Corrupt Police Officer: I Arrested Drug Dealers, Then Sold Their Drugs! There’s Massive Corruption Going On Today! - Mike Dowd

I've never heard a story like this in my life.

The story of drug trafficking, bribery, kidnapping, and even murder,

which earned you the nickname of America's dirtiest cop.

And I want to know everything.

Okay, but let's just be clear.

If you choose to have a conversation with me about this,

you're going to hear things that you won't like.

Jesus.

Let me just say this.

Being a New York cop was the greatest job in the world.

But it's not built for somebody to come in and be the knight in shining armor.

You're working minimal wage.

Civilians are against you, and you're directly told not to make drug arrests.

Why?

Oh, because they got a budget to manage.

And the average amount of overtime for one crack arrest was 18 hours.

So that leads to the streets becoming unwieldy.

So what happens is a guy like me, who's entrepreneurial spirit, shows up and says, there's a way to control this. I can't arrest them, so I taxed them.
And that escalated. Greed is powerful, bro.
But what happens then? You become God. I was making more than the president of the United States by protecting one of the largest drug trafficking organizations in New York.
But I was losing control, and I behaved in the face of New York City's corruption problem.

People want to be dead.

And then in 1992, you were arrested,

and you admitted to hundreds of crimes.

But what about your family at this point?

You know, that was tough.

They're really special people.

Mike, we spoke to your parents.

Do you want to see what they said?

I'm Carol Dowd,

and I'm Michael Dowd's mother. I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button wherever you're listening to this.
i would like to make a deal with you if you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button i will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better i can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button the show gets bigger which means we can expand the production bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to doing this thing we we love. If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button,

wherever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me.

That is the only favor I will ever ask you.

Thank you so much for your time. Back to this episode.

Mike, when people do interviews with you,

they often describe you as New York's dirtiest cop.

Right.

And I watched that over and over again in your interviews.

And I wondered as I watched people calling you New York's dirtiest cop, how that makes you feel? Not good. Yeah.
And that's a touchy subject. But I accept it.
And I've turned it into something where I'm able to maybe chaperone an audience because of it. But it's not nice to hear that.
More importantly, it's not nice for your parents to hear something like that. And thank God they're still alive.
But, you know, it's not the happy day when your mother sees your name on the front page of the newspaper, I'll tell you, and for nothing good. And how many crimes did you commit while you were a New York cop? So it may have been thousands because every time I did something that was inappropriate.
So you got to step back for a second. Every time a police officer puts on his badge and swears that oath and takes the job on, he's basically taking a risk on everything he does that can end him up in jail, everything.
And that's really a very difficult position to be in. Everything you do legitimately can end you up being sanctioned or arrested.
So I would suggest basically anything I did or any interaction I did could have been considered with some kind of criminal intent. And still on the top line, just painting the picture here, what are the, before we get into the detail, what are the variety of crimes that you committed as a New York police officer? So every time you take something from somebody, money, cash, drugs, personal property, let's say, it's basically a robbery, basically, because you have a gun on your hip and you're using a position of power.
So you would start with robbery, extortion, burglary, when you went into someone's home and came out with a product. I mean, I've taken tapes from, you know, back in the day, you know, those VCR tapes, there was a lot of good stuff in some VCR tapes.
I mean, we can get a little humorous here, but the reality was some guy's porn collection might be missing. I mean, these are the things that you ran into.
Their cash, their gold coins, whatever it was. When someone's dead, it's really hard for them to complain about what's missing.
So, you know, it's ironic, it's stupid, and it's debauchery at the same time. So you cross all the lines of decorum when you do something like that.
Did you steal someone's porn collection? Maybe. Really? It could have been.
They were dead. They were dead? They were dead.
They couldn't use it anymore. I mean, they were smoking crack, okay? So I'm in the 94th precinct in Brooklyn now, which is Williamsburg,

where you say it was a lovely place.

And it was.

It was becoming lovely when we were there.

They started opening up some studios.

We got a call for dead on arrival.

You know, someone was murdered.

So we show up, and the guy's sitting in his couch with a knife in his side.

I mean, you walk into a home, and there's a guy on his couch like this,

sitting there with a hole in his side, with the knife still in it.

He's bled out.

And the place looked like there was a party that didn't stop.

So while there, I'm sitting around waiting and waiting for the boss to show up and the squad to show up, the detective squad to show up.

And I'm looking around, rummaging a little bit,

like looking for the evidence of the crime scene.

And sure enough, I hit the button on the VCR,

and there's the porn.

They've got the porn on.

So I'm saying, okay, he's dead.

There's crack, evidence of, there was no crack there, by the way.

It was all gone.

No one leaves crack behind.

The cigarette smokes were, you know,

the ashes were piled out of the ashtrays,

and there's beer bottles everywhere. So it's July.
It's 100 degrees, and this apartment has no air conditioning

in it. So what does any self-respecting 20-something-year-old man want at this point?

Not the porn, per se, but the beer, right? So I'm looking around. Every beer bottle's empty,

and right below the apartment is a bodega, right below it. Like upstairs is the dead guy, and downstairs is the bodega.
So we go downstairs, and we tell the guy, listen, we're going to be upstairs for a couple hours. He hands us a six-pack of Coors Light.
He'd make the story up. We walk in, me and my partner, Tom, and in comes a detective.
We each have a beer. We're sitting in bullshit and waiting for the boss to show up.

Boss walks in.

She looks around.

She goes, I want every beer bottle in here printed, she says,

and in the refrigerator.

Now, I just put the fucking six-pack in the refrigerator when she walked in.

So I'm going, now, picture this. They know I'm corrupt, okay? But they can't prove it.
I'm on what you would call secret probation, even though I'm not on probation. They're watching me like a hawk.
Now I got a detective who's looking at me like, we just had a beer. Our fucking fingerprints are inside the refrigerator.
And he's scared. I'm not.
I mean, I'm going to take a hit, I guess, right? So I go, Sarge. She goes, what? In that refrigerator, there's a six-pack of Coors Light.
And my fingerprints are on the bottles in the refrigerator.

She looks at me, and she goes,

of course it's you.

She goes, of all the people in this fucking police department,

it would be your fingerprints inside the refrigerator,

on a cause light bottle, at a homicide scene,

and there's only four homicides in this precinct this year, and you've on three of them you've been at the scene of three so i go yeah it doesn't look too good does it so she goes i'm gonna go downstairs i'm gonna go to my car and i'm gonna make a phone call whatever i gotta do i said she said get rid of that and don't do it again. Did you steal the porn collection? Yes.
It was already in the car. It was already in the car? I already had it.
I mean, that's what he had. A knife in his belly and a porn collection.
You didn't steal the knife? No, I couldn't. It was evidence.
But you put his porn collection in your car? Yeah. Wow.
And you do originally trained to become an accountant and drop out because of a woman, right? Yes. And you wanted to follow her.
So you end up joining the police academy in 1982, 21 years old. Right.
And when you joined the police academy, did you do it because you wanted to be a police officer? And because you wanted to serve and defend? No, that's not why I joined. I joined because I wanted a job.
Because you wanted a job. And so when you stood there and took that oath, did you mean it? You know, no.
I mean, I guess so the answer to, so if you say no, that means that you have no concern or care. So it was an immature yes.
So you take that oath. You don't really mean it.
I'm embarrassed if I say, I want to be truthful because I don't like to lie. I felt pride when I said it.
Is that? I felt full of pride when I said it. And as part of your training to become a police officer, you do some integrity training.
Yes.

Some like ethics training to make sure that police officers are like straight and narrow and understand ethics. So one of the things that I would suggest on that statement or that whole genre is it wasn't necessarily – we weren't necessarily trained on integrity or ethics.
We were trained on this is what would happen to you if. don't take $5 from a motorist or $50 from a motorist because that will lead to, one, you being arrested and being all over the news, and then all the cops are going to hate you.
Like, it was never really explained to you as a student in an academy the depth of the lack of integrity and what you're actually affecting.

Okay.

But like the fundamental issue if we don't trust law enforcement and the downstream consequences. Thanks for saying it that way, yes.

Because it destroys the very fabric of what people trust in law enforcement.

Because when you need help, you've got to call somebody,

and the person that shows up has to be trustworthy.

