0:10

Welcome to GPPD podcast . I'm your host

0:12

, nate . I'm a lateral transfer officer

0:14

and I'm currently assigned to the investigations bureau

0:16

.

0:17

And I'm your co-host KD . I'm also

0:19

a lateral officer and I'm assigned to the crime prevention

0:21

unit . We're always looking for

0:24

great men and women for

0:26

the police department , but also we need dispatchers

0:28

, animal control , code enforcement officers

0:30

and detention officers . So if you

0:32

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0:35

them to grandpurepoliceorg

0:37

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0:39

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0:53

you will hear from police officers , their lives

0:55

and their stories . The accounts may be mature

0:57

in nature and mature language may be used . Listener

1:00

discretion is advised . Alright guys , welcome

1:02

back to the next episode of the GPPD podcast

1:04

. I'm your host , nate , here with KD

1:06

, and I'm

1:09

really excited about today because this is one of the opportunities

1:11

we had to talk to someone that I know . I know

1:13

there's a lot to the story , but I don't know much of the story , so

1:15

I'm really excited about this and I also really have no

1:17

idea what you do for us . I get three

1:20

emails all the time , but when I first got here , I was

1:22

like , hey , I won't reply , Because

1:25

if I don't reply it can't help me . Liable

1:28

for policy .

1:30

Actually , you can .

1:31

Don't get in trouble , man , so we appreciate you coming

1:34

bro .

1:38

Hey , glad to be here , man , glad to be asked

1:40

and excited to be here .

1:41

Yeah , this is not . This

1:43

is due to what you do in your personal time . This is like speaking

1:45

is not not really new , for you .

1:47

It's not new . This is what we do , this is

1:49

what we . This is right up the alley .

1:52

Well , why don't you ? Well , let's jump on in and tell us a little

1:54

bit about how you got started in life and how

1:56

you went up on the road that you're on .

1:58

All right , very good . Well , my name is Fred Bates

2:00

and I am originally

2:03

from the great state of Louisiana

2:05

, from the most culturally rich

2:08

city in the world

2:10

, city of New Orleans .

2:11

You're from New Orleans .

2:12

I am originally from .

2:13

New Orleans .

2:14

Yeah , yeah , yeah . So my

2:17

, my , my journey started

2:19

in a little little area of

2:21

the city called the Lord 9th Ward , and

2:24

Lord 9th Ward was one of those places where it

2:26

was very community oriented until

2:28

around 1980s when

2:31

crack cocaine hit the inner cities

2:33

or hit cities , and so

2:35

that that that Lord

2:37

9th Ward became one of the most

2:40

notorious places in the city uptown

2:43

projects , stuff like that and

2:46

I think that I've always had a desire

2:48

to help people . That's always been one of the biggest

2:50

things I've always wanted to do . And , man , I'm going

2:52

to tell you what when I was , when I was a kid , I

2:55

used to watch stories or shows like Adam

2:57

12 . I know I'm dating myself .

2:59

Now , this didn't come on , real this didn't come on real time

3:01

.

3:01

This was reruns . So Adam 12

3:03

and then I moved over to Hill Street Blues and

3:06

what really turned me on to police

3:08

work was Miami Vice .

3:10

Oh , man , I know about that one .

3:12

I know about the first two . You

3:15

you're dating yourself too , not knowing about Hill Street .

3:17

Blues . But I don't , I don't . 12 is

3:19

why they call us 12 .

3:22

I don't think so . I don't , I don't

3:24

think so .

3:25

That's where the , where the slang , came from .

3:27

I don't , I don't , I don't think so . We're going to

3:29

have to research that , yeah , yeah

3:31

, yeah so no , Adam 12 was their

3:34

call sign .

3:35

Right , you know , I'm saying , like when people call you 12 in the street yeah , that's

3:37

where I thought , that's where I thought that came from you

3:39

know what it could be .

3:40

It could be we're talking about local collect

3:42

colloquialisms and stuff like that . It could

3:44

be . It could be they make an opinion thing for you

3:46

.

3:47

Yeah , yeah , they call you , they call you bacon

3:49

they call you bacon copper pig

3:52

all that stuff man .

3:53

So yeah , that comes up from anywhere . So

3:56

so years , you know I was . I'm

3:58

also ordained minister , the

4:01

United Methodist Church is where I serve and

4:03

so so those kind

4:05

of things have always been my desire to help

4:07

people . So I got

4:09

into police work in 1980

4:13

, 80 , I'm sorry . I graduated from high school in 1986

4:16

. I got into police work in 1997 . And

4:19

so and this is after college

4:22

went to Orobson University in Tulsa , oklahoma , and

4:25

lived in Charlotte , north Carolina

4:27

, for a while and then moved back to

4:29

New Orleans .

4:30

How did that all work out ? That's a big jump

4:32

around . That's a big jump around .

4:34

Okay , so . So I went to

4:36

Tulsa , oklahoma , to

4:38

Orobson University , following the

4:40

call , pursuing ministry

4:42

, pursuing theological education . So I have

4:44

a minor , I'm sorry , I have a my

4:47

. My bachelor's degree is in biblical

4:49

literature , old Testament . I

4:52

have a MDiv Master

4:55

of Divinity , southern Methodist

4:57

University , and so

4:59

so that's the educational background . But when

5:01

I was in Tulsa , oklahoma , I

5:04

met my first

5:06

wife Okay , and we , we

5:09

got to know each other , got started

5:11

talking about getting married . She was originally from

5:13

Charlotte , north Carolina . Okay

5:15

, she was from a large church . There was an opportunity

5:18

to get some mentoring there . So we decided

5:20

to move to Charlotte , north Carolina . And

5:22

back in that day , charlotte was

5:24

more of a retirement sleepy town , and

5:28

this was in the early nineties

5:31

. And all

5:33

of a sudden , man , they started building

5:35

buildings and now Charlotte is a mecca

5:38

for finance , you know . So

5:40

they , they're just as big as Wall Street

5:42

is when it comes to finance . So

5:44

, anyway , got to , got to Charlotte and

5:46

did some radio there , did

5:48

some , did some ministry there . But

5:52

I did Christian radio . Okay , yeah , I

5:56

was , I was in a . We didn't call ourselves disc jockeys , call

5:58

ourselves announcers . We won , we won cool

6:00

like disc jockeys . We'd get

6:03

on and say the time is now 745

6:05

am and Jesus is Lord

6:07

of your life . So listen with

6:10

your spirit and

6:12

discover the difference . On W

6:14

O G R Radio .

6:17

Perfection . Yeah , that's what you do . Yeah , that's awesome

6:19

.

6:22

So we did that for a while and decided

6:25

to move back to New Orleans . That's when I really started

6:27

getting that , that urge to become

6:29

a police officer . So we

6:31

had a chief at that time that really

6:33

was doing some new , innovative

6:35

work . New Orleans , unfortunately

6:38

, has been known for notorious

6:41

corruption and so we had a . We had

6:43

a real progressive reform minded police

6:45

chief at the time and I felt comfortable following

6:48

that leadership . So we joined . I joined in 1997

6:51

and

6:53

graduated from the Academy

6:55

, joined in April , started the Academy in April

6:57

of 1997 . We finished

7:00

the Academy in 19 , in 1997

7:02

, december , and you

7:04

go back to those early days of police work

7:06

. That's when it is the

7:08

best . You know nothing

7:11

, you have no biases

7:13

, man , you just want to help people

7:15

, right , and started

7:18

off doing doing patrol

7:20

in the in New Orleans East , which is which

7:22

was the seventh district at the time , and

7:26

it was a . It was larger than Grand Prairie . Actually

7:28

, that particular police district was

7:31

larger than Grand Prairie , right , and

7:33

we actually just just went

7:35

to work and and got involved in stuff

7:37

. And so finally , thankfully , just because

7:39

of work and some previous relationships , I

7:42

was asked to join the task force , because

7:45

I had a fresh face , I was able to do what

7:47

was called narcotics by bust . You

7:50

know , nobody really knew me . Even I

7:52

grew up in the city and nobody really remembered my face .

7:55

So so when I work in that environment was when

7:57

you mentioned that it was close to it previously , and

8:00

it's one of those things where , like if you're around or not around

8:02

, people are going to pick up on that , like kind of , yeah

8:04

, if you make yourself known , basically that's going to

8:06

stick to you . It's not like because I don't like it in some big cities

8:08

it's so big you can . You

8:10

know you , even if you get burned in this situation

8:13

, you might be good . Yeah , right , right , right

8:15

.

8:16

Well , in this , in this situation , it's

8:18

one of those things I don't know if I

8:20

can give this away , but it's one of those things that if you

8:22

are in uniform , you look totally different than when you're

8:24

in playing clubs . That's true . And yeah , to

8:27

some people , and I'll give you this perfect example

8:29

. I'm riding a bicycle , I'm doing a by bus operation

8:32

. I'm riding a bicycle and

8:34

and I walk up to this guy . I'll ride up to this guy and ask

8:36

him hey man , what you got ? You know you're going to sell something . This

8:38

was back when marijuana was was illegal

8:40

. For real , right , I

8:43

have to thank you , you know . And

8:45

I looked at him and I said , oh my God , because

8:47

two weeks prior I had arrested him

8:49

for marijuana in uniform

8:51

you know , while doing some , some , some

8:54

, uh , uniform work , and

8:57

this time I'm in playing clothes and the guy man

9:00

, he looks at me . He says okay , what you got , I give him $20 or whatever

9:02

he sells me . I said man you really don't remember

9:04

me , do you ? I

9:06

arrested you two weeks ago . And so off to

9:08

jail we go . So I did that

9:10

a little while , did some by bus operations and that

9:12

that was really interesting , just to get to

9:14

see what it was like to to actually

9:16

be on on the playing clothes

9:18

side . And

9:21

again , I had such an interest

9:23

in in homicide investigations

9:25

that that was always my purpose , my desire

9:27

. That's where I'm going to be honest with you . I don't care

9:30

what I ever do . That was really

9:32

the meat and potatoes of my police

9:34

career , my law enforcement career . That that was

9:36

where it really was and

9:40

we function a lot differently

9:42

than the more current , you

9:45

know , homicide deals

9:47

. We were just because you could really

9:49

get on the street and just stay

9:52

out there , and office was never

9:54

. If you stayed in office too long you

9:56

were not considered a great detective . You had to

9:58

be on the street , you had to be in the streets . Now

10:01

I want to . I want to get in that just a little bit . I

10:03

don't want to gloss over the narcotics stuff .

10:05

Obviously you're a young guy , young cop you're . I

10:07

don't know how long you were on the street before you went to narcotics

10:09

.

10:10

About a year , about a year and a half .

10:12

What was that transition like ? You're kind of because by that time you

10:14

were kind of learning the ropes , learning how to

10:16

be a good street cop , picking up on certain things

10:18

that could save your life , and then , completely

10:20

different role , doing the same thing under cover

10:22

. What was that like ?

