Novel. On January six of two thousand and twenty, at four pm, Ben Photor got a text message from a number he didn't recognize. It was a single word. Ben replied with two question marks, and the stranger responded with a confusing series of messages about the weather and a pair of missing glasses, until they seemed to realize that they were texting the wrong person. Wait, ship is this Tommy?
And then things got strange. Instead of the conversation ending, Ben asked the stranger what they were doing later that night, and the stranger typed getting high and watching Netflix. How about you, to which Ben replied, nice, We're going to get high and go to the arcade I want to join. They continued chatting until late at night. The stranger eventually
told Ben that her name was Laura. Ben told Laura that he and his girlfriend were polyamorous and suggested that they all meet up, and he sent Laura a photo of him and his girlfriend. Laura replied, don't get me wrong, you are both hot. A yes, but I'm trying to make good decisions. But they kept texting over the next few days, and eventually Laura agreed to meet up with Ben and his girlfriend Andrea at the Silver Cloud Hotel near downtown Seattle. Laura told Ben a few of her
friends were in town visiting from Los Angeles. She'd been planning to pick up drugs for them, but her dealer stood her up. Ben offered to bring some to the hotel. That would make it even easier for pre party, Laura replied. Then, on January nine, at five fifty pm, Ben texted, Hey, so I was not able to get m but I can get you c at eight U G or a ball for two. Laura replied, that's cool. We have money for a ball, meaning an eight ball or around three
point five grams of cocaine. Four hours later, a Seattle Police Department detective held a meeting with members of her department along with some agents from the Homeland Security Investigation Unit. They were preparing for a narcotic takedown operation. At ten fIF pm, officers observed Ben Fodor and his girlfriend Andrea Bernstin parking orange smart car in front of the hotel and make their way into the lobby. According to court documents, Photor had a shiny gold backpack and was carrying a
blue tackle box. Andrea exited the South Lobby door to smoke a cigarette at the point, the police moved in and arrested Ben and Andrea. Back at the precinct, the officers searched Ben and Andrea's belongings. Inside the tackle box, they found seven separate bundles of suspected cocaine, weighing a total of four grams. They also found a scale covered in what looked like drug residue and another unknown white
powder substance weighing thirty one seven grams. Also inside the tackle box were two passports belonging to Ben and Andrea. There was, of course no Laura. It was a made up name by an undercover cop. This whole sting operation seems like a lot of work, and it appeared to be a shift in Phoenix's relationship with the police. This time they seemed to be taking the initiative to come after him, unlike in the past where they were reacting to his actions. According to Phoenix, he was under attack.
In January of Phoenix was charged with two counts violation of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, and in March he pled guilty to the lesser charges of conspiracy. The self proclaimed Guardian of Seattle was no longer standing his ground against arm crack dealers. He was himself a convicted drug dealer. The world would never see him the same way again. I'm David Weinberg and from the Team's at Novel and I Heart Radio. This is the final installment of The
Superhero Complex, Episode eight, The Hero We Deserve. When Phoenix got busted, the rain City superhero movement was a distant memory to most people in Seattle. They're fifteen minutes of fame had long been up. And then came the news of Phoenix's arrest for selling drugs to undercover cops. Phoenix was back in the spotlight. How have you dealt with the public perception of he was drug dealer? It's been terrible. Some of the worst times of my entire life walked
me through. Like how you've dealt with it? I mean, it's been really crazy, man, It's been really bad. So, like after the indictment, everyone just turned their backs on me and said that I was doing all this crazy stuff. I had people spit on me on the streets. I went to a weird little suicidal phase for a second where I was feeling like I should just end everything, and and then I came to the same conclusion how
he's come to you know, fuck you guys. If you read the transcript of the text exchanges between the undercover cop and Phoenix, he does not come across as a drug dealer. He seems more like a guy who thinks he's about to have a threesome and is only bringing some drugs to the party as a favor. He does mention drugs, but it's the undercover officer who brings them
up first. My takeaway from looking at the evidence provided by the Seattle Police Department is that in this instance with Laura, Phoenix looks a lot more like a middleman and a drug deal than some kind of big time dealer himself. But there's more to the story, because this wasn't the first time Phoenix had been caught selling drugs to cops. On November five, two months before his arrest, the Silver Cloud Hotel, Phoenix got a text from Mike.
Mike was actually to uncovered police officers. According to court documents, Mike and Phoenix texted back and forth for a few days, and on November Mike texted Phoenix asking to buy some M d M A. The cops say Phoenix asked for payment upfront and sent them his Venmo, which had a photo of him in profile. Also a fun fact I learned from reading the court documents, Phoenix's Venmo user name
was Booty sweat Baby. Anyway, Mike and Phoenix agree to meet at a Starbucks and the Wells Fargo building downtown around noon. The next day, a team of officers met for a briefing. Officer Amy Brownham was running the bust and she showed everyone a picture of Phoenix. An officer of pretending to be Mike, along with four other undercover officers in plain clothes were stationed inside the coffee shop.
Officer Brownham was also there watching from outside. At one pm, Phoenix rolled up dressed in a green tank top and jeans, carrying a brown paper bag. The whole exchange took less than a minute. Here's a condensed version of the police report. Phoenix is referred to by his last name Photor. Photoor and the undercover agent made eye contact with each other, and the undercover agent gave him a head nod. Photoor walked towards the undercover agent. They shook hands, and the
undercover agent asked photo Or if he was bent. He replied yes, the undercover agent handed photo Or two d dollars, and photo Or accepted the money. He placed the brown paper bag that he was carrying on the table in front of the undercover agent. Photor stated that it was all there and packaged into separate baggies. He told the undercover agent he could check it if you wanted to. The undercover agent declined and told Photoor that he trusted him.
