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

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Speaker 2 I've never heard a story like this in my life. A story of drug trafficking, bribery, kidnapping, and even murder, which earned you the nickname of America's dirtiest cop.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 minimum wage.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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 tax them.

Speaker 2 And that escalated. Greed is powerful, brother.
But what happens then? You become God.

Speaker 2 I was making more than the President of the United States by protecting one of the largest drug trafficking organizations in New York.

Speaker 2 But I was losing control, and I behave 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.

Speaker 2 But what about your family at this point? You know, that was tough.

Speaker 2 They're really special people.

Speaker 2 Mike, we spoke to your parents. Do you want to see what they said?

Speaker 3 I'm Carol Dowd,

Speaker 3 and I'm Michael Dowd's mother.

Speaker 2 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.

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Speaker 2 Thank you so much for your time. Back to this episode.

Speaker 2 Mike, when people do interviews with you, they often describe you as New York's dirtiest cop. No.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Not good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and that's a touchy subject,

Speaker 2 but I accept it. And I've turned it into something where I'm able to

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 that. And for nothing good, you know.

Speaker 2 And how many crimes did you commit while you were a New York cop?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it may have been thousands because every time I did something that was inappropriate. So you got to step back for a second.

Speaker 2 Every time a police officer puts on his badge and swears that oath and takes the job on,

Speaker 2 he's basically taking a risk on everything he does that can end him up in jail. Everything.

Speaker 2 And that's really a very difficult position to be in. Everything you do, legitimately, can end you up being sanctioned or arrested.

Speaker 2 So I would suggest basically anything I did or any interaction I did could have been considered with some kind of criminal intent.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 So every time you take something from somebody, money, money, cash, drugs,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So you would start with robbery, extortion, burglary, when you went into someone's home and came out with a product.

Speaker 2 I mean, I've taken tapes from, you know, back in the day, you know, those VCR tapes, they were... There was a lot of good stuff in some VCR tapes.

Speaker 2 I mean, we can get a little humorous here, but the reality was, you know, some guy's porn collection might be missing. I mean, it's just, these are the, these are the things that you ran into.

Speaker 2 They're cash, they're gold coins. You know, they were whatever was when someone's dead, it's really hard for them to complain about what's missing.

Speaker 2 So, and you know, it's ironic, it's stupid, and it's debauchery at the same time. So, you, you cross all the, you cross all the lines of decorum when you do something like that.

Speaker 2 Did you steal someone's porn collection?

Speaker 2 Maybe.

Speaker 2 Really? It could have been.

Speaker 2 They were dead. They were dead.
They couldn't use it anymore. I mean, they were smoking crack, okay?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 We got a call for dead on arrival. You know,

Speaker 2 someone was murdered. So we show up, and the guy's sitting in his couch with a knife in his side.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 you walk into this 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I'm looking around, rummaging a little bit, see what seat, like looking for the evidence of the crime scene. And sure enough, I hit the button on the VCR, and there's a porn.

Speaker 2 They've got the porn on fucking TV.

Speaker 2 So I'm saying, okay, he's dead. There's crack,

Speaker 2 evidence of, there was no crack there, by the way. It was all gone.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 cause light.

Speaker 2 You can't make the story up.

Speaker 2 We walk in, me and my partner, Tom, and in comes the detective. We each have a beer.
We're sitting in bullshit and waiting for the boss to show up.

Speaker 2 Boss walks in. She looks around.
She goes,

Speaker 2 I want every beer bottle. in here printed.
She says, and in the refrigerator. And I just put the fucking six pack in the refrigerator, but she walked in.

Speaker 2 So I'm going, now picture this. They know I'm corrupt, okay? But they can't prove it.

Speaker 2 I'm on what you would call secret probation, even though I'm not on probation, because they're watching me like a hawk.

Speaker 2 Now, I got a detective who's looking at me like, we just had a beer.

Speaker 2 Our fucking fingerprints are inside the refrigerator. And he's scared.
I'm not. I mean,

Speaker 2 I'm going to take a hit, I guess, right? So I go, Sarge,

Speaker 2 she goes, what?

Speaker 2 In that refrigerator, there's a six-pack of Cause Light.

Speaker 2 And my fingerprints are on the bottles in the refrigerator.

Speaker 2 She looks at me. She goes,

Speaker 2 of course it's you.

Speaker 2 She goes, of all the people.

Speaker 2 in this fucking police department, it would be your fingerprints inside the refrigerator on a cause light bottle at a homicide scene.

Speaker 2 And there's only four homicides in this precinct this year, and you've been on three of them.

Speaker 2 You've been at the scene of three of them.

Speaker 2 So I go,

Speaker 2 yeah, it doesn't look too good. Does it sound? She goes,

Speaker 2 I'm going to go downstairs.

Speaker 2 I'm going to go to my car. And I'm going to make a phone call.
Whatever I got to do. I said, she said, get rid of that.
And don't do it again.

Speaker 2 Did you steal the boom collection? Yes. It was already in the car.
It was already in in the car. He had the car.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's all he had. A knife in his belly and a porn collection.

Speaker 2 You didn't steal the knife? No, I couldn't. There was evidence.
But he put his porn collection in your car.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 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.
Why did you join?

Speaker 2 I joined if I wanted a job. Because you wanted a job.
And so when you stood there and took that oath. Right.

Speaker 2 Did you mean it?

Speaker 2 You know, no.

Speaker 2 I mean, I guess so. So the answer to, so if you say no,

Speaker 2 that means that you have no concern or care. So it was an immature yes.

Speaker 2 So you take that oath, you don't really mean it.

Speaker 2 And 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

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Some like ethics training to make sure that police officers are like straight and narrow and understand.

Speaker 2 So one of the things that I would suggest on that statement or that whole genre is it wasn't necessarily,

Speaker 2 we weren't necessarily trained on integrity or ethics. We were trained on

Speaker 2 this is what would happen to you if

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like the fundamental issue if we don't trust law enforcement and the downstream consequences.

Speaker 2 Thanks for saying it that way, yes, because it destroys the very fabric of what people trust in law enforcement.

Speaker 2 Because when you need help, you got to call somebody and the person that shows up has to be trustworthy.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So, yes. So, that wasn't the internal affairs officer that said that.
That would be your academy instructor. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Ironic, he said to me, us in the academy class, if you live by the rules that these guys

Speaker 2 espouse internal affairs, you'll never make a successful cop.

Speaker 2 Just cover your ass. That would be his, that was his words.
Just cover your ass.

