Lets just get right into it. Before we get into it, i really truly believe that every cop should have this book and not just every cop but in the Business World also because you are talking about integrity. Its a big issue all around but especially with police. Police have a lot of power. We are around money, drugs and corruption could be afoot so this is a great book. Its the second best book i have read this here come the second best. Guest i think the book that you wrote. Host are right you got me on that. Ive a few questions in the beginning in the prologue to talk about this case where you guys were a team that were following this guy. He was going to make a pick up in Washington Heights and hes a young fellow as you describe, grabs him to take him in to get the money or whatever it was. Its actually a rapper named young so. I know you dont listen to rap thats the word its always out there. People always say that guy is a young thug. Why would you describe that and what you classify as a young thug . It doesnt have to be racial. Thats a term that commonly use. Guest in this particular case this individual was not only a lookout but he was the muscle, he was the doorman and he controlled entry and exit from this building so instead of being a regular security person this guy was making sure that the police werent getting anywhere near the apartment or in some cases as we have seen the other people who were coming to steal from the drug dealers. Host okay. Something very interesting he stayed in the book and im quoting, bad cops are seldom bad cops just once. Please explain. Guest okay. In social science theres something called the slippery slope where at least the premise is that if you do something wrong and its miner it will gradually grow into something more serious. When someone makes the decision to commit a crime as a Police Officer, stealing, using Excessive Force, very rarely especially when we catch them is the first time they have been involved. What i would like to say and im sure youll echo this is that the overwhelming vast majority of the nypd officers dedicated hardworking men and women who at one of the toughest jobs in the country. Good people but its that small percentage, that less than 1 2 of 1 who are corrupt, who are brutal and who are bad cops. Host we are going to get to that. Guest is that that steals the headlines away from the good cops. Host you talked talk about that. We are going to get back to that but how often and also how often do internal affairs regular cops become criminals and once you guys wrap them they flip. How often do they flip because i know that cops dont want to rat out other cops but you have caught cops that have also committed serious crimes. How often would they wear a wire or rat out their fellow cops . Guest it doesnt happen as often often as the sugars often is a good but it does happen from time to time and a lot of it has to do with how deeply involved it is. Unfortunately sometimes the worst is the first one that gets arrested in the first one willing to talk so we use every method we can good solid investigative techniques like flipping people and using bad cops and putting them back out there using them as their agents and informants but yes we do. Probably doesnt happen as often as it could. Host earlier in your career and you did 41 years. Guest yes i did. Host you are more than 38 years old. 41 years and early in your career. What i gather out of the book is that you were straight as an arrow right from the top. The most particular case i really applaud you for is when you and your partner romeo were chasing a young kid and you saw he burglarized the place and you caught him leaving with the bag. You guys had the equipment your gun belt and youre fast and everything. He was a young kid starting at running and your partner got into a crouching stand that was ready to shoot him pretty much in the back i guess and you stop your partner and said no, we cant do that. I applaud you for that. This was in the 70s. There was corruption everywhere. I really applaud you for that. How did you feel after you did that . Guest i didnt want that young man to be heard for what he did. There was no justification for using that level of force on that young man. He was out running us and again good for him. Cops and robbers, good for him i was he was running away but i would get him eventually but i couldnt allow him to be shot running away from us. Host you guys still caught him if i remember. Guest yes we did. He had dropped the bag. He had a bag full of supplies out of the beauty parlor, nothing expensive hair drier, clock radio, brushes and cosmetics, things of that nature and once he dropped the bag he was not going to be caught. He was a young man and he was running fast and we saw him run into one of the abandoned buildings. And eventually we would catch him in the building trying to hide under some debris under broken door. Guest thats great and its for cops to take that stand most cops dont want to rock the vote if this is the way things are going. Exit when i read your book i actually was really straight in my career, very straight. I have this image and im reading your book and im like wow hes just like me, so straight which brings me to one of the funniest parts of your book they that you paid 10 for it. Guest it was only 1 dollar. Host lets set this up. Truly hard for me to believe that during the 70s, 80s and 90s he didnt take one cup of coffee . This is what used to happen to me. I was scared in the early 90s. I would purchase and they would want to get the stuff. I was so scared because im a rookie. I would say you got to lease give me four quarters. So you did that quite often . Guest i did and if the place wouldnt take my money i wouldnt would go back again. On when this happened coffee and tea were about 10 cents. I would get coffee for myself and my partners and i didnt have any change. The man was so adamant i just left a dollar and walked out. Host it became a running joke in the precinct. Guest why would you pay a dollar for a 10cent cup of