The undercover agent asked photo Or if he could hit him up next week if he needed more. Photoor said he could. Photo Or exited the Starbucks and jogged northbound. The version of events laid out in the police report is a pretty straightforward drug deal, But according to Phoenix, the media weren't interested in his side of the story. I got indicted, and people would not take my interview to talk to them about my indictment. They didn't want
to go into the gritty of what happened. They wanted to just basically slander my name, and they wrote all these articles that were inaccurate. They wanted to go with the falling hero line, and that's what they wanted to go with. So if the story the rest of the world heard is all wrong, what is the real story. I think, UM, not holding my friends and people I hang out with to the same standards of accountability that I would hold myself to makes me guilty by association.
In both the hotel and the Starbucks drug busts, Phoenix claims he was only facilitating other people's deals. He's basically saying he was nothing but a middleman. In the M d M A bust at the coffee shop, Phoenix says his friend was the dealer, not him, but Mike. The undercover cop told this friend he'd only accept the drugs from Phoenix, So Phoenix agreed to deliver the drugs, and then he says, here's a hundred dollar tip for being here.
Gave me a tip. I was like sweet, took that money and then handed him the bag and I left like, dude, I know what in the bag though, for sure? For sure? So am I still guilty? Definitely? But the person you texted, the person who showed up, the person who brought the drugs, the person who bought the drugs, all of that wasn't me. And as for the hotel bust, Phoenix says he was only near the drugs, not using or selling them. I wasn't on drugs. The Daily arrested us. I had no
drugs in my system. They checked my fingerprints. My fingerprints were not anywhere on the drug paraphernalia. The drug parapetet he wasn't found on me or near me. But did I know they had it for sure? Just facts like yep, and that's a crime, which it is. Conspiracy. Now there's a lot to unpack here, but let's start with the Starbucks bust. I have a very hard time believing Phoenix's version of the story. Here's why. Phoenix is a guy who believes that the Seattle police are out to get him.
He knows he has to be perfect and everything he does because he thinks the police are chomping at the bit to arrest him. And then this drug dealer friend of his comes along and says, Hey, I'm about to sell some drugs to this random guy to Starbucks. But for some reason, he says he will only accept the drugs if you deliver them, and Phoenix says, sure, no problem,
I'm happy to help. This all seems totally normal. For Phoenix to agree to that, he would have to be incredibly stupid, and Phoenix maybe many things, but stupid he is not. Also, who tips a drug dealer a hundred dollars? Now, as for the hotel bust, that one is a lot more complicated. Again, Phoenix makes the claim that he was merely the middleman, and I do think that the text
exchange seems like he isn't some drug kingpin. But if he didn't have anything to do with supplying the cocaine, why were his and his girlfriend's passports inside the tackle box with the drugs. I still can't make sense of that detail. And on the other hand, if the cops had such a clear cut case against him, why did Phoenix get off so easy? It seems odd to me that the police would put so much money in manpower into a sting operation to ultimately let him off with
a slap on the wrist. Maybe it's proof of Phoenix's theory that their goal was simply to ruin his reputation by making his arrest public. Or maybe Phoenix's lawyer just did what lawyers do and got the charges reduced. Or maybe Phoenix snitched on his supplier in exchange for a lesser charge. Those all seem like plausible theories. What we do know for sure is that when the charges were
first brought in January. There was account of cocaine possession with intent to distribute and one of feloniously delivering M d m A, but on March they were dropped to conspiracy charges. And a conspiracy charge basically means that two or more people agree to commit a crime at some point in the future. I was with people who had drugs.
I was aware that there were definitely drugs involved, and you know, as far as a conspiracy goes, it's just knowing that someone was trying to do something illegal and not stopping them. And I'm definitely guilty of that. So, I mean, I believe in America, I believe the Constitution. I'm gonna plead guilty because I'm gilty of that. But
it's disingenuous the way that it was said. And Phoenix did plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit violation of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, one for the M d M A bust and one for the cocaine. He was sentenced to four days in jail, time served, and find five dollars plus an additional one for the DNA test. I feel like that detail gets lost in the media narrative, like no one cares what the charges. It's like, oh, you're a drug dealer, right, but they're
not accusing me of being a drug delar right. But like what I'm saying is like, I know that's the stories that I'm a drugular, but that's not what he was accusing me of. How many days did you serve in jail? Zero? They said they wouldn't delete my charge, but if I pledged, which I had already done, they would give me zero days in jail, and in four years they'll delete my felony. But they just want me
to be guilty. Does that make sense? Like if I'm a danger to society, why would you release me the day that you I say that I'm guilty with no release conditions, there's literally nothing, but they wanted to give me like a felony tag. Phoenix claims that the Seattle Police deviated from their own policies and an effort to bring him down. So is what happened to Phoenix unusual for Seattle? We should probably start by saying that the Seattle Police Department is under a federal consent decree for
their history of biased policing. This is Rich Smith a journalist at the Stranger local paper in Seattle. The Seattle Police Department is a moribund institution that's overfunded. They'd spent a lot more of their time responding to non violent crimes than violent crimes. Lots of investment and new training strategy, his new ways to get him to stop arresting black and brown people at higher rates than white people for the same crimes. There hasn't been a ton of progress
on that bias. That's the reputation of the Seattle Police Department. The two main people in charge of prosecutions in Seattle at the time of Phoenix's arrest were King County prosecuting Attorney Dan Saderberg and Phoenix's old arch nemesis, former Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes. Pete Holmes's progressive era as a prosecutor. He came in swinging a big bat and just stopped prosecuting a lot of marijuana arrests. Pete Holmes covered misdemeanors
and Dan Saderberg was in charge of felonies. When Phoenix talked to me, he directed a lot of his anger at Pete Holmes, but it was actually Saderberg who was in charge of his case. He first started making reforms in the office related to drugs when he came on in two thousand eight, where he reduced filing standards for people who are caught simply possessing a certain amount of drugs. So both prosecutors are viewed as being relatively liberal on drugs.
