Corrupt NYPD Officer From "The Seven Five" On Mike Dowd, Drug Indictment & Being A Dirty Cop

what's up everybody and welcome in to another edition of the sit down as always if you enjoy this video please make sure you hit the like button let me know what you think of the discussion in the comment section below also if you do around here you just haven't done it or living under a rock i don't know what you're waiting for hit that subscribe button below now so you never miss another sit down video today ladies and gentlemen we are going to get into another organized crime topic and over the years over the time i've done my look into crime i'm constantly asked about the police we've talked a little bit about the police on this show over the years obviously we know about people like louis eppolito and stephen caracapa two of the most corrupt individuals in the history of law enforcement in america over the last couple of years i've watched some great documentaries about the police particularly corruption one of the best documentaries i've ever seen in all documentaries is a film called the seven five you could find it on netflix and other streaming platforms i did some digging and came across one of the main subjects of that documentary an individual called ken yarell ken yarell is a retired police department worker for the new york city police department he's written a book called betrayal in blue the shocking member of the scandal that rocked the nypd and he joins us today ken urrell i've been trying to get you on this show for a good amount of time i think you're in one of the greatest documentaries ever put out how you doing today my man good i'm good i'm glad to be on the show man i know you've been contacting me for a while i've had some personal issues that i had to you know get over before it's started doing interviews for other people so i'm glad to be on your show yeah and you i know you you're a very uh you know you're very upfront about what you had going on i want to i want to send my condolences to you ken i know your wife was a gleaming part of the documentary i knew she was very supportive of you she was a great woman and uh i wanted to send you my condolences thank you i appreciate that yeah she was a true ride or die putting you know right right down to the last moment so she stood by me behind everything it's hard to find those types of women nowadays ken she slipped through everything give me 35 years of uh 35 years of marriage i was blessed i bet yeah it sounds like it but i wanted to get in your story from the beginning and on this channel you know we talk about the mafia organized crime all that sort of thing but we find ourselves a lot you know i've talked to judges i've talked to fbi agents um this is the first time i'm talking to a police officer and look obviously you were not connected to the mafia whatsoever but you grew up you were born in ozone park right in the early 60s correct 1968 i was born in ozone park and within i think it was less than a year my parents moved to uh town in queens called rosedale it's right on the nassau border i'm always fascinated about this with people that are non-members of the mafia and have never had any connection to it you grew up in new york what you know about the mafia do you know anything about it was it pervasive in your community what was what was that tell me about your childhood in general childhood was typical childhood you know lots of sports back then you know uh playing in if it wasn't organized sports we got a couple of guys together from the neighborhood we go to the school yard at the park you know playing stickball the schoolyard play you know some baseball touch football on the street was all sports back then so what um what was your family like were they law enforcement people were they firemen i think i remember from the film that your family was in law enforcement is that correct no no law enforcement at all was uh my old man was a construction worker he did uh 50 something years in the union so as a as a teen he used to take me you know on my days off from school weekends and how christmas holidays things like that he used to take me on the job and show me construction and i think he did it to show me how hard the life was so i'd be out there doing construction and he tried to push me because he you know as a union worker in construction if it rained or sick the union benefits didn't include unlimited sick days didn't include you know the weather conditions are bad you can't work you don't get paid so he pushed me towards a city job sanitation firefighter police officer and you know back when i was a a teen in the 70s i think the first test came out 1975 was a layoffs in the nypd and they didn't do another test i think until 1978 and i took the first test and came out and i did well so i got hired by the pd right away they started doing my uh interviews psychological investigations all that medicals before i turned 20 years old as soon as i was 20 they hired me you know we hear about this you know for most cops that become cops or cops really in your time that there was a passion for it they were called to do it is that something you felt like you had were you was this something you felt like did you just do it because you needed a job or did you more feel like you were called to that career no it was that it was definitely about getting you know getting a job getting a career as opposed to what i was doing at the time i was working in a electronics factory out on long island didn't see a career in that and uh again you know with the influence i guess for my parents get a city job you know you'll have security job security so i started taking the test and fire uh police department called right away and you were a cop you were you mentioned uh recently that you were in a the academy obviously for the six months or so that you do and then you were on the street by 20 is that correct yeah what are you doing 20 years old yeah amazing so early did you feel you were prepared to hit the streets you knew you were gonna you obviously you know new york's a dangerous place yeah you're probably not gonna go out and you'll be in one of these really nice areas were you do you feel you're prepared did they prepare you enough for it i guess you're never really prepared you know they they give you very uh by the book teaching in the academy and as soon as you get out on the street you got all the veterans telling you we get that you know basically look like every movie you ever seen about rookies going out into the street forget what you learned in the academy kid uh i didn't have as much culture shock as a lot of guys a lot of guys came from long island and then they got stuck in brooklyn or the bronx and it was a big culture shock to them i grew up in queens one of the five boroughs and uh it was you know right next door to brooklyn i was in brooklyn many times as a teenager go down to clubs or bars so it wasn't too much of a culture shock uh and where we went when we did our probation for the first six months out of the academy they pretty much you weren't too much alone like they i went to the 7-7 precinct which is bed-stuy and when you walked a foot post there was a rookie cop on every corner so as you go out into a regular priest and if you get a football you know you're alone for 10 blocks so it was a big difference but it was you know to give everybody security and make sure you're feeling safe i guess and learn the job i want you to tell i heard a story that you told about when you first became a rookie and you went into the the kind of like the the lunch room or like the place you eat and one of these older like sergeants or whatever comes up to you and asked you for for money and you thought was he kind of like trying to shake me down to sit in here uh tell the story so what happened like i said i worked in a 7-7 priest and i was on utica avenue and they had an annex because the priesthood was pretty large so they had an annex off-site like on the other side of the precinct so we were working out of the annex that day myself and my rookie partner that i went through the academy with we both went to bed-stuy at 7-7 and we're walking foot post and the annex was actually the old 7-7 priesthood station house before they built the new one on unicorn avenue so we go there for our meal and this is i mean old you can walk in as a big old wooden desk old white-haired sergeant with the beard and everything and they actually filmed a few a few scenes see a few scenes from serpaco there so you know it's very cool and interesting to us and as rookies we went into the lounge you get an alpha meal and we sit down and it was a ball game on it was a weekend until you take your gun belt off your jacket and hang it up to relax a little for the hour old timer came to us he goes rookie give me a dollar rookie give me a dollar he's going around the room collecting a dollar from everybody and as a rookie you know we had no idea what this was for we thought maybe you had to pay a dollar for a kitty you know to sit in a lounge that they collected you know whatever coffee cakes in the morning who knows bagels so about we give them a dollar ten minutes go by guy comes back with like six cases of beer plops them down on his floor and now there's also a sergeant in there and the sergeant goes take a beer rookie so he's testing us to see if he can trust us even though we don't really work with him because as rookies we have a completely different different sergeant we don't work for the sergeant from that from the 7-7 the you know it works with the regular officers so i guess he's testing us because we're in his you know this is his spot and as rookies yeah we drink a beer we drink a second beer in an hour the hour's up so our meal i was up we get up we start putting our gear back on and the soldier's