10:24

It was , it was interesting , it was

10:26

, it was I'm not going to say scary

10:29

, but it was . It gave you . It gave

10:31

you a sense of

10:33

being uncomfortable and

10:35

I think that many times we get comfortable

10:38

in life , we get comfortable in certain situations

10:40

and the more you keep yourself uncomfortable

10:43

, I think , the more you

10:46

you tend to focus . Yeah

10:48

, so , so being

10:51

married to a radio is what it was called being being

10:53

on patrol . You , married to a radio , you just follow on the radio

10:55

. Here you had to have some self

10:57

initiative . You had to work on your own

10:59

, you had to make some some

11:02

. You did it as a unit , but you still had

11:04

to do some things on your own and

11:07

I think that many times

11:09

okay , let me back up , growing up in New

11:11

Orleans you had to be aware when you , when you were

11:13

walking the street , man , you know . So you

11:15

kind of had some street sense , some street smorgasbord . In the

11:17

first place it wasn't like you were coming out

11:19

of , like you see

11:21

, guys today they come out of suburbs

11:24

, they come out of you know , they've

11:27

never been experienced , they've never been in a fight

11:29

Like coming from the sticks and you're like

11:31

exposed to , to , to in my where

11:33

I worked , and it's like , oh , this is a different place , right

11:35

? And you never they've never been in a fight . Man , this

11:38

is how you grew up . I'm not saying that I

11:40

grew up in the Bronx , but

11:42

it was . It was still some some tough stuff

11:44

, yeah . So you kind of had some street smarts

11:47

and so . So

11:49

the police technique was not very

11:51

far away from understanding

11:53

survival skills and

11:55

techniques and stuff like that when you get into

11:58

office of safety Right . So

12:00

moving over into the into

12:03

the narcotics side

12:05

or the undercover side or the plain

12:07

clothes side was not that much of a

12:09

difference . You , you , these were people who

12:11

you had . You knew how to converse with

12:13

in the first place . You knew how to have conversation

12:15

, because this is who you dealt with on a regular basis

12:17

. And so when , when

12:19

, when I moved over to that place , I had I

12:22

had a female partner who

12:24

she kind of grew up in suburbs but

12:26

because of the certain schools she went to , she

12:28

was just as street . She could be a street

12:31

and hood , as it were , in the beginning , and so we

12:33

had such a great rapport because

12:36

she was able to really function just like she was

12:38

on the street .

12:39

Right .

12:40

You know . So we , we really had a good time . We really

12:42

had a good time doing it . It was

12:44

not a hard transition for me , but I understand

12:46

how some could , because you really have

12:48

to . What I call the

12:51

best way to learn is through immersion

12:53

. If you immerse yourself

12:55

in a , in a culture , or immerse yourself

12:58

in a certain skill set

13:00

, even if you're uncomfortable

13:02

going back to being uncomfortable you you

13:04

really look to do it quicker

13:06

. So you , you , you kind of function

13:09

a lot quicker when you begin to immerse yourself

13:11

. That's the best way to learn a language . Just go

13:13

and immerse yourself . You you're not reading

13:15

books , You're actually doing it , and

13:17

I think that's what that's part of what what that early

13:20

life of police work was like .

13:22

You ever have any . Any , because I think about

13:24

narcotics work and especially undercover . I

13:26

always think about that , you know , like the American

13:29

gangster stuff where it's like , hey , you know , you're burned . Someone's

13:32

holding you at gunpoint . You have anything crazy about that happen

13:34

when you're doing it .

13:35

No , no , we , we . We never

13:37

faced a situation where you

13:39

came up you were burned or something like that , because

13:41

I just

13:43

think I didn't do it long enough to really

13:46

get to that , to that stage I was

13:48

so fresh that that fresh

13:50

faced is what I'm saying that nobody

13:52

really caught it . Yeah

13:54

, he was a devote Literally

13:59

man , literally literally literally

14:01

and and we just had

14:03

back then it was a little low tech , we

14:06

had microphones

14:08

but you really couldn't do two-way conversations and

14:10

stuff like that . I mean you know , but

14:12

and again , I

14:14

just I know some of the old school

14:17

officers always say , man , it was so great back then , it

14:19

was so different back then . But literally

14:22

it really was . It was a different world . It

14:24

was a different , different form of policing

14:27

. In that stage , in that life , in

14:29

that city , things are just

14:31

totally different . You know my transition

14:33

to Texas . It was like I was . I went from Rocky

14:35

Road ice cream to vanilla .

14:39

I don't get the reference .

14:41

It was so exciting to just play

14:43

man . I'll give you a perfect

14:45

example . So when I first got here and I know we kind of jumped around a little

14:47

bit we're not going in sequence but when

14:50

I first got here worked

14:52

nights and I'm riding down the street

14:54

and a guy a

14:57

guy waves at me and

15:01

I

15:03

pull over and I say , man , what you waving at me

15:05

for what's wrong ? And I'm just speaking to you . What

15:07

are you talking about ? See , in New Orleans

15:10

, people walk all night

15:12

long , but if they wave at you

15:14

, they're doing something wrong .

15:15

They just try to get away .

15:17

Here people are genuinely nice , they're

15:21

speaking to the police .

15:22

Once you wave , you're talking to me . Show

15:24

me your other hand . All right , how you doing

15:26

?

15:26

Right right , you know so I had to get used

15:28

to the pro

15:31

police feel of this of North

15:33

Texas and people saying

15:35

thank you for your service . Man

15:38

, that was totally foreign to me in

15:41

that transition from New Orleans to

15:44

Texas North Texas in particular . But

15:47

yeah . So narcotics was fun . I

15:49

didn't do high , high volume

15:52

stuff , we just started

15:55

the process and our narcotics unit would

15:57

take over . So we function

15:59

more as a street level task force , so

16:01

kind of like how I did in my old age . Yeah

16:03

right .

16:04

Well , I like complaints and stuff . You know uniform .

16:06

If you can you , can you go cover

16:08

, Absolutely absolutely , and you just build

16:10

cases and if it got big enough

16:12

then you would turn it over to narcotics and they could

16:14

really see that we got something big here . Yeah , that's exactly

16:16

what I did .

16:17

Cool . So okay , were

16:20

you there during what is it

16:22

? Katrina ?

16:23

Absolutely .

16:24

Some of the other , I don't know .

16:25

Hurricane Katrina . Yeah , yeah , how was that ?

16:28

Of course we were over here and we're watching the news

16:30

and you're just like mouth

16:32

open , eyes open . You're like what the

16:35

hell ?

16:35

Yeah . So of course , here's

16:38

the difference between North Texas and New Orleans

16:40

. That , I guess , can give you better context

16:42

. I say sea level . That

16:45

was one of the things . In

16:48

this area you have so many different agencies

16:50

. That's one of the things I had to get used to . You

16:53

have an agency that's Dallas is on

16:55

one side , new Orleans

16:57

Police Department was it for

17:00

the city of New Orleans ? That's it . That's all you have

17:02

. And so you know everybody

17:04

. You know all

17:07

of the leadership

17:09

. You just know everybody . So

17:11

Hurricane Katrina , let

17:14

me back up everybody lives in a city , so

17:17

meaning nobody comes from outside

17:20

to help you .

17:20

So when there's

17:22

like no sheriff's department .

17:23

There's a sheriff's department but their function

17:25

is primarily jail detention , oh , okay

17:28

. Yeah , civil

17:30

sheriff , and his function is primarily civil services

17:32

, right ? So law enforcement strictly law enforcement

17:35

is the New Orleans Police Department

17:37

. So imagine the

17:39

entire police department being

17:41

decapitated when it comes to any

17:44

kind of service , anything

17:50

from assisting citizens to

17:52

assisting officers all of that is gone

17:55

. What I

17:57

looked at it ? Let me try to paint a picture . There

18:00

are many interstates . There's

18:03

one big interstate is called Interstate 10 , but

18:05

it has many overpasses , because

18:07

everything is elevated in the city . We're

18:12

riding on that elevated overpass and

18:14

I look out and all I can

18:16

see are tips of rooftops

18:18

. That's

18:21

where the water was . That's crazy . So

18:24

that's the look that

18:26

I and I got out , and

18:28

I just say to myself my life will

18:30

never , ever , ever be the same

18:32

, because this is not me

18:34

coming into a locale and

18:37

doing police work and then going back home . This

18:39

is my home as well as my job

18:41

. So everything is totally different in

18:44

this , and so we have experienced

18:47

many hurricanes , and so we were sort of

18:49

under the impression that this was gonna be a normal

18:51

regular hurricane . I hate to

18:54

say that , but I'm regular , regular hurricane

18:56

and you know , man , I have so

18:58

many stories . We could probably really talk for three or four

19:00

hours on this . But I'm riding

19:02

it's a Sunday , sunday in

19:05

August , august 28th Sunday and I'm riding

19:07

down the street . We're doing some proactive patrol

19:09

, just getting ready for the hurricane and getting

19:12

people , you know , to hey , go inside , stop

19:14

all this playing around . You know , I see

19:16

three or four ladies walking down the street , each

19:18

carrying a bottle of wine . Hey

19:22

, my neighborhood , my neighbor , is doing

19:25

a hurricane party , we getting ready to go . And

19:27

then that's what the mindset was like

19:29

it was another opportunity to

19:31

party . If anybody knows the city of New Orleans , it's

19:34

always a party . We're always looking

19:36

for an opportunity to have a party . You

19:39

party when you're born , you

19:41

party when you're divorced , you

19:44

party when you're married , you party when you die

19:46

, you party , man , it's all a party

19:48

and this was just another opportunity to have a

19:50

party . None of us realized

19:52

the implications that were about to take place

19:55

when this thing really hit and it

19:57

really was not the hurricane itself

19:59

, it was the breaking of the levees

20:01

that caused the problem . So

20:04

we were that night , we

20:06

were held up in a hospital

20:09

and the winds were blowing , and we just

20:11

felt hey , man , this is normal hurricane

20:13

. The

20:15

next morning , about eight o'clock , we started

20:17

getting all clear , everything is clear , the winds

20:19

have stopped , rain has stopped and everything

20:22

was really cool and

20:24

yeah , and so we were on the third floor of this hospital

20:26

on the street called St Claude

20:28

, near the Lord 9th Ward , and we looked out

20:30

and somebody noticed you

20:33

know why is that water

20:35

rushing so fast in

20:37

the ditches ? It's kind of fast . And

20:39

we just said , hey , that's just the water draining

20:41

, right , because ideally you should be kind of settling in

20:43

at that point , before it starts to recede right

20:45

. Absolutely no . The streets were clear

20:48

. There was no water in the streets at

20:50

first , this was just water in the drains

20:52

and stuff like this Looked

20:54

out about five or 10 minutes later and

20:56

noticed that there was more pulling . The

20:58

water was pulling , kind of coming up a little bit and

21:00

we were getting a little , you know , I

21:03

guess you know maybe a little flood or something has

21:05

happened . We all of a sudden started hearing

21:07

car horns , you know how . The alarms

21:09

were starting to go off and for some reason

21:11

, the trunks started popping . We looked out again , man

21:13

, the water was coming up higher and

21:16

this is when we realized we are dealing

21:18

with something beyond just the average hurricane

21:20

. Radio started going

21:22

off . This is , officer

21:24

So-and-So . I'm stuck . I need help . Officer

21:27

So-and-So , we need help over here . Officer So-and-So

21:29

, we need help over here . We just had

21:31

to get my family to the rooftop , so we had

21:33

off-duty officers who were beginning to call

21:36

in and request assistance

21:38

and we could not . Nobody could get

21:40

to anybody . We would just . I

21:42

refer to . I look at this . I love history

21:45

, I love to listen to history , talk about

21:47

history , read history , particular military history , and

21:49

what I hear about Vietnam is what I felt

21:51

. We saw smoke . We

21:53

heard helicopters and that was just

21:56

it . Silence everywhere else

21:58

. No birds , no dogs , nothing

22:00

else . No traffic , no horns , nothing . It

22:02

was just pure chaos

22:04

. Apocalypse , as it were , and

22:07

that's all you knew . You had no outside . You know

22:09

, we found out later that you guys , people

22:11

outside of New Orleans , were looking at

22:13

this and , oh man , poor people , oh

22:16

, we gotta send help , man , for us it was

22:18

a struggle . It was , you know

22:20

, life and death . We lost a lot of people . Two

22:23

officers , two or three officers

22:26

died in this process and

22:28

yeah , it was just . It was a tough time

22:30

.