But the Seattle Police do have a track record of questionable sting operations. Pete Holmes and the SPD came under fire for sting operations they executed in massage parlors in an effort to catch people paying sex workers. Those things were, at least among public defenders, considered pretty wasteful uses of city resources and pretty unsuccessful. A lot of the guys ended up getting off because of shoddy police work. They
were pretty incompetently run. Examples like this lend credibility to Phoenix's claims that the Seattle Police unnecessarily spent massive amounts of public money on his relatively small crime. If they're accusing him of being some kind of kingpin, then you know, maybe some kind of sting operation would make sense like that. But when I put it past the Seattle Police Department,
not at all. Putting too many recent sources into a dubious sounding Let's say a case like this would cops lie or waste a bunch of time and resources going after a group or a person who was a thorn in their side. I would not be surprised in the least. Pete Holmes declined an interview, and Dan Saderberg didn't respond to interview requests. The SPD also declined to put up a spokesperson, and the undercover officers we reached out to and former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best all declined to
comment as well. We put all of Phoenix's allegations to the SPD in writing and asked them about why so much time and money was spent on an investigation that ultimately resulted in two minor drug charges, six hundred dollars in fines, and four days in jail. The Seattle Police Communications Department responded that narcotics investigations routinely involved multiple officers and detectives, both for investigative and safety reasons, and are
conducted over months and even years. In some cases, our
department arrested Mr Phodor for crimes he committed. Regardless of what is true either, The Phoenix is a small time coke and ecstasy dealer, or he simply has a soft spot for helping out his drug dealer friends and as the victim of an over zealous police force at the end of the day, he got off with a very light punishment, and he knew very well the risks he was taking when he agreed to get involved in the legal drugs, So I don't have a lot of sympathy
for him. Everybody hates me already. I got split on the street yesterday. Someone call me the drug dealers, but I'm on the street to day in regular ass life. Because you think I sold drugs for real, what I didn't. And I don't care what you fucking think. Like people don't like me. They've never liked me, that's not new. But we're gonna talk about me showing up with literally three point four grams of cocaine in a bag I am not touching, while completely sober at a hotel trying
to meet a consenting adult to go play pinball. I mean, go fund yourself. When Phoenix landed in trouble with the police, he really wasn't in the superhero game much at all, and now that most people in the city were convinced that he was nothing but a drug dealing hypocrite. It was starting to look like this was the end for
Seattle's most famous costumed crime fighter. But the year brought unprecedented changes to the entire world, and in the midst of a global pandemic and a wave of social unrest in the streets, Phoenix would get his chance to rise from the ashes and down his mask one more time. That's coming up. By May of Phoenix Jones had basically retired from being a superhero. No more shaky body cam videos, no more railing against the police like he had in
the past. It looked as though Seattle police had finally convinced Phoenix to hang up his super suit and leave the crime fighting to the professionals. And then the world exploded.
Waves of peaceful protesters marched on bigger than ever before, from Washington's newly named Black Drives Matter Plazia to Philadelphia, turning violent in Portland, Oregon, Broo police clashed with protests jes the world had spent months being locked down, and then people in cities all across America and beyond erupted in protests and clashes with police. After a white police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis.
Rioters have taken over the shopping district in downtown Seattle. They've set fire to multiple police vehicles. They have broken into multiple businesses, including Nordstrom and Old Navy, and are starting to loot. On May, four days after Floyd's death, protesters marched through Seattle and gathered at hing Hay Park in Seattle's International District to protest police brutality. Protesters laid
down the roads, chanting George Floyd's name. The windows of a Ferrari dealership were smashed in, and some demonstrators curled fireworks. By May, the police were launching flash bangs, tear gas, and pepper spray at the crowds. Mayor Jenny Durkin and stated a five pm to five am curfew. This is a statewide emergency alert. The City of Seattle is asking all residents to immediately disperse from downtown and then on mate. Phoenix Jones resurfaced in his first tweet in over six months.
He posted in all caps the following message, if you're in downtown Seattle and have been injured, need medical assistance, or help evacuating. Tweet me see you in the streets. Perhaps inevitably someone replies that they need help getting some m d M A. But although Phoenix's reputation had taken a dent, it seemed like he was serious about his comeback. This is Phoenix Jones. I wanted to make a couple of things straight before I start at the child today.
Later that day, Phoenix live streamed from a car decked out in his super suit, though he changed up his look a bit. Instead of his rubber batman style mask, he had on a helmet. He announced that he was heading into the fray. It was a full blown relaunch. If you're injured and you need my help, give me a call, hit me off on Twitter. I'll come help you.