like where you going rookie i was like meal i was over boss we're going back out to post and he's like sit down you get more than two beers for a buck all right he's the boss you know what are we gonna tell no no to the boss i'm a 20 year old kid so we sat there for the rest of the tour was probably another four or five hours left in a tour just drinking beers all day so you never reported to the post that day no and once we had we reported in the early section and then once we had meal we never went back down right and was that a normal location and we're reeking of alcohol no one said nothing was that a normal is that normal it was normal back then 1980 you learned pretty quickly and as you alluded to when you came out of the academy it's almost just hey screw what you remember there this is how we [ __ ] do it here exactly that's how it worked right so it was is that the first earliest part you learned where this is how you game the system in a way you know it wasn't so much about gaining a system for myself and my rookie partner it was going to go along to get along basically as you know as kids and you that was also a way of you kind of learning the secrecy of being a cop you know you're not gonna run and and you're gonna do what you're told you're gonna stay in line just like any military system would be and that's that you do what you're told you you maybe do things we're not challenging anybody at that at that point right so your early career is a typical cop you're in a tough neighborhood bedford stuyvesant which is a tough neighborhood as we all know and if you're going to live in new york or not from new york or don't know new york it's very tough was there a place you didn't want to go when you became a cop like gizzle i don't want to go there did you have like a list yeah back back when you're in the academy they pass around a list they call it the dream list and you put down where you want to go so i put down the 105 precinct because that's where i lived that was my neighborhood but you quickly learned that you don't go to where you live because at that time they were worried about if you go where you live you're going to run across people you know and that tends you to you know break the rules for them and corruption now it's sort of the flip politicians want you to work in the priesthood you live because then you'll care about the area more so it's it's twofold you know it can make your way right so tell me when your career takes off you know you're a cop for for a certain period of time you're learning the tr you're you're learning the business you're learning what you do 7-7 is tough you tell me about the the transfer to the 7-5 tell me about how you eventually meet mr dowd michael dowd how's that all work it was it was probably two two maybe three years before i met doubt uh went to the precinct it was you know typical joe cobb go out in the street found the partner hooked up with a veteran he had probably 16 17 years on the job working there his whole career he knew the neighborhood inside and out he actually had an illegal apartment with a girlfriend in the projects and every job we went on this guy knew everybody in the neighborhood they're offering us drinks and you know beers we sit down have dinner with people so again it's that that two-fold thing why you shouldn't work in a precinct where you live because you know everybody and you tend to you know so i was typical joe cobb made my arrest did my thing and uh i got in a little trouble probably two years into the 7-5 i threatened the sergeant to break his finger shove it up his ass because he was disciplining me and the next day i came in they transferred me out i went to the 8-8 for a year and then i came back to the 7-5 you talked about that i i've heard about that you basically uh he was one of these like really by the book cops and you kind of were thinking to yourself this is you know one of the most dangerous posts in the city no one really cares about the way your shoes look or anything like that yeah this guy was just like a stickler for the rules and was that something you know were you were you someone that had always like not challenged authority but um you you know you kind of had a streak to where you're you're not going to be told what to do and it's just not how it works here again not at the beginning at the beginning it was go along to get along but as you're in the 7-5 which was at that time a nightmare you get jaded very quickly and you learned that you know i'm not working midtown manhattan my shoes got to be shine my ties got to be done up to the neck and your sleeves got to be buttoned up so you roll your sleeves up on a hot day you take your tie off to the side your shoes might get dirty every five minutes because you're walking through an empty lot with bricks and building debris you're going into abandoned buildings it's not the same as manhattan yeah you're in the belly of the beast yeah the things you gotta do to survive he was a rookie he was a rookie sergeant he just made the list and he was trying to go buy the book that's what it was and at the end of the day he had followed us to a couple of jobs and he was telling us hey i just told you to do your time why is your tie off again why are your shoes dirty it's like you know i'm getting a job after job after job you want me to take a break to go shy my shoes and they're going to get dirty on the next job again it's not going to happen so he was yelling at me at the end of tour when we were ready to go home and as he's yelling i mean like yelling and there's two tours one tour going in one tour going out just like 80 cops milling around you know getting their cars and their radios and all that and as he's yelling at me he's pointing his finger at me like he's you know a teacher disciplining a little kid and i was like i could hear you flying without you jabbing your finger at me and he's like i'll jab my finger at whoever i want i said do it again i'll break it off and shove it up your ass and his mouth dropped open and he just walked away and i signed out i went home i came in the next day obviously he made a complaint and the ceo had me transferred out i was like one of those uh you know stripe kind of guys exactly he was a new sergeant so he was trying to you know show his authority absolutely i want to ask you about the neighborhood you're policing in you know east new york bed stuy you would agree that um you know there are two worlds in this country okay the ones that most of us live in and there's a different level of another sub-world where you know certain places live a completely different life than we do there's codes there's things that you do there's things you don't do there's a different level of politics in those sorts of places how did you learn those sorts of things is it just being partnered with the right people how did that work just by experiencing you know the more you did you you quickly and in a place like the 7-5 you learn quick if i was working in queens i might handle five five to ten jobs a night in a seven or five on a 4-12 tour they were handling 25 jobs a night so you're learning at an advanced pace it's almost like if you're related to poker guys in the back in the 70s they played hand by hand so it took a lot longer now with poker apps they're playing you know a hundred times the amount of hands in the same time it took to play a couple of hands live right so you learn at an advance rate right gotcha so you eventually you know you go to the 80 what's the 88th that's cone or where is that yeah it was a nice place it was uh right i forgot what street it was but it was right by pratt college downtown brooklyn oh like brooklyn okay so kind of a yuppie type of place exactly um did you let me ask you by this point did you like you enjoyed working where the action was right or no you wanted to be down in those places uh at that by that point when i got kicked out i i enjoyed it because i was you know in with a good click of cops and was very close to my house it's only you know 15-minute drive down down the belt parkway it was real close and uh you know it would have been nice to maybe go to a detail or a slower precinct at some point but i wasn't ready at that at that time so eventually you go back to the 7-5 you go to the 7-5 right tell me about that experience initially going back to 7-5 was uh first of all it was a shock i didn't think i was going to go back my first day in the 8-8 i sort of like had that [ __ ] you attitude so i put in a it's called a 57 i put a transfer to go back 275 not thinking it would ever be on it just to say like you know screw you and i'll show you and a year later they honored it so i didn't expect to go back to the 7-5 but i ended up going back and uh you know i knew everybody there so it was very easy transition and they gave me a choice of squads roll call gave me a choice of squads who i wanted to work with and i started working with you know guys i used to know so i was endowed yet how does that happen michael dowd did you know about him did you know the kind of cop he was uh what were your kind of thoughts and what did you hear about him as soon as i came back to 7-5 it was roll call and at that time civilians worked well we're all called paas and the guy warned me goes stay away from this squad which is the squad dad was in and all the cops in that squad they were known to be corrupt and out there you know doing their own thing so i picked another squad where i knew a bunch of guys i started working with them and eventually the cop i was working with this is another whole story he ended up getting it right he was in a shooting there was a guy came out robbed the robber bodega came out with a gun and my partner happened to be he wasn't my partner at the time but he was on a foot post and he got into shooting and he shot the guy