- 6 minutes ago
Mike Dowd is a former New York City Police Department officer who became involved in drug dealing while on the force. He was arrested in 1992 and later convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to distribute narcotics, serving 12 years in federal prison.
He speaks to Business Insider about how police corruption starts and spreads inside a precinct. He breaks down why some officers turn corrupt, how the NYPD investigates its own, the risks officers take when they cross the line, and how much money is involved in drug-related corruption. He also outlines what could be done to improve police accountability and prevent similar cases.
Dowd now works on podcasts, books, and courses with the New Solutions Network, and is developing a premium cigar line with Adam Diaz.
For more, visit:
https://www.instagram.com/mindsorganized?igsh=azBiaHZid3dsczJ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLKRfeUn_2k
He speaks to Business Insider about how police corruption starts and spreads inside a precinct. He breaks down why some officers turn corrupt, how the NYPD investigates its own, the risks officers take when they cross the line, and how much money is involved in drug-related corruption. He also outlines what could be done to improve police accountability and prevent similar cases.
Dowd now works on podcasts, books, and courses with the New Solutions Network, and is developing a premium cigar line with Adam Diaz.
For more, visit:
https://www.instagram.com/mindsorganized?igsh=azBiaHZid3dsczJ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLKRfeUn_2k
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FunTranscript
00:00My name is Mike Dowd. I was a police officer in New York City in the 75th
00:03precinct in East New York in the 1980s to 90s. I was arrested and sentenced to
00:0714 years in federal prison for conspiring to steal drugs and sell
00:11protection to drug dealers and this is how crime works.
00:15I had 75,000 in the street that was supposed to come in the day I got
00:19arrested. You're talking about a turnaround of
00:21about $200,000 in one day. When you get so full of it you're almost asking for it
00:25to end. You know you start flashing a lot you're
00:28asking for help.
00:34The corruption started between 1984 and 1985. So the first thing I ever did was
00:39I pulled over a Corvette. It had no license plates, no registration, no
00:42insurance card and he had stacks of hundreds in a bag.
00:46I had a choice to to to either lock him up and take the car and voucher it,
00:51put him in jail for a day or two whatever, let him figure it all out
00:55or have him buy us a lobster lunch. So I suggested he give us money for a lobster
01:01lunch. He left a couple hundred bucks under the seat and I told him let's not
01:05see you ever see you again without plates and all this other stuff,
01:08registration and I felt like I stole something and I was nervous.
01:11So that's was the first time I did something like that and it wasn't like it
01:15was followed with many other things. There was a time where I didn't do
01:19anything. It was just one of those can I try something thing and I did.
01:22I was probably between 24 and 25 years old where it got significant which would
01:27have been street corruption. Like street level instead of vouchering drugs you
01:31either threw it out or you kept it or when you found some money on a scene.
01:36In my case you know I kept it you know so that's why I was corrupt because I
01:39instead of turning the money in I put it in my pocket.
01:42As a police officer you're exposed to everything in the world right you're the
01:45first on the scene to anything whether there was a burglary you would show up and
01:49if there was something burglarized or not there was an open entrance into either
01:53a home or a business. So at a point or two in my career there may have been
01:59something that I saw that wasn't claimed and I may have picked it up and put it in
02:03my pocket. All right you're constantly aware of opportunities. So for example
02:08you're in a busy sector in a busy precinct you're constantly going from one job to
02:13the next call for assistance robbery a burglary a murder a rape whatever's
02:19going on and along the way you're looking for
02:22these little opportunities little rubrics of
02:25either drugs or cash usually you know in either order doesn't didn't matter.
02:30We took mostly money and then we we got into systematic payoffs
02:33which was really where the best thing was because it kept us out of the street
02:38because the street talks too much.
02:46We got a call for a burglary at this location it's like a two-story walk up
02:50go inside past the first level to the second level
02:53and the door handles broken off so we walk inside and there's a young black
02:57girl one or two I can't remember sitting there hanging out
03:00well we got a call you broke in well our friend it's our friend's place
03:05they seem legit you know it's our friend's place they said she said we can
03:09hang out here. So I happen to look around the apartment I
03:12noticed something a little odd it was sparsely furnished
03:15but it was very clean I said to the girls well what was
03:19where's the girl she says oh my girlfriend was arrested last night
03:23and I open up the closet and there's like a black green hefty bag
03:28filled with cash so I'm like she's got locked up for drugs
03:32there's cash in here that no one vouchered
03:37yesterday and these girls are in the apartment
03:39so someone's gotta someone's gotta take this cash or at least
03:43with that who walks in behind me is the anti-crime unit and they see me with the
03:49cash in my hand they go oh wait I said ah yeah what are we
03:53gonna do voucher it and give it to the city
03:55so I said ah leave it put it back in the closet
03:58so we put it back in the closet and close the door and they take the two
04:01girls and arrest them for burglary so uh
04:06I get on the phone I call chicky I go chicky there's a house with a bag of
04:09money he goes I don't have a car
04:12I go what do you don't have a car he goes it's in the shop being repaired I
04:15said well rent one buy one steal one just get a car
04:18he ends up calling one of our other guys they pull up
04:21they get out they're wearing their blazers and make detective shields on
04:25them they walk in the house and uh within three minutes they're in the
04:30car ready to leave so I pull them over oh I gotta say how you doing
04:34got a big bag of cash here great okay so I go to the pay phone I call the desk
04:39I
04:39say listen I gotta go home my wife needs me for something