Your buildings on fire, you've got something going on like that and you need help and you have it called nine one one already give me plus I'll come put out that fire. He posts more videos that day. In the next Guys, Jones make sybody stay safe through medical attention, keeping everybody good. He live streams himself striding down the streets of Seattle carrying a fire extinguisher, and he claims
he stopped to break it. I thought some people breaking into a bartheuse, so I stopped breaking into the bartel as much as I could. Otherwise, you know, the vandalism will just continue. Phoenix is back. Meanwhile, the protests are escalating. By June six, the police are firing blast balls into crowds of demonstrators. On June seven, a man drives a car into protests at Capitol Hill and shoots a protester
in the arm. The Seattle police use so much tear gas against protesters that people in the neighborhood say it's seeping into their homes, and then comes June eight. We have to stand together and be one family pool. The birth of the Chop or chas, the push to defund and reform the Seattle Police Department, and the Black Lives Matter movement is how six city blocks have been transformed now called Chop. Officers retreated from the area to de
escalate the tension, effectively abandoning their station. Protesters say they won't be intimidated by threats and say they planned to stay as long as it takes to bring about change. It started when the police boarded up the East Precinct and vacated the property following clashes with protesters, so the protesters rearranged the barricades and established a six block area that included cal Anderson Park, a seven acre green space,
and Capitol Hill. Protesters pitched tents and dugout community gardens in the park. They called it the CHOP, an acronym that stands for Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, though some prefer the name CHAZ Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, and depending on which news outlets you believe, the CHAS was either a giant block party and safe space for protesters and community activists to organize, or it's an anarchist stronghold full of
criminals and delusional hippies. One of the more fascinating things about the chairs for the purposes of this story is that the chairs unintentionally became perhaps the largest test case for the work of real life superheroes because cops were not allowed into the chairs, though I suspect the place was crawling with plainclothes officers, but you know who was allowed to patrol this newly founded urban experiment. Hey guys, this is Phoenix Jones doing a day patrol the Capitol
Hill in downtown Always back. You guessed it Phoenix Jones. On June twelve, four days after the birth of the Chairs, Phoenix makes his comeback official. In a tweet in all caps, of course, he proclaims, I'm out of retirement. Streets need me Seattle, hold it together. I'm on my way. Two days later, on Sunday, June, he's back live streaming from the Chairs. He starts to film what he says is going to be an interview with some of the CHAZ organizers. Hey, guys,
what's up. I'm live inside the chat zone. Obviously, I'm just trying to find out one of the other people that we're speaking with. So I should be right back on in the next five or so minutes. But as the night wears on, things take a turn. So uh, sorry about that. In the middle of trying to give an interview, and right in the process of giving this interview, we hear this person saying that there's a guy with
a gun breaking into a place on twelfth Avenue. So we take off towards twelve and we get there and they have the suspect behind a car. There's a gathering of people outside an auto repair shop called car Tender, where Phoenix says he thwarted an attempted break in. I took off on foot around the corner, jumped over the fence, and went into the actual building itself to make sure he didn't have any you know, backup of friends inside.
No one was in the building. I was able to locate the box that had all the keys that he was planning to steal to come back and steal the cars, and then in the parking lot, so I was able to get the key, returned the key to the owner, and then I hid in the parking lot while a mom decided to yell at I love him suck. According to Phoenix, the crowd that has gathered is demanding that the owner of the business let the suspected thief go free.
I'm out here the place. There's probably at people. I'm gonna stop them from getting violence, and this is gonna get shitty, so I'll see you in the streets. Something clearly went down at the car tender, but from the videos that Phoenix posted, it's not clear what he was up to. We spoke to the owner of the store to get their account of what happened, and he said that Phoenix didn't jump the fence or save the car Keys.