bosses came down they shook his hand gave him medals for you know great job justified shooting about four months later they put him in a car and we hook up his partners they got him off the foot post you know i guess to reward him for you know justified shooting we're working together maybe six months hey there must have been some election in brooklyn ada got elected they thought it'd be a good time to arrest the cop you know and they came down and they arrested them they pulled them off the job they suspended them and uh i had now i have an open seat in my car and doubt at the same time had come back from coney island because he was sent there as a disciplinary problem and when he came back we started riding together and that's how i hooked up with doubt does it kind of work and i kind of relate it to a recent series i watched i've done a show on it these baltimore cops baltimore task force which i ask you about later but they talk about in baltimore city at the time and really forever if you were making arrests it really didn't matter what disciplinary problems you had um they were just gonna let you kind of do what you wanted to do now you're saying so that was a disciplinary problem but was he a good cop was he making arrests was that was that something that was important to the brass at the time he might have had a couple of arrests rookie as far as long as i know him he didn't make one arrest so it was basically he joined the police department in essence probably to just do what he had to do that kind of way well from what i've heard he he was a criminal prior to coming on the job somehow he got through the investigation and and he passed and he got on the job and he just continued those activities um so would you stay looking as far as i'm excusing you for making an arrest if you're you know doing the wrong thing yeah that might have been the situation in baltimore i know that's what they said you make arrests they'll ignore things the reason they were ignoring so much in the 7-5 is the 7-7 where i was working a year prior there were 13 cops arrested for corruption so the abortions and the politicians did not want another scandal in the 7-5 right so they had already been kind of hit on the rack a couple of times you knew what not to do weren't they uh in essence like going to like the fire departments and taking uh like ladders and all sorts of different [ __ ] to god yeah the guys in 7-7 yeah they were breaking into i mean we basically did the same thing we didn't grab ladders from the fire department they busted into crack houses and you know steal the drugs and money and then the guy that's in the trap house they would you know give him a kick in the ass get the [ __ ] out of here you know what is he gonna do report i was working in a in a crack house right so let me ask you in general around that time you know around all that stuff happening in the 7-7 and all that sort of thing was the corruptness pervasive throughout the park department let's just say you have 10 cops and they go into a drug house and there's money how many of the ten are going to take money at that time is that a pervasive problem to be honest i wasn't even aware of it i was i was very i don't know if i was naive or just oblivious to the whole thing or just i was you know doing what i thought a cop is supposed to do and which is obviously not stealing and corruption until and i don't want to say i know people accuse me saying that doubt i'm saying doubt made me do these things that didn't make me do these things but he opened my eyes to them and it just taught me a different way of doing things and then eventually greed takes over so i don't can't say how many guys were doing it prior obviously there was a whole crew on um on dowd's uh doubt shift that was doing it and a lot of them quit and left the department outright a few of them got arrested um he gambled you know he rolled the dice that the department didn't want another scandal and he stayed on the job so you eventually become partners with mr dowd i'm sure you were initially a little kind of worried you don't really know you've heard things about this guy you you talked about in the film um that the first time you you guys did what you had to do you were on the take that that was quickly though right you kind of decided within like a month you were going to kind of do what pretty much it was probably notice that everyone was doing no one's going to miss it these are drug dealers who cares you go into a place tell me about that first kind of time you did it with doubt well the first time i was exposed to it with him is is totally opposite than the first time we did it together the first time i was exposed to we had a call for a burglary was in the afternoon a young girl just got home from school and her front door was broken open so we were actually the backup team but he saw an opportunity to grab money and then expose me to it and you know he can't make real money until he exposes me to it because he doesn't know obviously if he can trust me or not because he doesn't know if i ever did anything so we get to the joint and we go through the whole place we don't see any burglars and he asks the young girls like do your money ha does your mother have money or valuables anywhere and she's like i'm not sure let me call her and she calls her mother at work and the mother says oh yeah it's up in my bedroom closet yeah please check make sure they didn't grab it so he as she tells us to us dowd instantly goes to the closet and he starts feeling around on the top shelf and i'm not really watching him because i'm not thinking that he's going to steal anything i'm not exposed to that yet i'm not in that mind frame and he grabs it and pockets you know whatever how much cash he had i think it turned out to be 800 dollars and uh he goes to the girl nope there's nothing here they must have got it so i don't think nothing i'm thinking oh yeah okay i guess they got it and we go downstairs we're gonna write a report and then the uh sector that got the call for it shows up on the scene so they go oh we'll take the report no worries and me and him leave as we drive away he fishes around in his pocket and he pulls out a hundred dollar bill and he hands it to me he goes here this is for you and i'm i'm looking at him like what's this because i it still didn't click to me he goes you didn't even see me take it did you and he was like proud that i didn't see him i was like no and you know now i'm at a crossroads do i take the money and not say nothing take the money and report him or not take the money and be aware of it and i'm just as guilty so every situation and at the sperm you know this is instantaneously you got to make a decision so i took it and you know i i obviously don't want to cut my own throat in the department so i took the money and then as more time goes on now he's explaining to me how much money is in his precinct and raiding you know crack houses and drug locations where you could grab more money so you realize hey i'm only making how much do you make in a year at that point you know when i was a rookie it was 19 000 a year when i got hired which is ridiculous by that time i was on seven years so probably 30 000 something still not that much yeah nothing you know to risk your life every day right and that's always what i find fascinating about people that join the police department obviously it's a noble profession and it's a a devoted thing but it's you're not making any money i mean you're risking your life every day in some of the most dangerous places on earth and you're making a certain amount of money so when you come across a suspect who's cutting the corners not working doing something illegal you could take a little off the top who's gonna miss it how did you feel at that moment when you took the hundred did you feel empowered do you feel like you know what [ __ ] this i'm gonna do what i gotta do i'm risking my life here i gotta take a little off the top i gotta do what i gotta do at that at that instant of of the hundred dollars i didn't think anything my head was too clouded with all the different directions it was going as we got into it yeah i mean you come across a job and you'll you know see 50 000 in cash and 10 kilos of coke who's going to report if you take it off the top not the guy that you're letting go because we didn't arrest them we would let them go so it's like who's he going to go completely exactly if he gets arrested he loses all his [ __ ] if we don't arrest him and take a little oh thank you officer and he can continue on his way on his day so you know and greed takes over and to try i try to explain it to civilians that say you know why would you ever do that imagine you're driving behind a brink's truck as a civilian doors bust off and a couple of bags fall out are you gonna take the bags or not take the bags and you're the only one that sees it yeah there's plenty of videos up on youtube where brinks trucks have broken open and people have dash cam cameras and you see people in a frenzy it's like there's you know sharks in a blood frenzy grabbing all the money but it's almost even like just walking down the street you go past like a little wooded lot and you see a bag of 20 000 exactly you know there's been times yeah plenty of times in miami [ __ ] washes up on a beach some type of drug deal gone bad and the money gets left behind because everyone flees that all disappears right and you're someone that you know you're again in the belly of the beast you're seeing it's not like the people that are doing this stuff for little old ladies that are down to their last three or four thousand dollars right it's these are people that are cutting core you know cutting the the you know corners they're doing what they have to do and they're polluting the streets with narcotics um so