#146 Blake Cook - America's Scapegoats: The 365-Day Service That Never Stops

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Not available in all states or situations. Blake Cook, welcome to the show, man.
Thanks for having me, Sean. It's an honor to be here.
It's an honor to have you. Thank you.
So we met through Kyle. Yep.
Kyle Morgan. Awesome.
One of my favorite guests ever on this show. Phenomenal human.
And he is, man, he is. And he connected with us, and I know you guys are working together.
Yep. And I'm just really thankful that he made that connection, because I've been looking forward to this interview since we spoke.
Appreciate it. So welcome to the show.
So I want to do just a full-blown life story with you. And I know you have a lot to say to the law enforcement community, especially.
Yep. I think a lot of those guys, the ones that are left anyways, are going through some tough times with everything that's changing.

And man, it's just a shame what has happened

over the past, what, four or five years in law enforcement?

Is that when it started?

2020.

Defund the police movement?

Defund the police.

After the George Floyd incident is when it just spiraled downhill. Man, that's, well, people are feeling it.
People are seeing it. This is what happens when you shit on the cops.
Crime is up nationwide. It's crazy.
I mean, I see these videos in, where is it, San Francisco, where people are just looting. That's mind-blowing.
They're looting the department stores, Apple stores. I mean, I've seen reels of them just walking in Apple stores and just.
Jewelry stores smashing glass and then just leaving. It's crazy.

That's not, somebody has to pay for that. Yeah.
Yeah. I would be, I'd be infuriated if I was a owner of a store in one of those cities.
I mean, what do you even do as a cop? Honest question. What do you do as a law enforcement officer when that's happening? I feel so sorry.
Yeah. If you try to, if you try to do anything, they're going to send you to jail for enforcing the law.
I feel so sorry for people, for law enforcement officers in those areas. Because, you know, God forbid, I had this conversation.
Those guys, their job is to escape by any means necessary. They're very brave and they're bold.
They have no respect. They're broad daylight smashing glass, grabbing thousands of dollars of merchandise and then leaving.
We show up. What are we supposed to do? Ask them nicely? No, we have to chase them.
We have to go hands-on with them. And if they fight us and we have to use force, now the mayor or the governor, God forbid, or the police chief, they're going to say, well, why didn't you let them go? Is that a hill you want to die on? Yeah, it is.
Because you know what? I was hired to enforce the law. Not different laws that you want me to enforce.
I was hired and took an oath to do my duty and to protect the laws and to protect innocent folks who are trying to make a living. Yes, did they physically harm anybody? No, but that store owner has to come out of pocket for that.
You know, that hurts that family.

That hurts the employees' families.

They're not going to get paid.

Maybe they get laid off because of it.

Maybe the store shuts down.

It has a domino effect.

Yes, they didn't hurt nobody physically,

but somebody has to deal with that.

How about the PTSD they just caused those people inside of there?

They thought that they could have died.

I mean, they're getting

robbed. Our job

as law enforcement officers is absolutely

I'm going to chase you down

and you're going to jail.

But unfortunately,

those cops, this

is their career too. This is how they feed their

family.

A lot of cops are not going to go, if they don't have the backing, man, they're going to sit there and watch it happen. I mean, I can't blame them.
I mean- It puts food on their table. I mean, some of these, some, here's another question.
I mean, a lot of, there was a lot of people on the bandwagon for defunding the police. Yeah.
A ton of them. You know, now they're having to live in this shit.
I mean, do you feel bad for them? You don't have to answer. No, I don't feel bad for them.
you know it's not fair to judge all of us

off of one individual's actions. Let's take ownership that that man was also a criminal.
Now, I don't believe that a knee should have been in his back. He's in handcuffs.
You could have put hands on the shoulders. There's three of you there.
Somebody grab his feet, somebody grab his shoulders until

we can get a wrap to put him in. There's way better ways to have handled that situation.

But we all got judged based off of one police officer's action. Law enforcement officers were

killed during those riots. People were still mourning their husbands and wives that were

killed based off another person's actions. And because you went out and said defund the police.
I think it went national that most of the big movements of the BLM spent the money that was donated to them on houses and cars. They don't care about their people.
I know. It's hilarious.
Now you're burning your own city down. It's hilarious.
It's like, what are you doing? But I guess if you put it into perspective as police officers are like commercial airline pilots. You can't have a bad pilot because if you have a bad pilot and he crashes and kills a bunch of people, people are going to be like, well, those guys aren't trained at that airline.
We're not going to fly that airline no more. We can't have bad cops.
And you know how you stop that? Is when good cops, whether you're young or not, you step up and you stop it immediately. You be brave and you be bold.
And you stand for what you believe in, and that is doing the right thing. That's how you stop that.
If I would have been there, I would ask him to get his knee off his back. And if he refused, I would have jerked him off of him and told him to stand by the car.
Somebody should have done that, but nobody did. Nobody was bold and brave.
So now, four years later, now look at us. Crime is through the roof, murders throughout the country.
Robberies. Man, I'm going to tell you something.
Everybody should own a gun. My fastest response time as a police officer was like seven minutes.
And now that we live in a time where criminals are braver than law enforcement officers, it's scary, man. It is.
I carry. It's why I carry everywhere I go.

Me too.

Me too.

I'm very thankful, Bella, for this town, though.

Franklin, Williamson County.

They do not fuck around here.

Hell, I like this place, man.

Did a little history last night laying in the bed, trying not to think about all the episode and all that.

And this is a very historical place.

Oh, yeah.

It's awesome.

Front lines of the Civil War right here. Yeah.
There's a Chick-fil-A down the road, pretty new. And when they broke ground there, they found the remains of like 12 soldiers from the Civil War.
I love American history. I was reading and there was that old plantation house here that still has blood stains.
Oh, yeah. On the floors from Confederate soldiers because I guess they had turned it turned it into a hospital.
Man, that's so cool. A lot of history here.
But all right, Blake, let's- Let's do it. Let's dive in.
So everybody gets an intro here. So Blake Cook.
Can we start a prayer? Would you like to start with a prayer? I would like to start with a prayer. Let's do it.
Dear Heavenly Father, God, I ask you, Lord, to be with us during this interview. Lord, I ask that you speak through me to whoever needs to receive this.
God, I give you thanks for bringing Sean into my life. I give you thanks for allowing him and giving him this platform to use for the good.
God, I'm so grateful for you. There's a song that says that evil, that the devil tries to bring evil, but you turn it for good.
And I'm beyond blessed. Thank you, Lord, for everything you do for us.
Lord, we give you the honor, the praise, the glory, and the love forever. Amen.
I would just like to add that I pray that this message that Blake is about to share with us goes exactly where it needs to go. I hope it is full of positivity for the current and future law enforcement officers that are about to serve

and are serving in the United States

and all across the world.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you for that.

Yeah.

That felt good.

Got to give him the glory, man,

because I'm telling you something.

I don't feel deserving of this,

but I'm here because he wants me to be here. Well, you do deserve it, man.
Thank you. I hope you start thinking about that with everything you do.
I think there are a lot of people that never achieve what they want to achieve because they don't feel that they deserve it.

And just knowing the little bit that I do know about you from reviewing the outline and digging into your background, you deserve every piece of good that's coming to you.

I appreciate that.

And I'm sure that Jesus would say the same thing.

Yeah.

Jesus chose wild men.

It is true.

Blake Cook.

Four years as Army Infantry in the 82nd Airborne Division.

You are a Purple Heart recipient for an IED explosion in Afghanistan.

You are a former gun, gang, and cartel detective

and a SWAT team member in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Thank you. You are one year sober from alcohol.
Congratulations. You received the 2018 Gang Unit of the Year Award.
You are the recipient of the 2023 Investigative Achievement Award issued by the United States Attorney's Office. You are currently the LE Director of Operations and Lead CQB Instructor at Blue Varying Solutions.
and you've been married for 12 and a half years and the father of one son who's 16 years old. That's me.
Quite the intro. How did you meet Kyle? Man, let's save that.
You want to save that? Let's save that. All right, we'll save that.
Because it's a testimony, man, of the power of God. I want to, let's save that.
We'll save it. We'll save it.
Yeah. So I have a Patreon.
I know you and Kyle do too over at Blue Bearing. So everybody go- I'm subscribed to your Patreon.
Go check that out. But we ask, so our Patreons, they've been with us forever.
They're our top supporters. Without them, I wouldn't be sitting here and neither would you be.
So one of the things I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question. So this is going to be a heavy interview, so we pick something a little lighter.
Okay. This is from Luke.
What is the most embarrassing thing that happened to you during your law enforcement career? Oh, dude. Oh, man.
I have a good one for that one. Did a search warrant one time on a gang house.
It was a non-traditional gang, which means it wasn't a gang that was, you know, it's like a neighborhood clique, right? The guy that we were going after, he was distributing stolen guns from soldiers to all the little hoodlums. So we went and did a search warrant.
Mom, I mean, just a horrible area in Fayetteville called Murgerson Road. So we go there, we execute the search warrant, the gang unit, not the tech team.
And we're searching through everything. And that morning, my bungee on my radio pouch had broken.
And I was like, ah, you know, whatever. It'll be fine.
So we're about to wrap up. I'm searching a closet, and I've been down to grab something.
And I guess it had fallen off. And I didn't know how it turned off.
I'm in the house. And so we wrap up.
We leave. Taking the evidence to the station.
and I'm, we wrap up, we leave, taking the evidence to the station.

And I'm driving down Merkison Road.

And, man, I hear, hey, Mr. Police Man, you left your walkie-talkie at my house.

And I'm like, oh, man, somebody's in trouble. What an idiot.
What an idiot. I'm like, oh man, somebody's about to be in a lot of trouble.
And she is just on it. And next thing I know, both of my cell phones, my personal, my work number's ringing.
And I answer it. It's my supervisor.
And he's like, hey man, hey man, hey, check, see if you got your radio. I'm like, hey dude, I got my radio, bro.
I'm like, I got, I got my radio. Oh shit.
And he's like, no, no, for real, Get hands on. I'm like, I got my radio.
Oh, shit. And he's

like, no, no, for real. Get hands on.
I'm like, all right. So I'm driving.
I'm feeling it. Pull

my vest up. I don't see it.
My heart drops in my stomach. So I turn around.
I pull over. I look.

Can't find it. I'm like, hey, that's my radio.
And I whip that car around.

And I am blue lights and sirens to this house. Because she is on it.
She is talking shit. She is just solid.
Because I mean, this is not like a channel just for us. This is a channel for that district.
Oh, shit. She's on the radio.
She's on my radio that I dropped. My police radio.
Oh, shit. I thought you meant this is the station

calling you on your cell phone. No, no, no.
So she

found my radio after we left the search

warrant and turned it on.

And now it was on that district station.

Like, dispatchers

are trying to dispatch officers

to calls. They can't

because she's on it.

Could you hear it in the car? I had an in-car radio.

I could hear it. Oh, shit.
That's why I started laughing. I was like, what an idiot.
Somebody's in trouble. Oh, my God.
I mean, I'll whip that thing around. By the time I get back to the house, the whole hood's out there.
Everybody. Man, I get out of the car.
She's holding that radio by the antenna. She goes, she goes,

here piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy.

Here piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy.

Sean, I felt this big.

My tattoos didn't matter.

My beard didn't matter.

My long hair didn't matter.

Nothing mattered.

I was so humiliated.

I had to walk over and was like, sorry about that. Got my radio, got back in my car.
But man, I had, I told everybody the story. Every day, I would have Miss Piggy.
I would take it down the next morning. It would go right back on my desk.
It was so embarrassing.

Because, I mean, you're talking a channel for that district.

Not just a channel for our unit, but for that district.

So everybody, police chief, everybody in my chain of command,

all the patrol officers who look up to us.

I mean, it is what it is.

I admitted to it.

Thank God I didn't get punished.

Because they realized that I was humiliated. Because when I got out, I had to turn my body camera on to make sure they didn't lie on me.
So the whole interaction was on camera. The whole Miss Piggy, Piggy, Piggy.
Oh, man. Everything.
So they're like, man, we're not going to write you up for this one. We feel like that you're, I'm like, hey, man, thanks.
Yep, I'm really humiliated. And I'm sure I'm never going to live this down.
Damn. Yeah, that's it, man.
That's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me. That's a good one.
It was awful. That's a good one.
It was awful. Wow.
Wow. Well, hey, before we dive in here, one last thing.
Everybody gets a gift on the show. Yeah.
Any guesses?

Gummy bears.

Man, I was hoping you wouldn't mess that one up.

Man, I watch the episodes.

Oh, these are awesome.

There they are.

Legal in all 50 states still.

Probably shouldn't be with all the sugar and shit in there.

Sorry.

But, hey, they taste amazing.

I love gummy bears, man. Cool.
Yeah. Thank you for that.
All right. All right.
Here's where it starts getting heavy from here on out. But we'll take any humor.
But yeah, so once again, Blake, we want to do a life story. So we always start at the very beginning.
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Get peace of mind now at HomeTitleLock.com, promo code SRS, or click the link in the description. I grew up in a small town in West Virginia called Pombo, West Virginia.
1,000 people max in my hometown, 18,000 in the county. So, real small town.
Everybody knew everybody. You start daycare with the same people that you graduate with.
So for 13, 14 years, it's the same friends. It's the same people every day.
Even in the summer, we all live next to each other. So it was a cool place to grow up.
Windows open, doors open, ride your bikes wherever, until whenever, you know, we didn't have crime you know just just rednecks you know so it was a it was a great place to grow up um i grew up in a split house you know the the only memory that i have of my mom and dad ever together my mom was trying to leave and my dad was punching a hole in the wall, screaming and yelling. It's the only memory I have of them together.
And so they got a divorce when I was young, you know, three or four. And my dad built a house right next door, right beside my mom.
And that was kind of cool. Why'd they get divorced?

My dad cheated.

Yeah, so my mom had a lot of hatred towards him,

but she ultimately left him because he was a cheater.

He cheated on her, so.

Were you close with both?

I am.

Growing up, yeah, I was close with both.

My mom was phenomenal, man.

To this day, I still wish her Happy Father's Day.

She did her best.

She was young.

Thank you. Yeah, I was close with both.
My mom was phenomenal, man. To this day, I still wish her Happy Father's Day.
She did her best. She was young.
She was, I think, maybe 21, 20 when she had us. I remember she'd take me to college with her, to community college, so she could get her degree.
I remember the only memory I have of it was— Your mom would take you to community college so that she could get her degree. She'd get her degree.
Brothers and sisters. I have a brother.
I have an older brother. He's four years older than me.
I love him more than anything. He's always protected me.
Always. We're complete different.
He's well-dressed, skinnier little fellow. He's an attorney.
Here I am looking like a convicted felon. But ultimately, man, at the core, we're the same person.
Even to this day, he still looks out for me. He's one of my biggest role models.
So he's a phenomenal father. He's a great husband.

He's just a great human.

So I have a half-sister and a half-brother from my dad's.

I don't consider them that.

They're my brother and sister.

But when my dad got remarried, he started another family.

But my dad built a house right next to us. It was cool as a kid because we would, for us, right, we would just go back and forth whenever.
But man, it caused a lot of drama, you could say. My mom and my stepmom didn't get along.
And, you know, there was constant arguing in the driveways. I remember, and, you know, I would say that they were more of the instigators on it.
You know, my dad liked to, even though they weren't together, like, my dad still pushed my mom's buttons. I remember one time I was going to school, and my stepmom or somebody had called down to the house.
My mom said something to her on the phone, and my mom was taking us to school, and my stepmom comes running out of the house, boom, boom, boom, down the stairs. And my mom's like, she worked out every day.
She wasn't a typical woman. She was raising two boys, and she worked out every day, and she was a social worker, so she was constantly dealing with drug addicts and stuff anyway.
So she stayed fit and she had these heels on, man. I remember my stepmom getting to the bottom of her steps and my mom just snapped her up in a headlock.
I'm like a kid watching this though. As a young kid, it's now I laugh about it, right? But as a kid, it was kind of scary.
You know, it's kind of like, what in the hell is going on? And then my dad come down, running down the stairs. You bitch, you better let her go.
You better let her go. Man, he got close to my mom.
My mom stuck them heels so far in his chest. Just took the breath out of him.
And then they just ended up splitting ways and trying to call the police or whatever. But, you know, it was always some type of, you know, if they were both in the driveway together, it was always like anxiety.
Like, let's just hurry up and get in the car. You know, like my mom did a very good job at protecting us from it.
But it was always there. And, you know, as a kid, that can be very traumatizing to always have that anxiety of, let's just hurry up and get in the car.
I hope mom and dad don't talk. If we were going out to the car and they were going out in the car, it was always just like, please, can we just not fight? My mom was always the bigger person when we get in the car, but it was always something, man.
Why did they not get along? Is your stepmom who your father had been a girl with? Man, that's, you know, yeah, like my stepmom, my stepmom, some weird shit. My stepmom was 16 when my dad started dating her.
My dad was like in his thirties. So it kind of tarnished our name a little bit.
And now thinking about my older brother, my older brother is only a few years younger than her. So there was always that.
There was always that, him and her. They never got along.

There was one time Father's Day.

We would always go up there.

My mom would, because he had every other weekend.

So we'd have to go stay with him.

And my mom would leave, maybe go on vacation with her friends or something,

maybe go out of town, and we would stay with him.

And, you know, my brother and my stepmom would always get into an argument. I mean, hell, she was only a few years older than him.
Then my dad would always take her side. My dad, my whole life, has always taken women over us, always put women first over his children.
And Father's Day, I'll never forget this. Father's Day, she had said something to him, told him she was going to whoop his ass or something.
And my brother was like, dude, you're like three years older than me, four years older than me, what are you talking about? So my brother picked up a two liter of Mountain Dew and chucked it at her. And he came over and got me and was like, hey, we're going to stay at the house.
And they ended up calling the police on him. And there was a cop at the time named Jim Hall who came up there and put my 13-year-old brother in handcuffs, put him in the back of a cop car over that.
You called the police on your own son because of something that he did that you caused by marrying somebody that was only two years, three years older than him. And so it was constant.
Like my mom would leave. We would go up to my dad's for a few hours.
And then me and my brother would go down to the house because it was just, it was always something. It was always something.
And my brother would cook for us. He'd take care of us.
And then when, you know, my mom, we would call my mom the day that she was coming back home.

And we'd be like, hey, mom, we just came down to the house.

We know you're coming home that day.

She had no idea that we were doing that.

But it was, he was, my brother was protecting me from the toxic environment.

He's always protecting me.

Damn.

And, you know, and I'm not saying that the whole childhood when my dad was back, because that would be a lie. You know, there were great times.
You know, we would have Nerf gun wars and things like that. But, you know, and he was a good dad growing up.
He would play basketball. He'd teach me how to play basketball and things like that.
But, you know, there was always something, right? There was always something that would happen that would run it, always. And it's just, and my mom did a great job at protecting us from that too.
She tried to limit our time as much as possible, but I'm not gonna sit here and beat my dad down, but because there were good times. He ran our community pool and he would take us down for

night swims. And I mean, there were great, great things, but as we always felt like that we were just second because he had started a new family and we were just secondary.
And that was a lot of my childhood until I became a young teenager.

You know, he, I was, I've been playing sports since I was young, like super young. And basketball was always my thing.
And, you know, we won every, you know, as a kid it was cool, but we won every county championship until I was in the eighth grade. And the only games that my dad would really attend were the ones that were in Palm Bowl.
And then when I got into the eighth grade, we won our county championship basketball game. And there was a guy in the stands that had known me forever.
He said, hey, won't you come try out for football? The way you move and how physical you are, you might be a great football player. I was like, man, I've never played football.
I don't want to get hit like that. I don't know if I'm tough like that.
So my mom signed me up and I started playing football. And my first time ever on the field, man, one of my really good buddies, Nick Razonico, came over, hit me so hard, put me off my feet and took my breath out.
He said, hey man, welcome to high school football. I was like, dude, I got to get in the weight room.
I got to get good. I suck.
I suck at this. I'm out of my comfort zone.
And then, man, I quit baseball. They only had me at baseball.
They only kept me around. I sucked at baseball.
my uh motor brother's name's JR his best friend Derek Bolt literally they thought it

would be fun

he was like 6'2 and like 11, 12 years old. Threw a fastball, hit me right in the neck.
I wouldn't stay in the batter's box ever again. I didn't want to hit.
I don't want you to hit me in the neck again. I don't want nothing to do with it.
They kept me around because I was fast and they could sub me in to run bases. And so finally, my freshman year, I was like, hey, chief, I'm not playing baseball no more.
He's like, why? I was like, look, me and you both know I suck. I'm going to work out for football.
And I dedicated like a lot of time in high school for football, working out in football. I was already pretty decent in basketball.
And then, man, my junior year, I started getting really good at football, really good. And then when I started getting good and my name started getting in the paper, then my dad started showing up to all my games.
And then he wanted to come around. And then he really wanted to come around.
My junior and senior year, we won back-to-back state championships in basketball. And he didn't really want it to be around.
Once we won the first one, he came to the second year, he came to all the games, came to all the football games. You know, he wanted to be there now, right? That's how I always felt.
Did you feel resentment because of that? I did because like, it was kind of like. At the time or looking back? No, at the time, I kind of did.
And I told my mom this as a kid because like the only times I ever saw you when I played basketball in middle school in the eighth grade, in eighth grade I'm what, 13, right? I'm starting to see things and understand things a little more. Like, why are you only at home games? Is it because you don't want to pay the $2 entrance at the other games? And you get in free because he was a schoolteacher at the school.
He was a schoolteacher? At Ponville Middle School. Then married a 16-year-old girl.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Weird.
Very weird. I didn't know any of this at the time, right? But my mom, again, she hid it from us because it was embarrassing, right? We live in a small town.
Everybody knows that. It was, it's still to this day, it's embarrassing.
Now that I'm an adult and I know that that's wrong, that's not right, like, you know, there's even some hatred that I have, resentment that I have towards him for giving us that bad name because we share the same last name. You know, like, I don't want people, fathers of my friends to think, man, I'm going to grow up sick like that because that's wrong.
It's sick. It's weird.
It is what it is. It's weird.
We come from a small town where everybody knows everybody. So, you know, when I started understanding these things, and then he started coming around in high school when my name started getting out there in the papers and colleges started coming and looking, then it's like, hey, man, like, where were you at? Like, my earlier years.
Now you want to travel two hours down the road to a football game and wear a shirt with my name on it. Like, hey bro, my mom has been to every game and my grandfather on my mom's side and my grandmother have been to every game since I ever played.
My mom showed up to an AAU game one time.

Her friends had a birthday thing that they had planned out for. I guess we didn't think we were

going to be there all day playing because we kept winning and winning and winning. She canceled her

plans so I could finish that game out. She's she's been there since day one.
Like, where have you been? Oh, now, now people are starting to know who I am here. Now people are like, wow, Blake's really good at this.
Because, man, I exploded with football. Like, I found a passion for it.
I was a slot, I was a wide receiver, and I was a cornerback. My junior year, I had like 13, 14 interceptions.
My senior year, I broke the record for yak yards, yards after catch. I had like, I don't know, a 7, 1800, like 13, 14 touchdowns.
There was one game where I had four touchdowns. And it was unheard of at that time.
Because you're talking 2008 where people were still trying to run the ball. Everybody then now wanted to run the spread because then Pat White, Steve Slayton, West Virginia started throwing the ball more.
And now we had some really, we had some new coaches come in that were like, hey, let's throw the ball. And their nephew was the quarterback.
He'd moved. So they were obviously going to let him throw the football.
But, man, it was like everywhere I went. Like, high school was crazy because, like, I'm going to be honest with you, Sean, I didn't do a single bit of homework.
I don't know if I even did classwork. I just got pushed through.
As an adult, I'm like, man, I wish you would have pushed me to do better. Let's rewind for a minute.

Yeah.

So did you actually tell your dad that or?

I never told my dad that.

You never told him that?

That was in your head?

That was in my head.

It was all those questions.

Yeah, just, you know, because it's my dad, man. I loved him.

I didn't want him to feel like I was mad or disappointed.

I loved him.

