Corrupt NYPD Cop interview - Mike Dowd

i was born in brooklyn my father was a new york city firefighter my mother was a homemaker uh back in the 60s when i was born that was a act considered a full-time job my dad joined the fire department in 1963 and in 1964 he took his family from brooklyn the flats in brooklyn on brighton marine parkway and flatlands avenue and he took us to brentwood new york it was a new burgeoning community that many of the new york city workers found themselves moving out to was affordable it was a home with the backyard and at this point we had i think there was five of us and my next brother ended up being born out there in in long island and then my sister so we had a total of seven kids we grew up in a what you consider back then a typical irish-american family dad being a firefighter and mom uh raising us i ended up with a passion for sports my dad had uh focused us on um well all sports but particularly we ended up being involved in ice hockey uh we love the new york rangers brad park was one of my favorite rangers jill bear hatfield so the we called it the gag line back then so as you can see i was passionate about hockey and uh from that point on we had our own basically our own team we had seven seven uh siblings that could play the sports some better than others um and and it took it took a while to realize that uh i wasn't going to be a professional athlete so at some point um which wasn't very quick but i i'll be honest i i held on to that dream probably up until 11th grade in high school when i realized that i just wasn't big enough and strong enough and fast enough but between between uh 10 years old and 17 years old i had a very slow growth rate i was one of those slow irish growers so it took me a while to fill out and um which which sort of uh made me um it made me feel less than uh it was one of those things that i had to go through as a young adolescent and i still trying to i'm still trying to overcome it today um i was a late bloomer i was very interested in dating and no one wanted to date a late bloomer um so i i i would say it went into a lot into formulating who i would become as a young adult and i think from that point forward realizing that i was a slow bloomer it limited my athletic involvement because i certainly wasn't able to excel uh mentally i was acute and aware and and pretty good at things and physically i had skills but i wasn't powerful enough yet so it set me back and and i'm i'm talking about this because it was a very formative time of my life that sort of would be the bridge to the rest of my life at that because of the shortcomings that i faced as a young guy my best friends were powerful young athletes and i was was gifted like them in skills but not not capable of staying with them because of my lack of physical strength so as you can tell i'm focusing on this because it was a big part of my youth and it was a very disappointing part for me so as i as i went along in life i i became i began to make choices based on my insecurities and being insecure i began every time i i dated someone i latched on to them like it was my last date ever and and it was very informative and formative to me i married my first girlfriend in fact the reason i went from high school to college to be an accountant my mother asked me to stay in college and finish my accounting and get my accounting degree but i chose because i wanted to keep my girlfriend and marry her i chose to take the new york city police department test amongst other civil service tests and from there i chose to take the police department when they called me and and then shortly thereafter mary impregnate my girlfriend and then and then end up marrying her uh it was almost uh at that point in my life i realized that i i was the man that i wanted to be physically mentally or maybe not mentally i maybe i'm still not still not sure that i am that man mentally but you know i could i i at that point in my life i was able to be um physically and and financially secure and now i ended up marrying a woman who i loved but it was puppy love still it was my first love and uh many of us know in the world today that those relationships tend to not work out it's your first girlfriend it's your first experience in life and you end up marrying them and it was a very difficult struggling match for me as i entered the police academy her and i was still in the dating scene she promised she would never marry a police officer and i was like why i didn't understand why at the time and as it turned out i began to know why as a police officer you're exposed to a lot of different things and women are way more mature than men they're more way more astute than men she knew that there'd be opportunities coming my way that would be difficult for me to resist and so she was right once again as most women are she was definitely right it was difficult to resist certain things and there was some lack of fidelity to say the least as i was growing up and so yes what led to a challenging beginning to a relationship um so i went to the police academy and as i entered the police academy i was scared i was a 20 year old 20 i just turned 21. i was a young guy i thought i was going to have a burgeoning hockey career that didn't work out in fact i'll tell you a story on my way into the police academy i badly twisted my ankle and i couldn't tell you which one today it was i think it was the right but it could have been the left either way so i was so excited that i was going to start the police academy and the day before i started it i twisted my ankle so i ran the entire police academy with a black and blue ankle and i didn't miss a lap and didn't miss a step but i was in pain for like a solid eight months and for about two three years my ankle was never recovered right but that's how that's how scared i was to to admit that i had an injury i didn't want to lose the job i didn't want to lose the opportunity to become a police officer at the same time i was scared to death to be a police officer because i didn't know what i would face and not only did i know what i faced my physical my physicality was just starting to catch up to me so i really i was i was between a boy and a man at 20 21 years old and it was scary physically scary mentally and emotionally i felt less than so i really was it was a challenging time for me and it turned out that uh while in the police academy i put on like 20 or 25 pounds go figure right it's like you see the kid go up to the marine corps and he comes home a man well sure enough it just took me a couple years later than the 18 year old going off to the service so between 21 and 22 years old i really began to fill out and become much more physical physically capable i was a very strong kid but i was i was a bait clamor as a child as a child as a young man i was a bait cleaner between 18 and 20 years old i clammed in the great south bay so what that gave me was core strength for a young lean man and then as i filled in it really it was really and i'm focusing on this because it's a very important part of being a police officer you can't be a little weasely guy and handle the streets of brooklyn back in the 80s i assure you and now i'm officially a cop and and i'm not ready i'm just not ready i'm i'm scared so they send me to queens i get this slow birthing in queens they send me out on patrol my first day on patrol in queens they have no radios so now i'm a police officer who's still a little scared i'm under the l on roosevelt avenue if you're familiar with queens at all it's it's a dark danky place and and and it's a hustle and bustle and i'm still this kid from long island who's not sure what day it is and i'm standing there and i need to have a quarter in my pocket in case something goes down because i don't have a police radio i'm going to bang on the street with my stick no one's going to hear me so to say the least i was unnerved and scared and i'm saying to myself is this for me i'm standing out here and i don't feel like i should be doing this i want to quit in fact it comes to a point where i turn around and i'm going back to the precinct i walk in the precinct and the lieutenant at the desk says to me dowd i go yes sir you know well worried what did i do now he goes do me a favor when you're standing out there under the l try not to scare the public getting phone calls that you're out there with your hand on your gun he says it's going to happen he says but you really don't want to get known for like scaring the public your first week out there so for unbeknownst to me i was scaring the