Bathtub Homicide/Suicide, Inside Fast & Furious, Home Invasion Foot Pursuit

this is things police see firstand accounts with your host Steve gold welcome to the podcast that interviews active and retired police officers about their most intense bizarre and sometimes humorous moments on the job it is I your host Old Ginger face thank you for being here everybody thank you for finding the show thank you to all the new listeners who are binging the show and hearing what these great men and women of law enforcement uh actually do on a daily basis in and out totally unedited no holds bar they let it rip and you get to hear and see what it is that they have to put up with and that’s the point of the show just so you hear and get a better appreciation through their stories of what they’re actually doing out there so uh thank you for the listening thank you for the rating and reviewing that’s been going on as always I appreciate appreciate that um you know if you can’t um if you can’t afford to join the patreon and give monetarily that’s fine the show will remain free um the whole point is for the max amount of people as possible to hear it but uh the rating reviewing is huge so if you if you really love the show and you want to uh give it a five star I appreciate it I I will say a few uh we’re well over a thousand now on Apple but there was one where someone gave like a really great review but then they click four stars and I think it was an accident so if it’s if that’s you go back and make it five I appreciate it uh if you do join the patreon you will get a um a 3X3 things pleas see vinyl sticker which you can put in your water bottle or car or whatever I have I’ve had one in my car for like two years now and it’s still uh still looks Brandy new so these are they’re pretty good pretty good uh quality I’d say I hope you guys are doing well out there I’m in the Northeast it’s been we’re finally getting um a taste of winter it’s like 15 degrees out it’s we’ve got we’ve had snow lately tonight for supper my wife made like chicken soup with rice with uh garlic toast like the the garlic toast I like you know it’s not like the fancy restaurant garlic toast it’s the uh just like sliced bread in the toaster oven with garlic powder and like flakes of parsley on it I just love it it’s the best it was so good so it’s that time year where I am if you’re in the southwest or the West Coast uh go f yourself because you’re probably having beautiful weather all the time um without with all that said we have a fantastic guest today I’m excited to have him on um he’s done a lot he’s been all over he’s uh retired ATF Deputy assistant director former NYPD homicide detective operation Fast and Furious whistleblower and author of The soon to be released in March it will be released the deadly path without further Ado let me bring on the great Peter foreli Peter Steve thanks for having me hey man my my pleasure brother I love the wall behind you get all the stuff on there yeah thanks my wife actually helped me put it together she’s got a knack for decoration and whatnot I not so much so thank you absolutely man looks great um what did you have for supper tonight did you have some chicken soup with uh with garlic to I had I had Chi chicken cutlets and some rice and beans my wife made my wife’s Puerto Rican so she makes Puerto Rican food that’s what we had today it was very good good for you man I when I worked at lepd backgrounds um I always said I should have been BN born not Puerto Rican but I always say I should have been born Mexican because I was always at the taco truck man I love I love spicy food it doesn’t love me but I I’m fully built for like you know uh Bland meat and potatoes but I love I love food like that it’s great yeah that’s good stuff hell yeah one of our officers where I work is is uh is Puerto Rican and it’s um very helpful cuz he he’s fluent and uh we have a we recently had a guy a a kid speeding through town and he tried to pull the whole like KN Eng glaz deal and he just started speaking to him and he was like oh damn yeah didn’t work out nice try though you got me damn it um but where I am in western Mass it’s like there’s uh there’s not a lot of Spanish speakers and um because this officer is with us they’ll they’ll put a broadcast through the throughout the county and now it’s like you know is there any Spanish speakers out there can you go to this stop so he gets to go all over the place to go you know to to translate so that he can you know help other cops make arrests and stuff like that that’s good but I’m sure it gets old quick yeah it’s like being a female cop like hey can you come search this female it’s like oh my gosh is this my only job now right right absolutely brother you’ve been you’ve done a ton you’ve you’ve done a t and you started in uh NYPD which NYPD is you know super busy to begin with and you ended up over the ATF did you did you come through as um did you come up through MPD as like through their Academy and through their whole system before you went to ATF yeah well actually when I started there were three different police departments in New York City there was New York City Housing police the Transit Police and the NPD we all took the same test we went through the same Academy I got picked for housing which actually the day I got sworn in you know sent to a different room thought I was in trouble and um now that I was going to the housing police I was really disappointed at first uh because I mean took the test to be an NYPD cop turned out to be a blessing what a great job so I I did um my first five years in Patrol um well the first three on foot patroling the projects in the Bronx wow during this during the late 80s I started in ‘ 887 so I mean it was pretty violent time um then you know eventually made it into the sector car and then finally into anti-me which was plain closed Patrol so I mean you doing Patrol duties but not in uniform and then uh I got into the detective Bureau in 1994 and then in 1995 Giuliani merged all three departments so you know when we heard this was happening I was a little bit concerned I didn’t know where it wind up but I was fortunate I wound up staying in the detective Bureau in the Bronx um did a couple years in you doing routine detective work and then did my last five years with the NYPD in the Bronx homicide task force was where I got my first taste to work in federal cases and um the Bronx DA’s office was overworked and you know plea Bargains were kind of the norm so you know um seeing the federal sentencing guidelines and the the impact that we could have with Federal cases what kind of me that’s what lured me to leaving the mypd and going over ATF so I I jumped chip in 2001 so how many years total mypd before you went Federal just shy of 15 okay so how old were you I was 34 wow so you just made the cut off then isn’t it 35 for feds it’s 37 ATF but yeah pretty much wow very close that must have been a big deal like you get um you get real comfortable in the organiz organization you’re in and then you’re you know you’re in your late 30s or mid-30s in your case and um you got to just putting yourself out there you’re going to another Academy you’re learning the ropes again like you’re the new guy all over again yeah know it was it was very humbling and uh let me tell you you know going through the academy atfs academy is no joke uh very physical a lot of PT which is fine I mean I was a weightlifter which was stupid um because you know there’s a lot of running down they want endurance yeah yeah and I I got pissed off if I had to drive a mile and a half more or less run one and then I remember one day we did a 10- mile run I thought I was going to die I made it you know I wasn’t at the front of the pack I’m not going to lie um you know it’s a fat old guy but it was a it was a challenge and the weird thing is I didn’t actually go through the ATF Academy till I had almost two years on with ATF because I got sworn in with them in um June of 2001 and our offices yeah our offices were in the World Trade Center and back then if you were prior law enforcement and I had worked with them a lot they gave you your badge and gun day one it was like just go do whatever you want to do make cases until we get a chance to send you down to the academy so then wow 911 happens and they took this position like hey you know we need you here we’re still doing a lot of stuff um we’ll send when we can send you so I didn’t go down to the ATF Academy till I had nearly two years on which sucked because if I failed out of the Academy I couldn’t go back to the NPD because NYPD will take you back in a year after that one year passes you’re you’re you know [ _ ] out of luck and um so I mean that’s being not being a very good runner let me tell you I learned how to run because feeding my family depended on it so yeah it was interesting so yeah and I spent my first six years with ATF still working in the Bronx so it really wasn’t much of a transition because worked the same ATF Academy neighborhoods kept some of the same informants actually so it wasn’t it wasn’t bad yeah yeah I know um I know those Federal cies are so do you all is it for the ATF and I because I know I’ve asked guessed this before but I don’t remember you go through fletzy and then you go to this the specialized ATF Academy is that how it works it’s exactly 10 back then it was 10 weeks of What’s called the criminal investigator training program which is pretty basic frankly not that much of a heavy lift and then um after that was 14 weeks of the ATF uh Academy which it was a lot more intensive because they you know now they own