He was my dad. And like I said, my childhood all the time wasn't all the time bad.
You know, he did do things that was a great father, but there were things that like, you know, I have a 16 year old son, right? I've raised him since he was three. His dad's non-existent.
I married my wife. She had a son and I've, I've raised him since he was three.
His dad's non-existent. I married my wife.
She had a son. And I've raised him since he was three.
That's my own. He is my son.
You'll never be able to convince me that he's not. I'll never look at him and say, hey man, remember that time I changed your tire? Hey man, remember that time I did this for you and did that for you and did this and that? That was what it was like.
It was always, hey man man, remember that time you ran out of gas on Salisville Mountain? Or ran out of gas on Salisville Mountain and I brought you gas? Yeah, that was that. Yeah, Dad.
Thanks. Thanks for being a dad.
Your dad was keeping tabs? Yeah. He's keeping tabs.
It's to this day, and we'll get to that. To this day, he still keeps tabs.
And it's like, man, you're my father. What are you talking about? You're supposed to do those things.
I would give my life for my son. I'd never keep a tab on it.
I'd be dead, but I'd never keep a tab on that. I hope that he would never be like, oh, well, you know, like, that's what I'm supposed to do.
And that's what I'm raising him as, is, hey, man, when you have a son or a daughter, you do things for them out of love. You never expect a thank you ever.
And so a lot of my childhood was he would do something great for us, but we would be reminded. Like, okay, my mom never did that.
Do you think, why do you think he did that? I think he just wanted us. You know, I really think, and this is something I've dived into in my adult life, is I felt like he was always trying to compete with my mother.
Because she always did right by us. But what he doesn't know is we weren't thanking her either.
Do you think maybe he was dealing with his own guilt? I do. He felt extremely guilty.
I had a conversation later on in my adult life, and he says he regrets cheating on my mom. And, you know, I do.
I feel like that he has his own demons that he deals with. And I think that it is his guilt.
Yeah, he did the right things, but ultimately, I think at that age, he just wanted us to tell him how great he was. Maybe he didn't feel like he was great.
Well, I'm sure he, I mean, all the clues are there. I mean, he built a house.
He wanted to be in our life. He built a nice house.
He did his best. He, you know, he worked as a manager at a swimming pool in the summertime.
And he took us on vacation every summer to Myrtle Beach with that money every summer. So he tried.
It's just he always wanted the thank you that we never gave him. I mean, I'm a kid Like I have one parent who gives me the world with not ever thinking about it and I have another parent who is trying and we're not giving the thank you to.
I'm keeping tabs. He's keeping tabs.
One's not, one is. What am I supposed to do? I don't know, my mom doesn't keep tabs, but he is obviously keeping tabs.
we're beyond grateful right i had a decent childhood i'm not gonna say i didn't but it was always like he's always trying to compete with my mom and my mom took us on vacations every year and you know to like mexico and cancun and and disney world and and it was always like he was trying to. My mom never like shoved it in his face, but he would always shove it back.
Like, oh, I pay child support. You know, I take the kids on a vacation every summer.
Like, it was always something like that. You know, it was always, it was always, you know, now that I'm older, I'm like, man, maybe I should have said thank you more.
I don't know. I was a kid.
I didn't know any better. I just thought it was what dads do.
Shit. What's your relationship like with him now? He's dying of drugs.
I've spent my whole adult life fighting drugs, and I'm losing my dad to it. It's a non-existent relationship.
I broke it off. What kind of drugs? Heroin, meth, fentanyl, cocaine, Dilaudid's.
Anything that's a drug that will get you high. How did that happen? When I was 14, he fell off a ladder, 20, 30-foot ladder, changed in a light bulb like a floodlight, and went to a doctor in a town in our county called Oceana.
It's nicknamed Oxyana. He had a doctor who was prescribing Oxycontins like crazy.
I guess he's in federal prison now, but he got addicted to Oxycodones. He got addicted to fentanyl patches for his back.
Then it went to Oxycodones. And I think my dad's always fought depression too.
A lot of times as kids, he'd sleep all day while we were with him. We figured maybe he's just tired, right? He was a volunteer firefighter.
He'd get caught out in the middle of the night, all that. But now that I'm older, I know what depression is, he definitely had depression.

I think he battled his own demons every day. And ultimately, they got the best of him.
You know, you talk a lot about breakfast this morning, about a great prayer. I could tell you're a Christian with very strong faith.
Have you ever tried forgiveness? I have. So, um, I attempted to save his life.
when I got out of law enforcement, so I found out that he was on drugs, right? So Thanksgiving 2018. We're back home.
We're in West Virginia. I'm at my mom's house.
Now, my mom lives in a whole other city, a whole other county now at this point, right? She moved to a bigger town of Beckley, West Virginia. It's got like 30,000 people in it.
So right outside of Charleston, West Virginia, about 30 minutes away. She don't even live near him anymore.
So she got remarried and all that in my adult life. But we went to visit him, me and my brother.
My brother has a lot of resentment towards him. He's not alive in my brother's mind.
My brother completely shut him off. My brother had warned me several times, my older brother, several times to be careful.
And my brother was mad that he was on drugs. Be careful in what way? Like, he's toxic.
Manipulation? Manipulation. He's going to put women in front of you.
Like, be careful with him. What do you mean he's going to put women in front of you? Like, if I have an argument with my stepmom, remember, he had an argument with my stepmom at 12 years old, 13, and was put in handcuffs.

My dad called the police on him and had a police officer put him in handcuffs.

So I think my brother's always had resentment for that.

It's terrifying at 13 years old.

Hell, it's terrifying at nine,

watching your brother get arrested by your dad.

That was traumatizing.

And then finally my mom rushed home and fixed the issue.

But so my brother's always had some sort of resentment towards him.

So my brother's like, we had heard that my dad got on drugs, like hard drugs in 2018. Because he was on drugs, met this chick, got on drugs, got away from this chick and got sober.
2016, 2017. My younger sister was in high school.
So, and her mother and my stepmom that we had the issues with had cheated on my dad and left my dad. So my dad was trying to raise this high school girl on his own.
He did a good job, but after she graduated, he met this other lady named Melissa. And Melissa comes from trash.
She was an addict, and she got him hooked back on drugs. So my brother wanted to drive down to confront him about all this, see if he actually is on drugs.
This was on Black Friday, day after Thanksgiving. So me and my brother, we drive down.
Knock on the door, Melissa answers. She's high as a kite.
Like, hey, my brother says, hey, is Jim here? It's my dad's name. She's like, yeah, let me go get him.
He's downstairs sleeping. I'm like, it's seven o'clock in the afternoon.
Like, what do you mean he's sleeping? Whatever. He's old.
Maybe he went to bed.

He comes up the stairs,

and it's the first time in my life I've ever seen my dad.

So my dad didn't drink when we grow up,

and I hardly ever heard him cuss.

I will say that.

But for the first time in my life,

I saw my dad physically, but I didn't know who my dad was.

He was so high.

And he invited us in, and my brother's like, hey, you're high right now.

What are you talking about?

And they get into a heated discussion, and my dad gets livid.

Somebody that is on drugs.

I think at the time, it was just, I think, cocaine and oxycodones is all he was on at that time. Because he was on four DUIs for driving while impaired from, not alcohol, but narcotics.
So he'd already been arrested for like three or four DUIs for this.

So we were,

my brother was attempting to try to help him,

but it went south.

My dad filled with rage

and he took off running back downstairs

and I knew that's where he kept his revolver.

I immediately grabbed my brother

and we ran out the house,

ran down the stairs.

It's like 15 stairs.

I run in my truck, open my door and I go to get my gun out. I'm like, he's going to kill us.
He is going to kill us. And man, he comes running out and I never saw the gun.
I don't think I saw the gun. Everything was happening so fast.
But the rage that he had, Sean, I went out that driveway at probably 50, 60 miles an hour. I thought he was going to kill us.
I thought he was going to kill us. And then the whole 30, 40 minute drive home, me and my brother didn't talk.
We got back to my mom's house and everybody was already in bed at this point. And man, I drank all night.
I cried my eyes out. I went on his Facebook page, found photos of when we were younger.
I just lost it. I had a mental breakdown.
That's the first time I ever saw him high. And that was the biggest start.
That was the start of my downfall. That was it.
That's what set the tone for the next several years of my life and what I was about to go through. So, no, I have forgiven him once.
And I almost died from somebody else's drug addiction. I almost lost my family because of somebody else's drug addiction.
and I refuse to lose my family or take my life from depression or die from somebody else's drug addiction. I won't let it happen.
I won't let it happen. About got me once, about got me twice, but never again.
No, no, no, no, your toxicity that you bring to the table, my childhood that you brought to the table, I'm not going to let it flow into my family. I'm going to protect my family.
Yeah. And my wife is so sweet, Sean.
She tries and, you know, she's, because she saw my dad before he was on drugs. We got married in the beginning of 2012, and we only knew each

other for like 30 days. We were married almost 13 years, and we'll get to that.
That's a whole other story, but she has always tried to, because she remembers him, right? She remembers who Jim cook was before drugs. I mean, and, and, but now it's like, I don't even remember who that person was.
I don't remember. I don't remember who he was because his addiction has been so bad on me that it's hard for me to even see the good anymore.

Maybe there isn't any.

Sean, I don't think so.

You know, the only reason I was asking about forgiveness is... I've come to learn that it's for you, not for the person you're forgiving.
Yeah. You know, I learned this from—I interviewed this guy, Victor Marks.
Yeah. And it is, without a doubt, the most traumatizing childhood I have ever heard.
I mean, it is.

His dad made him shoot, kill a man, and shove him in a hole.

That's horrible.

Yeah. And that's how he grew up.
So he talks a lot about forgiveness. He's forgiven his dad.
Yeah. And he called me up once.
He called me. I had, back in my tactical training days, there was this well-known trainer.
I won't say any names because I've forgiven him.

But he sued me and tried to take everything when I had not much to begin with.

But I was worried my home was going to go. I was worried my wife was going to go, and he just wouldn't stop with the lawsuits.
And until we were able to prove that the whole case was a phony case and he was going to have to repay me all of my legal fees,

which completely broke me, man.

And so when he found that out,

he quit suing me and whatever.

I'm just kind of giving you the context.

I didn't have the money to go back after him and continue the lawsuit.

And so that just, honestly, that's why I left the tactical industry. I was like, you know what? Fuck this, man.
I'm out. Who blames you? It's hard to trust people after that.
But I carried this rage with me forever. And this is just like one example, but I'm telling you this because Victor Marks is who taught me forgiveness.
And then I applied it to all these different aspects of my life and all these situations that I've been in with, you know, from military shit to agency shit, to business stuff, to friends, family. But this was the first time that it actually sunk in.
And, and the reason I'm bringing it up is I can see the rage. I can see it on you.
And I'm not, I'm not comparing stories. This is so much more insignificant than what you're talking about.
But, but he said, he said he's friends with the person that sued me.

And what you're talking about, but he said, he's friends with the person that sued me and said that they wanted me to forgive them. And I said, are you fucking calling me to ask me to forgive somebody because they're worried that my growth is, it's a different ballgame than it was 10 years ago.
Yeah. You know? Yeah.
Way different playing fields. They ran a whole smear campaign on me and everything.
And I was like, are you asking me to fucking forgive somebody who, like, tried to take everything from me, smeared my name, lied about my service, like wanted to take it all. And leave me in a fucking ditch because he's worried that I'm gonna do vengeance.
And he said, yeah. And I was like, It's real hard to tell you no, knowing what you've been through.
Yeah. And that you found forgiveness.
And I told him I would. I told him I never wanted to see him again.
He wanted to talk to me. I said, we don't need to talk.
I said, you can tell him I forgive him, and you can tell him that I'm not going to do vengeance on him. I'm above that shit.
And, man, just, like, fucking saying it to Victor. Probably felt good.
Dude, it was like, because every time that name got brought up, every time that name got brought up,

it would just fucking trigger rage.

Yeah.

And then in multiple people,

you could insert into that,

oh, I hear this person's name, I feel rage.

But that was the first time I learned it,

and it was like being let out of prison, man.

It was like, this shit doesn't bother me anymore. I dropped it.
I'm never going to talk to him again. I'm never going to be around him again.
At least if I can help it. But it doesn't affect me anymore, man.
I don't live in that prison of rage. And I just hope that you can find that because it's free.
And I am finding it, right? Because if I'm going to say that I'm a Christian, I need to act like a Christian. And it's hard, but parts of me is trying and, you know, we'll get to the parts of me is trying.
And, you know, we'll get to the parts of why that I am the way that I am right now in this moment. And you're going to be like, wow, I kind of understand.
Because I tried so hard and Blake I'm not saying I don't understand Oh I know you understand because you have your own trauma with it I just want you to I think you're a really good person I appreciate that that. And I just want you to be free.

And that's the only reason I'm bringing it up.

And that's what I need to work on because, again,

I want to be free of somebody else's addiction.

Because if I don't forgive him, then I'm just as,

I'm addicted to hate towards him.

Like he's addicted to drugs.

And until I can forgive him, I can let that go. You know, and you're right, man.
I thought I forgave him, but I don't feel it now that I'm talking about it. I don't feel that I truly, I might have told people, yeah, I forgive him.
But now that I'm here in this moment and we're talking about it, because I don't really talk about it often. I'll be honest with you.
I don't talk about it at all. I don't talk about it with my wife.
My wife brings it up. I immediately go to shutdown mode.
I would rather be angry and start an argument and piss her off than to have her try to talk about it. You know, and the other thing is, if you can take emotion out of this situation and actually look at it from a 30,000-foot view and just observe, look at what he's created for himself.
Yeah. You know? I think a part of me is I just love him.

And I hate that my niece doesn't get to experience a grandfather.

I hate that my son doesn't get to experience that.

And to be honest with you, man, I really just miss having a dad.

It's truly what it goes down to.

It's just missing. And I spent my whole adult career fighting evil and fighting drugs only to lose him to drugs.
You know, that's hard. I have voicemails of when he was trying to do better.
Hey, son, I just want to hear from you. I'm trying.
And I just sent him a voicemail, you know? And so I have a lot of guilt for that, dude. Like, I just, maybe I could have done better.
Maybe I failed him. Maybe he did addiction because I failed him.
You know, maybe he's addicted because I wasn't there for him or I didn't say thank you.

I didn't give him what he was looking for.

You know, that's a tough pill to swallow.

And it eats me every day.

Because I do, man, I'm missing.

Used to call me a shadow boy.

There's no shadow anymore. And man.
I'm missing. Used to call me a shadow boy.
There's no shadow anymore.

And man, that fucking hurts.

It hurts.

I'm 35 years old, man,

and the little boy inside of me still,

still misses, you know,

misses his dad.

When everybody else gave up,

I still tried.

Thank you. still misses, you know, misses his dad.
When everybody else gave up, I still tried. Man, I got burned.
I got burned. I almost lost everything.
So, I'm trying. I really am.
Maybe I need to go to therapy, you know? Don't give up, man. I'm not.
I'm not. I just need to take a break and figure, realize that I can't fix everything right now.
You know, when I was in the gang unit, we were an easy button. Hey, man, go fix this.
Gang unit, fix this. I'm used to being an easy button, fixing it right now.
But those right nows were only temporary fixes. Somebody else is going to come in and take that guy's spot, or somebody else is going to sell dope and guns out the house.
Maybe that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to fix it right now, right? And I'm getting no results because you can't fix a 67-year-old man, a 65-year-old man that's been addicted to drugs for the last eight years.

You can't fix anything on anybody if they don't want to fix it themselves.

That's the problem is he doesn't want it.

He just doesn't want it.

I know I lied.

I think a part of him, and I got to experience that, right? So 2004, I met Kyle. I was teaching on my own, I have my own company, Black Flag Solutions.
Want to train SWAT teams. Guys just didn't get the training that we had.
Well, I love law enforcement, man. I love law enforcement so much.
And I think the number one thing they lack is training. I was training people for free.
Departments won't spend the money. My God, they'll go spend $20,000 to get new pencils that say, you know, Fayetteville Police Department.
not Fable did this, it's just where I came from, but they won't put money towards training. It's mind blowing.
So I was like, I have to do something. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses.
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Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. And my wife was asking me to go do something because I was an alcoholic.
So I was training in a team one day. And my Aunt Judy calls me, my dad's sister.
And she says, hey, Blake, you have a second. And I'm like, damn.
She about to tell me my dad's dead. I've been waiting on that phone call every day.
I have my phone in my hand all the time because I'm waiting on the call. I'm like, is he alive? She said, yeah, he's alive.
I said, well, okay, what's going on? Why are you calling me? I'm in the middle of training. She said, he's dying.
He's laying in the bed at his house with Melissa, his stepmom. She's a really bad drug addict too.
And she was so concerned that he's dying that she called the police for help. Man, where I grew up, those boys don't know how to be cops.
And we'll get into that. They failed me.
So I said, hey. I said, what do you mean? They said, well, he walked in.
They saw needles and everything everywhere. I'm saying, they tried to do a, what do they call it? Like a self-check, like a hygiene check or whatever

on a person, well-being check.

I say, he's on probation

for hitting four cop cars on the side of the road, ha.

But he's on like a probation,

not in jail, but on probation.

I'm like, is there needles in the house?

Yeah, yeah, they said they saw needles, okay? They need to take him to jail, get him out of the environment. Well, it was the police chief.
There's only like three people in that apartment. Well, they say there's nothing they can do.
I'm like, what are you talking about? He's a drug addict. There's fringes everywhere.
He's on probation. It's drug paraphernalia.
I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's one orange cap.
Take him to jail because if he goes to jail, they won't take him. They'll make him go to the hospital before they can intake him.
So they'll force him to get medical. They're like, oh, Blake, they said there's nothing they can do.
I'm livid. I'm like, what do you mean there's nothing they can do? That's your job.
You just don't know what to do is the problem. You don't know how to be a cop is the problem.
So I'm like, I know he's a probation officer. So I call him up.
I'm like, hey, my dad's dying. There's drug paraphernalia everywhere.
The police chief went in there, saw it, nothing they can do. I'm like, can you go check on him tomorrow? He said, yeah.
Went and checked on him, found all the needles, revoked his probation, took him into his office. My dad calls me.
He's like, mate, he's high as kite. I'm like, hey, Dad.
He goes, Blake, you're going to have to help me

so they'll listen to you.

I'm like, hey, man, you're going to jail.

I don't want to go to jail.

I don't want to go to jail.

I'm like, hey, man, you're going to jail.

Like, I can't keep doing this with you.

You're going to jail.

So I hang the phone up.

I have a breakdown.

And I'm like, oh, my God, Blake, if he goes to jail, he's going to get bare minimum care. He's going to die.
So I call him back. Hey, I'm like, can he go get, so he's dying.
He needs real medical help. Can we convince him to go to the hospital? Then he can go back on probation at the house or whatever.
But let's see what's wrong with him. He said, yeah, we'll do that.

Took him to the hospital. Man, he was there two hours.
They lifelined him to some hospital

in Roanoke. Next day, he's having open heart surgery.
He's done so much heroin and fentanyl

that he has vegetation on his heart. He has what? Vegetation.
What does that even mean? Mold. Because drug addicts, they don't use, they use faucet water with bacteria.
So he had shot up so much that the bacteria in the water had went to his valve and started creating mold.

That's how much heroin he was doing.

Holy shit.

So he had open heart surgery.

He dies in surgery.

They bring him back to life.

They give him a second chance at life.

Doctor calls me and says, hey, he's got like less than 5% chance to live.

I'm going, because I had a conversation with him. I had a conversation with him afterwards.
They're like, he'll wake up, blah, blah, blah. But like, we're not sure.
And he was mumbling. He's like, all I heard was cremate me and spread my ashes on the hill.

The hill was, his house was built on a slope.

And that was the hill.

That's the hill that we played on as kids.

And that's all I heard.

And I was like, oh, my God, he's going to die.

I'm like, Nicole, he's going to die.

And dude, dude made a miracle.

Like, he was a miracle.

He woke up the next day, infection, no infection.

Vitals were good.

Everything was good.

So I told my wife, I said, this is my opportunity.

This is January of 2023.

It's my opportunity, honey, to save him.

I financially can do it.

I'm medically retired. I have the time.
I have to go save him. So I packed some bags, went to the hospital, walked in.
Didn't even know who he was. He's got no teeth.
He's weighing at maybe a buck 30. He's 5'10", 5'11".
Pale as can be. Looks like he's 90-some years old.
Barely recognize him. He's talking to me, and I'm talking to him, and, man, I stayed there.
I slept in my car, in my truck. I slept with the hospital.
I called my wife. I said, hey, he's agreed to let me help him.
She said, all right. My stepmom tried to visit him, Melissa.
She was kicked out of the hospital for doing heroin in the bathroom. So I'm like, hey, she's got to go.
She's living in his house. She's got to go.
So what I did is I came up with a strategy is I created a renter's document and had my dad sign it. And I paid him a dollar a month as a renter to allow me access into the house.
Because if not, I'm just breaking into the house and she could call the police on me. But she can't no more, because I have an actual contract signed by Jim Cook, that I pay him a dollar a month for my room downstairs in the basement, so I can kick a door in, do whatever I want to to the house.
I'm a renter. If I break something, I just got to pay the landlord, and that's him.
Her name's not on the house, just his. I said, man, I went down to this house.

I was like, hey, I went down to this house.

I was like, hey, here's a contract.

I'm staying here.

She's like, I'm out.

I'm leaving.

I'm like, cool.

That was easy.

She gives me the keys.

She calls some drug addict, pick her up.

I go in the house.

Sean, I've been into thousands of dope houses,

users, dealers, just disgusting people in general.

The moment I walked in, I threw up.

The smell.

The dog was overdosing also, had withdrawals.

Not overdosing, had withdrawals from dope.

It had diarrhea everywhere.

There was a mop bucket full of water, diarrhea water, where she had tried to clean it up, but it's just sitting there for days. Diarrhea all over everything.
The dog at one point had been chained to something in the door, in a back bedroom with carpet, and there was just shit and pee everywhere. and I'd found out that the dog had been chewing on syringes, and it was getting high.
And they haven't been used in there, because she'd been staying with somebody else. He's been in the hospital, so the dog's having withdrawals.
I'm like, man, I got to clean this house. I got to clean this house.
I spent thousands. My childhood best friend and my cousin on my dad's side, name's Josh Lumbo, phenomenal human.
Knew I was in town. I was actually staying with him.
I couldn't stay in the house. I'd get sick.
I'm on my hands and knees. Spent hundreds of dollars on cleanup stuff.

I'm like, shot back in diarrhea, ripping up carpet.

He shows up and helps me clean this whole house.

Most disgusting house I've ever been in.

And we had it spotless.

And she was gone.

I was still visiting my dad.

I was making the house. I fixed the steps.
I went and bought him a bed to bring upstairs. I didn't want him sleeping on a dirty mattress.
We got him brand new everything. And she, sorry, I'm having some, getting kind of emotional.
So I leave to go back home. This was about a month later.
See my family, do some things. My dad's still in the hospital.
They release him. I get home on a Friday.
They released him that same Friday. They weren't supposed to.
They weren't supposed to release him until the following weekend. I was going to pick him up.
So he had somehow convinced somebody something. Something happened where they released him.
So I went home. I was home.
And my Aunt Judy calls me and says, hey, they released your dad. I'm like, oh my God, I'm not there.
What do you mean? I can't watch him. Like he's going to go back.
He gets home that Friday night, drops him off. He gets home immediately.
He had been in contact with my stepmom since he's been in the hospital. He somehow got a cell phone and everything and was able to get in contact with her.
We didn't think they had any contact. I thought I had fixed that problem.

He gets home and she pulls up maybe 10 minutes later, the neighbor says.

About 30 minutes later, my dad's drug dealer, Tammy, I figured out my dad's drug dealer.

I got addresses, Sean, cars, mama's house, houses they were storing dope in. I had times of houses.
I dedicated the whole month also to following her around everywhere. I had built a case for the sheriff's office of Wyoming County.
Everything they need. Tried to give it to their dope cop, crickets.
Try to give it to the sheriff, crickets. They wanted me out of that county so bad because I was forcing them to do a job they didn't know how to do.
And I was calling them out on it. I have everything for you because their excuse was, we don't have enough information on her.
Cool, stand by. Boom, here's everything.
Phone numbers, license plates, houses, everything you need, her drop zones, the day that she gets her resupply, everything. I went to full straight detective mode again and got them everything in a big old folder.
Pictures, pictures of the cars, pictures of her. Pictures of her mom.
Pictures of everybody.

Her dog. I had everything in there.
They wouldn't touch it. Wouldn't touch it.

Didn't want nothing to do with it. Because that system down there is so corrupt.

Where is this? It's in Wyoming County, West Virginia.

It is the good old boy system. Who pays the most money is in charge.

I couldn't get help from nobody. I went to the sheriff's office, to the sheriff himself, who's known me since I was a child.
I was told he's just a drug addict. I understand that, guys.
But here is your number one drug dealer in the county. This woman's not only serving him dope, but she is traveling from Pville.
So there's four towns in where I grew up, Pineville, Mullins, Baileyville, and Oceana. She would come once a week and do a round in every little town and then go back home to Princeton.
She didn't even live there. She drove 30 minutes away.
I gave them everything. I mean, they told me to fuck off.
They didn't want nothing to do with it. They wanted me out of there so bad.
So that the night that they got home, my dad left with the drug dealer. Drug dealer came and picked him up.
They came back home the next Saturday. Drug dealer stayed there a little bit.
They went back to the drug dealer's house. And everybody on that, so the hill that I grew up on was primarily my whole family.
And the neighbors have known me since I was a kid. When I made, when I tried to move in and made my stepmother leave, dude, them old women on that hill baked me brownies and cookies.
And they were like, hey, thank you so much because it has just gotten so bad. So they were calling me and giving me updates.

And I'm like trying to get home.

I'm like, I'm in North Carolina at this point.

So I'm like, man, I got to figure out how to save my dad.

So I called my dad up.

Now Sundays came around.

Sunday's here.

I'm like, hey, dad.

This is like Sunday night, 10 o'clock at night.

I'm like, what are you doing? The neighbors are calling me. You weren't supposed to leave the house.
She's not even, the Melissa is not even supposed to be there. The drug dealer has been up and down the driveway.
Dude, I was sending text messages out to deputies, to police officers. She's there right now.
This is the car. Nothing, man.
Crickets. So I'm like, I got to get down there, dude.
I got to do something. So I'm like, hey, she's got to go.
I've already contacted your probation officer. They've already contacted your probation officer.
Man, you're going to jail tomorrow. Like, you have to.
It's not, he thought I had some power. He was like, you need to fix this.

I'm like, dude, what do you mean I need to fix this?

There's nothing I can do.

Only thing, I'm trying to help you.

I'm giving you a call right now telling you that your probation officer is showing up tomorrow.

She needs to be out of the house.

He's like, all right, all right, we'll figure it out, figure it out.

He had a call at four in the morning from my dad's neighbor. She was a younger girl.
And Melissa would go down and ask for a cigarette and they pretty much just pestered her. She lived in the house that we grew up in.
And I'd been trying to help them get Melissa out of there too and trying to help fix some things around their house because my dad was on drugs and the house was falling apart

and they were renters.

And she said, she called, she says,

Blake, Melissa called the cops on you.

How did she call the cops on me?

I am literally six hours away.

She's like, they lied.

They said that you were laying down the street

with a sniper rifle.

I was like, well, I'm home.

She goes, well, well,

Thank you. they said that you were laying down the street with a sniper rifle.
I was like, well, I'm home.

She goes, well, well,

the police officer took her to the master's office and she swore a domestic violence protector

brought her out on you.

I'm like, what?

And my dad's beeping in.

I'm like, I gotta go.

My dad's calling me.

I answer the phone.

