The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective sy a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Welcome back to part two of my chat with John Fariso, former veteran MYPD cop. If you listen to part one, we got a very detailed description of John's experiences when he was on the ground, not far aware the planes
crashed into the Twin Towers on September eleventh. I've got to say, John, and I was speaking to you off camera off Mike that just hearing the story from someone that was there, it really it brings it home. You read about it, but unless you're hearing it from someone that was actually actually there, you don't fully appreciate the magnitude of the chaos that went on that day. So thank you for sharing that sharing that story. And yeah, I think it's important that the story is not forgotten.
It was horrendous. It changed the world that day, and yeah, it's something that's embedded in everyone's psyche, but certainly for a native of New York like you, you must carry it with you every day.
Well, that's why I did it. I wanted to let people hear a different story than it's been told, and definitely not the Hollywood story. And I wanted the human side to it, and I put it free online because
that's I would just want people to not forget. I guess if you have ever a chance to tell anybody, he basically just doesn't want people to forget the story because they were Like I've said before, there were a lot of people that didn't go home that day and they never got a chance to tell the story.
I'm telling now part two, you're going to have to feed my fascination of what it's like being a cop in New York because I've been fascinated by it. I love policing. If you're a career cop, you're always curious what's going on. You can go to different jurisdictions, different countries, and there is a commonality that we all share in policing. We can talk shorthand we know the world. But there was something about New York that policing just seemed to
be policing on steroids. It was good, the bad, and the ugly and everything in between. So I just want to I want to read out something that you've written about policing in that other book. You've created telling stories, just stories about what occurs in policing. But this is how you've described policing in New York. So if we just start the conversation with that, these separate tasks come to you at random times, So going to work is
like a roll of the dice. One moment, you're driving with your partner talking about nonsense, and five minutes later you're coming face to face with dangerous people who just committed a criminal act. The way that these tasks become overwhelming and mentally draining, if you allow that to happen, that's describing policing. The joy I found in policing was you never knew what your day was going to bring. You could turn up, you could be some of the conversations.
I think we should record some of the conversations between partners driving around in police cars because they go in some wild, strange places. But you can be doing that, and I think it's to take the pressure off because you know you're going to hear a bit on the radio and the next thing you're going to be in some chaotic, chaotic situation. New York policing, my perception of it is it's dangerous. There's guns around, and there's a
lot of crime. Do you want to talk us through some of the dangerous times you've been in policing, because we've all had it. If you're a street crop long enough, you've gone in the situations where you weren't sure how it was going to play out. Do you want to talk us through a couple of situations you experienced as a New York cop?
Sure there is danger there, and you're told that as soon as you get in the police academy, and they would show us videos of the horrible videos of cops who got not just New York City cops, just cops throughout the country that got into very bad situations, and they would show it to you and they'd say, this is the profession you're taking. You need to be careful, which when you go to work, you need to be alert, you need to be in shape, you need to be ready.
And I remember that we had an academy instructor and they would tell we used to call them war stories, and we wanted to hear the war stories. But I like the war stories because if it happened to them, it would happen to us. And they told us a story about how you need to be ready in the car. Don't you sit there with your head down and you know, not paying attention. So I remember that police academy story.
And then I was had about five years on and we were driving around and my partner was talking about nonsense that had absolutely nothing to do with police work. And I wrote about this in my book It's called at the Window. And he was talking and we were driving and we had to pick up We used to have to pick up the prisoners meals because the prisoners would hang out the precinct. When this is New York City, you know, the courthouse is busy, like, don't send your
prisoners here, keep them in the priests. So sometimes they would stay there hours, and you know, if they went into a meal, you'd have to feed them. So I had to go pick up a prisoner's meal because he missed he missed the scene the judge and we had to feed him, obviously. So we picked up the prison's meal and my partner got out of the car and I got complacent at that moment, and I picked up
the newspaper. And it was before cell phones had picked up the newspaper, and I'm reading the newspaper to his day, I don't know what it was about. And I heard a thump at the window and I know now it was an elbow, and I looked out and there was a guy standing at the window with blood coming down his head and he had his hands duct taped like this and he was hitting the window at his elbow. So I, you know, I woke up. Man. The adrenaline just snapped to me and I was like, what just happened.
So I started to open the door and the guy falls down and lays on the floor. So I'm thinking somebody just shot him in the head, and I'm like, well, what just happened. I'm looking around, and somebody comes running across the street goes, they were just at the store. They just ran out. So I'm like, who just ran out? What just happened? And my partner's not there. I got the police radio, but I still gotta find out. I can't just start yelling at the radio. I gotta find
out what's going on. So the guy sits up as he's duct tape. He said that he was in the store, which was exactly in front of where I parked. I parked on the street, I parked, my partner walked across street. He said when I pulled up, he was being robbed inside and they were hitt him in the head with a shotgun because he wouldn't give up this the money or a safe. I don't I never got that full
part of the story. And the other man that was there said, when I pulled up, there was a woman in front, saw me and my partner get out, saw me. She immediately ran inside. I would assume she told them The cops just pulled up. As my head was in the newspaper. Those guys ran out with shotguns, passed my car, or at least to the left of it. He ran out. And so if those guys wanted to take me out in the car shoot it out with me and my partner, they could have took my partner out without of snow,
and they could have took me out. That's how quickly and how dangerous things were. Where I was just picking up a prison blowney sandwich and I drove into a hold up where they had a guy tied up and beating them with a shotgun right in front of me.
Yeah. Well, that that is policing, isn't it. That? You know, you can let you let your guard down, but you've always got to be aware of what you might walk into, A walk around the corner straight into Do you get conditioned to that? I'm asking you, like you see, I know from my point of view, the impact that has. How did you deal with situations like that? Did you just go okay, well, I've learned a lesson, Now I've learned something more. I pay attention.
Well, I immediately thought back to what the academy instructor told me, because he described almost the same exact situation that CUP officers were killed. In a situation like that where they drove up to a scene and they weren't paying attention, and the guys were they already there, and they thought they were there for another reason. You know, when I pulled up, those guys in that store probably assumed I was pulling up for them when it wasn't.
