Michael Dowd on Being NY's Dirtiest Cop, Working for Drug Dealers, Going to Prison (Full Interview)

okay here we go we have something very different for vlad tv today uh we have michael dowd who is considered one of new york's dirtiest cops welcome to vlad tv happy to be here well this is our first time sitting down together so i want to start in the beginning so you grew up in long island that's right brentwood they call it brent hood but yeah brent hood yeah okay you were the third of seven kids yes and uh you grew up irish catholic irish catholic my father was a new york city firefighter he was one of eight so you know we have a long tradition of lots of kids and you know nine month uh what do you call irish twins a lot of irish twins in the family okay irish twins okay so growing up in this type of family your dad being a firefighter is that what kind of led you into joining the police force so you know that's not that's a nice segway no one's ever asked me that specifically in in the thousand interviews i've done so my dad didn't lead me into the police force they begged for me to be a a lawyer a doctor or an accountant okay so like everybody back in the day when i was coming up every parent wanted their child to be at least one step above what they were right so dad was a civil servant we lived a difficult life you know but we had so many kids we didn't know how tough life was but for them it was paycheck to paycheck right dad worked three jobs so he wanted his son the charmed one me to do more and uh and hoped you know so i went off to college you know like most you know guys did then i did my two years in college and i realized this might not be for me you know the accountant in me wasn't really shining you know i didn't find the excitement in accounting so then i took the police test and uh at the suggestion of my parents you know as a backup take the police the fire sanitation in case case your career takes a different path and i ended up making a decision to leave college and joined nypd in 1982 with 3 800 other people that year okay so you joined the police academy in 1982 and part of the training in police academy is called integrity training oh yeah sure okay so tell me how serious integrity training was when you were going through that so you know you fast forward to integrity training because in the beginning that's not the first thing they teach you know they start to they give you a little information and you start learning how to be a police officer you learn the rules and regulations and then at some point they bring in internal affairs and uh so so back then when we were trained in it i think they showed you a film or two of a guy like me who got jammed up and they put him on tv and they see how sad his life turned out to be because he went bad you know and then you go look at him and you go well okay we're never going to do that right because you're young you're altruistic you're in the you're in the academy you're not there to do crime you're there to be a police officer and uh and then a guy comes in and speaks to you so there may be a few days of this but when i say a few days like an hour here an hour there and now we're there and then basically the last guy walks out of the room and the and the instructor turned around i think his name was dick lay right that was his name dick lay a big dick lay they called him right anyway and uh he was a hero cop in this back then in the 2-8 precinct in harlem and so he had a lot of street knowledge and experience and back in the 70s probably going through harlem in the 60s and 70s you probably had a pretty good idea about it work the street anyway so they he walks out the door uh the internal affairs guy and he said now you know there's two ways you can go you can go the way of them or you can go the way that everybody else so you know and that means cover your ass and you won't need to deal with internal affairs so the cover your ass part of it is the thing that i think we're still fighting about today right in today's police world you know uh cover your ass right have an answer you know except the cameras sort of change things you're basically talking about the blue wall of silence correct right yeah right which basically means that if another cop does something wrong you shouldn't say anything you should cover your you know your code you should be covered you should be covered and then covering yourself generally you'll cover them right because if i didn't see anything wrong then who's to say it was wrong right not the guy who did it right so yeah so yeah you could call it the blue wall of silence you know you can call it uh conveniently forget it you know you know like how many times does someone take the stand and say i don't recall right you know we've seen congressional hearings where you've had all these big shots take a stand and say i don't recall i i didn't see it that way you know so you learn how to testify or lie right so okay so you graduate from the police academy and then you get assigned to the 75th precinct in east new york yes not immediately but eventually yes eventually okay and east new york at the time had the highest murder rate in the country correct and right around that time crack was hitting new york as well yes about a year and a half two years into my hitting the street i want to say five that that period there crack showed up yeah so explain to me what it was like to be a cop not from this area at all you're from from long island so now you're being thrown into east new york right with a bunch of people that you didn't grow up around right uh you know with a high murder rate high crime rate crack cocaine going insane right how are you dealing with this mentally so so part of it is like so it's like i would have i would i would um analyze use an analogy like like a soldier he comes out of training he gets put into iraq and you know it's a shock right so you know it's not like you put in you don't go from the police academy and then go over to martha's vineyard you know and and walk people across the street you know you know make sure the baby's carriage is safe you know you go from being the police academy to essentially a war zone right so even even if you were a local guy you living on a different side of it is way different than being the guy that has to respond to the type of things that you're seeing right so being a guy from long island and i wouldn't say i was sheltered you know because when you grow up with seven kids you're gonna see a lot of [ __ ] anyway right and plus we all played sports we were all active we had our fights we did our things you know we grew up you know so but we didn't see murders around the corner every day which a guy from the hood might have seen but the reality is responding to a murder and seeing a murder is two different things and so when i became a cop of 75 um you know it was like this okay and i use this analogy too it's like when you my dad threw me in the in the bay right to teach me how to swim right he threw me in he was there to get to get you if you needed to but so it was either your sink or your swim so here you are you know pouring yourself into a situation where you better learn to to swim or sink you know so and that's basically what i said i mean i could probably recall saying those words to myself listen [ __ ] you better learn to swim right now or go home one of the two and yeah so learning by fire does that make sense so yeah so that's that's that's life okay so you joined the police to be a good cop it wasn't like you're already a criminal and the plan was to go in there and continue to be a criminal behind the badge you're coming in with good intentions your dad's a firefighter you know you have yeah he's a hero you know you have the best intentions coming in but then at one point while while working you know in the 75th precinct you pulled over a guy and there was a stack of money in his car in his fanny pouch and his fanny pouch it's fanny pouch talk about what happened next so um so like there's a sequence of things that happened prior okay and i often times i i leave them out and i don't know what kind of detail we can get into here but the reality the reality is i get i make a car stop uh on jamaica avenue by uh elders eldritch lane in jamaica avenue and it's under the l and long story short i make this car stop for insignificant but a stop sign whatever it was i'm i'm going to issue this guy as someone's cause he's a prick not because i want to because i never gave his son as anybody unless they asked me for one if you know what i mean like if they said listen i'm sorry are you giving their [ __ ] back and let them go but this guy was a little bit of a prick and so he was getting the summons or two whatever i could give him and the meantime i get a patrol car pulls up behind me and like hits their horn and i'm like what the [ __ ] oh thanks like i got backup for whatever reason i don't know i'm getting the summons out it turned out they were so pissed off they like did a cost up on me while i was stopping the people you know doing a car stop on the guys in front of me and the reason was because i made a cost up in their sector so it dawned on me that it was it was a very hostile situation here i am giving a summons for legitimate uh infraction and i'm getting like the cops are telling me what the [ __ ] are you doing here get out of our sector don't ever give a priest summons out in our sector again so it snowballed in my head to say why why do they give a [ __ ] that i'm giving a summons out here now i'm not stupid i understand you know power control you know location this is mine but to be that vehement it said to me there's a reason behind all this don't go to our [ __ ] restaurants don't go to our locations so it was like almost like i was taking something from them and and and then when you got six bucks in your pocket you pull the next guy over a week later and he's got a stack of hundreds like this and and no license registration or insurance card and i called it the puerto rican mystery in the in the