1161: Tegan Broadwater | How a White Cop Infiltrated the Crips Part Two

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Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, part two with former undercover cop Tegan Broadwater, who infiltrated the Crip Street Gang. Obviously, if you haven't heard part one, go back and listen to that. Part two, even crazier, more wild stories. We're just getting warmed up. Here we go. Part two with Tegan Broadwater.

You said you did a lot of stuff off the books. What does that actually mean? Sounds like something you're not supposed to be doing. Yeah, it is something I'm not supposed to be doing. It was with the resources that we had. Here's how you would set up a deal. Typically, you would say, all right, this is my target. This is the time I'm trying to go do X, Y, Z. And then you get a team of five dudes from the gang unit and suburbans and a bunch of white dudes with backwards baseball caps.

beards, hanging out in the hood three blocks away with listening devices. You go in, you give the date and time, what you're going to do, and you go in and you try to accomplish whatever the part of the mission is, make the buy, whatever. And it's just so freaking conspicuous and time consuming to get that together. And hey, these guys are saying, hey, man, B just went to Waco and he's going to be back. Are you interested in doing some business? And it's two in the morning.

I'm not going to get eight dudes out of their beds to come show up and do all this conspicuous stuff with a bunch of white dudes. Because that's the other thing is these dudes parking in these enterprise lease cars all over the hood. They're just like, I think something's up because.

These people also have lookout. There are 13 Ford fusions in the neighborhood, and usually there's zero. What's going on? It's that bad in a lot of cases. Now, there are some real expert guys. Again, if you're working with the FBI and you... certified your undercover status and you have a team of people from different places that you're going, that's fine. But I was also working in my own backyard and I had so little money.

And so little opportunity to just go in and start flashing money and blowing up stuff that I had to leverage the time that I could spend down there. Sometimes I would go down there specifically asking for someone I knew that was gone. So that I had an opportunity to just hang out. But not spend any money because the guy was gone. Yeah. And because I didn't have the money too. I needed to establish relationships and find out who's who. And so.

I'll just go down there. And before you knew it, after 8, 10, 12 months, I'm going down there and they're inviting me. I'm bringing four pack of Magnums and we're sharing malt liquor and playing Madden and whatever. And it's all good. But in the beginning, that's the idea is that's how you build relationships. You know who I am. You've seen me. I'm asking for so-and-so who are not here. And so the rest is, hey, what's up? You want a beer?

Just seeing what's going on. So that's a little bit different level of pressure for somebody instead of me saying, well, can you get me something? It's not all business. That makes a lot of sense. Also, I think it's funny you had the budget issues, right? So you have this wide, this big wide of cash. You got $200 on the outside. You're like, I hope he doesn't need any more than that. Because once I rip off this first $100 bill, everything out of that is once.

It's all about the Washingtons, baby. Yeah, we're taking them to the strip club after this deal. That's right. A little bit of sample, and then we're going to go to the strip club. We'll have a blast. Oh, man. You got word of a cop that sells Cripps info on police action.

What was your initial reaction to that? Because that's like the sinking feeling in your gut at that point, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It scared me to death because I knew the guy and I was a little bit over paranoid anyway because. Oh, you knew the guy that sold the information. I knew the guy. So you're like, oh, crap, he knows who I am. He knows who I am. He didn't know what I was doing that I was down there because when I started this thing, I acted.

a little over paranoid when I would make a buy and go tag the evidence and have it analyzed. I didn't put it to a long form report and put it in the system, which other people could potentially access. There are hard files in the narcotics office and the gang offices where you could go in and somebody could have essentially just followed my whole case by coming in behind and checking out what reports I'd made. So I would literally just say, here's the report number.

And further details forthcoming, I would keep my own reports to where I could go back after the fact because I was just so paranoid. I didn't even think it was going to come to that, to be honest with you. I just thought nobody really knew a lot about what I was doing other than my immediate supervisor.

That's all it needed to know. I just felt like I was getting so deep that I don't need a bunch of people talking about anything that I'm doing. There's too much to lose from general chatter. So when I found that out... It scared me to death. I thought, oh, my gosh. First of all, I was so glad that I didn't have a report in the box because these guys couldn't tell him who I was.

And it wasn't like he was involved to the extent where he's down there at the houses doing deals. He was working cases also, but he was just avoiding cases that involved any of them. He didn't bust. those guys. Yeah. I don't even know that he was on the take as much as he had personal relationships having grown up around them. Oh, I see. So he might not have even been corrupt. He just didn't want to bust his friends.

Yeah, he was corrupt to the extent that he was also, when we say we're doing the jump outs and the warrants and all that stuff before I came up with the undercover plan, that's the reason why. None of those houses had any people or dope or guns. Oh, because he would call and say, we're going to. Oh, it's coming. And then they would just be gone. Fortunately, that's how they handled it, as opposed to let's arm up and put 20 people in here.

But he was just telling them, hey, be gone. Whatever they cleaned the place out, it looked like, man, these people don't even know what they're doing. But you're swearing like, man, I swear this had some stuff in it yesterday. That's really crazy. So how do you handle that at that point? My gut would be.

Try to ask for an introduction so that you can, quote unquote, buy info on police activity. I don't know. But you don't really want to meet him because he'll be like, Tegan? Yes. I did not want to meet him, but I was curious about what information that he could provide because I told him I had some.

places on the other side of town that were catching a lot of heat. And if I gave you some addresses, could you get them to him and see what he could find out? That was essentially what I was trying to do. So you get to use him slash prove that he's...

corrupt without actually going face-to-face. Ultimately, I wrote up an inter-office thing and said, hey, here's the deal. Here's my complaint. This guy's completely crooked and blah, blah, blah. He's going to get somebody killed. What happened to him? Nothing.

Nothing happened. He retired happy. Wow, that's really horrible. Yeah, it's terrible. And again, look, I'm a low totem pole. I was doing what I was doing, but I... I send it to this supervisor who then says, whoa, this is a big deal. Send it to this supervisor, to that supervisor, and then to the, I don't know how far it got before somebody just said.