The woman ran inside and told them. I found that all out later, So I definitely learned a lesson from that. I'm not saying you can't be pay attention hundred cent of the time, but you really have to keep your eyes focused. But I was just glad I was going home that day, and you know, the bad guys got away. I don't know if they ever caught them. I never found out. You know, detectives came and handled it, and it
didn't matter to me. What maddened to me was because my partner walked out with his boloney sandwich in his hands for the prisoner, and I had explained Tom what happened. He saw the guy laying bleeding on the floor, and you know, we were just glad that we were going home that day, and we went back to the precinct
and we went back of patrol duties. And you know, if I told that story to the guys they worked with, they'd be like wow, but it wouldn't make a difference because they were like, you're okay, right, A worry about he mad? The report there would be it wouldn't be that big of a deal.
We tend to move on. We had an incident and talking about complacent in the building, I worked in the police headquarters where a person was waiting for someone to come out of the building and whoever came out, they were going to shoot, and sadly it was a public servant that came out out of the building and was shot. Curtis Chang. It was a horrible situation one Friday afternoon.
I remember it, remember it clearly. But from that it's sort of police headquarters, it's major crime where all the detectives work, and it sort of wake everyone up to the fact that yeah, you'd go out to buy lunch and you wouldn't take your gun, or you do things and just drop your guard down a little bit, and it takes some horrific situation like that just to check yourself and go, Okay, well, if I'm on the street, I've got my gun, and yeah, you get complacent and
Complaincency creates dangerous, dangerous situations. Policing isn't all bad, it's not all scary. I think every working cop has some funny stories or funny experiences or things that you've seen and you just think, I can't be seeing this. This is just ridiculous. And they don't have to be horrific. Sometimes they're just bizarre situations. I'm sure working the streets in New York as long as you did, you've seen
some strange and unbelievable things. Can you recall anyones that you want to share with us.
Yes, there's a lot of these stories that are funny, but couldn't make it to the book because it happened so quickly. I guess in New York we're so conditioned. It's just things happen very fast and you just move on. And you know, you would just go out on patrol and people would just run up to you yelling and screaming about nonsense. Sometimes and sometimes it was legit. Sometimes
it wasn't. Like I could tell you how many times like you would have a major crime happened in the middle of the street and there'd be the windows of a call would be shot out, and you know, nobody got shots. Everybody ran from the scene. So you pull up and you're like, Okay, everybody's gone, let's do a crime scene. And then people come running into the crime scene screaming and you're like, get out of my crime scene. And the woman's like, don't give my car a ticket.
So I'm like, this is your car. She goes, no, I'm across the street and I'm looking to like, you really think I'm gonna walk away from crime scene to give you a ticket. I'm like, get out of here, lady. So there's just situations like that that it's like, you know, there are people that believe everything revolves around them and you're there for them. You're not. I'm there for something
way more important than you're a double parks car. I mean here for what just happened in the middle of the street.
Yeah, there's a real big presence of place uiform police in New York, and you describe that, you know, you're a show for sometimes or you're giving directions. Everyone comes to policing. I remember my early days in uniform. I always get confused when you dropped in the city and area you don't know, but everyone's coming up and asking you for directions and like, you know everything because you were in the uniform. I would imagine that plays out in New York a fair bit too.
Yeah, there was a joke Wheze to say, because New York is a very diverse area. You have like a lot of wealth and a lot of people that are not very wealthy, living sometimes right next to each other. And a lot of tourists come to New York, you know, so there's no accent or language you've never not heard.
And I would be just you know, in Midtam Manhattan and you'd see these people wandering into a really bad area, sometimes not in mid toalm Manhattan, other areas of Brooklyn and stuff, and they'd hit you with this accent and you're like, what are you doing here? Why are you here? And they're like, we're lost, we're looking for the Statute of Liberty. I'm like, you're not even close to this.
So my partner would say, they're walking sixty one. The reason we call a walking sixty one was st one was a complaint report and usually for robbery and burglary. So we're like, they're walking sixty one. If they keep walking around, they're going to get a sixty one. So the joke always was, why don't we just hand them
the report and have them fill it out. So it got to the point when I had this nice old couple from the Midwest and they were looking for the I remember, they were looking for the Statue of Liberty and their van was out. I mean, they were going to get rolled. It was a matter of time. So me and my partner were like, I told the guy, you got to get out of here. Just follow me.
So just we caravaned them out of the bad part of town and we put them in the highway and we just pointed, listen, get on to this exit and you're fine, just drive away. So, like, you know, you have the cop humor. You have to help people, but it gets the time when it's comical and you have to make a decision for something that's not even police work. You have to just be a good person and get the person that should not be there out of there.
Yeah, and look, I think it's important that you've got to check yourself as a cop, that you don't lose your humanity. And yeah, showing that little bit of humanity that keeps you sane. But it's also the best way to do policing.
Yeah, it is. You know, there was a lot of times we would be drinking coffee and we would think it's a quiet nate and like we get the call of an address and it's like next dought to where we're standing the next building. You're like, is this a joke? Like did he know we're here? We're having drinking coffee? Well, like we think we're in the same building, and you just step outside, make a rate, go upstairs. Now, like,
how'd you get this off fast? Well, like when we were downstairs, they're like, oh, and then you're in the middle of a major crime again and you were just having your coffee and you're thinking, Okay, I'm going to handle this situation. Everybody's lived, it's good, but you're not gonna get back to have my coffee. That was my break and that's what police workers about.
Yeah, definitely. Now, New York had a reputation of high crime, and Mayor Giuliani bought in that zero tolerance like we're going to basically arrest our way out of this situation, and so the people were getting getting locked up for all sorts of crime. What's your take on that? In the New York Cop did it work or did it backfire.