04:42so I call basically bang in for half a day off we get a limousine and we go to
04:46Atlantic City and turn the fives and tens and twenties into hundreds and come back
04:51home what about forty thousand dollars in cash now listen that's a lot of money
04:54you know forty thousand in cash my salary was probably twenty two thousand twenty
04:58six thousand a year at the time we put forty thousand in cash in a bag
05:01and we split it three ways and we had a nice time Atlantic City
05:05back in the 80s it was a crack epidemic was going on
05:08initially when we were making these arrests we were overwhelming a system that was
05:13already overwhelmed so we were discouraged from making minor crack arrests
05:18now when I say discouraged they didn't say don't make crack arrests
05:22because that wouldn't be proper but what they did say was
05:26you know after you've made so many arrests the overtime mounts up and they put
05:29you on a not a good assignment to keep you from making arrests it's facts
05:34so we learned that it was easier just to take
05:43street corruption systematic payoff corruption and then investigative
05:47corruption it was it was rampant it was rampant the money was too big
05:52the oversight in the police department uh during that time
05:55i think they were going through a learning curve themselves and what do i mean by
05:58that they had just gotten done with the knap commission
06:01in comes the era of crack on the back of this
06:04and they were just not ready for the volume years ago corruption was basically top
06:10down people in very high positions of power like lieutenants captains and chiefs and inspectors
06:15that dealt with the community at large as far as decision making processes and who could be in
06:22business and who couldn't and then the the patrolman enforced the captain's rules
06:27the patrolman would never have to interact with the bosses so the patrolman could do whatever the hell
06:34they wanted as long as no one said anything who's the purse best person to victimize as a patrolman
06:40is a drug dealer in the street he's not going to call the police and say
06:45hi officer i'm selling a large volume of drugs and your police officers are stealing my money
06:50i mean it's just not the way it's done now today it's done believe it or not it is done
06:54like that
06:55today because they give them a pass and they take the corrupt cop which is fine that's their choice but
07:00it was so upside down that the street cops had more power than the bosses because you got a guy
07:07with a gun who's got a lot of money not every organization not every system was that way but
07:12there were pockets there were pockets that could do that and one of the examples i could tell people
07:16for a fact you have new york city joint task force working with a dea agent so you got one
07:23or two dea
07:23agents working with 10 cops and they were all considered dea agents because they work under the purview
07:29of the federal government they do long-term deep investigations which gets them to the level of
07:34very high drug distributions and that's where the money is you'll get a guy in the street selling
07:40you know ten thousand dollars a day in crack or a fifty or a hundred thousand dollars a day in
07:45crack
07:45but he's getting that from somewhere he's getting that from two three levels up as bricks of cocaine
07:51coming in where a guy's buying fifteen hundred kilos at a time okay and when you get fifteen hundred
07:57kilos at a time that means you're handling millions of dollars in cash so if you're an investigator
08:03in the dea slash mypd task force they would deep into these organizations and they would let the guy
08:11know you need to leave the country and leave 10 million otherwise we're taking you and that's how
08:18that worked a lot of guys will say this well we didn't do that mike and you're disparaging all of
08:23us i know you didn't do this but many of you knew about it which in reality makes you guilty
08:30i hate to
08:31say it and i'm not putting that on individuals but if you know that i've done something corrupt and you
08:37don't report me then you're corrupt it allows the system to continue the corruption by not pointing it
08:45out now you don't want to be the one that called up on me and they haven't gotten rid of
08:50me and i'm
08:51still there with my gun showing up to protect you or not protect you so it really is a very
08:57delicate
08:58balance just out of survival instincts why would a cop tell on another cop if he knew and many times
09:05i'm going to tell you straight up many times they didn't know but they sort of maybe knew do you
09:10see
09:15the difference guys around me were corrupt all right but not all of them and we knew each other
09:19it's there was there was just a way we knew the way you operated at a scene the way uh
09:25things were
09:26sort of handled the scene was handled not in the rest but what happens very quickly is you know who
09:32you can do it around if they were uncomfortable you would choose not to put them in that position
09:37so you would ask them to leave or make sure that they weren't fully aware it's just it's just the
09:44way you handle things it really became an art on not exposing your friends other police officers to
09:53your acts it happened a couple of times with me and i had to apologize to the guys and it
10:00actually was
10:00risky it was risky because i i felt very responsible for putting them in positions that may have went either
10:07way i ended up with a lot of complaints being um submitted to internal affairs against me but
10:12they were very difficult to substantiate there's a very big question that always gets asked to me
10:16how many guys were involved in this kind of thing two me and one other guy i mean come on
10:22let's be real
10:22so i'm just a four guy okay and i don't mean that i'm not responsible for what i did i
10:27i am you
10:28know i stole money and drugs and ended up selling and using drugs so i was a victim of my
10:34own
10:34circumstances for what i did to myself and my family and of course the police department suffered
10:38because of my actions but it wasn't just me alone and i'm not taking any credit away from others
10:43one time i shook a guy down for about four or five hundred dollars drug dealer drugs he had coke
10:50marijuana and heroin in a bag but he wasn't a big time guy he had pockets full of cash and
10:56i peeled off
10:57like four hundred dollars it was a routine i had you know i'd peel off the big bills or take
11:02half the stack and