22:30

Now a normal response in that situation , and

22:32

we haven't even got into what you're . Could we keep

22:34

jumping around ? But yeah , like a normal

22:37

response in that situation . A city gets flooded . Now I

22:39

imagine a place like New Orleans . There

22:41

is some type of preparedness

22:44

in the sense that a department like yours is gonna say

22:46

, hey , we might need boats . So I assume

22:48

you own boats . But

22:50

how in the world do you go about like

22:53

a situation like that , where streets are clear and now it's flooded

22:55

? How do you go about mobilizing those resources

22:57

?

22:57

Well , that's the point . That's the point . You

22:59

know , I had this conversation with my wife just the other night

23:01

. This is where you see leadership . We

23:05

had some leaders who Are the lack of no

23:08

, that's the point I'm about to make . We

23:10

had some leaders who were greater testing , but

23:13

when the crisis came , the

23:16

test didn't come through . And then we had leaders

23:18

who maybe were not great

23:20

at testing , didn't reach certain levels

23:22

, but began to lead . And if it wasn't

23:24

for those individuals who said

23:26

listen , five of you guys , let's

23:28

take a walk , let's go , come with me . Let's

23:31

have one particular captain who did such

23:34

an outstanding job , but

23:36

he did it against , and I don't know how

23:38

popular this was gonna be . He didn't feel and follow all

23:41

the rules and regulations of the book and

23:44

got was basically terminated

23:46

because of some of the innovative things

23:48

that he had to do . Nothing illegal

23:51

, nothing immoral , but he had to do some of the innovative things

23:53

, saved a whole fleet of vehicles because

23:55

he did something innovative . And

23:59

, again , because of the poor

24:01

leadership . You

24:04

have to learn how to be nimble in crisis

24:07

. You have to learn how to adapt , overcome

24:09

in what the Marines say all the time

24:11

, and that's exactly what some people had

24:13

to do and then some people fell apart , literally

24:16

, literally fell apart . Nerves

24:18

, lost every , all form

24:20

of courage , the whole point . And

24:22

so , when you talk about mobilizing

24:24

, there were things

24:27

in the book that you do , but

24:29

on this , nothing followed

24:31

the book . When you

24:34

, the greatest plans are great until

24:36

you get hit with adversity , and

24:38

nothing followed the book and the book got thrown

24:41

away and you had to really

24:43

reinvent everything you knew

24:45

, because everything that you had , all your resources

24:47

were flooded , everything

24:49

. We were basically on foot and in borrowed

24:52

boats by that time , and

24:54

so you just went to work . You went to work doing

24:56

what you knew to do , so we had officers who

24:58

jumped in boats and said let's go

25:00

save people . That's what I was gonna ask . What's ?

25:02

your first , because ordinarily saving

25:05

people that's a fire department thing . We do our best to

25:07

keep them safe and facilitate

25:10

that and even , like after Hurricane Harvey

25:12

, I was one of the groups that went

25:14

down to . Harvey , and even in that situation

25:16

we were still in a law enforcement capacity

25:18

because the looting and the

25:20

brokerizing and stuff like that . That's

25:23

gonna be a little bit different , though , in Nell's role during

25:25

Katrina , if I assume , because we're talking

25:27

about not only we're not saving people

25:29

, we're saving ourselves .

25:31

We have family that we have to take care of

25:33

. We

25:36

have no resources

25:38

, normal resources , like we were able to

25:40

send resources to Houston

25:42

and you had agencies that were

25:44

right outside of Houston . We had

25:47

none of that , because everybody that knows New Orleans it's

25:49

. We were cut off One

25:53

area , which is Slydale

25:55

Leeds , over Lake Ponson Train . That bridge was totally

25:57

destroyed and you couldn't enter

25:59

in from the other side either , so we

26:02

were literally cut off . Cut

26:04

off , yeah , and so we had

26:06

to really depend on FEMA and

26:08

we needed helicopter transports and

26:13

we man it was K-San in Vietnam . In

26:15

Vietnam , we were cut off and

26:18

the only thing we could get was air transport

26:20

and

26:22

helicopter landings and stuff like that . That's

26:24

the only way we could operate initially .

26:27

Okay . So watching from

26:30

afar , from over here , how

26:32

do you feel ? Fema like

26:34

if you wanna get .

26:35

Oh , they failed . Oh okay , they knew

26:37

they failed . Everybody knew they failed , and so

26:39

when we started talking about leadership , bro

26:42

.

26:42

It irks me . It's like if you can see something

26:44

coming , everybody , every meteorologist

26:47

this side of the Mississippi can see . Okay , what's about

26:49

to happen . You should see

26:51

this coming , which makes this

26:53

over here . You get prepared .

26:56

Well , I'll tell you now this is

26:58

interesting that you bring up meteorology

27:00

, because we

27:02

were not given the indication that Katrina

27:05

was going to be a major strike until

27:07

Saturday . And Katrina

27:10

hit on Sunday Because Friday

27:12

we were told it was gonna curve . Okay

27:15

, and usually those

27:17

people are pretty accurate , especially the hurricanes , yeah

27:19

, yeah they're pretty accurate , and so we had a

27:21

man . We were , you know , hey

27:23

, let's just kinda get ready . We

27:26

had our hurricane snacks as

27:29

we call them . Three days worth

27:31

. We were ready . We did have some now

27:33

outside . We didn't have a lot of outside

27:35

resources available , but we had placed

27:37

cars on the Superdome lots and

27:39

we were just man , we were ready

27:42

to go . Yeah , saturday

27:44

, we wake up Saturday morning . I

27:46

remember this like it was yesterday , and

27:49

the meteorologists , the mayor

27:51

, everybody on TV listen . This

27:54

has changed . The situation

27:56

has changed . We are gonna have

27:58

to get everybody out and

28:01

that's why you had the yeah , that's

28:04

why you had the issue

28:06

that you , what could have been like

28:08

most people that went to Canada , dallas or

28:10

Canada Houston would have been a five-hour to Houston

28:13

, eight-hour to Dallas , took them 16

28:15

and 17 hours Because you

28:17

were trying to egress a

28:20

whole city in one day and

28:23

then you had the showtub

28:25

. Last resort , which was the Superdome , became

28:28

a major chaotic mess . I

28:33

remember this one of

28:35

my neighbors and his wife were

28:37

literally having an argument in

28:39

the street . He wanted her to leave

28:41

. She didn't want to leave . I've been here all my life

28:44

. I don't leave the city for hurricanes and

28:46

, sweetheart , we really need to leave

28:48

for this one . And we lived

28:50

about a block from

28:52

Lake Pontchartrain . Oh , geez , yeah

28:54

, I did . I lived a block from Lake Pontchartrain and

28:56

Lake Pontchartrain actually overtopped the levees . I

29:00

had about five feet of

29:02

water in my house , cali

29:05

, and if she would have stayed she

29:07

would have made it . But we had a lot

29:09

of people that wanted to stay because they had been

29:11

through this before , and so they didn't realize

29:13

the level of

29:16

trial that they would have to go through .

29:18

Well , that's one of the sorry no no , go ahead . I

29:20

was gonna say that's . One of the negative

29:22

side effects in the

29:25

meteorology profession is because they

29:27

want people to take

29:29

precautions , but then if

29:32

too many times they're saying , hey , this is gonna be bad , pay attention

29:34

, and then stuff , because it doesn't always wind up

29:36

being twist where you get hit , it's not

29:38

just twist .

29:39

What's the adage ? The boy that cried wolf . Exactly , that's

29:41

exactly what it is .

29:43

Yeah , but there is no log in somebody

29:45

. Or is there a mandate where

29:47

you have to leave your house ?

29:50

You can call for a mandatory

29:52

evacuation , but that does

29:54

not necessarily

29:56

require a person to leave .

29:59

Yeah , I'm trying to see how that you know , like

30:01

constitutional .

30:02

Yeah , the problem with that is and what I tell

30:04

people all the time is this you know

30:06

you , if you wanna

30:09

risk your life , that's

30:11

fine . Now , nobody

30:14

has any legal right to force you

30:16

to do anything . Right , but then you force

30:18

the hands of somebody else , then you're forcing

30:20

others to have to come out and rescue

30:22

you , putting other people's lives at

30:24

risk , right .

30:26

That's the issue , man . Did

30:28

you see , like , of course ? I saw some of the pictures

30:30

. I mean it was people

30:33

, deceased people , animals , yeah

30:35

, hell , I think they showed alligators

30:38

, yeah , and I was like what .

30:39

Alligators will come in . You know what alligators

30:41

was saying Finally we get to take our city

30:44

back . Yeah , okay , that's

30:46

what , literally , because you know New Orleans man was , new

30:49

Orleans was a marsh land , yeah

30:51

, and that was a natural habitat of alligators

30:53

, snakes and everything else , yeah . And

30:56

so what you have is , finally alligators are saying , okay , finally we get

30:58

our city back , yeah , we get our land back

31:00

, because ultimately they were coming back taking

31:02

over . We rode out

31:04

New Orleans East trying to

31:06

find a way to get back around into the

31:08

Eastern area , because there was some

31:10

roads that were somewhat passable and

31:13

we tried to get out there and you would ride

31:15

out it was a street called Sheffman

31:18

, to a Highway and it's really

31:20

a highway road that goes way , you

31:23

know , just goes out . And we got as

31:25

far as we can get and along

31:27

the way , the whole way , you saw moccasins

31:30

, water moccasins , you saw alligators , turtles

31:32

just out sunning themselves , because

31:35

Just having a blast . Yeah , this is hey . Finally

31:37

we get our territory back .

31:40

Yeah .

31:40

Yeah .