Speaker 2 What do they mean by that? Always have a reason, always have an excuse. Basically, you hit it on the head.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 if you have a partner, be on the same page. So let's say something was

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You know, you're mad, you spit in my face, I put the cuffs on you, I give you a shot. It happens.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And it's called, I've read this term, the blue wall of silence. Yes.
Right. So

Speaker 2 let's just be clear. The first person that's going to snitch on you is going to be a cop, okay?

Speaker 2 However,

Speaker 2 more chances than not, they try not to. And that's just the facts.
Because

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Let's say you and I were working together and you just told on me last week and now someone's puddling you to death in the street.

Speaker 2 I have a chance to help you

Speaker 2 or I can call for backup and wait, you know, 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.

Speaker 2 Because you need those other cops for your own personal survival. Correct.
So you don't want to be snitching on other cops. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's, you know, I mean, it's really not built.

Speaker 2 That position in this society is not built for somebody to come in and be the knight in shining armor and say, listen, Officer Dowd, that was not appropriate.

Speaker 2 I'm going to have to report you right now. Before he goes to report me, I'm going to either bludgeon him to death because now he's taking my livelihood away.

Speaker 2 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, you're taking a career, a livelihood, incarceration.

Speaker 2 I mean, these are the things that can happen. Like I said, the minute you put that badge on, I didn't get to this, is the minute that the job is looking to take something from you.

Speaker 2 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 and there's a bonus for you at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Your boss goes, I got the people complaining, Dowd. 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 No one's in there going.

Speaker 2 They have rules and decorum, but no one's going, we're looking to take you for this. We're looking to stripe you for that.

Speaker 2 The civilians aren't walking into a firehouse and going, I didn't like the way that truck backed out and the siren blasted and hurt my ears. They're going, yay, they're going to save someone's life.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 it's such a grading position to be in.

Speaker 2 When we're thinking about the factors, the environmental factors that led you to make the decisions that you made.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Yes, that's correct. I saw some crazy stat, which I'm sure you'll be able to account for me, but

Speaker 2 in the sort of decade that you were a police officer, you didn't do that many arrests. No.
How many? 43. You did what? 43 arrests.
You did 43 arrests in how many years?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean,

Speaker 2 total 10 years, but yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 500. Okay, so about 90% of the things you should have arrested someone for, you didn't.
Correct.

Speaker 2 Okay. And why weren't you making more arrests?

Speaker 2 You couldn't keep the police on patrol if they were making arrests. They were clogging up the system.

Speaker 2 The system would get so jammed up, the average amount of overtime for one crack arrest was 18 hours. You would be paid for for that.
Paid time and a half.

Speaker 2 Okay, so then the department has to pay you more money if you do an arrest.

Speaker 2 And then process the arrest, and they all get processed through the correction system, and they all get processed through the court system.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And who's paying for all these arrests at the end of the day? Well, the city. The city's paying.
So the city don't want you to be arresting people. Oh, because they got a budget to manage.

Speaker 2 Were you ever directly told to stop arresting people? Yeah.

Speaker 2 How's this? You really didn't make a dent on it and now there's two men off patrol.

Speaker 2 And then your next assignment was the desk.

Speaker 2 You're making arrests causing a problem.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 They 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.

Speaker 2 I think if you look at any system, you'll understand why people behave they do if you understand the incentive structure.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 More crime. Yes.
So you were incentivized not to arrest people. Correct.
Okay. So that, so what if does that be? What does that lead to?

Speaker 2 That leads to the streets becoming unwieldy, you're 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.

Speaker 2 I tax these people

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 1983.

Speaker 2 Your starting salary when you joined the police was $18,000 a year, roughly. Yes.

Speaker 2 And you pulled someone over in 1983. Yes.
And that's the first time. That's the first time there was a tax levied.
That was the first time you committed a crime, I guess, as a police officer.

Speaker 2 No, but the first time that I committed an actual

Speaker 2 money crime, I would say.

Speaker 2 How old are 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.

Speaker 2 And people are, ah, listen, that's what they called it, all right? Because the guy was from Puerto Rico and he had no paperwork, no license, or anything like that. And he just bought the car.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I'm looking at him 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.

Speaker 2 Leave me enough money for a lobster lunch. This whole thing can go away.

Speaker 2 So the kid was quick on his feet. He left a 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,

Speaker 2 unless you got some more lobster launch money later. Of course, I didn't say that.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 I would say it was available and I've took advantage of some advantage of it, but yeah, there was some. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there was some. I mean, I mean, that's like, you know,

Speaker 2 you're driving by in a police car and a girl says hello, and you go out and you go, fuck her. I mean, you know,

Speaker 2 is that like a benefit of the job or is that your promiscuity?

Speaker 2 Did you ever do that while working?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 That's my biggest sin in the world. In the late while working.
In the car?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 It's not just in music. The lights of siren only went off once.
Really?

Speaker 2 That was from the blowjob. It wasn't from the...

Speaker 2 Yeah, the girl's ass hit the fucking buzzer. I'm like, what the fuck? The big back.

Speaker 2 It was three in the morning. You hit the buzzer.
I'm in the back of a courtyard of a nine-story building. Your boss, your sergeant, around that time, did he know that you were doing things like that?

Speaker 2 Not then. No.

Speaker 2 No. But shortly thereafter, there would be a situation where my sergeant, it was a murder scene,

Speaker 2 dead kid, 20-year-old, shot in the head, and there was a marijuana spot.

Speaker 2 There's money, there's drugs.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And so I took a little thin stack of hundreds and put it in my pocket. Turned out it was like 600 bucks.
And as the crime scene was being processed, in walks my sergeant, Sergeant James Otto.

Speaker 2 He says, is this it?

Speaker 2 Like two, three pounds of marijuana, which is like this much marijuana. It's not a fucking big pile of shit.
And

Speaker 2 I don't know, it was like, I don't know, $1,500 in cash stacked over here.

Speaker 2 Is this it? I go, yeah. I go,

Speaker 2 but, but I felt like he was asking me too much. So, well, I did have this, you know, take out a thin stack of hundreds.

Speaker 2 And he goes, oh, anything else? I go, no, that's it. I said, you know, I didn't want to think it full of blood.

Speaker 2 Later on that night, I run into him at a

Speaker 2 choir practice, they would call it. He went out bullshitting and having a couple beers.
I said, Son, let me ask you a question.

Speaker 2 What if, and I say, and I come across money, and he says, what if I kept that 600? He goes, I was annoyed that you gave it to me.