11:02put the money back in your pocket you're going home you got your drugs and your money back in
11:08your pocket you're not getting arrested so one day the precinct commander the lieutenant on the desk
11:13said to 10-1 means he wanted to talk to me on the phone lieutenant so i call the desk
11:19and he says uh
11:20there's someone here putting a complaint you stole money from him some young kid i go what what is he
11:25crazy of course of course i'm going this guy's crazy well i wouldn't see i wouldn't take a dime from
11:31somebody right he says you better get here to the station house before he gets in to make the
11:35complaint otherwise they're gonna have to open up an investigation i walk inside the station house
11:39and there's the two kids there's two of them and they look at me i look at what's going on
11:44i said i
11:44said i didn't lock you up what the what are you doing here i didn't lock you up well there's
11:49450
11:50dollars whatever missing i go what do you be missing i gave you your money back the kid goes yeah
11:57but
11:57there's 400 messages so you're in here making the complaint maybe it's in the street maybe it's in
12:02your car it was the first thing you do is coming i said where's your car i can't find their
12:07car i was
12:07trying to put the money back in the car before i got to the station house they parked the car
12:11four
12:12blocks away from the station house i don't know this at the time so i go uh well let's go
12:17check your
12:17car it's probably in your car i open up the back door i go did you look here and i
12:22throw the money on the
12:24floor and i go oh no yeah we look i said well you didn't look hard enough i said don't
12:29ever make a
12:30complaint against me i said you would have cost me my career if i ever see you again you're going
12:34to
12:34jail i mean they got the marijuana the heroin the cocaine still with them so i mean this is how
12:39could
12:40you imagine guy coming to the station house to complain that i took money meanwhile he's got heroin
12:45and cocaine and marijuana on him but the good thing was the lieutenant looked out for me he had 20
12:51years
12:51more 20 years more on the job than me so he wasn't my buddy but he was looking out he
12:57was looking
12:58out he didn't want me to get jammed up you know months later i have a new child i want
13:08to straighten
13:08my life and my career out i happen to be in coney island and i end up in an argument
13:14with an off-duty
13:15police officer and it gets nasty and he wants to make a civilian complaint against me which is
13:21unheard of police officers don't make complaints against each other they work it out so i happen to
13:26be out sick and i was just coming back from the beach okay i was with my wife and as
13:31i'm driving down
13:32111 on long island i passed the vehicle of the guy the cop that gave me the hard time in
13:39the street in
13:40coney island he ends up getting out of his vehicle and i pull over i can't see him but i
13:47know the car
13:48and my wife at the time happened to be in the car and i said do me a favor i
13:52don't want to turn
13:52around and make it obvious get a look at the guy so she gets a look at the guy and
13:56he goes upstairs
13:57into this crack house there's only one crack house in iceland and it was that was the one he was
14:01going
14:01into so i go home and i speak to my neighbor my neighbor is my current at the time my
14:06wife's uncle
14:07he's a detective in the 102 precinct i said he just went to crack house this guy
14:13i said so so there's no question what he's doing he goes call internal affairs i go billy i don't
14:17want i'm not that guy he goes because i i don't want to tell billy that i've been shaking people
14:22down a little bit and taking money off the street not a lot at this time but doing some of
14:26it enough
14:27where i had a little bit of heat but you know i looked at it as let's turn a new
14:32leaf and start a
14:32new leaf and that was my approach at this time so i called up internal affairs and they were at
14:37my
14:37house within 40 minutes this turned everything for me in my head okay i'm gonna be a good guy
14:42i want to straighten my life out dear lord you know i'm i'm asking god for forgiveness i went to
14:46a priest i did everything i didn't know you could do the cleansing trying to straighten my life out
14:50here i am turning on a guy that's selling drugs we know he's selling drugs that is a bad guy
14:54because
14:54he's starting with a cop in the street which is not a good thing right so he ends up telling
15:01me
15:01the lieutenant what we really want is we want to get enough information in case he wins his case
15:09and doesn't take termination as the i said wait so you want to just terminate him from the job so
15:15he
15:15can't be a police officer anymore they said yes they said and if he wins his case we want to
15:20have a
15:20backup to make sure he doesn't get his job back so that's why are you willing to say you saw
15:25him you're
15:26willing to say this because look i didn't see him sell anything i said i saw him go to crack
15:29spot do the
15:30investigation yourself but they wanted to know that they could at least begin something so they
15:35left me with the knowledge that all they really want was to get rid of them i'm sitting here saying
15:41i'm swearing my life off to turn my life around and they all they really want to do is get
15:46rid of the
15:47problem they don't want to arrest them they don't want to charge them they want to just get rid of
15:51them
15:54okay so that's what that i mean that was very impactful for me
16:03here i am a cop in the seven five and i'm there now probably three and a half four years
16:09so
16:10i mean you're so exposed to everything your your window into the world is beyond what others could
16:16imagine i know the people i'm one of those guys that is easily liked both in uniform and out because
16:23i'm really not looking to hurt you i'm just looking to see what you're about if you're dealing drugs i'm
16:28not looking to come down on your hard i'm just looking to say that don't disrespect me so i had
16:33their trust very early on and i ended up with very close friends with baron perez the auto installer he
16:40installed the music systems back in the 80s they had those big systems and they would put them in cars
16:46nice cars you know fancy cars and the sisters would be 20 30 000 with the gooseneck equalizers i mean
16:52the stuff that i could throw out there the benzy boxes i mean all this stuff from the 80s that
16:58was
16:58chic and and expensive they would all come through his business so every drug dealer in brooklyn and
