1160: Tegan Broadwater | How a White Cop Infiltrated the Crips Part One

This episode is sponsored in part by Vital Proteins.

Let's face it, once you hit 30, things start changing, start to feel a little different.

Turns out your body's natural collagen production, key for healthy hair, skin, nails, bones, and joints, drops about 1% per year after 30.

Vital Proteins helps tackle that very issue.

They are the number one collagen peptide brand in the U.S., and their ingredients are backed by science.

Think about that.

Helping you feel and look your best.

It's unflavored, which means you can easily mix it into just about anything personally.

I actually toss it in my coffee.

I know that sounds weird, but it doesn't taste like anything.

It just, just, if it's not simple, it's not happening for me and just goes right in.

They've even got these convenient stick packs for when you're traveling or running around this summer.

Bottom line, if you want to stay active, look good, keep doing the things you love, give vital proteins a shot.

It's an effortless addition to your routine.

And the key is, of course, consistency.

Get 20% off by going to vitalproteins.com.

Enter our promo code Jordan at checkout.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Hello, it is Ryan, and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we?

Just to make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, counting your steps, you know, all the mundane stuff.

That is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino.

Chumba Casino has all your favorite social casino-style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere with daily bonuses.

So sign up now at chumbacasino.com.

That's chumba casino.com.

No purchase necessary.

VGW Group Void where prohibited by law 21 plus.

Terms and conditions apply.

Welcome to the show.

I'm Jordan Harbinger.

On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional rocket scientist, neuroscientist, music mogul, or tech luminary.

And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs.

These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more.

That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start

or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.

Today on the show, former undercover cop Tegan Broadwater, who infiltrated the infamous Cripps Street Gang, we dive into the drug war and how we are not going to arrest our way out of the dope problem.

We also explore undercover tactics and strategies, close calls that almost cost him his life, becoming close friends with gang members, building trust, building rapport, and how he dealt with a leak inside his own police department.

This is a really good, solid two-part episode here that I know you'll enjoy.

Here we go, part one with Teagan Broadwater.

Yeah, because that's one of those jobs where everybody says

various interviews have been like, my stress was so high, one of my teeth started falling out.

And my stress was so high,

Bloodwork said I was going to basically die young because my cortisol was through the roof or had no cortisol or whatever it was.

My stress level was so high, I was addicted to hydroxycup.

And it's just one legal substance after another.

And that's the stuff they can say on air because they don't want to lose their job or their pension.

Like I was on meth.

I'm sure that some of these guys probably do get hooked on that stuff.

Yeah, some of them.

There's some rogue undercovers and there's some straight up trained everything by the book undercovers.

I've talked to a number of them.

And there's been a bunch of books out there too.

Some of those are also trash.

But when I did my research, I figured it was kind of a cop-out, no pun intended, to get yourself to do the dope and then get stuck on it.

I don't get it.

I just thought, man, the easiest way to get in is to just be willing to say, okay, well, then that's fine.

I'm going to go down the street and find somebody else to do business with.

And if you're really cornered, I just set myself up a little background to where I literally would go show up downtown courthouse every Saturday for a few minutes and be seen with everybody that's standing in line on probation to go take their piss test.

Oh, it's smart.

Yeah, no, I'd say, well, I'm not going back because of you because you want to give me some kind of test.

And then people can vouch they've seen me there before.

Yeah, they'll say, oh, yeah, I saw him waiting in line the other day, actually, because I had to take my test.

That's smart.

So you just show up at the courthouse, hey, Joe, just drink a coffee, go back out the front door, or pretend like you took a piss test, and everybody assumes it's it was a kind of a mass waiting room.

It wasn't literally aligned so I could be there and then walk back to the bathroom or whatever.

People just kind of see that I'm there, but not know what order I'm going with.

That's smart.

That's clever, man.

You got a few clever little bits in the book and we'll get to that.

Did they train you to do that or did you just think about doing that?

Man, I didn't have any training of what seems dangerous.

It's the best and worst part about it.

It really is because I really just had to wing it.

But I really did a ton of research.

I read and spoke to people about how they did things and everything else.

That's why I said it seemed so contrived the way everybody did it because I don't think there are enough people that are truly trained.

You know, the Scott Paynes and the FBI training programs and stuff like that.

I learned from those.

Then you have the other guys just go off on a wild hare and kind of disappear and come back and they're addicted to stuff because they were just willing to do whatever to get through the case.

I wouldn't have been willing to throw the case away, but I just sometimes I was overly creative to a fault where I just had too many little things I was trying to plan.

But I leveraged that.

in order to get around some of those pitfalls that I see everybody else falling into.

In fact, almost every ATF and FBI agent has told me that they don't do the drugs.

And they're cornered.

They have ways of fake doing the drugs, which they won't discuss on the show because the upside is minimal.

We just get a little curiosity bump and criminals find out how people pretend to do drugs.

But then the reason is not just so that you don't get addicted.

I was surprised to find out that

I guess it's no surprise, being a former practicing attorney, that attorneys go, you're a druggie too.

You did a bunch of drugs with him.

And then the jury, if they're a bunch of Puritans, will go, you're just as bad as the criminals.

How do you remember that?

You were high on meth at the time.

He made me do it.

Not a great look, not a great excuse.

You know, makes defense a little more easy for sure.

Yeah.

And it's not just credibility.

Again, it's state of mind at that point.

Like, okay, you did it.

Now you're under the influence of something that's been proven, blah, blah, blah, which is why you're even in this.

Also, I think it's outrageous government conduct is one of the defenses.

So he'll say something like,

well, this officer made my client do drugs.

No, he didn't.

Did you do the drugs?

Yeah, I did, but I did them after him.

Well, okay, now it's your word against his.

But if you say, I didn't even do the drugs, he did the drugs.

He had drugs in his system when he did the test.

I didn't have any drugs in my system.

Okay, well, then they weren't doing drugs together.

One guy was doing drugs and the other guy was pretending to because he's a police officer.

But if both of you are high out of your minds on meth that you just baked in a trailer, the gap between you and the criminal starts to shrink.

Quite a bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And especially these days when people don't trust cops anyway.

So.

Yeah, I wondered about that.

I wonder, does it make undercover work easier that people don't trust cops?

Because the criminals never trusted cops.

But now if they see you guys all as just as bad as them, maybe it's not as hard.

Well, I imagine it's on the prosecutory end, really, where that would come out, I think, because when you have cases like mine where, you know, you got these hand-to-hands and first-hand accounts of things they were saying that were incriminating.

And mine was obviously, I used a dope, but it was a gang case.

So even a lot of the things that they would say incriminatingly to me that were used as evidence were things that I didn't drag out of them.

But they just had to challenge my credibility on the stand.

Most people plead out when they realize, oh, the dude that I've been hanging out with for eight months is this guy or however long they've known me.

Then they just know the writing's on the wall.

They got to deal with it.

But

the ones that challenge it, their attorneys are going to just challenge my credibility as a person and professionally as well.

That makes sense.

I want to back up the truck a little.

One of the first things you say in the book, actually, is that you can't eradicate dope.

And this is probably a silly question, but what do you mean by that?

Isn't that what we're trying to do out there is eradicate dope?

No.

If you have a reasonable view on how things go, then you would at least think that we're working toward getting better enforcement and less drugs that hit the street, less addiction, less issues like that.

But I don't even see it that way.