I'm calling BS or whatever. No one even asked me any further questions. I submitted the written document with the complaint on it with all of the details, the legend about dates and times and who said what and... everything that I could give, and it came back with jack squat. That's crazy. Yeah, I think so too.

There's a part of me that wants to go, oh, he must have been in another operation and it was only at the high level. But that doesn't even make any sense. No, it doesn't make any sense. They would have explained that to me at some point. Hey, there's stuff you don't know and just.

leave this alone. I wasn't told to leave it alone. I would follow up and they said, I don't know. Because again, I'm handing it to you who has to get it through four levels of command structure. So it's almost like, oh, I've known Bill for years. He wouldn't do that. Throw this thing in the trash.

He plays golf with me on Saturdays. He would never do this. It could be. I don't know. That's crazy to me. That's really scary. Talk about not having your back. Yeah. He's lucky that I hid all my stuff. Because again, he could have figured out who I was and it stopped me in my tracks before not only did I make any progress through the case, but...

The first time I show up when they're notified that, oh, this guy's actually not T. He's not a source. He's a cop. Then who knows how they would have handled that? Because he wasn't going to tell me not to go. I just ratted you out. He's going to rat me out.

to them knowing it was me. And then I'm going to keep showing up thinking I got my game still, which is who knows where that goes. Yeah. Oh my God. That's terrible. Jeez. You did say something that I hear from almost every undercover who's ever been on the show, which is.

You're working like 80 hours a week, 60, 80 hours a week. You begin to forget who you really are. How did that show up in your life? Because some guys really, they became more of their persona, methed out biker, except maybe more like hydroxy cut.

out biker yeah how did it sort of manifest in your life because it seems unsustainable it's like a game or an addiction almost yeah i think it manifests most when you know i would come home and my wife would notice that i was stressed and you know i don't want to make it

like I was just constantly in character and I couldn't get out. But when you're living every day amongst those folks, you do develop an accent. Hey, I'm just going to be here for a minute. And then you come back in three hours and she's like, you've been gone. For three hours, you said you're going to be gone for a minute. I said, well, I mean, a minute, you know. But I think ultimately what it is, and I think in a lot of cases, really what it is, high stress, low sleep.

And I think over time, that just starts to take a toll in general in terms of how you treat people, how you treat yourself. I was a big, super workout buff, but I lost tons of weight during this thing because I know I've heard of guys that are working out a lot of crazy weather.

I don't know where I would have found the time to do that. I would sneak in, go into a kid's game in my UC car, drive way out to wherever, but I didn't have time for much else. And then when we could go out and we had something that we wanted to do, I was freaking exhausted. I'd sleep through movies.

would be snapping at people because I'm just irritated and tired as hell. And those are the types of things that start to take a toll on your relationship. You got to infiltrate a gang that works out every day. Yeah. And they're like, hey, man, you look rough. You need to take a nap. Go in the back. Well, I would have loved to. I didn't even really think about it a lot. I tried to exercise.

as much as I could. But having worked out so hard before, and there's times where you work out, and there's times where you're like, eh, I might call it a workout, I might not. I can just imagine like, hey, look here, Southeast Side Crips, man, we value self-care. If you're going to be a part of this gang, man, you got to take care of yourself. Yes. Brush and floss. I wore a bunch of baggy clothes anyway, so I didn't even notice that I was...

Losing all the weight I'd worked so hard to get, which is no big deal. All that weight anyway, just at my age now, causes me to have surgery. I found it interesting. You said the whole gang, love, loyalty stuff is just all fake. It's just all bullshit. And that they don't really...

care. They just go right back to selling and banging. Yeah, not all of them, but yes, in general, especially people that don't get long sentences. Most of the time, these dudes, when you're dealing with a police department or. whoever, whatever investigative agency is coming in and doing short-term busts, these guys get in and out. The slap on the wrist is a slap on the wrist.

And if they think, hey, part of the penance that you pay to be in a gang is that you might have to do a year here and there, that's not a big penance to pay. So when these guys get rounded up and they're doing 25 and 30, that's a big penance to pay. And you'd be amazed the things that will come out of people's mouth at that point. And I was surprised at some of the people that didn't, because the ones that didn't, I was hoping would. And the guys that...

did, I was hoping wouldn't and would just eat the ears. But you just don't know. But I think the vast majority of people, when they're facing some significant consequence, will change their behavior a little bit. Or at the very least, my hope is... when you come out and you are 48, that maybe now you'll be a little bit more mature because you're not going to go out and gangbang at 48 and no one's going to take you seriously anyway. Although people still do.

It's pretty amazing to see these old guys out there still talking about their OG and everything else. But my hope is that changes eventually. But again, these are not mature people in general. They grew up, hit the streets early, quit school, and then... kept doing what they're doing and then went in prison, learned how to do bad stuff better. And there are a few and the ones that make it and rehabilitate to whatever degree.

are really great people because they're still people who take the sociopath out and they feel like they can learn a life lesson and go forward then they're great people when they have that experience that's somebody i can learn a ton from now

that's actually had that kind of experience and they can bring that forward, take that lesson forward and teach other people. That's invaluable. Sure. They can certainly speak for a position of credibility if they go to, I don't know, middle school and like... Oh, yeah. You think being in a gang is cool? Here's what my life was like. Yeah. And then I went to prison for 25 years. You want to know what prison's like? And it's like, oh, geez, maybe not.

You said you wanted to get to know your informants enough so that you could steer them into a normal vocation. So you're getting to know these guys and you're like, hey, have you ever thought about not doing crime for a living? How possible is that? Informants are a different breed altogether. They're stuck between wanting to be endearing themselves to you for ulterior motives. Yeah, they're getting paid, yeah. And wanting to play the...

gang game, but they're not really accepted as much as you would think they were or else they'd be the ones you're chasing. So it's an interesting thing and you get to know them really well because essentially if you're working with an informant, they know who you are.

already and you're still going into a dangerous situation and they already know who you are. So the level of trust that you have to have with somebody at that point is pretty intense. And so you learn a lot more about them than you would.

somebody else. Because in those instances, you can ask those hard questions. They're going through a questionnaire in order to be certified and blah, blah, blah. You do meet their families and you ask them a bunch of questions. You're like, man, why are you not showing up on time? Are you freaking using you bastard? You're going through the stuff you feel.

like a big brother or something to them. So yeah, you wish the best for them. You want them to succeed. It's a long shot with a lot of folks, but I've seen some actually go pretty far. I've seen others that are dead now. So, I mean, it kind of runs the gambit there too. You always want the best for people though. Yeah, of course.

you're making at one point triple the amount of drug buys whatever but you're not making that many arrests building up trying to find the top don't get pressure like hey can't you arrest some of these guys isn't there pressure like You're spending a lot of money. I'm not seeing a whole lot of warrants or whatever coming through from you, pal. Yeah, and that's exactly how it works is they want to see you spending the little NARC budget, which is not that big in the first place.

