual.

New York was completely closed.

I mean, Vegas was always like an escape for me.

And now I live here, I kind of made it a permanent thing.

But I mean, during the pandemic, it was a no-brainer.

They kind of had some sense here.

Like, listen, like, you know, it was not as many people as normal, but things were still open.

You could kind of get around yeah you know new york it just it killed small businesses a lot of people couldn't reopen and if you saw a lot of people that did reopen they weren't the same some changed some didn't they were no longer 24 hours they had that stupid fucking sidewalk seating thing or whatever that was just a money grab by the city you know and all these that's what i feel like it's just money grabs that's what i say when the when the government took all the mobs tactics you know all they did was make them legal they're in the marijuana game now they're they sports betting you just name it and it's like all these things that they're doing these hidden taxes, just tricks they learned from organized crime.

They just made them legal.

Doesn't mean they're good.

You know, some of them are good, but some of them are terrible.

They ruin everything.

It's crazy because you look up, like, as a kid growing up to respect the government and police officers, and then you realize they're corrupt too.

Yeah, they're worse.

To be honest with you, listen, I've had experience with

mobsters, politicians, cops, lawyers, judges.

Like I've had experience with all of them, sat down at tables with them, broke bread with them, been to events with them.

The legal side are some of the most corrupt scumbag people that you'd ever meet.

A mobster, if you gave him your hand and you shook hands with him, most likely 99% of the time he gave you his word, his word was bon.

I mean, I've done so many legitimate business deals.

Like if I knew I was going to borrow money from someone, I don't want to give you your money back or whatever on, you know, organized crime or something like that, bookie, like, you know, loan shark, you shake their hand or whatever, like you put my bet in, yeah, my bet.

You know, know, your bet's good that you're coming with the money.

I've always been an entrepreneur, you know, so now that I'm older and I do these more bigger deals, like real estate and stuff that I'm into, and you give people your fucking hand, you shake it, and you even have contracts.

They intentionally don't fuck you because they'd rather go to the, you know, you're not going to spend the time to go to the legal system and sue me and it costs time and this and that.

It's like they already have it in your head to fuck with you, you know.

And, you know, I've seen that with a lot of quote-unquote lawyers who are, you know, supposed to be the most up,

respectable people and a lot of politicians, you know, just scumbag behavior that you would never see from a mobster ever.

But, you know, politicians are

just a breed of their own.

Well, the legal system's 100% been weaponized.

You saw that with Trump and you're seeing that in New York.

New York's conviction rates, what, 98%, something crazy?

I can tell you personally, from dealing with the ADAs, dealing with the Queen's District Attorney, where I made a lot of my arrests, Brooklyn, Brooklyn is like a free-for-all.

They only want the most serious thing.

Like, if you got caught with a gun in Brooklyn, it used to be like a year and a day.

Now you can just, the whole city, you can just basically get out.

Wow.

But they select.

The arrest process is all selective.

98% because they know what they're going to win and what they're not going to win and how much publicity and this.

It's all politicized.

And like you said, once it becomes political, you can weaponize it.

And then where are we going with this as far as freedom and everything else?

Like we're turning into a totalitarianism state here.

Or, you know, it's like, I don't want to say communism, but it's like, you know, you're tracked here.

You can't do this.

You can't do this.

Like, what freedom do we really have?

You know?

I mean, I think we were heading towards communism under Democrats, to be honest.

I agree with you.

You know, like, you have to put a mask on here.

You have to do this.

You can't do this.

Like, all this shit with...

Social media censorship.

Yeah, like people getting barred from saying certain things.

Like, my video gets flagged on YouTube.

Meanwhile, you can show it on, you can show porn and all this other kind of stuff.

I just recently saw, no, even on Facebook.

Oh, I'm not sure.

Like, I saw on Facebook whatever a girl pleasuring herself, completely nude and everything, with the

toy.

Totally.

Yeah.

And I'm like, and my thing gets censored and I blurt it out and everything.

I'm like, this is crazy.

I got a lot of strikes early on the show when it was Democratic leadership for like vaccine stuff.

That's another thing.

Vaccines.

Like certain topics they really don't want out there.

So when we were talking about this whole migrant thing, right, my channel was doing this because I talk about organized crime history.