in the documentary which back then that's what it was called that's just what it was called i love my puerto rican friends they're my best but but the bottom line is that was the nickname for it because because the guys from puerto rico would come here and they wouldn't be required in puerto rico to have the same stuff that they had to have here so that's why it was called that and the guy had nothing but a title like no license plates no registration no insurance but he had the title to the car so i knew it was his so i had about two three thousand dollars in summonses to give him and take his car and i said you know this is an opportunity where this guy's like to me he was like 17 or 18. he was like sort of innocent in a way like naive so i said you know what we like i like a lobster lunch that can go a lot further than uh than the tickets i'm gonna give you so i so he left a couple hundred bucks on the seat of the car and he went home and i was like it was like the first time i realized that there's money out here to be made like like almost legitimately how's that sound like i could almost legitimately make money out here without without risking any kind of additional exposure right i mean now i got 150 my partner's got 150. i don't quote me on the numbers if the guy listens to this i don't know what he actually gave me at this point because i forget over the years but it was the first time i realized that i could put some money in my pocket and like after i after about an hour or two i calmed down because it was a little nerve-wracking right and then after i calmed down i realized this is this is this a way to make some money out here and that's that it became my approach due to several things along the way the arrests we were making were pissing off the superiors um we were clogging the system with um minor drug offenders and uh we were getting huge amounts of overtime and so like we were paying our own salaries doubling our salaries by getting overtime and the city had to pay for one way or the other they were paying a lot of money so they made it difficult and and and and encouraged officers not to make the minor drug offense arrests so it became a self fulfilling prophecy of you know things are going to decline right when you tell your police officers to don't do anything the street then becomes itself and and the laws of the street take over well after you start doing this i mean i guess partially you felt unappreciated as a cop yeah of course you know what most people do in a lot of jobs okay so you can make excuses all you want the unappreciation part i think for me is sometimes a cop-out right but the reality is we're still human yeah and when you start doing arrests and you find whether it's money or drugs or whatever you have a choice you could either vouch it or you could take it for yourself right and you started actually taking things for yourself correct and your partner your first partner was in on it as well right yes see yes so there was there's a couple layers of partners that the documentary leaves out my first partner not so much but he didn't mind the money but he was short-lived and he went off the highway my next partner encouraged it in fact he's the one who turned me on to picking the drugs up because we didn't know what it was by the way so it was an odd it was an odd switch you know we didn't know what this stuff was we did we we had no idea that this stuff in the little plastic vials was cocaine crack we didn't know what it was so anyway long story short he took some home with him one day and he came back and hit me like 400 i said for what he goes those the [ __ ] in those via in those plastic containers was was cocaine i said oh so now it was like we've been throwing it out okay we were throwing it out and i was like why would you throw it out now you know you're getting money for it okay so he took it home his friend worked for brooklyn union gas he made some money we made money and it was all wow this is incredible so yeah yeah i guess one of your ex-partners said forget about beverly hills the ghettos where the real money is at yeah that was chicky yeah yeah well you know because you know there may not be a lot of like wealth but there's a lot of cash in the street you know so there's a big difference you know if you pull over a guy in a maserati he's got a gold card what are you gonna do what do you do with the gold card right but you pull over a guy in a bmw with some gold chains on him he's probably got a stack of cash in his pocket you know so big difference okay so that was your part back in the day yeah so you're partnered with chicky and you guys are basically you know stealing from the drug dealers and the people you're arresting and so forth just pocketing the money pocketing the cash uh let's just let's just correct that i made 47 arrests in 10 years 36 in my first year okay so we're not going to go into like how many arrests did i make if i took your money and your drugs you didn't get arrested so we actually were friends that's why okay the partner got it all right so then there's a situation where you went to a domestic dispute call and when you showed up there there was this huge bag of marijuana a bunch of cash a bunch of guns yeah uh you took eight thousand dollars for yourself your partner took the two guns because he was in he's a gun guy yeah and then you let him go and said okay that was a good score yeah and i what i forgot to tell what i forgot to say was we made an arrangement to come back every month for two thousand dollars a month but bobby smith his name was he never showed back up for the payment so it was a little i was a little pissed off at him i did see him eight months later and he ran down the block like the ghost saw him well at that point did you end up buying a condo in myrtle beach with the money prior to that yeah because i did i took took manuel noriega's cocaine uh from uh one of his uh middlemen up in on um i think it was vermont and and um between jamaica and atlantic avenue we hit a score at uh one emanuel north higgins houses yeah wow noriega had actual houses in new york well i don't know that he owned the house but his people were there you know there were panamanian nationals panamanian military yeah that's crazy how much did you take from that from that score no it wasn't a lot because we it was too many cops around so i took so i so i took about a half a kilo or k yeah about it three about three quarters of a kilo from now rieger's stash pink like beautiful pink uh scale and uh at that time was like 28 000 a key or something like that and uh so we got 14 000 for it and now you know we use the bleach test i know if you're familiar with the bleach test you drop the cocaine in bleach and if it falls it's all cocaine yeah so uh it was all cocaine so it was like pure and um so yeah so i took the cash from that and bought a condo in myrtle beach yeah okay so here you are basically skimming money from you know various people in your precinct right well i would call that street level stuff street level stuff right so you're basically making what you're making on the street right and then the precinct next to yours the 77th precinct has this huge internal bust that happened where 13 cops were arrested right and i guess these guys were actually going to the fire department and taking ladders and axes and actually using these tools to break into drug houses and steal from the drug dealers right insanity yeah i mean that you know to me that's a little bit on the board because now you're involving the fire department and you're in your crime i mean you know what i mean that's a little crazy you know we didn't need to do that you know because there was so much money out there i didn't need to didn't need to do [ __ ] like that i mean they were actually like because they were steel plated i don't know if you're familiar with they used to have these diamond plated steel doors that you really couldn't get through without a torch or some real heavy duty tools you know and the fact that they were breaking into them you know i mean don't get me wrong i did my share but i would just go around the wall because once you once once you pass the door frame the walls are all plaster so i mean what the hell are they doing i don't i don't know but i wouldn't worry about that you could punch yourself because some well because so many cops got busted at the 77th precinct a bunch of cops and your precincts started to quit because they knew that they might be next yeah you're pretty good you got that down yeah and i guess you're your old partner cheeky he he was one of the ones that quit okay so so when we used my old partner chicky he was an associate partner he wasn't my regular everyday partner but he was in the group he was in the group yeah so my other partner went to key west okay so he figured if anything happened he could just jump on a boat and go to cuba i don't know what he was thinking but anyway or uh south america uh chickie quit um three or four other guys quit or went to other departments they immediately scattered so it really looked badly on me because i was the only one left standing right me and maybe one or two others and uh so when i at that point they transferred me off to uh um coney island i did i did three five four months at coney island which is called the summit detail which was another scene and then um then i eventually came back to the 7-5 and i came back like tarnished no one would work with me they were afraid to work with me i was supposedly wearing a wire there was a lot of accusations slung my way and uh so now i have found myself in a really awkward position right here i am robbing everybody in the [ __ ] street and i can't get anyone to work with me not because i'm robbing anyone in the street because i now they think that i'm working for internal affairs because everybody around me has left right well you did get a new partner named kenny that took a while probably took six months to eight months to get a partner yeah eventually i hook up with kenny and he and urel right