4: Under the Spotlight

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a better path forward. We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill.
PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one. That's terrifying.
That's fair. Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.
We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down. I would love to see that.
We're on our way. I hope so.
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Hey, y'all. I'm Maria Fernanda-Diez.
When You're Invisible is my love letter to the working-class people and immigrants who shaped me. Season 2 shares stories about community and being underestimated.
All the greatest changes have happened when a couple of people said, this sucks, let's do something about it. We get paid to serve you, but we're made out of the same things.
It's rare to have black male teachers. Sometimes I am the testament.
Listen to When You're Invisible on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey.
We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before.
I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it.
I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care.
Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more.

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Novel.

May I see a show of hands? How many people in this room have ever dreamt of wearing spandex? One day around 2010, a guy named Peter Tangen was flipping through Rolling Stone magazine when an article caught his eye. It was called The Legend of Master Legend.
I found out from this article that there were more than 100 people,

like-minded, costumed activists

that were in the country.

You guys, there's really superheroes.

There's really superheroes.

How exciting is this?

Peter Tangen isn't your average comic book fan.

He's a photographer,

and you've probably seen his work.

One of his main gigs is taking promo shots

of Hollywood superheroes.

He shot Christian Bale for the Batman Begins poster,

Chris Hemsworth as Thor,

and also Will Ferrell as Elf.

He likes to mix it up.

But sometimes living in the world of celebrities

can feel a little fake.

And at a certain point in his career,

Peter longed to shoot something more real. And this article about real-life superheroes gave him an idea.
In a TED Talk he did in 2015, he remembers the moment. And it hits me right then and there.
I say, I got to figure out a way to make Hollywood-quality movie posters out of these guys. So Peter started reaching out to the real-life superheroes.
He got to know their work and shot them in glossy, big-budget photos where they posed with steely expressions against a city backdrop. Inevitably, he decided to reach out to Phoenix Jones, the greatest superhero of them all.
Not long after, Phoenix got a Facebook message from Peter, and the two of them talked on the phone, but it didn't go well. Peter had met a lot of real-life superheroes by this point, and he was skeptical of Phoenix's crime-fighting approach.
And he's like, what you're doing is kind of dangerous and actually maybe empathetical to the movement. You might want to, like, calm yourself down, you know? Plus, I highly doubt you're actually stopping as many crimes as you think.
He's like, I've seen maybe 10 crimes that have been stopped by real-life superheroes. Maybe.
And I was like, oh, okay, well, we're not friends. I don't like you.
I'm not going to talk to you again. And go fuck yourself.
It's a wonder why none of Phoenix's old superhero buddies are friends with him anymore. Anyway, after this initial call, five months went by.
And then Peter Phoenix again And according to Phoenix, this time he was full of praise He called me and says, look, you need to come to California I need to take photos and videos and shoot you Allegedly, Peter told Phoenix that he should sit down with the lesser real-life superhero community And tell them it was time to hang up their costumes You're're trying to, like, bring them a place they should not go. You can go there if you want to, but they shouldn't.
And you need to make that really clear because they'll all get killed. And then he bought me a plane ticket.
I left two days later and I flew down to California to meet Peter. The thing about Peter Tangen is that he's a big Hollywood guy and he lives in a big Hollywood house in the hills.
He lives in a giant glass house and I have a secret identity so I wore my mask every single day all day. It was terrible.
It's so ridiculous. He lives in Van Nuys, California in this glass house on the side of a freaking cliff.
Looks like the Iron Man house. Literally every wall is a fucking window.
I'm like why would you invite a superhero with a secret identity to a place where every wall is a fucking window? It was trash. I slept in my mask.
It was just horrible. As horrible as it was, it actually turned out to be a major turning point in Phoenix Jones' life.
Up until then, he and his team had attracted some media coverage. But according to Phoenix, he hadn't actively sought it out.
And every time media would call me, I'd just be like, no, I don't want to talk to you. And he was like, no one knows what you're doing, who you are, what you stand for.
He's like, and everyone wants to talk to you. So just go out, tell them what you mean and what you plan on doing.
No one's going to get mad at you for telling what you're doing. He's like, you're doing the dangerous work anyway.
You might as well protect yourself. Phoenix agreed to the photo shoot.
In the photos, he stands in a rain-soaked street, fully costumed, and glares down at the camera. He'd look a lot like Batman if it weren't for the gold chevron across his chest, which glows with an unearthly yellow light.
When the pictures were released, Peter's phone started ringing off the hook.

Phoenix wasn't just a local news curiosity anymore.

People around the country wanted to know who this mysterious crime fighter was.

Peter fielded so many calls for Phoenix that he ended up becoming his semi-official spokesperson.