And then I work up to the point where I'm dealing with so many people and buying little samples because I'm looking for the big guy. But all these other guys know that T is this big time dude and they want to sell me something.

I'm like, hey, man, give me 100. I'll see if I can move what you got or whatever, just as then I'll do something for you. That kind of thing once I got to that point. But I'm spending the budget for the week for the whole team. And my sergeant at the time was the only reason why.

I was able to succeed because I kept him apprised of what I was trying to do. He knew I had targets. He's known me for a long time by then and knew that these other dudes would come in at 10 o'clock, hang around the office. fart around a couple of cases or whatever, go to lunch from 12 to 3, 7 deep and then whatever. And meanwhile, I'm nowhere to be found. So these guys are complaining about me being some kind of loner. And I'm just like, dude.

Yeah. I'm happy to have you along working with me if you want to actually get off your ass. It was just exciting work for me. I just, I couldn't sit around. You actually wanted to be a cop. Yes. The other guys wanted to get a paycheck. Yeah.

So, yeah, he saw that and understood and allowed that to happen, essentially covered for me. Yeah. Knowing that I was working, what results I was getting to a reasonable extent. You know, I'd meet with him once a week and at least say, you know, this is kind of where I'm getting in close with this guy, blah, blah, blah.

There was a lot that I couldn't explain to him, obviously, because if I'm going in off the books when I'm going into work and essentially nobody knows I'm at work except one of the patrolmen I used to work with just telling him on the midnight shift, hey, man, I'm fixing to go do this thing. You mind standing by? They don't know the process, but yeah, man, I got you. And I'll just say, hey.

Stay far enough away, blah, blah, blah, and I'll keep the phone line open. That was my wire, so to speak. You just have your phone call going to him? Yeah. So that if anything goes wrong, he can roll up with the lights and sirens? Drive through the front door, man, because these are all like burglar barred, fortified. whatever as it just come save my ass. Jeez, and he's just hanging out at Tim Hortons waiting for the call? Yeah, basically, yeah.

But to think about it, as a patrol officer, that's exciting stuff to do, too. I guess it's better than, yeah. I mean, he's Carl Winslow in Die Hard, right? Yes. Hanging out outside of Nakatomi Plaza. It's something cool to do, answer a call or waiting for a call or whatever.

He called and said, you know, homicide detective. And you go out hunting. Something to do. Sure. Somebody who actually wants to work. No kidding. So you mentioned you did a bunch of stuff off the books. We touched on that. But why did you need to do that again? I needed to do it primarily because time was a key factor. And essentially, I spent so much time that it was a non-starter.

There was no team that could stay down there every single day, including weekends and everything else. So it's expensive. So you're just like, oh, I'm going to go do it by myself, even though I'm not supposed to do it. Yeah. And even just the hangouts. Every day of the week, I would spend some time there. I would at least drive through and say, what's up?

I'm on a Saturday and I'm doing something with my family, I would still roll through there and give a what's up. They saw me almost every single day for that straight 18 months. People saw my face rolling through there. And that was part of it, though. I never just disappeared for periods of time. That's when people start thinking.

Where have you been? Like, what's going on? And then I have to make up some kind of ruse, but I got locked up or wherever else I was supposed to be. And unfortunately, I lived in the same city, which was part of the other anomaly in this case is that I'm crapping in my own backyard, essentially.

So that made it more difficult. But that's why off the books, I would say, other than a couple of the things that I was involving myself with that would have been, once you go up the chain and say, hey, I want to go. You know, hang out with these dudes and play video games and be talking smack. I'm gonna try to meet some new people wherever you do that on a daily basis. Just some of it's prohibitive. You don't have enough manpower.

Some of it is just the stuff they wouldn't want you to do just for safety's sake or whatever. Because again, they want you to be wired. I wanted absolutely not to be wired. The time all we had was that primitive crab that you taped all over yourself. And how wired do you need to be when you're just playing John Madden to build rapport? You're just taking unnecessary risk at that point. But of course, their protocol is, no, you're wired at all time. We have a team ready to...

help you. And you're like, we're going to be here for five hours drinking and playing John Mann. It's a waste of time. So I see the temptation to be like, I'm just going to go do this. Yeah. And it gets so much easier, too, to where if somebody does call you two in the morning and saying, hey, man, this X, Y, Z. And I say.

I'll be there in a minute and I literally roll up and 25 minutes later, that would be something that would take three hours to get guys on call to get their cars, go gear up, meet at the office, wire me up, figure out a game plan. Now, time to crip walk your way to some deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

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All right. Now back to Teagan Broadwater. So the budget gets exceeded and you go to the feds, but they want to take over the case. Is that normal? Yeah, I think it is. Doesn't make any sense, though, because you're the guy who ran the case. What is their best argument? If you can sort of steel man this, what's their best argument for taking this case away from you? Because they just think we'll take the case that you brought to us thus far. And if they feel like.

They could put their own undercover in there and insert them or just take the case and run it up through the AUSA at that point and take all the credit for the case. The U.S. attorney. Yeah, because they're federal agencies. And obviously, the DEA would have people that are...

fully equipped to try to get an undercover in or whatever, but I already knew. It's like, man, this is ridiculous to try to insert someone else when I'm already in there. What's the point? All you're doing is complicating it, putting more risk on someone else. When the case is already rolling forward, it's rolling downhill now if I had the funds and the equipment. That's what I was looking for.