public that was scaring me on my first freaking day on patrol anyway as as so as the story would go i would get more comfortable uh and then i would then the reality hit and and i graduated what they call the training portion of my of my police career and i ended up getting transferred to brooklyn east new york brooklyn and let me tell you i tell the story and i'll tell it for your audience i'm driving in to east new york brooklyn now i got about a year and a half as a police officer i've seen some action nothing too heavy a couple doas a couple of arrests nothing major and i'm driving down sutter avenue and it's 6 30 in the morning june 13th 1983 and i look to my right and there's a group of people out throwing dice against a wall of a bodega and in the ghetto comes on by elvis presley and if anybody knows that song i can't sing it that well but if i could for if you played the music i'd sing it for you and a young man dies and the mother cries and and i'm crying i am filled up with tears in my eyes i want to turn around and go home now i'm a year and a half as a police officer and i want to go home i don't want to do this this is scary as [ __ ] i'm going into the ghetto and i i go to my locker i fill my locker up with my uniform and my equipment and i'm i'm exacerbated i don't know what to do so of course i go i stand roll call and i'm wondering how's this going to turn out for me i'm not comfortable i'm fearful and i would say there came a point and one of my first scenes was a shooting you go figure east new york brooklyn 7-5 precinct deadliest precinct in the country and one of my first scenes is a shooting scene it's on a midnight shift and i had i had almost tossed these two individuals because they were carrying a tire iron at two in the morning three in the morning what are you doing with a tire iron you're robbing cars you're doing something you're robbing tires back then it was big to rob tires because it was good in the crack error or the the drug error you can get a 50 60 bucks quick for some tires back then so and i and i failed to stop them because my partner didn't want to get out of the car and then three blocks i passed three blocks i turn around and i as i turn back around i see a guy laying in the street with a hole in his [ __ ] head and he was in front of a kuchifito place back then which we called which would have been a it's an all-night dominican spot where you can get anything you need to eat drink maybe even sex if you could whatever whatever goes on in those places and there's a guy laying in the street and the place had emptied out and standing around and here is jesus his name is jesus jesus is shot in the street in east new york i'm probably on the job a week or two and i'm like this is real i almost stopped somebody that had a weapon on them a gun and in this case instead of shooting me he shot jesus and i'm like how profound is like this is going through my mind i'm like this is this is real like this is no joke here someone's dead and i almost stopped this person and it could have been me so some people might out there might say it should have been you but in this case it you know thankfully it wasn't so that's the start of my career in east new york and i said to myself mr dowd you're going to either sink or you're going to swim so it's time for you to it's time for you to step up and be the man that you're supposed to be and and and i fought through those insecurities the late blooming aspect of it where i had to struggle with my own identity you know uh not as male female thing don't get me wrong here but about you know my abilities as a man to handle confrontation i mean we're not knowing superman here you know you don't get an s on your chest when you graduate the police academy and you know everything's invincible and you can handle arnold schwarzenegger down to minnie mouse it doesn't work that way you know you train you stay in shape and you hopefully you can handle yourself uh so p.s that's how my career began so now i i realize i'm in the depths of this career and i'm embracing it now i'm about to get married to a woman that i should have probably not married even though she was a wonderful person i wasn't ready for it so a lot of things are going on in my life i'm i'm i'm a young police officer beginning a burgeoning career i think i think it's going to be a successful one i have no idea that i'm going to end up where i end up in my career at this point i'm enjoying being a police officer i'm making arrests i'm making drug arrests i'm making murder arrests i'm making rape arrests i can go i can go down the list of the type of arrests i made and how i was being actually wanted as a valuable young police officer in the 7-5 for my first year and a half and um so i'll tell a story so i come into the um precinct one day and i see all these guys with their medals and you know young cops want to get medals above their badge because two things it shows you've got some street credibility and two it wipes away the the newness to to you being on the street and everybody wants to have a little bit of salt on in there in their jeans or or in their uniform uh when they when they're facing the street that's pretty salty it gives it even gives the uh what's called uh the street guys or or or the perps you get some credibility when you got some metal stacked above your badge so who doesn't want that off the rip you know it it sort of mitigates that that hey here's a new jack approach from the street guys so i go into the captain's office he calls i wrote up three or four medals and he looks at me and he goes to me you made a rape caller you took two guns off the street you made a drug caller and you did something else that was really pretty good he says to me this is east new york he said this is a regular day what was it doubt this is a regular day i said excuse me i go i took two guns off the street all on observation they weren't like calls the rape collar and then there was there was one other one that was a drug collar it was a big drug caller he goes to me doubt he says i'll tell you what i'll give you one meritorious an epd the other two i can't help you with so it was like it was monty hall i was making a deal with the captain just so i can get a you know what they call medals uh uh or some above my above my badge and and i said you know i felt like a fool and here i am a young aggressive cop i think i'm doing something really good i'm making these really exciting arrests i'm getting pat's on the back by the my fellow officers i go into the cap and he says this is a regular day in east new york i'm like wait a minute well if i was in queens or staten island or midtown manhattan what would i be doing oh you'd be getting you'd be getting you know gold plate dinners awards for these types of arrests but not in east new york well it's a regular day so what an awakening to say the least so is so now i'm faced i'm in a i'm i'm in a precinct and i'm in a crew i'm beginning a career that's showing me what i think is so important and so big has mitigation and value it might have been important to the person's life i helped save or the woman i prevented being continuously raped that may have been important to them but you know as far as the pd was concerned and the bureaucracy and what we call the job you know the job really didn't give a [ __ ] about me or what i was doing it was more like it was a numbers game for them and it became a numbers game and so that takes away my policing instinct not to for the instinctiveness of it but to to sort of hold some pride in what i was doing it it got wiped away real quickly when when you didn't feel the sense of um your own department showing you that they appreciate your excellent work uh so so that's where the rub starts to meet the road very early on in your career and um so so things start to change my outlook on the police department and how and don't get me wrong just because they didn't give me a medal isn't the reason there's it's a sequence of things that are going on you know you got to stop making drug arrests because you're clogging up the system you know they have to be significant if you make a couple of crack bile arrests you know you're costing the city thousands of dollars in in housing and inmate and processing an arrest overtime for you you're off the street there's less cops out as visible cops supposed to be visible so that they can prevent crime by their visibility so it it became became a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and and and and one way spiral downward in both my mind in in society because