Peter is actually how I got in touch with Phoenix in the first place. And Phoenix was going to need his PR rep.
The photo shoot catapulted him to a new level of fame. Phoenix's knack for grabbing people's attention is one of his greatest assets.
But it's also maybe his greatest weakness.

From the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, this is The Superhero Complex,

episode four,

Under the Spotlight. After the Peter Tangen photo shoot, journalists wanted to fly to Seattle and meet the famous Phoenix Jones.
One of those journalists was the writer and broadcaster John Ronson. John and Phoenix hooked up for a piece that John was writing for GQ.
John had flown over from England, and according to Phoenix, the idea had been to try and uncover a sex trafficking ring. But when they finally tracked down some sex workers, things didn't go as planned.
We couldn't find anything, right? Because none of them said they were trafficked, which was a giant bust. So instead, I went on patrol with John Ronson and took down 30 armed crack dealers.
You know, by myself. Phoenix and some of the other members of the Rain City crew had taken John on a patrol of the city instead.
Nothing was happening. He couldn't find any crimes to thwart.
And so he pulled out the big guns. That's John.
He told me that they headed to the Belltown neighborhood. It was a sketchy part of town.
It's like three in the morning. There was about five or six different groups of crack dealers on different street corners and various buyers going between them.
Phoenix described a fairly intimidating scene. Seattle's an open carry state.
Deuce walk around with their guns out. They stand on the corner, right? And when people come out of the club, they strong-arm them for money to get their car out of parking lots.
Yeah, 30 dudes with open-carried weapons in a parking lot. This was clearly a dangerous situation.
But John wasn't sure that the superhero's presence made things safer. The crack dealers all unified in saying, what the fuck do you think you're doing here in your superhero outfits? And one of them said, this may be fun and games for you, but this isn't fun and games for us.
This is how we feed our families. And then one of them said, if you don't get off our block, we're going to show you what the burner does.
And they had a point. Like, what the fuck were we doing trying to break them up? Like, whose business was it of ours? I mean, I'm saying ours.
What I really mean is Phoenix's. The way Phoenix tells it, this was a heroic standoff.
I look at Ghost and I said, Ghost, man, there's a good chance we're going to die here, bro. Are you good? The Ghost is like, yep.
And I looked at Jack and Jack's like, you're stupid, Jones. This is like a movie, you know? I looked at El Caballero and Cabbie's like, oh, I already called the cops, man.
He's like, I hope they don't shoot us before the cops get here. I already called the cops.
But John told me the danger really did seem genuine. They came up to us and they said, you are stupid motherfuckers.
Do you know that? Do you know that you are stupid motherfuckers?

We should shoot you.

And I've got to say, at this point, I was terrified.

They'd showed us the shape of a gun in their sweatpants.

They were clearly coming up with a justification

to commit an act of violence against Phoenix.

And they said, we should shoot you.

But if you refuse to leave, I guess we're going to have to go home. And they did.
They all went home. And so Phoenix won.
When Phoenix told me this story, he didn't paint John in a very favorable light. John Ronson hailed a cab and then got in the cab and told the cab to wait and was hiding in the cab.
And then he wanted to come back on patrol with us. And we're like, no, you're hitting the cab, bro.
Like, you're crazy. Like, you gotta come back out with us.
You're hiding in a cab with a cardigan. When I asked John about it, he told me he wasn't in the taxi.
But he did try to hail one down. They all had bulletproof vests, the superheroes.
And I had nothing. I had a t-shirt and a cardigan.
So I was close to the cab so I could, like, escape if I had to, but also close to Phoenix so I could hear what they were saying so I could write it all down. But if Phoenix says that he didn't let me patrol with him the next day because I'd hailed a cab, that's not true.
Phoenix was thrilled that I was there. And in fact, when I got back to the hotel at like six in the morning or whatever, the first thing Phoenix did was like phone me to talk excitedly about what had just happened.
And he was like hyperventilating down the phone. That's not someone who was so annoyed with a journalist that they didn't want them to patrol them the next day.
And the only reason why there was no patrol the next day was because Phoenix was doing a personal appearance at a comic book convention in town. And I don't think he did any patrolling that night.
So the cab was true. The rest of it was not true.
Their relationship was not exactly smooth sailing, but John doesn't hold a grudge. On a personal level, I liked Phoenix very much.
He was my favorite of all the superheroes that I met. He was charming, charismatic, fun, odd in a kind of engaging way.
I'd say the most negative thing I would say about Phoenix is that he had an odd relationship with crime fighting. It was clear that he was kind of addicted to it.
It felt like there was an addiction there. Like he couldn't find any crime to thwart.
He was getting more and more frustrated. It's like he needs a cigarette and he can't find one.
But during his time with Phoenix, John got a sense that crime-fighting wasn't the only thing he cared about. I think on our first night we heard a woman screaming and Phoenix was like Yahtzee! And when I'm running towards the sound, he's finding finally had someone in distress he could save.
And then as he was running towards the sound of the woman screaming, this car pulled up and these guys went down the window and went, it's the guy from YouTube. Can we get a picture with you? And Phoenix was like, sure.
So he stopped and took a picture with these guys. And by the time they were all satisfied, like the screaming woman was nowhere to be seen or heard.
According to Phoenix, his relationship with fame is practical. It's what keeps him from getting arrested or worse.
And that protection is all the more important if, like Phoenix, you're trying to do superhero work as a person of color. I'm a black guy in body armor running down the street punching white people.
I need some media coverage. So what does that look like to you? Like what's your strategy? Like what do you hope to get out of being covered in the media? Like that kind of stuff.
Not being arrested. I think what people don't know is that, especially currently, right? There are two different Americas.
Being a six foot tall black dude in body armor, running up to people who have been previously assaulted in the streets is not a solid look people don't approach it the way that you think that they would but yeah but when they see phoenix jones they see the symbol the one that i set up the one they're aware of they know what my mission statement is they know why i'm there and it puts them as much at ease as a costume vigilante can.