Unfortunately, I see that you have narcops working their asses off and guys going in undercover, guys going across the border and trying to deal with cartels and everything else so that we can keep the wheel spinning and keep it from getting worse.

So I think we're essentially putting people in harm's way for the benefit of

not seeing it get worse.

And I don't know if that's working.

I mean, I see fentanyl and stuff, and fentanyl deaths are down in the last 12 months, which is, I don't know.

Well, that kind of changed the game just because it's so lethal.

And you get surprised the people that are taking the drugs are ignorant to it or don't care or prefer it.

I mean, that the people in the street versus people like us who just look at it and be like, oh my gosh, this is going to be the worst thing if it's laced with fentanyl.

And then a user is like, oh, no, it's great.

The scariest thing about fentanyl is one, how lethal it is, like you said, but two, where it really freaks me out is I see people that I know that are like, hey, my friend's having a go-and-away party.

These are not people who normally do drugs, or it's like a bunch of lawyers or something like that.

And somebody just buys cocaine, but they get it from their cousin's cousin's friend instead of their usual guy and has fentanyl and they're dead.

And that's scary because certain people who use drugs recreationally like to think, look, man, I'm spending $500 on these drugs.

It's for a party.

I do this once a year.

We don't overdo it.

Those people are now dying from drug overdoses from fentanyl.

And the gross truth about it is people care more when it's like recreational, high-performing drug users than when it's somebody who has spiraled out of control for the last five years, going from a back back injury to taking heroin to then doing fentanyl in the street and has been homeless for three years.

It sucks.

And people can send me the nastiest emails they want, but it's true.

Society just cares about those people.

That's crazy.

That's a shame.

Those are the innocents.

Those dads aren't even really taking it on purpose.

That's a good point.

A lot of the drug users that I've known, because they were college wrestlers and did something weird to their back, started taking pills after a surgery.

Their pill prescription got cut off, but they were already hooked on this pain med, so they started buying it on the street.

And then, when their source ran out, they started doing heroin, which they didn't want to do.

They just wanted their doctor to keep prescribing them, but the doctor wouldn't because it's been five years or something.

And they have to act criminally in order to get what they need.

And then they're hooked on fentanyl and they're like, what the hell?

I was a division one wrestler.

Yeah.

How am I a junkie now?

Yeah.

That's the scariest part of this for a lot of people because it's easy to say this is someone else's problem.

But as somebody who does exercise every day, I'm like, I would take a pain pill if I slipped a disc.

Oh, wait, I could become a junkie in about three years through the exact same process.

And it's one of those things where once the consequences become possible for you, it's a much bigger problem now.

Yeah, we better pay attention to this.

It might affect me.

Yeah, that's everybody, though.

That makes me feel better.

Everybody lives in their own little tunnel.

And I guess they'll bitch about politics or whatever until there's some kind of benefit for them.

Then they'll pick that candidate, even if they're a complete idiot otherwise.

Yeah, I can't imagine what you're talking about right now.

Never mind.

I don't want to get into this.

So dealers, you say in the book, never do business from their house.

I would be a terrible drug dealer because it made sense to me, but I probably would have just invited people into my backyard to sell drugs.

I'm in the right business.

You are, yes.

But some of these guys had you in their house.

So what does that tell you when somebody's like, hey, come on over?

And you're like, oh, he actually lives here.

Yeah, that's a super show of trust, obviously, because usually, like I said, they don't invite you to the place where they rest their head.

There's too much to lose, even though essentially it's the one environmental aspect that they can control when you think of it from a strategic security standpoint, but it's also where they're most vulnerable because you see where they live, where you can catch them at any given time on any given day because they've got to sleep at some point.

And they just don't want to show people that.

Or they just do their business elsewhere.

So they're not showing off their kids or their girlfriends or whatever it is.

But yeah, for somebody.

In my case in particular, it was a big gesture of trust to say, come over to the house or whatever, because because typically they would just meet you somewhere or I'd be parked out in the driveway, hit them up, somebody else would come out and do some kind of proxy handoff type thing or whatever.

And so I had done so many of that in reverse that I think they just knew I was extra cautious and just had developed trust by then.

That's just one of those big signs to me, like, oh, man, this guy trusts me enough to come to his actual house.

It seems like a bad idea for them to put their guard down like that.

Is that a mistake on their part?

Or is it a business decision to say, I'm going going to show this guy that I trust him enough to bring him into my house and it might benefit our business relationship?

That's a good question.

I don't know if they were motivated by anything other than at that point they trusted me, so it was laziness.

LeConville says straight up convinced, that's what I was wondering.

Is it a considered decision?

Like, I'm going to have my closest contacts over.

You see, the godfather, they invite all the guys to the daughter's wedding.

And it's like, look, we're social.

We're friends.

You're close enough to my family.

It's my daughter's wedding.

It's a whole thing.

You're invited.

It seems like gangster version of that is, look, sit in my kitchen while my wife makes us some eggs and we'll do the deal there.

Now you're in the inner circle.

But it sounds like what you're saying is the guy was like,

I don't want to drive all the way downtown.

Just, it's fine.

Come to my house.

Yeah.

And that's a presumption on my part.

They still played the movie role.

I'd walk in, they'd close the burglar bar cage and lock it and shut the door.

And then he'd sit back on his couch with a couple 45s pointed out like it's some kind of, okay, we'll start rolling on this.

But I just attribute it to that.

It still was a leap of faith, though, on their part, because they said in practice, even with people that were fellow gang members, they didn't do as much of that.

I would say I was the only non-gang member that I knew of that was actually in somebody's house wheeling and dealing at that point.

Yeah.

Tell me how the Crips do business because it actually sounds quite a bit like a real business where they open up a test market, they run their guys in there, and then suddenly they go, oh, this is a serious moneymaker.

We got to get an experienced branch manager to go run these few blocks.

Sounds kind of like that.

It sort of is.

Yeah.

It's sophisticated enough to where you think that they have an appreciable talent to actually run a business, but at the same time, they're street thugs.

So there's, these are 25 to 29 year olds trying to do a thing, but they're still street thugs.

So in terms of their common sense is a little bit limited because their goals are to support the gangs.

They're still so selfish that they're infighting amongst different sets within the same gang and things like that.

If they were really that prolific at running a business, then you wouldn't have different sets within the Crip organization.

You'd have Crips as a whole.

They could conquer quite a bit, but they're so fragmented.

You just take on one aspect of it and take those down.

You have a bunch of people there, then you take other ones down and you can actually get sometimes other sets of Crips to help you infiltrate different sets for the sake of territorial command or whatever.

Yeah, that's interesting because, of course, from the outside, we think, oh, there's Crips and there's Bloods.

The Crips are all in the same team.

The Bloods are all on the same team.

it's like pretty serious business.

But it sounds like almost from block to block, it's like, those guys don't get along with those other guys.

And those guys don't get along with those other guys.

And these guys are doing business with the Bloods, but those guys won't do business with the other Crips.

And it's like, well, what the hell's the point then?

Why wear the blue?

Why have the colors?

Why have the jersey?

Why have it doesn't mean anything?

You're still shooting each other.

Yeah.

And the best thing to compare to is, again, that common enemy.

concept is that when there is a threat from bloods or law enforcement, they will collaborate a lot more because then, you know, hey, this is some kind of threat and blah, blah, blah.

And they'll get together and do more in that aspect.