okay so kenny's your new partner and a situation happened where you skim some money from someone on the street and you gave him part of the money right so at that point now he's in it with you he's in correct so then you meet a guy named baron perez right well i knew baron prior to hooking up with kenny so to be clear and i knew baron in a way that wasn't so criminal it was more like business associate like he was a businessman in the community i knew his clients were all local kingpins because they all had 20 000 systems in their cars i mean who else got that kind of money and uh with the goosenecks you know people hear me say these three the goosenecks the equalizers all the the big the big [ __ ] woofers and in the back you know so those things were uh indica indicative of drug money i mean just i mean clearly i mean who puts twenty thousand dollars into a into a [ __ ] 1800 car not me right he ran uh he ran a car serious shop called auto sound city correct and he knew a lot of the major drug dealers correct and he ended up kind of linking you up with some of them some point here after kenny and i kenny and i came to him one day with a score that we made at a murder scene we took a bunch of heroin and stuff and coke whatever out of the scene uh i don't think we got any money a couple of guns and uh we went to see baron with it what are we gonna do i mean we didn't have an outlet for this stuff we went to see baron long story short we get beat on it not from baron but the guy his name is gordo eddie and gordon anybody from logan knows eddie and gordo they're both dead i think although i don't know about eddie gordo's dead um but they were the local guys for heroin in that area like you know forty thousand a day in heroin that's that's the kind of numbers they do and so they dropped off this bigger heroin with them it was probably forty thousand dollars their heroin he said it could take a ten hit but this is this is the [ __ ] you learn right it could take a ten hit he hits it with ten it goes bad so now i got nothing so now this whole thing that went down exposure meeting this guy we get nothing out of it okay well but it establishes the relationship with baron beyond just business okay right and is it through baron that you meet la compania yes yeah so baron tells me listen mike now that i he knows that we're willing to play a little bit beyond stereo systems uh he says listen i got a guy he he just uh named la compania up on um norwood and fulton and he's been running and we know the spot because we get called up there every day he goes there's a guy up here and you can't do anything you know the guy's selling if you don't see him selling it you're not getting you know you don't make an arrest so the guy said that he needs some protection for the for the fourth of july weekend okay so i said sure eighty percent of the cops are on a detail or home at a barbecue so no one's really doing patrol on a holiday weekend because of the manpower shortages right so he says i said i'll cover him for the weekend and i'll do some internal research which i could i couldn't do any internal research so i made believe anyway long story short he makes it through the weekend with one or two minor uh bag sales out you know down the block not nothing in insi nothing significant and uh he pays us the 8 000 he owes us but in the process he shorts us 700 so and that's when you know if you watch the documentary the story comes up where you know we started putting pressure on his location to cover the 700 shortage i mean you're not going to assure us you know if the deal's 8 000 bring the 8 000 you know and so so yeah so that started the animus between us and the company the first i mean first go around you want to make sure it goes well right and you don't want to be a sucker and take less than you [ __ ] put your life on the line for so we put some pressure on them and then they put a hit on me so right and that was a very ruthless dominican drug gang uh yeah they had 29 murders yeah 29 murders associated with them yeah uh the guy who ran it was cello cello yeah okay i forget his name all the time and and because of the animosity between the 700 being shorted he put a hit out on you yes what was it like to have a hit put on you but you're a cop you know it's odd because you know it's like i guess if if any man had a was mocked you know what do you do do you go hide or you go confront the situation right so i mean first of all i didn't know i i i respond i get a 9-1-1 page from baron i show up there he tells me the story i go into work that day and kenny's not working that day i'm working with one of these internal affairs rats that's trying to set me up and i'm driving down fulton street by norwood and sure enough i see his car and i never met the guy in my life i see his car because i knew his car because the car had been in baron's shop and baron said that's the guy's car that you're protecting up on up on uh fulton norwood so uh i pulled them over i don't know the guy i never met in my life you know just to know that he shorted me 700 and so you know the exchange from the movie pretty much exactly like that he gave me his license registration i threw it back in his face i said you want to have me [ __ ] killed you wanna put a hit on me and then bing bing bing bing bing we went from there i was praying i was praying he had a gun on him because he was dead but he didn't and or he didn't i didn't see one and uh so i said if you if you want you can get out of the car right now we could do a mexican standoff i'll walk ten you walk then we'll turn and shoot see who wins i mean that's how [ __ ] like that's like it just it was a moment in time right so i took i just took the opportunity at that moment i mean what am i gonna do like wait to wait till tomorrow when i go leave leave work and he's got his crew sitting out front you know to to take me out you know what do you do so i confronted him and uh turned out he called baron up immediately after that and said um the hit's taken off which i didn't know so i get a page from baron i come to his office he says here's the seven hundred dollars he said in the hits off so i said oh well there you go it worked okay and at that point your dealings with the company it was pretty much over well done yeah you go your way we go our way have a nice day and that was and that was agreeable am i gonna do take on a whole [ __ ] drug organization by myself a little tight well after that you end up meeting adam diaz yeah well because because the money was good and baron himself was making a piece so he's like i ain't losing this gravy train i'm gonna turn it into something else and then and baron had all of adam diaz's uh porsches and mercedes and bmws in his shop and he was redoing them all and he actually had storage there and adam diaz would store his cars in baron's shop so he says i got another guy and bingo uh we ended up having a meeting and i said you know what it's not going to be the same anymore things have changed and that said uh you know 24 thousand dollars i'll have a sit-down meeting with this guy whether we agree or not but what but to say hello it's 24 000 i i put some math together in my head and i figured if i get fired i get three months cash for me in three months for my partner it'll keep us alive till we get a job i guess that's how naive you think you know okay now adam diaz is actually a much bigger drug dealer right than than el cello correct and he's making hundreds of millions a year well you know so i don't want to go in the hundreds of millions but he's doing about 50 million a year yeah okay 50 million a year yeah a lot of money a lot of money a lot of money okay so he gives you that 24 000 down payment he has no problem with that right he he didn't short you seven hundred dollars no no she was done his money's fine yeah he's good um and you asked for eight thousand a week right that seemed to be the going rate i don't know i wish i could go okay and he has no problem paying that not at all not at all yeah like like a six-pack you know he'd drop it off like a six-pack okay so now you are working with diaz and you're helping him with his drug operation essentially yeah so like like like an overseer right like he's doing his own operation and i'm surveilling it and ongoingly surveilling it and then when i couldn't surveil it i put chicky on because chicky had quit the pd went to north carolina to be a cop they wouldn't take them because it didn't the cards didn't follow like they were supposed to because the nypd already had chicky under investigation and they weren't going to pass a recommendation on to north carolina to a guy that was under investigation so now chickie came back with his was proverbial finger up his ass and said now what do i do i gave up a job as a pd i can't get one down there so we ended up attending bar and bailey's uh which was a we called it a bloodbath it was a nice place uh and uh he attended bar there and uh so i put him on for a thousand dollars a week with adam adam would pay him a thousand a week to surveil when i wasn't available okay now you actually provided police escorts for certain drug deals yes yes right okay crazy well you know what it was invited so what it was what it was was they were like there was a lot of there was a lot of robberies of drug dealers from drug dealers going on and and they even mentioned in franklin and and and coke in the movie like they were professional guys that would that would see these guys leave their build their businesses with their proceeds and with their drugs and even with their weapons now they're not walking around with their weapons out they got them on them whatever and these guys would target them as they left their businesses or at the close of business when all the money was thick and try to rob them so they asked us to to escort them be there when we close it's like a bodega closing for the day you know and you're gonna he's gonna put his you know three thousand in his pocket and needs an escort to his car to get home you know it was the same thing