It's the last conversation I ever had with my father. He said, fuck you, you piece of shit.
We took a DVPO out on you. I'm going to go do my time in jail.
There ain't shit you can do. You're a piece of shit worthless son.
Hung the phone up. So I'm like, what is going on? Now I have a DVPO taken out on me.
That's if found guilty of that, that's worse than being a convicted felon. So I'm like, immediately went into like, I got to go stash my gun somewhere else.
Because the first thing they do when they serve you that is they take your guns. But luckily, I was four states away, and there's no communication with that crappy agency there.
They don't even know how to handle that properly, thank God. It's like the one mess up where I took advantage of.
She didn't have my address, so nobody could serve me anything. These dudes are calling me, asking me to come turn myself in.

I'm like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about.

See you later, alligator.

So I got up with an attorney who was a friend of mine, Tim Lepardus, who, so my dad, so sorry,

I'm skipping.

That Monday morning, my dad got arrested from probation.

They took him to the courthouse.

Some people in the courthouse know who I am and went to talk to him and said, Jim, you have to drop this. He is a good person.
He trains law enforcement. He's not going to be able to do his job.
My dad said, fuck that piece of shit. Didn't drop it.
So I got up with Tim Lepartis, who was my dad's really good friend growing up, who's an attorney there, represented me for free. He helped me figure out a solution out.
So I did some smart things while my dad was in the hospital, right? Because he needed my help. Nobody else could help him except for me.
I made him sign his social security checks over to my house. All of his retirement money went to my mailbox in North Carolina.
So she didn't have access to it anymore. And if he did that, I would buy him dinner while he was in the hospital.
I'd help take care of him. I'd clean his house, do whatever he needed me to do.
Well, he did all this.

And I was like, okay, I have an advantage here.

She won't get any money for dope.

It's the end of the month.

She's not getting any money for dope.

And she needs a fix.

So I called her up.

I said, hey.

Tim Lepartis was like, hey, let's offer something. I said, all right.
I was like, $450. I don't know.
I came up with a number. It was $450.
And I said, hey, if you drop this, I'll pay you $450. And every month, I'll mail my dad's checks to you so you can cash them.
Because the little fast check general store,

grocery store in our hometown was allowing her,

knowing that my dad's in jail or in the hospital,

sign the back of his checks and cash them and then go buy dope with them.

So, but they would get like a 10% of the whatever,

3%, whatever.

They were making money.

They didn't care.

So they allowed her to fraudulently sign his checks and cash them. The whole town is crazy.
So she says, she goes, yeah, we could do that. I say, look, because it's thousands of dollars in his retirement, social security.
I'm like, I don't care what you do with the money. I'll mail it to you every month.
As soon as I get it, I'll mail it. I'll overnight it.
I'm panicking, Sean. I ain't slept in two days.
Because what if she gets up there and BSes and some female judge believes her? And I get convicted. I'm done.

I mean, your guns are gone, everything.

What am I going to do?

It's all I know is how to run a gun.

It's all I've done my whole adult life.

She said, I'll do that under one condition.

I said, what?

You have to write an apology letter to your dad's drug dealer. Because she knows you've been following her.
Because I'd knocked on her door and asked her to stop selling my dad drugs and stuff. Pretty much terrorized her to run her away.
I'm trying to save my dad's life. Didn't break the law.
Didn't do anything that I wasn't supposed to.

I just made my presence known.

And I said, you want me to write an apology letter to my dad's drug dealer?

She said, it's the only way that I'm going to drop this.

I was like, oh, man.

Oh, man.

What did I do? I wrote a letter. I had a conversation with Kyle about this not too long ago.
That letter was not to her. That letter was to myself.
That was an apology to myself for acting the way that I had acted out of character, risking my family's future to do things that I shouldn't have been doing. So I wrote the letter and I sent it to her and they dropped it.
It's the last conversation I ever had with my dad. Man, I'm sorry.
So it's a little frustration there. And I heard from him about a week ago.
He got out of jail. He spent a year in jail.
He said, hey, Blake, I love you. He didn't respond.
Hey, I just want to know you're okay. And then two days ago, I got a text.
I blocked the number. I'd appreciate you letting me know that you're okay.
I said,

I'm not going back to this. I'm not going back to this.
Because after they dropped that DVPO and after the justice system and law enforcement that I've dedicated so much time, I trained their little SWAT team for free 15, 20 times because I wanted to give back to my community that I grew up in. I have a small skill set.
I have a passion for this. I want to help you.
But when I asked for help of just doing your job, it was crickets. I was trying to do the right thing.

I was so close in my mind of helping him.

And all I needed was a little help from the law

to do their job.

And they failed me completely.

So after they dropped that,

I said, man, fuck law enforcement. Fuck this community.
And I went straight alcoholic, man. I drank every day, all day.
Hate. Pushed my family away.
Passing out drunk in my backyard by a fire. And I finally realized that I'm never going to get over this.
And the only way to get over this is to take my life. That was in April.
I knew my son's birthday was May 22nd. I said, man, I can't take my life before his birthday.
I can't take that from him. And at the time, I'm not thinking straight, right? Whether I take it before or after, still going to ruin his birthday, right? But I was trying to put his feelings first somehow and say, I'm going to wait.
So that was about two weeks when I started really deciding that, you know, I'm dragging my family through the mud. I'm feeling like this.
I can't. I need to set them free.
I am dead inside from my dad's addiction because I did. I tried.
I tried to save him. And I failed.
I failed miserably. And I thought that I actually had a chance to save him.
And I was taking it out on my family by drinking, pushing them away, staying on my phone. So I was like, hey, man, it's time to prepare things for

when you're gone.

So first thing, bills.

I made sure everything was on auto draft

on one card.

Boom.

Paperwork for the house, for the cars.

Everything went in my safe, labeled to my wife. I said, to my wife, here are the documents.
Everything, life insurance, whatever. everything that was important for my afterlife

to help her have somewhat of a smooth transition,

in my opinion, was there.

May 22nd came.

We were in Tennessee.

Does she know this?

She knows it now.

I shared this story at our Blueberry and Couples Camp last year.

It's the first time that anybody's ever heard it.

I held that in for months before I ever spoke about it out loud.

And May 22nd came.

We were in Tennessee.

Visiting my brother.

Had my son's birthday with my family.

We came back home.

Got home.

I texted Kyle. So I talked to Kyle previously on social media.
When I first went to help my dad, and then I had to drive home to get resupply, this show gave me hope. I listened to his episode.
I don't listen. I I don't listen.
I'm not real big into listening to people's podcasts and stuff. If I listen to a podcast, it's like the legends of the old West, Billy the Kid, things like that.
That's what I really like. But I was like, man, I need something.
I'm tired of listening to music. I don't want to listen to music.
I tried to listen to a couple other people's, but I was just not mentally there. And there was something about Kyle's podcast.
I talked to him a few times on Instagram, maybe one or two times. Remember, I was transitioning from Glocks to Sigs.
I knew that he had just started shooting Sigs. I was asking him some questions.
Small Instagram talk. And I listened to the podcast and I heard his story, right? And I was seeing, I'm getting chills, man.
And I was seeing what he was doing. I thought, oh my God, he was addicted a little bit, right? Look at him now.
I can save my dad. There's hope that people can be addicted and be saved.
Because in my whole law enforcement career, it was just drug addicts dying all the time, overdosing. It was horrible.
But now there's one positive story

of somebody that has overcame this. I can help my dad.
And that's what gave me the motivation to do what I tried to do on those two or three months that I was there. So at the time, I was training tactical teams through the colleges.
So North Carolina, how that works is a college can,

because there's only like for like training wise, you know, a college can host a course, have me come in as an instructor. It's free to law enforcement officers.
And then the state reimbursed the college for paying me. It's a great system.
So I was doing that through the colleges. And I was like, man, I love,

I still love the law enforcement community. Even though I was mad at the certain group that failed to do their job.
I love cops, man. I think what they do every day is courageous.
And I was like, man

I'm going to reach out to this guy

I'm going to

give him the advice

on how to teach cops through the colleges. If they're going to get any training, it might as well be by somebody like him.
Because there's so many fake trainers out there, right? He's got to be legit. He seems genuine.
I reached out to him May 23rd and said, hey, man, do you have time for a quick phone call?

He was like, sent me a picture.

I still have it.

It was weights.

And he's like, hey, I'm working out.

I'll call you in a little bit.

Or can I call you in a little bit?

I was like, yeah, man, absolutely.

The day came, no phone call.

May 24th came.

Thank you. you in a little bit.
Or can I call you in a little bit? I was like, yeah, man, absolutely. The day came, no phone call.
May 24th came. I didn't know this at the time.
I didn't even know this until when I talked about it at the couples camp. May 24th, 2012 is the day I got blown up.
May 24th, 2023 is the day that I drove my truck.

My service dog goes everywhere with me.

I put her in a kennel, I kissed her,

and I drove to Marshall's parking lot in Wilmington,

parked at the very end, and I rolled all my windows down.

I wanted somebody to hear the gunshot,

and I wanted somebody to call the police, and I wanted somebody to find me before the birds come in and eat me away. I bowed my head on the steering wheel, and I said, God, please forgive me.
I'm in pain. I don't want to go to hell.
Please don't send me to hell for this. I'm just hurting.
And I said amen. And I went to grab the gun.
My hand grabs the gun. My phone rings.
I remember the last two digits of this number, 82.

This last two digits, Kyle's phone number,

because I remembered he was in the 82nd.

It was Kyle calling me.

As I had my hand on the gun grabbing it,

he was calling me back.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

My phone made a noise. I grabbed my phone.
I am so grateful for that phone call. Man, I am so grateful for that phone call.
Man, I am so grateful for that phone call because the things I would have missed out on in life, man, it just wasn't that bad. So a big, beautiful man called me.
I answered the phone. I said, hello? And he said, hey, man.
Hey, man, sorry I didn't call you back yesterday. I said, hey, man, you calling? I had a great time.
You calling? I had a great time. I was like, he's like, you busy? I'm like, nope.
No, I'm not, man. He goes, hey, yeah, yeah, I got your message.
I was like, yeah. Started talking to him about the colleges.
He's like, yeah, man, that sounds great. That sounds great.
He goes, hey, do you know anybody that, I just had a cancellation in my Protector Mindset course. Do you know anybody that you used to work with on the team that would want to come and take it? I'm like, I don't know anybody right now.
Like, I'm in the middle of something. Like, I'm like, no, I don't.
He goes, oh, all right. You want to come take it? I said, you want me to come take your course'm about to i'm about to kill myself right now you said that no no no no i didn't tell him he didn't know this until months later until he heard it at the couple's camp i'm like dude in my mind i'm like bro i'm about to kill myself i'm not gonna tell you yes but the other half of me was, gave me a little hope, gave me something to look forward to.
Another, I love CQB, man. I love shooting.
I love this industry. I was like, yeah, man, I'll come take that course, dude.
I'm in the phone up, Sean. I was so excited.
I was like, oh, my God, man, I'm'm gonna go take this two's course. I've seen the videos.
We had a mutual friend that had taken the course a month or two prior that was like, it's the greatest course ever. I said, man, I gotta go try it out.
And, man, I'd sold all my stuff, right? I didn't really have much. I was so mad at law enforcement.
I was selling all my things, giving it away. I drove over to OP Tatticle in Raleigh.
It's like one of the best, like, Tatticle stores. They have all the good name brand stuff.
Man, I dropped a bunch of money. Got belts, got all this stuff.
I was like, man, I'm excited. I'm like, holy shit.
I haven't felt like this since months. And showed up to the course.
I bought all that stuff on Friday. Course was Saturday and Sunday.
Showed up to the course Saturday morning. And I'm sitting in the back and reintroducing ourselves.
Introduced myself and Kyle Zakel. You know, Blake's here.
Blake has his own training company too, so it's cool to have him here. And I'm like, how are y'all doing? I'm truly a nobody, but how are you doing? So an hour, 45 minutes in this course, man.
I do some demos with him. He's showing students corner fed, what one and two looks like, and I'm running reps with him.
You know, maybe he just felt that I was capable of helping him demo. So after that, he's like, hey, take these six students to do corner fed with them.
I'm going to take these other six and do center fed. I'm like, what are you talking about, dude?

I have a former unit guy

that's asking me to take six of his students

that has entrusted in him with money

that he's trusting in me

to be able to teach them even this little bit of knowledge? Gave me a little fire in my gut, right? Nervous. I'm like, dude, I'm capable of doing this.
Why are you nervous? This is what you, you're good at this. I'm like, but I can't believe it I'm like sure dude yeah whatever whatever you need

roger that

so we go over there

and then

we're switching

and then

spend that whole day

I'm helping him teach

and then

the next morning

second day of the course

he said hey

I want you to run

the first scenario

with

and then I want you

to follow in with the students

and kind of

Thank you. day of the course.
He said, hey, I want you to run the first scenario with, and then I want you to flow in with the students and kind of help guide them a little bit if they get stuck. I'm like, yeah, cool.
Phenomenal course. So we're at the end of the course and the students, I'm in the back sitting down as a student and these, there's 12 students.
I'm like the 13th, and these students are giving the pros and cons of the course, like kind of like closing statements, right?

About every student is thanking Kyle, but thanking me for my knowledge.

Everyone.

And I'm like, what is going on?

I started feeling some self-worth again. I started feeling like maybe I'm worthy.
Maybe I shouldn't die. Maybe there's a purpose for me here.
Because what really drawn me into Kyle was as he started his course out is, we're going to talk about God and if you don't like it, you can get out. I was like, dude, that's how I feel too.
But like, it's hard to, I'm in a bad spot right now. Right? So, but the last student's like, yeah, Blake, thank you for everything.
Thanks for your knowledge. Kyle's like, hey, man, you didn't know this was a job interview, did you? I'm like, I got my own training company.
What are you talking about job interview? I started my own training company. We're competitors.
No, not really. But, you know, I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, man, I got my own training company.
I'm not going to come work for you. What are you talking about? And then we started talking at the end of that, and then I saved my life.
I've been with him ever since. And that was the end of May, October 22nd, 2023, I was rebaptized.
Because God gave me a second chance. he put the right people in my path to save my life and I will spend the rest of my life honoring him.
And that's what I'm going to do because he gave me another opportunity, which I feel like I didn't deserve.

He took something that the devil meant for evil and he turned it to good.

And he did it to save me.

And had I met Kyle any sooner,

I don't think we would have clicked the way we did.

I don't think Kyle was,

Kyle had just gotten back from his treatment that he needed to receive me into his life. Timing is everything.
And I don't believe, the day that I grabbed a gun and my phone went off, I don't believe in coincidences anymore. I believe in God's timing.
I believe he is the power and he will guide you in the direction that you need to be, even when you feel like that you're carrying the load all by yourself. But guess what, brother? You're not.
He's carrying you and he's carrying the load to help you get through it. And that's what he did.
And that's how me and Kyle met. We've been running and gunning ever since.

He's my brother, man.

I love him more than anything in this world.

I love that man and his family and Erica and his children.

They are my family.

And I'm just grateful for the opportunity to even...

So I dropped my company.

I prayed and prayed and prayed, man. I was like, man, what do I do? It's just I've always wanted to work for myself.
And then prayers, I kept, you know, where two or more gather, there I am. I can do it by myself.
where we can partner up with Kyle as a team and use our platform to bring people closer to him. And that's what we're doing.
We're also teaching you to be men, but more importantly, we want you to be Christian men and women. So the next generation sees what that looks like.
Wow. I definitely was not expecting to hear that.
Saved my life. I'm beyond grateful, man.
I am. The opportunities, man, Sean is, you know, I did it August last year.
A couple months after I met Kyle, we got hooked up with Born Primitive. We did this video shoot for him in Arizona.
We're riding around in Helos. And I remember sitting there hanging off the side of it.
Kyle's to my right, two former, still Team Six guys on the back end. I'm like, what are you doing here? This is all God.
I'm just a cop. I'm just a cop.
At the end of the day, I'm just a cop. I have a former unit guy and I have two former Steel Team Six guys behind me and I'm the fourth man.
God is good. When you submit to him, fully submit to him, after everything I just went through, here I am flying around

on a little bird with these guys. And that was when I realized, man, this is all God.

This is all God. Here I am.

And here I am before you, Sean,

on probably the most respected platform in the world, in my opinion.

And I was just a cop.

God is great.

He will put you where you need to be.

Whether it's one person or 100,000 or a million

that can be saved by this message,

even if it's just one person,

I am where I'm supposed to be

on the day that I'm supposed to be here

with the person that I'm supposed to be with.

And I truly believe that.

I believe that too.

Powerful. Very.
Wow. That, um...
What did Kyle do when he found out about that?

So my wife was the first time my wife ever heard about it.

That was the first time anybody had heard?

Anybody had ever heard.

Anybody at all?

It was the second night of the couple's scandal. Holy shit.
Everybody was crying. I was crying.
My wife was crying. Wife was a little upset with me.
Because she's a lot to handle. I'm talking to me.
I wasn't thinking straight. I was thinking that I was saving y'all from me.
This is what I was thinking. I'm saving you from the monster.
I swore when I married you, I promised you nobody would ever hurt you again. And I'm saving you from me? I'm not physically hurting her.
I've never physically hurt, excuse me,

physically ever hurt my wife.

But I was emotionally hurting her

by just being an asshole.

Being a drunk.

So I was going to save my family.

Does your son know?

No.

He's going to now, isn't he?

Yeah.

He listens to your podcast.

How are you going to handle that?

Man, he's such a cool kid.

He's so understanding.

He is, uh... he's so understanding he is he is just such a good son and we're going to watch the episode together and we're going to have conversations that's what I told him he asked can to watch the episode together.
And we're going to have conversations. That's what I told him.
He asked, can I watch the episode? Yes, but not on your own. I'll watch it with you.
Because I don't want him to hear that and think that I was giving up on them. I wanted to protect them.

I just wasn't thinking right at the time because I was mentally dying from somebody else's drug addiction. I'd put my dad in front of my family for the first time, thought that I could save him because I can save anything, you know?

And I failed.

And I felt like a failure. And then I felt like a failure as a father for putting them second.
And then still failing. And then now I'm failing at home after my failure of my father.
It was time for me to go. But I think he's understanding enough to know because he has watched the, he watches everything I do.
You know, man, I love that kid, man. He's my hero.
He is, you know, his dad sucks. His real dad sucks.
He knows this, but he smuggles drugs with boats. He's a boat captain.
He drives to Mexico and Florida all the time. He's been arrested.
He's got a longer rap sheet than about any criminal I've ever arrested. My son Googled his name one time.
Found out that a month prior he had been in a hostage situation in Myrtle Beach. He took his girlfriend hostage and threatened to kill the cops on an 18-hour standoff.
So, you know, we have some conversations. We talk, and we're very open in our house about our emotions and feelings.
And he's 16, but, man, he acts like a grown-up. He's a phenomenal human.
What's his name? His name's Henry Stacy Hayes. We used to call him Stacy.
Got made fun of in high school, I think. So he goes by Henry.
But I found out recently that Hank is short for Henry, so now I call him Hank. Sounds cool.
He likes it. So you won't tell him this before he watches? We're going to talk about it, yeah.
I don't want him to be a shock. We're going to sit down as a family and have the conversation of, hey, we're going to listen to this show.
We're going to talk about this, and I'll explain to him everything that he's going to hear that could harm him or hurt him. Or not hurt him, but he'd be confused on.
I want him to hear it from me directly before the show comes out. How long have you known this is how you're going to do it? Going to do what? Talk to him about this? Yeah.
Man, Sean, this is... Did you know this before we spoke? I've never told nobody.
And I knew he would never find out. But when he heard I was coming on the show, he was excited because he had watched some other episodes.
And he's like, you know, are you going to talk about things I don't know? I'm like, yeah. He said, what is it? I'm like, well, kind of why I've been hesitant to ever do anything like this is because I don't want him to be confused, but he understands trauma and he understands that relationship with my dad.

He understands that PTSD from law enforcement.

He understands my injury from when I was in the army.

He understands that I have some trauma

and he does a great job at keeping me happy

and keeping me active. He's a major part of who I am now.
But I'm going to talk to him about it because I think he needs to hear it from me first rather than hearing it on a podcast as a family. We're going to talk about it.
And we're going to talk about this is what happened. This is why it happened.
This is why I was upset. And he's so smart and understanding that I know that he's going to understand because he's just, he's just like that.
He's just a, he's a phenomenal person and he's understanding. And I don't think it's going to be, you know, is it something that I did? That was my biggest worry was, you know, was it me and mom, you know? But no, man, it was just me, my own demons.
Trying to save somebody that didn't want to be saved was hard. And then failing at that when you thought that you could.
And he understands that we used to call him Papa Jim, my dad. He hasn't seen him in years, since 2018.
Well, he saw him two years ago. We were back home and we met with my dad at a state park at a little restaurant, and my dad was, like, shaking, and it looked horrible.
And we had a long drive home, and we explained it, and I told him that I'm not going to expose him to Pop-Up Gym anymore to protect him, and he understood. He was a little kind of scared why he was like that.
And I was like, well, he's on drugs. You're 15, man.
I can't hide that from you. He's on drugs.
Because you could just tell he's on drugs. I mean, scabs, shaking your mouth, doing all the things.
You could just tell.

So we had a long conversation that whole day about that,

and he agreed that he doesn't want to see that no more.

Are you expecting some tough questions?

Yeah.

He's intelligent.

What do you think the... I don't even know.
The first question will be... I don't even know.
I'm scared, to be honest with you. I am scared of what those questions are going to be.
But I'm going to answer them with honesty.

It's out.

Am I going to hide anything or try to make it sound better?

It's out.

Maybe he can take something away from this that, you know,

one that God is good,

that don't ever give up on life,

don't ever give up on yourself,

and don't ever run when things get hard.

Because now he sees positive growth.

He sees what we're doing now.

He's already seen me at my worst.

But I didn't give up by the grace of God. And things get better.
Life is hard, but things always get better. At the end of every rainstorm, the sun comes out.
You just gotta bear through the storm. And I hope that's what he learns from this.
But he's going to ask some tough questions.

There's a lot of lessons to learn from in this already.

You're just getting started.

Take a break.

Let's take a break.

Take a break.

You all right, Ben?

Yeah, I'm good.

I feel good.

Some heavy stuff. Yeah.
I feel good. Good.
First time I've ever talked about it other than with my wife and Kyle. And Kyle's wife, Erica.
So, you know, a lot of my followers on Instagram have an understanding of what I've been through. But they don't have a true understanding.
Because everything you post online can be made to look a little better, right? So, but you know, if you put yourself out there to fight evil or to do anything in that line of work. Trauma is going to happen.

We're not meant to see things that we've seen or do things that we've done.

And that's what I think he really understands is,

I don't have a normal job, nor did I have a normal job,

nor did I see normal things.

And with that comes some trauma.

So, yeah, it felt good to get it out.

I've been holding that in for a long time.

And I hope that it just reaches one person.

I think it's going to reach a hell of a lot more than that.

Yeah, you think so?

I know so.

Yeah, it felt good.

Blake, you've got to find forgiveness, man.

I am. I hope you do.
Something I'm working on now. I'm trying to figure out how to find forgiveness without physically telling him I forgive him.
Because I don't want to talk to him. It's for you, man.
It's not for him. Maybe that's crazy you said it, because my wife is having this conversation.
She said the same thing. Maybe when I'm ready soon, so I can move on, I need to call him and say, look, I do love you.
You are my father.

And I forgive you, but I can't carry on this relationship.

And I think maybe that's what needs to be said, truly.

But yeah, you're right, I need to forgive him.

And I feel like I'm ready to forgive him.

I'm just scared of his manipulation. He's already messaged me telling me he's sober.
I'm 18 months sober. Dog, that don't even make sense.
You were only in jail for nine months, and the last time I saw you, you were on drugs. still with my stepmom, so I can't help him.
She is, she is, I have videos of her, can't even put her shoes on. She is, he's a bad drug addict.
She is the worst drug addict I've ever seen. As long as he is with her, he'll never get clean.
He'll never get clean.

The moment he went to jail, she had some other dude living in the house begging him. She'll never get clean.
And I'm so scared that that phone call for forgiveness is going to lead to trying to save him again.

That's what I'm saying. for forgiveness is going to lead to trying to save him again.

That's what I'm scared of.

Because where I am now and who I am now is not the same person I was.

I'm a year sober from alcohol.

I haven't had a drink or did I want to drink alcohol in this last year. Because I can feel God in my soul.
And it's not that alcohol is bad. You're going to hell for drinking.
Man, it just doesn't do well with me. It brings the worst out in me.
And my problem is, is once I get that feeling of the buzz, dude, it's like riding a bull, man. I ain't stopping.
Maybe it doesn't have to be a call. Maybe it could be a written letter.
I thought about it. I'm just going to have to not put my return address.
They don't thought about it.

I'm just going to have to not put my return address.

They don't know my address.

Anytime I mail those other checks,

I didn't put a return address.

Or I made one up.

But there's no... I think it does two things.

It allows your dad to die. Knowing that you forgave him.
Yeah. And it sets you free.
Yeah. Let's take that break.
Yeah. Yeah.
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All right, Blake, we're back from the break. And, um, wow.
I, uh, was not expecting to get that deep that fast. And, um...
You know, deep quick. Yeah, it did.
It did. It definitely did.
I am curious. What did, um...
What did Kyle say when he heard that? He gave me the biggest hug. He was crying.
And he told me he loved me and said, I want you to know that as much as you needed me, I needed you in that exact moment. Wow.

So that was just good to hear.

It was really good to hear.

How much time had passed since between?

Six months.

Six months. You'd known him for six months since that call.

That was November.

I think we did a couple's camp in October and November.

But that was May.

May when it happened.

And he found out.

I think it was November.

That is definitely some divine intervention.

Yeah.

It truly was.

By high power.

Very amazing. Wow.
Yeah. It truly was.
By high power. Pretty amazing.

Very amazing.

Wow.

Incredible.

Well, let's move, uh,

let's move into...