Speaker 2 Like, just picture the moment. You're 20-something years old.
You're broke. You know, you're coming to work.
You know, you're surviving. You're in survival mode.

Speaker 2 You're out having a couple of 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's basically saying, if you get there, It's yours.

Speaker 2 Take what you can before I get there. Because I don't want to witness it because I don't want want to have to witness it.

Speaker 2 Was he taking money?

Speaker 2 Well, he wouldn't, he'd say no, but clearly he was indicating that it's good. Just don't let me see it.

Speaker 2 When you reflect on that scene that you arrived at, you said there was a 20-year-old man that was dead. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Did seeing those scenes ever bother you?

Speaker 2 Initially,

Speaker 2 my first DOA was my first day. Guy jumped off a building and landed on his head.

Speaker 2 That

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's a crime scene, essentially.

Speaker 2 I began to see people shot, stabbed.

Speaker 2 You have a total disconnect, like really quickly.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And my buddy Sal's like, nah, my partner, nah, let him go.

Speaker 2 Slate.

Speaker 2 So someone flags us down. Hey, this guy's trying to

Speaker 2 steal tires off a car. So now I said, look, we got civilians complaining about the same people that we should have just tossed.

Speaker 2 Turn around, go back about two or three blocks, guy's dead in the street.

Speaker 2 And I see a tire iron. So I said to the people,

Speaker 2 Was there were they carrying a jack or a tire iron? And they go, yeah, and they point over to the street where the tire iron was for taking the wheels off a car.

Speaker 2 This guy could have shot us, you know, like so, like,

Speaker 2 like he's dead, it could have been us, or

Speaker 2 if we did toss this guy, he could not be dead. So, when you come that close to death itself,

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a couple of times, but more important, one, one, one that strikes me a lot. I was talking to the guy who was going out.
I know he was going to die. You know, it was just,

Speaker 2 he was stabbed in the stomach and

Speaker 2 he's looking at me and he goes, I'm getting cold. I go, yeah, it's going to be okay.

Speaker 2 He says, I'm getting cold officers. I sat out.
Are you going to be okay? We're going to get you to the hospital.

Speaker 2 The ambulance showed up like five minutes later. He was barely conscious when he got in the ambulance and he wasn't going to make it.
And he died.

Speaker 2 And that was sad because I couldn't do anything for him. I'm like, you saw a lot of stuff.
Why did that affect you?

Speaker 2 I felt bad because I was talking to him and knowing he's going to die. Like,

Speaker 2 and one other time I felt really bad. Some guy who was, I guess he was, he was getting laid.

Speaker 2 young guy, big, heavy-set, strong, powerful black guy.

Speaker 2 His wife is like,

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 he was either dead or dying. He had a heart attack.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I wanted to give him CPR.

Speaker 2 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 go get the ambulance. Don't worry about it.
Yeah, yeah, he's gonna be okay.

Speaker 2 Don't worry about it. Go get the ambulance.

Speaker 2 And I'm like,

Speaker 2 shouldn't we do CPR?

Speaker 2 No, no, no. You go outside.

Speaker 2 I was the kid. I was the 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Why did they tell you not to render aid to him?

Speaker 2 I don't know. I don't know why.

Speaker 2 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 i 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

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I was like, okay, well, this ain't that bad. I mean,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 or give me something for discount. I mean, that's, it becomes, you become a market maker at that point.
Did you stop buying it to sell it for these drug dealers?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So here's 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.

Speaker 2 From my perspective, you may never say that.

Speaker 2 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 what best I could.

Speaker 2 If you had gotten robbed, I would do the report. I'd take you to a hospital if you were injured.
You know, whatever I need, I mean, I responded like a proper police officer.

Speaker 2 But if you were in the drug business, you were mine.

Speaker 2 You were mine.

Speaker 2 Simple. I mean, how else can I say it?

Speaker 2 What do you mean by you were mine?

Speaker 2 You were mine. I owned you.

Speaker 2 In what regard? In every regard. Whatever I wanted.

Speaker 2 You were mine. You could take their drugs.
Whatever 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.

Speaker 2 What else?

Speaker 2 Whatever. Coats, jackets, gold, whatever.
Chains. What was your biggest heist as a police officer?

Speaker 2 They weren't that large. I'd say 40,000 to 50,000 at one time, which back then was good money.
You know, you're talking about two years' salary, you know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if you're on like $20,000, $30,000, whatever is your salary, getting $40,000 is. Yeah, I doubled my salary, tripled my salary that year.
Things like that come along.

Speaker 2 So there was opportunities. So you would call that a score, right? Opposed to an ongoing thing.

Speaker 2 Because like, boom, it's there. It's a one-hit

Speaker 2 and it's over. Every job in East New York, nine 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.

Speaker 2 You show up, you're the boss. Were your colleagues around you doing the same?

Speaker 2 The accurate answer is somewhere.

Speaker 2 The best description is you would never know.

Speaker 2 You would never know. I might because I know what's going on.
But if you were a cop that was not involved, you would never know. So the good cops wouldn't know know that it was happening.

Speaker 2 They wouldn't know. Because I'm not going to tell you.

Speaker 2 Now, if you happened 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?

Speaker 2 You want in?

Speaker 2 I'll tell you a funny story, right?

Speaker 2 We 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 Dowd and his partner.

Speaker 2 Leave them alone. And they turn around and they walk away.

Speaker 2 So the officers knew, just, just, I don't want to see what they're doing because they're not, I'm culpable or responsible for what they're doing. And that's how it became.

Speaker 2 And what were you doing at that scene?

Speaker 2 Cocaine and heroin.

Speaker 2 My partner wanted the guns. I said, what are you going to do with the guns? There's money and this, this is money.
That's a gun. And people were dead.
So the guns may be connected to the crime.

Speaker 2 So just. When you showed up at a scene like that, how do you, and you arrive there and there's guns, there's money, there's drugs.

Speaker 2 How do you get the money and the drugs without other officers seeing you it's funny like how do 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 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 to secure it and make sure that everyone's doing what what they're supposed to do.

Speaker 2 I take this bag and I go like this and I put it in a garbage pail.

Speaker 2 He comes up to me, I go, Sarge,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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 cars.
I went right to his shop. I dropped off to a dope with him.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Should you have been?

Speaker 2 I should have been more cautious. Did you ever think you were going to get caught?

Speaker 2 You know, it was in the back of my mind for probably five years. Just never left.
And

Speaker 2 thus, you constantly are

Speaker 2 your anxiety levels up. You know, your body starts to go numb.