17:05queens had to come through baron's business to get the best systems and eventually at some point one of
17:11the organizations la companie went to him and said to him i can you get me a little inside information
17:16so
17:17being a businessman he knew that if he could get his buddy me to sell out which wouldn't have been
17:25a
17:25far stretch because he knew that i was capable of being a little bit corrupted because i've already
17:30brought him drugs in the past so now he said to me if you could help out this guy for
17:35the weekend
17:36it was a fourth of july weekend so it was a no-brainer for me he wants to know if
17:40he's safe to full bore
17:41sell his drugs well eighty percent of the police on fourth of july weekend are either off or at the
17:48parades the peers and stuff so yeah he's got a free free reign i'm gonna make eight thousand dollars
17:56to tell a story so i did i told the story and i got paid eight thousand dollars i'm not
18:01selling
18:01them anything i'm selling them the truth go ahead sell your drugs today because you're doing it anyway
18:05and i'm giving you the okay because you're gonna do it anyway so it was like a no-brainer for
18:10eight
18:10grand i just made eight thousand we split it between me and my partner i remember one of the
18:15one of the first acts of corruption i found a guy with these vials in his mouth we get a
18:20call crack a
18:21guy selling drugs on a corner of crescent and fulton which is a big hub for activity we get there
18:28and there's a guy standing there and he fits the description so he started questioning a few things
18:33what are you doing what are you doing he's talking to me he goes dentist oh he's at the dentist
18:43all
18:44right well we get a call she's selling drugs here not a dentist okay he's got crack vials lining his
18:51bottom and top and bottom lip all wrapped in here so he starts spitting it in the sewer all right
18:58we
18:58leave 10 minutes later you get called back uh the guy's got the sewer plate off it's 400 pounds he's
19:06going down the sewer hole to get these these these things i don't know what we don't know what they
19:10are so we figured there's some value to you don't just take a 400 pound sewer plate off right so
19:15within
19:15the next 24 hours you see these things popping up all around the street so my partner at the time
19:22we found a newport box filled with these plastic things with caps on them red caps yellow caps he
19:30takes him home he comes back the next day hands me a couple hundred bucks i go what do you
19:34what's this
19:34for he goes that's cocaine i go what he goes i go we've been throwing it out he goes yeah
19:40now he's
19:41handing me a couple hundred bucks i'm like i guess i guess we're in the cocaine business now i mean
19:48i mean it became like an atm machine like every corner had a crack dealer on it and it was
19:55just
19:55a matter of how much you were going to get them with either cash or crack kenny urrell was a
20:00cop
20:00in the 75 precinct who had no partner i had no partner and we'd be putting the car together just
20:06by luck or ad hoc and eventually i approached him and said listen do you want to make this permanent
20:12become partners because i'm tired of getting thrown in with these internal affairs woman and oddball
20:17guys that no one wants to work with and then i tried to explain to him how i made a
20:21lot of money
20:21and he said i know you're a corrupt i said yeah but this is how you do it and he
20:25goes okay let's do it
20:26so june 87 we became partners we eventually went from being patrolmen handling jobs patrolmen shaking
20:33down locals to basically patrolmen doing our job and overseeing drug operations so that they were safe
20:41and that's where we get into the protection market because it was less exposure adam diaz was the
20:48kingpin of a dominican drug organization kingpin because he was a massive dealer you know you get
20:54a kingpin term when you move more than 100 kilos a week okay and he was moving about a thousand
20:58kilos
20:58a month you know so he was very very big a big massive player in the game and uh very
21:03well respected in
21:04the game so i got connected with adam diaz through the relationship with baron perez the owner of
21:09autosound city who put me together with him after the failing of la compania when the company and i
21:16broke up i figured i it was a one-shot deal we got our money let's move on but baron
21:20being a businessman
21:21said wait a minute because he was getting a piece on the side he said look i got another guy
21:26that's
21:26going to want some help and it turned out to be adam i tell baron we'll have a sit down
21:30and we'll meet
21:31this guy face to face because the other thing didn't work out we ended up almost killing each other
21:35the conversation is going to cost him 24 000 for kenny and i so it was like 12 000 each
21:40and we sit
21:41down we have a discussion and we decide how we're going to do this operation and that if you're going
21:47to have us involved you're going to have to listen to everything we say because we're risking our
21:51careers and the first thing i said to him is we're going to be front page of the daily news
21:55if this
21:56goes wrong four weeks into it we see a big bus start being set up we don't know where but
22:01we know
22:01this one because there's 60 places they're selling cocaine everybody's selling it we don't know who
22:06they're in so not to take any chance i get on the phone i'm supposed to page baron hit him
22:12on the
22:12beeper 9-1-1 he didn't get back to me within a minute i couldn't wait i don't know when
22:16this bus is
22:16going down so i walk into the bodega on vermont and new lots go to the back get two heinekens
22:25open them
22:25up by the door and i go close down now i don't even know the guy i don't even know
22:30this guy from adam
22:31i go close it now he looks at me and i go close it they take the two beers and
22:38i walk out the door
22:39i get in the car we drive away we sip on our heinekens about 30 minutes later the lights
22:46the dogs freaking i don't know if there was helicopters they hit the store with i want to
22:52see a team of 20 guys they couldn't find salt in the store that's how cleaned out they made the
22:58place
22:58that later on of course i can laugh about it now but later on when i heard the stories how
23:03pissed
23:03they were i'm like oh my god i didn't know i just guessed they might be going to this store
23:08i was
23:08right and i was worth my weight in gold to them after that because they saved them probably 20 something