Wow.

Let's move on past high school. Let's go to college.
Let's go to college. That was a ride.
Was it? That was a ride. Road that train hard.
So I got a football scholarship. and man, I was, I thought it was the greatest thing ever.
So I got to Concord University, which is a school in West Virginia, southern West Virginia. And I got there, and coming from a small town, like, our partying was different,, man.
Our partying was in the fields, chucking Bud Light and drinking Bacardi 151 by fire, right? That's more dudes than girls, whatever. You know, it's the country.
I mean, I grew up with half, I grew up with everybody that was there anyway, so I've known them all my life. So I go to college, man, and I went early for summer practice.
It was kind of boring. It's just football all day.
Meetings in the morning, meetings in the afternoon, practice in the morning, practice at night. I was like, oh, God, this sucks.
So then the rest of the students started coming in. and right as football was starting up, I went to my first massive college party.
And it was in like an apartment complex. It was like, all these apartments were having one big party.
You could go from apartment to apartment. So I go down to this one guy's apartment and he's like, nah, man, football players aren't allowed in here.
I'm like, get out of here, man. Get out of my way.
Big boy. I mean, I thought I was something.
I couldn't tell me nothing. I was 18.
I had a football scholarship. I was on the football team.
I took two steps. This dude came up behind me and punched the living fire out of me.
Boom, knocked me out, fell down the steps. I woke up, my buddies were carrying me to the car, and they went back in the party, and I laid in the car in pain.
There's a small bone that's like right here that he had broken. And I had to go to the doctor the next morning, and I had to go tell my football coach I can't play because I was at a party that I wasn't even supposed to be at.
You know, we weren't supposed to party. He's like, well, fine, you're not playing.
He goes, you know, you're going to be redshirted and, you know, don't even know if we're going to carry on your scholarship next year. I was like, all right.
I understand. I understand.
Whatever. So, man, for the next, like, two or three months, I never went.
I didn't go to one class. Not one class.
I didn't even know where my class was. I knew where the food hall was and the gym.
And I stayed in my room and played Xbox all the time. That was back when Call of Duty, when they had the zombies, the zombie game.
Man, I was playing that all the time, partying at nighttime. Well, about November, well, October, right before Halloween, I go to my room and on my door is this letter from the college.
I'm like, what is this? Take it off, go in my room, open it up. It's like, ah, dear Mr.
Cook, you have zero attendance. Your grade point average is zero.
We're informing you that if you don't bring your grades up. Zero? Zero.
Literally zero? Zero. Holy shit.

I didn't go to one class.

And if you don't bring your grades up or make an effort,

then we're going to have to remove you from the college.

Well, that should be easy.

There's nowhere to go but up.

I was like, I reading it, I was like,

balled it up, Sean, in this most beautiful, rounded, small little tennis ball.

Kobe!

Threw it away.

I said, they're not going to kick me out of here.

No child left behind.

I'm like, dude, now I'm like, bro, it's not high school.

You know what I'm saying?

Dude, month and a half later, we're coming up on Christmas break. People were standing by my door.
I go to my room. They're like, hey, Mr.
Cook, how are you? I'm so-and-so. I'm in administrative office.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, how are y'all? Yeah, did you get your letter? Yeah. But you got a letter and you still didn't go to class? No.
They're like, oh, cool. Make sure you leave nothing behind when you leave here for Christmas break.
You're no longer enrolled here. I was like, oh my God.
I'm like, no, let's work something out here, right? I can't go home. I'm embarrassed.
My mom's going to kill me. She's like, nah, man, you got to go home.
So I called my mom. I'm embarrassed.
She's like, ah. She's like, oh, you idiot, blah, blah, blah.
She's like, but you know what? Everything's going to be okay. She's fine.
I understand. Maybe you just couldn't handle, you know, a college, a university.
I'm like, all right, mom. Yeah, you're just right.
Can't. She's like, all right, cool.
I'm going to enroll you in a community college. We're going to get your grades back up, and then we're going to go talk to them and see if we can get you back in there.
I'm like, absolutely, Mom.

That sounds like a great plan.

I attended the first class for 15 minutes, and I was like, this ain't for me.

I got up, left my notebook and everything in there,

told the teacher I was going to the bathroom, never came back.

Well, my mom said that I couldn't find a party where I grew up.

By this point, she was living in a little bit bigger city with like 20,000 people. What my mom didn't know is I could find a party in that city because Applebee's had happy hour at 12 o'clock.
And I got drunk with a bunch of moms with her kids and the little carriers on the ground like every day. So I didn't go to class.

And... with her kids in the little carriers on the ground, like every day.

So I didn't go to class.

And my mom was infuriated because she had tried.

I kept telling her mom,

maybe school's not for me.

I'll get a job.

I'll take a break.

I'll mature a little bit.

She's like, oh, cool.

She's like, let's try that. I was like, all right.
So I stalled for like a year. I'd sleep all day, played Call of Duty all night.
I'm like, hey, mom, I'm going to be a professional gamer. She's like, no, you got to go get a real job.
You're a loser. I'm like, no, I'm not.
I'm working on a career. She's like, playing video games is not a career.

So finally, one day, she comes home.

And by this time, she had met my stepdad.

And my stepdad was trying to get me to go.

He did something like delivering stuff for the coal mines.

And he was like, hey, he took me to work with him one day.

And I was like, oh, my God, this sucks.

I don't want to do this.

And finally, she came in,

and she's like, hey, you need to find a job, or you're going to have to go. I'm like, mom,

where am I going to go? She's like, I don't know. You can't keep living here because I'm just supporting this.
I'm like, okay, that's my mom. I'm the baby child.
You're not kicking me out.

You kidding me? My mom and papa would light you up if you kicked me out of this house.

That's her mom and dad. So I'm like, all right, whatever.
So I'm playing video games. She calls me up.
She's like, hey, you find a job? I'm like, yeah, I'm going to try Hibbitt Sports up to that new shopping center complex. She's like, okay, all right.
So I go up there and I'm like, oh man, please give me a job. I'm like, I'm looking like a bag of ass, right? I got like sandals on and some gym shorts and a dirty shirt with Dorito cheese all over it and a hat backwards.
I'm like, hey man, y'all hiring? They're like, oh, we're not hiring you. I was like, oh, wow.
I thought this was going to be easy. So I go outside and I'm sitting on the bench.
I'm like, oh my God, she's really going to kick you out of the house. Where are you going to work? I'm like, I'm not going to McDonald's.
I'm not, no, we'll figure this out. I hear this guy, he's like, hey man, you okay? And I look up.
He's kind of a bigger dude. He's got the old digital camo on.

He said, United States Army.

I was like, oh, man, I'm not doing so good.

My mom's about to kick me out of the house.

I need a job.

He's like, you need a job?

How old are you?

I'm like, at that point, I was 20.

I'm like, I'm 20.

He goes, come on inside. Let me talk to you.
He's like, what do you do for fun? I'm like, man, I play Call of Duty. He was like, oh, yeah.
He goes, let me talk to you about real life Call of Duty. It's just like Call of Duty.
I was like, dude, just like Call of Duty? I'm like, I'm down. I'm like, let's go.
We go inside. I do the little computer ASVAB thing.
Got my score. He's like, what do you want to do? I'm like, I don't know.
He goes, how about the infantry? I was like, what's it like? He goes, Call of Duty, man. He goes, front lines.
He goes, just like the game you play, all the cool gear. I was like, yeah, I want to do that.
He's like, all right, cool. Signed up, got a ship date.
That ship date was in January or December of 2010. And I go home.
My mom, I'm playing video games. And she goes, you're still here.
Did you get a job? I'm like, I did. She goes, oh, man, I'm so proud of you.
She goes, what are you doing? I'm like, mama, join the Army. She's like, oh, my God.
I killed my baby. Tell him you can't go.
I was like, I don't think that's how that works, Mom. I'm like, I've already signed paperwork.
I'm fully committed. She goes, oh, my God.
I killed him. She's like all hysterical.
I'm like, no, no. And then my set dad's like, no, it's good for him.
He'll be all right with him. My grandpa was in Vietnam.
My grandpa called her and was like, Tammy, he needs it. My uncle was in the Air Force.
He needs it. He is a bum right now.
He has no guidance. There's no discipline.
All right, because I've been handed everything because of football. High school, like it's Friday, you have a game tonight,

put your head down, take a nap. Basketball, Tuesday, Fridays, take a nap.
You want to go, hey, I'm kind of hungry. I can't play tonight on an empty stomach.
Hey, well, go down to the cafeteria and see if they'll feed you. Like, babied all through school.
Didn't do anything in school. And so I failed myself as a young kid, but the people that were supposed to be molding me didn't do that either.
So I had no drive, no discipline, no nothing. So I get sent to Fort Benning, Georgia.
And I'm like, oh my God, what did I sign up for? As soon as they get off the bus, everybody's yelling. It's complete chaos.
People are holding bags over their heads. I'm like, I didn't see this on call of duty.
This wasn't on call of duty. No, it wasn't.
Y'all supposed to hand me some sexy stuff. I got a bag and y'all are yelling at me.
So I did basic, right? My crew didn't give me anything in my contract. Nothing.
I didn't have anything. So about two months in it, I started asking people what they're doing.
Some people are like, oh man, I have the 18 x-rays the 18 X-rays, Special Forces. I got an airborne contract.
I got this. And I'm like, man, I got nothing.
I got nothing. I don't have anything.
I'm like, you know, people got bonuses. And I'm like, if I ever go back home, I'm going to fight this dude.
He lied to me. It's not like Call of Duty.
Everybody else in here are getting paid pretty good. I don't have anything in my contract.
So about two months in basic, the drill structure comes in. He's like reading off everybody's duty assignments of where they're going.
You know, people with airborne contracts, some are going to Italy, some are going to Bragg. Obviously, the AT&X guys are going to Bragg.
And they're like, Korea. I'm like, huh? What do you mean Korea? Like I'm the youngest child.
Like when we went to like Chinese restaurants and stuff, my mom took me to McDonald's. I'm not, I can't, I'm not going to eat their food.
I don't know what food they got there, but I'm going to starve. What are we talking about? I can't go there.
Are you absolutely kidding me? So I'm like, I'm panicking. I'm like, man.
I'm like, some other guys are like, oh man, South Korea, that's kind of cool. I'm like, that's not cool.
At this point, I was dedicated. I wanted to go fight bad guys.
Once I put the uniform on, because I come from a family of military people and I'm that generation. Now, my younger half-brother is now, he's in the 82nd, but I was the first one as the kids to go do something.
And so I was listening to all like the Toby Keith music and stuff before I left, get myself all like hyped up, you know, the American soldiers. By this point, I was like, I was kind of in it, man.
I was like, man, it's kind of interesting, whatever. But I wanted to go do something.
I didn't just, I didn't know anything about what I was doing in the first place, but I know I didn't want to go to Korea because I knew the guys didn't deploy from Korea to go fight a war. And we were still in war, right? So if I'm here, let's go do it.
I still had that. They were starting to mold me to understanding of my purpose, why I'm here, right? I'm here to go fight a war, go fight bad guys.
So I'm like, I go in there. That was on like a Friday.
And Sunday, it's like relaxed day or whatever, cleaning guns, whatever we're doing,

and I find my drill sergeant.

I'm like, hey, sir, Sergeant Rutherford.

I'm like, hey, Sergeant Rutherford,

or drill sergeant, can I talk to you?

He's like, what you got?

I'm like, hey, I can't go to Korea.

He's like, wow.

I'm like, well, one, like, for real,

I don't eat any kind of food like that.

He's like, shut up and get out of here, private. I'm like, no, no, for real.
I want to go do something. I want to go to war.
You have to help me get somewhere that's going to deploy me. I didn't just sign up for this to have a job.
Now I know my purpose. I understand why I'm here, and I understand the importance of why I'm here.
I understand that there are people who have died wearing this exact uniform that I'm wearing. I want a purpose.
He goes, pulls out. He's like, what have you gotten on your last PT test? I'd maxed out 300s on all my PT tests.
I actually trained for this. I didn't have a job, right? So I had six months to train.
I trained every day. I ran all the time.
I did everything I could because I'd been told that you can get contracts in basic. So I'm like, I heard that I can get an airborne contract.
He's like, look, you get 300 on your next PT test. It was coming up to be like the last PT test before AIT.
he's like you get a 300 on your PT test and I'll give you an airborne contract because you have the highest score here. You've had consistent 300s.
I'll give you an airborne contract. I was like, yeah, I was like, I can do that.
PT test was coming up about three days, two days before the PT test. I came down with the flu.
Diarrhea, throwing up, feeling weak. I'm like, oh, man, dude, I'm really going to Korea.
And the night before the PT test, my bunkmate was like, hey, Cook, I know you ain't been feeling well, but you want to buy something that'll give you energy? I'm like, what could you possibly have? Like packs of sugar that you stole? He said, no, no, no. I was able to get a five-hour energy shot from the commissary.
I was like, yeah. I was like, how much? He's like, $100.
I was like, done. Done.
I'll get you the money when we get out. He goes, all right.
And I'll rip that thing the next morning. Man, I was thrown up on that run.
But I was so dedicated to get out of a deployment to Korea, or a speech station in Korea, that I maxed out that PT test. I got a 300.
No shit. So, I mean, I'm pretty sure I'd shit myself on that run.
I wasn't stopping. I wasn't stopping to puke.
I had to do this. Like, because the push-ups and set-ups were easy for me, but it was always the run that I always came so close to always passing to get to 300.
It was always by like seconds. And I didn't have seconds to spare.
And I was feeling horrible. So they, um, Rutherford held up to his end of the bargain and gave me an airborne contract.
So, um, I got the orders. Everybody else, again, was pretty much going to Italy.
A few were going to Bragg and, hey, we'll get you to Bragg. I was like, man, that's great.
I'll take Bragg. I'm an hour and a half from Myrtle Beach, four hours from home.
Like, that's, that's, that's okay. I can do that.
I like that. And then I got to, you know, went to airborne school and, um, man, it's just, just another, you know, month of just being treated like shit.
And now I'm talking to guys there that are like, yeah, yeah. I'm like, oh, where are y'all going? Like, oh, you know, we're going to rasp after this.
And I'm like, well, what's that? They're like, oh, you know, ranger selection. I'm like, dude, how did I not get any of this? Like, I forgot what my ASVAB score was, but it was high enough to get these qualifications.
I don't know. I can't remember what it was.
It was like, I don't know, like one-on-one or something like that. I'm not sure, but it was high enough to get these contracts.
My recruiter just, I was easy. It was like a stray dog outside.
And he gave me a little puppy chow, a little food, and I was happy. He gave me a job.
I didn't think of the bigger picture. And I was like, man, I got to get there.
You know, it sounds cool. You know, that's the kind of people I want to be with.
So I get to the 82nd. I get to brag.
It was really cool, man. I was just, like, seeing all these, like, maroon berets and just kind of the vibe that people were putting out.
And I was like, yeah, this is, I like this place. This is cool.
But when I got to my company, man, you just get treated like shit. There's, like, no true leaders at that time in the 82nd.
Everybody just treats you like shit. There's nobody taking care of you.
Nobody helping you or trying to be a leader. You got people that have never been leaders a day in their life, like E4, like the E4 mafia.
Dude, those dudes would beat you down and treat you like shit, physically hit you and treat you like shit. Then expect for you to have morale.
And then the squad leaders would come down after doing nothing all day long. Instead of like going to do training, five o'clock comes around, it's time to go home.
Hey, we got to go do area beautification. That's just not what I signed up for.
I don't want to signed up for it all. This is ridiculous.
I was like this, I can't. Cause at that point I was like 20 years, I can do 20 years, retire at 40 years old.
Yeah, I could do that. At this point, I'm like committed.
I'm in this. I'm like, man, I'm the type of people I want to be around.
But man, that, I was very proud of wearing my maroon beret in my 82nd patch. But it was like every day bad leadership was sucking the morale out of me.
I'm like, I want to do this, but I got to get out. I got to go maybe try out for something else.
And that was when I saw my first SF guy. We were in a gym, and he was walking in.
I had a green beret, and I was like, man, what is that? He said, special forces. I looked it up.
I was like, man, I got to get there. That's what I want to do.
I wanted to go to ranger school. I wanted to do this.
And I had a horrible staff sergeant at the time. I mean, he was just a redneck from Louisiana that just was, he had failed selection like three times, failed ranger school, didn't want any of his guys going anywhere.
Right? Because if I pass ranger school and I have a tab, what does he look like? Jealousy. He didn't want any of us going anywhere.
Dude, I was smoking the MMPT. They would punish me by like stupid punishments by trying to smoke me.
I looked at it as a workout. Smoke me out for hours.
That just means I don't go to the gym after this. I enjoy it.
I'm working out. I enjoy working out.
I was taking all that hatred that we had talked about and I would put it into working out. I enjoyed it.
Pushups, front lean and rest, whatever. Because guess what? You're not going to do it until I die.
Eventually you have to stop. And I just got to outlast you.
And I can. But it was just all the time there.
Just there was no training. I think I did CQB like twice.
Like the rest of it was walking around Area J in the woods, acting like we were taking contact. Like there's no real training.
I'm like, man, this is, this is not, it's gotta be something better than this. Cause my motivation, I've been there for eight months and I'm like ready to leave.
I'm like, this sucks. I'm getting treated like shit every day just for being good at PT or like not being able to take the machine gun, like the 240 at a certain time while people are yelling at me and while I'm doing jumping jacks, I can't take this machine gun apart fast enough.
And neither could they. That's the problem.
I was being asked to do things that they couldn't do. But because they had been there and they deployed some BS deployment to Iraq and didn't do anything, but sat on a fob, they were superior to us cherries.
They thought they'd done something for their country.

So instead of just taking us under our wings

and teaching us the ways,

you treated us like shit.

You killed our motivation.

Hey, brother, we are your backup.

We are the people that are gonna be fighting next to you.

You don't want somebody next to you that hates you

when you're trying to fight for your life because if you get shot, I'm gonna have to help you. You don't want somebody that to you that hates you when you're trying to fight for your life.
Because if you get shot, I'm going to have to help you. You don't want somebody that hates you to help you.
So how about you build us up? But it never got to that point. It never, it just, I saw the first Green Beret and I was like, that's what I want to do.
I want to be that guy. I started looking into it.
I'd see somebody that was in SF, and I'd ask them questions. They were nice guys.
Hey, man, what's it like? Hey, you know, we do this, this, and this. It's grown-up rules, big boy rules.
I'm like, dude, I got to get there. Because I spent, like, my whole youth being a part of a really good team.
Football, basketball, I always wanted to be the best. I wanted to be on the best team to win.
And I wasn't on the best team to win. And I didn't want to go to war not being on the best team.
So I asked if I could go to The selection. No.
I asked to go to ranger school. No.
We're locked in. We have a deployment coming up.
We have training coming up. We don't have guys to spare.
We're already short. I'm like, man, you should want me to go do these things.
Like as a leader, I want you to be better. Because if you go and do these things and I help build you up, then that's an example of what a good leader I am.
They probably didn't understand that because that's how their leaders were. You're exactly right.
It is a domino effect. They've been treated like that forever.
And then it just keeps going and going and going. I think it's making a change now, mainly because social media, right? I think a lot of these leaders have a lot of squad leaders on Bragg that follow us and want to be good to their dudes because they're learning from what we're doing.
I think it is making a change, but back then, man, I hated going to work. I hated it.
I couldn't get out of there because nobody wanted to send anybody because if you sent me and I actually came back with a tab, you know, and you didn't have one, like, it sucked, man. It sucked.
And then finally I gave up because like, well, we're locked in on an appointment. So about November of 2011, we were supposed to deploy to Afghanistan.
We went to Louisiana. No, we were going to go to Louisiana.
It's JRTC and it got canceled. Then deployment got pushed.
So we did a jump. I was supposed to deploy like the following week.
So I went in for a haircut at this place called Frederick's Salon in Fayetteville. And I went in there and this girl cut my hair.
Did a great job talking to her, super awesome person, really connected with the person. Man, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
Man, I thought she was beautiful. And I left, said goodbye, and then we went to some other training.
Oh, we went to Dahlonega to train for about two weeks. And I came back, and they were like, all right, guys, your deployment got pushed again to February.
I was like, all right, whatever. So I went in for a haircut.
And my wife was the one that I connected with. She was like, hey.
She just got out of a relationship. She's dating this guy that was in the Q course, and he went to Germany and cheated on her and stuff.
She wasn't looking for a relationship. Neither really was I.
And she was like, hey, let's all go out tonight. I'm going to hook you up.
The girl that was in the chair next to me, she thought you were cute. I'll set it up, and we'll all just go out tonight, bring some of your friends.
I was like, yeah, that's awesome.

Let's do that.

And we go to my wife's apartment, and the girl never showed.

So I was like, all right.

So we all just started hanging out.

And then me and my wife started hanging out.

And stayed all night with her. Didn't have sex.
Thought that was awesome. Got married like 41 days later.
41 days? 41 days. Yeah.
That date alone is crazy. January 4th, 2012 is when I got married.
Well, we had just found out this past year her grandparents were married January 4th. No way.
I found out in a newspaper article that my aunt posted on Facebook that my dad's parents married January 4th. Wow.
No idea. We had no idea.
Wow. We have them hanging up in our house, both of the articles.
Hers is a wedding invitation. Mine's an article.
Super crazy. Very cool.
So how I met my son is about that third or fourth night, I was over at her house. And it was like in one of those old historical homes, downtown Fable, that they turned into like an apartment complex with like four apartments.
We had a backyard. We had a fire going.

She had her son.

She said, hey, he's in the bathtub.

My mom's watching him.

I'm going to go put him in bed.

I was like, all right, cool.

I'm sitting out by the fire.

I'm by myself.

I hear like little footprints.

I'm like, oh, what is that?

This kid runs over.

He's like soaking wet.

He sits on my lap.

Looks right at me, dad, in my face and says, I love you. I'm like, whose kid is this, first of all? Whose kid is this? I'm a little freaked out.
She's like, oh my God, Stacy, mom, you were supposed to watch him. She's like, he just ran out.
And she's got hip replacements. She can't really run after him.
She's like, I'm so sorry. He we're supposed to watch him? She's like, he just ran out.
And, you know, she's got hip replacements.

She can't really run after him. She's like, I'm so sorry.
I mean, you weren't supposed to meet you. I was like, she's like, you know, because she didn't want him to meet me, obviously, because she don't want to traumatize him with, you know, some male at his house.
And I don't know. We got married 41 days later.

And

I just instant

I just felt this instant love

for them

that I've never felt before.

And

What was your second interaction with them?

With your son?

We had

I came over

I had breakfast with them and stuff.

And then

about a week

I'm over. I had breakfast with him and stuff.
And then about a week, I just, instead of staying at the barracks, I just stayed there at their house. When did you start getting close to him? Almost immediately, honestly.
Yeah. What drew you in? He was was so loving he was just he was a good kid but man he was hell on wheels too though one time I had to discipline him I was like hey go sit on your bed he was like a little kid man he did something he wasn't listening his mom I said hey man go sit on your're in timeout.
So he goes and sits on the bed. I hear him in there like messing with the bed.
I'm like, hey, five more minutes just added. He looks at me dead in my face and goes, five more minutes.
I was like, I was like, hey, I can't whip this. I can't whip him.
She's going to have to go in there and deal with that. I was like, I'm about to lose it.
She said, what do you do? She starts busting out laughing. I'm like, no, man.
Go in there and whoop that tail. What are you talking about? So, you know, but we've had a great relationship since day one.

Since day one.

It is just, it's just like he's my child.

Since day one.

And I wasn't trying to be his dad.

He already had one.

I didn't know anything at the time.

Like his dad was, he knows this, but his dad was very abusive.

Like when I met my wife, my wife had screws, screwing her windshields down. Not windshields, sorry.
Her windows down around the whole house, the whole apartment. She had like five or six locks on the inside of the doors, keeping them from being kicked in.
So it was a, I never knew at the time. I didn't know.
I didn't know anything about that. I always thought it was weird.
I thought, okay, well, maybe somebody previous to this. But yeah, the windows were locked.
Back door had the same thing. It was a pretty bad situation that I came into, but I found it out weeks later.
And I was like, she's like,

she didn't tell me.

Her mom told me.

I confronted her about it.

She's like,

I don't want you to leave.

She's like,

I'm sorry,

but I feared if I told you,

you would leave.

You know,

it's hard to find somebody

as a single mom anyways,

but it's really hard to find somebody

that has a crazy abusive ex.

I'm like, I'm not going nowhere.

But they don't, all I ask for from here on out is honesty.

And that's what our whole marriage has been, is honesty.

And that was, we got married January 4th, 2012.

Like 41 days later, went down,

had a marriage at the courthouse, you know?

Got married in a red button up with a cheetah print tie.

You know?

Nice.

Some Vans, man.

And she dressed up nice,

had some guys from,

the one leader that was phenomenal, two leaders, one was named Nick Fredste, and the other one was named Dakota Cardo Santos, which ended up becoming one of my best friends. Really took me under his wing.
Phenomenal human being. He runs a gym now in Pennsylvania.
Phenomenal human. He was, man, he kept me going every day.

He was a phenomenal leader.

And if he would have stayed in,

he would have been a phenomenal leader.

But he was there at my little wedding.

And, you know, I didn't know any better

or anything at the time.

And I didn't tell anybody I got married.

I didn't tell anybody.

And so finally, the training came for JROTC, right?

And I'm walking around Louisiana.

My phone is just...

I'm like, dude, who is calling me?

They've been calling me for 10 minutes.

I throw it down.

It's like 28 missed calls from mom. I'm like, dang.
She found out. I'm like, dang.
This is going to be bad. So we carry on with the little training exercise we were doing.
And we get back to the little hooties and I call her and she's like,

my grandma will be her mom.

She should have been a CIA spy on Facebook.

She could have found anything.

She was the Facebook Farmville queen, man.

She lived on it.

She goes, well, mom said that on so-and-so,

that so-and-so saw where you got married.