Speaker 2 And you wonder, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with you? You're living like three different lives.

Speaker 2 You know, you have a wife, you have a girlfriend, girlfriend, you have drugs, you're a cop, you're selling drugs, you're shaking people down.

Speaker 2 Everything's just fine.

Speaker 2 It's never good. Do you have a wife and a girlfriend? Yeah,

Speaker 2 most of the time.

Speaker 2 And you have kids? At that time, one.

Speaker 2 And did anybody know what you were doing at home?

Speaker 2 I would lay that up to her.

Speaker 2 But the mink coats and the new cars and the trips around the world, you don't do them on a cop's salary. But you never said it.

Speaker 2 She knew. Enough.

Speaker 2 And did she ever give you advice about what you're doing? Stop. That's what she said.
Stop. I don't need this.
I'd rather have you. Imagine that.

Speaker 2 That's a nice feeling in a way, right?

Speaker 2 I'd rather have you and sleep under a bridge.

Speaker 2 That's what she said. Yeah.
Your ex-wife. Yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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, you know,

Speaker 2 380 or something, Mercedes-Benz, whatever it was. His license plate on the back of his car said,

Speaker 2 B. Scott.

Speaker 2 Less than a month later, about three weeks later, I'm out in Long Island, and there's the car.

Speaker 2 There's only one B. Scott, all right, in Louis Plate.

Speaker 2 And I pulled over. And I said to my wife at the time, I said, get a good look at this guy.

Speaker 2 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. I said, well, I left.

Speaker 2 I went home and I spoke to my neighbor, who's my wife's uncle, who was a detective in the 102 squad, was 28 years on the job at the time. I said, listen, I want to talk to you.
He goes, what's up?

Speaker 2 I told him the story, the scenario. And he goes, listen, Mike, anything but drugs, you got to turn him in.

Speaker 2 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 internal affairs.

Speaker 2 They were at my house in 45 minutes. Like, hello? I mean, I'm 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,

Speaker 2 they put a lineup in front of me. I picked 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.

Speaker 2 It's going on every day for about a month's length of time.

Speaker 2 So finally, I go, What do you want, bro? Enough is enough. I'm fucking your wife every time you go to work.

Speaker 2 I'm fucking her. No, no, no, no.
Oh, oh, really? Yeah, she gets off the train in the Low Island Railroad, and I pick her up, I bring her home, and I fuck her. Oh, okay, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 I said, Well, why don't you 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?

Speaker 2 So he could see you. I don't know.
Did you plot to kill him? No.

Speaker 2 Well, I plot to kill this guy.

Speaker 2 Well, because it sounds like he wants to kill you. Well, that's different now.

Speaker 2 But I didn't. Because I didn't know who it was.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And he was so pissed off. He made a complaint against me.
And, you know,

Speaker 2 he was suspended. At this point, he was suspended.
Oh, so he was a civilian when you arrested.

Speaker 2 He was suspended. He was an officer on suspension.
Okay. 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.

Speaker 2 What's a collector? He was the strongman. So if you owed money to a drug organization, he went out and collected it.
Oh, okay. So

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 He was not a front. He had been a legitimate business, but in his business would be all the dealers in Brooklyn would come in.
And did you, is that where you met La Compagnia? Yes.

Speaker 2 What is La Compagnia? La Compagnie was a Dominican drug organization that ran small nickel and dime spots throughout the city. Lots of them, like dozens of them.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 At the time, yes. But they were street-level mostly.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Every two weeks as a cop, so you're making $300 a week as as a cop. Right.
And this drug gang offer you how much money to protect? They didn't offer me anything.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And then they shorted me $700.

Speaker 2 What does shorted mean? Short. They were short $700.
Okay. So they paid me $7,300 instead of $8,000.

Speaker 2 So I told them, I need the rest of the money. The deal is a deal.
And they said, you know, we're not paying you.

Speaker 2 We're done. So then I threatened them and I shut their business down.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 They suggest to anybody that is willing to shoot and kill this cop, they'll pay them. And how did you find out that this drug gang have put a hit on you?

Speaker 2 Well, because Baron Perez knows everybody in the city, it's in the drug business because he does their cars. He said, there's a hit on you.

Speaker 2 He said, but I'll accompany you. I said, okay.

Speaker 2 I went out that same day. I saw his car.
I'd never met the guy in my life, but I knew his car, La Company, the boss.

Speaker 2 I pulled him over. He didn't know who I was.
I told him license registration. I just threw the papers back in his lap.
I said, you've put a hit on me. He turned as white as that pen.

Speaker 2 Because now I'm standing over him and he's sitting down in a little tiny Renault. He's looking up at me.
I said, if you want to put a hit on me, why don't we clear it up right here?

Speaker 2 I'll let you get out of the car. We'll do a 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.

Speaker 2 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. I wasn't going to not let him.
Were you not scared?

Speaker 2 I'm crazy. I don't know.

Speaker 2 I didn't think of fear. I was thought I was going to win.
What did he say?

Speaker 2 No, no, no. I said, well, you take the hit off.
My pager went off 20 minutes later. And he said the hits off, I don't want to do any more business with you.
There was a $700. Please leave us alone.

Speaker 2 So you got your $700 in the end? Yeah. And that was the end of your relationship with them.
With Le Compania, correct.

Speaker 2 At some point after that, you met a guy called Adam Diaz, who is a much bigger Dominican drug dealer. Correct.
Adam was, you know, two, three levels above them. You know, he was like...

Speaker 2 the guy that gets to 1500 kilos and distributes it out. And he's making a million dollars a week.
And he's selling, what, 50 million a year in in cocaine? Correct. Yeah.

Speaker 2 How did you come to meet him and what was the arrangement? I met Baron, the same way I met Le Company.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So he agrees he wants to talk to you? Yeah. And what does he say to you? He agrees to the meeting.
We sit down and I explain to him what I can do.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I said, well, 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 the terms.

Speaker 2 I'll do what I can for you. I said, I can't promise you anything, but I will do what I will do for you as the best that I can.
So, I mean, Diaz started paying me $8,000 a week.

Speaker 2 Listen, I'm now making $8,000 a week, split it with my partner, who didn't deserve any of it, but whatever. And

Speaker 2 it was more than the president of the United States at the time. I mean,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And there was a particular time where you 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 weeks.

Speaker 2 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 going to happen. So I walked him into the store, picked up two Heinekens,

Speaker 2 walked up to the counter, opened up the Heinekens, and told the guy behind, I didn't know the guy behind the counter. I go, shut it down.
Like, shut it down.