Now, I would argue because I robbed money from drug dealers and even their drugs, you can still trust me, right? That's what I would argue. Because if you're not doing those things, essentially, you're safe with me and I will give you the best police service that you ever asked for and probably go above and beyond to help you.
There was some kind of comment made at the end of your training by an internal affairs academy instructor, which basically said to be successful as a cop, don't follow these rules, the ethics rules that you were just given. So yes, so that wasn't the internal affairs officer that said that.
That would be your academy instructor. Okay.
Yeah. Ironic, he said to me, us in the academy class, if you live by the rules that these guys espouse, internal affairs, you'll never make a successful cop.
Just cover your ass. That would be his, that was his words.
Just cover your ass. What do they mean by that? Always have a reason? Always have an excuse? Basically, yeah, you hit it on the head.
And have, if you have a partner, be on the same page. So let's say something was handled inappropriately.
Maybe there was some excessive force use, which I'm not fond of and nor am I in favor of. But there may be times where you might have given a guy an extra elbow.
It happens. You know, you're mad.
You spit in my face. I put the cuffs on you.
I give you a shot. It happens.
Do you hit the door on the way in? Sometimes. So as long as your partner and you have the story straight, you can pretty much, without these cameras today, get away with most things that are not unreasonable.
And the police all kind of agree that they won't snitch on each other. That's the general rule.
And it's called, I read this term, the blue wall of silence. Yes.
Right. So let's just be clear.
The first person that's going to snitch on you is going to be a cop. Okay? However, more chances than not, they try not to.
And that's just the facts. Because what cop wants to go out on patrol knowing that if something goes down and it goes a little sideways from where it's supposed to go, let's say you and I were working together.
And you just told on me last week. And now someone's pummeling you to death in the street, I have a chance to help you, or I can call for backup and wait.
So you don't want that relationship with me, right? I mean, we're trying to get home tonight. Yeah.
So it really puts people in a very precarious position. Because you need those other cops for your own personal survival.
Correct. So you don't want to be snitching on other cops yeah yeah it's you know i mean it's really not built that position in this society is not built for somebody to come in and be the knight in shining armor and say listen officer doubt that was not appropriate i'm gonna have to report you right now before he goes to report me i'm gonna either bludgeon him to death because now he's my livelihood away.
He's taking the food off the table of my family. You don't look at it as like you're getting the guy in trouble.
You look at it as you're taking a career, a livelihood, incarceration. I mean, these are the things that can happen.
Like I said, the minute you put that badge on, and I didn't get to this, is the minute that the job is looking to take something from you. But think about that.
A mechanic goes to work and they say, can you get six cars done today? I'll try. You got six, it is a bonus for you at the end of the day.
A cop goes to work and they're looking to screw him the whole time. Who's looking to screw him? The department and the civilians.
I didn't like the way he handled me. They make a complaint.
Your boss goes, I got the people complaining and doubt. I'm going to have to give you a shit assignment or I'm going to have to change your assignment.
I mean, the whole time, someone's against you. They're trying to find some kind of chink in your arm or something you did wrong.
Yeah. And it's really to cover their ass.
Back to the beginning. It's a very, very difficult position.
A fireman goes to work. You know what they do? They save lives.
They put out fires. They eat a good meal.
They have a great gym. No one's in there going, they have rules, the decorum, but no one's going, we're looking to take you for this.
We're looking to stripe you for that. The civilians aren't walking into a firehouse and going, I didn't like the way that truck backed down and the siren blasted and hurt my ears.
They're going, yay, they're going to save someone's life. A cop shows up on the scene, he's going to give me a ticket.
He's going to arrest my husband. My husband beat me and he doesn't believe me.
I mean, it's just, it's such a, it's such a grating position to be in. When we're thinking about the factors, the environmental factors that led you to make the decisions that you made, one of the big factors that I was looking into at the time was there was obviously this crack epidemic, but then it also seemed like the police at the time didn't actually want you to arrest people.
Yes, that's correct. I saw some crazy stat, which I'm sure you'll be able to recount for me, but in the sort of decade that you were a police officer, you didn't do that many arrests.
No. 43.
You did what? 43 arrests. You did 43 arrests in how many years? Well, I mean, total 10 years, but yeah.
So not all of that was patrol, but yeah. So it doesn't matter.
I mean, I can make 43 arrests in a month, okay, if I really wanted to. If you weren't corrupt at that time, how many arrests do you think you probably should have made in those 10 years, based on the crimes that you observed? 500.
Okay. So about 90% of the things you should have arrested someone for, you didn't, roughly.
Correct. Okay.
And why weren't you making more arrests? You couldn't keep the police on patrol if they were making arrests. They were clogging up the system.
The system would get so jammed up, the average amount of overtime for one crack arrest was 18 hours. You would be paid for that? Paid time and a half.
Okay, so then the department has to pay you more money if you do an arrest. And then process the arrest.
And they all get processed through the correction system. And they all get processed through the court system.
I mean, you're talking 150,000 arrests a year in Brooklyn alone. That's a lot of numbers if you just keep cranking at it.
And everybody's getting 18 hours overtime per arrest. And who's paying for all these arrests at the end of the day? Well, the city.
The people. The city's paying.
So the city don't want you to be arresting people? Oh, because they've got a budget to manage. Were you ever directly told to stop arresting these people? Yeah.
How's this? You really didn't make a dent on it, and now there's two men off patrol. And then your next assignment was the desk.
You're making arrests causing a problem. The city's paying for it.
There's less police available. And the robberies, the murders, and the rapes in those communities were extremely high.
They'd rather have them sell crack than people getting robbed and raped and murdered. Does that make sense? Of course it does.
Yeah, so it's all incentives. I think if you look at any system, you'll understand why people behave they do if you understand the incentive structure.
And in your case, if you made more arrests of criminals, then the city would have both a bill, because they had to pay cops overtime to take care of the admin work,

but also they're going to have more cops off the street, which could also lead to more crime. More crime.
More crime. Yes.
So you were incentivized not to arrest people. So what does that lead to? That leads to the streets becoming unwieldy.
Like there's no control. So what happens is a guy like me, who's entrepreneurial spirit, shows up and says, there's a way to control this.
I tax these people or arrest them, one of the two. And I can't arrest them, so I tax them.
And let's talk about that first experience of you taxing the first person, which I think was in 1983.

Your starting salary when you joined the police was $18,000 a year, roughly.

Yes.

And you pulled someone over in 1983.

Yes.

And that's the first time—

That's the first time there was a tax levy.

That was the first time you committed a crime, I guess, as a police officer.

No.

But the first time that I committed an actual money crime, I would say. How old were you at that point in 83? 23, 24, yeah.
And that was basically, we called it a Puerto Rican mystery back then. I know that I'm famous for saying that.
And people are like, ah, listen, that's what they called it, all right? Because the guy was from Puerto Rico and he had had no paperwork, no license, or anything like that. And he just bought the car.

You pulled him over?

Pulled him over, no plates.

No plates, right.

You just came here from Puerto Rico, you got a stack of hundreds in your bag, and I'm looking,

I'm saying, you know, you got like $2,000 worth of tickets, and I'm supposed to take your car

from you. I said, but, you know, I like lobster.
Leave me enough money for a lobster lunch,

this whole thing can go away. So the kid was quick on his feet he left a couple hundred bucks under my briefcase on the back seat he got out and i said i don't want to ever see you again you know unless you got unless you got some more lobster lunch money later of course i didn't say that and of course i left that scene with the money and i was very uncomfortable because it was the first time i actually solicited something like that but it was sort of a it's almost like i won something as a cop one of the things we saw in movies back then is cops getting like sexual favors because they're cops yeah did that happen i would say it was available and i've took an advantage some it.
But, you know, there was some, yeah.

Yeah, there was some.

I mean, that's like, you know, you're driving by in a police car

and a girl says hello and you go fuck her.

I mean, is that like a benefit of the job or is that, you know,

your promiscuity?

Did you ever do that while working?

Yes.

That's my biggest sin in the world. In the lead while working? In the car? Yes.
Wow. It's not just in movies then? The lights and siren only went off once.
Really? That was from the blowjob. It wasn't from the girl's ass hit the fucking buzzer.
I'm like, what the fuck? The big back. It was three in the morning.
You hit the buzzer. I'm in the back of a courtyard, a nine-story building.
Your boss, your sergeant, around that time, did he know that you were doing things like this? Not then. No.
No. But shortly thereafter, there would be a situation where my sergeant, it was a murder scene, dead kid, 20-year-old, shot in the head, and there was a marijuana spot.
There's money, there's drugs. I mean, listen, it's overwhelming when you'll come across these things and there's a dead body there and you're entrusted to handle all this stuff and you're broke.
And so I took a little thin stack of hundreds and put it in my pocket.

Turned out it was like $600.

And as the crime scene was being processed, in walks my sergeant,

Sergeant James Otto.

He says, is this it?

Like two, three pounds of marijuana.

Which is like this much marijuana.

It's a lot of fucking big pile of shit.

And I don't know, it was like $1,500 in cash stacked all over here. Is this it? I go, yeah.
I go, but I felt like he was asking me too much. So, well, I did have this, and I take out a thin stack of hundreds.
And he goes, oh, anything else? I go, no, that's it. I said, you know, I didn't want anything to get full of blood.

Later on that night, I run into him at a choir practice,

they would call it.

He went out bullshitting having a couple beers.

I said, so let me ask you a question.

What if, and I say, and I come across money,

he said, what if I kept that 600?