you you know when when you’re a fety you could be in a class that’s mixed with like folks from IGS like and there’s some really obscure organizations like Noah National oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration oig they have cops yeah NASA has an oig so I mean you can be going through with folks from those organ organizations so the the PT isn’t quite as intensive in the fety program then when you get to the agency specific program it’s a little harder the border patrol program was brutal back then um ours was pretty tough and so was the US Marshall service were about on par and then some of the other ones were were you know tough but not as challenging I would say so we kind of envied those folks yeah to we’d go into the cafeteria like drenched in sweat um you know how it is you work out hard you take a shower and then you get out of the shower you’re still sweating yeah where some of the other organizations they look nice the hair was done perfectly you know they weren’t sweating they they didn’t smell we know we’re talking about the FBI guys right well they go through their own Academy yeah oh that’s right I heard it’s I heard it’s not that physical and I’m won’t b m the m i do wi my book a little bit but I’ll I’ll just leave it at that right are they kind of when you’re in the federal system are they kind of the the um kind of the they’re kind of the largest Federal agency so they kind of like the the one that everybody kind of bucks against or they’re kind of the one that everybody’s always kind of like ah the FBI is that kind of how it works FBI it’s them and to some degree DHS I mean those are the big 800 pound gorillas in the room and it’s weird like in certain parts of the country I’ve worked in we worked very well with the FBI in other parts of the country there was a more strained relationship you know and look everybody thinks that that the feds come in and screw over the local cops we’ve all heard the stories I lived some of them when I was a local cop U they do an equal amount of screwing each other over within the federal system there’s plenty of you know federal system Warfare that happens between organizations a lot of it’s organizational Pride um but look some places people work together well other places not so much yeah another another sentiment out there is that um ATF are like uh and I I have found the opposite of this because I’ve had ATF guys on here uh more than a few times that the ATF guys are um not pro Second Amendment or they’re they’re gun Grabber type guys and I don’t see that at all when talking with you guys I I see more like you guys are just into you enforce the laws that are out there but you’re very Pro Second Amendment yeah I look most ATF agents that I know are are actual you know I mean they they shoot they some of them are competitive Shooters most of them have large collections of guns themselves they’re absolutely Pro Second Amendment they get along very well with the ffls uh which is the licensed dealers and you know the agents because people think that ATF agents go in and inspect gun shops they don’t ATF agents investigate violations there are inspectors that inspect gun chops um rarely do those things ever turn into a criminal case um I know of personally two ATF agents over the years who I’ve met that I would describe as anti-gun uh one of them almost can’t became the director I’ll name him David Chipman I mean you know he was not a fan of the Second Amendment I was in the you know later in my career I was on IP’s um Firearms committee and David was on the committee with me at the time he was with gford which he’s I believe he’s still with gford um and he would get into heated arguments with a lot of the cops that were also on the committee because he just had such an anti-gun position but he’s one of two that I would argue took that stance look most ATF agents take the job because we go after folks who use guns in crimes everybody thinks that it’s all firearms trafficking or felons in possession and we do those cases we I don’t do them anymore but I mean I solved more homicides my first year as an ATF agent than I did my last year as a homicide detective because we worked racketeering cases we worked continuing criminal Enterprise cases hoback robbery cases so I mean if it involves a gun that that falls into atf’s jurisdiction and that’s that’s what most agents want to work and then you have I don’t know if you ever heard Jay Dobbins has a book out he he infiltrated the Hell’s Angels Kent croak who I work with infiltrated the pagans I mean you know so they do these long-term um you know infiltrations um to look for you know people involved in homicides and Firearm smuggling explos to smuggling so it’s not just guns a lot of folks look especially in politics they make it about guns right and but I get it look it’s a it’s a touchy topic with folks the Second Amendment is is sacred to me and to most agents but I know some folks think that we don’t really care about it and the other thing is atf’s made some mistakes over the years and when they make them it’s usually under the old what’s the saying go big or go home they don’t they make it they make it so yeah yeah I hear you do you know Lou vzone at all I I you know what I don’t know him I’ve met him a few times he was uh in based in Savannah I know he has a book out based on some storefront work that he did yeah um you know so I I met him when I was in charge of ATF Miami office but I never worked with him um I work with other people in the under cover program but never directly with Luke okay yeah he was on the podcast he was great he’s uh I mean he he looks like your he looks like the guy you want to send into the pagans or something big muscular guy tattoos you know what I mean but yeah he he had some definite um some hairy things I love the cover of his book it’s got like he’s got tobacco he’s got First Call alcohol and he’s got a firearm you know like kind of on the table in front of them it’s kind of uh it’s kind of neat um so Peter can you tell us as a either or or both um the first time as a law enforcement officer that you had a uh a uh intense call a call that really got your um heart pounding well I mean in in the projects a lot of times you’d be walking a foot post alone so there were times where something as simple as you catch a couple guys smoking crack in the stairwell and you got to take them into cust alone some of those things got hairy but I mean the ones that were the ones that stand out to me and we’re going back now you know 30 something years um I remember there was one call where a kid got into a h um you one of the housing project elevators was around Christmas time a little earlier than where we’re you know talking now and um there was a Christmas tree that some idiot had left in the elevator because God forbid you take it downstairs and put it where you’re supposed to put it so the guy just dragged it out of his apartment and left it in the um in the elevator and some young kid got into the elevator and you know decided hey this should be a great place to see how if I can light this Christmas tree on fire he’s on the 13th floor so he did he lit the Christmas tree on fire and it it took it lit up like a candle so by the time he made it down to the lobby he it inated himself I mean that was one of the first cases that I responded to where I was like Wow uh you know realiz opener but I I I actually um not too early in my career I think it probably like three or four years on the job I got called to another incident was the Happy Land Social Club fire and that was um 87 people died and it was all because some idiot um was trying to go in there and pick up the coat check girl and she wanted nothing to do with them so he left and went and bought a gallon of gas and got a book of matches from a nearby gas station went back and lit up the area by the front door well all the other doors were bolted closed because it was an illegal social club7 people mostly teenagers incinerated in there so that was pretty you know freaky thing to respond to I remember when when I when I showed up the fireman we talking amongst themselves and one of the firemen was saying that when they walked in they literally thought like what they didn’t understand what they were stepping on um but you could you could basically walk the entire floor without stepping on floor I mean it was just dead kids and you know adults as well but cindered bodies wow that’s not that’s kind of like the great white thing that happened in Rhode Island with the they had the pyrotechnics go off and people couldn’t get out and yes Dam I think that happened a year or two after if I’m not mistaken but yeah you don’t I mean you don’t forget those things you know yeah absolutely when you got there was it just fully engulfed too late to go in or anything like that oh yeah there was no going in and they I mean the fire started at the only point of entry which was the uh the door uh you know that’s why nobody got out and it was weird because I had heard and I don’t I didn’t see this myself that the detectives actually found um fingernails in the back door from women like trying to literally trying to open the door so ferociously that their fingernails were Housing Authority like embedded in uh in the Wood Wow imagine that that’s horrible just because this guy couldn’t get laid he he goes and burns everybody alive damn 87 people yeah yeah my I had an academy mate that went to the um Boston Housing Authority and um same for her it was like I didn’t even really understand what it was I was in my 20s I’m like how Housing Authority I I didn’t even