really it was a bodega closing down the only thing is they weren't just selling pampers they were selling kilos you know so they would unload their money and bags of [ __ ] cash and bags of cocaine into their car and we would escort them to to their uh to their stash house right and there was actually a situation where there was a undercover bust of diaz's bodega which slash drug house right and you warned him about that right so he was able to kind of clear everything out and he would have lost about half a million dollars in cocaine that day easily yeah okay so you're warning him you're giving him escorts right uh you're providing bulletproof vests for a screw yeah i didn't like mine so i gave it to him really that's what it was okay were you providing badges and guns as well no i no i i didn't go that far no okay but i i did find some guns in here give him throwaways you know that we like we find guns all like you just find guns you know they show up guns just pop up you know and uh so you know yeah i gave a couple guns yeah right and diaz said that the whole precinct was corrupt all the way up to the captain you know he talks good he tells a good story he didn't know the captain although i don't know maybe he did right so well there was a situation where there's a guy who robbed diaz and instead of arresting him you actually got him and turn him over to diaz yeah that's sort of hollywood there so uh i did catch the guy uh uh but he was with his wife so it saved his life okay yeah now you were also doing extortion i guess you could do anything yet well you can do anything with a badge and a gun if you know if the other guy's a criminal you know but it was only it was only the criminal element it's like being a wise guy and a mob you know they they target each other you know you're in a drug game you're free game it's part of the way it was i mean what do you do call the police yeah yeah i just got extorted by the 75th precinct for 4 kilos and 80 000 in cash what do you call the irs yeah exactly you haven't reported that income in a while you know right well you're making so much money that at one point you buy a brand new red corvette yeah yeah and you're making how much as a cop during that time in terms of your actual salary i think it was 32 or 28 000 at that time at that time okay okay so you essentially buy a car that's worth more than your whole salary yes and i brazenly left a sticker on the window i was just trying to make a point i think it was just okay and at one point you actually started taking that car to the precinct to work and back so everyone all the other cops around you are looking at it i was 20 something years old all right a little stupid do you think that that's what puts you on the radar in terms of internal affairs no no no i was already on the radar which is why i put the car there i was sick of it i actually was begging for them to bring it forward to bring it you know bring it man i mean i'm just parked in luke 10 i parked my car in the lieutenant spot and i'm like can you just [ __ ] bring it because i'm tired that was 1988. okay and at one point internal affairs actually started to investigate you they've been investigating all along but just coming up with dead ends there was a situation that happened where one of your fellow cops officer venable uh ended up getting killed by uh associates of la compania correct from what i heard was i don't know all the details yeah but yes and and i guess you went to diaz to find out who the killer was but diaz said he's not going to help you because he doesn't even know who the cop is that's not 100 accurate but yes essentially he he i did get the information from him and perez on who it was but i mean the cops pretty much had them but it was sort of reversed some guy took the fall from the for the other there was two people involved this is the shooter this is not the shooter the shooter the other guy took the weight for the shooter in it because his mother and father were had aids in the dr and they were never going to live and he's he had nothing going on and they're supposed to give him a hundred thousand dollars cash of course he never got the hundred thousand dollars cash and he got i think i mean he actually sent me letters in prison this guy i think he did his 25 years you know he played i don't know if he pled guilty or not but i think he may have was that like a major event in the precinct cop killed of course that was huge yeah and then the and the and the ironic thing if you want to say i was the responding police officer to the scene of the shooting and so let's be clear here i was not working for the company at that point okay it was at least six to eight months later i had no association with lacompania and so how it happened was this guy the company's spot was robbed this is this was a dispute over the spot so one guys come in with machine guns robbed the other guys they leave now they now they protect the spot with machine guns and there's some someone flags down a police van from transit and transit's not they don't work the street they don't know what's going on in this particular location well you know the officer officer officer they just robbed me at gunpoint so the office of venable a big big black guy gets out of the [ __ ] six four six five gets out of his vehicle to go in plain clothes walks to the door of the of the of the spot where the alleged armed robbers are inside he opens the door and there's a guy standing in the stairwell up the stairs not not quite down in the in the landing but up the stairs and the guy sees this guy standing there with the badge and he just started firing at him he hit him right in the head square square right through the head through out the back of his head and so long story short we ended up being the first we had a guy in the back seat under arrest for armed robbery okay there's a guy in the back on the seat under arrest armed robbery opened the door and threw him out into the back of the precinct on the parking lot just left i don't know if they ever process the arrest i don't even know so we went to the shooting scene and of course we picked up venable and put him in the car and drove him off to brookdale hospital pumping on his chest the blood coming out of his head the brain matter all over the car yeah so it was quite the scene to say the least i mean was there a certain level of guilt of here i am even though i'm not actively working with these guys now i was working with them and i'm taking money from them and then these guys go and kill one of my fellow cops and even though it's not exactly your fault you are somehow involved you know in a convoluted way of course you know i mean the guy who let the shipment come in from colombia caused this guy's death too right i mean i was a little closer than that but yeah so uh yes so and i had a lot of guilt over it and and to be honest with you i don't know if i've ever said this in public i cried a lot over it you know and and and you know asked my maker for forgiveness for whatever role i had in it so yeah it was very it was very difficult and still haunting at times in fact uh when i re reconnected with urel for the to do the documentary i put him in my car and i drove him over to a park in east new york that was named after this cop i'm getting chills right now thinking about it it's a little a little difficult um so yeah so whatever part i have it and i've i've felt the weight of it at times um i don't i don't personally believe that i was responsible but my actions in some way could have contributed by negligence even or or or corruption you know corruption affects everybody right so you know if the captain was corrupt and put the wrong guy somewhere he'd be responsible too so i feel some sense of responsibility it was a very awkward position to be in no doubt well originally when you would find a drug bust or whatever you would take a kilo here half a kilo there whatever else but at one point you actually graduated to buying kilos yourself and right selling the kilos so you essentially became a full-blown drug dealer correct yes okay and you're buying the kilos from diaz and perez diaz and a couple other guys associate that were that were at that level sort of yeah not many people were diaz level but some of the other guys i dealt with would sell 30 keys a week 40 keys a week like that which you know today that's you know people you know back then that was a small guy you know okay how many kilos were you buying at a time no so let's not get that twisted i probably if i bought a kilo every two months you know for my own little i had a little candy shop you know you know six guys i five guys i gave ounces to to and made money okay so you were in a major drug deal you were just getting a key i was getting it i was getting at a price that no one else could okay got it uh at one point you actually started you know getting high from your own supply right yeah they make songs about that don't they they do they do so at what point did you actually start using cocaine so i shared this incident it was a hockey game between the fire department and the police department and after the game fire the police department won my brother was the star of the game anyway and uh so my father was a fireman right and my brother's a police officer and my other brothers were firefighters so it's always a significant day in the family right we got my mother and father sitting on the fire department side me and my other brother on the police department side and my other brother's on the fighter pump so it's quite even the family rivalry anyway so after the game we're going over the bottles in many uh east meadow on on jericho turnpike across from the nassau coliseum and um my partner's in the car he takes out this tinfoil with some cocaine in it and he goes i'm gonna do some coke i said all right do what you want you know you're free yeah you're a free man you do what you want and he said but i'm not doing it if you don't do it and and and now that i showed it to you you're doing it otherwise i'll never talk