I try to delve on that.

I'm going to start talking more about my personal life because I see it's kind of popular.

You know, it got me here.

But, you know, that being said, you know, I was doing a lot.

My most successful video was actually a Vegas story about a mobster knocking out Frank Sinatra's teeth.

So you see my channel doing this, right?

Yeah.

And I guess I was a little ahead before my time.

If you go on YouTube right now, the first video about that gang I was telling you, the Venezuelan gang that I was bringing awareness to, El Trenda Aragua, it's like Venezuelan gang or migrants taking over.

I forget the exact title.

My channel did this.

Damn.

Immediately, bro.

Immediately.

I'm talking about I was getting thousands of views, like hundreds of views.

Then it started going like 1K, then 1.1, 1.2.

And then it started just going up.

And then I got 64,000 on that Sinatra video.

It was like, great.

All of a sudden, and you could look this up, there's not a video before mine, I believe, on YouTube about this gang.

I was the first one to ever put a video out on them, and it fucking did this.

Now that it's the hot topic, they could talk about it or whatever.

Now all the videos are doing well.

But they don't want you to talk about something.

I don't want to call it a shadow ban or whatever, but I mean, Jesus, like all of a sudden, it was the same kind of video quality.

I didn't really change anything.

I'm talking about a news story, but it's because what they didn't want to hear at that time, I feel like they shit on that video when my channel went down.

And ever since then, it's been hard for me to like gain that momentum that I had.

No, I've had that with certain guests.

If that platform doesn't like the guests, I have them on, my views the whole month will be shot just because I had that person on.

That's bullshit.

Yeah, because they shadow ban certain people or some of them full-on ban people and then I'll have them on.

And then if I post them on that platform, my views are down 90%.

Really?

It's crazy.

But I think times are getting better now.

I think we're due for a change.

I think people have just had enough of it.

You know,

you can have your little left side or whatever.

Obviously, you can tell by the way I talk, you know, I'm not a leftist.

You know, I'm not even an extreme rightist.

I'm like whatever makes sense.

Sometimes the left does make sense.

Most of the time, no, but sometimes they do.

And then, you know, I take it, I take everything with a grain of salt and then I kind of develop my own hypothesis here.

You know, so when you go too far left and you start to change question biology and stuff like that, oh, men can have babies and all this kind of shit.

Like

that's a mental illness now.

You know what I mean?

Now we're talking about a different side of the spectrum here.

You know, we're no longer, we no longer can have an intelligent debate about men and women if you're sitting here telling me that a biological man can get pregnant.

I've totally shut myself off, you know.

Which way did the mob guys lean politically from what you saw?

Well, I think most of them

kind of supported Trump, I would say.

Like, Like, I'm trying to think, like, the later years or whatever, who I would know.

Like, growing up, I think they were all very friendly with the Democrats from what I could see because the Democrats could be corrupted.

Yeah.

You know, like Schumer, like those guys have been in power for fucking so long.

Pelosi.

Pelosi is the best stock trader in history.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, I think that most of the mob guys were friendly with the politicians as far as the Democrats because they were corruptible.

You know, did they like, you know,

the Republicans that were tough on crime and stuff?

I think in some aspects, yes, because for the most part, you know, nobody really wants crime and shit in their neighborhood.

And they're criminals, they know, like they, they all live in nice areas.

You know, but they only hurt each other.

They weren't hurting random people.

That's why I respect it, too.

That too.

You know,

I put a,

it's part of my intro.

It's from the famed French connection detective, Sonny Grasso.

This is a guy who busted up the ring.

Him and his partner, Eddie Egan.

They were two of the best criminal detectives, I think, that the NYPD has ever seen, in my opinion.

And Sonny came from East Harlem, which was Italian Harlem.

And that was the mecca of heroin trafficking back in the day.

Everybody thinks about the cartels now, but the real original cartels were the Italians.

Had it before, maybe like Jewish and a lot of other of the gangsters.

They were big into

heroin importation, morphine, and stuff like that.

But what we know as, I guess, the modern-day

drug trafficking organization were the Italians, the French Connection, which

was primarily based out of Italian East Harlem.

That's where most of the dope in the country came from.

Yeah.

So

who do you think the most powerful criminal organization is right now?