have a concept of it and um yeah she saw a lot of stuff I mean you’re you’re right in the den I mean that’s where a lot of stuff happens in uh in people’s houses and around where they live that’s mostly where everything happens you know for yeah crimes and stuff like that that’s nuts did um was a transition did you ever like leave the housing authority and get into just a normal marked car with a partner or anything like that well we we patrolled the streets too uh our primary focus was in the projects and but our bosses hated if we made arrests off project they called it but a lot of times we did because if the we answered the same radios so I mean if a robbery came over at neby you know jewelry store or a liquor store um we got the call just like the prings and the the NYPD cops would get pissed off too because we’d get there first we would take the collar um yeah but and it was weird because you know I I should probably shouldn’t say this there was a little bit of like we we absolutely respected each other the different departments but there was a little bit of a rivalry and the thing is if something happened in the projects the cop the NYPD cops would come in beat the hell out of like the defendant and then just leave uh and we’d be stuck with the mess but you know that was the late 80s was different different era man different job a different profession even yeah I that’s so funny you say that because um I worked on Cape Cod for a while and we arrested a guy that was um a little bit on the road he was a little bit um Punchy with us but when we got in the booking room he totally come down and he had a pretty big record but he said um not that in yeah it was probably then it was probably 20 0 it was probably 10 years before that but he said he got arrested in Boston by Boston PD down by the uh the Boston PD peers and uh he goes yeah they uh they beat the piss out of me and I mean he didn’t get arrested he said I had an encounter with Boston PD and he goes this he goes this is why I’m not screwing with you guys any further because I know if I push it too far what will happen he goes I go he goes you know because I I screwed with Boston and they beat the piss out of me and they just left me there beat up like I couldn’t even walk my legs are so bruise from their batons and uh it was funny cuz I’m like dude you’re on we’re in a booking room with like a bunch of cameras we’re not that’s not going to happen here you know what I mean but um sometimes it’s kind that’s just kind of how it is with a bigger place that’s real busy you might just you might just catch an ass whooping or back in the day he might just catch an ass whooping and get left there you know well and the weird thing is there was a kind of a weird like relationship between us and the real hardcore bad guys because you know they resisted and you used force and then invariably you’d wind up having to take them before the preing desk officer and I can’t think of a single time where the person would be brought in handcuffs before the lieutenant Lieutenant say what happened to you son I fell sir always because they knew if if we fight the police you know we’re gonna get hit they accepted it there was like kind of weird respect between the really bad guys and the cops that’s gone now I mean it’s back then Bing was a little bit of a full contact sport now you know you put hands on somebody even if it’s Justified they want to indict you put you in jail and all kinds of crazy stuff it’s profession is change I mean and it’s weird because I spent some time up in Canada with with ATF I was assigned up there as a liaison and the same stuff that we hear down here um like if I Clos my eyes sitting in those um Squad rooms I would think I was sitting in an NYPD pre Saint or a Pittsburgh Pete I mean the same complaints that we have down here they have in Canada and I’ve gotten to know some folks from the UK same thing except they don’t carry guns right um it’s yeah it’s profession yeah it really is yeah it’s it’s it’s too bad they I mean cops now like I’m I’m scared to death of Chauvin getting into shooting cuz it’s like you you can literally be charged with murder before they’ve even done the investigation like there’s no there’s no Grace for cops at all it’s like they just straight up charge you with murder like that look at the Chauvin thing where it’s like now everybody’s got the 30,000 foot view of it and legal analysts are going in and they’re seeing the real autopsy and they’re going yeah you know this guy was pretty much crucified for the mob like he he really got uh H he got Delta sentence that was not appropriate for what happened I mean if the cause of death is not murder how is he incarcerated I mean I that I mean politics of that are appalling but yeah I mean the cause of death I from what I read was not asfixia so and it wasn’t ruled the homicide my understanding is he had a deadly level of fenel and he had some heart disease um so I mean I I don’t get that and look when I was in the homicide Squad we investigated police shootings um you know I I we never had one that was that was not justified I’m not saying that there haven’t been in nyp these time I’m saying during my tenure there they were all sure Justified shootings but um you know we needed a cause of death to charge that case if we ever had a cause of death come back like that for the New York City medical examiner’s office we would have been dead in the water so how they got past that to charge him is is perplexing politics I guess yeah I think they let the they let a third party um autopsy enter into court that the family Bathtub Homicide paid for and it said the opposite of the city it’s like come on this is this is crazy oh well well that’s uh neither here nor there but just a frustration of the job good for you Peter you’re out of it youve you’ve done your time you did you did your did your thing and uh now you’re retired so God bless you but um can you can you look back in your law enforcement career and tell us about a strange or bizarre thing you dealt with well I mean I was there for 9/11 which was strange and bizarre um we had a couple things I I remember there was one case that we had when I was still a detective it’s before I left um you know to go to ATF where there was a woman who was found in the bathtub um typical you know bad order case right so when when we when we cracked open the door the woman was in the bathtub fully skeletonized with two smaller skeletons and what happened is she had decomposed to the point where um the skeletons were sitting in the waxy substance was which was whatever you know um uh soft tissue and whatnot that it decomposed and turned into this mush um so I remember that was a weird one it actually turned out you know it took it we investigated like it was a homicide because we didn’t know even though we had a four century you know we weren’t sure did somebody locked the door with a key it was it’s not like that you know the door was left open and um took a few weeks for the toxicology to came you know to come back and it turned out she’ poisoned herself and her kids uh and committed suicide while sitting in the bath that was a pretty bizarre thing to deal with uh and see you know and and the smell you know you know how it goes yeah when that’s smell gets on your clothes it’s coming home with you the next day you get in the car you almost have to throw up it’s disgusting yeah um so that was pretty weird but you know look as a cop you see Response to 911 a lot of stuff you know yeah that’s that is a pretty bizarre one um Peter can you tell us about your response to 911 what what that was like yeah um I actually speak still at the 911 Memorial Museum it took me years to be able to even set foot back on that site I got there shortly after the first playe hit um I remember getting I remember pulling up to the to the traffic light um not light I’m sorry to to the parking space I was on the other side of seven World Trade I remember looking up at the building and just seeing the big slash in uh in the side of the building I remember looking up and seeing like somebody was waving a white maybe a t-shirt or something white to get attention down on the ground and I remember I didn’t respond to the 93 bombing uh immediately but I remember you know how by the time I got there they were rescuing people by helicopter that time so I was figuring okay the folks up top will get rescued uh from helicopter right um people down below will get out and the building’s going to burn and there’s not much they can do to save that building because the fire was pretty intense and um I got out at that time thinking that it was a small plane that hit the the Trade Center I didn’t realize it was you know large commercial airliner so I got out of the car um walked South a block and then made a left and walked um East and that’s when I saw a giant plane engine sitting right on the corner pretty much I mean and those things look pretty big on a plane when it’s not on the plane it looks much bigger I bet the size of a car yeah no yeah it’s tremendous so I remember uh you know ran into a detective that I knew Don F John fa we went up to the plaza and um while we were up there we were just doing what I mean look there’s no training to get ready for something like that so you’re do what you can you fill in the holes just at that point it was just trying to get people to keep moving so rescue workers could get in and um I remember looking to my left left and there was a young female um Latina EMT tending to a guy who was laid out on the ground he was not in good shape and the second plane hit and I