Inside REAL Human Trafficking Investigations | Carlos Rodriguez | Ep. 399

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Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me.

Soles. Start at the beginning, man, tell us a little bit about how you grew up and why you became a cop. What pushed you in that direction.

Well, I never ever thought I was going to be going to law enforcement. I actually worked for the Washington State Patrol as the mail boy, and I worked in the mail room and my girlfriend at the time, her oldest brother, was killed by a d UI. So when that happened was tragic, and I worked for the State Patrol and I thought, well, who gets duy s. It's state troopers. So I set out to become a state trooper and became a state trooper.

And there was an interesting moment in your book where you were, you know, the mail office guy, and what you wrote. You wrote a letter to Was it the chief of police? I kind of jumped the chain to command a few links there.

Yeah.

I remember I drove to work and I was just I was stunned from what had happened with my girlfriend's brother had been killed, and on Mother's Day of all days, early in the morning, and then I just went to work and I remember just feeling numb, and I decided to write a letter to the chief. And I was the mail boy, so I'm the person who delivers everything. So I just wrote the letter, put put it into an envelope, started to deliver everything down the hall, and

What was that conversation?

Like, Well, first thing, I mean I'd never seen the chief in the mail room, that's the first thing. And I didn't think he would even I didn't even think he'd get to it read it, because to me, I was shoot. I was early twenties, maybe twenty twenty one, and just didn't have any any interaction with him because I was low person on the totem pole. But I remember him coming in and he told me. First he said my name, and I thought, shit, this guy knows my name. And then he told me I needed to

And so, yeah, you went home and you helped out the family a bit. And what was the process like to actually, you know, fulfilling that uh you know, kind of a dream or obligation that you felt to become a state trooper.

Well it it was terrifying. I mean I was I had never done anything like that before. I'm most people

Uh So but I did it.

You know, I went to the academy. I had asked some questions. I tried to get help. People told me, you know, you just got to blend in. You'll get through it. If you're if you're you don't want to be too good, you don't want to be really bad. If you're right in the middle, then then people will leave you alone. You'll get and you'll get through it.

Yeah right, it lent itself to undercover work.

Yeah yeah, I got to do When Fast and the Furious first came out, they threw me a little Honda hatchback. So I got to do sell stolen property, which was awesome. It was fun because kids used to show me that, hey, look at my car, you know, don't steal my shit, you know.

So we got to do that.

And then and then I also so and then my uncle he's no longer here anymore. But he actually was on the other side of law enforcement. He worked for some drug cartels in Washington State and I ended up going to prison.

He shot somebody.

But he used to tell me, hey, mijo, don't don't uh don't grow go tea. Just look how you look when you're gonna go in before you do a deal with uh with whoever you're doing with. He goes, get some grease, put it all over your hands. Then go wash your hands so you look like you work, because cops don't look like they work, and you'll be good.

Just be yourself.

He goes, don't act like you know the Goateea's I don't know, the five eleven pants. You know that your basic stuff.

Yeah, like you can shave over the weekend. Like oh wow, that's real convincing.

Yeah.

Yeah, And and and it took me back then. I mean, it took me a couple of weeks just to get a little bit of facial hair. So now I have I have some, but this is like two weeks.

So well this is also I mean not way back in the day, but I mean back in the day, undercover work was really like oh, hey, you're a brown guy. You speak Spanish, Like you can go out there and sling some drugs with the kids, right.

Yeah, it was. It was totally different.

I remember when I was going through Detective Basic, they were teaching this class and then one guy stops and he goes, was you are you? Are you Carlos? And I was like yeah, And I was like I heard about you, we got plans for you. And then and then I was like great, you know, so it was fun I mean I got to do some some cool things.

I really learned. That's that's where I learned how to be a cop. I was a state trooper.

But when I went there and the people that I was with because we had it was city county FEDS, that's where I learned from them how to actually be a police officer. Because State patrol we had a different function. So I really learned a lot from from that group from my detectives.

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Yeah, so I got asked to go to it's called the Executive Protection Unit.

So I did that.

For a brief stint before going into crimes against children, and then right towards the end of my career, I went back to that with the different administration.

Yeah. I mean the first time around, it sounded like you kind of got jammed up in a shitty situation with was it like the chief of staff for the governor.

Yeah.

So I'll say, you know, in that scenario, you know, people want to manage things in different ways. I think, And what ended up happening is there was a threat that had come in and the way that it was handled they didn't really I think, care for a press release that went out.

And and and so.

Because of that, I ended up having a talk with my principle, and I don't think I was the best person for that, because of my principle needs to focus on how they're going to support their constituents. They shouldn't be worried about other things that they're not comfortable with a certain personnel. And really, in that instance, I mean, if you've done protection work or people who do that, the job's not about the people doing the work, it's about your principle.

And it's really thankless.

And and there's so much stuff that goes on behind the scenes that when everything you're doing all these things, but it looks like absolutely everything's smooth, and that's how it should be. No one should really know all the things that you're doing. So in this instance, it didn't work out, and I left. I left the unit and went back to the road for a bit.

Yeah, and then how did you get pulled into this whole thing with crimes against children?

So I was actually trying to get on to our Washington State Fusion Center to work with someone I had worked with before. He was He was a person that recruited me to go into narcotics and he was at the Fusion Center and I wanted to work with him again.

I'd learned a lot from him, and.

So I was preparing to go to that spot and then someone who was in the division slid over to that spot, so I wasn't able to get it. And he said, Hey, do you know this guy. This guy's name was Bill Steen. He was a marine recon guy. And I was like, yeah, I know Bill. Always to work together. And he's like, hey, why don't you contact him? He works for the Missing Unexploited Children's Task Force. I think you could do a lot of good there. They do a lot of good work. And I didn't even

Yeah, So Carlos told you, I mean, you're an audio cut out on my end, but you said you were talking about how you got into into investigating crimes against children and you wanted to work with your buddy, but that to work out, and where where did you end up? Where did you end up landing?