Do you think it's the cartels?

I would say so.

Yeah.

Definitely the cartels.

Definitely certain countries, I would say.

You know, in the Middle East, they have they're very rich in the opium.

Like I was saying, you know, the

golden triangle.

You know, there's a lot of warlords that we've hear about that never have even done jail time and have been some of the biggest drug traffickers ever.

Kun Sa, I don't know if you ever heard of him from like out of Burma.

No.

CIA connected, imported more drugs to this country, I think, than anyone ever.

And I don't think he ever did a day in jail.

Damn.

So, I mean, those guys are

the most powerful criminal organization, I guess, is the United States government, though, because they're connected to all these people.

For real?

Without them, they wouldn't exist.

You piss off this government or whatever, they'll come after you.

I agree.

Let's end off with some food.

Best pizza in Vegas.

That's an oxymoron, that question, because I can't legitimately give that answer because some of these people out here don't know what pizza is.

I'm convinced.

And if they've never been, you're from Jersey.

Yeah.

If you've never been to the tri-state area, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and had fresh bread out of a bakery, a bagel from a Jewish bagel shop, an Italian pizzeria that's been around for a long time, no frills, regular Sicilian kind of slices, you don't know what the real thing is.

So you cannot be a judge of food out here.

I laugh at all these fucking content creators that come out here and like, oh, this is the best pizza, blah, blah, blah.

In my opinion, even the ones that come over here that try to open them up, they're still a little off.

Like Prince Street Pizza came over and they opened up in the Durango.

They're good, but they're still a little off.

Like the crust is very different.

I like a place called Monzu.

They do their homemade pasta.

They also do pizza,

wood fire grill.

It's good.

It's very good for

Italian food.

What about bagels?

After they hear this, we're going to go for dinner.

So we better get this comp, all all right?

We definitely don't got straight comps.

What about bagels?

I've been struggling on bagels, bro.

Bro, bagels are non-existent.

Let me tell you, they don't exist.

There's one place.

It's in the middle of Henderson.

I forget the name off the top of my head.

They're okay, but I wouldn't even send anyone there.

Because they're going to be like, what is it?

Einstein.

No, hell no.

No.

Einstein, bagel mania, all these New York bagel and Buffalo.

It's all garbage.

And this is coming from a New York.

I was in the food industry, so I'm a little biased, but just a regular no-frill shop.

There's tons of bagel stores and pizzerias that I've never even been to in New York City.

And when I go for the first time, I expect them to taste good, and they usually do.

They don't disappoint.

When I go to these places, I went to this place, and I mean, I hate the shit on a business, but they weren't really nice in there anyway.

It's called the bagel nook, okay?

The girl goes behind the fucking counter to give me the bagel.

I swear to God, I thought it was a wax model.

It looked fake.

It looked like they painted on the everything seasoning.

I was like, that's what you're going to give me?

That's like it?

And it tasted just like it looked.

So that's why I'm convinced they spend all this money to open up a spot they really don't know what it tastes like because if you invested that much money into a business you wouldn't uh you wouldn't be selling that kind of product or something like that i need maybe they do well out here i don't know because i think the majority doesn't know well that's the thing though might be a little opportunity or whatever for somebody to take it over but people that grew up here and in cali they never had an east coast bagel or pizza i know that i know and i can tell like i can tell right away because the recommendations i get like you say my favorite pizza and i don't even want to say it because it's like somebody's going to come to me and be like that's your favorite pizza tone and i'm going to try to tell them like i understand But, like, Monzo's pretty good, but

they're not.

Yeah, I'm not walking into a spot and ordering a slice.

It doesn't exist.

Facts.

Doesn't exist, bro.

There's a couple, but hey, it's been a blast, man.

Anything you want to close off with here?

No, man.

You know, just everybody, thank you for having me on.

I really appreciate it.

Good luck with everything here.

You guys are doing great work.

You have a nice place and everything.

And, you know, everybody come follow me.

Check me out on my channel.

You know, I do mafia history live on location.

I got all over Vegas, New York.

And, you know, I'm trying to grow it.

You know, soon enough, you'll, you know, you'll see me here doing this whole thing.

Absolutely.

Corruption Connection.

Thanks a lot.

Peace.