It's an interesting because that's still the ramifications that out is still going now and I could do it. You know, there were a lot of people talking about it, but I could tell you from experiences because when I was in the police academy, he got elected as the mayor and he was the no nonsense, I'm gonna stop crime mayor. And I was a New York City resident and I remember it as a kid. My parents like, you don't go that section of town. You don't go to ask
his section town. You don't go over there when it's dark out. You come home. And they were always telling us what way to go and what not to do and what you know. So I was like, there's no way this guy's going to clean up crime. And I was in the priest and I was a rookie cop, and they were like, we're going to start arresting everybody who commits minor crimes. And I was like, well, why
would we do that. They're like, well, if a guy's urinating in the street, check if he has a warrant, because that guy probably has been committing crimes for years and he's never paying, he's never going to court. They were like, if he's urinating the street, if you don't see if he has a warran, if he doesn't give
him a summons. So it started to make sense. They started with the turnstile jumpers, and if anyone's been in a New York City subway, you know it's not hard to jump the turnstyle, And so Juliani said, you jump turnstyle, you're getting arrested, and they start the transit cops started with that. And once they started with the turn style jumpers, like you know, they were catching guys with guns, they were catching guys with serious warrants. So I'm talking like
murders and other states that came to New York. And you know, if you're a murder in another state, you're not that interested in paying your subway fare. But when they started arresting people for that, that's when they the criminals were like going underground almost they were, they were going behind. They would the weed deal is started to go, you know, on the beeper, through the payphone and through
the they went inside. The prostitution went inside. So you had some old school guys who were like, you cannot arrest somebody for domestic violence. I'm like, well, they're telling me to do my crime. If if I go to a domestic violence situation and a woman has bruises, you know, I'm walking this guy up. They're like, you can't lest a drunk driver. I'm like, what do you mean a can He just hit six parked cars and he's passed down his calm taking. I'm locking this guy up. So
it cleared stuff up pretty quick. Crime started to go down very quickly. They there's also people call it the broken windows theory, which definitely has that. And the c started to realize that they we were not just going to go to the scene. Like I would run into guys who'd just get out of prison, and they couldn't believe that we were harassing them for the things we did because they'd be like, Yo, what the fuck man I did prison time? No one bothered me for this shit. Well,
like things are different now. They're like, oh, I heard about that, Like guys with shoplift and were like, you come with us, But all I did was steel. This I'm like doesn't matter. So we were locking guys for shoplifting. And then they started to realize that man if I got a fellonly warant I shouldn't be out shoplifting. So it definitely changed the city. It brought the tourists back. Another place was Times Square that went from the crap zone to people bringing their little kids there to watch
Disney movies. That changed. That was I never expected that to happen.
So I was interested in it because when I was studying and on different things about policing, and the broken window effect is quite interesting and I like the concept of that was if you've got a street that's in that ghost street, so it were, Yeah, every city has them. There's graffiti, there's a band in, car, stolen smash windows. You go in and tidy that place up, get rid of the graffiti, clear the banding cars, put lighting in there. I think that combination is not a bad way to
approach approach crime. I know in New York that's where it sort of originated from. Did you see the benefits of that type of approach to reducing crime.
I definitely saw the benefits because I also lived in the city, so I noticed it. I noticed that nobody.
Was breaking it's felt safe going home.
Yeah, that and it was a lot of the petty crime, like you know, when I was younger, you know I had this, It's pretty funny. I had my car. I was concerned with people stealing my radio because you know, they steal your readers one thing, but you got to get your window busted. They ripped the freaking thing out. You know, these guys are like a chop shop guys.
How they steal your reader. So I used to have this plastic thing, Like in college, I had this phony plastic radio that was like a ten dollars am redo that I would put the plastic keys over my actual radio. Okay, I was like ry, And you know, people would put signs in their car there's nothing of value, please don't break the window. So you know, once they stopped, they
started actually arresting these people, those petty criminals. They really I don't know where they went, but they weren't doing much. And I wrote about those stories in my book because I eventually went to a unit called the conditions unit. And what was interesting was we would take priests and conditions because you know, it's like the movies, the phones always ringing in the priest and somebody's complaining about something. So somebody did statistics and like, okay, we're getting nine
complaints about graffiti. So they would narrow it down and they would say, graffiti is happening at this building at this time, and they would be in the conditions unit. They were like, okay, go plain clothes, go out and get graffiti. So we'd go out and we wouldn't know who to look for, but we knew the location, and we also knew that the city was going to lock this person up. Whether they did prison time or not,
it didn't matter. It was important that they realized if you were going to get arrested for doing this and comed out. We started locking the graffiti people ups. And then the graffiti people weren't even really doing it in the open. They were either doing it late at night or well you couldn't find them.
So you think, looking reflecting on it, you think it worked that that approach.
Yes, it definitely worked, because right now they're going to doing the opposite and it's showing.
Okay, so the opposite is and we're hearing it over here, like you're not going to police these minor offenses. Say yeah, it's interesting another thing about New York policing. And trust me, I'm not sitting here going oh, look, it's New York cops of the corrupt. Every jurisdiction in this country, every state police, federal police have all been through corruption inquiries. I was working major crime when a big Royal commission came through in New South Wales police at about corruption.
So New York is not unique to corruption in police, but because it is New York, a lot of attention is played out. What's your take on the perception of the past corruption in New York police and where you're at these days.
Past corruption before I was a police officer, from the stories I heard, was pretty more rampant and more in your face, where it was more like there's nothing to be done about it, and it was common. And then there was some movies made about it, and there was some real commissions that knocked out I wouldn't say knocked out the coruption because it never went away and I don't believe it ever will, but the old school corruption went out the window. And then when I was the
police academy, they drilled it into us about corruption. If there's any police officers who are rookies listening to this, you need to know that police departments take corruption very seriously. If you they will put a lot of resources into finding out if that is correct what you're doing. So if there's an allegation, they're going to look at it, then it's not some burglary that nobody cares about. They're gonna spend a lot of money in time to look
at if you did what they're saying you didn't. If you didn't, you'll get cleared. But people need to realize that corruption is dell will and it's a feather in the cap. I don't know about in Australia, in the United States, or especially in cities like New York, it is a feather in the cap for the prosecutor to get a corrupt cop, which means that look what we did, look at our integrity. We caught this guy. And sometimes the corruption is minor, but it's there and it is
a feather in the cap. They will put the resources into getting them.