turned to look back in the direction where she was and she literally was at this point also laid out and I literally watched the color bleed from her face and her eyes weren’t weren’t I mean she was gone so I you know yeah so there continuing to try to just help I remember turning and looking back at the North Tower which got hit sooner and that’s when started to see jumpers and the worst part about that is not just seeing the jumpers but hearing the impact of the jumpers getting the ground is is something that just still in my head you know um it’s hard to get out of there so um yeah left went back downstairs down to the main street level um I actually was tasked with going to find the ATF po uh folks because what happened was you know like when there’s a fire drill you’re supposed to go to a mustard location so they could do a head count right nobody showed up at that location so I was saying sent by my boss to go into the site and see if I could round up some folks to get them to go to where they were supposed to get the the headcount and which was a weird choice because I didn’t know everybody in the New York field division I had just started a couple months earlier and we weren’t all located in the same office so it was weird but I remember going down by the South Tower and um while I was down there I saw three NYPD emergency service unit guys who uh who I knew John cogin was a sergeant where when I was a rookie housing cop Vinnie Dan went through the academy with me and went through Feld training with me and then there was a guy Wally Weaver uh who was a he when I was a detective he was a young cop he loved watches we used to talk about watches all the time and I was watching them walk south on Church Street and they started to enter the site right under the the South Tower and Vinnie Dan looks at me and he’s like hey grabs his shirt like what’s up with it I had an ATF windbreaker on oh and um yeah and I left on a Friday and started with ATF on a Monday there was like what’s going on yeah so he didn’t get it so I was like you I kind of threw my hands up like hey you know whatever we’ll talk about it later and the dude had a smile on his face Vinnie was one of those guys little former Marine um just he walked in and as he’s walking in I was actually standing next to two ATF agents that I did find Salo and Jason zamoff and Jason grabbed my my left shoulder like he grabbed it like with ferocity and he just said one word he said run so I remember looking up and from where I was standing it looked like the tower was falling like a domino and if you ever see footage yeah if you ever see the footage the top the top of the South Tower caned and then the building collapsed under it so I just started running and wound up hiding under a fire truck for a few seconds just to avoid the debris and then got out and ran North but um j u Vinnie Dans John cogin and Walter Weaver died so I I basically watched three of my friends walk into the site never to come out again and I spent a few you know spent the entire day down there trying to you know help wasn’t much you could do to help and then spent um basically the first through the night the first night at the site pretty much although I had to pick up some radios and drop them off uh dug most of the second day and I didn’t get home till day three and it was weird because like you wanted to help but it’s F either folks got out or they died very few people actually needed physical help so it’s a tough thing to to deal with and you know losing losing three friends there watching them go was bad and it turned out I actually lost seven friends in total that day and sorry toar artist no yeah it is what it is um but since then it’s probably about 21 friends because people are still dying 9 911 related cancers and other 911 related illnesses I mean girl I field trained Jennifer Mian she was lieutenant in the NYPD died just a couple years ago brain cancer another guy I work with I’ll stop because I don’t want to get everybody all depressed it’s enough this about but yes another Lieutenant I work with just died a couple months ago of pancreatic cancer all 911 related it’s crazy jeez when you were um when you were hiding on Hiding under the truck the truck then you had to run was it did the only I’ve seen the videos where like the big huge dust plume comes up did you get out of that or did you get taken up into that well that’s why I got out from under the truck what happened was I went under the truck to avoid the debris and when that cloud came through it came through with some with some force behind it so I got hit in the face with that cloud and it was very gritty so I mean I’m you know I’m under the truck suffocate yeah and when you blink your eyes exactly it felt like sandpaper so I like I got to get out of here I’m going to suffocate I’m going to die here what a stupid move so I got out from under the truck and just ran North into like a duck into a building but yeah that cloud that was that was some nasty stuff to breathe in wow that’s intense man wow that’s terrible and then I’m I’m sure in an incident like that too where it’s like you said you were there like you went home on the third day it’s like How long have you been here no one’s probably keeping track of who’s been here for how long or like do you just kind of just tell someone hey I’ve been up for like you know two days I have to go get some rest well you know we actually got summoned to our office in Brooklyn to meet our director had flown up in a Blackhawk helicopter and wanted to meet everybody that’s why we left the the site um look nobody wanted to leave you know our friends were in there so I mean there were people sleeping on the streets and then you know taking a nap here or you know crashing into Apartments uh because people would offer you their apartment to sleep in and then you just went back and and dug so I don’t you know I wasn’t the only person that was down there just doing whatever I could do to help but unfortunately it’s kind of futile efforts because like I said before man the folks that got out got out and the folks that were trapped I mean I know there were a few Rescuers and Port Authority cops for example but most of the people perished they were gone yeah man and that that whole event is so tragic and it obviously and but like beyond the physical injuries like I have a good friend of mine who’s uh a guy he grew up with it was a New York um firefighter who just he just died actually so he’s my buddy’s going to his funeral tonight or his um his calling hours and he just went into the bottle PTSD because of 9/11 he was fine seemingly before that and then you know since then has just been uh fall down drunk he just because it just screwed him up so bad you know well I mean you don’t look that’s a tough thing to see and I’m not going to lie look gu maybe it’ll help somebody else I wound up with survivors guilt in a bad way for a while and then I I had PTSD and I was one of those folks like I thought I was having a heart attack one time went to the hospital um doctors examined me to to you know they could check for blood I guess if you there’s a marker if you had a heart attack so I had a doctor I think it was around 2006 in new central New Jersey the Central State Medical Center to tell me we think that maybe you might have PTSD I wasn’t nice to them had it happen again later because I’m like hey I’m the cop I’m the guy that you come to for help I don’t I don’t ask for help that’s that’s that was the culture back then it wasn’t until I wound up myself getting lung cancer in 2018 that I actually started speaking to somebody about it yeah thank God cancer free they took out the right lung all the cancer with it no chemo no radiation I was for you yeah yeah thank God but uh yeah I I had PTSD and I wasn’t I didn’t have the balls to ask for help I mean that’s that’s really what it was it takes courage to ask for help I’m glad people are doing it now but I came from a generation where that was taboo I’m glad that I’m glad that’s gone because you know look you come into this profession hole you deserve to leave this profession hole right yeah absolutely I me I remember talking with a a guy who was um LAPD for a long time and he’ been to a bunch of crazy stuff obviously long career and he said he was just standing I think he was like in Wendy’s or or McDonald’s in in line and um he just had he just started he like all of a sudden he felt like that anxiety like just out of nowhere he was like this is like he’s he’s like in his own mind he’s fine he’s like I’m fine right nothing’s wrong and then he had that like um you know that just encroaching feeling of Doom and he felt like he was gonna pass out or he was having a heart attack and he’s like where is this coming from like I’m I’m GNA I want to order a hamburger and I and all of a sudden I’m having this thing and it was from all the all the trauma all the all the things he stuffed away and it just you know in a line trying to get a hamburger it decided to rear its ugly head you know and then then of course you have to deal with it right that’s that’s kind of the way it works but that’s um like you said hopefully now things are pretty in the mental health world with police are it’s a lot more Progressive that way with like getting help and you know it used to be um you know hey there’s a you know there’s a poster on the wall with 800 number in case you have any feelings you need to you know you need to talk to it was almost said kind of like you know if you if you have to you know type of thing meanwhile you’re working with a bunch of guys that have are on their