So that's when the FBI was the obvious thing. And what's interesting is that they have a whole trained undercover program, but they appreciated the fact that this was already being accomplished. And I think it's just common sense. And of course, the FBI still gets...

all the credit for the case. They filed the case federally and all that stuff. So I'm working undercover. So honestly, the last person that gets credit for anything is the undercover because that's what you do. So you're not there for a glorification.

get done with a case like that and then raise your hand and say, I'm undercover, then you're never working again. So essentially everyone else is taking whatever credit they want, the gang unit and the FBI and the this and this, and they're all do press conferences. But I'm not showing my face. Sure. Yeah, no, it seems like a bad idea.

I'm surprised they didn't offer you a job after that because it seems like you did a pretty good job on the case. Yeah, that's not how it works. When you're in a civil service-based department, you test for every promotion and you either make it or you don't. That's how it goes. There's good things and bad things about that because...

It's a competency test and you cover leadership and different things like that. But it doesn't necessarily mean you have great leaders either, because if you can take the test better than me, now you're the next leader. Sure. So I'm just surprised the FBI wasn't like, you should apply here.

citing your undercover work here. I was probably too old by then. I don't know what the FBI cutoff is, but I was 35-ish, 30, whatever. It's probably like 36. I was pretending to be 29 or whatever it was. Sure. Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah. Tell me this story about you going in a dope house and then you end up, you were on TV at the same time. This is such a good story, man. This is the worst story, actually. Now I assume you can laugh at it. Yes, you have to laugh at it because otherwise I tear up every time. But yeah, I was at a level to where guys were coming to me all the time and I was moving out of the fishbowl because obviously the crypt territory was more than those six square blocks. That was just a violent hub.

But a lot of the supplies were coming from outside that neighborhood, still all interconnected and crip-wise. So I was really careful about who I was talking to because... Moving from guy to guy was I could do dope deals all day long, but if they're not a crip, I'm not interested in talking to them at all because I'm still working. Even if the FBI has given me money to spend, I have to spend it wisely. I have to still justify the money, especially.

with the FBI. You have to justify how the money's being spent. So we had this cat that pulls up. I happened to pick up my informant just to get a brief and see what he's been doing. Met this little corner store. We're driving around having a little sip and this dude pulls up and...

Flags us down. I see the car. It's this gold Lexus. And it keeps driving around like, who's this fool? He pulls up and he's like, T, man, hey, what's going on? I met you once through whatever and explained who he is. And I'm looking over at my informant who knows that this guy needs to be a crip for me even.

But he's trying to sell me something, man. I got this great stuff and whatever. I'm like, hey, man, it's all good. You don't need nothing. But it's good to meet you, whatever. And then my logarithm, my informant, gives me the little, like, man, he's a crip. He's probably a low-level crip. But again.

The level of Crip is insignificant to me. I'm creating a conspiracy case of a whole bunch of Crips that are causing a bunch of violent crime in the city. So basically this is like a RICO organized crime. Yeah, that's the idea is tying all that together, not the dope.

At that point, it was a risk for me to say, I'm going to come in and do a low-level dove deal because I'm supposed to be this big dude when he wants to sell me the whatever. But at that point, I'm also trying to say, well, this is a crip. A lower-level crip is still a crip. And a lot of times...

They're doing a lot of the violent acts themselves anyway. So I said, all right, man, that's cool. Where are you going? He said, just follow me. He said, my house, whatever. And we pull in, pull up the driveway like a normal, it's a little shocking little house with little burglars on the top built in the 50s.

Little hood house, typical thing, fence out in the front yard and everything else. He goes through the front gate and up the stairs, open the burglar bar, lock everything up back behind us, have a typical room set up with a little coffee table. Couch on one side, giant screen TV on the other side. Practically nothing else in the apartment besides a gun, a scale, and some dope.

PlayStation 4. Of course. And somewhere there's a Bible in porn. Somewhere. A Bible in porn? Yes. Those have to be present in order for you to solidify a proper dope house. It's ridiculous. Percentage-wise, pretty amazing. That's really ridiculous. And so we just start chatting, just familiarizing whatever he's talking about, whatever his stuff was. The TV happens to be on. And this is back in 2006.

seven-ish. So again, you realize there's four channels on TV for the most part at that time. It's not like everybody had 2,600 choices. And when they have TV in the county jail, it's running one of those channels all the time. Cops happen to be one of the most populaces that everybody watches. So Cops is on in the trap house.

Cops have to be on in the trap house. I don't even notice the cops on the trap house until I'm standing up. Those two are sitting down. My informant sits down and this other fool sits down. We're just jaw jabbing about stuff or whatever. And I hear a voice behind me. You talk about the feeling of dread that comes over. You get that adrenaline SNS dump and my auto exclusion happens and I'm seeing in tunnel vision and my heart rate's racing and I recognize that it's me from...

Several years back, at that time, I did an episode in 1999 that was on replay. Fort Worth did a crap load of episodes. They used to be on reruns all the time. I didn't even volunteer to go. My sergeant made me go on this day when I was on the cops episode. But there's a giant ass TV behind me with my big white. Nordic mug on there in a police uniform, driving a police car, arresting this fool on the freeway. And these guys are facing me. So behind me, I'm thinking I got this giant backdrop.

Lord only knows. And I've told you about all the things that I've prepared for. Sure. And these people pull guns. I got this. I think I'm tactically sound as long as I have somebody else to worry about. I'm going to this. If they ask me this, I'm thinking all these things so that I can just focus solely on.

Whatever important scenario was placed in front of me instead of thinking of all these ancillary things. And this son of a bitch just confused the hell out of me. You're just on TV in a police uniform behind you while you're dealing with these crips. Yes. Telling drugs in the trap house.

That must have felt like an eternity until that Arby's commercial or whatever comes out. It may have been Arby's. I think I would love Arby's. I don't know what it was because I would subconsciously just think, oh, I love Arby's. It's cops, so it's either that or $2.99 or yada, you're mine. And you're like, oh, thank God, Denny's commercials. Hey, can we turn off this TV? It's really distracting. At that point, you could have left it on. I don't know what I said. It was the most difficult part.

to actually put into the book because I don't know what I said. Everything else, I had notes and memorialized little things on napkins that I'd wad up like snot rags if there was something significant or write the story when I got home in my report that I never filed. But this, I was just like, I have no earthly idea what I said. And I was scared to death. And I know I talked, which they tell me now is a part of a training protocol. You keep talking through these stressful situations.