So I I had I was, I was working the road and it's called Bremerton, Washington. And then uh he had told me, He's like, hey, have you heard of the Missing and Exploited Children's Task Force or MECHTEFT? And I thought it was I thought it was this. We had another group in the patrol that would put pictures of missing kids on the side of semi trucks and then they mantled. They managed dental records, they managed the

And the reason why I.

Say residents is we had a cyber tip that there was a or that they had a cyber tip that those images were being traded from an IP address. So they had written a warrant for the residents that the IP address belonged to. So you don't really know who's trading inside. I mean, there may be some clues and you figure that out when you interview people, but you don't always know. So the warrant was for the residents to recover those images.

So I went and cross trained, and then I learned.

I didn't even know as a thing that people would trade these images of kids getting great videos photos.

I just that was totally new to me.

It's just disgusting, and I thought, this is something I could get behind, This is something I could go and try to hold these help hold these people accountable. So yeah, I interviewed for it and it ultimately got the position.

And what was that position?

So I was the sergeant in the State Patrol.

If you are a part of a task force or detective, then you're called detective sergeant. So I managed that task force.

And you know, and.

I'd been in the narcotics task force where I had I had a prosecutor assigned to me.

I had.

Six or seven detectives. People knew what we did, multiple agencies, I had admin support. When I went to this task force, I didn't have any of that. It was myself. I think I had two detectives at the time, and then uh, because one was just about to retire, one from another agency, and then Bill, the guy i'd met, We had no admin support.

They just cut it.

And I'd learned that they were actually looking at cutting the task force. They were going to eliminate it, which ultimately that never happens because you know.

What, what.

Member of the House or the Senate is going to vote on eliminating a team even if even if they don't provide the support to make that team successful. Because we didn't have enough people, we couldn't even serve a warrant on our own. We always had to partner with other people, ask people to help us so we could serve a warrant safely. So, yeah, I was it wasn't the most ideal when I got there. There was a lot that it needed. Yeah, so we didn't have the appropriate funding.

Pretty severely under resourced.

Oh yeah, we had, I think myself enough for two detectives, and then Bill ended up getting getting out of there. He promoted, and then we recruited two other people. One was from the Narcotics Task Force I worked at because I knew what he was about, so I recruited him over. And then one other guy was a trooper who he didn't really know how to do any detective work. But the guy just he had potential and he was just motivated,

In the beginning.

Yes, so tell us about, like, you know, your first big case that you recall, and like, how did those leads come about? Do they come about like people calling the cops, like I think this guy's up to no good? Or is it like I don't know how it works internally? Cyber crime reports like this guy's trading illegal materials or how's that come about?

Yeah, So there are a number of ways, yes, that your community can call and report something. Then there's you can have someone who's out in the field, who's a beat cop trooper on the road. They may see something and then they call another detective in another area that they don't have necessarily have the expertise to work with that.

So we'd get those cases.

And then there's something called cyber tips, and those are let's say, if you saw something thing online and you thought this isn't right, or someone approached you like right now it's roadblocks. So let's say there was something with roadblocks that was inappropriate, you could you could report a cyber tip through the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children.

The state, but we didn't manage the IKAC.

So we'd get we'd get cases, so we'd get cyber tips and then proactive work. So once you have the appropriate training, you can do undercover ops online, and we did a lot of that towards the let's say after I was there two or three years, we started doing doing a lot of the under online undercover ops.

What were some of the first cases that you worked on when you got there?

Oh, so, I'll say the one that comes to mind.

That I think, well, there's two. One was a coach case that I had.

It was a coach who was a wrestling coach and a football coach for for little little kids. And the reason why that sticks out so much in my mind is Bill had already left, he was a sergeant. He said, Hey, this buddy, I knew him from wrestling. He called me, his kids told him something and this is gonna be a good case, but you should talk to him tomorrow because he's really angry and he's drunk.

He got The.

Guy got loaded when he found out what happened, and one of his boys was ranked number one in state at the time for wrestling and his his weight class, and was just under a lot of stress. He had recently reconnected with his mom, who had been out of his life for a while. She she had shared something that had happened in his life that was tragic. So then he shared, Hey, this is what coach did to me and my brother. And he goes, but I'm okay, I'm a man, you know I can deal with it.

She couldn't.

She gonna handle it, So she ends up calling dad. Dad ends up calling us, so and that one, you know, he wasn't even trying to report it to disclose it. So when we went and met with him. But the thing why that, I mean, I have hundreds of cases like that, I mean, but the reason why this one sticks out is when I went and looked at the guy's Facebook, he was hugging a kid and the kid he was hugging, wasn't ended up not being a victim, but the kid he was hugging, My son was at

Did this guy do anything to my kid? You know what?

What?

Who is do I know any of these other children? So that that one really stuck out. And the thing that really sucked about that case is all of the offenses, all the times that he had offended on this this young man when he was a boy. Was they were all out of state. They weren't in Washington from what we had, so it was when he'd go on wrestling trips. So it was in California. I believe Reno were the two where the two areas, so we didn't have anything in our area. So I'm I'm trying to work with

He's going to leave to Canada.

We're thinking eventually he's going to figure something out because we're asking these questions.

So we're he was surveilanced on the guy following him. Call him in. We don't we can't arrest him.

I'm trying to get a warrant a restaurant from California, and I'm trying to work with the a U s A. But they want the other brother to disclose before they do something because.

They want mores attorney the prosecutor.

Yes, they want more, so we don't have enough. So but we follow this guy around for a couple hours, call him. He says he's three hours away, which of course he isn't because we're watching him.

Uh.

Then he ends up agreeing to come in, so we interview him. We ask him all these questions, We take him through this this processed timeline, and UH.

Through that we weren't able. We didn't. We weren't able to arrest him that day, and he ended up going to Canada.

But because of that, the timeline that he gave us of all the places he lived in different places, we were able to interview other people. And we had a lot of the lot of UH kids that came forward who are now adults. Some of them were adults, some we're still kids. So we partnered with FBI. They actually flew in two of their child friends interviewers and we spent a week just interviewing, doing safety interviews with all these kids. And we had ten ten that came forward

We weren't able.