He actually doesn't remember Phoenix being there at all. Anyway, despite the negative reaction that Phoenix says he received, he wasn't deterred. In fact, his ambitions seemed to be getting bolder. That same night, he posts a picture of Batman with the caption let's try and find a middle ground and I'm bringing great ideas and solutions to this problem. And the next day, Monday, June, it gets interviewed on local
radio by Jason Rants. Over the course of the last couple of days, it sounds like you have this goal of trying to bring people together. Take us through how that's gone so far. Well, I mean that's funny, Like the last couple of days, my goal has not been to bring people together. My goalp has bring people together by a entire life. In spite of his recent running with the SPD, Phoenix expresses his frustration at what he
sees as their lack of policing. It's been incredibly challenging because the Black Lives Matter movement is like a blanket word, right, black Lives matter. Obviously everyone agrees with that, bec there's a lot of other stuff in there that's kind of weird. And then there's the Antifa angle and all these other different things, but no matter what it is, taking over six city blocks is just illegal. And when the police decide could not respond to one calls in that area,
that is like name on you. And then, in one of the craziest turn of events and the Phoenix Jones storyline, Poenix shows up in the Chas that same night, claiming that the Seattle Police Department have contacted him and basically asked him to be a negotiator on their behalf with the people leading the protests. The response on social media is swift. How long has he been out of jail? Four? This ship is excruciating with hilarious. I thought he hung
up the tights. It just keeps getting weirder. Is Seattle Police actually set of Phoenix Jones to do this? I will follow the dead from laughter and I hope you will attend my funeral. He's a joke and I want to be cop. Isn't his superpower selling ecstasy? It wasn't quite the glorious comeback Phoenix had hoped for. But while he was busy playing the Seattle Police Department's unofficial mediator, a few streets away, another band of superheroes had arrived
to answer the call of their city in need. May stay safe. We're here rendering a Okay, Red Ranger and justin Service we met in the previous episode. We're also hard at work in the Chaz with their team Echo, the Emerald City Heroes organization. They were trying to represent a different kind of real life superhero. You're welcome, but please get the sat gotta staff. We're doing our best. Please get. They were supportive of the protests and said they wanted to be on hand to help anyone who
needed assistance. But in addition to tear gas and flash bangs, Red Ranger and the Echo crew also had to contend with the fact that Seattle's superhero movement had sustained some serious reputational damage. No, he's not a member of our organization. He's not No, no, no association. No we don't. You
want to make that very clear. There's you're not on our Phoenix has always said that one of the main reasons he created his superhero persona was to inspire others to take on injustice in the world and to stand up for those in need. But by the character he created became a punchline a symbol of hypocrisy and absurdity above all else, and as the most famous member of the community, his fall from grace cast a shadow over the whole real life superhero universe. While on patrol, Red
Ranger and Justin Service repeatedly distanced themselves from Phoenix. Phoenix Jones is another not really not anymore. He's in a bad what's the had we had? He's limitted criminal activities. I'm not going to get into it. Yeah, he's not a good example. At one point, they walked past a poster of Phoenix that said Officer Jones Pepper Spray and neighborhood near you. Holy take a picture of that. I can't. Oh,
no worries, I gotta get this holy crap. All through June of clashes between the police and protest is continued, and then on Saturday June, all hell broke loose and the Seattle superheroes had to step into a deadly situation where the police were nowhere to be found until it was too late. Around midnight, Justin Service and Red Ranger started their patrol of the Chaz Red Ranger, who was a registered nurse, had been giving medical care to folks
and trying to de escalate some arguments. There was a group of people setting off fireworks, but then around two am they heard gunfire. Phoenix was also in the area. At just after three am, he tweeted bullets and chaos. I'm in chopped, stay away, seen confusing shoot her on the loose. Red Ranger and Justin's Service ran toward the sound of the gunfire and arrived on the scene of the shooting. It was total chaos, and laying on the ground was nineteen year old Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr. He
had been shot. Come on, everybody back here back. We were doing CPR and trying to provide medical intervention with the volunteer medics that were on scene, and we were calling for an ambulance. Well, the ambulance wouldn't come in because they can't come in until the police cleared the scene.
Watch get out of here drive. The police claimed that it was the protesters we prevented law enforcement from entering the chaz But based on reporting by kow's Ashley Haruko, who reviewed videos from that night along with the dispatch recordings and eyewitness testimony, it was not the protesters it caused the delay, but miscommunication between the Seattle fire and police departments. Everybody, get back, get back, get back. I
get shot, get back, get back. Someone was shot. We ended up losing a poor young man, you know, when we tried to save him. We didn't get the help we needed that night, and I wish we had. There's a lot of factors that went into that, but it's still a regret that that young man lost his life. Every Holy Cross Horace Lorenzo Anderson's father, currently has an active lawsuit for wrongful death filed against the city of Seattle. Meanwhile,
Phoenix had apparently left the scene. He tweeted that he hadn't been able to get a description of the shooter, and I get the sense that he was reaching a breaking point. Later that same night, in the early hours of Saturday morning, he goes on to tweet too much, too damn much. We need to do something now. People
are dying and my fucking city is under attack. I arrived on the scene after the shooting, directed via Twitter, no police chaos, people grabbing the evidence and moving things, and had no description of the shooter, and medical was already there. I was drawing attention and with an active shooter, I had to be back. I have no idea how to combat this threat of real life ending magnitude and at the same time protect people's right to protest. I
am so angry. Why are the mayor, governor and police standing outside an imaginary border when citizens of Seattle are fucking dying? Then a long series of a's and h ah okay. If the brief moment in time when the Chads existed was a test case for letting superheroes stand in for cops in emergency situations, it did not go
well for the superheroes. They had failed in their mission to intercede in those moments before a crime takes place, and when things did go horribly wrong, they weren't able to prevent the death of Horace Lorenzo Anderson or catch the person who killed him. And at the end of the day, it is Phoenix him Health who is angrily demanding that the police show up and do something to protect the people because he and his fellow superheroes have failed.
In the days that followed. He then got into a Twitter beef with an account claiming to be the official CHAS account. It posted that Phoenix was banned from the CHAS and that the Chas Solidarity community had issued orders for security to deny access to the chairs to all members of superhero movements attempting to enter the area. Whether the account was really representing CHAZ organizers is contested, but Phoenix took it as the truth and railed against them.