third wife and you know have a drinking problem and you’re like well maybe you should have called that like 25 years ago well and in the back in the day there was also this fear that hey if I say I have something you know going on with me in my head they going to take my guns and I’ll be behind a desk somewhere those days are over yeah so thank God those days are over because I mean it prevented a lot of people who probably could have used some help from getting it and look cop and suicides usually are higher than cop homicides each year right so I mean how many lives could it have saved had the culture changed earlier GL it’s change now you know yeah absolutely Peter absolutely um can you I Home Invasion Foot Pursuit mean we’ve already talked about some intense stuff but can you recall a very intense or terrifying moment from your time in law enforcement yeah it was this one time um and look the thing with ATF is most of the stuff we did is pre-plan so you have a lot of planning in advance element of surprise usually I remember uh going back to I was talking before about being in plain clo we were I was in plain clo uh working uh 6:00 p.m to 2 a.m. shift one night where um we got a call of a home invasion so you know home invasion Rober was off Gun Hill Road in the Bronx not too far from I95 which I’m sure if you’re up in Massachusetts you’re familiar with sure and um so we responded and we were in an unmarked well we were in an unmarked car that was set up to look like a cab so we pull up to um this guy who’s standing in the street he looks a little bit like disoriented and he’s trying to flag us down so we very quickly realized this is one of the suspects from the home invasion what happened was they the they knew the cops were coming they went out of back window jumped off a fire so I got into a foot chase with this guy um Sergeant was behind me and he turned around with the gun in his hand and tried to shoot me but luckily he missed because I was too close so when he turned the gun in his hand his hand with the gun and it hit my face and the gun went off oh my gosh yeah I was like oh [ _ ] I’m dead like I I didn’t know you know I didn’t know if I got shot or anything just a concussion probably was like w oh yeah know so but but I mean luckily I was we were able to tackle him to the ground the gun fell out of his hand at that point we were able to cuff him up but yeah that was pretty terrifying uh and then you know I I I was at another call one time there was a police officer named Hector fontanez that got shot in the chest on not too far from where I was just talking about and and I responded to that and we threw Hector in the car and tried to get him to the hospital his vest was shredded like like Frosted Mini Wheats that sat in the in the milk too long for chist and uh but he bled he bled out in the car we weren’t able to do anything for him so that was that was terrifying in a different way when you have someone’s life in your hands and you’re trying desperately to to get them help but um you couldn’t I mean just a real bad feeling of helplessness yeah God bless him gez um man that’s intense and after Was there any doubt in your mind of career choice the gun goes off in your face like that did you was there any moment where you were like man I don’t know if I want to keep doing this or like was there any doubt in your mind of of your career choice no I look I love dig job I mean I probably if I could go back and do any time of my career over again it would be uniform Patrol to be honest with you because it was fun like when you’re a detective and you have cases there and shitty case tomorrow when you go back to the office that case is waiting for you when you’re on patrol it’s a clear slate you know I mean whatever whatever bad things you deal with today for the most part you come back give it to detectives yeah but I I I loved the job and um you know yeah I I was after that night I went home I couldn’t sleep I was [ _ ] my pants after the fact but when it’s going on and you know the drill you do what you do you do what your training tells you to do you don’t get scared in that moment you get scared later but no I loved it uh you know in fact even after that I get into work early try to get as much overtime as I can it wasn’t even for the money it was because I had fball fear of missing out I didn’t want I didn’t want to not be in in you know that day to miss the big shooting or the big car chase and the big foot chase I just I love the job um you know at some point you get a little too old for that stuff but um you know because your body can’t take it but I just love so no there was no you know second guessing hey did I make the right move in my mind that that was exactly where I needed to be foolishly but yeah yeah well well hey we we need people to think like that otherwise we wouldn’t have any cops absolutely Peter when you were with um the ATF how’s it structured like is What comes in your investigation there is there an ATF um like division that does homicide specifically or do you just kind of handle what comes in in your investigation you handle what comes in in your investigation and it’s weird because like I I get mad sometimes when I hear agents talk about oh small cases and I get all these small cases most of the cases that we that we had that turned into good cases all started as like a fet in possession of a firearm or something like that where their name would have come up in in a a homicide that you know hey you know so and so keeps getting released because no one will testify against them well that was the case usually because folks would get into Riker’s Island and get right back out federally they sat in jail longer so um most of those cases started as felon in possessions we’d get them in we they were looking at time they would come in and they profer in the federal system profer is like when a defendant and his lawyer come in and sit down with the agents and the prosecutor and for them to get a reduction in sentence they got to tell you everything they were involved in and everything they’ve ever witnessed so I mean that was like a treasure Trove of just intelligence to go out I mean you don’t just take them at face value you got to go out there and corroborate what they say people find evidence so I mean that’s that’s how a lot of our cases um that turned into homicide cases started or even home invasion cases or Rico cases usually they started as a smaller case um it rarely did they ever start as that you knew you were walking into some big case and and in those instances it was usually stuff that the police department brought you because said hey we need a federal partner to work on this with us or an FBI or or other agency might call you to be like a a co-sponsoring Agency on like a OSF case or something right but yeah most of it most of it was little small potatoes cases that turned into something good because you ask the right questions or you know you took the case to the next level instead of just dropping the guy off at the Magistrate’s Office saying all right that’s it wash my hands and move on to the next case right yeah ask a couple the right questions do a little prodding and before you know it’s starting to open up yeah exactly exactly no that’s great um Fast and Furious I want to ask you about the uh Fast and Furious so yeah can you explain that a little bit to the audience and also your role as a whistleblower sure well Fast and Furious was a scandal that happened back in 2011 uh it revolved around a case that started in 2010 in a uh ATF office in Phoenix and it was a case where agents were not interdicting firearms that they knew were being smuggled to Mexico to the caloa cartel primarily so um what happened was to to you know paint the pictures I went from working in New York where we were doing just like I told you we were working all of these gun cases flipping people building bigger cases I think by the time I had gotten to Arizona I was I went there because I actually got promoted so I was a a first line supervisor at this point in Arizona or I was an agent in New York so I had probably done around maybe 150 200 prior gun arrests in New York before I got to Phoenix and the way it worked is we called the US attorney’s office and we would make an arrest and we would okay take them to the marshals fingerprint them blah blah blah when I got to Phoenix I would observe um us attorney’s office not taking the cases and not prosecu them they always say well you know what we can indict it later just bring us the information and you know more often than not the agents would do that and the person would never get charged so you had these folks that were actually trafficking in Firearms to this to the caloa cartel and they weren’t getting arrested but what would happen is the the the gun dealers would call us and say hey um there’s a guy just walked in I’ll give you an example he walked in with a paper bag full of money and he asked us how many of the AK47 variant rifles because they’re not real AKs they’re the semi-automatic versions right how many how many do you have on the shelf and the guy would say I’ll take them all so the dealer would not make that sale because the dealers were good people you know they they were law Bing CI little fish they would call us right so we would go out to this to the area and we would let them all right we’re outside they would make the sale we would follow the buyer uh offsite because we didn’t want to do a car stop in the in the Dealer’s parking lot and put the dealer in a bad way and we would do the car stop ask questions build probable cause