eventually you and dowd start doing this on a regular basis let me ask you if you remember i don't know if you do but what was the most you ever took or saw with your own eyes a lot a truckload let's put it like that i don't want to give you a number uh you know it got crazy once we hooked up with the drug organizations and we started working for them that's when [ __ ] really got out again it's one thing to run across something randomly when you're on a call and you walk into the joint and yeah that's what i meant you sort of know when a call comes over the radio you learn to read the calls like hey that's a drug location or that's not a normal location for a shooting it's probably over drugs and money so you race there if you get there first you get to fill your pockets yeah you knew pretty quick so eventually you kind of graduate if you will okay you're making money just stealing off the top doing what you have to do during a rest you would eventually meet a person called baron perez baron perez is this car stereo salesman he has this place that he does what he does you talk pretty openly about you and michael about the wife of him beautiful woman tell me about her first of all what was she like her name well there's also a cop in a documentary named chicky yep baron's wife was also named chicky but it was i.e instead of y right so anyway very super attractive uh hispanic woman puerto rican woman um well we're both you know very attracted to her she's a super attractive girl so he pulled over and to you know catch a rap with her and she runs inside because baron's already a little shady doing shady [ __ ] so she runs inside hey there's two cops outside so he came running out so what did you know about baron did you know anything about him you knew the kind of guy he was really nothing at the time other than he was you know he was a partner in a auto auto repair shop not an auto repair uh stereo repair shop so uh you learn as a cop to get favors from business people like if we knew i knew a lot of uh mechanics that owned garages you have your car breaks down you drop off your car they'll repair your car for free you know your personal car uh old daguran owners free cigarettes free booze free soda free lunches all that type of stuff so as the owner of a stereo shop well let's see you know what type of relationship we could build with him and the people that own businesses do that because the more cops that show up at their legit businesses or in this case baron was not legit it's a free security for them it's way cheaper than them higher security you give away you know a couple of hundred thousand free stereos to a cop that's a lot cheaper than you know going out and having a security system having private security paying them all the time because the cops will you know be prone to come back and then the neighborhood the robbers the bad guys realize hey cop's freaking with this location you can't rob it so you were contracted initially to do security in a way you find out that baron prez is basically a front it's not really i mean it is cars shop but yeah he's doing a legit business but with illegitimate people that are bringing in tons of cash right so you first acted as almost security for him he was paying you how much like a certain amount per week baron dude enough baron paid us nothing he put free alarms and free stereos you know yeah it was just like a con okay yeah so it was it was a win-win situation as we got to know each other better and trust each other he's you know said i know some drug dealers and it was obviously we knew he knew drug deals because he's seen all the cars going and out but uh he goes maybe we can make some money off this and he introduced us to a drug dealer and before you knew it you're making eight thousand dollars a week cash and that's when you meet a fairly interesting character from the documentary i think one of the most you know besides you one of the more interesting people on that documentary this guy adam diaz this you know kind of you know got this wild accent just a really kind of a charming guy i felt like i felt like he was charming uh definitely someone with a lot of uh you know kind of a you seem to get ability seem like a smart guy you meet this guy adam diaz who's running this multi-million dollar drug empire in east new york um and and baron kind of makes this meeting what's the first thing adam diaz says to you do you remember that i don't remember exactly the first thing it was more dad was doing all the talking you know we met at baron shop baron made a couple of quick introductions and you know this is adam this is you know kenny and mike and then mike just went off into his field you know we could do all this for you and it was twenty four thousand dollars and again i got a little ocd i don't know if you got that from the documentary yes i remember yeah i i was like too much 25 right yeah why not 25 why 8 000 a week why not 10 000 a week it's just round numbers seem to work better when you have ocd so uh anyway it was 24 thousand dollars for him to meet us and trust us so uh they came in he came in we got the 24 grand it was eight grand a week after that and it was every week on time was eight thousand dollars in cash waiting for us at baron shop and kind of tell people what was your role okay what was what was that money for was that just for okay it was to let diaz know when narcotics was in the area close close to his well he had multiple locations close to his locations hey shut down that location and he had a beeper we set up deeper codes for him you know if we beat you number one shut down the first score two another three whatever we'll be we'll beat you when you reopen it things like that uh and then you know we basically became his brinks truck we would move drugs and money around for him you know not physically but as a ride-along so no one would rob him on the way he would tell us of uh his rival rival competition and we would put in narcotics reports some narcotics would go and hit them and he would get a stronghold in the neighborhood so let's take an inventory so you've you've stolen from jobs which you know is somewhat i mean it's obviously illegal but it's something a lot of people were probably doing but now you're starting to actively betray the badge and you're giving criminals intelligence that is not meant for them uh you're protecting yeah you're protecting people that are are multi-million dollar drug dealers i've heard a lot about la obviously you hear from you know this area la compania people like that um incredibly vicious individuals this was a different group though right this wasn't like the company it was actually the first group we worked with we tried to do the same deal we did with adam it was supposed to be eight grand a week and the guy showed us he gave us like 7 400 so i don't know if his bag man grabbed some hundred a couple of dollars out of it or or baron greg but when we got it it was short and we and you know ended the whole deal with them right away and then we ended up meeting diaz and from what diaz has discussed he was significantly a larger drug trafficker than than those folks is that fair to say the diaz dealt in kilos where the other group would you know break down the kilos and sell you know uh eight balls you know dime bags ounces how many kilos ounces do you know i'm sorry how many kilos is he kind of dealing with 20 30 40. it's hard i mean the documentary puts a number out there that he was selling 300 kilos a week it sounds a little exaggerated to me so but even a hundred i mean that's that means absolutely he was doing big business again he had three locations so right so so you're so as we take the inventory so you're starting to kind of do more and more bad and worse things but by this point you're just it's just part of the job i'm making tons of money so you're making what you know 8k a week that's you know are you splitting it completely in half 4-4 yeah we're doing 4-4 and then we cut in baron we gave baron 500 each so we're actually taking home 3 500 each but still on top of that's more than you're making way more that's more than we made in a month how did you and did you have michael sit down and say listen um we we have to like buy you know if you buy things in cash never put this like did you have that kind of yeah we had the discussion but it didn't matter that was falling on deaf ears right yeah if it fell on deaf ears i mean try to hide it a little better than than he did he didn't want to he was he was brazing i mean that's why he all his original crew quit when the 7-7 went down he's like [ __ ] out and rolled the dice now i'm in it and he's the same way he's just brazen he didn't care what anyone thought anyone else you know i'm sure you know and whoever seen the documentary knows what he did and listen we keep referencing the documentary every single individual that watches this video look ken we do a lot of views on this channel listen every person who watches this needs to go watch the documentary if you haven't you're crazy if you haven't but you know we're just kind of touching the the outer surfaces a lot of this stuff um i do want to bring up one story and you you your wife talked about this um you know everyone involved talked about this there was a situation where at one point michael dowd buys a corvette with some of his ill-gotten gains uh you you basically told them hey listen idiot don't drive this i don't know why you bought it in general but do not drive this to the precinct and like within a day he drives to the precinct yeah yeah i didn't know he was blind at him his wife was split up for a little bit and when his wife came back i guess you know as a you know present to themselves he went out to buy a brand new 1987 corvette red with a white top by convertible top and he actually went to the dealership