She goes, are you married?

I'm like, yes, I am.

Yes, I am, mom.

She goes, oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

You're an idiot.

And I'm like, they have a great relationship now.

But I was like, she goes, I had to find out through your grandmother on Facebook.

I'm like, sorry about that.

I was like, makes you feel any better.

Nobody else knew unless you lived here.

And so finally, man, we got through that.

And then I deployed at the end of February.

So I met my wife.

We got married in 41 days.

Thank you. So finally, man, we got through that.
And then I deployed at the end of February.

So I met my wife.

We got married in 41 days.

Went to training for a month right after I got married.

And then deployed two weeks after I got home.

Wow.

So.

How'd you propose to your wife?

The private way, you know. There's a little bar, restaurant downtown called Husk Hardware.
It's the first place we ever went to. We had dinner, and we had a little thing in the corner.
And, you know, took an E, asked her to marry me. And I was shaking so bad.
I'm 21 years old. I was 22 at the time.
I'm like, you know, couldn't even get it out, right? And I just knew I loved her. That's all I knew.
I just knew that, man, I don't even know. Like, I've never even felt this, really, this kind of love like, other than like my mom.
But I feel like I almost love her more than my mom. I loved her so much.
And yes, I proposed at a restaurant, right? And then we got super wasted. Went to Dollar Night at Lido's downtown.
Everything was a dollar. You know, we were high on life.
You know, we were just living it up. At the time, she's older than me.
She's a cougar. You know, she's 39.
I'm 35. So, you know, she's older.
And, you know, free haircuts for life, though. But, you know, whatever.
It's a perk. But I deployed, and then a couple weeks into deployment, my son's father found out that I was gone.
He was infuriated. He was livid at this point.
And because he hadn't even been around, really. But he just shows up and tries to cause violence.
When you were there? Never when I was there, but once he found out I left, it was game on. There's police reports.
Like when I became a cop at Fabo, I kind of looked into some addresses and stuff. He actually tried to cut a pipeline at that apartment and try to blow the whole apartment up.
What? Yeah. Before I was around.

Like, did some, Sean, some of the most horrific things I've ever heard of to her.

And I don't want to say them because they're her stories, but it was gnarly.

It was really bad.

So she's like, Blake, you know, I don't know what to do. So I call my mom.
I, hey, mom, I got a favor to ask you. I'm like, it's going to be a hard favor, but I need Nicole and Stacey to come stay with you.
I explained the situation.

She said, tell them, come on.

And she took them in.

Took care of them.

Made sure they were safe.

And, but my wife, every other weekend,

my wife had to drive to Fayetteville.

Five-hour drive.

She'd drive, drop Stacey off.

Thank you. Every other weekend, my wife had to drive to Fayetteville, a five-hour drive.

She'd drive, drop Stacey off on Friday, drive back to West Virginia.

Because his grandfather, his real dad's dad had custody, not his dad.

Because it's part of the good old boy system.

He had a bunch of money in Fayetteville and knew the the judges and how that even worked out is backdoor deals but she would turn around and drive five hours sunday to go pick him up and then drive five hours back she was driving 20 hours in a weekend wow so strong woman you know, and my mom took him in.

And so it was just, you know, it's a standard deployment.

It was winter.

It was starting to phase out of that wintertime, right?

We're starting to get into the fighting season that you always kind of hear about.

When we first got to Five Warrior, the Polish were still there. And, man, the Polish were crazy.
Like, they were somehow making, like, whiskey or whatever they were making. Like, them dudes were wild.
Like, it was cool to see that. It was a cool experience.
And, you know, we were doing the exchange with them one time, and we were on a route, and there was an IED, and it was close to, you know, we were like an hour away from like surf and turf, right? And, dude, we're like, oh, you know, we'll call EOD to come out and look at this. Man, these dudes just start chucking grenades.
They're just like, oh, we'll blow it up. I'm like, this is not how we operate, right? Like, kind of dangerous.
They're like, oh, no, we got to eat. We got surfing turf.
So I was like, this is, what? This is wild. This is crazy.
And, you know, so finally they ended up leaving. And then, you know, the rest of the big 80 seconds started coming in, right? Command Sergeant Major Love.
Dude was a soup sandwich, man. And he was the head of everything.
And it just got to the point where like, hey man, we're at war. We get mortared every day.
Like, why do I got to wear a PT belt to go to the bathroom? Why do I got to wear a PT belt to go to the chow hall? What are we doing here? And that was when I was like, I have to get out of the 82nd because this is, this is, this is crazy. I'm wearing a PT belt and I'm shaving in like horrible environments because I can't have like a little scruffle.
Like I'm shitting in MRE bags up at the outpost, like, and I'm still having a shave up there, what is going on, it doesn't make sense, everybody's stuck in this World War II, guess what, that was great, they did great things, it's not World War II anymore, right, it's a different environment, y'all can loosen up a little bit, this is not that long ago. Like, that's a long time.
We can chill out a little bit. I don't need to shave and shit in an MRE bag.
Like, nobody's bothering us. It was just, everything was ridiculous.
But it was fun, though. It started to really get to know the guys.

We started forming as, like, a little team.

We had gotten a new squad leader at the time.

His name was Staff Sergeant Garcia Boches.

He was, like, he's had, like, all these jumps.

He was a black hat for a while.

He was, Pat Tillman went to his class and jumped school. So he was a awesome guy.
Very old school though. But he took, he looked out for us.
And then before him, we had Nick Fredste, who was, he deployed like seven or eight times to Afghanistan. Like in my eyes, he was like a legend.

Like, man, this guy's still alive.

He's got eight deployments in 10 years of his career.

Like he'd been deployed like all the time.

And he was like, he was so chill.

Like we had him as a squad leader for like seven months.

And man, he just taught you

everything. Like he just took care of you.
He just taught you everything. But I still couldn't go anywhere because we're locked in on an appointment.
So then he got sent to another company, I think like Delta Company. And then we got Bochez, which was awesome to have.
And then we deployed. but I mean

it has actually

felt good because there are a lot of

gums We got Bochez, which was awesome to have, and then we deployed. But, I mean, it actually felt good because there are a lot of good young guys in the 82nd.
There's a lot of good dudes in the 82nd. You know, the conventional army has been overshadowed.
People think it's not cool anymore, like being in the infantry, like standard infantry, because of social media, right? Social media now, when you think of something sexy, you think of beards and like plate carriers and cut off t-shirts and, you know, the special operations community. Like it's, it looks cool.
And it's, you know, a lot of guys in the 82nd, they're really good dudes. And I think they feel maybe overlooked.
You know, maybe like we're not as important anymore because we're just in the 82nd. I've heard guys tell me their story.
Well, I was just in the 82nd. Hey man, be proud.
Be proud of what you did. You're still in the infantry.
You're still in the 82nd. You're still jumping out of planes.
Be proud of what you, I'm so proud to be in the 82nd.

I don't go around and try to act like I was in SF or anything. I'm proud of what I did.
Because what I did set me up for where I'm at now. That was where I'm supposed to be.
So I tell all those guys, anybody to this day in the 82nd, be proud of what you're doing. Your service is not overlooked.

You guys, there's a lot of really good young dudes

who... second.
Be proud of what you're doing. Your service is not overlooked.
You guys, there's a lot of really good young dudes who are changing this. They're changing the 80 second.
You know, I've been reached out by several guys and I will go on post and train any of those guys for free from the 80 second because I didn't get that. I didn't get any CQB training, except for basic.
And it was the whole like grab, lean, rock, lean, rock. Like old school stuff.
My heart is with them guys, man. If they ever need anything from me, like they message me all the time and I will do whatever I can for you you.
Any training, any shooting, any advice for, like, after the military, like, I got you. Because I'm proud of what, and I'm proud to know you.
Be proud of your service. So, we had one of the SF groups, I don't know which one, that was on our FO Warrior too.
So we would see them around and they just had like a different life, right? Everything was just kind of carefree and big boy rules. You know, they're treated like big boys because they are, right? They come from an amazing group or amazing unit or amazing team.
And something about that, I was like, man, when I leave here, I talked to Bochez and he's like, I'll help you. He's like, we'll get all the paperwork done.
We get back, we'll do everything. And I was so excited, man.
I was like so excited. And then May 24th, 2012 came.
We were, that week, we were the QRF. And whatever outposts that the SF unit had, they were taking contact.
And we were going out to help them. The fastest road to, I later found this out.
The fastest road to them was they labeled it as a black road. It hasn't been cleared of an IED in two weeks, but it was the fastest route to them.
So that's the one that our amazing leadership decided that we were going to go take. And we hadn't turned off Highway 1, but maybe more than a half a mile.
And I'm the gunner and we're driving and then it's so crazy. I even think about it now.
It's so crazy. I saw this massive bright light and then it was like slow motion of seeing the dirt.
I could see like piles of dirt. It was so crazy, like slowly.
I never heard it. I just saw it and I saw the dirt come up.
And I felt this heat, pressure, push me back. And my back plate broke in half.

And then I came forward and smashed the whole left side of my face on the buttstock of the 240.

And I woke up, they said about 10 minutes later, on a gurney.

I'm hearing people scream.

I'm hearing people talk about the QRF that's coming for us. Just got ran over an IED.
They're seizing all operations. I hear Apaches.
I hear something about ambushes. So the vehicle in front took the main blast, right? Our front half of our vehicle caught it because it was like kind of in between.
But I got the back blast. The pressure is what got me.
It pushed me back and broke my plate, and then I got slung forward and then broke the whole left side of my face. I, to this day, still have no feeling on the left side of my face.
Damn. There's, it's, you can look at my nose and tell that it's broken.
So I have no feeling anywhere over here. This is, they never fixed it,

never gave me surgery for it, nothing.

It's just, the nerves are gone.

It's crazy.

I feel this side, but not this side.

So if you ever see me with a face tattoo like Mike Tyson,

it'll be on this side.

Just so you know that.

Teardrops.

But I remember laying on the gurney

and they're trying to get a bird in. Man, one of my really good friends, he's calling in the nine line.
His name's Josh Marshak. Were you aware, or were you just conscious? I was aware at this point.
I could feel bleeding. I could taste the blood.
I just didn't know where it was coming from. And I actually have a scar on my head.
It was a massive gash. That's mainly where I was bleeding from.
But I had no idea. I had a massive headache.
My ears were ringing. And it was just tons of confusion.
But I could see Marshak next to me. And he's calling in the nine line.
I'm kind of, I'm kind of hearing what he's saying, but like, I'm kind of going in and out too. And I love that dude to this day.
Like, we still talk and I still thank him. Anytime I see him, I hug him.
Hey man, thanks for getting that nine line for me. Then a bird came down and they got me on the bird.
And crazy story about that too. They got me on the bird and I'm laying there and man, my head's killing me.
I'm bleeding. And on the ceiling is a flag.
You know, some of them will put their team flag or whatever on the ceiling. Man, it was a black beard flag.
It was this guy. And I didn't know my injuries.
I thought I was dying, the way everybody was acting. They're cutting clothes off on me.
And I pass out. And I wake up at the little medical spot on FOB Warrior.
And I got all these doctors around me, you know, asking me about feeling in my legs, my brain. I had a massive knot, like a huge knot.
They're like, oh, you're trying to do all these things, but they couldn't fly me to Bagram. Weather was so bad.
Whatever they call it, the sky was red. I don't know, whatever they call it.
But so I laid there for two days. just, I remember laying there and we'll get to that in a second, but

I remember laying there and we'll get to that in a second. But so they give me some morphine, like I'm feeling kind of good.
And I'm laying there. And then the next morning, the command sergeant major and the commander walks in.

And they're like, hey, Private Cook, we need to talk to you about something.

I'm like drugged up.

I remember the conversation.

They're like, hey, we need you to call your wife.

I'm like, okay.

I'm like, yeah, that'd be great.

Anybody got a phone?

I can call her.

Because I had one of those little Hodge phones that you could buy with the minutes.

I was like, hey, somebody gave me my phone.

They were like, but here's the problem.

Is the 82nd and the family readiness group called my wife that night.

Told my wife that there was an accident and I was deceased. Are you fucking kidding me? Next to my mom.
And your mom. And my mom.
And there was about an hour from my call, from the call she received from when I called her. They called her first thing that morning.
Not that night. First thing that morning.
Then I was able to call her an hour later. And she goes, her exact words was, who the fuck is this? I'm like, hey, it's me.
I'm like, I sound funny because I'm on morphine. I'm not dead.
I'm alive. I'll call you in a little bit.
She's so confused. I'm like, hey, I'm on morphine.
I'm not dead. I'm alive.
I'll call you in a little bit.

She's, like, so confused.

I'm like, hey.

I'm like, this is really me.

I promise.

They get on the phone.

They're like, ma'am, Ms. Cook, we're sorry about this.

Like, she is alive.

Nobody had died.

But, like.

Holy shit.

So, for an hour, my wife and my mom thought I was dead.

Like, how do you fuck that up?

God bless you. but like...
Holy shit. So for an hour, my wife and my mom thought I was dead.
Like, how do you fuck that up? Because some army wife calls my wife and tells them news that should have even been delivered to her. Why would you do that? It's not a responsibility.
So that was,

I think that still bothers my wife, maybe,

that she got that phone call.

But I can't even imagine, man, how she felt.

So, but at least they were,

they caught it fast enough

to where it wasn't a day, right, or hours.

It was about an hour.

And I think what happened is

the lady that was ahead of the FRG

had told her husband that,

hey, I called the wife.

She's okay.

He's like, well, hold on.

Nobody fucking died.

He just got hurt really bad. So we're able to clear that whole mess up and, you know, which was, caused anxiety for the whole rest of the deployment for my family.
But they finally get me to Bagram. I get to Bagram and, you know, I have massive headaches.
I don't feel well. I'm still throwing up.

My legs are feeling weird. My back is like super sore.
And I didn't break my back. Didn't have any spinal damage.
I just had like, my whole back was black. I guess just nerve damage.
So they're like, hey, we can send you to Germany and then send you home. Or I'm like, can I stay? They're like, well, that's, how do you feel? I'm like, I feel great.
You can't send me home. That's an embarrassment.
I failed at college. I failed my family about getting a job.
Like, I'm on a continuous path of failing. If I go home early, I look like a bitch.
I let my grandfather down. You know, I'm not dead, so why do I need to go home? So then they're like, that's fine, but you're not going to be operational for a little while.
Take these Ambien's in the morning and at nighttime, sleep. I was taking like two Ambien's a day.
One in the morning, I'd eat breakfast, take an Ambien, go to sleep. I'd wake up, go eat dinner, take an Ambien, go to sleep.
Then I was like, oh, I need pain medicine. They gave me oxycodones over there.
I was like, I stayed high and tired. Then I kicked all of it to the curb because now people are looking at me like I'm a pussy.
They don't know the extent of my injuries. When I got back, I told them nothing was wrong.
They don't know that I have some brain scans that, you know, they told me I was fine. But later on when I got back home, so I get back home and we do the deployment.
I do a couple missions with them and then I get back home and we do a battalion run. I think I'm fine.
I feel fine. I do the run.
Don't even remember the run. I remember walking out to the field, hearing some AC, DC.
We're all lining up. I remember drinking water.
That was it. That's all I remember.
So then I was like, man. How do you know you did the run? I don't know.
How do you know you missed something?

Because people had told me that I ran.

So I was in the formation.

My shirt was wet.

We had gray battalion shirts.

My shirt was soaking wet.

I thought maybe I was dreaming.

I didn't know what was going on.

People told me I ran.

I don't remember the run.

And my shirt's drenched. I mean, you're talking October, North Carolina, 80% humidity.
I'm soaked. I thought, man, maybe I just blacked out.
So a couple days go by. I start having these random nosebleeds, these massive headaches.
My eyes, like, start hurting over here on the sides. I'm like, man, I don't feel right.
Something's not right. I started getting like that, that feeling that we have when we stood up and your legs are tingling.
That would come and go. I felt like my legs were always asleep.
I'd be standing and I'd get this tingling and I'd have to lean on my wife. So finally, I go to Walmart.
And to go to WOMAC. And I pretty much get told I'm a pussy, being a pussy.
Suck it up. You're going to be a sick haul ranger? I'm like, hey, man, like, I got hurt.
Like, I'd like to get a follow-up. So finally, they let me get a follow-up.
get these scans done, get a full body scan, and ended up being committed to the hospital. I had swelling in my brain, and I had some optic nerve issues, and I had some nerve damage in my spine.
So I stayed in the hospital for like a week.

And then they get the swelling down.

They bring in a doctor who enrolls me

into the first WOMAC traumatic brain injury pipeline.

There was five of us.

One guy killed himself.

One guy dropped out. One guy dropped out.

Two guys dropped out.

And two of us completed it.

Me and another guy completed it.

So for two years, I did this pipeline.

I met with a world-renowned brain doctor.

I can't remember his name,

but me and my wife met with him once a month.

To this day, Sean,

I don't know why I was having the issues.

It was never explained to me.

Nobody ever got answers.

Nobody ever got anything.

I had a doctor, a neurologist, told me that she thought I had STDs.

What?

Exactly.

I got off the phone with my wife.

I'm like, what?

And then she ended up getting fired because she was sexually harassing patients. The whole system was broken.
To this day, I still don't know what happened. I did speech memory and physical therapy every day for two years, well, a year and a half.
And I got transferred to the warrior transition battalion because because I had so many doctor's appointments. And I couldn't ever get an answer.
The Army never wanted to admit that they messed up by letting me go back and not fixing me right then. Because that's on them.
They let me go back. I'm sure that that doctor, one, that did the brain scans, there's no way you didn't find that my brain wasn't swelling.
I had to nod out to hear and I was throwing up with nosebleeds. You just gave me Ambien.
I don't know if there was like, hey, we can't just send people to Germany unless you're like actively dying. I don't know.
I don't know. But to this day, I never got answers of what happened to me.
I have a medical file that's this thick. I'm 100 total and permanent, but I never got answers.
I could never get answers, ever. So for a year and a half, I did speech memory and physical therapy with no answers to what was wrong.
But whatever they were doing was working. So after a year and a half, I felt normal.
I had all these shock therapies on my brain. I had these needles put all over.
Had all these things done, but nobody ever told me why. Why I'm doing this.
Like, oh, you know, you got a brain injury. It's just something we're doing.
Something we're testing out. I'm like, I'm not a rat in a lab.
What's wrong? What are you doing to fix me? Oh, you know, you have a great care team. They got it taken care of.
Yeah, that's great. But what are they doing to fix me? Have they not explained this to you? No.
Bring it up to them. I bring it up to them.
Nothing. Nothing.
It was horrible. You want to know why guys are killing themselves? Because they can't get answers.
You don't care. You're a civilian or you're in the military and you're not giving people the answers that they need because you don't care.
Something's wrong with me. What is wrong with me? If the army fucked up, that's fine.
I'm not going to blame the army. But nobody ever told me what was wrong.
So I got released from the pipeline. I had this little ceremony, whatever.
They're like, oh, this was successful. I'm like, cool.
They send me back to my unit. Send me back.
I can leave Warrior Transition Italian and go back to the 82nd. Get in the 82nd.
Everybody's like rigging up, getting all their stuff. Hey, cook.
Hey, man, glad you're back. Go get your ruck.
Needs to be this weight, blah, blah, blah. We got a combat jump tonight.
And we're going to walk back to the company and you're going to jump to 240. I'm like, I just got back.
I just walked in the company. I'm like, what do you mean?

I'm not jumping.

I just did this for a year and a half.

This was like the end of 2013.

So about December of 2013.

I'm like, I only have like six more months left in my contract. I'm like, I'm not jumping.
They're like, oh, you're going to jump. You're not with the Warrior Transition Battalion anymore.
You're going to jump. I'm like, man, this is bullshit.
This ain't right. First Sergeant was mad.
They're all mad because I went to the Warrior Transition Battalion and got help that I needed. Whether I got told what was wrong or not, whatever they did worked.

I felt better.

I still have some stuttering when I get excited.

If you watch any of our videos on Instagram when I'm trying to teach, sometimes I'll stutter.

But whatever they did, it was great.

And I'm grateful for those people.

But to this day, I'd still like to know.

So I get rigged up. I got no option.
I'm an E4. You know, like, you can't argue.
They're either going to give me an Article 15 for disobeying orders six months before I get out, or I can just suck it up and jump. So I'm like, cool, whatever.
I'll jump to 240. At this point, whatever.
We jump, jump out, parachute opens, everything's fine and dandy. Bam, head bust right off the windshield of a Humvee.
Smack the Humvee on the ground. I woke up, man, I don't know, maybe, it could have been long, 30 seconds later, I'm like, damn, I got a headache.
I'm like, dude, suck it up. Suck it up.
Put my parachute up. Met up at the meetup point, the rally point, and I'm laying on the ground and Sergeant Bochez is right there and I'm just throwing up.
I am just yakking. He goes, Cook, what's wrong? I said, hey, man, I hit my head off the Humvee.
He shined a light and I was bleeding down there on my face. He's like, are you sure you hit your head? I'm like, yeah, I'm throwing up.
He's like, hey, he goes, go to the medical tent right now. He goes, you only got six months left.
Go to the medical tent right now. Went to the medical tent.
Took me to the hospital. Same doctor in the ER.
Super cool. Right back into the Warrior Transition Battalion the next day.
They treated my concussion for about five months. And then they were like, hey, you seem fine.

See you later.

Go pick up your DD. I walked in still thinking I had treatment.

I still had like a month left in my contract.

And they were like, hey, you can go pick up your DD-214

and take this leaf.

I was like, okay.

That sounds great.

Am I okay? Am I good to leave? Yeah, your doctor's cleared off all your paperwork. We have all your paperwork.
I'm like, nobody ran that by me. Nobody told me I was cleared.
No shit. I was like, let me see my paperwork.
There it was. So they rushed you out.
Rushed me right out. Pushed me right out the door.
Went to a social support center. Picked up my DD214.
And I didn't do any out-processing. Dude, I still have, I had like my helmet.
I didn't do any out-processing. Never got a letter for, to bring it in, nothing.
They rushed me right out. See you later.
And man, that's why I do encourage people to, if you want to stay in this longer, try to get to those other units, man, because I feel like you might get better treatment. Maybe it's different now.
I mean, it's been, my God, it's been 12 years now, but to this day, I have no idea. I just know how I felt.
I just know that I was putting this important timeline. I know that I was sent to a battalion that was made so people can go to their appointments because they're messed up.
And then I was rushed right on out. And I had two months of leave build up.
So I took it. Damn.
And still had memory issues. Couldn't remember anything.
Couldn't remember I put my keys. Couldn't remember nothing.
And so I had applied. So I got out early.
So that was like February or like March, March timeframe. I was like, man, what am I going to do? I was like, what am I going to do? Because I didn't get out medically.
Don't have a degree, right? Didn't take that serious.

Shooting a piece of paper in a trash can

didn't work for me.

What am I going to do?

I have a son and a wife.

She works.

She does hair,

but she had to lose all of her clients

when I deployed to move back home with my mom.

So she's still trying to build her clientele up.

She gave all of her clients away for safety. And now she's trying to build all of clientele up.
She gave all of her clients away for safety.

And now she's trying to build all of them back up.

It's hard.

So I'm like, man, I'm going to,

oh, we were driving down Bragg Boulevard

and I saw this armored vehicle flying up the road,

blue lights and sirens.

It said Fayetteville Police Emergency Response Team. I was like, that's it, man.
I'm going to be that. How do I get there? So I walked to the police station.
I walked in the police station. Hey, I want to be a cop.
How do I sign up? Like, oh, you know, you got to go to the training center. So I started the process and did all the hiring process.
And then, you know, May came and I heard nothing. May and June, crickets.
I'm like, man, I didn't get this job. Because, you know, I had to tell them, you know, so in that time period when I fell out of college, you know, because I was honest with him about everything, right? Smoked some weed.
My stepdad had hernia surgery. And when he was healed, I stole the rest of his Percocets and sold them for money.
So I had to be truthful on all this. I give you a lot of texture tests.
I was like, man, maybe they didn't really like that. Maybe that was, maybe I should have tried to a lot.
I don't know. Maybe they didn't like that.
Man, like June, end of June, they were like, hey man, start BLAT next Monday. It's like a week away.
Start what? BLAT, basic law enforcement training. You're hired with Fayetteville Police Department.
You start BLAT next Monday. I was like, they were like, report, we'll keep seeing an email with all the instructions.
I was like, am I hired? They were like, yeah. I was like, oh, man.
Damn. Cool.
Let's go be a cop, right? Have no idea what to expect, but let's go be a cop. So first day in B-let, we go and we're meeting with all the other people.
We had like a large class. We had like 18 to 20 of us.
And we lost six in for testing purposes. But Fayetteville has their own basic law enforcement training.
So everything is in-house. You don't have to, a lot of places you go to college, you go to B-Lit, and then you're sponsored by an agency that then picks you up afterwards.
But Fayetteville is a really good department because Fayetteville is a very dangerous city. So they have their own instructors, their own B-Lit, on site at the training center.
We have a whole training center. And so I go to B-Lit and we're sitting down, they're doing orientation at City Hall.
And then we do that. And then the next day we report to the training center.
Get to the training center and they're explaining everything. and they're like, every Friday we have a test

on, I think there's a total

of like 20 some tests

because it's all about like law,

fourth amendment,

like all the, everything,

anything about being a cop.

So they bring an instructor in on Monday,

teach you for four days

and then Friday,

you take an exam.

You can only fail two, your third one, you're out.

And I'm like, I go home and I'm like,

honey, I'm screwed.

I'm like, I can't remember.

At this point, I can't remember.

My memory is horrible.

It's really bad.