Speaker 2 He looks at me. I go, shut it down.
He don't know me. I don't know him, but he he knows.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And there was another occasion where you saved Adam Diaz. Well, that's when they got the robbery with

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And they're not going to kill you if they don't have to, to, if you give up the shit.

Speaker 2 So the kid walked him upstairs, Elvis was his name, 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.
And someone called 911.

Speaker 2 And I hit Mark 1 right down there. And I pulled.
That was the first car on the scene. I jumped out.
And Elvis goes, is Elvis telling me, yeah, they just robbed us. So I shut it down.

Speaker 2 We're on the scene, no further. I think it's a 90 x-ray, which means it's unfounded.

Speaker 2 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 out like cash and drugs the thieves couldn't get it all it was just too much i go what are you guys doing this is crazy how this happens they go we found i go list do you have a search do you have a search warrant to go in that house the young cop in I'm seeing a guy at the scene.

Speaker 2 They go, no. I go, so what are you doing? And 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.

Speaker 2 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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Speaker 2 One of your friends, when you were a cop, was called Officer Venable,

Speaker 2 and he was shot in the head by associates at La Compania.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 that doesn't matter that I didn't know him because he's a cop. That's, you know, it's not acceptable.

Speaker 2 Just the fact that a cop was killed is not acceptable.

Speaker 2 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 a cop.
But they killed a cop.

Speaker 2 And that's, you know,

Speaker 2 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, like, what am I really doing?

Speaker 2 It was hard to swallow.

Speaker 2 I mean, and I don't, I don't think, I don't think there's no excuse.

Speaker 2 What's the answer to that? It's not behavior that, or it's,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's almost like I was connected to it. And

Speaker 2 so it was tough. It was tough on me as a human being, never mind as a cop that was doing wrong.
I mean,

Speaker 2 we allowed them to stay in business.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 what

Speaker 2 how did that manifest like literally and specifically

Speaker 2 well i would say that that's when i really took that

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 What a cop does, what I did, was I would go in my bathroom, close the door, and read the paper and cry.

Speaker 2 Now, I don't know if there's ever 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.

Speaker 2 You go in your bathroom, read the newspaper, and cry. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Just because it was like a, it was a way to release all the built-up,

Speaker 2 I don't know what the proper word is for this at this point, stress, anxiety, guilt.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 I knew my internal strife about what I was doing was wrong, I was not able to publicly grieve.

Speaker 2 I'm really feeling bad right now. What do I do?

Speaker 2 You know, I robbed drug dealers and I sold some cocaine, and now there's a cop dead as a result of cocaine.

Speaker 2 Who do I tell that to?

Speaker 2 It's my own prison.

Speaker 2 And at this time, you were on drugs as well. You were taking taking alcohol and drugs at this point, yeah.
Also, you were losing your marriage.

Speaker 2 Correct.

Speaker 2 So I want to be accurate on the reason I went.

Speaker 2 Even in spite of losing my marriage and my kids and my house, it wasn't the driving force. The driving force was

Speaker 2 I was going to lose my job. That was the driving force.

Speaker 2 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 did you become?

Speaker 2 I became the direct results 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So a lot of people say, well, that's the environment they grew up in. You know what? I can see

Speaker 2 So, I can relate to that. You know, 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.

Speaker 2 If I'd asked your wife at the time,

Speaker 2 what's Mike like as a human, what would she have said to me at that point? When she probably would have said he's a lost soul and an asshole.

Speaker 2 I wasn't a nice,

Speaker 2 you become

Speaker 2 God,

Speaker 2 like you get the God complex,

Speaker 2 Like, you feel indestructible.

Speaker 2 But you see yourself declining. Like, it's the weirdest thing in the world.
You know you're going down a rabbit hole.

Speaker 2 But the whole time you have this false armor on.

Speaker 2 What's the rabbit hole you were going down?

Speaker 2 Drugs, alcohol, women, violence. You know, violence is coming.
You know, I mean...

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And you went to rehab, and when you're coming out of rehab, your intent is to straighten up your life?

Speaker 2 When I came home, you know,

Speaker 2 it was an eye-opener because

Speaker 2 I thought,

Speaker 2 great, I'm going to get a fresh start.

Speaker 2 It turned out that

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So in my case, because I tried to do the right thing, and

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So that means he's here to set us up.

Speaker 2 So when you came back from rehab, they thought you were working as an informant to correct. Yes.
Very well played. Yes.
That's what they thought, that I was now working for the man.

Speaker 2 And I was here there to get them.

Speaker 2 And what did that mean in terms of how they treated you?

Speaker 2 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 invite me to any social gatherings. So I was basically an outcast now.

Speaker 2 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 were isolated and that you had no camaraderie.

Speaker 2 You didn't have the reason that you enjoyed being a cop because you had brotherhood, camaraderie, safety, protection, like any organization that you belong to, you know?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You can stop, but you got to stay stopped.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.
The messages were being dropped. This guy's no good.

Speaker 2 And 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.

Speaker 2 You're either getting arrested or fired.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 You know, when the kid goes into the barn and there's a pile of hay and shit and 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.

Speaker 2 That's how I, that's who I am. I'm that guy looking for that little diamond in that pile of shit.

Speaker 2 I'm an optimist. You thought it would all be okay? Listen, 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

Speaker 2 every day in prison, I thought the next day I might go home. And I did that for 12 and a half years.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Take me into that day when you were arrested. by the police department.
So it's 92.

Speaker 2 The day after Rodney King riots, May 4th, May 5th, I had just made a deal with Kenny Urell, my ex-partner, who was in a cocaine business with him, his wife, and his friends at the bowling alley.

Speaker 2 Kenny Urell 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.

Speaker 2 So I got him a couple of packages of cocaine, let's say three or four. In the meantime, his phones are tapped because he was the target of an investigation on Long Island.

Speaker 2 The following day, I'm driving around and my radio is extremely quiet. No one's quiet.
9-4 is quiet anyway, the Williamsburg area, but really quiet for the last two, three days.

Speaker 2 And I'm getting a little suspicious. I just picked a drop and 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.

Speaker 2 I walk into the station house, my partner, and the desk officer. He points, he says, the captain wants to see you.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And sure enough, I 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. That was like right up my ass.

Speaker 2 I'm like, excuse me, guys. And he said, am I under arrest? They go, no, no, no.
Are you sure? Because you're awfully close here. Anyway,

Speaker 2 they put me in the 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.