with cash for the entire car which was like 37 000 and they had to tell him whoa anything over 10 we got a report to the irs so he left i think like 9 500 whatever it was and then made multiple payments but the day he bought it the first place he after leaving the dealership he came to was my house and he pulls in the driveway with a brand new red corvette i'm like what the [ __ ] you doing man we can't afford a brand new red corvette don't please you already got it don't take this car to [ __ ] work i would never take it to work [ __ ] next day you took it at work not only did he take it to work he parked it in a sergeant spot blocking the sergeant from parking his own personal car i mean come on man just completely brazen he just didn't care and then you know as with within a week he's [ __ ] on the side of the precinct on the way home doing burnouts smoking up the [ __ ] tires and everyone's looking at me he's like what the [ __ ] is wrong with your partner what are you doing leaving me to explain ah man that's mike i don't know so it was a you were a thing in your head probably this was a matter of not if but when absolutely this guy was going to do something [ __ ] stupid now let me ask you i'm curious about your um the rest of the the precinct you know the rest of the co-workers that you have because as we know cops have camaraderie they're all very close you know they have softball leagues and all this stuff what is the tenor of the people around you you know like do they do they kind of know what you're up to is this a lot a large percentage much like before i hooked up with him i think was just oblivious to the things that were going on there was a good handful that they were doing a corrupt thing grabbing money off a job or whatever i don't know how extensive they got they didn't get nowhere near what we were doing but once he started driving that red corvette to work i mean everybody was like you might as well hang a [ __ ] sign around your neck i'm corrupt so at what point um do you get to the point where you start moving narcotics for me that happened after i retired dad and i ended up going separate ways he goes off to another precinct i end up retiring and i didn't see him for probably a good year how long did you have on the job yeah just under 10 years like nine nine years and 11 months tell me why you're retiring uh what happened was i was after dad was gone i was working a sector call with her another cop and uh was we're doing four to twelve it was coming up to the end of the night and the end of night we just take a tour around the precinct you know just make sure everything's secure nobody's breaking into any businesses and everything and we're coming up fountain avenue and then the intersection is lyndon boulevard london boulevard is um six lane highway three lanes going east three lanes going west and then a service road for each so it's actually eight lanes so as we pull up to the intersection we're waiting at the light here comes a camaro it was a late mount late model camaro at that time probably like a 87 88 camaro this is in 1988 so it was pretty new um comes flying through the intersection but he's only on three ties in one rim so [ __ ] sparks and it's 11 30 at night so you see the sparks it's not like it's hitting so we look at each other's like we got to pull him over so you don't kill nobody you know so we go up behind him hit the lights and instantly usually when you hit the lights and somebody's dirty they flee everyone sees youtube videos cop chasing people and he starts weaving in and out of blocks you know these little side streets and at that time it was uh they were doing a lot of rebuilding revitalization in the neighborhood so there's a lot of tearing down the old brownstones and putting up uh like uh new construction for homes so there's a lot of construction sites he made the uh turn on the corner and must have hit some loose sand lost control hit a telephone pole as soon as he hits the pole door flies open and just like in a movie the perp gets out starts running i jump out of the car i start chasing him my partner takes the patrol car and he circles around the block because the guy goes into a backyard thinking he's going to come out the other side of the block i chase him into the backyard and there's a big stockade fence eight foot stockade fence six foots cave fence and he couldn't get over it usually when you trap somebody they're like exhausted they give up and you know put your hands behind your back you throw them up against the fence or the wall whatever it is and you cuff them this kid wasn't ready to give up so white kid from long island came in to buy more angel dust he already was high as [ __ ] kite and he turns around and he jumps two hands onto my holster and he's trying to yank my gun out so instinctively i put my two hands over his hands holding his hands down so he can't get my gun out we're tussling around and back in brooklyn there's stairways going down to basements we both lose balance we go down the stairway i put my hand out to brace my fall my hand goes all the way back i tear up the ligaments and the tendons he goes off running i put over the radio the purpose you know running down whatever block it was uh northbound and a couple of cops pulled up they caught him and he ended up going to the hospital and i ended up going to a different hospital and they kicked me off the job you know anytime you almost i would say 99 of the time you injure any of your fingers that you control your weapon with or your hand your wrist you break your hand tendons you can't get back to 100 they retire you because god forbid you go back out on the street and then there's a bad shooting or you know now your weapon's taken and they research your medical history hey he's not a hundred percent he had an injury or else through the department for millions of dollars so it's easier to give me a cheap retirement right i'm not going to compare you to a horse but like if a horse is racing and something little happens exactly they retire them yeah they get them retired absolutely so you're faced with kind of a where do i go from here kind of thing did you what did you consider doing did you consider like security or because at one point you had you've talked about at one point you did security a side gig doing security right yeah before i hooked up with that i was doing uh so i it was you know back at that time was very lucrative it was 50 an hour which was you know decent in 1985 86. and it was a high in security it wasn't like you know working in a grocery store in the back watching all the window cameras back then but watching shoplifters it was uh we worked the metropolitan opera we worked the russian ballet we worked the robin williams special back in 1986 so we were you know making decent money and uh eventually i hooked up with dad and i was like oh why am i working for 50 an hour i'm making eight grand a week so looking back uh wasn't so bad was it yeah it should have stayed with that fifty dollars an hour is still good now oh yeah no especially as a side thing um on top of what you're doing so you only did 10. you didn't you weren't available for a pension right i was available for a pension because at that point i wasn't caught doing anything corrupt that's true when you go into had put me on medical leave for a year and it's not medical leave you're sitting at home it's light duty they take your weapons away and you sit at a security desk so that's what i did for a year and after a year there was they sent me to three different orthopedics and they said look he's never going to be 100 and then you go in front of a police department medical board and they review all your medical records and they recommend you for retirement so i retired and that was it i was off the job i was 29 years old so you're thinking wow i'm i'm it's not like i'm 49 or 59 i'm 29. uh bro i was happy to be off the police department with all the [ __ ] i was involved in just happy to get off clean so you were just like okay i did all that [ __ ] now i'll just do something exactly did you have an idea of what you wanted to do what what made you uh or what made the contact come back with mr dowd what basically happened i just became mr mom and my wife went back to work and uh eventually with about a year went by i hadn't seen doubt anymore because he's working in a different precinct and there's really no reason for me to see him anymore so uh two other cops his or her gets real messy two other cops come to me knew what i used to do with doubt all the corruption and one of the cops used to be a cocaine dealer before he became a cop which shows you how shitty the investigations are into your background when you get on the job right so uh he wanted to get back into selling coke so he knew i had connections through dow to sell coke they come to me can you pick us up a piece and uh you know maybe become our partner because they didn't want to interact with that they wanted to go through me because they trusted me they never worked with that so i call up dad now i'm sitting at home in my long island house i don't have to do nothing i call up doubt i go hey pick me up a big a big 825 grams give him the money for it he picks it up in brooklyn brings it home drops it off at my house i don't have to do anything now the other guys come by pick up the piece and i make you know a commission on it eventually i realize i'm getting pure cocaine from doubt it's it's coming right off the key you know he's still picking up from diaz eventually got arrested he was picking up from another dealer and it's pure cocaine so i'm getting pure cocaine i'm like why am i giving these idiots on long island these other two cops pure cocaine so i saw whacking it i take half of the pure and give them the other half pure and then i whack it with inositol and give