I'm like, there's no way I'm going to be able to take,

sit down and do this and go take a test. I already had like test anxiety.
She's like, we're going to get you through it. I'm like, she's like, I promise you, we're going to get you through this.
I'm like, all right, I'm going to try it. So every Wednesday and Thursday night, my wife would come home from working 10 hours, help me make index cards, and she'd sit up all night flipping them for me, helping me study.
All night, hours. We'd get up 5 o'clock in the morning before test, and she'd flip index cards.
I was like top three in my class for academics, and there were some really intelligent people. I had like, I was getting almost, I never failed one test.
It's because my wife stuck by my side and came home after a long day of work feeding our son and then staying up and flipping index cards for me. And that's six months I'm doing that.
Damn. So she was exhausted.
Terry, now, never would have made it through B-Let testing if it wasn't for her. I owe it all to her and God.
But man, like, she made sure that I was successful. That's a good woman.
Oh, man. Yeah.
Yeah. Man, she was not going to let me fail.
Because she had saw my life the last two years of how I was treated in the Army. She wanted to go talk to all these chain of command.
She was livid. I was like, no, leave it alone, leave it alone.
She's like, Blake, I want answers. I'm like, I do too.
I'm like, I don't want to make nobody mad, Nicole. We don't understand.
I don't want to be punished. I'm afraid that if I roughed up too many feathers they're just gonna send me back to my unit just discharge me and send me back to my unit I'm like just be quiet so I can just keep doing the treatment because if you start pissing off people they're gonna send you they're gonna send me back they send me back then you have nobody to irritate except for that commander and first sergeant, and you're not their problem anymore.
So she's like, okay, okay, okay. So she was already livid.
I mean, dude, she had to help me shower. Like there were times where my leg would just go numb.
Like just like a, like not a numb, like not where I couldn't feel them, but like they were just asleep. And if I stepped, it hurt.

It felt like knives were in my legs, only in my legs.

Never my arms, never my upper body, always my legs.

The only answer I got was nerve damage.

And that it can take up to three to 40 years

for nerves to heal themselves.

They're kind of like misfiring is what I was told.

And that's what's happening.

They're misfiring with my brain. And that's the feeling that I'm getting.
Some BS answer. Not even a true medical answer.
Sounds like talking about a car engine. Like, tell me what's wrong.
But she never let me fail, man. So six months.
Go to graduation. You know, she pins my badge on me.
And know, I'm just so grateful that she took the time to do all this. Your wife pinned her badge on you? Yeah.
That's awesome. Yeah, it was awesome.
It was, because she should have been wearing a badge. By that point, she knew the law.
She knew the law better than I did. You know, because she had to read the chapters and pick out what she believed to be important things.
And while they were teaching, I would highlight things that they would be like, okay, you need to label the Sean Ryan show. Wink, wink.
That might be a test question. Yeah.
But she would go through all the highlights and make the index cards for me, and I would make them too. And without that, man, without her push, right? Hey, man, don't give up.
Don't give up. You're not broken.
Because I could have laid around and made excuses. Oh, the Army said I was ziffed up, right? Yeah.
Jacked up, you know? Because I wouldn't get any disability at the time. Nothing.
Not a thing. No good.
Nothing. No medical, no nothing.
So she pins my badge on me, and I get assigned to, Fayetteville's broken up into three districts, Camelton, Central, Cross Creek. It's a city of like 300-some thousand people, plus all the craziness on Bragg, right? A lot of people don't understand, man.
There's more gang members on Fort Bragg than there is in the city of Fayetteville. No kidding.
Hell yeah, we'll get into that. Well, before we do, before we get into your L.A.
career, let's take a quick break. Let's do it.
I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source.
It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter.
And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign super bad.
She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show. And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind-blowing.
And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So it's going to be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to.
And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not going to spam you.

It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two if we release two shows. The only other thing that's going to be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that.

But like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up.
Link's in the description

or in the comments. We'll up links in the description or in the comments we'll see in the newsletter all right blake we're back from the break you just got through the police academy where are we going yeah so like i said my wife my wife pinned me right so i'm super excited um starting to really feel like a cop.
I got a badge, I got a gun. All the training that I feel like I need.
So I get my assignment. You know, my assignment is Central District, which is kind of the city's broken, like I said, into three.
Central is the middle. So it covers a lot of the really bad areas.
It covers an area called Bonny Doon, Massey Hill, a lot of crime and gang members and all these things. What is Fayetteville? I've never been to Fayetteville.
So Fayetteville is obviously a military town, but it's weird. It's kind of nice, but it's kind of ghetto.
It's, you know, like the street that my wife grew up on was a really nice street. It's called Devon Street.
It's one of the predominant areas in Fayetteville because she's born and raised in Fayetteville. Okay.
And the street behind it is one of the worst neighborhoods in the city.

It's one of the worst roads on the city.

You could be driving nice, nice, nice, and then bam, ghetto.

And then nice, nice, nice.

It's crazy.

There's the, I really, because I started out in this district, I got fascinated with gangs.

Like, just how they operate, music, everything.

Really?

Yeah, I just got obsessed learning everything I could about gangs.

What kind of gangs?

So we have Bloods, Crips. We have MCs.
And we have some cartel. The New Generation and Sinaloa cartels, pretty predominant in the area.
Sinaloa cartel runs Myrtle Beach. No shit.
Oh, absolutely not. What do you mean by that? Runs Myrtle Beach.
Like runs it. They are.
Runs what? Like everything. Strip clubs, drugs, anything that comes in and out of Myrtle Beach is Sinaloa Cartel.
It used to, a long time ago, it used to be kind of like the Russian mafia. But something happened when the Sinaloa Cartel came in and just took over.
Dominated it. Dominated it.
Strip clubs, drugs. Probably all the stores, all the, so when I was younger, when I would go there.
What do you mean all the stores? Like Subway. Remember how Subway used to, like Subway and Merle Beach, you would go there, it would be like foreign exchange students from Russia.
The Wings, all the stores had Russian. Now it's just a bunch of Hispanic people.
Growing up, it was always Russian teenagers. Now it's not no more.
Now it's Mexicans, Hispanics. So we train- How do you know their cartel? So what, the cartel bought the businesses? We just know that they operate out of Myrtle Beach.
So anything in Myrtle Beach is probably like drug-wise and guns is probably all being filtered through the cartel, is what I mean. I'm not saying that they own the subways and things like that, but there's an increase of Hispanics in that area since the Sinaloa cartel has moved into that area, if that makes any sense.
Gotcha. Because they operate off I-95, right? So the halfway point from New York City and Miami, the halfway point is Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Is it really? You can take several exits in and out of our city off I-95 and disappear.

They operate a lot

in Lumberton, North Carolina,

which is...

It's called the Lumbee tribe.

They're not a national tribe.

I think Trump was trying to make it,

but they're not.

But there's a lot of land

and they can disappear out that way.

Like drugs and money and guns are just so predominant through Fayetteville

and that Robinson County area because of 95.

Interesting.

You can gump off I-95 and then boom.

So what was your first encounter with gangs?

What initially got you infatuated with that?

There was this kid in Fayetteville called Kaboom Holdley.

I think his name was Andreas Flight.

He was the leader of a non-traditional gang.

So you have traditional, non-traditional.

Traditional gangs are gangs like Lil Wayne came from,

like Eastside Maaparu. That is a gang that is nationally known everywhere, sets everywhere.
Non-traditional was like a neighborhood clique. So he had a non-clique called Money Gang, right? And they were a blood set.
How many people are we talking here? What's a non-traditional gang? 20, 30. 20, 30 people? Young, young teenagers who are violent.
Okay. You know, it's the, you know, the surf.
Young like 13, 14? 14, 15, 16. Okay.
17, 18 is kind of old. Old? Yeah, that would be old, older.
You're not, you're dealing with those high school kids. So, hold on.
I'm really I'm really... You sound like the guy to talk to.
So 13, 14's young, 18, 19's old. Where do they go when they're 20? So a lot of times they'll start in non-traditional gangs.
They'll get older. Then they'll move on and try to get into another gang.
if they're a non-traditional blood set, like money gang, they'll try to go, once they get older, they want to wait from that little clique. Or maybe several of them have died off and the gang has died off.
They'll go, maybe they have a homie that's with Eastside Maupai Ru or Sex Money Murder. Those are traditional gangs.
So money gang is a blood set, a non-traditional blood set. But once they kind of age out, maybe they don't want to be a part of this clique anymore.
What do you mean a blood set? So you have bloods and crips, right? That's just who you are. And then there's different sets.
Like a set is sex money murder. That is a blood set.
They're bloods, but then you have Eastside Mob Piru. So what is this shit like? The UFC feeder things? Dude, it's- Is that what it's like? It's very organized.
You're in the JV and now you're in the varsity? Pretty much. You're in the- Do they have- Minor leagues? They have rules.
Bibles. No shit.
They have, it's- What kind of rules? Like, you got to be beat in for a certain amount of, like, eight tray crips. Like, they have to be beat in for 83 seconds.
For eight three. Right? Eight tray.
Three is tray. So you have to be beat into the gang.
Or if you're a chick, you can be raped into the gang. You can be raped into the gang.

Rape into the gang.

Women choose to be raped into a gang.

Yes.

Why?

What do they get out of that?

They're obviously missing something at home.

They want to be a part of that gang.

What does that entail?

So like, man, who's the... What, are they going to fuck somebody? Oh yeah, they get raped by multiple gang members.
But is it rape? Pretty much, yeah. I mean, it's consent.
They're beating her ass and they're fucking her. It's not like we're all just gangbanging you.
They're like forcefully raping her. Because she's not like, maybe she don't want to be a part of it, right? Maybe she might like change her mind, but once you commit to it, you've committed to it.
There's no backing out. Yeah, it's sex, but then if they don't want to and they try to back out, there is no backing out.
So what's their role once they're in the gang? Once they've been raped into the gang? Like if they're a blood, they're a bloodette. What is that? I mean, are they prostatists? Are they actual gang members? They're gang members.
They get to just hang out with a gang. They don't really do anything.
They just hang out with a gang. I'll show you some videos.
That's all right. No, not of getting gang banged in.
but I mean, it's just, gangs are very interesting.

So if I go see, you know,

you have to be Hispanic or black to be a blood.

You can't be white.

Any white guy that ever says they're a blood,

they're a complete liar.

So in this day and age,

if I see maybe a young 13, 14-year-old

African-American kid,

and he's wearing Chicago Bulls, and he can't tell me anybody on their current team, it's a validation point to be a blood. So I have to get three validation points to validate you on a sheet that gets submitted in to state that you're a gang member.
But if you tell me you're a blood or a crip, I just need one other validation point. But a validation point is a lot of, you see a lot of blood members wear Chicago bulls.
Why? Because bull stands for bloods usually live longer and stronger. You see a lot of eight-trade crips, 83 crips, they wear the Texas Ranger hats.
The hats are blue and there's a T on it. T stands for tray, eight-trade.
You see like, you ever seen the tattoos that say MOB and they're like, ah, money over bitches, member of blood. You see a lot of tattoos that are RR, that stands for real right.
That means you've done something for the game. You've done something maybe violent for the game.
There's, you know, the five-pointed stars, six-pointed stars. You ever see anybody with a Star David on them? You know, they're a gangster disciple.
It's just so much. Bloods operate on the right side.
So if they're flying a flag, which is a bandana, everything should be on the right side.

If they're a Crip, everything's on the left side.

Now a lot of the younger kids will, instead of carrying flags,

they wear like red shoes or blue shoes, Vans,

is highly popular.

Are these the two biggest gangs in the country?

Bloods and Crips, yeah.

You know, it's what you, because-

Stalked to this day? Yeah, Stoopg, Crip. You know, Lil Wayne.
You can watch... There's a music video with him and Bruno Mars.
This mirror on the wall, whatever that mirrors or whatever. If you actually watch the music video, Lil Wayne pays tons of respect to the Bloods.
He shows all of his blood tattoos. M.O RR, five-pointed stars, everything.
A lot of them will even have red dreads. So there's another set of Bloods called Sex Money Murder.
They are a Blood set, but they were founded by a guy in the 60s, Pistol Pete. They don't do this.
This is blood, right? They hold this up, this is blood.

You'll never see Crips operate on the right side.

Crips will always operate over here.

So they're a blood set, but they show,

they'll throw up two pistols to pay respect to Pistol Pete,

and they operate off the color green

because Pete loved money.

Have you ever known Chicago Bulls to ever wear green? No. No.
So why do they sell green jerseys and green hats? No shit. It's because they sell to the gang.
They make a ton of money off of it. No shit.
Man, it's... Bloods will never eat at Burger King because BKA stands for blood killer.
Like, it's a whole bunch of rules that you would never even think of. Are these guys always...
Are these two gangs always co-located with each other or do they have specific territories? They have territories, neighborhoods. Within the city? Within the city.
So they'll be both gangs within the same city? Oh, yeah. Then you have non-traditional gangs who have no authority or discipline because they're just a bunch of kids that want to make their presence known.
They might attack a traditional blood set. It doesn't make any sense.
The non-traditional gangs, Sean, scare me to death. Why? More than the traditional ones? Because they're undisciplined.
They're not answering anybody. They don't have rules.
They have no rules. They're not scared of us.
Because why? Because they're 15 and 16. I can't do nothing with them.

16 or 15, 14 and 15, I can't do nothing with them. 16, you're mine.
But I can't do nothing with you at 15 or below. Man, like they are, it just, so I watched this first video.
My friend,

one of my really good friends named Dave Franklin, huge mentor at the police department.

He was in what was called GGVU at the time.

It was called the Gang, Gun, and Violence Unit.

So he came in and taught a gang class while we were in B-Lit.

That was one of the classes.

And I watched this video. It was called Gun Weight.
And it's a non-traditional gang, the Money Gang. And they're just in this shitty trailer holding up guns, talking about the gun weight.
Three of those kids in that video are dead from gang violence. Two of them are in prison and the leader is in and out of prison.

It's just, man, it's just so fascinating to me. I used to listen to the music, all the rap music, just listening to terminology, how they talk, how they operate.
Just there's so many different things like um like bloods um will um

you how they operate. Just there's so many different things like Bloods will, they'll make a sound.
You hear a lot in like Lil Wayne's music videos. So whoop, so whoop.
If they're in a large crowd full of other Blood gang members, that's signaling to them that 12 is around because it sounds like police sirens.

So it's just so fascinating. And a lot of chicks really got into the to the gangs because of Cardi B.
Cardi B's a blood. She used to have blood, blood dreads, and she had the whole nine yards.

She was a straight gangster.

She had a whole music video where there was like,

she's the OG,

back before she got super famous.

Wow.

Oh, it's...

So Cardi B's of blood.

Mm-hmm.

Lil Wayne's of blood.

The song Red Nation,

that, like, it talks about, it pays respects, even, like, Ocho Cinco's, like, it gives him a shout out. Doesn't mean he's a Blood, but it means he's an affiliate.
It's so interesting, man. Like, I used to be obsessed with watching, because I knew this was what I wanted to do.
How many gangs are in Fayetteville? Oh, man. A lot.

Like 20?

More than 20.

50?

Man, probably 30, 40.

30, 40 gangs?

Yeah.

Are they all rivals?

I don't think that they get along.

I think Bloods try to hang out with Bloods and Crips try to hang out with Crips.

I mean, 40 gangs in a town of, did you say 300,000?

300,000.

That's not a huge town.

No.

Where do 40 gangs go without running into each other?

They're everywhere.

They're everywhere.

Like...

Are any of them friendly?

Do the MCs get along with the Bloods or the Crips?

They don't even really mess with them.

The MCs don't get into that.

They have their own rival.

I mean, you've got cartels.

You've got the Bloods and the Crips.

Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings.

You got all this shit in one area.

We got Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, Gangster Disciples, Folk Nation, Hells Angels, and like four or five other motorcycle gangs. But all of those- How do you categorize them? Research.
A lot of them will omit. A lot of them will see on their Facebook page, hand signals, tattoos.
How do they not step on each other in a town of 300,000? They do. They'll never admit it, but...
I mean, what do they do? Prostitution, run drugs. A lot of it's running drugs.
Run guns. Run guns and run drugs and just be, they're just outlaws.
They just shoot each other. Like, nobody fights anymore.
It's just shooting. The Money Gang, they had a, I forgot, they brought in a boy from Charlotte.
Man, he sucked. I can't remember his name.
But he has been arrested several times for sex trafficking. He was a big sex trafficker.
God, I can't even remember his name on YouTube. They have all these videos out there, man.
Like there's one gang in Fayetteville called Rue Gang. We completely dismantled them.
They made a video that said, fuck the police, shoot anything blue. Holding rifles, convicted felons, and this idiot at a surplus store sold all of it to them for a music video, played carriers, then gave them patches to wear.

They were raided by Homeland Security.

Had stolen secret radios.

Had 22 Ops Corps maritime helmets

that belonged to still Team 6.

What?

22 of those.

How'd they get them?

Supply guys. Bring them there and sell them to him no shit he's gone they raided him i think he still has a store but he's he's pinning federal charges unless he snitched which i'm sure he probably did but that other gang is gone like we dismantled them they were two brothers the leaders.
And ecstasy or Xanax bars were their big things. We did a search warrant on their house, couldn't find anything in their house.
Went out to their storage unit, started digging through boxes, big old heavy boxes. I'm like, what is in these? Opened them up, cereal boxes.
I'm like, this is weird. Opened up the cereal boxes.
I'm like, what is in these? Open them up, cereal boxes. I'm like, this is weird.
Open up the cereal boxes, bags, cereal bags full of Xanax bars. Holy shit.
Probably thousands. I don't know.
I think about 20, 30,000. Just thousands.
I mean, they all kind of keep to themselves until at some point they cross paths or they have beef. Social media beef is the worst.
People get malady on social media and then they go shoot houses up. Nobody fights anymore.
It's shooting and killing. It's, man, Fayetteville's wild, Sean.
Is it really? When the sun goes down, it is.

You get like a very eerie feeling.

Because that's when all the goons come out.

They all come out to play.

And it is like, any car you stop, you might be in a gunfight.

Because they don't respect law enforcement.

Especially after the past administrative chiefs and stuff that we've had. Yeah.
Like, they just don't respect it. And, man, it's very, very interesting just how they operate because we'll find their Bibles and we'll study them.
And, you know, a lot of them can't stay off social media, right? A lot of them will always be on social media throwing up gang signs. So we'll go find them.
We'll do investigative stops on them. Find guns.
Man, the year that we got gang unit of the year, man, we got, I don't know, like 400 or 500 guns that year. Just guns everywhere.
And a lot of it is because soldiers leave their cars in their apartment complexes unlocked with guns in them. And these kids, these gang members, go around pulling car handles.
And then, man, they get 20, 30 guns a night. And then the soldiers threw his gun box away and doesn't even know his serial number.
So he can't, sometimes can't even charge them with a stolen firearm because they don't have the serial number. And they'll tell him, hey, when you get it, call it in so we can put it in the system and they never do.
It's, I mean, I've had some close calls in that city. That city never sleeps.
We've had broad daylight shootings. Wendy's parking lot, one o'clock in the afternoon,

three people dead in a parking spot.

It's crazy.

Damn.

I mean,

I pulled up to that scene

and they're like,

oh, the car left.

And I didn't see it.

And I saw three bodies.

I get out.

It's three young

black African Americans

dead over drug deal. It's just broad daylight.
I had one guy another one. Broad daylight, smoky bones outside Cross Creek Mall.
He was shot five times with a judge with a 410 show. I didn't know he was black or white until I felt his dreads.
I was plugging bullet holes.

Damn.

He survived.

He survived?

Yeah.

I couldn't tell his skin color because he was covered in red.

He was so bloody.

He survived.

He's paralyzed, but he survived.

It is wild.

It was a wild ride, man.

There's nowhere else I'd rather have been a cop, though, than that city. That city gave me every opportunity to do everything I wanted.
It was a fun place to work. True.
Sounds like it. Yeah, if you want to be a cop, man.
I mean, maybe not in today's time, maybe not now, because you got proactive versus reactive. Now so many cops want to be reactive You got through the academy You went on patrol How long did it take you to get into the gang stuff? Oh man About three years Three years? It's a spot nobody wanted to leave The gang unit? yeah nobody nobody wants to leave that unit everybody wants to be in the bank in the game everybody wants to be in the gang unit why it's fun you're like cowboys no shit yeah you're not like the narcs where you you know the narcs couldn't show their faces.
And, you know, we wear plain clothes.

I'd made my hair down past my shoulders,

a beard down to here,

just out there getting after it, man, fighting crime.

You know, there were times where we weren't seen at all.

And then there were times where we would go out at nighttime and just go to work.

Didn't take calls, did what we wanted, and we made a difference. You want to make a difference in your city and stop crime? You go get you about seven good dudes who want to fight crime and tell them good luck and give them a good supervisor.
How would you do that today? Is it even possible? It is possible. It is very possible.
We have to figure out, the problem is, is we have to figure out how do we keep good young cops from leaving to go do another job? Shitty cops are staying in and getting promoted. Well, how do you think that happens? How do you get good young cops to stay in the force with the shit leadership that we see today? I think that the good, because there is good leadership out there.
Where? Other than here. I think in a lot of agencies, there are good leadership that have made it to an executive level.
But they're too afraid to speak out because they're outnumbered. I think those people have to have backbone.
I think we have to figure out that this person is a shitty leader and they need to be demoted. You know, if you have officers, like when I left, when I medically retired, 108 left.
Let's talk about your career. I mean, when we spoke on the phone for the first time, you had a lot of frustrations.
Yeah. A lot of frustration.
So my first call ever, day one, I am, I got pinned the day before and now I've reported to my duty. I get with my FTO and we're going over all the things.
7.30 in the morning, my first call. Call comes out.
Missing kid. Cool.
It's a great one to go to. It's a great one to learn from right off the gate.
Missing kids. They come up all the time.
So a lot of them are runaways. A lot of them are just hiding in closets.
Don't want to go to school. Parents just can't find them.
Whatever. They're not actually missing.
They're just running away. So we get there and the mother is just, she's really like distressed.
I don't know what she's supposed to look like. It's my first call ever.
She's like, I can't find my son. I don't know where he's at.
I've searched the whole house. I just haven't looked in the basement.
They're like, well, has he ever had any behavior of running away? No, he just doesn't like going to school. Like, all right, man, we'll search the house again.
Search the whole house, nothing. Open up the basement door.
Started walking down the steps.

I see two little bare feet.

Maybe about a foot, foot and a half off the ground.

And I'm like, wow, I already know what this is.

I get all the way down to the basement.

My FTO is behind me.

He took an extension cord, tied it to a water pipe, multiple pipes, and hung himself.

So we're sitting there.

And I'm day one, man, first call.

My FTO is such a coward.

He said, hey, you need to go up and tell that mother that her son is deceased.

And we found him.

Thank you. No, no, you need to go do that.
I'm telling you, you go do it. All right, roger that.
So I go up there. She's standing in the kitchen.
She leaned up against the counter, and I'm, hey, ma'am. I'm sorry to tell you, but your son is in the basement, and he's no longer alive.
She let out a scream, Sean, that I still hear every night. I watched her open her mouth and scream, And when she opened her mouth and screamed, I watched her soul leave her body.
And I go back downstairs. She's screaming.
Finally, her sister gets there. She's comforting her.
I'm holding the kid's legs. FTO cuts the extension cord off.
He had like one of the serrated knives and cut him down. We laid him on the ground.
Did all the things. Called the detectives.
Next rotation came. Next rotation is kind of like towing.
Like for tow trucks. If we need a tow truck, it's the next on rotation.
But we have a morgue service, so they're in a rotation. So next rotation means whoever the morgue service is up to come get the body, that comes.
So we call for next rotation for mor. They come too, and they get the body,

and we go through on out the day.

Like the next call, man, was after that.

The next call was some old lady complaining.

And she was mad that the neighbor's cat was on her car.

Realistically, she was lonely.

Just wanted somebody to have coffee with at 9 o'clock in the morning. So you go from...
You go from a dead 12-year-old... Cutting a dead 12-year-old who hung himself...
To an 80-year-old lady who wants to file a complaint. She wants a police report for her neighbor's cat that's on her car causing damage.

And I have to be able to give her every bit of me that I can because she's calling me.

She's calling me for a service.

It's my job.

I can't go there and just give her half ass.

I have to switch off what just happened. What I just went through doesn't matter anymore.
That's done. Kick it out.
How do you do that? Try not to think about it. Focus on, man, the queue is so busy.
The queue and the calls, they're just stacked. There'll be 15, 20 calls pending.

They all go by priority.

You don't have time to think about what you just went through

because the next thing that you're going to go through

might be just as bad.

The next call might be your life.

Can't think about that.

You can't dwell on that, kid.

That's horrible.

But how do I know the next call

is me not dealing with somebody

that's going to try to kill me?

I have to be mentally sharp

to deal with the next call.

Once you get in your car

or not. But how do I know the next call is me not dealing with somebody that's going to try to kill me? I have to be mentally sharp to deal with the next call.

Once you get in your car and that call's over,

put your head on the steering wheel, let out a big old nice scream,

and push on.

Because guess what? The next call is somebody else's having their very worst moment of their life that you are responding to. Every call is somebody's worst moment of their life.
And every call, you should treat it as if it's your first call of the day because they deserve that. They're calling you at their worst time.
I never got a phone call for somebody to come tell me I was doing a great job

or somebody to cook me food or pat me on the back.

Every call for 10 hours is somebody's worst moment.

Somebody's dead.

Somebody's about to kill themselves.

A robbery, a murder, a mental patient standing in his garage naked with a butcher knife to granny wanting to have a cup of coffee. It's insane.
And there's no, there is no shutting it off. I still think about all of it.
There are cops that have been way through more than me. I don't know.
All I did was the next call could be life-ending for me, so I need to be switched on. That call no longer exists.
It goes away. It's just a report number.
But then you deal with it and you get home by drinking or lashing out at your family. And then you wake up the next day and you go to work and you treat people at work better than you treated your family because you can't show up to work angry.
You can't lash out at people at work. They'll put you on administrative leave and take your gun, make you go get help.
You can't shut it off. It'll affect your smile every day and you give people the best version of yourself because they need you in that moment.
Whether it might not be a big event to you,

it might be stupid to you. You might think this is a stupid call, but man, they're on, they call 911.
Police. Because they're having such a bad moment.
They need you at your best. Forget about the next call.
It's time to move on. This is what I always got told.
So at the end of that shift, I walked in.