31:42

So the lake that you're

31:44

saying top toe of the lake Lake .

31:45

Ponchertrain Lake , Ponchertrain . I'm

31:47

assuming that's a pretty big , yeah , it's only

31:49

. Think about this . It's only 12

31:51

feet deep . That's why it can not

31:54

be navigated by large

31:57

ships , but it

31:59

is . It's about

32:01

20 miles wide , so

32:04

it is a large body of water

32:06

and it

32:08

was where the most

32:11

of the problems came from , because

32:13

you had two or three levee breaks and

32:15

that lake feeds those areas

32:17

Gotcha . Now , one of the things , let

32:19

me say this , one of the things that New

32:21

Orleans did dodge

32:24

a bullet , and that's the Mississippi

32:26

. If the Mississippi breaks through

32:29

, which

32:31

you just can't , you can't plug those

32:33

holes , that would be something that you

32:35

just can't plug . But

32:38

there is a doomsday scenario that if a hurricane

32:40

comes up the right way , with

32:43

the IWO on the

32:45

west side of the

32:47

Mississippi , meaning

32:49

the water is being pushed up river , then

32:52

you would have almost a doomsday situation .

32:54

Yeah , because you and for anybody who hasn't seen

32:56

the Mississippi . I remember

32:58

the first time I went to New Orleans , probably

33:01

10 or so years ago , blew my mind . I

33:03

mean , it's the Mississippi River

33:05

best , not a river .

33:06

No .

33:07

I mean , that's an ocean man . Yeah , that was a great thing

33:09

and people call it the mighty .

33:10

It's called the mighty Mississippi . It

33:12

is a monster . It's a monster's because

33:16

it goes all the way from Illinois , all the way down , and

33:21

of course we're surrounded . We're actually three

33:23

feet below sea level , at least

33:25

when I say we , new Orleans , three feet below

33:27

sea level . So you have the Mississippi

33:30

River , you have the large body water , lake Ponzi train , and

33:32

then you have the Gulf of Mexico , which feeds . There

33:35

was an area called . We call it the Mississippi River

33:38

Gulf Outlet , they call it Mr Go . It was

33:40

really a low-match water deposit

33:43

that was placed there by the Corps

33:45

of Engineers to help dredge water

33:48

in that area and it became a

33:50

nemesis because it was allowed to . It

33:53

just pushed water into Lake Ponzi train and

33:55

it just created , create . Everything

33:57

that could have went wrong naturally went

34:00

wrong , and a lot

34:02

of the man-made resources

34:05

that we trusted , that

34:07

was supposed to keep us safe , failed , and

34:10

so that's what you had , okay let's

34:12

go back .

34:14

So if something with the Mississippi River

34:17

breaks , we're talking about washing

34:20

away an entire city .

34:22

Uh , it could , it could so . So the

34:24

Mississippi is is levied

34:26

at certain places . When I mean levied , I mean they're

34:28

built walls , levied walls . So

34:31

there's some places that , um

34:33

, the Corps of Engineers has developed a

34:36

ingenious , very ingenious um

34:38

way to control , like , when the river

34:40

rises it could or it

34:42

could become a mess , uh , problem

34:45

. But what they , what they've done , is they've

34:47

created a spillway that

34:49

allows water from the Mississippi

34:51

to enter into Lake Punchetrain

34:54

, which creates a place

34:56

to drip , to pull off some of the water

34:58

right . So , every every year , around spring

35:01

, usually , usually around spring , when , when a lot of

35:03

um northern states , the

35:06

snow is melting , that's when you really have that , that

35:08

issue . So , yeah , so that's

35:10

that's usually . It could be

35:12

problematic . I mean , if you , if you have a

35:14

good hard rain for three hours , the streets

35:16

are going to flood .

35:17

Yeah , so I , like I

35:19

absolutely love going to New Orleans Whenever

35:22

. My wife and I we have a bunch of kids , so we

35:24

don't get a whole bunch of free time , but the first

35:26

time , the first time

35:28

we had we got to leave before my last one

35:30

got here . We had like 36 hours and

35:33

like hey we're going to catch a flight , we're going to go to New Orleans because we'd

35:35

taken the kids before and loved it and it's

35:37

like it's this perfect mix of

35:39

it's . Almost it's a coastal town , so it kind

35:41

of has that coastal feel to it . But like I also

35:43

love history and like being

35:45

able to go on , like the Spanish mission , and look at something

35:48

that literally wasn't a part of our country

35:50

, it's just awesome to me and so we

35:52

would . We would go and we went to this one restaurant

35:55

and it would think I

35:57

believe it was in the French Quarter and

35:59

it started raining and like

36:01

you know you go in the restaurants , you got a couple steps up or whatever

36:03

. It just started . The place started filling

36:05

up the water . Yeah , like the restaurant where we're sitting

36:08

is filling up the water and I'm like , of

36:10

course , maybe and I know about Katrina I'm like

36:12

, oh my God , it's like a sneaky hurricane or something .

36:15

And I'm like no one is . No one cares

36:17

at all .

36:17

They're just like putting their shoes up on stuff and

36:19

the waiter is like , oh yeah

36:21

, just have a drink . Sit , kick back , relax , give her an hour

36:24

, it'll go away . Okay , and

36:26

sure enough , it just went away .

36:27

Yeah , sewage and water board

36:29

is a little . It really is public

36:31

works , and the

36:34

biggest problem that they have is keeping pumps

36:36

working , because pumps are the main

36:38

thing that will will keep the water . You

36:40

know you pump the water out , right , it

36:42

does . You can't just drain it . It's got to be pumped

36:45

out and if one of those pumps go down , people's

36:48

houses will probably get flooded . That's

36:50

what happened in that situation . More times than

36:53

not , if your car is parked

36:55

on streets you know the way the city

36:57

is set up you do more street parking than not

36:59

Many times

37:01

your cars will will get flooded . So

37:03

what they allow is hey , if we

37:05

feel like a rain , a rainy event is going to happen

37:07

and the flood is going to take place , we will allow

37:09

you to park your cars on what we call

37:11

neutral grounds . It's

37:14

, it's , and we don't have we

37:16

don't call them that here , right , but

37:18

these are places in the middle of the

37:20

, the avenue , the boulevard

37:23

or whatever that has just grassy

37:25

, it's like grassy areas , that's . That's

37:27

elevated , and you can park your

37:29

car up there . So you , that's that's what you do to keep

37:31

your cars from park , from flooding

37:33

. Yeah , so it's . I'm telling

37:35

you it's a different way of life

37:37

.

37:38

It's just a different way of life , and

37:40

it's the one city I've been to that like it

37:43

doesn't seem like you just went a few hours away , like

37:45

it feels like you were in a whole new

37:47

I want to say country necessarily , but

37:49

it almost is . It's like it's just , it's such a unique

37:51

culture .

37:52

Absolutely , absolutely , very few cities

37:54

that feel that way . For me , I

37:57

feel like that sometimes when I go to New York , and

38:00

San Francisco can give you a feel .

38:02

Really .

38:02

Simula yeah , simula to that for me

38:04

.

38:05

I've never been to New Orleans . Oh man

38:07

, it's you got to go . I absolutely love it . How

38:09

long does it drive from here ? Eight hours , yeah , okay

38:11

, I pass . You can't do that

38:14

I watch it on .

38:17

TV man jump on a flight . It's an hour and 15

38:20

, 20 minutes .

38:20

Yeah , it went back yeah

38:23

.

38:24

Yeah , I was , yeah , okay . So let me ask you

38:26

this how in the world did you

38:28

end up at GP ?

38:30

Police department yeah . So , hang on , I don't want to

38:32

skip ask . We already talked about the fact he's homicide . Oh

38:34

, okay , okay , no , you're in

38:36

the time

38:39

.

38:39

Yeah , we got a bunch of questions , yeah , yeah

38:42

.

38:42

Okay , homicide . Homicide Got

38:44

into homicide . It was unique . I

38:47

had a few number one . I

38:49

had a few very good mentors

38:52

One brother who was my mentor

38:54

deceased now but

38:57

actually I had two

39:00

mentors . One taught me

39:02

street life and one taught

39:04

me investigations , interviews

39:08

, could talk

39:10

you out of anything and whatever

39:13

it was , and another guy , man , he could

39:15

find whatever he wanted you needed him to

39:17

find , Put him in the street and

39:19

he'll find it . I had two great mentors

39:21

in teaching that . So I was young in police

39:23

work but I had great mentors that

39:26

brought me up . So I had some very , very , very

39:28

interesting cases , as you could imagine , in

39:30

the city of New Orleans , some very interesting

39:32

cases . Everything was not what

39:35

they call what we call dogs tied to

39:38

a tree . You know those are easy

39:40

cases where you just know pookie

39:42

shot dookie and that's what happened

39:44

, Okay , okay , and you

39:46

know those are dogs tied to a tree .

39:48

You know that's what we called them at that time I said , yeah

39:50

, they're giving you a dog tied to a tree . I don't want that

39:52

.

39:54

That means man . This is low hanging

39:56

fruit , just you know just

39:59

write the report and don't make any

40:01

mistakes . Get the evidence corrected

40:03

, you know . So , yeah , I

40:05

had some , let me give you

40:07

. I don't know how much time we got , but I

40:09

can give you some , maybe about three of the most

40:11

interesting cases .

40:12

Yeah .

40:13

Maybe two or three , all right . So I'm

40:16

sitting at home Sunday afternoon , sunday

40:18

evening , and I get a phone

40:20

call and I

40:23

had a desk officer with . The desk officer would actually

40:25

call you out and his famous

40:27

line was he

40:29

was talking with a gravelly voice hey , fred

40:32

, somebody's dying to meet

40:34

you . Yeah

40:38

, that was his way of calling you out

40:40

. So anyway we got , we got

40:42

a call one day . A dog

40:45

New Orleans East , which was

40:47

a little bit more rural part

40:49

of the city , a real dog no , real

40:52

, real by a while this time had found

40:54

a bone that was suspicious . Suspicious

40:57

bone that looked like it could have

40:59

been human man . We read in the middle

41:01

of I think it was playoff season or game

41:03

going on . So we get up , we , you

41:05

know , two or three of us we make the scene

41:07

and , true enough , the bone looks

41:10

like it could be human

41:12

. It's a regular dog . The guy

41:14

said man , my dog just went out and came back with this . I

41:16

said I needed to call the police because this really

41:18

looks suspicious . We

41:21

call out the . We call , had the coroner's

41:23

office . We call out the coroner's office . They come

41:25

collect the bone . We do a couple

41:27

of reports and do some pictures of the area

41:30

and we head back home A

41:32

week later call comes back

41:34

in Same dog has

41:36

found another suspicious bone

41:38

. So what this dog used

41:40

to do , the great , the great detectives

41:42

that we all , we realize this dog knows where

41:44

a body is . So

41:46

we call out cadaver , our , our

41:49

cadaver dogs and we do a search

41:51

of the area . This is again rural

41:53

part of New Orleans East which is marshy

41:56

. We have you . It took

41:58

us about two or three hours . We find a plastic

42:00

bag , a dark garbage bag

42:02

. In that garbage bag is a

42:05

head and two hands . The

42:08

uh , the uh dog continues

42:11

to search and the next finds another

42:13

bag about half a mile away , and

42:15

that in that bag there's a torso

42:17

, another , another

42:19

couple of feet , maybe another bag

42:21

with legs and feet . So we , we

42:23

know we have a homicide

42:26

. So the coroner's office comes out , we

42:28

, we pull the , the , the bags

42:30

together , they put the body together , we

42:33

some kind of way get an ID , we

42:36

find out who this person is , and this person

42:38

was , was , um

42:40

, might get a little graphic , but this person was

42:42

on the kit in the French

42:44

quarter , meaning this person

42:46

was a male prostitute . Okay , um

42:49

, and so we have to now go

42:51

somewhat undercover to

42:53

figure out what happened . We're

42:56

homicide detectives but we have to kind of really

42:58

just , you know , we have to take the badges and the

43:00

guns off and we have to go do real police

43:02

work , ask some questions . So we , we

43:04

go to a couple of bars .