Yeah, definitely. Look, if you've been in the police long enough, you've seen things or I'm not sure now like now, I think all police forces have seen I can only speak for this country. You need to be squeaky clean because you're going to get scrutinice because policing has changed people. It's don't worry. Nothing to see here, the cops are here. That mentality's gone. Now you get scrutinized. But corruption was a part of part of the police, and then you had
to navigate your way through it. I worked with people. One of my first partners when I went to detectives was locked up for corruption. I was shielded from that corruption, but that was only because I made made it very clear I'm not interested in going down that path. But there is a difficult way to navigate through your policing career if there are corrupt police and they bring shame on us all if they are corrupt.
Yeah, I've wrote a story about that in my book where I had a navigate around it as a supervisor. It's called Welcome to the Jungle. It was mainor corruption, but it was there, and it had to do with street vendors who were taking cops under their wing and befriending them. And you know, as a cop or just as a person in general, but as a cop, really we get a sixth sense and you just know when someone is not legit. So I always felt as a rookie, I noticed this too. If somebody who I do not
know I'm talking to civilian, somebody on the street. If they're trying to befriend me, I'm skeptical. Why is this person trying to talk to me? Why are they interested in pronouncing my name correctly?
Oh?
I saw you yesterday with your partner, and you got to put the brakes on. You say yeah, and you got to tell them I'm good, thanks man, Naha, you got my name wrong, don't worry about it. And then they realize, Okay, this guy we can't approach, and those same guys will search until they find a cop that they can get to, and I think I have to tell them, like, I'm not that guy.
Yeah, I'll approach mat That's good advice, John, because you've got to be a wary of that. Those people that are overly friendly to you going for a drink or whatever, or someone just turns up. You're drinking with a group of detectives and someone turns up, I let me buy you a some drinks and stuff like that. You've got to be that little bit a little bit wary. Let's talk about missing persons, because I know that's a passion
the views. How did you get into that area and tell us about what your role was in the Missing Person's Unit.
Sure, well, I said in the very beginning of the first episode. There was two incidents when I was a kid, so once again I was still interested in police work at a young age. And it was nineteen seventy nine and there was a kid had went to school, never made it. He was only I was nine, he was seven. Happened in here in Manhattan, Loneman that and his name was Eton Pets And it was a very famous case in the United States at the time. And this was
New York City when New York City was dangerous. But he basically didn't come home from school, and it was on the news every night, and I was very interested in police related stuff on the news, so I would watch it. But unfortunately, I was nine years old and there's a kid a little younger than me that got abducted, and they were basically saying this kid was abducted, he just never came home. So I would watch this night if the night on television. And my parents were funny.
They never said, you know, maybe you shouldn't be watching these crime shows late at night, you're only nine years old, But you know, they they didn't say that. So I'd watch it and then something strange that'd happened. I was afraid of being lost. So because the news started reporting this, as you know, they did the shock value. Even in the seventies. Oh, there was a cab driver who saw a young blonde head boy with two men and they
were flying out of the country. So the news did this, spun this story where this kid was in a pedophile ring, and I was like, oh, my gosh, there's creepy people in my neighborhood. I was in Queens and it's Manhattan, Manhattan, but I knew this could happen in my neighborhood. So, like I said before, I was getting afraid to leave the house and I would ask my parents if I got lost, would you find me. They're like, yeah, we'd find you. Who would I talk to if I got lost?
So I remembered locking the doors. Even though it was a safe neighborhood. I remembered locking the doors, and I remembered still watching it on television. So they never the news kept going with the shock value, and they had a suspect, but it turned out to be nothing. So that stayed with me, that missing person story. So as I got a little older, you know, I forgot about that story. I forgot about the kid. I remember his name, Metson Paids. And then when I went to the NYPD,
I was a big cop. And then when I went to the missing person squad, I said, wow, that sounds interesting. You know. I wanted to be a detective, like I said earlier, So I got a specialty unit because I had already. I already did my time investigating police corruption. So they said where do you want to go? I said, I was off of the missing person squad and I was like, yeah, I could do it. They said, you'll focused on one type of case. I says no. They said,
can you focus the detectives doing missing person cases? I said sure, I could do it. So I stepped into the office and my supervisor says, okay, we have a lot of cold cases here. You know. He told us everything we have to do, and I saw the Eton Pais photo and I said, wow, that's this case when I was a kid. That made me think and I was like, my gosh, he's like So he told me everything we're going to have to do with that case. And I met the detective who had it. I wasn't
a detective. Supervisor and then I'm going to fast forward here. I'm going to talk about the missing person cases. But I ended up working on it on that case, and I ended up working on the same case that I had a fear of as a kid. And at one point they were digging a basement in the city and I me, I was kept back from the dig and I was a little not happy about that. I was like, I want to dig. I want to be part of
this investigation. So ME and one detective were kept back, and as we were sitting in the office, the phone rang and civilian came running out. She says, he knows who the kid is. He knows who killed the kid. So I thought I had another case of which I wrote about in my book. But I have another case of a kid that went missing. So the detective wrote down the name's on Pats in the paper and that was how they solved the case through that phone call
when I was sitting in the office. So the same case there's a kid that scared me, I ended up working on. I was in the office when that call came in that solved it.
Wow, that's uh yeah, chilling, chilling and interesting that you carry that through. I had some cases that I knew that were occurred, high profile cases before I was in the cops and got to work on them. And it's something about policing. You think, how did I get to this point? Like it's good, it's great. You know something that you've been curious about, and here you find the out exactly what's gone on other missing person's cases that you worked on. Because in America, I would imagine there's
a lot of missing persons cases. Majority of them turn out to we find them, but there's a lot that just disappear in Some are a little bit more sinister than just wandering off.
Yeah, there's a few that are sinister. Now it's funny as I see it on the movies a lot there's like that twenty four hour rule that doesn't exist. You can't call miss persons for twenty four hours.
That doesn't that's just anyone, John, Can you yield that from the rooftop? Because I am so I get people fane me I'm out of the cops, and when I was in the cops, and they go, well, but we can't report it because they've got to be missing for twenty four hours. And whatever I say, if any cop has told you that they're lazy, and there you can report it, like, just walk in there if you've got concerns. Sorry, it's just it's a beer in my bonnet. About that.
I get so sick of hearing people go, oh, but we can't report the person missing because it hasn't been twenty four hours.