You know, I guess I shouldn't use that word.

As a costume crime prevention specialist.

That's what my attorneys told me to use.

Phoenix always has an answer for everything.

He always manages to come up with a reasonable explanation

for why he is right and everyone else is wrong.

When I spoke to Phoenix's former team members,

they all brought up his relationship with publicity. Here's El Caballero.
A lot of it, I felt like Jones's heart was for protecting people, but then there was also this part that I saw was actually his ultimate self at that time, which was publicity. Midnight Jack told me that the Rain City superheroes initially started out courting the media for strategic reasons.
It was a way to get a lot of attention on crime trends, to call attention to problem areas that the police were not enforcing. But as things blew up, that changed.
Ben was so hooked on the attention, on the media following and the celebrity status and things like that, that it was a problem. So then he started having us fucking, not necessarily fake footage, but kind of stage shit.
When we talked about his relationship with the cameras, Phoenix never admitted to staging patrol videos. But it was an accusation I kept hearing.
Cabby told me once that you guys were doing some media interview, and you started making stuff up, and he was like, dude, that didn't happen. And you leaned over and you said, hey man, the history's told by the victors, you know? Oh no, I didn't.
I leaned over and I said, history is written by the winners. Right.
So you were just making stuff up? Yeah, 100%. Phoenix even clarified for me.
The story Cabby had been talking about was when the Rain City superheroes were on Good Morning America. They're like, what's your biggest crime you've ever stopped? And I was like, arson.
Can you give me some details? I'm like, can't give you details. Phoenix couldn't give any details because there was no arson.
Like, we didn't have a lot of credentials at that moment. But we're on Good Morning America, and we're about to go on TV, and I was like, fuck it.
Yeah, straight up. And I don't feel bad about it.
I wouldn't take it back, and I would do it again. If you admittedly just, like, make stuff up to the media, like, how do I know what you're saying is true? I wasn't admittedly making that.
Hold on. If there's a way for me to tell a story that makes it sound better and doesn't change the core facts that are on a police report, I will probably do that.
To Phoenix, he's just giving the world what it wants.

I don't want to do interviews. I don't want to talk to these people.
I don't like you. I want

to stop bad people from doing bad things. And I want to make people do it themselves and understand

it. But the government and the world we live in would not let me.
So I gave you what you wanted.

You wanted a superhero because that's what you think what I was doing was. So I gave you a

superhero. Check.
But no point in any of this. Was this my, like, idea or goal? It's these types of statements from Phoenix that I have a hard time believing.
But I wouldn't necessarily say that Phoenix is lying when he says them. I think he probably believes them to be true.
And it's certainly true that as a black man trying to fight crime on the streets of America, the publicity provides him with a level of protection that any of his former team members who were white might not have needed. But I find his unwillingness to admit that he enjoyed being a celebrity as a kind of dishonesty.
For what it's worth, I think Phoenix liked all the attention. And not just because it made it easier for him

to catch criminals. But one thing does ring true in what Phoenix is saying here.
He spends his

whole life attempting to live up to a particular ideal of a superhero. And that's a lot of pressure.