23:15kilos and probably a half a million in cash that was in just on hand that one day at that
23:20one time
23:21i could do no wrong from that point on with with diaz organization so so that's really how i really
23:27earned my how do you say earned my street credibility with them they ended up dissipating
23:31some got arrested some left the country even after that i continued to have access um through other
23:39guys that just like these spots would just get filled in if someone got taken out that was moving
23:46100 kilos someone else was coming in to move 100 kilos so i smoked a couple of joints in my
23:55life
23:56and then i wasn't big big on it i never used cocaine in fact i was afraid to use cocaine
24:01i ended up doing
24:02a couple of bumps lines whatever you call back then and um i did every day for like 90 days
24:09thereafter
24:10it was just became addictive it was almost like a power struggle i'm not allowed to do this but i
24:16can
24:17so i ended up just mentally wanting the cocaine as a as a sign of defiance against the police department
24:24because there was a lot of strife between the rank and file and the department itself and it was almost
24:31like i was bad boy acting out against the department and eventually
24:38so out of control that i um couldn't find my my gun i could i couldn't find my i couldn't
24:47find my
24:47badge i couldn't find my memo book so i said put me on cell duty so i didn't have to
24:53go to the street
24:53because i couldn't find my gun and stuff so i'm on cell duty and in comes the ico the integrity
25:01control
25:01officer i look at him he looks at me and i know he's on me it was the day after
25:08saint patrick's day
25:10and i had just been warned better watch yourself and they had put me in the psych services they
25:15were really riding me hard so i see this ico walk in i can't find my i walk up to
25:22the desk i said i need
25:23to go to rehab the one guy says to they try they want to take me for a piss test
25:29which i'm done if they
25:31and the union stepped in and said the guy just turned his gun and his badge and is asking for
25:36help that's not the time to take someone for a piss test to try to fire them it's because no
25:41one will
25:41ever walk up and ask for help again so they were like you're right it wouldn't it would be precedent
25:49setting they sent me off to rehab i did two years in what they would call the farm which is
25:56limited
25:57duty restricted duty i had eight years invested i didn't want to walk away with nothing my life is
26:01invested in eight years so i did two more rehabs so i relapsed twice during the process basically i
26:08was running in there to hide to be honest but still i was relapsing and so by the time i
26:15come back
26:16i'm working in the white stone pound vouchering cars i'm working in the motor transport division
26:21moving cars around so i wasn't in a law enforcement capacity per se so someone in their infinite wisdom
26:27decided to give me my guns back put me back on patrol but i was i was too immature to
26:33say you
26:33know what i should quit i was just you know i had a wife and child another one coming shortly
26:38thereafter
26:39i i needed to cover my finances and i i didn't know how to get another job i mean i
26:44was a cop and now
26:45oh i quit the police who quits the police you know you get fired or arrested most people just don't
26:50quit you know so i go back to patrol and no one work with me i come with this baggage
26:56big heavy
26:57baggage behind me he's corrupt he's a drunk he's an addict whatever you know listen people talk it's
27:05like one big soap opera and eventually i end up working with a guy who no one wanted to work
27:09with
27:09because he was hot right damaged goods at this point it was baked in disaster because
27:15we both felt we were abused by the system or abusing the system and um so we just continued
27:21the abuse i mean in one way or another so i ended up back in in the cocaine business because
27:26i needed
27:26the extra money i was great it was it was greed at that point because i had already cleaned myself
27:31out
27:32i wasn't addicted anymore and i decided that you know what i could still make some extra money making
27:38dealing with cocaine and that's what i did i'm bringing small amounts home and i have three or four guys
27:43that are selling eight balls and i of course i missed the money from the diaz operation i mean
27:47i missed four thousand a week so now i had to learn to hustle and i was making maybe two
27:52three thousand
27:52a week hustling out the side door with the with the cocaine money usually i'd go to barron's shop
27:57and i'd have someone drop something off there for me and i would pick it up i'd pay for it
28:02and i'd go back to my home on long island break it up and hand it to my guys i
28:06had two or three guys
28:12the money in policing is never going to be great okay the reality was you have to set a standard
28:18for
28:18yourself to live by i mean i had like five six bucks in my pocket and i was a week
28:22to go to payday
28:23so after paying my bills whatever the bills happen to be whether i had if i had a mortgage at
28:27the time
28:28which sometimes i did or didn't uh a car payment insurance gas meals doesn't mean it's a hardship a lot
28:35people back then didn't have a lot of money between paychecks but the reality was it was a
28:40very stressful way to live i mean i was clearing three hundred and fifteen dollars a week maybe
28:44less at that point and anytime you can get yourself on a thousand dollars or five hundred dollars in
28:48cash you already made double your salary for the for the week it became an actual pursuit on a daily
28:54basis after a while and i used the term it was like a cash it was like an atm machine
28:59on every corner
29:00because everybody had money and drugs in their pockets so however you wanted to work with it
29:04very new corvettes things like that you know vacationing in the bahamas constantly going to
29:10you know atlantic city or vegas on vacations so i lived there pretty uh uh you know uh excessively
29:16for for a guy making 26 000 a year so i ended up with four homes and a condominium on
29:21the ocean
29:22by the time i was 26 years old i was burying money in homes and construction so that's basically a
29:26great
29:26way to loan a money at the same time someone's gonna know whether it's your mother whether it's your
29:32neighbor you know you now have you're making 28 000 a year and i'm just giving you and you have
29:37a boat
29:37a car and a camper i mean how'd you do this you're a young guy your family wealthy no