I always wanted to wear that urban legend began. I don't know if it's an old movie. It had to begin somewhere, and there's no truth behind it, and people still believe it. And there are people who wait twenty four hours to report the husband's missing.
I blame you God. It must have been one of those New York cop shows that came.
Out, definitely. So when I went to Missing Persons, I was surprised with the volume of cases because New York's a big city. You know, you get tourists, you get locals, you get everything. And so we I was the supervisor of eight detectives and there was other supervisors with the detectives. So we'd get about seven thousand cases a year. So now it's interesting, is seven thousand is at a very
low number. The reason I'm saying a very low number is because it would go to the local priests and first and you know, people would call number one and say, okay, my daughter ran away, and then detective would go there and then maybe they talked to the neighbor and they would say, you know what, she's staying at the park and they find her. So technically it's a report, it's a runaway, it's a missing person, but it's located quickly.
So by the time the cases we got, we got the ones that they didn't return in seven days, so the priests couldn't find them, detectives couldn't find them. They would send it to OSCUS. We were the experts, and ninety percent of them we found within or I say found, I mean there's unfortunately a lot of a lot of homice not there are some homicides, but a lot of suicides and we'd find almost all of them I would say, ninety to ninety five percent within the first week. And
that's as it located. It was that five percent that out of those seven thousand cases that you're like, Okay, something is going on here, there's something that's not right. And you know another thing that the media has wrong. People don't just fake their disappearance is that's very very rare. That's almost impossible to do now to faked disappearance. And if you fake it disappearance, you're probably coming up a crime to begin with. So they're looking for you for
the crime. It's not really you being missing. They're looking at you what you did for fake it. Nobody fakes their disappearance for no reason. So we had to look at those those cases. But I got very good at quickly knowing, like, you know, you can't judge it, you know exactly, but you're like, this sounds like a suicide. This sounds like a runaway. There's a lot of human trafficking that's happening too, and human trafficking is not really
someone from another country. A lot of times it's a young girl who meets the wrong person and he starts offering her money and she has to turn tricks for him, and then she goes missing, which is the pimp takes her. She's making money, he takes it to the cheap hotel, and the mother's reporting and missing. And that's a good example of the five percent that you know, you have to find this girl before something really bad happens to her,
and quite often we would. But that's an example of one of the cases that we had to spend a lot of time on with these human trafficking cases. To get these kids, it was usually a female fifteen years old. We'd have to find them and get them.
Back and that must give a lot of job satisfaction too, I think stepping in and bringing some comfort to the families or hopefully comfort if they can break away from what's happened to them. It's a very important role missing persons, isn't it, because the impact that has on families. You were the saying that, yeah.
We did see it. We didn't always hear it from the family, but was quite often when you know, we thought that this was an easy case. We used to say easy case, which meant that, you know, you get a guy, he's binging on whatever drug and okay, we're gonna find him soon in he's going to be at the rehab or he's going to be the local shooting gallery,
shooting gallery heroin. That's what we would say. So you know, you don't want to tell the family that, but you have to figure, okay, he's a junkie, we're gonna know, we're gonna find this guy, and then you know, you'd put up a flyer or two, and then one of the local guys would just you know, because missing persons isn't a crime, you would get some people would talk to you a little quicker because they know no one's going to prison, so they would say, yeah, I know him.
He's I ain't given you my name, but he's always on the corner every night. And then you go to the corner and you'd find him. And if he's an adult, technically he doesn't have to go home. You'd call the family. He's on this corner. He's not missing. The family would be very thankful quite often that we put that effort in. To me, it wasn't a big deal to find the case like that, it was an easy one, but to that family it was very important that that person was located.
Yeah. Well, yeah, they've come to the place for help, and if he can help them in that way. In your book, there was an interesting chapter about some missing persons, but it wasn't a missing person. You actually had the person but didn't know who the person was. A fifteen year old girl, I think it was. Do you want to tell us that story? I just found an interesting looking at it from a different perspective.
Yeah, that's the first story in the book. It's called even a little incident Could go a long way, and that is I would say, my favorite story. I don't like to use the word favorite, but I like to talk about that one because it was very different from what we did. Because very rarely do you have a living person who says they don't know who they are. We'd get the local drunk who ends up in the
emergency room hitting the head. Okay, you know something, key fella, he came out of a bar, he hit his head. We'll find out who this guy is. So this woman just walks into a shelter and says, I don't know who I am. I have amnesia who am I? And I was working that office that night and it was just me and a few detectives, and I didn't think much of it until I saw the girl's picture because they sent me a picture. I said, oh no, this is going to go viral. Because I saw the girl's picture.
There is missing persons. There are people. If you have anybody that's missing, put the best picture you can of them out. That's all I got to say. Don't put the guy with the mohawk. Put him when he looks the best, because he'll get more attention. So yeah, so you know what I'm talking about with that, and that's for a family. You want the best picture of the person out there. So they put this picture out. I said, this is going to go viral. I know it. So
the detective called me. He's like, listen, my supervisor is putting this on the news tonight. So I said, okay, now it's really going to go viral. So I told the detectives, I go, when this hits the news, the phones are going to light up. We used to use the term light up, which means that's going to call. So we used to have a book to sign out, and it was always the ongoing joke as the supervisor they hide the books and no one signs out and gets the heck out of there before you get told
they tell them what to do. So I took the book, and once they took the book, they knew it. They were like, we're pulling an all nighty here. I could have called her reinforcements to help us, but it was just me and a few detectives. And then sure enough the phone call started and there was a girl that looked like her in a building and we had to send people to the location and it wasn't her. It was just another girl that looked Tika. But we got a lot of calls on that and so it wasn't her.
And then as time went by, the detective called me back. He goes, my supervisor is putting it on a major network. Now, this major network in the United States goes all fifty states, all over the country and probably throughout the outside of the United States. I said, my gosh, every drunk amulus amateur salute and Wacko's going to stop calling. They put a picture up. It was like who am I, Please help me find myself. I was like, oh, my gosh. And the phone call started and we could not feel
the phone calls fast enough. And I talked to two truck drivers who said that they transported her from one state to another, and they described it pretty well. When a truck driver calls, you know, he's those guys are observed, they see what's going on, they pick up a hitchhiker, they're gonna remember it. So those two guys describe the
same situation in two different states. So I'm like, I think this is h So then We had all these amateur slutes calling, and we found out that some of them just wanted to put themselves in the case and talk to us like they were an investigator. And it got to the point I started I knew the voices.