And not everyone has the same idea of what a superhero is. When those interpretations clashed, things got messy.
That's coming up. Divorce can leave you feeling isolated, like you're stuck on an island with no direction.
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Start your divorce journey with the support you need at hellodivorce.com because you deserve a better path forward. We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill.
PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one. That's terrifying.
That's fair. Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.
We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down. I would love to see that.
We're on our way. I hope so.
PG&E electricity rates are now lower than they were last year. Hear what other customers have to say and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com slash open dash lines.
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Now, call StarStarGuts to get $50 off a full body intelligence test. That's Star Star 488 to receive a link to the offer.
There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation.
It's terrible, terrible dirt. Yazoo clay eats everything.
So things that get buried there tend to stay buried. Until they're not.
In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery. 7,000 bodies out there or more.
All former patients of the old state asylum, and nobody knew they were there. It was my family's mystery.
But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets.

Nobody talks about it. Nobody has any information.

When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo Clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.

The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that.

I'm Larison Campbell.

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While Phoenix Jones was making the most of his newfound celebrity, one of his many appearances caught the attention of Seattleite Crystal Marks. That's her real name, by the way.
So she was kind of born with a brilliant superhero alias. I've grown up in love with superheroes my entire life.
My dad was a huge nerd into D&D. He was in the Navy where they played D&D all the time.
And he got a friend of his to actually get my name worked into a Superman comic book. I thought that was the coolest thing.
So when I heard that someone was dressing up like one and doing something that a superhero would do, it was irresistible. When Crystal saw the news coverage of Phoenix Jones and his crew, she was immediately captivated.
Late one night, she set out to see what Phoenix was really about. I ended up kind of stalking his team, the Rain City superhero movement, through the streets of Seattle watching them break up fights.
Crystal didn't want the Rain City superheroes to see her. I threw my hair up in a ponytail and I wore a hat and sunglasses at night in the middle of Belltown in Seattle.
It was not the wisest choice. She hid behind street corners and counted 30 seconds before creeping along behind the superheroes.
I realized like, wow, anyone can do this. That's really cool.
But I wasn't seeing the things happening that mattered to me. Homeless outreach.
As a kid growing up in Aberdeen, Washington, Crystal had some rough patches in her childhood. When I was eight years old, my biological mom and I were kicked out of my grandmother's house and we were homeless.
We had nowhere to go living in our car. We lived under a bridge, living on my mom's friend's couches.
And we did that for a little over six months. And that stuck with me.
I was homeless as a kid and I wanted to see people reached out to in a compassionate way. For Crystal, Phoenix's team didn't seem like the heroes she'd been looking for.
I was. Like, do we need to just be breaking up drunk fights? Can we be doing more? So she started looking for alternatives.
It turned out Phoenix's crew weren't the only superheroes in town. Crystal ended up joining another group called the Washington Initiative.
They started out by patrolling around Belltown. That's Phoenix's turf.
It was a little bit of a not-so-friendly competition. But we realized very quickly after the first couple of patrols where we were just seeing people stumbling to their cars, we weren't really making a difference.
So our team, the Washington Initiative, switched over to more homeless outreach. Phoenix did not take kindly to his fellow crime fighters.
Evocatis saw Phoenix's reaction firsthand. He would get in very animated, screeching, yelling matches about how other teams are just trying to copy us or trying to draw his Facebook likes and his fans, his words, away from him and take it for their own, which didn't make a lot of sense or mean anything to me.
He felt incredibly threatened by anyone else that would try to do this line of work in his city. Phoenix used his social media to rail against his new enemies.
It was this feud online of I do this better, no, I do this better. Phoenix Jones was constantly saying, like, fine, you can say that you do homeless outreach better.
I'm sure you do, but that doesn't really matter. That's not really taking care of a community.
As long as you acknowledge that I'm the better fighter. The feud between Phoenix and the other Seattle superheroes speaks to something I've noticed a lot in the world of real-life superheroes.
There seems to be an ideological split at the heart of the community over what a superhero should actually do. Some of the real-life superheroes are all about action.
They want to take down criminals and stop violent crime. But there are a lot like Crystal, who see real superhero work as the humanitarian stuff, like homeless outreach.
They aren't interested in getting into fights. In fact, they see the flashy, action-packed crime fighting as reckless and irresponsible.
Personally, I don't understand why these two models can't coexist peacefully. But then, I'm not Phoenix Jones.
Among the rest of Phoenix's crew, the reaction to their superhero rivals was mixed. Midnight Jack was more action-oriented.
He was all about dousing people with flour and pepper spray. Crystal didn't think much of his tactics, though.
Midnight Jack, as someone out on patrol, he's just not bright. Like, there were plenty of times where I've heard of things where he had like a flash grenade or like a smoke bomb or something, and he would set it off on accident.
Like, you don't carry equipment that you don't know how to use. On the flip side, Jack thought the other groups, like the Washington Initiative, were nothing but attention seekers.
For whatever reason, they don't feel secure in themselves, or maybe they hate their job, or they hate how their life turned out, and so they're going to go and dress up like Spider-Man and run around, take selfies and shit like that. I've seen another crew kick a homeless dude awake to give him a water bottle so they can take a selfie of it.
You know what I mean? Like, I watched that happen. At the other end of the Rain City superhero spectrum, Evo had been getting tired of the media circus around Phoenix and of the constant need to seek out drama in the streets.
He felt inspired by his group's new costumed rivals. Holy shit, these guys are really professional.
They're on top of this. This is very different from what's been going on on our team where it's all about the Facebook likes and it's all about how many followers do you have.
Evo reached out to the Washington Initiative and struck up a relationship. At one point, he met Crystal Marks for coffee.
Phoenix fell to pieces over it. And he wanted to pat me down to make sure I didn't have any bugs or microchips planted on me because their entire existence is around spying on Phoenix, according to him.
Despite Phoenix's paranoia, Eva was undeterred and he and Crystal hit it off. In fact, a couple of years later, their relationship turned into more than a superhero collaboration.
You know, her hands would brush on a patrol and like, oh. And then he and I started dating and we got married.
These days, Crystal isn't involved in the superhero movement, but she is still a public servant. From 2019 to 2021, she was the deputy mayor of Burien, a city just south of Seattle.
And when she campaigned for office, she did not hide her past as a real life superhero superhero. It took me sitting down with my husband and saying, like, does this actually translate?