43:05

I was like what do you mean by undercover ?

43:07

Yeah , yeah . In other words , we take off some , we take

43:09

off the , we just go , we , we we're

43:11

regular customers and we go to some

43:13

of the more CD bars I

43:16

was going to ask them to dress up

43:19

. We have to dress up , we go to some CD

43:21

bars . Man , I'm from the city and

43:24

I know the city is notorious for certain

43:26

things , but what I saw in that bar

43:28

opened my eyes to

43:31

some things that I'd never seen before in my

43:33

life . Hello , um

43:35

, we get some information that the person had been cut

43:37

up . Cut up on a , on a , some

43:39

sort of um , uh , uh

43:43

, what are you , the guys that sell

43:45

meat ? The , the butchers , butchers , yeah , the guy the

43:48

guy had been actually cut up in a butcher .

43:49

Now we're getting to more .

43:51

Yeah , the actual butcher shop . So now we get into to

43:53

, uh , get into Godfather kind

43:55

of stuff . Now you know . So ultimately

43:57

we we do not . This is one of the cases . The

43:59

reason I bring this case up because we didn't solve this case . Uh

44:02

, this is still a unsolved case , but

44:05

the the way , the way we

44:07

found and investigated it and

44:10

the way we came to some conclusions was

44:12

one of the most , the most difficult

44:14

test that we had . And , and

44:16

I'll tell you as a homicide detectives , one

44:19

of the hardest types of cases

44:21

are those where

44:23

the victim , when you do a victimology

44:25

, is difficult because

44:27

the victim is so , has

44:30

no roots , you know , there's nobody

44:32

to really can can really monitor

44:34

, can really tell you where and when the victim

44:36

did this . And there's so many cases

44:39

, uh , in the city of New Orleans right now where you

44:41

have uh , individuals who , who

44:43

were killed , but you don't know who

44:46

and where because of the lifestyles

44:48

that they led , right , and those are some

44:51

difficult cases to solve .

44:53

Yeah , I've always heard that if you , you

44:56

know , of course now with technology , most of them

44:58

are going to get solved , but it's like if

45:01

you start having a problem with somebody that you know

45:03

or you just you out and you have a disagreement

45:06

or argument or a fight , chances

45:08

are you're going to get caught . Yeah , you know

45:10

, they would always say , uh , especially some in the other

45:12

city we worked . There was like no , if you just drive out of

45:15

town , go to a random town , kill somebody and then

45:17

come back , yeah , because it's

45:19

like there's nothing to tell you to that person .

45:20

Absolutely . We're very few times that you have

45:23

homicides like that . Yeah

45:25

, I mean those , those are your , your , you know

45:27

you you're talking about serial killer or something in that

45:29

nature . But many , many of them are domestic

45:31

, many of them are drug related , many of them

45:33

are uh , arguments

45:36

, stuff like that . But yeah

45:38

, the biggest cases that I think I had , that

45:40

that either were solved or unsolved

45:42

, were , um , we just had some cases

45:45

, man , and you know , in that city

45:47

you have , of course , you

45:49

have the drug trade cases . Uh

45:52

, there was one in particular where um

45:54

, um man , to this day I

45:56

still don't get it , but this

45:58

guy , he believed that

46:00

he , though , he trusted the guys

46:03

that he was doing these , these drug deals , with enough

46:05

to bring his , his children

46:07

, his kid and his girlfriend to

46:09

the drug deal . Um

46:12

, not known to him , they

46:14

had decided in advance to rob

46:16

him . And so he gets

46:18

to the location , they bring him

46:20

upstairs , the kid and the

46:22

girlfriend in the car and

46:25

the . The idea was

46:27

to rob him , but he put up a little resistance

46:29

, yeah , and I did See , and even

46:32

that like that .

46:32

Like okay , bad on the guys doing the robbery

46:34

, obviously bad on the idiot taking his kids , but also

46:37

you got your kids with you . Like me

46:39

, if I someone tries to rob me , someone's going to a gas station

46:41

, I might shoot out with you normally , but if

46:43

I got my kids behind me , that's . I'm not doing that , yeah

46:45

, yeah .

46:45

Yeah , you , you , you would think that , but he , he

46:47

puts up resistance and of course , they kill

46:49

him and , uh

46:52

, this was one of the first cases I'll tell

46:54

you . Let me just give you this point right here . The hardest

46:56

cases for me were children involved and

46:59

, um , it turns out the mom , we

47:02

believe the mom used the kid as a shield

47:04

and , uh , the child passed

47:06

and the mom was shot multiple times

47:08

but she survived , she was able to

47:10

become a witness and we were

47:12

able to , um , solve

47:15

and then get the , uh , the

47:17

perpetrators , what we call them , the , the

47:19

, those individuals . We got them , got

47:21

them in jail . So I feel like

47:23

sometimes I'm like Denzel and in training day

47:25

, you know , I got a , I got people right

47:27

now serving years because

47:30

of my case testimony . You know I

47:32

really , I really do feel like that sometimes , but you

47:34

think about it , man , and it's just . It's horrible

47:36

how people's lives change . Lives change

47:38

because of what they

47:41

decide to get involved in or

47:43

what others involve themselves in and pull

47:45

in innocent people .

47:46

You know so well when it all comes down . My

47:50

estimation is so much of it comes down to . That's

47:53

not going to happen to me , though . Like

47:56

it's always a , of course , me and my wife

47:58

go back and forth about this because she just , you know

48:00

, says I'm just paranoid . But it's like there's so

48:02

many people I guess in our job you see it

48:04

all the time that's what is never going to happen . It just does over

48:06

and over and over . It's like you know that guy

48:08

he bought from that person how many times he's like right

48:10

, I'm telling kids it's going to be fine . Yeah

48:12

, it's absolutely crazy .

48:15

Absolutely yeah .

48:16

What was your , what was your role while you're

48:18

homicide ? Were you like a baseline detective ?

48:20

Yeah , I was a detective . I was a detective

48:22

for several years and then , when I promoted

48:24

to supervise a sergeant , I

48:27

supervised a task force and

48:30

then I supervised a homicide unit . Okay

48:32

, what was it ? What was ?

48:32

the task force .

48:34

The task force was this was street level

48:36

crime , so this was not the narcotics

48:38

stuff , this was you have . At

48:40

that time you had , you had corners

48:42

, literally you had corners that were just notorious Right

48:44

, and so you put pressure on that corner and

48:48

, and , and you just made

48:51

sure that your presence was felt on that corner

48:53

and you clean that corner up and individuals

48:56

realized we're not , this is not our corner anymore

48:58

, this corner belongs to the citizens

49:00

of the city of New Orleans from now on . So that's

49:02

that's what you did . So you made , made

49:06

a rest , you got guns off the street and

49:09

and that was a big , in

49:11

my estimation , a big area

49:13

of crime deterrents .

49:15

Yeah , absolutely .

49:15

You know , just just dealing with you , you

49:17

, you targeted , you targeted certain , certain

49:20

hot spots it's really we call them the hot spots

49:22

. You targeted them and you

49:24

, you made sure that that the , the

49:26

individuals that made them hot spots

49:28

, you , you , you took care of business with

49:30

those individuals and you close that ?

49:32

Yeah , absolutely , absolutely Well

49:35

cause so much , so much . You know we

49:37

wind up , you know like Dr

49:39

Stanton's going to get it or two political , but like we wind

49:42

up fighting against the criminal

49:44

element but then also the

49:46

prosecutorial element when it comes to

49:48

the , the county where it's like I

49:50

might arrest you for drugs because you're selling

49:52

. You're selling drugs out here in this corner or whatever . But

49:55

if you're , you're bonding out , you're getting out , you're getting deferred

49:57

, you're , you're getting probation where the case is and you're right back

49:59

out there doing it again because no one's following through , kind

50:02

of that , that bum rushing style

50:05

of hey , you might not stay in jail , but

50:07

I'm going to take you so freaking often that I'm just going to

50:09

make your life until you leave

50:11

, and then people can actually live their lives like they're supposed

50:13

to .

50:13

Right . Well , since you're on it and I'm not going to make a big political

50:16

statement either but if you notice the big

50:18

wave of defund the police that

50:20

took place a couple of years ago and you

50:23

had a lot of progressive prosecutors

50:26

who said you know , we're going to start cutting breaks

50:28

and deals and all this kind of stuff , if you look at their record

50:31

now you realize they have reversed

50:33

course , really . Yeah , because

50:36

they realized that crime was increasing and people

50:38

were fed up with that and citizens began to

50:40

complain and say listen , we need police

50:43

officers doing their jobs , we

50:46

need prosecutors doing their jobs . And

50:49

if you look at the current DA in the city of New Orleans

50:51

, he has completely changed course . He wasn't

50:53

going to , he was not going to prosecute

50:56

juveniles at

50:59

all , and now that

51:01

course has changed because juveniles became

51:03

absolutely notorious

51:05

for car thefts , car

51:08

jackings , street-level

51:11

crimes , and now that city is They'll be

51:13

murder suspects Absolutely . And now you see

51:15

that there is a major shift in the crime

51:17

trends because these policies

51:19

have been reversed . We

51:23

talk about criminology all the time . You're

51:25

going to have a certain element , a level

51:27

of crime in any

51:30

location and if you're not

51:32

putting pressure there

51:34

, it can get out of control and

51:37

citizens suffer because of it . But

51:39

you take care of the criminal side of this

51:41

thing and citizens are happy If

51:43

we're doing our job legitimately . That's

51:46

the main thing and sometimes we lose that

51:48

element being legitimate . But

51:50

once we become legitimate or once we maintain that

51:52

legitimacy and

51:55

we see that here that's one of the things I love about Grand

51:57

Prairie is that the citizens here trust

52:00

the police . The majority

52:02

support the

52:04

government , our elected officials

52:07

support . You don't have that in

52:09

every agency in every city and it's

52:11

unfortunate because we have to become

52:14

partners . You have to become partners . If you're not

52:16

partners together in this process , it's

52:19

not going to be well for you or your city .