I'm like, stop calling, we know what we're doing. Then the case got sad, and I say sad is because I started getting phone calls from women in California because they were getting phone calls that their daughters were missing and they thought we had their daughter.
Oh they other families, Yeah.
The families of the legit missing started calling us, and I had to do my own, you know, cold case investigation through the computer, and I started to find out that wow, these two women are looking for their daughters and they're looking at us for hope. And we had somebody who claimed she didn't know who she was and.
Check it out.
One of the mothers called me back and said that no, it's not my daughter just looks like her because we compared the photos. But I felt for those women because this woman with this story that she didn't know who she was went viral, went across the country. It was twenty four hour news cycle and it kept going and I was the lead investigator on it, and I pulled an all nighter on that one, and you know, we
had all types of people getting involved in that. And it turns out we found out later on who she was because her father eventually called because she wasn't missing in another part of the country. And then I would find out later on that those two women that were calling me, they their kids were victims of a serial killer and they did look like her, so they had
the concern that we possibly had their daughter. And after I believe possibly after I retired, the serial killer came forward from prison and said that he had murdered these women. So I eventually did find out who their kids were, but it was not the girl that we had with us.
Yeah, it's missing persons. Working homicide as long as I did, I saw the impact that homicide have on families, but I also the increased impact when someone's just disappeared, where the families haven't got answers and they haven't found out what's happened to their loved one. It's painful and it's an area that policing them. I'm glad we've jumped on the twenty four hour. 'll throw that one out the door.
But quite often if you've got a good missing person's unit and set up in whatever police force or jurisdiction, it can make a big difference because they are solvable if a little bit of attentions put into them at the time they were reported. And if they're not, if they just sit in sitting in the draw somewhere or just on the computer and no one's looking at them, that's when they become problematic, when the trail has slowed down. What other areas of policing you spent twenty years in the cops?
Sure is this?
And this is again I might have learned this from TV. But that's the standard career for a New York cop. Twenty years and then you can retire. Is that the way it plays out? Or am I misreading.
It right now? It's twenty five years? But when I was there, you could do twenty years or retire, and most people do twenty retire.
You've done your service, You go out, there's a pension of whatever, but you've done done your service. Was that because of the intensity of being the New York cop twenty years? We don't have that in New South Wales police. We can stay until we decide to retire, but that brings problems in itself because a lot of people burn out. Do you think it was a good idea twenty years and now probably twenty five because people are working longer.
I think it is a good idea because you do need younger people to come in, and you know, the younger people that could do more, and I say do more as more physical and they could do the hours, the tours. Although when I left at the height of my career with the most experience I had, and I was at the height of my investigations, and I could
handle anything thrown at me. But you know, when it's time, you don't want to stay past you're welcome, you don't want to I started to get a little complacent again, and my head wasn't in the game as much I figured I did twenty years. I wanted to start seeing my family again. I know you wrote about it in your book. It gets to a point when you know, yeah,
the kid's missing, he's riding a skateboard. I'm looking at parks all over the city, and but yet my kids are playing soccer and I'm out looking for somebody else's kid. So it gets to a point when let somebody else take the rein and let somebody else come in and
learn the experience. And it was time for me to move on to back to the civilian world, because twenty years in the NYPD is a very long time, because I did eight years of just straight over time where I was working two jobs almost during those eight years, and it's in the candle at both ends at one point.
And it does have the impact on the family, doesn't it. And it's hard to walk away from when you're a dedicated police officer. You're on the case and it's not a nine to five job. But your family. Were they happy when you retired? Yeah?
They were. Even my kids kind of said it. They were like, oh, you could be homebore, you could do this, you could do that. And my wife was glad, you know she she basically said that she didn't watch the news most of the time. And then I had to tell her how many stories I shielded for her from that. I decided not. She's like, when were you going to
tell me this? I wasn't going to. I told her, why should I come home and burden you with the madness that's going on at work, because you know, I don't want to upset, you know, and people don't understand. You know, my wife has family that a police officer, but she still couldn't, not one hundred percent understand when I was getting out and there was no reason to cloud her mind with all that. And even my own
family they would ask me about work. I would tell them the funny things, the funny stories, but I didn't get into the nitty gritty of the real politics that were going on or the real it's a shock tank. It's you know, at times I used to joke around, I go, sometimes you feel like you're the goldfish with the piranhas and there's a glass ball. I used to say that.
In the detective bureau, it's a pressure environment. And I speak to a lot of cops on this show, and no people through my career, a lot of us say, yeah, I can handle the pressure of the work. It was the internal politics that where you're down because it is a I don't know, it's a very nature of policing. It it's a combative area to work, and it's funny reading stuff and preparing. You talk about the supervisors and this, and there's always a clash. It's a difficult area to work in, isn't it.
It's definitely difficult. I expected it. I expected more of the difficulty to come from the people on the street. I really got there thinking us first down mentality, and I realized that some of the biggest obstacles were your co workers or your supervisors. Whether they meant it or not, they were the biggest obstacles to you actually doing your job the way it should be done, or going home on time. There's a lot of politics in New York City,
because this is New York City. There's politics involved in police work and it shows.
Yeah, well, if you've read my book, you can see that I agree with that in the conflict that you can have in the workplace. Hi, guys, just a quick interruption to let you know about a new podcast from the team behind Eye Catch Killers. It's called The Mushroom Cook. It's about a case that made headlines around the world last year, the prosecution of a Victorian woman called Aaron Patterson over a family lunch that left three people dead. The podcast goes deep into what we know about those
alleged murders in the coming months. It will also follow the twists and turns as erin who's denied any wrongdoing faces trial. If you subscribe to crimex Plus, you'll get access to the Mushroom Cook early and ad free. Just search for the Mushroom Cook on crimex plus on Apple podcasts. What are you doing with yourself now? You running an investigation? Sure business.