Does this type of real-world experience of breaking up fights, doing homeless outreach, does that actually translate into public office?

And he helped me list out all the ways that it did.

Leading groups, making decisions, strategic planning, all of this stuff.

And so I ran in 2017, and I took out the incumbent in the primary with five people in the race. And then I came in first in the general and I became deputy mayor two years into my term.
When I interviewed Phoenix, this was one of the parts of his story I was most interested in asking him about. I'd heard stories of him referring to people like Crystal Marks with a derogatory term.
It's a story I'd heard from a lot of people who knew him. Apparently, Phoenix called the heroes who focused on homeless outreach real-life sandwich handlers.
That seemed to be one of the centers of beef around certain members of the Reigns of Heroes was that you were like, if you want to help people by giving them out food, you can't be on my team anymore. That's not what I said.
Say what happened. For sure.
If you want to take our main focus and make it humanitarian aid, then you should find another team. Because we do humanitarian aid for sure, but the concept is stopping crime.
No point in feeding people if the food you feed them gets robbed at their house. It's that simple.
I've never seen a comic book where the superhero runs around feeding people cheeseburgers, except the hamburger cartoons that I got from the McDonald's in like the 90s. We just have different concepts apparently of like what fighting crime is.
You can definitely hand out food. You should definitely do that.
There is nothing wrong with that. You don't need to wear an outfit for that at all.
Actually wearing an outfit to hand out food to regular homeless people makes you an asshole. Why is that? Because you're showing up and saying you guys are so disadvantaged that look at me in my giant suit handing you sandwiches that I made in my own house.
I mean, it's absurd. I think showing up in a suit and saying, hey, I put on this armor to protect you guys because I care about you being stuck out here makes way more sense than me saying, hey, here's a fucking cheeseburger, by the way, look at my outfit.
I mean, it's insane. It's just incredible.
It's like the disconnect between that and fighting crime

is mind-blowing to me.

I don't even get it.

Phoenix has a very specific vision

of what it means to be a superhero.

And for him, anything less than active crime fighting

doesn't measure up.

But when you make busting criminals your goal,

it isn't just the criminals you have to watch out for.

Phoenix's daredevil crime-stopping approach

brought him onto the radar of a powerful enemy,

the Seattle Police Department.