He wasn't using the phone any longer. So the other thing about this story is where he was staying. He was living with his mom when he was in Washington, and I knew the neighbor, so I told the neighbor, I said, hey, if you see this car show up, you got to call me because it's this is bad dude.

And we won him.

So she calls one night and says, hey, the cars here, so we set up on the on the place. We didn't get notified that he had crossed, so we set up on the house, see a guy that looks like him and it ends up not being the guy we like, end up pulling him over once we do takeaway, pull him over and he the guy who it was. This guy's uncle used to be a detective who worked the same cases that that we did, and he was actually one of the guys that helped write the law that

So we ended up getting a warrant for that, and he ends up coming down. We ended up in getting charges on him.

He didn't he didn't submit to another interview, but because of that first day when we were following him around and all the places he went we had seen him go to a storage unit, so we're able to get

That that case. The the reason why I think about that one because that one haunts me a little bit because there's one one kid in there. We found some images and we were never never able to identify who that kid was, so.

That I mean that it really bugs me. It bothered me for a long time until this year recently because there's so many changes with with software and technology. The my detective he still works there, he says, hey, I think we found that kid. So I don't know if they've reached out to because me that he's an adult now, but at least see we can get him some resources and we knew that he had created. His name is Scott Carroll. He's in prison down in Oregon right now.

But at least there's some closure now, so that's good.

And you said, this guy's in prison now, thankfully. So this case did get prosecuted.

Oh yeah, yes, yeah, I got prosecuted.

We ended up working with law enforcement down in Oregon because some of the victims were from Oregon.

So there he had offended on that.

We know of people in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and we believe Canada, but we didn't get we didn't really get much feedback from from them.

And it sounds like as an early case. You know, this one's a little haunting in the sense that you know, because of your personal connection, your son being at one of the victims' homes at at one point for just a normal you know, play day or whatever, that must have opened your eyes about how this stuff is all around us all the time.

Yeah, I'll tell you.

You know, people always say, well, what like when you talk about crimes against you, it's everywhere.

I mean, there are people out there.

I mean we did our demand ops where people were seeking to have k sex with kids thirteen and younger. We'd average seven arrests a night doing that. And that was just that's not even that's not on the darknet. That was on Craigslist or these different apps where people want to meet each other.

It was on those types of apps.

And it's so it's easy as ordering pizza to get grabbing a door dash. I mean, that's that's how easy it was. And we could have worked around the clock. I just didn't have the resources because when you work those cases, you have to worry about one your people, uh and the fatigue of your people, because if you don't manage that, they're going to start to make little mistakes, they're gonna maybe they maybe it increases the chance of a use of force, Maybe they missed something in a report.

We'd cap it at a certain time.

If there was a target that we needed to handle later that night or early in the morning, we'd have we'd pull a small team together and we'd focus on that so we can keep going.

And we do those ops about a week at a time. When I was there, that's what we would do.

So And what was that other case you mentioned from those early days that kind of stands out for you.

Uh, there's another one where I'd say I'd been in there a couple of months in the Task force, and uh, but my buddy Bill called me and said, hey, we got a really bad one. And I was like, Okay, I'll drive in. He's like, no, no, you don't need to come in. We can we can handle it tomorrow. And I was like, well he cuss on here. I was like, well, you know, fuck dude.

Okay.

I was like, fuck dude, everything we do is bad, you know, and you're calling me. He's like, no, no, it's it's fine. We had a lot of cases going on. He was working a case, investigating a retired cop like that, was doing stuff. So I mean, we're doing everything. So I stayed home, went in the next day, went in early, read the cyber tip, and it was just horrific. It was these two they're like practically kids, they're in their twenties. They're on this application where they just go and meet

Like she had a little baby boy who was six months old. So some of the contents pretty graphic, I'll sanitize it. But and then.

The other guy was doing stuff with his sister and brother and then animals that were on the farm, and they were sharing these images. And she had shared an image with something that she had made with her kid. And so when I saw that, and I was new that this was the first time. I'll say it affected me. I mean I had to take a breath. Luckily, I'm glad I was the only one that I could come in early, so no one was there to see that it how it was affecting me, and I thought, we

This other case with this former cop.

And we had two addresses that were about about an hour from where my office was in one to two hours if I remember correctly, from each other. So we set up on one place to try to find the mom first because she had the youngest child and wasn't there. So then we went to another city, it's called Montesano, and we set up on the house and didn't see anything.

He's like, yeah, I know. The landlord, So call the landlord.

Ended up, yes, she lives there, So we went out real early the next morning, ended up grabbing her and the kid off a bus.

There was a school bus.

While we had made contact at the residence and then interviewed her and she remember when we interviewed her, she was so matter of fact about what she had done, the different things that she was involved in. And actually later after that case, I went back and interviewed her in prison. I met with her a couple of times and she helped me develop my undercover role because I played the part of a mom with kids. But she she helped me with that.

So we because when you interviewed her the first time, that like she felt that you were sitting there judging her. Right.

Yeah, So when we do interviews, we would have a one and a two. So if you're the one in an interview, you're the one who's asking most of the questions and explaining everything to the person. The two usually takes notes and then we'll come in and ask questions. That's how we were trained. So I was the two, and so I just really just sat there the whole time and listened because my detective is doing a great job, and she was just engaging with him, talking back and forth.

We were doing to a certain you know sometimes yeah. Yeah.

So we'd go through that and then say, you know, if you see me write something down and then scratch it off, that's because you already answered the question. So you know, don't think we're judging you in any way. So that's what we would do, just a real empathetic approach.

Well, I take it you were trained on the read interrogation method.

Yeah, so we did read and I'll say, with uh, with interviewing, I think you really should take go to as many interview courses as you can, and you really need to develop your own style. The one that I really like that really changed how I interview people. It's called the guy's name is doctor Joe Sullivan. He's from Ireland and he trains people on how to interview people

Talking to them.