tea . Guest . Host the book is so authentic. All of these stories i can relate to. There has been a tremendous amount of obstruction and this goes back to something you are saying. Your estimation is that less than half of 1 of cops are bad. Explain a little further. For the people who are watching. Guest i spent 41 years in the nypd. I saw acts of courage, bravery and integrity but theres always that small number of cops who keep you up at night. When i was at commander everyone knew the person or maybe two that you didnt trust and the officers did not trust him or her either. What i did when i went to internal affairs is i brought the Commanding Officers on board and we would meet with them on a regular basis. I would ask them questions like who in your command are you a little concerned about . Who in your command keeps you up at night . We will do an investigation for you and maybe do an integrity test and maybe we wont want to talk about them later but we will put a case in your command. Some commanders are worried they are too many cases against my command he will think im not doing a good job. We always tell them you are part of the investigatory team. If you work with me youll come out of this looking well not being criticized. I always looked for that person and the other cops are willing to tell you if you are willing to listen who to stay away from and who they dont want to work with. Host that case really bothered me that we will talk about that later because like you said Everybody Knows who the hothead is. Thats like corporate america. You know this guy is dead weight and i want to work with that guy but with a policeman its so much more. Guest you have to be able to come forward and have to be of the standup and sometimes be ridiculed for it. I stopped my partner at the time and it wasnt easy for me in the beginning. The good thing was my reputation was that i was not a bad cop said they came to me and they said tell us what really happened. They will come and listen to your side of the story. They may not believe you but they will give you an opportunity to talk. Host in the last 25 years a dramatic decrease in crime at nypd takes a lot of credit and rightfully so. Things had changed from 42nd street to what it is today. You dramatically dropped corruption at the nypd. I have to give you credit. I know that you did and from reading the book you really explain it. Now, you think there is a direct correlation between the drop in corruption and the decrease in crime . Thats something i was thinking about when i was reading the book. Guest i would like to think so but the truth of the matter is when we were first starting an internal affairs back in 1993 we looked and we saw that for the most part internal affairs around the world was conducted very reactively. Someone makes a complete and we investigate the complaint but it had very little effect on corruption and the level of complaints we were getting so we changed our focus. We would take complaints from anyone but we decided in order to be effective we needed to be proactive. I think that proactive investigation is what set us apart on the other Police Departments and also was mainly responsible for the dash in corruption. Not willing to take credit for the reduction in crime. Host i think it belongs to the men and women of the nypd that as highranking members would like to stand up when crime goes down and say its our policies and procedures but its the men and women on the street to make it work. Host definitely. We got closer to the community and people were giving us more information but they credit goes to the nypd. You are working in brownsville in the 73rd precinct. I never knew that it was called for z. Thats the old name. Lets just think about this. It was one of the most violent places in the city of new york in the 70s. Fastforward now 40 years later. I was Commanding Officer psa to which were in the housing developments. As we scissor today my estimation is that brownsville is the most violent city in new york. I actually believe that. When do you think the Police Department is actually going to read that place of crime . Host guest i worked there for so many years and there were so many good and honest people people that i like to help as best i could. Its cyclical and as new york city is changing and we have seen all the parts of brooklyn is just in a matter of time before people discover that are on sale is the next hotspot and people are going to get in and they are going to make the changes with the Police Department with State Government to start to turn that place around. Host i believe thats the only place that hasnt turned yet. All those housing developments. Now, when you are on vacation with your wife, someone approaches you that you arrested before. I had the exact same experience. It was in jamaica and you were in the Virgin Islands. I did not do what you did. The he knew who i was but what stood out to me is relationships are every thing and when the cops are on the game is over so that means when you build relationships you are really doing the right thing because you would see this guy in the Virgin Islands when you and your wife are buying cigars and that could be a problem but a severe relationship that you had with your prisoners not that you had a close relationship but i gather you gain their respect. Guest i never hit a prisoner and then never let anyone else hit a prisoner in this particular case this young man was locked in a cell for a couple of hours and it was during the blackout. We couldnt have been as accommodating as they wanted to be. Host i remember i was a kid when the blackout happened that you really described exactly what everybody talked about. Host was a chaotic scene in all this young man wanted was to go to the bathroom and have a drink of water. How could i deny someone back . In good faith how could i deny someone back . Host you would be surprised that a lot of cops were denied a guy go into the bathroom. You also talked about what me and you know and anybody and Law Enforcement knows. I was