29:47so so may 5th uh we sing with the mile the following day i'm at work kenny had ordered a
29:54a big eight or something i could have been two big eights of cocaine um and i and and it's
30:01it's very
30:01eerie to go through this i was in the patrol car with my partner at the time tom massia and
30:08i was
30:09seeing things like everywhere i went i saw undercover police officers and i did and this is how crazy it
30:18is i don't even want to tell my partner but i see them everywhere and now of course i'm thinking
30:25it's the
30:26cocaine i'm paranoid i'm crazy and that i'm seeing them everywhere so at about 4 30 5 o'clock in
30:33the
30:33evening we pull up on the bodega to the right is a church the priest in there was very well
30:40-known
30:40likable guy there's a camera in his window and i'm looking up at this camera the camera's pointing at
30:45the bodega i just left so i look up and i got this brick in my hands you can't it's
30:51in a bag you don't
30:51know what it is it's big so something says to me don't pass this thing he hands it to me
30:58this way
30:58instead of handing it to me he hands to me and i take it and i put it on the
31:01floor of the patrol car
31:03go on with the day kenny goes back to long island i go to the i go to the italian
31:10social club
31:12for wine and pasta dinner i leave there i go to the call box which anybody who's listening to this
31:18would know the call box it was a bar on meeker avenue under the bqe i go to the call
31:23box i get
31:24two tall absolute and sevens take a sip and we get a call 10-2 to the command my partner
31:32i i look at
31:33each other we go did we do anything wrong like it was very eerie why are they 10-2 on
31:37us means report
31:38back to the command so we go back to the command and we walk in and the look on the
31:44sergeant's face
31:45was like he looked as white as the piece of paper you got in your hand and he goes the
31:51captain wants
31:51to speak to you for the setup you know he he just seemed he's doing what he's told to do
31:57this guy
31:57nice guy so i turn and in comes these two guys with their badges out eternal affairs lieutenant so
32:03and so we're taking you for a department order drug test so that's how the arrest goes down they take
32:09me downstairs me and my partner we get changed and i got my clothes my civilian clothes and all my
32:16stuff
32:17of course i have cocaine in the pocket of my civilian clothes so i'm gonna get rid of the cocaine
32:22i'm
32:22gonna throw it out the window when i get in the patrol car taking me to the i get there's
32:27no there's no
32:27handles on the so now i i smoked marlboro light at the time so i light up a cigarette hey
32:34guys you
32:35open the window and smoke nah that's all right when we get there we'll open up and i knew something
32:39was up i couldn't get rid of it so i think when i get out of the car i'll just
32:44go like that i'm slick
32:45i can do it they were there then i went around the car i'm gonna get no i couldn't do
32:51it there then
32:52i hit this phalanx of about 60 cops all all with all with brass on them on their head they
33:00were lining
33:00the walkway so you could do not i'm like this is all for a department-ordered piss test
33:08something's not right in comes a guy from suffolk county pd this is up in in left rack city police
33:14police uh psych ward left uh suffolk county pd yeah you're under arrest for conspiracy
33:21distribute narcotics of course they search me they empty my pockets out comes cocaine i get arrested i
33:28get taken out to suffolk county riverhead get out on bail get rearrested spend 20 something days get
33:33back out on bail ken herell my partner from the 75 precinct who's now retired with a three-quarters
33:39disability pension then i got him he's out on bail now he puts a wire on and he convinces me
33:45to do
33:45something that is not who i am and they catch it on tape and you don't hear the whole tape
33:51you only hear
33:51a clip of the tape and this is one of the things i dispute i'll dispute it to the end
33:55that we're supposed
33:56to take a woman and kidnap her and then bring it to colombian dealers to be killed okay so that's
34:01the that's the story that's not the real story we're supposed to go to her house take 10 kilos and
34:07a
34:07half a million in cash and leave her but because that wasn't aggressive and violent enough they kept
34:13moving the ball in the conversation and eventually it was like all right we'll put her in the back of
34:18the car we'll get we'll take her wherever we gotta go i'm done taught in other words i was done
34:22talking
34:23about it in the meantime i said put the scanner on because i brought a scanner he puts the scanner
34:29on and it says 107 precinct be advised there's a stakeout on avon street for burglaries i said
34:37we can't we can't go to i'm going what there's a stakeout for burglaries on he says we're not doing
34:44a burglary we're doing a kidnapping oh good idea let's just make believe we're gonna kidnap somebody
34:52and while they're looking for burglars on avon street which is about two blocks long it's about
34:56six houses on avon street they're gonna go there while they're set up for burglars so i went something's
35:01wrong here something's not right first of all we weren't even going there to do anything except
35:06look at the house so we're going to case the place out he turns it into we're doing it now
35:12we're doing
35:13it today what's what are you what's the rush we're talking about half a million dollars in cash and
35:17uh 10 kilos eventually they pull into my house and the feds arrest me they bring me to the southern
35:23district of new york and i face those charges learning that he snitched was heartbreaking when
35:29you find out that you're that you're getting cheated on by the your best guy in your life
35:33your only guy in your life that's got your back you don't want to believe it
35:42i plead guilty in front of judge kimberwood in the southern district of new york in 94 i was sentenced
35:48after the marlin commission hearings for me i like to for people to understand that pleading guilty is
35:55part of the redemption of life right because i was taking responsibility for my actions so the marlin
36:00commission was appointed by david dinkins to discover the depth of the corruption after my case
36:06i wasn't the first one to be taken down it was a 77 precinct got hammered several years before me
36:13the 77 precinct ended up being a prime example and we all panicked six guys from my squad left the
36:20job