So I think if you you know, you take that and that works can work for anything, not just sex predators.

But I think you take.

That, you take read, you take whatever whatever other trainings you've gone to, and you really develop your own, your own style so you can have a conversation. And I

Can ask all these questions while he's on the stand.

And I was really helpful just learning from I've been very fortunate to work with a lot of different prosecutors since I got to go all around the state and just learn a lot from from them because it's really a team effort.

But yeah, I think I got off a tangent there.

No, it's all good, Okay. I love the techniques and the trade craft. But as I recall, on this case, you guys did pick up the boyfriends too, right.

Yeah, So after we recovered the little boy and the

And then we had.

The detective was sitting at the PD getting ready to he was working on the warrant for the two locations. So Chris ends up rolling by and I see him at the house. So I'm like, hey, I got eyes on this guy, send me another leave someone with eyes on there, how far out of the other guys, so that we can go do a knock and.

Talk on on on the house.

And because I wanted to recover the phone when he when he parked and exited, he was on he was on an iPhone and we knew he had communicated. She said he had an iPhone and they had exchanged these images, so we wanted that piece of evidence. But yeah, so we ended up we ended up getting Chris and finding evidive evidence of he had received the image he had there. Through the search warrants, we found things he had done, horrible things he had done to his sister.

He was I had conversations.

He had his sister's panties in a box under the bed.

Right, yes, yeah, okay, he did.

Yeah, so you guys got him, Thank god. You know the thing I want to ask you too, from your experience in doing these interviews, and part of the interview process is you have to try to empathize with them a little bit to get them to open up. And I know that's a that's an interview technique. But at the same time, you have a lot of insight. And I realize the average American has an attitude and I understand where it comes from, of course, of like we should just shoot these people in the street.

Yeah, but.

You and people like you come to understand who these criminals are and why they do the things that they do in some cases, And I want to ask you about, like what insights you took away from that because it seems like there are two types of people. There are somes that are abused as children and they become abusers themselves, and then there's another type of person that gets abused and they come to the conclusion that I would never

I'll say from my experience, well, a couple of things is there are some studies that try to support statistics on you know, what's more prevalent, but really it's a lot of that's unless it's documented that something happened to that person. You're having to listen, you know, are they telling you the truth or sure?

Right? So, what I will.

Say from my experience that if someone is offended upon, it does not mean that they're going to become someone that abuses another person or offends on someone. But from what I've seen is there have been a lot of people who have are abusing kids that they were abused, if that makes sense, there is more likely than not that did happen. From from what I've seen the people who have who I've talked to when they said some

Mm. And as time goes on, you started doing a lot of these I don't want to call them entrapment operations because because it's in trouble, I don't know what the law enforcement term is. But you're out there trying to kind of bait in potential predators and catch them before they're able to do something really bad, sort of the what's his face Chris Hansen, Uh, Yeah, that's operations.

Yeah, that's what everybody relates to what we used to do, except I think, well, first off, the major difference I think is when somebody shows up to rape a kid that's thirteen and younger, because that's what we focused on. The youngest was three years old. That someone showed up to try to do something to a child is we don't have a reporter there that's there to interview it. You know, a lot of those cases, I don't know

The people want to run of the mill prostitution as well.

Well.

It could be people, you know, persons that are potentially trafficked, for people that are selling selling themselves for money. It could be hey, I'm I'm kinky, I'm looking, I'm looking to do this, and there's a lot of stuff that it was kinky as fush, but it was legal, right, so and we're not that wasn't our focus, right, Our focus was you know, and when we first did it.

And yeah, it was. It was like Gangbusters. It was crazy. I think out of.

The I participated in sixteen of the ops before I

Exact What was that difficult for you to, like, you're literally having a role play everything from a thirteen year old runaway to a mother or father that's trying to prostitute their children. Was that kind of like difficult for you to play that role.

I'll say I wish I could say yes, But I think being surrounded with all of that material when you're doing the work, you have the subject matter.

I mean, you're when you work those cases, you're you're just surrounded by this. It's just shit. I mean it's ugly. That's why it's called the ugly underneath. I call it the ugly. I mean you're just surrounded by ugliness. And so it was I had the subject matter to pull from to play the role.

I think the part that was was difficult. Well, there were a couple things.

One not getting not having that stuff stick to you so that you're thinking about it all the time, not becoming really skeptical and thinking everybody is like this because I'm in it all the time. And I had to remind myself not everyone wants to do this, you know, because I'm deep in it. And then so I had to I had to correct my thinking to know, hey, this is not how the world is. I'm here because I'm in this world trying to do this, but not

And then I think it was just dealing with it.

And what you do is you start to oh, sorry, that's my cat getting paid or getting getting food. So I uh, I think for me it was sorry, I didn't know that was going to go on. But for me it was you start to turn off your emotions so you can deal with this. And I just think it happens. I mean, I'm sure with and I listened. I didn't finish your book by I listened to your

And to protect your lot.

And disassociate from certain things.

Yep. Yeah.

And I think that the thing that I had an issue with is when I tried to turn things back on, it didn't always work, and I really I just became disassociated. I didn't it was hard for me to feel certain things. I compassion fatigue.

You know.

I would think, oh, well, I'm dealing with real problems, and I'd go home and you know, my wife's telling me about her day or my kids, and I was like, you know, those aren't problems.

You know.

So I had the compassion fatigue where I didn't really I wasn't really there for them to try to help them deal.

With what they needed needed to do. So that was was difficult in an area that I think I could have done done better.

Yeah, no, I want to ask you more about that, about kind of the psychological toll that it takes on on the police that do this. You know, you're you're wearing your t shirt for the International Association of Human Trafficking Investigators and I got invited down to one of their symposiums years ago and it was a huge eye

Yeah, I you know, I was just talking to a guy.

I'm going to a conference in April, and I was talking to the person who handles the vendors and I actually told him about the book and he's like wow.

He goes, uh, you.