That's coming up. For a while, at least, it seemed that Phoenix Jones had managed to fulfill his dream of becoming Seattle's very own Nightwing, the superhero Phoenix had looked up to as a kid.
Things weren't always perfect in the Rain City superhero movement, but for now, Phoenix was patrolling the streets several nights a week, chasing down criminals and snapping photos with fans. But the more attention he got, the more he rankled the local authorities.
The problem was that Seattle already had its own force of professional crime fighters, and they felt that Phoenix Jones was stepping on their toes. Police worry Phoenix's recent taste of fame pushes him to put himself in harm's way.
They insert themselves into a potentially volatile situation, and then they end up being victimized as well. Don't insert yourself into those situations.
If you see something, call 911. Police hope he stops before it's too late.
A pattern began to emerge. Phoenix and his crew would make the news for their latest act of costumed heroism.
And the Seattle Police Department would issue an increasingly exasperated statement to the effect of, thanks, but you can leave the crime fighting to us. I didn't know anybody who actually thought it was a good idea for them to put themselves in harm's way, put on these outfits, if you will, and make themselves a target for others.
Carmen Best was the chief of the Seattle Police Department from 2018 to 2020. She was the first black woman to lead the force.
But before Carmen became chief, she held a lot of different roles. And she was there during the height of the Seattle superhero movement.
While you truly respect what they were trying to do, I was very concerned, one, for their safety and two, for their full motive. Because we really discourage as a profession people doing what we would view as a vigilantism.
Carmen told me that the police department had been watching the superheroes out on patrol and making their TV appearances with growing concern. They don't have all the same protections that a law enforcement officer who's sworn in, who's had the training that we have in place.
There was an instance when one of them was injured pretty significantly and was stabbed. We definitely were cautioning them when that occurred.
It was our worst fears realized in that situation. And also intervening in the manner that they did, they put themselves in some legal jeopardy as well.
Carmen didn't know which would-be superhero it was in this instance, but Phoenix claims he's been stabbed on patrol more than once, and she definitely remembers him. Of course, his name came up.
He did the most amount of interviews and was pretty extroverted, if you will, in how he approached this whole thing. In my opinion, I think the opinion of many within the police department, this seemed a little bit like fantasy work, you know, putting on a uniform or an outfit, because you're actually not a superhero.
You're a person who's intervening in what can ostensibly be some pretty dangerous situations. And you can interfere in such a way that causes harm to not only yourself, but to the person you're trying to assist as well.
So we were very concerned about it. I understand this argument.
And I think it applies to a lot of people in the real-life superhero community. But I also think that this is one of the areas where Phoenix does have a point.
He's not the type of Yahoo who simply put on a costume and jumped into this job without thinking about it. He actually put in the time to train.
I can't imagine being a cop and not having certain skills. You know? It's not like going and lifting weights.
It's like running and training my knife disarms. Like, I do Wednesday knife disarms, right? I do Saturday hand-to-hand combat.
Like, I do that all the time, always. And he isn't only prepared for physical altercations.
He also has clearly spent time studying the laws around what he can and can't do when fighting crime.

Oh, I don't hire a lawyer anymore because I know all this stuff.

I mean, you get sued 27 times.

I know all of the laws.

The hard part for me is filling out the paperwork appropriately.

I've won them all, just to be clear.

Every single one of them I've won.

Except for one I consider a win,

but technically it was like a no contest.

The guy just didn't show up. But I mean, that's still kind of a win.
A lot of the media reports and statements from the Seattle police around 2011 seem to speak to an underlying worry that Phoenix might use excessive force in his crime fighting, or that he wasn't accountable for his behavior. But those are the same accusations that the U.S.
Department of Justice made about the Seattle Police Department in the same year. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division received a letter in 2010 from the Washington ACLU and 34 other civil rights and community-based organizations.
The letter requested an investigation into multiple incidents of excessive force by the Seattle Police Department, particularly force used against persons of color. The DOJ launched an investigation, and their report found that the SPD were engaging in a pattern or practice of unnecessary are still under federal oversight as a result of that report,

though a lot of activists in the city think their reforms haven't gone far enough.

It's also a reminder of what Phoenix was talking about earlier,

about the additional risk that he faces because he's trying to fight crime as a black man.

Phoenix talks about crime fighting like it's his whole reason for being. It's intense, but it's also not unique.
A lot of people are drawn to this line of work, but very few of them grind the nipples off a Batman outfit and go around hiding trampolines in alleys. I feel like a lot of people, like the more traditional path for someone who had those ideals about fighting crime would be to just join the police force.
I'm curious why that was not appealing to you. Because I want to help people.
And you don't see the police as being helpful. The police are very, very helpful in certain situations when they understand it on the right day, when you catch the right officer and you happen to have an open and shut situation.
But that's not what I consider policing. Where police really shine is investigating crimes that have already taken place.
But that is not justice to me. That's legalized retribution.
I think if you're a police officer or a crime fighter, your job is to intervene between the incident and the person at the moment of that incident, not to investigate afterwards.