I When I retired, I you know, I thought about getting away from all types of police work in general. And uh, I got very bored, very fast. And I realized that I went from a rollercoaster and then was told to sit and that wasn't me. So I I told my wife, I got to get a part time job. So she's like, yeah, yeah, get out of the house, get a pot time job.
So she was telling me you did to get it. Yeah the house, j'all I would have mentioned you a pine.
Yeah, I had to.
Uh.
I It's just I'm not saying I missed the police work. I missed the excitement, I guess, but I was definitely glad with dumb with the bureaucracy. So the first building was the I mean, the first job I got was actually the Empire State Building. And everybody's like, Okay, you just went to the second biggest building in the city. You sure, you want to work here, So I sure. So I was working the I was managing the security there.
So I did that for a number of years, and then what I was getting was a lot of people were asking me missing person questions. They were like, John, I know this guy, and I'm like, listen, I haven't done missing persons in years. They were like, no, but you were the missing person guy. So I found myself fielding all these missing person questions and I said, wow, I must have a lot of experience with this and
I shouldn't forget it. And I felt that if the NYPD gave me that experience and I had it and I lived it and I learned it, I need to put that experience back out there, whether it's on a podcast like this, whether it's writing my book, whether it's mentoring somebody or a private eye business. So I did the cop route and I did the private eye business. And I didn't want to do the cheating spouses. That's like a big thing here with people are making money.
I really my days of cheat, you know, watching people in cheap hotels at two in the morning. I didn't retire anything that. So I turned those cases down. I know other people make money with it. I got some interesting cases during COVID where people were moving people to their houses and they were not who they were, and then they just disappeared on them. They tried to report a missing and the police wouldn't take it. I was like, all right, this sounds of something I could do, and
it was fraud. They were definitely fraud cases. And so I keep gravitating back to missing person cases, and like I said, I network with a lot of private investigators. So I opened up a company and I still do miss some person cases. But what happens is another thing which I didn't expect is a lot of nonprofits reach out to me. I don't know if you have nonprofits there, but.
Yeah, this sign thing I heat, yep.
Oh you do. So there's a lot of you'll know, cold cases are you know, it's not like Hollywood where the cold cases everybody's focusing on it. The fold case, I hate to say it. It's in the back room, it's up on a shelf, it's got dust, and unless a call comes in or someone gives a quote a tip, that case is going to sit there for a very long time. So a lot of these nonprofits will help the family, and I look at the old cases, and so they'll approach me and they'll say, listen, this is
the information we have. And I look at it where I almost off from the beginning. I don't say men soft them meeting like I get out there and do the work. I say, was this done? Was? And I have a list, and I sometimes I don't even ask totally about the case. I go, okay, this person was missing from here with all these steps done. And there's a lot of times, you know, I could be honest. I'm retired now. The steps would never done for whatever reason. A steps were missed early on. I'm like, man, you
almost had this solved in the very beginning. Sometimes you can go back to those steps because there are people still alive, and you notice people will talk. I've had people on the phone from something fifty years ago and they're talking about it like it was yesterday. So there are people who will talk, and there are steps. Cold
cases still, kills still can be investigated. And I tell the family that the chances of me finding dismissing person, finding the body, or having some arrested is slim, but I can guarantee you I'll do the work on it, and that's something somebody these families have not heard in a long time. And I do the work on it, and I've had through this nonprofit, And something fulfilling for me is I've had one case reopened through the NYPD because I handed them the information that they needed and
I said, listen, you guys solved this. I'm fine with it, just you need to reopen this. And the family got on them and they got me and I got on the investigators and I had a case reopened. And there's another case in another state that's not even New York where I can't work on it, but they're pretty close to arresting somebody. And this is a person that got under the radar murdered somebody when as a missing person, but it was a homicide and they just need somebody
to confess our talk. But they're very close to an arrest on it. And that's something that the nonprofit had me really look at.
John. I fully understand that, and I've get involved in similar stuff since I've left the police, and it starts with the families reaching out to me, reaching out to me, can you have a look at this. Sometimes I have a look at it, whether they've got the cranial brief or the brief of events. I look at it and I will say in my opinion and have a sort of circle of other experienced detectives and people from the
lawyers and different things. We have a look at these things, and if the police haven't done their work, I'll type something up and say, well, look, these are the things I think should be done. I try not I want to work with the police. I don't want conflict. You don't want to get Hey, you guys, stuff this up. I'm saying this can be helped, but it is rewarding. I'm going from this podcast to have a look of brief of evidence of the families sent to me in
a gain. It was just a matter where someone that was written off as a suicide and they've got some doubts. I don't know if it is or isn't, but I'll look through the brief and to me, I'm talking about me, but I get the sense you feel the same way. If you can help a family with the skills that you develop from when you're in the cops. It's not a big ask, is it.
No, it's not a big ass because anybody who retires from laur enforcement. Even if you work on a slow police you have a tremendous amount of experience that people just don't have. And people are very interested in police work. It's obvious and because movies and books are written about it. So and there are people that need your help and it. You know, it's not like the PI that goes out there and kicks indoors. But you could shed light or look at a situation from a different angle that maybe
the police in nineteen seventy five didn't see. Maybe they didn't you know, didn't look at let's match. You know, it was common to not match a kese in one borrow would have come with the keys in another where they were almost the same was a mirror image of the same thing. Well, that happened five miles away. It's a different jurisdiction. That doesn't mean the serial killer knows that, you know, he's doing his work. So you have to re look at it.
And quite often it's not the failings of the police, it's just a system that was you know, when I first started investigating homicides, they had cards. It wasn't a computer system, it was cards. Yeah, So sometimes the mistakes have made and I always say that investigative opportunities were missed. But the benefit we have now is a benefit of hindsight looking back and all the DNA everything that we've got in our favor and now forensic science that helps
with investigations. But would you recommend policing to if someone came to you, a member of your family or some young person that you knew, came up to you and said, I'm thinking to join the police, so I want to be a New York cop. What would your responsible to them?