In another all caps tweet, he said, I do not respect your imaginary borders. Citizens are dying. Grow up. I'll see you to night in the streets, Jones out. Finally, on Wednesday, July one, the city moved in and started dismantling the CHAZ barricades. Protests and conversations about police abolition and reform would continue, but one thing seemed clearer than ever. In the city of Seattle. There seemed to be very
little appetite for our masked adventurer Phoenix Jones. His triumph of return only seemed to make him more enemies in the hometown he had sworn to protect. But even then, Phoenix Jones would not be deterred. He'd continue to take to the streets in search of crimes to thwart, and soon, at long last, I'd be going with him. That's coming up. Phoenix Jones had become a running joke in Seattle, his
superhero squad was a distant memory. He pled guilty to two drug conspiracy charges, and his relaunch at the Chas had been a flop. At this point, most people would probably decide to give up on the whole real life superhero thing, but Phoenix Jones isn't most people. When I visited Phoenix in Seattle, he agreed to take me on one of his patrols so I could see firsthand how
he fights crime these days. I am here to pick up Phoenix Jones at his apartment it is when I am on the summer one, but to go on patrol. I actually ended up going on three different patrols with Phoenix, and every single time we had to use my rental car because Phoenix was having various car troubles. On one of those patrols, the plan had been to begin the night by doing a homeless handout, which surprised me given Phoenix has past disdain for this type of superhero work.
But in the end it never happened because Phoenix claimed his car got broken into and someone stole all the stuff we were going to give out, so we had to go with Plan B. What's the plan for tonight? So we're going to Capitol Hill. We're gonna check that out and safely have people on foot walking around. Then if Capitohill's lame, we're going to check out the second and third and Pike and Aaria. We're gonna get out and walk around there a little bit. We never ended
up getting out of the car that night. Phoenix was just in superhero casual. He wasn't wearing his full super suit, just the molded breastplate with the gold chevron and a black leather trench coat and helmet so bullet proof. I still got all my stuff on. I'm a little less NiFe re sistant, but he had stuff time. We can still go fight crime. The stakes were very high for Phoenix.
He told me because he's on probation, there can't be any slip ups, pepper spray related or otherwise, because if he gets into any trouble, he says, he will go straight to prison for two years. You're a journalist, right, so if we if we stopped and we stop a crime and it goes badly, right, they're not going to rescue you. There's no legal ramifications for you. But me, I'm on probation. I've been asked to stop several different times. It's like every time I come out, my entire life
could possibly be on the line. With Phoenix behind the wheel, we made our way through the darkened streets of the city, keeping our eyes peeled for signs of trouble. When you start like a patrol and I'll like drive around and sort of feel it out, and I'll hit a spot like feels like this could be that spot, you know what I mean. But we weren't having much luck finding any crime. What percentage of patrols would you say you
end up stopping a crap? Mm hm, So I would say this on average, probably stop about two crimes a week or do with citizens help, like where I do something that's like above helping, right, But it's not always stopping a crime, and that's not always on patrol, right, Like today I fixed that tire for that person dressed up super suited up Phoenix Jones death right, But it
didn't have anything to do with patrol. Right. Phoenix told me the reason he was late to tonight's patrols because he and his son had pulled over to help a stranded motorist. Apparently he'd been wearing part of his supersuit, and his son had worn a Batman mask. Phoenix had lots of stories like this. He told me that the day before he had another heroic encounter. This time he had saved his neighbor's life. One of my neighbors overdosed
on drugs had a reaction that have CPR. Phoenix's need to help people impact every part of his life, even things like mundane trips to the grocery store. I went to the check in scan and I was trying to scan thing, and this thing would not scan my stuff. Now, US civilians would probably just head over to another register, but for Phoenix, this was his time to shine. He told me that when the checkout clerk didn't know how to fix the scanner, he got down on his hands
and knees to find the problem. He even called up the manufacturer himself to get the reset code for the machine. I popped it in, the machine worked, and I was like, They're problem solved, and I'm like, now, you don't do it next time, Phoenix said. His girlfriend, who was with him at the time, did not swoon or look into his eyes and say, oh, Phoenix, You're my hero. She was more like, can we just get the hell out of here and get on with our day. And like,
what what would you prefer me to do? You know? She's like, well, I guess I prefer you just to go another machine. I'm like, okay, so what besides obscating my responsibility to help my people, what other than that would you like me to do? I can see how it would be hard to be with someone like Phoenix, who seems to be addicted to being the hero. I think people love uncompromising characters, right, and just because I'm
an uncompromising character, people are drawn to that. But if they really understood what that entails, I don't think they would like it very much, you know what I mean. Phoenix is well aware that fighting crime can damage his personal relationships, but in another of our interviews, he told me he couldn't quit even if he wanted to. I think I have a compulsion to do the things that I believe in, and I don't care about the cost. Whatever makes me stop bad guys. It's a compulsion I
cannot fight. I don't know what it is. I can't put my finger on it, but it's a compulsion that could cost me everything that I could not stop doing. I think that compulsion was one of the things that made Phoenix as successful and as famous as he was at his peak. But alongside that compulsion to take down bad guys is Phoenix's compulsion to be better than everyone around him, and I think his intense competitiveness and his ego made it impossible for him to live up to