you're now encouraging the police officers to stop making arrests you're not ordering them to stop making arrests you're just making their lives more difficult if they make arrests so it became a very combative way to go to work and to do your job that's where michael dowd begins to turn his own he starts to make the job as a police officer his own reward um post so in other words rather than going to work to do the job as a police officer that i'm supposed to be doing i begin to do the job where it benefits me and that's not to say i didn't know my job and handled my jobs correctly you know and appropriate and professionally but anytime i can take a little leeway that would benefit me which might have been whether it's a free meal or i need new windows in my house so i go see the window guy in the precinct or i need a new front door on my house or i need paint for my house you know i begin to utilize the job to my benefit and then after that slowly becomes a way of doing the job i end up starting to look for some money and and and and and and i think i've told the story a thousand times how i come across what they call the puerto rican mystery back in the day whether because the puerto ricans didn't need papers when they came to america so they so they didn't bring any you know so they came here as citizens but they didn't have licenses they they oftentimes didn't register their vehicles because i think that the and i don't know but i think in puerto rico if you if you're if you knew the neighbor they didn't tell the police and he never you never had an issue like that things were run differently in puerto rico than they were in new york but the guys from puerto rico who came to new york sort of ran it the same way they didn't have registrations often on their vehicles so we called them the puerto rican mystery it was just the way the street spoke i learned it from others and and and i share the story openly and honestly because they became my best friends and i l and i love my puerto ricans but in fact half of my family's gotten hispanic and puerto rican roots in them but but but that's how they were and that's how we were trained as cops though that's a puerto rican mystery so it was good for four tickets so i find this guy i'm gonna give him four tickets maybe even have to take his vehicle because it's not registered and i don't want to do this to this kid because he's really not a bad kid you know he just he just didn't have the paperwork right he owned the vehicle he the title was signed to his name and now he's got he's got a corvette it's like a 78 corvette this is 1984. i mean so it's really not an old car you know and so it's probably a fifteen thousand dollar vehicle at the time and he's got a lot of hundreds in his bag so i could take his car or leave him with uh or leave him with his car and get a few hundred for myself so i made a decision and and sure enough i said we'd like to how about a nice lobster lunch for me and my partner i need him to say give me cash i said you know a nice lobster lunch would do and we can and let this thing go by so he put some money on the back seat i couldn't tell you if it was 200 500 i know it wasn't five or seventy five dollars all i know is you put some money on the back seat of my car and i felt like i felt like i i felt like i won something i felt like i won a prize so from that moment forward i decided if i don't get in trouble for this which i didn't i'm going to just look for small opportunities to enrich myself and i began to find ways to do it and at this point i'm making about 22 to 24 000 a year and my partner's taking these plastic vials with rocks in them and throwing them out we don't know what they are i mean there'd be a tennis ball and i'd be bouncing the tennis ball see now people don't know but you can bounce a tennis ball with a hole in it especially if it's cut on the scene and he could still bounce it so this guy bouncing his tennis ball and finally i grabbed a tennis ball on this kid one day i squeeze the tennis ball and it opens up and there's a bunch of plastic things in vials and with rocks i'm saying is we don't know what it is and so we throw it out we fig we know it's not legal whatever we don't know what it is no one's told us yet that this is crack cocaine and this is a crime we know it probably is but we don't even know where we're going with it it just hit the street we don't know so one day we find out that it has great value through another observation that we did someone took a sewer cover plate off to get the crack vials out that we threw down we said if someone's lifting a 400-pound sewer plate to get the crack vials out from this sewer there must be a lot of value to these things so the next day my partner and i find a marlborough box or a newport i think it was newport because the ghetto they they prefer newport i think so so he took a he took a newport box home filled with crack files he come back the next day he hands me two three hundred dollars i said what the [ __ ] is this for he goes that stuff i brought home last night turns out to be crack cocaine it's worth a lot of money i mean we've been throwing it out for about two months now so i mean thousands of dollars worth of stuff we've thrown out now oh jesus christ this is like an atm machine now we've got money in the street every day we're like we've become essentially a crack dealer my we would take the crack from the crack that we found in the street my partner would take it home he'd come back to work and hand me a couple hundred every couple days so at the end of the week instead of making the 315 a week i was making with the pd clear i was making two to 300 a day on every day we hit something so you're talking i was double and tripling my salary in just one little small score like that so it became it became the job for us of course we still did our job the police work is police work but when we saw an opportunity to take a little something we did it and our life was enriched i mean my partner redid his whole home on the street money that we took you know and of course i i just we funny story my partner says to me one day i really need to i need about a month off i said for what he says to fix my house he says i need to and he takes his hand and he's holding his hand like this he says if i could break this finger i could still hold the hammer so he i take my flashlight and i smash his hand he doesn't even know him i just go bang i smash his finger he goes what the [ __ ] i said you said you wanted a broken finger and he puts his hand back up and i hit it again with the flashlight bang i go i think it's broken now he's like holy [ __ ] i said listen i'm sick of you talking about it it's done he goes in he gets it x-ray it's broken he takes a month off to heal his finger and he fixed his house up with the money he'd been making on the side i went out and worked for him a couple days i did a little bit of work around the house for him and sure enough he was out and he lived out in mastic at the time mastic beach so we redid his house in mastic beach on the crack money and a broken finger so it was quite the experience for him and uh he saved a lot of money doing himself but but the point is that we began to look at the job for what we can get from it i mean while we're public servants you're not supposed to be doing that you're supposed to be there serving the public oh whoever thought that we'd be serving ourselves so that was the beginning of my career on how i would end up it down the down the road to where i end up so but during this process before i end up in big time with the with the big kingpins i'm i'm going i'm going home at night to a miserable home life because i'm not focused on it i have a brand new baby i'm not honest i'm hurting myself my current wife at the time um is is not happy with my let's say performance in i'm not i'm not acting like i'm not acting like the man young boy young man whatever it was that she knew when i was 17. um hostile i'm short i'm not considerate i have money that i never had so of course men and money sometimes they act a little differently i wasn't respecting my relationship and i began to become somebody that i didn't like and i it i ended up not being able to separate that nasty prick that had to run the street from the loving caring human being i should be at home they became sort of the same person and that's no way to live a life and it's no way to share a life with somebody so so my personality begins to get formed by my actions my survival skills and my insecurities they're all meshing into one now and there