He goes, I was annoyed that you gave it to me.

Like, just picture the moment. You're 20-something years old.
You're broke. You know, you're coming to work.
You're surviving. You're in survival mode.
You're out having a couple beers with your buddies. And your boss, who's got 20 years on the job at this point, so he actually could retire if he wanted to, and he says to you, if I don't see it, it's yours.
He says, but let me know so you can throw me something later on.

It was like the whole vision of this thing changed at that moment.

He's basically saying, if you get there, it's yours.

Take what you can before I get there.

Because I don't want to witness it because I don't want to have to witness it.

Was he taking money?

Well, he wouldn't.

He'd say no.

But clearly he was indicating that it's good. Just don't let me see it.
Was he taking money? Well, he wouldn't, he'd say no, but clearly he was indicating that it's good. Just don't let me see it.
When you reflect on that scene that you arrived at, you said there was a 20 year old man that was dead. Yeah.
Did, did seeing those scenes ever bother you? Initially, my first, my first DOA was my first day. Guy jumped off a building and landed on his head.
That bothered me because the family showed up. It was horrific.
And I got to hold the family back and don't touch him because he could be a murder. We don't know.
We don't know why he's dead. It's a crime scene, essentially.
I began to see people shot, stabbed. You have a total disconnect, like really quickly.
The first shooting I was at was doing a midnight shift, and the guys were doing a burglary of a car. They were stealing tires and tire irons.
And I said, hey, we should stop these guys. And my buddy Sal's like, nah, my partner, nah, let him go.
Slade. Someone flags us down.
Hey, this guy's trying to steal tires off a car. So now I said, look, we got civilians complaining about the same people that we should have just tossed.
Turn around, go back about two or three blocks, guy's dead in the street. And I see a tire iron.
So I said to the people, were they carrying a jacket or a tire on it?

And they go, yeah. And they point over to the street where the tire on it was for taking the wheels off a car.
This guy could have shot us. So like he's dead.
It could have been us. Or if we did toss this guy, he could not be dead.
So when you come that close to death itself, your survival instincts give you an ability to disconnect fairly quickly from those types of scenes. Did you ever show up to a scene when you saw someone dead or dying and feel sad? Yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, a couple of times, but more important, one that strikes me a lot, I was talking to the guy who was going out. I knew he was going to die.
He was stabbed in the stomach, and he's looking at me, and he goes, I'm getting cold. I go, yeah, it's going to be okay.
He says, I'm getting cold off us. I said, are you going are you gonna be okay we're gonna get you to the

hospital the ambulance showed up like five minutes later he was barely conscious when he got in the ambulance and he wasn't gonna make it and he died and that was sad because i couldn't do anything for him like you saw a lot of stuff why did that affect you i felt bad because i was talking to him knowing he's going to die.

Like, one other time I felt really bad.

Some guy who was, I guess he was getting laid. Young guy, big, heavy set, strong, powerful black guy.
His wife is like, I looked at her, she goes, I'm like, I knew, I could tell it was a sexual thing. They had sex.
And the fucking guy was like 35 years old. And he was either dead or dying.
He had a heart attack. And I wanted to give him CPR.
It would have been my first actual CPR case, you know. And the two cops I was working with go, no, don't worry about it.
Go get the ambulance. Don't worry about it.
Yeah, he's going to be okay. Don't worry about it.
Go get the ambulance. I'm like, shouldn't we do CPR? No, no, no.
You go outside. I was a kid.
I was a rookie. And these two old-timers were like, don't worry about it.
It's going to be all right. Go outside and direct the ambulance in.
Like two minutes later, the ambulance showed up. They started CPR on the guy, and he died.
To not render aid when you think you can make a difference, that hurts. Why did they tell you not to render aid, Tim? I don't know.
I don't know why. They didn't tell me why.
You know? And it was very disheartening because I think I could have helped save the guy. But what am gonna do wrestle with these guys and you know they go get the they're in charge senior cop on the scene is in charge at some point you started actually dealing drugs yeah how did you start getting into drugs when did when was that eureka moment that you realized that you could sell drugs my partner at the time took some home out of the blue.
And he came back and handed me a couple hundred dollars one day. I said, what's that for? He goes, that shit we've been throwing out is cocaine.
We ain't throwing it out no more. I got somebody that wants it.
So he's bringing me cash. I was like, okay, well, it ain't that bad.
I mean, for me, it was like, I didn't see it. I didn't do it, so I was okay with it.

And then it becomes like anything else.

It softens the blow for the next step.

And eventually I would lead to me just whatever dope I found I would take.

And if I couldn't find it, I'd see one of the drug dealers and say,

give me something or give me something for discount.

I mean, you become a market maker at that point.

Did you start buying it to sell it from these drug dealers?

At some points, I started buying it, yeah.

How bad did it get with the drug dealing when you were a cop?

Because it almost sounds like you've, at this point,

given up being a cop, enforcing the law.

It's a dichotomy, right?

Because I put the uniform on, I go to work,

and if you are not in the drug business,

you're going to get a good police officer.

From my perspective, you may never say that.

You may never agree with it.

But if you had a car accident and you needed a police officer to take the report, bring you to a hospital,

I would do all the arrangements, do whatever best I could.

If you had gotten robbed, I would do the report.

I'd take you to a hospital if you were injured.

You know, whatever it needed.

I mean, I responded like a proper police officer. But if you were in the drug business, you were mine.
You were mine. Simple.
I mean, how else can I say it? What do you mean by you were mine? You were mine. I owned you.
In what regard? In every regard. Whatever I wanted, you were mine.
You could take their drugs. Whatever I wanted.
i wanted your car if i wanted it did you ever take someone's car i didn't have to a guy gave me one what else whatever coats jackets gold whatever chains what was your biggest heist as a police officer i would they weren't that large i'd say 40 to 50 000 one at one time

which back then was good money you know you're talking about two years salary you know yeah if you're on a like 20 30 000 whatever yeah salary yeah getting 40 000 is yeah doubled my salary tripled my salary yeah that year things like that come along you know so so there was opportunities So you would call that a score, right, opposed to an ongoing thing.

Because like... Things like that come along.
So there was opportunities. So you would call that a score, right, opposed to an ongoing thing.

Because, like, boom, it's there.

It's a one hit and a one hit and it's over.

Every job in East New York, 9 out of 10 was involved with drugs.

You're exposed to it.

It's your choice on how you deal with it.

You're the boss.

You are the boss.

You show up, you're the boss. Were your colleagues around you doing the same? The accurate answer is somewhere.
The best description is you would never know. You would never know.
I might because I know what's going on. But if you were a cop that was not was not involved you would never know so the good cops wouldn't know that it was happening wouldn't know because i'm not going to tell you now if you happen to say something to me that you hey wait a minute something went down there i'd say and what do you want to do about it you want in i'll tell you a funny story ready let me go to the scene i don't want to describe it because it's lengthy long story short the cops show up we're the cops but the cops show up behind us and they go oh that's dowden's partner leave them alone and they turn around and they walk away so the office is new just just i don't want to see what they're doing because then i'm culpable or responsible for what they're doing and that's how it became and what were you doing in that scene cocaine and heroin my partner wanted the guns i said what are you gonna do with the guns there's money there's this is money that's a gun and and people were dead so the guns may be connected to the crime so just when you showed up a scene like how do you, and you arrive there and there's guns, there's money, there's drugs.
How do you get the money and the drugs without other officers seeing you? It's funny. Like, how'd you get it out? Do you put it in the back of the police car? So one time I put it in a laundry bag, which was loaded up with heroin and cocaine and I don't know, whatever else was in there.
And I happened to be lucky. There was a row of garbage pails along this person's entranceway.
As the sergeant was walking up the stairway to investigate the scene with us to secure it and make sure that everyone's doing what they're supposed to do, I take this bag and I go like this and I put it in the garbage pail. He comes to me, I go, Sarge, there's a guy dead in the doorway.
They shot him through the eye hole. I said, there's another guy shot upstairs and there's a bunch of guns and stuff up there.
I go, but there's so many cops here, I'm going to go 98, which means I'm going to go back on patrol. He goes, good.
Like, good idea. I'm like, good, we agree.
So that gets me away from the scene. So now he goes up the stairs.
I go back into the garbage pail, pick up the green laundry bag and put it in my car and I leave. So now I got to go to a drug dealer, get rid of it.
And then you get loads of cash. Eventually, yes.
And what do you do with the cash? In that specific case, I drove right to my drug dealing friend's place who had an auto body auto sound city they put the sound into into cars i went right to his shop i dropped off to dope with him and he called his buddy that sold the heroin in the area and so on and so forth and that recycles back into money were you ever scared no no should you have been i should have been more cautious. Did you ever think you were going to get caught? You know, it was in the back of my mind for probably five years.
Just never left. And thus, you constantly are, your anxiety levels up.
You know, your body starts to go numb. And you wonder, what's wrong with me?