his own ideals of what a superhero is. And even though I believe his heart is in the right place, there were moments when I was with Phoenix where I came away thinking this guy is just an asshole. One of those moments happened after we'd finished up a patrol and I had to give Phoenix a ride to go pick up a car he was borrowing. Sorry about this going around circles. It's definitely not my fault. Hello, alright, cool, I have to be on the right street, but the
address you gave me does not take me here. Frustration. Coincidentally, the person he was borrowing the car from was his neighbor, the one whose life he said he had saved from a drug overtose. Anyway, this guy had texted Phoenix the address where we were supposed to meet him, but the guy was drunk and sent the wrong address. This was around three in the morning, and when we got to where we were supposed to meet him, he was nowhere
to be found. So Phoenix started honking the car horn so his friend could hear where we were and come find us. Unfortunately, the batteries in my recorder had just died and I was in the process of replacing them when this sonically rich moment happened. We were parked right outside of an apartment and I called Phoenix out for what I thought was an asshole thing to do. I remember saying, there are people all around us trying to sleep, and blasting your horn outside their window at three am
is a dickhead move. By the time I was able to start recording again, Phoenix was in the middle of defending himself. So I don't know why that it's not chill like. Even when it's explained to me, it still doesn't. It still doesn't like change my mind on it. It just makes me think, like, well, if you don't like horn hawk, you shouldn't live in right next will road
like that. No one will ever convince me. But honking your horn outside someone's home at three am so you can find your drunk friend is an acceptable thing to do, but instead of Phoenix admitting that it's a dickhead move, he blamed the people sleeping inside their homes. It's not like this is a grave injustice or anything, but I think Phoenix's attitude about it says a lot about who
he is. The thing I find so infuriating about Phoenix that he claims to be out here in the streets because he wants to serve and protect the citizens of his city, unless he needs to find a drunk friend at three am, in which case, fun those people they should go find another street to live on. I think his willingness to disrupt these people those lives while also claiming to care so much about them that he puts
his life in danger for them, it's hypocrisy. And this is just one small example of many in which I believe Phoenix is a hypocrite. That's the thing that bothers
me the most about Phoenix. I don't think there's anything morally wrong with using drugs, so I don't really care whether or not Phoenix does drugs, and I personally believe all drugs should be decriminalized and treated as a public health issue, not a criminal one, so I don't have a problem with Phoenix's small time coke and ecstasy deals
on their own. The thing I just like about Phoenix is that he acts like he's better than everyone, that he claims to live up to a higher moral code than everyone around him, which I think is total bullshit. I do think he does more than most to help the people in his community, and I think he deserves credit for that, But I found so many instances where he lied to me that it makes it hard to
believe his endless tales of heroic deeds. Though. There was this one moment when we were out on patrol and we came across a concrete piece of evidence of at least one time when Phoenix really was the kind of superhero you read about in comic books. We were doing a U turn at an intersection when our headlights illuminated a mural on the side of a fence. There, in bright colors was a painting of Phoenix, drones and his full supersuited glory. There, I am. Yeah, it's Purple over
there getting pushed on the swing by be right there. Yeah, it's random. In the mural, Phoenix is pushing his ex girlfriend purple rain on a swing. They're painted to look like kids. Behind the mural was a playground. The building used to be a daycare. Phoenix had told me the story of the mural during one of our interviews. I stopped the building from catching on fire. I smashed in the building and I put the fire out when the building was burning where the children's daycare is in the like, oh,
look at this cool mural of these little kids. Know that mural is there because that building is there, because I'm here, Like, you can't forget what we did, even midnight, Jack, even though Caballero, because that guy men, Jack was cool enough to go run back to the car and if you bring me back to the fire extinguisher, so I only had to stomp out one floor of fires. He did that. It was real, So thanks Jack. I dedicated to a decade of my life to doing dangerous real
life ship. As we sat there staring at the mural and the headlights, Phoenix was feeling reflective and seemed genuinely sad that more people didn't talk about these moments in his life when he was a real hero, rather than focusing on his fall from Chris. I really did not think that my life would turn out this way, you know. I mean, like if I could have redrawn it, It's not quite what I had in my mind. What did
you have in your mind? I mean I have I have one drug charge, but I mean like nothing of any consequence. Right. I imagine that people would talk about my work. It's shocking that people don't. It makes me almost feel less. Uh well, I feel like your work is too unconventional for people to wrap their heads around it. You know, I don't know what's unconvincaal about helping people like it's people is one thing, but putting on a superhero costume and calling yourself a real life superhero is
a totally different thing. Agreed, but it's still the same. Suber often doesn't change the work. At the end of the patrol that night, Phoenix apologized for not finding any crimes to thwart. Sorry, we didn't find any crime. It's a random conversations. Yeah, we never did come across any crime during any of the patrols that he took me on.