Know, I used to work those cases, and you know, I wish, I wish I would have. I was telling you about this training. It's called the Shift Training. It's by the Innocent Justice Innocent Justice Foundation. They provide mental health and wellness for people who do this type of work and they travel around a different conferences and I was telling him about it and he's like, yeah, I never got to go to any of that. He goes,

You go and get like an iced tea, at Dunkin Donuts or something, right.

Yeah, So I like, I mean, I was worked in you know, near Seattle, so a big Starbucks thing up there.

My daughter worked for Starbucks for a time.

So I'd go to Starbucks and I'd get I don't drink coffee, don't. I just never liked it, but I drink tea. So I would go there, I'd get a tea. I'd park behind. There was a Sizzler there, so I'd parked behind the Sizzlers and I'd just play this little game. I think they still have a clash of clans. It's like this dumb game. So I'd play that for a little bit, get my head straight, and then i'd uh.

When we switched offices, because that's when we were in Olympi, Washington. We ended up being co located with the FBI's se their c TEFT, and.

So the child explotation tasks for us, and that changed my routine of going home. There wasn't a Starbucks on the way home. So I noticed, well, actually it was my ex wife. She noticed that I was angry. It was a lot angrier. Sometimes I take things out on her or the kids. I'd like snap at them or something like that. And then she brought it to my attention, and then I changed for a little bit, but I went back to what I was doing.

I really, I really wasn't.

I hold myself accountable with my own mental illness as much as I think as I could have.

It's hard when you're when you're in it, and you feel such a sense of urgency, right that you're seeing these kids that are victimized, and you know for reasons that you can kind of write off in your mind. You're like, I have, I'm sacrificing family life because I'm on this you know, righteous mission and finding that balance is something that's so hard and most of us don't get it, right.

Yeah.

Yeah, And that's that's one of the reasons why so this whole, this whole book journeys I I. I actually was writing it to try to write my own ship.

It wasn't to write a.

Book experience and contextual.

Yeah.

I was going to therapy and she was like, hey, you know, have you ever thought that maybe some people could learn from this if you were to share this and you could write a book or do a blog.

And I was like, oh, yeah, I'll write a book. And then I just started to talk about it.

And so that's how that's how this journey started and where I'm at now. But but yeah, I think I think I have found that people who do this work, they tend to be very selfless and they're helping all of these other people that they don't even really know

You can just make some horrible mistakes. You just it just can eat you up to.

Uh, yeah, before I want to get deeper into some of the fallout, but before we move on to the next part of your career, are any other big cases from this time that kind of stand out that you'd like to talk about?

I mean, I mean there are tons, Uh. I think the demands, the demand ones we did, we were pretty cool just because of what we did and the different people that we saw. I'm trying to think of another one that would be good to share. There there was a so there are I already talked about one where there's a female offender.

There aren't. There aren't. You don't always hear a lot of female offenders. And there was one case that I had I just finished an up.

With I think we had we had arrested twenty two people or something like that, and I get a call from from our FBI officer and our agent and he says, hey, Los so my nicknames Los short for Carlos. Hey can you talk to there was another TFO Task Force officer. Can you talk to him and help him out? We've we've got something here. And I was like, and I I really don't have the time, you know, I'm putting all this stuff together. I got to get it for

Who's a female. And uh So.

As they're talking, the CI says, hey, man, this this lady. She's like, she's like looking to she wants to have sex with kids. She talks about hurting animals, like all this weird stuff. And I remember, as he's talking to me, just thinking, One, I got all this stuff I got to deal with, and I gotta turn these cases over. But if I don't take this case, then what's going to happen? And then if nobody does this, then if something happens and she finds a kid, then it's my fault.

And who are set up? God in this case?

Yes, yes, so when And that's good to point out. So when we're when we're doing these cases, we're not offering it. We're not using real kids there. Now, I will say, when we've worked these ops and looking at the evidence after the fact, we're not just arresting all these people and then we're done. You're looking through digital evidence, digital media looking for potential of is there a live victim? Have they been hands on that's what we call it,

I believe she was sixteen.

And so the goal was we had identified who she was, try to recover the trafficked girl, and then get her on see if she's done anything with any other kids, and then and bring her in for what she was trying to do with.

These these two young kids. So she ends up, she agreed, She ends up showing up.

She brings some cash, not a ton of cash, to pay for the acts, and then she brings all of these sex toys like she she had dildo glass, dildo's speculum, all these clamps that she could put on her body. And then just went through the interview with her, and she was she was a statist. So she was really someone who enjoyed.

The I think the pain of it.

And she she had she was someone who had been abused growing up something that she had had a horrible life. But that doesn't I'm a firm believer that that does not give you any a pass to be able.

To do this, right. So so yeah, she she I don't remember she did I think eight years eight years in prison. She's still in prison, and she was early twenties. Jesus that showed up.

Yeah. Well, one of the things, one of the other things that jumped out at me from that conference as far as the difficulty in prosecuting these cases was that, you know, obviously, when a minor is abused by somebody who's like a parent or someone who's in the circle of trust, it creates a whole added dimension of difficulty

So a couple things.

So, yes, I did encounter where you have people who weren't aware that they were being trafficked.

You know, they did think they were doing this for whatever purpose, for love or for whatever.

When we built our cases, dealing with trafficking, which is slightly different than what we were talking about earlier. We would build those cases so that we wanted a solid case, so that if the person who was being trafficked or abused, raped was not we didn't need them. We didn't need their testimony. So we did extra work to make sure we had the records. We had if they were at hotels, we had all the receipts. We had the cameras doing surveillance, so we can actually see what's going on if they

Was there?

Did they force them? Did they defraud them? You know who's where's the money going? You know who's keeping the money? Do you have your do you have your own ID? Who's getting the hotel rooms. And then as as you build more cases, then pimps start to realize, okay, well now I don't do that. You know, they learn, they go back and forth, they get they get the public disclosure and read the cases and try to see what your tactics are, so you kind of do you have

You know, she's still here.

She's a fighter, and so what can we do to try to keep other people from going through that?

So and then we changed how we did that.