But yeah, in terms of just doing the business, they would set up houses like they'd have somebody's got a real estate license and he would set up all these rentals and then put some chicks in there that have an ID and they would sit in there and then the dealers would send their crews in and they'd have these mid-level guys running the house.

Somebody would make a drop under the engine compartment, the hood of the car that's in the backyard, and then they'd sell that throughout the day.

They'd They'd break it up and sell it.

They've got somebody that cooks it in a separate place.

So they're making all these drops at these different houses and they put all these little worker bees to go in there and distribute it throughout the day.

So even if you hit a house, typical narcotics operations or trying to even get the gangs through narcotics, which I was doing, you'd knock a house down.

You can try to get some intel, but you're still getting low-level people.

And then you've got somebody that actually is the renter in the home that isn't associated with the people.

So the renter is shielded there in terms of prosecution and then you've got dudes that certainly don't live there so finding mail and if they have drugs in there but they're not in actual possession it makes it a real difficult case to make each time it was just a pain in the ass for me i was hitting houses to try to hit the same people three and four times so that i could then call the district attorney's office and say all right this case that you have on so-and-so i know that you're going to plead it out because this is how you do it but There's three other ones and I think they're attached to some different prosecutors in the same office.

And maybe you could create a case out of of all these and actually give these people some time.

I see.

Yeah, it's probably harder to prove you didn't know what was going on when there's three separate cases on your property with different people that you have known associations with.

Okay.

We can go and prove this or you can stay in jail for six months because we're going to find out that you did this.

But yeah, if it's just one guy did a drug deal in your driveway.

But you find him, he swears he doesn't live there and I don't have anything to do with this.

And then three other times law enforcement finds you there three other dates with doping and guns in proximity, then circumstantially you have something you know starts to look bad at some point when it keeps happening.

Wow, you have the worst luck, man.

You keep getting arrested with drugs and guns near you all the time.

They're never yours.

That are never yours.

Insane.

You should probably keep better company.

You said the key skills are count and kill.

This is probably a dumb question, but I don't care.

Is every gang member violent?

Because it seems like they have to be, but it also seems like if you want to run a business, shouldn't you find smart people to do it?

I don't know.

Well, the tag tag on that question is profound, of course, but I think no is the answer, but it depends on to what extent.

If you work for a company that essentially makes its hay on the back end bullying people into doing business and it's some kind of illegal whatever, and you work for that company knowing that that goes on, there's some culpability that goes on.

But obviously, there are extremes in how people act in terms of who's the most violent, who's just a kind of a connector.

There's always those guys that I would run into that just know all these fools, but aren't really at a level to where they can just make a perfect introduction.

In terms of enforcement, a lot of those guys that are the most violent end up either knocked out in prison or running the show.

If they're smart, Mike Kingpin was involved in several murders, but was out and had gotten smart and was running stuff to where this dude's never got his hands on anything.

So he's running from a ghost.

Everybody knows who he is, but he's not driving to houses and delivering stuff.

He's dealing with the Mexican Connect pulling in 250K a week, moving product in this one part of town.

It's just pretty unbelievable.

Is that his operating capital or is that his profit, 250K a week?

That was his profit.

Wow.

So these guys are making a million dollars in profit.

How much do you think these kingpins are personally taking in?

That's a great question because when you talk about how organized the business is, these guys at the top got really smart.

There's a a reason why you're involved in several murders and you're a strong arm and you're smart enough to be a leader, but you're not driving a freaking Porsche around with 21-inch wheels and whatever, drawing attention to yourself.

Sure.

So these guys are living in modest houses, driving okay cars and just doing their thing.

And the lower on the totem pole you get, the more you see the money being squandered.

We had an informant in one of my cases where we ended up paying him like 50K for all of his help.

He helped us for several months doing this one case and took him two months to spend the 50K.

And this is a guy that lives in a rental in the hood.

And it was just a shame.

He bought two cars that ended up getting loaned out and stolen.

And then he bought a kilo.

And he's, I was like, dude, when you get to that point, you're like, yes, there's a level of sophistication, but ultimately they're not applying themselves to really learn how to run a true business.

They just outpower each other along every part of the path and then don't really have that financial responsibility unless you're one of those kingpins.

Yeah, it seems like these kingpin guys are, it's almost like they're smart enough or maybe they're just violent enough.

Shouldn't they be making enough money and going, all right, if I can't buy expensive things because it puts me on the radar too much, I got to stash this money and eventually I can retire.

I mean, is there any success story of anybody who's just like worked really hard, made a bunch of money, and then was like, I'm going to go live in the suburbs of Atlanta in a really nice house and pretend I made it all from this car wash.

There has to be.

Come on, man.

Yeah, there has to be.

And I was, I swore because of the amount of money that was coming in, I swore that when my kingpin went down, that money was somewhere.

We were raiding little storage places that we found in associates' names, everything that was completely empty, looked cleaned out.

And all of a sudden, his wife is starting to deal with these same people at the same level and picking up where he left off.

I think I'm thinking, man, she's not equipped to do this.

No.

And within a couple of months of the Roundup, because they hadn't even been transferred or completely tried and sent to their long-term federal facility, she got whacked.

And so I'm thinking, okay, now the money's really somewhere because at one point you thought, well, he's handing her the reins and she's going to continue this business, then there's still active money somewhere.

But when she's gone.

That's sitting somewhere.

It's not like she handed it off to somebody because she isn't expected to die that night.

So I think there still might be some money somewhere, but as you know, too, it's difficult.

You go do 30 years in Fed and then get out and all of a sudden dig up some kind of treasure and then pretend you're going to live an honest live and start with that kind of money.

That's also really a sophisticated process.

You've got to launder it somehow, but then also not have it be in your name so that when you get out of prison, you can access it and it doesn't get seized.

Yeah, that's a sophisticated move.

And again, at every level, you're talking about something else.

And again, this was a big city gang that were trying to infiltrate.

So that was their primary method of, I don't have to have a job because I'm part of the market here.

But it wasn't like some kind of ingenious thing where they're just doing the dope game and somebody at the top is just doing their thing and then stepping out and bugging, taking their winnings and moving to another country or something.

It just didn't work like that because they were all homies still.

All right, time for a little crack break.

We'll be right back.

Step into the world of power, loyalty, and luck.

I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.

With family, cannolis and spins mean everything.

Now, you wanna get mixed up in the family business?

Introducing the Godfather at champaccasino.com.

Test your luck in the shadowy world of the godfather slots.

Someday, I will call upon you to do a service for me.

Play the Godfather now at champaccasino.com.

Welcome to the family.

No purchase necessary.

VGW Group void where prohibited by law.

21 plus terms and conditions apply.

Support for this podcast comes from Progressive, America's number one motorcycle insurer.

Did you know riders who switch and save with Progressive save nearly $180 per year?

That's a whole new pair of riding gloves.

And more.

Quote today.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.

National average 12-month savings of $178 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between October 2022 and September 2023.

Potential savings will vary.

Moms and dads, do you wish you could know where your kids' shoes are at all times?

Now you can with Skecher's newest Apple AirTag compatible sneakers.

Find My Skechers.

There's a clever hidden AirTag compartment under the shoe's insole.

It's sleek, secure, and your child can't feel or see it.

Then you can check where your kids' shoes are on the Find My app.

Plus, they're available for boys and girls.

Get Find My Skechers at skechers.com, a Skecher store near you, or wherever kids' shoes are sold.

Apple AirTags sold separately.

If you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing folks for the show, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust.