Speaker 2 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.
like, I'm chain smoking. Yeah, that's okay.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Anyway, they pull up to one 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.

Speaker 2 I'm like, what the fuck is this? For a drug test? A little strange. I got out of the car.
I go, I could just, I can't dump it here. They're here.

Speaker 2 I can't even dump the Coke.

Speaker 2 So I get upstairs to the 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.

Speaker 2 He hands me the cup to go take a piss. I hit just on a bump and a fucking and a vodka, so I knew I was hit.

Speaker 2 I turn around and in walks my mother's cousin from Suffolk County Police Department and says,

Speaker 2 Mr. Dowd, you're under arrest for conspiracy to distribute narcotics.
So did you think you were going to jail for the rest of your life at that point?

Speaker 2 I didn't even think a week. I think think I think a day.
I think 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?

Speaker 2 It was the biggest moment of relief. You know, you asked about

Speaker 2 life-changing, you know,

Speaker 2 lowest points. This was the best feeling in the world, almost, like, almost.

Speaker 2 Like, I was like, finally, it's over. It's finally over.
I can go on with my life somehow.

Speaker 2 I didn't know it would take almost 15 years, or even more when you think about probation and a lot of this shit.

Speaker 2 You were relieved.

Speaker 2 When I was going to work every day, I was going to work with anxiety and fear.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 lying to my young child.

Speaker 2 Two children at this point. You know, everything's a lie.
So there's anxiety and fear in that. The fear of arrests really never entered my mind.

Speaker 2 It's funny when you describe being arrested and you you reference it almost like it was your moment of freedom.

Speaker 2 I still do today. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Obviously, most people can't relate. because they've never been in such a situation where they've been like arrested.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, some people kill themselves, other people overcome it and become the better version of themselves. Either they make

Speaker 2 lemonade out of the lemons or they go on to become ruinous. So, and I told you, I'm looking for that diamond in the pile of shit.
So,

Speaker 2 to me, it was freedom. How old's your child now, your son? I have two.
My oldest son is, uh, he'll be turning 40 and my younger son is 33 or 4.

Speaker 2 So what advice based on your experience in that moment would you give to your kids about

Speaker 2 living an authentic life and lying?

Speaker 2 So it's, and you'll know this from life itself, it's 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.

Speaker 2 So accept the hard knocks that come along with living honestly and

Speaker 2 you'll turn out to be a better person. So part of my lesson is

Speaker 2 if you don't have any bumps in the road of life,

Speaker 2 you really don't know that much about life, right?

Speaker 2 You have to learn how to overcome adversity. So go ahead, live a good life, do the best you can.

Speaker 2 And if there comes a point where you want to, let's say, experiment with something or take risks, just accept the consequences.

Speaker 2 If you're going to stick up a bank, there's going to be consequences, maybe.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You're logical. People that live in fear of consequences

Speaker 2 don't think of that. They think of the immediate consequences, immediate gratification.

Speaker 2 A 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,

Speaker 2 job, career, freedom, future, you know, relationships, all the damage one incident can cause.

Speaker 2 But if you own up to something immediately and accept the responsibility for it, people have a choice then.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 That must be quite a challenge for you today because you now go on podcasts, you interview, talk about what happened in your life. And

Speaker 2 there's a lot of things that you did that.

Speaker 2 are hard to say, but you're also battling with this new reality of being honest. Right.
About everything. Yes.

Speaker 2 So it's not hard for me to say anymore because if you 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.

Speaker 2 You, your audience, people that, listen, there's a lot of people that hate me out there, but I know this for a fact. I have people today reaching out to me that have attempted suicide 10, 15 times.

Speaker 2 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, if I can go down a list of them.
So you never know what

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 never was a cop. He was a bad guy.

Speaker 2 Well, you know what? Fuck you. You eventually get...

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But your family put up some assets to get you out on bail. That was a $350,000 bail.

Speaker 2 It doesn't straighten you up.

Speaker 2 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, three mortgages to pay.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Now I'm back in the chase again to try to get my life back together.

Speaker 2 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 can become a shrimp fisherman wait let's pause there a second so you're out on bail and you plan to escape the u.s 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

Speaker 2 Okay, so when you go out on bail, your family are basically guaranteeing the money. The money.

Speaker 2 So if you don't return from bail. they gotta sell their homes to pay my bill.
They've got to get $350,000. Yes.

Speaker 2 So what you want to do is you want to get $350,000, give it to your family so that you can escape the U.S. Correct.
Okay. Yes.
And how do you plan to get that $350,000?

Speaker 2 There's a scenario comes my way. There's a woman that owes this drug organization half a million in cash and 10 kilos.

Speaker 2 All we have to do is go get the money from her and the drugs, and I could pay my family back, and I can can leave the country and Kenny's gonna join me. My partner's back in.
But that wasn't the plan.

Speaker 2 The plan was never to kidnap her. The plan was to go in with some flowers,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So now it's 1992 so you've known him a long time seven years you've been friends a long time yes and kenny intentionally

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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're good.

Speaker 2 They're good. They take you from being a drug dealer who's going to get 15, 20 years, to a murderer kidnapper.
You took the bait, though. Took the bait.

Speaker 2 Swallow it like a pig. So you've left jail, you're out on bail.
Kenny starts putting in your head this idea of potentially kidnapping or stealing from this woman.

Speaker 2 You don't know he's working for the police. And on the day of this attempted kidnap slash robbery,

Speaker 2 you're arrested. Correct.
again,

Speaker 2 again, again, and how and how does it feel the second time you're arrested? Relief again, no,

Speaker 2 now I'm angry, now I'm pissed off.

Speaker 2 I'm pissed off because I'm you got to realize I'm a rat in a corner trying to get out.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 kidnapping theory that unfolds. Why did you take the bait there? Why didn't you just, because you talked to me, you said you had relief when you were arrested that first time.

Speaker 2 That's the dichotomy of this whole thing. It was the greatest relief of my life.

Speaker 2 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 for now. I got a wife and two kids.

Speaker 2 Because I was told I'm getting 25 to life by the state of New York.

Speaker 2 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. You know, all right, so you know you're getting 25.
So maybe 30.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So I'm like that fish. They dangle that bait.
Eventually a fish is going to bite that hook. What happens to the bail? Do your family get to keep their money? Yes, because I

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You serve 12 years and five months in prison.

Speaker 2 That day, you went to prison. If I had asked you how long do you think you're going to be here, what would you have said?

Speaker 2 So, when I was sitting there waiting to get sentenced, I'm thinking to get seven, eight years.