52:21

Yeah .

52:22

I completely agree .

52:23

I think it's such a weird reaction to

52:25

there were some instances where somewhere

52:29

controversial but justified , somewhere controversial

52:31

clearly not justified , but regardless of the

52:33

reaction being something like OK

52:35

, well , it's not a prosecute juvenile , OK

52:38

, that's a response to what , George Floyd , what

52:40

do those two things have to do ?

52:41

with one another , exactly .

52:43

Of course , you're going to get results that are wildly

52:45

scared and not directly related to

52:47

the issue at hand .

52:51

We could take politics out of this thing and

52:53

really look at it from a moral justice

52:56

standpoint , I think we'll be

52:59

a whole lot better off . But when we

53:01

try to choose sides and begin

53:03

to get political and set up camps

53:05

, then it becomes a we get

53:08

, we officers , police officers , we get caught

53:10

in the middle of this .

53:11

Oh , absolutely , that's true , right . Yeah , you know , this guy

53:13

has a sign up saying police , support me . This guy has

53:15

a sign up saying , please , it's like I do , right

53:18

, I don't know who y'all are Right

53:20

. So whenever

53:22

you promoted and you go to the

53:25

task force role , where

53:28

did you first of all ? Were you kind of around the same guy as

53:30

you were working with previously ?

53:32

No , so

53:34

when you promote in that city , when you promote

53:37

you move , you have to change districts so

53:39

you get a whole new set of

53:41

folks that you're working with . And

53:43

so I started off again supervising

53:46

a great group of people who

53:48

were just

53:50

interested in just doing better for their city . So

53:53

we worked together for a good year and a half and

53:55

then after that I as

53:58

a sergeant moved over to running my

54:00

own homicide unit in

54:03

the fifth district , which was my

54:05

where I grew up . Part of the fifth district contains

54:07

the Lord Ninth Ward . Many

54:09

people who are from New Orleans remember the

54:11

desire project area . To

54:14

some of you that might not be anything , but to

54:16

us that was like what's

54:18

that area that we ? It's real quiet now

54:21

. It used to be big , notorious in the city

54:23

, grand prairie . It used to be .

54:25

Doward's , doward's yeah .

54:26

Yeah , it was Doward's , when Doward's was

54:28

Doward's . Worse than that , because I went to

54:30

Doward's when I said this is , this is this

54:33

is nice , this is nice compared

54:35

to you know , but yeah

54:37

, so in that city I mean , I'm sorry in that

54:39

, in that part

54:42

of the New Orleans it was a difficult

54:44

place to work . So

54:47

the FBI usually says that a homicide

54:49

detective should have about four homicides

54:51

, five homicides a year . That should

54:53

be all . That's what the FBI

54:55

says . One detective for five cases

54:58

, because you have so much to do . My

55:00

first year I had 12 . Yeah

55:02

, I was just here , just me as a lead detective

55:05

Just me and then I was just lead , so it was

55:07

just four of us in one district

55:09

and the other three had 12

55:11

each too . So that was the homicide

55:13

rate in that , in just that one district . So

55:16

it was similar to that in the fifth district

55:18

where one of my good friends , who's passed away

55:20

nowadays this brother , he was a great detective

55:22

he would say man , I say how you doing , sir

55:25

? He said Bates , I'm just taking

55:27

names and keeping score . That's

55:29

just the way it was , because you go from one

55:31

case to the next case to the next case

55:33

, and it became an overwhelming situation

55:36

to where all you were doing was

55:38

on scene , typing

55:40

or in court . That's all you're doing

55:42

. You just didn't have time for anything else . On

55:44

scene of a case , interviewing

55:47

, typing reports or in court

55:49

, that's all you did .

55:52

How do you combat the burnout

55:54

with that ? Because with homicide it's different than like

55:57

if I had two people that are arguing

55:59

over who took each other's cell phone and needed

56:01

one of them to cooperate and I get burned out . In

56:03

that case , ok , right

56:05

, who's crying ? But it's a whole different

56:07

level .

56:07

Here's what I personally think and this might be just

56:10

my opinion , my opinion only I think people

56:12

who first thing

56:14

I think police work is calling

56:16

, is it calling ? And I think

56:18

being homicide detective is a calling . I

56:21

think that God gives . There

56:27

was a New York detective who

56:29

Herman that's

56:32

not his name , I can't take his name right

56:34

now , but he taught homicide 101

56:37

to cities and he said this

56:39

one statement he

56:41

says as a homicide detective , we work for God

56:43

. It was his statement

56:46

. That's what he put up . I think Chief

56:48

Sezny has that deal in his

56:50

office right now we work for God and

56:52

I think being a homicide detective , there's a certain level

56:54

of grace that God gives

56:57

these men and women to

56:59

really be able to do

57:01

this job on a consistent

57:03

basis . I think the same thing

57:05

happens with child abuse detectives , because

57:07

I'm going to tell you something I don't have the grace for that I

57:10

don't have to . Y'all might have to edit this out .

57:17

But I don't have grace for that .

57:18

So I stay away from that Because

57:21

I can't do that , I just can't . But

57:24

with homicide , because remember , homicide

57:26

well , at least in the city of New Orleans , you handled

57:28

homicides . You handled what we call

57:31

aggravated batteries , that's when somebody

57:33

was shot or hurt

57:35

to the point to where they could possibly

57:37

die . Got you , we handled suicides

57:40

and we handled deaths

57:42

that were unexplained , those

57:45

kind of things . So you went on a lot

57:47

of scenes , you saw a lot of death and

57:49

there's some people that are just not built

57:51

to handle that . Oh , absolutely not , and

57:54

so that's why I really think that you have

57:56

a certain grace for that , because you can leave

57:58

that scene , you can go

58:00

home and really you

58:02

can release that and live your life . But

58:04

there's some people that they struggle with

58:07

that .

58:08

You ever struggle with it early on , never did .

58:10

Never did . That's why I really believe I had a grace for

58:12

that , because I never struggled

58:14

with that at all . I

58:17

was able to go home , and I really believe

58:19

that part of that as well is my

58:21

faith . I really believe

58:23

it Because I'm a true

58:25

believer in God , through

58:27

Jesus Christ , and

58:29

I have a certain perspective theological perspective

58:31

on life , certain theological

58:34

perspective on death , and

58:36

I place those things in that same category

58:39

and I'm not living compartmentalized

58:42

. I have an integrated life . My faith is integrated

58:44

in my work . My work is integrated in my

58:46

faith . You see what I'm saying . So I

58:48

never had a

58:50

problem with that . Now

58:53

, morally , there are certain things that you may want

58:56

to do , like training day , denzel . You

58:58

might want to do things just to get people off the street , but

59:00

morally , if you do it right and

59:02

that's what I teach in the academy , man If you do

59:04

it right because it's right , even when

59:06

no one is looking , you're going to come out

59:08

on the right side every single time .

59:12

Essentially the way you explain

59:14

how you integrate everything . That's the opposite approach

59:16

of a lot . It's certainly the opposite approach of

59:18

me I try to be really big on . I

59:21

walk out the door and like is that

59:23

life ? And then this is this life . I

59:25

never heard someone say they intentionally

59:27

integrated all together .

59:28

Well , and so I'm not going home

59:30

discussing homicides , but

59:33

I have an intentional

59:35

faith that helps

59:37

me realize that , yes , this is my job

59:39

, but this is not who I am . You

59:41

follow me . So when

59:44

I go home , I don't have to go home a

59:46

homicide detective or a police officer . I can

59:48

go home as father , grandfather and

59:50

husband and just be

59:52

who I am there . But

59:54

when I go to work , I still have faith

59:57

, I still conduct

59:59

myself in a manner

1:00:01

of faith and as a man of faith , and

1:00:03

that I can objectively look at a situation

1:00:05

and know that this is

1:00:08

a situation that my faith

1:00:10

also speaks to . That's kind of what I mean

1:00:12

by that integration . I

1:00:16

don't sound too preachy here , but I'm not

1:00:18

just a Sunday morning Christian . If

1:00:20

you understand that , you can go

1:00:22

to church and church is church , but

1:00:24

then the rest of the week , man , I'm just wide

1:00:26

open , whatever . No , every

1:00:29

day , sunday through Monday , tuesday

1:00:31

, every day is me

1:00:33

attempting to live a godly

1:00:36

life , righteous life , knowing

1:00:38

that God put me here to not only help

1:00:40

people in tough times

1:00:42

, but also to bring some righteousness to

1:00:44

the land , to bring justice

1:00:47

to the land , and so I can incorporate all

1:00:49

of that at the same time , and that allows

1:00:51

me to be able to look at what Dr

1:00:53

King , martin Luther King , said man's inhumanity

1:00:56

to man , to look at that in a theological

1:00:58

perspective and realize this is what we

1:01:01

do to each other . But God

1:01:03

has the last say and I'm part of

1:01:05

God's hand in having the last say because

1:01:07

I work for God .

1:01:10

Do you ? I imagine there

1:01:12

are times it's difficult to maintain

1:01:14

a principled life

1:01:17

, but then also you're exposed

1:01:19

and what you're surrounded with all day

1:01:21

, every day , is you're working homicide

1:01:23

in the world . It's not

1:01:26

a real polished area in

1:01:28

the environment and the authors are around . A lot of

1:01:30

times People don't realize that the

1:01:32

stuff we're around influences us and kind of changes the

1:01:34

way we are sometimes . So your peers are not

1:01:36

always going to be living the same way

1:01:38

that you want to . What

1:01:41

do you do to kind of keep yourself on track or

1:01:44

remind yourself how to do this ?