I actually taught this six-minute networking stuff and I'm about to pitch to you.

Two three-letter agencies that use it in their undercover work to generate connections, maintain connections.

I'm teaching you how to do the same thing for free over at sixminutenetworking.com.

This is an easy course.

You can binge the whole thing.

It takes a few minutes a day, and many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to this course.

So come on and join us.

You'll be in smart company where you belong.

Again, the course is totally free over at sixminutenetworking.com.

Now, back to Tegan Broadwater.

I think a lot of people are probably wondering how a white dude infiltrates the crips.

How does that happen?

Because at first, when I heard about your story, I was like, Tegan Broadwater, not a typical name for a black dude, but what do I know?

That sounds kind of Nordic, suspiciously.

A little bit, but then, I don't know.

What do I know?

And then I talked to you on the phone and I was like, I'm suspecting that this person might actually be Caucasian.

And then you said, yeah, not a lot of people expected a white dude to infiltrate the cribs.

And I was like, okay, okay, there's a story here.

Yeah, of course.

And that's really the beauty of Undercover because I think the studying that I did and the cases that I read about and the people that I talked to in terms of how they managed to succeed in cases and fail in cases, everybody kept saying you've got to modify your behavior and try to fit into this group and that group.

And it was difficult for me to even get into the narcotics unit or to do some of that stuff because I'm just a big white stiff.

And we have these poor minority neighborhoods that are having all these crime issues and we need somebody that can fit into the profile or whatever.

And I'm like, man, that's just not how it works.

So try talking with a New Jersey accent and then they'll trust you.

I mean, it seems like it's too tall of an order.

Everyone in the crypts and bloods, do you have to be African-American or is it?

They've made some exceptions.

I don't know if it's widely accepted, but again, they have so many sects throughout a lot of those things that you'll find some Hispanic folks.

Occasionally you find some white folks, but I would say 95, 96% African-American.

But if I showed up, fat, wearing gold and tats all over my face and some missing teeth and maybe some teardrops, teardrops.

I probably could have tried to get an association, but that wasn't my really my goal anyway.

I almost got more information fitting in by standing out because I thought, I'm not just white.

You're glowing.

I'm white.

Yeah.

So I just thought, man.

Your refrigerator light gives you a sunburn.

I came in as a guy from South Texas in the Austin area where my connection had been busted by the feds and I was moving into a new area just because to get away from the heat, but keep my game going so that it appeared as though I was a big-time player coming into a new town.

So making these little inquiries were reasonable, but also

wasn't making buys from the small-time guys.

So the easiest way for me to start was to go down onto the blocks and take somebody with me that did fit a little bit more over the profile and say, I'm new to town, but I'm not here to play.

This isn't my game.

I do powder cocaine.

I don't do any hard stuff or whatever, but I'm just hooking my boy up over here.

He's trying to get his game going.

And I would make it all about him.

They'd ask me a bunch of questions.

I'm not going to ask you questions.

You don't have to ask me.

This is all about him.

You can ask him the questions that you want.

And I'd pull in and he would make an order for some crack cocaine.

And then they would come over and bring it to him.

And then I would hand him the money and we'd make that transaction that way.

I'm pretending like I'm trying to be the one that's being extra cautious.

I see.

I'm going to fight your cautiousness with my cautiousness saying, look.

Yeah, I'm actually not.

ready to do this because my game is way above your head.

So are you kind of pretending you're bankrolling this young dude?

It's almost like poker, right?

So, you get a poker player who's pretty good, but he's 25, and then you get some guy like some tech bro who goes, I'm not that good at poker, but I do have $500,000 and you can use it.

And then we split the winnings or however that works.

That's almost like what you're doing with drugs.

And the person that you're bringing around, is this somebody that's just been arrested before, and that's why they're working with you, or is it another undercover?

Yeah, in this case, it's exactly what it was.

It was somebody that was trying to work a case off.

Those are really hit and miss, but this was a perfect way for me to get in because I could be seen at least doing something where everything went without a hitch.

And I was also being uber cautious because normally in the blocks that we're talking about, where they called the fishbowl, and those little six-square block area, I mean, you didn't have any white people coming down there to do any business.

It was just, it was a gang haven, and the only other people in there that weren't gang-affiliated were just trying to make it, but had to live with all this violence in a prostitute hotel at the end of one of the entrances, one way in, one way out.

So, I just thought, everyone thought it was presumptuous anyway, that I even had the plan.

My boss laughed.

My informant laughed.

We're sipping whiskey at each.

Really?

He just laughed his ass off.

Sound a good sign.

You know, the city council and the chief of police and the mayor, it all said, all right, this is a nuisance.

This area is a big problem.

Sure.

And we need to do something about it.

And so they started doing all the typical things, jump outs and writing warrants and hitting

what's a jump out.

Driving an unmarked van into the thing and all of a sudden, you know, 10 cops bail out and just try to grab everybody that's running and that doesn't sound super effective but what do i know you'd be surprised and when you're talking low levels you can get somebody that's got something in their pocket that's running and you end up finding them they'll give up something oh i see what you mean yeah this is like the giuliani stop and frisk

yeah you pull up and then you just hop out of the van when everybody starts running you're saying stop because you know that that's an active drug-selling area and then people are running so you have a reason to at least stop them and ask questions at that point anyway none none of that stuff was working because there was too much information back in there to where there was too much heat.

Why do they call it the fishbowl?

Law enforcement deemed it the fishbowl because every time you went in, we went in too deep if you're answering calls down there or whatever, because it was just a super violent area in a generally violent part of town.

It was just a really focused part of the town.

Where is this literally in the United States?

It is in southeast.

Dallas, Fort Worth area.

I see.

Okay.

Every city has a similar area.

Fort Worth is what, the 10th largest city in the U.S.

And everything is predicated upon the way that the practices are handed down when they started here in LA.

And once you get through the prison systems, then that's where you accumulate more intel and more people that you can put out on the streets.

And you can take this set and now start a Texas chapter essentially and do that kind of thing.

I see.

Wow, it all originated here in Los Angeles.

I guess it's not a huge surprise.

No, of course not.

Yeah.

Capital, right?

So there's regular families living in this area, which is, of course, there are because it's a neighborhood.

But who lives there?

The kids can't walk to school, I assume, in a place like this.

No, at some point, people are like so off-put by gang violence.

Like, let them go kill each other.

That's fine if there's no collateral damage.

The fact is, you have people that have been living there for generations, and they're old and poor and just trying to make it.

And they can't just up and move.

So it's not as simple as that.

And then you've got these kids that are leaving the home and living six deep with an aunt next door.

And all of a sudden, they get a quick way to make a buck and then they turn into something.

But by the time they're in their mid-20s, they'd be part of the enterprise.

And it's just bringing this nuisance and danger around all these other people.

They're trying to raise kids and do whatever they can.

And that's really the motivation anyway in this whole thing.

I swear I swore to my wife, this is going to take me three months, I think, to get through it.

I already had my target list.

Thought I could get this knocked out in three months and at least make some good cases and get these people out of that part of the neighborhood and clean it up and see if they'll sell the houses off and then leave the people that are just trying to survive.

Sure.

I think it's the misconception about any poor part of town is where the crime is very high.

It's still a very small percentage of people who are committing the crime.

That's sad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cause like you said, there's a lot of people who have young kids and then there's old folks who can't move and they're just stuck with all these guys who are 25 years old shooting each other.

Yeah.

And the bullets going through your living room window while you're eating dinner.