What's wrong with you?

You're living like three different lives.

You have a wife.

You have a girlfriend.

You have drugs.

You're a cop.

You're selling drugs.

You're shaking people down.

Everything's just fine.

It's never good.

Do you have a wife and a girlfriend?

Yeah, most of the time.

And you have kids?

At that time, one. And did anybody know what you were doing at home? I would lay that up to her.
But the mink coats and the new cars and the trips around the world, you don't do them on a cop salary. But you never said it? She knew.
Enough. And did she ever give you advice about what you were doing?

Stop.

That's what she said?

Stop.

I don't need this.

I'd rather have you.

Imagine that.

That's a nice feeling in a way, right?

I'd rather have you and sleep under a bridge.

That's what she said?

Yeah.

Your ex-wife?

Yeah.

And why didn't you stop?

Can't.

You can't?

You can't.

You can't stop that.

It's not that easy to stop that.

I read the story that someone, a lieutenant,

had put a complaint against you for a trivial matter,

and you retaliated by reporting them to internal affairs

for being in a drug house.

And then this sort of led to a situation where you received death threats over the phone from that lieutenant. Yeah, I'm working in Coney Island.
I was sent to Coney Island to get away from East New York because they knew I was hot. I mean, the story is so big and deep.
It's just crazy. Bottom line with him was, I end up in a dispute with him somehow.
He's a cop. Cop, yeah.
And he had a Mercedes-Benz. 380 or something, Mercedes-B-benz whatever it was his license plate on the back of his car said b scott less than a month later about three weeks later i'm out in long island and there's the car there's only one b scott all right in leo plate and i pulled over and i said to my wife at the time i I said, get a good look at this guy.
And he went up into a crack house. There was only one crack house in the whole neighborhood.
And that was it. He went up into it and then he came out.
So I left. I went home and I spoke to my neighbor, who was my wife's uncle, who was a detective in the 102 squad, who was 28 years on the job at the time.
I said, listen, I want to talk to you. He goes, what's up? I told him the story, the scenario.
And he goes, listen, Mike, anything but drugs, you got to turn them in. And it was hard for me to do this because now I'm turning on a guy that I know was involved in drugs and I know what I had done previously.
So I call and turn them. They were at my house in 45 minutes.
Like, hello? I mean, at my house. I live 45 minutes from them.
They were at my house in 45 minutes. They do an interview with me.
Long story short, they put a line up in front of me. I pick the guy out.
So later on, within a week or so, I'm getting phone calls to my house at 2, 3 in the morning. But it's every day.
It's going on every day for about a month's length of time.

So finally, I go, what do you want, bro?

Enough is enough.

I'm fucking your wife every time you go to work.

I'm fucking her.

No, no, no, no.

Oh, really?

Yeah, she gets off the train in Long Island Railroad.

And I pick her up.

I bring her home.

And I fuck her.

Oh, OK.

Thank you very much. I said, well, why don't you come come by and we'll straighten it out right here you and me he goes why don't I put a bullet in your fucking head while you're standing there in front of the window so he could see you I don't know did you plot to kill him no well I plot to kill this guy well because it sounds like he wants to kill you well that's different now but i but i did but i didn't because i didn't know who it was it took me years to figure out who it was but in the interim i ran into him again i essentially arrested him without arresting him i gave him summonses which is an arrest in a way and he was was so pissed off.
He made a complaint against me. And, you know, at this point, he was suspended.
Oh, so he was a civilian when you arrested? He was suspended. He was an officer on suspension.
OK. And he was suspended for being the gun in a drug case in Harlem.
He was the collector in Harlem for a drug organization. It turns out.
What's a collector? He was the strong man. So if you owed money to a drug organization, he went out and collected it.
Oh, okay. So he was a police officer who had a job collecting money for a drug organization in Harlem.
You met a guy called Baron Perez. Yes.
Who's Baron Perez? Baron Perez is the guy who owns Autosound City at the time.

He was what you call a middleman in any deal in Brooklyn.

So he ran a car shop, which was a front for a cocaine.

He was not a front.

He had been in a legitimate business. But in his business would be all the dealers in Brooklyn would come in.

And is that where you met La Compeña?

Yes.

What is La Compeña?

La Compeña was a Dominican drug organization that ran small nickel and dime spots throughout the city, lots of them, like dozens of them. And they were basically based out of bodegas.
And you were a cop at the time when you met them? Yes. And they're one of the most powerful drug organizations in New York City at the time? At the time, yes.
But they were street-level mostly.

They had their own organizational structure,

but they dealt with all the street-level bodegas.

And at the time, you're getting paid $600 a week as a cop.

No, every two weeks.

Every two weeks as a cop.

So you're making $300 a week as a cop.

Right.

And this drug gang offer you how much money to protect them? They didn't offer me anything.

I told them if they want the protection, it was $8,000 a week.

And what did they say when you said that?

We'll pay it.

So they paid you $8,000 a week, this drug gang?

For the first week.

And then they shorted me $700.

What does shorted mean?

Short.

They were short $700.

Okay.

So they paid me $7,300 instead of $8,000. So I told them I need the rest of the money.
A deal is a deal. And they said, we're not paying you.
We're done. So then I threatened them and I shut their business down.
I parked police cars in front of their business for a week and they put a hit on me. What does it mean when someone puts a hit on you as a police officer? What does that mean? They suggest to anybody that is willing to shoot and kill this cop, they'll pay them.
And how do you find out that this drug gang have put a hit on you? Well, because Baron Perez knows everybody in the city, in the drug business, because he does their cars. He said, is it a hit on you? He said, by La Compania.
I said, okay. I went out that same day.

I saw his car. I never met the guy in my life, but I knew his car, La Compania, the boss.

I pulled him over. He didn't know who I was.
I told him their license registration. I just threw

the papers back in his lap. I said, you put a hit on me? He turned as wide as that pen,

because now I'm standing over him, and he's sitting sitting down a little tiny Renault looking up at me. I said, if you want to put a hit on me, why don't we, we'll clear it up right here.
I'll let you get out of the car. We'll do 10 pace walk off.
You turn around, I'll turn around and we'll shoot it out. Did you mean that? I meant it.
Every word of it. You don't say something you don't mean when you talk about guns and weapons.
What if he said yes? It was on. I wasn't going to not let him.
Were you not scared? I'm crazy. I don't know.
I didn't think of fear. I always thought I was going to win.
What did he say? No, no, no, no. I said, well, you take the hit off.
My pager went off 20 minutes later. And he said the hit's off.
I don't want to do any more business with you. There was a $700.
Please leave us alone. So you got your $700 in the end.
Yeah. And that was the end of your relationship with them? With La Comunia.
Correct. At some point after that, you met a guy called Adam Diaz.
Correct. Who is a much bigger Dominican drug dealer.
Correct. Adam was two, three levels above them.
He was like the guy that gets the 1,500 kilos and distributes it out. And he's making a million dollars a week.
And he's selling, what, 50 million a year in cocaine? Correct, yeah. How did you come to meet him? And what was the arrangement? From Barron, the same way I met LeCompania.
Through that car shop? Yes, correct. And we had a nice sit down, him and I.
We had a discussion. I said, if you want to talk to me, you bring $24,000 in cash.
I don't know why I didn't say $25,000. So he agrees he wants to talk to you? Yeah.
And what does he say in that meeting? He agrees to the meeting. We sit down and I explain to him what I can do.
What can you do? Nothing, really. But I make it up.
What did you say? I said, I can surveil your buildings and your locations. And if I know of any impending raids, I could give you a heads up.
I said, but one thing I did say to him, and I'll say it to the camera, if anybody gets hurt, I'm giving myself and you up. I said, because that's not what this is about.
We agreed to with the terms. I'll do what I can for you.
I said, I can't promise you anything, but what I will do for you is the best that I can. So, I mean, Diaz started thousand a week listen i'm now making eight thousand a week split with my partner who didn't deserve any of it but whatever and uh you know it was more than the president of the united states at the time i mean the like that's a pretty powerful feeling for a civil servant cop so you couldn't really do anything for him very little you could do very little for him but you promised him a lot? Yes.
And I actually performed for him. So he originally paid you $24,000? For the conversation.
Just for the conversation? Correct. And then he paid you $8,000 a week? Yes.
Wow. And there was a particular time where you did actually save him some money? More than once, yes.
I probably was involved with him at this point for about three or four four weeks i was able to pick off a pending raid that i didn't know they were going into his store but i knew there was a raid gonna happen so i walked him to the store picked up two heinekens walked up to the counter opened up the heinekens and told the guy i didn't know the guy behind the counter i go shut it down like shut it down he looks at me i go shut it down he don't know me. I don't know him guy behind the counter.
I go, shut it down. I go, shut it down.
He looks at me. I go, shut it down.
He don't know me. I don't know him.
But he knows. I walked outside.
And I say within an hour and a half, they were hit with a team of 30, 40 narcotics detectives. And I don't think they found a gram of salt in the place.
And there was another occasion where you saved Adam Diaz. Well, that's when they got the robbery with Coke and Franklin.
So Franklin and Coke were the local bandits. They robbed all the drug dealers because they were just straight-up killers.
They didn't care. And they went to his spot.
And they're not going to kill you if they don't have to, if you give up the shit. So the kid walked him upstairs.
Elvis was his name. He walked him upstairs to the apartment with all the drugs and all the money in it and they gave as much as they could up someone called 9-1-1 and i hit mark one right down there and i pulled out was the first car on the scene i jumped out and elvis goes elvis is telling me that he just robbed us so i i shut it down we're on the scene no further i think it's x-ray, which means it's unfounded, so that would stop the police approaching the location.
Basically, I have the scene closed down. There's a guy upstairs.
The cops are upstairs taking shit out, like cash and drugs. The thieves couldn't get it all.
There was just too much. I go, what are you guys doing? It's just crazy how this happens.
They go, we found... I go, listen, do you have a search warrant to go in that house? The young cop.
I'm the senior guy at the scene. They go, no.
I go, so what are you doing? You can't just go in there and take the shit out. Technically you can't, but you can because it's an exigent circumstance.
You're allowed. So they got bags of cocaine and money.
So I got the cops to put the cocaine and the money back in the fucking house. Don't ask me how, but they did.
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Terms and conditions apply. One of your friends when you were a a cop, was called Officer Venable.
And he was shot in the head by associates at La Compagnia. And you were the first cop to arrive on the scene of Officer Venable, who later died in hospital.
Correct. And you said that you had a lot of guilt over it.
Yes. Well, because it's just the whole thing.
I was involved in drugs in East New York, and I was involved in protecting drug organizations.