comes a point here where i look in the mirror and i go i don't like that [ __ ] guy i was ashamed and that was right around the time that i had moved from brentwood long island to port chef station long island so so it's i'm getting advanced in my career now but i shouldn't say that so i'm sorry let me back up it was prior to that that i started to feel that way but it was more poignant to me as i got older because i decided at some point here that i want to be more than a police officer not that it's not an honorable profession and it is and i never took it that way that's why i wanted to be more than that because i never gave the police job the respect deserved i never i never i never felt honored to be a police officer which i should have and when i looked in that mirror i saw a fake and it was really beginning to bother me the problem is that my whole life at that point from 23 to like say 27 i was a fake and it became part of who i was and i couldn't separate myself from it easily anymore and i had a decision to make and it's sad because i ultimately made the wrong decision i recognized that i wanted i wanted to be a politician i'd go figure i wanted to be a politician i thought that would be an honorable way to serve my community i know what communities need because as a police officer you see everything from the ground level up and and i i grew up a poor white guy you know seven kids my father was a fireman what do you think we had you know we shared shoes we swapped them you grew out of them i grew into them you know so you know we had a rough upbringing when it come to you know we didn't have white privilege but what we had was each other and i felt by being this person that i've become i'm i felt like i wasn't even one of my family i felt detached from my family while i was very involved with my family i felt dirty inside so i wasn't really one of them anymore so it was a very lonely feeling i couldn't be a politician because i was afraid to run now for political i think i could have won because i have a little charisma i think i might i think i could have i could have pulled it off but i knew that at some point some of the darkness would come out about the things that i had done now you're raised to a public level you know and people start whenever i mean some of the you think the most cleanest politicians in the world you find out the affairs of their life and they wish they never ran i think we all know who they are or who they've been you know go back to gary hart i think his name is whatever go back there right i mean just that's not too far back and you'll probably go further back but so going back to there i knew that i would jeopardize my family's position my parents position because their son some disparaging things might be said about him so it's sort of like i i was resigned at that point i was like my shoulders dropped and said now what and i actually honestly said i'm gonna have to be a damn good corrupt cop now like that's what i said instead of saying i'm gonna straighten my life out and become a straight cop but let me pause i did try at one point when i when i was they tried to kill me at my house one day a cop uh a cop threatened to kill me and it's it's a segway story that people don't know about some do some who've listened to me know about it but it's a story and i can get into it briefly i was transferred to coney island for the summer detail on the summer detail a guy started yelling yo yo yo from nowhere from behind me and no carpet is right if he's worth any street credibility ever turns for a yo yo yo man so but as as the guys i can feel his breath and his foot prince footsteps getting closer and closer i glance back and there's a big black guy jacked with gold chains hanging around his neck i figured as a local drug dealer yo yo yo in me i'm glad i didn't turn turned out he was a new york city cop and a long story short i'll cut to the chase and this because it's it's very involved he ends up putting a complaint in against me a civilian complaint are you [ __ ] kidding me cops don't make complaints against other cops so after he makes his complaint against me two weeks later you won't believe this story he's out by my house in a crackdown on long island brentwood long island route 111 right by the train station on route 111 long island i like to give location it gives people a little reference and above the above the dry cleaner there was a crack house in 1986 and he was going in it so full disclosure i called internal affairs on i mean a guy just put a complaint in against me i'm not i don't need to be loyal to this guy you know you're loyal to those that are loyal to you i think everybody in the world would understand that so actually i didn't i actually wasn't going to call internal affairs but my neighbor who was the detective in the in the 102 precinct said you gotta he said you know here's a guy selling now here i am just got finished chain i stopped selling the crack that we were stealing from the street and now i'm about to report a guy it's killing me so that's part of that twisted guy i was looking at in the mirror it's killing me that i'm doing this but i i justified it because he put a complaint in against me he he tried to be fired so yeah that's what you get from me i'm you know i'm being honest that's what you get from me you're going to get me fired i'm going to [ __ ] you any way i can too so p.s i dropped the dime on him and lo and behold internal affairs in new york city like any other leaky leaky's faucet all of a sudden within within weeks i'm getting death threats at my house turns out it was him and and one day i'm on the phone he wouldn't speak he'd call me up and just hang up after about 15 minutes every day for months it was about two months he was going finally i get him to talk i go why don't you just come and we're here and we do it and he goes how about i put a [ __ ] bullet in your head right now he says to me as i'm on the phone at 2 30 3 o'clock in the morning i just got in from my uh i was doing 10 i was doing six to twos in coney island at the time how about i put a bullet in your [ __ ] head right now through the window that you're standing in front of oh [ __ ] i look to my left i'm standing in front of a window with the phone in my hand so i just hit the ground i mean what would you do i hit the ground i said damn i could do a better job vacuuming this [ __ ] because the sand and the rug i could feel i'm like holy [ __ ] i'm crawling across the rug trying to get behind the wall here my wife's in the other room screaming what's going on i'm gonna shut the [ __ ] up i'm yelling at her she's not the problem because she's yelling he's on the phone laughing ha ha ha i've been [ __ ] your wife for months she's telling me stories i'm like what she's like who's [ __ ] me for months i'm like just let him talk please i'm trying to figure out who he is sure enough i figured out who he was i called the pd to pd says ah well we'll put extra patrols good luck you know because they didn't care the pd i i to be fair new york city police department called suffolk county where i was living and they said can you put a portable radio in the office's house he's being threatened they didn't know it was a cop threatening me but they knew i was being threatened suffolk county says that we'll give them extra patrols yeah so so instead of driving by once a day they drove by twice a day you know yeah there's 24 hours in the day but they drove by twice a day now anyway so i i lived under this this this is back in like 86-87 i lived under this dichotomy if you want to call it it was a very odd way to live you know i was a cop i i was a good cop i became a bad cop i wanted to become a good cop the cops didn't like me because now they're not sure why i'm becoming a good cop the other guy the other guy threatens to kill me i'm like this is [ __ ] this is not what i bargained for i'm looking in the mirror at a guy that's dirty i don't want to be that guy anymore i got a young child i want to be a dad to this boy you know and i have a woman there who's you know doing her best to stand by me and and i'm a piece of [ __ ] i've done bad i haven't paid for it i'm trying to turn over a new leap no one's letting me become the good cop mike anymore they'd rather me be the bad cop mike because that's what they're used to cops are running out of the job because the 7-7 precinct's getting locked up 13 of them get arrested they're all looking at all the other cops around the whole brooklyn north is under under suspicion and we're the target right now the 7-5 is the main