Well, if I know the person, I know the person, their personality, I would know if they would fit it better. I have a family member that's on the job right now, and I was approached with that exact question, and other people approached and people even said, you're going to talk this person out of it. It says no, I said, this is what this person wants to do. If you want to be a police officer, there is a job for you there, and if you want to do it, it
makes your job a lot easier. Fall from perfect, and I tell them it's not going to be an easy job. You're going to have to do a lot that you didn't expect. But if it's what you want to do, you have to go in it, and you have to be your own person and be good at what you do. So I would not talk anybody out of it. If it is what they want to do, if their head's in the game and they want to do that job, I would tell them yes, because I made a good
life out of it. I mean, I'm sitting on this podcast for you, talking across the world, and very few professions can do this. That they could. It's interesting they could write about it like me and you did. We wrote about it. So I would suggest it is if it's you want, if it's what you want to do, and it almost as if it's was you're calling all along, like you know when you watch those movies as a kid, and said I could do that, I could sit in
that police call. And if that stays with you over the years, and you're going to college and you going to do I went to school, I thought for education, but I knew I was going to be a cop, So I never once said I wished I was a teacher. I did what I was I wanted to do, which was police work. So off you have that in you. I would tell a person to take the job.
Yes, I like that. I like that advice. What do you think is the qualities of a good cop? What are the qualities you look for when you're a supervisor and you're looking for a term, or you're making up an investigative group. What sort of qualities do you look for in a person to be a good cop.
To be a good cop, you have to really be able to talk to people, talk down a situation. Look at something like, Okay, this person's drunk. He just told me to f myself. Okay, I'm going to step back. Okay, don't call them me the f myself, no one. You say it in a nice way, but you tell them
I'm not going to continue with this. But you also understand that, you know you can't be the tough guy, because if you're the tough guy all the time, doesn't matter how big he was, somebody's going to eventually punch in the nose. So you have to realize, who's the officer that could talk down a situation. Who's the officer that could tell the hardened criminal listen. And I've had to do this. I've looked at these guys like I can't fake this guy. But I tell him to put
his hands behind his back and come with me. And I would say, let's go, let's put your hands on your back, let's go. Ain' going okay, Well, I'll call five people then and they'll then you'll have to go. And he's like, all right, I understand. So a good cup nose to look at the situation and doesn't run into it. But when you mentioned investigator, you said something very interesting. You need a different set of skill set.
I was the supervisor investigators when I noticed the best investigators were the ones who think outside the box.
Yeah, I'd agree with that. I'd agree with that because it's anyone. Could I say this with homicide investigations, anyone can investigate certain the smoking gun type murder. It's like tracking an elephant through the snow. It's the difficult ones, the protracted ones, the ones that people give up on. I look for the investigators that want to hang in there and just go hard and think outside of the square,
because you got to. You've got to be creative in your thinking on what you're how are you going to go about it? That just brings us about to the end of time of our talk. Here book, what's the book called and where can we get it? For people that want to hear all the stories of a real, live New York cop. And you've listened to him now, so you know he's a real deal. Where can they get access to the book?
Yeah, I'm the real deal. It is sixty one, so we check that out. We only have people with a real deal on the podcast. But yeah, sorry, there's no AI here. If anyone's writing with AI, please stop. You know, I was the New York City Police officer.
I did it, and I worked different units that a lot of people never saw and never understood. And I'm writing about stuff that really people don't talk about all in a day's work and officers accounts twenty years NYPD. You get it on Amazon Kindle. It's sixty one short stories. They're short, from one page to seven page. It's everything from cop humor to the nitty gritty. I left out the gore, so it's just it's just funny police stories. There are a lot of investigation work, internal affairs work.
There is miss in person cases and just stuff on patrol that the truth is stranger than fiction, which means that if you had told me, wouldn't believed it. But it happened that I wrote about it in a book.
Well, the bits that I've had available to me that I'm reading, they're all interesting stories. And I got to say, I can just relate so much to the police. And I've seen that with different areas that I've worked in the police or different jurisdictions, that there's a commonality that runs through through policing, whether it's New York or New
South Wales, that you understand it. And you mentioned there, and we just finish off on the cop humor because a lot of times I feel, and we spoke about this off camera, you feel bad talking about crime or you glorifying crime or whatever when people are listening to two of us talk and they might think, well, they're laughing, that's a little bit inappropriate. But what I'm at pains to explain to people is that you need to be able to see some light in all the darkness you
see as a cop. Otherwise you're not going to last to twenty years. It's going to wear you down. You find you've got to find something to hang on to, whether it's a little bit of humor or a little bit of humanity to get you through the darkness. Would you agree on that.
I definitely agree. I saw it in your book too. You need you know, you're at work and you're dealing with these situations that are thrown at you, and you need the humor behind it. And if you go in with a sense of humor, you're gonna be it's gonna be a little easier. You can't be stiff as a board soldiering on. You can't do that all the time. And when I say cop humor, I don't want anybody to think that we were making jokes in front of family members. That never happens. These cop humor happens in
the cars driving away. It happened in the squad room, and it was It was funny because you learn it, you see it, and some movies have it correct, and some cops. If you have a sense of humor, and then you see a crazy situation and then you start to joke around about it and you drive away just shaking your head, and then sure enough you're back into a real situation again. And not every situation the cop
humor comes in. But you need the cop humor almost like your exhaling everything you just saw and you make light of it. And it almost shows that, Okay, here's my thick skin. But at times you have to I wrote a lot about that in my book, and sometimes you have to just wow, that just happens. Let's move on, Let's go on to something else, and you'll talk about it in a copume away.
Yeah, it's a good way of describing it. John. Well, look, thank you so much for the chat and taking this into the life of a New York cop. I think our listeners are going to find your stories and what you've spoken about fascinating. I also, and I say this to the cops, and yeah, thank you for the service to the community. I know what a working cop has to put in and the sacrifices you make. So thanks for making a difference a difference over there, and all the best with your future endeavors.
Great, thank you for having me on the show.
Was a great time.
Enjoyed it. Cheers, cheers. Well John three so didn't disappoint. He is everything I expected the New York cop to be. But what an impressive, impressive fella and a good storyteller. And I can imagine he would have been a good cop. And I've got to say he's account been on the ground on September eleven. I've read about that it's embedded in all our memories, but hearing someone that was there
and the experiences it was quite chilling. And any stories have just been in New York cop I've always had a fascination with New York cops, so it was great to finally sit down and have a chat with one