to you again and this was a guy that uh i don't want to say his name anymore this is a guy who ended up going to key west so um so i sort of was obliged to do it and you know i wasn't afraid that i was i tell you truth i was a little uncomfortable because i never did cocaine and it was a little scary and so but nothing happened i felt no effect from it and i went on from there and then about about three months later i used it every day for like three months it was like wow this stuff is [ __ ] good you know right so you became an addict yeah so so here you are you're a police officer by day drug dealer by night and also a cocaine addict all at the same time right how are you getting your head around all this yeah you're also and you're also married yeah a father i'm a father i'm a husband i'm a brother and a lot of other things right you know exactly exactly um so yeah i'm not doing very well like you know like if you could picture a train wreck and you're watching it you know like you could probably look at me and say there's possibly a train wreck going on over there and but but really you know we all think we're doing better than we we all think we look better and doing better than but when other people from a stepping from the outside look in like today i would see me today i would see me back then i didn't think anyone could and i'm not saying they did or didn't i don't know i was pretty good at it but the reality was um i would on my way to work uh i'd be and i tell a story i'd be driving 90 but in the right-hand lane not the left-hand lane because in the right-hand lane if anything happened i would go off the highway i wouldn't hurt anybody else and also i can get off the ramp and get to a hospital real quick because i'd be going numb on my way into work what do you call it stress anxiety i don't know what the [ __ ] it was but when your body from the left side of your face and your head down to your foot goes numb you know several days a week while driving to work something's not right yeah yeah okay so here you are you're trying to juggle all these different worlds and then in 1992 you you show up to work you actually have some cocaine in your pants right at the time in your pocket right and internal affairs swoops in and actually arrests you on the job essentially yes that's the picture but the reality was they picked me up to take me to lefrak city for a department-ordered drug test and while i was there i'm like i'm gonna burn this [ __ ] thing up you know i was i just had a half a pint of vodka and [ __ ] seven up and uh and i just did a couple blasts so i was going to burn the needle up no matter what and so i basically was like okay it's over like it's almost a relief right but the trick was you know i i just had walked past probably 50 to 60 police officers in full uniform with all the gold flashing you ever see the guys with all the gold on their hats and their and i didn't really know but this was for me and of course there was five other police officers arrested along with me so i'm like this is odd this is just a drug test there's like there's a hundred something cops here for a drug for one guy to take a drug test a little odd so p.s i took the drug test as i left the piss the piss room and handed the viola p to the guy in steps a guy in plain clothes my mother's cousin by the way and says suffolk county the police department detective so and so you're under arrest for conspiracy to distribute narcotics on long island so in lefrak city in new york so they coordinated so new york city was concerned about one thing firing me for a dirty urine suffolk county of course was going to take the criminal case against me because the city was out of the loop and that pissed and that pissed the city off how did you feel to be arrested and charged with something that you knew you did that i knew i did it was a relief i was relieved i was like thank god it's over i was like okay yeah so i'm in the back of a troll car unmarked car whatever you want to call it going from left right city to riverhead because they're going to take me out to suffolk county lockup and process me and it was the most peaceful feeling i had of course i was handcuffed you know behind my back like you know regular perp and uh walked into the jail cell in suffolk county which they were not very nice and um and still aren't but and uh i don't recommend it and um [Music] it was a sense of peace okay so now i just have to deal with this problem like like we just shift problems now and and and i i don't know maybe i'm the guy that walks into a room with a pile of [ __ ] and said there must be a horse in here right somewhere because look at this pile of [ __ ] i i don't that's how i was raised maybe or that's just who i am in nature and so so i was just i looked at it as another obstacle to a wonderful future like i didn't see yeah i didn't see i didn't see like a major problem here like like my mind doesn't process things that way i'm like okay we'll deal with this and we'll be okay so ironically enough in the end you know i'm okay you know but in the beginning it was not that way obviously well you get arrested right how much time were you facing at that point that they were telling you um life you were facing life in prison well so so they back up so i get arrested by the state and the state has me like three to life okay so i realistically ten years with the state eight to ten years with the state realistically i get out on bail with the state and then new york city gets together with the feds and then they come and kenny puts the white puts the wire on from the documentary i don't know if people i don't know if you will have led with people who have seen the documentary or suggested they see it before the interview or after the interview whatever yeah but kenny puts the wire on while we're out on bail and sets this whole big thing in motion which you see a little controversy in the documentary that's not really 100 accurate but overall it is okay so you get out on bail how big was your bail at the time uh well suffolk county had me for 350 000. okay yeah so you had to put up thirty five dollars my family's half well my family signed three houses over to cut to cover my bond okay you get out on bail right kenny gets out on bail correct but he agrees to cooperate with the feds and wear a wire against you correct so but you don't know this no at all clearly right so here you are you're out on bail facing life in prison right and then you have this great idea yeah to to do a hit yeah not really see that's where a kid a kidnapping yeah but that's not what happened okay okay so explain to me what happens at that point so it's so convoluted this is like another movie two people move into one of my homes they're both drug dealers i have to fill the house with renters i don't give a [ __ ] what you do pay your rent on the first of the month you could sell or buy i don't care i'm not involved long story short they convey one of them convinces me that i'm trying to think what happened now i'm getting confused um that he wants me to meet a friend of his colombian who's owed a half a million dollars and this woman has 10 kilos in her house in queens so i all of a sudden kenny and i convene and he's asking me some questions and i say listen i want to leave the country i'm not doing life in [ __ ] prison i don't give a [ __ ] i'm just going i'm going to go south america a guy offering me a job running a shrimp boat for the astoria manor because the astoria manor has 11 weddings a day and every one of them has shrimp as their cocktail so he needs about 30 pounds 30 3 000 pounds of shrimp a [ __ ] week so he wants me to go down to nicaragua and run a shrimp boat for the company and so on and so forth so now i can spend my whole life in nicaragua there's no there's no extradition and you can eat shrimp and and hang out with the latinos because i love them anyway and it's all good so that was my future right so kenny puts the wire on the entrapment thing comes up this case shows up with half a million dollars in cash now i say great i can pay my family back for the bail because they're going to lose their houses if i bolt so i can pay my family back we can take the 10 kilos whatever's left we whack it up give half back to the the the the colombian drug dealer and uh but it was supposed to be and and if you if you follow through on the film supposed to be a pushing guy supposed to show up with flowers knock on the door walk your way in it's a woman push it to the side take the [ __ ] and go the half a million and the and the 10 kilos well kenny kept moving the goal post now that he's working with the feds it went from a pushing with flowers to a kidnapping and then and then an execution he kept moving the goal post along the way and i'm just going yeah yeah whatever yeah yeah whatever because i don't give a [ __ ] at this point i just want to get that money so i can pay my parents for their homes that they're going to lose my brother and my parents and go to and go to nicaragua so i'm going yeah yeah yeah yeah whatever you know we can do this whatever you want to do but um that's not what so in other words he kept moving the goal post first would be a push in then it becomes a kidnapping and then after it becomes a kidnap it becomes an execution i'm like whatever yeah okay you pile on whatever you want at this point i know i'm gonna leave the country so so yeah so you could take it for what it's worth you know i i went speeding and then when you were speeding you end up flipping the car and someone dies so now it's a manslaughter charge right so you go to this house to do this kidnapping execution and i guess because cops aren't showing up you end up you know abandoning the mission right and going back home right and then at that point because kenny's wearing a wire and was in on it the whole time right now the cops come in and arrest you once again while you're on bail correct how did you feel at that point angry so yeah so some of the things i may have uttered or said or or thought aloud was like why the [ __ ] did you have to do this like you could have just called me up and said come on in we want to charge you in a racketeering indictment and you can remain on bail what your what your what your charges so and instead kenny encouraged everything to continue to put me back into criminal activity listen you know what happens is when you're predisposed to criminal activity and they show you some criminal activity and you walk into it it's not entrapment anymore it's it's your nature you know i'm not delorean i don't know if you remember delorean from the days he beat all those charges because he was not predisposed to sell cocaine you know so so by putting me in those situations he was feeding on my natural ability my natural instincts to to to look for a criminal way out of something and so he didn't entrap me but the reality was as a friend all he had to do was say mike i'm working for the feds here okay either you get on board and do what you got to do to keep your sentence at a minimum or you know or let's do it together you know let's you know he didn't act like a partner anymore right he was looking out for himself and his family which i can't blame him but in the end you know we all have to end up in the same place his wife passed just recently you know there's a lot of things that have transpired since then so well so you get arrested again and at this point i assume there's no bail well we're not seeking bail yeah yeah yeah we're good we'll stay now are you being charged with the potential kidnapping and murder so that's this is the interesting thing um i refuse to they try to indict me for it they may have even is they may have indicted me for it but i was never charged with it because i i began to uh i was negotiating a plea agreement and i said i'm not pleading to that that's not true you know they'll they'll they will argue i said i didn't do that i wasn't going there to do that it was not my intention you people changed the game whoever it did i don't know but i wouldn't plead to it but it didn't in my psi report you know so if you know from if you're familiar with how the feds work it's still everything you ever thought of doing or could have thought of doing or they think you may have done ends up in that report anyway so when i pled guilty to racketeering i pled guilty to distributing narcotics and conspiracy to distribute narcotics but they have these underlying activities in there that were part of the uh indictment so when you get sentenced it still gets mentioned well the the mullen commission did that happen before or after you got sentenced so that happened before so okay so the marlin commission they came to me because they were the model commission was uh um enjoined because of my activity right and it was so dramatic and plus the 7-7 had happened so due to the dowd case and the 7-7 and some other cases that they were aware of that no one really knows about because they stayed under the radar there's 200 cops arrested for drug drug trafficking back then right i'm the one they know but there was 200 right so uh the model christian came to me several times and i told him i i got unfurious you know basically go [ __ ] yourselves because they said to me um i said if i speak before your commission a lot of cops are going to commit suicide so they was like so who gives a [ __ ] like tell us what they said so i'm still human and i i don't want to see guys kill themselves you know so and they have families they have wives and children and parents and so i didn't think that was a smart way of doing things so i said that i wouldn't testify on their behalf and they could [ __ ] leave but nine months later the writer for the new york post at the time mike mcelroy he may have switched because he went to three different papers on my case he went from the the news day the post and the daily news while he had my case in his mouth he comes out of a death bed because he kills killed himself on the west side highway and a ddwi he comes out of his death bed and starts writing about i i killed nine people on nine people that i murdered nine people so in the new york post then the post runs with it then the [ __ ] cbs news and channel five they all run with the story it's all [ __ ] fake news it's all fake none of it's real absolute zero and so now i'm being looked at for nine murders so i call my lawyer up and say listen dude this isn't this is crazy you know he's like yeah he says mike what's the difference you want to hear you want iran is what's the difference nine murders drug kingpin what's the [ __ ] difference you're a piece of [ __ ] that's what he's saying to me okay thanks thanks a todd i really appreciate the support he goes what's the difference they're not disparaging you your character by calling you a murderer you're a drug dealer you're a cop you're corrupt what the [ __ ] you know i'm like this isn't right you know you want to find i want to fight the small points here so anyway um so on the back of that phone call he says i got a call from the marlin commission yesterday and they said they they'd ask even though you turned them down twice they begged you on and that they would go to your judge on your behalf if you were truthful and helpful to the commission in their goal so p.s at this point i'm looking for a friend in any corner because how am i gonna go to trial the new york post daily news cbs nbc fox news they got me down for five murders the nine murders so i i need a friend right so i i i reach out for the money they reach out to me we set up a meeting and i begin to tell them what they needed to hear and so really they didn't know what they needed to hear but i told them what do you want to do and they said well i said you want to catch me they go yeah yeah yeah like i had to tell them like here's a [ __ ] commission in place you know making millions of dollars a year to pay these [ __ ] and they come to me and they tell me i tell them do you want me to teach you how to catch me and they go yeah so i told him how to catch me and what they did was they caught the whole 30th precinct you know they called the dirty 30 i don't know if you're familiar with the stories or not but yeah yeah right and so hoorah right right so so you actually publicly speak during the smalling commission and there's cameras and everything else like that you admit it to hundreds of crimes yeah well every day you commit a crime when you're [ __ ] lying right you got a gun on your hip yeah and at one point uh one of the commission members said who was your primary employer was it the police or the drug dealers right and how did you answer that i think i said both both yeah i think you actually said that you would forget to police you would actually forget to pick up your police paycheck yeah because there was so much drug money that you would forget about that policing yeah i mean i knew it was there but you know ultimately making a lot of living a lot of money yeah i didn't really worry about it well ultimately you accepted a plea deal or you went to court so it took two years to to work out a plea agreement but i you know i i i fronted let's go to trial you know let's go to trial you know meanwhile you're facing life you know let's go to trial and you know so i i i bought it i pushed i bought it i pushed and then back and forth and and they offered me a plea from i i forget that 15 50 12 to 15 and a half and the judge gave me 14 right in the middle because of the cooperation she did say it by sentencing i was going to give you more than you're like 15 and a half which probably would have been 20 right and uh she said i was going to give you significantly more but because the model commission said that you were helpful and truthful i'm going to give you a sentence within your guidelines because you know in the feds they work by guidelines you know even though you do face life because which means they have to they have to justify why they're giving you the sentence they've given you in my case uh my guidelines put me in a 12 and a half to 15 and a half range in the plea agreement it doesn't mean that um i mean i probably was a little higher than that but in the agreement that was rational that i was willing to accept was in the bound boundaries of 12 and a half to 15. so here i am pleading guilty to getting at least 12 and a half years in prison and and could have been way more so but the reality was it turned out to be 14 years by judge kimball wood you know the love judge they called the love judge uh back in the day so yeah the love judge well your partner kenny who was involved in essentially the same stuff that you were right because he cooperated right he did not spend a single day in prison that's correct when you ultimately found out that whole story how he cooperated right and he got no prison time at all by essentially trying to set you up how did you feel i was pretty [ __ ] angry not about him not getting the time clearly i knew that that as a result of his cooperation i was just angry the way he went about the whole thing and um it was hurt it hurt it hurt you know you've i felt i felt violated you know here's a guy in my home coming to my home you know i'm willing to give him what i can you know see him through this as a team you know feed his family you know do what i can for him i got him his pension he was already out on a pension very few people mentioned that you know he was already out on his disability pension for life when he decided to get involved in selling cocaine because he was born at home and his taxes were going up his taxes were going up so he wanted to cover his taxes by supplementing his disability income with a little cocaine business at the bowling alley in west babylon so yes so i was i was hurt by the fact that he was in a much better position than me financially and would be and because of you know i had four homes and a condominium on the ocean in myrtle beach and so that made me stretch right i was really stretched financially and and once one thing goes wrong like people stop paying me rent because they saw me in the news and