We we made sure that we had it's called trauma informed approach, where were truly where we're actually spending the time making sure that they get resources and not I when we would do options, you'd set dates to try to recover somebody, but still you have your your arrest team in a part portion of the house calling the dates. Maybe the pimp, drop trafficker, drops person off. Person comes in, they get the buy, you get this, push a little button,

You're still the police with guns out. It isn't really right.

It's it's very traumatic because when you see, you know, when you're a civilian and you see people with guns out that they're not really processing everything that you're saying.

Guaranteed they're not remembering everything. Uh. And so just kind of changing how you you do different things. I know there's a up in Canada. They have a way of doing things where they actually have someone with life experience who's in their task force and they'll set up the dates and then they just go knock on the door, explain who they are.

She goes in and talks. They make sure it's clear safe. She goes in and talks to them, says, hey, here's why we hear. She goes through her spiel because she's she knows how to speak with the person, goes through the spiell offer resources. This is why we're here. We're not here to arrest you. Do you want to get

They were able to build I think goes over ninety percent.

They actually were able to convict, charge and convict the traffickers from doing it a different way.

And because when you when you.

Meet people, like when i'd meet kids that are being trafficked, or you'd be adults that are being trafficked that were in that life, they don't want to talk to you. You know, you're you're the cops and look at their life experience before you know we're Did they have someone with it was addict to them? Did they have someone you know who just kind of looked at them or treated them like they were nothing or trash And it takes while, It takes a while to build that up.

She ran again. We got her in Oregon, we got her in California, and then I think the last time I saw her, I got her out of a hotel.

And it was always during the holidays. It was Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve. We we we recover her. And the last one, I think it was Christmas Eve and pull her out of this hotel and she's in the back of the car and I just remember telling her. I was like, hey, you know, I'm not your dad, but you know, I just.

I just hate seeing you like this. And she's like I know. She goes, I don't have a dad, and I she goes, I don't hate and I said, you probably hate me, and it's like, I don't She goes, I don't hate you, but she points to the f b I guy. She goes, I hate that motherfucker. I don't know why.

I don't know why she hated the guy. His name was Kyle, was the nicest guy from Minnesota. He talks like he talks like Owen Wilson, you know, Jeepers.

I mean, that was this guy and he's like but she just hated him. She could not stand him me and he was so nice. Well he's still alive, so he's still he's still nice. But but I just remember that.

Conversation with her, and it was horrible. I mean, part of what I missed about being in the work is I had these undercover profiles, and I was friends with her on Facebook. It's like a kind of see and she didn't know it was me, so I could kind of see when she'd post stuff that she was doing okay, which was really cool to see. And then when I retired or when I got out of it, you don't

Before we move on, I mean, are there any other ones you'd like to talk about that were particularly insightful as far as how law enforcement and prosecutors go after these cases or in how people are victimized, maybe there's some lessons learned.

I'll say, you know, if you're if you're doing this work and you you have a prosecutor that's really motivated, you know, don't well one, don't be afraid to go meet with your prosecutors. And because it is a team effort. But not all prosecutors are the same. Some suck, but you have some that are really good and really good at what they're doing and working together to just asking the questions, you know, what do you need? What do

Right.

So if it means that you have to do an extra report or go talk to another person, or do something a certain way that you don't normally do it within reason, then.

You do it.

You need to do it so I think I think that's important, and just learning from that, learning from all your experiences. When you first start to testify, you're not gonna be as good as the next time you testify. So just getting the feedback from from those cases, I think is really important. I don't know if that's what you what you asked, but that's what sticks out in my mind with those cases.

The next thing I want to roll into was sort of you leaving this task force. Did you decide that you had had enough and you needed a break, or did the police actually decide like, Okay, this guy did his time and we need to cycle him off this job.

It was not quite that. What had happened was the position opened back in the Governor's detail, and it was when my principal at the time was also running for president and he didn't win. But they had two teams going and the person who they thought would take that spot wasn't interested in staying there.

He was only there temporarily.

So they were trying to get people to go in to manage the executive Protection Unit, and they really weren't having No one was really interested in it.

I mean, it's a tough job.

So I got asked a couple of times, Hey, you should put in for this, and I was like, oh, okay, well I'll do it if you give if you make sure there's a mechtef in every district in the state patrol, because there's eight districts.

I go, well, you give me this and I'll leave, you know, and then we can go do this. I was joking.

But then then I started to get calls from different people saying, hey, just listen to me, you should do this, and I was like, no, I've been there, done that. That's not my not what I want to do. And then one of my buddies called and said, hey, we're on the street. Is you're just going to get put there, So because no one's interested, you have the experience, maybe you should just go have the big men safe face. That's a call I got. So I was like, okay,

I'd still be there work in those cases for sure.

And but I'm glad that that happened because one I retired as after I did my short stint there, and then I retired after twenty five years, because you can go at twenty five years with the State Patrol. And it also showed me that it showed me that I was actually affected by the work by the by that ugly is I like to call.

It, that it was affecting me, and I didn't realize how it was had affected me, just decisions I had made in my life and and I and I'd say, you know, I started to realize it. Then it didn't really hit me until I moved to San Diego.

Where I live now, and the work I had done and I didn't have the same support structure, and I just, you know, things would just trigger me on different things, and I just my emotions started to flood back and I didn't really know how to manage them. So just like i'd see something and you know, I get really super emotional. So just so I thought, you know, I should probably go talk to somebody. So and then that's I started to talk to someone. And then I realized

So so yeah, so that that's why, that's kind of how I left. But I'm glad that happened that way because now I'm still I'm still involved. I don't I don't do the work, but I still help train and still do the conference circuit. The job I do now now, I still I do Title nine investigations sex assault type stuff on the policy side for the school district. So we're in San Diego.

It's the second largest school district in California, and so I do employee investigations. I also do some law enforcement investigations because we have our own police department and just really focused on accountability compliance and then making sure that kids are safe and they're able to go to school and learn and not have to worry about someone creeping on them or you know, assaulting them in some way.