And now a cop that I didn't know was killed. And that doesn't matter that I didn't know him because he's a cop.
You know, that's, you know, it's not acceptable. Just the fact that a cop was killed is not acceptable.
And now the guilt that I lived with was that I was protecting people

that may have either dealt with those people

or been associated with those people.

He killed the cop.

But they killed the cop.

And that's, you know, everything's, what does Tyson say?

Everything's, it's all good until someone punches you in the fucking nose.

Well, that's like getting punched in the nose.

Like, what am I really doing?

It was hard to swallow. I mean, I don't think, I don't think, there's no excuse.
What's the answer to that? It's not behavior that, or it's, first of all, in East New York, the cops are the greatest in the fucking world, okay? They dealt with the worst scenarios that mankind can present. And at that point, no cop had ever been killed in East New York.
Some had been shot. Some had been injured.
But no on-duty police officer had been killed ever in East New York to that day. It's almost like I was connected to it.
And so it was tough. It was tough on on me as a human being never mind as a cop that was doing wrong I mean we allowed them to stay in business even though there was little you could do the fact that you knew what they were doing and the fact that you partook in some of the spoils of it you feel that you're directly connected and responsible when you say you feel bad what how did that manifest like literally and specifically well i would say that that's when i really took that turn into drugs and alcohol more deeply and that's when i ended up probably three three to six months later I ended up in a rehab.
About six months later, I ended up in rehab. Were you depressed? What a cop does, what I did, was I would go in my bathroom, close the door, and read the paper and cry.
Now, I don't deserve any sympathy for that. It's just, it was my way of letting go of all the guilt I was living with throughout my career as a cop.
You'd go in your bathroom, read the newspaper and cry? Yeah. Yeah.
Just because it was a way to release all the built up, I don't know what the proper word is for this at this point, stress, anxiety, guilt. Because I was I knew my internal strife

About what I was doing was wrong

I was not able to publicly grieve. I'm really feeling bad right now.
What do I do? I robbed drug dealers and I sold some cocaine, and now there's a cop dead as a result of cocaine. Who do I tell that to? It's my own prison.
At this time, you were on drugs as

well. You were taking drugs.
Alcohol and drugs at this point, yeah.

Also, you were losing your marriage. Correct.
I want to be accurate on the reason I went.

Even in spite of losing my marriage and my kids and my house, it wasn't the driving force. The driving force was I was going to lose my job.
That was the driving force. At this point, I didn't want to lose the job.
I'd rather leave the job on my own terms than lose the job. Who had you become? I became the direct result of poor decisions and the environment that I was in, which I could see looking back at the time.
I became whatever was in the environment. I became part of the environment.
I was no different than the people that were selling crack cocaine or robbing people, robbing drug dealers, because they all did each other that way. So a lot of people say, well, that's the environment they grew up in.

You know what?

I can see that.

I can relate to that.

It doesn't excuse the behavior.

We all know that.

There's no excuse to the behavior.

But I became the environment I was living in.

If I'd asked your wife at the time, what's Mike like as a human, what would she have said to me at that point? She probably would have said he's a lost soul and an asshole. I wasn't a nice, you become, you become God.
Like you get the God complex. Like you feel indestructible, but you see yourself declining.
Like it's the weirdest thing in the world. You know you're going down a rabbit hole, but the whole time you have this false armor on.
What's the rabbit hole you were going down? Drugs, alcohol, women, violence. Violence is coming.
I mean, you're turning into a violent potential killing machine. I was going to become the exact thing that you would have said you don't belong in the street ever in your life again.
And you went to rehab, and when you're coming out of rehab, your intent is to straighten up your life? When I came home, you know, it was an eye-opener because I thought, great, I'm going to get a fresh start. It turned out that when you become a straight-laced guy, when you've been known to be corrupt, the process of getting to become a police officer in full respect is very, very difficult.
Maybe never. It may never happen.
So in my case, because I tried to do the right thing and I'm not trying to shift responsibility because it's always your own responsibility. Because I was trying to do the right thing, cops got nervous because this isn't the guy we heard about, so that means he's here to set us up.
So when you came back from rehab, they thought you were working as an informant potentially? Correct, yes, very well played. Yes, that's what they thought, that I was now working for the man and I was here there to get them.
And what did that mean in terms of how they treated you? So they would be, they would shun me, not want to work with me, not want to partner with me, not want to back me up, not up not invite me to any social gatherings so i was basically an outcast now i went from being the guy that ran shit to an outcast and what did that mean for you as a cop well it meant that you isolated yeah and that you had no camaraderie you didn't have the the reason that you enjoyed being a cop because you had brotherhood camaraderie safety protection like any organization, like any organization that you belong to, you know? And I basically didn't have that anymore. And that

affected me and my decision-making going forward from there. So I just couldn't stay stopped.

It's like being an alcoholic. You can stop, but you got to stay stopped.

How long were you in rehab for?

Two years.

You were in rehab for two years?

Yeah. Not locked away in rehab, but on what they call modified assignment for two years.

Okay.

And you tried to resign slash retire from the police on disability at one point.

Well, I was hoping that they would offer it.

Right.

Yeah.

Message was being dropped, this guy's no good.

They're going to arrest him soon if he continues on.

You know, the words to me were, you're going out one way or the other, and it's not through disability. You're either getting arrested or fired.
I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
I'm disability. You're either getting arrested or fired.
Someone looking at the story would probably go, why didn't you, if you knew that they were onto you, if you knew that they were investigating you, following you for months and months and months, why didn't you just stop? You know when the kid goes into the barn, and there's a pile of hay and shit in manure, and someone tells him there's a diamond ring in the middle of that pile of shit and the kid gets a shovel and he starts shoveling looking for that diamond ring that's how i that's who i am i'm that guy looking for that little diamond in that pile of shit i'm an optimist you thought it would, I was in prison for, well, I was sentenced to 14 years,

which, by the way, was a pretty fair sentence overall, I guess.

And every day in prison, I thought the next day I might go home.

And I did that for 12 and a half years.

That's how powerful the mind is.

I was born in 92.