seize the guns and no one would go to jail so but we would seize the guns so anyway um this went on I mean I’m talking over the course of like the three years where my group was focused on doing that sort of case we SE thousands of guns headed to Mexico um not that many people went to to federal jail um what would happen is my folks would be given the five words that they hated to hear take it to the county take it to the county so the County Prosecutors when they could would charge them so anyway um a new group is formed to take over Firearms trafficking cases to Mexico and my group’s mission was changed to investigate home invasion robberies and uh those sorts of offenses in Phoenix because Phoenix unfortunately during that time had the distinction of leading the nation and being second in the hemisphere in home invasion robberies because people were robbing the cartel drug stash spots so anyway um while this new group is formed every week we would have these supervisors meetings and the new group supervisor good guy um misguided I would listen to this these discussions about this one case they were working and I remember the first uh discussion they were talking about we’re up to like 600 guns on this case like wow that’s that’s interesting I figured some of it was historical maybe they found business records um so you know okay no big deal um next meeting they’re up to like over 800 guns on this case and I’m like now are you guys yeah I’m like are you guys stopping the straw purchasers are you asking questions no no no we’re doing something different so look I don’t pretend to know everything I don’t know what they’re doing but you know it’s not my group I’m in a different group right so I I figured okay but whatever they’re doing must be interesting um wasn’t discussed didn’t next meeting go up and up and up so finally I’m starting to say hey man like what the [ _ ] going on why aren’t you people stopping these STW buyers this is this doesn’t seem good well one of these cops is going to be you know um one of these guns is going to be wind up pointing at some cop or some kid in the street you know um this is [ _ ] so I’m told hey man mind your business you know we know what we’re doing we got this so anyway um Brian Terry a border patrol agent gets killed in December of 201 and um word comes back that one of the guns that was involved in killing Brian was tied to that case and now all of a sudden things start to get out of control and one of the agents in that group who knew what was going on contacted Chuck Bradley’s office so at another meeting I’m sitting there and where I’m told that hey um the US attorney’s office isn’t too happy with the agent John Dodson who blew the whistle and uh there’s Rumblings they may even consider inditing him and now at this point I’m saying to myself wait a minute all of these firearm trafficking cases that we brought to the US attorney’s office that they punted on um and including I mean cases with bodies on them there was one case for example um the gun was purchased and within 48 Hours was used in a shooting where 21 people were killed including four cops in Canada and Mexico the US attorney’s office wouldn’t take that case so I’m like so they’re going to indict an agent who blew the whistle on this case because the US attorney’s office was intimately involved in it but you wouldn’t indict all of these Firearms traffickers so I went home that day I was pissed off like big time yeah so I remember having a conversation with my wife and telling her what was going on on and um I said look I’m I’m going to call grassley’s office and let them know even though I wasn’t involved in that case that the US attorney’s office has been letting these guns walk for a long time or at least the defendants rather and um and now they’re talking about inditing an agent for for blowing the whistle when they wouldn’t Indi all of those Firearms traffickers so then what I found out later was the dealers themselves right again like I told you they were decent people they would call us and we we would get out there and interdict the Firearms you know or if we couldn’t get out there that day because we were tied up they would postpone the sale till the next day they would say hey the Nick’s Check didn’t work out come back tomorrow or they would just not make the sale but they never let the gun just go off into the hands of people that they knew were criminals right so yeah so but anyway so what happens is while we were doing what we were doing the guns weren’t getting traced because they weren’t ever making it to crime scenes so when a gun leaves a gun store we’re not going to trace it because we know that where the gun was purchased because the trace only will take you to the retail purchase right right that so anyway um the gun dealers are like um once my group was repurposed to the to the home invasion stuff all of a sudden they’re getting traces back so they’re like wa why are we getting calls from ATF saying that our guns been recovered in Mexico for all these years when we called you folks we never were getting traces so they they were like look we we’re not going to sell these guns anymore to these folks we’re done so the ATF supervisor that was involved in that case and the head of the ATF office in Phoenix and the US attorney’s office met with the gun dealers and said Hey listen you’re this is groundbreaking what we’re working on continue doing what you’re doing continue making those sales so so they did well as it turns out now those same gun dealers that did what the US attorney’s office and ATF told them to do are being sued by the government of Mexico I mean that’s how screwed up that whole mess was gosh but yeah I blew the whistle because um look our cases weren’t getting prosecuted by the US attorney’s office there was Rumblings that they were going to prosecute John and the other thing I realize is like my agents look the only way as a federal agent for you to really reach your full potential is to have that buyin with the prosecutors because you need things cour orders you need to be able to take a guy out of prison so you need to rid of ABS corpus so he can go point out addresses where he’s done things in the past they weren’t doing that for us so I was like you know here not only were they talking about inditing John and not only um were they just horrible Partners to work with on gun cases but as a supervisor I’m realizing my agents will never reach their full potential because of them not because the agents aren’t trying hard but because the prosecutors that we were working with were horrible so I wound up testifying in June of 200 And1 um in front of Congress about what happened um with that entire Fiasco of a case h how did that go over for you when you started doing that when you started speaking up Congressional Deposition oh not good um it’s you know long before the actual um hearing that because that was televised on C-Span and little Snippets were on the news there was a uh a a deposition behind closed doors which is normal so that deposition went on for many hours and there were staffers like from Senator Le staff um Senator Grassley staff uh Daryl Isa staff and Elijah Cummings staff so I mean I told them everything everything I knew about the case I spoke about before in canona for example about um a one case we had actually involved the dirty gun dealer who admittedly trafficked over a thousand guns to the cartel he didn’t give a [ _ ] um so I mean I outlined all of these cases to them spoke about another case that we were working that involved the guy who was making grenades for the caloa cartel that the US attorney’s office refused to prosecute despite confessions and him getting caught crossing the border with 115 disassembled grenades in his tires um they refused to prosecute that one too so I tell them all these things when the when the deposition was over I walked back to my office which was about four to six blocks away I don’t know exactly and before I even made it back to my office I got a phone call from a prosecutor from that office saying hey Pete everything that you told those Congressional staffs has been related to the United States Attorney I’m like okay that’s not good um the very next yeah that so the exactly the chief federal law enforcement officer for the state and so then anyway the next day I get contacted by another person from that office because not all of them were [ _ ] some of them were and he’s like hey Pete uh I need to meet you for coffee so okay so I met him he hands me an email from the US attorney to his entire staff saying anyone running into Pete forcelli even if it’s on the weekend and he’s sitting there having a cup of coffee with his family it is to be reported to me through your chain of command immediately this point I realized I’m a mark man this is not a comfortable place what do what do you do as ATF agent in that who who do you go to for help well Congressional Testimony I mean I had already spoken to grassley’s folks so I called them and and truthfully I I called the inspector General’s office as well because the Department of Justice has an inspector General and they were they said they were monitoring it but um and then it got worse like I remember the day before my congressional testimony so now it’s this is going to be testimony I’m wearing a suit I’m in front of Congress there’s cameras and everything um you know you’re I’m already a nervous wreck at this point oh yeah I be crapping my pants and I get a phone call from uh one of the Chiefs at the US attorney’s office who was who was a decent guy Mike morsy was his name and he was