Like, investigating afterwards is what you've done when a plan fails. Talking to Phoenix, the biggest beef he seemed to have with the cops was that he thinks they aren't effective at stopping crime.
But Phoenix saw that as an opportunity, a gap the cops weren't able to fill, but a superhero might. Cabby also saw the Rain City superheroes

as a way of making up for the police's ineffectiveness. They show up after a crime has happened.
And a lot of things happen in between when a crime is happening and when law enforcement actually arrives or medical services arrive to actually deal with the problem. That in-between space was where the Rain City superheroes saw work to be done.
But even at their most intrepid, they always got law enforcement involved, despite their ambivalent relationship with the cops. In fact, on their patrols, Evo told me there was even a role dedicated to police liaison.
I started being on 911, which means if we saw an actual crime happen, we would call Seattle police right away. That was like step one was call them.
Always know where we're at. The street corners, know the intersections, know exactly where we're at so we can report it.
But when the police did show up, things could get tense. Cabby told me a story about a patrol when things went south.
We rolled up in Belltown and saw this guy harassing this man and woman who were a mixed-race couple. And instantly we knew, like, we felt like this guy was racist, like, trying to attack this couple.
According to Cabby, one of the other Rain City superheroes, Captain Karma, approached the man and told him to leave the couple alone. And this guy, like, butterfly kicked him right in the chest and threw him out in the street.
I was like, what the? Cabby says he ran over and pinned the guy in a wrestling hold until the police finally arrived. They pull up and they pull out their guns and like, let him go, let him go.
We're like, we want to press charges. This guy just attacked a couple with their baby.
We think he's a racist or whatever. Like, like, let him go.
We're like, this guy's violent. And they're like, let him go.
So the Rain City superheroes did what they were told and they let the guy go. And he runs up and he punches the cop in the face.
So then all of a sudden the cops who have their weapons drawn are wrestling with this guy and the guns are pointing around to all these different people, putting everyone's life in danger. And so I grabbed the guy again.
Cabby claims he broke the guy's wrist. The police demanded that the superheroes unmask and hand over their footage, which they agreed to.
But then the police let the guy they had just subdued go free. I'm like, nope, I want to press charges.
I'm like, sorry, we can't press charges against him. I'm like, why is that? Because that's crazy.
And they're like, diplomatic immunity. He's from the Russian embassy.
So they ended up letting him fucking go. Pardon my language.
And we were there looking like dumbasses, I guess. I don't know.
Sitting there with their masks off, like hands on the hood like we were criminals. Russian diplomats aside, there are a lot of videos that showcase the dysfunctional relationship Phoenix and his crew had with the Seattle police.
And Phoenix became increasingly vocal online with his criticisms of the cops. Let's make sure I understand this.
Guy assaults person. Guy walks away clean and free.
Nothing happens. Police won't take my statement, won't take my paperwork.
I am pretty pissed off right now. Phoenix had a couple of favorite targets to beef with.
Seattle has lost its mind when it comes to what a real crime is. It's lost its mind.
And part of that is Pete Holmes and his inability to do his job. Phoenix is talking about former Seattle city attorney Pete Holmes.
Me and Pete Holmes have a history of hating each other too. The district attorney of Seattle is a complete joke.
He is trash. Trash.
From 2010 to 2021, Holmes was in charge of all misdemeanor prosecutions in Seattle. He has sandy gray hair parted at the side and glasses, and he embraced a lot of left-leaning policies when he was in office.
He declined to be interviewed for the series, but he's gone on record multiple times telling Phoenix to stand down. Holmes once said to the press, quote, Mr.
Fodor is no hero, just a deeply misguided individual. He also argued that Phoenix couldn't rely on Seattle's Good Samaritan laws to protect him.

He said, quote,

Our state's Good Samaritan statutes are designed to protect individuals who happen upon, rather than actively seek out, opportunities to render assistance to others.

These laws are not designed to protect a branded, costumed character, his roving video crew, or their copyrighted videos from the reach of tort plaintiffs. It's not surprising that Phoenix and Pete Holmes kept butting heads.
The first couple times, the first like 10 or 12 times, it was just me pleading with him to actually charge the criminals and him explaining to me how I'm not a police officer. And me being like, yeah, no shit, idiot.
I don't need to be a police officer. And him saying, well, it draws a weird precedent.
No, what draws a precedence is a guy running around in a rubber suit and actually finding crime. That draws a precedence.
Maybe you should do your job. Throughout 2011, things were getting increasingly tense between Phoenix and Seattle's law enforcement.
And while his fellow superheroes didn't necessarily disagree with him, they worried that Phoenix's outspokenness would provoke a backlash. Jones really instigated the hatred of SPD.
That's cabbie. He was just always like in interviews, anything.
He was like, cops, if they would do their job, blah, blah. It was like, dude, I mean, that's not really how it is.
He was a total dick to them, which I understand a young black dude. I get it.
And I'm not an apologist for law enforcement.

Basically, people call and they show up afterwards. It's like trash collectors.
It's like, you deal with it afterwards. But at the same time, we got all put under the whole blanket.
Oh, these guys think they're vigilantes. They're taking the law in their own hands.
It's like, no, we're not. In the early hours of October 9th, 2011, Phoenix was out in downtown Seattle patrolling with Ghost, a videographer named Ryan McNamee, and the journalist T.
Krulos, who we met back in episode one. It had been a long night, and Phoenix was nearly ready to wrap things up.