they're like well this guy's going away why'd i pay the [ __ ] rent so things got bad quickly for me financially from there because i dumped all my money into homes well in the documentary kenny said that he doesn't consider himself a rat yeah he feels like he he stopped a woman from from getting killed but the the weird part hearing a cop talk about considering himself a rat is just so mind-blowing to me because a rat is not a police term you know a rat is a is a criminal term right it's not you know you're you're you're crossing genres here in an insane type of fashion yes uh do you consider him a rat yes yes yes oh you know why because let's take the police out of it for a minute when your friend turns you in and he's done what you've done let's forget that he's a police officer would you consider him a rat yes okay so now when you're a police officer and you and your partner see there's something somebody got people that don't understand a mob guy turns in a mob guy he's not a raptor because he turned in a mob guy he's a rat because he turns in his friend he's a rat because he turned in his boss he's iraq as he turned in his cohort so kenny's turning in his cohort someone that he's doing the same thing with something that he was in involved in so that's why i consider marat now as a police officer if you see something wrong you're supposed to report it cop civilian you know god whoever's doing something wrong you're supposed to re report it as a police officer but when you're playing both roles you got to accept the fact that now you're in a civilian world you're a rat and no cop likes a rat because then that person's exposing you to things that he's already been exposed to but now he's he's exclu exculpating himself from it by telling on you so so you know so so yeah so cops should never be considered rats but they are since the time you found out that he was cooperating and wearing a wire did you ever speak to him in any of these years so yes we met uh to film the documentary which was my design by my design the documentary uh people came to me and said we'd really think including kenny might be good for the whole project you know so you know i really wasn't for it but i spoke with baron the deal maker and baron sort of encouraged me to you know bury the hatchet and and it'll be good for the film and and i don't doubt that it would be good for the film i we didn't need him because he did nothing except turn me in but in the end i guess you need the culprit right you need the you need that guy right so yeah so we brought him in and i arranged to meet him at the 75th precinct he he didn't know it and he walked in front of the precinct and i was standing behind a van and i sort of jumped them you know like i missed them i know i don't know what to do i don't want to say [ __ ] you you're rat you know because what good is that going to do us right we're trying to we're trying to promote this film and get it done and get it done right and his cooperation was important enough so i jumped him i hugged him i said hey it's over you know we're here let's move forward and so we had a couple of in-depth conversations he still turned out to be a scumbag in the conversations i said how'd you feel you know you put your partner away from almost life he goes he says i didn't lose a minute sleep wow i said you got to be [ __ ] kidding me and then i heard from his wife that that's not true but long story short he still yeah i don't i you know what he's a listen his nickname was scummer okay that was his nickname in the police department so and i asked him one day why did he call you scummer because i wasn't his i wasn't his partner all along you know he goes i'm a scumbag what do you think so what does the scumbag do there you go it fit the [ __ ] yeah it fit the mold well you get sentenced to 14 years in prison right you know how old at the time well uh so i was arrested at 31 so when they sentenced me i was probably 33. okay so essentially you knew you were going to spend the rest of your 30s apart part of your 40s right behind bars correct uh now were you in protective custody the whole time being an expert no no i wasn't i was in pc uh for the first i want to say eight or nine months you know give or take a month uh and then one day i said i can't do this anymore i'm gonna hang myself from the fire plug you know in this in the cell there's these [ __ ] sprinklers i said i'm gonna be hanging on a fire plug in this this evening when you come by for for the midnight count if you don't get me out of here right now so about 15 minutes later they pulled me out and put me in gp and ever since that day i was in general population okay now how do you deal being an ex-cop in a society of criminals yeah you know you got to be politically correct you know and you and you certainly uh you take a a you take an approach of of humility but firmness and be a man you know and if someone steps to you you either you either you stepped right back or you suck his dick so you know and i'm really not i don't know that i'm any good at that so i didn't want to take that chance i didn't want to fail i don't want to fail blog there you know wow i was not ready for that answer uh okay so was there ever you got to go now i mean right i'll take your word for it yeah good uh so but are there ever were there ever times with all the gangs and everything else like that and the the deep hatred that these guys have of cops yeah and having access to a cop who's also a criminal yeah were you ever attacked so so i'll cut to the chase so there was always some tense moments and in fact every person in every prison knew who i was so that's not a good feeling i'll just say that much you know i went to like four or five different prisons and every person in that prison i was the talking point so a bus comes in 35 40 guys get off you know they're going to spend six months or 60 years in this [ __ ] place and i'm talking points so you want a friend you want a new friend you want a [ __ ] because you got a community community the first thing is you know that guy over there is a new york city cop you know what guys over there is new york city cop i was the [ __ ] focal point so one day i end up in a prison out in pennsylvania and i i'll tell you a story so it puts makes a point so i get off the bus and the lieutenant pulls me aside that lieutenant's like sort of in charge of of of dispersing you anyway he says listen come here i go yeah what's up i'm down down nine years what's up you know what do you want he says uh just keep your past quiet and you should have no problems here i said lieutenant by 11 30 main line the main line is is ciao everybody in the [ __ ] prison is gonna know who i am he goes oh just there's a lot of you here and no one really knows them i go okay but by 11 30 mainline they're all going to know who i am here because i'm a new york cop right i mean everybody in the world reads the new york post daily news front page it's on the front page of every paper in the country at the time but now it's nine years later i said everybody's gonna know by [ __ ] so i take my bro by bed roll and my [ __ ] and i head off to my uh cell the carpet to sell puts me in the hack puts me in room 106. i go to room 106 i put my [ __ ] down down now i hate when someone yells my [ __ ] name because you know people have of a memory with that name that name you know so i don't you know i don't say doubt you know because the front page of the newspapers are down for two years you know people recall that [ __ ] especially in prison you got nothing to do right so i'm like i'm here [ __ ] five [ __ ] minutes the guy's calling my name so i go back to seat of hack and he says to me lieutenant just called he said [ __ ] mainline they've already called them he said the whole [ __ ] prison knows who you are and that you're here this is like at 9 15 in the [ __ ] morning i'm like okay here we go he goes tell doubt he's wrong they already know so anyway so yeah so they knew who i was wherever i went um i'm not a shy guy uh but i kept to myself you know and but the odd thing about criminals is a lot of them have cop in them because because they've always lived around the police right they've been arrested they've been processed you know they've tried to figure out you know some of them were going to be cops they ended up getting jammed up so you know and some a lot of them were cops you know listen there's probably 2 000 cops in the federal system so that means it's 5 10 in every prison you know so you know a lot of cops get arrested i mean it happens a lot so so yeah and and you know guys don't wake up one day and say i want to be a criminal all their life they end up in that life you know they started out they wanted to be firemen and cops you know their family members a lot of the guys in there their family members were cops so yeah you know to kill your [ __ ] cousin or your brother when you get home so it's a dance you know so but there was some hairy moments i won't deny it but you know where you gotta tie up your shoes and put your [ __ ] uh newspapers on and and head into the [ __ ] to the mop room uh-huh so you won't get stabbed so you don't get stabbed yeah so were you ever stabbed beat up anything no i was never stabbed and i never was hit by anybody i yeah there was some tense moments and um i did i did grab somebody by the throat or something but you know but you know don't i mean i'm not a little guy you know i'm six foot one you know 190 pounds i was ripped i was probably the best shape of my life which was good so you know and it wasn't gonna be a one-way dance so right if it's not an easy one why bother right so well you get sentenced to 14 years you end up doing 12 years and five months right how did it feel to walk out of that prison cell so the last day in prison i was i slept i overslept for the first time so that's really incredible like they had to come wake me up so if anyone has ever been in prison or left prison they would know what i'm talking about like they were circling my cell waiting for my [ __ ] because