gig they're looking at so now i'm sitting here saying i want to leave i want to become a politician i can't my name is dirty life for me was one big intense i mean i've used the word dichotomy again but it was one big tense ball of rubber bands just waiting to snap and i ended up i ended up uh being pursued by a lieutenant and and i was plotting on how i was going to kill him like this is this i was planning on how i was going to kill this lieutenant who was pursuing me because now i i've made an arrangement with the local drug kingpins to get 8 000 a week it was less stressful because i wasn't robbing local street dealers anymore i had a a high level kingpin giving me 8 000 a week it was much common my life was way calmer so and then of course at this point i'm starting to enjoy cocaine so i'm getting eight thousand a week splitting it with my partner who deserved none of it just for the record and and and i'm getting my fill of cocaine and i'm either selling it or using it mostly selling it but you know i i do a half a gram a day every day for years so so i had that going on so my life was so like i said i made that decision at some point i'm all in so then i end up with the corvette i drive a brand new red corvette to the 7-5 precinct i park it in lieutenant spot because he's pissing me off all right he's after me now what if you're after me and i put a brand new vet in your spot with a 38 000 price sticker on the window and i'm making 27.5 at this point you think you could catch me and if you can't catch me guess what it's on and i'll tell you the truth from that moment that they didn't pull me in i'm like i'm golden i can do what i want i like like that's how the mind works the mind doesn't say okay sir you've gotten away with it it's time to go lay it down maybe that's the insecurity in me from being a little little guy when i was when i should have been a bigger man physically but now i'm a big guy powerful guy with money i'm like [ __ ] the world right it's almost like my revenge came out and rather than being intelligent and intellectual about it saying okay mr dowd you've gotten away with quite a bit in your life it's time to turn over a new leaf which i attempted it didn't work for me didn't work for me so i went back to being a little bit of a crazy [ __ ] in fact i became emboldened by it they when they came after me instead of quitting the police department i went off to a rehab center i went off to a rehab center three times they called in the pd they called it the farm i went off to the farm so you know basically it is a farm you go to this house in the mountains and you go up there and you dry out you straighten your life out you get your head back together you come back and you and you'd rejoin the team fresh but not me because no one would accept me straight they wanted the corrupt michael dowd because as a straight police officer that meant i was working for the man and they didn't no one no one wants a guy working for internal affairs in fact the irony of this whole story is that the story about the cop that no one knows but i do the cop that threatened to kill me that story became who i was to the other police officers the the the guy who contacted internal affairs and no one wanted to work with me now so here's a guy me who's one of the most corrupt police officers in the street i drop a dime on a guy who's trying to get me fired because i didn't answer to his yo yo yo i dropped a diamond him selling crack which is really a good police officer right think about it a good police officer drops a dime on someone selling crack now i'm a bad police officer cause i dropped the dime on some guy selling crack okay so i was selling crack i was a bad cop i dropped the dime on a cop selling crack i'm a bad cop when am i a good cop so i embraced the whole [ __ ] bad end of it and i became more creative i ended up doing two years in this rehab center they call the farm uh i come out of that like more aware and so now i go to another precinct called the 94th precinct so i leave the 7-5 i do the two-year stint on the on the lamb they caught them the farm no guns they call the rubber gun squad for those of you listening i was in the rubber gun squad for two years and i'm like this is great i don't want i don't want my guns back i'll just i'll go out this way you know no not the nypd they call me in one day and they go okay it's been two years i go and can can i get my pension like this disability pension because i'm crazy and leave no no no we're going to give you your guns back and you're going back on the street as a patrolman and you're going to go but we're going to shift you to to the 94th precinct which is a slower priest of course i find all the action of course i find all the action in the slow precinct i'd become the most corrupt police officer ever to be in the 94th precinct now instead uh i end up doing racketeering things with with organized crime i end up uh making money uh in in the auto industry i end up making false police reports out for people in the auto industry i end up being chasing cars every car accident that took place now cops don't like paperwork i think anyone would probably know that anybody knows that knows a cop we hate paperwork i would pursue paperwork now because that paperwork was going to get me anywhere between 500 a thousand dollars just to make the report out in benefit to my uh tow truck guy so i i ended up turning that into a money machine so this guy said to me dad why don't you like resign i go resign i'm making 2 3 000 a week plus my salary now i mean i found ways to make money and i mean i mean it's humorous and it's embarrassing at the same time i hope you understand that i i tell these stories with the same vigor in which i approached uh what i did but the reality is i was a scumbag what i was doing was scumbagish you know people might even not fault me for wanting to make a few extra dollars but the way i approached it was it was about me it was never about what i was hired to be a police officer serving the public i turned it very early on to serving me and and i i had that approach throughout and and it's selfish and in that selfishness i ended up losing myself uh the the guy that was building wheelbarrows at 15 years old and selling them to the neighbors as a planter and it was 15 i paid five dollars for that wheel that they put on that little wheel cart that you see out in front of people's lawns i paid five dollars for that i took the wood from crates that were skids that you would that you would put boxes on top of i took the crate wood and i molded them and i cut them and i put them together and i sold wheelbarrows to my neighbors that's the guy i was creative a little bit a little handy trying to have some fun and now i'm a big involved with kingpins shaking them down taking payoffs and eventually the end would come so now i'm in the 94th precinct uh and and and i've turned i've turned a career uh from from from being involved with drug uh operations to um in the 94th region i got involved in with organized crime figures and i turned i turned the uh the auto industry into a way of making money and and and it was it was less i was less involved with the street level activity then because now i'm just i'm just dealing with the organized crime figure who runs a um runs an auto body repair shop and but part of me couldn't stay away from the drugs mind you at this point i've developed a significant drug organization on long island okay and by that i mean significant it was a funded it was it was it was not large but it was it was it was a steady flow it was anywhere between a thousand to two thousand dollars a week of steady income coming in my direction from the four or five outlets that i provided cocaine to on long island i mean i'm entrepreneurial right i i figured these are gentlemen that i know that go to the local bars that i would go to and in those local bars there's always someone selling cocaine so it might as well be my cocaine i mean if you're going to sell cocaine i'm going to bring in 96 pure cocaine and you're going to do whatever you do to it but you know you're getting the best when i show up so i give my guys the best cocaine in america at the time mostly pink peruvian which was incredible cocaine if you liked cocaine i don't know if you did or you didn't but some have some of us have dabbled and that was always the best it tastes like bazooka bazooka bubble gum it was so smooth that's what they in fact that was one of the nicknames for it was bazooka um but that being said so i provided a good quality cocaine to my local guys