And in 92, that's quite a significant year for you because this is the year you were arrested. Correct.
Yeah. What happened that day? Take me into that day when you were arrested by the police department.
So it's 92. The day after Rodney King riots, May 4th, May 5th, I had just made a deal with Kenny Urel, my ex-partner, who was in a cocaine business with him, his wife, and his friends at the bowling alley.
Kenny Urel kept calling me up for drugs because the price had doubled. And he knew that if anyone could get it, I could.
And I did. So I got him a couple of packages of cocaine, let's say three or four.
In the meantime, his phones were tapped because he was the target of an investigation on Long Island. The following day I'm driving around and my radio's extremely quiet.
No one's quiet. Nine 4's quiet anyway, the Williamsburg area, but really quiet for the last two, three days.
And I'm getting a little suspicious. I just picked the top of the package off with Kenny.
I pull up to the station house and I see a car there. It looks strange, and I see two guys in the front seat.
I walk into the station house, my partner, and the desk officer, he points, he says, the captain wants to see you. In walks these two guys that were in the car, that were out in front of the precinct, with their badges out, Lieutenant so-and-so, internal affairs, we're taking you for a drug test.
And sure enough, went downstairs, got changed. I couldn't even get changed.
I couldn't get my clothes off. They were so close to me.
I couldn't bend my knee. It was like bite up my ass.
Like, excuse me, guys. I said, am I under arrest? They go, no, no, no.
Are you sure? Because you're awfully close here. Anyway, they put me in a car.
I get in the back of the car. I said, I got to smoke.
I got cocaine in my pocket now because it's in my clothes. I couldn't take it out and leave it in my locker with them standing there.
I go, you guys, can you open a window? I'm smoking a cigarette. I'm chain smoking.
Yeah, it's OK. We'll be all right.
Are you sure you guys are going to choke out? No, no, don't worry about it. I'm trying to get the cocaine and throw it out the window.
Anyway, they pull up to left-rack city, and there's probably 60 cops, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, inspectors, all of them, lined up with their brass on, all in uniform. I'm like, what the fuck is this? For a drug test? A little strange.
I got out of the car. I go, I can't dump it here to here.
I can't even dump the coke. So I get upstairs to 16th floor, and there's the lieutenant who's been waiting for me for years.
He goes, Dowd, how are you? I go, good, sir, how are you? He goes, good. He hands me the cup to go take a piss.
I hit just on a bump and a vodka, so I knew I was hit. I turn around and in walks my mother's cousin from Suffolk County Police Department and says, Mr.
Dowd, you're under arrest for a conspiracy to distribute narcotics. So did you think you were going to jail for the rest of your life at that point? I didn't even think a week.
I didn't think a day. I'm going to make bail.
I'm going to beat the charge. That's how I'm thinking.
How did it feel when you got arrested? It was the biggest moment of relief. You know, you asked about life-changingchanging you know um lowest points this was the best feeling in the world almost like almost like i was like finally it's over it's finally over i can go on with my life somehow i didn't know it would take almost 15 years well even more when you think about probation and a lot of this shit.
You were relieved. When I was going to work every day, I was going to work with anxiety and fear.
I no longer had to have that fear. It was gone.
Of course, I didn't know what I would be facing. I figured this would work out.
Like, that's how I thought. You know when you say you're going to work with anxiety and fear earlier on you said you weren't scared of being arrested I wasn't scared of being arrested I was afraid of ruining my life okay and living a double life you know I'm lying to my wife I'm lying to my family I'm lying to the department I'm lying to myself I'm, two children at this point.
You know, everything's a lie.

So there's anxiety and fear in that.

The fear of arrest really never entered my mind.

It's funny when you describe being arrested and you reference it almost like it was your moment of freedom.

I still do today, yeah.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

If I could capsulize, put that in a bottle, the peace I had at that moment, I could probably live in that peace my entire life and wish for that peace, the peace that comes over you when that pressure comes off your life, because I no longer have to live a lie. Obviously, most people can't relate because they've never been in such a situation where they've been, like, arrested.
But I think to some degree, people can relate with the feeling of living a life that's, like, inauthentic to them and then something happening which forces them to course correct. Yeah.
I mean, some people kill themselves. Other people overcome it and become the better version of themselves.
Either they make lemonade out of the lemons or they go on to become ruinous.

And I told you, I'm looking for that diamond in that pile of shit.

So to me, it was freedom.

How old's your child now, your son?

I have two.

My oldest son, he'll be turning 40.

And my younger son is 33 or 4. So what advice, based on your experience in that moment, would you give to your kids about living an authentic life and lying? So it's, and you'll know this from life itself, it's easier to tell the truth in the end than it is to lie because you have to remember the lies every day and live with the pressure of being uncovered so accept the hard knocks that come along with living honestly and you'll you'll turn out to be a better person so so part of my lesson is if you don't have any bumps in the road of life, you really don't know that much about life, right?

You have to learn how to overcome adversity.

So go ahead, live a good life, do the best you can.

And if there comes a point where you want to,

let's say experiment with something or take risks,

just accept the consequences.

If you're going to stick up a bank,

there's going to be consequences, maybe. And if there isn't any consequences, it's going to haunt you.
There will eventually be a consequence. There's always a consequence.
Everything has a cost. I think about that just in day-to-day interactions, that it's like it's easier to have the difficult conversation now versus avoiding it, and then it becomes an even more difficult situation yeah you're logical people that live in fear of consequences they don't think of that they think of the immediate consequences immediate gratification guy wants to get high because he wants to feel this now but he doesn't realize that later on that cost, the consequence to that job, career, freedom, future, relationships, all the damage one incident can cause.
But if you own up to something immediately and accept the responsibility for it, people have a choice then. You know who I am.
You can either interact with me or not. But I don't have to have a false front on when I speak with you or interact with you.
That must be quite a challenge still for you today because, you know, you now go on podcasts, you interview, talk about what happened in your life and you, there's a lot of things that you did that are hard to say, but you're also battling with this new reality of being honest about everything. everything yes so it's not hard for me to say anymore because if you choose to have a conversation with me about those things you're going to hear things that you may or may not like but you chose to be in this conversation you your audience people that listen there's a lot of people that hate me out there but i know this for a.
I have people today reaching out to me that have attempted suicide 10, 15 times. Cops that have had the gun in their mouth and then their son walked in the room.
And then I spoke to them the next day. I mean, I can go down a list of them.
So you never know what being honest and fully disclosing the tragedy of life, the experiences of life, can do for the next person. And so that's really where I'm so happy that I've been able to do that.
I have a purpose, and it keeps me connected. You know, look, once you're a cop, you're sort of always a cop in a way.
When there's going to be cops, he's never always a cop. He's a bad guy.
Well, you know what? Fuck you. You eventually get released on bail after that first arrest,

which I think comes to a lot of people's surprise because I think some people thought that you were going to be in prison

for the rest of your life.

But your family put up some assets to get you out on bail.

That was a $350,000 bail.

Right.

It doesn't straighten you up.

No.

When I get out on bail, I'm clear-headed, but I don't know what to do

because I've never been in this situation.

I don't have a job.

I have two or three mortgages to pay.

I have a condo on the ocean in Myrtle Beach.

I don't know what to do because I've never been in this situation. I don't have a job.
I have two or three mortgages to pay. I have a condo on the ocean in Myrtle Beach.
I have three homes. The tenants stopped paying the rent because they saw I was arrested.
Now I'm back in the chase again to try to get my life back together. And then it turns into a whole new scenario.
Comes my way. I'm out on bail.
I end up making a plan to go to Nicaragua if they could become a shrimp fisherman. Wait, let's pause there a second.
So you're out on bail and you plan to escape the US. Yes.
Which means that you'd be escaping your charges. Correct.
But I can't go if I don't pay my family back. I can't leave them homeless.
Okay, so when you go out on bail, your family are basically guaranteeing the money. The money.
Right. So if you don't return from bail.
They got to sell their homes to pay my bail. They've got to get $350,000.
Yes. So what you want to do is you want to get $350,000, give it to your family.
Correct. So that you can escape the US.
Correct. Okay.
Yes. And how do you plan to get that $350,000? There's a scenario comes my way.
There's a woman that owes this drug organization half a million in cash and 10 kilos. All we have to do is go get the money from her and the drugs, and I can pay my family back, and I can leave the country, and Kenny's going to join me.
My partner's back in. But that wasn't the plan.
The plan was never to kidnap her. The plan was to go in with some flowers, push her out of the way, take the money and the drugs.
But Kenny was working for the federal government right now wearing a wire. He called me up for the drugs that brought me into his conspiracy and they made me the kingpin of his conspiracy.
How long had you known Kenny? I had known Kenny since 1985.

So now it's 1992. So you'd known him a long time.
Yeah, seven years. You'd been friends a long time.
Yes. And Kenny intentionally wears a wire.
Correct. And pulls you into a conspiracy.
Correct. Working with the police.
With the federal government, yes. Where they're trying to get you to potentially kidnap this woman,

steal her stuff.

Correct.

And leave the country.

So what does that do?

That makes me, it takes me from a low-life drug dealer to a low-life kidnapping murderer guy.

So then I'll never go home.

You see?

You see how they, they're good.

They're good.

They take you from being a drug dealer who's going to get 15, 20 years

to a murderer, a kidnapper.

You took the bait, though.

Took the bait.

Swallowed like a pig.

So you've left jail.

You're out on bail.

Right.

Kenny starts putting in your head this idea of potentially kidnapping

or stealing from this woman.

You don't know he's working for the police.