It's ridiculous.

Yeah, to say the least.

And these guys are so violent.

I mean, you mentioned in the book, people are getting executed because somebody sticks a rifle up their ass and fires.

It's just like super sociopathic sounding.

Yeah, that was one of the guys that was a part of the Crips, but again, was robbing other Crips.

He was just going against the whole code.

So he eventually robbed one of the upper echelon guys' parents

and tried to get them to search in the attic.

One of the dads in a wheelchair and everything.

It was a really pathetic scenario.

Jeez.

Just super, super brazen about the way he went about things.

And they didn't just kill him.

Oh, so he deserved it.

I guess so.

Never mind, man.

I'm fine with it.

I guess so.

Yeah, okay.

Essentially, it was a gang beef.

But you do see somebody that's out on the street, and I would get a lot of it because they're just testing me too.

They just think I was naive in the beginning until they thought that I was some kind of big timer.

They'd say, man, I got this kilo, 11K, and get it.

And I'm thinking, who'd you steal that from?

Yeah, because is it too cheap?

Is that what that is?

Yeah.

That's somebody that steals your car and then tries to resell it at a tenth of the value just to unload it.

No, thanks.

You said by the time you were doing undercover work or you wanted to do undercover work and infiltrate the crypts, you had executed 500 warrants.

I'm going to assume that's a lot because it sounds like a lot.

That was part of my motivation to get into the narcotics unit because, again, I'd been turned down three times.

I didn't get until the fourth time.

My interviews went great.

I knew all the laws.

And so all I could do in order to really get it with the issues that they had and they were looking for a profile is to just outperform and show that I can accomplish this stuff anyway.

So then I show up and I say, I have six informants on the books.

I've done this many buys, you know, I've done this many warrants, you know, so I would do these small time warrants.

I got a team that's SWAT certified and we'd go do our patrol stuff.

And then after patrol, I would show them where I'd made the buys during their shift.

And then we'd go hit a house and then tear everything and find all the evidence and whatever.

And they were just small time dope houses that NARCs didn't want to hit because they were looking for bigger stuff.

But it was a good experience for me because, again, we're using hand-be-down SWAT stuff.

It's all expired.

If you get shot, this might just disintegrate.

So try not to take a shot.

What expires?

Obviously, we didn't take it too seriously.

That's really cool.

Yeah, we didn't read the labels.

Yeah, it was obviously not the steel plates, but apparently they replaced all their stuff.

And then we took these old used-up helmets and whatever.

What's this stain on my Kevin?

Don't worry about it.

This old van.

Sometimes the van would break down halfway on your way to the location, this piece of junk vans.

We didn't have much of a budget to work with, but again, I was just efficient at making either covered buys, using an informant, or learning how to do a little bit more undercover on a small scale, doing little small deals, and then getting into those houses later to build evidence.

But just the fact that you can drive a van up and get in a stick and execute a dynamic search warrant, kick the door down and do it was a great experience.

And that was.

Part of the inspiration, too.

I'm just imagining you have a bunch of guys laid out on the front lawn with the handcuffs on and the guys like, hey, the van won't start again.

It's like, call a couple Uber XLs.

you gotta get these guys booked who's got a minivan at home take the car seats out bring it over here way more embarrassing oh man like why are there so many cheerios on the floor of this cop car don't worry about it shut up that's practically what it was seriously bad i don't know where they even got it from but they were like here y'all can use this because we were doing a good job hitting these places on a regular basis and the fact I would go in and make buys on Monday, write the warrant, hit the place on Tuesday, do the catch up stuff and file the paperwork for my next one on Wednesday Wednesday and hit another house on Thursday.

And to the point where the hood came to me and my informants were like, hey, they call it Task Force Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I'm like, I'm like, oh, really?

Am I that predictable?

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

That's when we were doing just the small time stuff, but I was just trying to hit as many places as I could.

Again, just to, when I go in for my interview, I can say, okay, I've got a couple hundred warrants I've done.

And this is the case.

This is what we've gleaned from those cases.

These are my informants.

I've learned how to work them.

And I'm not working in a bright white neighborhood just trying to bust TCU kids.

I just showed that you don't have to fit a profile necessarily to TCU's college kids.

Yeah.

I would imagine busting a college kid is like the rookie job.

Like, all right, find some guy who sells weed and also delivers sandwiches.

See if you can actually make an arrest.

Yeah.

As long as you find ketamine in the sandwich, maybe that'd be a good thing.

Yeah, my buddy, who I grew up with, he used to deliver sandwiches and he would also sell.

marijuana.

So he was like a good gig for him because he's driving around all day and he's got sandwiches in the car.

And it's not like really suspicious if he's going walking around buildings because he's the Jimmy Johns guy for God's sakes

yeah plausible deniability so sometimes people would order sandwiches and he'd be like he'd show up and they'd be like all right mark we want an eighth and thank you you got my hunters club you know and he's like of course he's probably like a lawyer now actually a good guy but he told me he got caught once and the way that he got caught was he had stopped selling weed because he didn't want to run into any trouble and he was graduating he didn't really need need the money anymore.

He's going to get a real job.

That was the plan all along.

It is for a lot of college kids who sell weed.

Sure.

And somebody was like, I really need it.

I really need it.

I really need it.

You're the only guy I know.

I really need it.

And just kept pestering him.

And he was like, fine, I can get you an eighth of good stuff.

Just tell me where to drop it off.

And that guy, he was like rolling over on him.

And basically, he was a snitch because he had gotten caught doing something else.

I can't remember what it is.

And so he was like, the rule is if you're in the game, you're in the game because then you're being careful.

And he's like, because he thought about it a lot when he was doing his probation.

The reason I got caught was I didn't take any of my usual precautions at all with transportation, vetting, making sure this whole thing seemed legit.

And he's like, 2020 hindsight, the whole thing stunk to high hell.

I just didn't pay attention because he was like done with it and let his guard down fully.

And so he's like, when I was actively doing this, I never would have fallen for this particular trick.

I don't remember all the circumstances.

I thought that was kind of interesting because I suppose it makes sense.

Some of the guys that you busted, like the guy who had you over to his house, if he was really thinking, he probably wouldn't have had you over to his house.

He would have been like, no, I have these rules for a reason.

They're there for a reason.

That's a reason.

It's a rule.

Maybe I don't want the cop in the kitchen.

Oh, Teagan's not a cop.

Oh, the one time I make an exception.

Yeah.

It's the guy.

And those are interesting because those are a little bit sniffing entrapment.

When you really are like, nah, I'm completely retired.

And you're like, come on, man, just one more time.

Just do it.

I know you're not doing it anymore.

I mean, that's a little bit of a different situation.

And it wasn't a cop, it was a snitch anyway.

But I can't remember exactly, but I think it was a snitch.

I think it was just like, okay, well, you're going to be on probation.

He didn't try to fight it.

This isn't trapment.

It was like an eighth of marijuana, for God's sake.

This is such a small amount of marijuana.

I think a prosecutor would have gone, why am I freaking looking at this?

Even in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it's what are we doing here?

But that was a while ago, too.

The 90s, yeah.

Yeah.

And a lot of people don't recognize how badly marijuana was looked upon back in the 90s.

And you go back to the 60s, and there's people doing 20-year stints for a half a pound of marijuana.

I mean, obviously the culture has shifted.