Then, he says, one of his crew

spotted a fight outside a bar.

Phoenix, look down. Huge fight.

Go, go, go, go.

I take off running towards him because I can see these guys

kicking this person on the ground, just beating him up.

Get me 9-1-1!

They're kicking each other,

punching each other.

That's T.

Pushing each other down the street.

Phoenix ran at full tilt and leapt into the middle of it. I'm like, break it up.
Fight breaks up, everything's cool. Then they start yelling about getting a gun and all kinds of other stuff.
They take off to their car. They try to chase me around.
The guy chases me, he comes at me, so I just smog him with pepper spray. No big deal.
He pepper sprays him. And the pepper spray dissipated into the air, and everyone was coughing and rubbing their eyes.
In the midst okay, but I still... I'm gonna kill my shit! And then she fell on her face.
The minute she fell, those dudes went crazy. Boys, I'm the United States! And they started coming back at us.
No! No! I don't wanna hit you! They all sort of grouped together, and then they rushed us. Attack yourselves! What? Oh, Jesus! And attacked us.
I actually got punched in the face and I was like don't don't punch me. We were in a very chaotic situation.
I was genuinely very afraid for my safety. At one point it looked like They might be looking for my safety.
This is getting serious. Put your camera on.
Put your camera on.

My camera is up.

At one point, it looked like they might be looking for a gun.

Are they getting guns?

Phoenix pulled out his trusty pepper spray again and gave the attackers another dose.

Ghost got kicked and fell over a trash can

and busted his finger up, had to have hand surgery

from how bad he hurt his hand.

We got rockets, fuck.

They started throwing rocks at us. Watch out! And then tried to run us over with a car.
Get that officers! Get that officers! T! T! Get that officers! Finally, the cops showed up, and they were pissed. The first thing this officer said was, Phoenix Jones, I'm tired of playing these games with you, man.
I'm tired of this game. We're about to arrest a whole bunch of you and clean things up.
According to both T and Phoenix, the police officers were not interested in hearing what Phoenix had to say.

They wouldn't look at our video.

They wouldn't listen to us.

They're like, we've had enough of you superheroes.

You've already pepper sprayed three people today.

Which is true, but you arrested the other two.

Like, maybe you don't understand how this works.

You know?

And then the cop was saying stuff about like,

you're not a police officer.

You don't have any authority.

You guys are really arrogant to think you can make a difference.

And I was like, yeah, it's crazy to think you can get into a car,

drive to a crime, and make a difference, right?

Douche.

The cops arrested Phoenix and took him away in their car.

The people who Phoenix said had been fighting were let go,

and the other Rain City superheroes melted into the night. T was left standing on the street corner, alone.
And that's when I looked down at my hands and I saw that my hands were shaking from the adrenaline of what had just happened. I've always liked Phoenix personally, and I think that he's done some good things for the city of Seattle.
But it made me realize that the real-life superhero thing could be really dangerous. And in that circumstance, I think that his intention was to help save people because he saw people fighting.
But that his interaction made the situation a lot worse. the pepper spray made everyone angry, and it turned the scene into total chaos.
The tables had turned on Seattle's comic book crusader. This time, it was Phoenix who ended up behind bars.
Phoenix Jones was arrested by Seattle PD on suspicion of assault.

Officers say Jones told them he spotted two men fighting,

but could not explain why four people, including two women, got pepper spray.

Pepper spray. Pepper spray.

Priest reports of citizens being pepper sprayed by Jones and his group.

Pepper spray. No big deal.

Pepper spray made everyone angry.

The officer wrote that Jones had a history of injecting himself in these incidents.

No big deal.

Everyone was coughing and rubbing their eyes.

No big deal. Turned the scene into total chaos.
No big deal. Jones has been advised to observe and report incidents to 911.
Holy smokes, Batman, I bet this never happens to you.

What's a superhero to do when his back is against the wall?

That's coming up on The Superhero Complex is hosted and written by me, David Weinberg, and reported by me, Amalia Sortland, and Caroline Thornham. Production from Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham.
Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien, and David Waters are executive producers.

Fact-checking by Andrew Schwartz.

Production management from Cherie Houston, Frankie Taylor, and Charlotte Wolfe.

Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson.

Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters.

Original music is composed by Paul Hausden.

Special thanks to Peter Tangen,

Willard Foxton, Matt O'Meara,

Katrina Norvell, Beth Ann Macaluso,

Oren Rosenbaum, Shelby Schenkman,

and all the team at UTA.