when you leave you don't take your stuff with you you give it out to guys that you care about the guys that were good to you right my sweatpants my sneakers my coffee mugs all the [ __ ] that i acquired you would give it out so it's like 7 15 in the morning usually up at 6 00 7 15 in the morning they're knocking on my cell door down you're going home today what because they all know you're going home i go yeah what time is it at 7 15. you know you're missing breakfast and all this [ __ ] so i'm like oh jesus so that was the first day i overslept in prison was the day i was leaving so i don't know i don't know why but uh so leaving prison was was scary life was so fast like prison life is you know it's timely and whatnot and your movements are all timed but the speed of the street was scary for a guy who who thought he was you know mr street the speed of the street was very scary and intimidating and it came to a point where i didn't want to be in the street anymore i wanted to go back to prison i was not comfortable in the street it was really not a comfortable place to be and so yeah so in 12 and a half years i was sort of uh institutionalized so yeah and it was it was sad because i didn't know what to do you know and uh now i have to start feeding myself the [ __ ] i was getting fed before i was a before i was in prison i was eating for free right i was a cop i was making all kinds of money i had no concerns that way and uh and then when i went to prison i ate for free for 12 and a half years and now if i wanted a hot dog i had to put a you know a buck 25 out for a dirty water dog in the city and i'm like oh wow how do you do this you know so i'm a cheap [ __ ] now too but that's not the point the point is it was a new life and uh and it was scary it was very scary and i come out to meet people that were family members and nephews and nieces and stuff that that weren't there when i was in prison and it sort of made me feel like the whole [ __ ] world went on and mine didn't like i come out in the 80s like i come out with the 80s in my [ __ ] head you know and and i still act like sometimes some people some people say i still act like well did your wife stay married with you the whole time uh no early on uh we agreed uh to um to separate our go separate ways because she had a lot of time to do and she had two kids to raise more importantly and being being held back by some guy in prison for 10 or 15 years there's no way for a woman to look forward to raising kids and supporting children so so she and i decided you know not not happily but but did so uh to to to to move on you know so yeah and she's doing well today she's out in california she's living a decent life yeah i mean sad sad to to come out and not really have your wife waiting for you and so yeah no it was tough it was tough only because the toughness was because what's my family what am i you know i'm i'm now i'm a guy with no children really because you know i didn't raise them with no relationship because i don't have one i'm i i'm a 40-something-year-old man with parents and that wasn't my life right i went away you know since i'm in my 20s i'm involved in a family type thing of my own now i'm like daddy's mommy's boy again you know i was like holy [ __ ] you know it's not an it's not a comfortable feeling so but thankfully they're good people they're really you know i got i got lucky and if i got if i didn't get lucky in any area of my life i got very lucky with my parents they're [ __ ] great well during the documentary at the very end you said you know you started out wanting to be a good cop never intended to be a bad cop and you actually started crying right as you're as you're saying that uh is there a lot of regret over what you've done so i just listened to an interview i had done back in the 90s with the uh mcneil lair newshour and i think i misspoke or maybe they cut my words so they said you they said to me are you sorry so i said sorry sorry is not really the way to describe this you know and i did mention that there's a lot of regrets and one of the many some of the regrets that i didn't mention in the in the documentary the film they did which i i don't know why because normally i would say that i regret what i did to the police department to the to the men and women that that didn't do the things that i did i regret that i put that onus on them to have to overcome that like if i'm corrupt to look at the next guy you're probably corrupt too right i mean it doesn't you know that's just the way life is so i regret that i did that to those people that were honest because there were many honest i would say there were a lot less honest then than they are today by the way uh because i'd say a third of the police department was [ __ ] straight out clipping everybody they could back then today i don't think it's that way but i'm not in there but i just don't think that it is so yeah so my regrets are i have children that grew up without a father i disparaged the police department and the guys that women that had the struggle overcome what i did and you know i regret what i did to myself i mean i didn't have to have that life i had you know i don't want to call it a privileged life because i didn't but i had a father who worked his balls off and a mother who fed me and kept the roof over my head every day and some people don't have that or don't have that kind of support and i had that i took it for granted as i did the police department i took the job for granted i never respected it and i'm disappointed on that i didn't acknowledge the i didn't never acknowledge the value of it for some reason i did i don't know why i mean i could probably do a study on why i didn't value it but i know that i didn't value it and today i wish i could have valued it and treated it for what it was you know it's really a pretty nice position maybe not today the way the society hates the police today but back then even though there was a lot of police confrontations it was due to violence in the street and subduing violence today it's everybody hates everybody for christ's sakes adam diaz the drug dealer that you were working with he himself got arrested and he did how much prison time i want to say eight years but i'm it could be six whatever it was yeah okay and did he get deported to the dominican republic so so i just spoke to him yesterday so um he did six or eight years got out got rearrested did 13 more years and then as part of his release rather than stay in and fight to stay here he took deportation just to be done with so he so he was deported back to the dominican republic and he's there currently today right and which is a very interesting twist of fate here the two of you the two of you actually partnered up together and launched a dominican cigar line oh that's true yeah yes called the seven five which was named after the precinct what are you gonna call it what are you gonna call it how did those cigars do is the business still running well it's still up in fact he sent me a message yesterday that for some cigars yes yeah uh yes so so he owns the he registered and owns the name and um i've been going on so many shows that i said i gotta have something to promote because i don't have a book available and the documentary is not financially rewarding to me other than the fact that i did it you know but so i said i need to promote something a hat or some gum i don't know anything so i ran it to him discussed it with him and since his cousin owns a a a tobacco um a cigar making factory in the dominican republic i said that's perfect we'll name a cigar so so it's not very profitable but it's a very high quality cigar and it and and i don't have any left right now but i'm getting more okay and i guess i mean earlier this year there was news that ben stiller is talking about doing a movie about you yes about you know the whole 7-5 thing but i think it's mostly around me so yeah yeah it'd be a hell of a movie it would be a hell of a movie yeah if they listen to me you've been done a long time ago but that's another story you know hollywood they doing things strange well uh michael dowd i appreciate you coming in and sharing your story uh like i said we've interviewed so many kingpins and and criminals and and everyone else like that and we've never interviewed a cop that actually was on both sides of the law this is a very unique story and the fact that you're so honest with everything you did you know you didn't deny it you don't paint yourself as a victim you know what you did you did your time and and now you get to talk about it and it's a it's a very cautionary tale also you know for people who think hey i'm going to join the police force and i'm going to basically skim on the side and so good luck yeah good luck especially these days you know with body cameras and everything else like that like you said it's just a lot harder to do it especially i mean not only body cameras but also everyone has a cell phone there you got a cell phone today yeah yeah you know what and that's not a bit it's not a bad thing i i have to say it's not a bad thing do things right that's what we're here for you know when you're 20 and dumb you don't you know you think it's all about you right you're young you're dumb and i don't mean everybody is but i was you know i was immature i should i made it about me instead of making it about what i was there for i was there to serve the [ __ ] people instead i was serving me at some point it reversed and and once you reverse something it looks great from the other side because it's all about you right so yeah but today i you know at 60 i'd be a damn good cop but no one wants me anymore so well michael i appreciate you coming in and uh you know looking forward to what you have coming up next thanks for having me absolutely until next time peace peace

Channel: djvlad

Views: 619,874

Rating: 4.6901269 out of 5

Keywords: VladTV, DJ Vlad, Interview, Hip-Hop, Rap, News, Gossip, Rumors, Drama

Id: FGWTlgRz6uE

Length: 84min 21sec (5061 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021