Even in places like Texas and Florida, where they'll be the last to get on board, they still don't really enforce a lot of stuff because they just don't play unless you're walking around with weight, obviously, but somebody like that.

And interestingly, the way you describe the college kid is a lot of how these, whether they be gangbangers or just drug dealers in this poor neighborhood, fall into the same situation because they'll say, hey, man, you know, I'm 19 years old.

i'm just trying to make it i need to get through this but they can't afford a college they're just trying to save up to do this but what's readily available is crack and they can make even even more and it makes you wonder well if crack were available in some of the ritzy more places you could do weed and make a little bit but if you decided you want to do crack also like there's 200 people around here that would totally buy it from you would you do that for you know risk the felony knowing that there were plenty of people on your neighborhood blocks that would feed you that money yeah it makes it an interesting thing for an immature kid who just.

It's a thought experiment, man.

Look, back in the 90s, cocaine was bad, but there were still kids who were from New York and stuff who were like, it's not that bad.

My parents do it, you know, whatever.

And so you'd go to these parties with these New York kids.

This is Ann Arbor, Michigan.

And they would have cocaine.

And I was like, I don't want to be anywhere near this stuff.

And then when I went to move to New York after college, I was like, oh, they're not kidding.

This stuff is just like everywhere.

And there's a lot of casual users.

Even in the 90s.

When was this?

This is like like 2000 2001 by the time i graduated wow that's crazy and new york had a lot of casual users i worked on wall street so guys i'd be like i am so tired i gotta go buy a red bill and they're like that ain't shit try this and i'm like you're a fifth-year associate at a firm why do you have this in your desk and he's like well try it and then you'll know why i have it in my desk because at 11 p.m on a sunday when you've been working for seven days it beats red bill

yeah you want to finish this brief or not pal and i'm like okay so in ann arbor there were kids that were doing it and i remember my friend Jason was like, I got this cocaine.

And I was like, oh, I don't want any part of this.

And I was like, where did you get this?

And he goes, Larry.

And I go, we only know one guy named Larry.

So which Larry?

And he's like, Larry.

And I'm like, the physics major?

The guy who's got like a PhD thing going at Caltech after this?

And he's like, yeah.

And I couldn't believe it because it wasn't like.

junkies who were rolled up in a gutter who are screwing up their lives.

It was like the guy who's in medical school is also the cocaine dealer.

Man, that's so whack, though, to me.

He's really putting his entire future at risk.

Dumbass kid stuff where the consequences are just illusory and you can't quite wrap your mind around it.

But yeah, it was exactly that.

And he ends up being a felon, even if you get out, you're still screwed.

You can't go back and try it again.

I mean, you're done.

It's probably really hard to get a job as a tenured professor if you have a cocaine felony on your record.

Even if it was 30 years ago.

I mean, it's pretty amazing how punishing those felonies can be.

Yeah, that's terrifying because a lot of these guys were perfectly nice, normal guys.

They just like to dabble in a little bit of the white powder.

And I remember being like terrified of the stuff because I grew up in the 80s and 90s where it's like, this is your brain on drugs.

Any questions?

And it's like, oh, I don't want that to happen to me.

Yeah, I have plenty of questions.

Yeah, I have a lot of questions, but I don't want this guy to answer them because he's freaking me out with his frying pan.

All right, now it's time for me to sling some dope deals on the fine products and services that support this show.

We'll be right back.

If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors.

They make this show possible.

All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

If you can't find a code, you're not sure if the code exists, definitely email us, jordan at jordanharbinger.com.

I am happy to surface codes for you.

It is that important that you support those who support the show.

Now for the rest of part one with Tegan Broadwater.

I understand you think a lot of the advice given to undercovers is nonsense.

I touched on this at the top of the show.

One of the tips is make your car dirty, get an earring, what was it?

Talk with an accent.

And I'm thinking, this can't be real.

Is this really what people are learning?

You said you had no training.

So I don't know.

What's worse, that training or no training?

For me, I honestly just, what I've learned from the people who are really successful in real long-term undercover work, which is different than going to buy something and then make it a buy bust.

are that you keep a personality type that is really close to your own.

And I think it was just proven of the fact that when I was trying to get in the the narcotics unit and I was figuring out how to make these buys and figuring out how to convince people to do what it was, it was just all about leveraging my own personalities.

Instead of trying to memorize 50 different things, and then when they start asking you these 20 questions, you're messing them up because you're trying to remember who you're supposed to be and all this kind of stuff.

It makes it worse.

Yeah.

In an exigent circumstance, I don't want to have to think of A through Z.

Yeah, you want to grow in under stress.

So I want to know that these things are high and tight and I just can worry about A through C and make some strategic choices at that point.

And then, so I just give myself less to think about because it's stressful.

Even in a successful deal or a successful day hangout, it's still stress.

If I'm an undercover, I change my name, but I'm still from a suburb of Detroit.

I still moved to California.

I still did a little bit of time when I lived in New York.

Maybe I wasn't a lawyer in New York, but maybe I was, I don't know, working at a bar that I hung out at a lot in New York that's no longer open, something like that.

That way, if I have to recall it, or I say, yeah, when I lived in New York, and the guy's like, wait, I thought you said you lived in California.

This doesn't make sense.

Oh, no, I lived in New York before.

Yeah.

And I don't have to change my story.

It's actually my story.

I just with a little 15% bullshit.

And that's when it would even come into play.

Because what I found before I got into it, I had everything set up.

My backstory's kind of set.

I've got these IDs.

And I just kept thinking, I don't know when I'm going to use an ID.

Anyway, these people asked to see my ID.

I'm going to be like, you freaking kidding me?

You want to see my ID?

Let me see your...

Before I sell you this quila of uncut cocaine, I need to see some identification to make sure you're a real ID.

It's interesting because because obviously all that stuff gets handled and there's been scenarios where people have been shaken down and they're in a place where they can't leave and they've got to recite stuff and it's just kind of the way you're stuck so it's necessary but in general if you're playing that game a lot of these guys amongst themselves i don't really know what this dude's full name is i know he's this and i've known him since first grade but i really don't know his whole name his name is jackbox but i don't know what if his real name is john all right i never knew that yeah it's amazing so so for them to start asking that's another way that I got in a lot easier is when they started giving me the 20 questions, I would immediately just resort to, man, I don't mind answering a little bit, but we're not going here.

I'm a professional and you obviously haven't done this enough to understand how this works.

And it doesn't work by me giving you a bunch of information.

You don't ask me anything.

If you want to do business, cool.

If you don't want a business, also cool, because I got other places that I can go do business.

I could see the ID thing coming in a little bit like you deliver the information in a way where the person thinks they're clever for getting it.

Like maybe you need to chop a little bit off of a brick.

So you take out your ID and he notices it has your fake name on it.

And then it's like, oh, his name is Tegan Narrowwater.

I love it.

Huh.

I love it.

Is that a realistic?

Yeah, it sounds like a really creative kind of way to just do something subtly to just bolster your own idea.

You leave it on the table when you look at it and then you take it, okay, and then you pick your ID up.

And of course, he's eyeballing it, but you just pretend you don't notice that.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing I feel like.

Yeah, I like thinking through this stuff.

It's fun.

Yeah.

The part that wouldn't be fun for me is wondering if I'm going to get shot.

That's the part that doesn't sound as I know.

I compare it to like jumping out of a plane with a parachute and you're not sure how to work it, but you just figure it out.

Once you're out of the plane, you got to figure it out.