one guy who owned a liquor store i mean these were these were businessmen one guy was a liquor store one guy was a trucker another guy was um uh he was also the clown at parties that was one of the one of his jobs that he did and the other guy was um an electrician so all these guys were established in their own little fields and they had a network of people that adults that they dealt with you know i love that story when they say you're poisoning the children you know your drugs are hitting the going to the children in the schools well i'm not going to say that my drugs did or didn't i know but but from what i know that wasn't what happened with it so i'm trying to save my the little bit of soul i have left for the depredation that i that i provided to the world through my own uh immoral uh activities that being said you know if you're getting a half a gram in the back of a bar on a friday night uh you're not the child that's getting cocaine okay can we just can we all be honest with that and and come to terms that everybody that sold drugs in their lifetime didn't sell it to a kid in high school all right i mean at least that's my approach i live with it every day um so in the 94th precinct i become the guy that no one wants to work with because now i've survived numerous investigations i've been dumped from one precinct to another and i end up involved with the guy that was arrested for murder so here i am i'm the most corrupt police officer on the job at this point i'm known as it you they don't know why i even have a badge and a gun on but i do in fact the commander the precinct commander called me in the day i got there and said i'll lock you up myself if i if you do anything illegal here he says i have friends in internal affairs who told me all about you and i'm looking at this guy like why do i have a [ __ ] job then i mean really think about why do i have a job you gave me my gun and badge back a shield you gave me my gun and shield back i was happy in the white stone pound pushing cars you know invoicing the vehicles i really don't want this job like this you let us retire me because you know that's the options they had so they didn't want to retire me so they gave me my gun and my badge back and they let me loosen the street but we're watching you oh you can only watch me so well let me tell you yeah i'm a little slick so i made my moves and and i i think i spoke about this earlier in this in this in this interview here that i decided if they're not going to stop me i can't stop myself because no one would accept me as a good cop they wanted me to be that edgy rogue guy so i justified my actions from there forward and i got involved with a local colombian in the ninth floor of course there was only there wasn't a big drug spot the 9-4 but they had significant cocaine it was the 80s in the early 90s so i knew the colombian drug dealer in the neighborhood of course i found him and i got kilos from him and uh so one so so i'll fast forward to the day so rodney king verdict comes out and la which we're we're happy to be in la right now probably close to where this uh whole thing broke la verdict comes out the cops aren't guilty and la goes on fire they're called that the riots are on right and so that was may 5th or 6th may 6th may 6th uh i get i get i get a call report back to the precinct i look at my partner he looks at me you don't often get a 10-2 it's called a 10-2 and it's actually become famous since since i've coined this it's become you don't want to get a 10-2 like people that's become a thing in the nypd you don't want to get that 10-2. so i said how about i call they go no 10-2 because that is so 10-1 or 10-2 i said how about a 10-1 they're going to know 10-2. i didn't like the way they answered that question so i look at my partner i said did we do anything wrong today because that's the first thing you think why would they tend to you and they hadn't called us for two days on the radio like they never call us now the night four's a quiet precinct but to not be called for two days i look at him he looks at me as did we do anything wrong today why that we should be concerned i'm i'm seeing them following me i'm seeing them following me and i'm not telling my partner because they follow me all my life i don't want my new partner to get spooked we're starting to make money now we just made we just made fifty four thousand dollars between me him and ken urel who's the other part to my story that we haven't really spoken about here we made 54 000 in like a week and a half so i just we just split up the money so i don't want to spook him we're doing really good right but meanwhile being followed so i'm like this isn't looking good so i look at him i go did we do anything wrong today he goes what do you mean i go well why would they be 10-2 in us i said we did give kenny and his kenny a half a kilo just now but that's not wrong i mean i mean i mean how wrong is that i mean i just went like this i mean so i'm not saying i'm not thinking i'm not thinking investigation wrong i'm thinking did we run over did we run over anybody did we smack someone on the side of the head we shouldn't have we just had an absolute seven this big that's not really wrong i mean what's the pink they sent me back to the farm for drinking hmm i did just do a couple of bumps but that's not really one because no one saw me do a couple bumps so i got a little bit of cocaine in me and about four ounces of vodka i ate good and so no we've done nothing wrong we've done absolutely nothing wrong here today but what people don't know because i never really share this story is i see i see a [ __ ] camera in a window above my head and i don't say anything because i don't want to spook my partner across the street was a church and the what you would call the where the lay people in the church live or the or the priests bang boys whatever they do up there you know when they hide boys in the church they're up there they're up there in the window there and they got a camera pointing towards the store that i just walked out of i'm saying i so so here i am denying what's going on i'm denying it to myself and to my partner because i don't want him to know what he doesn't see i don't want to spoken for they call us ten two we drive down and this is the first time i've driven the wrong way on meseroll street mesaros streets are one way it goes from franklin it goes towards the water instead i come in from the water and head towards franklin on messerol and the priest is on the right-hand side it's an old beautiful building old precinct new york style you know with the with the green windows and the it's really pretty cool you don't want to be in there though but and to my left i see a vehicle that i've never seen before and that's one of the things i've been aware of for the last four years always check for on vehicles that i had never seen before because that's listen for four years that's how i lived can you imagine going to work looking for police vehicles that you've never seen before and then we get a new vehicle assigned to the command cause the old one was thrown out and for about a week i'm not sure what the [ __ ] this vehicle is doing here i mean this is how i live my life i'd be driving down uh the l.i.e and i'd be in the i'd be going 90 but instead of in the left-hand lane i go to the right-hand lane because if i crashed i would crash off the side of the highway that's the way i went to work for over a year and a half if i crash because my body would freeze from one side all the way down to my foot so i guess they would call it stress to say the least right so here i am 30 years old so stressed out that my body is numb on one half and so and i'm fading as i'm driving this stress is so bad i'm fading as i'm driving and and i would i would say okay i don't want to hurt anybody else so if i crash i crash off to the side of the road i mean that's that's how deep seated the depredation is you just don't give a [ __ ] you can't stop you can't stop yourself so some real relief will come belief does come how does relief come to a guy who's doing what he's doing to himself and others i walk into the precinct and the guys in the car sitting there to get out and so now i know there's people walking behind me and i'm walking up these steps into the precinct very nice very nice building so i walk in and and i know something's way wrong i look to my right and the sergeant behind the desk is looks like looks like he's seen three ghosts not one he's like and i go what's up sarge and he goes he points the captain wants to see you this is