Speaker 2 And sure enough, she was firm and gave me what she thought I deserved. Mr.
Dowd, that's 168 months. So I'm going, what the fuck's 168 months? And she knew it.
She goes, that's 14 years.

Speaker 2 How did you feel when you heard that? I was devastated. I was devastated.

Speaker 2 You don't know how you're going to react. I was pissed and devastated.
And

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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 time? Yeah. But I was fortunate enough that,

Speaker 2 see, I went to prison as basically a racketeer, right?

Speaker 2 So, 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 wouldn't be the same.

Speaker 2 level.

Speaker 2 And then you have your white collar guys and your bank robbers. So was I was a cop sentence.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But there were some people that were kind, and that helped made my bid go well. No matter where I am in the world, it seems like everyone is drinking matcha.

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Speaker 2 You can get 40% off your first order using code diary40. What about your family at this point? Your mum and dad? Right.

Speaker 2 We try.

Speaker 2 Swatch your hand. Yes.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 I'm Carol Dowd,

Speaker 3 and I'm Michael Dowd's mother.

Speaker 2 Well, I remember being in court.

Speaker 3 I only went to court once, and that was the day of sentencing.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It wasn't in years, you know and somebody says that could be 15 years

Speaker 2 and 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 in through the bars that are between us and say what did you do this for you know i can i can only imagine yeah the the emotions that must go through your head when you you find out something like that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's terrible.

Speaker 3 Believe me, it's terrible, especially when you think you're dealing with something else. You're dealing with a kid who is honest and reliable and smart and good.

Speaker 3 Absolutely shocked.

Speaker 2 I was angry, very angry at him.

Speaker 3 How could you do this? You know, that type of thing.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You know, that was tough.

Speaker 2 She had

Speaker 2 she went to church every day.

Speaker 2 12 years.

Speaker 2 She's eighty-four.

Speaker 2 That's tough.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Why do you think that moved him so much?

Speaker 3 I don't think he ever really sits back and thinks about the other people.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 How does that make you feel when you see

Speaker 2 him?

Speaker 3 It made me feel glad that he felt sorry.

Speaker 3 Because he never really says this in front of us, but

Speaker 3 it made me feel glad that he remembered that I went to church and prayed for him.

Speaker 3 He had good parents,

Speaker 2 believe me.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 You know? She's always the

Speaker 2 Bob was always the

Speaker 2 the weather vane of what's right and wrong, right?

Speaker 2 I fought with my mother my whole fucking life

Speaker 2 because she always

Speaker 2 kept me on track, you know, tried.

Speaker 2 Past the joke.

Speaker 2 Yeah, she's tough. She's still tough.

Speaker 2 You had to fucking get me a cocksucker.

Speaker 2 Don't be a cocksucker.

Speaker 2 it's so interesting to see to see that that emotion because it 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

Speaker 2 we fight every fucking day still

Speaker 2 my father leaves the room but we get to

Speaker 2 it's like you guys are always fighting that's that's what your mother does.

Speaker 2 Because she's the one who keeps you

Speaker 2 to the mat. She puts you on the mat.
My father, it's okay. We'll get over it.

Speaker 2 But my mother, she holds you to account.

Speaker 2 Mother holds you to account. She loves you still.

Speaker 2 She went to church for every day. Every day.

Speaker 2 I never knew that.

Speaker 2 I never knew that.

Speaker 2 I only found that out.

Speaker 2 I think about a year ago. I'm the whole fucking 20 years.
She only told me that about a year ago.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 Why does that move you so much to find that she went to church every day when you were in jail?

Speaker 2 Because my mother's not very lovey-dovey.

Speaker 2 I am.

Speaker 2 She's not. And because my father was, you know.

Speaker 2 But,

Speaker 2 you know, when you're raised by my mother was raised by nuns, you know, very cold and calculating.

Speaker 2 You definitely knew she had a lot.

Speaker 2 I mean, for someone to go to church every

Speaker 2 day, they must really love you. I guess it speaks for itself.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 You love them.

Speaker 3 but my showing my love was like making them breakfast. I made them breakfast, you know.
So that was kind of a

Speaker 3 way to show your love. You know, I was here for them all the time, but I was not,

Speaker 3 I was not mushy, you know.

Speaker 3 And he's right. It was hard for him to

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 You know, so there was always that

Speaker 2 direction or whatever.

Speaker 3 So I was pretty tough, but that's the way I am.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Maybe I was too tough.

Speaker 2 What is that range of emotions you feel about them

Speaker 2 now in the wake of all of this?

Speaker 2 That they

Speaker 2 persevered.

Speaker 2 They persevered when I didn't think much of their

Speaker 2 travails that they were going through.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But yeah, it's really heavy for me to

Speaker 2 like that. I don't think anybody asked me that question before because that's really,

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm 64 years old, bro. My parents are 80s.
You know,

Speaker 2 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.
And

Speaker 2 with them, I call them almost every day just to see, you know, hear their voice, make sure,

Speaker 2 check.

Speaker 2 Everything's good? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 Is there guilt associated with them in particular?

Speaker 2 I don't even know what guilt is anymore sometimes. I just think it's

Speaker 2 I have

Speaker 2 compassion

Speaker 2 for what they've had to deal with. So if you can translate that to guilt, I guess so.
But for me, it's it's more like

Speaker 2 that's amazing what they did and what they still do. Like,

Speaker 2 and maybe there's a sense of pride and maybe some shame.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of gratitude there. I am so grateful.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I was the star.

Speaker 2 I was going to bring my family someplace.

Speaker 2 And in the end, it came back to

Speaker 2 the people that

Speaker 2 I was always told not to be. Like, don't be like dad, be somebody else.

Speaker 2 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 these are the perfect people.

Speaker 2 It all comes back to them, really. If you think about it, without them,

Speaker 2 I'd be inside, you know. Because you left prison after jail after 13 odd years

Speaker 2 when you were 43 years old you left yeah i'm gonna say i was 44 actually when i stepped out the door yeah so you stepped out the door at 44 years old and you went back home yes right yeah to their house to their house yeah

Speaker 2 yeah that's you know quite the story i looked out the window i saw my my brother's two kids i didn't know their names

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 The losses 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, a zero

Speaker 2 is a zero.

Speaker 2 You know, that's the, that's the, you come out to zero. You are zero.
Like, what we all measure ourselves by what we've gained over life. I don't have a car.
I don't have a dollar.

Speaker 2 I don't have any clothes. I have nothing.
And now I'm 44 years old. But I had two

Speaker 2 wonderful people.