I don't know what I said, but I was talking just thinking, I am so freaking screwed right now. And honestly, I was as paranoid about...

having a violent confrontation as I was about this thing ending before I got to the head of the snake. I mean, I was a little bit overly psycho about... what i was willing to keep this case going because i had put in so much time and effort and there was nobody else working with me obviously outside the scenes i had an agent assigned to the case but i was in there alone doing all these hours and putting in all this time

I was going to be damned if I had to cut it short because a freaking TV show came on. But I was certain this is not going to end well. I don't have the key to the Berkley Bar door. This is going to be bad. Oh, man. So I just...

The most anticlimactic part about it is that I just filibustered. I call it a filibuster. I just talk about whatever it is. I'm going to keep talking until this is over. And thank goodness it's over. And then I'm hauling through the deal. And I probably look like a complete amateur doing this dope deal.

But they couldn't have been on point at that time. Got the deal done. Was hauling ass. Man, I just remembered I got something else. And we'd go out the door. My informant jumps in the passenger seat. I'm just looking at him. what is up with you? He was all looking at me confused too. He had no freaking idea. Oh, he didn't notice. No, obviously nobody noticed. Yeah. Or that would have come around. But at that point, once I left with my life and my sanity, I thought.

That's not good that this is in my mind now. Now I'm super paranoid if that thing's still showing to the extent that... We could be in a trap and this is literally what they're watching. Who else is watching cops at this exact moment that I also work with right now? How many times are they rolling? I mean, I don't know how many times this comes on all the time because it's Fort Worth. I don't know. It's the middle of the night. Half these folks are up. Am I going to walk into the next?

house and they'd be like, saw you on TV. You look familiar. Yeah. But there's something beautiful, I think, about guys in uniform. I used to know people that I'd work with and then I would see them out of uniform and just not recognize them.

And I think civilians think even more like that. If they know who a police officer is, they just have a particular kind of look and you put them in street clothes and they just don't recognize them the same way. And I think that was fortunate in this case that it would just.

I think there was a separation, not to mention the high and tight, barely any hair look when I damn sure could have grown out any hair I wanted and I didn't. You get labeled as a snitch eventually. How did that happen? And what do you do about that?

This was the difficult part. And this is why had I gone through training, I would have figured out that this is really against the rules. Not that I didn't know it was against the rules, but look, I'm trying to be a big time guy. And obviously, if I've been working with cartel guys and had this big operation going, I can't be out here dealing with these little punk gangbangers and then somebody call me out. The worst thing they can do is call you a snitch. Even better than if you're...

Deemed a cop, you just run the risk of getting some kind of violent repercussions, but almost certainly you would if you're a snitch, because there's a lot less repercussions for you if they find a snitch in the ditch versus finding a cop in the ditch. There's going to be... A hunting party coming out. Yeah. So I think I was so well known by then that they just thought it was a snitch. Nobody really thought about a cop. And the reason why it happened was it was the same little.

gangster hopping that i did where i was talking to this one dude and in typical doper gangbanger fashion he was giving me what i needed and so he thought he was doing me righteous but would show up late all the time because intermediate level doper or whatever show up. And so I leveraged that as, hey, man.

I don't play like this. I need people to be on time. I'm running a business. I don't know what you think you're doing or whatever. And I just had to play it off because again, I have a case on you already. For me to just keep buying is just... wasting a bunch of money. I need to be spending somewhere else because I need to put other crips on this conspiracy case. So I end up going up the street, literally around the corner from where this cat is.

When he doesn't show up on time, I just take off. I go around the corner and I start talking to somebody else around there. By this time, it's not even hard for me to go talk to other people because everybody at least has heard of me. So I at least can stop by and have a conversation.

I don't even remember at the time. I know I ended up getting something from them, but I don't even remember if I was actually buying anything significant. It was probably just, I'm just going to go over here and feel these guys out because I at least have that excuse in my mind. Like, man, you didn't show up on time. I can't be sitting around in the curb.

We got cops all over the place. You're going to find some white dude in a Mercedes. Hello. And apparently he drove by and saw me. And that's when he started saying, man, this dude's a snitch because he's thinking in his mind.

I've been selling this guy righteous and now all of a sudden he's over here. What is he even doing over here? He has no reason to be going to one of my fellow guys. And so he puts this jacket on me is what they call it. They give you the jacket. It's a label. It's a snitch. And my informant is calling me. In a panic because he knows the risk that he runs. If he'd made an introduction to this guy four months ago and then all of a sudden it comes out that I'm some kind of snitch.

he's going to be the first guy they drag in and try to figure out what's going on too. So he calls me in a panic in the middle of the night. One of those guys, he's infamous for just calling. I'm like, and he'll say to you, man, it's really important. It's an emergency. T, call me.

And they'd be like, hey, man, you got any money for a beer, man? Can you meet me out to whatever? I'm like, son of a bitch. Yeah. So I'm ignoring it because it's like late in the night. And so when I finally picked up, he said, man. There's a word out on the street that manager snitched. They gave me the jacket and blah, blah, blah. And it's coming from this guy. Yeah. Blah, blah, blah. He explains whatever the deal is. He doesn't know.

why or anything like that, but words get into him. And so he's freaking out because he's got a high penance to pay at this point. And so in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, when I'd say off the books, so very far removed from working with...

anybody who's covering me almost ever at this point. And I'm probably easily over a year in and been out there so often that I'm just figuring out how do I make this case survive? Do I want to die? No. Was I willing to lose my job over making this successful? Yes. And that's an interesting thought in retrospect. But I thought, OK, if T is who he is and I purport myself to be some kind of big time dude.

And I've been through the ringer and I've ran giant operations. And these punk gangbangers are trying to put a label on me that's going to get me killed in the street. This is the lowest next to a pedophile. You can't put a label on somebody worse than this. What would T actually do? So I flipped back over. I had my plan and I set my alarm for six o'clock in the morning. I got up and got myself all psyched. Knew this dude does his drop.