like stage they staged it right and he's panicking the sergeant's panicking of course i don't know this at the time but i as as i as i look back later on he's panicking the captain wants to see you he points so i turn around and the two guys that were walking in behind us there's no captain wants to see us they pull out their badges internal affairs division and i'm like yeah that's gonna help i just drank another five ounces of [ __ ] vodka i just did a couple of bumps yeah can i help you they go we're here to take you for a department-ordered drug test for suspicion i go oh really this is good this should work out just fine i'm saying to myself so and my partner and i both of us so we go we go downstairs go to get changed i'm getting changed and i'm turning my lock i'm looking at these guys and i go is this am i under arrest no no no i said okay so i open the i open my lock i take it off i hope for the thing now i've got cocaine i've got cocaine and and my guns in my locker and and the pants i have has cut and i have about a thousand dollars in cash what cop on on a wednesday or something that gets paid tomorrow has a thousand in cash in their locker so i go okay so i go like this i i can't get my pants off because they're so close to me i mean they're like this they're like touching me so i go do you mind so they go like this they back up about three inches so i i work my way out of my pants i hang up my uniform pants i take my gun belt i hang up my gun belt and i go okay now i look right look i'm not under arrest right no okay so i take my club now i'm looking at these jeans the jeans have five grams of cocaine in the pocket so now i no i'm like okay let me just put my cocaine laced pants let me get my pants with the cocaine on so i can't they won't they won't get like i'm getting dressed like this trying to get my jeans on right i put my jeans on and i and i look at my guns i look at them i go what about my off-duty gun do you think i should leave it like yeah you probably should no cop ever leaves his off-duty service revolver off-duty gun in his in his locker so i leave the gun in the locker i said you know this isn't going to go too well i can tell right now so i go i'm not under arrest right no so i turn i can't even turn they're so tight on me and i'm going okay there's five and a half grams of cocaine in this pocket that garbage pail over there that's where this is going as i walk i'm gonna go like this i'm gonna dump it right i'm slick i can do it guess what as i turn the corner to go to the garbage pail someone stands in front of the garbage pail like this so as i meet and then every place i went every place i went for the next 45 minutes i was blanketed i mean these guys if they weren't first of all most internal affairs cops are pretty are pretty shitty at being cops all right but they were good at this i give them damn good credit the guys that came for me they kept me from being able to so i get in the police vehicle right and i get they say come on think about this ladies and gentlemen i am now not in custody but because i am trained to follow orders i'm following the orders of police officers in the civilian world they're telling me what to do instead of saying to myself which i was why don't i just leave why don't i just leave i'm not under arrest i can quit the job anytime i want i can say i'm done i'm going home but i don't i follow waters like a good little soldier i get in the back of a police unmarked police vehicle while in the back i go you guys uh look there's no handles there's no window handles there's no door handles i'm like even the back of my police vehicle that i drive around has door handles and and and and window handles for the even for the perpetrator if he wants to get out but not in this vehicle this police vehicle that carries corrupt police officer that does not have a handle or or or a window crank so i said to the officers in front listen you guys mind if i smile i'm not handcuffed so i'm free i'm a free human being you guys mind if i smoke a cigarette and i'll go right ahead i'm smoking like a banshee dog like i'm smoking up the whole car i think i go you guys want to open nah we'll be okay they won't open the window i mean it's a 20-minute drive to where i'm going they're smoking then i i put the cigarette out i lit another one i'm filling up the car with smoke you guys mind you know i i can't breathe back here nah that's all right we'll open it when we get there i'm saying son of a [ __ ] because i of course was going to toss the drugs out the window of the of the car so i feel okay perfect i'm gonna get out of the car at lefrak city if anybody knows lefrak city in queens on junction boulevard right by the l.i.e that's where the police do their uh uh it's their medical office now you have 40 000 employees so the medical office is big enough like a hospital so it's so big for the cops to go in and out of anyway i get out of the vehicle and they got me blanketed and i turn and i face the entrance way to left right city uh the building in lefrak city and there's 60 cops lining the walkway all in gold everybody's got gold something on on this side and this side i said oh jesus i'll never get rid of this [ __ ] now i'm not gonna eat it right so and all i'm thinking is i'm getting the drug ordered a department ordered police piss test i'm gonna burn the test and go i'm gonna fail but hey we'll see so i'm walking down the phalanx and then i make a into the building i make a right-hand turn and that's phalanxed right to the elevator it's flanks with people so i don't know this is 148 men internal affairs 148 men were there this was big i didn't know how big it was i'm finding out later on when i read the news but anyway so the elevator opens up and i go up to the 16th or 17th floor i enter the elevator and there's these scrambled eggs that i never saw in my life on there with the scrambled eggs in the police department means the gold brass on top of the their hat the bridge the brim of their hat chief so and so chief so and so there was two chiefs on the elevator one on one side and one on the other side of me i don't see chiefs in my old i'm on the job maybe from a distance oh there's a chief over there i got two chiefs standing on the elevator with me they hit the button the elevator goes up opens up there's another phalanx of cops sitting there in on the 16th or 17th floor and here comes the lieutenant who said the son of a [ __ ] was after me for years he comes out officer doubt i got lieutenant hoffman or whatever holmen i think holdman or something like that lieutenant holman how he is i'm drunk by the way i'm half drunk now from drinking the [ __ ] vodka and he goes i have a piss test for you i go no problem sir i fill this thing up i go okay job over i close it up i give it i don't say anything of course i'll give it back to him and then all of a sudden one adam but yeah we you got the pet yeah we got him and we got the package uh you got it yeah okay good officer dowd turn around you're under arrest suffolk county police department detective civility whatever my cousin my mother's cousin my mother's cousin's arresting me and so he knew he goes oh i think i know you i said yeah i think you do he followed me for he'd been following me for about six months okay he knew who i was of course he didn't actually i got the word believe it or not i got the word early on they're looking at you of course i didn't stop i couldn't stop like i told you when i led into this part of the story the relief would come so i pissed in the cup i knew i was losing my job and then suffolk county detective puts the badge up just turn around you're under arrest for conspiracy to distribute narcotics they reach in my pocket they pull out a bag of cocaine i've been trying to get rid of this cocaine now for two hours i can't get rid of it i look at the guy i go what are you doing putting cocaine what are you doing putting cocaine in my pants he looks at me he goes uh don't try that with me down i said everybody tried it with me over the years i figured i'd try it with you anyway so p.s i end up getting arrested obviously from there being taken from from new york city being taken out to suffolk county new york and put into riverhead county jail which by the way i don't recommend to anybody you talk about a sewer back then it was a real sewer today a little different i had a recent use for them but but uh back then it was i mean the toilets were painted the seats were painted you wanted a clean toilet seat there was layers of paint that was the seat like you sat on paint chipped paint anyway