the messenger so I wasn’t really mad at him but I was pretty pissed off there with with the grenade case we tried to arrest the guy who was making those grenades um when we couldn’t get them we were trying to get Mexico to get them we tried to even see if we can get venue in another District uh like where where the parts came from for somebody to prosecute this guy well I get a phone call saying hey uh Pete this is uh Mike um our offices position position which is when you knew you were about to get taken in the backside our office’s position is um we we never allowed John Baptist kingry um to uh transport those grenade Parts uh across the Mexican border which and what they were trying to say was that we did which was a lie so here I am like the night before my testimony they’re starting to take some of the stuff that they did and turn it around to use against me and my agents uh thank God everything that we did was documented and everything but I mean it turned into like a four-year investigation um for me to clear my name and during which because you know a lot of it stuff conversations I had with prosecutors so a lot of it was um he said she said kind of things where it’s to the point where I was telling the Inspector General investigators and the Congressional investigators hey man if you don’t believe what I’m saying put me on the box I’ll take a polygraph I told him straight up I said I will take a polygraph about anything I’m talking to you about Fast and Furious any of the related cases with stuff going to Mexico with kingry said I’m not going to let you go on a fishing Expedition but I’m an open book for any of those things and it was always oh no no Pete we believe you we believe you but I mean that that happened six times over the course of four years where I’m like hey man if you don’t believe me put me on the box which was a gamble because if you fail a polygraph they can rank they can pull your security clearance and then you’re [ _ ] out of luck and might have to look for another job and look I don’t believe polygraphs are exactly um perfect right so I mean but at the same time I I didn’t know what else I could do to defend my reputation other than continue to fight because you know I wasn’t going to go out and let them you know tarnish my reputation and go out yeah way I was going to leave I was going to leave with my reputation intact but then it took four years to completely clear my name and just get back to work damn so during that four After Action Report years were you able to even get involved in other cases or this was this what you were doing well initially I was uh not doing anything they they had me come in I sat in a cubicle my corner office was gone I sat in a cubicle next to the furniture that was broken that they were getting ready to throw out and garbage cans and everything so I I I reread the Beltway Sniper investigation after Action Report three times in the course of many months so then they sent me to headquarters to write policy for a few months and then um the director well what happened was the a person who was in Phoenix when the [ _ ] hit the fan that came there who I didn’t really know very well this guy’s name is Tom Brandon he later became the deputy director of ATS um he threw me a lifeline and sent me up to Canada um so I spent two years in Canada as a liaison to law enforcement up there so I was basically up there to help them deal with cases that had ties to the United States um which was good because I couldn’t work in Arizona anymore because your primary job as a supervisor besides supervising your group is to be a liaison kind of an advocate when [ _ ] goes sideways at the US attorney’s office to get him to to work with your folks well I I was no longer capable of doing that because they hated my cuts so but the the position in Canada was great though I’ll tell you I got to work a lot with the Ontario Provincial Police with the Toronto Police Service you want to talk about just great cops and just good people Canadians are great I love Canadians they they’re awesome and U they’re old school too I mean you Canada you think of like a little softer they’re tough as Nails up there yeah well I mean the culture up there they’re very kind people the cops up there are like knuckle draggers man they’re they’re [ _ ] awesome loved it so I worked with them for two years and then um then I went back to promote it actually and I was put in charge of leadership training for ATF um assistant deputy director is that right is it well ATF Miami when I left I was a deputy director so I was I was a gs-15 like division Chief then I I was sent down to Miami um as an assistant special agent in charge and then I was put in charge of the Miami office which was nice and then um then I went back to headquarters as a deputy assistant director uh after three years in Miami while while I was down in Miami was uh I had great agents us attorney’s office down there was great had the the you know unfortunate responsibility of having to be in charge of the investigation into how alar matine got his gun for the um excuse me the Pulse Nightclub shooting oh and I also oversaw atf’s investigations into the Fort Lauderdale Airport mass shooting and Parkland and uh you know those were tough crime scenes to yeah go to you know just rough they took a lot out of me oh I can only Tom Brandon imagine so I mean um kudos to the ATF for not stifling your career after doing that you know after testifying to the truth and all that they didn’t sound like they punished you no it was it was this Tom Brandon and it were three people Tom Brandon Tom adury and uh actually a director that was appointed by Barack Obama who um who when he got the job I was kind of [ _ ] in my pants because he was friends with holder and my testimony was not kind to Eric Holder and the Obama Administration so I I was like oh boy this is not going to be good for me I’m I’m [ _ ] um and he turned he turned out to be a straight shooter the guy’s a Marine Corps Colonel he was a US attorney in Minnesota he was like hey man just long as you told the truth we’re we’re good um Tom Brandon who was his deputy director um was was solid because look I know full well most whistleblowers their careers are over usually there’s divorces there’s bankruptcies sure um they told me specifically Tom Brandon as long as you’re telling the truth I have you back um he did so I mean he should get credit for that the other thing is like he never fought my battles for me but they let me fight my battles like I remember like when one of the oig reports came out some some of the stuff that was in there was [ _ ] so I said look I’m gonna go to Congress and I’m gonna [ _ ] tell them that this is [ _ ] so um Tom was like well just make sure you do it on yourk time so literally when the report was because they tell you when the report’s going to come out the oig it was supposed to come out on noon it was a day I believe in o October so I literally sat on a park bench near the Capitol building and I already called the staffers and said hey when this report drops I want to talk to you about it so I sat there and I’m looking on my phone and as soon as it was published to the oig’s website I called him like where do you want me and we sat there and I just went through line by line you know explaining you know my position on everything and look I also I’m not GNA say I got everything right there were mistakes made I wasn’t trafficking in Firearms I wasn’t smuggling I wasn’t doing any of that [ _ ] but you know I made some leadership decisions that I probably would have made differently on a surveillance for example where I I my agents didn’t want to they wanted to rely on a poll camera I didn’t trust the Paul camera uh because I didn’t trust technology because I don’t old fart and uh and surveillance got burned so you know stuff like that I owned you know I’m not I’m not the kind of guy that points fingers at people for my mistakes so um but after that happened it was pretty much done um the uh Congress released a report um basically saying hey doj you [ _ ] up and uh you know you shouldn’t try to throw an agent under the bus for Prosecutor’s mistakes and then I just went about my life after that ah thank goodness so so the what was the impetus what was the what was the force driving fast and furious why did they do it well you know I’m GNA be completely honest I was not in that group so I couldn’t figure out like originally what they were saying is Well what we were going to do is we were going to use the straw purchasing and the Firearms trafficking laws to take down a cell within a cartel um that’s what they were saying now first off the prosecutor that was leading that case was leading other cases that we had worked with him in the past and he was he was horrible I mean he was he was an amateur so it’ be like taking a kid who sucked on a high school football team and having him throw uh touchdowns for the Green Bay Packers at the Super Bowl you it just made no sense so um it it was just a failed strategy from to begin with and then when you consider like dea in Mexico had a robust network of CIS they also had vetted units down there um of of Mexican law enforcement that could actually take action on [ __ ] which we didn’t have so I mean if DEA with the narcotics trafficking conspiracy laws uh and those tools couldn’t take down a cartel the idea that we were going to do it with straw purchasing uh violations was just ridiculous so it sounds political sounds like there was some kind of political driving force well here’s what I’ll say what was going on is the um I don’t know if you’re