them a mix and now i have a whole big eight that i got for free because they're paying for it because i'm mixing it and then i you know there's a lot of casual drug users at that time and you know you get a reputation you become a drug dealer how long did that go on for that went off for a good two years making more on that than i made with doubt off of diaz now obviously i want people to go check out the film if they have and i want people to go read your book which we'll talk about at the end so we're not going to get into every single thing you did but you know how does all this end for you you know how does this shake out you're making more money than you ever have you're retired you have nothing else you're doing you're making big money by the way i wanted to ask you before we answer that question what kind of things during all this you're making a good amount of money per week you know way more than your counterparts are making what kind of things are you buying with this because obviously you're a smart guy you know that i can't go out like if we we liken it back to the mob we look at goodfellas right when they do the big lufthansa score people are buying cars and mint codes you knew that that wasn't going to be a way out so what kind of things are you purchasing you're doing like you need a new oven you buy the oven with cash for me it was pretty simple was you take your paycheck and at that time there's no direct deposit so you got your paycheck you put your paycheck in your checking account and you pay your mortgage your utilities where you could show where your paycheck is going right the cash items are things they're not going to track you buy furniture all your food you're buying cash you don't pay by credit card so basically it's you know it was pretty simple to hide it and then of course you make it so much you gotta stash a lot away so that's sometimes the thing about making money illegally it's it's pretty easy to make it as you know but spending it is very difficult as many criminals now you can't just go out at least smart people you can't just go out you have to start to you know kind of show where you're getting it from so exactly how does all this end for you what's the do you get any sense that hey wow i've went from maybe taking a little money on the job too yeah i'm a you know in all assets a drug trafficker came straight out ended up being yeah i ended up being a drug dealer uh did you have any shame okay at that point i'm sorry what did you have any shame at all did you think in your head like what am i doing here oh absolutely yeah yeah i mean i i stopped at the end when we ended up getting busted i was out of it i wasn't doing nothing when they raided my home there was nothing there so uh what happened i was you know you justify things in your mind selling to casual users you know you're not on the corner selling to little school kids you're selling to adults that are casual weekend users but as you gain a reputation now i have dealers coming to me so i had like four or five deals working for me so instead of selling a gram or you know a small eight poll to the cash user now i'm selling to dealers who are buying an ounce from me they're buying a big eight from me so i'm moving more product and one of those dealers ended up selling to her undercover cop they tapped his phone and from his phone it just spider webbed out into everybody else did you have um did you have a strategy of like i i know most people don't do this but you obviously know when you're committing crimes and at some point you know it's pretty likely i'm gonna get caught did you think about that day did you have an idea of what i'm what am i gonna do when all the shoe comes down because you already know and like dad was doing [ __ ] he probably shouldn't be doing and buying stuff he shouldn't and eventually he was kind of a loose cannon was gonna get you caught you knew that you had people under you that likely if they were caught it's all going to go up and they're just going to you know talk about you did you have an idea of of hey this is what i'm going to do when this happens my my exit plan was in fact when my house was raided and i was arrested my house was up for sale my exit plan was come to florida and eventually i got here not the way i wanted to get here but that was my exit plans come down to florida get the [ __ ] away from all everything i was doing everything i was involved in did you your wife knew the scope of what you were up to right did she she she was pretty open like she knew what was going on she was definitely well she wasn't so much aware of what i was doing when i was a cop because i wouldn't tell her things she was aware money was coming in not really how i was getting it once i started selling drugs at home she was totally aware of that and 100 against it just stop stop stop you can't be bringing this in the house what are you doing you know you're gonna get busted and you know you get that arrogance about you it's like i know what i'm doing i'm not going to get busted you know i was running the plates of every time i got a new user or a new dealer i would run his play to run his name because i had connections in the police department to make sure they were were not cops you know they weren't undercover and eventually the kid who got caught i told him please you got any new customers give me their information and i'll check them out first he got the guys that undercover his information but he sold to him before he gave me the information so when i ran the guy's information i found out he's an undercover cop so i put my exit plan into strategy you know and uh everything was out of my house my house was up for sale i'm trying to get out before it's all over but by the time he told me he sold to the guy they already got taps on everyone's phone that's always the problem with uh ken with with people that do crimes they always involve too many people right some people don't just say you know if if a criminal could just do things on his own right it could run his own thing he never had to deal with anyone else yeah yeah always trust yourself right and let's say maybe one or two people that are very close to you which you generally can trust but so i want to i want to ask you about the day you got pinched ultimately is it similar to where they come at five in the morning and kick your door and how does it work it was it was at night yeah for us it was that night they hit everybody's location at the same doubt was working his with his partner they went to the precinct he was working in i was the nine-four precinct he was working in at that time they called they called them in they grabbed them cuffed them up they tell them you're being arrested for a drug conspiracy out on long island the other two cops that initially brought me into the drug transaction after i retired they they were up at the range in the bronx uh internal affairs went there locked them up brought them out to long island for me and they graded everybody's house they raided dowd's house they raided his partner's house they raided uh my house and they raided all the dealers houses that got caught in this wiretap so what for me i wasn't at home when the raids went down the raids were like 10 o'clock at night i went out to one of my dealer's houses to pick up money to kid with me money i was trying to get all my money and get out and when i was there for maybe five minutes and suffolk county slammed the door you know just like on tv they come rushing in i was like that's it it's over game is over come on instantly put my for initially i thought we were getting robbed i thought there was somebody coming in robbing us and then you know you see the police shields and everything that's it so they take you down what do they say to you right away they really didn't say say much of any they separated me from from the kid with the wiretap because i think they had arrested the kid with the y tap and he ended up cooperating and that's how they got everybody else but uh we all go down to it was riverhead suffolk county riverhead and at first i thought i was only being arrested for being in a drug dealer's home and then eventually all the cops started coming in because they're coming from you know brooklyn precincts so it was a longer longer a trip outfit to riverhead for them and when they start coming in now you know my wheels start spinning i realized this is a lot bigger than i thought it was so so then they start throwing out you know you you start to kind of realize okay this isn't just something that i'm doing this is more than a simple drug drug dealing on long island this is involving all the cops i'm involved with and you're facing you know probably i mean they give you numbers right 25 to life we were facing yeah they're giving you football numbers okay so at a certain point did you ever get to the point where you said because some people will say this this is it i'll go to jail that's that that's exactly what it was i you know i told my wife look and you know divorce me leave me and you know move on with your life because i'm facing 25 to life she says oh no no wherever you go i'm going to follow you i don't care if i got to live in a trailer or a dumpster i want to be close to you which was you know wonderful she was a great woman and uh we were in for like two or three weeks because the bell was so high was a cash bail finally made bail and i'm talking with my lawyer i had a very good lawyer it was uh his name was marty effman he was eric nyberg's partner eric nyberg is the lawyer who defended amy fischer the long island low leader who happened to be arrested two weeks after me so we were both in the office at the same time and uh he tells me look they don't want to go to trial with this they're just making a big deal about it in the paper they'll probably offer