So what were some of the things that you did to start to like recover from working this kind of job as it started to like affect your personal life. You said you mentioned that you're, you know, often being triggered by different things that kind of bring you back to that bad place. How did you start to deal with that.

Let'll say, well, the first thing I did.

I mean, I still have some good friends, so I talked to them, but really I I interviewed a number of therapists and I just called them and I said, hey, here's here's what I used to do. I see that your background you deal with because down here there there's a lot of military personnel, so there are a lot of people who say that they they're kind of they try to advertise towards that for the PTSD. So I contacted a number of people and I said, well, I

I think I had a really hard time with.

I used to get really mad at people when that we're in law enforcement that said oh I can't do I can never do what you do. And I was like, well, you're fucking cop, why can't you do this? You're supposed to help people?

And I was angry. I still was pissed off about that all the way till when I moved here in twenty twenty three and one of the sessions she's like as I shared that with her, and she's like, well, well can you do this? Can you?

Are you on an NBA team? Can you build a rocket? I was like, well no, She goes, well, everybody has their different skill set. It goes you did it because you could do it. That's why you did it. And I'd never thought of it that way, and then so I know now that that's not you know, it wasn't necessarily fair meat for me to get angry, but it did.

It used to pissed me off. I was like, fuck, ain't you guys doing this? Come on, let's all go get these guys.

But so, I think I think that was that was really big. And then really writing writing things out.

I'm a big Stephen.

King fan so as a kid, and I so I got his book on writing. It's called On Writing, and I listened to that on audible a couple of times. So he's like, you know, this is your job. If this is your job, you should be doing this every day for this amount of time, or it's not really your job. So I just set one to two hours a day to write to go through things. Once I decided it was going to be a book. But that was really good.

I couldn't It.

Wasn't always every day because sometimes when I got to something that was heavy, I didn't want to have that stuff in my head when I went to bed, so i'd skip a day or maybe wait till I was off, and then write during the day when before I went to sleep. I think that that was helpful. So it took a little longer to get things to go. But I've never written a book.

I mean, it was but the whole journey's been been pretty cool. And then I got to meet get to meet a bunch of cool people so far, so that's fine. And hopefully you can be able to help people. That's that's a big goal.

So and when is the release date for the book?

So the launch date is March thirty first. I think it'll be available before then, but we're trying to trying to launch it on the thirty first, just to make sure everything is is available on the website.

So March thirty first is the launch date.

So the ugly underneath. We'll put some links down the description too, for folks to go and find the book. I really appreciate you doing this because I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions about this subject and I'm glad to you know, hear a real expert on it. And I did want to touch upon briefly. In the last you know, five to ten years, I think there's been sort of an explosion of interest is the wrong word, but concern about human trafficking.

And.

There's good reason and I think that can lead to a lot of good things, passing new laws, reforming the existing system, and all kinds of things that you know could be done to help. But that has also led I feel like a lot of more misconceptions and a lot of groups coming out there that you know, some of them mean, well, I'm sure, but a lot a

I'm not sure which organization, but there there are. I Mean, something I learned with work in these cases is people tend to create to put themselves where they can create.

An opportunity to get what they want. So if you like.

Cars, you're going to go to car shows, right, If you like sports, you're gonna go to sporting events. You're sexually attracted to kids, you're going to do things where they're kids around and you have the opportunity to offend. So that's why you see people. I'm not saying everyone who is bad. Who's who's a coach or a janitor or a teacher or you know, people who are around kids, but that's why you see those instances where there are people that are in those professions that are doing those

So but yeah, I'll say there I do. I agree with you.

There are a lot of organizations that you know, I don't. I don't know all of these people that come up. You have people who who have the same background as you know you or they were or say they do in special ops. And I don't know invent any of them. But people say that they've done all these things, and I'm sure.

They're very good at what some of them are very good at what they do.

But if you're not involved in training, you don't have the training, and you don't know how to handle these cases, you've got no business doing that type of work. And then if you're just gonna go rip someone, go to another country and rip someone out of a situation and say, yeah, we save this kid, But what happens afterwards, what's going to happen? Why are they why are they in that situation in the first place? Are they doing that because

They want to do good.

You know, they may have a good heart and want to do these good things, But there are so many organizations that are already out there that are really good at what they do and have the training and they and they can get these other people, they can get, they can do awareness.

So just support those groups that are already there. You don't need it.

Seems like for a while I quit following it because it gets old. But you see, like it seemed like every month you'd have one or two new NGOs up and they're saying, oh, I was a swat commander or I was you know, this member of this special Operations group and remember this, and I'm thinking, well, what what did you do in Yeah, what did you do in trafficking? Do you know how to work a case. You know,

You know? How do you know?

Because I was in law enforcement, I had all the training. I first went to the task force, I don't know what the fuck I was doing. I mean, I knew how to work dope. I applied that to that, but I didn't I didn't know that. I hadn't listened to a survivory yet. I hadn't I hadn't seen that. I hadn't been confronted yet with those images and what these

I love.

I love going to those events because you do get to unwind, but then you meet other like minded people who are experts and they know what they're doing, and you can sit down, you can.

You can have a drink with them, e pizza or whatever.

You do, have a conversation with them, ask how they're doing it in their area, and they go, oh, that's something I think we can do over here.

Here's what we do.

Have you experienced this, and then you just you just come back, just rejuvenated and going back and you just

No, No, it's all good.

No.

I I have my tangent too that you know, just because you were in Navy seal doesn't mean that you should be uh going into human trafficking interdiction in foreign countries down in Central America, whatever the case may be. And you know some of these guys are again I know, some mean well yeah, others I think are more involved in fundraising and grifting than they are in actually helping people.

Yeah.

And then the other thing is that the it gets blended in with like Christian evangelical stuff and they start talking about spiritual warfare and fighting demons and all kinds of weird shit.

Yeah.

I So I grew up in the Bible belt and I used to carry a Bible to school, and.

But I'm not what I and I don't anymore. I mean, when I moved to Washington and I kind of got out of that area, I realized you know, well, this doesn't make sense or that doesn't make sense.