And my sergeant's sitting there with his legs up, shoes off.

I said, cook, how was it?

I'm like, oh, it sucked.

First call of the day, kid hung himself.

It's a lot.

He starts laughing.

He's like, suck it up.

Welcome to being a cop.

I was like, what? What? And then it just, for the next, you know, two and a half years, it was a ride, man. Every day, like, bro, if you're not checked in, when you check in for service, if you're not mentally checked in, you could die.
You could die. There were times where, because let's say you're being proactive.
You know, it's a scary feeling walking up to a car that you just pulled over, especially if you can't see inside of it. You know, a lot of people ask, why do cops touch the back of the car? For DNA.
For if we're shot and killed, right then, right there, our fingerprints are on the back of that car. So when they find it, they can for sure say, that is the vehicle.
There's Cook's fingerprints. It's scary.
Oh, shit. I didn't know that.
Man, every traffic stop that I walked up to that I couldn't see into the car

or my spidey senses kicked in.

Man, people ask,

why are cops so aggressive when they get up to the car?

Because when they touch the back of your car

from the front of their windshield,

do you know what they're thinking about?

Am I about to take rounds through the windshield?

Am I about to get shot? When the window comes down and it's old Miss Betty and she's all nice and sweet, it's a good feeling. Now, she can still kill you, right? You still got to be elevated a little bit, but it's a good feeling because every car I ever approached, I just waited for rounds to come through the windshield.
If you had rounds come through the windshield? I've never. Luckily, I've never.
I've seen a lot of videos where it has happened. It just never happened to me.
And I had an OG gang member in Bonnie Dune tell me one time.

He'd say, man, you know, I see a lot of people in the neighborhood treat you different.

He's like, you ever wonder why?

I'm like, I don't know, man.

Because you present yourself well.

Your uniform is obviously tailored to your body.

You're fit.

Your hair looks good. Your belt looks good.
Everything about you says, I don't want to fuck with you. I can't run from you.
I can't fight you. You're going to kill me.
But I'll run from him because he's fat and sloppy. That's a big deterrent.
My uniform was fresh every day. I had three uniforms.
I wore the same uniform. Day one, I wore my first uniform, and then I would wear that again on my fourth day.
But day one, two, and three, I always had fresh uniforms. On my day off, the first thing I did is I took them to one of the shops and had them pressed.
They were all tailored to my body because I wanted to present myself as if you fuck with me, I'm going to kill you.

If you try to kill me, I'm going to kill you.

You're not going to kill me today.

I'm the wrong one.

I'm going to do everything lawful.

I'm going to do everything I can as a professional

to keep you alive during our interaction.

But the moment you try to take me off this earth,

buddy, I'm coming.

And it ain't going to end well for you.

I'll give you the utmost respect.

Everybody I encountered, I treated it as if it was my mother, my father, my brother, my sister. I treated them as a family member and as a United States American citizen because they deserved that.
Now, the moment you cross that line, then we're going, we're doing it. Whatever you want to do, but you better be ready because I'm ready.

And I try to harp that to law enforcement,

to, hey, man,

like, use this as a motivation.

Get in shape.

Go to the gym.

And quit eating bad on duty.

Like, be presentable.

That will keep you alive.

If bad guys, right?

I heard you asked Sheriff-

Mark Lamb.

Yeah, Sheriff Mark Lamb. Love that dude.
What's a good way to prevent people from

entering in your home and things like that? Security cameras. Anything that bad guys will not,

you'll never become a victim if they feel like that there will be any resistance. They only pick easy targets, man.
Wolves don't attack

other wolves. They attack sheep.
They kill animals that can't protect themselves.

A single, right? If it's a single wolf, they're not going to try to kill a grizzly by themselves.

They know they're going to lose.

So they'd just rather go get the sheep.

I wanted to present myself

as if you mess with me,

you're getting all of me

and it's not going to end well.

And that's how people,

if they just put

just 80 tea stickers on glass,

that's a deterrent.

Flood lights.

Anything that they feel like they're going to get caught at all,

they won't mess with it.

It's only easy targets they prey on.

Same with law enforcement.

Yeah, you have a gun.

Maybe you look like a badass.

You probably can't shoot it.

So they're going to test you.

I never got tested.

I got tested.

No, take that back.

I've been tested twice.

One dude was like 6'6".

Thank you. I never got tested.
I got tested, and I take that back. I've been tested twice.

One dude was like 6'6", 280.

Brother, I just held on.

That was it.

That's all you could do.

Slam me up against my hood of my car.

I just maintained control as much as I could until somebody else came and helped me.

But very few times I've been tested.

And it's because every day at work,

there was nothing on me that looked ragged.

Let's talk about that scenario.

How did that start?

Traffic stop.

Dude had outstanding robbery warrant.

Pulled him over outside the hospital,

Cape Fear Valley Road.

Soon as we stop, the car door opens. I get out.
He takes off running. He is on me before I know it.
I'm fighting him. He's fighting me.
Dude's picking me up like a rag doll, throwing me on the hood of the car. And I'm just holding on.
Finally, we make it on the ground. I don't have a lot of jujitsu knowledge at all, but I did mess around with it.
So I did know some control techniques to try to control him, especially keeping him off my gun. That was my biggest worry, was my gun.
He actually got hands on my gun, but I had my level three Safariland holster that had the hood, and he didn't know how to operate, work that. He knew the button, but he couldn't get my hood.
So that holster saved my life. Always have your hood up.
You see a lot of officers, they put the hood down to get shots off faster. Just go train.
That's it, because that saved my life. Then luckily, my zone partner, BJ Bullard, showed up and just came up from behind and just one good hit.
The boy went down and that was it, end of the fight, because now it's two on one. His chances are over.
He felt a little resistance, a little, I can't compete against two, and he gave up. You know, it's because BJ was a proactive.
He was a proactive. He wasn't the first to always initiate, but he would always back you up.
He was a good country boy. And he went to the academy with me.
So, you know, it's, I've seen videos where cops just stand there and watch their buddies get beat up. I don't know how you do that.
Because if BJ would have watched me get beat up that day, we would have had to have shot that dude. And then, what would that have been? Yeah.
I shot an unarmed black man. And that always goes through your head.
Especially after the boy in Louisiana, I think, that they killed.

The Darren Wilson guy killed.

Just started all this years ago, like 2014.

What happened there?

Remember he, like, robbed the gas station,

and the officer got out with him,

and they got into a tussle,

and he shot and killed him inside the vehicle or something.

It was Mike Brown.

Remember Mike Brown?

That was St. Louis.

Yeah, St. Louis.

Yeah.

Yeah, so Mike Brown.

I used to live there.

After that, like, man, like, I'm white. It sucks.
You know, if I shoot an unarmed black dude, because guess what, man? These can kill you. If you're 6'6", 290, and I'm 5'10", 215, would a reasonable person believe that if you got the best of me you could take my gun out and kill me?

Yeah.

Now I'm shooting an arm-on-arm dude.

That's what the news is going to put out.

West Virginia boy

shoots and kills an arm-on-arm dude.

Like,

the news is awful.

Yeah.

And there are a major reason

why cops are getting out too by telling lies. Who are they going to call? They never thought about that.
These big cities never thought about that. Who are y'all going to call when these criminals go wild? Crime doesn't stop.
But police officers will quit. Criminals won't quit.
That's all they know. Why would I continue to get treated like shit for $43,000 a year? Did you get treated like shit? Let me rephrase that.
Did your department have your back? No. Oh, man.

No.

Some did.

Most didn't.

What's the first incident you were in when you realized that?

So I had one supervisor named Kerry Young, man.

Phenomenal dude.

He always had my back when I was on patrol.

I mean, I tell you, like, two or three people right out the gate. He had my back.
There was one incident that there was a disturbance inside of a restaurant when I was on patrol during the day. Dude had made a comment right before we got there that he was going to go to his truck and get a gun.
We show up, he's still in Texas Roadhouse, or Logan's Roadhouse. We go inside, he's still in there.
Him and this other family have went at it. He goes, I'm going to kill you.
I've already had two people tell me that said he was going to go get a gun. So he runs out to his truck.
I watch him run out the door. And so I've run after him.
He goes, opens up his door, gets in a posture as if he's grabbing something under the seat. I draw my gun.
I give him commands. I got three days off for that.
He had a gun. I was too aggressive.
He had a gun? He had a gun under his feet. He just never presented it.
Because he didn't present it, why did I draw my gun? Why didn't I use de-escalation skills? I don't know, bro, because I didn't want to get shot first. How about that? That was when I realized, wow, things are bad.
How early in your career was that? A year and a half. That was a year and a half into your career, and you had how long of a career? 10 years? 12 years? Eight.
Eight years? And I had one time where I was fighting a guy. We'll get into that.

But that was when I was in the gang unit.

I mean, if you cussed on body camera in a high-stress situation,

you're getting 10 hours off.

You're getting written up.

So a lot of people don't know this.

It's become a nationwide thing.

If I point my gun at you, that is a use of force. I get written up for that.
Might not catch days off, but let's say a year goes down the road and I pulled my gun 50 times that year. Dude, I could pull my gun three times in a shift.
We're dealing with people. I've had people jump out of a bay with swords serving involuntary commitment paperwork that their family couldn't deal with them anymore.
So I have to go in and deal with them and put them in handcuffs and take them to the mental section at the hospital. I mean, I have almost, I had a guy who was shooting blow darts.
So Fayetteville used to have a mental institution. They shut it down and just, see y'all later, thanks for staying.
Send them all back out in the wild. My first week, I had a call, a guy named Alan, in his garage, butt naked, circle drawn in the garage with chalk.
He's got a trash can in the middle of the garage. People were running by.
I called him and said he's blowing blow darts at him. So I'm like, oh, it's a mental patient.
I'll convince him to go to the hospital. I'm going to hit Chipotle after this.
This is easy. I like these calls.
As I'm coming around the corner, I hear dispatch. She's like, you know, now he's in the garage with a knife.
Man, I hit the corner, dude. This dude's standing there butt naked.
This big, massive butcher knife. He's like, come in the dungeon, motherfucker.
And I'm like, no, sir. I'm like, let's drop that.
And he's like, no, no, no. He's like, fuck you, come in the dungeon.
And finally my backup comes, like seconds later. So now we're both lethal, right? Because we don't know what he's about to do.
People don't understand, tasers only work if you're in a distance. Like if I shot you with a taser right here, it wouldn't work.
I have to be like seven feet back to get the spread, to split the hemisphere. One has to go in the upper torso and the other one has to go in the body to get exactly what you need.
If I shoot both here, that's why you still see people being able to reach it out. It doesn't do what it's supposed to do.
That's why cops, they shoot tasers from feet away. It doesn't work.
I was too far back from my taser and I didn't want to get close enough to him so it works because if I get closer to him and he charges at me and then Regat shoots him, what did I create? Why did you go up there? To tase him so we didn't have to shooting. So we're out there 45 minutes, me and him, me and Regat.
This dude's coming in and out of his house, finally getting him to put the knife down in the middle of the garage. And he runs over and he crouches down behind like a city trash can on wheels.
We're like, what's he doing? He's like back and forth using the trash can as like a barricade.

And he's talking to Regat.

And then he starts talking to me.

And Regat yells at him.

And he turns a little further.

What he had had, he had taped on the back of the trash can a little 10-inch blow dart gun.

And he was putting darts in it as he was talking to us to shoot us with them. And when Regat yelled at him and I saw him do that, I holstered, pulled my taser out, upside down, shot it.
One went in his head. The other one went in the wall.
He turns around, tries to dive on the knife. I turn the taser off, turn it back on, initiates the second cartridge.
I shoot it again. One misses.
The other one hits him in the head. Done.
He starts like seizuring out and everything. Hits his head, cuts his head wide open.
He's bleeding everywhere. Get him in handcuffs.
Later we found out that he had dirty blood and he was stabbing himself with the needles

and was trying to shoot people with him to give him his dirty blood.

But he was also on cocaine.

Holy shit.

Was he HIV positive or something?

Oh, yeah.

He was also on.

So he was trying to fucking give other people HIV.

It's crazy.

He was gone.

So we got him in handcuffs.

He found out he had been drinking and he was on

cocaine.

But they were upset with me

because he split his head wide open.

I'm like, he's

alive.

What do you mean?

And that was like a big ordeal.

That was a big ordeal. Like, oh, they're gonna sue us.

I'm like, for what?

You're

welcome. So, what

Thank you. And that was like a big ordeal.
That was a big ordeal. Like, oh, they're going to sue us.
I'm like, for what?

You're welcome.

So what, I mean, do they give you a suggestion?

Like, okay, well, what would you?

There's no suggestion.

What were you supposed to do?

They don't know the answer.

The problem with agencies is...

Shitty leadership. Shitty leadership.
Because in their mind, we had this guy named James Nolette. Man, he ended up being our assistant chief.
He ran everybody away. He was horrible.
Probably, in my opinion, maybe the worst human on the face of the earth. He was a horrible person.
Not just a bad leader, but a horrible person. Man, this dude would punish people

because he thought by punishing people, it made him a good leader and that he would get promoted. This dude made it all the way up to assistant chief.
He's the reason why I left. I mean, officers are doing their job and they're getting written up for it.
I ended up not caring about getting written up because at that point I'd applied and got my VA disability. You want to give me a week off? I'd take a vacation and post it all over Facebook.
I don't care I'm getting paid but imagine

some of these guys who are a father of three and a wife. They're making $1,100 a paycheck.
And they're getting talked about getting two days off. Why would you be proactive? So now I got to feed a family of four on a $700 check because you gave me two hours off or you gave me two days off.
So why would you be proactive? Yeah. I can't blame them.
We have to hold leadership accountable. I don't blame them either.
I mean, I see this shit all over, you know, social and the news and people raiding the mall and people, I mean, now you go in, what, California, even everything, literally the entire store is behind those little key things. We were in, yeah.
We were in California. I don't blame the cops at all.
I blame the people that live there. I needed deodorant at Target.
You wanted to defund them. You got what the fuck you asked for.
Yeah. Now you can live in this shit.
California's wild. I went to Target to get deodorant, had to find a sales associate to come and unlock a case so I can get a thing of deodorant.
They're like, yeah, sorry, they steal everything.

I'm like, that's crazy.

But the problem is,

is if they get a use of force with these people,

they're going to get in trouble by the chain of command

because the chain of command says,

well, that's a hill that we don't want to die on.

You know, just let them take it and we'll take the report. That's not right.
That's not right. It's not right to the people that own that store.
Do you think this shit's going to change? The only way it can change, in my opinion, is if Trump gets reelected or if Trump gets put back in office. Well, I'm with you on that.
But even so, I mean. It does.
When he was in office, things changed. I don't know what happened, but there was a little bit of a span there where cops were being cops again.

It's, I don't know what it was, but during the, I was a cop for two years during the Obama administration.

And it was different.

They had a liberal chief, like, who like said that we were pulling over too many black people.

That's another thing, Sean.

I got in trouble.

So anytime you do a traffic stop, you got to do a traffic stop incident thing

where you put in male, female, black, white.

They just searched the car.

What did you find?

I used to get in trouble and have to go do racist classes because I was pulling over too many black people, but my district was all African Americans. Like, so what did I do? Stopped stopping cars.
I let known drug dealers drive past me because I'd already stopped too many black people.

And it's piss leadership. It's because instead of having a backbone and being a man, they would rather throw you under the bus and make themselves look good.
we disciplined him, don't worry.

Instead of saying, hey,

Blake is assigned to you. and make themselves look good.
We disciplined him, don't worry.

Instead of saying, hey,

Blake is assigned to an area full of African Americans.

He's probably going to have a higher traffic stop rating for those kind of people.

Like, I have heard people say,

go stop more white people.

What does that even mean?

Go violate somebody's right?

Stop them because they're white now?

That's the leadership mentality

that we're having nationwide.

It don't even make sense.

How would you even, I mean, how would you begin to fix this?

Serious question. Man.
I don't know, Sean. I really don't.
Because, like. It's got to be on every single person's mind who wears a badge.
Every single one of them has to know about this shit. Oh, they do.
I've had so many people ask me if I can be their voice. Please put this out.
Hey, this happened. Do this.
Hey, like, can you put this out on your social? Like, they can't go vocal about it, right? Because they're going to be punished. They're terrified.
It's the good leaders have to somehow get a backbone. If they don't have a backbone, then they're not a good leader.
That's true, man. You're right.
So yeah, we have very few good leaders then. I mean, the- I don't give a shit where they came from, what the fuck they did.
If you get up there and you don't have a backbone, you're a piece of shit. And that's- I agree.
You've seen it in the military, too. These guys that have these phenomenal careers, and then they get up top, and they turn into a complete piece of shit.
They're just chasing money. They're chasing.
Now they're on a salary. And they're trying to max out their time so now they can get promoted, and then max out that time and get promoted so their retirement looks good.
Mm-hmm. So they make more money in retirement.
And it's so much easier to write us up than stick up for us. So when I was in the gang unit, we were the easy button.
We were the button that, for an example,

a brand new female officer out in an area called Bonnie Dune,

she was doing real police work.

She had a good sergeant.

They were letting her do good police work.

She was disrupting this non-traditional gang's operation.

They started getting tired of her. She did a traffic stop one time, pulled over a kid, had a gun in the car.
Gun was in the passenger seat. She arrested him.
He was a convicted felon. She knew that.
All the people out of this little apartment complex came out and swarmed her. somebody ended up taking the gun out the seat thought they were

going to came out and swarmed her. Somebody ended up taking the gun out the seat.

Told her they were going to kill her.

So they said, hey, there's a female cop.

Her life's being threatened.

We need to go out and make our presence known.

Coming from the top.

Who's this coming from?

Coming from the top.

Cool, I'll stop what I'm doing.

Thank you. It's no, coming from the top.
I'm like, who's this coming from? Coming from the top.

Cool, I'll stop what I'm doing. We went out there, drove around the complex.
I'm like, cool, I need to stop a car here. So I waited till I saw a traffic violation.
Saw a traffic violation, lit them up, happened to be right in front of the apartment complex.

As I get out the car, man, 30, 40 people were coming out. I'm like, oh no.
I'm like, hey,

we don't look like the regular fucking police. We don't act like it.
Get your asses back inside or you can get some of this too.

They're like, cook.

I was like, yeah.

So this is the gang unit.

They call us like Charger Boys.

That was a name that carried on from when they were GGVU.

Everybody was scared of the Charger Boys.

And we gave a head nod and went back inside.

Problem solved.

The Uber driver, it was an Uber driver that we stopped, black kid, said that I called people coming out of the apartment complex the N-word. Called and complained.
So an investigation happened. I have my body camera on 24-7.
I will say whatever, I will say whatever with my camera or with my camera off. Whatever I say with it off,

I'll say with it on. I don't change.
It's just who I am. I said, go ahead and review it.
Went in, set it in, it uploaded. Didn't happen.
We had a major at the time, Major Whitaker. He was racist.

He was a black dude.

He was racist.

He hated white police officers, Major Whitaker. He was racist.
He was a black dude. He was racist.

He hated white police officers,

in my opinion, just my opinion.

He was not proactive.

He was a horrible cop throughout his career.

And he didn't like the way I talked

to people in that neighborhood.

He thought I was talking to them like that

because they were black.

So they called me in the office, in his office. Like, hey, we refuse this footage.
Major Whitaker wants to have a conversation with you. And I'm like, dude, okay, I cussed.
Sorry. Like, when you're in those environments, you speak their language.
You don't tell them, please get inside. They don't understand that.
They didn't grow up with that verbiage. Hey, get the fuck inside.
Okay, cool. Sorry.
It's not regular police. We're going back inside.
So I get in there and they're all in there. And he's like, talking about, well, we didn't like how you talk to people in that neighborhood.
You know, it's a minority neighborhood. You know, the times that we're living in, you could have been a little

nicer. I'm like, I'm like looking over at my leadership, like, does anybody want to tell

them why I was there? Do you even know why I was out there? A female cop is being threatened that

they were going to kill her. I'm like looking at my leadership, like,

Thank you. there, a female cop is being threatened that they were going to kill her.
I'm like looking at my leadership like, y'all didn't tell him? Y'all didn't brief him on this? Because in his mind, I'm out there just freelancing. The people that see me out there have everybody being quiet, crickets, hands in the pockets.
He's like, cook, what would you have said if you're in Van Story's Hill? Van Story was a really nice neighborhood in Fayetteville. And a group of four or five white women came out drinking wine.
And you were on a traffic stop, what would you tell them? Again, I'm looking at my leadership like, this dude's trying to bait me in on a race question. They're looking at me, I'm like, I'll tell them to get the fuck back inside.
We ain't the regular police. Nothing changes.
Don't make this a race thing. And my leadership, they're like, oh.

I'm like, don't, oh.

How about you be a man and say you sent us out there?

The people that came in and told us to go out there didn't say a word.

No shit. Nobody spoke up and said, hey, we sent them out there because X, Y, and Z.

Because they were threatening to kill a female officer. Female police officer.
Nobody said a word. Why? Because they're cowards.
Because they don't want to take the responsibility that they sent us out there because it looks bad on them and everybody's trying to get promoted. How the fuck does it look bad if they sent you out there because they're about to help? Because they don't want to take responsibility.
Because a female officer was about to get murdered. They don't want to take responsibility.
Nobody wants to take accountability of sending people out to do things when it comes down to it. Now, when it's good, if it's good, it's good.
Hey, if we sent them out there, that was on me. Monday morning, we do the crime stats come out, right? Oh, it's lower.
Yep. I sent the guys out there.
We took care of that. But when shit hits the fan, you're on your own.
And when the waiter brings the bill to pay, ain't nobody else paying it but you. Everybody else done walked out.
That's a major issue that we have. And I had that happen to me so many times that it just became normal.
Is that why you left? I left. I left because they had us out in an area.
It was a predominant gang area, drug area.

And I watched a car go by and I realized that the driver

was a guy that I had dealt with before

named Joshua Hill.

Known to have guns,

known to sell guns,

known to be a big dope boy. Not just little street stuff, you know, kilos of fentanyl, kilos of cocaine.
He was, he was, he was, did this beautiful charger, man. Just chrome paint job, big rims.
So I get behind him and he takes off. I take off with him.

No lights, no sirens.

Take off with him.

Finally, turn my blue lights and sirens on,

he goes faster.

So I'm like, okay.

I'm gonna turn my blue lights and sirens off,

I'm still following you, brother.

And then he realizes he can't shake me.

We didn't go far, maybe 200 yards.

He pulls over.

So I throw my car in part.

I'm like, all right, he's not jumping out.

Nothing's going on.

Took a deep breath, and I was like,

treat it like a regular traffic stop.

Don't act like it just almost turned into something.

So I go up to the car, rolls his window down. Man, I see the bag.
His carotid artery is just thumping. He's sweating profusely.
Can't even talk, he's breathing so hard. I'm like, hey, sir, I'm Detective Cope of the Fayetteville Police Department.
The reason why I pulled you over is we have a new chief. You have a really dark window tint, man.
Window tint's the flavor of the month. I need your L's.
I'm going to scratch

off a warning ticket. I'm hungry.
I'm going to go to Chipotle. Okay? We're going to make this quick.

So I'm like, all right, cool. Where's everybody at? I didn't get enough time to put it on the radio yet

because we kept playing the games,

and I was trying to get it out, but I couldn't

because we stopped too soon.

So I get back in my car and put it out,

and a canine officer shows up.

And I was hoping for one of the gang guys,

but the canine came up, which was great

because he's backing me up.

Look up his history, man, it's just gun charges. He's going away for a while.
I didn't see a gun. When I went back and watched my body camera, you can see it clear as day.
Sitting right here, I just got focused on the bag, the dope. My attention went straight to the dope.
I smell it. I know I'm going to search the car, and I know what I need to find is in that bag.
So I'm watching the bag. Don't even see a gun.
Don't even see the Glock. Now, it's a black gun with black center dash, right? So we go up to the car.

I'm like, hey, man, I'm going to pull him out.

I'm like, all right.

I'm like, hey, Mr. Hill, I need you to step out of the vehicle.

Before I walked back, I actually had him take his keys out and put them on the dash,

something I always did if I knew that I was going to search the car.

So because of this reason, when I walked back up and asked him to step out of the vehicle,

he said no.

Opened the door.

He grabs the door.

He shuts the door.

Now he's trying to throw it in drive,

but he doesn't know that his keys are on the dash.

We had to turn the car off,

and I made him put the keys on the dash.

His oot-a-loop now is,

his mind went to,

I got to get out of here.

So I open up the door again.

I dive in to get him.

He reaches down.

He goes to pull out a Glock.

Glock hits the steering wheel.

I grab a hold of the Glock.

If you look right here on my hand, I have two scars.

You see them?

That's from his front sight post, trying to rip it out of my hand.

Now I'm hitting him with elbows.

I'm hitting him with, I can't shoot him.

I'm left-handed.

My gun's over here.

I have a hold of his gun with my left hand pinned down.

I'm hitting him.

I start beating him over the head with it shatters, nothing.

He knows he's going to jail forever.