He had a little port-a-cochet over the side of the garage, and at the bottom there was a little missing piece of concrete, and that's where the larger stash would go. He'd make his drop every morning. And so I pulled up and waited for him to show up on time, which, of course, he did not.

I was there when he got there. And when he got up there, I just got out of my car and made a straight beeline for him. He's like, hey, man, what's up? And I just started beating the shit out of him. This is what you do. Now, obviously, I had plenty of training. I wasn't trying to kill the dude, but this is the least.

of what I would do. There's a lot worse that I could have done, but obviously I'm not trying to do anything other than convince him that this jacket needs to be taken off me because people are going to die if I just ignore it. People are going to die, starting with my informant.

And that's what a gangster would do. We got into it and I ended up rolling around the grass down the hill and then ended up with a good knee into his rib cage. And he was having a hard time catching his breath. And I told him to take the jacket off of me and just walked away.

And that's the last I heard of it. Really? Yeah, that's the last I heard of it. And I don't think it was atypical. I think it probably gave me a little more street cred, but I also don't think he just got up and went around and told everybody he just got his ass kicked.

I don't think it was made into a bigger to-do because what would you say? I said he was a snitch and he just kicked my ass. I don't think so. I'm curious. You just say, I think I was mistaken about that. My bad. Yeah, that I don't know because I left it up to him.

Obviously, if he's the one talking about it, this is how I'm going to handle it. I'm not going to go around and justify myself because I feel like I'd already had. And I thought, that's the way I'm going to handle it. And then hopefully that word gets out. And that's how it went down. That's exactly what happened.

It just got squashed. But again, the concern comes back into my mind when somebody says, I only find out in retrospect that it was because he's seen me at the other places. I'm starting to think. Oh, my God. Is this freaking cops episode coming on everywhere? And all these people are figuring it out. It's still making me just 10 times more paranoid. And now I'd done that and obviously would not be permissible under any circumstance. Yeah, of course.

And so I thought, well, I'm really sticking myself out there. But I felt like I really had a purpose. I know, interestingly, too, in retrospect, saving that neighborhood was already accomplished. Saving a larger part of the entire... portion of that neighborhood and further into the city based on the same violent corrupt crips that were there it changed my perspective on kind of what I was doing but I was in it really deep and I just I don't know how logical I was

In my age now, I'm so much more logical and predictable in how I perform because some things are just so not worth it. And I already know I got so much more to lose. But the younger you go back and figure out, man, I got.

this the gang, and I'm willing to do all these other things. And you're like, man, are you sure you've weighed all these consequences? Yeah, no kidding. But yeah, that was one of the more extraordinary parts of that case. You know, it's a good use of your off-the-books drug money. The fine products and services that support this show.

We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Cayman Jack, America's number one margarita. We had a little backyard hang recently, just a bunch of us friends catching up, snacks on the table, music playing, you know that kind of thing. A few lawn games. that somehow get way too competitive. You know how it goes. Eventually, everyone hit that moment of looking around like, okay, so who brought the good stuff? That's when we broke out the Cayman Jack.

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You pull this clever move where you switch up an order at the last minute and it leads to a big supplier. Tell me how that worked. Yeah, one of the same typical deals where I'm cruising around with this cat who we're supposed to get this deal done.

he's picking it up from a cook. And this guy's name was D and we go in his house and he's actually cooking all this stuff up. So that's why I knew that this guy had gotten all of his stuff from this particular cook. So I have an order, I don't remember, quarter key, something moderate.

I didn't have an extraordinary budget like a lot of people think about with federal money. Even when I had money, it wasn't extraordinary. But we set this deal up, and when he gets there, it's crack. It's hard. Like, dude. You know me. I can't do the crack, man. I need the powder, man. He's, man, I thought you said crack. We were just at the cookhouse and my boss, man.

Can you help me out any other way? He's like, let me try to think. So I'm actually rolling around with him. This is one of those paranoid dudes that tells you to meet him somewhere and then five other places after he moves, then we finally do the deal.

But now I'm riding him around with me. So we're driving around in my ride. He takes me to this place and goes in and picks up something else. The guy says he can get it, but to park and wait. And we go back to the place where we were supposed to meet, where they're having this house party.

And so we're just hanging out at that point because we're waiting to do a deal. But I'm essentially put in a situation where, hey, this is like the greatest networking event ever. I'm in the middle of the hood at a house party, a bunch of crips.

playing poker inside. There's dudes in the backyard cooking. There's people hanging out in the front. As overt as you can imagine, a house party being with a bunch of criminals at it. And while I'm still waiting, actually, I'm trying to remember if it was...

right after the deal, the guy showed up and we did the deal or if it was right before. So this blue SUV pulls up, they call it a blue Jeep, no matter what it is, if it's a Jeep or if it's a Durango, everyone in the hood calls it a Jeep. But it was, I think it was a Durango, blue Durango. pulls up and everybody starts flocking over to it. Now my kingpin, I'd known who the kingpin was since before the case started. I had...

run-ins with him just doing warrants and stuff. He never got busted for anything. So I knew he was the guy. I didn't know how big he actually was in real life. And he had been laying low. He split town and... There was a lot of heat from the feds or whatever. I don't remember who he said he caught heat from. I was thinking, it's not heat from me because I haven't been at your doorstep, but I wish I had been. So he apparently was back in town. This window lowers down and I see...

From his nose up, he's out poking his head out the back of his own car like somebody's driving him around. And all these people are gathering around. It's like the freaking king has showed up into the town. And I'm thinking, man, this is unbelievable. I walk over and of course I'm with these two dudes that I'm doing deals with. One guy's linking me with a new guy and we're getting what I need. It's a natural symbiotic situation.

walk over with the crowd or whatever, and I see him, I know exactly who is. I only can guess that he might know maybe who I am, but I've seen him and talked to him with a balaclava years before, but he wouldn't recognize me otherwise.

And I just remember catching some eye contact as he's talking to people and kind of high five and whatever. And I kind of looked over. I'm going to give him the what's up. He gives me like a what's up. And it wasn't curious or suspicious or anything. He just gave me a what's up. And I thought, that's cool.