36:21like they quit they went to different police departments they just resigned and then i was left
36:26standing there because i had a wife and kid i couldn't go anywhere i had bills on a wife and
36:30kid and mortgages four or five of them at this point so i ended up uh hanging in there and
36:35praying
36:36that they would go away but what happened was they said that's it it's over there's no more corruption
36:42so five years later or so when i get arrested they were so angry because they had made believe they
36:50understand this they made believe that they cleaned the corruption up by taking out the 77
36:55and then when i got pinched and the set and i went down for the 75 the marlin commission came
37:01in to
37:01investigate the the depth of corruption and they ended up taking out 30 something men out of the
37:0730 precinct the whole midnight shift they locked the whole shift up and they said you know like really i
37:14mean you know you guys this is what you're sitting on this the corruption was beyond imaginable the
37:21marlin commission came to me and i didn't want to talk to them i turned them away twice because i
37:26didn't want to testify and give them information that would hurt other police officers so the third
37:31time i was accused of nine murders by mike mcelerian which was all lies not only was i a bad
37:35cop now
37:36i'm a murdering bad cop because according to the news fake news and um my lawyer had just been on
37:41the
37:41phone with the marlin commission they were begging me to come back in so i invited them to meet me
37:46in
37:46mcc new york and i said what do you guys want with me you know i can't really help you
37:50much
37:51i said but what i can do for you is this i can teach you how to catch me would
37:56that work for you
37:57and they said yes teach us how to catch you i basically had become a public spectacle
38:05and now by taking this plea i was fortunate enough that i had testified before the commission
38:10to help change the new york city police department forever and to help change policing in america
38:15forever now it was a little disparaging way of going about it when you take a plea of guilty
38:22in the federal system you have to tell them everything you ever did and you have to say who
38:28you did it with because if you don't and that person gets charged with the crime and they can come
38:35back
38:35and arrest you for that crime and my agreement was i'll tell you what i did i'll tell you what
38:42i did
38:42and who i did things with if i have to but if i don't have to as long as you
38:48you agree not to charge
38:50me then i it all it all is very delicate balance on how you take that plea so it wasn't
38:56easy so did i
38:58give people up no why because i wasn't willing to corroborate the evidence against them they had a
39:04list of people that they knew already that had done things and believe it or not most of them
39:09didn't get charged and they had a long list of people
39:17i pled guilty to rico racketeering and drug distribution i ended up serving four thousand
39:24five hundred and something days they sent me to mariana florida which was a very nice federal prison
39:29i would say but don't forget yourself you're in prison don't ever forget you're in prison
39:33but i would say it was manageable because i'm a manageable guy people didn't know how to take
39:38they knew who i was immediately wherever i went i was the cop i was front paged i'm a new
39:43york guy
39:45i don't recommend it okay it's not the best way to go i would say i was surprised that it
39:50wasn't worse
39:51i never struck a person and no person ever struck me did i meet every challenge when i was called
39:57out yes
39:58in prison uh i i i continued my arc of redemption i ran and the drug program for five years
40:06uh i worked
40:07on their suicide program for three years i saved two lives in prison so i i was a i was
40:12an active
40:12participant in the prison community in order to improve my own standing and improve those around me the
40:19line officers were kind not overly but they were they they had an empathy for me but once you got
40:27above the line officers you got into the back rooms where the people were the decision makers
40:32they sort of held it against me that i was a cop and i disparaged the uniform and the badge
40:37and any any any benefit that most inmates get which i would have gotten if i wasn't a cop like
40:44i qualified
40:44for the camp treatment you ever heard of fed camps club fed i stayed in a medium high my whole
40:50my whole
40:51time which means basically just under penitentiary level well club fed of course people think you're
40:56out there playing tennis and swimming and golfing what they actually are is the back-end workers in
41:01the military camp uh camps so they'll do services to keep the lawns at the camps cut the military camps
41:07keep the housing uh cleaned inmates will do a lot of that work so and it's sort of choice work
41:13because
41:13you're not stuck inside of a prison walls all day long
41:16i was released in 2004 my father was going to come pick me up with a limo i said no
41:26dad
41:27i want to take the bus i want to just be normal i remember getting on the bus and uh
41:32looking out the
41:33window i didn't want to be the cop anymore you know the ex-cop the cop in prison the high
41:39profile
41:39and then i get to the freaking halfway house and i'm all over the front page of the newspaper and
41:45then i took a shower in my parents house for the first time and i cried so hard that i
41:52didn't feel
41:52the shower wetting me it felt like my tears were wetting me it was the first time i was able
41:59to let
41:59loose of all the disaster i did to myself and others i had a wife and two children two boys
42:07and
42:07i was a horrible a horrible husband um not such a great dad um and i basically destroyed their lives
42:18and um i've spent the next 25 years trying to do the best i can to be a father and
42:25a friend
42:26to my boys and their grand my grandchildren it was very difficult for me to get a job because it's
42:32hard to fill out an application when you're 44 years old and the last job you had you were 18
42:38or 19
42:39and then you went in the police department you got this gap of 22 years and they go well what'd
42:44you do for 22 years oh well let's talk about that on the side you know so it's difficult
42:55i was born in brooklyn in 1961 i grew up in brentwood long island we had a military mother and
43:02a father who was a gem i never thought about being a cop when i was growing up i was
43:06an accounting major