But my philosophy is do good, put good out there. I mean, you can't tell me if I don't do all of these good things in the world that if they're right and I get up there and there's a parlyage gate so that some guys not gonna let me in, you know, because I because I I didn't Yes, I did this or you know, or did that way. And then there's so many different religions, you know, how do you know which one's right. I mean, some people are probably gonna hate me for saying that, but that's that's

But that's that's what I think. Do good. Yeah, there are there are a lot of NGOs that are like that. I'm very skeptical.

When I'm I am connected with somebody like that because I've I have prior experience in that world. And it should be about what's the mission. And in this case, when you're talking about kids and keeping people from being raped for money or for anything of value, and then putting that on the internet for people to share, the cost is too high. You know, that's what's more important than that. That's the mission. It shouldn't be the man over the mission or the person over the mission. It's

Are there any NGOs that you are involved with that you'd feel comfortable shouting out?

Oh?

Yeah, the One Internet or the International Association of Human Trafficking Investigators. Great group of guys. They have a conference they do. The main conference they do is in Saint Pete's now it's a new venue this year in Florida. They but they're they're doing stuff in Maryland, conferences in Maryland, Canada. They're doing a bunch of stuff in Canada. And they're great because they provide training to people who have the commission,

So they're great.

Raven dot Us work in the policy side. Rebecca Bender has an organization that helps survivors. It's called Elevate Academy.

Awesome.

I know I'm going to miss them. There's there's tons, there's in Seattle. There's a place called rest. They provide housing, low barrier housing for for trafficking victims.

So they're great. I know I'm going to miss them.

There's so many of them, ever strong. They used to be called stolen Youth. They're in the Washington area.

They're great.

They help raise money for funding training in schools in San Diego. San Diego Youth Services they provide wrap around services for families and potential traffic victims. They have bullying programs, training for kids in school. So they're changing because how do you prevent someone from becoming a sex buyer. You got to focus on the people who are buying when they're younger, right, So they have training on hey, this is why this is wrong, this is how you build a healthy relationship.

So that's something we partnered with in San Diego.

So that we have that available to our students when we start to have these see these problems. We'd actually just launched our human trafficking prevention program in at San Diego Unified School District.

Pretty excited about that. Way we can track different things and get get students resources and it's.

Like another job, but it's it's well worth it. So I'm sure I missed a neck mech National Center Missing Exploited Children, Missing Kids dot Org. That's the big one. But they the clearinghouse for all the cyber tips.

So the book do out in March. The ugly underneath is there? I mean, you told us a little bit about where you're at today and you're still involved in investigations. Is there anything else you want to talk about or anything else you want to shout out before we wrap up tonight.

I'd say the big thing is if you.

If you're in this line of work, you know, just know that it affects you, and you need to make sure you take breaks, take breaks so you can you can care for yourself and you can care for your family because if you don't, it's going to tear you down. And and surround yourself with good people.

I'd say that's that's.

Number one for those that are in in the work. If you are someone who is not, But there are a lot of people who are interested in this, like with all the true crime stuff.

Uh, if they read the book, they'll get it. They'll get a look.

Into what that's about. And support those that are that are out there protecting your kids and protecting your family and and trying to get them to a better place because they need it. I mean, it's you don't get you don't get a lot of thank yous. Usually when you're a cop, I mean you're in a restaurant, it's usually like, oh, behavior, he's.

Gonna arrest you. You know.

It isn't like the firemen who get like, you know, all the cool stuff. It's like people usually only reach out to you.

When you're a cop.

If you know, they when they need you, they need your help, or or they're trying to scare their kid, you know, a pizza hut or something.

I did want to point that out to tonight that you know, I I I understand there's a thought process out there all cops are bastards and defund the police and this sort of stuff. And I totally get that there are corrupt cops out there. There are racist cops, There are guys that should not have a gun and a badge, for sure, But absolutely, on the other hand, there are cops out there who are heroic and are doing vitally important work to protect our citizens every day.

Yeah, and.

You know the part about you know, the good and the bad they're I think what maybe a lot of people, this is what what I hate when someone does something really bad.

It used to make me so angry.

That's law enforcement because no matter what uniform they have on, it's still a police uniform and they represent everybody else and they need That's why you need to have good investigations when someone doesn't abide by their policy, so they're held accountable. So they can't do that because they're making it bad for everybody. And if they're not doing what they should, then they shouldn't be a cop.

You know, it's get rid of them. Yeah, that's that's my two cents on that. I think accountability is important.

When when we went in the academy, one of the first things they said on day one was you live in a glasshouse, and you're held to a higher standard. And if if you're not okay with that, this isn't the job for you. You are, Yeah, it's different. You're hell to a higher standard because of what you do. The community has it. They're trusting you with their safety and if you do anything to mess that up, you're you're

But yeah, and where can people find you online? Do you have a website, a LinkedIn anywhere you'd like to direct people?

Yeah, so the website right now is the ugly underneath dot com on TikTok or Instagram, it's I should have it memorized, but it's I believe it's c Underscore Rodriguez one night, but Carlos Rodriguez, that's my name. But the website has that the ugly underneath.

There's a link for it. So not everything's up yet till the book's published. I think that the links will to work on the website and.

We will shout it out when it comes out. And actually, you reminded me this conversation reminded me something I want to shout out real quick. A previous guest on the show, General Remo Butler. Because of the interview he did on the show, he went ahead and he wrote his memoir. The book is out on Amazon now. It's called Lead from the Front Lessons and Legacy from the First Black US Army Special Forces General. Author again is Remo Butler,

All right.

Thank you, thank you so much for having me on. It's great to meet you.

Yeah you too, Carlos, thank you, and for all of our listeners out there. We will see you next week. Thank you for joining us tonight. Hey guys, I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the team House podcast, the eyes On podcast, and the high Side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going

Checking it out.

The website for it is Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com, slash Join Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com slash join. Uh. You go there and you enter into your email list, or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and I hope you'll