Speaker 2 Your mom and your dad. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Not everybody could get that.

Speaker 2 Did you want to go back to prison

Speaker 2 when you came out? 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.

Speaker 2 When I first came home,

Speaker 2 I didn't even know how to order a hot dog. I didn't know how.
I didn't know how to matriculate through society.

Speaker 2 That same moment, I came out of the shower and I stood there and I said, what am I going to do with my life? I got to get a job. What's it like to get a job?

Speaker 2 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 come from prison.

Speaker 2 Now you're a dirty cop. Who the fuck wants to hire a dirty cop?

Speaker 2 You disparage the public's trust.

Speaker 2 You robbed drug dealers. You sold drugs.
You did cocaine. Oh, did you want to hire me? You didn't know your kids when you came out? I didn't know my kids.

Speaker 2 How could you? It was gone for 12 and a half years. My son was six,

Speaker 2 five and a half. He went to college.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So that was a tough situation to walk into. And yeah.
You tried to get a job as a handyman thereafter.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And before you were arrested, there were 16 complaints that had been made against you in the years to the Internal Affairs Bureau.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And during those hearings at that commission, you admitted to hundreds of crimes, but later you said it's probably more like thousands, and you explained the context of that. Correct.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So that commission was a huge moment back in 1992 where things really... Yeah,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 If I went back and I spoke to Mike at, let's say, 18 years old. Yeah.

Speaker 2 What was like the most important thing that he needed to hear that he didn't hear?

Speaker 2 What would you, if you could teleport back now and whisper in his ear? Yeah. What would you say to him?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, you know, maybe I would.

Speaker 2 I'm proud of you and I love you. You know?

Speaker 2 I'm proud of you and I love you.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's simple. Two words.

Speaker 2 Why did he need to hear that?

Speaker 2 What would that have changed? Well,

Speaker 2 because we never know that we're doing enough.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 to be full of pride can be damaging. But for others to be proud of you.

Speaker 2 Like you wonder what did I do that would give you that gives you a 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 No, you're getting back to my mother, okay? You're getting me back to my mother's stuff. And I've always been seeking my mother's approval for some reason.

Speaker 2 My dad was always pretty proud of me, you know?

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 I think, so one time hearing that would do nothing for anybody. But if that's what you felt.

Speaker 2 But to be felt, feel that, and to be constantly reassured, I think that that could make some significant changes in any person. Because

Speaker 2 as I'm thinking it through, I've always was seeking my mother's approval.

Speaker 2 I mean, every problem I ever fucking had with a woman, I would always like profess my mother's, I don't have my mother's approval. Somehow it would come out.
I'm disappointing my mother.

Speaker 2 And that never has left me. I think now I'm okay.

Speaker 2 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 even think you liked me.

Speaker 2 You know, so, yeah. So.

Speaker 2 Does this corruption still go on in the police department? Yeah, oh, it's massive. So it's still happening now.
It's massive.

Speaker 2 It's just everything changes, but it's still corruption. And

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's all about big budgets and money, power.

Speaker 2 Do you think they'll always be? Listen, they had the girl bend over and get taken up the ass. Excuse me.

Speaker 2 The police chief.

Speaker 2 Did what?

Speaker 2 Grabbed the lube from his location, bent the girl over the couch, and fucked her in the ass.

Speaker 2 Recently? Yes.

Speaker 2 And he was paying her for it.

Speaker 2 On overtime.

Speaker 2 Who was this? This was a sex worker or... This is a fucking lieutenant.
Oh, so the chief was having sex with the lieutenant? Yeah, because she needed money to pay her bills.

Speaker 2 Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 He gave her $200,000 in overtime pay. This is what goes on.
That's the corruption that goes on today.

Speaker 2 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...

Speaker 2 Here's how it's today. Corruption is today, hit and miss.
Scores. Opportunity.
There's no systematic corruption today. There may be a few.

Speaker 2 There may be a few, but very few. And when you say scores, you mean cops showing up at somewhere, finding something.
And finding something and taking it.

Speaker 2 Like, that would be the corruption you would run in today more than anything else.

Speaker 2 In that kind of

Speaker 2 level of corruption. But systematic corruption of the bureaucracy itself is massive.

Speaker 2 What was the most you reached you

Speaker 2 how much money you made in a day? You said it was 40,000. 40,000.
Yeah. And was that the...

Speaker 2 It's the funny thing is I could have made $150,000 if Diaz said I should have took the money from

Speaker 2 that the 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

Speaker 2 wow yeah so so yeah so i i mean listen there's a thousand stories in that city uh

Speaker 2 every day was a it's like being in a movie but you're just you're actually part of it every every fucking day you know it's just insane i listen I loved being a police officer.

Speaker 2 I didn't think that I would.

Speaker 2 It's the greatest job in the world if you have the support that you need.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Don't we all?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to say it again, and I said it on sulfide on the belly.

Speaker 2 Just

Speaker 2 everybody needs more love.

Speaker 2 Just love. Just love each other.

Speaker 2 Listen.

Speaker 2 Just listen to your friends. Listen to your neighbors.
Just listen. Patient.
Love.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 2 You'll find that we have more in common than we don't.

Speaker 2 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 because you're right.

Speaker 2 It does sound like it's a movie, effectively. It sounds like you, some of the stories that you've told and the things you've been through

Speaker 2 are unthinkable. But in the context of the human side of everything you've shared,

Speaker 2 it also makes sense. You know, we go through experiences in our lives and we can kind of take one or two routes.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 He was one of my best friends. It was 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.

Speaker 2 I knew that effectively, I was so desperate to be successful

Speaker 2 that that desperation would

Speaker 2 take me to great lengths.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Fortunately, I was really scared. So I was like scared of that's a lesson.
Yes. Yeah, I was.

Speaker 2 And I was, there were early parts of my career where I was offered opportunities to go in a certain direction, especially when I dropped out of university.

Speaker 2 And they explained to me, you know, the situation.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And kind of like what you said about your parents, desperately wanting to be more. You know, if you think about business on entrepreneurship as well, it is like

Speaker 2 self-punishment. So it's like a huge risk, huge punishment,

Speaker 2 great uncertainty.

Speaker 2 So to do such such a thing, to like 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 weren't good enough in some way, and that's the escape velocity that propels us into a better or worse life.

Speaker 2 Yeah, thank you so much, Mike. I really, really appreciate it.
What a journey.

Speaker 2 We launched these conversation cards and they sold out. And we launched them again and they sold out again.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

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