1:01:46

That's a great question . Great question , and

1:01:49

this goes to being biblical , being

1:01:51

theological . Jesus said

1:01:53

to believers you

1:01:55

are a salt of the earth , you're a light

1:01:58

to the world , and so I'm

1:02:00

not walking around condemning folk for what they

1:02:02

do or don't do or whatever . I just know who

1:02:04

I am in Christ . And

1:02:07

Paul put it this way in Galatians , chapter

1:02:09

two now y'all got me on the preaching side he

1:02:11

says I'm crucified with Christ . I

1:02:14

no longer live the life

1:02:17

I now live . I live by faith in

1:02:19

the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself

1:02:21

for me . So what he's saying there is

1:02:23

I'm not living for myself anymore

1:02:25

, I'm truly crucified

1:02:27

, and so what I do and how I live

1:02:29

is really for Christ Around

1:02:32

. I'm not just wearing a badge saying

1:02:35

that I'm this and y'all are that . I'm

1:02:37

really living my life for

1:02:40

Christ . And so out of that comes if

1:02:42

somebody needs help , I'm helping . If

1:02:44

somebody needs encouragement

1:02:46

, I'm encouragement . If somebody

1:02:49

just needs me to just live in front

1:02:51

of them a certain way , that's what I'm doing

1:02:53

, you know . And so

1:02:55

for me , as a minister

1:02:58

, from the ministry side of this , I find

1:03:00

police work to be a great place for

1:03:03

me to understand people , because

1:03:06

in this life , you have to understand three things you need

1:03:08

to know yourself , you need to know

1:03:10

God and you need to know people . If

1:03:13

you know those three things , you can have a lot

1:03:15

of success in life . If you know yourself , you

1:03:17

gotta know what pushes you , what you need to

1:03:19

know , cause there's certain things I told you I can't

1:03:21

do child abuse . I know I can't do it . You

1:03:25

know God . And then you know people . I find that

1:03:27

in church , people

1:03:30

put on the best face , oh

1:03:33

man , the greatest smiles . But

1:03:35

see , what I do realize too , is those same church people

1:03:37

are the same people I see on

1:03:40

the streets , and that

1:03:42

helps me understand where people really

1:03:44

are , so that on Sunday mornings

1:03:47

I'm not just being theological , I'm also being

1:03:49

real in real life and

1:03:52

meeting people exactly where they are

1:03:54

. That's what Jesus did . Jesus was not

1:03:56

. Jesus didn't come here talking about

1:03:58

, you know , the skies and the celestial stars

1:04:00

and the angels . He met people where they are , you

1:04:03

know . And that's exactly what I think police

1:04:05

work does for us . We

1:04:07

really , whether you believe or not

1:04:10

, we really work for God . And

1:04:12

if anybody doubts that , read Romans 13 . And he

1:04:14

sent authorities for a purpose . Do

1:04:18

we do it just late ? That's up to us . Individual right

1:04:21

, you follow me , but that's our position and that's what we

1:04:23

do , and so , for

1:04:25

me , and for me and my

1:04:27

colleagues , we we're doing God's

1:04:29

work . We just have to make

1:04:31

sure we do it the right way . Yeah

1:04:33

, absolutely , that's

1:04:38

exactly what it is .

1:04:39

Yeah , now , we've been going for a while and I know you're

1:04:41

gonna you're gonna shoot me if I don't move

1:04:44

on , but I

1:04:47

interrupted him earlier , so

1:04:50

I would like you to . We probably talk for three more

1:04:52

hours about some of that . I would love to , but some

1:04:54

of the . How in the world do we go from

1:04:56

New Orleans and you promote sergeant

1:04:59

and then your lieutenant ?

1:04:59

Yeah .

1:05:01

And then you wind up in this grand prix .

1:05:03

Yeah so I'm glad you . Yeah , I know we were about

1:05:05

to get there , so I'm . We're in

1:05:07

the middle of Katrina and by

1:05:09

this time the National Guard had

1:05:12

been In other states that

1:05:14

started sitting National Guard . So I

1:05:16

remember this National Guard air crew from

1:05:18

I think it was Vermont or Maine , flew

1:05:21

out , flew for us every night . So I rode helicopters

1:05:23

every night just doing overwatch

1:05:25

for the city , checking out .

1:05:26

You know we're doing roll with that one .

1:05:28

I was a lieutenant and I was overseeing the looting

1:05:30

operation . Oh , got you . So we were looking

1:05:32

. You know , if you saw , because the city

1:05:34

was blacked out , it was still no , no electricity . So if you

1:05:36

saw some headlights somewhere , you say , okay

1:05:38

, you know what is that ? What is that car doing right

1:05:41

in this dogs on this dark street , you

1:05:43

know , when they were still curfew and all this kind of stuff . So I

1:05:45

was doing that for a while and I

1:05:47

met this , this

1:05:50

National Guard

1:05:52

person from Texas who was

1:05:54

a police officer in Mesquite and

1:05:57

he said man , you really need to investigate

1:06:00

North Texas Police work

1:06:02

, because I , you know , I was telling them , you know

1:06:04

, quality life in New Orleans prior to Katrina was

1:06:06

a little rough and then you know it's gonna be a

1:06:08

mess afterwards . I'm not trying

1:06:10

to jump ship , I'm gonna work here

1:06:12

as long as I can to help the city recover

1:06:14

. But I realized this is not my long term . My

1:06:17

wife and I have been to this , not our long-term Life

1:06:20

. So we were , we were gonna be relocating at

1:06:22

some point . So this guy put the bug in my ear From

1:06:26

a ski . I couldn't tell you his name , couldn't tell you if he's still on a job

1:06:28

or not in Mesquite , let's keep police department

1:06:30

. He said man , you really should give North Texas a try . I'm

1:06:32

the ski police department . I

1:06:34

said , okay , well , check this out , we're

1:06:37

gonna try it out . My wife has some family

1:06:39

here , so she had

1:06:41

already investigated the area . So we

1:06:43

decided you know what , we're gonna leave

1:06:45

the city , we're gonna leave New Orleans , we're gonna leave the NOPD

1:06:47

, we're gonna come up here and we're gonna just

1:06:49

do something different . We've been in police work all our

1:06:51

life . By the way , that I tell you , my wife was please , she

1:06:54

was a , she was I'm sorry , she was a police

1:06:56

officer and she , she worked

1:06:58

the French Quarter .

1:06:59

So she was downtown French Quarter .

1:07:01

Yeah , so we were both leaving

1:07:03

. It was her role . Whenever you're left

1:07:05

, she was a police officer .

1:07:07

Okay .

1:07:07

Yeah , police I , she was an officer , she fun

1:07:10

. She worked in the at that time

1:07:12

. She was , she was , we call , across the river 4th

1:07:14

district . She was a police officer in that , in that

1:07:16

area Patrol

1:07:18

. She also did FTO training

1:07:20

and stuff like that . So so

1:07:22

we decided we're gonna leave , we're gonna get , we're gonna just escape

1:07:25

the life , we're gonna come out of New Orleans man , we're gonna

1:07:27

just come to North Texas and just do something

1:07:29

different . And I , like the godfather

1:07:31

3 , every time we try to get out they pull us back in

1:07:33

. So we got up here

1:07:35

, we looked around . Initially

1:07:39

we both Decided , you know , footwork

1:07:41

might be the because we lived in Fort Worth , so

1:07:43

we're gonna join , join the Fort Worth police

1:07:46

department . We took the test , both scored high

1:07:48

and we're getting . I Don't

1:07:51

I'm not gonna say what happened , but we were

1:07:53

gonna go to Fort Worth and

1:07:55

just didn't quite . You

1:07:58

know , like the whole culture

1:08:00

thing at the time , and somebody

1:08:03

suggested Grand Prairie . They said

1:08:05

, look at , you know , give Grand Prairie a shot . By

1:08:08

the time I was doing some stuff with Kent , tarrant County

1:08:10

and decided they didn't let me go over and check

1:08:12

Tarrant County outs , I mean a Grand Prairie

1:08:14

out . So came over , score

1:08:16

real high on the test , you know , and

1:08:18

Thank God I was in shape , so

1:08:21

I was able to run to the mouth mouth in the hair

1:08:23

and all that kind of stuff and jumped on the and

1:08:25

I think I was like One of the top two on the on

1:08:28

the list . So I , you know now

1:08:30

I didn't come in and say hey , I'm a lieutenant and all

1:08:32

this kind man , I just you know , I

1:08:35

just give it a shot .

1:08:35

Make a difference anyway right , Right

1:08:38

.

1:08:38

We didn't have the lateral program at the time . So

1:08:40

you know , man , I'm just coming in .

1:08:42

You're really just coming in .

1:08:43

Yeah , coming in , coming in . Like I told you before

1:08:45

, I was actually in training , making more money here

1:08:48

in training . Then I was as

1:08:50

a lieutenant there .

1:08:51

Oh , as lieutenant , as lieutenant .

1:08:53

No man as a lieutenant as a lieutenant

1:08:55

making more money here ? Yeah , because

1:08:58

you could come here with your underwear

1:09:00

. Everything else is given to you there

1:09:03

. You had to buy everything except your gun .

1:09:05

In New Orleans .

1:09:06

Yeah , yeah everything except your gun

1:09:08

you .

1:09:08

You had to buy . I

1:09:12

was your uniform .

1:09:14

I was here next , so I used to say this

1:09:16

a lot of people and I still said man , you just

1:09:18

don't realize what this

1:09:20

city provides you . Oh yeah

1:09:22

, we

1:09:25

get , we get spoiled , we

1:09:27

get comfortable , go somewhere

1:09:30

else and you realize you work

1:09:32

. You literally work for one of the best agencies

1:09:34

in this world . I'm not saying that because I'm

1:09:36

because we're here , here . You know , you really work

1:09:38

for one of the best , one

1:09:43

of the best agencies in this , in this , in this

1:09:45

country absolutely . So

1:09:49

so I get started now

1:09:51

. This is the chief . Hill was the chief

1:09:53

at the time , right , and he

1:09:56

said hey , man , why don't you ? You know , you know

1:09:58

you have all experiences , but but you know It'll be good for

1:10:00

you to go through the Academy because you

1:10:03

know you would , you would get to know some of your

1:10:06

co-future coworkers . I

1:10:08

said , no , sir , I'm gonna just , I'm gonna just get

1:10:10

started . So I didn't go through the Academy coming

1:10:12

here , I just got in and we

1:10:14

got started and , man , it's been , it's

1:10:16

been a whirlwind since now . Unfortunately

1:10:20

, I didn't get a chance to go back to homicide

1:10:22

here Again . Homicide

1:10:24

was at that time for me , was was like that

1:10:27

, that was the . The

1:10:29

only time I was in that time was when

1:10:31

I was in the office at that time . Let

1:10:33

me back up . Patrol was really , really , really , really fun , but homicide

1:10:36

was really wax cell . That's what

1:10:38

my grace was

1:10:40

in the sense . So

1:10:45

I'm kind of doing a boring job here

1:10:47

right now . What

1:10:52

exactly do you do ? What exactly do I do ? I am , I am called

1:10:54

a planning and research officer about

1:10:57

Preparation

1:10:59

, planning . Literally planning is planning

1:11:01

and research . But here it was

1:11:03

. It became somewhat of a different

1:11:05

animal . Chief died

1:11:08

at the time Was was it pretty

1:11:10

much became . You know , whatever you were assigned

1:11:12

to do is one of those open-ended deals . So

1:11:14

, man , we started doing everything from grants and and

1:11:17

policies , and right now I'm

1:11:19

focusing on policy . We revised

1:11:21

policies . So if something changes in the textures

1:11:23

legislature , something's changed with the law

1:11:25

, we see something

1:11:27

, we need to do something different , make

1:11:29

some adjustments . Part of my

1:11:31

job is to prepare the document to

1:11:34

get the policy changed and get

1:11:36

it reviewed . And then we that's when

1:11:38

you get those emails hey , these are the

1:11:40

new policies , this changed and that changed

1:11:42

, and so on and so forth .

1:11:43

So let me ask you this is something that's always , always

1:11:46

confused me what's the thought

1:11:48

process behind ? Sometimes we get these policy revisions

1:11:50

and it's like changes personnel

1:11:53

to officer .