you a plea deal eight to ten years take that you young guy take the eight to ten years and you know you'll be out when you're forty i was thirty two at the time 31 32. so uh that's what i was planning to do down didn't want that plan he didn't like that plan he's like i'm not doing 25 years you know where did you get eight to ten my lawyer didn't tell me that i was like well sit down with your lawyer see what he says and as time went on he comes to me with a plan to hit a stash house in queens with he had three he had multiple houses so one of the houses he was renting out to three colombians and they obviously knew he was arrested because we were in every paper we were on the news every night and they went to him with this plan to hit a stash house and so he's like just completely his partner he came to me with the plan he's just a complete lunatic criminal like he doesn't care like he he's already thinking about the next score he doesn't even care about what he's gonna say do you do you kind of think yourself i'm never gonna get through to this [ __ ] guy like i just i gotta do what i gotta do you know i tried i tried for a good two three weeks oh we're not doing this i'm absolutely not doing this and then in those two or three weeks the feds now we were dealing with suffolk county now the federal government had a uh an investigation on us going back to 1988 this is 1992 now so they contact my lawyer and when they contact my lawyer to come in and you know do a profit session with them i told dowd i go bro feds are looking at what at us they want my lawyer and me to come in and sit with them he was like what do they want i don't know yet but i'll let you know when i get back so they were going in i go and sit down with the feds and they start peppering me with questions that they should have had no idea about so i know there's other people already cooperating diaz was arrested in 88 his lieutenant was arrested i was worried about dowd's current partner because his current partner was doing the same [ __ ] with him in 1992 that i did with him back in 1987 and he knew everything i was involved with so everything they were questioning me with there was only a handful of people that should have known it so somebody was talking somewhere so when i left that profit session i i'm not doing nothing me and my lawyer walked out after like 20 minutes 15 minutes when i got home donna's sitting on my stoop he's like what happened what happened we go inside sitting in my kitchen table it's like bro somebody's [ __ ] talking somebody knows something we need to make our best deal possible and he took his fists pounded it on my kitchen table he goes that's all the more reason we need to do this thing talking about that hit on the stash house and it wasn't only a hit honest house his plan was after we hit the place to take off families and go live in nicaragua i was like [ __ ] are you out of your mind i'm not doing i'm not taking my wife and my kids to nicaragua it's not happening we're not doing this and he was adamant man right so what happens is i went back a second time to the federal government i didn't tell him i went back a second time and at that time they give you another prophet sessions called queen for a day you tell them about every crime you were ever involved in and they won't use it against you and but you've got to be completely honest if they catch you in a lie the deal is off and you get prosecuted for everything so i went and i was completely honest and at the end of this whole i told my whole criminal history i told him oh yeah by the way dowd came to me with a plan to hit a stash house and kidnap a woman that lived in there and their [ __ ] mouths just dropped off and like are you [ __ ] kidding me and then that's the whole thing comes down they want me to go back out find out more information about it where a wire was you know it became a lot more involved than i expected it to be when i started cooperating so were the feds looking to like supersede this indictment and take it over and kind of run all this together and they took the whole suffolk county case and rolled it into a ricoh charge right so i got hit with rico right so you're you know this is this goes from being like a an eight you know peace kind of sentence little drug thing to this is a massive criminal indictment yeah and they've gone back years they're going back all the way back and you knew that there were people that were already talking anyway and it was obvious okay so as we know you know this all kind of ends by you uh you kind of get down involved in this thing or he get you involved you kind of wire up do your thing um and to this day dowd you know says things about you you say things back about him you ultimately didn't serve any prison time for this um michael dowd did um let me ask you when you think back to the eight to ten years or whatever you know if if you could have been dealing with a normal thinking individual what would a point we would have went off to jail hand in hand we would we would have been partners in a [ __ ] prison cell but he did not want that he and he says in the documentary in my mind i got to figure out a way around this i got to get around it and his way around it was you know this stash house plan and skipping the country did you ever think the nicaragua thing did you ever think yourself at any point like maybe we could actually do that you know like did you ever never never worked when he initially told us he he said it to myself my wife and his wife the four of us went out to dinner while we were out on bail and the three of us [ __ ] looked at him like are you out of your [ __ ] mind and he was your wife came right out and said i'm not going to nicaragua yeah that's all right yeah it's kind of a wild and you know i'm a typical new yorker i've never been to the empire state building i've never been to you know the statue of liberty i live in my own little world i don't even know where nicaragua was i'm like how do we even get there he's like oh you drive straight down through central america oh really okay i i guess it is a plan it's it's an elaborate one but uh it wouldn't be easy to do they weren't gonna track us down you know put us on america's most wanted right and by this point your national news right your news every night every night we're on the news so ultimately uh michael dowd um got 16 years in federal prison served about 12. you know you moved on with your life you know you've obviously were approached to do this film you know i've heard i heard a story you did a show many years ago with artie lang which is pretty pretty cool in its own right and you talked about you actually shopped this to the idea to many people and ultimately it was made in you actually mentioned you shopped the show to jd is that true from the stern show is that what happened was when i was on that medical leave and i was working the security desk yeah all the things i had done i knew i was i was it was a movie in my head so i just started writing down all my exploits i was going to write a book or a screenplay and luckily when these morons raided my house all that it was basically would have amounted to a confession because it was all my exploits in criminal activity right written down on you know sheets of loose leaf paper in my bedroom and they're just going through [ __ ] so they found paper and they just threw it up in the air not realizing what it was so uh i started writing what ultimately became betrayal and blue prior to my retirement prior to my arrest and then uh once i was uh you know once everything was over and we came down to florida i completed the whole thing wrote the whole thing out and i started trying to shop it i was writing you know uh publishers and uh they just they didn't want to know nothing about it by the time i was done it was like six seven years later and like oh that's old news we don't want to know nothing about it that was basically the responses i got from them and then i also i did i wrote jd because uh howard was talking to him one day about he wanted to be a uh a director or of you know producing films and all that just ah [ __ ] why not no all right jd and the only reason i wrote jd is because i know how it is going to promote anything that jd does so i figured you know that would have been a good idea yeah it would have been a good connection it's wonder it's a wonder looking back uh it's too bad jd never responded or or did what he should have did because it ended up turning into a an absolutely terrific documentary uh it came out in 2014. like i said i think one of the better documentaries i've ever seen not just criminal documentaries it's terrific stuff it features you features doubt it features diaz all the players um i i did want to ask um whatever happened to baron perez uh he was when the federal indictments came down he was rearrested he ended up going along with everybody else that was the only one who didn't get it he tried to make a deal they caught him in multiple lives because everybody else that cooperated told the truth so everybody's stories all corroborated each other and his story was totally different so hold on a second that's interesting so you're saying in a grand scheme of things you're saying that michael dowd has often since then tried to throw these stories out that everybody's bad that was involved with this because they did stuff with the government and i didn't so you're alluding to the fact that michael doubt attempted to cooperate and the government wouldn't accept him he sat down he sat down with the southern district same same people i sat down with there was a he had a prophet session just like i did and they found him and i got all the paperwork they found to be totally untruthful and they let him loose he fell back he made an agreement with the marlin commission which you