We also didn't help anyone. We didn't administer any first aid or hand out any food or socks or water like Justin's service, and Red Ranger had done on their patrol. I said good night to Phoenix, and I assume it was the last time I'd ever see him. This was my last reporting trip to Seattle, and I was heading back home to Los Angeles in a couple of days, and we had no plans to meet up again. All right,
signing off, But then a funny thing happened. When I got back to my hotel, I noticed that Phoenix had left his helmet on the backseat of my car. So I texted him and he said he would stop by the next day to pick it up. Just before the sun came up, I got another text from Phoenix. It said three to one, then another text that said three minus two equals one. It was one of his number codes, the kind he told me he sends to his friends to let them know he's thinking about them. The next day,
Phoenix came over to my hotel. He was parked on the street outside. I came out and opened the passenger side door of his car and handed him the helmet. And then I looked down and saw it plane his day, just sitting there and the arm rest of the car door a small bag of drugs. At least I assume it was drugs. It wasn't much, just a bit of white powder inside one of those tiny zip blocked bags, the kind only drugs come in. I held it up and I looked at Phoenix and said, you should be
careful with this stuff. It's illegal and you're on felony probation. He seemed very surprised and laughed nervously. Then he took the bag from me throughout the window and drove off, And that was the last time I ever saw Phoenix Jones. Now, the thing is, it wasn't Phoenix's car. He was borrowing it from his neighbor. So there's a good chance that Phoenix had no idea it was there, But that probably
wouldn't have mattered to the police. After I got back from that last trip to Seattle, I looked into what Phoenix had said about his probation, and I wasn't able to verify if it was true. According to the court documents, the sentence he received did not include commune any custody, and the King County Community Corrections Division said he isn't
under their supervision for the charges. But whatever the terms of his release are, if Phoenix got pulled over and the cops found drugs in the car he was driving. I don't think the outcome would be good at the end of the day. I do think that Phoenix is a liar, and maybe he conned a few of his
supporters and friends out of some cash. We have yet to see the super suit the Phoenix said he would build after reportedly collecting over three thousand dollars and go fund me and sure, the guy is super arrogant, admittedly uncompromising, and also a total hypocrite. But there is no part of me that thinks he should be in jail. I do believe there's a good chance that he might slip up and end up serving time, largely because his personal
life seems so out of control. In one of our interviews, he was telling me about the court mandated therapy sessions that he goes to. Do you feel like you've gotten anything out of therapy? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I've learned what is wrong with other people a lot. Phoenix told me that his therapist had her own theory about why Phoenix has so many struggles in his life. You feel like you're out of control of your world because your family got rid of you. Maybe, but my family did get
rid of me. That's a real thing. And if I feel out of control, maybe you should talk to those motherfuckers who put kids on a doorstep, not talk to the kid who make sure other kids don't end up on a doorstep. That ain't a problem to me. There's no logic gap from me there. You're not gonna convince me into feeling better. I'll never feel better ever, and I don't want to. It's almost as if underneath his super suit, Phoenix has this protective layer. This reflectsive attitude
that surfaces anytime someone challenges him. I'll leave it to Phoenix and his therapist to figure out why Phoenix feels this need to be above reproach. I do hope he works it out. I think it would do him some good to listen to criticism and think honestly about how his actions affect other people. I think that would make him better at crime fighting and improve his personal relationships. And I know that's not just an important thing for
Phoenix himself, because he's also a parent. Which brings me to one last story that I'd like to tell you before I bid farewell. It's a story that Phoenix told me about his twelve year old son. He was at the park one day after school, just hanging out with some friends, and he noticed a suspicious looking guy standing outside a liquor store holding a knife. The guy went into the liquor store, and Phoenix's son walked over and peered into the store through the glass door and saw
this guy robbed the woman working behind the register. She's an old middle Eastern lady. She's like seventy as a mobility scooter. She's like defenseless. Sounds like, I don't think so. So he goes over his store. He waits by the door and the door slides both ways open right. I love his ingenuity. So he pulls the door this way so it's opening towards the front right, and when the guy tries to run out of the store, he just bang. He hit the dude straight in the face with the door.
The alcohol goes down, the knife flops out of his hand. I said, Chase is this guy and now he's got no knife, and he turns around to face off with my son. My son just straight kicked him straight in the face. Matt. Shortly after the police arrived on the scene. A cop show up and he's just karate and kicked this dude down the hill. And then the girl in the store said that, you know, he'd hit it with the door, and they cracked the glass of the door
in the store. So the police were saying that they were going to charge him with breaking the glass, and the woman was like, absolutely not. That guy had a knife and he came into my store. The store clerk convinced the police not to charge Phoenix's son with a crime for breaking the door, and instead, Phoenix says, the cops gave his son a token of their appreciation for his act of civilian heroism. The police gave him this like little crime stopping pendant. It's really cool. I'll show you.
I'll pull it up. It's really cool. And as his first crime he had ever stopped. You know, at the time, the cops didn't know it was Phoenix's son. They came by the house to give him the little pendant and talked to about it, you know. And when they came by the house, I was there, and the cup was like, oh man. He's like, I don't know what my boss is gonna think of this, Phoenix says. The police told his son he could keep the award, but that he
had to keep it a secret. There was a definite conversation between the police and my attorney because they in no way endorsed my behavior, which is hilarious because they endorsed my behavior entirely right, because my son used every skill I've ever taught him. It's not that the fun crime. It's that he recognized the same thing that I recognized and put the responsibility on himself. He's not the kind of person that sees a problem and goes, oh, that's
for somebody else. For that person is not my person. Like he sees something, takes responsibility for it, and fixes it. That's what I love about it. It's not that he stopped the crime, it's that he did it for someone else. Does that make sense? Would you want him to have the life that you do? No? I would never want anyone to life I have. Was this the origin story
of Seattle's next great real life superhero? With this twelve year old boy following his father's footsteps and grow up to become a masked adventurer, a defender of the innocent and protector of the downtrodden. Maybe he would even be better at it than his father because he'd had loving parents who looked after him and was not burdened by the baggage of being abandoned as a child. Maybe he would build his own supersuit and find some like minded
friends and spend years training for a righteous goal. Maybe he would become the hero that Seattle deserves. Or maybe this is just an they're made up story, like the kind you'd read in a comic book. The Superhero Complex is hosted and written by Me, David Weinberg and reported by Me, Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornhum. Production from Mamalia Shortland and Caroline Thornhum. Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien and David Waters are executive producers. Fact checking by Andrew Schwartz. Production
management from Shari Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Original music is composed by Paul Housden. Special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton, Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norville, Beth and Macaluso, Rin Roe, Zimbaum, Shelby Shenkman, and All the team at U t A. For more from Novel, visit novel dot audio m