familiar with what happens if you buy two handguns there’s a form that’s called the multiple sale form that’s filled out so if you go into a gun store and you buy two two shot ter ringers capable of firing four shots fully loaded um both you know between the two of them you fill out this form which gets sent to ATF so ATF knows so and look uh full disclosure we’ve had cases where someone went in I’ll give you an example guys Guy brought 19 Glock 19s so we get the form we’re like okay it’s a good gun kind of yeah good gun kind of unusual most collectors don’t buy 19 of the same gun especially a Glock it’s like so so that’s suspicious to us so we we went and talked to the guy and he’s like yes sir I started a security guard company and I bought the guns my plan is to you know give them to the guards they’ll sign them in okay good to go so I mean but it was just a conversation so but long story short what happens with that multiple sale form is it’s an indicator sometimes because I mean you you’ll see somebody buying guns and they repeatedly buy guns and then those guns keep getting traced from crime scenes that’s somebody you want to go talk to sure well for for rifles there was no such requirement right so that guy I talked about earlier who went in and bought the 13 AK4 yeah there was no form so we the only time ATF would know about those um instances where if the dealer called us or if if it was a Savvy straw buyer who the dealer just didn’t realize was a straw buyer and you know sold the guns honestly thinking it was an honest sale we would find out when the gun gets recovered at a crime scene so what happened was they were pushing this thing called demand letter three right which said that if a person on the border state buys multiple rifles that same form would be filled out so I think that was the political aspect based on what I heard and again I wasn’t involved in the decision makings I wasn’t in those conference rooms at headqu or department but that was the only political thing that um that really came out of operation Fast and Furious was this demand letter three um if that’s why they did it um they should be ashamed of themselves and again I don’t because a lot of bodies dropped in Mexico and Brian Terry’s dead um at you know on the other end of guns that were trafficked during operation Fast and Furious and in those cases ATF agents could have stopped those guns but they didn’t yeah sinful yeah absolutely well good for you man thank God for uh guys like you and law enforcement stand up and say what’s true you know we need that we we all totally be lost without that gez um Peter can you tell us can you remember a heartwarming situation from your time in law enforcement oh there were a lot of them um you know I mean I remember one time there was a uh a young girl um not that young she was 14 years old but she was special needs and and she was missing um and it was a big deal obviously she was severely autistic and missing in the Bronx uh not the place you want to get lost in projects in the Bronx hell no South Bronx South Bronx is like block upon block upon block of housing projects so I remember um you know uh being able to help locate that girl and bring her home to her mother the feeling you know just was amazing um but there’s plenty of times like that you know where you you just um you see the worst in mankind I think when you’re a cop but you also see some of the best you know you also see acts of heroism on the part of civilians that you’re uh you know a witness to or have to document I remember one time even seeing these two guys on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn this gasoline truck literally exploded and there was a guy stuck in the in the cab and I watched as two guys one was Nor D fireman another guy was a regular guy uh dragged this guy out right before the entire cab became engulfed in flamed wow it was funny because the civilian was so overcome with emotion for doing such a good thing he was like sobbing the fireman was used to it you know I guess but um yeah we see we see the good and the bad as cops yeah absolutely so a real popular question on the show is uh advice that you would give with all your years of experience to someone who’s thinking about becoming a police officer or is in the process now is in backgrounds or you know it’s just um weighing their options what what would you tell these people being a cop is perhaps one of the most rewarding careers I think that you can pursue if you do it with the right intentions I mean you you literally part of the solution you know you’re protecting people from some really bad people you’re helping people at their worst um I think to do it effectively you have to really remember that the badge is not a reflection of power it’s a reflection of responsibility you know um it’s a lot of trust is placed in you when you get that badge and that gun and you’re put out on patrol and I think if you’re willing to go in there and be humble and recognize that throughout your career I don’t care how much time like I let when I left ATF I had 35 years of total law enforcement experience I was still learning every day and I I was learning from people that had more time on the job than me and I was learning from people that came came right out of the academy who just looked at things through a different lens so if you’re humble and you’re willing to be a sponge and just learn and and just stick with your principles and remember that the badge means responsibility and not power I think you’re on the right track all right words of wisdom thank you very much for that brother hey let’s uh let’s talk about the book a little bit say it’s coming out in March um what uh what was the what was the motivation here just obviously you have you have great stories but um what uh what spurred you to do it there were a couple things actually and I’m not going to lie one of them was I had a ton of legal bills that I had to pay over the years and I never made that money back so I I hope the book sells but the reality is um you know towards the end of my career I was a deputy assistant director I was a head of training so I’d go down to the academy and you know what happens you get some folks that just take the job and they’re just happy to have a job but every now and then I’d run into an agent who got hired by us and so he would start googling and researching and look at the history of the organization sure and invariably I would hear um so you were one of the whistleblowers did we really do that and so I would do what and they would all have these weird um you know visions of what happened during operation f f because if you watch the news back then you either heard the Democrat version of what happened which was blame Bush or the Republican version of what happened which was this all started because of Obama um so the real story was never told for them you know I know there were there were stories about the the the Scandal itself but not how we got there so I wanted to set the record straight for these cops and agents that might want to come on with ATF or just people who were interested in what happened there um so that they know you know um I just think it’s important because if you don’t know about history somebody might repeat it right yeah absolutely and the book’s called The Deadly path how operation Fast and Furious and bad lawyers armed Mexican cartels and you will share with me the uh the link for purchasing that in March when it comes out yes it’s it it’s actually the link is available for pre-order now on Amazon but yeah I’ll put that I’ll put that in the show notes perfect I think yeah I’ll get it to you awesome Peter it was an honor to have you on brother thank you so much yeah no my pleasure it was an honor to be here I really appreciate the invite yeah of course um I’m going to do the outro takes about three minutes can you hang on for a second sure all right I’ll be right with you the great Peter for S guys um man fascinating stories especially the uh the really detailed look behind fast and purus really really good stuff thank you to Peter for coming on thank you for everybody for supporting the show the rating and the reviewing all the things you guys do I truly appreciate it this is the time in the show while we when we thank the patreon sergeant so there’s two levels in patreon you can be a patrolman or a sergeant either way I’m going to send you a sticker but the sergeants will get a shout out on the show and who I’m talking about is Andy bigs Greg Gad boy the great Adam mihal Chris June the great Gary Steiner Jake Pineo John Shoemaker the great Lauren Stimson the handsome Lane Campbell Seth right everybody James Rose the one and only the great Tony fee Ben Peters see it work brother Jason Loud don’t forget him mik win the great Sasha McNab Scott minkler Tammy Walsh holding it down to dispatch William James onong that’s Deputy William James on to you thank you very much Sean Clifford Dennis kisio Keep It Coming brother Iceman from motorcop Chronicles check him out great podcast George Tessier he at church Brother Scott young the great Thomas Connell Wayne M Miller retired ATF and author Dan Carlson from Burly boards Doug and Kelly Newman love you guys see at church Dave Elman Elliot Sykes Richard tolls keep on trucking my man Christian the great Jace Crow Brad Thompson Kyle Roberts Zack Haney The Great Nancy Hammond Clark lucku Adam McMahon oifer Andy Sheriff Ron and the great Zachary pleet guys thank you for supporting the show you keep the lights on over here and you keep the episodes coming so ha thank you and I’ll see you guys next