Who's the snowman here in the middle of the crew? Who is this dude? So I thought it was cool that I got the little what's up. And that was my first inkling that, man, this connection, this is like a manifestation in real life of. These people all lead to this, and we're all standing here right now. This is ultimately what the goal is to get all these people out of here. And this is the kingpin who's running the whole show. Yeah. So...

How do you eventually get all these guys indicted and arrested? Does it happen kind of all at once? It seems like it has to. Otherwise, everybody goes to ground, right? You hope it happens all at once. That's the plan anyway. That was the FBI agent. Assistant U.S. Attorney and several people from the FBI field office in Dallas were working tirelessly and overnight to help write all these search and arrest warrants for all these target locations. We had 51 people in the conspiracy.

at the very end, 41 of whom went federal sentencing and 10 went state. So we're writing warrants all over the city for these people to do all at once. And so they're having this big to-do in a gymnasium full of... seven, eight, nine agencies. We've got ATF and FBI. We've got Fort Worth SWAT. We've got gang unit. All these people are all gathered as 200 plus officers in this gymnasium talking about.

or we're going to do the next morning at 6 a.m. To me, I'm just, my mind's blowing. Are you nervous? Are you excited? I'm both. And honestly, it was surreal because by then I'd been doing it for so long. Just the fact that it was actually going to culminate in anything that meant it was done was weird for me. It was just something where I felt like my behavior, I was willing to just keep doing crazier and crazier stuff to just keep this thing building.

So it was surreal that it was even ending at all. And normally, too, you do a case and then you crack the door down. That's the fun part. And everybody else is doing this for me. I'm working from the end of the FBI and I'm following their lead, too, because. I'm just assigned to the FBI as a TFO. I'm not actually an FBI agent.

So I'm following all the protocols that they have to go through. What's a TFO, just like a liaison? A task force officer, a municipal or a sheriff department or somebody that's signed to the FBI. They get credentials and work in the office. So it was surreal for me there, too, because...

It was just enough old school. We walk in the room the next morning at 6 a.m. They got this long table with big red telephones, old school dial in hard line telephones lined up and down. I think the FBI, honestly, many agencies. had all these passe technological things when they worked in their office at WordPerfect. I think by then, WordPerfect had been defunct almost for a decade. They still used it, but it's hard to actually...

Pull up a file, you steal something from there, put it on a thumb drive and try to pull it up. Most computers at that time, there essentially is naturally encrypted, you know, behind the times. But all these big boards, all the targets are listed and whatever's going on.

I was a nervous wreck knowing all this stuff was supposed to go down. So they launch everybody. They give a green light over the radio at 6 a.m. And all these tactical teams are hitting all these different locations at 6 o'clock in the morning all over the city. We only got 17 of the people in the first day. Oh, wow. So there was a bunch more people over the next couple of weeks that we were working on rounding up. And that was the most nerve wracking time. I bet. I bet.

Oh, we didn't get so-and-so. Oh, no. So now he knows. Yeah. Where is he? Oh, okay. Three weeks later, we found him. He was hiding out in somebody's house. Yeah, in your backyard. Yeah. With a sniper rifle. Jeez. So, yeah, it took a couple of weeks.

Most of them got rounded up within the following week-ish because it was still an aggressive thing. When that roundup came out, there was a lot of attention brought to the case, news conferences and everything else. There was a lot of patrolmen and everything else that were... also actively interested in finding some of these guys. So we got lots of help. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, it was a nerve-wracking time, though. Happy, sad, too, for the guys that you get to know and that you really like, and knowing that it's the end of that is also kind of nerve-wracking, too. So what was the result, then? A lot of these guys got some decent time. Yeah, the lowest was, I think we had seven went to trial. All the rest of them pled and shared information. Of the ones that went to trial...

I testified on behalf of several of them also in terms of behalf of their character, because they were people that I thought deserved to be in the conspiracy. Once these arrests are made, I have no control over what sentences they get. Or you've got a federal judge that's tough on crime guy and you lose control. The only thing that I could do is try to convince them to cooperate and give them my word. And I didn't do this for everyone.

But given my word, I'll testify on behalf of you and your character. Most people didn't believe me. And I kind of didn't blame them, even though it was traumatic for me, because I'm thinking in my mind, like, no, dude, we really did have a connection. I really like you. But you've also known me for two years as T and now.

telling you I was lying the whole time. So I also understand why you don't believe me. But it was traumatic for me when they would just give you the bird and move on because you just really had these high hopes for the guys that you thought had a chance. You really wanted to get the lowest sentences. And since I didn't get to pick, that's the only thing I could do.

Once I testified for one person and just said, man, I think they have a lot of social redeeming value. They've made a lot of mistakes. They are tied in with this, but... I think I would be even comfortable as the undercover with them getting out with a lighter sentence, whatever that needs to be. I'm just, I would testify on their behalf. And once I did that, a few others perked up.

And decided to cooperate, and I ended up doing that. So the lowest sentence was two years, and the average sentence was 19 years. Oh, wow. So you add a ton of dope into this situation, and it turned into what... People consider it a dope case, but again, it's not a dope case. These are violent criminals selling guns, doing drive-by, everything else. And you debrief all these fools and they're sharing.

who murdered so-and-so at the stop and shop, whatever. We had nine cold case murders that got reinvestigated. So that's really who these folks are. And the last three are getting out. Biden's actually his last hurrah. Let the last three guys out, one of which is actually a pen pal of mine. I've been trying to get out for years, me and another attorney, because I think he got really screwed on the Senate. I see. The other two are those.

kind of folks that you want someone to let you know when they get out, so you can just watch yourself. Sure. But again, the only reason I can even think that even happened, because it happened without any... instigating from me. We're working from behind the scenes and trying to put together a case to get my guy out. And all of a sudden he calls and said, man, I just, he's getting down in July. Is that, again, they think.

This is a dope case. These are nonviolent, whatever, versus drugs and blah, blah, blah. Well, that's not the case. There's so much more context in this situation. I know we're closing here, but before I forget, one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode with you was because you are...

donating some of the money from this book. Tell me about that, where that's going. Yeah, I was encouraged to write a book after this, and I had no interest in writing a book at all till somebody brought me to... one particular organization that got me turned on to this whole thing where we calculate all the kids that were left behind after this roundup. So you have 51 people off the street, one female, 50 dudes. And you try to think of, all right, now...