Man, I'm like, I'm getting tired. The canine officer was trying to get in, but he can't.
And I wish he would have went around, but it was a pretty crazy incident. Man, the passenger door opened.
I can't say his name because he does federal work, but the most big, beautiful country boy ever that was an honor gang unit opens up the door and just punches this dude, man. And we fall out.
Get him in handcuffs. No more issues after that.
His gun had his sweat dripping off the handle. Took pictures and videos of everything.
So cool. It's a useful force, right? Because he got hurt.
I hit him a couple of times. He got scraped up on the ground.
People are outside filming, right? Because we're in a predominant minority neighborhood. And here we are pulling out this dude, roughing him up a little bit because he had a gun.
So we go back to the station and upload my body camera. I'm typing my report.
Body camera uploads. I'm allowed to watch my body camera to write my report accurately.
So I'm writing my report. And I write it out, submit it in.
Everything's good. Come to work next morning.
And I'd already, before I get to this, I'd already tried to leave Fayetteville once. And we'll get to that after this.
So the next morning, the report comes out. Or I get to the office.
They come to my desk. Hey, they need you in IAE's office.
I'm like, okay, yeah, I mean, I did hit the dude, right? So I'm sure I need to sign internal affairs paperwork saying that I'm being investigated. So I go in and I go to make a right into the sergeant's office and they're like, no, no, no, we're in this room.
What room? The room that has the camera with the red light on it right now that means it's recorded? They're like, yeah. I'm like, oh, okay.
It's kind of serious. So I get in there, they're talking, they're like, hey, on your body camera, you stated that you thought he had a gun.
You never stated that he had a gun, but you wrote on your report that you observed the gun. we believe that you lied on your report.
I'm like, well, hold on.

First of all, I was fighting for my life. My OODA loop was all jacked up and I was trying to yell that he had a gun, but I couldn't get past the initial traffic stop when I was like, man, he's got to, I think he has a gun.
He has to have a gun. There has to be one in here.
But my OODA loop was so messed up, I just kept yelling, I think he has a gun instead of gun. I made a mistake.
Nothing unlawful about what I did. I watched my body camera.
I wrote a good report. I stated in my report that I thought he had a gun until I observed a gun.
But they were trying to twist it around because that assistant chief wanted me out of that unit, James Nolette. So he was pressuring of why I said I thought I had a gun and tried to make it seem like I was lying.
I got so emotional. The gun was in the body cam footage, correct? Yes.
And we had photos of the gun. The gun was put in evidence.
The gun was taken with his DNA on it. Your hand's all sliced up.
I'm bleeding. The gun with his DNA on it is in evidence, on body camera, and we took crime scene photos.
What are y'all talking about? So they wanted to suspend me. For what? Because it would have sounded bad on CNN.
That's the... If I would have shot him, it would have sounded bad on CNN.

That's the... If I would have shot him, it would have sounded bad on CNN and I was too aggressive.

See, what the fuck do we even...

Why is there even a Fayetteville Police Department?

What's the...

Honest question.

Honest question.

What the fuck is the point?

So Chief Brayden is there now.

Chief Brayden is the only one of the few that has a backbone. There are several others that he's promoted that have backbones, and they're making better choices.
Chief Brayden is a crime fighter. The dude still wears tactical pants.
He's been on SWAT team his whole career. He took eight rounds on a search warrant.
He is a crime fighter, and he's the police chief there, and he's doing the best he can, and he's promoting the right people. He's just now fighting city council.
Why are we pulling over black people? I don't know. Maybe because their tags are dead.
Why are we arresting more black people? Maybe because they're dealing drugs. I don't know.
I just know that a crime is being committed and we are taking that person to jail no matter what the color is. So he has shaped the police department back.
The TAC team is doing more search warrants

now than ever. They are back

to trying to be crime fighters, but he's just

getting so much push now. City

council has too much power.

They have too much power.

Because for them to be able to...

How do the citizens

combat this kind of shit?

I don't know, man. I don't think enough

give a shit. To be honest.
I don't think they're aware. You're not aware if you don't attend the meetings and nobody attends those meetings.
Well, I mean, they might be aware that their city is being overrun by gangs. It's...
But they put out we don't have a gang problem. The city council does.
We do have a gang problem. But I will say, Sean, Brayden is doing a...
I would go back and work at the Fayetteville Police Department right now. I would.
Under Chief Brayden is the only person I would. Now, there are still some cowards in that leadership, but there are more people now with backbones that were on specialized units and were proactive police officers that are making a difference there now.
The biggest problem they're facing now is trying to get city council to raise their pay. I work at Fayetteville and you can go work at Cary for $20,000 more, and it's a way nicer city.
But chief fought for them and did get them a pay raise. So he's doing the things.
There are still some police departments that have great leadership. They're just...
I don't doubt that, and I'm not saying there isn't. Far and in between.
But I'm saying

with

the other chief,

what is the point

of having a police department?

I don't know, man. What is the point? The chief

that I worked under, that was the assistant chief,

James Ouellette.

The main chief, her name was Gina Hawkins.

She tricked us. She got hired and started buying our tag team everything.
And then it was like she flipped a switch overnight. More people left because of her than anything.
Dude, her last year as a cop, she was at a bar, a gang bar on Owen Drive in Fayetteville, North Carolina, left with the mayor. Two minutes later, had a homicide.
Her vehicle was in front of the building. She showed up two hours later, had a police officer come pick her up because they assumed that she was drunk.
Showed up at the crime scene. One of the homicide detectives said, hey, chief, I'm here to brief you.
She said, hey, I'm here to get my car. She had sunglasses on and a wig.
They said, well, you can't take your car. She moved him out of the way, went and took her vehicle that was taped off in the middle of a crime scene and drove it off.
The bar had cocaine in it. The bar was a, it was a homecoming weekend for Fayetteville State University, which is Fayetteville's, there's two colleges, three colleges, Methodist, Fayetteville Community College, and then Fayetteville State University, which is a all-black college.
It was their homecoming. They had a massive party there with gang members.

Apparently, I wasn't there, there was drugs all over the bar that our police chief was at.

They paid her $250,000.

She claimed some racists that she was mistreated because of her race.

And then she went back down to Atlanta. Our city manager was only there because he got a DUI in a county that she worked in, and she got him out the DUI, and then he hired her when he got hired in Fayetteville.
She wasn't even in the running. He brought her back in the running.
It's that kind of stuff that is going unnoticed and why people are leaving.

That's the shitty leadership I'm talking about.

So after they told me

that it would have sounded bad on CNN,

I lost it.

I was so mad.

You were going to talk about something

that happened a couple weeks prior.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I was trying to leave Fayetteville.

And this is the first time this has ever been heard,

other than my wife and a few other people.

Nobody at the department ever knew why I came back.

I lied and said the guy decided not to go to the troopers. So I decided I had to leave Fayetteville because they were just, man, it was just like one incident after another, just horrible leadership.
They were telling us to go do something. I'd point my gun and then I'd get written up.
I'm like, I can't sustain here. I can't work here anymore.
My mental health is damn near gone, and I'm drinking all the time. All night long, I'm drinking.
So I applied for a police department where I live now called Riceville Beach. Went in for an interview, and I answered like four questions, and they were like, hey, you're hired.
Just don't do nothing stupid in between now and when you can move up here. I was like, oh, absolutely.
Man, the following weekend, like that was on Thursday. Yeah, the following weekend, Saturday, there's an island called Palm Tree Island.
It's got a fake palm tree.

You can go out, pull the boats up and swim.

It's super fun.

It was July 4th weekend.

Went out to the island with some friends.

I was just drinking, man.

I drank a whole fifth of Fireball.

At that point, I'm drinking out of rage.

Just pure rage.

Because I didn't want to face the reality that I have to still go back to work, deal with bad leadership. It got to the point, Sean, where I didn't even want to go to work.
I couldn't go to sleep because the anxiety was so bad about knowing that when I get to work tomorrow, somebody's going to task me with something, and then they're going to write me up for it if it doesn't go smooth. So, man, I drank this whole bottle back when my wife was drinking too.
She was drunk, and the people we came on the boat with left. Left.
Left us on an island. Sure, there was a bunch of people.
I was drunk. I didn't know anybody.
So the island is in the intercoastal waterway, but it's maybe 50 yards from the shoreline, but it's deep, and it's a high boat area. So my wife said, hey, we're going to swim.
I'm like, yeah, we got another option. So we swam.
I'm like, I'm a decent swimmer, but drunk. It's kind of hard, especially with the current, right? Low tide was coming in, so the current was pushing out.
And I felt like I was drowning. We get all the way to the, we make it across, we get to the dock.
And I'm just a country boy from West Virginia, right? I don't know about all the barnacles and everything on the dock, so I grab ahold of the dock. Current's coming out.
Current takes my legs out and just slices my legs. I'm like, dang.
So get out, and I look down, and I am just bleeding. Shit.
I'm just, my whole legs is covered in blood. And I'm like, oh, my God, we got to get back to the house.
Like, I'm not supposed to be out here acting a fool. And now I'm standing on a dock with blood everywhere.
And I'm hammered. Shit house.
Not hammered, shit house. So we take off walking and we're not familiar with the area and we're drunk.
My wife's like, hey, we got to go this way. I'm like, no, we have to go this way.
This is the way to the house. She's like, no.
So we get in this massive verbal argument on the side of the road. Cars everywhere.
It's July 4th. I'm screaming.
She's screaming. I'm like, fine, go that way.
I'm going this way. She goes that way.
I go this way. Man, 45 seconds later, I hear it.
I turn around. Dude, drawing down on me.
Show me your hands. I'm like, okay.
He comes over and handcuff me. He's like, where's she at? I'm like, okay.
He comes over and he handcuffs me. He's like, where's she at? I'm like, who? He's like, the lady you were arguing with.
I'm like, this is my wife. She walked that way.
I'm walking this way. We're trying to figure out who gets to the house first.
Puts me in the back of a cop car. The rest of the cops show up.

They know who I am.

They ask the dude what happened.

They went and found my wife.

She was like, nothing happened.

They come back to him, and they're like,

why did you put him in handcuffs?

He's a cop in Fayetteville.

He didn't do nothing wrong.

Now he's in the back of a cop car in handcuffs. Takes me out.
They all apologize. They even take me to the house.
I got a call Monday morning. You're not hired.
So I tried to leave, and I failed.

So now I'm thinking, man, they all knew I was leaving.

I told them I'd gotten the job that Thursday,

and I was going to prepare to leave.

I was like, oh, my God, dude.

If they find out about it,

I'm going to get disciplinary action and probably be taking off the gang unit.

How do I tell them I'm not going to this department anymore?

Came up with a lie.

I said, hey, the guy that was leaving to go to Highway Patrol

didn't get the job in the Highway Patrol,

so he went back to the job, and they're not feeling it.

They did offer me a reserve job for now, but I told them that if I can't get a full-time job, I can't commit to that. And that bought me about a month until this incident occurred that I just explained with Fighting for the Gun.
And then once that happened, I had an emotional breakdown. I was like, I can't leave this place.
I'm stuck here. I'm getting treated.
I'm getting shit on right now in a room that's being interviewed because I fought a guy for a gun the day before and it would look bad on CNN. Well, guess what, asshole? What about my family? Because the fact of the matter is, if I would have died on that Friday, they would have had a nice memorial service.
People would have grieved. They would have put these beautiful flowers and wreaths on my car, had a memorial service Saturday, funeral on Monday.
And before the flowers died on my vehicle Monday morning, they would be swiped off and it would be reissued out. My desk would be cleared and I would be some stupid pitcher on a wall.
And the next generations of police officers would walk by and just know that's just some guy that died here. And the only people grieving me for the rest of my life would be my wife and son.
That's the truth. You don't ever put an agency before your family because the agency moves on.
Your family doesn't. They grieve you forever.
The agency does some bullshit stuff for a couple of days and then don't even communicate with your family anymore. Your badge gets reissued out.
Everything. Like you didn't exist except for the picture that collects dust in a hallway that people don't even know who you are.

So I got up.

I completely excused myself from this.

After they told me it would have sounded bad on CNN,

I didn't hear anything.

I stood up, went to the bathroom

outside the gang unit office.

It's a single bathroom.

Locked the door, sat down on the ground

and just cried my eyes out. I said, I can't do this.
Because I knew that from here on out, I would never be able to make a decision to protect myself in the event of a deadly force encounter because I'll always think about, am I going to get in trouble? And I can't do that. I can't put my family through it.
I wasn't feeling well, man. Called my friend who was my family doctor, and I went and saw her.
I just left. I left the apartment.
Went and saw her. I guess they were still waiting for me and I, I don't know.
She said, come in immediately. I went and saw her, sat down.
She said, Blake, you don't look good. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, no, like I see it.
You don't look good. Her husband was a retired Green Beret and she knows the look.
And she just talked to me and I talked her, and she put me on medical leave. I always mess it up.
FM, LFA, whatever that is. It's the medical leave, like the people take when they have babies and stuff.
I always mess that up. But Kyle's going to laugh at that because I always mess it up.
But she said, hey, you can't do this job no more. She goes, it's going to take your life.
I'm just crying, man, because I love this job. It's the highlight of my life.
I was in it, man. I was in it.
I didn't get the opportunity to go SF. And here I am in this specialized unit that is

just big boy rules. Something I always wanted was, and we were killing it.
And man, she gave me my paperwork and I went back to the department. They're like, oh, where'd you go? I was like, hey, I'm out.

Am I doing this no more?

Their mouth's all dropped down. God, where'd you go? I was like, hey, I'm out.
I'm not doing this no more.

They're all mouth all dropped down.

I'm like, y'all fucking did this to me.

I love this job.

I'd have died for any of y'all.

I love this job more than everybody in this building.

And you stole my passion from me

because he failed to be a good leader.

James Nolette stole the passion of law enforcement out of me,

sucked it out of me

because he thought that was going to help him be promoted.

Stole it from me, man.

I love law enforcement.

That's why I love working at Blueberry. I love what I do now.
We give so much to the community, to law enforcement. All of our training courses are incredible because we're passionate about what we do.
I've had somebody ask me, Blake, why do you still give back to the community? You're completely screwed over because I love you. And I love everybody that wakes up every morning and puts a badge on.
And I'll say this. Think about it like this.
All the tier one guys, all the specialized military units, they go do the most dangerous jobs in the world, the most secretest, dangerous jobs in the world.

But the difference, they get to get on an airplane

and come back to the United States of America.

Police officers are deployed 365 days a year,

seven days a week, in a city that they have to work in.

You want to talk about paranoia?

I can't even go to Best Buy with my son without being bumped into somebody that I arrested for a drug charge. And I don't know if he's going to kill me right here or right now.
That's paranoia. Law enforcement take their life, I believe, because of paranoia.
185 law enforcement officers killed themselves in 2023. 136 died in the line of duty.
Why are we having more officers dying by self-inflicted gunshot wounds than they are fighting crime? It's because the leadership is pushing us to the point where we would rather kill ourselves than have to see your fucking face in the morning. That's the problem.
And it needs to be addressed nationwide. The DOJ needs to do something about it.
Somebody needs to do something. It's getting out of control.
And bad leaders need to be held accountable. They need to be fired.
Man, I'm passionate about this because I feel sorry for them because there are some good ass cops out there, man, that are still believing the right, still doing the right thing. But when the time comes and there's a little hiccup in what they're doing, they're thrown to the wolves and their families have to suffer because it comes out of a paycheck.
That's bullshit. If you get an officer involved shooting, they put your ass in a closet.
Whether you're good or not, if it's a good shooting, they put your ass in a closet.

Whether you're good or not, if it's a good shooting, they put your ass in a closet,

get you a new gun, and they make you watch body camera footage.

Nobody checks on you.

They put you in the worst job possible.

Man, things need to be done better.

People need to speak up.

You know how you change this, Sean? Fucking officers need to step up and speak up. Because as a unit, as a whole, they can get some stuff done.
You might be scared alone, but man, form you a group and make sure that that bad leader gets out of there. Or you walk out.
Because they want that bad leader or they want to lose 100 people. I try to bring this to Gina Hawkins' attention.
She called me when she found out I was leaving. Begged me to come in for an interview the day after.
She said, please come in. We don't want you to leave.
I said, chief, I'm out.

I'm like, your leadership is fucking horrible.

The people we have under you, horrible.

She said, still come in and talk to me.

Come on, Blake.

I said, all right, I'll give you an exit interview.

I came in there, I sat down,

started telling her issues.

She didn't want to hear it, man.

She didn't want to hear it. She took up for every one of those dudes.
I said, that's the problem. That's why I'm leaving.
I said, you don't even know it yet, but you're about to have a mass exit. Like, it's crazy.
The riots? Why would anybody want to be a cop after the riots?

The city we lived in.

They were burning the mall down.

Our SWAT team was riding around in unmarked cars,

and it looked like...

What's the movie where they have, like,

24 hours to kill people?

You know what I'm talking about?

Oh, what is that movie?

The Hunger Games?

No, no, they have 24 hours to kill people. It's legal.
All crime is legal for 24 hours. Can't think of the name of it.
If I wasn't on here, I'd spell it off. But man, that's what it was like.
People doing donuts in the middle of major intersections, shooting guns in the air. People shooting glass out of convenience stores.
Raiding Walmart, shooting guns. Employees in Walmart calling for help because they can't leave.
That is a hostage rescue at this point. They're being held there by gunfire.
We're not entering Walmart. We advised them they needed to shut down.
What? We got to do something. Like Academy Sports, Fayetteville.
It took us two years, a year to recover from what happened there.

Two patrol officers watched the vehicle,

watched four gentlemen run out of Academy Sports,

like for the fifth time, carrying boatloads of guns,

throwing them in the vehicle.

They recovered like 15 guns in the parking lot because they dropped.

Got behind them, was going to stop them and James Ouellette told him,

let them go.

We have the license plate.

We'll find the guns.

Mind-blowing.

Purge.

That's the movie.

The Purge.

I've never seen anything like it in my life.

That incident happened in Walmart.

Man, I remember sitting in the vehicle

and my eyes were so watery

because I was so mad. I was like, everybody's like, oh, well, I remember sitting in the vehicle, and my eyes were so watery because I was so mad.

I was like, everybody's like, oh, well, we can't, you know, like, no, man, somebody right then should have made a decision.

Like, there are people that need to be saved.

Go in the back.

Let's go pull the people out and drive on.

Those people need our help.

They just, they said, let them burn it down.

The residents of Fayetteville and her leadership

should have been infuriated.

There's radio calls of her saying, stand down.

James Noet, assistant chief, car two, stand down.

Your city's burning down.

People's lives are at stake.

Thank you. James Nollette, Assistant Chief, cartoon, standing down.
Your city's burning down. People's lives are at stake.
What are we doing? It reminded me of the scene, Sean, from 13 Hours. Remember when they're waiting to be released and they're just watching the embassy being burned and nobody will send them? That's what it reminded me of.

They're burning their market house down,

which is like this historic building with the historian guy inside of it.

Let it burn.

There's somebody inside of there.

He ended up getting out,

but what do you mean let it burn?

I just had so much that I couldn't do it anymore.

And I can't even imagine these massive cities.

Cops getting,

you see, there was a video recently out in D.C.

Cop getting drug through the street.

Thank you. I can't even imagine these massive cities.
Cops getting, you see, there was a video recently out in D.C. Cop getting drugged through the street.
Still on his cell phone. Dude, if I saw my partner getting drugged like that, well, I'm going to go get two or three people, and we're going to come in like the Wolfpack from WWF.
We're coming in hot. We're going gonna lay the law down.
But they can't. People are scared.
They watch their buddy be drug off because they're scared you should have even been there. It's, I love the people, man, who are out fighting every day.
I really do.

I'm their voice for them.

I will continue to support them

because there's a lot of good young cops out there,

but, man, you have to come together as a whole.

What would you...

This is infuriating.

I can't even imagine how you feel because I'm infuriating. I can't even imagine how you feel, because I'm infuriated.
But... I mean, what do you say to these guys? The young guys.
Hey, man. Focus on why you're doing it.
Because it's not for money. It's your calling that you feel like that you're being called to do.
Focus on the positive impacts that you're making on people's lives. That's what kept me there so long.
When I was in the gang unit, we would go do search warrants, and there would be kids without beds.

The next morning, I would go to the mattress warehouse and buy mattresses, and then deliver them to that house for those kids.

I've taken vans off my feet.

I used to keep boxes of vans in my feet of different sizes to give out to kids who didn't have shoes. I have pictures of all this.
I used to find what I would feel like a kid in a neighborhood who just wasn't in a game but wanted to affiliate with a game who just was on a bad path. And I'd say, hey, man, look, I'm not asking for passing grade, or I'm not asking for A's and B's in schools.
Bring me passing grades, I'll buy you Kevin Gate concert tickets when he comes to Fayetteville. I'll buy you skateboards.
I'll buy you a bicycle. Bicycles are huge.
It gives them the ability to go get a job. It gives them the ability to escape their situation.
That's why we have a bike drive

at Jimmy's at Riceville Beach.

It's a bike drive.

We raise 2,000 or 3,000 bikes in 30 days.

Brand new bikes, not used bikes.

We raise these bikes and we give them out at Christmas

to kids who get nothing for Christmas.

Because a bicycle to a teenager

that's living a horrible life is a way for them to escape, to go get a job, go do something.

Instead of just walking around.

I have a huge passion with this bike drive.

I have a huge passion.

I used to buy kids bikes all the time.

It's because I'm giving them the ability to get away from what their environment is producing for them.

I'm giving them something, some motivation. Man, I see you buy skateboards all the time.
We have a skate shop in Fayetteville, man, and they were so awesome. They would sell me boards at 50% off.
And I'd go to the neighborhood and I'd give it to the kid. Or if there was a kid that we did a search one on that was traumatized.

I'd go play basketball with them.

There's one picture, man. It's my favorite picture.
It's hanging up in my house. It's the gang unit.
We just went in a neighborhood. We played basketball with all these kids.
They were terrified of police. It's Massey Hill.
It's one of the worst neighborhoods. And they were damn sure terrified.
Dudes with beards and long hair. Because that's normally people that are coming to take their parents away for a while right we're the jump out boys and uh just got out and started playing basketball with him one day used to do it all the time on the road just play basketball with him and there's this picture of this kid he's sitting on my shoulders he's messing with my hat.
His brothers and sisters are here and the gang unit's here. And it meant so much to those kids, man, to see that we're humans.
Law enforcement officers are humans. The problem is that citizens see us at their worst moments.
They'll never see us at their best moments. So if their worst moment, we're either good or evil.
It doesn't matter. They still don't get to see us as humans.
You know, when I go home and I take off that vest, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a son, I'm a brother. I'm a human.
I used to have shit thrown on me when I was on patrol.

Crazy lady shitting her hand and threw it on me.

All I did was ask her to get out of the road.

People don't understand that. So when people are wondering why officers are aggressive,

you're just seeing them in that capacity.

You don't know what they just came from.

They're humans.

Find them outside this.

They'll joke with you.

They'll have a beer with you.

They'll hang out with you.

They're just normal people that have a job and an oath to protect.

That's it.

Yeah, man.

Just stay motivated.

Do it for the right reasons and be a good cop

and know that you're impacting somebody's life.

Whether it's one person or it's 100 people,

you're impacting somebody's life.

Thank you. good cop and know that you're impacting somebody's life, whether it's one person or it's 100 people, you're impacting somebody's life.
You have the ability to reach somebody at their worst moment and try to make it a smidge better by just your presence. That's the key, man, of being a good cop.
Try to make somebody's worst moment a tad bit better.

How would you want a cop to approach you at your worst moment? That's it, man. You do that, you're going to be okay.
You'll have a good career. But when it's time to go to work, it's time to go to work.
It's time to be the police when it's time to be the police. But you got to be able to switch it up and switch it down.
It's the biggest thing about CQB is when knowing to throttle it up and throttle it down. That's what makes it professional.
You know, I truly believe that a professional law enforcement officer is not one that gets in shootings. I was fortunate of eight years to not get into, I didn't ever pull the trigger.
That is because I did everything as a professional. There's nothing more professional than going into a crazy environment and not having to kill somebody, having to talk them out of their worst moment, having to have better tactics than the bad guy to get them in handcuffs.
That is being a professional.

That is what should set you aside from everybody else,

is being able to go do what I consider to be the country's most dangerous job

and not ever pull the trigger

because you have better tactics, you're out thinking,

and you have the ability to talk somebody down

at their worst moment.

That's what makes a good cop, Sean.

That's what makes a professional, in my opinion.

Damn.

That's damn good advice, brother.

I tried to live by that, man.

I did.

I really did.

I wanted to make an impact.

That's all I wanted to do. Well, it sounds like you made a hell of an impact.
I like to think I did. I really do.
But there's a lot of people that know you did. I appreciate that.
It means a lot, honestly. You're welcome.
I tried. Well, Blake, we're wrapping up the interview.
But, um, and man, I'll tell you, it's been a real honor. It's been a pleasure to be able to sit here and share this story.
You know, a lot of things, man, I've never even said out loud. So thank you for having me on the show and using this platform.
And, man, if it just helps one person, that's all that matters. It's going to help a lot of people.
And, man, seriously, I just, I'm so glad Kyle, you know, connected us. And it sounds like Blue Bearing Solutions is doing just amazing stuff.
And all that stuff will be linked below if you guys want to follow Kyle and Blake and take some courses. But more important than business, I just want to say thank you, man.
Thank you, Sean. Thank you for the service you've done, and, man, just thank you for law enforcement everywhere.
I know that community's going through a real fucking tough time right now. And there's a lot of us that appreciate it, that appreciate the service, that wish Ellie the best.
And we support you. We do.
And I hope they hear that. Yeah, I think that's the most important thing for them to hear, is that stay off the news, stay off social media, because people support you.
And I'll say something, too. I always do it.

But, man, if you are, for the listeners,

if you are, if you do support, and we all do,

anybody that watches this channel supports law enforcement,

man, just take five seconds out of your day and say thank you. That's huge.
Wish them safety. I appreciated every person that stopped me and said thank you.
It was the only positive thing I ever got during that 10-hour shift. I do have one last question.

All right.

I mean, it sounds like your mom has been there for you,

and, I mean, she's always been there.

Sounds like a very, very strong woman.

And is she going to watch this? I'm sure. You got anything to say? I would not be who I am without her.
She never gave up on me. She's been my mom and my dad.
She's been my biggest supporter. I love you.
And I'm so grateful that God gave you as my mother. Thank you for never giving up on me.
Good for you, man.

I wish you the best of luck, and I'm just very thankful that we met.

I'm excited to be on your podcast, man. It's an honor.
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