And on the day of this attempted kidnap slash robbery, you're arrested. Correct.
Again. Again.
Again. And how does it feel the second time you're arrested? Relief again? No.
Now I'm angry. Now I'm pissed off.
I'm pissed off because I'm, you got to realize, I'm a rat in a corner trying to get out you throw some cheese in front of me i go and eat the cheese and then you poison the cheese which is kenny bringing the fucking poison pill to me of this kidnapping theory that unfolds why did you take the bait there why didn't you just because you talked to me you said had relief when you were arrested that first time. That's the dichotomy of this whole thing.
It was the greatest relief of my life. But I jumped back in like a fool.
It was, you know, the word fear always comes out first for me. Fear of not being able to provide from now I got a wife and two kids.
Because I was told I'm getting 25 to life by the state of New York.

That'll make anybody consider running.

I don't give a fuck who you are.

Now you're a police officer in your 30s, 25 to life.

So you know you're getting 25.

So maybe 30.

So now I'm 30-something years old.

If I get out at 60, maybe, if I live through it, I'm looking to go.

Bottom line. Now whatever opportunity comes along, I'm looking to hit on it, whatever I can do.
So I'm like that fish, the dangle that bait. Eventually, the fish are going to bite that hook.
What happens to the bail? Do your family get to keep their money? Yes, because I got arrested. Because I got arrested.
Eventually, you're convicted of racketeering, organized, which is basically an organized crime scheme and conspiracy to distribute narcotics. Right.
You serve 12 years and five months in prison. Yeah.
That day you went to prison. If I'd asked you how long do you think you're going to be here? What would you have said? So when I was sitting there waiting to get sentenced, I'm thinking I'm going to get seven, eight years.
And sure enough, she was firm and gave me what she thought i deserved uh mr dow that's 168 months so i'm going what the fuck's 168 months and she knew it she goes that's 14 years how did you feel when you heard that i was devastated i was devastated uh you don't know how you're going to react. I was pissed and devastated.
And I got to survive this. Like, now you go right into survival mode.
I got to survive this. And how am I going to do that? People often think if you're like a cop and you get sent to prison, that you're going to have a really hard time.
You are. Did you have a hard but i was fortunate enough that see i went to prison as a as basically a racketeer right so and and i worked with dominican drug gangs 30 of the population is dominican slash puerto rican slash drug dealers in that realm then you have your street peddlers which are wouldn't be the same level.
And then you have your white-collar guys and your bank robbers. So I was a cop.
I wasn't sent to prison as a police officer for violating human rights, for beating and abusing individuals. I was sent to prison for doing what everybody else in there was doing.
So the landing was a little bit different for me. Now, don't say it was not easy.
I didn't have people opening a welcoming mat for me. But there were some people that were kind and that helped make made my bid go well.
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What about your family at this point? Your mum and dad, right? Okay. Swatch your head.
Yes. Okay.
I'm Carol Dowd, and I'm Michael Dowd's mother. Well, I remember being in court.
I only went to court once, and that was the day of sentencing. And when they said the amount of days he would be away, I didn't really, it didn't like hit my mind, right?

Because it was in days, it wasn't in years, you know? And somebody says, that could be 15 years. We tried to deal with it the best we could.
Everything was going smooth in our lives, and then all of a sudden, this hit. when I saw him, I guess my first reaction was,

I love him, but I want to just reach into the bars between us and say, what did you do this for, you know? I can only imagine the emotions that must go through your head when you find out something like that. Yeah, it's terrible.
Believe me, it's terrible, especially when you think you're dealing with something else. You're dealing with a kid who was honest and reliable and smart and good.
Absolutely shocked. I was angry, very angry at him.
How could you do this? You know, that type of thing.

She took eight months to come see me.

Eight months?

Yeah.

And then she finally came and she didn't want to let me go.

You know, that was tough.

She had, she went to church every day.

Twelve years. She's 84.
That's tough. Yeah.
OK.

Why do you think that moved him so much?

I don't think he ever really sits back

and thinks about the other people.

You know, the other people in his life,

his father, his mother, his family.

It was all about him.

It wasn't about anybody else around him.

Thank you. his father, his mother, his family.
It was all about him. It wasn't about anybody else around him.
How does that make you feel when you see him? It made me feel glad that he felt sorry. Because he never really says this in front of us, but it made me feel glad that he remembered that I went to church and prayed for him.
He had good parents, believe me, and I don't know why this happened to him. He was a skinny little kid on the corner with a police uniform on and the authority, I guess, went to his head.
I'm not sure, you know? She's always the, Bob was always the weather vane of what's right and wrong, right?

Mm-hmm.

I've worked with my mother my whole fucking life.

Because she always kept me on track, you know, tried.

Bastard.

She's tough.

She's still tough.

That's the fuck you get me.

I'm a cocksucker.

You're a cocksucker.

You're a fucking prick.

It's so interesting to see that emotion because it really tells me a lot about the relationship

you have with this woman.

I don't even know this woman, but I can see the relationship.

We fight every fucking day.

My father leaves the room, but we get to...

It's like, you guys are always fighting. That's what your mother does.
Because she's the one who keeps you to the mat. She puts you on the mat.
My father, it's okay, we'll get over it. But my mother, she holds you to account.
Mother holds you to account. But she loves you still.
She went to church for every day. Every day.
I never knew that. I never knew that.
I only found that out. I think about a year ago.
I'm hoping for 20 years. She only told me that about a year ago.
What? Why does that move you so much to find that that she went to church every day when you were in jail? Because my mother's not very lovey-dovey. Ah.
I am. She's not.
Because my father was, you know. But, you know, when you're raised by...
my mother was raised by nuns, you know,

very cold and calculating.

She had a heart.

I mean, for someone to go to church every fucking day. They must really love you.
I guess it'd be for itself. you know i had to have some discipline raising that many children you have to have discipline and of course you kiss them good night you kiss them goodbye you love them but my showing my love was like making them breakfast.
I made them breakfast, you know.

So that was kind of a way to show your love, you know.

I was here for them all the time.

But I was not mushy, you know.

And he's right.

It was hard for him to understand what I was going through because I never showed my emotions to them. The only emotions they would get is get up in the room and clean it up.
Get upstairs you and hang those clothes up. So there was always that direction or water.
So I was pretty tough, but that's the way I am.

I think because of the way I was raised, I didn't have a happy childhood,

but that's, you know, that could be a reason why I was tough, but I was tough. Maybe I was too tough.

What is that range of emotions you feel about them now

in the wake of all of this?

That they persevered.

They persevered when I didn't think much of their travails that they were going through.

I wish I could be them to my kids.

When I reflect on it, I'm like, I'm not them.

I can never be them.

I just can't.

But, yeah, it's really heavy for me.

I don't think anybody has asked me that question before because that's really, I mean, I'm 64 years old, bro. My parents are 80s.
Days on this earth are numbered for all of us, and we don't know when the next one's going to come or not. With them, I call them almost every day just to see, hear their voice, make sure.
Check. Everything good? everything good yeah okay is there guilt associated with them in particular um i don't even know what guilt is anymore sometimes i just think it's i have compassion for what they've had to deal with.

So if you can translate that to guilt, I guess so. But for me, it's more like that's amazing what they did

and what they still do.

Maybe there's a sense of pride and maybe some shame.

There's a lot of gratitude there.

I am so grateful.

That would be the best way to describe.

Yeah, because I didn't have that for my parents growing up because I was the one. I was the star.
I was going to bring my family someplace. And in the end, it came back to the people that i was always told not to be like don't be like dad be somebody else you know my mother she came from a broken home don't be like don't be like your mother be like somebody else but they these are the perfect people it all comes back to them really if you think about it without them i'd i'd be in i'd be inside you know because you left prison after jail after 13 odd years and you were 43 years old you left yeah i'm gonna say i was 44 actually when i stepped out the door yeah she stepped out the door of 44 years old and you went back home yes right yeah to their Yeah.
To their house. To their house, yeah.
Yeah, that's, you know, quite the story. I looked out the window and I saw my brother's two kids.
I didn't know their names. And I'm looking at these two kids.
Those are my nephews. I don't even know who they are.
I don't know their names. And then you see the tears flowing.
That was 10 times the first shower I took in freedom. And I didn't know if it was the water or my tears that were cascading over me.
That's no exaggeration. I had to rebuild a life from there.
But without them and that shower, without that moment of realizing the loss. See, people don't realize the loss.
The loss is from the time you graduated high school and finished two and a half years of college.

You left that, and then there's the next 20 fucking something years

of your life, zero.

It's a zero.

You know, that's the, you come out to zero.

You are zero.

Like, we all measure ourselves by what we've gained over life.