so happy to read that you said the hook is alive and well. Let me explain to the people with the hook is. Basically if you know somebody, corruption i worked at mcdonalds and i was a ceo in light nephew wanted to job i would probably put them on french fries and move them up to be the manager. Guest theres nothing corrupter untoward about it. The hook is people who know Police Officer sometimes they put them in commands that are more favorable. Command is easier for them to commute back and forth. Commands that are better suited for younger officer. Host it wasnt suited for the guy that was doing the corruption in the book were you sent him from Staten Island all the way to the bronx. The. Guest theres something called highway and its not used often but sometimes its a way of getting a strong message across that you are here to do a job, do your job. Host exactly. Now you talk about something that bothers you was go away money and go away money is basically a lawsuit against the city of new york, the Police Department and the city says hey lets just settle this for a suit and then you can speak about it, 10,000 or 20,000. In 1999, 1997 i believe the Officers Association had a lawsuit based on discrimination working conditions. Minorities were being severely punished more harshly than other people and cases of disciplinary action. They settled the suit for 27 million. Do you think that was hush money . Guest heres the way the attorneys describe it and im opposed to it from day one. If you have done something wrong you have to make amends. My mother told me that when i was a child but if you are right you need to defend yourself. And a lot of these cases the attorneys will come and say we will do a cost analysis. It will cost us 100,000 in legal fees and court fines etc. But if we get the person said thousand dollars they wont go away and the city saved 90,000. I think this encourages lawsuits. People will say our case isnt strong. Our case may not even be wonderful but if we sue maybe they will give us go away money. They will give us money and we have made money. The city says we have done nothing wrong. The individual officer says he or she did nothing wrong but they are encouraging it in my opinion and if you are right you need to stand up and fight. Host okay. The infamous mike dow. You speak about the mic dow and i believe you said, do you believe that there were other mike dows out there at this time . Is so hard for me to believe that he was the only person that was robbing drug dealers way back then. Guess who it had to be more. Host it had to be more. Why do you think the Police Department when after these guys . Guest you have to remember back then you had the internal Affairs Division which was an outgrowth of the nap division and they were there to handle what at the time was systemic corruption within the Police Department, very reactive approach. What they did was they didnt grow as corruption grows. In my time i have seen corruption go from systemic to opportunistic to now familiar. Familiar corruption, thats the most difficult to detect and prosecute. As corruption was mutating on the systemic corruption, systemic music goes up and down the entire organization. We find that latterly plus word late vertically in the organization. That was basically eliminated and today im happy to say during my time i see no signs of systemic corruption. Opportunist pick corruption where people take advantage of opportunity, now that is much more difficult to be reactive. The old internal Affairs Division did not grow, did not evolve as corruption was mutating. They tried to do the old things over and over again and they were ineffective. Corruption was allowed to flourish not on purpose but it does they just didnt do it correctly. Host now, when you took over, i love that you said ray kelly basically stuck the ied right on the throat. It doesnt matter. When the boss tells you to go somewhere you just say i i served. If you say anything other your career will probably just be stagnant. The thing i got out of that, want to know and i may have to reread it who came up with a twoyear rotation . Was that you are ray kelly . Guest that was part of the plan. What we did is we did focus groups. Host explain to people what the twoyear commitment is. Guest the twoyear commitment is you are drafted and he could no longer volunteered to be in i. D. Some people say shanghai. What we would do was to advocate the most talented people. The people with the best reputation, people of the best records people who have proven their work to the Police Department. We did these focus groups and we found out the opinion of the old internal Affairs Division was not very favorable. They were either cowards afraid to be real cops so they went to internal affairs instead or they were rats. When people got caught doing bad things in exchange for leniency they would rather have other cops or they were people who wanted to change the world and didnt know how they wanted to do at the dayton know they had to change the world. I dont know that was true or not but thats what the cops believed so we got together and we were putting together a new internal affairs for euro and we said we cant let People Volunteer because they are not well thought out. We are going to have to change that could we are going to make it a draft. We are only going to bring people in who are respected none in a highquality investigative supervisor. To make it more palatable we said there should be a minimum of a twoyear commitment. Looking back on it now i probably would change that. I would publicly make it a threeyear commitment because by the time i had those investigators up and running atop speed they were looking to move on. I would change that if i could. If i could go back in time i would change that to three years but it changed the perception. No longer were they cowards and rats but they were respected members of the Police Department who when their twoyear commitment was up they would go back into policing and be accepted by the rankandfile Police Officers. Ho