see in the documentary where he's testifying live on new york one and they they gave him a deal because he was still facing 25 to life and they ended up i think they gave him 15 16 and he did 11 and a half for 12. yep so he got time off of his cooperation as well he's pissed at me because i wore a wire against him but he basically did all the same [ __ ] i did he cooperated every player cooperated everybody right and in the end he was the one that served 12 years in prison exactly you know they always go after the top guy and the second guy they bring in for the cooperation and the second guy gets the deal right but they want the top guy just because he was the top guy and diaz was already in jail right so just to end on this um you're you've you were approached you did this likely could be a film someday is that that correct after the documentary came out it was uh it premiered in 2015. uh sony there was a bit of war on sony and i think uh anna pura were was in a bitter war over who gets the rights to it sony went out they had more money and uh we worked with them for like four years met multiple directors multiple you know screenwriters and uh eventually they dropped the project and when the project was dropped we were in limbo for about a year and mgm picked it up about a year ago now we have new contracts with mgm new director direct new director is ben stiller met him a couple of times sat with him and uh i forgot who i told you a screenwriter was either way ben stiller i mean let me just the guy from house of cards right yeah i remember you told me that let me ask you when it comes to ben stiller i i maybe just looking at you i kind of could see it could you see ben stiller maybe playing a younger you i could i could maybe see that i bet i think we're basically the same age now i'm pretty sure he's in his late 50s i feel like he could pull it off how's he going to play a 20-something year old i don't know i feel like he could i so it's like i mean you both look pretty young quite frankly but i mean you know he's directing maybe he'll put himself in as a cameo i don't know who would play you in a film i i don't know honestly i i don't know the younger actors in in the uh you know in their 20s who who they might use to portray i heard uh possibly uh shia labeouf or dowd you know so that could work if that's how you pronounce his name hey have you ever seen the wire i've seen the wire i've seen we own the city you've seen them so i just want to i want to ask you about that number one shield yeah i want to ask you about that when we wrap up but there's a guy in season two of the wire he plays a guy called uh nick nick zabotka he's an actor pablo schreiber i think he could play you i think that could be a decent uh uh cast um so you've seen the wire you've seen we in the city we've seen the shield all these police shows and now obviously only one is actually based on real events which is we own this city we've on this show we've also talked about the mafia cops you know obviously i think when we look back on corruptness and these are individuals that actually killed people uh allegedly on behalf of the mafia when you look at something like we own the city do you feel that and i don't maybe you won't answer this i don't know but do you feel it's almost fate for a lot of these people that have become officers to want to maybe take a hand out here there are they almost is it almost destiny i mean it's hard we're all human in man in the beginning you know you you don't do anything but you get exposed to the [ __ ] day after day after day it wears you down and eventually you know you give in and you take it you know imagine driving behind a bricks truck yeah every day every day though the truck doors open up and drop the bag the first thing you guys turn it in the 15th time you're not turning that in right but ken i mean all due respect i mean most of us wouldn't sell crack if we needed if we didn't have to i mean wayne jenkins literally stole money off citizens and then resold the drugs in the street i mean that that's you know that's that's hard to understand but i guess once you get into it where it's hey we're doing this and no one cares and you justify everything in your ad you just justify everything i'll tell you what a fascinating discussion would be you and him wayne jenkins the guy in the we in the city you know the real character man that would be interesting to you all talk real quick before we go michael dowd has been out there he does a lot of media stuff nowadays do you have any a will to him do you talk to him at all no we we spoke at the beginning we were we did a scene for the documentary that was edited out they surprised me they flew me into brooklyn and went to the 7-5 precinct he was standing there you know i'm sure they wanted some type of confrontation but we saw each other gave each other a hug and we really just talked about old times as once the documentary came out social media sort of you know people saw taking sides and it tears you apart and we took jabs at each other i haven't talked to him in a couple of years interesting what i'm going to recommend to everyone watching this right now i'm going to put some of the links to some of your work in the uh description i want to first talk about your book betrayal in blue the shocking member remember a shocking memoir of the scandal that rocked the nypd and you you kind of talked about the story behind the documentary i urge people to go check out the book the link to it is in the description just terrific stuff really well written really well done also if you haven't go check out the seven five i'll leave some information for that but you also just started a youtube channel and you've joined the ranks of all of us crazy people on youtube and you're talking about police corruption what are you doing on your youtube channel there's a link to the description everyone go subscribe what do you talk about on that channel ken uh basically uh police corruption guys that of course blind dirty cops uh i'll do uh i usually try to keep it brief because youtube people sort of have a very short attention span you know you look at your analytics and it's uh you got a an hour video and they watch 10 minutes of it so i try to keep it 20 minutes or less so i'll do two two stories maybe one story if it's a little more involved and then i do a q a about my own life people send me questions that i answer uh a lot of the earlier videos i get deeper into stories that are not in the book that are not in the documentary and uh it's just an unending fountain of information i mean cops are they don't learn bro they're getting arrested every day there's a cop getting arrested and i try to stay away from the simple arrests like dui domestic dispute i mean these are guys that are doing bad [ __ ] go check out all the stuff ken's working on in my and has worked on in the description kempford one question i promise to let you go i always ask this to people whether you're a criminal whoever you are you look back on your life okay you were a cop you had a civil service job you you were doing something honorable look at all the things you did you look at where you are now you're living your life maybe this is a dumb question to you but i've had people actually say yes was it all worth it the life you you led [ __ ] no no even once even once this is over once the movie's over i can't wait to go back into obscurity man i want to put this [ __ ] behind me and and not not worry about it you know the youtube channel will be done i'll take it down i don't want nothing nothing from it uh i would have loved to have had a honorable career done did my 20 years like a lot of my friends they went up through the ranks they won off the details and then you know they're living an honorable life uh unfortunately i didn't do that i took the wrong path and you know i paid my own price for it i might not have gone to jail but i paid a price and uh that's that do you miss your life that back then do i what do you miss just being a cop i definitely need camaraderie and hanging out with the guys like i have a small group of friends now or i have a lot of people that write me because of the documentary in the book that want to come and hang out with me then it's not they're not real friends i mean you know they know me because of the doc they know me because of the book they think they know me and and from youtube too because someone watches the documentary now they think they're watching us myself you know down and the other guys in it they think they're watching us now that should happen in the 80s that's not us now so you don't really know us fascinating life well i have a feeling uh you end your life just back to relative anonymity and it's a wild story nonetheless and it's been a wild ride in your life kenyarelle go check out everything he's working on go subscribe to his youtube channel man listen i'm gonna tell all you people that watch this show you guys helped out other people go check his channel out this guy's doing some interesting [ __ ] uh we're gonna see a lot more of them i know maybe you might not want that uh but it's a great story it's a fascinating story ken norell thank you for being here thank you for sharing some of your story man and my my channel is my name ken urell yeah i'm gonna put the description oh below the link very easy to find thanks ken thank you man appreciate it

Channel: The Sitdown with Jeff Nadu

Views: 33,471

Keywords: ken eurell, the seven five, the seven five documentary, michael dowd, mike dowd, NYPD, nypd, nypd police, drug dealers, mafia, mafia history, jeff nadu, jeff nadu sitdown, police corruption, mafia cops, corrupt cops, the sopranos, sopranos, we own this city, wayne jenkins

Id: 8ScrTJhKmmU

Length: 78min 33sec (4713 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 21 2022