1:11:55

Yeah , just like little terminology . I know Alright

1:12:04

. So it is as a simple as this

1:12:06

. If you change Either

1:12:09

one of you have been in military yeah , okay

1:12:12

, military structure Is

1:12:15

is similar , you know , because we're paramilitary

1:12:18

organizations . So if you change your organizational

1:12:20

structure For whatever reason

1:12:23

, if you add a deputy chief or you

1:12:25

you add a assistant chief

1:12:27

, that changes your bureau setup

1:12:29

Right , and so you have

1:12:31

to actually restructure the

1:12:34

organizational chart , meaning

1:12:36

that now everything that's in policy

1:12:39

dealing with that organizational chart has

1:12:41

a change as well . So a unit

1:12:43

changes from a division , changes

1:12:45

from a from Well , bureau

1:12:47

changes to a division , a division changes to a unit

1:12:50

, whatever happens , and it

1:12:52

has to , it has to match up for for

1:12:55

it to be Consistent

1:12:57

throughout the entire document . The policy

1:12:59

right we're , we're

1:13:01

judged by what we call . It used to

1:13:04

be a Kaliya accredited , a credit in agency

1:13:06

. Now it's the Texas chiefs of police

1:13:08

, a credit agency , and

1:13:10

they actually come in , do an audit and

1:13:12

part of their audit work is to look at our policies

1:13:15

and to make sure Our policies are lining

1:13:17

up with the Best

1:13:19

practices and accreditation . And and

1:13:21

so you have to have your verbiage right

1:13:24

. Believe it or not , people , people

1:13:26

, lawyers , if

1:13:29

somebody violates , or they suspected

1:13:31

of violating policy . They will go to

1:13:34

the policy and ask why

1:13:36

did this happen here ? Why is this stated

1:13:38

here ? Is this consistent with this ? So

1:13:40

you have to be consistent all the way through every time , because

1:13:43

you're just on that through outside accrediting

1:13:45

agencies as well as outside

1:13:48

legal legal Challenges now

1:13:50

, how does that work as far as productivity in your part

1:13:52

?

1:13:52

Are you just consist like you just say

1:13:54

, hey , I'm gonna read one chapter a week ? Well

1:13:57

, we do it as a team .

1:13:58

It's , it's we've been doing this for about four years now

1:14:00

that there's a chief them Sorry , not

1:14:02

it . There is a policy review committee , okay

1:14:04

, and it is done primarily

1:14:06

with the deputy chiefs , assistant chiefs , and

1:14:09

then let's say , let's just say , you guys

1:14:11

right . Let's say y'all see something in policy

1:14:13

. Are you experience something ? And you say , hey

1:14:15

, so it's wise , this like this , your

1:14:19

soldiers will say , I man , I don't know this , this makes

1:14:21

no sense , this is dumb , you know . I y'all

1:14:23

talk about . This is dumb . This

1:14:29

is some , you know . So , um , if

1:14:32

the , if the sergeant is a

1:14:34

proactive soldier , he'll bring it to the lieutenant , she'll

1:14:36

bring it to the lieutenant . Lieutenant will do the same thing . Hey , I

1:14:39

think this may need to be adjusted and

1:14:42

I know that may take some time , but

1:14:44

it gets up and we look at it and say , man

1:14:46

, this is this . This does not make sense because

1:14:48

we just sit in policy 101 that you

1:14:50

do to do , need to do this Policy 102

1:14:53

. You say you do that . That's the exact opposite , so

1:14:55

that you look at that and sometimes

1:14:57

that happens , many times that happens , and you you

1:14:59

need to make the changes in that to make Sure it's consistent

1:15:02

across the board . So we have a , we

1:15:04

have a committee now that we look at certain things . Every

1:15:07

two years , the Texas

1:15:09

legislates , texas legislature meets

1:15:11

and you have to make some changes about what you do

1:15:13

. I mean , we had some stuff in policy regarding

1:15:15

open carry and and and

1:15:17

conceal carry right . What

1:15:20

happened to conceal carry right ? It's

1:15:22

gone . So why ? Why are we talking about conceal

1:15:24

carry ? And our policies have to go in

1:15:26

and and Scratch that out . That needs

1:15:28

to be , needs to be changed . We have to keep the policy

1:15:30

up to date when it comes to

1:15:33

the current law . Texas

1:15:35

state of Texas Y'all

1:15:40

want a job .

1:15:46

I mentioned , you reflect this , this archist test , so you would

1:15:48

just kill it . Yeah , yeah

1:15:51

yeah , you know , but I'm gonna say what

1:15:53

now , sir .

1:15:53

Now , this is funny . This is funny

1:15:55

Because I did take it and

1:15:57

scored pretty high on it . The

1:16:00

problem was I didn't have the time at the time

1:16:02

right To to

1:16:04

get the extra points , yeah , and you know . And

1:16:06

then I got busy in ministry and managed

1:16:08

this is , you know , it is . Yeah

1:16:11

, that's hey , you guys handle the supervising

1:16:14

part of this . But the

1:16:16

the first part of that question . You said

1:16:18

I should be able to ace it because I know it . Believe

1:16:21

it or not , it's really hard because

1:16:23

I'm doing two things Is

1:16:25

this Louisiana law or is this Texas

1:16:27

? Oh right , yeah , like I'll go back to aggravated

1:16:30

battery quick . And there's no such thing as

1:16:32

aggravated battery , right , and that's what I , you

1:16:34

know because of . There's a law of First

1:16:37

. You know , if you learn something first , it's the strongest

1:16:39

in you , and so I have to constantly remind

1:16:41

myself this is Texas and this is Louisiana

1:16:43

. That's why I think lawyers or have

1:16:45

the bar in each state , because the states

1:16:48

have so many different laws

1:16:50

and stuff . The

1:16:52

second thing is it's hard for me to remember

1:16:54

Is this the revision ?

1:16:56

or is this the original ?

1:16:57

Yeah , I can't remember now . Do , do , we

1:16:59

do two or do we do three

1:17:01

? Yeah you know . So it's difficult

1:17:03

for me to do that because I run

1:17:06

through it so many different times .

1:17:07

Yeah , okay , so

1:17:10

are you a full time , like you have your

1:17:12

own church now ?

1:17:13

Yes , I am , yes , I do full time , full time

1:17:15

. Hey

1:17:19

, we don't . By the time I finish , we will

1:17:21

right . Grace Methodist Metroplex

1:17:24

. We are a congregation

1:17:26

that we are located on the campus

1:17:28

of Texas Wesleyan University . Yeah a

1:17:31

large church that is on

1:17:33

the corner of Collard and

1:17:35

Rosedale Street and city of Fort Worth , and

1:17:38

so , yeah , we , we are online

1:17:40

. We we , of course , everybody's online these

1:17:42

days Facebook and Instagram and all

1:17:44

those different places grace , grace , methodist

1:17:47

Metroplex .

1:17:48

Yeah , that's dope . Okay

1:17:51

, so then you know I want to talk about . How

1:17:53

is you still going over to

1:17:55

talk to the kiddos ?

1:17:56

Yeah , man , yeah , and I don't know

1:17:58

if you know this , but they decided , I think the

1:18:00

GP , isd decided they're gonna Collapse

1:18:03

. The . Yeah , I think

1:18:05

this Maybe political , but

1:18:07

I think it's unfortunate . Yeah , because

1:18:09

I'm telling here some strong learning processes

1:18:12

, when you're not dealing with certain areas

1:18:14

of social function , you

1:18:16

know you're not trying to be the , you know man

1:18:18

for the ladies .

1:18:19

I keep working on TTCs , two different schools , ones of the man's

1:18:21

ones . Yeah , yeah , yeah .

1:18:23

Yeah , so they're doing that Doing away

1:18:25

with that but we have been and KKD

1:18:27

has been doing a great job . Actually he's one

1:18:29

of our favorite speakers on

1:18:33

on every I think it's the fourth Friday

1:18:35

of the month we go over

1:18:37

as a Police department one

1:18:40

individual go over and speak to the

1:18:42

young men's leadership Academy . They're

1:18:44

their fellowship of Christian athletes and

1:18:47

it's about 50 guys , 50 young men , junior

1:18:49

high level age level and we encourage

1:18:51

them from a faith-based perspective

1:18:54

on life and

1:18:56

on leadership and and

1:18:58

and they'll ask us questions , but we get

1:19:00

a chance to really encourage them in some

1:19:02

aspect of life and

1:19:04

that has been good for us . Coach Coggins

1:19:07

leads us , calls us over there , and so we get to get

1:19:09

a chance to go over and chat with him . We

1:19:12

had several offices go over and

1:19:14

, yeah , kd just happens . I don't know what

1:19:16

he does , but he I don't know if he's giving him money or

1:19:18

what we always get

1:19:20

. We always get big accolades when he comes

1:19:23

and and he did a great

1:19:25

job , you know . So I I'm

1:19:27

not supposed to do this , but I'll kind of call him

1:19:29

a little bit more , because he gets

1:19:31

you know , he gets the big , the big accolades

1:19:34

.

1:19:34

Yeah , good reviews I like going over there . Those

1:19:36

are good kids .

1:19:37

That's awesome yeah well

1:19:39

. I think We'll wrap

1:19:41

it up , gone slightly past what we're supposed

1:19:44

to .

1:19:45

Yeah , man yo y'all call me back . We can get

1:19:47

into some more of these specifics if you

1:19:49

want to .

1:19:50

I'd love to hear some of the stories . Yeah , have a part

1:19:52

to . Yeah .

1:19:53

Yeah , we , we will , we will it's

1:19:55

. There's a lot , you know , I look

1:19:58

back over my career now it's been

1:20:00

20 , some

1:20:02

20 Y'all

1:20:04

do the math a 97 to my cop

1:20:06

, like 25

1:20:09

years or so , right , yeah , so the

1:20:11

number of stories that you can start compiling

1:20:13

, yeah , and forgetting , and then go back

1:20:15

and remember oh man , that was wild . Yeah , I remember we did

1:20:18

that . It's

1:20:20

amazing . Now , katrina , of course , is

1:20:22

one of the biggest highlights because it was such

1:20:24

a traumatic incident , critical

1:20:27

incident for everybody . Yeah , but

1:20:30

for the most part , this

1:20:33

I know this podcast is really geared Just

1:20:36

people , giving people an opportunity to see inside

1:20:38

work . If you have a calling

1:20:40

to police work or if you

1:20:42

even interested in police work , first

1:20:46

of all , find a right agency , because

1:20:49

you you get you can get turned off

1:20:51

, going to the wrong place , you

1:20:53

know , and the city of

1:20:55

Grand Prairie , this police agency , this

1:20:57

agency under current leadership in the city

1:20:59

, I'm telling you , you know , nobody's

1:21:01

perfect , but this is a great

1:21:04

place to work for you know .

1:21:05

So Please

1:21:08

don't I Guess

1:21:13

.

1:21:13

I appreciate sir man , it's been a pleasure you

1:21:15

guys . You guys were fun to hang out with

1:21:17

yeah , I appreciate it . Yeah all right

1:21:20

, the next time , next time , all right , all right . I

1:21:23

.