Once I got into the case, a lot of those things that I ran into, I couldn't anticipate, but I knew that a lot of the typical things might happen.

Somebody's going to brandish a gun.

Somebody's going to pull a gun on me or whatever, try to search me.

They're going to ask to do dope.

All those things, I would run through as much of it as I could and try to figure out how can I manage to maneuver through those situations ahead of time.

Yeah.

So that, again, I don't get caught flat-footed and stutter over myself trying to think of what I'm supposed to say because I've thought through a lot of those scenarios.

There's a point at which some guy says, like, brandishes a gun.

He says, you want some of this?

And you're just like, whatever, fool, and roll your eyes.

What are you actually thinking in that moment?

Because I would not be thinking, whatever, fool, idiot.

You know, I'd be like, oh, my God.

This guy's threatening me with a weapon.

Yeah, well, of course you are.

And if you're talking about the guy walking out in front of the car,

like, how do you train yourself to do that without worrying like, oh, he might actually shoot me when I'm like, whatever, sucker.

That's why I wonder if a lot of people could do a lot of this stuff.

You have to stay cool out staying cool.

But of course, in your mind, you're running through scenarios because I'm thinking, I'm basically sitting on my piece because it's out of a holster, but sitting under my thigh.

But obviously, if he's already brandishing something, I'm not going to get it in time.

So I've got to start thinking strategically about how I'm going to do stuff.

But typically, you just want to engage in some kind of conversation and figure out what he wants.

Because Because again, he's just talking a bunch of bullshit at this point.

Anyways, you're like, again, I'm supposed to be coming in as somebody bigger and better than these guys are used to because I'm new, but man, I've been through this game before and you guys are the novices.

So I'm just playing it off like that.

But yes, my brain is running through 800 things because again, I'm stuck there and thinking, okay, well, I'm half trapped in this thing.

But if I can talk to him, maneuver myself out of the card where we can be mono-y, mano, that's great.

But then if that's the case and and I end up having a piece prepared and he's got eight other dudes that are also standing here, that's also not advantageous to be out of the car.

Do you think I'm just going to run over this dude?

That's where some of your training does come in.

Those scenarios where you've run where people are coming up and doing these fake deals at the window and telling you to try to figure out what you're going to do and you try to shoot somebody and you get wax bullets peltering all over the back of your neck, which don't feel good.

Oh, wow.

That's a real thing.

Wax bullets.

I never thought about that.

Oh, dude.

They'll leave good old whelps, too.

Yeah.

You can can wear protective equipment.

They get through the little crevices and do some paintball where you're like, I thought I was wearing a protective neck gaiter.

Like, no, man, not from five feet away when the guy hits it five times in a row.

Yeah.

There was something in the book that I didn't fully understand.

So you go and buy drugs, and the guy I think is trying to sell you crack, and you're like, no, I don't want to buy crack.

My guess was that you wanted to find powdered cocaine because that's the expensive ingredient in crack.

It's essentially cocaine before it's cooked down into crack.

And essentially, crack is like a purified high and a really fast high.

And that's what went into the poor neighborhoods through the 80s when it was created.

But my objective in that instance was to try to move beyond the crack because what I wanted were the suppliers.

So I want when you come in with bricks of cocaine, you're not buying bricks of crack.

You're creating the crack from those bricks.

So it's like baking powder and it's like crap you can buy at the grocery store.

Yeah, so they either step on it or make it pure however they're going to break it down but my objective at that point was to move past them because you're dealing with crack by the time somebody's bought it they've already sent it to a house to cook they've broken it into 100 pieces and now you're giving it to me i'm not interested in that so by not being interested first of all culturally it made sense because you know i don't really have a game where people are looking for hard is what they would call it at the time Hard as crack or hard as cocaine?

Hard as crack.

And the powder was the cocaine powder.

And then my objective again was, you need to introduce me to the guy you get

ultimately.

Because if you're getting it after it's been cooked, this guy's an underling from the cook who's an underling from the guy who gets the cocaine.

You're skipping, whatever, three levels by refusing to deal with crack, which is gross anyways.

But like you said, culturally, it's sort of, you're not a druggie, you're not a user because you don't want crack.

You want cocaine.

It's, oh, so he's going to cook it or he uses cocaine or his people that he sells to use cocaine.

So they have more money because crack is just cheaper cocaine basically at that point.

Yeah, well, it all breaks down into you turn $100 into a million dollars pretty quick when you break it down into all those pieces, like you would anything else.

You sell a car part by part, it's a lot of work, but once you sell it part by part, it's worth a lot more than just buying the car in the first place.

So it's same concept.

But my objective, again, it was difficult in a drug case.

It would be something that I could try to just work straight up that chain.

But the problem was for me that even when I had somebody that was helping me get what I needed, I still had to figure out a way around that to go to somebody else because this wasn't a drug case.

It was a gang case.

So I'm thinking, okay, I've got all these gang members that are all connected and affiliated and they're doing this business.

This guy's kind of doing me righteous.

He's getting powder, but I still need to move on to somebody.

So I'm trying to find excuses to say, man, I can't trust you anymore and move on to somebody else who he's affiliated with and still not have somebody get totally pissed off because I'm trying to create a case where I'm locked in in a bunch of gang members, not necessarily just, oh, I finally got the dope I want and we can close the door now.

Do some of these folks think that if you ask a cop if they're a cop, they have to answer truthfully?

This is like a Hollywood movie thing, right?

I remember in the movie Blow, Pee Wee Herman, whatever his real name is, says, are you a cop?

You have to say yes if you are.

If not, it's entrapment.

And it's a joke because that's not true, right?

That's not true.

Yeah.

Of course it's not.

So do you benefit from Hollywood movies miseducating people?

I both benefit and lose some traction.

And the benefit was things like that, because that was still the word on the street.

They would ask you, I would ask them.

I would leverage that same thing.

Hey, are you a cop?

You know, you got to tell me.

I would say the same thing to people that I was meeting because I had to pretend to be very suspicious too, because I'm supposed to be the guy.

Contrary to that, though, at the period of time in which I was doing this was the 2005 through 2008 in this particular case,

there wasn't super sophisticated equipment.

There was new equipment coming out, but it wasn't super reliable.

And so, when it comes to the wires you wear, they tape it to your chest in the movies and all this kind of stuff.

Yeah, put on a t-shirt.

That's what it was.

That sucks.

Yeah, it totally sucks because a tape recorder on your chest.

Can you please do better than this?

Oh, that's scary.

So, I never wore a wire for that reason because I thought that's the most obvious freaking thing ever.

All you have to do is even just messing around, just kind of shove me and be goofing around and figure out what's going on here.

Oh, hold on a second.

Yeah, that's terrifying.

I tried all kinds of other things.

They had some things that were on keychains, and I used my phone at the time.

The phone was just had a limited amount of space.

In 60 seconds, dude.

And yeah, I was literally recording one deal in the back of a car, and it went off like some kind of alarm, like it had run out of space on a recorder.

And I had to figure out like.

The hell's going on with this?

Damn, Nokia.

Yeah, I can't figure this out.

I'm thinking, just forget it.

I'm not recording this.

Oh, God.

The modern equivalent would be an app on your phone that says police recorder.

Basically.

It totally repeats when it's not as police recorder.

Time is up.

Oh, what is that?

That's just my kid sending me a text message.

It's just so sad.

The technology is just so bad.

It just makes no sense.

You mentioned when people are suspicious of you, you just touched on this.