43:07in uh in suffolk community college and then cw post and um my dad had been a firefighter and half
43:14of my
43:14family had been through the civil service ranks and so i thought it would be an easy transition take the
43:19test which i did which i did fairly well on the test to get into the mypd you had to
43:23pass a series
43:24of tests so you had to pass a written test psychological test a medical examination and
43:30be overall in in good health and and a criminal background check which i which i passed them all
43:36in the new york city police academy they offer you opportunities and examples of how to behave
43:41in a in individual neighborhoods for example the bronx would be a different approach if the guys
43:46were out playing dominoes in the street opposed to queens where they were getting cats out of trees
43:51i started out in 1982 in the police academy because it was a large class a large graduating class so
43:57instead of going through a six-month training we ended up in training for a year which was basically
44:00no training then i ended up getting transferred to the 75th precinct by the time you left the police
44:05academy you do absolutely nothing except get out there young man and good luck my first day in police
44:11uniform with a gun and a badge walking down 34th street right outside madison square garden 7th avenue
44:19their message was cover your ass be on the same page and by the way it's not an it's not
44:25a corrupt
44:26thing to do it's just the right way to handle business be in sync know what you're doing go about
44:32it in a unified approach so that this way there's no discrepancies and i ended up in the 75 in
44:381983
44:39driving down the street to elvis in the ghetto is on my first day i actually ended up with tears
44:45in
44:45my eyes i wanted to quit i'm a skinny wiry young guy you know my this isn't for me my
44:50mother was
44:50right i should have stayed in college and something in the next let's say the next 24 to 48 hours
44:56something changed at one point there i went like this i gotta sink or swim and you begin to change
45:03i'm answering calls for for assistance whether it's robberies rapes murders family disputes aided cases
45:11you know cats and trees very rare you know if they're not eating it i love being a cop i
45:16love
45:16the action i know the street i know everybody and you have to learn very early on how to maintain
45:23your
45:23emotional uh stability and and not be overwhelmed by what you're seeing and that was one of the early
45:31things i learned and the responsibility as a police officer that you end up having is far beyond what
45:38you could imagine you've been given the power to take someone's life legally and it's not that a
45:46civilian can't do it as well but you're being entrusted with the power of your of your government
45:52to kill someone once you learned your limitations and and the power that you wielded you felt like
46:01you were god but it was fun it was fun but at some point there you need listen america we
46:09want more more
46:16more
46:16for me personally i my my misdeeds my criminal and my corruption shined a light on on the lapses
46:24and the lack of supervision and if you notice today you have a lot more higher end supervisors on the
46:31street than they did 15 20 years ago so i think they changed their model so that the there's more
46:37accountability right at the scene today than it used to be years ago because years ago a cop ran the
46:43street a soldier would show up occasionally just to see if everything was going the right way but
46:48nine times out of ten the patrolman ran the street because they're sworn police officers they're supposed
46:53to be given the trust but today they've taken it and put a layer of supervisory officers in the street
46:59so the decisions are made at a better at what i would say a higher level early on you have
47:04cameras today
47:06you have internal affairs today you have outside groups monitoring the police today it first was a
47:12very difficult job to be a police officer a robot would even fail as a police officer okay let's just
47:16be clear let's be understanding they are human beings the fact is that today policing is so hyper
47:24focused and vigilant on every single thing they do that yes it's a very trusted position i think there's
47:31no actual latitude like there was when i was a cop which which was taken advantage of by me but
47:36not
47:37by others so i mean you know and good sound thinking people that you hire to be your police officer
47:41i think
47:42they should have a little more latitude to to be able to like what we call correct a condition rather
47:46than
47:46make an arrest all the time and just change someone's whole life forever i was put in the position by
47:54my deeds and then by my actions afterwards so i'd like for people to understand that
48:00i have tried to do my best i'm a very um highly sought after advocate when it comes to police
48:06suicides and we know today's environment is very very fragile when it comes to policing
48:11and um i've become quite the advocate for police officers that are going through difficult times and
48:17trouble the nypd is not nearly as corrupt as it ever was okay that's a fact the only difference today
48:24is
48:24the mypd's corruption is back up top and it's pretty evident if you read the news in the last
48:30two or three years a lot of big bosses have gotten a lot of trouble i'm a proponent of anything
48:36change is good but i think there's got to be a safely it was like so so for example i
48:43was a big
48:44proponent of the cameras because i think most police officers
48:49will do the right thing especially if they know they're being monitored by themselves because they
48:54are professionally trained on how to act and i think it's been proven now that the cameras have
48:59been very helpful on both sides i'm a proponent of implementing changes ongoingly i'm working with
49:07the new solutions network and we're working on this thing called merge it's an employee health section
49:12where if you have an addiction problem you contact them your employer and they put you in touch with
49:17the track of people that can help you through whatever you know whether it's alcohol whether
49:21it's family social problems whatever the the illnesses you're dealing with and the pd is accommodating
49:27because they can keep you working in a non-patrol or non-confrontational position because they have
49:33desk jobs all over the place and you're basically a police officer working in a civilian capacity
49:43so
49:54you
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