I don't have a car. I don't have a dollar.
I don't have any clothes. I have nothing.
And now I'm 44 years old. But I had two wonderful people.
Your mom and your dad. Yeah.
Not everybody can get that. Did you want to go back to prison? Yes.
When you came out? When I when i first came home yeah because people talk about being institutionalized where prison becomes home and comfort and familiarity yeah was that the case for you yes i when i first came home i i didn't know i didn't even know how to order a hot dog like i didn't know how i didn't know how to matriculate for society that same moment i came out of the shower and i stood there and i, what am I going to do with my life? I got to get a job. What's it like to get a job? Forget about getting a job when you come out of prison.
That's like almost impossible, just so you know. Like, there's no bullshit.
It's almost impossible to get a job when you get home from prison. Now you're a dirty cop.
Who the fuck wants to hire a dirty cop? You're disparaged the public's trust. You robbed drug dealers.
You sold drugs. You did cocaine.
Oh, would you want to hire me? You didn't know your kids when you came out. I didn't know my kids.
How could you? I was gone for 12 and a half years. My son was six, five and a half.
He went to college. My other son was 11 months, and he was going into second year of high school by the time I went to see him, well, first year of high school.
So I didn't know them. So that was a tough situation to walk into, and yeah.
You tried to get a job as a handyman thereafter. Eventually you go on to be approached to make a documentary about your life called The 7-5 Documentary, which explains your life in more detail and everything that happened.
And the documentary was centering on the Mullen Commission, which was a commission set up in New York by the mayor at the time to assess the extent of corruption in the NYPD. Correct.
And before you were arrested, there were 16 complaints that had been made against you in the years to the Internal Affairs Bureau. You didn't provide any names at the Mullen Commission.
You said at the time, if I speak before your commission, a lot of cops are going to commit suicide. Yes, that's correct.
And during those hearings at that commission, you admitted to hundreds of crimes. But later, you said it's probably more like thousands in the context of that.
Correct. And in that commission, you admitted that both police and drug dealers were your employees, and as a result of this commission, 200 officers were arrested for drug trafficking.
Correct. So that commission was a huge moment back in 1992, where things really...
The commission actually took place in 93, but yes, in association to my arrest, yes. And that was 10 years ago, roughly? Yes, so that was 2015, 16.
If I went back and I spoke to Mike at, let's say, 18 years old, what was, like, the most important thing that he needed to hear that he didn't hear? What would you, if you could teleport back now and whisper in his ear, what would you say to him?

Yeah, well, you know, maybe I would...

I'm proud of you and I love you, you know?

I'm proud of you and I love you.

It's simple, two words.

Why did he need to hear that?

What would that have changed? Well, because we never know that we're doing enough. And to be full of pride can be damaging.
But for others to be proud of you, like you wonder, what did I do? That gives you sense of pride on my behalf, let's say? Like, why would you be proud of me? Well, because I like the way you handle people. You go out of your way, you know, which is both showing love and it's a reason for you, friends, to be proud.
I'm proud of Mike. Why? Because he sacrifices of himself for others.
Like, that's sort of in my nature, I guess, to begin with. Did you feel like anyone was proud of you at that age? You know, you're getting back to my mother.
Okay. You get me back to my mother's stuff.
And I've always been seeking my mother's approval for some reason. My dad was always pretty proud of me, you know? And do you think that if someone had said that to you at 18 years old that they're proud of you that they loved you do you think it's likely that you wouldn't have made the decisions you then went on to make i think uh so so one time hearing that would do nothing for anybody but if that's what you felt but to be felt feel that and to be constantly reassured I think that that could make some significant changes in any person.
Because as I'm thinking it through, I've always been seeking my mother's approval. I mean, every problem I ever fucking had with a woman, I would always, like, profess my mother's approval.
I don't have my mother's approval. Somehow it would come out.
I'm disappointing my mother. And that never has left left me.
I think now I'm okay. My mom and I are pretty, pretty cool.
You know, when she told me she was praying for me every day, I'm like, I didn't think you liked me. You know? So yeah.
So does this corruption still go on in the police department? Yeah. Oh, it's massive.
So it's still happening now? It's massive. It's just everything changes, but it's still corruption.
And so when I was a corrupt police officer, the corruption was at the lower level because it was a street-level corruption. Today, it's all up at the top, and it's plenty of it.
It's all about big budgets and money, power. Do you think they'll always be...
Listen, they had the girl bend over and get taken up the ass.

Excuse me.

The police chief...

Did what?

Grabbed the lube from his location,

bent the girl over the couch and fucked her in the ass.

Recently?

Yes.

And he was paying her for it.

On overtime.

Who was this?

This was a sex worker? This was a fucking lieutenant. Oh, so the chief was having sex with the lieutenant? Yeah, because she needed money to pay her bills.
Oh, okay. Okay.
He gave her $200,000 in overtime pay. This is what goes on.
That's the corruption that goes on today. Okay.
He gave her $200,000 in overtime pay.

This is what goes on.

That's the corruption that goes on today.

Do you think there's still drug corruption going on with drugs and drug dealers and stuff like that?

Not to the extent that it was.

No, but there's always some.

It's always.

Here's how it's today.

Corruption is today.

Hit and miss.

Scores.

Opportunity.

There's no systematic corruption today. There may be a today.
There may be a few, but very few. When you say scores, you mean cops showing up at some point finding something? Finding something and taking it.
Like that would be the corruption you would run in today more than anything else in that kind of level of corruption. But systematic corruption of the bureaucracy itself is massive.

What was the most you, how much money you made in a day?

You said it was $40,000.

$40,000, yeah.

And was that the...

The funny thing is I could have made $150,000

if Diaz said I should have took the money from that robbery

where they left the money behind.

He said, you should have took that money.

At least I know someone would have got it.

He said the cops got it. Wow.
Yeah, so, yeah. So, I mean, listen, there's a thousand stories in that city.
Every day was a, it's like being in a movie, but you're just, you're actually part of it. Every fucking day, you know, it's just insane.
Listen, I loved being a police officer. I didn't think that I would.
It's the greatest job in the world if you have the support that you need. You can have a wonderful day as a police officer.
You can have a horrible day. But in the end, all you really want is love.
Don't we all? Mike, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question that's been left for you is, what is the gift that the universe, life, or God has put you here to share? Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to say it again, and I said it on the sore fight on the belly.
Just, just, everybody needs more love. Just love.
Just love each other. Listen.
Just listen to your friends. Listen to your neighbors.
Just listen. Patient.
Love. Why? You'll find that we have more in common than we don't.
Mike, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you.
And I mean, what an incredible life you have lived. Incredible isn't a very intentional word there.
You're right. It does sound like it's a movie, effectively.
It sounds like some of the stories that you've told and the things you've been through are unthinkable, but in the context of the human side of everything you've shared, it also makes sense. You know, we go through experiences in our lives and we can kind of take one or two routes and that experience you went through, the love you did or didn't have, the words that went, said or unsaid can take any of us in any direction and even me sat here today there were moments in my early life where I remember a friend turning around to me and saying to me one day he said you're either going to be a millionaire or a criminal he he's one of my best friends it was my my friend Joe I remember exactly where I stood when he said it because I knew it was the truth yes like I knew it was the truth.
I knew that effectively I was so desperate to be successful that that desperation would take me to great lengths. And those great lengths, especially when you're a young man and you don't understand consequence in the same way, those great lengths can trip you over any kind of moral barrier.
Fortunately, I was really scared. So I was like scared of...
That's a lesson. Yes.
Yeah, I was. And there was early parts of my career where I was offered opportunities to go in a certain direction, especially when I dropped out of university.
And they explained to me, you know, the situation. And I was too scared to take them up on the offer.
And actually, the path of least resistance for me was going into business and building businesses and doing those kinds of things. But it all stemmed from an underlying, probably insecurity, but also fear.
Yeah, and desperate and just like desperately wanting to live a better life. And kind of like what you said about your parents desperately wanting to be more.
You know, if you think about business and entrepreneurship as well, it is like self punishment. So it's like a huge risk, huge punishment, great uncertainty.

So to do such a thing, to start a company, to take that big of a risk,

there's going to have to be a pretty strong macro tailwind driving force

that's making you do that.

And a lot of the time, having sat here with CEOs and founders

and people that have achieved great success,

it's much of what you've described.

It's maybe a parent that didn't love me enough. It's maybe living in your father's footsteps.
It's maybe being bullied in school. It's maybe being told you aren't good enough in some way.
And that's the escape velocity that propels us into a better or worse life. Yeah.
Thank you so much, Mike. I really, really appreciate it.
What a journey. We launched these conversation cards and they sold out.
And we launched them again and they sold out again. We launched them again and they sold out again because people love playing these with colleagues at work, with friends at home and also with family.
And we've also got a big audience that use them as journal prompts. Every single time a guest comes on the diary of a CEO, they leave a question for the next guest in the diary.
And I've sat here with some of the most incredible people in the world and they've left all of these questions in the diary and I've ranked them from one to three in terms of the depth. One being a starter question and level three, if you look on the back here, this is a level three, becomes a much deeper question that builds even more connection.
If you turn the cards over and you scan that QR code, you can see who answered the card and watch the video of them

answering it in real time. So if you would like to get your hands on some of these conversation

cards go to thediary.com or look at the link in the description below. Thank you.