so that was just to give you an example of what it was like but anyway so now i'm in suffolk county jail but on the way to the suffolk county jail i was so relieved it was the best feeling i've had since high school the house how sad is this it's the best feeling i had since high school since winning the uh uh the hockey we won the hockey championship in high school which which i was a big part of uh mostly my brother and my brothers uh my neighbor were they it was they were they were one and two i was number three on the team they were younger and better what does that tell you so i really i took a little bit of a slow approach but i did win the championship and the feeling and the exuberance of the freedom and then the power that came with that win of the championship was the same way i felt in the back seat of the patrol car when i was formally arrested going out to suffolk county of course arriving in the jail is a little different story you know mentally now you're going through a lot of emotional changes and oh my god what do i face but so i called home that night and my wife says to me i just want you to know the next day i just want you to know i had the best night's sleep in my life last night i went excuse me she goes don't take it the wrong way she says i love you she says but i slept like a baby last night she says i finally knew where you were so so not like like so if you to capitalize someone's life you know i mean to see it from other people's perspective you know it was significant for to me for me to hear i never forgot what she said right she said i had the best night sleep in my life so when i look back at my life and i analyze it because i think at this age i'm 61 now we try to analyze what what what what went wrong and where it went wrong you know there's several phases right stages and phases um so for me i feel as though looking back at my life i was one of seven children and i wanted to stand out i wanted to be you know daddy see me daddy you know you know that type of thing and and those impressions as a young child form us into who we become later on in life and of course there's always things along the way that will will help tilt us in one way one direction my mother wanted me to stay in accounting school i might have robbed banks or something differently with a pen but and i might not have right i might have been a wonderfully successful accountant or something or maybe a ceo of a corporation you know people that have our type of skill set they end up actually thriving in society if they direct it the right direction you know i didn't um i i attribute some of that to laziness to be honest with you i think there's there's a lazy nature in some of us and some of that to me was my laziness or or i life was oh life was good enough but when i was at the good enough stage it was never good enough if that makes sense it's good enough but had i made changes in my life it could have been way way better or more fulfilling and but today if you don't mind me saying my life is way more fulfilling today you know i speak a lot i try to encourage people not to do what i've done you know i've been through the aaa i've been the sobriety process i i've had a couple of bumps in my road even since coming out um i think every bump in the road makes us a better person i don't know if your audience would agree with that but it gives us character you know the person who's never had any adversity in their life you know had to overcome anything it's hard to get an example although if you start out like them and stay like them you don't need any examples but if you have an example of crisis in your life it's nice i get a lot of calls today from police officers that are going through some heavy [ __ ] i mean ready to put the gun to their heads in their mouths and you know often now i i i get involved in uh there's a podcast like um that deals with police suicide um i i get involved with them i i go to meetings with people i um i go to colleges i go to high schools i speak before them so today the tragedy of my life i don't know what kind of tragedy they would call it but you know i wasted a lot of my life but i think when i look back it's really not a waste because i'm able to take all the travails of my life and put them in perspective and help the next guy and and i hope that that message because when i tell stories and i get a little stupid and goofy about what what i've done i tell those stories from the heart because i mean i didn't i robbed drug dealers and and sold drugs because it was exciting i wasn't sad when i was doing it i was sad when i reflected upon it so when i tell you a story about how i did it and why i did it i don't try to tell you from a you know a demure position i'm certainly i i you know i shook down guys like 8 000 a week i i want you to understand 8 000 wii's exciting the problem is the price you pay is long lasting i still don't have a real job i had i had a job it took me nine years to get a real job after coming out of prison and then i was there a year and the movie was released a documentary about my life and i lost that job because the documentary was released you know so so i will warn your viewers that you know especially if you're in a police field you lose the community of police and and guys that and women that are in the police field and guys and women that are friends with people in the police field they know when a cop loses that connection it's a lonely feeling and to be honest with you other than the damage i did to my children and of course my parents who had to suffer their son being this this public disgrace losing that police family is is huge because you don't just lose the police family you lose those that love police officers and first responders and you lose that whole community of belonging to that so if you talk about the suffering of a person that has made poor decisions their suffering continues on throughout their life what i try to do is i try to be bold and say this is who i am this is what i've done but this is what i've done it's not who i am and if you don't like me that's i i i'm sad for you because you're missing out today i feel i have a lot more to offer people than i did when i was a police officer because i have so much experience on both sides of the fence that i can actually help enrich a police department one scandal in your police department you wish you hired me president consultant you know for a couple thousand dollars to come in and speak to your police officers and and the change i can make in one i've had cops call me up and say i retired because of you i had new city police officers call me up and told me they retired because of me and they still got arrested and then called me up later on and told me that if it weren't for me and my example they would have been arrested on the on the job and lost everything instead they got their pensions i got arrested some of them and others were in the midst of some of the things that i will describe if you follow me about temptation and how to avoid certain things so and i get those calls and and it's and it's really those are the things to me today that can help me in my road to redemption right i mean i think life is is a there's a bunch of travails and and and and a process but if you get a chance to give somebody live a life of redemption it's what can bring it make it whole when when i go to when i they put on my tombstone they'll corrupt this and that but that that that butt is still being developed and i hope that butt is a good one and i i ask people to uh to embrace the butt you know and i don't mean the butt incredible story thank you so much you

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

Views: 3,279,389

Keywords: soft white underbelly, swu

Id: Gl4sV4aXgKQ

Length: 73min 22sec (4402 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 02 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Llamadmiral]

Incredibly captivating interview in my opinion. I rarely watch 1 hour long videos, but this guy is really well spoken.

[u/BongyBong]

This was one of my favorite interviews so far.
When he talks about selling drugs on long island, I'm reminded about my father. He was a truck driver who lived in Long Beach in the 80's, who was eventually locked up for driving with a suspended license and having large amounts of cocaine on him with intent to sell. I can't help but wonder if my father was involved somehow back then with Mike in some way. It's probably unlikely, but this interview made me think about it.

[u/[deleted]]

God damn this became an immediate favorite