In the dialogue that's in the book, you ask them questions back.

You're kind of flipped the script to get them thinking about their answers maybe instead of your answers.

Can you give me an example of that?

I think that's a good technique to deflect suspicion.

And I'm wondering what other techniques you have to deflect suspicion.

It depends on the type of questioning.

Said, I've gotten some where they're just rattling off questions.

I just say, man, you obviously are a novice.

You've never done this before because you don't ask somebody questions like that.

If you're really in business to do real business, it's not how it works.

Other times, like I said, I would pull up vouching for him and blah, blah, blah, you heard about him and everything else.

And then I would slow the game down before this guy starts saying, hey, man, good to meet you.

I'm going to do this and this.

I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I got a few questions.

I want to make sure your source is straight.

Have you dealt with so-and-so before?

Because this is where I'm getting to you.

That's great.

I'm glad you know him.

But do you know my guy over here too?

I also need to know that I'm connecting people that I trust to you.

But careful questioning.

I didn't ask idiot questions.

Some of the low-level folks would ask.

Let me see your ID.

Can you prove that you're really who you are?

I'm not going to ask you to prove who you are either.

For doing this illicit game, then the idea is your best friend is saying I'm cool and vice versa.

So let's do business.

I don't need you to have incriminating information on me.

I want to do business.

In that kind of world, it's ideal to know only so much.

So the only way that I really would get great information on these guys is, of course, to just figure out who they were, where they stayed, and then grab a license plate on my way out and then to work backwards because I had a little more sophisticated technology to work with in terms of figuring out exactly who they were, pull up a mug shot.

I'm like, okay, I know exactly who this dude is.

Even then, it was a lot less of a thing for those guys to be able to just get online, spend spend 20 bucks, and figure out who I was necessarily.

That makes sense.

So it seems like if there's supposed to be that distance between you and the person you're dealing with, giving away too many details about yourself might be an indicator that you're lying.

So the way cops work most of the time, people talk about trade craft.

I'm like, man, I think this is just so obvious to bad guys too, anyway.

But most cops are not doing long-term undercover work.

They're doing short-term deals.

They're going to knock this guy down.

If he gives up somebody else, they might go there.

And then two days later, they're knocking everybody down.

They just take what they can get.

You don't accept no for an answer when you're a cop working short-term stuff like that because you only have one shot at this.

You're just trying to get it over with.

Even if it is a massive deal, it's a massive deal.

And it only happens once because the serendipitous situation is about to happen.

So they're trying to make this deal happen.

My whole approach was the opposite.

I'm like, I'm happy to walk from this because what they really want is my money.

And I say, well, you're not going to get my money until I'm absolutely positive that this is going to work.

So the cops will typically just try to push a deal to go forward.

And I just leveraged the complete opposite and was the first to say, you know what?

That's okay.

You can keep asking questions, but I'm done here.

I'm not interested.

Don't worry about it.

You keep whatever you're going to keep and I'll just get out of here.

So you're not in a hurry to make the bust, which probably gives you a little bit more credibility, I guess.

It's almost look, compared to, again, in a normal business situation.

And you would know this too, being the master,

the master

of nothing.

In terms of relationships and things like that, you don't just walk up and meet somebody and then start pitching stuff.

Oh, yeah, definitely not.

It's the same type of thing, really, because that's the human nature part.

Because if you knew for sure I was a gold mine and I knew for sure this is the best deal ever, we would just do it.

But that's never really the case.

But the only way you've determined it's a gold mine is because, man, I've really gotten to know you.

I really appreciate what you do.

I know you as a person and at least have vetted you from people that I trust with my life to the point where let's do something serious.

That's the way they work.

I think it's more human nature than anything else.

This is a high-trust business, the drug game.

It has to be because I can't do a credit check on your LLC to make sure that you are current.

I can't get a proof of funds from your banker.

There's no third-party verification other than, oh, T says you've been dealing with him or you sell good stuff or whatever.

I mean, that's as good as it gets.

Yeah.

Oh, for sure.

I mean, that's how you grow, man.

That's how you grow business.

Somebody is.

Jordan says, hey, man, this guy's good to go.

I wanted to introduce him to you.

I would just talk to him.

I wouldn't even have to ask questions questions because you're sending him.

I trust you.

So automatically, we'll just talk to the guy.

You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with a black man that befriends members of the Ku Klux Klan.

I don't support the KKK at all.

I don't support that ideology.

But I support people having the right to believe as they want to believe, as long as they don't cross the line and hurt people.

And to show, to prove that I will stick up for somebody else's rights has also led to people just like that sticking up for mine.

I know I didn't convert anybody.

I am the impetus for over 200 to make up their own minds to convert themselves because I've given them reason to think about other things that make more sense than what they're currently doing.

It bothers me a great deal that we call ourselves the greatest nation on the face of this earth.

You know, we have to admit that there are some flaws here.

I don't adhere to that statement that we are the greatest.

Maybe I would bend and say that perhaps technologically we are the greatest.

So how is it that we as Americans can talk to people as far away as the moon or anywhere on the face of this earth, but yet there's so many of us who have difficulty talking to the person who lives right next door?

This is the 21st century.

This racist nonsense does not belong in any century, let alone the 21st.

We are living in space age times, but there's still too many of us thinking with Stone Age minds.

For more on how Daryl Davis convinced 200 KKK members to give up their robes, check out episode 540 on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

That's it for part one, part two, coming out in just a few days here.

All things Tegan Broadwater will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com.

Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

Please consider supporting those who support the show.

Also, our newsletter, Wee BitWiser, it gives you something specific, something practical, something that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships in under two minutes.

And if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out.

It's a great companion to the show.

JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it.

Don't forget about six minute networking as well over at sixminutenetworking.com.

I am at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

In this show, it's created in association with Podcast One.

My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadas Sedlauskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

Remember, we rise by lifting others.

The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting.

The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

If you know somebody interested in the undercover scene, police work, drug trafficking, maybe they like stories like this, definitely share this episode with them.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on this show so you can live what you learn.

And we'll see you next time.

Hello, it is Ryan, and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacasino.com.

I looked over at the person sitting next to me, and you know what they were doing?

They were also playing Chumba Casino.

Everybody's loving having fun with it.

Chumba Casino is home to hundreds of casino-style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere.

So sign up now at chumbacasino.com to claim your free welcome bonus.

That's chumba casino.com and live the chumba life.

Sponsored by chumba casino.

No purchase necessary.

VGW Group void where prohibited by law.

21 Plus.

Terms and Conditions Apply.

All you parents out there trying to soak up every last drop of your baby's early days, I see you.

It hurts your heart every time you leave their side, but let's be real, you've got stuff to do.

That's where Nanit comes in.

Don't think of it as just a baby monitor, it's your superhero parenting sidekick that makes connection happen anywhere, whether you're in another room or a plane right away.

With Nanit, crystal-clear HD video makes checking in easy while capturing priceless moments.

Have you ever seen a baby discover their toes?

It's can't miss entertainment.

And two-way audio brings you crib side to lend a little comfort when it's needed, even if you're caught between meetings.

The ability to be there without physically being there?

It's all part of the Nanit effect.

Stay connected, track developmental milestones, and understand your baby even better with Nanit's personalized insights.

As a special offer for our listeners, use code baby20 at nanit.com now to get 20% off your first order.

That's code baby20 to save 20%.

Nanit, parenthood looks different here.

Nanit.com.