How many fatherless kids are there going to be on the street in that same poor neighborhood being raised by aunts and grandmothers in that same place who are going to take the next opportunity? And then you got to get some dude in 18 years to go in and take them all to jail. I'm just thinking.

This is salvaging that neighborhood in a certain way, but it's not a long-term solution. The arrest is not a long-term solution. You're getting the violent people away so that this neighborhood could potentially thrive. But what are we doing for that neighborhood to thrive?

And this organization is an after-school organization that mentors children of incarcerated and murdered parents. They teach them they have to come in and report their conduct grade every single day. They talk about their test scores.

They get mentored in art class, in their homework stuff. They do music. They do athletics. They have little after-school Dallas Maverick guy who'll come out and do some kind of thing at the basketball court or whatever. It's a fantastic program. They essentially teach these kids. table manners and how to apply for jobs. Oh, wow. Yeah. Smart. But it takes her ceiling from this level and makes it sky high, which we take for granted.

Our parents have always said, you can do anything you want. Sure. If you just do this, this is the path and whatever. It's like Chris Rock bit. You ever remember that Chris Rock bit where he's like, you tell a white kid he can do whatever you want. He turns around and says, I can know that. That's exactly right.

It is right. I think it's funny because it's ironic because these kids, again, that was their dad. That's what they knew. Their dads grew up in that same environment, got into the bad stuff. I will concede most of these guys were not actually great fathers at all. Yeah, I was going to say, like, absentee father, but your father before was...

Staying up all night, killing people. Yes. Yeah, not a pillar. It still illustrates the problem ultimately, which is why, okay, I thought that's a purpose to write the book. And so we donate all the profits actually from this book to organizations that we've donated to that organization in particular.

as well as others that are the same objective as mentoring children of incarcerated parents, so that the cycle has some potential for fixing itself. You're teaching them ways in which they can succeed in other ways besides. grabbing a gang member and latching on in sixth grade or whatever that is yeah wow that's really awesome and i hope that it's successful i mean it sounds like it is so far but man how do we get out of this mess it seems like a huge chunk of the next generation

doesn't have functional parents, doesn't have role models, and we can't really arrest our way out of this dope problem. It sort of reminds me of that scene in the movie Blow where...

They're interrogating the guy and they're like, what do you think you're doing selling drugs? And he's like, you can't arrest your way out of this problem. There's all these drugs that go across the border. It's all about demand. There's always a market for it. What do we do about this? Politics and graft and everything else. Yeah.

I don't think in terms of drugs, obviously, I think the war on drugs, I think everyone would agree that doesn't work has been how many decades now that's been in play. You're putting a lot of lives at risk for us to continue spinning the wheel so that it doesn't get worse, which is the only... real progress I think we make when you're fighting the dope is you're just...

putting people in harm's way, law enforcement doing all this different stuff just to make sure it doesn't get worse. Because if you quit fighting it, it will get worse. Fighting it is not beating it either. Yeah. I don't know exactly a solution. I think if I did, I'd be speaking all over the world, giving them the magic key. But I do think too many people pass on making an impact because they think it's this giant undertaking. And if you can impact.

One person that is of age that can be enlightened by some kind of wisdom or encouragement or whatever. I think that's really the key is if more people would think a small difference adds up in total. I think that's really where it comes in. Educating people and acknowledging consequences. Most of the people in the dope game are not accountable people, and they get pissed off when they get caught.

But if you actually understand consequences and value other things that you can do, you'll make better choices in general. And it's not that we can do that in mass with one kind of turnkey thing. But I think. People that have a struggling kid or something that may listen to you, even if you tell them the exact same stuff their dad tells them and they don't listen.

A lot of times it could be as simple as that, just saving that one dude, because he's going to then have a testimony about how he managed to get away from some of that stuff. And then that spreads. Other people are doing that. So I really think it's just an individual thing where...

Most of us get old and you realize, wow, I was trying to do all this stuff to make myself successful. And once I get to a certain age, I realize it's all about making other people successful. That's when life really becomes real. It's so much better. But not everybody sees things like that until you can help a single person out and appreciate what that does. That's a legacy, even if you don't get your name put on a plaque for it. So I think we could solve some of those problems.

Teagan Broadwater, thanks so much, man, for coming in. We went way over. I appreciate you hanging in there. I'm honored to be here, man. Thank you for letting me come on. If you're looking for another episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show to check out, here's a trailer of our interview with Jack Barsky, former KGB spy who posed as an American in a truer than life version of a Hollywood movie. This is one of our most popular episodes of the show.

Jack not only dodged the FBI for decades but also defected from the Soviet Union, secretly becoming a real American. We'll learn how spies were recruited and trained during the Cold War. And what skills Jack used to assimilate seamlessly into American culture. I was untouchable. I was above the law. I was always bypassing customs and passport control. So a young person, it really feels good because...

How did you flip to eventually becoming full American? I know they tried to call you home. Can you take us through that? They called me back as an emergency departure. They've done this in the past. They call back an agent, and as soon as they step on Soviet soil, they are jailed or even executed. I was stalling the Soviets, and then one day they send one of their resident agents.

And he said to me, you've got to come home or else you're dead. It was a threat. I decided I would defy them and tell them that I'm not returning. I will not betray any secrets and please give the money on my account to my German family. Wow. Tell us how you got caught, because the story is just not complete until you, like you said, had to face your past. I was stopped on the other side of a toll gate.

It was a state trooper. Just like to check your license and registration. And could you step out of the car? I step out of the car, still not having a clue what was going on. Out of the corner of my eye, somebody approaching me from the back. The fellow introduced himself. Riley FBI and he showed me this badge. We would like to talk with you. The first question I asked, am I under arrest? And the answer was no. Then I said, what took you so long?

For more from Jack Barsky, including how Jack was finally caught by the FBI and what happened after that, check out episode 285 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. All things Teagan Broadwater will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

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I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show, well, it's created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

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